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Archive for July, 2019

Bosses’ Responsibility

Wednesday, July 31st, 2019

Monday was about dealing with jerks in your workplace and yesterday about managing lazy co-workers.

What about bosses? Where are they? Why is it being left to workers to deal with problem co-workers?

Over the years (decades, actually), I’ve heard all the excuses — ‘I can’t be everywhere’, ‘I’m working on it’, or the ubiquitous ‘I’m busy’.

Those are the “good” excuses; here are the bad ones — ‘they’re really good at [whatever]’, ‘they’re a friend/relative of X’, ‘they’ve been here since the beginning’, and, in some ways, the worst ‘deal with it’.

Being self-motivated and self-managing should not include having to manage your colleagues.

That’s the boss’ job and why they make the bigger bucks.

I’ve never forgotten what Terry Dial, who eventually became vice chairman of Business Banking at Wells Fargo, told me decades ago when I was a recruiter, “People are 90% of our costs as well as the key to customer service and satisfaction. The only thing that should take priority over hiring a new employee is keeping a current one.”

That hasn’t changed in all these years.

Which begs the question, what are the bosses doing?

Avoiding direct interactions by hiding behind social media and chat apps, just as they hid behind email and, before that, memos.

Sometimes it’s because they are promoted in spite of not being a “people person,” which has nothing to do with whether they are extroverts or introverts.

Good bosses know that when someone is messing up, hurting or one of the other myriad causes of less than optimum behavior, it’s their responsibility.

Period.

No ifs, ands, buts, or excuses.

Image credit: Jordan Davis

Guest Post: How to Manage a Lazy Colleague

Tuesday, July 30th, 2019

Yesterday we took another look at the effects of, and how to deal with, jerks in the workplace. Today’s guest post by Ariel Schur addresses a different problem, i.e., colleagues who don’t pull their weight.

Most of us have dealt with a lazy colleague at some point in our professional career. They do the bare minimum, but just enough to fly under the radar. Coworkers like these unfortunately have the capability of single-handedly undermining group work or projects with looming deadlines. Yet, somehow, they have managed to remain employed – and some even manage to get ahead! Are employees simply supposed to grin and bear it? What can we do when we’re saddled with a lazy coworker?

There are effective ways to combat this issue at work and potentially change that colleague’s behavior moving forward.

Speak to your colleague directly

Approach your colleague with your concerns, relate their performance back to how it affects you. For example, “I’ve been taking on a lot of your work assignments lately and it’s preventing me from getting my own work done”, or “I had to re-do your part of the project because it didn’t follow the requirements”. Making them realize how their shortcomings are affecting the performance of yourself or the group is the first step if you want their behavior to change. From there, talk about ways to hold each other accountable and hold up each end of the bargain for future collaborations.

It is usually best to first try approaching your colleague with your concerns before going to your manager. Not only is this proper workplace etiquette, but why take the problem to someone else if you may be able to solve it on your own?

Document all correspondence

Any e-mail, conversation transcription, group notes, etc. will be helpful. Keeping a paper trail of all written (or verbal) communication is important for two reasons; 1) so you can remind your colleague of all the times you talked to them regarding the issue, and 2) you’ll have examples to bring up to your boss or manager, in the event that you do have to talk to them about the situation. If it does need to be reported, I suggest going directly to whoever is overseeing the project or would hold you responsible if the work is not completed.

Keep a Positive Attitude to Avoid Adopting Their Work Ethic

It’s easy to let a coworker’s laziness affect your attitude at work. You may even feel tempted to think “well, if they’re not going to do it, neither am I” – but that’s a bad idea. Your reputation is directly correlated to your performance and that is not worth risking. If you talked to your colleague and/or supervisor and do not see a change, do not let it influence the work you’ve put in. Always remain professional and continue to be the conscientious worker you are!

Dealing with lazy colleagues is never easy. Talking to them about the issue is often times enough for things to improve, but in some instances you may be required to take extra steps. Try to work with them, keep track of all the problems that arise as a result of their slack, and do not let it affect your own performance. Taking these steps to combat the issue are sure to make your life at your job easier moving forward.

Ariel Schur, LCSW is the CEO and sole founder of ABS Staffing Solutions. Her high-touch, service-oriented approach has been a refreshing change to the industry. Ariel prides herself on developing highly customized relationships with clients so that they can find the right employee matches for any and all employment needs.  Ariel has set a new standard for the “boutique” approach to staffing. Her work model is time-intensive, specifically tailored to her clients’ specific needs, and all-encompassing to provide the highest quality experience.

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Rich Waidmann’s No jerks Allowed

Monday, July 29th, 2019

              (see the full Infographic at Business Insider)

Poking through  13+ 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.

People. Whether at work or in your personal life, how you choose to respond to people is usually the make or break of any situation. That is especially true when dealing with someone’s negative actions.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I’m in love — with a man I never met, never spoke to, never followed or chatted with online.

His name is Rich Waidmann and he’s founder and CEO of Connectria Hosting.

I love him because when he started his company he consciously set out to make it a great place to work.

That means it’s a job requirement at his company that every employee treat everyone else with courtesy and respect as well as “going the extra mile” to take care of people in the community who are less fortunate

Then his company did a survey and found that

More than half (55%) of 250 IT professionals in the US. surveyed said they had been bullied by a co-worker. And 65% have said they dreaded going to work because of bad behavior of a co-worker.

Waidmann believes it shouldn’t be that way so he’s starting a No Jerks Allowed movement in an effort to encourage better cultures.

Way back in 2007 Stanford’s Bob Sutton wrote The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, but looking at the stats I’m not sure how much good it actually did.

And considering the fact that companies are shoehorning more people into less space something needs to change.

The Talmud says, “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.” Moreover, it’s often as we are that particular day, or even minute, and even as we change, minute to minute, so do others.

Jerks are known to lower productivity and kill innovation, so a lot of good information on identifying and dealing with jerks has been developed since Sutton’s book came out.

Contributing to that effort, here are my four favorite MAP attitudes for dealing with jerks.

    • Life happens, people react and act out, but that doesn’t mean you have to let their act in.
    • Consider the source of the comment before considering the comment, then let its effect on you be in direct proportion to your respect for that source.
    • Use mental imagery to defuse someone’s effect on you. This is especially useful against bullying and intimidation. Do it by having your mental image of the person be one that strips power symbols and adds amusement. (Give me a call if you want my favorite, it’s a bit rude, but has worked well for many people.)

And, finally, the one I try to keep uppermost in my mind at all times

    • At least some of “them” some of the time consider me a jerk—and some of the time they are probably correct.

Image credit: Connectria

A Song From Then for Now

Wednesday, July 24th, 2019

The Superman panel KG sent yesterday reminded me of something I always wanted to see happen.

There is a song written in 1949 by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical South Pacific.

The song is You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.

I’d love to see it done as rap, preferably by someone like LL Cool J, who has such a positive, good guy, persona.

And another version by Willie Nelson.

How ‘bout versions by Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

It’s a song that needs to go viral all over social media to all audiences.

A song to help fight the hate and bigotry that’s invading all spaces and nobody is safe from.

It’s this song.

Image credit: Critical Past

A 1950s Solution for the 21st Century

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019

KG sent this to me.

What follows is our thread.

Me: Haha. This needs to go viral on social media! But did you notice the kids are all Caucasian?

KG: Yes — because is it the Caucasians that are causing the problems…

Me: Yeah, I realized that after I emailed you. But not all the problems. My sister dated a Black guy in college and his family threw fits. Taught me bigotry is universal, but white bigotry is more powerful/damaging.

KG: I understand. Humans are the problem, regardless of creed or color. However, white people expect that 400 years of slavery and oppression can just be wiped over and that suspicion of motives, etc. should just disappear. The reality is that we create problems for ourselves and for every other living thing on earth.

The consequences of slavery and oppression will be there for a long time.

Obviously. More than half a century and the things that have changed are the clothes, hairstyles and lack of phones.

Golden Oldies: Jack Welch Is Wrong! Balance Isn’t About Choosing This Over That

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

Poking through  13+ 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.

Welch is still alive and must love today’s optimized millennials, who were raised to constantly strive and never stop working. Burnout would be no problem, since he could simply fire them.

In spite of that I doubt he could manage them; neither they, nor their elders, would take kindly to his style.

In fact, Welch’s approach is actually the fastest way to produce a bumper crop of weeds.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I’ve disagreed with Jack Welch many times going back to the start of this blog. In December 2006 I wrote Men Want A Life, Too in response to Welch’s comment.

“We do acknowledge that work-life balance is usually a much harder goal for women with children. For them, there is about a 15-year period in their careers in which the choices they make are not about what they want from life professionally and personally but about what is right for their kids. It can be a fraught time, since choices and consequences are more complex. That, however, is a topic for another column.”

It took two-and-a-half years, but he did return to that topic recently at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference telling them that women need to choose between raising kids and running a company.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” (The article is from the Wall Street Journal and is the first link on this Google search page.)

Putting the comments together we have a high profile x-CEO who believes that the way to the top is for both men and women to make the tough choice and put their family second to their career.

Just let relatives, nannies (if you can afford them), daycare, schools, friends, gangs and the internet raise the next generation.

Why do comments like these come primarily from old, rich white guys?

What planet are they living on? More importantly have they bothered listening to today’s workers—and I don’t mean just Millennials.

As long as this is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that runs companies that attitude will translate to corporate action and companies will face problems staffing. The recession won’t go on forever and demographically there’s a serious people shortage at every level and in every field.

If you really want to attract the best and brightest men and women then you need to recognize that their priorities have changed and if forced to choose the company will, in most cases, come in second.

And those candidates who do choose company over life may lack the empathy needed to innovate and market, let alone lead, the current workforce.

There are plenty of companies that already know this and have adjusted their culture accordingly, but most will be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality once the economy turns around, demographics rears its ugly head and they have no choice.

Video credit: bonewend on YouTube

Tools of a Gardener

Wednesday, July 17th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fringedbenefit/15099557066/

As you probably guessed, Jack Welch has been on my mind, mainly because I was stuck having lunch with a retired executive who went on and on about what a great role model Welch is.

When I disagreed, with specific examples, he informed me that he expected my reaction because I was a woman.

Huh?

Wow. I’m really glad this guy is retired, because he sure doesn’t relate to today’s workers no matter their age.

Jack Welch said a lot of stupid things (IMO), but one of the worst was his attitude towards work/life balance.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

Another was his evangelizing Six Sigma as the solution to everything.

But nothing replaces high EQ, empathic, humane (not just human) bosses.

Not  processes, not technology, not AI, and definitely not robots.

No matter what big and little tech want, believe or tell us, people are analog and always will be. For that matter, the real world is analog and always will be.

So, for the foreseeable future, the management and leadership skills needed to grow strong, creative, highly productive workers will be found in those who understand the limits of digital and can move freely and successfully in an analog world filled with analog people.

They are the true gardeners.

Image credit: Jane Nearing

Growing Weeds

Tuesday, July 16th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124665605@N02/15138562212

Back when Jack Welch implemented forced ranking throughout GE. was perched at the top of management gurus he

Also known as forced distribution and, derisively, as “rank and yank,” the practice was championed by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, who insisted that GE identify and remove the bottom 10 percent of the workforce every year.

Hundreds of companies used it, including tech giants, but most (all?) have stopped. Some took longer than others, Microsoft got rid of it in 2015.

As I said in a post when Amazon finally dumped it in 2016,

Amazing how it’s only taken 30+ years for management to figure out that setting employee against employee does not foster teamwork.

Having to watch your back, knowing it’s “you or them,” doesn’t foster anything.

But even without a formal forced ranking policy, some managers still believe that pitting team members against each other is the fastest way to boost productivity.

However, it’s a great way to increase your experience hiring

Image credit: russel harris

Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Managing Weeds

Monday, July 15th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/barockschloss/4569881909/

Poking through  13+ 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 wrote this in 2012 and reposted it in 2015. The idea behind it is one the most important and viable concepts a manager (supervisor, team lead, executive) will (can, should) learn during their career. It is the difference between good and great.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

As companies grow and managers build their organizations they frequently talk about “weeding out” low performing employees—Jack Welch was a ninja weeder.

If that thought has crossed your mind you might take a moment to think about James Russell Lowell’s comment, “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”

As with weeds, there are better ways to look at under-performing employees.

Seeing a weed as food changes everything, just as seeing people’s potential does.

95% of the time it’s management failures that create weeds and those failures run the gamut from benign neglect to malicious abuse and everything in-between.

Weeds can come from outside your company, inter-departmental transfers and even from peers in your own backyard.

What is amazing is how quickly a weed will change with a little TLC.

“Weeds can grow quickly and flower early, producing vast numbers of genetically diverse seed.”

People grow quickly, too, and often produce innovative ideas just because someone listened instead of shutting them down.

And while trust that your attitude won’t change takes longer to build, the productivity benefits happen fairly rapidly.

So before you even think about weeding look in the mirror and be sure that the person looking back is a gardener and not a weed producer.

Flickr image credit: barockschloss

When Smart is Stupid

Wednesday, July 10th, 2019

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144957155@N06/36639716763/

Do ads for smart stuff excite you?

Do you lust for a smart refrigerator, smart doorbell or some other smart product?

Do you want a smart home?

What about a smart city?

We already have a smart electric grid.

What do they all have in common?

They can be hacked.

It’s something to think about.

Smart = hackable.

Hacking a personally owned smart device is bad, but it pales in comparison to what happens if (when) the grid is hacked, whether by a foreign power or civilians for ransom.

Ukraine’s power was hacked in 2015, but old technology saved it from a far worse outcome.

A bill introduced in 2016 has been working its way through the US Congress. It would require similar old tech for US power grids. The bill provides a study period, so it will be 2020 before anything actually happens.

The old tech is actually the only solution that is immune to cyber/digital attacks of any kind.

Can you guess what it is?

If you guessed analog/manual/human give yourself a gold star. If you are under 40 you get five gold stars.

“Specifically, it will examine ways to replace automated systems with low-tech redundancies, like manual procedures controlled by human operators,” said US Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), who introduced the bill on the Senate floor in 2016. (…) The US is very close to improving power grid security by mandating the use of “retro” (analog, manual) technologies on US power grids as a defensive measure against foreign cyber-attacks that could bring down power distribution as a result.

Are you surprised? I’m not.

I always thought hooking the power grid up to the hackable internet was a dumb idea.

Kind of like locking your house and then taping spare keys to the doorframes.

Now we’ll spend millions on these “improvements.”

Stupidity really does rule.

Image credit: Midnight Believer

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