This blog is about the relationship between organizations and the people who work for them. And, it’s dedicated to the millions of people around the world who go to work every day wanting to do a great job.
Management
Shining eyes
“A [symphony orchestra] conductor doesn’t make a sound. His job is to awaken the possibility in other people.”
This is what Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, says.
And, how do you know you’re doing it?
“If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it… It’s about how many shiny eyes are around us.”
As a leader, how many shiny eyes are around you?
Random Posts:
Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
Recently the LinkedIn HR discussion group I follow asked the question: “PowerPoint slides loaded with paragraphs of text … is this laziness? Lack of awareness? Do people really think this is good visual support? What do you think?”
The answers:
they don’t know what they’re doing
they don’t know they don’t know what their doing
they’re lazy and they don’t know any better
it used to be ok, but not now. The world has moved on, but they haven’t
they don’t have the time to do it right
many companies want these kind of slides
people who are afraid of public speaking do this in order to hide behind text-heavy slides
they have no respect for the audience
they’ve never heard of Pecha Kucha, the 6×6 rule, Prezi, the drop the slide at your feet and if you can’t read it it’s got too much on it rule …
they’re consultants
they think it makes them look smart
they don’t know the material
Great fun and a good way to let off steam. Given that you’re not an academic or a consultant, the question is, “Why do you do what you do on the job?”
Random Posts:
Be aware, be very aware
Dale Carnegie once said people will judge you not only by what you do, but also by how you do it, and what you say, and how you say it. In other words, words and speech matter. True, but strong and silent men and women have even more problems. Because in the real world people will judge you not only on what and how you do and say it, but when, where, why, and to whom you do it and when, where, why, and to whom you say it. Not to mention, who said and did what immediately before and after you did. In other words, words, speech, action, and context matter. This is why communication is so difficult. The lesson for communicators in organizations is “be aware be very aware.” A lesson everyone else would also be wise to learn,too.
Random Posts:
Rest, renewal & the global situation
When you drive a big rig, the time you drive and rest is regulated for safety reasons.
When you fly a plane, the time you fly and rest is regulated for safety reasons.
When you’re a senior leader making decision that affect 1,000s, maybe 100,000s, of people – employees and customers and communities – you can, and likely do, work many more hours than the 40 hour, 5 day standard work week [at least that's what it is here in Quebec, Canada].
I recently read a post - ”How to accomplish more by doing less” - that brought the implications of this to my mind again. Here Tony Shwartz talks about the absence of regular rest and renewal during the day and a good night sleep on individual performance. And, that made me wonder about the impact it’s having on the quality of thinking and decisions that are being taken by leaders who are are working 60+ hour weeks. Not getting breaks or lunches away from their desks. Working evenings and weekends because they are in meetings from 8 to 6 or later each and every day. Not taking vacations.
Could inadequate rest and renewal have led to our current global economic and political situation?
How can we help our organizations focus and prioritize?
Do less [but more of the right things]. Do it well. And maybe we can change the world!
Random Posts:
“How easy is it for me to do great work?”
I’ve been a fan of Bill Jensen‘s work since I read his first book, Simplicity. But, the book that really made me sit-up and take notice was “Work 2.0: Rewriting the contract“. In it he asks leaders to think about how their employees would answer this question – “How easy is it for me to do great work?”
“Work 2.0 is not for the faint of heart… it is for those who are not afraid to stretch their thinking about work and the new contract every employer must make to keep their talent.”
Jane Harper, Director , IBM Extreme Blue
In the 10 years since it was first published the pressure to find and keep the right talent has increased. The employer – employee relationship has changed. But, organizations have not. Or not well or fast enough.
Enter “Hacking Work“, Bill’s most recent project. The idea is simple. As employees we have a choice. We can sit and wait for our organizations to make it easy for us to do great work or we can take action on our own behalf, something Bill calls benevolent hacks, and make it easier for us to do great work.
As a leader ask yourself what you’re doing to make it easier for employees to do great work.
As an employee, don’t wait for your organization to catch up to your needs on the job.
Ask: What can you do to make it easy for you to do great work?
Random Posts:
You can’t know what you don’t know!
“Orienting employees has more to do with introducing employees to your culture – “The way we do things around here” and the brand experience – than it does all the rules and regs that are the usual focus of employee orientations.” Yes, I said that in a post last November.
And, I still believe it. But part of the way we do things around here has to do with rules and regs so employees need to know that too.
My nephew, let’s call him John to protect the innocent, got a job at Subway earlier this summer. He’s 16 and this was his first experience working outside the family business. He lasted less than two weeks. No one told him that on breaks there’d be no place to take the break. You see at this Subway outlet you can eat all the food you want, but there’s no where you’re allowed to eat it. Unknowingly, poor John found a corner in the empty restaurant to take his break and have his snack. The next day he was told off [I guess the manager watches the video] and his hours were cut. The day after that he quit.
You can’t know what you don’t know.
This came to mind today when I was out chiwalking up Mont Royal and heard someone coming down the hill complaining about being told off at work for something they’d never been told and couldn’t be expected to ‘just get’.
So, ask yourself: What do new employees need to know about the way we do things around here? Are we giving them an adequate orientation or are we just waiting until they break a rule or cross an invisible line to let them know?
Good for John for quitting. And too bad for Subway ’cause they lost a great employee.
Random Posts:
“DIY” management
The other day, over breakfast with a good friend and senior HR professional, I learned something that surprised me. He works for a fortune 500 pharmaceutical company that is well-known and highly respected. Since he’s been there – well over 10 years – they’ve reorganized every year or two. I don’t mean minor reorganizational changes. I mean major tectonic plate shifting changes. And over that time, like many other companies, they’ve centralized the global HR function into their head office and shifted the commoditized work of the function to outsource partners.
But today, he told me that, they are also transferring technical HR work to managers.
Now, as those of you who follow this blog know, I think management should take more responsibility for their employees – knowing who they are, listening to them, helping them align priorities, getting them what they need to do their jobs better and more easily, building capacity of teams and individuals. But what my friend was talking about takes management in the opposite direction.
His company has decided that managers should take on what is fundamentally a very technical data input role. Thanks to new user friendly People Soft interface they will be able to promote, demote, transfer, reassign, document vacation, parental leave and remove their employees from the corporate database all on their own. Just add water and stir.
In a world that is already over-charged and over-loaded there are now new responsibilities that take management further from leadership and deeper into the semi-automated technical world that once belonged to HR specialists.
So while, managers are entering data, employees are calling an outsourced support function in Manila and figuring stuff out on their own rather than speaking with their boss or their local HR business partner. As one of my friend’s colleagues said it’s a world turning into “Do it yourself” management!
You do have to wonder what’s this transfer of work really about? And is it really for the better?
Random Posts:
Sucky values suck!
It was impossible to disagree with Robert Fritz when he said, at a training I participated in last week, that:
“Organizations are amoral in and of themselves.
It’s human beings in organizations that have values.
It’s leaders that must impose values.”
So, when I read the most recent Maritz poll results (2010, USA), I had to conclude that leaders may be imposing values, but they aren’t the ones that are being communicated by Corporate communications and HR professionals.
The survey found that “despite a slight improvement in business conditions, the American workforce remains less engaged with their employers than they did one year ago. Poor communications, lack of perceived caring, inconsistent behavior, and perceptions of favoritism were cited by respondents as the largest contributors to their lack of trust in senior leaders.” Specifically:
- Only 7% believe senior management’s actions are completely consistent with their words.
- 14 % of employees believe their company’s leaders are ethical and honest.
- Only 12 % believe their employer genuinely listens to and cares about employees.
- Only 10 % of employees trust management to make the right decision in times of uncertainty.
- About 25 % of employees distrust management more than they did the year before.
What is especially disheartening is that these same leaders are reading this report and year over year seeing the same results disappointing results. What are they making of it? Do they see employee involvement in their businesses as a must have or as a nice to have? What’s keeping them up at night if it’s not this?
Sucky values suck!
Thanks to Hacking Work and Communication at work for bringing this poll to my attention.
Random Posts:
A marathon is not a sprint!
As I wrote yesterday’s post, I remembered a conversation I’d had with a client of mine a few years ago. I’d commented that the people in his organization were acting as if they were running a sprint when they were really in a marathon. In their case, it was more like a very, very long, cross-country ultra marathon every day for over 5 years and a stream of change programs and reorganizations. My client laughed. He’d been a sprinter in a past life and reminded me that a 100 meter sprint lasts under 11 seconds!
Not anything like a marathon.
No wonder people were exhausted. They all believed that if they just pushed harder then they’d catch up and things would get back to normal. And the CEO, the execs, the professional communicators and human resources professionals all believed it too. Well of course this wasn’t true then and it isn’t true today, 4 years later. I hear that the organization is still working people at a sprint pace. Busy “sweating the small stuff” as the current CEO said in a recent interview.
Doesn’t sound like a prescription for being the best we can be – institutionally or professionally – to me. And, it made me think. What, if anything, can we do to help institutions that are behaving as if they are in a sprint when they are in a marathon?
Random Posts:
“Sometimes you just have to go rogue”
“Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing.” [Caterina Fake at Happiness Hack]
There’s nothing fake about Caterina Fake’s take on the role of management. She’s co-founder of Hunch and Flickr. And thanks to Hackingwork you can hear how she, as “a management 2.0 leader thinks about [her] role and best practices for being a disruptive hero”. [really gets going at 4 minutes]
Yep. “Sometimes you just have to go rogue.”
Sign up for mailing list
Recent Posts
- Do you know the 3 best headline writing tricks ever … anyone can do, guaranteed!
- You have a presentation to make
- Shocking news!
- Shining eyes
- Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
- Be aware, be very aware
- If the US Army is embracing social media, you can too!
- Thriving in chaos
Authors
Recent posts
- Do you know the 3 best headline writing tricks ever … anyone can do, guaranteed!
- You have a presentation to make
- Shocking news!
- Shining eyes
- Why oh why do presenters put so, so much text on their PowerPoint slides?
- Be aware, be very aware
- If the US Army is embracing social media, you can too!
- Thriving in chaos
- Rest, renewal & the global situation
- Learning from the Bishop’s wife