Dog food, champagne, and Email

I am grinding through about 12,000 speaking proposals for the upcoming HR Technology Conference in October 2014, and in a recent review call, a rep from one of the vendors made almost a side comment about their own internal use as a company of the HR solution that they are offering in the market. The context was a discussion about a newer recruiting application the vendor was advocating and the vendor rep sort of off-handedly mentioned something like 'And we used the tool to source and help assess candidates for the 15 developer positions we needed to fill last quarter'. 

Not a big deal right, that a HR technology company would use its own HR technology to help it solve its own HR problems and challenges. You would, as an observer or a potential customer of an HR technology solution sort of expect that the actual developer of a solution would have to naturally want to and be strongly motivated to use their own solutions in house. click to see what I am talking about

This concept of a supplier company and its employees using the technology, products, or services that they produce is refrred to as 'Eating your own dog food' or for more sophisticated suppliers, 'Drinking your own champagne.' And typically, and especially in the minds of potential customers and prospects, when a company 'Drinks its own champagne' it is a sign that one, they are committed and passionate about the product, and two, the product actually works.

This 'dog food/champagne' issue was in the news again recently when the President of PayPal, David Marcus, came down hard on PayPal employees who had refused to install the PayPal payments app on their phones, had forgotten their PayPal passwords, and essentially were not advocating for the product and brand by using the product (and using it publicly). 

Here is a short excerpt from Marcus' email to the PayPal team to give you a feel for just how serious 'eating your own dog food' is from this Exec's point of view:

As a matter of fact, it's been brought to my attention that when testing paying with mobile at Cafe 17 last week, some of you refused to install the PayPal app (!!?!?!!), and others didn't even remember their PayPal password. That's unacceptable to me, and the rest of my team, everyone at PayPal should use our products whenever available.

Marcus goes on though, and this next part is even more interesting:

In closing, if you are one of the folks who refused to install the PayPal app or if you can't remember your PayPal password, do yourself a favor, go find something that will connect with your heard and mind elsewhere.

Boom.

Marcus moves from, 'You really need to be an advocate for our products while you work here' to 'You probably should not be working here if you are not going to advocate for our products.'

Lots of commentators came down pretty hard on Marcus for the tone and message (maybe it was a bizarre set of !!! and ??? mixed in), but I think I am with him on this one. Wouldn't you expect someone who worked at PayPal to actually use PayPal?

I would. Just like I would expect a big payroll provider trying to sell payroll technology to my company to actually use that same technology to pay their own employees.

If a company doesn't internally use their own stuff (where applicable) or can't convince its own employees to adopt their products, to me that is a big red flag about the viability of the product, the commitment of the employees and the long-term chances of a successful partnership with their customers.

Postscript - If you click on the thumbnail image on the right side of this post, it will expand a 1977 advertisement for corporate email technology from Honeywell. If you read the fine print, (and it might be hard), after the copy that describes how wonderful this new email service will be, your 'Contact us to learn more' information contains a phone number and a postal or physical address. No way to contact Honeywell via email, even though that is precisely the service they are selling. Sure, in 1977 maybe none of the prospects would of even had email themselves, but to me that is not really the point. Honeywell would have looked really sharp and progressive if indeed, they offered email as a way to contact them about using email.

Postscript 2 - I am a Diet Coke fan. Last year at a vendor conference I was about to moderate a panel that included a participant from one of Coke's competitors. This panelist noticed my Diet Coke and asked me kindly but seriously, if I wouldn't mind leaving the Coke behind as we took the stage. And I did.

Have a great day!

On positive reflection and workplace stress reduction

Quick shot for a 'I have about 7,817 emails to read/reply to Thursday' but want to put off that torture for at least 15 more minutes, (the time allotted to research, write, edit, and hit 'Publish' on this sucker).

Did you catch the HBR.org 'Daily Stat' item from this past Tuesday? If not, here it is in its entirety (please don't come after me Harvard):

Stress levels and physical complaints declined by roughly 15% after employees were directed to spend 10 minutes writing about three things that had gone well each day, says a team of researchers led by Joyce E. Bono of the University of Florida. At the end of the work day, the employees logged on to a website where they were asked to write about events large or small, personal or work-related, and explain why they had gone well. The findings suggest that this intervention could have important effects on employee stress and health, the researchers say.

SOURCE:  Building Positive Resources: Effects of Positive Events and Positive Reflection on Work Stress and Health.

Pretty simple right?

Take about 5-10 minutes at the end of the day and deliberately think about, and document, three positives from the day - work successes, some good news in your personal life, maybe even something simple like your favorite NBA team won the game last night. Do this every day and over time, at least according to this research, your overall stress level is likely to decline, and you will start to feel better overall.

Sounds like it makes sense, lots of us forget to think about thepositives in our work or personal lives and focus on the negative. If you are encouraged/forced to write down or log in an online tool somewhere only the positive things at the end of the workday I suppose that will help you 'shut down' from work in a generally better mood and mental place than you might otherwise. Especially if the final 'work' of the day was something unpleasant or difficult or simply just a pain in the neck, (like the task of reading all your email that I am currently avoiding).

What do you think, would this kind of intentional positive reflection make a difference in reducing your stress levels?

For me, I am not so sure. Maybe it is the cynic/pessimist in me, but the second I sat down to document the three positive items for the day, I would naturally look to pair or balance them with three negatives.

And then I'd probably be back to focusing on the negatives again and stressing and you know the rest.

But what the heck, I might as well give it a shot:

Three positives from yesterday:

1. Scored two First Class upgrades on my flights home from IBM Connect

2. My old reliable truck actually started after 4 days parked outside at the airport in mostly sub-zero temperatures

3. I made it home in time to watch KD and LeBron go at it in one of the NBA's best match ups

I guess all in all that makes for a good day.

I will let you know tomorrow if I feel less stressed. I still have all that email to read though...

Happy Thursday!

Be proud of where you work: Talking points from the NSA

An internal NSA memo leaked over the weekend, one where the good folks at the National Security Agency provide some tips for their staff to take home and use over the recent Thanksgiving holiday in case they were confronted with a drunk Uncle or angry Cousin who might not be totally pleased with having a member of the family a part of cyber spying, stealing personal information, or whatever else the NSA can be accused of carrying out.

The 5-point document (with supporting examples) can be found here, and if you can overlook the source, history, context, etc., it actually provides a really useful outline of what employees can do to carry the brand message out into their personal lives.

Here are the 5 talking points about the NSA that the agency wanted, or at least advised, it's staff to share while sitting around the holiday table, with some comments from me about how they might be more generally applicable to any organization.

1. NSA's mission is of great value to the nation.

Applicability for you?

Probably some. Obvious if you work for a children's hospital or for Waste Management. Maybe less relevant if you are in some kind of management consulting group or work for one of the local car dealerships. In those cases you want to find someone (other than the greedy owner of the company) that benefits from the existence of your organization to speak up. There must be somebody, right?

2. NSA performs its mission the right way.

Take a page from the NSA, (as well as the example set by the local personal injury attorneys in your market), and stress it is not just what you do, but someone you do that thing with more integrity than the other guys that do that exact same thing as you. Don't worry about proving it, it is pretty much impossible for anyone to dispute your claim tom the moral high ground.

3. NSA performs its mission exceptionally well.

Probably the weakest of the talking points to rally behind. But I suppose in your context the fact that you are still (for the moment anyway), an ongoing concern that is employing people must mean you are doing something well. Don't grab for too much else here.

4. The people of NSA are loyal Americans with expert skills.

Drop the nationalistic bit if that makes sense for you, and go for the standard and universal 'We only have the best of the best here at ACME' take. We all know that to be the case. Everyone only employs top talent, 'A' players, etc. So what if it is not true. Unless you work for Yahoo, apparently.

5. NSA is committed to increased transparency and public dialog.

Your company has an official corporate Twitter account, right? And probably a Facebook page too. And whatever other associated social outposts that the last batch of summer interns set up for you. Forget that the last post was some inane blather last week about Black Friday, the fact remains that you are an open and transparent organization. And you will prove it the first time someone, anyone tweets at you or leaves a comment on your corporate blog.

And there it is. The much-maligned and reviled NSA has just handed you the recipe for indoctrinating helping your teams share the good news about the work you are doing there at the Widget factory.

Think of it this way, how hard can rallying the staff and goosing morale be if even the NSA thinks it can  do it?

What if we had fewer managers?

For a few minutes yesterday I dropped in on the always interesting #Nextchat on Twitter which was on the always popular HR and Talent topic of employee engagement. In the discussion most of the comments and observations around the topic of engagement were what we have come to expect, (and know to be true). Nevertheless, there were some excellent insights shared by many of the participants.

But you know the story around engagement, right?

Employee engagement is a reflection of the 'extra effort' people choose to make or not make, bad company culture drives much of the measured low levels of positive engagement, and most interesting to me, that managers are the prime drivers or enablers of engagement in the organization.

If the organization has bad managers, or not enough good managers and then you will have an engagement problem, (and a retention problem and a recruiting problem, and on and on). Managers need to be engaged themselves in order to have a better chance at rank-and-file employee engagement. Managers are often the barrier to engagement, as they simply don't know or realize the importance of engagement in a broader organizational context. Managers are the devil's spawn and their mere presence haunts the hallways of the company headquarters.

Ok, that last comment was not really stated, but you get the idea. The manager as the key to engagement, (and lots of other really important talent management practices), was beat to death.

After watching the discussion carry on in that manner for a bit, I finally (at least to me), offered the only suggestion that might actually have an immediate impact, (not necessarily a positive impact, I admit).

Here it is:

Since 'managers' seem to be the cause of all the disengagement, then what if we simply had way fewer managers? #nextchat

— Steve Boese (@SteveBoese) November 20, 2013

 

I was kind of being a wise guy but not totally.

If (bad) managers are truly such an important driver of engagement and talent management, and we have known this for ages, and at least according to the consistently poor engagement levels we see in many if not most businesses we are doing a terrible job of selecting and coaching these managers, then wouldn't it make sense to simply have far fewer of them?

Find the 20 or 30 percent of the managers that actually are really good at engaging teams, guiding career development, challenging employees to reach their potential, etc. and just let them manage everyone.  Take the rest of the managers that aren't good at those things and either let them focus on the actual work they are good at or let them move on.  Or make them sort of 'technical' managers that don't have the messy 'people' manager side of things and can focus on the work, sort of like how football teams have offensive and defensive coordinators that set strategy and tactics but don't really have to deal with the players on an individual and personal level.

I don't know, it just seems like after years of lamenting about the shortcomings, disinterest, and general imperfections of 'managers'  that at least some of the problems could be solved by having fewer of them.

What do you think?

70 is the new 50?

Overheard from one of the talking heads on CNBC this morning in the context of a discussion on the potential candidates for new CEO of Microsoft: (Note: I am paraphrasing the below exchange as best as I can from memory, as I was still a bit groggy waiting for the coffee to brew).

Host - Now how do you feel about Alan Mulally from Ford to be the next Microsoft CEO?

Expert guest - I think he'd be fantastic. He's done an amazing job at Ford, he has ties to the Seattle area, and would be able to turn around that company.

Host - But is he able to take that job and do it well for say another 7 years? Isn't he something like 68 years old now? (Note: Mr. Mulally was born on August 4, 1945 making him, indeed, 68 years old).

Expert guest - Sure he could. Why not? 70 is the new 50 after all.

(Chuckles around the table).

Except that it really is not all that funny.

The issue really isn't whether or not Alan Mullally would in fact make an excellent CEO for Microsoft and even at 68 years old still has the energy, drive, good health, mental agility, etc. necessary to succeed in such a big, complex job. 

Rather, to me, what made me stop what I was doing and shake off my still-waiting-for-the-coffee early morning stupor was the really casual way in which none of the show's other participants really pushed back on the notion that '70 is the new 50'.

Is that really accurate? And is that how folks working today need to contemplate their working lives? Planning for a future where you will need to (or be expected to), be churning out the widgets at 70?

To me this is not some long term trend playing out over decades and decades, it seems much more like a one generation shift. 

I suspect most of the folks reading this blog are in what we'd consider their 'prime' working years, probably between 35 and 55. And probably most of the folks can look back just one generation, to their parents, and see how the arc of their professional lives looked much, much different and sets up in contrast to the '70 is the new 50' point of view.

And since I don't know your specific story, I will share mine, (and assume it resonates, if not, please share in the comments).

My Mom was mostly a stay at home Mom until the kids were older and two of the three of us were out of the house. She then had a few different part-time jobs, a couple that she really liked, but then opted out of the workforce for good at about 55 or so. 

My Dad, after leaving the Army, worked for one company his entire professional career, held various management and administrative roles, and retired for good at about 62 years old, (and was 'ready' to retire way before that).

I suspect the stories of your parents are similar. And I'd also suspect at least for many of us today, we expected our stories to play out along similar lines. But it does seem that, in just one generation or so, these expectations, borne out of a combination of economic necessity and some measure of changing cultural and societal pressures, are being rapidly altered.

The talking head on CNBC might have been (kind of) joking when he said '70 is the new 50.'

But let's pretend for a moment it was not a joke, and it really is more representative of how more and more of our careers will look.

Are we ready for that?

Are our organizations ready for that?

Will you ever see your Grandkids while they are still young enough to spoil?