Category: Corporate Games

I recently met a group of people
while on a three week cruise.
Everyone in the group
had been laid off from the same company.
They were young,
highly educated,
highly skilled,
and now unemployed.

I’d be surprised if
there was a single person in the group
returning from that cruise
without at least one interview lined up.

Why?

Because they networked
with the 3,200 other passengers,
many of them executives and board members.
Everyone on the ship knew their story.
Many people admired their confidence,
their positive reaction to the lay off.

Not everyone can afford such a networking opportunity.
However, everyone CAN network
in equally unusual and effective ways.

A week into an intensive training program,
new employees at Zappos
are offered $2,000
(as well as their pay for hours worked)
to quit.

This is absolutely brilliant.

Building a great company is tough work.
Employees tempted by this cash
are unlikely to stick it out.

Getting that offer up front
is a test for how badly you TRULY want it.
How many new bloggers,
if offered $2,000 to never blog again,
would save themselves time and money
by quitting early?
Isn’t finding out
today rather than a year from now
worth $2,000 of your own cash?

Next time you start something,
think
‘If someone gave me $2,000
NOT to start,
would I still do it?’

There is a myth
that older managers/employees/superstars
become obsolete.

The happy truth is
that myth is false.

If you constantly learn
and develop yourself,
you will NEVER become obsolete.
There is no way a kid fresh out of school
can compete with your experience
IF you’ve studied the same things.

You’ve had 40 years of learning.
She’s only had 20.

The BIG problem is
that most of us are lazy
and stop learning.
We stick with the same 20 years of learning
we graduated with.
Those 20 years are
now 20 years out of date.

We don’t become obsolete.
Our knowledge does.

Take a course this summer.
Dust off those brain cells.

Women in business
constantly have to fight
the ’emotional’ label.

Does that mean we can’t get angry?

Nope.
But it does mean
we have to manage that angry.

Cathie Black in
Basic Black explains

“It’s okay to let people see
you’re angry,
but it’s not okay
to lose your cool.”

“There’s a big difference
between these two emotions:
losing your cool
is an overly personalized response
in an office environment.
It’s better to express anger briefly,
then move quickly
to the next, much more important step:
fixing whatever’s been broken.”

Focus on the problem
and
bookend the anger
with rational, constructive information.

When interviewing,
don’t bother asking
anyone in a manager position
or above
whether they’re a people person
or a task person.

It’ll just irritate the applicant.

Anyone with half a brain
will answer that they’re a people person.
It is challenging to reach the higher levels
without being a people person.
That you’re asking that standard question
raises questions in the applicant’s mind
about what type of business you’re running.

As Lee Iacocca once said
“Anyone who doesn’t get along with people
doesn’t belong in this business,
because that’s all we’ve got around here.”

When you’re laying off employees,
standard practice is
for another manager
(usually someone from human resources)
to sit in.
This person doesn’t say anything
(and if it is a human resources person,
probably better that they don’t).
She’s just THERE.

Why?

John Roberts, Former CEO of Roberts United Utilities,
states
in Hiring And Firing
(LES50NS from Harvard Business Press)

“If you’re at all concerned
about that person leaving that interview
with a different view of
what was said than the one that you have
and perhaps taking you
or the business to court,
taking further action,
then my strong advice
would be to have a reliable witness.”

In this litigation happy world,
don’t lay off solo.

“We’re going to wow them
on this project.
We’ll do the analysis.
Then we’ll present the findings.”

What kind of patronizing
togetherness crap
is this?

What my manager should have said
was
“We’re going to wow them
on this project.
You’ll do the analysis.
Then I’ll present the findings.”

Motivating yet honest.
We’re a team.
I have my role.
She has her role.

We, you, and I
should be used cautiously.

Present the I portion first
and listeners tune out,
thinking it has nothing
to do with them.

Use ‘we’ when you really mean
‘you’ or ‘I’
and you sound like
you’re talking down
to your listener.

‘You’, ‘You’, ‘You’
cries dictator.

For more insight,
see this post
at Confident Writing.

Many companies are telling employees
to use up vacation now
while sales and other activity
is lower.

A loved one took them at face value.
He had a lot of vacation
(because he is key to the team
and works around the clock).
He decided to take 3 weeks.

On my advice,
he trimmed that to 2.

Why?

Because 3 weeks is unusual.
Others comment on it.
It is a ‘must-be-nice’ type of vacation.
Managers round it up to a month.
Tasks can’t wait for a month.
Replacement staff are trained.

In other words,
you are replaced.

NOT what you want in
this type of environment
(or ever).

If you’re playing the corporate game,
keep your vacation to 2 weeks or less.

A popular cost saving ‘trick’ for companies
is to cut an employee’s hours and pay
by 20%.
In other words, the 4 day work week.

The employee has a choice,
go somewhere else
or deal with the decreases.

For a regular employee,
this is close to a disaster.
For the entrepreneurial employee,
this is the equivalent of a lottery win.

You now have the stability of full time employment
(usually with the health plan)
but paired with the flexibility
to start up a business.
3 days to work on your own business,
4 days to work on someone else’s.

Don’t squander it!

Oh, and ask for the Wednesday off
so you are only two days away
from your own business.

Very few of us
thank our employees.
That, alone, will make you stand out
and increase loyalty.

Almost no one thanks
their employees’ parents.

No one except for PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.
Not only does she send a quarterly hand written letter
to the spouses of her 27 top executives
but she also sends letters to their parents.

As she says
“The outpouring of emotion and response
I got from them was incredible.”

The top people don’t work strictly for money.
Thank the people
who truly motivate them.