Think of a company you want to work for… Goldman? Apple? Google so you can ride those bikes you saw on The Internship? Alright let me stop you.

No, none of these company are what my title is talking about. While they might be ok to work for, good pay, maybe some fun, they aren’t the model company. Want to know what to look for? First try out what Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg called ‘may well be the most important document to ever come out of [Silicon Valley]’ (GQ). Netflix itself might resemble the very values and organizational behavior all start-ups, and some corporations, should emulate.

Some things might catch your eye, like the unlimited vacation days, sick days, or choose-your-own-hours, but its more than that. What sets Netflix apart is their 9 values which, while might come across as common sense, not many companies actually achieve.

The slidedeck was published in 2013 by the head of Netflix, Reed Hastings. Its over 100 pages long but only has a few sentences max per slide, making it an easy read. A link for your reading is below. I invite you to see the similarities and differences between their beliefs and your ‘dream’ company’s beliefs.

 

http://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf

With the New England Patriots playing in their 7th Super Bowl in 17 years in a few hours, I find it important to understand how such a dynasty could occur. What is the biggest difference in the behavior of good organizations compared to the bad ones? The NFL is known for being one of the hardest sports to have consistent success in (take this for instance: the past two Super Bowl reps last year did not even make the playoffs this year).

However, there are two teams that have this kind of success being the Patriots and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Pittsburgh holds the record with Super Bowl wins at 6 while the Patriots are in the tail-end of perhaps the greatest stretch in the sport’s history. But what makes them so different than the snake-bitten franchises like Detroit or Cleveland? What behavior drives these organizations to succeed where most have failed? What organizational behavior is key to success in the NFL?

As stated in my recent post, great leaders make great futures for their organizations. It’s no coincidence that the two owners of the Patriots and Steelers, Robert Kraft and the Rooneys respectively, are considered the best in the business. They make the best decisions on who to hire and who to fire.

But the best organizations don’t make those decisions often. Take for instance that Belichick, coach of the Patriots, has been at the helm for 17 years while the Steelers have had 3 head coaches since 1969. That is impeccable. Put this in comparison of the aforementioned Browns: they have hired 3 head coaches in the last 4 years. 

Hirings and firings produce a level of uneasiness in an organization; this prevents the employees from fulfilling the second level of Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs: job security. If the employees have no belief in job security, they’ll focus more on not getting fired than doing a good job. This is turn makes overall productivity go down, resulting in poor performance across the board. Then the culture turns dreadful, creating a toxic environment renowned across the lands (see any perennial losers in sports or Cleveland).

However, if employees know they aren’t one mistake away from losing a job, they can take risks.

The Rooneys and Kraft are known for being good owners because they often choose to not overreact to any one incident. This lets their employees and staff feel comfortable knowing they have some kind of job security. They let employees focus on their jobs and give them some leeway in terms of responsibility. Thus, it allows employees to focus on fulfilling higher needs based on Mazlow’s model. This is why the Patriots are at the Super Bowl and why Cleveland has never been to one. 

Last summer, there was a cafe in Port Carling called Legends. They were hiring a dishwasher. I searched for a job. They hired me on the spot which I found odd. The chef took me through a walk-through the next day. He showed and taught me all the processes of the kitchen. On my way out, he said to me ‘this place is toxic dude. The owners are f*@cking nuts.’ That was my introduction to the organizational behavior in this fine establishment.

Over the course of the one week I worked with that chef, his behaviors started to turn into my behavior. A rush stressed him to the point of a near mental breakdown. He resented customers and became uncaring about the quality and the cleanliness. As the only other employee in the kitchen, I started to mirror the same feelings. They have to be wrong, difficult, picky if anything was sent back. They must be wrong. Between the two of us, that was the norm.

But he eventually snapped. The norms and environment created by him broke him. His friend came in and took over the situation.

Those last few weeks I spent there, I noticed the norms changing. Food came out better than before, the kitchen started to get cleaned, and the customer miraculously knew what they were talking about. There was no argument, no resentment, and no breakdowns. This serves as an example of the importance of leaders; they make the norms in the kitchen and can turn around a family business’ future.

Chicago Style SEO is a online marketing firm that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO) and contains a blog completing their business. In this blog, they explore issues and topics pertaining to marketing through new media practices like Facebook and YouTube. I thought it would be useful because it teaches us things maybe Sauder wouldn’t such as strategies to better compete on YouTube.

They talk about how important length, branding, ads, and even trolling is to the amount of views you get on videos. Having a cousin who runs a YouTube channel, he told me another important thing is to work with other YouTubers to ‘cross-pollinate’ subscribers and viewers. People join others who provide the same content in order to strengthen their respective fan-bases. I thought about how this advice could apply to business.

The first thing that popped into my mind was Pepsi and Coca-Cola joining forces to ‘cross-pollinate’ customers. That’s collusion and illegal. But, starting a YouTube channel is almost like building a small business: find a niche in the market, appeal to your audience, spark word-of-mouth marketing. You have new customers (viewers) and regulars (subscribers) who will generate money for you depending on how much ‘business’ (online traffic) you generate. Branding is so important YouTubers always dedicate the last 30 seconds on videos to saying ‘hit the like button and subscribe’ almost like a mini commercial for them. Also, you need a PoD in whatever field you provide content for. Are you a gamer? You need something to make you stand apart from the rest in order to generate more traffic and make more money off ad-revenue.

Marketing is also a bit tricky since you can’t run a typical ad-campaign on

a website. They need to be a bit more creative than that. Many small-time YouTubers help bigger YouTubers for a shout out; this increases exposure for small-timers and improves the content of the big sharks. It’s almost like an internship. Sometimes, YouTubers create merchandise to diversify their revenue streams although they have to be careful not to push it too hard. They also have to keep creating something new as peddling out the same content everyday would deal death for channels.

Anyways, check out the website and link if you are interested in it.

https://www.chicagostyleseo.com/2015/08/11-youtube-strategies/

 

On this post, I will examine two blog posts by fellow peers and provide my take on them. This will primarily be my opinion.

Blog Post #1: You Should Give A Damn About Your Bad Reputation by Megan Binder

Right off the bat, a very opinionated piece about corporations committing heinous acts and unethical behavior. She accuses two big companies, Apple and Toyota, for exploiting workers and endangering their drivers (respectively).

In the case of Apple, it’s 100% true and well-known that the working conditions in China are disgusting and the wages sickening; however, we as consumers do not care. Apple’s brand is so massive that any scandal or news story exposing their lack of morals are immediately and blindly protected by fans. How were sales effected after the story about suicide nets was released? Eh, not that much; this isn’t because what they did wasn’t wrong or media turning a blind eye, it’s because Apple consumers just don’t care.

Toyota and other car manufacturers have a long history of letting faulty products sell. I talked about this in my previous blog post where faulty cars caused multiple deaths before the government decided to intervene. But again, we don’t care. We don’t care that Honda cheaped out on a $2 part; we don’t care if their employees die early deaths; we do not care about the latest recall because we would buy a Toyota anyways. That’s because it isn’t in the public’s eye for long; another story about an actress going to rehab or some new disease will divert our attention as they sweep it under the rug.

Blog Post #2: Creating Shared Value: too good to be true? By Sakiko Toriya

Ok, so this tackles the issues of the idea of shared value: primarily that it ignores how society’s problem got here. In a broad sense, shared value almost seems like a diversion, and a poor one at that. A cynical view could be that the businesses have some corporate interest in giving back. McDonald’s sponsoring youth soccer teams? I don’t know if that excuses them God-only-knows

what to millions of kids after the game (I mean really, what is pink slime?); it definitely doesn’t fix the amount of obesity caused by fast food. The point is, corporations should try to correct the negative externality they create in the world; I just don’t know if what they are doing is really helping the problems they have created. A better way to create shared value is spending more money for sustainable, environmentally-friendly, healthy inputs… but that would hurt their bottom line.

Word Count: 447

 

Its official: the shared economy is upon us. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Lyft have changed the game forever. It was once where we had to call a business to get our goods or services (unless a friend or neighbor could do the same thing); now, there’s an app for that.

Shared economy focuses its idea around collaborative consumption wherefore people can fully utilize a highly priced product like say, a house or car (investopedia.com). What incentivizes people is that it turns your house or car from a source of debt to a source of income. It’s easier now than ever to become a taxi driver in your spare time with Uber, and rent out your property when you’re away with Airbnb. Also, it’s cheaper for consumers than conventional services and goods because it creates a more competitive market. This is its value proposition: break traditional monopolies and create more value out of products.

Positive externalities also come out of this. Juliet Schor points out that ‘secondary markets reduce demand for new goods, so footprints go down’ or at least they should (greattransition.org). (Go to the article, it’s very illuminating). What she is quick to point out is that not a lot of studies have been done about that. This is probably because things like Uber are so new and are finally big enough to make a noticeable difference.

So why oppose it? The company relies on people to do their key activities for them. Businesses like Uber and Airbnb put their ‘employees’ in bad positions ‘who may not even realize what kinds of liabilities they’re taking on’ (washingtonpost.com). They are the key partners, revenue streams, and provide the resources. People buy the cars, the houses, the goods that sharing economy businesses offers. If one of the people gets in a crash, or their house gets totaled, for the most part they have to deal with it themselves; Uber and Airbnb does not provide insurance or workers comp. They also exploit loopholes in the laws (Uber and Lyft aren’t a taxi service technically) so that they can provide services for cheaper (a bit unfair). 

The shared economy fills an unrealized demand in the economy. It is possibly helping the environment and improves the flow of liquid cash to many more pockets. On the dark-side, if something goes wrong, only the consumers and contractors get hurt and the corporations get away, earning more profit by doing nothing. Perhaps the shared economy isn’t so different after all, and that is what makes me scared. 

I want to hear your thoughts on this. It’s a free pass to comment, use, or quote me in your blogs. I invite you to take it.

 

 

Word Count: 449

 

Works Cited

“Debating the Sharing Economy,”Great Transition Initiative (October 2014),http://www.greattransition.org/publication/debating-the-sharing-economy.)

 

Radcliffe, Brent. “Sharing Economy.” Investopedia. N.p., 11 July 2014.

Web. 15 Oct. 2016. <http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharing-economy.asp>.

 

Rampell, Catherine. “The Dark Side of ‘sharing Economy’ Jobs.”

            Washington Post. The Washington Post, 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 15 Oct.

2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell

-the-dark-side-of-sharing-economy-jobs/2015/01/26/4e05daec-a59f

-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html?utm_term=.797c00c4a8df>.

Oh boy some people could write books on this; I’ve got 450 words… Well 436 now.

 

“You could fill an entire MBA course with case studies of all the strategic blunders Yahoo has made”

-Quincy Larson, freecodecamp.com

It is true that some of the most important decisions are the ones not made; however, you might get left behind if you do it for too long. The fact is that Yahoo sat content, not wanting to actively seek for the next big thing. They had the opportunity to buy Google in 1998 for one million dollars (wired.com) but they turned it down and stubbornly denied any way they could improve. They thought they had a sustainable competitive advantage in search engines. What they needed to embrace was the transient advantage successful companies like Google and, once upon a time, Apple deployed or else, like Blackberry and AOL before it, Yahoo would fall to the wayside.

“Yahoo had two problems… easy money, and ambivalence about being a technology company.”

– Paul Graham, paulgraham.com in 2010

What always drives me crazy is when restaurants sell out; the food tastes like it was frozen, no new ideas were thought of, and it feels like the heart was ripped out of everyone. I always call that situation “when accountants take over” because the strategy seems to be saving a dollar in the short term. In turn, in the long term, that restaurant is ruined.

The same applies to Yahoo. Quincy Larson says that Yahoo fell for professional professionals; never in their history did the company have a visionary like Gates, Jobs, or even Ballmer at the helm after the creators left (freecodecamp.com). Without a strong leader, poor decisions were made and thus sent Yahoo into a spiral until most of their company value was from Alibaba. Execution of new products were poor which shows signs of ineffective operations, marketing was never able to make Yahoo more appealing than Google, and the financing team couldn’t make any smart investments. Overall, none of the executives at Yahoo contributed anything successful after the Alibaba purchase; it was just a matter of time before the former tech giant fell.

“It all started when Yahoo put acquisitions ahead of innovation in the dot-com days.”

– Steven Vaughan-Nichols, zdnet.com

From the top down, Yahoo’s failure was a given via its leadership and bullheadedness to change. Verizon bought the shell of a tech giant in what Forbes calls “(The) Saddest $5 Billion Deal In Tech History”. No moment of silence for another stubborn dinosaur.

 

Works Cited

By 1998, Yahoo Was the Beneficiary of a De Facto Ponzi Scheme. “What Happened to Yahoo.” What Happened to Yahoo. N.p., Aug. 2010. Web. 02 Oct. 2016.

Larson, Quincy. “The Rise and Fall (OK — mostly Fall) of Yahoo.” Freecodecamp. N.p., 25 July 2016. Web. 2 Oct. 2016. <https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-rise-and-fall-mostly-fall-of-yahoo-ddbceb44670c#.tpi2xqdlk>.

Vaughan-Nichols, Steven J. “The Rise and Fall of Yahoo | ZDNet.” ZDNet. N.p., 25 July 2016. Web. 02 Oct. 2016.

Vogelstein, Fred. “How Yahoo Blew It.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 1 Feb. 2007. Web. 02 Oct. 2016. <https://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/>.

 

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