BETTER THAN IT HAS TO BE

"We're bringing things into this that haven't been developed... we're working with scientists in the Netherlands... all trying to push boundaries, because that's what Michael is all about."

That's not a line from an R&D guy or a New Products engineer; it's from a Wardrobe Designer named Zaldy, talking about his work for Michael Jackson. It's in the recently-released video of the documentary "This Is It." (If you haven't been paying attention, the documentary is made from footage of the rehearsals for what was to be Jackson's touring show.) Watching it got me thinking how fully Jackson fit the profile of great bosses that I've been developing over the past couple of decades. Okay, his personal life was bizarre and misguided, and I suppose that we could say it killed him, but there on stage he was efficient, guided and guiding, a master at work -- not just a master performer, but uplifting manager.

Like all of the great managers I've studied, the ones I came to call "gifted bosses," he was conscious of creating something special. And he made everyone else fully conscious of it, too. There was never a "good enough" moment. Indeed, we get to watch as a choreographer and dancers have a lively exchange on how to properly do a crotch-grab during one dance number, and the choreographer, without irony, explains how a Baryshnikov would have done it.

And, in another scene, we encounter what we must consider another of our Great Moments in Management. Jackson is working with his Musical Director, who plays him a bit of a song. Jackson says, "Pretty good. Pretty good." And that is all it takes for it to be tossed out. Then the Music Director offers a new variation; Jackson opines that the rhythm needs to "simmer"; to which the response is, "Let add a bar. See what we get, simmer-wise." And they experiment till it's just right.

This Is It I love that exchange because it shows what happens when everyone is committed to creating the terrific. "Pretty good" is an insult. It's as if the team leader had said, "It's good enough for other people, but not us." And the team believes it, without question or apology. We see the same spirit when the pyrotechnics guy demonstrates the fireworks above the stage and the Director says, "Can we do that, times ten?" and the answer is, with delight, "Absolutely."

It would be easy for the fireworks tech to say, "Hey, that's what's in the specs" or, bigger picture, to say "Hey, it's just a music concert." That would be as easy as telling Steve Jobs to relax, it's just a music player or cellphone that he's working on. But nowhere in "This Is It" is a hint of that "it's only" thinking. Every crotch-grab is important, every firework, every guitar solo. The Wardrobe Designer I mentioned earlier was working with scientists in the Netherlands on wearable lights. If they weren't there would anyone notice and be disappointed? Of course not. What we see in the documentary, and what I've seen in the best workplaces, is a culture where the work is NOT about the audience/market/customers; it's about taking talent and taking off with it, luring it into the unknown, playing with the extraordinary for the sheer joy of being part of something better than it has to be. And that's exactly what elevates the best business endeavors, the joy of exploration into the frontier: better than it has to be.


©2010 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES SECRETLY HATE YOU, AND VICE VERSA

"I had the meanest boss in the world so I'd call in sick a lot. I would say I had 'female problems.' My boss didn't know I meant her."

-Wendy Liebman

One of the problems with this economy is that if you're lucky enough to have a job, you have to live with the burden of being Lucky To Have a Job. Implicit in being one of the Lucky Ones is "shut up and be grateful", which is no one's first choice in the luck lottery.

Meanwhile, managers themselves keep getting asked to give just a bit more effort, to put in a bit more time. The problem is that they've been doing a bit more, year after year, crisis after crisis for a decade or two. Let's review the math of "just a bit more": If you work 40 hours a week and you're asked to put in an extra ten percent, in ten years time you're at 104 hours (which is 15 hours a day, seven days a week). It's your investments that are supposed to compound, not your workweek. (Compounding uninterest?)

What got me thinking about the dual-stress of the modern workplace was reading the news reports about job satisfaction stats reaching a new low. So I decided it was time to update my pair of lists of boss-employees annoyances. Let's start with the list of employees' frustrations…

REASONS WHY YOUR EMPLOYEES SECRETLY HATE YOU


• Using the word "teamwork" when you really mean "overwork without complaint or compensation."


• Treating kindness as if it were a scary virus that might spread to others – "If I did it for you, I'd have to do it for everyone."


• Calling to "check in."


• Offering distant and vague rewards: "No promises, but something good is coming."


• Complaining about the cost of repairs for your "Beemer."


• Prattling on about being a team when your real goal is to get a big promotion and leave the team behind.


• That face you make.

And, on the other side, let's recall what it is that managers find annoying about their employees…

REASONS WHY YOUR BOSS SECRETLY HATES YOU


• Saying "FINALLY!" to any announcement of a positive change.


• Mistaking a thought for an idea, an idea for a proposal and a proposal for an innovation. (An idea is to an innovation what the sex act is to raising a child.)


• Asking for advice when what you really want is to pass off problems or responsibilities.


• Being miserable but not having the guts to do something about it.


• Pretending not to understand.


• Mistaking the boss for a wealthy and gullible relative.


• Reacting to an attempt to the company doing something nice for employees by saying, "I'd rather they just give us the money it cost."


• That face you make.

What's needed from both sides is to assume the best about the other, even when you know better. Perhaps that's what it means to be a professional: Show up – I mean really show, all in – and force yourself to assume the best (which means you don't get to make that face).

©2010 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

DEWEY OR DON'T WE: ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN MANAGEMENT

"WE HAVE BOOKS ABOUT TV!"


-A sign in the Springfield Library -- the Springfield that's home to Marge and Homer Simpson and family




Today we travel to an unlikely place in search of inspiration for innovation, to a library in Gilbert, Arizona. There we can find the start of a radical notion known in the library world as "The Perry Branch Rebellion."

The Rebellion began with what qualifies as one of our Great Moments in Management. One day in 2006, a boss happened to say to an employee four of the most beautiful words in organizational life: Let's do something special.

Ah, what glory lurks in that little statement! Yet, such a suggestion is spoken rarely; the more common pronouncement is just the opposite, the dreary, "It doesn't have to be anything special" The heart sinks. But a young librarian named Marshall Shore recently recounted for me how one fine day he was asked by Harry Courtright to make a library special. (Perhaps we should also make this a Great Moment in Career Management because when I asked Shore if he'd be amazed at being asked to do something unique, he replied, "I'd developed a reputation for experimentation and innovation, so when they asked me to be involved, it was asking for something new." And there's the career chicken-egg – you have to be known for being special to be asked to be special.)

What Shore did was to seek out locals who did not use the library and ask, Why not? Here again, let us stop and admire: Most people, put in charge of opening a new library branch would seek out librarians and library users – the "experts" – to ask for "input." But, as Shore put it, "I want everyone to use the library so I wanted to see what was stopping people from coming in." He mostly heard two complaints: finding a book using the library numbering system, and the fines.

Given the nature of the economy, he couldn't give up a revenue source, like fines, but he could do something about those little numbers, the Dewey Decimal System that we all learned in school… didn't we all?... yet it's still off-putting to many prospective library users. I suppose it made them think of the crusty old school librarian with the schussing – a serpent-like hissing, come to think of it, the snake in the stacks.

But many of these same non-users of the library claimed to LOVE going to bookstores – ah-ha – and that's how Shore decided to offer up the radical notion of dumping Dewey and going with the topic-grouping familiar to book shoppers.

Imagine the resistance Shore faced. Not from library customers – he knew from survey results that three out of four visitors to the library came in to browse, not to seek out a specific book – but from librarians and staffers, the people who live Dewey, die Dewey. How did Shore overcome their objections?

Get this. It was a new library branch. The Dewey-less system was decided BEFORE the staff was hired. Part of the interviewing process was asking about Dewey. Those who couldn't imagine a library without it simply were not hired.

If you have an idea you want to nurture, don't plant it in the forest of the status quo, place it in a fresh field, away from the old growth. Give it to a new group or try it in an experimental store, surrounded by people who want it there, who want it to thrive.

Which brings us to an IBP (Important Business Principle) with a lovely Zen weightless heft: It's easier to change people than to change people.

©2010 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

A POORLY WRAPPED GIFT

“If only we’d listened to that boy, instead of walling him up in the abandoned coke oven.”
-Montgomery Burns, The Simpsons

I once found myself sitting next to a physician in an auto repair shop’s waiting room. I don’t recall how it came up, but when I mentioned that I used to run a market research company, he brightened, saying, “We started using customer comment cards at our office.” Knowing that early research results can be startlingly helpful, I asked what he’d learned so far. He smiled and shook his head: “We don’t read what people write. The girls just throw the cards away. We only have them out because someone told me that if people have a complaint and can write it down, they’re less likely to file a formal complaint.” Makes you want to write a customer comment on your hand and deliver it straight to his ear-hole, right?

What got me thinking about doctors and customer service was talking with Angie Hicks, of Angie’s List, the consumer ratings service. Her firm’s three-quarters of a million members rate local businesses, and starting last year, they added doctors. Some of those doctors have objected and actually created a waiver for patients to sign stating they will not comment publicly on the doctor’s care. Angie calls this “the equivalent of a gag order” and it certainly tests the gag reflex. I mention it because the waiver is actually a convenient customer service, alerting you upfront that the person you are about to meet is the worst order of creep – the one who knows he or she is a creep and has refused to do anything about it except try to keep word from getting out.

But there are other important things to learn from Angie Hicks, one of the few who is successfully getting people to pay for content on the web. How does she make her service that good?

She keeps a blog at AngiesList.com and in reading some of her entries I found this note: “If you’re in the Columbus, Ohio area, stop by Cup o’ Joe in German Village tomorrow between 1 and 2:30 for a cup of coffee and a chat. I’ll be waiting!”

When we spoke, I asked Angie about that little invitation and she explained that she has such meetings three or four times a year, in different cities, usually in coffee shops, with all local members receiving an email invitation. These events don’t draw large crowds – 20 or 30 people is considered a nice turnout – but perhaps that’s better, because she doesn’t go out to speak, but to listen. And listening may be the primary customer service skill.

One of the things Angie hears from members is how to serve them better. Angie said, “For instance, one person explained that she was caring for elderly parents in Florida and wanted information on services in that city. So we added an option for members to add a city, at a discounted rate.”

Was the member with the elderly parents complaining to Angie? I suspect that she thought it was, but that’s not what the wise executive hears. And that brings us full circle, to what the doctor who threw away unread his customer comment cards did not understand: A complaint is a present in homely wrapping paper. Tear off the wrapping and there’s a suggestion inside. Unwrap that and there’s a market waiting to be served. Unwrap that and there’s a check with your name on it.


***

© 2009, King Features

IN PRAISE OF THE TYRANT

”Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
-Steve Jobs

The English literary critic, John Collins, once opined that you should “Never trust a man who speaks well of everybody.”

When it comes to organizations, I’d like to propose a related standard: “Never trust a manager who likes everything you do.”

What got me thinking about creative standards was reading the charming, lively and useful biography of David Ogilvy, The King of Madison Avenue, by Kenneth Roman, a former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. What impressed me most about Ogilvy’s involvement in the creative process was not his own copywriting – Roman tells me that Ogilvy had a dozen years of generating solid ad copy, but then took to calling himself “an extinct volcano” – but how he became the yardstick of quality.

Roman encountered the Ogilvy & Mather agency’s standards of excellence within a few months of starting work there when he was called away from dinner by a phone call from one of the agency employees who was working on a two-page magazine ad. Roman was told that the pages were too far apart, leaving an eighth of an inch of extra white space between them. The problem could be easily remedied, but doing so would cost $300 for new printing plates. Roman describes what transpired next:

“I agreed that the fix made sense but pointed out that this was not the main campaign, only a coupon ad, and this was just a test market. The change could be made later. ‘And the client has already approved it,’ I added.

“The reproving response was swift. ‘David says (pause) it’s never too late to improve and ad – even after the client has approved it.’ ‘Spend the 300 bucks,’ I agreed. Like the Church, the agency had standards.

Roman’s biography is replete with instances of Ogilvy’s standards lifting the organization. One former employee who went on to become a best-selling author, Peter Mayle, recalled getting his ad copy returned by Ogilvy heavily marked with red pencil including this bit of marginalia:

“Quack-quack. Belles lettres. Omit.”

On another occasion, when Ogilvy feared the entire agency standards were slipping, he wrote a series of memos under the heading “Escape From Dullsville.”

Roman tells me that he is often asked if working for such a demanding legend meant that Ogilvy was “scary.” His response: “No! He was fun and he was funny.”

So Ogilvy was charming… AND demanding. A lovable tyrant. Like many of the best leaders, he was feared in the best way – the employees didn’t fear him, they feared letting him down, feared failing to live up to his standard’s and the agency reputation.

We all need that fear, especially in an economy that is so bad it can scare the good fear away. It’s tempting for managers to try to make up for tough times by being soft, by being cheerleaders. But the best bosses understand that this is no time to go smiley-facing mediocrity. If you have a quality tyrant where you work, be grateful. If you don’t then it up to you to ask yourself the hard questions and to know when the right answer is that you’re wrong… Quack, quack.

***

© 2009, King Features

SINGING IN THE RAIN

“The point of living is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.”
-Peter Ustinov

Assume for a minute you are the Guardian Angel of the Economy. It’s your job to guide the economy the way a film director guides a movie – you aren’t in the movie, but it’s your movie.

So along comes 2008: you’ve directed scene after scene, year after year, of economic expansion. So what is it time for? Something bad. That’s how plots work – hey, that’s how the world works. The garden must have a snake or there’s no story.

“Why,” we whine, childlike, “can’t our movie just go from jolly scene to jollier scene?” Because at some point we must test the characters in the movie, anneal them in a confrontation with disappointment and failure and in so doing, reveal their strengths and weaknesses… reveal them, which is to say, reveal character. (Notice the wisdom of the language here – “characters” and “character” both derive from the Greek “kharakter,” which is “a stamping tool.”)

Sure, the economy looks bleak. The stimulus package was old politics and, sigh, not all that stimulating. And that means no easy solution. So, ready or not, it’s character time.

Which brings us to the notion of making 2009 a great year. The very idea comes across as happy talk, but no, what I want to talk about is being handed the opportunity to separate “net worth” and “self-worth.”

Recently I spoke to a convention of Florida real estate agents. These were people who have faced one of the worst markets in the country, and for years they have watched their incomes plummet. I asked them this question: “How could this be your best year yet?” It took awhile to get past defining “best year” strictly by income – nearly no one could anticipate winning a game played by those rules. However, we soon had developed a marvelously robust list of ways to turn a dreary economic run into a time of triumph. For instance…

- 2009 is the year in which I started taking care of myself, and that while my youth is gone, my youthfulness isn’t.

- 2009 was the year I put time and energy behind my belief that it’s family that really matters – this is the year that we became closer than ever.

- 2009 is the year that I created the time to do volunteer work – I couldn’t contribute as much money as I have in the past, but instead I gave of myself, and discovered how much I have to give and how much remains to be given.

- 2009 is the year in which I began to experiment with how I do my work – I became more open-minded, made myself more tech savvy, and experimented with innovations, all making me more valuable to my employers and customers.

- 2009 was a time to re-examine my relationship to “stuff,” letting me peel away the materialism of the past decades, to discover the “joy of getting rid” as an antidote to acquisitiveness.

- 2009 was a chance to test my inner resolve and my spirituality – I learned that, given the chance, I can stand up to a bad economy, smile, and ask, “What have you got to teach me?”

Help yourself to a few of the above, add a few of your own, let me know how it goes.

2009 is the year of character. It’s as good a movie as you make it.

**

© 2009, King Features

What Works Better Than Layoffs - The Speech I Wish More CEOs Would Give

"It's a great time to be Cisco."


That line came from John Chambers, CEO of Cisco. Despite declining sales, Chambers told CNBC that his company had no plans for layoffs, but rather, had moved $500 million into a fund to pursue new growth opportunities.

(For a similar, more recent interview: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/videos/fy09q2_earnings_020509.html)

The same day that I saw Chambers interviewed, I interviewed the CEO of a billion-dollar company who had just announced layoffs. However, unlike Chambers’ Cisco, this CEO’s company was booming, with sales up nearly 20%. So why the layoffs? Because they’d projected an increase of sales of more than 25%, so 20% was a disappointment. Talking to the CEO, I believe that layoffs actually cost MORE than letting the company grow into the larger staff, but the CEO felt the need to react and layoffs have become the knee-jerk reaction of executives everywhere.

Sure, there are situations where layoffs are inevitable, but I believe many could be avoided. Here’s how I wish executives would think about layoffs, expressed as The Speech I Wish CEOs Would Give…

[Speaking to all employees] As you know, our sales revenues are down. I know that you must be worried – fear is a rational response when the media are full of images from the Great Depression. Indeed, everyone is expecting me to announce layoffs – stockholders and other investors want me to do something – anything -- to help keep profits from declining, and layoffs are tangible evidence that a CEO is responding. However, I am announcing today that we will NOT be having layoffs anytime soon.

When companies proclaim that they are going to cut staff, here’s what usually happens. Some of those “cuts” are merely positions that were put in the budget and have yet to be filled, so eliminating them doesn’t actually reduce current spending, just future budgets. Next, and more importantly, the cuts tend to be among the least expensive employees, especially entry-level employees. Thus, should you succeed in reducing the headcount by 10%, you’ve actually cut the spending on personnel by less than 5%, perhaps only two or three percent.

Further, total spending on salaries is just a fraction of overall costs; in our case, one-quarter of total expenses. So if you announce a ten percent lay-off, you reduce one-quarter of expenses by a few percentage points, meaning that you succeeded in cutting costs by one or two percent.

And what is the cost of that cost savings? You have fearful employees, hunkering down, devoting much of the internal conversation organization to worry. That’s not what we hired you to think about.

So today, instead of announcing staff cuts, I am asking you to do join with me in doing the cutting – cutting waste out of our system. My goal is that we find ways to reduce costs by 10%. This will have a financial impact five times greater than cutting the staff by 10%. Further, I want you to find new efficiencies that allow us to take out expenses while better serving our customers. In other words, I’m asking you to be creative, and for that I need confident, bold employees.

If we do this right, and do this together, we will become a better, faster organization. Together we can go without layoffs. Instead of worrying about who will stay and go, I invite you to join me in worrying about how we will become even more useful to each other and to our customers. Instead of getting rid of some of you, I’m counting on all of you – now go out and prove me right.

**

©2009 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.