Hidden Mojo

Here’s the paradox: companies are filled with good, normal, cool people. But very often they operate like slow, bureaucratic, unfriendly machines. Nobody enjoys working in that kind of an environment–and if your people do, you’ve hired the wrong folks! It’s possible to make your company more human, which makes it more fun and more profitable for everybody involved–your people, your customers, your stakeholders, and you!

So here are seven ways to humanize that mofo:

1. Incentivize Groups, Not Individuals

When you rank peoples’ performance again each other, like Jack Welch back in the day, you create an incentive for people to either a) suck up to their boss, or b) climb over their co-workers to get to the top. This zero-sum game is old news–even old-skool Fortune Magazine has figured it out. People realize that stack ranking uses a lot of energy that can be applied more productively to fulfill the company’s goals.

The better option is to do what Whole Foods does: pay bonuses based on group performance. Structuring incentives this way encourages people to collaborate so their team and your business succeed, rather than putting themselves first. For this to really work, it’s key that the groups choose who their team members are, as nobody wants to be forced to work with people who bring the group’s chances of success down.

2. Encourage Employees to Blog

A lot of companies like to think they control their communications about how great their products, employees, and performance are. Mind-numbing press releases are issued with the right “messaging”, but MarCom speak is meaningless. The Cluetrain Manifesto covered this seven years ago, but it still holds true: people don’t want to be spoken at (especially when the speaker is speaking like a synergizing, integrated, seamless robot!) And the real message about your company gets out anyway: people talk, and figure out that your press is worth less than the paper it’s printed on.

So let your employees blog. People tell authentic stories, and stories have always been the best way to convey information. Customers, shareholders, vendors–they all want stories, cuz guess what? They’re HUMAN too! Stories build bridges, they help people relate to each other, and they start conversations. These are all GOOD things for your business!

People don’t want to be spoken at, especially when the speaker is speaking like a synergizing, integrated, seamless robot!

Good blogging examples include Robert Scoble, who is credited by many (including The Economist) with putting a human face on Microsoft through his blogging efforts, and Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

Blogging is scary, because you lose perceived control of your company’s story. But the reality is that you have as much control of your company’s story as a baby does over her bladder. But you hired smart people, right? Provide guidelines, and trust them to do the right thing. They’ll tell stories that will make you proud, and build good will with all your stakeholders.

3. Get Executives on the Front Lines

There’s often a big disconnect between executives and customers, and executives and employees. And I kinda understand: a pimp corner office, business class flights, and an executive assistant at your beck and call could make anybody forget what it’s like to work on the front lines. So do what Jet Blue CEO David Neeleman does: he flies constantly, working flights with his employees, and talking to customers. It’s a grounding and insightful experience to remember why you’re in business the first place (the customers), and understand the challenges that your customer-facing front-line employees have to deal with.

4. Change Your Language

When I was in college, I got a job as an Resident Assistant, working for a gay professor. Because RAs deal with 18 year old kids, one of the first things we were taught was to be sensitive about using the word “gay” to mean something stupid, as was common usage. Since a lot of kids were figuring out their sexuality, it was critical that we provided an accepting and safe atmosphere. And the use of gay when the proper word was stupid sent a strong signal that gay kids weren’t accepted. The lesson here was that people interpret language on multiple levels, and implied meanings send strong signals.

On that note, here are three common business terms that dehumanize your company and need to go:

First, forget about “marketing campaigns”–you’re selling products, not making war.

Second, a friend once told me that it’s instructive that only two businesses call their customers “users” (that’s software developers and drug dealers for those employed as neither). If you are designing software, your customers are not “users”, they’re people.

And third, forget about allocating “resources”. Each employee that you want to do work has different motivations, knowledge, and skills, which means they’re not interchangeable resources, but unique little snowflakes. Language is a crutch here–the wise manager learns how to create a context in which their people are doing work that they love to do, rather than banging away at something because that’s what they’ve been allocated.

Those are just examples, but there’s lots you can do to change the dehumanizing language that your company uses, and its effect on your people, customers, and investors.

5.Use Real People on Your Website

If your site is full of slick-looking corporate drones, it’s just like 99.9% of other corporate websites. Humans respond to other humans, so take ESPN’s cue and use your employees on your website. Using real people (or your company’s employees) on your website show the world that your company is run by real, live humans, and not corporate robots that masquerade as real people but say things like “we provide an innovative, cost-effective solution for cross-enterprise business process automation.”

6. Maximize Work-Life Integration

I once got a stern talking-to about blogging from work on my lunch hour. While this seemed reasonable to me (my lunch hour = my time), it was not so clear to my boss. After he was done chewing me out, I politely asked if it was then not kosher to check work email from home at 3pm on a Sunday. He got this point.

It’s very difficult today to establish work/life balance. Balance implies a zero-sum game, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The real key is to figure out how to enable work/life integration. Integration implies transitions between work and life, depending on the context. If you want to go watch your kid’s soccer game at 4p on Tuesday, that’s cool. Just like it’s cool if you’re working on Sunday morning.

Vacations are especially important here. Motek, a warehouse automation company in Beverly Hills, requires employees to take five weeks off, and pays them $5000 if they do. Remember: your company is not the endgame for anybody–yourself included. It’s a means to being happy and living well. As Maurice Mascaranhas said, “Profits are like breathing. You have to have them. But who would stay alive just to breathe?”

Acknowledging your people have interests and responsibilities other than work, and letting them take care of those responsibilities when they choose, will paradoxically increase your peoples’ loyalty to your company.

7. Get Rid of Discretionary Bonuses

Discretionary bonuses are nothing but popularity contests. If you’re more popular with your manager than your co-workers, you get a larger bonus. There’s no insight into why your bonus is $1000, what your co-workers got, and why. By paying discretionary bonuses that are unrelated to any productive causal behavior, you send a message that it’s more important to kiss manager butt than to do good work.

Humans respond very well to cause and effect. For example, if I eat this donut, I gain another pound, and my already-infinitesimal odds of dating Alessandra or Gisele decrease even more. By setting clear expectations for your people (i.e. Do X, and Y happens), you make it a lot easier for them to kick butt, be happier, and align their actions with your business’ goals.

Hope you enjoyed this. Part Two is coming in a few days…