I was told there would be no excavation

There are many two-word phrases that frighten managers.  Among the top ten, according to my highly non-scientific yet government-funded research include “involuntary retirement,” “bonus reallocation,” and “special project.”  But the most blood-curdling phrase has to be “bad attitude.”  When properly applied to one of your employees, nothing is more frightening and difficult to address. 

Now, the reason this is so scary is because it’s real.  I had the pleasure, in just this past week, of talking not only to a manager who has an employee with a bad attitude, but with a relative of mine who IS an employee with a bad attitude.  And let’s be clear – she relishes in it…  That’s scary.

And so, the most obvious way to deal with this is to perform a quick and effective I&L – Identify and Label.  Identify which employee has a “bad attitude” and then use that as a label every time his or her name comes up in “managerial conversations.”  Doesn’t solve the problem, but at least it lets everyone know that you know.

So if I&L is not the way to go, what is to be done?  Here is the painful prescription:

1. Get out your shovel, it’s dig time – most of the time, a ‘bad attitude’ is the accumulation, over time, of a series of perceived (or perhaps real) slights and transgressions that congeal into a systemic frustration with the organization, whose only outlet is that delightful passive-aggressive BA.  Assuming you weren’t there for the entire process, start digging.  See if you can get your employee to list, in painstaking detail, the litany of evils that have been done unto them.  Now you have context.
2. Race to the fork in the road – I gotta believe there are lots of marriage counselors out there who listen to a couples’ list of grievances and actually recommend they’d be better off apart.  This is key – if you and especially your employee don’t want to start fresh, the best thing you can do is help them find a place where they can start fresh on their own.  You have to be ready to do that.  But if they are genuinely willing to let the past go…
3. Build a plan and stick to it – create a mutually agreeable way to redress the top three (or one, or five, whatever) issues that, if left unaddressed, will  continue to irritate the wound.  But they have to be “forward-looking.”  In other words, don’t give someone a pay increase to make up for the 1.4% bump they got in 2002.  Build a compensation plan that rewards future performance based on a real change in performance and attitude.  You get the idea.

Why would you go to all this trouble to “save” someone who can just as easily be written off?  Well, I think there are two reasons:

1. It’ll make you a better manager.
2. In this cold and flu season, remember that BA’s are highly contagious.  Just one sneeze…

 

Real guts

It has taken me quite some time to finally admit a truth.  I am a chicken.  I am not a big fan of roller coasters, though I do occasionally ride the more tame ones, I wouldn’t bungee jump off a porch, skiing down a black diamond slope seems more like punishment than “outdoor fun”,  and my idea of a “rush” is a 3 1/2 foot downhill putt for a buck.  Yup, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to make that diagnosis.

So you can imagine how much I admire people with guts.  And here’s one I just learned about, thanks to a Facebook post by my good friend Ilya and a little extra research.  He’s the founder of 37Signals and his name is Jason Fried.  37Signals, as you may know, is a software development company that makes, among other things, BaseCamp, and appears to have been there at the beginning of the creation of Ruby on Rails, a very popular open source framework for developing software applications.  What’s interesting is that none of what I just mentioned is why I admire him or think he has guts.  Here’s why.  This is an excerpt from an article about him in eWeek, talking about the team at 37Signals:

Want to work at home? Cool. Want to come in to the office? No problem. Want to take a few hours off in the middle of the day to goof off and look at Internet videos or read? Please do it; it’s encouraged, Fried said. He doesn’t believe in treating employees like children. 

It’s easy for anyone to read that and say, “yeah, that’s exactly how I would treat my employees too if I ran a software company.”  But let me tell you that, when you’re worried about revenue, billings, cash flow, customer satisfaction and the second mortgage on your house you took out when you started the company, and you walk past a team member who is napping at their desk, goofing off, or setting up his or her fantasy football lineup in the middle of the day, you’d be surprised how quickly every fiber of your being wants to ask them what the heck they’re doing.  If you don’t believe that, you’ve never been in that situation.  Walking by, paying attention to your own tasks and trusting that the rest of your team is doing the same no matter what outward indications you’re getting to the contrary takes real guts.  And from what I can see, Jason Fried’s got ‘em.

If you want to learn more about Jason or read some thought-provoking insights into how he views work, check out this article.  Unless you’re chicken…

Enforcing the Unenforceable

I hear that there is pending legislation in many states, if not in Congress itself, that would “ban” texting while driving.  Have any of you actually texted while driving?  Are you that desperate to get a message to someone that the best way you can think of to do it is to try to type it on a tiny keyboard, possibly even hitting the same key three times to get a “C”?  And is the best way to get you to stop doing that the threat that you could be pulled over and fined at any second by a state trooper who “catches” you with his or her eagle eyes as you speed by at 77 miles per hour??

This is such a wonderful example of creating rules to make someone feel like they’re making a difference and controlling a situation they have no control over.  Sure texting while driving is stupid.  Sure it’s dangerous.  But so is riding a motorcycle without a helmet and many states actually REPEALED laws that made that mandatory.  And oh by the way, it’s just a tad easier for a cop to spot a motorcyclist without a helmet.

Here’s another one:  trying to “ban” employees from using Facebook or Twitter (or any of a dozen other popular uses of the internet these days) by creating a policy that “forbids” their use, or simply shuts down access from your network.

Two quick thoughts here:

1) how many of your employees are walking around with iPhones or some other device that let’s them use these applications anyway in spite of your ban?  How many will have those devices in 3 years?  Let’s be conservative and just say ALL OF THEM.

2) Don’t your employees have better things to do than ‘tweet’ with their friends all day?  Don’t they know that?

If you want to encourage your folks to focus on the task at hand, not unlike driving, isn’t a well-understood relationship between their focus, energy and dedication and outcomes that equally benefit your company AND them a better approach?  Oh wait, that’s a lot harder than issuing a policy or buying some super-duper firewall software…

You think you have it tough???

I am sure everyone has their own opinion about what a really tough job might be.  Cop, fireman, Shoe Disinfector at a bowling alley… Here’s mine:  How would you like to be responsible for making LeBron James a better basketball player?   And, oh yeah, what if you were a 38 year old former lawyer with a Russian dad and an Israeli mom?  And what if you never played competitive basketball or coached above the junior high level?  That’s a tough job.

And yet, that’s exactly what Idan Ravin does for a living.  A damn good living too, from what I can gather from Sports Illustrated (see, I do read other mags besides PM Network and Bowling Weekly…)  And how does he do it?  Among other things, he points out LeBron’s faults.  What???  Yup – he tells him he can’t dribble and makes him do drills to be better at it.  AND, LeBron pays him for this!!

So riddle me this…  Why is it so hard for managers to sit an employee down and find constructive ways to point out areas where they are weak and need to improve?  Is it because they haven’t earned the respect of the employee?  Is it because they’re afraid of “hurting the employees feelings?”  Or is it because they’re not trained to detect those weaknesses and see the connection to growth, productivity, effectiveness, or that company’s equivalent of winning an NBA championship??

Whatever the reasons, just recognize that you’re not doing yourself or your employee a favor by avoiding a conversati0n where you have to tell them they really don’t dribble very well.  It’s not easy.  It’s not fun.  But if Idan Ravin can do it to LeBron James, you can do it to your star player too…

Nothin’ but the best, Alice

We decided to get a family portrait done, because it had been approximately 15 years since the last one, and it seemed like we should capture an image of our children before we have to steal one from their AARP membership cards.  So we searched relentlessly for just the right photographer, since this was such an important undertaking and we wanted it to turn out just right.  One photographer in particular impressed me a great deal.  He talked a good game and seemed genuinely interested in capturing the “Kreha Essence.”   As he became more enthused about the project, he reached into his equipment bag and took out his camera, a Kodak Instamatic Brownie camera that looked like it probably captured the drama of the landing at Normandy.

Needless to say, we moved on to the next photographer…  Now here’s what you’re thinking:  I’ve never seen a serious photographer who doesn’t also have a passion about their equipment, because his or her cameras are an extension of their art.  Of course not!  They understand that investing in quality equipment, even though it’s expensive, is a necessary cost of doing business, and, quite frankly, of making the right impression on some of their clients.

So why is it that some technology consulting companies can’t seem to find the funding to provide similar quality equipment for their technical staff?  What message does that send?

Just to round this out, I went to a panel discussion last week on using technology to market your company.  As we rolled around to the subject of tools, new media, etc. one of the panelists, the CEO of a small, growing company, actually said, “I wanted an iPhone, so I finally had to buy them for my staff.”  Nice message.

I realize how costly it can be to replace or upgrade laptops, servers, your network and other infrastructure that your teams use to do their work on a very short cycle.  Do you realize how costly it is NOT to do that…?

Occasional Props

As I reflect on my posts over the last year, it could be possible that I might be a bit critical of certain ideas and management practices from time to time.  So I thought I would switch things up a bit and toss out some props to Roberto Toledo.  I don’t know Roberto, though we share the same first name, which pretty much assures he’s cool, but he wrote a brief article in this past month’s PM Network magazine (yes, I am that big a loser – I actually read it) that, unlike most of the self-congratulatory, “didn’t my project go great”, “don’t you wish you were me” stuff I typically read, hit home for me. 

Here’s the link if you’re interested:

Roberto’s Article in PM Network

If you prefer Cliff Notes, here are Roberto’s five rules for innovation:

1. It’s up to leaders to establish the culture and environment for innovation.
2. Innovation is a social process.
3. Innovation is all about failure.
4. Cutting-edge creativity alone is not enough.
5. Innovation can be your number-one competitive advantage.

Makes you want to read the article, huh?  Loser…

Pride and Prejudice

Here’s an interesting thing about Facebook.  None of my friends ever talk about themselves, all the great places they’ve recently been and all the things that they or their children are accomplishing.  It’s such a humble space.

“Wait a minute,” you’re saying!  Who are YOUR friends you weirdo!??!

I am, of course, being facetious.  EVERYONE likes to update their Facebook community on what’s going on in their lives – good and bad.  And, for the most part, their on-line friends behave exactly as you would expect.  Supportive and non-judgmental when things are rough, and genuinely congratulatory and happy when they achieve something.  As it should be!

Not to beat a dead horse from last week, but why are these same people so reluctant to even complete and post a project status report, no less laud their achievements or openly point out their struggles?  That does happen where you work too, right??

I have a theory.  When no one notices or celebrates your successes, however minor, you eventually lose your enthusiasm to share them.  And when you don’t get support or empathy when you point out your struggles, but instead blame and judgment, you start to wonder if it might not be smarter to keep that info to yourself and let your audience figure out on their own how things are going.

So when you set up your fancy enterprise project reporting system, and inform everyone that they have to post their status every 2 weeks, you might also want to think about instituting the celebration and support processes that should inevitably accompany the system.  A little less prejudice might induce a lot more pride…

The Invention of Lying

I went to see The Invention of Lying last weekend.  Clever little movie from Ricky Gervais who “discovers” that he is the only person, in a world otherwise just like ours, who is capable of not telling the truth.  As you can imagine, he proceeds down a slippery slope from some “whitish” lies to get some extra money and a few dates to some whoppers.

That got me thinking about a lot of things but two specifically come to mind.  The first is that it seems telling that our linguists have created so MANY words for that slippery slope.  Mistruth, misconstrue, exaggerate, embellish, fabricate, fiction…  I could go on.   And that’s without consulting a thesaurus!  The second is, unlike in Ricky’s world, how our human nature seems to lend itself quite readily to “modify the facts” when the stakes are high.  And ironically, when the stakes are high, the truth is often at its most valuable.

I have recently come across several “management dashboards” that use the standard Green, Yellow, Red symbols to indicate the “health” of a project.  You know, whether it’s ahead or behind schedule, whether it’s over or under budget, whether the scope is wildly out of control, etc.  And it seems that, for many managers, their objective is for everything to be green.  And when it is – you get a cookie.

Now add all this up…  A slippery slope that makes it easy to justify altering facts, compensation tied to “good” performance (aka lots of green dots = lots of cookies). the well-founded statistic that most projects fall behind and/or end up over budget, and pressure to present the most favorable possible status from your superiors.  Is it any wonder that it’s hard to get the real status of a project??

When I was managing lots of project managers, I toyed with the idea of rewarding them for telling me things were bad.  I never quite figured out how to do it effectively, but I always suspected that rewarding people to tell me everything was green was “bad form.”

So do yourself a favor.  Create a measurement system that encourages and rewards accurate reporting, and makes it more difficult to justify why something is green than why it’s red.  You’ll get some pretty funny looks, but you might also get some truth…

Straight talk

I was invited via email to a webinar today!  I was immediately tempted to attend because who doesn’t love a good webinar?  Especially with THIS as the description (no kidding)?  I will bold my favorite parts:

Get a first-hand look at the new Innovation for Growth concept from (insert company name here). Innovation for Growth is for IT professionals who are looking for integrated solutions that deliver additional cost savings to their organization while driving competitive advantage by increasing your operational performance. Join us to learn about enhanced collaboration, improved unified communications, and the power of choice.

Maybe I just should have bolded the whole thing and saved time.  I have been subjected to, and perhaps even written, a fair share of management-speak over the years.  But I have only recently come to abhor it.  And this invite is a prime example of why.  Not only do I have NO IDEA what the actual topic of the webinar is, I find it extremely hard to believe that I will ‘drive competitive advantage’, ‘increase my operational performance’, ‘enhance collaboration’ or get my whites whiter as a result of attending. 

So here’s the thing:  I rarely write posts about talking straight directly, although that’s the title of this blog.  But you folks out there in management, marketing and other fields where communication is a core part of your role – try to apply some BS litmus test to what you’re communicating.  We’d all like to be Barack Obama’s press secretary, issuing statements where nuance is expected and therefore scrutinized.  But your employees and customers deserve better.  They are out there in the new world of social media, talking quite candidly about you and your services/products.  I strongly advise you do the same, if you want to avoid confusion, or worse yet, straight up mockery…

and thanks to alert reader, Ilya, here’s a link to a most appropriate Dilbert cartoon…  http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-09-26

Day Trading

After the most recent 10 year roller coaster ride that is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but more importantly, my decimated 401k, you would think that, finally, the euphoria of Day Trading has worn off for the common person.  I do remember, though, the halcyon days in late 1998 when 25 year olds in my office at Xerox would have Yahoo Finance open, literally buying and selling stocks like, well, Yahoo, which, believe it or not, was near $400/share for a while, on an hourly basis.   Get rich quick.  Crazy times.  Lessons learned…  But so 10 years ago, right?

And yet it appears that our insatiable need for instant gratification, coupled nicely with our emergent societal ADD and the pressure for immediate results has created a renewed form of Day Trading in management, specifically Sales Management.

I realize, of course, that in sales management this approach is not new, per se.  Rather, I thought it was dead.  But after talking to a sales associate over the weekend who described the ups and downs of every conversation with her manager based on her numbers FOR THAT WEEK, I realized that old habits die hard.  She went on to describe exactly what you’d expect:  the relative calm on a week when she was hitting her targets, and the dread on weeks when she wasn’t.   One thing that was pretty clear – she did not see this process as:

1. even remotely humanizing
2. motivational

My response to this (and I apologize if this is redundant with several recent posts) is “duh…” 

So here’s the thing.  I understand that, as a manager, you are held accountable for sales targets, profits, revenue and a host of other highly measurable (and yes important!) objectives.  I am simply suggesting that one of your core alleged skills as a manager is to decouple those targets from how you motivate your team and make them feel valued.  Otherwise, you’re just an overpaid walkie-talkie.  Duh…