Inspired by my brother’s comment and the subsequent email discussion among him, my father and other brother, I recently picked up and read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, a book I’d postponed reading for many years.
This wandering-America genre of literature, at its heart, is the author's own self-exploration. Steinbeck's introspection is remarkably honest, often hilarious and other times sad. He writes of his quest to determine what exactly it means to be an American – almost at an arm's length, as though he's excluding himself from consideration – and ultimately decides he can't quite pin it down.
It’s a studied glimpse of America in 1960. And he didn't balk at exploring the underside, too. He purposefully went to New Orleans to witness the ugliness of racism, where white housewives loudly taunted a little black girl attending a newly segregated school. He indulged in analysis of the meaning of racism in the American South, wondering where it would lead and how or if it would end.
Colin Fletcher's The Thousand-Mile Summer (which I wrote about here last September in "The Concertina of Life") qualifies for this genre. It, too, is a retelling of a similar journey of self-discovery, a trip with a pre-determined beginning and end.
One trait these books share is their rush to finish. The end of Steinbeck's trip was the same as Fletcher's – hurried and harried. Steinbeck drove a counter-clockwise route in a camper with his dog Charley, a very intelligent standard poodle, going from New York through New England and then west through Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana to Seattle, returning by way of California, Texas and the South.
By the time he reached the western tip of Virginia, he fairly raced home, stopping only for gas and catnaps. He admitted that his interest in the passing landscape was non-existent, that he didn't really see anything. Fletcher, too, admitted that the last three weeks of his hike, which mileage-wise amounted to nearly a third of his total trip, were "dull." The telling of the final miles, in both, takes up far fewer pages than did the equivalent number of miles earlier in the books.
The initial purpose of their trips – to explore and delve into their subjects – fades into tedious recitation as they approach their final destinations, perhaps a reflection of human nature, our innate desire to complete the tasks we assign ourselves.
Steinbeck started his trip in New York and headed north into New England where he dug into the territory and the people. It was far closer to his home than Virginia, yet he didn't spend as much time or analysis there as he had in nearby Maine. The freshness of the idea of exploring got stale. Maybe it’s simply a longing to return home.
We set goals for ourselves, inject purpose into what we do. Often, in the heat of the moment, in the reality of the act, we lose track and just want to be done with it. I think by the time he extricated himself from the ugly racism of the South, enduring what he referred to as “weary nausea,” Steinbeck had tired of the journey and the subject matter. It had lost its magic pull and became a push to get back home in New York. He wrote:
It is very strange. Up to Abingdon, Virginia, I can reel back the trip like a film. I have almost total recall, every face is there, every hill and tree and color, and sound of speech and small scene ready to replay themselves in my memory. After Abingdon – nothing. The way was a gray, timeless, eventless tunnel, but at the end of it was the one shining reality – my own wife, my own house in my own street, my own bed. It was all there, and I lumbered my way toward it.
It is the rare human able to treat the journey’s end (or the task, for that matter) as intently as he/she does the beginning. Is it typical of the genre, of the human race? I want to undertake a more detailed analysis to include others: Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, On the Road by Jack Kerouac (both of which I read years ago), and Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent (which I haven’t yet read). I’ll let you know what I learn.
Insights and Ideas on Business and Employee Communications
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
A Missed Opportunity
Given the chance to boost employee morale, to reinforce the kind of messages that help build a cohesive organization, what kind of company would pass it up?
It's hard to imagine that any organization – especially in these trying times – wouldn’t want to maximize every opportunity to lift people's spirits and make them feel a part of something larger than themselves.
So it struck me as absolutely tone-deaf and (dare I say?) stupid when I actually observed a company that missed the opportunity – big time.
Escorted into the lobby of the headquarters of a multi-national corporation, a potential client, I was heartened and pleasantly surprised to see a wall of black and white photos of people: office workers, blue-collar workers and executives in various poses related to the work they do.
I recognized the CEO and commented aloud to my companion – the prospective client liaison – what a great idea it is to post all those employee photos. It reinforced the sense of community that helps define a corporation and its mission. I imagined myself an employee coming into work every morning, feeling a sense of pride at seeing the photo of myself alongside my fellow workers. "What a terrific idea," I said aloud.
So imagine my shock and surprise when she said that all but the handful of executives were in fact models, not real employees of the company.
Whoa. Check please.
Talk about a missed opportunity. Talk about a self-inflicted fatal wound.
Not only would a wall of employee photos be a real morale booster and enhance people's connectedness to the organization, but the company's failure to do so – and in such a blatant fashion – had the complete opposite effect. Were I an employee there, the knowledge and daily reminder of seeing a wall of photos of models pretending to be real employees would be a daily slap in the face. It would tell me that employees are replaceable by anonymous models and therefore not essential to the organization or its mission.
What possibly could have been the motivation? Cost saving? Was it really cheaper to hire dozens of models and take professional photos? Not likely.
In the delicate dance with a prospective client, I handled the topic carefully. Fortunately, she agreed with me and, in fact, felt herself insulted just as I would have had I worked there.
The experience revealed volumes about this organization and the people who ran it. But it also spoke to the broader issue of engaging employees in the organization and its mission.
As I wrote in the previous entry here, businesses are at their heart communities of humans. Anything that enhances that community, that builds people’s sense of connection to the greater whole, is going to redound to the benefit of the corporation.
Connecting employees to the corporation can take many forms, and the more methods employed, the better. Frequent face-to-face meetings, executive visibility and availability, communications in numerous venues and such all add up to a better-informed and better-connected employee population, employees who are engaged in the long- and short-term goals of the organization.
Envision a company that does all that and how well a wall of employee photos would be received, and how natural the addition of such photos would be.
Now, imagine the opposite. Without revealing the name of the company, I can assure you that it is now in dire financial straits – five years after my having seen those photos in the lobby. In my own mind, I see a direct connection between its current situation and that wall of photos. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity.
It's hard to imagine that any organization – especially in these trying times – wouldn’t want to maximize every opportunity to lift people's spirits and make them feel a part of something larger than themselves.
So it struck me as absolutely tone-deaf and (dare I say?) stupid when I actually observed a company that missed the opportunity – big time.
Escorted into the lobby of the headquarters of a multi-national corporation, a potential client, I was heartened and pleasantly surprised to see a wall of black and white photos of people: office workers, blue-collar workers and executives in various poses related to the work they do.
I recognized the CEO and commented aloud to my companion – the prospective client liaison – what a great idea it is to post all those employee photos. It reinforced the sense of community that helps define a corporation and its mission. I imagined myself an employee coming into work every morning, feeling a sense of pride at seeing the photo of myself alongside my fellow workers. "What a terrific idea," I said aloud.
So imagine my shock and surprise when she said that all but the handful of executives were in fact models, not real employees of the company.
Whoa. Check please.
Talk about a missed opportunity. Talk about a self-inflicted fatal wound.
Not only would a wall of employee photos be a real morale booster and enhance people's connectedness to the organization, but the company's failure to do so – and in such a blatant fashion – had the complete opposite effect. Were I an employee there, the knowledge and daily reminder of seeing a wall of photos of models pretending to be real employees would be a daily slap in the face. It would tell me that employees are replaceable by anonymous models and therefore not essential to the organization or its mission.
What possibly could have been the motivation? Cost saving? Was it really cheaper to hire dozens of models and take professional photos? Not likely.
In the delicate dance with a prospective client, I handled the topic carefully. Fortunately, she agreed with me and, in fact, felt herself insulted just as I would have had I worked there.
The experience revealed volumes about this organization and the people who ran it. But it also spoke to the broader issue of engaging employees in the organization and its mission.
As I wrote in the previous entry here, businesses are at their heart communities of humans. Anything that enhances that community, that builds people’s sense of connection to the greater whole, is going to redound to the benefit of the corporation.
Connecting employees to the corporation can take many forms, and the more methods employed, the better. Frequent face-to-face meetings, executive visibility and availability, communications in numerous venues and such all add up to a better-informed and better-connected employee population, employees who are engaged in the long- and short-term goals of the organization.
Envision a company that does all that and how well a wall of employee photos would be received, and how natural the addition of such photos would be.
Now, imagine the opposite. Without revealing the name of the company, I can assure you that it is now in dire financial straits – five years after my having seen those photos in the lobby. In my own mind, I see a direct connection between its current situation and that wall of photos. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
A Community of Humans
“Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.”
A client shared that quote with me a few years ago. I think it’s one of the best summations of the importance of consistent, timely and relevant employee communications, of using communications to build trust and strong, lasting relationships within an organization.
The quote was attributed to Arie de Geus, former head of Global Planning for Royal Dutch Shell, now a fellow at London School of Economics and MIT.
I got to thinking about those words and the sentiment they express the other day when I learned that The Rocky Mountain News was shutting down. To learn more about it, I visited its web site, which features a 20-minute video that, at its heart, I sensed, reinforces Mr. de Geus’ words.
The newspaper closed less than two months shy of the 150th anniversary of its founding. That’s a lot of history for any organization. In fact, the founding of the paper predates Colorado statehood by about 17 years. You can imagine the kinds of news it covered over the years – the settling of the Wild West and everything since.
The staff knew the end was near because The News’ owner, Scripps-Howard, announced in January that it was seeking a buyer and that, if none stepped forward within a month, it would close the operation.
The newspaper business in general has been struggling for some time now, having lost advertising revenue and readers to the Internet. But combining that fact with a dour economic climate, The News’ fate was sealed. The interim period gave the people the opportunity to prepare the paper’s obituary, so to speak, including this well-produced video and a 52-page history inserted into the final edition last Friday.
But it was the video that spoke to me and evoked de Gaus' words. Staff reporters and editors are interviewed and you sense the tears about to flow. It is a very sad wake, as though they had lost a parent too soon. It may even have been more profound than that.
These people lost not only a job, but they lost a mission they shared with dozens of other people within an amorphous entity called The Rocky Mountain News with which they all identified deeply, an entity they helped shape and define every day.
These are tough times for a lot of businesses. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. That video makes the effect obvious. Watch it and you’ll get a deeper understanding of what a lost job really means.
We commit the majority of our waking hours throughout our adult lives to our careers and jobs. We sustain a significant sense of self-worth and value from what we are able to achieve – each in our own way – on the job. Take that away from us and what are we left with?
This is the core question that people are asking themselves as they contemplate the potential loss of their own jobs. Sure, the lost paycheck is the big immediate concern. How will we pay the mortgage? How will we pay the bills? What about our family? Will we be able to find a new job in this lousy economy?
But the deeper pain and self-doubt arises from the disconnection from that “community of humans” that was the organization we worked for, that community from which we derived so much sense of satisfaction and our connection to the larger world, that organization we helped shape and define.
Managers and company leadership must think about this component of people’s jobs as they contemplate cut backs, lay-offs and the like, rather than seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet. They must continually engage their people to build trust and understanding – especially in difficult times – as they contemplate the extreme measures to take to accommodate slumping revenues and profits. They must convey an honest empathy with their people, and a sincere faith in the value and contributions those people bring to the greater whole that the company represents.
That’s what Arie de Gaus’ words are all about. Managers must focus their thinking on the reality of their organization as a community of humans first and foremost. If they do, if they have always done that, chances are that the fruitful and profitable economic activity of producing goods and services will follow.
Who knows? Perhaps the bite of a bad economy will have less effect on such a community of humans, and enable the organization to weather the storm and live to see better days.
A client shared that quote with me a few years ago. I think it’s one of the best summations of the importance of consistent, timely and relevant employee communications, of using communications to build trust and strong, lasting relationships within an organization.
The quote was attributed to Arie de Geus, former head of Global Planning for Royal Dutch Shell, now a fellow at London School of Economics and MIT.
I got to thinking about those words and the sentiment they express the other day when I learned that The Rocky Mountain News was shutting down. To learn more about it, I visited its web site, which features a 20-minute video that, at its heart, I sensed, reinforces Mr. de Geus’ words.
The newspaper closed less than two months shy of the 150th anniversary of its founding. That’s a lot of history for any organization. In fact, the founding of the paper predates Colorado statehood by about 17 years. You can imagine the kinds of news it covered over the years – the settling of the Wild West and everything since.
The staff knew the end was near because The News’ owner, Scripps-Howard, announced in January that it was seeking a buyer and that, if none stepped forward within a month, it would close the operation.
The newspaper business in general has been struggling for some time now, having lost advertising revenue and readers to the Internet. But combining that fact with a dour economic climate, The News’ fate was sealed. The interim period gave the people the opportunity to prepare the paper’s obituary, so to speak, including this well-produced video and a 52-page history inserted into the final edition last Friday.
But it was the video that spoke to me and evoked de Gaus' words. Staff reporters and editors are interviewed and you sense the tears about to flow. It is a very sad wake, as though they had lost a parent too soon. It may even have been more profound than that.
These people lost not only a job, but they lost a mission they shared with dozens of other people within an amorphous entity called The Rocky Mountain News with which they all identified deeply, an entity they helped shape and define every day.
These are tough times for a lot of businesses. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. That video makes the effect obvious. Watch it and you’ll get a deeper understanding of what a lost job really means.
We commit the majority of our waking hours throughout our adult lives to our careers and jobs. We sustain a significant sense of self-worth and value from what we are able to achieve – each in our own way – on the job. Take that away from us and what are we left with?
This is the core question that people are asking themselves as they contemplate the potential loss of their own jobs. Sure, the lost paycheck is the big immediate concern. How will we pay the mortgage? How will we pay the bills? What about our family? Will we be able to find a new job in this lousy economy?
But the deeper pain and self-doubt arises from the disconnection from that “community of humans” that was the organization we worked for, that community from which we derived so much sense of satisfaction and our connection to the larger world, that organization we helped shape and define.
Managers and company leadership must think about this component of people’s jobs as they contemplate cut backs, lay-offs and the like, rather than seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet. They must continually engage their people to build trust and understanding – especially in difficult times – as they contemplate the extreme measures to take to accommodate slumping revenues and profits. They must convey an honest empathy with their people, and a sincere faith in the value and contributions those people bring to the greater whole that the company represents.
That’s what Arie de Gaus’ words are all about. Managers must focus their thinking on the reality of their organization as a community of humans first and foremost. If they do, if they have always done that, chances are that the fruitful and profitable economic activity of producing goods and services will follow.
Who knows? Perhaps the bite of a bad economy will have less effect on such a community of humans, and enable the organization to weather the storm and live to see better days.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
In the wake of the deal
We learned this week that Oracle is on a buying spree, taking advantage of the weak economy to pick up a few bargains. It’s sort of like what we’d do in terms of upgrading our housing situation right now – if only we had the cash on hand to do it.
Oracle does have a lot of cash on hand - $7.4 billion, to be precise. So CEO Larry Ellison has gone shopping, beefing up his company’s product and service offering by buying 10 different companies in the past 12 months.
While safeguarding its future bottom line with a broader selection of offerings, the company’s near-term challenges are happening below Ellison’s radar screen: the actual integration of these often disparate companies and cultures into the behemoth that Oracle has become. A telling comment by one employee, quoted in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/09), points out the nub of this problem.
“Some former employees … say the acquisitions spawned confusion in-house as people got thrown together on new projects. ‘My manager would put me on projects that are totally irrelevant for my skill set,’ said one former consultant who joined Oracle when it bought PeopleSoft Inc. in 2004. The changes became so frequent, he says, he eventually stopped trying to remember the names of groups he was assigned to.”
Merging one company into another is a big mountain to climb, all the more difficult when the acquired company is large, with a lot of employees in a variety of operations, located in numerous places around the world.
The big numbers guys – people like Larry Ellison and his peers – can seal the deal and head off looking for the next bargain. In their wake are a lot of people who have to make the latest deal work, sewing together the mismatched seams that occur at many points of contact.
For instance, noses get out of joint when people in the acquired company lose the cherished titles they had earned in their formerly independent firm. Maybe a “senior vice president” at XYZ Software is now a “director” in his new company, one of hundreds with that title. Sure, his salary and benefits stayed the same, but he lost his corner office and the perks and respect that went with being an SVP. Ruffled feathers like that need to be smoothed, lest the birds fly away.
At its heart, the integration is all about hundreds of important tasks like that – the dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s – that consume thousands of man-hours in weaving together two organizations to assure that the original intent of the acquisition is realized.
Integrations aren’t completed when the deal closes. That’s just the starting point. And typically, as much as one, two or even three years later, there can still be a lot of loose ends.
Individuals at some foreign operations might still be operating under “temporary” contracts and not officially part of their new company. I’ve seen cases where local labor laws prevent the new company from even issuing new business cards until all the laws have been satisfied to enable these people to become official employees of the acquiring company.
The HR people, meanwhile, tear their hair out over these complications, trying to sort out the nuances and keep everyone happy and productive.
The IT operation is another matter. Among other tasks, they have to align two networks to assure that people on both sides of the integration can readily communicate. Even in a company like Oracle, it likely takes months before employees in the acquired firms have full access to internal web sites, Shareware and assorted applications.
And business can’t stand still while these details around payroll, benefits and IT access are sorted out. People on both sides of the integration are expected to be working together from Day 1, creating, selling and servicing products, and keeping customers happy.
In all this, communication plays an important though limited role. The temptation is to fly at the 20,000-foot level, looking for the common cultural links that help one group better understand and merge with the other. We can develop narratives that distill the essence of the acquisition strategy that brought them together, and use that to help shape internal messages and reinforce the core themes. That’s an important part of the process.
But at the end of the day, the most valuable communications are those that establish broad internal awareness and understanding of the challenges everyone is facing, while providing timelines to give people a sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel; communications that anticipate and answer people’s burning questions, the open issues that keep them awake at night. That’s what matters most.
Oracle does have a lot of cash on hand - $7.4 billion, to be precise. So CEO Larry Ellison has gone shopping, beefing up his company’s product and service offering by buying 10 different companies in the past 12 months.
While safeguarding its future bottom line with a broader selection of offerings, the company’s near-term challenges are happening below Ellison’s radar screen: the actual integration of these often disparate companies and cultures into the behemoth that Oracle has become. A telling comment by one employee, quoted in the Wall Street Journal (2/17/09), points out the nub of this problem.
“Some former employees … say the acquisitions spawned confusion in-house as people got thrown together on new projects. ‘My manager would put me on projects that are totally irrelevant for my skill set,’ said one former consultant who joined Oracle when it bought PeopleSoft Inc. in 2004. The changes became so frequent, he says, he eventually stopped trying to remember the names of groups he was assigned to.”
Merging one company into another is a big mountain to climb, all the more difficult when the acquired company is large, with a lot of employees in a variety of operations, located in numerous places around the world.
The big numbers guys – people like Larry Ellison and his peers – can seal the deal and head off looking for the next bargain. In their wake are a lot of people who have to make the latest deal work, sewing together the mismatched seams that occur at many points of contact.
For instance, noses get out of joint when people in the acquired company lose the cherished titles they had earned in their formerly independent firm. Maybe a “senior vice president” at XYZ Software is now a “director” in his new company, one of hundreds with that title. Sure, his salary and benefits stayed the same, but he lost his corner office and the perks and respect that went with being an SVP. Ruffled feathers like that need to be smoothed, lest the birds fly away.
At its heart, the integration is all about hundreds of important tasks like that – the dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s – that consume thousands of man-hours in weaving together two organizations to assure that the original intent of the acquisition is realized.
Integrations aren’t completed when the deal closes. That’s just the starting point. And typically, as much as one, two or even three years later, there can still be a lot of loose ends.
Individuals at some foreign operations might still be operating under “temporary” contracts and not officially part of their new company. I’ve seen cases where local labor laws prevent the new company from even issuing new business cards until all the laws have been satisfied to enable these people to become official employees of the acquiring company.
The HR people, meanwhile, tear their hair out over these complications, trying to sort out the nuances and keep everyone happy and productive.
The IT operation is another matter. Among other tasks, they have to align two networks to assure that people on both sides of the integration can readily communicate. Even in a company like Oracle, it likely takes months before employees in the acquired firms have full access to internal web sites, Shareware and assorted applications.
And business can’t stand still while these details around payroll, benefits and IT access are sorted out. People on both sides of the integration are expected to be working together from Day 1, creating, selling and servicing products, and keeping customers happy.
In all this, communication plays an important though limited role. The temptation is to fly at the 20,000-foot level, looking for the common cultural links that help one group better understand and merge with the other. We can develop narratives that distill the essence of the acquisition strategy that brought them together, and use that to help shape internal messages and reinforce the core themes. That’s an important part of the process.
But at the end of the day, the most valuable communications are those that establish broad internal awareness and understanding of the challenges everyone is facing, while providing timelines to give people a sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel; communications that anticipate and answer people’s burning questions, the open issues that keep them awake at night. That’s what matters most.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Weathering the Tough Economy
Few businesspeople today have ever faced such a dreadful economy, nor the multitude of challenges it has wrought. This is new territory for almost everyone. How well people operate going forward will determine the speed at which we, both individually and collectively, pull out of this economic malaise.
Though I do firmly believe that “this too shall pass” and we will eventually see an expanding economy, with job growth, I am no economist and certainly have no crystal ball to foresee when that turn-around will come. But I can opine on internal business environments and how leaders, managers and their employees should be operating together to serve the best interests of their companies.
Regardless of which way the economy goes in 2009, leaders' and managers’ uppermost focus must remain on the perpetuation and long-term success of the company – a goal that encompasses many aspects of running a business and countless decisions, big and small. But if business leaders and managers do only one thing right in these trying times, it has to be treating their employees with respect.
Many companies have had to impose layoffs in recent months. Likely there are more to come. Even if they haven’t laid anyone off yet, virtually every company, even those with strong balance sheets, is considering or has enacted pre-emptive budget cuts, including wage and hiring freezes. The result? Nervous and insecure employees everywhere.
Needless to say, nervous and insecure employees are not always doing their best work – which is the last thing a stressed organization needs. Businesses need their people to be at their best to collectively surmount today’s complex challenges, and can’t afford disaffected or disconnected employees.
It is incumbent, then, on managers and leaders to take some simple actions to counteract the unavoidable negative climate of fear that can set in and afflict even the best businesses under the cloud of budget cuts or a recent or potential layoff.
Downsizing and economic uncertainty is a time for dialogue based on facts and the realities of the marketplace. It’s a time for listening and responding, and for alignment. Words alone will not calm people's insecurities. But the right behaviors and actions will. One valuable behavior is encouraging dialogue. Set up a system to invite feedback. Don't let anything fester. Keep the dialogue open. Listen.
Re-engage the workforce in the business at hand. Restate business goals and the strategies that will get you there. Remind them in succinct terms why you're in business. Bring the outside world in to re-emphasize the climate of uncertainty you’re operating under, including the challenges your customers, suppliers and competitors are facing. Acknowledge people's frustrations and insecurities but, at the same time, remind them that this is the world we’re all operating in today. The only thing they can control is what they do every day. Re-iterate what is important – the business goals – and make sure that they see their connection to and role in fulfilling those goals.
Employees, too, have a significant role to play in this dynamic. In addition to their willingness and desire to put in the extra effort, they should be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. The need for honesty is also critical, alerting supervisors and managers to new opportunities and unanticipated problems - along with proposed solutions. Employees should also remain curious about the world outside their company, especially their customers but also the global economic climate and the many facets of the world that have direct and indirect impacts on how their company operates.
Leadership should keep managers in the loop so there is a common understanding of the marketplace realities that led to the action (e.g., layoffs and/or budget cuts), the company's business strategy going forward, and the responsibilities of the employees to drive toward those goals. Prepare backgrounder documents for the managers to assure that employees across the organization are hearing a consistent message, and that managers are prepared to answer the inevitable tough questions.
There's an unspoken truth when people are laid off: their work still must get done. But where is that work going? How is that particular operation, function or department going to make up for the lost manpower and productivity? Who is going to take on that burden? What work or project needs to be stopped or reassigned? These are often the first and most difficult questions on everyone's mind after the dust of downsizing settles. Be prepared with realistic, workable answers.
In their January 12 Business Week column, Jack and Suzy Welch offered what I would consider another valuable piece of advice:
“…resist the impulse to make 2009 a year devoid of celebration. When times get tough, leaders often assume it’s unseemly to stop now and again and, well, have some fun. But this year – because of its severe challenges – is sure to be filled with remarkable small victories and heroic efforts. What a lost opportunity to build morale it would be, then, not to recognize and reward the people who are over-delivering. More than ever, they need and deserve it.”
If we learn anything from these frightful, uncertain times, let’s hope it’s the central importance of showing respect for employees by communicating with them frequently, openly and honestly.
Though I do firmly believe that “this too shall pass” and we will eventually see an expanding economy, with job growth, I am no economist and certainly have no crystal ball to foresee when that turn-around will come. But I can opine on internal business environments and how leaders, managers and their employees should be operating together to serve the best interests of their companies.
Regardless of which way the economy goes in 2009, leaders' and managers’ uppermost focus must remain on the perpetuation and long-term success of the company – a goal that encompasses many aspects of running a business and countless decisions, big and small. But if business leaders and managers do only one thing right in these trying times, it has to be treating their employees with respect.
Many companies have had to impose layoffs in recent months. Likely there are more to come. Even if they haven’t laid anyone off yet, virtually every company, even those with strong balance sheets, is considering or has enacted pre-emptive budget cuts, including wage and hiring freezes. The result? Nervous and insecure employees everywhere.
Needless to say, nervous and insecure employees are not always doing their best work – which is the last thing a stressed organization needs. Businesses need their people to be at their best to collectively surmount today’s complex challenges, and can’t afford disaffected or disconnected employees.
It is incumbent, then, on managers and leaders to take some simple actions to counteract the unavoidable negative climate of fear that can set in and afflict even the best businesses under the cloud of budget cuts or a recent or potential layoff.
Downsizing and economic uncertainty is a time for dialogue based on facts and the realities of the marketplace. It’s a time for listening and responding, and for alignment. Words alone will not calm people's insecurities. But the right behaviors and actions will. One valuable behavior is encouraging dialogue. Set up a system to invite feedback. Don't let anything fester. Keep the dialogue open. Listen.
Re-engage the workforce in the business at hand. Restate business goals and the strategies that will get you there. Remind them in succinct terms why you're in business. Bring the outside world in to re-emphasize the climate of uncertainty you’re operating under, including the challenges your customers, suppliers and competitors are facing. Acknowledge people's frustrations and insecurities but, at the same time, remind them that this is the world we’re all operating in today. The only thing they can control is what they do every day. Re-iterate what is important – the business goals – and make sure that they see their connection to and role in fulfilling those goals.
Employees, too, have a significant role to play in this dynamic. In addition to their willingness and desire to put in the extra effort, they should be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. The need for honesty is also critical, alerting supervisors and managers to new opportunities and unanticipated problems - along with proposed solutions. Employees should also remain curious about the world outside their company, especially their customers but also the global economic climate and the many facets of the world that have direct and indirect impacts on how their company operates.
Leadership should keep managers in the loop so there is a common understanding of the marketplace realities that led to the action (e.g., layoffs and/or budget cuts), the company's business strategy going forward, and the responsibilities of the employees to drive toward those goals. Prepare backgrounder documents for the managers to assure that employees across the organization are hearing a consistent message, and that managers are prepared to answer the inevitable tough questions.
There's an unspoken truth when people are laid off: their work still must get done. But where is that work going? How is that particular operation, function or department going to make up for the lost manpower and productivity? Who is going to take on that burden? What work or project needs to be stopped or reassigned? These are often the first and most difficult questions on everyone's mind after the dust of downsizing settles. Be prepared with realistic, workable answers.
In their January 12 Business Week column, Jack and Suzy Welch offered what I would consider another valuable piece of advice:
“…resist the impulse to make 2009 a year devoid of celebration. When times get tough, leaders often assume it’s unseemly to stop now and again and, well, have some fun. But this year – because of its severe challenges – is sure to be filled with remarkable small victories and heroic efforts. What a lost opportunity to build morale it would be, then, not to recognize and reward the people who are over-delivering. More than ever, they need and deserve it.”
If we learn anything from these frightful, uncertain times, let’s hope it’s the central importance of showing respect for employees by communicating with them frequently, openly and honestly.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Value of Office Small Talk
It’s called “water-cooler talk,” or just shootin’ the breeze. It’s the non-productive chitchat that occurs in every office every day of the week, especially Monday. And it’s the bane of many productivity-obsessed bosses. But is it communications? Is there any value in it? Should it be discouraged?
Like anything, too much is too much. Nothing of value happens in a business environment if people spend the bulk of their time talking about topics unrelated to the business at hand – the NFL playoffs, stock tips, a big family event, complaints about the weather, golf scores, vacation plans, and the like.
This kind of internal communication, if practiced in moderation, is indeed valuable.
Let’s face it, people comprise businesses. And these people have lives outside the office: families, celebrations, illnesses, hobbies, pet peeves, and passions unrelated to their 9-5 responsibilities.
Knowing a person’s interests outside the office often gives us clues about what makes them tick – how they operate, how they think, who they are, what they’re truly good at. Having such insights into and connections with the people we work with regularly, or even occasionally, can be valuable in the long run.
For instance, common interests can create strong foundations for establishing and sustaining important working relationships. It’s the proverbial icebreaker that gives us entry to tackling difficult and challenging work-related subjects day-in and day-out.
The ability to open a Monday morning business meeting with a brief rehash of a Sunday afternoon football game eases us into a discussion of how to address a vexing customer relations issue or a challenging technical glitch. Or it enables a manager to soften the blow of some bad news. Maybe it serves as an appropriate metaphor for or segue to the topic at hand.
Small talk can also help us connect with people at remote locations. It can be fun working with people in other locations when your respective favorite professional football, baseball or basketball teams play each other. You can speculate ahead of the big game, needle one another, gloat a little if your team wins, or make lame excuses if your team loses.
We’ve all had to work with people about whom we know nothing; people who think the personal side of our lives is an inappropriate topic for office discussions; people who dive straight into the topic at hand every time, with no preamble discussion beyond a perfunctory “good morning.” Think about your working relationships with those kinds of people. Would the word “sterile” describe it? Did you feel you could trust them? Did you enjoy working with them? I dare say the answer to these questions is “no.”
Consider the opposite. Suppose you work for or with someone who opens conversations by asking how your son is doing in his first year away at college, or about your wife’s job with a company that isn’t doing well, or inquiring about the health of your ailing mother. You’re going to have a different kind of relationship with that kind of boss than the former.
This person operates on an entirely different plane. Instead of a terse “let’s get down to business,” by acknowledging the personal issues that may be distracting you at the moment, your colleague indicates a personal stake in your life and an awareness that you may not be on top of your game that day. Showing that we are concerned about each other’s welfare and personal challenges is a sign of respect for the person as a whole being.
There’s still another side to office chitchat, with perhaps a business benefit. Suppose a water cooler discussion one day reveals the fact that a co-worker lives next door to someone you know as a valuable contact in your particular field. Maybe your water cooler friend is in R&D and you’re in sales. As a tech guy, maybe he didn’t think of his neighbor as a potential customer. But you know the name and so you ask your office buddy for an introduction, or perhaps you finagle an invitation to a neighborhood Christmas party where you hope to meet this neighbor. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if it leads to new business.
Similarly, maybe someone’s outside hobby has some bearing on the business that they hadn’t thought of. Or maybe a realization that a new hire’s single-digit golf handicap indicates the kind of dedication and perseverance you’re looking for as a new member to your team.
The point is, we are all people for whom the work-a-day routine is but one facet of our lives. To recognize that is good. It is a sign of respect for our colleagues as individuals, acknowledging their unique selves that they bring to the job every day.
Like anything, too much is too much. Nothing of value happens in a business environment if people spend the bulk of their time talking about topics unrelated to the business at hand – the NFL playoffs, stock tips, a big family event, complaints about the weather, golf scores, vacation plans, and the like.
This kind of internal communication, if practiced in moderation, is indeed valuable.
Let’s face it, people comprise businesses. And these people have lives outside the office: families, celebrations, illnesses, hobbies, pet peeves, and passions unrelated to their 9-5 responsibilities.
Knowing a person’s interests outside the office often gives us clues about what makes them tick – how they operate, how they think, who they are, what they’re truly good at. Having such insights into and connections with the people we work with regularly, or even occasionally, can be valuable in the long run.
For instance, common interests can create strong foundations for establishing and sustaining important working relationships. It’s the proverbial icebreaker that gives us entry to tackling difficult and challenging work-related subjects day-in and day-out.
The ability to open a Monday morning business meeting with a brief rehash of a Sunday afternoon football game eases us into a discussion of how to address a vexing customer relations issue or a challenging technical glitch. Or it enables a manager to soften the blow of some bad news. Maybe it serves as an appropriate metaphor for or segue to the topic at hand.
Small talk can also help us connect with people at remote locations. It can be fun working with people in other locations when your respective favorite professional football, baseball or basketball teams play each other. You can speculate ahead of the big game, needle one another, gloat a little if your team wins, or make lame excuses if your team loses.
We’ve all had to work with people about whom we know nothing; people who think the personal side of our lives is an inappropriate topic for office discussions; people who dive straight into the topic at hand every time, with no preamble discussion beyond a perfunctory “good morning.” Think about your working relationships with those kinds of people. Would the word “sterile” describe it? Did you feel you could trust them? Did you enjoy working with them? I dare say the answer to these questions is “no.”
Consider the opposite. Suppose you work for or with someone who opens conversations by asking how your son is doing in his first year away at college, or about your wife’s job with a company that isn’t doing well, or inquiring about the health of your ailing mother. You’re going to have a different kind of relationship with that kind of boss than the former.
This person operates on an entirely different plane. Instead of a terse “let’s get down to business,” by acknowledging the personal issues that may be distracting you at the moment, your colleague indicates a personal stake in your life and an awareness that you may not be on top of your game that day. Showing that we are concerned about each other’s welfare and personal challenges is a sign of respect for the person as a whole being.
There’s still another side to office chitchat, with perhaps a business benefit. Suppose a water cooler discussion one day reveals the fact that a co-worker lives next door to someone you know as a valuable contact in your particular field. Maybe your water cooler friend is in R&D and you’re in sales. As a tech guy, maybe he didn’t think of his neighbor as a potential customer. But you know the name and so you ask your office buddy for an introduction, or perhaps you finagle an invitation to a neighborhood Christmas party where you hope to meet this neighbor. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if it leads to new business.
Similarly, maybe someone’s outside hobby has some bearing on the business that they hadn’t thought of. Or maybe a realization that a new hire’s single-digit golf handicap indicates the kind of dedication and perseverance you’re looking for as a new member to your team.
The point is, we are all people for whom the work-a-day routine is but one facet of our lives. To recognize that is good. It is a sign of respect for our colleagues as individuals, acknowledging their unique selves that they bring to the job every day.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Just say "Thank You"
Our mothers taught us always to use the magic words – “please” and “thank you.” They often couched the suggestion with various aphorisms like, “you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.”
Tired and trite as such counsel may seem, the core truth is timeless and unchanged. Such behavior is important, even in business. A manager’s “please” and “thank you” carry much more meaning to employees than they do coming from a peer. That’s because people appreciate recognition, especially when it comes from those who may have the capacity to shape their future.
In the course of interviewing employees in a client organization a few years ago, we heard a story from people in the unionized manufacturing operation that underlines this point.
Late in the afternoon one day, a critical machine broke down, causing a shutdown of the entire production line. An early diagnosis determined it would keep the line down for at least 48 hours – maybe longer. The maintenance team, consisting of about a half-dozen men, stayed past quitting time and dove in. In fact, they worked through the night and, by mid-morning the next day, had the machine up and running again. The projected 48 hours of downtime was cut to a mere 15.
Sure, these union machinists were on the clock. And, of course, they collected a hefty overtime bonus for their hard work. The union contract would have allowed them to quit after their requisite eight hours and return the next day at their usual starting time. But, as a team, they decided to work through the night and get the production line back up and running.
A few days later, after these men punched in one morning, their supervisor greeted them with a boxful of warm donuts, a pot of fresh coffee, a “thank you” for each, and a big smile. He paid for the coffee and donuts out of his own pocket. The smile and “thank yous” were free.
Seems like a simple gesture and an obvious one.
When one of these guys told us the story, he got emotional and a little choked up at the recollection. In fact, when I retell the story, so do I.
We heard that story about five times from different people, only one of whom was actually a member of the original crew that worked through the night. The story was so compelling, everyone we talked to seemed familiar with it.
Now, here’s the amazing part of my story…
We later learned that the actual event had taken place more than three years before we heard about it.
Small effort? Yes. Big impact? You bet.
When businesspeople talk about “reward and recognition,” it usually is in terms of formal systems, where people’s performance is measured on the fiscal year and they earn credits toward a reward: a gift card or something from the company store. Maybe they get their name in the company newsletter.
That’s all well and good, and I don’t discourage that kind of activity. But if that is the only way people are recognized for their hard work, the result will be a closely aligned set of behaviors within the margins of those pre-set determinants of desirable conduct.
Go ahead and do that, if you wish, but don’t overlook the far more important and meaningful kinds of reward and recognition… the simple ones, like:
• A big smile
• A pat on the back
• A “Thank you for your hard work”
• Impromptu team meetings to tell them that they’re doing a heckuva good job
In short, do the kinds of things you yourself would want to hear from your manager. You’ll be amazed at how well your words are received. Who knows? Maybe they’ll talk about it for years to come.
Tired and trite as such counsel may seem, the core truth is timeless and unchanged. Such behavior is important, even in business. A manager’s “please” and “thank you” carry much more meaning to employees than they do coming from a peer. That’s because people appreciate recognition, especially when it comes from those who may have the capacity to shape their future.
In the course of interviewing employees in a client organization a few years ago, we heard a story from people in the unionized manufacturing operation that underlines this point.
Late in the afternoon one day, a critical machine broke down, causing a shutdown of the entire production line. An early diagnosis determined it would keep the line down for at least 48 hours – maybe longer. The maintenance team, consisting of about a half-dozen men, stayed past quitting time and dove in. In fact, they worked through the night and, by mid-morning the next day, had the machine up and running again. The projected 48 hours of downtime was cut to a mere 15.
Sure, these union machinists were on the clock. And, of course, they collected a hefty overtime bonus for their hard work. The union contract would have allowed them to quit after their requisite eight hours and return the next day at their usual starting time. But, as a team, they decided to work through the night and get the production line back up and running.
A few days later, after these men punched in one morning, their supervisor greeted them with a boxful of warm donuts, a pot of fresh coffee, a “thank you” for each, and a big smile. He paid for the coffee and donuts out of his own pocket. The smile and “thank yous” were free.
Seems like a simple gesture and an obvious one.
When one of these guys told us the story, he got emotional and a little choked up at the recollection. In fact, when I retell the story, so do I.
We heard that story about five times from different people, only one of whom was actually a member of the original crew that worked through the night. The story was so compelling, everyone we talked to seemed familiar with it.
Now, here’s the amazing part of my story…
We later learned that the actual event had taken place more than three years before we heard about it.
Small effort? Yes. Big impact? You bet.
When businesspeople talk about “reward and recognition,” it usually is in terms of formal systems, where people’s performance is measured on the fiscal year and they earn credits toward a reward: a gift card or something from the company store. Maybe they get their name in the company newsletter.
That’s all well and good, and I don’t discourage that kind of activity. But if that is the only way people are recognized for their hard work, the result will be a closely aligned set of behaviors within the margins of those pre-set determinants of desirable conduct.
Go ahead and do that, if you wish, but don’t overlook the far more important and meaningful kinds of reward and recognition… the simple ones, like:
• A big smile
• A pat on the back
• A “Thank you for your hard work”
• Impromptu team meetings to tell them that they’re doing a heckuva good job
In short, do the kinds of things you yourself would want to hear from your manager. You’ll be amazed at how well your words are received. Who knows? Maybe they’ll talk about it for years to come.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Communicate with your employees - Doctor’s orders
Business people are busy today – very busy. That has always been true, but more so now in the face of a distressed economy. Companies are struggling to maintain profitability, the components of which reside in every part of the organization – from maintaining good client/customer relations, to wringing maximum productivity and efficiency from production, to cutting expenses to the bone.
For the senior people, these pressures are compounded. They carry the weight of the company on their shoulders. You’re doing them a favor when you can relieve them of some of their burdens. So the suggestion that senior managers become better communicators is often met with incredulity and outright rejection.
Yet focusing a bit more on communicating with one’s employees can actually help bring some of the relief and support that is so critical in such trying times. A true story helps illustrate this.
A few years ago, a process industry company engaged us in an employee communications assignment. This company owned several large facilities around the world. The plant where my story takes place was quite large and consisted of multiple parallel processes, all doing pretty much the same thing round the clock. Like other such plants, a machine manager and his team of managers and supervisors run each component operation, covering the various facets of keeping that machine going.
The manager of one machine in this plant told me this story and I’ve never forgotten it.
He was in his mid-50s. One day, he went in for his annual check-up and his doctor told him that he needed to get more exercise, and suggested a long walk each day would be a good start.
This plant is built with the offices at one end, and an executive parking lot right outside. So this machine manager every day would walk about 50 or 100 feet between his car and his office. To follow his doctor’s orders, he decided instead to park his car at the opposite end of his plant, forcing himself to walk about a half-mile both morning and night. Aside from getting more exercise, he realized some unexpected but very important benefits.
He suddenly had a lot more daily interaction with the people working on his machine than ever before. Sometimes it was a simple wave or nod and a "good morning" or "good night." Other times, it was talking about the latest NFL football game or the coming hunting season.
The important thing is that he broke the ice. Over time, he also changed people’s perceptions of who he was and what he did. He became more human and more approachable in their eyes. And what happened eventually is that people increasingly felt comfortable coming to him on the floor with problems, ideas, insights and solutions. Though that hadn’t been his intention, he opened lines of communication that had never existed before, in turn building trust among the work force.
His machine was one of the older machines in the company, yet about a year after he began his daily walks through the plant, his operation’s performance rose markedly – so high in fact that it became the most productive and efficient operation in the company.
What happened? What role did communications play in making this production line suddenly so productive? I think you know the answer, or at least can guess.
As this manager told me, as his people came to feel more comfortable with him, they told him things about his equipment and operation that he hadn’t fully appreciated before. And when he engaged in a little give-and-take with these hands-on operators, they had ideas and insights that, as the guy in charge, he could and did act on.
Sitting in that remote office, buried in reports, emails and meetings, managers don’t get a lot of opportunity to get their hands dirty, so to speak, learning what makes their operations tick. So the lesson here is, create the opportunity. Get out and talk to people. Pretend your doctor told you do it. You may be surprised what you learn.
For the senior people, these pressures are compounded. They carry the weight of the company on their shoulders. You’re doing them a favor when you can relieve them of some of their burdens. So the suggestion that senior managers become better communicators is often met with incredulity and outright rejection.
Yet focusing a bit more on communicating with one’s employees can actually help bring some of the relief and support that is so critical in such trying times. A true story helps illustrate this.
A few years ago, a process industry company engaged us in an employee communications assignment. This company owned several large facilities around the world. The plant where my story takes place was quite large and consisted of multiple parallel processes, all doing pretty much the same thing round the clock. Like other such plants, a machine manager and his team of managers and supervisors run each component operation, covering the various facets of keeping that machine going.
The manager of one machine in this plant told me this story and I’ve never forgotten it.
He was in his mid-50s. One day, he went in for his annual check-up and his doctor told him that he needed to get more exercise, and suggested a long walk each day would be a good start.
This plant is built with the offices at one end, and an executive parking lot right outside. So this machine manager every day would walk about 50 or 100 feet between his car and his office. To follow his doctor’s orders, he decided instead to park his car at the opposite end of his plant, forcing himself to walk about a half-mile both morning and night. Aside from getting more exercise, he realized some unexpected but very important benefits.
He suddenly had a lot more daily interaction with the people working on his machine than ever before. Sometimes it was a simple wave or nod and a "good morning" or "good night." Other times, it was talking about the latest NFL football game or the coming hunting season.
The important thing is that he broke the ice. Over time, he also changed people’s perceptions of who he was and what he did. He became more human and more approachable in their eyes. And what happened eventually is that people increasingly felt comfortable coming to him on the floor with problems, ideas, insights and solutions. Though that hadn’t been his intention, he opened lines of communication that had never existed before, in turn building trust among the work force.
His machine was one of the older machines in the company, yet about a year after he began his daily walks through the plant, his operation’s performance rose markedly – so high in fact that it became the most productive and efficient operation in the company.
What happened? What role did communications play in making this production line suddenly so productive? I think you know the answer, or at least can guess.
As this manager told me, as his people came to feel more comfortable with him, they told him things about his equipment and operation that he hadn’t fully appreciated before. And when he engaged in a little give-and-take with these hands-on operators, they had ideas and insights that, as the guy in charge, he could and did act on.
Sitting in that remote office, buried in reports, emails and meetings, managers don’t get a lot of opportunity to get their hands dirty, so to speak, learning what makes their operations tick. So the lesson here is, create the opportunity. Get out and talk to people. Pretend your doctor told you do it. You may be surprised what you learn.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Reaching employees at the Super Bowl
When a marketer advertises during the Super Bowl, what kind of message is it sending to its internal audience, its employees?
This is an especially pertinent question in our current economic climate as businesses struggle with sinking revenues and profitability. Lay-offs at the larger companies – the kind that advertise during the Super Bowl – are becoming everyday news lately. And those that are not cutting staff are asking their employees to pinch pennies.
So when that same penny-pinching company spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl advertising – which this year will cost about $3 million for a 30-second spot – do employees resent it and see it as hypocritical, contrary to a climate of cost cutting? Perhaps. But there’s another angle to this. And while the decision to forego high profile advertising in the name of cost-savings may seem obvious, it really isn’t.
According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2008) this is a question that FedEx is wrestling with right now. The package-delivery giant has advertised in each of the past 12 Super Bowls and has reserved a slot for the 2009 game, as did a number of other advertisers. In fact, NBC’s inventory of ad spots was sold out in September – before the financial meltdown.
But FedEx has not confirmed its buy and, a spokesperson says, it is concerned that spending such an exorbitant amount of money when it’s “asking employees to do more with less” will not be received well. [Update: FedEx has decided not to advertise in the Super Bowl.]
I remember, years ago, a beautiful advertisement for Porsche in a number of glossy magazines. The ad featured a large double foldout with a schematic cut-away of the Porsche 911 and intricate airbrush graphics detailing all the unique engineering that makes a Porsche a Porsche.
At the time – when I was a neophyte in the marketing business – I doubted the very expensive advertisement sold many cars. But a wiser marketer explained it a different way. The ad wasn’t meant so much to sell new cars as it was to confirm to Porsche owners that they had made the right decision.
It gave owners a private little gloat, and made them proud of their decision – and their exceptional machine. It provided them more information about their cars than they had ever gotten, facts and details that underlined the thrill they experienced using the product.
In the same way, advertising a product or service in bad economic times may, on the surface, seem frivolous and wasteful, especially to the insiders who are having to deal with the effects of belt-tightening. And so a case can certainly be made for skipping the Super Bowl and putting those millions to better use inside the company and/or assuring continued customer support.
Yet, the opposite case can also be made. A high-profile Super Bowl ad, if done right, can send a message of strength, determination, conviction, and renewed faith in the firm’s future. It says “we’re in it for the long haul, come what may. We’re not going anywhere.”
That’s certainly an important message to the employees as they fight to keep the firm profitable and worry about their vulnerability in tough financial times. It can steel their resolve when they get a morale boost like that. Like the Porsche ad, it can seal the deal with the employees.
But make no mistake about it: it’s a delicate decision, one that needs to be thought out in the larger context of marketing goals and the company’s long-term strategic direction, just as does the tone of the advertisement. While the decision is often made by the chief marketing officer and his/her team, another voice ought to be heard in that process: the employee communications professionals.
Questions about the value of the highly visible advertisement in the context of the internal climate must be posed and considered in terms of, not only the ultimate decision of whether to advertise but how to advertise, the content, and the tone. The wise marketer will accommodate and honor that input. The company will be stronger for it, regardless of the ultimate decision.
This is an especially pertinent question in our current economic climate as businesses struggle with sinking revenues and profitability. Lay-offs at the larger companies – the kind that advertise during the Super Bowl – are becoming everyday news lately. And those that are not cutting staff are asking their employees to pinch pennies.
So when that same penny-pinching company spends millions of dollars on Super Bowl advertising – which this year will cost about $3 million for a 30-second spot – do employees resent it and see it as hypocritical, contrary to a climate of cost cutting? Perhaps. But there’s another angle to this. And while the decision to forego high profile advertising in the name of cost-savings may seem obvious, it really isn’t.
According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2008) this is a question that FedEx is wrestling with right now. The package-delivery giant has advertised in each of the past 12 Super Bowls and has reserved a slot for the 2009 game, as did a number of other advertisers. In fact, NBC’s inventory of ad spots was sold out in September – before the financial meltdown.
But FedEx has not confirmed its buy and, a spokesperson says, it is concerned that spending such an exorbitant amount of money when it’s “asking employees to do more with less” will not be received well. [Update: FedEx has decided not to advertise in the Super Bowl.]
I remember, years ago, a beautiful advertisement for Porsche in a number of glossy magazines. The ad featured a large double foldout with a schematic cut-away of the Porsche 911 and intricate airbrush graphics detailing all the unique engineering that makes a Porsche a Porsche.
At the time – when I was a neophyte in the marketing business – I doubted the very expensive advertisement sold many cars. But a wiser marketer explained it a different way. The ad wasn’t meant so much to sell new cars as it was to confirm to Porsche owners that they had made the right decision.
It gave owners a private little gloat, and made them proud of their decision – and their exceptional machine. It provided them more information about their cars than they had ever gotten, facts and details that underlined the thrill they experienced using the product.
In the same way, advertising a product or service in bad economic times may, on the surface, seem frivolous and wasteful, especially to the insiders who are having to deal with the effects of belt-tightening. And so a case can certainly be made for skipping the Super Bowl and putting those millions to better use inside the company and/or assuring continued customer support.
Yet, the opposite case can also be made. A high-profile Super Bowl ad, if done right, can send a message of strength, determination, conviction, and renewed faith in the firm’s future. It says “we’re in it for the long haul, come what may. We’re not going anywhere.”
That’s certainly an important message to the employees as they fight to keep the firm profitable and worry about their vulnerability in tough financial times. It can steel their resolve when they get a morale boost like that. Like the Porsche ad, it can seal the deal with the employees.
But make no mistake about it: it’s a delicate decision, one that needs to be thought out in the larger context of marketing goals and the company’s long-term strategic direction, just as does the tone of the advertisement. While the decision is often made by the chief marketing officer and his/her team, another voice ought to be heard in that process: the employee communications professionals.
Questions about the value of the highly visible advertisement in the context of the internal climate must be posed and considered in terms of, not only the ultimate decision of whether to advertise but how to advertise, the content, and the tone. The wise marketer will accommodate and honor that input. The company will be stronger for it, regardless of the ultimate decision.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Manage People’s Expectations in an Acquisition
Is the firm opening a Los Angeles office, one young copywriter wonders aloud. “I’d love to move to LA. Get myself a convertible.” No one knows for sure what is happening to their New York advertising agency, Sterling Cooper. But something surely is afoot as the partners remain huddled in the executive conference room.
It turns out the firm is being acquired by a larger London ad agency, and all bets are off. “There’s definitely going to be some redundancies,” says a secretary. Everyone is panicked. Is their job “redundant?”
An account manager lowers his voice conspiratorially: “Regime change is always tricky. You want to stay neutral. Loyalists are always hung and you don’t want to get caught in the fall-out.”
Another adds, “They don’t care about us. We’re just a bunch of salaries on a ledger. They’ll draw a line and get rid of everything below it.”
The traffic manager whines, “I like this company the way it is.”
Sound familiar? Is it real life? No, but it may as well be. It’s a scene from the final episode of the second season of “Mad Men,” an original dramatic series on cable TV, from AMC. Placed in the early 1960s, it no doubt accurately reflects the fear that is felt among employees in an acquired firm.
For dramatic effect, while the news of the merger is sifting through the Sterling Cooper organization, there is a very real fear overhanging the world due to the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which mirrors and exacerbates the angst of those in the firm and their uncertainties of the coming merger.
This isn’t 1962 and times do change, but not in the realm of mergers and acquisitions and their effect on the people at ground level – the ones who aren’t reaping the profits that owners and partners do.
Mergers and acquisitions foment uncertainty, dislocation, fear – and worse. Much of that - the natural human reaction to radical change - cannot be avoided. Changes that such events bring also spawn questions that cannot be answered right away. And when questions can’t be answered promptly, the rumor mill takes over.
What can be managed, on the other hand, are people’s expectations, and insights into how decisions affecting their lives will be made, and when, as well as communicating why some questions will remain open for a time.
In today’s business world, much of the value of an acquired firm resides in its people. The acquiring company buys brand names, patents, manufacturing facilities, equipment and the like, to be sure. But without the people, it is an empty shell. So it is incumbent on the senior managers to do all within their power to reassure the people and reinforce the company's core values so that the talent won’t make a beeline for the door the day the sale closes.
At base, effective, relevant and timely communications will go far in achieving the core business purpose of the merger, which is to preserve and enhance the value of the acquired company by building trust and credibility among the new employees.
Often, the danger lies in the early days before much is known and few of the big questions can be answered. The acquiring firm will often communicate reassuring words that “nothing (or little) will change” and that people should just keep doing what they’ve always done.
But as the deal shakes out and the questions begin to find answers, the early general communications may be inadvertently contradicted. It can’t be helped. Much is discovered in the early “honeymoon” phase that hadn’t been anticipated, necessitating unplanned changes in plans.
Change is like that. The key is to approach the employees and managers of the acquired firm with honesty and reassurance.
The key messages stay simple, direct and honest:
It turns out the firm is being acquired by a larger London ad agency, and all bets are off. “There’s definitely going to be some redundancies,” says a secretary. Everyone is panicked. Is their job “redundant?”
An account manager lowers his voice conspiratorially: “Regime change is always tricky. You want to stay neutral. Loyalists are always hung and you don’t want to get caught in the fall-out.”
Another adds, “They don’t care about us. We’re just a bunch of salaries on a ledger. They’ll draw a line and get rid of everything below it.”
The traffic manager whines, “I like this company the way it is.”
Sound familiar? Is it real life? No, but it may as well be. It’s a scene from the final episode of the second season of “Mad Men,” an original dramatic series on cable TV, from AMC. Placed in the early 1960s, it no doubt accurately reflects the fear that is felt among employees in an acquired firm.
For dramatic effect, while the news of the merger is sifting through the Sterling Cooper organization, there is a very real fear overhanging the world due to the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which mirrors and exacerbates the angst of those in the firm and their uncertainties of the coming merger.
This isn’t 1962 and times do change, but not in the realm of mergers and acquisitions and their effect on the people at ground level – the ones who aren’t reaping the profits that owners and partners do.
Mergers and acquisitions foment uncertainty, dislocation, fear – and worse. Much of that - the natural human reaction to radical change - cannot be avoided. Changes that such events bring also spawn questions that cannot be answered right away. And when questions can’t be answered promptly, the rumor mill takes over.
What can be managed, on the other hand, are people’s expectations, and insights into how decisions affecting their lives will be made, and when, as well as communicating why some questions will remain open for a time.
In today’s business world, much of the value of an acquired firm resides in its people. The acquiring company buys brand names, patents, manufacturing facilities, equipment and the like, to be sure. But without the people, it is an empty shell. So it is incumbent on the senior managers to do all within their power to reassure the people and reinforce the company's core values so that the talent won’t make a beeline for the door the day the sale closes.
At base, effective, relevant and timely communications will go far in achieving the core business purpose of the merger, which is to preserve and enhance the value of the acquired company by building trust and credibility among the new employees.
Often, the danger lies in the early days before much is known and few of the big questions can be answered. The acquiring firm will often communicate reassuring words that “nothing (or little) will change” and that people should just keep doing what they’ve always done.
But as the deal shakes out and the questions begin to find answers, the early general communications may be inadvertently contradicted. It can’t be helped. Much is discovered in the early “honeymoon” phase that hadn’t been anticipated, necessitating unplanned changes in plans.
Change is like that. The key is to approach the employees and managers of the acquired firm with honesty and reassurance.
The key messages stay simple, direct and honest:
- We acquired your company because of the excellence it adds to ours. It would be unwise for us to do anything that diminishes or destroys that excellence.
- Please work with us as we get to know one another better, as we learn how we will operate together going forward.
- Help us discover your best practices and show us how they might benefit the new larger company.
- Please understand that there will be stumbles along the way. We will always try to minimize the mistakes and hope that you will be stick with us through the rough patches.
- By working together, by striving to achieve the best for our customers, our employees and our stockholders, we will all succeed together and the final product will be more than the sum of the two components.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Who is Joe Maddon?
Unless you’re a baseball fan, you probably don’t know the answer to that question. Even then, you may not. Joe Maddon is the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, the surprise contender for baseball’s American League championship and, if they beat the Boston Red Sox, the World Series.
“Surprise” because, up until the 2008 season, the Tampa Bay team was the doormat of the league and had never come close to making it to the playoffs in its short 10 years of existence. All of a sudden in 2008, they tore up the competition and won American League East division title with pretty much the same collection of players as before.
And therein lies a lesson for managers in all lines of work.
One truth about managers in Major League Baseball is that the better ones are often those who were also mediocre players. Very few All-Star ball players go on to become superb managers when their playing careers are over. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t name any in the modern era.
In other words, outstanding playing ability does not necessarily translate to superb managing skills.
The same is true in business. For instance, how many companies promote their best salespeople to sales managers, only to watch them fail? Unfortunately, it’s too common. Being a superstar salesman does not require the same skill set as being a good manager. Similarly, the ability to hit, throw and catch a baseball does not equate to the ability to manage highly talented and often temperamental people.
Joe Maddon – with a bit of a wise grandfather look about him – took on the top job at Tampa Bay prior to the 2006 season. Before that, he had done stints as a manager with an array of minor league teams, and served as bench coach for 10 years with the Los Angeles Angels. His unremarkable playing career included the Los Angeles Angels farm system for three seasons. He never made it to the big leagues before switching to scouting and then managing.
What makes a great manager like Maddon, one who can take a collection of 26 men and turn them into a contending team? Certainly at the top of the list is an appreciation for talent and the insights necessary to apply that talent correctly to quickly changing, evolving circumstances. One truth about baseball that I read a long time ago is that it is a game of suddenness: suddenly, anything can happen. The same is true in a business environment.
Also right up there is an organized mind, with a knack for making obtuse connections between disparate opportunities and challenges – e.g., the right players and the combination of batting order against a particular pitcher’s style.
But perhaps the most important skill is the ability to communicate effectively with a diverse group of professionals, many of whom in the Major Leagues have outsized egos.
And that’s the secret in business too - which is not to imply that business managers must deal with outsized egos, though they do on occasion. But they do have to contend with evolving situations and unforeseen challenges and opportunities, sometimes turning on a dime. And they must foster the forces and people under their control as best they see fit.
Establishing strong, trusting relationships with those upon whom he/she relies is critical. As has been noted previously in this space (see below, "Fair Weather Employees?"), the manager can’t wait until the crisis starts to begin building those relationships. That effort must begin their first day on the job.
Building trusting relationships with your team members requires superior listening skills, empathy, insight into team members’ relative strengths and weaknesses, along with an on-going desire to see those people improve and excel as individual contributors.
In that regard, I am reminded of the words of the late great sportswriter, Red Smith as he remembered his days at the old (and defunct) New York Herald-Tribune. Sports editor Stanley Woodward returned from World War 2 and set about building what was then and probably still is the best collection sportswriters ever.
“He was scouting for the best men he could get,” Smith recalled. “Stanley was the best department head, perhaps the best all-around newspaperman I’ve ever known. Some sports editors, especially if they write a column, are afraid of competition. They want to be the big man of the paper. But Stanley’s rule was, ‘I don’t want anyone who can’t out-write me.’”
It’s a good philosophy for any manager: don’t be threatened by the superior talents of your own people; hire the best and cultivate them to become even better; and establish the kind of relationships where they wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.
Watch Joe Maddon in the coming week as his Rays take on the defending world champion Boston Red Sox. Watch how he manages his team, how he keeps his cool and counsels individual players quietly. I wish him the best of luck – but not too much, because I’m a Red Sox fan.
“Surprise” because, up until the 2008 season, the Tampa Bay team was the doormat of the league and had never come close to making it to the playoffs in its short 10 years of existence. All of a sudden in 2008, they tore up the competition and won American League East division title with pretty much the same collection of players as before.
And therein lies a lesson for managers in all lines of work.
One truth about managers in Major League Baseball is that the better ones are often those who were also mediocre players. Very few All-Star ball players go on to become superb managers when their playing careers are over. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t name any in the modern era.
In other words, outstanding playing ability does not necessarily translate to superb managing skills.
The same is true in business. For instance, how many companies promote their best salespeople to sales managers, only to watch them fail? Unfortunately, it’s too common. Being a superstar salesman does not require the same skill set as being a good manager. Similarly, the ability to hit, throw and catch a baseball does not equate to the ability to manage highly talented and often temperamental people.
Joe Maddon – with a bit of a wise grandfather look about him – took on the top job at Tampa Bay prior to the 2006 season. Before that, he had done stints as a manager with an array of minor league teams, and served as bench coach for 10 years with the Los Angeles Angels. His unremarkable playing career included the Los Angeles Angels farm system for three seasons. He never made it to the big leagues before switching to scouting and then managing.
What makes a great manager like Maddon, one who can take a collection of 26 men and turn them into a contending team? Certainly at the top of the list is an appreciation for talent and the insights necessary to apply that talent correctly to quickly changing, evolving circumstances. One truth about baseball that I read a long time ago is that it is a game of suddenness: suddenly, anything can happen. The same is true in a business environment.
Also right up there is an organized mind, with a knack for making obtuse connections between disparate opportunities and challenges – e.g., the right players and the combination of batting order against a particular pitcher’s style.
But perhaps the most important skill is the ability to communicate effectively with a diverse group of professionals, many of whom in the Major Leagues have outsized egos.
And that’s the secret in business too - which is not to imply that business managers must deal with outsized egos, though they do on occasion. But they do have to contend with evolving situations and unforeseen challenges and opportunities, sometimes turning on a dime. And they must foster the forces and people under their control as best they see fit.
Establishing strong, trusting relationships with those upon whom he/she relies is critical. As has been noted previously in this space (see below, "Fair Weather Employees?"), the manager can’t wait until the crisis starts to begin building those relationships. That effort must begin their first day on the job.
Building trusting relationships with your team members requires superior listening skills, empathy, insight into team members’ relative strengths and weaknesses, along with an on-going desire to see those people improve and excel as individual contributors.
In that regard, I am reminded of the words of the late great sportswriter, Red Smith as he remembered his days at the old (and defunct) New York Herald-Tribune. Sports editor Stanley Woodward returned from World War 2 and set about building what was then and probably still is the best collection sportswriters ever.
“He was scouting for the best men he could get,” Smith recalled. “Stanley was the best department head, perhaps the best all-around newspaperman I’ve ever known. Some sports editors, especially if they write a column, are afraid of competition. They want to be the big man of the paper. But Stanley’s rule was, ‘I don’t want anyone who can’t out-write me.’”
It’s a good philosophy for any manager: don’t be threatened by the superior talents of your own people; hire the best and cultivate them to become even better; and establish the kind of relationships where they wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.
Watch Joe Maddon in the coming week as his Rays take on the defending world champion Boston Red Sox. Watch how he manages his team, how he keeps his cool and counsels individual players quietly. I wish him the best of luck – but not too much, because I’m a Red Sox fan.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Dings in the Green Monster
Familiarity with our everyday reality sometimes blinds us to meaningful and critical nuances. It usually takes an outsider to sense, appreciate and bring to our attention that which may be as obvious as the nose on our face.
What got me thinking about this little truism is the Green Monster, the famous leftfield wall in the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park. Or, more precisely, how it once was shown to me.
The New England Sports Network (NESN) broadcasts virtually every Red Sox game, both at home and on the road. The exception is when ESPN or FOX decide a particular game’s import merits a national audience. While I prefer the commentary, humor and observations of the regular NESN announcers – Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo - one ESPN broadcast earlier this year opened my eyes to a wonderful little truth about the uniqueness of 96-year-old Fenway.
The most dominant feature of Fenway, as any baseball fan knows, is the “Green Monster,” the 37-foot wall that shortens leftfield to a mere 310 feet (Fenway’s centerfield “triangle” being 420 feet). It creates a nightmare for visiting leftfielders, unsure how to play a careening line drive that may hit the wall at various angles 10, 20 or 30 feet above their heads.
Never before that particular ESPN broadcast did I really appreciate the Green Monster. During a lull in the action, ESPN focused one of its cameras closely on the wall and suddenly it became apparent, as the announcer noted, that there were dozens upon dozens of dings, dents, and pockmarks in the green sheet metal sheathing – testimony to the years of line drives that produced hits, many of which spelled the difference between victory and loss. It gave me pause, and made me wonder which long-since-retired All Stars created which ding, dent and pockmark. It conveyed a sense of history, like the still visible bullet holes in the exterior walls of the École Militaire that bear witness to the last firefight in Paris as it fell to the German army in June 1940.
It took an outsider to notice that little nuance, something that the local guys never mentioned. Sure, Remy and Orsillo are probably well aware of it. No doubt they can see the pockmarks in the wall every time they watch a line drive rebound fiercely off the wall. But they don't really see them. The dings are a fact of everyday life in Fenway and not worth a second thought, much less an NESN close-up or an exegesis about it.
What does that tell us about how we conduct business, or go about our daily lives?
Coming home from an exotic foreign vacation, we try to hang on to the newness of everything as we return to the banalities of everyday life. We promise ourselves that we’ll look at every familiar facet of our life with new eyes and fresh insight. But we can’t. It’s not human nature to be able to bend reality and pretend that everything old is new again.
We need to learn to listen to that other opinion, the unique insight – even though it may seem off-the-wall. It is that other insight, that unique way of looking at things that can open new vistas to our everyday world, whether it be the world of business or that of our personal lives.
Our own Green Monsters have become something so familiar to us that they cease being monsters at all. They become a toy, like the bobble head “Wally” dolls sold at Fenway, the faux team mascot, a cute, cuddly Sesame Street-like rip-off that neutralizes the otherwise scary concept of a monster. It is a monster that is easy to live with, easy to conceive, easy to ignore in the wallpaper that surrounds our lives.
If we can bring in the outsider’s view, or imbue ourselves with that view, we can see with new eyes the world with which we are so familiar. We can be tourists in our own land and gain new insights into how we operate in that context, better able to be honest with ourselves about our weaknesses and strengths, about the dings in our own Green Monsters.
What got me thinking about this little truism is the Green Monster, the famous leftfield wall in the Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park. Or, more precisely, how it once was shown to me.
The New England Sports Network (NESN) broadcasts virtually every Red Sox game, both at home and on the road. The exception is when ESPN or FOX decide a particular game’s import merits a national audience. While I prefer the commentary, humor and observations of the regular NESN announcers – Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo - one ESPN broadcast earlier this year opened my eyes to a wonderful little truth about the uniqueness of 96-year-old Fenway.
The most dominant feature of Fenway, as any baseball fan knows, is the “Green Monster,” the 37-foot wall that shortens leftfield to a mere 310 feet (Fenway’s centerfield “triangle” being 420 feet). It creates a nightmare for visiting leftfielders, unsure how to play a careening line drive that may hit the wall at various angles 10, 20 or 30 feet above their heads.
Never before that particular ESPN broadcast did I really appreciate the Green Monster. During a lull in the action, ESPN focused one of its cameras closely on the wall and suddenly it became apparent, as the announcer noted, that there were dozens upon dozens of dings, dents, and pockmarks in the green sheet metal sheathing – testimony to the years of line drives that produced hits, many of which spelled the difference between victory and loss. It gave me pause, and made me wonder which long-since-retired All Stars created which ding, dent and pockmark. It conveyed a sense of history, like the still visible bullet holes in the exterior walls of the École Militaire that bear witness to the last firefight in Paris as it fell to the German army in June 1940.
It took an outsider to notice that little nuance, something that the local guys never mentioned. Sure, Remy and Orsillo are probably well aware of it. No doubt they can see the pockmarks in the wall every time they watch a line drive rebound fiercely off the wall. But they don't really see them. The dings are a fact of everyday life in Fenway and not worth a second thought, much less an NESN close-up or an exegesis about it.
What does that tell us about how we conduct business, or go about our daily lives?
Coming home from an exotic foreign vacation, we try to hang on to the newness of everything as we return to the banalities of everyday life. We promise ourselves that we’ll look at every familiar facet of our life with new eyes and fresh insight. But we can’t. It’s not human nature to be able to bend reality and pretend that everything old is new again.
We need to learn to listen to that other opinion, the unique insight – even though it may seem off-the-wall. It is that other insight, that unique way of looking at things that can open new vistas to our everyday world, whether it be the world of business or that of our personal lives.
Our own Green Monsters have become something so familiar to us that they cease being monsters at all. They become a toy, like the bobble head “Wally” dolls sold at Fenway, the faux team mascot, a cute, cuddly Sesame Street-like rip-off that neutralizes the otherwise scary concept of a monster. It is a monster that is easy to live with, easy to conceive, easy to ignore in the wallpaper that surrounds our lives.
If we can bring in the outsider’s view, or imbue ourselves with that view, we can see with new eyes the world with which we are so familiar. We can be tourists in our own land and gain new insights into how we operate in that context, better able to be honest with ourselves about our weaknesses and strengths, about the dings in our own Green Monsters.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Man Who Loved Typewriters
Don’t judge me harshly, please, and think that this is just a weak attempt to get off on the cheap here by clipping and pasting someone else’s writing as my own blog entry. But I couldn’t resist sharing this little gem, discovered and shared with me by my father, a loyal reader of this blog. (Thanks, Dad.)
It comes to us courtesy of that lively masterpiece of journalism, The Economist, the English news weekly that persists in that old-fashioned journalistic custom of publishing stories without bylines. Would that others emulated the practice, we might have far fewer hyper-inflated egos pontificating at us. (Remember how good Talk of the Town in The New Yorker used to be without bylines?)
That aside, I hope you will enjoy this beauty from the magazine’s September 18 edition that recalls a simpler era when writing without aid of pen or pencil required knowing the qwerty system and strong, nimble fingers. As someone whose first jobs were in newspapers using manual typewriters, this story speaks to me.
Martin Tytell, a man who loved typewriters, died on September 11th, aged 94
ANYONE who had dealings with manual typewriters—the past tense, sadly, is necessary—knew that they were not mere machines. Eased heavily from the box, they would sit on the desk with an air of expectancy, like a concert grand once the lid is raised. On older models the keys, metal-rimmed with white inlay, invited the user to play forceful concertos on them, while the silvery type-bars rose and fell chittering and whispering from their beds. Such sounds once filled the offices of the world, and Martin Tytell’s life.
Everything about a manual was sensual and tactile, from the careful placing of paper round the platen (which might be plump and soft or hard and dry, and was, Mr Tytell said, a typewriter’s heart) to the clicking whirr of the winding knob, the slight high conferred by a new, wet, Mylar ribbon and the feeding of it, with inkier and inkier fingers, through the twin black guides by the spool. Typewriters asked for effort and energy. They repaid it, on a good day, with the triumphant repeated ping! of the carriage return and the blithe sweep of the lever that inched the paper upwards.
Typewriters knew things. Long before the word-processor actually stored information, many writers felt that their Remingtons, or Smith-Coronas, or Adlers contained the sum of their knowledge of eastern Europe, or the plot of their novel. A typewriter was a friend and collaborator whose sickness was catastrophe. To Mr Tytell, their last and most famous doctor and psychiatrist, typewriters also confessed their own histories. A notice on his door offered “Psychoanalysis for your typewriter, whether it’s frustrated, inhibited, schizoid, or what have you,” and he was as good as his word. He could draw from them, after a brief while of blue-eyed peering with screwdriver in hand, when they had left the factory, how they had been treated and with exactly what pressure their owner had hit the keys. He talked to them; and as, in his white coat, he visited the patients that lay in various states of dismemberment on the benches of his chock-full upstairs shop on Fulton Street, in Lower Manhattan, he was sure they chattered back.
A drawer of umlauts
His love affair had begun as a schoolboy, with an Underwood Five. It lay uncovered on a teacher’s desk, curved and sleek, the typebars modestly contained but the chrome lever gleaming. He took it gently apart, as far as he could fillet 3,200 pieces with his pocket tool, and each time attempted to get further. A repair man gave him lessons, until he was in demand all across New York. When he met his wife Pearl later, it was over typewriters. She wanted a Royal for her office; he persuaded her into a Remington, and then marriage. Pearl made another doctorly and expert presence in the shop, hovering behind the overflowing shelves where the convalescents slept in plastic shrouds.
Mr Tytell could customise typewriters in all kinds of ways. He re-engineered them for the war-disabled and for railway stations, taking ten cents in the slot. With a nifty solder-gun and his small engraving lathe he could make an American typewriter speak 145 different tongues, from Russian to Homeric Greek. An idle gear, picked up for 45 cents on Canal Street, allowed him to make reverse carriages for right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew. He managed hieroglyphs, musical notation and the first cursive font, for Mamie Eisenhower, who had tired of writing out White House invitations.
When his shop closed in 2001, after 65 years of business, it held a stock of 2m pieces of type. Tilde “n”s alone took up a whole shelf. The writer Ian Frazier, visiting once to have his Olympia cured of a flagging “e”, was taken into a dark nest of metal cabinets by torchlight. There he was proudly shown a drawer of umlauts.
Mr Tytell felt that he owed to typewriters not only his love and his earnings, but his life. In the second world war his knowledge of them had saved him from deploying with the marines. Instead he spent his war turning Siamese keyboards into 17 other Asian languages, or customising typewriters for future battlegrounds. His work sometimes incidentally informed him of military planning; but he kept quiet, and was rewarded in 1945 with a medal done up on a black, familiar ribbon.
Each typewriter was, to him, an individual. Its soul, he reminded Mr Frazier, did not come through a cable in the wall, but lay within. It also had distinguishing marks—that dimple on the platen, that sluggishness in the typebars, that particular wear on the “G”, or the “t”—that would be left, like a fingerprint, on paper. Much of Mr Tytell’s work over the years was to examine typewritten documents for the FBI and the police. Once shown a letter, he could find the culprit machine.
It was therefore ironic that his most famous achievement was to build a typewriter at the request of the defence lawyers for Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1948 of spying for the Soviet Union. His lawyers wanted to prove that typewriters could be made exactly alike, in order to frame someone. Mr Tytell spent two years on the job, replicating, down to the merest spot and flaw, the Hiss Woodstock N230099. In effect, he made a perfect clone of it. But it was no help to Hiss’s appeal; for Mr Tytell still could not account for his typewriter’s politics, or its dreams.
It comes to us courtesy of that lively masterpiece of journalism, The Economist, the English news weekly that persists in that old-fashioned journalistic custom of publishing stories without bylines. Would that others emulated the practice, we might have far fewer hyper-inflated egos pontificating at us. (Remember how good Talk of the Town in The New Yorker used to be without bylines?)
That aside, I hope you will enjoy this beauty from the magazine’s September 18 edition that recalls a simpler era when writing without aid of pen or pencil required knowing the qwerty system and strong, nimble fingers. As someone whose first jobs were in newspapers using manual typewriters, this story speaks to me.
Martin Tytell, a man who loved typewriters, died on September 11th, aged 94
ANYONE who had dealings with manual typewriters—the past tense, sadly, is necessary—knew that they were not mere machines. Eased heavily from the box, they would sit on the desk with an air of expectancy, like a concert grand once the lid is raised. On older models the keys, metal-rimmed with white inlay, invited the user to play forceful concertos on them, while the silvery type-bars rose and fell chittering and whispering from their beds. Such sounds once filled the offices of the world, and Martin Tytell’s life.
Everything about a manual was sensual and tactile, from the careful placing of paper round the platen (which might be plump and soft or hard and dry, and was, Mr Tytell said, a typewriter’s heart) to the clicking whirr of the winding knob, the slight high conferred by a new, wet, Mylar ribbon and the feeding of it, with inkier and inkier fingers, through the twin black guides by the spool. Typewriters asked for effort and energy. They repaid it, on a good day, with the triumphant repeated ping! of the carriage return and the blithe sweep of the lever that inched the paper upwards.
Typewriters knew things. Long before the word-processor actually stored information, many writers felt that their Remingtons, or Smith-Coronas, or Adlers contained the sum of their knowledge of eastern Europe, or the plot of their novel. A typewriter was a friend and collaborator whose sickness was catastrophe. To Mr Tytell, their last and most famous doctor and psychiatrist, typewriters also confessed their own histories. A notice on his door offered “Psychoanalysis for your typewriter, whether it’s frustrated, inhibited, schizoid, or what have you,” and he was as good as his word. He could draw from them, after a brief while of blue-eyed peering with screwdriver in hand, when they had left the factory, how they had been treated and with exactly what pressure their owner had hit the keys. He talked to them; and as, in his white coat, he visited the patients that lay in various states of dismemberment on the benches of his chock-full upstairs shop on Fulton Street, in Lower Manhattan, he was sure they chattered back.
A drawer of umlauts
His love affair had begun as a schoolboy, with an Underwood Five. It lay uncovered on a teacher’s desk, curved and sleek, the typebars modestly contained but the chrome lever gleaming. He took it gently apart, as far as he could fillet 3,200 pieces with his pocket tool, and each time attempted to get further. A repair man gave him lessons, until he was in demand all across New York. When he met his wife Pearl later, it was over typewriters. She wanted a Royal for her office; he persuaded her into a Remington, and then marriage. Pearl made another doctorly and expert presence in the shop, hovering behind the overflowing shelves where the convalescents slept in plastic shrouds.
Mr Tytell could customise typewriters in all kinds of ways. He re-engineered them for the war-disabled and for railway stations, taking ten cents in the slot. With a nifty solder-gun and his small engraving lathe he could make an American typewriter speak 145 different tongues, from Russian to Homeric Greek. An idle gear, picked up for 45 cents on Canal Street, allowed him to make reverse carriages for right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew. He managed hieroglyphs, musical notation and the first cursive font, for Mamie Eisenhower, who had tired of writing out White House invitations.
When his shop closed in 2001, after 65 years of business, it held a stock of 2m pieces of type. Tilde “n”s alone took up a whole shelf. The writer Ian Frazier, visiting once to have his Olympia cured of a flagging “e”, was taken into a dark nest of metal cabinets by torchlight. There he was proudly shown a drawer of umlauts.
Mr Tytell felt that he owed to typewriters not only his love and his earnings, but his life. In the second world war his knowledge of them had saved him from deploying with the marines. Instead he spent his war turning Siamese keyboards into 17 other Asian languages, or customising typewriters for future battlegrounds. His work sometimes incidentally informed him of military planning; but he kept quiet, and was rewarded in 1945 with a medal done up on a black, familiar ribbon.
Each typewriter was, to him, an individual. Its soul, he reminded Mr Frazier, did not come through a cable in the wall, but lay within. It also had distinguishing marks—that dimple on the platen, that sluggishness in the typebars, that particular wear on the “G”, or the “t”—that would be left, like a fingerprint, on paper. Much of Mr Tytell’s work over the years was to examine typewritten documents for the FBI and the police. Once shown a letter, he could find the culprit machine.
It was therefore ironic that his most famous achievement was to build a typewriter at the request of the defence lawyers for Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1948 of spying for the Soviet Union. His lawyers wanted to prove that typewriters could be made exactly alike, in order to frame someone. Mr Tytell spent two years on the job, replicating, down to the merest spot and flaw, the Hiss Woodstock N230099. In effect, he made a perfect clone of it. But it was no help to Hiss’s appeal; for Mr Tytell still could not account for his typewriter’s politics, or its dreams.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Maintaining a Sense of Urgency
Through good times and bad, through crises and times of change, businesses that thrive, grow and succeed are those best able to maintain a sense of urgency.
But just what does that mean, to maintain “a sense of urgency?”
Many people equate urgency to lots of tasks being done quickly and frantically. If you check your thesaurus, you won’t find that urgency, quickness and franticness are synonyms. Unfortunately, too many people buy into that myth. And that’s exactly the wrong approach when a business is contending with a crisis or profound change. While complacency is certainly the wrong way to respond to challenging circumstances, a false sense of urgency can often be more dangerous.
In his latest book, A Sense of Urgency, John P. Kotter ably explains the difference between the three responses and provides a very useful guide for businesspeople facing change, crises and challenges. Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has been lecturing and writing about leadership for years.
He has authored three outstanding books on the subject in the past decade, that have become invaluable for today’s business leaders: Leading Change, The Heart of Change and Our Iceberg is Melting. This latest book carries forward and develops the themes of the previous three while folding in and updating much of what he learned in the intervening years.
The essence of true urgency lies in doing the right things the right way. It is “ridding oneself of unproductive tasks that add little value to the organization but tend to clog managers’ calendars and impede necessary action.” It is not allowing subordinates to “delegate tasks up” to you. It is that and much more.
No doubt you’ve dealt with managers who appear to be operating with urgency. They run from meeting to meeting, always checking their BlackBerry, coming in early and leaving late. Perhaps you’ve even been guilty of false urgency. According to Kotter (and our own observations), managers like this tend not to get a lot accomplished, and rarely contribute to addressing the immediate crises.
Kotter defines complacent behavior as “unchanging activity that ignores the organization’s opportunities or hazards, focusing inward.” He says that a false sense of urgency is aimless, “frenetic behavior leading to exhaustion and stress.”
Complacency is built on a feeling that the status quo is basically fine. On the other hand, false urgency is built on a platform of anxiety and anger. By contrast, the true sense of urgency is action that is alert, fast moving, and focused externally on important issues.
That external focus is so important that Kotter devotes an entire chapter to it. In fact, bringing the outside world in is one of his four tactics to achieve urgency.
As noted, a complacent organization is one that is inwardly focused. He writes, “An inwardly focused organization inevitably misses new opportunities and hazards coming from competitors, customers, or changes in the regulatory environment. When you don’t see opportunities or hazards, your sense of urgency drops.”
Bringing the outside world in can take many forms, and Kotter cites a number of examples. For instance, bringing in the voice of the customers helps the organization become more cognizant of what it is doing right (and wrong), and how it might improve its products, services and customer support in ways that assure and improve customer loyalty.
The outside world, as Kotter notes, is a constantly changing beast, with new challenges always popping up. New technologies arise that could mean the death knell of your business or, conversely, make your business more valuable if those technologies are leveraged correctly.
An important component of urgency, which Kotter only obliquely mentions, is the central role of communications. Unfortunately, he falls into the usual trap of referring to organizational communications repeatedly in the context of a function performing various tasks. In fact, effective communications – both internally and externally – are implicit in truly urgent behavior, though he fails to say so.
Leaders and managers operating with urgency are very clear in their communications and keep their people in the loop. They engage regularly in lively discussion, dialogue and debate inside the company, and assure that the information they impart to the organization is both timely and relevant.
Despite Kotter’s oversight and his omission of that key point, it’s a fine book with some very important counsel for today’s manager.
But just what does that mean, to maintain “a sense of urgency?”
Many people equate urgency to lots of tasks being done quickly and frantically. If you check your thesaurus, you won’t find that urgency, quickness and franticness are synonyms. Unfortunately, too many people buy into that myth. And that’s exactly the wrong approach when a business is contending with a crisis or profound change. While complacency is certainly the wrong way to respond to challenging circumstances, a false sense of urgency can often be more dangerous.
In his latest book, A Sense of Urgency, John P. Kotter ably explains the difference between the three responses and provides a very useful guide for businesspeople facing change, crises and challenges. Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has been lecturing and writing about leadership for years.
He has authored three outstanding books on the subject in the past decade, that have become invaluable for today’s business leaders: Leading Change, The Heart of Change and Our Iceberg is Melting. This latest book carries forward and develops the themes of the previous three while folding in and updating much of what he learned in the intervening years.
The essence of true urgency lies in doing the right things the right way. It is “ridding oneself of unproductive tasks that add little value to the organization but tend to clog managers’ calendars and impede necessary action.” It is not allowing subordinates to “delegate tasks up” to you. It is that and much more.
No doubt you’ve dealt with managers who appear to be operating with urgency. They run from meeting to meeting, always checking their BlackBerry, coming in early and leaving late. Perhaps you’ve even been guilty of false urgency. According to Kotter (and our own observations), managers like this tend not to get a lot accomplished, and rarely contribute to addressing the immediate crises.
Kotter defines complacent behavior as “unchanging activity that ignores the organization’s opportunities or hazards, focusing inward.” He says that a false sense of urgency is aimless, “frenetic behavior leading to exhaustion and stress.”
Complacency is built on a feeling that the status quo is basically fine. On the other hand, false urgency is built on a platform of anxiety and anger. By contrast, the true sense of urgency is action that is alert, fast moving, and focused externally on important issues.
That external focus is so important that Kotter devotes an entire chapter to it. In fact, bringing the outside world in is one of his four tactics to achieve urgency.
As noted, a complacent organization is one that is inwardly focused. He writes, “An inwardly focused organization inevitably misses new opportunities and hazards coming from competitors, customers, or changes in the regulatory environment. When you don’t see opportunities or hazards, your sense of urgency drops.”
Bringing the outside world in can take many forms, and Kotter cites a number of examples. For instance, bringing in the voice of the customers helps the organization become more cognizant of what it is doing right (and wrong), and how it might improve its products, services and customer support in ways that assure and improve customer loyalty.
The outside world, as Kotter notes, is a constantly changing beast, with new challenges always popping up. New technologies arise that could mean the death knell of your business or, conversely, make your business more valuable if those technologies are leveraged correctly.
An important component of urgency, which Kotter only obliquely mentions, is the central role of communications. Unfortunately, he falls into the usual trap of referring to organizational communications repeatedly in the context of a function performing various tasks. In fact, effective communications – both internally and externally – are implicit in truly urgent behavior, though he fails to say so.
Leaders and managers operating with urgency are very clear in their communications and keep their people in the loop. They engage regularly in lively discussion, dialogue and debate inside the company, and assure that the information they impart to the organization is both timely and relevant.
Despite Kotter’s oversight and his omission of that key point, it’s a fine book with some very important counsel for today’s manager.
Friday, September 12, 2008
"We?" or "They?"
Ever notice how fickle sports fans can be? Last Sunday, before the New England Patriots-Kansas City Chiefs game started, fans interviewed in the parking lots were saying, "We're going to win the Super Bowl this year!"
But something terrible happened during the game. In the first quarter, the Patriots’ star quarterback, Tom Brady, took a solid hit to his left knee, crumpled to the turf in pain and, as we would later learn, is out for the season with torn medial and anterior cruciate ligaments (MCL and ACL). After that, fans were heard saying, "I don't think they can win this year without Brady."
How quickly things change from “We” to “They.” It's not unique to New England, nor is it unique to sports. I guess it's just human nature to want to associate with winners but to distance ourselves from losers – even perceived losers.
The same is true within the corporate world. In a winning company, one that is on top of its game like Google or Apple, the employees typically talk about the company in the first person plural. "We own the market."
But when a company is struggling, it's often "They don't know what they're doing. They have driven this company into the ground." In those cases, employees assume no responsibility for the decline of the company. It’s someone else’s fault – namely, the CEO and/or the management team.
When clients engage me to assess their internal culture and the quality of their employee communications, I usually conduct numerous interviews and focus groups with managers and employees. I listen closely for that “we” and “they” – whether front-line employees use the first or third person plural in reference to their employers.
Frankly, in that I usually have been brought in to address perceived problems, it’s more often the latter, as in, “They tried that before and it didn’t work.” And, “they never listen to us,” etc. In cases where the companies are struggling, rarely do we hear statements like, “We’re having a tough time.”
It goes to my original point here. People, by nature like to be associated with winners, and tend to distance themselves from losers. But for a company facing difficult challenges, what is the tipping point between "We" and "They?” How can leaders create that sense of ownership that is so important through good times and bad?
While the answer to those questions is unique to each situation, the commonality to all is effective communications – which is to say, relevant information conveyed in a regular and timely manner via dialogue, discussion and debate among and between leadership, managers, supervisors and employees. Where that is the norm, the sense of ownership is far more prevalent than not. You are more likely to hear employees using “we” than “they.”
People might point to a successful organization and say that developing that sense of ownership in a winning environment is easy. But I push back and say, what’s the chicken and what’s the egg?
More likely, the organization is successful because the environment of dialogue, discussion and debate is well established. People at all levels have a voice in the operation and, at the same time, they have a clear understanding of the company’s vision and mission, as well as the strategies that are driving them in that direction. Course corrections in the face of competitive threats and a changing marketplace are communicated clearly and regularly. There is no such thing as a “fair weather” employee. There is little opportunity for disassociation to fester, even when the chips are down.
Of course, the professional football team metaphor is imperfect because the average fan is not an employee and has no personal stake in the outcome of team’s season – unless that fan bets on the team. For a going concern, the average employee indeed has a personal stake in the health and well being of his or her company: his or her livelihood.
So it behooves company leadership to assure that its employees stay engaged, fully comprehending how they contribute every day to the ongoing health of the business. Only then will they see that they share responsibility for its success or failure. Only then will they think of the company as their own, in the first person plural.
But something terrible happened during the game. In the first quarter, the Patriots’ star quarterback, Tom Brady, took a solid hit to his left knee, crumpled to the turf in pain and, as we would later learn, is out for the season with torn medial and anterior cruciate ligaments (MCL and ACL). After that, fans were heard saying, "I don't think they can win this year without Brady."
How quickly things change from “We” to “They.” It's not unique to New England, nor is it unique to sports. I guess it's just human nature to want to associate with winners but to distance ourselves from losers – even perceived losers.
The same is true within the corporate world. In a winning company, one that is on top of its game like Google or Apple, the employees typically talk about the company in the first person plural. "We own the market."
But when a company is struggling, it's often "They don't know what they're doing. They have driven this company into the ground." In those cases, employees assume no responsibility for the decline of the company. It’s someone else’s fault – namely, the CEO and/or the management team.
When clients engage me to assess their internal culture and the quality of their employee communications, I usually conduct numerous interviews and focus groups with managers and employees. I listen closely for that “we” and “they” – whether front-line employees use the first or third person plural in reference to their employers.
Frankly, in that I usually have been brought in to address perceived problems, it’s more often the latter, as in, “They tried that before and it didn’t work.” And, “they never listen to us,” etc. In cases where the companies are struggling, rarely do we hear statements like, “We’re having a tough time.”
It goes to my original point here. People, by nature like to be associated with winners, and tend to distance themselves from losers. But for a company facing difficult challenges, what is the tipping point between "We" and "They?” How can leaders create that sense of ownership that is so important through good times and bad?
While the answer to those questions is unique to each situation, the commonality to all is effective communications – which is to say, relevant information conveyed in a regular and timely manner via dialogue, discussion and debate among and between leadership, managers, supervisors and employees. Where that is the norm, the sense of ownership is far more prevalent than not. You are more likely to hear employees using “we” than “they.”
People might point to a successful organization and say that developing that sense of ownership in a winning environment is easy. But I push back and say, what’s the chicken and what’s the egg?
More likely, the organization is successful because the environment of dialogue, discussion and debate is well established. People at all levels have a voice in the operation and, at the same time, they have a clear understanding of the company’s vision and mission, as well as the strategies that are driving them in that direction. Course corrections in the face of competitive threats and a changing marketplace are communicated clearly and regularly. There is no such thing as a “fair weather” employee. There is little opportunity for disassociation to fester, even when the chips are down.
Of course, the professional football team metaphor is imperfect because the average fan is not an employee and has no personal stake in the outcome of team’s season – unless that fan bets on the team. For a going concern, the average employee indeed has a personal stake in the health and well being of his or her company: his or her livelihood.
So it behooves company leadership to assure that its employees stay engaged, fully comprehending how they contribute every day to the ongoing health of the business. Only then will they see that they share responsibility for its success or failure. Only then will they think of the company as their own, in the first person plural.
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Concertina of Life
One day last month, I perused my bookshelves looking for something to read for a trip I was about to take and landed on an old book I hadn’t read in years: "The Thousand Mile Summer," written in 1959 by Colin Fletcher.
Fletcher, a Welshman, fought with the Royal Marines in World War 2, and then traveled the world before settling permanently in the United States in 1956. He was the author of several outdoor books. His more noted titles were his second and third books, "The Man Who Walked Through Time," and "The Complete Walker" – the former a memoir of his hike that covered the length of the Grand Canyon below the rim; the latter a comprehensive guidebook for aspiring back country hikers. "The Complete Walker," updated four times, became the Bible for backpackers.
"The Thousand Mile Summer" concerns his hike up the spine of eastern California in 1958, from the Mexican border to Oregon - up the Colorado River, through the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, into the Sierras, and north. It took exactly six months to the day, from March 8 to September 8. And so, today marks the 50th anniversary of the walk's completion. At the book's end, as he reflects on the experience and how he had told the tale, he writes the following:
"There is a difference in shape between a journey as it happens and a journey as you remember it. At the time, there it is – day after roughly equal day. But when you look back afterward (and especially when you talk or write about it) memory pushes and pulls at time as if it were a concertina. The vivid moments expand, so that they stand out like cameos. The dull periods contract, until whole weeks become compressed into thin shims."
This paragraph really struck me. If you think more broadly about "journey" to imply the many experiences that comprise our lives, it makes perfect sense. We all do much the same. It's a wonderful metaphor, the idea of life’s memories as a concertina. The daily routines, with all their banalities, are compressed into the thin shims, while those joyful moments, sometimes so brief and fleeting, expand, stand out and over-shadow everything else.
The clever and creative among us are able to weave the pleasurable moments into larger-than-life events. Sometimes, we exaggerate some details while ignoring others. Indeed, a good storyteller, one who can entertain in relating personal experiences, is one who is able to play that concertina, expand the moments of joy and excitement to come alive and become something larger than they were.
Fletcher, who passed away last year at the age of 85, teaches us the importance of focus, of winnowing out that which is unimportant. His tale examined in wonderful detail the unusual people he met along the trail, the beautiful vistas of the eastern Sierras he witnessed, the harsh heat of Death Valley, and the like. Yet the last several hundred miles toward the Oregon border, his tale speeds to a conclusion, falling into the "thin shims" of his story. (He admits, “The last three weeks of the hike were dull.”)
I think of his words a lot lately, assessing how I might approach each new day, whether it will be a thin shim or whether I can make it stand out like a cameo. In the end, it is we who make those choices.
Fletcher, a Welshman, fought with the Royal Marines in World War 2, and then traveled the world before settling permanently in the United States in 1956. He was the author of several outdoor books. His more noted titles were his second and third books, "The Man Who Walked Through Time," and "The Complete Walker" – the former a memoir of his hike that covered the length of the Grand Canyon below the rim; the latter a comprehensive guidebook for aspiring back country hikers. "The Complete Walker," updated four times, became the Bible for backpackers.
"The Thousand Mile Summer" concerns his hike up the spine of eastern California in 1958, from the Mexican border to Oregon - up the Colorado River, through the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, into the Sierras, and north. It took exactly six months to the day, from March 8 to September 8. And so, today marks the 50th anniversary of the walk's completion. At the book's end, as he reflects on the experience and how he had told the tale, he writes the following:
"There is a difference in shape between a journey as it happens and a journey as you remember it. At the time, there it is – day after roughly equal day. But when you look back afterward (and especially when you talk or write about it) memory pushes and pulls at time as if it were a concertina. The vivid moments expand, so that they stand out like cameos. The dull periods contract, until whole weeks become compressed into thin shims."
This paragraph really struck me. If you think more broadly about "journey" to imply the many experiences that comprise our lives, it makes perfect sense. We all do much the same. It's a wonderful metaphor, the idea of life’s memories as a concertina. The daily routines, with all their banalities, are compressed into the thin shims, while those joyful moments, sometimes so brief and fleeting, expand, stand out and over-shadow everything else.
The clever and creative among us are able to weave the pleasurable moments into larger-than-life events. Sometimes, we exaggerate some details while ignoring others. Indeed, a good storyteller, one who can entertain in relating personal experiences, is one who is able to play that concertina, expand the moments of joy and excitement to come alive and become something larger than they were.
Fletcher, who passed away last year at the age of 85, teaches us the importance of focus, of winnowing out that which is unimportant. His tale examined in wonderful detail the unusual people he met along the trail, the beautiful vistas of the eastern Sierras he witnessed, the harsh heat of Death Valley, and the like. Yet the last several hundred miles toward the Oregon border, his tale speeds to a conclusion, falling into the "thin shims" of his story. (He admits, “The last three weeks of the hike were dull.”)
I think of his words a lot lately, assessing how I might approach each new day, whether it will be a thin shim or whether I can make it stand out like a cameo. In the end, it is we who make those choices.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
"Inside Steve's Brain"
Before someone points out the obvious… Yes, I am very intrigued by Steve Jobs and his chief creation, Apple Inc. For good reason. I have owned and used Apple computers since 1984. Since buying my first Macintosh in 1989, I’ve never used anything else and cannot imagine why I would ever buy a Windows-based machine.
Knowing my bias and interest, my friend and colleague, Gary Grates, alerted me to a new book last week he was certain I’d appreciate. He was right. The book is “Inside Steve’s Brain,” by Leander Kahney, news editor for Wired.com.
The book is about the way Steve Jobs thinks, how he operates, how he built Apple, his successes (and mistakes), his stunning innovations, and his most unique approach to the world. But it’s a lot more than that. It is a business book full of valuable ideas and insights into one of the hottest companies of our time. In addition to all that the reader will learn implicitly, the book makes it easy by concluding each chapter with a helpful summary list of “Lessons from Steve.”
Jobs’ success is not a simple formula, and thus deserves a book-length exploration that a blog entry cannot fulfill. But here’s the crux. Steve Jobs finds the best people, attracts them and, once he has them on board, allows them the freedom to do their best work. At the same time, he demands perfection. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Known for his abrasiveness, Jobs bisects the world into "geniuses and bozos." He weeds out the bozos.
Collaboration is central to how Jobs operates. The book compares how Apple approaches product development versus the typical auto company. At Apple, the design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing teams work side-by-side throughout the development process so there is little chance of miscommunication. Not so at other companies:
…Jobs has said it’s like seeing a cool prototype car at a car show, but when the production model appears four years later, it sucks. “And you go, what happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! … What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers and the engineers go, ‘Nah, we can’t do that. That’s impossible.’ And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people and they go, ‘We can’t build that!’ And it gets a lot worse.”
Pixar, Jobs’ other baby, is discussed within the context of how he puts together teams of talented people and allows them to thrive. The book contrasts Pixar’s way of doing things to the typical Hollywood approach. Pixar, by the way, is not headquartered in the LA area but in Emeryville in the East Bay.
In Hollywood, every one is a free agent: directors, writers, actors, etc. The deal is pitched pulling together the various talent. As Kahney notes, the people are finally working together smoothly about the time the filming is wrapped up. Pixar operates on the opposite model.
At Pixar, the directors, screenwriters, and crew are all salaried employees with big stock option grants. Pixar’s movies may have different directors, but the same core team of writers, directors, and animators work on them all as company employees. In Hollywood, studios fund story ideas – the famous Hollywood pitch. Instead of funding pitches and story ideas, Pixar funds the career development of its employees… At the heart of the company’s “people investment” culture is Pixar University, an on-the-job training program that offers hundreds of courses in art, animation, and filmmaking. All of Pixar’s employees are encouraged to take classes in whatever they like, whether it’s relevant to their job or not.
It’s no surprise that Jobs has earned remarkable allegiance from his people. We can see the results for ourselves in the great products those people create and the sales of those products. I’d read before the sales statistics for the iPod, but the book reiterates them and they’re worth repeating here as a demonstration of the success of the Apple model.
According to analysts, the company is on track to sell 200 million units by the end of 2008, and 300 million by the end of next year. Some analysts think the iPod could sell 500 million units before the market is saturated – which would make the iPod a contender for the biggest consumer electronics hit of all time. The current record holder is the Sony Walkman, which sold 350 million units during its 15-year reign in the 1980s and early 90s. Incidentally, Kahney writes at length contrasting Apple and Sony and how they develop and market new products.
What I find most telling is Apple’s (and Jobs’) near-total focus on the customer experience (in contrast to companies like Sony). While most companies just make products, Apple’s approach reflects the title of a 2005 Forrester Research study: “Sell the digital experiences, not products,” which the book cites. Chapter 6, on Innovation, concludes with the following “Lessons from Steve.”
If that’s not a formula for success, I’d like to see one that is.
Knowing my bias and interest, my friend and colleague, Gary Grates, alerted me to a new book last week he was certain I’d appreciate. He was right. The book is “Inside Steve’s Brain,” by Leander Kahney, news editor for Wired.com.
The book is about the way Steve Jobs thinks, how he operates, how he built Apple, his successes (and mistakes), his stunning innovations, and his most unique approach to the world. But it’s a lot more than that. It is a business book full of valuable ideas and insights into one of the hottest companies of our time. In addition to all that the reader will learn implicitly, the book makes it easy by concluding each chapter with a helpful summary list of “Lessons from Steve.”
Jobs’ success is not a simple formula, and thus deserves a book-length exploration that a blog entry cannot fulfill. But here’s the crux. Steve Jobs finds the best people, attracts them and, once he has them on board, allows them the freedom to do their best work. At the same time, he demands perfection. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Known for his abrasiveness, Jobs bisects the world into "geniuses and bozos." He weeds out the bozos.
Collaboration is central to how Jobs operates. The book compares how Apple approaches product development versus the typical auto company. At Apple, the design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing teams work side-by-side throughout the development process so there is little chance of miscommunication. Not so at other companies:
…Jobs has said it’s like seeing a cool prototype car at a car show, but when the production model appears four years later, it sucks. “And you go, what happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! … What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers and the engineers go, ‘Nah, we can’t do that. That’s impossible.’ And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people and they go, ‘We can’t build that!’ And it gets a lot worse.”
Pixar, Jobs’ other baby, is discussed within the context of how he puts together teams of talented people and allows them to thrive. The book contrasts Pixar’s way of doing things to the typical Hollywood approach. Pixar, by the way, is not headquartered in the LA area but in Emeryville in the East Bay.
In Hollywood, every one is a free agent: directors, writers, actors, etc. The deal is pitched pulling together the various talent. As Kahney notes, the people are finally working together smoothly about the time the filming is wrapped up. Pixar operates on the opposite model.
At Pixar, the directors, screenwriters, and crew are all salaried employees with big stock option grants. Pixar’s movies may have different directors, but the same core team of writers, directors, and animators work on them all as company employees. In Hollywood, studios fund story ideas – the famous Hollywood pitch. Instead of funding pitches and story ideas, Pixar funds the career development of its employees… At the heart of the company’s “people investment” culture is Pixar University, an on-the-job training program that offers hundreds of courses in art, animation, and filmmaking. All of Pixar’s employees are encouraged to take classes in whatever they like, whether it’s relevant to their job or not.
It’s no surprise that Jobs has earned remarkable allegiance from his people. We can see the results for ourselves in the great products those people create and the sales of those products. I’d read before the sales statistics for the iPod, but the book reiterates them and they’re worth repeating here as a demonstration of the success of the Apple model.
According to analysts, the company is on track to sell 200 million units by the end of 2008, and 300 million by the end of next year. Some analysts think the iPod could sell 500 million units before the market is saturated – which would make the iPod a contender for the biggest consumer electronics hit of all time. The current record holder is the Sony Walkman, which sold 350 million units during its 15-year reign in the 1980s and early 90s. Incidentally, Kahney writes at length contrasting Apple and Sony and how they develop and market new products.
What I find most telling is Apple’s (and Jobs’) near-total focus on the customer experience (in contrast to companies like Sony). While most companies just make products, Apple’s approach reflects the title of a 2005 Forrester Research study: “Sell the digital experiences, not products,” which the book cites. Chapter 6, on Innovation, concludes with the following “Lessons from Steve.”
- Don't lose sight of the customer: The [Macintosh] Cube bombed because it was built for designers, not customers.
- Study the market and the industry: Jobs is constantly looking to see what new technologies are coming down the pike.
- Don't consciously think about innovation: Systemizing innovation is like watching Michael Dell dance. Painful.
- Concentrate on products: Products are the gravitational force that pulls it all together.
- Remember that motives make a difference: Concentrate on great products, not becoming the biggest or the richest.
- Steal: Be shameless about stealing other people's great ideas.
- Connect: For Jobs, creativity is simply connecting things.
- Study: Jobs is a keen student of art, design and architecture. He even runs around parking lots looking at Mercedes.
- Be flexible: Jobs dropped a lot of long-cherished traditions that made Apple special - and kept it small.
- Burn the boats: Jobs killed the most popular iPod [the Mini] to make room for a new thinner model. Burn the boats, and you must stand and fight.
- Prototype: Even Apple's stores were developed like every other product... prototyped, edited, refined.
- Ask customers: The popular Genius Bar idea came from customers.
If that’s not a formula for success, I’d like to see one that is.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Managing a Presidential campaign: Lessons for managers?
No doubt all business books that provide insights into effective management techniques have a few rules in common… things like the importance of decisiveness, keeping the strategic view, not allowing problems to fester, communicating effectively to both internal and external audiences, maintaining and encouraging loyalty, minimizing staff dysfunction and turnover. Things in that vein. These rules apply in spades to CEOs and, for that matter, the President of the United States.
In fact, the modern presidential campaign provides the kind of trials and pressures not unlike those faced by most CEOs. That includes managing massive budgets, creating and sustaining loyalty, selling a range of ideas to skeptical audiences, selecting and motivating quality senior managers, and developing trusting relationships with those top people.
In that context, then, it was revealing to read in the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly that Hillary Clinton apparently fell short in most of those areas. The only conclusion the reader can draw after reading the 6100-word article (“The Front Runner’s Fall,” by Joshua Green, Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2008) is that Ms. Clinton apparently lacked core management skills as she made her run for the presidency. Reaching that conclusion leads to the follow-on: that she probably was not presidential timber.
At the same time, the parallel conclusion one might draw is that, in this day and age, candidates like John McCain and Barack Obama, in getting as far as they have, demonstrate those key management skills and both should be commended for that.
We may complain about the duration of these campaigns – going on more than 18 months now – but one thing is sure: they truly test the mettle of the candidates, putting them through some pretty rough paces.
Certainly, glad-handing voters in Bumsteer, Iowa, and Zipville, Ohio, is not the same as staring down Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And deciding whether to run an attack ad is not the same as the decision to go to war.
But this is a tough job en route to acquiring the world’s toughest. On many levels, the campaign is good preparation in that it demands the ability to:
So why did Hillary Clinton fall short? Pundits on both sides of the political spectrum long felt she had an honest shot at winning the Democratic nomination. Could her downfall have been her poor management skills, as evidenced in the Atlantic Monthly article?
Joshua Green sums up the dysfunction early in his story:
“Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence – on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to ‘do the job from Day One.’ In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.”
Green cites numerous cases where she hesitated, wouldn’t make a decision, or left it to others, including her husband, the former president. Former GE CEO Jack Welch always said that it isn’t the wrong decisions that hurt your business. It’s the ones you don’t make.
Mrs. Clinton also struggled with putting together an effective core team, one whose skills blended and complemented one another. There was a lot of backstabbing, backbiting, and second-guessing going on. Consequently, making a bad situation worse, there were no clear lines of authority, and Mrs. Clinton couldn’t or wouldn’t fill the gaps.
Therein lies an important lesson here for businesspeople – managers who must make decisions, hire and fire people, develop talent, sustain loyalty, all in the on-going challenge of running a successful business. People become managers and progress in the organization because they learn how to exercise these important traits, and then they get better as they progress in the organization.
Most businesses are structured in such a way that those who don’t progress in their management skills don’t climb the corporate ladder. We could say the same is true of our presidential campaigns.
In fact, the modern presidential campaign provides the kind of trials and pressures not unlike those faced by most CEOs. That includes managing massive budgets, creating and sustaining loyalty, selling a range of ideas to skeptical audiences, selecting and motivating quality senior managers, and developing trusting relationships with those top people.
In that context, then, it was revealing to read in the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly that Hillary Clinton apparently fell short in most of those areas. The only conclusion the reader can draw after reading the 6100-word article (“The Front Runner’s Fall,” by Joshua Green, Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2008) is that Ms. Clinton apparently lacked core management skills as she made her run for the presidency. Reaching that conclusion leads to the follow-on: that she probably was not presidential timber.
At the same time, the parallel conclusion one might draw is that, in this day and age, candidates like John McCain and Barack Obama, in getting as far as they have, demonstrate those key management skills and both should be commended for that.
We may complain about the duration of these campaigns – going on more than 18 months now – but one thing is sure: they truly test the mettle of the candidates, putting them through some pretty rough paces.
Certainly, glad-handing voters in Bumsteer, Iowa, and Zipville, Ohio, is not the same as staring down Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And deciding whether to run an attack ad is not the same as the decision to go to war.
But this is a tough job en route to acquiring the world’s toughest. On many levels, the campaign is good preparation in that it demands the ability to:
- Attract, build and retain the necessary talent pool to run a very complicated process under severe budget and time constraints
- Develop and maintain the loyalty of hundreds of staffers
- Create, staff and inspire at least 50 independent state organizations
- Communicate your core messages clearly and effectively
- And to do it all under the constant scrutiny of the modern news media
So why did Hillary Clinton fall short? Pundits on both sides of the political spectrum long felt she had an honest shot at winning the Democratic nomination. Could her downfall have been her poor management skills, as evidenced in the Atlantic Monthly article?
Joshua Green sums up the dysfunction early in his story:
“Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence – on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to ‘do the job from Day One.’ In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.”
Green cites numerous cases where she hesitated, wouldn’t make a decision, or left it to others, including her husband, the former president. Former GE CEO Jack Welch always said that it isn’t the wrong decisions that hurt your business. It’s the ones you don’t make.
Mrs. Clinton also struggled with putting together an effective core team, one whose skills blended and complemented one another. There was a lot of backstabbing, backbiting, and second-guessing going on. Consequently, making a bad situation worse, there were no clear lines of authority, and Mrs. Clinton couldn’t or wouldn’t fill the gaps.
Therein lies an important lesson here for businesspeople – managers who must make decisions, hire and fire people, develop talent, sustain loyalty, all in the on-going challenge of running a successful business. People become managers and progress in the organization because they learn how to exercise these important traits, and then they get better as they progress in the organization.
Most businesses are structured in such a way that those who don’t progress in their management skills don’t climb the corporate ladder. We could say the same is true of our presidential campaigns.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)