Meng Tan - a model of Google's Mindful Leadership

Where two or more gather…let them do so with consciousness

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I have spent over 25 years working and consulting for all types of organizations – big, small, public, private, for profit and not. One thing I have found to be consistent is a general malaise in these organizations. The unbridled pursuit of profit at any cost has left them with products that are commoditized, employees at the brink of exhaustion and environments and communities close to depletion.

Why is this happening?

To understand, I removed myself totally from corporate life and gained a new perspective. I left my consulting practice and immersed myself into the mindfulness community.

I went inwards using today’s contemplative practices to gain insight.  I have been researching the most successful leaders in consciousness and sustainability looking for the best wisdom teachings. What I found surprised me and gave me hope.

There is a movement that is gaining ground. This movement is involved in developing a new economic model, one that is based not on a single but rather a triple bottom line: People, Planet and Profit. At the core of this movement is a philosophy that is bringing mindfulness practices into the work place, such as conscious awareness and intention, meditation, yoga, happiness and much more.  Forward thinking organizations are realizing that these practices will not only improve the health and well being of employees and the environment, but will deliver significant business benefits of increased productivity and innovation.

I recently attended a conference called the Wisdom 2.0 Summit. It was the first of its kind, bringing together leaders in industry (Whole Foods, Zappos) and new technology (Twitter, Google, Facebook), with spiritual and social consciousness leaders. The proposed topic of discussion was: “How can we live mindfully, with meaning and wisdom while leveraging the great technology of our time?” But, what ended up being discussed most was: “How to bring mindfulness to all parts of our lives, particularly our work lives?” What I found encouraging were many examples of extremely successful organizations already incorporating mindfulness practices and realizing quantifiable benefits.

Below I have outlined three companies from three different industries incorporating consciousness practices to help not only generate profit, but also to maintain a healthy and happy workforce and sustainable environment. Below are some of their most successful practices, described in their words:

Google

Online Search and advertising ($23.6 billion in sales, 20,000 employees)

Comments from:

Gopi Kallayil (Group Marketing Manager, Google),
Bradley Horowitz (VP of Products, Google),
Meng Tan (Head of Personal Growth at Google)

Interesting Fact: The title on Meng’s business card: Jolly Good Fellow (Which nobody can deny)

  • Google has a healthy disrespect for authority and meetings; we create an environment where engineers (hacker culture) can get into the creative flow
  • Successful companies can create an environment, setting and culture that allows the flow to happen, “not by managing, but tending to garden”
  • Focus on results produced versus effort and time; allow people to manage their own schedules
  • Provide opportunities/environment for “ah moments”; this happens when people are relaxed and having fun
  • Incorporates mindfulness in organization with daily meditation practices, bringing spirit world into daily lives, blessing in email message
  • Strategies include: finding small amount of time each day to do yoga and meditation (team contemplates problems before coming up with solutions)
  • Non-negotiable commitments with self
  • Most important connection is with self (Search Inside Yourself program at Google)
  • Playfulness, increase efficiency and peacefulness – making them a priority (family Fridays)
  • Community and social integration
  • Create a curriculum of Emotional Intelligence (EI) – comes from inner development, attention and mindfulness
  • Continuous improvement and innovation comes from EI
  • Examples of courses provided: stress reduction, mindfulness, empathy, sleep, tea, speaker series
  • Googlish culture– bias toward people who are emotionally connected and altruistic
  • Googlish dress code – don’t be naked (naked is undefined)
  • Looking for “ Wisdom aptitude” in candidates
  • Green focus – offer free bikes all over campus for employees to ride to meetings; shuttle bus from San Francisco removes hundreds of cars from the California highways daily
  • Free food – no employee to be more than 200 feet from healthy quality food that is local, organic, sustainable; helps people work and enjoy life together…is good for biz
  • Enlightened leadership is needed –  key elements include:
  1. Fair and equitable incentive structure
  2. Open management style and structure
  3. Do the right thing, make people happy and successful (Be a force for good)
  4. Mindfulness – deepen within companies, makes good business sense

Why – Business Benefits:

  • Improves profit – when improve EI studies have proven you increase productivity and efficiency
  • Leadership – best leaders have high EI
  • Happiness – when people are happy they are more creative and productive, not just today but tomorrow too (studies have shown)
  • Programs must: be backed by science to convince the skeptics; have real business benefits; engender compassion and be transformative; involves consciousness (not creating too much structure, maintaining openness, trust, not micro managed)

Zappos

Online retailer (Over $1billion in gross revenue in 2009, recently sold to Amazon)

Comments from:

Tony Hsieh (CEO Zappos)
His Book: Delivering Happiness, A Path to Purpose and Passion

  • Starting a movement – one in which you don’t have to choose between happiness and profit, these two concepts can coexist
  • Hiring practices include two sets of interviews for skill and fit
  • Even a die-hard capitalist will understand that if you treat customers well it is good for business: plough advertising money into customer experience to generate Word of Mouth
  • Think of social media not as a “marketing channel” but as a “relationship channel” -Twitter practice of service: all tweets must either Inspire, Connect, Educate or Entertain
  • Reward random acts of kindness
  • Culture is the driving force
    • First 50 people set the culture
    • Need to set the culture early
    • Humour is the delivery vehicle for truth
    • Core values in other companies were lofty and read like a press release, we wanted Zappos values to become meaningful such that employees could live up to and be hired based on
    • Consultative process to come up with values

Zappos Core Values

As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the Zappos core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies. These are the ten core values that we live by:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service

  • Deliver Wow – There is no script in call centre, we celebrate long discussions, because they are the  best branding; customer call centre not hidden but promoted on each web page; we found that high return rates = most loyal customers, so we pour marketing and advertising dollars into customer experience instead of traditional media

2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

  • How weird are you – we value creative fun and a little weirdness, recognizing and celebrating uniqueness

4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

  • Be creative and open minded – we test for this attitude among applicants

5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

  • Trust employees to make personal and professional connection with each customer (one customer service agent sent flowers to a women who lost her mother)

8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

  • Be Humble – to remove ego; when they interview a new candidate, it starts with shuttle driver

Samavor Tea Lounges

Tea retail outlets (2008 revenue $2.3 million, 230% increase)

Comments from:

Jesse Jacobs (Founder), Samavor Tea Lounges

  • Tea Lounges are designed with Zen, mindfulness, slowing down
  • If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want
  • Core Values – WHY RACE:
    • W- Why are we here (our biz/role)
    • H – Hierarchy – flat or lack of
    • Y – You – what you (customer, employee, etc.) need
    • R – Relax, yoga, meditation, mountain climbing
    • A – Autonomy, empowered, educated, learning from asking, take risks
    • C- Connection, physical, one-to-one connecting
    • E – Education of employees and customers
    • Turned off WIFI in lounges to help people reconnect – not a popular biz decision, but brought in a whole new clientele
    • Elements to create good culture and mindfulness:
      • Shadow of leader – leaders who are situationally aware
      • Aiming to become the best leaders we can become
      • Encourage people to question, ask why, challenge the norm
      • Harness the energy of everyone versus just those at the top
      • Hire talent and then get out of the way
      • Leaders need to be hyper-sensitive
      • Flipped pyramid – leaders support managers, managers support servers, servers support table cleaning staff, cleaning staff support customer (who are at the top)

Why – Business Benefit:

  • To be successful need to listen to inner voice for innovation, otherwise products or services become commoditized, become price sensitive, versus increased quality and uniqueness that can garner higher prices