There’s an interesting assumption that it’s harder to have a great company culture in a large company and recently I was asked, if you’re a small company going through fast growth – how do you maintain that warm familial feeling and not become cold and “corporate”?  So here are  some things to think about:

1)      That warm fuzzy “we’re a family” feeling can easily become dysfunctional in a heartbeat no matter how big you are.  As the leader of your company – you do not want to be poised as the mother/father with the siblings fighting for your approval/attention.  And avoid at all costs of thinking of your employees as children – it’s debilitating and demeaning to them and an entrapping  train wreck for you.

2)      At the core of that small company warm feeling of goodness are aspects that with consistent intention and attention can be replicated in a larger company:

• Everyone plays an important role that’s critical to the success of the company
• And thus everyone is accountable for their piece
• You have each other’s backs and support one another in times of pressure
• You’re all in alignment – clear on the vision being achieved and the path to get there
• Everyone shares in the successes and the failures
• Appreciation is spoken often
• There are often opportunities to improve, innovate, be challenged and stretched
• Employees’ opinions, input and expertise are sought out when considering new options
• Excitement for what’s being created is in the air

3)      Often it’s “policies and procedures” that feel like the tipping point.  Yet this doesn’t make a larger company cold.  Rather they are the guiding principles and boundaries that create clarity and efficiency, allowing a company to focus on what’s important instead of trying to manage one-off situations.  When done thoughtfully, these policies and procedures and their language can reflect a warm, close culture.

4)      One thing a small company has that most large companies struggle to match culture-wise is flexibility and nimbleness.  Yet large companies have the advantage of a more stable, consistent culture (hopefully one they love) that if someone comes in and they are not a fit, they will either adapt to the culture that’s in place or leave.  The company is unlikely to accommodate the individual – and that can be a good thing.  Do you remember as a smaller organization how you would try and mold yourself to accommodate the *one* – THE employee who was supposed to take your company to the next level, but whose attitude and way of being simply did not match your culture? Lesson learned.  Choose your culture and choose individuals that generate it.

5)      So the assumption is off – it’s not that it’s more difficult to have a great company culture when you’re a larger company, it’s that if you have a culture that needs adjusting it just requires a bit more time and energy to turn a freightliner than a small boat.

Collaboration is all the rage.  And for good reason.  It allows for a meeting of the minds, buy-in from those sitting at the table and an opportunity to consider diverse perspectives and options that may well contain the best next step.  However collaboration is not a cure-all.  More cooks in the kitchen doesn’t always make the sauce taste better.  It can be time-consuming, inefficient and depending on how it’s facilitated it can simply reflect group-think.  At a later date I’ll address “The 6 Keys to Great Collaboration”, but for now here’s when to use it and when not to use it:

When to use it:

• To find a solution to address an ongoing challenging issue
• To consider the pros and cons of moving forward on an opportunity
• Beginning of a project – scope, roles, SMART goals, general timeline, desired results
• When you need agreement, buy-in and support to have success on moving forward
• When you really want input, ideas, suggestions and feedback on a topic that’s central to the viability/improvement of the company
• Big picture thinking, consideration of major changes to the company – identity, service/product mix, significant growth, merger, acquisition

When not to use it:

• To garner agreement or approval on a decision that’s already been made
• Issues around safety
• Issues around ethics – just do the right thing, period.  No discussion needed.
• Decisions that require urgent action
• Financial issues that are critical to the viability of the company
• Detailed or logistics intensive planning (instead have one person propose a plan of action and garner input on the viability of the plan)
• Small decisions

I get it – companies want to keep their best people.   Makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is to shackle them to keep them in your company.

And I’m not saying it doesn’t work – I’m sure there’s many a talented person that stayed at an organization longer than they wanted to because of benefits, phantom stock, an earn out or something of similar ilk.

It’s like consensual blackmail.  The consensual sounds nice, the golden part sounds good too, it’s the blackmail and handcuffs that somehow kill the pleasant ring.

Do you want to be a company where people work there because they feel like they have to?

Or because they want to?

Employees who show up because they want to usually care about the company, their colleagues  and themselves. They believe in working in a workplace that’s good for them – good for their spirit and good for their sense of pride.

If you’re a company that’s implemented golden handcuffs – chances are you put these in place out of fear of losing someone and because you simply didn’t know any other way.  Perhaps you yourself feel shackled to your business and feel like you have to offer “incentives” to encourage others to stay.

Don’t shackle your people to secure that they show up.  Instead inspire them to choose to show up with their spirit and self-respect intact.

How do you do that?  You do that by creating an extraordinary company culture where most days people look forward to coming to work (yes, it’s possible!)  There’s a reason why that one company down the street that’s known for being a great place to work has a line of applicants out the door – many of whom are willing to get paid a little bit less than the competition because it’s worth it.  It’s worth feeding their soul and maintaining their dignity.

Before we get to the questions, for a successful interview keep in mind the following:

• #1 – Hire for your culture (if you like your culture!); hire for your values
• Can teach skills, can’t teach attitude
• Take reference checks seriously
• Consider the team they will be working with – good fit?  Should the team interview them too?
• Hire slowly, fire quickly
• Don’t hire someone you don’t like – regardless of the qualifications – in the same vein, if your intuition says no or there are ANY red flags, don’t hire
• Past behavior and action often dictates future behavior and actions
• Leave open ended questions open – meaning a little silence is okay (in fact it may mean that s/he is thoughtful in his/her response!), don’t fill up the space with the answer you would like to hear
• Ask questions the first half of the interview, then spend time telling them about your company and what you’re committed to, then ask them what questions they have – the questions they choose to ask will tell you A LOT, listen closely – often this is what their concerns are, this is what’s important to them.  If they ask good questions about the business/culture/position this bodes well!
• Read their body language – 90% of communication is non-verbal; also what is your body language telling you about how you feel when talking to this person
• When looking to hire look: 1) someone you’ve worked with who could fill this job who’s really good, 2) widen the net to people who you trust, 3) try to find somebody you know and trust who knows the person you’re thinking of hiring

Questions are meant to find out (so listen for):

• Sense of Humor – Do they have a sense of humor
• Candid and Honest – Are they candid with you and honest about themselves; can they admit to their mistakes
• Ethical and Integrity – Passionate about doing the right thing
• Value Based Life Outlook – Not-selfish or egocentric, passionate about something bigger than themselves
• Collaborative – gets along well with others, team attitude – refer to “we” or only “I”
• Energy–Givers – Are they energy-givers, optimistic, cheerleader
• Common Sense and Good Judgment
• Ability to Adapt – How they handle change
• Curious, Innovative, Problem Solver
• Learner – Are they interested in improving themselves; can they learn from their mistakes

Top 10 Interview Questions*

1. Tell me what you think this job is all about.
2. Tell me about your life. Start wherever you want to, from the beginning or the end, but talk to me about you, what you’ve done, and then walk me through what you’ve done with your career and where you want to go.
3. Why are you choosing us?  What can you do for the company and why do you think it would be a place where you could be successful?
4. What are your priorities?  What makes you tick?
5. What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of? OR Give me an instance where you really believed in something and you were able to make a difference.
6. What would say was one of your most significant mistakes and what did you do to correct it?  What did you learn from it? How would you do it differently?
7. If you had to name something, what would you say is the biggest misperception people have of you?
8. What makes you really angry?
9. What do you do in your free time? If we were going to hang out, what would we do together? What would you show me?
10. Tell me about a time when you felt the company you worked for needed to do something differently or go in a different direction: How did you handle that? How did you approach it and how did you resolve it? If you had a do-over, what would it be? Tell me about your results.

*Many of these are adopted/adapted/culled from the weekly New York Sunday Times Corner Office interviews of successful CEOs and the question – What questions do you ask when you’re hiring?

I hear this often – we don’t have the budget of Google or Apple – we simply can’t afford to have happy employees.

There’s a misperception out there that in order to have happy employees you have to throw extraordinary pay and fabulous perks at them.

First, let’s look at perks – while I’ll be the first to admit that a massage would be nice or a retreat in Hawaii, the value is temporary. Think about it – if you come back from your relaxing lunch massage to sit down next to your vampire co-worker, the one you sit next to every day, 8 hours a day, the massage might be just enough to keep you sane, forget happy.   Or if you return from Hawaii, proud of your tan and pictures of coconuts, to toxic drama where none of your innovative ideas can see the light of day, the glow of the tan wears off, quickly.

Second, let’s look at pay.  Remember a time you had an all-star player that you gave consistent substantial increases to, the one who may have even said they were happy, and who then gave you their notice and went elsewhere (maybe even to the competition.)  Well sorry to say, they weren’t happy and they didn’t feel safe to tell you that they weren’t.  In some cases you find out that they even took a pay cut.  That’s because (and I hate to do the cliché) money isn’t everything.  In fact it’s not even in the Top 8 Critical Factors to having employees feel good about coming to work.  I will tell you that employees want to feel that they are being paid “fairly.” Especially in relationship to their co-workers – because yes, they will talk about it, company policy or not.

Third, know that there are many many ways you can create and keep happy employees that don’t cost a dime.

Fourth, I would suggest you can’t afford NOT to have happy employees – take a couple of minutes to consider the ROI of happy employees:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtA67Xvz2bI.

Transparency is the latest in a line of business buzz words.

And there’s a reason why it sounds sexy – because the assumption is that it helps create another of the latest “it” words, trust.  We’ve got nothing to hide.  All our cards are on the table.  What you see is what you get.  No deception here.

And while transparency is great – companies being straight, clear and honest about what they’re up to and how they’re doing, there’s something missing.

You know the one way window/ one way mirror – as seen in the movies when FBI are interrogating potential criminals – in some ways with “transparency” we’ve just flipped the window/mirror.  Instead of employers watching/micromanaging employees, in transparent companies, employees can watch their employers.  Which while great, is still half of what needs to be accomplished.

The issue that remains – can employees be transparent with their employers?  Can they feel safe saying what opportunities and challenges they really see? Can they be candid (and constructive) and not canned?

Now if you had two way transparency – a clear window that opens, then there really could be huge understanding, communication, innovation and forward motion.

How many leadership teams are still interrogatively watching their employees?  How many leadership teams have done the “right thing” and are sharing the financials, sharing the information and yet wonder why looking at a mirror reflecting the same faces and ideas on a daily basis isn’t resulting in significant improvements?

There’s another way, a crystal clear way.

If you’re buying a business there are a many factors you’re assessing – looking at past performance as well as potential future success.

When looking at the potential upside, have you asked yourself what kind of culture would I be inheriting?

Let me give you a simple analogy -

When you inherit an extraordinary culture, you have a state of the art plane, and a runway with the immediate potential to fly to great heights.

When you inherit a toxic culture, the plane is still sitting in pieces, never mind a runway.

How much of a price reduction should you negotiate if it’s toxic?  What’s going to be the cost (financial and emotional) and time frame to turn the culture around?

How much more should you consider offering if it’s a fabulous culture?  What’s it worth to you to be ready to take off on day one?

Now how do you know if the culture is fabulous or toxic?  Ask the seller and chances are “it’s great!”  But how do you really know?

This is where Choose People can help – we measure employee happiness, we measure “do the employees at this company feel good about coming to work.”  Do they want to be there?  Are they excited to be there? Or are they simply warm bodies? Or even worse, are they full of resentment and disgruntled?

Lastly, if it’s an incredible culture we can tell you why so that as you takeover you keep in place those facets that are working.  And if it’s toxic, we can give you a roadmap as well as timeline for turning it around.

Remember the movie “Money Pit?” – a house can look beautiful on the outside and be a disaster waiting to happen on the inside.

Do your cultural due diligence.

We know that appreciation and acknowledgement of those who help us is important in all aspects of our lives, and yet in the workplace we struggle with gratitude the most.  Do you say thank you for the obvious – “thanks for coming in on time?”  If you thank one person, do you need to thank the one sitting next to them too?  Do I need to write a thank you note?  Does there need to be some sort of reward to go with it too?

In some workplaces, appreciation is so rare that people wonder if anyone sees/cares about their hard work.  On the other end of the spectrum, you have managers who say thank you so often that it can becomes meaningless or appears inauthentic.

Meaningful appreciation and recognition includes the following characteristics:

1. Informal – doesn’t need to be written or part of the “employee of the month”
2. Timely – as soon as possible after the help has been received
3. Unexpected – super powerful when people don’t expect to hear from you
4. Personalized – what did they specifically contribute) that was helpful?
5. Genuine – feel/convey the gratitude when you express your appreciation – don’t just say it to say it
6. Verbal is ideal, as well as face to face (tone and body language speaks volumes) – though timely is more important, so if you can’t see the person within 24 hours of the impact of their help, then use another mode of communication
7. And lastly and most importantly Say What it Meant to you – so often we simply say “Thank you!” or via text (when it’s apparently not even worth spelling out) “Thx!”  I too am guilty of this with friends and family.  But when it comes to work relationships where bonds may not be as strong or intent not as clear, it’s important to take the time to say what it meant to you (or the company) to have their help.  Express the impact of their contribution.  Here are some examples…Thank you:

• • You made my whole day
  • Because you dealt with that issue, it made it possible for me to have uninterrupted time to finish a critical project that’s been on my plate
  • Because you went above and beyond to meet the deadline early, the client was thrilled and referred us another one which means we’ll meet our sales goals for the week
  • Because you stayed late, it meant I could go see my daughter’s soccer game, she was so happy to see me in the stands
  • Your leadership and integrity in this situation has meant that we won’t lose such a key account
  • Because you figured out this problem we’re able to truly move forward on the new product line that will give our company an incredible strategic advantage

So right now, take off of your “to do” list that thank you note you’ve been meaning to write, walk over to who you want to acknowledge, with gratitude in your heart look them in the eye, thank them and express the impact of their help.

And no, it doesn’t need to be accompanied by a gift card (this can sometimes even cheapen the contribution made by the individual.)

Real deal appreciation trumps a gift card every time.

On January 3, 2008 Room & Board, which sells hand crafted American-made furniture created their Guiding Principles – principles they incorporate daily in their operations.  These principles are not only inspiring, they are also down-to-earth and provide a true compass during decision making. For anyone who is looking to revamp, recreate or reconsider their foundation (purpose, mission, values) – this is an excellent example of what’s possible when thoughtfulness, vision and authenticity unite.  With their permission, I have replicated verbatim these principles:

OUR PURPOSE

We need to provide for ourselves and those we love. That’s the very basic premise that brings us to work each day. But beyond the obvious economics of work, we believe that our endeavors should have meaning.

It’s our belief that a comfortable home and good design are an enhancement to people’s lives. Building relationships with our customers and helping them create homes they love, gives us great satisfaction.  When we can share this passion with individuals with whom we enjoy working, there is nothing better!

SETTING THE STAGE

Your past work experiences may have been quite different from what you’ll experience at Room & Board. We do things differently. We challenge you to think in new ways; about how your role is defined, the relationships that you build, and your connection to the business and the outcomes that you achieve.

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Respect and Relationships

Respect is foundational to our work environment. Everyone is expected to build relationships based upon mutual respect and collaboration; with one another as peers, as well as with our customers and vendor partners.

Our work doesn’t happen within the structure of an organizational chart. Real work happens within relationships. That’s why it is so important to understand how you affect others, including your peers. You should be comfortable providing consistent and meaningful feedback to everyone in the organization and openly receive insights shared with you.

Our vendor partners play a significant role in our success. We should treat them as true partners, respect their point of view and hold them to high standards. Our shared goal is mutual long-term success.

We share this one world and whenever possible, we expect each of us to make deliberate and responsible decisions to protect it.

Individual Accountability

Use good judgment when making decisions and apply principles, not rules to each situation.

Each of us should have a passion for our work and a commitment to our career. Engage with curiosity and lead with questions each and every day. You actions, not your title, will define your success.

We trust one another to work hard to keep our work commitments. Each staff member must remain accountable to the needs of the business while at the same time being afforded the flexibility to balance his or her personal obligations.

We push to innovate. With such a progressive mindset we understand that mistakes will be made. If they’re not, we probably aren’t trying hard enough. When you make a mistake accept it, communicate the reality of the situation and, with those you have effected, collaboratively decide how best to move forward.

We seek many voices when making decisions. Be open and honest when sharing your voice and expressing a different point of view. We expect differences of opinion and those challenges strengthen the outcome. And once a decision is made we must all engage fully to make it work.

Engaging in the Business

We share financial information because to be successful, each of us needs to be proactive in our understanding of how our actions affect the financial health of the organization.

The more you seek to understand how your role is related to our business objectives and tied to the broader success of the company, the more rewarding, enjoyable and challenging the effort.

Attaining a base level of sales growth and profit is necessary for our long-term health. It allows us to reinvest in the business, which in turn gives us the opportunity to continue to grow successfully.

As Room & Board grows, it is critical that we keep it simple. Each of us should care enough to get involved in the smallest of detail. When we focus on the basics, the rest will follow.

Room & Board’s annual business planning process is meant to be fluid to allow for the changing realities of our world. Our measures are often ranges supported by a well thought-out plan. This process avoids the game playing of trying to hit absolute numbers. Once our business plan is set we’re each accountable for the things that we control to achieve the plan.

IN CONCLUSION

Defining our Guiding Principles in this way is meant to encourage meaningful conversations that help you understand our uniqueness and support your success. We strongly believe these principles create a rewarding and deeply satisfying work experience. Embracing our Guiding Principles is an expectation we have of every Room & Board staff member.

Thank you Room & Board for sharing such an extraordinary and thoughtful document!

“It’s no big deal, but I just thought you might want to know…”

“It’s not that important, but I heard…”

“I know you’re really busy, so I don’t want to take up too much time, but I wanted to share…”

“Uh, do you have a minute?  I can come back – I’m sure you’re really busy.  No really, I can come back later – it’s neither here nor there.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is courageous communication.

This is your employee trying to tell you about an elephant in the room.  And the bigger the elephant, the smaller the crumb.

They won’t come carrying a big red flag nor a fire extinguisher or a sign that says “run for your life, the sky is falling.”  There will be no signs on their face of the absolute angst, concern and fear they’re feeling.

They think you’re blissful in your corner office – clueless to the chaos just outside your door.  People tell you want you want to hear.  They smile when you walk by, maybe even give you a thumbs up.  You’re the boss after all.

Maybe it’s someone on your executive team that’s driving everyone crazy.  Maybe it’s a project in which everyone knows the deadline is going to be missed.  Maybe it’s a huge mistake with a client or with an order.

They will only give you one bread crumb and they will wait to see how you react.   If you fail to only see the crumb and not the trail to the elephant, the employee will not give you the next crumb to follow.

When given a crumb listen very very closely.  If they say it’s not important, it is.  Then ask the questions you don’t want the answers to.  Because those are the answers you need to hear.  And whatever you do – don’t kill the messenger – THANK the courageous employee for taking the time to tell you.