Why some companies buzz with energy and others don’t – B
This is a half-hour podcast but this exercise only uses the first one third of it, just over 9 minutes. You may fill in either 20 gaps with the words you hear, or 40 by continuing. There were a few slips in the text which have mostly been corrected to correct English.
Lynda Gratton: Why some companies buzz with energy and others don’t
I’m Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and I’m talking about my new book, Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces and Organisations Buzz with Energy – and Others Don’t.
You …………. 1 have to go into an organisation to realise how far and how quickly they have changed over the last ten years. There’s a huge challenge around different generations. Generation X, for example, 25-year olds, want something different, ……………. 2, interesting. They want to work in a more relaxed way. Many of us will be working until we are over 75 at work and so there are a whole set of interesting challenges around demography. At the same time, the way that we run organisations is completely changed. Think for a moment about Linux, an ……………………. 3 platform that many of us use in our organisations. Remember that Linux is entirely …………………….. 4 volunteers, something we wouldn’t have even dreamt ………………. 5 ten years ago.
And where people used to have full-time jobs that they did all the time, more and more of us are working in projects where we come into organisations and go out. What does this mean for ………………………… 6? Well, what I’ve seen in my 20 years looking at organisations is that we’re moving increasingly from a command-and-control way of running organisations, where rules are important, where ……………………….. 7 are important, to one much more based on coaching, on relationships, on networks, on conversations, on innovations. That’s very fascinating to me and over the last four years I’ve really looked …………………….. 8 at how we can think about our new organisations. What is the new organisational reality and how can organisations respond?
One of the things that I noticed when I started researching on organisations is that sometimes when you go into a company it feels almost like The Big Freeze. You know, people aren’t happy, they’re not talking to each other, they’re not being innovative, their ideas aren’t being communicated. And other times, as soon as you go into a company you can feel a hotspot. People are energised, they’re excited, they’re working on meaningful things, they’re loving working with each other, they feel great. Those hotspots are absolutely ……………………. 9 and over the last couple of years I’ve looked really carefully at what a hotspot is, why they …………………. 10 and what each one of us can do to ………………… 11 that we create more hotspots in our organisations.
So, what I want to talk about now is to really ……………………. 12 on teams and energy. I want you to think about a time when you’ve been in a hotspot. Think about a time when you’ve felt very excited, when you’ve worked with people on something that you really loved doing; think about how that felt for you, think about what emotions were associated with it. The question I want to ask you to think …………….. 13, wouldn’t it be great if more of your work was spent in hotspots and less time was spent in The Big Freeze, when you felt uninterested, when you felt as if nothing meaningful was happening in your work?
Now, our research shows that it is actually possible to increase the times when you’re in a hotspot and it’s possible also for organisations to build hotspots. And what I would like to talk about now is how you do that.
One of the first things we found about organisations where hotspots seem to thrive is that they were often places where people had what I’d like to call a co-operative ……………………….. 14 ,where people felt as if it was okay to co-operate with each other, they felt good about that. They felt as if working with others in a ……………………. 15 way was something that was important to them.
Now, the challenge there is many of our companies have become very competitive. They’re built with tournaments, …………………. 16 systems pit people against each other and it gets very difficult, therefore, to really be co-operative. And these companies that are competitive, tournament-based, really create The Big Freeze. And the question really, I think, for me, and indeed for you, is how do you create an organisation where people feel co-operative? And what we found is there are many things that an organisation can do to create a place where co-operation ……………………. 17. For example, you can think about the way that you coach and train people. In fact, our research has shown that the most important human resource practice associated with a co-operative culture is the extent to which people are ……………………. 18 and mentored. So really think about whether you have coaching and mentoring practices in your organisation, do you have means by which people show they ……………… 19 ………….. ………………… 20 ?
To continue:
The second thing we found around a co-operative mindset is the way that senior executives behave seems to be absolutely crucial. People watch really carefully what they see senior executives doing and if senior executives behave in a highly uncooperative way, if they’re badmouthing their …………………………. 21 , if they find it difficult to work co-operatively with others then that rôle model has an ……………………. 22 ………………….. 23 on the rest of the organisation.
So to build a co-operative mindset the first thing you need to do is to think about coaching. The second thing you need to do is to think about the way your senior executives are working with each other and help them and you understand that your behaviour sends out really important rôle models to the rest of the organisation.
There’s one more thing you might want to think about when you’re thinking about building a co-operative mindset, and we saw that at Goldman Sachs. One of the really fascinating things about Goldman Sachs is its recruitment process and ………………….. 24 who’s been through that recruitment process knows very well what it’s like. Basically, if you apply ……………… 25 a job at Goldman Sachs you can anticipate ………………….. 26 being interviewed about 40 times. Now, that seems sort of ……………………………… 27 on the face of it, but the truth is that what they’re doing at Goldman Sachs, what the executives are doing at Goldman Sachs is that they’re screening out people who are not capable …………. 28 with other people and they’re ……………………………. 29 people who are uncooperative. Because Goldman Sachs realise that one of the reasons that they’re as ……………………. 30as they are is it’s not a company of individuals, it’s a company of relationships and teams. And they begin to find out whether you’re relationship-orientated at the very point in which they’re recruiting you.
So the first thing to develop hotspots is strive to create a co-operative mindset. Think about the culture, think about your ……………….. 31 – particularly coaching – think about the way your senior executives behave, and think about the way that you’re recruiting and training people to be co-operative. And that’s absolutely crucial for a hotspot but it certainly isn’t enough. I mean, you know and can think about times when you’ve been in an organisation which is very co-operative but which, frankly, feels more like a country club – everybody likes each other, they’re all having a lot of fun – but nothing ………………………….32
So the second thing that’s really important in a hotspot is that you have to encourage people to work across …………………… 33. Now, why is that so important? Well, our research has shown that when you work with people you know very well, about ……………… 34 % of what you talk about you’ve already talked about. In a sense you ……………………….. 35 recycle old knowledge. Now actually, that is a good thing if you are people who are real experts and who want to talk about the same thing ………………………………………. 36. But if you want to be innovative then that’s not such a good thing. So to create a hotspot one of the things we found, and you may want to think back to the hotspot that you were thinking ……………… 37, my ………………. 38 is that often that hotspot came because you met somebody you’d never met before. You need to bring strangers together to ……………….. 39 hotspots. Often the people that you know the most and spend the most time ………………….40 are not the places and times when hotspots arise.
(One of the things that you need to think about is ……)
To continue…..