There is a very good chance that I am perhaps overly aware of the business environments that I have been in. This could be because of all of the changes that I have seen in those environments over the years. I can remember when everybody wore a suit and tie to go to work and people could smoke in the office. It really wasn’t that long ago when you think about it. Now with virtual offices and telecommuting we are all casually attired whether we are in the office or not, and very few admit to smoking whether they actually do or not, and certainly not in the house or office as the case may be.
It could also be that I am so office environmentally aware because of the many things that have not changed over time. Just about every cube still looks like every other cube. The carpet and wall color schemes all continue to remain boringly and uninspiringly neutral. It is from this bland sea of constant cubic uniformity that we are trying to create and innovate new approaches and solutions to our customer’s needs.
There is however one bastion of stolid stability in the office environment that stands out above all others. It is so pervasive and consistent so as to be present in just about every office environment that I have ever worked in or visited. It is so constant so as to go almost unnoticed by the denizens of the business office environment. Almost. It seems to me that the one thing that never changes, regardless of restructuring, reorganizing or remodeling is our office art.
That is correct. The objects and images that adorn the walls of the standard office building seem to be a constant that never changes.
The items on the walls of an office would appear at first to fall into one of three general artistic categories: Technical, Inspirational, and Artistic art. Invariably there is a mixture of all three genres in any office environment, and depending on the group involved in that location there is usually an emphasis placed on one specific type.
Technical office art usually consists of multi-colored charts and posters that purport to provide some sort of definition or direction in accordance with the various processes associated with the business. There is usually a flow diagram of some sort associated with them, and they also usually contain at least three or four geometrically diverse shapes as a way of distinguishing the various different functions represented in the flow chart.
The more complex, the more colors, the more shapes and the more connective flow lines the better. Remember this is technical office art. It is supposed to be colorful, complex, obtuse and inaccessible. You will usually find this type of art in the building sections normally populated by engineers, and the research and development staff. The truth be told, most of them don’t understand the diagrams and flows either, but it does contribute to the general feeling that you are in a technical area populated by smart people.
Inspirational office art usually consists of sweeping vistas, soaring birds or athletes, either individually or in teams, either training for or competing in high stakes arenas such as the Olympics. In general we are all inspired by pictures of mountains, or eagles or groups of people rowing boats. When we see these things I assume we all want to go climb the mountain, soar like the eagle or row the boat to the point of exhaustion. Who wouldn’t?
However, that alone is not enough for the image to be considered inspirational office art. It must also be accompanied by some sort of an inspirational phrase or message. When I see these pictures with their inspirational catchphrases, I can’t help but think of the statue shown in the opening credits of the movie “Animal House”. As the camera pans down the length of the statue of the founder of Faber College, it rests on the inscription at the bottom. The inscription reads:
“Knowledge is good”
That movie inspired me to do many things, most of which I will not go into here.
Inspirational art is normally found in and around the Human Resources and Training departments of a company. I don’t know why these groups require that much incremental inspiration, but they do seem to need it.
The final category of office art is the category that can nominally be considered art. That is the artistic category. This category consists of anything that can be hung on the walls of an office that is neither technical nor inspirational in nature. The preponderance of artistic pictures that are hung an office wall normally consist of some sort of pastel oriented soothing landscape or similar type of image. It is definitely not art that is intended to evoke any sort of response, with the possible exception of a yawn.
There are however notable exceptions to this generalization. I was once in an office building where there was a framed US flag that hung on the wall. This in itself was not too interesting except for the fact that the flag had only forty eight stars, not the customary fifty that I had grown used to seeing on the average flag pole outside. I could not tell if it was in fact a decorative antique or artistic relic, or if it had just been put up on the wall prior to Alaska joining the union in 1959 and no one had thought to take it down since.
This point brings me to the downside of all this office art. It never changes. Buildings are erected. Businesses move in and they are finished out with whatever art du jour is popular or applicable at that time, and that art is never changed. The building, the offices, the cubes may be rearranged or reconfigured, but the artwork remains intact and in place. For years.
I am sure that some number of millennia in the future when the future archeologists are excavating our office buildings, much like we have done in the ancient pyramids, they will discover all these images on the office walls (much like the hieroglyphics on the pyramids) and wonder how people with such boring tastes could have built such buildings.
I believe that there was some sort of financial analysis conducted which proved out the hypothesis that it would in fact be cheaper to move, relocate or rotate the locations of the resident people in the building than it would be to periodically replace and upgrade the office art. This could in fact be the underlying reason that on average people in offices are asked to change their locations approximately once every year.
On the surface this movement of people not art, may sound like an ingenious solution the issue of people becoming jaded with respect to their professional surroundings, but no one thought about the long term issues associated with this scheme. With all this office relocation that has been going on for years on end, we now have HR and Training people trying to contemplate pastel landscapes and outdated flags, Engineers and developers being assaulted by simple pictures with inspirational phrases and the rest of us losing productivity as we try to understand the complexities associated with the engineering flowcharts and diagrams that once directed the development processes of our companies.
Pardon the pun, but this cannot be considered a pretty picture.
As an example, currently outside my office is a Software Improvement Process Diagram. It is on that heavy gage high density white presentation board. On the surface this isn’t so bad, other than the fact that the plan is dated 2004. It is only ten years old. Now it may be a fabulous process and there is even the finite possibility that it still may be applicable. The problem is that it is not applicable to me. I am here now, and I need my abstract pastel landscapes, or even a trite inspirational eagle or two if I am to get my work done.
On the inside of my office is a multi-dimensional, multi-figured, multi-colored flow chart and guide to problem solving. When you put the four three dimensional figures that represent the various stages of the problem solving process together, to me they
resemble a psychedelic lava lamp that has been laid on its side
The four phases of the problem solving process all quite conveniently start with the same letter “D”. They are “Define”, “Discover”, “Develop”, “Demonstrate”…..
Reading further into the detail….Wait a minute. This thing is actually starting to make some sense. I guess I should have looked at it in more detail sooner.
Nevermind.
Category Archives: Self Analysis
Don’t Drive Angry
For those of you that don’t know, I live in Texas. Texas is an interesting state and there are many things that I like about it. And there are a few that I am not so fond of, such as the apparent absence of any mountains or anything else that might pass for “terrain” within a five to six hour driving radius from where I live. It’s pretty flat here. Driving in Texas is invariably a very high speed endeavor and learning experience. Hence there are many signs along the sides of the various highways which simply state “Drive Friendly”.
It may be a reach but I got to thinking of the parallels that exist between Texas highways and today’s business climate. I think it is obvious that there are far more ups and downs in today’s business than there are on Texas’ highways, at least in the part of Texas that I live in. Now there is supposed to be some mythical portion of Texas that is referred to as the “hill country” where there are supposed to be some hills and there may be some people who claim to live there that might dispute this assertion.
I have flown and driven over a great deal of the state. While not “planer” flat in the mathematical sense, it is by and large pretty flat.
But I digress….
I think that some of the speed limits on Texas highways are some of the highest speed limits in the country, and even these are considered to be not much more than guidelines and suggestions as opposed to limits and laws by the Texas locals driving here. People move quickly here on the roads. This requires a great deal of attention and high speed interaction if you are to get anywhere safely.
Are you now starting to see the parallel between driving in Texas and working into today’s business environment?
What Texas has learned is that high speed interaction between people requires a certain amount of courtesy and respect between the related participants. There needs to be a certain adherence to the protocols associated with the various interactions (such as driving on the proper side of the road, remaining in your appropriate lane, dimming lights for oncoming traffic, and if you are going to swear at or call the other participants on the road derogatory names it is probably good form to keep your windows up so that they cannot hear you (this would be the automotive equivalent to the “mute” button on a conference call). Hand gestures of just about any kind, other than a polite, short, open handed wave are discouraged.
In short, this type of mutual respect and interaction on the Texas highways can be considered driving friendly.
What the Texas highway department has realized is that people who are not friendly on the Texas highways seem to have more issues and unpleasant interactions on the Texas highways than those that are friendly. They have learned that people who are not operating in a friendly manner in a high speed environment have problems interacting with other people in a high speed environment. Being tired, angry or any other non-friendly physical or emotional state could affect how they are perceived and have a detrimental effect on their performance and interactions.
Overly aggressive behavior, just as overly timid behavior had a tendency to cause issues on the roads and disrupt the smooth flow of traffic. The same was seen with a lack of respect for the needs and rights of the other drivers on the road. It was also noted that the boorish behavior of one could engender a similar behavior in others, again resulting in a limitation of the progress for all. Even those that are maintaining their proper decorum on the roads needed to be ever aware for those that were not in order to make sure that they were not inadvertently caught up in issues not of their own making.
Hence the multitude of signs dotting the (mostly flat) Texas highways reminding all participants to “Drive Friendly”.
Unfortunately, most business environments do not come with signs reminding the various participants to drive friendly.
By its very nature today’s high speed business environment requires us to openly and directly confront the various issues that we face on a daily basis. Many of these issues can be the result of actions, activities and behaviors of others on the same road. In short there are many times where we are asked, or in some instances forced to deal with issues that are not of our own doing. There are other times where we will be dealing with issues that are our own. This is business.
When there is an issue to be solved it doesn’t matter at that point in time who is responsible for creating that issue. Despite everyone’s urge and desire to first thing figure out who is to blame for it. What matters is who is going to be responsible for solving it. If someone is driving on the wrong side of the street or running red lights, it can create issues. If there is a traffic issue you worry about taking care of the issue and those affected by it first, then you look at who is at fault. Getting people back in the right lanes and making sure that they stop at future red lights should be the preventative solution goal as it is always more effective to avoid future issues than to have to expend the time and resources required to deal with them.
By the way, that red light thing in Texas can be tricky. I think the standard street light progression as perceived by Texans is: Green – Yellow – Dark Yellow – Really Dark Yellow – Almost Green Again – Should Have Been Green Again By the Time I got There – Green. It seems that the standard response to any of these perceived light colors or light color changes is to increase speed to enable that person get through the intersection as quickly as possible and thereby minimize the time available for any intersection issues. This approach does not always seem to work.
Business is about how effectively we can interact with others in the pursuit of our objectives and goals. Our human nature makes it difficult to separate how we are feeling at that time from how we are dealing with others. Anger and other emotions have a tendency to adversely affect our performance and decisions making abilities in the office, just as they do when we get behind the wheel of a car.
Business decisions and judgment, like the decisions and judgments while driving on the highway are best performed when we “Drive Friendly”. Perhaps we might do better if we added a few more “Drive Friendly” signs to the office environment, instead of just having them on the sides of the flat Texas highways.
Thinking It Through
Every now and then I have a good idea. Depending on whom you ask you can get the entire gamut of responses as to how often this type of event actually occurs. My mother seems to think just about every one of my ideas is a good one and that they are the result of the fifty percent of my DNA that came from her. It seems to me that she didn’t always think that. I think it started when I got the idea of graduating college and moving out. My wife on the other hand seems to think that I might have a significantly lower hit rate for good ideas as opposed to the total number of ideas that I have. A much, much, significantly lower hit rate. I think the number of good ideas that I have probably lies somewhere between these two boundaries, but it is hard to tell which is which until I spend some time thinking them through.
A good example of this process can be seen in how I write these articles. I keep a pad and pen around where I capture all the ideas that I have for topics for future articles. When I have an idea, I write it down on the list. The list grows and the articles get written. Seeing the list helps me visualize and formulate what ideas I want to convey and what I want to say. When I don’t capture my idea on the list I have a tendency to forget what my idea was and then I go through the day kicking myself because I have forgotten what was obviously going to be a great topic.
I didn’t get this process from school or writing class or anything like that. I got it from work. I always keep both a notebook and a whiteboard (both topics of previous articles) in my office where I would (and still do) capture the things that I felt needed to be done. I know that writing something down instead of typing it in is old school, but so what.
As of that point in time that the topics got written down on the article list or objectives were written on the white board, all of them were good ideas. Ideas such as “insult the boss” or “complain of wife’s attire” are not good ideas and didn’t make the list. I was obviously proud of this fact.
I then started working through the ideas selecting the topics to write about or prioritizing the various things I felt needed to be done in the business. I would start writing articles or further outlining activities on the white board or charts. I would very rapidly start to see which of my topics and activities would be fruitful and relatively easy to generate positive results. I would also see that some other ideas and activities would also be good, but would require deeper thought and more effort to bring to closure. It was some of these activities and articles that I have been the most proud of.
I would also begin to see that in some of those topics and ideas, regardless of how hard I worked them at this point in time were not going to yield something that would work out well enough that I would want to sign my name to. These items and objectives were not then discarded. They were put back into the holding file for further consideration and thought. Some have stayed there a very long time and probably will never see the light of day. Some have stayed there a relatively short period of time before the translation occurred between what I had and what I wanted. Some were left on the white board to remind me what I needed to think about and what I felt needed to get done.
What brought this mental process to mind was my last article, the one that I didn’t write and didn’t post. I had a great topic. I thought it would be one of those easy to write and be oh so proud of it ones. I got started. I soon realized the path that I was on for that topic was taking me down the wrong road. Try as I might I couldn’t see a way to get onto the right path and convey the wisdom that I was absolutely sure that I had inside of me. I had to put it back in the holding file. It wasn’t ready.
I suspect that if my wife ever reads any of my articles that she is smiling right now and commenting to herself that I should probably do that with far more of my ideas.
The point I am making here is that at the start all ideas start out as good ideas. It is not until after we work on them and work through them that we can ascertain the feasibility and applicability to the goals that we have. Some make the grade. Some do not. I have actually found that the majority of both my article topics and identified business activities end up at least in part resulting in a product that gets put forth into the world in one form or another.
There will always be those that will want to poke holes in your ideas, or articles for that matter. I have gotten some interesting comments regarding some of the topics and articles I have written. I am pretty sure that some of their suggestions and conditions that they have ascribed to me regard capabilities that are probably either genetically or biologically impossible.
But it doesn’t stop me. It really doesn’t even slow me down.
There will always be those in business that will at first adhere to the “Not Invented Here” school of ideas (commonly called NIH Syndrome). It is at this point in time that your metal will be tested. How feasible is your idea or proposal? Have you thought it through?
Many of us have a tendency to propose an incomplete or not fully thought through and formed idea. It might be a good idea that is worthy of going on the list for development. However proposing it prior to thinking it through would be like publishing an article before it is fully written.
What is the first thing most people do when they hear a new idea?
They try to shoot holes in it. They look for the weaknesses and the reasons that it will not work.
It is the common perception that if one chink in the armor can be found, if one flawed aspect of an otherwise glorious and eminently functional idea can be identified, then by association the entire idea can be dismissed as unworkable.
It may be human nature where the inherent resistance to change may be built into our collective DNA. I don’t know. Sometimes it seems that we would rather continue down the known road, which we know will not get us to where we need to be, instead of changing direction and setting out on a road whose final destination is not fully known but at least is going in the direction we want. When I catch myself resisting someone else’s new ideas I consciously try to take a step back and try to be more receptive. Even so, it takes an effort.
Thinking through the new idea will help you uncover any potential issues and weaknesses. It will help you prepare for the NIH syndrome that you will inevitably encounter. It will prepare you with responses to potential objections. It will also save you some embarrassment if your idea turns out to be one of those that actually should have stayed on your list or white board for a little while longer.
Most everybody at one time or another has good ideas. Some get captured and some get forgotten. It is the interval and the effort that goes into the idea after it gets captured and before it gets proposed that is the key. It can be the difference between being just another “off the cuff” suggestion and a studied and considered proposal for improvement. A good idea matters. Thinking it through matters even more.
Bad Deals
I started off my business career in sales. I admit it. It’s not something I am particularly proud of…come to think of it, it is something that I am particularly proud of. I can honestly say that I spent time in one of the most difficult professional disciplines around, the professional discipline of trying to get someone to give you their money. I learned a lot in sales about dealing with customers. I also learned a lot about dealing with the internal mechanisms of the company that I worked for as well. I thought that any customer that I could make a deal with and get an order from was a good customer. As I have progressed through my career I have learned that not all deals and customers are good.
For the average salesperson an order is an order. The more of them you get, the more commissions you get. The more commissions you get the more money and personal esteem you acquire. Along with this comes better houses, cars, big screen TVs and along with the laws of natural selection an increased opportunity to pass your sales DNA along to future generations of sales people. In case you missed it, sales is a jungle.
The ideal sales deal is that you provide your customer with something they need, a product or a service, and they provide you with something you need, primarily money. As long as everyone keeps this sort of exchange arrangement in mind things normally go well, and for the most part they usually do.
Occasionally however there have been recorded instances where things didn’t go well. Many of these sorts of instances are attributable to honest mistakes or misunderstandings and the preponderance of them can be cleared up by honest and diligent work by both parties associated with the deal.
Then there are the outliers. Those deals that you have entered into that despite the fact that you’re doing everything right, either one or both of the parties to the deal are unhappy. Either the customer is not getting what they wanted, or you are not getting paid. Sometimes both. What do you do?
The first step is to find the nearest Home Depot store. Go there and go into their Bathroom / Plumbing section and find a really nice mirror. Buy that mirror, take it to your office, hang it on your wall and spend some time looking at and questioning the person in that mirror to make absolutely sure that you are in fact living up to your end of the deal. Try to look at the person in that mirror from the customer’s point of view. Have you told the customer everything the need to know? Have you done everything you need to do? Start with you.
If you have completed step one and are reasonably confident that you and your team are providing all the entitled goods and services to both the letter and the spirit of the contract then the issue may in fact lie on the other side of the deal, with the customer. This is usually a pretty rare, but not an unheard of event. You may have a customer that through either the normal or abnormal conduct of their business is difficult to deal with.
I have not had to deal with this sort of situation very often thank goodness, but when I have it has normally fallen into one of two categories: it is either a very small customer that for whatever reason has been forced into a position where they cannot adhere to the deal they made, or a very large customer who feels that they are either such a desirable customer or so dominant in their market that they do not feel that they have to adhere to the deal they have made.
Of the two scenarios, I prefer the first one. A company that can’t honor the deal for the most part will be willing to work with you. There may be a solution out there where the deliverables of the deal can be altered to where both parties can be addressed. A small customer company by its nature can be a fragile enterprise. There are risks associated with dealing with them. They will however usually try to work with you.
On the other side of the spectrum is the large company. These are companies that understand the role and position in the market and use it as leverage against all of their suppliers. If you want their business then they feel that you will have to play their game. Most customers want their partners to make a reasonable profit. This usually assures them of a continued available supply of the good or service that they want or need. Some however just want the deal now and will not care if you are around for the next one or not. They know there will be someone else there if you are not.
The usual response to this tactic is for the organization to agree to the terms because the organization decides that it wants the business bad enough, and the size of the business is large enough to warrant an agreement. There will usually be pressure from the sales team trying to convince everyone of the strategic nature of both the business and the customer in question, and how the profit will be made up on the next deal.
It never happens that way, and there is nothing strategic about unprofitable business. I have addressed this topic specifically in the past. You can talk yourself into just about any kind of business, but you cannot talk yourself into profitability.
Once you are into one of these types of deals where the customer is obviously leveraging you there are only a limited number of things you can do: You can look for a legal way out, or look for a way to minimize the damage and exposure while you meet your end of the agreement. After all, you signed it.
Exiting a deal because you don’t like the terms of a contract you signed is usually only an option of last resort. Unless you have been demonstrably misled by the customer, this really isn’t an option. But it is also a financial decision as well. If the fines and penalties for leaving the contract are less that than the losses expected from continuing, it needs to be reviewed.
That usually leaves buckling down, trying to reduce all costs associated with the deal in question, and then getting out at the earliest legal time. Issue the exit / cancelation notification and don’t take any argument from the sales team or customer. These are the teams that were responsible for the deal in the first place. Don’t allow them to prolong the inevitable.
Be polite. Be firm. Be gone.
Sometimes bad contracts are expensive opportunities to learn lessons. Other times they can just be plain expensive. They can be lessons about markets. They can be lessons about sales teams and their compensation incentives. They can be lessons about specific customers. The important point is that they need to be lessons that are learned.
If you have only a contract or two that fall into this category then they could be an anomaly. If you have multiple bad deals in a specific market or with a specific customer, you need to learn how to de-risk those types of deals, or avoid those specific markets or customers.
If you have multiple bad deals across multiple markets and customers, then you have a sales force issue, where their objectives and incentives are not aligned with the profitability objectives and requirements of the company. This is a key point. If you have a number of bad deals you have an issue with your sales team and their compensation plan. You probably need to make sure that the sales team has some sort of margin or profitability goal associated with their compensation in order to avoid this situation.
Regardless, the only person responsible for a bad deal is the one that agreed to it. Don’t sign a bad deal hoping you can make it better. Don’t specifically blame the customer, but if they are unwilling to create an agreement that is at least fair to both parties you need to remember and learn from it. Learn from it and put the processes in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Bad deals happen only because you agree to them.
Defining Success
I started this topic quite a while ago and put it away as I could not comfortably come up with a method to address the topic. I now have a daughter in college and it seems to have taken on a new life for me.
We all want to be successful and even more so want our children to be successful. I didn’t want this discussion to be purely an analysis of numbers and trends, but rather the relationship to both the opportunity and probability of “success” and more importantly the definition of success. For so long, so many of us have defined “success” as going to school, then going to college, graduating, getting a good job with a major company and going on from there.
Is that really the proper definition of success in today’s world?
We normally associate the attendance of and graduation from college as a prerequisite of success. I was reading an article about relative graduation rates for students in the US who attend college. It showed that the graduation rate could be directly correlated to the cost of the college. That means that the more expensive the college tuition (Private school vs. Public institution) the more likely it was that the student would graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 4 years. I guess that means that if you want to up the odds of your kid graduating from college that you had better send them to an expensive school.
The problem is that they are now all expensive. Very expensive.
It showed that on average about two thirds of students entering a Private institution of higher learning graduate with a degree in 4 years (actual number is 64%), and that about one third of students entering a public institution of higher learning graduate with a degree in 4 years (actual number is 37%). It also shows that the gap closes significantly if graduation data is reviewed after 6 years instead of 4. Private school students hit 3 out of 4 graduating (actual number 78%) and public school students hit 2 out of 3 (actual number is 66%).
Stepping it back a little further, and out of my own curiosity, I looked up the percentage of high school students that graduate from high school and enter college. This number comes in at about 70%. It is interesting that in these difficult economic times that this number is now at its all time high (actually it was set in 2009, but 2010 was at almost the same level). Being something of a math-guy, I multiplied the two numbers together and came up with the fact that less than half the people that go to high school actually graduate high school and college (even after 6 years of college).
Okay, so what.
When is the last time you have hired, or you have heard of someone being hired into an organization without a college degree? If less than half the people entering school graduate college, chances are they won’t be hired by a corporate organization. That doesn’t mean they aren’t successful. It means they are doing something else.
This got me thinking a little bit further on the topic.
I did what most people do these days. I went out and “Googled” the percentage of college graduates that are actually hired into a position that requires a college degree. I make this distinction because some graduates will take positions that do not require a college degree to perform the work (check out the baristas at Starbucks), and others will not find work (check out the “boomerang” kids returning from college to live at home).
As we all might expect this number varies with the status of the economy. In 2006 and 2007 approximately 85-90% of college graduates found work. In 2010 this number dropped to only 56%. 22% of 2010 college graduates took jobs that did not require a college degree. In total 78% of 2010 college graduates found work, but many of them were “under employed”.
That means that of the people who start school, a little less than half actually graduate college with a degree. Of those that graduate college, a little more than half (or a quarter of the total that started) actually find a job that requires a college degree.
A little more research – again with Google’s help, revealed that of those that find work as a college graduate new hire, 46% – again almost half, will leave their jobs (either of their own volition or at the company’s direction) in the first 18 months of employment. The information I found goes further to indicate that while 46% leave, only 19% of those that stay will be successful, with successful being defined as advancing up the corporate chain with increasing responsibilities and a (hopefully) fulfilling career. To me that means that 35% (the 54% that do not fail less the 19% that are actually successful) of college graduate new hires remain employed but are again not what we might successful.
So let’s recap. If we have 100 people who start school, approximately 70 of them will graduate high school. Of those 70, approximately 50 will graduate college. Of those 50 college graduates, approximately 28 will find a job that requires a college degree in today’s economic climate. Of those 28 that have found work, approximately 13 will leave their jobs in the first 18 months of their employment. Of those 15 that remain employed, approximately 5 will be what we as business leaders might call successful.
According to our preconceived notion of success, only five percent (5%) of the people will be successful.
Now I have had to pause here for a while because there are so many different directions that I can go with this type of information and analysis. We can look at the societal or cultural reasons why almost three quarters of those people starting school won’t graduate from college and will most likely be excluded from consideration for positions in our companies. We can look at what causes almost half of those that we do hire to leave. We could also look for the presence of similar characteristics in the successful five percent and see how we might be able to teach and train people on how to utilize these success attributes.
Or we could ask if we have the right definition of success.
The comedian Craig Ferguson had what I thought was an incredibly insightful as well as very funny monologue addressing what he called the “deification of youth” where he noted amongst other things that youth also meant a lack of experience. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROJKEwYEx8Q) And a lack of experience to me means that you don’t know what you want yet. How can people be successful, when they lack the experience to know what they want to be successful at?
When we judge success we have a tendency to judge it from our own perspective and experience (because we are not young, we have experience), and not everybody has the same perspective. As time passes and we gain more of the “experience” that Craig Ferguson mentioned our perspective also changes. Not everyone who starts school is destined to be a leader in business. Not everyone who plays golf is destined for the PGA, or now senior PGA tour.
Of the two I think it is now the golf one that bothers me most.
Many, simply by the choices that they make will opt to be something other than what “we” may currently define as successful in business. We see this in the generational definitions that are currently in vogue. Generation X, Generation Y, Baby Boomers, etc. all have their own definitions of success. We as business leaders need to understand these differences and try to adapt to them as well as try to adapt them to the goals of business. Not everybody will meet our definition of success, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be successful.
That doesn’t change the fact though, that I want my daughter to graduate from college…and get a good job.
Why Ask Why
Have you ever asked yourself why you are doing what you are doing, right now, in the office? Most of the time we spend in the office seems to be composed of a pleasingly familiar set of activities that we have been doing for quite a while. We continue to do what we have been doing usually because at one time or another it worked on a problem. We received the positive feedback we were looking for and incorporated it into our routine. Not to sound too trite but I think we can all agree that today, and looking forward, the business world does not look anything like routine.
Believe it or not I was too young to really remember the 1960’s, but I have read about them and have watched innumerable movies that were set in the period. This of course makes me an expert on the 1960’s. After all this intensive research, and all the popcorn and sodas associated with watching the research, I think you can distill down an entire decade in American history into a two word sentence:
Question everything.
The reason that I have taken this half century retrospective (gosh, is it really fifty years ago?) is that it may be time to dust off the “Oldie but Goldie” catchphrase and start ruthlessly applying it to business.
It is easy to start down a simple road in business. The problem is that almost no road remains simple, or straight. There are always twists and turns, and probably even a few loop-the-loops in every business road.
I’m sorry; I got carried away with my metaphors there. I’ll try to keep that sort of behavior to a minimum.
My point is that every business needs to continually ask itself why is it doing what it is doing. Just because it started down what it thought was the right road a while ago doesn’t mean that it is still the right road today. Again, this is pretty basic stuff, but when it all gets boiled down to the basics, business is really pretty simple.
Business is about customers.
Now despite what the courts or politicians may rule or claim, businesses are not people. I think it is much the contrary, in fact I think it is the opposite: People are business. The business can’t ask itself why it is doing what it is doing, but the people can.
This brings us back to the comfortable routine that the majority of people in business have day in and day out, going down the road that they started out on some time in the past. The easy path, the path of least resistance is to continue down the path that we are on. A plan, program or model may have been put in place and work begun. Chances are that time has passed. At the risk of propellering off into rampant triteness again, if time has passed, chances are that times have changed.
The only real constant in business is customers.
When we begin to ask ourselves why we are doing what we are doing, any question we ask that does not have the word “customer” in it, and does not focus on how to bring value to the customer is probably a wrong question to ask. It will be this single minded approach to how we address changing what we do and why we do it that will enable businesses to navigate the necessary changes in directions, and different roads that must be traversed.
Small businesses are usually held up as models of outward facing, customer oriented businesses. I think this is probably correct. I also think that this is probably not due to any deliberate focus or business magic. I think the reason that small businesses focus on the customer is because they don’t have anything else to focus on. They are small businesses. By definition they do not have much in the way of internal infrastructures, or any of the other trappings of large businesses. They only have an idea or product and customers, so by default that is all they focus on.
It is usually not until a business becomes large and somewhat successful that it begins to focus on things other than customers. This is also the appropriate time to start asking the difficult questions. If you ask yourself the “why are you doing this / is it for the customers’ benefit” question, and you either can’t answer it or associate it with a customer value, then you need to start looking deeper at what you are doing.
Companies seem to begin to lose their way, and their customer focus when they start to concentrate on better ways to do things instead of doing things better. It’s a subtle but important difference. Focusing on a better way to do things means you are shifting your attention to how you are doing something. Focusing on doing things better means you are still focused on what you are doing.
In most instances (but admittedly probably not all instances) your customers will not be particularly interested in how you do something. They will definitely be interested in the result of what you have done. To put it another way, do you really care how a company builds a car? If the company uses all manual processes or a fully automated production line, does that materially affect your buying decision on the car?
Speaking only personally at this point, I don’t remember asking the car salesman those questions the last time I bought a car. I was more interested in the resulting product, its safety, reliability, efficiency, and most importantly if I thought I would look cool driving it.
This again is a good time to bring us back to asking ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. We need to always focus on and keep in mind if what we are doing is providing value to the customer, or if we are doing it for some other reason. Are we internally focused on our own systems, programs and processes and trying to hopefully provide ourselves value or are we focused on improving what we provide to the customer and providing them more value. It may sound a little strange but we need be relentless and ruthless when it comes to customer focus and what we are doing. If we don’t, when we take our eyes and minds off that customer for whatever period of time while we focus on some internal aspect of how we do things, someone else who is focusing on that customer will take that customer away.
The next time you walk into your office and begin your normal start of the day routine, you probably ought to ask yourself “why”.
Politics
We would all like to think that business is run as a meritocracy. That would mean that those who have actually earned favored or leadership positions would be the ones that occupy favored or leadership positions. Either unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you choose to look at it, that is not entirely the case. Personalities, friendships, alliances and past histories all come into play when leaders and their teams are selected. In multinational companies it also seems whether we want to believe it or not that location and cultural heritage can come into play when leadership positions are discussed. The politics of business, the perceptions of who we are and how we act can be potentially more important than our business accomplishments and capabilities when it comes to opportunities for leadership roles.
I would be surprised if that last statement did not elicit a collective “Duh” from everyone.
Leaders want a diversity of thought on their teams. By having differing points of view pitfalls such as “group think” and “blind spots” are avoided and stronger team solutions are arrived at. Leaders also usually want a uniformity of support on their teams as well. This means that they like to know that they have people on their team that they can count on regardless of the situation.
On the surface this may sound like an irresolvable dichotomy; a desire for a diversity of thought and opinion and a unanimity of support from the same people on a single team. The balance is struck by the astute leader that can select members of the team that are all driven to achieve the best results, no matter whose solution is selected or implemented. The dynamic is maintained by team members who understand that there are other members on the team who may have equally passionate opinions and points of view on issues, and who focus on the solution, not the individual who has proposed it.
For the leader politics is about having trust in the team. For the team it is earning and maintaining the trust of the leader and working as an individual within the team. For the individuals of the team it is about the meshing of personalities and styles with the leader. A good example of this phenomenon can be seen when a new leader or CEO is brought into an organization. The new leader will usually review and interview the existing team, and then replace either part or possibly all of the team with new team members that are known entities have experience with and are trusted by the leader. The replaced team members probably have done nothing wrong. They were just unknown entities that had not had the opportunity to fully gain the leader’s trust and were replaced by people who had already proven their abilities and trust to the new leader. Were the replaced team members less capable? Probably not since they were already performing in those roles for the previous leader, but that’s now a moot point as they were not given the opportunity to fully prove their capabilities to the new leader.
That is an example of the politics of business at some of its highest levels. It usually plays out to a similar extent at just about every level within an organization. Leaders at all levels of an organization have a tendency to “like” to have certain people, and certain types of people on their teams. These are the people who have engendered a political trust by the leader. They are to some extent know entities. They have known capabilities and approaches to solving issues. They have demonstrated allegiance to the leader, and performance in the past and are expected to do so in the future.
Politics even more so comes into play in trying to make the transition from an unknown entity as part of a team, to a known, “liked” and trusted team member. There are no hard and fast rules that can be put in place here other than one: as both a business person and a team member you must be true to your nature. Do not try to be all things to all people. It is even worse if you try to be different things to different people.
There are a limited number of positions on any team. Not everyone can be on the team. There will be some leaders that will not be compatible with who you are and how you go about your responsibilities. The same will probably go for their teams. For example, in a matrix and consensus structured organization, individuals with an authority-responsibility disposition may not be as fully comfortable or successful as they would be in a general management or profit and loss structured organization. The same would go in reverse where matrix comfortable individuals would probably have issue in the P&L structured organization.
Unlike governmental politics where it seems the process is to find the best way to tell people what they want to hear, business politics seems to be more about finding the best way to tell people what they need to hear. Public arguments and friction caused by differing opinions and aggressive message delivery styles will probably not be considered the most politically astute way of communicating what the leader needs to hear in the business environment.
Some people might argue that I have the political savvy of a petulant fourth grader. To some extent this might be true although I would hope that I would have learned a little since then. Early in my career I learned that I seem to migrate toward leaders that were more results and less process oriented. This did not mean that it was only results that counted. There was obviously more to it than that, but it at least put me in an environment that matched my business performance tendencies. I understood this and did not try to become a process or qualitative team member. I carried this objective, results and quantitative approach with me as I matriculated in management.
Now the politics of business for me are more associated with assessing the management structure that I am in to understand if they are quantitative-results oriented, or qualitative-process oriented. I understand where I am a better fit and where I am not. For me to be a member of a qualitative team would be a stress on them as well as myself. Likewise it might be a stress for a process focused individual to be a member of my team, since my tendencies are not in that direction.
Just as you should work to understand your business styles and tendencies, so do leaders need to look to understand your business styles and tendencies. Leaders look for both diversity and compatibility in their teams. As leaders take on new roles and need to create new teams, or as they look to fill roles in their existing teams in will be business style and team compatibility that will become more the deciding factors as most potential candidates will be fully technically competent or they would not have been considered in the first place.
What may be viewed as politics can also be viewed as leaders looking for a comfort level with the individual members of a team, and the team as a whole. Those that the leader has worked with in the past, either directly as a team member or as part of another type of issue, may have a “political” advantage or disadvantage, depending on how that leader has viewed the style of their business conduct. Beneficial experiences and compatible business approaches can in some instances potentially favorably sway decisions that might have been made on merit alone. Just as dissonant experiences and compatibility can potentially unfavorably sway decisions in the other direction.
Business opportunities, promotions, assignments, etc. will not always seem to go to the most deserving or the one who may have best earned it, from each individual’s perspective. There will always be a personal experience, compatibility and trust factors associated with each leader’s decisions. We would all like to look at this as “politics” when it comes to how someone may or may not have ingratiated themselves with a particular leader. Leaders always evaluate p
eople, both those on their teams and those that are not. Understanding this, and combining it with finding the appropriate business performance style to provide leaders with the information that they need to know may be the best solution to dealing with business politics. It provides the opportunity to demonstrate business capabilities without generating conflict or dissonance. Leaders can look for capability and compatibility for their teams and individuals can look for resonance in leaders for their business approaches and styles.
I wish I had learned this one a little better earlier in my career. I was under the mistaken impression that being right or delivering on objectives was the only thing that mattered. It matters a great deal, but when everyone believes they are right in their own approach and are delivering on their objectives to one extent or another, it may be the other criteria, or politics that make the difference.
Wait….
I am pretty passionate about what I do and the responsibilities I have. It makes me opinionated about what needs to be done for the benefit of the business. It drives me forward and I think it has probably been a key element of my successes in business. If I am going to sign my name to it, or be responsible for the results generated, I want to believe in it and have input to it. I understand that I have my point of view. I understand that there may be points of view other than mine. When I encounter these other points of view I usually try to convince these misguided souls of the errors of their ways by demonstrating to them the superior logic and position of my point of view. These interchanges are usually called arguments. I have learned over time that before I engage those with opinions that are different than mine in an argument (or high energy discussion if you prefer), that I need to wait.
Discussions are about participants exchanging ideas. They are usually about a search for something, be it more information or a better solution. Arguments are about the participants trying to convince each other that the other participant is wrong. When you get into an argument basically one of two things can happen. You can be right and win the argument, but at what cost? Or you can be wrong and lose the argument, and again at what costs?
Discussions have a collaborative element to them. There is benefit to be gained by both parties. Arguments are a zero sum gain situation. Someone will win and someone will lose. Like a boxing match in arguments there can be knock outs, technical knock outs, unanimous decisions, and split decisions. Occasionally there can be draws or no decisions, but those are relatively rare outcomes of any argument. Arguments are meant to be won, otherwise why engage in them?
I once worked at a company where culturally the “right” and “wrong” of an argument did not matter as much as the passion and rigor that was employed in the argument. This meant that an acknowledged “wrong” outcome could be the result of an argument if the arguer was vehement and passionate enough about their position. It was a culture of arguing, not discussing. As you might suspect that was quite a learning experience.
Being passionate and opinionated about business are key elements that drive leaders to both achieve and succeed. Left unbridled or uncontrolled these elements can create an argumentative environment. If a leader formulates an opinion and then is unwilling to look for more information or a potentially better solution, there will be no room for discussions. There will only be arguments. Eventually there will be fewer and fewer of those as they are generally viewed as unproductive. With no discussions and fewer arguments, a leader had better hope they are correct in the formulations of all their opinions.
When I was a kid my dad used to tell me that he was not always right, but he was never wrong. I guess I didn’t get to win many arguments with him, despite however I might try. He also told me that he might not always be right, but he was always the boss.
Winning an argument usually means that you have to prove the other person wrong. Depending on how this is done it can be either a constructive experience or a destructive one. I think we have all been in the position where someone is so far out on a limb in their argument and in our opinion so far out of touch with the realities of the situation that it is difficult not to publicly saw it off out from under them. While this act can provide momentary pleasure it causes issue with the person on the limb and it will cause issue for those doing the sawing.
Publically putting someone down in business, regardless of how badly they deserve it, or possibly need it will only lead to a reputation as being someone that puts people down. It will not enhance your image. It will not make you a better leader. It will just make people a little more careful about what they say around you. If this is your object, then go for it; however be prepared to be shown no mercy in the unlikely event that at some time in the future you may actually be wrong.
The key point here is that there is a significant difference between being passionate and opinionated about what needs to be done, and being argumentative about what needs to be done. Very few people will venture into an argument believing that they are wrong. They like you will believe that they are right and will want to do what is best for the business.
We all have a pride of ownership associated with our ideas and plans. This is what makes us want to defend them so vigorously when faced with questions or alternative proposals. The idea here is to wait before engaging in an argument. That is correct, wait.
There will always be time to argue. Once the argument is started it usually can’t be stopped. It took me a while to learn this one. In school as in just about anywhere else, it was encouraged to argue your position. That was because you only had an hour or so in each class and like your favorite detective show on TV a solution had to be arrived at within that hour.
In business you have more time than that. Business does move quickly, but not so quickly that you cannot afford to sleep on any issue that may be the genesis of an argument. If you still feel the same way about the situation in the morning then you can argue. However it has been my experience that you won’t.
You will have had time to cool down and avoid the immediate emotional response. You will have had time to evaluate, even if it is subconsciously, the other person’s opinion and position to see what if any merit it may actually hold. You may be better able to participate in a discussion instead of precipitating an argument.
In short, by learning to wait you may be able to make sure that everyone is a winner instead of having to have someone lose in an argument.
Thinker’s Block
I love my subconscious. It always seems to be on, even when I am not. It does have its drawbacks. I suspect that it is responsible for my fear of spiders, but I can’t prove it. I didn’t know I had a fear of Spiders until I saw the movie “Arachnophobia” some years back. About half way through the movie I couldn’t stand to have my feet on the floor of the darkened theater because I thought I felt things on my legs. I guess that is the price I have to pay for having an active subconscious. But I know it is always there, ticking away. “Ticking” makes it sound like my subconscious works like some sort of fine Swiss watch. I am pretty sure it doesn’t do that either. It actually seems to go in fits and starts, and leaps and bounds. I have also learned to trust it almost implicitly when it comes to business issues and finding answers.
When we are faced with an issue or a problem it seems to be our nature to obsess or grind on it until we have a solution. In general this approach will usually work. The conscious application of experience and knowledge, focused and brought to bear on a finite and defined problem will usually yield a workable solution and good results. We learned this by studying for and taking examinations in school. We learned the basics and the tenets of our various disciplines and then tried to apply them to the questions posed to us to see if we knew how to properly apply them, not just memorized them. This was a good process to use when you knew going in that there was a “correct” answer to be found. Hopefully we have brought these good solutioning habits into our business environments.
But what happens when you do everything you are supposed to do, and the solution does not present itself? In business you are not assured that there is ever a “correct” answer to be found. Perhaps the best you can do is finding an answer that is not as bad as any of the others. You gather the facts and check the data. You understand the needs and availabilities, costs and prices, supplies and demands. You have got it. Just like all the previous times. But for whatever reason unlike all the other times, the answer to your issue this time is just not there.
You have the dreaded Thinkers Block.
I call it thinkers block because for the most part we are all knowledge workers. When a writer finds that they are unable to write for any reason, it is usually referred to a “Writer’s Block”. It only goes along the same lines of reasoning that if a knowledge worker is unable to perform their knowledge based work they must have Thinker’s Block. I guess you could use “Knowledge Block”, but it just doesn’t seem to communicate the issue at hand as well.
You might think from empirical observation that there are many people out there in the world in general and the business environment specifically who spend their entire lives in this state of mind. I have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. I think that most of these people have probably made a conscious decision on their part to not think anymore. If pressed these people can like riding a bicycle, remember how to think and deliver a solution, but for the most part will not do so. For whatever reason it seems that they have learned that it may be easier to let other people ride their bicycles while they metaphorically take a cab.
So where does the unconscious come into all this discussion of conscious decisions, problem solving and thinkers block you might ask? What I have found is if I have truly done my due diligence on an issue, done the research and applied myself to a solution and still have not arrived at a workable conclusion within a reasonable time frame, then the best thing for me to do is to take a break. It’s time to step away from the issue, work on or do something else for a little while, and let the subconscious take over. What I find is that while I am away or when I come back to the problem that there can be a new way of looking at things or an unexplored direction may be a new path to a solution.
Now you might think that this is such a neat trick that it might be best to just go ahead and bypass all the seemingly unproductive conscious effort and skip right to the unconscious part of the problem solving scenario. I have actually tried this as well. It doesn’t work, at least for me. It seems in this scenario my subconscious does not readily accept direct input. Unless the input is filtered through a direct and significant effort at consciously finding a solution, my subconscious does not seem interested in becoming engaged in the process. I am pretty sure that this is some sort of a built in safety mechanism since from what I can tell I probably do not want to be able to directly access some of the other things in my subconscious directly on a regular basis. If there is anything else in there that is worse than the spider thing I don’t think I want to know about it.
I have actually seen this subconscious problem solving process captured in a movie; “Men in Black III”. When presented with a conundrum that despite their best efforts they couldn’t solve, they didn’t keep pounding their heads against the thinkers block brick wall. They went and got pie. They took a break. And low and behold it worked. Now some script writer must have noticed the same principle that I am writing about or it probably wouldn’t have found its way into that movie.
Now in movies everything has a tendency to work out just fine. In reality, not so much so. However I have found that if I do encounter a situation where I am not able to come up with a solution via the normal analytical process, where I have worked hard at finding a solution but seem to have come up against a brick wall, that if I set it aside for just a little while and either take a short break or work on something else, when I come back to it I seem to have a refreshed view of the situation and can find a way around my thinkers block. I don’t necessarily have to go for pie like the Men in Black do. I usually go for a diet soda, or more recently a bottle of water as I try to take on more of the aspects of a healthier life style.
Sometimes when you have Thinkers Block, the best thing you can do is take a break. When you come back the issue, you may also find that your subconscious has also been busy, and will enable you to look at the problem with fresh eyes and to see an answer.
Now if I could just get it to work on that spider thing.
Losing Your Cool
I lost my cool the other day. I don’t do that very often. I try to make sure I don’t do that very often. I understand that may be hard to believe, but it is true. I didn’t realize just how far I had lost my cool until after I looked up from my phone call, the source of my cool losing, and saw three people staring concernedly at me from my office door. I guess I was louder on my call than I had realized. As I sat down, calmed down and reflected, I wondered is there really a place in business for losing your cool?
I try to be for the most part a positive reinforcement type leader. When people do well, whether they are on my team or not, I try to make sure that they get the recognition and reinforcement to continue on with those desired behaviors and activities. When people miss the mark I usually try to talk with them one on one to see what changes we can make to assure that future opportunities are not missed. It’s pretty rare that I get to the point where such a vociferous interchange occurs.
On the other side of things I have also noted that there always needs to be a balance in the way you conduct your business. There needs to be a reward or upside for appropriate or desirable behavior. There must also to be a downside or penalty for undesirable behavior. It seems that the question might now be; how undesirable must the behavior be to merit so significant a negative reaction? Are there really any types of behavior in a professional environment that should engender such a negative reaction?
Looking back, I can only identify maybe one or two managers in my career that I could really say used losing their cool as a management tool or technique. They were reasonably successful as far as their career progressions went. They both progressed to the senior executive levels, and in one case beyond, but were also widely regarded as rather unpleasant individuals to deal with. I suspect that all the yelling they did had something to do with that perception.
My point with these two examples is that they “used” losing their cool as their management technique. It definitely had a startling effect the first time you witnessed it, or were unfortunate enough to have to experience it firsthand. However after that, each successive time only seemed to reinforce the unpleasant management nature of these people. The actual subsequent yelling and screaming sessions while colorful seemed to lose their impact and value. They led their teams by using the fear of not performing and then having to endure the unpleasant management technique result. It was in essence the avoidance of the negative reinforcement that drove their teams.
As I recall, it was not some of the most fun I had in my career, although I did learn about many of the management and leadership topics that I have previously related. Maybe it was actually more fun than I give it credit for. Probably not.
I think I actually lost my cool because I was frustrated at the behaviors of the people I had been dealing with, both in my team and in another group. I had been dealing with these issues for quite a while. The person on the other end of the phone line receiving my tirade was actually someone I very much respect and consider a friend. That probably played into the situation as well. It is probably harder and less rewarding to yell at a stranger than it is to yell at someone you know. The stranger wouldn’t know if they were just the unfortunate one who happened to be the straw that broke your camel’s back, or if you were just a jerk that always behaved that way. A friend can probably tell the difference. At least I hope so.
In this situation our teams seemed to have found themselves in a finger pointing, circularly intractable situation where each was questioning both the role of and value add of the other group. An unhealthy situation at best. I contacted my friend to let him know of my annoyance at the last round of communications that had transpired. He responded and let me know that he was pleased that I was annoyed by the actions of his team. Perhaps he was being jocular in his response. Perhaps not. However in my somewhat animated and frustrated state over the ongoing issues, and the inability for the two business teams to work together in any way resembling a united effort, I lost my cool.
I have discussed the need for passion in a leader. This instance has reminded me that passion can be a two edged sword. The passion that drives us on to achieve can also result in the frustration over our inability to achieve and that can cause us to lose our cool. The result is that I took it out on a friend. Did he contribute to the situation and did he bear some of the blame, possibly. But that doesn’t mean he deserved to have to put up with me as I careened into my over energized state.
As is usual, I’ll provide a couple of quotes that I think might be pretty germane to this topic. The writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce said:
“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
I am really feeling that one.
Colin Powell, the retired four-star general and author said:
“Get mad, then get over it”
I am still working on that one.
I have sent a short note to apologize to my friend. He should not have had to put up with me in that way. I do however think that we may have broken the circular “do” loop that we were in, and can now start to make progress on the root issues causing both our and our teams frustrations. The next time I feel that frustrated, I think I will try to maintain my decorum and find a less volatile way to deal with the issue and express my displeasure. I really don’t think there is a place in the business for losing your cool.