A lot of people may think that I live in the past because of all the references that I make to it. I read business books that are hundreds of years old because I have decided that almost all new business books and articles are a recycled version of the classics with some modern jargon thrown in to make it seem fresh and contemporary. I compare present generational norms and business performance to the past because they are good benchmarks and yardsticks for what has been done as compared to what is now being done. Those comparisons do not always favor the past generations or business performance. I am eminently aware of the past because without knowledge of the past how would we know what direction we are going? I am definitely aware of the past but I definitely don’t live in the past.
It’s time to get a little esoteric, but why not? George Santayana, the twentieth century philosopher, poet and essayist wrote is his book “The Life of Reason”, (1905):
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Many think that Winston Churchill was the author of the famous quote “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, but he was in fact paraphrasing Santayana. This is just a small literary nugget for your historical learning pleasure.
The key point here is that the retention of what we have learned is the key to progress. This would logically mean that the future is built upon the past. Go figure. It takes a visionary to be able to interpret what was and extrapolate to what’s next. Just as Sony took the leap from portable transistor radios to portable cassette players (the then ubiquitous, and now all but forgotten Sony Walkman – ranked as one of the top TWO technical inventions of the last fifty years), Steve Jobs and Apple took the next leap along the same path with the now ubiquitous iPod (which ranks number THREE behind the Walkman). Contrary to popular belief these products did not materialize out of thin air. They had their roots in the past.
Conversely, there is the ubiquitous financial caveat contained in every investment prospectus that I have ever read, that states very clearly:
“Past results are not a guarantee of future performance”
In business as in sports we always keep score. That is how you tell who is successful and who is not. A very good example of this is the batting averages of baseball players. While the player’s batting average is not a guarantee of the performance of any individual at bat, it does give an indication about what you might expect from that player over time. There are always hitting streaks and slumps that must be factored in, but in general past results are a reasonable predictor, not guarantee, of each player’s future batting performance.
This fact may also be demonstrated in the Walkman – iPod comparison as well. The Walkman was indeed a game changer in the market, but not anymore. The iPod has supplanted it – but it was not until after twenty years had passed where the Walkman was dominant that the iPod was introduced, and even then it took a few years.
The same concept would logically be analogous to business. Understanding past business performance allows you to understand what worked well and what didn’t. Just like knowing individual batting averages or team won-loss records may give you an insight into how they may do for the rest of the season (although no guarantee), in business we like to know who has been profitable, how profitable they have been and how long they have been profitable. It doesn’t mean that they will continue to perform the same way that they have done successfully in the past, and it doesn’t mean that they will have to change everything if they were not successfully done in the past, but it is a good indicator (not a guarantee). There are hopefully always ways to do good things better and ways to improve on failures without starting changing everything and in effect starting anew, or returning to the “infancy” that Santayana mentions. There is that retention of the past thing again.
Staying with my esoteric bent I am going to go a little further into the past. Heraclitus, the fifth century B.C. Greek philosopher said:
“Nothing endures but change.”
This statement has been quoted and paraphrased by everyone from Plato to Diogenes to the latest business management books de jour . We like to all say that the only constant is change. The concept comes from three thousand years in the past, but still seems reasonably applicable today.
However, staying focused on your past is like trying to drive a car forward by looking in the rearview mirror. I don’t know who said this one, and it didn’t seem to be so valuable a quote to spend the time looking it up. Even so, it is reasonably accurate. But you do need to have some idea of where you have been if you are to successfully get to where you want to go. The past is where you were, the present is where you are and the future is always a goal.
So enough already with the philosophy and esoteric. What has this got to do with business?
The past is no guarantor of the future, and we know things are going to change. Knowing the past allows us to understand what the business has done right and what it needs to improve. Even the most disruptive of market forces take time to take effect. Walkmans replacing radios, iPods in turn replacing Walkmans, CDs replacing LPs, digital replacing analog technologies or even automobiles replacing horses for transportation did not happen overnight.
It takes people who understand the past and the trends and directions that it has imparted on the present to make sense of and deal with the present. It is the visionary who understands the past and the trajectory that it has put us on, that can take the next leap and either extend or modify this trajectory as is called for in business to realize the future. The past is useful in that it tells us where we have been in comparison to where we are. It is also a necessity if we are to recognize what we must change and what we should retain to get to the future. You can’t live in the past but you need to be aware of and understand the past if you are to make it to the future.
Blame
What is the first question that gets asked when something goes wrong? This should be an easy one for everybody. The first question that is asked after something goes wrong, or not according to plan is: Who is to blame? It seems to be built into our DNA that we look for someone to blame. This process has evolved into an art form in recent times. It is now even the subject for tongue in cheek commercials, which in my book means blaming someone else for our own performance (good or bad) is now part of our social, and business fabric.
If we happen to fall off a ladder, we blame the ladder manufacturer for not putting a warning label of some sort on the ladder that clearly states that ladders are in fact dangerous pieces of equipment and that the scaling of them should not be attempted by the uncoordinated, clumsy or stupid. Going even further, the epitome of this blaming cultural art form has to be the getting burned by spilling hot coffee in our laps and then blaming the provider of the hot coffee for providing coffee that is too hot. The fact that “spilling” the coffee was involved seems to have been left out of this picture.
I have digressed, but I think you get the picture. Since childhood we have been conditioned to create excuses or blame others for our behaviors. “The dog ate my homework” has moved into our cultural lexicon, as a method of blaming an unexpected external event for not having an assignment completed. “The sun was in my eyes” likewise has evolved into a catch-all method of blaming external factors for not being able to perform an expected function. The bottom line here is that we like to blame other people, issues, factors and things for when we fail to meet expectations. The fact that the dog may have been around for years or that the sun has been around since well before the dawn of man and is a known source of glare, both of which could have and should have been taken into account during preparations, is conveniently not mentioned.
All of this evolution and history of the culture and art of passing the blame for our inability to achieve our objectives or to succeed in completing our tasks brings us to business. I think we have all been around people who are never at fault for missing their goals. They are artful. They are glib. They are eloquent. But they are not leaders. They usually elicit looks from their peers that are normally reserved for politicians, used car salesmen and poorly trained puppies that may have tried their best but just couldn’t seem to go on the paper.
The simple fact is that sometimes in business things do not go the way we hoped, expected or planned. It can be for reasons that are outside of our control or within our control. It doesn’t matter. For whatever reason the job didn’t get done. It happens. I will now impart to you the best phrase to use when creating excuses and placing blame when this type of situation occurs:
“It was my responsibility.”
Stand up. Look in the mirror and recognize the person responsible. Regardless of what happened you shouldn’t get to blame anyone else. Leaders understand this.
It may not have been their fault that the objective was not achieved, but it was their responsibility to achieve the objective.
Other leaders recognize this. It is the leader’s responsibility to put the team in a position to succeed. That means they need to provide the appropriate resources (time, money, people, there really are no other resources than these) to get the job done. If the team doesn’t succeed you cannot blame the team. It is the leader’s responsibility to put the team in a position to succeed.
It is the leader’s responsibility to put the right people on the team. If the right people are not on the team it is not the team’s fault. The team will do the best that it can with the people that are selected for it. It is the leader’s responsibility to foresee the potential issues and roadblocks to the team’s success. It is not the team’s fault that the unexpected occurred. The team is in place at the direction of the leader. A leader needs to be prepared with alternative and back-up plans in case the unexpected does unexpectedly occur.
In business as with falling off a ladder, we seem all too prepared to place the blame for any missed achievements on others. We are all too willing to place the blame elsewhere for our own lack of performance. We also seem to be all too willing to allow others to exhibit the same blame shifting behavior. The blaming art form has given rise to a new activity and the creation of a new word to deal with the blame generation process:
“Blamestorming”: The Oxford Dictionary defines blamestorming as: Group discussion regarding the assigning of responsibility for a failure or mistake. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and identifying a scapegoat. Check out:
http://www.tvspots.tv/video/53353/DIRECTV–BLAMESTORMING
No team is mistake free when it comes to the execution of their responsibilities. No team achieves one hundred percent of their objectives one hundred percent of the time. No team should be blamed for this fact. Just as the leader should acknowledge and attribute all team successes to the team, the leader should NOT blame the team for any failures associated with the team’s performance. Just as the leader receives their credit for the team’s performance from the fact that they enabled the team to be successful, so should they take responsibility for not enabling the team’s success.
Blame is a funny thing to me. I think it openly diminishes the one doing the blaming. However it also seems to unavoidably diminish the one being blamed. Once the accusation is made or the blame assigned, at least some of the stigma associated with that event will remain, regardless if the accusation or blame is proved to be unfounded. That to me is a lose – lose proposition. There is no benefit to be gained by anyone by trying to assign blame anywhere.
The leader that stands up and takes responsibility, and does not look to attribute blame to anyone else, will again be the leader that is looked up to by their team and will be respected by their peers. Just as the leader receives some of the credit even though they attribute the success to the performance of their team, they will also not receive all the blame by taking responsibility for the issues associated with the missed achievements by the team.
I know it goes against just about everything we have seen and been taught to this point of our lives, and it also seems to go against what is now accepted as the cultural norm but when it comes to issues in business I just can’t see the value in someone uttering the professional equivalent of “The dog ate my presentation” or “the fluorescent lights were in my eyes” when not taking responsibility for their performance.
Credit
I singled out a team member from another leader’s organization during an organizational leadership meeting the other day to make sure that he was recognized for the great work he had done in supporting me and my team on a very difficult assignment. Even though I got to report the progress, I thought it was important that the person most responsible for the work received the recognition for the job well done. His senior leadership thanked me for the acknowledgement. I didn’t remember getting thanked very often for acknowledging another team’s individual member in the past. I got the subtle feeling that this sort of acknowledgement behavior may not have been the norm.
This small interchange got me to thinking again. This is always a dangerous process as I am never sure where it is going to lead me, but I thought anyway. I started remembering back in my career to try and pinpoint when and where I adopted and implemented the position that a leader should not take the credit for the successes and good performance of the team.
I can remember working for managers that did not seem to ascribe to this approach to team acknowledgement. We probably all have. It has been a while and I find myself searching my memories for how I felt about it. I would have to say my memories and feeling about it were mixed. I remember feeling proud that the work I had done was being recognized as noteworthy, but I also remember feeling at least a little bit slighted that the manager was individually receiving the accolades.
I can also remember the first time I was singled out and recognized by a leader for delivering an important work product for the organization. There was the same pride in the work, but also a little more pride associated with the specific acknowledgement.
Business is about competition. On the higher levels one business competes with another for available customers and revenue. Organizations within the business compete (and work in concert) with each of the other organizations within the business for funding and growth opportunities. To illustrate this organizational competition just take a look at the budgeting process and how the available funding and growth are allocated in the next year’s plan.
There is also competition within and amongst the various organizations on an individual level as well. There is usually a general desire by individuals within an organization to matriculate upwards in the organization to positions of greater responsibility, and compensation. This is not always the case as there are those that find a role and level that they are happy with and do not try to go farther, but in general this desire for upward progress in the organization is a given.
The competitive issue arises in that as you progress further and further up the organizational charts, the number of positions available to advance to becomes smaller and smaller. Individual contributors usually wish to become managers, who in turn want to be one of a fewer number of senior managers, who in turn want to be one of still fewer directors who in turn want to be one of even fewer vice presidents, and so on.
As an individual contributor we get the opportunity to be specifically acknowledged for the work we do. There probably isn’t anyone else doing the specific work the individual is doing so this is okay. Individuals who do good work seem to be the first ones to be recognized and promoted to the management levels. This begins and reinforces a process where the desire for individual recognition is seen as a key requirement for promotion and advancement.
The issue here is that as you are promoted and rise in the organization the amount of solution content that each individual manager adds to the delivered work product begins to change and decrease. The individual delivering a project has a great deal of input and relationship to the final work product. The director (two to three levels higher in the organization) of the individual delivering the project may be able to provide guidance and directional input on the project but probably limited to little specific content. It is still the individual that is delivering it.
I know I have, and I suspect that many others have worked for managers (a generic term to be applied to people at all relative levels of an organizational hierarchy) who never seemed to advance beyond the need for receiving that individual recognition. These are the type of individuals that seem to gladly accept the full recognition for the work delivered by the entire team. They are a team manager but they are still thinking and acting like an individual contributor.
There are and will always be instances of the type of management behavior being rewarded. It is not however a sign of leadership and at least in my experience seems to be a behavior which eventually catches up with the individual. Leaders eventually identify this type of behavior and react negatively to it.
Leaders understand that their role becomes more strategic and directional, the higher up in the organization they go. They may identify the issue, prioritize the project, and provide the funding and staf
fing to see to it that it can be completed, but they do not perform the work product themselves. They know others must do this, as they have other issues to identify, prioritize and act on. They also know that those who actually do perform the work product should be recognized when they succeed.
These are the types of leaders that are recognized by their teams as a leader to be valued because they know that they will be recognized and rewarded for their efforts. What may not be so widely known is that these are leaders are also valued by other leaders as being able to successfully assemble quality teams that identify and resolve the issues they are faced with. When a leader publicly recognizes the efforts and abilities of the individuals on the team who successfully delivered on their objectives, they are also tacitly pointing out that they as leaders put together that team and put them in the position to be successful.
Giving credit where credit is due is the sure sign of a leader. A leader knows they are in charge and ultimately responsible for the delivery and success of any project. That does not mean that they have the right to, or should assume all the credit for the delivery and success of the project. On the contrary. The leader that understands their role in the project, who focuses on and enables the success of the others on the team, and then makes sure that they are recognized and acknowledged for their success, is also usually the one that gets the most credit without ever having to ask for it.
Arguing and Negotiating
When two people are have a discussion with opposing points of view it is usually called an argument. Webster’s Dictionary (an all time favorite of mine) defines an argument as: “An argument usually arises from a disagreement between two persons, each of whom advances facts supporting his or her own point of view.” This is a great description for what goes on between two friends when they are arguing if the beer does in fact taste great or is in fact less filling. I don’t drink that particular beer so it doesn’t matter to me.
However, if these two individuals are no longer representing themselves in the beer argument, but are now representing their respective different companies with opposing points of view, they are no longer arguing. They are negotiating. Going back to Webster’s we find the following definition for a negotiation: “a discussion set up or intended to produce a settlement or agreement”. To me these two descriptions appear to be the two sides of the same coin. There are many reasons to have an agreement, one of which is to avoid future disagreements. Once there is a disagreement you definitely want to have a negotiation to resolve it as an argument probably won’t provide a solution.
Now we are getting somewhere. When two people disagree, they have a discussion called an argument. When two companies disagree, they send people to have a discussion called a negotiation.
One of the key points required for both arguing and negotiating is to clearly establish what each participant’s starting positions are. Who is claiming what, and who is denying what? Who says “yes” and who says “no”. Who says “up” and who says “down”. Who thinks they should be paid a lot of money and who thinks they shouldn’t have to pay any money at all. That sort of thing. This is a very important point in the process.
If the two parties find that their initial positions are similar, or even the same, then it will be difficult to have a meaningful argument, and the negotiation will consist mainly of nodding heads and the shaking of hands. This type of premature negotiation has a tendency to leave both parties vaguely unfulfilled from the negotiation process.
The next part of the process should be the justification and validation of the respective initial positions. I think this is the key part to many arguments and is critical to any negotiation, or argument for that matter. The respective positions on the topic in question need to be defined and justified. Why does each participant believe that they are correct, and why do they believe the other party is not?
In a recent discussion with my wife (it was a discussion not an argument as she does not allow me to argue with her) she put forth the position that “I should have fed the dogs”. I never feed the dogs unless I am specifically asked to feed the dogs because she always feeds the dogs and if I also fed them we would very quickly have obese Chihuahuas. Hence my position was that I do not feed the dogs unless asked to feed them. We therefore started out with very well defined positions for the ensuing discussion with our differing points of view (argument).
As you might guess this was a discussion that I was not going to win.
Fast forwarding to the end of the discussion, it was decided (by her) that either I was asked to feed the dogs and forgot, or I was asked to feed the dogs and did not hear the request. The fact that I was at work in my office in another building in another part of town when this request was made was inadmissible evidence. So I went and fed the dogs.
In business, depending on who has made the claim or demand, there may be a similar tendency to accept the same type of behavior and response when it comes to requesting positional justification prior to a negotiation. Why does on party feel that they are due a large sum of money from the other party? What specifically justifies the claim? What specifically validates the amount? In too many instances businesses seem to rush to try and deal directly with the claim, regardless how potentially outrageous it may be, before they understand the basis for the claim itself.
Please do not misunderstand me. For the most part most businesses perform and act in a reasonably appropriate and logical manner. They usually only make claims requiring a negotiation when there is a justifiable cause for such behavior. I think that part of the reason for this general behavior is that businesses are usually made up of honorable and logical people. Those types of people are prone to logical and honorable behavior.
I also think that logical people fully expect to have to be able to justify and defend any claim that they may make. If in general the first response to any claim being made is to ask for a justification of why the claim was made, then there is a certain amount of preparatory work that should be expected.
When it comes to customers, sometimes this check and balance claim expectation validation can break down. In today’s hyper-competitive world, where the customer is always right and vendors strive to be identified as “partners” instead of just “vendors”, customer service is sometimes the only differentiating factor available in the market. In this new commercial world where the speed with which you respond to a customer request or demand can be the difference between keeping that customer and losing them to the more responsive competition, jumping when the customer says jump is rapidly becoming the expectation.
In this type of environment, where “partners” are working together to achieve a mutually beneficial solution (It’s true. That’s what it now says on every sales presentation I have seen, and they wouldn’t be exaggerating, would they?) it is sometimes easy to forget to ask why partners are making any specific demand, or making the claim that they are making.
Vendors and customers ask these sorts of questions of each other. Just as good fences make for good neighbors; these good questions make for good contracts and relationships. Sometimes partners can forget or neglect to ask these questions. Those exclusions can eventually make for some significantly misplaced expectations, expenditures and possible difficulties in the partnership relationship when the necessary reset on the expected demand response occurs.
Good customer service and customer relationships require vendors to not only understand what is wanted, but why it is expected. Asking for this justification of demands and claims is not the sign of a weak partnership. It is more the sign of an engaged relationship. To blindly respond to any customer generated stimulus will create an unbalanced and unsustainable situation. In this event the desire for a partnership will devolve into more of a master and servant arrangement where one party makes demands and the other fulfills them.
Asking for the justification of expectations, demands and claims is probably the best way to validate what the other party actual desires. Are they looking for a problem to be rectified, or is it something else? Are they testing your responsiveness, or do they have a genuine need? Is there something that they actually want, or are they just seeing what they can get? It is not the sign of distrust in the partnership. It is more the sign of parity in the relationship.
Or as in the case with my wife, it was probably just my turn to feed the dogs.
Being Young
I think we are all young to a certain extent. I don’t think it matters how old we are. Although we all equate numerical age with being young, we shouldn’t. Being young is something else. We all start youths and as we gain experience we also seem to start to lose our ability to be young. I think in many instances we do not see these changes in ourselves. I do not think that those that we continue to work with see these changes either, since they too are gaining experience right along with us. I think the loss of being young is a little more insidious than that. When we are young we don’t know what we can’t do, and as a result we are able to do the things that others can’t because they “know better”.
In case you are missing the connection here I am not saying there is a direct connection between your age and being young. I don’t think there is. I think being young in business resides in your head.
I watched a great rant by the comedian Craig Ferguson on the “Deification of Youth” or otherwise titled “Why Everything Sucks”. You can find it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROJKEwYEx8Q. Aside from being very funny he does touch on some of the issues and sources of our obsession with youth. I think they apply equally to business.
Notice again that I am not connecting “Youth” with being “Young”.
We tend to associate being young with the physical attributes of youth and age. As Craig Ferguson points out there are also experiential and state of mind attributes associated with being young. Unfortunately we all seem to focus on the youth aspect of being young. We assume you have to be a youth in order to be young. Hence again according to Craig we seem to be focusing our resources on retaining our youth instead of what I would call being young.
I tell people that I have grown older, but that I have not grown up. My wife does not seem to be entirely happy about my lack of growing up.
I absolutely agree with the preconception that we need young people in business. Young people have energy. They don’t seem to slow down. They have places to be and things to do. They walk fast. They get there early and stay till they are done, not till any specific time. They look at goals as something to be attained and exceeded, not something to be measured against. The young believe that they are responsible for their own attainments, or failures, and act accordingly.
I remember few if any incidents in my youth where I looked for a consensus on just about anything I did. In some instances I might have been better off doing so, but in the long run it was probably those failures that taught me the most.
Young people take on challenges because they have no idea what they are getting into, or if they do they don’t know any better about saying no. When we were young we did not know what we could do, or conversely what we couldn’t do. There were always plenty of people who were ready to tell us what we couldn’t do. There are many of those people still around in business now. When we remain young we retain this don’t know that I can’t do it approach even though we may have gained some of the experience that tells us it may be difficult if not impossible.
Young people ask direct questions and give direct answers. There was an old television show hosted by Art Linkletter called “Kids Say the Darnedest Things”. It consisted of kids (in this case really young people) answering some simple and seemingly innocuous questions and everyone listening to what they said. The kids answered directly without first wondering if they should answer at all, if they would look foolish for their answer, or if they would get the answer wrong. They just answered. I can’t help but believe that approach might help improve business.
Direct questions are usually the simplest ones to ask. Why? How much? What do you do? We seem to have evolved to a point where direct questions are associated with being rude. The young ask direct questions without the consideration of if it is rude or not. It shouldn’t be construed as a question of etiquette. It is merely a request for a desired piece of information.
Young people understand that they can be wrong. They think they know everything (especially my children) but I think deep down they know that they don’t. That doesn’t stop them though. That’s why they went to school. To learn some things that they didn’t know that will help them later. That learning process usually involves getting a few things wrong. They don’t want to be wrong, but they know it happens and hopefully they will learn from it.
The active ingredient here for this aspect of being young is learning. Sometimes it is mandatory and we are forced to go to school and learn something whether we want to or not. On the other hand as we gain and gather experience we should recognize how much we have yet to learn and no so much rely on how much we believe we already know. When we have decided that we either have learned enough, or know enough is when we begin to not be young.
Too often it seems we have a tendency to get defensive in our business posture as a result of feeling that we must defend what we have already achieved or accomplished instead of remembering the risks and behaviors that enabled those accomplishments to occur. We understand the new challenge but may not as fully commit to or embrace it. We are now more conservative in our approach. We feel that we have something to lose and not so much to gain. We are no longer young, and we are acting like it.
I do not wish to sound too utopian in my views. I understand the realities of life and business. At least I hope I do. My objective is to remember my approach to things as a youth and combine it with the knowledge and experience I have gained since then. I may have a little better idea of some of the things that I can do, but I think there are probably vast expanses of things that I can’t do that need exploring, if for no other reason than to prove that there are parts of it that can actually be done.
I think being young in business is about remembering and channeling the energy, excitement and approach we had to proving something when we started out. It’s more about having somewhere to go instead of looking back at where you have been. It’s about continuing to learn new skills and capabilities instead of relying on those that you already have. It is retaining the realization that it still is about the destination and not so much about the path or process that is supposed to get you there.
It is remembering that it is not so much about youth but more about retaining our approach to things in our youth. I think that is the essence and key to being young.
Measuring and Reporting
Management styles seem to go in and out of style. We have one that works moderately well, and then we go looking for one that is purported to work better. It didn’t used to be like this. For the longest time business structures seemed to follow the same structures that we had in our militaries. We even used a military naming nomenclature when we described them: The General Management Model.
Now I am sure we have all heard the jokes about the efficiency of the Military, and how “Military Intelligence” is an oxymoron, but it seems to be an organizational model that has literally stood the test of time. Please do not make the mistake in assuming that I disrespect the Military. On the contrary I have the greatest respect for those that serve in the military. They have chosen to put themselves at risk for our benefit.
I thank them for their service.
Can you imagine what would happen if the Military experimented with a Matrix Management organizational model? Having a conference call in the middle of an engagement to determine what the response to the hostilities should be doesn’t strike me as the most effective way to deal with that situation. The phrase “shoot, move, communicate” leaps to mind as the preferred active response.
However business has never seemed to be constrained in such an organizational way. There are many organizations that have dabbled with if not fully implemented non-general management types of organizational structures in their efforts to find more effective ways for dealing with their various engagements. Has it worked? I would say that the results are mixed. In some instances possibly yes and in others, not so much. I think that it clearly goes to show that there is an individual / human aspect to leadership that directly interacts with and affects the success of the chosen organizational structure. Good leaders can make any organizational structure better, while managers can slow down the progress of any organization.
What these other organizational models have also done is that they have created the need for an entirely new business structure almost entirely dedicated to measuring and reporting on the various separate business elements.
The creating of this measuring and reporting structure has both good points, and some not so good points. Within a non-general management oriented organization no one person has the full authority over any specific engagement. In the military this would be the equivalent to having an organization responsible for guns and another organization responsible for bullets. While you may come up with the best guns and the best bullets, if they don’t work together you may be in for some surprise issues when it comes to engagement time.
So how do you solve this problem in such an organization? You measure each group’s performance and publicize or report on it.
It has long been proven that the best way to get someone to fulfill their responsibilities is to report on and publicize their performance. This is true with respect to the investigative reports that we see on television that expose improper behaviors in our politicians and businesses, and it is also true with respect to the internal workings and responsibilities within a business organization. Shining a light on bad behavior is one of the best ways to get that behavior to stop just as shining a light on good behavior is an excellent way to continue to propagate that type of behavior.
The problem with this sort of structure is that those people who are doing all of this measuring and reporting are not directly contributing to the performance and progress of the business. They are making sure that someone else is directly contributing to the performance and progress of the business. No matter how you want to look at it, there is a fundamental difference. Measurers and reporters are what are known as Overhead Expense in an organization.
In a distributed (verses centralized) organizational structure no one controls the end to end view and performance of the business or the organization. For a business to be maximally efficient someone needs to have this decision making authority and responsibility. In the non-general management organization no one has that final decision making role and since it seems that everyone must be fully informed, everyone must be measured and reported on by everyone else. It is possible that the evolution of this process results in more people measuring and reporting on what needs to be done than there are actually doing what needs to be done.
This can be seen as a business proof of the old adage: Too much of a good thing can be bad.
This sort of measuring and reporting appear to take a more central role in the organization when there is a division between responsibility to get something done and the authority to get something done. In the military there is a very clear responsibility – authority line of command. Orders and responsibilities are cascaded down and the objectives are usually reasonably clear. One officer does not go outside of his organization and tell another officer or his organization what they must do unless there is a direct reporting line between them. In this way compliance with the objective is a given.
In the distributed responsibility structure, compliance may not necessarily be a given. Issues arise when one organization is dependent on another for the completion of a task, but the second organization fails to prioritize or perform its part of the task. After all, what can be done when an organization fails to comply with the wishes or directives of another organization that is not directly in the same reporting line? You may be able to complain, but you cannot enforce compliance as may be done in the General Management model.
So what do you do to assure that disparate organizations comply?
You start measuring and reporting on them so that everyone else knows which organization in the distributed structure is not performing. This is both an offensive strategy in that it tracks progress (or lack of it) toward the objective as well as a defensive strategy in that it clearly points out if there are issues and where they are – presumably not in your or the measuring organization.
Reporting in the general management structure is used to determine the progress against a defined set of goals. It is normally self reported by the organization. Reporting in the decentralized structure not only performs these vital tasks, but also takes on the added function of identifying any potential external organizational dependencies that can be incrementing, or decrementing performance. As such it is not uncommon for each group to report not only on themselves, but on all contributing groups to make sure that their, presumably correct opinion on progress is documented. Thus they all add to the complexity and the overhead associated with the entire reporting process.
Measuring and reporting are definitely needed in business. It is how we keep score. Having each group report on so many other groups would seem to me to be an extreme. The problem is I don’t know what else you can do when one group has the responsibility to get something done, but the actual authority and ability to get it done resides somewhere else. It seems that the only thing to do is shine the light and hope for the best.
Either that or utilize an organizational structure where the authority and responsibility to get things done reside in the same place. It cuts down the need for so many reports. Like President Harry Truman said:
“The buck stops here.”
Finding Inspiration
I need to send out thanks to my friend Ulrich for the inspiration for this post. Uli is a friend that I met in Brazil on a trip sometime back. He had some really amazing electronic gizmos and gadgets that made me quite jealous. While we were talking about his electronics preferences the conversation shifted, as it often does to other topics. One of the topics we touched on was our reading preferences, and the types of books that we both drew inspiration from. I mentioned that I like to read, and prefer to read a broad range of literary genres and topics. Uli too likes to read but said he usually keeps his reading centered on business and management oriented books and materials. Those happen to be one of the specific genres that I for the most part avoid. It was interesting that we had such divergent approaches to the items that we read, and the information we applied to our business responsibilities.
As I have noted in the past, many of the items I have read seemed initially to be outside of a direct association with business and management. This isn’t by chance. I have read many management articles and books. However in doing so, from my own point of view, I started to notice many similarities to the tenets covered, and only slight variations in the applications of them. There were only so many ways to dress up the ideas of the need to be flexible, that things are going to change and how to deal with these inevitabilities.
That type of management book similarity has sent me off in a couple of different directions when it came to reading and applying what I read to business. One direction I went was into the past to see where many of these “new and improved – yet strangely similar” business strategies came from. I have covered this topic several times in the past. Remember, business, commerce, and strategy has been around almost as long as humans have been around. I have found that sometimes the best books about business are not actually about business. If I need true specific business management input or strategy I go to the four texts that I see as the basis for just about everything in business management and leadership that has been written since. They are:
The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This is a twenty five hundred year old text written by a pre-china general that never lost an engagement that is still used in military academies around the world, and in many business schools.
The Prince by Machiavelli. A sixteenth century political and strategic treatise by an Italian diplomat and political theorist.
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. A text on focus, adaptation and martial arts by a seventeenth century Japanese swordsman.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian. A book of maxims for dealing with the real world written by a seventeenth century Spanish monk.
These are not the books for everyone. These are just the primary books that I turn to when I need a jumping off point for inspiration on a specific business or related issue. I continue to reread them and usually pick up something new every time I do.
I recommended them to Uli. We will see if he reads them and agrees with my assessment of them, or if he continues to buy and read the latest derivative management strategy books that are on the market. I guess it doesn’t really matter as long as he is enjoying and finding value in what he is reading.
The other direction that I go is to read just about anything but management books. This covers the literary spectrum from magazine articles to Blogs to Science Fiction novels to Classic Literature. Much of it is not directly applicable to anything associated with business and leadership, but occasionally there are some interesting aspects that present themselves. Whenever I per chance happen to make one of these unexpected business leadership synaptic connections with something that I have read I try to capture it specifically and share it here. Hence the idea of inspiration as the topic for this piece.
Uli on the other hand noted that the source of business inspiration for him came from business oriented literature, be it articles or books. If this works for him, then great. There seems to be a never ending supply of new management and business oriented articles and books every day for him to read. If they provide inspiration to some of their readers then there must be some value in them.
Inspiration for me is a strange element. I have very seldom had it strike me metaphorically from the blue. I normally get it by recognizing analogies, connections and parallels to seemingly unrelated events and topics. I look for stories of success or leadership in seemingly unrelated fields and then wonder how it might be applicable to business. This approach has led me to better understand the leadership secrets of Captain Kirk from the Star Trek shows and movies, as well as how Jerry Seinfeld applied himself to his craft as a writer to such a successful extent. Along a non-literary line, it has also taught me how to deal with and negotiate with my soon to be fifteen year old son when it is time for him to mow the yard. Success can be achieved from many different directions.
The point here is to start recognizing what keys your specific moments of inspiration. What are you doing, what are you reading, who are you talking to when you have your best ideas? More importantly how do you recognize them when they occur and how do you capture them? There is something about those environments that triggered the creative process. A little self analysis and cognitive association will go a long way here.
I have never been able to innovate because I have read a book on how to innovate. I have read many other books on many other topics that I cannot do, even though I have read about them. I have read about time and space travel and even though I might like to try it I don’t think I can do it just because I have read a book about it. On the other hand, I did learn about physics and differential calculus from books, but I also had a reasonably highly skilled mentor / professor to help me there. Almost all the innovations that I have been involved in have come from trying to apply something new from outside the accepted business norm, to the business norm. That and a significant amount of stubbornness in refusing to listen while everyone else patiently explained to me why my new idea would never work.
It is a significant step going from knowing where you can hope to find inspiration to actually doing something with the inspiration you found.
I also think that part of the reason that I have been able to draw business inspiration from such a diverse literary catalog stems from the fact that I genuinely like to read. I enjoy books. That may be the key to finding inspiration, at least for me, and probably others. I seem to draw my inspiration from relating the things I like to do, like reading to the other things I enjoy in business. I would think that this might be the case for others as well. Conversely, I would guess if you dislike something enough it may be a source of inspiration in how to avoid or improve it. I’ll have to think about that one a little more.
Inspiration doesn’t seem to be a well that I can just wonder over to and dip a bucket in and come out with a new idea. It is more of an understanding of how things work and how I relate to them, and putting myself in the positions where there has been a proven tendency to find inspiration, and then being aware enough to recognize it when it hits. It seems to be the doing of something, possible fully unrelated to the topic that allows you to form the new associations to the old issues.
For me anyway, that does not usually involve the reading of the latest management self help, or how to innovate book. In this case it came from talking to a friend out those books.
Intelligent Pause
I seem to discuss communications a lot. That is probably because communications are central to all aspects of business. I am going to continue in that vein here, although possibly in a direction that may not be expected. I think that it may be time for us to start practicing and working on our talking skills to each other.
The other day I was talking with a friend. It was a bit of a free form discussion. The unscripted type where you are doing one of the most dangerous things on the planet: talking and thinking at the same time. Even though it seems I have no shortage of opinions, I also try to make a concerted effort to listen as well. In this instance I actually spent a little time listening to myself, as well as my friend during our discourse. What I heard out of my own mouth concerned me.
It appears that I had gotten a little lazy when it came to talking.
I caught myself using too many “crutch” words when talking. I think, you know, it’s like, those seriously annoying words, those obvious verbal “tics” that we are all guilty of, actually. I started listening even closer to the way my friend was speaking, and he was doing it too. He had his own pet phrases and words that he liked to use as well. It seemed that when he was unsure of what he wanted to say he would fall back to one of these words or phrases to get himself started.
I got to thinking about my own use of my crutch words and phrases as well and came up with the same conclusion. When I have an idea that I want to express, the most difficult aspect for me in expressing it is the same most difficult aspect of any other endeavor, that of getting it started. I had fallen into the habit of using one of these comfort phrases or crutch words to get my speaking process going.
A little self-analysis like this can go a long way. Having become aware of my own tendencies in this area has also made me aware of it in others. I started to not only listen to what others were saying, but how they were saying it as well. I think most of us, but not all of us have this comfort phrase tendency to some level.
The most common comfort phrases that I have picked up are (I am sure there are many others, but these are some of the most common that leap to the forefront, at least in my mind):
• “uh…”, “ah…”, “hmm…” Nothing says I don’t know what to say better than one of these words.
• “Like” – It’s like this, or like that… How can so many things be like something else? Why don’t you just tell me about it, not something that is “like” it?
• “You know” – It’s like you know, or just, you know… If I know, then you don’t need to tell me. If I don’t know, you don’t need to ask me. I think we all know what I mean here.
• “Obviously” – one of my personal favorites. If it’s so obvious, then don’t make a mockery of your audience’s intelligence by bringing it up. If it’s obvious to you it’s probably obvious to them. If it’s not, it sounds like you are talking down to them.
• “Actually” – It’s actually this, or you know actually… Let’s get this straight. I am probably going to assume whatever you are telling me is “actual” unless you tell me otherwise. There is no need to emphasize its actuality.
I mentioned that many but not all people used these speaking process kick starting phrases. I started to pay especially close attention to those people who did not have any noticeable tendency toward using favorite words or phrases. I wanted to understand what they said and how they sounded. It was very interesting.
They didn’t say anything particularly smarter or deeper that anyone else. They didn’t speak noticeably faster or slower than anyone else. They just didn’t sound as repetitive. They sounded (gulp) more intelligent. This was especially disconcerting as one of the primary groups that avoid these verbal tics is the politicians. I don’t know if we all could go on if I had to cede greater intelligence to them.
Contrary to popular opinion, it is very difficult to get ahead in business without some reasonable level of intelligence. It is a pretty good assumption that most business executives to one level or another are pretty smart. However some “sound” smarter than others. How do they do it?
They don’t use crutch words or have as many of those verbal “tics”.
Instead, they pause. And how to people sound when they periodically pause when they are speaking during a conversation? The general consensus that they sound intelligent.
Don’t believe me? We are now in the middle of what is known as the off-year primary political election cycle. This is the time of year when all of our media, news, and communications are polluted with messages from this year’s crop of ultra-sincere sounding political hacks, or their news agency supporters, trying to convince us that they are the true representatives of the people, and their opponents are in fact prevaricating, bloviating morons.
What these messages all have in common is that they are devoid of all verbal crutches. Listen not to what these people say, but to how they say it. They all sound sincere and intelligent. Regardless of the veracity or outlandishness of the claims that they are making on their own behalf, or against their opponents. Despite any semblance of anything resembling substance, they all sound believable and intelligent.
It is probably not fair to compare politicians to executives. Really. No, I mean really.
However, the executives that do not use the standard catch-phrases sound better and more believable when the talk. Instead of starting off a sentence with some favorite or comfortable word or phrase, they seem to pause instead.
I think this sort of talking activity has been well documented. The idea is to listen for your own comfort phrases and then consciously trying to eliminate them from your speaking and talking styles. The process is to pause when you are about use one of your favorite pet phrases or words, and instead of using those words, pick up with the thought you would convey after those words.
This is what I mean by the intelligent pause. You don’t have to eliminate the crutch. You just don’t verbalize it. It is there in your head, where it will probably always be, you just don’t verbalize it.
I think we all probably know people that either consciously or unconsciously do this. They are the ones that seem to be thinking before they say anything. They appear to be weighing the value of their words before they speak them. Their opinions seem to be more readily sought out or valued.
It has been a frustrating process for me as I try to re-kick the catch-phrase habit. I had not realized how ingrained they had become. But I am working on it. There are several of my friends who might comment that the best way for me to appear more intelligent would be for me to extend my own efforts at an intelligent pause out indefinitely to the point where I just shut up. Unfortunately this just won’t do. I do however suggest that we all try to listen to how we say things as mush what we are saying.
Like, you know, it obviously might actually help us communicate good..er.
Every Day
I read an article about Jerry Seinfeld the other day. In it he was discussing some of the secrets to his success. Now obviously they can’t be secrets if he is openly discussing them, so maybe we should refer to them as some of the tenets he adhered to in the pursuit of his goals. Perhaps tenets would be considered too strong a word for describing his approach to applying himself to his comedy craft. However you would like to describe what he did along his road to success, he boiled it down to a simple phrase. He did something every day.
The example he used related to his writing. Whether he was writing for his stand up routines or the ubiquitous “Seinfeld” show, he wrote every day. That was his goal. He didn’t set the goal to write a joke, or even a good joke. He didn’t need to pound out a chapter in his book, or a scene for the show. He didn’t even need to make sure that what he wrote was good or used in any of his multiplicity of ventures. He just needed to write.
He knew that by getting started his ability and talent would take over. Some days would be better than others and the output of a higher quality. He knew that by the continued application of his effort he would continue to improve across the board. Eventually the output from his bad days would be better than the output of his earlier good days. The objective was the activity, not some specific amount of output. He knew the output would come if he achieved his goal of doing something.
I thought this was an interesting approach to doing ones work.
I, like many others am something of a goal oriented worker. I like to set the bar at a specific and acknowledged height and then either leap over it, or find an equally impressive way to limbo under it. One day it might be a graceful hurdle that takes me to the other side of the bar and the next might be a skidding face-plant that takes me sliding under it. Others are more process oriented where they can look to a prescribed set of steps that they can embark on that should result in them getting to the other side of the bar. The Seinfeld approach did not seem to fit into either of these categories. To extend this example it would almost be described as “start moving in the direction of the bar” and eventually you will be on the other side of it.
I think I like this approach because of the daily activity goal. It seems that we spend more and more of our time on conference calls and in meetings and in other activities that might be considered to have questionable value-add in the conduct of our business responsibilities. We seem to have reached a point where we have to consider the output of these conference calls and meetings as part of our business responsibilities, even though we seem to achieve very little in the way of definable progress in them.
It would be at times like these where I would start to apply the “Every Day” business scenario. The idea here would be that leaders in the various disciplines that they are responsible for, would need to set a goal of doing some work in their discipline that is additive in moving that discipline forward.
For example, research and development leaders would need to make sure that every day they do something that furthers the research and development of the business. That does not mean reporting on their team’s progress, nor does it mean explaining to management what the latest development release is looking like. It means doing something directly associated with furthering an aspect of a products research or development. Sales leaders would need to spend time each day actually selling, not reporting or tracking, etc. Operations leaders would need to set time every day to work on how to improve their business’ efficiency.
This is obviously pretty simple stuff, but business in its proper form in not necessarily complex. After all, how many times have we heard people say that they are so busy that they don’t seem to be able to get their real work done? What Seinfeld seemed to have found was that the focus should not be on getting the real work done, but rather getting started on the real work. He realized that the getting done part of it would actually take care of itself.
On the surface this seems a little counter-intuitive to me, but the more I think about it, the more comfortable I get with it.
It seems that leadership roles have a tendency to attract a significant number of non-productive and “office-trappings” types of responsibilities. These functions usually take the form of making and presenting status reports, attending peer team meetings and calls to assure coordination, reviewing, approving or denying requests, and other similar such activities. I am hard pressed to find a way to associate these responsibilities with leadership, other than in how fast one can discharge and complete them and get back to the real functionality and responsibility of the business at hand.
Unfortunately it seems that as leaders matriculate up the corporate chain they may be judged more on how well they perform these attracted functions, and less on how well they actually perform their Research and Development, Sales or Operational responsibilities, to extend the previous example.
This is where “Every Day” would come in to play.
We should all look to find a way to make sure we perform some of the specific activities that are required to further the goals of the business, every day. This does not mean that we should be happy with making progress on the charts for the next business review. It does mean that we should work on something that would eventually need to be reported on in your business review.
Put simply “Every Day” means to me that we don’t need to report on something every day. Every day we need to do something that may need to be reported.
It may end up that it does not need to be reported. It may not provide the expected or desired impact. On the other hand, it might eventually turn out to be a game changing improvement to the business. The point is that none of those things will happen unless you are applying yourself to the objective.
Seinfeld knew that not everything that he wrote was going to be used, or maybe even good. He did however recognize that he would never have anything much less know what was good or not unless he wrote. He saw that the goal should not have been to only write good content, because he could not clearly discern the good from the not so good unless he had them both available to compare. Hence his objective was simply to write.
The analog to this approach that I would choose for leaders in business would be to focus some time every day on the non-administrative work that you and your team are responsible for accomplishing. I know this sounds silly to the point of almost being inane, but
having been through the days where it seemed that the administrivia and process ruled over work and performance, I think it bears repeating: It is easy to get lost in the busy of busy-work and forget to try and accomplish some real work. And it is the real work that needs to get accomplished, every day.
Coffee
Let’s get one thing straight from the start: I am a certified coffee non-drinker. I have tried it. I don’t like it. I have tried to like it. I have failed to find a way to like it. I have tried to use it as a primary source of caffeine to help me make it through those especially long business days. I just can’t seem to make myself like it. Regardless of what anyone else says, it tastes bad.
However, I do recognize that I am in the minority when it comes to coffee use in the business environment. It is quite possible that without coffee, or its prime component caffeine, that all business and commerce, and quite possibly society in general would grind to a halt. If anything, I think that our coffee consumption in the office has increased in recent years as our dependence on it as an energy source in the office has increased.
I have managed to come up with only one way that I can successfully imbibe coffee. I take a coffee mug and fill it approximately one third of the way up with the artificial, chemical infused, powdered chalk-like non-dairy creamer that populates the counter next to the coffee maker in the break room in the office. I never use the cholesterol laden real cream or the liquid artificial, chemical infused non-dairy creamer. The primary reason for the powdered preference is due to the fact that it is the only type of coffee creamer available next to the coffee maker. I think the Food and Drug administration has forced the manufacturer of this product to change its name to “coffee lightener” as opposed to coffee creamer in the interest of honesty in advertizing.
I then step over and find the sugar. The real sugar. Not the further chemically infused, cancer in rat causing sweetener. I am not afraid of the carcinogens in that sweetener. It is the aftertaste that they leave after I have used them that removes them from my preference list. If I am going to drink something that tastes as bad as coffee, I do not want to have to put up with the added insult of tolerating and additional bad aftertaste from the artificial sweeteners after drinking it.
I carefully measure out approximately another third of a mug of sugar and combine it with the powdered coffee lightener.
Now is the time for the coffee. It doesn’t seem to matter if I add a spoon full of Folger’s instant coffee crystals and hot water, or get freshly brewed from ground coffee bean French vanilla coffee from the local college degreed barista at Starbucks. I can’t tell the difference. They are both equally bitter in my universe. I then fill the coffee mug up the rest of the way with whichever coffee is available. If I happen to have a Milky Way or Snickers candy bar handy I will then use it to stir these elements into a nominally drinkable solution that I am somehow able to choke down. I don’t do this often. I think I might have had two cups of coffee this year. I usually resort to coffee when I don’t have enough money to buy a caffeine rich soda from the soda machine.
I guess I have never been able to develop the educated palette that can discern between the various levels of bitterness that are entailed in recognizing the difference between Folger’s and Starbuck’s fresh brews, even though they are purported to come from obviously different ends of the taste spectrum. I guess I don’t go to Starbuck’s enough, and when I do I usually seem to order something other than coffee. It is kind of interesting to go to Starbucks and order a (caffeinated) soda though. Whenever I do it, it seems the entire staff behind the counter stops whatever it is that they are so industriously doing in the obviously complicated preparation of their patron’s coffees, and stare at me. I used to be slightly off-put by this, but now I find it relatively humorous.
The only problem with preparing coffee in the manner I prepare it is that it can only be called a liquid in the truest sense of the word, meaning it is not a solid or a gas. The coffee I prepare from this recipe seems to be slightly more viscous than the equivalent beverage that others prepare in the same break room. This higher center of gravity, slightly more dense coffee causes the other patrons of the office break room coffee maker to not so much stare at me, but to seem to want to keep track of me by watching me indirectly from across the room while quietly talking to each other.
Between the staring baristas and the whispering break room denizens, it should be no surprise that I usually drink diet sodas. These drinks usually contain the desired caffeine but not in quite the concentrations associated with coffee. I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to drink decaffeinated coffee. If you are going to drink something that tastes that bad, you should at least get the desired effect from the caffeine, or you have defeated the entire purpose of the exercise in the first place.
Here is just a little “did you know” information about caffeine. Caffeine, as it occurs in nature is an interesting element. It is a bitter (who would have thought that after actually tasting coffee) element that acts as a natural pesticide in plants. That is correct. Caffeine is nature’s bug killer, yet we guzzle it down in our coffee like camels hitting the oasis after two weeks in the desert. It is also recognized as the worlds most widely consumed psychoactive drug. That is also correct. It is a psychoactive, mood altering drug. However there is no one stopping Juan Valdez and his mule from bringing pure Colombian coffee across the border into the United States.
I mentioned that I drink diet caffeinated sodas, and as you know these are in fact sweetened with those aforementioned bad after tasting chemically carcinogenic compounds. I felt that since the sodas tasted so much better than coffee, I needed to demonstrate some sort of caffeinated solidarity with the bad tasting coffee drinkers. The solution wasn’t so much to make the soda taste bad but rather make sure it left some sort of bad aftertaste. This way we caffeine imbibers can stand united.
Stand is a relative word here. I don’t think that anyone consuming any sort of a caffeinated product can stand united or any other way for that matter. They usually fidget, or go to the bathroom. This stems from the fact that caffeine is both a stimulant, which means it incites activity in our central nervous system, and a diuretic, which means it incites activity in our bladders. Hence you are either fidgeting or going to the bathroom after drinking coffee.
Thinking back, I don’t remember it always being this way. I seem to recall that the office used to have an energy all its own. Caffeine seemed optional and more the province of the particularly spasmodic and hyperactive individuals in the office. When there was a question about someone’s behavior it was usually attributed to the fact that they must have had “too much coffee”. Funny, you don’t hear that excuse for strange behavior in the office anymore.
The office seemed to generate its own energy in the people there, not reduce it. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the number of people who are actually in the office and the need for and amount of coffee that is consumed. Could it be that in the past we generated our energy from each other? Now that we have remote offices and virtual offices and are no longer in proximity to each other, it seems we need a different energy source, such as coffee and the caffeine that it contains.
Perhaps I am reaching, but I definitely think if we had more people back in the offices, we would all have more energy and sources of stimulation, and probably need less coffee.
I think I’ll go and get another diet soda. I hope I have enough change as I don’t think I can face drinking any more coffee. I had a cup a couple of weeks ago and still shudder at the thought of drinking any more of it.