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Archive for January, 2019

Wally Bock on Leadership as if People Mattered

Wednesday, January 30th, 2019

I especially like this post because, in today’s build-your-brand culture, it presents a solid road to success as a boss based on a radical idea: it’s not about you. You are not the be-all and end-all and even if you were it wouldn’t make you a success as a boss. It’s why, in the long run, AI won’t/can’t replace human bosses.

I joined the Marines right out of high school and started in business before I earned my degree. I had a family to support, so going the traditional student route made little sense. I earned my degree while I also worked full-time at responsible jobs. It turned out to be a good thing.

I could take classroom learning and try it on the job right away. It didn’t take long to figure out that an awful lot of the so-called expert advice was nonsense. The people in my economics textbooks, for example, didn’t act like me or any people I knew. Years later, Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler would call them “econs.”

Most of my books and most of my professors treated management as an engineering problem. There was much language about designing an effective system and “well-oiled machines.” There was plenty of advice that involved knowing what buttons to push or what levers to pull.

I learned a lot of good things, but most of the good stuff had nothing to do with working with people. I learned most of that on my own, mostly the hard way. You can have the biggest brain on Planet Earth but working with people requires your heart.

Working with people differs from working with machines. You don’t have to read a book or this blog post to figure this out. Look around you. Think about the people you work with every day.

What are People Like?

We know a lot about people. For starters, we know that we’re all imperfect. We make mistakes. That includes you. Forgive other people when they make a mistake. Admit it when you do.

People have strengths and weaknesses. You want to get the most you can out of those strengths and make those weaknesses irrelevant. People want to make progress. You should help them improve performance and spot opportunities they can seize.

People are emotional. Your computer doesn’t care if you snap at it, but your teammates do. A turret lathe won’t have a fight at home before coming to work. But pretty much everyone I know has had that experience. That’s how it is. Deal with it.

Machines can run all day, every day, for months. Buildings can last for decades with little maintenance. People are different. There’s a limit to how many hours most people can put in before productivity dwindles to almost nothing. For most of us, the top limit is somewhere between 50-55 hours a week. Overwork your people and their productivity will drop like a stone.

People need recovery time, too. After a long day, or after that big push to get a project done, people need to take time off. They need to hang out with their friends, play with their kids, go to a baseball game, or cook and consume a fine meal. Anything that’s not work-related. You interrupt that recovery time at your peril. Do it too often and people get resentful.

People thrive on good relationships. People want to work with other people they enjoy and that they can count on. Many a team has seen productivity decline because two team members couldn’t or wouldn’t get along. It’s your job to manage the work environment.

You’re A People, Too

You’re a person, too. You make mistakes. You have emotions. You have strengths and weaknesses. You want to make progress. Relationships matter a lot. You need breaks and recovery time.

One more thing. You set the example, whether or not you want to. It’s almost impossible to have a team that’s productive and happy if you’re a grumpy slacker. See to yourself first. Revel in your humanity. Draw strength from your relationships. Work hard, but get recovery time, too.

Image courtesy of Three Star Leadership

Ducks in a Row: Hustle Culture

Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hermzz/6478535091/

Yesterday’s Oldie talked about one of the biggest lies perpetrated on an already vulnerable Millennial audience — relentless striving 24/7.

It’s a great article — equal parts enlightening and alarming.

Welcome to hustle culture. It is obsessed with striving, relentlessly positive, devoid of humor, and — once you notice it — impossible to escape.

According to Erin Griffith (@eringriffith), writing in the New York Times, the biggest drivers perpetuating the scam do so to line their own pocket.

“The vast majority of people beating the drums of hustle-mania are not the people doing the actual work. They’re the managers, financiers and owners,” said David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder of Basecamp.

In 2016 Marissa Mayer, of Yahoo infamy, claimed a person could work 130 hours a week was possible “if you’re strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom.

Many companies extoll the approach and incorporate it into their culture, but WeWork has gone further and built its business around it and is a good example of how this philosophy in action looks more like a cult than a culture.

It has exported its brand of performative workaholism to 27 countries, with 400,000 tenants, including workers from 30 percent of the Global Fortune 500.

But it took Gary Vaynerchuk, the patron saint of hustling and founder of One37pm to “glorify ambition not as a means to an end, but as a lifestyle.”

It’s a lifestyle that has made a fetish of convenience, not for the sake of a better, more well-rounded life, but as a way to free up more time to work.

Finally, without doubt, it can be stated that hustle is a culture with no redeeming features. It sucks humanity from its followers, then uses up and destroys the most devout.

Image credit: Hermann Kaser

Golden Oldie: Don’t Buy The Lies Of Silicon Valley

Monday, January 28th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/elektorlabs/16192054960/

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Last week we looked at millennial burnout and it reminded me of a post I did a couple of years ago on how it’s often driven by Silicon Valley pundits who preach the need for relentless hustle, which, to put it politely, is a crock.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

This is a short post, because it contains links to the two biggest Silicon Valley lies.

I realize that lies aren’t nearly the big deal they used to be, but when the source of those lies is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) prevalent in a critical piece of US infrastructure the lies take on a life of their own.

They carry so much credibility that their insidious spread is guaranteed.

The first lie is that success requires constant hustle. Whether starting a company or working in an existing one, hustle means giving up everything else — family, friends, recreation, relaxation, whatever, no exceptions — and work 24/7/365 (more if you can figure out how).

But for some, “hustle” is just a euphemism for extreme workaholism. Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. Gary Vee, an entrepreneur and angel investor who has 1.5 million Twitter followers and a string of best-selling books with titles like “Crush It!,” tells his acolytes they should be working 18 hours a day. Every day. No vacations, no going on dates, no watching TV. “If you want bling bling, if you want to buy the jets?” he asks in one of his motivational speeches. “Work. That’s how you get it.”

Which, as anyone familiar with productivity research knows, is a pile of poop.

The truth is that much of the extra effort these entrepreneurs and their employees are putting in is pointless anyway. Working beyond 56 hours in a week adds little productivity, according to a 2014 report by the Stanford economist John Pencavel. But the point may be less about productivity than about demonstrating commitment and team spirit.

The second lie is that Silicon Valley is special. But Silicon Valley’s special is completely self-serving.

Silicon Valley has a lot of self-interested reasons for preferring to maintain a facade that its culture is special, and that its industry is more innovative, virtuous and productive than every other industry. It serves as a great recruiting tool as the region competes for talent with other industries and areas. It allows insiders to maintain outsize control of their companies. And it is a way to prevent regulators from coming in and regulating Silicon Valley to the extent that it might otherwise seek to do.

Stop drinking the Valley kool-aid. Facebook doesn’t love you, it loves your identifiable personal data, which is slices, dices and sells to all comers.

Google jettisoned its “don’t be evil” motto when it got in the way of revenue generation.

Read the articles.

Share them, tweet them and stop ruining your own life by believing them.

Image credit: Elektor Labs

If The Shoe Fits: Founders and Fools

Thursday, January 24th, 2019

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Neither market cap nor valuation are cause for celebration.

Both are as ephemeral as morning fog.

Ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella his reaction when Microsoft became the most valuable company in the world for a few months last fall.

“I’m not one of those guys who says, ‘let’s celebrate some market cap measure.’ That’s just not stable.”

What does interest him?

The Microsoft-generated ecosystem.

“Our business model is about creating more surplus outside us. We will only be long-term success when the people are making more money around us,” he said.

This dovetails with what Bill Gates also believes, i.e., a company’s success is defined when the total value of the ecosystem around it is more valuable than the company that created it.

That ecosystem seems non-existent to the majority of founders of gig economy businesses, dating apps, social media, etc.

Or perhaps it’s just those with venture funding who are focused on growth at all costs.

That said, this post is dedicated to the founders who focus on building sustainable businesses/ecosystems.

As opposed to the fools who chase investment in lieu of revenue, celebrate valuation based on their last round of funding, and don’t care about ecosystem beyond its PR value.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Excuse The Typos

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

Pretty much everyone I know responds to my emails (yes, emails) on their smartphone.

They respond to email because they know I don’t text.

As a result, I am inundated with emails that not only respond to the subject at hand, but provide me with constant comedic content.

They don’t need to try and be funny, because their phone’s autocorrect takes care of that.

And gives me the opportunity to make (as a Brit friend says) smartarse comments.

That said, I’m taking this opportunity to show I really do understand the difficulty they are facing.

It’s not their fault.

They are all much too busy to review their emails before hitting “send.”

Image credit: Language Log

What’s Life?

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019

People constantly offer up their own answers to ‘what’s life’, which is good.

I think the only definition that really answers that question is one you craft yourself.

Here’s my answer.

Life is a kaleidoscope, with no frame, constantly changing and filled with beauty.

What it is not is a jigsaw puzzle, with a single picture and set borders.

Image credit: Lance Shields

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: the Reality of Culture

Monday, January 21st, 2019

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Danial Adkinson was lucky. His first boss was a true role model and taught him one of the most important lessons anyone ever learns. He was especially lucky, because he learned it at a very young age and apparently pretty smart, because it stayed with him.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Washing dishes for Jeff was grueling, greasy work. But then again, making a pizza, or driving a truck, or baking a cake, or any of countless other jobs are not always enjoyable in themselves, either. Out of all the lessons I learned from that guy in the Pizza Hut tie, maybe the biggest is that any job can be the best job if you have the right boss.Danial Adkison

People work for people, not companies.

People quit people, not companies.

They accept positions because of the culture and leave when it changes.

Bosses interpret company culture; they improve or pervert it; they add/subtract/polish/tarnish it.

What bosses don’t do is pass it on intact and untouched.

Flickr image credit: Susanne Nilsson

Millennial Managers

Thursday, January 17th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/3555349324/

From the Winter 2018/2019 issue of Inc. Magazine (Use the link to see the actual survey results.)

The oldest Millennials are now well into their 30s, and they’re increasingly running companies. Inc. and our sister publication, Fast Company, partnered with career-development site the Muse to survey 155 Millennial bosses to see how they manage, what they value, and how they plan to shape the future of business. The top priorities they cited are humanist: creating positive work cultures, forging strong relationships (in person, not through apps), and caring for the whole person, not just the worker. And, unlike some Boomers and Gen-Xers, they’re optimistic about those who will replace them. As Elena Valentine, co-founder and CEO of video company Skill Scout, predicts, “I have a hunch Gen Z is going to make an even bigger impact.”

Of course, the survey focused on CEOs in tech; no one seems to bother doing similar surveys on lower level millennial managers working outside of tech.

So I thought I’d share my own experience over the last 15 years with millennial managers and their workers at my small, local bank branch.

Over those years there have been roughly seven managers, all but one were promoted and are still with the bank.

Unlike large, urban branches, small branches like mine function differently. Tellers remember your name and chat; managers often handle transactions normally done by bankers.

Because I handle the banking, wires, etc., for my Russian business partner I had a lot of interactions with the managers, as well as the staff, and got to know them on a more personal level than you might expect.

The managers all ranged from their late twenties to early thirties.

They managed much the same as the CEOs in the survey. Same concerns and efforts with their peoples’ growth and well-being.

Our conversations often focused on the culture they strove to create and, for a few years, what it took to protect their people from the toxic culture and destructive behavior of a district manager (she created enough stress to put one pregnant manager on doctor-ordered bed rest) who was finally fired.

None of the managers were perfect, although the current one is as close as any manager gets, but they created great micro-cultures, in which their teams thrived.

Impressive, especially when you consider that the bank is Wells Fargo.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

Burnout and Millennial Optimization

Wednesday, January 16th, 2019

Unfortunately, the things that are drummed into our heads growing up continue to harass and control us throughout adulthood.

So it’s no surprise that the parental optimization and monitoring that did so much damage to millennials continues to haunt them as adults resulting in mundane task avoidance and burnout.

BuzzFeed’s Anne Helen Petersen wrote a very personal essay explaining millennial burnout. Interesting because in spite of being raised in Montana where she didn’t suffer the more extreme versions of optimization found in more urban areas, she still suffers from burnout.

Why am I burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young. Life has always been hard, but many millennials are unequipped to deal with the particular ways in which it’s become hard for us.

It’s not the big things that affect her, but the little ones.

I realized that the vast majority of these tasks shares a common denominator: Their primary beneficiary is me, but not in a way that would actually drastically improve my life. They are seemingly high-effort, low-reward tasks, and they paralyze me.

72% of Boomers are white, 61% of Gen X is white, but of the 80 million millennials only 56% are white, but a large percentage of that 56% were raised privileged in middle class or better homes.

Many of the behaviors attributed to millennials are the behaviors of a specific subset of mostly white, largely middle-class people born between 1981 and 1996. But even if you’re a millennial who didn’t grow up privileged, you’ve been impacted by the societal and cultural shifts that have shaped the generation. Our parents — a mix of young boomers and old Gen-Xers — reared us during an age of relative economic and political stability. As with previous generations, there was an expectation that the next one would be better off — both in terms of health and finances — than the one that had come before.

But they are not better off, nor is the world they’re inheriting.

A few days later Quartzy’s Jessanne Collins wrote about her own burnout

I related precisely to Petersen when she wrote: “Things that should’ve felt good (leisure, not working) felt bad because I felt guilty for not working; things that should’ve felt “bad” (working all the time) felt good because I was doing what I thought I should and needed to be doing in order to succeed.”

and how having a kid changed her thinking.

The strength to say “no”: to pass on things that aren’t worth your time and energy; to skip events you don’t really want to go to but feel like you “should”; to take Instagram with a grain of salt. To not sweat the small stuff, in other words, or at least to reject the notion that by not sweating the small stuff quite as much, we’re not measuring up to some impossible standard.

Much of Boomer and older Gen X attitudes can be traced back to a saying that always chilled me. It went something like, life is a challenge to be overcome.

I preferred a different version that went like this, life is a mystery to be lived, not a challenge to be overcome.

It dovetails nicely with Peterson’s idea that life should be lived, not optimized.

Image credit: Beck Pitt

Who Made the Millennials?

Tuesday, January 15th, 2019

https://www.freeimages.com/photo/parental-advisory-graffiti-1494264

As I said yesterday, millennials aren’t what you think.

It’s pretty stupid to think that 80 million people would all think and act identically. Not all Boomers did drugs, not all Gen X were slackers and not all millennials were spoiled and entitled.

Just as an animal reflects how it’s raised, so does a human.

When I’m accosted by an unruly dog I hold the owners responsible.

The deprived generation of the Depression raised the entitled generation of Boomers who raised the much entitled, very special generation of Millennials, so when you look at millennials you should look to their parents — the Boomers.

Time magazine’s 2013 cover story was written with an eye to covering for its Boomer reader base. It did a good job by locking in the millennial myth.

“The Me Me Me Generation—Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents.”

Not that they had much choice.

No generation grows up in a vacuum and economics plays a large role.

The first wave of millennials hit the job market in 2008.

(…) millennials were in the fourth year of the “jobless recovery,” facing high unemployment, mounting debt, and an eroded social safety net. And yet, with breathtaking cluelessness, TIME framed the millennials’ desperate search for stable work as a privileged character flaw—look at the kids too flaky to handle “choosing from a huge array of career options.”

Options maybe; actual jobs, very few.

Worse, the attitudes drummed into our heads growing up are very hard to shake at any age and some are still wreaking havoc.

Join me tomorrow for a look at what’s happening now.

Image credit: speight

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