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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and I'm here with our season five special guest, dave Nurchi, and he's helping unpack the hard thing about hard things with Ben Horowitz, and today's episode is about hard things with Ben Horowitz. And today's episode is about how perks do not define culture. They are not core values or specific to moving the mission forward. And that's brought to you by Cutthroat College podcast, helping people avoid going broke because of the cost of college. There's also a college boot camp kind of run by the same people. Kayla and Hector are the co-hosts of the podcast. Kayla also administers a program called College Boot Camp through Seeds of Hope, and Seeds of Hope is a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 1:
All right, back to our point. Perks do not define culture. They're not core values or specific to moving the mission forward. Let's call this like the Twitter, you know, or the Google or Pixar rule. We'll call it the Twitter rule, you know, or the Google or Pixar rule. We'll call it the Twitter rule. Right, because Twitter's gone now. So you know, this is a good example of basically like corruption within an organization. When we're talking about perks, we're talking about, you know, like everybody's got to have free coffee and free lunch and we got to have a wine bar at the office, and we're going to have a wine bar at the office and we're going to have a foosball table and before you know it people are like literally playing for eight hours, working for two hours, you know.
Speaker 1:
Or you know, one day a week I need to do whatever I need to do, you know, like that has nothing to do with work. I just want to play and have fun. I think that that's what we're talking about there, and so, like, when you look at an organization, you're like, hey, this is, this is what's great about the organization the first thing out of your mouth probably shouldn't be Nerf gun battles, right?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, if that's what you're centered around, well and think about I look at it this way too when Google is providing all this stuff right, or like I eat breakfast, I eat lunch, I eat dinner, I have all this stuff right, or whatever. Like I eat breakfast, I eat lunch, I eat dinner, I have all this stuff, I have nap pods and all these different things, nap pods I love that nap pod.
Speaker 1:
You get a pod that you nap in like what are they doing?
Speaker 2:
you're basically you just live there, right? That's not like it's. It's a kind of a weird concept of like okay, so do I ever leave? Like, why would I leave?
Speaker 2:
And it's a almost a reverse of the like, just kind of playing and then working. Sometimes it's almost like you're just expected now to just be on campus for forever. Right, we provide you everything. So that's kind of a an interesting way to look at it too. But if that's what you're centered around, I look at it this way. You have motivation and discipline and I look at those as two very different things. The perks are like motivation, where you kind of need that every day. Right, like motivation will just come and go. You'll hear a quote, you'll listen to something. It gets you motivated in the moment, but it kind of fades out. Right, that's like a perk. You're having fun in the moment playing foosball at the office and it's just kind of done. The discipline is what keeps you moving forward. Right, discipline, that's what you're doing every day. You wake up, you go work out or whatever your discipline is.
Speaker 2:
That's what the company values are right, that's what you're working towards every day. So the values are the discipline, the perks. Are this like motivation, that kind of comes and goes, and that was my takeaway of how I look at those two things and what the difference is there. It's almost like a distraction.
Speaker 1:
Distraction, definitely, yeah, how I look at those two things and what the difference is there, it's almost like a distraction. Distraction, definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, perks are like entitlement, you know. It's like what are you gonna give me next? Because, because they're not necessary. So it's it's freebies, you know. And and when freebies become part of the compensation scheme, when they become part of kind of like I deserve this because I work here that seems to be like it can start to become a problem, especially because every business is going to have tough times.
Speaker 1:
How do you take away a perk If you make a perk part of the central purpose of being there? So if the purpose for being there is not the mission of the company but to get the perks, like what happens when you change a perk? You know somebody's favorite perk and also think about, especially for much, much larger companies, if you think about how much it costs for things, how much money is being spent so that somebody can have a nap pod, like why do you need to nap at work? You're a full-grown-ass adult. If you're working right, like if you need a nap in the middle of the day, maybe you're ill and you need to take the day off and go home and get better. But why do you need a nap in the middle of the day? And you know, and I get it too because there's there's situations from a performance standpoint and Ben talks about it in some of his books where it's like look, you're gonna be working late, I'm going to need you to stay over, we're going to do all kinds of stuff. You know it's going to be intense and I will buy you lunch and I will buy you dinner and I will send you on a date with your spouse once a week. Okay, so those are cool perks, but those are perks for specific project orientation. There's project orientation with it and they're for a purpose, because I'm asking you for extra right now. It's not a permanent ask, it's attached to a goal, it's attached to a goal, whatever.
Speaker 1:
Whatever stuff somebody wants, you know, like free lattes or something. Why don't we change the perks from that to job security? You know a lot of the companies get Twitter. Guess where all their employees are. They're unemployed.
Speaker 2:
They're playing foosball full time now.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I mean like. So you start to look at some of this stuff and you go look, perk number one I want job security. I write put your head down and work. No more naps during work, right yeah, perk number two I want to grow personally and professionally. I write be open to constructive critique, you know. Be open to your managers telling you you're not doing a good job. Be open If somebody tells you that you need to be more professional or dress better, you know, or something like that. Like, like, stop being offended by everything. Maybe those should be the perks and not look, you know, everybody gets to come in and just because, just because you're here, you get this stuff.
Speaker 2:
Well, and really, what you're saying, that that is the transition into, like the, the company values or the mission. Because think about it this way If people are joining your company because they believe in what you're doing, yeah, right, as a company, the just cause, like we talk about, right, the mission of values there are there. They're already joining because of that. They in right, they bought in, yeah, they want to contribute to that. You don't contribute to a perk, you just receive it. But it's also, you're never going to win everybody over with perks. You're not, you're not winning, you're not trying to win anybody over with your company just cause. You're saying here it is, here's what we do.
Speaker 2:
if you get on board or get on board right or you're not going to be here long because you won't want to be the perk. Well, what if I don't drink coffee? I don't care about free coffee. What if I don't want a nap? I don't care about the nap. So now you're going to be playing this game as you continue to grow of yeah. Well, what do people want? What do I take away? I took away coffee because 10 people don't drink coffee.
Speaker 2:
I I brought in free fruit, but so you're always playing this game of like favorites and what, and what people want or don't want.
Speaker 1:
I was just thinking about ice cream. I was like, so I give every, everybody can have all the vanilla ice cream they want. And people are going to be like that's not fair, I don't like vanilla ice cream. So then you get chocolate ice cream and everybody can have all the chocolate ice cream they want. And then people are going to be like that's not fair, I don't like ice cream at all. So then you got to bring in candy bars and everybody goes I don't like candy bars and you're going to get apples. You know, then people will say, well, I like the ice cream and I like the apples, but not the candy bar. So it's not fair.
Speaker 1:
So I need something because I don't like the candy bars, because that person over there they like apples, candy bars and ice cream. You shit. That has nothing to do with the work, yeah, so, like you said, have the mission, man. You come to work and you're living the mission, and when we do good along the way, we'll reward you yeah, we're gonna have some fun, but it's gonna be for a purpose yeah, yeah, um, and and and.
Speaker 1:
Then when you know we ask you to do extra and we know that you're really putting out for us, we'll reward you. That's maybe where the perks need to be living.