On Fridays, California Employer Daily will often be given over to an “E-pinion” column by Jennifer Carsen, Esq., ERI’s Managing Editor. If you’ve got an idea for a 500-700 word column on any topic of interest to California employers, we’d love to have you as a guest columnist. Just describe your idea in a brief email and send it to editor@employeradvice.com. Be sure to note it’s for an “E-pinions” article, and give us a phone number and the best time to reach you. All submissions become the property of ERI.
HR policies and practices are not “one size fits all.” We’ve all tried ideas that worked great for a colleague but laid a total egg for us. You can call it “culture” or “fit,” or “lack of commitment,” or whatever you like, but this doesn’t get to the root cause. To find that, you need to ask, why wasn’t there fit? Why couldn’t you get commitment?
Could it be that the initiative didn’t fit your strategy? Was the behavior it promoted or expected inconsistent with your mission? Was your company a bad place for that good idea?
Ideas Must Fit Your Mission
Here at ERI—a “products” company—we have to keep coming up with innovative ways to serve you, our customers, in order to succeed. This creates inherent tensions, because creating new products and updating existing products demands a lot of efficiency. But when we go too far in the name of efficiency, we lose the wind in our creative sails.
“Operations” companies, by contrast, succeed by delivering products and services at lower and lower cost. They thrive on ideas that drive efficiency. “Customer” companies, on the other hand, don’t. They need deep relationships with their customers, allowing them to become embedded in their customers’ operations. Pushing for efficiency over all else, as on a factory assembly line, gets in the way.
Because your job is to deliver people, policies, and practices that support your organization’s strategy, understanding your core mission is very important. If you don’t, you’ll be forever trying things that work elsewhere but won’t work for you.
Here’s a brief rundown of the kinds of ideas, people, and reward structures that work for each company type:
Products Companies (like ERI)
Culture: Ideas that give people considerable independence and support invention and creativity. Structure and policies have to err in the direction of allowing autonomy.
People: Products-oriented people have to enjoy learning, be curious, visionary, creative, and artistic. They have to have a team orientation and be enthusiastic about group problem-solving. These characteristics are often more important when hiring than actual skill sets. Once you’ve found people like that, encourage long-term employment.
Rewards: Structure so people are willing to take risks. Some projects will work; some won’t, so broad-based sharing of success is appropriate.
Operations Companies (e.g., Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines)
Culture: Much more organized; focused on efficiency.
People: Look for people who love to compete and who are driven to win. They need to love structure and be interested in refining processes.
Rewards: Variable and differentiated, driven by quantifiable performance.
Customer Organizations (e.g., IBM, Nordstrom)
Culture: Needs to adapt to the customer at the same time it adheres to core values. Must be committed to solving customer problems quickly.
People: Hire those who take the long view and build long-term customer relationships.
Rewards: Offer considerable variation and differentiation, but not as formulaic as with operations, due to the long-term focus.
This is a very abbreviated treatment of a complex subject. My purpose in writing about it is to give you some context for judging how to approach your policies and practices.
My advice: First, figure out what kind of company you are. Second, formulate and evaluate your strategies against the needs of your organization… and not someone else’s.
See you next time. Have a great week!