Management is a dirty word these days; most articles talking about what and how people manage peg the information to ‘leadership’, don’t mention managing and never call them managers.

But they are.

So today I offer you a selection of information about managing.

We’ll start with a McKinsey article that, although it talks about bosses and uses the L word, does a good job spelling out the importance of being tuned into your people

Bosses matter to everyone they oversee, but they matter most to those just beneath them in the pecking order: the people they guide at close range, who constantly tangle with the boss’s virtues, foibles, and quirks.

And although classic management strategy involves being highly visible, according to HBS professor Anita Tucker, just being there isn’t enough.

Managers who merely put in time “walking the floor” are not doing enough when it comes to problem solving; in fact, it can make employees feel worse about their situation.

Next we take a look at what it takes for managers to motivate their people that includes a surprising finding.

The things that make people satisfied and motivated on the job are different in kind from the things that make them dissatisfied.

A fun and informative post from BNET looks at errors made by newly promoted first time managers and provides a link that looks at what companies do to help.

Last year the Institute for Corporate Productivity surveyed hundreds of employees to determine how well their companies helped people make the switch to management.

Finally, a let’s take a look at the question of how young bosses should go about managing older employees. This Harvard Business Review post offers some good basics when it comes to managing, but the idea that the concepts are peculiar to the situation of younger managing older is ridiculous. Read it and tell me if there are any employees that wouldn’t respond well to being managed as described, or any manager who wouldn’t do better managing that way.

And while we are on the subject of young and old I want to share an article that goes a long way to correcting—or at least reminding us—that we really don’t know what someone else is thinking.

I asked her why she had come to the nursing home, and she described the recent passing of her husband after 73 years of marriage. I was overwhelmed by the thought of her loss, and wanted to offer some words of comfort. I leaned in close and spoke.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “What has it been like for you losing your husband after so many years of marriage?”

She paused for a moment and then replied: “Heaven.”

Enjoy!

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Whether you consider your boss, or yourself, a leader or a manager you should find today’s offerings of interest.

Most of you know that I firmly believe that good managers must also be leaders, and vice versa, in order to get the best from today’s uber-savvy workforce, but that doesn’t always happen. This interview with Randy Komisar, who has been launching startups for 25 years, both as an entrepreneur and a VC, talks about the difference and what needs to be done.

Next is an interview with Aaron Levie, co-founder and C.E.O. of Box.net. Levie talks about how he manages, leads, hires and his company’s culture.

Our third interview today is with executive coach Liz Wiseman, Co-author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, discussing the difference between ‘multiplier’ and ‘diminishers’ (I sure hope you work for the former!)

In a great column, Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company and co-author of Mavericks at Work, considers the idea of corporate heroes from a different point of view—not are there any left, but rather how do we recognize one in today’s business climate.

Finally another look at Mark Hurd—two, actually.

The first, from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and the author of Confidence and SuperCorp, considers a question we’ve all been asking: “How can very smart, accomplished people do such stupid things?” The second, from Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, the Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior and author of a new book, Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t, sees Hurd as a teaching moment on the subject of power.

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People make the world go round. Love ‘em or hate ‘em they are the only thing that truly keeps boredom at bay. However, we’re not all fascinated by the same ones. Personally, I require more substance to fuel my interest than is usually offered by most of the glitterati and sports figures that many people follow; here are a few that I’ve enjoyed recently.

I always find salaries and those who receive them interesting and this synopsis of a Wall Street Journal article and the article itself (links in the synopsis) fill the bill. I especially chuckled when I saw that Steve Jobs would have made more holding his underwater options than he did with the restricted stock that replaced them; he also wouldn’t have gotten into a backdating bind.

Of all the articles written about Tony Hayward, my favorite was Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s guide to Hayward’s leadership skills. To wit: “deny and minimize problems; emphasize your own power and importance; make the story all about you; never apologize, and don’t even pretend to learn from your mistakes; and hang onto your job even when it’s clear you should go.” Although many executives practice one or more of these traits, the list seems a better fit for 99.9% of politicians past, present and, probably, future.

Next is an absorbing article about Alex Bogusky, the whiz of Madison Avenue—or he was. The guy responsible for Burger King’s success and Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign quit. Not uncommon, but Bogusky not only left the industry and turned his considerable talents to making a kind of peaceful war on it.

Finally, the story of socialite Judith Peabody—a truly remarkable woman. Remarkable not just for the money she raised, but for her courage in the face of a disease that terrified a nation—AIDS. 30 years ago when even much of the medical profession refused to touch an AIDS patient, Judith Peabody spent hours visiting patients offering hugs and encouragement.

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Today we’re going to start with the general and move to the specific.

Last year we saw a generational shift during the Presidential election and that generational shift is happening in business, too.

Ethisphere recently spoke with William W. George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic and currently a director of both ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.

George considers Chip Conley too old at 49 to be one of those transformational leaders, which just goes to show how silly it is to define things by a random circumstance like birth date. It may seem to work as a generality for marketers, but it rarely holds up on a case-by-case basis. In a delightful post, Conley talks about his leadership lessons during junior high.

No, what Danari [13 year old grandson] wanted to know is which classes had the most profound impact on me as a leader today?

I do like Bob Sutton’s stuff, he’s a great writer and he always makes sense. In this post he looks the boss as a shield, not for herself, but for her people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since it’s the focus of an article I’m publishing in September’s issue of Harvard Business Review called “The Boss as Human Shield,” and of one chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss. There are many nuances to how bosses protect their followers, but it’s a useful simplification to say that the protection must be both tangible and emotional.

The recent stories of unbridled greed makes you think that nothing would surprise you, but any time you think that another story comes along and you realize that you ain’t seen nothing yet. The story of David H. Brooks, CEO of DHB, which makes body armor for the military and police, fits that category. It’s not just his greed, although that is stunning,

“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y.

but it was his defense that blew me away.

His lawyers also defended the hiring of prostitutes for employees and board members, arguing in court papers that it represented a legitimate business expense “if Mr. Brooks thought such services could motivate his employees and make them more productive.”

Unbelievable.

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Summer time and the living is easy—but the thought of a date makes some people queasy…

People may date all year long, but there is something about summer that especially leads to thoughts of romance—or at least lust. Maybe it’s all those partially unclothed bodies…

Twenty and thirty-somethings aren’t hesitant to try new stuff and seem to love tech-driven solutions to the age old problem of finding love, think match.com, eHarmony and others.

Now there’s a new wrinkle in the dating scene.

“…a raft of newfangled dating tools are striving to better bridge the gap between online and real-world romance.

Some companies offer a combination of flirty calling cards and Web pages. Others operate dating applications that use the global positioning systems in cell phones to help local singles find one another.”

Then there is the all-important first date, because what you suggest tells more about you than all the studied (or drunken) prose you post, email or text.

7,000 of the four million single people in New York City have proposed first date on a new site called HowAboutWe.com and crunching them has yielded interesting insight.

New data from a Web site suggests that not only do many people plan similar dates, but like lemmings, they also collectively migrate from one theme to the next.

Gee, sounds a lot like high school.

All this is great fun, but the problems start when you and your new love/lust/friends start sharing all that fun online, because what you post today will be there forever. I was warning about this back in 2006, but not with the authority of Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University. His article is worth reading because what you post could cost you your future as it already has for others—and, no, I’m not being an alarmist.

Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” After discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the photo was “unprofessional,” and the dean of Millersville University School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a result, days before Snyder’s scheduled graduation, the university denied her a teaching degree.

Read the article, then think at least five times about what you choose to give immortality.

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I get really tired of the L word (leadership), but I can’t seem to avoid it. It’s used whether applicable or not—more often because the people described are positional leaders than because they actually embody real leadership

The Washington Post’ leadership section has a new blog that looks like it is worth reading, especially if you are interested in analysis of the exploits of leaders ripped from the headlines.

“PostLeadership” is a new by Jena McGregor that will examine real time leadership lessons as they unfold in the news — explaining what works, what doesn’t and who is getting it right.”

Her first post, What BP’s Tony Hayward can learn from World Cup coaches, gives you a good feel for both her writing and her opinions. I highly recommend it.

Now for a couple of guys who actually deserve the L word.

22 years ago he was a dairy farmer who started a co-op with a few neighbors. Today he is CEO of a 550-employee company with $530 million in sales last year, but it isn’t your typical corporation.

George Siemon isn’t just in the business of organic milk. As the CEO of Organic Valley, he has shepherded the company to its own organic brand of leadership and corporate culture.

Are you a Mark Twain fan? If so, get ready to have your world rocked.

Twain spent the last four years of his life dictating his no holds barred, half million word autobiography, but said that it should not be published until the world was ready to deal with his unvarnished views. 100 years after his death his decedents have decided it’s time. The first volume (of three) will be out in November.

Ron Powers, the author of “Mark Twain: A Life,” said in a phone interview. “He’s been scrubbed and sanitized, and his passion has been kind of forgotten in all these long decades. But here he is talking to us, without any filtering at all, and what comes through that we have lost is precisely this fierce, unceasing passion.”

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I have only two items for you today, not because they are longer than typical, but because I hope they will stimulate your mind as they did mine.

First, a provocative essay from Andy Grove, Intel’s legendary CEO, now retired, but obviously not from thinking. In it, he explains why startups aren’t really an engine for job growth what actually needs to happen.

[New York Times columnist Thomas L.] Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.

The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

Now for the real mind bender.

Are you familiar with the Singularity?

…the arrival of the Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.

At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past.

Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity.

Read the article, read some of the links, think about the pragmatic, ethical, moral and religious aspects, then come back and share your thoughts.

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It’s a holiday weekend, so I thought I’d offer you a variety from which to pick and choose.

First up is a good overview of the business and political crises that are either ignored or denied by the leading players.

Polls show that our business, political and financial systems, and the people who lead them, are seen as lacking in ethics, competence and respect. … We have a crisis of ethical culture in both the public and private sectors.

Chris O’Brien offers a thoughtful look at money, motivation and Silicon Valley, although what he says applies universally.

That money motivates us to do our best is the ultimate expression of faith in the free market. Challenging this orthodoxy is heresy.

Yet research overwhelmingly indicates not only that money is not an effective incentive for creativity and innovation — it actually may make performance worse.

Next is an interesting commentary by Donna Flagg that looks below the typical views of managing Gen X and Y.

But really, I fail to see how this is different from any other good, old-fashioned generation gap where the underlying issue is simply about a need to understand differences.

Next is more insight about your brain and the subject of daydreaming; if you don’t daydream you may find it surprising.

But now that researchers have been analyzing those stray thoughts, they’ve found daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals.

Finally, the comments are in on Harvard’s Jim Heskett’s most recent online discussion considering whether strategy, execution or culture had the greatest impact on a company’s success. It’s definitely worth reading, both the initial article and the comments.

Respondents who ventured to place weights on the determinants of success gave the nod to culture by a wide margin.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

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What does it take to be an entrepreneur? According to Anthony Tjan, Founder/CEO of venture firm Cue Ball, you need to be an architect (big-picture planning), storyteller (research and selling), and disciplinarian (executing).

It is easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and endless hours, and you often forget that running really hard does not necessarily equate with running in the right direction.

It doesn’t always start with a formal business plan or even with a specific idea. Innovation strikes in different ways as you will see.

Robert Croak is CEO of Silly Bandz, the hottest new kid craze.

Croak is an opportunist who has found the greatest opportunity of his life. “I’m the luckiest guy alive right now. I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who has a reason to be happier than I am,” he says. “I have the hottest toy, the hottest fashion product on earth. All the right people like Silly Bandz. Everyone asks who my publicist is. I don’t have one. We don’t advertise. All we do is viral marketing. This is happening on its own.”

Tod Dykstra, founder of Streetline Networks, watched cars circling the block in San Francisco looking for cheap parking.

Streetline’s system lets parking authorities identify crowded streets and jack up parking-meter rates block by block. The idea is to encourage drivers to stop circling and get off the streets—either paying for a municipal garage or heading to a less crowded neighborhood. San Francisco and Los Angeles are now installing Streetline technology.

Many people believe that entrepreneurs are all risk takers with a horror of working for large companies, but that isn’t true. What is true is that they go through many of the same efforts and traumas as the more traditional ones.

Gary Martz is a senior product manager at Intel, who proves that the three skills Tjan describes are just as applicable in-house as outside.

Intel nearly killed off WiDi… “They literally laughed me out of the room.”

Anil Duggal, a physical chemist at GE’s research labs, had to go to the Feds for funding when Jack Welch was GE’s boss, but it was a different story when Jeff Immelt took over.

First, Duggal had to develop a genius for getting funded. The idea of manufacturing lighting with a method akin to newspaper printing was a tough sell. In the late ’90s, he managed to buttonhole U.S. Energy Dept. officials visiting GE to look in on other projects. The $1 million grant that resulted helped keep the project going. Then in 2001, Jeff Immelt, still new in the role of CEO, challenged GE engineers and scientists to strive for breakthrough ideas. Today, OLED and LED research get about half of GE’s R&D budget for lighting.

As you can see, a common thread that runs through these stories is that entrepreneurs see things differently from the rest of us. They see what is and needs to be, or should be, or could be.

Ben Huh saw the potential of a site called I Can Has Cheezburger, raised some money and $10K of his own savings to buy it and then used the concept to create the 53 sites that make up Cheezburger Network.

“It was a white-knuckle decision,” he said. “I knew that the first site was funny, but could we duplicate that success?”

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More proof that culture is the difference between winning, losing and turning around.

What can culture make happen? Just about anything.

What do Apple, McDonalds, IBM, Continental Air Lines and ABB have in common with Western Digital, U.S. Steel, Waste Management, Nutrisystem and Orbital Sciences? They all came back from near death experiences or brushes with irrelevance.

Culture drives everything that happens in a company.

Steve Jobs says that Apple has a startup culture and it was the culture he focused on when he came back to bring the company back from the brink.

When it comes to culture Jim Goodnight’s 30 year-old SAS is at the top of the heap and likely to stay there. Goodnight decided not go public because he “didn’t want analysts on Wall Street telling him how to run his business and forcing him to cut out the elements of SAS’s culture that give it an edge” and what an edge that is.

Finally, there is no way today’s column can end without a reference to Zappos.

You’ve probably already seen it, but the article in Inc. Magazine on why Zappos was sold to Amazon is actually an excerpt from Tony Hsieh’s new book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.

In his column about Zappos Chris O’Brien supplies a great close to today’s post.

If you treat employees like they’re just a bottom-line expense, they’re bound to act like one, delivering the very least performance possible. And if you treat customers like they’re a problem, then they’ll eventually get the message and go away.

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