Continuing from the previous day. On the flip side of that, when I am a supervisor of others, I’m sure that relationship will be just as key. I have to take the initiative as the supervisor though in that context to be open and transparent and vulnerable to breed that trust. That trust I want to find in others when I’m the hiring manager and looking for someone to join the team.
The who can make the coefficient of the exponential be less than 1 or greater than 1. If the full trust is not there, then even (.95)^3 goes further and further away from 1. Bit if you have full trust and autonomy established between supervisor and supervisee, then that becomes (1.05)^3, which only keeps growing.
On the topic of hiring, I want to work with someone who’s willing to learn, is okay with mistakes, has good values and lives by them. Can I trust them not only with my job and the company, but hypothetically with my wife and kids? I want hiring someone to be the best decision for the company I’ve ever made. Just like I believe that I want to prove that the best decision 2U has ever made is hiring me. That may or may not be true, but I want to feel that. And tbh, some days I wake up with that thought in the back of my mind as I go to work. I think every person should feel like that when they are part of any organization. So they feel invested in the work that they own.
I think we think of HR as a throwaway department that all companies need to have administratively. But I could argue that it’s the most important department in any company. Any organization is a system, yes. But who will operate according to that system? Why does a mission and purpose exist? To impact people. At the end of the day, it’s humans helping humans. And so let’s create a context (the company) that allows us to do that in the best possible way. I think when I have my own organization, I want to invest the most into people. Because people create the products. People execute the processes. People manage financials. It comes back to people.
I think right now, I currently say that I think people are the most important. The who. But maybe my actions have the why, why, and how above that. That’s something I want to make an adjustment to.
I think organizations can invest more into their hiring practices to select the people who can perform the best but will add culture, value, trust, positive energy, diversity, and more to the team.
The other thing here though is that there may be a best fit for the company at the time of the hire. And then there’s a best fit for the company in 1-2-5 years. Those things may align and converge to the same person. But if the organization can develop that person B into becoming someone even more than they had thought possible in a longer time horizon, then that’s the person I’d rather go with.
Oh. What if we align the hiring practices and criteria to match what we will assess their job by during performance reviews. Because it feels like comparing the hiring criteria to the performance review criteria is like comparing apples to oranges. If that’s more aligned, then who you’re looking for in the job search will match who you’re looking for a year or 3 years after they’ve joined.
Can I shift the paradigm with hiring? Create an effective system where we increase the chances of success as a company because of that hire. Combining my 1000 universe-probability approach here - I think every hire should only increase the number of universes that the company succeeds in. If it doesn’t, then why make it?
I’ve already kinda touched on it but the culture is everything. Having a toxic work culture can ruin your mental, emotional, spiritual health. What does a healthy vs a toxic work culture look like? I think you can feel it more than anything. Toxic ones impose the hierarchical nature of any organization. Supervisors believe that because they are higher than someone in an org chart, they are better than them or what they say is more correct or they can give instruction without any criticism or feedback or healthy dialogue. Toxic ones believe that work is the most important thing in their life.
[Side note: I think having a quick exercise during hiring of them ranking the items that I ranked in Yad Bhavam Tad Bhavati or Samruddhi could be insightful]
That they have to stop living the other aspects of their life to get work done after hours or on the weekend. Now if a person wants to work all those hours ‘off company time’, then more power to them. But if one person does it, it shouldn’t be expected from everyone or really anyone else.
Toxic work cultures don’t have space for trust or ownership or autonomy. It’s basically driven from a place of fear. I think there is a fear of losing power once you have it. This is especially prevalent in politics. But that fear of losing power I think goes even deeper to a fear of not being accepted or a fear of not being enough. Because if they feel enough, then people wouldn’t do anything to keep their job or protect their reputation at the expense of others’. That they’ll sacrifice the success of the company so that they look good. Because they can’t bear the fact that someone looks bad on them.
There’s a fear of failure there too. Toxic culture may say they are okay with failure and making mistakes but their actions speak otherwise. And when other people see people getting let go because of mistakes from which that person can learn and still provide value, then it’s the company itself that’s losing out.
Toxic cultures may be nice to people but it’s not genuine. It’s putting on a facade so you can climb this ladder that humans have built out of nowhere. A healthy culture provides a safe space to share their ideas, feelings, and more, without feeling judged. They can give feedback without being too defensive about it. The feedback that’s given is about a person’s work and not who they are.
However, how do I reconcile that who someone is in position will have a big impact on the outcome of the department / company? Like balancing identity feedback with output feedback.
[This is potentially how you tie in Identity KPIs on the team level so it may not be seen as a personal attack.]
Healthy cultures allow for failure with an understanding that people will learn through these failures. You need everyone bought into the Purpose, Mission, values of the organization but perhaps more importantly, the leaders of the company and the leaders of their direct teams. The trust, acceptance, and belief that the leaders have the best interests of you and the company at heart is crucial. Because if you don’t, that’s when those primal fears start rearing their head. That the purpose, mission, values of the company, you can buy into unquestionably. Then there’s less chance that there are people who go rogue and are concerned only about themselves and not the success of the org as a whole.
Breeding the mindset that you’re part of something bigger within the context of a workplace can then apply positively when the employees are involved in non-profit work or volunteering or donating money, etc.
Simply put, a healthy work culture instills a core value of a greater cause.
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