Working With Others

Last Friday, many news outlets picked up an interesting story. The Community Services Director in an Ohio community canceled this year’s Little League All-Star Game citing “child development studies” that say these sorts of games need to be banned. Parents were outraged. Last month, there was a controversy in Durango, CO when the High School principal wanted to discontinue the tradition of honor students wearing white robes at graduation as a symbol of their academic achievement. Fortunately, in this case the principal listened to the input of the outraged parents and the tradition continued, as well it should.

There is now an entire generation – the Millennials – who have grown up in a culture where everyone is wonderful, where only positive feedback is present, where everyone gets an award for just participating in an activity, and where outstanding achievement in school, athletics, or any other endeavor tends to get downplayed so as not to make others who did not achieve at such a high level feel bad – or worse yet, where everyone gets an “A”. So these twenty-somethings are entering the workplace expecting to get rewarded for just showing up.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a Baby Boomer. I grew up in an era when sometimes you tried out for the team, play, orchestra, or choir and DIDN’T make it; when teachers arranged seats in the classroom according to class rank; and when not everyone got into the college they wanted or got hired by the company where they really wanted to work. In other words, there was competition. And yes, a competitive environment can have serious flaws. However, this nonsense of not recognizing achievement because it will somehow segregate people has to stop. The reality is that in the workplace people get performance reviews – at least annually – and not everyone should get rated at “greatly exceeds standards”. Unfortunately, the twenty something’s saying “I’ve never gotten anything less than an ‘A’ in my life” will not cut it. This participation award mentality has created an entire generation who find negative feedback and dealing with adversity difficult. And adversity is exactly what businesses will have to deal with in the future. It would be a much better world if schools, community programs, and families helped young people find their talent instead of having them falsely believe everyone is great at everything.

The subscribers to this site have probably noticed the infrequency of the blogs over the last couple of months. Awhile back I noticed that the program I was using to write posts on www.workingwithothers.com was behaving, shall we say, weirdly. My travel scheduled delayed my following up on it, and low and behold there were some major bugs. In the words of one my of my friends, it was busticated!

Well thanks to Karen Arnold at High Desert Web – my Albuquerque-based web-hosting company – I am back in business. I have been with High Desert Web for more than two years and they have been fantastic! More posts are on the way.

JD

Current statistics state that the average cost of an MBA degree is in excess of $40,000 per year with some programs costing as much as $60,000 a year for a typical two year program. And according to www.mbaprograms.org, “ [T]he tuition cost of an MBA is more often than not an indication of its quality and regard among employers.”  There clearly is a mythology in play that says that corporations highly covet MBA’s, particularly from the top schools.

Here are some observations that might cause everyone to at least re-evaluate the value of an MBA degree more objectively.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I hold an MBA degree.

1. I have worked with MBA’s from the top programs in the country including Harvard, Wharton, and Kellogg.  I have also worked with those who earned their degrees from one of the many other MBA programs – usually in the evening while working.  There have been, what I would call, outstanding managers and leaders from both camps.  And there have been some whom I would consider dangerous to themselves and others – abject disasters as business managers.  My conclusion is that those high potential business people would have been high potential even without the MBA degree.
2. I have also met a number of MBA’s – even from top schools – whose technical skills – being able to read financial statements, or create a business plan, etc. were first rate.  But whose reasoning ability – the capacity to understand the second, third, and fourth order consequences of a decision – and the ability to get work done through others was sorely lacking.
3. Most MBA curricula focus on teaching business basics – the same basics that one would also get in an undergraduate business degree program- often taught by the same faculty using the same text books – except that the course numbers indicate a graduate school designation.  And because the courses are not cross-disciplinary, the curriculum reinforces the prevalent silo orientation of most corporations that organize around accounting, marketing, finance, and manufacturing functions.
4. Most business school faculties have a strong academic orientation.  That fact has at least two implications.  First, what gets taught is taught from a very theoretical perspective. Second, faculty get promoted not for their teaching but for their research.  So corporations that hire MBA’s have to spend time teaching them “how things really work”.
5. From having been an adjunct MBA professor for about 18 years,  many of the MBA students that I encountered lacked basic writing skills.

For what it is worth, I think corporations need to re-think their hiring practices and critically assess the value of an MBA.  At the same time, take a look at outstanding liberal arts graduates who have learned how to think, and write, and communicate. And who know how to learn. I can assure you that this pool could learn the basics of business (e.g., how to create and read financial statements, how to do a business plan, how a business makes its product or service and its money, and marketing principles) in less than six months – probably even in six weeks. By far one of the best MBA students that I taught was graduate of a liberal arts college whose whole curriculum is based on reading great books and writing about them – and she has been a quick learner in every position she has had.  So think about it.

People in my seminars and workshops often ask me “what business books do you read?  I answer, “I don’t read business books. The group is usually stunned.  What I found through the years is that  many business books don’t really offer any new ideas and often lead readers to the conclusion that there are simple answers to complex problems. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

Patrick Lencioni is a writer and consultant that a number of people admire.  His books often have a number in the title: The Five Temptations of a CEO; The Five Dysfunctions of a Team; The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Let me be clear that Patrick Lencioni and I probably have a great deal of common ground in our shared passion for making workplaces better.  His books are very accessible and seem to have struck a chord because his book sales are off the charts.  And I do not disagree with the major themes in the books above.  What is a problem for me is how the work gets applied.  Most people in organizations who cite his works tend to have read them non-critically and believe that, “if we can only overcome these five dysfunctions we will be a better team.  What is missing is the question, “might there be a sixth or seventh dysfunction or temptation that is really tripping us up?  Patrick Lencioni provides an example of what philosophers refer to as reductionist thinking – the tendency to reduce problems and solutions to the simplest set of principles.  Another example would be Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  The finite number of principles that reductionist thinking yields are not necessary bad or incorrect principles.  I have worked with teams that, in fact, exhibit all five dysfunctions about which Lencioni writes – as well as others!.  However, reductionist thinking has a way of making people lazy.  Instead of asking “are these really the three, four, or five things in play or better yet, might there be other principles that would apply, there is a tendency to accept as true the results of this reductionist thinking.

Another book that I have seen get mis-used is Jim Collins’ Good to Great.  Collins talks about great organizations making sure that they have “the right people on the bus.  I have talked with a number of executive who extol the virtues of this book and especially cite the part about getting the right people on the bus.  The way this passage gets interpreted is to hire (that is get people on the bus) who look like, think like, and act like the people doing the hiring.  So without real diversity do we really have businesses that can be as great as they could be?
So what do I read?  I read biography, history, and poetry.  I am currently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.  This is the story of how Abraham Lincoln selected for his cabinet four of his rivals for the Presidential nomination in 1860 and forge them and others into a team that lead the United States through the Civil War. If you really want to learn about getting the right people on the bus and building an effective team read this book. But read it with a critical eye, ask questions, then decide how you want to move forward.

Noel Coward said, “Work is much more fun than fun.”

How many of us can honesty say that they feel as Noel Coward did?  In my career, I have encountered many people who firmly believe that work is work and by definition should never be fun.  This group believes that one works in order to have fun.

Based on personal experience particularly during the past several years, I am an advocate of the “life is short philosophy.  Recently, I have really been reviewing various aspects of my life and asking myself is this something I really want to do.  What I have realized in this process is that we all have choices and we can choose to do what we want to do.  Granted, some people may not be happy with the choices we make and we may have a limited number of options from which to choose.  Yet, we still have choices.

Occasionally, I meet people who are miserable in their jobs.  For them, work is far from being more fun than fun.  When I suggest that they have options, they often look at me like I have two heads and give me a litany of excuses why they are stuck.  Yet, every once in a while, one surprises me.  That person says, “you know, I’ve been unhappy in this job for years and maybe it is time to make a move.

Imagine what life would be like if we could have our work be a fun part of our lives. I am interested in hearing stories from people who have made a choice to enliven their work lives.  Is anyone out there willing to share his or hers?

On Saturday, December 1, 2007 at about 7PM CST, my dear friend Andrue Scott died peacefully at the Benedictine Care Center in Minneapolis, MN. Andrue had battled HIV-AIDS for more than 16 years. A 1966 graduate of NYC’s School for the Performing Arts, he always had an uncanny sense of timing. So by dying on World AIDS Day, Andrue was being Andrue until the end. What finally caught up with him was that sarcoma that had metastasized before his leg was amputated in June, 2004.

I met Andrue when he was managing the Barnes and Noble Music Department in downtown Minneapolis. I went in one day at lunch to purchase one opera , Puccini’s La Rondine and left with TEN operas and a new friend.

So why am I writing about Andrue who was born Drue Scott Oppenheim in Queens, NY on May 25, 1948 in a blog about working with others? Reader’s Digest had a feature entitled, “The Most Unforgettable Character I Have Ever Met. (Maybe they still do, I haven’t looked at an issue since Lyndon Johnson was president!) Andrue would be my subject if I were to write that essay today. He was very opinionated, somewhat assertive, and quite frankly, well, bossy! However, he had a certain wit and charm with which he could put people at ease and endear himself to many. His circle of friends included the rich and famous as well as the everyday regular people of the world. He was high on the likeability quotient.

There are at least two things we could learn from Andrue. The first is that he maintained that everything worth learning about in life comes from either a Broadway musical or a TV sitcom , and he could cite the exact show tune or episode to support his claim. Of course, this was back in the day when both musicals and sitcoms had substance. Second, Andrue always communicated directly , he said what he meant and meant what he said. I’ve maintained that if people could only communicate clearly with each other, many workplace issues would go away. So thank you Andrue for your friendship and what you have helped all of us to learn.

About a month ago, I co-facilitated a workshop at a training conference.  As most conferences tend to do this one included a luncheon keynote speaker. Having played this role on many occasions, I can say with authority that I am not a fan of luncheon speakers.

Here’s why.  Most planning committees so highly structure a conference that there is very little time to connect with colleagues, share ideas, and meet new people in the field.  Usually these opportunities are available at 15-minute breaks or at those god-awful cocktail receptions. As Open Space Technology creator Harrison Owen noted years ago, the most interesting conversations usually occur outside the formal setting of a conference.

At this particular conference, the luncheon speaker gave a presentation on why lectures are de facto “bad and that “good’ trainers use a variety of gimmicks to “keep people engaged under the assumption that engagement equals learning.  The reason for this approach is that according to the presenter, television, with its ten-minute segments in between 3 minutes of commercials has conditioned everyone to only tolerate short periods of information exchange.  While the speaker was clearly professional and passionate about this approach, you’ve probably guessed by my tone that I was a little annoyed by the content.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a member of the American Society of Training and Development, and have been doing instructional design and training for about thirty years.  I completely support the importance of keeping the training class engaged and maximizing learning.

At times this session seemed like a mix of an out-of-control auction and the behavior of frenzied commodity dealers on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade.  I see this disturbing trend in training in which sizzle gets rewarded over substance and feel like the training community is selling it’s collective soul because it is afraid to make training challenging.  Why do we have to “dumb down workshops just because network television has dumbed down what it offers in a format that conditions people to short sound bites instead of a deeper dialogue.  What is missing is the opportunity to reflect, to go deeper, to really promote understanding. I think it is important to find ways to make these activities more accessible.   And what was missing from this keynote was the presence of any opportunity for exchanging points of view on when this anti-lecture approach is NOT the best one.  From where I was sitting I found it interesting that there were a significant number of people who were not engaged in the activities being suggested by the presenter.

I know this entry may irritate some of my colleagues as much as the content of the presentation (not the speaker) irritated me.  However, I feel a need to put a stake in the ground and invite others to do the same.  I am all for making learning enjoyable and enlivening.  However, I want to do it in a way that does not sacrifice substance and that has respect for the intelligence of the learners.

When my stepchildren were involved in youth sports, I remember a conversation among the parents in which we would wonder about the new coach. People would ask, “Is this person a screamer. In other words, except for when the coach is shouting encouragement or trying to get a player’s attention from across the field, does the coach routinely yell at the players – especially if they make a mistake , which (news flash to ALL coaches) they frequently do because they are learning how to play? We did not like the screamer coaches.

I’ve noted before that there are many websites devoted entirely to bad bosses (e.g., www.badbossology.com, www.badbosses.net). A question being asked around the water cooler is now, “Is that boss a screamer? In other words, is this boss someone who yells at his/her staff? It is a pretty sad state of affairs when this happens.

Well, here is the deal. It is NEVER OK for a boss to yell at a peer or a direct report in the workplace and that includes one-on-one meetings as well as larger gatherings. I think the worst example of this kind of behavior I have witnessed was when I was asked to coach the CEO of a small privately held services company several years ago. This CEO spent the entire leadership team meeting publicly humiliating each member of his team , for very trivial things. And if a given VP had not done anything wrong, this CEO would still berate them on general principles. What was even more amazing is that this team put up with it.

This happened to me once. It was about twenty years ago, and my boss started screaming at me because I responded to a request from her boss directly without having my boss review it before it was sent , not that my boss ever communicated this expectation. We were in the boss’ office. When she finished, I very calmly said, “It is quite reasonable for you to communicate your expectations about how you want me to handle a given situation. It is not acceptable for you to scream at me. I treat you with respect and I expect the same in return. My boss sat in stunned silence. She then apologized and said that she might have overreacted.

Sometimes bosses scream because they are scared of something , and more often than not because the organization has allowed the person to get away with it. Simply letting them know what is and is not acceptable , very calmly , will work most of the time. When it does not , then you have more data that will help you decide what to do. About six months after my conversation, I started my own company.

Last spring I wrote a blog about the hiring of Tim Brewster as the head football coach at the University of Minnesota.  My main point was that I thought it was a mistake to hire someone who had absolutely no head coaching experience at any level to run a Division IA football program.  I certainly wished the coach and program success, but was extremely skeptical that good things would happen.  In addition to a 1-2 record against weak non-conference opponents, I think I was justified in my criticism of this hire , for another completely different reason.

I was in Minneapolis last week conducting a couple of days of training and happened to catch an interview with Coach Brewster on the local radio station that broadcasts the Gopher football games.  The interviewer asked the coach about the process of recruiting , supposedly the main reason the University of Minnesota Athletic Director hired this guy , and I was dumbfounded by the answer.  First of all, the over-the-top positive thinking platitudes have this guy sounding like a cross between a motivational speaker and a used car salesman.  More importantly, he showed how out of touch he is with the current high school generation, when he said “I’m not just asking a kid to make a four year commitment to Minnesota, I’m asking them to make a 40 to 50 year commitment because they will love living here.

A couple of things¦  I lived in the Minneapolis , St. Paul area for more than thirty years, return frequently, and think it is a wonderful place.  And some athletes do in fact stay in the Twin Cities after they finish their playing career.  However, to ask a member of the youngest generation to make a 40-50 year commitment shows a complete lack of understanding of this group.  Young student athletes see choosing a college where they will play football as a four year , or less if they are a blue chip player , commitment period.  Once they have lived in Minneapolis for a while, they may see its advantages, but to tell a high school athlete they are making a multi-decade commitment at the tender age of 18 may be a bit scary.

One of things a leader needs to recognize is that everything he/she says is magnified greatly and everyone pays attention , even alumni!

We’ll see what other things the coach has to say.

I heard a story a while back that shows the power of a team , in an unexpected way. One member of a departmental team in a business organization had fallen on hard times. That person’s six-year-old daughter had a serious illness that really impacted his presence at work and his performance, and as a result, his team’s performance. Without any coaching from the team’s supervisor, the team came together for a meeting. They collectively realized that anyone of them could be in the other person’s shoes at some point in their lives, so they decided to do what it takes to carry this person’s load. In addition to covering the work responsibilities, they also collectively pooled their sick leave and vacation time to minimize for this person’s having to take days without pay at a time when he could least afford it. To make a long story short, his daughter completely recovered and as a result of their actions the team was stronger.

In looking at the relationships in your life do you have friends at work or in your personal life who would go to “hell and back for you when you are going through a rough time. I made a choice a long time ago that that was the kind of friend I wanted to be. I’ve certainly had my rough spots and my friends were there for me in many different ways. So when I tell someone, it is OK to call me anytime, I mean it. And what is important, it is not a quid pro quo kind of thing. It is just the right thing to do. In the above story, each team member was clear there was no other way they would have wanted to behave.