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Barry-Wehmiller – Another Great Participation Age Company

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They’re Everywhere.

Participation Age companies make higher profits, are more stable, have more cross-trained people, exponentially higher Stakeholder satisfaction and retention, and great longevity. Are you looking to join one, or become one? Here’s another great example:

Most companies are still mired in the front-office business practices of the Industrial Age. But the Participation Age is a tidal wave breaking over the workplace. Those that embrace it will thrive. Those that don’t will be left behind.

Hallmarks of most Participation Age Companies:
1) Leaders, not managers. Stakeholders, not employees.
2) PARTICIPATION in building a great company. SHARING in the rewards.
3) Decisions made by those who will carry them out.
4) Results-based (not the traditional time-based workplace)
5) Profit-sharing (includes time-sharing – extra time off for good results)

Barry-Wehmiller – Embracing The Participation Age and Thriving
Company Name: Barry-Wehmiller
Industry: Diversified manufacturing technology and consulting
Revenue: $1.7 billion a year
Headquarters: St. Louis, MO
Founded: 1885
Growth: 20% compound growth every year since 1987
Ownership: Privately Held

Key Culture Belief
Leaders shouldn’t manage people; they should steward them. Who in your life do you “manage”? Your spouse? Your children? No, you care for them. You acknowledge the deep responsibility you have for them. They wanted to be sure Truly Human Leadership becomes permanently embedded in their culture. So they taught leaders to become good stewards of the lives entrusted to them.

Key Leadership Practice
THL – Truly Human Leadership

Key Moment
1997 – Bob Chapman, CEO, had “an epiphany” while visiting a company B-W had acquired. He was hanging out in the kitchen before work watching people have fun talking, but noticing the closer it got to the start of the workday, you could see the “joy went out of their bodies.” He asked himself, “Why should people have to leave work to have fun?” And that was the beginning of a new way of doing business at B-W.

Key Mindset
Bob Chapman decided and the company’s Guiding Principles of Leadership cultural vision statement needed to be lived out, not in employee handbooks or on posters – “we’re going to put this in people’s heads and hearts, not just on the walls.”

Key Participation Age Practices
(an extension of their Key Beliefs (no managing):
1) No managers, just leaders who seek how to make others successful
2) No timecards, even in their manufacturing area
3) Free phones for line workers to call out any time
4) Take breaks when needed, not at prescribed times
5) A multitude of other things based on the principle of de-emphasizing hierarchy and elevating equal voices in building a great company
6) Results-based rewards: “Measurables allow individuals and teams to relate their contribution to the realization of the vision”
7) A deep commitment to their Stakeholders personal growth

Key Results
1) Exponential revenue growth (20% compounded annually since 1987) and overall company expansion
2) 88% of employees of Industrial Age companies feel they work for an organization that doesn’t care for them. At Barry-Wehmiller, 79% surveyed by an outside organization said they believe BW cares about them – 180 degrees from “normal”.

One Fun Thing They Do
Guiding Principles of Leadership SSR Award Program. Team members nominate their peers as great examples of leadership in our culture, celebrating the everyday greatness in those that they work with day in and day out.

The entire organization gathers for elaborately planned celebrations designed to make the winner feel honored for his or her contributions to our culture. Winners are awarded the keys to a unique sports car, which they can drive for a week. Unlike a plaque for your desk, winners get the chance to drive their “trophy” for a week, inviting questions from family, friends and neighbors about why they have this unusual car.

They’re Everywhere
Companies of every size, in every industry, are embracing the Participation Age to be more successful. If you are a Stakeholder and want to Make Meaning, not just money, leave your Industrial Age company and go find one (see other examples on this blog). If you’re looking to build one, read Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea

Story confirmed with Barry-Wehmiller. Click here for more information on Barry-Wehmiller’s Participation Age culture

Why Correcting Stakeholders Can Make Things Worse

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Mistakes vs. Patterns

Too often we correct or admonish people when we shouldn’t, and plenty of times we let things slide when we should jump right in. Here’s a very simple principle for figuring out when to get involved.

When someone does something we consider close-but-no-cigar, not close, or downright goofy, we usually do one of two things, depending on our own tolerance for confrontation.

1) We jump right in – and either a) walk them gently through the right way, b) blow them up with quick anger, or c) something in between. or

2) We ignore it.

In most cases, the surprisingly right thing to do is #2 – ignore it.

The simple question we forgot to ask ourselves before we jumped in can be one of the most valuable leadership questions we never ask:

“Was this a mistake or a pattern?”

A Mistake
A mistake is something we do once and learn from, so we don’t do it again. The only way we all got to where we could recognize other people’s mistakes is because we made them first.

A Pattern
A pattern is a habit of doing the same lackluster, lame or outrageously stupid thing regularly. We do these things over and over because we’re not learning from them. Every leader has good patterns and bad patterns. And so does every Stakeholder who works in our company.

Know the Difference
Most managers never ask which is which, they just jump in so they can show they “add value” (which is partly why they are managers, not leaders). Great leaders will always ask the question first, “Is this a mistake or a pattern”?

And honestly, if it’s a mistake, does it really help for me to jump in, either gently or angrily, and tell you all about it?

Jump in when…
The ONLY time we should jump in is:
1) if it is blatantly obvious that the person will never be able to figure it out themselves, and wants to, or
2) It is clearly a pattern and they can’t or won’t deal with it.

Patterns of doing things less then great or just plain wrong always need our attention. But mistakes almost always need to be ignored. If you hired right, your Stakeholders want to do great work. And one of the best ways for them to get there is the same way you did, by learning from their mistakes. Beating them up or fawning over them and “coaching” them every time they do something less than great simply makes them feel like children.

Never Ignore The Patterns
Ignore the mistakes until they become patterns. But never ignore the patterns – they will sink the Stakeholder, if not your business.

Managers correct everybody for everything. Leaders take the time to figure out if they are dealing with a one-off mistake or a pattern, and then they help people with the patterns and ignore the mistakes.

Stop managing and be a Leader – ignore the mistakes and address the patterns.

The Results-Based Culture and What It Will Do For You

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Day 12 of 21 days with Chuck’s new book, Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea

There is a growing wave of companies rejecting the front office practices of the 21st century Industrialist. Here’s what a Participation Age company looks like. They come in in all sizes and industries, and are showing us the future of business is already here.

Our company, Crankset Group, has grown 409% in the last five years by building a company on the following business practices:

– Culture is King – Culture is the most important asset in our business. It is who we are at our very core and oozes out of our products and services into every relationship we build. As Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Great companies do not “have” a company culture. The leadership lives out their beliefs and life principles in their business, and that IS their culture. If our culture is right, we will attract the right people who want to work in that kind of environment. Culture comes from our written beliefs and principles, on which we run our business.

– Vision and Mission – A Participation Age company has a well-defined vision and mission. Our vision: To Live Well By Doing Good. Our mission: To provide tools for business owners to make more money in less time, get off the treadmill, and get back to the passion that brought them into business in the first place.

– Everyone is a leader – Whoever is most effected by a decision should make that decision whenever possible.

– No Promotions – everyone comes in as a “Chief” – Chief Results Officer, Chief Connecting Officer, Chief Relationship Officer, etc. Promotions are time-based constructs of the Industrial Age. Instead of promotions, as people increase their influence in our business, they make more money.

– No management – None of the people at Crankset Group are stupid or lazy, so there is no need for smart and motivated managers. We’re all smart and motivated. Everyone is self-motivated and self-managed.

– Results Based model – We don’t have office hours. People are measured by results, not time spent in a chair. Get your work done and go home. Pay increases are based on the same thing.

– No Vacation Time or Sick Days – Again, get your work done, and go on vacation. We’re all adults and are all owners of our responsibilities, so we can also own our time. We expect people to get more time off than they would in a typical 21st century Industrialist company.

– No Annual Bonuses – Bonuses are “time-based” rewards for occupying a chair for another year. We do “Ad hoc” rewards to reward performance throughout the year. They add up to a lot more than an a bonus and actually mean something to those being rewarded.

– No Annual Reviews – we review each other and how things are going all the time. It makes no sense to store it up to dump it on somebody once a year. We all know how we’re doing throughout the year – no surprises.

– No Annual Raises – As people raise their level of influence and responsibility in the business (they do this, we don’t), we recognize that because raises come ad hoc throughout the years, sometimes a couple months in a row.

– No Departments – people don’t “belong” to someone or some artificial group.

– Direct Communications – without departments, people don’t have to go through gatekeepers to talk to someone. People who need to talk, do so, and stuff gets done a lot faster as a result.

– Profit-Sharing – within 20 months of joining Crankset Group, people begin to receive profit-sharing. They help make the money, they share in the profits, not just a salary (which the owners also get).

The Bottom Line
Ownership is the most powerful motivator we have in business. Stakeholders are treated like owners and expected to act that way. (Note: Because of that, profit-sharing is non-negotiable in a Participation Age company.)

This is a glimpse into our Committed Community business model. If you don’t work for a company like this, start looking for one. Companies everywhere, in every industry, are leaving the Industrial Age, entering the Participation Age, and embracing similar models. We’ll look at a few of those in the next blog post.

This is a summary of a chapter from Chuck’s new book, “Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea (And Other Business Diseases of the Industrial Age)”. Click here to pre-order this new ground breaking book at a discount on IndieGoGo.com until July 28.

The Seven Business Cultures – Which One Is Yours?

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Day 11 of 21 days with Chuck’s new book, Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea

“Culture eats strategy for lunch.” – Peter Drucker. What You Believe Determines Your Culture. A company with two people in it has a culture, and that culture is simply what you believe and value. Those beliefs and values determine how you make every decision. The outcome of those decisions is your culture. Which of these seven identifies your company?

Business owners complain all the time about lousy customers, or difficult employees and vendors. If you have customers, employees or vendors you don’t like, look in the mirror. The problem is almost always that you aren’t running your company on your culture, but on an addiction to shiny objects, or short-term decision-making (the need to get the money flowing quickly right now).

If you don’t like what you see in your company, your clients, or your Stakeholders, take a look in the mirror. It is very likely you aren’t running your company on what you believe, but are just taking clients, employees and vendors based on impulse. The revenue generated by violating your beliefs will not compensate for dissonance it creates in your business and more importantly, in your life.

Pick a Company Culture
In working with companies on four continents, we have seen seven common types of company culture. Which one is yours?

1) The Inmate Culture – people are stupid and lazy. They are boxed in, with no ability to make decisions and are at the mercy of the tyrants for which they work. This was the Carnegie culture.

2) Axle and Spokes Culture. It’s more like a cult than a workplace. He makes all communication and decisions. He divides the people against each other and forces everything to come through them, without interacting on their own. The guy at the top of this culture is usually very insecure, or has a giant ego. The “boss” is the center of everything.

3) Hired Hand Culture – People are a necessary annoyance in the business. The objective is to only give away the tasks the owner hates, and no others. They don’t want to hear from the employees. Go ride the fence and leave me alone.

4) Family Culture – I’m the adult, you’re the children. I will take care of you and protect you and burn myself out doing things that you can’t seem to get done. You will depend on me for everything. It makes me feel valuable. My door is always open for you to come to solve your problems for you.

We see this in everything from mom and pops to fairly large companies where the department heads function as the only adult in the department. Do you really want more kids? Some business owners and company leaders apparently do. People rarely get fired from this type of day care center.

5) The Allies Culture – The most predominant Industrial Age culture model still in practice in today. Like World War II alliances, the focus is largely on the task, and relationships are only a necessary inconvenience to help us get the task done. You don’t have to like each other; just need to focus on the task at hand. The overwhelming majority of big corporations have Allies cultures

6) Friends Culture – This “hippie” culture is a 1960s reaction to the Industrial Age and its Factory System. All authority is bad because the Industrialists abused it. We see The Friends Culture a lot in smaller companies that have been bought out by employees, or one employee who has worked there a long time. We also see it in larger but very new companies started by Millennials who are reacting to Industrial Age companies they have been around.

But the Friends Model is actually an unintentional extension of Industrial Age employment, because nobody wants to be the adult Stakeholder and make decisions on their own. They need to get everybody involved and the group makes the decisions. Kum ba yah – can’t we all just get along? Good luck with that. Consensus eventually, if not quickly, leads to something unremarkable that pleases everyone and stretches no one. The hallmark of the Participation Age is sharing, not consensus.

7) The Community Culture – This is the Participation Age model and works in companies from 2 people to 10,000 who are practicing it today. The Community culture, in its structure, looks a lot like the workings of a town. Every town has clear hierarchy; it’s not a “Friends/Hippie Culture”. Every town has a mayor (or other top decision-maker or makers), city council (leadership team), functional group leads and many others who all have some kind of accountability relationship, whether with a team or a single individual.

Clear hierarchy does not mean a heavily top-down hierarchy. A satellite dish to demonstrates the Community model that is taking hold in companies of all sizes. In this model, leaders are on the bottom as servants, not a privileged class. Hierarchy is de-emphasized by giving most leadership and decision-making to a much broader group of individuals; really to everyone. The satellite dish allows for leadership and decision-making to move from one person to the next as needed to accomplish the objective.

Sometimes the head honcho of the company finds themselves way out on the edge of the satellite dish, with someone else dead center in the middle of it, making some decision. Great leaders know when to get out of the way, and do it as often as they can.

Another good image of a Community culture is a soccer team, basketball team, or hockey team. Whoever has the ball/puck is the leader and they have to be trusted to know what to do with and who to pass it to next. There is a coach (leader), but they don’t run out on the field, grab the ball from each soccer player and kick it around themselves. If the players can’t be trusted to make good decisions, the coach needs other players.

In the Community culture model, giving this kind of ownership and responsibility is one of the most powerful ways to provide people the ability to Make Meaning, which is a much higher motivation for Stakeholders than just making money.

A few short years from now this will be a big duh, as the younger generation builds businesses in the Participation Age that encourage people to share in the creation of great companies.

If you don’t have a Participation Age Community culture right now, what one thing can you do today to begin to move in that direction?

This is a summary of a chapter from Chuck’s new book, “Why Employees Are ALWAYS a Bad Idea (And Other Business Diseases of the Industrial Age)”. Click here to pre-order this new ground breaking book at a discount on IndieGoGo.com until July 28.

Employees are Always a Bad Idea.

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Children or Adults

This Industrial Age concept was never a good idea for companies, and was worse for the “employees”. Today, companies that move forward without employees will thrive. Those that don’t will fall behind.

The Industrial Age gave us cool toys and a cushy life, but it also came with some Business Diseases. One of the most rabid of the Business Diseases is the concept of an employee, which is a very new idea in the history of man, and one that needs to go away.

When machines took over most production, they couldn’t run themselves, and so the Industrial Age re-created people in the image of machines in order to run them.

“Employees are “Silent”
Over time companies made it clear they only wanted the productive part of the person to show up. They required people to leave the human being (the messy part) at home. As a result, the generation which entered the work force at the very peak of the Industrial Age (1945-1960-ish) was given the worst generational label ever – The Silent Generation. If you had a “Silent” as a parent, you learned to live life the way they had been taught – “Be loyal to the company. Do what you’re told. Show up early, leave late. Shut up, sit down, don’t make waves, live invisibly, go out quietly. The company will take care of you.”

Employees are Children
This view of work (and life) turned adults back into children. You were taught that the most mature person was one who obediently took orders, did what they were told, didn’t question authority, was blindly loyal to those in charge, and lived passively as others directed their lives. Pretty much what we want a four year old to do.

In order to keep the children from ruining the house, and to make them extensions of machines, the Industrial Age boxed people in with extremely clear and narrow limitations on what they could do, the hours in which they could do them, and endless limitations on being human and “adult” at work. It stripped them of their need to think, create and solve because the machine didn’t need them to think, create and solve. It just needed them to do.

Employees Are a Disease, not a Cure
We reject the business culture of the Industrial Age as a bad idea that needs to be corrected. Employees are one of those Business Diseases that should be eradicated. Because of the Industrial Age, the word “employee” has become synonymous with “child”. We can’t even use the word anymore. We don’t want to hire children who need to be told what to do and managed closely so they don’t run into the street.

Employees are Replaced by Stakeholders
So we don’t hire employees, but have replaced them with Stakeholders. Our Stakeholders are sold out to living well by doing good, and are not employees who punch clocks. Stakeholders are first and foremost adults who can think, take initiative and make decisions, carry responsibility, take ownership, be creative and solve problems.

Stakeholders are Adults
Our Stakeholders are all adults. “Employee” is a four-letter word for us. Adults don’t need someone to keep them from running into the streets or ruining the carpets. Adults ask questions. They don’t live passively but are self-directed, creative, and solve problems. They don’t shut up; they make waves, they are highly visible and they don’t expect the company or other adults to take care of them. Adults own stuff, and they own their work as a natural part of being an adult. And the whole messy person comes to work, not just the extension of the machine.

Stakeholders Require Leadership, not Adult Supervision
If you hire Stakeholders (adults) instead of employees (children), it changes the way you direct people. We don’t have office hours, vacation time or personal days. We’re not interested in whose car was in the parking lot first or who left last. We believe office politics is a waste of time, so no one will ever be promoted.

Stakeholders Focus on Work, not Promotion to the Next Title
Every adult who works with us (over 20 full and part-time and growing) has a title that includes the word Chief; Chief Results Officer, Chief Connecting Officer, Chief Transformation Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Development Officer, Chief of MIH (Making it Happen).

We don’t have supervisors or managers or directors or VPs – just Chiefs. None of us will ever need to be promoted, we’re already all at the top. We’ll just grow into more responsibilities as we become better at things. As we do them, they will be recognized and somebody might change our title (there is no centralized title giver).

Stakeholders Create Better Teams
We believe in working together as Committed Community (adults live in community) to get results for each other and for other business owners. Every full-time Stakeholder will take part in profit-sharing. Why wouldn’t they? They’re all adults who own their work, they should own profits from their work as well. That’s what adults do.

Stakeholders are Self-Motivated
Although we lease 1,500sf of office space for training and rent other spaces around the city, none of us have an office there – we all work from our homes and places like breakfast joints and coffee shops. If it helps somebody to get things done better, we’ll get them an office.

Stakeholders Make You and Themselves More Money
Our business grew 61% in 2010, 41% in 2011, 75% in 2012 and projected at 50% in 2013. Why? Because every Stakeholder is an adult, taking responsibility, creating, problem solving, making it happen, and taking ownership of whatever needs to be done to bring our clients the best experience and the most tangible results possible. And everyone is a lot happier because they all work with adults who pull their own weight.

Employees are a bad idea. Stakeholders rock.

Culture Matters More Than You Think

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Hire for culture, not for skills.

Great idea? Focused market? Good financial backing? Skilled employees? You’ve got it all, right? Maybe not. None of that matters one whit unless everybody holds the same core values. The numbers don’t lie – culture is the number one priority if you want to go the distance.

65% of all mergers fail and the #1 reason is because their culture’s clashed. Forget the merger – I believe even a higher percentage of small and local businesses fail because of this issue, without ever getting much past the first employee stage. We almost never pay attention to the things that matter. Why would culture be any different?

We at the Crankset Group always look at culture fit long before we look at skills. And if someone is a clearly better culture fit, I’ll hire them instead of the much more highly skilled person. It’s a no brainer. But most of us still go right to the resume’ (what I call “the tombstone”) to find out all the great things somebody did in their past lives, and never ask, “Will we want to be together 9+ hours a day for years to come?”

The Industrial Age left us with a terrible cultural legacy some have labeled the “allies” model of company culture. It was supposed to be the most evolved, but it doesn’t work.

Here’s six views of “employees” that are common in local (and giant) businesses. See which one is yours:

  1. Employee as enemy – all processes are set up to box them in and treat them like prisoners/numbers. Inmates, I mean employees, are to be mistrusted on the way in.
  2. Hired hand – a necessary evil; we give away tasks to them reluctantly, even though nobody can do it as well as me. We never want them to think, just do tasks.
  3. We are family – the parent/child approach – good luck with that! Do you really want more kids? Some business owners apparently do.
  4. Friends – everyone is on a level plane. Everyone is in charge of everything, therefore, nobody is in charge of anything – “we’re all friends here, right?” Anything with two heads belongs in a circus. Where does something belong with no head?
  5. Allies – The dominant Industrial Age culture. The focus is on the task. Like England, Russia, France, and the U.S. in World War II, we don’t have to like each other; we just need to focus on the task at hand. This is the worst and most advanced form of Industrial Age thinking. Most companies still live here. Let’s just hire for skills. Culture is woo-woo crap.
  6. Business as COMMUNITY – The great companies are already doing this. They believe strongly in why they exist, what they are doing here and where they are going. And they don’t hire people who don’t want the same things. Committed Community is the basis for getting the task done in the new company.

Community has hierarchy – somebody is in charge. But it emphasizes collaboration and true “team” – using agreed upon methodologies to achieve an agreed upon goal. Community imputes trust and creates an environment where everyone is encouraged to take ownership and make a contribution. Community members play clearly defined roles as part of a team, not behind cube walls.

Hire for culture. You can teach anybody a skill, but if they don’t believe in what you do, it’s a short-term gain with long-term pain.

What’s your company culture? And by the way, if there is only one of you right now, that’s the best time to answer the question.

Who WE are is so much more important than who people want us to be. Who are you as a company?