it’s not
Personal,
it’s just
Business.
When push comes to shove, the prevailing
attitude in a struggling business is, “you
do your job, I’ll do mine.”
BY DUNCAN BLAKE
I
T’S 10:36AM ON A WEDNESDAY, AND THERE
isn’t a lot of collaborating going on around the offices
of Contoso Ltd. “Hey, fact is, I wasn’t hired to do that
job, I don’t get paid to do that job, so why would I help
do that job?” It’s not that the employees here don’t like
each other, necessarily. It’s not that they’re tired, necessarily. It’s that they do their own job. Period. Nothing
else. And frankly, they say, it’s a model that works for them.
“Basically I come into work and turn my computer on,” noted one employee who asked to remain anonymous. “Then
I’ll focus on the deliverables by taking care of whatever action items are staring me in the face. Bing bang boom.” And
to these employees, it’s the only way to work.
Each day the members of this medium-sized company
punch in around 9: 45, and quietly match about 40-50 percent of the output of other local companies in the community; a number, they say, “is plenty for us.” Here, nestled
12 miles from the business capital of the state, a few dozen
quietly type away in their cubicles in polo shirts and khaki
pants. “It’s the standard apparel for the operation,” noted one
maverick employee. “But the way I see it, the bigger the phone
clip the better. It’s all about finding little ways to be unique.”
On any given day, the servers in the company will generate very little power, which the CEOs have found is one
microsoft.com/peopleready
of the clearest examples of an advantage they enjoy by utilizing a mere fraction of everybody’s potential. In fact, it’s
a business model that many companies are beginning to
adopt. “We’re not necessarily up for a lot of challenges, when
you think about it. I get tired easily, so I’d just as soon
go home and sleep. Then I’ll eat dinner and go to bed. Or
eat more food.”
But unlike many of those companies that are following in
Contoso’s footsteps, the CEO feels like there are a few things
that give them a competitive edge. “We have a lot of fun
around the office. There’s a lot to do, see, whatever. We have
marker boards, people draw little doodles on them, you name
it. It allows us to leverage our assets in a way we were previously
unable to roll out.” The atmosphere is, indeed, a little more
raucous than you might expect from a business in which
nobody speaks to one another. In the short amount of time
we were there, there were high fives, back slaps, and pistol
points. There were thumbs ups everywhere.
Once they put the kibosh on focusing on hard work or
caring about much, it was an easy transition to passable
mediocrity. The company had far less incentive to compete
with any companies on any level, and thus filled a void in the
economy. “There just wasn’t anybody quite like us. We make
some money, and we hope that keeps happening. Will that
