5 culture hacks for big companies
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By Kia Abdullah
Stop discussing, analysing and documenting every tiny decision — take action instead.
“I’m used to running around in circles,” says Ruth with a bone-weary sigh. “Last month, I asked my manager for a wrist rest. She told me to ask the IT helpdesk. Helpdesk referred me to HR. HR referred me to Facilities. Facilities told me to go to the stationery office. The stationery office was closed for lunch. In the end, I just gave up…”
This story from Ruth Nachum, Senior Account Manager at a FTSE 100 company, is the kind that plays out a thousand times across our biggest companies every month. It signifies the process-heavy culture that bogs down big companies and saps productivity.
Managers at these companies try hard to be nimble and agile and all the other words that litter their websites but, in reality, the bureaucracy is too heavy on their shoulders. Meaningful culture changes take years to implement, but there are things you can do today. Here’s where to start.
1. Move to a ‘Maker’s Schedule’
Picture this: you get into work in the morning and realise that you’re yet to reach a decision on an important set of designs. You schedule a one-hour meeting with the designer and developer on the project — at 2.30pm because that’s the only timeslot you have.
If this scenario sounds perfectly normal, then you’re doing things wrong. Managers can switch tasks easily because their schedules are sliced into
one-hour slots by default. ‘Makers’ on the other hand (programmers, writers, designers, doers) need longer lengths of time to focus and work. Planting a meeting right in the middle of their schedule disrupts their entire afternoon and swallows productivity.
Instead, move to a Maker’s Schedule, as defined by startup svengali Paul Graham. Group meetings together in the morning to get them out of the way and leave the rest of the day for work. Maintain this as a sacrosanct rule to prevent ‘meeting creep’. Let people work.
2. Forget open offices; try coworking instead
Harvard Business Review (HBR) reports that people thrive in coworking spaces far more than in traditional offices.
Those in coworking spaces:
- Feel that their work is more meaningful
- Have more control over their environment
- Feel part of a community
Keeping teams small and placing them outside HQ exposes them to different people, different expertise and a cross-pollination of ideas.
Patrick Imbach, Head of Tech Growth at KPMG, works out of Huckletree Shoreditch and cites several benefits: “Huckletree puts us right at the heart of highly promising businesses and entrepreneurs and arguably helps us spot emerging trends. It provides great spaces to run our own events for the startup community and helps us attract and retain staff with an entrepreneurial mindset.”
Book a free tour at Huckletree to learn more about coworking for bigger businesses.
3. Make IT ‘frictionless’
Tim Campos, Chief Information Officer at Facebook, calls it ‘Frictionless IT’: the ability to pick up a new mouse, extension lead, dongle, keyboard or screen wipe on your way back from lunch instead of filling out a form and waiting days.
How can you create innovative solutions like this to let people work? You don’t need to do a company-wide survey to find out what the problem spots are; just talk to a dozen people or two. If there are specific barriers and bottlenecks, they will soon become apparent.
4. Teach tech to the higher ups
Many higher ups in traditionally big companies wouldn’t be able to define UX (user experience). In most cases, this is fine: CEOs are paid to run companies, not to learn every acronym in the glossary. What’s more problematic is when a lack of technical knowledge affects people on the ground.
“I’m not a designer but my project lead doesn’t seem to understand that,” says developer Mark Price. “It’s not unique to my current company either. I’ve been asked so many times to mock up some wireframes. Good design is a discipline in its own right.”
Asking a developer to do UX is like asking a construction worker to throw together some architectural blueprints. Someone truly talented in both arenas is something of a white whale.
To become more agile and effective, big companies need to educate those at all ranks on the importance of UX and broader developments in tech.
5. Be brave!
Big companies are understandably averse to risk. They have huge a customer base, a lucrative client list and a precious public image to protect.
In startup culture, taking risks is an integral part of growth, be it a nascent YouTube with its laissez-faire attitude to copyright or a more mature Facebook playing fast and loose with privacy settings. If you are providing something people love, you can afford to take risks. Failure isn’t always bad if, as the saying goes, you fail fast and fail better.
Stop discussing, analysing and documenting every tiny decision — take action instead.
It was Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, who said, “We have a strategic plan — it’s called doing things.” It may be missing half a dozen process diagrams, but it’s an excellent place to start.
