Book Review: Ron Friedman,The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace

There is a mystifying gap between what science knows about human behaviour and what organizations think they know. As a social psychologist specializing in human motivation, Friedman found that there is a massive divide between behavioural science and the modern workplace. Friedman has outlined the science behind thriving at work while offering practical advice for managers who are committed to make a real difference in the workplace. He has sifted through an enormous amount of research on human motivation and then distilled it into a series of best practices for creating a ‘great’ (as in effective, positive, efficient, successful) workplace. One of the favourite aspects of this book is that it is a compilation of over 1000 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and provides ‘lessons of pride’ at the end of each chapter to work on as an action item for managers and emerging leaders.

The best place to work brings together decades of psychological research into a package that offers an organization concrete advice to improve the well-being of workers and the quality of work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders how they can use scientifically proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation and stronger performance at every level. The book is divided into three parts: designing an extraordinary workplace experience, motivating excellence and, finally, attracting and retaining top performers. Each chapter addresses different aspects of the workplace, offering illuminating and often counter-intuitive best practices for making one’s organization effective. The conclusion of each chapter cites some of the action items that are worth to ponder for managers and emerging leaders of organizations across the globe.

The first part of the book, consisting of five chapters, explores the different facets of psychological needs to cultivate an engagement atmosphere. A workplace that provides immediate feedback, meaningful recognition for the job and opportunity for career growth creates the brand of best place. The author states that building a thriving organization in the current economy demands a great deal of efforts which is more than what the human efficiency can provide. It requires harnessing of intelligence, creativity and interpersonal skill sets. Encouraging people to take risks creates an attitude of incrementalism. As an example, Friedman cites Merck and Co., one of the world’s largest drug manufacturers, which provides its scientists with additional stock options, leading them to admit that their research is yielding undesirable results. The simple belief here is that mistakes are the tuition one pays for success. Successful organizations have a firm belief that creating the space for intelligent failure is an investment, one that can yield major rewards in the long run. Friedman sums up the first chapter by stating that ‘when we are terrified of making mistakes, we stop searching for new ways of developing our competence. And when our workplace no longer satisfies our need for competence, it is just a matter of time before our engagement drops’ (p. 11).

Great companies do more than make their employees comfortable. Along with a space of creativity they craft experiences that make their workplace distinct. Assembling a unique workplace that can communicate the organization’s priority demonstrates managerial competence and grows employee engagement. Offering appealing indoor or outdoor space for employees to gather is a vital touchpoint created by many progressive organizations for bolstering employee relationships, creating network opportunities and to spark creative interactions. A good way of using space to engage employees is by getting them personally involved in designing their workplace (Becker, 2004). Another perspective the author cites is about promoting autonomy, providing a rationale when tasks are presented and offering flexibility on how and when a task is performed. A means of growing autonomy is through providing employees with options on where to do their work, allowing them the options to occasionally work from home, a coffee shop or at the beach. Feeling playful at work makes oneself more optimistic, increasing one’s willingness to take on challenges while helping to maintain a flexible mindset. In today’s knowledge economy, it is the quality of one’s thinking that matters the most and quality thinking is directly tied up with energy levels. One way, many organizations—particularly those whose employees are engaged in a high level thinking, like Google and 3M—leverage this insight by deliberately scheduling play into the workday.

In the context of creating a best place to work, the book explores the term ‘relatedness’ as one of the most underappreciated need in the psychological framework. Connecting people to one another does not just help them enjoy being at work, it also leads to quantifiable gains in their performance. Research shows that happy people tend to be more effective in their jobs. It is because, when people are feeling good about their lives, they connect with others more easily, think more optimistically and free up valuable mental resources to focus on novel ideas. Psychologists have found that simply asking people to identify specific aspects of their lives for which they are thankful alters their perspective in a powerful way (Foster, Witcher, Campbell, & Jeffrey, 1998). Friedman states that ‘when we build appreciation for our current circumstances, we feel happier about the present and more optimistic about the future which improves the quality of our work’ (p.84). Employees with better friendships at the workplace tend to stay on with the company for longer. Studies shows that employees with a best friend at work tend to be more focused, more passionate and more loyal to their organizations. Therefore, meaningful connections are vital for one’s psychological and physical well-being. Shared activities catalyse workplace friendships in ways few interactions can (Kube, Clemens, & Michel, 2012). They foster proximity between employees who rarely meet and boost their level of familiarity with one another, highlight similarity of interests and leverage informal, non-work environment to prompt self-disclosure. At the same time, the author states that ‘close relationships are often built upon a foundation of shared risk. It is when we reveal our vulnerability we acquire close friends’ (p. 142). However in the context of workplace, ‘if we are dealing with a collaborator who seems to view you as a competition, look for areas of common struggle, where you need one another. It is easier to connect with someone when it is clear that you are both on the same side and neither one of you can succeed alone’ (p. 181).

The second part of the book has four chapters which draw contemporary research into the fundamental drives of motivation and excellence within a workforce. In a workplace, when people are given a purposeful rationale, they are more likely to invest more effort and to view their contribution as important. Therefore, the key towards crafting an effective rationale is to communicate how a successful outcome will provide value to the contributing person. One way of helping people feel purpose-driven in their respective job profiles is by giving them the flexibility to design their own approach to work (Jena & Pradhan, 2014). In a 2011 study, spanning over 60 countries, researchers found that autonomy and a friendly work environment is a consistently better predictor of psychological health than income. At the same time, inviting employees to explore solutions together and demonstrating that the management values their inputs is an important technique for growing an employee’s sense of choice. When the goal of the organization is to grow engagement and improve performance on intellectually challenging tasks, Friedman advises to induce intrinsic motivation than supplementing with extrinsic rewards.

Recognition not only shapes career ambitions, but it also increases the perceived value of one’s work. The author argues that many organizations get recognition wrong by overdoing it and making it a routine. This happens because when every employee is given the same degree of recognition regardless of their efforts, the organization gears for a growth of disengagement. Friedman suggests that ‘to grow workplace engagement, instead of taking work away in recognition, try rewarding high performers with more responsibility by growing their departmental involvement and including them with major organisational decisions’ (p. 203). The organization can start introducing more peer-to-peer recognition to uplift the engagement level. Workplace social media tools help in a big way in promoting a mindset of recognition, making it easier for employees to bond while simultaneously fuelling their motivation.

The importance of communication in organizational set-up is well explored in the second part of the book. The author iterates the fact that employees join an organization because of its reputation, but leave because they cannot get along with their managers. Therefore, when it comes to effective management, underdeveloped listening skills does more than just hurting the leader’s ability to influence their team. Therefore, the negotiator rule of thumb is: listen twice as much as we think. The author suggests that a mini-goal that can help the leader to better connect with others is to incorporate PEARLS (a statement of partnership, empathy, acknowledgement, respect, legitimacy and support) into a workplace conversation.

The author discusses in detail an interesting topic—‘why the best managers focus on themselves’—through impressing on the psychological gain of ‘mimicry’ that binds individuals into groups by signalling similarity that creates an allegiance amongst group members. Replacing the people with whom an employee spends most of his time is presumed to alter his impression about organizational norms and lead him to recalibrate his approach at work. The author proposes through the ‘rule of mimic’ that instead of criticizing underperformers, it is better to adjust their social network by pairing them with new office mates or assigning them to a new work group that brings them closer to their colleagues.

The third part of the book encompasses two chapters and speaks about the nuances of attracting and retaining the top performers. For a growing number of organizations, cultural fit has become an important priority when arriving at hiring decisions. It is presumed that when employees have similar norms and attitudes, they are more likely to get along. However, while similarity among co-workers can foster smoother interactions and better relationships, there comes a point at which too much similarity can stifle certain elements of performance, like complacency and overconfidence. So, what is the right degree of cultural fit for a job aspirant? The last part of the book provides tips to understand the hard truth about hiring while proposing lessons of hiring for action managers. The last chapter of the book is about creating the feeling of pride to be a part of the organization. According to Friedman, there is clear evidence to suggest that more flexibility to employees yields greater commitment, productivity, engagement and a sense of pride in one’s workplace. Decades of studies have confirmed that people are happier, healthier and more productive when they feel autonomous. It is because autonomy is a basic psychological need. The more autonomous one feels, the more he/she is likely to be engaged and accomplished on the assigned work. Therefore, emphasizing past achievements, having an ambitious vision for the future and delivering tangible benefits to the community fosters pride by helping people view their affiliation with a company as a boon to their social status and tag it as the ‘the best place to work’.

The book is filled with practical, accessible ways of not only seeing oneself in depth but also looking at the complex mosaics of work environments with pitfalls and opportunities galore. The language is user friendly and use of jargon is minimal, if any. The stories in the book ranging from cruise ship casinos to hostage negotiations are basis for lessons on better leadership in workplace. The author’s ‘menu of proven ingredients’ in all chapters is extensive and detailed—and although some discussions might be more or less relevant to a specific organization, it is possible that every organization will find at least some takeaways from each chapter. However, more graphic representation of statistics would have been a nice addition to this book. Also additional details about employee selection procedure and interview processes would have been an added value. We also find that the author has put too much weight on the results from research in some parts of his work without thinking whether it applies to real world workplace environment. For example, he says that work environment matters but if one tries to follow the change that is required, the change turns out to be so huge that one wonders what other issues might crop up when the suggestions are carried through. In other words, some suggestions were never questioned back to the academia. At the same time, as practitioners in the field of man-management, we would vouch for the book as it discusses a wide range of topics from recruitment, retaining talent, alternate ways of compensation, how to handle disagreements and many more that will set anyone up for success in the future. We highly recommend this book to all business students as it not only shows how companies and managers can change to improve but also gives advice on how individuals can improve to be more successful from day one on a job.

In a nutshell, the book suggests the strategies to fulfil the employee’s needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness while providing the managerial implications to succeed in bringing up an extraordinary workplace. It is a valuable and entertaining read, full of powerful insights that should be known to every manager and leader. While its focus is to help employers build a better workplace, a mission we think it justifies well, the advice within can be used and applied in many other aspects of life: finding a great job, in academia, even with just personal relationships and socializing.