Discover the secrets of career suicide for yourself today!

By Neil Patrick

Are you the CEO of a global advertising business? Are you feeling out of step with the 21st century and in need of a career change? Well I have great news for you. You could transform your career faster and easier than you ever thought possible. Thousands of old white guys know this secret to career transformation. And you could too. Just follow our FREE step by step guide below! Act now before it’s too late.

Offers subject to status. Results may vary. We assume no liability for anything you say do or think which you may find has unexpected consequences. Your personal credibility may be at risk.

If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to get business leaders into trouble these days, it's trying to deny a problem exists when all the evidence points to the contrary. Whitewashing the truth might be the essence of what  advertising companies do, but in an age where media is more democratic than ever before, it's also dangerous and potentially career terminating.

And one group of people are especially vulnerable to this; people stereotyped as ‘old white guys’. I am sensitive to this because I am more or less one myself and it dismays me when I see my demographic peers damaging our increasingly fragile standing in the world.

Last week, via an interview on Business Insider, an old white guy who ought to know better, Chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts got into a spat about his views about women’s careers in advertising and for expressing his opinion that the issue of gender was “done and over.”

He was confronted by Business Insider with the challenge that the advertising industry is sexist because not a single CEO of the six largest advertising agencies in the world is female.

You'd expect that a man at the head of a large global business whose very nature revolves around communication, persuasion and sophisticated messages, would produce an elegant, visionary and inclusive response.

But he didn't.

Having spent about 20 years of my career working almost daily with advertising firms, I've observed at close quarters that the advertising industry is sexist for many reasons, not just its attitudes to the women it employs.

Moreover, its ‘creative’ output for clients is often ageist, elitist, patronizing and worst of all, frequently devoid of any sort of moral compass. Changes to the law have been necessary to stop tobacco advertising and control advertising to children. Basically, provided your business isn’t illegal, almost any advertising company will gladly take (a lot of) your money and spend some of it to promote and lavishly entertain you whilst pocketing the rest.

Commenting on Roberts' fall from grace, CEO of 20-first, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox pointed out in her Harvard Business Review post that:

“Roberts’s kind of willful blindness (in Margaret Heffernan’s wonderful phrase) is widespread. Those who explain the dominance of men in leadership by citing women’s “personal choices,” which of course they respect and have no wish to influence. Others who make a fuss of visibly promoting alpha females (usually without kids) to prove their gender neutrality, while alienating the next generation of women. Those who proudly say they hire the best candidate regardless of gender, without ever considering that their definition of “best” might be rigidly male.”

This blindness and denial is not only unconscionable, it's harmful to business effectiveness. Avivah goes on to say:

“That’s where many managers still are, mostly unconsciously. Denying differences. Some, like Roberts, use the differences to rationalize the gender gap. But without understanding all the issues that affect, influence, and irritate women, it’s pretty hard to create gender-balanced workplaces or to connect with female consumers sustainably.”

“Rather than ignoring gender issues, it’s increasingly important for 21st–century leaders to understand them — deeply. When you can speak to both men and women, without alienating either, that’s “gender bilingualism.” It has nothing to do with Men Are from Mars–esque stereotypes, and everything to do with embracing gender differences along a whole range of masculine and feminine career cycles, communication styles, and differing attitudes to power. And in the world Roberts describes, “a world where we need, like we’ve never needed before, integration, collaboration, connectivity, and creativity,” gender bilingualism is increasingly a leadership skill.”


This is the first reason that Roberts got it so wrong. He didn't just suggest it is not an issue, he clearly stated that the problem is solved, because he believes that women who think and behave just like the worst kind of stereotypical old white men, are doing just fine in the advertising industry.

Mainstream and social media were quick to cotton on to Roberts’ expressed views in the interview and he was promptly suspended pending internal disciplinary processes. He resigned on 3rd August.

Advertising agency creative work is collaborative, fast paced and can be great fun. Agency leadership roles managing business and people usually isn’t. But this is hardly solid grounds to conclude that no women really want to make this transition.

Historically, the principal measures of career success have been rank and pay. The default generalisation is the higher we climb on these particular ladders, the more successful we are assumed to be. And the more fulfilled and happy too.

But this is a way too simplistic view. Reality is different. It is nuanced and often it is entirely the contrary. I know a lot of other old white guys who hold senior positions and would gladly give them up if they knew how to survive without them. They are tired, disgruntled, cynical and burned out. They have little or no fun at all in their work. They’d gladly hand their jobs over to another man, woman or hermaphrodite if they were given half a chance.

This disengagement is because too many organisations have retained cultures which place a premium on Alpha-male competitiveness. Cultures where only lip service is paid to collaboration and inclusivity. Cultures where there is tokenism. Cultures where a winner takes all mentality prevails.

Why do we continue to define success simply in terms of positions on an org chart and pay scale? The millennials have it right. Success is about doing the things at work from which we derive most satisfaction. Whatever those things are and whatever gender we are. But implicit in Robert's comments is that connectivity, collaboration and gender appreciation might be useful for his staff but are not terribly valuable characteristics for industry leaders. It reflects an old world view, not the reality of 21st century business leadership.

He said:

“So we are trying to impose our antiquated shit on them, and they are going: ‘actually guys, you’re missing the point, you don’t understand: I’m way happier than you.’ Their ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy. So they say: ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by’. I don’t think [the lack of women in leadership roles] is a problem. I’m just not worried about it because they are very happy, they’re very successful, and doing great work.”

And this is where Roberts committed hara-kiri; he asserted that there is no problem, because women are choosing to work to different definitions of success. Not that these definitions are essential to everyone at all levels of the organisation.

The thing that astonished and disappointed me most though was that a man who is (was) at the very top of a huge global business which specializes in media and communications somehow thought that he could express these opinions and not get killed for it. He more than most people should understand how the media, his peers and the public would be likely to react to any statement of denial on this topic.

It seems to me that the real issue for organisations in the 21st century isn’t how to make organisations blind to gender, measuring 'equality' using old world metrics of  pay and seniority; it is how to harness and fulfill the unique talents and aspirations of all employees regardless of age, gender or race. And to recognize that leadership teams exclusively reserved for alpha men are at a serious competitive disadvantage in the digital age.

But then I’m an old white guy, so what do I know?

Why your career dream may already be dead

By Neil Patrick


We don’t just have a global jobs crisis, we have a career progression logjam…

Today I woke to a BBC Radio 4 news item which reported that CEOs were complaining (again) about talent shortages and their difficulties with attracting and retaining good people.

There was much talk about “talent acquisition”, “agile organisations”, “human assets” and a good deal more management psychobabble. But whilst I yawned at the language, there was no doubting the veracity of the message.

In October 2015, PA Consulting issued a report which attributed this problem to poor use of HR data:

“There is a mismatch between chief executives’ desire to get talent management activities right and their investment in technology; only 3.6% of CEOs and HR directors had a coherent approach for analysing talent-related data”.

Report author Jennifer Cable said: “The say-do gap is huge. It seems that talent management is belief led rather than metric led, but you name me another critical area of competitive advantage where activity is not being backed up with concrete data.”

I would go even further. The problem isn’t just about data and beliefs. It’s about culture and action. Or lack of it. 21st century HR leadership is broken. It no longer serves either employers or employees well. I have nothing against HR people. And I would point out that HR is by no means the only function which has failed to transform fast enough to keep pace with what Jeremy Rifkin calls "The Third Industrial Revolution". Marketing, sales, finance, even IT in large organisations are similarly lagging.

Recently, the Pew Research Center reported that the US middle class was now outnumbered by the poor and upper classes. This is another indication that the traditional career ladder structure has bottlenecked in the middle of society.

This strategic failure is also evidenced by my own mailbox. Almost everyday I get emails from professional people who despite having great qualifications and work experience report that they cannot get interviews, let alone get hired.

If we have lots of skilled people looking for jobs, AND organisations frustrated in their search for good people, how come this problem exists at all?

What on earth is going on?

I am not going to fall into the trap of blaming one party or the other. But organisations have to accept that the old model of recruiting and hiring is failing faster than they’d like to admit.

This isn’t news to some I know. It’s the maturation of trends which have been going on for at least a decade.

The root of the problem isn’t useless job applicants or wicked HR people. The root of the problem is how both employers and jobseekers think about jobs. What they are, who does them, how they do them, how they are managed, how they are rewarded.

The current model of recruitment has not suddenly materialised. It has had decades of refinement, all designed to assess, quantify and rank the suitability of individuals for a particular job. Organisations like processes and procedures. They help them feel in control. And able to defend themselves against potentially hostile regulatory or legal threats.

Recruitment and selection processes and procedures have now inevitably become hard coded into IT systems called applicant tracking systems. Large employers have invested millions in their adoption and deployment. I have written about the consequences of these systems here.

HR teams are not to blame either. But they have become servants of the machine. The catchphrase “Computer says ‘No’” could have been written just for them…

The problem is that the whole recruitment industry and HR profession has been getting better and better at doing what can now be seen to be the wrong things.

They have become experts at creating boxes and then matching the boxes with the people that apparently best fit into them. These boxes specify everything, much of which is irrelevant or at least a distraction. Things like:

• Hours of work which reflect traditional norms not operational or employees’ needs
• Cut and paste competencies which are generic and often based on lazy thinking
• “Acceptable” levels of sickness which assume everyone’s health is the same
• Holiday entitlements which reward length of service rather than accomplishments and workload
• Rates of pay pegged to outmoded concepts of seniority and status.

These boxes haven’t really adapted very much to reflect the huge changes which have been going on in the world. They perpetuate some very old ideas about what a job is and how it should be done. These ideas are a legacy of the old command and control structures which originated in business and organisations in the industrial age.

People were increasingly reduced to cogs in a giant machine. This direction of travel has now reached a breaking point where unless an employer is desperate, hardly anyone can match their over-specified expectations.

If we add in instinctive personal biases around gender, age, appearance, race, we start to get a glimpse of just how much the system is broken. Yes, I know such things are illegal, but they are so easily fudged that hardly anyone worries about them.

Meanwhile the very nature of work has massively transformed in many jobs over the last ten years.

Organisations talk a great deal about becoming agile, yet their procedures change really slowly. Many aspire to being disruptive, yet are effectively paralyzed by risk aversion and legacy structures. They seek to be flexible, yet find change difficult. They espouse how they are customer-centric, yet shareholders' interests always trump customers'. They keep on doing the same old thing when it comes to specifying job roles and finding people to put in them.

Jobseekers are rightly and understandably frustrated and incensed by this. The explosion of  digital communication, means anyone who is looking for a new job can find hundreds almost instantly online. The result – organisations are bombarded with on average up to 200 applications per vacancy.

And since humans cannot possibly be expected to accurately assess such a deluge, automation has been adopted to screen, sort and rank resumes and choose candidates. Except these systems are at best only partially effective. In one test carried out by consultants Bersin Associates, a ‘perfect resume’ only scored 43% on the applicant tracking system…

Organisations aspire to respond and adapt to these problems, but very few are making real headway. This is because they are playing around the edges, when what they really need is a complete rethink of how they can reconcile their need for talented people with an admission that the current way of doing things is no longer fit for purpose.

So we see the continuation of cut and paste job descriptions. Of largely discredited psychometric assessments. Of idiotic interview questions and competency ‘tests’. Of overly rigid terms and conditions of employment.

The future won’t be owned by organisations which perpetuate the status quo. It will be owned by those that can grasp the nettle and figure out how they can live by these ideas not merely talk about them.

For millennials, this fragile career environment is one they have grown up with. They’ve never known anything else. For older generations, it’s nothing short of a catastrophe for which few are equipped.

Organisations will eventually transform. They have no choice. The trouble for people seeking jobs and career progression is that this transformation is going to take a very long time. And the trouble for organisations is that this key strategic requirement is so low on their agendas that they are at risk of organisational obsolescence which at best will hamper every aspiration they have, or at worst kill them.

Happy New Year! ;-)

The Best Advice I Received for Blogging on LinkedIn Pulse

By Karthik Rajan

The month was August, the year 2014. I saw a small icon show up on my LinkedIn profile. It was an icon for a pen – an icon that gave me the gateway to pepper the digital space. When I decided to take the plunge, I shared with my mother that I planned to blog. She gave it a quick thought and said, “Son, one advice – do not advise.”

The assuredness of her voice on the phone threw me out of balance. I asked her, “Can you elaborate more?” She added with a smile, ”No matter which part of the world and irrespective of language, when given a pen and paper, people have a proclivity to become authority figures on do this and do not do this.” She added, “Just share your experiences, trigger the reader's curiosity and let the audience draw their own conclusions, respect them as individuals and they will in turn respect you.”

Her advice made me think. How much do I remember from instructional classroom work vs. the stories outside of it? The childhood shenanigans and bonding with friends and family seem to be the memories without expiry date. On the other hand, concepts taught came a distant second. Reflecting on my own experience reference points, I saw myself nodding in agreement with her advice. Many of us think, few do. On this activity, I decided to act. The best way to describe it is through William Wordsworth’s words - “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” 

 

My experiences in the last 9 months gave me some things to ponder.

What I learnt about easy reads vs. disciplined moments

Many blogs are easy reads, packed with content like top 10 lists (listicles as my friend Dustin McKissen affectionately calls them). They have an ability to reach large audiences, but what about recall rates in the long term? On the other hand, sharing experiences – it takes a disciplined moment to get hooked on, a little while to make inferences but the memories are valuable. Emotional writing laced with context, is worthwhile in the long run. Without realizing, I was picking sides on the long-term metric (KPI) for thoughts on the digital space: Blending in to be forgotten or standing out to be remembered.

What I learnt about the commonalities between leadership and blogging

Leaders are endowed with power to take, but great leaders eschew the trappings of position but enhance the might of relationships. As a blog writer, we do stand on stage near a lectern, as scary as it may seem, just like leaders we have a choice to be pedestrian or great. It is very tempting to lecture (there is a time and a place for that) but it takes conscious choice to do the less obvious – reflect back the power of importance bestowed upon the blogger by the reader.

In a few meaningful words

My Mother’s timing of advice was impeccable; it did help me orient my blogs. The outpouring of responses from you all has been fantastic. A heartfelt thank you for the reads, likes and more importantly the comments, emails and phone calls. Just the learning from those conversations are a few blog posts. More importantly, I have learnt a lot about you. There are many bonds I have built. I really appreciate the relationships and memories.

Sharing experience, before your first blog

For those of you on the cusp of that very first blog, I understand the fear of the trolls, the unknown and many more knots in your stomach. The reality is that there is an army of souls- nudging you with words of encouragement, leaning in with thoughtful commentary that will expand your horizons and sharing with you their most precious - time.

If my experience is anything to go by, I am inspired to share - Just do it. When you take that plunge, I look forward to reading your first blog. Just let me know.


Ed: This post is reproduced with the full consent of the author. I'd like to thank  Karthik for his kindness in allowing me to share it here.

Why you will fail to have a great career (Part 2)

By Neil Patrick

My earlier post with this title got a lot of hits when I tweeted it the other day.

A few days ago I also set out some thoughts here on why it’s a myth that the young are technologically superior to their parents. And I mentioned the H word, “hipsters”. Deliberately actually, as at the time I was reading the pre-publication version of a new book by my friend and author George Verdolaga.

George has insightfully and engagingly set out how our society creates two basic types of attitudes and behaviours. George has labelled these groups “Mavericks” and “Hipsters”.

I enjoyed the book so much that I volunteered to write about it on this blog to help George reach more people who might benefit from, or be interested in it. It’s called “The Maverick Effect – How to be a daring innovator and effective change maker”.

My wife read it also and despite being a very different personality to myself she loved it too!

If you’d like to obtain a copy, it’s available now at Amazon here.

The book was written for anyone who has ever felt excluded, discounted, discriminated against, ridiculed, or bullied.

Within its covers is an explanation of so many aspects of society, attitudes and behaviours that I think it will be of interest to a very wide audience. Moreover it provides valuable help for anyone struggling to overcome prejudice, discrimination or alienation.

More than that, if you are or know someone who is experiencing such agonies, the book actually describes how this state of affairs can be turned into a catalyst for such people to not just overcome these traumas, but to achieve really amazing things with their lives.

After I’d read it, I was delighted to interview George about the book and the ideas within it. Here’s the transcript.

NP: So George, what’s The Maverick Effect basically about?

GV: It’s a book that’s designed to teach people how to develop the confidence necessary to be a winner in life and at work

NP: How did you come to write the book?

GV: I decided to write it when I finally came to realize that the challenges that I was going through were not designed to keep me down but to give me the strength & resilience to overcome life’s obstacles and achieve whatever I’d set out to do. And then when I saw the earlier lives of famous people (which I’d written about it my book) they all went through the same kind of difficulties I did and that’s precisely what enabled them to achieve the level of success that they attained. They had the hunger for success and that’s really the key differentiator between people who are successful and people who aren’t.

NP: How can we tell if we are a maverick or a hipster?

You’re a hipster if you’re careful not to rock the boat and like to just go with the flow. Popularity and being on-trend is important to you. Mavericks on the other hand tend to be disliked or misunderstood and they sometimes have these ideas that are considered “strange” or “totally out there”. They don’t have a compelling urge to be followers. They have strong personalities that may turn people off initially but at the same time they do have a magnetism that draws others to them, even if it may be for the wrong reasons, mostly because they’re passionate about their ideas no matter how radical these may be. You’re a maverick if you’re not afraid of rejection or scorn and don’t mind being regarded as an outsider. Mavericks can be hard-headed and stubborn but they also know with absolute certainty that one day they’ll be proven right.

NP: Is our category pre-determined by personality and genes, or are we free to choose it?

GV: People definitely have a natural personality but that can be influenced by upbringing and life experiences. In other words, we may each have a natural disposition but that can be tempered by what we learn and what we see around us. So choice plays a big part in our life outcomes. It’s not just about personality, in other words.

NP: Do you have a sense of what proportion of people fit might into each category? Are there differences by age, location, gender etc?

GV: I would say that between 90% - 95% of the population are hipsters that just choose to go with the flow and not disrupt the status quo and 5% - 10% of the general population are visionaries that lead the other 90% - 95% who are only too willing to follow them. There is no difference between age, location or gender as Mavericks tend to come from different parts of the world.

NP: How does this phenomenon manifest in the workplace?

GV: Most people tend to fall in line and go hipster. The few that don’t and become outspoken get quickly labelled as trouble-makers. Some of them are in fact misfits but a few really are mavericks. They’re meant to either rise up the company ladder or most likely start their own companies. Mavericks are usually outspoken and don’t follow rules very well as they like to make up their own. Companies are usually hidebound places that are tough to change from within so mavericks either have to leave or learn how to dance (so to speak) until they eventually get their way.

That’s why in my book, I show mavericks how to walk two worlds, the one they see in their heads (the future) and the one they have to currently live in. For mavericks to really influence the world and get their way, they have to win the respect and admiration of the hipsters (who will end up joining their cause and eventually promoting them so they can make that “I- found-them-first” boast) so they have to be just a little bit subversive enough to be sexy (ex. think jazz or rock and roll when these were new and readily embraced by teenagers wanting to rebel against their parents’ tastes) enough to draw attention to themselves but also mainstream enough to be able to attract a followership. It’s a fine line that one has to walk.

NP: Your argument is that mavericks eventually change the world, but that hipsters perpetuate the status quo is convincing. Yet doesn’t this imply that the greatest short term rewards are from running with the pack?

GV: Yes, you’ll definitely be rewarded in the short term by running with the pack but you’ll be forever invisible. Geniuses aren’t discovered because they did their best to blend in and not rock the boat. They become celebrated because they dared to challenge existing truths (ex. ‘the world is not flat - it’s round’) or dominant groups. You can certainly escape being bullied or ridiculed by shape-shifting to fit in. But you’ll most likely be average the rest of your life. Being a powerful and influential maverick requires hard training, much like military boot camp. If you don’t pay the price and go thru this tough apprenticeship, then your brilliance won’t shine through. You’ll be like a raw diamond… nothing but pure undeveloped potential.

NP: What advice about jobs and work choices would you give to A) mavericks and B) hipsters?

GV: Mavericks would make great inventors, pioneers, explorers, scientists, engineers and inventors. They like to create things from scratch and go to uncharted territories. Hipsters would make great museum curators, newspaper reporters, TV news anchors, editors, film critics, trend forecasters, salespeople and marketers. They like to look at other people’s work and then deconstruct, critique or promote this.

NP: You mention that businesses which are most successful are genuinely different. But doesn’t this also mean that they have a higher failure risk simply because they are in uncharted waters?

GV: Businesses that are innovative are able to minimize their failure rate by testing products before they launch these to market. If companies don’t test and simply launch new products they will experience failure more often that’s for sure. But you don’t have to be a pioneering company to experience failure. You can be a copycat business and still fail. Being first has nothing to do with failing. Not testing your product or service – and not being attuned to what your target market wants – has more to do with failure than being first to market or simply being different. People like different. But there’s a way to do different that ensures success.

NP: Companies want to retain and grow their talent; how can your ideas help them do this?

GV: Feedback is important. I think that few people can work effectively in a vacuum. Training is also important. When the economy (or a company) is in a downturn this is usually the first thing (training) that gets thrown out the window. Bringing in outside speakers/trainers who can see the forest for the trees is often a great idea for bringing fresh ideas into a company that may be getting stale or too set in their ways. And leadership training implies not following the herd but leading it. So when everyone else is cutting their training budgets and slashing costs, you’re doing the opposite and investing more and more in your people in order to build loyalty.

NP: Thank you George! I’d just like to add that the book is a really great and easy read. And I know from experience that writing plainly is much, much harder than it sounds!

GV: Thank you Neil, it’s much easier when you are doing something you love.

I’d like to thank George for providing me with the advance copy of the book and for taking the time to answer my questions about it. Totally recommended reading!


GEORGE VERDOLAGA BIO:

If you wish, you can connect with George here:

Website : www.georgeverdolaga.com
Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/pub/george-verdolaga/1/956/582
Twitter: https://twitter.com/georgeverdolaga

George Verdolaga is a prolific author and speaker. His two biggest passions are teaching and helping people to get out of their own way so that they can reach their personal, career, or business objectives as quickly and painlessly as possible.

George was the president of the Westdrive Educational Foundation (WEFI) and served as the administrator and program advisor for both the elementary and pre-school departments for ten years. He continued his involvement in education by volunteering as a grade three Teacher at the parish religious education program (PREP) of St. Andrew’s Parish in Vancouver’s East Side community for ten years, with his wife Maita. Both of them are also active members in their local church.

In 1999, George established Flowform Design Group, a residential interior design company. When the recession of 2008 hit the global economy, he saw many people get laid off and attempt to get back on their feet by blanketing the entire city with their resumes and receiving no callbacks. As a result, George created the ‘Sitting Pretty’ Home Study Course, based on his experience of successfully finding work in places like Manila, Milan, New York, and Vancouver in as little as eleven days by talking directly to decision-makers who had the power to hire him on the spot.

After the 2008 recession, many twenty- to thirty-year company veterans found themselves out of work and unable to land a new job. As a result, George wrote The Contractor Lifestyle to show careerists how they can have jobs for life by adopting an entrepreneurial mindset while they work for other people. More recently, he created The Job Farmer where he shares the most effective way to find work—or get business clients—by “farming” rather than “hunting”. George wrote his third book, The Maverick Effect, to show potential innovators and change-makers that their earlier hardships prepare them for the leadership role that they will assume later on in life.

George has been president of various business associations and has sat on the boards of several non-profit boards including the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (JDRF). He currently serves as a mentor at the Multicultural Helping House Society and AIESEC UBC which is an international business organization for university students.

Why admitting personal failure is sometimes the best thing to do

By Neil Patrick

We all screw up from time to time. We're human. We make mistakes. Admitting to our weaknesses is hard. Yet sometimes it really is the best thing we can do.

Yesterday the UK charity Kids Company was declared insolvent and shut its doors. The evening TV news was full of scenes of inner city children howling in disappointment.

The charity was set up on 1996 to provide extra care and support for kids from the most troubled and disadvantaged backgrounds in inner cities across the UK. It delivered this support through a network of street level centres, alternative education centres, therapy houses and over 40 schools.

Kids Company told the government that it would close its services on 5 August 2015 less than a week after receiving a government grant of £3m. Yet despite this massive cash injection, the charity was still insolvent. It had no alternative but to close.

This was a charity which had enjoyed the patronage of many of the UK’s most high profile people from David Cameron to wealthy celebrities. The cash simply poured into Kids Company. During its lifetime, it received more than £25 million from the government, and another £4.25 million in early 2015. Prince Charles praised it. The band Coldplay donated £8 million. Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, Jemima Khan, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, John Lewis were all eager donors.

Kids Company’s founder and former Chief Executive Camila Batmanghelidjh was an archetype of the mantra that with passion we can achieve anything. Her motives, commitment and compassion are not in doubt. Neither is her ability to gain personal influence and profile. She became a brand.

Camila Batmanghelidjh in 2008
Credit: Garry Knight

Recognition and accolades flooded in. According to Wikipedia:

In 2009 Batmanghelidjh was named Businesswoman of the Year by the Dods and Scottish Widows Women in Public Life Awards. She has also received Ernst and Young's Social Entrepreneur of the Year award (2006), Third Sector Magazine's Most Admired Chief Executive (2007) and the Centre for Social Justice's lifetime achievement award in 2009. Batmanghelidjh has been awarded received honorary degrees and doctorates by several universities including York St John University, the Open University and Nottingham Trent University. In February 2013, she was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4. In the same month, she was appointed an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to children and young people. In September 2014 she became an Honorary Fellow of UCL.

Some, notably senior civil servants, said she had also become untouchable and that the charity’s financial affairs were not well managed. When the continuation of government funding was made conditional on her stepping down from the role of Chief Executive early this year, her reaction was to play her trump card. She called David Cameron and asked him to overrule the demand. Which he did.

Yet the critics wouldn’t be silenced. There were reports from former employees that the charity was simply handing cash over to children. That its statistics about the real numbers of children it helped were exaggerated. That its management accounts were inadequately transparent.

These allegations were fiercely rebutted with all the passion Batmanghelidjh is renowned for. Yet no amount of rhetoric and robust defence could alter the fact that Kids Company was a financial train wreck.

Kids Company would never have existed were it not for the passion, work and talents of Batmanghelidjh. But here is a classic example of how these things alone and even the patronage of the most influential people in the land do not make us untouchable or able to sidestep the requirement for money to be properly managed. Especially when it is not our own.

Leaders must recognise their own strengths and weaknesses and if they are not so good at some things, make sure they delegate the responsibility to someone who is.

Batmanghelidjh is unrepentant. She blames civil servants and the media for her troubles. She seems unable to accept the reality that her personal credibility is at stake unless she accepts responsibility.

Sadly she has so far failed this real test of leadership. A true leader accepts that everything which happens on their watch is their responsibility and blaming others regardless of their failings can only reflect badly on us.

Such a simple gesture of humility and responsibility is what’s called for now if Batmanghelidjh wishes to be remembered as an innovative philanthropic entrepreneur, rather than a failed charity CEO.

How to be perceived as a real leader

By Neil Patrick


Leadership is the number one competency employers seek today – but how can you prove you have it?

I've been investigating the data about the most desirable competencies employers are seeking today. Here is Indeed.com's list of the top 10 professional attributes that employers want to see in their employees, in order of importance:

1. Leadership skills

2. Interpersonal skills

3. Problem-solving skills

4. Self-motivation

5. Efficient

6. Detail-oriented

7. The ability to prioritize

8. Team player

9. Reliable

10. The ability to multitask

The list wasn’t particularly surprising. I suspect most people could second guess most of this even if it might be a little harder to guess the exact priority order the data reveals.

But the question this prompted in my mind was:

“If leadership skills are the most desirable competency, how can an employer discover what an applicant’s true leadership skills are and more importantly, fairly assess and rank competing candidates against this criteria?”

Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama in 2014 by Pete Souza 

Mike Sweeny at MAS Recruiting provides this answer to the question:

Organizations use a variety of assessment tests and/or tools to attempt to determine leadership as well as other personality traits in candidates. Overall, the results are very mixed.

Recruiting is not an exact science. You can't "test" your way to hiring people with strong leadership skills. I advise your hiring team to focus on a candidate's leadership track record. Ask each candidate to relate how they demonstrated leadership in various scenarios during their job history. Prior to the interview, have your team develop specific examples that relate to the job at hand. For example, the position being interviewed for may be a production supervisor in a manufacturing facility that has a poor quality record. During the interview session, have your team probe candidates to discuss their history at solving similar problems.

Past work history, combined with solid reference checking, is the best way to hire people with leadership skills. Assessment test may provide additional data to help in your hiring decision, but they are no substitute for probing past work history.

Fair enough, but this approach has several weaknesses:

1. Only candidates selected for interview are assessed against the number one competency

2. The measures are subjective and not quantifiable

3. References are unlikely to be able or willing to provide a great deal of reliable data on this characteristic, they after all are unlikely to have any data which records, let alone quantifies their employees’ leadership skills.

So job seekers are left with a quandary:

The number one most desirable personal attribute has no independent meaningful measure attached to it. And this means there is little we can do to provide independent verification of our leadership competencies.

To look at this in another way, there is no way currently in which HR and recruiters can reliably measure candidates against their most desired attribute.

This is a catastrophe. Especially when we consider that real leaders are not usually those who shout the loudest about themselves. The greatest leaders influence not by shock and awe tactics, but by a consistent influence, inspiring those around them by their behaviours and attitudes in a humble and collaborative way.

But there’s good news. Things are changing and they are the greatest opportunity yet for employees to demonstrate their leadership in a way that no-one can ignore.

Time and again, it is repeated that job seeking is a sales and marketing job, and the most successful candidates approach it in this way.

The rise and rise of digital and social media and ‘big data’ (I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention that in this post) are at last reshaping how HR and recruiters approach their hiring processes.

This revolution is having profound impacts. And it has given rise to something that it’s of immense value to marketers and job seekers alike.

It’s called social proof.

Businesses now use this all the time to prove their credibility in their online and offline marketing. The types of proof vary according to the nature of the business. And the immense value of social proof is deployed within the marketing tactics of most leading businesses today.

Hotels and restaurants covet their user ratings on online media. Writers seek favorable reviews of their books on Amazon. And at a more personal level, we all wish to achieve and retain a good feedback score from our buyers on Ebay.

The huge value of social proof resides in that it reflects what others think of us, not what we say or think about ourselves.

HR and recruiters are at last waking up to the potential this unlocks for them to get better and more quantifiable insight about candidates.

And it’s not rocket science to work out what this means.

Let’s work through a simple example. Faced with two otherwise identical candidates, which person would you assess as having the greater leadership skills?

Person A

• LinkedIn : 800 connections, 12 recommendations and 250 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 300 people, followed by 1500 people

• Klout score : 60

Person B

• LinkedIn : 200 connections, 1 recommendation and 30 endorsements

• Twitter : Following 750 people, followed by 150

• Klout score : 35

At this point I am sure that some of you will be howling in protest along the lines of, “these measures are unreliable and misleading because…” (place your protest of choice here).

And I would probably agree with your arguments assuming they relate to the facts that these measures are all prone to weakness and exploitation or gaming.

But I’d remind you of my opening point:

Presently there is no measure of leadership that is helping recruiters and employers reliably assess, measure and compare candidates against their expressed number one competency – leadership.

Yes the metrics I have selected are flawed. Yes they can be manipulated – (if you spend a really long time doing so) and yes they don’t tell the whole story.

But in the absence of anything better, what will employers do? My prediction is that these metrics will become more and more important. And therefore we ignore them at our peril.

As I have said repeatedly here and elsewhere, there’s no quick fix. The only way to capitalize on this situation for employees and job seekers is to invest steadily in building your online profile.

And for most of us this means a fundamental reassessment of how we prioritize our daily tasks. Yes it’s another thing to add to your already too long to do list. Yes it won’t deliver instant results. But it’s the only way you’ll become person A instead of person B.

Like it or not, your whole career future may hinge on this.

The dark side of positive thinking

By Neil Patrick

There’s power in positive thinking. But as dogma, it’s dangerous. It’s taken hold to such an extent that it risks blinding us to the reality of situations. Worse, when it becomes group think, that myopia becomes massively amplified. And the leveraging of delusion has created some catastrophic consequences.

In the world of work, positivity has become almost a mandatory pre-condition for employment.

It doesn’t matter how smart we are. How much experience we have. If we don’t fill the world with cheerfulness and positivity, employers don’t want us in their fold. The greatest virtue you can possess as an employee is the willingness to joyfully execute whatever task you are assigned.

The same mantra is provided to those looking for a job. Jobseekers are told that they must think positive. Their lack of a job is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. They should stride out into the world with a great big smile. True, but this is much easier said than done.

Freedom and blind enthusiasm cannot easily co-exist

This blind enthusiasm and mandatory cheerfulness is also a hallmark of the control systems of dictatorships. All that loving devotion to a leader and joyful exuberance at political rallies. We were mostly bewildered by the manipulated mourners at the funeral of Kim Jong-il in December 2011. But although more subtle, the same cult of positivity also underpins many codes of behavior in the west.

The statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang

 CC BY-SA 3.0 J.A. de Roo

The financial collapse of 2008 was foreseen by plenty of people. The trouble is, they were isolated, shut up and drummed out of the party by the rest who were just having too much of a good time to countenance any cautionary advice.

Too much positivity is as dangerous if not more so than too little.

I think of it as a continuum. At one extreme is the viewpoint characterized by thinking such as the cult of the power of attraction. The idea that we can have anything we want if we just want it enough and imagine it enough. This idea is that by some as yet unknown force of nature, we can have anything we desire – we just have to want it enough.

The power of attraction has found a convenient alibi in quantum physics. All those phenomena that fly in the face of conventional scientific thinking. If normal science cannot explain everything, anything is possible right? Well, no actually it isn’t. There’s plenty of stuff we cannot explain, but that doesn’t automatically prove the correctness of any random idea that comes into our heads.

At the other extreme is the idea that we are all victims of an inevitability that we are really powerless to stop. Forces which are so much more powerful than we are, that we are all doomed. This ideology of fearfulness is characterized by the survivalists – those folk that have abandoned all hope in the world avoiding Armageddon and have decided to take to their bunkers to survive whatever horrors are about to descend.

Both extremes are wrong. We can change things and we have a lot more power than we often recognize. But the key isn’t blind cheerfulness and all charging together lemming-like over the cliff, or self-isolation and hunkering down to ensure our families can survive the unimaginable perils of the future.

The power to effect change is by developing our abilities to discriminate between right and wrong. To vigorously pursue our ambitions and to engage with others with whom we can share mutual support and help. And to have the courage to confront and challenge our leaders when they are at risk of getting it wrong.

Sure, doing it with a smile on your face and joy in your heart is no bad thing. Just don’t place too much faith in group think.

My thanks go to Barbara Ehrenreich, whose RSA video here inspired me to write this post.

Beware false idols - especially when they are talking politics

By Neil Patrick

After Russell Brand got a lot of airtime last week with his comments about the economy in an interview with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC, it got me wondering about how other folk from the world of entertainment were commenting on society and politics.

And I didn’t have far to look. It seems that the economy is becoming the new rock and roll for a whole heap of entertainment folk.

Russell Brand

Here’s a piece from Henry Rollins where he puts forward his opinion that many of the economic problems in the US could be solved with more education and more health provision.

And it's very entertaining. But it’s nonsense.

But it’s such a shame that’s it’s nonsense. I happen to like Henry Rollins. He’s a man of many great talents. He has made some awesome music, he’s a brilliant poet and speaker and he’s a really funny guy too when he chooses to take on that persona.

But he’s not got a clue about economics or government. Sure, he’s really passionate. He’s a powerful speaker and I want to believe him, I really do. But he’s just so wrong. And this is where he ends up in the same camp as Russell Brand, who is also so fired up, he looks like he might explode at any moment.

But this is a very engaging talk as I’m sure you’ll agree:






So why do I think Henry is wrong? He’s wrong in just the same way that Russell Brand was wrong.

The US, the UK and Europe have a big set of problems right now. We all know that. We don’t need to be told that we are in a really bad place economically and socially. We don’t need to be told that our governments are failing us.

But we don’t need people who are professional entertainers telling us how to fix things. Okay, our politicians haven’t got a clue either, but a career in entertainment doesn't exactly equip you with a good set of leadership skills for a crisis situation.

Ironically, it’s politicians who have mastered oratory and argument rather than policy and leadership that got us into this mess in the first place.

What we need is people who are competent to lead. People who don’t put self interest first. People who can inspire us to support tough decisions about hard choices. And people we can trust.

The entertainers engage us. They know how to inspire us. And as masters of engagement they can put forward their views in a passionate and superficially convincing way.

But that doesn't mean they are right. And it doesn't mean they have the faintest clue what they are talking about.

So to quote The Who who knew a thing or two about rock and roll, ‘Meet the new boss…same as the old boss'.

Now there’s a cautionary lyric if ever I heard one.

RICHARD BRANSON: Hiring older workers is the right thing to do

Here's a interview with Richard Branson last year, in which he gives his views on the value of older workers. Given the association of the Virgin brand with youthful vigor, not to mention Branson's penchant for adrenaline stoked adventures, I think his views on this subject are worth repeating here. Apparently he plans to work until he is 90...

Q: What is your approach to hiring older workers? If you were looking for a position, how would you look to overcome the ageism barrier?

A: Thank you for your question! It is an appropriate time for me to address the issues of age and the workforce, as I turned 60 in July.

This year I ran my first marathon in just over five hours and tried to set a record as the oldest person to kite-surf across the English Channel (high winds forced me to abandon the attempt) - both tasks usually associated with younger people. And I'm not alone. These days, people are living much longer, active lives - so retiring at a young age is no longer necessary. If a person looks after himself with regular exercise and a good diet, there is no reason why he should not keep going well past 60.

I plan to work until I feel I'm no longer making a real contribution to Virgin. I see a good 30 years of work ahead. It's true that at 60 there are some tasks that suit me better than others, but I see few real limitations in my current role.

Richard Branson

In the UK, the government has recommended extending the age of retirement to 67, and many countries in the rest of Europe are contemplating similar legislation. It is not just governments, but company boards around the world that are facing the challenges of serving ageing populations.

So while it is true that some employers may have negative preconceptions about hiring older workers, they are only doing themselves a disservice. Entrepreneurs and managers who hope to succeed are taking a close look at older applicants.

There are real advantages to hiring these employees. Studies have shown that older workers may lower time-keeping and absentee issues ; they also tend to have higher levels of commitment to their jobs and loyalty to their employers, which reduces staff churn and helps reduce recruitment costs.

And there is a strong business case for companies to diversify the age groups they employ. In all our ventures, we put a real emphasis on offering great service, and to succeed, we must truly understand our customers and see our service through their eyes. As our and others' customer bases get older, managers will need staffers who themselves reflect the changing demographics.

This is a challenge for Virgin since we have tended to be quite young at heart. The average age in the group is still fairly young, with more than a third of staff under the age of 35 and only around 3% over 55.

This is largely determined by a few factors, including the sectors we operate in and the newcomer status of some of the businesses. For example, Virgin Active, our health club chain, attracts a younger workforce due to the physical nature of the work. As the challengers to established brands, our airlines - Virgin America, Atlantic and Blue - have tended to be magnets for younger cabin crews and ground staff, which affects the group's average age.

Even our finance business has younger staff - again, people interested in the company's challenger status and in new product development. But as we prepare for the future, this is a factor that clearly needs to change.

How? Well, many businesses retire their experienced staffers, both to cut costs when times get tough and as a matter of course. But those employers can lose a lot of key skills when workers with a wealth of knowledge and experience leave.

One answer is to become more accommodating in work arrangements. Offering part- time jobs, job shares, flexi-time and full-time jobs with longer holidays may attract older workers. This would enable everyone - not just older employees - to strike a better work-life balance and allow companies to retain their skills and experience.

I hope that with this approach, our group will continue to maintain a very open policy of recruitment and that ageism will not be an issue. Hiring older workers isn't just the right thing to do; it also makes good business sense.

Branson blogs on www.virgin.com/richard- branson/blog. You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ richardbranson.

This post originally appeared here:
http://www.bdlive.co.za/articles/2010/10/14/richard-branson-value-the-skills-of-older-workers;jsessionid=27C5CBE518983FFEF9FD83338E88121E.present1.bdfm

Employers: choose your words carefully - or face the consequences

By David Hunt PE

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A capital walks into a bar, and… Wait, you’ve never heard of a capital walking around? OK. A talent walks into a …. You’ve not heard of a talent walking either? A resource? No? Of course not! People walk into bars.

And this is a terrible secret in today’s workforce. We have Human Resources discussing Talent Acquisition and reading articles about Human Capital retention; these terms obfuscate that there are people involved. On a visceral level the use of such dehumanizing euphemisms has an extremely corrosive effect on multiple facets of the relationship between company and employee.

Take-away 1: The words we choose define our thought processes.

Choosing to refer to people by terms more typically associated with things disconnects managers from the fact that people are being discussed. Companies employ people; they should have Personnel departments. They hire and seek to retain people, so they should search for and keep people, not “talents,” “resources,” or “capitals.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in the hiring process itself. Companies no longer look for talented people with capacity for growth; rather, they seek persons with specific skill sets, often to the point of writing job descriptions so razor-sharp in specificity that, seemingly, the only person who could get the job is the person who just left the job. My favorite example reads:

“Wanted: Urinary Catheter Design Engineer. Must have at least five years of experience designing urinary catheters.”

Needless to say, this is frustrating to job seekers who, based on the overall job description, believe they are up to the challenge and are eager for the chance to grow.

So what drives this? There are several causes working together. First, today’s companies run so lean that there is no time for a traditional learning curve, either in the company’s projects’ timelines or on the hiring manager’s calendar. Indeed, the catchphrase of modern hiring managers is “hit the ground running.” Never mind that this is impossible; even subject matter experts need weeks just to learn the company’s systems – a process lengthened considerably by most companies not having formal new-hire integration processes, let alone a mentor with the time to take hew hires “under their wing.”

At one employer, over 500 man-hours went into installing each new piece of equipment; my own “installation” consisted of a 20-minute orientation and being handed assorted manuals to read.



Take-away 2: No-one can possibly be the best unless you invest

The best way to have someone “hit the ground running” is to proactively implement a formal process of integrating someone into the company under the auspices of a mentor, most effectively a joint task between Personnel and the hiring manager. Anything less wastes the potential of the new hire.

Second is the risk-aversion in today’s corporate world. If a “perfect fit” hire does not appear, hiring managers can always blame the candidate pool for not spontaneously producing a superhero. But should a hiring manager hire someone who did not fit every bullet point, they expose themselves to blame should the new hire not work out. It’s easy to blame the “shortage of talent” when the pain of understaffing is diffused over the organization, but far riskier personally to take a chance if not hiring a Superman. However, that diffuse pain of not hiring anyone has costs as well: unhappy customers and stressed employees. These should prompt company executives with perspective to act to protect the company as a whole.

Last, and most significant, is the mental thought pattern created by the dehumanization of corporate terminology. Employees are no longer people, they are “assets.” Companies don’t hire people, they “acquire talent.”

By describing people with the same language as equipment, hiring managers combine project pressures, risk-avoidance, and dehumanization to create job descriptions resembling machine specs. The slightest deviation from the requirements is grounds to rule out candidates, as many seeking jobs complain. A few years ago I experienced this first-hand when I easily met every listed criterion but one: I didn’t know the right CAD package. It didn’t matter that I had been doing CAD work for longer than they required and could easily learn a new software program. I didn’t meet the spec, so I was off the list.

Whether consciously or not, hiring managers act as though there are vendors somewhere cranking out people with precisely defined skill sets. In the real world, though, most careers are the product of changes in path imposed from the outside, especially given today’s layoff-willing world.

In my career I’ve only voluntarily changed positions twice. The specific skills that I’ve developed are, for the most part, not part of a deliberately planned progression but pure necessity in having to survive involuntary changes and the need for an income.



Take-away 3: No job description should have more than 3-5 “must have” requirements.

All points, whether needs or wants, must be made as generic as possible (e.g., think “thought process of the person” rather than “specific software package”). Software can be learned – the ability to think is the real requirement.

Another consequence of using these dehumanizing terms is the treatment of candidates during the job search process. It is now typical for companies to use automated resume submission systems; but some automated systems don’t even acknowledge receipt or completion of the application. Companies such as this are referred to as “black holes,” and they are plentiful. The fact that companies don’t specify an automated response from an automated system is a clear indicator of how much these companies truly value a candidate’s interest in them.

Of course, nobody expects a hand-written reply to a resume. But in my last job search I learned that companies do not reply after interviews – never mind resumes!

My experience is not atypical. Indeed, most companies seem to treat applicants as supplicants, begging for scraps from the master’s table. While that seems melodramatic, it’s born out by experience. A company VP I knew through networking invited me to interview for an open position before it was publicized: The Holy Grail of networking! Yet after an interview visit in which every discussion ran long (a very good sign according to “conventional job search wisdom”), and their adding to my schedule (another very good sign), I heard nothing. Only three months later, when I managed to catch my contact on the phone, did I learn they had a hiring freeze. Neither my contact nor anyone else was bothered to spend two minutes to contact me.

Abraham Lincoln said that if you want to test a person’s character, give them power. By that standard, many companies are lacking. Not responding to resumes, let alone interviews, is the norm; but this can backfire. How companies treat persons applying for work is a common topic in every networking group I’ve ever been in, including the one I run, and doubtless affects decisions to pursue specific companies.

The foundation of this new attitude towards candidates lies in the subconscious reaction to the use of dehumanizing terms and its logical extension that people are interchangeable units and thus instantaneously replaceable. The less we refer to or view people as people, but rather as things, the less likely we are to consider them as worthy of respect or courtesy. Such terminology creates an emotional distance between manager vs. subordinate, as well as company vs. employee and candidate, and is akin – though not as extreme – as the infamous “Prisoners vs. Guards” experiment done at Stanford University.

My argument is not that there is no need for authority, but rather that authority and power are magnified by the emotional distance created by dehumanizing terms, and can lead to the very behaviors too-often seen in today’s workplace.


Take-away 4: How you treat candidates will enhance or hurt your image in the marketplace.

If your company is not communicating with candidates in a timely way, bank on the fact that they are telling other potential candidates about your company. Remember that there are far more people that you reject than you hire, and imagine how many other job seekers they meet!

There is a final consequence to the subconscious corrosive effects of using such terms: how managers view and interact with rank-and-file employees, and the resulting effects on employee trust, performance, and retention.

No less a person than GE’s Jack Welch admitted in his book, Winning, that corporate handbooks and other materials discussing a company’s respect for “work life balance” are mostly marketing tools to get potential candidates’ attention. Yet handbooks don’t spring from the ether – they are written by people, and more importantly approved by people in top management. By approving a handbook where what is said clearly differs from what is done, dishonesty is codified as tacitly approved by the upper echelons. And people take note of this, with rank-and-file trust in management decreasing with the level of the manager. (1)


Take-away 5: If you communicate it, mean it.

No matter how well disguised, deception and hypocrisy will come out. And once out, the genie will never go back into the bottle. The situation is not symmetric: it can take months to build a reputation as trustworthy, but a single comment to destroy that trust.

For example, filed under how-stupid-do-you-think-we-are, several years ago a senior executive casually made a comment to a Q&A meeting I attended – a comment that brazenly contradicted earlier official statements by the company’s management and gave lie to those earlier statements to boot. By his offhand comment, it appeared he didn’t conceive we could fact-check his statements against those previous official statements. His unwitting admission of official mendacity displayed management’s contempt for us rank-and-file people, and sparked a smoldering grass fire in the plant eating away at our already-low morale.

Trust is one of the most important commodities managers have, with tremendous leverage over their ability to lead people successfully. (2) A liar once exposed cannot be trusted; in one impending layoff situation I was in, the department manager swore that he did not know who was to be let go. But he knew and we all knew he knew. Had he announced that he “could not discuss it, I’m sure you all understand,” that would have sufficed. The fact that he lied to our faces destroyed his credibility and his ability to lead. We later found out that he had been ordered to lie “or else” – thus placing him in an impossible situation – and the twin revelations of the order itself plus what should have been its predictable effect on his leadership position also demolished the credibility of those above him. As a direct consequence the bleeding of people to competitors accelerated.



Take-away 6: Just because someone isn’t a senior manager doesn’t mean they can’t check what you say against other information.

Count on the fact that they will, especially if they are nervous. Remember that many of them are just as shrewd as you were in your early career, perhaps even more so.

The words we choose directly shape our perception of what is being discussed. Using terms like “resource,” “talent,” and “capital” to describe people subconsciously transforms people into things. The effect is corrosive in multiple areas – from interviewing and hiring, to trust and the ability to lead, the dehumanization of people in corporate vocabulary has multiple negative effects on how people are viewed and treated. Those attitudes and treatments are predictably reflected back by rampant cynicism, low retention, and poor organizational performance.



Take-away 7: What goes around, comes around.

If you treat people as expendable assets, don’t be surprised that they treat you as a stepping-stone to be exploited in their individual career growth goals. They will prioritize themselves over the organization they’re in, performing their jobs until they wring all they can from your company to aid in their jumping to another stone that looks better.


[1] “Many employees don’t trust their boss,” Machine Design, September 13, 2007
[2] “The High Cost of Lost Trust”; Harvard Business Review, September 2002


(c) 2013, David Hunt, PE

This re-edited article was originally posted by David Hunt on his old blog, the-blue-lobster.blogspot.com, and recently was reposted on http://bestsalestalent.com/information-for-job-seekers/words/.

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

The Lazlo Emergency Commission Report

By David Hunt, PE

I love science fiction. Being an engineer I love reading about the technology / science dreamed up to solve problems like interstellar travel, disease, creative aliens, etc. But I also – contrary to many engineers – enjoy the human elements of the stories too. (Side sci-fi plug: Frank Herbert’s Dune is, IMHO, the greatest sci-fi novel of all time. I read it, didn’t understand most of it, and the moment I finished the last page flipped back and started it again. I read it annually, and still find new things in it that I hadn’t seen, or new insights into human nature that I, now older and hopefully wiser, hadn’t grasped before. That’s the beauty of truly great literature.)

So what’s sci-fi got to do with things? Life imitates art.

In the novel The Forever War (link has spoiler!) mankind is engaged in a life-or-death battle with a race called the “Taurans.” And after the war has gone on for centuries, humanity decides to genetically engineer soldiers into someone’s idea of a perfect soldier – and I’m going from memory here as I can’t find my copy of the book: A combination of the Praetorian Guard, the Nazi SS, the Russian Spetznaz, etc. These soldiers were vicious, incredible athletes, worked together seamlessly, placed no emphasis on individualism or their own survival… and they got cut to ribbons costing humanity many critical battles.

Today’s employers use personality profiling on candidates to search for people who most closely match their particular vision of an ideal <fill in position here> in order to create perfect teams who will minimize interpersonal conflicts. As I wrote on my old blog in a post Diversity of What?:

Just think about how insidious this is. Companies are screening out people based on the ability or inability to show the proper personality for a given position. Just imagine – a group of Accountants who all think alike tasked with developing a new way to achieve a faster end-of-quarter closing. A team of Engineers who all think alike assigned to brainstorm, create, test, and launch an innovative new product. And so on.

More terrible, the hidden implication is that by hiring a person to be the “perfect engineer” (or whatever) a company is hiring to fill that slot with little-to-no consideration of the person’s future potential. Sure, companies have a need for an engineer, but one of the roles of Personnel (note, I used the right word this time) is to work to bring on board people who can grow and develop in the organization in addition to helping fill the immediate needs.

(Sidebar note: My essay in the New Hampshire Business Review reprises some of the points from the above blog post regarding the need for “fresh eyes” to drive innovation.)

So the first point that I’d like to make is that people are not robots. Every person has arrived at today via a unique path, and to think that there is some factory “out there” creating perfect fits for a position is folly. We also have unique personalities, and even if two persons have similar backgrounds and career paths – even tested personality types – personalities and egos can nevertheless result in clashes.

The second point, though, is more significant, and goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

While many people are dedicated to their jobs, employers, and careers, most people work to live, not live to work. Unless a person is a “company man” of a kind rarely seen in this era of rapid job shifts – the average longevity of a person in a company these days being on the order of three years – they place more value on their personal life than their company life. More importantly, they place their ability to sustain that life above any loyalty they might feel when the news is filled with stories of entire departments being slashed, and kept around only long enough to train their overseas replacements.

Which brings me back to the Lazlo Emergency Commission Report, cited in the novel. Despite having created teams of ideal soldiers, the effort was a failure that almost cost humanity its survival (I won’t truly spoil the novel’s conclusion – it’s a good read). The conclusion was that we won battles when we had soldiers who were well-trained, well-equipped, and who fought like hell for their own individual survival. The program of engineering idealized soldiers was abandoned.

Teamwork is good, and people need to subsume some of their individual goals for the good of the team. Most people can, and do. Further, teams can be very useful for generating ideas and alternatives and considering multiple viewpoints, analyzing failures, etc. But, given Maslow, great leaders recognize that people are ultimately at work for their own individual survival. Pay games, personality tests for idealized profiles, relative rankings of employees against other employees – all can result in a perception that the employer is pitting employee against employee. Even when this perception is mild, often there is the implicit message that if a person does well, they will only get the “employment continuation award”; the hidden threat is that they might be on the edge and thus better strive even harder to continue getting that award.

When all is said and done, people value their ability to meet their life goals above their ability to meet their employer’s goals. The key to organizational success is to lead with a vision to inspire, not threaten, people. I remember a key line from the classic epic Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, in which an orc in charge of a military unit opines “Where there’s a whip, there’s a will.” I still remember thinking, even in my tender years when I first read that line, that the only inspiration this provides is to do the minimum needed to avoid being whipped. (And it has the second disadvantage of creating resentment of the one doing the whipping.)

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. – General George S. Patton

Only by inspiring people to see their self-interest as being aligned towards a higher goal do great leaders motivate people, as highlighted by this short anecdote:

A man was touring the construction site of a medieval cathedral. He saw a young man roughing out a stone and asked what he was doing. “I’m carving a stone,” was the answer.

He then saw a somewhat older man carving a bas relief on a stone and asked the same question. “I’m helping build a cathedral,” the second man replied.

Then he saw a man taking these intricately-carved stones and fitting them together and once more asked his question. “I’m glorifying G-d,” said the oldest of the three.

So, a few conclusions.

1. Trying to screen candidates to form a perfectly-functioning team built to an idealized vision and that works together with minimal conflict will, in the long run, backfire. (IMHO conflict is where the best innovation arises!)

2. People arrive at the present through unique paths; there is no such thing as an ideal candidate. (Ironically, companies tout diversity while using personality profiles to eliminate it.)

3. People may work in teams, but for the vast majority of people their own survival takes precedence over the organization’s goals. Only when they’re not worried about lower-levels of Maslow’s hierarchy (like their employer’s control over their ability to put food on the table) can they truly focus on the higher ones (like work goals).

4. A good leader will use fear only sparingly, but will instead inspire and find ways to – on a person-by-person basis – align the team’s goals with the self interest of each team member. (Note – I am by no means saying this is easy!)

With shameless self-reference, check out the quote on this image which I posted earlier.

I am dedicating this essay to David Hildreth, my first boss when I joined Ford Motor Company. Of all the people for whom I’ve worked, he is the only one who – if he called me tomorrow and asked me to come work for him again (which would require relocation to a place I’d rather not live) – I’d seriously consider it… because it was he who asked. He inspired me to be a better engineer, and set me on the path to being a better person to boot.

Would your subordinates – past or present – say that about you?

(c) 2013, David Hunt, PE

David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.

A Message from Millenials to Boomers – We Want Traditional Values Back

By Cindi Bigelow, President of Bigelow Tea

When I was invited to speak about leadership at a local high school recently, I found myself looking out into an audience of expectant faces - typical American parents concerned about their kids' future at a time when jobs are scarce, college costs are high and people are debating the value of a liberal arts education.

I have two children, one who recently graduated with a degree in Spanish and English, and another who is studying business... so I know the competition is intense, compounded by the fact that some 78 million members of the Millennial Generation are entering the workforce at a time when some 76 million Baby Boomers don't really want to retire.

The audience was looking for answers. I'm an established businesswoman and a parent. What could I tell them?

"What do you want your kids to be?" I asked. "Doctors? Lawyers? Investment bankers?" And I could see heads nodding in agreement around the room, at least until I threw them a curve ball and asked, "How many of you said in your minds, 'I want my kids to be NICE?'" You could see their eyes open wide.

You see, in my mind, it's of incredible importance, even though, I will admit, "niceness" isn't on any curriculum at any liberal arts college I've visited. Furthermore, "niceness" isn't part of any professional performance evaluation in Corporate America, probably because we sometimes operate under the misguided notion that nice guys, and girls, finish last.

I'm here to dispel that notion. I look for "nice." I need to see "nice," not only in my kids, but also in my employees - all of them.

Yes. I want my kids to be "nice" people, and I don't really care if it's one of the least-discussed values in modern America. But in my opinion, we need to talk about this virtue much more often. These words need to part of our daily lexicon.

A "good" education should make sure it's teaching young people about values, and let's be honest, young people need to focus on these virtues because in many ways, our society has taken kindness, niceness and compassion (things that our parents and grandparents in the Greatest Generation practiced so naturally), for granted.

My list of what I want my kids to be is actually much longer than merely "nice." In no particular order, I want them also to be:

• Caring
• Hard-working
• Balanced
• Fair
• Resilient

I also have a list of what I don't want them to be. I don't want them to feel "entitled" or be disrespectful. And I certainly don't want them to have an "attitude."

And how do I impart this important information to my kids? By "messaging" to them continually (maybe similar to how a company tries to advertise its products). This kind of steady repetition of values is essential in raising our children. "Say please and thank you." "Hold the door." "Be kind to your brother." "Be friendly to the kid who doesn't have any friends." "Tell the truth even when it hurts." "Learn how to say 'I'm sorry.'"

And the good news is it works. I've seen the results.

This is how values were traditionally passed on from generation to generation, back in the era when we talked with our children at the dinner table and didn't spend the time texting.

The crazy thing is that research on the Millennial Generation shows they are looking for values, they crave them, and many are concerned with the direction our country is taking.

There have been many studies of the Millennial Generation, particularly by marketers and retailers who recognize their buying power, not to mention politicians, who recognize their voting power.

Here are some of the relevant characteristics of a generation that is typically defined by its love of technology:

• Some 63 percent of Millennials, as opposed to 55 percent of Baby Boomers, consider it their duty to care for their parents who are aging, according to a study by Focus on the Family. To me, that's great news.

• Equally important, 52 percent of people in the Focus on the Family study say that "being a good parent" is their most important goal in life. How can you argue with that personal goal?

• At the same time, this is the generation that might just change the face of Corporate America. A poll by the Marist Institute of Public Opinion found that almost two-thirds of Millennials think the nation's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction.

• In addition, they have a problem with "compartmentalization," and 88 percent of them think people "have a different set of ethical standards in business than in their personal lives," and 66 percent believe there should not be two sets of values governing people at home and in the office.

• When it comes to the traditional juggling act of balancing work and family life, 75 percent of those polled said they believe they can balance the challenges of their careers -- but not at the expense of their families.

What I find so inspiring is that the younger generation is already wired for success and committed to traditional values like kindness and compassion and integrity. We just have to keep reinforcing that message and not let our society's love of professional and material success overshadow the importance of being a good and decent person.

When I finished the presentation I asked the group of parents one more time, "What do you want your kids to be when they grow up?" All of them raised their hands and said "Nice" at the same time. Made my heart warm and put a huge smile on my face!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cindi-bigelow/being-nice-an-endangered-virtue_b_3624604.html