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Archive for December, 2019

Relatives and Family

Wednesday, December 18th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonythemisfit/4212124305/

I’m taking some time off, so this is the last post of 2019 (wow, has this year gone fast) and I thought I’d leave you with some food for thought.

Speaking of food, here’s a thought to keep in mind as you navigate holiday get-togethers.

“Relatives” refers to people to whom you are related by blood or a kin-type relationship (stepwhatevers, etc.)

“Family” refers to people who are interested, concerned, caring, supportive, and love you.

If you are very lucky some of your relatives are also family.

But there is no guarantee.

So this holiday season be sure that you spend time with both, relatives and family.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

See you next year!

Image credit: Tony Fischer

The Old People Market

Tuesday, December 17th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/foundin_a_attic/32886550815/

A recent article in Wired focused on the industry claim, amplified by the media, that driverless cars will be a boon to seniors — not that any of them were asked.

Not only are the claims that these systems might help older people overblown, they’re also made, for the most part, without including those older people in studies of the effects of the technology.

What a joke. If you claimed to design a better surfboard, but had never surfed, people would be more than skeptical.

This is a common cycle in technology, more broadly. Over and over again, designers claim their products will be great for an aging population without actually including that population in the conversation. “I think there’s been a lot of new technologies being marketed toward older adults but that haven’t necessarily been designed for them, with their capabilities in mind,” Wendy Rogers, a professor at the University of Illinois, told me for an episode of my podcast Flash Forward. (…)

In many cases, such products were designed by younger people with little sense of what seniors actually need. “So, the buttons are small, the voice quality is not easy to hear, the number of steps required to set it up to get it to do what you want to do is complicated,” Rogers told me. “There are a lot of apps out there, things that are supposed to support pain management, for example, and they’re just not designed well for older adults.”

One of the best examples of bad design is found in most alarms, such as smoke alarms and carbon monoxide monitors. They all have one thing in common, the sound they emit is usually high-pitched, which is pretty useless, since high frequencies are the first to go; not just in old people, but in middle age and younger.

A friend in the geriatric field told me that nursing homes and assisted living facilities often have trainees smear a light coating of Vaseline on their glasses. Functioning all day (or longer) gives them a much better understanding of what many seniors deal with all the time.

You would think companies would be more interested in the reactions of their target market, but when that market is seniors, companies see no need to ask, since they know best — especially true when technology is involved.

There seems to be an assumption, conscious or not, that as joints stiffen brains do, too. And I’m sorry to say it is much worse in younger males.

And younger males are the guys who get funded first.

Do you see a problem here?

Image credit: foundin_a_attic

Golden Oldies: Entrepreneurs: A Lesson From IDEO

Monday, December 16th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jm3/519148031

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.

Our population is aging, so more and more products are being developed for that market. The problem is that they are being developed by 20 and 30-somethings based on their idea of what’s needed — but in most cases they don’t have a clue.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

How would you respond to the following if you a large segment of your target market was older?

    • Would you hire a woman?
    • Would you hire an old woman?
    • A really old woman?
    • Could such a woman contribute significantly to a project?
    • What could she teach your hot, young engineers?

While most founders would answer ‘no’ or ‘nothing’, IDEO thinks differently.

The company recently hired Barbara Beskind and both she and IDEO consider her 90 years a major advantage.

She applied after seeing an interview with IDEO founder David Kelley, who talked about the importance of a truly diverse design team and hires accordingly.

The aging Boomer market has companies salivating and hundreds are developing products for them.

The problem, of course, is that younger designers have no idea what difficulties older people face; not the obvious ones, but those that are more subtle.

Beskind does.

For example, IDEO is working with a Japanese company on glasses to replace bifocals. With a simple hand gesture, the glasses will turn from the farsighted prescription to the nearsighted one. Initially, the designers wanted to put small changeable batteries in the new glasses. Beskind pointed out to them that old fingers are not that nimble.

It really caused the design team to reflect.” They realized they could design the glasses in a way that avoided the battery problem.

It’s the little things that make or break products and the knowledge of the little things comes mostly from having been there/done that.

That kind of insight is priceless.

Now how would you answer those questions?

Image credit: jm3 on Flickr

Privilege

Wednesday, December 11th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephendann/3769037680

Three years ago Jason Ford, an entrepreneur and investor in Austin, TX, wrote a post on Medium titled The real reason my startup was successful: privilege.

It is far more honest and accurate than the typical stuff from founders talking (bragging) about how they did it on their own.

This is especially true of younger founders.

Like Rick yesterday, they have no recognition of the privilege that eased their lives and underlies their success.

The post was thoughtful, intelligent, calmly stated, no insulting, or trolling.

But a lot of people scanned it, their focus caught on a couple of words, so the misinterpreted what Ford had written, in many cases angrily.

A couple of months later he followed up with White privilege is real to respond to comments from the first post.

Ford says it better, but privilege, whether White or based on gender, zip code, alumni, or any of a myriad of other things is very real.

Ford says it much better than I do; read his posts and spread the word.

No problem, large or small, was ever solved by ignoring it.

Image credit: Stephen Dann

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Are You Privileged?

Monday, December 9th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflythegreat/6132347883

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.

It’s been nearly five years since I wrote about “Rick” and in spite of everything that’s happened in those years, including inheriting his grandmother’s large estate, Rick still doesn’t consider himself privileged. Not surprising, considering the American belief that anybody can bootstrap their way to success all on their own. That includes people like Kylie Jenner, who brags about being self-made, since she bootstrapped her company using her own money — all by herself. No question, bootstrapping is far easier when you are privileged.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

If you’re an outsider, or even an insider prone to objectivity, Silicon Valley’s culture is a mess.

When I said as much to “Rick” his response caught me off guard — although it shouldn’t have.

“I wish they would just give it a rest. I am sick and tired of all the crap about wealth inequality, lack of diversity and privacy rights. That stuff is not my responsibility. I’ve worked hard and deserve my success; nobody went out of their way to help me. I’m sure not privileged and I figure if I can do it so can they.”

I’ve heard this before, but it still leaves me speechless.

Rick is tall, white, nice looking, middle class family, raised around Palo Alto, and graduated from UC Berkeley; his dad worked for Intel.

Yet he doesn’t see himself as privileged.

Over the years I’ve known thousands of Ricks.

And therein lies the true problem.

Because it’s hard to change that which doesn’t exist.

Image credit: Dagny Mol

Guest Post: Nobody Starts Out to be a Bad Boss

Wednesday, December 4th, 2019

In all my years of reading Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Blog I have never come across an iota of unnecessary complication, convoluted advice, negativity, or BS in any form. Just solid common sense and usable how-to’s. Monday you met a good boss and yesterday one of the worst, today is some advice from Wally on how to become a Monday-style boss.

Nobody gets up in the morning and decides they’re going to go into work and be the worst boss on the planet. So, why are there so many bad bosses?

Depending on the research you read, between 1/2 and 2/3 of all bosses are ineffective. Most of them aren’t mean, or abusive, they’re just bad at the job. That research was done a few years ago, but I don’t think things have changed much. It’s the system, silly.

The System Creates Bad Bosses

Bosses are people who are officially responsible for the performance of a group. We expect them to accomplish a mission through the group and care for group members.

Alas, we promote people who give no evidence that they have the skills to do that job or have any desire to do it. You wouldn’t hire someone as an accountant because he or she was a good plumber. But we do that all the time with bosses. We promote people to group responsibility because they’re good at something else. That something else might be making sales, designing marketing campaigns, or writing code. It usually doesn’t include the things we want bosses to do.

You might ask, “Why do people take a position they don’t want and probably won’t be good at?”

That answer’s simple. In too many companies, becoming a boss is the only way that you can get more money and prestige. If it’s the only route available, people will take it.

We could fix this easily. Allow people who might become bosses to try on the job in a temporary assignment. That way the company learns who has the aptitude and desire for a boss’s job. And people learn whether they’ll enjoy the work.

Great. We give bunch of people a job they have no aptitude or desire for. We call it a promotion, but it’s more like a career change. What do we do next?

We compound the problem. Once you become a boss in most companies, you can’t go back to being an individual contributor. You’re stuck. For the rest of your career, you’re going to be miserable doing a bad job that affects the lives and productivity of dozens of people.

Then we compound the problem one more time. We dump people into that new career without much training or support.

Lots of Bosses Don’t Know What Being A Good Boss Looks Like

We build up our mental model of what a good boss is by experiencing a good boss. Too many people who get promoted haven’t had one. They have no idea what it’s like to be a good boss or how different it is to be on a team with a good team leader.

This is a chicken and egg problem. You need good bosses to set the example and help others imagine what being a good boss is like. And you can’t use the negative examples of bad bosses. Bad bosses may teach you what not to do, but they can’t teach you what to do instead.

Good Bosses are Effective Coaches

You want bosses who are coaches, mentors, and encouragers of people who want to do a similar job. That means training bosses in coaching and development skills. It means tying some of their compensation to the work they do developing people. It means basing their promotion, in part, on how effective they are developing good leaders.

The Transition is Critical

We must provide special support during the two years from the time a person is promoted. That means readily available materials, coaching, and coursework.

Deliver training in small bites not a three-day program that covers everything. Deliver training before a person assumes the job, not six months later. By then he or she has developed a bunch of bad habits. Supplement with coaching to transfer skills from the classroom to the workflow.

New bosses will come back from training with a head filled with good ideas about what to do. Then, those ideas slam into reality. Doing is a lot harder than knowing.

That’s when coaching is vital. They need to learn in small, doable steps that build confidence. The best place to get that is from their boss, who’s also a great coach.

Bottom Line

We have a system in most companies designed to produce too many ineffective bosses. We need to fix the system. Meantime pay special attention to coaching. Give potential leaders some experience of the job before they accept it. We can make sure the bosses we have understand new leader development as part of their job and have the skills to do it. We need to remove leaders who aren’t effective, so they don’t continue to affect performance and morale.

Image credit: Three Star Leadership

The Screwing of WeWork Employees

Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019

A long time ago I wrote about what I call ego-merge, which refers to buying into the idea that you and your company are one.

Ego-merge used to be the result of long-term employment with the same company; these days it’s more the result of buying too deeply into the founder’s vision.

“The initial thing of ‘making a life, not a living,’ ‘community,’ ‘better together’ — the terms WeWork pushed as marketing also seeped into this company’s culture in a very real way,” said Kevin Hsieh, a software engineer involved in the group. “There is a looming sense of betrayal and frustration that that wasn’t necessarily followed everywhere.”

Betrayal is no understatement.

Adam Neumann, WeWork’s CEO, walked away with a $1.7 billion golden parachute, while employees are getting worse than screwed.

Combining an intriguing vision, with intense passion and an invincible belief in self, is a recipe that can  hook investors, workers and users — and it did.

Caveat emptor, indeed.

Golden Oldies: If the Shoe Fits: When a Layoff is Required

Monday, December 2nd, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/5726760809/

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.

This post is from 2014, but layoffs are again in the news. Almost every day another company talks about cost-cutting and rumors start to fly. Contrary to what you might think, there is a right way and a wrong way to handle a layoff.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

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

The need for a layoff can happen to any company of any age or size, but most companies and managers bumble the task and end up doing far more damage than necessary.

The damage is not just to those laid off, but also to those left behind, themselves and the company.

As most of you have read, Cheezburger Networker just laid off a third of its staff, but great credit goes to CEO Ben Huh for bending over backwards to do it with the least damage possible.

    • He cut his vacation short when he realized what had to be done, as opposed to delegating it and staying away until it was over.
    • He was honest, open and candid with his entire staff, thus avoiding the kind of rumors that typically circulate.
    • He did everything possible to ensure those laid off found new positions, including personally reaching out to other companies and setting up his own job fair.

In short, he did everything I recommended in 2008.

I only know of one manager who got his jollies laying people off (he always tried to do it just before Thanksgiving or Christmas) and he was, without doubt, a sadist.

Most managers, like Huh, find them to be tremendously emotional and not at all fun.

“Often, when faced with a problem, you want to run in the other direction. It’s like seeing a lion in the jungle. But I have to do what is best for the company, even if it sucks emotionally.”

There’s one more required action after a layoff and that’s dealing with the empty space, which can’t be ignored, but can be done positively without spending big bucks.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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