Joy at Work. Dennis W. Bakke
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years, only the shared values remained an integral part of AES’s corporate discussions.
The shared values we wrote in the circle of the diagram that day were Integrity, Fairness, Social Responsibility, and Fun. Other important words were used from time to time to describe our aspirations, but they never made it to the center circle. Concepts like ownership, trust, and accountability were subsumed in the four overarching values we chose. No purpose or goal was defined at that time because the Seven-S framework curiously did not have a place to describe the primary reason that an organization existed. AES’s purpose was articulated a couple of years later, and in the ensuing years it gradually became an integral part of our shared values and principles.
When Roger Sant first used the word “fun” to capture the kind of working environment we wanted to create, neither of us could have guessed at its layers of meaning. It forced us to think through exactly what was meant by “fun” and the best ways to explain it. We defined fun to mean rewarding, exciting, creative, and successful. The idea that a company could be fun kept AES fresh and vibrant for years.
At the time, Apple Computer was the darling of the fledgling high-tech industry. One thing that set it apart was the beer parties it held every Friday afternoon. We were very clear that this was not what we meant by fun. Nor did we believe that business success or “winning” made work fun. Nor was fun related to the type of tasks an individual performed. What we meant by fun was captured many years later, in slightly broken English, by an AES employee writing from Kazakhstan: “The common principles of integrity, fairness, fun represent AES culture which are mostly convincing. They are also the basic spirits. I work on the site whether day or night, whether weekend or working days, whether with pay or without. In this kind of working environment, my talent was fully exerted. I felt a lot of fun to use my talent and experiences accumulated throughout years of hard work. I feel I am standing on the shoulder of a giant fulfilling the social responsibilities.”
People I have met—regardless of class, income, nationality, and education level—want a chance to meet the needs of their families while doing something useful for society.
Joy at work gives people the freedom to use their talents and skills for the benefit of society, without being crushed or controlled by autocratic supervisors or staff offices. The World Bank recently conducted a study of 70,000 poor people around the world. One of the questions asked of respondents was this: “What is your most pressing need?” The answer was not social services or homes or other material things. What these people wanted most was the freedom and wherewithal to be entrepreneurs. This was not surprising to me. People I have met—regardless of class, income, nationality, and education level—want a chance to make the most of their abilities to meet the needs of their families while doing something useful for society.
When we made “integrity” one of our shared values, we defined it in the classical tradition. The word is derived from the Latin integra , meaning wholeness or completeness. It is the same root word from which we get integer (whole numbers) and integration. It has to do with how things fit together in some cohesive and appropriate way. Being truthful is part of what it means to have integrity; living up to commitments is another.
I believe that integrity requires an organization to communicate the same message to the general public that it does to its own employees. That means openly admitting mistakes to shareholders, bankers, and governments. Readers of my letters in AES annual reports may have noticed that I took pains to discuss our mistakes and problems during the year. The letter was meant for all stakeholders who helped us achieve our purpose, not just shareholders. I believe they all deserve the same basic information, both positive and negative. Integrity also means fully explaining values and corporate purpose to all stakeholders, especially when these principles are unconventional, potentially controversial, or hard to understand.
Business executives don’t spend much time talking about values, so misunderstandings and disagreements are bound to occur. Once, when we were in Minneapolis to raise equity for AES, a potential investor left the breakfast early. On the way out the door, he laughingly told one of the investment bankers: “They can have all the fun they want, but not with my money.” Another humorous incident—there were many others that were not so funny—occurred when we prepared a slide presentation before a public offering of AES stock. We designed a chart to try to explain what we meant by “fun.” We gave it to our investment bankers to review:
The investment bankers reviewed the chart, added one circle, and sent back the revised version:
Several years later, when a consultant from McKinsey was giving a presentation about AES, one of our executives asked why he hadn’t mentioned our shared values. It turned out that the consultant was enthusiastic about our values—for all the wrong reasons. “They really reduce labor costs,” he said. “Employees love these values, and they work harder and more productively because of them.” This is the pragmatic line of thinking about values that I had fought since the early days of the company. It ignores the moral dimension of values and regards them as nothing more than a means to make money. The distinction was articulated by an Oxford professor named John Kay: “There is a real difference between saying to your workers, ‘We care about your welfare because we do,’ and saying, ‘We care about your welfare because that will make you work harder for us.’ ” Employees can tell when values are genuine and when they’re adopted for ulterior purposes.
I feel strongly that people should be able to bring many of their basic beliefs about life into an organization. AES people were encouraged to live their beliefs inside the business just as they would at home, in their places of worship, and in their communities. This was very popular with most AES people and somewhat novel. Most of us have heard the phrase “Business is business.” The phrase implies that business has its own set of rules. When we go to work, we’re supposed to leave our “Sunday school” or “homespun” values at the door. My view is just the opposite. Because our central values and principles were derived from mainstream values practiced by billions of people around the world, we hoped that most of our people could bring the key elements of their personal philosophies into the workplace.
Less popular was the idea that we should practice AES values both at work and in other areas of our lives. For example, integrity at AES meant that we did not cheat, steal, or lie on the job. It seemed logical that we should also adhere to those strictures in our private lives. “It’s personal” or “I’m on my own time” are no more appropriate excuses than “business is business” for not acting according to basic shared values whether we’re at work or not. Cheating on your income tax returns is not consistent with AES’s concept of integrity. If we became aware of such behavior away from the workplace, we would ask the employee to act in a more upstanding way—or to leave the company. My colleague Stu Ryan, an excellent strategist and an even better person, continually pressed me and other company leaders to deal aggressively with discrepancies between professional and personal behavior. I do not think we did a very good job living our values outside work. Many of our top people felt uncomfortable about becoming involved in the personal lives of other AES employees. I understood that doing so was delicate and difficult, but I thought we should at least struggle to achieve moral consistency.
When it comes to “fairness,” I often think we chose the right value but the wrong word. In my lectures, I often ask people to complete the sentence. “Fairness means treating everyone _______.” Ninety-five percent of the people I ask respond, “the same.” I usually respond, “I mean just the opposite.” The word “justice” better describes the standard we set for ourselves and AES.
I like the traditional Jewish definition of justice: “To each person what he deserves, to each one what is appropriate.” If I combine this definition with an assumption that each person is unique, I logically complete the sentence this way: “Fairness or justice means treating everyone differently.” We’ve all heard the story of the sergeant who stands before his troops and announces, “Nobody gets special treatment around here!”