March 2010 Archives

In today's economic environment, you would think that getting fired or laid off is the absolute worse thing that could happen. While this may seem true in the short run, getting fired is, by definition, definitive. Getting fired leaves you with few options and it forces you to act. By acting, you may very well improve your situation and get into a better work environment; one that is more focused on your career goals.

No, the worse thing that can happen to you as an employee is getting a demotion. Keep in mind a demotion may not be just a title thing, you could get demoted by having your responsibly assigned to someone else, your clients reassigned, receiving a lower title, a reduction in staff, lower responsibilities, or having your pay frozen. None of these actions leave you with a positive feeling about your employer or yourself. What both employers and employees fail to see is that this is like the Titanic leaking water. If may not seem like a very big event but eventually, your ship will sink. No one really recovers from a demotion by ignoring it or doing very little about it. This applies to both sides of the equation; managers should also pay attention when this happens to one of their employees. Talk to them and try to get an understanding of how they are feeling. These are your resources; you can't allow them to continue this downward spiral. Not only do you have the responsibility for allowing this happen to one of your employees, you also have the responsibility to ensure they recover. (All Managers need to re-read that last sentence).

So what should you do? First, talk to your boss or your boss's boss and get a clear picture of why it happened. You may be surprised that it had very little to do with you or your performance. If it is your fault, take inventory of your weaknesses that lead up to this event. Maybe something was happening in your personal life or some miscommunication occurred. Whatever it is you need to put a plan in place to address theses issues and move forward. Look for a lateral move or something in a growing part of the business. Maybe even, hold to your company process manual, contact someone in HR to get some guidance. Do they still offer career counseling or do I need to call the outsourced help desk? "Yes, I would like to speak to someone about career planning" "Is the PC plugged in?".

In today's economic environment, you would think that getting fired or laid off is the absolute worse thing that could happen. While this may seem true in the short run, getting fired is, by definition, definitive. Getting fired leaves you with few options and it forces you to act. By acting, you may very well improve your situation and get into a better work environment; one that is more focused on your career goals.

No, the worse thing that can happen to you as an employee is getting a demotion. Keep in mind a demotion may not be just a title thing, you could get demoted by having your responsibly assigned to someone else, your clients reassigned, receiving a lower title, a reduction in staff, lower responsibilities, or having your pay frozen. None of these actions leave you with a positive feeling about your employer or yourself. What both employers and employees fail to see is that this is like the Titanic leaking water. If may not seem like a very big event but eventually, your ship will sink. No one really recovers from a demotion by ignoring it or doing very little about it. This applies to both sides of the equation; managers should also pay attention when this happens to one of their employees. Talk to them and try to get an understanding of how they are feeling. These are your resources; you can’t allow them to continue this downward spiral. Not only do you have the responsibility for allowing this happen to one of your employees, you also have the responsibility to ensure they recover. (All Managers need to re-read that last sentence).

So what should you do? First, talk to your boss or your boss’s boss and get a clear picture of why it happened. You may be surprised that it had very little to do with you or your performance. If it is your fault, take inventory of your weaknesses that lead up to this event. Maybe something was happening in your personal life or some miscommunication occurred. Whatever it is you need to put a plan in place to address theses issues and move forward. Look for a lateral move or something in a growing part of the business. Maybe even, hold to your company process manual, contact someone in HR to get some guidance. Do they still offer career counseling or do I need to call the outsourced help desk? "Yes, I would like to speak to someone about career planning" "Is the PC plugged in?".

Are you a firefighter or Smokey the Bear? More importantly, which does your organization value the most? A firefighter is someone that has a tremendous skill set and can come into a giant mess to solve the problems immediately. They can quickly diagnose the issues and get into the details in order to move the project forward. Firefighters are a great asset to have and I don't think you can survive in this world without them.

While it doesn't happen often, many firefighters allow situations to get out of hand before they come in and save the day. Or maybe, managers allow situations to get out of hand before they send in the firefighters. Many years ago I was hired to run a 40 person group and the only instruction I had from executive leadership was don't mess with Bob (Not his real name); we must have him in order to survive. Now being in the business for 15 years, you can imagine my excitement to meet such a technology expert. It didn't take long; within a month I had seen him work late into the night or weekends so save the departments skin with systems going down or in need of repair. After another month or so, I noticed something else. Most of the problems he solved over the weekend could have been solved the Tuesday before they got out of hand. In other words, he ignored the small issues that were the foundation for the big problem to come. Eventually, I replaced him with a new employee at about 50% the expense. Issues and firefights dropped by 80% and our customer satisfaction rose by 20%.

This brings me to Smokey the Bear. What is Smokey's primary job? I suppose he is a symbol and spokesman for the forest. You never actually see him putting out fires thus his job is to ensure the fires never start to begin with. As in my previous story, we moved away from a fire fighting response mentality to one based on Smokey. We focused our attention on the small and seemingly insignificant issues. You see, you also need Smokey the Bears in the organization to understand where problems start and ensure that a match doesn't become a raging fire. The skills sets are completely different and sadly the response of management is equally different. Not much has changed in the last 20 years; fire fighters still get the praise they deserve and Smokey the Bears get... Well, I guess they get the satisfaction of a job well done if nothing else. In a world based on "What Have You Done for Me Lately", ensuring problems never emerge in the first place isn't highly regarded.

No, I am not talking about the brain numb appreciation that we get when our leadership tells a community of 2,500 people how much they appreciate everyone's commitment and dedication. All the while, you glance over at Joe who is the epitome of the walking dead. No, what I am talking about is the real, personalized and heart felt appreciation that was, not just popular, but part of the business culture years ago. So, I'll ask the questions that need to be asked:

• When was the last time you called an employee on their birthday, employment anniversary, or wedding anniversary?
• When was the last time you took the time to recognize your employee whose kids are graduating College?
• When was the last time you emailed an employee thanking them for just being a part of the company?
• When was the last time you wrote a real thank you note and mailed it to an employee congratulating them for getting certified?
• When was the last time you reached out to a co-worker that you haven't seen in 5 years?
• When was the last time you took an employee two levels below you to lunch and picked up the tab?
• Now, let's flip this around. When was the last time you thanked your manager for being there?

Look, I am no Polly-Anna. My rose colored glasses were ground to powder a long time ago but this stuff matters. At home, I have just a couple of things on my desk. One is a real thank you letter; on company letter head, that I got 22 years ago. The Vice President simply wanted to say thank you for being there and helping the company succeed. How many have I received since then? Not a single one that was personalized but plenty rubber stamped ones that everyone else got. How would I describe this lack of real and heart felt appreciation in corporate America? Sad, Stupid, Idiotic, and one major reason for such a high degree of turnover. Why don't managers extend themselves with a little appreciation? Simply, they don't get it either. This stuff starts at the top and filters down. If you manager doesn't thank you very often, then you can bank they aren't getting any appreciation either. What happened to us, to busy, to proud, to afraid, or to embarrassed to do the right thing?

Not sure why I like this show but it has my attention every Monday night. American Pickers comes on the History channel and is basically a show of a couple of guys looking for antiques in piles and piles of junk. Anything that they can sell, they buy, from old bikes to metal advertising signs. The best shows seem to center around the guys digging through 10 feet of rubble or cutting back kudzu to find that special item. Their ability to spot something of value in a large pile of junk is nothing short of astonishing which brings me to my analogy; our intranet.

Is our intranet a big pile of rusted junk? Many think so since it seems to have very little information architecture or overall data strategy. A simple search for collaboration yields 13,658 results out of 772,000 sources. Imagine 13,000 rusted car parts sitting in a yard and you want that 1942 Desoto Hood Ornament. Are you going to sort through each and every one? We brag about the amount of information we have and we may have as much as 7 million pages of content ready to be absorbed. And, that’s just the stuff that's captured by the search engine which is estimated to only be about 10%. Could it be, we have 70 million document artifacts wandering around in the Corporate junk yard?

Now, what skills do you need to be an Corporate Information Picker? The ability to find the exact document, web site, or person you need is a rare skill indeed. Although it wouldn't make good television, it would be funny asking a new employee to see if they can find the process for ordering a laptop, getting office supplies, signing up for discounts, or finding the metadata expert within this 300,000 person sea of knowledge. I wonder how much productive time is wasted sifting through the junk looking for the right piece of information. Hey, look what I found! Sweet, a 1980's Executive Manual printed in dot matrix print. This should come in handy. I wonder if it has any value?

A few years ago, I read that the number one trait that a CEO looks for in their executives is discretion. Basically, the ability to keep secrets is a critical skill that is required in the executive ranks. You don't hear much about this and you certainly don't see any training classes on the topic. Some secrets are famous like the seven herbs and spices used by KFC. Perhaps the most famous one for those of us in Atlanta is the formula for Coca-Cola. Since, I am not in management and there is little hope of it ever happening, here you go...

Ingredients:
1 oz. Caffeine Citrate
3 oz. Citric Acid
1 fl. Oz. Vanilla Extract
1 qt. Lime Juice
2.5 oz. Flavoring
30 lb. of Sugar

Other companies are a little more open about their secrets such as Disney. They even found a way to monetize their secrets in an executive training program known as the Disney Institute which is on my bucket list to attend. Discretion is a skill that I need to improve upon but no one ever tells me anything. Maybe this blog has something to do with that. We talk about transparency but some secrets do need to be held in check. Perhaps the key is knowing which ones need to be leaked and which ones don't. Apple seems to have mastered the idea of secrets as well. OK, after I wrote this I did a Google search for best corporate secrets and it looks like Forbes beat me to it. Oh well, a day late and a dollar short.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/19/protecting-trade-secrets-leadership-managing-halligan-haas.html

Conforming is something we do everyday because it makes life easier. Some symbols of conformity are funny when we think about them like the white shirt only dress code at IBM. Conformity is fairly easy to teach to the masses of employees. In some cases we just hand out a manual or send folks to an online training class. Conformity is easy to measure and test for success. Take it from someone that sometimes fails to take the required training in the required time frame and routinely shows up on "The List". Conformity is also easy to manage because it’s so black and white. You didn’t get the project done in the time allocated. You failed to allocate your time appropriately and didn’t fill the appropriate forms. You stepped outside the process and that must be punished.

Our schools thought us conformity, our higher education systems followed suit, and now our employment organizations believe our future relies on it. What’s the problem with conformity? It must be the greatest thing since the executive manual since every organization seems to thrive on it. What we like about conformity, more than anything else is the predictability. We love the ability to predict success which, by definition, attempts to eliminate the possibility of failure. Maybe it's better stated that we strive to eliminate the variations of life that create failure.

Of course, without failure there is no progression. Progress comes a top the failures which we strive so hard to get rid of. We need more failure, more people willing to step out of the Six Sigma mindset. Maybe I need to return my white belt after saying such blasphemy. It’s not just our processes that hate failure but our evaluation systems. Will I be better judged by delivering 10 projects on time or failing on a stretch commitment? We need more failure, not less. When Paul Ehrlich discovered the drug to treat syphilis, he called it Formula 606. This was due to his 605 failures that came before. We need more innovation, more initiative, and more ideas that rethink the basic definition of doing business in a 2.0 world. I put forth one of my favorite quotes:

The number one reason that organizations fail is Good Management - Clayton Christensen.

How could this statement have a shred of truth? Because "Good Management" strives for conformity, control, and predictability. Not what you want is a fast, dynamic, and evolving business environment. More importantly, this is the death nail for any organization looking to compete in a 2.0 world. The Olympics just ended and we should applaud all those that didn’t win a medal. You can bet everyone that even participated in the Olympics didn’t conform to the mediocrity standards set by the majority. They failed, failed, and failed again to be the best in the world. That deserves praise, not condemnation.