Not What I Expected

More Tips for Carol Bartz

Susan Mernit wrote up "6 tips for Carol Bartz's first 100 days", and it's a good set of tips. I'd like to add 6a, and 7:

"6) Ask--and meet--the rank and file and get their ideas" 6a: And don't rely on your management to decide who amongst the rank and file talk to you.

I've seen this played out too many times--the new exec comes on board, and wants to talk to rank and file to get an idea how things are. They ask for this at meeting with their VPs. The VP of HR is asked to send out the request to the managers.

Big mistake--what happens here is that management decides that there is *no way* the CEO is going to hear from anyone in their organization unless it's someone personally selected by management who already knows the drill (or can be threated or bribed into knowing the drill real damn quick), and can learn the script for the meeting.

What happens? Well, if the CEO is clever, they're going to have a list of every toadie in the organization, and also know that management needs to be cleaned out. If they aren't clever, they go away possibly wondering why everyone they talked to was either a supervisor or tech lead, and they have some really interesting (ie favoring the manager who sent them) ideas on how to fix the organization.

Guess what happens? Either nothing or decisions are made that make no strategic sense to anyone outside of the company, and the corporation continues down the garden path to being bought out or filing chapter 11. The decisions seem to favor a small group of people, who then make out like bandits.

And that segues into:

7) Don't assume management is on your side. In fact assume that entire layers of management are pretty happy with the way things are, and don't want anything to change.

Yes, even though this seems strange in a company that is bleeding from all pores, there are people in these companies who are running their own game, and as long as their fiefdom is doing fine, they're not interested in anything changing, thanks. These people are usually pretty short-sighted, both from a strategic and time sense: they're not interested in what's going to happen in 12-18 months, because their horizon doesn't extend that far. They don't care about the rest of the corporation, except how it helps them achieve their ends.

A fairly quick way to find out if there's an entire layer of management that's a problem is to play a game I call "chase the meme". Remember the rank and file? Ask them to let you know when the directive arrives.

A good directive is something like "managers are requested to spend all their employee relations budget this quarter, and to ask employees at their department meetings how they should spend it. Please communicate this to your organization.". It's bland, and it asks that it be communicated all the way down.

Now, let it loose. The next exec meeting, ask that this be communicated. Enlist HR to get the directive pushed out to the first layer below the execs.

Now wait. When I took part in this, the company in question had a *10%* rate of the directive making it to the first level managers and their staff. It turned out that the director level managers across the entire company were ether dropping it on the floor or asking the HR manager to *not* communicate it.

Armed with that information, the CEO started poking at the director layer, and found that they had effective set up a communications wall, and were cheerfully running their own organizations to their own benefit. I wish I could say that this was dealt with, but it took two more regime changes before that CEO was able to get rid of the lot of them.

Seriously, you don't want to get there. At that point, it took an amazing amount of luck and hard work to get that company out of its death spiral. Others--not so lucky.

Rethinking my position in the metals market

You know, when Pat and Ron discuss silver futures during the Cubs broadcast, maybe it's time to rethink my position in the market.

I don't think this means it's going to crash, but I do think it's going to get even more volatile than it has been. Anyone who's trying to play the spot market or day trade in silver is taking a much bigger chance that they'er going to get seriously burned. It's like finding yourself at a blackjack table with people who barely understand the rules--they'll do stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, and nail everyone else at the table for their trouble.

Too bad the copper and zinc markets are even a worse mess.

Geez, maybe I ought to wait for Bay Meadows to re-open and try my luck with the horses. There's probably less chance of someone stumbling in and randomizing the race.

(technorati tags: silver, baseball,futures)

MLB site strikes again

I was surprised that this season, MLB (the site that deals with the online multimedia products from Major League Baseball) didn't barf into my lap on opening day, as it has every past season. No, it decided to wait until today to deal me dirt.

I clecked on the multimedia tag to open up a browser window for the radio broadcast of the Cubs game. The first message I received from the site was that they didn't support my browser, which is safari, and that I should use either firefox/netscape or MSIE. Oddly enough, it's been working fine with Safari until this morning.

Then it told me that I didn't have a subscription. Unfortunately, I have been paying these idiots for their miserable service since MLB decided to take the games from the radio stations streaming them, and put them on a "pay for" service. Believe me, I'd be lots happier if the Cubs games were still on the WGN radio site, and I didn't have to deal with changing services to go from the pre-game to the actualy boradcast, and then back again. Not that I'm going to get that, though.

So I check my credit card statements. Nope--MLB, even though they had told me they were going to automatically charge my card, hadn't. I've learned that attempting to deal with MLB's alleged "customer service" is a no-win game. The customer service script they use is to tell the customer (note--in many cases, the customer has paid for a service they aren't getting) that they are completely full of shit, and don't know what they are doing. I've had these conversations, from "it won't run on a Mac--get a Windows box", to "there's a problem, I don't know when it will be fixed", followed by a hang-up. Nice guys. They mlb.com people know they have a monopoly, and once they have your money, they don't have to care.

So, it's time to pay up. I finish the process, and check my mailbox. ALong with the "thanks for your money", I see a "if we weren't able to charge to your credit card, we cancelled your account w/o telling you, and we started it back up again" email. Now, *there's* customer service--first they use the negative option for renewals, and then they kill off accounts without telling the customers when they can't get the charge to go through. Ever hear of contacting the customers? There must be a reason, other than selling account info and sending advertisments, that you require email addresses, right?

I had hopes that with XM, I'd be able to get away from this stupidity, but XM is following the "play one feed from the game" model. Maybe once compression and bandwidth improves, I can hope for a "pick your broadcaster" option. I'm looking forward to it.

And to Bud Selig, self-described technophobe, who according to the New York Times, admits that he can't point his browser to the MLB website: Bud, get someone who understands e-commerce, electronic product delivery, and who actually gives a damn about the customers, and have them manage the site. Given all the grief that's currently comng down in baseball, can you really afford to anger *more* of your fanbase?

(technorati tags: baseball, business,ecommerce)

Hey Bill--here's where your future BSCS students went!

The University of Illinois (remember NCSA Mosaic? remember NCSA anything?) has so many applicants to their undergrad business school that they can pick and choose among the best.

UI isn't the only school that has had their business school applications trend upwards. And why not? That business degree is likely going to command a better starting salary, fewer work hours, and a much smaller chance that a pink slip and offshoring of their job is going to be the reward for their work.

These are the bright students. remember?

Seattle--I'm worried about you

I used to spend a good chunk of time up in Seattle. I hope to again. I follow the Seattle news pretty religiously--in fact it was a bit of a joke that I knew better what was going on in the area than some of the residents.

I find the Summer Nights series being cancelled disturbing. I find the quote from one of the people who was able to get it cancelled even mroe disturbing--"We won! We are really excited."--Cheryl Trivison (check at the bottom of the article). Um, they are excitied. And they seem to be looking forward to more lawsuits to get what *they* want at the local parks. Nice attitude--do it their way, or risk getting your ass sued into oblivion.

Has anyone checked the last port of call for the people who were yelling the loudest? Because they sure sound like some of the SF Bay Area residents who repeatedly have screwed things over for a lot of people because of their rampant NIMBYism.

Look, one of the things that I liked about Seattle is that they had a lot of events going on, and there was a lot of cooperation and negotation and compromise, and ultimately working things out. And that Seattle hadn't gotten itself to the same place that the SF Bay Area has, where if you want to do anything, you have to get the buy-in from everyone including the Left-handed Albanian Alligator Wrestlers for Buddha, or else you'd find yourself up to your neck with lawsuits and pickets.

And that Seattle hadn't had a bunch of people move in because they "loved the whole Seattle thing", and them immediately turn around and try to get rid of all the things that attracted them in the first place.

Oh, and in case anyone wants to start accusing me of not having walked the walk, I live close enough to the Santa Clara International Swim Center that my street is clogged about a dozen weekends a year with SUVs full of swimmers. And since that Center is also where the main park is, on other weekends when there is a festival, once again the streets are full of people parking to get to the event.

But you know what? I have a really nice park within walking distance, and I can walk to all those events. Sort of works out, you know?

It's called community. And that's what Seattle stands to lose.

(technorati tags: business, Seattle, community)

Olympics: Ricki Martin's performance

Somewhere, there's an Italian production of Rocky Horror that's missing a bunch of costumes and backup dancers....

(technorati tags: business, sports, olympics)

Corporate Bozosity--in your IT organization?

I don't know why, but when I read Guy Kawasaki's latest, "How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion" I keep flashing on "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." from Anna Karenina. Is that my right brain having a chat with my left?

But when I saw the entry talking about the IS dept forcing everyone to move from Macs to PCs, well that just cranked a serious riff on IT-oriented indicators that the bozosity has indeed, infected the organization:

1. The execs have better networks and servers than the rest of the organization.

2. IT has an executive desktop support group. It's bigger than the desktop support group for the rest of the company.

3. But the exec desktop computers have been stripped for parts, and no one notices.

4. The engineering group, out of desperation, creates its own support organization. Corporate IT spends more time and money trying to shut down the "rogue organization" than on improving its own support standards.

5. The IT organization tells products that they can't launch the new product line after the 20th of the month, because they're in "datacenter blackout" until the 5th of the next month.

6. And it won't happen anyway, because the engineering group didn't properly fill out the 110 page change control request document. It's not IT's job to tell Engineering that they didn't fill it out correctly, or how to do it correctly.

7. Network and server outages are scheduled for IT's convenience.

8. IT will installed a monolithic control system, and ability to support products and programs will be determined by whether there's a module available for that product.

9. The IT organization thinks that the company is there to support them, instead of IT supporting the company.

Which leads to:

10. The IT organization is completely outsourced while the execs try to figure out exacly *how* did they get to chapter 11.

(technorati tags: business, IT, bozosity)

Guy Kawasaki and "Intrapreneurship"

Guy Kawasaki has started a blog, and you should be reading it. Go ahead, I'll wait....

Okay, back? Good!

This morning's piece is on The Art of Intrapreneurship, and it's a goodie.

But I'm going to add a couple of items:

1. Don't make the "reward" for intrepreneurship a pink-slip. I've just recently recovered from a corporation that with great fanfare and hoohah created a "new concepts" area. And over the past two years, most of the people who went to that area were laid off. Why? Most of them found themselves on the outs when their idea was sucked up by mainline corporate, and apparently the managers in those areas wanted to make sure no one ever found the bodies. Okay, what message are we sending here? And a few found that what they came up with couldn't be made commerical--yet. You think they're going to get the credit when some VP intros the ultimate product three years from now? Believe me, when I was wrangling sys admins, we spent a bunch of time getting the specs for old prototypes off of frighteningly old tape. Yes, Virginia, there is a reason someone is keeping the old SCSI tape drive alive, much less the 6250 bpi (eep!) reel tapes. It's for all those archeological expeditions on product that never saw the light of day.

Way back when I was a chemist (and we are talking a long time ago), the rule of thumb was that if one idea came out of R&D and made it to market, well *that* was great. But for some reason, when you get to an industry that doesn't burn holes in your jeans, they want everything to come out of research to make them a mint. Sometimes (the not-so-apocryphal story of how we got Post-it Notes) what you're looking for doesn't have an application in the area you're researching, but it's certainly useful elsewhere. Sometimes you have to wait for the rest of the industry to catch up with you, and sometimes you have to wait for society to catch up with you. Some stuff just doesn't pay out in 18 months. (Sidenote to the new kids on the block--the 18 month horizon was cut from whole cloth by MBA schools that were turning out all those arbitrage pirates in the early 80's. It's still not backed up by anything particularly useful.)

2. Whatever you do, don't let your corporate IT people anywhere near the intrapreneurs. Nothing will kill an idea in progress faster than some drone handing out 100-page forms to be filled out so the group can get a server installed in a place that *may* get the server UPS and back-ups. I have had these forms dumped on my desk, because as the manager-mom of the coders, it was my job to run interference for the group. Nothing like wasting time with 90 pages of "this isn't SAP, so this page isn't applicable" instead of getting actual work done. Another idea-killer is being told that yes, you can get your server installed, but you can't have access to it--you'll have to have the IT dept install all your builds. On their schedule. Because according to the SOX docs, they only install software on alternate Friday nights. That's if they can work it around their "real" work. Do you really think that when you miss the 18-month window because the IT dept caused massive delays and disasters, that the IT dept is going to get nailed? Nope!

I get asked a lot why so many companies have a corporate IT dept, and then have engineering or R&D systems and network support groups. There you go. And if I'm running or supporting an Intrapreneur group in that building a football field down the road, I'm setting up my own systems and network support. The last time I looked, it was the company's name on my check, and not the IT dept's.

3. The Aeron chair is a back-killer, especially for women. I was told this by an Occupation Therapist, and from experience, I'm inclined to believe her. If I get an office with one of those monsters, I grab a proper chair from the closest conference room and use that. Facilities ought to check offices some time, and see how many people are actually using those alleged ergonomic chairs, and how many are using anything else. You could fund a bunch of Friday beer bashes with the difference on a $650 chair, and a standard $150 office chair multiplied by all the people who'd be a lot happier with the cheaper chair.

(technorati tags: business, IT, intrapreneur)

Layoffs: Lessons Learned

For the luvva Mike, guys, don't let the manager you're going to lay off pick the people from their staff they are going to have laid off! It doesn't matter if they know they are going to be laid off, or not--if you're letting them go, there's usually a really good reason why they're being let go, and one of them might be they don't have a clue about dealing with staffing issues.

I recently saw multiple levels of this in action, and what was left for the company was a flaming bag of cow manure left on the corporate doorstep. They're going to be cleaning up that mess for quite awhile.

Corollary--use the WARN Act or whatever is applicable in your locale to bring people back on board. If staff are still "employed" for 60 days after the layoff notice, and they're the ones who should still be with the corporation, then bring them back on board and deal with it. Don't listen to the HR bunnies who tell you "Oh, we can't do *that*--that's ha-a-a-a-a-rd". Lay them off them instead--you'll be doing yourself and the company a big favour.

But better yet, don't let the people who are going away for a good reason give you one final example why they should be gone.

(technorati tags: layoffs, business, HR

Speed Record on "The Apprentice"

I think Randal set a new "How quickly does the job candidate turn around in his skin after he's hired" speed record on The Apprentice this past Thursday night. he can chalk it up to excitement or whatever, but he completely missed or ignored the cues and clues that Trump dropped about hiring Rebecca as well.

Yeah, there's an element of "I won, and I don't want to share this moment", but Randal dropped the graciousness he exhibited during the "games" so quickly that you have to (and I suspect, Trump, Carolyn, and George have to as well) wonder whether the Randal they saw was a construct, and they were getting a peek at the real goods.

(technorati tags: business, apprentice, organizational behavior)