Google’s dress code:
You must wear clothes.
(source).
Sally Hogshead has a great post called How to be an anarchist that opens with these words:
They’re lighting the town square ablaze, running amok through the embassies, yanking down statues and looting the stores.
Who? Your consumers. And if you’re smart, you’ll grab a torch and join them.
Sally’s post is mostly about anarchy in media – about:
…the power shift from established forms of information to consumer-directed content. From encyclopedias to Wikipedia. From publishing to blogs. From movie theaters to iPod screens. From retail locations to pop-up stores. And in case you hadn’t noticed, from traditional paid media to all those new forms of digital media spawning like bunnies.
But I believe business anarchy has a much wider scope, and that it’s time for us to break away from the old mental model that defines a company as a way to control employees.
The time has come for the radical company.
What does that mean? To paraphrase Paolo Freire:
The radical company, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a “circle of certainty” within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the company is, the more fully it enters into reality so that, knowing it better, the company can better transform it.
This company is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This company is not afraid to meet the people or enter into dialogue with them. This company does not consider itself the proprietor of history of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but it does commit … to fight at their side.
Freire was talking about the radical human – I’ve rewritten his quote to talk about the radical business and it still makes perfect sense. To make a company happy you must be willing to be radical, to commit the company to the employees’ freedom.
Also, you must be willing to do this against business tradition and against the advice and recommendations of people who just don’t get it.
My good friends at WorldBlu make a living teaching organizations to be more democratic and they recently published their 2007 list of most democratic companies. This list shows that companies that are run democratically, with few remnants of the old, military-style, hierarchical, command and control structures perform better and more efficiently today.
They’re also happier workplaces because we like freedom. We like being able to take responsibility, make decisions and grow into leadership as fits us. On the other hand, we hate being stuck in bureaucracy, red tape, meaningless rules and endless power struggles.
A horrible case: Alabama A&M University who has this policy in case of a death in an employee’s family:
Staff members shall, upon request, be granted up to three (3) days annually of bereavement leave for the death of a parent, spouse, child, brother or sister, grand parents [sic], grand parents-in-law, grandchild, son or daughter-in-law, mother-in law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, step children, children-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and first and second cousins. Other relationships are excluded unless there is a guardian relationship. Such leave is non-accumulative, and the total amount of bereavement leave will not exceed three days within any fiscal year. If additional days of absences are necessary, employees may request sick or annual leave, after providing an explanation of extenuating circumstances.
(Via Gruntled Employees, who has some pointed words about this case :o)
A good case: Nordstrom’s, who only give their employees one rule:
Rule #1: In all situations, use your good judgement
In the excellent book The Second Cycle – Winning the War Against Bureaucracy, Lars Kolind wrote about how easy it is for companies to get stuck in a bureaucratic, controlling mindset – especially as they grow older, bigger or more successful. He also outlines his recipe for breaking out of this mindset, which includes A Collaborative Organization, i.e. one where leadership is distributed as much as possible.
Luckily, more and more companies are starting to realize that command and control style leadership:
My favorite example of a radical organization is still Semco in Brazil where (just to mention a few examples):
Radical companies give their employees more freedom and find that people become happy at work, and consequently are more engaged and productive. This also makes the company more profitable, which Semco has certainly found.
So making your company radical is not only fun it’s also good business.
And there has never been a better time for it. We’re richer, more educated and better informed than ever before in the history of mankind. We have the knowledge, the means, the tools and the drive to finally change business for good.
Our reward will be companies that are:
And to anyone who thinks “yeah, nice idea sure. Too bad it’s impossible” I refer you to this quote.
What do you think – would you like to work in a radical company? Have you tried it already? What was it like?
In my last post I wrote about how Costco treats its employees better than their competitors, get huge profits as a result – and catch flack for it from stock analysts who want them to spend less money on their people. Go figure.
So here’s a good question… considering that Costco spends 40% more on their employees than their closest competition, how well is Costco CEO Sinegal himself paid?
Despite Costco’s impressive record, Mr. Sinegal’s salary is just $350,000, although he also received a $200,000 bonus last year. That puts him at less than 10 percent of many other chief executives, though Costco ranks 29th in revenue among all American companies.
“I’ve been very well rewarded,” said Mr. Sinegal, who is worth more than $150 million thanks to his Costco stock holdings. “I just think that if you’re going to try to run an organization that’s very cost-conscious, then you can’t have those disparities. Having an individual who is making 100 or 200 or 300 times more than the average person working on the floor is wrong.”
So here’s a company that pays its employees more than average – and its CEO waaaay less. I like it!
This also contributes to making people happy at work. While I always say that money can’t make us happy at work, a salary that’s too low or blatantly unfair (say one that is 200 times smaller than the CEO’s) can definitely make us unhappy.
You’d think that if a company treats its employees well (a lot better than their competitors) and gets great business results because of it, that this company and it executives would be celebrated and praised for it.
You’d be wrong.
The New York Times has a great article about Costco, the huge American chain of supermarkets who spend much more on their employees than their main competitors:
Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish.
According to Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal, this makes good business sense:
Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.”
The results are pretty impressive:
Costco’s stock price has risen more than 10 percent in the last 12 months, while Wal-Mart’s has slipped 5 percent. Costco shares sell for almost 23 times expected earnings; at Wal-Mart the multiple is about 19.
So how do stock analysts react to this? They tell Costco to start treating their employees worse:
Emme Kozloff, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, faulted Mr. Sinegal as being too generous to employees, noting that when analysts complained that Costco’s workers were paying just 4 percent toward their health costs, he raised that percentage only to 8 percent, when the retail average is 25 percent.
“He has been too benevolent,” she said. “He’s right that a happy employee is a productive long-term employee, but he could force employees to pick up a little more of the burden.”
This makes zero sense to me – but it illustrates two things perfectly:
This is partly why Jim Goodnight, the CEO and owner of software company SAS Institute refuses to take his company public; he knows that it would become much more difficult to keep SAS employees as happy as they currently are (read about how SAS keep their employees happy).
One company did manage to go public and keep their identity: Google. When they announced their IPO, founders Brinn and Page made it very clear that they would continue to run the company their way. They promised to go on treating their employees extremely well and making long-term decisions rather than living from quarter to quarter. If investors didn’t care for that, they were kindly requested to take their money elsewhere. Google being Google, investors flocked to buy the stock anyway – less famous companies might not get away with this approach.
To me, it makes perfect sense that treating employees well makes them happy and that happy companies make more money – and this is backed up by many studies. To give one example, the 100 best companies to work for in the US, have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of 3.
It’s time that investors and stock analysts realized this and started demanding of companies, that they make their employees happy. This not only increases profits, it’s one of the best and most efficient ways to do so.
UPDATE: Turns out the highly up-to-date article from the NY times I reference is 2 years old. So much for my amazing powers of observation :o) Fortunately the tendency still holds and Costco still treat their people better AND outperform Walmart on the stock market.
Treat the enterprise as a community of engaged members, not a collection of free agents.
Corporations are social institutions, which function best when committed human beings (not human “resources”) collaborate in relationships based on trust and respect.
Destroy this and the whole institution of business collapses.
– Henry Mintzberg (Via Workplay)
I don’t know about you but I get a LOT of email! Even after the spam filter has done its thing I’m still more or less deluged and of course every single mail must be answered, which means I also send a lot of mails (btw: If you’ve sent me email and I haven’t answered – have patience, I will :o)
Every email says something about the person who’s sent it. It serves in some way to tell people who you are. So your mission this Monday is to make yourself an email signature that somehow expresses who you are and what you do and which will make whoever receives your email a little happier.
I’ve seen many great examples. My Iowan buddy Mike Wagner signs all his emails:
Keep creating,
Mike
Phil Gerbyshak who blogs at Make It Great of course has no choice but to sign his
Make it a GREAT day!
Phil
Some people end their emails with a funny quote or a wise saying, such as these:
All generalizations are false.
I don’t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
“Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.”
So think about how you can sign all your mails in a way that expresses who you are AND makes whoever reads it a little happier. If you come up with something cool (or if you already use a great email signature), please post it here in a comment – I’d love to see how you do it :o)
The Chief Happiness Officer’s Monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.
The Happy at Work Manifesto is now live at ChangeThis.
The manifesto is a declaration of principles and intentions for those of us who have decided, that we want to be happy at work.
It’s for everyone who thinks we should stopped putting up with unhappy workplaces, bad bosses and unpleasant working conditions. It’s for those of us who know that unhappiness at work is not a minor annoyance; that it can make us despondent, cynical and negative and worst case, make us sick or kill us.
It’s a manifesto for people who want to be happy at work, to get more energy, drive, fun, good experiences, creativity, productivity and success. Who know that this is how we must work from now on – with happiness!
Read the Happy at Work Manifesto here.
If you like it, please forward it to others who may also enjoy it – or need it :o) There’s a “Send This” button on the ChangeThis page you can use to pass it on.
Here’s just a short updatefrom me while I enjoy some more vacation. The weather in Denmark sucks right now which is great, because my wonderful girlfriend and I have spent some time upgrading our apartment – we’re talking fresh paint, general fixing and some cool new furniture – so the bad weather just means there’s less temptation to skip that work and go to the beach instead – perfect :o)
I’m enjoying a week’s wonderful vacation in Greece. We’re talking warm weather, lots of sights, great beaches and time with my family and wonderful girlfriend. Wooo-hoooo!
In the meantime, why not check out the happy links collection, where you can:
There are lots of great stories on there already – and more are always welcome :o)
Gene Fowler, the CEO of Fatkat Studios was so inspired by my book Happy Hour is 9 to 5 that he’s now writing a review of it for Progress Magazine.
And while that’s really nice of him, the best thing is the great cartoon he did based on the book. Go check it out – it’s hilarious :o)
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