This is just AWESOME :)
I would argue that most jobs, no matter how serious they may be on the surface, offer the chance to show your playful side.
And if they don’t, there are other jobs that do!
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Book review: Everybody Matters by Bob Chapman
This is simply one of the best new business books I’ve read in a LONG time.
What if you ran your organization based on actually, genuinely caring for every single person in it? How would that inform strategy and leadership and how would it affect employees and the bottom line?
Bob Chapman’s leadership at Barry Wehmiller shows what that looks like and it is amazing.
Barry Wehmiller is essentially in the business of buying struggling production companies around the world and making them happier and more productive by introducing their processes and culture. They have 8,000 employees in 100 locations around the world in a large variety of businesses and they’re profitable and growing fast.
In this short speech, Bob Chapman explains their leadership philosophy:
The book contains a ton of powerful lessons that any workplace could learn from, but for me, these were the 2 most powerful things in the book.
1: Performance focus – with people first.
Of course the company cares about performance, but they realize that people come first. Chapman shares the story of what happened when a lean consultant came to do a presentation:We scheduled a kickoff meeting in Green Bay with a group of senior leaders to learn about Lean and begin our continuous-improvement journey.
On the first afternoon, a consultant gave an opening presentation on Lean. After forty-five minutes, I stood up and walked out of the room in frustration. The presentation was all about justifying bringing Lean tools into an organization because they help add to the bottom line and get more out of people. “This will help you get more out of people.”
That’s when I left the room.
Brian followed nervously after me, glancing back to see if the presenter was still speaking.
“So, what’s going on?”
With fire in my voice, I said, “Brian, we are never going to have a Lean journey like that in our organization. We are not going to suck the life out of people and take advantage of them in that way. We are going to build a Lean culture focused on people or we’re not going to do it at all.”
I had made it clear that our version of Lean was to be about people.
Too many CEOs would never even catch that. They are steeped in the idea that results come first and processes like Lean are used as a tool for that purpose.
At Barry Wehmiller, Lean has become a tool to make work more fun and meaningful for the employees. And that in turn drives better results, than a direct results focus.
2: No layoffs
Your values are tested in hard times. It’s a lot easier to be nice and appreciative and people focused when the business is profitable but when revenue takes a hit and your company is losing money that’s when you get a chance to show if you take your values seriously of if they’re just pretty words that you don’t really mean.In the book’s most interesting chapter (for me at least) Chapman discusses what happened when the recession hit them in 2008. They lost a large amount of business and were faced with massive pressure from their bank to cut costs.
Most companies around the world would not hesitate for a second before enacting layoffs. It’s just what you do, despite the fact that evidence shows it’s actually bad for business.
Chapman instead worked hard to come up with a plan that would ensure the company’s survival without laying off a single person – which they did.
The upshot
I HIGHLY recommend this book. It’s a great read and shares not only a great business case but also Chapman’s personal story which is interesting in itself.
The book shows that happy workplaces can exist in any industry (even production) and that you can systematically transform bad, failing workplaces into happy successful ones. Provided you do so with some good structure, great leadership and the basic idea that people deserve to be treated well at work.
Related posts
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Epic buffalo prank at Zappos
We visited Zappos in Las Vegas last week and saw this epic prank video :)
Ever done something like that in your workplace?
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Welcome. Coffee?
This is not a coffee shop – this is the reception at one of our clients in Denmark.
They can greet you, get you a visitor’s badge and notify the employee your meeting with. And while you wait for them to come meet you, they can also whip up an excellent cappuccino or a flat white.
Employees can also have informal meetings in the café and buy coffee cheaply using their ID cards or an app on their phones.
I saw something similar at the Coca-Cola HQ in Atlanta.
I like this kind of thing because it breaks down the formality of the reception area and makes it more welcoming and interesting. It gives visitors a better first impression and provides employees with a more relaxed setting.
Does your workplace have something similar?
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I am going to happy you :)
It just struck me that the Danish word for happiness (glæde) is both a noun and a verb.
So in Danish you can experience happiness (føle glæde) but you can also “happy someone else” (glæde en anden).
As in: “I think this will happy my spouse” (det vil glæde min partner) or “small acts can happy others” (små ting kan glæde andre).
I don’t want to read too much into that linguistic quirk, but it is interesting because it goes to the heart of what happiness is – i.e. very much something we do for each other.
Can you think of another language that has this feature?
Also, the same word is also used to say that you are looking forward to something. “Jeg glæder mig til jul” literally translates “I happy myself about Christmas” and means “I’m looking forward to Christmas.”
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My upcoming open gigs around the world
Here are some of the upcoming international conferences and events you can catch me at:
October 15, London UK: Well-Being at Work
November 10, Santiago de Chile: Expo Capital Humano
November 16, Istanbul Turkey: Peryön Kongres
November 25, Prague Czech Republic: Happiness at Work
December 3, Novi Sad Serbia: Geekstone Conference
December 18, Colombo Sri Lanka: Dev Day 2015
March 23, The Hague Netherlands: Happy People Better Business
April 13, Birmingham UK: Service Desk Conference
May 9, Miami USA, WorldBlu Summit
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To create results, leaders must put relationships first
Should a manager focus primarily on results or people? Should the manager be the one who sets KPIs and drives employees towards their goals, or should the manager rather be the one who understands and likes employees and is able to build good relationships with them?
In 2009 James Zenger published a study that examined exactly that question. He found that if a manager is seen as being particularly focused on results alone, he/she will be seen as a good manager by only 14 % of the employees. If a manager has only strong social skills, the manager is regarded as being a good manager by a mere 12 % of the employees.
However, for those managers who are both focused on results and have strong social skills, the likelihood of being evaluated as a good manager rockets to 72 %. But here is the bad news: Less than 1 % of the managers in Zenger’s study were evaluated as being strong on results and having strong social skills. Ouch!
But how can it be that so few managers master both? An article from Harvard Business Review by Matthew Lieberman provides the answer: It is the brain’s fault. Our brains simply have a hard time being both socially and analytically focused at the same time. In the article and in his outstanding book “Why Our Brains Are Wired To Connect”, Lieberman writes:
Even though thinking social and analytically don’t feel radically different, evolution built our brain with different networks for handling these two ways of thinking.
In the frontal lobe, regions on the outer surface, closer to the skull, are responsible for analytical thinking and are highly related to IQ. In contrast, regions in the middle of the brain, where the two hemispheres touch, support social thinking.
Here’s the really surprising thing about the brain: These two networks function like a neural seesaw. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more one of these networks got active, the more the other one got quieter. […] in general, engaging in one of these kinds of thinking makes it harder to engage in the other kind.
We know from extensive research that happiness at work is primarily affected by two factors, namely results and relationships.
Employees love their jobs when they make a difference at work, and when they feel cared for as human beings. These two factors determine – far more than gyms, massages and other perks – whether employees are happy, motivated and productive, or not. That is why it is essential to have managers who are able to help employees experience both.
Yet, in the business community, it is depressingly common to primarily acknowledge results-oriented managers, instead of those with strong social skills. Usually, the most professionally competent employees are promoted to managerial positions, even if they lack the social skills it takes to be a manager. If these new managers do not get the training/further education they need, it has a directly negative impact on happiness at work and consequently on productivity.
Here is a radical idea: I believe that you will have more success if you select managers with excellent social skills, and train them to become more focused on results. I believe that it is much easier for a person with good social skills to learn to focus on results, than it is for a hard-core results-driven person to develop social skills and empathy.
Southwest Airlines have long done this. The excellent book “The Southwest Airlines Way” by Jody Hoffer-Gittell reveals the secret to Southwest’s remarkable success: high performance relationships that create enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among Southwest employees. For instance, when Southwest looks for new managers, the most important skill is the ability to connect with others and create good relationships.
Personally, I am convinced that the most important leadership skill is to actually like other people.
We also have to consider how we reward managers. Most workplaces reward managers for creating good results, but how many have bonus arrangements considering those who build good relations? Why not split the managers’ bonuses 50/50 between results and relations? If we only reward one of the two, it only encourages one type of behaviour, and the one-sided focus on results will eventually harm results and the bottom line.
Your take
Think about the best manager you’ve ever had or met. What made that manager effective? What about examples of bad management you’ve seen – what made those managers bad?
Do you agree that relationship skills are the most important for managers?
Write a comment – I’d love to hear your take.
Related posts
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An inherent paradox
For most of us, work is not optional – we have to make a living somehow.
Finding work we enjoy given that, is a paradox we all must resolve.
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This workplace is NOT afraid of colors (and yours shouldn’t be either)
I took this picture at one of our clients in Denmark. Their offices are in a building that used to be a paint factory and they have fully embraced that history and esthetic in their workplace design and layout.
Walking around their building I felt inspired and energized. Then I see a traditional beige-and-grey cubicle landscape and I despair for all humanity :)
I don’t want to overstate the role of office design – it is definitely not what makes or breaks a workplace. But I can’t help wonder why companies are so afraid to display some identity, variation, playfulness and (not least) bright colors in their buildings.
It’s not that hard – here are some great examples:
- 10 seriously cool workplaces.
- 12 ways to pimp your office.
- dPOP’s office is underground and AMAZING.
- Meet me in the UFO.
And please don’t confuse well-designed with fancy and expensive. Some companies spend tons of money on really exclusive furniture and still end up with an office that is boring and lifeless.
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Six ways Jack Welch is wrong about what makes a great company
So Jack Welch is becoming semi-enlightened in his later years. The man who previously promoted firing 10% of your employees every year is getting all soft and cuddly and wants companies to be good workplaces.
He even published an article called 6 ways to tell if you work for a great workplace. And he really is starting to get it. Unfortunately, he’s not quite there yet. Let’s look at where he gets it right and wrong.
His first point is that “1: Great companies demonstrate a real commitment to continuous learning.” Spot on. Well done, Jack.
But then he says that “2: Great companies are meritocracies. Pay and promotions are tightly linked to performance, and rigorous appraisal systems consistently make people aware of where they stand.”
No. Just, no. Many great workplaces don’t have rigorous appraisal systems. In fact, some great workplaces have been ruined when they start measuring everything. Just look at why Microsoft abandoned stack ranking:
Microsoft has been known as the ur-example of pitting employees against one another in an attempt to reward the excellent and weed out the weak, which gained widespread popularity in the 1980s after then-Chief Executive Jack Welch brought the ranking system to General Electric.
The problem is workers generally aren’t thrilled about having to play Game of Thrones at the office. David Auerbach, a former Microsoft employee, recently told Bloomberg Businessweek that the practice had employees feeling helpless and “encouraged people to backstab their co-workers.”
Yes, Jack Welch inspired it. No, it doesn’t work.
Under point 2 he also writes that “People with brains, self-confidence, and competitive spirit are always attracted to such environments.”
There are a few fundamental mistakes here. First of all, hiring for brains and self-confidence may land you with a lot of jerks. New York based company Next Jump tried it and found that:
…we followed a common practice used by the biggest tech companies in the world: to hire brilliant and driven people. But, after two years of heavily investing in this hiring process, concentrating our efforts at the top engineering schools on the east coast, we found ourselves with a small army of brilliant jerks.
The culture was toxic. Racial tension, blaming others, total disregard for other people’s opinions and total protection of one’s own ideas and work products. We did a rapid evaluation of all the people we would want to work with vs those we didn’t, and, in one day, we fired half our engineers.
[after that] humility became an important trait to screen for in our hiring process. We now interview for 45 minutes on humility. No matter how brilliant and driven a candidate is, if they get a humbs down on humility, we do not hire them. No exceptions.
And as for hiring competitive people, there is actually evidence that competing lowers performance.
Jack says that “3: Great companies not only allow people to take risks but also celebrate those who do.”
Excellent, Jack. I agree.
The next one is “4: Great companies understand that what is good for society is also good for business.”
Which is awesome, but then he has to add that “They offer flexibility in work schedules to those who earn it with performance.”
No. Great workplaces offer flexibility to everyone.
He also writes that “5: Great companies keep their hiring standards tight. They make candidates work hard to join the ranks by meeting strict criteria that center around intelligence and previous experience.”
But actually, some of the greatest workplaces I know hire based less on skill and much more on personality and attitude. Look at Southwest Airlines who famously “Hire for attitude, train for skill.” Or Pret a Manger in the UK, who hire happy people and the teach them what they need to know in the job.
And finally he writes that “6: Great companies are profitable and growing.”
Nope. They can be growing, but they absolutely don’t have to be. Ricardo Semler, the CEO of Semco in Brazil put it like this:
There is no correlation between growth and ultimate success. For a while growth seems very glamorous, but the sustainability of growth is so delicate that many of the mid-sized companies which just stayed where they were doing the same thing are much better off today than the ones that went crazy and came back to nothing. There are too many automobile plants, too many airplanes. Who is viable in the airline business?
If someone asks me, ‘where will you be in 10 years’ time?’, I haven’t got the slightest idea. I don’t find it perturbing either if we said, ‘look, in 10 years’ time Semco could have 500 people instead of 3,000 people’; that sounds just as interesting as 21,000 people. I’d hate to see Semco not exist in 10, 20, 50 years’ time, but what form it exists in, what business it’s in and what size it is are not particularly relevant.
A company certainly has to be profitable in the long run or it won’t be around but I would bet that there is no correlation between the growth rate of a company and how good a workplace it is.
Your take
What do you think? Is Jack Welch right or wrong? What makes a great workplace in your opinion?
