In this video, John Gerzema talks about the post crisis consumer at TEDxKC. Basically, he’s talking about finding an upside to the financial crisis and showing how it has changed the way people spend money, save money, and demand more from companies.  A culture of transparency has emerged to gain back some of the trust lost.  He cites Gortex as an example where management posts expense reports for everyone in the company to see.  But what else has changed in the workplace post crisis?  And how does this touchy-feely notion of cooperation jibe with the harsh realities of layoffs, slashed benefits, and overall anxiety in the workplace?

To be clear, trends in consumer behavior and lifestyle changes do have softer edges than the workplace, but the crisis has changed the way people interact at work and how businesses do business.  Here are some ways that you might be able to be more effective and help your workplace adjust post-crisis:

1.)  Transparency

If you think about the value that we’ve put on secrecy in the past, it’s very hard to move away from it or even see the value.  But often employees are asked to do more with less people and the result can be a stressful, unproductive workplace.  It’s both a manager and employee issue, but there may be a simple solution.  Everyone laying out their workloads and being honest about what they see as fair and unfair.  Yes, there is the opportunity for arguments to erupt, but there is also an opportunity for a large pool of people to put their heads together to get a job done.

2.)  Cooperation

This links back to transparency, but can be extended further.  Cooperation in the workplace may be between departments or even partner companies.  The idea is that working together makes us stronger than working separately.   Think about departments as diverse as accounting and marketing.  Is there a way to make them work together in a more efficient way.  Traditionally we’ve looked at bringing in a system that will make something easier for one set of people but more difficult for others (think of software that require retraining and a complete rework of how someone has done their job for 25 years.)  Why not sit everyone down and start to cooperate on issues to see if there’s a solution that’s low cost, easy to implement, and that will help everyone?

3.) Long Term Thinking

Is it possible that people are thinking of their jobs as more long term than before the crisis?  No one can tell what the long term trend is going to be, but there were a huge number of people dreaming of the value of their property in Florida or checking in on their stocks in the past.  It turns out that the consumer savings rate has climbed significantly post crisis.  This would indicate that things like a steady pay-check and a 401K plan not to mention health benefits means significantly more than it did in the past.  Jobs have become more valuable.  Not just because the unemployment rate is near 10%.  But because the benefits of long term employment align more with people’s values today.

The phrase ‘balance of work and life’ indicates that they are polar opposites that one needs to carefully adjust to ensure that they don’t both come tumbling down.  It seems that the two complement each other.  Today, there’s a chance for work and life to align more closely; for values that we bring to our homes and neighborhoods to enter the office.  Getting to know our co-workers as neighbors and sometimes neighbors in need isn’t just a feel good notion, it’s good business

John Gerzema says there’s an upside to the recent financial crisis — the opportunity for positive change. Speaking at TEDxKC, he identifies four major cultural shifts driving new consumer behavior and shows how businesses are evolving to connect with thoughtful spending.

Consider this anecdote from on where fear can lead in a workplace at Portfolio.com

Back in the mid-’90s, when Nick Leeson was the general manager of the Singapore office of a British investment bank called Barings, one of his underlings made an error that cost the company $30,000. Leeson decided not to report it. He tried to hide the loss in a secret account instead. He figured he could make up the difference with a little trading of his own. He bet that the Nikkei would go down; it went up. He bet that Japanese government bonds would go up; they went down. Playing double or nothing time and again, Leeson compounded his predicament—raising the deficit from $30K to $30 million to $200 million. He ultimately rolled up $1.3 billion in losses, driving Barings out of business.

The first, and most obvious lesson here is that transparency is always key.  In other words, don’t lie.  That may seem like a simple almost childish rule, but it’s essential.  Leeson was trying to hide a mistake and ended up making the situation worse.  If he had come clean, the situation would have been much better for him and for his company.

But the story raises some important questions.  Why was his fear so great that he couldn’t come clean about the mistake?   Ultimately, we don’t know what forces were at work here, but clearly this is a situation to guard against as both an employee and employer. Here are 4 ways to deal with fear at work and move on:

1.)  Tell the Truth but Present a Solution

Technically Leeson skipped the first part of this and went, not so successfully, to the second.  It’s important to get the order right.  Most companies hire people not to be perfect, but to be human.  And human’s are pretty good at correcting mistakes, solving problems, and getting ourselves out of the messes we got into.  Coming clean with a mistake, accepting responsibility, and presenting a solution shows your true value to an organization.

2.)  Manage Expectations

This doesn’t mean lowering your standards, but it does mean laying out realistic scenerios for success and failure. Make sure that your boss understands and agrees with your plan of attack and understands the possible downsides.   Don’t ever expect a boss to be ‘OK’ with failure, but do lay out the possibility of it happening.

3.)  Don’t Let Fear Be Your Primary Motivator

Fear can be a terrific motivator if you’re running from a tiger.  But it’s probably not a great way of driving success in the workplace.  As the example above proves, fear of a modest failure can lead to something catastrophic.  Fear as a motivator just leads to some poor choices and ultimately escalates.  Success as a motivator ususally involved short and long term goals, acheivement, and celebration.

4.)  Take a Breath, Excercise, Spend Time with Your Family

In other words, relax a little.  Most of us say that these things are important, but we seldom truly invest in them.  Stepping a way from an issue at work, even for an hour, can help bring clarity to a situation and put it into context.  Most of us are not making life and death decisions at work and most problems can be solved.  Put problems into context.  They will still be problems, but you won’t feel like a tiger is nipping at your heels.

5.)  For Bosses Only: Creating an Atmosphere of Fear is Counterproductive

While having a hard line policy of no toleration for mistakes may seem like a viable leadership technique, it can leave you vulnerable to lower productivity, high turnaround rates, and a non-transparent culture at work.   It your job to lead and motivate employees, not tally and judge their mistakes.  Why was the mistake made?  How are we going to fix it?  What can be learned from it?  These are helpful questions that, when answered, will help employees grow.

NEOtropolis, from Western Reserve Public Media, did a terrific profile of some of NorthEast Ohio’s most innovative workplaces. They look at Marcus Thomas LLC, a Cleveland area advertising and marketing firm, where employees have access to inhouse video games and can bring their dogs to work. Their space is also open and airy and a cool place to wander around. Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna. The NorthCoast 99 Best Places to Work winner has started Fit For Life, an employee wellness program. We’ve focused before on workplace aesthetics, but this program brings up some good points about efficiency (employees working later because they don’t have to go home and walk their dogs) and cost savings (saving on insurance because people exercise at work).  There’s also a terrific panel discussion.  Check it out here: Link

As the line between work and life becomes more gray, expect unconventional workplaces to become, well, more conventional.  It’s probably worth it to point out that the examples typically used to show an unconventional workplace usually have some branding component.  In other words, a creative agency having a creative office is positive branding.  A healthy work environment in a company related to healthcare is another positive branding reflection.  But what about accounting?  Or engineering?  Or manufacturing?  In other words, does a positive work environment matter if no one expects it to be positive?  Or at least something more than a room full of desks and cubicles?  In many ways, yes.

The same benefits apply to different disciplines — accountants still need to go home and walk their dogs or care for their children, for example.  So the lesson may be to not judge your work place requirements by how much you are perceived by  the outside world.  Increasing productivity and wellness are the main reason for creating a comfortable, accommodating space for work.  The branding should come second.

Watch the video here:  NEOtropolis Episode 111

Liesl Schillinger from Slate wrote a fantastic and interesting analysis of the American, British, French and German versions highlighting the differences in the show as a window in the differences in work life around the world.  While generalities about different cultures are rarely helpful, the differences in the show do highlight how various cultures operate under familiar circumstances.

It’s an interesting and entertaining read and there are some intriguing video clips that, even though they are not sub-titled are really funny.  If you watch the videos, you’ll recognize familiar trappings of office life far from Scranton, PA.  From the article:

Watching all four versions back-to-back is not only a strangely unmooring experience—like seeing the film Groundhog Day over and over—it’s a crash course in national identity. And if any conjecture could be made about the cultural differences that these subtly contrasting programs reveal, it might be this one: These days, Germans and Americans are doing much of their living in and around their offices, while the Brits and French continue to live outside of them. Here, in broad strokes, are the chief differences. In the British version, nobody is working, nobody has a happy relationship, everyone looks terrible, and everybody is depressed. In the French version, nobody is working but even the idiots look good, and everybody seems possessed of an intriguing private life. In the German version, actual work is visibly being done, most of the staff is coupled up, and the workers never stop eating and drinking—treating the office like a kitchen with desks.

Read the full article here: Foreign Office on Slate

Also, the article highlights the rarity of talking to human beings.  It’s a real differentiator that Zappos offers customers a generous return policiy and ulimitied phone support located in the US.

From the article

Zappos and its imitators—shoes.com, heels.com, and the Gap’s inexplicably named piperlime.com—are shifting this public transaction into the comfort and privacy of customers’ living rooms. There, thanks to Zappos’s three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day return policy, we can all be Imelda Marcos, sifting through ceiling-high piles of boxes, and waiting in sweatpanted indolence for the UPS man to pick up our rejects.

Unlike most Web sites, including Amazon’s, which seem to be operated by spectral forces rather than by human beings, Zappos prominently displays a toll-free customer-service phone number. There are no limits on call times, and the resulting sessions occasionally resemble protracted talk therapy. On July 5th, a twenty-two-year-old C.L.T. member named Britnee Brown, who has been with the company for a little more than a year, took a call that was a record five hours, twenty-five minutes, and thirty-one seconds long, from a woman on the East Coast interested in Masai Barefoot Technology shoes, which purport to mimic supposedly salubrious barefoot-on-the-beach walking with curved rubber platforms. “We started talking about her sister,” Brown said. The call that set the previous record lasted more than four hours, with a woman afflicted by peripheral neuropathy who had trouble feeling her feet. “She told me childhood stories, things like that,” Jennifer S., the operator who handled that one, said in a video posted on YouTube. Zappos has advertised sparingly thus far, preferring word of mouth, and (unlike most companies) encourages employees to let it all hang out on Twitter and Facebook.

Read the full article here: Link

Mike Rowe, the host of “Dirty Jobs,” tells some compelling (and horrifying) real-life job stories. Listen for his insights and observations about the nature of hard work, and how it’s been unjustifiably degraded in society today.