Topic: Org. Culture

On the way to the gym this morning I heard a radio ad that I’ve heard several times before.  It’s from the International Star Registry.  It’s a mind-boggling scam.

These people offer the chance to “name a star”, and tout it as a “great gift” — “a gift that will last a lifetime”.  And, “your gift will be registered in book form in the US Copyright Office.”  In some weird sort of way, it almost seems like a nice idea.

You can almost imagine taking your honey out to Lookout Point on a clear starry night, pointing up just to the right of the Big Dipper and saying, “Look, Dear, there’s the Candy Smith star.  I had it named just for you.”  And as you melt together into the evening, it all seems so perfect.

But it’s a complete lie.  Take a quick look at the web site’s FAQ.  Aside from several questions about how to order, there’s the real meat of the matter. Q: Am I buying the star? A: No.  We do not own the star, so we cannot sell it to you.

More importantly: Q: Will the scientific community recognize my star name? A: No.  We are a private company that provides Gift Packages.  Astronomers will not recognize your name because your name is published only in our Star catalog.  We periodically print a book called Your Place in the Cosmos © which lists the stars that we have named.

So let me see if I have this right.  For my $59 - $159 I get a certificate from you that says you named some random star in my name.  You will occasionally print out a list of these names and send it to the copyright office (as any author can).  And that’s it.  No one will recognize this name, and all I have to show for it is a credit card receipt and a piece of paper.

The International Star Registry sold something they don’t own, have no inventory of, have an unlimited supply of, and have essentially no cost-of-goods-sold.  It’s raw profit.  I could also print out a piece of paper that says “This star over here is the CLWill star”, send it in at essentially no cost to the US Copyright Office, and I’d have the exact same effect.

This is an incredibly inventive scam.  But it begs an important question: how do these people sleep at night?

I can understand how some low life came up with this idea over a couple of beers.  I can even understand that there are people in this world like this scammer who live for separating fools from their money.  I don’t like that, but I realize they exist.

What I wonder about is all the other people in the organization.  This can’t be a small endeavor.  There are people answering the phone.  People entering things into the database.  People handling the accounting, payroll, taxes, etc.  People developing the ads and the web site.  There must be a dozen or more people involved in this scam.

How do they all sleep?  They all must know the ridiculousness of the deal.  They must all start out chuckling at the people who order.  But at some point it has to turn sickening.  There just has to be silly levels of turnover as people tire of cheating their fellow man (or woman).

Then I wonder, what is this organizational culture like?  Do people cheat and connive each other into promotions and raises?  Do they stab each other in the back?  If they scam strangers for a living, they must treat each other like crap.

On a personal level, can they really look themselves in the mirror every morning as they head off to work, and think this is really OK?  Do they go to church and talk about “doing unto others”?  What do they teach their children about work ethics?  It turns my stomach from 2,000 miles away (they’re in Illinois), I can’t imagine being involved in such a thing.

And as I’m typing this blog entry, I got a new piece of spam from the “Heritage Registry of Who’s Who”.  The exact same scam, in different clothes.  Add in the incessant diet drug ads that proliferate this time of year, and the incredibly annoying ads for Enzyte, “for natural male enhancement” and you wonder, where have all the scruples gone?

Here’s a quiz for you: who has more retail outlets — Starbucks or General Motors (GM)?

If you listen to all the late night comics with their shtick on Starbucks and how there’s one on every corner, you think you know the answer.  Well, you’d be wrong.  Starbucks has about 6,300 company-owned stores and GM has almost 7,000 dealerships.  Wow…

Now this is just a little unfair, Starbucks has another couple thousand franchise locations inside places like grocery stores and theme parks.  And GM owns virtually none of their stores.  But the fact that the numbers are even in the same ball park is stunning to me.

I wrote a couple of months ago about what a terrible experience buying a car is, and the toll it takes on the people who have to do it for a living (see that piece here).  And about how the differences between the retail experiences can be easily seen here.

Simply put, buying a car is the worst shopping experience that you can have.  Bar none.  And people with any scruples find it impossible to work in the business for very long.  It’s a sick business that someone needs to change.

I don’t mean to pick on GM just for the excess of dealers.  A piece in the Wall Street Journal today (subscription-only link here) points out that none of the US automakers are immune from this issue.  All the “big three” have well over 2-1/2 times the number of dealers per point of market share of Toyota, for example.  Perhaps that (and this) explains why Toyota is doing so well, and eating Detroit’s lunch.

I think this excess of dealers is one good reason for the problem.  Too many dealers chasing too few customers.  And it leads to a fetid culture of sleeze-ball sales tactics, terrible service, and lousy margins.  It’s little more than vultures preying on the few customers there are.

Starbucks has nothing in their store that costs over $250, and the vast majority of sales are under $10.  I don’t know for certain, but I would have to imagine that their average transaction is in the $5 range.  This just begs for a lot of outlets, to make the impulse purchase easy.

GM, on the other hand, probably has an average transaction around $10,000.  I don’t know many people who decide on a whim to just drop by the Cadillac store and pop for a new $60,000 Escalade.  Or stop in for a quick brake job.  Why on earth do they need so many stores (or brands, but that’s another story)?

If the new purchasers of Chrysler, Cerberus Capital Management LP, want to really make an impact on the car business, they could start here.  And rumor has it, they are going to — by combining all the Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep dealers together.  It’s a good start.

If you’ve followed along with this blog, you know a couple of things:

• It’s past time for some sort of recognition for the one year anniversary, and
• I’ve been quite remiss in posting over the last month or so.

As to the former, I say: “bah humbug!”  I have grown weary of reading all the celebratory posts from people trumpeting their “blogiversary” as if it really mattered.

Suffice it to say, if you like doing this whole blogging thing, the first year flew by.  If you did it for all the wrong reasons (because you’d become rich, or famous, or quoted, or perhaps even noticed) then it probably was a year of pure torture and pretty soon it will fade into obscurity.  I like to think that for me, it was the first of these…

As to the lack of meaningful content herein over the last several weeks, I’d like to proclaim a number of really good excuses.  To wit:

• I came to the aid of a fellow blogger who, under relentless denial-of-service attacks, had to move immediately from one blogging platform to another.  This resulted in herculean efforts to design, move, convert, and deploy an entirely new solution in record time.  It went off with nary a hitch, and I’m pleased to note that the bad guys are being stopped at the gate (to the tune of 10,000+ attacks a day).
• My main Windows computer breathed its last breath, a result of euthanasia.  I’ve spent the last month making the final move of my life from Windows to the Mac — a sort of conversion that, like those of a spiritual nature, involves great joy and discovery coupled with several rites of passage.  I plan to write much more about this experience in a more appropriate forum to be announced later.

• Our eldest son just graduated from high school, and that comes with an inordinate amount of anticipation, preparation, visitation, celebration, and recuperation.  This was a wonderful time for us all (dampened only slightly by a cruel theft of the diploma…), but one that is good to have behind us.

None of this is really justification for my lack of posting here, but it might explain to those around me the incredible lack of sleep I’ve had over the past month or two.  And it does indicate why there has been at least a little to celebrate around here.

So, dear reader, please forgive the unintended hiatus, and stay tuned…  I promise a reinvigorated effort in short order.

It’s annual report season again, and with it comes the flood of plastic wrapped envelopes to our mailbox that carry the once-a-year bounty of glossy, over-polished, and saccharin manifestos from publicly traded firms.  This is “the art of the annual report”.

I look forward to this flood, it offers insights that are hard to get any other way.  Inside these envelopes, you get an unmodified view of the company.  Certainly it is not an objective view, yet that is what makes it such a clear view.

You can tell volumes about companies and their culture by what they choose to portray in their annual report.  Once a year, companies get a chance to tell the world who they are, what they stand for, and what they are trying to accomplish.  And they can do it in a forum that is completely unadulterated by outside forces like the media or their critics.

Yes, of course, the government and tradition mandate that some information be included.  And since most companies include their proxy information in the same mailing, included are some required documents to support their voting process.  But if you take the time to look carefully at the whole package, the insights are many.

First and foremost, the report itself is a gold mine of company culture information.  Because most companies try so hard to make the report a show piece, it is quite telling to see how they present it.  There are some very interesting things to look at:

• Is it a very polished, glossy document (over-polished)?  Or a businesslike and direct report (not professional enough)?
• Does it feature pictures of just the CEO (are they an egotist)?  Or the executive staff (diverse)?  Or the products (hiding the leadership team)?  Or the employees (trying too hard to appear egalitarian)?
• Does it overflow with flowery language about “the world today” and “XYZ Corp.’s place in it” (taking themselves a little too seriously)?  Does it have a sense of humor (or even too much) Or is it just a dry recounting of economics (oh, lighten up)?
• Is it written in the form of a letter from the leader(s) or with the polish of a marketing piece?
• Who is that target audience?  Shareholders?  Employees?  Competitors?
• How much did it cost to produce?  Those are your shareholder dollars you’re holding…
• Most importantly, what does it say about the vision for the company?  What are they trying to accomplish?  Is it clear, obvious, obtainable and yet still a stretch?

These are all interesting questions, and they tell you a great deal about the culture.  I like to read it wearing several hats.  What would this mean to me if I worked there?  Is this company just a vehicle to express the ego of the CEO?  What would I think if I were their competition?

And then there are the wonderful proxy materials.  Here’s where you get a lot of interesting stuff.  In here are all the gory details of executive compensation, perks, and other dark secrets they try to bury in pages of dense text on toilet-paper-thin paper.  It’s a gold mine of information about the company and its leadership.

The proxy materials are where I (and most of the world) found out about Robert Nardelli (formerly CEO of Home Depot) and his truly absurd contract and pay package.  I wrote about it here, and since they were required to quote essentially the whole contract, it was great fun to read.  This info proved to be a key part of Nardelli’s downfall.  But you had to read the annual report to see it.

So I encourage you to welcome this bounty of “annual report art”.  Next, I’ll talk about my favorite one of them, but in the meantime, don’t just toss them in the recycle bin.  Plumb each and every one for the hidden gems that lay within.

I had to buy a new car yesterday.  Interesting that I said “had to”, isn’t it?  Pretty much sums up the state of the car buying experience these days.  Despite all the potential for fun — lots of new shiny toys, all the options in the world to choose from, flashy ads from the car companies, the ecstasy of driving home in that new car smell — car retailers work furiously to take all the joy out of the process.

I used to have a nasty new car addiction, about half of the reason I kicked the habit was the pain of dealing with the dealers.  I’m just over it, and I’m now driving a seven year old car with 100,000 miles on it.  The car I bought yesterday was for someone else, or I wouldn’t have been caught dead in a dealership.

You see, when it comes to bargains, I’m not much of a hunter, I’m more of a gatherer.  I’ll do all kinds of research so I know what a good price is, but if I have to fight for the price, it’s just not worth it.  This makes me a lamb to slaughter in a car dealership.  And they seem to sense it.

The whole experience is just rancid, and set up to make it absolutely horrible for the customer.  It begs a lot of questions:

• Why is it considered OK that ten different people would pay ten different prices for the exact same item, based solely on their skill at this silly game?
• What happens to people who either don’t understand the game or can’t play it at all?
• Why is it that you don’t even negotiate with the person directly, but send your representative (the salesperson, who is on the other team) into a mysterious back room to negotiate on your behalf?
• Why is it that you have to threaten to leave before you have a deal?
• Why is this the only retail experience like this?  You don’t buy groceries, or appliances, or even a house this way.
• How did the process get this way?  Who came up with this process that is exactly the same in every dealership?
• Why can’t anyone really change this terrible experience?  Companies have tried (Saturn, Lexus) but it never sticks, and just rots into this same fetid mess.

But even these aren’t the questions that got me to thinking yesterday.  I wonder about the people who have to live in this festering boil of a work environment, and what it does to them.

As I was pacing waiting for yet another deal volley over the net to be returned, I was asked by another salesman if I was “having fun, yet”.  I replied: “I’d rather be at the proctologist’s.  I don’t know how you can do this for a living.”  He said: “It’s my third day.”

What struck me was the way he said it.  It was a combination of shame, humiliation, and resignation.  Although I can’t say from experience, I would imagine you’d get the same answer from a new prostitute.  I immediately thought, how sad.

Now that I think about it, I’ve never met a car salesperson who didn’t aspire to something else.  Well, there are those who take a perverse glee in this sick game.  But they aren’t common.  Most just seem to be there until they get something better, or just something else that doesn’t involve french fry oil.

The whole car buying experience, and the people in it, is so wrong.  Even the latest innovation of getting multiple bids on-line is just a mask for the problem, as soon as you enter the dealer’s lair, you’re meat.  How come some creative company can’t fix the whole thing?

At the risk of venturing into a philosophical quagmire about various religions or value of faith in general, there is a trend afoot that makes me question the role of religion in the workplace.  I am struck by the ascendancy of new Christian movements into various secular portions of society such as law, government, and business.  I’ll leave it to others to question the rest, but I have strong views about the place of religion in business.

Before anyone begins by impugning my own faith, I probably should lay that on the table.  I grew up in what could be called a mildly protestant family, neither zealots nor godless, and spent years in school where there were multiple mandatory chapel services each week.  But little of that has permeated my business life, and I think that’s for the best.

Recently, however, as the world seems to be fragmenting along religious lines, it seems people like me are fewer and farther between.  Somehow, in this world of Shiite vs.  Sunni, Jew vs.  Muslim, Protestant vs.  Catholic, and on and on, it’s rarely simple enough to disagree but you apparently have to go to war over it.  More and more people seem to think it’s OK to draw lines based on religion as if thousands of years of history haven’t taught us any better.

And now it seems that there is a tendency for evangelical christians, especially, to feel that the workplace is an appropriate, and even fertile, ground for spreading their gospel.  There is even an organization called Christ @ Work that is trying to promote this kind of thing.

Created by Crown Financial Ministries, the organization and website of the “Fellowship of Companies in Christ” is eye-opening (check out the questionnaire, or the employee emails section).  And like most similar organizations, Christ @ Work is deeply conflicted.  For example, it claims to be “a non-denominational organization”, presumably as long as it’s Christian.

Various companies call themselves “faith-based”.  An example you see everyday and probably haven’t thought much about is Covenant Transportation.  This is a publicly-traded Tennessee-based trucking company whose trucks are seen nationwide.

I first noticed Covenant when I saw “It’s a child, not a choice” plastered on the back of a trailer.  I wondered if it was simply one trucker expressing an opinion…  until I saw it on every trailer.  No, Covenant seems to think that expressing a controversial opinion in such a broad way is a good thing.

Regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, their use of the company fleet to take a stand on a controversial issue has to be a bad thing.  Do they have a litmus test for all employees (”are you pro-life”)?  That would be illegal under EEOC rules.  Do they turn down deliveries destined for Planned Parenthood?  I believe, as a licensed common carrier, that too would be illegal.  Does their business suffer to some degree because of this controversial stand?  Do they not want a pro-choice stockholder?

Curiously enough, the only place Covenant mentions that they are “faith-based” is on the About page (oh…  and the back of every truck).  The rest of the site only talks about what a great place it is to work, with “great pay, and great values”.  In fact they stress the individual:

We encourage individuality.  We encourage you to be yourself.  We encourage you to see our company in your own unique way.

Presumably as long as your way of seeing includes the pro-life sticker on the back of your truck.

I find this whole trend utterly offensive.  I don’t really care what you do on Sunday, or Saturday, or during Ramadan, as long as you get along well with the other children and get your work done.  I fully and completely support your right to hold dear whatever beliefs you have, and if those beliefs require you to dress, eat, or worship in a specific manner, please do so.  But the minute your beliefs reflect on the organization as a whole or, worse yet, challenge those of others, that’s where I draw the line.

And I get truly incensed when a secular organization chooses to take an overtly religious position.  It is the height of hubris to think that the management team somehow has the right to force its beliefs on the employees.  Each and every person at Covenant is assumed by the general public to be pro-life.  It’s not only a bad answer to WWJD, it’s certainly not supporting the individual, and it’s just wrong.

As an interesting side note, the title of this post: the famous saying “What hath God wrought“, was an example of religion creeping into business.  It is a verse from the Bible (Numbers 23:23) but was most famously used by Samuel Morse as the first message sent by Morse Code.  One can argue forever, perhaps, about whether this is a better line than Alexander Graham Bell’s “Watson, come here I want you”, but there is little doubt the latter is vastly less likely to spark a debate about the existence of a supreme being — unless Watson thought the voice was from the beyond…

Since you’re reading this site about business, perhaps you’d be interested in reading a number of other blogs on business topics.  One of the best directories of this sort is the Blog Flux Business Blogs directory.

Blog Flux Business Blog Directory

I find it fascinating to just troll through this directory looking for people with interesting things to say.  Certainly it can be a chore to separate the wheat from the chaff, but there are some very unusual things to see.

The New York Times Magazine had a wonderful cover story yesterday about Toyota and their path to world dominance.  This is a great read for most of corporate America, a modern day tale of the tortoise and the hare.

There are many interesting parts of this wonderful article, from the discussion about the creation of the new Tundra full-sized pickup to the parade of companies that try to learn from Toyota’s methods.  But to me the most interesting part is the discussion of the company culture and how their consistent drive for improvement (kaizen) is pervasive.

It seems to me that most of the truly great stories of organizational success are not ones of meteoric rise, they are the result of long slow burns that finally pay off.  As in the world of Hollywood, it seems to me that most “overnight successes” really have decades long histories of pain, tribulation, and persistence.

Even in the rocket-ship ride of the .com era, where most rockets tumbled into the sea, or exploded on the pad, and yet a few hung on to achieve greatness, I can’t think of a truly successful example that didn’t have a long, painful gestation.  The two most oft cited examples of Amazon and Google in fact had their rough childhoods, and painful adolescences, and neither has yet existed long enough to know whether adulthood will suit them well.

In my own experience at Microsoft, the best and most venerable products were ones that were definitively not successes in their first iterations.  Be it Windows, Excel, Word, Internet Explorer, or SQL Server, virtually all Microsoft products of any note were born of a desire to patiently chase down the competition and do what they did better.  The dogged and relentless pursuit of the competition was a key aspect of the company culture, and resulted in version 3 (or 4, or 6…) eventually overtaking the rival.  This happened so much that we used to refer to ourselves as the world’s best “tail-light chasers”.

Which gets me back to Toyota.  The company recognizes, like few do, that developing and nurturing a culture is a key part of making an organization hum.  I talk a lot about mission statements, and how valuable they (and visions) are to organizational success.  Toyota sees that almost instinctively.  To wit:

Toyota’s overarching principle, Press told me, is “to enrich society through the building of cars and trucks.” This phrase should be cause for skepticism, especially coming from a company so adept at marketing and public relations.  I lost count of how many times Toyota executives, during the course of my reporting, repeated it and how often I had to keep from recoiling at its hollow peculiarity.  And yet, the catch phrase — to enrich and serve society — was not intended, at least originally, to function as a P.R. motto.  Historically the idea has meant offering car customers reliability and mobility while investing profits in new plants, technologies and employees.  It has also captured an obsessive obligation to build better cars, which reflects the Toyota belief in kaizen, or continuous improvement.  Finally, the phrase carries with it the responsibility to plan for the long term — financially, technically, imaginatively. “The company thinks in years and decades,” Michael Robinet, a vice president at CSM Worldwide, a consulting firm that focuses on the global auto industry, told me. “They don’t think in months or quarters.”

I love their mission statement (“to enrich society through the building of cars and trucks.”), and will discuss that more soon, but what strikes me most is that last part: “they don’t think in months or quarters”.  Neither do most successful organizations.  They think in terms of what’s right in the long term, and let the current quarter and stock price fall where it may.

When Microsoft was most successful (under Bill Gates and Frank Gaudette’s leadership) it did too, offering essentially no “guidance” to the market.  It seems they may have strayed lately from this view, when a comment from Steve Ballmer sends the stock reeling, and that’s a shame.

The point here is that Toyota and most other great companies, didn’t get there overnight but over decades, don’t plan for tomorrow but forever, and don’t try to justify their actions but rather their philosophies.  This seems to be an anachronism in this go-go, always rushing, instant gratification world.  Bummer.

Alan Mulally

I asked the question back in September: Does Alan Mulally (the new Ford CEO) have a better idea? Recently, he has answered the question definitively, and the answer is a resounding yes.

I complained a while back that Ford had just given up, lost creativity, and was basically flailing.  In that post (here), I pointed out that Ford had had blatantly stolen the name of the Five Hundred SEL from the Mercedes Benz 500 SEL.  This kind of lack of creativity just eats away at companies.

I also suggested that Alan Mulally was a super choice for the CEO.  He’s a man who turned around Boeing’s Commercial Airplane Group and could do wonders for Ford.  In the post here, I noted how he had hit the ground running.  Well just the other day he took another great step forward.

Ford Mustang

One of the things that has just gnawed at me about Ford is how they have simply killed off brands for no apparent reason.  They stopped making the Mustang for about 20 minutes earlier this century.  This is the car that had the biggest start of any car in history, had a great following among the now aging and wealthy baby boomers, and yet some genius wanted to kill it.  Well someone got smart, they reintroduced the current retro model, and it’s one of their strongest selling cars.  Duh…

They also killed the Taurus.  In case you don’t remember, the Taurus was a truly ground breaking car in the 1980s.  It was the first car of the “bar of soap” aerodynamic shape trend at the time.  In an era where cars were quite angular and edgy (literally), the Taurus shocked the automotive world with its wind-tunnel smooth design.  The car was a huge hit, and at one point was the top selling car in the world.

Ford Taurus

But…  like so many things seem to at Ford, the car atrophied.  By the mid-1990s they had let the car wallow, refusing to choose to make the occasional radical redesign car lines require.  Few people wanted to own a car with a decade old design.  It faded into the oblivion of the rental fleets.  Eventually Ford, seemingly mystified by languishing sales, killed the car just a few months ago.  No one inside the company knew what to do with it, and no one outside the company appeared to notice.

Well Alan Mulally knew better, and he just announced that they are renaming the Five Hundred to be the Taurus.  From what I hear, this was Alan’s idea and he pushed it through.  And what a marvelous idea: capitalize on a brand name that was very strong and at the same time right the heinous wrong of the obvious plagiarism of the Five Hundred SEL name.

This appears to be just the start of Alan Mulally’s better ideas.  You go Alan!

The Kresge Foundation is a great organization.  They seek to strengthen other non-profit organizations by helping them to grow and improve their operations.  It’s the philanthropic world’s version of the old Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  This is all very good stuff.

If the name doesn’t ring a bell with you, the Kresge Foundation grew from the wealth of the Kresge family, the “K” in KMart.  Decades of hailing shoppers to blue light specials made the Kresge’s very rich.  And the foundation is their way of paying the world back.  Good for them.

But a bunch of this breaks down into a mish-mash when you hear their ads on National Public Radio:

The Kresge Foundation helps organizations to catalyze growth, connect with stakeholders, and challenge greater support.

Huh?  Catalyze?  Stakeholders? Buzzword Bingo!

I have talked about this before, but as soon as you start to over-think your mission statement, it’s broken.  I constantly see organizations who have spent way too much time at an “executive offsite” stewing over their corporate vision or mission statement.  There are even consultants who make most of their living from traveling the world helping people run these offsites.

I’ve been to many of these things.  They start out with the best of intentions, and then go down hill from there.  The consultant usually whips out the same tired flip charts they’ve used 300 times before, leads the group through the same tired exercises, pushes them toward some conclusion without even understanding the organization, and moves on.  The executives go into these meetings thinking they are changing the world, or at least their little corner of it.  And they over-think the thing, and leave the meeting with a mushy, overwrought, jumble of buzzwords.

Even worse, they then call a huge corporate meeting and announce the thing like Moses coming down with the word of God.  And the employees go insane.  They marvel at the fact that the leadership of their organization has time to spend stewing over this stuff.  They try to imagine what kind of people it takes to create this crap.  They ask themselves how much money, at the exec’s obscene pay rates, it cost the company to come up with this thing.  They wonder about the hundreds of better ways that money could have been spent, or the exec’s time could have been used.  Then they go back to work.

This might make you think I don’t find value in mission statements or corporate visions.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I’m a huge fan of figuring out what your organization is trying to accomplish, writing that down, and making sure it’s widely known, well communicated, and referred to constantly.  But like almost everything else in business, visions are best when they are simple, direct, and abundantly clear to everyone.  If they are not, what you get is this drivel, that is often worse than having no vision at all.

The saddest part of the Kresge Foundation example, is that their web site has a super statement of their mission right at the top of the home page:

The Kresge Foundation’s mission is to strengthen nonprofit organizations that advance the well-being of humanity.

Simple, direct, and understood by everyone.  And it is definitively NOT pompous or trying too hard.  They should be using that instead of trying to catalyze their stakeholders into a catatonic state.

There are a number of ways to detect the “soul” of an organization.  Although it can be a lot of fun to get inside a company or group and understand the relationships, the culture, and the tone and tenor of the organization, I like to look at the obvious external signs.  It is easier to see things that way to be sure, but you also know that, if it shows outside the organization, it certainly must be there on the inside — usually in spades.

That’s why, to see a company’s culture, I look so often to the things that are readily available to the general public.  In looking throughout this site and in my upcoming book (Out of Control?!) you’ll see that I frequently refer to press releases, advertising, and signage as a ways to read an organization’s culture.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to notice another trend, and it speaks volumes as well.  It’s only suitable for this internet era that the sign is the organization’s URL (uniform resource locator — web address).  I’ve found that you can read a lot of what the organization is about by the URL they have chosen.

Jason and Nicole Wilson

A week or two ago my family and I visited the new “hot” restaurant in Seattle: Crush.  It has been getting a lot of press, and the young chef is even getting a stint on Martha Stewart’s show (is that an honor??).  It’s an interesting little place, set in an old house in the Madison Park area of Seattle.  The place is everything it’s supposed to be: it has no parking to speak of, and inside is a hip, trendy, minimalist decor with white plastic furniture that looks like leftovers from the Austin Powers set.  The folks are all in black and the food is trying very hard to be great.  It was good, but clearly not at or near the top of the excellent Seattle restaurant scene.

But, I digress.  When I went to try to find the restaurant to make reservations I did the natural thing: I googled it (”crush restaurant seattle”).  And much to my surprise, the URL wasn’t “crushrestaurant.com” (that’s in Calgary, Alberta) or even crushrestaurantseattle.com, or anything similar.  No, it’s chefjasonwilson.com.  Wow, that’s an interesting choice, I thought, and let it pass.

Casey and Wendy Treat

That was, I let it pass until last night.  I couldn’t get to sleep so I turned on late night TV, and after midnight on Sunday is just a wasteland.  But in between the infomercials was a show I’ve seen advertised quite a bit here, a religious broadcast from one of the local multi-branch mega-churches that have become so popular (why is a question for another blog).  The church is called the Christian Faith Center, and the show is Living on Course.  It is lead by an energetic and passionate young pastor Casey Treat and his wife, Wendy, who are both prominently featured in all the promotional material.  And the URL is?  No, not christianfaithcenter.org or christianfaithinternational.com (the apparent larger organization).  Nope, it’s caseytreat.com.  You’ll notice two things about that URL: 1) it’s a .com (commercial), not a .org (non-profit), and 2) it’s all about Casey.

So now you see the theme.  Both of these organizations (Crush and the Christian Faith Center) are lead by charismatic young up-and-comers.  They are trying to “make a name for themselves” and by gosh they have done it, especially with their web addresses.  Instead of focusing on their organization, and putting the emphasis on that, they’ve chosen, quite explicitly to put the spotlight on them.  In fact, from a web perspective, it’s all about them.  That speaks volumes.

Now, before you go crying “hypocrite!” and telling me what a putz I am, complaining about focusing on the individual from a web site with my name (clwill.com), my picture on the front page, let me differentiate.  This web site IS all about me.  I am a one-man-band.  Consultant, speaker, author, it’s all just me.  There is no one else.  By contrast, these folks (and I’m sure there are others) have chosen to make their public face of their organizations be all about them.  I have problems with that.

Aside from the difficulties it raises in simply searching for these organizations on the internet, my first and foremost issue is the ego problem.  It takes a pretty healthy ego to think the whole organization revolves around you.  There’s something about this that reminds me of George Foreman and his five boys named George Foreman II, George Foreman III, etc.  Beside the fact that George clearly doesn’t get the whole multi-generational thing, it’s just silly.  And stunningly self-centered.

Second, and perhaps more important, is the effect this has on the psyche of the organization.  What must the many other members of this organization feel like?  They don’t work for the betterment of the organization.  The organization doesn’t really have higher goals and aspirations.  This isn’t about the best restaurant, or the finest food, or saving the most souls…  nope, it’s all about Jason or Casey.  How demeaning.

Also, notice that both of these guys have prominent photos on their site of them with their wives.  They seem to want to make it seem like a team thing.  Nicole Wilson is the first person listed in the “people” section of the Crush web site.  But it sure is Jason’s URL.  And Wendy Treat is all over their site: “Join Casey and Wendy Treat at…”.  The Treat’s try to make it sound like it’s their ministry, but it clearly is Casey’s web address.

And finally, what does this say about the lifespan of the organization?  Does the organization have any life without them?  If they die or move on (or get caught in some rancid sex scandal), does the organization die?  Restaurants come and go, so perhaps that’s just OK with Crush — without Jason, there is no Crush.  I bet his sous chef would like it to be different, but that may be OK with Jason.  However, I’m quite sure the many members of the Christian Faith Center don’t think their whole involvement with the organization is with Casey.  I’m sure most of them would still like to have a place of worship when Casey Treat is caught with a gay prostitute snorting meth…

So you can tell a lot about an organization from the outside, even from Google.  Best of all, you can tell who it’s all about.  Is that why the stars of huge business are Exxon Mobil, General Electric, CitiGroup, Bank of America, Chevron, IBM, etc., etc. and companies like Ford, Dell, Gillette, and Sears have lost their luster?  Hmmm…  interesting…

I was reading a very interesting note from Robert Scoble’s blog about business cards (Business card best practices) and it made me think.  Many of the things he talks about are great advice, and some of them are very cool.

A great example of “cool” is the famous card of Matt Mullenweg (founding developer of Wordpress — the software that powers CLWill.com) that said simply: 1) Go to Google, 2) Type in Matt, 3) Press “I’m Feeling Lucky”.  Very slick, and still works. [ed: try it with “clwill”, too]

Business cards are more than simply a way to communicate facts, they say an amazing amount about you, and the organization you work for.  I think the Japanese and Koreans have it right in their rituals and reverence for the exchange of business cards.  The guy who said on Scoble’s blog’s comments, “For an IT guy, business cards are strange relics of an analogue world” was simply wrong.  Just as with titles (see my FAQ entry here), business cards aren’t a remnant of yesteryear, and you treat them as such at your peril.  Even the most mole-like of dweebs meets people who want to know who they are.

This article made me think back about some of my business cards.  At one point I had kept every one I ever had over my career.  When I came across the three-ring binder of them a year or two ago, I realized it was time to move on.  So I threw them out.  All but my last one at MS.  I worked so hard for that darn thing, I just couldn’t see throwing it out.  So I saved a few.

That card was actually not bad, I think.  Clean, simple, direct.  Even though it violates Scoble’s rule #5, it doesn’t say what the company does, I think most people know Microsoft.  And it leaves a lot of white space, I wrote a lot of notes on those cards.

Reading this article also made me shudder, and pull one of my current cards out of my wallet.  Ouch…  need to work on that.  They look pretty, but they don’t say what I do, and they leave a vacant impression.  And the back is empty — a terrible waste of space.

The thing I remember most about bad business cards is what people choose to put on the back.  The front speaks loudly and clearly, but it is often the back that says the most.  And here, people struggle, and often fail.

Of course, if you do business in a couple of languages regularly, you should have two-sided cards, one in each language.  And if you work with the blind, braille cards are obvious.  But beyond that, people just seem to have a lot of trouble.

Some of the worst examples of the back of business cards are the ones that trumpet something silly like their ISO 9002 compliance status.  I am especially amused by ones that put the company’s vision or the company’s “values” on the back.  Some HR person thought that would be a good thing, but most of these statements are meaningless drivel (see my post here) or are very internally focused (”treat every customer with respect”).  I frankly hope you treat me with respect and don’t need to see a checklist on the back of your business card to remind you.

The back of some cards are actually useful for the recipient.  Like one with a map to the store.  Or a criminal lawyer’s card with your Miranda rights on it.  Or a reminder of your appointment with your proctologist.

Some of the best card backs are ones that echo important messages for the company.  Repeat marketing themes, or at least tell in clear, crisp terms what the company (and you) do.  This is wasted space for which some bright marketer can surely find an excellent use.

So, I know I have lots of work to do with my cards.  I’ll report back when I get my homework done.  How about you?

I had the privilege joy chore of taking the flight from Seoul to Seattle a couple of days ago.  If you haven’t had this fortune, it’s a 10 hour flight through 16 time zones where you arrive 6 hours before you left.  I’m not a good sleeper on planes so any of these long-haul, multi-timezone flights are hard.  This one was especially noteworthy, however.

We flew on Asiana Airlines, a Seoul based carrier that was a special treat.  Unlike their state-owned competitor, Korean Air Lines, they focus on the long-haul traveller and do it very well.  It is a formula that includes the latest planes (ours was a new Boeing 777-200), all the best amenities (like 110v and 220v outlets in each business-class seat), and very impressive service.  There were 13 attendants, plus a flight crew, on a flight I’m sure a US carrier would have had 6 people working.  At the start of the flight, the entire staff stands at the head of the aisle and bows to the passengers.  In business-class, they pampered us constantly with two three course meals, constant checking on our welfare, and genuine smiles.  You really got the impression they cared about you.

Which gets me around to the point of all this.  I really needed caring for on this flight.  Everything that could go wrong did.

While in Korea, I found I really enjoyed the food.  For some, kimchi and other native tastes require getting used to.  For me, I took to them immediately.  And Asiana offers two meal services: western and Korean.  So on the way back I tried the Korean fare.  Well my bibambop (sort of a rice and vegetable version of the Cold Stone “mix ins”) was stone cold.  Normally it is served quite hot, and my most recent experience at a fine Seoul eatery was served in an iron bowl that had to be 1100 degrees.  In this case it was not even warm.  But did I care?  How could I?  The service was so good, the attendants were there with more champagne, taking away empties, adding treats, etc. that I forgot it wasn’t perfect.

Then, within an hour of the start of the flight, my fancy 777 “wonder-chair”, the seat with a half-dozen motors, lumbar adjustments, and a “bed mode” simply stopped working.  Wouldn’t budge.  It had worked for a while, but suddenly there I was in my full upright and locked position.  Not the best way to spend 10 hours.  So I inquired of some assistance.

I was swarmed with help.  The head of cabin service eventually took my seat apart.  She was unable to get it to work as intended, but found all the manual controls, and adjusted it to my liking.  Throughout the balance of the flight I was checked on to be sure the seat was where I wanted it, and to apologize profusely for the failure.  At one point the assistant purser insisted that I get a nap, and graciously turned it into “bed mode”.  I actually slept on an airplane — a true feat for me.

My point in all this is that service really does matter.  And more to the point, outstanding service can make up for any number of problems in the product.  I’m sure that on a US carrier, I would have had someone who would have done something about my issues with the flight.  But I’m also sure they would have done it grudgingly, with a tone of “oh, great, now what’s your problem?”  On this flight, it was clear they really wanted to make me happy.  And it made all the difference.

Think about it.  Here I am, in a quite public forum, raving about an airline’s service.  But I had a terrible flight: cold food, a broken seat, and a video system that couldn’t have been more jumpy/flaky/noisy.  What do I remember?  The service.  The genuine kindness and concern of the employees.

I’m a customer of Asiana’s for life.  Next time I’m headed to Korea, or anywhere in Asia, I’m going to see if they fly there.

What does this say about your organization?  It says that service not only matters, is not only a good thing to have, but it may save you from a whole lot of other faults.  It may be the thing that makes that missed deadline, that faulty part, that little mistake go away.

And great service is about the only thing that makes customers-for-life.  People don’t become customers-for-life because of low prices.  If someone comes along with a lower price, they’re gone.  They don’t become customers-for-life because of a good product.  As soon as someone offers that same product, they’re vulnerable to switching.

People become customers-for-life because of other people.  They feel a connection, a relationship.  And they want to continue that relationship.  So do whatever it takes to make your organization care about its customers.  You may keep them forever.

With all the noise about the Hewlett-Packard board room scandal, resulting in the removal of their Chairman, Patricia Dunn, I wonder if it is making managers thinking about the spying they do on their own employees.

Patricia Dunn

Let’s be clear, I think what Dunn did was wrong.  She got upset at leaks around the removal of Carly Fiorina as CEO, and decided to hire a private investigator to find out who was talking to the press.  The PI used “pretexting” (pretending to be an authorized person) to get access to a wide range of phone records.  They looked at not only the board, but also reporters from BusinessWeek among other media outlets.

It’s not clear at this point whether this was a case of an overzealous PI, simply wanting to please a client, or an overzealous client pressuring a PI to “get me an answer, dammit”.  Not to pre-judge, but from everything I hear about Ms. Dunn, I’m leaning to the latter.

Whichever it turns out to be, the local district attorney has said they they are still deciding whether to file charges.  Ouch…

But this is an extreme case, and while I’m sure there are others many worse, I wonder how many cases like this there are routinely happening on a day-to-day basis.  I believe that spying on employees in one form or another has grown from being something you might consider doing in the case of a crisis to being simply a matter of daily life for some executives.

It doesn’t help that technology now makes this easy, from email logs to text messages to phone records.  This is, in fact, one place where the crime dramas on TV don’t exaggerate.  I know from both personal experience and technical knowledge that getting more detail about your electronic life than you ever dreamed imaginable is incredibly easy.  Again, no amount of hype can overstate the amount of data about you that lives on some server somewhere.  So the info is there, ripe for the picking.

I’ve worked with, around, and for some very driven people.  And I know that it takes remarkably little to get these people to overreact and want to poke and pry into almost any one’s life, at scary depths.  I’ve been in the position to tell these people “no”, or at least “you can’t be serious” more than a few times.  And others have told me stories that still keep me up at night about executives demanding (and almost getting) bank records, trailing people, even digging in their trash.  For their own employees for gosh sakes.  It’s really just sick.

Often this is cloaked under the “trust, but verify” mindset.  They think: “Sure I trust the people around me, but what harm is there in checking to make sure that trust is well placed?”  The harm is that it’s offensive, degrading, and often illegal.  It is not trust when you don’t trust the other person enough to believe them in the first place.  It is a lie to think that you trust someone and then feel like you have to check up on them.  If you don’t trust them, tell them your concerns.  If you do trust them, really trust them.

This entire discussion is well above and beyond the question of whether or not you should look through the company phone or internet records to see what your people are doing.  That’s a whole different kettle of fish, and one for another time.  After all there may be legitimate performance or legal reasons to do that.  And this also leaves out the complete question of external spying for corporate advantage — there definitely isn’t enough time for that topic.

But, please, please, if you find yourself or a peer thinking about spying (something that would typically involve a private investigator) on someone in your company, for any reason at all, stop them or call the cops.  If the activity is illegal let the police handle it, and if it’s not, find another way to solve the problem.

In the case of HP, I can’t help but thinking that if Dunn had simply sat down and had a 1-on-1 conversation with each of the board members, she wouldn’t have found her disgruntled one in a heartbeat.  And saved her job, her reputation, and the “HP Way”.

I just returned from a board meeting that was challenging.  It was challenging both in the issues that were being debated, but also in the behavior of one participant.  I’ve been in hundreds of meetings like it, and it makes me want to scream.

I love challenging subject matter.  Nothing is more fun than a group of bright people exploring complex issues and trying to come to a reasonable decision.  Even when the momentum is going against my position, it’s a treat to have the insights of others, and to work with the group dynamics to make progress on tough issues.  But the whole thing can go down the tubes through the efforts of just one person.

I’m a “glass half-full” kind of person.  I tend to be optimistic about things, tend to try to find the best in others, and tend to think everything will work out for the best.  But I have just as much respect for people who are “glass half-empty” kinds of people.  They tend to think things won’t work and that everyone is out to screw you.  Most of the ones I know are lawyers…  Generally, these people make a great match for people like me.  Together, we tend to find a reasonable middle groud — with the optimism to get it done, and the caution not to do something stupid in the process.

Then there are the “empty glass” people.  You know these people, they can’t imagine how or why it will work, don’t understand why we’d even consider doing that, and generally find fault in everything.  They want to think they are just cautious, glass half-empty people, but their glass is bone dry.  I’m sure there are people at the other end of the spectrum, who are encouragably optimistic, I just don’t see them in business meetings that often.

When the empty glass people are in your meeting, you can spot them immediately.  They second-guess everything, and nothing is ever right — even the coffee.  Beyond being just being another person to sway in the meeting, these people are more incidious.  They sap everyone’s energy, and end up sucking the life out of the group.  The optimists have to fight against an unreasonable position, and the pessimists find themselves having to defend the reasonable glass half-empty perspective, lest it be sucked entirely down the drain.

In my board meeting, the empty glass person was relentless.  She kept at it, with all her weapons.  She countered every comment, saw nothing positive in anything, and scoffed at reasonable attempts at compromise.  She, simply, made a fool of herself.

So, what do you do about them?  Well, if you are leader, it’s simple: just don’t invite them.  Avoid the risk and pain of having these people torpedo your meeting, and keep them off the roster.  Just like a bad employee, the whole organization will be better off if you just cut your losses early.

If you are unfortunate enough to merely be stuck in a meeting with one of these people, there’s little you can do.  Try to make them see reason, toss up arguments to combat their negativism.  But it usually doesn’t work.

So I go back to the lessons I learned from child-rearing.  More often than not, I find that ignoring them works.  If the rest of the meeting participants follow suit, they grow weary of pushing the rock up the hill, and stop.  With any luck, they will get so tired of it, they will decline the next meeting invite, and everyone will be better off.

While on a plane for hours a few days ago, I found myself drawn into the inflight “entertainment”.  Among some interesting fare (a classic Everybody Loves Raymond among other things) was the usual self-serving drivel from the airline, and a strange infomercial about a Marriott hotel in Florida.

It was a weird piece, several minutes long, devoid of any real information and filled with cliches.  I had seen it on the outbound flight, and it struck me as unusually sappy.  On the return I was overwhelmed.

As with any hotel propaganda, there were the required panning shots of the lobby, the pretty girl diving into the swimming pool, the enchanted couple gazing into each other’s eyes over plates of tiny morsels of food, and the family happier than any other you’ve ever seen after a long plane flight.  And the interview with the manager was insipid, with so much for me to love: “our outstanding personnel” and other ridiculous HR miscues.  But the thing that struck me the most was:

We pride ourselves in exceeding our customers’ expectations every day.

I’ve always had trouble with this whole concept of “exceeding your expectations”.  It was obviously created by marketing people from words that seem to sound good, but what does it mean?  Let’s examine it…

What are my expectations?  When I go to a nice hotel, I expect a clean room, a nice bed, no bedbugs, and quiet.  Hard to exceed those…  Hermedically clean?  Anechoically quiet?  Less than zero bedbugs?  OK, that’s simply being petty and splitting semantic hairs.

But, really, how do you consistently “exceed my expectations”?  Only by me expecting to be disappointed in the first place, or by having your market placement so far off base that you trick people.  Either of these are failures on the part of the company.

If I go to a Motel 6, I don’t expect Four Seasons level service.  So if I get it at a Motel 6, something’s wrong.  The Motel 6 is wasting money providing services to people who aren’t looking for them, and probably losing a boatload doing it.  And it’s impossible for the Four Seasons to exceed my expectations, because I expect them to be the best.  Anything less is a failure.

All of this plays hell with the employees.  It’s like saying: “set a really low bar for our customers then surprise the heck out of them by being competent.”  Expecting your employees to do daily slight of hand with their level service isn’t a good thing for business, it’s a sure path to frustrated and disgruntled people.

So, please, stop “exceeding my expectations”.  Just set a really high bar, and meet it every time.  Consistency is what matters, not the occasional random overshot.

Ford Five Hundred SEL

It’s a topic I cover at length in my upcoming book.  Sometimes you can tell a great deal about a company from distance, without even crossing the threshold.  I find it often in advertisements, press releases, and especially in products.  Today I found it in the total lack of creativity in the naming and design of a product.  From a company that is losing market share hand over fist.

I pulled up behind a car today that made me do a double take.  It was a large black four door sedan, with a strong hint of styling of the large Mercedes sedans.  I saw the badging that said “SEL” on the right trunk.  I thought…  hmmm that’s one I hadn’t seen, seems like it’s off for MB.  Actually kind of ugly.  Wonder what it is?

To my complete shock, it was a “Ford Five Hundred SEL“.  A Mercedes knock-off that Ford didn’t even have the creativity to name with some imagination.  If you know Mercedes, you know that throughout the 80’s and 90’s their top of the line sedan was the 500 SEL.  As if to avoid lawsuits, Ford decided not to call it the 500, but rather the “Five Hundred”.  But I’m not fooled, and clearly calling the model the “SEL” was no accident.

Mercedes Benz S500

Of course copying styles in the automotive world is nothing new, and one shouldn’t be surprised to see a million look-alike boxes wandering the highways these days.  But this level of clear duplication is far beyond the norm.  Not only does the car copy many of the styling cues, but they blatantly stole the name.  If Daimler-Chrysler’s lawyers aren’t all over this, they should be.

But, legal issues aside, the part that is so depressing to me is the signal this sends to the world, and especially to the employees of Ford.  It says, quite loudly and clearly: “we have run out of ideas, and we no longer really care enough to be creative”.  This is a sad commentary for a company who’s marketing tag line is “Bold Moves”, and who’s young Chairman appears in their own ads stressing how hard they are working to be innovative.

Also sad is that this lack of creativity is from a company with a long heritage of innovation.  From the early days and Henry’s clear vision for the Model T, to the exciting years of the Mustang, and even later with the original “slip-stream sedan” of the 80’s in the Taurus, the company has a history of leadership in many areas.  And now this…

Perhaps the saddest part of this is that, from all accounts, the Five Hundred is a very good car.  It got strong praise from the automotive press, car buyers liked it, and the ever hard to please Consumer Reports loved it.  The engineers did a great job with this car, it was the product naming and marketing team that simply gave up.  And the sales show it.  One clear sign is that I first noticed this car almost two years after introduction.  Another is that the car is selling so poorly that Ford has cut production of the car.

All of this must hit all parts of Ford.  Think of the production team sitting there excitedly at the internal introduction of the car, and it rolls out as an exact duplicate of the world’s most prestigious brand’s flagship car.  One can only imagine how depressed they would be, how demoralizing it would be to have the Chairman talking about “bold moves”, and then send you off to make copies.  Exactly how hard would the sales force work to sell a car with the highlight being: “well, it looks and is named exactly like a car that costs twice as much”?  And how much does the public believe in Ford when their flagship sedan is so much a contradiction from their loudly stated objective of “bold moves”?

This all must just make everyone at Ford so depressed.  I know it did me, and I don’t even work there.

Wells Fargo Newsletter

I’m a happy Wells Fargo customer.  And they send me an interesting email every now and then called their “Small Business Roundup®”.  It’s not a bad email newsletter, as these things go, so I generally give it a scan when it shows up.  This week was no exception.

The subject line was “It’s All About The People”.  Well, given my passion for the people side of the business world, I was eager to see what they had to say on the subject.

Perhaps there would be some words of wisdom about hiring and firing.  Maybe a nugget or two about managing teams.  Who knows, there might be a pearl or two about motivating your superstars.  The possibilites were endless.

Imagine my disappointment when the topics included:

• Feature Article: Outsourcing for Greater Efficiency
• Feature Article: Take Advantage of the Research Tax Credit
• Business Intelligence: Tapping Temps for Help
• Solutions: Turning to Interns for Low-cost Help
• Solutions: Bookkeeping and Accounting Outsourcing
• Work/Life Balance: The Benefits of Basic Savings Accounts

Wow.  I was dumbstruck.  Four of the six articles are about how to NOT use your employees, and one is about how to get a tax write-off when you do.  My favorite, however, is the one that somehow tries to equate savings accounts (that earn less than a two percent interest rate) to “work/life balance”.  This is the definition of self-serving useless advice.

Now, yes, I understand it’s a bank, not an HR consultancy.  And I admit perhaps I was hoping for too much.  But come on, a newsletter entitled “it’s all about the people” that is almost entirely focused on ways to avoid building and managing a quality team of people?  Even the most jaded person has to admit that’s beyond the pale.

I found that I had to buy a mattress today.  What fun.  After a wonderful shopping experience at a number of discount places that didn’t have what I wanted, but whose employees sure had plenty of attitude, I ended up back where I started: Macy*s — part of the Federated stores.

Buying a mattress is not a difficult task, but apparently selling me one is.  Especially if you want one right away.

Yes, I really want it today.  I’m driving a truck, and I need the mattress now, so, yes, I want one that’s in stock, and yes, I’ll drive to wherever your warehouse is to get it.  I know that’s not what you normally do, but I’m sure it’s a reasonable request.

You’re going to charge me $20 to pick it up?  Please, I understand delivery charges, but I have to pay you to let me drive to the middle of nowhere, deal with your surly warehouse person, and load it into my own truck while he stands and watches?  Oh…  my…  god…

But that’s not really the point.  As I went to buy the mattress, I needed to use the restroom, which is conveniently next to the employee break room.  I love these places.  There is no better place to understand a company’s culture than the break room.  Not only do you get to see employees when they are not “on stage”, but you also get to see all the silly things companies post for their employees’ eyes only.  Some day I’m going to do a book of photo essays on break rooms…

Macy*s break room did not disappoint.  Like many big company break rooms there is a bulletin board with all kinds of things posted: the obligatory EEOC and other government notices, tired handwritten signs about not leaving food around, and notices about company meetings that happened two months ago.  There were also very high quality signs from HR that advertised 800-numbers to call for issues or questions, and a number of employee signs selling various household items.  Nothing special here.

Best of all, however, were two huge (1′ by 3′) signs high on the walls, in bright Macy*s red and black.  One said “TEAM WINS”, a sentiment that I found later was plastered all over the warehouse as well.  I’m not sure if that means “let’s rack up some wins as a team” or “being a team is a winning strategy”.  I’m sure someone knows, but not many care.

The other huge sign said “YOU COUNT”.  Beyond the wishful thinking of the HR person who created that sign, I’m not sure at all what this one meant.  Yes, I know what it means: you are valuable, you make a difference.  But I’m not sure if that means anything to anyone at Macy*s.  The employees surely decide whether they count more by the company’s actions than by a big sign in the break room.

I went back to finalize the purchase, and found two people huddled around a computer terminal, trying in vain to get the system to complete the sale.  My zip code was recently changed, and the system kept telling them “cannot deliver to that zip code”.  But remember, I was picking it up, no delivery was involved.  Doesn’t matter…  the system wouldn’t complete the sale with that zip code.  And it wouldn’t accept my old zip code, because that didn’t match the city anymore.  After 15 minutes, and two more people offering advice, they finally ended up moving me to the address of the warehouse, and were able to complete the sale.  Let’s just hope the mattress doesn’t get recalled and they send the notice to their warehouse.

I’m sure the employees struggling with the ancient computer system would much rather have had the company focus on new computers than on signs for the break room.  And I know that, as the team of them struggled to conquer the lame system, not one of them felt like they “counted” to Federated.  I’m confident they were frustrated and dreaming of greener pastures elsewhere.  So much for fancy signs in the break room…

Right to the head of my observations on the importance of symbols to an organization marches the International Association of Machinists, District 751.  I’m not sure I could ever find a more perfect symbol of union’s gone wild than this one.

IAM Website

The IAM is the union that represents the bulk of the line labor at Boeing’s aircraft assembly plants.  This union is a key reason why Boeing’s employment see-saws from year to year, and was probably a key cause of the infamous billboards that read: “will the last one who leaves Seattle please turn out the lights” in the 1970’s. This union is famous for its hardcore stances, and its strikes at the expense of everyone involved, including their members.

Their website is symbolism enough, with the top “Job Info” links on the page being about what to do if you’re the “victim” of a job action or being warned of a layoff.  No, not about job training, or even joining the union, but rather “how did the company screw you today?”  Yes, that’s pretty good symbolism in itself.

IAM Sculpture

However, I had heard about the monuments in front of District 751 headquarters in Seattle for some time.  I just had to check them out for myself.  What I found was amazing.  Yes, they have a sculpture garden in front of the headquarters (where are your union dues today?).  And yes, one of them is of people actually working on an airplane.  Even better, it’s a man and a woman working — probably a nod to Rosie the Riviter of WWII fame.  Homage to a proud heritage of building some of the most amazing and world-changing machines to be sure.

IAM Monument

But the union saves their biggest and most elaborate monument to show their true colors.  The main monument on the site, the one with the American, state, and union flagpoles, and the one at center stage, it the most stunning.  This monument is not an homage to the workers and the incredible machines they build.  No, it is an homage to the striker.

The picture is hard to see, so let me guide you through the panels.  At the center is a pair of large “751″ symbols, above is a winged logo of the IAM, and behind are the three aforementioned flagpoles.  This is all good.

Mounument Panel

No, it’s the four panels on either side that are the clearest symbols (although not the best of photographs here).  The panels depict strikers carrying picket signs and gathered around a burn barrel.  For example, the leftmost panel (shown) has people carrying signs that read: “COLA”, “Paid Holidays”, “Seniority”, and “Union Shop”.  The second panel’s striker’s sign says “Hold the line 89″.  It is the panel to the far right that has the group gathered around the burn barrel.

What does it say about this organization when the most important monument is dedicated not to the good things that they do, not to the hard work of their thousands of members, and not to a spirit of cooperation and working together, but rather to how defiant they can be?  It’s like an homage to a six-year-old’s temper tantrum in the grocery store.

What it really speaks to is the mind set of the leaders of the union.  Here is a group of people who truly believe their finest hours have been not wins, but rather impasses.  They get their strength not as a group of leaders but rather as a mob.  Their top priorities are not really the welfare of their members as people, but maintenace of their union as a group.

I have strong opinions about unions, and I will say a great deal more about them in the future.  But I’m not sure I’ll ever say it as clearly as the IAM says it themself with this astounding monument.

I had the wonderful fortune to drive from Seattle to L.A. and back a couple of weeks ago.  You see a lot of nothing and do a lot of thinking in those 40 hours.  Spotted on a truck was this statement:

Providing customer solutions through trust and innovation.

OK, so now the quiz: what does this company do?  The answer is at the end (no peeking).  Your choices:

• Computer systems integration
• General freight handling
• Food services distribution
• Electrical contractor supply

I’m a huge believer in visions.  I think every organization and every project needs one.  You simply can’t have too much focus on a team — people really need to know what they are doing and why.  It’s not optional.  It’s so important the better part of a chapter of my upcoming book is devoted to it.

But quality is at least as important as quantity.  Just opening the corporate buzzword dictionary and choosing at random doesn’t work.  Take this example.  Please.

There just is nothing there.  What the heck does this mean?  How does this inspire?  What is a “customer solution”?  How does this help me do my job?  Can I make any decisions based on it?  What would I choose to do or not do based on this statement?  I have a lot more to say about visions, why they are important, and how to develop and use them.  But let’s just make one thing clear, this statement is worse than nothing.

If you are an employee at this company, this statement is painful.  Not only does it not mean anything, you can be sure it was rolled out with fanfare and lots of sincerity.  You probably sat there at the announcement and went “huh?”  You couldn’t believe what you were hearing.  You thought: “the CEO and his team spent months and how many thousands of consultant dollars to come up with this?  What a waste.”  You wondered why they didn’t put the energy into fixing the stupid products we sell, or the health care plan, or the silly payroll glitches, or heck, even the toilet in the bathroom.  You are deeply depressed.

This vision is worse than no vision.  At least with no vision, the employees don’t know the management team is a bunch of idiots.  As the old saying goes: better to say nothing and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Much more on visions to follow.  But in the mean time, your answer: it was a food services company.  They move boxes of Cheetohs from the warehouse to the grocery store.  Where are the “customer solutions” there?  What “innovation”?  Sheesh…

I needed some stamps and stopped into the post office today.  Miracle of miracles, there was no line.  At the counter she tells me “these new stamps have the ‘39 cents’ on them now.”  OK, I admit, I’m not strong enough to let that one pass: “well that ought to be good for a few weeks,” I said.  Those were the last words I got out in the next five minutes.

She gave me a history of stamp price increases in the last five years, a diatribe on GWBush’s stance on postal pensions, and a prediction on the future of the postal service’s finances.  The line behind me began to form; I simply wanted to buy two rolls of stamps.  It became increasingly uncomfortable.

Of course, the post office is where the term “going postal” originated, and like most stereotypes, it’s based in some elements of truth.  No, I didn’t expect her to whip out an uzi and start sawing us down, but it got me thinking about the messages all team members send to the outside world.

Most companies don’t think enough about the subtle (or even blatant, as above) messages their front-line people are giving to their customers.  Do the people touching their customers understand the vision for the company?  Do they agree with it?  Do they actively support it and work toward it?

Five uncomfortable minutes in the post office had me wondering what life was like well behind the counter, and in the lunch room.  From this quick encounter, I know I wouldn’t want to work there, and if given the choice, I wouldn’t shop there.  Are your people having the same effect?

For crying out loud, it is one of the most touchy yet most important elements of organizational culture.  I mean, holy f%&*ing christ, few things draw such a clear line between those that do, and those that don’t.  Of course, dumbs*&t, I mean cursing in the workplace

With the simultaneous resurgence of religous zealotry and the decrease in workplace formality, a conflict was inevitable.  Some workplaces are church-like in their genteel nature, and others sound like army bases or truck stops.  What’s a person to do?

Well, as in most things, there are a number of perspectives to consider.  Do you swear or not?  Does the workplace swear or not?  Should you try to change it (or you) one way or the other?  It’s really not that simple, is it?

And perhaps I’m not the most objective observer.  I’ve grown up in workplaces where cursing was not only acceptable, it seemed a badge of honor.  So I have a potty-mouth.  As you can guess, my wife loves it…  [not].  But I have learned, over the years to be a cursing chameleon, and I think that works.

My rule of thumb is not to let the first one slip, until I hear someone else offer it up.  Then I just try to tune my mouth to the surroundings.  If everyone uses profanity with every breath, I increase to about 50% of that level.  If the place is a church, I’ll be right there with them (unless I get my hand smacked by a stapler…  then all bets are off).  This seems to work, and doesn’t make me appear too much of an outsider.

But what if you don’t swear, think others shouldn’t either, and yet work where they do?  Should you try to change your little corner of the world?  Well, sure, if that’s your calling.  But prepared to be disappointed, ridiculed, and even ostracised for your efforts.

If you decide to take on the challenge of a curse-free workplace, you’re in for a tough job.  It is a deep part of culture and habit, and the mission won’t be easy.  Take it slow, make sure you’re on good solid footing otherwise, and quietly eat the elephant one bite at a time.

Pick a likely target and privately, quitely have go at the “you know, it wouldn’t hurt if you toned it down a bit” conversation.  Be sensible, be reasonable, and set your sights low.  Don’t make it a key issue, don’t wave your opinon in peoples’ faces, but over time just let everyone know you’d prefer a different style of speech.

And don’t be surprised if you get told how effing silly you’re being.