Category: Corporate Games

My dear mom is in her last few months
of working
before retirement.

Her manager,
thinking she no longer
has to keep my mom happy,
is giving her all the crap jobs.

This is normal.
In the last few weeks of a contract,
I get all the crap jobs too.

The thinking is…
the employee (contract or full time)
doesn’t have any choice
but take it.
What is she going to do?
Quit?

Newsflash!
There’s always choice.

My mom has six months worth
of unused sick leave.
When she gets assigned a crap job
she wouldn’t normally do,
she takes that day off.

I, having more freedom
over my tasks,
would put the crap jobs
on my to-do list.
Surprise! Surprise!
I never got around doing them.

Managers have LESS leverage
over leaving employees.
Assign these employees crap jobs,
and there will be repercussions.

Summer time is high season
for fraud detection
in companies.

Why?

According to Ernst & Young
it is because the fraudsters
are away from their jobs
on holiday.

“Perpetrators are away
and not able to cover their tracks easily.
Frauds, such as accounts manipulation
that are covered up
in the course of the year
are often spotted
when colleagues take over
and notice something is not quite right.”

And who are these fraudsters?
Is it the high school grad
in the mail room sporting the green mohawk?
Or the cleaning lady?
Or the guy who waters the plants?

Actually
“The profile of a typical fraudster
is a long serving, trusted employee,
who works long hours and
is reluctant to take their annual leave.
Without doubt,
one of the most simple and cost-effective
anti-fraud measures
is to ensure employees take
at least two consecutive weeks holiday.”

Vacation time isn’t just an employee perk.
It can also keep company resources safe.

Recently, I was asked to get involved
with a situation
that was none of my business.
Two people I loved
were negotiating a transaction.

I asked what the problem was.

Both sides said
“There are no problems!”

Bullshit

No one gets a middleman involved
if negotiations are going
wonderfully.
Middlemen are a pain in the ass.
They slow down and complicate
every transaction.

And it was bullshit.
The two loved ones were on the verge
of severing their long term relationship.

I took the middleman position
(and ended up being hated for it)
because I loved these two people,
and I knew how terrible it would be
if their relationship broke down.

Otherwise, I tend to avoid it.

If someone asks you
to get involved in something
that is none of your business,
there’s a reason why.
THINK about saying ‘Yes.”

Forbes has a list
of 5 common yet deadly email errors.

The one I absolutely
have zero tolerance for
is the CC’ing Up

“Intention:
When you’re having an email exchange
with a co-worker,
and s/he escalates the conflict
by sneakily CCing a higher-up.
She’s resolving the issue efficiently
by letting a higher-up in on the conflict.

Perception:
She’s sneaky, conniving and
out to make them look bad.
Even more nefarious: the BCC.”

Except it doesn’t have to be CC’ing up,
it is CC’ing anyone not originally on
the email listing.

OR forwarding emails
without getting permission
from the people involved.

It takes mere minutes
to get permission to CC another person
or to forward an email to outsiders.
Take those minutes
and preserve your relationship.

I recently had a visitor.
I asked her what she wanted to do.
She said she didn’t care.

So I did what I wanted to do.

She didn’t like that.
(Who knew a make-up saleswoman
wouldn’t like a shoe museum?)

You know what I thought
when she complained?

Tough shit.

She lied to me
by saying she didn’t care
when she clearly did,
so why should I care
that she’s unhappy?

‘Cause that’s what the response
“I don’t care” is…
It is a lie.

You don’t care what restaurant
we choose?
Okay, I’m choosing that all you can eat buffet
with the history of giving
their patrons food poisoning.

You don’t care where your career
is heading?
Fine, I’ll demote you to entry level,
and cut your salary in half.

If you want to be viewed
as an honest person,
strike “I don’t care”
from your list of possible responses.

When Steven Spielberg,
at age 13,
made his first movie,
he could have
chosen any of the boys
he knew
to star in it.

He asked the bully
who had been beating him up,
and
letting air out of his bicycle’s tires.

The bully laughed at him.

Steven Spielberg asked again and again
until the bully said ‘yes.’
He then made the best movie he could
with this bully cast
as the John Wayne-type star.

The bully became his friend,
and
his ally.

Rivals
(or as my 11 year old niece calls them
arch enemies)
don’t have to stay rivals.
One
or both
of you is choosing
that adversarial relationship.

Change your choice,
and you’ll change your relationship.

As one of my pen names
becomes more and more established,
I have to be more and more vocal
about wanting push back,
asking for my story submissions
to be rejected by editors
if they SHOULD be rejected.

It is human nature
to respect the successful
and some people think respecting another person
means accepting everything
they say and do
as being right.

I’ve seen this at companies.
The CEO is seen as a god.
What she says must be right.
A great CEO will work hard
to ensure her authority is always questioned
because
she’s not a god.
She’s human.
And humans make mistakes.

In his book
Car Guys vs. Bean Counters
Bob Lutz points out that
“One curious cultural characteristic
I encountered at GM
was an exaggerated respect for authority,
with the acceptance of everything
uttered by the CEO and other senior leaders
as infallible gospel.
It is bred into the system.
Senior people are seen
as being in possession
of some superior wisdom,
to be revered if not downright feared.

The reality is that
the company’s most senior executives
are just people who happen to get promoted
and who daily face the insecurity
of wondering if they are doing the right thing.

The good leader deals with that insecurity
by putting forth his or her ideas,
then letting subordinates dissect
and critique them.”

Ensure your employees
and your management team
are comfortable with questioning your decisions.

An author I know
has never had the same editor
or the same cover artist
for her books.

She complains about this bitterly,
and I roll my eyes.

Why?

Because turnover of partners
is a sign
that you’re difficult.

People tend to avoid conflict,
especially when the conflict
doesn’t benefit them.
Telling you you’re difficult
benefits no one but yourself.
Most people
won’t bother.

Meanwhile, you’re sabotaging your career.
Eventually you’ll run out of new people
to irritate
and you’ll be either isolated
or fired.

If you’re never working with
the same team members,
and you get transferred from person to person,
manager to manager,
you have a problem
and that problem is YOU.

Swallow your pride
and ask someone what the issue is.
And for shit’s sake,
if that someone is honest and tells you,
THANK her.
They’re doing you a favor.

When I consider selling a stock,
my financial adviser
always brings up
the price I bought the stock at.
I don’t care about that price.
It is in the past,
a sunk cost,
and my decision to sell or not
depends on my outlook for the future.

That’s how we should
feel about decisions also.
Past decisions are sunk decisions.
We can’t change them.
Today’s decision is based on new information,
new circumstances.
It should be looked at
with fresh eyes.

Unfortunately,
studies say that
we don’t do this.

“When the same person responsible
for the disappointing first strategy
was given the power
to decide the next move,
it was much more likely
that they would choose
to stay the course.
They were predisposed
to escalate the commitment
because to do otherwise
would be to admit a mistake.”

The solution?

When a project doesn’t work,
either switch project managers
or have the decision to continue/kill projects
depend upon another person.

Some of my buddies at university
would degree jump
because they changed their minds
about what they wanted to do
with the rest of their lives.
History majors thought
they had to have a business degree
to be in business.

Sure, it helps, but it isn’t a requirement.

What matters most is
you learned.
Learning something relevant to the job
is a bonus.
Did you lead a school project?
(the subject doesn’t matter)
Did you juggle a part-time job
with schooling?
Did you initiate something, anything?
Show you’re a leader and
employers won’t care what you led.

According to Erin Miller,
co-author of a student guidebook,
“Employers are looking for
employees who are intelligent and trainable
– and that’s what a degree says.”

You don’t need the right degree
to get that business job.
You need the right mindset.