I wrote the original of this post five years ago and posted this follow-up three years ago.

Considering the media frenzy around the lifestyles of tech CEOs I thought it was time to post it again.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about leadership that included a quote from the main character, a forensic anthropologist, in the TV show Bones.

Anthropology tells us that the Alpha male is the one with the crown, the most shiny baubles, the fanciest plumage, but I learned that the real alpha male is often in the shadows because he is busy shining the light on others.

Founders are typically alphas, whether male or female.

With that in mind I have a simple question to ask you.

Which kind of alpha are you?

Read the original post and then decide.

If you don’t like your answer choose to change.

There’s always a choice.

Flickr image credit: Tambako The Jaguar

Want to integrate almost real-time employee action analytics to give your people better feedback and potential career boost?

There’s an app for that.

Imagine a tiny microphone embedded in the ID badge dangling from the lanyard around your neck.

The mic is gauging the tone of your voice and how frequently you are contributing in meetings. Hidden accelerometers measure your body language and track how often you push away from your desk.

The app is from Humanyze, the test subjects work for Deloitte, participation was voluntary and the anonymous results positive.

“The minute that you get the report that you’re not speaking enough and that you don’t show leadership, immediately, the next day, you change your behavior,” says Silvia Gonzalez-Zamora, an analytics leader at Deloitte, who steered the Newfoundland pilot.

“It’s powerful to see how people want to display better behaviors or the behaviors that you’re moving them towards.”

But only when there is choice and trust.

Then there’s the truly evil app that records everything employees do 24/7, with no anonymity .

The U.K.-based company The Outside View, a predictive analytics company, also recently gave staff wearables and apps to measure their happiness, sleep patterns, nutrition and exercise around the clock in an experimental project.

So your boss knows when you decide to watch your favorite TV show, instead of taking a work-related course, or sing karaoke, instead of going to bed early.

“It’s bad enough that we lose control of our identities with threats of identity theft. I think it’s even worse if we lose the privacy of our actions, our movements, our physiological and emotional states. I think that’s the risk.” –Kenneth Goh, professor of organizational behavior at Western University’s Ivey Business School

They actually think that employees will be motivated by coming to work and having their boss ask why they didn’t work-out, but were up until 2 am.

I don’t think so.

As with so many inventions through the centuries, no matter how pure the motives of creators, anything can be corrupted and its use perverted by other humans.

Hat tip to KG Charles-Harris for pointing me to these stories.

Flickr image credit: Hans Splinter

Everybody is talking about the NY Times article detailing little-known aspects and actions of Amazon’s culture.

There is a plethora of discussion, commentary, vehement agreement/disagreement on the information presented in the article and I don’t plan to add more.

What is important is knowing when your workplace crosses the line from tough to toxic.

While the fluidity of the line is a function of the individual, that is only true when there is choice.

And fear, whether real (no new job prospects), instilled (abuse resulting in an “it’s my fault” mentality) or imagined, precludes choice.

Without choice it’s toxic.

Flickr image credit: eek the cat

Just as a company’s culture reflects its values, its advertising typically reflects its culture.

Most ads are relatively generic, cars, food, even drugs; with minor changes to the words or voiceover you can interchange competing products almost unnoticeably.

Most companies prefer to play it safe, whether in advertising or culture, sticking with the idea that “if it works for them it will work for us.” Call it the no/low risk approach.

Back when Apple’s culture was cutting-edge, so were its ads—remember the ad introducing the Mac? It was shown only once during the 1984 Super Bowl, but is remembered 30 years later.
A far cry from the safe, generic iPhone ads of today, which are quickly forgotten.

According to a new ad from Guinness, “The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.”

A great mantra and absolutely true—for individuals and corporations.

Guinness’ new ad chose to go against every cultural norm found in beer advertising.

Did it work?

Flickr credit: recoverling; YouTube credit: Guinness

We learn through words and can often learn more by deconstructing them.

Just as one of the most critical managerial (human) actions is found in its own anagram the Tao of another is found within the word itself.

The word is LIFE.

The Tao of life is IF.

IF you think/say/do this instead of that the Tao changes.

The IF isn’t always conscious or obvious.

But it is there.

It’s up to you to choose consciously.

Flickr image credit: gfpeck

Wanting to make a difference has been one of the top three reasons for people of all ages and backgrounds to join or leave companies for decades and it’s only increasing with today’s attitudes.

Many of today’s most desirable new grads are applying to Venture for America, a nonprofit organization that selects fellows to work in cities, like Detroit, that aren’t the usual magnets for top, young college grads from the most elite universities.

They are turning down six-figure salaries with prestigious firms for the chance to have real impact.

This is the same reason that most people join startups—small team means a bigger impact by each person.

Outsiders and the media most often focus on startups as a path to riches, but that’s not what’s uppermost in the minds of most candidates.

While many crave work on the bleeding edge, whether of technology, medicine, business process innovation or something else, 99.9% are there to have an impact and make a difference.

Even if the effort doesn’t succeed, they want to look back at that time with satisfaction and know that their own actions helped get it as far as it went.

Efforts like Venture for America and the opportunities they create are the best chance to change the course of potential failures that permeates our country.

We need many more of them.

Image credit: Venture for America

People have longed for an all-knowing leader who they can mindlessly follow and abdicate their decision-making, since time began.

Some seek this all-knowing leader in religion; others look to politics, while still others believe that business is a better source.

Their time would be better spent accepting the reality that no such thing exists anywhere in any walk of life.

Then there are the people who aspire to be that all-knowing leader.

To that end they amass thousands of friends and followers, network their way well beyond what’s needed to be a LinkedIn Lion and work ceaselessly to raise their Klout score.

Finally, there are those who know without doubt that all-knowing leaders are in the same category as the tooth fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa Clause and they aren’t them.

Which are you?

Flickr image credit: Warning Sign Generator

Interviewing is a lot like dating; each party provides (positive, upbeat, biased) information to the other and on the basis of that they decide to meet.

They meet, they talk and sometimes they connect.

When that happens one asks “will you…” and the other says “yes.”

And they head off to change the world—or at least their little corner of it.

They say that men fall in love with their eyes and women with their ears.

Using the term ‘love’ loosely, one might say that managers, no matter their gender, fall with both—first with their eyes and then confirmed with their ears.

Unfortunately, their divorce rate usually runs far above the 50% divorce rate for real marriages.

A study decades ago showed that positive hiring decisions were made in the first 20 seconds of meeting and rationalized over the hours spent interviewing thereafter.

That explains a lot about the high turnover that plagues many managers.

The take away here is that if you’re looking to build a winning team (or for a life partner) keep a wary eye out for chemistry and charm.

Flickr image credit: bixentro

“That culture is like the air we breathe or the water that fish swim in. It has the potential, for better or worse, to affect everybody in the same way.” –Dr. Linda H. Pololi, a senior scientist at Brandeis University

Dr. Pololi was talking about the culture in academic medicine negatively affecting men as well as women, although the women’s situation has a higher profile.

While the information in the article is interesting, as well as unexpected in part, it’s her comment at the end on which I want to focus.

As a manager you set the culture of your own group; it may closely resemble your company’s culture or may be wildly divergent.

The divergence is not always a bad thing—many managers have created great cultures in the midst of toxic ones.

By the same token, toxic mini cultures have been propagated within good company cultures by managers who believe that approach is the best way to manage.

Companies are much like gardens and the cultures within its main culture are what grow therein.

If you equate good culture to flowers and bad culture to weeds the problem becomes obvious.

Flowers are fragile and require more thought, attention and cultivation for them to spread.

However, with no effort on the part of the gardener, weeds spread quickly and if ignored will take over the garden.

There is an anonymous poem that I do my best to emulate throughout my life,

Your mind is a garden,
Your thoughts are the seeds,
You can grow flowers or
You can grow weeds.

With a bit of tweaking you can use it for your company,

Your company is a garden,
Your cultures are seeds,
You can grow flowers or
You can grow weeds.

It’s always a choice, but this choice will affect your employees, customers, vendors and investors.

Be sure to choose consciously, wisely and well.

Flickr image credit: William Murphy

While looking for something in my old posts I came across this one and decided it was a good time to post it again.

Choose the Freedom to Change

“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.”
–Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill

I recently ran across this quote; it’s been years since I read the play, but that poignant line, with its message that what has been is and irrevocably will be has always left me feeling depressed and angry.

Depressed because it revokes hope.

Angry because it’s the antithesis of everything I believe.

It proclaims that we, whether individuals, organizations or countries, can’t change; that we are locked on our trajectory with no rudder and an endless supply of fuel.

That thought represents a type of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) I’ve constantly rejected, while embracing the belief that anyone can change if they choose to make the effort.

Not that it’s simple or that it’s easy, but that it can be done.

I’ve done it and am in the process of doing it again.

You’ve done it and can choose to do it again.

Whether you choose an opportunity or pass it by, each one changes the present and alters the future, because your MAP changes with each decision.

Not necessarily large changes, but changes none the less and those changes will impact your next decision and so on throughout life.

You can avoid changes by embracing a rigid ideology that eliminates decisions by turning a blind eye of all divergent opportunities or by allowing someone else to decide for you in the name of followership.

What will you choose to do?

Flickr image credit: David Reece