hire and promote Engaged Employees for your Culture
Each leader and each organization must own the culture. No two companies are the same. At Dotson, we look at many companies and many programs, try on the ideas, and if they fit, we adopt them as our own. When hiring, it is important to identify the applicant’s personal core values and ensure that there is alignment with the company’s core values. It is impossible for an individual to have values after work differ- ent from values while at work.
How important are values are to an organization? This can be illustrated by looking at two companies,
Zappos.com© and Netflix®. Both are companies that live their values.
At
Zappos.com©, founder Tony Hsieh tells a story in his book “Delivering Happiness.” This books describes the company’s ten values drove
Zappos.com© to a billion dol- lars in sales and a billion dollar purchase of
Zappos.com© by
Amazon.com in just 10 years. Their values are: 1. Deliver WOW through Service 2. Embrace and Drive Change 3. Create Fun and a Little Weirdness 4. Be Adventurous, Creative and Open-Minded 5. Pursue Growth and Learning 6. Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit 8. Do More with Less 9. Be Passionate and Determined 10. Be Humble
My favorite
Zappos.com© policy is that every employee participates in a four-week training period. At the end, they are offered $3,000 to quit the company. Only a few of the non-committed take up the offer.
The easiest way to understand the culture at Netflix® is to Google the “Netflix® Culture PowerPoint.” You will find a 128 slide deck that is a fast read. This culture slide deck at
Netflix® is the best example that I have seen which explains a company’s unique culture. Very quickly, you will under- stand the seven aspects of their special culture: 1. Values are what we Value 2. High Performance 3. Freedom and Responsibility 4. Context, not Control 5. Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled 6. Pay Top of Market 7. Promotions and Development
Netflix® has high expectations for its employees. It also abides by this practice: “Adequate performance gets a gen- erous severance package.”
As I do with
Zappos.com© I have a favorite Netflix® policy. The Netflix® focus is on what people accomplish, not on how many hours or days worked. The company’s vacation policy is simple – there is no policy or tracking.
Once again, for a company to be successful, the leaders must own and live their cultural values. We only have to list En- ron’s four values (integrity, communication, respect and ex- cellence) that were chiseled in marble in the main lobby to make this point.
Empower your Teams
Hand-in-hand with engaging the individuals, the organiza- tion must empower teams. There are just two very simple rules in this regard: to ask and to listen. While they appear simple, they are very difficult in practice. Many times, re- sults are not what you expected, which means that the lead- ers don’t always get their way.
Recall the disastrous new molding machine story of my first big purchase. Today, Dotson does capital purchases much better. Every time we spend more than $10,000 for some- thing new or an upgrade, we engage a team of employees that will be impacted by the purchase to research, determine options, go on site visits, set the payback expectations and
Figure 7. Shop floor touch seen for showing results. International Journal of Metalcasting/Fall 2011 13
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