Today is a collection of provocative, personal opinions on a variety of subjects. I hope you’ll take time to comment if one hits hard.
Since Steve Jobs died there have been dozens of tributes and a more recent outpouring of reality checks, because Jobs was not a saint—but then who is? I found the mortal Steve touchingly described in his sister’s eulogy and the business side balanced by Jesse Larner on products and Geoffrey James on management.
The articles on Groupon’s IPO have been inundating the media since it was announced. Keith Ecker provides a look at the repercussions from a changing culture beyond the analysts’ discussions of share price and value.
I’m sure many of you are following the heated debate sparked by a screening of the November 18 episode, “The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley,” from the CNN documentary series, “Black in America.” One result was a Twitter fight over comments by Michael Arrington, claiming in one breath that he doesn’t know of an African-American CEO and in the next that Silicon Valley is a pure meritocracy (which you would only believe if you are an under-30 white male with access to a great Rolodex). Read this commentary by Hank Williams, a successful, black entrepreneur.
Speaking of entrepreneurs, check out Josh Petersel’s, Harvard Business School Class of 2013, take on entrepreneurism.
Cindy Ronzoni, a communications and social media consultant, had heard a lot about the Zappos culture. See what she thinks about it and her experience when she took the Zappos tour at its headquarters in Las Vegas.
Finally, Gene Marks, offers up his thoughts on Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO. At first reading it comes over as pretty sexist, but read it again and the reality of what he says is plain, although I don’t completely agree with his final statement.
Fit makes your clothes look great; fit makes your shoes comfortable; cultural fit drives success, whether corporate or personal.
Just as one-size-fits-all doesn’t apply to great fitting clothes or shoes; it doesn’t apply to company culture—think Zappos and Intel.
Some great people love highly political environments; they consider politics a game and thrive on playing, while others shrivel and die in that situation.
A good friend interviewed at Apple when it was young and hot. She wanted to know about the work, but the interviewers only talked about the campus gym and Friday beer blast, which turned her off.
The true secret of success, both individual and corporate, is fit.
For companies, the kind of culture is less important than whether the people hired are a good fit—not to the propaganda, but to the cultural reality.
For individuals, it’s not really about free massages, catered lunches and foosball, but about how well the company’s values match their own.
Another bit of stupid is the idea that startups/small companies have great cultures, while large, established companies are boring and regimented.
In fact, if you really listen, you can hear the assumptions behind the media chatter on culture—assumptions that a little thought renders ridiculous.
Time spent evaluating and testing cultural fit always pays off, whether you’re a hiring manager or a candidate.
More proof that culture is the difference between winning, losing and turning around.
What can culture make happen? Just about anything.
What do Apple, McDonalds, IBM, Continental Air Lines and ABB have in common with Western Digital, U.S. Steel, Waste Management, Nutrisystem and Orbital Sciences? They all came back from near death experiences or brushes with irrelevance.
Culture drives everything that happens in a company.
Steve Jobs says that Apple has a startup culture and it was the culture he focused on when he came back to bring the company back from the brink.
When it comes to culture Jim Goodnight’s 30 year-old SAS is at the top of the heap and likely to stay there. Goodnight decided not go public because he “didn’t want analysts on Wall Street telling him how to run his business and forcing him to cut out the elements of SAS’s culture that give it an edge” and what an edge that is.
Finally, there is no way today’s column can end without a reference to Zappos.
You’ve probably already seen it, but the article in Inc. Magazine on why Zappos was sold to Amazon is actually an excerpt from Tony Hsieh’s new book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.
If you treat employees like they’re just a bottom-line expense, they’re bound to act like one, delivering the very least performance possible. And if you treat customers like they’re a problem, then they’ll eventually get the message and go away.
I’m not sure whether it’s amusing or ironic (or both) but breakout companies all seem to be focused on culture. And when they are successful, no matter the business, they are immediately in high demand to tell others how they do it—think Tony Hsieh and Zappos.
Last Saturday I told you about Nick Sarillo, whose two pizza restaurants in Chicago do $7 million a year with 20% turnover vs. the casual dining industry average of 200%. As a result of the Inc magazine profile he is keynote speaker at the Pizza Executive Summit this summer. I’m sure he’ll be in demand other places. I love the title—“Culture 2.0: Branding your company’s way of life;” think about it.
Along with being a culture fanatic I also believe that anyone can lead given the opportunity, challenge and a supportive culture in which the messenger is never killed.
An NYT interview with Mark Pincus, founder and chief executive of Zynga offers insight into his approach of making all his people CEOs.
“I’d turn people into C.E.O.’s. One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows whose C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me. And it was really effective. People liked it. And there was nowhere to hide.”
Stories from CEOs of their most life-changing day in their careers. Sometimes the result was promotion to the upper reaches of business, and sometimes a steep fall from grace.
TED has become a phenomenon and it’s on now. Plan to spend some time listening to an eclectic group of creative thinkers.
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.
The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
In a final tip of the hat to Valentine’s Day tomorrow, check out substitutes for Viagra that taste great.
If today has any unifying theme it’s a focus on management being smart, instead of the opposite.
Let’s start with my favorite customer service example, and one I’ve written about often, Zappos. CEO Tony Hsieh has a fierce focus on his customers that he fosters with a culture of fun for his people.
Michigan’s Dan Mulhern focuses on the importance of good corporate culture, especially in a downturn. He says that now is not the time to ignore culture even with the extra-challenging circumstances that Michigan faces.
Can a large corporation learn from its mistakes? Many don’t, but BMW did. It botched it’s acquisition of Land Rover by trying to impose it’s own culture on a totally different product, but avoided making the same mistake with the Mini Cooper.
Finally, can the people who built mint.com find happiness inside the large corporation that acquired them? They seem to think so.
Way back in the late seventies I was telling clients that their company culture was important. I didn’t use the term, because it was considered ‘smoke and mirrors’; but culture has always been the deciding factor when a person joins a company or leaves and also the bedrock of innovation and productivity.
From tiny Elk River, MN, where a local president says, “Sportech’s culture is one of the company’s top competitive advantages,” to Canada where “Canada’s most-admired corporate cultures are outperforming the rest — despite the economic downturn” to Internet powerhouses like Amazon and Zappos to Southwest Air Lines all credit their strong performance to their cultures.
Yum Brands is hitting its current marks and laying the foundation for the future with a massive cultural overhaul.
Yum! Brands, the owner of chains such as KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Dave Novak, the chief executive, is presiding over a training programme that he says is the “biggest culture-change initiative in the world today”, affecting all of the firm’s 1.4m workers spread across 112 countries.
Culture drives the success of the Ritz-Carlton according to its president Simon F. Cooper.
A culture is built on trust. And if leadership doesn’t live the values that it requires of the organization, that is the swiftest way to undermine the culture. No culture sticks if it’s not lived at the highest levels of the organization.
From the start, right along with the marketing and financial plans, Administaff co-founder Paul J. Sarvadi focused on a culture that would empower employees.
…very few people spend the amount of time and effort to develop their people plan,” says Sarvadi, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Administaff Inc. “What’s their people strategy? What is the culture they want in their company? What is their organization and leadership philosophy for the company? How do they want to award people?
Once upon a time Covidien was Tyco Healthcare (yes, that Tyco), a company going no where. It agitated to be spun off, dropped a toxic name, changed its culture and is now a $10 billion 41,000 employee global innovation powerhouse.
Covidien had to make changes to everything from its product development process to its employee evaluation and compensation program.
Whether you’re part of a giant enterprise or an individual out on your own reading stories about how other companies embedded the right combination of hard practices and the right MAP in their culture will show you what to do.
Sure, you’ll have to tweak the idea to fit your needs, but you’ll be surprised how similar the basics are once you strip away the trappings.
More from Business Week’s Innovation on why now is a great time to juice your innovation efforts and what a number of companies are doing. Whether you run a large company, are a micropreneur or working for the man, but dream of doing more you’ll find ideas and encouragement in the stories. Don’t hesitate to click around on other topics. Innovation offers up amazing stuff.
Another BW story sounds a cautionary warning on the recession’s potential effects on a generation of workers, similar to what happened in Japan a decade ago.
On a lighter note, here is an update on how Zappos is using social media (why are we not surprised) to further connect their culture and their customers. Think about how your company could benefit and back your suggestions up with this and other articles, especially if their about your competition.
Finally, Have some fun and read through the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Awards. The Ig Nobels are given by Improbable Research, “Improbable research is research that makes people laugh and then think. We collect (and sometimes conduct) improbable research. We publish a magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research, and we administer the Ig Nobel Prizes.” I love the Ig Nobels; they demonstrate the amazing creative spark found in the human race.
I hope you enjoy my picks and find both information and inspiration in them.
Tuesday we talked about how to make levity a part of your MAP, but left the final one, how easily do you laugh at yourself for today.
Many people have trouble laughing at themselves and some who do so easily in one arena, are up tight in another—especially if it’s business related.
If you want to implement your own version of The Levity Effect you need to recognize that it’s almost impossible if you can’t lighten up yourself.
We’re not talking about telling jokes, but about accepting your own humanity.
When you stand on your dignity or take yourself too seriously you become unapproachable; your team and colleagues can’t be sure where the lines are or what might offend you, so they shut down.
The first thing you need to do is identify why you feel that way; once you do you can either change it or just learn to work around it; it doesn’t matter which as long as you get results.
I have a client who, when something happened that was embarrassing or didn’t match his self-image, had a tendency to tense up or even take offense and strike out, instead of laughing or shrugging it off.
I had him spend some quiet time one evening replaying many of the incidents and letting them play out using worst case analysis. It turned out that in his mind the worst thing that could happen was being laughed at, which would cause his people would lose respect for him. (I’ve found ‘losing respect’ to be on of the most common reasons for maintaining dignity in people at all levels, but often worse the more senior they are.)
When I suggested he try laughing first, he said I was nuts (I hear that a lot) and dismissed the idea. I said that he should do it just to prove me wrong and also that if it didn’t work I would refund a portion of what he had paid for coaching.
Money always gets people’s attention as does the chance to say ‘I told you so…’, so he took me up on it.
We agreed he would do it consistently for a month, record the results and then discuss them.
30 days later he was a different guy. He said that work had never been so much fun, not a word he had previously used; his team had been cautious when he started responding differently, but after a couple of weeks they seemed to be accepting the change. The office atmosphere was considerably better, attitudes had improved as had productivity and one candidate had accepted the offer in part because “everyone in the group was smiling and it seemed like a fun place to work.”
It may sound simplistic, but often solutions to these types of problems are simple, although they take great strength of character to implement.
Image credit: Jim Gordon on Mapping Company Success
By now, anybody who reads or watches the news knows that Amazon acquired Zappos, even if they don’t know about Zappos (a man asked me what a zappos was because it seemed very expensive).
Jeanne Bliss quoted a line from Tony Hsieh’s internal email (emphasis mine), “Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say “Amazon acquires Zappos” or “Zappos sells to Amazon”. While those headlines are technically correct, they don’t really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline “Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree…”)”
I agree that it’s a marriage made in heaven.
Both companies boast management that is passionately focused on customer experience, are long-term thinkers, know how to plan and are talented at executing.
Some pundits are focusing on the cultural compatibility and whether Zappos will be forced to change because it’s now part of a public company.
People tend to forget that Jeff Bezos is the CEO that Wall Street loves to hate.
They hated it when he expanded out of books; they predicted Amazon’s demise when it used its expertise to do fulfillment for other companies and again when Amazon jumped into cloud computing.
Bezos’ attitude is encapsulated in this short interview ending with a perfect wrap when asked if he feels vindicated by the company’s success.
‘No. I’ve taken plenty of criticism, but it’s always been about our stock price and never about our customer experience. After the bubble burst, I would sit down with our harshest critics, and at the end of the meeting they would say, “I’m a huge customer.” You know that when your harshest critics are among your best customers, you can’t be doing that badly.”
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Today is a collection of provocative, personal opinions on a variety of subjects. I hope you’ll take time to comment if one hits hard.
Fit.
If today has any unifying theme it’s a focus on management being smart, instead of the opposite.
Tuesday we talked about how to 
