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Archive for November, 2019

Gobble ‘til You Wobble

Wednesday, November 27th, 2019

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

Today is a day for good advice utilizing a compendium from past posts.

First, remember that Thanksgiving food has NO calories—so give thanks!

Next, good wishes from the Internet.

May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have never a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!

Finally, a small offering to print out (just add crayons) that may provide you with at least ten minutes of peace. If your group includes multiple kids, or inner children, print enough for all and have a contest. Click to find larger versions for your party.

One more thing.

Christmas parties are just around the corner, so the more you farctate (look it up) today the less you can in December.

It’s Up to You

Tuesday, November 26th, 2019

Scheduling is every boss’ responsibility.

Good scheduling means your people can count on having a life outside work.

If projects stack up, or have deadlines like these, you need to figure out what’s going on.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan4th/2312622098/

Don’t look to your team for a solution.

In most cases, look in the mirror to solve the problem.

Image credit: Dan4th Nicholas

Golden Oldies: MAP Action 2 (management by walking around)

Monday, November 25th, 2019

https://unsplash.com/s/photos/office-space

Poking through 13+ 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.

80 years ago Dave Packard commented that good management was “marked by personal involvement, good listening skills and the recognition that “everyone in an organization wants to do a good job.” That belief developed into a management technique called MWBA and it’s just as powerful now as it was then — if not more so. 13 years ago I wrote a four-part series about it. The second post talks about why to do it, the third about uncovering problems and the fourth about using MWBA to crosscheck what you hear.

And yes, you do have time.

Author John le Carré, of Bond fame, said it best.

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Remember Management By Walking Around (MWBA)? It’s an oldie, but a goodie.

Great managers work to spend at least 25% (or more) of their time wandering around chatting and building trust with their people.

Don’t have time? Maybe that’s because you never really thought abut the benefits. Getting to know your people this way helps you to

    • spot high-potential workers;
    • raise your trust quotient with employees;
    • improve retention;
    • attract talent;
    • discover molehills before they’re mountains, and, most importantly, it’s the best, if not only, way to
    • know what’s really going on.

To work it must be the norm—that means it needs to be done constantly, not just when there’s a problem.

Consistent, casual visits make people feel comfortable and encourages them to chat—saying what they are thinking without editing it. To pass on information, rumors, and the like without wondering or worrying that it will boomerang and hurt them.

While wandering, you’ll hear enough to validate or repudiate what you heard from somewhere else. It lets you protect your sources—which means they’ll continue to pass on information—and it helps you avoid acting on erroneous information.

The higher you rise in the organization the more important this intelligence becomes. One of the greatest dangers for any manager is getting isolated and hearing only a sanitized or slanted version of what’s going on within the group, department or company. This is especially true for the CEO and senior staff.

Bottom-line—get off your duff, out of your office, wander around, say hi, listen, be a sponge and soak it all up.

Invest the time—that’s what managers do—and it will pay off handsomely!

Does it still work? Absolutely. Read about how it went from strictly a management tool to also offering personal growth and stress reduction.

A note for managers in love with tech. MBWA can’t be done digitally; it’s an in-person, face-to-face technique that works.

It takes far less time than recruiting new people.

And it’s free.

Image credit: LYCS Architecture on Unsplash

All About Work

Wednesday, November 20th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tyger_lyllie/87895703/

Startup or not, people are working longer hours even if they aren’t in an office.

Millennials are burning out, because they feel guilty unless they are working.

People of all ages, even those well into their seventies are working longer and proud of it. Having spare time has become a symbol of low value, while being always busy equates to high status.

So it’s no surprise that companies and individual bosses are taking advantage and always pushing people to increase productivity.

When what they should be doing is sending them home, since working longer hours has been proved to lower productivity.

As countless studies have shown, this simply isn’t true. Productivity dramatically decreases with longer work hours, and completely drops off once people reach 55 hours of work a week, to the point that, on average, someone working 70 hours in a week achieves no more than a colleague working 15 fewer hours.

But that doesn’t stop various media from writing job shaming articles making fun of successful, well-known people working retail jobs.

Fans wondered why it was deemed newsworthy that a mother of two had taken a job in a different sector when her best-known role as an actor had wound down. (Soap stars, even on massive hits like EastEnders, do not earn early-retirement-level salaries.)

The fiasco echoed a similar attempt at job-shaming by another British tabloid last year, when the Daily Mail published photos of American actor Geoffrey Owens bagging groceries as a cashier at a Trader Joe’s, a retail chain known for its excellent job benefits. Fox News picked up the story in the US and both media outlets were ridiculed for it.

And, for a change, the trolls crawled quietly back under their rocks. Will wonders never cease.

Many of those working so-called low-level jobs are college graduates.

McKinsey findings show that 48% of employed U.S. college grads are in jobs that require less than a four-year degree.

Geoffrey Owens summed it up best.

“There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable,”

Image credit: Kat

Ego vs. Profit

Tuesday, November 19th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/purpleslog/3134323442/in/photolist-5LYeam-d9DmTm-cAhxNh-dVhL7y-dVhKs1-TGBPPh-2TSgCv-9WCV3h-AnF1U4-9WA3Hp-7K5aVg-9wrvaw-9wrxUj-4H3sdR-8yo3F5-DEC3i-2h7m3VZ-XXt7T1-2gG7DBu-b5aMga-jATNhy-2hbtdiC-bVRXUM-8vJGry-cdhbFo-2ghfvhL-W61rLT-2gQvEo9-ixG8wg-KQ5F-KQ5C-KQ5B-KQ5G-KQ5D-KQ6Q-KQ6U-KQ6M-KQ6V-KQ6R-KQ6S-KQ6N-9VAAZU-WATzHX-2h7iwcz-2gQvErf-jnjP9-2ghfrP3-2gHswCh-2h5PFap-295cXUb

Yesterday’s post focused on the importance of financial controls.

Unicorns focus on funding.

The “horses” talked about yesterday are focused on profit and building sustainable business.

But when it comes to valuation, founders often focus on just one number: the magic B (as in billion).

This was analyzed in great detail in a post from CB Insights last month.
On the 31% of unicorns that are worth exactly $1B, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners Jeremy Liew wryly noted (via this tweet) that it’s “potentially not a coincidence.”

Investors are still enamored by founders with their fast talk and passionate visions to “change the world.”

However, enamored or not, when funding, investors focus closely on CYA.

Which is easy, since investors have all the leverage, because they dictate the terms.

This is what is happening to get that exact $1B valuation. Even if the fundamentals don’t justify the $1B valuation, the investors can lay on enough structure and terms to get the founders to a $1B headline valuation (while investors have the protections they need). With the $1B valuation, founders get:

  • desired media exposure to attract talent
  • bro-grats tweets
  • conference speaking gigs
  • a place on this list

Of course, it’s the programmers, marketers, sales and support who actually build the products that will pay the price for the inflated valuation.

In these exit situations, common shareholders, aka employees, get fleeced.

Harking back to 2015, money has tightened again and being profitable is at the forefront of founder thinking — mainly because it’s the focus of investors.

Stockpiling cash is at odds with the model of most venture capital-backed start-ups, which typically raise piles of money to spend on growing faster. Many investors are now pushing their companies to turn a profit.

Shades of déjà vu.

Image credit: Purple Slog

Entrepreneurs: Know and Control Your Burn Rate

Monday, November 18th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gowestphoto/3921760653/

Poking through 13+ 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.

Burn rate is why companies (and people) should budget. Unfortunately, budgeting is often driven by burn rate when it should be vice versa — as most learn the hard way. Hard, but not impossible, just ask the guy who went from a burn rate of over half a million a month to $15,000. Although this post is from 2016 when money was tight and focused on entrepreneurs, it applies to companies of any size, as well as people, no matter their income.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Last summer David Bladow, co-founder and CEO of flower delivery startup BloomThat, had the worse kind of ah-ha moment after deciphering the company’s accounting — a self-described “convoluted mess.”

What he found was a monthly burn rate of $550K that meant the company would be out of cash in just 4 months.

That knowledge drove a laser focus to change.

Now instead of shutting its doors in November, its self-diagnosed death date, the startup launched nationally on February 3. The company that was burning through half a million a month is now down to $15,000 a month.

BloomThat did early what every founder should be doing now.

Yesterday Mark Suster wrote about how to figure the right burn rate for your company and last week we talked about doing more with less.

Actually, I think the tightening of funding is a very good thing, although it will create a certain amount of carnage, it will force founders and their teams to grow up.

If that sounds harsh, so be it.

Funding based on unproven future sales is driven by hopes that are heavily shaped by outside circumstances — circumstances beyond any founder’s control.

Sam Altman warns that funding is not a guarantee of success and in the next few years David Bladow, Andrew Wilkinson and dozens like them will prove that horses have the staying power that unicorns lack.

Flickr image credit: Tsutomu Takasu

Reviews and Male Bosses

Wednesday, November 13th, 2019

Men have been bosses since the dawn of work.

Therefore, by whatever name, reviews have been a male province.

For decades reviews have been hell.

performance-review-1

And in many companies they still are.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

Reviews and Female Bosses

Tuesday, November 12th, 2019

Women at work are damned when they get promoted and damned to a lower profile and paycheck when they don’t.

They are especially damned when they are a boss doing reviews.

That became clear in a recent study by Martin Abel, an assistant professor of economics at Middlebury College, that was published in the Institute of Labor Economics.

All managers need to be able to give tough feedback at times. But Abel’s research finds that both men and women discriminate against female bosses who dish out criticism, even when the feedback is worded identically to the feedback given by male managers.

Women are supposed to be nice, complimentary and supportive (especially to men). Those who are assertive and speak up, instead of melting into the background and shutting up are considered bitches.

As are women who do what bosses are supposed to do, i.e., provide feedback, both good and not, that helps their people grow and develop their capabilities to the fullest.

…workers surveyed were “about three times more likely to associate giving praise and appropriate use of tone with female managers. By contrast, they are about twice more likely to associate giving criticism and strict expectations with male managers.”

The attitudes aren’t new. The same type of studies (presenting the same whatever, but using male and female names) have documented the same reactions in college professors, managers and workers.

Like I said, damned either way.

Image credit: Karen Cox

Golden Oldies: Twofer On Reviews

Monday, November 11th, 2019

Poking through 13+ 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.

5 years ago s+b created a video based on brain science to show how and why people often reacted negatively to performance reviews.

Ducks in a Row: Brains and Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are a frequent subject of management gurus, the media and pundits of every variety, myself included.

More recently the focus has been on what’s wrong with reviews and how they often act as a demotivator.

A new article in strategy + business uses brain science to look at exactly why and how reviews demotivate.

YouTube credit: strategy + business

A year later GE scrapped its notorious rank and yank review system as implemented by then-CEO Jack Welch. A year after that Amazon followed suit. There are still plenty of companies that use the system — whether they admit it or just change the name. Individual managers are also guilty of it no matter their company’s attitude. Be it company wide or individually the effect is the same — higher turnover, lower productivity, decreased engagement, and increasing recruiting costs.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A Sea Change for Annual Reviews

Years ago I wrote about how to make annual reviews painless and effective — more a review of the  year’s accomplishments and setting goals for the coming year than a critique of work past.

It worked because mini-reviews, coaching and conversations during the year were frequent.

Typical annual reviews were fraught with fear and loathing.

For decades, General Electric practiced (and proselytized) a rigid system, championed by then-CEO Jack Welch, of ranking employees. Formally known as the “vitality curve” but frequently called “rank and yank,” the system hinged on the annual performance review, and boiled the employees’ performance down to a number on which they were judged and ranked against peers. A bottom percentage (10% in GE’s case) of underperformers were then fired.

Jack Welch championed a lot of very bad stuff (e.g., work/life balance, HR), but the negativity of rank and yank is near the top, if not number one.

(As for GE’s stellar results keep under Welch keep in mind that businesses like GE Financial practically printed money until it all blew up.)

But times are changing.

According to Raghu Krishnamoorthy, the longtime GE exec in charge of Crotonville (GE’s in-house management school) “Command and control is what Jack was famous for. Now it’s about connection and inspiration.

And to that end, GE has developed a new in-house app that basically does what I and others evangelized a decade and more ago.

The new app is called “PD@GE” for “performance development at GE”  There’s an emphasis on coaching throughout, and the tone is unrelentingly positive. The app forces users to categorize feedback in one of two forms: To continue doing something, or to consider changing something.

If you don’t have the luxury of an app you can simplify it even further.

    • Care about your people.
    • Interact with your people.
    • Talk with your people.
    • Challenge your people.
    • Help them grow and advance — even when that means they leave for a better opportunity that you can’t provide.

Read what GE is doing and adapt it to your own group — whether your company does of not.

Image credit: Mark

Goodbye Potholes

Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/deborahfitchett/4374565545/

Do you hate it when roads you travel often are torn up for weeks/months in order to repave them?

I do. I also hate the pollution manufacturing asphalt causes, not to mention the choice between driving on potholes or seeing my taxes paying to do the same road over and over.

Things are about to change — finally!

“New synthetic binders are going to transform the global road construction or road rehabilitation marketplace, and they’re going to allow for roads to be 100% recycled,” says Sean Weaver, president of TechniSoil Industrial, the company that designed the new process. “That’s always been the holy grail of the road construction market—could you recycle 100% of the top surface of the road, grind it up, crush it, and put it right back down, and have that be as durable as the original hot mixed asphalt road.”

Even better, the process uses recycled PET plastic (think water bottles) to replace bitumen and the result is far stronger than the original.

Considering the fact that so much US infrastructure, especially roads/streets/highways are badly  deteriorated TechniSoil’s innovation couldn’t come at a better time.

After it’s tested in LA the main problem will be getting (forcing) bureaucracies and politicians to use it.

And that means overcoming entrenched players, with powerful lobbying and money to buy the pols.

Image credit: TechniSoil Industrial

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