Yes, you should be fanatical about getting the details right. Yes, you should shape the group’s values with symbolic acts on certain specific details, but not on every detail. The symbolic acts are meant to lead the way—to guide, to show, to set an example. They are meant to leave a lasting impression so that you don’t need to tightly control people—so that people will behave of their own accord consistent with the core philosophy.

You can be hands-on without stifling people; you can have your fingers on the pulse of the organization, yet not suffocate folks. Indeed, a non-controlling personal touch has just the opposite effect of micro-management. Instead of demoralizing people, it elevates and inspires them to perhaps do more than they would otherwise think possible, which leads us right into our next leadership style element.

As described earlier, one of the primary functions of corporate vision is to add meaning, to be a source of motivation for extraordinary human effort. A clear and compelling vision is essential to people seeing the importance of their work. If you haven’t yet read Chapter 4 on vision, read it. If you haven’t set a vision, do so.

Also, remember that one of the components of a good vision is a set of core values and beliefs, a set of guiding principles and precepts. This underlying set of core values plays an essential role in guiding people’s daily behavior and standards. In fact, there is a direct link between values and tactical execution. For example, if one of your core values is “treat customers like human beings” and if it is well inculcated through your organization (as it is at L.L.Bean), people are going to treat customers like human beings.

To be specific, here are the three levers they used to such great effect.

The first is expressed values: what you write on the walls. We don’t mean that you should literally write out your “values.” Many leaders and many companies set about doing this and wind up with a list of generic values such as integrity, innovation, or, God forbid, teamwork—which are about as meaningful as Muzak—and then wonder why the whole exercise doesn’t seem to have made much difference. Instead, apply some creativity to how you want to bring your meaning to life for your people. Don’t tell them what you value, show them. What do you actually want them to see and to bump into at work?...

A second way to cascade meaning is through rituals… You already have rituals, whether they are conscious or unconscious, and these rituals—the things you do repeatedly—communicate to your people what is meaningful to you. If we followed you around for a week, we’d see them. Let’s say you have a meeting: What time do you show up? Are you five minutes early, or five minutes late? What are you wearing? Do you catch up with your team members about their personal lives or do you launch right into business? Who talks first? Do you allow your team members to speak, or do you cut them off? Does the meeting go long? Do you hold people back to finish things up?

These are all aspects of your rituals, and we, your team, see them, make sense of them, and draw our conclusions—whether you want us to or not. The question, then, isn’t whether you have rituals or not. The question is whether or not you are deliberate about what your rituals communicate…

The third lever is stories. Chick-fil-A makes an art of its storytelling through the operator profiles during Seminar. The company dedicates time to going out to each operator’s store, taking photos, and learning about his or her family and community, precisely so it can share these stories with the rest of the company.

Many of the best leaders are storytellers, not in the sense of writing a novel or a screenplay, but because they cascade meaning through vignettes, anecdotes, or stories told at meetings, on email chains, or on phone calls. They are always telling these little stories, because the stories that they choose to tell convey what they value. Stories make sense of the world: they are meaning, made human. That’s why religions tell stories about their messiah and the creation of the earth, and include parables within those stories that help us learn what is meaningful. And that’s why you can tell a lot about what matters to a team by the stories that the team members tell themselves.

These days, I’m wary of seemingly simple incentive rules that promise amazing results. They are rarely simple, and often leave collateral damage. Usually, a better option is to have a frank discussion about what we should value and why. Why should we care about exploring more designs early on? Why should we aim to speed up engineering velocity? Once people understand and buy into those values, they can make the best decisions on how to apply them.

To help people apply this lesson, we’ve run the Subtraction Game with at least a hundred organizations, including: the top eight executives at Bloom Energy;100 credit union executives; 150 Netflix film postproduction employees; 300 partners in a big law firm; 400 Microsoft executives; and 60 Stanford staffers at a “Help Center” workshop. We ask people to start with solo brainstorming, to “think about how your organization operates. What adds needless frustration? What scatters your attention? What was once useful, but is now in the way?” For some organizations, we add, “Identify impediments that are within your sphere of influence and that are systemic at your company.” Next, people meet in small groups or online rooms for ten minutes or so, discuss the impediments each member generated, and brainstorm more potential subtraction targets. Then, to focus their attention, they select a couple of targets and outline rough implementation plans—who would lead the charge to eliminate these obstacles, whose support they would need along the way, and which people and teams might push back against the change.