Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 67, by Joe Podolsky:
From: JOE_PODOLSKY@HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 96 11:34:38 -0800
Subject: To Dream, To Believe
"To accomplish great things, We must not only act, but also dream; Not only plan, but also believe." By Anatole France (quoted in _Forbes_ magazine, 12/30/96)
We hear a lot about work/life balance, in management literature, in various programs by executives and personnel people. It's a tricky subject. In a discussion about this recently, one of my colleagues reminded me that someone did a study of women who were leaving fast-track corporate jobs. In their exit interviews, they usually kept their bridges intact by saying that they were leaving to spend more time with their families, etc., but then they immediately opened their own companies and were working more hours, with more pressure ... but they were working on things that mattered to them and in environments in which they felt fully committed and valued. More people than ever seem to be solving their need for fulfillment by working in small organizations. This trend has been accelerated by recent widespread corporate downsizing. Small, few-person companies help the economy in a very important way; they turn the fixed cost of permanent employees into the variable costs of buying just what we need. For example, if we in a large company have an in-house copy center, we have the fixed costs of the space and equipment and the copier operators. If, however, we shut down the copy center, we no longer have those fixed costs and pay, instead, only for the services we need. And, we can do business with several different centers and negotiate the best price. >From individuals' viewpoint, small companies can be fulfilling also, especially when they feel totally responsible for their own success or failure with none of the large organization politics and bureaucracy that amuse us Dilbert readers. But, for individuals, working in small companies has its problems also. All people don't have the skills needed to run a small business. There may not be enough work to generate a reasonable income. The time they have to invest may really put a strain on their personal lives. And they lose the associations with colleagues who are all working for greater purposes that can be achieved only in large organizations. There are costs to companies also. For example, the best customer service comes from happy employees dedicated to the long term success of their enterprise. Permanent employees can be encouraged to do not only their own jobs but also to cooperate with others in the company to do things together for the benefit of the end customer. In an internal information technology organization, for example, we can work with our internal customers to best achieve the best results for our external customers. The internal IT unit is motivated to keep its costs low so that overall company costs are competitive. If IT is outsourced, however, the internal corporate customer _is_ the end customer for the IT vendor. And, naturally enough, the IT vendor wants to maximize its revenues, and it's up to the internal customer to use market forces to keep costs low. I don't mean this to be a full discussion of outsourcing issues; I'll hold that for another jottings. But I do think that there are things that can be done, both by organizations and by individuals inside those organizations, short of outsourcing, to make things better, both for the stockholders and the employees. For a company, the problem is cultural; that means that the solution is either very easy or very hard. The organization must say and _act_ like it values individuals and the contributions of their full beings. In the November-December 1995 _Harvard Business Review_, there is a perspectives article that gathers the opinions of several business leaders on the topic, "How Can Big Companies Keep the Entrepreneurial Spirit Alive?" The answers fall into three categories: 1) Create environments where risks are accepted, where success is rewarded and failure is the basis for learning, not punishment; 2) Adjust compensation systems to reward individual contributions based on objective achievements rather than subjective opinions; 3) Create opportunities for spin-offs (or spin-outs, as they are called in the Thermo Electron Corporation) that give both the company and people in the spin-off opportunities for significant equity rewards if the enterprise is successful. For employees, the problem is one of self-motivation. Peter Block, in his book _Stewardship_ tells us all to take charge of our own lives and tells managers to expect us to do that. Block doesn't like the word "empowerment" because he feels that it is patronizing, that it assumes that hierarchical managers have the right to give permission for people to be individuals. Block sees it as equivalent to someone saying, "It's ok, you can breathe." Unfortunately, the truth is that many people have worked so long in tightly controlled processes that they do need permission to breathe. And we managers should give that permission and insist that people take responsibility for their own work and results. At best, it will take some time to move from today's industrial functional structure invented by Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor to Block's dream of fully self-managed individuals. But to make that shift requires as much or more from us individuals as it does from us managers. In 1985, Gifford Pinchot III wrote a book called _Intrapreneuring: Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur_. In that book he lists ten commandments for the would-be intrapreneuer. A few of these are quite extreme, but they set the tone: 1. Come to work each day willing to be fired. 2. Circumvent any order aimed at stopping your dream. 7. Never bet on a race unless you are running it. These others, however, sound pretty good to me: 3. Do any job needed to make your project work, regardless of your job description. 4. Find people to help you. 5. Follow your intuition about the people you choose and work only with the best. 6. Work underground as long as you can; publicity may trigger the corporate immune mechanism. 8. Remember it's easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission (this is my personal favorite. I think it originally came from Grace Hopper, the first woman admiral in the U.S. Navy). 9. Be true to your goals but realistic about the ways to achieve them. 10. Honor your sponsors. Every New Year is an automatic reminder to reflect and to plan. It's also a good time to dream of things that aren't yet and can be, and to believe that we can be part of bringing those dreams into reality. To do that does not necessarily require shedding the traces of organizational hierarchy. But it does require our own passion and determination, both as managers and as individuals. I'd very much enjoy hearing your stories about dreams and beliefs in organizations. Have wonderful holidays and a healthy, happy, and fulfilling new year. Joe