I absolutely agree with your second point relating to engaging employees with something meaningful. One particular example comes to mind for an event we conducted for Roche Pharmaceuticals. We took 300 of their sales people and renovated a house in a day as part of a team building day during their 4 day sales conference. The house (bequeathed by a lifelong supporter of Camp Quality) was planned to go to auction to provide funds for the charity and after our renovation efforts the house managed to achieve $85000 more than previously anticipated. The staff loved it, felt like they’d contributed something meaningful (which they indeed had!) and it created an amazing positive camraderie among everyone involved. Google are another company we work with who are committed to giving employees time to follow their passions during work hours and you really can see it in the attitude of the staff – they’re so committed to the company and it’s cause.

Fundamentally I think the CEO/Manager/Leader will fail to achieve their desired outcomes because their staff will become very disengaged and unproductive, worse would strike. We have seen this with the rise of the trade union movement where employers did not care for their employees.

Is it appropriate, no. If you treat your people as machines then your business will fail. Not even sure it would be appropriate in jest, but I guess it might be.

Michael

In reference to your point number #1, hypothetically, what would you think of a CEO/Manager/Leader that says to her staff “I don’t give a sh*t if your happy or not.” ?

What do you think the outcome of such a statement would be on the staff and productivity?

Do you think there could be any justification or any situation where you think this is appropriate, even in jest?

Rgs, James.

It was just after he took over BR and created Virgin Rail. He believes that sort of thing really makes a difference and helped his employees get to know him.

I wonder what Branson would make of Jason Calacanis’ blog? I think he might find it hard to argue with a lot of it. Virgin’s early days were very comparable with the type of start-up environment Calacanis describes, but it was record shops rather than software development, without massive injections of VC funding if I (remember correctly).

Although I don’t think Branson would advocate sacking people who weren’t workaholics, he did work people very hard and key people who didn’t see eye to eye with him soon departed, even some partners in the business.

I’d like to know how Branson motivates people and how at the beginning he managed to get a bunch of very talented people to be so totally committed to Virgin for basic wages. I can’t imagine many of them would have been able to foresee what Virgin would become.

I had heard he did things like that but not that specific example, thanks! I would mind having a house that could have a party for 85,000 people .

Rgds
Michael

Your Branson quote just reminded me of something. I heard him being interviewed on the BBC world radio recently. He mentioned that when he bought what was essentially British Rail when it was privatised, he invited the staff to his house for the weekend, all 85,000 of them!

Cheers,
Kevin