In our wired era being available 24/7 generates both bragging rights and work/life balance complaints and nowhere more so than the high-powered world of management consulting.

It was in this world, as represented by a small team at Boston Consulting Group, that HBS professor Leslie A. Perlow initiated an experiment four years ago on the extreme benefits of “predictable time off” (PTO).

She shares the story and documents her findings in a new book called Sleeping With Your Smartphone.

Supposedly, the unpredictability working across time zones requires constant availability, but is that true?

“What caught our attention was that the more people were on, the more unpredictable their work time seemed to become.”

The key to success was predictability.

Perlow’s research started with a small team and three basic steps.

“First, team members have to agree on a specific unit of time each week that everyone can turn off. Not at the same time, obviously, since team members have to cover for each other. In our first experiment, it was one night a week. But whatever the goal, it has to be valued by the team, as a group. It has to be small but doable. And it has to be concrete and measurable.”

“Second, the team needs to meet weekly to discuss the challenges and successes they’re facing as they try to achieve the goal. These meetings are crucial for PTO to work, but they offer much more. They’re a regular forum for productive conversations about work, conversations that empower people to speak up. In theory, people are speaking up about process, which allows the team to meet the time-off goal. But really they’re speaking about all aspects of the work experience.”

“Finally, the team’s leaders — bosses, managers — have to show support for the project and for team members’ efforts. That’s not just about allowing colleagues to speak up and to use their time off. It’s also about doing the same themselves.”

Four years later 86% of the consulting staff in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC are practicing PTO.

According to BCG’s CEO, Hans-Paul Bürkner, the process unleashed by these experiments “has proven not only to enhance work-life balance, making careers much more sustainable, but also to improve client value delivery, consultant development, business services team effectiveness, and overall case experience. It is becoming part of the culture—the future of BCG.”

Retention is up, job satisfaction is up, productivity is up, client satisfaction is up.

Given proven results and a reliable methodology to follow, PTO can be instituted by any manager at any level even where the over-arching culture is hostile.

Nor is there any need for HR approval.

Go ahead; reap all those rewards and be a hero to your team—all it takes is 20 bucks and synergistic MAP, both of which are in your direct control.

Image credit: Harvard Business School

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An excellent article on loyalty citing research from various Wharton professors on the subject of worker loyalty is a valuable read.

It’s good for bosses and employees alike; the former can use it to analyze and improve their approach, while the latter can give a printout (anonymously, if necessary) to their boss.

One of the most valuable findings is that in some ways nothing has changed on the employee retention front over the years.

Human nature, Harter adds, “doesn’t change when the economy changes. It might take on a different dynamic” during a recession, but what remains constant is “the need to be connected — to a manager, a co-worker and/or a purpose, and also the need to be recognized.” People’s perceptions of their own standards of living “did drop as the economy dropped,” he says. But that same drop was not registered in workplaces where employees said they have “someone who encourages their development. There is something about having a mentor, or someone in your life who helps you see the future in the midst of chaos, that can make a difference.”

Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small cites a body of research on what is called “procedural fairness,” indicating that much of what employees feel about an organization “is not the outcomes they get, but the processes. If people feel like processes are handled fairly in the organization, even if they don’t get the best for themselves,” that would tend to encourage loyalty.

Recognition, fairness, being valued and encouraged to grow are still the most powerful intangibles when it comes to retention and their source is still the immediate boss and maybe their boss.

As I wrote last year, caring begets caring and the actions that show you care aren’t found in compensation packages.

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Back in January I provided a link to The Mix (Management Information Exchange) and recommended that you register and read hacks of interest to you.

If I hadn’t done so it’s doubtful I would have heard about Ricardo Semler and Semco Group.

Since the mid-80s when Semler arrived on the scene, that has meant an ever-evolving experiment in upending the organizational status quo: no organizational chart, no fixed offices or working hours, no fixed CEO, no HR department, no five-year plan (or two- or one-year-plan), no job descriptions or permanent positions, no approvals necessary—and an endless array of clever practices and initiatives to increase individual autonomy and agency, participation at every level, trust, and informality.

The result? Market success—Semco is private but Semler reports average annual revenue growth at 40% and profitability. (…)

“We constantly talk about passion—serving customers passionately, filling in forms passionately—but what if we created the conditions for people to feel exhilaration, to get involved to the point they shout ‘yes!’ and give each other high fives because they did it their way and it worked?”

Would your people thrive in a going concern that functions more like a startup than most startups?

If yes, why? If not, why not?

Knowing why it would/does work is useful because you can share the knowledge and lessons learned with others.

If you don’t believe similar actions, tweaked for your organization, would work you need to ask why not.

You can ask your peers or, better yet your people, but first ask the mirror.

You may need to look no farther.

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What do Wal-Mart, Dewey & LeBoeuf and NewsCorp have in common?

Cultural deficiencies manifested in bad judgment, lies and executive shilly-shallying.

What was not previously known until the Times report on the bribery scandal is that at about the same time Mr Scott began the offensive to improve Wal-Mart’s image in the United States, he also rebuked the company’s internal bribery investigation in Mexico for being overly aggressive. The investigation was soon dropped. (Wal-Mart)

“The [compensation] guarantees were extremely corrosive culturally because they were divorced from individual or firm performance, which shatters the whole notion of a partnership,” Mr. MacEwen said. “And they were promiscuously awarded.” (Dewey)

The negotiations were so tightly held that only Mr. Crone, Mr. Myler and Mr. Murdoch knew about them, said two company officials. The officials said that even employees who were typically involved in legal decisions did not learn of the settlement until it leaked in a newspaper. (News Corp)

What does Google have in common with them?

Cultural deficiencies manifested in bad judgment, lies and executive shilly-shallying.

The report, which was first published in its unredacted form by The Los Angeles Times, also states that the engineer, who began the project as part of his “20 percent” time that Google gives employees to do work on their own initiative, “specifically told two engineers working on the project, including a senior manager, about collecting payload data.” (Google)

In a March post I asked, “Does Google’s new approach to privacy violate its ‘don’t be evil’ philosophy?”

I guess that question is answered now.

But I have to say, I find it sad to see Google all grown up and playing in the same class as Wal-Mart, Dewey and News Corp; I honestly thought they were better than that.

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“In many ways, it’s not my generation’s fault that Japan has so much debt,” he said. “But blaming others won’t get us anywhere. We just need to find a way forward. It’s the responsibility of all of us born into this age.” –31 year old Naomichi Suzuki, the youngest mayor of the country’s most rapidly aging city.

You could do much worse than incorporate Naomichi Suzuki’s attitude into your company culture, life and as an integral part of your MAP.

Organizations and individuals spend inordinate amounts of time and energy assigning blame and indulging in recriminations.

At times it seems they want apologies more than solutions.

Look not just around you, but also in the mirror, and you’ll find at least one such active situation (say thanks if it’s only one).

Assigning fault is necessary in certain circumstances, usually when specific legal and societal laws are broken by specific, identifiable individuals.

Assigning responsibility is most productive when used as a learning experience, again for specific, identifiable individuals.

Solutions that move the situation forward are where time, energy and resources should be focused, but for some it’s more about them than solving the problem.

“Supporters of the defeated Ms. Iijima [the losing candidate] dominate the city council, blocking proposals and hurling criticism at the young mayor.”

The question all individuals must answer for themselves is what’s most important,

• my way or
• solving/moving forward.

Flickr image credit: Patrizio Cuscito

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[Oops! My apologies. this weekend was the first warm days where I live and I spent them in my garden:) (What a mess!) In so doing, I lost track and didn't write Sunday's Quotable Quotes and although I had this post ready I forgot to schedule it for this morning. --Miki]

I’m sure you’ve seen the story regarding the resignation of Best Buy CEO Brian J. Dunn.

Yet one more incidence of fooling around with the help = inappropriate personal conduct = resignation/termination.

Lawyer Michael W. Peregrine writes that times are changing.

It’s the traditional compact in corporate America: what C.E.O.’s do on their own time is their business, as long as they are not breaking any laws. And it’s a compact that is rapidly going by the wayside, as boards concerned with the corporate reputation are increasingly making clear.

However, it does make one wonder when actions that have almost always resulted in termination at lower levels make headlines when they happen in the executive suite.

With few exceptions, most companies have rules against managers dating subordinates; affairs between peers are considered dicey and intra-office adultery is a definite no-no.

When companies are demanding entre to the personal/private areas of candidates’ social media prior to hiring why is it so surprising that corporate boards are focusing on personal/private executive behavior?

In a world where street reps are forever and the bedrock of good corporate culture is trust and authenticity there is no room for do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do executives.

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Culture is today’s focus; it is considered the reason that companies succeed or fail and whether innovation will flourish or wither.

Culture is researched, dissected, written about and discussed; is culture a set of specific rules or a moving target, amorphous and difficult to pin down?

Perhaps it’s more like a computer, with core hardware and constantly changing software.

In computing, the term I/O refers to input, whatever is received by the system, and output, that which results when the input if processed.

Programmers know that if the input if bad what comes out of the computer won’t be any better, a phenomenon known as “garbage in/garbage out.”

GI/GO applies to culture and, for that matter, everything else in life.

What comes out is a function of what you put in.

Blindly accepting everything offered by even the most brilliant source will result in garbage out at some point.

Creating and sustaining good culture requires more than studying what’s worked elsewhere and best practice benchmarks; it requires critical thinking on your part.

No one person, past, present or future, has all the answers. No company has tried every possible combination of every approach conceivable.

Plus, they are not you, while your culture is you.

That means being your own computer—gathering input from all available sources, applying it to your situation, processing it—absorbing, reworking and rejecting.

The result will be at least slightly different from what you started with, because you’ve added the flavor of your own life experiences, knowledge and MAP to the mix—and that’s good, it shouldn’t be an exact copy.

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I’m not really a sports fan, but I read the NYT and occasionally an article that focuses on the human side as opposed to the play intrigues me. That’s how I ended up reading about Jeremy Lin and using him as an example of how easily bosses miss their real star talent.

In mid-March another Knicks story caught my eye.

[Coach] Mike D’Antoni and the Knicks parted ways Wednesday — an event that seemed fated once the franchise acquired Carmelo Anthony, an immense talent whose individual playing style clashed with D’Antoni’s spread-the-wealth offense.

At first glance you might not think this is applicable to business; obviously, no boss is going to quit when an employee disagrees with the culture, no matter how good he is.

In fact, it’s much more likely that the boss will laud him and shower him with whatever perks, bonuses, promotions and raises possible.

Anything to keep him happy; anything to keep him, period.

Not all star players have star egos; from the little I’ve read Lin is the former, while Anthony follows a more typical star profile with the ego to match.

So what really happens when a culture starts focusing on star egos?

The most obvious problem is the deep doodoo you are in if your star ego is injured or leaves.

The more subtle crisis takes place quietly over time as all the potential star players leave for more spread-the-wealth cultures and bosses who will give them a chance to shine.

Flickr image credit: Joshua Smith

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How many cultures does a company have?

One if you believe the articles, studies and interviews that abound, but that isn’t a very accurate picture of reality.

Cultural reality is comprised of multiple micro cultures co-existing beneath the larger corporate culture umbrella.

How many?

One for every person in any type of management or leadership (if you insist on separating them) role, formal or not.

Culture is a function of MAP; everybody’s MAP is unique and because it’s unique each person’s perception of the culture fostered by their boss is at least slightly different.

And if the perception is different their interpretation and implementation of it will also be different.

The result is micro cultures.

That’s why cultural fit or, at the very least, cultural synergy, is the most important trait to look for when hiring at every level.

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In the beginning…

“Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit at a meeting. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out,” adding that the slogan was “also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.” –Wikipedia

Google formalized the idea by making “You can make money without doing evil” the sixth point of its 10-point corporate philosophy.

Fast forward to March, 2012…

“This change [the new privacy policy] violates Google’s prior privacy policies, which deceived and misled consumers by stating that Google would not utilize information provided by a consumer in connection with his or her use of one service, with any other service, for any reason, without the user’s consent,” the three plaintiffs, represented by law firm of Grant & Eisenhofer PA, said in the filing.

Take another look at Buchheit’s words, “in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.”

I’m sure that Google, like everyone else, believes that these and similar actions aren’t exploitation, they are “improving/enhancing user experience.”

The problem, of course, is that phrases, such as ‘don’t be evil; and words like ‘ethical’ are fluid, i.e., their meaning changes in conjunction with various cultures and societal changes within each culture, so there are no absolutes to rely on. (I’ve addressed this quandary and ethical fluidity many times.)

What do you think? Does Google’s new approach to privacy violate its ‘don’t be evil’ philosophy?

Flickr image credit: opensource.com

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