Chuck Blakeman – TRANSCRIPT
A few years ago, I read a riveting blog post by a young guy who made it clear to me that a new work world is emerging. His post went something like this, “Every morning when I get to work, I park my car, leave myself in the car, and go in to work. At lunch, I always try to come back out and reunite with myself for a few minutes, before I have to leave myself in the car again and go back in to work. I do this every day, and in the evenings, I always hope I’ll get off in time to reunite with myself before I’m gone.”
What this guy identified is that he’s living at the intersection of two opposing work worlds: the industrial age, which is still strangely dominant in the front office of most companies, and the participation age, which is emerging as the new standard for how we work. It’s an awkward pass-off. For instance, in the production area, we have replaced industrialized assembly lines and smokestacks with things like nanotechnology and clean rooms. But the front office looks pretty much the same way it did 100 years ago, with managers making all the decisions.
These industrial age management practices, which recreated humans as extensions of machines, are colliding with the emerging participation age workforce that wants to make meaning at work, not just money. The hallmarks of the participation age are simple: participation and sharing. Companies are discovering that if they invite everyone to participate in the building of a great company and to share in the rewards that both the company and the people profit more.
The participation age is also creating workplaces with a soul. This isn’t woo-woo crap; these are hardcore success strategies.
So let’s imagine, what does a participation age company look like? Imagine a company with no departments, no corporate ladder, no promotions, no HR department, no written policies, and just a few written beliefs. Imagine a company with no managers, just a few leaders who lead because people are following them, not because they have a title on the door.
Imagine a company with no office hours, even in manufacturing, with self-managed work teams who own the decisions that they will have to carry out. At a company with unlimited vacation and profit sharing for everyone. Think about this: is it possible this way of business would work better for both the company and the people that work there? Is that possible? In his book, “Reinventing Organizations” Frederic Laloux said, “Imagine what organizations would be like if we stopped designing them like soulless, clunky machines?” And I would add, what would organizations achieve if we re-imagine them around the idea that everybody wants to be creative, productive, self-managed adults?
Well, the good news is we don’t have to imagine this. Participation companies are springing up all around us, in every size and in every industry. What you see here is only a few, a small partial list of companies that have either fully transitioned or are racing to embrace the participation age as fast as they can. We need to know why they want to do this.
Here’s a window into the issue. Of all the reporter’s questions, who, what, when, where, how, and why, which one of those is the most human of questions? Why? The one that an animal is least likely to ask is, “Why?” Yet what is the one question that you are forbidden to ask for 100 plus years at work? Unfortunately, “Why?” If you asked why, you were challenging authority; you were a rebel, an outcast, a misfit! These were systems designed by a few geniuses to be run by unquestioning, childlike employees, right?
The good news is in the emerging participation age all of this is changing, and thankfully, very quickly. To that end, managers, who embrace authority and control are disappearing in favor of exponentially fewer leaders, who embrace participation and sharing. Employees who are treated like children and herded into office daycare centers to be supervised are being replaced by stakeholders, self-motivated adults who don’t need to be managed, just lead.
What’s the difference between an employee and a stakeholder? Employees come to work as extensions of machines. Stakeholders bring the whole messy, creative person to work. Employees, like machines, do just what they’re told. Stakeholders question everything. Most importantly, employees need to be managed. Stakeholders simply need to be led.
So how do we stop managing and start leading, so that people are freed up to become stakeholders? First, we have got to stop solving problems and deciding things. Leaders train other people to solve problems. They delegate decision-making, and then they get out of the way. You see, the art of leadership is to know how few decisions the leader needs to make.
Secondly, managers focus on process, they can’t help themselves, while leaders focus on results, “just get me a result”.
Third, managers delegate tasks, which actually makes people feel used, “Put this nut on this bolt.” While leaders give responsibility, “Get me a great result, get me a great product.” Giving them responsibility creates ownership, and ownership is the most powerful motivator in business. Giving ownership will make sure that you take care of your own — You get the picture. Something else is emerging.
The problem is in the industrial age nobody owned anything, least of all, your time. You traded time for money; it was a very clear exchange. You give me X amount of time, I will give you X amount of money. But in the participation age, something new is emerging. Companies are realizing that when you give people time, they will make you more money. Give them control over their time and they will build a great company, not for you, but with you. In the participation age, time is the new money. Something else is emerging, or really just re-emerging, and that is the desire to make meaning at work, not just money. This isn’t just a millennial thing.
The research shows every cohort group from millennials to baby boomers want to make meaning at work. The difference is that boomers like me were taught by our industrial age parents to shut up, sit down, don’t make waves, don’t ask why, live invisibly, and go out quietly. But millennials aren’t growing up in the shadow of the industrial age, so they won’t put up with just having a job, stripped of its humanity. They actually want work, not a job, because work is meaningful, a job only pays the bills.
In the participation age, people will work because they can make meaning at work, not just money. OK, so to the leaders of some companies, this may all sound like sappy HR stuff to placate the workforce, so let’s take a look at how the company does in a participation age.
The average Fortune 500 company grows 122% over ten years. Jim Collins’s carefully selected “Good to Great” companies grew 316% over ten years. What about participation age companies? Raj Sisodia, in his book, “Firms of Endearment”, asked the Fortune 500 companies this outlandish question: are any of you in business to do something greater than just make money for your investors? He found 30 companies that raised their hands and said, “Our first priority is to make meaning, not money,” and with that primary commitment to making meaning, those 30 companies grew an average of 1,025% over ten years, three times faster than “Good to Great” companies and ten times faster than the norm.
The results are in: if you want to make a bucket load of money going forward as a company, you need to join the participation age. So let’s take a look at one participation age company: Semco, a company that does everything from manufacturing to banking, has 3,000 stakeholders. It was founded in 1952, and completely transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by Ricardo Semler. He rebuilt the company on two elegantly simple assumptions that govern every decision they make: one, trust in adult behavior. This is the critical assumption that people actually want to be productive and to contribute to something bigger than themselves. And number two, everyone’s work rhythm varies as to when, how, and where they get their best work done.
So what kind of company has Semler built on these two simple assumptions? To begin with, he reduced 12 layers of management to three layers of leadership. He created a company with no titles, no management ladder, and no headquarters. Stakeholders at Semco are now self-organized and self-managed teams, and every six months, those teams vote on their own. They make their own decisions regarding productivity, pay, who leads the team, and who gets to keep their job. There are no managers to involve in the process: they don’t exist. There are no set work hours at Semco, even in their assembly line work. To ensure that nobody wastes time, all meetings are optional. Imagine how many ineffective meetings — Yes, can I get an amen here?
Imagine how many ineffective meetings go away on their own when this rule is applied. Poof! Semco also has unlimited vacation and pay is based on productivity, with profit-sharing for everyone. But one of the most important guiding principles at Semco is this: question everything. People at Semco are all trained to ask why at least three times before making a decision. Ricardo Semler said he didn’t build a participation age company just to get freedom from the time clock, the cubicle, or the bureaucracy. He said he did it because he wanted everyone who worked there to have the freedom to discover their own destiny.
Again, this may sound great for the stakeholders, but how has this focus on humanity worked out for Semco? Incredibly well, it turns out. In a recent 10-year recessionary period, Semco’s revenues grew 600%, profits were up 500%, productivity rose 700%, and to this day, employee turnover remains at an incredibly low one to two percent. But these guys aren’t alone; they’re not freaks. W. L. Gore, for instance, with 10,000 stakeholders was organized this very same way long before Semco, and scores of other companies are already organized this way, or moving as quickly as they can in this direction.
So how do we find one of these companies, or how do we build one ourselves? First, make sure people are paid for great work, not for time spent sitting in a chair for another year. Look for a results-based workplace. Second, find out if stakeholders actually own and are empowered to make decisions they will have to carry out. Third, talk to the stakeholders themselves and see if they’re invited to bring the whole, messy, creative person to work.
So how do we prepare to become part of the participation age? First, it takes a focus on making meaning, not just money. Second, of course, be self-motivated. Create your own path. Employees need to be told what to do, stakeholders design their own lives. And third, ask yourself, what motivates me at my very core?
My mother strongly encouraged me to build a life around the three S’s of the industrial age: safety, security, and stability. The idea that every day should look the same. The problem with these is that they’re near the bottom of what motivates people. To her credit, coming out of the Great Depression, she was looking up at the bottom, at needs that had never been met. But in the emerging work world, stakeholders will stand on a foundation of safety, security, and stability to pursue to fourth S of the participation age: significance. This may be a trapeze moment for you.
If you run a company or feel like you’re stuck in a job with no soul, you may have a decision to make, but there’s good news. There are a few dozen giant corporations, hundreds of big ones, and tens of thousands of small to medium-sized companies racing to embrace the participation age as fast as they can, or who are already there. Don’t settle. Find one you can join as a stakeholder, or build one yourself. The emerging work world is waiting for you. Please, come join us in the participation age. Thank you.
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