SMRs and AMRs

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Hiring the best workers and paying above industry average vastly improves productivity

Three Good Hires? He’ll Pay More for One Who’s Great

New York Times

This interview with Kip Tindell, chief executive of the Container Store, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. Tell me about your most important leadership lessons.

A. I studied a lot of philosophy at Jesuit High School in Dallas. One of the things that really struck me was that most people seem to think that there’s a separate code of conduct in business from your personal life. And I always believed they should be the same.

So we have what we call foundation principles. They are talked about and emphasized around here constantly. They’re all almost corny, a little bit Golden Rule-ish, but it causes two things. It causes everybody to act as a unit. Even though we’re sort of liberating everybody to choose the means to the ends, we all agree on the ends, and the foundation principles are what cause us to agree on the ends.

As a result, we have people unshackled to choose any means to those ends, but it’s not mayhem because our foundation principles kind of tie us together.

Q. Talk more about those principles.

A. We preach a lot here that team is one of the most beautiful of all human experiences. You do great things together, and you go home at night feeling wonderful about what great things you accomplished that day. That’s what people want, and that’s what wise and sophisticated leaders help cultivate and know that people want. Every bad boss you or I have ever had thinks that what people want is the exact opposite of that.

The way we create a place where people do want to come to work is primarily through two key points. One of our foundation principles is that leadership and communication are the same thing. Communication is leadership. So we believe in just relentlessly trying to communicate everything to every single employee at all times, and we’re very open. We share everything. We believe in complete transparency. There’s never a reason, we believe, to keep the information from an employee, except for individual salaries.

I always make it a point to give the same presentation I give at the board meeting to the staff, and then that trickles down to everybody in the company. I know that occasionally some of that information falls into the wrong hands, but that’s a small price to pay for having employees who know they know just about everything.

(More here.)

1 Comments:

Anonymous Morocco Bama said...

I'm a Dallas Jesuit College Prep grad and I can say, unequivocally, this is complete rubbish. I liken Corporatism to Stalinism. It's a Totalitarian structure with lipstick....but it's still a pig, and this is pure propaganda straight out of the pages of our very own Pravda.

1:43 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home