Culture is a Dichotomy: Positive or Negative

Working for any corporation or even in the halls of academia means one will deal with the parent organization’s culture. Culture is often described as the mission, worldview and values found within members of the body. No matter how benevolent management’s motto, the true goal of any business is to turn a profit. Corporate values have to revolve around keeping your organization profitable or tomorrow will result in bankruptcy. Making money is a more complex than just an idea or a value driven goal though. Leadership and toil towards a common goal is necessary. The drive towards profits can be cruel if human weaknesses like greed are unchecked. How individuals treat each other within a profit framework is a reflection of the culture.  Cultures can be divided simply into positive and negative.

How people interact with each other comes from the top. Since corporations are not democracies, leaders set the tone on culture. This cuts both ways, in positive and negative fashions. In most cases, the direction is positive enabling necessary initiatives like safety and the efficient use of employees’ time. Poor management gives the converse results with a negative culture detracting from productivity. Unpleasant, toxic work environment is a poor outcome management would like to avoid. All organizations are a mixture of both positive and negative influences. It can be generally stated that a culture fits into a positive or negative camp.

Tell-tale signs of a negative culture reveal itself in a multi-faceted manner with these common traits:

1) Silo effect – The silo effect is when individual groups and even single employees are isolated from other inside groups. Information is not shared across functional areas making simple tasks often difficult. Employees have no idea what is going on within the corporation. The old mushroom joke comes into play here. One is treated like a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed a lot of manure.

2) Mistrust – Being isolated from your colleagues without any information about the day-to-day functions will often breed mistrust. This leads to inter-group hostility then in-fighting. Energy is wasted in proxy battles instead of directed toward productivity.

3) Inefficient labor – Managers that want to get ahead are forced to play a devious game. The best way to do this is get onto the better side of there direct manager by using labor to fulfill their supervisor’s desire no matter how wasteful. Tasks that should have top priority are ignored for busy work. Little significant work gets done.  Another inefficient labor practice is hiring too many people as a grandstanding political statement, “Hey, look at all of the people I manage.”

4) FEAR – The culmination of the above three signs is fear. Chronic fear makes employees extremely insecure. People only do enough to keep their jobs with no further incentive. Loyalty also quickly vanishes. Short term thinking dominates the workforce as survival. Unnecessary terminations and constant layoffs result in a culture of terror.

Positive culture is in sharp contrast to the negative and has similar tell-tale signs:

1) Respect – When I mean respect, it is in the sense that employees are also people with lives outside the business. Reasonable accommodations are given to the employees for personal life events like family, rest and personal tragedies. It is an unwritten code that employees will complete work without intimidation.

2) Transparency – Information required that an employee needs is readily available and accessible. Decisions concerning employment and operations within divisions is transmitted is an open, non-hostile manner.

3) Investment – Businesses that invest within themselves are going the long run. Investment includes training, equipment and long term strategic thinking. Paying industry competitive, appropriate wages also leads to a good workforce. Promoting employees according to ability and planning proper succession are outstanding investments.

4) Organization based outlook – Employees across all levels in the organization are free to contribute ideas to the common good of the organization. This is not only rewarded but encouraged without ideas being stolen. Besides being recognized with simple material rewards, they also gain the satisfaction of giving to a greater cause.

This list is a basic outline for anyone who will work for any organization to recognize before employment. Working for a company with a positive culture will boost your career while the opposite will occur with a negative culture. Identifying these characteristics in the interview stages before accepting a position is a topic for another essay.

Good Is All One Needs

It is amazing how often we hear from employers these days about how there are millions of jobs available and they can not fill these positions. I will not get into the details about the overall problem with my introductory post into the topic, but this post addresses the question that plagues hiring authorities everywhere. What kind of employee does a company really need? Organizations need all-around good employees when often they have a short-sighted fixation on acquiring “the best” candidates based on perceived competency.

Employees typically complete on the order of three to four unique tasks. Some advanced jobs (like engineering) require even less. The best example of a field heavily geared towards specialization is computer programming. Building software has two components, outlining the aesthetic aspects of software followed by the more challenging task of implementing functioning code. Employers hire someone who can complete the tasks and deliver a certain quality standard. When a customer purchases software it does not matter that the code is perfect script. All that matters is the software executes the expected task through an accessible interface with minimal error. Good code will suffice in comparison to great code. This is also true with employment. We will call this general employee competency.  

Just as the tech consumer needs good software, employers need workers with good character to fill their rank and file. It is obvious no organization wants a misbehaving employee. Laziness, bad attitudes, dishonesty and illicit behavior are just the many of negative qualities to avoid at all costs. I will argue that the majority of workforce does NOT have these undesired qualities and behave in an acceptable manner. It is very important for employees to display positive habits as punctuality, reliability, honesty, and a team player with a sense of mission. Employers should focus significantly concerning these qualities within employees and not leave it as an after thought.

This is important for the simple fact it opens up the number of candidates available. If hiring personnel search for only “the best” or “all-stars” this limits you potential hiring pool significantly. Only a few percent of the population is the best. It can get expensive quickly since they will demand high salaries and other benefits. If an opening is truly open to the outside, focus on a well-rounded candidate with high quality character and competency. In the end, this is what a hiring manager truly needs. Filling the position will be made relatively simple. 

New Business Challenge Part 1: Markets

This is my first post in 3 years. Between job and family my writing has decreased to an unacceptable level. LinkedIn has invited me to contribute to their site. The post below is my first on LinkedIn. It is intellectual, but for someone who wants to start their own business, necessary information. Enjoy!

Running a new business can be exciting and life changing. Taking an innovative idea and bringing it to life. Potential rewards are towards the upside when a business succeeds. Start ups have generated an entire mythology around the topic. What often is ignored surrounds the unspoken negative side with business failure rates during the initial 5 years. I have read that around 80 % outright fail, 10 % organizations live on in a lesser form while 10 % grow to become big, successful entities.  Working in a well connected startup; I have dealt with many new businesses and bringing their products into reality. This post is part one of two in a series addressing the two main pitfalls I believe cause this large failure rate, marketability and corporate mismanagement. We will address the former and most important factor in this article. 

Business sales come down to one question, “Why should I buy this product or service?” Breaking the question down into smaller components yields even more simple items. Do I need this product? Is this the best version on the market? Will I get good support and service? Many more questions arise that define a customer’s desire in purchasing any product. Other less obvious, but very important factors that come into play are product functionality, accessibility, culture and even the zeitgeist. The best example of a product missing in the secondary categories is Chevrolet trying to sell the Nova (no go in Spanish) in Latin America during the 1970s.

Larger more established companies also face the market challenge, but have more leeway since they are often diversified allowing a greater margin of error. With a startup, a few errors are fatal. Being a small, young company forces the business into creating a viable product with its main and often only product. For it to survive within such a short time frame, the product is required to fit into one of three main categories:

1 Revolutionary – nothing like this has ever been seen before

2 Disruptive – this product is the better mousetrap

3 Niche – this product fills a previously empty void within an industry.

If the business is a market failure from the beginning, these are (in my humble opinion) the root causes and should raise a flag within anyone who is dealing with a nascent business:

Delusions of Grandeur –

The inventor has the best product in the world that is going to conquer all markets. Founder(s) can be good salespeople and make it sound like their technology is just unstoppable. Another related delusion is the founders’ obsession since it is their lifework while overlooking the obvious flaws. Big egos are at play here. Yelling at the sky to make it green just will not make it happen. Reality will one day step in and make an ugly scene with all involved.

Lack of Due Diligence –

Modern technology is complex and is built upon decades even centuries of prior discoveries and inventions. One can easily point out the con artist who comes and tries to sell you a bridge. New products or services do not tower as the Golden Gate Bridge since they inhabit only the thought process of the company’s founder. Does a variation of this product exist? Has this idea been tried before without luck? Those who cut corners will downplay these quintessential questions.  

Insufficient Product –

The product is put onto the drawing board, prototypes work and production begins. Once the initial sales are complete the technology works. It just does not work well enough to displace an alternative or does not make the product worth purchasing in comparison to the price. In other words, the benefits do not match the high cost.

Application Missing –

Key to any new successful endeavor is the “killer” application. The customer will buy this product to complete a necessary task or resulting entertainment. Failure to fulfill an application is a recipe for disaster resulting in no orders. Starting a business before a previous demonstration will most likely lead to this endless, financial drain leading to a slow death. Focus is demanded to avoid this trap.

This post is not as a condemnation of start ups, but is educational for those who wish to engage in such enterprises. Start ups and small businesses are the backbone of the US economy and encourage job growth. This in turn makes our economic engine purr along while many in the world stammer. We should encourage those who are willing to take the risk and start their own enterprises for it benefits them and society as a whole. Part two of this series will address the broader issue mismanagement found in all corporation sizes.

Engine economy

This is my first posting in over two weeks. I just moved to Dallas and my new job is occupying most free time, thus, my posting frequency is going to decline. Since no one has ads on my blog, I feel free to do so.

In prior posts, Volt Full of Trouble, The Inconvenient Electric Car, and The real future energy crisis look into energy issues relating to transportation. I discuss the aspects of what will occur when crude oil supplies are depleted worldwide in the latter post. The former posts investigate why the electric car and hybrid are poor replacements for the current technology. My over all conclusion is we need a liquid alternative to crude oil along with innovative engines.

This post on MSNBC.com is just what the doctor ordered. Researchers at Michigan State University have developed their Wave Disc Generator. According to the authors,

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

If true, this is quite an improvement over current 100 year-old technology. They even claim that it reduces emissions by 90 percent in comparison to typical internal combustion engines. Double bonus for clean air.

How the engine works creating such high efficiency,

The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

If claims are true or not, it is going to be new technologies similar to this prototype that is our future, not electric cars.