Way back in 2006 Tom Rath wrote a book called Vital Friends, in which he discusses the vital role friends play in our overall health, happiness and well-being.
“A vital friend could halve your chances of dying of heart disease; speed healing; and reduce your chances of getting cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and certain cancers.”
Now fast forward to 2012 where for many loneliness is rampant in spite of having dozens, hundreds or even thousands of Facebook friends and a similar number of followers on Twitter.
The isolation that is a hallmark of loneliness impacts people at work; after all, human emotions can’t be turned on and off like water faucets and some researchers are finally focusing on that.
Executives and managers might be surprised to learn that employees who have best friends at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs — and, if they have at least three vital friends at work, 96% more likely to be satisfied with their lives.
Loneliness is easily fixed, unlike depression (they are not synonymous)—all that is required is a friend.
This is important to you as a manager, since loneliness affects productivity and creativity.
What can you do?
Encourage better communications.
Provide an avenue for your people to connect in a relaxed atmosphere, whether at work or a more social get together.
Create a buddy system as part of your on boarding efforts.
But the most important action you can take is to pay attention to your people and not assume the problem will fix itself.
Shawn Parr, whose company works with large corporations, such as Starbucks and MTV, on innovation wrote a meaty post called Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch.
It reminded me of something I wrote back in 2008, because the title is from a quote by Dick Clark, CEO of Merk and after rereading it I decided it’s worth reposting, so here it is.
Culture Trumps All
A post on Dave Brock’s blog led me to an article at IMD’s site called “An Unpopular Corporate Culture” and, as Dave said, it’s a must read for anyone who still thinks that corporate culture is some ephemeral concept with no real impact that consultants use to sell their services.
And a double-must for those who talk about culture’s importance, but don’t walk very well when it comes to creating a great corporate culture.
For those who prefer to put their faith in plans and strategy, hear the words of Dick Clark when he took over as CEO of Merck in 2005 and was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to its former glory. “His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company’s insular, academic culture.” The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” Clark explained. “You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it… the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.””
If you’re looking for a best practice corporate culture silver bullet forget it—one size doesn’t fit all.
Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, describes that company’s top-down command and control culture of consistency and discipline as “the source of our competitive advantage,” and has made it a priority to reinforce it.
Meanwhile, Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, in their discussions about the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, have been concerned with avoiding an Exxon style command and control culture. Jobs says that, “Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn’t been about economics, it’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that’s the thing that’s going to determine the success here in the long run.””
It took Lou Gerstner a decade to remake IBM.
The key lesson Gerstner learned in his time with IBM, as he later reflected, was the importance of culture.”Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success—along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
The article is more than just additional proof for my favorite hobby horse.
The analysis of the role of employee complaints/negativity play in culture and the importance of what to keep when setting out to change a culture as opposed to what to jettison will give you new insight on your own company’s culture.
In case you still doubt the power and value of culture I hope that Dick Clark, Rex Tillerson, Robert Iger, Steve Jobs and Lou Gerstner combined with the articles in Fast Company and IMD have finally changed your mind.
A McKinsey study on the value of corporate social responsibility found “…highly innovative Fortune 1000 companies derive greater financial returns from their corporate-responsibility activities than their less innovative counterparts do,” and suggested three actions to improve CSR ROI,
“Upwards of 40 percent of industry’s energy efficiency improvement opportunities can be realized through low or no-cost projects rooted in corporate culture change”
They must know something since dollar savings to date are not millions, or even hundreds of millions, but billions.
“The key to this model is the formation of multi-disciplinary, cross-functional site teams, with insight from operators, maintenance, mechanics, core process experts, energy experts, engineers and management.”
Two of the biggest stumbling blocks on this path are Wall Street, with its short-term, i.e., quarterly, focus and the current definition of “stakeholder.”
Typically, stakeholders are viewed as investors, management, customers and workers; progressive companies have added the local communities where they do business and a few have tiptoed further.
Whereas Richard Branson points out in Screw Business As Usual every living thing and the planet itself are stakeholders.
Sadly, rather than being in the lead, the majority of US corporations are staying focused on short-term results and narrow definition of stakeholder.
But the winners in the future will be those companies, large or small, whose thinking is longest and definition is broadest.
I hope you are one of them.
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Kung Hei Fat Choy (Wishing you an abundance of wealth and prosperity!) Happy Year of the Dragon
It caught me because I’m not a lover of sweeping generalizations, since very few hold up against reality and this was one of them.
In this case, the author, with a typical consultant-pundit in support, denigrates as silly the raft of new CXO functions in business.
While I agree that they can be empty window dressing, the majority I’ve seen are powerful positions. You can tell the difference by the report structure—if the position doesn’t report directly to the top boss—CEO, COO, President or owner—it’s likely fluff.
Another statement, that titles were “likely dreamed up by the marketing team,” was really hilarious considering the corporate examples cited.
Kodak and Dell appointed Chief Listeners. Facebook recently added two Chief Privacy Officers. Coca-Cola is really gung-ho on the trend, employing a Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chief Scientific and Regulatory Officer, and Chief Quality and Product Integrity Officer, among others. Microsoft has a Chief People Officer; IBM a Chief Information Officer; Xerox a Chief Strategy Officer; and New York City has its very own Chief Digital Officer.
I find it hard to believe that the likes of Sam Palmisano, Michael Dell or Steve Balmer, let alone Michael Bloomberg, have marketing designing their organization.
The list also displays a high level of ignorance, since several of those “silly” titles, e.g., Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) have been around for decades, while others reflect important new priorities.
It’s not that I condone title inflation, but making sweeping statements that disparage efforts by companies to focus knowledge, skills and resources on specific problems and increase accountability by putting one person in charge are worse.
Creating new areas of responsibility to meet the needs of a changing world is necessary and bosses who ignore the changes or the need are setting their companies up for failure sooner, rather than later.
As long as the CXO has a well-defined mission, the authority to achieve it and direct access to the top the position deserves respect and support.
Outsiders who belittle that effort should be ignored.
I have often heard managers refer to their job as “herding cats;” this is especially true in technical fields where much of the work requires individual efforts.
Scientists are probably the most difficult, since they often come from an environment where publish or perish is the mantra and egos are super-sized.
This was the difficulty that David Ferrucci faced when he set about building the team that created Watson for IBM. He not only had to herd cats he had to hire cats.
As most of the world knows, Ferrucci’s team was wildly successful and created a computer that won playing Jeopardy against its two top past champions and is moving on to far greater challenges.
He says, “In the end, the hero was the team, not any individual member or algorithm.”
What do the researchers think? This comment from one of them pretty much says it all, “Compared to the way we work now, it’s like we were standing still before.”
These scientists are all considered ‘stars’ in their respective fields, but none of them could do anything close to Watson on their own.
Nor could they have done it if their egos and desire for personal recognition had stayed their driving force.
“As for the members of the original Watson team, they’d tell you that never in a million years could they have imagined what we accomplished. Just like Watson itself, we all learned that the sum is much greater than the parts.”
Hiring and herding cats is the true talent of a great manager/leader and absolute proof that in today’s world the boss needs to be both.
And Watson is proof positive that the only stars worth having are the ones who join the team.
Creativity. Thinking outside the box. Innovation. Whatever you call it, idea generation often starts with a brainstorming session and too often goes no where.
McKinsey alumni Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne offer a seven point guide that will make your efforts much more productive.
Know your organization’s decision-making criteria.
Ask the right questions
Choose the right people
Divide and conquer
On your mark, get set, go!
Wrap it up
Follow up quickly
Sounds like common sense, right? But you’ll see from the explanations how habit, misconceptions and politics often undermine these efforts.
And remember, while the first six points assure you of a productive effort this time, ignoring number seven will cripple not only this time, but all your next-times, too.
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior.HBS Working Knowledge
Not good news when your goal is to increase creativity in your people, but not really surprising.
When we think actively, we see more possibilities, and that includes ways to gain an advantage – a survival mechanism. When we think passively, we don’t see the possibilities, so we follow the rules. –Deb Pekin, Change Manager, Kraft Foods Inc (from a comment)
Creativity isn’t a faucet that can be turned off when it’s inconvenient—it’s part of a person’s MAP; it’s who they are, so they will apply it across the board.
“Dan and I are of the hope that managers will start thinking about how to structure the creative process in such a way that they can keep ethics in check, triggering the good behavior without triggering the bad behavior.”
That’s one approach.
Perhaps a better one is to build a strong ethical culture first and overlay it with a culture that encourages creativity and innovation.
One of the most important things is to make sure that unethical behavior is not tolerated, let alone rewarded; in fact, in some cases it should be terminated.
Of course, that means ethics would trump expediency; not the most common scenario in modern business.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show on TLC (a unit of Discovery Channel), but I plan to this spring; even more surprising to me is that it’s a reality show.
A reality show about great corporate culture in an industry known for the opposite.
“We were interested in working with Southwest,” said Dustin P. Smith, vice president of communications for TLC, “as it is one of the largest airlines in the country and is known for its exuberant corporate culture and for having refreshing and personal customer service that is regarded as unique in the industry.
I doubt that anyone who travels is surprised at the choice of Southwest; and certainly not Southwest.
Ashley Dillon, a spokesperson for Southwest Airlines, said the airline was chosen also because of its tradition of transparency, which relies heavily on the use of social media, blogs and other media.
In a 2009 post citing the airline’s success even during the height of the recession I linked Southwest’s and Zappos’ success to the same core cultural belief—happy employees (one Southwest flight attendant even rapped about its GAAP results).
They stowed drugs in secret panels inside planes; stole laptops, lobsters and fine clothing flown as freight; and rifled through passengers’ belongings for perfume, liquor and electronics.
Passenger losses in 2009 totaled 5.3 million dollars and for the last eight years American Airlines was the source of more reports than any other airline.
“What percent of American Airlines employees would you say engaged in this conduct?” a federal prosecutor, Patricia E. Notopoulos, asked Matthew James, a defendant in the case who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution. “About 80 percent,” Mr. James answered.
Of course, management claims it’s just a few bad apples.
Over the years I’ve read about and listened to hundreds of reasons why creating a culture that keeps employees happy just can’t be a priority— productivity and profit are the top priorities.
Obviously, they haven’t found the correlation, in spite of the high-profile examples that abound.
An interesting interview with Ed Schein, a senior professor at MIT and a “pioneer” on the subject of corporate culture, who now believes corporate culture is irrelevant.
The real answer to that is that Corporate Culture is no longer the relevant topic. I think the relevant topic is macro culture, nations, corporations, corporate culture (where all these nationalities and occupations play out), and micro cultures where you have problems in the operating room and in teamwork because you have multi-nationals, people from different occupations that cultures, all interplaying.
OK, I don’t have a PhD and I’m not a brilliant, recognized expert with an international reputation, but my initial reaction to reading the transcript of the interview was ’duh’.
Of course corporate culture is impacted by having multiple nationalities working together, but it was impacted when the workforce were all native-born, but from different regions or even neighborhoods.
As to the micro cultures created by each boss (leader in the accepted jargon), again my reaction is ‘duh.’
Every person is shaped by their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), AKA, values. Every manager (from team leader to department vp) creates a culture in their organization that is based on those values and it can be similar, synergistic or diametrically opposed to the cultures above.
All that said, I think it’s great when recognized experts put shape and definition to the things that most workers know by instinct and they do it with a level of credibility far beyond the reach of someone like me.
Here is the interview or you can read the transcript at the link above.
Today’s post is short because reading the articles to which it’s linked is critical.
Are you a good communicator? Do you provide clear, complete, timely information to your team? Do you ever worry that it’s not as understandable as you think?
Have you ever read or heard a professional communicator and wished you could do that, too?
You would expect the two top people of an innovation consultancy to be good communicators and not make the assumption mistake.
“And that brings us to the ultimate irony. When we talked about firing people, we were thinking about those higher on the org chart, not lower. We meant the boss and senior management team. … We thought we made this implicit in the article. Judging from the response, we didn’t. We should have made it clearer.”
Communicating takes effort and the number one rule of clarity is no assumptions.
Read the articles and save them to read again whenever you find a disconnect between what you communicate and your team’s actions to be sure that you aren’t the source of the problem.
Way back in 2006 Tom Rath wrote a book called Vital Friends, in which he discusses the vital role friends play in our overall health, happiness and well-being.
Shawn Parr, whose company works with large corporations, such as Starbucks and MTV, on innovation wrote a meaty post called 
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior. 
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