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.
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.
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.
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.
KG wrote this five years ago and, sadly, many of the concerns he mentioned are happening. AI bias is rampant and, as usual with emerging tech, most people don’t know/understand/care about the danger that represents.
A few months ago I read the book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era by James Barrat. It was a tremendously interesting book and confirmed many of the concerns I’ve been having about my own industry for some time. Subsequently there have been a slate of articles wondering about AI and how the industry is progressing.
One of the book’s premises was that we need to take a step back and think about the moral and ethical basis of what we’re doing and how and what we’re imparting to these machines.
I believe that it will be difficult, or impossible, for the AI industry to change direction mid-streams and start being concerned about morality and ethics. Most of the funding for AI comes from DARPA and other such institutions that are part of the military and affiliated organizations. Finance is second largest funding source.
Most of the people who are concerned about AI (including James Barrat) worry about when machines gain human level intelligence. I am much more concerned about what happens before that. Today it is said that the most sophisticated AI has the intelligence of a cockroach. This is no small feat, but it also brings with it some clear implications – cockroaches have important drives and instincts that guide their behavior. Survival, resource acquisition, reproduction, etc. are all things that cockroaches do. How far away are we from when our AI exhibit these characteristics? What about when we get to rat-level intelligence?
At that point machines will be very powerful and control many of the essential functions of society. Imagine a frightened rat (or 6 month old toddler) with infinite power – what actions would they take to protect themselves or get what they perceive they want or need? How would they react if we stood in their way? How concerned would they be with the consequences of their actions? Most adults don’t do this today.
Before we achieve human level intelligence in machines, we’ll have to deal with less intelligent and probably more dangerous and powerful entities. More dangerous because they will not have the knowledge or processing power to think of consequences, and also because they will be controlling our cars, airplanes, electricity grids, public transportation and many other systems.
Most AI optimists ignore the dangerous “lower mammal, toddler and childhood” stages of AI development and only see the potential benefits at the end. But we need to think about the path there and what we can do to prepare as individuals and as a society.
Not to speak about the fact that once we reach human level intelligence in AI, we’ll be dealing with an intelligence that is so alien to anything we know (after all, we have lots of experience with cockroaches, rats and toddlers), and no way of knowing what its motives are. But that will be left for another discussion.
Poking through 12+ 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.
Mea culpa has never been anyone’s favorite thing, but in the eight years since I wrote this post hearing it has become even more unlikely — unless, of course, the speaker has already been outed for whatever and mea culpa is their default fallback position/excuse.
In the popular vernacular, the expression “mea culpa” is an admission of having made a mistake by one’s own fault (one that could have been avoided if the person had been more diligent).
Mea culpa are two of the most powerful words any manager can say—as long as they are authentic.
Creating a culture where mea culpa is not just tolerated, but applauded is the mark of the best ‘leadagers’ (Leader + Manager discussion).
The words offer no value if they are uttered insincerely or as a means to an end.
Publicly taking responsibility for an error, let alone a real screw-up, is the mark of a good leader, a great manager and a true mensch.
Users bear some of the responsibility, but it’s difficult to say no to something that’s not just socially acceptable, but necessary, in spite of it having the addictive power of heroin.
Sure, social media companies need to police their platforms much better, but users need to use their brains when sourcing services.
Assuming information offered by service providers, such as plastic surgeons, on sites like Snapchat and Instagram is truthful, reliable and vetted is just plain stupid.
“I’ve had my before and after photos stolen—used by other doctors as if they’re their own work. I’ve had my own video content—even sometimes with me in it—used by other people,” said Dr. Devgan. In fact, a 2017 study found that when searching one day’s worth of Instagram posts using popular hashtags—only 18% of top posts were authored by board-certified surgeons, and medical doctors who are not board certified made up another 26%.
A friend and I were sitting at a bar, iPhones in pockets, discussing our recent trips in Japan (…) The very next day, we both received pop-up ads on Facebook about cheap return flights to Tokyo.
(…) data you provide is only processed within your own phone. This might not seem a cause for alarm, but any third party applications you have on your phone—like Facebook for example—still have access to this “non-triggered” data. And whether or not they use this data is really up to them.
Google freely admits it reads your Gmail and Android constantly harvests data; all in the name of providing a “more relevant marketing experience.”
Amazon’s Alexa keeps having security problems that are shrugged off as minor ‘oops’, but they aren’t minor when they happen to you.
Google suffers from similar problems, as does every smart product you add to your home.
There’s a lot more, but you can find it faster than I can add it to this post.
The lesson to learn is that privacy and security start with you, because believing that the companies supplying the product/service give a damn flies in the face of the daily increase of evidence to the contrary.
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.
Lying isn’t new, but it is certainly in the ascendancy. It doesn’t matter what media you follow, not a day goes by without a story about someone in a position of trust lying — whether politician, corporate chief, religious leader, friend, relative, or someone else. It is important to remember that few, if any, see their actions as problematic.
Lying and cheating are common occurrences and recent research shows that, contrary to popular wisdom (wishful thinking?), they do not make people feel badly.
In an interview, Dan Ariely, a leading behavioral economist at Duke and author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves, made two comments that especially caught my eye for both their perception and accuracy.
“I have had lots of discussions with big cheaters — insider trading, accounting fraud, people who have sold games in the NBA, doping in sports. With one exception, all of them were stories of slippery slopes.”
“When you are in the midst of it, you are in a very, very different mindset…. You are not a psychopath, and you are not cheating. You are doing what everybody else is doing.”
Slippery slopes, indeed.
KG’s comment after reading the interview brings forth another salient point.
It is my belief no person ever quite understands their own artful dodges used to escape from the often grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Long before lying became the issue it is today, Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924) had a great response.
The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.
The problem with this solution is that it requires self-awareness, personal effort, determination and grit.
All of which, if there is no financial reward, are in short supply these days.
I had something else planned for today, but two things, took precedence.
First, I had coffee with some guys and they started in about how overblown the whole “he touched me” thing had gotten. There were five of them, two said it had been blown up by the media, two thought the women had a point and the fifth said it was all feminist crap from a bunch of man-haters.
I accidentally spilled my coffee on him (it really was an accident; I choked on the sip I was taking when he said that and spilled it), which broke up the party.
So I came home, looked at some news articles and found one that was so relevant I had to share it with you.
For the project, titled “The Dress for Respect,” researchers built a dress embedded with sensor technology that tracked touch and pressure. The information was then relayed to a visual system so that researchers could essentially track harassment in real time. (…) In just under four hours, the women are touched a combined 157 times.
Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Future emerging leaders in companies need to know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and a spotlight will be shined when it does.
I was going to comment, mentioning what happens when a power is toppled, but LaVonne Reimer (fourth comment) beat me to it.
She cited the story of Mike Cagney, who was fired from online lending company Social Finance last September after an investigation by the board of over accusations of sexual misconduct and lying.
Powerful men getting fired for harassment and/or sexual misconduct is all too common these days, but that wasn’t Reimer’s or my point.
Yet just months after Mr. Cagney departed SoFi, two venture capitalists who had been on the company’s board and knew many details of his actions invested $17 million in his new start-up, called Figure. Since then, Mr. Cagney has raised another $41 million from others for the lending start-up, which will open soon.
Suster’s idea that “Leaders in all industries need to stand up and say that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.” means nothing as long as there are no real consequences.
Obviously, losing their jobs did not equate to losing their power.
And it’s the power that matters, not the job — because there is always another job.
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,
