creating the best workplace on earth.docx

7/28/2019 Creating the Best Workplace on Earth.docx

1/5

Creating the Best Workplace on Earth

Suppose you want to design the best company on earth to work for. What would it be like? For three years weve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives in surveysand in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organization. This mission arose fromour research into the relationship between authenticity and effective leadership. Simply put,

people will not follow a leader they feel is inauthentic. But the executives we questioned made itclear that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization.

What did they mean? Many of their answers were highly specific, of course. But underlying thedifferences of circumstance, industry, and individual ambition we found six commonimperatives. Together they describe an organization that operates at its fullest potential byallowing people to do their best work.

We call this the organization of your dreams. In a nutshell, its a company where individualdifferences are nurtured; information is not suppressed or spun; the company adds value toemployees, rather than merely extracting it from them; the organization stands for somethingmeaningful; the work itself is intrinsically rewarding; and there are no stupid rules.

The Dream Company Diagnostic

These princi ples might all sound commonsensical. Who wouldnt want to work in a place thatfollows them? Executives are certainly aware of the benefits, which many studies haveconfirmed. Take these two examples: Research from the Hay Group finds that highly engagedemployees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations than the least-engagedworkers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengagedfolks by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold inrevenue growth. Recent research by our London Business School colleague Dan Cable showsthat employees who feel welcome to express their authentic selves at work exhibit higher levelsof organizational commitment, individual performance, and propensity to help others.

Yet, few, if any, organizations possess all six virtues. Several of the attributes run counter totraditional practices and ingrained habits. Others are, frankly, complicated and can be costly toimplement. Some conflict with one another. Almost all require leaders to carefully balancecompeting interests and to rethink how they allocate their time and attention.

So the company of your dreams remains largely aspirational. We offer our findings, therefore, asa challenge: an agenda for leaders and organizations that aim to create the most productive andrewarding working environment possible.

Let People Be Themselves

When companies try to accommodate differences, they too often confine themselves totraditional diversity categories gender, race, age, ethnicity, and the like. These efforts arelaudable, but the executives we interviewed were after something more subtle differences in

perspectives, habits of mind, and core assumptions.


2/5

The vice chancellor at one of the worlds leadin g universities, for instance, would walk aroundcampus late at night to locate the research hot spots. A tough-minded physicist, he expected tofind them in the science labs. But much to his surprise, he discovered them in all kinds of academic disciplines ancient history, drama, the Spanish department.

These six things can make the organisation of your dreams an organisation that operates at its fullest potential.

Suppose you want to design the best company on Earth to work for. What would it be like?

For three years weve been investigating this question by asking hundreds of executives insurveys and in seminars all over the world to describe their ideal organisation. Many of their answers were highly specific, of course. But underlying the differences of circumstance, industryand individual ambition we found six common imperatives. Together they describe anorganisation that operates at its fullest potential by allowing people to do their best work.

We call this the organisation of your dreams. In a nutshell, its a company where individualdifferences are nurtured; information is not suppressed or spun; the company adds value to

employees, rather than merely extracting it from them; the organisation stands for somethingmeaningful; the work itself is intrinsically rewarding; and there are no stupid rules.

Let people be themselves

When companies try to accommodate differences, they too often confine themselves totraditional diversity categories gender, race, age, ethnicity and the like. These efforts are


3/5

laudable, but the executives we interviewed were after something more subtle differences in perspectives, habits of mind and core assumptions.

The ideal organisation is aware of dominant currents in its culture, work habits, dress code,traditions and governing assumptions but makes explicit efforts to transcend them. We are

talking not just about the buttoned-down financial services company that embraces theinformation technology guys in shorts and sandals, but also the hipster organisation t hat doesntlook askance when someone wears a suit. Or the place where nearly everyone comes in at oddhours but that accommodates the one or two people who prefer a 9 to 5 schedule.

Transparency

The organisation of your dreams does not deceive, stonewall, distort or spin. It recognises that inthe age of Facebook, WikiLeaks and Twitter, youre better off telling people the truth beforesomeone else does. It respects its employees need to know whats really going on so that theycan do their jobs, particul arly in volatile environments where its already difficult to keep

everyone aligned and where workers at all levels are being asked to think more strategically.

Youd imagine that would be self -evident to managers everywhere. In reality, the barriers towhat we call radical honesty that is entirely candid, complete, clear and timelycommunication is legion.

The reluctance to be the bearer of bad news is deeply human, for instance, and trade secrets willalways require confidentiality. And we dont wan t to suggest that honesty will necessarily stop

problems from arising, particularly in highly regulated industries that routinely find themselvesunder scrutiny.

We maintain, though, that executives should err on the side of transparency far more than their instincts suggest. Particularly today, when trust levels among both employees and customers areso low and background noise is so high, organisations must work very hard to communicatewhats going on if they are to be heard and believed.

Magnify peoples strengths

The ideal company makes its best employees even better and the least of them better thanthey ever thought they could be. In robust economies, when competition for talent is fierce, itseasy to see that the benefits of developing existing staff outweigh the costs of finding newworkers. But even then, companies grumble about losing their investment when people decamp

for more-promising opportunities. In both good times and bad, managers are far more oftenrewarded for minimising labour costs than for the longer- term goal of increasing workerseffectiveness. Perhaps that explains why this aspiration, while so widely recognised and wellunderstood, often remains unfulfilled.

Elite universities and hospitals, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and design firms like Arup haveall been adding value to valuable people for a very long time. Google and Apple are more recentexamples. They do this in myriad ways by providing networks, creative interaction with


4/5

peers, stretch assignments, training and a brand that confers elite status on employees. None of this is rocket science, nor is it likely to be news to anyone.

But the challenge of finding, training and retaining excellent workers is not confined tospecialised, high-tech or high-finance industries. We contend that the employee-employer

relationship is shifting in many industries from how much value can be extracted from workersto how much can be instilled in them. At heart, thats what productivity improvement reallymeans.

Stand for more than shareholder value

People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something they can believe in.Ive worked in organisations where people try to brainwash me about the virtues of the brand,one seminar participant told us. I want to work in an organisation where I can really feel wherethe company comes from and what it stands for so that I can live the brand.

It has become commonplace to assert that organisations need shared meaning, and this is surelyso. But shared meaning is about more than fulfilling your mission statement its about forgingand maintaining powerful connections between personal and organisational values. When you dothat, you foster individuality and a strong culture at the same time.

Show how the daily work makes sense

Beyond shared meaning, the executives we have spoken to want something else. They seek toderive meaning from their daily activities.

This aspiration cannot be fulfilled in any comprehensive way through job enrichment add-on. It

requires nothing less than a deliberate reconsideration of the tasks each person is performing. Dothose duties make sense? Why are they what they are? Are they as engaging as they can be?

This is a huge, complex undertaking. But we suggest that the benefits of rising to it are potentially very great. Where work is meaningful, it typically becomes a cause.

The challenge is similar to that of fostering personal growth. If you dont do it, the best peoplemay leave or never consider you at all. Or your competitors may develop the potential in peopleyou have overlooked. When you do make the investment, your staff members become morevaluable to you and your competitors alike. The trick, then, is to make it meaningful for them tostay.

Have rules people can believe in

No one should be surprised that, for many people, the dream organisation is free of arbitraryrestrictions. But it does not obliterate all rules. Organisations need structure. Markets andenterprises need rules. As successful entrepreneurial businesses grow, they often come to believethat new, complicated processes will undermine their culture. But systematisation need not leadto bureaucratisation, not if people understand what the rules are for and view them as legitimate.


5/5

creating the best workplace on earth.docx

Documents