Category: Reflection

I got a couple very nice emails in the last 24 hours asking if I was OK because I had not posted in about a month.  I appreciate the concern, and was actually quite shocked to realize that it had been so long.  The reason I have not been posting is that I have been hyper-focused on getting a complete draft of my next book done.  For better or worse, when I get close to finishing something like that, I get so obsessed that I don't even realize how much I ignore other things. I am happy to report that, on just Tuesday, I sent a complete draft to my editor, and while it will still need some work, it is getting pretty close to being done.

I will write about the book more here, and let you know the title soon (we are close to settling on it, but not quite).  And given the strangeness of publishing, the book isn't scheduled to come out until September 2010.  They are also talking about linking the publication of the paperback edition of The No Asshole Rule to that launch, which sounds kind of fun to me.  But one thing I would like to say is that, in writing the book, I kept finding that the comments you all wrote on my blog and sent me in emails had a big impact on my understanding of what the best and worst bosses do, and also provided some fantastic examples (like this one) for the book.  So although I have not been blogging, I have been thinking of the folks who read this blog and write on it a lot.

I expect to get back to blogging regularly again in the next week or so, and once again, thanks for the concern and for all you have taught me.

Bob

I have had at least half-a-dozen interactions with people over the last couple weeks where they didn't quite seem to believe that I write all my blog posts, articles, and books myself.  I would repeat several times to them, "Really, I write it myself," and yet they still did not quite seem to believe me.

For better or worse, unless I quote someone else, I write every word in this blog, my articles, and my books.  That is one of the reasons that you will sometimes see typos and misspellings here — I am prone to making them and bad at seeing them.  And when there is an editor involved — and good ones help a lot — I love when they help and I battle back like a pit bull when I think they are making it worse.  The key thing for me is the "voice," especially when I write an article or book. I not only edit myself for content and flow, I am always reading the words over and over again to make sure that it sounds like me, like the way I would say something — the words, the tone, and so on.  Some editors get annoyed at me when, after revising one of my sentences, I reject it because "I would never say something like that," but I think that is the most legitimate reason of all to reject a revision.

Earlier in my career, when I first started writing for broader audiences rather than just for peer-reviewed academic journals, I was initially a bit shocked to discover that many of the management books and articles out there have ghostwriters whose names never appear, sometimes appear as a second author, or more often, as the mysterious "with."  The first time I learned this was when Jeff Pfeffer and I wrote The Smart Talk Trap (I linked to the HBR version, but here is a free video that explains the point) for the Harvard Business Review. Our editor was Suzy Wetlaufer (now Suzy Welch, yes, married to Jack), Suzy asked me: "are you the author or the writer?"  I had no idea what she meant, and she had to explain — as she giggled about my naivete — that many HBR articles and management books are written by people whose names never appear on the list of authors.  In fact, Suzy told me that she had ghostwritten management best-sellers herself, but wouldn't tell me which ones!  As with "The Smart Talk Trap,"  I still write my articles myself (or with co-authors, who do the writing too, notably Jeff Pfeffer).  Yes, sometimes my stuff is edited –sometimes heavily (My recent BusinessWeek essay was the most heavily edited piece I have written in years). Sometimes I love the editing, such as Suzy's suggestion of "The Smart Talk Trap" title. Or my editor Rick Wolff's work on The No Asshole Rule — Rick really gets the voice I try to sustain.  And my favorite editor over the years is Julia Kirby at the Harvard Business Review, who has done four or five articles of mine — ranging from the original essay that led to The No Asshole Rule (called "More Trouble Than They Are Worth") to an HBR article that I just finished called "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy," which will appear in a few weeks in the June, 2009 HBR.

I am very picky about dealing with editors. Even the best editors. This partly comes from the years I served as a reviewer and editor of academic journals, where I drove researchers crazy by insisting that they write more clearly.  In retrospect, it was probably a bit obnoxious of me to suggest to several renowned academics that they need to read Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and to go through their manuscripts and complain every time they wrote in the passive voice.  But I apply the same obsessive standards to myself.  I drove Julia and another HBR editor a bit crazy over the wording of the final sentence of the boss article.  But it was also fun, in part, because they all had the same obsession with language that I do.

I find that the editors who make things worse take away my voice and my style. Indeed,  I blogged (they called us "thought leaders") at Harvard Business Online for several months (see here, they are still up), but –even though it was a blog — I had an editor there who repeatedly dulled the emotion and sharpness of my arguments, cut what he saw as digressions, and told me again and again that my posts were "too long and too emotional" for a "corporate blogger" (He is no longer there).  Indeed, he edited me far more heavily — as I pointed out to him — than any editor I have ever had for my four books and about as heavily as HBR editors do for articles that appear in the magazine (but Suzy, Julia, and also Bronwyn Fryer understand my voice better, and arguably, have helped my strengthen — rather than destroy and obscure — my voice).  And as for length (as I told this editor many times) I sometimes write posts that are longer than other bloggers on purpose.  It is who I am — and I don't believe that any post over about 500 words is automatically too long. 

So, to return to the main point, yes I appreciate and benefit from good editing (even heavy editing) and I battle like crazy against bad editing (and sometimes lose).  Certainly, there are drawbacks to my style, and I worry like crazy about ways to improve my style (especially in books and articles).  But whatever you read under my name, I've written and struggled over every sentence.

P.S. My memory that Charles Barkley told the press he hadn't read his own book was partly wrong — it was worse than I recalled as he disagreed with what his ghostwriter wrote and used that as an explaination for why he was misquoted in his own book.  I dug up the story.  It turns out that, when reporters started asking him about some controversial quotes in his forthcoming book Outageous, he disagreed with some of the nasty things said about teammates, notably Manute Bol. The 1991 story also indicates that he tried to stop publication of the book, but after realizing it was too late because Simon & Schuster had already printed 60,000 copies, he told the press "There are going to be a couple of things (wrong). The majority of the book is correct, and I stick by it."  I wonder, if he hadn't read the book, how he knew the other stuff was right!

This post is by John Maeda and Becky Bermont at Harvard Business Press Online.   It is very helpful for understanding the disconnects that sometimes happen between academics and people with real jobs — we wonder why, while those of you with real jobs wonder what to do, for example!  Lovely stuff. Here is a taste, there is more.

In
academia there is the luxury of time. Thus when a thought might start,
it doesn't necessarily have to finish. You can begin … and not
necessarily end. It is this kind of open-endedness that makes academia
a necessary space of free thought in the world. The free space is a
necessary inefficiency designed into the academic system so that new
thoughts can form in the most productive manner — which is through the
natural reinforcement of the passage of time.

In
industry we like to hear the virtues of "execution" and "getting things
done." Got an idea? Set a target deadline. When you're done, package
the result and move onto the next task. Don't think. Just do. And keep
on doing. One of my best friends at Samsung epitomizes this approach to
his life at work. And I admire it, and emulate it in things that I do
with my own work

.

One of my students sent me a link to this story.  This guy plays Warcraft III, which isn't as popular as it once was in the states, but remains a favorite among professionals, and outside the U.S. — apparently especially in Korea.  Here is the lead tot he story:

"22 year old Jae Ho 'Moon' Jang, a Korean WarCraft 3 professional gamer who was dismissed from the MyM team just over a week ago, was rumoured to have negotiated a contract with WeMade FOX,a
Korean gaming organisation.The rumour was confirmed yesterday with Moon
signing a 700 million Korean Won contract (£350,000 GBP, €390,000 EUR
or $470,000 USD) over three years. There were thousands of people
present during the signing, where he also was presented with his new
uniform, the typical WeMade FOX colours: green, white and black.'

This isn't exactly what top professional athletes get paid, but still pretty impressive.  The gaming business, as most of you know, is huge … bigger than the movie business by some calculations.

I haven't talked about Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog in awhile, but it remains one of my favorite blogs, for admittedly selfish reasons — whenever I read it, I feel a little better about myself and feel like I learned something.  Gretchen blends stories, opinions, and research with an authentic and rather charming writing voice that is a delight.  I think her message — look at her 12 commandments — is especially helpful during these tough times.

I especially liked her eight tips for dealing with criticism on Wednesday, which I need to keep mind. See the details here:

1. Listen to what a critic is saying.

2. Don’t be defensive. 

3. Don’t fire back by criticizing your critic.

4. Delay your reaction.

5. Explain honestly the reason for your actions.

6. Admit your mistakes.

7. Explain what you’ve learned.

8. Enjoy the fun of failure.

I especially like the last one. Diego and I talk about how "failure sucks but instructs," I think Gretchen is reaching for a higher level of happiness. 

One more thought on happiness, I was talking with a colleague a few weeks about the research on creativity and emotion.  I will eventually write a longer post on this, but the upshot is that "Don't Worry, be Happy" is a great song, but for creativity and decision-making, the best approach is probably "Do worry, be happy,"  or being a "Happy worrier" is the path to excellence.

Happy New Year, by the way.

 
A lot of people have joked about the horrible and hollow language that people use in business. There is the game of bullshit bingo for those who want to pass the time in boring meetings (pictured above). And a couple years back I blogged about Polly LaBarre's brilliant term to define the entire mess, jargon monoxide. Lots of business terms bother me, largely because, although they once actually meant something, they now seemed to be used by people who don't actually know what they mean or the phrases are just plain worn-out.  I have used a trick for years when I suspect that people are spewing out jargon but don't know what they are talking about. I ask them to define their words — it is amazing how often they can't do it.  I still remember the executive who got mad it me years ago when I asked him to define a "simultaneously loose-tight organization," which was from Peters and Waterman's In Search of Excellence.  I think it means, essentially, that management tries to control a few critical things but leaves a lot of other things unconstrained.  But I am still not entirely sure and that touchy manager had no idea what he was talking about.

In any event, I have been especially annoyed lately by three phrases, in part, because I keep hearing them used by students who have limited, if any, business experience and in ways that seem misguided.  

Leverage: This is of course what got a lot of homeowners with sub-prime loans and their banks in trouble.  But the way I keep hearing it used, at least is by people who want to do as little as possible and get as much back as possible.  This can be a good way to make money, but last year a student used it to explain why he was doing so little work and his team was doing so much, he called it "leveraging my team members' talents."  A pretty fancy way to say he was lazy as hell.

Value Added: This term is based on a noble concept, that one's efforts or ideas should add value.  We all want that.  But I keep hearing it used as a euphemism for "what is in it for me?"  It hasn't happened to me, but a number of colleagues in business schools have had students come up after a class, announce the amount that they had paid for the last hour or two of class (perhaps a couple hundred bucks?) and then say "the value added for my time isn't worthwhile."  I am not arguing that people should waste their time, but as I have noted before, viewing time as money does very bad things to your mind — it turns people into selfish jerks.

Core Competence: This is a word that is just plain worn out, although it seemed to mean something when it appeared in the great book, Competing for the Future.  But the meaning has been squeezed out of it, and while doing what you are good at, and leaving the rest to others, is often a wise move in business and life, it still grates on my nerves because I have heard it used in ways that Hamel & Prahalad could never have imagined or wanted.  I tend to use it only in sarcastic ways now, such as when I claimed that GM' core management competence was explaining why they couldn't change, the "no we can't" mindset.

These words sound like fingernails on the chalkboard to me… which ones drive you crazy or which should be banished?

I was reading a great chapter on wisdom by Karl Weick (in here) and ran into a great quote from R.D. Laing,

"The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice that how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds."

One of the best defenses against failing to notice is to surround ourselves with people who think differently than we do, know different things than we do, and therefore notice different things as they  travel through life — and to listen to them.  And when they don't speak-up, we need to stop and ask them what they are noticing that is wonderful, beautiful, strange, seems out of place, or is wrong.  Unfortunately, too many of us seek to be around people who are just like us in as many ways as possible.

Hal Varian is, among other things, Google's Chief Economist, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, a New York Times columnist, and author of many books including Information Rules.  He is also been around a long time and seen many ups and downs in the economy.  I found it comforting when he reminded a group of us (I am paraphrasing): "When things seem really good, it is never as good as it seems.  And when things seem really bad, it is never as bad it seems."

Given the recent madness, I hope he is right