This is a video recently produced from a 10 city national team building and leadership development roll-out with Sonic Automotive. Sonic is an incredible company with a vision to develop the company culture – and in particular the systems and the leadership throughout the organization. Check out this engaging video synopsis of how experiential training helps Sonic to begin to infuse their culture with their most important driving characteristics.
A BIG thanks to Richard O’connor and the Regional F&I Directors for delivering the message and working with the Grand Dynamics team for these outstanding programs. Nice job Will and Stephanie on the facilitation – and to Stephanie for putting the video together. And to all the participants, YOU ROCK! Remember the Playbook, Conscious Leadership, and to transfer your Sonic – Grand Dynamics experience for positive personal and business results.
This type of program is what we (Grand Dynamics) refer to as a CULTURE INFUSION. – Tim
Here is my next alpine climbing objective. The mountain is called the Mooses Tooth and the primary objective is a route called Ham and Eggs. It is the centralcouloir in the photo below. The couloir itself is 2,500 feet to the exit point, with another 600 feet up the wild ridgline to the true summit, for about 3,000 vertical feet of climbing. The route is know to be a classic difficult Alaska test piece that combines snow, ice and mixed climbing in a wild remote location. I have a ton to share about the climb, the training and the process I have gone through since i committed to climb this route on Wednesday, January 20th. My climbing partner is Gary Falk. It’s go time. – Tim
I recentely delivered a “Behind the Magic Curtain” Customer Service Action Seminar for businesses in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Part of the 4 hour seminar included a segment on leadership styles and emotions. Check out this awesome South West clip – this was the third video clip I shared about Leadership, Managing Emotions and Customer Service.
How do you think it relates? — Posted by Tim Walther
Professor David Guest at King’s College, who analysed the survey, says: “A key theme to emerge from the survey is that the notion of employee engagement is more important than ever and is set to be the big issue for 2009 and beyond. Redundancies, more assertive management, and cuts in pay and training are all likely to impact on levels of employee engagement.”
Here’s is the full article. What you will find, is that employee engagment is critical. When you are ready to improve employee engagment, contact Grand Dynamics! Enjoy. – Tim
City law firm Speechly Bircham has teamed up with King’s College London HRM Learning Board to conduct a survey of senior HR managers. The survey paints a challenging picture for UK businesses; it reveals the damage caused by the economic downturn to employee engagement with stress and claims of bullying and harassment on the increase, while pay, bonuses and training budgets are being cut.
The survey shows that, despite widespread workforce reductions continuing, 28% of organisations are still experiencing staff shortages. Interestingly when asked about the criteria for selecting people for redundancy, an employee’s absence record was cited as one of the top criteria. Maintaining employee engagement is cited as the biggest challenge facing bosses.
Reductions in pay and training budgets: 36% of respondents reported a reduction in the size of pay increases, with 33% having reduced the number of staff receiving a bonus and 45% reducing the size of the bonus pool; while 37% reported a reduction in training and development budgets.
Commenting on the findings, Richard Martin, employment partner at Speechly Bircham, said:
“Employers need to realise that although their immediate reaction may be to cut bonuses and pay pools, they do still need to invest in the safeguarding of their talent long-term.”
“One way they can do this is to try, wherever possible, to maintain existing training and development programmes, as cutting back on training will only bite back in the future when they are faced with a glut of underdeveloped staff. The ongoing need for specialist skills is particularly pertinent given the UK’s longstanding, wider skills crisis. The report identifies talent management as a key concern going forward as well as ongoing problems with a shortage of skilled staff. There is an obvious disconnect between a skills shortage on the one hand and a cut in training budgets on the other.”
Increasing workplace problems: 29% of senior HR managers reported an increase in levels of stress among employees, and almost a third of respondents reported an increase in employee relations problems including bullying, stress and harassment. Despite this, 25% reported a reduction in levels of sickness absence.
Richard Martin comments: “This is a clear rejection of the Benylin advert! While an increase in stress might usually be reflected in higher levels of sickness absence, staff appear to be more reluctant to take time off as they rightly realise this may expose them to greater risk in cutback programmes.”
“Employers need to be wary, however, of taking into account sickness absence caused by stress resulting from workforce bullying and harassment or they may be faced with claims.”
Redundancies and staff shortages: 42% of businesses reported redundancies in the past year, and of them, 80% had used compulsory redundancy. Despite this, 28% said they were still experiencing staff shortages – and that the problem lies in finding staff with specific qualifications/skills.
The effect of a trade union presence on grievances: Senior HR managers responding to the survey felt that, looking ahead to the next twelve months, the factor that makes the greatest difference to a rise in grievances is whether or not there is a trade union presence. 33% of those with a union presence expect an increase in the number of grievances compared with about 18% per cent of those with other forms of employee representation or no representation. This is particularly surprising as a union presence is not associated with the rise in grievances in the previous 12 months.
Tougher management and an increase in grievances: 29% of respondents reported an increase in grievances over the past year; 23% expect more to come in 2009. The main grievance issues cited were relations with senior and line management (18.5%) and bullying and harassment (15%). In the coming year, an 11% increase is expected in grievances associated with pay and conditions.
Richard explains: “There seems to be a real concern about grievances escalating considerably at a time when employee engagement is cited as a major concern. With the abolition of the statutory dispute resolution procedures as of April 2009, employers will have to continue to devote energy and attention to their internal dispute resolution processes. Managers must realise that aggressive management is not always the way to drive efficiencies across a business.”
“What is encouraging is that 42% of those who had made staff redundant in the past year, engaged in some form of collective consultation.”
Major business challenges: The top HR challenges for the next year are seen as: maintaining employee engagement (cited by a huge 58%), succession planning (44%), talent management (38%), managing redundancies (35%) and, perhaps surprisingly, managing growth and expansion (31%).
Professor David Guest at King’s College, who analysed the survey, says: “A key theme to emerge from the survey is that the notion of employee engagement is more important than ever and is set to be the big issue for 2009 and beyond. Redundancies, more assertive management, and cuts in pay and training are all likely to impact on levels of employee engagement.”
Recruitment decline: Half of all respondents said that there had been a decrease in general recruitment. However, interestingly only 17% reported a decrease in recruiting graduates.
Richard Martin explains: “In past recessions, one of the first steps taken was to cut graduate recruitment. When the economy recovered, employers realised they had missed out on a generation coming through the ranks. Employers appear to have learned their lesson and are maintaining at least some graduate recruitment for the moment.”
Impact on HR departments: The downturn has not hit HR departments themselves disproportionately – 25% say they have actually increased headcount over the past 12 months. Restructuring of HR departments continues apace. 38% had restructured in the previous year and 31% expect to do so in the next year.
Professor David Guest comments: “Contrary to expectations in such a volatile environment, is that a remarkable number of HR functions are satisfied with how they are able to influence their organisations and the support they receive. This would appear to be a good news story for HR professionals, who have sometimes been seen as the poor relation when compared to other functional areas.”
Stuart Woollard, Managing Director of King’s HRM Learning Board and co-author of the survey report comments:
“It is evident that organisations are facing serious workforce issues that are a direct fallout from the current economic environment. There are clear challenges here for management to grasp quickly and act upon to avoid damaging any strategy to ‘ride the recession’. Fortunately, HR functions appear to be anticipating potential problems such as disengaged employees and the impact of stress, which if left unchecked may have significant additional cost and performance implications for staff and businesses.”
“However, it will be interesting to see if HR can push these to the top of management agendas. HR functions will need to play a central role to drive actions that mitigate the negative outcomes that arise from this recession and help their organisations create a stable and engaged workforce that will take them through and beyond this exceptionally challenging period.”
Notes to editors
Riding the Recession? The state of HR in the current economic downturn is one of the most comprehensive surveys to date on the effect of the downturn on employers and their staff. The questionnaire was distributed to approximately 5,000 predominantly private sector senior HR managers in November 2008. 329 responses were received by early December in time for analysis. A large majority of the respondents hold the title of Human Resource Director or Head of HR. The data was analysed by Mike Clinton, David Guest and Stuart Woollard at King’s.
Speechly Bircham’s Employment group is a leading employment law practice meeting the diverse needs of a broad range of employer and senior employee clients. The employer clients include public and private companies, partnerships and other organisations, based in the UK and overseas, across a wide range of business and professional sectors, with a strong focus on financial services. The team handles sensitive and complex issues across the spectrum of the employment relationship. The group has specialist expertise concerning immigration issues and works closely with the firm’s pension and employee benefit teams. The team is highly regarded for its experienced, discreet and practical approach.
King’s HRM Learning Board is a world leader in providing effective and meaningful links between academia and the HR community. It provides a focus for mutually beneficial and productive long-term partnerships, bringing together academic experts and key leaders and professionals from industry and government. The Learning Board is a conduit to the latest global thinking, research, and learning in organisational analysis and HR management. It also enables access to the unique talent pool of academics, researchers and HRM students at King’s.
Here is a bit of a start of the Self Actualization series of blog postings. Self Actualization was part of my intensive research from 2004-2007, which I am now revisiting and interweaving with individual and organizational happiness, and happiness consulting concepts. Out of that same time period cam my book Seeking True North. I am finding that so many concepts I have been studying are juxtaposing. Namely: Happiness, Emotional Intelligence, Self Actualization and living to one’s true potential. I excited for what the future holds!
SELF ACTUALIZATION
“Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is.” Abraham Maslow Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people. The characteristics listed here are the results of 20 years of study of people who had the “full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc..” Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem.
Maslow’s Basic Principles:
1. The normal personality is characterized by unity, integration, consistency, and coherence. Organization is the natural state, and disorganization is pathological.
2. The organism can be analyzed by differentiating its parts, but no part can be studied in isolation. The whole functions according to laws that cannot be found in the parts.
3. The organism has one sovereign drive, that of self-actualization. People strive continuously to realize their inherent potential by whatever avenues are open to them.
4. The influence of the external environment on normal development is minimal. The organism’s potential, if allowed to unfold by an appropriate environment, will produce a healthy, integrated personality.
5. The comprehensive study of one person is more useful than the extensive investigation, in many people, of an isolated psychological function.
6. The salvation of the human being is not to be found in either behaviorism or in psychoanalysis, (which deals with only the darker, meaner half of the individual). We must deal with the questions of value, individuality, consciousness, purpose, ethics and the higher reaches of human nature.
7. Man is basically good not evil.
8. Psychopathology generally results from the denial, frustration or twisting of our essential nature.
9. Therapy of any sort, is a means of restoring a person to the path of self-actualization and development along the lines dictated by their inner nature.
10. When the four basic needs have been satisfied, the growth need or self-actualization need arises: A new discontent and restlessness will develop unless the individual is doing what he individually is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write–in short, what people can be they must be.
Emotional Intelligence and Experiential Training and Development -
Published in the Association for Experiential Education “Horizon” Newsletter
By Tim Walther, M.S.
As Experiential Training and Development practitioners, we all understand and value the importance of “soft skills” training. This synopsis provides an overview of Emotional Intelligence as it relates to Experiential Training and Development.
Experiential Training and Development (ETD) practitioners understand and value the importance of “soft skills” training. As practitioners, we intuitively know that experiential methods develop these skills, often very quickly. However, by their very definition, “soft skills” are hard to measure. Without such measures, we as trainers lack the data to develop business model for selling such trainings to skeptical front line managers, human resource directors, and other key corporate decision makers. “Where is my return on investment?” is what you know they are thinking.
One excellent measure of soft skills that has emerged in today’s training and development research is emotional intelligence (EI). EI research provides the ETD practitioner an opportunity for assessing areas of ETD programming and tracking the results. Detailed in leading publications, including the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal, and recognized by training and development experts world wide, EI has literally redefined what it takes to be effective in the workplace.
What is Emotional Intelligence? There are two primary models that have surfaced in the realm of EI: the Goleman model and the BarOn Model. Goleman’s model identifies four strategic areas: awareness of self (emotionally); awareness of others’ emotional states; management of self; and management of other’s emotional states. Dr. Reuven Baron defines EI as “an array of personal, emotional and social competencies and skills that influence one’s abilities to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures.” A competency may be defined as a personal trait or set of habits that lead to more effective or superior job performance. BarOn has identified EI competency areas, each with sub-constructs, to include intra-personal, interpersonal, stress management, adaptability and mood competencies.
Today’s business is unlike the previous decades. Everything happens in real-time. Other factors that have emerged in today’s business world include globalization, technology, speed, competition, decreased organizational hierarchy, a shift from management to leadership and employee retention challenges. Businesses today now require innovative training and development solutions that not only impact the bottom line, but provide valuable employee incentive as well. While technical competency and cognitive ability are important for today’s business person to be successful, it simply isn’t enough anymore. It is simply an occupational hurdle – an expectation that today’s corporate professional already has these skills and abilities. Where research is showing a big difference is in identifying those professionals with low EI and high EI. And everywhere that research has been conducted, the professionals with higher EI are running circles a round those without strong emotional competencies.
Fortunately, it has been shown that EI, unlike IQ, can be learned. Furthermore, research indicates that experiential training is a particularly effective method for developing EI. Properly designed and ongoing EBTD training and development focused on developing specific EI competencies will have valued, lasting impact.
How is EI Measured? The BarOn EQ-i is a current measure of choice for emotional intelligence.
Normed on over 60,000 people in thirty countries, the EQ-i is a paper and pencil test that has 133 brief items and a 5-point Likert response set. It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. The test has been used to predict successful job performers, including Air Force recruiters, district managers in a large automotive corporation, middle manager insurance sales persons, non-college educated successful businesspersons, and upper level financial consultants for one of the Big 6 consulting firms, as well as aggressive behavior in the police force. Employees who are selected using the BarOn EQ-I show greater productivity, reduced turnover and consistently out perform their co-workers. (EQ-I Technical Manual, Baron, 1999).
For the ETD practitioner of the future, Emotion Intelligence assessment tools and training and development applications certainly deserve attention. Focusing soft skill development toward specific EI competencies can lead to great advances in demonstrating the efficacy of ETD programming. At last, we may have the answers we have been looking for, and a process for addressing those age-old questions of the efficacy of soft skill training. For more information on the emotional intelligence assessment and training, contact Grand Dynamics at info@granddynamics.com
Tim Walther, M.S. is the President of Grand Dynamics, Inc., a training and development company specializing in corporate retreats, business consulting and health and wellness services. Grand Dynamics is based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Tim holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Business Psychology and a Masters in Experiential Education focused on organizational development and leadership applications. Grand Dynamics provides a variety of services incorporating the use of Emotional Intelligence as a platform for increasing personal and professional performance for individuals, teams and organizations. For more information, you can contact Tim Walther at tim@granddynamics.com or call 307-733-1989.
This article was published in the Association for Experiential Education Newsletter, Horizon, Fall 2002.
Here are excerpts from an article in which Grand Dynamics was featured in the New York Times. The topic: Return on Investment of outdoor Team Building and Leadership Development and statistical evidence that outdoor team building pays off! The reference to Grand Dynamics is at the bottom of the article and I have pasted it at the top for quick reference to the ROI. The remainder of the article is available below. Enjoy!
One trade group claims it has found statistical evidence that outdoor team-building exercises pay off. The Construction Financial Management Association in Princeton, N.J., which represents 7,000 financial professionals, has held annual retreats for new chapter presidents in Jackson Hole, Wyo., since 1995. It asked Grand Dynamics, a consulting firm, to create exercises based on the best sellers “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson, on workplace change, and “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
William Schwab, the association’s chief executive, said 27 chapter presidents who attended four out of six years had a net annual membership growth rate of more than 10 percent and a membership renewal rate of 81 percent, compared with the average renewal rate for associations of 75 percent. He said 34 chapter presidents who never attended had a 19 percent membership loss in that time.
“Without a doubt, we’ve been able to map our chapters’ development based on whether or not the chapter president went through this experience,” Mr. Schwab said.
Excerpted from an article by SHARON MCDONNELL, NY Times, Late Edition – Final, Section C, Page 7, Column 3 June 23, 2005
August 23, 2005
Team-Building With a Twist
By SHARON McDONNELL
It was the waiter’s missing shirt button, and the tattoo of a snake and a lizard on his bicep, that clinched it.
Fifteen employees, from managers to plant workers, of the Gates Corporation, a Denver maker of automotive and industrial rubber belts and hoses, had already lifted fingerprints near the chalk outlines of two bodies in an alley and a parking garage and found clues like hair, blood, the steak-knife murder weapon and notes about the killings.
Then, over dinner in a restaurant, one of them remarked that the waiter’s appearance matched evidence that they had gathered during the day. So the group asked Tim D. Keck, a consultant and retired police chief who was leading the exercise during a quarterly team-building conference in Poplar Bluff, Mo., the location of a company plant, to “arrest” him.
Corporate trainers have always had a knack for coming up with offbeat exercises to teach teamwork and build leadership skills. Rope courses and other military-inspired Outward Bound-like tests of endurance have been around for decades. But in the last few years, there has been a shift away from physically demanding and intensely competitive exercises toward more creative and cerebral undertakings, according to the American Society for Training and Development in Alexandria, Va.
The new wave of team-building adventures varies from cooking contests à la “Iron Chef” and arts-related activities like playing percussion instruments, staging plays and dancing to outside ventures like sailing and crime scene investigating.
“The fact these activities are colorful and different often makes them suspect and controversial, but they can be perfectly legitimate if they achieve a strategic business objective,” said Patricia A. Galagan, vice president for content at the society.
Some employees have become believers. “It really helped with thinking and brainstorming, and being observant,” said Clover Stout, a health, safety and environmental protection specialist at Gates, of the mock detective work that began at the Gates plant and fanned out into the town. “At the beginning, nobody wanted to share information – there really was a competition on who could find the clue first. Then we had to work with the other team, and everyone huddled up to share information, and the competition aspect started to go away.”
William E. Oden, Mr. Keck’s partner at Performance Insights, a consulting firm in Tulsa, Okla., says the exercise, which they developed just last year and call “C.S.I.: You,” is by far their most popular. “Nice-looking people from middle management are crawling through Dumpsters,” he said. “We had no idea how much people like that. Some men call afterward and ask if their wives can come.”
But TV provides more than grist for titles. The craze for reality shows like “Survivor” and “Fear Factor” has fanned the public’s interest in interactive challenges and is a boon to the business, in the view of Sally Mertes-Stone, who has offered grape-stomping as a team-building activity for nearly 15 years as the spa fitness and activities supervisor at the Fairmont Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa in Sonoma, Calif.
Peggy Wilson recalls how frenzied the competition got when about 90 General Mills managers grape-stomped in May on a lawn at the Fairmont, one pair at a time. One person in bare feet would stomp the grapes in a redwood barrel, while the other frantically directed the liquid through a spout in a bid to produce the most juice.
“You really had to stand back,” said Ms. Wilson, an executive administrative assistant in the manufacturing division. “I’m not saying it was enough to draw blood, but some people will do just about anything to win.”
Team-building activities can also have a democratizing effect among staffers; Ms. Mertes-Stone recalls how the owner of a national hotel chain, then in his 80’s, squeezed into a barrel with some of his managers. “After he finished, he took a swig,” she said. “When the C.E.O. and his top people are doing the same thing, it’s a great equalizer.”
Some skeptics feel these exercises have gone too far. Dr. Kenneth Sole, a social psychologist and president of the organizational-change consulting firm Sole & Associates in Durham, N.H., says he does not think such exercises do much good. “There is no need to learn from the ‘analogy’ that we might draw from activities that are far afield, both literally and figuratively,” Dr. Sole said. “Such approaches have the effect of contributing to the avoidance of important issues that people often confront in their efforts to become a successful team.”
But proponents of such off-site team-building activities say they do work, if done right. To be effective, these specialists say, they should teach useful skills like communication, trust-building, collaboration and risk-taking in experiences with clear parallels to workplace situations; they should set specific goals for teams, which should consist of people who work together, not of randomly assigned employees; and they should include “debriefing” sessions to reinforce the business lessons and insights learned.
One trade group claims it has found statistical evidence that outdoor team-building exercises pay off. The Construction Financial Management Association in Princeton, N.J., which represents 7,000 financial professionals, has held annual retreats for new chapter presidents in Jackson Hole, Wyo., since 1995. It asked Grand Dynamics, a consulting firm, to create exercises based on the best sellers “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson, on workplace change, and “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey.
William Schwab, the association’s chief executive, said 27 chapter presidents who attended four out of six years had a net annual membership growth rate of more than 10 percent and a membership renewal rate of 81 percent, compared with the average renewal rate for associations of 75 percent. He said 34 chapter presidents who never attended had a 19 percent membership loss in that time.
“Without a doubt, we’ve been able to map our chapters’ development based on whether or not the chapter president went through this experience,” Mr. Schwab said.
Did you know that in 1908 Bike Polo was almost an olympic sport!?! Well check out this youtube video to learn more about bike polo. This is a new activity that GDI is considering offering to our corporate clients this year. To start out the clients would first build the bikes and then learn the rules of the game. They would than play the game and donate the bikes after to a local charity as part of their CSR program. Hope you enjoy
I’v always wondered when this amenity would finally come through. Leave it to the UK to get this ball rolling!
The Holiday Inn has decided to hire human bed warmers to help guests get a good night’s sleep. These employees, dressed in all-in-one sleeper suits, will actually climb into your hotel bed before you in order to warm it up!
This could help restless business travelers and vacationers slip into slumber, according to Dr. Chris Idzikowski of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre.
“There’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop. The decline occurs partly because the blood vessels of the hands, face and feet open up and release heat,” he told The Press Association. “A warm bed is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep. Holiday Inn’s new bed warmers service should help people achieve a good night’s sleep especially as it’s taking much longer for them to warm up when they come in from the snow.
Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall likens the serve to “having a giant hot water bottle in your bed, warming it up before guests climb in to give them a great night’s sleep away from the cold—of course they jump out before you jump in.”
The human bed warmers will be a free service to hotel guests. It’s expected to be tested in Manchester and in London later this month.
I am so excited to be posting my first blog on the new Grand Dynamics site! There’s a LOT on my mind, and what I want to share in this post is an interview about the relationship between Culture and Customer service. I recently saw Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, speak about customer service. He told a great story, and he spoke alot about happiness, self actualization and optimizing his people. The similarities between the models he shared and my international research and focus was, quite frankly, really eerie!
But for now, let’s talk about his message of how great customer service is really a derivative of CULTURE. And where does the culture come from? Holding true to their CORE VALUES! Zappos is serious about their Core Values – so much that they use them for all their hiring decisions – a decision which, according to Tony, is critical to the success of a company LONG TERM. He said that one of his primary responsibilities is to uphold the standard of firing employees when the are not operating in alignment with the core values. THE CONCLUSION? The best companies focus on the culture of their people first. When you do that, the rest will come! By the way, less than 1% of applicants are hired by Zappos and people line up to get a spot at this company ranked #15 in the best companies to work list. I found that out while speaking with a customer service rep while ordering my first pair of shoes. I was immediately upgraded and my shoes were sent overnight to meet me at my hotel on the road! Awesome. Check out this interview to give a little insight into Zappos, and think about how the Culture in YOUR ORGANIZATION can drive outstanding customer service!
This interview with Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos.com, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Tony Hsieh is C.E.O. of Zappos.com, the shoe seller that Amazon acquired last year. A core Zappos value, he says, is to “create fun and a little weirdness,” so he values individuality in hiring.
Corner Office
Every Sunday, Adam Bryant talks with top executives about the challenges of leading and managing.
Q. What are some of the most important leadership lessons you’ve learned?
A. After college, a roommate and I started a company called LinkExchange in 1996, and it grew to about 100 or so people, and then we ended up selling the company to Microsoft in 1998. From the outside, it looked like it was a great acquisition, $265 million, but most people don’t know the real reason why we ended up selling the company.
It was because the company culture just went completely downhill. When it was starting out, when it was just 5 or 10 of us, it was like your typical dot-com. We were all really excited, working around the clock, sleeping under our desks, had no idea what day of the week it was. But we didn’t know any better and didn’t pay attention to company culture.
By the time we got to 100 people, even though we hired people with the right skill sets and experiences, I just dreaded getting out of bed in the morning and was hitting that snooze button over and over again.
Q. Why?
A. I just didn’t look forward to going to the office. The passion and excitement were no longer there. That’s kind of a weird feeling for me because this was a company I co-founded, and if I was feeling that way, how must the other employees feel? That’s actually why we ended up selling the company.
Financially, it meant I didn’t have to work again if I didn’t want to. So that was the lens through which I was looking at things. It’s basically asking the question, what would you want to do if you won the lottery? For me, I didn’t want to be part of a company where I dreaded going into the office.
So when I joined Zappos about a year later, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t make the same mistake that I had made at LinkExchange, in terms of the company culture going downhill. So for us, at Zappos, we really view culture as our No. 1 priority. We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.
Q. So how do you do that?
A. About five years ago, we formalized the definition of our culture into 10 core values. We wanted to come up with committable core values, meaning that we would actually be willing to hire and fire people based on those values, regardless of their individual job performance. Given that criteria, it’s actually pretty tough to come up with core values.
Q.Tell me what happened.
A. We spent a year doing that. I basically sent an e-mail out to the entire company, asking them what our values should be, and got a whole bunch of different responses. The initial list was actually 37 long, and then we ended up condensing and combining them and went back and forth and came up with our list of 10.
Today, we actually do two separate sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his or her team will interview for the standard fit within the team, relevant experience, technical ability and so on. But then our H.R. department does a separate set of interviews purely for culture fit. They actually have questions for each and every one of the core values.
Q. Can you give me an example of the value and the question?
A. Well, some of them are behavioral questions. One of our values is, “Create fun and a little weirdness.” So one of our interview questions is, literally, on a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you? If you’re a 1, you’re probably a little bit too strait-laced for us. If you’re a 10, you might be too psychotic for us.
It’s not so much the number; it’s more seeing how candidates react to a question. Because our whole belief is that everyone is a little weird somehow, so it’s really more just a fun way of saying that we really recognize and celebrate each person’s individuality, and we want their true personalities to shine in the workplace environment, whether it’s with co-workers or when talking with customers.
I think of myself less as a leader, and more of being almost an architect of an environment that enables employees to come up with their own ideas, and where employees can grow the culture and evolve it over time, so it’s not me having a vision of “This is our culture.”
Maybe an analogy is, if you think of the employees and culture as plants growing, I’m not trying to be the biggest plant for them to aspire to. I’m more trying to architect the greenhouse where they can all flourish and grow.
Q. Did the process of developing those core values go smoothly?
A. Honestly, there was a lot of resistance to the core values rolling out, including from me. I was very hesitant, because it just felt like one of those big-company things to do. But within a couple of months, it just made such a huge difference. It gave everyone a common language, and just created a lot more alignment in terms of how everyone in the company was thinking. If I could do it all over again, I would roll out our core values from Day 1.
Q. What other things did you do at Zappos to sort of reinforce and build the culture?
A. Probably the most important thing I did was try to encourage employees to come up with their own ideas for building the culture. The actual ideas that I’ve personally come up with are few and far between.
Q.But what were those?
A. For example, for our offices in Las Vegas, it’s a big building. We’ve probably got 700 employees in Vegas. The previous tenants had multiple doors where you can exit, and the parking lot is in the back. We made the decision to actually lock all the doors so everyone has to go through the front-entrance reception area, even though that means you might have to walk all the way around the building. The reason for that is to create this kind of central hub that everyone has to pass through to help build community and culture.
And the free lunch we provide for employees is really meant less as a benefit in terms of a free lunch, and more to get employees to interact with each other. But most of the stuff that happens in our office is really about some employee coming up with an idea and, whether it’s me or other managers, saying, “If you’re passionate about it, just run with it.”
At some point, it kind of just snowballs, because once employees see other employees just doing stuff, then that lets them feel like they have more permission to run with their ideas.
Q.Any other examples?
A. One of our teams — the outdoor team in our merchandising department — decided to decorate one of the conference rooms, and transform it so that when you’re inside, you feel like you’re in a log cabin. They spent the weekend tearing up the floors and putting in a fake fire and all this stuff. It was pretty cool.
But then, the week after, the team sitting next to them said, we can outdo them. The next thing we knew, within two or three months, all 20 or so conference rooms were all decorated by different teams.
Q.What else is unusual about Zappos?
A. We have a culture book. We put it together once a year and we ask all our employees to write a few paragraphs about what the Zappos culture means to them and, except for typos, it’s unedited, so you get to read the good and bad. It’s kind of like customer reviews you might read on Web sites, but these are essentially employee reviews of the company and our culture. We make it freely available to visitors and anybody who asks for a copy.
Q. If you’re hiring a senior executive, reporting directly to you, what kind of questions would you be asking them?
A. It’s pretty hard to interview senior executives, because they’re in that position for a reason. They do many interviews themselves. It’s hard to tell from an interview. So I’m not sure there’s that much you can get out of the in-office interview. They need the relevant skill set and experience and so on. But far more important is, are they going to be good for the culture? Is this someone we would choose to have dinner or drinks with, even if they weren’t working for Zappos?
Hiring senior-level talent is very hard, it’s hit or miss, and they can do a lot of damage to the culture. We’ve had bad experiences with that. So we have this thing called the pipeline, which is our vision for how we want to grow as a company. We’re hoping five years from now the vast, vast majority of all hires will actually be entry-level, but we’ll provide all the training and mentorship so that, over a five- to seven-year period, they can become a senior leader within the company. That will help protect our culture and also give all the employees a growth path professionally.
Q. But again, if you had to hire someone from the outside for a senior job, what would you do?
A. It’s not just a single day with them and you make a decision. We’ll invite them to barbecues on weekends and they bring their families, and just hang out, or go to dinner or happy hour or whatever. It’s more just about trying to get a sense of who they are outside the office, I guess, and whether you feel like you can actually get to know them on a personal level or if they’re very professional and standoffish.
If it’s the latter, then it’s probably not going to be a good fit for us because, at the end of the day, what matters most is how deep of a relationship you can develop with them. For someone who’s not comfortable being themselves, that kind of puts limits on how close of a relationship you have.
Q.If you could ask only one or two questions to get a sense of a person, what would they be?
A. “If you had to name something, what would you say is the biggest misperception that people have of you?” Then the follow-up question I usually ask is, “What’s the difference between misperception and perception?” After all, perception is perception.
Q. What are you trying to discover with those questions?
A. I think it’s a combination of how self-aware people are and how honest they are. I think if someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow. If they’re not self-aware, I think it’s harder for them to evolve or adapt beyond who they already are.
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