What Makes a Winning Workplace?
Saturday September 27, 2003
FSB: Fortune Small Business and Winning Workplaces sponsor a competition, started in 2002, to name the best bosses in small and mid-sized companies. The bosses selected in the 2003 competition are as diverse as their companies, but all share the designation "best boss" because of the innovative, employee-friendly practices in their companies. These "ways of winning" quotes are from one of the winning bosses, Bruce Woolpert, President and CEO of Graniterock. They're worth your attention as is the entire article.
Woolpert says: "Most businesses are set-up consistent with a traditional top-down or family (father/mother -- children) model of organization design. While some companies preach 'empowerment' of individual decision making, there is really not a true drive to build self-leadership and build team member responsibility for company-success. A self-leader ‘owns’ his or her work, sets improvement goals, works to improve results, and owns responsibility for job function performance. A very high level of job satisfaction is developed from this approach and company performance greatly improves.
"Some businesses practice organizational approaches which basically teach and reward 'dependency' (adult-child) of employee action. Companies come to believe that the 'only happy employee is an employee who is being taken care of.' Instead, a business should be growing independent people (adult-adult) who carry an understanding of the company’s challenges, successes, and areas for improvement, and work together to address needs. Our experience tells us that independent people are the only ones who can really develop a sense of making a profound and important difference."
You'll want to read the whole article about each of the bosses at the Winning Workplaces website.
Winning Workplaces is an Evanston, IL-based not-for-profit assisting small and midsize businesses to create great workplaces.
Woolpert says: "Most businesses are set-up consistent with a traditional top-down or family (father/mother -- children) model of organization design. While some companies preach 'empowerment' of individual decision making, there is really not a true drive to build self-leadership and build team member responsibility for company-success. A self-leader ‘owns’ his or her work, sets improvement goals, works to improve results, and owns responsibility for job function performance. A very high level of job satisfaction is developed from this approach and company performance greatly improves.
"Some businesses practice organizational approaches which basically teach and reward 'dependency' (adult-child) of employee action. Companies come to believe that the 'only happy employee is an employee who is being taken care of.' Instead, a business should be growing independent people (adult-adult) who carry an understanding of the company’s challenges, successes, and areas for improvement, and work together to address needs. Our experience tells us that independent people are the only ones who can really develop a sense of making a profound and important difference."
You'll want to read the whole article about each of the bosses at the Winning Workplaces website.
Winning Workplaces is an Evanston, IL-based not-for-profit assisting small and midsize businesses to create great workplaces.
No comments yet. Leave a Comment