Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company

One of the strangest things I've seen in my career (and I use that term lightly) is how companies react to bad morale and attrition - they meddle even more than they did to cause the bad morale and attrition in the first place.

Kathy Sierra has an, as usual, excellent post on her insightful web log, Creating Passionate Users, on the topic - Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!  The title isn't quite as useful advice as this quote:

The company should behave just like a good user interface -- support people in doing what they're trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way.

Whenever we see government increasing regulation to improve competition in an industry, we wonder how they can be so blind.  Similarly, often it's hard for companies to know exactly what all their employees do.  And, as they try formalise the process of their employees doing their work, the overhead and the reduced employee satisfaction causes things that used to get done not to get done.  And they see this as a reason to place more formality in things - which the employees see as getting in their way, and ultimately leads to them being unhappy.

Growth stages are the most opportune and dangerous for companies - a whole whack of people being added, changing the culture as new elements and ideas are added.  New ways of thinking of things.  New values.  The danger comes in the need for growth lowering the criteria for entry - less referrals from existing staff, more unknowns, more pressure to hire fast enough to meet requirements.  A few bad apples get by, leading to measures to halt the damage.  These measures change the culture too, potentially alienating the original employees, and also potentially scaring away the people most like the original employees from working there from the vibe they pick up in the interviews.  Attrition starts.  And then beatings will continue until morale improves...

I've had two pretty good interventions in my work life.  I've had many more bad interventions.  The good interventions sought to find the root of the problem - the misunderstandings and unvoiced thoughts.  The bad interventions sought to find someone to blame, and to try treat the symptoms.

Some of the worst interventions were enforced team building exercises.  Or "bunny hugging", as Barry would call it.  Or exercises in exactly how fake we can be when being fake will make the pain end faster.  Not that these exercises didn't help solidify existing alliances between employees, or facilitate the making of new friends - it's just that they didn't have the ability to seek the root problems.  If anything, the solidification of existing alliances and the forming of others usually come at the expense of the company, not to its ultimate benefit, as the topic of conversation is usually the stupidity of the company to try use bunny-hugging to "fix" things.

When you enter an environment where one is forced to sing happy birthday to colleagues on their birthday, or forced to attend a meeting to celebrate an employee you haven't even met having a baby, you have to wonder what underlying problems the company has had, and the likelihood that they still exist.

If you want to make someone happy, make it possible for them to do their job the way they want to do them - for a lot of people, that means doing it properly.  Take them seriously when they talk.  If they complain about the light levels where they work, don't simply lament the situation - do something about it.  If they express disinterest in something, try find a way for them to avoid it.  If they think a particular book would be useful, buy it.  Be the facilitator of their success, filter of outside forces, and the deliverer of praise.  Sure, you can't accommodate your employees every time, but make sure they think that you're doing what you can to avoid the company making their life difficult.

(By the way, I'm not saying that team-building is a bad thing.  It's just that if it's being done in response to identifiable problems, then it's likely not going to help.)