Full confession – I despise meetings.  I have spent much of my career sitting through insanely inefficient meetings – I prefer to call them “boil the ocean” meetings.  The topics in these meetings usually lacked clarity and focus so the meeting would drift…badly.  Of course, when your boss is sitting in the meeting (or worse, was the one who called it) it is difficult to exit early.

But alas, I have found an inspiring article with a fantastic idea.  This is from Inc.com (emphasis mine):

“Interaction should be constant, not crammed into meetings once a week. You just turn around in your chair and bounce an idea off one of the other 10 people in your office. Keep the floor plan open so people can talk to each other. As the company gets bigger, keep dividing it into smaller and smaller groups. Follow Jeff Bezos’s two-pizza rule: Project teams should be small enough to feed with two pizzas. At Hunch, we don’t have meetings unless absolutely necessary. When I used to have meetings, though, this is how I would do it: There would be an agenda distributed before the meeting. Everybody would stand. At the beginning of the meeting, everyone would drink 16 ounces of water. We would discuss everything on the agenda, make all the decisions that needed to be made, and the meeting would be over when the first person had to go to the bathroom.”

Caterina Fake is the co-founder of the photo-sharing site Flickr. Her new start-up is Hunch, a website in New York City that takes user input to make recommendations on thousands of subjects.

“When I used to have meetings…” – fantastic.  If I were there, I would drink a pot of coffee myself before heading into that meeting.

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This CNNMoney.com article is fascinating, at least to me.  A doctor opens up about his clinic/practice in terms of the financials of it.  As a small business owner, I have a complete appreciation for the decisions he has to make in terms of his business.  At the end of the day, it is a business.

If you think your business has to fund some extraordinary insurance policies, wrap your mind around this information:

Fixed costs for a private practice also include malpractice insurance. He pays about $7,000 a year for himself and $2,000 each for his two nurse practitioners. Schreiber admits that his cost for malpractice insurance is relatively low, compared to specialists such as ob/gyns, who pay upward of $100,000 a year.

I just about did a spit take that would have showered my laptop with coffee.  Anyway, it is an interesting read.

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I had this thought when talking to a customer – he has an employee to whom he pays a set wage (hourly pay, but same number of hours every pay period).  Week in and week out, there is no discernable, tangible output of work from this employee.  Does this fact make this employee’s pay infinite per hour?

Just a thought.

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I’ve been busy over the past week or two handling a myriad of business topics and tasks which has decreased my blogging time dramatically.  One item has come up during this time at one of our customers – a battle of wills amongst managers.  This is no small battle, it has turned into an ongoing war for which I am now in the midst of the battlefield.

Without going into specifics, I can tell you where we start in these situations – motivations.  The first place to look when there is interpersonal conflict within an office team is the motivation pattern for each individual.  In the instance with our customer, we have two people with almost polar opposite motivational patterns.

Here is why this matters – neither person can understand where the other is coming from, especially in terms of decision-making.  Each person finds the other one to be inconsistent, off-base and…well, wrong.  The relationship has deteriorated into acerbic communication.

Unfortunately, this customer did not assess this employee when they were in the hiring phase.  Instead, they made an emotional hire.  This employee has the skills to succeed in this role, but the hiring manager was never informed of the employee’s motivational pattern.  If he had been, he would have known the differences between the two of them and he could have managed through them.

I’m not sure the relationship is salvageable.  I am certain it was avoidable.

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Remember back a few years ago when Radio Shack fired employees via email?  Well, here comes another tone-deaf approach by retail management.  I think the title of the Inc.com article explains it well – PetSmart Fires Employee Who Brought Dog to Work.

Here it is:

Eric Favetta, a 31-year-old PetSmart employee, was fired for "theft of services" after bringing his dog to work during an overnight shift he’d picked up as a favor to his manager, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

…

Favetta – a former military dog handler who’d worked at PetSmart for 18 months – didn’t want his 3-year-old Belgian Malinois, Gizmo, to be home alone all day and night. So he put Gizmo in the Secaucus, New Jersey store’s doggie day care facility. The store was empty, and Favetta checked in on his pet every 15 minutes.

Two weeks later, store and district managers requested a written report of his overnight shift. He complied – and promptly was fired for "theft of service."

“I was shocked,” Favetta told the Star Ledger. “It makes me sick that because I brought my dog to work with me when the store was closed to do the company a favor, I was called a thief and terminated.” "Theft of service" was just a convenient excuse to axe him because he didn’t get along with his manager, he argues, noting that he opened the store and handled money without incident.

Astounding.  In all fairness to PetSmart, they did change course and offer Mr. Favetta his job back and a transfer to another store.  I am still amazed that the corporate people did not see the irony and idiocy of this situation.

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Now this is something I have not seen yet – loaning out your employees during slow periods.  Inc.com provides the article:

How it works: On the StaffShare website the “seller” company lists the employee’s skills, daily rate, and availability. The cost is £50 (roughly $81.70) a year per candidate. The “buyer” company searches the database, uses the website’s message system to vet candidates and iron out details with the seller, and then a contract is sent electronically.

The background behind the idea:

“The companies had these redeployment pools of 1,000 people who needed to find other work within the company,” Flaxton says. “So we thought, ‘What if there was a service where they could find it at another company?’”

Conceptually, I think it is a tremendous idea.  Logistically, I’m not sure how this approach would work for retention.  Still, I believe there will be major transformations once we finally come out of this severe recession.  Employees moving to a contract agreement seems to be a natural progression.

The movement of health insurance payments from the employer to the employee (inevitable based on rising costs) will remove one of the incentives of traditional employment agreements.  A contractual (1099) agreement could become the more standard arrangement.

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This is from the Herman Group as they make their predictions each year.  I can attest to the first point being valid – I have talked to a handful of salespeople who are waiting out the economy to jump from their current position.  These guys have a wonderful grasp of new words and phrases.  I always learn about some relatively new word from them.  I have taken the liberty of bolding some of them in the pull quote below.

1. Cutbacks and Re-Engineering will continue into 2010 Expect ongoing reductions in force as some employers continue to optimize their workforces and eliminate “redundancy”. We caution these employers to be very careful, because we know that 54 percent of today’s employees are ready to jump, as soon as the economy improves. They are currently “Corporate Cocooning“.

2. Shortages of Certain Skill Sets will become More Acute As the economy begins to recover, certain skill sets will be more critical and difficult to find. These high-demand workers will be more demanding about their work schedules, environment, etc. The wisest employers will embrace not only flex-time, but flex-place as well.

3. Employers will embrace Innovative Ideas to Reward their Valued Workers This innovation will include non-financial ways and even non-reward (recognition only) ways to add value for their top talent; these innovative ideas will come from the employees themselves. Employers that do not mine the collective intelligence of their workers will find themselves unable to optimize profits.

4. Fear and Apprehension continue to reduce Productivity A significant percentage of employees continue to worry about the future. These negative feelings will persist, unless addressed. Transparency, besides being one of those elements employees seek, will be imperative.

5.More Employers will invest in a Variety of Healthcare Cost-Cutting Strategies Besides wellness programs to address expensive unproductive behaviors (like smoking and over-eating), more large employers will embrace ideas like onsite clinics and health coaches. For some candidates, the cost of not complying with the prospective companies’ wellness programs will change their employee value propositions so drastically that they will choose to work elsewhere.

6. Focus on Engagement will replace the Focus on Retention Recognizing that with engagement comes not only retention, but greater productivity and profitability, too, employers will change their focus. We will see Directors of Retention morph into Directors of Employee Engagement. The next step (coming much later than 2010) will be to recognize the importance of the total “Internal and External Customer Experience”.

7. Increasing Attention to Succession Planning Around the globe, we see an increasing attention to succession planning and management. However, the issue of succession preparation continues to take a backseat to succession planning. This big mistake will begin to be felt in 2010, when Baby Boomer retirements combine with the lack of trained people becomes a critical problem. Succession management continues to be critical to long-term success.

8. Employers that did not build Bench Strength will pay More to hire Experience Organizations that did not take the opportunity presented by this business slowdown to send their people for more training, will have to pay more to hire trained, experienced people.

9. Some Employers will eliminate Reward Programs Misunderstanding Dan Pink’s new book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us”, some employers will abolish their reward programs altogether. This ill-advised shift will cause significant, negative, unintended consequences.

10. Burned out Employees will begin Leaving Employers Over 80 percent of today’s employees feel overworked and under-appreciated. Too many organizations have survived and maintained some level of profitability by over-loading their long-term employees. Once we begin to see positive job growth in the second half of 2010, some employees will feel confident enough to leave their companies.

11. Employers will accommodate Older Workers like Never Before The exodus of their long-term employees will challenge some employers to get the work done, without resorting to hiring expensive contract help or paying high fees to recruiters. Enlightened employers will mine the rolls of their retired workers and hire them back on a part-time, temporary, or seasonal basis. These seasoned professionals will be welcomed back, in spite of the fact that they will dictate their own terms.

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As a long-time fantasy football player, I am terrified by this story of a termination that occurred in Texas (one of the football capitals of this country).  The quick details:

Pettigrew and three other Fidelity employees were fired for playing fantasy football.

“Firing a guy for being in a $20 fantasy league? Let’s be honest; that’s a complete overreaction,” said Pettigrew, who lives in Grapevine and has an MBA from the University of Texas at Arlington. “In this economic time, especially. To fire people over something like this, it’s just cold.”

Said Fidelity spokesman Vin Loporchio: “We have clear policies that relate to gambling. Participation in any form of gambling through the use of Fidelity time or equipment or any other company resource is prohibited. In addition to being illegal in a lot of places, it can also be disruptive. We want our employees to be focused on our customers and clients.”

Yikes.  That is some draconian policy they have, but I’m not sure Mr. Pettigrew is completely innocent in this situation:

Pettigrew, who was the commissioner of his league, knew Fidelity had a policy against playing fantasy football at the office. But he said the policy was poorly communicated and ignored by leadership. Pettigrew said there were at least 10 fantasy leagues in which leaders and managers played.

But the story has another turn:

Pettigrew, though, said he never sent any fantasy football e-mails at work or using his work e-mail address. But the investigators found two instant messages that had fantasy-football-related material.

“One of my buddies sent me something about how bad Trent Edwards was playing or something like that,” Pettigrew said. “So they called me in and talked to me for about 90 minutes on everything I ever knew about fantasy football. They interrogated me as though I was some sort of international gambling kingpin. Then they released me for the day, and I was like, ‘OK.’ I never thought they’d fire me for this, but, the next day, I get the call saying I had been terminated.”

No way this guy should have been terminated.  Clearly his analysis of Trent Edwards play is spot on, in my opinion.  In all seriousness, this does seem quite harsh in this economy during the Christmas season.  I would say some sort of reprimand was in order, but a termination without warning is over the top.  One of the often discounted items is the effect this type of leadership has on team morale.  Upper management could have gotten their point across without sacrificing team morale with an overreach.

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This story will do down in the annals of management malfeasance.  A good friend of mine works for a small company that had an atrocious employee.  This employee couldn’t show up on time (if at all), didn’t seem to know what she was doing and created great dissent within the team.  Unfortunately, the owner made the emotional hire and didn’t want to admit his error, at least not in a timely manner.

So this employee continued her employment with my friend’s company for almost 6 mos. and the stories that surrounded her were almost unbelievable.  She missed work all together and offered these excuses:

• overslept
• reaction to medication
• robbed while she slept
• didn’t know she worked that day

You get the idea.  To top it off, money was missing from the petty cash – something that had never happened before her arrival.  A terrible hire and a worse employee.  The owner finally came to grips with the situation and terminated her employment on a Friday.

Later that same day, the former employee sent a text into one of the employees to say she was mad that the employee had posted something on Facebook regarding her termination. The employee did not know what she was talking about.  The employee had not posted anything of the sort.

The former employee would not back down via text and know that something had been posted.  It took a day to sort out the complaint, but they did discover someone had posted something about the termination on Facebook.

It was the owner.

He ended up removing the post and apologized to the former employee.  Unbelievable.

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Good leaders must be good followers.  That is paradoxical, isn’t it?  This article from CNNMoney.com chronicles an M.B.A. students journeys from grad school to the Marines to a tour of duty in Iraq and back to grad school.  It is a fascinating first-hand account (h/t to JustSell.com).

This is profound (emphasis mine):

In many ways there’s probably no better preparation I could have had for the business world than joining the Marine Corps. The Marines teach you how to be both a leader and a follower.

I don’t have to lead in every situation – but I’ve come to enjoy stepping up in a time of chaos. When I’m working with a group now, I can honestly say that I think about the team first. The “I first” approach has been drilled out of me.

Therein lies a common problem I encounter with business leaders – they are not good followers.  Leadership has a way of removing empathy over time.  Some leaders forget what they personally experienced when they were in follower positions.  Other leaders develop what I refer to as “god complexes” where they believe they are all-knowing.  Usually they are not, but you can’t illustrate that point to them.

For instance, I know of one business owner who is a subject-matter expert in his field.  Unfortunately, that field is not a business field.  However, he believes his subject-matter expertise transcends the subject into business management.  His employees, some of whom do have business expertise, attempt to contribute to him in these areas.  He will not receive the input.  Instead he forges on making independent decisions that have cost the business dearly.

If you read the entire article you will see a unique process, employed by the Marines, to teach team-building amongst leaders.  The best sales leaders I have encountered are the ones who know how to empower their employees, direct through difficult situations and make the tough decisions at critical junctures.

That last sentence sounds trite, but it is true.  The gist of it is the opening sentence of this post – good leaders must be good followers.

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