WISDOM FROM FRIENDS: QUESTION YOURSELF

In honor of a New Year and Decade, in the next three weeks we will be sharing wisdom that others have shared with us. We are grateful to our generous friends, whose gifts have sparked fresh reflections about living out our intentions to engage others in authentic conversations.  The notion of becoming truly authentic — in the sense of being clear about who we want to be and making choices about how to do it — is less daunting when we remember that it is a daily, lifelong process. It helps to remember that change is rarely the instant transformation we sometimes yearn for.

 

This week, we’ll start with questions by Shiloh Sophia, which our friend and colleague Jeff McCollum sent in a holiday email. They have a yin/yang rhythm we like. The questions are framed in a way that emphasize the importance of being willing to let go of one thing in order to achieve the benefits of another. The questions are a different iteration of an activity we often do with clients, called “Gains and Losses,” that bring into focus the necessity of releasing in order to receive.

 

Question number 10 also gets at an idea we think frequently gets overlooked, especially in the workplace — the ability to grieve and let go of the past so you can look toward creating a shared, preferred future.

 

We hope you find these questions useful.

1.      What is it I am committed to starting?

2.     What is it I am committed to finishing?

3.      Who is it I am excited about being?

4.      Who is it in me I am excited about letting go?

5.      Where is it I will spend my time?

6.      Where is it I will spend less of my time?

7.      Who will I reach out to and connect with?

8.      Who will I surrender and let go?

9.      What is it I feel really good about?

10.  What is it I need to forgive myself for?

SEMCO: A case study in distributing organizational power, Part Three

(Continued from Part 2)

 

Synopsis: Ricardo Semler, inherited his father’s company in 1982. He was 24 years old. After his singular focus on work created a serious health crisis, he decided something had to change. Over several years, he dismantled the hierarchy of his traditional organization to create an adult culture of empowered workers.  Today Semco employees decide when it makes the most sense for them to work and where. They choose their own leaders, define their own schedules, and set their own salaries.




The purpose of work at Semco, Ricardo insists, “is to make workers, whether the working stiff or a senior executive, feel good about life.”

 

Sounds crazy? Here are a few facts about Semco so you can judge for yourself:

• The company that employed 100 employees in 1982 as of 2007 has 3,000 workers


• Semco now represents diverse ventures including manufacturing, mixing equipment, making cooling towers, technology, managing Latin American properties, and environmental consulting.


• It experienced a 900 percent growth in 10 years.


• In Brazil, Semco increased its ranking from 56^th to 4^th in machinery operations.


• It ranks No. 1 in the service industries in which it is active.


• Turnover has been less than 2 percent over 25 years.


• Operating this way has generated a 27 percent growth rate for 25 years, without public investment and in spite of Brazil’s erratic economy.


• The $4 million company Ricardo inherited is now worth more than $220 million

 

Semco is an unparalleled example of how abandoning traditional management strategies and widely distributing organizational power can lead to phenomenal business results — and create meaning and purpose at work.

 

Says Ricardo: “People want to work when work is not the enemy of personal freedom and legitimate self-interest. Our [organizational] ‘architecture’ is really the sum of all the conventional business practices we avoid. The purpose of work is to make workers, whether the working stiff or a senior executive, feel good about life.”

 

Treating his employees like adults, helping them understand the marketplace they live in and trusting them to get results has been a remarkable success formula t Semco.

SEMCO: A case study in distributing organizational power, Part Two

(Continued from Part I)

SYNOPSIS:After inheriting his father’s company, Ricardo Semler worked so hard and long at building the company that he began exhibiting serious symptoms: dizziness and fainting, chronic sore throat, shaking hands and constant heartburn. He checked himself into a clinic for exhaustive medical tests, and braced himself for bad news.

“Ricardo,” the doctor told him gravely after three days of every conceivable medical test. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.” His symptoms were the result of a serious case of stress.

This diagnosis led to serious self-reflection about what his life had become.  It marked the beginning of what would become a lifelong habit of asking the question, “Why?”

• Why had he stopped making time for the things he used to enjoy, like music and reading?


• Why was he killing himself for work?


• Why should he be making decisions about how his employees did their work when they had more expertise at their work than he did?


• Why was he treating adults like children, mandating all aspects of when, where and how they got the job done?


• Why was he the only one who got to make important decisions when they would affect everyone in the company?


• Why shouldn’t the people who worked at Semco have an equal voice in creating the future?


• Why didn’t he take more advantage of the collective wisdom of the people he hired?


• Why wasn’t he educating workers about every aspect of the business so they knew how to make good decisions?

These kinds of questions lead to the transformation of Semco. The first thing to accomplish, Ricardo decided, was to “rid the organization of hierarchy.”

It was a constant work in progress, but throughout the years, Ricardo kept asking “Why?” And the answers would lead to a further dismantling of the policies, procedures and processes of a traditional organization.

Semler eventually was running a company where “CEO” was nothing but a title, and he had little more power than any given worker. Today’s Semco is a place where employees decided when it makes the most sense for them to work and when. They choose their own leaders, define their own schedules, and set their own salaries.

They order their own equipment and supplies, without purchase orders. All meetings are open — show up if you’re affected or interested, leave when you lose interest. Projects get a green light only a when critical mass decides to make it happen. Leaders are situational – the staff determines when it needs one. When a leader’s role is no longer necessary, it goes away, without anyone losing pay or status. Nobody is entitled to the corner office, the premium parking spot or an executive dining room.

Those who are interested in who gets hired do the hiring, regardless of their position in the organization. People choose their own titles based on what the customer needs. The HR department consists of one person.

Semler says he exchanged the traditional system “hire, then manage” to a company that tells its employees: “Let’s do what you think you need to do in a way you’d like to do it. “

Sounds like a recipe for disaster? Well…. You can decide after next week’s installment.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…

BOOK REVIEW: We Must Be the Change

Authentic Conversations: Moving from Manipulation to Truth and Commitment

This review is by Jeffrey McCollum

This book is challenging and provocative. It's not one you can breeze through because it has this unsettling knack for holding up a mirror and saying, "Hey look. There's something here I want you to see." The something it wants us to understand is how deeply our everyday conversations at work are riddled with a lack of authenticity and how that lack stifles engagement and personal accountability. As a result, business results are less than they could be.

At the heart of this problem is an enormous collusion–a pattern of parent-child conversations that have become undiscussible in daily life. These norms in turn create organizational culture. The Showkeirs' fundamental premise is if you want to change a culture you have to change the conversations–difficult and, in their view, dangerous work. To change those conversations we have to accept our complicity in them.

The book is broken into two broad sections. First the Showkeir's lay out their case for change. Then, the offer a set protocols for shifting those conversations.

The case for change starts with an identification of "relationships that don't work at work ". Specifically, they point out how the following conversations–holding others accountable, caretaking, coping with disappointment and colluding with cynicism–are so deeply engrained that we take them for granted. "In all cases, these types of conversations have a detrimental impact on the culture and the business", they argue.

The conversations rest on a set of "old" management assumptions that see people as objects, ignore individual freedom and will, use policies and procedures that ensure compliance and emphasize leaders and experts while ignoring those who work in the system.

Leaders who see their role as "holding people accountable (as opposed to them being accountable) and who seek to protect their organizations from the rough and tumble vicissitudes of the market place (as opposed to helping them understand those realities) are operating from an implicit parent child model. This model puts unreasonable expectations on the leader and creates dependency in those led. [Although the Showkeirs chose not to venture into a discussion of contemporary American politics, it was hard for me to avoid looking at their arguments in the light of how self interest seems to be trumping service on the public stage.]

The Showkeirs explore the power of cynics to sap organizational change efforts of vitality and momentum. They become, in effect, a black hole into which hopes for a better future disappear. Leaders who seek to protect people from disappointment by promising safe landings in all difficult circumstances create cynics.

The antidote to all of this is to promote an "adult to adult culture" in which each individual in the organization:
* Becomes the eyes and voice of the business
* Brings an independent point of view
* Is expected to raise difficult issues
* Extends a spirit of goodwill to the endeavor
* Creates business literacy in others
* Choose accountability for the success of the whole business
* Manages his own morale, motivation and commitment

These qualities propel an organization from manipulation to engagement. People in the organization are enabled, ennobled and empowered–by their own choice. Manipulative conversational practices like name dropping, hidden agendas, over promising, sarcasm and exaggerated optimism or pessimism are replaced by authentic ones. All of this requires that we remain vigilant to three levels that operate in any conversation: the content, others' emotional responses and our own emotional responses. To business that operate on the belief that "business is about logic and fact based decisions", these three realities are radical in their own right.

Having laid out their case, the last portion of the book is a "practical guides to conversations like:
* Facing a difficult issue
* Seeking an exception (a radical reversal of the common organizational practice that it's easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission)
* Proposing change
* Introducing a mandate
* Renegotiating an established relationship
* Initiating endings
* Dealing with individual performance

These types of conversations, done in a manipulative parent-child environment, tie people in knots. Done authentically, they create clear, clean communication which, in turn, drives business performance to higher and higher levels.