Company culture close to a Cult

Next when reading Tony Hsieh’s book I’m wondering about how it is to have a family at home and friends from before when working at Zappos. It’s great to love to go to work, to feel that you have friends there who care for you and who support you, but as a parent of three kids I wonder how you cope with the other cultures that you must be a part of – the small communities of every school and daycare that your children belong to? It feels quite important to actively take part in your children’s school when parents arrange mingles and activities. If you don’t your kid is soon an alien to school, friends and to you. So how do you fulfill your parental role while being a part of a culture as Zappos, asking you to check in your full time, ethics and soul into the company?

Or maybe it’s a culture created by and for dinkies or at least childless employees and there should be other companies in the society building culture by, with and for parents… and everyone else who is not willing to check in his soul to a company.

It is much more fun to go to work when believing in and embrasing the goals and when being a part of the company, but at the same time it’s easy for this kind of culture to become a cult – a religion - creating new goals and ethics over time that everyone follows out of pure social validation. In my mind it is sound and maybe even human to be precautious to that kind of traps. At the same time as I adore the described Zappos culture and philosophy, it is always scary when groups become strong and powerful. Powerful cultures got power over the group and over others.

More thoughts from Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness

Start small - make change

So today I was invited to speed coach 29 particpants from Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon and Sweden in the Young Leaders Visitors Program at Swedish Institute. It was five very intense hours where about 15 different projects were presented to me in five minutes each, expecting a ten minutes feedback. These are probably the most passionate and engaged social entrepreneurs in the world, and it was this passion more than anything else that rested to my conclusion and reflection of the day.

It striked me that it is common that those who are passionate about their cause tend to see an online application from one perspective. They build an idea on a need - to upload or create something, or to get some information for example - while there are almost always at least two perspectives, two target groups - those who upload and those who are going to enjoy the uploaded content, those who read the information and those who would like to add information. To create a full experience not leaving any of these two users disappointed you have to see the needs from both sides. What will the visitor experience when looking at the uploaded content, and how can she/he take it further? What does the visitor expect to happen when uploading her/his content?

My relation to the Internet is almost presumptuous. All of these online projects presented can be reality. Anyone who has this much passion will be able to offer it as a gift to the user and the user will engage back in return. Clearify to yourself and others what your driving forces and words of values are and stay stick to them in every little decition to mediate them to everyone around you. Most webbsites, applications and communities can not offer this personal passion. If you love your one and only user and care for him/her - she will tell her friends and you will soon be more.

Start small - make change - grow big - make big change.

CSR låter roligt, utvecklande och effektivt

SvD skriver idag om att upp emot hälften av alla chefer i kommun och landsting går i pension de kommande 10 åren och hur viktigt det blir för dessa arbetsgivare att jobba med sina varumärken för att locka kompetens.

I samma tidning intervjuas (H&M's CSR chef angående företagets hållbarhetsarbete. Jag tänker att de vänder den mest tänkbara kritik de kan få till sin fördel genom att jobba aktivt med problemen.

Jag har tidigare alltid tänkt att det inte spelar mig någon roll huruvida företagens hållbarhetsarbete främst är en strategi för att främja varumärket eller för att rädda världen - arbetet blir ju gjort och det är det viktigaste, men på sistone har jag ändrat mig. Det räcker inte att bara tala om att man arbetar för hållbarhet. Alla måste arbeta för att alla andra också ska kunna bli bättre. De måste dela med sig av kunskapen om vad de gör och hur de arbetar. Målet måste vara ett mer hållbart arbete för alla för att resultat ska uppnås.

Kommun och landsting är för mig idag lika med tråkigt, icke utvecklande och ineffektivitet. Ska de locka mig ska de skapa varumärken med ett gemensamt mål om hållbarhet på alla fronter vilket för mig låter roligt, utvecklande och effektivt.

Different opinions are great - different goals are not

Different opinions can lead to the most magic end result ever. When being in the middle of the process you probably go home from a discussion of different opinions and complain 'she's always persisting with her idea about bla bla' and you feel frustrated. But in the end, when a fantastic product is released and you look back on the production, you realize that it was great to get all aspects, knowledge and ideas put together into the best ever set. That you were wrong in some ideas and right in some and that you're happy that your colleague was so persistent.

Having different goals is the opposite. It results in endless lead times, eternal discussions and a half as good product as it could be. Must remember to not mistake one for the other.