The Absentee CIO

The Law of Attraction

If you've been as long in the tooth in the corporate/ professional world as I have, you'd have faced your fair share of rejections - whether it be in job interviews or sales pitches or even making human connections with your colleagues in the work place. 

If you're deeply analytical of your missteps (or some would say 'anal') you're bound to run a play-by-play of what happened. Did you say the wrong things, was your tie out of place or did you just not give the right vibes. Hand-wringing as much as I have, I've come upon the realization that just like human, outside-of-work relationships, in the professional world, the Law of Attraction has a major role to play as to whether your interview answers or your sales spiel resonnated with the party you're hoping to get a nod from.

Digging deeper, realize one fact - your skills, experience and background are pretty one-dimensional. Like words on a page, you can either spin a masterful tale of your achievements or paint a compelling picture of what makes you (or your company) the right candidate for the job. A lot of people talk about pre-qualifying - about auto-bots that screen keywords in an application to the right syntax on your resume landing you a scond glance from an over-burdened HR department to a bid-qualification sheet that checks the boxes for your selection. All of that is true. This post is not about making the first cut. That's a given, a hygiene factor in your submission, the entrance fee to the dance. My contention is that in order for the next round of down-selection or elimination to take place, human dynamics takes over and then things turn...well, very touchy-feely.

The bigger the stakes get, the closer to the finish line you are, the more human the decision-making process gets. And at the heart of that process lies the 'law of attraction'. When I sell myself or my company's services to a client, it boils down to whether I strike a chord with the human buyer of the services and whether he can truly answer the question 'Can I work with this person? Is this somebody I empathize with, who shares my values and my beliefs and at the end of the day - can I be trapped in an elevator with him confident of the company and the comfort that he's got my back?' This is the crux of the law of attraction - am I attracted to this person in front of me? 

HR, executive and sales coaches make a living advising on the law of attraction. How do you make yourself more endearing, more personable, more likeable and therefore a more acceptable choice to the decision-maker.There are tons of seminars focused on identifying hot-buttons and capitalizing on sacred principles. And no, this post isn't even about that. 

Where I'm hoping to lead you, is that regardless of how conniving you are (harsh term deliberately used here), you're bound to lose some interactions. I've reached the conclusion that no matter how hard I beat myself up about the outcome - I wish I hadn't said what I said, maybe I should have toned down my message, and no matter how hard I practice and rehearse the next time - I still am not going to be everything for everyone. 

And that's the bottom line of this post. The law of attraction is real. But it is based upon the human decision making of the economic buyer (the hiring manager, the client executive). By virtue of being a human decision, it is purely based upon the dynamic between 2 individuals which is a completely random result. Just because you didnt get selected because of this law of attraction doesn't make you any less competent, any less experienced. It just happened to be a human dynamic that was not meant to be.

The reality of the situation is, there's no way getting around the law of attraction. If the decision maker selects you inspite of a wishy-washy feeling about you, the interaction is bound to be rocky resulting in a premature demise. I've experienced a lot of interactions that started off less than stellar and then eventually fizzled, because there wasn't a strong basis of attraction (or good vibes) to build upon. My detractors will try to say that you can eventually turn a not-so-good situation around and I'd agree that there are variations to the norm. But I maintain that for an interaction to be sustainable, it has to have a strong foundation.

Now for the feel-good message. Every time I've feel bad about an outcome that didn't go my way, I ask myself - "Was I being myself? Did I answer the questions based on what I believed? Did I represent myself realistically and more important - truthfully?' And when I answer in the affirmative, I tell myself - well then maybe this wasn't meant to be. And if I had pushed it to be, maybe it wouldn't last. This isn't sour-grapes. I've had deals (and jobs) where I've gone into undecided and unsure. And they haven't lasted. 

My mantra now is to be the most honest (and respectful) counterpart I can be in any sales situation. I represent myself honestly, answer the questions based upon what I believe and let the chips fall where they have to. I don't base my self-esteem on where the ultimate decision falls, I just realize that this is a human decision based upon where the law of attraction landed between me and my decision-making counterpart. And that the decision is best for both parties and sets up my decision-maker for success that he can own and stand behind.

I am a sum total of experiences, background and qualifications and most importantly, values, culture, beliefs and opinions. That total package appeals to a lot of individuals and turns some people off. That doesn't make me less attractive (to use the moniker). It just brings to light that no matter how hard you try, you won't appeal to all. But if you are true in your representation, and you do get selected, you can be comfortable in the knowledge that the interaction is destined for great things because you and your counterpart have pre-determined success based upon the law of attraction.

 

Courage is the name of a Blind Dog in my Neighborhood

Most flagging/failing ERP implementations often have one thing in common. They are composed of a team of 'heroes', of participants who go above and beyond the call of duty to work manically into wee hours trying to meet deadlines long past. When the date moves once again, the leadership justifies the delay with "The team is working hard to get the job done". Courage, hard work, perseverance becomes the mantra for catching up and the team rallies around its core membership highlighting in audit reviews of how the workforce is burnt out trying to meet near-impossible deadlines.

Unfortunately, while there's enough examples of how a last minute hail-mary pulled the proverbial rabbit out of the hat, there's also enough evidence that if fundamentally, the processes and behaviors don't change, true success in an ERP go-live is as fleeting as a snowflake in warm weather. ERP implementations are common-place in today's day and age. ERP implementations are as packaged and routine as they come. Yet, a startling majority of them fail - especially in meeting original deadlines or expectations. 

The problem is not just with ERP. Its also evident in organizations. Interviews now include snide references to whether you're willing to work long hours, to do 'what it takes' rather than any emphasis on your process discipline or whether you have the ability to provide consistent and predictable outcomes (the function of a job versus any prima-donna activity) I can confess that I fell victim to the same scourge. I applauded people who worked long and weary hours toiling and looked down upon people who seemed to clock out on time each day. They mustn't be working hard - I rationalized.

Unfortunately, we as people, organizations and nations seem to pride on our 'productivity index' which seems almost always measured with long working hours. We justify bad behavior with manic and frenzied activity. Its almost as if we're enamored by the aura of despair versus the results that it does or does not produce.

I've seen too many failed projects and realized that the key point of distinction between them and the ones that succeeded was the absence of any process discipline in the ones that failed. An ERP implementation is a simple exercise. Spend the bulk of your time analyzing requirements and mapping them to the functionality of the software. Spend a lot of time hashing through the requirements and making sure that you're only building where critical. The unique point here is that you're supposed to spend the lion's share of your time on the analysis and design of your to-be world. If you get the method right, then your build (however complicated) is still the most straightforward pat of the delivery. It shouldn't fail.

Unfortunately, bad ERP implementations are all about grandstanding. People short-change the analysis process, hear only what they want to hear, allow themselves to either fall in the rut of not hearing enough or create way too slick and complicated solutions to seemingly simple business problems. Then, they get into it all the way to the bitter end. Coding/ developing/ creating more and more complex answers and getting frustrated about 'scope creep'. The answer to the problem is a straightforward one. You bought an ERP package - therefore by virtue of the same, you expect to take out of the box a large majority of the functionality. You may have some holes - but unless those holes constitute something that uniquely sets you apart from a competitive advantage perspective, leave them alone.

We're a generation of solution builders - ERP projects have thrived on the ability of people to design and over-build huge monuments of grandiose plans. We take great joy in working hard long hours and it acceptable to say that you're working weekends to catch up. Maybe thats the way we're wired. Courage has become the mantra of the day. In my humble opinion - the projects that I've seen wildly successful is where people created more reasonable goals for themselves, set mini milestones to build upon and took baby steps (but well rehearsed, process-driven steps). As far as those work-till-the-wee hours kind of guys, my advice is this - courage has no place in organizational success. Its better to consistently succeed in small endeavors than consistenly burn out on large dramatic gambles.

Selling the message

In my role as a salesperson, I've often wondered how to deliver a successful sales pitch. What does it take to deliver a convincing presentation? How do I convince the other side to buy in to what I'm proposing without trying to hard-sell the situation?

Successful salespeople will tell you about the art of selling without even trying. About getting the client to trust what you're saying and truly represent the client's best interests. In the end, its all about whether the client believes in what you're selling and buys-in to the program. The key then is - how do you sound convincing, believable? Is it just a lot of role play and acting? Do I need special ed. to learn how to deliver my lines?

Mulling over this, I boarded my flight to Atlanta. Sitting diagonally behind me was this gregarious executive, a man of many seasons trying to chat up a pilot dead-heading on the flight sitting across the aisle from him. The pilot had curiously asked the executive whether he traveled a lot which led to a 40 minute diatribe from this man about how much he had seen in my lifetime of travel. At first, the conversation seemed very interesting to eavesdrop on. The man spoke about all that he had seen in his lifetime of travel. The divorce on board, the quickie in the back rows of an international flight, being invited to a party by a couple of flight attendants. I strained to hear, mentally trying to match his stories with my own, trying to catch a glimpse of this traveler and look at him as he spoke.

Then, over the course of his conversation. the topics became more salacious, wilder, much more fantastic and oddly enough less interesting or captivating. It wasn't what he was saying (the topics were gory enough to draw anyone into the conversation). It was how he was saying it. His voice was devoid of passion or conviction, of any real feeling of attachment to the conversation. Sitting in front of him, it was hard to see his facial expressions or his body language but from what I could hear, he was fast losing his audience - the pilot and the other passengers around him who he hoped to impress. The man was well-spoken. His English was impeccable, his topics were interesting. But he seemed to have alienated the people he was so desperately trying to impress. What happened?

Oddly, as that conversation ended, another one commenced with the same pilot in question. This time, it was an elderly gentleman sitting alongside me who had turned around and started talking to the pilot. The gentleman was a retiree from the aerospace industry. He spoke about building planes all his life and what he had seen. from twin-engines to Russian-built turbofans. His topics were less controversial. His message less dramatic. But he seemed to engage the pilot a lot more and his fellow passengers as well. We all found ourselves contributing to the conversation (even though I figure we knew even less about engines than on-board sex). And as he talked, I scanned the man's face and his mannerisms in delivery.

I noticed that the man seemed less interested in impressing his audience. He narrated his tale with a quiet confidence, interspersed with a chuckle and internal reflection. It was obvious that he was recollecting while recounting. His face lit up with experiences of lore. His smile widened as he remembered incidents while narrating. None of this seemed forced or false. The man obviously had lived through these experiences, which made his delivery believable. It also drew all of us into the conversation - to partake in the experience, to learn from what this person had so obviously gone through.

I left the flight a lot more enlightened about what makes a successful sales pitch. A successful sales person is not someone who just agrees with his client or makes flashy, wild claims. It isn't sustaining enough to be the spotlight in a conversation, to try to engage with tales of glory alone. What makes a client want to buy-in to a message is whether that message is delivered from the heart, from experience. Experience is not something you can fake sustainably. You can't read about it, flash it through or lie about it.  Its shows itself on the kind of life you've led and what you've seen in it.

One of my ex-bosses used to tell me that we all are only '2 minutes from being discovered'. That we had only a limited amount of time before our lies caught up to us and our shallowness exposed. Hence, in order to avoid being caught, you had to be two steps ahead. I find this approach tiring. Its draining  to always try to keep ahead of the pack. And I find most salespeople do that by a technique called 'mirroring". Find out where the client is and mirror his thoughts and opinions as your own. That is a good sales technique and it is a good idea to be on the same page as your client. However, as (if not more) important is your ability to impart your true standpoint and experience. If you disagree because life's experiences have taught you differently, don't hesitate to state that. Speak from your heart and draw your counterpart into your viewpoint. And do that because you believe in it - a product of your understanding and experience.

The most successful sales people are built out of experience. Flash and talk can only get you so far. In order to sell the message, you have to have lived the message. Now I only hope I can be strong enough to speak out of experience rather than to merely impress my audience.

The Seven Year Itch

A stock question asked by hiring managers of prospective employees is "Where do you see you yourself 5-7 years from now?". This question is also interpreted as "What is your intermediate to long-term career goal?" Regardless of whether the manager actually wants to hear your answer, the response to the question is a scientific basis in determining not only your career aspirations but whether or not you and your goals are a fit to the culture of the hiring organization and the job at hand with its potential for growth. Let me try to explain why.

The average employee is promoted every 2.5 to 3 years (considering an acceptable to a marginally above expected performance). The superstar (1 out of every 10 employees) gets promoted every 1.5 to 2 years (unless he gets burnt out before he gets promoted). So over a 5-7 period you're looking at 2-3 promotions which HR managers will tell you is a major leap in position, title and hierarchy. So when a decision-maker is asking you the question, what they're trying to ascertain is:

1) Is your stated career goal in line with the growth potential offered by the job?

2) Is the job you're applying for aligned with the kind of skill and developmental opportunities you need to get to your desired level of position and responsibility?

3) Finally (and my personal favorite) - did you put any thought into where you'll be after a reasonable time has elapsed in your career?

Most people I've spoken to fall short in point number 3. The most popular reason is that most people prepare themselves so much to impress for the job at hand in the recruiting process that they lose sight of whether or not the job they're aspiring towards actually is aligned with any long-term, strategic objectives or desires. And unfortunately, they jump from job to job focusing on the here and now and either find themselves adrift in 10 years or try for progressively higher positions without having the background or skill investment to justify someone hiring them in the first place.

Here's my formula for those looking for a change. Before you apply to a job, sit down and think about your 5-7 year plan. I'm not asking you to plan up till retirement, just the next 2 positions you'd like to have and where you'd want to end up. For example, if you're currently a supervisor, your next 2 logical jumps are manager and then ultimately senior manager. Think about the size of organization you'd want to end up in 5-7 years from now. Will it be global? Do you want people responsibilities? What size of budget would you like to command? This exercise is particularly hard because when you're done flexing your mind to where you'd like to be, you're going to be only halfway done.

Now for part 2 - once you've decided what type and size of organization you'd end up in and what position you'd occupy, you have to pick 5-10 representative real organizations that match the profile. Then, going on to their career websites, you'd look for similar titles and positions advertised and find out what skills, experiences and characteristics the job really requires (normally found in the job description). If you're feeling up to the challenge, try to obtain sample (real life) resumes - a good recruiter should be able to help you with some active negotiation. Now that you have this, create a dummy resume (yours 5-7 years from now). Write in the skills, the kind of background you'd have, the experiences you would have gained and the organizations you'd have amassed in your background.

Reality should now sink in - in order to happy in your career and with the employer you join, you've got to map the delta between your current background and where you think you'll end up in 5-7 years on your dummy resume. So when you're applying for a job (regardless of how glamorous it sounds, what short-term need it satisfies your ego with or how much it pays), will it really align with your future career goals by giving you the skills, opportunity and pedigree you need to get to the next level?

The payoff of this seemingly tiresome exercise is huge. If you do it right, you'll not only impress your hiring manager with an articulate view of your future and how this job gets you ther, but you'll also dramatically increase your odds on being happy in the job and moving forward in a definitive manner rather than just wandering. The offset for this is that maybe you wont get that job when you're that honest and detailed, but it won't be because you said something wrong, but because the hiring manager realized that the job wouldn't provide you the long-term gratification you need to get to where you want to get to.

Jobs (inside of a career) are longer races than short sprints. If you join an organization which is aligned with and gets you to or close to your 5-7 goals, you're going to be happier, more productive and on a firmer footing in your career. If you're truly anal about your future (as some unnamed present company), then you're going to look at your 5-7 year goal annually and tweak the expected future profile constantly. But even if you do it on breaks between employers, you'll have a better chance to look at yourself in 10-15 years with a career well charted and actively managed.

I've heard many a complaint as a people manager from subordinates who felt they were being left behind - not enough opportunity, not enough promotions, no skills being built, development ignored. While some of them are the fault of the organization in not developing them enough, there's a burden on the employee itself that can't be ignored. If you join a dead-end job with no thought of your future or one that has growth but not aligned with what you want, just because you jumped at a percentage increase on your current salary or a fancier title, you have largely yourself to blame. Every job is not just the joy of the present but the promise of the future. And if that future is not aligned with your future, well....you get my drift.

Kind of like the proverbial 7 year itch don't you think?

The Love You Make!

I use Thursdays afternoons as my own quiet time. It's time I keep to myself reflecting on the things I've done, things that matter to me and all the wonderful people that have graced me with their presence and interaction on my journey to grow old with success and dignity. Today, I'm thinking of professional success, of a road well traveled sprinkled with positive experiences. Many people count their own skills, their talent, or work ethic as instrumental in their success. I too, believe that my personal profile and background has played a role in the great opportunities I've been given. But I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the people that have had the faith in me to bring me to where I am.

Do personal interactions actually matter? Can people really transform someone's career? The answer is simply yes and I'm living proof of the positive impact that others can have on your own climb up the corporate ladder. A lot of people have seen my resume (shameless self promotion) and it seems remarkable that I went from consultant to manager to director and then ultimately the VP in such short order. But for the true closet investigative reporter in us, the story like every other has a backstory behind it's covers.

I had a remarkably quiet initial 6-7 years in my career. I kept to myself, concentrated on being the best technologist I could and focused inwardly for the most part trying to better my skills with no thought or regard for anyone else. My career plateaued in 2000 when the y2k boom turned to bust and people realized that planes weren't going to fall out of the sky after all. It was also the beginning of the tech crash and people couldn't be laid off fast enough in the quick bleeding consulting industry. It didn't matter how good you were or how high you'd flown in your career, you were a number unless someone higher up was willing to stand behind you and vouch for the need to keep you around. I lived in perpetual fear in those dark times and for the majority of the crash, followed various executives all over the country pitching our story and trying to drum up business. It was also around that time when (either out of resignation, despair or acceptance) I became less self absorbed in how my career was going or what skills I was garnering and instead submitted myself wholeheartedly to the process, willing to do whatever it took, not just to perpetuate my own success but the entire firm's existence as a viable growth entity. I made myself available for proposals, asked how I could help, hounded for things I could do to help our practice grow.

And then something amazing happened. I started gaining a reputation, not just as a skilled resource but someone who could be counted to do whatever it took. I made copies, churned one proposal deck after another, gave demos and followed firm partners into unlikely boondoggles. It was a risk. Not being billable is a death-knell for a consultant. My colleagues laughed at me, didn't understand why I wouldn't concentrate on getting myself off the bench. But slowly and surely my doggedness paid off. Each time my name came up in a layoff list (and it did) there was some executive who stood up for me and took me off it. When the market came roaring back, the same executives for whom I had done futile roadshows put me in roles of progressive responsibility in major engagements. I left consulting with a string of big name involvements, the bulk of which I had garnered out of people's faith in me than my own inflated skills. Industry proved to be just as kind. Having proved that the willingness to involve yourself in a broader cause rather than just yourself got doors opened for me. I was successful as program manager because my boss entrusted me with the responsibility to globally rollout ERP apps to our Asian locations (something that wasn't in my direct sphere of responsibilities). Those experiences directly landed me the job as director. I wouldn't have ever been the CIO of MCS if the then COO didn't take a leap of faith with me. And I wouldn't have been fast-tracked into interviews and job offers in a soft hiring economy if it wasn't for the executives at leading organizations to vouch for my street cred with their own positive experiences and recommendations. I am where I am today not just because I posess talent in some measure but also because every step of the way someone stood up, called out to me and brought me over.

What's the point of this tirade? The point I'm trying to make is that people have a great deal to play in your career. And the sure-fire way of ensuring that people will back you rests more in the way you approach them rather than good timing or good fate. Treat others with same involvement and interest you'd like them to take with you. Show people around you compassion, involvement and a genuine care for the broader whole and you'll find people willing to back you as their winning horse. Love begets love, friendship begets friendship and selfishness begets isolationism. It amazes me when I see people around me at work who take no interest in anything but what can promote their own agenda. They are the ones who couldn't be bothered by anyone except their upward chain or for efforts that only benefit them. Just as I have talked about my superiors who helped me succeed, I could write a book on every successful project or endeavor that I've been on where the people working with or for me me have achieved phenomenal things just due to their love and respect for me or towards the broader team. I would be nowhere without these people who reciprocated wholeheartedly to my call because they believed that I had their best interests at heart.

This is now my personal credo for professional success. I eagerly participate in recruiting for my current firm. I actively seek out mentoring opportunities when offered. I work deals and proposals after hours to get back in the groove and work with as many practitioners (consultants and executives alike) when its just as easy to beg non-availability when one is fully assigned. Make an effort to keep your relationships positive for both parties, invest in others trying to understand where they come from. Get involved and participate. The Beatles said it best when they sang "For in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make"

The Power of Negativity

I found out the other day that one of our ex-employees was posting negative things about me in an internet message board. This person was someone I had hired and invested a lot in,had accommodated quite a few of his personal requests (work from home, get assigned to different projects/ teams) and generally treated well. When he quit, it was supposedly because he had found a much better opportunity and I wished him well in his new job and his future. Why then, after months of having left us, did he resolve to write these nasty and untrue things? What was his trigger to react to an employer from the past and fling some proverbial mud? Why can't he just move on and concentrate on his current employment situation?

Unfortunately, the guys who wrote about the power of positive thinking failed to highlight how powerful negativity is as an emotion. The negative person often not only sees the glass as half empty, he sees hairline fractures on the glass and the water as muddy and undrinkable. He is constantly unhappy with where he is at, thinking himself destined for a greatness that never comes, and when the grandeur fails to materialize, all that is left is to lash out at everyone around them in a completely infantile and negative manner.

Are there truly negative people around in the workplace? Are there signs to watch out for? How do you deal with a negative influence without damaging the overall morale of the group?

When I look back the years of history I had with this one particular individual, its pretty obvious to me in hindsight that he displayed some of the traits that led to his online meltdown.

1) Throughout his stay here, this person wouldn't get along with any of his team members or subordinates. Every chance he'd get , he'd try to enforce his will or dominance on the entire team. While dominance by itself isn't a deal-breaker (many of our leaders are Type-A), dominance with an intent to subdue the other into blind compliance is a warning sign. The negative person is unable to thrive in a group-setting. His style won't allow him to see the positive contributions of others or appreciate what they bring to the table.

2) The constant whining and complaining about not being recognized. Most negative people can't be kept happy regardless of what you'd do for them. This individual was offered a flexible work schedule because of the distance he commuted to work. This should have been considered a perk but it wasn't - it became an entitlement. The negative person considers not only "what have you done for me lately?" but also "what did you ever do for me?" as their popular drivel.

3) Failure to speak positively about anyone else. Take this test - ask your potential negative employee to say 4 good things about someone else in the group. If they stop at 1 or can't say anything positive, you may want them to pick their most favorite person and say 7 good things. The negative person fails both tests. This is because, this individual not only has an inflated sense of self-worth but also believes others to be inferior in some way or the other.

What do you do when you find a negative influence in your team? Sadly, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot you can do to foster positivity. People who let negativity govern their lives can only poison the pond with their behavior and in order for the negative energy not to permeate the group, you have to allow the individual to transition out of the organization completely. I believe I did more damage than good when I moved this person from team to team, hoping they'd work out somewhere because I didn't want to admit that this person was beyond help and needed to be cut out from the organization like a disease. Organizations need positivity to be able to thrive and prosper. The negative person needs to work for himself as he is the only one who can tolerate and nurture his dysfunctional behavior.

To this individual - you got what you deserved while working here - nothing less. if you didn't make it to your perceived level of greatness, that decision was reinforced when you decided to lash out against your former employer, team and superiors. No one likes a sore loser, especially one who's still complaining about the score when the game is all over.

Following the Herd!

I happened to go to my favorite Thai restaurant at the beach to pick up the food I had phoned earlier for. I saw this homeless guy perusing the menu outside the restaurant. As I parked, he turned towards me and I realized that his pants (he had a couple of them on as layers) started to drop. He hastily pulled them up, flashed me a toothless (probably meth induced) grin and said " I should get me a belt". I don't know why but I felt a little unsafe and I picked up my bag with me which I would normally left in the car.

The guy entered the restaurant before me and sat all the way at the front of the restaurant. The waitresses were a little freaked out and looked at each other while I went by the counter to pick up my food. While I was paying, I noticed that they had called a male waiter to ask the man to leave. I couldn't pick up all the conversation but I heard the homeless guy say that he was hungry, saw him throw down a couple of bills on the table and ask why they couldn't serve him. I quickly completed my exchange, got in the car and as I drove around the corner, I saw him outside walking away.

This is the stuff that kind of gets me down. I could have chosen to make a difference in that guy's afternoon. Maybe bought him some of the food he wanted and paid for it. Or maybe I could have shared my food with him. 10 Bucks would hardly make a dent in my finances. But I chose the easy way out and walked away. Perception is a huge thing - we choose to let it affect our realities and treat others in not the way we would want to be treated ourselves. What makes his hunger different than mine? Is it because he doesn't fulfill society's standard norm of acceptability?

Three things that I took away

1) I am thankful for what I have. I could be broke, friendless and alone in the world and I am not. I can walk into any place and have a decent meal without having to be thrown out. I have a roof over my head and I am healthy and alive!

2) We are all a step removed from destitution. Lose a couple of steady paychecks and one could easily be a bag lady. I used to believe one couldn't go hungry in this country. I saw it disproved in action.

3) Prejudice doesn't only have to be about race and sex. Its about being treated by how good you look and the clothes you wear or the designer labels you subscribe to. Even though I have everything, I chose to be prejudiced towards a hungry man and felt threatened by his presence even though he posed me no harm.

I didn't mean to bring you down.I am just sharing a perspective. Kind of explains a little more about me and where I come from. Holler back if this kind of stuff is boring and I'll try to keep it more upbeat. I believe we all can make a difference by following our own inner voice and not just following the herd.

Is Empathy a Weakness in the Corporate World?

I have to admit - I'm a softie at heart. I cry during sad parts in movies or when I come across a poignant verse or chapter in a book. It drives my wife nuts to watch me crumble over what she believes is fiction and so apparently not true. 'You're a sucker for a hard tale' she tells me. 'You got sucker written all over your forehead. No wonder people walk all over you!'

I'd have loved to argue the point with her. But the truth is, she's mostly right about what she's stating. Keeping aside the 'sucker' moniker for a moment, I do have the tendency to believe whatever is stated to me, whether in print or in person from a colleague or subordinate.This is because:

1) I innately believe in people and that given an opportunity, would rather speak the truth than lie.

2) In the case of fiction (or for that matter an interaction with a colleague), I am empathetic towards the person or tale being told and feeling what they are undergoing, want to believe and help them.

Here's where I think the crux of this whole post lies. Its one thing to feel the pain and suffering of someone else and want to help them in day-to-day life, whether it is buying a hungry man a meal, or offering to read to the blind or going out of your way to get a lost person to their destination. Its another when you are in a corporate position and your personal feelings about a person or their situation affects the way you treat or react to them.

What I have been told as I climbed the corporate ladder, is that with every rung you ascend, you have to distance yourself a little more from the people who work with making yourself almost a corporate figurehead rather than a person. Whether this was expressed by one of my bosses who said he needed to make me 'less of a nice guy'  or another who stated 'that I needed to fire people or get fired myself', in my rise to a CIO, I heard people advise me on becoming a more 'hardened professional.

Surely, you didn't need to de-humanize yourself to rise up to the top. Why couldn't I spend time with people I worked with, hear them out, be approachable and generally be 'one of them'. After all, didn't we all bleed crimson regardless of rank? If I treated people fairly and they saw me someone who so passionately felt for them, wouldn't they resort to only the truth and not try to manipulate my responses?

Upon reflection, I've come to the realization that my 'good guy' theory may have some flaws. For every person that was positively impacted by my approach and empathy, there were people that either, misused the trust I had in them and flat out lied to me to procure themselves a better deal, or were just jaded by the fact that I was so gullible and unable to distinguish the true 'wheat from the chaff'.

Empathy is a dying trait in the corporate world. If you're an executive in a corporate hierarchy, you're basically a number cruncher, someone who plays out options and alternatives, examining outcomes as mechanically you would people as a new product launch. This is not necessary a bad thing. Its just a sign of the times. You're only as good as your last quarter and no one really cares about how you feel as long as you get the job done.

I fought this almost bullheadedly. I wanted to create my leadership out of a different mold. However, there are instances where my style of empathy just wont work.

1) Time Off/ Work-from-Home/ Personal Days: Lets face it. We all have issues on days coming to work. Whether it is a sick child or a pressing personal appointment, we have something else going on. That's why companies have the concept of PTO, vacation or just time off. I can't tell you how many people have come to me over my career as a people manager and asked for special dispensation using the 'work from home' concept to avoid using their carefully banked vacation time. I am an advocate of working from home (should the organization allow it) but otherwise, I don't think its fair that some people have to use their vacation time (because they're diligent in doing so) and others get a free pass just because they happened to tell me a story that rang of hardship. I would routinely allow people who approached me their request to work from home based upon what they told me. But I believe that this is one place where 'regular' requests from the same employee need to denied.

2) Layoffs: Whether you like it or not, layoffs are an inevitable fact of corporate America. You may hate the system, but it exists and is thriving as a method of temporary cost containment. I've worried myself sick about what's going to happen to the person being let go. But the fact is, the decision has to be made and as long as the layoff isn't malicious and is done with as much respect as possible, the survivors have lived to fight another day.

3) Disciplinary Action: This is where most 'empathetic' managers fail. And to be honest, this is one Achilles heel I need to correct long term. Not everyone is redeemable. Every time, I've been faced with a rogue employee or an under-performer, my first instinct is to try to work with them. I've moved people across various functions and roles even though they should have been cut loose on the second try itself. This is also an area where you're heavily watched over by your subordinates, peers and superiors. The more weak people you carry, the less effective you are as a team and as a leader.

How do I correct my 'weakness' without coming across as this emotionless, unapproachable despot I'm trying so hard not to be? In recent times, a more sobering realization has occurred to me. I don't have to be a pushover to be a nice guy. Every time someone comes to me with a sob story or if I confront a sticky situation with an employee, I need to examine the person's situation balanced with the needs of the community (in my case, my department). So realistically, I would still be empathetic, except I would be considering the needs of the broader group rather than just the individual's.

You want a day off (supposedly working from home even though your personal commitments are going to prevent you from being effective) - I'd have to balance that request with the thought of whether I could feasibly make this a policy for everyone in the team. Would granting this request be fair to the needs of the others who don't do so?

When I have to discipline someone, I would need to look at the pattern of behavior displayed by the person and what it would do to the collective morale of the group if I let undesirable behavior slide. If I'm forced to lay a portion of my team off, am I retaining people who would be a better part of the team, rather than people who really 'needed the job', thus making sure I can still get the work done with the people I have left and warding off future resource actions.

In all cases, I think empathy does still have a role to play in the corporate world. I just think that as leaders, we need to divert our empathy to the group rather than to the individual.

What do you think? Let me know - I'm really trying to build a working premise here that can be used by me in my next foray into the corporate world.

I got to go stock up on my supply of Kleenex - 'The English Patient' is on the telly tonight!

The 'Connected' Generation

Waiting around for my flight at DIA yesterday, I couldn't help but notice that all the phonebooths were occupied. Except, there weren't any phones being used. Instead, people had plugged in assorted devices in the power outlets that lined the base of each telephone. Looking around, I saw people sitting with their backs against pillars with smart-phones and laptops connected into the outlets on the pillars used by the cleaning crews to vacuum the airport. I took a moment to let the sight sink in. All around me, people seemed to be hunched over their iphones, their netbooks, PDAs and blackberries, barely peering past the glowing text on their screens. Others seemed to be crowded around the LCD monitors perched on the wall, their eyes transfixed on the voiceless visual candy of a CNN reporter talking about Tiger's latest transgressions. Checking email every 15 seconds, watching the nasdaq ticker move, tweeting, texting, facebook and myspace have become the latest preoccupations of the masses. I bet you could streak past the hallways at DIA wearing precious little than brightly colored ribbons and have only a handful of people actually look up from their tiny screens to acknowledge your presence. Welcome to the 'Connected' Generation!

Don't get me wrong. I love my devices as much as Joe, Harry or Sally. My wife can regale you for hours of stories of family dinners where I had little to share with my kids as far as meaningful conversation goes but furiously emailed to colleagues asking for updates on an upcoming meeting or presentation. I like to stay connected - check my emails and the web first thing in the morning, multiple times in the day and the last thing before my head hits the pillow. But of late, I'm beginning to question whether I haven't sacrificed other skills at the altar of digital progress.

We've all heard or seen the 2 workmates emailing each other constantly instead of standing up and actually talking to each other. But I realized the extent of how far we've come in our device-led lives when this story was relayed to me by a colleague. Apparently, there was a 'Sales Review' meeting in a popular Software organization and the meeting organizer asked a 10-man account team how many of them had actually met their 'key account' client face to face. Only a third of the crew had, leaving the others (including some of the leaders) to interact with their client counterparts over emails, webinars and phonecalls. Their client preferred that, they said. It was cost effective and more efficient. I was truly shocked hearing this episode. Wasn't Sales the last bastion of face-to-face interaction? After all, the Sales guy is your quintessential 'cool dude', coiffed in the best pressed suits and the most sparkling of smiles. He's the guy with best handshake, who convinces you over a good meal while looking you straight in the eye, how his product will be the best thing for your organization since sliced bread. Surely, no computer can ever replace that!

But I'm also cognizant about what's happening here. All over, people are choosing faceless interaction over a personal one. We have shifted our shopping habits to online ones (no pushy sales people, better sales). We conduct almost all our daily activities online and its purported that more marriages dissolve because of a spouse's obsession with an online game than with other popular vices (gambling, alcoholism or drug addiction). A personal revelation for me was my 13 year-old's texting activity with her friends (in spite of my constant nagging and threats of dire financial consequences. Not that I mind my daughter's interaction with her friends. When I was her age, I spent every evening chatting with my buds. But it was done on street corners and cul-de-sacs face to face while we skipped stones across the sidewalk and high-five'd when someone cracked a particularly funny joke. For all my sweet angel's communication with her bffs, I can bet good money that she would have little to say if actually locked in a room with her friends face-to-face.

Why is real communication and interaction important? Well, on a macro-level, I'd state that more service jobs have been lost to digitization (real people displaced by computers) than to off-shoring. To a service oriented economy like the US, the lack of real service jobs is a death-sentence to any economic revitalization. On a micro-level, I'm afraid that we're losing our communal skills and social etiquette. I saw daily examples of people pushing others to rush to the gate or barely looking past their headphones when they bang against you, rarely apologetic and almost never making eye contact. We're becoming more insular and self-contained (almost selfish to a point), an antithesis of the human race which distinguishes itself from the animal planet by how it interacts in a social setting. The health and vitality of our personalities and the success of our communities depends not only on the technological advances we make but also how vibrantly and positively we interact with each other. I see the Y or Z generation more and more socially inept and it concerns me that we will soon lose all real means to deal with each other.

I love the concept of Facebook and the fact that its allowed me to connect with friends from a time ago. I'm jiggy with Myspace and the creative platform that its provided millions of under-35 year olds to talk about the stuff that matters to them. But I'm also afraid that its given birth to a generation that hides behind Avataars, smileys, emoticons and text abbreviations rather than have meaningful one-on-one communication. I want Second-Life to flourish but also want my real First-Life to be filled with human beings as well.

I propose that we take a stand on the matter. Lets tell our schools to teach kids social skills as much as technological ones. Bring class debates, group discussions, role-play back into the forefront of our syllabus. In the corporate world, lets put interactive skills at test during interviews as well as technical ones and mandate annual 'interaction training' as some of us do basic excel. 

I want my friendly salesperson back, I want to conduct some serious small-talk with my bank teller, smile at the passer-by and wink at the waitress as she brings me my extra side of jalapenos. Now please excuse me while I go back to my Webex while texting to my team mate and buying that much-needed Fedora on Ebay and rotflmao because of this email I just received on my iphone.

The Human Desire to Prosper

On my plane ride back from Denver today, I was seated next to a woman with 2 children heading back from a ski vacation in Colorado. We got talking about our kids and she told me how her son was born with down's syndrome, had diabetes and had recently been diagnosed with celiac disease, a form of gluten intolerance that debilitated the mind and body if one ingested any form of gluten in their food intake. I was amazed on how she dealt with this seeming adversity in good stride, how patient she was with her son on this long  plane ride and how she never painted herself or her family as a victim of any god-given travesty.

I have always believed parents of children with special needs to be gifted with an abundance of unconditional love for their children that counters what would seem like a heavy burden to carry. I mentioned it to her hoping for an affirmation of my belief. She remarked that she and her husband had not been aware that the child in her womb could have down's syndrome. That when she found out, she was disturbed, worried about her capacity to handle the responsibility. However, over time her doubts vanished as she realized that the boy was a gift, possessing a human sensitivity to his surroundings and an intuitive protectiveness towards his younger sister that negated any personal hardships his care entailed. She then said, and when people look at him...I cut her short - "Don't you just hate it when people stare?". She corrected me instantly."I don't mean in a negative way. In fact when most people look at him, they want to approach him, to try to help, to support." She spoke about her favorite restaurant and the wait staff there, who when they dined, would approach the boy, talk to him and cater to him as if he was a VIP. That, when she called them last year to inform them that her family wouldn't be patrons anymore because of the boy's celiac diagnosis, the chef researched the disease on the web and created a meal specially for the boy that would accommodate his food-intolerance. They now have a dish called 'special fries' that is trademarked for this boy and his diet.

My jaw dropped. Why would seeming strangers want to do something so remarkably altruistic for someone else. Surely, this family's patronage could easily be substituted by another's? How can I apply this learning to organizational behavior?

I am instantly drawn to McGregor's theory of Motivation (Theory X and Theory Y). Theory X believes that people are intrinsically lazy, need to be controlled and almost in a Pavlovian way of reward and punishment be driven to appropriate behavior. Theory Y (my prescribed theory if you haven't already figured it out through my blog) recognizes people's own desire to excel, succeed and build a better society/ organizational result for themselves and the people around them. 

I have had the privilege of being 'management' at town hall meetings. In one of them, the executive presenting was asked when raises were being issued. We all knew that the market sucked, that our company was subject to the recession and that prospects of an increase were grim. The executive stumbled through the largely unpopular response, provided some incoherently pieced together homilies on the recession and finally decided to end the torture with "we should be thankful to have jobs in this economy". I cringed at this response and tried to put this down to his draconian style. However, I've come to realize that this is a popular tool used by badly-run organizations and bad leaders to try to coax performance out their team (Theory X in practice).

Yes, I am thankful to have a job in this economy. Yes, I think we may derive some incremental benefits from employees (people staying longer, complaining less) because of fear of losing their jobs. But I think that it is naive to believe that this is a lasting human sentiment that can sustainably make good organizations great or save bad organizations from eventually going kaput. People can generally see through the application of Theory X and realize that they're being held hostage in a bad situation while a privileged few rake benefits in good times and bad.

Another painful application of Theory X is annual performance reviews. Performance reviews are an essential tool in recognizing people's contributions and providing them a roadmap to succeed in years to come. Instead, I see more and more inept managers using 'coaching points' and 'things to do better' as their vehicle in a performance review to remind their subordinates on how they really aren't doing that well and need to do better to survive.

This is where the woman's story comes in. I believe that people are drawn to extraordinary acts of kindness, creativity and performance when they themselves try to control their own blueprints for success. Time and again, stories of human greatness hit our wires reminding us that when confronted with a challenge and provided the opportunity to demonstrate our god-given and society-shaped talents and skills to make a difference. I sincerely think the executive in point had the opportunity to present our organizational challenges and set a bar for us to hit that would have got us our increases or at least allowed us to control our destiny. For every organization that enforced job and pay cuts on its staff during the last 2 years, there have been stories of organizations asking their employees to help in the solving of the problem at hand collectively. I've read where a hospital's staff willingly took work-hour reductions across the board to save anonymous job cuts. Of people who volunteered in soup kitchens to feed the homeless when their own livelihoods were suspect. 

The Human race possesses a talent to succeed beyond all odds. The carrot and the stick in Theory X may corall us into survival, but in order to succeed and prosper, we have to be allowed to be partners in the shaping of our collective destinies. The roots of the Quality Management movement in the 80s and 90s came out of people participation in the Kaizen revolution. German dominance in surgical precision in industry in an era of post World War 2 decimation came out of a nation's pride and the people's belief in collective greatness. We possess not only the tools to shape our destinies but the empathy to want a better world for all of us. This is the hidden key for organizations to transform themselves in crises rather than inducing fear in the remaining.

Throughout the plan ride, the woman talked about support groups on the web, things other parents had written about their situations and unique coping strategies that would confound the finest medical and psychological archives. How amazing we are as a human race that we can come up with creative solutions to problems that otherwise seem insurmountable. Can't we channelize this in organizations, even those in extreme distress? Can't we use this collective spirit to turn our nation back to greatness?

When our plane touched down, the woman and I said our goodbyes and she thanked me for being understanding and pleasant company. I smiled weakly at the compliment, knowing fully well that I came through more enriched than any quips or tales I might have regaled her with. Through her experience and the selfless love and support of others in her journey, I am re-energized with the affirmation of our human desire to succeed and prosper.

We Built This City!

In the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to reflect on what within a decade and a half career in IT I really achieved that I can consider my USP. What I came up with was that among all the cool stuff I have done in my professional life, my proudest and most poignant moments have been dedicated to organization building. I'm happy to have been a part of building an IT organization as part of a large ERP transformation as an IT leader. In that specific case, we built an IT team readied and capable of handling a new IT environment, infrastructure, applications and service delivery and nearly doubled the IT DNA in less than a year in-sourcing a host of functions that were previously farmed out to competent but un-invested outsourcers. Most organizations today trying to transform their IT departments, talk about building world-class IT and I wanted to share some learnings that I experienced in my journey to build a high-performing team.

1) Organization-building requires a special type of passion: Most job ads I see asking for an IT leader who will build a brand-new IT organization (to address a new ERP, or to meet new business challenges) focus a lot on skills, probably hoping that if you got a leader with the right skillset or tools background, that he would automatically also be able to attract and retain a brand-new workforce in his mold. Obviously, having someone at the helm who's actually had some experience in the new tool set matters. But far more important is the leader's desire to work with people (in an up-close and personal way). If the leader's job is to build a new team, then his only job for the next foreseeable future is going to be spent evangelizing, selling, recruiting and retaining human talent. This requires a leader's dedication to wanting to spend his time with the people he's working with, to understand their motivations, their aspirations, their strengths and weaknesses - this becomes his priority mission, putting to the wayside technical expertise or any kind of cool geeky stuff that we IT people would rather spend our time on. In order to build a team, I found myself practicing 'Management By Walking Around', stopping by each person's desk, asking how their day went or how they could help build a better environment, talking and listening, dealing with raw emotions and needs as much as skills and technical know-how. If you don't genuinely like investing yourself in your people, you cannot build a new organization, probably only maintain one that already exists or make minor tweaks at best by hiring and firing at the fringe. I felt like I was in talk therapy most of the time but the result was an organization that I knew intimately would help us succeed.

2) Check your ego at the door - Sure, I was proud that I was a VP of IT, a CIO, the leader of the free IT world. But critically, I realized that in the throes of forming a new organization, I was a facilitator or a conduit at best. When I talked to people, in an interview or in a routine day at the office, I focused less on what I was going to do for them and the company, but rather the great things that they were doing and how they could together create something truly remarkable for the rest of the business to see. I am genuinely humbled by how many smart and committed people we were able to get together and how the only way I helped was to allow them to express themselves through their work while standing at a safe distance away supporting, rather than dictating my wisdom or counsel. Most of the great strides we achieved was because the people in my team stepped up and came up with solutions which I supported rather than making them blindly follow my agenda.People believe that high-performing teams offer superior alternatives to complex business problems. I believe that in order to have a high-performing team, you've got to trust them enough to provide them the complex problems and allow them to come up with the solutions themselves, facilitating and supporting the answer at best if you truly need to be involved.

3) Respect all constituents - There is no silver bullet, no panacea for the illness. You can't toss out an entire organization and hire a new one. You're going to get through this, mile by mile, hire by hire trying to keep the new inductees motivated to suggest and implement change, while you're supporting your old organization to stay sane in the chaos that change inevitably brings. You're not going to be successful if you throw your new hires to the old guard, allowing them to get jaded, nor are you going to make any headway if you don't provide a meaningful transition to your existing employee base to the promised 'new life' that awaits them. The time I spent creating bridges for existing staff was as important as my hiring new ones. The personal roller-coaster while all this happens is gut-wrenching. Not a day went by that I didn't deal with one of our seasoned members challenging me on their role in the future state or one of the new guys questioning whether I really had the courage to allow them to make changes. So, I split my time on both issues. I took an org list of all our people and thought about the existing staff as much as the new ones - what training/ experiences were necessary for the joint learning, how do I create and pair individuals up, where do I empower, all the while keeping in mind that in order to succeed, we would all have to succeed, not just the ones who came aboard on the last stop.

4) Over-communicate - Remember my talk therapy mantra - chances are that if you hire enough new faces on your team, your fledgling organization is in a state of flux at best, trying its best to assimilate using informal modes of communication and water-cooler talk. So you take your show on the road - have weekly, bi-weekly and monthly meetings, communicate through newsletters, memos, presentations, whatever it takes. You're not 'fluffy' if you repeat your message through various means. You're trying to make your point consistently, to an audience that is constantly morphing with the addition of new members. I practiced my elevator speech constantly, tried to provide written forms of collateral of the 'vision'. Communicated till I was sure that everyone got what we were doing, not just rely on someone else to tell them what the master plan was.

5) Find common bonds outside of work - the most successful human organizations are ones that provide their workforce opportunities to form relationships other than formal work-role ones. Concentrate on collaboration - instant messaging, blogs, social outings, mentor groups, get people together to experience each other in more ways than one. Create a social network, not just an organizational one. We celebrated monthly recognition awards, got people in quarterly and semi-annual get-togethers, encouraged teams to go out together for hosted lunches, birthdays of the month, etc. The result was an organization that while formed of people with various tenures in the organization, had one common goal - Have Fun Together!

6) Find compatriots-in-crime - So, you're a director or a CIO. You talk a good game but can you actually put anything in motion? Chances are, if you're like me, you have all these good ideas but you have trouble executing all this while you're also trying to represent a department in an official capacity. I found compatriots in crime, a colleague VP who was equally jazzed about building teams and an extremely efficient assistant who executed like clockwork. And we went to town! You can't rely on social committees (well maybe you can if you have an established organization). When you're building one, you have a rat-pack of comrades-in-arms. Every cool idea I had, I ran it by my SWAT duo. If they were bought in, the three of us made it happen. Actually, they made it happen, all I did was watch in shock and awe. If you're a CIO in a new organization and you don't have the support I had in the friends and family plan, recruit your local HR rep. They're equally enthused about making this kind of stuff happen and can actually give you some pointers on the way, raising your game.

7) Be Honest - Obviously, if you or your company's leadership have made a conscious decision to build a 'new' organization, everything's not all copacetic with the existing situation. Being as politically sensitive as you can, be open about the present short-comings that your organization (new and old) are going to have to overcome. Talk about failure openly with your team, reminding them at the end of each treatise that together the organization is going to resolve the situation, emerging stronger and better.

I could write a whole lot more. But I'd like to end with this. In order to build a new organization, I started off with a pact that people were the most important key to our success. I was going to dedicate myself to spending as much time as I could with them. Keep my ego in check and allow myself to learn from the new melting pot of culture, experiences and backgrounds. Communicate openly and honestly about the agenda at hand and create as much fun as I could for our collective selves as budgets and executive management would allow.

In the beginning, I thought I was creating a new future here. In the end, I realized that by merely creating a facilitative environment, the people we had in the organization, created a better future for themselves and the company. The organization built itself, diminishing my own contribution in that end state. I probably had little to do with what I believe is a still-growing organization - We built this city together!