The Disneyfication of a University
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The only time I've heard any of the concepts cited since the training push has been in the context of some mid-level executive type pushing an unpopular top-down change, and even then, they seem to be at the bottom of their rhetorical sack. My co-workers' reaction ranged from neutral to eye-rolling, and as far as I can tell, no one has explicitly employed the trained culture concepts and the whole experience has mostly been forgotten.
I have no idea how much the my employer paid for all this, but the cost must have been enormous (every employee had to attend a course that took between one and three whole work days, with no multitasking allowed).
My single moment of satisfaction was in trolling the interlocutor at the end. He still recognizes and smiles to me in the halls, which tells me my trolling was sufficiently subtle.
Iridology: the inspection of the iris of the eye as an aid in determining a person's state of health or in diagnosing a health problem.
Edit: why the downvote? You could tell me what I did wrong
Edit: found it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22064530
Starting workday with everyone standing in attention outside and singing company song when company flag was hoisted did not go well.
I'd love to say it was isolated, but my wife worked for a big 4 consultancy firm straight out of university. Just do a Google search for "Ernst and young happy day". I'd paste a link, but I'm afraid I'd actually have to watch it again...
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_EO1.htm...
I only bring it up as there are just so many parallels in American culture that would see corporate team building and identity type activities as a natural extension: prep rallies, cheer leaders, pledges, marching bands, frats, school songs, etc.
These activities have some parallels outside the US, but they're activities that can seem distinctly 'weird' and not done to the same extent if you come from outside the US.
And not only do we have actual history (ibm) and many contemporary US companies doing these kinds of practices, in many ways the practices make much more sense if taken as a natural extension of already common American cultural practices...
It's no coincidence that corporate anthems like this sound similar to the Scientology hymn We Stand Tall: https://youtu.be/XyNh1j3dsp8
𝅘𝅥𝅮 For we're about to toast 𝅘𝅥𝅮
𝅘𝅥𝅮 The corporation known in every land... 𝅘𝅥𝅮
I think what we're seeing is the same principles that worked on the mid century manufacturing laborers being refined for the information economy age.
That reminded me of the Clockwork Orange.
As an American, I find that quite amusing. I'd say it brings a smile to my face, but there's likely one there already.
My grandma (came to the US from the USSR during WW2) would always answer a little too honestly when we asked "how are you doing?" Sometimes she would say "Still walking" and sometimes she would talk about how the neighborhood is going downhill. I would laugh and say "you know in America we just say 'good'!"
Must be some interesting story there...
The joke isn't really Lisa mistaking a "gruff Slavic manner" for hostility, it's more the Slavic manner being actually hostile.
Beyond the surface interactions there's not much difference, though. Interactions with people you know better, be it friends, family or coworkers, are pretty similar.
When taken to the extreme you end up with a Potemkin village where everyone grins and nods and goes about their day never expressing anything honest.
I much prefer a society where people are open and there is some accountability than a group of smiling yes men which is the type of thing these corporate culture workshops seek to indoctrinate.
They both focus on you projecting "good vibes" and only allowing others who also project good vibes around you. If you can do this, then (Nature/God/the Universe) will reward you.
Like all the pictures of Jesus being crucified and wearing crowns of thorns, and the talk of how we are all sinners and bad people. And the talk of writhing in lakes of fire.
But seriously, as an American, I fully agree. Having to pretend to be a happy camper at work when one is going through a (not culturally approved) personal tragedy sucks big time.
*) The traditional, class struggle related response, however, is, "They are paid too much."
(Obviously, this is to be read with a grain of salt.)
"Leave me alone. I know what I'm doing." :)
This is exactly why you need to put an inordinate focus on the bright side.
>You are supposed to feel empathy for other people and feel bad for their misfortune even if you have the good luck of not going through suffering
Yeah if you live in a tribe of like 30 people maybe. You can't scale that sort of empathy to collectives the size of "all coworkers at $bigco". That's way too much empathising. Way too many people who are going to be down. Particularly in an office. You can't combine "unmasked feelings" and "dreaded place we have to be compensated to go to".
>I just don't understand this obsession of feeling good all the time. If you have never felt sadness, pain, shame, or embarrassment, is it something to brag about?
It's not about feeling good all the time. It's about not throwing your bad feelings at people who also feel bad while 50 other bad feeling people do the same.
Scratch Beginnings
http://www.amazon.com/Scratch-Beginnings-Search-American-Dre...
> I am going to start almost literally from scratch with one 8′ by 10′ tarp, a sleeping bag, an empty gym bag, $25, and the clothes on my back. Via train, I will be dropped at a random place somewhere in the southeastern United States that is not in my home state of North Carolina. I have 365 days to become free of the realities of homelessness and become a “regular” member of society. After one year, for my project to be considered successful, I have to possess an operable automobile, live in a furnished apartment…, have $2500 in cash, and, most importantly, I have to be in a position in which I can continue to improve my circumstances by either going to school or starting my own business.
It's a nightmare, and I have barely even touched on what it does for the negative reputation of Americans...(reinforces a reputation as superficial, idiots, two-faced, liars, etc). Other Americans, please find a way to stop this madness!
GW's attempt to institute a "culture" using techniques developed at Disney is just one of many possible examples, although I will admit it is a particularly easy one to mock. (Quoting the OP: "The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.")
Much of higher education in the US is now controlled by an administrative bureaucracy that thinks in terms of corporate strategy, corporate culture, financial incentives, business processes, and so on. These people don't teach or conduct research, and in many cases have never taught or conducted research. They think of academics as "human resources" that must "add value" to the organization, i.e., produce benefits that can be readily measured.
At the top of this growing administrative apparatus are college and university presidents earning seven figures a year, but typically they also earn additional income from sitting on corporate and non-profit boards. Presidents tend to have illustrious academic pedigrees, but their involvement in day-to-day academic matters is at about the same level as the involvement of a burger-chain CEO in the operations of a single restaurant in the chain.
Below presidents, there are multiple layers of bureaucracy that have been growing for quite some time, with no slow-down in sight. According to federal figures, as of a few years ago, the number of non-academic administrative and professional employees at US colleges and universities has more than doubled in the past quarter century, outpacing the growth in the number of students or faculty.[a]
Perhaps the most salient example of this ever-expanding bureaucracy is Stanford's shiny new 35-acre campus in Redwood City, which houses only non-academic administrative staff -- that is, people who work in departments with names like Finance, Planning, Facilities, Human Resources, Business Affairs, etc.[b]
Whether this corporatization proves a good or a bad thing in the long run, it remains to be seen. (I doubt it will prove to be a good thing.)
[a] https://www.necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problema...
My company also has a corporate headquarters where there are thousands of well paid people keep themselves busy creating training materials and processes that look good but are ultimately not practical or just stating the obvious in new words.
Is this really a good example of administrative bureaucracy growing out of control?
I mean, if you had to pick a group of people to move off your university campus due to space constraints, it seems like administrative staff would be the logical choice. Moving certain departments off-campus, or letting fewer students live on-campus would both be worse for the academic environment.
In addition, Stanford has consistently ranked near the top of all universities in research output while also providing free tuition to any student whose family makes less than $150K per year. Doing this costs a lot of money. Where do they get that money from? Mostly donations and grants. It takes a lot of people to administer grants (which tend to come with lots of rules on how you account for the money) and to schmooze with donors, etc. But the end result -- funding high-quality research and providing a free education to thousands of students each year seems like a pretty good outcome.
Whether the "corporatization" of US high education will prove a good or a bad thing in the long run, it remains to be seen.
Nobody, certainly not the dean, wants to deal with that kind of negative publicity. And so, every order gets stamped and signed and countersigned, often with an eight-by-ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining the "business purpose" of the item.
This still doesn't totally stop idiots from ranting about "Who buys video games and cocaine to monkeys?!" or "Why do shrimp need a treadmill?" However, it gives the university a little bit of cover--and since a lot of this work gets lumped in with other stuff, no one ever figures out how much time and money that wastes.
The idea of a separate campus just for administrative staff feels like a real-life version of Douglas Adams' Golgafrinchan Ark B: https://everything2.com/title/B+Ark
s/earning/receiving/
How much do all the administrative salaries add to the average student's tuition bill?
Just as an aside - this does include professional staff, which is advisors, academic support staff, and other student facing services. The problem with higher ed statistics like that is that it makes no effort to separate the assistant to the assistant to the assistant provost from the academic coaches. One of the two of those positions actually provide value to the student experience.
It's not clear at all that academic coaches provide value to students.
Being advised by actual professors would provide far more value to students.
Whoa there, I need a citation for that, and I need a strong citation for that. It literally flies in the face of higher education research. Here's one study from the WWC, indicating strong evidence of effectiveness for coaching: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/study/72030. And that was after 30 seconds of searching.
Actual professors provide value to upper-division students who (a) have a major already, (b) have study skills and other skills necessary for success, and (c) are at their terminal institution.
For the other (on my campus) 65% of students, coaches are more effective in terms of completion and spring to fall retention.
Is it? How could it end up being a good thing?
Bureaucracy always pops up somewhere where there is money floating around like a patch of moss grows in humid tree bark. It doesn't produce anything of value besides justifying its own existence
Sometimes expressed as the Iron law of oligarchy [0] or the The Iron Law of Bureaucracy [1]
It also tends to be more organizationally driven than dynastic or personal. That is partially why even corrupt ones were an improvement over literal feudal fiefdoms historically.
It is still often a source of mediocrity and stagnation but we should remember why they existed in the first place. They do need periodic reform and streamlining certainly.
unless you hold an MBA degree, this phrase really weakens your critique, because it rests on a trope rather than experience. you could have easily left it out and it would have only strengthened your credibility.
nearly everyone has experienced corporatocracy, either as an employee or a customer (rarely as an executive or involved shareholder), but most people don't have MBAs and can't speak to how it directly influences organizational structures and behavior (if at all).
the "ever-expanding bureaucracy" you reference is a direct, if unintuitive, consequence of privileging capital over labor. middle managers seek power and prestige through bureacracy because it reflects the values of capital holders (money and strict hierarchy, for example), rather than the creators and doers who seek power and prestige through demonstrations of skill.
to change this, we need a fairer balance between capital and labor (not a wild swing of the pendulum). we need to better reward the makers, not the rent-seekers. laws and norms and expectations and literally who we look up to needs to change.
It's easy to point at certain areas of staff growth as excessive (cue someone quoting the number of "diversity" administrators at college X) and I agree there's plenty of areas of waste.
However, the big picture is that I think the "big research university" has defined it's mission as something which is inherently going to be an extraordinarily complicated enterprise to run.
And other trends outside their control have contributed as well.
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If you think about the "research" side, most are attempting to run cutting edge labs in basically every domain, at once. That's very difficult to support from a facilities, technology, etc perspective. You wind up with numerous small groups with complex, completely different needs and few economies of scale, unlike running say, a huge R&D lab in one domain/small set of domains like pharma or semiconductors or something.
Reduced direct state funding means that universities are ever more dependent on alumni support, grant money, other fundraising, and monetization of R&D development (patents/IP). All of which require a sizeable quantity of people to oversee who do not teach or research. It is, or should be a net positive in terms of finances if you're doing it, but it certainly doesn't make stats like employee ratios look better.
On the student side, the growth in fancy student housing/services is well-covered ground I won't repeat, but is also a contributor to costs.
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The article mentions outsourcing, but fails to mention that most functions typically have reasons why they're difficult to outsource. That's not to say that none can be done, but "it's not that easy" is also true.
They mention security as an example.
Most campuses have full police departments with sworn officers, empowered to make arrests, file criminal charges, carry firearms, and so on. They can't hire an outside company to do it in their place, and given the size disparity with the towns they often exist in, local police would be unable to provide a sufficient level of service. (Nor would local taxpayers be accepting of funding it to support an entity not paying property taxes).
For public universities, this is also often a matter of state law. Ex: The NY State University Police is a state agency that handles policing at SUNY schools. No SUNY campus head, or even the head of the SUNY system, has any power to outsource that function.
There's also a not invalid perception of a different level of professionalism (even with issues with American policing) and level of required training between "private security" and "actual police officers" in most places.
The whole of Australia, for example.
That they're a certain tier of upper management for whom it's expected and normal that they engage in a bunch of activities at what is assuredly less than "full time" attention to any one of them and among which they cannot possibly be keeping their work totally separate and interests perfectly straight, while employees have to beg to "moonlight" or start their own side-hustle a lot of places, is one of the facts of corporate culture and the state of current capitalism that upsets me the most.
Like, pick one. Either it's super-important that all of us and especially people taking home tons of pay at the top of the pyramid are entirely on-board with a single employer or venture, or those not reaping such huge benefits should have the same freedom of association and freedom with their time as those at the top. I'll take either—the former would probably fix some major systemic problems we have while the latter would make my life easier and simpler.
But "mad about the Mouse" training? No.
That said, most of the Disney World “quick serve” cafeterias are covered in food waste by the end of the day. I suppose there’s only so much you can do to keep up with 20,000 toddlers times three meals a day.
That's definitely not the norm for Disney's parks.
[Corporatization] has saddled us with a higher-education model that is both expensive to run and difficult to reform as a result of its focus on status, its view of students as customers, and its growing reliance on top-down administration.
Not surprisingly, those administrators who occupy the highest ranks in our college and university bureaucracies are those who have professionally benefited the most from corporatization.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-corporatization-...
It has devalued the real purposes of education, and has had the most draining impact on higher education culture that I have ever experienced. It has led to more PR and Marketing dollars, and less dollars for professional development for people who actually impact student success.
I hate it.
I've been subjected to these kinds of 'workshops', and, like the author I too resent them. What's interesting is that many people (a majority?) in my organisation hated it too.
Why do sessions like this keep getting organised? Why don't employees unite and speak up? What's in it for management? Deep down they must know that for most people attending, it doesn't add any value (it detracts).
>A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.”
It's a similar social proof by misdirection as millionaire motivational speakers selling expensive seminars to "get rich", mid level marketing schemes recruiting new members, etc.
Why? What's to gain? These workshops wouldn't be happening if the highest levels of leadership didn't want them to. So it's my opinion on the matter against theirs. Maybe they will value my opinion and consider, or maybe they won't. I don't know for sure. If they want to pay me to daydream through silly horoscope or culture training, fine. I'll pick my battles and that's just not one I care about enough to fight. We'll do the training for a few days and then we'll never think about it again and continue doing our jobs as usual.
Early in my PhD, I was made vice-president (or something like that; I don't actually remember) of the university's Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE). This title was really only a formality as there were no duties aside from some training that the university required. The organization existed mainly to get external speakers every once in a while. The organization was purely professional. Keep this in mind.
The most annoying training could accurately be described as "frat boy training" in the sense that it seemed to be targeted specifically at heavy-drinking fraternity members. The training lasted about 2 hours as I recall and had to be retaken yearly. It involved groups of roughly 100 people watching videos and participating in discussions about (basically) why you should call for medical help if someone passes out after drinking too much. (There were some other lessons, like telling us to call a certain phone number to report on people who seem to be "suspicious" but are not breaking the law.) The entire event seemed to be motivated by lawyers' desire to reduce the university's liability in the event that someone drinks too much and dies.
The first year I was in a leadership position in the local SFPE group I attended the training and thought it was a huge waste of time. None of the training applied to our group. We never had any social events, much less ones with alcohol. Plus, I don't need to be told to call for help if someone is obviously in medical trouble.
Given that, in the the second year of the training I arrived early and politely asked the presenter about why my group was required to attend this training. The presenter responded rudely along the lines of "Of course you have to take the training. Sit down and do it." Not only that, apparently they had a panic button, because soon after that two security folks came in to escort me out of the room for being belligerent. (I don't recall the presenter doing anything that seemed to indicate they were calling for security.) I was really struck by this because I was polite the entire time and was actually going to take the training again.
After being removed from the room, some admin came down to chastise me. I carefully explained to the admin that I don't believe this training is relevant to my group at all, particularly as one of the only graduate students in attendance. The admin continued to chastise me, and told me that I would have to reschedule my training for another time even though I had not missed much as I recall.
Later the same admin contacted me to tell me that yes, in fact, my group was misclassified, and we will never have to take that training again.
Yeah, I think most of the time the purpose of these trainings is so the employee can't say "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to [harass people/reveal private customer data/accept bribes...]" and thereby reduce legal liability for the organization.
This is funny and very self-aware of you, but you bring up a good point.
Would people feel worse/better/the same if the company said "you can take a day off today and we're going to give your day's salary to a bunch of minimum wage labor to perform charity work."
Or maybe give people the option to show up to the event or allow their salary that day to be use to pay a few people to show up in their place.
Sending people home defeats the purpose.
In which case the goal is to make people feel good about the company.
(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kill_two_birds_with_one_stone)
I recommend two books:
1. Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Paul Bloom https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062339355/against-empathy/ Summary: people should be more compassionate, not more empathetic.
2. The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life http://elephantinthebrain.com/ Summary: 80% of what people do is signalling for others and themselves.
You were not wrong. It's just that these company exercises are all about social signalling. Instead of sitting in a circle and everyone telling everyone else about their values and empathy and personal development they did some task that achieved the same.
Minimum wage workers are extremely low quality. They have 0 skills and require education on everything. Sure Engineers need to learn too, but there's a gigantic difference.
Minimum wage workers are hard to find. Most people won't work for that little, so turnover is high.
Minimum wage workers don't care. They know they can find another job easily.
I was forced into paying 15$/hr for data collection as a result.
I'm not saying the method used was effective in that regard, but it's possible the aim went beyond what was immediately in front of you. Strongly bonded teams (whether built socially or through adversity) tend to be better teams.
I know HN probably skews towards an industrious/utilitarian/pragmatist point of view, but many of us probably work in teams where not everyone holds the same perspective. Understanding how those people work and are motivated is important.
Your example trends a little bit on the extreme end of the spectrum (I totally get your point, so), but the truth is that for a lot of people that is a truly good experience. IMHO companies are abusing this for cheap employee motivation and PR.
At that point, feelings play a pretty important role in getting you to stay.
When the pay is market then the feelings are important. When the pay higher then market, the feelings are not important. That's how finance keeps the talent. That's how Uber got away with what it got away with until it became clear that its employees were not going to become insta-rich after the IPO.
These examples are everywhere.
Would you still care about it if you were paid 3x or would you work for a couple of years and peace out?
Then if I could automate or outsource all my chores, I would only have free time to spend around the house while still doing my share!
Surely marital bliss and mutual appreciation would follow! :p
I'll be sure to farm out all my spousal duties if I have better things to do and I'll report back on how that went.
Honestly, I'm starting to think that very few married couples are really all that compatible in the first place, and that the institution isn't a very good deal for most people involved. Considering just how many marriages end in divorce, plus how many people simple stay single these days, it seems like marriage really isn't workable. It only worked in "the old days" because women were 2nd-class citizens who rarely could get good jobs, and social pressures just forced people to get married, and stay married, even if they were miserable together.
Careful that your spouse doesn't prefer the performance of those duties by the contractor to how you perform them.
However, in the particular case of moving, a friend might not want an untrusted stranger handling their belongings, so you would need their consent and they might not give it.
I can fully agree with that. I have only left one job to pursue "better" opportunities (a move abroad). I also regretted it later, as I left a great team. All the other exits were caused by me being tired of arrogant/ignorant managers.
Two out of three times it was about terrible working conditions and lack of a will to do anything to improve the situation.
- Simon Sinek, "The Infinite Game"
An excellent book that I'm recommending more and more.
Of course that doesn't do much good for the company's employees that don't wind up volunteering / doing the work, perhaps even increasing the separation the employees may feel toward the less-privileged. Service projects, mission trips, etc. can do a lot toward increasing humility, gratitude, and a spirit of giving in a more-privileged person. One could argue this is partly why companies want to do this sort of thing, so their employees grow (among other good / less-than-good reasons).
Perhaps a company could split the difference. Hire others to do the manual labor that day, but take half the company's team to the jobsite do the work with them. Then on another day you do the same with the other half. That way, all parties involved receive some benefit, and everybody is getting to meet a human being behind the statistics. Just a thought.
P.S. It's a certain level of irony when a party steps in to "help," when in reality they're taking away opportunity from parties more prepared for that sort of work, and are probably doing a worse job, aka building shoddily-constructed houses for the poor. This is especially a problem in developing countries, when an organization or church flies a bunch of inexperienced people into the country, brings in supplies, etc., and virtually takes over the available construction projects in an area because they're doing it for free. All of a sudden the local tradespeople have their businesses dry up, and they may not be able to recover -- and they're the ones that the area needs to continue the work afterwards! A far better method, in my opinion, is to get the locals involved and ask how you can help. Volunteerism is fantastic, but we should do it wisely. </soapbox>
I really wonder how much of it is this, and how much of it is virtue-signaling at the corporate level: "look at how great our company is! We have our employees spend work hours on charity work!"
While it wouldn't do much for "team building", it seems like society would be better off if these companies simply contributed to a fund to pay minimum-wage workers to do this charity work. This would get more charity work done, and also provide jobs for some underprivileged people.
As for your soapbox, I completely agree.
It used to be that religion provided these answers. Believe in God, have faith, go through these rituals, help the poor and you're a good person who has successfully discharged moral responsibility.
Religion has faded away, so we're left with "a good person helps the poor" which everyone agrees is a pretty moral thing to do. But the more indirect it gets the less moral value is assigned to it.
People assign moral value to hours of time invested because time is what we all have equally. Time is not money when it comes to judging character. It must be this way because otherwise it'd be that very high earning people help the poor to a vastly greater extent than the average person does, just by turning up to work every day and paying their taxes. If that automatically made them morally superior to everyone else, it'd create a lot of resentment. No matter how hard you worked you would never be as "good" as the rich guy who just turns up and does some lucky stock trading or whatever.
I think sometimes programmers don't feel this way to quite the same extent as other sorts of office workers because we sometimes get more meaning from our work than someone in e.g. sales. The Silicon Valley stereotype of "Join our startup because we're changing the world for good!" has a basis in real self-perceptions. If you believe you're making the world a better place by actually doing your work, of course doing extra charity stuff will seem silly and a poor allocation of time/money relative to other ways of achieving the same ends.
This would only make sense if paying taxes actually helped the poor. In America, it doesn't really follow. There's not much of a social safety net here. For proof, all you have to do is walk around various large cities' downtowns and see all the homeless people. There's thousands of them within a very short walking distance of the White House and Capitol buildings in DC.
Sure, America is very large. It may not be 'much' of a social safety net relative to other countries. But it's still the case that the rich subsidise the poor to a very large degree, in any western country.
There are some other components administered by the same agency, including TANF, SCHIP, and Medicare, so yes there is some safety net there, but relative to other western countries it's rather poor. If it weren't, we wouldn't have so many homeless people. America is NOT like western European nations.
In the end, all social security is a wealth transfer from rich to poor. Even rich employees become much (money) poorer when they retire. That's not a criticism, just an observation.
If it makes you feel any better, I found this line/story absolutely hilarious.
Not being able to read social queues, I once bought a girlfriend a massage at a place that was actually a brothel. My life is a trajecomedy.
One small company I worked for once did this, but with gathering apples that would otherwise have gone to waste ("gleaning") to give them to homeless shelters or something. Took up two or three hours, total, lots of driving (gas burnt), and so on. Fifteen or twenty people.
We wouldn't even have had to pay minimum wage workers to do what we did to substantially beat our productivity that day. Simply buying apples with ~3x the average worker's hourly wage times the number of workers we had there would have been embarrassingly more effective. I question the entire exercise and charity org behind it, actually. I suspect someone's making money off it one way or another, maybe just by building a "personal brand" as a corporate charity consultant or some such. The market's pretty efficient at getting cheap food to paying customers, and you probably can't beat the efficiency of simply buying food even at minimum wage rates, by manually harvesting from leftovers, however sad it may seem to let that food rot.
It's kinda a dumb idea, if your main goal is improving the world, to such a high degree that I think it'd set of alarm bells for even people who aren't into the effective-altruism thing.
[EDIT] back-of-envelope we could have bought 750-1000 pounds of apples without even getting some kind of bulk price. I think we "gleaned" like 200-300 pounds, tops, and it may have been less. It'd be much higher still if we figured it using company revenue for that span of 3 hours, rather than worker pay, and that's not factoring in all the costs of driving-people-to-the-orchard and all the driving-apples-all-over-the-place that the organization's volunteers did, nor their time. Overall I bet we weren't much more than 10% as effective as just buying apples.
But I suppose it might be for the volunteers to get back into the US than it might have been for a randomly selected group of construction workers. A back problem intervened, and the acquaintance didn't go.
Of course, it's not necessarily an effective use of time.
Self-reflection is often lacking in the profession. Many folks feel threatened by it. I used to be very emotionally invested in how unemotional and rational I was.
Now I accept that emotions are just part of the business of existing and thinking.
“Culture” is just a summary of what people do — the way to reinforce it is just to do it. If people are visibly rewarded day-to-day for acting a certain way, and visibly not rewarded (and let go) for doing the opposite, that’s going to be what determines the culture.
The only way to be informed about culture and values is to work there for a while. Trainings are at best aspirational (this is where we want to go) or just plain delusional (this is how we want to look like)
When I joined in the corporate drudgery I hated all of the equivalent rituals. I worked at a game company that did a literal equivalent of a pep rally for the 100+ employees who were in the process of finaling a game. Quarterly all-hands meetings are usually veiled pep rallies where making some noise is replaced by polite applause as division managers tout rose-color tinted bullshit.
Nothing alerts my cynicism quite as much as this fake-it-till-you-make-it forced optimism and team building. I've been through a dozen flavours of team building including learning my MBTI, my DiSC color and more. I've gone on day long retreats/field trips and I have been forced to awkwardly mill about every Friday for flat beer and microwaved appetizers. I cringe at the very thought of this stuff.
I wouldn't be able to count the number of company value presentations I've been subjected to. Core values, OKRs, and a host of company culture defining paradigms I don't even remember. I've seen laminated principles posted in break rooms and hallways only to be usurped by some new systems within months.
And yet I truly and deeply believe it is not only worth the effort - I believe that things like these are essential to build high-functioning teams. It is a bitter medicine but once I wipe away my cynicism I must admit it works. Just like advertising - that stuff sinks into your subconscious whether you like it or not. Only stubborn fools will insist it doesn't work on them, as if they have some kind of mental fortitude/resistance unlike all other humans.
IMO, aligning people to a small number of shared values is maybe one of the most important and powerful things we can do.
I never understood why we celebrated product launches. Half the time it seems the thing quietly dies a year later. Why don't we celebrate things that go on to actually provide value instead of just celebrating that labor was done? What's the point of labor that doesn't produce value? Should that be celebrated?
Because for most people social recognition makes it worth it, regardless of how meaningless it really is.
If you can't tell, I don't really care much for celebrations.
There is an anecdote related to Neils Bohr but possible only tangentially related to him [1]. From the linked article I've pasted the anecdote:
> Bohr used to keep a horseshoe on the door of his house. In European (and Indian) superstitions, the horseshoe is believed to be an object that guards the house against the evil spirits. A friend, upon seeing the horseshoe on the door of Bohr's house, asked Bohr as to whether he subscribed to the relevant superstitions. Bohr replied that he didn't believe in them but he was told that the horseshoe works whether or not one believes in their power.
Team rituals are like this horseshoe. They appear to work whether or not you believe in their power.
1. https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/8387/is-the-anecdote...
So I think having a party to anticipate is a way to emotionally incentivize pushing through that barrier.
It's exactly after that early iteration after launch that you might have something to celebrate.
Personal anecdote, I am not a sports person, but I was at a baseball game once. The crowd briefly got wild and I could literally feel that weird elation of being part of a cheering group.
Another anecdote I frequently recall is one from the documentary "Wild Wild Country". This documentary follows an Indian guru named Osho as he establishes what amounts to a cult in the US. One journalist recounts going to the town where the community has established themselves with a mind to expose them as a cult. He relates the members lining the streets waiting for the Guru to drive along and he can't help but feel their ecstatic energy as they wait for him. As the car slowly drives down he sees the adherents completely lose control of themselves as the car slowly passes them. When the car arrives in front of him he makes eye contact with Osho, the guru, and the journalist himself burst into tears. He didn't become an adherent or start to subscribe to the cults beliefs but he was overcome in that moment.
1. The university staff were mostly sullen at a culture workshop, enthusiasm was low.
2. Disney is an entertainment world leader.
3. Disney attributes its leadership position to its corporate culture, evidenced at Disney sites which are in a world of their own compared to other entertainment sites - if you've ever been to a Six Flags (USA) or Alton Towers (UK) you'll know that they don't compare to the all around experience at Disneyland.
4. Disney is selling a consulting service to other enterprises to improve cultural coherence, it costs millions.
5. The author objects to the suggested focus of culture. In their words:
> We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s brand new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.” Hold on. We change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition how? The answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous—by being nice. “Care,” we were told, is one of our three “Service Priorities.”
The author shows no evidence of understanding the purpose of a mission statement, which is a guiding principle that cuts across all aspects of an organization's basic deliverables, to help guide all staff on what service delivery would look like if more than the bare minimum service were to be offered. "Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time". How is this not vacuous? i) it helps you understand you are looking to create change that is remarkable and identifiable to GW, not just any old university, ii) it reminds you the changes being made are to change a young student's life, it's not just to teach them factoids, iii) it reminds you that the goal of GW is to change the world through it's teaching, not train people to pass exams and get certificates.
6. The author is combating the university's efforts to get a common aspirational purpose, instead they are trying to create a common rebellion against leadership, so they must want something else that leadership is offering. Because no alternative aspirational purpose was offered, the author is de facto trying to rally people behind ... nothing, inaction, rebellion for rebellion's sake.
As lovely as a thought this might be I have never seen a company that actually used it as anything other than a marketing tool. Maybe a charity (and not even all of them).
At best they'll try to when the company's first founded before it gets swept away in a tide of shareholders and market strategies.
Disney's corporate culture encompasses more than what the company believes. Rather, their culture encompasses everything about the company's approach. It doesn't sound like that's what's being discussed at these workshops. If the slogans aren't being matched with changes in leadership or changes in policy, they are just slogans.
You're right about a mission statement's intended purpose. But in practice, mission statements usually have no impact on a company.
You say the author must want something else that leadership is offering. That is not necessarily the case. It sounds to me like the author thinks the university's culture is already good, and doesn't need work.
This is still vacuous and not very applicable.
"remarkable and identifiable to GW" which means what?
"change a young student's life" in what way?
"to change the world through it's teaching" to change the world how?
So basically you're saying universities are in the entertainment business and they should look to the world leader to see how things should be done?
I'm not sure I would disagree with this, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't what the president of GW was thinking.
Maybe they would be happier if the administration would just let them do their jobs?
The key for me was seeing people consistently let go for breaking "core values". Or having it be a basis for someone's promotion. Obviously that is never going to work well in a University context where tenure is a thing.
If your company is doing that... AND you actually agree and like the Core Values they are promoting, I'm kind of into these workshops and the extra work that goes into maintaining a strong and specific work culture.
"Honesty" is not a value.
"Move fast and break things" is a value.
Enron's core value statement included " Integrity – We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely."
So my point stands.
"Pathological lying" will never emblazoned on the front door, but if you work in P.R. or a Law Firm they will absolutely embrace phrases like "Framing the narrative".
At those work places "Honesty" is absolutely not a core value.
I worked at one institution where if you took a sick day, but then posted pictures on Facebook from Disneyland it was entirely acceptable. That place kind of sucked even though you could get away with anything.
Another job I had would fire people for very comparatively small lies. Things that people do all the time like pretending to have sent an email that just wasn't delivered somehow. It resulted in an incredibly honest and relaxing workplace.... once you adjusted to not telling white lies to cover your ass, and just admitting your mistakes all the time.
That company paired honesty with being much more lax than usual about punishing mistakes. And it was totally ok to say "I need a mental health sick day" and then go to Disneyland. The more honest people thrived in this environment, but many people just can't adapt to the culture at the institution.
On a more serious note, I'm on staff at a relatively major university having spent the previous 30 years in private industry. One of the things I (now at least) appreciate is that the university isn't supposed to have a corporate culture. There isn't a profit motive, it provides a safe-haven for "new thoughts", and should be altruistic in ways even a non-profit corporation can't be. (Note - not all "new thoughts" end up being right). As we work on the university's infrastructure, we commonly ask ourselves how we (as staff) can make the student's experience and/or education better. We're not directly interacting with students (most of the time) like the faculty but I feel the pain of this GW professor - perhaps their president needs to ask the same question.
But GW isn't really an academic institution. It's a real estate developer that uses rich kids from Long Island to fill it's square footage.
If you want to meet a real estate behemoth have a look at Harvard...
Now, I'm not saying having snacks is bad, but you must have drowned in the koolaid to think that a couple of bags of chips in place of a raise shows the company appreciates your work.
One in a while I meet a poor guy like him.
I vaguely remember the corporate culture workshops we had to attend at a couple previous employers, and yeah, it's annoying and boring, but someone had to justify spending X million dollars on a new slogan and spiffy "these five words summarize who we are and what we do for the world".
Apparently that wasn't (isn't?) the norm in university settings?
Also, your summary hit the nail well but missed,
>A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.”
Which makes the situation more insidious.
But I can't remember any of the content of the seminars, because I'm not sure I was fully conscious through them.
A lot of companies have realized that they get employees to work harder for less if they are able to get the employees to develop some sort of emotional attachment to the company. If you as an employee are getting a lot of push about "company culture" and the company is trying to push various experiences to make you feel good about the company, you should make sure you take the time to seriously look at your compensation and what the market compensation is, and see if they are trying to underpay you relative to your value.
Whether you're a business, volunteer organization, sports team or anything else you want the people working with you to be motivated. No matter what. Motivation is the goal.
If you get into motivational psychology, especially for people in the software field, studies consistently show that motivation for us boils down to 3 things: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.
In many cases, feeling good about the place that you work will feed into that purpose motive. Having "esprit de corps" with your team feeds it because you want to both help your team to succeed and you don't want to let them down.
That's also why a bad manager, leader, owner, coach, etc will torpedo it fast because you're going to be a lot less motivated for somebody like that.
I know HN isn't big on YouTube links, but this is one of the better short talks on motivational psychology out there (about 10 minutes long).
I cannot speak for everyone but nothing motivates me more than a well defined task/problem, a reasonable amount of time to solve it, and a follow up letting me know how much my solution helped.
No amount of gimmicks is gonna win with that.
And that's totally normal.
Some companies can better fit the Purpose mold better than others. Many can't at all.
Of course, but that's not the problem with what GW is doing. The problem with what GW is doing is that trying to make people feel good about the place they work with by putting them through artificial "team building" exercises doesn't work. The way you make people feel good about the place they work with is to make it a good place to work. That means letting people do their jobs, giving them the tools they need to do their jobs, and removing obstacles that are in the way of them doing their jobs. Forcing people to stop work and go to these events fails at all three.
Culture has this really interesting property. It's really the cumulative effect of all the decisions and actions taken by every member of the culture. However -- here's the fun part -- the history of those decisions and actions informs future decisions and actions. It becomes somewhat cyclic and self-reinforcing. And because of this it's very difficult to change once it settles in.
So yes, sometimes upon high will attempt to effect cultural change by repetitious reinforcement. And yes, this looks like propaganda because it is. But that does not necessarily mean it is negative or ill-willed. Sometimes a culture really does need to change -- I'm sure Uber saw a lot of "propaganda" when they started getting flak over their sexist workplace...
For a trivial example imagine a three piece suit environment which insists it is a casual working environment while having twelve pages of dress code vs one where they can tell who is there to interview because they are wearing business casual instead of teeshirts and jeans.
The key is to turn that feedback cycle to your purpose. Once consequences start flowing, word will start to get out that "this one has teeth". You want people to get dirty looks and comments about bad behaviour. That negative response will then feed forward into future decisions.
If you care enough to put in some extra time ... you've chosen to care.
There's no "fleecing" with that.
Ironically, as someone who's always been the type of personality to make sure that the equation checks out, I've come to see that it doesn't make the world a better place.
C'est la vie.
It's common (i think) to just start work, play along, make friends and skip many valuable versions of item 1. I skip it often... but i know people who pay a lot of attention. Like lawyer level attention to the mechanics of a relationship, what's being said and what is being exchange, and how are people being influenced.
Some places feel like company is out harvesting black hat social engineers to work against their employees. Excuse the language, i don't mean this in any alarmist tone. But anecdotally i've felt this and mostly (sadly) ignored the feeling out of laziness or lack of awareness or cause.
Yip, the whole "team pep" talks and the like, all reminisce of what we would call a "cult" in mentality they wish to install in the worship of the `company`.
But unless you have a vested interest in that company with shares or a good profit share package, then giving any job your life and soul is only going to end badly for yourself and you will burn out. Though the trend may seem to pull them in, burn them out and install a agist mentality upon older workers, don't make it right - however indirect that mentality is played out.
Remember, a career is a progression of job measured via what you get paid, but they are still jobs after all. If on the other hand you are more involved in the risk and rewards aspects, that is different as your being fair upon yourself with what you invest. Otherwise, it is just a job.
When I was working as a software developer I usually got the most fun assignments, not because I worked myself to death, but because I was at least pretty good for the type of job I had and took initiative.
Now I'm in a job role where I'm expected to take initiative and drive things myself and that can of course mean burnout for a lot of people but I still feel that the company culture is pretty supportive of preventing that. I have monthly 1:1 with my boss and the standing agenda is:
1. How do you feel your work/life balance is right now?
2. How I can support you in removing any obstacles preventing progress in your goals/projects?
3. What can you do to take action to make progress about the things we have talked about.
This is absolutely not a startup though and not in the US either.
I also do realize that if I find a more interesting job I will quite and if my company realize that they don't need my services they will try and fire or move me to another position.
Some companies aren't trying to underpay employees, they are charging a fair price to their customersrather than fleecing them. Or they corporately care amount more than the fiscal bottom line.
This requires employees willing to work for a fair wage and not maximum compensation.
Now as with all things it can be used in good and bad ways and it’s far easier to do bad than to do good. But it’s just a tool of control.
This is the kind of bullshit I inoculate myself against by telling myself: This is not your life. These are not your best friends. This is you farming gold out of a megacorp so you have the means to advance the story-driven missions that are your real life.
More broadly, people are lacking third place institutions like churches, fraternal service organizations, or neighborhood clubs to connect - when their coworkers throw up barriers to connecting, folks get awful lonely awfully quickly.
A 40 hour work week is 23.8% of your week. If you get 7 hours of sleep per night, it's 33.6%. I don't want a third of my waking hours to not be my "real" life.
You're implying as if it's inherently a fraud. Which means that you're implying that "emotional attachement to the company" is something that has no real value for employee - or at least not as much value as money would have.
Why do you think so?
The two big things that determine whether these things suck or rock is basically the amount of money the company invests into its own employees and the amount of growth opportunities. Both of those are (optional) second order effects of the company being wealthy and successful most of the time.
That tendency is in no way unique to teenagers and has a long and dark history.
Bullying
Drugs
Sex
Cheating
Whatever
Leadership is what you do with / for people, not talking at people, but talking AT seems to be the easier / more frequent route.
Graduate quality and skill has increased since 1990 [citation here] for each school individually. What you're seeing is an increase in the variety of institutions you are seeing graduates from.
Not everywhere is created equal. Universities and graduates are all mostly getting better, but they're not all as good as one another.
For context, I'm comparing graduates from a local name-ish school with my no-name school back in the day. Back then, there was a lot of theory, math, proofs, etc. These days it seems more like websites, apps, etc. Some ML, though more because it's trendy, I suspect, and I don't think linear algebra is required.
Beyond that, I spent a ferocious amount of time in the computer labs getting the "trade school" part of my education on my own while I was taking the theoretical coursework. Kind of two curricula for the price of one. I think this is the best path for someone who really wants to be at the top of the field.
Get more money out of students, put more money into these programs with nice kickbacks to administrators. Win-win, at least if you're in an administration position.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-m...
Surely the main goal is to drive out older workers. Some number of them will refuse to tolerate repeated exposure to such nonsense.
I’m all for universities instilling a customer service attitude among staff, and maybe a third party is the right tool to kickstart that process, but it’s leadership from both management and staff on the ground that actually allow these changes to take hold.
And this 2003 article from the LA Weekly gives a jarring glimpse into Mouse mentality: https://www.laweekly.com/keepers-of-the-magic-kingdom/
“The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.
In addition to this state of mind, 'reason,' there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.
But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.” ― Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
BY DANE KENNEDY
The George Washington University faculty and staff ain’t got no culture. Or worse, we’ve got a negative culture. This was the verdict of the Disney Institute, which the president of our university commissioned last year to assess the culture on our campus. Fortunately, the institute, which is the “professional development and external training arm of The Walt Disney Company,” has a remediation plan. It has designed workshops to teach us the cultural “values” and “service priorities” we evidently require.
The culture that Disney has crafted for us is not, it should be said, the high culture of the arts that the poet Matthew Arnold described as “sweetness and light.” Nor is it the anthropological notion of culture—a system of meaning that shapes social behavior. Rather, it is corporate culture, a creature that has become all the rage in the business world—and now, it seems, is burrowing its way into universities. Its professed aim is to instill a sense of shared purpose among employees, but its real objective is far more coercive and insidious.
Our president is rumored to have forked over three to four million dollars to the Disney Institute to improve our culture (he refuses to reveal the cost). A select group of faculty and staff, those identified as opinion leaders, are being offered all-expenses paid trips to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando “to gain first-hand insight into Disney’s approach to culture.” For everyone else, the university is conducting culture training workshops that run up to two hours. All staff and managers are required to attend. Faculty are strongly “encouraged” to participate, and some contract faculty, who have little job security, evidently have been compelled to do so.
I attended one of these workshops. It was a surreal experience. About a hundred mostly sullen university employees—maintenance workers, administrative staff, faculty members, and more—filled a ballroom. Two workshop leaders strained to gin up the crowd’s enthusiasm with various exhortations and exercises, supplemented by several slickly produced videos. The result was a cross between a pep rally and an indoctrination camp.
We were introduced at the beginning of the workshop to the university’s brand new slogan: “Only at GW, we change the world, one life at a time.” Hold on. We change the world only at GW? And we achieve this absurd ambition how? The answer, it turns out, is pretty vacuous—by being nice. “Care,” we were told, is one of our three “Service Priorities.” We were given “Service Priorities” table-tent cards, conveniently sized for our pocketbooks and billfolds so we can whip them out whenever we needed to remind ourselves how we change the world. These cards offer a series of declarative statements—pabulum, some might say—about our “care” priorities. Here’s a sample: “I support a caring environment by greeting, welcoming, and thanking others.” To help us care for others, the university has established a “positive vibes submission” website, where we “can send a positive vibe to someone.” It was hard to detect many positive vibes in the workshop itself.
The other two “service priorities” give us a clearer idea of the culture initiative’s real agenda. One is “safety;” the other, “efficiency.” Both exhort employees to improve their work performance. The very first “safety” recommendation is an injunction to “keep areas clean, well-maintained, and inviting.” An important measure of “efficiency” is a willingness to “embrace change and [be] open to new ways of working.” One might wonder whether work efficiency would be enhanced by redirecting the millions of dollars that are going to the Disney Institute into staff salaries or bonuses instead. But that misses the point. The main purpose of this corporate culture initiative is to create a more disciplined and compliant workforce. Our workshop leaders actually acknowledged that “compliance” is a central pillar of the project.
Lastly, we were introduced to “Our GW Values”—“ours” only in the sense that they were being imposed on us. One might think that our president would be interested in promoting and honoring the values that are specific to our mission as a university, such as innovative research, teaching excellence, critical inquiry, and new ideas. Think again. As crafted by the Disney Institute and its administrative acolytes, “Our GW Values” are “integrity,” “collaboration,” “courage,” “respect,” “excellence,” “diversity,” and “openness.” All worthy values, to be sure, but is it possible to offer a more generic and innocuous set of standards?
The GW culture initiative can be summed up in two words: Mickey Mouse.
Guest blogger Dane Kennedy is the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University.