Great places to work are like great sports franchises

The nice people over at Glassdoor.com released their 'Top 50 Best Places to Work for 2013' list today, and as usual it is an interesting collection of all kinds of organizations - large and small, high-tech and old-school, and relatively young to long lasting.

The full list can be found here, as well as on the image to the right, (click the thumbnail for a larger view).Click to expand

The important aspect of the Glassdoor 'Best Places' list, unlike any of the other, similar types of lists that are around, is that it is determined not by some kind of expert panel of thought leaders, judges, or academics; but rather it is calculated from the company reviews and ratings about the companies that have been left on the Glassdoor.com site.  So these ratings are the closest equivalent to say, the Amazon.com book review or the Yelp restaurant review for the workplace.

But since I like to compare, evaluate, and assess just about everything through the prism of the world of sports - rather than give you a (lame) take something along the lines of 'Facebook is the Best Place to work again, I wonder what lessons you can learn from this', I thought I'd make it fun, (for me at least), and cherry pick a few big names form the list and juxtapose them with the big time sports team they seem the most like.  

Why do this?

Why not?

Here goes:

2. McKinsey & Company - Easy, these guys are the New York Yankees.  Big name, big reputation, have a kind of mystique about them and have had it for a long time. The name that the rest of the market compares themselves to.

4. Bain & Company - Again, pretty easy. If McKinsey are the Yankees, then Bain are the Boston Red Sox. Also have a big name, have had some success, but will always be looking up at the big dog on top.  It is fitting that McKinsey came in a couple of notches above Bain.

11. Careerbuilder - Not as obvious as the McKinsey and Bain comparisons, but I will go with the basketball's San Antonio Spurs.  Consistently good, with some legendary performance in the recent past. But also consistently overlooked and sometimes underrated despite their pedigree. Finally they both have a bit of 'I can't believe they are still relevant after all these years' kind of feel to them.

24. Trader Joe's - I will go not with one team with which to compare the eclectic grocer, I will go with an entire league - the National Hockey League (NHL), currently not playing their current season due to a labor/management dispute.  Like the NHL in sports, Trader Joe's is kind of a niche player in the grocery business, has a kind of weird appeal, but if it was gone hardly anyone would really miss it. Think about it - does anyone really need a Trader Joe's?  Or the NHL?

35. General Mills - Time for a football comparison. Let's go with the Green Bay Packers.  Midwestern organization, been around forever, everyone can recognize them by their brand, and kind of hard not to like, even if you don't care about cereal or sports. Feels like they will be a part of the landscape forever.

50. Starbucks - I'll go international on this one and call them Manchester Uniited from English football soccer. They are both ubiquitous, have a global presence and instant brand and name recognition, and both have the most annoying fans/customers that you will ever encounter.  Man United fans and Starbucks customers are really similiar - smug, kind of annoying, ('Quad-soy-no whip-light foam-hazelnut-extra shot'), and somehow think being a fan/customer grants them some kind of unearned social status.  Disclaimer: I am a Liverpool/Dunkin' Donuts person. 

That's it - I need to stop there, but I am sure you have your own ideas. There are 45 more companies on the list that need a sports team equivalent assigned to them, have at it in the comments!

It's still a mad, mad, mad, world

Fresh off yesterday's take showing how one local automotive dealership, not really the kind of business that pops to mind when thinking about diversity and inclusion, is bucking that trend and embracing the important role women employees have in their business, comes an interesting and eye-opening tale from the world of advertising, that paints quite a different, and damning picture on that industry's hiring practices and climate.

I call your attention to what is an absolute must-read, particularly in light of the recent re-kindling of the 'Can Women Have it All?' debate, is a piece called 'Confessions of a Female Ad Exec',  (Note : there is some definite Adult content in the piece, if you are easily offended, then don't bother clicking through), published on the Digiday site. Originally published as an anonymous, (and edited) piece, and later re-issued under the byline of Colleen DeCourcy, CEO of Socialistic, a social media technology, content, and design studio, the piece contains some really honest and raw reflections of Ms. DeCourcy's experience climbing the ranks of the Advertising industry. 

Why are the upper echelons of the Ad industry still so the same, still not reflecting the changing world and workplace overall? From the Digiday piece:

The sacred question agency execs are answering with their hires is, “Are you like us?” The affirmative answer if they hire is, yes. It might not even be done consciously, but hires and promotions are often done on this basis. (By the way, that can apply beyond women to black/Jewish/gay/handicapped/patently JNF — Just Not Funny.)

But beyond arcane, foolish, and either subtly or overtly discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, Ms. DeCourcy also offers up an admission of sorts, that perhaps she too had some kind of role to play as well, as both victim and unlikely participant. Again from the piece:

An issue that’s rarely addressed is how many women in advertising don’t help each other out. What is it that drives a select group of women to actively not support other women? I have been a victim of it, and subsequently I resist working with “those kinds” of women. Sadly, since it’s impossible to see through a smart woman’s tightly controlled veil of camaraderie, I’ve grown irrationally afraid of all women at work, and I’ve missed the opportunity to work with the great ones.

But maybe it’s not the women who are at fault here. Maybe the fact that there are so few of us in the boardrooms leads us to assume there’s only room for a certain number.

But more truthfully, the reality for women my age is that you had to sever the sisterhood ties so hard and so early in order to run with the boys that you just don’t know how to get back home again. I’m just a tourist in the land of women now. I’m not fully of the culture.

There's more to the piece than I grabbed to use here, and I hope you read it all, (and again, only if you are not going to be offended by some language and frank descriptions of inappropriate workplace talk), and let it sink in a little bit.

For me, the takeaways are many, but one that stands out is that employees, even C-suite execs, are real people too. Their stories are always unique, often complex, and almost never what you, as the person wondering 'Why?' or 'Why not?', would expect.

It's still a mad, mad world out there. And while yesterday's post about the 'We are all happy together' auto dealer paints a really bright and positive picture, today's piece reminds us that we really don't and often can't know what lies beneath that surface.

Speed Kills: Or, what can you accomplish in 90 days?

As if you needed any more reminders about the importance of speed - to take decisions, to build the right team, to execute a plan, and to deliver something tangible to your customers, (whomever they are), then take a look a this story - 'A Chinese Company Plans To Build The World's Tallest Building In Just 90 Days'.

Yep, over 800 meters tall, (that is like, 235,450 feet or so I think), and planned to rise 10 meters taller than the current world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. But compared to the Burj, which was constructed at an estimated cost of US $1.5B, and was completed over a period of about 6 years, the Sky City, (the name for the Chinese tower), is planned to be built at an approximate cost of US $625M and be completed in a mind-boggling 90 days.Bolt

The company behind the Sky City project made news earlier this year with their construction of a 30-story hotel in only 15 days, so even if Sky City proves to take a little longer than three months to complete, (it has to one would think), it does seem likely that on a cost/time basis that Sky City will be erected in far, far less time than the Burj, and really any other similarly massive structure.

The big point in all this? That speed, ability to scale quickly, and out-execute the competition is fast becoming, (maybe it has always been this way, I suppose), more critical than chasing down absolute cost advantages by adjusting supply chains, relocating facilities, and beating the crap out of suppliers on price. The reason Sky City will cost less than half of the Burj isn't due to relatively cheap Chinese labor, it's that through process improvements, innovations in design and pre-fabrication, and precise and relentless execution the tower can be constructed in a fraction of the time it took for the Burj.

One more tidbit of data that seems to back up this argument, from a recejt Hackett Group report titled 'Reshoring Global Manufacturing: Myths and Realities', (PDF), that examines some of the key drivers behind firms like Apple's manufacturing and supply chain strategies: 

The U.S. lacks the sheer labor capacity that would be required in order to ramp up production of iPads at the speed needed to maintain the company’s edge in the hyper-competitive tablet and mobile device market.

 

Thus one may assume that Apple’s manufacturing sourcing strategy is primarily motivated by scalability and supply chain risk, and only secondarily by total landed cost.

Bottom line - easily copied competitive differentiators, like chasing labor cost advantages, eventually, and often faster than you think whittle down to almost nothing.

What persists is the sustained ability to out execute, and to consistently deliver more, with solid quality, and demonstrable results and impact in shorter and shorter timeframes.

What's on your 90-day plan? 

However ambitious it seems right now, remember somewhere out there one of your competitors is dreaming much, much bigger. Maybe even tallest building in the world big.

Titanic : Or, I'm comfortable not knowing

Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, which accounts for the recent upsurge in news and events surrounding the ship's tragic fate, as well as the return of the incredibly popular 1997 movie, (now in 3D!) titled, aptly, Titanic.It's not just a movie!!!

For a combination of reasons - the scale and luxury of the incredible ship itself, the many pronouncements of its 'unsinkability' prior to it well, sinking, the presence onboard of many of the time's super rich and elite, and finally the sheer scope and sadness of the tragedy that saw over 1,500 perish in the freezing sea; the Titanic story seems even more popular and in the societal conscious than ever before. The 1997 film played a significant role of course in cementing the Titanic story in our collective minds, it was for many years following its release the highest grossing film ever, and even now is still second in Worldwide box office receipts. With close to $2B in worldwide ticket sales and about 178,294 additional showings in the last 15 years on cable TV, chances are really, really high that everyone has seen this movie, or at least is familiar with it. It remains a legendary achievement in pop culture history.

The popularity and ubiquity of the 1997 movie has also had some unexpected effects on the understanding and interpretation of the actual events of the Titanic in the minds of some observers. Namely, it turns out that lots of people, (mostly young people), did not realize that Titanic was not just a movie, but an actual historical event. There have been loads of articles posted about this, this one from the Gothamist is a good example, and they (mostly), take the same kind of condescending slant of 'Can you believe these dumb kids?' and 'Our culture is doomed once these numbskulls are in charge.'. After all, the reasoning goes, how can you not know the Titanic story, it has been told, re-told, revised, re-revised, told some more, dramatized, and finally re-dramatized pretty much endlessly for the last 100 years.

So here's where I disagree with that kind of reasoning, particularly when it comes to 'adults' passing judgment on say the average 15 or 16 year-old that might not have realized that there was an actual Titanic, and not just the boat that Leo DiCaprio sailed on in 1997. The history of the Titanic is at best marginally interesting, and 100 years later the continued fascination with the tale is to me, kind of baffling. Yes, it was an amazing story; yes, there is some historical significance; yes, subsequent efforts to analyze, understand, and interpret the events have yielded some important insights; but the level to which this singular event has been elevated is in my view way out of rational proportion.  

If the 1997 movie was the first and only introduction and experience to the story for say anyone under 25 years of age, I am perfectly fine with that. And I'd submit that there are likely about a thousand other subjects that we as a society should be concerned that our next generation of workers and leaders need to know more about, the details of an ocean liner sinking in 1912 fall really low on that list.

Recently Naomi Bloom ran an excellent piece on the difficulty of keeping up with everything, and the importance of applying perspective, choice, and reasoning in the battle against an endless and unyielding stream of information.  The main point - you have to pick your spots, you can't know everything, and you have to decide what is truly relevant and meaningful. 

If keeping up with every nuance in the 100-year old Titanic story seems valuable to you, then that is fantastic, but don't crack down on some 17 year-old that doesn't see it the same way, or even never gave the entire episode a second thought once the movie ended. There are likely about a million things I'd rather have that kid be familiar with, (cruise control is not the same as auto-pilot would be one), than knowing if John Jacob Astor made it to the lifeboat in 1912.

If culture eats strategy, then what eats culture?

I still play Rock-Paper-Scissors.

For a simple game, it is incredibly nuanced and complex. Like all good games, there is no sure way to win, and no sure way to lose. Some day I hope to hone my skills to the point where I can compete for big bucks on the R-P-S circuit.

Why mention Rock-Paper-Scissors? Choose wisely

It came to mind from thinking about two things - one, another run around the park for the popular 'Culture Eats Strategy' meme, (ok, it is not really a meme, I just couldn't think of a better word. Sorry.). This line of thought posits that without the 'right' or 'good' or 'well managed' company culture, that it does not really matter much what the business strategies are, that decreased or lacking employee engagement levels caused by that poor culture will effectively short-circuit and lead to failure even the best, most intelligent strategies. It makes plenty of sense, is fairly hard to argue against, and tends to play to the part of us that simply likes to believe if we create great places to work, great experiences, and happy/engaged/satisfied employees that everything else might just fall into place.

But like the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, that is non-linear, and where any choice you make can potentially be trumped by another choice, is it possible that while Culture may eat Strategy, that there might be something out there that might eat Culture?

How about Talent?

A few days ago mega fast food franchise company Yum! Brands, (think, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell), announced its latest quarterly earnings, and one of the highlights was the company's strong growth and performance in China, with an expansion of locations and same-store sales up 21% on the quarter. On the quarterly earnings call, Yum! CEO David Novak was asked about the company's successes in the often difficult to crack Chinese market, and his explanation of the reasons behind this excellent performance curiously did not attribute it at least primarily to some kind of superior business strategy, or wonderful organizational culture. No, he talked about Talent. From the transcript of the earnings call:

I think our whole formula for success in China has been geared on great local management team with phenomenal local operating capability. And we've always had one rule, we never want to expand any further than or faster than our people capability.

But we're like the Procter and Gambles, the king of marketing talent in the United States. We see ourselves as the leader in operating talent in China. The second big thing on people capability is just our development operations. Our development team -- we have 700 people in our development team. And we have the best retail management base in China. This is a huge competitive advantage as we go forward. 

Let that sink in a minute. People capability. The leader in operating talent. The main reason Yum! is winning in China.

Later in the discussion Novak does talk about the importance of flagship locations, and arriving first to local markets, both clearly business strategy type decisions, but the overall emphasis and the main reason for success and ongoing competitive advantage is finding, developing, and pipelining great local managerial talent.

Talent. Not culture, not strategy, not some innovative marketing or social media outreach.

It is a very interesting take, and I'd recommend reading the full transcript of the earnings call, (come on, you have time, lay off Facebook for ten minutes).

What do you think - if culture eats strategy, could it be that talent eats them both?

Have a great weekend!