#business practices

[unbfacts]

At Costco's Issaquah headquarters, all 7,000 corporate employees, including the CEO, are assigned cubicles, with the CEO's being slightly larger.

[bobauthorman]

RWBY Pool Episode

Man in an ugly, colorful shirt: "Welcome to the Closet Ocean Resort, where you can get a taste of the sea hundreds of miles from the coast".

Ruby: I can't believe Vacuo has a water park!!!

Weiss: I can't believe the park is underground.

Yang: Yeah, hey, mister, what's the deal with this place?

Man: Well, originally this indoor water park was built aboveground. Then there was that big sandstorm a few years back, and here we are.

Blake: And you're still running it? That's almost impressive.

Man: Well, when the company was unwilling to close the place down after the disaster, given the high rate of customers we get.

Weiss: I guess having a swimming hole in the desert is a bit of niche market. How much does the resort make?

Man: Well, officially, we're about 30,000 lien in the red.

Ruby: Wait, you're losing money? But you just said you get a lot of business.

Man: Well, the company is, or was, an Atlas corporation. And no one in the kingdom wants to give Atlas any business. So, the local customers bribe the staff to let them in without paying admission.

Blake: I guess that's one way to support workers and also stick it to big business.

Yang: Are you a local?

Man: Actually, I'm from Atlas. I used to be in the accounting department before I was 'promoted' to branch management after I yammy'd on a VP, thanks to some tainted donuts in the break room.

Weiss: That sounds like retaliation. You should report this to HR.

(Brief pause. Weiss and Man burst out laughing)

Man: 'Report to HR'... ha, good one.

Yang: Y'know, I'm surprised the Vacuans are okay with this place, considering all the water it requires.

Man: That's cause we don't use fresh water. Our pools are full of seawater shipped in directly from the ocean. They use one of those firefighter planes to scoop the saltwater out directly. Then they dump directly into a hatch on the ceiling.

Ruby:That's so cool...!

Blake: I guess that explains where that came from.

Man: Yeah, musta gotten caught up in the latest shipment. Could you take care of that? Preferably, before adult swim ends.

[dekaydk]

Contract signing…in person?

Is this how they do it in Thailand? I mean, I barely remember the time before signing a business agreement electronically (Docusign or Adobe or the like) and with someone from Legal and Finance in the loop. Family companies do it differently? It's more personal this way?

Not complaining, just curious.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Ok, my thoughts on the Colur situation. Colur has been basically running a sham business for the last few years. Whatever she’s been doing since the second pre-order, is nothing short of a scam. People ordered their dolls, and waited, she got the dolls, but never shipped them. It doesn’t matter if intentional or not, she hasn’t sent these dolls to her paying customers, in any sensible time frame, ever since she got them. It’s basically a very clear scam at this point. And no excuse is going to cut it, because as a business, she is, to say it kinda coldly, obligated to deliver the product paid for. If she can’t afford the shipping, because of bad decisions, it’s not something that should be put on the buyers responsibility. That said, it’s no excuse to allegedly bully, or harass her. It’s incredibly vile to bully someone, and people who actually did it, need to sit the fuck down. Being rude, or mean, isn’t the right response to someone dodging their responsibilities. If people are calling genuine criticism, or complaints, bullying/harassment though, then that’s also just pathetic, since there’s a clear line between the two. In my opinion, I think people who got blown off, after having paid for their dolls, and everything, and still haven’t received them, they should take the legal route, and report Colur for fraudulent business practices, and just go the legal way. Even if that causes her to have to file for bankruptcy, private, or as a business, then that’s on her, and her horrendous business practices. And I’m genuinely surprised more people haven’t done so already, because that’d force her to either refund, or finally ship all the dolls ordered. Maybe it has to do with the doll collecting culture, but I honestly think many people are honestly kinda naive, in that they just forgive companies, and artists, if the completely fuck up, and just keep supporting them, instead of looking out for their own interest, and reporting them/demanding a refund for an item they haven’t received.

~Anonymous

[imkeepinit]

YouTube will run ads on smaller creators' videos without paying them

[hamiltonlindley]

Coaching Employees to Improve Performance and Engagement

There are two donut shops near my office. The donuts taste identical. The interiors are similar. The locations are equally convenient. But at one donut shop, the employees mumble and are more interested in the cash register buttons than the customer in front of them. At the other store, the workers make eye contact, engage in friendly small talk, and serve me with a smile.

I also noticed that one of the stores had an angry, frowning woman behind the counter wearing a tag that said “manager.” She barks at employees, telling them that they didn’t know what they were doing. She focused her efforts on command and control. Guess which location she was in.

Leaders as coaches

Our leaders influence everyone around them. Innovative companies realize that managers can’t have all the technical answers when industries are in constant disruption. Many businesses are moving from the traditional command and control model to promoting coaching instead. A coach asks questions rather than providing answers, supports employees rather than judges them, and encourages employees’ development instead of directing them. In this model, employees learn how to adjust to regularly changing conditions in ways that unleash innovation, energy, and commitment. The leaders who coach aren’t know-it-alls. They are learn-it-alls.

Coaching feels too soft for managers who tackle performance problems by telling employees what to do. It makes them uncomfortable because it strips them from asserting their power. So these managers oppose coaching. In a leadership style study, leaders ranked coaching as their least-favorite method, telling the polling company that they didn’t have time for the slow work of educating workers and encouraging their growth.

By coaching employees, blame gives way to advice and education, and outside motivators are displaced by self-motivation. Obstacles fall, teams build, and change is welcomed instead of feared.

The GROW Model of Leadership Coaching

The GROW model of coaching involves four steps that give this method its name (Goal, Reality, Options, Will). It is effective because it requires educating yourself to think in new ways about your purpose as a leader. This model involves managers responding to worker’s dilemmas by asking them questions like:

What are you trying to do?

What’s working?

What’s not working?

How can I help?

What have you already thought of?

What really matters here?

You’re on the right track when you ask good questions and assume that you don’t have all the answers.

The GROW action steps are:

Goal.

The goal is what the person expects from the conversation right now, not the project’s ultimate completion. People don’t do this naturally in most discussions. An excellent approach is to ask something like, “When you leave this conversation, what do you want that you don’t have now?”

Reality.

These questions assess how the employee perceives the situation in a nonjudgmental way. As a coach, you should ask questions rooted in “what, when, where, and who.” In these conversations, don’t ask why. The focus of reality must be facts. Asking why calls employees to explore ideas and motivations instead of facts. That can create self-justification, which is counterproductive in these discussions. A good question to ask is, “What are the important things we need to know?” Listen mindfully to the response. What are they missing? This action is crucial because it prevents them from jumping to conclusions. The coach’s job here is to ask the correct questions and step out of the way.

Options.

Your job as a coach is to encourage people to think about solutions they haven’t considered. They often feel stuck. “There’s nothing I can do,” they may say. Or “I’m split between X and Y.” Or “I have one option.”

Ask something like, “What would you do if you had a magic wand?” That question is liberating. It promotes people thinking in productive, fresh ways. Once they’ve expanded their perspective, your role is to help them deepen their ideas by encouraging them to examine these new options’ risks and rewards.

Will.

Ask, “What will you do?” This prompts the employee to talk about the next steps to execute the plan that emerged from the coaching. If they appear to be hesitant about implementation, then ask them to rate themselves, “On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you going to execute this plan?”  

Is there ever a time that command and control leadership is better?

For teams that must meet precise deadlines and specific procedures, a command and control style is beneficial. But it doesn’t promote the growth of individual team members. Leaders who have invested time coaching employees will likely have better results when projects need a command and control leadership style.

Conclusion

You have about 100 conversations a year that are so important that they could change your life path and those you coach. Employees need the skills to unlock previously buried issues, reveal new options, and expose fresh insights. Managers as coaches draw energy, creativity, and learning from the people they work with. Instead of one brain driving the show, coaching combines the whole team’s minds and trusts them to achieve exceptional performance.

[quotesfromscripture]

You are to buy from your countryman on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And he is to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what he is really selling you is the number of crops.

Leviticus 25:15-16 NIV