Interesting post over at Incentive Intelligence regarding incentive abuse, bad corporate culture and lack of trust.

‘If you don’t address the root cause of a problem you can’t motivate and reinforce the appropriate behaviors that will drive performance.

And many times the root cause is the company culture. A bad culture will pervert any incentive and recognition program.’

But I think lack of trust is a symptom of a bad culture, not its cause.

Bad culture is always the responsibility of the CEO (or whatever the top dog is called). Whether the culture is actively fostered by the boss or allowed to flourish through benign neglect it’s still his responsibility.

And no one but the boss can fix it, either.

What has your boss done for you company culture lately?

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I love it. Another article focusing on what companies need to do to hire Gen X and Y—of course they’re a big chunk of the workforce and getting bigger—Gen Y alone is 80 million strong and will compose 44% of workers by 2020.

Not that I disagree with the comments, but that the focus is strictly on doing these things in order to lure younger employees because they demand it, when the same perks will attract works of any age.

‘The move often is aimed at attracting the youngest members of the work force — Generations X and Y — who are more outspoken than their baby boomer predecessors about demanding a life outside the office, said Lynne Lancaster, co-author of When Generations Collide.’

What people seem to forget is that the Boomers were plenty disrupting and more demanding than their parents—in fact, historically each generation has disrupted the status quo and demanded more than its predecessor in one way or another.

Just as every generation has focused on various traits of the upcoming generation and deemed them the end of civilization—if not the world. I’m sure our hunter ancestors looked with horror at their gatherer children and predicted starvation if the herds weren’t followed.

I have no problem when Gen X and Y talk their demands and walk when they aren’t met because most of those demands will improve the workplace for all ages, but they would do well to remember that eventually they will become their parents—maybe not to themselves, but to the newer generations agitating for change.

Do you find yourself moving down this road?

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MAPpingCompany Success’ Expediency

Linked Intelligence’s Connecting

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Over at Computerworld David DeJean offers up some good commentary on the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo.

After a quick look at a couple of Microsoft’s biggest screw-ups, such as Hotmail, Dean says, ‘To be sure, that was a decade ago, and Microsoft has had some time to learn from past mistakes — and it’s gotten plenty of opportunity, with 52 companies bought since 2005, according to Wikipedia. I’ve got to say, I haven’t heard any horror stories. Maybe it has. But if I worked for Yahoo! right now I’d be comparing that acquisitions list to my rolodex and making some calls to find out.’

Granted that this merger-not-of-equals is a long way from happening, but if it does it will definitely feel hostile.

It’s not just the huge disparity of culture and technology—it’s the idea of being invaded and defeated. Corporations are nationalistic and people are rarely creative, productive or happy when they lose their national identity, their culture is destroyed and the conquerors start running things.

It takes enormous tact, diplomacy, openness, and authentic respect (not traits for which Microsoft is known) to merge when things are synergistic, let alone when there’s a history of open warfare.

In a slowing economy I’ll give odds that not just Yahoo’s best, but all the rest, are already burning up recruiter phone lines, spending hours on LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media sites, calling friends, attending networking events and scouring ads looking for a new home.

What would you be doing if you worked at Yahoo?

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By 2010 one in every three workers in the US labor force will be people of color.

True diversity isn’t just diversity of race, gender, creed and country, but what I call the new diversity—all those plus diversity of thought.

Think about it, if a manager really works at it she can create a rainbow colored group who all think the same way—it’s far more difficult to put together a group of totally diverse thinkers.

Managers tend to hire in their comfort zone, but more and more that refers to how people think, rather than how they look.

Here are 5 guiding points in hiring and managing diversity.

1. Avoid assumptions. People aren’t better because they graduated from your (or your people’s) alma mater or come from your hometown/state.
2. Know your visual prejudices. Everybody has them (one of mine is dirty-looking, stringy hair), because you can’t hear past them if you’re not aware of them.
3. Listen. Not to what the words mean to you, but what the words mean to the person speaking.
4. Be open to the radical. Don’t shut down because an idea is off the wall at even the third look and never dismiss the whole if some part can be used.
5. Be open to alternative paths. If your people achieve what they should it doesn’t matter that they did it in a way that never would have crossed your mind.

Finally, remember that if you’re totally comfortable, with nary a twinge to ripple your mental lake, your group is probably lacking in diversity.

How do you hire and manage diversity?

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Most of us aren’t enamored with lawyers in general, and in-house counsel are no exception. But what’s it like from the lawyer’s point of view?Is working directly for a company and having to assimilate its corporate culture and deal with whatever the bureaucracy is in order to function difficult? Easy? Unnoticeable—just another day at a different office?

I’ve never given it much thought. In all honesty, my thoughts about company counsel most often run along unprintable lines when I’m struggling to turn a policy crafted in legalese into a document that normal employees can understand well enough to follow.

I learned a bit tonight in a Law.com story about in-house counsel recounted from a meeting of the Association of Corporate Counsel.

No surprise that ‘establishing trust with businesspeople is a key to success for a general counsel…’ was considered key and a number of counsel offered up their own experiences.

They all agreed that it was absolutely critical to understand the corporate culture and the company’s business in depth.

Here are the questions they covered.

Question 1. When you first went in-house, what were the most important things you found you needed to know?

Question 2. What was the hardest thing for you to get used to?

Question 3. What was the easiest?

Question 4. What are you still trying to get used to?

Question 5. What do you like best about being in-house?

Question 6. What do you like least?

Question 7. What are the most important things that helped you succeed?

The responses parallel much of the working world.

A strong dislike of corporate politics, bureaucracy and excessive meetings was countered by better work/life balance, lighter workload and a friendlier atmosphere.

Gee, who knew? Lawyers are people, too.

Do you like your in-house counsel?

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My thanks to Scott Allen for pointing this out. (I don’t get around as much I should:)

Rob May has left Businesspundit, but is still in voice with a new blog he calls Coconut Headsets along with an explanation of the name.In short, the term refers to copying a façade in the hopes of making it real. As applied to business Rob says, ‘Managers wear coconut headsets when they blindly copy ideas, or grossly misapply them, instead of thinking through each situation to see if adopting a new idea makes sense. Leaders wear coconut headsets when they confuse cause and effect, like believing that happy employees leads to better corporate performance, when perhaps the real link is that better corporate performance leads to happy employees.’

I like the analogy and it’s a great way to broach a serious problem with a bit of humor, always a good idea.

MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophyâ„¢) addresses a problem similar to coconut headsets.

While copying blindly is ineffective, copying thoughtfully ideas that are at odds with your MAP is just as ineffective.

When the manager, who’s MAP believes his people are stupid, add little value, are interchangeable and easily replaced, institutes an employee recognition program it’s bound to fail because his people will feel the hypocrisy and ignore it.

Utilizing best practices and other good ideas works only when

• you take the time to think them through and tweak them to fit the situation; and
• they are, at the least, synergistic with your MAP, so you can authentically support them.

How do you stay true to your MAP and avoid coconut headsets?

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There’s a good article in Workforce Management (you may have to register, but it’s free) detailing why having excellent strategic vision, confidence and communication skills can kill your ability to lead instead of guaranteeing it.

‘[If you want] employees to embrace and adopt a new strategy, those who take their vision, confidence and communication skills to an excess can actually erode the commitment of their people…

…securing employee commitment requires dividing leaders’ job of gaining commitment into two categories: issues of content and context…

There are two basic content issues for leaders: demonstrating to employees that the plan is valid…and communicating the plan in language and concepts they understand…

If employees don’t feel the plan is valid or don’t understand it…they will not commit themselves to implementing it…

The context issues are the perceptions of those who must implement the strategy…Four fundamental perceptions set the context: credibility and sincerity; …courage…competence…and their care and concern for those who will be affected by it.’

• Achieving buy-in means involving staff—the more the better.

• It’s about listening—not just talking.

• It’s about hearing—and being willing to change when appropriate.

Running a company in today’s corporate doesn’t lend itself to edicts and pronouncements—unless you enjoy the constant challenge of hiring.

How do you achieve buy-in?

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My buddy Bob Turek writes Project Management 411 and we got into a discussion regarding Bob’s post on the difficulty ‘in they can’t get the multi-divisional executive team scheduled to sit down and make the “consensus” decision to go ahead.’

Bob wrote, ‘The problem is that there has not been a reason, up to now, to have a standardized process affecting multi-divisional consideration of projects, tactics and strategy alignment.’

I replied, ‘I’m not disagreeing with you. Good process, as long as it doesn’t ossify into bureaucracy, makes any project or action move faster. I just believe that processes are the structural underpinnings of culture, so without the right culture processes will be flawed and actions subject to the chaos of disparate egos.’

Processes created outside or in ignorance of the existing culture won’t work. It’s that simple.

That’s because the culture, whether created top down or allowed to percolate up from the ranks, is anchored by and tied to the CEO’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophyâ„¢).

If that MAP is tolerant of raging egos then the resulting culture will not be one of building consensus, sharing information or helping others.

Do the processes in your company take its culture into consideration?

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