Author: broc edwards

what if it’s not about employee engagement?

Work SucksEmployee engagement is a HUGE issue. But… maybe the problem is we’re focused on the wrong thing. Maybe disengagement is a symptom and we keep trying to fix people rather than addressing the underlying causes. Maybe it’s not as hard as we think. Maybe it’s not even really about engagement.

What if it’s about the employee experience?

Computer programmers place a big emphasis on creating a great user experience. They call it UX and know if the user experience is poor, people will stop being users and go find better software. Marketing and sales folks spend time fretting over the customer experience (aka CX). They know that customers will stop being customers if the experience is too difficult. UX and CX are huge issues and are given considerable attention.

Companies are slowly (oh, so slowly) catching on to the idea that they are competing for candidates. Talented candidates have options and if the application process is too painful, they’ll immediately go somewhere else. So, we’re hearing more and more about the candidate experience.

But we don’t hear much being said about the employee experience (call it EX). EX is made up of all the things that help or get in the way of employees getting their work done: management, their supervisor, rules and policies, work processes, work environment, culture, co-workers, etc. Does their daily work experience make them feel frustrated, angry, defeated, or hopeless? Or do they feel empowered, responsible, supported, and valued?

This is not just a human issue, not just an engagement issue, this is a business issue. Business gets done for, through, and by people and it’s been said that the customer experience never exceeds the employee experience. It’s a simple formula: CX<EX. How a company thinks about and treats its employees has a direct impact on how employees think about and treat customers which has a direct impact on how customers thing about and treat the company which has a direct impact on business results. In short:

Employee Experience >>> Customer Experience >>> Customer Behavior >>> $ (or not)

If you were going to improve the employee experience, what would you do? Here are a few ideas:

1. Start where you are with what you have (and stop digging). It’s easy to think of engagement as being too complicated or someone else’s problem. It’s easy to think it’s only for the VP of HR to worry about or that you can’t do anything because you’re not Zappos or Google. But the truth is, we can all make a difference in whatever organization we’re in.

Think about it this way: Are there things that you personally could do right-now-today that you know are 100% guaranteed to cause a terrible employee experience or spread disengagement throughout the company? (Yes!) If you have the power to have a negative impact, you also have the ability to have a positive impact. And if you know the things that make it worse the obvious strategy is: Don’t do that.

There’s an old saying: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. If you’re fighting against disengagement, creating an award winning workplace is a fantastic goal, but the first step is to simply stop doing things that create a terrible employee experience and cause disengagement. Don’t worry about making it better (yet), just quit making it worse.

2. Recruit and hire like it matters. If you want engaged employees – people who give a damn about results – start by hiring engaged people. Recruit, select, and hire people as though the future success of the company depends on it (hint: it does).

The software company Valve is a great example of an organization that truly understands the importance that hiring the right people has on business results. From their employee handbook: Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing. So when you’re working on hiring… everything else you could be doing is stupid and should be ignored!

3. Invest time, money, and resources into developing people. This is kind of a big deal. People who care about their results tend to enjoy new challenges and hate stagnating. They want to learn, grow, develop and won’t stand for watching life pass them by or resigning themselves to a career where every day is the same. You hired great people, help them continue to be great. Oh, and the world is changing quickly. If your people aren’t developing new knowledge and skills every year, your company is sinking into the past.

4. Pay attention to culture. We’ve been told, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” and that sounds really impressive, but what is culture? The best definition is comes fromTerry Deal and Allan Kennedy: culture is the way things get done around here. Beliefs, policies, values, rules, unspoken norms, etc. all manifest in how things get done. So when it’s said that culture eats strategy, it doesn’t mean strategy is unimportant, it means that how you do things (the culture) must be in line with and support what you want to do (the strategy).

Likewise engagement efforts can be completely supported – or devoured – by culture. Do you have the culture you want? Does how you do things support people being fully engaged and at their best or does it shut people down?

5. Get rid of stupid policies. Speaking of how we do things around here… Stupid policies prevent people from doing good work, degrade the employee experience, and get in the way of results. They are generally the result of two situations: 1) someone did something dumb once and a policy was created rather than dealing with the situation and treating it like the anomaly it was; or 2) a policy was created to address a once valid situation that is no longer important, relevant, or valid.

Do something radical. Find out which policies are causing frustration and preventing people from getting their work done, then change or destroy those policies.

[Check out the book Kill the Company by Lisa Bodell for more thoughts on eliminating stupid policies.]

6. Provide employees with good managers. It’s said that people leave managers, not companies. Managers make or break the employee experience by making people feel supported and valued, bringing out their best and challenging them to be even better. Or NOT. Leading is a tough job most managers simply haven’t been prepared to do.

People usually get promoted into management because they’re good at the technical parts of their job and then are suddenly expected to be able to lead people. And it’s just not that easy. Leading is a distinct and completely separate skillset and like all skills it has to be fostered and developed.

If engagement and the employee experience is important and if managers can destroy them, then it makes sense to intentionally develop great managers and provide the support they need to make good decisions and do great work. Actually, if you did nothing else, having managers who don’t destroy engagement daily will provide tons of bang for the buck (bonus if they can actually build engagement).

7. Value people. This is at the heart of everything we’re discussing. This doesn’t mean everyone gets a trophy and it doesn’t mean coddling poor performance. And it REALLY doesn’t mean hollow, insincere lip service to “our employees are our greatest asset.” But it might mean believing and acting as though people matter. It might mean a bit of gratitude, a touch of understanding, a tiny amount of empathy, and the sense that the company cares about the individual. All employees will have joyous, painful, exhilarating, scary, and very human moments both at work and home. How the company, team, and leaders react tells people all they need to know about how they are valued. Few things will cause a person to disengage quicker than realizing no one cares.

So what’s it all mean?

Ultimately, improving engagement and the employee experience isn’t about improving a survey score, it’s not magic, it’s not a program, and it’s much bigger than HR. It’s about doing things that support your employees and managers at being their best and eliminating the things that cause them to stop caring.

Sounds easy. Sounds simple. Yet very, very few companies have it figured out.

[Photo credit: michelhrv via Compfight]

six myths of employee engagement

“Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him.” ~ Elbert Hubbard, A Message to Garcia, 1899

Much gets said about employee engagement and little changes. Headlines shout that only 30% of employees are engaged and then try to connect that number to the economy, terrorism, climate change, Millennials, or whatever the fear of the moment is. Except that engagement, as measured by Gallup, has held very steady between 26% and 30% since they started measuring it in 2000 (Gallup). Lots of concern and money thrown at the issue and there’s very little change.

Maybe part of the problem is all the myth and hype that’s built up around it. As I look around, there are six prevalent engagement myths I routinely come across (though surely there are more).

Myth 1: Everyone knows the definition of engagement. There seem to be as many definitions as people discussing engagement and trying to find the best one is a challenge. For example, there is a 2006 SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) publication titled “Employee Engagement and Commitment” that includes an entire page of definitions from 10 different companies. Every vendor seems to use a different definition and the average person usually thinks of engagement as synonymous with happiness, fulfillment, or job satisfaction. Some definitions are very academic, but I like simple. For me, the most useful definitions focus on a person’s discretionary effort and my own personal definition of engagement is “giving a damn”. It lacks nuance and precision but it’s stone simple and immediately understandable.

Myth 2: Engagement is about making everyone happy. Although I’m all for everyone being happy, there seems to be – at best – a loose connection between engagement and happiness. I suspect engaged people tend to be happier on the whole because they feel like their efforts matter, but I’m very skeptical of the suggestion that happiness creates engagement. People who give a damn about doing their jobs well are often irritated with anything that prevents them from being at their best. They’re mad because they care and that’s very different than being happily indifferent.

Myth 3: Work ethic is dead (kids these days). There are a lot of fingers being pointed at the Millennial generation and a lot of talk about how different they are. It’s easy to talk about how things were when we were young and lament the death of the old fashioned work ethic. Consider the possibility that the “old fashioned” work ethic we romanticize and get all misty-eyed nostalgic over never existed. For a bit of perspective, read A Message to Garcia, written in 1899 to see what the author thought of the work ethic back then (spoiler: it was pretty bad). Or just think about it this way: if we have a five generation workforce and 70% of the workforce is disengaged and that holds steady over time since before Gen Y was a strong presence in the workforce, it can’t be about generation.

Myth 4: $$$ = Engagement. I hear managers complain that they can’t motivate or get their employees engaged because they don’t control wages. It does seem like increasing pay would increase engagement, but the research of Fredrick Herzberg and others suggests otherwise. Money creates lots of things but it doesn’t seem to cause people to give a damn over the long haul. Yes, being underpaid is demotivating and disengagning, but being overpaid doesn’t fuel superengagment.

Consider yourself as an example. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this post you’re a pretty engaged person and you care about the results you’re creating in your life and at your job. Do you give your all right now? Do you do an honest day’s work? Are you consistently considered a high performer? (Yes!) If your company doubled your pay could you create double the results you do now? Would you do twice as honest of a day’s work? Would you give your all twice as much? No, it’s not possible.

Flip this around and think about that actively disengaged toxic co-worker dragging the team down (you know who I’m talking about). Would paying them more change their personality, work ethic, or the amount they cared about the results they are creating? Exactly. [NOTE: I’m not saying people shouldn’t be paid more, I’m saying that increasing wages above market rate won’t magically cure disengagement.]

Myth 5: Engagement is a survey, program, or initiative. Lots of times HR or management focuses on measuring engagement with surveys or doing a program to increase engagement. That’s fine as long as everyone remembers that engagement is NOT a number from a survey and doing a program doesn’t necessarily equal engaged employees.

Engagement isn’t posters, slogans, training, or perks.  All those things have their place but all the dry cleaning, free soda, and foosball tables in the world won’t make people care more about their jobs. And, hopefully it’s not a surprise, but different people are, well, different. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to engagement. Oh, and people sometimes put their happy face on when taking surveys and don’t respond with their true thoughts and feelings (shocker!).

MYTH 6: Engagement is only an HR issue. This ties back to the myth that engagement is a survey or program. Disengagement is branded a “people problem” and handed to HR as though engagement is a thing that is separate from the business.  Engagement is not something that can be delegated to a specific department. It’s not something we can purchase. Engagement is not separate from the business and it’s not separate from the people. Business gets done for, through, and by people so engagement is a BUSINESS issue through and through. People touch every aspect of business so people problems affect business results.

What if the whole idea of engagement is simply a well-meaning red herring? What if it’s not the real problem at all? What if it’s an indication of something bigger and we’ve been treating symptoms rather than the real issue?

Stay tuned for more on this. Next time we’ll look at some things we can do and something that might be more useful to focus on than engagement. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experience in the comments.

[NOTE: this post is based on part of my presentation What if Employee Engagement Actually Mattered?]

whose policy is it, anyway?

Had a great conversation the other night with a friend about making organizations flatter and removing the barriers to people doing great work. It’s easy for me to get pretty excited and idealistic about the shift I see happening in companies and the future of work. I was brought down to earth with the memory of a silly process that stayed in place because it existed but no one knew who was responsible for it.

Several years ago a CFO complained about a form used by his accounting department to track training expenses. It was intended to make sure that employees weren’t going on some sort of training spending spree (does that happen?) by requiring several levels of approval before they were able to attend the training.

The reality was NO ONE filled it out in advance. They only completed it when accounting started calling well after the fact and insisting on it to justify the expenses. Plus, it applied equally to all “training” from attending a lunch at a professional organization to a multiple day program across the country. And, many of the people who had to fill it out had company credit cards and discretionary funds – I suspect they simply got around completing the form by not calling it “training”.

So here was the CFO griping that he had to complete a form that he thought was ridiculous and stupid. Although it was a training form, it never passed through anyone responsible for training so it was a form that only his department used. Think about that again. His department’s form. He thinks it’s stupid. He could kill it on the spot. But rather than risk eliminating it (who would protest?), he complained and let it continue. I’ve no doubt he is still complaining about it today.

Stories like that make me think the organization of the future is just a little bit further away than I want to imagine.

What thinks you?

IBM’s co-investment in training cuts salaries by 10%

Just saw that IBM is cutting salaries 10% for employees in the Global Technology Services strategic outsourcing group who have been identified as not keeping their skills current. For the next six months, identified employees will spend a day a week getting current on their skills. IBM is calling this program a “co-investment” in training. (See the full article at Computerworld.)

So, it’s pitched as a way to help employees who are falling behind. Employees spend 20% of their week in training and their salary is reduced by 10% (assuming they are working five day weeks for eight hours a day). Critics and cynics suggest it’s a way to weed out certain employees without having to pay severance. Or maybe it’s just a new way to reduce the salary budget for six months?

So many questions:

  • Was this a long time coming or just dropped on employees one day? How was well was it communicated?
  • How did IBM determine who was lacking current skills and which skills were lacking? Are those skills needing to be brought current actually required in the daily work of those who haven’t kept up?
  • Have training budgets or programs been cut in the past five years? Did everyone have equal opportunity for development?
  • What have those who are deemed current done differently than those who aren’t? How did they stay current? Was it through seeking training on their own time or was it on-the-job training from working on new projects?
  • Were those skills and the level of mastery needed made explicit before / after the pay cut?
  • Who is providing the training? How is it being paid for?
  • Why is the program six months long for everyone? Is everyone lacking the exact same amount of skills?
  • Has the workload of participating employees also been reduced to allow for the day of training?
  • How will the skills and mastery be assessed before reinstating pay?
  • What happens if a person doesn’t reach those levels? Are they fired, do they continue training, etc.?
  • Has IBM just handed everyone an excuse for not working more than 40 hour weeks: “I’d love to stay and work longer, but I need to keep current.”
  • What will be the impact on the morale of all employees?
  • Is this – as some commented – an subterfuge to “encourage” certain employees to quit or a clever way to help trailing employees get back up to speed?
  • What will be the next company to do this?

What thinks you?

can I get a little hate?

I’m fascinated by branding. Not the marking-cows-so-the-don’t-get-rustled kind. The kind of branding that’s about identity and messaging and clear authenticity. How clear? If No One Hates You, No One is Paying Attention. That statement is the title of a great piece by Alf Rehn (@alfrehn), and gets at the heart of branding. Alf reminds us that trying to be all things to all people doesn’t work, despite the legions of businesses that attempt it. It makes sense to know and declare who you are as a business and what you stand for. But the ugly, unmentioned downside is that in doing so you are also declaring who you aren’t and who you stand against.

So truly strong branding is only telling people “Our products are for you. You will like them. You will like what being associated with them says about you. You should buy them.” But it’s also taking that stand to say “Our products are not for you. You won’t like them. You won’t like what being associated with them says about you. You shouldn’t buy them.”

As an example Alf mentions the Cadillac “Poolside” ad. I hadn’t seen it, but it apparently launched in the spring to much criticism. Take a look:

Critics said it missed the mark, because it was obnoxious, reinforced negative stereotypes about Americans, and didn’t appeal to most buyers. Which was the point. They took a bold stand in defining who their target customers were and who they weren’t. It also got people talking and passionately arguing about Cadillac and what the ad represented. And it presented their electric cars a cool status symbol for people who would typically abhor electric cars as being for “tree hugging ecomentalists”.

Ford took advantage of the Cadillac’s self-induced negative press to parody it with an ad targeting a completely different group of buyers. Think young urban activist vs middle aged Wall Streeter. It’s a brilliant parody, nailing scene after scene and positioning buying the Ford as almost an act of protest against everything the Cadillac buyer stands for. It’s a pretty good jab, but not quite as much of a statement simply because the Ford has a bigger target market and the ad doesn’t have the same level of potential for starting internet flame wars.  See it here:

Not as bold as it seems

These ads actually highlight how low the bar for a definitive brand is set. That the ads appear buzzworthy is incredibly telling. This isn’t edgy – it’s actually very safe because it’s just acknowledging and reinforcing their long established brand images. The people who liked it were already on board and those who got irritated never going to be customers anyway. All the marketers have done is acknowledge and play off of what was already there.

Middle-age folks with some bucks treating themselves with a luxury car because “they’ve earned it”? Not quite a shocker. Twenty-somethings buying a small economy car? Well, few among that market could afford the luxury brand even if they did want it. Safe. Safe. Amusing. But safe.

Why are we so concerned with clearly defining our brands? Why are we so worried we might offend a potential customer when those who might be put off by the brand were never going to buy from us anyway? Why do we so rarely define both our target market and our anti-market? Our brand and our anti-brand? (A fun question for my HR friends: What’s the brand and anti-brand for your HR department? If you can’t answer that you might want to start asking around because it exists whether you’ve defined it or not.)

Bolder branding?

You know how difficult it is to shake the reputation you establish in the first few weeks on a job? Branding is the same. The brand image can boost or haunt you for years to come. So one of the biggest challenges is changing a brand by creating a new and different identity. The risk is that you’ll offend and lose the existing demographic while not convincing anyone of the new brand. Some retailers, such as JcPenney have been giving a master class in how not to change your brand for the past couple of years.

We started off with cars, so let’s continue there. Jaguar has been one of the most interesting rebrands to watch. They had a huge sporting heritage in the 1960s and then slowly morphed into an old man’s brand for people who liked luxury cars that tended to leak oil and break down on the way to the country club. Unfair? Tough. That’s the unfortunate power of branding. Your brand is not what you want it to be, it’s the identity and image stuck in the customer’s mind. And that can be tough to overcome.

A couple of years back they attempted to change their image with ads like this:


That’s a pretty swift kick to the crotch of the traditional buyers. Then, more recently they switched to the Good To Be Bad campaign with ads like this:

Are they good cars? Don’t know. But the branding has taken a bold, fun, tongue-in-cheek stance with a middle finger (or two fingers upraised) to the stodgy past. These are not cars for everyone. More importantly, judging by the styling and dragster-meets-F1 car sound, they are not cars for Jaguar’s traditional customer.

But they are cars for who they want their new customer to be. They have a very clear idea of who that is and isn’t.

Do you?

Everything you think you know about success is wrong (a book review)

Success is how you define it and mediocrity is one of my biggest fears. We all have different definitions of what success means to us in all aspects of our lives. I have some big ideas about the contribution I need to make before I leave this planet and the thought of not living up to those ideals terrifies me.

The challenge is that “pretty good” is a reasonably easy target while “extraordinary” requires a completely different level of choices and commitment. And those actions have to exist in a life where there’s a job, family, friends, pets, house chores, hobbies, etc., etc. No surprise that comfortable distractions are a lot more attractive than committed actions.

As one who enjoys anything that will help me be at my best, I have a love/hate approach to personal development books. Much of it is syrupy feel-good nonsense, but some is very legit and useful. The problem is, even the good stuff is usually just repackaged ideas that have been around for the last 50-100+ years.

Some very large names in the field have done quite well rehashing ideas from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, Norman Vincent Peal’s The Power of Positive Thinking, or Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret. Tony Robbins summarized the wisdom of the ages best with his Ultimate Success Formula which goes something like: 1) Know what you want; 2) Know why you want it; 3) Take massive action; 4) Notice what’s working or not; and 5) Change your approach until you get your results. Simple, straightforward, and intuitive, but perhaps not sufficient. No one who’s made it to adulthood should be surprised by any of those steps, yet most of us are still stuck in ordinary.

The title for this review comes from the back cover of Dan Waldschmidt’s (@danwaldo) book EDGY Conversations: Get Beyond the Nonsense in Your Life and Do What Really Matters. He takes a different approach and asserts that goals, hard work, and tenacity are not enough because we are our own worst roadblock. Our beliefs and behaviors, excuses and justifications keep us in comfortable mediocrity. Truly rising above, standing out, and making a difference requires a completely different level of commitment, thought, belief, and action.

“Because success isn’t about knowing more, It’s about being more… The reality is that you already know what to do… The real question is, what will you do about it? Who will you choose to become.” – Dan Waldschmidt

Contrary to what the infomercial experts and hope pushers tell us, Dan wholeheartedly acknowledges that the whole being extraordinary thing is really freakin’ hard. Knowing what to do is easy; actually doing it is miserably difficult. The movies make it look simple, right? A three minute montage with some upbeat music in the background and suddenly the underdog is a martial arts winning, freestyle rapping, marathon running, dance champion with a Harvard degree and a thriving side business bootstrapped into a global powerhouse. But in real life it comes down to who we are choosing to be and the decisions we are making every day.

The author reminds us that outrageous success comes as much from what we say “no” to as it does what we say “yes” to. And in our instant gratification you-deserve-to-have-it-all marketing saturated world, saying “no” is weird. And painful. And miserable. And necessary.

This book is the author’s approach to breaking past ordinary. His formula is based on the acronym EDGY: Extreme behavior, Disciplined activity, Giving mindset, and Y(h)uman strategy. The last letter’s a stretch, but the writing is spot on. Actually, I could have shortened this review to: If you like his blog, buy the book.

If you’re unfamiliar with his blog, check it out here. Dan’s not into business or life as usual and has a contrarian approach written in direct one and two sentence paragraphs with brilliant turn of phrase and a deep belief that the reader has it in them to be amazing. If you don’t like his blog, you really won’t like his book. If you like the blog, you’ll find he brings powerful examples and a very human vulnerability beyond his normal writing to the book.

So here’s the ugly secret truth: life is so much easier when you have excuses or others to blame for not creating the results you want. Sure, you don’t accomplish what you want, but you get to be comfortable in your mediocrity. This book is aimed at stripping those illusions away and challenging you to set that comfort aside to pursue your intentions with the ferocious, relentless tenacity of a Spartan warrior. It’s not wondering what to do, it’s not creating a 10 point success checklist, it’s being the person you need to be.

All day, every day.

creating a more human business (book review of “the happy manifesto”)
20140903_140729

I marked a few important pages…

Like it or not, the future of work is here

The future of work excites me, fascinates me, and frustrates me. Work as we know it isn’t really working anymore. Work is designed as though people are interchangeable machines instead of being designed to help people be at their absolute best. It’s designed around outdated ideas on when and where and how work MUST be done. It’s based on the (profoundly, incredibly stupid) idea that the boss is the supreme expert in all things work getting things done through apathetic, incompetent minions. We’re doing 21st century work based on ideas developed in the industrial revolution.

People aren’t cogs, people are the point. Business gets done for, through, and by people. I can’t say it enough. It’s common sense obvious. Employees are people, customers are people, vendors are people, managers are people, CEOs are people. Yet, the simple idea that designing business for people (humanizing business) leads to better results is somehow radical. Those too-crazy-for-business-school ideas exist and thrive in organizations that let them.

The thing is, we know better and it’s changing. The future of work is here, examples exist now. Companies like Zappos get attention and flak for challenging the status quo, doing things their own way, and building the company around customers and employees. So many pundits and analysts dismiss the challenges to business school models as trendy fads or unworkable if you aren’t Google, ignoring the under-the-radar examples that have been too busy succeeding for decades to be bothered to care what critics think.

One of those businesses is Happy Ltd., an IT training and e-learning company repeatedly recognized as one of the 20 best places to work in the UK, with accolades and awards from Management Today, Financial Times, and the Great Place to Work Institute. How? Henry Stewart (@happyhenry), the company’s founder, shares his not-so-secret secrets in: the happy manifesto: Make your organization a great workplace (available in free and discounted versions through Henry’s website or at amazon.com).

 

Answers right in front of me

In so many ways it’s the type of book I’ve been looking for and it has been sitting on my bookshelf for at least a year and a half. The publisher had originally asked if I’d like them to send me their catalog to see if there were any titles I’d like to read and review Of course, there’s only one answer to that question and I quickly read and enjoyed Marianne Cantwell’s Be a Free Range Human but the happy manifesto sat unread. I enjoyed and got so much out of this book that it hurts I ignored it for so long. Sigh.

“That is what this book is about. Its aim is to help you, throughout your organization, to put in place the structure to make that freedom and trust possible.” ~ Henry Stewart

The book based on the author’s 20+ years of experience running his own company based on the principles described. He writes in a clear, straightforward way and provides real-life examples. The author shows what worked, what didn’t, asks some painfully thought provoking questions, and replaces conventional business methods with approaches so radically common sense they seem counterintuitive. I’ll highlight a few here.

 

Get out of the way

Many people have observed that the best thing leaders can do to enable people to work at their best is to set clear expectations and then get out of the way. Easier said than done for most leaders. How far out of the way? How about “pre-approving” ideas by giving the team full permission to implement their proposals without the leader reviewing it? How about the leader completely removing themselves from the approval process and ensuring they don’t see (and interfere) with new ideas until they are well established? How about removing blame and creating structures that encourage innovation? How about encouraging disobedience?

“Generally I try to avoid telling people what to do but, if I do, I know there is a fair chance the member of staff will do something completely different anyway, if it seems a better way to help the customer or achieve the result that is needed.” ~ Henry Stewart

 

Create ways for employees to say “yes”

People need to know what is expected and where the boundaries are yet rules often turn into all the reasons an employee can’t help a customer or get things done. Using systems based on principles versus unyielding rules and policies can give people the freedom to solve problems and move things forward. How often do we see rules are put into place to prevent problems caused by a small percentage of people instead of helping the vast majority be at their best? On the flip side, how often do we trust expect the people doing the work to find the best ways to get the job done?

“A rule has to be obeyed. In response to a rule you are expected to suspend your judgement. A system is the best way we have found so far to do something. If any member of staff can think of a better way in the situation they are in, they are encouraged and expected to adapt the system.” ~ Henry Stewart

 

Get rid of the things getting in the way of great work

Research shows (again and again) that organizations which are great workplaces are more financially successful. Interesting then that creating a great workplace isn’t a priority and expectation for maximizing shareholder value. I’m a firm believer that the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience (I wish I knew who first said that). It makes sense yet organizations rarely focus on the employee experience.

The author shares an interesting twist on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs he refers to as “a management hierarchy of needs”. Among all the needs Workplace Safety and Comfort is at the bottom with Freedom at the top. What stands out to me is how little effort we make in organizations to meet all the levels of this hierarchy. It’s as though we meet the most basic of needs and declare it a job well done (and wonder why engagement levels are so painfully low).  AND just as Self-Actualization is unsustainable and meaningless if our basic physical needs aren’t met, trying to create Freedom at work without meeting all the other needs first is unrealistic and primed to fail.

“First, are your people’s basic needs being met? Have you asked them what gets in the way of doing their job well? Second, what are you doing to engage people’s higher motivations?” ~ Henry Stewart

 

Seeing clearly

Transparency is becoming a bit of a buzzword, but how many take it to heart? How many organizations make everything available to everyone? Company financials? What would happen if everyone suddenly had the information they need to make decisions, understood why and how financial decisions are made, and those decisions were transparently exposed to all?

What about [gasp, shudder] salaries? Are your salary decisions fair, unbiased, unprejudiced, and reflective of the value a person creates for the organization? If the answer is “no” you have bigger problems than people simply knowing each other’s salaries.

 

How important is hiring at your company?

Your company has probably stated that “people are our most important asset” or some such. Sounds good, but… How big of a stand is your company willing to take on that principle? The software company Valve famously made this statement in their employee handbook: Hiring well is the most important thing in the universe. Nothing else comes close. It’s more important than breathing. So when you’re working on hiring – participating in an interview loop or innovating in the general area of recruiting – everything else you could be doing is stupid and should be ignored!

How important are people to your company’s success? How important is hiring on future results? What’s the cost of a bad hire? How much effort is put into training hiring managers and selection teams? It seems like so many companies are happy to have warm bodies OR hold out for perfection based on a wish list of “requirements” that is largely irrelevant to a person’s ability to do the job (e.g., requiring a degree, any degree). From my observation, few give hiring the emphasis it deserves.

Are you able to prove they have the skills and ability to do the job or does your selection process only highlight their ability to interview well? There’s a big difference between being able to talk a good game about doing the job and actually delivering. Are you able to determine how well they will enhance and support those around them?

Do you have an easy way to reach out to the most interested people whenever you have an opening (hint: a post and pray approach doesn’t count)? Do you have a ready list of people interested in working for you as soon as a position comes open or do you make everyone apply even when there isn’t a job so “they’ll be in the system”? Are you surprised when they don’t?

 

“Profits are important and necessary but not sufficient.”

He’s preaching to the choir here (What’s the Purpose of a Business?) How differently would business be organized and conducted if it were based on the idea that profits are a means, not an end? How much better would organizations be at creating profits if they had all their employees fully behind the meaning and purpose of the work they were doing?

“I’m in business to make a profit. Of course I am. But I’m also in business to make a difference. Otherwise what is the point?” ~ Henry Stewart

 

Leaders should be good at leading (for a change)

Promoting the most technically skilled people into management roles and expecting them to be immediately and naturally good at leading would be a completely unbelievable and ludicrous idea, except it’s pretty much a given. Everywhere. It’s patently ridiculous yet is The Way Things Are Done.

Running counter to this, the author’s company divides management into two functions: 1) strategy and decision making which is handled by elected department heads; and 2) supporting, challenging, and coaching which is done by coordinators. These may be the same people or may be different and employees have a say in who their leader is. It sounds weird and it completely flies in the face of the more traditional “promote the most skilled and who cares if they can manage others” approach, yet it seems to work for them.

 

And that’s really it, isn’t it?

We can argue Happy Ltd.’s approaches, ridicule them for being unfamiliar or seeming unrealistically idealistic, yet… it works for them. That doesn’t mean it will work for everyone in every situation, but I get excited because it if works in one place, it just might work in others.

So the question isn’t, Does this approach work? The question is How can I put his approach to work in my team / department / organization?

new socks: the last post you ever need to read about Zappos

I ordered several pairs of running socks from Zappos last night and am pretty jazzed about it (it’s the little things that make a good life, right?). After I clicked the purchase button, it struck me – why are there any articles written about Zappos?

The internet is awash with articles and posts about the online shoe store, but why? Yes, they operate differently, but it’s not like it’s hard to figure why that difference works so well. Zappos makes it supereasy to purchase a huge variety of shoes, etc. at reasonable prices with zero risk that it won’t fit or you won’t like it, and deliver them quicker than should be possible. If anything does go wrong, they immediately bend over backwards to more than make it right. Their entire company – every process and system and policy – exists to enable a great customer experience and somehow the business world is surprised that Zappos has an enthusiastic (fanatical?) customer base lining up to give them money. Who knew that people might want to do business with a company that treats them well?

Are we in the business world truly that thick?

“But what about their culture?” some might ask. “They have a unique culture and are so successful, shouldn’t we try to figure out how to copy them? What about all their employees with blue hair coming to work in their pajamas? That’s weird isn’t it? Shouldn’t all us business and HR types be discussing how awesome/strange/wonderful/it-will-never-work that is? Shouldn’t we be desperately trying to figure out how to bring the Zappos culture and magic into our workplaces?”

As near as I can tell with my very low level of expertise (I once toured their HQ and I have bought some stuff from them), their unique culture and the unique results it creates is based on two things: 1) customer experience is everything; and 2) the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience (they don’t say it that way, they just live it). They commit to hiring great people who want to provide an amazing experience for customers and then create a work environment where those employees can and are expected to do just that. Create a great employee experience and the employees will create a great customer experience.

It’s an embarrassingly simple and devastatingly, disruptively effective approach. And, most businesses predictably ignore it. Puttnam’s Law tells us it’s better to fail doing what everyone else is doing than to succeed by doing different.

Sure, we could build a business around the customer and employee experience. Or, we could just keep on doing what we’ve been doing, keep getting the same results, and read some more articles about what Zappos.

 

Running Uphill Even When I’m Not

I often like to run through the neighborhoods around my house and try to get out several times a week. Well, “run” may be a strong word but it sounds better than “jog” or “who-are-you-kidding-it’s-a-fast-walk-at-best” so I’m sticking with it. Anyway, there is a long, steep hill early in my route. Naturally, I go slower up the hill. My stride shortens, it takes more effort, I breathe harder and faster, it hurts more. Naturally.

A person simply goes slower uphill and faster downhill. That’s just intuitive. But… That’s not how it worked. I discovered my pace slowed going up the hill and then stayed slow even when the road leveled and started going downhill. I would get used to running with a shorter stride and slower pace to compensate for the hill and then just keep that stride and pace even though it was considerably different than how I was running before the hill. The weird thing is that I would have never known it without looking at my watch – I would have sworn I was working hard and running at a great pace.

I’ve learned that I need to deliberately readjust my pace when I get to the top of the hill. It’s easy to do, but I have to make a conscious effort.

It made me wonder how often this happens at work. How often do we have to slow pace for a very legitimate reason but then don’t pick it back up once that reason has passed? How often do we start people out slowly because they are learning the job but then don’t ratchet the pace up as they gain skill? How often do we slow down and relax right after a big project and then slowed pace stays slow? From my experience, everyone believes they are a hard worker and may feel like they’re still putting in a great effort even when the road has turned downhill.

What’s the best work pace? Don’t know. Depends on the people and the situation. But I suspect that, like I discovered on my run, we get used to a pace and stay with it. We don’t naturally and intuitively adjust pace to the situation – we don’t automatically go faster just because it gets easier. I wonder if we don’t need to consciously and deliberately readjust each time the situation changes.

 

 

[Photo Credit: ~Oryctes~ via Compfight cc]