Analysis of “Creating the Best Workplace on Earth”
By: T M
In the Harvard Business Review article: “Creating the Best Workplace on Earth” by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, the concept of creating a perfect internal work environment is discussed. The purpose of this article was to discover what employees really required to be their most productive. With millions of difference approaches to achieve this goal, six core factors were uncovered. These core factors are the simple ideals where “individual differences are nurtured; information is not suppressed or spun; the company adds value to employees, rather than merely extracting it from them; the organization stands for something meaningful; the work itself is intrinsically rewarding; and there are no stupid rules.” The place where all these ideals correlate is referred to as the “Organization of Your Dreams.” A place based off of the principles of the employee with the directives of the organization/top management.
Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones developed these concepts by asking hundreds of executives in surveys and in seminars from around the world to describe their ideal organization. They were researching the relationship between authenticity and effective leadership. Here, authenticity is referred to as the true identity of the employee. Where the employee able to display their strengths and their weaknesses without having to “act” in the way a traditional organization may expect them to. From there, an effective leader could use these strengths to empower the organization and allow the employee to be at their most productive. The key concept was that to be authentic, they needed to work for an authentic organization. This model then leads us to the “Organization of Your Dreams.”
These ideals may all sound like common-sense objectives, but several of these ideals run counter to traditional practices and fixed