Archive
Don’t You Wish….
…you can have a Dilbertonian conversation with a BM (past or present) like the one below without getting fired? Of course, the elegant genius of Dilbert is that former cubicle-dweller-turned-gazillionaire Scott Adams makes you want to laugh and cry simultaneously.
Recursive Behavior
Information hoarding by individuals and orgs used to lead to success in the past, but information sharing is one necessary but insufficient key to success today.
In this century, if the dudes in the penthouse at the top of the pyramid keep all the good stuff locked up in the unspoken name of mistrust, it’s highly likely that this anti-collaborative behavior will be recursively reproduced down the chain of command. Hell, if that behavior led to success for the corpo SCOLs and CGHs, then it will work for the DIC-force too, no?
“Trust is the bandwidth of communication.” – Karl-Erik Sveiby
Clever And Mistake-Free
In “The 3 rules of mindsets”, Daniel Pink provides these examples in order to contrast fixed minded thinkers with growth minded thinkers:
- Fixed mindset: Look clever at all costs.
- Growth mindset: Learn, learn, learn.
- Fixed mindset: It should come naturally.
- Growth mindset: Work hard, effort is key.
- Fixed mindset: Hide your mistakes and conceal your deficiencies.
- Growth mindset: Capitalize on your mistakes and confront your deficiencies.
I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly struggling against the “Look clever at all costs” and “Hide your mistakes..” fixed mindset maladies. It’s easy to criticize the “environment” for these shortcomings, but ultimately it’s a personal ego battle, no?
Are You Still Working On That?
It’s funny enough when you work for a one dimensional manager (one dimension = schedule), but it’s even funnier when another 1D manager that has nothing to do with your project stops by to chit chat and he/she inevitably asks you:
Are you still working on that?
LOL! Being 1D, and even though he/she has no idea what it takes (or should take) to finish a project, the question can be interpreted as: Since you’re not done, you’re lazy or you’re screwing up.
When the question pops up, try this Judo move:
Should I be done? How long should it have taken?
Or, you can be really nasty and retort with:
Yes I am still working on it. Sorry, but it’s not a shallow and superficial management task like signing off on a document I haven’t read or attending an agenda-less meeting that I could check off on my TODO list.
Come on, I dare you.
Fierce Protection
Delicious, just delicious. Pitches from Fred Brooks, Scott Berkun, Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister, and Steve McConnell all in one place: the Construx (McConnell’s company) Software Executive Summit. You can download them from here: Summit Materials.
Here’s a snapshot of one of Fred Brooks’s slides that struck me as paradoxical:
So…. who’s the “we” that Fred is addressing here and what’s the paradox? I’m pretty sure that Fred is addressing managers, right? The paradox is that he’s admonishing managers to protect great designers from…… managers. WTF?
But wait, I think I get it now. Fred is telling PHOR managers to “fiercely” protect designers from Bozo Managers (but in a non-offensive and politically correct way, of course). Alas, the fact that this slide appears at all in Fred’s deck implies that PHORs are rare and BMs are plentiful, no?
How do you interpret this slide?
Aggressive Substitution
One incredibly overused word heard repeatedly like a metronome across the vast corpo wasteland is “aggressive“. We will “aggressively pursue new opportunities“, “aggressively cut costs“, yada, yada, yada. It’s most commonly used by anointed BMs everywhere in long winded inspirational sentences that contain its most beloved twin: “schedule“. Here’s what my corpo jargon decoder ring tells me what it means:
Aggressive Schedule (AS) = Work your ass off at least 12 hours a day for months on end without receiving any overtime pay and expecting the same 1% yearly raise as the rest of the DICforce that smartly exits the psychic prison after five to seven hours of work per day. Oh, and I’ll get a bonus if you meet schedule.
The AS(s) phrase is always wielded by someone with no real skin in the game except for the possibility of fewer stock options if the “S” isn’t met. Since chronic overuse of any word takes the sting out of it, how about creatively mixing it up from time to time with a synonym replacement:
- Barbaric schedule
- Contentious schedule
- Destructive schedule
- Disruptive schedule
- Disturbing schedule
- Intrusive schedule
- Pugnacious schedule
- Rapacious schedule
I can’t decide on my favorite surrogate replacement. It’s either “pugnacious” or “rapacious”. What’s yours?
Blind, Ignorant, Deaf
In “The Thought Leader Interview“, HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar describes his shocking “Employees First, Customers Second” method of management to a pair of Strategy+Business magazine reporters. In keeping with my biased approach of culling only those quotes and passages that support my view of what the wildly successful company of the future looks like, I’ve assembled this self-serving list for your consideration:
Somebody said to me about the Employees First program, “Vineet, your competitors will copy this, and therefore, it will not be a differentiator.” My response was, “If our competitors can post the results of 360-degree evaluations, more power to them.”
The moment the recession hit we went out to our employees and said, “We have a problem. We’re going to solve it together.” We had thousands of ideas coming in, and we implemented them. Most of them were operational: There were no new products, services, geographies, or contracts. But HCL grew 23 percent and increased global market share by 21 percent. Our employees felt they were a part of everything we were doing, because of our inclusive approach. Even if it may take a bit longer to arrive at decisions, this approach helps ensure that implementations are smooth and that initiatives are sustained after the initial hype.
We created a 360-degree process where anybody can give feedback to anybody, including to me. We post the results internally so that all employees can see them. Good or bad, we all learn from the results. It’s open, it’s transparent, and the impact is positive. We find that this practice is motivating people to change their behavior. They try harder.
We also looked for symbolic ways to be a model of openness. One thing I did was publicly dance in front of all my employees. This was to remove the halo that a CEO has around his head. Meaningful conversation happens after you have set the stage in this way, after you make clear that you are as open as anyone else — crazy but effective.
So I held an open house with a group of employees. “I’m feeling pretty bad,” I said. “Nobody is saying what is positive about our company. Do you think I’ve unlocked a genie that is spreading demotivation?” Their answer was interesting. They said it is good to wash dirty linen in public, in this case on the blog, because it builds trust. There are no rumors. We discuss everything openly and honestly. We don’t always have solutions to problems, but at least we expose them.
Whatever trust is left in command-and-control management structures has been deeply tested during the recession. I am told that in business in general, employee trust in management is at its lowest point ever.
Even though Mr. Nayar is a breath of fresh air, I’m not too optimistic that his ideas on effective corpo governance will spread like wildfire to a company near you. You see, Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco Inc., was Vineet Nayar twenty years before Vineet Nayar. Of course, since Mr. Semler’s version of participative management was also an all out assault on the draconian, patriarchical, system of management that pervades the globe today, he was ignored by mainstream business too.
Disconnect And Distance
If professional social networks like LinkedIn.com were around in the 1980’s, it’s highly likely that you’d be branded as an unloyal traitor for joining one. Even today, didn’t you feel a slight twinge of exhilarating fear when you joined? Uh, not me (LOL!).
If the leaders (or should I say the “SCOL“s?) in your org are ostriches and they cling to outdated, mechanistic, FOSTMA ideas like the demand for one way loyalty without even a hint of self awareness that they need to change their mindsets, then head for the hills because your sugar daddy is most likely going downhill. If, for some reason beyond your control you think you’re stuck where you are, then simply disconnect and distance yourself from the daily shenanigans that take place in your environment.
Rabble-Rousing And Anarchy-Instigation
Because he’s passionate, energetic, and prolific, I like Tom Peters. Check out this twitter conversation I recently had with him:
What are your thoughts?
Love Before Fear First, And Fear Before Love Second
One of Niccolo Machiavelli‘s most famous dicta is:
It is better to be feared than loved.
But wait….. that’s not the whole story. It’s certifiably time-proven and unassailable advice after you’ve parked your svelt butt on the throne, but not before. As you rise through the power rankings on your way to becoming alpha dog, it’s better to be loved than to be feared so that you can be swept into power by the very same people that you’ll need to fear you after you’ve secured Fort Knox.
You get it, right? If you’re not loved on the way up, chances are that you won’t even make it “up”. Hence, you’ve got to cleverly morph into one of those “nice guys” at work. You know, one of those stereotypical Stepford dudes that everybody speaks fondly of, but whose contributions and accomplishments are mysteriously unknown.
Thus, I, Bulldozer00, illegitimate son of Bulldozer and 00, have successfully catapulted brother Machiavelli’s quote for success into 21st century:
“Before you acquire power, it is better to be loved than feared. After you’ve acquired power, it is better to be feared than loved” – Machiavelli and Bulldozer00
Moo, hah , hah, hah. MOO HAH HAH HAH!!!!
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