{"id":909,"date":"2007-05-10T13:04:07","date_gmt":"2007-05-10T18:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/ubiquitous-communication\/"},"modified":"2007-05-10T13:04:08","modified_gmt":"2007-05-10T18:04:08","slug":"ubiquitous-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/ubiquitous-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Ubiquitous Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px\" height=\"99\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/05\/windowslivewriterubiquitouscommunication-9ea8ballot-box6.png?resize=99%2C99\" width=\"99\" align=\"left\"> Yesterday I posted on communication blindness.&nbsp; Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.careerjournal.com\/~r\/wsj\/career_journal\/~3\/115566537\/20070510-badal.html\" target=\"_blank\">Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy?<\/a>&nbsp; A stunning thought that I have never considered.&nbsp; Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary&#8217;s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited.<\/p>\n<p>Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>At first blush, this approach seems as if there is too much communication, too much anarchy and not enough command-and-control structure.&nbsp; We&#8217;ve never encountered a company that incorporates this management approach.  <\/p>\n<p>The article references some skepticism for this approach also:  <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Harry Katz, dean of Cornell University&#8217;s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, doubts a system like Ternary&#8217;s could work on a large scale. In bigger companies, &#8220;there&#8217;s an inevitable conflict of interest between managers and employees,&#8221; Mr. Katz says. General Motors Corp.&#8217;s Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., for instance, experimented with giving employees a strong voice in management, but later moved back to a more-traditional structure, he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>However, it is quite a testament to communication, isn&#8217;t it?&nbsp; Well, I was hooked until I got to this section of the article (my emphasis):  <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The repeated changes to Ternary&#8217;s pay scale last year demonstrate employee empowerment in action. The company shares financial data, including everyone&#8217;s salary, with all employees. In 2005, Bill Schofield proposed cutting the salaries of senior programmers, including his own, by 15%, and boosting compensation for junior programmers. The council agreed.  <\/p>\n<p>Then, last summer, Ternary ran into a cash crunch because some customers weren&#8217;t paying their bills on time. The strategy council slashed salaries by 22%. That rattled Chad Wolfe, a 29-year-old Canadian programmer who told his representative on the strategy team that he would have trouble paying his personal bills. <em>So the team devised no-interest loans for needy employees.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for me.&nbsp; As a Utilitarian I would fail wildly in this company.&nbsp; However, if we were helping them to hire more team members, we would certainly stress the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.selectmetrix.com\/Assessing_Motivations.html\" target=\"_blank\">Social motivation<\/a> in all hires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I posted on communication blindness.&nbsp; Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com&#8217;s Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy?&nbsp; A stunning thought that I have never considered.&nbsp; Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach. Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary&#8217;s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited. Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year. At first blush,&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/05\/ubiquitous-communication\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-compensation","category-team-management"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-eF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2485,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2011\/05\/it-is-all-about-communication\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":0},"title":"It Is All About Communication","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"May 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"From today\u2019s Herman Trend report (emphasis mine): The other highlights of the study are fascinating: the least happy of the generations is the Baby Boomers. They expressed the strongest discontent with their employers and the greatest frustration that their loyalty and hard work have been neither recognized nor rewarded. \u201cAlmost\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1797,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2008\/11\/10-ways-to-help-out-your-employees\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":1},"title":"10 Ways To Help Out Your Employees","author":"Lee Fratzke","date":"November 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"ManageSmarter has a good article that\u00a0provides 10 ways that you can help your employees through the economic crisis.\u00a0 There are some simple ideas on the list that a manager should do regardless of the economy.\u00a0 What better way to retain your employees than to show your appreciation for their efforts?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/how-to-manage-gen-x-and-gen-y\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":2},"title":"How To Manage Gen X and Gen Y","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"February 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"CareerBuilder.com's latest newsletter features Managing Outside Your Generation which discusses the differences in managing Gen X employees vs. Gen Y employees. The article is a good, hands-on read for any manager. To cut to the summary statement of the article: Generation X requires more training, whether on-the-job or through continued\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":534,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/12\/time-wasting-miscommunication\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":3},"title":"Time-Wasting Miscommunication","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"December 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The information topic seems to be appearing everywhere we look this week. Now this article from Selling Power - The Cost of Poor Communications - attempts to put some metrics to inapt communication between managers and employees. While managers are off worrying about sales trends and marketing plans, they often\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":266,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/08\/blogs-recruiting\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":4},"title":"Blogs &#038; Recruiting","author":"Lee Fratzke","date":"August 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogs Could Become Newest Recruiting Tool from the SHRM website (membership required): Blogs offer businesses an excellent and interactive communication tool. For example Microsoft has close to 3,000 blogs posted by the company's employees. Blogs can give an insiders view of a company's work environment to potential job candidates. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":776,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/03\/distributed-decision-making\/","url_meta":{"origin":909,"position":5},"title":"Distributed Decision Making","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"March 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We have written much about the flattened org chart that the younger generations subscribe. The extremely veridical, military-like chain-of-command days are waning in the modern work world. The decision-making distribution of authority is having a tremendous impact on slow-to-react companies. I encountered this shift years ago working for a company\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Communication&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Communication","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/communication\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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