Tuesday, July 29, 2008
A few weeks back I invited folks to rank order 21 ways to earn employees' love for the company and the results are in. Here is how the perks rank (remember, people had to rank order the 21 items so the lower the average score the better). Also, I've included the original descriptions of these perks that appeared on the blog posted by the CEO of SurePayroll, Michael Alter -- the blog that got this whole thing started.
You'll see that you can't buy love on the cheap.
#1 is...Give Them Managers Who Know How to Manage People (average ranking: 2.3) All the perks in the world can’t overcome working for someone who is a jerk. Choose and retain people for management because they can bring out the best in everyone they work with.
#2...Positive Words and Opportunity to Succeed (average ranking: 2.6) Studies show that workers who receive regular praise and are given an opportunity to do what they do best every day are more loyal and more productive workers. As if we needed a study to realize that!
#3...Office Ambiance (average ranking: 5.5) Dingy walls and cramped quarters don't do much for employee love. On the other hand, employees love to work in an office that is stylishly designed with ample room and great furniture.
#4...Ownership (average ranking 6.0) Give employees a piece of the equity pie and everybody's interests are suddenly aligned.
#5...Learn, Baby, Learn (average ranking 6.7) For many people, it's not just what they earn, it's what they learn. Invest in employee training and you'll soon have a more loyal, not to mention more skilled, workforce.
#6...Friends (average ranking 7.5) People who don't have friends at work are more likely to quit. Those who have friends are more engaged at work. So do something that encourages friendships…start an office book club, for example.
#7...Free Parking and Transportation Reimbursement (average ranking: 8.2) Instead of raising salaries, offer to pay for parking or train passes instead. It's a small gesture but employees will appreciate it. And it's tax deductible.
#8...Casual Dress Codes (average ranking: 8.5) If I had a dollar for every employee that's quit a job because the dress code was too formal, I'd be a rich man indeed. At SurePayroll, we are very carefree when it comes to dress codes and our employees appreciate that very much.
#9...Surprise Holidays (average ranking: 8.5) Everybody loves a day off, especially if it's not on the holiday schedule. Want to put smiles on the employees' faces? Announce a day off out of the blue.
#10...Free Food and Drinks (average ranking 11.0) Having free sodas in the fridge and free snacks on the break room counter are tried and true techniques. Keep the snacks healthy and you'll win a few extra points for being concerned about employee wellness.
#11...Proximity to Public Transportation (average ranking: 11.2) Location, location, location! Most folks will trade salary for a shorter, easier commute. If you have a convenient location, you can count on a broader selection of employees.
#12...The Latte Machine (average ranking: 11.7) Throw out the cheap coffee maker and invest in a high-end coffee heaven maker.
#13...Bring in the Masseuse (average ranking: 12.5) Last but not least, when the going gets tough, the tough get a massage. Make your office stress-free by bring in a masseuse once a month — or during your busier, more stressful times.
#14...Great Parties (average ranking: 13.3) Companies that party together stay together. Take time out to celebrate and do it in style.
#15...Dinner for Two (average ranking: 15.1) Don't forget to pamper spouses and partners too. Treat employees to a night out with their loved ones and you'll earn twice the love.
#16...Flu Shots for Everyone (average ranking: 15.9) I wasn't so sure about this one, but after two years of providing flu shots, I’m sure our winters are more productive with happier, healthier employees.
#17...Call In the Ice Cream Truck (average ranking: 15.9) When the ice cream truck pulls up in front of your business and gives your employees free ice cream, you’re sure to earn a few employee loyalty points.
#18...Tickets to the Big Game (average ranking: 16.0) Surprise your employees with an outing to the local ballgame.
#19...The Game Lounge (average ranking: 17.3) Foosball, billiards, air hockey, your favorite game console, or even something as low tech as Checkers or Monopoly -- let the games begin!
#20...Beer (average ranking: 17.5) One reader wrote me that he has a keg tapped in his office every Friday afternoon and that employees love it. I'll drink to that!
#21...Movie Afternoons (average ranking: 18) All work and no play makes for a dull workforce. Fire up the conference room projector every Thursday at 2:00 PM and show a movie. Don't forget the popcorn!
Best Ways to Earn Your Employees' Love -- The Results Are In!
Roche’s Bet on Genentech’s Culture
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
In case you haven’t heard, Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche announced yesterday that it wants to buy the remaining 44% share of Bay Area biotech company Genentech it doesn’t already own. (In the interest of full disclosure, Genentech is one of my clients.) It’s not surprising that Roche wants all of Genentech’s capabilities when it comes to the business of science – Genentech has been hugely successful with its suite of oncology therapies.
And if you follow some of the pharma blogs, many inside and outside Genentech are predicting a brain drain of scientific talent once mean old Roche (and all its minions in Nutley, New Jersey) get their hands on Genentech’s cherished entrepreneurial, “science is king” culture. All of this may be very true and Roche’s press release announcing its intent mentioned more than once keeping Genentech’s culture intact. But one way to assess the possible effect of a brain drain on Genentech’s ability to continue to perform as it has so far is to look at this situation through the lens of Clayton Christensen’s Resources-Processes-Values (RPV) framework and how the source of an organization’s capability migrates over time.
Let’s start with Christensen’s definitions of resources, processes, and values, in his own words.
Resources include people, equipment, technology, product designs, brands, information, cash, and relationships with suppliers, distributors, and customers. Resources are usually people or things – they can be hired and fired, bought and sold, depreciated or built.
Organizations create value as employees transform inputs of resources – the work of people, equipment, technology, product designs, brands, information, energy, and cash – into products and services of greater worth. The patterns of interaction, coordination, communication, and decision making through which they accomplish these transformations are processes.
An organization’s values are the standards by which employees make prioritization decisions – those by which they judge whether an order is attractive or unattractive, whether a particular customer is more important or less important than another, whether an idea for a new product is attractive or marginal, and so on.
Christensen points out that:
In the start-up stages of a business, much of what gets done is attributable to its resources – particularly its people. The addition or departure of a few key people can have a profound influence on its success. Over time, however, the organization’s capabilities shift toward its processes and values. As people work together successfully to address recurrent tasks, processes become defined. And as the business model takes shape and it becomes clear which types of business need to be accorded highest priority, values coalesce.
Success is easier to sustain when the locus of the capability to innovate successfully migrates from resources to processes and values. It actually begins to matter less which people get assigned to which project teams. In large, successful management consulting firms, for example, hundreds of new MBA’s join the firm every year, and almost as many leave. But they are able to crank out high-quality work year after year because their capabilities are rooted in their processes and values rather than in their resources.
So the big question is whether Genentech has evolved (what would a story about a California company be without at least one use of the word “evolve?”) to the point that its “locus” of organizational capability has migrated from resources to processes and values? If so, we need to remember that processes and values don’t reside in any one person or group of people. It is as though they exist in an alternate universe, to the point that even if in some fantastical circumstance, every single employee were to leave Genentech, there would still be a virtual repository of processes and values that other smart, scientific people could plug into and get comparable results.
So where does culture fit into the RPV framework? Dr. Christensen, if you please.
As successful companies mature, employees gradually come to assume that the priorities they have learned to accept, and the ways of doing things and methods of making decisions that they have employed so successfully, are the right way to work. Once members of the organization begin to adopt ways of working and criteria for making decisions by assumption, rather than by conscious decision, then those processes and values come to constitute the organization’s culture.
So Roche’s real bet when it comes to Genentech’s culture is that is has evolved past a person-dependent capability and resides much more in the company’s processes and values, whether or not they are followed by assumption or consciously. If so, Roche could withstand the loss of an Arthur Levinson (Genentech CEO) or Richard Scheller (Genentech Chief Scientific Officer) and still maintain the organizational performance of Genentech, as long as it doesn’t screw around with its processes and values. But that’s a big “if.” Roche’s leadership team has a big decision to make -- where business and philosophy intersect. Should Roche become more like Genentech or Genentech more like Roche? Quite the wager.
Culture Break: Snagfilms Experiment
Leadership Coaching: Perk #21, Part 2
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
This being a respectable business blog and all, I’m a bit hesitant to include a letter from Dear Abby (I have an editorial policy never to use the word “closure” in my blog) but a Corporate X-Ray reader was kind enough to point out a letter that appeared in Monday’s Dear Abby column this week. In the spirit of serendipity, here it is.
Dear Abby: I read an article in our local paper a while ago that said good employees who leave a company usually do so because of their boss.
With that in mind, I would like to bring closure to my recent resignation with the following open letter to my former boss:
“Thanks for asking me to stay on, but I respectfully decline. I will be self-employed from now on. However, if in the future I ever feel the need to be publicly humiliated, blind-sided, ostracized and called a spy, be distrusted and disciplined by superiors for no good reason, fight for wages that are rightfully mine, stabbed in the back by fellow employees, used as a pawn in executive rivalries, or (especially) chewed out when you’re having a bad day, I’ll get back to you!”
- Moving on in New Mexico
Hasn’t He Ever Heard of Dilbert?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I’m surfing the web the other day and I come across this blog entry on the Inc. magazine site – 20 perks that will earn your employees’ love. The blogger, Michael Alter, is obviously no slouch – CEO of an $11 million company that the National Association for Business Resources named as one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For, not to mention McKinsey and Harvard MBA credentials.
So after reading his list, I was struck by one “perk” that was missing that my experience tells me is a huge factor in whether an employee “loves working for you.” That perk is a manager who isn’t a jerk, who doesn’t make their employees’ jobs more difficult, who actually looks out for the best interests of their employees, who isn’t working out childhood issues on company time. Is that too much to ask? Now I recognize that perk #18 down the list -- Positive Words and Opportunity to Succeed – is part of being a good manager but I think Mr. Alter should consider adding a twenty-first perk to make it explicit, and while we’re at it, put it at the top of the list. So here’s my suggestion, Mr. Alter.
Give Them Managers Who Know How to Manage People. All the perks in the world can’t overcome working for someone who is a jerk. Choose and retain people for management because they can bring out the best in everyone they work with.Besides, your general counsel might be willing to switch this one with the beer perk. Something about having the keg in the manager’s office every Friday afternoon gives me pause.
Hey Corporate X-Ray reader, let me know how you would rank these 21 perks.
Leadership Coaching: Growth Leaders…Know Thy Style
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Wall Street Journal has a great article this morning (“In Search of Growth Leaders”) about research done by Sean Carr, Dr. Jeanne Liedtka, Robert Rosen, and Dr. Robert Wiltbank on the characteristics of middle managers that have achieved significant organic growth for their companies. I couldn’t help seeing the DiSC behavioral styles in their behavioral descriptions of these growth leaders. What I have seen in my work is that our individual behavioral proclivities have a strong influence on our management approach and actions. So since this research indicates that growth leaders “thrive on accepting challenges, taking action and getting immediate results,” (sounds like the driver-influence style combination to me) here’s some possibilities for our steadiness-conscientiousness style colleagues to consider for personal growth opportunities to drive corporate growth strategies.
Change to Broaden Your Expertise
My steadiness-style compadres often avoid taking on new work experiences out of fear of falling short of expectations and letting their organization or team down. But look at it this way -- by taking these chances and learning new skills in real time, this positions you and your team to contribute significantly to your company’s success by achieving organic growth and at the same time address the unmet needs of your customers, making them very, very happy. Think about it.
Expand Your Definition of “Data”
The research indicated “success was based more often on thoughtful exploration of customers’ needs than on dry market data.” For my conscientiousness style folks out there, stretch your definition of acceptable data to include conversations with clients about unmet needs. Doesn’t sound very scientific but even Margaret Mead did field research.
Lower Your Risk
Neither the steadiness nor conscientiousness styles have a high natural tolerance for risk. So take your natural analytical, collaborative mindset and work with your suppliers and customers to develop ideas (as the research revealed). Also, remind yourself that a degree of testing is part of the analytical process so find ways to experiment in the marketplace to understand what works and what doesn’t work.
You, Too, Are a Pragmatic Idealist
As the article points out,
In assembling teams, growth leaders learned to combine two seemingly opposing forces: holding people ruthlessly accountable for results, and engaging their passion to build something great together.So as a conscientiousness-style person, you don’t have the ruthlessness of a driver-style person -- big deal. You still know how to hold people accountable, maybe not always for results but definitely for quality. So just move results higher up the priority list. And as a steadiness-style person, you may not have the overflowing passion of an influence-style person, but you know how to work with others, all in the name of accomplishing something great – TOGETHER. Remember, your ego won’t get in the way.
Hope this helps. Now get out there and grow!
