Visiting a young lawyer friend of mine, I wasn’t surprised by his request to take a couple of minutes out on a Monday so he could “endure” his annual performance review.
After all was said and done, and he dressed in his casuals, I asked, “Well, how did it go?”
“I wish they would have fired me,” he said, adding, “I hate my job.”
They didn’t, and to him it meant another five-figure bonus, on top of the near six-figure salaries each he and his corporate lawyer wife earn.
He punched up his wife on his cell phone. I heard, “Got my bonus,” as if this was the nirvana of his year at work.
Yes, I gingerly probed what the problem was, but the details of his answer aren’t the point of this column other than to say he wanted to practice a more “strategic” business law than writing trial briefs and being third chair on a corporate defense team.
So, I ask, whose responsibility is it for my lawyer friend to jettison the hate and truly fall in love with his job – his or the law firm and its partners?
“Actually, it’s both,” said Dennis Bakke. “The boss has to be a leader – allow people like your friend to take the last shot of the game, to make decisions and take the responsibility he wants to take.
“Yet your friend must begin himself to take random acts of responsibility; break out of his job description and take risks without asking those above him. When he does and succeeds, they’ll view him as a human being and they’ll trust more and more each day.”
And in the process he’ll create joy at work for himself and the entire organization, said Bakke, author of “Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job” (PVG Press, Seattle, 2005).
It’s possible to have all or most employees truly experience joy at work?
Bakke thinks so. In fact, he and partner Roger Sant created a company whose sole purpose is to accomplish this simple, yet unconventional and rare goal.
They did so by divesting themselves, the board and top executives of power-creating authority, pushing all decision-making down to the lowest ranks possible. They did so by relegating the growth of profits and shareholder value below that of consistently operating in an atmosphere of integrity, fairness, fun and social responsibility.
The company, AES Corp., a publicly traded operator of 118 electric power plants in 16 countries with 40,000 employees, operated without traditional middle managers, and shared all company information with employees, including a coal hauler in China, so they have equal access to the advice and decision-making process.
It even experimented with employees being able to set their own salaries – succeeding only once.
“We simply did away with the concept of managing people,” Bakke said. “Look, you manage money, you manage systems, you manage resources, but people are none of these.
“Our philosophy is that we all unique individuals; we are here to serve people. We eschewed the popular slogan that ‘people are our best assets.’ People aren’t assets, machines and equipment are assets.”
Encouraging local decision making down to the lowest level (the janitor managed the plant’s cleaning budget) was key to creating joy at work, Bakkee said, that translated into nearly zero turnover. Hardly anybody left unless they were fired.
The quickest way to get fired at Bakke’s AES was to make a decision without thoroughly soliciting the advice of co-workers. “You would be surprised how employees would come up with the same decision that an executive would, as long as they researched it and solicited their co-workers advice,” Bakke said.
He conceded it was difficult to give up power “so that people could soar. When you serve your employees, relinquish the power, you become a leader very different from a Donald Trump or a Jack Welch. You see yourself as no different, no better than the people you serve.”
A spinoff idea was to try to involve employees in setting their own salaries. After several tries and failures, it worked at a plant in southwest Pennsylvania. “We did the research, told the people what others in the area were paid for comparable work.” They were told the budget for salaries and asked to submit their requests. Everybody in the plant got a copy of each co-worker’s request so they could receive feedback before resubmitting a final figure.
“It worked pretty well, but we wound up $10,000 over budget,” he said. Seems everybody but one employee had set a reasonable salary. “So we waited about a week; he came in and said he wanted to revise downward his number.”
P.S.: AES still exists today under different management. Bakke now leads a Virginia-based company that runs charter schools. AES acknowledges that it maintains the old philosophy of employee empowerment, but cautions, “Today, our businesses still operate very independently, yet are careful to factor in the broader view in their decisions – how they affect those of other businesses and of AES as a whole.”
Write Eric Zoeckler at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206 or e-mail mrscribe@aol.com.
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