10 Coworkers You Want to Kick in the Keister

May 22, 2013 Uncategorized No comments

keisterkickThere is no such thing as a perfect workplace. No. Such. Thing. Every organization’s got its own quirks and oddities. Just for kicks, here are some of the folks you’ll see around just about any organization. Please resist the urge to shout out your colleagues’ names as you read.

1. The Smooth Operators

These folks, they know exactly what to say and how to say it. They’re often fantastic with customers and act just the way they’re supposed to around certain people. But around others, they’re cynical, arrogant jackasses. But smooth cynical, arrogant jackasses.

2. The Beggars

Like they’re begging you to fire them. They do just enough not to get canned, but are so subversive and are such an awful influence on others. Often though, beggars put on a friendly air, but with just enough sarcasm that you know they’re being sarcastic.

jersey-shore-season-313. The No-Talent Ass Clowns

Somehow these jokers have survived in your organization for years on nothing but their ability to make folks chuckle from time to time. They put out just enough barely-mediocre work to keep their boss at bay, but they’re such a burden to any team they’re on because they’re not really interested in performing at a high level, improving their own performance, and so on.

4. The Ultracrepidarians

You know the type. They’re the ones who love to give advice and criticism about anything and everything, which isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself; but these guys do it from a position of acting like they know everything about everything. (And yes, Ultracrepidarian is a real word. Hat tip to those kids who made fun of me when I was but a wee lad. It sent me to the dictionary and thesaurus so I’d never be unarmed in a battle of wits ever again.)

5. The Curmudgeons

These cranky crabs are always having bad days and believe the only way to make theirs better is to make yours worse. So they do.

6. The Slangwhangers

My seven British readers will enjoy this one. These are those loud, obnoxious people who you just want to kick in the shin so at least they will have adequate reason for sounding as loud and annoying as a donkey in heat. (Don’t ask.)

7. The Popinjays

The pretentious ones. They’re so vain they probably think this post is about them.

8. The Malfeasants

They’re always breaking rules and doing things they’re not supposed to be doing. No matter how tight or loose your guidelines are, these guys are always pushing it anyway. Got a five-minute grace period before you officially count someone as late for work? Yeah, they’re coming in at six after.

9. The Wikipediots

Everything. They know everything. Well, they know everything about three and a half minutes into a conversation they’re sitting in on. In those three minutes they’ve looked up the topic on Wikipedia and memorized what they perceive to be the main points, as well as some more obscure facts to give the impression that they understand the finer nuances of whatever you’re discussing. Just for kicks sometime, start talking about a word that isn’t a word and ask them what they think about it. Watch them squirm, check their phone, then squirm some more.

complaining10. The Fuss-Buckets

They find something to complain about with everything, and I mean everything. It may sound something like this:

Relaxed dress code? Great. But I still can’t wear my tankini? How lame.

Or this:

I think you can have fun at work too, but there’s a time for work and a time for fun.

Or this:

With all that laughing it’s a wonder they get anything done…

So look, if you’re one of these, don’t be too hard on yourself; you’re certainly not alone. We’re all human and we’ve all got our “stuff.” As teammates and leaders, it’s on us to help everyone from the Smooth Operators to the Fuss-Buckets grow and mature and develop, remembering that we’re far from perfect ourselves.

 

11 Ways to Crush Your Team’s Creativity

May 21, 2013 Uncategorized 2 comments

monty-python-footWe clamor for it, but don’t see much of it, or at least not as much as we’d like. And really, if we were pressed further, I don’t know that many of us would even know what we’re actually wanting.

It’s the ever-elusive but always romantic notion of creativity. It is the unicorn. It is the thing that will make the angels in heaven (if you believe in such things) sing or the nothingness that is beyond now continue to do and be nothing (if you believe in such things).

We — myself included — talk so much about creativity, and yet when we look around most organizations, it’s not like we’re having to tell them to pump the brakes (thanks, David Wilhelm) on the creativity. We have good intentions; I really believe that. I know we do at Mazuma, and I know we have some wicked creative Mazumans there. Our AVP of Technology, Christian, who I mentioned in this post, and I were talking just yesterday about some things we think we could do to foster more creativity.

But upon further contemplation, rumination, and even some pontificating, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a fool’s errand. Yes indeed. It’s bunk. Unicorn doodoo. Rubbish. Crap. BS. Or just regular S.

backstreet-boysI think many of us are far closer to being able to eliminate all the creativity talk from the vernacular at our organizations than being able to see actual creativity flourish in any meaningful way within our organizations. So let’s just crush it. As some lyrical geniuses once serenaded us, “Quit playing games with my heart.” Let’s not play games with creativity’s heart. Let’s break it instead.

Here’s how I propose we do that. (PS. Eat it, Backstreet Boys)

1. Provide your team no feasible time to exercise creative effort.

You know what I mean, right? I mean, don’t stop saying you want them to be creative, but make sure they don’t actually have any time to do that. Their days need to be so jam-packed with other stuff that the most creative thing they’re doing is figuring out how to fit in a restroom break.

2. Provide them no outlet for their creative energy.

It’s important that the team not have any outlet for their creativity. There shouldn’t be anywhere to go to exert creative energy, and there shouldn’t be any particular business problems for which you want them to create solutions.

3. Don’t give them time to think.

Related to #1 above, time to think is terrible, because that’s often where good ideas come from, especially if more than one person has time to think at the same time. And God forbid they’re together when they do it. Then you’ll have this whole mess with them coming up with ideas, you saying no, them coming back with another idea, you saying no, etc.

12381a9acbc88cf25558485a4b8d4bc64. Don’t challenge them to be creative.

For heaven’s (if you believe in such things) sake, do not under any circumstances challenge a clump of humans to be creative. There’s something in people that seems to come alive when provoked by a challenge. They’re able to muster creativity that even they may not have known they had. Clearly we don’t want that. Plus, if you challenge them to be creative, it could be misconstrued as you supporting creativity in a tangible way; and we’ve already established that we do not desire that.

5. Don’t give them “permission” to try things.

Always encourage them to play it safe. Now, don’t come right out and say, Don’t be creative and try new things. Be more subtle. When someone tries something and it doesn’t work, crush them (subtly). When someone throws out an idea that seems off the wall, literally throw that person off the wall. The latter isn’t as subtle either, but will still get the point across. That point is that it’s not safe to try new things.

dead-twitter-bird-20110107-0939006. Block social media.

You simply cannot have them being exposed to thoughts and ideas from all over the world. You never know when one of those pesky ideas will latch itself onto your employee’s brain stem with such determination that he or she won’t be able to rest until he or she has made that idea happen.

You also don’t want them communicating with so many different sorts of people. Who knows who these people are? How can you be sure they’re only straight-laced business folks like you need your employees to be? There are undoubtedly bad influences lurking behind every tweet. Like artists, for example.

7. Be sure to schedule their entire day full of meetings and/or tasks.

Remember, free time is wasted time. If people have time to sit still for even a few minutes other than to cram food down their throats (preferably while still working), their minds might be freed to actually think. Thinking is to be avoided at all costs. I know I try to avoid it.

8. In other words, do not set aside time for people to think and collaborate.

To be clear: You don’t want employees to have the time or space or permission to tackle problems together. One person’s creativity is often contagious, and believe me — that’s the last thing you need. Call the CDC if you suspect an outbreak.

JustSayNo19. Make “No” the default answer to new ideas.

It’s just simpler this way. You don’t have to think about the ideas; and the employees learn first not to get their hopes up, and eventually not to offer ideas at all. We would consider this a win.

10. Don’t acknowledge creative ideas that work for the organization.

Look, sometimes things get away from us and in spite of our best efforts, some crazy idea sneaks through and wouldn’t you be darned — it worked. Damage control time. The best thing to do — a best practice, if you will — is to ignore it altogether. Just act like you experienced the success through the regular course of business. You see, if you start pointing out when people’s creativity creates positive outcomes for the organization, you run the risk of them mistaking that for you actually encouraging creativity, which would be awful of course.

11. Don’t encourage the oddballs.

Remember when your parents said that whole “Don’t laugh; it only encourages him” thing? (Or was it only mine that said that to everyone else after I did something funny/mischievous?) Same principle applies here. If there are people within your organization who are a little different or quirky or creative or unorthodox, do not — I repeat, do not — encourage them. In fact, frown at them whenever they look in your general direction. Like literally frown.

If you can do these things, you stand a pretty good chance of crushing creativity on your team and within your organization. Just make sure you don’t try anything new to crush the creativity. Only tried and true creativity-crushing methods are appropriate.

My Gut Tells Me You May Not Like This Post

May 20, 2013 Uncategorized 17 comments

albert-einstein-intuitionAll of you out there who blog know there are some posts that everyone else in the world is going to think are rubbish. Absolute rubbish. (You’ll just have to imagine my British accent there.) Today’s may or may not be one of those for you.

Data is a thing. (No, Trekkies, not that Data.)Celebrity City

Intuition is a thing.

Hunches are things.

Logic is a thing.

Rational thinking is a thing.

Information is a thing. (Al Gore invented a superhighway for it, you know)

roasteriefrontObviously I’ve over-simplified the above, but the point is that all of these “things” are what we use to make decisions every day, be it as leaders; team members; family members; friends; neighbors; patrons at local eateries like Foo’s Fabulous Frozen Custard, the Roasterie or Dodge City Distillery; or consumers at online retailers like Amazon or Zappos. Heck, we use those things to determine our philosophical outlook on life itself to some degree, which determines the lens through which we view reality in many ways.

And just because it’s important to me — please note that we talked about frozen custard and philosophy in the same paragraph above. On what other blog….foosfabulous

The tricky part with all of those things above is that they’re interrelated and often interdependent, and there’s no universal standard that tells us how much weight we’re to assign to any of those particular things. What if logic seems to tell me one thing, but the numbers don’t appear to bear it out? What if the data points in one direction, but your intuition is pulling you in the other? What if all the experts are saying to do this or that, but you have a hunch that this other thing — different that the this-or-that that the experts have suggested — would be an even better solution?

And there’s the rub.

Because here’s where we arbitrarily start ranking those things, if not overtly, certainly in a de facto sense. You’ve seen it happen a dozen times at least. I know I have. You’re sitting in a meeting and some version of the following conversation takes place.

BizPerson1: So we can clearly see from the previous 312 slides that the data points in a pretty obvious direction. People will notice us more if we wear tin foil hats in our locations.

BizPerson2: Wow. So according to your data, people with tin foil hats on were noticed almost twice as much as people without tin foil hats? Numbers don’t lie, people.

BizPerson3: Um, I hope the numbers and data will pardon me, but my gut tells me that having our teams wear tin foil hats is a terrible idea.

BizPerson2: Were you not paying attention to BizPerson1′s presentation? All the data, all the information — it all indicates that people in tin foil hats get noticed.

BizPerson1: Yeah. Where’s your data, BizPerson3? Hm? Got any actual data to back up your assertion?

BizPerson3: No, I have not done extensive research around how people respond to other people wearing tin foil hats, but I do tend to have a good feel for human “stuff,” and my intuition tells me that the tinfoil hat strategy would make us the laughing-stock of…well…maybe the whole world. I know your data says one thing, but I’m telling you — don’t do it.

BizPerson1: Well, I’m afraid we can’t make business decisions based on how you feel. Numbers don’t lie.

An exaggerated example of course, but its non-exaggerated cousin is played out all over the place every day. Now before you freak out and throw the square root of 417 at me, I’m not at all saying that numbers don’t matter or that data isn’t important. They do and it is. What I’m saying is that people have intuition for a reason. Will they always be right? Nope. Will your numbers always enable you to make the correct business decisions? Nope. But it doesn’t always have to be an either/or thing. They can be used in concert. And sometimes you just have to have the stones to go with your gut.

One of my favorite “coachings” I’ve ever received happened a few months back. I can’t remember what exactly prompted the discussion, but my boss told me not to back off my intuition. He told me use it and go with it because it was a strength of mine.

You see, sometimes I think we unwittingly buy into the lie that everything we need to know is always in the numbers. But if that were true, relationships would be a math equation and emotion would be a Sudoku thingy; there wouldn’t be gutsy risks — just extremely well-calculated ones.

As leaders, we’ve got to do a better job at learning who on our teams just seems to have that “thing” where their gut seems to be right a lot of the time. Their instincts tend to be right, even if it seems unlikely that they would be. Their intuition operates with clarity; for them it’s the equivalent of all your studies and numbers and data.

But that means us too, as leaders, need to have the guts to go with our intuition sometimes instead of hiding behind the numbers. Hiding behind the numbers is the easy way, because even if it goes wrong, it’s easy for us to say that with the information we had it seemed pretty clear that that was what we should have tried blah blah blah.

What’s harder is making a decision because you feel like it’s the one that needs to be made. Your gut tells you it’s the right one. You won’t have the luxury of hiding behind the numbers if you’re wrong, but at least you’re actually thinking and making decisions instead of doing what the numbers tell you to do.

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