Management Craft

Where the sun shines....Redux

I was searching through old posts on the breakthrough blog and found this one from October of 2006. Given that it is gray and cold here today, I thought I would post it to shed some light.

Where the Sun Shines

The sun does not shine everywhere
On everyone
All the time

Even on a clear day
There are shadows
And colder dark spots

The warm rays touch us
When arms open
And we reach

I took this picture on a recent hike in the Cascades. The leaves glowed with happiness.

Show Your Warts

Giving passion, heart, and soul to our work is an option – a choice. Team members choose how much of themselves to give based on how they feel about the work, the work environment, the company and their managers (you). If you are a joy to work with, people will work harder for you – period.

Everyone can be likeable – everyone.

Similarly, everyone has the potential to be annoying and a pain in the neck. I have coached a few jerks and have had to share with them the perception that people had about them. You know what the common response was? “They don’t know me. If they really knew me, they would not hate me.” This is often true – and their responsibility to address. I don’t let managers off the hook easily when they have not taken the time to let their peers and team members get to know who they are – warts and all.

We all have weird habits and personality flaws, but it’s our flaws that make us interesting.

Here are a couple great links to kick off the week:

I like this post from Herman called, Do What You Know. Here's a snippet:

In a major city in the South there was a guy who sprayed hotels weekly to eliminate bugs. He was great at his job and had locked up all of the hotels. As he showed up weekly to keep those spiffy hotels bug-free he often dreamed of owning his own hotel. He should have stayed with what he knew. After becoming a millionaire doing a job few would covet, he squandered it away building a hotel without any knowledge of how to do that.

What do you think about this? My heart says I wanna totally reinvent, but my head says that Herman is likely right. Is this a chicken and the egg? Do we do what we do well because it is a good fit for us or is our work a good fit because we do it well? What if what we are doing is not lighting us up? Maybe it's not the work it's us. Maybe the next thing will be equally uninspiring because we have chosen to be uninspirable (yes, I know that is not a word, but it oughta be). Is there a patter with all roads leading back to you?

I also like this post from Rosa called How Organizational Culture Happens. Here's a snippet:

What gets created, is what we commonly call organizational culture, a culture which will help you attain the visionary goals you have set your mission-critical sights on beyond today, within the framework of a business.

And here's an interesting look at the whole Joe Torre incident as it relates to pay for performance and the downside of extrinsic motivation. From HR Captialist:

Joe Torre seemed to make this same point Friday when he said: “If somebody wanted me to manage here, I’d be managing here. That’s my feeling. Yes, it was a very generous offer, no question about it. It still wasn’t the type of commitment that we’re trying to do something together as opposed to what can you do for me. … It’s not the money that’s going to be the determining factor. It’s the commitment and trust. You can’t have one without the other.”

Two Beautiful Books

I am working on my nonbusiness writing and reading this weekend. Here are two recommendations for beautiful gift books.

I bought this first recommendation last week and wholeheartedly recommend it for all you tea lovers out there (and what a great gift for your tea loving friends). It is called The Story of Tea. This lush book is well written and has lots of photos. It's a heavy book and worth the $29 cover price (less at Amazon).

The second book is one that I thumbed through at the bookstore and thought to myself - what a wonderful gift for any bird lover. I am just a junior bird lover and was enthralled - I would love to have a copy of this book called simply Bird: The Definitive Visual Guide. This is a big book and the photos and color illustrations are amazing.

Managers are Like Rock Albums

When we buy a typical album of music, we get a mix of songs by one artist or group. There are usually one or two great songs, and bunch of good songs, and a couple that you skip over whenever they play.

Sure, there are those rare air times when most or all the songs on an album are great, but this does not happen very much.

Managers are like albums of music. They usually have one or two strengths, do a lot of things pretty well, and they suck at a couple tasks. There are the rare managers that have many strengths and I would guess that less than 5% fall into this category (given the odds, you probably are not one of these, although 80% of you probably think you are).

When we buy music albums, we expect a mix of songs and we are OK with the natural distribution of great, good, and skip-over songs. Perhaps we should see managers the same way. We should expect our managers to have a few unique talents, do most things well, and we should acknowledge that he or she - like most people - will stink at a couple things.

An album can be a great album and have a couple skip-over songs.
A manager can be a great manager and stink at a few tasks.

The management skip-overs should not be CORE to the success of the team or business, if this is the case the manager and the job are not a good fit.

I was talking to a friend of mine and we got on the topic of 360 degree assessments. 360s are great when they communicate strengths and help managers focus on building strengths. But I will bet that the focus of the conversation is on the low points in the bar graphs - the relative weaknesses.

We say that focusing on our strengths is most important, but I don't often see that we tolerate weaknesses. To focus on strengths we have to tolerate - even embrace - some weaknesses.

If we expect managers to turn weaknesses into strengths, this is not focusing on strengths. It is focusing on weaknesses.

Skip-overs are part of the package. Don't waste a lot of time trying to make a hit song out of a dud management practice. Find the gig that best fits your sweet spots and be cool with the rest.

I have worked with and for managers who had huge blind spots. Some of these were mission critical and they were not a good fit for their roles. But most of these managers had blind spots in areas that added up to minor irritations, and that's fine. I was able to appreciate their unique strengths.

With iTunes and similar music sites, we can buy just the great songs for a buck a piece. No skip-overs! But with managers, we can't do this. The album comes as one package - warts and all.

My Demotivators - Redux

I am not sure why, but a funny post I did over a year ago is getting lots of hits this week. It's somewhat tasteless and crude, so I thought you might enjoy seeing it again. "Alone" is my favorite (that's a picture from my solo trip into White Sands).  Here's the post below from September 25, 2006:

My Demotivators

OK, OK. I know. What's a chic and sophisticated professional like myself doing messing around like this?

I needed a mental break. Soooo, I created two three Demotivational Posters (I shared the link a couple days ago). Sure, it's kind of negative - but meant to be all in fun.

Make your own! Email me yours if you think you can do better. I'll post it if I agree.

What do you think?

Why we SEEK to tell our secrets...

This post is slightly off the management topic, but because I have a BS in BS, I can link it to management with no problem.

I found this post on Citizen Rain about a blog called Post Secret interesting. Post Secret is a blog filled with secrets. People mail their secrets in to be posted. No names, of course. Check out the blog, it is amusing - sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. Frank Warren, the author of the blog, gets so many secrets sent to him that he has created a book of them (actually he is on his 4th book of secrets) and is currently on tour.

This got me thinking about two questions:

1. Why do we like telling our secrets?

2. What would a list of management related secrets look like? If you would like to send me your management (or business in general) secrets by email. I will post them all with no names once I get enough to make a meaty post of it. Just to be clear, I am not asking for your favorite management techniques - I am asking you to tell me a secret about something you did at work that nobody else knows.

Go ahead, use your extra incognito gmail/yahoo/hotmail email address and send me your secrets.... my email is lhaneberg AT gmail DOT com.

Fireside Chat with Bill Yenne

What's a perfect pint? Chat with Bill Yenne

During this 20 minute podcast, I chat with Bill Yenne, author of Guinness: The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint. Whether you love beer or not, you will enjoy this conversation about a world class brand and product. If, like me, you love a perfect pint, you will want to hear what Bill Yenne has to say about this most noble and complex liquification. We touch on several topics including history, widgets, nitrogenation, love, culture, and Irishness. This week's podcast is sure to whet your whistle. I enjoyed ready Guinness, finding it an evocative and interesting book - I recommend it!

You can listen to my podcast with the Bill Yenne by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here: MP3 Download

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog or see the list on my main website here.

You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name for Fireside Chat.

Lemons, Lemonade and all that

Here in Seattle we had a wind storm today. My power was out for about an hour but some neighborhoods are still without power. The West Seattle blog offers this compelling video shot in today's storm of a windsurfer.

Made me think of the old adage about lemons and lemonade.

Are you harnessing the storm surge or getting blown to bits?

The Business of Leisure

It's amazing how hard we work to figure out how to relax.

Does this seem odd to anyone else?

We enroll in retreats - get to the airport two hours early, fly for another four hours, carry all our electronics with us, and then pay for it with plastic that boomerangs back into our lives three weeks later.

We buy books about Zen, Wabi Sabi, goddesses, secrets, and breathing techniques. We attend monthly book chats to discuss breathing.

We become human pretzels on bright rubber mats and we take classes to learn how to laugh.

We nurse expensive single malts and foo-foo drinks at loud happy-hour joints.

Our volunteering starts off simple enough, but then our inner leader kicks in and before we know it we are on the board of directors.

Those needing to relax in mid-life often find that a red topless car or purple motorcycle are required tools.

We plunk down thousands of dollars on vibrating chairs and pay thin people dressed in hemp to cover our naked bodies with hot oil and rocks. The hotter it is, the bigger their tip.

We spend weeks planning vacation details and the vacation mourning our lack of control over the details. We judge new lands by how they don't fit our expectations. We stand in line for hours to see the Mona Lisa and then look at her for less than two minutes. We snap drive-by photos of sights we've highlighted in travel guides. Then we spend nights and weekends uploading and editing the vacation photos to share with others and we tell people, "hey, I saw the Mona Lisa."

Guppies would find it hard to fly and hummingbirds can't swim. But why don't we know how to relax?

Perhaps it is time we all woke up and smelled the vente soy latte. We know how to relax and recharge. We know how to laugh. We know how to breathe. Or we did once and that knowledge is still in there like riding a bike. The pursuit of leisure is a diversion that can take us in the opposite direction.

Are we addicted to Name Brand leisure? 

What did you do this weekend?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing.
I relaxed.
Oh, so you went to the spa? Read a book? Went shopping?
Nothing.
You tried one of those sensory deprivation tanks?
No, I did nothing.
Where did you go?
Nowhere.
Did you take in a DVD?
No.
I see, you got drunk and slept.
No. I did nothing.
I don't understand what you mean. Is something wrong?

To relax, relax. What are we afraid of?

Book Cover Contest - $500 to the winner

I am going to be putting out a revised edition of High Impact Middle Management later this Fall and I would like to add a new cover. I have always disliked the old one, but as a first time author (this was my first book), I did not have any say in the matter.

I have decided to open up the cover design to my blog readers and their friends. If you or your friend would like to submit a design, read on. I will pay $500 (for royalty free rights) for the winning cover design and will provide exposure for your work through my blog and website.

Here are the details.

On the front cover, I want the following words:

High Impact Middle Management

Lisa Haneberg

Revised Edition

That's it - no HIMM acronym (I have never liked this acronym) and I am not putting the subtitle on the cover. On the back, we can include a few blurbs. I am open to innovative designs!

The book will be a 6X9 paperback and approximately 240 pages. Four color is fine for the cover. I will likely use Book Surge to publish this revised version of the book and you can find a PDF with cover specs here (under common downloads).

I would like the cover to be striking, bold, and smart.

Send me your cover designs by November 9th, you can submit as many cover designs as you like. I will post the entries on my blog and get reader input as to which cover best expresses the book's essence. I will use that feedback as part of my selection process. I will share the website information for all entries, so everyone will get exposure for his or her work. I will be doing other books in the future, so this could lead to more work on other projects.

Feel free to email me with your questions, but I do not want to limit the creative process by suggesting any particular color palette or style. I recognize that the cover I like the most will likely be nothing I could have imagined on my own.

Once the decision is made, I will announce the winner and pay that person $500 for the winning cover.

This is the old cover:

I can't wait to see what the new one will look like!