Bruce Stewart

just testing the comment and email notification system.

Matt Shlosberg

Jennifer,

Thank you for your questions. I hope the following will answer:

1. I don't think it's a matter of paycheck dependency. I think it's a matter of perception of paycheck dependency or perhaps fear of losing a job. You are right that it may not be 100% age dependent and if this organization had 1,000 employees, targeting age would probably be the wrong this to do. But this was a small organization and it was easily seen that the young crowd didn't have that fear of losing the job because they (1) still lived with parents, (2) had no student loans yet, (3) didn't have mortgages, and (4) were maybe too young to be financially experienced to know better. The idea wasn't to reduce dependency as much as it was to build a culture of people who weren't too worried about getting fired.

2. The source of fear in the organization is the fact that people can be fired or unable to find another job if quit voluntarily. If they didn't have this fear, other things wouldn't scare them either. In fact, if an unwanted event happened to them, they could easily quit. So, if your alternative (quiting) is easily reachable, why would you be afraid of other things? In this particular case fear was eliminated because the source of fear disappeared. By focusing on people who weren't scared of losing jobs, this firm eliminated the source.

3.I think it depends on the industry, the types of people, and the job market. For example, Harvard professors are probably not much scared because they are hot; if they quit Harvard, they will be instantly snatched by another university. So this model would work in Harvard University regardless of employees' age and family status. US based doctors and nurses would probably be in the same shoes. But this wouldn't work in companies, industries, or geographies where unemployment rates were high or finding a job is tough. Also, although I don't have empirical evidence to prove my theory, I would guess that on average older people with families are more sensitive to job losses than young singles. It may be a false sense and it may just exist in their heads, but it exists.

Hope this helps.

Matt Shlosberg

Farayi,

Thanks for the comment. I don't have the research that shows the paycheck dependency across companies and industries, but this was the case in a small (20 people) group of people in this particular company. But if you think about this concept in general, it makes sense. This firm was in the software industry and this story took place in late 1990s. Back then IT people would send out 5 resumes and have 4 interviews and 3 offers the next day (first hand experience!). So people weren't scared to lose their jobs. The older crowd with families was far more experienced in personal finances and had more to lose, so paycheck was far more important to them. Although this could have been a false sense of paycheck dependency, since the older folks could probably find a job in a day as well. But it didn't matter if this sense was real. What mattered is whether or not there was fear in the workplace, and this fear was a direct result of the potentially false sense of paycheck dependency. Also, people with families tended to care more about families and worked exactly 8 hours a day, while young geeks treated work as play and stayed at work longer.

You have to see how this applies to various industries, but I suspect it can be done anywhere, including the soap industry. The idea is to find entrepreneurial people that want to make it big, give them freedom, communicate a vision, and get out of their way. P&G is a good example of this strategy at work.

Ellen Weber

Matt, my apologies for misspelling your name!!!

Ahmad el Nashar

I believe this is an impressive story about creating the right work culture. When I look at all the various things done it boils down to this create the right work culture and get onboard people aligned to this culture and you get an amazing organization. I actually think a lot more values/mindsets were introduced in the change mentioned here that also need to be emphasized such as team work, freedom, and entrepreneurship.

Having said that, it is important to be able to sustain this culture. Therefore to me a lot of the things you mention could create a hype that would positively influence people for a while however there needs to be mechanisms in place beyond recruitment, and pay and introducing some of the fun concepts to maintain this culture. This would be especially true if the organization seeks to grow and maintain this culture.

So here comes questions on leadership development process/mechanism, the onboarding process, decision making mechanisms and other culture sharing/value definition process mechanisms.

Marwa Farouq

I really like this story, it's so impressive and innovative in the way implemented.
I'll actually try some of those ideas in my practice and see how it works.

Thanks for sharing :)

Pedro Gonzalez Lopez

I realy like the concept of: ¨Increase trust, reduce fear¨. I will only change the approach to reduce fear, focusing more on the fear source at the organization and less on the fear source at the employees side.