Employee Engagement

Trust is still a must

On the rant I mentioned yesterday. Maybe rant is a little strong. Letting of steam may be a bit fairer. Anyway, the post came across as an impassioned plea for more trust and transparency in the work place.

The guy was clearly frustrated, and he broke a few basic rules of social media netiquette by ‘SHOUTING’ a bit at unnamed individuals who in his eyes seem to get a kick out of  ‘being in the know’.

I was with him 100% in sentiment, but feared that his manner had the potential to undermine a very important debate, as well as create a negative perception among people that didn’t know him and thereby damaging his own personal equity.

I also feared that the naysayers could use the post to take a swipe at my beloved Yammer.

So I called him up for a chat. And guess what – I was beaten to it. A call from up on high had already been made to his boss, along the lines of “have you seen what this guy has written – how can he be trusted with sensitive information after writing something like that?”

Exactly as I feared. His rant had diverted attention away from the real issue and drawn attention to himself in a way that he had not intended or desired. Many people would have been put off by such a reaction and it would have been easy and forgivable to say “sod that, I’m not playing on Yammer again, it’s far too dangerous”.

Fortunately he didn’t. After a few hours of reflection he returned and apologised for his earlier rant, explaining how his passion for the company and his desire to see it be the best it can be lay behind his emotional plea.

He then went on to list the following reasons why he believes transparency in the workplace is a good thing:

  • It helps employees understand why
  • It allows for consistent messaging across the organization
  • It leads to faster, more efficient execution
  • It heals we/they divisiveness
  • It keeps good people from leaving
  • It facilitates the best possible solutions

That’s better! That’s what I call a proper contribution to a very important debate.

And it’s made even more compelling by the fact that it’s not from a text book on employee engagement or from the mouth of an organisational effectiveness guru.

It’s straight from the heart of a very engaged employee.

Trust is a must

Our Yammer network is growing by the day and as time passes my excitement about its potential for increasing the speed and quality of collaboration, knowledge sharing and innovation across the company rises.

So naturally I get very protective when something happens that potentially undermines our continued use of my new favourite application. One of the issues I know causes some discomfort among senior executives everywhere is the issue of trust and confidentiality. So one thing you don’t really want to see on Yammer is open discussion about commercially sensitive information that needs to be kept in a closed loop.

After many thousands of conversations and contributions on our network since it was brought to life last year I have yet to see anyone cross this boundary.

Actually this comes as no surprise to me. I have long believed that when you trust people to behave appropriately they do. Secrets fuel gossip, speculation & rumour, which quickly spreads around as people who feel excluded and unworthy probe and speculate. This can be very disruptive in any work place – and sooner or later they become open secrets in any event.

And because people have no stake in them (and they only have half the story) they are far more likely to say or ask something inappropriate in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In my experience the more stuff you try to hide, the greater the risk you run of it leaking out. On the other hand, if you treat people as adults and trust them with information, they will repay your trust and respect the need to exercise discretion and moderation when talking to the outside world.

Of course there are some things that need to be kept secret. But I think that too many companies have a tendency to overplay the secrecy card – and this can have a seriously detrimental effect on organisational culture and effectiveness.

One of the guys at work had a bit of a rant on Yammer a few days ago on this very subject.

More on this tomorrow. Trust me, it’s a good story…

Celebrate good times

I love celebrations. Last week we celebrated the company’s 10th birthday with cake, champagne and jelly beans at all of our offices in the UK and abroad. It was a real joy to see happy smiling faces everywhere as we celebrated a decade of incredible achievement. On 9 June 2000, Betfair ran its first market on the Oaks at Epsom, where £3,462 was traded between 36 customers, watched over by just a handful of staff. Ten years later the company employs over 2,000 people spread across 30 locations around the world, and deals with more daily transactions than every European stock exchange put together.

And for the next month we are celebrating the most amazing festival in the sporting calendar. We are at our core a sports betting company, so the World Cup is a big thing for us, and we have been preparing for it for years. It’s only fitting therefore that we have a bit of fun and pay homage to the 32 teams battling it out in South Africa.

While the media are banging on about the cost to employers of World Cup distraction as staff absenteeism and lack of attention rises incrementally in line with England’s success on the pitch, and companies ban access to footy websites and make the flying of the Cross of St George a disciplinary offence, we have been encouraged to fly the flag – and more.

Our offices have become a sea of colour, creativity and noise to reflect the energy, excitement and diversity of the World Cup. Our staff in London have self organised themselves into 34 teams and given their bits of the office a bit of a makeover. There are 34 teams because two non-qualifiers that narrowly missed out on a trip to South Africa, Ireland and Egypt wanted to get involved.

My team is representing the Cameroon. Which is great, because the Cameroon have a rich heritage when it comes to World Cup celebrations!

Don’t be fooled into thinking we are all just on one great big World Cup jolly. Au contraire, this is going to be a very busy month for everyone as we mobilise to meet the demands of dramatically increased customer activity.

However, I work for a company that recognises the importance of celebration as well as the value of having a bit of fun while your nosed is pressed firmly against the grindstone.

Don’t just sit there feeling hard done by – check out our current vacancies and get involved!

Profits, passion & purpose

Delivering Happiness officially hit the streets today – although it kind of feels like it has been out there and read by millions of us already. It deserves to be a major success if for no other reason than the extraordinary way in which it has been marketed over the last few months. It will be a best seller because never before has an author put so much heart and soul into launching a book.

I suspect it cost a few bob as well, but how much better to spend your marketing budget on delighting a legion of existing fans and admirers and leveraging their already enthusiastic advocacy, which has already resulted in 40 reviews on Amazon, 32 hits on Google News just today, and attracted pieces in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and CBS News.

So what is all the fuss about? Read the book and certainly in the early stages you encounter a pretty ordinary guy. If anything, an under achiever. A flighty, fidgety sort who seemed to lack focus and drive. As a teenager and young adult, he was far from being a model student and a worthy employee. To put it bluntly, his low boredom threshold and inventive ways to avoid doing work did little to point to the fact that he would become a multi-millionaire by his early twenties.

That should be pretty inspirational stuff for thousands of listless teenagers out there who think life is sooooooo unfair.

Like many successful entrepreneurs, Tony Hsieh was far more interested in finding ways to make money than to focus solely on his studies. He was making $200 a week from a mail order business making buttons at High School. And while his parents thought he was diligently practicing his violin for an hour every day, he was reading ‘Boy’s Life’ magazine behind his bedroom door whilst the rest of the house listened to a pre-recorded loop of him scratching away at the fiddle.

At Harvard he did as little academic work as possible, spending a lot more of his study time in bed than I ever did at Uni, and instead of working nights for one week every term at the local bakery to like I did to make ends meet, Hsieh was making considerably more from his late night fast food operation selling burgers and pizzas to his peers.

Somehow he graduated with a degree and got a very well paid job with Oracle. That did not last long as he found it tedious and unchallenging. His subsequent stint as a self employed web designer went much the same way.

All the time, Hseih was learning the importance of doing something you were excited by. So much so that a few years later when he sold his Link Exchange to Microsoft for a mere $265m, with a personal fortune of $41m, Hseih gave $8m back because he didn’t have the patience to wear his golden handcuffs for another few months. He had worked out that for him, following his passion was more rewarding that chasing the buck.

And then came Zappos. Having read the book I can see that Tony Hseih’s passion had very little to do with selling shoes. Online or offline. No – his passion is for driving human (and therefore corporate) performance through amazing customer service. It could have been furniture, whoopee cushions, griddle pans or fishing tackle. It just happened to be shoes. Aided by the inspiration of some people he met along the way.

What drives this man is the pursuit of happiness and the recognition (or is it faith?) that there is a proper commercial virtuous circle, where happy staff equals happy customers, equals happy shareholders.

Most companies focus their efforts on creating shareholder value. Tony Hsieh knows that very few people get out of bed in the morning to create shareholder value. A few companies flip this convention on its head and works their butts off the make their staff feel valued, empowered, trusted, respected and dare I say loved. This rubs off on customers big time. And so it’s pretty good for profits too.

If any of this resonates, you should read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. If you think it sounds like a load of old tosh, you should read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose.

What motivates you?

I bumped into this very clever video the other day. Actually, one of our engineers posted the link on Yammer – but that’s another story…

It’s a 10 minute presentation by Dan Pink, author of the much acclaimed Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which contains some really interesting insights drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation.

Most experts agree that money is never at the top of the list of factors which motivate people. Dan Pink agrees with this with one notable exception; higher pay equals better performance provided the job being performed involves only mechanical/repetitive tasks. Where work calls for anything beyond this, such as rudimentary cognitive skills, creativity and decision making, larger rewards can actually lead to poorer performance.

Personally I think there is a very simple sociological issue exposed here which does not get discussed. People who perform jobs that are very mechanical and repetitive tend to be less well paid.

Poorly paid people will respond to financial incentives. It’s blindingly simple. They need the money. People who routinely need to exercise their cognitive skills, creativity and make big decisions are by default paid much higher salaries. When you are paid a lot, financial incentives are far less compelling. They don’t need the money quite so much.

He does not exclude money completely as a work place motivator. If you don’t pay enough, people won’t be motivated. Pink’s fundamental premise is that provided you pay enough, and thereby take the issue of money off the table, then autonomy, mastery and purpose become the three main forces for motivation and engagement. I guess this is not inconsistent with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which most psychologists and sociologists seem to swear by.

The content of the video is very interesting in its own right, but what makes it a truly great find is the very clever and ever so engaging use of animation as an alternative to death by PowerPoint. I think they call it scribing, and a British company called Cognitive Media appear to be pioneering this stuff.

Honestly, it really works. Judging by the number of ‘likes’ and positive comments on the Yammer thread, people really enjoyed the experience. I found the technique quite riveting. Give it a bash; it is 10 minutes well invested if, like me, you are turned on by interesting new ways to communicate.

I was delighted to see Atlassian get a mention as well. Atlassian are right up there with Netflix and Zappos when it comes to promoting the importance of a strong company culture as a differentiator and source of genuine commercial advantage. In this context, Atlassian are held up as an example of the importance of autonomy at work.

Once a quarter, engineers at Atlassian are given 24 hours to work on whatever they want, with whoever they want, however they want. The only ask is at the end of the 24 hours they show the rest of the company what they have been up to. According to Dan Pink, that one day of “pure undiluted autonomy” has led to a whole array of fixes to existing software and a whole array of ideas for new products that otherwise would never have emerged. Instead of paying an innovation bonus, they take the view that “you probably want to do something interesting, let me just get out of your way.”

Google famously do the same with their 20% time and Yahoo call them Hack Days. I like!

Delivering Happiness

Next week sees the much anticipated publication of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a couple of advance copies a few weeks ago on the understanding that I would review the book on Riding the Ripple and give the other copy away to one of my readers. 

It’s a bit like being gifted tickets to Super Bowl on the understanding that I turn up for the game. Why would I not want to write about one of the people on planet earth that I most admire? 

As books go, I’ve read better. But as a real life example of how a very different kind of corporate culture can become the driver of unprecedented commercial success, it really doesn’t get better than this. 

Tony Hsieh is no literary genius; he is just a straight forward, straight talking chap who possesses bucket loads of intellect, emotional intelligence, drive and humility. 

Oh and he happens to be CEO of one of the last decade’s biggest internet sensations, Zappos.

On the face of it, Delivering Happiness is an archetypal story of rags to riches – and as a self confessed Sunday Times ‘How I made it’ addict for donkey’s years, I’ve read hundreds like it.

But actually I haven’t. I have never read anything quite like this before, because Tony Hsieh is a one-off. 

  • How many people do you know who would turn their back on trousering $8m in order to chase a passion?
  • How many CEOs do you know who’s core beliefs on human interaction are heavily influenced by the very tribal behaviour experienced in rave culture?
  • How many companies do you know that prefer to create interesting stories through delivering amazing customer experience instead of paying for PR?
  • How many companies do you know that rely on word of mouth and spend the money that other companies would spend on advertising on customer service?
  • How many companies do you know that communicate with their customers and staff at the same time, over the same channels? 

I will be examining these and other themes in the book over the next few weeks. For now I hope I have whetted your appetite for Delivering Happiness sufficiently that you’d like to take a shot at winning yourself a free copy. 

All you have to do is RT any tweet you see from me mentioning  Delivering Happiness and then DM me and tell me how many posts on Riding the Ripple mention Zappos, and how Tony Hsieh pronounces his surname – is it Shay, Sigh or Shy?

Alternatively you can just buy it on Amazon!

The art of corporate apology

My infatuation with Zappos reached new heights at the weekend. Nailed on to undermine morale, there is nothing worse than working in an environment where the grapevine consistently beats formal and informal communication channels, especially when things go wrong and there is no acknowledgement.

Too many companies operate in a climate of unnecessary secrecy, either in the belief that you can keep a lid on major foul ups (which you can’t) or because they have yet to learn the art of corporate apology. This applies equally to the internal and external audience by the way.

Internally, without acknowledgement there is no learning and the most powerful thing about making a mistake is the shared learning opportunity it presents. Honesty and openness when a clanger is dropped should contribute to that particular clanger not being dropped again. Ignore it – or God forbid try to cover it up and you will be punished. Maybe not immediately, but your time will come.

I’m very blessed to be working for a company that gets this, and whilst it may not quite be up there with Zappos, it’s not far off.

So, back to the incident/communication that prompted this outpouring of love and goodwill.

How does this rate for speed, transparency and humility in the face of a customer pricing mistake that cost the company a $1.6m loss in the space of 6 hours last Friday?

http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/inside-zappos/2010/05/21/6pm-com-pricing-mistake

It’s beautiful is it not?

Thou shalt not greenwash

Reading Dan Gray’s Live Long and Prosper this week re-ignited an intellectual debate that has been raging within my head for ages.

Can you preside over a truly sustainable brand if the focus of your corporate responsibility activity is not directly relevant to your own business strategy and operations?

Dan Gray says no way. His third commandment, “thou shalt not engage in greenwash” states that sustainable brands must integrate and serve those concerns that are directly relevant to their sphere of influence. They must focus their corporate responsibility activities on issues that are directly relevant to and most impacted by the business’ strategy and operations.

I can see the sense in this for most commercial undertakings. Oil companies should clean up after themselves if they make a mess. Chocolate manufacturers need to be careful where they source their palm oil from. Shoe shops don’t want to be buying stock from sweat shops employing 6 year old kids working 12 hour days for two bob. But no one is seriously questioning our right to put petrol in our Prius, a Lion bars in our belly or Twilights on our toes.

But what about tobacco companies? Fundamentally, their core business reduces the life expectancy of every one of their customers. Does this mean that the focus of their corporate responsibility activities has to be on finding a cure for lung cancer and providing medical assistance to those damaged by their products? The logical extension to this argument would be the only way for a tobacco company to create a sustainable brand would be to close down its operations and stop making cigarettes.

I’ve seen many good examples of companies engaging in corporate responsibility activities that are not directly relevant to their own operations that do not comprise greenwashing.  And I have seen many examples of companies who try a little too hard to leverage their community programmes to support their commercial activities, which to my mind is equally as cynical and potentially damaging as washing your greens.

Regardless of my issues with Dan Gray’s third commandment, it was a very insightful read and I’d thoroughly recommend anyone interested in this stuff to grab hold of a copy.

What will you do?

Together for LondonI quite like Transport for London’s current ad campaign, Together for London. It is aimed at passengers and using very simple graphics and clear concise messages, it sets out to get across the message that a little thought from each of us can make a big difference for everyone.

I wonder if they have an internal version of the same campaign?

There’s a train driver on the District Line who for me personifies employee engagement. I have had the pleasure of travelling on his train a few times recently.

Yes, pleasure!

Regulars on London Underground may think this is an odd thing to say. Tube trains are a means to an end – on a good day they get you from A to B. They are not noted for their comfort or hygiene and certainly not for their ability to lift one’s spirits.

Meet District Line Dave. I don’t know his real name, but he sounds like a Dave. Dave does not make customer announcements from the manual. I’m sure he says what he has to say. But it’s what he doesn’t have to say and does that makes Dave my hero. He adds a bit of humour and personality to his work. He doesn’t tell jokes, but he certainly raises passenger morale through a combination of charm and wit.

He tells the odd short story and he shares the odd pearl of wisdom. In doing so he brightens our lives. He connects total strangers who share knowing smiles, some of complete surprise and others of recognition and appreciation. The few times I’ve seen him, as alighting passengers walk past the drivers’ cab at Wimbledon they smile, wave and even queue up to talk to him.

I Googled Dave this evening expecting at least to find a Facebook fan site or something. All I found was a very recent piece in the Telegraph and an unnecessarily long video on YouTube. And still no clue to Dave’s real identity.

If I ever find myself on one of his trains again I promise I will make the effort to say hi and to thank him for being an example to us all of how bringing a bit more of yourself to work can brighten up the lives of those around us.

If anyone from TFL is listening, please give Dave a bit pat on the back. He is one of your greatest ambassadors!

Professional Development in Internal Communication

Not so long ago I completed an online survey at the invitation of Internal Communications (IC) recruiters extraordinaire VMA Group. Designed to gather independent information on salary benchmarks, skills requirements and key career development trends within the UK IC industry, the survey was completed by 250 senior IC practitioners. 

This evening I popped along to RIBA to see the survey results presented back to a posse of grim faced IC ninjas eager to find out how the industry has fared since the last survey in 2008. So what if anything has changed? 

Salaries have remained pretty static, with modest uplift at all levels broadly in line with inflation. Given the economic backdrop over the last 2 years I’d say this is a good sign for the industry.

 One of the most interesting changes was around reporting lines. Since 2008 the three notable changes are:

  • The number of Heads of IC reporting directly to the CEO has doubled, from 4% to 8%
  • A 10% increase in Heads of IC reporting to the Head of Marketing
  • A significant reduction (11%) in the amount of Heads of IC reporting to Corporate Communications

 Team size was interesting, in particular the fact that 25% of IC teams comprise just one person operating alone. There was no figure for 2008 to compare this figure against. I’ll ask VMA tomorrow if they have this.

Another interesting finding was the difference between the top 5 skills deficits as perceived by IC practitioners versus those of their employers: 

IC practitioners Employers
Coaching senior leadership Strategy setting
Social media development Coaching senior leadership
Change management Influencing
Influencing Writing
Strategy Setting IC theory

Interesting to see that Social media development does not feature in the employers’ wish list. Personally I think that this is a reflection on the relatively slow recognition of the game changing nature of social media channels and actually IC practitioners are ahead of the curve here. I’d expect to see it higher up this list in the next survey.

To finish off this whistle stop tour of the survey findings, what do you make of this one? In 2008, 19% of respondents felt that their senior executive team were key IC advocates. In 2010 that figure rises to 30%.

Could this be an indication that employee engagement and the role IC plays in increasing it has become progressively more recognised by senior executive teams as an important and relatively low cost differentiator of corporate performance during harsh economic times?

I’d like to think so, but then I would wouldn’t I!