BrandToBeDetermined

What are you doing to build morale in a recession?

Eurasian Eagle Owl
Originally uploaded by eschipul

Question: What are you doing to build morale in a recession? People are worried!

Answer: Not much really. I no longer view it as management's job to entertain the troops.

Or to put it another way; whatever will be will be.

Whether the issue is the price of gas, the price of food, the electric bill, the war, the recession, the unemployed, the lack of health care, the broken government run by the boomers to be paid off by the millenials who haven't figure it out yet, the devaluation of our currency, well, there are just plenty of reasons to be in a craptastic mood as an American right now.

I've done this dance before. 2001 was crap even before 9-11 and it went down from there. And we were told to "go shopping" while we figured out who attacked us. (Rant: This time buy a smaller car. Carpool. Move closer to work (gasp!). Get a roommate. Save money. Meet the neighbors. Organize card nights to save money from restaurants and have a better time and get the kids playing in the streets again. Think.)

As a company we had an mini-exodus of employees in 2001 and went from 12 employees all the way down to 6 at our lowest point. As a leader I blamed myself for this. No longer. Maintaining employee morale and a sense of determination is far beyond the ability of one leader. Particularly given the inputs of so many outside of work.

The public for which masterpieces are intended

...as dead as O-Ren
Originally uploaded by eschipul

"Whom were these two seeking to please? Not the audiences of Lima. They had long since been satisfied. We come from a world where we have known incredible standards of excellence, and we dimly remember beauties which we have not seized again; and we go back to that world. Uncle Pio and Camila Perichole were tormenting themselves in an effort to establish in Peru the standards of the theaters in some Heaven whither Caleron had preceded them. The public for which masterpieces are intended is not on this earth."

- The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thorton Wilder, pg 77

The Post American World

BBC World News has a posted Fareed Zakaria Post American World. First

"the rise of the rest places certain limits on American power"

"The rise of the rest" is actually a pretty darn positive statement. From a study-of-power perspective it is no surprise that the vacuum formed, the monopoly formed by the USA being the sole-super-power, has a post-world that is hopefully more balanced.  Make no mistake, I am incredibly pro-America because, well, I am an American. I can't tell you how much I love this country.

Yet conversely I don't like our role as World Police. I don't recall applying for that job, and the fact we have been forced into it, leads us to an awareness of a lack of gratitude. This leads to email snippets like the one below.

5 Basic Rules of Negotiation

Reading  Harvard Negotiation Project: 5 Lasting Rules For Negotiating Anything on GigaOm made me send the list of five rules of negotiation to a client. First the rules:

1. Don’t Bargain Over Positions
2. Separate the People From the Problem
3. Focus on Interests
4. Invent Options for Mutual Gain
5. Insist on Using Objective Criteria

One side effect of the recession I have seen is clients getting into complicated situations, even some self destructive, almost as a diversion from the real issues. I don't have a solution. But I do wish folks would learn a little more about creative negotiation to get us all to a happy place. Just keep paying it forward I tell myself.

Work Stressors and How to Respond

the blight
Originally uploaded by eschipul

Stress. Sucks.

Much has been written about stress invoking the limbic brain, which while effective in dealing with saber toothed tigers, isn't so great at dealing with the complexity of the modern world. Add on top of that the recession, inflation and our mind's dubious relationship with money and you have a mess. A mess of stress.

So to break this down I did some reading and The Stress Experience at work comes, according to researchers, comes from:

1. a person's perception of the situation;
2. the person's past experience;
3. the presence or absence of social support; and
4. individual differences with regard to stress reactions.

(source: Organizational Behavior, Hellriegel, Slocum, Woodman, pg 199)

Attacking these one by one can and will reduce stress. Perception. For example the people a person hangs out with and the content they put into their brain frames their perception of the world. Cliff changed the way I think about the post office. A character? Yes. But a real change in perception based on fiction.

Variable Pay and the Tournament Theory of Economics

Differentiation is something we talk about a lot. Yet there are subtleties that as a leader are very hard for me to wrap my brain around. On Differentiation Welch says:

“I just don’t like quotas in the boardroom or in the office.  Winning companies are meritocracies.  They practice differentiation, making a clear distinction between top, middle and bottom performers.  This system is candid and fair, and it’s the most effective way for an organization to field the best team.” – Jack Welch, Winning, Pg 346

I tend to agree with that statement. Yet the word "meritocracies" even with the given Rand overtones leads us to believe people are paid fairly for the work they do. That just sounds right, doesn't it? Pay people fairly for the work they do. ?

But economics suggests otherwise. Specifically the tournament theory of economics. In the Forbes article Why Your Boss is Overpaid Tim Harford explains:

The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid--and it's for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn't being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we'll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this "tournament theory."

Or to have it explained by an economist, because that always clears things up, we have:

This explanation of wage differences in terms of relative performance is often called tournament theory. One place where this explanation should work is in contests with winners and losers. For example, consider two almost equally able gladiators fighting in the arena of ancient Rome. Small differences in ability (or luck) could result in a huge difference in reward--one could die and the other live.

Though gladiators are no longer part of our world, there are still cases in which winners matters a lot, and as a result, small differences in ability (or luck) can cause large differences in reward. The sports world has many examples.

Having started the company on 7k, for years I made sure I demonstrated the "boot strap" nature of business. I lived in a small house. Drove a civic. I am not of the personality to discuss my latest golf vacation to big sur (I don't golf and I am not sure where big sur is, or if they have a golf course.) This works against me as a leader.

The theory goes that if you have a motivated employee. They believe in the company. They like what they are doing. And they look at the managers and the CEO and see them living below their means, driving sensible cars, that in fact this hurts the company. Good people will leave because they do not see the just rewards of the tournament.

Guy Kawasaki Coming to HTC April 24 2008

As seen on Chron.com  - Kawasaki is coming to Houston!

  guy kawasaki 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

Guy Kawaski:  The Art of the Start
Guy Kawaski
Thu 24-Apr-08 6:30 PM to Thu 24-Apr-08 9:00 PM

Having seen Guy's panel at SXSW, he is an entertaining speaker with plenty of great content. I am looking forward to attending!

Note also this is an evening program. Hopefully we can walk over to a local restaurant after the talk.

Register to see Guy Kawasaki at HTC on the HoustonTech site (yes a Tendenci client - woot!)

Regarding the economy of the United States on March 22, 2008

Regarding the economy of the United States on March 22, 2008.

I noticed that many people are reluctant, or "were" reluctant, to use the word recession as the economy spiraled down in 2007. Yet in my eyes the recession was late and it annoyed me when people denied it's arrival. Stockdale suggests we don't keep our head in the sand if we want to survive.

"Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

- Good to Great, Jim Collins

The fact that the US economy is in a recession, and may go into a depression, isn't rocket science. It is common sense.

You have malaise at best in America. From that previous link ArabNews says:

The United States remains the sole superpower, but its dominance is challenged by an economic and cultural shift toward Asia and the impact of globalization, which Americans do not yet fully comprehend.

Add to that a few more items. Oh I don't know we can start with high energy prices. The debt and deficit growing. The irrational exuberance of the housing market dropping. Overdue. Baby boomers buying more meds on less money because they "spent their children's inheritance" (so sayeth bumber sticker wisdom). And bought condos in Florida they can't afford. A crazy unpopular war but no way out without breaking commitments to allies.

Beware the Ides of March

"Beware the Ides of March" - the soothsayer said to Caesar

From Wikipedia on the Ides of March:

In the Roman calendar, the term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of the other 8 months.^[1].

In modern times, the term Ides of March (Latin Idus Martiae) is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was assassinated, in 44 BC, the story of which was famously retold in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.^[2] The term has come to be used as a metaphor for impending doom.

photo from wikimedia commons - Vincenzo Camuccini (d. 1844), Mort de César, 1798

Jack Rabbit Slim, the Tortoise and the 2008 Economy

  Jack Rabbit 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

The 2008 Economy reminds me of a story.

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.

Hare ran down the road for a while and then and paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, "How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?"

Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, "There is plenty of time to relax."

Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.
The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for Tortoise, they woke up Hare.

Hare stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late. Tortoise was over the line.

After that, Hare always reminded himself, "Don't brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!"

2007 was a truly awesome year for us. But I find myself thinking that 2008 will be more about the tortoise than the hare. Good luck everyone - the race is ON!