Which Type of Company would you Rather Work For?
I recently stumbled across an article in Fast Company about a management “guru” named Fernando Flores. His methods consist of developing team cohesion and developing leaders through “total honesty”. This honesty often means being a jerk.
Can you imagine working in a setting where it’s acceptable to say things like this to your co-workers (all from Flores’ seminar)?
“Hope is the raw material of losers.”I can’t tell you how fast I’d be gone from a workplace like this. Life’s too short to put up with jerks.
“You are going to be fired from this company if you don’t transform yourself. You will be fired because all of the others in this room are committed to transformation, and they need you with them. If everybody here says you are full of shit, and you don’t acknowledge it or see how that assessment serves you, you are doomed. You should be happy and grateful for these assessments.”
“You are blind, egotistical, and inwardly focused. I can’t challenge you without your getting defensive.”
“Ryan, you are a Dilbert leader. You never take a stand. And here you are listening to Felix, who is resignation personified.”
Fast Company’s storytelling makes me vomit. Harriet Rubin, the author, likens Flores to esteemed management thinker Peter Drucker.
This is Flores’s realm, his gift, his invention. What Peter Drucker did for organizations, Fernando Flores is doing for individuals. Before Peter Drucker, there was no science of management. Before Fernando Flores, there was no science of organizational transformation.What a joke. Telling people bluntly and rudely what you think about them is not a gift or an invention. It’s another fad preached by a “rockstar guru” that promises results to sub-par managers if you follow the One True Way.
Drucker was an esteemed professor, wrote more than 30 books about management, and mentored some of the giants in business. Flores has done… what? Certainly he hasn’t pioneered the science of organizational transformation - there are no mentions of repeatable process along with quantifiable improvements.
If you want your co-workers to improve, honesty is important. But being an asshole has been proven to be an ineffective management strategy. So why even bother beating this drum? 21st century companies focus on outcomes, connections, people, and creativity.
Contrast Flores and the companies who pay him money to berate their people with Netflix. They’ve been on my radar as an institutional innovator for a few years now. People have been paying more attention since a recent Netflix internal document (that’s well-worth reading) has made its way around the web at lightning speed:
People are enthusiastic about Netflix because there aren’t enough companies who practice what Netflix does. They treat employees like adults, trust them to make the decisions that you’re paying them (equitably) to make, and has systems to get rid of people who don’t fit the culture.
Now you tell me… which type of company would you be able to better create meaning for yourself? Which place would you be happier? Is the future of meaningful work at companies who hire people like Flores? Or at places like Netflix?
