Category: Leadership

Some of Fred Gratzon’s readers refuse to believe his claim that he’s the laziest man in North America. If he is, then how could he have created two successful multi-million dollar businesses? Fred’s answer is classic:

I did not do it with hard work. I did not do it by busting my butt. I did it by having fun – so much fun that people were attracted to that fun. I then picked the most competent attractees to be on my team and off we went. Whatever “hard work??? there might have been, I had long since turned into a game and we had fun “playing??? it.

Read Fred’s post – it’s excellent.

That’s a blueprint for happiness at work and success right there! I agree 100% and wrote a post a while back on why laziness is the major force behind my success and happiness. Also read my review of Fred’s brilliant book The Lazy Way To Success.

I met Motek’s CEO Ann Price at the 2006 WorldBlu Forum on democractic organizations, and her story of how they work at Motek was tremendously inspiring.

Motek make warehouse administration software and here’s some of the great things they do according to this excellent article in American Way Magazine:

• Price offers her employees a $5,000-a-year travel benefit for flights, tours, cruises, you name it – but only if they take at least a three-week paid vacation. She gives employees another two weeks off for paid holidays throughout the year and leases luxury automobiles for any employee who has worked at the company for at least 10 years. Then there’s the fact that Price sends employees home at five p.m. sans laptop and locks the doors on the weekend.
• …every Motek employee has a designated backup available to provide cover while they’re out of the office. The only requirement is to check with the backup to make sure he or she is around before the employee leaves.
• The company keeps a single to-do list… Anyone can enter an item, including customers and vendors. The list can include everything from ordering ink cartridges to customizing a specific function for a customer. Motek divvies up the tasks at meetings and teams don’t pay any attention to who entered particular items.
• Price doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to bonding with customers. She designates individuals – from top executives to line workers – heroes for their roles in effecting change at a company that uses Motek’s software. Then she sends out a professional photographer who shoots for Fortune magazine – at somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000 a shoot – to snap their photo, which she then posts on the Motek website. There, you can read all about the person’s achievements and how they were able to deliver superior results.
• For Price, the endgame isn’t to earn money at any cost. And it isn’t about ruling the software industry. No, Price has bigger ambitions: She hopes to change the world.

The result: Happiness and profits. Eighty percent of the technical team has been with the company for at least 10 years, compared to an industry average employment span of 18 months. In 2005, Motek’s revenue per employee topped $217,000. Competing firms’ revenue typically ranges from $150,000 to $200,000.

This is a wonderful story of great, unconventional leadership focused on making employees and customers happy rather than on growth and profits. With growth and profit as the results.

My recent post on how not to manage geeks has sparked a lot of interest and a lot of great comments.

Right now there’s a very interesting debate going on in the comments about the need for structure in small or large organizations. This debate is great because it goes right to the core of the central dilemma of new leadership and employee empowerment.

Here are some of the key arguments that have come up:

Elling writes: I think you’re attacking structures which you can do without in a small company… In a large company there’s a NEED for the structures…

Jeremy writes: I can anticipate some of this need – the need to account for diverse costs accurately and thoroughly, the need to maintain a standard of output for workers in an organized, fair fashion, etc. – but these play to the weaknesses of large organizations. In other words, large organizations SHOULD be at a disadvantage, and the structures we’re proposing tearing out actually add value only in the sense that MegaCorp is inherently inefficient and out of scale with the market.

Numeeja writes: …there is NEVER a ‘NEED’ for self-serving, ‘personal progression over departmental improvement’ style work places and managers.

Thad writes: The place where I work is managed by good people who don’t want to be bureaucratic jerks, but they can’t grasp one simple concept: they are giving me money in exchange for doing something I love–they don’t have to shackle me with schedules and policies to get me to produce! I will be here working my little heart out because *I want to be*. I try to block out the memos and TPS reports and remind myself that those things aren’t really changing what I get to do here, but damn, every time the red tape is thrust in my face it just deflates me and I don’t even feel like trying to design or build something.

Elling writes: If you have 20 people which you want to pull in the same direction, you NEED to have a manager who’s job it will be to try and ensure that the people in the group DO pull in the same direction… On the other hand, I do realize that there ARE idiot-bastard-managers out there. And I’m not defending them.

Cityzenjane writes: …small tech teams in my experience – when left to their own devices do a GREAT job of pulling in the same direction, getting behind technical strategic priorities that they have been part of developing.

First let me say thanks to all who’ve commented. THIS is what blogging is all about – one post sparking many great contributions. I feel lucky to be hosting this dialogue.

But which is it? Do companies need structure or don’t they? Is less management better than more management? Is management a necessary evil or simply evil? :o)

Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist once said:

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth

and that’s exactly what I think we’re dealing with here. Whenever I’m faced with one of these either-or questions, I try to loook beyond the immediate choice, to see if there might exist an answer that transcends the dilemma and includes both. Can we have both personal freedom and structure at work?

The answer is not only that it can be done, but that many highly succesful companies are actively doing it. The truth is that there needs to be structure for personal freedom to even be possible. But we are talking a different kind of structure. Where the “old” structures are often opaque, rigid and top-down we can instead create new structures that are the exact opposite but perform the same function of coordinating and streamlining people’s efforts. These new structures are transparent, dynamic and participatory.

Companies that have done this include business school case classics like Semco, Oticon, Southwest Airlines and GE Aviation. None of them are doing too shabby (understatement alert), and people are really happy at work there. Herb Kelleher, ex-CEO of Southwest, was once asked how he could maintain control when his employees had so much freedom. His answer is classic:

Control? Never had it. Don’t want it.

I think we can move forward most efficiently if we shift away from choosing between freedom and structure, and work from the assimption that it’s about choosing both and thus creating a new kind of structure.

Let me hit you with one last Niels Bohr quote (Yes I’m a fan, dammit):

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

I spotted this sign in the men’s room of our local IKEA:

For those (unfortunate few, I’m sure) of you who don’t read Danish, it says:

I assume there’s an exclusive restaurant
for managers only?

Erik Edelstein did not make it into IKEA’s
Management Potential Programme

Heh! So if you’re the kind of manager who believes it is your god-given right to eat your lunch in a special, exclusive restaurant seperate from the employees, then you’re not going to manage at IKEA.

Which makes excellent sense for three reasons:

1: Facetime is important for happiness at work

Managers must spend time with their employees and lunch may be the best time for it! How else are manager’s going to know what’s going on? And one thing that makes employees happy at work is a manager who has time for you and understands you.

2: Management applicants self-select

When IKEA promote their management programme in this gutsy way they are making sure that they weed out applicants with the wrong attitudes from the very beginning.

3: It matches IKEA’s brand

It also speaks to me as a loyal IKEA customer and it blends perfectly with the principles of democracy and equality that their brand of cheap but well-designed furniture stand for.

So: Management development, brand development and happiness at work all in one. Not bad, huh?

Previously: BMW brand themselves againt bureaucracy.

I’m adding “management-only restaurants” to my list of vampire ideas.