Work Matters

  • Asian Leadership: A New Book With Dave Ulrich

    9780071084307

    Last March, I joined Dave Ulrich in Singapore to lead an "executive roundtable" with the CEOs and heads of human resources from seven companies, which was convened by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower. The participants included executives from DBS (a bank),  Far East Organization (a real estate company), Procter & Gamble, MediCorp (Singapore's leading media company, they own everything from newspapers to TV stations), General Electric,  IDEO, and IBM.  We were also joined by three thought leaders: Debashis Chatterjee, Michael Jenkins, and Howard Thomas. 

    We had two days of intense conversation about the challenges of leading large companies, with a particular focus on the challenges faced in Asia.  One reason that the conversation was so focused was that those of us at the gathering had committed to produce an edited book, which was to be published by September.  I was of the opinion that this was an impossible task, but Dave Ulrich (a masterful leader) had done it once before, and he assured me it was possible because of the great managerial skill of the folks at the Ministry of Manpower.  I was skeptical, and as regular readers of this blog will recall, I was also distracted because I had open heart surgery in April.  Indeed, I tried to resign from the project a couple times, but Dave, and the amazing Arina Koh and Serene Teh from the Ministry (to whom we dedicated the book) talked me off the ledge. 

    To my amazement, not only did we finish this edited volume on time, I think it makes a nice contribution. It is called Asian Leadership: What Works and it is for sale at Amazon in the states.  It isn't destined to change the world, but it does have some nice cases and commentaries.  One of my favorite pieces is "Banking the Asian Way" by DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, which describes the determination of one DBS to meet with an important customer in the middle of a cyclone. I also was quite taken with the pieces by Stuart Dean of GE and Cordelia Chung of IBM on the extreme lengths that these two huge firms go through to develop and assess leaders — and with how both showed that being a solo superstar doesn't cut it in either place.

    The thought leaders also wrote some lovely pieces too; for example, Michael Jenkins' piece on the company vs. national culture was intriguing, especially because we had a lengthy conversation during the gathering where most executives argued that company culture was more important for success than national culture. I was also taken Debashis Chatterjee's piece on change, as he made a strong case that, especially in Asian settings, imagination and taking a long-term time perspective were ore important for success than doing careful analysis and choosing "the best" decision in many cases.

    I could go on and on, as the book contains 30 short pieces organized around 8 themes:

    1. Creating Customer-centric actions

    2. Implementing Strategy

    3. Getting Past the Past

    4. Governing Through Decision-Making

    5. Inspiring Collective Meaning

    6. Capitalizing on Capability

    7. Developing Careers

    8. Generating Leaders

    Even after doing this book, I am far from an expert on Asian leadership, but I did learn a bit more about this vexing topic from the process and it also helped me understand a bit more about what it takes to be a good boss in any culture. I also enjoyed working with Dave Ulrich a great deal, as we have complementary skills; he is much better at organizing ideas than I am and is skilled at dealing with my diverse and often disconnected thoughts.  Dave was also enormously supportive of my personal challenges during the production of the book, which I greatly appreciated.

  • The Leadership and Influence Summit: Its Free, Online, and Happening Now

    I was invited to be part of this cool online event and I am most impressed with the quality of the content and speakers.  It was originally scheduled to run just two days, but it has been  so successful that it has been extended until November 30th.  Check it out here: You need to register, but it is free.  There are about 30 short talks (6 to 20 minutes) from thought leaders including Robert Cialdini, Charlene Li, Tim Sanders, Jim Kouzes, Marshall Goldmith, Stan Slap, and on and on.  The diversity and quality are pretty impressive.  I hope you enjoy it.

    P.S. I contributed my AlwaysOn keynote, which you can also see here.

  • I hand out copies of your book like valium pills

    This quote is from an email I got from the head of a "conflict resolution" office at a large organization. She was talking about The No Asshole Rule.  I wonder if the combination of the book and valium would be especially effective under some conditions!

  • Narcissism and Creativity: Intriguing and Troubling Findings

    A trio of researchers — Jack Goncalo and Sharon Kim of Cornell University and Frank Flynn of Stanford — have done a pair of experiments on narcissism and creativity (see the description here) that are fascinating and have some disturbing implications.  In both studies, they used a questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (see the long version of it here and test yourself) to assess if people suffered — or perhaps enjoyed — this characteristic. 

    In the first study, students were placed in pairs and asked to pitch an ideas to their partner for a movie concept. The results: "the ideas impressed the person evaluating the pitch roughly 50% more than did those from the least narcissistic pitchers."  BUT the interesting twist was when these same ideas were evaluated by two independent observers who only saw the ideas on paper, but did not see the pitches:  "Having only seen the movie pitches in written form, they found the narcissists' ideas to be about as creative as proposals from non-narcissists. The difference, the researchers say, was in the pitch itself: narcissists were more enthusiastic, witty, and charming—all traits, according to past research, that people associate with creativity."

    In other words, the live pitches led people to make an attribution error, to confuse stereotypical features of creative people with creative ideas. (This explains, by the way, why creative people who come in bodies that can't pitch need someone on their team to sell their ideas: Steve Wozniak would not have succeeded without Steve Jobs' pizazz.)

    The second study bugs me, and even though I don't like it, I am trying to resist rejecting it because it was done quite well.  "The researchers composed 4 person teams of various numbers of narcissists: asked them to draw up proposals to improve the performance of real businesses and other organizations. Teams made up of three or four narcissists came up with incremental proposals and failed to generate and discuss many ideas, but so did teams with no narcissists. The teams that generated the most ideas were half narcissist."  Senior author Jack Goncalo speculated that this finding may have occurred because: "narcissists can help get ideas on the table. If there are too many of them, however, there may be too many egos in the room, preventing anything from getting done."

    As I said, I am not especially happy about the findings of this study, in part, because even if these findings do generalize to the real world, narcissists do so much damage that they still may not be worth the trouble.  On the other hand, this research is consistent with more applied and qualitative writings by Michael Maccoby (see this HBR article) that suggest narcissists are high magnitude people, with strong pros and cons.  Maccoby summarized this perspective brillantly:

    Leaders such as Jack Welch or George Soros are examples of productive narcissists. They are gifted and creative strategists who see the big picture and find meaning in the risky proposition of changing the world and leaving behind a legacy. Indeed, one reason we look to productive narcissists in times of great transition is that they have the audacity to push through the massive transformations that society periodically undertakes. Productive narcissists are not only risk takers willing to get the job done but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric. The danger is that narcissism can turn unproductive when, lacking self-knowledge and restraining anchors, narcissists become unrealistic dreamers. They nurture grand schemes and harbor the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success. This tendency toward grandiosity and distrust is the Achilles’ heel of narcissism. Because of it, even brilliant narcissists can come under suspicion for self–involvement, unpredictability and—in extreme cases—paranoia.

    I'd love your reaction to this research and more generally to the notion that — contrary to my biases — that narcissists may at times may be worth the trouble!

  • Is Work Matters Banned at GE?

    A well-placed source informed me that this blog is blocked by GE, that you can't access it through their network.  If anyone can confirm this rumor, I would be curious to know why it is so.  This blog does contain swearwords (although, if reports are true, Jack Welch would not be shocked by such language), but for the most part I believe the ideas are constructive and I also don't recall saying anything nasty about GE.  Also, if this blog is blocked any other places, I would be curious to know that as well, as this is the first instance I have ever heard of it being blocked and their may be others.

    Also, a message to whomever makes the decision at GE: If the rumor is true, please unblock my site! 

  • The Better By Design Summit: Cool Things I Heard in New Zealand

       SCCZEN_A_300906SPLMOON3_460x230

    I had the privilege of speaking at the Better By Design CEO Summit in New Zealand last week, which was a delightful event for 300 or so executives.  It was intended to spread knowledge and whip-up enthusiasm about design thinking among businesses in that lovely country.  Our master of ceremonies was the charming and astute Jeremy Moon (pictured above), who is both the Chairman of Better By Design (a New Zealand government group that develops and spreads design thinking), and is also CEO of a firm called Icebreaker, which makes very cool high-tech wool clothing.   Go here to see the line-up of speakers, here for a press report, and here for their blog.  To give you a biased take on the conference, I thought it would be fun to just list some of the cool things I heard people say, as they said a lot of fascinating things that got me thinking.  If you would like to leave a comment, let me know what especially struck you — positive or negative — and why.

    Most of these aren't exact quotes, rather they are the product of my lousy note taking.  So I apologize for any errors or misrepresentations.

    From  Marty Neumeier, author of the The Designful Company:

    Design thinking helps close the gap between knowing and doing, which I call "dragon gap:" When the old map makers wanted to represent uncharted territory, they drew pictures of dragons to represent the scary unknown.

    "We intend to keep innovating" (How Steve Jobs reportedly answered a question about how Apple plans to keep growing.)

    Design is like a sound that only dogs can hear.

    Business keeps speeding-up, but our brains aren't getting any faster.

    A wealth of information creates a paucity of attention.

    Even the lone ranger didn't work alone.

    From Dick Powell, Co-founder Seymourpowell, a UK-based design firm:

    Anthropolology before technology.

    Slow is the new fast.

    The never ending now.

    You can't make a massive change all at once.  The smartest people and companies find ways to keep winning a little bit along the way.

    From Adam Lowry, Co-founder and Chief Greens Keeper, Method Products

    Design is the first signal of human intention (quoting William McDonough)

    Design advances slowly but not gradually — there are long periods where not much happens, punctuated by periods of rapid and dramatic change.  It is like the theory of punctuated equilibrium from evolutionary biology; change happens in fits and starts, in step functions.

    Good design creates good stories.

    We got a lot of free PR, including on Jay Leno's show, for writing advertising copy claiming that our products make your stuff "fricken clean."

    We are in "a constant state of make" at Method.

    We are "people against dirty" and one of our primary challenges is to "Keep Method weird."

    When asked why Method keeps innovating, he answered "our people give a shit."

    We had over 300 SKU's in 2007; now we have about 110.

    I have a veto, but the most powerful thing I can do is to never use it."

    We would rather have a hole (an unfilled position) than an asshole at Method.

    From a panel of who described their design thinking study tour to Silicon Valley, which was composed of executives from New Zealand firms and was sponsored by Better By Design — and was led by Perry Klebahn and Diego Rodriguez:

    Think big, but make it happen step by step'

    To fail is not shameful.

    Teams that do beat teams that talk.

    I am going to get rid of my office and sit with my people.

    Keeping  and growing good people, and strengthening the culture, those are our biggest business risks.( Heard at Method and Google).

    Its hard.

    At Google, they told us "above all, we try not to hire bullies."

    We started out last and finished first in a tire changing competition — that was a wake-up call.

    We were way ahead in the tire change competition, so we started resting on our laurels and we didn't question our assumptions. So the the team that started out worst beat us in the end.  (The tire changing exercise is something I have written about here at HBR.org) 

    Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company, author of Rules of Thumb, and Global Detective:

     This conference keeps going back to a pair of themes I hear everyplace I go now, leadership and change.

    I went to a conference recently where two CEOs of big companies told their people, essentially, that everything will be fine, there is no need to worry.  They pretended to be for change but were really against it.

    The best changes preserve the best of what is already there and get rid of the rest. 

    If you want to change things, make hard things easier. Or raise the cost the cost of the status quo. Or do both.

    Design thinking plays important roles including serving as a problem poser, problem solver, a sensemaking tool, a source of differentiation. It also can be a source inspiration and aspiration.

    When I worked for the City of Portland, Oregon, my boss defined a strategy as anything that solves more than one problem at a time.  That was part of the philosophy that helped transform the city into one of the best places to live in U.S.

    The world is thirsty for difference.

    Design is too important to be left to designers .

    You don't have to it all in one bite (talking about change)

     Rob Fyfe, CEO of Air new Zealand, is a national hero for leading the airline from financial ruin, deep despair, and shame to a place infused pride and excellence — not just among its employees but among every New Zealander I talked to about the airline (which was dozens, as everyone from taxi drivers to teenagers brought it up).  It was just named ATW Airline of the Year, the industry's most prestigious award.

    The airline suffered from a loss of self-belief and pride.

    All the smiling people had left.

    My challenge is to bring people to life.

    It would be like going to a Greenpeace rally in a Hummer (on the challenge of claiming that an airline is green)

    We had delusions of global dominance.   Yet, in the end, we realized that all we had was our New Zealandes –  not so much the beauty of the country, but the charms and quirks of our people.

    I don't spend a lot of time on spreadsheets; I spend it  with my people or thinking about my people.  Several members of my board thought that was all wrong and I should be spending most of my time on financials, but they have come around.

    I spend a day each month doing a job on the airline — working as a flight attendant, a baggage handler, anything but a pilot!

    We use real words, not business language or jargon.  That other stuff sounds fake.

    One of our most successful campaigns featured our people "body painted;" it started with one of our pilots on a billboard and the motto is that our "staff have nothing to hide."

    This isn't meant to be a linear post that makes a clear and integrated point– rather it is a kind of like a Rorschach Test, one of those projective tests where personality and hidden conflicts are allegedly revealed when a person is asked to describe what he or she sees in abstract pictures, images, or artwork.   But I can say that the main thing I was left after the conference and my other social activities with was that the people in New Zealand are an intriguing mix of proud and modest, and competitive and cooperative, and as Diego Rodriguez pointed out, they have a can do attitude in combination with a no asshole rule.  So New Zealanders are well-suited to the design mindset and methods and are a lot of fun to work with.

    Finally, a big thanks to my hosts from Better By Design including Judith Thompson,  Vijayan Kutta, Miriam Wilkins, and Nicky Toresen.  They were fun and extremely competent — and I appreciate their tolerance of my various quirks.

     

  • More on Hard Times and Friendly Bosses

    I wrote a post a couple weeks back about some intriguing (although flawed) surveys that suggest the downturn may have resulted in better relationships between employees and their bosses.   An article just came out at Human Resource Executive called "Is the Recession Making the Boss Friendlier" that digs further into these rather surprising findings and quotes some of my arguments about why relationships may have improved better, especially that incompetent bosses of all kinds may have been shown the door as part of the workforce cuts that so many organizations have made.  I was rather disturbed, however, by an argument at the end of the article by a management consultant that seems to be arguing for the virtues of tough bosses — and that downplays the importance of compassion, treating people with respect, and treating them with dignity.  The article says:

    But Alan Weiss, an organizational development consultant, author, and president of Summit Consulting Group Inc. in East Greenwich, Conn., says the results of the two surveys won't change one simple fact.

    "The role of a boss is not to be friendly, but to direct, give instruction, lead and make hard decisions. You can't give honest and tough evaluations to friends," he says.

    The lesson for HR is simple, he says: "Help managers to manage, not to merely try to influence; help employees understand that a tough boss who helps them succeed is far better than a friendly one who just wants to be 'one of the crowd.' "

    Alan's last line bugs because it sets up a false choice, sort of like arguing that it is better to be kicked in the head than to have your eye poked out.  Yes, all good bosses need to do tough things — negative feedback, giving people assignments they don't want, and implementing firings and layoffs when need be.   But as I have written here before, write in Good Boss, Bad Boss, and talk about at the McKinsey site, there is a difference between what a boss does and how he or she does it,  The best bosses do the dirty work with humanity and compassion. And providing support to people to help them succeed includes a big dose of emotional support. 

    Bosses who push for performance above all else and don't give a hoot about the dignity and respect of their people do a poor job of developing their people and — as much research shows — will be condemned to have subordinates who are less likely to make an extra effort to work harder and longer and who leave for new jobs at higher rates,   Yes, I agree with Alan that your boss isn't always your friend (but sometimes this does happen, and it can be a good thing) — but I get sick and tired of people who celebrate tough and heartless bosses.  I don't want to work for one and, as much research shows, most employees don.t want to either. And, as I have suggested here before, a hallmark of such bosses who do succeed is that they pair up with a "toxic handler" or two to soothe those they damage and to clean up the messes they leave in their wake. 

  • Penis Poisoning Posts at BNET

    I have written extensively in The No Asshole Rule, in Good Boss, Bad Boss, and numerous posts (like this one) about the dangers of power poisoning, about how when people hold positions of authority over others, it often leads them to become more focused on their own needs, less focused on the needs and reactions of others, to act like the rules don't apply to them — along with a host of unattractive responses including the lack of impulse control and the tendency to dehiumanize others.   In this vein, I worked with the folks at BNET to do two posts (which just appeared) on a particular form of power poisoning, which I call "penis poisoning."  The first post is called "Would You Let Lust Ruin Your Career?"  Here is the opening:

    An old Yiddish saying in Portnoy’s Complaint – Phillip Roth’s lewd classic – describes the misguided behavior of all too many powerful men: Ven der putz shteht, ligt der sechel in drerd, which means “When the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground.” From recent academic research and press reports, it’s clear that power can poison even the most intelligent and well-meaning people when they take influential positions.

    I then explain a bit about the effects of power poisoning and offer advice for powerful men, starting with "Accept that you, as the owner a penis, are at risk."  The second post is what BNET calls a "rogues gallery"  called "Sex, Lies, and Stupidity;" which considers men who have apparently had impulse control problems of this kind ranging from former senator Larry Craig, to Bill Clinton, to Tiger Woods, to former HP CEO Mark Hurd, to pedophile Catholic priests.

    Sex is always fascinating to us human beings and so these posts are already generating comments. Yes, it is an entertaining topic, but it is also a serious one.  Penis poisoning ruins many people's lives — and is something that many organizations handle badly. 

  • Clueless, Comical, and Cruel Bosses: The Huffington Post Slide Show

      Slide_12136_161601_large
    You may recall that, about a month ago, I asked readers for examples of clueless, comical, and cruel bosses.  You did a wonderful job — via comments and emails — of sending in over 100 awful actions.   I promised I would list my favorites — the worst of the worst — here.  It took me longer than I expected to get to it, but I finally did this week.  The top 14 are presented at Huffington Post as a slide show, with all sorts of bells and whistles (you can vote on each boss and other things).  The call it "Horror Stories About The World's Worst Bosses."   The first slide is pictured above.  The caption is:

    1.      "Giving the first employee of the month award to himself."

    Below are the other 14 I sent them (they cut one) followed by a bonus example:

    2.      Showed appreciation by giving an employee an ipod (except he's deaf)

    3.      My first boss was the founding partner of a mid-sized law firm in Boston….He used to come in every morning, vise-grip my head with his hands, kiss the top of it, and say "hello my luv, ho-e-you, ho-e-you". Then he'd proceed to shred me all day long. His best moments were after I was sick and lost too much weight, used to walk around screaming "where's the damned stick with t*ts?.” Really. I worked for him for 15 years. Then I went to one of the biggest firms in Boston, worked for the chairman of a big department. He started farting really loud when they made him not be chairman anymore. The special times were when he got really mad, and people would try to talk over it, and he'd push even harder, and they'd jump an octave.

    4.      A very attractive female direct report was working while sick. He shouted "! You're looking mighty ugly today!" Saying it once wasn't enough. He said it very loudly about 3 or 4 times.

    5.      My wife's boss eats pork chops in team meetings, then picks her teeth.

    6.      He kept me from conferring with the doctors that were treating my mother for a brain tumor.

    7.      I had one boss who used to call meetings, invite a bunch of people, and of course there was no agenda so we didn't even know what we were supposed to be discussing. Then, just as everybody arrived, his cell phone would go off and he would excuse himself to go take a lengthy personal call while the rest of us just sat in the conference room twiddling our thumbs. What a waste of time!!

    8.      When flying on the company plane, (facing seats), if her feet are cold, she just jams them up under the ass of the person across from her.

    9.      I once worked for a firm whose chief executive made promotion decisions based on graphology, astrology, and a variety of pseudo-scientific techniques. For instance, she would secretly acquire handwriting samples from new staff and decide on appropriate placement and position for each person based on the results. This activity was shared only with her direct reports. I learned all this to my horror when I was promoted into her staff (evidently I unknowingly passed the "tests"). I wanted to promote a very talented subordinate to a junior management position; a promotion she vehemently opposed on the grounds that an analysis of his handwriting and "aura" had revealed him to be deceptive and deceitful.

    10.   He gave his employees used, counterfeit designer watches to reward them for their efforts.

    11.   Clips finger nails in meetings.

    12.   When a group of us were checking into a hotel for an out of town customer meeting, hitched up his pants and asked, young, female desk clerk: "Where can a man go to get some in this town?

    13.    One boss I had used to start meetings with, “I can't sit down, I've just been ass-raped.” In an ocean of inappropriateness, that one stands out!

    14.    I worked as nurse a few years back at a facility where the manager encouraged nurses to order extra valium when placing narcotic orders with the hospital pharmacy so staff “could have few for personal use.

    15.    My boss ordered her best friend (also her subordinate) to collect money from the other subordinates to buy a $600 bracelet for her birthday

    Finally, perhaps my favorite bosshole of all time apparently “water boarded” a subordinate at company picnic to increase motivation is his sales team. As the Washington Post reported in April of 2008:

    No one really disputes that Chad Hudgens was waterboarded outside a Provo office park last May 29, right before lunch, by his boss.

    There is also general agreement that Hudgens volunteered for the "team-building exercise," that he lay on his back with his head downhill, and that co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over his nose and mouth.

    And it's widely acknowledged that the supervisor, Joshua Christopherson, then told the assembled sales team, whose numbers had been lagging: "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales."

    Thank so much for sending in all those stories!  I think it is time for a list of good bosses! These stories are fun in a sick kind of way, but it is important to remember that most bosses out there are doing a pretty good job and are aiming to get better.

  • Shit Show: The Phrase I Learned at Pixar

    On Wednesday, I was lucky enough to be invited back to give a second Good Boss, Bad Boss talk at Pixar.   I love Pixar. Not just because they are so cool, but because of the deep and relentless commitment to quality and humanity. If you have not heard it, I urge you to listen to this Fresh Air interview about Toy Story 3 — if you listen closely to how they approached their work, you can hear almost everything you need to know about design thinking and leading creative work.  As one little example, which illustrates "Failure Sucks But Instructs," note that they had 60 different drafts of an especially crucial scene.  Also, as an illustration that creative people and companies have a kind of "storehouse" of rejected ideas that they keep trying to apply to new problems (sort of like a bin of old parts), listen to the example of Lotso, a character who was invented but discarded for an earlier film but who worked great in Toy Story 3 (See Andy Hargadon's book if you really want to dig into this perspective).

    I could go on and on, but this post is about the new phrase I learned at Pixar.  I was speaking at an internal event, which was meant to help people at Pixar get to know each other better (I am going to omit names so I don't break any confidences). Before my talk, there was a hilarous interview with a Pixar insider, and one of the best parts was when she was asked her favorite swear word.  She mentioned a traditional one, but then added her new favorite was "shit show."   As with the rest of the group, I was quite taken with it.  Of course, shit show is already in the Urban Dictionary.  There are 13 definitions, but I like the most popular best:

    A description of an event or situation which is characterized by an ridiculously inordinate amount of frenetic activity. Disorganization and chaos to an absurd degree. Often associated with extreme ineptitude/incompetence and or sudden and unexpected failure. Similar: fiasco clusterfuck

    "The picnic turned into a real shit show because that bozo decided to throw rocks at that hornet's nest."

    As I joked to the audience, while I have resisted doing a sequel to The No Asshole Rule, I am a bit tempted to do a book called The No Shit Show Rule!