Non Manager's Guide to Management

How NOT to manage a situation.....

2005-09-13T04:03:00.000-07:00

Click here to read How Bush Blew It on Newsweek.

Change is good.... If you're a baby....

2005-03-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a misguided belief in much of the business world that "change is good" and lots of neat studies showing that people hate change.

Both of these are completely false. Change is neither inherently good or bad, change is change.

In order to support higher stock prices, many companies feel the need to constantly change things up, reorganizing, laying off, bringing in new theories, hiring consultants, embracing new management styles, and hiring new leadership. The theory seems to be that it is more important to do something to cause a bump in the price than to make long term plans that will maintain the companies success.

If you read and believe in crap like Who Moved My Cheese, you probably feel the need to criticize those in your organization who don't embrace change. After all, we're living in a fast changing world where if you don't get on board, you're going to be left in the dust. Just ask those masters of change in the new economy like the founders of Pets.com and the thousands of other agents of change that litter the internet graveyard.

The fact is that quite often the status quo exists for a reason. Just because things have been done a certain way for awhile doesn't mean that the way is out of date or wrong. Quite often it's the way things are done because trial and error proved it to be the best way.

People are not resistant to change, they are resistant to change that can impact them negatively. If you told your employees tomorrow you were giving them a 20% raise across the board, they'd embrace that change with all of their heart. If you came in and told them you're going to shift their departments around and reassign leadership, chances are they're going to panic because they know more about the potential end result than you do.

So if you're making a change in your organization, first think it through. Get input from the people it will affect BEFORE you do it. Analyze, gather information, and above all, EXPLAIN your reasoning and offer an open door for feedback when the change is made. Change may be necessary, but lack of communication is never acceptible.

Words to Avoid

2005-02-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

It seems as though every corporation says in 50 words what it can say in 5. When writing or speaking for business purposes, there is one simple rule: write and talk as though you were sitting at home talking to your husband or wife. And don't spin it with fluffy words. Your employees, stockholders, and everyone else will see right through your euphemisms.

For instance, you would never tell your wife that you wanted to make an acquisition of a angled bladed metal swinging recreational apparatus from the local boredom solutions establishment. Especially if you meant you wanted to buy some golf clubs from Dick's.

Most of the words used in corporate speak are chosen because they "sound professional". You talk differently than you would at home to set yourself apart. But typically, at best you sound like a snob, at worst, you sound stupid. And in no case do these words roll off the tongue.

So, here are some words to avoid or, more importantly, words I hate.

Agreeance

I thought this was a local thing, but I heard it on TV the other day. This manufactured word means agreement, as in, "We are in agreeance that you sound like an idiot saying this word.

Out of the Box

This one snuck out of the business world and into the land of the living. What once was a cute phrase for someone or something that was different, it's now become such a cliche that the expression itself is back in the box. Think outside of the box and strike this puppy from your day to day conversations.

Real Time

I've never figured this one out. Real time simply means that it is being done without delays, typically simultaneously with something else. For instance, "we're answering our customer inquiries in real time." This one bugs me because it implies that if you put something off, you're doing it in "fake time." The only fake time I've ever seen was a watch I bought off a guy in an overcoat.

Solution

This just cropped up in the past few years, primarily in marketing. When I was a kid, a solution was one of two things. It was either a chemistry term or it was something you found in the back of Encyclopedia Brown. Now the word seems to be used mean any product or service. And there is why it is worthless. If you're selling soap, don't tell me it is a dirt removal solution. If you're advertising your garbage service, don't tell me you're the leader in sanitation solutions. It doesn't sound more professional. It just sounds like you're peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining.

Space

No, not as in "space cadet", but when you hear someone say it, you'll assume they might be one. This is another word like solution, used to mean pretty much anything that is done. For instance: "we're in the consulting space", or "we have to make our presence known in the consumer space." Kick this one into "outer space."

Real Time

I've never figured this one out. Real time simply means that it is being done without delays, typically simultaneously with something else. For instance, "we're answering our customer inquiries in real time." This one bugs me because it implies that if you put something off, you're doing it in "fake time." The only fake time I've ever seen was a watch I bought off a guy in an overcoat.

Utilize

This busy word means use. You will NEVER find an instance where use will not take the place of utilize. When I see people using it, I want to utilize a baseball bat to brain them.

The myth of multitasking

2004-12-14T23:28:00.000-08:00

There was a point very recently in my life when I asked myself why I felt like I was getting nowhere. I was working 10+ hour days, truly working, not spending much time in meaningless meetings or BSing with coworkers. In my daze, I started to realize what my problem was. I had voice mail, e-mail, constantly ringing phones, seventeen windows open on my computer, and was often answering an e-mail on a conference call while thinking about what I had to do next.

In short, I was caught in multitasking hell. Maybe it's my own inadequacy talking, but I've always felt that a multitasker is typically either 1) a liar, or 2) someone who does lots of things halfway. When I began to see I was meeting number 2, it made me tear up.

The fact is, businesses are looking for people who can do the work of three people with numerous capabilities. The problem is that, in this world of on call 24/7, it can become easy to get lost in an informational hell where it isn't always clear what is important, and e-mail, voice mail, and other technologies are called communication but are actually lazy ways to cover one's backside.

This article, in the Businessweek, written by Michelle Conlin is excellent reading for those of us with too many technologies and too little time.

Take A Vacation From Your BlackBerry
Gadgets may or may not boost productivity, but they sure boost errors and stress

Marty Kotis is one of them -- the people of the handhelds. The CEO of Greensboro real estate development company Kotis Properties carries not one but two cell phones: a Bluetooth-enabled Motorola V710 and a Treo 600 (soon to be upgraded to a 650). That's so he can talk on one while simultaneously checking and sending e-mail on the other. His green BMW 740 is equipped with two LCD screens mounted above the front and back seats so he can hold mobile videoconferences. On the bimmer's backseat bulges his 50-lb. go-bag complete with a laptop, five external drives, an iSight camera, a digital camera, a digital video recorder, and a Bluetooth printer. At stoplights he downloads everything from aerial photographs of new site locations to songs like Over and Over by Tim McGraw and Nelly, which he plays wirelessly on his stereo through his iPod. "Sometimes people honk," Kotis says.

In Tokyo they call them the oyayubi sadai -- the Thumb Generation. Here in the U.S., the multitasking mobs don't yet have an official moniker. Instead they are known by their crackBerry thumb splints and their Treo trances, their faces glued to screens as the sounds of Ice, Ice Baby ringtones fill the air. Text messages are creating a new office shorthand: "Tx. Hi yu si on confcall 330$." (Translation: "Thanks. Why don't you sit in on the conference call at 3:30?") In Congress, BlackBerries -- the ultimate in post-boom cachet -- have turned a slew of starched staffers into keyboard Cassanovas, "blirting" (flirting) across hearing rooms. CNBC anchor Alan Murray even confessed to viewers that he uses his handheld in church.

There's no doubt that the multitudes of gadgets, many of which claim most-lusted-after status on Christmas wish lists, have enabled us to be productive in ways we never dreamed. They also make us not so productive, like the time Omar Wasow, executive director of BlackPlanet.com, got an urgent text message during a high-level meeting that read: "Nicole Kidman with yoga mat in Union Square. Right now." The question, then, remains: Are these devices really delivering on their promise to heighten productivity? Can gadgets enable one employee to do the work of two?

To those in academia who study our use of them, the answer is far from a resounding yes. The idea that gadgets always make us more efficient "is a scam, an illusion," says David Greenfield, director of the Hartford-based Center for Internet Studies. That's because at their heart, gadgets enable multitasking. And a growing body of evidence suggests that multitasking can easily turn into multislacking. It also increases errors, short-circuits attention spans, induces air-traffic-controller-like stress, and elongates the time it takes to accomplish the most basic tasks by up to 50% or more, according to University of Michigan psychology professor David Meyer. At the same time, scrolling through e-mail during business lunches and punching out text messages during meetings can kick in our dopamine-reward system, says Meyer, unleashing a pleasure-inducing hit that for an estimated 6% of Internet users has become clinically addictive.

Gadgets also trigger cognitive overload, says Harvard Medical School psychiatry instructor Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, contributing to a new epidemic he calls ADT: attention deficit trait. All that toggling back and forth "dilutes performance and increases irritability," says Hallowell, causing steady managers to become disorganized underachievers. "I'm not pro or con technology, but this is a challenge we've never faced before."

As gadgets enable everyone to generate more and more work, raising the volume of material people have to process, the flywheel moves faster and faster. "At some point it becomes an insupportable loop," says Hamilton College anthropologist Douglas Raybeck. We aren't built for "continually processing a great mountain of information." Thus signs of sanity are emerging: the Quiet Car on Amtrak. The buzzing "manner" mode on phones. Teenagers throwing cell-phone-free, no-text-messaging-allowed parties. As with all things technological, perhaps it's time for the executive class to take yet another cue from them.

The Fifth Discipline of Building Your Cheese To Last While Searching For Excellence

2004-10-31T21:12:00.000-08:00

Take a trip into any book store or glance at the shelves of most middle and upper level managers and you'll see that business books are huge business. Stroll down the shelves and you'll find books from CEOs, professional consultant, sports coaches, college professors, and even a cartoonist or two. You'll find titles like Built to Last, In Search of Excellence, Good To Great, and Who Moved My Cheese. Each of the books is full of pithy advice, sage systems, and guaranteed methods of turning your career, your business, and everything you touch into the next big thing.

Unfortunately, the truth to running your business will NOT be found within those pages. Every executive who scans the pages of the best selling tomes that populate the lists in Business Week looking for answers to life's problems will most likely come up short.

The simple fact of life is that successful businesses are built on hard work, good ideas, lots of luck, and good people. In some form or fashion, you'll find much of the same advice in all of these books, usually wrapped in some system a savvy author has created to market and try to sell to the masses.

This isn't to say the advice is bad, or that reading these books is a waste of time. However, realize that many of the business exaulted in these books will find hardship down the line and that many of the people writing these books are in the business of writing books.

The best way to read the books is with a highlighter and a notebook. Take down the stuff that touches your heart and mind, and chuck the rest. You know your business better than any author out there. Remember that.