At Home or in the Office

      The periodic eruption over working at home versus showing up at the office misses an important point. Does one of the alternatives help the person do a better job? 

     The home-vs-office argument is often seen as a contest between a boss who needs reassurance that work is actually being done and an employee who wants the option of sleeping in or goofing off. Or maybe getting more done better.

     Let's back off a bit and start over. What is the job, anyway? And what, therefore. is how it should be done? 

    Exploration of that side of the situation reveals how well the two parties grasp what the job is supposed to accomplish, and therefore what the worker bee should be doing to accomplish it. Miscommunication -- or lack of communication -- between the parties routinely muddies this vital issue. 

     In all my years as a manager I didn't realize the one element that clearly marks employee effectiveness, and therefore is the top marker for good management.     Results.

     If an employee regularly produces outcomes that meet requirements such as return on investment, organizational standards and teamwork expectations, that person is doing a good job. 

     When those outcomes can be achieved by workers scattered in various homes rather then sitting in a central office, the situation shines a light on the managers of those employees. 

     Have they organized the best possible structures and practices for maximum value in supporting the work of good employee? Does their managing behavior make best use of the employee' work through the structures and practices they have set up?

     In all my years as a management consultant, I sometimes wondered at the extent of incompetence I encountered in the ranks of management. 

     People often were promoted to management positions because of seniority or friendship or a superficial appearance of competence based on educational record. If you had earned a master's degree in business, you must know stuff.

You and Your Climate

     Are you concerned about climate change?

      . . . So am I.

     Have you done anything about it?

      . . . Neither have I. 

     My general attitude toward the concept of climate is that it would be best if there were no human race. There are maybe 8.5 billion of us humans running around the globe right now, every one of us using up oxygen and emitting pollutants with every breath. And all of us are breathing all the time. 

     And we billions of humans are burning fossil fuels every day in our cars, trucks, furnaces, etc. Little of this was happening a few hundred years ago, There were mostly trees contributing to cleaner air and other generally favorable stuff going on.

     Not so any more. Our situation is one bristling with ominous possibilities.

     We the people are so pervasive, and the climate is so enormous, that the situation is infinitely beyond the ability of any one of us -- or any hundred, thousand or million of us -- to do much about it.

     That is not to say we can't do anything about it. How many of us 8.5 billion people would it take to collectively control-reduce-eliminate fossil fuel combustion? What if we really, REALLY decided to change our recreation and transportation choices, our home heating systems and other pollution-generating activities? 

     The alternatives -- walking, bicycling, reducing, substituting -- are available now, and others could be developed if we put our minds to it.

     Individuals can make relatively minor lifestyle changes without much inconvenience. We have to have reasons to do so. and there are such reasons. The challenge is to make those reasons real and effective to enough people.

     As with all matters human, the initiation of individual change comes with dialogue. If we talk enough to each other about the benefits of a particular change, the avoidance of a particular developing disaster, habit change seems almost automatic.

     So the effective action is the individual decision to raise and share thoughts and information about the conditions and actions we can do something about. That action is well within the perimeter of possibility for the individual human being. If we talk about it, we'll do it.

     Let's give it a go. Pick a couple of occasions today to share and seek individual thoughts about what people are doing, and what they can do. about their personal envelopes of climate. And tell 'em what you think.

s

New Year, Old Story. Time for a Project Plan

      In mid-January of this year, I wrote this:

     Well, it's January, so let's get at our annual Personal Improvement routine. 

     We're halfway through the month, so the first phase of our New Year's Resolution process is history. That phase is the careful listing of our shiny good intentions. 

     For many of us, maybe most of us, the following phase is the rapid fade of it all. The new me may never materialize at all. Depressing.

     Today is June 4, and this is what I've got to say to myself: I told you so.

     

     

The Afternoon the President Was Shot

 On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, I was fill-in wire editor of the Elmira Star-Gazette, working with printers out in the composing room to assemble Page One of that day's paper. 

A copy boy who had been sneaking a peek at the AP wireless machines came running in: "The president has been shot!"

Three messages had been transmitted:

        DALLAS, Tex. AP -- Two priests who were with President Kennedy say he is          dead of bullet wounds.

       DALLAS, Tex. AP -- Two priests stepped out of Parkland Hospital's emergency       ward today and said President Kennedy died of his bullet wounds. Government       sources in Washington said that President Kennedy is dead.

     The priests came out of  the ward at approximately 1:37 p.m.

     The announcement by the priests brought audible sobs from a crowd of scores         of newsmen and other citizens crowded around the emergency ward entrance.

      Sen. Ralph Yarborough, talking only a few minutes before to newsmen,                    collapsed in sobs as he told of witnessing the slaying of the president. 

         DALLAS, Tex. AP -- President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Friday from an                     assassin's bullet.

I saved the printout with the family archives, and years later my journalist-author daughter Maureen had it framed and gave it to me as a gift. The printout doesn't capture the horror of that day, but it triggers powerful memories.

Education(?) and Learning(!)

    Think back. What happened in your third-grade classroom on this date in May? What did you learn that day? 

     The day was maybe six hours long, but by now it is an undistinguishable fragment of your education career. You don't remember what was going on in that place on that day, because it almost certainly is buried in your great mass of schoolroom experience. 

     Overall, you probably sat in various classrooms for eight school years or so of elementary education and four years of high school. How can you know what all that sitting contributed to who you are today? 

     And then maybe you went to college, and perhaps grad school. What exactly did all those hours do for you? It may be easier to identify specific payoffs from certain grad courses and from skills training courses and workshops -- but even some of that wasn't of use to you, or has been forgotten. 

     On the other hand, how much of what you know or do was acquired in one-on-one conversation you had and demonstrations you watched? And trial and error? 

     And how much knowledge and understanding, however it came to you, was absorbed and integrated into your immense mental capacity, the great dynamic that drives the thousands of tumbling thoughts, reactions and decisions that create and determine the days of your life?

     It's useful to turn those memories and questions over in the mind as we witness -- or conduct -- considerations about education today and how we do it. 

     My Dad and I discussed the best purpose of education, specifically in terms of higher education, when I was preparing to go to Holy Cross, as he had done (Dad, Class of 1923; Jim, Class of 1958). We did not at all consider college to be skills training. It was to develop the mature person, the contributing citizen.

     Occasionally, I have wondered over the years if that concept was too grand and somewhat empty, maybe too vague. Well, maybe not. Read on. 

     My daughter Maureen extended the Milliken-HC line with her 1983 English Lit degree, and likewise became a newspaper editor. A few years ago, she was quoted thusly in a Holy Cross magazine article:

            My father did a lot of hiring during his newspaper career and always said that a good liberal arts education, combined with newspaper experience,  was      preferable to a journalism degree. 

         To that end, I believe I got a fantastic education - not only the subject matter, but the Jesuit emphasis on analysis and thinking, questioning and delving deeper. I see so many people in this business who just don't know how to think, how to question. You'd think in journalism it would be second nature, but with a lot of people it doesn't even occur to them. 

         On top of that, I find a lot of people have very limited world views, very limited knowledge of history and the world around them, and don't even have the smarts to realize they need to know more  or the ability or curiosity to find it out.

     In terms of newswriting, interviewing, deadline-meeting and other technical skills special to newspapering, Maureen picked them up easily, as I did and as I presume my Dad did, on the job. How? Using those superior skills, the ones she articulated so well. 

     I'm convinced that no particular day of school, or moment in class or conversation, was determinative in the development of my accumulated abilities to think, learn and communicate. I'm equally sure that the overall progress, the direction, the specific judgments were rooted in those long-ago exchanges with Dad. Plus the recent insights from my daughter.

     Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Mo.

        

     

 

                        Looking at Katahdin on the way to Baxter State Park, Maine

Reassessing Employee Dismissals

     It's sort of a downside of retirement, this gradual dawning of the truth. It happens when, freed of the consuming confines of worklife, you have the time and leisure to actually think. It can be hazardous to your contentment. 

     Example: As a manager, I fired very few people, but maybe I shouldn't have fired any. 

     I faintly recall the tight, combative feeling that develops when that final straw drops like a lead pipe, and you unholster the ultimate management weapon. I hated that feeling. I never hated the person I was rejecting/ejecting, though. I felt I was reluctantly administering just desserts. 

     Now, from the purgatory sanctuary of an easy chair, the retiree can shake the dust from such memories and honestly assess the garment itself -- the underlying relationships. No question those particular relationships were not good, and I identified the precipitating causes at the other end of them. But how about looking at how the situations developed?

     Two of the histories occupy my attention today.

     The first is that of a headstrong young man who had flatly, and repeatedly, rejected suggestions and admonishments. His direct supervisor came to me with a demand that he be fired. He had been quite offensive and the supervisor was really angry. 

     Then, as the three of us sat down, he pulled out a note he had worked out for himself about how he was promising to change his ways. I shoved that aside and proceeded with the dismissal. I thereby may have missed an opportunity to help that young man mature a bit, and to deepen my own skill set. Maybe we could have worked from the new start he was offering..

     That same supervisor later created a growth opportunity for me in a related circumstance. She gradually developed a rebellion against management restraint. There was a confrontation, then a follow-up session at which I conditioned her continued employment on an explicit understanding of the management order. In short, it must be made clear that she worked for me. She couldn't accept that and walked out. 

     In effect, the event resulted in a more constructive tone in the office. Sloppy, unintended and overdue, but for the better.

     I made my "him-or-me" demand of my own boss in a later conflict with an incompetent,  bullheaded colleague, -- and got the offending guy fired. 

     The final decades of my career were devoted to project management consulting,. I realize now that in that role I was handing out more advice about navigating personalities and relationships than about network diagrams and risk management. 

   Nowadays completely on the outside looking in, reading the histories and thoughts of other people from other workplaces, it's still a learning experience. 

     Learning what?

     I find myself reverting to a fundamental view of management: As a manager, I was responsible. How did I conduct my part in the initiation of each individual relationship? Did I thoroughly examine, thoughtfully consider and wisely manage the beginning and the various events and moments along the way?

     As the most responsible party, what did I do or fail to do as my various relationships grew? Did I lead, advise, instruct, initiate, respond, support, critique effectively? Did I learn what I needed to know in order to conduct each activity and invest in it appropriately?

Doing such an assessment in these silent moments of maturity is a long process, maybe an open-ended one. It can be  uncomfortable. Sometimes there's a shocking flash of enlightenment, delightful or horrifying.     

     As it continues, you get to know yourself. Work at it. There are many roads to this journey, and some of them can end in deep satisfaction.  

     

We’ll Be All Right

     Long ago and far away, I once wrote a newspaper commentary about a single corn plant that had popped up in our front-yard flower garden. It was for me a visual parable, a symbol of practicality elbowing its way above mere prettiness.

     To  tell the truth, it looked kind of ugly, looming over the pretty petunias or whatever. I didn’t care about that. I just really liked its assertion of raw individuality.

     The point was not well made in the column, and no one expressed agreement. The article was not particularly memorable; I can’t tell you today what it actually said. But it did make an impression on one editorial writer, who frequently addressed me in the office afterward as “Cornstalk”. I suspected he was doing it in mockery, but I never got around to asking before he died a little later.

     The corn kernel that seeded the plant probably came from scattered bird food or dog food that had been swept off the porch floor. The event reminded me at the time of the pop song “I’m a Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch, and All I Do Is Cry All Day”.

    

     The cornstalk memory is served up in response to a piece on the Press Herald editorial page Feb. 4 that gave a number of reasons to be depressed about the present state of our world and its prospects.

     I don’t agree with such a worldview. Never have.

     Then I also saw  a report in the paper about a guy who had just visited with a bunch of school kids, and was really upbeat about a future to be managed by such cheery and vigorous people. Him I agreed with.

     We’re not talking about cluelessness. The adult positive attitude fully accounts for the barriers and pitfalls out there. You just know they can be avoided or overcome. They don’t define your world, and you intend to take care of them.

     Over a few days, varying new inputs settle and mature in your thoughts, eventually resulting in a glow of optimism and confidence. Even if the rest of the world is draped in gloom, we of the cornstalk persuasion are optimistic. We’ll be all right.

      As a general thing, after all, there is good reason to accentuate the positive in whatever situation. Doing so reassures you that you’re not a helpless victim. It gives you something to work with. It asks, “What are you going to do about it?”

 

     There’s good reason to ask yourself such a question. When the negative view rules the process, the only meaningful question is, “Oh, Lord – what will become of me?” You don’t have to do anything. You can’t. You’re a victim.

     Not so when you accentuate the positive. In response to opportunity or danger, you ask:  “What am I going to do about it?”  That demands a response. It presses you to do something.

     So you do something. If you have an off-the-shelf response, this matter is pretty easily taken care of. You take care of it and we don’t have this conversation.

     But say you don’t have that handy solution. You don’t know what to do. So now we must figure out what to do when we don’t know what to do.

     We have a process – as simple or as complex as it needs to be – called problem solving. Doing it right requires a positive mindset, a solutions attitude.

 

     The solutions attitude is essential to problem solving. No matter how daunting the situation, however “hopeless,” you have to decide. You have to prepare to act, then launch action with strength and vigor. It works. Wondering, worrying and brooding do not work.

     The lesson of the cornstalk in the petunia patch is that of courage and originality. Your solution may not be supported by others. It may look strange --never tried before. But if you believe in your process, you apply it. You stick with it. Make it work.

     In Super Bowl LI in February 2017, the New England Patriots were down 28-3 in the third quarter . . . and came back to beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28. Athletic competition at that level is so intense that such a comeback was inconceivable. But it happened.

     We are struck by the appearance of a cornstalk in a petunia patch.

     We admire the confidence and dedication that wins a football championship against huge  odds.

     Highly unlikely, both of them. But they actually happened. If we keep our eyes open  -- and our minds -- we’ll be all right.

Patience & Tolerance. And Confidence

     For most of us, the towering challenge in building management competence is at the very beginning. There is a fundamental contradiction imprinted on our workplace behavior by our beginner experience.  It makes Square One so difficult that some people never fully get through it. And, for those who do, applying its lessons can block further growth.

     This is how it works: 

     We first must learn the skills and practices of personal productivity. That means we work on how to order our days through time and priority management while we're learning how to do the job. If you don't get this right, you can never do anything well -- especially    leadership. 

     But, at the same time we must learn as managers when and how to suspend certain of the personal skills in order to handle responsibility for the output and skills development of others. That requires concentrating our attention outwards, working to understand and influence others. For example, building effective working relationships is not at base a matter of efficiency.

     So, we must focus intensely on identifying, defining and perfecting our own personal activities at the same time as we're doing the same for others. Contradictory activities.

     The first step, personal productivity, is very difficult to even understand, then to learn. It requires a lot of practice, and trial and error. 

I Didn't Retire. I Just Quit.

     My Dad worked at his hometown newspaper for his entire career, from 1923 until his sudden death (by heart attack?) in 1956 at the age of 55. He was telegraph editor and news editor at The Elmira Star-Gazette for much of that time.

     He must have been good at it, because I understand he had a number of opportunities to transfer to other papers in the Gannett Company. He never left Elmira and The Star-Gazette because, I was told, he didn't want to disrupt the family. He was busy fathering 14 of us during those years. 

     I remember Dad talking about retirement in his early 50s. I have never thought of retirement for myself. I just up and quit working a couple of years ago (age 84).

Listening, Seeing and Persuading

     Shut up and listen.

     Simple to say; not always easy to do, and quite a complex challenge when properly understood.   
     We need to remind ourselves that this process is about the other person as well as ourselves. Any time we're in a conversation, there's something we want from that process -- and we believe the other person has it. 

     At the very least we want to earn a favorable impression. It's a form of sales, actually.
     The sales professional bases the pitch on research, observation and analysis, some of it done in advance, some in direct preparation and some while the process is under way.
     For starters, the homework. What evidence is there of the prospect’s history with the subject, and current interest in it? The pro also mines his/her own experience and enhances it with current observation.

     That basic information is used to shape our thinking about how to organize the presentation, however informal it is. Through the initial pleasantries, we don't want to forget our purpose, and the reasons why we think the other person should be interested in it
     Then, as the actual process unfolds, the pro examines and analyzes how the prospective buyer is reacting. On the fly, there are continuous adjustments.

Act Like a Manager

     It’s not public relations exactly, although it’s closely allied. It’s the manner and behavior we instantly associate with The Boss.

     The boss is the person whose directives are to be followed (and, sometimes, the one to be blamed for whatever is disagreeable in our workplace.) 

     “PR” has become something of a familiar cliché in modern America. We toss it out as a verbal sneer at anything we consider phony and hollow in the utterances of prominent people. Too bad, because real PR is an important and valuable element in our public discourse. It’s how we extend the value of good things by telling people about them.

     True, that telling can be exaggerated, distorted or false, but most of what we see and hear in such promotion is reasonably honest and true. Also, our critical thinking skills enable us to sort out the value from the trash – when we exercise our duty to do so.

     So, back to the workplace. You have an opinion of your boss as a manager, the person ultimately responsible for the results of your group's work.

     However, the manager is not solely responsible. In a healthy organization, each of us must carry a share of that responsibility. It is extremely important, vitally important, that the individual and the manager understand and practice their roles in this form of partnership.

     The manager must be personally clear on what the organization is to accomplish and how it is to function . . . and must share with each staff member an equally clear picture of how that person fits. And, of course, what that means for the actions and behavior of that person.

      Each of us staff people must also be clear -- within ourselves and with others -- on the actions and behavior that fulfill our obligations in the organization.

     “Being clear” is an abstract expression for a complex set of communication actions that involve talking, listening, watching and demonstrating for the purpose of equipping the staff member to do certain things, and convincing that staff member to do those things correctly and dependably. If I were to see a video clip of myself on the job, would I see myself doing those things?

     It is incumbent on both parties to set up and conduct the process with the minimally necessary amount of continuing contact between the two. Collaboration and communication are essential, but too much of either wastes the valuable resource of individual contribution.

     The manager sets the tone and carries the major weight. The manager walks and talks with confidence in the relationship of mutual respect and defined responsibility. Just look and listen, and you can tell.

     The manager acts like a manager.

---

 SEE ALSO: Management Power, Management Behavior      http://jimmillikenproject.blogspot.com/2018/04/management-power-management-behavior.html

Wisdom, If You're Smart. Or Mom

      "We grow too soon old and too late smart."

     My mother used to say that, in her version of a Pennsylvania Dutch accent. I have never heard an actual practitioner of that vernacular, but I suspect Mom's rendition of it was atrocious. Not that she would have been all that bothered. All she cared about was making the point. And make the point she did. 

     She was, in fact, the very exemplar of the wisdom/wise smarts illuminated by the quote. She knew an awful lot, having produced a lot of smart kids after marrying a wise man. Her own formal education had been stunted by the need to learn and carry adult responsibilities as the oldest child in a family that needed her to do that. But she became a human encyclopedia over decades of conversation as we kids came home from school brimming over with new knowledge.

     In the latter half of her adulthood, as a widow, she made it her business to repair some of the  shortfalls in her formal education. But for me, going back to my earliest memories and continuing through her long life, my mother was unfailingly smart and wise.

     The smart-wise combination is not all that common, you know. Smartness can grind on wisdom, and wisdom tends to suffocate smartness. But the two depend on each other, and in the long run you operate on a dynamic combination. Succeeding at it requires attention.

     As we navigate life, we need to keep learning fresh stuff to deal with new challenges and opportunities. But what to put in, what to leave out? And some of what we already know and do becomes obsolete, sometimes dangerous. What to weed out, what to keep? What to change and how?

     Familiar old skills and practices need tuning and refreshing, trimming and remodeling. Why, when and how to do that?

     The how-to is not particularly easy, and it most definitely is not quick. Earning and applying it calls for conscious. persistent effort. Judgment is the working engine of wise, smart change. Patience is its fuel and discipline is both the gas pedal and the brake. My lifetime is the trip. 

     Thanks, Mom for the roadmap. 

       

     

Language Abuse, Grammar Addiction

     "I'm silently correcting your grammar."

     That's what it says on my new coffee cup, and that’s what I do. Can’t help it. I'm commenting (to myself) about the stylistic quality of what I'm hearing in this conversation we're having. I'm commenting in detail, all in my head.
 

     An obsession with the rules of language arose in me early, and has sent down deep roots over the ensuing decades.

     I'm the son of an editor. I wrote well from an early age. I was successively an English major, a newspaper editor and a management/writing instructor. I designed and delivered a three-day course in Business Writing and a daylong training session for working professionals called “A Grammar Refresher.”

     You don’t easily get over such a history.

Holding My Chin and Shutting My Mouth

     Holding my chin while I’m trying to think deeply may not be necessary, but it seems to help. 

     When I’m trying to listen, on the other hand, shutting my mouth is more than helpful. It’s absolutely essential. So is clearing my mind, and so is focusing my attention – sort of like deep thinking. All that is a lot of work, so we don’t experience a great deal of it around us.

     Here is how it works: When I am in conversation and, shutting my mouth, put my hand to my chin, I am signaling my partner in that situation that I am thinking (maybe deeply) and focusing my attention.

     If, at the same time, I continue looking at the other person, they will tend to conclude that I am taking them seriously and paying attention to what they’re saying.

The Essential Contrarian

      If you don’t have a contrarian in your group, go find one.

     Contrarians are those people who  doubt everything, question beyond reason, keep pushing for more explanation. They stretch out discussion when you just want to get some damn thing done.

     The contrary spectrum runs from skepticism to all-out opposition. Wherever the bothersome person is on the spectrum, responding with anger or dismissal – which is really tempting – is the wrong way to go. And don’t ignore it – some staff members will be listening, and you should be, too.

     Contrarians aren’t always just plain negative, but sometimes they really are. When that is so, they need to go find work elsewhere.

      Mature managers know how to handle the entire range. They understand the importance of listening before acting, seeking to understand what drives a person’s beliefs. Sometimes complainers benefit from explanation, sometimes they just need a respectful listener.

  

Succeeding When You Don't Know What to Do

     Unknown unknowns are in the very center of Project Management. 

     Project management is the process of making something new. When you do that, you may be just assembling familiar pieces in familiar ways. That’s the simplest activity on the arc that graduates through levels of familiarity (process management, really) into areas of creativity at increasing levels of risk.

     Risk is the possibility that what you attempt won’t work, and failure can sometimes carry a high price. So project work often is launched and conducted tentatively. The sponsoring organization bases its approach on wishing and hoping more than on managing, particularly managing risk.

     Timidity puts real project success out of reach, and many organizations assume that’s the way it has to be.

     Successful organizations, on the other hand, accept a certain level of failure. They learn from their failures, and apply the learning to a broad pattern of success. Their failure is a purposeful, controlled component of their success. They know they can’t grow without it.

Real Leaders, for Good or Ill

   

 

     I saw this college classmate, Dick, every day back then, but he was not a close buddy. Dick was a member of the football team who rarely got into a game. Academically, he won no honors, as far as I know. He held no important positions. He was not prominent in any way.

     Yet, I’ll never forget him. All these decades later, the message of his example remains strong in my mind. The message: Integrity matters.

Communicate Like a Manager

    
     Don was a substantial person, in body and in manner. He was sure and solid.

     Burt was knowledgeable and precise. He always was on time, always accurate.

     Cove was commanding and demanding. You knew he was in charge, and he brooked no disrespect.

     Dick was reliable and supportive, respectful of people’s ideas.

     If you were going to assemble a pretty good manager, you could do worse than start by combining those four guys. Putting them all together would have been impossible, of course, not least because none of them would have put up with the others for very long. Independent judgment was a common characteristic of their management style.

     Each of them had his limitations, too.

     Don didn’t communicate well. Burt couldn’t manage larger issues. Cove was thin-skinned and prickly. Dick was poor at strategic thinking.

   

Bungling the Branding

    

   What you call something matters. It can matter a lot.

      “We don’t have time to help you build your monument to yourself,” they told the project manager.

     “Monument to yourself” is a brand, and not a good one. A brand establishes an identity; attitudes and assumptions gather around it. Organizations spend a lot of time, thought, money and effort to establish and maintain their brands.

     The “monument” brand is an example of what happens when you don’t make the effort. It influenced the attitude of the news staff of a small daily newspaper. Their managing editor had been tasked with managing the newsroom’s work on a special edition.

     Since the edition was his ego trip, they reasoned, why should they extend extra effort to accomplish it?