Probably not going to get a "Best Boss" mug from the staff any time soon

Sometimes it can be really tough to be the boss.  Lots of calls, lots of emails, lots of meetings, and probably lots of people in the organization that want a little piece of your time.  They might need some direction, want to get your opinion on something, might need some clarification before taking an action, and sometimes the team just might want a little face time, you know, a little interaction with the boss. Sometimes people feel a little better after getting some 1-1 time with the big kahuna.

So all that can get tiring for the boss. At least at times it can. The boss, too, has things to do.  The boss probably has his/her own agenda and priorities on any given day. The boss, sometimes, probably comes into work not in the best mood and maybe does not want to deal with any of this 'other' stuff that was not perfectly slated into their calendar for the day.

So I can kind of get it when once in a while the boss does not really have time for small talk in the elevator or in the hall. Or when, even in a small company, you need about 3.5 weeks advance notice to maybe get 30 minutes on the boss' calendar to day your piece. I get it. I do.

But time management is only one of the dozens of things a successful leader needs to be good at in order to succeed, and while I don't know for sure how to manage time effectively, (I am writing this at 11:30PM so I can attest), I do know that the wrong way for the boss to set expectations for the staff as to his/her availability and accessibility is to do what TV personality Steve Harvey dropped on his organization, (and as described in Mashable).

Take a look at an image of Harvey's set of instructions to his staff that was reportedly sent at the start of the show's most recent season:

Awesome stuff, right?

Don't talk to me under any circumstances unless we have a meeting on the calendar in advance. Don't speak to me in the hall, don't linger outside the elevator, don't 'ambush' me in the makeup room - basically DO NOT APPROACH ME AT ALL.

Love it.

But at least Harvey dropped a 'please don't take offense' at the end of the 14 ways to not talk to Steve Harvey bomb.

That will make it all better. 

I actually kind of like some of Harvey's rules. I may try to enact a couple in my life too. And if I do, just please don't take offense.

The five kinds of office environments and what they really say about your company

Caught the news this morning that Apple begun moving employees into its new, futuristic, spaceship-looking, and $5 Billion costing campus in Callifornia last week.

The space (or space ship) seems to be by all accounts incredible, (and I suppose for $5B it had better be), and reading the article over and looking at some of the pics of the new Apple campus got me to thinking about the various office spaces that I have worked in or at least have visited in my career. 

And honestly, while each office space is unique, and different in its own way, I think that they all can be broken down and places in one of just a few categories. Let's say five.

Here are the five kinds of office environments as I see it,an example of a typical company with that kinds of office set up, what the company thinks their offices say about them, and what each type of office really says about you, the company, their aspirations, and maybe even their future.

Here goes....

1. We don't have ANY offices  100% virtual baby. I'm having a staff meeting from the beach in Majorca.

Example: Automattic, Buffer, GitHub

What the company thinks it says: We are progressive, we only want the best talent, we trust people to do their best work in the environment that suits them the best

What it really says: There's a chance we may not qualify for a 12 month lease of decent space. And your Mom or Aunt Sally has almost certainly never heard of us. But if we disappear, it won't make too much of an impact, since we were never really 'here' anyway.

2. Class 'A' space in the office park out near the airport

Example: Tons of them - think logistics, insurance, regional telecom companies, pretty much anyone the developer can find

What the company thinks it says: We care about our employees enough to have them work in a clean, bright, and completely non-confrontational place. If the space is comfortable and has ample parking, then it is all good.

What it really says: We have just about zero personality or culture. Check that - we can add a 'culture' board to the break room wall, near the microwave. That will work. Class 'A' office space is like a Honda CRV. Sure, it will get you where you need to go, but you will remember exactly nothing of the journey. 

3. Big city, downtown, high rise (especially when relocating from Class 'A' space out in the middle of nowhere)

Example: Boeing, General Electric, McDonald's

What the company thinks it says: We want to attract more millennials who want to live and work in large cities with lots to do and see - arts, restaurants, sports, night life, etc. We also like to see the company name on a big tower. We also want to attract a more diverse, technically savvy workforce while we are at it.

What it really says: We can't recruit anyone younger than 40 to come to work in McMansionville 24 miles outside of the city. We also like to see the company name on the side of a giant building.

4. Common plan! Exposed brick! Ping Pong! Kegerator! (Did I mention the exposed brick?)

Example: Every Series A funded tech startup in San Francisco or New York

What the company thinks it says: We are cool! We are fun! We like to work hard and play hard! We don't care about hierarchy here, the CEO sits at the same communal table we all do! And we like exposed brick!

What it really says: Common plan spaces are way cheaper than building out personal offices, rent at the converted warehouse was almost nothing, (a lot less than in the McDonald's tower), after about 4 days everyone will invest in new noise cancelling/don't talk to me I am trying to work headphones, and my gosh are Josh and Tim ever not playing ping pong! I don't have a snarky remark about the kegerator. That would be pretty cool to have.

5. Money is no object. I mean, NO object.

Example: Apple's new campus

What the company thinks it says: We have more money, power, influence, and gravitas than anyone. We can do whatever we want. We don't care what you think.

What it really says: We have more money, power, influence, and gravitas than anyone. We can do whatever we want. We don't care what you think.

$5B large on a new office? Must be nice.

That kind of scratch would buy a lot of ping pong tables.

And keep everyone's kegerator filled for a long, long time.

Have a great week!

People, not projects

In between games of the NBA playoffs this weekend and as I was digging through a couple of weeks of 'saved' items in my Feed reader, (anyone still using feed readers?), I came across a link to a Quora thread aiming to address the question 'What made Xerox PARC, (the legendary reseearch shop in Palo Alto), so special?'

One of the responses, from Alan Kay, offered eight reasons why PARC (and the earlier ARPA) were so effective, and in reading Kay's observations, I thought the first five were pretty applicable to just about any organization that is faced with the need to remain, (or become) innovative and dynamic.

The first five points are below, I think they pretty much are self-explanatory, so I will just repeat them here and send you on your way on a sunny Monday:

There was a vision: “The destiny of computers is to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for everyone in the world pervasively networked worldwide”.

A few principles:

1. Visions not goals
2. Fund people not projects — the scientists find the problems not the funders. So, for many reasons, you have to have the best researchers.
3. Problem Finding — not just Problem Solving
4. Milestones not deadlines
5. It’s “baseball” not “golf” — batting .350 is very good in a high aspiration high risk area. Not getting a hit is not failure but the overhead for getting hits. (As in baseball, an “error” is failing to pull off something that is technically feasible.)

Really solid stuff, I think.

Start with a vision, but one that is short, cogent, and easily rallied around by the right people. Then set about giving those right people support and space to execute on that vision. And allow 'misses' from time to time, after all, even the best baseball players fail more than 60% of the time.

Easy, right?

But much easier said than done. Probably why we still talk about legendary places like PARC all these years later. They are the unicorn stories we keep having to cling to.

That's it, I'm out. Have a great week!

It's better to have a job when you're looking for a job

As the 2007-2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic recession fade further and further into the distance, we don't in 2017 talk about unemployment all that much. The sustained recovery in the labor market has pushed unemployment to near "full employment" levels of about 4.5% in the US, and in many sectors and job roles most employers would report 'good help is hard to find'. Until the robots take over. But that is a different story for another time.

Back to unemployment though. In 2008 and 2009, there was plenty of discussion about the best ways to help the many, many folks who were out of work to get back into the labor force. Lots of job search gurus appeared online, plenty of networking and support groups were created, and certainly significant governmental support, (cars, banking, insurance), was marshalled to try and stop the bleeding in the labor markets and help get people back to work (or keep them in work).

Around that time, as the unemployment rate topped at about 10%, one peculiar storyline emerged, and pretty consistently as well - namely that folks who were unemployed, and 'actively' looking for work, were often characterized as less desirable candidates than say someone who was currently employed, and may not even be actively looking for something new. The dream 'passive' candidate if you prefer that term. Lots of anecdotes about hiring managers passing on any candidate who was out of work were shared, and plenty of folks, (I possibly was one of them), opined about how unfair that this kind of (for lack of a better word) discrimination against the unemployed was seemingly more and more prevalent. And anecdotal or not, it certainly seemed that looking for a job when you did not have a job was much, much tougher than looking for one when you were already employed.

But just how much tougher is it, really?

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York looks to put at least some data around these anecdotes by looking at job search activity by unemployed workers, by employed workers, (both passive and active), and people out of the workforce. The entire report is interesting and worth a read but I thought I would tease out two of the report's most interesting findings about job search, and more importantly, job search outcomes.

1 - Lots of employed people are actively looking for work - almost one quarter of them 'actively' searched in the trailing four weeks of the survey period

Not shocking I guess, but also the 23.3% doesn't account for the probably much larger number of employed workers that would be open to at least discussing new opportunities, even if they were not in active search. Said differently, one of the reasons contributing to a bias in favor of employed workers is the fact that just about all employed workers are still in the candidate pool anyway. At least partially in.

So how does this perceived bias influence outcomes? Here's the money chart from the study, depicting how search behavior and application intensity translate into positive outcomes, i.e. job offers.

I will help you with the fine print here. Unemployed workers make up about 7 percent of the survey sample. They send out 40 percent of the total job applications, but receive only about 16 percent of the total job offers.

In contrast, folks who were employed and were actively looking for work make up about 20 percent of the sample but receive almost half of all offers. Further, the employed not looking for work (and who do not apply for any jobs), receive about one‑fourth of all the offers in our sample—more than the unemployed who are the most active searchers and applicants.

So how much better is it to be employed when looking, (or in many cases not looking) for a new role?

Well, according to this data, much, much better. Roughly it takes eight times the effort in terms of time spent and four times the application rate for unemployed folks to generate a similar rate of job offers that employed workers realize - many of whom are not looking for work at all.

Hopefully we won't have another dramatic economic or market shifting incident like the financial crisis that drives up unemployment and will make these findings and their impacts top of mind again. But it is good food for thought for any of us who may not love the job we have now, and are looking for something better.

We just might want to hold on to that crappy job as long as we can, because having it makes our odds of finding the next (hopefully less crappy) job that much better.

Most of us are on Plan B (or C or D)

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Ask any 8 - 12 year old that question and you will probably get one of the following careers in response - Movie Star, Pro Athlete, Musician, Astronaut, Firefighter, (increasingly) Video Game Developer, or maybe YouTube star, (apparently that is a thing now).

What you won't get much of in response are more common occupations like Office Clerk, Home Health Aide, Salesperson, or Bus Driver.

Not a shock, right? But I wonder if there isn't more to think about from the disconnect between what we really wanted to be doing with our careers, and what (many of us), end up actually doing in our careers. A recent survey of more than 400 teens conducted by C + R research suggests that most of today's teens have career aspirations that are extremely out of synch with the true nature of the labor market.

For example, 20% of surveyed teens expressed a desire for a career in "Arts, Design, Entertainment, Media, & Sports", a field that makes up only about 1% of American jobs in the workforce. And fully 0% of teens indicated a desire to move into "Office and Administrative Support" occupations, (like HR or IT), even though that category encompasses fully 15% of American workers today, making it the largest segment of the labor force as tracked by the BLS. 

This is not surprising data; I mean who wouldn't rather be a relief pitcher for the Mets or a Hollywood movie producer than say, an HR manager? 

Heck, even to this day when people ask me about my career goals, 'Point Guard on the Knicks' still comes up as a delusional option.

Why does any of this matter? Who cares what your boss or your colleague or even you wanted to really do with your life when you were 12 or 14?

It is possible that it does not matter. 

But it is also possible that it is a good idea to be reminded every once in a while that most of us are not really doing the thing we used to dream about doing. 

That does not mean we can't love what we are doing now, and be excited about how our careers have panned out, I am not saying that. And even if we can't be doing the thing we'd really want to be doing, (I am too old, slow, and have too unreliable a jump shot to actually play for the Knicks), I think the key to making peace with the Plan B ( or C or D), that we landed on is finding some elements of Plan A inherent in what we ended up with.

If you really wanted to be an artist or an athlete or an explorer, then what can you find in your (less glamorous), HR Manager role that at least hints at or reminds you of why you were attracted to those childhood dreams in the first place? What can you invent to make the role you have more like the one you always wanted?

How can you become the most artistic, expressive, courageous, legendary HR Manager ever?

If you can, then you probably will accomplish your version of "Point Guard for the Knicks".

Have a great week!