Seeing Yourself As Employees See You

I was reading an article about Walmart's new "Walmart Express" concept stores that they are developing to compete against Dollar General and the article ended with, "We have to look through the consumers' eyes…”

I couldn't but think, I wonder what employees see when they look at the company they work for?

Over the course of 20 years with a company that grew from 150 to well over 900 from both growth of the core business and through acquisitions I have had to wonder numerous times about how to deal with a company of employees who were now being "integrated" into a totally new system.

We would spend quite a bit of time reviewing their pay structure and benefits, we would also begin reorganizing and restructuring, and of course we were also moving them to our computer system and our vendors/suppliers.  All of this would be done with little or no input from the employees of the acquired company.

Its kind of like Zynga, which is relocating its headquarters and building a dog run on the roof of its new headquarters.  As a company that employs mostly young people, or "Millennials," as they are referred to I am sure that the idea is not all that novel.  But, the reality is the company is named after the founders dog and the dog is part of the logo.

From the outside looking in, one can find this an interesting 'benefit' provided to employess, but there is a possibility that the employees see it as nothing more than the heavy handed attempt by the founder to make everyone love dogs the way that he does.

The headquarters is 270,000 square feet so there has to be quite a few employees and imagine if all of them have dogs?  What happens if someone's Great Dane decides that my Pekingese annoyed it?  Would the company be liable for damages?

I remember when we were constructing a new manufacturing facility in 1990; we set aside space for expansion and the first "expansion" that management thought of was a gym for management!  As our work force was 85% female and our management was 100% male, a gym for management would have sent all the wrong signals!  The reality was if we were going to "expand" then we needed to do so in a way that provided a value to our operations; we needed something that would attract employees and keep employees once they were hired.  

Thus, our options were basically either a daycare or a auto repair facility because the two major reasons employees could not come to work was either that they could not locate a babysitter and or they did not have reliable transportation.


That was how Stepping Stones Learning Center, Inc., was formed, a not for profit daycare facility that was open to the public.  A daycare that actually lost the vote against the gym for managers!  


We opened the daycare to the public for two reasons; one, was because we knew that the employers would always suspect the quality of service if it was just opened to our employees and two, even though a not for profit we still wanted it to run as a business, separate from our business.


We eventually had two daycares, which served a total of 300 children most of the time!  These daycares allowed us to compete for employees and to remain a domestic manufacturer long after all of our competitors had flocked overseas with the passage of NAFTA in 1994.


The daycares paid rent and were profitable; today, one of them is still in operation long after we ceased operations because the local chamber used the daycare to attract businesses to their community!


I am not real sure how employees see a dog run on the roof of corporate headquarters?  I am not real sure how that attracts and retains employees; but do hope that they have carpeted their offices with carpet squares!   

Innovation, Change, And Disruptive Hypotheses

I have always been fascinated with what makes some companies and or organizations so successful and why other companies struggle and then never quite achieve their potential, then you have those companies that, for a period of time, are doing everything right and growing by leaps and bounds, only to end up being an eventual cultural relic.

Innovation and change are disruptive; they involve someone somewhere asking the question, “what if….”  That then becomes the basis for a disruptive hypothesis; a disruptive hypothesis being an intentionally unreasonable statement that is designed to upset your comfortable business equilibrium which in turn leads to a change in direction of your thought process.

Innovation starts with a disruptive hypotheses and the process of creating one involves:

1.      Defining the situation;

2.      Searching for clichés;

3.      Then twisting those clichés around.

Every industry has its "best practices" and every industry has its stereotypical way of doing business; we seek out consultants, we seek out employees, and we seek out solutions to problems by believing that success derives from being better, more experienced, or more like everyone else in our industry.

Exactly then how do you question clichés if you reinforce "...that's the way we have always done it..." through your hiring practices?  Stealing the expertise of a competitor is not innovation.

I remember when I first was introduced to the concept of self funding employee health insurance, I was informed that we were not "big" enough.  But, when I asked why and what does the number of lives covered have to do with it I never could get an answer other than, "...because that is the way it is...."

Eventually, we sat down and worked up the numbers and came to understand why the number of lives covered is important but we also found that we could benefit from shifting to a self funded plan.  Then we went on and found that by working with a local hospital we could create a "gatekeeper" network that involved our employees naming a primary care physician who managed their health care and who was paid a higher fee to do so; this in turn lowered our health care costs!

If you find yourself struggling with a growing company, where it seems that the different departments are not coming together then why not institute a 'job swap' program; a program where, on a regular basis employees work with their counterparts in other departments?  If shipping and customer service are always at loggerheads, then let them spend a day, on a regular basis, in the shoes of the other.

In the apparel industry sales will always demand new products; new colors and or something new every few months.  Then when you analyze sales you realize that 75% of your sales come from the same 10 products; obviously the desire for newness is only a motivation to get your sales people out selling the same products they have always sold.  But, so many apparel companies end up growing to the point that their inventory and product line ends up being their downfall.

What if, rather than sending professional sales people to a trade show, you sent company employees?  Who better to sell your product but the people who make the product?