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How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

technocrat.net

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Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#121

Post by RyanMcGreal »

gruseom wrote: post #100
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. After years of direct involvement in measuring productivity, I would accept that as a general axiom. I've likened it to badly applied wallpaper: push down a bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

So what would you say are the best ways to measure productivity?

I'd say "don't bother". The very act of measuring changes employees' focus from getting the job done to gaming the system. The more that management focuses on the metrics, the more that people are driven to secondary and even tertiary efforts to look productive, rather than spending their energy just doing their jobs.

It triggers an arms race of workers seeking ways to mask their activities and management building ever-more elaborate and invasive metrics to capture them. The end result is that everyone spends so much time and energy on administration that the output of real work actually falls - along with both employee morale and management confidence.

I found myself nodding my head in recognition when I read the excellent essay on lesswrong.com about spammers trying to game PageRank. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1339704

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#122

Post by loewenskind »

jgrahamc wrote: post #8
j_baker wrote: post #6

"I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive. I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'result…

On the company's web site there's a page about him (he's the CEO): http://cerner.com/public/Cerner_2.asp?id=27586 In that it says: "Cerner associates extol Neal for his passion and foresight, his ability to drive change within organizations, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his candid, uninhibited conversational style." So that's just a candid, uninhibited conversational style :-) Note that that message was sent in 20…

So much for theories about Karma, etc.

EDIT: To be more clear, there is no such thing as Karma outside of ones self. If you can be a total douche bag like this guy and not feel bad about it, then nothing bad is going to happen to you because of it.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#123

Post by loewenskind »

From the NYT article on this event [1].

>It made Fortune magazine's lists in 1998 and 2000 of the 100 best companies to work for in America.

Why do people still cite this ridiculous report? It's had both Walmart and EA in the list. Both companies are about as bad to work for as is possible as a professional in a first world country.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#124

Post by dagw »

loewenskind wrote: post #123

From the NYT article on this event [1]. >It made Fortune magazine's lists in 1998 and 2000 of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Why do people still cite this ridiculous report? It's had both Walmart and EA in the list. Both companies are about as bad to work for as is possible as a professional in a first world country. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...

I imagine it depends a lot on what you do. Fortune magazine targets rich manager type people so I'm assuming they mean best companies to work as a highly paid manager. I have no reason to believe that Walmart or EA (the actual EA, not one of their game studios) couldn't be great companies to work for if you're a senior manager in charge of major aspect of the company. If I was a global logistics guy, Walmart might very well be at the top of my list of companies I'd like to work for.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#127

Post by dedward »

Hypothetically...

The memo would certainly kill morale at most places I've been. The corrective actions being asked for are completely wrong.. but this is aimed at middle management.

Read the beginning of the memo - not the end. If the parking lot is largely empty at 8am and at 5pm..... and workers are expected to work a standard 40 hour week, that's an indication that something might be wrong.

One can also assume that if the organization was functioning correctly and middle management was doing it's job - the CEO wouldn't give a rat's a about the parking lot - because he'd have the metrics in front of him to say "Damn, that KC facility is doing awesome! Every other facility should be learning from these guys.". Instead, something prompted him to feel that the place was slacking, and seeing an empty parking lot at 8am AND 5pm is a pretty good indication that people aren't even putting in minimal working hours. Fair enough. (And if he's completely wrong - middle management should be able to manage upwards correctly and explain to him why he's wrong, why everyone is car-pooling and why the metrics and results are best-of-class, so he should just back off)

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#128

Post by gruseom »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #121
gruseom wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what would you say are the best ways to measure productivity?

I'd say "don't bother". The very act of measuring changes employees' focus from getting the job done to gaming the system. The more that management focuses on the metrics, the more that people are driven to secondary and even tertiary efforts to look productive, rather than spending their energy just doing their jobs. It triggers an arms race of workers seeking ways to mask their activities and management building ev…

That confirms my bias, which is that it can't be measured directly and the metrics that people try it with usually do more harm than good. But it's very interesting coming from someone with "years of direct involvement in measuring productivity".

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#129

Post by caffeine »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #50
Periodic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a case of misplaced metrics. I can't find the name of the paper or the researcher, but I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. Measuring number of hours in the office is not a direct measurement of productivity, and these employees were meeting the metric, but onl…

>I believe it's been shown that when you try to reward/punish some metric of productivity, invariably the employees will begin to maximize that metric, perhaps at the expense of productivity. After years of direct involvement in measuring productivity, I would accept that as a general axiom. I've likened it to badly applied wallpaper: push down a bubble and it just pops up somewhere else.

Even if the metric is a direct business metric that it's manaagement's job to optimize (like profitability or number of users)?

I've always thought it would be interesting to see the results if half of everybody's salary (including the CEO and the toner refill guy) was paid by dividends from shares of the company held in trust for this purpose. As in, every year, everyone's pay goes up/down by the same (relative) amount.

What if, in addition, the shares held in trust were a closed pool, requiring employees to give up part of their bonus share to any new employees hired? The expected net outcome of hiring on profitability would then have to outweigh the decreased income from a (very slightly) reduced share of profits.

I'm not certain that this is the ideal system of incentives (i.e. there might be local minima one could get stuck in), but it would certainly be an exciting experiment...

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#130

Post by ahoyhere »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

When a person says exactly what they are thinking, and it comes out horribly -- but accurately -- it's not "poor communication," it's "poor being."
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