Month: April 2009

It is tempting during these challenging times
to lie to employees
and tell them
good times are right around the corner.

Don’t.
You will get called on it.

A loved one helps the sales team sell.
He knows he hasn’t been
on a sales call for a month.
He knows clients aren’t renewing contracts.
He knows current clients
are asking for price reductions.

Yet his boss stood
in front of him and his fellow consultants
and told them that
they’ve made it through the worst,
that good times were coming.

Bullshit.

Good times aren’t coming.
Even worse times are.
Only an idiot would not see those signs.

And now everyone is wondering
what OTHER things the manager is lying about.

You hired intelligent employees.
Respect that intelligence.

Bad news concerning your direct reports
comes from you.
It doesn’t matter if they’re
full time, part time,
contract, volunteers,
interns, aliens from space.
If they report to you,
they hear the bad news from you.
No excuses.

Yesterday, my contract got shortened by a week.
I expected it.
I accomplished what I needed to do
and it didn’t make sense for me to sit there
doing nothing.
If my manager hadn’t proposed it first,
I would have volunteered
(I have a book I want to write).

The thing is…
my manager didn’t propose it to ME.
She got a middle man
to deliver the news.
Then she avoided me for the entire day
until I walked up
and told her I was more than fine
with her decision.

With her decision.
Not the way she handled it.
I lost all respect for her
and I doubt I’ll work for her again.
Chicken shits always bail at critical times.
I’d rather not be around when they do.

Put on your big girl panties
and deliver the bad news yourself.

There is a refreshingly honest
interview with
Jacqueline Novogratz,
CEO of Acumen Fund.

In it,
she discusses parental leave…
“I have four brothers who all work on Wall Street,
and I remember when
one of my brothers’ wife had a child.
And I said,
“Well, is there, you know, paternity leave?”
And he said,
“Oh, yeah.
We have the most liberal paternity leave
on Wall Street—
but I would never take it,
because if I did,
everybody would think I was, you know, wimpy.”
And I think there’s great truth to that.”

I once sat in a board room
while execs discussed an opening.
A woman was considered
and then dismissed
for the position
because she was in her child bearing years
and recently got married.

The first step to solving a problem
is admitting there IS a problem.
If you’re female,
under 40 years old,
and wish to sit in the C-Suite,
address the child issue head on.