Why Should Anyone Work Here?

We've both worked extensively in a business school context so we're interested in trying to apply that perspective to businesses and to organizations. We've worked together so long now it's almost seamless – we can't really see who wrote what. We seem to have fun together and that's good, and of course Gareth, in addition, has got the HR experience directly with having been a director of HR with both Polygram and the BBC.

Rachel Salaman: So how does this current book, "Why Should Anyone Work Here?" fit in with the other ones you've written together?

Rob Goffee: Probably the one we're best known for is, "Why Should Anyone be Led by You?" and, in that book, we said to managers, executives, those who wanted to be leaders, "Be yourself more with skill." In other words, express yourself more authentically. To which the response from some executives was, "Well, I'll be more authentic when my organization is more authentic. Until then, I'll carry on being a kind of political player. "And that's a kind of disappointing response, but it got us interested in what does an authentic organization look like.

In the book "Clever," we were focusing primarily on skilled, talented, mobile people who increasingly, I think, were wanting a work experience which was less about the extraction of value from them and more about finding a place where organizations gave them value, added value to them. So we became increasingly interested in a kind of paradigm shift where it's not a matter of how you fit the organization but, increasingly perhaps, how the organization fits you.

Rachel Salaman: The subtitle of your book, as I mentioned, is, "What It Takes to Create an Authentic Organization" and you mention authentic there. It can mean a lot of things. What's your definition of authentic in this context?

Rob Goffee: As you said it's a rich word, it's a complex word, it carries many meanings. But, in simple terms, we're really talking about organizations that we can believe in, organizations that we can trust, organizations where we know what they stand for, and maybe, in addition to that, organizations where, to use a popular contemporary expression, you can be your best self, where you can express yourself well and confidently. And that's broadly what we're talking about.

And, of course, in a way you don't need me to say that we live in a time where we're increasingly interested in this because engagement levels are low or falling, trust levels are low or falling, cynicism about organizations is rising, one corporate scandal follows another. VW is yet another just recently, which heightens this idea that, "Wouldn't it be nice to work in a place where we really can believe in what it stands for?"

Rachel Salaman: What research did you do for this book?

Rob Goffee: We started with, as those executives that we were working with said, "I'll be authentic when the organization is authentic." Well, we started pressing them in classroom conversations around what is an authentic organization? What's its shape? What does it look like?

We followed that with interviews with individuals all over the world and, when our five or six dimensions that we'll talk about began to come through, we then began to think about organizations which might be doing quite well on these dimensions of an authentic organization. So we started doing some case studies of exemplar organizations and, finally, we developed a questionnaire around some of these dimensions, and one version of that was used in our original Harvard Business Review article, published a couple of years ago, and another version is in our new book.

Rachel Salaman: So let's talk about some of these dimensions now, or attributes I guess we could call them, and the first letters of these spell out the word "dreams." It makes it easier to remember. They are the following: Difference, Radical honesty, Extra value, Authenticity (which we've touched on), Meaning, and Simple rules.

So starting with the first of these, difference, you say that leaders should amplify difference rather than minimize it. So what do you mean by "amplify difference?"

Rob Goffee: I think the first point to make is that organizations create many pressures, we think, for conformity. Those pressures are sometimes formal, through appraisal systems, competency models, and God knows what else, sometimes informal, through the culture of the place and so on.

So I think you've got to work against the grain of that to nurture individuality, to look for people that are different, and to encourage those different people to actually express those differences. In other words, not just to tolerate differences but to celebrate it.

And in the book we're trying to say that this idea of differences goes beyond conventional notions of diversity, which of course are really important. The ambition to get a better mix of genders, races, ethnic minority, and so on is very, very important but what we're really digging down into in the book is differences in terms of mindset.

Rachel Salaman: What do you mean by that exactly?

Rob Goffee: The way people think, different perspectives, different assumptions. In a way, some of the paradigm organizations we cite in the book are looking for people that don't quite fit. We talk about Arup, the engineering company, which is an extremely creative engineering firm responsible for some of the most beautiful and brilliant buildings around the world, and they literally are looking for people that bring a difference in way of thinking to the organization because often, to use a colloquial expression, it's the kind of grit in the oyster which creates the pearl.

Rachel Salaman: So how should a leader approach this, given that conformity, at least in the way things are done, often makes for greater efficiency, so it's usually the easy way forward?

Rob Goffee: Of course, and those pressures I was talking about earlier on, it's because of the efficiency you're referring to. But never forget that creativity increases with diversity, even though diversity is difficult to manage. So you've got to find a sort of happy medium and I guess the logo might be find cohesion without homogenization. Build consensus around core or central values but tolerate, I think, diversity around behaviors.

Rachel Salaman: Are there any pitfalls that leaders should look out for as they're trying to do that?

Rob Goffee: There are. In the book we say, as I just said to you, look for different people and also encourage them to express their differences. And I think organizations have been kind of tolerant often of the expression of what we call cognitive conflict, in other words debate and discussion and difference around ideas, rational debate and so on.

Then there's another kind of conflict called affective or emotional conflict, which again is about differences of emotion. And we are interested, aren't we, in creating organizations which have passion so we should expect some sort of emotional conflict around differences and so on, but clearly that's got to be refereed and managed in a way which doesn't lead to breakdown or chaos.

If you look at the Beatles, John and Paul didn't exactly love each other, but they were terribly creative. Those differences between them were responsible, I think, for a lot of interesting creativity from that group.

Rachel Salaman: So your next attribute that you talk about in the book is radical honesty, and, in this context, what's the difference between honesty and radical honesty?

Rob Goffee: First of all, we live in a social media world where, to quote a phrase we use in the book, you need to tell the truth before someone else tells it for you, and if you don't, watch out as all sorts of value can get destroyed.

So we think radical honesty is something about being speedy and proactive in sharing information. It's about having candor in the way in which that information is shared. It's linked back to something we were just talking about, it's about encouraging dissent, the expression of different ideas and views, and it's also about engaging with a wide group of stakeholders, in other words not just shareholders or employees but also customers, suppliers, wider society, and so on.

If you look at an example like VW right at the moment. I think this kind of radical honesty will be vital in the way it manages the fallout from the emissions problems.

Rachel Salaman: So if a leader listening to this might want to start looking at their own behavior and implement more radical honesty in their day-to-day behavior, what might that look like? Is it about communication or is it a bit more strategic?

Rob Goffee: It's a bit of both. I think the examples of the people at the top, of course, are extremely important and we also live in a world, don't we, where there's a lot of background noise. There's communications stuff everywhere and I think to be heard you've got to follow some simple guidelines. Communicate quickly and honestly, as I've just implied. Try to use lots of different channels, because there are going to be differences – there are certainly generational differences in preference for different channels of communication and so on. Try to encourage employees to bring bad news up to you if you're at the top of the organization, because often communication is far too one-way and downwards and not a lot of listening at the top from people coming up with some of the problems. Keep things simple, and building feedback.

Now these are really simple ideas, but lots of organizations seem to have significant scope to improve this and what it's not about, I think, is yet more sophisticated people in communications functions. You do need sophisticated people in communications functions, but you need skillful communicators all over the organization. It's not one or the other.

Rachel Salaman: If we talk now about the dimensional attribute that you call extra value, and you say that that's about magnifying people's strengths. So how does the value idea fit with the idea of people's strengths?

Rob Goffee: The simple point we're trying to make, and I referred to this when we wrote the book "Clever," is that we're increasingly resistant, I think, to this idea of going to work and being exploited as it were, or talented, clever, creative people are particularly resistant to this, that value is being extracted from them. And what we want is increasingly added value, although, as we also say in the book, there's a problem in many organizations that, in developing people and building on strengths, we've tended to focus only on the people at the top and, actually, maybe we should extend our focus to everyone who works in organizations who are all interested, I suspect, in having value added, in being developed, in having their strengths magnified, and so on.

The other thing to say is to perhaps just broaden our idea of what strength might look like. There are not just technical skills or conceptual skills, there are also skills in dealing with other people, there are also skills or values or areas for development which are around building people's networks – increasingly important in the world we live in. So, I think we should think more widely and fully about what development might look like and, indeed, think about the whole person beyond those technical skills.

I believe we mentioned in the book that organizations like Waitrose actually support their employees in having singing lessons, piano lessons, and so on – the encouragement of the development of self. To go back to where we started, I want to work in an organization where I can be my best self, so let's broaden our ideas about what strengths might look like.

Rachel Salaman: So how much time and effort do you think leaders at all levels should put into finding out the strengths of their people and what are some tips for doing that?

Rob Goffee: A lot. The simple answer to that is perhaps it's to find out the most important thing they do, to find out what people are good at, what their enthusiasms are, and to organize around their enthusiasms. If you look at many organizations, that seems to be the last thing they are doing – organizing around enthusiasms.

I went to the London Olympic Games (and of course I'm biased because I'm a Londoner), which I thought were a tremendous success. And the first sign for me that they were going to be a tremendous success was when I came out of Stratford tube station and saw the volunteers. And the volunteers were probably the most wonderful thing about the games, and many of those people were doing a serious job, as it were, for the first time in their lives, coming from deprived parts of east London and so on.

And the use of volunteers, the use of part time employees, around those Olympic Games was an amazing demonstration of what work can look like when people are doing things they're enthusiastic about.

Rachel Salaman: So, from a practical point of view, how should a leader probe and see what the strengths of their people are and what matters to them? Is it about one-on-one meetings? What can people do?

Rob Goffee: I do think it's about using eyes and ears. I do think it's about looking at what's in front of you and talking to people, getting to know them. In our previous book on leadership, we said good leaders get close and, when you get close, you understand what makes people tick.

Of course you can't be close all the time, and there's always a moment when you need to step back and create distance and look at the bigger picture, and so on. But maybe, particularly near the top, there's a bit too much of that going on and, occasionally, it might be better to escape the bubble, roll your sleeves up, and get down on the shop floor and see what's really going on. And then perhaps you might understand what it is that people get enthusiastic about and, indeed, what frustrates them.

Rachel Salaman: If we can return to authenticity now because that's the next attribute in the DREAMS acronym. Now, obviously you've talked a little bit about this already, so perhaps we can think about some practical steps that a leader could take to make sure that his or her organization is authentic.

Rob Goffee: Yes. Unfortunately in many organizations, this question of what do we stand for gets addressed through the mission statement, and the mission statement then gets re-written three times in five years and people become cynical about it. So it's clearly much more than that.

We talk about three aspects of authenticity, one is to understand your roots, to understand where you come from. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of authenticity is "of undisputed origins." So thinking about your legacy, your history, that's something to work on and some organizations are very skillful at this. We thought New York Life Insurance, a mutual in the States, was very skillful at building upon its strong mutual foundations as a kind of rock to identify with during financial uncertainty. But you don't need to be decades old, as that organization is, to have strong roots. We think a relatively young organization like Apple is also rather skillful at using where it started and where it came from as a way of identifying what it's about.

Two other things we talk about is, obviously, religiously practice the values. There's no point having values and then not putting them into practice. Organizations like, in the book we talk about BMW and Heineken. An engineer, when he or she goes to work, knows why they're going to work, which is to build the ultimate driving machine and so putting things into practice is important.

Finally, we also say, if it doesn't sound too circuitous, that authentic organizations develop authentic leaders, and have authentic leaders as great role models at the top of the organization. Look at an organization like Ryanair and the boss, Michael O'Leary, sums up what Ryanair stands for, whether you love them or you don't, and it attracts sometimes slightly mixed reactions but clearly you've got someone there who's embodying what it stands for.

So, practice what you preach, authentic leaders, and strong roots – these are important areas to think about.

Rachel Salaman: So M in the DREAMS acronym is meaning, which is about ensuring that daily work is intrinsically satisfying for people. So, looking at this from the other side, in your experience what makes work devoid of meaning?

Rob Goffee: Alain de Botton has a very simple idea about where meaning comes from and he says it's about, when you work, it's about increasing the pleasure of others or, if you're a doctor for example, reducing their pain. Increasing pleasure and reducing pain.

If you have a direct interface with the people you're serving, your patients, your customers, whatever, then you can see the outcomes of your work and that's where meaning comes from. Unfortunately, many of us tend to work in organizations which are large, complex. So scale is a problem, you can't connect your efforts with outcomes, there are extensive divisions of labor, you can't connect your little part of the process to the part of others, and even that is complicated by the fact there's often time lags. If you work in a pharmaceutical company and the project you're working on may not hit the market for another seven years, and by the way after seven years the American drug agencies turn it down. So scale, divisions of labor, time lags, these things disconnect people from outputs, customers, the market, and so on. And I think that makes it a little more difficult to get that kind of meaning which most of us want when we go to work.

The ironic thing, however, is that, even having said this, what we found was that many people are able to eke out meaning from their jobs. Even the most mundane jobs can give people a certain level of satisfaction. But what they get frustrated about is the organizational context within which the job sits, which is what I've just been alluding to.

Rachel Salaman: In your action points for leaders in this chapter, you say don't assume your motives and your sense of what's meaningful are shared by others, which is an interesting, nuanced point. Could you expand on that and talk about the implications for leaders?

Rob Goffee: We regularly work on this with executives in classrooms. We give them long questionnaires to assess the relative significance of their motives and, guess what, you tend to see a variety, even amongst a group of so-called similar executives in a classroom and, of course, that variety is then played out in their teams and in their organizations.

Most of us have a lot of information about other people's skills, their experience, their ability, and so on. A lot of that stuff is measurable. We have very little information, it seems to us, about their motives, and yet the motives are really the things that are going to turn people on or turn people off.

In the absence of good information, guess what we do. We make a fatal mistake. We tend to assume our motives are shared by others, and the overwhelming evidence is that motives vary so, what we're arguing is, again going back to this, use your eyes, use your ears, and never make that safe assumption that their motives are like yours. Some people are switched on by recognition. Some people wish to work quietly on their own. Some people want to be part of a team. Some people like a load of money. Some people like running things. Some people like freedom and creativity.

We're driven by different desires, motives, enthusiasms, and it really is the job of managers, anyone who is working in an organization, to understand what it is that drives those around them, and that's the source of meaning.

Rachel Salaman: Moving on now to the last attribute, which is simple rules. Why is this important?

Rob Goffee: It's important, just to report something from the book, of the six dimensions, I think this is the one that people got most frustrated about and felt most bogged down by – complex, imposed rules rather than simple, agreed rules.

Complex, imposed rules turn people off, they sap energy, they close down initiatives, and so on, and even trendy, sexy businesses can suffer. Years back, Hewlett Packard suffered from this development of excessive complexity – too many rules, processes, procedures, and so on, matrix organizations etc. Even now, wonderful businesses in a way, like Apple. Sometimes, if you visit an Apple retail outlet, it is a little bit like suffering a bureaucratic process, especially if you're taking a phone back to be repaired.

So all organizations need to be vigilant about this. Having said this, everyone knows, we all know don't we, freedom rests upon constraints and so our DREAMS model starts with difference and being yourself, but that doesn't mean go to work and do the hell what you want. People do need simple guidelines and simple rules and, strangely, simple rules free people. The problem is that most organizations have rules that, frankly, we call mock rules – we don't really believe in them, we don't follow them, and an example is professional cycling. These rules which all of us are avoiding or ignoring do create that kind of cynicism.

The last thing to say about this, in terms of importance, is that many growing businesses, when they're small they can stay flexible and free of rules, but they fear the impact of rules and systems as they grow. But they're going to have to get systems and the trick really is to develop systems where you know what the rules are for. The problem in large, complex organizations is we often have rules all around us that, frankly, we don't know what the hell they're for and there are so many of them we don't even know when we've broken them.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and you note in the book that there are formal and informal rules in most organizations. So how does that fit into your advice to make rules simpler?

Rob Goffee: You clearly don't need to write everything down and you don't want to write everything down, so, inevitably, you're going to get the formal parts and you're going to get the informal parts.

The danger, I think, the thing to watch out is when the informal rules are really telling us that the formal rules don't work. In other words, where the informal rules undermine the formal rules or are some kind of joke about the formal rules. Then that's probably telling you that the formal rules have become what I just said, like mock rules. We don't really take them seriously and you don't want that.

So I guess ideally, and we never live in a perfect place, that you want those informal rules to be a way of elaborating or refining what's written down and in a way which reinforces rather than undermines.

Rachel Salaman: What role does trust play, then, when it comes to rule making in organizations?

Rob Goffee: Hugely important, and you're quite right to pick up on this because I think a little comment we make in the book is try trust before you develop another rule, and there's a terrible tendency when things become more complicated or difficult or there's a problem to just keep extending the rule book. And try trust first. Of course that is risky, be prepared for things to go wrong, but what we know is that more and more and more rules often simply create more distrust and more creativity in terms of people getting around the rules.

So not to make too grand a statement, but the whole future of financial service sectors around the world, including London, rests upon our ability to develop simple, agreed rules and if we drown these sectors of entrepreneurial activity in complex, imposed rules, well they are going to drown.

So it's a huge challenge and how do you get to trust? Well it takes a long time to build and you can blow it away very quickly. But we do think that that's the key to minimizing some of the rules which are too excessive for many organizations.

Rachel Salaman: You dedicate part of the book, towards the end, to creating and sustaining authentic organizations, embedding the attributes and the dimensions we've just talked about. What pitfalls may leaders run into as they try to do this?

Rob Goffee: Clearly when you start up a business from scratch, you're kind of starting from a blank page and maybe you can dream, to use the acronym of the book.

We talk about a wonderfully successful mobile gaming company, Supersell, based in Finland, in the book which has the dreams that we talk about and almost every characteristic in DREAMS is there and they've been hugely, immensely successful in a very short space of time. However, as you grow, there are always challenges in sustaining these ideals that you have at start-up with scale and complexity, the things we've been talking about already. And then sometimes you simply slide away from your original ideals and you need to rediscover them.

In the UK, Barclays is an example of a bank which, over the last couple of years, has been trying to get back to its origins and its core values, and all of these are different kinds of challenges.

With simple guidelines, as always, you need strong, consistent support from the top. You need to be very careful about where you start. We identified six dimensions. Which one should you focus on? Well, for VW at the moment, it's probably radical honesty, but that's not a surprise is it? If you're searching for creativity, well maybe you should think a bit more about developing a bit more diversity. If you're drowning in rules then start with simple.

So pick the place to start, recognize that there is sometimes conflict between one dimension and the other. Too much difference, too much self-expression and so on can make things very slow and complicated, so sometimes it undermines the simplicity point. And just stick with your promises. If you promise something then make sure you deliver because, otherwise, you'll simply create yet more cynicism.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in this discussion. What do you think are the one or two top takeaways for leaders who want to make sure their organization is a place people want to work?

Rob Goffee: I think, in really simple terms, avoid the short-term fixes. Some of the things we report in our book about the ideal organization, they're not a surprise, but we try to fix these with short-term – the mission statement, the engagement survey, and so on. Go long and deep is what we would say, and realize that this is not either or. Building the DREAMS organization is going to be the one which probably is the high performing organization. And, at the end of the day, most of us want to go to work and do good work, so we're optimists about this, but realize that this is a long project rather than a short and simple fix.

Rachel Salaman: Rob Goffee, thanks very much for joining us today.

Rob Goffee: It's a pleasure, thanks Rachel.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Rob's book again is, "Why Should Anyone Work Here? What it Takes to Create an Authentic Organization," and it's co-authored with Gareth Jones. I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.