Suppose you survey a company's employees and ask them to select just one "Oldie-Goldie" tune that expressed their true feelings about their company's culture, their work experience, and their satisfaction as employees. What song would each of them choose? And what employee behaviors would likely parallel such a song choice?
Frivolous questions? Hardly. Some theme, in song form or not, already plays in each employee's head right now, directly affecting job performance and the ultimate experience delivered to customers.
Here are three song possibilities, and some lessons they can teach us.
Johnny Paycheck's "take This Job and Shove It"
No doubt, this Johnny Paycheck ballad has been the anthem for job dissatisfaction since the song's debut in the early '80s. But this theme spells more risk than ever for today's corporation.
That's because Internet capability has created a virtual "shove it" tool kit for disillusioned employees, producing company consequences that range from deep embarrassment to heavy financial losses, as illustrated by these three scenarios:
- Four burned-out employees of a Canadian coffee bar on Vancouver's east side walked off the job. To underscore their frustration, they taped a highly visible poster (complete with store name, address, and logo) in the store's front window. A passerby photographed the poster and posted it online. Ben McConnell saw the post and linked to it on his churchofthecustomer.com blog site, where it got 100,000 hits. The poster read:
Scott,
Your staff is tired of your attitude, your inconsideration, your ungratefulness and lack of trust. If you expected more from us, you should have thought more about your staff than your business.
We are good, loyal workers but you always let us down. Be more of a people person, okay? You will see that it pays more. We quit today because this is the end and you didn't do anything to prevent it. Treat your staff better.
Signed, (signatures of all four employees)
- Posted on an Internet chat board where customers exchange tips on how to "negotiate" cheaper cell phone services with carriers, was the entry below. Note how the ex-employee, bitter from her job as a cellular service rep, willingly shared insider tips:
I have worked for [company name] as an accounts manager in the Saves Team...and one thing I would suggest you do is always cancel your contract after 12 months. Just bring your number to your new contract. Here's the low down… (The writer then shares detailed insider information about rate plans and what to say to call center reps to manipulate the best deal.)
(At the end of her post, she rants:)You're [held] worthless as a customer and it's rubbish! It's not the reps fault, it's higher management setting hard and unreachable targets for the reps and the reps are forced to choose between feeding their family or giving the customer what they deserve. Safe to say, when I decided to leave in my last week, I didn't care. It was a free for all, for all the customers that deserved it!
- UBS PaineWebber analyst Roger Duronio, upset by what he considered a meager annual bonus, released a logic bomb virus that disabled 2,000 of the firm's Unix servers. UBS financial traders were unable to make trades for up to several weeks in some locations. Four long years later, the company reports some of the systems have still not been recovered. While not releasing the cost of the lost business, the firm reported costs of $3 million for getting the systems back up. (The analyst was convicted of computer sabotage and sentenced to 97 months in prison.)
Lesson: It's more important than ever that management gauge employee engagement and satisfaction, and address the problems that surface. The stakes are high.
Sly & the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summer Time"
A chance discussion with my seatmate on a recent Southwest flight provided this example of what a "Hot Fun" company culture can reap:
What would motivate a young husband in his late twenties, with a wife newly diagnosed with a serious disease and no longer working, to stay in an entry level $31,000 job he took temporarily with Enterprise Rent-A-Car after he finally got the $51,000 offer from the utility company for which he'd interviewed a month before?
His wife says, "When will you start?"
He says, "We have a problem."
She says, "What kind of problem?"
He says, "I'm having so much fun at Enterprise. For the first time ever, it's like I'm not even working. I put in these long, ridiculous hours, but time flies by. I love the folks I work with. I don't want to quit."
The couple makes a pact and he stays on with Enterprise. Financial circumstances over the next 12 months test their resolve. They move out of their apartment and in with her parents. They borrow from his mom, juggle credit cards, and live paycheck to paycheck. But, despite his long, demanding work schedule, he's engaged and having fun. He locks into Enterprises' crisp, advancement path and works closely with his supervisors to set goals, timelines, and compensation targets. One performance-filled year later, his first big promotion arrives. More promotions follow in the second and third year, further deepening his company commitment.
Lesson: Enterprise applies a winning formula: "Hot fun" staff engagement and deep team comradeship coupled with clear performance goals and career laddering "grow" high performing employees who stick.
John Lennon's "Imagine"
Lennon's utopian song, recorded in 1971, challenges listeners to think well beyond today's world and imagine something much more. Likewise, search giant Google has built a company culture that propels its employees to "disregard the impossible" and relentlessly search for fresh, new ways to fulfill the firm's mission: "to collect all the world's information" and make it accessible to everyone.
Charged with protecting this unique culture is Google's 20th employee, Marissa Mayer, who is keen on making sure the search giant remains an unrivaled idea factory. "A License to Pursue Dreams" is how this VP of search projects refers to the company's "20% Time" policy, by which all employees are allowed to use 20% of their work time to focus on their own, self-directed "what if" projects.
At the heart of the policy is the trust that Google places on employees to pursue whatever they want. It's a policy that has paid big returns for Google, reports Mayer. For example, of the company's new product launches and features released in second half 2005, a whopping 50% of those innovations originated from 20% Time projects.
Lesson: Fostering creativity is a cornerstone value in corporate cultures that produce extraordinary outcomes. The best minds need creative freedom and the self-actualization it produces. Don't provide it? They leave.
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Your turn: What's playing at your company?
Name that tune. Then listen closely to what the song can teach you about your company culture.
