So I don’t often get any emails, but I have that feature turned on for my feedburner feed so I get do get some, but i’d rather have comments - turned it off - snap. My 10 Tips for dealing with the fact that you will never leave your job post has received 3 emails and NOT from 3 people I know, so I thought I would follow up on it. Each of them referenced the “Greening Your Own Grass” concept - weird I thought, because sometimes I’m just cheese, which was the intent. So like any good opportunist, I googled the term and it appears there’s no obvious content around this, so what the heck. It even has got a kitschy pop psychology ring to it.
I went out looking online for ideas, since I haven’t thought the concept much more than cheesy bullet I created. So I decided to extend the concept to support the hiring requirements of democracy, an online entity of some sort in the marketing sector, but I changed them a little, to fit the context of greening.
“The ability to unlearn.” - After you are in a business for a while take the opportunity to engage new kids on the block and get their input. A refreshing view is always a good thing, plus you might find something simple which could add significant value.
“The desire to add value.” - In principle this is the enjoy what you do concept with a little Locke thrown in. Don’t become a pass-thru entity. Routing work “packets” isn’t a job, it’s a network appliance . A router is cheap, replaceable and boring.
“The imagination of a child.” Creativity is the first thing to go after being in a role for a while. Wake up and be excited about trying new ways of doing your job. Take 10 minutes a day researching on what you do and find out what others like you have done - repackaging is still creative, if not fully original.
“A global perspective.” - This is one of those onion concepts - first layer is understand the big picture, identify your ability to impact the big picture and to deliver. The other is more literally - understand your connection to supporting the changing market place, which is going global.
Soul. While the democracy list takes a jab at James Blunt, it’s about identifying how you can find your corporate flow. Perfect balance of challenge and capabilities.
So as I think about Greening YOUR Own grass, is about finding your corporate flow. Flow is basic chart, which most marketing and tech folks should be able to interpret. I first discovered the construct of Flow in a Leisure Lifestyle course during undergrad, these diagrams come from a person who synthesized some chap named Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presentation in Sydney on 17 March 1999…
So this Flow thing just might work to start the greening. So keep a hiring attitude and a desire to find your flow in the workplace. There’s $.02 on something I never thought I would post on, my Leisure class.
So I have this quote in my relevant quotes slideshows:
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.” - Dave Barry
So I got to thinking - what makes a meeting productive? so i have the four maxims on having effective meetings. Very often meetings end up being general discussions, rather than action oriented or goal driven. To avoid that, just try and not be part of the problem, we can’t impact other peoples’ meeting modes, only our own. So I thought I would put some meeting maxims together. Let’s just synchronize on maxim:
max·im [mak-sim] –noun
1. an expression of a general truth or principle, esp. an aphoristic or sententious one: the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. 2. a principle or rule of conduct.
So here are my 4 meeting maxims:
Manage the meeting: the management of the meeting starts at the invite. Identify attendees that can drive to closure the purpose of a meeting or those that need briefing. During the meeting address the agenda and begin the meeting on time and frame expectations, the situation and the goal of the next N# of minutes. Provide background material and context in the invite.
A Single Item: Have meetings with a single purpose. An Update meeting, literally only updating on activities. Have a session on a single decision, not the follow on concepts or tactics. Often meeting drift into next steps, additional topic extensions and general scope creep. A single topic scenario:
Should we Pursue Project X?
The decision/purpose of the meeting is the pursuit of the project, not the tactics or plan. Don’t meeting creep into what to do on project X, keep it to what you should pursue - why, who and how is a different meeting.
Stay Topical: Meetings are not a social event, while I know it may make the meeting more interesting, but the water cooler, cube chatter and general hallway drive-by’s should be used for catch up and trivia. If you stay focused, you may get done ahead of time and be able to get back to the business and avoid a time killing event
Have the [tag]Meeting[/tag]: Bring your opinions, facts and willingness to engage and contribution to the discussion. Very often meetings, don’t really happen. I mean everyone shows up, or you start late or you go off topic and ultimately you need another meeting, on the same topic. Have the meeting also means, don’t have a meeting after the meeting about how much the previous meeting didn’t meet expectations or express exceptions not voiced during the meeting. Best to just have the meeting once.
So this is how I look at driving productivity from a meeting, just an idea.
USA Today did a piece that says most people think [tag]middle management[/tag] sucks - more access, more work, more meetings…. Yup and more opportunities, learning and influence on the organization. [tag]Work life balance[/tag] indeed.
So I had a boss once that said “don’t whine - get a new job”, he was full of bumper sticker management - “Your lacking of planning doesn’t make it my emergency” - I mean a real witster, but not necessarily wrong. The salient part is that if you say yes to something and don’t like it - do something else.
A survey referenced in the story concludes essentially 1 out of 4 want to do something else (promotion, life stuff…) This “I need to do something else” phenomenon is not new [tag]Eric Saperston[/tag]’s movie [tag]the Journey[/tag] influenced lots of kids to do something else. I’m not convinced that this disdain with “what you are doing” is a middle management thing - more of a life thing.
Middle management is a place you can thrive and deliver career influence on many folks in the organization and if this isn’t your thing - then be a contributor. The article cites flexibility as an issue, but I think it is a little long on the drama.
Lack of flexibility
Managers such as Raj Nijjer, who oversees a staff of four software test engineers at a software company in Scottsdale, Ariz., are struggling with whether to remain in their jobs. The 29-year-old and his wife recently had a son, and Nijjer says that as a manager, he can’t avail himself of the same flexibility as his staffers. On a recent day off with his baby, a crisis at work erupted, and he had to go in and conduct meetings with his team.
Welcome to the [tag]blackberry lifestyle[/tag]! The real challenge is integrating WORK into life, not LIFE into work. Use your media access to your benefit. Early morning email, late night email and industry web browsing - helps you better understand the organization, industry and confines the impact to a single sitting rather than on going dribbles and drabs which are interjected into your day.
Remember - anything can be done on a bluetooth and a cellular wireless card for your laptop. Its worth it for you to use your own money, if you can’t get from your employer. The right tools for the right life. A crisis can be VERY effectively managed remotely from a bluetooth device. Long lunches, early days and late arrivals are a privilege of the middle management - sorta.
I’m not saying be a slacker, but if you do 50 hours a week, not many people care where it is done - just that as long as it gets done and done well, that’s the key. (I am making the assumption your good at ALL of your time management and good at your job.)
If you actually manage, lead and are organized most jobs in middle management shouldn’t kill your life.
•More work. Middle-management jobs have become more demanding. Technology means middle managers have to do more multitasking and are expected to be accessible to their staffs, a Herculean challenge in the age of globalization. Employees may be spread across the globe, and a manager may have to get up at 3 a.m. to take a call from an employee in another country.
•Generational differences. Baby boomers, born roughly between 1944 and 1964, were reared with the ideal of company loyalty and the notion of a hierarchical career path that included paying dues and gradually ascending the corporate ladder. Middle management was considered a plum assignment that also brought job security.
Yes the world is different and flatter. A 3 am conference call gets you not coming in until noon or a FULL telecommute day. A conference call at 7PM get you home at 3:30. Balance folks.
The other item is due to the emotional investment more middle managers than not, don’t take all their paid time off which doesn’t help for the “I like my job” quotient. Staying at home and doing only 3 hours of work on a PTO day is better than burning it or banking it for the “future”.
Another trick - I’m a fairly wired worker so I go places where it’s plausible that you have no “bars” on the phone - mountains, 3rd world countries…. [tag]Integrate work[/tag] into life and enjoy the middle management opportunity.
A good amount of people in most workplaces work a real day’s work, but there are few/a small handful that believe being a pass-thru entity who provides verbose email updates qualify as work. The visualist is mainly focused on visibility and will eagerly sign up for any action. That’s when the real fun starts.
FAST FORWARD: Meeting end +30 minutes: The visualist stops by the office and meanders his/her way to a discussion on “who might know this” or “who might know that” or “who could”. After the information is divulged in a way that he or she can comprehend - they disappear - so they’re kinda magician’s as well.
Action item due time -30 minutes: Visualist stops by and plays back their assessments of the status, asks for input and thoughts around next steps. You give it up and - WHOOSH - gone like a phantom.
Status Meeting -12 minutes: Some how in the time you chatted a 3 page missive is sent which is effectively only 3 bullets of update, 2 bullets of next steps and a bunch of “here’s how tough it was” and “thanks to xxxx”. Ah the visualist value add - bloated communication, kudos and poor word choice.
Meeting: He or she boastfully brings in their update printed and reads it, like they aren’t sure they know it outside of the script.
So the fun part with this type of self-proclaimed leader starts when you go for the details. Go into the details, he or she will need to publicly engage the person who did the work or state they need to follow up with the work doer for additional validation and clarity, after fumbling towards an answer.
The other slightly mean thing to do is to send them off to the wrong people, this only works with short deadlines. Or goof with them on next steps… So while the stuck series speaks to leadership and middle management influence, the visualist is typically a climber who believes they are a leader. I mean they typically are in the office early.
These people typically think note taking and action management with the leadership is leadership. Some time’s note taking is just note taking. Typically these peoples ego’s will provide a quick burn from which only a phoenix will rise.
It takes all kinds of leadership styles and ameoba is generally a kind, well intention and fairly good manager with limited creativity. To just baseline on the core object which is the metaphor for this leader:
a•moe•ba also a•me•ban.Any of various one-celled aquatic or parasitic protozoans of the genus [tag]Amoeba[/tag] or related genera, having no definite form and consisting of a mass of protoplasm containing one or more nuclei surrounded by a flexible outer membrane. It moves by means of pseudopods.
So it also is important to understand pseudopods:
pseu•do•pod(sōō’də-pŏd’)n.A temporary projection of the cytoplasm of certain cells, such as phagocytes, or of certain unicellular organisms, especially amoebas, that serves in locomotion and [tag]phagocytosis[/tag].
So the metaphor is a simplistic non-committal group thinker who just kinda hovers as a key activity.When experiencing an ameba event, typically it involve a fairly large group of folks from extended groups, your not sure why he/she is there, but you can’t miss ‘em because they took a seat at the middle of the table.
The other characteristic which is a little odd, this person schedule no meetings, in fact you probably can’t even remember the last meeting or email you received of from this person outside of the dog pile congratulations email streams which happen over a minor accomplishment.
So we have an effective non-entity.This person will wildly support any decision which has a clear majority and remain silent with anything below 70/30. (fair weather golfer) Once the momentum is clear in a discussion, this person will emphatically agree! The amoeba will also be the last person to comment in a discussion. This person actually allows other functional to drive innovation into their own group which provides an exclamation to their passive reality.Bad Leaders Hover!
So how do you deal with this archetype?Just remember the amoeba is a survivor, in fact that’s all they ever do (embrace the metaphor).Another key point to remember is when dealing with an amoeba is no one likes the mean kid and the bar for mean with this leader is low.
So if you can’t go head to head with this simplistic leader, use a mirror.Embrace the ameba’s view of the world and partner to develop an understanding of the processes and key metrics to deliver increased visibility through your own hovering in their group.Come up with improvement ideas and general observations to help improve the effectiveness of the group. The cool thing is if they invite you in – then you can do anything, so add some value!
A piece built around the “all the accountability, but none of the authority” reality of being a product manager. A little long, but still interesting and insightful.
In 1776 in The Wealth of Nations, [tag]Adam Smith[/tag] wrote that the needs of producers should be considered only with regard to meeting the needs of consumers. While this philosophy is consistent with the [tag]marketing concept[/tag], it would not be adopted widely until nearly 200 years later.
So [tag]PowerPoint[/tag] is the core medium of marketers, we are asked to give presentations all the time. Sometimes it’s a prospect presentation, some times the executive team or to your reports. Did you know that most EVERYTHING can be effectively explained in 5 steps. The 5 Step process has it’s roots in P&G and is a great platform for communication. The five step can be used for memos, collateral or even wedding proposals. So here is the 5 step framework:
1. Background. Why are you here? Only baseline info in the Background - this is the basis for discussion, basically just the facts or mutually agreed to corporate/industry myths. In a prospect presentation it’s the problem/need.
2. The Idea or Recommendation. What are you proposing? This is typically one sentence, but I cheat some times.
3. How it Works. The details. In addition to How, also What, Who, When, Where. Another way to look at this is plan.
4. Key Benefits. Often these tie to the actions in how this works.
5. Next Steps. Who has to do what and by when for this to happen?
Often when giving a 5 step to the uninitiated they often don’t believe you will proceed against the five steps. It’s a little odd, but it happens. It represents a series of talking points and necessary supporting data or metrics to drive the decision process. The [tag]5 Step Presentation[/tag] can be more than 5 slides, but most things can be done in 5 slides.
The Collaborator sorta sounds like a super hero - not so much, but I can see the spandex garb in my head, so I’ll run with it.
The collaborator is an interesting [tag]leadership[/tag] persona - on the surface it is a label, mode of operation and general concept which is good - right up until something requires accountability. So let me state - a product, deliverable or just plain anything is just plain better with help. In fact a group can always produce a better product, but there always lingers the [tag]group think[/tag] risk, which ignored, not understood or believed to be a myth by the collaborator. Think Abilene paradox! - agreement is a bear.
Usually the better product is produced through iterations and review, rather than sharing the creative process, model development or production activity. Everyone has a role and value they bring to the table, but the leadership super hero - The Collaborator - believes ALL phases of delivery are best done with 12 people (4 on a dial in number, 6 people in the room and 2 following up after the fact via email). While with a geologist, I just put together some diagnosis concepts, the collaborator requires a little more work to flesh out and help folks understand how to thrive in a collaboration lifestyle - err “workstyle”.
So in a collaborative reality the delivery time lines are COMPLETELY manageable and by manageable - I mean lot’s of headroom, but due to the number of meetings - the whole thing is a little over complicated from a production process perspective. The meetings become a great opportunity to get input - in fact this leader prefers volume of input to validity of input. So in the model - the more commentary the better, I find myself becoming a play-by-play analyst of my daily work life (update emails, update meetings, update blog posts..) and acknowledging each item of input through a series of “let me know sure I fully understand - you believe <insert random input provided by a direct report of the collaborator>” or rapid response email requesting more quality insights which can help delay the next rev of uninspiring delivery.
This is the best leadership model to survive/hide in, all you need is input and participation in the process, since the team will develop all parts of the deliverable. In fact, it is almost preferred to start with a framework, rather than a draft of something - since no single person is accountable in this model. The model by design makes EVERY work product a success and while I never participated/witnessed, I suspect there are [tag]group hugs[/tag] if I was able to attend all of the typical 3 hour review meeting.
Facts, stats and logic are your magic bullet under this leader persona - in fact if you can present the facts in the way that the leader believes it was a product of the team, you WIN and get to participate in future love fests which produce watered down messaging, minimalist risk taking and in general a place to call your own on the Phrog farm.
Jerry Harvey on Phrogs:
All organizations have two essential purposes. One is to produce widgets, glops, and fillips. The other is to turn people into phrogs. In many organizations, the latter purpose takes precedence over the former. For example, in many organizations, it is more important to follow the chain of command than to behave sensibly.
Phrog is spelled with a ph because phrogs don’t like to be known as frogs, and they try to hide their phroginess from themselves and others by transparent means… For one who has been a person, it’s a great come down to be a phrog.
