Tag: organizational culture

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If you want happy workers, stop treating them like children

This article was brought to my attention by the fine folks at HBR – thought I’d share:

Employee perks
Adult workers don’t need an office that’s like a zoo. (REUTERS/Erin Siegal)

Recently, there’s been something of a happiness backlash against America’s obsession with feeling happy at work. That’s because some companies have been going about it in the wrong way, working on short-term solutions that tend to treat employees more like children than adults who add real value to an organization.

In his book The Happiness Industry, political economist William Davies argues that the discourse around the popular psychology movement entirely misses the point. Instead of discussing ways to improve morale and happiness at work, he pushes us to consider a more fundamental question: Why we are having this discussion in the first place?

“Work is so focused on an intervention tailored toward making people positive so that they work harder,” he tells Quartz, pointing to the wealth of perks some businesses now offer. “We don’t really question how businesses are intrinsically run.”

Take Google, a pioneer in terms of the perks it provides employees, which has secured it a place at the top of “best places to work” lists for nearly a decade. But Davies suggests we look closer at the reason for the perks, which is to extract more hours and greater loyalty from employees—making work a place that you never need to leave.

“It’s almost shameful to complain about work in America,” says Davies, who is based in the UK. “They [American workers] seem to want to believe they should be the last person to leave the office. Brits want to get to the pub as fast as possible.” He gives an example of a casino worker in Philadelphia who shared that he and his colleagues are regularly required to dance to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” with their manager.

As we’ve moved away from a post-industrial society into an information age, knowledge and customer-service work make up a greater portion of all labor. This kind of work places more social and psychological demands on workers, says Davies, and CEOs have increasingly adopted the role of chief psychologist for their companies, managing the well-being of their employees.

Research shows that how we feel about a job absolutely does affect our performance. But instead of focusing strictly on meeting physical needs/desires through unlimited snacks and beer, free massages, and on-campus gyms, companies should consider motivating employees by making them greater participants in the business. “Involve them into discussions about policies, ask them what they want, and distribute authority,” Davies suggests. He also recommends CEOs recognize that most employees want clearer boundaries between work and the rest of their lives: “A system where employees can go to work, and just do the work.”

Many companies have emulated Silicon Valley in adopting perks as a hiring strategy, but the next level in which they’ll compete is not by attracting them with physical amenities, but by extending more trust and allowing employees to work more autonomously.

Original post is HERE

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The Necessity of Failure

Failure

I would hope by now, that everyone understands that failure is nothing to fear. Also understand that getting to that point is a real trick sometimes.

“There are very few black-and-white truths in management or in business, but one that I have found is that people either hire people who are smarter than them or people hire people they can control. I see it over and over again. I’ve always hired people who are smarter than me. I rowed crew in college, and I’m always thinking in those terms — will they make the team better?” ~ Nancy Dubuc
Originally posted on NYTimes

Nancy Dubuc | The Necessity of Failure

Nancy Dubuc, chief executive of A&E Networks, has made her mark on cable television by taking big risks. But for every success, Ms. Dubuc says, she has learned from important failures.

This interview with Nancy Dubuc, the chief executive of A&E Networks, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. Tell me about when you were younger. What were some early lessons for you?

A. I grew up in Bristol, R.I. I had grandparents and great-grandparents nearby, and because I was the only grandchild until I was 12, I was the center of a lot of adult attention.

I’ve only come to realize this within the last couple of years, but because I was part of so many different households, I was able to be a slightly different child in each one of them. That openness to change was ingrained in me at a very young age. I think it helps me to this day, because I can walk into a meeting, size it up and pivot. That’s not something you can teach.

Were you in leadership roles in high school?

My interests were more extracurricular, more external and more social than they were academic. My birthday is also in December, so I was one of the older kids. That meant I learned social leadership early on. I was always just much better in a team and work environment than I was in a classroom environment.

How have your parents influenced your leadership style?

The directness of my mother is clearly in my voice. Her opinion is always a very strong opinion at the dining room table. I think she empowered me to have the same drive.

My stepfather and I had long drives to school together, and I was never allowed to listen to my radio stations. It was either NPR or we would talk. One of the things that he used to say to me often, and I’ve taken this with me, is “Don’t worry about it, because it’s not going to turn out that way anyway.”

I don’t think you understand that when you’re 16 or 17 years old, but now as I look back on it, so much of what we worry about is the outcome, and outcomes rarely turn out the way you think they are going to. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have patience and discipline and drive during the process, but only thinking about the outcome is in some ways very singular, because the outcome might be something different, and it might be better.

When did you first start managing people?

I worked at an outside production company for five years. People didn’t report directly to me, but I handled a lot of logistics, like schedules and budgets. Then, over time, some of the field producers started asking my opinion about their work — “Could you look at this and tell me what you think?” I aspired to be these people someday, and they cared what I thought about their work. That’s when my creative confidence grew.

And what was your first formal management role?

I was put in charge of development for A&E. I suddenly had eight people reporting to me, and I had to let some of them go.

Because?

I have an innate passion and competitive streak to win and to create, and I want our team to be better than everybody else. Some people thrive in that environment, and some people don’t.

There are very few black-and-white truths in management or in business, but one that I have found is that people either hire people who are smarter than them or people hire people they can control. I see it over and over again. I’ve always hired people who are smarter than me. I rowed crew in college, and I’m always thinking in those terms — will they make the team better?

Another pattern I’ve seen is that managers will sometimes complain that one of their employees is difficult to manage. But those difficult people also tend to be the best performers. Sometimes managers don’t realize that they actually have to manage people. You have to figure out what motivates them. Great managers recognize that there is no one way to manage. You may have to be 10 different managers to get the best out of your team.

How has your leadership style evolved?

I lead with some core principles. I need to trust who works for me, and they need to trust me. Trust is just paramount. And the more people say, “Trust me, I’m here for you,” the less I trust them. It really needs to be trust by action. If people do, act and deliver, I will forever give those people more leeway.

I value people who have something constructive to say and can make things better. Anyone can have an opinion about what’s wrong with something. I can’t stand the pile-on effect when something didn’t work. But then somebody might say, “Well, what if we did this?” It may be wacky and it may not be the right thing to do there, but at least they’re trying to solve the problem.

How do you hire?

A lot of it is intuition. I also think about the skills I have and the skills I need. I’m a big believer in the idea that people tend to fall into one of three camps — you’re either a thinker, a doer or a feeler.

So I’ll be thinking about the mix of those three groups on my teams. If you have all thinkers, nothing will get done. If you have all doers, that can be really chaotic because you’re not necessarily thinking about the consequences. And feelers are important because they create energy — but if you have too many of them, they will just dramatize the moment.

When you put the different kinds of people together in the right way, that can be very powerful. You never want that out of balance.

And which camp are you in?

I’m more of a doer. And when I have time, I think.

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The Google way of attacking problems

The Google Way of Attacking Problems

Liked this HBR post. What do you think of the Google approach? 

 

One Friday afternoon in 2002, long before his company became a household verb, Larry Page walked into the office kitchen and posted some printouts of results from Google’s AdWords engine. On top, in big bold letters, he wrote, “THESE ADS SUCK.”

In most companies, this would be seen as cruel — an arrogant executive publicly humiliating his hapless employees for shoddy work — but not at Google. In fact, his unusual act was a show of confidence, defining a tough problem that he knew his talented engineers would want to solve.

In their new book, How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg describe what happened next. By early Monday morning, a group of engineers sent out an email with a solution that not only resolved the AdWords problem, but helped transform Google into a major money machine. The episode exemplifies how Google has built a culture that attacks problems — not people. I see four assumptions that drive that kind of culture:

1. People want to do a good job. Lost in most of the talk about “accountability” is the fact that most people are professionals who want to be proud of their work. Mistakes are not nefarious; they’re often the result of good intentions.

Back in the ‘80’s, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap was the prototypical CEO. He would ruthlessly downsize, firing thousands of employees in the process, with the purported aim of “creating shareholder value” and instilling a “culture of accountability.” His performance earned him a place on covers of business magazines with glowing headlines.

If Page had instilled that same culture of accountability, he would’ve run straight down to the ads team and took them to task. He could’ve threatened to fire them, demanded that they work through the weekend and promised that, unless the problem was dealt with quickly, there would be hell to pay. Most companies work like that.

Yet what Page did was something else altogether. He didn’t threaten to fire anyone or demand “accountability.” Rather, he offered his engineers a difficult and interesting problem to solve, confident that someone would want to accept the challenge. That speaks volumes about the culture he and Sergey Brin created at Google.

2. Given enough eyeballs, every bug is shallow. Page didn’t go to the AdWords team, but posted the problem in the kitchen where the whole company was bound to see it. In most companies that would be seen as harsh, purposely embarrassing an underperforming team.

Yet the employees at Google recognized it for what it was. Page was simply abiding by the mantra of the open source movement: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow (also known as Linus’s Law). And the engineers responded accordingly.

Google is a large company, with nearly 50,000 employees strewn across more than 40 countries and, from an organizational standpoint, it looks like many other companies of similar size. It has a hierarchical command structure that manages multiple divisions. Yet the difference is that it doesn’t let it’s organizational structure dictate its operational practice.

That’s why Google still, in many ways, is able to operate like a startup. Its leaders recognize that while some of the trappings of a large corporation are inevitable, you can still preserve your ethos. You never really have to grow up as long as you maintain your sense of wonder and excitement.

3. People perform best at tasks that interest them. It’s also important to remember the context of the incident, which took place in 2002, just as Google was gearing up for its IPO.  There was an urgent need to beef up revenues and the problem with AdWords was a serious impediment to achieving that.  Most CEOs wouldn’t have put up a note in the kitchen, they would have made sure they got their best people on it.

But think about what would have happened next. A meeting would have been called and, because the “best people” are usually very busy, it would have taken a few weeks to set up. They would have discussed the problem, suggested possible solutions, tested the most promising ones and months later they might have had an answer.

Yet Page understood that the “best people” would be those that were interested in the problem. As it turned out, while glitch in AdWords was complex problem for most people, it was relatively basic for search engineers. They quickly recognized that implementing an “ad relevance score” and ranking ads that way would be a perfect solution.

So the “best people” weren’t chosen by Page, they chose themselves and proved so adept at the task that the AdWords problem was solved over a weekend. Far faster than most CEO’s can organize a meeting among “top people.”

4. Great leaders provide a sense of mission and purpose. Many managers are fond of saying that they consider talent to be their number one priority, by which they usually mean hiring people that went to certain schools or had senior positions at key competitors. However,talent is overrated. It is only effective when directed by passion and purpose.

I once had a business unit manager that seemed completely incapable of coming up with creative solutions. We mutually agreed that it would be best for her to leave our company and she went on to be a very successful interior designer. Obviously, she had no shortage of talent, but it only came to the fore when she could apply it to problems she cared about.

That’s why culture is so important. It’s self-selecting. In enterprises with strong cultures, everybody knows where they want to go and do what they need to get there. In weak cultures, people just do what they’re told. They perform tasks, follow the rules and try not to color outside the lines. There’s no mission to be passionate about.

When he posted that note in the Google kitchen, he knew the culture at Google would go to work. He didn’t have to spell out what to do because he’d already created a company with a mission and a purpose.  All he had to say was: “These ads suck.”

Greg Satell is a U.S.-based business consultant. You can find his blog at Digital Tonto and follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto.

Original article