Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Are You Working in a Cult?

What does Steve Hassan have to do with the workplace? In a piece in Canada’s The Globe and Mail, writer Harvey Schachter uses Hassan as the subject in his column on work-life balance. 

Steve Hassan is a mental health counselor who’s an expert on cults. Hassan knows what he’s talking about. He entered the Unification Church at age 19 and spent several years recruiting and indoctrinating new members, as well as performing fundraising and campaigning duties. After rising to the rank of assistant director of the Unification Church at its national headquarters, Hassan was severely injured in a traffic accident related to his duties. While he was in the hospital, his parents took the opportunity to “deprogram” him.

It worked. Hassan left the church and is now a well-respected international authority on the effects of cult membership.

Taking a look at Hassan’s BITE Model (Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotion) of cult-like organizations, it’s immediately apparent why Schachter would draw a parallel to some of today’s workplaces.

Behavior Control

Cults regulate the individual’s physical reality, including where he lives, what he wears and how much sleep he gets. Individualism is discouraged, while group-think prevails. The individual must make major time commitments for indoctrination sessions and group rituals, be obedient, and accept having little time for leisure, entertainment or vacations.

Information Control

Leaders decide who needs to know what. Information is distorted or held back, to serve the needs of the organization. Access to outside information is discouraged, such as critical analysis of the organization or meeting with disgruntled former members.

Thought Control

The member is expected to accept the organizational doctrine as the truth. Only good thoughts are encouraged, and negative thoughts are shut down. Questions that are critical of leaders are not seen as legitimate.

Emotion Control

Fear abounds over thinking for yourself. Members are indoctrinated into having a phobia about leaving the group or questioning the leader. Those who leave are shunned, and the belief grows that there is no legitimate reason for leaving.

For more on workplace cults, visit the AMEX Open Forum.

Building Culture in a Digital World

Quick quiz: true or false?

1. You don’t know anyone who works at your company.
2. You try not to involve yourself with your company’s digital networks.
3. When it comes to certain office protocols, you have no idea what is and isn’t acceptable.

If you answered ‘True’ to these statements, you’re part of the 20 percent of global employees who work on virtual teams, and your organization’s culture is a total mystery to you.

This is a problem, because even as we strive to enhance our cultures so our employees will stick around, our strategies mostly shut out employees who don’t come into our offices. If we want to encourage collaboration and track productivity, we have dozens of effective digital tools from which to choose. But when it comes to tools meant to inform and reinforce culture, there’s not much.

In a recent article for Fast Company, Austin Carr reported on a few new technologies that are a step in the right direction. Yammer, which is an enterprise social network that Microsoft acquired for $1.2 billion, acts like a Facebook for internal business use. It enables employees to exchange messages, media and status updates—integrating the option to “Like” a coworker’s post or give him or her “Praise” badges.

Taking it a step further is emotional intelligence company Kanjoya, which has a product called Crane that taps into an organization’s Yammer network and analyzes data to measure how employees are feeling at any given moment or on any given topic. Crane can tell, for instance if your employees are irritated by a new policy or don’t like the way management is handling a current issue. Although it’s not always clear what leaders should do with Crane’s data from a big picture perspective, the program at least allows them to address small details that might otherwise go unnoticed and fester.

For tips on how to effectively build culture in a digital world, check out my full post on the AMEX Open Forum.

Is Your Workplace Safe?

Safety isn’t just a manufacturer-only concern. Protecting workers from falls and other physical injuries is part of it, but organizational safety also encompasses your employees’ ability to express themselves freely, and to come to work knowing that their confidential information will not be compromised. Whether you’re a small retail operation or a big consulting firm with employees worldwide, safety should be a critical issue. Not only will making safety a priority protect you from being sued, but it will also contribute to the overall strength of your culture.

Digicast is an Australia-based workforce consultancy that recently produced a white paper, Three Factors That Influence Workplace Culture, which connected safety to strong organizational culture. One interesting section dealt with the factors that influence safety. I’ve highlighted these in the “Five Commandments of Safety.”

1. Thou Who Has an Office Shall Clean It.

Digicast cites a study by Dave DeJoy and Todd Smith from the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, which found that a well-kept site usually means safety is a priority. “If you talk to people who do safety inspections,” DeJoy says, ”they will tell you that the first impression they get when they walk into a factory or construction site—how neat it is and whether employees seem to be actively engaged—often indicates whether a workplace is safe.”

2. Thou Shall Not Overwork Your Employees.

The same study by DeJoy and Smith also found that when work interfered with family demands, job performance was affected and the risk for injury increased by 37 percent. In 2011, when excessive working hours resulted in pilot error on several airlines, the FAA stepped in with regulations. Even if you’re not dealing with human lives, ensuring your employees have solid work-life balance and are satisfied in their roles will enhance safety and culture.

3. Thou Shall Not Make Safety an Afterthought.

Digicast says that progressive companies with best-in-class safety records include safety in all major decisions. Safety is a topic at every board meeting and all departments consider safety when developing products and services. Leaders don’t bury their heads in the sand, and HR is totally on board. “A lot of organizations are set up so there is a wall between HR and occupational health and safety, but the two can no longer afford to work in silos,” DeJoy says.

Jonathan Thomas of the National Safety Council adds, “The things that HR leaders are most concerned about are also the building blocks for building a safe workplace.”

Have a look at the AMEX Open Forum for more commandments of a safe work culture.

 

Have You Planned Your Succession?

An important part of long-term success is developing your top talent so they can eventually replace you and other key players. Succession planning doesn’t have to be painful. After all, your organization is evolving, and you don’t want all the great progress you’ve made to be undermined due to an unplanned departure.

Along with Tim Kuppler, founder of consultancy The Culture Advantage and author of the ebook Building a Performance Culture, I offer this basic blueprint for succession planning that can be implemented by organizations of any size.

Track Potential Successors

Identify potential leaders on your team by reviewing 360-degree survey feedback, performance reviews and personality and strengths assessments. Ensure that your selections reflect your organization’s ideal culture and that they will keep things moving in the right direction. Keep tabs on where potential successors are headed by noting key development actions, resources and timeframes. Organize everything with a grid that makes it easy to compare one candidate to another.

Leverage Your Team

Gather your current leaders together to provide input on the most critical competencies, skills and attributes of successors. Set aside time for meetings where succession planning is the only focus. Devise a rating scale so potential candidates and supporting documentation can be reviewed objectively. Note that open discussion may bring out political sensitivities, especially if family members are involved.

Facilitate Growth

Great leaders are created, not born. Make sure potential successors, especially those who are new supervisors, have access to general management training so they “get it right the first time.” Mentoring programs are also beneficial for providing extra coaching to accelerate learning. Give employees options for potential mentors instead of making assignments where fit or trust issues could exist. Make sure mentorship is a two-way street. Your current leaders can learn a lot from the questions and approaches raised by potential successors.

For more succession planning tips, check out the AMEX Open Forum.

Map Your Office Design to Your Culture

The 712,000-square-foot Deloitte University (DU) facility in Westlake, Texas, was once a controversial project. 

Some didn’t believe that the forward-thinking accounting company should invest significant resources in a non-virtual campus. But Deloitte executives were committed to growing the world’s best leaders through collaboration, and having a place where people could meet in person still seemed like the best path.

The cornerstone of the DU facility is a multi-touch, multi-user 20-foot media wall, which allows visitors to track others who are onsite in real-time. Attendees are encouraged to meet up in themed hang-out rooms on each floor, socialize in the facility’s many restaurants and lounges, and attend sessions in classrooms equipped with videoconferencing and wifi.

Working Together, Not Apart

Deloitte is a culture where people talk to and brainstorm with each other–a lot–so the new facility was designed to make that as easy as possible. New employees often start their Deloitte careers with training that takes place at DU, and by the time they leave they are accustomed to working in a highly interactive fashion and are likely to continue this approach in their home offices.

Deloitte’s perspective is illustrated in a recent article for Forbes, in which Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett explained that today’s organizations are shifting from the “I” space to the “we” space.  As the command-and-control leadership style fades, c-suite executives no longer wish to be isolated from their employees. This means that in the realm of physical space, the literal c-suite is becoming a thing of the past. 

Steelcase, which is a workspace design company, does not have traditional offices. Its “we” spaces are conference rooms focused around particular issues or initiatives, and there reside the relevant executives and employees. Like Deloitte, Steelcase’s goal is to promote non-stop collaboration. This environment, as Mr. Hackett told Forbes, aims to encourage eye contact, provide everyone with equal access to information and allow people to move around and participate freely.

Learn more about how to map office design to culture at the AMEX Open Forum.

Drinking Too Much Kool-Aid Can Be Dangerous

Anyone who has worked in an organization for longer than a few months has heard the expression “drinking the company Kool-Aid.”

Even though Kool-Aid isn’t as popular as it used to be and may well end up with the same fate as Twinkie, the comparison still resonates. To drink the Kool-Aid means you believe in the organizational culture so much that you are willing and able to spout its principles without thinking, and that you ignore any evidence supporting the notion your company’s way of doing things isn’t working as well as it could. 

This is dangerous.

I once worked with a small company that was convinced its new accounting practices were revolutionary in the industry. Management spent a lot of money to get an automated system up and running, and drilled employees mercilessly on how to use it properly. The company got a great deal of incredible PR around the initiative. The system was easy to use! It saved tons of time! And new accounting was just the first step in a phased cultural initiative that would leverage state-of-the-art technology to free employees up to do what they did best!

There was only one problem. It didn’t work—at least not precisely enough. It turned out that some of the complex accounting issues the company faced required a human brain to sort. But the company was so busy touting its brilliance that it took numerous customer complaints to realize what was happening.

When you have a terrific culture or are in the midst of changing your culture to become terrific, it’s easy to overlook data that doesn’t support what you’re trying to do—and that’s where things get risky. A healthy organizational culture must be in touch with its thinking and have the ability to make rational decisions.

For suggestions on questions to ask to remain in touch with reality, have a look at the AMEX Open Forum.

 

Are Your Leaders Deluded?

As reported in the Economist last fall, corporate culture expert Dov Seidman’s firm LRN and Boston Research Group conducted a study that demonstrated that leaders’ rosy view of their organizational cultures is not in line with employee beliefs.

The research, National Governance, Culture, and Leadership Assessment, included data from 36,000 employees in 18 countries and was detailed in The How Report: New Metrics for a New Reality: Rethinking the Source of Resiliency, Innovation, and Growth.  The report identified three archetypes describing how businesses generally operate:  Blind Obedience (43 percent), Informed Acquiescence (54 percent) and Self-Governance (3 percent). 

Gulfs in Opinion a Mile Wide

The companies in the tiny self-governing category have astronomical advantages over competitors, including more innovation, stronger employee loyalty, higher customer satisfaction, stronger financial performance, higher resiliency in the face of a crisis and lower levels of misconduct.

Unfortunately, when it comes to whether or not a company is truly self-governing, there is a major gap between the views of C-suite executives and those of their employees: in the U.S., leaders identify their organizations as self-governing eight times as often as the overall workforce (24 versus 3 percent).

There are other gaps too.  For instance, 27 percent of executives believe their employees are inspired by their company, but only 4 percent of the employees agree.  And 41 percent of managers say their firm rewards performance on values rather than financial results, but only 14 percent of employees think this is true.

In other words, C-suiters think they’ve positively revolutionized corporate culture, and their employees, well…don’t.

To find out how you can course correct, check out my Culture Beat column on the AMEX Open Forum.

How to Lose a Pointless Process

It’s one of the great injustices of Corporate America.  Complex processes spring up around everything, and only some of them make sense.  As someone with an eye toward improving productivity and adding to the bottom line at your organization, inefficient, overly complicated, unethical, or just downright silly processes may irritate you to no end.

Off With Its Head!

Whether you’re a new employee who has seen things done better on the outside or a tenured one who knows change is essential, your first reaction might be to march into your manager’s office and let her know exactly what you think of this nonsense.  This may include an emotional, frustration-fueled recommendation (read: rant) to do away with the process immediately.  Or better yet, why not skip your boss and go straight to the source of the problem – the “keeper” of the process?

Well, hold your horses because this approach doesn’t usually work.  The truth is, most processes were implemented for a reason, and most were sensible at one time.  Managers, and especially the “keeper” of the process, are invested in it and presumably understand the big picture regarding how the process fits into the scheme of general operations.  They will probably not appreciate being told how things should be by someone who doesn’t have the whole story.  And by railing on said process, you may in fact be implying that they are not doing their jobs well, which will put them on the defensive right away.

For more tips on coping with bureaucracy, check out Intuit's Fast Track blog.

How to Avoid Self-Destructing on Foreign Soil

On April 20, 2010, the oil rigger Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.  After the explosion killed or injured 28 workers and released 4.9 million barrels of crude oil, the gushing wellhead was finally capped. British Petroleum (BP), the multi-billion dollar oil and gas company, was indisputably responsible.

Instead of expressing true remorse and compassion for the disaster, then CEO Tony Hayward committed a series of cultural gaffes that enraged U.S. citizens and lawmakers. For instance, well before the Gulf crisis was resolved, Hayward proclaimed that he “wanted his life back.” Then, as efforts to plug the leak continued feverishly in the U.S., he casually took in a sailing race with his son off the Isle of Wight in the UK.

Hayward’s American Disconnect

This behavior was consistent with Hayward’s work/life balance philosophy.  He once said publicly that he didn’t work weekends and took all of his holidays no matter what.  What the British Hayward failed to realize was that most Americans don’t necessarily agree with this point of view. It is the American way to take responsibility for one’s mistakes and do everything you can to remedy a bad situation. Until the problem is solved, free time does not exist. Since Americans were affected most when Deepwater Horizon exploded, many wanted to see Tony Hayward on a boat participating in the clean-up.

Although much of his business is conducted in the U.S., Hayward did not demonstrate strong global competence. His lack of understanding regarding how the crisis would be received in the U.S. led to a backward slide of goodwill and a plunging stock price for BP. That summer, it would also cost him his job.

To find out how you can avoid a Tony Hayward-like PR catastrophe, read my advice over at the AMEX Open Forum.

 

Hire Smart Like Billy Beane

Who could resist a movie with Brad Pitt?

In Moneyball, which is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Michael Lewis, Pitt plays Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Pitt or no Pitt, I normally stay away from sports movies. But Moneyball is no ordinary sports movie. It’s a lesson in hiring to which all small- and large-business owners should pay attention.

Baseball’s Mistake in Identifying Top Talent

The basic premise behind Moneyball is that baseball scouts have recruiting all wrong.  For more than a century, they’ve been relying on statistics like batting average and runs batted in (RBI) to assess players’ future performance on Major League teams. 

Worse, more often than not they “go with their gut” when making hiring decisions, letting personal feelings about a player, how he looks in a uniform, and the role they picture him having on the team, influence their selections. 

Billy Beane’s Lean and Mean Hiring Machine

Once Billy Beane realized that neither the objective nor subjective measures being used correlated with team wins, he turned the whole system on its head. Beane worked with Athletics’ data analysts to reveal the key factor in predicting future player success: the on-base percentage. The more effectively a player can control the strike zone, the better he’ll perform overall.

Fortunately for the Athletics, this quality was cheaper to obtain than traditionally valued attributes, and despite being outspent by $80 million by teams like the New York Yankees, Billy Beane’s Athletics were competitive and strong.

For advice on how you can hire like Billy Beane (and save a bundle), read the full article at the AMEX Open Forum.