Simón Cohen at Henco: Sustaining 'High Performance, Happy People'

Francesca  Gino; Jeff  Steiner; Arianna  Camacho; Paul  Green

Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2019

Simón Cohen at Henco: Sustaining 'High Performance, Happy People'

by Francesca Gino, Jeff Steiner, Arianna Camacho and Paul Green

Abstract

Simón Cohen—Founder of Henco Logistics—transformed a small Mexican logistics company into a major player within the industry. Cohen credits the firm’s focus on employee happiness as the key ingredient to its success, an approach he developed following a personal crisis, and eventually captured and codified by the slogan “High Performance, Happy People.” Yet, there is reason to question whether “High Performance, Happy People” can endure through Henco’s rapid growth, leadership transition, and changing employee expectations.

Keywords: work/life balance; growth strategy; corporate culture; motivation; values; Authentic Leadership Development; Leadership; Personal Development and Career; Motivation and Incentives; Values and Beliefs; Service Operations; Organizational Culture; Growth and Development Strategy; Service Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

21 pages

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Citation:

Gino, Francesca, Jeff Steiner, Arianna Camacho, and Paul Green. "Simón Cohen at Henco: Sustaining 'High Performance, Happy People'." Harvard Business School Case 920-005, August 2019.

Article | Management Science | October 2020

Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance

Diwas S. KC, Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino

How individuals manage, organize, and complete their tasks is central to operations management. Recent research in operations focuses on how under conditions of increasing workload individuals can decrease their service time, up to a point, in order to complete work more quickly. As the number of tasks increases, however, workers may also manage their workload by a different process—task selection. Drawing on research on workload, individual discretion, and behavioral decision-making, we theorize and then test that under conditions of increased workload, individuals may choose to complete easier tasks in order to manage their load. We label this behavior task completion preference (TCP). Using six years of data from a hospital emergency department, we find that physicians engage in TCP, with implications for their performance. Specifically, TCP helps physicians manage variance in service times; however, while it initially appears to improve shift-level throughput volume, after adjusting for the complexity of the work completed, TCP is related to worse throughput. Moreover, we find that engaging in easier tasks, as compared to hard ones, is related to lower learning in service times. We then turn to the lab to replicate conceptually the short-term task selection effect under increased workload and show that it occurs due to both fatigue and the sense of progress individuals get from task completion. These findings provide another mechanism for the workload-speedup effect from the literature. We also discuss implications for both research and the practice of operations in building systems to help people succeed.

Keywords: healthcare; knowledge work; discretion; Workload; Employees; Health Care and Treatment; Decision Making; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Productivity;

Citation:

KC, Diwas S., Bradley R. Staats, Maryam Kouchaki, and Francesca Gino. "Task Selection and Workload: A Focus on Completing Easy Tasks Hurts Long-Term Performance." Management Science 66, no. 10 (October 2020). View Details

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By 2013, the U.S. wireless industry was in the midst of a costly transition. As consumers began to embrace more sophisticated mobile devices, the industry's four main players spent heavily to improve their infrastructures for providing reliable high-speed data services. T-Mobile, the smallest of the four major carriers, lacked the scale of its competitors and risked falling further behind in the contest for market share. Faced with this daunting business environment, T-Mobile's new CEO declared war on the rest of the industry, decrying competitor pricing practices and upending the traditional contract-based business model. This case provides background information on the state of the wireless industry in 2013 and follows T-Mobile's early steps to transform its market position.

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Simón Cohen at Henco: Sustaining 'High Performance, Happy People'

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