The Language of Acronym

In order to successfully navigate corporate America (and probably any corporate environment), you need to be adept at speaking an ever popular language:  Acronym.  I would surmise that Acronym may be the most popular language in the world. 

Humor: The Commute

It’s that time of year when schools let out for the summer.  It’s no doubt a challenging transition for parents to keep the kiddos busy until the school year starts up again.  But there’s one very good thing about summer recess… the work commute gets better!  No more traffic jams in front of the multiple schools you pass by on the way to work.  No more stay at home parents on the roads taking kids to school during the commute time.  No more school buses stopping every other block.  Depending on your route, this could shave a ton of time off your summer commute.  Enjoy it for a couple months! 

While the school-related delays are annoying, there’s an endless list of other frustrating factors to our daily commutes.  Like most people, some tick me off more than others.  But as I’ve gotten older (or as I call it, more mature and wise), I’ve gotten less ‘road-rage-ish’ and more ‘it is what it is-ish.’  Although many of these are general driving annoyances, they become amplified during the morning and evening commutes.  Here’s some of the most annoying pet peeves of the daily commute:       

Seniority Priority

Seniority priority.  It’s a part of corporate America that doesn’t get a lot of pub, but is at the heart of most everything we do.  Senior level execs say ‘Jump!’ and all colleagues quickly ask ‘How high?’  Unless you want to commit career suicide, requests from senior level execs naturally take priority.  This concept can be extended throughout all levels of the organization.  Basically, the higher the person is on the org chart above you, the higher the priority you will place on the request.  

Humor: Funny How the Story Changes

Remember the experiment where a person whispers a short story to the person next to her and each person does the same until the story has traveled around a roomful of people?  By the time the story gets around the room, the story has been completely changed from its original version.

We see this ALL the time in Corporate America.  Instead of a roomful of people, the story moves up the chain of command.  As the story moves up the food chain, so does the team’s perceived capabilities.  Overpromising or overreaching is commonplace, which can lead to horrific senior-level decision making.  Here’s a humorous take on how the story may change at different levels of the chain of command when a simple question is asked about a potential project.  Enjoy.

You Might Be A Micromanager If…

Are you a micromanager?  How do you know for sure?  Most micromanagers aren’t self-aware enough to know.  If you’re curious whether or not you may be a micromanager, here’s a handy top 10 list.  If you are guilty of multiple items on this list, you are likely a micromanager (and for the sake of your employees please work on addressing this behavior!).   

You might be a micromanager if…

Go Put Out That Fire Now! A Lesson in Providing Direction

Have you ever had a manager or colleague ask you to take care of a problem, only to give you virtually no background or guidance?  And when you ask more than one question, you’re told you’ll need to figure it out yourself.  The good old delegate and dash.  Talk about being set up to fail.  But now it’s your problem because you are not a mind reader.  Plus, now you are forced to prioritize the urgent over the important (my experience is most fires turn out to be relatively unimportant).  Good luck with that.

Since we are always having to put out fires at work, I’ll use the fire analogy to help managers understand the difficult position they put staff members in when they do this.

Done or Done Right

What’s better, done or done right?  Completion or progress?  Timeliness or accuracy?  Ready, fire, aim or ready, aim, fire?  Quantity or quality? 

We’ve heard the saying ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.’  Fair point.  If you only accept perfection, you may never reach the finish line.  That's a problem.  However, we’ve also heard ‘Do it once and do it right.’  If you have to re-do something multiple times because it wasn’t completed correctly the first time, that’s a problem too.  So if both approaches are right, you can see how trying to achieve the appropriate balance may be a significant source of stress and frustration for workers everywhere.

I Have Nothing to Do

Years ago I had a person work for me who had a very high opinion of himself.  In his mind, he was a superstar.  He walked on water, did no wrong, and everything he touched turned to gold.  Ever worked with one of these people?  While he did produce decent work, there was a bit of a discrepancy between his perception and everyone else's reality.  In my opinion, one reason for this gap was his inability to take initiative or be a self-starter.  At one point during a lull in our workload, he even asked me for something to work on because as he said ‘he had nothing to do.’  While I appreciated the apparent desire to take on new tasks, I was a bit disappointed this person really couldn’t find a single thing to do on his own.

Results or Facetime?

It’s that time of year again when it’s usually cold in the morning and comfortable in the afternoon.  Walking the few blocks into work from the parking garage on these very chilly mornings, I’ve noticed many people not wearing a coat.  Conversely, during the winter months, on mornings with the same temperatures, there will not be a single person without a coat.  Why is this?  Simple.  Many people use the warped logic of looking at the calendar to determine what to wear instead of dressing appropriately based on the current temperature.  Makes no sense.

Do More with Less

Can we have a pizza party for the team?  No.  Can we sign up for that training session?  No.  Can we do that teambuilding event?  No.  Can we update our software?  No.  Can we have a holiday party?  No.  Can we get a raise?  Heck no.  Instead, we're going to cut the expense budget by 5%.

 

And oh by the way, we’re not backfilling any of those positions where half the department left the company.  We’ll just need to figure out a way to absorb those responsibilities into our workload.  Plus, we’ll need to take on that new project.

Change for the Sake of Change

The three certainties in life are death, taxes, and change.  Change in the workplace is virtually a daily occurrence.  Why so much change?  Are we that bad now?  Could we be that much better?  We’ll never know unless we change!  But which ones are the needed and good changes and which ones are the changes for the sake of change?  Ideally, every decision maker should use an impartial set of criteria to perform a cost/benefit analysis and come to a rational decision.  But we all know that ’rational’ and ‘impartial’ doesn’t always happen. 

Office Politics: A Couple Do's and Don'ts

Everyone’s got an opinion on office politics.  Heck, there's even a website dedicated to Office Politics!  Some decent reads that get more into this topic include Office Politics Handbook, Dealing With Office Politics, Stop Avoiding Office Politics, How Office Politics Work, and How to Handle Office Politics. 

Here's a couple of my simple tips to keep in mind when navigating the office politics maze. 

Multi-tasking is a Myth

So do you think you’re a good multi-tasker?  You know what?  There’s no such thing.  Effective multi-tasking is an oxymoron.  Here are a couple decent reads from Health.com and AICPA that elaborate on why multi-tasking is counterproductive.  In addition, I think this demotivator says it all.

The Fatal Flaws of the Performance Review

Cue the scary music.  No one looks forward to them, not the boss and not the employee.  So are they even needed?  Here’s some articles that suggest giving the performance review the heave-ho… Wall Street Journal, Forbes-Kruse, Forbes-Lawler, Nelson Motivation.  While I think there’s definitely a place for the performance review in today’s Corporate America, I also think it has some fatal flaws too.

Key Ingredients and Chewed Remains

We’ve all seen the motivational/inspirational postings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Or if you go old school, there’s always the motivational posters hung in the conference rooms and common areas.  Feeling motivated yet?  Doubt it.  While there’s an endless number of extrinsic motivating factors in today’s world, I contend the vast majority of them are just white noise.  None of them motivate/inspire you to actually take action.  Why?  My experience is that motivation generally comes from within.  The motivational postings may give you a warm and fuzzy for a few seconds or look nice on a wall, but that’s about it.  The demotivation posters, on the other hand, are hilarious.  Art meets Dilbert.  So what’s left?  Plenty.  Instead of coming at it from a motivational standpoint, let’s try the self-awareness angle.

What's the Top Priority in Your Job?

Adam Grant has a pretty good post on LinkedIn regarding The #1 Feature of a Meaningless Job.  Spoiler alert, his answer is meaningful work.  As if you couldn't have guessed that from the headline.  There are many other good articles linked to Mr. Grant's article, so definitely worth the read.

Humor: The Office Fridge

The office fridge can be a battleground.  Approach at your own risk.  It’s certainly been a source of angst for many office workers over the years.  While most people have a name tag on their office door or cube, you’ll never find their office fridge name displayed anywhere.  Here’s a listing and definitions of those office fridge names to help you out.

It's Not My Job!

Have you ever been asked at work to complete a task you felt could only fall in the ‘perform other duties as assigned’ category of your job description?  Or perhaps you perceive there are others in the organization far better equipped to perform said task?  Or maybe there are others that should be performing the task, but aren’t, and now you have to pick up their slack?  Diagnosis:  ‘It's Not My Job’ syndrome.  Course of treatment:  Bite the bullet and do it.  Or read on.

Work-Life Abundance?

Jennie Wong has a great article that looks at work-life balance from a different angle.  I’ve had many previous posts regarding this topic including Work-Life Balance Advice, Work-Life Balance Choices, and We Work Too Much.  But Ms. Wong’s article hits on a point I’ve long feared may be true.  To many people, work-life balance has become polite code for working less.  And so work becomes the bad guy. 

Start Your New Job Right

So you landed your new job.  Great.  Now what?  Just like new parents have to immediately flip the switch from pregnancy-focused to parenting-focused, so do the legions of people who land a new job.  The job seeker becomes the newbie.  So how do you start your new job right?  Scott McDowell, Hannah Morgan, and Katharine Brooks make some good points in these articles.  As Pianaman routinely cuts to the chase, here are my crystal ball offerings: