Employee Graduation

Most organizations bend over backwards to retain key talent. Often this results in an employee staying at a company for the wrong reasons- golden handcuffs, guilt, fear, etc. I believe organizations should focus instead on encouraging employees to "graduate" when the time comes. This seems counter-intuitive. Why invest in an employee that is going to leave?

No doubt, organizations need a return on the investment they make in their employees. But there may be diminishing returns on that investment over time or the employee may not be 100% on board with their role or they may have outgrown their potential in the organization. Whatever the reason, I believe there are few instances of a healthy lifetime employee/employer relationship. People and the organizations they work for rarely evolve synchronously over a long period of time. 

Perhaps the most desirable form of graduation is an employee becoming an entrepreneur. This can also serve the "parent" business by outsourcing work to the former employee's startup. Ricardo Semler's "Maverick" demonstrated the success of this approach. I have seen it here with our former employees that now run Joyful Noise Recordings and Ayokay.  Not everyone is meant to run their own business but I do think organizations should build entrepreneurial employees (also called "intrapreneurs"). In many ways I feel this is the civic duty of business owners. An entrepreneurial minded employee can be a very powerful asset to an organization as well as their community. 

I believe business owners should focus on their employee's overall growth, not just their growth within the organization. If you don't make this investment then your employees will be more likely to leave. Don't underestimate the real value of employee happiness. In my experience, growth equals happiness. But every organization has limitations for employee growth. So when an employee's growth slows it may be time to help them pursue a new opportunity. 

Don't forgot, employees are brand ambassadors. When they leave your organization they will carry your brand with them. What do you want them to say? Don't you want them to tell a positive story about their experience? Don't underestimate the harm your brand can suffer when your employees suffer. I have seen this greatly undermine companies. No-one wants to work for or with them.

Is ROWE A Culture Killer?

First here's a re-post of the definition of ROWE from CultureRx's GoRowe.com website (emphasis added):

"Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) is a management strategy where employees are evaluated on performance, not presence."

Increasingly I've come to take issue with the "presence" aspect of ROWE. I believe it works against a healthy culture. How can you build a great team when that team is rarely together? Imagine a basketball team where everyone practices alone- how do you think they would compete against a team that practices together? 

We are physical creatures and, as it's been proved many times, much of our communication is non-verbal. In my opinion Skype just doesn't make up the distance. Innovation, ideation and collaboration all degrade with distance. Not to say that you can't have a healthy mix of present/remote work. There are times when the best work is done heads down, with intense focus. I see that on my team all the time. 

Truly exceptional companies put organizational health first. I believe this requires presence. ROWE advocates need to consider whether their adopted philosophy is damaging their most important asset- their health. 

(Inspired by Patrick Lencioni's new book "The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business" and a lunch conversation with Don Sedberry)

Steve Jobs, the Luddite

Lately I've found myself imagining what Steve Jobs would have done had he lived. I think we have all engaged in this mostly useless mental activity. So my "Steve Jobs Simulator" keeps arriving at a surprising outcome: Jobs living to denounce the very technology he helped create. Yes, my highly accurate simulator, after numerous simulations, all reviewed by a team of peers, produces (drum roll): Steve Jobs, the Luddite. 

Consider his Buddhist leanings and semi-Zen nature. What if he came to believe that his attempt to create "insanely great" products had resulted in legions of digital addicts who had traded the wideness of "real" life for a tiny screen? What if he became convinced that humans were not meant for constant digital connectivity? Is it really that far out to consider he might have wanted to clean the temple and destroy the very empire, Apple, that he built? Ok, it's pretty far out but wasn't Steve kinda far out too?

More and more I wonder if we may come to a similar "simulated" conclusion, that we aren't built to run at this speed. Our physical OS can't handle constant digital connectivity, it disrupts our normal rhythms. Or maybe we will evolve in ways we can only imagine now. Regardless, things are about to get interesting. Too bad Jobs isn't around, he would have made it even more interesting, one way or another. 

My Week Off The Grid

I recently resolved to go a week completely off the grid- no email, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. It helped that it was also a week that my family would be spending at Union Pier on Lake Michigan. But let's be honest, how often do we truly "unplug" for vacations. I never have. In the past I have always checked email several times a day, taken some calls and generally kept half my mind back at work. The result was that I always returned feeling half rested.

To commit I left my laptop at home and deleted all relevant apps from my phone. I did take my phone since I needed to be available for emergencies- which, thankfully, there were none. I even moved Safari to the furthest reaches of my iPhone screens so it wouldn't tempt me. 

I did go through a brief detox and experienced some digital withdraws but overall going off the grid was much easier than I expected. Within a day I reached a state of relaxation that usually takes 3-4 days, which is right before I have to leave- sound familiar? 

Did I cheat? I did succumb once to research my new obsession- Carl G Fisher. But otherwise I stayed clean. 

I wish I had been hooked up to some monitors when I reinstalled the apps on my phone. I felt sweat creep across my forehead, my heartbeat increased and my stomach started to turn. Stress, like a heavy jacket, came down on me. I hadn't realized how relaxed I really was until that moment when the grid came rushing back into my life. I would imagine it might be similar to a junkie taking a hit after being clean for a while. The body at first freaks out and then readjusts to the new normal. But let's not kid ourselves, stress ain't healthy.

The week was one of the most relaxing ones I can recall. My company survived, and even thrived, in my absences. Stuff got done and life went on without me. I spent focused time with my family, read books and slept- a lot, if you ask my wife. I highly recommend you try it on your next vacation. Don't worry, the grid will take you back with open arms, drug dealers always do.

Why Physical Objects Matter...at least for now

Seems like a strange topic for a blog, right? Of course physical objects matter! I am writing this on one, I use one to get to work everyday. But we may be closer than we realize to a world where we have increasingly less contact with actual physical objects.

Consider a future where your computer and phone are part of your body. Or beyond that, to a time when you no longer even have a body. Your existence becomes purely virtualized. I know, it sounds crazy but when you start walking down Singularity's exponential path, mixing in Moore's Law, you may start to see that this future could intersect your lifetime. In many ways we are, perhaps unintentionally, conditioning ourselves to this transition. Technology is already invading our biology.

Digital experiences are becoming the norm. Soon we may have few areas of our existence that don't have a direct digital aspect. This ranges from always-on Bluetooth headsets to sleep monitoring. It just makes sense that we are moving towards digital co-habitation. But I'm concerned we may get lost in the transition. 

When we interact with physical objects we have a distinctly different experience than interacting with digital objects. Physical objects engage all of our senses- we can smell, feel and touch the object. It can age and change. In engaging all our senses it also taps into all our types of memory. These older types of sense memory are much stronger than our more recently evolved verbal memory. As I learned in Moonwalking With Einstein- we can remember an image for years but words slip away easily, they need another sense to act as an anchor.

Presently, our digital experiences only engage a few of our senses- sight, hearing and maybe touch. But they do not engage smell at all and barely touch, touch. Digital experiences often go by like a TV show. Something we watch with interest but stand removed. 

Physical objects ground us in a particular way- they require our presence. We cannot interact with them in any meaningful way without being present. Also, they can age and change. They can be lost. They cannot be infinitely cloned like a digital object. There is no "iCloud" for people and stuff- at least yet. Most importantly they engage all our senses which leaves dimensional craters in our memory. This connects us to the passage of time and to each other. We all share in this fully immersive reality but it seems we are running from it towards inferior digital realities.

The further we move towards digital interactions that only engage a few senses the closer we get to becoming Star Trek's "borg". A being that has forgotten its humanity. Ironically to avoid becoming the borg we may need to speed up digitally connecting our bodies. Our digital experiences need to engage all of our senses. Maybe digital spaces could have a feel and smell all their own- like walking down a hall in high school.

I fear we may need to quickly become the borg to save our humanity. If we spend too much time in transition we may collectively lose some of our fundamentally human characteristics. A quick change could bring all that we love about analog human experience directly into a digital existence. But inbetween we are left with a half real digital existence. That will wear on us. The way we flock to the newest devices reminds me of how everyone sold their records when CDs came out and then many grew to regret it later. We must remember that analog existence has its charms. Let's not lose ourselves as we embrace the Singularity.