Blog — Page 20

How to Get Ahead — Don’t Be an Idiot

Every now and then Jed or I will be sitting across the table from someone who will confide in us that he really wants to be promoted into the next job. Sometimes, he may not know what that next job is, but he really wants it. “How do I get ahead?”, he may ask of us. This got me to thinking:

Boot-licking – Constant, shameless, thorough and quality bootlicking.

Eliminate the competition by quietly and carefully sabotaging their every move. If you think they might be higher in the standings than you for the next role — take them out.

Sewering Your Boss — Maybe if you make her look stupid enough, they’ll fire her, and put you in her role.

Constantly Champion Your Own Virtues – If people don’t know how wonderful you are, it’s about time you told them. Don’t be afraid to repeat, ad nauseam.

Sorry – I seem to have lost my inner-monologue.

It’s frightening how many people think that one or more of the above will work. We see it time and time again, even if people don’t fully admit to employing some or all of these techniques.

There is no doubt that occasionally a boot-licker will slip between the cracks and have some success for a limited period of time. Maybe even a year or two. However, there is always a reckoning. This is not to say that the most qualified person always gets the job – organizational politics are a fact of life that people need to accept. I don’t know of any organizations that are pure meritocracies.

But people who attempt to prosper by insincere means most often meet their demise with the same level of intensity as they played the game. What comes around goes around – even though it may take longer than many of us might like.

So how do you get ahead in your career? Start by not being an idiot. If you can’t manage that, you’re not going to get ahead anyway, so you might as well cut your losses now. (Oops – there’s my inner-monologue again).

If you want some other ideas, download our latest podcast on How to Get Ahead – Wily Manager Style.

In the meantime… let’s be careful out there.

Micro-Managing: A Great Way to Get Fired

OK – we’ve all done it. Decided to do something ourselves because its easier and faster than holding the appropriate person to account. Maybe you’ve even done it with your children. Micro-managing – the gift that keeps on destroying.

Every manager has been warned against this, so let’s look at why it happens, given the most common excuses most managers give for doing so:

It’s faster to do it myself. It probably is faster… the first time. But if you look at the amount of time it will take you to teach or correct someone else in the execution of a task, versus the amount of time it will take you to do it on an ongoing basis, the answer is clear.

I can do it better. You probably can… for a while. However, if you insist on doing every individual task yourself, you will become quickly overwhelmed, and will end up doing some (high) proportion of those tasks poorly.

My people aren’t capable. If this is the case for any amount of time, you are clearly not doing your job as a manager. It is your job to develop people. Occasionally you truly don’t have the right talent, in which case you have to make changes to your talent bench.

I need to keep close to the details. Actually, you probably don’t. As a manager, it is not your job to be expert at everything. It’s your job to create experts, and be able to ask some semi-intelligent questions of them.

If I don’t do all these tasks, I won’t be useful anymore. Listen to yourself. If you’re that insecure in your role as a leader, you need to examine whether you should be in a management role at all.

The bottom line is that micro-managers sap the productivity out of organizations by failing to capture the discretionary effort of their employees. They don’t develop people, which is a primary function of a leader. They also limit their own career mobility by trying to make themselves indispensible in the role they are in.

Micro-management is a self-destructive behaviour, and a great way to get fired. Then you’ll have lot’s of time.

The Results-Oriented Work Environment (ROWE)

Apparently the most recent flavour of the month is the Results-Oriented Work Environment or ROWE for those who prefer to only work with acronyms. It a great name because how could anyone not want a more results-oriented work place? Some of its detractors call it something different – anarchy. I would probably call it self-employment.

ROWE, in its most current incarnation, was pioneered at Best Buy, and is in use at other high profile companies such as IBM and Netflix. The theory is a simple one: employees set their own time, schedules, and work methods, and are instead measured on the output of what they produce. In theory, it sounds like an excellent idea, and in certain cases it could probably work very well.

I can think of a two situations where it really wouldn’t work:

It can’t work where there’s a high degree of inter-dependence with other stakeholders. As a refugee of the Retail Food Industry, I can say without reservation that it would be a disaster if employees wrote their own schedule. As great as it would be for the bulk of employees to work banker’s hours, it would get pretty frustrating for customers who predominantly shop at nights and on weekends.
It can’t work in situations where it is difficult to measure the output of employee effort. If there is any degree of variation in work processes, then the measurement thereby becomes very difficult. For example, any profession with case-work (lawyers, social workers, insurance etc.) are inherently difficult to measure. Some cases may be easily wrapped up in a few minutes, while others may require weeks of research and follow up.

I know we’re all supposed to buy-in to the myth that any and all things are measurable, but the luxury of believing that falls only to academics who have never had to actually measure anything. Ask a professor how to measure teaching effectiveness, and watch her face as she looks like your dog when you pretend to throw the ball and then hide it behind your back.

The second group of people who insist that all things are measureable are management consultants – who, (for the low cost of $5000/day plus expenses) are more than willing to help you measure everything in your business. Unlike the professors, these folks don’t believe it, but they make good money convincing organizations to try it.

Should you try to better focus your organization on results? Yes – that’s your job as a manager.

Should you impose measurement systems on everything? Maybe – it depends on your business, and how meaningful you can make your metrics. Where possible, you should measure and evaluate people mostly on their output.

Should you set people loose and tell them as long as they produce X widgets in a given week, they can do whatever they want? I think that’s a recipe for disaster for employee morale, risk management, and true accountability.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong (with thanks to Dennis Miller).

Politeness in the Workplace? Go #@$% Yourself!

I’m not really sure when it happened. Sometime over the last few years it has become socially acceptable to have a potty-mouth at the office. Most often I am invited into workplaces for short periods of time – usually a few months – so I normally don’t know anyone when I first show up, and have to take some time to get to know people.

I find it incredible that people who don’t know me are quite willing to use exceptionally foul language in our very first meeting. I should clarify two things:

1) I’m not there to fire them, or otherwise torture them… which may be construed as just-cause for an expletive or two.

2) I’m not offended by any of this, and use my own fair-share of foul words in more familiar company.

I just find it curious that people think words your mother always told you she didn’t want to hear are now common-place in work settings. In my experience, this transcends just about all demographic groups. It is not just younger people, nor is it just men. I have witnessed this in large cities, and small ones, in a wide variety of industries. I think it’s safe to say this has become a societal thing.

So… what is to be done? Probably nothing. But I would caution anyone who cares that first impressions are very powerful, and if you litter your first impression with language that would make a lumberjack blush, then you will inevitably come across as insensitive and less intelligent.

As a general rule of thumb, it might be good to know someone’s last name, before asking them (in so many words) if they like sex and travel. Likewise, don’t assume that you’re not offending anyone, just because everyone else seems to be swearing. It’s amazing that many offices insist on no fragrances or smelly foods for fear of upsetting someone, but have no similar guidelines for certain forms of noise pollution.

Until you know who you’re talking to, you might want to channel Bill Cosby more so than Eddie Murphy. In the mean time… check out this clip for how one office handled it.

Recruiting — The Black Art

In professional sports, considerable resources are spent scouting new prospects and eventually landing them in the organization. Those that manage professional sports know that you truly do “win it in the draft”, and they take their recruiting process seriously enough to make it a key source of competitive advantage.

With very few exceptions, other businesses do not do nearly as well. Many (perhaps most) organizations manage the recruiting process about as well as George Bush manages the English language. It might be entertaining, but only for the same reason you would slow down to look at an accident scene on the side of the highway.

It seems that many organizations of all shapes and sizes improvise their way through this important process. What makes this most surprising is that every time an organization goes to the market to hire, they put themselves at considerable risk: risk to reputation, as well as legal risk if they mismanage the recruiting process badly enough.

A meaningful discussion of this important subject would take much more space than I have here, but here are five ideas to improve the recruiting process in any organization:

Take it seriously — it’s very expensive to get it wrong. The Journal of Compensation and Benefits estimates the cost of turnover at 1.5 to 2.5 the annual salary of the position. So when your new recruit doesn’t work out, and leaves after three months, there is a real cost to the organization.
Know what you’re recruiting for. If there isn’t a comprehensive job description, you need to write one – before you even place an ad. You need to know what results the position should be achieving, and what competencies are required to do the job well.
Separate your needs from your wants. I recently read a job advertisement in the paper for a public sector organization that wanted 20 years of experience, and multiple university degrees for a job they were only willing to pay $45k per year. That person does not exist. Decide what your “minimum price of entry” requirements are, and categorize everything else as a “want”. In other words, it would be a bonus if the person had that experience or competency.
Get rid of bad recruiters or hiring managers. Anyone who seems to power trip or get perverse pleasure out of making candidates squirm should be removed from the process. If you find yourself with such a recruiter or an HR person – fire her. If it is a hiring manager, insulate them from the process, and seriously consider firing him/her, too.
Make the match. Remember you are being evaluated every bit as much as you are evaluating the client. Allow the candidate to ask questions; Tell people what to expect; follow up with everyone; always check references.

As best I can tell, most organizations recruit poorly not because they don’t know what to do, but rather because they choose not to do it. This is at your peril.

By the way – Jed and I have done a podcast and a topic bundle on effective interviewing. Hopefully you find it useful.

A Bad Boss Can Kill You

A 2009 Swedish study tracking 3,122 men for ten years found that those with bad bosses suffered 20 to 40 percent more heart attacks than those with good bosses.

Wow – glad I’m not Swedish. I’m actually looking for the complementary study that shows how bad employees shorten a supervisor’s lifespan. Maybe Hell really is other people.

So – is there any truth to the above study, or is it more silliness cranked out by academics looking to dabble in the real world by grabbing a headline? I’m sure the research would speak for itself, but what is instructional about its findings?

No one would dispute that stress will kill you, but how does a bad boss equate to stress? The obvious thing to do here is to list off all the poor qualities of a bad boss, and draw a parallel between their bad behaviour and their employees’ stress. In reality, stress merely exists, and our reaction to it makes it unhealthy.

So I am willing to believe that a bad boss will kill me, but only if I give him/her enough control over me that I react poorly to the stress they are generating. I can’t control their behaviour, but I most certainly can control my own behaviour, and my reaction to theirs.

Or I could move to Sweden. I hear it’s nice.

Business is a Contact Sport — Wear a Cup

At the risk of coming across like The Cranky Middle-Manager, I have a couple of grievances to air on how people interact with each other in the workplace. It seems that people claiming that they work in a “toxic environment” is all the rage as of late. In a minimum of cases, this may be truth, but in far more circumstances, it seems as though anytime someone doesn’t smile at you at the water cooler, you’re entitled to claim a horrible work situation.

The truth is that anytime you are in a workplace of more than one person, there are going to be disagreements and compromises. And contrary to much of the hype you read in the popular media, sometimes work will be a drag. To quote Jed’s dad, “If it was supposed to be fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”

I believe the root cause of this problem, is most people’s incompetence in dealing with conflict. Many people believe that conflict is bad, when in fact it is neither good nor bad, but merely exists. People’s response to conflict can make the situation bad.

Some people respond to conflict by becoming aggressive and overbearing. Others choose to avoid conflict like it was a toilet seat at the bus station. Both responses are destructive and will not improve or resolve whatever situation has caused the conflict to emerge.

Interestingly, in my experience I see the most common response to conflict to be one of either avoiding or yielding. Both are poor responses to conflict in almost all cases. If you are inclined to respond to conflict in this way, it is time to grow a pair and act like an adult. Issues need to be confronted and dealt with.

It doesn’t mean you are always going to get your way, but at the very least you will have some confidence that you have attempted to constructively resolve workplace conflict, rather than letting it get pushed underground to fester.

It’s a Jungle Out There

I found this clip on YouTube that is a hilarious/sad commentary on many workplaces. Happy Viewing.

Is There Hope for Introverts?

Other than questioning someone’s parentage, is there a faster way to insult someone than calling him an introvert? Isn’t introversion something that we need to cure people of by sending them to the Dale Carnegie Course?

Many organizations have invested in some form of psychometric instrument that indicates whether people have a preference for introverted or extroverted behaviour, but that hasn’t stopped the vast majority of people from throwing around these terms without actually having a clue as to what they mean.

People hear “extrovert”, and they think: outgoing, friendly, social, capable, productive, normal.

People hear “introvert”, and they think: shy, withdrawn, anti-social, illusive, dysfunctional, wall-flower.

The problem with these descriptions is that neither is particularly accurate, and it infers that people are capable of only one set of behaviours exclusively. There is also a connotation that Extroverts will excel in business to a much higher degree than Introverts.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins reveals the qualities that his research has shown as effective in running great organizations. Interestingly, many of the qualities of “Level Five Leadership”, are found more naturally in people with Introverted preferences.

You might also be surprised who may be a closet-introvert: High-profile leaders, television personalities, sports stars, maybe even one of your friends, neighbours, or family are introverted. They’re everywhere, so beware – you never know when they’ll want to slink into the back corner of a meeting room, and silently wish everyone would stop talking at once. Or perhaps pray that someone will listen to them for 20 seconds before interrupting them. Worse yet, they may think about something before responding to a question creating that awkward few seconds silence.

So you may be wondering where I fit on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Grid.

As someone who spends a lot of time talking to groups of people, and a person who worked in television (for a short and spectacularly unsuccessful period of time), I am rarely accused of being an Introvert.

I prefer to label myself as a Recovering-Extrovert. We might need to create a new scale for measurement.

Chicken$hits Can’t Be Effective Leaders

Far smarter people than me have written about what is required for effective leadership, but this week I have been reflecting upon the most necessary ingredient: courage.

I have had the pleasure of interacting with many leaders of varying quality over many years, and all of them have at least a few obvious strengths, but the common denominator in the truly outstanding leaders, are those who handle awkward, difficult or downright scary situations head-on. They don’t always get it right the first time, but the outstanding leader does not back down because she fears reprisal from her boss, peers, direct reports or some other stakeholder.

It is amazing how many people have a strong need to liked by those who report through to them. The relationship between a boss and his/her employees should always be respectful, but it does not need to be friendly. Many leaders hate to deliver bad news, or say “no” to people. Other leaders won’t deal with performance issues because it might involve a difficult conversation, or let an employee who should have been fired years ago get away with perpetual sub-par performance.

This is exquisite BS.

It is a form of dishonesty, and certainly demonstrates a lack of integrity when leaders fail to engage in difficult conversations. Progressive organizations have figured this out, and gotten rid of managers who are afraid to get rid of people.

The right thing to do is rarely the easy thing to do, but it is the burden of leadership. If you are too chicken$hit to do the right thing, then you should either grow a pair, or wait to be fired. The choice is yours