The Corporate Curmudgeon

YOUR INNER-HOMER: Homer Simpson vs. The Culture of Innovation

2011-10-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

“That’s it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I’m going to clown college.”
-Homer Simpson

Homer Simpson is a genius of the workplace. The problem for Mr. Burns and his other bosses is that Homer’s a genius at avoiding work. And that’s why he’s so dead-on funny, because inside every one of us is our Inner-Homer, the part of the brain that figures out how to slip responsibility and rationalize doing so. And when it comes to innovation, our Inner-Homer is at its best.

WHY YOU AREN’T INNOVATING

“Son, if you really want something in life you have to work for it. Now quiet! They’re about to announce the lottery numbers.” HS

Executives insist that they want their employees to be more creative and that’s why virtually every list of corporate “values” includes something about the company being a leader through innovation. Then, the same executives who “value” innovation create a culture that makes it almost impossible. When employees come up with suggestions, managers are quick to say something like, “Let’s get our projects caught up, then we can think about it.” And, before the employee can slouch away, the manager adds, “Speaking of projects, where is that report I asked for?”

Here in The Time of No Time there is no “caught up,” meaning that innovation waits upon the time that never comes. Employees soon learn not to bother making suggestions.

IDEA JUDO

“The three little sentences that will get you through life. 1. Cover for me. 2. Oh, good idea, Boss! 3. It was like that when I got here.” HS

“Oh, good idea, Boss!”

Employees figure out that bosses get enthused about their own ideas and that if they just pretend to be likewise enthused, they can quietly kill the ideas later. After all, most ideas require some work and who has time for more work? Instead of disagreeing with an idea, the better bureaucratic avoidance is to act enthusiastic then ease the idea into Never-Never Land of Ideas: this one is called, When-When: The Land of the Wistful Someday. Employees learn not to disagree, just to “caution.” They aren’t being difficult, just helpful. And they come to believe it.

“If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can’t speak English.” HS

When it comes to thwarting an idea, the best solution is to blame the system – the skilled bureaucrats are the crypto-bureaucrats, the ones who blame the bureaucracy, cursing the system even as they make use of it. Before long, both employees and managers start to believe they are helpless to do anything new. The culture is one of hard work, and everything but the next deadline gets postponed. Innovation joins the list of The Wistful Someday projects.

THE 1% SOLUTION

“I think Smithers picked me because of my motivational skills. Everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I’m around.” HS

So how does a company overcome “the tyranny of the urgent” and get employees to commit to innovation? The most familiar option is to make innovation the job of a few employees, putting it into R&D or New Products. The upshot is that you have 1% of employees doing 99% of the innovating. Well, okay… 1% is better than nothing. However, if you spend time studying the origin of innovations, what you find is not the skill of the scientist, but that of the explorer. Most innovation comes down to spotting transferable ideas.

THE 100% SOLUTION

“’To Start Press Any Key.’ Where’s the ANY key?” HS

Once you understand how ideas happen, then you understand the waste of locking creativity into a single department. That’s why we set a goal of creating a Culture of Innovation where…
IDEAS ARE COMING FROM EVERYWHERE and EXPERIMENTSARE HAPPENING IN EVERY DEPARTMENT.

To get there requires more than a motivational talk. And it certainly requires more than a brainstorming session. There’s a reason that brainstorming sessions rarely produce innovations – they produce hundreds of ideas that are born into the old idea-death culture, so those white boards covered with ideas are merely a frustrating reminder of what you don’t have, like the hungry couple standing outside the restaurant and reading the menu on the door.

At The Innovators’ Lab we believe an innovation effort starts with metrics, and that the metrics have requirements paired with them. The only way to get every employee to think about ideas is to make ideas a job requirement.

Some executives fear this will mean idea chaos. They fear having ideas coming from everywhere, thinking that every employee is being given an invitation to tell the leaders how to go their jobs. No. The idea requirement is built around having all employees thinking about how they can do their jobs better, especially by better serving their customers. (Part of the Culture of Innovation is making sure every employee knows who his or her customer is.)

Then, once you have all employees looking for ideas, the trick is NOT allowing a “creativity bureaucracy” to evolve. Instead, each department is required to experiment with some of the ideas. Once ideas are becoming experiments, the organization’s leaders can steer the innovations toward the bigger goals.

Innovation doesn’t start with brainstorming. It starts with understanding what we call “inno-nomics,” – organizing both the demand and supply of creativity. You start with understanding that innovation only happens when you make it happen -- to achieve The Culture of Innovation means that you go out and build The Culture of Making It Happen.

You can’t just hope that employees can be persuaded to change; every corporate employee soon learns how to rope-a-dope any new management program. No, you have to figure out the change you want and start changing expectations, requirements and rewards. It comes down to this: Less talk about change, more changing.

Innovation - Incubator or Graveyard? By Mike Manes, Square One Consulting

2011-09-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

Dale Dauten in his newspaper column got me thinking with this closing statement:

"If you have an idea you want to nurture, don't plant it with the forest of the status quo; place it in a fresh field, away from the old growth. Give it a new group or try it in an experimental store, surrounded by people who want it there, who want it to thrive" and "Which brings us to an IBP (Important Business Principle) with a lovely Zen weightless heft: It's easier to change people than to change people."

Dale is right on both counts. My question is: "Can you and your company culture innovate?" Before you say yes - remember, Casual Friday is not innovation!

Here's the first test:
You find someone intentionally destroying a computer in your office. It costs $600.00. What do you do? Ignore them? Fire them? Have them arrested? Send them to counseling?
I'm guessing you don't ignore them.

Here's a second test:
You introduce a great idea / innovation at your next management meeting and the first comment to follow is "Great idea but the devil's in the detail." More alarming is that all the heads are bobbing in agreement - "Yea - the devil's in the detail." Guess what - it's time to change the sheets in the bed because you've been sleeping with the status quo (devil) too long. Michelangelo said, "God is in the detail."
The devil's work will be done - innovation killed.
Time and space do not permit a thorough examination of all the reasons (a.k.a. excuses) you still believe you and your company are innovators. I'll just offer the following two explanations of why this ("devil's in the detail") is the reaction. If you agree - do something about it, INNOVATE. If you disagree - quit reading you're not going to change anyway! At least you'll die in the arms of your lover.

Draw your organizational chart - now frame the perimeter. It's a pyramid. You're at the top and your managers / supervisors rest near the pinnacle. The worker bees and the trainees (worker bees in incubation) stand between you and the marketplace - your customers. If you innovate it will require flattening the organization - that's not going to happen since your managers / supervisors have spent years clawing their way to the top and you want to do what - flatten the system? NO WAY!

Now superimpose a bell curve on the pyramid. At the front end are 20% of the folks willing to embrace the new. They are enthusiastic but will burn out quickly without change. On the back end are 20% who are retired in place. You send them a check each week in spite of the fact that they quit working for you years ago. The remaining 60% aren't bad people - they are bad innovators. They kill ideas to protect you from yourself - you mean well but "the devil's in the detail." They've done it before - they'll do it again. It's what's best. See IBP in paragraph # 1!

***

Comments from Dale...

You smash a computer worth $600 and get fired. Kill an idea worth $6 million and you get thanked for coming to the meeting. That's the power of the status quo - to quote an old song, bureaucracy is the art of "killing softly."

Since I wrote the column Mike quoted above, I've been doing work with companies where we go in and change the culture without changing the people. We've now proven that can get an immediate break-out of ideas and experiments from the same old people in the same old jobs, if they are given new requirements. (By new "requirements," I mean that they are required to get involved in idea generation and in experimentation.)

(If you'd like a copy of a booklet I've written on how you can create a culture of innovation, call the delightful Paula Wigboldy at 480-785-2886, or email Paula and we'll send you one.)

Not every employee is skilled at innovating, of course, but do it right and that's OK - you only need a few. What I love about Mike's piece is his notion of replacing the pyramid with a Bell Curve. You get the "early adopters" to join in and you get ideas flowing. That's the easy part -- any good brainstorming trainer can get you a list of good ideas. The hard part is anticipating the resistance and figuring out how to hammer away at it. ("Hammer" is the right analogy, because you have to chip away at the cement of the old culture.)

Here's the IBP (Important Business Principle): Ideas don't have a "time" that "has come" when they magically overcome obstacles. Ideas are work and take time and almost no one has any of either to spare. So if they are to move forward, they must get pounded or dragged or sneaked into the future. Ideas don't need "a time"; they need hero, one who is willing to make time.

ODDS ARE, YOU HAVE A MEDIOCRE BOSS

2011-08-10T11:31:00.001-07:00

”He likes his butt scratched. People will come up to him and pet his head. He’ll turn right around and show them his butt.”

-Georgetown University professor Father Christopher Steck describing Jack the Bulldog, the school’s mascot, to “Esquire”

Something about that quote makes me think of a certain category of manager. But first, let’s put management into perspective:

Odds are, you have a mediocre boss, who has a mediocre boss, who has a mediocre boss. There’s no escaping the math – there’s a 90% chance that your managers are not in the top 10% of managers.

Knowing that, perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised that the response of the business community to the economic crisis has been so uninspired.

What got me thinking about mediocre management was hearing from Keith McLeod, the Tucson consultant who inspired many of you when I passed along his suggestions on dealing with the economy. (If you missed that column, go to dauten.com and there, under Columns, you’ll see “Finding Value in Chaos.”)

This time, McLeod reminisced about a second-rate manager: “I was coming up with new ideas and was a threat to my boss. He called me in and said, ‘You aren’t fitting in. If you don’t change within 30 days, you’re gone.’ It was jarring. I thought I was being called in for praise. My reaction was to check with him on everything I did for his input while I searched for a new job. At the end of 30 days he called me in and said, ‘You’ve made a remarkable turnaround.’ I countered with, ‘Well, thank you, Al. I’m giving two weeks notice. I’m moving to Michigan to run a bank.’”

This is relevant because in a time when managers are anticipating the need to lay off employees, many began to second-guess their employees’ work. Should you find your work being questioned, the natural reaction is to avoid management. However, the correct response is just the opposite – to seek out massive amounts of feedback. Doing so, the manager becomes one with your work, including being able to take credit for it and/or you. Meanwhile, find a better manager.

Here are McLeod’s reflections on his escape from mediocrity: “Too often idiot bosses are so focused on themselves they lose valuable employees. (The sad part is some of the employees think something is wrong with them, and never leave and flower elsewhere.) Instead of empowering employees, these bosses are self-focused, and should be shot.”

There is something appealing about the idea of shooting lousy managers – it would open up jobs without increasing unemployment, and I suspect the funeral industry has the highly desirable “multiplier effect,” the economists’ Holy Grail.

But setting that aside, you can now see why I thought of Jack the Bulldog offering his butt for scratching. It’s like that with bad bosses – it’s all about them.

Which takes us back to the bulldog’s caretaker, Christopher Steck, who added: “I once received a thank you note from a student that described me as ‘one of the Georgetown’s biggest celebrities.’ I thought that was a bit over-the-top, but then I realized that the note was addressed to Jack, not me. I feel like I live in the reflected glory of a dog. But sometimes the most important thing you do in life is to help others shine.” And there it is in that last sentence, the attitude common to those managers who made it into the top ten percent.

THE ORIGIN OF "TALENT"

2011-08-04T14:03:00.001-07:00

To attract, retain, and obtain the most from Awesome Talent, organizations will need to offer an Awesome Place to Work, a place where people not only get paid their due, but also get to initiate and execute Great Things. A place where they can add Awesome Entries to their WOW Project Portfolio and add equity to their Brand Called You.

–Tom Peters

The Age of The Employee is over. Gone. Get used to it.

The New Economy is about a lot of things and “jobs” isn’t one of them. Companies don’t hire employees anymore; they hire time or talent. That means they hire hours or skills. You don’t want to sell your time – too many people will gladly do what you do cheaper. So all that leaves is selling skills, which takes talent.

I was recently listening to an audiobook by Peter Saccio of Dartmouth and from him I learned the origin of the modern use of the word “talent.” It was once just a unit of money, like the peso or the dollar. However, the Parable of the Talents eventually changed that.

You may remember the story from the Book of Matthew: A rich man goes on a journey and entrusts five talents to one servant, two to another and one to a third. When the man returns, he finds that the first servant invested wisely and doubled the money. The second servant did likewise. However, the servant with just one talent buried it for safekeeping and thus returned just the lone talent.

Jesus’s conclusion does not offer any sympathy for the third servant. The first two are praised and given more responsibility, but the third is not just criticized, but the boss instructs the others to “…throw that worthless slave into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Yikes.

As I say, our use of the word “talent” derives from this parable because it was clear that Jesus was talking not about money, but about making use of one’s gifts. To ignore (bury) your gift (talents) is not some minor offense – it makes you unworthy of being in the company of those who know how to build upon theirs.

If you needed any further encouragement to discover and redouble your talents, there you have it. And, looking a bit further, what does it say about being the boss? The boss in the story doesn’t say to the third man, “Oh well, you did the best you could.” And he doesn’t say, “Let me sign you up for a training course.” No… it’s straight to the gnashing of teeth.

We often hear the expression “God-given talent” and if we think of talents as a gift from God – a literal birth-day gift -- it’s good to remember that when the Big Guy stops by your place to say hello, if he doesn’t see the gift out and being used, He gets testy.

THE DAUTEN HIERARCHY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

2011-08-04T13:56:00.007-07:00

Having started working with companies on creating a Culture of Innovation, I was forced to consider all the other types of cultures. Inspiring by my architect pal, John Ball, I put together a hierarchy of cultures. I wonder, Do you recognize your organization somewhere on the pyramid?

©2011 by Dale Dauten.

E-Luminations: Farewell from 'The Corporate Curmudgeon'

2011-05-10T00:32:00.004-07:00

It's been a while. If you didn't hear, I decided to end my "The Corporate Curmudgeon" column. 20 years. Never missed a week. Yeah, I miss it. I wrote a pair of farewell columns, reprinted here, that will explain my decision. Now, unfettered, I can offer up some original material. The first piece is a definition.

It's below, along with a PDF version, in case you'd like to post it in your workspace or conference room. (Or, if you're feeling mischievous, you might post it on an executive's door.)

©2011 by Dale Dauten.

That definition is the start of a series on innovation. I'm pleased to have started major Culture of Innovation projects for Honeywell and STC, where we are creating places where ideas flow and experiments are a routine part of the workplace. More at www.dauten.com under The Innovators' Lab, or click here.

**

OK, now for those farewell columns...

THE (NEXT-TO-LAST) CORPORATE CURMUDGEON:

WHAT I'VE LEARNED

By Dale Dauten

"Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way."

–E.L. Doctorow

I've written over a thousand of these columns and I'm sorry to tell you that this is the next-to-last one. It's been over twenty years; it's time. This column, "The Corporate Curmudgeon," once appeared in several dozen papers with a combined circulation of tens of millions; now, it's just you and me and my mother... and I've caught Mom skipping. So, time for something new.

Even after twenty years, I don't think I could walk away from The Corporate Curmudgeon if I didn't have another weekly column to write; it's a career advice column, "JT & Dale Talk Jobs," co-authored with J.T. O'Donnell, the brightest and most innovative career coach I could find (and, trust me, I searched). It's fast-paced and practical but still has time for the occasional curmudgeonly aside. I hope it will appear here, in the place of my old column.

Next week I'll say farewell, but for now, as we approach the end of the year, it's a good time to sum up some of what I've learned...

Most jobs are boring because they are designed that way. If you're building an organization, you want to create jobs that qualified people can do readily. Then, when you go to hire people, you look for employees who have successfully done that exact job. In other words, you minimize uncertainty, which is same thing as structural boredom.

In EVERY company people are going to make fun of the boss; it's just that in the good companies, it happens when the boss is around.

The worse the job, the harder it is to leave. A bad job is like a leech on the brain, numbing the soul and sapping self-esteem. A bad job makes you less qualified for a good job and less able to find one.

What another way of saying "workaholic"? Employee of the Year.

The more time and people devoted to a decision, the more likely it is to be wrong. The more people involved in a decision, the more likely it is to prudent. Prudence kills.

Bad jobs carry the seeds of good jobs. It may seem wise to send lousy jobs overseas, but along with those jobs go the knowledge, experience and money which will soon enable foreign companies to offer their own brands. And when they do, the good jobs will grow there.

On the high road, too, there are potholes.

We don't want to admit to its grim efficiency, but there's a reason why hierarchical, bureaucratic management systems are the basis of virtually all armies, governments, corporations, churches and schools: BUREAUCRACY WORKS! In fact, one reason it works so well is that an elaborate bureaucracy eliminates the need for charisma, reduces the demands upon competence, and replaces individual integrity with systematic regulation. Said another way, bureaucracy is leadership that doesn't reply upon an actual leader; the system is the Churchill.

Watching television these days feels like going to a low-rent carnival. Everyone is shouting to you, grabbing at you, grease-smiling and cheese-baiting... and that's just the talk shows. Is there any guest on any late night show who isn't selling something? Anyone who isn't telling stories written by an image team? Now, the people who brought you TV are taking over the Internet. No wonder newspapers, both online and in print, are about to make a comeback.

It's easy to believe that we live in a visual world and that words, especially written ones, don't matter. Don't be taken it by that false logic. The truth is that words are picture-making devices, the visual before the visual, and words remain THE important business tool, and THE important career skill.

And I have to end with one last insight from Gerald "Genghis" Cone, CEO of Mundane Industries: "The fact is that employees work harder the closer they get to their annual reviews. Why do you think I postpone them at the last minute every year?"

THE CORPORATE CURMUDGEON:

FAREWELL

By Dale Dauten

"If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown."

–Adam Walinsky

For the past dozen years or more, I've put a quote at the top of this column and, thinking back, I decided the Walinsky one above was my all-time favorite. Clowns AND Shakespeare; that's my kind of writing.

The reason I was thinking about my all-time favorite was that my time's up, at least for this column. As I mentioned last week, I'm going to be putting more time into "JT & Dale Talk Jobs," a zippy and useful career-advice column that I hope will appear here in place of The Corporate Curmudgeon. (My partner in that column is the charming and wise career coach, J.T. O'Donnell, who you'll love.) If you'll miss the old column - and, boy, I will - there's a collection of some favorites at dauten.com, where you also can sign up for updates about new material I'll be doing, including a pair of books coming up.

Over the years I've written as the ghost of Vince Lombardi, done Dr. Suess take-offs, including one called "The Clerk With The Smirk," had Siskel & Ebert review your career as a bad movie, and of course offered the opinions of CEO Gerald "Genghis" Cone and HR VP Winslow "Win-Win" Cheeseley, both of whom are colleagues at my mythical employer, Mundane Industries. It's a miracle that any editor of the Business section let me get away with it, so if you're reading this, you know your editors have open minds and don't take themselves too seriously, which means that they deserve your support, by which I mean your subscription.

As I looked back, feeing sentimental, it seemed right to end with an update of my most sentimental column...

I wish for you that you go to work at a place where they're glad to have you, a place where they wonder how to keep up with business, not where to stalk it.

And I wish for you that before too long you get chosen for a big assignment and that you have the privilege of being scared. Someone gives you a promotion or new job and you say to your spouse - the terrifically supportive one that I wish for you - "I don't think I'm ready" and your spouse says, "Well, they picked you, so they think you're ready. And me too, because you're the best."

But I also wish for you that somewhere along the way you get fired. You push an idea too hard, and a VP from L.A. who's jealous of your popularity gets you axed. Then someone you used to work with calls you and offers you an even better job and a year later you run into that VP at a conference and sincerely say, "Thank you."

I wish for you that you get to hire extraordinary people, some of whom are ones that don't look or act the part and your coworkers wonder if you know what you're doing. And those oddball employees understand that you gave them a break and they wonder how they can ever pay you back even as they are doing so. And you hire friends' kids for summer jobs and they when they're asked how you were to work with, they smile and say, "Cool."

I wish for you that when business goes down and the slope slips, you don't. An employee comes to you and says, "These numbers look awful, but we could fudge a little right here on this line and forget to report this account and then they'd look okay." And you give them the tight smile and the hard eye and say, "No, we'll either figure it out or tough it out," and your employee looks at you with relief and admiration and says, "I was hoping that was what you'd say."

I wish that when you start to think about retiring that your coworkers are horrified. And I wish for you that when you're old you have a mild heart attack, where everyone prays for you and comes to visit and they all realize how much they love you. And when, after a long healthy life, you die, I wish that everyone says, "THAT was a life well lived" and then, every so often, when things are tough, they think of you and smile, and try one more thing, and that's the one that works.

©2011 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

HOW TO HANDLE A BAD INTERVIEW

2010-09-22T17:34:00.005-07:00

"I'm open for business in your neighborhood;
The blues is my business, and business is good."

-Etta James

Plan to arrive a half an hour early. But don't do in. Drive around until you're five minutes early. If you're not early, you're late.

Your mind is going to want to think about how badly you need this job... any job. Even more, you're going to think about the one question you hope they do NOT ask, the dreaded "Why did you leave your last job?" When they ask - and they always do -- just say that it was a lay-off, shrug, and then ask a question before the interviewer does. And stop thinking about it.

Yes, you CAN stop thinking about it. Don't want fall for that purple elephant crap... just start thinking about your favorite boss and your favorite coworkers. Think about what you accomplished at your last job... and stop right there, do NOT think about how much more you could have accomplished with better management. Think only about things that make you smile, that make you strive into the interview confident and upbeat.

You can't let yourself get annoyed that you've been kept waiting for 40 minutes. Tell yourself that they are disorganized because they need help... hey, they need YOU.

When the guy you are scheduled to meet finally appears, he'll tell you that he's had "a crisis" and there's been "a blip." Instead of meeting with him, you're going to meet with someone named Crystal. This is a good thing, he tells you, because Crystal is "closer to the front lines." He shakes your hand, repeating, "It's a good thing," and hustles off. You can tell he's the sort of guy who tells everyone he jerks around that it's for the best, but you don't let yourself think that way.

Crystal appears 15 minutes later and introduces herself by correcting you -- "It's Krystela - with an 'a' on the end," and spells it. It's odd that her boss wouldn't know her name, but maybe she's new - after all, she looks like somebody who hung a tassle on the rearview of her Civic in the past weeks. Focus.

She takes you to the conference room and you'll be suspicious that it's because she doesn't have an office. Don't think that way. Just sit on the front of the seat, leaning forward - for you, the seat has no back.

She'll read your resume as she sits there, and it's obvious that it's the first she's seen of it. She says, "Why did you leave your last job?"

You'll fight the urge to over-explain, but then you notice that she's looking at her Blackberry and isn't really listening. You could say "I stapled my boss's lips shut so he'd stop interrupting me," and it wouldn't matter. But you just say, "lay-off" and shrug knowingly, then change the subject by asking her about her job. She'll say that she's an intern and is leaving next week for a trip to Mexico, so it's her last week.

Naturally, you'll want to feel discouraged, especially knowing that your wife and mother and mother-in-law will all be calling to ask how it went and then pretend not to blame you. So you'll lie and say it went great. And then you'll send a thank-you email and lie some more. And then you'll tell yourself the truth: somebody, somewhere needs your help and you're going to find that boss, no matter how many bad interviews it takes.

©2010 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

BETTER THAN IT HAS TO BE

2010-04-27T16:42:00.004-07:00

"We're bringing things into this that haven't been developed... we're working with scientists in the Netherlands... all trying to push boundaries, because that's what Michael is all about."

That's not a line from an R&D guy or a New Products engineer; it's from a Wardrobe Designer named Zaldy, talking about his work for Michael Jackson. It's in the recently-released video of the documentary "This Is It." (If you haven't been paying attention, the documentary is made from footage of the rehearsals for what was to be Jackson's touring show.) Watching it got me thinking how fully Jackson fit the profile of great bosses that I've been developing over the past couple of decades. Okay, his personal life was bizarre and misguided, and I suppose that we could say it killed him, but there on stage he was efficient, guided and guiding, a master at work -- not just a master performer, but uplifting manager.

Like all of the great managers I've studied, the ones I came to call "gifted bosses," he was conscious of creating something special. And he made everyone else fully conscious of it, too. There was never a "good enough" moment. Indeed, we get to watch as a choreographer and dancers have a lively exchange on how to properly do a crotch-grab during one dance number, and the choreographer, without irony, explains how a Baryshnikov would have done it.

And, in another scene, we encounter what we must consider another of our Great Moments in Management. Jackson is working with his Musical Director, who plays him a bit of a song. Jackson says, "Pretty good. Pretty good." And that is all it takes for it to be tossed out. Then the Music Director offers a new variation; Jackson opines that the rhythm needs to "simmer"; to which the response is, "Let add a bar. See what we get, simmer-wise." And they experiment till it's just right.

This Is It I love that exchange because it shows what happens when everyone is committed to creating the terrific. "Pretty good" is an insult. It's as if the team leader had said, "It's good enough for other people, but not us." And the team believes it, without question or apology. We see the same spirit when the pyrotechnics guy demonstrates the fireworks above the stage and the Director says, "Can we do that, times ten?" and the answer is, with delight, "Absolutely."

It would be easy for the fireworks tech to say, "Hey, that's what's in the specs" or, bigger picture, to say "Hey, it's just a music concert." That would be as easy as telling Steve Jobs to relax, it's just a music player or cellphone that he's working on. But nowhere in "This Is It" is a hint of that "it's only" thinking. Every crotch-grab is important, every firework, every guitar solo. The Wardrobe Designer I mentioned earlier was working with scientists in the Netherlands on wearable lights. If they weren't there would anyone notice and be disappointed? Of course not. What we see in the documentary, and what I've seen in the best workplaces, is a culture where the work is NOT about the audience/market/customers; it's about taking talent and taking off with it, luring it into the unknown, playing with the extraordinary for the sheer joy of being part of something better than it has to be. And that's exactly what elevates the best business endeavors, the joy of exploration into the frontier: better than it has to be.

©2010 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES SECRETLY HATE YOU, AND VICE VERSA

2010-03-10T19:34:00.009-07:00

"I had the meanest boss in the world so I'd call in sick a lot. I would say I had 'female problems.' My boss didn't know I meant her."

-Wendy Liebman

One of the problems with this economy is that if you're lucky enough to have a job, you have to live with the burden of being Lucky To Have a Job. Implicit in being one of the Lucky Ones is "shut up and be grateful", which is no one's first choice in the luck lottery.

Meanwhile, managers themselves keep getting asked to give just a bit more effort, to put in a bit more time. The problem is that they've been doing a bit more, year after year, crisis after crisis for a decade or two. Let's review the math of "just a bit more": If you work 40 hours a week and you're asked to put in an extra ten percent, in ten years time you're at 104 hours (which is 15 hours a day, seven days a week). It's your investments that are supposed to compound, not your workweek. (Compounding uninterest?)

What got me thinking about the dual-stress of the modern workplace was reading the news reports about job satisfaction stats reaching a new low. So I decided it was time to update my pair of lists of boss-employees annoyances. Let's start with the list of employees' frustrations…

Using the word "teamwork" when you really mean "overwork without complaint or compensation."

Treating kindness as if it were a scary virus that might spread to others – "If I did it for you, I'd have to do it for everyone."

Calling to "check in."

Offering distant and vague rewards: "No promises, but something good is coming."

Complaining about the cost of repairs for your "Beemer."

Prattling on about being a team when your real goal is to get a big promotion and leave the team behind.

That face you make.

And, on the other side, let's recall what it is that managers find annoying about their employees…

Saying "FINALLY!" to any announcement of a positive change.

Mistaking a thought for an idea, an idea for a proposal and a proposal for an innovation. (An idea is to an innovation what the sex act is to raising a child.)

Asking for advice when what you really want is to pass off problems or responsibilities.

Being miserable but not having the guts to do something about it.

Pretending not to understand.

Mistaking the boss for a wealthy and gullible relative.

Reacting to an attempt to the company doing something nice for employees by saying, "I'd rather they just give us the money it cost."

That face you make.

What's needed from both sides is to assume the best about the other, even when you know better. Perhaps that's what it means to be a professional: Show up – I mean really show, all in – and force yourself to assume the best (which means you don't get to make that face).

DEWEY OR DON'T WE: ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN MANAGEMENT

2010-03-10T19:21:00.008-07:00

"WE HAVE BOOKS ABOUT TV!"

-A sign in the Springfield Library -- the Springfield that's home to Marge and Homer Simpson and family

Today we travel to an unlikely place in search of inspiration for innovation, to a library in Gilbert, Arizona. There we can find the start of a radical notion known in the library world as "The Perry Branch Rebellion."

The Rebellion began with what qualifies as one of our Great Moments in Management. One day in 2006, a boss happened to say to an employee four of the most beautiful words in organizational life: Let's do something special.

Ah, what glory lurks in that little statement! Yet, such a suggestion is spoken rarely; the more common pronouncement is just the opposite, the dreary, "It doesn't have to be anything special" The heart sinks. But a young librarian named Marshall Shore recently recounted for me how one fine day he was asked by Harry Courtright to make a library special. (Perhaps we should also make this a Great Moment in Career Management because when I asked Shore if he'd be amazed at being asked to do something unique, he replied, "I'd developed a reputation for experimentation and innovation, so when they asked me to be involved, it was asking for something new." And there's the career chicken-egg – you have to be known for being special to be asked to be special.)

What Shore did was to seek out locals who did not use the library and ask, Why not? Here again, let us stop and admire: Most people, put in charge of opening a new library branch would seek out librarians and library users – the "experts" – to ask for "input." But, as Shore put it, "I want everyone to use the library so I wanted to see what was stopping people from coming in." He mostly heard two complaints: finding a book using the library numbering system, and the fines.

Given the nature of the economy, he couldn't give up a revenue source, like fines, but he could do something about those little numbers, the Dewey Decimal System that we all learned in school… didn't we all?... yet it's still off-putting to many prospective library users. I suppose it made them think of the crusty old school librarian with the schussing – a serpent-like hissing, come to think of it, the snake in the stacks.

But many of these same non-users of the library claimed to LOVE going to bookstores – ah-ha – and that's how Shore decided to offer up the radical notion of dumping Dewey and going with the topic-grouping familiar to book shoppers.

Imagine the resistance Shore faced. Not from library customers – he knew from survey results that three out of four visitors to the library came in to browse, not to seek out a specific book – but from librarians and staffers, the people who live Dewey, die Dewey. How did Shore overcome their objections?

Get this. It was a new library branch. The Dewey-less system was decided BEFORE the staff was hired. Part of the interviewing process was asking about Dewey. Those who couldn't imagine a library without it simply were not hired.

If you have an idea you want to nurture, don't plant it in the forest of the status quo, place it in a fresh field, away from the old growth. Give it to a new group or try it in an experimental store, surrounded by people who want it there, who want it to thrive.

Which brings us to an IBP (Important Business Principle) with a lovely Zen weightless heft: It's easier to change people than to change people.

A POORLY WRAPPED GIFT

2009-08-05T10:37:00.003-07:00

“If only we’d listened to that boy, instead of walling him up in the abandoned coke oven.”
-Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons

I once found myself sitting next to a physician in an auto repair shop’s waiting room. I don’t recall how it came up, but when I mentioned that I used to run a market research company, he brightened, saying, “We started using customer comment cards at our office.” Knowing that early research results can be startlingly helpful, I asked what he’d learned so far. He smiled and shook his head: “We don’t read what people write. The girls just throw the cards away. We only have them out because someone told me that if people have a complaint and can write it down, they’re less likely to file a formal complaint.” Makes you want to write a customer comment on your hand and deliver it straight to his ear-hole, right?

What got me thinking about doctors and customer service was talking with Angie Hicks, of Angie’s List, the consumer ratings service. Her firm’s three-quarters of a million members rate local businesses, and starting last year, they added doctors. Some of those doctors have objected and actually created a waiver for patients to sign stating they will not comment publicly on the doctor’s care. Angie calls this “the equivalent of a gag order” and it certainly tests the gag reflex. I mention it because the waiver is actually a convenient customer service, alerting you upfront that the person you are about to meet is the worst order of creep – the one who knows he or she is a creep and has refused to do anything about it except try to keep word from getting out.

But there are other important things to learn from Angie Hicks, one of the few who is successfully getting people to pay for content on the web. How does she make her service that good?

She keeps a blog at AngiesList.com and in reading some of her entries I found this note: “If you’re in the Columbus, Ohio area, stop by Cup o’ Joe in German Village tomorrow between 1 and 2:30 for a cup of coffee and a chat. I’ll be waiting!”

When we spoke, I asked Angie about that little invitation and she explained that she has such meetings three or four times a year, in different cities, usually in coffee shops, with all local members receiving an email invitation. These events don’t draw large crowds – 20 or 30 people is considered a nice turnout – but perhaps that’s better, because she doesn’t go out to speak, but to listen. And listening may be the primary customer service skill.

One of the things Angie hears from members is how to serve them better. Angie said, “For instance, one person explained that she was caring for elderly parents in Florida and wanted information on services in that city. So we added an option for members to add a city, at a discounted rate.”

Was the member with the elderly parents complaining to Angie? I suspect that she thought it was, but that’s not what the wise executive hears. And that brings us full circle, to what the doctor who threw away unread his customer comment cards did not understand: A complaint is a present in homely wrapping paper. Tear off the wrapping and there’s a suggestion inside. Unwrap that and there’s a market waiting to be served. Unwrap that and there’s a check with your name on it.

***

© 2009, King Features

IN PRAISE OF THE TYRANT

2009-05-20T11:07:00.004-07:00

”Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
-Steve Jobs

The English literary critic, John Collins, once opined that you should “Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.”

When it comes to organizations, I’d like to propose a related standard: “Never trust a manager who likes everything you do.”

What got me thinking about creative standards was reading the charming, lively and useful biography of David Ogilvy, The King of Madison Avenue, by Kenneth Roman, a former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. What impressed me most about Ogilvy’s involvement in the creative process was not his own copywriting – Roman tells me that Ogilvy had a dozen years of generating solid ad copy, but then took to calling himself “an extinct volcano” – but how he became the yardstick of quality.

Roman encountered the Ogilvy & Mather agency’s standards of excellence within a few months of starting work there when he was called away from dinner by a phone call from one of the agency employees who was working on a two-page magazine ad. Roman was told that the pages were too far apart, leaving an eighth of an inch of extra white space between them. The problem could be easily remedied, but doing so would cost $300 for new printing plates. Roman describes what transpired next:

“I agreed that the fix made sense but pointed out that this was not the main campaign, only a coupon ad, and this was just a test market. The change could be made later. ‘And the client has already approved it,’ I added.

“The reproving response was swift. ‘David says (pause) it’s never too late to improve and ad – even after the client has approved it.’ ‘Spend the 300 bucks,’ I agreed. Like the Church, the agency had standards.

Roman’s biography is replete with instances of Ogilvy’s standards lifting the organization. One former employee who went on to become a best-selling author, Peter Mayle, recalled getting his ad copy returned by Ogilvy heavily marked with red pencil including this bit of marginalia:

“Quack-quack. Belles lettres. Omit.”

On another occasion, when Ogilvy feared the entire agency standards were slipping, he wrote a series of memos under the heading “Escape From Dullsville.”

Roman tells me that he is often asked if working for such a demanding legend meant that Ogilvy was “scary.” His response: “No! He was fun and he was funny.”

So Ogilvy was charming… AND demanding. A lovable tyrant. Like many of the best leaders, he was feared in the best way – the employees didn’t fear him, they feared letting him down, feared failing to live up to his standard’s and the agency reputation.

We all need that fear, especially in an economy that is so bad it can scare the good fear away. It’s tempting for managers to try to make up for tough times by being soft, by being cheerleaders. But the best bosses understand that this is no time to go smiley-facing mediocrity. If you have a quality tyrant where you work, be grateful. If you don’t then it up to you to ask yourself the hard questions and to know when the right answer is that you’re wrong… Quack, quack.

***

© 2009, King Features

SINGING IN THE RAIN

2009-03-12T14:33:00.002-07:00

“The point of living is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.”
-Peter Ustinov

Assume for a minute you are the Guardian Angel of the Economy. It’s your job to guide the economy the way a film director guides a movie – you aren’t in the movie, but it’s your movie.

So along comes 2008: you’ve directed scene after scene, year after year, of economic expansion. So what is it time for? Something bad. That’s how plots work – hey, that’s how the world works. The garden must have a snake or there’s no story.

“Why,” we whine, childlike, “can’t our movie just go from jolly scene to jollier scene?” Because at some point we must test the characters in the movie, anneal them in a confrontation with disappointment and failure and in so doing, reveal their strengths and weaknesses… reveal them, which is to say, reveal character. (Notice the wisdom of the language here – “characters” and “character” both derive from the Greek “kharakter,” which is “a stamping tool.”)

Sure, the economy looks bleak. The stimulus package was old politics and, sigh, not all that stimulating. And that means no easy solution. So, ready or not, it’s character time.

Which brings us to the notion of making 2009 a great year. The very idea comes across as happy talk, but no, what I want to talk about is being handed the opportunity to separate “net worth” and “self-worth.”

Recently I spoke to a convention of Florida real estate agents. These were people who have faced one of the worst markets in the country, and for years they have watched their incomes plummet. I asked them this question: “How could this be your best year yet?” It took awhile to get past defining “best year” strictly by income – nearly no one could anticipate winning a game played by those rules. However, we soon had developed a marvelously robust list of ways to turn a dreary economic run into a time of triumph. For instance…

- 2009 is the year in which I started taking care of myself, and that while my youth is gone, my youthfulness isn’t.

- 2009 was the year I put time and energy behind my belief that it’s family that really matters – this is the year that we became closer than ever.

- 2009 is the year that I created the time to do volunteer work – I couldn’t contribute as much money as I have in the past, but instead I gave of myself, and discovered how much I have to give and how much remains to be given.

- 2009 is the year in which I began to experiment with how I do my work – I became more open-minded, made myself more tech savvy, and experimented with innovations, all making me more valuable to my employers and customers.

- 2009 was a time to re-examine my relationship to “stuff,” letting me peel away the materialism of the past decades, to discover the “joy of getting rid” as an antidote to acquisitiveness.

- 2009 was a chance to test my inner resolve and my spirituality – I learned that, given the chance, I can stand up to a bad economy, smile, and ask, “What have you got to teach me?”

Help yourself to a few of the above, add a few of your own, let me know how it goes.

2009 is the year of character. It’s as good a movie as you make it.

**

© 2009, King Features

What Works Better Than Layoffs - The Speech I Wish More CEOs Would Give

2009-02-24T11:06:00.003-07:00

"It's a great time to be Cisco."

That line came from John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. Despite declining sales, Chambers told CNBC that his company had no plans for layoffs, but rather, had moved $500 million into a fund to pursue new growth opportunities.

(For a similar, more recent interview: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/videos/fy09q2_earnings_020509.html)

The same day that I saw Chambers interviewed, I interviewed the CEO of a billion-dollar company who had just announced layoffs. However, unlike Chambers’ Cisco, this CEO’s company was booming, with sales up nearly 20%. So why the layoffs? Because they’d projected an increase of sales of more than 25%, so 20% was a disappointment. Talking to the CEO, I believe that layoffs actually cost MORE than letting the company grow into the larger staff, but the CEO felt the need to react and layoffs have become the knee-jerk reaction of executives everywhere.

Sure, there are situations where layoffs are inevitable, but I believe many could be avoided. Here’s how I wish executives would think about layoffs, expressed as The Speech I Wish CEOs Would Give…

[Speaking to all employees] As you know, our sales revenues are down. I know that you must be worried – fear is a rational response when the media are full of images from the Great Depression. Indeed, everyone is expecting me to announce layoffs – stockholders and other investors want me to do something – anything -- to help keep profits from declining, and layoffs are tangible evidence that a CEO is responding. However, I am announcing today that we will NOT be having layoffs anytime soon.

When companies proclaim that they are going to cut staff, here’s what usually happens. Some of those “cuts” are merely positions that were put in the budget and have yet to be filled, so eliminating them doesn’t actually reduce current spending, just future budgets. Next, and more importantly, the cuts tend to be among the least expensive employees, especially entry-level employees. Thus, should you succeed in reducing the headcount by 10%, you’ve actually cut the spending on personnel by less than 5%, perhaps only two or three percent.

Further, total spending on salaries is just a fraction of overall costs; in our case, one-quarter of total expenses. So if you announce a ten percent lay-off, you reduce one-quarter of expenses by a few percentage points, meaning that you succeeded in cutting costs by one or two percent.

And what is the cost of that cost savings? You have fearful employees, hunkering down, devoting much of the internal conversation organization to worry. That’s not what we hired you to think about.

So today, instead of announcing staff cuts, I am asking you to do join with me in doing the cutting – cutting waste out of our system. My goal is that we find ways to reduce costs by 10%. This will have a financial impact five times greater than cutting the staff by 10%. Further, I want you to find new efficiencies that allow us to take out expenses while better serving our customers. In other words, I’m asking you to be creative, and for that I need confident, bold employees.

If we do this right, and do this together, we will become a better, faster organization. Together we can go without layoffs. Instead of worrying about who will stay and go, I invite you to join me in worrying about how we will become even more useful to each other and to our customers. Instead of getting rid of some of you, I’m counting on all of you – now go out and prove me right.

**

©2009 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

"I Walked Away From An Easy 2K"

2009-02-24T10:54:00.007-07:00

”For those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset.”
-Jim Collins in “Good to Great”

Picture this: You’ve completed your first week of training for your new job when the HR-ers running things announce that you are now eligible for a $2000 cash bonus. You brace yourself for the daunting list of goals you must reach to qualify, but no -- to get the money you need to do just one thing: quit. Give up the rest of the training, walk away, and you get two large.

That’s how they do it at Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer that will do a billion dollars in business this year. The CEO, Tony Hseith says of the invitation to quit, “We started at $100 and keep upping it. Only 2-3% take the offer and that’s not high enough.” But get this – the offer comes with FOUR MORE WEEKS of training to go. I don’t know if this matches your experience, but facing four more weeks of corporate training, most people are willing to grab the “just shoot me now” buy-out.

Still, Zappos makes the offer, not just to get rid of the least committed trainees, but to add to the commitment of those who remain: As Hseith put it, “They will say to friends and family, ‘I walked away from an easy 2K.’”

Hseith certainly knows something about walking away with cash. In 1998, at age 24, he sold his internet start-up company to Microsoft for $265 million. He sold out, he insists, because “the culture went downhill.” When I sat down with Hseith I asked him what went wrong: “I ended up surrounded by people I wouldn’t hang out with.”

Hseith explained that “culture and brand are two sides of the same coin,” and so he wanted to be part of a hang-out-with culture. If you go to YouTube, you can see the employees having fun – there’s the “HR Dancing Queen,” shaking it in ways that would make the typical HR person merely tremble.

Speaking of trembling, do NOT watch the video called “Slap our CEO” with people from HR – they will explosively vomit at the point where Hseith not only gets slapped, but then slaps an employee, apparently for showing up late for work. The people in the video were being playful, but nothing is fun to watch when there’s vomit on your shoes.

All of which might lead you to believe that the CEO would be a Robin Williams sort, bouncing about being wacky. But Hseish resembles a Buddhist monk in blue jeans – he’s not just of Asian descent with stubble-cut hair, but he has a moving stillness that makes you think he’s doing a walking mediation.

You’ve probably read “Good to Great,” and so you know that Jim Collins described the leaders of great companies as “self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy.” Tony Hseith goes much further: When I commented on how different he was from the typical pump-you-up entrepreneurs I meet, he merely said “I’m an introvert,” and that was that.

So an introvert created a company full of extroverts so outgoing that the company’s brand is built on playfulness. What does that say to leaders about “set the example”? It says this: The company isn’t who you are; the company becomes who you hire and fire, and who you promote, and in this case, who you pay to leave training and go away.

(This is the final installment of a series featuring speakers at my favorite annual conference, the Compete Through Service Symposium held each fall in Phoenix. The previous discussions can be found at dauten.com.)

**

©2009 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

The Boss at a Loss

2009-01-15T14:56:00.005-07:00

Whenever I send out E-luminations, I get wonderful comments in response. I decided to open up the comments for everyone to see by turning E-luminations into a blog. I'll also be upping the mailings from monthly to once every week or two. Let me know what you think.
-Dale

It was over a decade ago that I wrote a corporate version of "The Cat In The Hat" called "The Clerk With The Smirk" (You can read it at dauten.com, under "Columns".} Now it seems fitting to turn Suessian with the managers who have only one response to trouble – laying off employees. So, with a nod to the late, great Dr Suess, here is…

THE BOSS AT A LOSS

The sun did not shine
On the boss and his staff.
The rain came to stay
For a quarter, a half.

"We're in this together,"
Said the Boss At A Loss.
We ten must work smarter
To make it across.

The staff they were eager
To try something new:
"Just give the OK and –
Your team will come through.

"We'll all get creative.
Instead of despairing,
We'll shake things up
With plans that are daring."

"Whoa, no need to get wild,"
Cried The Boss At A Loss.
"We need to drill down
And cut, cut, cut costs."

But cutting and cutting
Turned into a spiral,
The bad news kept coming,
The decline went viral.

"I've got to do more,"
Thought the Boss At A Loss.
"We have to cut staff --
I'll weed out the dross."

"We're in this together"
Said the boss to the six.
"We've got to spend less
To get out of this fix.

"We've got to work smarter
In this econo-mergency,
We all have to feel
A sense of urgency.

"No more sales trips,
No more buying of bagels.
We need to cut service,
On prices finagle."

"We're in this together,
It's up to us three.
I'll be here for you…
Well… no guarantee."

And The Boss at a Loss
Got into a rut –
Tut, tut, and cut.
Cut, Cut, and tut.

The lonely last employee
She said with a sigh,
"We can't keep doing nothing,
Let's give something a try."

"You're the only one left,"
Said the Boss At A Loss.
"One more expense --
The last item to toss."

Then the Boss had a plan
To turn things around.
He shouted for help,
But no, not a sound."

"I thought it was lonely,
When I was on top;
But nothing like bottom,
The last shoe to drop."

So he locked up the door,
And still holding the knob,
Swore he'd get creative...
In finding a new job.

What Management Really Wants

2009-01-05T18:34:00.001-07:00

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
- Dorothy Parker

Walt Disney once pointed that the key to success was to do something so well that people will pay to see you do it again. So, using that as a standard, here’s the question: When was the last time you saw a business presentation that you would pay to see again? OK, that’s too much to ask. How about this: when was the last time you saw a presentation that you’d want to sit through twice?

If you’re a corporate employee, wouldn’t be grand if your management actually looked forward to having you present instead of just pretending to look interested (after announcing just before you begin that they’d love to stay longer, but have an important conference call in fifteen minutes)?

One reason that presentations have become exercises in forced concentration is the dumbest advice ever offered to presenters, the old Keep It Simple, Stupid. This leads to The Lucidity Paradox, where you make your points so clear that they disappear.

Another piece of classic advice to presenters is the old What’s In It For Me principle, where your remarks address the audience’s self-interest. That would seem to be good thinking, but the fact is that most people have their self-interest figured out before you begin and come not to learn but defend. So, instead of KISS or WIIFM, I say the best advice to follow comes from the people who know audiences best, the ones whose livelihoods depend on knowing audience: the folks in the entertainment business who say, “Leave ‘em wanting more.”

Let’s face it, the typical PowerPoint presentation is an exercise in leaving the audience wanting less. So how is it possible to cover a topic thoroughly and still leave the audience wanting more?

What got me thinking about that question was a presentation by Mike Figliuolo (fig-lee-OH-lo), a former corporate guy who’s now consulting on how thought processes influence communication via his company, thoughtLEADERS (thoughtleadersllc.blogspot.com). Here are three of his suggestions:

1. “An individual’s compensation is inversely proportional to the number of PowerPoint pages he or she will tolerate before having a stroke.”

2. “If it’s two pages, it’s not a summary.” (Figliuolo quotes one executive commenting on the readability of written reports as saying, “If it has a staple I won’t read it.”)

3. “When people start thinking, bad things happen.” (The advantage of moving quickly through a presentation is that, done properly, you guide management to the conclusion you want to reach before they have time to let their minds wander off onto another agenda.)

You can see where he’s going here – right to the point. Seems easy enough, but it isn’t. Why? Figliuolo points out that the person giving the presentation yearns to impress the boss and the way to do that has always been by working hard. Thus, if you’re a typical corporate employee, you believe at some level that showing management all the research and data you’ve collected will impress them. Alas, it only impresses them that you think like the little people.

So you keep it short but NOT simple – you keep it big and fast and leave them working to keep up. You have the details available, should they want to see them. They won’t. But, with some luck and skill, they’ll want to see you present more often.

(This is the second of three reports on presentations at my favorite annual conference, the Compete Through Service Symposium in Phoenix. If you missed my first report, it’s available at www.dauten.com/columns. The final installment will appear in two weeks, following a special holiday column.)

* *

2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

I Can't Think of Anything Else I'd Rather Be Doing

2009-01-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

“All glory comes from daring to begin.”
- Eugene Ware

If you’re like me, you go to the typical professional conference and you end up listening to commonsense advice and well-worn platitudes till you want to scream, “Tell me something I don’t already know!”

There’s one conference I attend every year where that does not happen, and that’s because the only speakers are people doing something new and interesting. It’s The Compete Through Service Symposium, put on in November of each year by Dr Steve Brown of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State.

There were a dozen presentations worth telling you about, but I’ve picked three, ones so good that I followed-up and interviewed the presenters. Today, the first of a three-part series, we begin start with Dr. Gary Bridge, Senior VP with Cisco Systems. He offered a glimpse of how Cisco uses technology internally, which I am guessing is also a glimpse of what will be happening around your office.

It’s about to get cloudy. A new technique that had conference attendees buzzing was the “tag cloud.” You put a document into a free program at tagcloud.com and it returns a cloud of words, out of which, by employing various type sizes, the most common words jump out. (My guess is that this is just a fad; if I’m wrong, this may be the death of the complete sentence.)

The weekend CEO. You’ve heard that expression for second-guessing sports decisions “Monday morning quarterbacking.” Well, second-guessing CEOs is catching on – maybe the parallel to “Monday morning QB” should be “the weekend CEO.” Bridge suggested that the easiest way to find out the negative gossip about your company is to put your company name into Google, followed by the word “sucks.” (He suggested you also try “sux,” because younger generations will save a couple letters wherever they can. Perhaps this suggests that the complete word will be buried next to the complete sentence.)

Doogling. There was a pair of ideas that came out of the Bridge’s presentation that struck me as especially useful and readily implementable. First, Cisco has developed what they call Ciscopedia, where they capture the internal knowledge of their employees. Second, they have what they call Directory 3.0, resembling a corporate version of Facebook, where employees list their preferred ways they be contacted, availability and skills, both at work and outside of it. Bridge explained how the social networking aspect was useful to him when first working on a new client in the casino business: he did a search of Directory 3.0 and discovered an employee who loves poker and recruited that employee to coach him. This ability to do an internal directory search resembles a Google search – a Doogle? – and is something that has to catch on, and once it does, I suspect it will spread to searchable directories of suppliers and customers.

ETC… Bridge also described a technology called “telepresence,” with life-size video images of remote attendees at meetings, and later described how an employee, returning to the office with a Blackberry full of new e-mails, can simply make a throwing motion and that activates the Blackberry to update the desktop computer with the latest emails.

I like to think that such technologies, both useful and playful, will make their way through the economy. And I can only hope that they will help more people feel about their jobs the way Bridge does: When I spoke with him, he summed up his worklife with a remark anyone could aspire to, saying, “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. Every day there something that makes me glad for that day.”

* *

2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Talent Spotting

2008-12-30T02:33:00.004-07:00

From Guy Browning’s “Great interview questions for cutting interview candidates down to size”…

1. What is the capital of the Bolivia?
2. How would you rightsize a matrix management structure while implementing TQM from an empowered stakeholder base?
3. If you were so brilliant why haven’t you got it decent job already?

“You are going to get this wrong.” That’s my advice to people choosing a new hire based on job interviews. Because of all the IBPs (that’s Important Business Principles) I’ve written about, the hardest for people to act upon is this one: “The person you interview is never the person you hire.” Oh, sure, managers will nod in agreement, all the while secretly thinking that they have The Eye, the ability to shoot lasers of truth straight through to a person’s soul. But if you want to find a great employee, SEE THE WORK, or least talk to people who have seen the candidate’s work.

What got me thinking about hiring was talking to Larry Sternberg of Talent+, a company in Lincoln, Nebraska that’s developing what they call “the science of talent.” This means that they figure out the work attitudes of first-rate employees versus their average counterparts and then hire for those distinguishing attitudes. However, instead of a multiple-choice test, they used an open-ended format. As Sternberg puts it, “If I give you five choices, what I learn is if you can pick the right one. But, if I give you open-ended questions, I can see what your brain generates. Then we can look at your answers and see if they are conceptually equivalent to the answers of the top performers in that job.”

While the exact wording of the questions is proprietary, Sternberg paraphrased for us a couple of questions from the interview for sales people:

(1) “Should you guide clients to a buying decision or wait for them to reach their own conclusions?”
(2) “Are you sometimes reluctant to pick up the phone and make a sales call?”

I asked Sternberg if he often encountered the same phenomenon I’ve seen, that of managers being overconfident in their ability to spot talent. He replied, “What I encounter are managers who believe that they can create excellence – if you get the training right and the motivation right, excellence results. I don’t believe it. Giftedness cannot be installed.”

Sternberg told me of the time when he was working in China, opening a Ritz Carlton Hotel there: “In Singapore, they have a well-known hotel school. One of the things the Chinese CEO was trying to accomplish was to get the Chinese students to smile more. It simply isn’t part of their culture to smile as often as Americans do. So he put together an elaborate program of secret shoppers and a point system for smiles. He explained the intricacies of his program and asked me what I thought of his chances of succeeding. I could only smile and say, ‘Good luck.’”

Sternberg then added, “It was Peter Drucker who pointed out that if you do a good enough job of growing strengths you make weaknesses irrelevant. Was Picasso good at math? Who cares?”

Speaking of caring, if you’re the sort to care about right answers in an interview, I leave you with two, from the sample questions mentioned earlier:

(1) Top salespeople believe in their product, and their ability to figure out what is right for customers, so they are quite willing to jump in and tell the customers what they should be buying.

(2) The best salespeople own up to occasional “call reluctance” – what makes them different from the average salesperson is that they make the calls ANYWAY.

I warned you up front that you were going to get this wrong.

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2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

The Day the Economy Didn't Die

2008-12-30T02:30:00.003-07:00

“Death should not be seen as an end but a very effective way to cut down on expenses.”
-Woody Allen

Once upon a time there was a blithe and prosperous village. Then, one day, a butterfly flapped its wings.

When that butterfly flapped its wings, the owner of the local hardware store was sitting across from the town’s banker. He saw the butterfly out of the corner of his eye and looked over to admire it. The banker noticed that the store owner was not just looking away, but looking up and left, avoiding eye contact. Having once taken a seminar on body language, this made him nervous – wasn’t that the sign of deception? After all, this particular store owner was doing too well – too many people were building too many buildings, too many people had been getting rich too fast, and it made him nervous – this could not last. The banker spoke of bubbles and told the owner of the hardware store that he was worried.

The store owner wasn’t surprised – after all, the good times had to end sometime and, if truth be told, he’d like to take some time off and make up any lost revenue by cutting back on expenses, maybe letting one of his employees go. He said as much to the banker and left.

Later that afternoon, the town banker told the owner of the local dairy, that not only was he worried about the economy, but that the owner of the hardware store was laying off workers. The dairy farmer had been expecting this day – after all the good times couldn’t last forever – he was ready with his own contingency plan. He would get ahead of the downturn by selling some of his herd are and getting rid of the kid who he’s hired as a favor to the preacher.

So the dairy farmer sold some of his cows and called the grain company and reduced his standard order for feed. This was very bad news for the woman who ran the grain company. She decided she’d put off the improvements she was about to start. So she called the local contractor and said she wouldn’t be modernizing, after all.

Later that day the contractor visited the hardware store and told the owner that he had one less project. When the store owner asked what had gone wrong, the contractor told them that the grain company was cutting back because the dairy was cutting back because the town was doing too well.

This was exactly what the banker had predicted, the hardware store owner thought – the downturn had come. Instead of firing one employee, he decided to fire three, telling himself that it was better to be safe.

And the next time he visited the banker, he didn’t notice any butterflies outside the window, because the banker had just told him he was canceling his line of credit. After all, the banker explained, he had to be safe.

And so it went, each business got safer and safer till they were all in danger.

There was, however, one old farmer who had a different contingency plan. While all the other townspeople saved so much money they went out of business, he bought cheap land and equipment and his operations thrived. And that’s how it came to pass that the former owner of the hardware store went to work for the old farmer. One day he asked his new boss how come he’d done so well in a bad economy. The old farmer said, “My father lived through the Great Depression and he used to say, ‘fear is the greatest expense of all.’ He taught me to welcome the bad times as the start of good times.” The old farmer smiled and said, “It’s a good time for a bad time.” And the former store owner knew he was working for the right boss.

The moral of the story: “There is no safety in the herd that is running toward the cliff.”

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2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Old Lessons for New Problems

2008-12-30T02:22:00.004-07:00

“The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.”
-Anonymous

When I studying Economics in college, we often debated these two big issues facing the future of the economy: what to do with all the leisure time people would have (thanks to the declining work week), and what to do with all the extra people created by the population explosion.

Now, three decades later, no one even uses the term “leisure time,” much less wonders what to do with all of it. Not only did the workweek not fall to 35 hours a week, then 30, but society has shown amazing creativity is filling whatever time we have. Thanks to wi-fi, the cell and the Blackberry, we can fill any spare moments with work, but also, we have managed to take the leisure out of leisure time. Think, for instance, of the working mom who is driving her kids to the Math-nasium and then retrieving the family wiener dog from “doggy’s day out.” Not exactly leisure. In fact, I think we need a new word for “leisure time” spent doing work-like activities. We could use a compressed version of leisure work – i.e., “lork” -- but I’ve been using “errk.” This is errand-work, and I like how it sounds, like the “irk” in “irksome.”

So, we have increased the workweek and added in many new errks, pretty much doing away with leisurely leisure.

But what about the other bugaboo of my econ education, overpopulation? It was in 1968 that Paul Ehrlich’s book “The Population Bomb,” escalated the metaphor of a population “explosion” forward into “bomb.” This created sci-fi images of a biological weapon where babies would be sprayed into your home, screaming and angry and looking to suck down your food supply along with everyone else’s. However, while I wasn’t paying attention, the problem solved itself.

What got me thinking about the old baby bomb was reading a recent “Trends” report (trends-magazine.com) that reviewed the research on population trends. You probably heard that the Europeans were facing declining populations, but it’s not just Europe. Worldwide, there are six million fewer children under seven than there were in 1990. Six million fewer children.

Take a look at some of these birthrate numbers, and put them in context of the “replacement birthrate” of 2.1 (which is the average number of children a woman must bear to keep the population constant):

Canada: 1.55
Japan: 1.37
China: 1.39
Korea: 1.17

Even in Italy, where you’d expect those big Catholic families, the birthrate is 1.26.

In the U.S., the birthrate is 2.01. As for Mexico, I quote the “Trends” report: “It’s one of the last countries on Earth most people would expect to face a population shortage. However, its fertility rate has already fallen to 2.5. And, it’s dwindling so fast that it too will soon drop below the replacement rate.” The report adds, “This means that the flow of immigrants from Mexico, which America depends upon for cheap labor and to keep the size of its own population from falling, will soon be reduced from a torrent to a trickle.”

So there we have it, another problem blinded by science (in this case, effective birth control), and by the absence of the other problem we started with, leisure time – after all, working women want smaller families.

These days what they are worrying about in college Econ classes is how to deal with the decline in spending and tax revenue from having fewer young people. Clearly, economists need to spend more time at the mall. Just as work and the new near-work crowded out leisure, we can count on new types of spending to make up for the feared decline in consumer spending.

We can count on the ingenuity of the marketplace to create new “necessities” on which to spend money, including the endless supply of expensive new “errks” that we’ll need – if they’re good enough, they’ll keep the younger generations from dwelling on all the mistakes of my generation.

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2008 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Blog forthcoming...

2008-12-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

The blog is currently under construction, but check back soon!