Page 148 - HBR's 10 Must Reads 20180 - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

LET YOUR WORKERS REBEL

boundaries within which employees will be free to deviate from the
status quo. For instance, the way a manager leads her team can be up
to her as long as her behavior is aligned with the company’s purpose
and values and she delivers on that purpose.
Morning Star’s colleague letters of understanding provide such
boundaries. They clearly state employees’ goals and their responsi-
bility to deliver on the organization’s purpose but leave it up to in-
dividual workers to decide how to achieve those goals. Colleagues
with whom an employee has negotiated a CLOU will let him know if
his actions cross a line.
Brazil’s Semco Group, a 3,000-employee conglomerate, similarly
relies on peer pressure and other mechanisms to give employees
considerable freedom while making sure they don’t go overboard.
The company has no job titles, dress code, or organizational charts.
If you need a workspace, you reserve it in one of a few satellite offices
scattered around São Paulo. Employees, including factory workers,
set their own schedules and production quotas. They even choose
the amount and form of their compensation. What prevents em-
ployees from taking advantage of this freedom? First, the company
believes in transparency: All its financial information is public, so
everyone knows what everyone else makes. People who pay them-
selves too much have to work with resentful colleagues. Second,
employee compensation is tied directly to company profits, creating
enormous peer pressure to keep budgets in line.
Ritz-Carlton, too, excels in balancing conformity and nonconfor-
mity. It depends on 3,000 standards developed over the years to en-
sure a consistent customer experience at all its hotels. These range
from how to slice a lime to which toiletries to stock in the bathrooms.
But employees have considerable freedom within those standards
and can question them if they see ways to provide an even better cus-
tomer experience. For instance, for many years the company has al-
lowed staff members to spend up to $2,000 to address any customer
complaint in the way they deem best. (Yes, that is $2,000 per em-
ployee per guest.) The hotel believes that business is most successful
when employees have well-defined standards, understand the rea-
soning behind them, and are given autonomy in carrying them out.

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