What Makes You A Winning Organization?

Another outstanding contribution from Dan Greenberg...

What Makes You A Winning Organization?

Recently, I’ve been ruminating on the practices that make employees want to remain at their job and not jump to another company.  Having worked in soul-sucking and soul-enriching situations, I’ve seen it both ways.  Here are some of the attractions that keep me coming back.

Hiring

The old adage is not to put all your eggs in one basket but I say put them all and then some into this basket.  My current employer requires every candidate no matter the position to meet with two of the partners before they are hired.  If the partners don’t approve, they don’t get the job.  Over and over again at prior jobs, I’ve seen hiring take a backseat and I’ve heard both on and off the record some form of “we’ll hire any old schmoe and coach her or him into an all star”.  It’s no surprise that this just leads to a culture of mistrust and underwhelming performance because standards of hiring were sacrificed.  Imagine how much less stressful your life would be if you trusted the people working for you.

Flat Hierarchy

My current employer has as close to this as I’ve ever seen.  I am not even sure who my boss is but the person I think is my boss has not a clue what I’m up to and doesn’t need to because (see above) he trusts me.  Our teams work directly with our customers and with each other, politics are nonexistent, and we actually focus on the product and not our own self interests - what a novel concept!  Note that this has nothing to do with compensation, but see the next section...

Pay

The way I’ve heard it is pay people enough that they’re not thinking about money.  (and it doesn’t hurt to put a little extra scrutiny when hiring into finding intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated folks, just sayin).  When I was interviewing for my current job, they asked me how much I was making at the time, they got a sense of my background, my lifestyle, and they made me a generous offer that they figured would not only attract me away from my previous job but also take the money concern out of the equation.  Granted there are only so many slices of the pie to go around, but have you considered that hiring the right people could double or triple the size of the pie?

Burn the Red Tape

Let employees do whatever they want.  You trust them, right?  At my current engagement, if I want to expense a coffee or a lunch or two it’s no big deal.  If I need a box of sharpies, a whiteboard, index cards, I don’t need to wait for three rounds of approvals.  I’ve taken more training courses (fully paid for) in the three months I’ve been at this job (and had to turn down their offers for me to take more) than I did in six years at my previous employer.  When I was in the interview process they said if you want to improve yourself through training, why on earth would we do anything to stop you?  Bonus Question: In such a laissez-faire environment, how do you prevent sleazy opportunists from walking all over you?  By not hiring them 😉.

Deliver Outstanding Customer Service to Your Employees

Customer service has been written about ad nauseam but what about internal customer service?  Where I work now, conference room phones almost never break and when they do, someone from IT is on it immediately and  when they can’t fix it, a new one is purchased and brought in right away.  We have email addresses entitled Payroll, HR, IT, and when you email them the response comes back in a couple of minutes or less.  There are dedicated staff at all of our sites who handle tech issues, point you in the right direction for HR or payroll questions, and help with nearly anything.  Most companies ignore these concerns but they make a huge difference.  There are many studies out there (Here is a good one) that detail the cost of losing an employee but the bottom line is logically we need to be spending far more on retention than we are because it would pay for itself in spades.  Make your employees feel as if they are staying at a 5-Star resort.

Conclusion

Creating a winning organization is about far more than making money, but the good news is it correlates with profit.  That being said, it is about how you want to treat people and the way you want to live your life.  When I have a tough decision to make, I have to go deep down to my core to find the answer.  Usually that involves asking others for help and collecting a wide range of opinions, but ultimately I need to stay true to myself.  As I’ve said time and again throughout my career (and I usually get warned not to say it), I will gladly risk my job in favor of what I believe in.