I, and dozens of others, have written on the negative and downright destructive effects from social media’s FOMO.

However, I hadn’t given any thought to the idea that it had invaded the workplace, too.

As if email [at work] wasn’t bad enough at cultivating FOMO, we now have a new generation of real-time tools like chat to stoke it. Yet another thing that asks for your continuous partial attention all day on the premise that you can’t miss out.

FOMO is just as detrimental at work as it is personally. It distracts, interrupts conversations, and destroys focus.

Basecamp noticed and not only created a solution, but also gave it a catchy, sharable name.

People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. That’s what we try to encourage at my company, Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.

It’s JOMO that lets you turn off the firehose of information and chatter and interruptions to actually get the right shit done. It’s JOMO that lets you catch up on what happened today as a single summary email tomorrow morning rather than with a drip-drip-drip feed throughout the day.

Once again, Basecamp hits a homerun. (Two previous posts, here and here, talk about others.)

If you’re impressed with Basecamp’s ideas, you’ll not only enjoy It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, by Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, you’ll also find solutions you can use.

Image credit: Basecamp

I recently made a career change that, so far, has been extremely positive.

I have been in the tech space for some time and enjoy it. However, I think I carry a bit of baggage when I go to new companies.

By that I mean I have had employers in the past who were truly miserable to work for. I dreaded going in each day and my motivation was very low.

When I look at new companies I tend to carry that frame of reference with me as I interview. I consider the culture, how would I like the boss, how do people act in the office?

I have been interviewing for a few months now, at a variety of companies, and I have seen a few that make me want to run!

I’m in sales and whenever I hear a company say that they don’t have a process in place and just want somebody who’s hungry, I think red flag.

Obviously you want to be engaged and hard working in sales, but I have found that organizations that have no formal process in place are just flying by the seat of their pants.

It’s hard to define success, there is little support for you and if you don’t hit your numbers you are out right away.

I also spoke with a company that recently received an influx of VC money. As a result they have hired 70+ sales people all at once. Big red flag! How do you manage that? What metrics are defining success? How many people are on quota? None of that could be answered, so I stopped that interview process right away.

At the end of the day I found a company that is doing some really cool things in the GIS space. They are growing, own their IP, have a huge customer base and the co-workers are truly kind and passionate about their roles and product.

The benefits were awesome, but at the end of the day I asked myself, could I be here for 8 hours a day and still want to come back the next day?

For me the answer was yes.

Image credit: Bs0u10e0

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

As a founder I’m identified as a leader, but I don’t believe that any position makes one a leader.

Nor do visions, speeches, brilliant presentations or skilled fundraising.

I believe you recognize a leader by the quality of their team.

That doesn’t mean hiring someone else’s stars, it means hiring good people and providing all of them an environment that helps them become stars.

Over the years, I’ve collected short quotes that inspire me and help me become a leader in fact, not just in name.

Here is one of my favorites.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
John Buchan,
historian and political leader

I hope you find it as useful as I have.

Image credit: Wikipedia

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.

The lesson of these two posts is simple: culture can be good or bad; cults are always bad.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Two Sides Of Cult Culture

Did you do your homework from Saturday?

I asked you to read Heather Clancy’s take on great culture (content isn’t immortal; the link is a 404 error) and said that I’d explain today why I disagree.

The problem I have is with the idea of culture as a cult.

The definition of cult is given as “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work,” and culture as “set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices;” Heather sees ‘devotion’ and ‘shared’ as interchangeable—and that makes me very uncomfortable.

Another definition for cult is “obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.”

The examples she uses, Apple, Google and Salesforce.com, are superb companies.

But when someone says ‘cult’ to me I think of Jim Jones, whose followers had great devotion, so much that they followed Jones to the death—literally.

Lehman Brothers and other Wall Street banking houses had/have strong cult cultures as does AIG. Their people had great devotion and passion to cultures that were focused on winning no matter what and we all know where that got us. Another enterprise that comes to mind is Enron.

The point I’m making is that cult culture, like most concepts, cuts both ways.

When culture becomes a cult it can lose its flexibility and willingness to grow and change—necessities in today’s fast-changing world.

It’s always tempting to choose examples that highlight the positive view of a business (or any) concept, but it is imperative to avoid assumptions and remember that there are two sides to everything.

Image credit: Gúnna on flickr

Ducks in a Row: Culture Then and Now

Three years ago, in Leadership Turn, I talked about the dangers of allowing your culture to become a cult, but it seems that’s happening more and more.

The same day I explained here the benefits of what I called an ALUC culture.

ALUC is composed of four actions:

• Ask everyone for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions—not just your so-called stars.

• Listen and really hear what is said, discuss it, think about it.

• Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.

• Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.

The following day I offered some simple advice on implementing ALUC.

All three were worth reading then.

All three are worth reading now.

You want/need a culture, not a cult.

Flickr image credit: Antony Hollingworth

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Expediency seems to be the lens through which everything is viewed these days. Not that that’s new; this post dates to 2011 and it wasn’t new then. Flexibility is a great trait, but there are things it doesn’t enhance — such as company values. In fact, it destroys credibility, as described below.

Join me tomorrow for a great take on trust from the inimitable Wally Bock.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Do clichés annoy you? There’s a good reason some of the tired, old clichés stay around—namely, they work. They say what needs to be said in a way that isn’t left open to interpretation, like ‘walk your talk’ as opposed to ‘authenticity’.

I was reminded of this after listening recently to an entrepreneur.

Here are the salient points of the conversation,

• he had built a culture based on fairness, trust and authenticity;
• he worked hard to hire the smartest people available;
• salary and stock options were based on necessity, i.e., he did what he had to do to land the best candidates.

I asked him what would happen when people learned of the discrepancies between their package and a peer’s; that the approach seemed to fly in the face of his “fairness, trust and authenticity” statements.

He replied that

• people trusted him to do what was best for the company;
• he was fair to each person based on their individual expectations;
• any effort to implement a uniform compensation (salary and/or stock) policy would hobble his ability to hire stars; and
• it was a non-event because nobody knew anyone else’s package.

I have to admit, the naiveté of his final point cracked me up (I managed to control my hilarity).

Basically, he seems to believe that fairness, trust and authenticity have flexible meanings and that expediency trumps them all.

What do you believe?

Image credit: kevinspencer

I attended an AA-ISP* event tonight and heard something that struck me, “culture is a reward.” What a profound statement.

I’ll back up and explain what transpired tonight. I am in B2B sales and I have found that I must constantly sharpen my mind.

Sales is, to some degree, a game, but one requiring confidence. There is a lot of rejection and stress. Add to that the fact that most folks view sales as a negative field and it makes for a combustible result. I attended an event tonight that focuses on improving sales and the profession.

With all the negativity that surrounds the role, I have found the absolute opposite when actually at work.

Yes there is rejection, but there is also a lot of positive outcomes. I meet with clients that are trying to solve massively complex problems and I get to somehow help. My clients are usually more knowledgeable than I am, so I also learn something new.

That said, let’s get back to the statement I made earlier regarding culture as a reward.

Have you ever started a job thinking it was one way when it the reality turned out much different?

You felt like you got the rug pulled out from under you? I have and I hated it. The culture was negative and nothing was as it seemed. From the outside it was fine; from inside terrible.

On occasion, though, we luck out.

We stumble across an opportunity that delivers as promised, whether Google or some local shop that has a great team.

Doesn’t it feel like it’s a reward to just go to work? That is it!

A good culture is its own reward. I could not add to it because it is so true.

Now I just need to surround myself with it and never let go. 

* American Association of Inside Sales Professionals
Image credit: GotCredit

There’s no question that tech, just like every other industry, is highly biased. It’s become a major issue not because it’s new, but because tech drives much of the economy, which puts it in the spotlight. Added to that, more women and people of color are and speaking out publically about what they have to deal with.

Tech’s main excuse for its lousy diversity numbers is a lack of talent, so they focus on kids to fill the pipeline — but all that really does is provide 5-20 years of avoidance in dealing with the real problem

Consider the hard data.

Among young computer science and engineering graduates with bachelor’s or advanced degrees, 57 percent are white, 26 percent are Asian, 8 percent are Hispanic and 6 percent are black (…)  technical workers at Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, according to the companies’ diversity reports, are on average 56 percent white, 37 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic and 1 percent black.

Those numbers certainly don’t add up.

The real problem is culture (duh!) — why spend eight-or-more (usually more) hours where you’re actively not wanted?

Yolanda Mangolini, Google’s director of global diversity, recognizes this problem.

“We know that it’s not just about recruiting a diverse workforce. It’s about creating an environment where they want to stay.”

True, but, in fact, the greatest company culture possible won’t cut it.

Even more important than company culture is the boss’ individual culture.

For hard proof there is Mekka Okereke, the black engineering manager who runs Google Play and seems to be missing (or controls) both conscious and unconscious bias.

That team is 10% black, 10% Latino, 25% women and 50% female managers, and has become a role model for other managers,

Obviously, Okereke doesn’t just hire strong talent; he provides an environment in which they can learn, grow and excel.

That’s what a good boss is supposed to do.

But it’s the great ones who actually do it.

Image credit: Andrew Wippler  

Back in 2013 I wrote a post about intentional culture quoting Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson.

“If you don’t create a culture at your company, a culture will create itself. And it won’t be good. I sometimes hear people say ‘We don’t have a culture at our company.’ They have one. But if it hasn’t been nurtured, if no one has spent on any time on it, you can assume it’s the wrong culture.”

It’s well recognized that good culture doesn’t just happen — it requires conscious intention from day one and never ending vigilance ever after.

Sustaining culture requires a tough stance on hiring and a willingness to walk away from candidates who aren’t aligned with and enthusiastic about your culture.

However, no amount of vigilance and effort assures that the resulting culture will be what is termed ‘good’.

Whether the intentioal from the top or is allowed to rise from the ranks, the culture will reflect the values of the source and will be propagated by attracting candidates with similar values.

Uber’s bro culture reflects Trvis Kalanick’s values.

Zappos reflects Tony Hsieh’s.

For a great read on intentional culture and how to do it, check out Making Culture a Tangible Metric by Eric Blondeel and Moufeed Kaddoura, co-founders of ExVivo Labs.

Hat tip to the CB Insights newsletter for sharing this article.

Image credit: Richard Matthews

If you’re reading this I am making the assumption that you’re a knowledge worker. You may be in an office, a coffee shop, or perhaps some hillside retreat. Regardless of where you may be you have work to do and it needs to be done in a timely manner. When I am truly engrossed in something that has all my attention I get a hit of dopamine that channels my energy. Some call this flow.

Your brain is being fully maximized, distractions fade away and creativity takes place. When I am in this state it feels like work takes less effort. I am satisfied with the results and I feel accomplished. Truth be told I wish I could achieve this state more often and for longer periods of time.

As I was thinking about the concept of flow I was thinking how it could be applied to culture. If we are looking at flow in a way that reduces effort and gets faster results than perhaps we can apply that principle to culture as well.

I read a quote from Steve Jobs where he said, no one individual accomplishes something great, a team does. As I thought on that it occurred to me that the culture of Apple must be one where the team comes first, rather than the individual.

In my mind that is culture at work.

Any new hire would quickly see that belief in action, mimic it, and before they knew it they would assimilate without any conscious thought. That’s not a bad thing, since our brains have so many other things to worry about.

I think the same could be said of the military. You read stories of folks who did heroic things and their reasoning was that they didn’t want to let their team down.  As a former Marine myself I can assure you that peer pressure is real and the last thing you want to do is let your buddies down. As a result you see some extraordinary actions on the part of service member, first responders and others. In my mind that is flow at work.

As always, though, we need to figure out how to iterate and expand our culture to a point where flow is achieved and it seems effortless.

I have found that surrounding yourself with folks that have passion for life, push themselves past their comfort zone, and care for others is a terrific foundation to achieve success.

Image credit: ReflectedSerendipity

I recently switched jobs to a company that is smaller than my last but where I have the ability to truly achieve success or crash and burn. It’s slightly terrifying but I try to follow Richard Branson’s example of just saying yes to things first and then figuring it out as I go along.

One thing I realized after taking the role is I am the one that must set the cultural standard. It’s not that the company doesn’t have one, but most of the employees are remote and we rarely see each other.

As a result there is not really a zeitgeist in the office that tends to guide everyone’s actions. It took me a couple of weeks to reach this conclusion, but once I did I sought out some resources on how to set a standard.

I was not blessed with an iron will. For me I must work every day at maintaining discipline and work ethic. It’s not a battle, but it’s something I am very much aware of and I take steps to ensure I set myself up for success.

One way I do this is through emulation of others. I realize this may not be groundbreaking but I think it’s important to remember.

When I was growing up I would see people at the top of their game or profession and a lot of times not think about the work it took to get there. As I have matured I realize it takes great effort to achieve success and we must make it a priority. There are several people I follow on LinkedIn that hold influence. I try to emulate what they have done to form my own identity and culture.

I have also sought out mentors throughout my career. Some of these are formal, but some are not. I reach out to them for specific needs or learning opportunities.

What do you use for guidance when setting a culture? Is it a company, ideal or person?

I believe all can benefit when creating an identity, as long as we are choosing the right example to emulate.

Image credit: Ron Mader