Here's What Salesforce Paid for Rypple, and Who Got Beat For the Deal...

At the time of the deal for Salesforce to acquire Rypple, I wrote this post related to why it made sense to me.  At the time, there wasn't any info on what Salesforce paid for the company, and a couple of Google searches show little info out there now on the specs.  So let's share!

Fortune reports in this article accompanying their "Best Places to Work" issue that Salesforce paid $60 Million to acquire Rypple, that SuccessFactors had a higher bid in play, but Rypple decided to take less to go with overall culture and "fit".  More from Fortune:

"It took a Reuben sandwich and Dr. Brown's Cream Soda to close the deal.

Nobody's as good at salesmanship in the world of high tech as Marc Benioff, the nimble and gregarious 6-foot-5, 290-pound co-founder and CEO of Salesforce.com. A few months ago, his burgeoning company -- the San Francisco-based powerhouse in cloud computing for businesses -- was looking to buy Rypple, a startup in Toronto that specializes in human resources apps. The two companies had already had several rounds of discussions. In late October, the 47-year-old Benioff was in Manhattan to speak before the G100 conference of executives. So were Daniel Debow and David Stein, the 38-year-old co-founders of Rypple.

The night before, Benioff took them to San Pietro, the Midtown Italian restaurant where he holds court every time he's in town: "Right over there is where I sent my favorite California Cabernet to King Abdullah of Jordan -- to say thank you for helping to build peace in the Middle East!" And the king was so impressed he sent his bodyguards back to the hotel "to bring me one of his famous beautiful watches!" Benioff has told the tale so many times at the restaurant that the waiters can recite it. He made sure that Stein, a wine buff, got the same bottle of Dalla Valle as the king.

After attending G100 events the next day, Benioff suggested that he and Debow hit the renowned 2nd Avenue Deli for lunch. (Stein had to go back home.) There weren't any tables, so Benioff got them seats at the corner of the counter. And he ordered up the full array: corned beef, sauerkraut, and melted Swiss on rye, with lots of dressing; matzoh ball soup; chopped liver; chased with warm assorted rugelach. They didn't talk business. "We just kibitzed," Debow says. Soon thereafter, Rypple took Salesforce's $60 million, turning down a richer offer -- from SuccessFactors, which was just bought by SAP, one of Salesforce's archrivals. "It wasn't only about deal terms, but corporate culture," Debow says. "We barely met the other CEO." Debow says he sensed Benioff was the kind of person "we could deliver our company and employees to … that we entrepreneurs could be part of their family. Nobody can keep up the artifice over a couple hours of sharing pickles."

Personal attention and cultural fit made Rypple take less and go with Salesforce?  Bravo and a cautionary tale for the value of C-level involvement in many things.  Congrads again to Rypple and Salesforce.  

More on "Questions to Ask To Figure Out Who Owns Your Culture"....

Yesterday, I posted on How to Figure Out Which Managers Are Net Positive to Your Culture in 1 Question...

Pretty good challenge or food for thought came in from David in the comments of that one.  Check it out:

"Kris - Won't the answers to this be dependent on the existing culture? If the organization is filled with "slackers", aren't they going to pick someone who they perceive will allow that to continue?

And also somewhat subject to the halo effect? Human nature attributes positive factors to successful performers, whether they actually have those attributes or not. I think this bias would enter into the results."

My take - bias is always at play, but in my experience using this question, employees will tell you what they aren't getting enough of with their answers, and it almost always centers around things you and I consider to be critical in building a strong organizational culture - items like the manager taking the time to deliver feedback, spending time on the development of the employee, standing up when necessary for the employee/department, shooting straight and being honest with the employee, limited political game playing on the part of the manager, etc.

You know - things that show leadership and empathy, all with an employee-centric approach.  The employee is really saying what they don't get enough of with their current manager with this question.

I thought David's question was good, but I've always seen it go the other way - the employees tell you who's doing things very, very well.  People talk, people know.  If you have more than 15-20 managers in your unit, ask the question - you'll almost always get some surprises....

 

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What's the Difference Between a Manifesto and a Mission Statement?

Easy:  A mission statement is usually boring and completed as a corporate project, complete with consultants and other things that ultimately water the whole thing down.

A manifesto is usually completed by an individual and looks to throw fastballs at the head of the establishment.  Manifestos can't make it through a group editing process because they're too renegade. 

Mission statements are the opiate of the masses.  Marx thought it was religion - it's not - mission statements are the crackpipe of the corporate masses.

Jerry McGuire called what he did a mission statement.  It was actually a manifesto.  He got fired as a result (I'm here to fire you Jerry.  Could you stop thinking about yourself all the time?).  The manifesto was too big for "the man".

Reference - this post on manifestos over at The Cynical Girl, with specific reference to the comment by "Jackie".

Employee Rants Against Company Strategy: Let's See How Google Handles This One...

The internet age is a scary place in a lot of ways related to talent, but I'll focus on one today - employee rants that are mistakenly posted to public sources or leaked out of a company and broadcast globally.  

I've posted a lot of those here - mostly memos from CEO that have been leaked by a recipient in the company.  It's good material to review.  You get a sense for how the leadership of a company is communicating issues that are important, etc.  

But the CEO memos are the easy ones.  It's a memo, it was distributed throughout the company.  It was prepared for mass consumption, if only internally.  

Here's something that's much harder for HR pros to figure out what to do with.  The rant from an employee that says the company is missing the mark and goes into painstaking detail on why, and calls out the C-level and the founders for not "getting it".

Case in point, this Google+ rant from Google engineer Steve Yegge.  Here's the rundown of how the story broke and a couple of choice excerpts as reported by Silcon Filter:

"Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on the horrors of working at Amazon, a company that is notorious for its political infighting. The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run.

The post itself has now been deleted, but given Google+’s reshare function, multiple copies exist on Google’s own social network and elsewhere on the web.

Selected excerpts from Yegge via the Silicon Filter reporting:

"That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t “get” platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years. I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services. Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it: all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on.

Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: “So is it the Stalker API?” She got all glum and said “Yeah.” I mean, I was joking, but no… the only API call we offer is to get someone’s stream. So I guess the joke was on me.

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone."

You should go read the whole post from Yegee, the entire thing is available at Silicon Filter.  For most of the world, the first reaction would be to fire this person for writing this rant and making it public. Certainly most of the CEOs we work for would want someone's head for this.

But Google is interesting in this regard.  If what's being reported is true, Yegge meant to share this with everyone at Google, and in hat tip to that, he's actually saying hi to the leadership and founders of the company in his rant....while he's taking a shot at the DNA of the company (he said a bunch of positive stuff earlier in the entire rant, so it's balanced in that way) and saying the new product to compete with Facebook (Google+) sucks.  

What would happen if one of your employees emailed a rant like this to the global distribution list? Would he be embraced or fired?  Would he keep his job, but be on the s##t list for the rest of his career?

I like to have fun with Google and challenge the conventional wisdom that they're the golden child, but I'll say this.  If an employee can write a rant like this, distribute it to the company and the world and the response of the company is to think about the content instead of being pissed, that would be the type of company I'd want to work for.

It would also be the type of company you and I would want to build.   It would be great to be on the inside and see what happens next.  With Yegge, his interactions with other Googlers, etc.

Fascinating stuff.

R.I.P. Al Davis: Here's My Favorite HR Quote From the NFL's Sith Lord....

Al Davis, the funky longtime owner of the NFL's Oakland Raiders, died this weekend.

Things Al Davis will always be remembered for:

--Building a franchise culture that embodied renegades and misfits, and still winning in the early days (but not lately).

--Drafting Jamarcus Russell out of LSU, giving him $30M large and never having him produce.

--Providing the whole wardrobe for a series of gangsta rap groups including NWA, Eazy-E and of coures, the DOC.

--Doing a funky press conference where he not only talked about a "final warning" letter he had sent former coach Lane Kiffin, but actually read it word-for-word to the press.  But that's not all.  Al also had one of his flunkies throw it up on an OVERHEAD PROJECTOR while he was reading it.  In 2009.

But I digress.  I'm having fun with the memory of Al, but the phrase "Just Win, Baby" will always be attributed to Davis.  It's a great HR phrase signaling the need for results, but it's not even my favorite performance quote from Al Davis.  This memory from Ben Horowitz is:

"As I was feeling sorry for myself, I randomly watched an interview with famous football coach Bill Parcells. He was telling the story of how he had a similar dilemma when he began his Head Coaching career. In his very first season as coach, Parcell’s team, The New York Giants, was hit with a rash of injuries. He worried incessantly about the impact of the injuries on the team’s fortunes, as it is difficult enough to win with your best players let alone a bunch of substitutes. When his friend and mentor Raiders owner Al Davis called Parcells to check in, Parcells relayed his injury issues. Parcell’s: “Al, I am just not sure how we can win without so many of our best players. What should I do?” Davis replied: “Bill, nobody cares, just coach your team.”

That might be the best CEO advice ever. Because, you see, nobody cares. When things go wrong in your company, nobody cares. The press doesn’t care, your investors don’t care, your board doesn’t care, your employees don’t care, even your mama doesn’t care. Nobody cares.

And they are right not to care. A great reason for failing won’t preserve one dollar for your investors, won’t save one employee’s job, or get you one new customer. It especially won’t make you feel one bit better when you shut down your company and declare bankruptcy."

You have reasons why the project/job didn't work out.  We get it.  You're probably even right... But the truth is, when you start talking about reasons it's probably not going to work out before the final results are in, it's weak.

Nobody cares.  They just tally up the score at the end and the world keeps on spinning.  Hard but true.

Thank you, Al Davis.  May the world remember you in your 1970s and 80's glory and not what happend in Oakland since 2000.

Is a Presentation From Tony Hsieh of Zappos Enough? (#HRFL11)

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh keynoted HR Florida this morning.  Before I go off on a rant, let me say this – I’m a fan of HR Florida, Zappos and Tony Hsieh.

Tony Hsieh has done it – he’s built a great company and a culture at Zappos that can actually generate business and opportunity unrelated to the core business of his company – by talking to people about culture.   He’s a great speaker and the thoughts he shares on culture, building a company and chasing a bigger purpose are compelling.  I’m a buyer when he speaks.

HR Florida is a great conference.  I put it in my top two in the HR space:  HR Florida and the HR Technology Conference, which will be in Vegas in October.  Both shows do a great job with content, logistics and the thousand details that go into putting on a production of this size (HR Florida has 1,500+ attendees this year and in addition to Tony, also has Daniel Pink coming in on Wednesday).

The problem, as it so often is, is what people do once Tony pumps them up to change the world.  You want to be like Zappos.  I want to be like Zappos.  Let’s start with a couple of simple tweets I put out this morning while listening to Tony to see if you’re ready to do what it takes:

“Test for building your version of the Zappos culture: Are you willing to list every employee you have that’s active on Twitter on your company website?  #hrfl11”

“Be real and you have nothing to fear – Tag for transparency at Zappos.  #hrfl11”

What about it Sparky?  Are you willing to put up the 500 most active employees you have on twitter on a rolling widget on your corporate website and control none of the message?

No? Then you’ve got some work to do before you can be like Zappos.  Apparently people are real in your company – so real that you can’t tolerate the transparency of the exercise described.

If you won’t show off your team members in that way, it’s usually because you think some of them are not ready for prime time.  And that’s the point.  The naysayers to me claiming that a keynote from Tony isn’t enough will say, “Kris, Tony doesn’t advocate being like Zappos.  He thinks you should build it in the way you want.”

The naysayers are right.  But I suspect Tony would be a huge advocate of doing whatever it takes to reset your culture and have actual values you are willing to hire and fire by.  That doesn’t mean you have to copy what Zappos has done.  It does mean that you should take down the plaque that espouses Integrity, Communication and Teamwork and see if they really drive your culture.  Of if they’re just hollow values written on paper that no one can recite, and certainly no one lives by.

The real issue with having a supernova like Tony deliver a keynote at a great show like HR Florida is the lost opportunity.  Other keynotes are simply aspirational.  They're present to pump you up, often with stories that have nothing to do with HR.  Not Tony.  Culture is in the wheelhouse of what HR is supposed to own.  But no one really knows how to get started.  How do you reset a culture that's driven by your founder being around for the last 20 years and doing it the way he (and his wife) wanted?  Scary stuff for most HR pros to think about taking on.

I’d love to see a conference track after a Zappos keynote that really challenges and develops those who are interested in taking the pain that’s necessary to reset their corporate culture.  I’d love to see that track arm HR pros with tools that can help them make the case.  First conference that really tries to dig in and make HR pros who volunteer uncomfortable after a big meaty keynote wins.  Big.

Tony Hsieh: +1.  HR Florida: +1.  What HR pros do next after hearing Tony speak:  Not registering a score at this time.

(check out all the tweets from HR Florida by searching the hashtag #hrfl11)

Don't be a @$@$: A Great Way for Acquiring Companies to Deal With Large Amounts of Banked PTO

Last week, I ran a post called, "Ask the Capitalist: Is This Acquiring Company a Bunch of Pricks?  Simple theme - acquiring company comes in, buys the other company and says "none of your existing vacation and sick time banks are going to transfer to our company".

Obviously, that company's in a situation where they're not worried about organizing/unionization, etc.

However, there's a real cost to rolling those hours over into the new company, since the acquiring company will have to account for the future liability - today - via the P&L statement.  CFO and Controller skills needed.

Still, it begs the question - if you're an acquiring company and you want to be graceful but don't want the financial baggage associated with the huge PTO banks owned by the employee base you're inheriting, what do you do?

You find the middle ground, Marge.  A sharp reader of the Capitalist had the obvious answer in the comments section of that post:

----------------------------------------------------

Kris—

"My dad's company was acquired a few years ago, and while he had to go with the new company's PTO plan, his accrued sick time was thrown into a special bank of time to be used for salary replacement in case of FMLA, STD/LTD, or extended bereavement. It came in really handy twice."

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Bingo.  Accrued time thrown into the special bank to be used for salary replacement not covered by your STD plan in the case of FMLA leave.  I'm no CFO, but I bet the P&L impact of this is much less, and just as importantly, you look like you actually give a $##t as the acquiring company.

Which is where you want to be.  Simple answer that is a nice middle ground....

Culture, Culture, Culture: Here's the 1 Question You to Need to Ask...

Lots of smoke and mirrors out there related to company culture.  Just got off the phone with someone who's thinking about paying well into the 5 figures for an engagement study in the division they support.

No doubt you want to build the best culture possible at your company, which requires employee engagement (or whatever you choose to call it). Regardless of how you define your culture, you can find out what your employees really think and what they value culturally by asking the following simple question: 

If you could pick any manager (other than the one you currently report to) in the company to work for (regardless of functional area), who would it be and why?

Ask that question on your next employee survey.  See which managers come back repeatedly as someone the masses want to work for.  Figure out why, watch them and talk to them.  Then try to institutionalize their approach.

It doesn't take deep 5 figures to figure out what you need to do.  As with all things, the hard part is execution...

Innovation That's "Good Enough": What Can Your Team Attack in a Day?

I've written a good bit in the past regarding the concept of "good enough" - how products and services that solve simple pain often get used more than products with a greater degree of complexity. Complexity is often the enemy of actually getting people to "use stuff".

If you agree with that statement, then doesn't it make sense that you would force teams to ship features and services around your product in the shortest time possible?   Give teams more time, and what creeps in?  Usually more features, complexity and a drop in usability.  They had more time to think about the possibilities.  What did you expect?

That's why I was interested to see this post by the folks at Sonar6, a performance management software company based in New Zealand.  They recently held a FedEx day focused on "shipping" a new feature based on a day's work via cross-functional teams in the Sonar6 HQ.  Here's a breakdown from their site:

"The other week the Auckland office had a crack at our first ever Fedex Day.

Loosely based on Atlassian’s Fedex day, the idea is to pick a project that can be delivered in a day, and then spend the day – just the one – doing it. Projects don’t have to necessarily be 100% complete or highly polished when the deadline hits, but they should be presentable. Cross-functional teams are encouraged, as is working on something you wouldn’t usually get to play around with.

Ours went a little something like this…

Thursday afternoon Everyone met to present their ideas and expectations were high. Proposed projects ranged from loading screens and interactive customer maps to product specs and database overhauls:

Kai and Xavier proposed building a game that would draw review information from Sonar6 and make it easier (and more fun!) for managers to track team progress and review completion.

Bobby, James and Craig planned to restructure the internal Sonar6 Helper Tool, making it easier for everyone in the company to get customer information and see what’s happening inside the software."

Game changing products/features from a day's development time?  Probably not, but it sure seems like that type of activity helps a company build muscle related to the discipline it takes to develop new features quickly and be brave enough to ship them before they're "perfect". Whatever that is.

Revenue generated by FedEx day at Sonar6- next to 0.

Message sent on discipline it takes to create features that are "good enough" and get shipped quickly - priceless.

Facebook, The Winklevoss Twins and How You Dress at Work Gets Judged...

If casual dress codes have done anything, they've made it harder for a select group of stakeholders in the employment process to figure out how to dress.  Take these two examples from my life last week:

Example #1:

Me (to candidate): "Hey, the other thing I wanted to let you know is that we're business casual to casual in how we dress in the office at Kinetix.  I'm probably going to be wearing jeans, so do what you need to, but keep that in mind."

Example #2:

Client (to me): "Hey, we've got a casual dress code at ACME.  You don't have to wear a suit and tie, if fact, it'd probably be better if you didn't."

Simple, right?  Not so fast.  If anything, it can make it harder.  You've got a casual to business casual dress code. Great!  That's attractive for you to have as an employer, but it's hell on the people who want to work with you/for you.  Thoughts that go through the mind of the candidate/potential partner:

1.  No tie - got it.  What about the jacket?  If I go shirt with a jacket, is that too much?  Do I get penalized for that?

2.  OK - I'm going no jacket.  Do I go button up dress shirt?  Polo?  Hmm...

3.  If they're casual, do I go for the full monty and wear jeans?  That's who they are - do I get penalized in the "getting to know you" phase for wearing jeans like the rest of the company does? Is that good or bad if I do it?

It's tougher than it looks.  And just in case you don't think people are judging you every step of the way, consider this video from Larry Summers (former president at Harvard), where he talks about the Winklevoss twins at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference.  For those of you not in the know, the Winklevoss twins were featured in the movie The Social Network - the movie about the creation of Facebook - they claimed that Facebook founder Zuckerberg stole their idea and created Facebook.

The quote:

"One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they're looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case.”

Here's the video.  Take a look....

Great stuff.  My advice?  Always go business casual.  The extremes, regardless of what's been reported as acceptable, will probably kill you.  Pick the middle option and hedge your bets...