Working With Fools

Give Yourselves A Pat On the Back, Management Team!

My department is in a budget crisis.  We overspent last year in excess of $12 million (yep, that million with an "M") with the expectation the regulators who dole out the money we spend would somehow magically say the over-spending was somehow OK.  Well, they didn't.  Instead, we heard in writing a few weeks ago that the regulators are very upset with the fact we over-spent in 2007 and, that they've decided to reduce our 2008 budget by a corresponding amount to bring us back in balance.
To no surprise my department's "management team" as they so self-fondly refer to themselves have been scurrying around quite a bit more than usual lately.  On Thursday of last week, they all went into a closed-door pow-wow for what was supposed to be a 2 hour meeting from 8 to 10 AM.  I departed for the day at 4 PM, with the meeting still going on.  My understanding is the management team ended their meeting after 5 PM that day, without actually finishing the task at hand of deciding what to do with the pickle they got us in.
What a bunch of helpless dopes!  They couldn't manage themselves out of a wet paper bag!

... once again, more evidence of this place I work being OVER MANAGED and UNDER LED.  Where have all the leaders gone????

What Leading Business Thinkers Have To Say

Hi,  This article is from the Wall Street Journal, On-Line 05/05/08.  It is good stuff!  Too bad so few people in management positions share and apply these insights...

Quest for Innovation, Motivation Inspires Gurus

Leading Thinkers 
Apply Varied Skills 
For Global Solutions

By ERIN WHITE
May 5, 2008; Page B6

Managers everywhere these days worry about innovating, motivating workers and global competition. So it's no surprise that writers and consultants who tackle these subjects place near the top of The Wall Street Journal's ranking of influential business thinkers. Here are snapshots of three who ranked in the top five:

Gary Hamel

• Gary Hamel, 53 years old, is a prolific writer and speaker who has kept his popularity despite falling victim to a peril of gurudom: His 2000 book, "Leading the Revolution," lionized Enron Corp. (The Enron case study was removed from later editions.)

What's his secret? "He's just got a good sense of the managerial zeitgeist," says Thomas H. Davenport, who compiled the rankings. At a time when businesspeople worry that traditional management techniques are losing effectiveness, Dr. Hamel has written a book examining new approaches. "The Future of Management," published in October, uses case studies from Google Inc. and Gore-Tex maker W.L. Gore to shed light on management innovation.

Dr. Hamel spent a year working as a hospital administrator after earning a master of business administration -- just long enough to realize he didn't want to deal with the "minutia of actually being a manager," he says. Instead, he thought it would be more interesting to think about management. "I didn't want to be in a career where you had to go to the same committee meetings every week," he says.

He earned a doctorate at the University of Michigan, where he met professor and author C.K. Prahalad. The two teamed up on research, including well-received business-review articles that coined the terms "strategic intent" and "core competence." Their 1994 book, "Competing for the Future," cemented Dr. Hamel's superguru status. Today, his speaking fees range from $50,000 to well more than $100,000, depending on the circumstances, he says.

Dr. Hamel says his latest book sprang from years of conversations with frustrated managers. "It seemed to me that getting large organizations to be persistently innovative was akin to getting a dog to walk on its hind legs," he says. "The moment you turned your back, it was down on all fours again." He argues that long-term success for companies stems more from the way they are managed than from their strategy or products.

Of Enron, he says that the company had a "uniquely entrepreneurial culture" that pioneered concepts like energy trading and won praise from other observers and CEOs. "Virtually everyone inside and outside the company was surprised" by the fraud that later surfaced, he says.

Howard Gardner

Mark McDonald, a group vice president at technology consulting firm Gartner Inc., thinks Dr. Hamel is particularly good at provoking and shaping debate among executives. "[Dr.] Hamel is very influential at setting executive mindset about things they should be paying attention to," he says.

• Howard Gardner, 64 years old, is a psychologist and professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. He is best known for his theory of "multiple intelligences." Dr. Gardner believes there are at least eight types of intelligence, including linguistic and musical. He's also interested in ethics, decision-making, leadership and persuasion.

The son of immigrants who fled Hitler's Germany, Dr. Gardner studied psychology, sociology and anthropology at Harvard. His breakthrough work came in 1983, when he published "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences."

He didn't focus on businesspeople for another decade. In 1996, he spoke at the World Economic Forum for the first time and found he was comfortable chatting with business and political leaders. A few years later, an editor at Harvard Business Press suggested that he address the business audience more directly. That led to his 2004 book about persuasion, "Changing Minds."

Much of Dr. Gardner's recent work is grounded in the workplace. Last year, he edited the essay collection "Responsibility at Work," which examined factors that contribute to responsible, ethical workplaces, such as good role models and responsible co-workers. His book "Five Minds for the Future" outlined skills for future leaders, such as the "synthesizing mind," which can bring together different ideas.

Thomas Friedman

Dr. Gardner's popularity beyond academia reflects managers' desire to understand what makes workers, peers and bosses tick. Many companies, for example, are trying to boost employees' "engagement," or emotional commitment to their jobs. Dr. Gardner says managers often ask him how to change minds "since that is something that they have to do a lot."

Michael Lee Stallard, president of E Pluribus Partners, a Greenwich, Conn., consulting firm, is a fan. He first ran across Dr. Gardner about 10 years ago, when he read "Frames of Mind." Mr. Stallard tapped Dr. Gardner's notion that people learn differently when he designed a training program. The training incorporates data, stories and visual images to reach people with different approaches.

• Thomas Friedman, age 54, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign-affairs columnist for the New York Times and the author of two best-selling books on globalization, "The World is Flat" in 2005 and "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" in 1999. "The World is Flat" documented heightened international competition, particularly from developing countries, sparked by technological change.

With an undergraduate degree from Brandeis and a master's from Oxford, Mr. Friedman began his journalism career as an international correspondent for United Press International and has worked for the Times since 1981. He thinks his ideas help managers understand a fast-changing environment. "The World is Flat," he says, "gave people a very simple way to explain a whole complex set of changes that had really changed the environment in which they were living and working and playing." The book sold more than two million copies, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Next up: environmentalism. Mr. Friedman's latest book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," is scheduled to appear in August.

His popularity among managers reflects their desire to understand the broader world in which they operate. "The world we're working in -- and we're all trying to be successful in, and have our teams be successful in -- is changing so dramatically and so fast," says Gartner's Mr. McDonald. "People have a natural desire to look for some kind of framework or a way of explaining what's going on."

 

Some People Just Lack Class and Common Sense

My wife and I just finished dinner and, as usual we talked shop; spoke about work.  I know, probably the topic for meal conversation and not a good subject to dwell on to sustain marital bliss. Nonetheless, we (fortunately or unfortunately) do touch on work  related subjects frequently because of the fact we both work for MyCompany, although in different locations and departments.  Because we both share the same employer, it's a common element we have in our relationship.

So, I imagine you're wondering what this has to do with the title of this post.  You're probably wondering, 'does his wife lack common sense or class?'

Actually, what I want to share in this post is something my wife shared with me over dinner about one of her coworkers.  To get right to the point, a particular coworker of hers' passes gas, i.e. farts out loud on a frequent basis at work.  This guy is an educated professional, someone who makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $90,000 a year!  Everyone has flatulence problems from time-to-time; but, this jerkweed doesn't even try to hold it in... he lets it rip, almost as though he's proud of his  ability!

Some people just lack common sense and class and this guy who works with my wife is one of them!

A Brief Post On Straff Meetings

Just came back from my nightly walk with my dog, a time when a I do a lot of thinking about many things.  It's a Friday night and I took the day off to do some inside painting in the house but, for some odd reason, the subject of staff meetings crossed my mind.  I guess it's because my boss, Ms. gruff had one this week.
They're scheduled to occur every other Wednesday morning, however, nine times out of ten Gruff cancels the afternoon before or the morning of the meeting.

The point on staff meetings I was thinking about tonight while walking the dog is that, out of the roughly few hundred staff meetings I've attended over the course of my illustrious 27 year career, I think probably 10% were worthwhile.  This begs the question, "Why do bosses have staff meetings then?"  I can think of two possible explanations:  a) bosses are supposed to have staff meetings, it's become part of what bosses are supposed to do, and b) bosses have staff meetings to remind their underlings who's in charge.

I have to wonder how many man and woman-hours are wasted each and every year on staff meetings!

Setting Goals - A Great "Idea"

When it comes to setting goals, this year is unlike any other I've experienced at MyCompany as far back as I can remember.  The company has a mandated goal from on high, that each and every employee is to set goals.  Sounds like a good idea, right?  Well, it is a good idea!  The problem is the way it's all executed results in jack squat!
To begin with, today is the last day of April -  four months into the year and the goals are still not final.  Heck, they're barely preliminary!  I had my first meeting with my darling, sweet supervisor, Ms. Gruff three weeks ago.  Next week, four weeks later, I'm scheduled to have a second meeting with Gruff to supposedly finalize the goals.  If I had to bet, at best, I will not have final 2008 goals until the end of May, when the year is just about half over.
You may be wondering why four weeks went by between my first and second goal meeting with Gruff.  The answer is twofold:  one, that Gruff had to "check" with her boss to see if he thought they were OK (can you say lack of empowerment?), and secondly, Gruff and the other supervisors didn't understand their marching orders, in particular how to define within the goals, how they were to be measured at the time of annual performance reviews (poor communication).

I have no problem with the theory of goal setting - it's a noble undertaking which could be worthwhile.  The reasons for why setting goals is not worthwhile boils down to poor execution!