6 ms·

Your Company Is Not a Family

115 points by ghosh 12y ago

Jdfmiller 12y ago
The fact that they didn't include a quote or captioned photo from Michael Scott is a missed opportunity.
guard-of-terra 12y ago
These comparsions are meaningless. Your real family might not be a family in the rainbows and unicorns sense. On the other hand, your company might be quite like a family in Lannister sense.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  In general, your company should not be a family in the sense that they have the right to demand your help whenever and wherever. With a company, there is a contract and limits. Besides which, you're lucky if you have a tiny handful of people in the entire world with whom things are "in the rainbows and unicorns sense". Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well.
  - PavlovsCat 12y ago
    > With a company, there is a contract and limits. To be fair, this is true for people, too, they're just unwritten. Family to me is kinda like a very very close friend; I might expect more support, and give more support, but there is still no outright demanding stuff, and there are limits. But I still don't think a company should be like a family, because I think the whole human race should be like a family :P We can still rib on each other, and compete, but to outright snatch up as much as we can to the detriment of everybody else, results in a swift but friendly smack by grandma. I wish I could coat it in academic enough words though so such a proposal might fly here; I know it's not realistic in the short and medium term, but I would consider it a worthwhile long term ideal.
  - marvin 12y ago
    >Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well This is an important point, which I'm surprised that it's necessary to emphasize. I have plenty of rainbows and unicorns in my life, but they will evaporate in a couple of years if I start doing 60-hour workweeks and prioritize my career above everything else.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Your real family might not be a family in the rainbows and unicorns sense. No, but we use metaphors for their common sense interpretation (the average normal/loving family in this case).
Dakuan 12y ago
-10 points for "winningest"
dingdingdang 12y ago
While the article tries it really only manages to scratch the surface of the iceberg when it comes to the, generally epic, failure of company structures to provide a meaningful environment in which human beings can thrive as whole beings. The idea of the "sports team" is not functional - the limited human interactions necessary within an artificially established playing field will NEVER mirror the real world challenges a company, and the people within it, faces. Sure that artificial playing field allows an easy "team" mentality but this "team" will never work against real-life challenges.
- scribu 12y ago
  A sports team faces many real challenges besides the artificial challenges on the field: many months of training before a big playoff, which involves individual player discipline, extensive interaction with the coach and the other players, interaction with the press etc. Where the comparison breaks down, I think, is that the activity of individual employees in a company (especially a big one) isn't nearly as visible as the activity of an athlete. Therefore, there's less incentive to be a "team player", since it won't necessarily help you get a better job at a different company.
- cjf4 12y ago
  Limited human interaction? Team sports primarily consists of human interaction. You practice with your team, have meetings with the coaching staff, film sessions, team meals, travel together, team training sessions, and that's before you even set foot on the field or court. And the leadership and communication skills are directly transferable and valuable to a business setting. The business unit as a sports team idea is a bit tired and cliche at this point because it's been a comparison made for at least 50 years. But that speaks to the cliche's validity. David Foster Wallace wrote in Infinite Jest "cliches earned their status as cliches because they were so obviously true."
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
Aaaaa full-screen popup! Can we start adding popup warnings to submissions like this?
adwf 12y ago
Using sports metaphors is a particularly bad way to go about it in this instance. The average young NFL player is only expecting a career lasting about 5 years, maybe 10 for exceptional guys; The average young office worker is looking for 40 years. If you were fired as frequently as players get traded in NFL, we'd be living hellish careers!
- walshemj 12y ago
  And a lot of pro sports players have fixed contracts can't imagine a firm wanting to continuing to pay some one for 5 years when their job becomes redundant.
- arethuza 12y ago
  But isn't that the point they are trying to make - that sports teams can be effective despite have very high rates of staff turnover because everyone has realistic expectations of the employer-employee relationship?
  - XorNot 12y ago
    In careers which last, at most, 5-10 years. Not 40.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I'd actually be interested to see the stats for developers and how long the average career is. Now obviously some people make it to their 40s, 50s and later but I suspect most don't.
      - michaelochurch 12y ago
        What do you think they do when they get to that age? Where do they go? My observation is that age discrimination isn't a brick wall, so much as an increased difficulty in doing things a person should be able to do. It's not like you can't get a programming job after 40, because obviously people do. It's just that job searches are no longer completed in 2 weeks; it's closer to 4 months. What no one told us in school was that getting better at our jobs, past a certain point, makes job searches harder and more complex, especially because HR drones don't understand our specialties and tend to use them against us. ("Doesn't have 3 years of Swift experience? No hire.") Structuring a society as a pyramid actually works when it is in transition from poverty to industrial wealth, but it's a disaster in a stable state.
walshemj 12y ago
I know business schools are looked down on by the "proper" parts of the Host UNI but winningest FFS this is the HBR not the back page of the Sun. Doesn't exactly show Harvard in a good light that one of their publications uses such god awful English.
Kiro 12y ago
So just because it's not exactly 100% like a family you're not allowed to draw a comparison?
- mrestko 12y ago
  The problem is that the way family relationships are different from all other relationships (namely that they are lifelong) is the exact way in which a business is unlike a family.
  - afarrell 12y ago
    Familial relationships are also unchosen, unlike relationships in companies.
coldtea 12y ago
>Your Company Is Not a Family Really? But I want to believe the paternalistic BS by my bosses (who'd fire me at the first chance of reduced profit margins without a second thought), and fill the empty whole in the center of my life with some purpose based on my job.
brudgers 12y ago
A typical company is no more a professional sports team than it's Ward, Wally, June, and the Beaver. More likely it's the sports team equivalent of a 2am domestic dispute call to the trailer park on Cops - leadership is running a win at all costs T-ball team. The sports metaphor doesn't change the fact theyre cutting people for their obsession with ponies.
hellbreakslose 12y ago
What is this guy talking about, only from the 1st paragraph I started laughing at his poor example... Are you serious? When I was 17 and I wanted to go on big adventures like every child does, my dad threw me out of the house and let me stay on the streets for weeks until he accepted me back. And at some cases those parents won't accept you back. Now you'll go on saying bad parenting... No just the way you've describing your perfect family model is... I do love my father and hate him at the same time. He taught me a lot by taking moves like the one above and making them reality. P.S. Yes I don't believe company is exactly your family, but there should be some kind of friends. At the end of the day you spend most of your time with them. I just found obsurd having an example like that, just cause you were raised with parents that accepted your big time mistakes... most of the parents do, but that's why 99% of the people in this world can't live a day without their phone, tv and fastfood.
smegmalife 12y ago
Lots of companies are different. There are some that are more like sports teams, and some that are like families, and heck, some actually are families. This article does nothing but debate semantics. Every metaphor breaks down at some point, so I don't see the need to debate which works the best.
vkjv 12y ago
#1 reason a company is not a family. You do (or don't do things) for your family despite personal loss because it is good for the whole. That is something most people do not do for their company, nor should they.
csbrooks 12y ago
If you want every one of your employees to be a "superstar", just pay them millions a year, and the sports metaphor is a great fit. Otherwise, sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. In real life, you can't just let everyone go who isn't a superstar, unless people are tripping over themselves to get a spot at your company.
jordan0day 12y ago
It's certainly not a family, but a "team" probably isn't right, either. If you company wants to use a sports team metaphor, that's fine, but just remember that many professional sports have players unions and guaranteed contracts. Oh, what's that? Not such a big fan of the sports team metaphor now?
- moron4hire 12y ago
  They also tend to make tradition-based rather than evidence-based decisions. How many times have you heard, "hiring so-and-so just (made|didn't make) good football-sense"? Superstition is extremely strong in sports franchises.
  - gdilla 12y ago
    However, the 'moneyball' way is pretty widespread these days, even outside of baseball.
  - jordan0day 12y ago
    I think you could successfully make the argument that most hiring decisions are probably done like that. Of course, I would imagine there's a lot fewer metrics available for hiring for most non-athlete positions, so "moneyball" might be a bit tougher for off-the-field jobs.
moron4hire 12y ago
How about we just stop saying a company is like-a-family or like-a-team or like-a-band or like-an-anything-that-isn't-a-company? Companies are companies. They are their own distinct thing.
netcan 12y ago
There are analogies and then there are analogies. One very common type is of the talk is cheap variety. Management can declare their company to be a team or a family or an enchanted kingdom. They read about it in Harvard Review. Like a mission statement or a slogan , these thing only mean something when you put your money (literally and figuratively) where your mouth is. Most don't. The second type is a half hearted analogy. The company really intends to be like a team, a family or a special forces unit. But, the cost to really making that mean a lot is high. You can make the business somewhat family like or team like relatively cheaply and inform your company culture, but there are going to be countess cases where the cost is high. FO employees to really buy into it, they need to accept this costs. Most don't. What they have is rhetoric and a certain amount of investment into team building. Fair enough, but not what this article is decribing The type of team like environment the article is describing doesn't come cheap? You need to have good feedback & measurement mechanisms for performance on the team level. You need success and failure to be very well compensated for and it needs to be based on team performance. Are you compensating success well enough that members of the team will want to see the poorest performers periodically replaced? A professional sports team is an exceptional environment. The people there are high achievers and they are ambitious. They are the 1%, most hardworking and talented. They get a lot of money and a lot of glory. They're in 'once in a hundred lifetimes' state of mind. Can your company offer that? Is 5 years of success on you "team" the pinnacle of a career? Are they making more now than they ever will be? Will these be the glory years they relive? Functions with very straightforward feedback, like sales tend to develop these dynamics with the right compensation structure. A small startup with only a handful of high equity employees can develop this culture naturally. Trying to artificially create it elsewhere is hard. I also suspect it's near impossible a group with over 50 or so people. It's easy to say this stuff. Does Netflix really put this into practice? Does anyone?

115 points by ghosh 12y ago

The fact that they didn't include a quote or captioned photo from Michael Scott is a missed opportunity.

These comparsions are meaningless. Your real family might not be a family in the rainbows and unicorns sense. On the other hand, your company might be quite like a family in Lannister sense.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
In general, your company should not be a family in the sense that they have the right to demand your help whenever and wherever. With a company, there is a contract and limits. Besides which, you're lucky if you have a tiny handful of people in the entire world with whom things are "in the rainbows and unicorns sense". Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well.
- PavlovsCat 12y ago
  > With a company, there is a contract and limits. To be fair, this is true for people, too, they're just unwritten. Family to me is kinda like a very very close friend; I might expect more support, and give more support, but there is still no outright demanding stuff, and there are limits. But I still don't think a company should be like a family, because I think the whole human race should be like a family :P We can still rib on each other, and compete, but to outright snatch up as much as we can to the detriment of everybody else, results in a swift but friendly smack by grandma. I wish I could coat it in academic enough words though so such a proposal might fly here; I know it's not realistic in the short and medium term, but I would consider it a worthwhile long term ideal.
- marvin 12y ago
  >Rainbows and unicorns actually takes a whole lot of hard work at making interpersonal relations work well This is an important point, which I'm surprised that it's necessary to emphasize. I have plenty of rainbows and unicorns in my life, but they will evaporate in a couple of years if I start doing 60-hour workweeks and prioritize my career above everything else.
coldtea 12y ago
>Your real family might not be a family in the rainbows and unicorns sense. No, but we use metaphors for their common sense interpretation (the average normal/loving family in this case).

Dakuan 12y ago

-10 points for "winningest"

dingdingdang 12y ago

While the article tries it really only manages to scratch the surface of the iceberg when it comes to the, generally epic, failure of company structures to provide a meaningful environment in which human beings can thrive as whole beings. The idea of the "sports team" is not functional - the limited human interactions necessary within an artificially established playing field will NEVER mirror the real world challenges a company, and the people within it, faces. Sure that artificial playing field allows an easy "team" mentality but this "team" will never work against real-life challenges.

scribu 12y ago
A sports team faces many real challenges besides the artificial challenges on the field: many months of training before a big playoff, which involves individual player discipline, extensive interaction with the coach and the other players, interaction with the press etc. Where the comparison breaks down, I think, is that the activity of individual employees in a company (especially a big one) isn't nearly as visible as the activity of an athlete. Therefore, there's less incentive to be a "team player", since it won't necessarily help you get a better job at a different company.
cjf4 12y ago
Limited human interaction? Team sports primarily consists of human interaction. You practice with your team, have meetings with the coaching staff, film sessions, team meals, travel together, team training sessions, and that's before you even set foot on the field or court. And the leadership and communication skills are directly transferable and valuable to a business setting. The business unit as a sports team idea is a bit tired and cliche at this point because it's been a comparison made for at least 50 years. But that speaks to the cliche's validity. David Foster Wallace wrote in Infinite Jest "cliches earned their status as cliches because they were so obviously true."

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

Aaaaa full-screen popup! Can we start adding popup warnings to submissions like this?

adwf 12y ago

Using sports metaphors is a particularly bad way to go about it in this instance. The average young NFL player is only expecting a career lasting about 5 years, maybe 10 for exceptional guys; The average young office worker is looking for 40 years. If you were fired as frequently as players get traded in NFL, we'd be living hellish careers!

walshemj 12y ago
And a lot of pro sports players have fixed contracts can't imagine a firm wanting to continuing to pay some one for 5 years when their job becomes redundant.
arethuza 12y ago
But isn't that the point they are trying to make - that sports teams can be effective despite have very high rates of staff turnover because everyone has realistic expectations of the employer-employee relationship?
- XorNot 12y ago
  In careers which last, at most, 5-10 years. Not 40.
  - arethuza 12y ago
    I'd actually be interested to see the stats for developers and how long the average career is. Now obviously some people make it to their 40s, 50s and later but I suspect most don't.
    - michaelochurch 12y ago
      What do you think they do when they get to that age? Where do they go? My observation is that age discrimination isn't a brick wall, so much as an increased difficulty in doing things a person should be able to do. It's not like you can't get a programming job after 40, because obviously people do. It's just that job searches are no longer completed in 2 weeks; it's closer to 4 months. What no one told us in school was that getting better at our jobs, past a certain point, makes job searches harder and more complex, especially because HR drones don't understand our specialties and tend to use them against us. ("Doesn't have 3 years of Swift experience? No hire.") Structuring a society as a pyramid actually works when it is in transition from poverty to industrial wealth, but it's a disaster in a stable state.

walshemj 12y ago

I know business schools are looked down on by the "proper" parts of the Host UNI but winningest FFS this is the HBR not the back page of the Sun. Doesn't exactly show Harvard in a good light that one of their publications uses such god awful English.

Kiro 12y ago

So just because it's not exactly 100% like a family you're not allowed to draw a comparison?

mrestko 12y ago
The problem is that the way family relationships are different from all other relationships (namely that they are lifelong) is the exact way in which a business is unlike a family.
- afarrell 12y ago
  Familial relationships are also unchosen, unlike relationships in companies.

coldtea 12y ago

>Your Company Is Not a Family Really? But I want to believe the paternalistic BS by my bosses (who'd fire me at the first chance of reduced profit margins without a second thought), and fill the empty whole in the center of my life with some purpose based on my job.

brudgers 12y ago

A typical company is no more a professional sports team than it's Ward, Wally, June, and the Beaver. More likely it's the sports team equivalent of a 2am domestic dispute call to the trailer park on Cops - leadership is running a win at all costs T-ball team. The sports metaphor doesn't change the fact theyre cutting people for their obsession with ponies.

hellbreakslose 12y ago

What is this guy talking about, only from the 1st paragraph I started laughing at his poor example... Are you serious? When I was 17 and I wanted to go on big adventures like every child does, my dad threw me out of the house and let me stay on the streets for weeks until he accepted me back. And at some cases those parents won't accept you back. Now you'll go on saying bad parenting... No just the way you've describing your perfect family model is... I do love my father and hate him at the same time. He taught me a lot by taking moves like the one above and making them reality. P.S. Yes I don't believe company is exactly your family, but there should be some kind of friends. At the end of the day you spend most of your time with them. I just found obsurd having an example like that, just cause you were raised with parents that accepted your big time mistakes... most of the parents do, but that's why 99% of the people in this world can't live a day without their phone, tv and fastfood.

smegmalife 12y ago

Lots of companies are different. There are some that are more like sports teams, and some that are like families, and heck, some actually are families. This article does nothing but debate semantics. Every metaphor breaks down at some point, so I don't see the need to debate which works the best.

vkjv 12y ago

#1 reason a company is not a family. You do (or don't do things) for your family despite personal loss because it is good for the whole. That is something most people do not do for their company, nor should they.

csbrooks 12y ago

If you want every one of your employees to be a "superstar", just pay them millions a year, and the sports metaphor is a great fit. Otherwise, sometimes you gotta work with what you've got. In real life, you can't just let everyone go who isn't a superstar, unless people are tripping over themselves to get a spot at your company.

jordan0day 12y ago

It's certainly not a family, but a "team" probably isn't right, either. If you company wants to use a sports team metaphor, that's fine, but just remember that many professional sports have players unions and guaranteed contracts. Oh, what's that? Not such a big fan of the sports team metaphor now?

moron4hire 12y ago
They also tend to make tradition-based rather than evidence-based decisions. How many times have you heard, "hiring so-and-so just (made|didn't make) good football-sense"? Superstition is extremely strong in sports franchises.
- gdilla 12y ago
  However, the 'moneyball' way is pretty widespread these days, even outside of baseball.
- jordan0day 12y ago
  I think you could successfully make the argument that most hiring decisions are probably done like that. Of course, I would imagine there's a lot fewer metrics available for hiring for most non-athlete positions, so "moneyball" might be a bit tougher for off-the-field jobs.

moron4hire 12y ago

How about we just stop saying a company is like-a-family or like-a-team or like-a-band or like-an-anything-that-isn't-a-company? Companies are companies. They are their own distinct thing.

netcan 12y ago

There are analogies and then there are analogies. One very common type is of the talk is cheap variety. Management can declare their company to be a team or a family or an enchanted kingdom. They read about it in Harvard Review. Like a mission statement or a slogan , these thing only mean something when you put your money (literally and figuratively) where your mouth is. Most don't. The second type is a half hearted analogy. The company really intends to be like a team, a family or a special forces unit. But, the cost to really making that mean a lot is high. You can make the business somewhat family like or team like relatively cheaply and inform your company culture, but there are going to be countess cases where the cost is high. FO employees to really buy into it, they need to accept this costs. Most don't. What they have is rhetoric and a certain amount of investment into team building. Fair enough, but not what this article is decribing The type of team like environment the article is describing doesn't come cheap? You need to have good feedback & measurement mechanisms for performance on the team level. You need success and failure to be very well compensated for and it needs to be based on team performance. Are you compensating success well enough that members of the team will want to see the poorest performers periodically replaced? A professional sports team is an exceptional environment. The people there are high achievers and they are ambitious. They are the 1%, most hardworking and talented. They get a lot of money and a lot of glory. They're in 'once in a hundred lifetimes' state of mind. Can your company offer that? Is 5 years of success on you "team" the pinnacle of a career? Are they making more now than they ever will be? Will these be the glory years they relive? Functions with very straightforward feedback, like sales tend to develop these dynamics with the right compensation structure. A small startup with only a handful of high equity employees can develop this culture naturally. Trying to artificially create it elsewhere is hard. I also suspect it's near impossible a group with over 50 or so people. It's easy to say this stuff. Does Netflix really put this into practice? Does anyone?