This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Archive for November, 2010
Employee orientation. The essentials.
New employee orientation begins way before you think it does. It starts when an employee makes first contact with your organization. That could have been years ago if they use your product or service or if you’re a major brand with lots of advertising dollars. Or it could have been the job ad on Workopolis or Monster. Or it could have been at a booth at a job fair. It most certainly isn’t at that “onboarding” event you asked them to attend 2 months after they started working for you.
Orienting employees has more to do with introducing employees to your culture: “The way we do things around here” and the brand experience than it does all the rules and regs that are the usual focus of employee orientations.
Nordstrom’s employee handbook may do this better than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s certainly the shortest. Here it is in its entirety.
Welcome to Nordstrom
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.
Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time.
What do you think? Does this say more about their culture than a full-day briefing and a 300-page orientation binder?
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Great idea # 2 – Netflix on building a great culture
An occasional post on a really great idea for internal communications – simple and high impact.
““I will not lie, not cheat, not steal,
nor tolerate those who do.”
All of us are responsible for value consistency.”
What a simple and obvious way to ensure that values are valued. And that behaviours reflect values. Well, it may be obvious, but how many organizations do you know where employees are really responsible for ensuring values consistency?
Netflix CEO Reed Hasting’s “Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture” presents their current best thinking about maximizing Netflix likelihood of continuous success.
I’m a little behind in seeing this. But thanks my good friend Christine Pietschmann I did.
This deck is one of the best things to cross my desk in a long time. It’s well worth the time it takes to flip through the 128 slides. It’s clear. It’s concise. It describes the kind of culture Netflix is building and practically what that means for employees and managers on a day-to-day basis.
It describes in a comprehensive way ‘how we do things around here’, why, and what that means for you – if you are already an employee or if you’re considering joining Netflix. And it has clear implications for you if you are an investor or a customer or potential customer. No ambiguity. No gray zone. No corporate jargon. No acronyms.
Well done Netflix! You’ve set the bar very high indeed.
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Asking the right questions
I got a note from someone who’d just read the IBM Global Human Resource Officer Study for 2010: “Working without borders”. He was disturbed to discover that Chief HR Officers are positioning themselves to “leverage collaboration”. His question: “How can Organizational Development lead the design of Organization 2.0?”
It’s the kind of question I hear regularly. How can function X own [insert your choice – innovation, employee communications, the brand, etc.]? How can function Y think they can lead [insert your choice again]?
But, are these the questions we should be asking? Instead, what if we asked:
- What is the collaboration for?
- How will collaboration support the business strategy?
- What impact will it have? Do we expect the impact to change over time?
- Does the level of collaboration need to be the same across the whole business – from function to function, from exec level to front line? Or is it needed only in certain pockets [product development and customer service, marketing and sales, etc.]? Will this change over time?
The conversation changes and depending on the answers, “ownership” [function, level] should be obvious. Is your organization asking the right questions? Are you asking the right questions?
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Learning from Indian royalty
I just saw an amazing exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario – Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts. The role of the royal procession in Indian culture is a key element of the exhibit. It is at least as rich and opulent as you would imagine. Stunning.
In the first room a Maharaja talks about the power of the royal procession. I admit that I expected him to talk about how the procession is designed to position the Maharaja as a powerful god-like being. Whether the turbaned and bejewelled Maharaja is riding in a gold and silver ‘howda’ on the back of an elephant dressed in highly embroidered ornaments or in a silver and enamel landau carriage [yes silver!] or in a aluminum on saffron and Phantom II Rolls Royce, the royal procession is a spectacle. And, it’s designed to be spectacular [start at 3 minutes on this video].
But, what the Maharaja said made me stop. He said that the real power of the procession isn’t the spectacle. Instead, it’s a profound reminder of his responsibility to the people in his kingdom.
Now, I know your CEO is no Maharaja. And our organizations are not feudal kingdoms. But, are there any events or moments in organizational life that connect senior executives to employees in a way that gives them a powerful and direct understanding of their responsibility? If so, what are they? And if not, should we be thinking about how we can better make that connection?
For those of you interested in what it took to dress an elephant for such a procession [no irony intended]:
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We’ve come a long way ladies! Or not.
Last night I attended a very successful ‘friend raising’ event in Toronto for Equitas: International Centre for Human Rights Education. Thanks to the generosity of the TD Bank, it was held on the 54th floor of a tower in one of the few Mies van der Rohe buildings in Canada. The room overlooked the twinkling city below. Simply breathtaking.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the board room of a bank. The last time was 30 years ago when I was a freshly minted MBA.
I remember walking into the board room of the Bank of Montreal as if it was yesterday. Not because of the no doubt important presentations that were made. Not because of the incredible Canadian art that hung on the walls and stood on plinths along the hallway. Not because of the endless walnut paneling and brass fixtures. Not because of doors that were almost too heavy to open. Not because of the rather small, simple, historic original board room table almost forgotten in the corner [somehow very touching surrounded as it was by all this opulence]. Not because of the incredibly long boardroom table that extended from one end of this enormous ball room sized room to the other. Not because of the over 60 blue leather and walnut chairs sitting around the table. Or the matching leather mats at every place.
No, I remember that day because of the carpet. It went on forever. From the elevator, down the hall, into the reception area and then on into the board room. As a woman in heels it was almost impossible to walk across that plush carpet without keeling over or twisting an ankle. I knew then, if I’d ever had any doubts, that this was a place designed by men for men.
And so it was last night. Just one thing had changed besides the glorious view and the name of the bank. Today, the carpet didn’t fill the entire floor. Instead, it sat like a plush [though still dangerous] island under the board room table. We’ve come a long way ladies. And, we’re getting closer to the board room table if the carpet means anything.
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Uhura or Deanna Troi?
Maybe it’s due to the Time Warped posts, but I’ve been thinking about … yes, you guessed it Star Trek. And I discovered something pretty interesting. Somewhere between Star Trek and Star Trek: The next generation the communication officer disappeared. What happened?
Remember Uhura, she was the communication officer on Star Trek. She was a major character in this early version of the show. Communication was a technical challenge and seemed pretty transactional. I always felt the character was barely hanging on getting her ‘phone’ to work. Uhura seemed like a female Scotty – “Captain, the dilithium crystal is overheating. We’re going to blow up.”
By Star Trek the next generation the communication officer is gone [or at least not a main character] to be replaced instead by Deanna Troi, the empath. She’s just there. No big drama. No big “oh my god can she do it? Can she get us out of this mess?” She’s just present and adding value by helping the Captain navigate the different creatures and cultures they encounter. She’s all about relationships. And, technology serves only in as much as it supports the relationship.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather see our profession evolve in the direction of Diana Troi. More empath than technician. What will it take? [check out the Commscrum discussion on LinkedIn: Building communication mastery in a cross-disciplinary inside/out world and here]
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The 80/20 rule
I was enjoying a fabulous performance by the McGill Symphony Orchestra [Schulich School of Music] the other night, thanks to the generosity of a good friend, when I found thinking about the 80/20 rule.
You know, the Pareto Principle. Discovered in the early 1900s by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who “observed that 20% of people owned 80% of the wealth” in his country. Others observed similar phenomena outside of economics. This came to be called the 80/20 rule. Applied with rigour and discipline it should mean that organizationally we’re able to prioritize those elements of the business we must focus on as a priority. That 20% that are essential to delivering 80% of the result.
Back to my musical evening out. I found myself wondering. What is the essential 20% of this performance? Is it the score? Or maybe only 20% of the notes? The musicians? Or just the violins [it was a violin concerto]? What if that one soft ding of the triangle hadn’t happened perfectly in the Allegro? Would it matter? What about the conductor? Could he make 20% of the gestures and get 80% of the impact?
And, would 80% of the result be good enough for this orchestra.
I don’t think so. So, when did the organizations we work in start preaching the 80/20 rule. And what was lost as a result?
The liner notes for the concert read: “The talent, passion and dedication of our musicians are an inspiration to us all.” When’s the last time you looked around your workplace and thought: “The talent, passion and dedication of our employees/my colleagues are an inspiration to us all/me.” If not, why not? Has the 80/20 rule dulled our aspirations?
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The power of acronyms
I’ve always thought that once we moved from typing on machines the days of the acronym would be over. Why do we need them? We don’t need to push keys up and down to type in the same words over and over. We can search and replace in one stroke.
I was so wrong. Acronyms are alive and thriving in every organization I work with.
Acronyms are short form. They’re code. They’re kind of cool – you can make them spell catchy words like DEVIL [development in logistics – thanks to my dad who loved creating sticky acronyms for projects he led]. They’re the part of the language that proves you’re part of the ‘in’ group – the ones that know what the acronyms mean. Until you don’t.
I remember joining a large global company about a decade ago. Engineering was key to this business and so were engineers. And engineers love acronyms [an unproven theory]. Anyway, I went to meeting after meeting in those early days just trying to wade through the acronyms.
There was one meeting that stands out. Somewhere about 5 minutes into the meeting someone referred to “XMNP” [acronym disguised to protect the innocent]. The discussion got incredibly animated and built to a crescendo when about an hour in I realized that there were two groups in the room. They both used “XMNP” acronym. And they both used it in different ways. They were fighting about different things. No one had really thought about what the initials meant since they’d made them up and except for the new person in the room who asked they might not have.
And that’s when I realized the real power of acronyms is to obscure and confuse. If you’re not in favour of obscuring and confusing then I think you know what you have to do.
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Recent posts
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