As someone who is burning up some of the most productive years of his life for a corporation as a means to earn his livelihood, I have become increasingly sensitive to the costs involved during my tenure at work. Thanks to the Internet, I am beginning to understand the work cultures that exist across various organizations and how this culture impacts the lives of people who have taken the momentous decision to spend a few years of their lives with an organization in a financial transaction, otherwise known as a job. The aforementioned "cost" problem could be worsened by the fact that there are layers upon layers of management felt material that subscribe to the "pay your dues" rule; due to which, networking trumps talent in terms of career progression. This rule can worsen work culture if the organizations in question are risk averse; an overtly cautious and risk averse culture is the worst enemy of innovation and career progression.
The Norms: There is an unspoken norm that permeates the corporate landscape: management trumps other roles to gain the best visibility and decision making opportunity. The following excerpt from a BusinessWeek article proves it.
"Several current and former insiders say there's a caste system, in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys. They argue that it could prove to be a big challenge in the future as Google seeks to maintain its growth. They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers."
It is unclear to me as to how Google's growth is in question because business types are perceived as second-class citizens. Also, is it absolutely necessary that salesmen and dealmakers have more clout than the others for an organization's growth? Here is the lament of a Wall Street tech M&A specialist who was looking for a change of scenery and a more relaxed lifestyle:
"They just aren't very focused," says the prospective hire, who didn't get the job. "They're biased against businesspeople, and their deal strategy is pretty much, 'O.K., if we see something, then we'll look at it."' The candidate, a Wall Street tech M&A specialist who was looking for a change of scenery and a more relaxed lifestyle, calls the experience "chaotic, bureaucratic, and very rigid." Strung out over more than nine months and numerous coast-to-coast flights, the courtship culminated in a jarring "pop quiz." The corporate development team suddenly broke from the script and gave the banker a laptop and 40 minutes to value a business, suggest a strategic buyer, and present a case to the entire team.
I personally do not find the above style of interviewing to be unconventional at all. The reaction is probably in response to stimuli; people interviewing for management positions have gotten used to a standard interview template. It has always been my belief that no practices exist to measure tangible skills of management candidates.
Subversion: On a different note, I have found some illuminating ideas from different organizations that provide a drastic shift in thinking when compared to established corporate monoliths which are caving under the pressure exerted by their own weight and inertia.
Embrace risk: I recently saw a video on CNN where Marissa Mayer, the VP of Search Products & User Experience at Google was on a panel with Ariana Huffington. Ariana highlighted the fact that Google being the behemoth that it has become incorporates risk taking in its corporate culture. Marissa explained it in greater detail:
[*] The probability of success will increase by increasing the number of attempts at implementing ideas that are likely to succeed; therein lies the risk.
[*] Due to the nature of the industry Google is in, agility is paramount.
[*] Google products such as GMail are driven by small teams with a maximum size of ten. Many such innovative teams inter-operate to create collaborative solutions.
[*] Networking as opposed to a rigid top-down hierarchy style of management.
[*] Consensus and opinion is taken seriously. I think we can learn from this risk approach and probably apply it to our own personal and professional lives. Well, there will always be this argument that staples such as Insurance, Banking, Grocery & Pharmacy chains are drastically different in nature and similar rules do not apply. I agree to an extent but there is some rigid learned pattern in corporate America that they need to unlearn. Everywhere you go, it is the same story about risk averse management which tries to tackle lame and achievable objectives to keep a clean slate. There is absolutely no risk injected into the "Objectives for the year 20XX" PowerPoint slide, which almost, always is driven trickle-down management style.
Fire Yourself: This technique is actually orthogonal to the above Andy Grove in his 1996 book, "Only the Paranoid Survive." When Intel's memory-chip business was getting battered by Japanese rivals in the 1980s, Mr. Grove asked Intel co-founder Gordon Moore:"If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do?" Mr. Moore answered that a new CEO would get Intel out of the memory-chip business. "Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?" Mr. Grove retorted. He then did just that, reshaping Intel from a memory-chip producer to a microprocessor maker.
Promote Transparency: Vineet Nayar, president of India's 30,000-employee HCL Technologies (Research) has created an interesting environment: Every employee rates their boss, their boss' boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see. That's unheard-of! And that's not all. Every HCL employee can at any time create an electronic "ticket" to flag anything they think requires action in the company. Amazingly, such tickets can only be "closed" by the employees themselves. And Nayar is vigilant that managers not intimidate employees about creating or closing tickets. Managers are evaluated partly based on how many tickets their departments are creating - the more the better. Source: CNN Money
Maslow's Pyramid: Democracy creates interesting problems for corporations in the Information Age. With democracy comes freedom of thought, expression and lifestyle. Here is professor Henrik Holt Larsen of the Copenhagen Business School,
"It’s harder than ever for businesses to attract and retain employees who not only possess the required skills but who can also be emotionally bound to the company. People tend to focus more on their own desires and needs and therefore to surf between multiple career paths. We don’t know enough yet about this narcissistic personality."
It is interesting that a Business School professor would say that. Speaking of narcissism, I am not sure if the professor realizes the history behind the idea of a "corporation." Many definitions exist but at least in the United States, the corporation is a result of a huge loophole in the legal system. It is an entity designed by law to protect the financial interests of its stockholders and generate healthy revenue at all times. This idea of a corporation is more or less similar all over the world.
Corporations as legal entities have always been able to perform commercial activities, similar to a person acting as a sole proprietor, such as entering into a contract or owning property. Therefore corporations have always had some limited amount of 'personhood', which has allowed corporations to conduct business while shielding individual stockholders from personal financial risk (i.e., protecting personal assets which were not invested in the corporation).
The stronger concept of corporate personhood is often traced to the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (118 U.S. 394), which provided some greater degree of protection from arbitrary state action. In their decision, the justices gave no explanation of how an amendment about the rights of former slaves should also apply to corporations. Source: Wikipedia
I feel that if corporations simply attended to the Maslow Pyramid requirements to guide them in their principles, employee retention and innovation would almost be on auto-pilot. As far as innovation goes, especially for Knowledge Workers, the Self-Actualization phase of the pyramid is critical. This is where certain top-down management styles and knowledge workers are at loggerheads. This is why certain companies like Google, Apple, Pixar, Volkswagen etc., attract the best innovators while others don't.
One year ago, on this fateful day, Manjunath Shanmugam was shot and killed by an Indian Oil Coporation dealer in Lakhimpur Khiri, Uttar Pradesh. The reason: he stood up for what was right and was honest. Thanks to the alumni and his friends, who have barely managed to keep the memory alive in the media frenzy of today where attention spans are shrinking at an amazing pace. 
This is shaping up to be a great fortnight for Indian Women. I blogged recently about 
