My Boss, But Not Necessarily Dr. Evil

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

The best thing a boss can be in the current environment is a doer rather than a grand planner and schemer. In other words, what you want is a fellow minion; what you hope not to find in the corner office (or glorified cubicle depending on your company's resources) is your own Dr. Evil.

When it comes to the most loathed of bosses, sheer cruelty plays a role sometimes (many reports of sadistic bosses out there), but more often it's the tendency to make plans (big, disruptive plans) that the boss doesn't have to implement him or herself.

What about a Friday afternoon dachshund parade around the block that we could turn into a weekly event to drum up attention for our brands?  What business prospect wouldn't be intrigued to watch hundreds of dachshunds engaged in a contest for which best displays or illustrates one of our company's brands? Now, I know what you're thinking—this could get redundant—but the plan is much more finely nuanced than that. This week dachshunds, next week springer spaniels. Well, we have to do something to make our brands stand out in this competitive marketplace, don't we?

You laugh, but I think it sounds like fabulous fun, and you never know,  it might be just what your brands need to be paid attention to. But can you imagine organizing such a thing, and what if it had to start next week, or even next month?  Well, at least that plan was enjoyable. Unfortunately, most of the schemes bosses come up with, but don't have to implement, aren't nearly as fun once put into action. How about a plan for work buddies whose fates would be tied to one another?  Everyone at the office is paired with another employee. Everyone is responsible not only for themselves, but for making sure their buddy meets his or job requirements. If one buddy gets fired due to unsatisfactory job performance, his buddy is automatically eliminated, too. "Anyone who doesn't like the plan can leave," the boss tells his managers. That's what's fun about the give orders-but-don't-implement job role—as boss they're under no obligation to receive constructive criticism about the plan. It's his plan and he'll enforce it if he wants to.

What about a new Pass The Hat work plan?  Every Friday everyone will put their biggest task in a big black felt hat circulating from cubicle to cubicle. On Monday, to create a more innovative, stimulating work environment, everyone will pick with their eyes closed from the hat to determine what they'll be working on that week.  Sound ridiculous?  Of course. But if your CEO said you had to do it, would you argue?  In this economy?  Of course not!

Some bosses are compassionate, offering to dock their pay to one dollar a year since a quarter of their staff was laid off—or docked all their pay, you might say. Others, though, don't have any such humanitarian strain running through their blood. Some don't even have the capacity to recognize irony. In one situation I heard about, the CEO sent an announcement about a hiring and salary freeze, only then to send an additional e-mail a few hours later pointing out all the new "strategic" hires she's added to her staff. What's a strategic hire, anyway?  More of the grand planning, I surmise. Sometimes strategic can be translated into "For my comfort as the boss."

The famous executive personality is Type A, but I think the best bosses are more practical than ambitious. Rather than striving for world domination, how about striving for domination in helping workers with the irritating minutia that comprises their work day?  Or, another way of saying it is, how about striving to dominate as a leader in streamlining the workload of employees, earning a reputation as a world class simplifier?  Plans to control spheres of marketplace and change the face of the company often backfire because they complicate business operations so much that meeting the basic of needs of customers or clients is compromised. Basics are overlooked in the race towards the grand and unwieldy. It's okay to be simple-minded. There's nothing wrong with a simpleton boss. They're the best kind.

If you're wondering what advice as work managers to give your company's bosses, or even it's head boss, on being the best boss possible in a deathly economy, emphasize the need to think more in terms of the daily and right-under-their-noses than the long-term or worldly. Some global, long-term strategic thought is necessary, it's true, but when your staffs are overloaded, it's more important to help take on the daily grind occurring in the cubicles down the hall. Being Dr. Evil is glamorous, but being a CEO who's happy to find a way to be the assistant to the assistant manager in the cubicle in the corner is far more noble—not to mention cost efficient and effective.

Would you secretly describe your company's executives as a convocation of  Dr. Evils?  Do they joyously make unreasonable plans that are only reasonable because they don't have to do the resulting work?

Chief Executive Guru

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

I don't know about you, but I'd love to see at least a few corporate executives dress up to match the way they feel inside. That would mean adopting the attire of 1960s gurus, the ones with the robes and turbans, and other lavish accouterments. Chances are they're not nearly as fun as old time gurus, but I bet more than a few of them have a faith about their business acumen and overall genius that matches the faith those gurus had about their mystical abilities. I say this after observing all the surveys, like the one I highlighted in this week's Business Intelligence column, that attempt to tap their "wisdom" regarding our financial crisis. It's an ironic place to turn for help given that today's high-level executives are part of the same pool of "sages" who got us into this mess.

Some of them have some good points to make, though many didn't (or won't) follow the advice themselves. It reminds me of the overweight friend who likes to dispense dieting tips. They have some smart things to say on the subject, but aren't able to put their own words into action. With that in mind, it's a good thing the Web 2.0 revolution has hit. Instead of waiting for words of wisdom and truth from the top of your organization, workforce managers are now able to work towards solutions via a ground-up approach. If you haven't already implemented corporate wikis, blogs, and social networking sites, now is the perfect time to make the leap. A wiki where employees go to share expertise can offer a cost-effective tool to downsized work groups. They may not have the knowledge among their mighty staff of two to answer the latest headache-inducing question, but thanks to their wiki, they've discovered the man with the stains on his tie, who works down the hall, has valuable information to offer (even if he has yet to master the art of gracefully eating jelly donuts).

Wikis also—and this part executives might not like—give employees a way to break through the euphemisms and internal public relations messages delivered to them from the top. If you give them free reign (which you should), a wiki can serve as a self-testimonial tool. If, for instance, the company has implemented a new outsourcing system for IT processes that executives insist will make everyone's life easier, a wiki is a place for those who have navigated the new system to give other employees a first-hand account of what it's actually like, and how best to get used to it.  On the one hand it's good to be like the former Soviet Union, and control the information workers share with each other, but on the other hand, doing so could be counterproductive. What's the use of swallowing the corporate speak about new systems and processes if workers aren't able to put the new ways into action well enough to get their work done efficiently? Sometimes they need a cut-through-the-bull session with someone who has been there themselves to make executives' smooth-sounding plans workable.

Corporate blogs are similar. In between angst sharing that may displease executives, informal employee exchanges can lead to good ideas. If a group of employees communicating through the corporate blog discover they all loathe the same new process, maybe through their complaining they might isolate exactly what's preventing them from using it effectively. If you have a corporate culture open and accepting enough to make these workers feel at ease about sharing, a proposal for a new process, or a way of muddling through the one they're stuck with, could be brought to your desk. Corporate blogs also are retention tools. As comforting as executives try to be (in between announcements about current and upcoming layoffs), the real relief is talking out anxieties with peers, and thereby finding ways to support one another through the current debacle. True, your workers don't have too many places to go in this economy, but without an internal forum to turn to for support, they may become too psychologically bogged down to get their work done as well as they used to. That's the last thing you want as with many of our boats drifting in circles, everyone needs to be up to par enough to row as fast and strong as possible.

Social networking sites, which I've detailed at length already on this blog, are like a combination of blog and wiki, while offering additional power such as the ability to let others see collected articles of "genius" like collections of books and whatever projects participating employees care to share. Like other Web 2.0 tools you open up to employees, there doubtless will be a goof-off factor, but the psychic benefits and the potential for innovation this technology enables, makes the risk well worth it.

At a time of profound "global" executive embarrassment—frivolous bonus packages combined with impressive incompetence—workforce managers can use all the help they can get. With most companies doing much less than their best now, gurus can be found beyond the corner offices. Today's gurus are an especially ascetic lot. You can find them huddled over their meager rations, taking yet another "working lunch" in the cubicle across the hall.

Is your CEO still your company's chief guru when it comes to business acumen, or are you searching the organization from bottom to top for powerful business strategies?

You're Hired! Oh, Wait, Can I Take That Back?

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

Instincts are one of my favorite things. That could be for one of two reasons, or some combination of the two. First, I'm lazy, and if there's a way to make decisions that doesn't involve any work beyond  a moment or two of trigger-fast reflection, I'm all for it. Second, I love animals, and animals are supposedly strong on instinct and short on logic. Anything that makes me more like my cat, Miss Minnie, is a good thing.

Luckily, I'm not yet charged with hiring (or firing for that matter) colleagues. I think I could do it, but I would need to put aside my love of instinct, or at least add some logical accompaniment. I've touched before on this blog on the topic of relying on more than instinct in workforce management. When it comes to hiring decisions, it's as true as ever.

There's an unfortunate tendency in hiring practices that I've observed in my professional life. It's classic psychology, but inappropriate nonetheless, that managers gravitate toward not just hiring people with work styles compatible to their own, but taking it a step further (into the range of walking lunacy) and hiring less experienced clones of themselves. Now, this doesn't have to mean the person they've hired is unqualified, of course. But if the clone happens to be qualified and ends up doing a great job, the similarity between the boss and her young spawn may give rise to office psycho-dramas. Believe me, I know as I was one of these clones. Well, not a clone in actuality, but there was enough of a similarity between myself and a former boss, whom I'll call "Suzy," that people in the office started referring to me as "Suzy Junior."  I was a diligent, high-performing worker, but my competence combined with my similarity to the boss unnerved my supervisor (a manager who stood between me and the boss who hired me in our hierarchy). She felt so strongly that I was being groomed to replace her she began making up stories about me to our boss, sabotaging me. Never able to fire me thanks to my high-performing record, I ended up in a much better workplace of my own accord, but this episode in my life naturally left some scarring lessons about the psychology of hiring, and what happens when you get it wrong.

Some might say that since I turned out to be a highly competent, reliable worker, the person who hired me got it right. At least that's what I like to think. But I can see it from another perspective. In addition to competence, the manager doing the hiring needs to consider how the applicant will blend in and get along with co-workers, including the person charged with overseeing his or her day-to-day work routine. The person who would supervise me on a daily basis met me, and had her chance to veto my hire, but I have a sick feeling she was overruled by our boss, or felt pressured to agree that I would make a great addition to our work team. The lesson from all this?  Don't overrule or pressure the manager who will have to deal day-to-day with your brilliant new you.

The second example of the clone phenomenon is funnier because it worked out okay for the new hire in question. The person who hired him had an artistic, sleepy aspect, though sadly was not an artist, but the editor-in-chief of a trade publication. The person he hired also had this wonderful sleepy, slow-to-speak, slow-to-act (dare I say lazy?) tendency. This pair reminded me of the personification of a impressionist painting—hazy, soft-eyed, slightly out of focus. Well, Senior Sleeper was fired, and Junior Sleeper was kept on, left thankfully to very tolerant co-workers. The work group functions, but probably would be better off and higher-functioning with someone a little more alert and confidently assertive.

If your managers successfully avoid hiring a clone, another big one is not allowing irrelevant testing to influence the decision. Personality testing surely has it's place. But if the boss, and everyone the person will work with, loves the potential hire, and he or she has scored well on skills testing, then, whatever you do, don't rule them out because they "flunked" or frightened you in their personality assessment. A friend of mine was in the final running for a position as editor, and was worried because she had been given a multi-hour test to complete that provided her prospective bosses with a trial run of her editing abilities. A few days later she was told she didn't get the job. She had passed the editing test that took up half her day, but indicated she was mentally unfit for the position on her personality assessment.  Use psychological assessments sparingly in the hiring process. In other words, use it as one piece of a much larger puzzle, but never use it as the maker or breaker of your decision. Not only do I suspect, based on my professional (as well as social) association with this friend that the company made a poor decision, but I also notice how flaky it makes that company look. "United Corporate Men and Women, Inc., rejected an otherwise great candidate all because of a personality assessment?  Really?"  Not the best PR.

Last, beware of creating hiring practices that scare away all but the most lowly workers. I'm referring to the companies that leave candidates dangling for a few weeks or more, or worse yet, the ones that tell applicants they nearly have the job (in so many words), to then not only not hire them, but never respond to them at all for months. But then, call out of the blue six months later with a fabulous offer.

A lack of self respect is prized by some of your supervisors (what won't an employee lacking self-respect say "yes" to?), but for the wellbeing of your company, do you really want these people representing you to your customers and the public?  Our economy is in the dumps, but desperation is never chic—even at a business networking event comprised of very unhappy people.

What can you advise other companies about best practices in hiring?  Any unfortunate lessons you learned along the way?

Something Bothering You?

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

There's something about an annoying co-worker that's like a Medieval form of torture. Unlike the persistent whistler in a department store, or the airline passenger seated next to you who insists on smacking her watermelon-scented bubblegum all the way from New York to Phoenix, the noisome colleague is not time limited. One of the worst things about this economy, I was thinking this morning, is if you happen not to like someone you share office space (or heaven forbid a work arrangement) with, there's no getting rid of them. When times were better, there was always the hope they might be lured elsewhere, but now, unless they get laid off (and for Karma's sake it's never smart to wish that), you're stuck with them.

So, since it's rack and screw time courtesy of the co-worker who needs a primer on dental hygiene, the one who hums no discernible tune incessantly, and the countless others who think it's okay to leave cell phones with disco ring tones on their desks unattended for hours, workforce managers need to provide some relief. Does your office have a mechanism for dealing with these common workplace annoyances before they breed passive aggressive behavior in co-workers?  Few, after all, will directly ask All Day Hummer to give the band inside her head a break (or at least turn off the mike), but many more will answer her reasonable work-related requests sharply or gossip about her to other workers by way of forming a makeshift All Day Hummer Sufferer support group. Inconsequential behaviors can snowball into larger, more complex, interpersonal dramas.

I heard about an online service you can log complaints about others into, and then the system sends an e-mail to the offender explaining they're annoying you without telling him or her who you are. So you get to complain without taking responsibility for the complaint. Would such a system be possible on your office intranet?  It's not ideal to complain without owning the complaint, but it might be an efficient way to nix annoying behavior both inconsequential like humming and whistling (my particular angst) and more serious irritations like workers who consistently miss their deadlines. Come to think of it, I'd be an enormous fan of such a service on a corporate intranet. The first step towards eliminating insensitive office behavior is training employees in team building programs, or in other parts of your curriculum, how to respect the comfort of others. But since the average person is selfish about his own preferences, and cowardly about confronting those who encroach on those preferences, workforce managers can't rely on their sage teachings to maintain harmony (the non-humming kind) long-term.

If confronting directly or indirectly isn't an option, maybe the office equivalent of chronic pain management is called for. Perhaps the problem isn't the hummer or whistler but the worker who is irritable enough to be bothered by it. Could classes on focus and meditation, or "centering" oneself, be called for at your office?  With promotions and raises on hold for months, if not years, employees are anxious and not as happy as they were a year ago, so can you blame them for being a little touchy?  Throw in exhaustion from taking on the tasks of laid off colleagues, and you have an interpersonal tinderbox. Most companies wouldn't be open to paying for psychologists to facilitate sessions on coping with stress and daily work life irritation, but maybe trainers could read up on this subject, and try their hand at offering seminars on becoming more grounded, at peace, and focused. There is so much information available on this topic for free online, there would be no expense incurred to the company other than the trainer's time, and providing such an offering to weary employees would be appreciated. Or at least it would show that you're still interested in keeping them happy.

Tap into the expertise that already exists among your workforce in this area. I bet at least one, or maybe even a few dozen of your employees, are avid yoga enthusiasts or certified yoga instructors. Would one of them be open to volunteering her time to providing a seminar or two to colleagues?  In exchange for their help, you could give them an extra few days of vacation time. Instead of concentrating on what you can't afford to provide workers, think of ways to create incentives for workers to come forward to provide for each other. It's well worth a free vacation day or two to have volunteers ready to lead stress-relieving activities that may make your workforce more productive.

The Tribe of the Annoying People isn't going anywhere because we're all members of it at one time or another (some, of course, more often than others). In the inter-tribal warfare between the Whistlers and the Non-Whistlers it's nice to think of a workforce manager ready to step in as peace negotiator before tensions escalate.

How do you help your employees handle interpersonal workplace annoyances big and small?  Do you have any suggestions on maintaining the peace and comfort of colleagues who have to share space in trying times?

The Seeds of Inspiration (And the Drought)

[Courtesy of Grantland Cartoons]

Last year I visited a self-described "innovation" firm that had just opened a new office here in New York City. I was greeted by "Super Cow," a bull dressed as Superman, and diner-style seating in lieu of work stations. Rather than assign employees permanent spots, each worker was given a laptop and told to move about freely—to any of the diner booths, or to any seat around a large communal table placed at the center of the open space the office was organized (or unorganized) around. I left with the same feeling that might be experienced by a poor person peeping into an expensive restaurant watching patrons eating meaty lamb chops. It looked great!  But such a situation had never (and likely never would) be offered to me or most other office-day laborers.

The excitement this spectacle afforded me, however, was blunted barely a month later when I received a mass e-mail from the communications professional who had arranged and hosted my visit letting all her contacts know she was moving on. She had only been on the job for a couple of months. So much for the hope of the innovative workplace!  True, it was different, but apparently not more pleasant than the typical work environment. In a way her swift departure from the "innovation" company confirmed a suspicion I had behind the stimulation I felt about this new way of managing workers. As I toured the office, noting the staff's various walls for sharing everything from "inspiring" news stories and little-known, random facts about new hires (all new hires were required to submit a blurb with such information along with a photo), I thought to myself, "Gee, I bet these people are stressed out."

The "innovation" culture required such a sustained level of enthusiasm and high-energy output that I thought it must be exhausting. It's dark of me to point this out in a blog about sowing the seeds of workplace inspiration, but sometimes workers need to emotionally disengage to survive their jobs (even mostly healthy, positive jobs). The forced-communal environment and all the sharing would put an introspective, inward-looking person like myself on overload. I think my nerves would eventually snap. I'm known to colleagues and friends (and to myself most of the time) as an imaginative, creative person who favors the zany over the tried-and-true, but I think the "innovative" workplace I witnessed would eventually have me howling, "Please, please no more sharing!  I need my own space and enough structure to feel I have time for contemplation. I don't have the energy to figure out where I'm going to sit every morning."

Really, can you imagine the politics of the flexible seating arrangement?  Employees with neuroses would go mad. "Why didn't Shirley want to sit next to me today?  What does it mean that Bob sat next to Tony two days in a row, and they never once asked me to join them?," the more obsessive of your workforce would agonize. Instead of just breezing past Supercow with their cup of coffee, they have to start the day with a decision that's seemingly inconsequential and yet will affect the way the rest of the day plays out. What if you happen (or strategically) decide to sit next to a particular co-worker you've never sat next to before only to discover he's a compulsive snacker who chews with his mouth open?  How would you inoffensively extricate yourself? 

The seating dilemma is a silly one, but illuminates a problem with self-consciously "innovative" workplaces: Instead of making worklife easier, these next generation arrangements often make workdays more complex and demanding. It's good to engage the minds of workers so no one is on auto-pilot, but do we have to make everything, including seating arrangements and how much we interact with colleagues, into an enforced production?  When so much "innovation" is mandated, it ironically results in a dearth of the creative spirit. The culture becomes a new regimen, or ruling regime, rather than a way to free the minds of employees. I wonder if the young woman I dealt with at the "innovation" firm ever needed to ask for space and a break from the constant engagement, but was afraid to, or punished for it, because that request would conflict with the company's strict doctrine of innovation?  I'm guessing the firm's self-described, glass-walled "fish bowl" private room didn't bring much relief to this possibly beleaguered worker.

To implement innovation cultures that don't become stifling, allow workers the space to retreat from the communal atmosphere. Instead of turning the whole office into an innovation workshop, give employees their cubicles or offices, and then also provide ample space for gatherings, and forums for sharing such as trendy Web. 2.0 social networking platforms. If you can afford to do so, invest in laptops rather than desktops to encourage employees to make themselves comfortable wherever they choose to work, whether that's tucked within their all-important alone space, in the communal gathering area, the corner coffee shop, or from home. The key is emphasizing that no one approach defines innovation. For many of us creative types, after all, freedom to think means quiet to reflect without interruption. Does that make us anti-social and anti-innovation workshop?  Some cultures, like the one at the "innovation" firm I visited, would argue that it does.

Actually, though, I think large metallic farm animals dressed as superheros are the perfect way to greet new visitors to an office. I'm in favor of corporate menageries. It's just that sometimes Super Cow thinks being alone in the pasture might be nice.

Is your company building an innovation culture?  How's it going?  Is the new way of managing office life flexible enough to inspire creativity in all the varieties of personality your workers come in?