Get Real

“Getting real” means “getting to the truth,” no matter how difficult. When companies demonstrate real commitment to getting to the truth throughout their organizations, they speed up business processes, cut through red tape, and deliver better results. By contrast, whenever people and organizations resist dealing with the truth, they bring positive accountability to a grinding halt, which eventually leads to undesired results. But getting to the truth is not always easy, especially when doing so requires extra effort, makes someone else look bad, or involves personal risk. In the end, however, “getting real” will do much more to move a project for­ward, produce results, and build accountability than any attempt to create a happy illusion, no matter how well inten­tioned. Creating work environments where people settle for nothing less than the truth, enables individuals and teams to recognize the reality of their situations and take accountability for delivering results, now and in the future.

One of our clients, a major Fortune 100 organi­zation, “ADH,” illustrates the value of getting to the truth. ADH manufactured a medication designed to treat a medical condition that affected a relatively small number of patients. The drug had been on the market for several years, but new business circumstances persuaded ADH to stop manufactur­ing the product. A few weeks later, when a father whose young daughter depended on the drug attempted to refill her prescription, he discovered the drug was on back-order. Little did he know that ADH was in the process of selling out its supply of the drug before ceasing production altogether. Unable to obtain the drug, the increasingly distraught father wrote a letter to ADH’s president explaining his distress. The president, in turn, asked “Bill,” a senior ADH executive, to follow up.

As Bill responded to the situation, he discovered that no one—including doctors, pharmacies, consumers, and employees—knew that the drug would soon be discontinued. Going further, he found an available generic drug that could effectively replace ADH’s product. He quickly communicated the information to a grateful father, who immediately went to the pharmacy at a university medical center. However, when he got there, the pharmacist and a resident dietician told him that the inactive ingredients in the generic drug differed from ADH’s formula. “The generic drug would not provide an acceptable substitution.”

More communication with the frantic father only deepened Bill’s resolve to get to the truth. He immediately contacted the manufacturer of the generic drug and, after several discussions, determined that the generic alterna­tive was a perfectly suitable substitute. Bill called the father again to explain the science behind the generic drug and its suitability for his daughter’s condition. After that, he called the uni­versity pharmacy to explain it to them as well. Then he put his organization to work preparing a letter for distribution to doctors and pharmacists throughout the nation, detailing the suitability of the generic drug as a replacement.

Bill’s deep commitment to getting to the truth not only helped people solve a short-term problem, but also strengthened ADH’s culture. Bill’s story, and others like it, have been told and retold thousands of times throughout ADH. A less accountable person in a less accountable culture might have simply told the father, “We’re discontinuing the product. You’ll need to work with your doctor to find a suitable solution.” Instead, he got real.