Managers who complain about slacking staff without examining their work environment are deluded. Being a slacker is not an innate human quality, it’s a product of the habitat. Fundamentally, everyone wants to do a good job (the statistical outliers who do not follow this are not worth focusing policy on).
The problem is that deluded managers expect unreasonable returns from their investment. They think you can get the best from people by thinking the worst of them. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t crack the whip with one hand and expect a firm handshake with the other.
If you want star quality effort, you need to provide a star quality environment. No, window dressing like a free meal is not it. It can serve as a cherry on top, but if the rest of the cake is full of shit, that’s not going to make it any more appealing.
A star environment is based on trust, vision, and congruent behavior. Make people proud to work where they work by involving them in projects that matter and ignite a fire of urgency about your purpose. Find out who you are as a company and be the very best you. Give people a strategic plan that’s coherent and believable and then leave the bulk of the tactical implementation to their ingenuity.
If you’re doing work in a less than star environment, you owe less than star effort. Quid pro quo. By all means, do yours to affect and change the environment. Nudge it towards the stars. But also, accept the limitations of your power. You can drag a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.
So ration your will and determination. Invest what’s left over, after meeting the bar of your work environment, in your own projects, skills, and future. The dividends is what’s going to lead you to the next, better thing.
Everyone deserves to work at a place that inspires them to give their very best. Don’t stop reaching until you have that.
(Like this? There’s more where this came from. Pre-order REMOTE: Office Not Required, our new book on remote work.)
Seyed
on 06 Mar 13Can’t agree more. After dealing with bunch of a-hole teachers/managers, I can totally understand what you mean!
Jean-François
on 06 Mar 13Pretty much sums up the message I tried to get across to my manager in my performance review of last week.
Z.
on 06 Mar 13Great thoughts. What does 37Signals do to create that kind of environment (which of course you do)?
FM
on 06 Mar 13I don’t mean this as a carp, I think a lot about this issue myself and am wondering about something that has come up for me multiple times leading a small group.
You often hear that having a clear vision and convincing your employees to be passionate about that vision is the most important thing you can do as a leader. That sounds obviously right to me. But as you said, a component of that is offering a coherent “strategic plan” that lays out, at least in broad terms, how you will get there.
On the other hand, I remember well the chapter of Rework that suggests we call these “strategic guesses,” and recommends in strong terms against planning too much.
How much planning is the right amount? How can you convince people (not only your team, but in my case potential donors or board members) that you have a clear vision even if you want to resist creating structured plans that might constrain your future efforts and cause you to be running your operations from the past?
Michael
on 06 Mar 13I’d like to read a follow-up to this specifically about urgency of purpose.
Jonathan Petrino
on 06 Mar 13100% Correct, managers need to understand their responsibility to employees, team members,and their organization. We’ve all seen this, and it’s a for sure, one-way, ticket to irrelevance.
Derek
on 06 Mar 13You cannot deny that there are people who do a better job when they are pushed. To these people, working from home would only make things deteriorate. Moving them back to office is better than firing them.
Jay
on 06 Mar 13Loved this part: “They think you can get the best from people by thinking the worst of them.”
I’ve worked with a manager who would essentially act as if a certain employee wasn’t there, or undermine their efforts/achievements.
No one’s going to give you quality work if you don’t start by respecting them and recognizing the work they’ve done.
Russell Maher
on 06 Mar 13One of the most honest and accurate things I have ever read about business environments and individual work effort.
Set your own course people!
Wilman Arambillete
on 06 Mar 13I agree with you. However, I guess the missing point in all this cascade of comments since Yahoo CEO’s decision was taken about canceling remote work, is the staff selection process.
Choosing the right candidate for the right position according to their profile. And by profile I don’t mean skills but what the candidate is capable of in terms of self discipline, self motivation and responsibility. Like some people wrote in previous comments, not everyone is able to perform well without guidance. Some people need to be pushed to complete certain tasks and tend to procrastinate. This is inherent to the human being and not everyone has the needed will power to perform at 100% when working alone.
Fortunately, there are people who can and those are the ones you most probably would like to have in your team. I respect that and totally support your vision of encouraging workers by providing them with the best working conditions. A nice working environment and the freedom to work in what they feel most comfortable with is always welcome.
Having said that, there are certain kind of undesirable workers who do not care about anything and their sole interest for remote working is to avoid direct control over their activity and laze around all day. Again, it is the employer’s duty to carry out a better selection process in order to filter them.
TDG
on 06 Mar 13Wrong. Fundamentally, no one wants to lose their security and job.
TDG
on 06 Mar 13That is different than “do a good job”.
Scott
on 06 Mar 13“Fundamentally, everyone wants to do a good job (the statistical outliers who do not follow this are not worth focusing policy on).”
This is SO true, and has been recognized as a key attribute of Gen Y. Making it through college and/or impressing an employer enough to get the job should be a sign that one is willing to do good work. In tech companies especially, managers should be thinking more about finding the best direction to aim an employee’s talents in, not how to keep the minions under control.
Stick a passionate worker in a prison-office with a bunch of dead fish managing them by mistrust, and within six months he/she will be spending as much time as possible NOT focusing on assigned work. Some turn to Solitaire and Facebook in desperation, others find work projects that are more meaningful than what’s been assigned, and others will just leave. Absolutely no one wants to put in good work in a bad environment.
FM: I think the spirit of Rework was that you should definitely have a clear, strong vision. You just don’t need to meticulously write it out in month-by-month plans that will turn out to be unrealistic. Keep the vision alive in everybody’s minds and hearts, not in instantly-outdated spreadsheets.
Tamal White
on 06 Mar 13Great book.
William Ghelfi
on 06 Mar 13In “real” (i.e. not American style) latin it is “do ut des”. “Quid pro quo” doesn’t even exhist outside US, while a similar sentence – “qui pro quo” – actually means “a misunderstandig”.
TDG
on 06 Mar 13Good quote, Tamal. True. If people wanted to fundamentally do a good job for their employers, the management role would not have needed to evolve into a role. It did though. Why? Because too many require management. If no one required management, capitalism would never have evolved managers, and trust would flow freely.
Pete
on 06 Mar 13Agree. However if thinking the Yahoo case, you are a new CEO in a company with corrupted culture. It’s not news that people do slack in big corps if they have an opportunity to do so and a company culture supports that i.e. working at home is a bonus and nobody expects you to do actual work there. Been there, done that.
how do you fix culture like that? I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Pete
on 06 Mar 13Taking the priviledge off could be the wake up call the organization needs. They realize there’s a problem and at lease now they are in the same room face to face trying to solve it. Once solved, priviledges are returned. I’m sure people do understand that culture and env is a serious business.
Dave
on 06 Mar 13Not true that everyone wants to do good work. Not at all. That’s why in every single profession the percentage of people doing truly good work is shockingly low. Look around, its true.
What it comes down it is Quid pro quo. I pay you to do good work. If you don’t off with your head.
Jeremy
on 06 Mar 13But Dave, do you pay me to do good work, and trust me to identify and take charge over what this work is? Or do you pay me to “good work”, as defined by you, with little-to-know input from me?
If it’s the former, then that’s what this is talking about.
If it’s the latter, good luck bringing me in to begin with…
Mark
on 06 Mar 13I think it is as simple as this: workers cannot care about something they can’t understand. As a leader if you have done a half-arsed job of explaining what you need doing and why it needs doing, then your workers will do a half-arsed job.
Andrew
on 06 Mar 13This whole article is based on one assumption that people want to do a good job. Reality check suggests, however, that most people would not be working at all if they didn’t have to and the rest would likely to have chosen a different job.
In addition to that, not all people can make the right judgement about their effort. Many B doers truly believe they do an exceptional A+ job. This second point deserves a separate discussion though.
Amphion
on 06 Mar 13This article also assumes there’s always a nice challenging project for everyone. However truth is that someone needs to clean our toilets too.
Dave
on 06 Mar 13@Jeremy In my company work is clearly defined. I know what we need to get done and quality I expect for finished product which is clearly communicated. You are paid to deliver that in any manner you want anywhere in the world you want and at generous and reasonable timing. If you think what I proposed is shit and you can do better you are also paid to tell me so. Now if you don’t do the work, you will be fired.
Company is not democracy. Of course you get to voice your opinion, but you don’t get final say. That stays always with me. If that’s something you don’t like you should start your own company.
As they say, fish stinks from the head. Every company is the reflection of its leader. We all need clear rules communicated and most importantly enforced. Otherwise you get what you get…
Roy
on 06 Mar 13A great example of what a huge difference the environment can make was also mentioned in this blog post by Aaron Schwartz about a General Motors plant which was known for having the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States (not just slacking off, but deliberately scratching cars). The Plant was closed, but the next year it was reopened by Toyota which hired the old workers, and turned it into the best plant. Same workers, different management style, made all the difference in the world.
We have a tendency to attribute people’s behavior to their personality, not their environment, which is known as the fundamental attribution error.
TDG
on 06 Mar 13Roy, so those slack off employees were not very motivated to work and did not “fundamentally” want to do a good job, right? The Japanese come in and toughly manage these guys and whip them into shape. Could 37 Signals get these guys to do the same?
TDG
on 06 Mar 13Could those guys have worked remotely?
Anonymous Coward
on 06 Mar 13@Dave
Sounds like you have a proper structure and flow then. I think this article is addressing environments that don’t allow their employees to “deliver [work] in any manner you want anywhere in the world you want and at generous and reasonable timing.” If that’s truly your company, then I don’t think you have a B-environment.
I think that people, overall, DO want to do good work (or they want to just do NO work). Nobody wants to spend their time doing things that are unfulfilling and that they know is crappy. But the environments need to allow for that.
For example, we had a particular project that, to have it done well, should have been pushed back about 3 weeks to coincide with some other related things. Everybody agreed this was the case (including management)... but somebody, at some point, had made getting this done sooner a “goal”, for the sake of putting that deadline on it. There was no intrinsic need to do it sooner, yet it was a goal to do so. The result was that it was done at a lower quality, and with less enthusiasm.
The B-environment setup – being a slave to the “goal” – led to a B-quality result, and nobody was really happy. In this case, we could take the “off with their head” approach with the person who implemented it – but I would argue that the B-quality wasn’t their fault.
Jeremy
on 06 Mar 13@Dave – that one above was me, forgot to fill out the form.
Chris
on 07 Mar 13A nice follow up to your spot on 5by5’s Quit. If you don’t have passion at work, then put in the minimum required of you and spend your energy and passion elsewhere.
GregT
on 07 Mar 13Sounds great. Now, go try it at a company with 3,000 employees, or 30,000.
Roy
on 07 Mar 13@TDG No, if you read that blog post you’ll see that it was General Motors that tried the tough management style, which backfired as the workers started to retaliate by scratching the cars and loosening parts. Toyota simply asked the workers what the real problem was when the workers failed at their task (by asking ‘Why?’ repeatedly) and then helped to fix the problem by changing the environment, so that the workers could do a good job.
It wasn’t the personality of these workers that was a problem or needed changing, so applying the tough management style here, is like yelling at your computer. It’s in our instinct to yell, but it won’t solve the problem.
So as for the new Yahoo! policy, it makes the work environment worse for some employees, without convincing them why it is necessary or even helpful to be at the office at all times. Unless these employees will be figuring out a new direction for Yahoo! fulltime, they will notice that on some days they could have easily done the same work from home, but that’s just not allowed and for no good reason in their eyes. So if the goal is to get a better culture, it just backfired already, by offering zero flexibility for no good reason which will feel like an undeserved punishment. Because Yahoo! gains nothing from it when they are at the office instead of working from home on some occasions, and the employee loses a benefit, which might matter a lot to them. So it’s Yahoo! 0 : Employee -1, and this score looks like punishment, even though that is not intended. And the danger is that these employees feel this is undeserved and might retaliate or leave and then you might get this outcome: Yahoo! -1 : Employee -1, which reflects the outcome of war, just like what happened in the General Motors plant.
Greg L.
on 07 Mar 13If I were an employer, I would rather let go of unmotivated, undisciplined people who wouldn’t do a good job without toughly managing them and whipping them into shape. Why should I have to do that? That’s like trying to use a computer that doesn’t work unless I spend a lot of time troubleshooting and maintaining. Total waste of time and money.
I would much rather work with the kind of self-driven, purpose-driven person who gets things done on his/her own when nobody is watching. I couldn’t care less where he/she works as long as meaningful work gets done efficiently. Remote work promotes such efficiency in my opinion.
Vlad
on 07 Mar 13It’s just the myth that those principles can’t be applied to bigger organizations. The Productivity/quality issues been the case for years in the auto industry where thousands to be motivated for working good.
“workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences” – W. Edwards Deming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
If you look through what Deming did, all answers are there. He is the person tought Japan car industry to do the quality they achieved.
See also the famous Deming Red Bead experiment where he brilliantly showed how workers are punished/rewarded for something they don’t have actual control on.
TDG
on 07 Mar 13Do those of you here who work from or used to or those who advocate it but don’t work from home (ironically), do you require much management to get anything done? Do the 37signals crew remotely require much management to get anything done?
TDG
on 07 Mar 13Correction: “who work from home…”
Anthony Green
on 07 Mar 13Zeitgeist. Join one of the myriad of organisations and individuals who worldwide are working to popularise the notion of autonomous and democratic workplaces: http://www.worldblu.com http://www.stoosnetwork.org http://holacracy.org ...
Stuart
on 08 Mar 13Nice article… I’m yet to see any press raising the issue of the accountability and responsibilities of the managers of the remote yahoo workers. Surely these failings are the result of less than competent managers. Did they not notice that work wasn’t being done by a [large?] number of remote employees??!!
Laurence McCahill
on 08 Mar 13Great post David.
I believe it comes down to trust. Hire people that have similar values to the company that you trust. Then let them get on with their jobs.
If leaders want the best from people they need to have empathy and genuinely care for their workers, creating a culture where everyone is pulling in the same direction for the good of the team (not themselves). Transparency and openness are vital too to create a close team too. Command and control just doesn’t cut it for this generation. And free lunches and a Foosball table doesn’t turn an unhappy workplace into a happy one. The Southwest Airlines Way is a great read on how to create a great company culture.
Research tells us that results and relationships are what makes a happy team, and happy people are more productive, more creative and generally better at their jobs. It pays to treat people well.
Covered this and more in this recent post.
rob weeve
on 09 Mar 13my question is off topic, relates to an old post you wrote several years ago for 37 signals entitled “forget-the-resume-kill-on-the-cover-letter”. Tx, Rob http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1748-forget-the-resume-kill-on-the-cover-letter#all_comments
in the next to the last paragraph you wrote: "This advice is probably exactly the opposite of what you’ll if you’re aiming to get into a big shop with a formal HR department." Would you please complete , what word comes after "you'll" ?Craig Davey
on 10 Mar 13“A star environment is based on trust, vision, and congruent behavior.”
This is one the finest sentences I’ve read this week.
+1 on this whole article. Thanks David.
Santhosh
on 12 Mar 13@David,
I am not sure about the points that is mentioned. But, as for me I do not want to work, it should be as part of our daily life where it is not restricted by timings but the ideas.
I could not agree more with these lines and I am working on this and will continue to do so.
“Everyone deserves to work at a place that inspires them to give their very best. Don’t stop reaching until you have that.”
Juan Ruiz
on 13 Mar 13However, I believe it does not matter who are you working for, you should always give your best. Mediocrity it’s an acquired habit.
This discussion is closed.