[Oops! My apologies. this weekend was the first warm days where I live and I spent them in my garden:) (What a mess!) In so doing, I lost track and didn't write Sunday's Quotable Quotes and although I had this post ready I forgot to schedule it for this morning. --Miki]

I’m sure you’ve seen the story regarding the resignation of Best Buy CEO Brian J. Dunn.

Yet one more incidence of fooling around with the help = inappropriate personal conduct = resignation/termination.

Lawyer Michael W. Peregrine writes that times are changing.

It’s the traditional compact in corporate America: what C.E.O.’s do on their own time is their business, as long as they are not breaking any laws. And it’s a compact that is rapidly going by the wayside, as boards concerned with the corporate reputation are increasingly making clear.

However, it does make one wonder when actions that have almost always resulted in termination at lower levels make headlines when they happen in the executive suite.

With few exceptions, most companies have rules against managers dating subordinates; affairs between peers are considered dicey and intra-office adultery is a definite no-no.

When companies are demanding entre to the personal/private areas of candidates’ social media prior to hiring why is it so surprising that corporate boards are focusing on personal/private executive behavior?

In a world where street reps are forever and the bedrock of good corporate culture is trust and authenticity there is no room for do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do executives.

Salvor Harding, a character in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, states a great truth when he says, “Violence is the last refuge of incompetence.”

I plagiarized that line and applied it to the business world, especially networking events and came up with this…

Jargon is the next-to-last refuge of incompetence.

But I have to say, people who break my rule sometimes leave me feeling incompetent enough to resort to violence to shut them up.

Flickr image credit: Gavin Llewellyn

Yesterday I said I would offer some ideas for helping people on your team disconnect, since not all companies are willing to shut down email at night in order to force the issue.

Even the ones that do might not accomplish what they intend given that there are plenty of ways to continue working without corporate email.

So what can one manager do to change attitudes within her own group?

As usual, much of the answer is found within MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), both yours and your team’s.

For your team, one of the most important is recognizing that digital addiction is more about its effect on ego than a love of gadgets.

“Being a successful member of middle class society is showing our dedication to professional work and being available at all hours of the day.” –Carolyn Marvin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication

Changing that perception requires more than a statement or directive from you.

I’ve said over and over “to change what they do change how you think.”

You need to change your beliefs and your actions.

There is no way you can tell your team to take a digital break if you don’t take one.

Why would anyone do what you say when they see you doing the opposite?

If they can always reach you nights, weekends and vacation by email or phone do you really believe that they will disconnect?

Worse, if you actively contact them during those times they wouldn’t dare not to be available.

To make disconnecting truly productive from both your/company’s point of view and the individuals’ requires an open conversation.

Use the article Wharton article as the basis for a “say anything” discussion and together create a holistic digital framework that provides the downtime needed to have a life and recharge without cost to organizational accomplishment, personal perceptions or ego.

I guarantee that if you make the time and commit to doing the work your group’s productivity and creativity will skyrocket while turnover drops like a stone.

Join me tomorrow for a look at how disconnecting plays in a startup.

PS Happy Leap Day!

Flickr image credit: Mike Licht

Why are so many blogs and biz books overwritten; saying the same thing over and over as if repeating the message for an extra hundred or more pages will make it more powerful?

Even fiction often follows the same pattern.

Why is so much content garbage?

Why do people insist that more is better?

Why do they assume that using a word with multiple syllables will make them sound more intelligent and impress the reader?

Websites are worse, both B2B and especially B2C.

Way overwritten and in long dense paragraphs with the vital information buried.
Has it gone completely unnoticed that almost nobody reads anymore?

The majority scan and in a hurry, spending 5-10 seconds to decide if they want to spend the average of 30 seconds on that page.

And those of us who do read are easily annoyed by bad design and the garbage that passes for content.

The problem, of course, is that a healthy ‘data-ink ratio’, which means saying a lot clearly in as few words as possible, is hard work.

I probably shouldn’t complain since I offer a service called Clarity REwriting that contributes significantly to my revenues, but still.

It’s easy to avoid dense, opaque, overwritten books and blogs, but when I need information from a website I am stuck.

So do yourself (and me) a favor.

Think about the data-ink ratio when you develop your content; doing so will improve your business.

DISCLAIMER: What follows is an ad.

If that’s too much work call or write me (the contact info is in the right hand column); you’ll find I’m fast and more affordable than you might imagine.

Flickr image credit: Beck Tench

Unless you’ve been living on another planet or alternative reality you’ve heard that Facebook is going public.

Facebook loves to position itself as users’ friend, with only their best interests at heart.

In his founder’s letter Mark Zuckerberg said “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Huh?

There is far more truth in the editorial comment, “This also seems disingenuous considering that Facebook’s biggest triumph is to help advertisers by mining user data to target ads and to train them to treat corporate brands like friends.”

The exception is the 845 million people who log in on Facebook’s mobile app, “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven.”

But I’m sure they’ll find a way.
How much personal data does Facebook collect?

Consider the disk sent to Max Schrems, a 24-year-old law school student, a Facebook user since 2008, who is spearheading a protest against “Facebook’s illegal practices of collecting and marketing users’ personal data, often without consent.”

The disk contained 1,222 pages of information.

That’s a very rich vein of ore for any marketer to mine.
Privacy is a far bigger deal in Europe.

Europeans demand more privacy than Americans and the EU is far more willing to enforce that desire than the financially beholden US Congress.

That makes international monetization more difficult.

The drive for monetization underlies everything Facebook does—but that’s not what’s bad.

What’s bad is their pretense that it isn’t true.

Facebook as a social force isn’t going away, but you would be wise to remember that Facebook is not your friend.

Flickr image credit: marcopako 

An engineer friend sent the following story because he knows I’m an evangelist for KISS** and this is such a great example of it.

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line; otherwise you will have disgruntled customers at all points.

Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution – on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop; someone would walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A few weeks later the CEO checked the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” he thought, but before closely checking other statistics.

To his consternation, the number of defects picked up by the scales after the first three weeks of production use was zero, where as it should have been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report.

He filed a bug report and after investigating the engineers came back saying the report was correct; the scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were filled.

Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory to see for himself the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.

A few feet before the scale there was a $20 desk fan blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

When the CEO asked a production worker about it he got this response, “One of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang.”

While I agree that this is a great example of KISS it also highlights another piece of management idiocy.

How many times have you seen a similar story play out not only in manufacturing, but also in development, marketing, finance, sales and especially administrative areas?

How much money is spent every year on expensive consultants and external specialists while the actual workers are never asked for solutions?

Why haven’t more bosses learned that solutions can come from anywhere and listen to all their people?

Of course, workers’ solutions wouldn’t be described in multisyllabic words in bound in custom folders on heavy bond and presented in a darkened room using impressive power point slides by ego-stroking consultants.

Mostly, they would just work.

** (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)

Flickr image credit: L Gnome

Are you familiar with Rube Goldberg? He gained fame as a cartoonist and inventor of complicated machines that performed simple actions.

Kinetic artist Joseph Herscher provides a modern-day example of a Rube Goldberg machine.

The hallmark of Rube Goldberg communications is using a complicated, convoluted sentence when a simple one would provide the same information.

It’s using five-syllable words where two syllables mean the same thing—juxtaposition instead of nearness.

It’s confusing instead of clarifying.

It’s annoying and demotivating.

Are you a Rube Goldberg communicator?

YouTube image credit: allonewordplease

Creativity. Thinking outside the box. Innovation. Whatever you call it, idea generation often starts with a brainstorming session and too often goes no where.

McKinsey alumni Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne offer a seven point guide that will make your efforts much more productive.

1. Know your organization’s decision-making criteria.
2. Ask the right questions
3. Choose the right people
4. Divide and conquer
5. On your mark, get set, go!
6. Wrap it up
7. Follow up quickly

Sounds like common sense, right? But you’ll see from the explanations how habit, misconceptions and politics often undermine these efforts.

And remember, while the first six points assure you of a productive effort this time, ignoring number seven will cripple not only this time, but all your next-times, too.

Flickr image credit: By Bengt Nyman

As most of my readers know, I’m not into social media; I am on LinkedIn and my company’s new product Option Sanity is on Facebook and Twitter, but other than the blog posts, I can’t say that any of them are particularly active.

I also freely admit that I don’t really understand how to use them for business (I have no interest in building my ‘personal brand’).

The negative side, especially the bullying, personal attacks, hate and amazing level of active stupidity, that I read about dismays and disgusts me. Beyond the negative much of what I heard was just totally inane; granted, I’m not a celebrity watcher and wouldn’t care what God had for breakfast, assuming h/she bothered posting the information.

Then came the so-called Arab Spring and suddenly social media showed a decidedly positive side.

Right around Thanksgiving I read about Amit Gupta’s friends who started reaching out after he was diagnosed with leukemia.

And so his friends set up a website, amitguptaneedsyou.com, to encourage donor drives, during which the tissue type of potential donors is collected with a cheek swab. The site links to the National Marrow Donor Program website. It provides instructions on hosting a bone marrow dive and provides PDF fliers to promote the events. Yes, there is a Facebook page. Twitter blew up with news of the drives and Gupta’s health. And, of course, there’s a Twitter hashtag (#IswabbedforAmit).

When word of Gupta’s need for a match started circulating, unique visits to the marrow donor program website increased from about 16,000 on a typical day to 40,000. “That’s 21/2 times,” says Dr. Jeffrey Chell, the donor program’s CEO. “That’s impressive.”

I found many other stories of social media’s impact, and lives saved, as a result.

It’s good to know that social media, especially the 5000 pound gorillas Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate more real good than just keeping families in touch.

I guess the good offsets the bad.

Of course, the real problem is the humans that use it; they are just the same as they’ve always been—social media just makes them more so.

Flickr image credit: PUBLISYST Comunicaciones

Last Friday I cited HBS research that indicates that the best results are achieved when those in charge are both good managers and competent leaders and that the key factor is excellent communications.

Whether you think of yourself as a leader or a manager, communications is about more than talking clearly, it’s about providing all the background necessary for your people to understand why they are doing their jobs, as well as what jobs they are to do.

Think of it this way,

• operational communications provide people information on how to do their jobs, while
• management communications tell them what their jobs are and why they do them, giving form and purpose.

People need both.

Many of the problems that managers face daily stem from their own poor or inaccurate communications, often as a result of using jargon in an effort to sound sophisticated, knowledgeable and with it.

Jargon doesn’t work for several reasons.

• You may not totally understand or be comfortable with the jargon;
• your people may have their own individual understanding or be guided by their previous boss’ definitions that have nothing to do with your intended meaning. This happens often enough with words of one or two syllables, let alone multi-syllabic management-babble; or worse,
• your people may shut down when they hear jargon.

You can create a relatively jargon-less environment by

1. keeping it firmly in mind that your goal is to provide your people with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely, simply, and efficiently as possible; and
2. providing clear, concise, and complete communications at all times.

Follow these two steps religiously and the results will amaze you,

• Productivity will skyrocket; which will
• make your company more successful;
• your employees happier; and
• you a more effective manager with better reviews and an enviable reputation.

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Be sure to check out this months Leadership Development Carnival; it’s been broken up to run over several days, so I can’t repost it here.

Flickr image credit: kevinspencer