Turn me to stone
Do anything you want with me
Cover my eyes
There’s nothing more they need to see
Turn me to stone
Before there’s nothing left of me
Make me a rock
And not what I appear to be
Turn me to stone
Turn me to stone
Stereotomy – The Alan Parsons Project

Once upon a time I was a hiring manager, and perhaps if fate has its way again, I’ll be in a position with this type of responsibility again soon. But for now, I’m on the other side of the desk. After reviewing some recent hires by prominent organizations, a rather interesting pattern emerged: how similar the hires are to each other…and to the hiring manager.

Hiring people like us is safe. It means we don’t have to challenge our own comfort zones. We’re getting people who fit a mold that we’ve already defined as “successful.” But I’ll argue these reasons are built on bad assumptions, made worse by the constant pressures of change and innovation. Hiring people who fit a highly pre-defined mold is a sure path toward stagnation. If you’re in a hiring position, here are a few questions to consider:

• If you hire people with a similar background as you, do you think you’ll be getting the breadth of expertise and thinking necessary for your team’s and organization’s success?
• If you hire people who you think are going to usually agree with you, are going to get divergent outlooks to fill in your own and your team’s blind spots?
• If you hire people just like you, are you sure you know why?

I’ve been there and intimately know the challenges of making the best hires possible. Just be mindful of why you’re hiring a particular skillset or background. Is it to mimic your own identity and preferred beliefs of past success? Or is it to add greater depth and diversity of ideas to your team and organization?

photo credit: tsuda (via Flickr)

I’m not the best one to talk about to-do lists, Getting Things Done, or the other various thinkings about task management. All too often, I still find myself just keeping those various things that need to be completed inside my head. I do have a Pro account with Remember the Milk so I can sync my tasks with my BlackBerry but it doesn’t take long for me to neglect the lists. Perhaps its a lack of discipline, but that’s not to say that I’m not productive…okay, maybe I’m not as productive as I could be.

Now I’ve heard plenty of people talk about the necessity of getting things out of my head and onto paper or a screen – something visible so I don’t have to try to remember it all. It’s that process of trying to mentally corral all those sundry tasks needing to be done where trouble lies for most of us. When was the last time you knew you had several things to do, but couldn’t remember them all? Or worse yet, knew exactly all the things that had to be done that day and felt overcome by a feeling of hyperanxious dread?

That last feeling was mine this morning…until I heard this story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich from Radiolab talked about an interesting experiment conducted by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv. It turns out that when we store all of these tasks (or anything really) inside our brain’s short-term memory, our rational self becomes overloaded giving our emotional self space to take over. It certainly gives greater insight into the panicky feeling I was wrestling with earlier today.

Here’s the page for Willpower and the Slacker Brain (but definitely listen to the audio story…it’s both entertaining and enlightening):

What do you think? Make sense to you?

photo credit: kristinized (via Flicker)

How many of us have ever felt like Vince Young, quarterback for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans? He was once a heralded first round draft pick by the Titans but after a knee injury in his first game of the 2008 season, he was relegated to a backup role for the remainder of the year and first six games of 2009. It was only after the Titans started a woeful 0-6 this year that Young got a chance to start again. Since his return as a starter three weeks ago, Tennessee is now 3-6.

Vince Young’s story is still unfolding but haven’t we all been in his shoes before? I’m thinking specifically about our work. We’re good at what we do and receive accolades from our managers. Then, we make a mistake and are demoted to some form of a lesser role in the organization. Or we find ourselves entangled in a layoff. Or we simply find ourselves burnt out of the job. It becomes easy to just stop caring and giving our best. This quote from Young as told to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King shows how important it is to stay out of the muck and mire of self-defeating, internal dialogue.

A couple of times last year, when he was most frustrated, Vince Young would text Kobe Bryant, who had become something of a mentor. He’d write something like, “Man, I wanna play so bad. What do I do?” The answer would always come back from Bryant with something like this: “Stay focused. Work on your craft.”

When we’re faced with bad situations in our work, often the best solution is to remember that its temporary and can turn around at any point. We need to stay focused and committed to improving our selves and our capabilities. You never know when you’ll be asked to return to the starting lineup with a chance to be even better than before.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired about work? While indicators for workplace health my be declining, all is not lost. Ellen Galinsky at the Families and Work Institute notes there are six ways organizations can promote a healthier and more effective workplace.

As a manager or executive, how does your organization rank based on these criteria?

• learning opportunities and challenge
• a good fit between work and personal life
• autonomy
• having a supervisor who supports job success
• economic security
• a work climate of respect and trust

More from the CNN Health article…

In an organization, nothing starts a mad fit of eyerolling and quizzical looks among employees quite like management decrees. It’s not unlike the images we have of royal decrees being issues in olden times. From atop his tower, the king stands before his subjects and issues proclamations that often have little positive bearing on their lives (e.g., your taxes will be increased because I want to fight a war in a land you’ve never heard of – or – this is your new queen, now bow down and worship her). But hey…he’s the king and do any damn thing he likes because he’s the king (including repressing the local peasants who disagree with his claim to allmighty power).

Management decrees (oh alright, if it makes you feel better we’ll call them “decisions”) often come from the same thinking: “This is a good decision from my vantage point and employees will just need to accept it.” These decisions don’t need to be weighed against whether they make sense to the employee, whether they mesh with their day-to-day experience, whether they make their working lives easier. The employee is supposed to follow the orders because the individual proclaiming them is their king boss.

For a more modern day example, CNN reports the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are seriously contemplating the idea of creating a tobacco-free military. At a surface level, it sounds honorable and makes sense since so many VA hospitals cope with the fallout of tobacco-related illnesses. But dig a little deeper and it shows the same misguided thinking that is the hallmark of one-way managerial decision-making: As your boss, I know what’s best and while I may pretend to care about what you think, I really don’t care enough to listen. If the Pentagon did listen, these are the things they might actually hear:

“When you’re tired and you’ve been going days on end with minimum sleep, and you are not getting the proper meals on time, that hit of tobacco can make a difference,” said Gen. Russel Honore, who was in charge of the Army’s training programs before he retired.

Other soldiers questioned whether this was a good time to stamp out smoking, given the Army’s concern with a high suicide rate. “For some, unfortunately, they feel that smoking is their stress relief. Well if you take it away, what is the replacement?” said Sgt. 1st Class Gary Johnson.

(Note: Let me say that I’m not advocating smoking or tobacco use. I enjoy an occasional cigar with friends, but also fully know the health risks. I’ve had my share of relatives who’ve dealt with the connected illnesses such as cancer and emphysema. But if you haven’t noticed, this blogpost isn’t about tobacco…it’s really about the hubris of managerial decision-making.)

There is something to be learned from getting out from behind the desk, the clinical wording of studies and the blind paternalism that passes for managerial decision-making. Demanding and decreeing change will likely get you nowhere at best; it might just cost you respect and influence among your employees. Bring your people into the decision-making process and learn how decisions will interplay with their daily working reality. Your decisions will be more relevant and your chances of having filth flung at you during company meetings will be lessened.

Creating policies for blogging, social media, and the like is a murky area for most organizations. And let’s face it: most of us don’t actually enjoy writing this stuff (or maybe that’s just me). This is why it’s always nice to find a list of good policy examples from which we can swipe and alter for our own purposes. Enjoy!

http://123socialmedia.com/2009/01/23/social-media-policy-examples/

I love Iron Man. It just happens to be one of my favorite (and best written) comic book series being published right now. And as for the movie…I saw it twice in the theater and I’ve seen it three times since buying it on DVD. On my daily walk this morning, Black Sabbath’s Iron Man came up on my iPod and I started to think about scenes from the movie. One particular scene flashed across my thoughts and led me down an interesting path of reflection.

[SPOILER ALERT: the scene below is a crucial plot point so if you haven't seen Iron Man...Wait...you haven't? Okay, hurry up, buy it, and watch it...then come back. I'll wait.]

Toward the end of the movie, Tony Stark/Iron Man battles his business partner, Obadiah Stane, who proves to be a megalomaniacal character with no remorse when it comes to selling weapons to both the U.S. and the terrorists that the U.S. fights. Stane also manages to steal the designs of Tony’s armor and has his engineers secretly build a much larger, more powerful version, which – at least in the comics – is referred to as the Iron Monger armor. So, this final smackdown between two metal giants becomes one between creator and imitator. Which, to me, is the connection to the fallacy of best practices.

Because Stane didn’t understand how his armor really worked, he became overreliant on someone else’s technology. Our heroic Iron Man took advantage of this by climbing on his back and ripping out Stane’s weapon targeting system which ultimately proved to be crucial to the villain’s defeat.

This isn’t the first time I’ve teed off on best practices (see here), but I’m also not completely opposed to them, either. The critical difference is how they are applied. If you blindly accept best practices without fully considering how they’ll work or without determining how they’ll integrate with your own systems, then you’re missing the whole point. And you’re likely in for a surprise when you find that you get some exceptionally poor results.

Instead, try this: BE UNIQUE for goodness sake. You have all kinds of creative ideas floating around your organization. They exist inside the heads of your people. Rather than looking for that next great idea outside your organization, look inside. Your people are the ones who have an intimate grasp of the challenges you all face…and likely they have some solutions, as well.

This idea and plan for Endiscouragement is not mine, but I wish it was. It comes from David Donathan at University Business (via LibraryBytes). David’s article is called Stifling Initiative and it proposes ten never-fail ways to kill innovation without actually saying “no.” With tongue firmly planted in cheek, he describes the reason why this is a practiced skill for managers:

Unfortunately, there are always those who just don’t get it. You know-those who think organizations need to adapt to remain competitive, that change is good and results in greater efficiencies, that failure to adapt to “modernalities” is evil and counterproductive. Since they usually mean well and truly believe they are trying to improve our situation, we don’t want to cull them from the herd (besides, who wants the hassle of trying to break in the newbie?). It usually suffices to discourage these people to the point that they fall in line and stop agitating. How do we get them to stop? How do we encourage the status quo without driving them to leave? I call this unique program “Endiscouragement: The Fine Art of Encouraging No Change Without Being Perceived as a Naysayer.” It has ten simple rules, which, if judiciously applied, will gradually lead the agents of change to conform to the culture of no that we are so carefully trying to preserve.

My personal favorite is #6: “Have you talked to … about it?”

While similar to rules 2 and 3, this rule is more nefarious in that you have appointed the agent of change the instrument of her own endiscouragement. The agent of change will wander from one overworked, disinterested employee to another as each key person refers her to someone else who needs to be “in the loop before I can help you.” Eventually the agent of change will be locked into a self-instigated merry-go-round of eternal meetings. Best of all, she will be so busy trying to deal with all the meetings for her proposal that you will be able to call her to task for not being attentive to her job.

The sad thing is that most of these rules are practiced in organizations not out of maliciousness or Machiavellian cunning, but out of a simple (and usually unconscious) belief that this is how the corporate world operates. Which leads me to a couple of related questions:

What does your organization do to encourage dynamic innovation at all levels? What does your organization do to stifle innovation? If you want to truly engage your employees, your answers will lead you to some interesting conclusions.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful and meaningful Thanksgiving. With all that’s going on in the world, this year’s holiday has been a time for me to reflect on all that I’m thankful for in my life. And perhaps just as importantly, to appreciate the hope and potential that each day brings.

In my readings in business anthropology, I found this story which really speaks to how we create our own sense of thanksgiving each day in our work. The key is in our approach:

In one training exercise, new employees are sent into a small village dressed in plain white uniforms and are required to go door-to-door asking residents for simple household chores that they may do without pay. The trainees must do this alone and may not return to the training facility until they succeed in finding work. The exercise is not as simple as it may appear because doing a favor for someone in Japan creates an obligation, meaning that strangers are not eager to accept gratuities. After being refused several times, the young trainees usually find that they are happy to do whatever work they are offered, no matter how menial or onerous. This experience is meant to teach them that it is not the nature of the work that determines one’s attitude toward work, but rather one’s attitude that determines the way in which the nature of work is perceived. (emphasis added)

Marietta L. Baba, Anthropological Practice in Business and Industry (2005)

What are you doing to extend the feeling of thanksgiving into your daily work?

For those of you who follow football, the firing of Matt Millen should not come as a great shock (and for those of you who happen to still follow Detroit Lions football, it likely comes as a Day of Liberation). If you don’t happen to follow or care for the american-style pigskin sport, this is just another example of what happens when you hire someone to manager your operations who has technical experience and passion, but next to zero management ability. The fact is that while anyone can be a manager, not everyone is actually good at it.

One of Millen’s former employees, coach Steve Mariucci, had this to say:

Matt’s interest really wasn’t there. I don’t think he was equipped with his background to do a good job. He certainly had an interest, certainly loves football, he certainly has a passion, but I think his skills would say that he simply didn’t have the experience to do a good job in management.

That’s not to say that he couldn’t have learned and honed his management craft because let’s face it…management is something that can only be learned through practice. However, judging by the fact that he made rather curious personnel moves throughout his tenure and other poor decisions that led to a 31-84 record over the last eight seasons, I would wager against that idea.

But luckily, failing doesn’t mean failure. Here’s hoping that Millen does find what he’s good at and runs wild with it.