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.

In the six years since I wrote this individual focus on meware has skyrocketed, while focus on wetware has plunged. If this is true for you, you may want to reconsider the long-term effects, both professional and personal.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Wally Bock writes one of the few blogs under the “leadership” banner that I like, mostly because he writes common sense, keeps it simple and (usually) sees leadership through a lens similar to my own.

In a recent post Wally writes about people.

People are emotional. Some economists write like they think it’s not so. Some philosophers think it’s bad. But it’s the way we are. Our emotions affect everything we do and every choice we make.

People are perceptive and insightful. We notice things and reach conclusions without the need for advanced programming.

People are creative. Human beings are natural idea generators. Just let us show up and watch us go.

People are both consistent and inconsistent. As a species we’re pretty predictable. Once we’re past young adulthood, our previous behavior is a good guide to our future behavior. But individually we’re a source of constant surprise.

People have knowledge. Knowledge is information plus context. On a good day, we can generate wisdom.

People have relationships. They are a source of strength and support and insight. They are also a source of biases.

People have lives. We have a life at work and a life at home and a host of other lives. They are all in play all the time.

That post reminded me of an ancient Cathy comic from the Eighties in which a computer salesman tells Cathy he knows hardware and software, but isn’t fluent in wetware.

Unfortunately, a lot of managers aren’t as fluent in wetware as they need to be to generate high levels of success for both their team and themselves.

For that matter, people in general aren’t always wetware aware, let alone fluent.

However, they seem to be both fluent and aware when it comes to meware.

The problem is that meware won’t raise productivity or drive innovation; it won’t produce responsible, well-rounded kids or create viable relationships.

When it comes to life, wetware is really all that matters, whether professionally or personally.

Flickr image credit: ThisParticularGreg

A couple of months ago I wrote two posts, Ducks in a Row: Respect vs Nice and Ducks in a Row: Respect Does Not Mean Agreement.

Yesterday I had some feedback from a senior exec who said that while he agreed in principle, he wouldn’t try to apply it to his team. He went on to say that his team was so diverse, consisting of recognized experts from different disciplines, that they had only two things in common.

The first was the size of their egos; and the second the desire to solve the problem — their way.

I asked if he had even tried any of the idea in the linked articles.

He said no; he’d been down that road in the past and the cost in time and energy was too high.

I asked if he would reconsider if I could show him a team that made his look like easy, with egos that dwarfed theirs.

He laughed and sure, so I showed him.

The team is made up of politicians from all parties, government officials, corporate CEOs, trade unionists, clergy, journalists, academics, and activists.

That got his attention, as did the task they were brought together to address, because it is not only larger, but far more intractable.

…top Mexican leaders who are working together on a project called Méxicos Posibles (Possible Mexicos) to develop solutions to their country’s daunting problems of illegality, insecurity, and inequity.

Since I knew he was listening I told him one more thing; maybe the hardest one for him to accept — that his ego was similarly sized and his own belief in his ability to make it work was no different than any member of his team.

I told him brute force wasn’t going to cut it and that he didn’t have to do it alone.

Méxicos Posibles used a consultancy led by Adam Kahane, author of Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust.

I suggested he start with that book and other resources linked in my post.

I reminded him he has the stature to reach out to people like Kahane and get a response.

Hopefully I got through; I’ll know in a few weeks what direction he chooses and will let you know.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

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.

People Like Me is probably one of the most important posts I ever wrote. Additionally, 12 years ago I said,

A workforce that homogenizes along any lines is a workforce that will either miss, ignore, or be unable to reach a part of their market.

And in 2007 I wrote,

Keep in mind that true diversity includes MAP and mental function, not just race and gender. I’ve known managers whose organizations were mini-UNs with equal numbers of males and females, but they might as well have been cloned from the boss, their thinking was so identical.

I call it “homogenizing,” which is the polar opposite of diversity, which includes race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and MAP. Research has proven that while diversity pays, homogenizing will kill you.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

A CEO (who wants to stay anonymous) called me today and said, “If charm causes bad hires, what causes “wrong hires?” He defined a wrong hire as one where a good person with good skills that seemed to fit the req was hired, but didn’t add the expected strength to the team. So I explained comfort zones and he said, “You should put that in the blog,” so I am.

I first wrote about comfort zones back around 1999 (Hiring in Your Comfort Zone) for msdn (Microsoft Developers Network, where I used to have a column) and the idea hasn’t changed a lot.

Our comfort zone is where we all prefer to do things. People want to spend their time with people like themselves. This isn’t about simple labels, such as race, religion or gender, which are more society’s labels. Our own subjective labels have more to do with schools (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, etc.), specific professions (not fields), and especially companies (think McKinsey). It’s how we choose a way to connect, because, true or not, MIT grads believe they have more in common with MIT alums than with Cal or Columbia. Doctors hang out with doctors, usually those with the same, or similar, specialty or employer, but rarely with nurses or radiology techs. We like enough knowledge commonality so we don’t feel ignorant, but can still learn. It all boils down to, “people like me (PLM).”

And that maybe fine in our personal life—but not so fine in our professional life, especially not for managers responsible for hiring. The broader the PLM definition the longer it takes to become noticeable, but it’s there if you look for it.

I’ve known the following (often more than one who fits the profile):

• Director of system development who came from a software background, hired hardware engineers with extremely strong software experience, although it wasn’t needed.
• VP of marketing with a Harvard MBA whose team were all “Ivy.”

Think of the articles you are constantly seeing of new CEOs who hire the majority or their team from their previous employer with the express purpose of getting the same mindset. Bob Nardelli, the new CEO of Home Depot is a great example of PLM hiring. And sometimes it works, at least for awhile.

But the long-term cost to companies can be high.

• When the choice is between the best applicant and PLM, PLM usually wins out, slowly lowering the quality of talent.
• PLM homogenizes the staff, reducing diversity of both thinking and thought (methodology and result) and it’s that diversity that supplies strength and creativity.
• PLM can wreak havoc on retention efforts and drive out legacy knowledge.
• PLM hiring can involve just one part of a company or create a ripple effect, e.g. slow product development, which delays delivery, crimping sales and keeping the company from achieving its revenue goals.

Yes, all of this and much more are a product of a PLM mindset.

Image credit: Jurgen Appelo

Some bad actions seem to have a much longer tail than others and are more personal.

The length of the tail also seems related to how much the breach affects “people like me.”

The proof of this is happening right now and playing out in social media. It started with the addition of a Wikipedia board member.

Nearly 200 Wikipedia editors have taken the unprecedented step of calling for a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board of directors to be tossed out. (…)  “In the best interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, Arnnon Geshuri must be removed from his appointment as a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.”

Geshuri played a central role in the “no poach” scandal (where a number of top companies, like Apple and Google, agreed not to recruit from each other) that has had lasting effects on countless careers.

Although I’ve said many times that past performance does not predict the future and I firmly believe in second chances there are caveats.

One is that the the person agrees it was wrong, takes responsibility for their share of the action and accepts some kind of punishment — whether a monetary fine, jail time or just a public statement.

When it’s an ethical lapse, as in this case, I consider if the person should have known better — which Geshuri should have.

However, this wasn’t just an ethical lapse; both the scheme and his actions were illegal.

And there is no question that as a high ranking HR professional he did know it was both illegal and unethical and was in an excellent position to assess the long-term damage it would do.

Geshuri was actively involved along with facilitating others.

Therefore, I tend to agree with the editors that he doesn’t belong in an organization that runs of pure trust.

But I am just as sure he still has a great career path in most of corporate America, where they would understand (and in some cases even condone) what he did, as well as in politics, where both the criminal and civil breaches would just be business as usual.

Image credit: Myleen Hollero / Wikimedia Foundation

There was a time, and still is to millions, when “design” meant looking pretty—or not.

Design certainly didn’t refer to finding solutions to life’s real problems.

Of course, first you have to identify the problems, which isn’t done 140 characters at a time.

You won’t find them with Google and there’s no app for that.

Identifying real-world problems requires actually talking (gasp) to people—and real world experience doesn’t hurt.

This may be why senior entrepreneurs are on the rise, since it means communicating with empathy and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Empathy seems to be in short supply the younger you go, but it can be taught and where else but at D.school—the top design school.

At the heart of the school’s courses is developing what David Kelley, one of the school’s founders, calls an empathy muscle. … the students are taught to forgo computer screens and spreadsheets and focus on people.

So far, that process has worked. In the eight years since the design school opened, students have churned out dozens of innovative products and start-ups. They have developed original ways to tackle infant mortality, unreliable electricity and malnutrition in the third world, as well as clubfoot, a common congenital deformity that twists a baby’s feet inward and down. (…)

Mr. Kothari also said his plans took a new path. Before he took his first D.school course in 2008, he said, he spent most of his spare time in front of a computer, brainstorming ideas for websites and mobile apps that never materialized. Design was always an afterthought. But he says that first ramen assignment became the prelude to a revolutionary new way of solving problems by spending time with people to understand how they live their lives.

Empathy muscle.

I like that.

Too bad the teaching is limited to design and only at one school.

It’s definitely a muscle that is lacking in many of the under-25 crowd and badly atrophied in much of the rest of the population.

Flickr image credit: Arya Ziai

Last year, Brad Feld of Foundry Group joined a roster of gurus who recommend hiring for cultural fit above all.

I said it again last week.

Henry Ford was one of the first to explain why, If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

This is true for every company from startups through the Fortune 10.

And the key word isn’t “forward” it’s “everyone.”

Research has shown that culture trumps strategy and the most important component of culture is people.

Without people there is no company.

With the wrong people there is no team.

It is the team that makes vision reality.

It is the team that draws investment and customers.

It is the team that lets you pivot, innovate and change when necessary—no matter your size

It is the team that saves your ass when you screw up.

Your team is made up of the people who focus on the success of the company, knowing that its success ensures their own, not the people who work primarily for their own success.

A strong team always trumps a group of individual players—no matter how good they are or what each has done in the past.

Team needs and candidate attitude should always trump individual credentials, experience, previous title and company.

Flickr image credit: Glyn Lowe Photoworks

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

“The higher you go in life, the greater the capacity for self-delusion.” —George Mitchell

There’s a very contagious illness making the rounds and it reached pandemic proportions more than a decade ago.

To check if you have it take the simple quiz below.

In the privacy of your own mind how would you answer the following questions?

1. Are you usually the smartest person in the room?
2. Are you annoyed when someone doesn’t instantly “get it?”
3. Do you listen equally well to all your people?
4. Is your main networking criteria WIFM?
5. Did you succeed because of others?

If you answered yes, yes, no, yes, no then you’re already sick.

If you considered the answers obvious you have a serious case of what Pat Riley calls the “disease of me,” while the startup world knows it as “founder’s ego.”

It means you not only do things better than others, but also can do no wrong.

While there is no inoculation against it, there is a cure.

The cure requires changing your MAP and it’s free.

Hat tip to Wally Bock for a great reminder on how easy (and stupid) it is to buy into your own infallibility.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

The article accompanying this post may surprise you, but it gets my point across with eloquence.

And while it talks about a romantic relationship the lessons in it apply to all human interactions for they are all relationships.

It’s a woman’s story about two very different romantic relationships and a pet tortoise named Minnie that turned out to be male.

Her first lover became her ex lover because he wanted/needed/expected/demanded/ she be something she wasn’t.

I didn’t want to be in a relationship again where someone wanted me to pretzel myself into someone I wasn’t. “You’re odd,” my ex had told me. “All you want to do is watch movies, read books and play with Minnie.” He meant it as a rebuke, but I kept thinking: what was wrong with that kind of nirvana?

Her second lover, who became her husband, had a different attitude towards her oddness and towards Minnie.

Where my old boyfriend told me how obsessive I was about Minnie, Jeff celebrated our connection, making a fake newspaper cover featuring Minnie and me.

When Minnie finally died many of the author’s connections (including her mother) couldn’t understand her grief—after all, it was just a reptile.

People told me about their dogs and cats who had died, and I thought, it’s easy to love the beautiful, the normal. But what about the gifts of loving the strange, the uncommon, the odd?

Bosses tend to hire people they think are like themselves and get upset when they find out they are actually different—strange, uncommon, odd—and when that happens they would do well to remember the lesson of the porcupines.

Better yet, remember the story of Minnie, because your relationships with your people are the secret sauce that will make you and your company a success—or not.

A strange little figure. Uncommon. Odd. And completely and always beloved.  

Image credit: HikingArtist

Wally Bock writes one of the few blogs under the “leadership” banner that I like, mostly because he writes common sense, keeps it simple and (usually) sees leadership through a lens similar to my own.

In a recent post Wally writes about people.

People are emotional. Some economists write like they think it’s not so. Some philosophers think it’s bad. But it’s the way we are. Our emotions affect everything we do and every choice we make.

People are perceptive and insightful. We notice things and reach conclusions without the need for advanced programming.

People are creative. Human beings are natural idea generators. Just let us show up and watch us go.

People are both consistent and inconsistent. As a species we’re pretty predictable. Once we’re past young adulthood, our previous behavior is a good guide to our future behavior. But individually we’re a source of constant surprise.

People have knowledge. Knowledge is information plus context. On a good day, we can generate wisdom.

People have relationships. They are a source of strength and support and insight. They are also a source of biases.

People have lives. We have a life at work and a life at home and a host of other lives. They are all in play all the time.

That post reminded me of an ancient Cathy comic from the Eighties in which a computer salesman tells Cathy he knows hardware and software, but isn’t fluent in wetware.

Unfortunately, a lot of managers aren’t as fluent in wetware as they need to be to generate high levels of success for both their team and themselves.

For that matter, people in general aren’t always wetware aware, let alone fluent.

However, they seem to be both fluent and aware when it comes to meware.

The problem is that meware won’t raise productivity or drive innovation; it won’t produce responsible, well-rounded kids or create viable relationships.

When it comes to life, wetware is really all that matters, whether professionally or personally.

Flickr image credit: ThisParticularGreg

“We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.” –Stephen Covey

Think about it.

You assume people will do the right thing when faced with choices.

You assume the visions presented by your leaders are honest, true and in your best interest.

You assume your religious leaders practice what they preach.

You further assume that they will protect you and yours when their own go off the rails.

You assume your spouse/partner/friend will like the movie/book/people that you like.

You assume your team will tackle work/projects in the same way you do.

But for any of these assumptions to be true, all the people involved would have to have exactly the same MAP and experience that you have—which is impossible.

And that is what you want to remember the next time you find yourself assuming.

Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjhughes/266394830/