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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

47 Billion to Almost Zero in Just Six Weeks

Wednesday, October 16th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/southbeachcars/30059814877/

Top bosses can create/ruin more than a company’s culture, they can literally destroy the company.

How much damage can one person inflict?

Ask Adam Neumann, founder and ex-CEO of WeWork.

Just six weeks ago, the coworking giant WeWork was the US’s most valuable tech startup.

How valuable? Try $47 billion, based on it’s last funding round.

Then it tried to go public.

Almost immediately, all hell broke loose. A steady stream of rapid-fire headlines detailed Neumann’s self-dealing, mismanagement, and bizarre behavior. Within 33 days the offering was scuttled, WeWork’s valuation plummeted 70% or more, and Neumann, who believed he would become the world’s first trillionaire, was ousted as CEO. What was supposed to be Neumann’s coronation as a visionary became one of the most catastrophically bungled attempted debuts in business history.

Hard to believe, but it seems a lesson has been learned and the so-called magic of Silicon Valley is waning. Visions and charisma are no longer enough.

Investors, reporters, and analysts, chastened after seeing Theranos revealed as a massive fraud and watching Uber fail to live up to the hype, didn’t let another visionary founder pull the wool over their eyes.

Without new funding, and with the IPO shelved, WeWork could run out of money by Thanksgiving and be forced to file bankruptcy.

Founders and CEOs aren’t gods.

They are mere mortals; human beings just as capable of screwing up as anyone else.

There’s an old Italian proverb that says it all — after the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.

Image credit: Phillip Pessar

Golden Oldies: Where To Work

Monday, September 23rd, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/9698637692/

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.

Knowing, understanding and accepting yourself is critical to major decisions, such as choosing a spouse/life partner/job. Ignoring or distorting any of the first three practically guarantees blowing the last three. As does ignoring or distorting the info gathered from your due diligence on the last three.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

There’s a very stupid myth that only the very talented are hired by startups and that the very talented only want to work for startups.

The corollary being that those who work for public companies, let alone large ones, probably aren’t all that talented and certainly not innovative/creative.

What a crock.

Another part of that myth is that working for a startup is the road to riches.

An even bigger crock.

The myth also says that the best place to work is a unicorn, such as or AirBnB, GitHub or Palantir,

And that is the biggest crock of all.

If you are looking for new opportunities and are dazzled by the idea of working at a unicorn I strongly suggest you read Scott Belsky’s post on Medium.

A company’s fate is ultimately determined by its people, so talent is everything. But this old adage bumps up against another one: cash is king (or runway is king, for a fast-growing private company). Without runway, talent takes off. So, it is no surprise that bold moves to extend runway (think late-stage financings at technically large valuations with some tricky liquidation preferences underneath) are done even if they could hurt the company (and its people) in the long run. This is especially true when these financings are ego-driven rather than strategic. The problem is, the employees at these companies don’t understand the implications.

But whether startup or Unicorn, this anonymous post on GitHub is a must read.

This is a short write-up on things that I wish I’d known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I’m not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would do well to consider alternatives.

The right place for you to work is the one that satisfies what you want — whether that’s the opportunity to work on bleeding edge technology, build a network, upgrade your resume or even plain, old curiosity.

The wrong place is the one you join with an eye to getting rich quick or for bragging rights.

Or because somebody says you “should.”

Image credit: Mike Mozart

Ducks in a Row: Culture is the Keeper

Tuesday, March 26th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ebby-rebby/5800753858/

Oh joy. A new study of 25,000 employees, working in more than 1,000 different companies across 20 industries spread across Northern America, Europe, Asia, and Australia was done over the 12 months of 2018.

43% of employees said that they would be likely to leave their current companies if they were offered a 10% pay rise elsewhere. That number was up from 25% in their 2017 survey.

The report says that weak company cultures are to blame, while the author thinks the strong job market is also responsible.

I disagree, because if the majority of the stuff listed below is actually fixed it will take a lot more than a 10% raise to attract someone to a culture that probably has those same problems.

Here is the list.

  1. Technical issues with software, and other tools
  2. Interruptions and disruptions from Slack, emails and noisy office environments
  3. Poor communication from management / lack of training and information
  4. Disorganized and time-wasting systems and processes
  5. Misguided decisions from management / bad leadership
  6. Lack of flexibility / no opportunities to work from home
  7. Overworked / under resourced team
  8. Office politics / favoritism
  9. Difficult customers
  10. Too many meetings

The sheer size of the responding group means smart bosses will take note of these irritants; most are fixable without much impact on the budget.

Most require changes the boss can effect or, at least, influence. People aren’t stupid, they know their boss can’t change the whole company. But if they change what they can and keep working on the others, their people will stay and work with them.

What often matters most is that bosses recognize that they are part, if not all, of the problem and are honestly trying to change.

Image credit: Emma

Golden Oldies: What the Boss Contributes

Monday, March 18th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/akumar/3180900835/

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.

You got MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), I got MAP, all us humans got MAP. MAP reflects your values — whatever they may be — and culture is MAP in action.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

What does the boss really contribute to their organization?

The culture; it’s the boss’ MAP that forms and shapes the culture for their organization.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a mom and pop operation, startup or global giant; whether the company has two, two thousand or twenty thousand employees; whether the boss is called owner, founder, president, or CEO.

Cultural ideas can’t percolate up from the ranks without a top boss who enables the bottom-up culture in the first place, as well as providing the fertilizer that allows ideas to bloom.

It’s not enough to announce the cultural attributes in which you believe, such as no politics, and then ignore political actions because you believe that your senior staff are adults and won’t engage in behavior that goes unrewarded.

Even those who manage culture by benign neglect must see to it that there are repercussions for actions that flaunt the corporate culture just as there are for actions that violate legal issues such as harassment.

And all this is just as true for the individual subcultures that establish themselves around every manager in the company all the way down through team leader.

Creating and caring for the culture should be written into every manager’s job description at every level.

If that seems a bit extreme, keep in mind that study after study has proven that culture affects productivity, engagement, innovation and retention.

Image credit: Kumar Appaiah

Golden Oldies Twofer: Two Sides Of Cult Culture and Ducks in a Row: Culture Then and Now

Monday, May 21st, 2018

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.

The lesson of these two posts is simple: culture can be good or bad; cults are always bad.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Two Sides Of Cult Culture

Did you do your homework from Saturday?

I asked you to read Heather Clancy’s take on great culture (content isn’t immortal; the link is a 404 error) and said that I’d explain today why I disagree.

The problem I have is with the idea of culture as a cult.

The definition of cult is given as “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work,” and culture as “set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices;” Heather sees ‘devotion’ and ‘shared’ as interchangeable—and that makes me very uncomfortable.

Another definition for cult is “obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.”

The examples she uses, Apple, Google and Salesforce.com, are superb companies.

But when someone says ‘cult’ to me I think of Jim Jones, whose followers had great devotion, so much that they followed Jones to the death—literally.

Lehman Brothers and other Wall Street banking houses had/have strong cult cultures as does AIG. Their people had great devotion and passion to cultures that were focused on winning no matter what and we all know where that got us. Another enterprise that comes to mind is Enron.

The point I’m making is that cult culture, like most concepts, cuts both ways.

When culture becomes a cult it can lose its flexibility and willingness to grow and change—necessities in today’s fast-changing world.

It’s always tempting to choose examples that highlight the positive view of a business (or any) concept, but it is imperative to avoid assumptions and remember that there are two sides to everything.

Image credit: Gúnna on flickr

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22404598@N05/461027693/Ducks in a Row: Culture Then and Now

Three years ago, in Leadership Turn, I talked about the dangers of allowing your culture to become a cult, but it seems that’s happening more and more.

The same day I explained here the benefits of what I called an ALUC culture.

ALUC is composed of four actions:

  • Ask everyone for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions—not just your so-called stars.
  • Listen and really hear what is said, discuss it, think about it.
  • Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.
  • Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.

The following day I offered some simple advice on implementing ALUC.

All three were worth reading then.

All three are worth reading now.

You want/need a culture, not a cult.

Flickr image credit: Antony Hollingworth

Culture On Purpose

Wednesday, July 12th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/richardofengland/6788829651/

Back in 2013 I wrote a post about intentional culture quoting Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson.

“If you don’t create a culture at your company, a culture will create itself. And it won’t be good. I sometimes hear people say ‘We don’t have a culture at our company.’ They have one. But if it hasn’t been nurtured, if no one has spent on any time on it, you can assume it’s the wrong culture.”

It’s well recognized that good culture doesn’t just happen — it requires conscious intention from day one and never ending vigilance ever after.

Sustaining culture requires a tough stance on hiring and a willingness to walk away from candidates who aren’t aligned with and enthusiastic about your culture.

However, no amount of vigilance and effort assures that the resulting culture will be what is termed ‘good’.

Whether the intentioal from the top or is allowed to rise from the ranks, the culture will reflect the values of the source and will be propagated by attracting candidates with similar values.

Uber’s bro culture reflects Trvis Kalanick’s values.

Zappos reflects Tony Hsieh’s.

For a great read on intentional culture and how to do it, check out Making Culture a Tangible Metric by Eric Blondeel and Moufeed Kaddoura, co-founders of ExVivo Labs.

Hat tip to the CB Insights newsletter for sharing this article.

Image credit: Richard Matthews

Knowing Why/When To Quit

Monday, March 20th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/botter/70228/

Occasionally I share stuff I receive from clients and sometimes from readers, as I’m doing today. I ask if I can share it and usually the response is ‘yes’, with the caveat that I change enough to ensure that nobody will recognize the writer.

I think “Caz’s” situation and its outcome are very applicable right now. I hear from a lot of you, all asking how to know when to “pull the plug.”

As always, I’m available by phone or email if you want/need to hash things out; contact info in the right-hand frame.

Hi Miki,

It’s been awhile and a lot has happened, with both family — the adoption went through and I’m a new dad! — and I’ve got a new job.

As you know, I’ve been getting more and more concerned about my future at “Locus Systems.”

You also know I’m extremely culture sensitive and the culture has been changing quite a bit, moving more and more towards a fear-based approach.

In addition, we launched a new product about 2 years ago and landed a total of maybe 20 customers.

While the product itself worked and there is a real need, the market just didn’t respond.

This in turn led to our CEO, who owns the company, to push the sales teams harder. In the end he said the failure was on the individual sales teams, not the product.

I have a strong business background and know that for no discernible reason good products sometimes just don’t find the market demand expected.

This whole ordeal has led to a lot of resentment on the part of the sales teams and management.

Some of our best team members started leaving; I’m talking about people who sell $4MM plus a year, so great salespeople.

Each time someone left the CEO would make it a point to remind everyone that that person lacked the vision and we were better off without them.

Give me a break!

On a personal level commissions started being delayed. We always waited 2 months or so for our commission, but it was creeping into a 3-4 month time frame, sometimes longer.

All this led me to a realization that I was probably on a sinking ship. I don’t mind struggling, and you know I’m a fighter, but when the CEO and management are essentially belittling employees and putting all failures on them it’s time to go. 

So I started looking.

I found a great opportunity with “Jasper, Inc.,” another young software company that’s growing organically and has what seems like a terrific culture — all the good stuff you’ve written about (why I started reading you in the first place).

I found the opportunity locally, but the company doesn’t care where I live. That means we aren’t restricted to one town. I always wanted to be able to choose where I live and not have my job dictate that to me.

Although I just started, I’m really enjoying it. The opportunity came as a bit by surprise, but quite frankly, the conditions, benefits and pay are all superior to what I had. 

I’d like to stay in touch. This role will give me more financial freedom then I have had in the past and that may come in handy down the road ;-)

Caz

Image credit j. botter

Ryan’s Journal: When Culture Betrays

Thursday, March 16th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/roryfinneren/2791004393/in/photostream/

Most of my writing is based on what is going on in my life right now. I have found it’s easier to write about what I know and tap into the emotion of it all. One thing I learned recently is culture can be a double-edged sword and should be respected as such.

If any of you are reading more than Entertainment Weekly I am sure you have seen the meltdowns that are occurring at Uber, the falling stock prices at Valeant Pharmaceuticals and maybe the second bankruptcy of Radio Shack.  All of these are a result of a culture that betrayed the very members it was meant to protect.

How do we watch out for that in our personal lives?

One way I do it is by seeking constant feedback. I have found I have a significant blind spot when it comes to measuring myself, so I suck up my pride and go to those I know will give me a real answer. Perhaps these companies could have done the same?

When looking at these three cases I have found one commonality, pride. Let’s examine each and see what you think.

Uber is pretty public at this point. The CEO had a history of being bold, in your face and decisive. This has its place but can also become unbalanced. Additionally, somewhere from the top down the idea that women should not be treated equal came out and as a result you have cases of sexual misconduct and favoritism playing out.

Valeant was a darling of Wall Street for many years. Its former CEO was incentivized to get his stock to a certain price point. If he did that he was rewarded with stock options that were incredible. Harvard did a study on it and thought the scheme was amazing. What people didn’t know though was the CEO was utilizing accounting methods that favored the stock price. He also utilized a private pharmacy that was undisclosed to the public to deliver his prescriptions. This had an added benefit to the stock. Both methods were found to be unethical, the stock crashed and shareholders lost billions.

Radio Shack recently filed for a second bankruptcy. They have been unable to turn around their stores to get to a profitable point. I am not too old to remember going into these stores as a child and enjoying them. They offered some great products, were knowledgeable and if you were a radio geek you could find just the part you needed. Unfortunately they didn’t expect a rise in cell phones, online ordering and other buying trends. These have all contributed to its losses. They are still around but I wonder for how much longer.

I bring all of these up as examples where the culture of each led to misses and failures.

Culture in my mind is the mentality of a company — its thought processes.

On an individual basis are you allowing your culture to betray you?

Image credit: Rory Finneren

If the Shoe Fits: 22 Real-Life Ways Not To Succeed

Friday, December 23rd, 2016

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mToday is my last post of 2016.

That gives me nine whole days (I don’t do holidays) to power through the things on my to-do list that I never seem to get around to doing — like the windows.

I’m a world-class procrastinator, which is why it’s a very long list, so nine days isn’t all that much. But I do plan to make the most of them.

Wednesday I offered you 56 words with the power to change your life.

Today you get 22 real life examples of how not to succeed as a boss to keep you busy while I’m gone.

So lift a glass and accept my warmest wishes for a wonderful, joy-filled Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/whatever-makes-you-happy surrounded by those who care.

And indulge yourself in the three Fs — family, friends and food.

I’ll see you next year and share the changes that are coming to MAPping Company Success. I think you’ll be pleased.

Take care.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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