Kindness.
Large Girl with No Eyes, Julian Schnabel
One of the keys to a good life and possibly success at work is kindness.
This includes not just being kind to other people but kind to oneself.
Often we spend our time regretting, self-flagellating, doubting our decisions and wondering if we can ever measure up especially in a world filled with standards and measures that are unattainable.
In today’s competitive marketplace of rapidly transforming landscapes and constant benchmarking we often forget that we are dealing not just with buyers, sellers, users, members, competitors, analysts, scientists, management and employees but with analog, carbon based, feeling filled people.
Humans.
Messy and Moody. Dream filled and desire driven.. Anxiously ambitious. Undulating with uncertainty.
Kindness is a way to connect in a world where connections are key.
But it not easy to model in an Excel spreadsheet, display in a PowerPoint , or be described with any depth by GPT.
The machine will rapidly compute an answer, garland it with perspective, refine and correlate what has been fed into its innards, and then emit an output in a dazzling display of verbosity.
Answers that may awe us.
But rarely move us.
Below are three takes on kindness. From GPT-4, author George Saunders, and poet Naomi Shihab Nye.
Take 1: GPT-4 on Kindness
Prompt: What is kindness?
Kindness is a type of behavior marked by acts of generosity, consideration, or concern for others, without expecting praise or reward. It is often considered a virtue and is recognized in many cultures and religions as an important value. Kindness can manifest in many ways, including but not limited to:
Helping others: This could involve assisting someone with their work, offering to carry heavy items, or helping someone cross the street. The act doesn't have to be grand to be kind.
Complimenting or praising someone: Words of affirmation can have a huge impact on someone's day. Complimenting someone genuinely can be a simple yet effective act of kindness.
Empathy and understanding: Kindness often involves understanding other people's perspectives and feelings. This could mean listening to someone when they're having a hard time, or refraining from judgment when someone makes a mistake.
Patience: Patience, especially when dealing with difficult people or situations, can be a significant act of kindness. It involves tempering your reaction, even when you're frustrated or angry.
Charitable giving: This is another classic example of kindness. Donating to a cause you believe in, volunteering your time, or even just offering someone a meal can all be acts of kindness.
Showing respect: Treating everyone with respect, regardless of their background or beliefs, is an act of kindness. This could involve simple things like saying "please" and "thank you," or more complex acts like promoting inclusivity and fairness.
In essence, kindness involves treating others the way you'd like to be treated. It's a simple concept but can have a profound impact on the world.
Take 2: Author George Saunders on kindness
The author George Saunders gave a short and remarkable speech on the importance of kindness which everyone should listen to.
A key theme is “to err in the direction of kindness”
Some key passages of his talk to students
“When young, we’re anxious — understandably — to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you — in particular you, of this generation — may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . .
And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.
Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.”
Later George was interviewed on this talk which went viral after it was posted in the New York Times on why kindness was important and here is what he said:
“Ninety-nine percent of the time if you just do your best to be kind, you’re better off. It’s the basic things, like trying to have good manners, keeping your assumptions about the other person a little open, being willing to revise your opinion.
Perhaps it’s all a self-fulfilled prophecy. We live in an unkind world because we believe it’s an unkind world.
The thing I’ve noticed is that if you go out into the world ready for confrontation, then confrontations find you. But if you go out with a sort of diffusing energy, the world reads that and feels more friendly toward you. So I think there’s a circular effect.
In the media and in our political rhetoric, we’re told don’t be a sucker, be firm, be strong, push back, they’re trying to get you. If you buy into that—even on a molecular level—the world smells it on you. Whereas—and here’s where it sounds corny—the world responds to you differently if you go out thinking, alright, I’m going to pretend that everybody out there is my brother or my sister, and if they are temporarily behaving like they’re not, I’m going to pretend that they’re just confused. I’m going to insist, through my mannerisms and my tone of voice, that I see them at their highest.”
Take 3: The poet Naomi Shihab Nye on kindness
Kindness.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye
Exponential Organizations!
Earlier this week (June 6, 2023), a new book called Exponential Organizations 2.0 by Salim Ismail, Peter Diamandis and Michael Malone was made available.
Every subscriber of this thought letter regardless of whether one is employed by a firm, self-employed, unemployed or even retired is likely to benefit by reading this book.
It will stretch your mind and make you re-think a lot of things about firms and work and the future. There will be parts that may surprise you and parts that may anger you. You may nod along and occasionally fly into rage wondering if the authors have tripped into the light fantastic.
The book is filled with examples, charts, data, and graphs and step by step exercises and recommendations that you will be able to leverage as you manage your career, your team, and your firm.
You can own it and read it now on any device that supports the Kindle app for only 99 cents here
The Changing Nature of a Firm.
Ronald Coase an economist from the University of Chicago won the Nobel Prize in part for his rationale that firms exist because internal transaction costs are lower than external transaction costs.
In short, despite internal bureaucracy and red tape and processes, large firms endured because no matter how bad the internal friction it was often less than the friction of negotiating and setting up each transaction necessary to get a job done with outside parties.
But then…
In the US in the three years beginning in February 2020, small establishments—locations with fewer than 250 employees—have hired 3.67 million more people than have been laid off or who quit. Larger establishments—those with 250 employees or more—have cut a net 800,000 job (and this was before the huge layoffs at the large tech companies). That is according to data from the government’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.
A combination of enabling technologies including mobile computing, new marketplaces (Amazon Web Services, Shopify, Upwork) that allow for easy access to scaled resources through an API, a changing work force (free-lancers will outnumber full time employees next year in the US) and new mindsets (76% of Gen-Z want to be their own boss) have made Coase’s law less relevant than it was before.
Now combine the changes we have lived through in the past two decades with the disruptions of Covid-19 and the huge emerging technology platform shifts driven by AI, AR/VR, Blockchain and 5G-- all of which massively empower individuals and small agile teams-- and the nature of firms will change.
Large firms will continue to endure because in many cases scale, capital and other resources are better allocated and utilized with such structures, but these firms will increasingly work in radical new ways which include becoming flatter, faster, enabling fewer and fewer full time employees than ever before.
In 2020, the Amsterdam based banking and financial company the ING Group with over a trillion dollars of assets decided the future was going to require much more autonomous ways of working and decided to develop a transformative new model. The asked each employee to re-apply for to the company if they were interested in the new ways of working which reduced the number of mangers, removed the ability to delegate tasks that you should do to others and required constant shapeshifting. Nearly one third of the employees quit and the following year ING delivered the same results with the remaining two thirds of employees.
Many firms have begun to realize that the future does not fit in the containers of the past and most organizations may have been built for yesterday rather than the very different challenges of today and the amazing opportunities of tomorrow.
The new firm will be an Exponential Organization 2.0 which the authors define as
A purpose-driven, agile, and scalable organization that uses accelerating technologies to digitize, dematerialize, democratize, and demonetize its products and services, resulting in a 10x performance increase over its non-ExO peers.
The Key Drivers of An Exponential Organization
The chart above is a map of the terrain that forms the Exponential Organization 2.0.
It all begins with a Massive Transformational Purpose which is defined as “the core reason for the firm’s existence. It is the foundation upon which all the company actions take place. It establishes a long-term goal for the company that is so sweeping and profound that it is always within reach yet always unreachable. It sets a moral foundation for all company interactions between stakeholders. It keeps the company disciplined and on target. It inspires employees and customers. And it galvanizes employee morale and retention.”
Here are some examples of MTP’s:
Google: Organize the world’s information.
Uber: Go anywhere. Get anything.
Danone: Bring health through food.
Spanx: Elevating Women.
It is key to determine a massive transformational purpose ( MTP) for an ongoing firm and should be something every new business should figure out at launch.
The other two factors that drive new organizational design are external facing ones (SCALE) which is how the firm connects with the outside world and internal facing ones which are the key factors that the firm should run the business internally (IDEAS).
Connecting Externally: SCALE
Staff On Demand: Projects should be staffed, and work done by putting together teams of pre-qualified workers hired on a as-need basis. These individuals could be self-employed, free-lance, procured from third parties such as Upwork and other contracting , or even full-time employees who are re-aggregated around the jobs that need to be done and then dissolve post the job. Think how talent comes together in Hollywood around a tv show or project or consultants move from assignment to assignment at a Bain or McKinsey depending on their skills and the assignment.
Community and Crowd: Communities are built around users, customers, alumni as well as vendors, suppliers and fans who are aligned with the massive transformational purpose who are granted special favors, given insider insights and forward look on future offerings and rewarded with gifts and trust. While they are not employees, they are pseudo employees, citizens of the firm’s larger community. Companies like Peloton and Apple of leveraged community from key developers to super and early fans. Community is often sourced from crowds. With most of the worlds 8 billion people connected online one can leverage crowds to grow a company and find community as TikTok did in entertainment and Kiva in finance and GoFundMe in fund raising.
Algorithms and AI: Both technologies allow for massive research, fast pattern matching, massive experimentation and more and will turbo-charge talent and company design.
Leveraged Assets: Increasingly companies will be asset light using APIs to access what they need when they need it whether it be compute power, manufacturing, or distribution. Cloud based computing is a common form of a leveraged asset.
Leveraged significantly reduce the need for capital, cost of carrying inventory and risk of obsolete technology.
Engagement: Engagement is the use of techniques like gamification, incentive prizes, and recently crypto economics like NFT’ s to keep stakeholders interested, involved and increasingly committed to a shared purpose. Examples include how Reddit uses its members to vote up or down on submitted content. It’s the classic example of reciprocity Engagement: if you share content you can access content which drives engagement of community and crowd.
Connecting Internally: IDEAS
Interfaces: Interfaces are the matching and filtering processes that allow a firm to translate the abundance of data into precise and meaningful information that can be acted on. For instance Shopify has created a number of interfaces that allow its customers to access all of its SCALE attributes which is it’s community, it’s AI, it’s external and internal talent and its assets so that an individual can find an eco-system of third party functions to help them sell as well as buyers for their products and services.
Dashboards: Dashboards are the internal and external presentation of real time objectives and key results (OKR’s) a company needs to operate. These include everything from leader boards and other data for users to internal metrics to drive the firm such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Life-Time Value (LTV), Margin, Churn, Net Promoter Score etc. These dashboards constantly allow a company to re-allocate resources, change marketing plans, re-price products and navigate the firm.
Experimentation: In a fast-changing world experimentation and iteration is the only way. Experimentation is a key to make data driven decisions even about innovation and creativity. By trying different approaches and A/B testing, measuring quickly, failing fast and honing and building on success a company can speed and scale rapidly.
Autonomy: Some of the biggest drawbacks of large organizations are bureaucracy where there are scores of people empowered to say no and very few who can say yes, decision makers far from the customer or the marketing battlefield and an entire ethos of giving “good meetings” and “butt covering” versus making shit happen. Autonomy challenges this via an approach characterized by self-organized, multi-disciplinary teams that operate with de-centralized authority all focusses on hitting the company OKR’s, Massive Transformational Purpose and Moonshots.
Social: Social technologies accelerate conversations and therefore learning cycles. These include communication tools like Slack, Zoom and Google Docs, collaboration tools like Asana and Jira and workflow management tools like Dropbox. There are ranges of tools from Canva a collaborative graphics tool to Miro board that allow virtual white boarding.
The Imperative of Transformation
We have entered the dawn of a new era whether one is a CEO, or an intern, a gig worker or an investor will need to twist themselves and their organization into new shapes to continue to thrive in the future.
The ability to exponentially grow is now possible for every person and firm where most external barriers, excuses and obstacles are being dissolved away and our ability to change will make us grow while staying the course will likely see us going the way of Blackberry, Kodak.
No great talent or company is defeated.
They defeat themselves.
By failing to change and adapt and re-invent.
Lamentations of the Modern Manager.
Worked so hard for this corner office with a view.
This wonderfully awe-inspiring room.
But instead of enjoying my due.
Have the same square footage as everyone else on Zoom.
As a manager we would monitor and check-in.
Now with everyone working anywhere that is in the dust bin.
Worked my way up the ladder as I grew grayer.
But now everybody wants to “de-layer”!
All these young folks are now so entitled.
They refuse to bend their knee to our high title.
Even worse than being in awe of us they boo!
Asking what value, we add and exactly do?
They would rather be their own boss.
And look at the decades we put in as a loss.
A deaf ear to our beliefs that expertise, craft and skill are like fine wine.
Which get honed and grow working with people over time.
Things were clear cut and everything in its place.
Now everything is fluid, as if we are drifting in space.
Everything is leaking into everything and exploding everywhere.
Commerce and media, offline and online, and only attention is rare.
Just when one came to grips with all this digital stuff.
Our knowledge of Web3 and AI we need to shine and buff.
All the information and data on pay and other secrets only we knew.
Now on Fishbowl, Glassdoor and LinkedIn are freely shared in full view.
We need to balance a world of hybrid and remote.
Cannot be a boss but a coach and on talent dote.
Align with DEI and ESG while being sensitive to taking a political side.
Should we fail to deliver the market will have our hide.
Managing used to be quite a sweet gig.
Delegated work as paychecks grew big.
But now to remain relevant we must constantly learn.
And many old tricks and processes we need to burn.
Boards announce big audacious goals.
Press releases sparkle with promises and roar.
But it is us who need to be great at our roles.
Otherwise, the stock will droop, and we will be out the door.
Now the challenges come from far and near.
One wrong move and there goes all the sales of beer.
How does one navigate and steer?
When there is so much that we must fear?
We must improvise and be agile.
Constantly adjust to a world that is volatile.
Yet our deliverables increase and thicken.
While deadlines and timetables we are given grow short and quicken.
We are the glue that connects the firm.
So why is everyone making us squirm?
They take us for granted and rare is the pay hike.
Maybe we should go on strike?
But if we do, will they go all Elon Musk?
Mow down everything leaving just husk?
Or will they transfer funds to Open AI?
Use GPT and Dall-e and wish us goodbye?
These questions linger and add to our stress.
Even though it is us who they need to clean their mess.
We need to stay stoic, brave and maintain a stiff upper lip.
And to continue to bravely captain the ship!
The Magic of Tech / The Complexity of Humans.
Technology is a form of magic that despite its downsides create more opportunities for more people and has done so on an ongoing basis.
In 2013 researchers at Oxford University predicted that modern computational technology including large language models would put 47% of all jobs at risk.
10 years later globally we have the lowest unemployment in decades with world-wide GDP and per capita income higher than ever.
Jobs lost. Jobs gained. But all jobs will be changed.
Modern computational and communication technology from mobility to the Internet has changed all jobs. Most of them significantly because of new ways to discover data, increase efficiency, attract new employees and talent, find new suppliers, and means of production or accept payments.
There are three big benefits new technology brings.
a) Efficiency usually through time and or cost savings: It saves time by automating tasks that are often mindless or requires going through large amounts of data. Often because automation can do more faster it saves money.
b) Effectiveness by doing things better or doing things that were impossible: Adobe Suit of tools allows for manipulation of images and video that were impossible. Modern special effects enables creating movies like Star Wars and Avatar.
c) Enablement of “God like Power”: The most powerful technologies give human’s “God Like Power”. Mobile phones enabled billions to be connected to each other, entertainment, and information all the time for the fraction of what one long distance call used to cost.
Take the current when it serves.
From “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare:
"We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."
If an individual or business does not wish to be more efficient, effective, and enabled and turns down the benefits of the new technology they are likely to be an individual who is less relevant, less successful, and likely to be out of a job.
There is no choice but to utilize the technology.
Technology has always enabled both the math/analytical/left brain part of work and the magic/creative/right brain part of work.
Excel made finance easier, and Word made writing easier.
PDF’s made publishing easier, and Adobe Photoshop made design easier.
Today GPT allows efficiency in telemarketing centers where AI assists in answering questions while Mid-Journey and Runway ML creates amazing new options for creativity.
A case can be made that jobs will be changed so much that we will be working at many jobs and the future is about work and not jobs.
The choice is in how one uses the technology.
To that end successful individuals and companies use different criteria to decide how much technology to use and where to use it and the most successful will marry the magic of tech with the mystery of humanity to differentiate, innovate and turbo-charge talent.
1) Differentiation: Over time most technologies become commoditized or are available to most businesses for an affordable price. Thus, while using the technology keeps one competitive there is more that is needed to be differentiated. It is differentiation that enables a company to gain market share or charge a higher price.
If two companies were competing and both fully automated their process there would be no difference between their products and services driving them to commodity pricing. A large part of the differentiation between firms is driven by the ideas, storytelling and creativity brought by the different talent to differentiate their company.
While Delta and American use the same technology (aircraft) and resources (airports), and operate under the same rules and regulations (FAA), Delta has been consistently higher rated and more profitable than American because of its talent and culture.
Apple uses production lines at FoxConn which many of their competitors also use and most of the raw materials are similar or purchased from competitors (screens from Samsung or LG) but it is design and branding and storytelling that allows Apple to become the most valuable company in the world.
Most marketing services companies like advertising and media agencies of a given size have access to exactly the same platforms and technology but they differentiate via focus (what they specialize in so they can build unique knowledge, data, or IP), by how they work (how various teams come together to develop solutions) and by level of service or range of capabilities (ability to understand and respond to client needs) and the quality of talent and partners.
2) Innovation: Machines tend to learn and optimize based on pre-sets of learning data or pre-programmed algorithms which do adapt but are often unable to recognize if the landscape has changed either due to competition or new customer needs and so it requires humans to identify these changes and develop new ways to re-program and direct the machines in production.
Most modern technology is an aid to innovation but is not innovative itself.
It was not microscopes and gene-editing technology that enabled a Nobel Prize in Medicine or access to a Particle Collider and Supercomputer that discovers new particles but institutions and talent who challenge the status quo, imagine new answers, and break the mold.
If a machine can enhance the outcome by either doing it cheaper or faster or better it would be a competitive challenge for any company not to optimize and allocate more work to automation especially if the work is repetitive, boring and does not enhance or build skills.
However, most firms whether they are in the product or service sector will always have humans in the mix because it is the mix of computing of robots and the dreams of humans, the logic of data driven, digital silicon objects and the mysteries of feeling driven, analog carbon based humans where new products, services, ideas and creativity will thrive.
3) People and talent will grow more important and not less important: The jobs least impacted by AI are jobs where there is a need for interaction with a person. Some of these involve dentistry or delivery or restaurant service.
Increasingly people will look for people to talk to, guide them, or enhance their experience. Remember how irritated one gets when one cannot reach a human in customer service? Phone trees and automation while they save costs can enrage much more than they engage.
Time after time, many industries from the medical field to the teaching field have tried to create assembly line, industrialized, technology timed and monitored models and doctors have quit, the best teachers have become dispirited.
Employee joy is critical for service, idea, and innovation and if one finds less purpose, meaning or growth in a job it will hurt the product or service. If people are a cog in the machine, they will find ways to hobble the machine.
Martin Sorrell who runs S4 an advertising firm that buys media recently was asked if S4's adoption of AI “super tools” will threaten jobs at the company, Sorrel said: “Automation poses risks all round but we don't know what those will be. We don't know whether AI will be a net generator or net destroyer of jobs. But the algorithm will be more effective than a 25-year-old media buyer.”
Martin was right in not being sure about AI;s impact on jobs though history suggests it will end up creating more jobs than it will destroy. And, yes an algorithm can be more effective than a 25 year old media buyer but recently a Japanese company replaced its CEO with an AI so technology may also be coming for more senior roles like Martin Sorrel’s then someone who has grown up comfortable with technology. And the reality is that the 25 year old media buyer will still be key because she will be working with the algorithm, modifying the algorithm and augmenting the algorithm versus being eaten by the algorithm.
If a company can replace a person completely with an algorithm their Client does not need the service firm since they can just tap into the algorithm! Which many will do where they can so there has to be other value than replacing people with machines. And every company will be shouting about their “super tools” and it will be a cacophony of noise and and a sea of claims with little differentiation.
Also imagine if you are a young talent why would you join a company where your CEO is hungering to replace you as soon as they can? ( Never mind the fact that 76% of Gen-Z want to work for themselves so the shortage will be getting these talented people to stay on board versus optimizing them away).
The world of media increasingly has been automated with all sorts of advertising and marketing technology and this has allowed for optimization of media that humans alone could not do but the total number of people working in the field has increased and not decreased because the world is not a static place.
As soon as one optimizes a certain type of media there is new break throughs in communication whether it be voice or connected TV’s or gaming which requires new tools, techniques and ideas and a way to integrate across them all and infuse all this optimized media with ideas.
Service businesses involve humans and to be human is to often be unpredictable, incomplete, illogical, and incomprehensible and no machine will be able to do things alone because humans do not compute!
We often make no sense and in it is the wonderful complexity of humanity.
We choose with our hearts and use numbers to justify what we just did. All the AI’s are being optimized for intelligence which is IQ that might in conversation sound like EQ but they do not have a heart.
Combining the magic of tech while embracing the complexity of humanity is will be the key to thriving in a transforming world.
Irresistible!
Mid Journey. Prompt…Imagine what irresistible looks like?
Josh Bersin is a legend in the world of Human Resources and Talent.
His four decade long career has spanned all the twists and turns and ups and downs of a career from studying to be an engineer at Cornell and Stanford, earning an MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California Berkeley to working for large companies such as IBM as well as smaller firms. Josh also has had the experience of being laid off which gave him the opportunity to began Bersin & Associates in 2001 an advisory firm focussed on corporate learning which expanded and grew and was bought by Deloitte in 2012. Josh spent 6 years at Deloitte before he began yet another career in launching the Josh Bersin Academy in 2019 to help develop HR and Learning professionals and in 2020 the Josh Bersin Company which today has 40 analysts and advisors who publish constantly, undertake research and help guide organizations through the transformations at work. And in Fall of 2022 he published Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the Most Enduring Employee Focussed Organizations.
What Next in the World of Talent?
I was lucky to have Josh as my guest on the latest episode of my What Next? podcast and it is a conversation that everyone who is interested in the future of work whether you are a CEO, a Human Resources professional and most importantly talent navigating your career should listen to!
Some highlights include the following insights and statements and this is just a sampling:
Companies will become their employees rather than the employees becoming the company as the future of talent is crafting jobs around skills of the people versus fitting people into jobs.
Too much emphasis on measurement can lead to reduced productivity as people work to hit goals versus doing the right thing and many times the goals can be counterproductive and can lead to significant damage to a company like Wells Fargo employees opening fake accounts since they were compensated on how many accounts they opened.
Many organizations compensation and reward models as well as management styles are broken being stuck in a world where people moved up a hierarchy, worked full-time in an office, stayed at a company for many years. In today’s environment when skills rather than tenure, unbundled and distributed work and side gigs and side-hustles permeate and careers last much longer than most companies it is management that is failing to transform themselves from bosses to coaches.
Focussing on employee experience and culture is even more important than customer experience and investor relationships. We discuss the ups and downs at two world class firms Starbucks and Microsoft and what we can all learn from them. And how in a world of AI the best companies will be Human Services Companies.
A conversation with Josh Bersin:
Listen wherever you can access podcast from Apple to Spotify. Here is the Spotify Link.
It will change the way you manage and grow yourself, your teams and your business.
The Seven Secrets of the World’s Most Enduring Employee-Focussed Companies.
I have been reading and re-reading Josh’s latest book and have marked it up a lot since it is chock full of examples, methods, approaches and stories on the big shifts all of us have to undertake to attract, retain and grow talent.
Here are the Seven Secrets ( which are in one way no longer secrets since Josh has published and shared them) but they are secrets in that too many companies remain oblivious of them or rather so many of us have the answers can be in front of our faces but we choose not to see or after seeing them refuse to accept them.
Teams not Hierarchy: Josh defines teams as “a highly interdependent group of people that comes together in a physical or virtual setting to plan work, solve problems, make decisions and review progress toward a specified goal”. In a world of work that needs Jazz like improvisation and agility versus Classical hierarchy and bureaucracy the team is the key to the future of work.
Work not Jobs: In a world where people work all around the world, some part time and some full time and where companies are delayering and reducing levels the future is not jobs to fill but work that needs to get done. Companies have to re-architect around skills, outcomes and work versus titles, layers and jobs.
Coach not Boss: Leaders will build and guide people helping them unleash their inner talents rather than monitor, oversee and evaluate them. These days leaders focus on zone of influence versus zone of control.
Culture not Rules: Culture is often mistaken by many companies to be about a place. So many corporate campuses particularly the tech companies were more about inculcating cult like behavior rather than cultures. Josh Bersin reminds us that while culture does include the work environment it is not just physical place, but also an environmental and a virtual experience. And in addition there are four other components of culture which include well-being, inclusion, recognition/reward and flexibility (optionality, agency and freedom). Focussing only or mainly on physical space and believing the “office” is where its at is rather outmoded, outdated and outlandish given where we are going in the future.
Growth not Promotion: Companies should find ways to grow people so they can up-skill, re-skill and adapt and learn to fill future needs instead of constantly trying to find the right skills for the job today which will change tomorrow. As companies focus on flexibility, teams and getting work done there is a significant amount of de-layering underway. Compensation aligned with levels, tenure and how many people one commands or the size of budgets one oversees is increasingly mis-aligned with being effective, efficient and evolving in an increasingly accelerating and fluid world. Talent needs to grow and re-invent so companies can grow and re-invent.
Purpose not Profits: Companies that succeed behave like good citizens and ensure well-being of employees, alignment with society and openness and inclusion. These build deeper relationships with their customers and consumers, stronger attraction and retention of talent and a more resilient eco-system of relationships with communities and suppliers. Focussing on these right things ends up building competitive advantages which lead to profits. To win a game focus on the ball and not the scoreboard.
Employee Experience not Output: Talent will grow more important in the future and not less important. AI will require not just great talent but increasingly the ability to be more human and the future will be about Human Services Companies. Great results, brands and much more will not be possible without employee joy driven by great employee experiences.
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