Open letter to CXO’s
Pam Slim writes a refreshing and forthright post slamming common management practice. I particularly like her take on culture:
Corporate culture is a natural thing that cannot be manufactured. No amount of posters, incentive programs, PowerPoint presentations or slogans on websites will affect the hearts and minds of your employees. If you want to see things change immediately, stop acting like an asshole. If you see one of your senior managers acting like an asshole, ask him to stop. If he doesn’t stop, fire him. You will be amazed at how fast the culture shifts.
This sentiment was also conveyed in Robert Sutton’s essay in Harvard Business Review where he advocated businesses implement a no asshole rule. Don’t hire assholes regardless of their earning potential and if someone has developed into one, help them see the light or get rid of them.
While I haven’t seen an intervention described in these forthright terms before it certainly meets our criteria of a small thing that can make a difference. Put another way; using simple rules. And frankly, life’s too short to deal with arseholes (Australian spelling).
Here are the 10 points Pam makes. For each point she provides a paragraph.
- Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture.
- Stop running your company like the mafia
- Spend a moment walking around the halls of your company and look at your employees
- Teach people how to get rich like you
- Don’t ask for your employees’ input if you are not going to listen to it
- Don’t train people until you know what problem you are solving
- Ditch the PowerPoint when you have town hall meetings
- Focus on the work people do, not how or when they do it
- Watch the burnout
- Forbid people to work while they are on vacation
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on: