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.
This post is from 2014, but layoffs are again in the news. Almost every day another company talks about cost-cutting and rumors start to fly. Contrary to what you might think, there is a right way and a wrong way to handle a layoff.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
The need for a layoff can happen to any company of any age or size, but most companies and managers bumble the task and end up doing far more damage than necessary.
The damage is not just to those laid off, but also to those left behind, themselves and the company.
As most of you have read, Cheezburger Networker just laid off a third of its staff, but great credit goes to CEO Ben Huh for bending over backwards to do it with the least damage possible.
He cut his vacation short when he realized what had to be done, as opposed to delegating it and staying away until it was over.
He was honest, open and candid with his entire staff, thus avoiding the kind of rumors that typically circulate.
He did everything possible to ensure those laid off found new positions, including personally reaching out to other companies and setting up his own job fair.
I only know of one manager who got his jollies laying people off (he always tried to do it just before Thanksgiving or Christmas) and he was, without doubt, a sadist.
Most managers, like Huh, find them to be tremendously emotional and not at all fun.
“Often, when faced with a problem, you want to run in the other direction. It’s like seeing a lion in the jungle. But I have to do what is best for the company, even if it sucks emotionally.”
There’s one more required action after a layoff and that’s dealing with the empty space, which can’t be ignored, but can be done positively without spending big bucks.
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.
80 years ago Dave Packard commented that good management was “marked by personal involvement, good listening skills and the recognition that “everyone in an organization wants to do a good job.” That belief developed into a management technique called MWBA and it’s just as powerful now as it was then — if not more so. 13 years ago I wrote a four-part series about it. The second post talks about why to do it, the third about uncovering problems and the fourth about using MWBA to crosscheck what you hear.
And yes, you do have time.
Author John le Carré, of Bond fame, said it best.
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
Remember Management By Walking Around (MWBA)? It’s an oldie, but a goodie.
Great managers work to spend at least 25% (or more) of their time wandering around chatting and building trust with their people.
Don’t have time? Maybe that’s because you never really thought abut the benefits. Getting to know your people this way helps you to
spot high-potential workers;
raise your trust quotient with employees;
improve retention;
attract talent;
discover molehills before they’re mountains, and, most importantly, it’s the best, if not only, way to
know what’s really going on.
To work it must be the norm—that means it needs to be done constantly, not just when there’s a problem.
Consistent, casual visits make people feel comfortable and encourages them to chat—saying what they are thinking without editing it. To pass on information, rumors, and the like without wondering or worrying that it will boomerang and hurt them.
While wandering, you’ll hear enough to validate or repudiate what you heard from somewhere else. It lets you protect your sources—which means they’ll continue to pass on information—and it helps you avoid acting on erroneous information.
The higher you rise in the organization the more important this intelligence becomes. One of the greatest dangers for any manager is getting isolated and hearing only a sanitized or slanted version of what’s going on within the group, department or company. This is especially true for the CEO and senior staff.
Bottom-line—get off your duff, out of your office, wander around, say hi, listen, be a sponge and soak it all up.
Invest the time—that’s what managers do—and it will pay off handsomely!
A year later GE scrapped its notorious rank and yank review system as implemented by then-CEO Jack Welch. A year after that Amazon followed suit. There are still plenty of companies that use the system — whether they admit it or just change the name. Individual managers are also guilty of it no matter their company’s attitude. Be it company wide or individually the effect is the same — higher turnover, lower productivity, decreased engagement, and increasing recruiting costs.
Years ago I wrote about how to make annual reviews painless and effective — more a review of the year’s accomplishments and setting goals for the coming year than a critique of work past.
It worked because mini-reviews, coaching and conversations during the year were frequent.
Typical annual reviews were fraught with fear and loathing.
For decades, General Electric practiced (and proselytized) a rigid system, championed by then-CEO Jack Welch, of ranking employees. Formally known as the “vitality curve” but frequently called “rank and yank,” the system hinged on the annual performance review, and boiled the employees’ performance down to a number on which they were judged and ranked against peers. A bottom percentage (10% in GE’s case) of underperformers were then fired.
Jack Welch championed a lot of very bad stuff (e.g., work/life balance, HR), but the negativity of rank and yank is near the top, if not number one.
(As for GE’s stellar results keep under Welch keep in mind that businesses like GE Financial practically printed money until it all blew up.)
But times are changing.
According to Raghu Krishnamoorthy, the longtime GE exec in charge of Crotonville (GE’s in-house management school) “Command and control is what Jack was famous for. Now it’s about connection and inspiration.”
And to that end, GE has developed a new in-house app that basically does what I and others evangelized a decade and more ago.
The new app is called “PD@GE” for “performance development at GE” There’s an emphasis on coaching throughout, and the tone is unrelentingly positive. The app forces users to categorize feedback in one of two forms: To continue doing something, or to consider changing something.
If you don’t have the luxury of an app you can simplify it even further.
Care about your people.
Interact with your people.
Talk with your people.
Challenge your people.
Help them grow and advance — even when that means they leave for a better opportunity that you can’t provide.
Read what GE is doing and adapt it to your own group — whether your company does of not.
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 read a couple of articles last week highlighting two mind-blowing new products. Tomorrow you’ll learn about one that addresses wildfire prevention in a totally new way. The other (Wednesday) is a way to recycle roads, instead of repaving them, using plastic bottles.
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.
Since this was written in 2012 things have gotten much worse, with deep fakes, audio and video, fake news and misinformation in general added to everything described in the post. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is more true now and more important than ever before.
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.
Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?
And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.
Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?
His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.
If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.
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.
It’s interesting that so many of the entrepreneurs whose ideas could actually change the world are either still in school (not college) or at the other end of the spectrum. It also seems that most of the 20s/30s/40s crowd are primarily interested in changing their financial status and burnishing their brand. Oops! Seems like I’m getting cynical in my golden years.
I frequently see comments on blogs and social sites along the lines of “I know I could be an entrepreneur if I just had a good idea” or “I want to be an entrepreneur and change the world.”
Sadly, it seems that most are looking for ideas to make them the next Groupon or Foursquare and while that might make them rich, it will hardly change the world.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it won’t change much or get you into the history books.
You change the world by tackling real-world problems, often with hard science.
But you don’t need to be a scientist; self-taught Gary Cola invented the world’s lightest, strongest steel that takes less than ten seconds to make.
In fact, you don’t have to be an adult. Take a look at the winners of the first Google Science Fair and you will be blown away; none are 18 yet and none of their ideas involved the Internet.
Here’s an idea; if you want to change the world look for problems with global impact. Blake Mycoskie is changing the world with shoes and glasses, while Anthony Capone, CEO of Nimbus Water Systems, is changing it with inexpensive, solar-powered, portable water purification systems.
Then there are toilets.
Yes, toilets.
That handy gadget that we take for granted (unless it isn’t working) and that many parts of the world only dream about.
“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet.” –Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global development program
And the Gates Foundation is putting its money where its mouth is.
Look around; think about changing the world by reinventing or innovating something that addresses a basic need.
You may not end up as rich as Mark Cuban, but I guarantee that it’s the sexiest, most exciting, rewarding, feel-good thing you’ll ever do.
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.
CEOs screwing up their company culture isn’t new. And, one way or another, CEO ego is usually the cause; what differs is what they do now vs. then. Before, it was rotten decisions based on dinosaurian mindsets coupled with a god complex. Now the screw-ups tend to be grounded in rotten decisions based on hard-to-believe immaturity coupled with a god complex.
Changing culture doesn’t happen overnight and takes a lot of damn hard work.
But it can be done.
And for CEOs willing to take the time and do the work, the payoff is ginormous to the 10th power and goes well beyond money — for the company, the employees, stakeholders and last, but certainly not least, for themselves.
“I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
On a funny, or should I say ironic, side note.
As I looked through past posts and articles I realized how similar in name Nadella is to his complete cultural and managerial opposite, [Robert] Nardelli.
Separated by two letters and a mental chasm that dwarfs the Grand Canyon.
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.
It’s said that money is the root of all evil, but there are plenty of evil people with no money and lots of wealthy people who do enormous good. I think it’s more accurate to say that greed is the root, since people will do anything to satisfy it. And often, what they do is perfectly legal — but legal doesn’t mean either ethical or moral.
I’m no happier about the AIG and other bonuses paid to screwed up Wall Street banks, but I’m not sure why any of us are surprised.
“In the largest 25 corporate bankruptcies between 1999 and 2002, while hundreds of billions of dollars of investor wealth and over 100,000 jobs disappeared, the Financial Times found the “barons of bankruptcy” made off with $3.3 billion.”
Giant compensation packages, guaranteed bonuses and platinum parachutes are excused by Boards and executives as necessary to attract the “best and brightest,” but here’s what’s really going on.
The ‘names’ demand outsize compensation/stock options/guaranteed bonus/etc. in order to validate their ‘brand’.
Those responsible for hiring not only meet the demands, but even exceed them in an effort to attain or sustain the company’s reputation as a better home for ‘stars’ — the more stars you have the greater the bragging rights — mine’s bigger than yours in high school locker room talk.
Now let’s consider the folly of this attitude.
Those hiring often seek a name brand in the mistaken belief that the brand comes with a warranty that guarantees good results.
But no matter who you hire you’re actually paying for their past performance, which is always influenced by
circumstances—boss and company positioning in its market and industry
environment—culture and colleagues;
and let us not forget that minor factor
the economy.
The hiring mindset is that everything the brand accomplished was done in a total vacuum and dependent only on the brand’s own actions, therefore changing every single surrounding factor will have no impact on performance.
Put like that it sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it.
This is one of the prime reasons that so many CEOs bring their ‘own team’ over when they move, as do managers all the way down the food chain—they know they didn’t do it alone.
CEOs aren’t like movie and rock stars whose very names draw consumers into spending money—nobody ever bought a product from GE because Jack Welch was CEO, nor do they carry Jobs iPods—so why pay them that way?
Moreover, assuming that performance occurring during an expansion is a valid yardstick for performance in general, let alone a downturn, is sheer idiocy.
You have only to remember the difficulties faced by people whose management skills were honed between 1991 and 2000, the longest expansion in our history. When the recession hit in March of 2001 they had no experience whatsoever of how to drive revenue or manage in a down economy.
That recession and the previous one in 1990 lasted only 8 months each. The longest recession we’ve had was 2 years, January-July 1980 and July 1981-November 1982, and that one had a 12 month break in it. This means there are a very small number of managers with any actual experience managing in anything even close to what’s happening now.
The current recession officially started in December 2007, so it’s already 15 months old and the end isn’t in sight.
What experience makes these folks the ‘best and brightest’ for today’s world?
Just why the hell are companies still guaranteeing oversized compensation and exorbitant exit packages when now is definitely the time to pay for future performance—no guarantees.
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.
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.
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.
Why is happy so often equated with fun, as in “if you’re having fun you’re happy.” What makes you happy? A beautiful sunset? Your kids/grandkids? A quiet walk? Time with loved ones? For most people, It takes more substance than fluff to make them happy.
It’s well-proven that happy employees are more productive, but creating happy requires substance.
The components of long-term happiness are things such as challenging work, continued learning, opportunities to grow, clear communications, fair bosses, etc.
All of these require more thought, effort and skill from managers than installing a few foosball tables or gamifying the project.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
