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.
Culture change
Celebrating failure
Engineers without borders publishes something called a failure report. They “…believe that success in development is not possible without taking risks and innovating – which inevitably means failing sometimes.” And, they go on to say that they “…also believe that it’s important to publicly celebrate these failures, which allows us to share the lessons more broadly and create a culture that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking.”
Talk about missing the point. The organizational objective isn’t failure. The organizational objective is learning. Celebrating failure isn’t the same as celebrating learning.
And for me it raises a question. How is it that good ideas like organizationally learning becomes something that ‘glorifies’ failure. Is it really so hard to learn from our organizational failures?
For two other perspectives, more individually than institutionally focused check out:
- Steven Parker’s post “Are you part of the cult of failure?”
- Bill Jensen’s post “I F@#ked Up: Big Time… Introspection is Hard!”
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The golden rule at work
There’s much “wrong”, and amusing, with this short little orientation film from the 50s [with thanks to Michael's recent post]. But there’s something very right. The message that the teacher, Mrs Percal, delivers to her students: “Don’t forget the golden rule” just because you’re at work.
Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion, her mission to bring compassion to the world [including some pretty surprising places like Pakistan] and the movement that is growing daily in support for the Charter reminds us of the power and importance the golden rule can have in our lives. But what about our work lives?
The golden rule in the work place. Now that is “an idea worth spreading“!
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Great idea # 3: Building pride – The Hudson Bay Company story
An occasional post on a really great idea for employee communications
– simple and high impact.
For those of you who don’t know, The Bay was incorporated “…by British royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay” making it “… the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world.” [source] I grew up knowing it as The Hudson Bay Company. Somewhere along the line it became HBC and The Bay.
And somewhere along the line the adventure was over. The Bay had become a tired and dowdy department store owned by venture capitalists. You couldn’t even find a Hudson Bay Company Point Blanket anywhere in the store.
And somewhere along the line over 70,000 employees and millions of customers had lost the spirit. Products were uninteresting. And the service was nonexistent or surly.
Enter Bonnie Brooks, Chief Adventurer (aka President and CEO), The Bay, Hudson’s Bay Company. The store, here in Montreal, looks the same from the outside. But inside there’s a lot going on and it’s all good.
In the two years since she was named, Bonnie Brooks has managed to transform this dying department store. And she’s done it by going back to basics: Building pride in the founding spirit of adventure and discovery. The things that connect the business to this incredible 400 year history that had been lost. And, she’s managed to take mostly hourly minimum-wage employees with her by building their pride – in the institution, in leadership and in the work they do for customers every day. Genius.
She’s “invited employees on a mission”. A mission to engage with the business and their customers. And they are. Their pride in the company and what they are doing is palpable.
She’s managed in a very short time to reignite pride in the institution and the heritage and tradition of the past. She’s changed the employee experience. And in doing so she’s changed the customer experience.
A simple idea. Incredibly well executed. Good for employees. Good for customers. And good for The Bay.
Congratulations Bonnie!
PS: The iconic blanket stripes are now trademark protected and you can now find the Hudson Bay Company Point blankets, pillows and other gift items that reflect the traditional bay colours and spirit in their in-store boutiques.
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“Fear grows that it will be ‘freedom 75’”
For those of you who don’t live in Canada this headline from this morning’s paper will require a little explanation. Freedom 55 is a very successful London Life campaign that encourages people to save and invest using their financial products including life insurance so that they can/ will have the good life of retirement sooner – age 55 not 60. The TV and print ads show images of fit and active grey-haired couples in exotic locations, golfing, just sitting looking out on their secluded lake. Free to just have fun.
The good life view of retirement is something relatively new. In the west, sometime in the 1930s our governments began designing pension plans and tax laws to encourage the growing numbers of old to get out of the workforce. But, by the 1950s it was clear the “old” weren’t interested in retiring to do nothing. And so retirement was sold as the fun time we get after the slavery of our life up until then. [source]
Ah retirement! Ah Freedom 55.
Fast forward to today’s headline which goes on to say: “40 per cent of 25-to 34-year-olds concerned about when they can retire.” Why are 25 to 34 year olds concerned about when they can retire? I don’t mean they shouldn’t be saving or investing or planning for the future. They certainly should. But what I find discouraging is that instead of demanding more from their work and workplaces they’re worrying about how soon they can stop, get out.
Retirement. First it was a social obligation. Then an economic privilege. And now a personal entitlement based on a Faustian deal. Work hard at something you are neutral to, or dislike, and eventually you’ll get the prize. Retirement. Or maybe not.
And for this 40% who are focused on when they can retire it’s a huge loss – for them and for the organizations they work for.
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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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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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Time warped 2
I’m reading “Where Do Good Ideas Come From?” by Steven Johnson for my book club. I’m not that into it, but there’s one thing reading it has reminded me. Sometimes your best and most creative thinking happens when you’re not trying. For me my biggest insights happen when I’m walking up Mont Royal or when I’m asleep [and yes sometimes I even remember them].
So that means that one of the conditions we need to create for ourselves if we want to have good ideas is downtime. Time away from the pressure to write, think, make, perform.
For anyone working in, or near, institutional environments knows that this is virtually impossible. We’re now working at least 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days/week. More work piling on with every passing day. At the same time as virtually every organization I know is looking for more insight into and innovative solutions for their business and organizational challenges, and every government I can think of is looking to recreate our economic model, we’ve got less and less time to just down tools and let our brains do what they do – noodle when we’re not thinking about anything.
There’s something wrong here and we don’t have the time to stop and think about it.
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It’s them!
In organizational life there are a lot of “thems”. And, they are all up to no good. You know them:
- The executive who must have been smoking something when they came up with that idea
- Those senior managers who clearly don’t know what they’re doing
- Those executive assistants who have nothing to do but gossip
- Middle managers and front line supervisors who are simply incompetent and never do the cascades [read anything] the way they were supposed to
- All employees who come to work to do a bad job, waste time on the internet, stand around talking, break the rules
- Those guys in corporate who are always asking us for reports and making our lives miserable
- Those guys in the region who never do what we ask and make our lives miserable
- Our colleagues upstream/downstream/in operations who just can’t get their processes right, deliver on time, do anything right
- Those guys in region X or product Y who don’t do ‘it’ like they’re supposed to
- The consultants who cost too much and deliver so little
- Our customers who question our service, aren’t happy with our products.
What’s this all about? What about us?
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“Buckle down. Get on with it.”
Today’s post is inspired by the girls at Underworld’s on Coronation Street [yes, I watch them all]. Things are going badly for the business. Carla has just come back to save the day after two ‘bad’ characters have apparently left the business in shambles. No Christmas for the girls at Underworld’s. As one character points out ‘Just because the owners have done a bad job why won’t we get our Christmas party?” Why are they being punished because of the failings of the owners? Well life [and certainly work life] is not fair.
Just buckle down and get on with it.
The CEO and his team want you to be “engaged” in a ‘big change’…
- But, by the time they tell you about it it’s either wrapped with a big bow or it’s still so conceptual you can’t make head nor tail of it. You just buckle down and get on with it.
- But, in order for the change to happen you will need to take on new projects. Your performance objectives haven’t changed. Your ‘day job’ priorities haven’t changed. Your client needs are still the same. The length of your day is still 24 hours [I actually heard an exec tell another senior manager that]. So, you layer on this new work onto your current work. You just buckle down and get on with it.
When “change” came every now and then it was manageable. But today we’re asking employees [and I admit it may be even worse the more senior you are] to do back-to-back sprints instead of marathons.
Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture? What’s really changing?
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Recent Posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
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Recent posts
- Grey zones are costing your organization big time
- Saying goodbye to jargon
- Don’t leave them laughing
- A master class with Ed Sullivan
- Innovation & collaboration: Strategic priorities or not?
- The truth about the number 1 fear
- Want to know the secret to writing a great speech?
- Connecting for big business benefits
- Staying in touch with reality
- “Just hire a Dalek”
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