I have a comment regarding your hypothesis. I do believe it true to some extent, but there is a point where the performance culture diminishes with company "sexiness". Fun can be a motivation to put in more work, too much fun can be dangerous to performance culture, but too little fun can also kill morale. I think companies like Google have found the perfect middle ground between fun and performance. Also, some "fun" stuff could be used to drive innovation. For instance, I learned that Google employees are encouraged to take a day of the week to work on "fun" side projects, and Google projects like Gmail have spun out of this.
Thanks a lot for commenting, and I think you have an excellent point.
My primary thinking is around where 'fun' or 'sexiness' is the primary reason for attracting talent. If the main reason people join a company is because of how cool it is, then you would quickly find many people whose incentives are not aligned with that of the company. They may have a lot of fun at company parties or spend a lot of time posting IG stories from the company's resort, but their actual performance would probably be lower than intended.
On the flip side, if you already have an environment where talented people are present to work on very challenging and impactful problems (e.g. Google), then it is very important to introduce some elements of 'fun' or 'sexiness' to drive retention (because otherwise these very talented and ambitious people would leave to solve even more exciting and challenging problems elsewhere).
Again, this is my hypothesis and I am open to better arguments or actual data :)
Hi Hameed,
I have a comment regarding your hypothesis. I do believe it true to some extent, but there is a point where the performance culture diminishes with company "sexiness". Fun can be a motivation to put in more work, too much fun can be dangerous to performance culture, but too little fun can also kill morale. I think companies like Google have found the perfect middle ground between fun and performance. Also, some "fun" stuff could be used to drive innovation. For instance, I learned that Google employees are encouraged to take a day of the week to work on "fun" side projects, and Google projects like Gmail have spun out of this.
Your newsletter was brilliant as always. Arigato.
Hi Ibrahim,
Thanks a lot for commenting, and I think you have an excellent point.
My primary thinking is around where 'fun' or 'sexiness' is the primary reason for attracting talent. If the main reason people join a company is because of how cool it is, then you would quickly find many people whose incentives are not aligned with that of the company. They may have a lot of fun at company parties or spend a lot of time posting IG stories from the company's resort, but their actual performance would probably be lower than intended.
On the flip side, if you already have an environment where talented people are present to work on very challenging and impactful problems (e.g. Google), then it is very important to introduce some elements of 'fun' or 'sexiness' to drive retention (because otherwise these very talented and ambitious people would leave to solve even more exciting and challenging problems elsewhere).
Again, this is my hypothesis and I am open to better arguments or actual data :)
Thanks a lot, Ibrahim!
The butterfly and caterpillar analogy 👌👌👍
Thanks for the book recommendation.