Are you familiar with the old sayings, “don’t trouble trouble unless trouble troubles you” or “don’t go looking for trouble?”

More and more often I hear from and about managers at all levels who seem to be making this attitude central to their management approach.

Not just managers, but workers, too, have absorbed the message into their MAP.

They tell me that they are so overloaded, so busy, with so many fires to fight, that they can only deal with what is actually happening.

They claim there is no time for preventatives; no time to “nip [whatever] in the bud.”

I tell them that if they made time to stamp out the sparks now they wouldn’t be fighting so many fires next week/month/year.

What about you?

Are you a firefighter or Smokey the Bear?

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/billmcdavid/3840647521/

Eleven thousand business books are published every year. Amazon currently lists more than 60 thousand books on leadership alone. There are also magazines, web sites, e-books, audiobooks, podcasts, and blogs. They all offer ideas on what to do. (Thanks to Wally Bock for the great stats.)

Much of what is written is anecdotal.

Much of what is written is more for self-aggrandizement as pointed out in this post by Jim Stroup.

And too much is garbage, pure and simple.

What it all has in common is the idea that if you do what the author did, or says to do, then you will become a leader whatever the situation, circumstances or your experience.

Obviously, this is poppycock. Nobody would even think of suggesting this kind of ‘do it my way and succeed’ approach to an athlete or entertainer, so why think that leadership, or managing, for the matter, is any different?

Little of what’s out there involves the rigorous kind of research that forms the basis of most subjects.

That lack is starting to be addressed by Harvard Business School.

According to professor Rakesh Khurana “If we look at the leading research universities and at the business schools within them, the topic of leadership has been actually given fairly short shrift. … What we tried to incorporate in the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice is how each different perspective illuminates key elements such as similarities and differences in leadership across task, culture, and identity.

Khurana also says that “Leadership just wasn’t tractable by large databases.” No surprise there, much of what involves human MAP isn’t.

But it was this comment that resonated loudest with me.

“There is no single “best” style of leadership nor one set of attributes in all situations.”

In conjunction with the effort to increase serious research, HBR is running a blog for just six weeks called Imagining the Future of Leadership. The articles are, in general, excellent and the comments interesting. Check it out and add your own thoughts.

I don’t believe that Harvard is the last word, but it is encouraging that a serious and respected institution agrees that the subject is complex, doesn’t fit neatly into a specific field and sees the need for much more than is currently available.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patriciadrury/3237604522/

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rotia/3170474588/

I’ve worked with startups for many years, first as a headhunter and later as a coach. My company is in the process of launching Option Sanity™, an incentive stock allocation system based on founder/company values.

People join startups for many reasons and one is the possibility of substantial financial rewards; they take a sizable risk that only pays off if the company is acquired or goes public.

But what of the gigantic payouts public companies are giving execs who took no real risk and whose actions aren’t actualy responsible for the stock price.

Stock granted when the market is down, as it is in any recession, goes up no matter what management does or does not do. Yes, management skill can drive it higher, but, as the old saying goes, a rising market lifts all boats and that is whether the skipper has a clue or not.

This recession is no different; in fact the payouts are going to dwarf anything seen previously. They may not equal the obscene bonuses paid by Wall Street, but they are pretty obscene in their own right.

An Associated Press analysis of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that 85 percent of the stock options given to CEOs last year are now worth more than they were on the day they were granted. For some the value jumped by a factor of 10 or more. An Associated Press analysis of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index shows that 85 percent of the stock options given to CEOs last year are now worth more than they were on the day they were granted. For some the value jumped by a factor of 10 or more.

I’ve never met workers who thought they should earn what their bosses earned, but they do what they hear in the news to make sense when measured against the company’s success.

I doubt anyone inside or outside of Apple has ever questioned Steve Jobs’ value when they hear about his compensation.

Carol Bartz received $47.2 million in 2009, 90% from stock options that went up primarily because the market did.

I wonder how motivated Yahoo employees are knowing that.

How motivated would you be?

Flickr photo credit to: Svadilfari on flickr

Companies are pushing managers to do more with fewer resources than ever before.

Managers are searching for ways to motivate their people in a world where bonus money has dried up.

But for many employees it isn’t about money. Today’s workforce is far savvier and as long as they see that management, especially executive management is taking a similar hit, relatively speaking, they are willing to push through if their primary desires are satisfied.

In my 20+ years as a recruiter I found that people want to

• make a difference;
• be treated fairly; and
• matter [to boss and colleagues].

There are other things you can do to show your appreciation and motivate your people without killing the budget, but they are worthless if you don’t supply the three on the list.

Assuming they are functional in your organization, what else can you do to tangibly show your appreciation, reward effort, lighten deadline-induced stress and just have fun?

Here’s a starter list to get you thinking

• Chocolate—in any form.
• Beyond chocolate use any/all kinds of food, fruit, cheese, etc.
• Coupons for iTunes.
• Buy stuff that can be taken apart so that each part becomes a prize. People can trade and swap parts with each other to complete their thing faster. (Small fountains, gadgets, etc.)
• Buy annual family memberships to various museums, zoos, etc. (several to each). Most offer special visitation nights to member-only exhibits and holiday showings. (The memberships may even be tax deductible.) Use the specials as rewards along with loaning out the regular memberships.
• Create company money worth $X that can be added together and redeemed for cash to use as they choose. You can have different denominations that add up over time with a max of ten bucks. Remember, it’s not about money it’s about fun.
• Take the team to lunch for hitting deadlines.
• Have one or more daily hero awards with a special trophy or cap to wear the following day.
• Give annual Hero Awards (like the Oscars) at an awards dinner (maybe combine with your Holiday party). Projects and sales worked on could be like movies with various categories. Employees do the voting. This balances the instant gratification with longer term rewards.

Whatever you do, don’t forget your admin and support staff. They usually get left out of rewards/motivation programs, but they shouldn’t—they are the oil that keeps that machinery humming and things won’t run smoothly without them!

What do you do, or would like your manager to do in the line of motivation? Please take a moment and share your ideas with other readers.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoosvanrobin/4435615438/

See all mY generation posts here.

This week has been about communications, so I thought it apropos to include some good quotes about communications.

I love communications and communicating, whether it’s a good book, a stimulating conversation or when something I write really clicks. I think Anne Lindbergh summed my feelings up best when she said, “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

Do you ever feel that real communications is a dying art; and if not dying, severely incapacitated? Well over a hundred years ago Charles Dickens said, “Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”

Before Dickens was even born Joseph Priestley said, “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” I guess he was prescient.

Erma Bombeck said, “It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.” That’s because so many people are enamored with their own voice.

Effective communications requires real effort; as Russell Hoban warns, “After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”

Sadly, we live in an era that proves the truth of Josh Billings words, “Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one.”

Changing this paradigm can only happen if each individual makes a conscious choice to do it; not through promises posted on a Facebook wall or tweeted to a mass of followers, but one person to one person.

Let’s get everyone as hooked on good communications as they are on coffee.

Sxc.hu photo credit to: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/547050

I was looking through my articles to see what I would offer you and I realized that I had five I wanted to share, but they didn’t fit into a nice, neat category. I decided I didn’t care that it was an illogical collection, it fits my mood and an irrational dose of spring fever I’m enjoying along with the weather.

First up is a little story to make you think. I write a lot about accountability; I read this years ago and forgot all about it until I saw it again in a post from Dan McCarthy. Share it as often as possible; it sinks in far faster than anything else I’ve found.

This is a story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it.
Everybody was sure Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody‘s job.
Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn‘t do it.
It ended that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Anyone who follows this blog knows that brain research fascinates me and this one is no different. Seems that laughter isn’t about funny, it’s a form of communication.

Laughing is primal, our first way of communicating. Apes laugh. So do dogs and rats. Babies laugh long before they speak.

Every week or so I receive an invitation to join Facebook that I politely refuse, explaining that I don’t do anything except LinkedIn. Many times they write back and ask why, so I thought it would be faster to post a link than to write every time and explain that I’m a digital dinosaur who still believes in an old fashioned concept called privacy—which seems to be disappearing whether by hook, crook or glitch.

On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations.

This one may offend some of my readers, but you don’t have to click the link. Again, long time readers are probably aware that I am vehemently opposed to the teaching of “intelligent design” or any other faith-based content, so I found the idea of someone evangelizing evolution through rap brilliant.

For Baba Brinkman has taken Darwin’s exhortation seriously. He is a man on a mission to spread the word about evolution — how it works, what it means for our view of the world, and why it is something to be celebrated rather than feared. To this end, he has concocted a set of mini-lectures disguised as rap songs.

Finally, a superbly intelligent explanation that, for me, answers the question of why the health care bill brought forth so much strong negative emotion. What do you think?

To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

Flickr photo credit to: pedroCarvalho on flickr

This week has been about communications, both corporate and personal, and what they tell the world beyond their words. Today is about basic ways to improve them.

Way back in 2006 I wrote Good writing fast—an oxymoron and in those four years only two things seem to have changed—writers care less and readers complain more.

It’s actually easy to make basic improvements on your writing using tools you already have. Yes, they take an extra minute or two, but consider the negative impression your writing can make will last for years.

Your writing will improve significantly just by using three simple tools

1. In Word (or what ever word processing program you use) and turn on spell checker and grammar checker (skip style checker) and use them.
2. Write blog comments, etc., in word and paste them where you want them.
3. Set your email to spell check automatically before sending.

But the most important tool to improve your writing is your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™). You may find that you need to adjust all of them and this is as true for corporations as for individuals.

1. Foremost, you must think, not only about what you want to say, but also about the effect you want to have and the image you want to project.
2. You need to care; you need to own the idea that the stuff you write on the web really is people’s first impression of you and consciously decide what you want that impression to be.
3. Understand that jargon, rambling or complex sentences and multi-syllabic words will not make you sound more knowledgeable or your pitch more impressive.

You must be willing to spend the extra few minutes it takes to implement the six points; once it becomes your new norm and you see the effect you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/karola/3623768629/

We are talking about communications this week; Tuesday we looked at a sample of opaque corporate communications; today we’ll consider personal communications.

I will skip the idiocy of the tell-all approach so popular on Facebook, MySpace, etc. and focus instead on the trail of poor communications so may people leave behind as they comment their way around the Net, whether it’s a review on Yelp, comment on a business/professional/”straight” blog, profile or some other form of “personal branding.”

Let me say this in words of one syllable: How you write tells people who you are.

As I’ve written before, this isn’t just about Millennials, it applies to anybody still concerned about the impression they make.

I came across a perfect example completely by accident.

Granted it is an extreme example; the comment was left on a blog post discussing social judging skills citing research showing that children as young as three months demonstrate them. (I’m not including a link to the post because I have no interest in embarrassing the writer who used her own name.)

well i think that people say they an change a baby if they are rude or like bad you know but really the baby knows what there trying to pull on them:) i think that people say they can change peope and if they think they changed someone there wrong cause deep deep down your still that mean cruel un hearted person or caring person:)

Lots of people write all lower case, so perhaps we should ignore that. And there are many words that sound alike with totally different meanings—there and their—so should we give that a pass? Can you make sense of what the writer is saying?

What is your impression of the writer?

Would you hire her or want her on your team?

Now consider that it was written by an adult, native English speaker, who has a college degree and works in a professional capacity.

If she was a candidate you were considering and you googled her name and saw this would you hire her?

It’s unlikely she writes like this all the time, because if she did she couldn’t do her job, but when it comes to the web the usual attitude is ‘who cares’?

Your writing is like breadcrumbs left along your route on the web; they enable the world to follow you and get to know you; it is their first impression of you.

It’s up to you to decide what that impression will be.

Join me tomorrow for the basics of good breadcrumbs.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanbaptisteparis/224566560/