*** 8 Rules For Creating A Passionate
Work Culture ***
PAUL ALOFS :-
Several years ago I was in the Thomson Building in
Toronto. I went down the hall to the small kitchen to get myself a cup of
coffee. Ken
Thomson was there, making himself some instant soup. At the
time, he was the ninth-richest man in the world, worth approximately $19.6
billion. Enough, certainly, to afford a nice lunch. I looked at the soup he was
stirring. “It suits me just fine,” he said, smiling.
Thomson understood value. Neighbors reported seeing him
leave his local grocery store with jumbo packages of tissues that were on sale.
He bought off-the-rack suits and had his old shoes resoled. Yet he had no
difficulty paying almost $76 million for a painting (for Peter Paul Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, in 2002). He sought
value, whether it was in business, art, or groceries.
In 1976, Thomson inherited a $500-million business empire
that was built on newspapers, publishing, travel agencies, and oil. By the time
he died, in 2006, his empire had grown to $25 billion.
He left both a financial legacy and an art legacy, but his
most lasting legacy might be the culture he created. Geoffrey Beattie, who
worked closely with him, said that Ken wasn’t a business genius. His success
came from being a principled investor and from surrounding himself with good
people and staying loyal to them. In return he earned their loyalty.
For the long-term viability of any enterprise, Thomson
understood that you needed a viable corporate culture. It, too, had to be
long-term. So he cultivated good people and kept them. Thomson worked with
honest and competent business managers and gave them his long-term commitment
and support. From these modest principles, an empire grew.
Thomson created a culture that extended out from him and has
lived after him. Here are eight rules for creating the right conditions
for a culture that reflects your creed:
1. Hire the right people
Hire for passion and commitment first, experience second,
and credentials third. There is no shortage of impressive CVs out there, but
you should try to find people who are interested in the same things you are.
You don’t want to be simply a stepping stone on an employee’s journey toward
his or her own (very different) passion. Asking the right questions is key:
What do you love about your chosen career? What inspires you? What courses in
school did you dread? You want to get a sense of what the potential employee
believes.
2. Communicate.
Once you have the right people, you need to sit down
regularly with them and discuss what is going well and what isn’t. It’s
critical to take note of your victories, but it’s just as important to analyze
your losses. A fertile culture is one that recognizes when things don’t work
and adjusts to rectify the problem. As well, people need to feel safe and
trusted, to understand that they can speak freely without fear of repercussion.
The art of communication tends to put the stress on talking,
but listening is equally important. Great cultures grow around people who
listen, not just to each other or to their clients and stakeholders. It’s also
important to listen to what’s happening outside your walls. What is the market
saying? What is the zeitgeist? What developments, trends, and calamities are
going on ?
3. Tend to the weeds
A culture
of passion capital can be compromised by the wrong people. One of the most
destructive corporate weeds is the whiner. Whiners aren’t necessarily public
with their complaints. They don’t stand up in meetings and articulate
everything they think is wrong with the company. Instead, they move through the
organization, speaking privately, sowing doubt, strangling passion. Sometimes
this is simply the nature of the beast: they whined at their last job and will
whine at the next. Sometimes these people simply aren’t a good fit. Your
passion isn’t theirs. Constructive criticism is healthy, but relentless
complaining is toxic. Identify these people and replace them.
4. Work hard, play hard
To obtain passion capital requires a
work ethic. It’s easy to do what you love. In the global economy we can measure
who has a superior work ethic, who is leading in productivity. Not many
industries these days thrive on a forty-hour work week. A culture where
everyone understands that long hours are sometimes required will work if this
sacrifice is recognized and rewarded.
5. Be ambitious
“Make no
little plans: they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” These words were uttered
by Daniel Burnham, the Chicago architect whose vision recreated the city after
the great fire of 1871. The result of his ambition is an extraordinary American
city that still has the magic to stir men’s blood. Ambition is sometimes seen
as a negative these days, but without it we would stagnate. You need a culture
that supports big steps and powerful beliefs. You can see these qualities in
cities that have transformed themselves. Cities are the most visible examples
of successful and failed cultures. Bilbao and Barcelona did so and became the
envy of the world and prime tourist destinations. Pittsburgh reinvented itself
when the steel industry withered. But Detroit wasn’t able to do the same when
the auto industry took a dive.
6. Celebrate differences
When choosing
students for a program, most universities consider more than just marks. If you
had a dozen straight-A students who were from the same socio-economic
background and the same geographical area, you might not get much in the way of
interesting debate or interaction. Great cultures are built on a diversity of
background, experience, and interests. These differences generate energy, which
is critical to any enterprise.
7. Create the space
Years ago,
scientists working in laboratories were often in underground bunkers and rarely
saw their colleagues; secrecy was prized. Now innovation is prized. In
cutting-edge research and academic buildings, architects try to promote as much
interaction as possible. They design spaces where people from different
disciplines will come together, whether in workspace or in common leisure
space. Their reasoning is simple: it is this interaction that helps breed
revolutionary ideas. Creative and engineering chat over coffee. HR and
marketing bump into one another in the fitness center. Culture is made in the
physical space. Look at your space and ask, “Does it promote interaction and
connectivity?”
8. Take the long view
If your
culture is dependent on this quarter’s earnings or this month’s sales targets,
then it is handicapped by short-term thinking. Passion capitalists take
the long view. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year, but
underestimate what we can do in five years. The culture needs to look ahead,
not just in months but in years and even decades.
The writer
Arthur Koestler said that a writer’s ambition should be to trade a hundred
contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years’ time and for one reader in a
hundred years’ time. Lasting influence is better than a burst of fame. Keep an
eye on the long view.
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