This is an office - Ogilvy & Mather Offices in Guangzhou
Some of us spend more time at the office than in any other place. To encourage creativity of their staff, Ogilvy & Mather had their Guangzhou office designed by M Moser & Associates around the theme “Carnival of Ideas”. Do you think the employees enjoy going to work? Ok maybe your company doesn’t have the budget, the space and the guts to put a carousel in the corridor. But let’s see how you can improve productivity and make the office a pleasant place from a management perspective.
ROWE stands for Results-Only Work environment. Created by CultureX and applied by Best buy, this management strategy is focusing on results instead of working on a time-based measurement. Basically, it is about giving people more trust and freedom to make them feel more responsible and help them increase productivity.
How does that work? Although you cannot apply all these rules for managing your team – some people need discipline, you can certainly get a few hints. Basically it relies on results and trust :
Actions based on Results
x Optional meetings. Let the people decide if they need to go or not. Can they use their time in a more effective way? If they think so, let them do it.
x Base rewards on results, not on how much time they spend in the office. Is the guy always staying late the one that brings more productivity?
x Rowe has to be applied to everyone – including assistants and new comers.
x Stop interrupting people by walking around to check-in all the time. This is highly counterproductive.
x Plan ahead instead of sending urgency signals all the time to pressure deadlines. Eventually it will end up just like Peter and the Wolf, when nobody takes you seriously anymore.
x If facing an under-performance situation, talk to your people and focus on the work itself.
Actions based on Trust
x It’s up to people to decide their own work-life balance.
x Don’t judge how people spend their time and make sure people within your team don’t do it either.
x Let the people decide if they can leave early – instead of allowing them to. The article talks about a snow storm, well in Shanghai it can be a Typhoon too.
x Trust your people like you trust yourself. I believe this means micro-managers are just bosses lacking of self-confidence.
x Try to make people feel good enough in the office so they actually want to come and work with you. Be nice. Enjoy.
Discipline © Steven Klein
When I was a child I remember playing with my brother and sisters. Whenever something was broken – that happens frequently in big families, it was “Not me!” and “Nobody”‘s fault. Although I am pretty sure we weren’t lying blatantly, we, as children, didn’t take our responsibilities.
Responsibility goes hand in hand with maturity. As we grow up we hopefully get more mature and thus, take more responsibilities, meaning being able to hear criticism and change. A lot of people cannot do that because as my guru says “When it comes to Ego, most people can’t hear a thing. It’s like their brain is blocking information and rejecting it.”
One of the problems in the office is when you face a situation when it’s Nobody’s fault. There is a problem. It needs to be solved. But once you ask what happened, you hear endless justifications about how he/she did this and how nobody said before we should do that. I often hear foreigners in China complain about their Chinese colleagues or staff. What comes up the most is the “They never say no” “They don’t do basic things” or “We think differently”.
How to manage unresponsible people is about finding a balance between authority respect and nursing:
- Never incriminate someone in front of other people, especially not a Chinese. It sounds easy. You think you understand pretty well the “face” issue. Now think about it with work pressure, deadlines…patience getting short : not so easy…
- Breathe. Always be in control even if you want to defenestrate the person.You are supposed to be a role model not the psycho bitch
- Speak to the person in private. Tell them you trust them (if you do), trigger their emotions to engage them in their actions.
- If there is something wrong say it. Ask “Why do you think the situation is like this?” and “What do you think we should do?” Listen and answer accordingly.
- Give a perspective of how it could be if he/she listened to you – less overtime, a bonus, more interesting stuff, a promotion. Don’t make promises you can’t keep though.
- Don’t assume once the target is reached it will stay like this. You have to be constantly on the back on some people, this is why there are leaders and followers.Repeat endlessly.
- Give the good example. Someone in the army told me once “I’ll never send my guys where I won’t go myself”.
One guy in my team was almost fired before my arrival. I found out he was actually the best element, but because of poor management, his work quality was decreasing. After I encouraged him and gave him more responsibilities I am happy to hear that he is a different person
And he changed from a “Not me” to a “somebody” in the company.
The other day I was in a meeting with someone who was supposed to sell me the services of his – quite – important company.
Shortly after it started, I felt like being on a bad date : stuck with someone who doesn’t know me and keeps talking about himself. At some point, I was nodding without listening and thinking “Can’t he tell I am bored out of my mind?”
After being forced to look at the complete company portfolio, I had ten minutes left and very little patience to hear more. I just cut it off and thanked the guy politely. I don’t think I’ll ever buy anything from him.
So I figured it can’t hurt to remind a few tips for client meetings
- Do your homeworks : get information about the brand/company you expect to sell to
- Tell a story. People engage to stories and to other people. Not to powerpoints with no soul.
- Keep the introduction of your company short.
- Listen and ask questions. Be curious and customer-oriented.
- Pick up and introduce case studies. We, clients, care about measuring actions.
- Be ready to provide accurate answers to questions.Know your business.
- Don’t assume the person you’re talking to knows less than you do.
- Be aware of the fact you are not the only one in competition.
- Don’t try too hard. It’s just a turn-off.
Otherwise, you’d be ruled out just like in the dating game : “Next!”
In a place like Shanghai, professionnal are often confronted to the work language issue.
For instance, a company from a non-english speaking country establishes English as the official work language, hires Chinese staff and possibly Chinese-speaking staff. As long as email remains the tool of communication, this is fine – or almost. But when it comes to meetings, it can really be time-consuming. Take the example of a meeting between two foreign companies : a service provider and a client. 6 people around the table, 3 languages – and many different accents. Out of the 6, only 1 or 2 people are fluent in the 3 languages. The others only master A and B, or B and C languages. Sometimes, just one language.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that soon, micro conversations and comments on the side start on both ends of the table, some people stop listening. Instead of 1 hour, the meeting takes longer, the last points are reviewed in a rush because everyone has to run elsewhere. Honestly I don’t know about you but in the office there is almost nothing I hate more than over-lasting meetings.
What can we do about that? Learning Chinese overnight being pretty much out of the question, let’s look at some tips to make these meetings shorter and more effective for everyone :
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Define an official language for the meeting and inform everyone involved. The question is “What are the key points that need to be resolved?” or “What is the goal of the meeting?” For instance, if this is resolving specific, technical issues that can only be monitored by executive local staff, make sure they talk to each other.
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The
interpreter. Is an interpreter needed? Hire one or chose a reliable person of your staff to act like one. For tips regarding interpreters,
check this.
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Decide the table seating before it starts. No, table seating are not only for weddings.
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Have someone taking the minutes – this is a no brainer but make sure everyone gets the right documents before and after.
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If possible, provide your staff mandatory language training classes at lunch time. Most people will thank you for that.
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And, to all foreign companies and public organizations looking to expand in China, there are plenty of very much qualified young professional who speak several languages and that are looking for jobs out there. Just stop sending expat dudes who have no idea about where they are.
Like Georges would say : “What else?”