where analog thoughts meet digital things
manuel koelman | entrepreneur from cologne | dutch nationality | web and social media enthusiast | practical philosopher | co-founder of talential.com | born on the 23rd | trying to keep it real | caotina lover
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Corporate Culture
"Employees should choose their own salary" - thoughts on corporate culture
On Friday, during likemind CGN, I had an interesting discussion with a couple of guys. We started off, talking about the future of recruiting and soon had a controversial debate on corporate culture and new styles of work. Both topics I find hugely interesting.
Not only have I worked as a management consultant with corporations on enterprise 2.0 and change management topics. As an entrepreneur I have a huge impact on the corporate culture at talential.com myself. We are a decentralized - almost virtual - company, thus making it essential to establish new working styles, rules of interaction and cultural values.
I will try to post more about these subjects in the next months. Some of my most controversial arguments were
- fire (all) your managers
- employees should select their boss (aka "leadership is defined by followership")
- employees should choose their own salary
- job titles are toxic
Some more topics we didn't have the chance to go into detail are
- virtual teams are more productive (aka "why each employee should have his own room")
- trust is more important than control
- the illusion of growth
- planning is overrated (aka "nobody has a clue")
- hire lazy employees
- perfection is the enemy (aka "good is good enough")
- money is not a good motivator
- a business plan is worthless
- ...
I have to
see if I will write about these topics in German or English. I might even open up a new blog. Stay tuned...
Comments [5]
A disconnect between meetings and the real world
I love meetings. Lots and lots and lots of meetings. Morning meetings are an excellent start in the day since you don't have to start working right away. Same with the end-of-week meetings, the weekend starts earlier - every week. Love it! And there are many more sales meetings, marketing meetings, management meetings, project meetings, motivational meetings. The list goes on. It's also cool because if you have a lot of meetings you can stick out as a real leader by coordinating all the meetings. Of course, you would hold a meeting for that.
Ok, stop the bullshit. Meetings suck! I already posted a cartoon about meetings as the perfect alternative to work. Here I have another one. This cartoon brilliantly shows what happens in most meetings. At the end, everyone in the meeting agrees, a lot of heads are nodded and whoever was leading the meeting does a (long) wrap-up.
Then, without fail, people return to their desks and expound on exactly why nothing in that meeting would actually work. There is just a real disconnect between what happens in meetings and the real world. Ok, to be fair, this is more a corporate culture thing. However, in companies with such a corporate culture - and there are many - it is no wonder that we spent so much time in meetings.
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