James Cameron is known
for being a real bastard to work with.
“I have my bad days,
and on my best days I’m no Ron Howard.”
He works hard
and expects everyone else to do the same.

But people like to work with him
because he gets results.
His people win Oscars.
His movies make money.

Rebecca Keegan has some great snippets
about his leadership style
in her book
The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron.

“”It’s Avatar, dude,
nothing works the first time,”
read a whiteboard
in the spare Los Angeles warehouse
that served as
the sci fi film’s motion capture soundstage.
Breaking new ground
is Cameron’s raison d’être
— nothing interests this man
unless it’s hard to do.
But innovation has also become
a way of bonding his teams,
both on Avatar
and on his deep sea expeditions.
“We’re out in the wilderness
working far beyond
the borders of the known,”
Cameron says,
comparing his CG and undersea projects.
“We’re doing extraordinary things
that outsiders would not even understand.”"

Are you doing extraordinary things?

One of the new hires
at the company I am working with
left after a week.
No, she isn’t now unemployed.
She is back
to working with her old company.

You see…
she never quit.
She took a 3 week vacation
to try out the new job.
Turns out,
she wasn’t impressed
so she went back to the old job.

A friend of mine
took a leave of absence
from her current employer
to try out a new employer
for a couple months.
Again, she wasn’t happy with her move
so she returned to her old job.

A week,
a couple months,
a year,
companies are willing
to wait for good people.

Just because you hired that good person
doesn’t mean she’ll stay.
If you want to keep her,
you need to ensure the reality lives up to the hype.

An author buddy received requests
for partials (first 3 chapters)
for the same manuscript
from two different agents this week.
(Very exciting times for my buddy)

She debated whether she should send
the partials to both,
worrying that she’d waste one agent’s time.
(Yes, yes, we convinced her to send to both)

This is a very… well… female reaction.
We pride ourselves on being nice,
on thinking of others.

Really, what we are doing
is making decisions for others.

By only submitting to one agent,
my friend has made the decision
not to allow the other agent access to her work.
The other agent can’t even negotiate
to represent her.

She has also decided
that the preferred agent will be so blown away
by her manuscript,
she’ll offer immediate representation.

That’s pretty damn arrogant.

I try not to intentionally harm others
in my pursuit of success
but I let people decide for themselves
what is and isn’t good for them.

A new Catalyst report
uncovers that
three times as many women (19%)
as men (6%)
lost their executive level jobs.

The Wall Street Journal
felt the difference was due to the small sample size.
Ilene H. Lang, president and CEO of Catalyst,
stated that
“gender-based stereotypes about
leadership during tough times and
limited access to informal networks and mentors
may be partly responsible for the disparity.”

I’d be extremely curious to see
what those executive positions were
(this was not examined in the report).
Human resource and marketing executives
are more likely to be consolidated
with other departments
than say…
operations or sales.

Studies by Catalyst
reinforce my first hand experience
finding that
“women often choose staff jobs,
such as marketing and human resources,
while most senior executives and board positions
are filled from the ranks of line managers
with critical profit and loss responsibility.”

Is it gender that is driving the job losses
or responsibility?

I spend $10 a week
participating in the office lotto pool.

Playing the lottery
doesn’t make sense financially.
The odds of winning are very, very low.

So why am I part of it?

Because participating
in the office lotto pool
DOES make sense… for me.
It is a quick way of announcing
that I am part of the team,
that I am one of them.

Normally I don’t get asked
to participate
until months into a contract.
It is a signal
from someone on the list
that I’ve gone from an outsider
to being one of the team.

So I don’t shrug off that signal.
I participate
and amplify that belonging
to the others.

My author buddies and I
have multiple names,
multiple identities.
Many people on the internet
have these split personalities.

And sometimes it gets people
into trouble.

A buddy of mine
recently got nailed to the wall
because she gossiped about an author
to the actual author.
The author was using
her reviewer pen name online.
The gossip was not based on fact
and my buddy not only ruined a relationship
with that author
but with many people who witnessed
the confrontation.

Don’t gossip (period)
but especially don’t gossip online.
You don’t know
who you’re talking to.

This week,
I directed two beginner writers
to a call for submission
that I, myself, was targeting.

Another writing buddy
claimed I was nuts.
Why would I encourage someone
to compete with me?

Because…

A) Many will be encouraged,
few will actually do.
Dreaming is, yes, free
but doing is very rare.

and

B) Doers are rarer than projects.
If I did encourage someone to DO
and she snagged a spot
I had my eye on,
I know there will be other spots.
It isn’t the end of the world.
And I’ve increased the value of that contact.
I know the beginning writer
and she now knows even more people.

Encouragement may cost in the short term
but in the long term,
it is free.
Encourage someone today.

I estimate
that whenever I have to break from writing,
it takes me at least
one half hour to find my groove again.

One half hour
every time someone asks me a question
or the phone rings
or I receive a request
I can do ‘later.’

Most creative people
(artists, marketers, product developers)
have the same recovery time.
It is painful,
especially when we’re trying to be creative
on tight turnaround times.

What I do is shut my door,
unplug my phone,
and disappear from the world.

Do you allow your creative people to do this?
Do your creative people,
regardless of titles,
have, at the minimum,
offices with doors on them?

A manager is transitioning
her group from data processors
to analysts.

She has told her team
that if coding doesn’t appear correct,
they should investigate and correct it.

One of the first decisions
was to override a coding
made by a senior person.
It resulted in a large expense
being paid by an incorrect company.

The manager didn’t yell.
The manager didn’t blame her staff.
The manager congratulated the staff member
on making the decision,
holding it up as an example,
and then coached her
on how to make a better decision next time.

Will she make a better decision
next time?
Likely
but more importantly,
she’ll make a decision.

A controller announced
she was leaving the company today.
She was EXTREMELY happy
that she’ll be leaving
at the end of next week.
She isn’t going to another company.
She simply doesn’t want to
work for this one.

I suspect that most of her staff
will be interviewing
in the very near future.

This is great
if it is what the exec team wants.
It is not so great
if they need a transfer of knowledge
and a stable employee base
during the transition.

If your manager
can’t keep her joy low key
over the two weeks or more,
let her advise the transition team
from her home.