Enron is back in the news because Jeff Skilling’s appeal is currently in front of the Supreme Court (his sentence may be reduced or overturned on a technicality).
Arthur I. Cyr, Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College, offers an interesting commentary on Skilling, the Enron debacle and Arthur Andersen.
Leadership personality is telling in any organization. Skilling from early days as a McKinsey consultant was notorious for an exceptionally aggressive, grasping style. Business author and former colleague Tom Peters described him as apparently able to “out-argue God.”
The damage that attitude causes knows no bounds and holds true wherever it is found.
Enron, stock option backdating and finally the derivatives of the financial meltdown are all from the same seeds.
In hindsight, Enron’s death was symptomatic of growing global problems. In an age of great prosperity and exceptionally cheap credit, people fairly easily could put greed before good judgment.
Greed before good judgment says a lot, but not quite all.
Even when greed isn’t the driving force there is ideology—an inflexible force that proponents claim eliminates the need for any judgment at all.
Good management, however, requires flexible, insightful human strengths. Regulation and law enforcement only provide context.
Cyr’s final comment sums up the true solution as well as the why rules and even laws don’t work.
One reason I love the NY Times is that it runs great articles on new research about what makes us humans tick.
Most of us are aware that there are different forms of communications. Verbal, i.e., words, is the most common, but nonverbal, tone of voice and facial expressions, are often more potent.
In research with infants, it was shown that gently massaging premature infants three times per day for 15 minutes helped them gain weight, be more alert, and cry less. These infants were released from the hospital sooner than infants who were not massaged.
The latest research confirms the same positive response in adults.
Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.
Two attitudes make this work.
Sincerity; people will know if your actions are manipulative as opposed to authentic.
Appropriateness; to avoid a negative reaction from anyone use your observational skills and common sense; high fives and similar expressions are the safest, while hugs are the most dangerous. An employee who avoids physical contact with her team is unlikely to appreciate being touched by her boss.
There are many ways to inspire and show you care just as there are many clubs in a golf bag; and just as it is a fallacy to play the whole course with just one club, using only one form of communication to motivate your people is to shortchange them—and you.
An angry email berated me for Saturday’s post, saying in part, “Why don’t you ever choose more typical CEOs and cultures to write about? I read blogs to help me manage more effectively and the stuff you talk about is almost impossible to implement.”
The answer, in a nutshell, is that you can’t implement anything at odds with your own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)
Therefore:
If you don’t believe in a happy workplace where people have fun then there is nothing that Tony Hsieh or anybody else can teach you that will help you create one.
If you stand on your dignity and can’t laugh at yourself there is no way you can implement The Levity Effect.
I could keep giving examples, but you get the point.
I, and dozens of other experts, have said over and over that people can’t sell something they don’t believe themselves.
Nor can they implement cultural features that are out of sync with their MAP.
This is especially true for managers because they typically hire in their own image, so that their team has similar MAP—and the same problem.
If you find yourself on this treadmill, rather than write an angry email or complain to your buddies look in the mirror and know that you can change if you want to.
Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?
The opening episode starred Larry O’Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management.
O’Donnell plays ‘Randy’, a new worker being filmed for training purposes. At one location he jams the trash line by not removing large cardboard; he is fired, for the first time in his life, for not being able to efficiently collect blowing trash at a landfill—unlike the worker he is with who has done the job for 19 years while spending three days a week in dialysis; he cleans porta-potties with a guy who’s attitude is every manager’s best dream; and he rides with a female trash hauler where he learns that to stay on schedule women drivers use cans from the trash as pee-pots.
He meets a 29 year old single mother who overcame five kinds of cancer by age 25, has taken in her brother’s family and her dad, is about to lose her home in foreclosure and is doing three jobs post layoffs for the same money she was getting before, but is still upbeat and even invites the new guy to dinner.
O’Donnell is surprised by the physical and mental exhaustion he experiences his first day, amazed by the people he meets, outraged by what he learns and shocked at the implementation of a policy he personally conceived to raise productivity by which workers were docked 2 minutes for every 1 minute they were late.
At the start of the show when O’Donnell tells his executive team that he is going undercover the reactions vary from surprise to incredulity.
When he meets with them at the end and talks about what he learned and changes he believes are needed and how he plans to use his new knowledge the look on guy’s face said it all—he might as well have rolled his eyes.
Sadly, that is often the reaction from senior leadership regarding intel that comes from front-line, bottom-of-the-heap workers.
The smartest managers listen to their all their people—not just the ones in suits.
The final scene includes and overlay update on what happened to each of the people who worked with O’Donell and changes, both made and ongoing, as a result.
I don’t watch reality shows; I’ve read that many are scripted, but I do believe that there are bosses of large companies who don’t have egos the size of Texas and are capable of learning from unfiltered feedback from the lowest rank and file.
Plus, it seems that changes were actually made.
As big a believer as I am in bosses talking to the troops, there is no way O’Donnell would get this kind of feedback from this level of employee if they knew who he was.
Go ahead and call me naïve, but in spite of everything I’d rather be a chump than a cynic.
And in case you missed Undercover Boss you can watch it here.
Do you wonder what’s happened to people over the last century and into this one?
Did something change or was it always this way?
When did fudging, dissembling, dissimulating, equivocating, falsifying, fibbing, inventing, misleading, misrepresenting, misstating, and prevaricating become business as usual?
Call it what you will, it is still lying.
Leaders, followers, parents, kids; religious or not; whether business or personal, everybody does it.
We lie to avoid confrontation; improve results; sidestep repercussions.
We lie to our friends, parents, kids, congregations, clergy people, bosses, workers, colleagues and service providers.
From why something/someone is late to income tax to stock option backdating and corporate results to campaign promises and disagreeing ideologies—the list is both endless and all encompassing.
Most of us don’t see ourselves as liars, usually because there are “valid reasons” for it.
But ‘reasons’ don’t change the bottom line and Plato’s words ring as true today as when he spoke them,
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
That infection has become a pandemic, spreading from one to another in both obvious and insidious ways.
It’s doubtful that there is any way to actually eradicate lying, but the next time you deviate from the truth think hard about your reasons; most of the time they won’t hold up.
Great Place To Work just released their Best Places to Work rankings for large, medium and small companies in countries around the world. So out of the thousands of companies how are the best places to work chosen?
Our approach is based on the major findings of 20 years of research - that trust between managers and employees is the primary defining characteristic of the very best workplaces.
At the heart of our definition of a great place to work - a place where employees “trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with” – is the idea that a great workplace is measured by the quality of the three, interconnected relationships that exist there:
The relationship between employees and management.
The relationship between employees and their jobs/company.
The relationship between employees and other employees.
In other words, it all comes down to trust and culture.
The funny thing about trust and culture is that the managers at all levels who strive to build trust and work create great, fun, inclusive cultures are reading this and nodding their heads, while those that don’t are clicking off to another site, because all the proof in the world won’t change their minds.
Imagine the level of idiocy required to blind people to studies such as this.
The North American winners in each category may surprise you—they certainly surprised me.
NetApp is the #1 large company;
Ultimate Software is the #1 medium company; and
Badger Mining Corporation is the #1 small company.
Ever wonder which companies are at the other end of the spectrum? The companies where the culture ranges from suspect to toxic and executive compensation outrages both employees and the rest of us?
When you’ve coached or written a blog for years you can find yourself answering the same questions over and over, but that’s OK. I’d rather have you drop me a line or use the chat box in the right frame than search for something and become frustrated.
And that’s what happened last night about 10:30.
“Ken” pinged me and asked if I remembered a post that talked about compensation and used a stool as an analogy for the company. He said he’d read it a few years ago and wanted it as part of a presentation for his boss.
No Problem. I’ve used that analogy with clients for years and in posts three times. After I gave Ken the URL he said I should post it again.
I agreed, but added a bit to cover the current situation.
Success is like a 3-legged stool—
Customers / equity-holders / employees
If one leg becomes too long, the stool tips over!
Taking care of the first two is a given, whereas taking care of employees seems to be based on the labor market.
If the market is hot, people are showered with money and perks, as the market cools, so does employee care.
Yes, you can buy people and you can replace people, but it’s very expensive.
In the kind of tough economic times we’re going through people understand when there are no raises and even when their compensation is cut to avoid a layoff.
But if that treatment extends only to workers and lower management, while executive compensation and perks continue, you can count on a steady exodus as business improves.
When the market is tight and companies are throwing cash, stock and perks right and left it’s the wise manager who remembers that people who join for money/stock/perks will leave for more money/stock/perks.
Enron is back in the news because Jeff Skilling’s appeal is currently in front of the Supreme Court (his sentence may be reduced or overturned on a technicality).
Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?
Often
When you’ve coached or written a blog for years you can find yourself answering the same questions over and over, but that’s OK. I’d rather have you drop me a line or use the chat box in the right frame than search for something and become frustrated.
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