Another Great Place to Work: Philips

Philips is implementing the New Way of Working (NWoW) throughout the world. They call their program Workplace Innovation (WPI). In my forthcoming book I will devote a complete chapter on Philips WPI: when, why and how it started, how they go about their transformations and what the results are so far.

The interesting thing about Philips WPI is that they run this program in different countries in different ways but with a common base. In other words they understand that work environments are and will remain different in for example Hong Kong as opposed to say Sao Paulo. But still they want to accomplish the same effectiveness, efficiency and worker satisfaction everywhere. For that you need to differentiate and take into account the cultural make-up of a country.

Here is a 5 minute video clip on WPI. The video is targeted at (future) users informing on what to expect and instructing them on how to behave: find a desk, clean it when you leave, decide for yourself when and where to work, walk away when on the phone and so on.

And yes near the end of the clip (at 4 minutes 18 seconds) they mention it:

"WPI gives you a Great Place to Work"

So to all Philips office workers throughout the world: enjoy it, because "You can manage it".

NOT a Great Place to Work: Microsoft Corp

Yesterday I wrote about my happy 1-day return to the Microsoft Nederland office because I had some business to do: another set of presentations on my beloved 'New Way of Working' (NWoW). I blogged that I still found it a great place to work and my former colleagues agree with me, because Microsoft Nederland had been chosen as the 'Great Place to Work' for the third time in a row. A tremendous achievement.

However if you look at the US Great Place to Work site, we see a completely different picture. In the top 100 of best places to work Microsoft finishes 72nd. Yes, 72nd!! I would be so ashamed that I would resign from participating in this competition immediately or do everything to become a top tier player. But obviously Microsoft Corporation doesn't care very much about this list and - in my very personal opinion - also not much about the work environment of their employees. They were no 86 in 2008, then rising to a "promising" 38th position in 2009. But obviously that was too much to cope with and they dropped back to no 51 in 2010 and now 72 in 2011. What a sharp contrast with the Netherlands and other European countries where Microsoft usually finishes in the top 3.

What is the cause of all this?

Well maybe the closer you are physically collocated to hard ball guys like Steve (Ballmer, CEO), Steven (Sinofsky; Windows lead and desktop die-hard) and Kevin (Turner, COO) the tougher it gets. Maybe employees in Corp are more pessimistic about their future now that Microsoft has been dropping the ball on smartphones and tablets (I had my first Microsoft smartphone and tablet back in 2003!!) and is playing a slow catch up with Google (Office 365, Live). Also Ray Ozzie being moved out of Microsoft - the one with the best vision on the future of software technology - might have to do with. I don't know whether this has influence on the employee well-being.

What I DO know however is that Microsoft Corp did have one of the worst office environments I have ever seen (OK a little exaggerated, but I set a high standard, especially for a super rich multinational). On the outside - the much acclaimed campus - it looks all great. But if you enter those buildings - building 18, my worst nightmare! - it is really terrible. The energy is being completely drained from you when you walk down the corridor and see the tiny offices that are now occupied by 2 or sometimes even 3 people. Half of the offices are on the 'inside' and have no natural light. It is always a mess, because people are moving every 2 or 3 months and never empty their cardboard boxes. The carpet is old and sort of brownish (What is it with Microsoft and brown? Remember the first Zune?). In short it looks like everything is being done to demotivate the workers. And it works. Rank 72 in 2011.

Now I hear you say: "Well, why don't the people from Microsoft Nederland tell those Corp people how to do it right, since they know it so well?". Well its not for lack of trying. They tried and tried again. But I have frequently noticed during my times at Microsoft that 'Corp' people are just too arrogant to listen to co-workers outside their sanctified inner circle. They really suffer from a 'not invented here' syndrome. Because after all, we are Corp and we invent the stuff around here. You just go and sell it.

A former colleague of mine and a true NWoW ambassador tried to get one of the vice presidents enthusiastic about the 'New World of Work' (which is what they call NWoW at Microsoft). And it looked like he succeeded. He got this VP into agreeing to do a measurement with an instrument that measured several work dimensions. The results were so bad for the division, that the VP of course accused the messenger and the message instead of acknowledging the problem. My former colleague told me later that after that incident it was 'a career limiting' thing to even talk about the New World of Work in this VP's neighborhood.

No, at Microsoft Corp they are OK with place 72 on the top 100 list of best employers. After all, it is much better than place 86 back in 2008, isn't it?

Great Place to Work! Three times in a row

Creating a great multi dimensional work environment where people can and want to give their best at work is what the New Way of Working (NWoW) is all about. It will make organizations more effective and efficient and it will let people be happier at work. Happier in the sense of workplace satisfaction but also that people feel their potential is used best. And as we have seen in the blog on the ultimate business case, happier people are good for the economy both at the level of the organization as well as for the nation.

This morning I am at the office of Microsoft Nederland, my former employer, where I worked for 7 years and got 'initiated' into the NWoW somewhere at the end of 2005. Today I am here to give yet another presentation on this fabulous subject to customers of a Microsoft partner. Returning to this office always gives me joy. Why? Meeting old colleagues? Sure. But actually I enjoy 'meeting' the office, the way it looks, the way people meet and work here, the atmosphere. You just feel the energy. This office located at Schiphol airport opened end of April 2008; almost 3 years ago. At the time it was a sensation. At the time Microsoft was THE showcase of NWoW. My first book on NWoW appeared a year prior to the opening of the office. But end of April 2008 I could finally experience NWoW myself instead of just writing and talking about it. For more than a year I enjoyed working here at this office. I learned to appreciate the effect of a fantastic office environment on the overall work enjoyment. And now returning here as a guest I re-experience the feeling of working here. Yes, Microsoft Nederland is still a great place to work.

I am not alone in this appreciation. It's not just me and my focus on NWoW that made me such a happy employee. Just last week for the third time in a row Microsoft Nederland has been elected as the 'Great Place to Work' (in Dutch). Since 2004 Microsoft had been participating in this yearly competition, but they never were able to win. They finished fourth or third or even runner up; never number one. But after the introduction of NWoW and the move to the new office. Bingo. Number 1 employer in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

So congrats Microsoft Nederland with this achievement!!
And thanks for letting me return here every now and then.


PS Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book tells the complete story of the journey towards the New Way of Working of Microsoft Nederland and the results that have been scientifically verified.

The New Way of Organizing (Part 5)

This blog is part of a series that started here and discusses the organizational model that belongs to the New Way of Working (NWoW). In a previous blog on ROWE (Result Only Work Environment), I stated that ROWE is a great concept, but it is not enough. First ROWE only addresses the organization dimension of the four dimensional work environment. Second even within the organization dimension it is pretty 'stand alone'. I believe ROWE needs to be embedded in an organizational structure and culture that supports the New Way of Working to be more effective. The picture below tells partly what I mean.

Having a 'result agreements' working environment only and only with individuals leads to the left half of the picture. People run after their own results and there is no guarantee that these result agreements are coordinated or that people even support each other in getting the results. Their is no clear direction and no synergy.

However when the result agreements are part of a bigger structure they can become more effective and more coordinated. The right half of the picture tells you what I mean. Let me elaborate on it just a little. Creating that structure requires a four step process.

First the organization needs a clear and crisp vision and ambition that is known and shared by the people that are part of the organization. It should not be a 'fluffy' PR-statement or a 10 page document, but something that is both authentic and able to energize people.

Second from this shared vision and ambition one deducts result areas that support the vision and ambition. All result areas together should be able to do the 'job': realize the vision and ambition of the organization. Transforming these result areas into operational and SMART result agreements requires a next level of deduction and refinement. Then we need to assign the result agreements to units, teams within units and individual within teams. Turned around each individual should have some individual result agreements, some at the level of his team and some on the level of his business unit. This makes sure that he needs to cooperate with colleagues in order to make his results. Also it should be explicit in his result agreement that when the individual makes his results he is not just doing a great job, but he is also contributing to the overall vision and ambition of the organization. This can create 'connection' between people of different units within the same organization that do completely different kinds of work like 'Sales' and 'Administration'. They still connect because everyone knows: we are all contributing to the same overall goal and each one is contributing his part.

Third, result agreements should not only tell the workers what they need to accomplish but also how they should go about. That means two things. First what processes and procedures are available in order to make the results (the structure) and second what kind of behavior is and is not acceptable in making the results (the culture). This is how part is where we need to exercise caution, because we can give too much structure and behavioral guidance but also too little. The idea is that we create a work environment where people are stretched but also empowered to get the things done.

Fourth and finally we need to embed this ambition-driven organization structure into a Management and HR system & process. Both systems/processes are aimed to support the workers in staying their course, getting the right facilities to do what needs to be done, to make sure that they are well rewarded for their accomplishments and to have the ability to grow.

So ROWE is great, but it needs more substance and more structure to get the maximum value from it. 

The New Way of Organizing (Part 5)

This blog is part of a series that started here and discusses the organizational model that belongs to the New Way of Working (NWoW). In a previous blog on ROWE (Result Only Work Environment), I stated that ROWE is a great concept, but it is not enough. First ROWE only addresses the organization dimension of the four dimensional work environment. Second even within the organization dimension it is pretty 'stand alone'. I believe ROWE needs to be embedded in an organizational structure and culture that supports the New Way of Working to be more effective. The picture below tells partly what I mean.

Having a 'result agreements' working environment only and only with individuals leads to the left half of the picture. People run after their own results and there is no guarantee that these result agreements are coordinated or that people even support each other in getting the results. Their is no clear direction and no synergy.

However when the result agreements are part of a bigger structure they can become more effective and more coordinated. The right half of the picture tells you what I mean. Let me elaborate on it just a little.

First the organization needs a clear and crisp vision and ambition that is known and shared by the people that are part of the organization. 

Second from this shared vision and ambition one deducts result areas that support the vision and ambition. All result areas together should be able to do the 'job': realize the vision and ambition of the organization. Transforming these result areas into operational and SMART result agreements requires a next level of deduction and refinement. Then we need to assign the result agreements to units, teams within units and individual within teams. Turned around each individual should have some individual result agreements, some at the level of his team and some on the level of his business unit. This makes sure that he needs to cooperate with colleagues in order to make his results. Also it should be explicit in his result agreement that when the individual makes his results he is not doing a good job, but he is also contributing to the overall vision and ambition of the organization. This can create 'connection' between people of different units within the same organization because everyone knows: we are all contributing to the same overall goal.

Third, result agreements should not only tell the workers what they need to accomplish but also how they should go about. That means two things. First what processes and procedures are available in order to make the results (the structure) and second what kind of behavior is and is not acceptable in making the results (the culture). This is how part is where we need to exercise caution, because we can give too much structure and behavioral guidance but also too little. 

Finally we need to embed this based organization structure into a Management and HR system. Both systems are there to support the workers in staying their course and to make sure that they are rewarded for their accomplishments as well have the ability to grow.

So ROWE is great, but it needs more substance and more structure to get the maximum value from it. 

The Ultimate Global Business Case for NWoW

This morning I got a very interesting message in my inbox from Gallup.com, the number one 'polling' organization. The message read: Poor Workplaces Present Key Challenge for the UK

As an ambassador for NWoW I was naturally directly involved. It triggered some 'click' events. And after a little digging it became clear that Gallup is able to present the ultimate Global Business Case for NWoW. Thank you, Gallup!!

Here is how it goes. This page tells the story behind the headline of the message that was dropped in my inbox. You can read it for yourself, but this is my summary. The Work Environment Index is the most influential of the 6 factors making up the Well-Being Index and it can be much improved.

Now if you read this picture you will notice two things. One, the difference between US and UK well-being is largely explained by the big difference in the Work Environment Index, which for UK people is at a deplorable 34.7. Two, for both countries the satisfaction with the work environment is very low compared to for instance emotional and physical health. There is a lot of room for improvement and improving the (multi dimensional!) work environment will improve overall well-being

AND improving well-being leads to a sustainable improvement of society's economy. So NWoW improves organizations, people and society. That is exactly the first statement of the Preface my book on NWoW. This might look like quite a mental jump, but another picture from a Gallup presentation (slide 14) that is available on the net proves exactly this point:

Improved well-being lowers expenses in medical care and increases performance at the workplace, leading to an increased economic value: directly (more effective and efficient organizations) and indirectly (less expenses for society). AND .. the well-being of people is not just a means, it is a goal in itself. As stated above well-being is heavily influenced by the work environment.

I rest my case!

ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat...

...... gently down the stream. Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Life is but a dream.

No I didn't misspell the old nursery rhyme. Life is but a dream and so hopefully is Work for you. Wouldn't it be a shame if the activity that takes up almost half of your life between say 25 and 65 (excluding sleeping, washing, eating and commuting) is not worth your while. NWoW aims to redesign the Work environment so that it becomes that 'dream'. But it is quite a journey down the stream.

ROWE-ing your organization will help you getting there. ROWE stands for Result Only Work Environment. It is a great thing and I believe it a critical ingredient of the New Way of Organizing. However ROWE by itself is not enough. There is more the New Way of Organizing.

For today - a sunny Sunday here in Holland; time to enjoy it fully - I leave you with a picture that hints at one of the shortcomings of ROWE. The next blog will elaborate on them.

[Consider this part 4 in my series on the New Way of Organizing which in itself is one of the dimensions of the New Way of Working (NWoW). If you are just joining and want to catch up, start first here and then here]

The New Way of Organizing (Part 3)

The first blog on this topic was about the traditional way of organizing work and how it doesn't serve us anymore. Part 2 introduced the New Way of Organizing as presented below. 

Part 3 will shortly talk about the organizing principles behind this model. Simply put it is about: Why, What and How.

The Why is about why we have organized ourselves in the first place. It is the uniting principle where (groups of) people are connected to an overall goal and to each other. Most organizations have a vision. but very often it is a 'lip service', a PR-statement or a 10-page document. A good uniting vision should be short, clear and crisp aimed at both the heart and mind of people. Every member of the organization should know and embrace the vision.

The What is derived from the vision. It is translating the vision into practical result areas and refining those result areas into result contracts. People or groups of people are taking on that contract and commit themselves into delivering the results. 

The How is about how we will get to those results. What processes, rules and procedures are at the disposal of those 'contractors' and what kind of behavior (derived from core values) is effective and acceptable in getting the results. So the how is about the structure and culture of the organization.

The New Way of Organizing should result in a 'fluid' organizations that adapts very easy to changes in the context. How fixed or flexible are these organizing principles? An organization will not very often change its Why, its vision. It is the most stable principle. The What is somewhat more adaptable depending on the level. Having new result areas - which translates into new products and services for the customers or new supporting services - will happen every now and then. The detailed result contracts will change every year or even more often. The How is somewhere between the Why and the What and also depends on the type. Processes are in for continued optimization and its supporting rules & procedures should have that as well. Culture however is less flexible. You cannot change a culture overnight. It takes years and it is very hard to 'engineer' a culture (though not impossible).

All of this doesn't sound very 'fluid', does it? So how is this New Way of Organizing more flexible than the old industrial model? The answer is: through the activities of its people. The New Way of Organizing creates a framework where people are directed and guided on the one hand but also left to the circumstances on the other. It deliberately creates space and 'uncertainty' for people to operate so that they need their talent, their competencies and even their passion in order to make the results to which they committed. That space should be exactly right. Not too much space where people feel lost and unconnected. Not too little space where people feel trapped or suffocated and just a 'cog in a machine'. Finding this 'sweet spot' of space is not easy. It requires experimentation and it changes over time. As people learn to adapt to working within that new space, you will need to stretch it a little more. If you stretch it beyond the capacities, you will need to shrink it again. So also the framework itself is somewhat flexible.

The New Way of Organizing (Part 2)

The previous blog was about the traditional way of organizing work and how it doesn't serve us anymore. This blog introduces the New Way of Organizing. Meet the organization model for the New Way of Working (NWoW):

The new model still has a hierarchy but it is not a person or group of persons that are on the top but a vision, mission and ambition. From that vision and ambition one derives result areas, result goals and result contracts. Then people or groups of people (teams, departments, business units) are assigned to those contracts. Those contracts are tied to the vision level so that making your result not only tells you that you have done a good job but also in what way that job and that result contributed to the overall vision.

There is a lot to be said on this. Which I will save for future blogs on this topic.

The New Way of Organizing (Part 1)

In the next couple of blogs I will illustrate the New Way of Organizing which is a crucial part of the New Way of Working (NWoW). There is a lot to be said about that, so I will need some days to explain it.

This 3rd dimension of the 4 dimensional NWOW work environment (see earlier blog) is often overlooked by organizations that journey towards NWoW. It is much easier to change the Office and IT environment. And so most organizations leave it at that. But an organization should direct & support as well as divide & coordinate the work that has to be done in the best possible way. And that demands for a New Way of Organizing work. The old way doesn't cut it anymore. However most organizations still cling on to it, because of a phenomenon that called mental drag: we cling on to an old established mindset even though we know it is not effective anymore. Let's take a step back and illustrate this.

The organizational model of the Industrial era is the Machine Bureaucracy. In this machine bureaucracy, decisions are made at the top level and mechanically carried out at the lower levels. The decisions at the top (strategic apex) are being translated and refined by layers of middle management into specific work instructions to be carried out by the operating core that is closely supervised by a command & control management style. The model is static ("design once, run forever") but highly efficient and effective for mass industrial work. However the machine bureaucracy was so successful that it has been copied by more or less every large organization in every industry across the globe including the financial services industry and the public sector.

But times have changed and so has the type of work and the context of work. In the postindustrial world we work with our brains (both halves!) in a very dynamic environment. Clearly we have to abandon the old static model and create a fluid, dynamic organizational environment which still has to direct & support as well as divide & coordinate the work that we do.  This is the New Way of Organizing. Tomorrow in part 2 of the series I will introduce this model.

Guilty feelings got no Rhythm

Before the industrial revolution there was no clear cut separation between work life and private life. Both were naturally integrated. People worked where they lived and lived where they worked.

The industrial revolution drove people - especially men - out of their houses and into the factories. As mobility increased, so did travel distance between home and factory. As roads started to congest, travel time increased. As work changed from factory work to office work, we created administrative factories and kept on commuting. As technology created the possibility of working anytime and anyplace, we still kept on commuting. Due to our mental drag: the context changed, but our behavior did not.

Now some of us slowly adapt and start working from home now and then. But even then we feel compelled to work at least from 9 to 5. We might not have any difficulty working 'overtime' in the evenings or weekends, but we sure do have problems of taking leisure time between 9 and 5.

Do you?

Take this litmus test for yourself and see if you are truly ready for the New Way of Working (NWoW). Shift some of the work you need to do towards the evening or weekend and start doing other things during 'office hours' like taking a hike, doing some shopping or go to a movie. Do you feel prying eyes? People pointing and talking about you? Do you feel guilty?

Chances are that you do. As long as you feel guilty, you are not yet completely into NWoW. Don't be discouraged. It took me several years and it's not fun: guilty feelings got no Rhythm. But once you have adapted you will value having more freedom of choice in deciding when and where to work. NWoW does have Rhythm!!

NWoW: a means not an end

The New Way of Working (NWoW) is a means and not an end in itself. I notice that some advocates of NWoW do not always keep this in mind. Even when I talk to management executives who want to 'do' NWoW I sometimes feel they want to do it, because everybody is doing it. At least that is the case here in the Netherlands, where NWoW has become a national theme.

NWoW is good for people and also good for society. But the prime driver for NWoW is that it is good for the organization, good for business. I always use the picture below to talk about the results of NWoW for the organization. I will only very briefly discuss it here. Chapter 4 in my forthcoming book is totally devoted to the results of NWoW for the organization.

As you can see there are two sides. On the left are the positive results that one anticipates and on the right we see some possible side effects. I often call NWoW the medicine against the industrial mindset that still rules in many organizations. Most of these side effects we can prevent by reading the patient information leaflet that accompanies the medicine. Let's just briefly concentrate on the anticipated positive effects.

The results that are the easiest to demonstrate - and have indeed been demonstrated by most organizations 'doing' NWoW - are cost reduction and employee satisfaction. Cost reductions are most often in reduction of office space, less travel, less absenteeism and the end of internal moving that is people that have to move physically to another workplace in the building. Employee satisfaction is easily demonstrated by a series of surveys over a longer period of time. One can imagine that it is not too hard to measure reputation and customer satisfaction as well. However for one reason or another not many organizations that measure their progress on NWoW report on these factors.

On the other hand more and more organizations are starting to measure their CO2 footprint. Once that is established it is easy to measure the progress. Less office space, less travel and also 'smart' commuting (for example, see blog April 1) are a direct result of NWoW contributing to the decrease of CO2 footprint. Many organizations integrate 'green' initiatives into their NWoW programs like green buildings and green IT. But - and that is a matter of definition of course - I prefer to separate 'greening' from NWoW.

Surprisingly, measuring increased revenue is hardest of all whereas this is one of the prime drivers for NWoW: increasing the effectiveness of the organization. Why is this so hard? Well there are so many variables involved in revenue that it is very hard to ascribe it to some specific intervention like NWoW. Besides most organizations in the public sector do not measure revenue. Most organizations however do measure the increased perceived productivity of their workers due to NWoW. And indeed in almost all of these measurements organizations report improvements in perceived productivity.

So let's not forget that NWoW is a means and not en end in itself. We really could use better measurement instruments, but even though the results so far are encouraging.

IT: the liberator

NWoW is not an IT concept, but IT is one of the prime drivers or enablers of NWoW. IT liberates us from having to work in a fixed place and on fixed times. Let me illustrate this.

Time warp yourself to 1870. You are working in an office, maybe an insurance company. There are no computers obviously, but also no telephones. Even a typewriter is not available, because it has barely gone into commercial production at the time. So imagine your workplace to be something like this.

All information is on paper and all information processing needs to be done on paper as well. The paper is at the office so you need to be there in order to do some work. Also you need to meet face-to-face in order to work together. Why not do this at the office as well? So lets make an agreement that we work and work together each working day between, say, 9 and 5. And so it happened!

Now get back to April 2011. All information can be digitized and we have computer technology to assist us in the processing of that information. Thanks to broadband internet and a plethora of devices we can access and process that information anywhere and at anytime. Also we have numerous devices and applications that enable us to communicate and collaborate with each other wherever and whenever we are, be it email, chat, phone, video conferencing or what have you.

So IT technically liberates us from the 'prison' of the office place and the office hours. We can work anytime and anywhere. But most of us still show up at the office around 9AM and leave around 5PM. I have called this 'mental drag'. Although technology has liberated us, most of us are still prisoners of our traditional mindset.

To make this work right and into our advantage, we do not just need technology. We also need different ways of organizing our work, a different and more productive office environment and a different mindset towards work. Changing a single dimension of the environment - in this case IT - is not enough. We need a holistic view and a holistic approach to create a better and more productive work environment.

And precisely that is what NWoW tries to accomplish!

How to create NWoW?

The New Way of Working (NWoW) places people centre-stage and creates around them a great and inspiring work environment where they can (ability) and want (motivation) to give their best at work.

There are 4 dimensions to the work environment:

1. IT devices & apps enabling people to work anywhere, anytime and work together in new ways;
2. The Office becomes an attractive meeting place where people are longing to be and work;
3. The Organization's mission, structure & culture become drivers to improve its effectiveness & efficiency by connecting people together and directing their actions;
4. The Mentality at work especially the relationships between managers and subordinates and among peers as well as self-management of the individual. 

We can command people to be on time or finish the task at hand before end of day, but we can never command people to give their best. They can only give that out of their free will and (intrinsic) motivation.

By creating an integrated, multi-dimensional work environment we are trying to accomplish just that.

More of this in future blogs and in chapter 3 of 'Journey towards the New Way of Working'.

NWoW is no April Fool!

The New Way of Working or as I abbreviate it: NWoW is not a joke.
The old way of working is however still a real yoke.

In the postindustrial society we suffer from mental drag and still cling on to industrial solutions a lot. We do things the way we have always done, just because we have always done them. For instance we step into our car at say 7.30 in the morning and work our way through traffic to arrive at 9 AM in our office. For something that is outside traffic hours a 30 minute drive. And what do we do once we are there?

We take coffee and open our laptop and start working on ... mail. And then some document editing for the project we are working on. We could have done that at 8.00 in the morning at home, wait until the congested roads are wide open again and then take that 30 minute drive at 10 AM to arrive at 10.30 AM. We have would have gained an hour. 30 minutes of company time productivity and 30 minutes of personal quality time.

But we don't do that. Why not? Because we are used to arrive at the office at 9AM. No matter what traffic. No matter if we actually need to be in the office at 9AM. We do it, because we have always done it. We blame the traffic and we feel helpless victims of circumstances we cannot change.

Sigh.... we really, really need NWoW.