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Archive for September, 2017

Ryan’s Journal: Interview With Dave Crenshaw

Friday, September 29th, 2017

I recently had the opportunity to spend time speaking with Dave Crenshaw to discuss his new book, “The Power of Having Fun”.

The topic of the book can be a bit incomplete when looking at it without context, so let me expand on it. The book alone is not simply a guide for how you can have fun but more a lesson on how incorporating fun into your daily life will enhance productivity and lead to true happiness.

That can be a bold statement that a single book will somehow transform your life in some profound way, but Dave does a great job in providing concrete steps to help achieve a balance with work and life.

A little background on Dave Crenshaw to give some insight into how he realized a book on how to have fun was required.

Dave is a coach and speaker who has spent considerable time with high-performing folks in business. After he graduated from Brigham Young University he realized that he wanted to be an entrepreneur and coach. After working with a firm he decided to set out his own shingle and started hustling to form his own successful business.

I say all of this to point out that this book is not some theoretical novel written by a guy who sat in an ivory tower, Dave has been in the trenches and fully understands that life requires balance.

The premise of the book is simple enough. As work and home life start to blur we can become focused on ever more productivity, efficiency gains, and the bottom line. People have started to sacrifice taking vacations let alone spending a quality hour around the dinner table at home with family.

Careers have a tendency to become more and more demanding as we rise the ladder. Dave isn’t saying that should be abandoned, he is merely stating that an oasis, as he calls it, should be observed.

The first thing that stood out to me is the guilt that people feel when having fun.

A lot of times you see people take a great vacation or buy a new item they had lusted after, only to feel guilty for it after. As a society, we are taught that our reward comes after the hard work.

From a religious perspective, this is inherent, “our reward is in heaven” is a phrase you will hear often. As a result, we are wired to not take pleasure in fun until we have completed the task at hand.

Dave takes a different approach to this. His idea is to set up a block of time where we have determined that a fun activity will occur. This oasis allows you to relax and recharge, while also not skewing over to just wasting time.
Have you seen the business owner that cannot take a vacation out of fear that his employees will resent him? Or perhaps you have brought the laptop with you to Tahiti so you can remain connected to the office while forsaking family commitments.

Does this really advance us as a society?

Maybe in certain cases, but most humans need a balance to live.

One thing I like to always understand is how can we quantify this?

The simple answer here is to run an A/B test.

Go a week where you build in an oasis and then go another week without. See what the two outcomes are and determine if incorporating them into your life makes sense.

I am personally in a place where I have little kids and a busy wife. I feel guilty if I go out to lunch let alone go out for a night on the town because I know my wife struggles to have any time for herself.

When speaking with Dave about this he agreed that it can be tough. His solution though is to ensure my wife has her own oasis of time. Build it and plan them out and both parties can be happy without the guilt.

Now, you may be thinking that this book is only addressing a first world problem for high income earning folks. I would disagree.

An oasis of time does not require an elaborate trip to the Bahamas. It can simply be reading a book for thirty minutes or going out for a meal rather than cooking.

The idea is that a balance and time to recharge are required, but you should not put yourself in debt doing so.

The book addresses a range of topics from specific steps for how to build an oasis to how to deal with the emotional baggage that we all carry. The one takeaway Dave told me he would like people to have is this. “Fun is a priority, it must be planned because it’s easy to neglect.

From a tactical standpoint, the book is a fun read, has some great workbooks, and can be incorporated into your life immediately.

From a strategic view, this book has the ability to address long-standing guilt that we as a society have accrued.

I encourage those that are trying to find a balance in life to read it. The busy mom, the lonely workaholic, or the college grad. It is applicable to all and was a true pleasure to read.

His book is available now on both Amazon.com as well as national book retailers. To learn more about Dave visit his website.

Miki’s Rules To Live By: A Word To The Wise

Wednesday, September 27th, 2017

https://www.pinterest.com/juderice/

And sometimes it’s completely absent.

Image credit: Judy Caler Rice

Ducks in a Row: Transformation Done Right

Tuesday, September 26th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/howardh/6259041319/

Last February I wondered if the iconic 1984 Apple Super bowl ad would still feature a woman if it were made today.

There’s been a lot of change since that ad, but for women and people of color much of the pre-2000 progress has regressed.

Fixing that means transforming what-is to what-should-be and management professor and guru Henry Mintzberg offers some of the wisest thoughts I’ve seen on the subject (‘wise’ being very different than ‘smart’).

Transformation requires change — the organization and its culture must transform itself based on a new vision and different core values.

But where to begin? That’s easy: at the “top”. Where else when there’s such pressure. Besides, any chief who has been to a business school or reads the business press knows that it’s all about leadership: the boss who does the thinking that drives everyone else. Louis XIV said “L’état, c’est moi!” Today’s corporate CEO says “The enterprise, that’s me!”

I’m sure we can all think of numerous CEOs who model Louis’ mindset and dozens of them have gone down in the conflagrations they started at the top.

Yesterday’s Golden Oldie revisited Steve Ballmer’s effort to transform Microsoft’s culture by edict. It didn’t work.

Ballmer seemed to channel John Kotter’s eight point approach:

  1. Establish a sense of urgency.
  2. Form a powerful guiding coalition.
  3. Create a vision.
  4. Communicate the vision.
  5. Empower others to act on the vision.
  6. Plan for and create short-term wins.
  7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change.
  8. Institutionalize new approaches.

As Mintzberg points out, this is a top-down, command/control approach that certainly won’t fly well with today’s workforce in spite of being taught at Harvard Business School by a “transformation guru.”

Mintzberg demolishes each point (read his post) and is backed by solid brain science.

…to achieve this result, people throughout the company need to change their behavior and practices, and that can’t happen by simple decree. (…) New behaviors can be put in place, but only by reframing attitudes that are so entrenched that they are almost literally embedded in the physical pathways of employees’ neurons. These beliefs have been reinforced over the years through everyday routines and hundreds of workplace conversations. They all have the same underlying theme: “That’s the way we do things around here.”

The most dynamic, ongoing case study of transformation is being played out publicly at Uber.

It will be interesting to see which approach Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi uses.

Image credit: Howard Hecht

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Cultural Change by Edict

Monday, September 25th, 2017

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Everybody pretty much agrees that the culture of tech companies need to change. (The focus used to be on Wall Street. It never changed, but the focus did and tech is the new, very visible poster boy of bad culture.) It’s also agreed that changing a company’s culture isn’t simple — and it certainly isn’t done by proclamation.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/78428166@N00/7395002760/I’ve written many times about the importance of breaking down both horizontal and vertical silos (for more click the silo tag), but I don’t believe it can be done with an edict—even if that edict comes from Steve Ballmer.

This is especially true at a company like Microsoft, where the silos were intentionally built decades ago as part of the corporate structure.

Vertical silos, by nature, create, at the least, rivalry, but, more often, an “us against them” mentality within each silo.

For thousands of Microsofties, that’s the only cultural world they have known; many of them grew up in it, both in terms of years and promotions.

Changing culture is recognized as the most difficult organizational change any company, no matter the size, can undertake.

And one of the greatest error’s a CEO makes is thinking that all he needs on board is his senior staff the rest of people will fall in line.

For most companies, let alone one the size of Microsoft, terminating managers and workers that don’t fall in line isn’t even an option, since there is no way to replace them.

Yet having large numbers of your workforce on different cultural pages is a recipe for disaster.

The results of Ballmer’s changes will unfold over the next couple of years—in spite of Wall Street’s quarterly focus.

Changing culture is tremendously difficult; Charlie Brown didn’t pull it off at AT&T; Lou Gerstner said it was the most difficult part of turning around IBM.

Do you think Ballmer will succeed?

Image credit: Tobyotter

Editorial note: The answer was ‘no’ and Ballmer left Microsoft 6 months later.

If The Shoe Fits: The Self-Made Talent Shortage

Friday, September 22nd, 2017

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

5726760809_bf0bf0f558_mQuick. Off the top of your head, what are the chances you’d hire a 65 year-old Black man for a senior management role in your startup?

Unlikely — or flat-out ‘no’?

Next question.

How well could you handle traveling from the Bay Area to Detroit to Toronto back to the Bay Area and then to New York, London and Columbus, Ohio, back to the Bay Are for one night, then to Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong for ten days, with a side trip to Seattle?

That was the recent schedule of the 65 year-old Black guy you probably didn’t hire.

Tough schedule, jumping around all those times zones; think it would dent your 20/30-something system more than the 70+ hour week you brag about?

The guy you didn’t hire is John Thompson, but that’s OK, he already has a job.

He’s CEO of Virtual Instruments, one of several startups he invested in after he retired from his ten year stint as CEO of Symantec, which came after his mandatory retirement from IBM after 28 years.

That little age bias you have would also preclude your hiring Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown (62), Qualys CEO Philippe Courtot (70), Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison (73), Netflix’s Reed Hastings (56) and dozens, if not hundreds, of others.

The interesting (hilarious? ironic?) part is that if you were using most recruiting filtering tools, human or software, their resumes would probably be screened out.

Now just think how much larger your pool of exceptional talent would be if you brought yours and your organization’s biases/assumptions/prejudices under control.

What talent shortage?

Image credit: HikingArtist

Ryan’s Journal: Are Companies Replacing Governments?

Thursday, September 21st, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdsteam/26584933684/I was on LinkedIn today reading a post by an employee of a company that I was unfamiliar with.

In the post this guy wrote about how great his company is. They allow you to work remotely, pay for all insurance premiums for the entire family and also give a $150 credit towards a monthly gym membership. I’ll be honest I was a bit jealous at the perks and thought about the possibilities there. At the same time, I thought about how companies have come to exert great influence as well.

Governments are designed to keep us safe, build roads, ensure proper regulations and so on. Depending on who you ask and what generation you are speaking with there is also an expectation for access to proper education, low cost or free healthcare, and perhaps a living wage. Government has not really lived up to those dreams, though, and companies have stepped in.

Is this a bad thing? From a free market perspective it is the natural next step. As economies mature the workforce demands greater amenities. Of course a lot of these higher end perks are limited to one industry, tech.

So maybe the free market isn’t responding at all, this is merely a bubble. And if we take it one step further these companies we hear about with great perks are the outliers. Even most run of the mill tech companies do not offer unlimited vacation and in-house yoga classes.

As I ponder all this I think it can go a few different directions, because I really do not see government stepping up to the plate anytime soon. Companies that are offering these great perks are on the cutting edge and leading a sea change.

The next generation will take these amenities for granted and time will march on. The flip side is we determine these amenities are unsustainable and companies wind them down. As a result greater pressure is put on government to reform.

Without stepping into the hell called politics today, I will say this.

I like a path where we can chart our own course. We can choose the company that we want to work for based on our value system.

That way, as we mature as a society, we can learn to accept different beliefs of value and realize it is the differences that can make us good.

Image credit: gdsteam

Change Requires Trust From All Parties

Wednesday, September 20th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vexrobotics/17795865460/

Sometimes — more like most of the time or at least too often — we all say things without thinking through the full ramifications, especially those gleaned from experiences we’ve never had or opposed to what we think.

Yesterday I mentioned a startup CEO who said he was concerned about hiring more women, “It just seems like such a huge risk as CEO,” which brought the social media house down on him.

Although he apologized, etc., I noted that his words and actions probably didn’t do much to change his mind.

After reading the post a friend from back east wrote me his thoughts as a man-of-color/founder/CEO.

Sadly, everything he says is true and has been for decades — and I say that from first-hand other-side experience.

In the 80s and 90s I was three things that weren’t supposed to align: a successful tech (hdwr and sftwr) recruiter who was female.

Back then it was assumed that, as a woman, I acquired most of my clients in the same way Hollywood starlets got parts — on my back.

But, as I always said, if that were true I wouldn’t have had time to go to the office, let alone recruit anyone.

Here is the email; my only editorial change was to delete the name of the incubator.

Miki,

When I expressed skepticism regarding real change, you said that it’s better because now people are speaking about it. I replied that it will probably be worse for women in general, because now they will be seen as a risk factor. Unfortunately this is my own experience — I am afraid of mentoring women because they will often take it the wrong way, as several have interpreted my well-meaning advances as attempted pickup. It’s just not worth it.

Most recently, I saw a young black woman at an incubator I was visiting and decided to pay attention to her in a purely social way to make her feel welcomed. There were NO black people there, and since I am viewed as somewhat of a star and important, I believed it would be a boost for her. I never had a conversation with her, and the contact stayed on the level of smiles, fist bumps, etc.

While I was in SF, I received an invitation to a Y-Combinator invite-only event on women and leadership that I could not attend. I approached the woman and told her about the event and asked if she was interested in going. She said, “Absolutely!” and I said — “Send me your email and I’ll introduce you to the people who are leading this effort within YC.” She wrote her email address on a piece of paper and I made the introduction. 

Unfortunately her email bounced. I tried several different approaches. Then I went to her a few days after the event and said that I tried to make the introduction, and that her email had bounced. She looked at the piece of paper that she’d written her email on and confirmed it was incorrect without correcting it.

It then dawned upon me that she’d purposely provided me with the wrong email address, probably because she interpreted my friendliness as sexual advances. The sad thing is that I subsequently observed her whispering with other women and looking over at me, and that other women were avoiding contact with me. 

I then resolved that it’s just not worth it. I’m never going to make friendly advances to a woman in a work situation in the US again.

I do it all over the world, and have mentored men and women in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the US, but here is the only area where I’ve had negative experiences doing so with women (several). I’ve never had, or been interested in, a sexual relationship with any woman at work, in any country where I’ve worked or lived (except my partner who was my teenage girlfriend). 

The inflamed, sexualized nature of everything regarding female/male relationships in the US work environment does much to damage women’s advancement.

Which men will take the risk of staying late to mentor a woman after everyone has left the office — not me. Which men will take a woman out for drinks to have an informal chat about the politics at work — not me.

Which men will associate informally and socially outside of work with women they work with — not me. The reputational risk is simply too great. 

Who is the loser? Obviously both men and women, since there is greatness among them both.

Culturally it is more difficult to mentor women in the US than in Pakistan. Who would have thought…

The following came as a PS about an hour later.

Sexual advances are something most women, and some men, have to learn to deal with.

This has always been the case, and there have always been successful women. There are more successful women now than ever before.

The worst thing that can happen is to scare away the men that genuinely mean well.

Haven’t you ever asked yourself why women in more misogynistic societies are surpassing US women in societal and professional advancement to an increasing degree?

May it be because there is no cost to supporting women for those men who choose to do so? In fact, there is often great benefit, as they will have access to a more motivated and competent pool of people.

All that said, I am not recommending turning a blind or benign eye to the kind of behavior and toxic cultures that have been making headlines.

Image credit: VEX Robotics

Ducks in a Row: Change? Yeah, Right

Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/timove/34352989113/

I read a post by Ellen Pao in Medium in which she asks if anything has really changed.

On its face, it all sounds like meaningful change, right? Or at least it sounds a lot better than the very recent public shaming of women who came forward and the sweeping of bad behavior under the rug. (…) Public apologies and one-off actions are superficial ways to react to criticism or put on a happy face, but they often cover up company culture failures that are hard to fix, especially if no one is seriously trying.

While there have been multiple resignations and apologies (complete with crocodile tears), do you really believe that any of these wealthy, well-known, white guys will land anywhere but on their feet? That their actions will have any permanent effect on their future?

If so, you’re living on a planet to which I’d love to emigrate.

Whereas the women who went public will pay a heavy toll.

I [Pao] have heard from several women who spoke up in this newspaper and elsewhere this year that they continue to face harassment. They have been told that discussing their experiences has limited their careers.

After virtual reality startup UploadVR was sued for sexual harassment in May, a male startup CEO publicly commented that lawsuits like this make him “VERY afraid to hire more [women]. It just seems like such a huge risk as CEO.” His comments went viral and he later retracted, apologized and deleted them.

Retracted, apologized, deleted, none of which is likely to have changed his attitude.

Speaking of UploadVR, which had, and probably still has, one of the worst, sex-drenched cultures in Silicon Valley.

The Valley will protect it, because it isn’t just a guy or a company, but a hub for the VR crowd and, collectively, they need it.

While current publicity is heavily focused on tech, the same actions are alive and well in many venues from the University of Rochester’s Department of Brain and Cognitive, one of the top graduate programs in the US, to women in sports broadcasting.

Are things getting better? Maybe.

But as long as there are no long-term ill effects for guys there is little reason for them to do the hard work of educating against bias, both inherent and societal, and changing culture.

Nothing is as simple as it seems. Be sure to read about an experience, shared by an East Coast founder (published September 20), that turns a spotlight on rarely mentioned fall-out from the harassment problem.

Image credit: TimOve

Golden Oldies: Change Starts with the Boss

Monday, September 18th, 2017

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

I think the best commentary on this post comes from a comment on the original that validates it.

You just nailed the main issue with failed change efforts. Change starts in the head (pun intended. . .). Many times when I’m brought into a company, bosses want me to help change everybody else but them. Doesn’t work!

It always amazes me how bosses are more willing to waste money than to change their thinking and behavior. The trick is how to find a way to help bosses see the ROI of changing the way they think and behave before trying to embed those changes throughout their organization.

Great post! – Dr. Ada Gonzalez

No one ever said change is easy and it’s still harder when it is your MAP that needs to change, but it is possible. More on change during the week.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

The thing she [behavioral psychologist] taught me—and this sounds obvious—is that behavior is a function of consequence.  We had to change the behavior in the organization so that people felt safe to bring bad news. And I looked in the mirror, and I realized I was part of the problem.  I didn’t want to hear the bad news, either. So I had to change how I behaved, and start to thank people for bringing me bad news.Joseph Jimenez, chief executive of Novartis

The behavioral psychologist was brought in after a consulting group was paid to provide “better, more robust process, with more analytics,” which changed nothing.

When we started RampUp Solutions in 1999, we spent a good deal of effort coming up with a tag line that easily explained the services we provide.

After several iterations we finally settled on “To change what they do change how you think”

Over the years, I’ve heard and read story after story of how all kinds of changes—from turnarounds to improved productivity to retention — all started with a change in the way the boss thought.

And that applied whether the boss was CEO, team leader or somewhere in-between.

Stories and discussions about change tend to focus on the actions that bring about the changes, instead of starting at the beginning with the hardest work.4222820626_8089f3a13b_m

Work that requires the boss, at whatever level, changing the way they thinks and then dispersing and embedding those changes throughout their organization.

So before you hire expensive consultants or seek help from advisors look in the mirror to determine how much of the problem is you.

Image credit: manymeez

Ryan’s Journal: Uncomfortable Situations Can Bring Comfort

Friday, September 15th, 2017

https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewbain/521768141/Last week I wrote about Hurricane Irma bearing down on my home state of Florida.

It was a scary time and brought a dose of reality to life that is not often seen. Through the experience I had a chance to view the before and after effects on people and thought I would share.

In my post I mentioned that there was a mad dash at stores for food, water and fuel to prepare for the arrival of the storm. It tended to be everyone for themselves and as a result was a bit chaotic.

In the interest of safety and because I have lived through several hurricanes, I took my family and left.

The trip we took normally calls for about 8 hrs of driving, but in this case it took 12. Roads were clogged, gas stations were packed, when they had fuel, and everyone was heading one way, north.

The trip was not scary, but it was surreal.

We took a back road highway as the interstates were turning into parking lots. We also drove in the dead of night and it was still packed.

Small towns with one open gas station had traffic jams. People were driving in emergency lanes and all toll roads were suspending payment for evacuation purposes.

This all added to the overall discomfort.

I knew my family and I were safe, but when I left I did not know how my house would fare or if I would have a home to return to.

The great news is we suffered minor damage to a fence and that is about it. Others weren’t so lucky.

How does this bring comfort though?

I spoke to my friends throughout this experience and truly felt closer to them.

Strangers have been open and people are helping.

Now that the panic of the storm has passed folks are banding together. Because I was gone my neighbors that stayed watched over my home and sent picture updates after tot show the results.

It has been rewarding to be surrounded by a sense of community and love.

Now I know times like these are sometimes short lived, but the memory of it can last a while.

I would never suggest that you suffer a major tragedy to experience this sense of belonging.

But I will say I am grateful that I was.

Image credit: Taber Andrew Bain

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