Poking through 14+ 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.

I used to have a feature called Quotable Quotes and may bring it back. Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970,  (use the link if you aren’t familiar with him; it is a good use of your time) spoke on many subjects. Considering current societal upheaval and forces at work today, it seems like a good time to review his comments on fear. I find them extremely timely, probably even more so than when they were written.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Most of us live with one kind of fear or another, although few of us admit it. Fear often masquerades as something else—envy, arrogance, failure, success—to name just a few. Bertrand Russell provides interesting commentary on fear in it’s many guises.

“Fear makes man unwise in the three great departments of human conduct: his dealings with nature, his dealings with other men, and his dealings with himself.” This explains much of what’s going on in the world today.

Fear not only paralyzes us it builds in our minds until it’s many times its original size; as Russell points out, “Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance . . .” I would add that ‘of great importance’ doesn’t necessarily mean global in scope or world-changing—unless you mean your own little corner of the world.

These days superstition is rampant and cruelty—physical, mental and spiritual—abounds in epic proportions at every level of human interaction. It’s worse now than ever before because technology has shrunk the world, given a louder voice to these evils and muted what wisdom is available. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom . . .

Envy is another form of fear; fear that someone has more, but as Russell points out there is always someone with more… “Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

Fear feeds off fear and can be overwhelming. Fear of technology is usually well masked, but it can be substantially diluted if you remember that technology is finite, while humans deal in the infinite. There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.”

Fear drives ideology, ideology preempts thought and not thinking kills or, as Russell said, “Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

Russell didn’t name it, but he had a wonderful take on ideology, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

Image credit: Wikipedia

Next Monday’s Oldie is about what to look for when choosing a place to work, with a special caution for unicorns.

Today I thought we’d take a quick look at a “great place to work” myth.

Google topped the best places to work lists for years, but no more.

According to the 2019 Glassdoor survey Google is in 8^th place based on 9186 reviews.

Last year 20,000 people walked out in protest over the handling of sexual harassment accusations and Google promised to do better.

But almost a year after the historic walkout, a dozen current and former Google employees told Recode that many employees are still justifiably afraid to report workplace issues because they fear retaliation. They say the company continues to conceal rather than confront issues ranging from sexual harassment to security concerns, especially when the problems involve high-ranking managers or high-stakes projects. …dozens more employees say that when they filed complaints with Google’s human resources department, they were retaliated against by being demoted, pushed out, or placed on less desirable projects.

… Google’s top-down culture that suppresses meaningful employee pushback — even in areas the company says it’s trying to improve on, like diversity.

To really find out about a company you need to do the same depth of due diligence on it that the company does on you.

That requires more than reading employee reviews; it means searching traditional media as well as proven new media.

And checking out who left and why.

Most of all it means making the time to just do it.

Image credit: Ben Nuttall

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.

Labor Day started as a sop to the working masses after a strike was broken using Federal troops. When I was young Labor Day was an actual holiday when businesses closed. Fast forward to today and for many it’s a workday like any other and a great reason for businesses to have sales.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Have you ever taken time to wonder why there is a holiday dedicated to people who work?

No?

Then before you get too caught up in shopping, beer and BBQ, take a minute to learn exactly where the holiday comes from.

It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).

Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.

Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.

In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.

Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.

Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.

Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).

Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.

Image credit: Fredrick Remington via Wikimedia Commons

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.

There are two lessons in this post.

The first is that managing at any level requires you to be present, conscious, and focused on your people — not on your social media, where you’re having dinner, or the work being done on your home.

The second, is that if you are one of the truly bad ones, who messes with your people’s heads and inflicts intentional hurt on them, you will get yours, because eventually what goes around does come around — no matter how long it takes.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

“Is there a single devastating thing I may do unconsciously that messes my people up the most and, if so, what are the effects?”

I’ve heard variations of this question from many managers over the years.

The answer is yes, there sure is and if you aren’t doing it unconsciously then you’re one of the really bad guys and I can only hope that your turnover soars and your reputation spreads.

The action is inconsistency and the primary effect is fear. Secondary effects include intimidation and insecurity.

The end results in the business world are distrust, low productivity, less innovation, abysmal retention and, on a more personal level, poor reviews, fewer promotions and less opportunity.

It doesn’t matter that the inconsistency is unintentional, arbitrary or whimsical the results are the same.

It’s not knowing that really gets to people—even more than expected abuse.

Think about it. It’s one thing to have someone who constantly criticizes (unconstructively) or disparages you, because you can learn how to turn a deaf ear if, for some reason, you can’t get out of earshot.

But when a zinger comes out of nowhere in what’s normally constructive, or at least neutral, feedback you’re caught unaware, thrown off balance and it really gets to you.

Actually, the more infrequent it is the worse it is when it does happen. And after it happens a few times people find themselves waiting for it, wondering when it’ll happen again and almost holding their breath to see if this is the time the other shoe will drop.

That fear grows exponentially once it takes root and distrust typically increases at the same rate.

Can you think of a worse scenario for people to labor under?

But when it’s unconscious, how do you know?

If you actually focus on the person with whom you’re talking, instead of checking your phone or thinking about something else, you’ll see the zinger hit and you should be able to identify what it was. If you can’t, then ask! Acknowledge the reaction, state that you know it was something you said, but you’re not sure what. Be gentle if you expect the person to open up, but you stand a better chance if you ask immediately, while they’re still in shock.

But if you did it on purpose, to enjoy the show and then get them to open up so you can twist the knife, I sincerely hope that all your teeth and hair fall out and Zeus’ thunderbolt strikes you where you stand and chars you into tiny little bits.

Image credit: sxc.hu

Have you ever taken time to wonder why there is a holiday dedicated to people who work?

No?

Then before you get too caught up in shopping, beer and BBQ, take a minute to learn exactly where the holiday comes from.

It’s the result of an 1894 labor strike against the Pullman Company (think aspirational, luxury private railroad cars).

Engineer and industrialist George Pullman’s workers all lived in company-owned buildings. The town was highly stratified. Pullman himself lived in a mansion, managers resided in houses, skilled workers lived in small apartments, and laborers stayed in barracks-style dormitories. The housing conditions were cramped by modern standards, but the town was sanitary and safe, and even included paved streets and stores.

Then the disastrous economic depression of the 1890s struck. Pullman made a decision to cut costs — by lowering wages.

In a sense, workers throughout Chicago, and the country at large, were in the same boat as the Pullman employees. Wages dropped across the board, and prices fell. However, after cutting pay by nearly 30%, Pullman refused to lower the rent on the company-owned buildings and the prices in the company-owned stores accordingly.

Federal troops used extreme force to break the strike resulting in 30 deaths, while rioting and sabotage left 80 million dollars worth of damage in its wake.

Indiana state professor and labor historian Richard Schneirov said President Grover Cleveland’s decision to declare Labor Day as a holiday for workers was likely a move meant to please his constituents after the controversial handling of the strike. The president was a Democrat, and most urban laborers at the time were Catholic Democrats.

Congress approved (knowing their constituents would also be pleased).

Makes you wonder what the current president and congress would do.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

This week has been an interesting confluence of events across the world stage.

Uber continues to be in the news, this time they decided to fire the head engineer, Anthony Levandowski, who is at the heart of the lawsuit with Google.

The US is on the verge of leaving the Paris Accord, something that could quite possibly have a generational effect.

Suicide bombs continue to tear apart lives across the globe.

What is at the root of these three things?

I believe it is fear.

They say the coward dies a thousand tiny deaths, but a brave person dies one glorious death.

I can tell you right now these are cowardly acts.

To begin, Uber is in the fight for its life. They are losing money every day with their current model. They are betting big on automation and have come up against Google over perceived theft of proprietary documents.

If they lose this they could be done. When you step back and look at the ride sharing model, it’s needed but it’s not unique. The barriers to entry are low and there is no differentiation of product from one company to the next.

They need to lead the space in automation because it’s the future and is inevitable. Fear has led them to both hire and fire the engineer at the center of it all. Perhaps they believe this will help their case, time will tell.

The US leaving the Paris Accord is monumental. I am not a scientist, but I can say this: I inherently know that pumping carbon emissions into the air is bad. Add to that the science that supports it and you begin to see the need to somehow influence climate change for the better.

Why would a president risk the lives of future generations so that a few energy companies can prosper?

Fear. Fear has gripped the voters in the first place who chose not to better their lives through education, which would enable them to better their lives.

Fear is in the president’s heart as well to think that climate change is not real.

Finally it brings us to terror.

These plots are designed to disrupt and bring fear to the masses. It is sometimes effective and can have lasting implications.

How do we combat fear?

One way is by seizing the courage to move one step forward at a time. Embrace the fear and look st how destructive it can be and then make a move against it.

That could be helping someone that isn’t like yourself. Learning about a new culture. Perhaps even sitting down to talk with someone on a different political aisle then yourself to learn why they believe the way they do.

It starts with believing people have value regardless of position and then embracing them.

Perhaps that’s too simplistic, but I know in my own life it has worked and is scalable.

Image credit: Pati Morris

KG emailed me this cartoon and asked what I thought.

I responded that I had a better image of leadership, only mine was drawn with words.

I’ve shared them here before, but a reminder never hurts.

As for the best leaders,
the people do not notice their existence.

The next best,
the people honor and praise.

The next, the people fear;
and the next, the people hate—

When the best leader’s work is done,
the people say, “We did it ourselves!”

To lead the people, walk behind them.

–Lao Tzu

Now that’s what I consider a beautiful image.

Image credit: Anonymous via the Internet

A colleague commented that he feared tackling a major project he had never done before. He said the challenge was exciting, but it was still scary.

I told him to think about all the stuff he does now that at some point he hadn’t done before.

This is just one more new thing that would soon become old.

Old and comfortable.

It’s how one gains experience and, occasionally, wisdom.

I reminded him that anyone who figures out how to do something the second time without doing it the first, could sell the hack and be a billionaire.

Flickr image credit: fry_theonly

In 1849 Jean-Baptiste Karr said, “the more things change the more they stay the same” and that’s still true today.

On the surface you wouldn’t think Musical.ly’s Alex Zhu Zhu and Intel’s Andy Grove have a lot in common, but you would be wrong.

Both created cultures that incorporate a critical attitude — paranoia —  although they look very different.

Andy Grove: “When I came to Intel, I was scared to death. I left a very secure job where I knew what I was doing and started running R&D for a brand new venture in untried territory. It was terrifying.”

Zhu Zhu: “The day we released this application to the market we realized it was never going to take off. It was doomed to be a failure.”

Musical.ly’s first pivot went from a video education app to a combination music/videos/social network that was catnip to their target early-teen demographic.

That led to growth, but it was slow growth, which the founders knew was leading to a slow death.

The a-ha tweak happened when they moved the logo and growth exploded.

They had realized that when people shared the music videos, the logo was cropped out on Instagram and Twitter. They repositioned it so now it was easy to see that it was a Musical.ly video.

Grove said, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” (Grove’s paranoia did not condone bullying or a culture of fear.)

Zhu Zhu is far from complacent and keeps pushing and iterating faster.

“I think we have these scary moments all the time because you’re never safe. Even if you have tens of millions of users, you have to keep them always engaged. I think it’s better for us to be scared all the time rather than feel content that we built a successful product and now we can lay back.”

If you don’t care for paranoia, you can substitute a combination of never-ending mindfulness, objective reality as opposed to comforting assumptions and unremittingly honest feedback.

Image credit: musical.ly

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Do you spend any time reading archives from sources you like? I don’t mean stuff that’s a few months old or even a couple of years. I mean thought pieces dating back 5, 10, 15 years ago or even more, especially those focused on what bosses need to do to motivate, retain and get the best from their teams. The problem is not in the content, nor how pertinent it is. The problem is that it’s still applicable, which means bosses haven’t changed much, if at all over all that time — but the workforce has. Here’s an example of what I mean.  Read other Golden Oldies here.

My post yesterday brought an interesting question from Dan L. in Boston. He said, “Why in the world would any manager do anything that would reduce the options available to identify a solution needed in his/her group, especially a CEO?”

So, I paraphrased five reasons that I’ve actually heard, in one form or another, from top managers who talked about being out of the box, but really wanted to stay in it.

• Think outside—as long as it doesn’t make me uncomfortable.
• Don’t challenge the status quo in a manner that scares me.
• Be creative within parameters I can understand.
• If you want to breach the box, do it my way.
• We’ve never done it that way.

At first, Dan was incredulous, then he really thought about what’s behind each of the five reasons, and he understood what anybody who really listens to the thoughts behind people’s words comes to know.

Out of the box is about change, and change is scary—for everybody.

But it’s not about being scared, it’s about how you choose to handle it.

That’s right, choose.

Your responses, your choice.

Think about it this weekend.

Then, when you get to the office Monday and one of your people has a great idea that scares the dickens out of you, consciously choose how you respond—knowing that no matter how you choose the ripples of that choice will spread and impact not only your future, but also the future of your people and your company.