Do You Trust Your People?
The Global Leadership Summit is a two-day event that is telecast LIVE from Willow’s campus near Chicago every August to more than 600+ locations in North America. Throughout the fall, Summit events take place in an additional 128 countries—translated into 60 languages. This is the 23rd annual Global Leadership Summit being broadcast around the world to more than 400K people.
Below are my notes for Laszlo Bock:
Laszlo worked as a tutor, teacher, baker, lifeguard, librarian, etc. Laszlo observed that most people have a gap between their values and where they actually live. This frustrated him early in his career and led him to a career in HR. He went to work with start-up Google to run People Operations. HR is one of the hardest jobs there is. And everyone thinks they can do your job better than you do.
You spend more time at work than anything else. This should mean something. You must find the best people, grow them as fast as you can and keep them for as long as possible.
He eventually left Google to start Humu.
- Our objective is to make work better for everyone everywhere through science, machine learning and a little bit of love.
- Work 9 hours
- Sleep 8 hours
- Family 3 hours
- Friends 2 hours
- Entertainment 1 hour
- Eat 1 hour
- The experience of work should be meaningful, it should matter, it should be better.
- Treat your people right and they will do amazing things for you.
- We have far more in common than separates us.
- We all want the same things, a little happiness, a little meaning, to have a voice in the things we do.
We all want to be valued and have a voice in what we do. A leader needs to give that to their people.
Laszlo’s 10 Work Rules!
The core principle is to treat your people right and they will take care of you.
1. Give your work meaning.
- The most important thing.
- You must have a great mission. A mission that matters.
- 1/3 of people feel meaning at work
- 1/3 of people do because they have to get $$ to live
- 1/3 of people see it as game to get to the top
- People remember the duty of the job but forget the joy.
- 4 Steps to give your work meaning.
1. You must figure out the “Why” of the work you are doing.
- Figure out your “WHY”. Post on you desk, in your calendar, on your mirror so that you are consistently reminded of your “WHY”
2. Go to people around you and ask why they are doing the work they are doing. What are their motives?
3. Bring in people whose lives have been impacted by your work in a positive way and have them tell their stories.
4. Do all 3 over and over again. It is easy to forget the “why” in the hurry of life.
- Meaning Matters!
- Told an example of how life-change stories impacted fundraising by a +400% rate. This is the impact of connecting work to meaning.
- What is your Why?
2. Trust your people.
- One big mistake many companies make is not trusting their people.
- They will repay you with good, hard work.
- The only single thing that the academics have ever proved that drives performance is having a goal. Make sure people know the goal and how to achieve it.
- AT Google everyone had a goal and everyone could see everyone’s goals on the intranet.
- If you show people information they will make better decisions.
- If you believe people are fundamentally good they will do the right thing. They will reward you by being more creative and adding value to the organization.
- Research has proven that organizations with High Control & Less Freedom=Lower Production, Lower Wages & Higher Cost. Conversely, Self-run=Greater Freedom, Greater Productivity, Greater Wages & Lower Costs.
- What drives performance? “Give more freedom to your people than you are comfortable with.”
3. Hire only people who are better than you.
- Recruiting and hiring is so important because that is how you transform an organization.
- We all think we are good at hiring but we all do a poor job at it.
- When you meet somebody you make a snap assessment. Then you spend the rest of your time confirming your assessment during the interview.
- We tend to hire people whom we have commonalities with.
- All our commonalities don’t tell us who the person really is.
- Don’t let the person doing the interviewing do the hiring, have them write notes and someone else read the notes and make the hiring decision. This takes away our bias that hinders us making the best hiring decisions.
- Find out the thing that drives that person.
- You have to make a commitment to hire only people that are better than you.
- Hire great people and then give the freedom.
- Give more freedom to your people than you are comfortable with.
- More freedom makes people happier and they stay longer.
4. Don’t confuse development with managing performance.
5. Focus on the two tails.
6. Be frugal and generous.
7. Pay “unfairly”
8. Nudge
9. Manage the rising expectations.
10. Enjoy! And then go back to No.1.
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