Minimize incivility (and fire the assholes!)

“The costs of incivility are great. In our research with Christine Pearson, a professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management, we discovered that half of employees who had experienced uncivil behavior at work intentionally decreased their efforts. More than a third deliberately decreased the quality of their work. Two-thirds spent a lot of time avoiding the offender, and about the same number said their performance had declined.”

That quote is from the article, “Creating Sustainable Performance” in the current issue of Harvard Business Review. The authors—Gretchen Spreitzer, professor of management and organizations at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and Christine Porath, assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business—spent seven years studying what makes employees and organizations thrive. Minimizing incivility was among the four top things they found that managers could do to make workplaces more productive.

Civility is a big deal at Intertech. Not only does it make business sense, it makes coming to work a lot more pleasant! Civility starts at the top by setting an example.  I’m happy to note that Intertech partners and senior managers simply do not yell or browbeat people. We also make a practice of saying “please” and “thank you.”

But behaving nicely only goes so far. We’ve also institutionalized our behavioral expectations in a 15-page document called “Intertech Communication Guidelines.” This spells everything thing out so employees don’t have to wonder what is — and what is not – Ok.

Sadly, though, sometimes even the Guidelines are not enough to ensure civility and that’s when we let people go. Or, as I like to say, we fire assholes! If you know me, you know I don’t use that term often or lightly, but several employees over the years left me with no other adjective or choice. They were the “dogs” in my “Saints, Dogs and Stars” analogy (see Building a Winning Business if you have no idea what I’m talking about!). Essentially, they were exceptionally smart or gifted and believed that entitled them to treat others badly.

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but by the time someone is into their ‘20s, they’re about “98% percent baked” as a person. Data supports this statement, which means it’s pointless to try to reform an asshole. The best thing you can do is to show him or her the door. Similar to firing someone who’s nice but isn’t a performer, having the strength to fire an asshole is a test of your culture. If people who abuse others are permitted to stay, it won’t be long before the folks that they’re abusing decide to leave.  With nice people leaving and assholes staying, you’ve got a culture shift – and that’s something I never want to experience at Intertech.

Next time I’ll wrap up this series on employee happiness with a post on employee feedback.

Next post: Let ‘em know how they’re doing!

Let the sun shine!

Those in the news business are familiar with “sunshine laws,” which stipulate that government and other public institutions must openly share information about their operations, decision-making and financial expenditures. The idea is that “opening the doors and letting the sun shine” on government will foster honesty, good decision-making and public accountability.

It’s a concept that works well in the private sector too.

The study on employee sustainability that I’ve been writing about in the past several posts identifies “sharing information” as one of the four most important things managers should do to create sustainable workplaces with happy productive employees.

As the researchers, professors from two leading business schools, note: “Doing your job in an information vacuum is tedious and uninspiring: there’s no reason to look for innovative solutions if you can’t see the impact. People can contribute more effectively when they understand how their work fits with the organization’s mission and strategy.” (“Creating Sustainable Performance” by Gretchen Spreiter and Christine Porath, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2012).

I could not agree more, which is why Intertech embraces an open book management strategy. Specifically, every month, we share the following with all of our employees:  sales, cost of goods sold (COGS), gross profit, expenses, and post-tax profit. These numbers are important to our consultants because they each receive a year-end personal bonus based on utilization (i.e. how many hours they charge).  We apply a multiplier based on post-tax profit.

Our people can earn up to two times their year-end bonus based on company profitability.  In 2011, consultants received 50 percent additional year-end bonus payments based on profitability.  We call this our Profit Participation Program (PPP) and we share the PPP multiplier at the all-company monthly meeting as well.

While employees thrive for many reasons, I’m convinced that our open book approach has fostered a greater sense of employee ownership in our collective success.

Next post: Minimize incivility (and fire the assholes!)

If you do nothing, you’ll make no mistakes!

In my previous post I described a seven-year study on workplace productivity found that employees thrive when they are given discretion to make decisions. For many managers, especially new ones, this can be a scary proposition. What happens if an employee makes a big mistake on your watch?

We’ve found ways at my company to encourage good independent employee decisions, while still giving people support and direction when necessary. For example, I’ll ask an uncertain employee, “What do you think we should do?” This open-ended question encourages them to begin thinking of solutions and developing their decision-making skills. I also try to give some parameters, particularly when decisions involve expenditures, For example, “Go ahead with your idea and purchase XYZ if it’s less than $1,000.  If it ends up being more than $1K, circle back with me and we can talk about it.”

It’s also helpful to clearly communicate the outcome that you’re looking for and to share, if it’s true, that you’re open to whatever path will get them there (assuming it’s legal and within reasonable fiscal limits!).

Despite an employee’s best efforts, they will make mistakes. It’s just part of work and life. When this happens at Intertech, I share the story of how I screwed up as a college kid on our family farm. If you’ve read my book, Building a Winning Business, you probably cringed as I described breaking the axel on my Dad’s truck while trying to haul a log. Fearing the worst, I reluctantly confessed to my Dad. To my immense relief, he simply replied: “If you do nothing, you’ll make no mistakes.”

I like that story because it helps to create perspective.  When someone is taking a mistake or situation too seriously, or they’re dealing with someone who is taking themselves or a situation too seriously, I share that “If this is the biggest problem they’ve got (or we’ve got), life is going pretty well.” It’s usually true!

Next post: Let the sun shine!