In the past I have looked at several different disciplines within the business organization. Sales, Marketing, Finance, Research and Development and even Human Resources all have their roles and responsibilities in the organization. There are a couple of key support organizations that should also be examined; Facilities and Information Technologies (IT), and unless you want to have an office in an abandoned warehouse and communicate via semaphore (that’s the waving of flags to pass messages between ships) or smoke signals, you need to be aware of and know how to work with them.
The facilities group is a reasonably simple group to identify and locate in the business environment. Simply find the second nicest offices in the building. Chances are these will be the facilities group.
Why the second nicest? Very simple. Facilities is normally wise enough to understand that the senior corporate executives will expect to have the nicest offices in the building. They will want the biggest offices on the highest floor with the best views out the windows. If someone else has them, the executives will want them. This will cause unrest and unhappiness. It is best just to give executives what they want. Everybody knows this, including the Facilities group.
And who will be the ones to give the executives the offices that they want? Correct, it will be Facilities. They are the group that is in charge of all the buildings and all the stuff that goes in all the buildings. Once they have decided who gets the very best offices – the executives – they then get to decide who gets the second best offices. The only people who can over-rule Facilities decisions regarding who gets what office are the executives, and since chances are that the executives are all content and placated in their offices Facilities pretty much at this point has carte blanche to decide who gets what.
With this kind of power with respect to office allocation it is only logical that they should place themselves only slightly below the corporate executives in the office pecking order.
Also expect Facilities to place their offices as far away from the corporate executives as is possible. They usually do this in order to minimize the opportunity or even the chance that a corporate executive may actually wander over to their area just to make sure that they do in fact have the second best offices in the building and not the actual best offices in the building. This will mean if the executives are on the top floor, facilities will be in the basement. If the executives are on the east end of the building, facilities will be on the west, and so on.
Why is all this important you may ask? Remember on average you will be asked to move your office location every one to two years. Also remember to take advice like this with a grain of salt as it is also estimated that 76.43% percent of all statistics are made up on the spot. I however have found this to be a reasonably accurate estimate on the number of times I have moved my office in my career.
With that in mind, it may be a good idea to identify who the Facilities representatives are within your organization and to foster a relationship with them. This relationship will be good for you in that it may help you and your team when it comes time for you to move, and it can be good for Facilities as they want to build relationships with both the current and future leaders of the organization.
The next group to be aware of is the Information Technologies team. No one is ever really sure where their offices are. Their offices are normally in a part of the building that is cordoned off from the rest of the mere mortals in the organization, usually behind a security door or special access badge reader of some sort. This is usually claimed to be done in the name of making sure the communications infrastructure of the organization is kept safe from terrorists and other employees of the business, but one can never really be sure.
I have walked by these doors on several occasions and thought I have heard the sound laughter and music, but as these doors also appear to be somewhat sound proofed I was never quite sure so I have written it off to an over active imagination.
The Information Technology team members are also easily recognizable by the number, quality, complexity and sophistication of the electronic gadgets that they have in their possession. The Information Technology team members are usually the people with the coolest mobile phones, with the latest time saving applications on them, and the ability to have you stricken from every corporate directory with but a single call or key stroke. Now that is power.
For those of you that are wondering, IT are the people that are responsible for your phone and computer networks. If you want to have a quiet day in the office just go and insult the IT leader in your area. It will be surprising how seldom your phone will ring, or dial tone will be present when you go to make a call.
If you want to reduce the number of emails that you have to deal with, just send an email to management which is critical of the IT team’s performance. You will also find that when your email is not working and you call the toll free hotline for immediate technical support that they will direct you to the website where they will ask you to send them an email detailing the issues that you are having with your email.
There is currently a détente between most Facilities groups and most IT teams in that Facilities is responsible for enabling IT to have office space behind closed and locked doors where goodness knows what goes on, and IT is responsible for making it impossible for all but the very most senior executives to ever establish real time contact in the form of a phone call with anyone from the Facilities group. If this relationship were found in nature it would be called social symbiosis.
The reason that I bring IT into the discussion about the Facilities group is that every time you move your office you also have to reestablish all of your network connections so that you can get email on your computer and that your phone will ring when someone calls you at your new office. If you move every one to two years on average, that can turn out to be a significant amount of time spent with the Facilities and Information Technologies groups.
Without exception I have found the professionals associated with the Facilities and IT groups to be some of the most helpful individuals in any company I have been in, I have also found that it does not hurt to bring them “tribute” in the form of a written thank you for the effort that they have invariably expended on my behalf to make the vast majority of my office moves while not enjoyable, at least that much more tolerable.
Category Archives: Humor
International Travel, Beer and Cabs
A recent international business trip reminded me of several axioms that I had learned on past international trips but for some reason seemed to have forgotten. When I mention international trips, I mean real international trips. Not trips to our neighbors to the North or South, but trips over oceans and to different continents. Trips where you get to sit next to people for eight, ten, twelve hours at a time while traveling. Those are the kind of international trips I am talking about. In fact it can’t really be considered an international trip unless you go to a place where you can order and drink a beer that you have never heard of before, and the actions that are perpetrated on the highways during the natural order of conveyance (what we would call driving) scare the hell out of you.
I’ll start with the more pleasant of these two aspects of international travel, the beer. As time has passed I have found myself ever more comfortably in the rut of preferring to drink beer as my social beverage of choice. It is estimated that beer was invented some 7000 years ago. There have been ancient Sumerian poems written about beer that are more than 6000 years old. Some anthropologists argue that it was the invention of beer (along with bread) that was the base line cause for the rise of human civilization and technology. I guess if you are going to have to survive on something as boring as bread you better have something tasty to wash it down with.
7000 years is a long time to have in the perfecting a beverage. I think we have gotten pretty close in some instances, and maybe not so much in others. I think the last great advancement in beer-kind was when we went from “beer” to “cold beer”. Mixed drinks have come and gone. Martinis were popular, then they were not. Then they enjoyed another resurgence, but then fell out of style yet again. And this was all just last month. The same can be said about various other drinks based on bourbon, gin, vodka and just about any other distilled spirit you can think of.
The one exception to this rule would be scotch. One should never mix scotch with anything. Alone and unmixed scotch is almost undrinkable. Mixing it with anything is the one thing that does in fact render it truly undrinkable. I suppose mixing scotch with water, or ice (frozen water) is acceptable as it serves to dilute scotch’s almost undrinkable nature.
I have digressed. Each culture has its local preferred beer. I have found that part of the fun of visiting these foreign countries is to sample the local brews. It usually surprises my hosts and creates a common topic of conversation. I have learned that in foreign countries Budweiser is considered an imported exotic brew. Now I have nothing against the good people of Anheuser Busch, in fact when I am home I have been known to partake of many of their products. Despite the “man-law” that you “don’t fruit the beer” I seem to have developed a certain partialness to one of their lime infused beers. Again I have digressed. This seems to be a common thread when I talk about beer.
My foreign hosts invariably try to order me one of these types of beers when I visit. Why would I fly thousands of miles just to drink the same beer that I can easily get at home? I want to try the favorite local beer. Almost without exception it has been a very pleasant experience.
In Ireland the fresh Guinness from the tap does in fact taste different than the Guinness we get here in a bottle. The bottled stuff here reminds me personally of shoe polish in both its color and taste. The stuff in Ireland is truly wonderful. The same can be said about Hite beer in Korea, Cerpa in Brazil and Steinlager Pure in New Zealand. They are great tasting beers and there is certainly a reason why they are popular brands in their home countries. I strongly urge everyone who travels to sample the local foods and drinks when traveling. Since civilized business people have been drinking beer for thousands of years, it is a great ice breaker, conversation starter and usually results in a pleasant discovery.
The only real problem with the beer in foreign countries is that you usually have to go somewhere in that country to get it. The act of going somewhere for beer, or anything else for that matter usually involves getting in a car and venturing out on the roads, with the local inhabitants. There is nothing that can prepare you for this, short of going to your favorite amusement park, getting on the roller-coaster and demanding that they run at least five other roller-coasters at the same time, on the same tracks, all in different directions. I don’t ask to drive these roller-coasters, and I certainly know better than to try and drive in a foreign country. When visiting foreign countries I don’t drive, I take cabs.
First of all, contrary to my wife and children’s opinions, I do know how to drive. I know most of the rules of the road here in the US, both the written and unwritten ones. The unwritten ones seem to include such gems as “Don’t make direct eye contact with someone you are passing” and “Turning on your signal to move into another lane is seen as a challenge to anyone else to try and speed up so as to occupy the space in the lane you are intending to move into”. I think we are all reasonably familiar with these rules and many others when it comes to driving here. It seems to be part of the “sport”.
However, nothing can really prepare you for riding in a cab in a foreign country. I am not casting aspersions or trying to denigrate any people, places or things. What I am saying is that, in general and with a few noted exceptions, that upon entering a cab in a foreign country you should be issued a blindfold and a cigarette when getting into the back seat.
While this idea may conjure up images of facing a foreign firing squad, it should not. First of all a firing squad ends reasonably quickly, while a foreign cab ride can go on for hours. A more accurate comparison would require a firing squad with guns that either would not, or could not operate properly, people who might not know how to properly operate or aim their guns and multiple conflicting orders being issued from a multitude of incomprehensible commanding officers.
Amidst all this, after a certain amount of time, many loud noises and several near misses later, you would then be required to then pay this firing squad an unspecified amount of money and to thank them for their time and effort on your behalf.
The foreign cab issued blindfold would more properly be so that you couldn’t see what was going on around you on your way to wherever you were going, and the cigarette would be to calm your nerves, even if you didn’t smoke.
Mark Twain is quoted as saying: “All generalizations are incorrect, including this one”. I would say that in general he is correct. One notable exception that I have encountered to the international driving free for all that I have experienced has been in Australia. While travel on the roads there does seem to have a tendency to take on certain aspects of a game of high speed bumper cars, you are actually expected to ride in the front seat of the cab, next to the driver. Perhaps this passenger proximity has a mellowing effect on the drivers. Perhaps it is the funny accent all Australians claim we have when we speak English there. Whatever it is, they seem to drive in a manner that I can more readily comprehend.
That, and they have some really great beer there too.
Learn to Talk Good
I remember having a conversation with one of our newer hires in a past assignment. I should say that I remember trying to have a conversation with one of our newer hires in a past assignment. He obviously didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t tell him. I thought I would just strike up a conversation and get to know him, and at the same time communicate what an outgoing and friendly organization we tried to have. I should have known better.
The first thing I had to do was to try and pry his nose out of his smart phone long enough to make eye contact with me. While he did look up long enough to acknowledge that I did exist, that I was standing there next to him and that I was not in fact one of the undead zombies that he was so fond of eradicating in oh so many colorful and exciting ways, I didn’t get much more than that. No verbal greeting. No nod of recognition. It seemed that just my motion of walking up to him had caught his eye and momentarily distracted him from whatever he was doing on his smart phone. He immediately went right back to it.
Undaunted, I said hello and questioned if he was in fact the new hire that we had just brought on.
I could see the gears turning. I could see the internal battle raging. He was obviously hell bent on whatever application he was using on the smart phone and I was annoying / distracting him from it by my insistence on engaging him in some sort of social interaction. It took him a while to frame a response, without looking up.
While he went through his internal preparations, I asked him if he would like me to text him the question, if that would make responding to me any easier.
This got his attention. He looked up to see if I was being serious, if I was angry, or if he could ignore me and blow me off. I kept a straight face and to his credit he finally looked up and acknowledged me. Since it was obvious at this point that he did not know who I was (I think I was his supervisor’s, manager’s boss at that time) and again to his credit he did not choose to demonstrate what I perceived as his distain at my interrupting his communing with his smart phone. Smart boy.
Since he now recognized that I was not going to go away easily, or due to his ignoring me, he tacitly agreed to slightly more than 2 seconds of prolonged eye contact and acknowledgement before his next text message came in and distracted him. He immediately re-immersed himself in his phone and began to type furiously with his thumbs at a speed that could only have been attained after many, many hours of practice. I was amazed.
As he was typing I said that he should go ahead and respond to that text message as I would be pleased to watch and wait.
Now he knew something was up. After he had finished his prolonged message he again looked up at me to see what sort of expression I had while uttering such blasphemy regarding the priority of his smart phone connectedness. I kept my face carefully neutral. I then smiled.
At this point he now recognized that, horror of horrors, he was going to have to engage me in a real time interaction. I could tell that he recognized his predicament because he had exactly the same look on his face that my son did when my son realized what he had just stepped in because he had forgotten to clean up after the dogs in the back yard before he started mowing.
It was at this point that my smart phone started ringing. I let it ring. I could see that he was having a hard time with my nonchalance regarding the immediacy of my smart phone communication. He asked if I was going to answer that. I think he was hoping I would and that would be his opportunity to flee.
I said no and made a point of reaching in my pocket and turning the phone off. I think that single act caused the preponderance of blood to drain from his head. He seemed to grow quite pale. It seemed I wanted to talk with him and he was going to have to respond. We were going to have a conversation.
I am familiar with “text-speak”. I actually do text quite often. I just don’t converse in it real time. I prefer to speak English, although I do understand Spanish, and even took a little Russian in college. I am not quite sure what language he spoke.
What I did gather from him was that everything according to him was “like” something else. It was “like” this, or when he was surprised it was “like” wow. Things were also “seriously” one way or “seriously” another. There were also times when it appeared that he was tongue tied as he tried to locate the real-time emoticon that he could provide me that would convey the depth of his feeling or commitment in the conversation.
I think that all this time he thought that I was going to harsh his mellow.
What he didn’t realize was that in accepting that he was going to have to talk to me he had actually stumbled upon the best way to achieve what he wanted in the first place; which was to find a polite way to drive me away. I don’t think I am overly literate, but this guy drove me nuts.
About five minutes into the conversation I was looking for either the “off” button or the ejection seat switch. It was as though my children’s texts had been animated and had come to life in front of me. There were no complete thoughts or sentences that were conveyed. All standard grammatical concepts now seemed to be merely the slightest of suggestions. In short he was verbally illiterate.
I am sure that he hoped to, and quite possibly even thought that he had made a good impression on me. I believe I might have misled him down that road when at the first courteous opportunity I thanked him for talking so good with me. He smiled and immediately dove nose first back into his smart phone and beat a hasty retreat to my office.
I am concerned that we all may talk so good in business in the future.
White Boards
There have been a lot of great inventions that I have tried to take advantage over time. A great example of invention progression is the evolution from cassette tapes to audio CDs to MP3 players. It used to be an effort to take your music with you on a trip. Now without a second thought I can bring it along in my smart phone, stick in my ear buds and try to ignore the large guy next to me who is staking claim to take half of my seat in addition to his on the plane while he snores and drools on my shoulder. In business the advent of voicemail, email and PCs has had the beneficial effect of removing both time and distance from the business environment. While I have had cause in the past to point out how these advancements may have been abused or used in ways that they were not intended, they have by and large been beneficial to business. What I want to discuss now is an invention that in my opinion has far outstripped any of them in its importance to business, at least for me – the whiteboard.
The whiteboard is the product of its own technological evolution. It appears to have started out in the open air conference areas of Egypt a few thousand years ago as a granite slab, a hammer and a chisel. During the meeting when you wanted to write something down you chiseled it into the granite. This worked great until you filled up the slab. Erasing was problematic, so you just went and got another slab. This had a tendency to slow ancient Egyptian business meetings down.
Millennia passed and the granite slab was eventually replaced by a sheet of black slate. The writing substrate was still rock based; but it was much more easily erasable and you were much more efficient in that you didn’t need as much of it. The hammer and chisel were likewise replaced by white chalk. This new technology worked so well that blackboards and chalk were placed in almost every school room in the world. These blackboards were heavy, expensive and caused students to try and suck up to teachers by offering to rid the erasers of excess chalk dust outside during recess. Then came colored chalk. While this improved artistic license it did not improve the bottom line.
Black slate boards then gave way to pressed particle boards and chipboards with some sort of sprayed on green, semi-erasable covering. The green boards did not seem to erase quite as cleanly as slate boards, and they still used chalk but the boards were not nearly as heavy and expensive. The expensive, heavy slate chalkboards were then recycled into heavy expensive slate roof shingles which were then used for the roofs of expensive houses. There may be some moral to that story but I can’t quite figure it out. Green boards not only appeared in schools they also started appearing in conference rooms.
Business executives were still not happy in that most of them had a difficult time translating the ideas and information that were expressed with light colored chalk on a dark colored board into ideas and information that they would write as dark colored ink on a white sheet of paper. This light to dark thing seemed to cause a great deal of consternation in the management ranks. The solution to this problem was either to change all business over to using dark paper and pens that wrote in white ink so that the ideas and information would not have to suffer through this color inversion conversion, or create a white surface board for people to write on in the first place. I still believe that we would all be writing on black or green paper with white ink if they had been able to figure out how to mimeograph and photocopy on to dark paper.
The first whiteboards were actually sheets of steel with a white porcelain coating. It was found that the porcelain was so non-porous that it would not absorb any of the ink used to write on it. This allowed it to be erased perfectly clean. Because steel and porcelain were again found to be too heavy and too expensive and probably too efficient, new old substrates such as particleboard and chip board were quickly substituted for the steel sheet and other white, more porous coatings were substituted for porcelain. The fact that these new coatings would partially absorb permanent ink which in time would eventually render them useless seems to have been lost on everyone. These are the ubiquitous whiteboards that we have today.
I am a huge fan of the whiteboard. I have not one, but two of them in my office. I would have more if I could but the corporate facilities drones have told me that would be showy, presumptuous and far above what they consider my current station in the organization. I have thought about scavenging another white board from some other empty office or conference room but my “To Do” list has not yet exceeded its current two whiteboard limit, and I am not that desperate.
I keep an ongoing list and record of the issues, topics, ideas, customers, etc. that I must address on my white boards. This way whenever I have the opportunity to look up I can reassure myself that I have prioritized what needs to get done, and which topic is next to be addressed. As issues are solved they are erased, sort of, since today’s whiteboard coating are now semi-absorbent, and as new items come up I can add them in.
To the casual observer coming into my office, my white boards are impressive. They are covered with cryptic topics and diagrams, all of which are color coded in association with whichever of my multitude of dry erase pens was functional enough to leave a legible image on the whiteboard at the last eureka moment in time where I identified a topic or requirement that I would need to note in order for it to be prioritized and addressed. Some of the topics have been there for a while, meaning they are either immutable / unsolvable issues, or are of such a low priority that I never seem to be able to get around to fixing them. Some are as recent as my last ad-hoc discussion on issues facing the business this week.
I have commented in the past that it is well documented that work expands to fill available time (Parkinson’s Law, C. Northcote Parkinson). Likewise I have had people comment that it appears the number of issues and the size of the writing on my whiteboard seems to increase in proportion to the available room for topics on the whiteboard. The more I think about this the more I am inclined to review it. If this is indeed an accurate white board corollary to Parkinson’s Law, I have an empirical test that I think I will try.
Instead of adding another white board to the brace of them that I currently have, I may actually remove one of them. If the whiteboard corollary to Parkinson’s Law is correct and issues expand to fill available space on a white board, then by removing a whiteboard I should reduce the number of issues I have to deal with. If I take this to the logical extreme and remove both white boards, I should hit the point of optimal performance. Since I will have no white board space where I can write down and capture the issues that I need to deal with, I should therefore have no issues deal with.
Maybe I won’t try that one after all.
What I have found is that I do some of my best work when I am animated. I think many others do too. It is difficult to be animated and to continuously produce quality work when you are sedentarily sitting at a desk and staring at a screen. When I work and even as I write this article, I periodically feel the urge to get up and move around if for no other reason than to become active. Having a whiteboard around allows me to capture topics and ideas during these active times.
Several millennia from now when the future equivalent of today’s Egyptologists are excavating the ruins of my office they too will be trying to decipher the hieroglyphic remnants of the messages that remain on the whiteboards. The difference will be that where we had only one layer of carvings on granite to try and understand the topics and priorities of the ancient Egypt
ians, they will have innumerable partially erased layers of permanent ink on semi-porous whiteboards to try and piece through with us. These future archeologists may also wonder why we created these multistory mausoleums that we inhabit today, where the crypts on each floor were so densely packed. They may also wonder why the walls in each crypt didn’t extend all the way up to the ceiling and we put the whiteboards on the inside of each crypt; when the ancient Egyptians only created the pyramids with walls of stone for their hieroglyphics.
Some might say that we have come a long way.
Eschew Obfuscation
The topic for this post was suggested to me by a good friend over in Europe, Codrin. I don’t know why I hadn’t leveraged his input for my own continuous improvement in the past. He indicated that there was a synergy of our ideas where I could take advantage of some low hanging fruit and get some quick wins. Since he considered himself a stakeholder and influencer in my blogging process he thought I should outsource some of my ideation process whereby a consensus for topic creation could be leveraged. This could in turn create a new best practice and benchmark for future cross functional team blog topic empowerment.
Goodness, this could be worse than even I suspected.
This is going to be something of an interesting analysis as far as topics goes. Some of you may look at that introduction and say that there is nothing wrong with it. The rest of you will probably have had the needle on your Business Jargon Overdose meter pegged at the “red line”, and quite possibly could have broken the meter all together. Whenever I find myself in a business jargon overdose state I find that the best cure for me is to go listen to music (usually either alternative rock or jazz, depending on my frustration level) until my fists unclench. As this condition seems to be occurring with ever greater regularity I seem to have acquired a significant music library.
For the purposes of the remainder of this discussion I will use the terms Business Jargon and Business Slang (BS) interchangeably. Being a product of the business technology acronym generation I find myself being a little more comfortable and potentially more accurate, in referring to the latest business technology generated buzz words by the acronym “BS” rather than by their jargon related acronym counterpart.
Business, especially the high technology business used to be ruled by the use of the acronym. There were financial based acronyms such as ROI (Return on Investment) or NPV (Net Present Value) and there were technology based acronyms such as CPU and RAM and PROM and the like (I know I have dated myself through the selection of technology acronyms. As I have said many times, I am somewhat “old school” in orientation.) The point here is that these acronyms meant something. They were shortened names for actual formulas and physical devices. They represented real things and as such had a real value.
When we fast forward to the business of today we seem to have replaced our quantitative value acronyms with the much more malleable business jargon, lingo and slang of today. As such it seems that the value of our business communication has also decreased in accordance with the utilization of these BS terms. I’ll pick on a few of my favorites.
Synergy. Really? I understand the concept where the combination of multiple elements creates an end state that is greater than the sum of the individual elements. I got it. I think everyone else gets it too. However, we were all taught early on in our school careers that one plus one does not in fact equal three. To hear people talk today it seems that all we need to do to improve our business, increase our profits, reduce costs or cure baldness is combine some disparate people, jobs and functions and we will miraculously get more out of it than we put in. Not every combination creates synergy. Some things do, others don’t. As an example, I like beer and I like ice cream. I don’t think I will create synergy and get something I like even better if I combine beer and ice cream.
Wait a minute. That one might actually work.
Cross Functional. Come on. This one along with consensus, empower and transformative combine to make any written communication appear both longer and more important. Mostly just longer. It seems it is almost impossible to see only one of these words used in its literal form in any form of communication. That would be the metaphysical equivalent of hearing the sound of one hand clapping. What we now seem to end up with is: “We need to empower a cross functional team to reach consensus on our transformative plans.”
Can’t we just say that we need to get together to figure out what to do next?
Customer Centric / Focused / Voice / Satisfaction: Incredible. The last time I looked just about every business on the planet was in business to sell some sort of goods, products or services to a customer. Now the definition of whom or what a customer is can vary from business to business, but the concept of providing a customer something of value and in return the customer giving you money is the basic precept of business. Everything that the business does needs to be focused at providing the customer something and getting them to give you their money. There is a definition for people in businesses that are not directly involved with either providing the customer their desired “something” or getting the customer to give you money. These people are called “overhead”. They are also the ones most prone to using these types of customer related phrases.
Anyone who uses the phrase “customer centric” is usually not.
Paradigm Shift: I don’t even know what to say here. This one seems to be utilized along with such ideological jewels as Best Practices, Benchmarking and Continuous Improvement. Everyone from Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species (things evolve and change, to paraphrase) to Woody Allen in Annie Hall (things, like sharks keep moving forward or die, again a paraphrase) has said that things change. Things that were once done one way are now done another. This is the essence of the meaning of a “paradigm shift”. Nothing ever stays the same. We might like it to, but it won’t. If we just get used to this fact perhaps we can do away with these repetitively redundant descriptions for change.
Robert Heinlein said: “We live and learn, or we don’t live long.” I guess this applies to businesses as well.
As difficult as it may be to believe I have actually been accused of not being either politically correct or a team player. It could be because I don’t normally seek a transformative transparency in looking to create consensus. I don’t think that we probably need to incentivize employee stakeholders and influencers when we are looking at the value add of any presentation or proposal. It seems that my problem may actually be that I do not know how to fully leverage the cloud, fully take advantage of virtualization or deliver anything as a service.
On the other hand it could be that I don’t believe in utilizing the current iteration of Business Slang that is being passed as intelligent and useful business communication.
I think we need to remove the BS (Business Slang) from the business vernacular, and get back to simple ideas of making things, selling things and delivering things when we communicate with each other. It will help get things done.
In other words, let’s eschew obfuscation.
Humor
When I was a kid I used to like to stay up late and watch Monty Python’s Flying Circus on TV. I think it was on either at 10:30 or 11:00 PM, which was really late for those days, at least for me. It was my first introduction to humor from the UK. Monty Python was all about the absurd, delivered with a straight face. It was timely. It was topical. At times it was even considered racy, for its time. I thought it was hysterical. It engendered in me an appreciation for the seemingly crazy things that people can say and do, with an earnest expression. As I have continued on in business, and in life for that matter, business events and actions continually remind me of the need for a good sense of humor and an appreciation of the absurd. I suppose that Monty Python imbued in me the ability to see the humor in some of the most arcane or improbable situations. The problem with this capability is that it seems that nature did not equip me with a very large buffer between my brain and my mouth where my comments could be reviewed before being released to the general public. Hence I have allowed many comments to escape that upon reflection might have been better retained for only internal consumption only. When I see something that I think is incongruous with the situation I have a tendency to immediately point it out. I think I am pointing out the humor in the situation. Other people have a tendency to think that I am pointing out how funny, or foolish I think they are. It’s possible that there might be a little bit of that going on as well. I remember reading that no one actually sees themselves as evil, even when they are committing some of the most evil acts in history. It is interesting to me how few if any people in business see themselves as humorous or dumb, even when you see them saying or doing what appears to be some of the funniest or dumbest things possible in business. That is too bad as there are plenty of seemingly foolish things that go on in business. If there wasn’t where would Scott Adams get all his great and scarily accurate ideas for his Dilbert cartoons? Humor not only relieves and avoids stress; it slaps stress in the face, brings it to its knees in a wrist lock and makes it whine and beg for mercy like a professional wrestler who has just been smacked with the ever handy folding chair. I am not sure where that came from but you get the idea. If a little bit of humor is good, then a whole lot more humor would be better, right? Not a chance. Humor is best applied in the office in smaller doses. It is not a big step to go from a person with a sense of humor to a person who is regarded as a smart-ass. I seem to have the uncanny ability to not only carefully approach the razor thin border between humor and smart ass, but with no malice of forethought to effortlessly leap across it with the grace and intent of an Olympic broad jump champion. I have been known to end up so far into the smart ass territory that it would appear to the casual observer that I am trying to sneak up on humor from the other side. This is one of the places where I learned that too much of a good thing can indeed be bad. Once you have been christened a smart ass it is incredibly difficult to get rid of that tag. Regardless of what insight or intelligence you may bring to a situation, your opinion will be discounted to some extent because you are considered a smart ass. It will happen.
We have all been guilty of saying or doing something that at the time seemed very logical to us, but in hindsight we question just exactly what we were thinking at the time. I have kept several pictures of myself and my friends from earlier days just to remind myself that sometimes even my judgment can and should be called into question. Where did I ever get the idea in college that long hair and bell-bottom jeans were a good look for me? Some of my so called friends have some even better pictures of me, but I go ahead and pay the extortion price to keep those out of the public eye.
Business can be challenging, intense, stressful, uncomfortable, and rewarding and any number of other high energy adjectives to define it. But above all, it needs to be fun. If you are not enjoying what you are doing, you had better find something else to do. Humor for me is the weapon of choice when I have to deal with issues and situations that are in no ways any fun. And even that sometimes is not enough. Despite my best efforts, I have found no humor or anything that can even remotely be described as fun or enjoyable when I have had to tell someone that their job is going away and that they will have to leave the company to look for a new one. However, that too is part of business.
The key is to not unleash your humor fully in the public forum. Regardless of how obviously absurd or funny a manager’s antics may seem there will always be someone who does not find it as funny as you did. There will always be those around who are taking themselves and their work far too seriously. Business is important. Paying attention and providing value is key. There will always be those who will associate a sense of humor or a less than morose attitude as the traits of someone who is not fully engaged or serious in the business.
Since we now live in the age where political correctness is all the rage, I think we must now refer to these types of people as “intellectually challenged”, instead of any other more direct moniker. And like drones in a bee hive, there will always be certain number of them hanging around the boss.
Find an outlet for your humor. A few close friends are good. I started writing about it – far too late in my career but I found it a great outlet. Only provide it in small doses in public. Let people know that you have a sense of humor by only providing glimpses of it. By channeling your humor and insight appropriately people will appreciate that there is more to you than just a business persona. This is also a really good idea if it turns out that you really don’t have a sense of humor to begin with. That way you will fail to be funny only occasionally instead of more frequently.
While you are supposed to be having fun in business, you are not supposed to be a comedian, or providing everyone else’s comedic relief. In school we could all recognize who the class clown was. In business you don’t want to be that person. After all, to use the Monty Python allegory just a little more, you may find yourself having to deal with the minister of funny walks, and he will take his job seriously. And he may not find it funny when you make fun of either his job, or the way he walks.
Office Decor
I have mentioned several times that I am a proponent of walking around the office. It gives you an opportunity to observe firsthand what is going on and the level of activity and it makes you visible and approachable to the team. On these walks I have had the opportunity to both observe and enter multiple offices and cubes. I understand that many people consider their office to be their second home, but we all need to remember that the office is a place where business is conducted and that any office customizations or decorations should reflect this. It’s hard to walk around any office and not see at least a few cubes adorned with a few cartoons and clippings from the ubiquitous “Dilbert” publications. Yes, Scott Adams (Dilbert’s creator) is a genius. Yes, we all can identify with several of the characters depicted. The topics and dialog are scarily close to what we have all experienced in the past. I get it. I think they are great too. Dilbert pokes fun at companies and their management with an accuracy that is both hard to believe and hilarious. I don’t think you should be posting them on the outside wall of your cube or office. The point is that like it or not, believe it or not, where you work does reflect on you and the type of work that people would expect from you. I have been in several senior leaders offices. There were no Dilbert cartoons displayed. There was usually a plant or two, but it was not a jungle, and they were well kept. There was a picture or two but they were usually either of an artistic nature or of family. There were usually a few management books on the shelves and a few documents on the desk. It was lived in, uncluttered and comfortable, but also orderly and clean. It displayed professionalism, balance and confidence, all traits that are desirable in a leader.
At home do you have a wall where you post cartoons and comics that continuously poke fun at your domestic management? I am married and my wife has a very good sense of humor. She would have to have one if she has been able to put up with me for as long as she has. I recognize this. Even knowing this, I do not go and take every domestic based cartoon that I find humorous, and that might poke fun at her or her position in the household and post it outside the front door to our house. I don’t post them on the inside walls, or even on the refrigerator. I know better than to continuously press my luck in that way.
My point here is that while there are many good, funny, humorous, or situational correct business cartoons out there, are you sure that you are sending the message that you want to send by displaying them where you specifically conduct business? By using them to make your tacit comments about your company or management, you are also making a comment about yourself that may not be perceived in the most professional of terms.
Having been in uncounted offices and cubes throughout my career I’ll try to describe and comment on a few of the various office decors that have stood out in my mind:
Having a professional looking office will not guarantee you leadership opportunities or business success. However, having one that is overly cluttered or decorated, or displays social or political cartoons or commentary will definitely not help you. I understand and agree with everyone’s right to assert their individuality and to have it reflected in the décor of their office. Just remember that businesses are looking for people with character, not people who are characters.
What do you think your office says about you?
Business Oxymorons
Every time I get a memo, directive or request from management, or anyone else for that matter, that causes me to shake my head, I put it in a file where I can review it and smile at a later date. I have to do that because sometimes it is almost impossible to believe in, let alone laugh at many of the documents and directives when they are actually issued. It seems that it is only on reasonable reflection that the humor associated with the document can be appreciated. Over the years I have amassed a fairly large file of what I like to refer to as management “Business Oxymorons”. Here are some of my favorites. Process Simplification: Process simplification has long been a target for cost cutting and efficiency increasing projects and teams. Regardless of how the business is structured, or what processes there may be in place, this is an area that can and will receive incremental focus. My favorite approach here was when I received a 36 chart presentation deck detailing the process we would all be using going forward for corporate process simplification. That is correct. It took 36 charts to detail out how we were going to simplify things. Needless to say, I had a suggestion for the first process to focus on for future simplification. Like process simplification, cost reduction is also always a favorite topic for management attention. Indeed cost reduction should be an ongoing focus for every business. The point here is the activity of cost reduction should be the focus. The idea is to reduce costs. The tracking of cost reduction doesn’t actually reduce any costs. It could be argued that one of the best ways to start reducing costs would be to get rid of all the teams whose only responsibility is to track cost reductions, since they are actually an unproductive incremental cost to the business. I always thought that the people who were implementing cost reductions were also capable of tracking cost reductions too. I wrote an entire post dedicated to this concept a few weeks ago. Sales teams want to sell things. That is what they are supposed to do. Customers usually want the lowest price possible for the goods and services that they are going to purchase. Sales teams try to get their customers the lowest price possible, sometimes by describing the business opportunity as “Strategic”. Getting requests to discount product and service prices to the point of unprofitability because it is strategic to the company to get this business has always been an interesting exercise in logic for me. How can bringing in any incremental unprofitable business be of benefit to a company, let alone strategic to it? We are all continually asked to do more. That is the nature of business. How we go about it is the key to our effectiveness. I know many people who pride themselves on their ability to be on conference calls, do their email and converse on their computer’s instant messaging system at the same time. I also notice that these people are usually so busy that they never get anything actually accomplished or completed. Productivity is the measure of things that are completed, not the measurement of the number of things being done concurrently. It is similar to the idea about the difference between work and progress. Work can be a great deal of splashing around in a pool. Progress is actually swimming somewhere. It seems that whenever there issues in a business, the first thing management requests are a brand new set of metrics and reports regarding the already identified issues. Metrics and measurements are key tools and sources of data for any manager and business. They help us keep score. They help identify where issues may lie and where performance may need to be improved. Measurements very seldom tell us how to improve performance, only that against some sort of scale that performance needs to be improved. More measurements or more detailed measurements may not help this situation. It is the decisions that are made and the actions that are taken in the business as a result of the measurement information that are the solution. Business measurements are a ways to a means, not a means unto themselves. The 80 / 20 rule truly does apply to measurements and data, and the idea of trying to measure your way out of a performance issue rarely works. The world is a very big place and the way business is conducted varies significantly from place to place in it. Global tools, programs and platforms, while always a desirable goal are almost always problematic when it comes to implementation, but that has never seemed to stop the drive towards them. Part of this issue seems to be in that global projects focus on trying to remove the differences between business regions instead of leveraging the similarities that the regions have. By the time you modify the tool, platform or project to take into account every regional business difference, you usually have a uniform solution that is so large, complex, expensive and unmanageable that it is worse than the separate and discrete capabilities it replaced. My father would have called this phenomenon the starting of a vast project with something along the lines of a half vast idea. These are just a few of the business oxymorons that I have in my file. I am sure there are others that I will bring out in the future. I believe it is the irony associated with the approach as it applies to what was obviously the desired solution that causes me to share them here. It appears that at least in some circumstances it is true what has been said about good intentions. It also doesn’t hurt to find the humor in it.
Announcing / Assigning a New Team to Track Cost Reduction:
Unprofitable “Strategic” Business:
Multi-Tasking Equals Productivity:
Measurement is the Solution:
Global Projects:
The Uniform
I guess I may be somewhat “old school” when it comes to what I wear to the office. I can’t seem to get past the idea that the office is where I work and practice my profession. I still think of the office as the place of business and I feel like I perform better when I have my business uniform and game face on. I can remember back when that meant that you wore business attire to the place of business. I am in no way advocating that we all revert to wearing suits and ties as our business uniforms to the office, but I do think we need to rethink what we do wear to the office.
I think the only way to approach this topic is to be a little bit tongue in cheek, and attempt to inject a little humor into the discussion about it. I don’t want to sound or be judgmental. Different people have different tastes in attire. I am sure there must have been many good reasons for some of the outfits that are now to be seen in the office. However I do believe that as business professionals, working for the most part in office environments where customers can and do have a tendency to visit, that we should try to be attired at least as professionally as the average department store sales associate.
I understand the idea of casual attire and how being more comfortable may improve productivity and employee satisfaction, and I to some extent I agree with these concepts. I think the key attribute to remember here is that it is not just “casual attire”; it is “Business casual attire”. You are not at home, or shopping, or running errands, or even working in the yard. You are in a place of business, your business.
It is in the spirit of this approach that I will try to give a few examples and suggestions regarding some of the office attire I have been witness to, and some possible suggestions:
- Tee shirts. I have never seen anyone working in a department store wearing a tee shirt. People who work at gas stations and McDonald restaurants do not wear tee shirts to work. Unless you are a professional body builder, or report to Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” I can’t see that a tee shirt of any color, regardless of how clean and well ironed it is or how funny the comment stenciled across the front and/or back of it is, would be acceptable attire in the office. I take that back. I guess a tee shirt would be acceptable if they are worn underneath your professional office attire shirt. I think a pretty good rule of thumb here is that if it doesn’t have a collar, don’t wear it to the office.
- Men’s Sandals. Let’s face a fact here guys. At the admitted risk of sounding somewhat sexist, most men do not have especially attractive feet. Particularly when they are hanging out the bottom of a long pair of pants. Now I have seen some men who have either been told, or perhaps have the self awareness regarding the attractiveness of their feet that have covered them up with socks when they decide to wear their sandals to the office. Really? Long pants, socks and sandals? I understand that sandals are comfortable. I have a pair or two myself. If comfort is the key, you need to go out and buy a comfortable pair of adult shoes. A reasonable rule here is that open toed foot attire is generally neither a professional nor a good idea for men in the office.
- Baseball Caps. Yes, baseball caps. Unless you are a professional baseball player, or Larry the Cable Guy, you should probably not wear a baseball cap to your office. With today’s new hair styles it doesn’t seem to really matter if you are having a bad hair day or not, so there is no reason to cover it up with a baseball cap.
- Sneakers, running shoes, or athletic shoes. I know it must sound as though I have some sort of a foot fetish. I don’t. I believe this type of foot attire is only acceptable if you work in an environment where it can reasonably be expected that either a basketball game or a marathon race will spontaneously erupt, and as part of your job description you will be required to either play point guard on the basketball team, or be the rabbit that sets the pace for the first several laps of the race. Otherwise plan on wearing a casual dress shoes.
- Blue jeans. Yes, they are comfortable. Yes, they are ubiquitous. No, I personally do not think they belong in the office. When you go to the dentist or the doctor’s office are they wearing blue jeans? How would you feel if you walked into the doctor or the dentist’s office and they were wearing blue jeans? When was the last time you saw a sales associate at a department store wearing blue jeans? There are some environments where jeans may be an acceptable type of attire (lab environments, maintenance, etc.) but the office environment is probably not one of them.
I don’t really know what the guidelines for office attire are, or what they should be. I have only rendered my opinion on some the items that I have seen in the past on a relatively regular basis. The idea here is that as I have said, the office is a place of business. Some behaviors and some attire that may be acceptable in other places may not be acceptable in the office. People can truly wear whatever they like to the office as long as it is within the rules as spelled out by the appropriate organization. I try to be a professional when I am in the office. I can’t help but feel that dressing a little more professionally helps to put me in that mind set as well. The only comment I can really make along this line is that when you are choosing your uniform of the day for the office, ask yourself if you have ever seen your reporting superior wearing similar types of attire. If the answer is “no” then you might want to think twice before putting it on and going into the office.
Silence
It has taken me a long time to learn how to be quiet. Sometimes I still forget what I have learned. I believe that to be a good leader you need to have strong goals, convictions and opinions. It is those things that help drive you on to achievement. What I wrongly supposed was that in having those leadership traits that you needed to express them verbally in the public forum.
Having goals, convictions and opinions have normally in the course of business brought me into various levels of conflict and contention with others who may not have the same opinion set. How and where the conflict was handled has contributed significantly to how I have been perceived in the organization.
Public forums, conference calls, etc. are best used for building the consensus. Conflict here has a tendency to polarize the group and slow progress for all. If there is a disagreement, I have found that I will try to take it off line and address it privately. That way a solution to an issue can be presented to the group, instead of just presenting an issue. As hard as it may be for the people who know me to believe, I am trying to apply the word of Will Rogers when it comes to conflict in public forums. Will had the great phrase:
“Never miss a good opportunity to shut up.”
I have been working on it. I think it is working. However, in these efforts I am also reminded of the story told by Ron White, a standup comedian from here in Texas. Ron tells the story of having a few too many drinks and subsequently being arrested. During the arresting process the police officer started to read him his rights. As we all know the first right is the right to remain silent. Ron White’s comment in this case was:
“I had the right to remain silent. I just didn’t have the ability to remain silent”
Being silent doesn’t mean that you concur or agree with all that is discussed. For me being silent, while difficult, affords me time to examine questions from multiple directions instead of just the first one that comes to mind. I have learned that if I disagree, instead of presenting what can be construed as an open challenge in the forum, that I can get far more done, even in the course of a disagreement, in a less public setting.
I should note that silence should not be the rule in all public business forums. If that were the case conference calls would be pretty quiet and very short. Constructive comments and suggestions for alternatives need to be made. It is the unproductive conflict that should be reduced. As I have said it has taken me a while to learn the difference between the two.
I continue to work on channeling my inner Will Rogers in not missing the opportunity to shut up, in those instances when in the past I would have been like Ron White and not had the ability to remain silent. It’s difficult, but I think it is just as important to the leader as having the convictions and opinions that drive us forward, and cause the conflict.