Author: lenny

billion dollar data centers, but my washing machine can’t count

You’ve seen the headlines. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta are collectively pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure. Massive data centers humming with thousands of GPUs, cooled by entire rivers worth of water, powered by dedicated energy grids. The scale is almost incomprehensible.

And yet.

You toss a load of laundry in, the machine says 32 minutes remaining, you go make a cup of coffee and come back 45 minutes later. It still says 14 minutes.

How is this possible? How can humanity build the most sophisticated computing infrastructure in history and still not figure out how to make an appliance count backwards from 30? It feels absurd. It feels like a joke. But the answer is actually a fascinating window into how technology economics, engineering priorities, and product design really work.

First, Let’s Acknowledge That This Is a Real and Legitimate Frustration

This isn’t just you being impatient. Washing machine timers are notoriously inaccurate, and it’s been a running complaint for decades. You plan your morning around that countdown. You schedule your gym trip, your grocery run, your entire afternoon. The machine just lies to you; casually, repeatedly, with zero remorse.

The same goes for dishwashers, dryers, and ovens. These are appliances that cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and their most basic user-facing feature (telling you when they’ll be done) is essentially a work of fiction.

So what’s going on?

The Real Reason: Washing Machines Are Deliberately Cheap to Build

Here’s the first and most important thing to understand: the chip inside your washing machine costs approximately nothing.

We’re talking about a microcontroller that might cost the manufacturer somewhere between $0.50 and $3.00. It has a tiny amount of memory, minimal processing power, and it’s designed to do one thing: execute a pre-programmed wash cycle sequence. That’s it. It turns motors on and off, opens valves, reads a handful of sensors, and displays some numbers on a screen.

The entire electronics budget for a mid-range washing machine might be $15 to $30 in components. The rest of the cost goes into the drum, the motor, the bearings, the casing, the water pump, and the retail and distribution markup.

Contrast that with an AI data center, where a single NVIDIA H100 GPU costs around $30,000 to $40,000, and a single rack might hold dozens of them. The economics are not just different (they’re from entirely different universes).

Why Does the Chip Quality Matter for Time Estimation?

Because accurate time estimation isn’t actually a simple problem. To count down correctly, the machine would need to dynamically account for a huge number of variables in real time. Doing that well requires more sophisticated sensors, more processing power, and more complex software. All of that costs money.

The Wash Cycle Is Not a Fixed Process

This is the key insight most people don’t realize: a washing machine cycle is not like a three-minute egg timer. It’s a deeply dynamic process that changes based on dozens of real-world conditions, including:

1. Load Size and Weight

A heavy load of jeans and towels takes significantly longer to spin out than a light load of t-shirts. The machine has to work harder to extract water, and it may need to run additional spin cycles to balance the drum properly.

2. Water Pressure

How fast the machine fills depends entirely on the water pressure in your home at that particular moment. If someone else in the house is showering, running the dishwasher, or flushing a toilet, the fill time increases. The machine’s initial time estimate assumes nominal water pressure. Your actual pressure? It has no reliable idea.

3. Water Temperature

If the machine is heating water, the time it takes to reach the target temperature depends on your incoming water temperature, which varies by season, geography, and time of day. A cold winter morning means the machine works harder and longer to heat the water.

4. Fabric Sensing and Load Balancing

Modern machines do try to sense load imbalance and redistribute clothes during the spin cycle. This can add several minutes of back-and-forth spinning that wasn’t in the original estimate. A badly tangled bedsheet can turn a 30-minute cycle into a 50-minute ordeal.

5. Suds Detection

Used too much detergent? Many modern machines will detect excess suds and run additional rinse cycles automatically. This is almost never accounted for in the initial time estimate.

The point is: the machine genuinely doesn’t know how long it’s going to take when it starts. The timer it shows you at the beginning is an educated guess based on the selected cycle settings and almost nothing else.

So Why Doesn’t It Just Update the Estimate in Real Time?

Great question. And here we get to the heart of the engineering and business trade-off.

Some machines do try to update their estimates. But they do it badly, for a few reasons:

The Sensors Are Primitive

Most budget and mid-range washing machines have very basic sensors. They can detect whether the drum is spinning, whether water is present, and roughly how heavy the load is based on drum resistance. That’s about it. They don’t have precision weight sensors, real-time water flow meters, or temperature monitoring sophisticated enough to feed accurate predictions.

Adding better sensors costs money (and more importantly, it costs money on every single unit produced). A $5 sensor might seem trivial, but if you’re selling 500,000 units a year, that’s $2.5 million added to your manufacturing cost. Appliance manufacturing is a brutally competitive, low-margin business. That $5 matters enormously.

The Software Is Written to Be “Good Enough”

Here’s a dirty secret of consumer appliance development: the software is not a priority. The engineering effort and budget goes into the mechanical components: the motor, the drum, the reliability of the seals and bearings. Those are the things that cause warranty claims and reputation damage if they fail.

A slightly inaccurate timer? Nobody returns a washing machine because the countdown was off by 15 minutes. So the incentive to fix it is very low. The software gets written, it gets tested enough to pass QA, and it ships; it might not be updated again for the entire product lifecycle.

The Algorithm Wasn’t Designed to Learn or Adapt

The timer logic in most washing machines is essentially a static lookup table. Based on the selected cycle (cotton, delicates, quick wash, etc.), it assigns a predetermined time estimate. It might shave off a few minutes as the cycle progresses, but it’s not doing real dynamic calculation.

A truly accurate timer would need to continuously monitor actual progress against expected progress and recalculate the remaining time. That requires a more sophisticated algorithm, more memory, and more processing cycles. It all points back to needing a more capable (and expensive) chip.

But AI Is So Cheap Now. Why Can’t They Just Use AI?

This is a fair and increasingly relevant question. If AI is getting so powerful and so accessible, why not just put a smarter chip in the washing machine?

A few reasons:

The Design Cycle Is Long

Consumer appliances are not smartphones. They’re not updated every year. A washing machine model might be in production for five to ten years with minimal changes. The electronics inside were probably designed and locked in three to four years before the model even launched. You’re not getting a mid-cycle software update that improves the timer algorithm.

Reliability Over Intelligence

Appliance manufacturers have a deeply conservative engineering culture for good reason. A washing machine that fails mid-cycle, floods your laundry room, or damages clothing is a catastrophe. The simpler the electronics, the fewer the failure points; a cheap, dumb, proven microcontroller is more reliable than a sophisticated, power-hungry AI chip that’s never been stress-tested through 10,000 wash cycles in humid, vibration-heavy conditions.

Nobody Is Asking for It

Bluntly: accurate timers are not a major purchase driver. When consumers shop for washing machines, they look at capacity, energy efficiency ratings, spin speed, noise levels, and price. A salesperson has never closed a deal by saying “and this one has an incredibly accurate countdown timer.” Until it becomes a competitive differentiator, manufacturers have little incentive to invest in it.

So Why Are We Spending Billions on AI Then?

Because the economics of AI infrastructure are completely inverted from consumer appliances.

Every dollar invested in an AI data center can potentially generate enormous returns (through cloud computing fees, through powering products used by billions of people, through competitive advantage in a market where being slightly faster or smarter than your rival is worth billions). The ROI calculation justifies the astronomical spending.

A washing machine timer, on the other hand, is a cost center. Improving it costs money and generates no additional revenue. The consumer who buys the machine with the accurate timer pays the same price as the one with the inaccurate timer. They can’t know the difference until they’ve already bought it and lived with it.

This is what economists call an information asymmetry problem. You can’t evaluate timer accuracy in the showroom. So manufacturers don’t compete on it.

The Broader Lesson: Technology Doesn’t Improve Uniformly

Your washing machine timer is a perfect example of a counterintuitive truth about technological progress: technology doesn’t get better everywhere at the same rate. It gets better where the money and incentives point.

AI gets billions of dollars because it has clear, enormous, immediate commercial value. Smartphones get incredible year-over-year improvements because hundreds of millions of people upgrade every two years and pay premium prices. Electric vehicles are advancing rapidly because of massive regulatory pressure and competitive dynamics.

Washing machine timers? No lobby. No competitive pressure. No consumer awareness. No ROI. So they stay stuck in the early 2000s, lying to you about how much time is left, completely unbothered.

Will This Ever Actually Get Fixed?

Possibly. Interestingly, it’s the AI wave that might finally fix it; albeit indirectly.

The rise of smart home appliances and connected devices means some premium washing machines are now running more sophisticated software, connecting to apps, and actually improving their estimates over time through usage data. Samsung, LG, and Bosch have high-end models that do a meaningfully better job of dynamic time estimation than their budget counterparts.

As the cost of capable chips continues to fall (driven in large part by the AI boom creating economies of scale in chip manufacturing) it will eventually become economically viable to put genuinely smart processors in mid-range appliances. When that happens, your washing machine might finally learn that your load of king-size duvets always takes longer than it thinks.

But don’t hold your breath. Industry design cycles are slow, consumer awareness on this issue is low, and appliance manufacturers are not known for being early adopters of anything that costs them money without a clear revenue return.

The Bottom Line

The gap between a billion-dollar AI data center and a lying washing machine timer isn’t a failure of technology. It’s a completely rational outcome of economic incentives. We build what we have strong reasons to build, and we leave “good enough” alone when there’s no pressure to improve it.

The AI data center exists because it’s worth unimaginable amounts of money to the companies building it. Your washing machine timer is inaccurate because fixing it isn’t worth $5 to the company that made it. The technology to fix it exists; the incentive doesn’t.

That’s not a comforting answer when you’re standing in your kitchen wondering if you have time to run an errand. But it is, at least, an honest one.

Now go check on your laundry. It’s definitely not done yet, no matter what the timer says.

looking back

When I ask what the most crucial trait of a strategist is, I often hear “understanding trends” as one of the answers. During lectures and keynotes on the subject, I ask participants which distinct quality they believe is necessary for creating solid strategies. While a sensitivity to current and future trends is vital, another aspect is frequently overlooked.

In the past, when fewer people labeled Elon Musk as crazy, he once defined intelligence in an interview as the ability to ask yourself, “what does this remind me of?” When building a future-proof strategy, asking that same question and drawing inspiration from potential similarities across multiple decades is essential.

Looking forward is just as indispensable as looking back.

Bridging the Gap in Employee Engagement

In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment, employee engagement has become a crucial factor in driving organizational success. Understanding the importance of employee engagement and the various factors that influence it is the first step in bridging the gap between employees and their work. From creating a positive work culture to providing opportunities for growth and open communication, there are numerous strategies for improving employee engagement that can significantly impact the overall productivity and satisfaction of employees. Moreover, the role of leadership in setting clear expectations, leading by example, and recognizing and rewarding employees cannot be understated. Effective communication, building trust and accountability, implementing employee recognition programs, and addressing burnout and work-life balance are also key components in enhancing employee engagement. With the utilization of technology and continuous measurement and improvement strategies, organizations can create a thriving work environment where employees feel valued, motivated, and fully engaged in their roles. As we delve deeper into the various aspects of employee engagement, it becomes clear that the success of any organization is deeply intertwined with the level of engagement and satisfaction of its employees.

Understanding Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is not just a buzzword, it’s a critical component of a successful and thriving workplace. When employees are engaged, they are more motivated, productive, and committed to the organization’s goals. It creates a positive work environment where everyone feels valued and appreciated.

There are several factors that can affect employee engagement, such as clear communication from leadership, opportunities for growth and development, recognition for hard work, and a healthy work-life balance. Understanding these factors is essential in creating strategies to improve employee engagement within an organization.

Measuring employee engagement is crucial in determining the current state of workforce engagement. Surveys, feedback sessions, and performance reviews can provide valuable insights into how engaged employees are with their work. This data helps organizations identify areas for improvement and develop action plans to boost employee engagement.

Strategies for Improving Employee Engagement

Creating a positive work culture is crucial for engaging employees and fostering a sense of belonging within the organization. By promoting teamwork, recognizing achievements, and providing support, employees feel valued and motivated to contribute their best. A positive work culture also leads to higher job satisfaction and lower turnover rates, resulting in a more cohesive and productive workforce.

Providing opportunities for growth is another key strategy in improving employee engagement. When employees see that there are pathways for career advancement, skill development, and learning new technologies or processes, they are more likely to be committed to their roles and eager to contribute. Investing in employee training programs and mentorship opportunities not only benefits individual staff members but also enhances the overall talent pool of the organization.

Encouraging open communication builds trust between management and staff while creating an environment where everyone feels heard. Whether it’s through regular team meetings, feedback sessions, or anonymous suggestion boxes, allowing employees to voice their opinions helps address concerns early on before they escalate. Open communication also enables collaboration among teams and promotes innovation as diverse perspectives are welcomed.

The Role of Leadership in Employee Engagement

Setting clear expectations is crucial for employees to understand what is expected of them. This helps create a sense of direction and purpose, leading to higher engagement. When leaders communicate their expectations effectively, employees feel more confident in their roles and are motivated to contribute positively.

Leading by example is another key aspect of leadership in employee engagement. Employees look up to their leaders for guidance and inspiration. By demonstrating a strong work ethic, positive attitude, and dedication to the company’s values, leaders can influence their team members to do the same. This fosters a culture of high engagement where everyone strives to perform at their best.

Recognizing and rewarding employees for their efforts plays a significant role in boosting employee engagement. Effective leaders make it a priority to acknowledge hard work and show appreciation for contributions made by their staff. This not only motivates employees but also reinforces the idea that they are valued members of the team, encouraging continued commitment and enthusiasm.

Effective Communication for Employee Engagement

We’ve got a bunch of different channels at our disposal – from emails and newsletters to team meetings and one-on-one chats. By utilizing these various communication platforms, we can make sure that everyone is in the loop and feeling heard.

But it’s not just about talking at our employees – it’s also crucial that we listen to what they have to say. Seeking feedback from our staff shows them that their opinions truly matter. This open dialogue fosters a sense of trust and belonging, ultimately boosting their engagement levels.

And when conflicts arise (because let’s face it, they will), we need to tackle them head-on. Proactively resolving disputes creates a harmonious work environment where everyone feels respected and valued. Let’s keep those lines of communication wide open!

Building Trust and Accountability

Creating a culture of trust within the workplace is essential for engaging employees. When decisions are made transparently, it fosters an environment where employees feel valued and respected. This transparency helps in aligning the goals of the organization with those of its workforce, leading to a more cohesive and motivated team.

Accountability is equally crucial for employee engagement. By holding employees accountable for their work, it communicates that their contributions matter and that they are responsible for their actions. This sense of responsibility can lead to increased ownership and pride in one’s work, ultimately resulting in higher levels of engagement among staff members.

Consistency is key when building trust within an organization. By consistently demonstrating honesty, integrity, and fairness in all interactions, leaders can build a foundation of trust with their employees. Actions speak louder than words, so maintaining consistency in decision-making processes will help foster an environment where open communication thrives.

Implementing Employee Recognition Programs

Are you ready to take your employee engagement to the next level? Implementing employee recognition programs can be a game-changer for boosting staff morale and motivation. By acknowledging the hard work and contributions of your employees, you are showing that their efforts are valued and appreciated.

There are various types of recognition programs that you can explore, from peer-to-peer recognition to milestone celebrations. Best practices for recognition include making it timely, specific, and meaningful. Consider creating a system where employees can nominate each other for outstanding performance, or establish a points-based rewards program tied to certain achievements.

Measuring the impact of recognition is crucial in determining the effectiveness of your programs. Keep track of key metrics such as productivity, retention rates, and overall job satisfaction. Gathering feedback from employees about their experience with recognition can also provide valuable insights into areas for improvement.

Addressing Burnout and Work-Life Balance

Feeling burned out at work? It’s time to take a step back and recognize the signs of burnout before it takes a toll on your well-being. From exhaustion to lack of motivation, identifying these red flags is crucial in order to address them head-on. By acknowledging the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, we can prevent burnout and create a more fulfilling work environment for everyone.

Promoting work-life balance isn’t just a trendy catchphrase – it’s essential for overall employee engagement. Encouraging employees to prioritize their personal lives alongside their professional responsibilities leads to higher productivity and satisfaction in the workplace. Whether it’s offering flexible scheduling or promoting self-care practices, there are numerous ways employers can support their staff in achieving that sought-after balance.

Supporting mental and physical well-being shouldn’t be overlooked when addressing burnout and work-life balance. Creating an open dialogue around mental health, providing access to resources such as counseling services or wellness programs, and fostering a supportive culture all contribute to maintaining a healthy workforce. When employees feel valued not only for their contributions but also as individuals with unique needs, the result is improved morale and stronger employee engagement.

Utilizing Technology for Employee Engagement

In today’s fast-paced and technology-driven world, utilizing employee engagement platforms is a game-changer. These platforms provide a space for open communication, collaboration, and recognition among employees. With features like virtual team-building activities, feedback tools, and peer recognition programs, these platforms foster a sense of belonging and motivation within the workforce.

Remote work has become increasingly common, making virtual engagement an essential aspect of employee connection. Leveraging video conferencing tools and chat applications allows for seamless communication regardless of geographical barriers. This not only keeps remote employees connected but also enhances their sense of involvement in company initiatives.

One solution to help map mutual expectations, that is both scientifically sound and academically valid is kazi. It identifies both preferred job content – and team roles and matches them with jobs that meet the same expectations.

Furthermore, leveraging data analytics provides valuable insights into employee behavior and preferences. By tracking engagement metrics such as participation rates in company events or utilization of online resources, organizations can tailor their strategies to better meet the needs of their workforce. This data-driven approach ensures that efforts towards employee engagement are targeted and effective.

Measuring and Improving Employee Engagement

Are you ready to take your employee engagement to the next level? It’s time to start measuring and improving! By setting key performance indicators for engagement, you can track progress and identify areas for growth. Whether it’s through productivity metrics or feedback from employees, having clear benchmarks will help you stay on track.

Feedback is crucial when it comes to understanding how engaged your staff are. Implementing surveys and regular check-ins allows you to gather valuable insights into what motivates your workforce. This two-way communication also shows that their opinions matter, which in turn boosts morale and commitment.

Remember, enhancing employee engagement is an ongoing process. Continuously seeking ways to improve creates a culture of openness and transparency within the organization. By implementing new strategies based on feedback received, you’ll be sure to see positive results in overall staff engagement.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement refers to the level of commitment, passion, and enthusiasm that employees have towards their work and the organization they work for. It is about creating a positive work environment where employees feel motivated, valued, and connected to their work.

2. Why is employee engagement important?

Employee engagement is important because it directly impacts productivity, performance, and overall business success. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive, innovative, and loyal. They contribute to a positive work culture, higher customer satisfaction, and increased profitability.

3. What are the common challenges in employee engagement?

Common challenges in employee engagement include lack of communication, limited growth opportunities, inadequate recognition, poor work-life balance, and ineffective leadership. These challenges can lead to disengagement, low morale, and high turnover rates.

4. How can organizations bridge the gap in employee engagement?

Organizations can bridge the gap in employee engagement by fostering a culture of open communication, providing opportunities for growth and development, recognizing and rewarding employees’ contributions, promoting work-life balance, and cultivating effective leadership.

5. What role does management play in employee engagement?

Management plays a crucial role in employee engagement. Effective managers create a supportive and motivating work environment, set clear expectations, provide regular feedback and recognition, empower employees, and promote a sense of purpose and belonging. They act as a bridge between the organization and its employees, ensuring their needs are met and their voices are heard.

Conclusion

Bridging the gap in employee engagement involves understanding its importance, utilizing effective communication, building trust and accountability, implementing recognition programs, addressing burnout and work-life balance, leveraging technology, and measuring and improving engagement through feedback and continuous improvement strategies.

metro map career

Why not hire one new employee for two or three jobs? I don’t mean that these new employees should work themselves to the bone, performing multiple jobs simultaneously. I mean that companies benefit from creating a perspective to make the follow-up trajectory clear, very early in the process.

The extent to which companies can successfully connect candidates to themselves correlates strongly with the extent to which companies can offer perspective. This can be illustrated relatively simply. Consider a subway map. Dear candidate, you are here. On this line, there are three stops (opportunities for advancement), and at the fourth stop, you could switch to another line, if you wanted to. Switching involves a so-called non-linear career switch, where the employee does not advance within the same role but can explore an adjacent role.

This brings me to “g”, the seventh letter of the corporate culture alphabet, which stands for growth.

Many companies prioritize growth but fail to propose a personal growth trajectory during the hiring process.

empowering flexibility

Heraclitus famously said, “Change is the only constant,” a principle that holds as true for businesses as it does for life. In a world where adaptability can make or break success, flexibility isn’t just beneficial; it’s essential.

Studies consistently reveal the power of a flexible corporate culture in enhancing organizational effectiveness and boosting performance. Whether it’s smoother implementation of information systems (Lepore et al., 2018), improved company performance through HR adaptability (Ngo & Loi, 2008), or fostering job satisfaction via authentic leadership (Azanza, Moriano, & Molero, 2013), the message is clear: flexibility enriches both the workplace and its people.

Beyond the research, how does flexibility manifest in the real world? Consider the employee navigating personal challenges, the professional feeling stagnant after years in the same role, or the organization facing unforeseen global events or disruptive tech. These scenarios underscore the need for flexibility at both individual and corporate levels.

Two foundations for flexibility.

Clear expectations.
Not everyone is naturally (equally) flexible, and that’s perfectly fine. Articulating the flexibility your organization offers (or demands) demystifies it for your team. It’s about setting the stage for what’s expected and how employees can navigate their roles with agility. This requires mapping professional expectations for both people and jobs.

Empowered autonomy.
Rigid, bureaucratic procedures — even though necessary in some cases — can stifle innovation and morale. Instead, empowering your team with autonomy not only fosters a deeper connection to their work but also encourages a culture where flexibility thrives.

lost again

I had gotten lost for the third time in as many days. In 2008, I found myself in Shinjuku, one of the busiest districts in Tokyo. In front of me was a gigantic neon Epson sign. I knew my hotel was diagonally behind that neon sign, but I couldn’t find my way there. A bit of background information: this was in a pre-smartphone era, and in Japan, it’s not unusual to navigate using large buildings, many of which continue underground. Without speaking the language and without map apps on a smartphone, it apparently was a huge challenge for me to navigate from point A to point B.

As mentioned, for the third time in a row, I was stuck. I probably looked a bit defeated. Until, at one point, a Japanese man approached me and asked if he could help.

The reason I tell this story is to illustrate the concept of empathy, more specifically the difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy (with ‘E’ as the fifth letter of the corporate culture alphabet) is perhaps one of the concepts with the most untapped potential.

Empathy means being able to view a situation from another person’s perspective. If a friend’s cat dies, your reaction might be: “Oh no, terrible news. I once lost a cat too, and I was devastated.” That’s compassion. You put yourself in the other person’s shoes and imagine how you would feel. Empathy, in this case, would mean wondering how that person feels. Without reflecting it back to yourself. How does that person feel? Why do they feel that way? How long have they felt like this? Etc.

To come back to my Japanese debacle. If that man who approached me had only felt compassion, he might have thought to himself: “I’ve been tired before, so tired that I just stood still in the middle of the city.” That wouldn’t have really helped me personally. The fact that he wondered why I was standing there looking bewildered, without reflecting on what it would mean for him, ultimately led me to my destination. He was kind enough to give me detailed directions and walk part of the way with me.

I’m telling this because I think empathy and compassion are often confused. Both in marketing and in human resources, I advocate for an empathy revolution.

By breaking away from “how would I feel in that customer or employee’s place” and moving towards “how does that person feel,” just that.

exclusive inclusivity

Diversity, with ‘D’ as the fourth letter in the alphabet of corporate culture, is fortunately on the rise. More and more companies are establishing roles for ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’, but how does diversity actually impact corporate culture? Here are six aspects where diversity has an impact, both positively and negatively.

Three positive influences are innovation & creativity, attractiveness, and improved engagement.

Innovation & Creativity: Various studies show that when approached correctly by human resource management, diversity not only stimulates innovation and creativity but also enhances problem-solving abilities.

Attractiveness: Companies known for their diversity often find it easier to attract talent because they have access to larger talent pools.

Improved Engagement: Employees who feel represented and involved are often more interested in their work, which increases engagement and thereby productivity.

On the other hand, three negative effects can arise when diversity is not properly managed; communication problems, tokenism, and exclusive inclusion.

Communication Problems: Cultural, linguistic, and perceptual differences can lead to various problems with poor management. A thoughtful approach and coaching are essential when focusing on diversity.

Tokenism: As a talent, you never want to hear a voice in your head during the ‘employee lifecycle’ asking a pertinent, painful question; did I get this job because my last name is Benaïcha, or because I am the right person for the job?

Exclusive Inclusion: Having a diverse workforce does not automatically lead to inclusion for everyone. Without actively focusing on inclusion, some employees might actually feel excluded or isolated.

Conclusion: diversity offers many advantages, but implementing it correctly is a challenge that requires insight and a solid approach.

no pity

Compassion (with ‘C’ as the third letter in the ‘organizational culture’ alphabet) is often mistakenly equated with pity, but it’s certainly not that. Compassion is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. In a corporate culture, compassion is not so much a moral as it is a strategic necessity.

When companies focus on compassion, it means that both leaders and employees pay attention to the needs, challenges, and well-being of colleagues. Integrating empathy into your core values creates an environment where employees feel valued and supported. This leads to increased job satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity on one hand, and increased customer satisfaction on the other.

For example, Salesforce, known for its ‘Ohana Culture,’ emphasizes building familial support within the organization. Their initiatives include mindfulness zones and well-being programs that extend to family members.

In short; organizations that hold compassion in high regard inherently focus more on the well-being of their employees.

belonging


“Belonging” is the pivotal ‘B’ in the alphabet of organizational culture, serving as a cornerstone for a robust and positive workplace environment.

The trio of affirmation, belonging, and competence are identified as vital components of a corporate culture that is both people-focused and inspirational. As highlighted by a study dating back to 2008, it is the sense of connectedness, the feeling of belonging, that resonates deeply within us—not only as individuals but also as colleagues.

Employees who experience a sense of belonging see their roles as more than just jobs. Their work becomes intertwined with their identity, making it more likely for everyday tasks to feel meaningful.

Conversely, where a ‘sense of belonging’ is missing, the result is often a disjointed workforce characterized by isolation, competition, and a pervasive sense of disengagement. In such environments, departmental silos, metaphorically thick and towering, certainly do nothing to bridge these divides.

Among the various initiatives that can cultivate a sense of belonging, two stand out: a commitment to inclusivity and the encouragement of open communication.

What other initiatives can you think of that might contribute to a greater sense of belonging?

appreciation

Appreciation is much more than a pat on the back. Appreciation and recognition are the building blocks of a healthy corporate culture.

Gallup research shows that employees who do not feel adequately valued are twice as likely to leave the company in the coming year. Another study by SHRM shows that 68% of companies that strategically handle recognition score significantly higher on employee engagement.

One way to facilitate appreciation is by organizing frequent feedback sessions. It’s important to note that there isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach. The old adage, “my door is always open,” doesn’t work (for everyone). Some employees actively seek feedback, while others prefer to leave the initiative to their supervisor or the company. By the way, this is one of the things that Kazi addresses.

In short;

🔍 Visibility: Recognizing and valuing employees ensures that team members feel seen and heard.

❤️ Motivation: A simple ‘thank you’ can boost morale, leading to increased enthusiasm and higher productivity.

🔄 Retention: When employees feel valued, they are more inclined to stay.

Appreciation is the first part of the company culture ABC. Inspired by an image from Hacking HR.