Blog Posts — Page 7

Note to Self: Take More Notes

A couple of thousand years ago, Socrates was lamenting the fact that writing things down was an intellectual crutch that was making the youth lazy. Or it might have been Plato – I really can’t remember because I failed to write it down.

It seems that as every year passes, I am able to hold less and less in my head, and rely more and more on writing things in a notebook. I have attributed this to the same reason my computer slows down after a few years – more and more bits of (mostly useless) information is taking valuable disc space away from what I need to remember most recently.

Case in point – I went to the grocery store looking for five items last week. The first four, I recalled without difficulty. The fifth item, however, completely eluded me to the point where I was wandering up and down the aisles with my mouth open, and eyes squinted hoping that item number five would magically jump off the shelf and into my basket.

I left the store with four items.

On the way home, there was a radio trivia contest asking about the actor that played the role of Skipper on Gilligan’s Island in the 70s. Any thinking person would tell you that it’s the legendary Alan Hale. Likewise, if you want to know Marsha Brady’s first boyfriend’s name (Harvey), I’m the guy you want to call.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I could take out a Craig’s List ad as the phone-a-friend guy for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” contestants for anything that happened twenty or thirty years ago. Just don’t ask me who won the 2010 World Series. I remember watching the game, I just didn’t write down the winner.

I first started thinking about this blog post in the car, and had something really clever to say. Unfortunately, I couldn’t write it down, so you might have to check back every few days to see if I’ve remembered.

Note to self: Take more notes.

Living in the Post-Politically Correct Era

Recently, I was meeting an old friend for lunch. When I got to the restaurant, I wasn’t sure if he was already there, or if I had arrived first, so I asked the hostess if there was anyone waiting. “There’s a woman waiting on a party of four”, she explained, “and another man wearing a grey suit.”

I had absolutely no idea what my friend was wearing, so I said, “The man I’m looking for is a tall, bald, black man.” The reply I got was quite telling. The hostess looked quite uncomfortable, and replied, “I didn’t know I could identify him as ‘black’”.

“It’s OK”, I said, “he knows he’s black.”

I’m happy we’ve moved beyond Amos and Andy jokes, but the story above illustrates a hyper-sensitivity to cultural diversity that does no one any good

For this reason, I am self-proclaiming myself to be living in the post-politically correct era. This means the cultural differences between people have such little consequence for me, that it is entirely appropriate for me to comment on such differences.

Just the other day, I was saying to my Irish friend, Alexis Theodropoulos, that this politically correct garbage has gotten way out of hand. It seems that every Tom, Dick and Xianlong in town feels comfortable critiquing your tolerance simply because you mention in passing that you don’t like curried food.

I live in a city where the WASP population is significantly less than half the population. I live in a country where there are no majorities – not white males, not English speakers, and not people of Protestant faith. It’s a community of communities (with proper credit to Joe Clark).

These diverse groups do not integrate, but they do coexist, and do so nicely. So next time you see an Italian on the street – ask him the best place to eat schnitzel. You just might be surprised at the response.

Overwhelmed? Try the 3-Martini Lunch

Back when I had a real job, I would occasionally find myself completely overwhelmed with all the things going on around me. So I did what I was supposed to do: I took a couple of minutes, and tried to find some way to dissipate the stress, and refocus that energy.

It didn’t work.

First, I got one of those foam stress balls, but I found myself squeezing it so tightly, that what I really wanted to do was to bite little pieces off, swallow them, and then crap it out and throw it at the people who stressed me out.

I next got one of those audio files of soothing sounds. Being born near the ocean, I decided to play the “Sounds of the Sea”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t relax because I kept checking to see that those seagulls I could hear, weren’t going to come along a crap on me.

I took up yoga, but failed to find anything relaxing about some other stressed out individual invading my personal space by shouting “ohmmmmm” in my ear. Rather than calm me down, it inspired in me the need to punch people.

Finally, I resorted to the old standby of stress relief — booze. Of course, in this day and age, the 3-martini lunch is frowned upon, so you need to find more discrete ways to manage stress if you choose this option. I opted to take a flask to the food court – not very discreet.

Then I realized the thing that stressed me out most, was people telling me not to be stressed out. I figured out that for the last million years or so, humans have been stressed out, and what I was experiencing was really nothing new.

Feelings of stress are good indicators that it’s time for you to take action. Stress tells the body it needs to defend itself against external stimulus. In the case of the caveman, feelings of stress helped to not be eaten by a sabre tooth tiger. In the case of the modern office worker, it to not be eaten alive by corporate bullshit.

Feelings of stress at work are the modern equivalent of the “fight or flight response”. When faced with situations or people that inspire stress, you should quickly sum up your odds of winning, and react accordingly.

We still feel the fight or flight response, but we fail to quickly sum up our odds. As a result we try to win every battle, and end up spending far too many hours at the office.

It’s either that, or figure out the 3 Martini lunch.

Dealing with Employee Dishonesty (and a Bright Red Firebird)

Sooner or later it’s going to happen – you’re going to have to fire someone for dishonesty. Of course, all the management gurus will tell you that you need to trust your people absolutely, and because you’ve heeded this advice, you’ll feel betrayed and stupid.

On the opposite side of the trust spectrum, I was once told a manager must assume that every one of his people is trying to rip him off at all times. In this case, when you do have to deal with dishonesty, it’s not a shock or a surprise, but you live the rest of your work life in a perpetual state of jaded negativity.

Both mindsets are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Organizations’ inability to manage this dynamic is why employee orientations often suck so badly. There’s really nothing more welcoming in an organization, than when they spend an hour or so reviewing all the possible contingencies under which you will be fired. You can bet the HR and legal teams worked overtime on this stuff.

But I’ll bet you Jim Rockford’s bright red Firebird (if you were born after 1975, look it up) there’s a way for managers to negotiate this grey area.

You absolutely need to trust your people – much like you trust your children. You must also open your mind to the possibility that some employees are going to betray this trust every now and again – much like your children.

However, the parallel with children ends here. In most cases, you’re stuck with your kids, and all their mistakes. You have no such obligation with employees. If an employee breaches your trust by acting dishonestly, you have a responsibility to act quickly, decisively, and severely.

There are very few circumstances of employee dishonesty that I can think of that should not end in the termination of an employment contract. Failure to do so treats shareholders, and all the honest employees you have with great disrespect.

And don’t try to weasel out of this managerial burden by having the HR and Legal teams get together to put 400 pages of policy in place. You can’t legislate honesty… but you can fire the dishonest. Quickly.

I was unable to embed the video clip I wanted this week, so go look it up on YouTube yourself: “SNL Sexual Harassment and You”

Working for Idiots

Believe it or not, it is possible that you are a very nice person, but a horrible boss. The stuff of Hollywood legends, and blog anti-heroes is that of the grand-mal, asshole boss. The person who is evil incarnate, and takes great pleasure in making others miserable.

I’ve worked in dozens of organizations either as an employee, contractor or consultant – and I’ve never met this person. I have met a number of horrible bosses, and usually they qualify as horrible for much more subtle reasons than sitting in a corner office, and laughing like Dr. Evil while pulling the wings off living insects. Below are some of the most common horrible boss types.

Everybody’s Best Friend – this is the most common type of horrible boss. This person has a high need to be liked by others, and should therefore never be put in a position of leadership. Unfortunately, we usually promote people who are good technically at the work, and rarely test a person’s ability to be disliked by others – a core skill for leaders.

Mr. Insecure – This poor guy feels pressure from above because he’s probably not very good at what he does. He also thinks this peers and his direct reports are out to get him. As a result, he takes irrational actions and makes poor decisions. If you wait it out long enough, this guy usually manages to get himself fired.

Ms. Moody – This person is delightful one day, and a nightmare the next. You need to look for the cues in the morning as to what kind of day she is having. You can also be rest assured that when she’s having a bad day, you’ll have a bad day.

The Visionary – this person can be a good leader if and when he has a brilliant manager back him up. When this ingredient is missing, this is the person that comes up with a bunch of great ideas, but has no ability to implement them. One tell-tale sign of this type of horrible boss is assigning the same task to several different people.

The Prince of Darkness – this type of horrible boss desperately reinforces the hierarchy at every chance. She will usually do this because she never really expected to amount to much, and probably feels like an imposter much of the time. She’s so desperate not to be discovered, that she’ll do anything not to compromise her place on the corporate food chain.

Armed with this information, it is now your job to ensure that YOU are not any of these types of horrible boss. You can’t change their behavior (unless of course you choose to commit bossicide), but you can make sure that your direct reports are never exposed to such things.

Don’t Trust the Trust Game

“Let’s take everyone off-site for team building. It will help get people out of their comfort zones.”

The last time I heard that, I ran away so fast, there was a Bob-shaped hole in the exit door. I’m not exactly sure what logic leads people to believe that one day away from the office is going to make up for poor management and inadequate leadership on all the other days of the year, but you need to think very carefully about how and when you take your team offsite.

Don’t get me wrong… I do think some of these outings can be fun. I just don’t think it will have any impact on the business or the people. I am reminded of the manager who decided that taking his team out for Karaoke would be a good idea. It would help them bond as a group, and promote creativity. For the one aspiring rock star of the group, it was a great time. The rest of the people, however, were jaded and cynical that they had to sit through Karaoke without the one necessary ingredient to make it fun – booze.

Think about it – if you want to breach people’s comfort zones, then it depends a lot on the people. If you have a bunch of Type-A extroverts, then getting them to play silly games, and make asses of themselves is well within their comfort zones. The introverts will be horrified, and the extroverts will be in their element. If you really want to breach the extroverts’ comfort zones, get them to sit quietly for an hour and read a book.

I’m also reminded of the group that was encouraged to play the “trust game” where you fall backwards and trust that your team will catch you. You guessed it – one broken wrist later, they discovered it had far less to do with trust than it did with the physical logistics of catching 200 pounds in the palms of half-a-dozen sets of hands.

The bottom line is that most forms of group training and other team building exercises are a waste of time and money. There needs to be specific desired behavior changes that can be measured back in the workplace, otherwise save your money, and just take your team out for dinner instead. It will be cheaper, it is more sincere, and it will be appreciated more.

At Which End Should You Crack Your Egg?

As someone who travels a lot for work, I end up eating in restaurants a fair bit, and I sometimes end up having difficulty deciding between the chicken stir-fry, and the boiled fish. Yep, that’s right, I have eating habits typical of an obese rabbit. But I digress.

You can imagine the confusion I would cause if I simply didn’t decide on a meal. For some indefinite period of time, I would become more and more famished, while the waiter, kitchen and support staff would wait (at first patiently), and then eventually boot me out for being such a twit.

Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to managers who fail to make decisions. People will wait patiently for some period of time, perhaps make a recommendation or two, but eventually they’ll get angry and boot you out.

There are a variety of reasons that managers fail to make decisions, but there are two essential things for indecisive managers to remember:

1) First, the decision you are about to (not) make, is really not all that important. It’s about as consequential as my choice between chicken and fish. Unless you are reading this as the head of some nation-state headed for armed conflict (in which case, I’d love your comments below, Mr. Netanyahu), then don’t flatter yourself by thinking that decision you’re delaying has any serious consequence.

2) The wrong decision today, is better than the correct decision a month from now. At least if you make the wrong decision now, it will become clear quickly, and you can change course. Just ask the guys who came up with the genius idea of “New Coke” a few years back. The old Coke was only off the shelf for a matter of seconds before they realized they’d made a huge mistake. It took a few more seconds to correct course, and get back to the business of pedaling sugar-water to the entire world, and kicking Pepsi’s ass.

So it’s time to quit agonizing and make a decision. When in doubt, flip a coin – the worst you’ll do is relive the New Coke fiasco. Start tomorrow morning by making the important decision of which side of your egg you should crack (with due credit to Jonathan Swift – look it up).

Forget Your Superstars — Focus on Middle Performers

In just about any work group or organization, you’ll find a normal distribution of performance quality. In other words, your employees will fall into the normal bell curve with a few superstars, a handful of laggards, with most of your employee population falling in the middle.

The management books and the HR folks will tell you reach out to all employees to create a high performing environment. The fundamental flaw with this advice comes from its source: most of the authors of management books have never actually been managers; and, HR… well, it’s HR. If you’re one of the few companies out there with a high performing HR department, then you probably should heed their advice. For all the other organizations, tell HR that once it manages itself to be a high performing group, they will win the privilege of advising you to do likewise.

Here’s what you actually need to do: forget about the front and back of your bell curve. Yep, that’s right, ignore your superstars and your laggards.

Your superstars are often your most high-maintenance people. They often do great work, but leave a trail of broken relationships behind them. When you look at their overall impact on the organization, as opposed to their proficiency in what you’ve asked them to do, the net effect is often much less positive than you might be lead to believe. They also tend to jump ship quicker than others.

Your laggards are a bit more tricky. You can’t ignore critically poor performance, or it will drag others’ performance down. You need to minimize the influence your laggards have on others, but you don’t want to put a whole bunch of energy into trying to improve the poor performer if there’s little chance it will substantially improve.

Leaders need to focus on the middle of their curve. If you can push those good performers a bit further along the curve, then the overall impact to the organization can be substantial. Those in the middle are lower maintenance, they probably have a higher ability to improve than the laggards, and they are more stable than the superstars.

The success of an organization rarely depends on the retention of a few superstars. More likely it depends on the retention of the middle majority of good performers – the same group that likely gets the least attention in most organizations.

I guess irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Education versus Experience

Every now and then I get drawn into the age-old argument about education versus experience. On one side of the argument are people who seem to have an irrational resentment towards others’ educational credentials. They ask, “how is it that smart people can do such stupid things?”

The answer, quite simply is that education and intelligence are not necessarily correlated.

On the other side of the argument are those that wave their communications degree from the local community college around like it was a ticket to success. They ask, “I studied hard, why won’t they make me a vice-president of something?”

The answer, quite simply, is because you don’t know anything yet.

People who want to seriously argue whether education or experience is better, apparently have neither. It is an argument for brain-dead people. Here are a few points to ponder:

Education is simply a different form of experience. If this is all you have, it is limited at best.
People who have 25 years experience at something need to be questioned as to whether they have 25 years experience (like a neurosurgeon) or one year’s experience 25 times (like a barista). Sometimes anything past the first year is a waste of experience.
When things don’t happen the way you want them to, it’s not necessarily a knowledge (education) gap. If education was the only thing that mattered, then nobody would smoke, very few would be fat, and nobody would watch TV (or use any other recreational drugs).

The bottom line is that any education or development is going to make an individual better than s/he would be without it; it won’t make one individual better than another. So stop fixating over education versus experience, and go improve one or the other.

Politically Correct Brainstorming

So… how many politically correct pinheads does it take to screw-in a light bulb? ANSWER: None… because they are forever in the dark.

As it turns out, there was a (hopefully futile) movement in the UK to stop using the term, “brainstorming”, because some PCP (politically correct pinhead) decided that this was disrespectful to those with mental illness.

This PCP was apparently in a good position to winge about such things, because very clearly, s/he suffered from some form of mental illness. I’m not really sure what is more ridiculous to me: this PCP’s delusional version of reality; or the fact this complaint got enough traction that it actually made the news.

Perhaps people paid attention to this for the same reason they slow down to see a car accident. The most frustrating thing about this silliness is that it diverts attention away from the serious implications of mental illness.

So next time you suggest a brainstorm to generate ideas, and some PCP tells you the term is inappropriate, respond with the following:

a) First comment on their appearance – no one looks perfect, so find something really obvious to critique them on.

b) If they happen to be from a visible ethnic group, don’t be afraid to bring that up either. This is unlikely, as most PCPs tend to be white folks with Anglo-Saxon last names who ease their guilt by advocating for others who would rather they kept their mouths shut.

c) Question their parentage – that should set them off.

d) Ask them how much they’d charge to haunt a house.

e) Be relentless.

After your coworkers have pulled the (kicking and screaming) PCP off you, remind them that violence in the workplace is a serious issue; equating brainstorming with mental illness is not.

Now, I’m headed outside to board up Wily Manager headquarters in anticipation of the forthcoming firebomb.