Traditional executives still don’t get how I manage my company
photo credit: Meffi
Just to mention few things old-school executives don’t get about how I manage my company:
- Instead of restricting the access to the social media space and related networks I actually encourage my employees to listen, think and become active part of what’s happening in this digital environment.
- My company goes green. We do not receive/send any paper invoices/mail. We only accept/use e-invoices/PDFs and we offer lower fees for online/remote consulting to reduce CO2 emissions avoiding traveling.
- I offer to my employees flexible work time (yes, they can work at anytime).
- Work remotely (yes, if they can’t come to our office they can work from wherever they have access to the Internet).
- etc, etc, etc… starting to get the idea?
What do I think? I treat my employees like adults. Easy and simple. Period.
I give them responsibilities and I have trust in their skills. Putting them in the best conditions to work I have no doubts that they will meet successfully our deadlines. At least I think it makes more sense than stress them out with super rigid structures and tasks. During the last 3 years I never had a problem conducting the company in this way but hey…Â I’m always open to constructive criticism and I never stop learning from my mistakes and from who’s working with me.
What do you think? What’s your experience? How do you feel/work in your organizations? What do you actually think can be improved in your companies?
Andrea
Author: Andrea Vascellari
Andrea Vascellari is the CEO of itive.net. All thoughts and opinions on this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer or clients; neither past or present. If you liked this post feel free to follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or subscribe to this blog.
This is great! I absolutely agree that you should be less restrictive and more trusting of your employees. IF or when I start my own company, I am definitely going to keep this in mind.
Thanks for a great post,
Taylor
@Taylor: There are a bunch of other things that I would recommend to executives but I wanted use this post as a conversation starter to pitch future posts on this topic.
Glad you find it interesting, thanks for joining the conversation!
Makes perfect sense.
What kind of ‘problems’ did you face with customers?
Had a longish discussion yesterday with a blogger who is part of a network of bblohgs that I market.
He wanted a complicated reimbuesment system if he brgs me somebody who books at another blog.
I tried to explain that such systems only cause fights and make stuff more expensive. he insitesd that automatizantion makes all businesses better.
I doubt that that is true in all cases.
@Oliver: I’m not sure I understood what you mean. In my post I’m talking more about organization management, but if we talk about customer service & support we use GetSatisfaction and Twitter. So we use tools that help us in managing the relationship with our clients but behind each message/answer/tweet there’s always a ‘real person’ from iTive that takes care of the client’s needs. “Automatization” works but only until certain level.
I love what you say here and stand for, but, alas, my experience is very different. Like you, I wanted to trust my subordinates and let them completely free to do their work. They, invariably, cheated. All of them. To me this was a big nasty surprise and made me reconsider my belief to the inherent goodness of the human nature.
I strongly wish I am wrong.
@Nikan: I went through that with my first company. iTive is my second one and I’m trying to do things differently by:
1) Thinking and selecting way more carefully (I became very picky) the people I work with. In the past I’ve put the wrong person (with the wrong values) in charge of certain tasks and it took a long time to replace it. I learned from it.
2) Understanding that achieving this kind of relationship takes time and effort from both, me and my employees. This synergy will not happen overnight in any organization.
Lots of people say that I’m a dreamer because of the way I look at things but what I think is that the day in which any dreamer will get together with other people that believe in that dream…well that dream will become true.
Nikos, thanks for stopping by and joining the conversation I hope to see you soon again and I wish you the best for your business,
Andrea
Andrea,
Great points, and well put!
Contrary to what Nikan experienced, I strongly believe that trust is indeed key for successful work. Not just trust in your employees, but also your colleagues and clients.
Of course that also means that good hiring practices are even more important than usually. I don’t have any employees, but as a freelancer I work with a lot of external freelancers and agencies. For me, a simple rule has so far worked pretty well: I try to only work with people I trust, or who were recommended to me by people I trust. For those of us working in a digital, networked environment it’s fairly easy to get a good impression of someone by doing some background checks online. That, plus a recommendation and you’re off to a pretty good start.
Andrea, how do you go about it, how do you hire, how do you know who’s the best fit?
Peter
@Peter: You seem to be not the only one interested in these topics…I’ll take your comment as inspiration to release new blog posts related to this one
Stay tuned via RSS…
Thanks for this post, Andrea, really enjoyed it. It reminded me of a book I read while on a vacation last summer. (It’s in German, title translates into: “Tomorrow, I’m coming in later”
I think the key for success for your points number 3+4 is actually the people you work with. I used to work for a company where the level of productivity was measured by the amount of time you spent at the office. Co-workers that came in early and left after everyone else were seen as more productive and more hard-working. Asking the boss if one could stay home and work remotely was met with shock. Further, there needs to be a collective state of mind amongst the co-workers about how things go. Coming in late, you just can’t get greeted with ‘the look’.
Executives should learn about the B-types (http://www.b-society.org/node/14), people that are more productive during the later hours. I am one of them – actually last night, I couldn’t sleep because of some ideas floating in my head so I went back up, worked and got up later than usually this morning.
In my opinion, spending time at the office is important though. You get the interact with people and seeing one’s emotions and reactions is important and sometimes you need a sounding board for your ideas & thoughts. However, the time spent in an office should be focused on catching up and defining clear tasks that everyone can work on remotely afterwards. Spending hours in meaningless meetings is frustrating and will eventually make you end up hating to go to the office.
Looking forward to reading your future posts on this topic.
@David: This digital landscape is offering us the possibility to reshape the way we work making it more efficient (at least at certain levels).
So why not to try?
Will this change happen overnight? No it won’t and keep in mind that especially in the beginning it won’t be easy to ‘break’ traditional rules by which we have been used to play until now…but again I think it worth trying.
Like I said @Peter I’ll keep in mind these comments to release new blog posts on topics related to the one I shared in this blog post.
Thanks for the comment, it’s thanks to conversations like this one that I better understand you and your needs.
On this blog I want to share something useful and informative for the community.
Andrea
Thanks for your reply, Andrea.
I totally agree that it’s worth trying. Quick thought in the case of the traditional boss: Instead of confronting him/her with a totally new approach, why not start the conversation bottom-up on employee-level and see if other people are having similar thoughts and needs, sit together and come up with specific a plan and tools to be used and including a timeline (test phase, assessment, changes, etc) and present it to the management. Given that one found like-minded coworkers eager to improve work, that way you can quickly see if a change could indeed actually happen and would be supported by the entire team.
@David: Hehhh…love your comments. The more I read the more this conversation makes me think..
From my point of view/experience a bottom-up approach is always a good thing, but you always have to keep in mind:
1) the nature of the organization in which you are trying to make the change happen.
2) the consequences of those actions (positive & negative)
Thumbs up from me but (and here again, I agree with you) before implement any change it’s ‘wise’ to always discuss about it with senior management/executives BEFORE take anything into action.
Totally agree on your points. I should have added that a bottom-up approach should be addressed to senior management prior to developing the plan. The team should mention that they’d like to come up with some points to improve work-life (including risks & opportunities) and that this won’t affect daily operations and will be discussed after hours. Then ask for the best time to present the results to senior staff, again, after hours. That way, the management will hopefully think: “Interesting, I wonder what this is about” and eventually be more open for what employees think of the company and what they come up with.
On a side note: Personally, the last time I applied for a job (3 years ago), I didn’t care to ask about flexibility at the work place. Should I apply for an open position today, this would definitely be on my list of questions. I’d even go further and ask if it’s ok to talk to other employees about this topic before making a decision to join a company.
(PS: BTW, first I was disappointed not to be able to subscribe to future comments by email but you managing to keep the conversation alive via Twitter for everyone to follow is even cooler
@David: In a sense this links back also to what Peter was touching before when talking about key points in hiring.
This works both ways hiring and being hired. I’ll expand in future posts.
About comment subscription: I don’t know if you are already using it or not but have a look at http://www.cocomment.com/ It’s useful to keep monitoring conversation across multiple sites. I use it & like it
#productivity tools
@Andrea Thanks, was aware of CoComment but never really go into it. Just signed up and installed and looking forward to see what it does
Looking forward to reading your future posts.
You have really good points there, Andrea. It reminds me how modern enterprise should and can work instead of old-fashioned patterns of leadership. When you trust your employees this way, it really makes them want to be a succesfull and aim for the good results. Of course as a newly graduated I don’t have such a good experience as you do, but as an employee myself these facts feel like something I would love to have in my job
Anyway, in my opinion a well planned, but flexibel way of doing management is the way to results.
@Elli: Your thoughts are precious and add value to the conversation as much as the others do…so thanks for joining!
I’m always interested in hearing the point of view of other ‘digital natives’ because this new generation is anyway the one that (sooner or later) will lead organizations in future, and it’s actually a generation that can make the change happen… read more here http://www.andreavascellari.com/?p=2246
That’s great. People are much more effective when they are comfortable and happy. I know for me suit + tie, 9-5 is not comfortable. I need my own way of doing things. One reason I am trying to start my own business is because there aren’t enough companies like yours out there!
@Jared: Exactly. It’s a shame. I mean it’s so full of talented people out there, actually what I noticed it’s that everybody has a special skill/set of skills but in many of today’s organizations they can’t express them, they can’t take that uniqueness into action.
This is why I think it’s important to let people work in the best conditions.
Hey… of course when we meet our clients a suit it’s still probably a wise choice
but I’m sure you understand what I mean…