Retail Wire panelists weighed in on the subject of the disagreement between Costco and Coca Cola on wholesale pricing. (At this writing, Costco has dropped Coke products from its stores.) Is this a sign of retailers’ greater power over national brands, and is it fair to consumers? Here’s my take:

There is little doubt that retail consolidation over the past decade has put greater pressure on brands to cooperate with (or in some cases, bow to) their key accounts. At the same time, national brands own a smaller share of a shrinking pie as large retailers put their focus on private or exclusive labels. so the power in the equation has definitely shifted toward the retailer. The Costco-Coke dustup takes it to a new level, however: At what point does the power struggle between the brand and its retail “partner” start to affect the consumer adversely?

Wait, some of you might be thinking. Who is Robin Tunney?

Robin Tunney; image courtesy of tvdramas.about.com

I think Tunney was slated to be a star when she started cropping up in movies in the 1990s. While stardom didn’t happen for her, she’s had steady work, currently starring on The Mentalist, a CBS procedural. She was supposed to co-write a book on feminism with her friend Liz Phair, with whom she worked on the movie Cherish. I’m still waiting for that last one.

For many in my age group, we know her from back-to-back appearances in Empire Records and The Craft. As both movies were slumber party staples in my friend group, featured teen girl characters, and were accompanied by popular soundtracks, I knew I’d need to revisit them.

Empire Records came out in 1995 and developed a bit of a cult following, despite poor reviews and a dismal box office performance. It also instilled a personal desire to work at a record store, particularly an indie fighting to stay that way. At 13, it looked so cool and fun to “work” all day at such a place with hip teens and twentysomethings.

Well, maybe not them specifically, as the characters in Empire Records aren’t believeable as people so much as underwritten Generation X versions of cool kids dreamt up by a team of movie executives: there’s Joe, the anti-establishment boomer-era owner (Anthony LaPaglia); Lucas, the Zen-like hipster (Rory Cochrane); A.J., the sensitive artist in love with the unattainable Corey (Johnny Whitworth); Corey, the wholesome speed freak perfectionist (Liv Tyler); Gina, Corey’s slutty best friend who wants to be in a band (Renée Zellweger); Mark, the stoner (Ethan Embry); Berko, the rocker who clocks in between gigs (Coyote Shivers, who was married to Tyler’s legendary mother Bebe Buell at the time); and Debra, the rebel girl accountant who shaves her head after attempting suicide (Tunney).

Oh, they are so selling out; image courtesy of chartrigger.blogspot.com

The writing is the movie’s biggest problem, though I’ll never understand why casting directors thought someone as boring as Tyler would ever be a huge star (I’d ask this question again later in the decade when Katie Holmes started landing movie roles). The motivations of the characters, though meant to be read as young and madcap, are childish and inconsistent. The boys pine after girls, eat pizza, get high, and glue quarters to the floor. The girls pine after has-been teen idols doing in-stores, alternate between loving and hating each other, and get together with the boys who pine after them. Both sexes deliver such profound lines like “If I can love her in that skirt, than this must really be it” and “I went to rock and roll heaven, and I wasn’t on the guest list.”

That second line is the answer given to a question about bandaged wrists. It’s delivered to withering effect by Debra, potentially the movie’s most interesting character. She’s not glamourous like her female co-workers or sophomoric like her male colleagues. She also seems to have gone through real pain, deeper than the surface angst used to promote OK Soda and perhaps closer to the actual pain brought on by parental neglect and low self-esteem. In the early 1990s, these and other issues were particularly relevant to young girls, some of whom would form or discover riot grrl and queercore and develop their own queer and/or feminist identities. We only get a sense of Debra’s absent mother, resistent intellect, boredom with men, feelings of inadequacy, and the hope for something better.

Note: I’d recommend watching director Allan Moyle’s far-superior Times Square. Rest assured that the tale of two girl runaways falling in love amidst downtown New York’s early-80s squalor will get its due on this blog.   

It’s weird that slashed wrists bridge Tunney’s two major performances to date. Clearly suicide, perhaps most unfortunately personified by Kurt Cobain, was on young people’s minds at the time. I’d hedge that this has more to do with class frustration, racial injustice, conflicted feelings about sexual orientation, coming out to unsupportive families and communities, dysfunctional home lives, and a lack of any real support system. I’d also add that it’s an on-going problem.

Absent mothers also connect Debra and Sarah, the latter of whom lost her mother during childbirth. As The Craft was originally pitched as “Carrie meets Clueless,” it seems necessary to point out that these movies feature girls with compromised mother-daughter relationships. Carrie’s mother is a crazed witch. Cher Horowitz, like so many other fairytale heroines before her, lost her mother at an early age and has only an idealized memory of her. Sarah has similar baggage, along with the additional burden of being responsible for her mother’s death. Oh, and carrying on the ability to perform witchcraft. That’s a hell of a lot for any teenage girl to shoulder, especially when she’s moving to Los Angeles with her family.     

A heartening aspect of The Craft , no doubt motivated by how successful Clueless was, is the presence of girlfriends. Sarah meets shy Bonnie (played by Neve Campbell) and becomes friends with a trio of Goth girls. Two other movies came out in 1996 that focused on girl gangs – Girls Town and Foxfire. For a more nuanced analysis of these two movies and their depictions of homosociality and developing feminist politics, I highly recommend checking out my friend Kristen’s thesis Revenge, Girl Style. 

The Craft entertains the progressive potential of girl friendship, particularly for outcasts. There are also hints at the queer possibilities of homosocial bonding and witchcraft. It even contains racially charged moments, particularly when Rochelle (played by Rachel True), the coven’s lone African American member, casts a spell on Laura Lizzie (Christine Taylor), a popular blonde who is on the swim team with her. After enduring Lizzie’s racist comments about her hair, Rochelle turns her bald, thus rebelling against normative, white-centric notions of feminine beauty. 

But these suggestions are sidelined. Because what the movie is really about is the battle between Tunney’s kind-hearted Sarah and Fairuza Balk’s destructive ringleader Nancy, who is jealous of her frenemy’s natural aptitude for witchcraft. It should also be noted that Nancy is working-class and coded as queer. The movie makes a considerable effort to undo her queerness, putting men in between her and Sarah, whether they be ex-boyfriends or Manon, the supernatural male figure that the girls worship. The movie ends with Nancy trying to kill Sarah, resulting in a showdown that tears the group apart, causes Sarah to move, and leads to Nancy being institutionalized. The final shot is of Nancy in a straight-jacket trying to fly out of a padded cell. The movie’s message: we are the weirdos, mister. Just don’t expect us to stay friends or keep a hold of our sanity. So much for sisterhood.

Nancy's farewell; image courtesy of channel4.com

Sisterhood is often lacking in movies, but is emphasized to market teen movies, if only to tap in to the girl market. But much of this was eclipsed in story development to make way for more lucrative prospects, none more pronounced at the time than the soundtrack. A considerable number of American teen movies in the 1990s featured a soundtrack, many boasting songs by alternative rock artists. Unlike The Craft and Empire Records, and more in line with All Over Me, Girls Town and Foxfire paid particular attention toward showcasing female artists, particularly those closely associated with hip hop and the then-waning riot grrrl movement. Scholars like Jeff Smith and Mary Celeste Kearney have addressed this in their work, theorizing that the soundtrack served as a way to cultivate potential audience markets and a source of textual identification for fans.

While female artists are present on the soundtracks to Empire Records and The Craft, they’re not the focus, perhaps out of fear of alienating a broader audience. This might further explain why The Craft soundtrack features covers of popular songs from lesser-known acts. Our Lady Peace contributes a version of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Heather Nova covers Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch,” and Letters To Cleo take on The Cars’ “Dangerous Type,” a tactic they’d repeat when covering Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me” for 10 Things I Hate About You at the end of the decade. And let’s not forget the double-nostalgia of former Psychelic Furs’ front man Richard Butler covering The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” with his post-Furs project Love Spit Love. 

Cover to "The Craft" soundtrack (Sony, 1996); image courtesy of thesoundtracktoyourlife.co.uk

A major problem both of these movies share, and is evident in other titles of this period and in the Brat Pack movies of the 1980s, is the need to broadly define its characters as members of a generation, rather than as complex young people with particular problems oftentimes informed by their identities. And while ennui and an ironic fluency in popular culture were markers for Gen X, these young adults were more than just sneering (white) kids in flannel, combat boots, and barettes. At least off-camera.

Oftentimes, they were frustrated by how little high school and a liberal arts education could get them in a job market, particularly during the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy had yet to recover from the 1987 market crash. They were annoyed at the shrine their parents built to the 1960s, as it was clear just how empty and hollow their promises of revolution were. In some ways, they were no different than people my age or boomer hipster Paul Kinsey on Mad Men, turning to interesting records, movies, books, and TV shows, but knowing they wouldn’t make them any happier, politically mobile, or economically viable.

Michael Gladis as Paul Kinsey, proving the every generation has its hipster; image courtesy of readingunderthecovers.blogspot.com

Some of these people formed bands, often annointed with glossy but unremarkable one-word monikers: Sponge, Drill, Lustre, Cracker, Elastica, Spacehog, Dig, Hole, Belly, Hum, Bush, Toadies, Oasis . . . In a particularly cruel example of market imperative, many of these bands broke up or were without major label record deals by the end of the decade.

I still have Elastica's debut album!; image courtesy of forgottenfavorite.com

But it’s hard to convey all of this in a 90-minute movie, especially one that hopes to cash in on the wages of the very demographic these popcorn flicks were hoping to represent. Some did a decent job of conveying this generation’s ambivalence, particularly indies like Kicking and Screaming. I’d also add that Reality Bites highlights these problems, even pointing out the crass ways in which corporate America capitalizes on the very market its created. While I wish Winona Ryder’s filmmaker character Lalaina didn’t end up with Ethan Hawke’s slacker Troy, I understand why she can’t be with Michael (played by director Ben Stiller), who works for an MTV-type network that makes worm’s meat out of her documentary about her friends. 

Richard Linklater’s second feature, Dazed and Confused, did a considerable job at suggesting that Generation X inherited their sense of slacker frustration (and detached nostalgia for Schoolhouse Rock and The Brady Bunch) from their parents. That Linklater cast a bunch of twentysomething unknowns like Joey Lauren Adams, Ben Affleck, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Jason London, Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Marisa Ribisi to essentially play the teenagers and young adults who would become their parents may strengthen Robin Wood’s argument that Dazed is a horror film. 

Some television shows also did a good job articulating the nuances of the slacker era. I’d offer up British programs like Spaced, along with MTV’s Daria and ABC’s My So-Called Life. The latter featured an angsty girl protagonist, complex teenage characters, depicted boomer parents being just as clueless and angsty as their brood, and created an immortal stoner heartthrob named Jordan Catalano (played by Jared Leto), whose band Frozen Embryos changed their name at the end of the series to perhaps the most perfect of Gen X band names: Residue.

Angela Chase (Claire Danes) with the object of her affection; image courtesy of thefbomb.org

But it’s always different for girls, and unfortunate that Tunney and many of the actresses of her generation were not given the consideration they deserved (though I love that Austin Chronicle writer Margaret Moser fancies herself as being like Balk’s character in Almost Famous). Some may attribute this to their flat delivery or lack of believability, but I’d wager that this has more to do with poor character development on the part of screenwriters and the industrial emphasis on youth than it does on the actresses. At 19, Kristen Stewart is playing the slouched-shoulder ingenue of a multi-million-dollar film franchise, its latest installment complete with a soundtrack featuring of-the-moment, indie and indie-friendly artists like Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Lykke Li, Grizzly Bear, and Thom Yorke. I only hope she has that sort of star power at 25.

Kristen Stewart at the "New Moon" premiere in Los Angeles; image courtesy of justjared.buzznet.com

One of our consultants at Bama, Dusty Staub, preaches that the number one factor facing most companies is Fear. Fear presents itself in many capacities. In Susan Older’s recent article, the fear is surrounding the loss of jobs and worsening unemployment rates. This is a concern for those employees who are worried about being the next to go. We’ve all heard stories about perfectly hirable people failing to find jobs and not being able to support themselves. This causes rampant fear for those still in the workplace, and an almost feverish need to follow instructions and diminish reasons to be singled out.

However, in a more traditional economy, fear was still a cause for concern. Fear manifests in these key ways:

• Fear of Confrontation; being afraid to tell someone how you feel, or confront an issue head on. This can lead to gossip and unnecessary workplace drama.
• Fear of being ostracized; fear around being criticized for an idea or contribution. This leads to a lack of participation and lack of creativity.
• Fear of Ridicule; this could have to do with workplace bullying or a hostile work environment. When coworkers are close, there tends to be more of a fear of ridicule, usually the less productive workers ridicule the productive workers about working too hard, or making everyone else look bad. This leads to a slowing down of the productive worker’s achievements.
• Fear of Discrimination; race, gender and sexual orientation are still issues in a lot of offices. Some minorities choose to fly “under the radar” to avoid being singled out.

Fear is bred from uncertainty. Therefore the way to alleviate fear is to create an environment in which information is openly shared, discussed and understood.  An open and honest environment allows employees to ask questions, to be given feedback and to share concerns. There is much less fear when everyone is accepted as an equal contributor to the team.

In order for an employee to feel confident that they will be accepted, they must be loved and appreciated no matter who they are, they must be given honest feedback, not ridicule, they must feel that they will not be excluded or left out intentionally because of an idea, and they must know that if they confront a problem, it will actually get resolved. This is the key to helping our employees feel safe and secure at work, and not letting fear rule anyone’s decisions.

I should be sleeping. But after spending such a phenomenal day doing strategic planning that included a delicious wind up dinner, family style, at one of our favourite restaurants, with my ‘other family, team McNak, it is so good to close off the day knowing that this was time well spent. I just had to share.

Our  day’s objective: to get clarity around a major goal and set the course for the next quarter.

Our day began extremely smoothly. I think we can attribute this to knowing that we have a team that is prepared to share and take risks for the best interests of our McNak family. We agreed to a no hold back, tell it like it is session. Rip the bandages off if you must. Expose the rocks and then set a plan in place to remove them. The adage that people need to weigh in before they buy in is so very true. We finished the day knowing far more about each other and with a clearer course than when we began. And we left in alignment.

During this session we got on the topic of what we have now called Family loyalty. This is when you know that the relationship has set a course on its own beyond your own controls. Its on autopilot. Loyalty high, trust high.  Bradley Cuzen nailed it with his comment by a recent placement who had called us with new business and had proudly said to him ‘we’re family now’. I think our whole team beamed when he told us the story!

Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – A Leadership Fable had the perfect opening line from this book for today’s retreat. He said, ‘Not finance. Not strategy. Not Technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.’

As we shared our reflections on the day over a delicious dessert platter we concluded some things that we are certain of. Families aren’t perfect. People aren’t perfect. Trust is crucial. Commitment – everything. And when you take the time to know how each person fits, combined with a single unified goal, the ultimate power of a team is magic.

Row in the same direction and your outcomes will be substantial. We can hardly wait to embark upon our united objectives of the next quarter in our business together. How sweet it is.

~ Sarah McNeill

Two of my three children, who are pretty grown up now, are excellent bike riders.  By that, I mean that they appear to be able to ride bicycles around big cities while rarely striking other objects or falling and damaging themselves.  I attribute this entirely to my teaching methods when they were young and first wanted to ride a “two wheeler.”  I would take them to the top of a steep hill on their very first try, get them situated in the seat, and push them down the hill.   My wife would wait near the bottom with a video camera to capture the inevitable crash and trip to the ER…

If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’re probably one of those managers who, when approached by one of your talented young employees who has unilaterally decided they are ready to switch from being a developer to a business analyst, lead an important client meeting with a million dollar proposal on the line or run the biggest, most important project you currently have going even though they’ve never led a project before, says, “sure, why not, you seem ready,” pushes them from the top of the hill, contacts the filming crew, and goes back to your office before your coffee gets cold.

Learning to ride a bike takes balance, coordination, awareness of your surroundings, confidence and experience, which riders gain a little at a time as you slowly (sometimes VERY slowly) let go of the back of the bike.  Hmmm, the roles we talked about earlier seem to need the same skills.  With your employees, your job is teach them to switch roles, grow their skill sets, interact effectively with customers, and lead projects with nothing more than a skinned knee, not a trip to the ER.  But real mentoring programs that can build you a team of Lance Armstrongs take time, commitment and measurement to make sure they’re working.   Even though I believe that you should treat all your employees like adults, sometimes you gotta treat ‘em like kids…  ironic, huh?

Ignite seismic cultural shifts within the enterprise to outpace the pace of change.  Incent, nurture, evangelize collaboration.  The constantly shifting enterprise landscape drives explosive growth, and radical shrinkage, sometimes all at once.

The pace of change keeps accelerating exponentially.  No one worries about ‘Stability Management’.   The demand is for a new style of leadership.  How do we lead when our employees are distributed, they have opinions, and they don’t blindly follow?  How do we get Information at everyone’s finger-clicks, when information is power, and many organizations still feel that they lose power if everyone has access to the information?

In these situations, companies need to provide incentives to their workforces to use online spaces.   Moore’s Law will morph to Moore’s Law cubed and have a profound effect on technology development using even richer media tools to improve the community user experience.  The rise of on-demand communities will quickly proliferate and be more robust and compelling in its ability to ferret out the transitory expert who happens to fit the demands of a particular situation.

To purchase reprint and/or other rights for this cartoon, buy a framed
print, or have it reproduced on T-shirts, mugs, aprons, etc., visit the CartoonStock website by clicking the sidebar link.

Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.

An article caught my attention about a marketing company that is entirely virtual; no employees, no payroll, everyone is freelance.

Starting out like this is a great way to keep overhead low, but would quality or deadlines suffer? There are many companies using freelance, or contract workers. Time will tell if this trend continues. I can see the appeal to employers; no salaries, no benefits, paying only for work completed. Downsides; brand identity may suffer, corporate culture will be non-existent, consistency may suffer, and no company picnic or Holiday party.

Have a look at the article in the Globe and Mail and chime in.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/business-incubator/founded-on-freelance/article1369268/

You know all the time people disagree about the definition of right and wrong. But every one across the globe will lament without argument on the loss of ethics in  today’s business.

 Honesty in business dealings doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of people’s minds. Here I could recollect what once my professor said that I could learn more   bottom lines of business from Business Ethics Cartoons rather than in attending big lectures and seminars on business management. That is, today, hundred percent true and correct in my practical life.

 When ethical values are falling, people often turn to government for help. That is what exactly happened in recent years. In short what has been driving business is increased concentration on very short-term earnings, achievement of targets and so on and not on the ethics of doing business.

 When you read about World’s 10 most outrageous CEOs you will definitely agree with me that ethical behavior is a very personal matter, which requires that a person be honest and truthful in all business and accounting dealings.

  If you go through the list of   World’s most outrageous CEOs: List (compiled by Forbes) recently you will agree with how true is what a Japanese proverb states: “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.”

 The list of The Most Outrageous CEOs Of 2009 – reminds me what I read sometime back that “In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics” and “All are not saints who go to church” and “In a state where corruption abounds laws must be very numerous”.

There are many two-word phrases that frighten managers.  Among the top ten, according to my highly non-scientific yet government-funded research include “involuntary retirement,” “bonus reallocation,” and “special project.”  But the most blood-curdling phrase has to be “bad attitude.”  When properly applied to one of your employees, nothing is more frightening and difficult to address. 

Now, the reason this is so scary is because it’s real.  I had the pleasure, in just this past week, of talking not only to a manager who has an employee with a bad attitude, but with a relative of mine who IS an employee with a bad attitude.  And let’s be clear – she relishes in it…  That’s scary.

And so, the most obvious way to deal with this is to perform a quick and effective I&L – Identify and Label.  Identify which employee has a “bad attitude” and then use that as a label every time his or her name comes up in “managerial conversations.”  Doesn’t solve the problem, but at least it lets everyone know that you know.

So if I&L is not the way to go, what is to be done?  Here is the painful prescription:

1. Get out your shovel, it’s dig time – most of the time, a ‘bad attitude’ is the accumulation, over time, of a series of perceived (or perhaps real) slights and transgressions that congeal into a systemic frustration with the organization, whose only outlet is that delightful passive-aggressive BA.  Assuming you weren’t there for the entire process, start digging.  See if you can get your employee to list, in painstaking detail, the litany of evils that have been done unto them.  Now you have context.
2. Race to the fork in the road – I gotta believe there are lots of marriage counselors out there who listen to a couples’ list of grievances and actually recommend they’d be better off apart.  This is key – if you and especially your employee don’t want to start fresh, the best thing you can do is help them find a place where they can start fresh on their own.  You have to be ready to do that.  But if they are genuinely willing to let the past go…
3. Build a plan and stick to it – create a mutually agreeable way to redress the top three (or one, or five, whatever) issues that, if left unaddressed, will  continue to irritate the wound.  But they have to be “forward-looking.”  In other words, don’t give someone a pay increase to make up for the 1.4% bump they got in 2002.  Build a compensation plan that rewards future performance based on a real change in performance and attitude.  You get the idea.

Why would you go to all this trouble to “save” someone who can just as easily be written off?  Well, I think there are two reasons:

1. It’ll make you a better manager.
2. In this cold and flu season, remember that BA’s are highly contagious.  Just one sneeze…

Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom

It’s an exciting idea, the way that Web 2.0 will transform the world of work, making collaboration the norm by providing wikis, bosses opening up dialogues by posting blogs that are open for comments, replacing meetings with discussion boards.

But before we get to that nirvana, we will have to live with the worrying answers to the question ‘how will the corporation subvert Web 2.0′

In the long term the Luddites always lose. In the long term the organisations which embrace Web 2.o will over-take those which resist it, just as Amazon has flooded out the bookshops and iTunes and Spotify have all but destroyed the the record companies.

What worries me, is the nature of that embrace.

Web 2.0, briefly, comprises the tools and attitudes that enable me to blog and enable you to rate my post and comment on it.  It’s FaceBook and Twitter and citizen journalism and mash-ups and crowd-sourcing and ‘Here comes everybody’.  It’s MySpace instead of A&R  It’s Wikipedia instead of the Brittanica. It’s Twitter instead of… well… instead of no Twitter. Web 2.0, so we all thought, is a force for democracy and good.  It cuts out the parasitical middle-person, it empowers individuals and enables them to form groups and enables those groups to face down corporations and governments.  It puts artists directly in touch with their audience. It enables me to publish this and you to read it with no more cost than our time. It turns base metal into gold and chocolate into a slimming aid.

There are, it seems, two current views of what happens when Web 2.0 meets the Enterprise.  In the first view, Web 2.0 brings about innovative, hierarchically flat organisations where knowledge is freely shared, where anyone who comes up with a bright idea can get it aired and taken up, where discussion boards pwn meetings and where gatekeepers and barriers to innovation are no more.  Google is reported to be just such a place.  The other view is that Web 2.0 and the enterprise are oil and water:  executives and managers will resist Web 2.0 either because they don’t get it, because they think it is a distraction, or because they are just plain running scared.

But I am not convinced by either.  Web 2.0, combined with an internal search engine, are powerful surveillance tools.  Any well-governed Wiki will tell you exactly who made which changes when, and far more neatly than you can track the changes in Word.   You can capture Instant Messenger logs and run searches on them in a way which you cannot tape and search conversations by the water cooler.  Nobody minutes meetings any more, but a discussion forum can be there for as long and the server farm lasts and longer.

Web 2.0 facilitates networks and interactions, but it also makes them more visible, and therefore easier to track.  We already know that the web is destroying privacy.  These days it takes diligence, vigilance and consistency to hide in cyberspace.  It is hard not have your name published by other people when school mates tag you on photos in FaceBook.

So it is surprising that hierarchical organisations don’t espouse Web 2.0 tools more actively, and this supports the theory that this is because execs and managers just don’t get it.

As something of a Web 2.0 evangelist, that places me on the horns of a dilemma.  A trilemma, actually. Do I:

1. promote Web 2.o tools because they empower people and democratise knowledge
2. stop promoting Web 2.0 tools because they expose people by turning situations which they are used to considering private into permanent searchable records or
3. use the argument that they can improve audit and accountability in order to get them into an organisation because they are just so flippin’ COOOL?

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the current cultural buzz factory ‘Zappos’ the billion dollar online shoe store.

I got a unique opportunity to have dinner with their CEO Tony Hsieh & their COO Alfred Lin.  The following day which was Saturday they set up a 90 minute exclusive tour for 12 of us followed by an additional 90 minute  behind the scenes Q&A session where they really opened up to us.

To start with – I was intrigued and a little bit cynical.  Where they REALLY as good as all this press was saying ?

I’d been the Chief Operating Officer for 1-800-GOT-JUNK? during the heyday of the companies growth and cultural buzz.  During the midst of my tenure I was lucky to be there when we ranked #1 Company to Work For in BC two years in a row by BC Business Magazine and then ranked #2 in all of Canada to Work For.  I knew how the whole culture thing worked.  I saw how we cranked it up – and I saw it go up and down at various points during our growth.  We were having tours & Q&A’s of our company every Friday during those days too.  Were they really this good ? What did they do differently ?

I’d also helped build a couple other companies over the years with awesome cultures. College Pro Painters was where I cut my teeth with culture, and Ubarter.com was where I had fun trying it the dotcom way.  1-800- GOT-JUNK? was where we nailed it.

So with Zappos, I just wanted to see if they were REALLY as good as all their press said (and I’ve had lots of experience getting Free PR too)…..

Here is what I learned at Zappos.  I wouldn’t say I was blown away – I wasn’t – but it was damn good and I learned.  I was and still am in awe of HOW DEEPLY rooted their CEO & COO both live the core values that eminate throughout the company.  I have to go back on a weekday now too – to be fair – in an office that seats 700 people only about 20 were milling about.  My bet is the energy is mind blowing when they bring me back.

Key Points I saw and learned:

—First 10 hires are the most important people to ever hire.  They hire everyone else and they set the direction of the company culturally.

—Core values first…Make all your decisions based on them.  They asked employees what the core values should be and they call each other on them daily.

—They grade employees on how they are living the core values in all roles, two times a year.

—They bring job candidates from the airport in a shuttle. And after they drop off the candidate they ask the driver for his thoughts on the candidates fit culturally – the interview starts at the airport.

—To figure out your company core values they really pushed to have us ask ourselves what are our own personal core values….the company values come out of those.

—Core values should be short phrases not just single words like “passion”

—They tell the emloyees that they are responsible for care taking the core values.

—Culture is like what makes a flock of birds work with out leaders as they all fly and turn as a group. It’s their cultural DNA.

—As their CEO Tony said – if you don’t fire people for not following core values they become a meaningless plaque on the wall

—In 2003 they decided they wanted to be about customer service. So they cut a profitable model of drop shipping to REALLY focus on Customer Experience – and um – it’s working.

—Most important thing they’ve done is exceed expectations.

—Every year they print and give out a Culture Book (I got copies of 2008 & 2009) and it is only edited for grammar and spelling.

—Tony is obsessed with Happiness  – and suggests we all read the “Happiness Hypothesis”

—I think their quirky decorating of all workstations is a little bit too cluttered, dusty, and could use a few days of junk removal – but if that’s the only negative I found then even a guy with all my A.D.D. could turn a blind eye.

These guys GET Culture.  I only wish I could buy shares in the company.  Too bad Amazon bought the whole company for over $900 Million a few months ago

This guest post was written by:

Tony Hsieh, Cameron Herold, Alfred Lin

Cameron Herold

Founder, BackPocket COO
www.BackPocketCOO.com

Service Culture sebuah tuntutan ataukah kebutuhan bagi perusahaan jasa/layanan.  Nah, untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut, ada baiknya kita ikuti tulisan berikut.

Bagi manajer dan karyawan yang berhubungan langsung dengan pelanggan memerlukan informasi agar dapat melaksanakan tugas mereka sebagai pimpinan atau pengelola dan sebagai pemberi layanan terhadap konsumen internal dan eksternal. Komunikasi dua arah dalam organisasi usaha layanan akan memperlancar aspek communication management.

Organisasi usaha layanan harus diawali dengan suatu komitmen yang kemudian ditanamkan menjadi suatu budaya perusahaan (corporate culture). Dalam membangun service culture dibutuhkan empat hal yaitu :

• Strategic Requirements
• Organizational Requirements
• Management Requirements
• Knowledge and Attitude Requirement

Mengembangkan Strategi Layanan (Strategic Requirement)

Agar pengembangan strategi layanan berhasil, harus didukung oleh management puncak dengan mengembangkan pula budaya layanan (service culture). Perilaku manajemen puncak yang dapat dijadikan model atau contoh positif terhadap service culture akan memperkuat mengakarnya budaya tersebut. Untuk membangun hal tersebut, dalam merekrut calon karyawan manajemen harus memiliki kriteria standar mengenai nilai, sikap, dan perilakunya yang mendukung konsep layanan atau service culture.

Mengembangkan Struktur Organisasi Layanan (Organizational Requirement)

Pembentukan struktur organisasi harus menunjang service culture dengan cara memperlancar komunikasi dua arah dan mengacu pada struktur organik, misalnya memilih struktur organisasi yang bersifat simple  profesional bureaucracy, yaitu kombinasi antara struktur sederhana dan birokrasi profesional bagi sebuah layanan yang memiliki operating core yang bersifat profesional. Contohnya adalah underwriter atau claim adjuster  di suatu perusahaan asuransi, dokter di sebuah rumah sakit atau montir di sebuah bengkel. Struktur sederhana yang bersifat organik dan tidak berlapis-lapis akan memperlancar terjadinya komunikasi dua arah. Para profesional atau tenaga trampil merupakan operating core yang menjadi inti operasional perusahaan. Standarisasi, yang menunjang efisiensi dan terdapat dalam organisasi tersebut merupakan sifat dari struktur birokrasi profesional.

Strategi organisasi usaha layanan yang dilakukan bukan hanya dengan menerapkan Total Quality Management (TQM), melainkan juga dengan menanamkan paradigma pembelajaran organisasi (learning organization), akan sangat mendukung keberhasilan service culture. Learning organization bukan hanya bersifat adaptif terhadap perubahan seperti paradigma Total Quality Management, melainkan juga bersifat proaktif untuk mengantisipasi perubahan di masa depan. Hal ini akan tercermin dalam manajemen sumber daya manusia. Misalnya dalam proses seleksi, harus dipilih karyawan yang memiliki kemauan kuat untuk belajar. Untuk melakukan seleksi ini, perlu diadakan analisis atribut personal (personal attributes analysis) dengan mengidentifikasi sikap dan kompetensi yang dibutuhkan serta memperjelas hal mana yang harus sudah ada pada diri orang tersebut atau hal mana yang dapat dikembangkan melalui pelatihan. Selain itu, pelatihan yang dilakukan bukan hanya pelatihan yang berorientasi masa kini melainkan juga pengembangan para karyawannya yang berorientasi ke masa depan, dan sebagainya.

Mengembangkan Kepemimpinan (Management Requirements)

Untuk layanan yang baik akan berusaha memiliki dan memelihara kepemimpinan layanan (service leadership). Untuk membangun hal tersebut, perlu dilaksanakan hal-hal berikut ini :

• Encourage Leadership learning atau usaha menggiatkan organisasi untuk belajar, yang dilakukan dengan cara menanamkan budaya learning organization yang diimplementasikan dalam kegiatan manajemen sumber daya manusianya.
• Mempromosikan orang tepat. Misalnya dalam aspek perencanaan karier, promotion form within menuntut persyaratan kualifikasi tingkat pendidikan minimal, prestasi kerja, dan lamanya bekerja.
• Menekankan keterlibatan personal. Semua karyawan harus memiliki nilai, sikap, dan perilaku yang menghayati faktor critical the moment of truth atau berorientasi pada kepuasan pelanggan. Komunikasi dua arah harus berjalan lancar.
• Menekankan kepercayaan pada seluruh karyawan. Contohnya adalah melakukan pengembangan karier untuk meningkatkan motivasi dengan melakukan job enrichment atau empowerment.

Mengembangkan Service Training Programs (Knowledge and Attitude Requirements)

Program pelatihan terhadap keahlian, pengetahuan, dan sikap karyawan dibutuhkan untuk mencapai kualitas pelayanan yang baik. Mengacu pada konsep tekstonomi Bloom, tujuan pelatihan harus memperhatikan tiga domain pada masing-masing orang sesuai dengan kebutuhannnya, yaitu affective, cognitive, dan  psychomotor.

Sebagai ilustrasi seorang agen asuransi yang bertugas sebagai pemasar produk asuransi pada usaha layanan asuransi harus memiliki pengetahuan yang berhubungan dengan bidangnya, misalnya mengerti asuransi apa yang diinginkan atau dibutuhkan konsumen dan mampu memberikan informasi kepada konsumen yang membutuhkannya  (cognitive domain). Contoh gampang yang lainnya, seorang sopir taksi yang bertugas mengantarkan kosumen harus dapat mengemudikan dan memperlakukan mobil dengan baik. Ini berkaitan dengan psychomotoric domain. Sikap positif staff customer service misalnya dengan memperlihatkan empati, mendengarkan secara aktif, dan responsif pada konsumen pada konsumen yang dihadapi melibatkan effective domain.

Pelatihan-pelatihan untuk mencapai seluruh tujuan di atas dapat dilakukan dengan :

• On the job Training, contohnya latihan instruksi pekerjaan yaitu memberikan petunjuk-petunjuk mengenai pekerjaan secara langsung saat bekerja untuk melatih karyawan bagaimana melaksanakan pekerjaan mereka sekarang.
• Off the job training, contohnya adalah metode simulasi permainan peran (role playing). Ini dimaksudkan agar karyawan melatih sikap dan perilaku dalam menghadapi pelanggan dan melatih keahlian berkomunikasi yang baik. Selain itu presentasi video pun dapat dilakukan untuk melengkapi bentuk pelatihan role playing. Karyawan sebaiknya diperlengkapi dengan rekaman video dan buku pegangan yang berisi cara-cara efektif dalam melayani pelanggan sehingga karyawan dapat mempelajarinya sendiri bila membutuhkannya.
• Dalam pemasaran internal, motivasi kerja yang tinggi sangat dibutuhkan. Untuk merealisasikannya dapat dilakukan melalui berbagai cara yang menyentuh setiap aspek manajemen sumber daya manusia. Sebagai contoh, kita ambil acuan salah satu teori motivasi kontemporer yang diajukan oleh David Mc Clelland yang dikenal dengan sebutan Three Needs Theory atau teori tiga kebutuhan yang terdiri dari need for affiliation, need for power, need for achievement.

Program orientasi dilaksanakan untuk memperkenalkan karyawan baru terhadap lingkungan kerjanya dan memberikannya kesempatan untuk bersosialisasi satu sama lain. dengan demikian, diharapkan karyawan tersebut dapat memahami budaya perusahaan dan memenuhi need for affiliation. Pelatihan dan pengembangan (yang antara lain bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kualitas karyawan, mencegah keusangan karyawan, dan meningkatkan motivasi kerjanya), penilaian prestasi kerja, perencanaan karier yang berlaku di perusahaan termasuk dalam kategori need for achievement. Selain itu, perencanaan karier dan penempatan, misalnya promosi, job enrichment atau empowerment, masuk dalam kategori need for achievement. Contohnya adalah tercapainya standar gaji / upah tertentu yang cukup kompetitif atau menarik di bandingkan dengan pesaingnya. Need for affiliation contohnya adalah kawan sekerja yang menyenangkan, atasan yang bijaksana. Need for power, misalnya bawahan yang menyenangkan dan dapat dikelola untuk bekerja sama. (radix)

  Corporate Culture And Your Bussiness.
 O.k. Rod, Corporate Culture; now I know your off your Rocker, what the heckk are you on about now and why do I even

care about Corporate culture and why did you spell heckk with two k’s anyway!? well i’ll try to be easy on you;

Corporate Culture is literally the stuff your bussiness goals and dreams are made of. What do I mean; well as a

entrepenuer everyone starts off with a bussiness concept, or model yes to adventually make money but further than

that for a ’cause’. We’ll it’s the ’cause’ part of the equation that we are looking at today.
  The cause is the ‘core value’ that your company and vision represents; who do you want to reach and why!?
 That’s part of the equation too, so if that’s not it entirely, not even if you put money back into the equation, then

what is it? Well Corporate Culture is the intent , motivation and core value and drive of the entrepenuer who started the company in

the first place; and intended to be sought after by the people he or she employs.
 Corporate Culture is readily evident as a sole proprietorship or on the partnership of a small firm but is vitally

important to maintain and regulate Corporate Culture in the management of larger firms in the millions of dollars per

year in revenue.For a quick example of what we are tallking about the core fundamental mission at web secrets

bootcamp or what resinates within our staff/family is that we would like to touch as many people as possible with high

quality life and internet/busssiness coaching through whatever means possible and available to help ‘them’ achieve

success and in turn continue in success ourselves.
  So I ask what is your driveing force and how will or do you resinate that with the folks in your employ!?What is your

“Corporate culture’!?

Internal culture is the most powerful determinant of brand values, which, in turn affect external brand perceptions. It directly impacts the brand development as it lies at its core.

If we think of corporate culture as an organism, evolving over time, it could develop as a goldfish or a piranha.  Cultures contain positive and negative traits – each can thrive or die depending upon its environment. Continuing the evolutionary model, it is the survival of those best suited to that environment that will prosper.

It is on the management of this environment that brand leadership can have its greatest influence in ensuring positive traits are encouraged and negative eliminated. The internal culture can be nurturing or cynical, fearful or cooperative, innovative and creative or conservative and static. We have all seen the ‘power of the group’ in action in organisations – for good and ill. People who fit the current culture survive and those who challenge cultural norms and have the potential to change it leave or are marginalised – if the culture is a sound one, this may be a positive activity, but often it leads to the perpetuation of undesirable attitudes or practices.

The evolutionary view, on a wider stage, will dictate that brands best suited for the market environment will thrive and prosper – but internal cultures are often evolving independently – to paraphrase Richard Dawkins, we have the ‘Selfish Culture’. Its only purpose is to perpetuate itself. So if, for example, we have a grasping internal culture that considers customers as dumb punters, no amount of tweaking the brand image or fine words about being ‘customer focussed’ will make any difference. To build a strong brand requires strong brand values and that needs the right cultural envirenment. Corporate culture is the DNA of the brand values.

I’m faced with a problem that I know is not unique here in the United States:  I live in a community that is a cultural vacuum – no local flavor, no feel.  Whatever used to exist has been replaced by a corporate culture of Applebees, Panda Express, Famous Dave’s, and the Olive Garden.

I would tell you where I live, but it really doesn’t matter.  What I’m experiencing is repeated all over America.  The neighborhood coffee shop is being replaced by Starbucks, the local mom n’ pop restaurant is swallowed up by the competition; restaurants that offer visitors familiar, industrialized dishes where ever they go.  Menus are printed not with words, but pictures….BIG pictures… of what the food looks like when it arrives on your table.  Patrons no longer need read well-crafted description of the dish on the menu.  They only need to look and point (and possibly make a grunting sound) when the server arrives to take their order.

I worry that the acceptance of this corporate culture is deleterious to the rich local cultures that so many small cities and towns in America possess.  Certainly big cities are somewhat immune to this phenomenon.  People living in large metropolitan areas enjoy eating at locally-owned establishments and typically shun chain restaurants.  Suburban America, on the other hand is a cash-cow for corporate dining.

So what’s an unlucky suburbanite like myself to do?  How do I avoid the temptation of all that is deep-fryed, glazed, and described with a litany of unnecessary food adjectives like “slow-roasted,” “hand-carved,” and “applewood-smoked?”  How do I escape the incessantly annoying and underpaid servers that are forced to wear ridiculous uniforms to give patrons a “restaurant experience” and sing birthday songs that make my ears bleed?

To me, there are three simple solutions to this problem:

1.  Don’t patronize these restaurants – your dollars speak for themselves.

2.  Patronize locally-owned establishments.

3.  Cook at home – It may be a pain, but you and your family are better for it.

It has taken me quite some time to finally admit a truth.  I am a chicken.  I am not a big fan of roller coasters, though I do occasionally ride the more tame ones, I wouldn’t bungee jump off a porch, skiing down a black diamond slope seems more like punishment than “outdoor fun”,  and my idea of a “rush” is a 3 1/2 foot downhill putt for a buck.  Yup, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to make that diagnosis.

So you can imagine how much I admire people with guts.  And here’s one I just learned about, thanks to a Facebook post by my good friend Ilya and a little extra research.  He’s the founder of 37Signals and his name is Jason Fried.  37Signals, as you may know, is a software development company that makes, among other things, BaseCamp, and appears to have been there at the beginning of the creation of Ruby on Rails, a very popular open source framework for developing software applications.  What’s interesting is that none of what I just mentioned is why I admire him or think he has guts.  Here’s why.  This is an excerpt from an article about him in eWeek, talking about the team at 37Signals:

Want to work at home? Cool. Want to come in to the office? No problem. Want to take a few hours off in the middle of the day to goof off and look at Internet videos or read? Please do it; it’s encouraged, Fried said. He doesn’t believe in treating employees like children. 

It’s easy for anyone to read that and say, “yeah, that’s exactly how I would treat my employees too if I ran a software company.”  But let me tell you that, when you’re worried about revenue, billings, cash flow, customer satisfaction and the second mortgage on your house you took out when you started the company, and you walk past a team member who is napping at their desk, goofing off, or setting up his or her fantasy football lineup in the middle of the day, you’d be surprised how quickly every fiber of your being wants to ask them what the heck they’re doing.  If you don’t believe that, you’ve never been in that situation.  Walking by, paying attention to your own tasks and trusting that the rest of your team is doing the same no matter what outward indications you’re getting to the contrary takes real guts.  And from what I can see, Jason Fried’s got ‘em.

If you want to learn more about Jason or read some thought-provoking insights into how he views work, check out this article.  Unless you’re chicken…

Cultural Fit Part II -  How to hire the “Perfect” Candidate

A lot of people will wish you luck in finding the perfect candidate – they will say that you need it. Not true! Employers can make their own luck by carefully selecting the right person and merging him/her with your existing team.

Like any successful business practice, a little bit of process and planning will yield huge dividends.

Start with the Details

First, you must be able to describe the position in a detailed and accurate way.  To do this, systematically evaluate why previous employees have left. Were there technical gaps? Relationships that never gelled?  Examine performance reviews for the entire team, and look for recurring themes of strength or weakness. Use this information to draw up a new, fully detailed job description that focuses equally on technical expertise and behavioural characteristics. Yes, you may want to skip this step! Persevere – this information will allow you to exactly pinpoint the person you’re looking for.

Build a Common Vision

If this is a complex role, ensure senior managers involved in the hiring process generally agree on what a “perfect” candidate looks like in terms of experience and personality. Schedule a brief meeting, and separate the criteria into “must have” and “helpful to have”. You may be surprised to hear how members of the same team view the role differently! This meeting will provide clarity once you begin the interview process, and will save valuable time and effort.

What Do You Need to Know From Your Candidates?

Select the right interview questions to screen for desired behaviours. To do this, go through the information you learned in step one, and ask for specific examples of how the candidate has dealt with similar challenges in the past. This is called Behavioural Interviewing Techniques, and it brings a great deal of clarity about a candidate’s experience and their way of thinking. Truly, it explains how they “get things done,” which is a combination of internal motivators, external motivators and communication style. If you follow this process, the top 1-2 candidates should stick out by a mile.   Click here for inspiration.

Mentor Success!

Congratulations, you’ve chosen an amazing person for your organization and your work is done. Well, almost! Research shows the on-boarding process ultimately determines whether a person succeeds or fails.  An employee handbook is no longer sufficient.  During the first ninety days, your new employee must quickly learn the unspoken and unwritten rules about how the organization operates – ie. your culture. How quickly they learn this determines their success, and this is particularly true for senior management and executive roles. As a direct manager, you are responsible for ensure they understand your culture and communicate in an appropriate style. Many managers believe the new employee should have to “prove themselves” or “establish their value to the team.” However, we believe that current market conditions, changes in business direction and competitor threats will give your new team member ample opportunity to contribute to your organization! Most importantly, ensuring your new hire feels welcomed and respected means you’ll avoid having to go back to step one.

Your ability to mentor your new hire will allow them to shine, and effectively contribute to your organization!

~ Julie Steele

photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik

I was meeting with a prospective client a few weeks ago to discuss how communications might help them address their employee engagement challenges.  The client felt that they were vulnerable to defection to their competitors, and wanted to find a way to retain those “at risk” employees.

The talk turned, as it usually does, to how much information the company shared with their workforce, what type of information is shared, and how effective the communications are perceived to be.  The manager’s response:  “I don’t think our employees even know what the vision is, even though we tell them all the time.”  Hmmm.

A quick check of the company’s public Web site showed why:  “Our vision is to become the leading provider of __ services in the global market.”

This vision statement, while undoubtedly forward-looking, is a great example of the “Mad Libs” approach to creating a vision. 

Go ahead, fill in the blank with any type of service and you’ll see what I mean.  No wonder the employees have failed to embrace the company’s vision.

There are plenty of companies that are getting it right, companies who align their vision and mission with their values and culture: 

• Amazon:  “To build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
• Wegmans Food Markets:  ”Every day you get our best.”
• Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

For several decades now, business school graduates have spent countless hours crafting far-reaching, aspirational vision statements to guide their company’s growth and expansion.  But the language of traditional vision statements, with phrases such as “best in class,” “global,” “industry-leading” and “superior products and services” seem archaic to today’s workforce.

Employees can’t and won’t embrace a vision they don’t understand.  If you want to engage the support and loyalty of your workforce, you must give your employees a vision statement that they can relate to on a daily basis, one that will help them steer toward that fixed point on the horizon.

Susan

“The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration”

By Andrea Gabor
(http://www.strategy-business.com/article/09302?gko=a702c-27802017-27863600&cid=enews20091117)

In an article for Strategy + Business entitled The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration, author Andrea Gabor identifies the challenges organizations face when they choose to adopt a collaborative work environment.   According to Gabor, the biggest obstacle for an organization is the deep change required in the way knowledge is controlled and shared — changes that have the potential to alter relationships both within the company and with its outside constituents. Anything short of total commitment, Gabor warns, is likely to lead to short-lived improvements and eventual failure.

For organizations considering open collaboration, Gabor recommends a clear-headed look at the challenges associated with the change and she identifies seven essential strategies to making it work including:

1. Creating a clear leadership message
2. Collaborating with customers
3. Building a culture of trust and open communication
4. Cultivating continuous improvement
5. Building a flexible innovation infrastructure
6. Preparing your organization for new skill sets
7. Aligning evaluations and rewards

The article points out that “open collaboration is a complex, all-embracing process, requiring genuine commitment from corporate leaders, a willingness to abandon many venerable corporate customs, and an appetite for unleashing and managing disruptive change across the organization.”  But Gabor also encourages organizations to move forward and continue to develop their approach to open collaboration, because for those that do there are great benefits as well.

Sometime today or tomorrow, be sure to read—or save, this article—it’s one of the best on collaboration that we’ve seen. 

And if you are looking for a little additional inspiration and insight on the subject, check out the on-demand webcast of Pass the Ball: The Power of Collaboration.  This is a presentation Ken Blanchard did together with Cisco WebEx in June as a part of their Pass the Ball initiative. Ken shares his thoughts on getting others involved, how a philosophy of “none of us is as smart as all of us” helps everyone accomplish more, and the difference between serving and self-serving behavior.

In his November 17, 2009 Mike Henry Sr. writes a wonderful succinct piece on the essence of “Servant Leadership”.  Many have heard the term, even strive to be one, but do we know what it really means?Mike Henry Sr. drives it home so nicely by breaking down the phrase “Servant Leaders serve people in pursuit of a goal”, I will just refer you to his original post:

6 Facets of the Servant Leadership Diamond

Leave a Comment:  Which of the 6 Facets do you need to polish?

Book references

For those who want to dive deeper into the subject of Servant Leadership there are many terrific books on the subject.  These are my favorites:

• The Way of the Shepherd: 7 Ancient Secrets to Managing Productive People
• Leadership by the Book: Tools to Transform Your Workplace
• Courageous Leadership

Related Posts

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Too Busy for Our Mission

Servant Leaders and the Tribe by Mike Henry Sr.

Leadership 2.0 by Michael Hyatt