trust and be epic

Trust and be Epic

November 2010

I don't know about you, but I'm still hungover a bit from the last two years. I was closing my business of seven years in '09 so when 2010 came along with the promise of a steady paycheck from what seemed to be a company on the verge of greatness and dipped in a dynamic culture - I was elated. What I did not know was how the merger and moving our office into the new space and new coworkers would effect our culture. Even with the new disco ball and beer runs the original culture was gone.

There was a lot of work to do and the buzz words from leadership were "integration" and "be epic".  Knowing what it's like to run a business, I gave the new situation breathing room. As the buzz words changed to "restructure" and "top 10 percent", I hung in there. The restructure changed my title and put two people between me and leadership.While the rest of my team was up in arms, I smiled and made the best of it; this was just part of the growing pains of combined greatness and eventually leadership will turn some of it's attention inward and prove they truly cared about the people, after all every business owner knows that their people help crate the greatness and are their greatest asset.

Let's go back to the "10 percent" buzz word. I was sitting in a meeting where leadership explained the new model for measuring the companies success via it's people. They said, with a straight face, the new model for ensuring employee satisfaction was to focus on the "top 10 percent" of their employees. Dead silence filled the room. One guy, started counting the folks in the meeting, "10", he exclaimed, "so leadership is only interested in one of us in this room?" The next question was how do they deicide who gets to be in that one in the top ten?

There was no answer that soothed the burning question - every one of us (not making that decision) sat there mortified. Most of the people, really talented, funny and skilled, are gone - we are all scattered across various companies in San Francisco.