Nii Dowuona started as a programmer, became project manager, then added engineering manager to his workload, picked up an MBA at night and is now VP of Development—all at the same company.
He recently shared four tips that he has worked to instill in his company’s culture.
Avoid giving unsolicited advice.
Always ask for permission first, and don’t be insulted if you’re refused. Reacting calmly will leave the door open for future conversations.
However, remember that people can’t/won’t solicit what they don’t know they need. It’s true that advice can be obnoxious, but suggestions can be offered differently or the advice can be phrased as a question that opens the subject up to discussion. The big problem is often not the offering, but the pushing. ‘I explained so nicely why you are wrong, but you still won’t do it my way.’ is what often is being passed off as advice.
Avoid “guilt trips.”
Never try to make your listener feel guilty. Few adults respond well to such tactics. Instead, straightforwardly ask the person for what you need, explaining the possible outcome of inaction.
This is so true and the same goes for hinting and expecting the other person to not only pick up on the hint, but also to interpret it accurately. Plus, it’s a boomerang whammy, because people who hint often become angry or disconsolate when the hint is missed/ignored or misunderstood.
Avoid offering hollow reassurances.
Don’t attempt to gloss over problems or try to hide the downside of what you’re proposing. Openly acknowledging the facts is the key to positive communication.
Glossing assumes the other party is too dumb to figure the downside out and comes over as insulting, contemptuous and condescending to the other person.
Avoid pressuring a person to change.
Allow team members to hold their own opinions and positions. Arguing won’t change those opinions anyway.
Pressure not only won’t change anything, it often makes the people dig in their heels; at the least, it eliminates any viable conversation on that subject and may cause the recipient to shut down to anything you say in the future.
Granted, none of these are rocket science, but stop and think about how often you do one or another.
Today is Blog Action Day and the topic is Climate Change, so I asked Chris Blackman, who is a strategic consultant specializing finding both private and public funding in the green and clean technology sector, to offer her thoughts on a subject that enrages me every time it comes up—which is more and more often. The subject is the sacrificing of one limited resource for the sake of another.
From Chris…
Would you choose to go hungry and thirsty so that you could have energy?
To biomass’ benefit the water it consumes is reused over and over again, but turning waste to energy using the aerobic digestion method has a 1:1 ratio—one ton of waste requires one ton of water to process that waste.
In some ways, we have adopted an anything goes approach to producing some green energy and it seems a bit deja vu: using oil products to produce other energy forms.
In this case, it is even worse—it is not only the environmental impact but also the real possibility of going thirsty or hungry if we use our drinking or irrigation water to produce energy.
A recent New York Times article revealed that a solar power company dangled the opportunity to create hundreds of new jobs in a desert community at the cost of “consuming 1.3 billion gallons of water a year, about 20 percent of the desert valley’s available water.”
All that community needs to do is to look at the legal battle being waged right now amongst the states that have access to the Colorado river to vividly understand why they should not sell their water rights, in the hopes of procuring water from their neighbors.
Already there are many parts of the country in which the water is already unusable in spite of the Clean Water Act.
In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. … the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene.
I am not in any way advocating stopping our investments in clean and green energy; however, it is tunnel vision to invest in clean energy at the cost of clean water.
There are places in this country better suited, where the solar and water requirements are better aligned: Florida and the rest of the Southeast, at least in most years. (See Chris’ post on how dark, rainy Germany used US-invented technology to become a global solar leader.)
The opening question may seem melodramatic, but I wonder what the former Soviet Republic would give today to have the Aral Sea back, since today it is mostly a dry lifeless bed of blowing salt.
Was its loss, and the salt poisoning of the surrounding lands, worth the measly two decades of cotton they produced while depleting its water sources? The environmental and economic toll of the Aral Sea’s destruction could end up being as costly as Chernobyl.
That is not melodrama, that is precedent.
Want more proof? T. Boon Pickens, who isn’t known for his ‘friend of the community’ attitudes, is betting 100 million dollars that water is the new oil.
‘Oh Father, spare me the need to eat and drink so that I may use these resources for electricity’ – who would ever pray for that?
We still don’t get “the vision thing.”
When will we begin to approach our economy and the environment as a single integrated whole?
When will we balance out the true costs and benefits of our activities?
When will the options we choose from include using less, instead of always inventing new ways to consume more?
Yesterday I shared emails from a reader who, at the end of the day, realized that he was over-reacting, his boss was insanely busy and nothing was wrong.
Today I want to share another story with you, only this one happened shortly after I entered the workforce.
There were seven of us in the office, everyone pulled their weight and we were a very congenial group often going out together for lunch or a drink after work.
One day “Jenny” didn’t come in and the next day she was late. Over the next few months she became cranky and very touchy. Her work slipped and the rest of us found ourselves picking up the slack. People started grumbling and, as they always do, the grumbles got back to our boss.
Fortunately, we had a very smart, proactive boss. He called a brief meeting on a morning that Jenny was absent and explained to us that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer; she was getting treatment, but in the meantime Jenny had to fill in for her.
We all knew that Jen had two younger sisters and that her dad had been out of the picture for years, so suddenly the dark circles, grouchiness, and missed days all started making sense. He told us that Jenny hadn’t said anything because she wasn’t looking for pity and the best thing we could do was to wait until she told us herself. In the meantime, he would appreciate it if we would desist from the grumbling and not-so-subtle comments.
That episode taught me a great lesson.
From then on, when someone didn’t do as expected or let me down in some way, my memory would flash to Jenny and I would take a deep breath and stomp on my reaction, because I didn’t know what was going on in their world.
I’d love to say that I always did this, but that would be a lie. But the older I got the more successful I was and I never regretted it. If the behavior continued I look for reasons and more often than not I found them.
Sure, there were times nothing was wrong and the person was just taking advantage of me and others, but more often they were under the gun, whether a derringer or a bazooka, and I was glad I didn’t make it worse.
So the next time someone lets you down, think about Jenny and cut them some slack; you’ll be glad you did.
“Leaders tend to be narcissistic, but you don’t have to be a narcissist to be a leader.” –Amy Brunell, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University’s Newark campus.
“…narcissistic behavior is a “trait predicting charismatic leadership. People who are charismatic and charming… They think they’re entitled to it. They think they’re smarter than other people and they can get away with it.” –W. Keith Campbell, head of the psychology department at the University of Georgia in Athens.
Narcissism isn’t necessarily bad, but it is growing. When psychiatrists deemed it a bonafide personality disorder in the 1980’s it affected 1% of the population; in 2008 the number stood at around 6.2%.
Most politicians are narcissists, as are many media personalities (neither is surprising), but it seems that more and more business leaders fall in that category also.
There are 7 component traits that are measured.
Authority
Self-sufficiency
Superiority
Exhibitionism
Exploitativeness
Vanity
Entitlement
Although I have no proof, I bet that most, if not all, Wall Street honchos would score fairly high on these traits.
“A study published in December in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that people who score high in these traits are more likely to be leaders, but these individuals don’t necessarily perform any better and potentially may become destructive leaders.”
So much for the much-ballyhooed ‘charismatic leader’.
Then come back and share your score and whether you believe it fits you.
My score was 11, but if I had taken it 30 years ago I think it would have been at least 5 points higher. (Age is either mellowing me or I’m more realistic:)
There are no right or wrong answers and even if you score off the narcissism charts that doesn’t mean you’re ‘bad’—as with any trait it is how you handle it in every day life that matters.
Company culture is a hot topic in the business press; CEOs are working to foster “cultures of innovation;” and culture is being lauded or blamed for a variety of happenings.
The bird’s eye view of what’s important in culture is as varied as the executives, academics, pundits, media and other experts who expound on the subject.
But what about the worm’s eye view—what do plain vanilla employees think and want? It’s important, since without them there is no company.
It used to be when I talked with people that it was easier for them to articulate the attitudes and behaviors they didn’t want to encounter in the workplace.
Even today, with a far more savvy and sophisticated workforce, people still tend to focus first on what they don’t want:
Too much politics: personal, group, or in senior management.
Unnecessary bureaucracy.
Poor management practices such as erratic management; intimidation; micro-management; belittling or contemptuous treatment; poor scheduling; no loyalty; the attitude that “we don’t have enough time to do it right but we have enough time to do it over;” workaholism; etc.
Any form of harassment, whether overt or covert
A generally negative attitude, i.e., the glass is half empty
Arrogance or an elitist attitude.
An unwillingness (at whatever level) to seek and implement the compromises necessary to meet most of the organization’s needs within the required timeframe.
But when you get them to focus on the positives, the sophisticated and savvier mindset of today’s workforce is even more obvious when discussing the factors they desire.
Here are some of the high points that people say they want for themselves and from their managers and company:
The opportunity to truly “make a difference.”
To be treated fairly.
To trust the management and be trusted by them.
To embrace the idea that work can and should be fun.
Accurate prioritizing of company, team, and individual goals while keeping them synergistic.
A positive “can-do” attitude (aggressive, but realistic—the glass is half-full).
Continuing development and quality improvement in people, products and services, and processes.
Committing to employees, customers, and investors—and meeting those commitments.
An open, accurate, company-wide flow of information starting from the top.
An environment that encourages people to reach their full potential, professionally and personally.
A conscious effort to stamp out “not invented here” syndrome (in all its varied forms) so as to not waste time reinventing the wheel.
There’s great value in this worm’s eye view. By eliminating what employees don’t like, and giving them what they want, you create a foundation on which to build the kind of innovative, profitable culture—the kind craved by investors, customers, and the rest of the outside world.
Will the energy grid replace existing sources of power—oil, coal, gas, and nuclear—with renewable energy? Currently, our energy is finite and polluting yet highly efficient. And all of the players in the market, producers and consumers, recognize the need to overcome these limitations.
Solar energy accounts for only 0.003% of energy consumption in the US today and that is projected to increase to 2% by 2025. That kind of miniscule percent of the overall energy consumed is not specific to solar energy. Wind, bio-mass and geothermal heat all give a negligible contribution to the US’s power supply.
The players in the market have one requirement of energy: it must be reliable at all times. Oil and coal are reliable. And from what I could see at the AlwaysOn Going Green conference, oil and coal companies are not going to allow their market shares to erode without putting up a fight and having their case heard. Chris Poirier, CEO of CoalTek, emphasized to the audience: coal in particular exists here in the US in abundance; coal companies are developing cleaner versions of this resource.
Much is made of “clean coal” but at the end of the day, clean coal is an oxymoron. Coal is a disaster at every stage of its production.
To mine coal, currently the companies raze our mountains to procure the coal. What they absolutely never want to discuss is that they are a highly subsidized industry: all of the energy used to transport the coal over vast distances is subsidized.
But probably the gravest problem of using coal as an energy source is that it emits more carbon dioxide than any other fuel and those carbons are much more polluting because the carbon molecule in coal is larger.
According to John Woolard, CEO of BrightSource Energy, the only way that we can overcome the limitations of going completely green and clean is if we take a localized approach to integrating the grid. That requires the grid to receive energy locally: solar power from Southern California and the Western states, wind from the Mid-West states, tidal power from the coastal states, etc.
That is a smart way of consuming energy. However, what do cleaner oil and coal have in common? The infrastructure already exists for these products. The grid already runs on oil and coal.
How will consumers and the US government react to the fact that this resource resides in abundance in this country and that we wouldn’t have to pay to overhaul our infrastructure to continue to use it?
For argument’s sake, let’s suppose that all renewable energies will have the same level of projected involvement as solar will in 2025, renewable energies would capture about 15% of the market.
Hopefully this is an ineffective way of looking at the situation as nothing is static and clean and green tech companies could possibly improve the amount of energy they generate exponentially in the future.
This all begs the question: can green and clean tech survive and even thrive without national policies to encourage their adoption?
I fear that due to the propaganda of coal being cleaner from the coal companies and the lack of capital investment and political incentives from the government to upgrade our infrastructure we will not replace coal and oil in our grid with renewable energies.
Southwest Airlines, like Zappos, has a corporate culture that is head and shoulders above most and is the envy of their competitors.
Southwest’s culture is so important that the company walked away from a deal to buy Frontier Air Lines.
It is that culture has helped Southwest weather the current financial storm and it zealously guards that culture because it knows it is the true foundation of its strength..
As Gary C. Kelly, Chairman, President and CEO, said in the during the Q2 Earnings Call,
“Excluding special items, we reported a second quarter profit of $59 million and that was $0.08 a share. And I would say given the deep recession that that is a very solid performance and, of course, I’m very proud of our people on every front. We continue to manage through the economic crisis with a lot of change and all the while our folks are delivering a very high-quality operation and outstanding customer service, so I’m very, very proud of them.”
The call was primarily with analysts, although many investors probably joined it, and the introduction included the following statement,
“This call will also include references to non-GAAP results; therefore, please see our earnings press release in the Investor Relations section of our website at Southwest.com for further information regarding our forward-looking statements and for a reconciliation of our non-GAAP results to our GAAP results.”
So if you’re Southwest and known for a fun culture, how do you incorporate that into something as eye-glazing as explaining GAAP, AKA Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, at your annual meeting?
Easily. You just ask David Holmes, known as the Rapping Flight Attendant, to explain it.
The silly blow-up over President Obama’s back-to-school speech drove home once again how I am that won’t be around when the current crop of kids take the reins of political, social and business so-called leadership roles.
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
I say ‘conservatives’ because so-called liberals seem more flexible within their stands. (Please note that I said ‘flexible, not changeable.)
What exactly was in this speech, that some kids weren’t allowed to hear? Here are some excerpts that I found especially uplifting to hear—and if you think I cherry-picked the contents you can read it in its entirety and decide for yourself.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world — and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.
You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to train for it and work for it and learn for it.
What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. The future of America depends on you. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents and your skills and your intellect so you can help us old folks solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.
[After describing specific kids’ situations] But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their lives, for their education, and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you’re not going to be any of those things. The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study. You won’t click with every teacher that you have. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right at this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength because it shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and that then allows you to learn something new.
So today, I want to ask all of you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a President who comes here in 20 or 50 or 100 years say about what all of you did for this country?
Why? Because he encouraged them to take responsibility for themselves? Because he said that our country’s future depends on them? Because he was raised by a single mom? Because he told them that success was a function of very hard work?
Or is it the closed-minded attitude of the ideologue represented by 15-year-old Andrew Quick, near Orlando, Fla., who said “he considered the speech to be a potentially disruptive interruption of his school day, so decided not to watch it. “I’m a Republican,” he said, “and I really don’t like Obama all that much.”
I translate that to mean ‘I don’t listen to anyone who doesn’t think as I think and agree with me’, an attitude that doesn’t bode well for our country’s future.
Exactly what in this speech was of such concern to the conservative agenda that their kids should not hear it?
Perhaps the problem is the message that, in the end, they are each responsible for what they become—not their parents or teachers or politicians and certainly not God—just them.
That they will be what they choose to be and whether that choice is active or passive; it’s their choice as thinking individuals—assuming they choose to think and not just blindly follow a given ideology.
“The US has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. (The Self Storage Association notes that, with more than seven square feet for every man, woman and child, it’s now “physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self-storage roofing. …one out of every 10 households in the country rents a unit…”
According to Derek Naylor, president of the consultant group Storage Marketing Solutions, “Human laziness has always been a big friend of self-storage operators, because once they’re in, nobody likes to spend all day moving their stuff out of storage. As long as they can afford it, and feel psychologically that they can afford it, they’ll leave that stuff in there forever.”
I’ve said for years that people aren’t water faucets, able to turn off emotions and thoughts or change their MAP just because they change environments from home to work or vice versa.
Reading the article made me realize a hidden reason that makes changing culture so difficult.
It’s not just that the parts of the culture changes, but that the employees won’t let go of the parts that are changing or being replaced; instead they store them away to sort later.
But later never comes, so, like the stuff in the storage units, it sits in the back of their minds running up a bill that is paid in energy, focus and productivity.
As a result of the economy, many of the thousands of the units that were in use for no other reason than laziness are being cleared out, or at least downsized, and the stuff gotten rid of.
Perhaps this is a good time to work with your employees to clean out their mental storage places; to purge the cultural residue and clutter that fills them up.
So clear out the rubbish, open the windows and let the fresh air flow through reenergizing everyone.
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,
Nii Dowuona started as a programmer, became project manager, then added engineering manager to his workload, picked up an MBA at night and is now VP of Development—all at the same company.
I am continually amazed and revolted as I watch so-called conservatives of all stripes work to be sure their children are exposed to nothing that conflicts with whatever ideology they are steeping them in.
