To Give Your Employees Meaning, Start With Mission - Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer - HBS Faculty by Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer | 11:00 AM December 19, 2012 It is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. -Jim Collins Do you feel that you have work worth doing? Must it be this way? Why is meaning so important? Unfortunately, too many companies don’t even try to make work meaningful for the people doing it. The Company’s primary objective is to maximize long-term stockholder value, while adhering to the laws of the jurisdictions in which it operates and at all times observing the highest ethical standards.Dean Foods Company Mike Brenner and Steve Van Valin, of the consulting firm Culturology, talk about sources of “meaning amplification” that managers can tap in their quest to sustain employee engagement. To accomplish this, leaders have two tasks. Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.Starbucks Coffee
A Simpler Way to Get Employees to Share - Michael Schrage by Michael Schrage | 9:00 AM December 13, 2012 A few years back, I helped a large, very compartmentalized and extremely silo-ed global organization launch an internal competition. Its goal was to promote greater sharing of ideas, information, best practice and innovative processes. Leadership recognized that business units and functions had effectively been allowed to ignore the rest of the enterprise. The design was simple, clever and cheap: top management would recognize and reward people who demonstrated an ability to cross-functionally get real value from their colleagues and cohorts. Dual prizes created a symmetrical “marketplace” where employees were simultaneously encouraged not just to look for interesting ideas to “steal” but to think about which of their own best practices deserved wider internal promotion. It worked well. This “enterprise marketplace” emerged before the Jives, Yammers and SharePoints had materialized as intranet social media platforms.
Where Culture is King Where Culture is King Despite size, scope or industry, the Most Admired Companies for HR share a commitment to culture centered on values every employee lives by. By Maura C. Ciccarelli Thursday, December 6, 2012 When it's good, you can feel it when you walk in the door. Corporate culture is not about great brand messaging (think Apple) or a consistent customer experience anywhere you go around the world (think McDonald's), though these can contribute to a unified purpose for employees. Since 2005, Human Resource Executive® magazine has teamed up with Philadelphia-based Hay Group to identify organizations among Fortune magazine's Most Admired Companies that typify best HR practices. "Don't tell me; show me" is how Hay Group's Melvyn Stark describes the manifestation of a corporate culture. "Culture is not the kind of thing that companies would herald publicly," says Stark, Hay's vice president and regional reward practice leader located just outside New York City. management. Values in Action
The Real Point of Gift-Giving - Peter Bregman by Peter Bregman | 1:18 PM December 15, 2010 A few weeks ago was my birthday. I turned 43. 43 doesn’t mark a new decade. And yet as I emerge from this birthday, I can’t imagine feeling any more appreciated, respected, and loved. As we enter this holiday season, it makes sense to pause for a moment and think about gifts. On a basic level, we give gifts because we’re supposed to. Underlying that custom is an important purpose: appreciation. But here’s a common misconception: the bigger, more valuable the gift, the more it expresses our appreciation. Because gifts don’t express appreciation, people do. The gifts I received that meant so much to me on my forty-third birthday? Just as he is. And yet we almost never do this. Think of our corporate end of the year rituals: performance reviews, holiday parties, and, sometimes, if we’re lucky, bonuses. Performance reviews are supposed to identify our strengths, and the best reviewers spend most of their time dwelling on strengths. That’s OK.
Make It a Habit to Give Thanks - Ron Ashkenas by Ron Ashkenas | 12:00 PM November 20, 2012 While Thanksgiving in the U.S. is celebrated with sports events, family dinners, and time off from work, its real purpose is to reflect on everything that we have to be thankful for — such as health, family, material possessions, and general success. It’s also a good reminder that “thankfulness” and “appreciation” are important managerial behaviors in effective organizations — behaviors that need to be fostered throughout the year, not just when there’s a holiday. There are actually two kinds of appreciative behaviors that managers need to develop, interpersonal and organizational. Interpersonal appreciation is the day-to-day ability to genuinely and graciously thank other people for what they do. The reality is that all of us need affirmation and positive feedback, at least occasionally. In fairness to managers, neglecting to give interpersonal thanks is usually unintentional, particularly for the busy and overwhelmed.
5 Ways to Make Employees More Productive Want to dramatically improve your employees' performance without spending any money? Want to dramatically improve your own performance without taking classes, attending seminars, or buying cool new gadgets that promise lots but deliver little? It's easier than you think. Here's how: Create self-esteem incentives. We all work harder when we feel respected and appreciated. Every employee is different, so think about the type of praise and recognition that has meaning to each person who works for you. Then build incentives based on what makes the most impact. Employees work hard because it's their job, but employees work even harder when they feel good about themselves. Every job has some latitude--make sure you fully exploit that latitude so your employees can feel better about themselves, both as an employee and as a person. They'll naturally be more productive--and happier. Eliminate stupid stuff. Every company and every job has a number of once meaningful but now worthless tasks.
The Two Most Important Words When I arrived at Mattel, the company was losing almost a million dollars a day, the bonus pool was empty, and equity awards were underwater. I believed that those challenges were surmountable. On my first day, at a “town hall” gathering in the cafeteria, I said, “I know how this works. We will turn things around, and because I’m the new, outsider CEO, I’ll get a lot of the credit. I had just arrived from Kraft Foods, where I spent the first 23 years of my career. Most people come to work every day aiming to do a good job (even if my one bad boss didn’t believe that). Now, I’m not Pollyannaish. What’s wrong with recognizing a job well done? At Mattel, we do that with our Rave Reviews program, which allows employees to recognize and thank one another with a simple e-certificate for a free soft drink or coffee. Wherever I show my thanks, these tips work well for me: Set aside time every week to acknowledge people’s good work.
Articles - Building Companies to Last Inc. Special Issue—The State of Small Business In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever In this era of dramatic change, we’re hit from all sides with lopsided perspectives that urge us to hold nothing sacred, to “re-engineer” and dynamite everything, to fight chaos with chaos, to battle a crazy world with total, unfettered craziness. Well, I submit that “everybody” is wrong. To identify those timeless fundamentals, Jerry Porras and I embarked upon the intensive six-year research project that led to our book Built to Last. By studying companies that have prospered over the long term, we were able to uncover timeless fundamentals that enable organizations to endure and thrive. Make the company itself the ultimate product—be a clock builder, not a time teller Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date. Take for example, T.J. “How can you?” Now, whenever T.J.
Center of Excellence: Preserving corporate culture for sustained growth I'm doing some research regarding the importance of corporate culture and how to perserve a small business corporate culture while continuing to grow the business. While some may consider culture to be a bunch of mumbo jumbo, a strong corporate culture can really be critical to a businesses success and in particular to retaining top talent. It is hard to maintain the culture as a business grows unless you commit to it's maintenance and that requires commitment from the top to the bottom. Spend the time to clearly defining your corporate culture and rallying your employees to participate and contribute to it's continued existence. Here's the research I've pulled together. A Corporate Culture Worth Keeping - Small Business Guru blogCorporate Culture Definition and more... - Answers.comCorporate Culture in Your Small Business video - Small Business TV Includes a list of Four Deadly Corporate Culture Mistakes Small Business Corporate Culture - Ezine Articles
Preserving Your Culture During A High-Growth Phase: 5 Keys to a Successful Culture For the last several years, not a month has gone by without at least one well-meaning, concerned employee pulling me aside and asking me, something like, “Clate, how are we going to preserve our amazing culture as we continue to grow at such a fast pace?” I always tell them that we’ll be true to our Core Philosophy and we’ll be just fine. But the truth is, a few years ago, we had just raised venture capital, we were about to begin hiring at a very brisk pace, and I wondered the same thing: “How would we preserve our great culture while hiring very quickly.” Since that time, we’ve grown the company from 50 to 175 employees, our revenue has quadrupled, and our culture has never been better. As I’ve considered what we’ve done to make this happen, I came up with 5 Keys to our success. 1. If you haven’t read Jim Collins’ book Built To Last, you must read it. 2. Don’t hire the best or smartest people. 3. Every employee must understand the values and purpose of the company. 4. 5.
Preserving Your Company Culture as Your Business Grows Over the past year, has your business been steadily growing? Although this is a positive for your profits, you may be concerned about how this is influencing your company culture. It is your job as a business owner to ensure that your employees feel comfortable in the workplace, even as it grows bigger. There are many ways to help your team adjust, including customizing their benefit options. Having the ability to scale your company to still preserve the shared values and culture within takes time to learn. • Keep the Same Perspective. At Clark Insurance, we want you to keep in mind that the foundation of your business is your hard working employees.
Workplace Culture Is More Important Than Anything Else Photo: Instagram/nadavshoval Companies sink or swim based on their internal culture. One bad hire can have a huge effect on morale, productivity, and ultimately, the bottom line.Brad Feld, co-founder of startup accelerator TechStars and managing director at VC firm The Foundry Group, says that too many startups focus on hiring for competency over cultural fit. “Many people default into choosing people who have high competence but a low cultural fit,” he writes. “This is a deadly mistake in a startup, as this is exactly the wrong person to hire.” Instead, leaders should hire people who see the much bigger picture, and can truly help a company thrive by aligning their career goals with a company’s values and mission. One of the most influential leadership books in recent years, Tribal Leadership, shows just how important culture is over nearly anything else — even a brilliant idea. “Tribal leaders focus their efforts on building the tribe — or more precisely, upgrading the tribal culture.