All posts by Steve

Achievement, Alternatives, Change Management, Leadership, Self Analysis, Strategy

Disposable Business

Leave a comment

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a family sat despondently in their family room. They didn’t know what to do. Their color television had for some reason stopped working. Since they had never felt the need to communicate with each other while the TV had worked, they were now horribly out of practice. What to do? Things looked bleak. It was time for action.

Now here is where things get really weird. The eldest male of the family, the nominal head of the family unit (I say nominal head as this was only a fictional title. He actually reported to his mate, the most powerful woman in the universe) stood up, put the non-functioning television in the family’s means of conveyance (re: minivan) and took it to a place that was known as the repair shop.

Yes, he actually took the TV in to be repaired.

I can actually remember back to a time when this would not have been a fictional story. The reporting structure of the family is non-fiction. Every male, nominal head of a family does in fact report to their respective specific most powerful woman in the universe. The rest of this story is border line science fiction. Today when something breaks we don’t seem to fix it. We don’t even seem to be inclined to try and fix it. We just throw it away and go get another, newer one.

What used to seem to be a society based on the utilization of durable goods seems to have evolved to society based on the purchase of disposable goods. We don’t seem to want to fix anything anymore. When something breaks our first inclination is to get a new one. If that is not eminently feasible, the next step is to call someone to have them fix it. It has become the societal norm these days.

Now let’s go to go to different galaxy that is not so far away. We still have a disposable versus a repairable product mindset, but now we will be talking about businesses, not products. In this galaxy there is a business that has been performing well for many years, making products that have been well received and are well thought of by their customers. I was going to say that they made high quality, repairable televisions, but that would have been just a little excessive in my opinion.

Let’s say something now happens to this business. For whatever reason it is now no longer performing as well as it did. Its products are no longer well received nor are they well thought of by their customers. For lack of a better description, this business can now be considered broken.

Are broken businesses as disposable as broken products? How does a business actually break anyway? In a broken product, it is usually a component that fails and brings down the entire product. What happens when the components of the business are all still operating as they did when the business was not broken?

We were a culture that used to fix our own cars, change our own oil, fix our own flat tires, do our own home maintenance and improvement work. Now we just get a new replacement or call someone to come fix it. How does this culture translate to our new business models? What do we do when the current business model doesn’t work anymore?

I am fond of quoting Albert Einstein. I think he is universally recognized as a pretty bright guy, with the theory of relativity and all that. One of my favorite quotes of his, and I have used it before is:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”

I have met a few leaders that could actually change the way they think. There have not been many, but there have been a few. Most of the time a manager learns a way to do something successfully gets rewarded for that approach and spends the rest of their career replicating that solution set. They continue to think the same way. They just try to apply the same methodology in different situations.

Think of the old phrase:

“When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

In effect, they were once successful as a managerial hammer, and seem to have dedicated the rest of their managerial life to finding another perfect business problem nail.

Businesses are not disposable, and can invariably be repaired. Repairing a business changes it. It takes a different mindset. You can’t just call someone to come fix it. You can’t call a plumber or electrician to come fix it for you. You have to understand the plumbing and wiring of the business yourself. You have to get back to the mindset of changing your own oil and fixing your own flat tires.

Sorry for the poor metaphors, but I think you get my point.

Part of the solution may be to get a good plumber or electrician on your team, and to listen to them when they give you their recommendations and opinions.

I think this is the essence of learning to change the way you think. Sometimes you are the proper hammer for the current nail. Sometimes someone else is the proper hammer. The key is not being locked into a specific method or process of solving problems, and being able to recognize when things have changed and some different thinking is required.

A broken business is made up of many “working” people. I think that despite the trends to the contrary, they are not disposable. If they are performing poorly it is usually not because they want to perform poorly but rather they have been given poor leadership and are focusing on the wrong issues (re: nails). Disposing of them and getting new people will not fix that problem.

Remember, the thinking of those that got the business into its current state will usually not be sufficient to get it out of that state. The way the business is being managed, or those that are managing have to change. It is difficult for a leader to recognize that they must change. I think it is almost impossible for a manager to recognize that they must change.

I think our disposable product culture has taken its toll on our ability to repair broken businesses. At the risk of sounding too trite we seem to be predisposed toward disposable businesses. We seem to have evolved a mindset that if the current compliment of people cannot achieve the desired goals that we should dispose of them and replace them (like our products) with newer models.

The problem with that thinking is that it seems to be some of the thinking that may have been responsible for getting the business into its current state, and as Einstein noted, that probably won’t be sufficient for getting it out of that state.

Expectations, Goals, Leadership, Objectives, Planning

Put it on Paper

Leave a comment

Here I go again, demonstrating to the world just exactly what sort of a business dinosaur I am. That’s ok. I don’t really mind. For those of you not exactly following what I am saying here, I would refer you to the title. I refer to paper. You know, that old technology, tactile foldable thing; paper. Most people don’t use paper anymore. If they want to take a note they usually type it into their omnipresent laptop or tablet, or if really pressed they will use their thumbs and try to tap it into their smart phone.

I remember attending a sales conference some time ago. For those of you who may not be familiar with sales conferences, these are events where the sales team goes to celebrate their previous year performance while also receiving their next year targets and objectives. I also understand that each day of the sales conference has a two drink minimum.

I am not going to discuss paper and its relationship to a sales team’s past performance. The paper that is normally associated with that is green, has pictures of past presidents (and others – Ben Franklin wasn’t a president, at least I don’t think he was) and is recognized as legal tender. In this case I am going to talk about paper and how it was used in relationship to the future targets.

Success in sales is a double edged sword. Do well and you are rewarded handsomely with commissions and recognition. On the other hand, do well and your next year’s targets will be raised so as to reflect your past success. They will usually be significantly increased. It is one of the basics of target setting. Beat them one year, expect them to be significantly increased the next. Such is the life and continuous challenge of being a top flight sales person.

At the sales meeting I was at, the Senior Vice President of sales had just finished congratulating the team on their past performance, when he turned everyone’s attention to the future. It was if he simultaneously and collectively hashed everyone’s “mellow”. He told them what their targets were for the next year.

The air left the room. There was an audible whooshing sound as the blood drained from the various sales leaders’ heads. What had been a celebration now sat precariously on the precipice of becoming an insurrection. The demanded growth was that large. It was impossible to achieve. It looked like it was going to get ugly.

This was when the wily sale vice president stood up and said.

“I don’t know how we are going to get to the number either, but the first thing we need to do is to put it on paper so that we can start working on it.”

He understood that while the goal sounded outrageous and unattainable, that the first step in generating success was to make the target real. Putting it on paper demystified it. It made the number real. And making the goal real, regardless of the perceived difficulty in attaining it is the first step in attaining it.

By putting it on paper you take something that may seem out of reach and reduce it to a number, or words on a piece of paper. Think about that for a minute. When it is on paper it is both bound and defined. It is no longer unbounded and undefined. It is real.

I thought this was a pretty spectacular way to regain control of the room. Sales people are not renowned for being the most forward thinking of strategists. Some of the really good ones that I have known are, but for the most part, maybe not so much. In any event, by telling the team members to write it down, and then taking a moment to pause in his presentation, which had the effect of adding more impetus to the request, he slowed the runaway new quota riot train before it could fully leave the last year’s performance station.

It took me a while to come up with that allegory. I am not sure that I fully like it, but I think I will leave it for now.

The simple fact of writing something down starts the planning and strategy process. Putting pen to paper. Once something is written invariably something else will be written next to it, or below it. Once the thought process starts other ideas will begin to evolve. Eventually plans and strategies will emerge. It won’t happen all at once. It will take time. But it all starts with just writing down the goal on a piece of paper.

Alignment, Change, Reorganization, Structure

Make Your Customer’s Business Simple

Leave a comment

Sometimes it is hard to think of business as simple. Perhaps as we have evolved from a production oriented society to more of a consumer and service oriented society we have evolved the notion that business is complex. Maybe it is because of our dependency on the tools and technology now required to conduct business has evolved as has the perceived complexity of the infrastructures that we must have to support them. Think about the power that we now have on our desk tops and in the palms of our hands. Despite all of this, I think that business is only complex if we decide to allow it to be complex, or worse yet, make it complex of our own accord.

Technology has effectively removed time and distance from the business equation. Anyone, anywhere at any time can access a global marketplace where they can “do business” with just about anyone else that they wish. It has also made everyone smarter, in that the only reason for anyone to make an uninformed purchase decision is because they chose not to get informed by using their aforementioned powerful desk top or hand held tools.

But if business is really not all that different why do companies continue to insist on changing and continue to invest in developing and creating new and better products? Why do companies still have sales teams and operations groups and all the other corporate functions that have been the mainstays of business organizations for hundreds of years? If business is really changing then why are so many things about it still remaining the same? When business’s reorganize, they invariably “shuffle the cards” associated with their organizations, but they are still the same cards.

I think it may be in that in its simplest form business is about delivering value. The value can be in the form of a product that can be as simple as a clay pot or as technically complex as a cloud based data storage system, or in the form of a service such as simple as a freshly mowed yard or the complex capability to operate and maintain that cloud based data storage system. The quantification of the value provided is determined by the amount of currency that will be exchanged for the clay pot, mowed yard or cloud based storage system.

There you have it. This is still pretty simple. Business is about exchanging money for something of value. I guess that is actually the definition of commerce, but in this case it is also business.

com•merce/ˈkämərs/ The activity of buying and selling, especially on a large scale.

It seems that it is from this point that we have decided to add complexity to the business formula.

Since business cannot fundamentally change the simplicity of exchanging money for something of value, it tends to change how it goes about pursuing this exchange. It organizes itself to simplify the pursuit. Then it reorganizes. It changes in response to a perceived competitive threat. It centralizes. It decentralizes, distributes and diversifies.

In short organizations drift into an internally focused approach to commerce and business. Since it is so difficult to change a customer, organizations tend to focus on changing themselves. It seems as though that there is a belief that if an organization can convince itself that it is changing in order to make itself easier to do business with, an organization can become that much better at doing business. This is an almost purely internally focused concept. Unfortunately business and commerce must usually be done with the external world.

This is an approach that invariable runs out of momentum. Organizations seem to believe that by endlessly trying to make themselves easier to business with, it makes it easier for the customer to do business. This is a key point. Just because an organization has tried to make itself easier to do business with does not mean that the organization has made it easier for the customer to do business. I guess a good example of this would be making it easier for the horse and buggy driver to buy buggy whips does not necessarily help him sell more buggy rides around Central Park.

It is a debatable trade-off of how much value is associated with the complexity a company can introduce into their systems and processes in an effort to reduce a customer’s complexity in dealing with them. Increased complexity comes at a cost or in this instance a price to the customer. An internally focused business confuses the value of removing customer complexity in dealing with a vendor, with the actual removal of complexity from a customer’s business.

This is a rather circuitous way of saying that the focus should not be on making it easy for a customer to do business with you. That must be a given. The focus should be on how you make it easier for your customer to do business with their customers. That is where the true value of commerce is.

There is a certain amount of value that a customer will recognize in an organization that makes itself easy to do business with. There is far more value that a customer with recognize in an organization that makes it easy for the customer to do their business.

This is where we get back to concept of “simple” in business. How do you make it easier for your customer to do business? How do you help them remove the complexity associated with their customer commerce? How do you reduce their risk? How do you help them increase the perceived value of the good or service that they are offering to their market?

It is no longer good enough to just make it easier for your customer to buy your good or service. Everybody has just about mined out this opportunity with the law of decreasing returns starting to take greater and greater affect versus the input required to affect the change. The better approach now needs to be how do you make it easier for your customer to sell their good or service. What expertise can you contribute to their success? Remember it seems to be the tools and technology that is complex, not the business.

Expertise has been and still is a product. But as I noted earlier, as products that make up our tools, and the infrastructures to support them have evolved and become more complex, it seems that expertise associated with operating these tools and infrastructures continues to be somewhat overlooked.

Organizations continue to try to restructure themselves to make it simpler for their customers to do business with them. They also try to restructure to make themselves more efficient at conducting their business. I think the next logical step in the evolution is to no longer think about how you can restructure yourself to conduct your business, but how you can help your customer restructure themselves to make their business easier to conduct.

I think the question for the future is no longer how can I be easier to business with, but more how can I make you easier for your customers to do business with? What customer complexity can you remove from their organization? It should no longer be what device can you sell them that is more efficient, but what can you do for them to make them more efficient.

In an internally focused, product driven world this sounds complex. It is easy to believe that because it is different than they way organizations have been thinking, but when you think about it, it should be pretty simple.

Adversity, Humor, Travel

Flying Fourth Class

Leave a comment

Please take note of the following comment as it is one that I would never have thought that even I would ever say. Starting off like that ought to get your attention. I have been told by those that know me that they are continually surprised by what I say. I have also been told that I have a tendency to go ahead and say what others were thinking but decided not to say. These events seem to occur when the buffer between my brain and mouth is either overloaded, or I have decided to just not engage it. As you might guess on occasion I have gotten in trouble for what I have said.

So, with that kind of a build-up, here goes:

I sure miss the good old days when I could fly coach.

For those of you who are not fully versed in the class warfare that is occurring daily in our skies, let me try to elaborate. I will focus my comments primarily on international flights since it appears that it is on these flights where the new “under-class” has appeared.

At the very top, the acme, the apex of the travel class hierarchy is “First Class”. They usually sit at the very front of the plane. They get on first. They have no baggage limitation rules. Flight attendants throw rose petals in the aisles in front of them as they walk to their seats. They get the good booze, and as much of it as they want, without ever having to ask.

It is a mythical place where they get to sit, as they are a mythical people who can afford the exorbitant prices required to sit there. People who sit in first class normally carry a scepter when they get on the plane. They wear capes and cloaks that are lined with real fur. If one is ever caught wearing faux-fur they are immediately removed. It took a special dispensation to allow the pilot of the plane to be able to walk through first class to get to the flight deck so that he could in fact fly the plane.

The next class of traveler in the pantheon of sky people is “Business Class”. This title is a misnomer. Very few if any “business people” can actually afford to sit in business class. Business class is only slightly less expensive than first class. I believe this slight price reduction is because that in business class you do not get the complimentary manicure and pedicure that is normally associated with first class.

Business class is usually populated by only the captains of industry. The CEOs, the movers, the shakers, the people whose corporate jets are either down for maintenance, or don’t have the flight range capability to actually fly the required ten to twelve hours needed to cross major oceans on international flights. People in business class normally have perfect teeth, expensive clothes and great tans.

The business class seat in principle is very similar to the first class seat in that it has the capability to be fully reclined into a bed where the weary traveler can sleep away the duration of the flight. The primary difference is that it is not in the very front of the plane, and it is separated from first class by a curtain. This curtain is a metaphorical iron curtain as there is normally a guard stationed there (in the guise of a flight attendant) to keep any would be social climbers from trying to use the first class toilet.

I still don’t know what the first class toilet looks like. I have heard rumors that in addition to an actual commode it also has a bidet, and one of those attendants that hands you rags, towels, and mints.

This brings us to the next set of seats; Coach Class. Instead of the four seats across that you have in first class, and the six seats across that you have in business class (all of which recline fully flat into beds) you now have nine seats across in coach class. These are the normal airline seats that we are all familiar with. They have been fully padded and engineered to be as physically uncomfortable as is possible, without actually being charged with some sort of cruelty crime. Coach seats don’t recline so much as they lean back, a little.

Coach class is nominally populated by mere mortals: People who are either trying to get somewhere, or get home after having been somewhere. Occasionally you will see newlyweds in coach. You can readily identify them as the will be the only ones smiling as they take their seats in coach. He will also be the only man that will help a woman put her carry-on bag in the overhead bin.

Nothing is complimentary in coach. You must buy your own booze and snacks and the flight attendants will only grudgingly give you a choice of inedible chicken or unappetizing pasta for your mandated meal. Digestive medications are premium priced and extra in coach. The experienced coach traveler brings their own snacks and drinks with them on board the plane.

This brings us to the new under-class in air travel: “Economy Coach Class”. Yes, it is true. Enterprising airlines have created a new lower class of coach. A while ago I would not have thought that it could be possible, but just as physicist Steven Hawking was able to create a unified theory of black holes and string theory, airline theoreticians were able to conceive of a passenger class that was lower than coach. Once thought of, it was only a matter of time before its practicality was empirically tested.

Instead of the nine seats across that are present in coach class, economy coach class has ten seats across the plane. Yes, it is true, ten seats. How can they do that you may ask? The simple answer is that they made the seats narrower, since it was impossible to make the aisles narrower and still have the drink cart pass through. Now for the average person whose shoulders are narrower than their hips this may not be too much of an issue. However there are some of us whose shoulders are in fact wider than their hips. We are the people who are now learning to sit forward in a chair from the waist down and sideways in it from the waist up.

Think about trying to hold that position, let alone sleep in that position for any number of hours.

Not only did the make the seats narrower, they also did away with all of that excess knee room that members of the coach class basked in. By arranging the rows so that your knees actually touch the seat in front of you, airlines achieved the twin goals of adding more rows (and hence more paying customers per flight) to the plane as well as taking your mind off the fact that unlike coach seats that “lean” back, your economy coach seat is now best described as “tilting” back, just a little bit. It can only tilt back just a little bit because the person sitting behind you also has their knees firmly pressed against the back of your seat. There is not much choice other than to sit straight up in economy coach.

It wasn’t too long ago that business travel, and travel in general might have been considered interesting and borderline enjoyable. As companies continue to work at finding ways to reduce costs, airlines have continued to work at ways to increase the revenues and margins that they are losing as businesses cut their travel related costs. The result is economy coach class: The underworld in the traveler class hierarchy. The class where the only difference between passengers and luggage is that it appears that luggage is handled in a more human and professional manner.

With that being said, I will now wedge myself into my ten across narrowed seat, turn my torso sideways so as to not invade my seat neighbor’s space, tilt my seat back the maximum seven and one half degrees from vertical and attempt to sleep in close proximity to at least two hundred and fifty others for the next ten hours.

Gosh, I love to travel.

Decision Making, Leadership, Performance, Sales

When Sales Fall

Leave a comment

We all know that senior management likes to see a sales volume graph that is a smooth line sloping upwards from the lower left of the chart to the upper right. If the economy and the market are growing and the customer demand grows along with the economy and the competitors don’t change their product’s or price and the government does not change any of it regulations and none of the multitude of other demand affecting factors changes, it is possible that this utopian state can exist…for a little while. However any unanticipated change in any of the listed (or any of the large number of unlisted factors) can and will change the profile of the slope from its desired direction.

Senior management must then lead and decide if the change is just a normal process within the market cycle, an aberration in an otherwise stable situation, or a longer term portent of an ongoing decline. As with most management decisions and strategies, only time will tell.

If time shows that it is indeed either a part of the normal market cycle or an aberration in an otherwise stable market, then there is no problem. Sales improvement can and will continue. On the other hand, if sales do not improve and the downturn turns out to be part of a longer term economic, market, customer or competitive event then significant business issues will ensue.

I have long been an advocate of the axiom: The best way to generate a good bottom line is to start with a good top line. This only makes sense. The more good revenue you have, the easier it is to generate good earnings. Good revenue is defined as revenue that includes a business sustaining profit margin. However if revenue has fallen, and the cost structure has not followed suit, then earnings too must eventually fall.

Senior management, the market analysts and the stock market in general do not like it when earnings fall in a company. Like the sales and the earnings, the price of the stock will also fall. Soon the investors and stock holders will request that senior management take action to improve their investment’s stock price, or they will request that they get a new senior management team.

When sales are stagnant and costs are relatively high with respect to sales, there are usually two paths that management can choose from in trying to rectify the situation. They can try and cut costs in order to resize the business to be more in line with the new revenue levels and hence generate a reasonable profit on the new lower revenue levels; or they can try and embark on a growth strategy in order to drive the revenue levels back up to where the desired earnings can be generated with the current cost structure.

Several factors can influence which path management may decide to take. Is there a cyclic nature to the sales profile where downturns and following upturns are common? How deep is the downturn? How prolonged is it? Is it industry wide? Is it part of a greater economic event? The answers to all of these questions, and many others can influence management’s decisions and responses to the reduced sales levels.

The general response to a sales downturn is to refocus on sales, but also to begin reducing costs. While layoffs are painful and take their toll on both the employees and the company, they do invariably succeed in resizing the company’s cost structure to be more in line with its current revenue levels.

This is cold. This is hard. It is also the truth. If we are to assume that the company must survive in the face of a prolonged reduction in sales, then this is in general the selected way to assure that a business is moved back into a profitable state as quickly as possible. Focusing on sales while reducing costs will eventually generate the earnings that a company needs for continued operation.

However some businesses decide that they may not want to adjust their cost structures in response to a downturn in sales. There can be any number of reasons for this. They may decide that the downturn is only seasonal, or will not be prolonged and sales will recover. They may decide that they were understaffed prior to the downturn and hence are right sized for the reduced sales levels. They may be culturally averse to the separating of employees. Regardless, they may choose to embark on a sales growth strategy as the solution to a sales downturn and the accompanying earnings and profitability issues.

While sales growth strategies are laudable approaches to a reduced revenue / high cost base issue, for the most part they generally prove unsuccessful. This again is directly due to the fact that sales levels have already fallen. Something must be changed in order to get sales levels to increase. This new event can take the form of adding additional sales personnel to address and sell to a larger number of customers, modifying the product offering to make it more appealing to the market, increasing marketing programs and promotions in an effort to generate more demand in the market, or a number of other modifications to the business equation.

The point here is that all of these and many of the other sales improvement modifications require that incremental investment and cost be put into the business in an effort to drive more sales out of it. Adding sales people, modifying or redeveloping the product, creating and implementing marketing programs and promotions, reducing prices, etc all take incremental investment and increase costs.

That means that even if you were successful and found a way to drive sales back up to the previous levels where they sustained the previous cost levels, the very act of driving the sales back up increased the cost basis. That means that you cannot be satisfied with just getting back to the sales levels you were at, in order to maintain the desired profitability levels, you must drive sales to levels above their previous amounts.

This too could be a good plan except for the fact that the market like nature, abhors a vacuum. There are relatively few “green field” opportunities where growth and market share can easily be obtained. Unless the overall size of the market is growing, it usually means that new business must be taken at the expense of another market competitor.

Obviously no one likes to lose customers and market share.

Market research has shown that in general it is five times easier to sell to existing customers than it is to sell to anyone else. This makes sense as you would suspect that if a customer has already made a buying decision in your favor in the past, that they would probably be disposed to make a similar decision in the future. But in a market growth strategy you are not only trying to sell more to existing customers, you are trying to sell to new customers. Someone else’s customers.
Logic would show that if it is five times easier to sell to your own customers that it would be five times more difficult to sell to someone else’s customers. This logic does not bode well for a growth strategy.

Sales and business growth are always part of the objectives of any business. Sometimes however, businesses fall short of their sales and growth objectives. This can and does happen in even the most stable of markets. Leaders must actively recognize and anticipate what is occurring. If the change is cyclical or just an aberration, then normal business processes should continue. If it is judged that there are other forces in the market affecting sales and that recovery is not imminent or expected of its own accord, than action must be taken.

As always, the sooner that action can be taken, the less severe it usually needs to be. Increased sales focus or cost reduction activities taken in March or April will avoid the desperation and severity of actions that must be taken later in the year. Regardless of when actions are taken, the costs associated with a business must be in line with the profitability objectives and existing sales volumes of the business. To focus on just the growth component of business solution (or just the cost component for that matter) would be similar to trying to adjust both the volume and the tuning of your car’s radio by turning just one dial.

Efficiency, Focus, Meetings, Problem Solving

Meetings and Phone Calls

Leave a comment

I don’t think that it is any sort of a big secret that I am not a great fan of meetings. I can remember way back into the dark ages when meetings were convened in order to reach a decision. Sometimes you counted the votes in an effort to achieve some sort of a democratic consensus in the hope that the combined input of all would result in the best decision and solution. Sometimes the votes were “weighed” where the boss’s vote weighed more than the sum total of everyone else’s vote combined. The point was that a decision got made.

Originally meetings were just that, a “meeting”. Webster’s Dictionary (one of my favorite books) defines the verb “meet” (as in to meet) as “to come into the presence of”. Meetings were defined as a physical presence event. They were held face to face. People came from all over to attend. Meetings were not taken lightly. You needed to be prepared. They were special times where the day to day grind was set aside, where reports were presented and decision were made. You looked people in the eye. Feedback was immediate and visible. Things got done.

This was back when everyone worked in a place called the office.

As time has passed we have virtualized our office. Technology now enables us to work in teams across time zones and around the world. This new approach has broadened our ability to work together, but it has also reduced our ability to have the physical presence that defined a meeting.

Instead we now have phone calls. When we have more than two people on a phone call it is termed a conference call. We seemed to have evolved to a place where we now consider conference calls to be “meetings”. As more time has passed it seems that these conference call – meetings have become more and more of an open discussion forum where the actual making of a decision and moving forward has taken a back seat to the ongoing discussion of the topic at hand.

I am convinced that at least part of the reason for the increasing ineffectiveness of meetings these days stems from the fact that telephone etiquette is different from meeting etiquette, and the ability and proclivity of people who are invited to the conference call – meeting to forward their invitation to the meeting to other people.

In short, technology advancements, virtual offices and the ability to invite ever increasing numbers of attendees to a meeting without the meeting initiator’s consent have conspired to cause the loss of control, purpose and value of a meeting.

In the past a meeting had a defined time. It started, had an agenda and it finished. Because of the effort involved for people to meet face to face it was a taken that there had better be progress, or resolution or a solution to the topic. The investment in time and people and travel made it imperative.

This is no longer the case with a conference call. On a conference call the only one really paying attention at any point in time is the person speaking. Because everyone else is usually busy and sitting at their desk, they are multi-tasking and doing something else while only partially attending the conference call – meeting. If nothing is accomplished at the meeting it is no great loss. It is easy to schedule another conference call and pick up where the last one left off.

The sense of purpose and requirement for conclusion is lost because it is no longer a meeting. It is a phone call.

A second contributory factor to the decline and fall of meeting effectiveness is the growing sense that it is alright for people who were invited to the meeting (now conference call) to invite other people to the conference call. What was once a manageable number of attendees, each with a specific role to play and deliverable to provide now seems to have blossomed into a search for consensus across anyone and everyone who could conceivably be associated with the meeting topic.

In the past when people actually met face to face this just didn’t happen. No one just “crashed” a meeting uninvited like some college fraternity party. In the time when you actually had to be at the meeting in order to attend it, it meant something to be there. You had to stop whatever else you were doing and go to the meeting. It was a very rare occasion where an incremental invitation was extended to someone who was not on the initial meeting invitation list.

It was even rarer when an incremental invitation was extended by anyone other than the person who called for, set up and owned the meeting.

Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case anymore.

Now I find with ever increasing numbers we have meeting attendees who are attending (actually dialing in to the conference bridge) who were not invited to the meeting. I see more and more electronic notifications that someone who was invited to the meeting has forwarded the meeting invitation to someone else.

When did it become okay to do this?

The only time that I could see this type of situation arise would be when an original meeting invitee can no longer attend and must delegate their responsibility with respect to the meeting to someone else. But here we have a one for one replacement, not an incremental attendee.

I liken the incremental invitation scenario to be similar to being invited to a friend’s house for a dinner party and arriving with several of your friends (who were not invited and the host may or may not know or have planned for) because you thought they would enjoy a dinner party and should be involved.

I have stated many times that I am probably old school in my approach to business. That does not mean that I will not embrace new technologies and business techniques. I will whole heartedly do so if I can see the value and improvement the new idea brings to the business. I understand the new virtual office and team structure. I see many of the benefits that it brings. I also see many of the detriments that it also brings.

There are many increases in productivity that can be directly traced to the new virtual structures. I think that there are also many decreases in productivity that have not been fully recognized yet in the new business processes that are resulting from these new structures. I think some of the loss of meeting productivity is one of them.

When we turn a business meeting into just one of several other telephone calls we start to devalue its purpose. We multi-task and no longer give it our full attention. When we start inviting, or allow others to invite more and more people to a meeting we are complicating the process and diffusing the focus, and again devaluing the meeting.

And all of this seems to be okay because if we don’t get anything done in this meeting, or on this call, we’ll just have another one. It is now so much easier to have a meeting, and so much easier to forward meeting invitations that allow us to bring more people than necessary together, that we no longer feel that the purpose, function and conclusion solution that were once the primary objectives of having a meeting to continue to be of primary importance.

In short, it appears that it is now so easy to attend a meeting, and we have so many people attending meetings, that we have devalued the purpose and objectives of having meetings. It seems as a result we are having more and more meetings attended by more and more people, and getting less and less done at each meeting.

What that means is the next time you get invited to a meeting, pay attention to the proceedings, insist that there be a definable outcome of the meeting, and don’t forward the invitation to anyone else for the meeting.

If we all did this we would all probably have fewer meetings to attend because we would get more done at the ones we actually went to.

Leadership. Communication, Management Style, Recognition, Risk and Return

Good Job

Leave a comment

I have written in the past about the need to say “Thank You”. In our roles we are all dependent to some extent on others and our teams for our success and it seems too many times we neglect to recognize that fact and thank those that have helped achieve success. I have also written about the need when thanked to say “You’re Welcome”. Too many times we have the tendency to respond with some sort of less meaningful phrase such as “sure” or “no problem” or some other similar value reducing terminology. Doing this devalues the exchange to the point where we soon begin to wonder why no one has said thank you to us anymore. At the risk of sounding like some sort of overzealous disciple of Miss Manners I am going to stay somewhat in this vein and discuss the needs and benefits of letting people know when they have done a “Good Job”.

We like to think that we all live and work in one of those here to fore highly desirable risk and return environments. I really don’t think this is truly the case. We have all come to expect a supremely high level of performance and competency in all that we do. It is when expectations of performance reach these levels that in reality there is very little return available. When you expect perfection and receive perfection you are merely satisfied, not delighted. When that situation occurs all that remains in the expectation equation is the risk. I’ll illustrate with a couple of simple examples:

I have had a car for the last couple of years and it has been absolutely problem free. All I need to do is put gas in it, and occasionally bring it in for an oil change or service as is indicated and was expected when I bought it. It has run flawlessly and I am very happy with it.

Despite this near perfect performance, I have not bothered to call the dealership, or manufacturer for that matter, to tell them how much I appreciate their effort in producing such a fine car. It is in reality what I expected.

On the other hand however, should I go out to my car at the end of the day today and unexpectedly find that it will not start, or now requires towing and service and whatever else in order to return it to its previous performance level, there is probably a very good chance that I will make both of those calls to the dealership and the manufacturer to let them know of my relatively low level of contentment with their product and question them rather vociferously about their plans to rectify the situation.

On a similar and yet much broader example, I think the majority of us now get our internet / television / phone service delivered to our homes via some sort of communication service provider. For the most part these capabilities are also delivered at a very high level as well. And for the most part we have all come to expect, and possibly even depend on this level of service.

However, should we lose our internet connection capability while one of our children is in the midst of doing their last minute research for their assignment that is due the following morning, or heaven forbid we lose the video signal during one of our favorite television shows or during the big game, I suspect that there will be several calls into that provider both voicing displeasure and asking when the service will be restored.

Like I just said. There does not seem to be any further reward available for expected flawless performance, only the risk of disappointment and unhappiness when it is not achieved.

I think the same sort of approach has evolved in the business world. We bring people on and build teams expecting them to operate and perform at very high levels of competence and efficiency. This is obviously a given. If we didn’t think that the people could operate at very high levels of competency and performance we wouldn’t have selected them in the first place.

It is only when they occasionally don’t operate at these high levels of expected performance, or fail to achieve one of several stretch objectives that managers engage and provide immediate feedback, and when they do it is normally in the form of negative feedback. It’s sort of like the employee being the cable company when the cable goes out in the middle of the big game. They hear about it.

It doesn’t matter that the employee or the team may have been performing superbly for significant stretches before the issue. It doesn’t matter if the objective was reasonable or even achievable. Because we have continued to evolve ever higher levels of performance expectations, we are in fact little by little removing the “return” portion of the risk / return equation. There is no longer a return for performing well, only a risk for having an issue.

This approach can evolve businesses into a de facto negative reinforcement management style and structure. Instead of people striving to improve or do better, they in fact begin to work at avoiding the negative feedback.

On the surface this may sound like two sides of the same coin: striving to achieve and working to avoid failure, but in reality they are not. If there is no reward of any kind, including the simplest recognition, then there is no incentive for improvement or advancement. Avoiding failure means the incentive is just to perfect the status quo. The result is that you are not really trying to make things better; your effort is going into avoiding making them any worse.

I have worked in organizations where negative feedback avoidance as opposed to positive feedback incentives was the cultural norm. I believe that there are some structures where this approach may in fact prove appropriate, particularly in those areas where the “collective” aspect of the performance is more important than the individual’s.

I remember working for an Asian based company that had this negative feedback, more collective approach to things. The organization’s management viewed their value add to the business structure as their ability to focus on those objectives that weren’t achieved and goals that were not met. It was an eye opening experience.

During my first annual review, after a reasonably successful year, I was met with the following statement (and I am paraphrasing, but also very close to the actual statement):

“It seems that you have met all your goals for this year, but all in all, we actually expected better performance from you.”

I wish I had made that up, but I didn’t.

The fact remains that while there may not be a full balance in the risk and return equation for business performance, there at least needs to be some sort or recognized return. To put it a little simpler there needs to be some sort of carrot to offset the stick approach to management. I think the carrot starts with the simple acknowledgement that someone has met our expectations. In essence letting them know when they have done a “Good Job”.

It doesn’t need to be said all the time. I don’t think that any of us has a desire to have praise lavished upon us all the time. That would devalues the effect. However on occasion acknowledging the effort, which even though was expected or even defined and required in the job description or position profile, can go very far in maintaining a level of commitment to continuing to move the business forward.

Without this sort of positive reinforcement it is all too easy for a business to fall into the trap of not trying to move things forward and doing things the best way, but only trying to avoid the negative feedback associated while maintaining a performance that meets the current level. Performance measurement is no longer associated with who performs the best; it is now focused on who makes the fewest mistakes.

The problem is that the only person who makes no mistakes in business is the one who doesn’t do anything.

I am not proposing that providing compliments will correct all business issues. What I am saying is that occasionally recognizing those people that are performing at the expected high levels of achievement with the acknowledgement of “Good Job” will likely keep them more engaged and more likely to deliver the desired good job in the future.

…and no, “Not a Bad Job” is not an acceptable alternative acknowledgement.

Achievement, Business, Character, Experience, Humor

Feeling Inferior

Leave a comment

I like to read. My son says he would prefer to wait for the movie. Any movie. Seeing as how he is still only fifteen years old, I don’t think that there is much that I can do about that right now. What I can do is control what I read. I was under the misguided idea that occasionally I should read articles, magazines and books written by and for successful people, who like to tell us other presumably less successful people what we should do to become more successful, just like them.

I don’t think I am going to do this anymore.

Every time I read one of these success missives, I can’t help but feel inferior. It has a tendency to either depress me or drive me nuts.

I’ll demonstrate by example:

I got an email notification that my college alma mater (of all things) “liked” an article on one of those professional networking sites. I take being a mighty Lobo alumnus of the University of New Mexico very seriously so I thought it best to go check out what my alma mater deemed important enough to actually like. I clicked on the link in the notification.

Via the magic of the internet I was immediately whisked to the site of some business and technology e-zine with the appropriately titled article (and I am paraphrasing here as I don’t wish to have to provide attribution)

“27 Things that People Who Are More Successful Than You Do Every Day – Including Weekends – Before They Leave Work, That You Probably Don’t Do Which Explains Why They Are Successful And You Aren’t”

You would be surprised how close to the real title that paraphrase is.

As I said, I like to read. I read for information and enjoyment. I also believe it is something of a dying art. I mean why read when you can text or IM or as my son does, watch the movie anyway? But that is not the point. The point here is that I was already at the site. I consider myself to be reasonably successful. I have not ruled the world but I have done moderately okay. I figured I would peruse the first few topics of the list of successful attributes purely out of self interest and compare what the list said successful people do with what I do and see how much similarity there was.

Big mistake.

After furiously reading through the entire list with ever increasing disbelief to see if there was anything at all that I did at the end of the day that even remotely resembled something that a successful person was purported to have done at the end of the day, I came to the crushing conclusion that I am not fit to leave work at the end of the day, let alone work anywhere.

In case some of you have not experienced the joy that accompanies an epiphany that springs from reading an article like this, let me provide an example as a means of explanation. Most of us know how to sign our names. There are probably a few of us who don’t, and due to the penmanship challenges associated with the inability to sign their name these people are hence genetically selected to become doctors. Over time we have all probably evolved our “signature”.

Now take the pen that you normally sign your name with, put in the other hand (the hand that normally holds the paper while the first hand signs your signature) and now be told that all successful people are ambidextrous and in order for you too to be considered successful you should immediately be able to use that other hand to sign your signature as quickly, clearly and effortlessly as the first hand.

Give it a try. See how that works for you.

You now have only the slightest of inklings how it feels to read these articles about the habits, traits, customs, manners, dispositions, styles, fashions, penchants and proclivities of successful business people.

It depresses me that I don’t seem to have any resemblance at all to these so called successful people. It depresses me that I don’t spring out of bed at four o’clock in the morning prepared to shampoo the dog and rotate the tires on my wife’s car, and jog six or eight miles while thinking great world changing thoughts, all before going into the office like successful people are being depicted as doing. I am crestfallen that I don’t seem to be the appropriate whirl wind of activity in the last ten minutes of my business day closing off to-do lists, clearing my desk while simultaneously creating a workable plan to solve world hunger as I prepare to do battle with the other presumably unsuccessful souls on my commute home from the office.

It further concerns me that almost all the people that I know that I would consider to be successful also seem to have nothing in common with the ideal successful person that these articles describe.

In the past I have discussed how happiness cannot be derived from the actions and relative performance of others. I guess the corollary here is that feelings of depression and inferiority in the office should also not be the result of the actions and relative performance of others either.

Unfortunately that approach does not seem to sell articles, magazines and books. Nor does it seem like a very good way to drive people to specific web sites where their eyeballs can be assaulted by both an article describing in detail why they should by inference not consider themselves to be successful as well as those advertisers that are on that site who have specifically tailored their self-help ads to those people who after reading the article are now feeling so insecure about their relative worth and success in business.

What this epiphany does open up to me is the idea of a new opportunity to address a whole new segment of the self help article, magazine and book market. It is the segment of the market that is for the business person that is at least in part moderately successful, and wants to feel good about what they have accomplished. Think about that for a moment. Doesn’t everyone want a little recognition, reinforcement and reaffirmation that they have in fact been doing things well?

Think about the titles for these articles, magazines and books that could be generated, based on this new and previously untapped market approach:

“From Good to Better”
“Twelve Habits of the Moderately Successful”
“Congratulations on Making it to the Office on Time”
“How to Get Back From Lunch in One Hour”
“Speakerphone Etiquette in the Cube Farm”
“The Art of Aiming Low and Meeting Your Objectives”

The list could go on and on.

I understand that in this day and age that it is hyperbole that sells. As another example, in the past it used to be enough to just report the news. Now we seem to have a never ending stream of talking heads that are associated with one end of the political spectrum or the other that are now presenting their “version” of the news. Everything now has “spin” and now screams for our attention. I think the same is now the case for the plethora of business “self help” articles, magazines and books that are vying for our attention.

Each of these new and improved lists of elements associated with success seems to be more outlandish than the previous. As I noted before, based on these items it is hard to understand how I or anyone else is or can ever be considered successful. Hence the source of my concerns over these feelings of inferiority.

I think the bottom line is that when you take everything into consideration it is still things like drive, determination, attention to detail, effort, honesty, knowledge, experience, cooperation, preparation and maybe just a smidgeon of luck that are some of the determining factors in success. These concepts are not particularly exciting and don’t promise any secret short cuts to success. Maybe that explains why there doesn’t seem to be a market for a book titled:

“Be Smart, Work Hard, Perform Well and Move Ahead”

Perhaps another answer to being considered a success is to write a book that tells other people what they should do in order to be considered a success.

Culture, Differentiators, Humor

Walls, Windows and Corners

Leave a comment

I think it is safe to say that we are truly a status conscious species. We are probably also somewhat obsessive and we seem to like shiny things. Where we live, what cars we drive, etc to one level or another are important to us. It is how we differentiate ourselves from each other, but it is also what makes us all the same on a larger level. So how do we differentiate ourselves in the far more homogeneous business environment? Since we all strive for some sense of individuality, how do we distinguish who is who in an office environment where the focus is usually far more on the collective than the individual?

Office environments seem to be designed with the twin objectives of both minimizing the differences between those of the same level and formalizing the differences between those of different levels. The differences are removed from the system through the use of standardized office constructions. Based on their relative position in the office hierarchy like levels get like office sizes, colors and furniture. Office component colors and furniture are standardized to the point where the days of the mythical executive reserve known as “Mahogany Row” where huge offices and plush office appointments have all but receded into the mists of time.

Now a days there are still many office differences denoting relative professional rank, but they are all somewhat less apparent. The first of several formal office differentiators is office size. The workspace naming nomenclature also reflects this size disparity. No one has an eight foot by eight foot office. They have a “cube”. And regardless of how much square footage they have for work space they will continue to be considered in a “cube” until the second major work space status differentiator is taken into account: that being the height of the walls around a work space. If there is any space between the top of the office walls and the office ceiling, it is a cube, despite any arguments to the contrary.

The best barometer of work space status is the height of the walls around the work space. A good rule of thumb is that if you can see into the work space over the walls surrounding the work space that the occupant is of the most junior of levels. Chances are that they will have the least floor space as well. The only way that these “low wall” denizens can differentiate themselves from other junior cubicle dwellers is by the type and amount of stuff that they jam into their cube. We have all seen it. The over abundance of pictures, knick-knacks, plants, college memorabilia, you name it, that is used to individualize what is an otherwise small, nondescript work space.

As responsibility, prestige and status grow, normally so do the height of the walls surrounding the work space and the area contained within those walls. Surprisingly enough as the walls get higher; the amount of individualizing “stuff” within those walls also seems to decrease. Perhaps it is only those without such office adornments that are selected for higher walls. I think further study on this relationship may be required. It doesn’t matter how high the walls get or how much room there is within them, if the walls do not reach the ceiling of the work area, as I have already said, it will still always be considered a “cube”.

At some point in time the normal progression of wall height and work space size will hit a nominal limit, one of which is the afore mentioned ceiling. Not some sort of metaphorical glass ceiling. The physical acoustic tiled one within the office work area. Once the walls hit the ceiling the area they contain is no longer considered a “cube”. It is now an “Office”. These constructs normally come with a real door that can actually be closed. A nominal amount of privacy is now possible since office doors do not usually contain a window.

Once the threshold has been crossed from cube to office, you might think that the opportunity for status differentiation would be limited. If you thought this you would probably be wrong. There is still the opportunity to differentiate offices by size and location. There is a point of diminishing returns with respect to office size so for the most part I will deal with the aspect of office differentiation based on location, or more importantly, the number of windows that it does or does not have.

Offices that are constructed on the internal walls and passage ways of the work area allow the external sun light to enter the windows and illuminate the entire work area. This allows the people with low walls to at least enjoy the sunlight. This sort of office structure usually indicates one of two possible scenarios: either that the company is truly work environmentally conscious and wants everyone to enjoy the sun light, or that the people inhabiting those offices still haven’t quite made it to the big leagues.

I have only worked in one company in one location where all the offices were intentionally placed internally away from the windows. Needless to say, this is a rare event. On the other hand I have also worked in several locations where you could not actually tell if the building had external windows, or if the sun was actually shining outside unless the doors to the external wall offices were open and the sun was shining through the open door. Chances are if there are internal offices and you are in a multi-story building, you have just not gone to a high enough floor to find the external wall offices.

But even window offices are subject to a status arrangement. The two status guides here are the number of windows that the office has and whether or not it has a “Corner”. This is where the phrase “Corner Office” came from. If you have an entire wall of a four sided office covered in windows, the only way you can get more windows is to have windows on a second wall of your office. According most accepted theories of geometry the most efficient way to achieve this phenomenon is to put your four sided office in a corner of the building so that two of the office sides have windows.

The corner office is generally accepted as the apex of the office status pyramid. If you have one of these you are generally regarded as someone to be reckoned with.

Corner offices are usually reserved for only those who reside within the “Executive Suite”. If you want to see more on the “Executive Suite” please see my May 8, 2014 article on this topic.

I think one of the most spectacular examples of the need and desire for corner offices can be seen in the United States military. Most buildings are build with four corners, which naturally limits the number of corner office opportunities. The US military built the Pentagon, which as we all know has five corners instead of just for. This increases the number of available corner offices by twenty five percent. I guess they had to find an appropriate way to office all the Generals, Admirals, etc that they had.

But now here comes a new office status disruptive technology; the home office. With all the new communication technologies that are available, many former inhabitants of the cube farm are now opting to work at home and cyber-commute to their work. Now it is possible for everyone to have their own office, that can be as big as they want, with as many windows as they want and decorated however they want, and no one will ever know the difference or be able to assess their relative rank in the office hierarchy.

As this work at home technology proliferates we will have to revert to the old tried and true methods of assessing your office status, namely: what city or neighborhood you live in, how big is your house, what kind of car you drive and how many shiny things have you accumulated.

Oscar Wilde once said “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” He may actually be correct. However now it appears that we are entering an age where work may be imitating life far more that life is imitating work. I wonder what Oscar Wilde might think of that since he actually worked at home as well.

Alternatives, Attrition, Decisions, Reacting, Relationship

When Friends Resign

Leave a comment

A friend of mine resigned a while ago, and I don’t know if I have consciously or unconsciously avoided thinking about it as a topic. Enough time has passed where I think I can look at it at least reasonably objectively.

I have often talked about the conflicted feelings that occur as a result of corporate layoffs. On the one hand there is compassion for those that seemingly through no fault of their own are tapped on the shoulder and told that they don’t have a job anymore. On the other hand there is the necessity for the company to adapt, resize and redefine itself for the new market and financial realities that it is facing. The resulting guilt, fear and uncertainty of the accompanying survivor’s syndrome for the employee’s that remain after watching their friends leave, are detrimental to both the employees and the company. Hence the evolution of the preferred corporate approach of making and implementing the changes quickly so that the focus can return to the business at hand also as quickly as possible.

But what happens when your friends leave of their own accord?

There are also many conflicted feelings that occur when a friend leaves, but I think they are slightly different. In a layoff, there was no choice. Friends are told they no longer have a job. When friends resign we all know that they made a cognitive decision. It was their choice. In the former situation there is a little “there but for the grace go I…” and a little of the afore mentioned survivors guilt. In the latter we all ask: What do they know that I don’t?

Successful business has a lot to do with good leadership and the accepted team approach to achieving the goals. Not everybody can be the leader, but everybody needs to demonstrate leadership. Not everybody will be in full agreement with the leaders, but everybody needs to align with the designated objectives. There is always a mixture of satisfaction and gratification along with frustration and dissatisfaction in all that we do in business. It is how well we are able to balance these conflicting feelings and emotions that will usually have a lot to do with our individual and team success.

The usual process is to create the team, assign the roles, define the objectives and begin their pursuit. The team members begin to mesh and friendships inevitably arise. New teams, roles and objectives will come, but the friendships that are established usually remain. These relationships evolve into our “networks” and support systems.

These are the people that we go to lunch with and who will listen to us when we have not yet fully internalized the directions and objectives that we now have.

When they decide to leave it makes us all take a moment to pause and reflect. The inevitable question that comes to mind is: Why did they decide to go when I have not? Have I missed something?

It has been my experience that career change decisions are invariably made in isolation of any friendships. Most of my friends who have made these types of changes did not tell me or consult with me before they made them. The contemplation of any career change is a personal thing and not to be taken lightly. The support or opposition of a friend to a possible change can modify both individual’s behaviors today and in the future.

Plus, once it is spoken of, even as a remote possibility, the potential career change secret is out. The sharing of a potential career change opportunity or decision could also cause issues with peers and management in any current assignment. If the potential change is not realized, the issues caused by the consideration of it would continue to remain.

In speaking after the fact to friends who have left in the past, I have found that they normally leave for basically one of two general reasons: to increase their satisfaction and gratification related to what they do, or to decrease their level of frustration or dissatisfaction related to their current roles and situations. The first reason is looking forward to something better. The second is looking back at something worse.

The increase in satisfaction can come in the form of more money, promotions, more responsibility, titles, etc. This can be seen as part of the normal progress in a career. As one matriculates up the management line, the number of available “next step” positions becomes increasingly small. Sometimes it may be viewed as necessary to step outside of the current structure to keep a career moving.

The decrease in dissatisfaction can come in the form of the desire for a more stable work environment (no prospect of layoffs) better alignment and utilization of individual talents or better alignment between work and management styles. Misalignments in strategies, cultures and management styles can contribute to and accumulate dissatisfaction to the point where an exit may be required just maintain some semblance of sanity.

In many instances it seems to have ended up being a combination of all of the above.

There is normally also some sort of minimum differential barrier that must be overcome in order to get someone to decide to leave their current role. This could be considered the “barrier to exit” (as opposed to an economist’s barrier to entry). Most everyone will put up with some amount dissatisfaction in their current role. Most everyone will also put up with some lack of satisfaction in their current role. This can be due to the time, effort, pay level, etc. that has them vested to one level or another in their current role. Please notice that lack of satisfaction and dissatisfaction are in fact different. The lack of happiness doesn’t mean that you are unhappy. It just means that you are not happy. I think you can go a lot longer not being happy than you can go being unhappy.

But how much does it take to cause someone to go past the barrier to exit tipping point? Again it seems that there are many factors. Careers and career trajectories, corporate positions, directions and performance, and time, as well as the status of the greater employment and opportunity markets will all come into play in either lowering or raising the barrier to exit.

I think that this is probably a long winded way of saying that as individuals we will all react differently to the stimuli, both the positive and the negative associated with our positions. We all create our own barriers to exit. Sometimes there is a desire to leave, but no opportunity elsewhere. Sometimes there are opportunities elsewhere but no desire to leave. Either case could be considered a high barrier to exit situation.

I think we all either consciously or unconsciously keep track of our own barriers. It is only when someone we know has consciously overcome their barriers and resigned that causes us to pause and question. We wonder if our barriers are too high and are we missing something. We also wonder if theirs were too low and were they too rash.

I believe the answer is that anyone that makes a career decision either to stay or to go, has probably made the right decision for them. It is not good to judge your own happiness based on the happiness of someone else. It is probably equally inappropriate to judge your satisfaction with your position or career based on the position or career satisfaction of someone else. They have made a choice and are probably happy with it, just as you may or may not have made a different choice and should be happy (or at least not unhappy) with it.

Still, you can’t help but wonder.

I wish you fair winds and following seas, my friend.