Dan Erwin

When You Hate What You Do

The October 10 issue of the Economist says that disenchantment with work is growing.  In all, 24 members of France Telecom have committed suicide since 2008, similar to episodes at Renault, Peugeot and EDF.  As the article reported, one woman sent a suicidal note to her father before leaping from a 4th flour window.  "I have decided to kill myself tonight. . . I can't take the new reorganisation." 

Job disenchantment is not merely a European issue.  The American Center for Work-Life Policy, found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of employees professing company loyalty slumped from 95% to 39%, and the number voicing trust in their managers fell from 79% to 22%.

Of course, this also takes a toll on organizational productivity and competitiveness.  And, as the writer points out, the people most likely to move when things look up are the high-flyers.

What's to be done?

Managers need to be up-front with their employees, and be very careful about the signals they send.  In a stressful situation, it's typical of employees to parse every single word and tone from management.

Employees, of course, can take comfort that history is on their side--at least in the rich world.  It's also important to take stock of your emotions, realizing that stress inevitably escalates negative feelings.  When the opportunity surfaces, it's also a good time to learn about strategies for stress management, and develop your resilience.  My post on resilience will add a few more ideas for your toolkit.

You might also be surprised to learn how much getting yanked around can be good for you.  It's good for building smarts.  And in a stressful time, it's also one way to take your mind off the dark stuff.

Quotation of the Week: Janice Bryant Howroyd

The lesson of today is that you're working for yourself.

 

--Janice Bryant Howroyd, CEO, Act 1 Personnel Services, a staffing and employment company.

 

"Most people say they're giving their lives to the company, but it's more of a cooperative process.  Companies have tasks to perform and you must put in your best effort and identify yourself with that job." 

 

New York Times, 10/11/09

Career Counsel: Follow Your Own Path

Robert Kaplan has a Harvard email alert worth its weight in gold especially for Gen-Yers, but applicable to most any stage of your career.  He affirms what many are learning from the market, that careers are under the gun.  His focus is upon one question:  Am I reaching my potential?  Kaplan, very much like me, believes that you have to take a very personal look at how you define success, and find your path to get there. 

Kaplan, however, seems to move in the traditional "follow your passion" approach, a notion which the research of Herminia Ibarra has shown to be bankrupt.  I discuss Ibarra's approach in a single paragraph, so follow the link if you're intrigued.

Kaplan concludes with three recommendations which are important for every businessperson.

Managing your career is 100% your responsibility and you need to act accordingly.  Many promising professionals expect their superiors to mentor them, give them thoughtful coaching, provide them with challenging opportunities and generally steer their development.  Such a passive approach is likely to derail you at some point.  While your superiors will play a role, you career is your own.

Be wary of conventional wisdom.  It's almost always wrong--for you.  Hopping on the bandwagon may feel good initially but often leads to painful regrets years later.  To reach your potential, you must filter out peer pressure and popular opinion; assess your own passions, skills, and convctions, and then be courageous enough to act on them. 

Have faith that, although justice may not prevail at any given point in time, it should generally prevail over time.  When you do suffer an injustice, you need to be willing to step back and objectively assess your own role in these events.  That mind-set will help you learn from inevitable setbacks and eventually bounce back.  It will also help you stay focused on issues you can control as well as bolster your etermination to act like the ultiamte decision maker.

A Tryout to Avoid Hiring the Wrong Manager

The current issue of Businessweek has a story in its management and leadership section about firms that are "turning to tryouts to avoid hiring the wrong executive."  Sounds to me like a glorified probationary period, but it does take the company off the hook for poor recruiting.

Companies using the new model admit that interviewing is the best of a poor process, and the statistics are with them.  Since 40% of executive hires from outside a company last no more than 18 months, interviewing is not all that trustworthy.

What struck me was the single illustration the authors chose to use.  The CEO of a data storage company had recruited a CFO on a try-out basis.  He tells how as the recruit was "scrawling out scenarios at the whiteboard, he started to feel as if he were pulling the new guy up a hill.  'I was constantly having to lead him into a high-level discussion and say, 'Come on, get high-level again.  Let's think more strategy here.'"

Business people are trained to think incrementally, yet big-picture, strategic thinking is needed again and again.  That's an important note for every employee who wants some guarantee of success to look for people who can think big picture, watch them, listen to them, ask questions of them, and learn how to think that way for themselves.  The research shows clearly that even tough skills like strategic thinking and big-picture thinking can be learned with guided mentoring.

Here's an earlier post on the importance of big-picture thinking.

So You Didn't Get That Promotion. What Next?

Gen-Xers are well into the management ranks, and, now, some Gen-Yers are getting their first promotion to manager.  Let's suppose you didn't get that anticipated promotion.  What next?

Of course, your boss may be feeling guilty.  If you're a Gen-Yer facing your first management failure, just cool it.  There are a number of useful strategies for your future, beginning with focused feedback.  Indeed, Eilene Zimmerman suggests you tactfully address a number of pointed questions to yourself, your boss and your mentor(s).

First, answer some basic personal questions for yourself:

• Were you aware of the possibility that someone else would get the promotion?
• How important was the promotion to you?
• How well is the company doing over all?
• Were you the only person who didn't get the promotion?

Answers to those questions will set you up for some intelligent interviewing of your boss and perhaps your mentor.  As Zimmerman suggests, don't try to persuade your boss he/she made an error.  You might also talk to some of the other executives that are knowledgable about the issue. Try to find out why you didn't get the job.  Be sure to tell your boss that you're interested in improving for the future and so you want to know the skills to work on.  Try to get some examples. 

One of the consultants suggests it may be just a matter of office politics.  Don't go there.  If it's office politics, nine times out of ten, it's a sign that you don't know how to manage your boss.  People who manage up well know who's going to get the position (or whether they're not going to get the position) long before it takes place.  People who manage their boss well, who work on mutual relationships and mutual dependencies, know what's going on.  If you're important to your boss, he/she will usually confide in you before the announcement--whether or not you get the position.  Check out my post on managing up for a starter and look over the post categories for "managing up."  Furthermore, Kotter and Gabarro's HBReview article on managing your boss is so well known that you can get it free on the web, here:  http://bit.ly/16irnn

FYI:  I respond negatively to most of the stuff about "office politics" or "chemistry not being right."  To a high degree they're both about lack of skills.  Admittedly, the population is largely unaware of both sets of interpersonal skills, but they're out there for those who really want to learn.  If you talk to an HR person or an "expert" who can't explain how to manage office politics and interpersonal chemistry in very effective ways, you've got a traditionalist who hasn't kept up over the last ten years.THIS IS A RANT!

After you've gotten feedback, go to work on improving those skills.  Send your boss an update, and advocate for yourself as you're having difficulty or succeeding.  Build that network of mentors and coaches and ask for their help.

Failure to get a promotion is not life or death.  It may just be a sign that you've got something else to learn.  And if you're not smart enough, yet, to learn how to manage your boss, well . . . you finish the sentence.

What further questions do you have?  I'll be glad to point you to other resources.

Job Search: Clearing the H.R. Hurdles

Phyllis Korki of the Times has an intriguing article on how good candidates clear the H.R. hurdles.  As a management coach for more than 25 years I've been around plenty of hiring (and firing or lay-off) situations, as recently as the first week of October.  Although I've basically kept my fingers completely out of that practice, my ears have always been open to what's going on. 

I won't vouch for the accuracy of her statistics, especially because she offers no sources.  Korkki suggests that there is an average of six job seekers for every job opening.  I'm going to assume that she's correct.  What that means is that it's going to be very difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition. 

Korkki addresses this question:  how do you persuade a company to hire you if you're underqualified or overqualified?  The laws of supply and demand are against you.  If the only relationship you have with the company is electronic, your chances are not good.  I assume that's no surprise.  But check out the tidbits she offers.

Here's the important conclusion:  If you can establish personal contact with someone on the inside, you may be able to make your case.  It's tiresome to have to repeat this, and a lot of people don't like to hear it, but it comes down to networking--face-to-face networking.  That's one of my favorite rants.

Korkki also says most recruiting managers believe that the best guarantee of success is past success.  I think that's wrongheaded, but that's the conventional wisdom, so pay attention.  My attitude is that success in one environment has little relationship to another environment.  And environments tend to determine success far more than the individual employee.  But, that's not the conventional wisdom.

Being a bit transparent can be quite helpful.  One of my friends recently told the hiring supervisor that if she was looking for someone who could hit the ground running, she was looking at the wrong person.  But if she was looking for someone who could handle a great deal of ambiguity and creativity and invention, he was the right person.  He got the job hands down with an unbelievable raise.

If you get into an interview, I have one recommendation:  tell a number of stories about your successes, the difficulties you face, and a few failures.

Ideas, concepts, statistics and recommendations are rarely remembered, but stories?  If they're to the point and told well, they're always remembered.  Everyone is a sucker for a good story.

An intimate of mine got a great--no, fabulous job, last year.  After she was hired she went around to those who interviewed her and asked why they hired her.  She talked to six interviewers and the response was uniform.  Excellent references, excellent experience, excellent knowledge base, and great stories!   Nearly all of the interviewers were brilliant MDs and PhDs from Harvard or MIT.  As I said, everyone is a sucker for a good story.  But you've got to get the interview opportunity.

The Dumbest Idea I've Ever Heard

One of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard is the hostility to knowledge, reason and research.  NPR had a discussion about climate change issues with two scientists and they both commented that many people believe that knowledge, reason and research are not the basis on which to make environmental policy.  Dumb!

In public matters and media conflicts, there's a recurring mistake by the audience.  It fails to distinguish between balance and proportion.  The media typically presents two sides of the conflict--say, climate change.   "We're presenting a "balanced position."  What the audience hears is that there are 50% of the scientists on one side and 50% on the other. 

As a result, a great deal of the public pays little attention to the conflict.  They think scientists can't agree, so politicians can't agree, so why should we agree.  On climate, like a great many other issues, there's a terrific amount of agreement by scientists--more than 95% agree on the seriousness of the problem.  The public will never know because of the confusion between balance and proportion--and its rejection of knowledge, reason and scientific research.

Be very careful in your media consumption.  And just as careful in your decision making--in any context.

Rule 1:  Play close attention to so-called balanced perspectives.  They may not be proportionate, and the impact on decision making could be a horrible mistake.

Rule 2:  Whatever the decisionmaking context--business, family, environment-- we know that empirical analysis of results makes for the best decisions.

Should You Apologize?

It all depends.  But in some situations, according to a brief article in the current issue of Businessweek, the answer is a definite yes.  Researchers at Britain's School of Economics wanted to find out the best way to deal with complaints about a defective German product, something small like a set of salt shakers.  They tracked negative and lukewarm comments posted by the company's customers and responded to more than 600 complaints.  For half of the complaints they offered a brief apology, and to the other half they offered a "good-will gesture" of a small cash rebate.  All this was based on the condition  that the customer remove the complaint posted online. 

The result?  About 45% of those receiving the apology withdraw their negative ratings from online, compared with only 21% who were offered money to do so.  And the apologies were effective even though they were brief, impersonal and asked for something in return?

Why do you think this was?  Before you answer the question, here's another piece of research not reported in BusinessWeek.

A Colorado surgeon was sued for malpractice when one of his students accidentally punctured an artery during an appendectomy.  The surgery was eventually success, but there were complications resulting in an upset patient. 

The surgeon took the advice of his lawyer who recommended no response and no interaction between him and the patient.  The patient sued because the surgeon "just didn't care."  In the final analysis the suit was brought not because of the surgical error but because of the failure to apologize.

Since 2002, hospitals in the University of Michigan Health System have been pushing their doctors to apologize. The result?  Attorney legal fees have dropped by two-thirds and the number of malpractice suits have been halved.

Why does an apology work?  Although there are a number of possible reasons, the best answer is based on human evolution:  "Apologies trigger this biological instinct to forgive that is hard to overcome."  And, the people who accept apologies feel better about themselves because of our own human love of magnanimity.

How Nonsense Sharpens Your Smarts

The latest Science section of the Times, in an article by Benedict Carey, reports on a study that suggests that nonsense, experience which violates logic and expectation, primes your gray matter to sense patterns it would otherwise miss.  It's a well-known fact that we cling tightly to our personal biases, looking for predictability, when we feel threatened.  Travis Proulx at UC Santa Barbara and Steven Heine at U British Columbia, argue that nonsense works the same way: we want to maintain coherence, predictability and consistency.  Our brains have evolved to predict and create our own theories about how our world works.

FYI:  For those unacquainted with basic research process, theories are attempts to explain or represent an experience.  They are ideas of how something happens.  Everybody uses theories.  We can't live without them.  My underlying interpersonal theory, for example, is that if you treat people well, they'll treat you well.  Scientists develop theories from observing and questioning and if they think their theory is valuable, then they'll set out to test that theory.  Research essentially tests theories--our hunches about how something works.  Theories are the way we understand and organize our knowledge.  They focus our attention on important variables and relationships.  

"Invaluable Nonsense"

Creativity and innovation are among the key drivers of business success in today's world.  That will be more and more true.  Uniquely, that's one reason understanding nonsense is so very important to your/our future. 

Back to the notion of how nonsense works and why it just might be a valuable theory.  The researchers argue that nonsense breaks the patterns of coherence, meaning and consistency and that when this happens our brains grope for something, anything that makes sense.  Inevitably, when things don't add up, the mind goes into high gear.  We're motivated to to look for patterns far more than when looking at ordinary things. 

Thus far, the scientists have done brain imaging studies of people who are trying to make sense of an anomaly and working out dilemmas.  What they've found is that the imaging shows that the more activation, the greater the drive to seek and correct errors (the nonsense) "the greater the motivation or ability to seek and correct rerrors in the real world."

What isn't known thus far is whether exposure to nonsense can help people learn more effectively.  Thus far, however, the research supports what novel seekers have always insisted:  "At least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking."  That may well pose significant career and organizational opportunities.

Arthur Caplan on Health Reform

--Health reform is in the ethics. It will only occur if those who favor it can win the fight to recognize a right to health care. If health care is recognized as a right, then the details of how to achieve affordable health insurance reform will follow. If it is not, then efforts to move reform forward will simply die under the weight of nitpicking, fear-mongering, sloganeering, and the invocation of details as obstructions to change.

--Arthur L. Caplan,  Professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

Caplan is a distinguished bioethicist, exceptionally readable and one of the most insightful in the entire field.  His post on health care reform will be found here.  He is one of those persons who is fully human and a sheer delight to engage.  A frequent guest and commentator on media outlets, he is among the most prolific writers and often cited scientist in the world.  And, there's not a stuffy bone in his body.