From Here to Autonomy by Jory Des Jardins

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We're Good People, We Just Work for Bad Companies

I was watching a program on The Learning Network, one of those educational reality shows that focuses on helping people become financially responsible.

The woman featured on the program, we'll call her Bertha, was a serious shopaholic. The host of the show tracked her down in a store and said "Bertha, we need to talk."

"Should I ring this stuff up first?" she said.

The program host staged a finanicial intervention; he showed her video testimonials of her family and friends, admitting their concern over her spending habits. He walked her through her closet and asked some evocative questions:

"Why do you need 75 pairs of shoes, Bertha? Why do you need 49 purses?"

Lastly, the host walked Bertha through her finances. He showed Bertha that she had racked up $94,000 in debt and that she was currently spending several thousands of dollars more than she or her domestic partner brought in every month. Tears flowed from her eyes as she looked up and said to the host,

"I didn't mean to do this."

I tried to put myself in Bertha's position, but I couldn't.

How could she not know what she was spending? Maybe it was my Midestern upbringing, my father's insistence that I not purchase anything I couldn't afford and knowing he meant it when he said he wouldn't bail me out. Somewhere in my upbringing I've had a ledger line in my brain that I knew not to cross. Becoming a small business owner, my challenge was learning that some debt is useful.

The thing that struck me about Bertha was her utter shock that she was spending more than she had. She seemed like an intelligent woman, did she never add-up the numbers?

But then I realized that Bertha never looked at the numbers for that very reason, so that she could claim ignorance. She probably suspected that her spending far exceeded her means, but by not actually looking at her finances she wouldn't have to feel responsible for them.

This is a common tactic across all sectors--business and consumer. There's a general willingness to sidestep limits by pretending they don't exist, and this tendency is compounded in situations where we don't have immediate governance. If our bosses seem to approve, well, then, what's the problem?

Bertha surprised me by her ignorance of her personal means, but seeing her interaction with her domestic partner I could see how she'd let her debt grow. Her partner had become the parent, in effect, the responsible one. Similarly employees knowingly do things that are wrong or unethical because they are condoned by people in power.

It's true--we don't put "Thwarted an illegal business transaction" or "whistleblower" on our resumes. We can't often brag about many of the responsible things we do at our jobs. We don't win awards for being the highest earner on the sales team who didn't exaggerate her numbers. We often have to enact the highest "good" (good in many cases meaning profit) by doing a little bit of bad.

In her strategy + business article "Winning the Devil's Bargain", Elizabeth Doty tells of her own executive struggles with following through on little things that chipped away at her values.

I wasn’t naive. I told myself that ethical bumps in the road were part of the game of business. Our hotel managers sometimes secretly canceled guests’ discount-rate reservations on oversold nights. I myself had concocted the “right” numbers on sales forecasts, and then convinced my boss in his staff meeting that I really believed them.

And in her future career she interviewed dozens of executives who'd made similar tradeoffs, massaging numbers or effectively ignoring things that, if one's livelihood weren't on the line, would never have transpired unquestioned.

Fortunately, with transparency becoming more than a lip-service term, there is an increasing tolerance for the manager who will lay it straight. But here's a new problem: Do managers on the whole know how to lay it straight? We're so used to shrinking appropriately to adversity that we don't know how to stand up for what's right.

I once worked for a company that was about to declare bankruptcy and suspected that the shipping bills I was racking up would likely never get paid, but it was standard practice to move forward until the shinola hit the fan--why worry about it otherwise?

Eventually, when I applied basic logic and realized that we would likely never pay this vendor, I approached a supervisor and asked if this was, you know, like, "OK to do?"

"Oh absolutely," he said. "This is how it's done." "This" being racking up bills you had no intention of paying. It's an unspoken rule in business, you don't "tell on" your employer, especially to another vendor. Rather than raise a stink about this practice being wrong, I felt stupid for questioning it. Stupid kid, nobody's banrupt until they stop sending the packages.

Today this attitude strikes me as short-sighted. Why not empower your employees to get a handle on your resources/debt by keeping them in the loop and making them responsible? Why not show them the budget and allow them to make the right decisions? Why not let them keep every ounce of their dignity by allowing them to question things that they feel aren't right? Why not put the responsibility squarely where it belings--on everyone?

I suspect that, like Bertha, your employees aren't really that surprised that the shinola does, eventually, hit the fan.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

12:19 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Congratulations on Your Diversity Policy, but Why Can't Poor People Work Here?

There's a key scene in the film The Pursuit of Happyness, which I caught on the plane ride home from a business trip last week; it speaks volumens about how companies fail to account for the financially diverse backgrounds of their employees, even while having corporate policy in support of diversity.

The main character, played by Will Smith, is an ambitious but down on his luck man seeking to better his prospects with a nonpaid internship with a major brokerage firm. Though he and his family have been evicted from their home and they are living in a shelter, Smith's character, based on the real-life businessman Chris Gardner, manages to show up for work every day in a suit. No one knows how broke he is.

One day, on his way out of the office, a broker asks Gardner for $5, what he needs to hop in a cab to get to his appointment. Gardner looks in his wallet, at his last remaining $7 or $8 dollars for the week.

"Thanks, Chris," the broker says, grabbing Gardner's five dollar bill. "I'll get you back later." The broker, obviously, had no idea that he had taken the money that Gardner needed to feed his son that day.

I had no idea why I was blubbering like a baby while watching this movie on the plane. For the most part, even in leaner times, I've been fortunate to not wonder if I would eat that day. Even in my first job out of college, when every single dollar was accounted for, I could afford to "lose" $5. I may not have liked it, but I could survive it.

But this movie made me painfully aware that even those who work hard in life to get ahead in business must be at a threshold-level of wealth and education to even get or maintain these opportunities.

Chris Gardner was more than just lucky, or extremely talented; he was an anomaly. What he could bring to the table was seen almost accidentally, when he managed to crack the code of a Rubik's Cube in front of another broker and scored an interview for a non-paying, highly selective internship.

There is a strong irony in many corporate circumstances: the higher you go up the ladder, the less personal financial accountability you have--the more meals get put on the company card, the more box seat tickets you get to the games, the more forgetful you are of what it took to get to where you are. Many who are there never had to ask themselves whether they should take a staring position and risk not feeding their families.

In another very frustrating scene, Chris Gardner scores a high-level meeting for the brokerage and has 20 minutes to see this potential new client. As he rushes out of the office, a senior broker asks Chris to please move his fancy car out of the tow-away zone, as he's on his way to a meeting himself and needs to get there on time. The irony, of course, is that Gardner needs his meeting much more than the senior broker does, as his future at the company depends on earning new clients. Gardner scours the city in the senior broker's expensive car, looking for a decent parking spot. He finds an illegal one, misses his meeting and gets a parking ticket--one he opts to pay but cannot afford.

This movie begged the question for me: How can companies truly accommodate talented but less financially advantaged people? It's one thing to support diversity, but we still advertently require a baseline level of wealth to survive in these positions.

In my first job out of college, we were often encouraged to have staff lunches in restaurants. Problem was, we were all paid so poorly that only the people who were independently wealthy or living with their parents could afford something better than a bag lunch or bagel. To get ahead and be team players we had to buy lunches we didn't want in places we couldn't afford. Many of us couldn't afford to live in New York City and had long commutes, or we lived in the city in borderline crazy situations. I lived with two women in a two-bedroom apartment--we traded off who got a bedroom every four months. Many nights I slept in the living room. One of my work friends lived in a one-bedroom apartment with four mattresses across the floor to accommodate her and her three roommates.

We did our jobs knowing (or praying) that our situations were only temporary. Knowing that our parents sent us to college and that, if worse came to absolute worst, we could scrape up a few dollars from home, we were able to take the risk of a low-paying but potentially high-yielding position. Others who don't have family income to fall back on, or who have children, don't always have the luxury of betting that the future will hold more. They need to go for less lucrative, but more immediately gratifying, blue-collar jobs.

How can companies accommodate financial diversity? I see several ways:

--Commute stipends: People that have to come in from far outside a commercial epicenter can't afford to take cabs to work. They take longer, less reliable forms of transportation, sometimes multiple forms of it, to show up at the office. When we ask these people to work long hours we are often making it impossible for them to get home without finding special transportation (cabs, limos, etc.) If a company can't pay to get their people home safely and affordably, let them go home on time. And have a culture that allows people to leave after normal business hours.

--Petty cash: Many corporate accounting structures require an initial outlay by an employee for travel or entertainment expenses, followed by reimbursement 30 to 45 days later. For junior employees there should be a petty cash system that provides immediate, accounted-for per-diems, so that these costs are covered immediately. Employees won't have to worry about covering rent while they wait for a reimbursement check.

--Shared meal budget: Typically if a manager takes her team out to lunch, the manager pays--though that's not always the case: When I worked at a startup and offered to take out my team, I knew better than to tap the limited T&E budget; everyone had to cover themselves. But I also made sure that the place was well within everyone's food budget. Even better is to allocate a budget for regular social interaction among your team. The budget doesn't have to be large, but it should be given to employees to use at their discretion. They may opt to go somewhere inexpensive, or someone more expensive and use the funds to supplement a meal. The only "rule" should be that the activities funded by this budget be inclusive of everyone (and be legal, of course).

These are tiny things, but as the film showed me $5 can mean a lot.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

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Want to grow your business? Give customers more sprinkles

I had lunch in Chicago with Andy Sernovitz, former head of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and author of Word of Mouth: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. He invited me to Lou Mitchells, a downtown diner--that's all I knew about the place at the time. When I arrived, the restaurant was packed and we were told we'd have to wait a short while for a seat. The wait ended up being a minute or two, and in the interim we were offered a selection of donut holes.

This place doesn't make people wait to get fed, Andy said. He explained that depending on the time of day a selection of extras were offered to diners, everything from donut holes to prunes. After dinner, customers were given a free scoop of ice cream.

"I mention this place in my book," Andy said. "Donut holes are not much, but it makes a difference to people. People will talk about it with their friends."

Now considering the size of the portions that came to our table (our food looked nearly untouched at the end of the meal, yet we were stuffed) we hardly needed donut holes as a precursor, but something about offering food to waiting customers felt luxurious to me. Call me a cheap date, but I left that diner feeling incredibly satisfied.

Compare that with a recent dinner I had in my neighborhood at at new Indian restaurant. The place was neighborhoody but hip, and located in a renovated warehouse with stained glass windows. Upon seeing it my huband and our neighbor "Ooohed and ahhhed" simultaneously. Perhaps this place would be our next hangout.

We sat down for a while before being addressed by our waiter. I'd just been on a two-hour bike ride and was weak with hunger. I noticed that the menu featured several types of nan--the leavened bread often ordered in accompaniment with an Indian meal--and each meal selection included a type of nan as a complement. Though the nan was mentioned as a part of the meal, it was actually an additional charge. Each of us ordered some.

We waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, our main dishes arrived, but not the nan. We waited as long as we could, but the food was getting cold, so we ate our meal without it. Near the end the nan arrived, and it was delicious; but it was late. We left the restaurant disappointed.

Donut holes, nan--it's all just greasy bread in the end--but the circumstances behind how each was served are critical. When offered free donut holes before the meal, it felt like a perk, a courtesy. When served nan late and for an extra charge it felt like a stingy experience.

These examples remind me of how easy it is to create positive customer experiences, and, conversely, how to create detrimental word of mouth. Often it's as simple as creating the perception of generosity, of abundance. If a product or service comes with an introductory consultation, an additional battery, free samples, donut holes for the people waiting in line, the consumer takes in these extras and feels good about his choice. But when these options are charged as premiums, measured by the ounce, or not made an integrated part of the customer experience, the perception tanks.

Another food example (I must be hungry): There's a legacy ice cream parlor on the main street near my house. At any time of day until midnight you'll see a line of people waiting for their ridiculously large scoop of ice cream. People wait sometimes for a half hour to be served. The first time I went to the parlor I was warned: Order the child scoop. I'm glad I did; I could hardly finish my serving. Even my husband, who has this inhuman ability to consume large amounts of food, couldn't finish his sundae in one sitting, or even two.

When you order a pint of ice cream, the servers stuff as much ice cream as possible into the container, using special tops that allow for overflow. Even the ice cream is "stuffed"; my favorite flavor, Coffee-cookie dream, has whole chunks of Oreo cookies and cookie dough in every bite. Yet when I buy cookie dough ice cream in a store, I have to dig forever to find a chunk of anything.

Though we know we likely won't finish our ice cream we feel we are getting a generous experience, one that makes the half hour in line worth the wait. Recently the parlor raised its prices considerably, and still people come in droves. We feel we get what we pay for.

As much as I love this ice cream I always feel a bit guilty about eating so much of it. I was thrilled when a new non-fat, low-calorie ice cream parlor opened down the street. I figured that tons of women like myself, who love ice cream but felt guilty eating pints of it, would be lining up to try this healthier version. But that never happened.

I visited this new parlor the week that it opened. The staff were friendly and there to answer my questions about why their product was healthier. I was given a loyalty card that promised me a free serving after my tenth visit. I ordered a plain vanilla, fat-free serving and asked what sprinkles I could have on top of it. The cashier pointed to a bin of granola and a rather anemic looking bin of chocolate sprinkles. My heart sank. Even if these sprinkes were healthier options, I wanted more of them. I wanted more than the little shake of chocolate dust that she put on top of my ice cream. I wanted a more generous experience.

At the end I didn't need to struggle with the choice of low-fat or high-experience. This new ice cream parlor shut down in just a few months. It was clear to me why: They didn't give people enough sprinkles.

What sprinkles can you offer your customers?

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The New, New Manager: What Geeks Can Teach Us About Getting Stuff Done

Back in the days of yore (2001), when nearly all of my new media peers were losing their jobs, my company saw an opportunity to develop content around what we all sensed was a seismic shift in our way of thinking. The events of 9/11 scared the bejeezus out of all of us. We developed a seminar (that never got off the ground) called "Surviving and Thriving in the New Economy". We must have known how to survive and thrive, after all, because we were still employed, right? The irony in all of this was that during this time I'd never felt less competent or less able to manage the uncertaintly of that time. A better title for this seminar would have been, "How to keep your apartment in the new economy."

Professionally I had an identity crisis. Everything that I had believed about being an effective manager fell away. I once bragged to a report of mine that my job was to be the bug up his, err, backside--relentless, like a drill seargent in BCBG heels. I knew how motivated I was to get things done, so I simply applied my brand of anal retentiveness to everyone else's work. And for a long time that worked, while there was work and budget and people who could take your place if you couldn't hack it. Of course, once all of that went away and I had no projects to push, I was aimless.

Now, when I experience the "push" manager--the boss who is convinced his job is to force a project to completion--the hackles in the back of my neck stand at attention. Not only do I feel that this form of management is not effective; it's oh-so-Web 1.0.

Don't get me wrong. I work just as hard now as I did seven years ago--harder even. But a few things have shifted. For one: Push management just isn't efficient. Perhaps I'm getting old; perhaps I'm married now and have better things to do with my time than breathe down the necks of my reports to make sure they are doing work. Perhaps I've seen how powerful the collaborative management model is and have forever turned away from thinking that everything must begin and end on my desk.

Knowledge@Wharton delves into the topic of collaborative management in a piece published last month--Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business. The piece summarizes the thoughts of Anthony D. Williams, co-author of the new book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, who makes the case that Wikipedia, the open source online encyclopedia isn't just a novelty, but a beacon for the way we will work in the future.

While the humongous growth in Internet usage fueled a churn-n-burn, instiwealth mentality in 1999, Wikipedia and the social media ethos is inspiring a reliance on open-source and "pull" management, in which ideas are solicited and inputs are volunteered rather than determined by the board room and then forced into execution.

Williams calls this confluence of technological and cultural ethos, a "Perfect Storm":

The key ingredients in that storm, he said, are the technological advances -- often referred to as "Web 2.0" -- that make online collaboration and communication easier to transact, as well as the arrival of a generation of Internet users that has been born since 1980 and that insists on taking a more active role in creating or editing the online content that it uses.

I insist on distinguishing myself as "not a geek," but as a management enthusiast, but I can't help sounding like one when I use examples like Wikipedia and Linux to describe the art of getting things done. Still, before I geek-out any further, I should disabuse you of some assumptions you may make about open source management, based on misperceptions many have about Open Source:

Open Source Management is NOT egoless nor without a reward system. I attended a session on open source technology at this year's SXSW Interactive conference seeking to understand why the hell would anyone give up their time and best ideas for free? "I hate to sound like such a capitalist," I said before asking my question, then braced for a stoning. Fortunately this was a friendly open-source crowd.

One of the panelists explained that there was, in fact, a hierarchy in Open Source software projects, but this hierarchy is based solely on participation and merit. There has to be a hierarchy, or the quality of the product can't be preserved, and those who contribute most to the project won't be incented to stay involved.

Additionally, there is a status, or acknowledgement given to people who contribute that I liken to blogging. Maybe you don't get paid for blogging, but your free contributions get read and result in other things--speaking or consulting gigs, for instance, Google Juice, and overall recognition.

And Open Source is far from being simply a "free" or "cashless" enterprise. Companies like IBM spend big bucks paying their researchers to contribute to open source projects, as these projects often determine their next steps in product development. And key contributors are often commissioned to help keep companies competitive in the space.

Williams provides a number of corporate Open Source examples:

1. Marketocracy.com, an investment tool in which some 70,000 people create virtual stock portfolios; the results of the top 100 performers are used to guide a real-world mutual fund that routinely outperforms the Standard & Poor's 500 index of large companies.

2. "Ideagoras" -- where scientists and product developers openly share ideas for new advances. A prime example of this concept is InnoCentive, a web-based approach to commercially oriented research that enlists scientists globally to solve specific problems, with the ability to reap cash bounties for their work. Williams said consumer giant Procter & Gamble is a major booster of InnoCentive, even though the firm already retains 9,000 of its own employees devoted to research.

3. The so-called "global plant floor," in which industrial giants like aircraft maker Boeing are using the Internet to re-define their relationship with their suppliers. He said that Boeing's new 787 jet, "the Dreamliner," is a highly collaborative effort with parts manufacturers; one result is that the electrical specifications, which typically ran to 2,000 pages, have now been reduced to 20 pages.

4. Second Life, the increasingly popular virtual world developed by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, where players create human-like avatars that socialize and spend a type of money, "Linden Dollars," to buy virtual property. Williams noted that the country of Sweden even has opened a "virtual embassy" within Second Life, with the idea of luring tourists.

Applying this to business is useful: An open source manager must know the value of collaborateive intellectual capital and how to use it.

Open Source Management is NOT chaos...if you execute correctly. To pull it off requires re-branding of yourself however, from manager to steward. You are not making anyone do anything but rather extracting the goods from your best sources.

The best managers in an open source model are the best listeners. They perceive underground rumblings and potentially brilliant ideas. They mine diamonds in the rough and seek win-win situations. And they are exellent delegators; at the end of the day, they get others to execute. And I suppose they are excellent translators; they don't brain dump a lot of open source jibberish on the floor, but rather pick out the important and usable strands and put them to good use. It's work, but a lot less work than generating the pile yourself.

With the Open Source mentality firmly embedded in my psyche I offer up a new way of surviving and thriving in a new economy: turn to others, and keep your mouth shut.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

07:43 pm | 0 recommendations | 5 comments

Three Reasons Why I Will Still Fly JetBlue

Even before JetBlue left planefuls of customers stranded on the runway for hours, earlier this month, I had a bad JB experience that broke my heart. My flight left late for fueling reasons that are still beyond my comprehension, but that were totally preventable. With one of the lavatories out of order, the tension on the plane was palpable.

And you know what? I still plan to fly JetBlue!

Even though a silly planning snafu delayed my flight by hours, and I returned home from an already grueling business trip at 4am, even before David Neeleman's unpolished apology was made available on YouTube, I was willing to believe that JetBlue would fix what's broken. Here's why:

1. JetBlue empowers its employees to make good when the company fails to deliver. I--like most JB customers--have been an advocate of the airline (witness my story of how JB saved me the aggravation of re-booking a flight, even when the mistake was MY FAULT). These positive experiences add up to good karma later.

Even while cursing under my breath because I'd just been told that my flight would be delayed another three hours, I appreciated that our flight attendant made all fee-based entertainment on that flight free. I appreciated that I received a voucher for $25 off my next flight, and when I learned that I used that voucher improperly--after booking my next flight, not before--the customer service supervisor understood that a few extra bucks in credit card processing fees was worth my business and let the credit stand.

Because JetBlue worked hard to acknowledge the importance of customer satisfaction early, the carrier has, in effect, built in a forgiveness contingency in it's implied agreements with its customers.

2. JetBlue opens the kimono. While some crisis management professionals would have cried if their CEOs used words like JetBlue CEO David Neeleman used to describe how he felt about his companies failings ("humiliated and mortified," among others), customers see it differently. We see someone who flies just like we do and would move heaven and earth to rectify what happened.

Unfortunately most companies prep their spokespeople like trial defendants and insist they take the Fifth before admitting to not just wrongdoing, but regret for wrongdoing. Neeleman's imperfect delivery, his visible discomfort when conveying his regret for what happened appeals to my sense of humanity, and my desire for something real. I don't want measured, restrained phrases like "We regret the inconvenience" to define my experience, I want to know the airline understands how it feels to be trapped on flights for ten hours. I need to know this even before I am reimbursed financially for my suffering.

3. JetBlue provides positive customer experience. I am willing to wait out a little discomfort and let the carrier rectify its mistakes before taking my business elsewhere because my experiences with other airlines ain't that great. Sure, I may have come home sooner on another airline, but I wouldn't have enjoyed that flight as much. I wouldn't have had free wireless while waiting in the terminal, or a selection of quality movies, or endless supplies of free biscotti.

Companies that do not build stellar customer experience into their services won't have second chances like JetBlue. And when I say customer experience I don't mean friendly service reps, but something much deeper and more integrated into a company's offering. Customer experience happens before a crisis.

Mark Hurst, founder of Creative Good and the GEL Conference, provides a very clear distinction between customer service and customer experience on his blog, goodexperience.com, when he describes a dissatisfactory situation he encountered when ordering office furniture:

Customer service is the job of front-line workers, servicing customer requests for help - via an 800 number, e-mail, or a retail desk. It's important to invest in good customer service, but that's just the tiniest sliver of the customer experience.

Customer experience is the job of everyone in the company. My customer experience was bad because the product, and the refund policy, are both broken. Everyone from the CEO and CFO to the product designers and manufacturing facility contributed to this bad customer experience; and as a result, they've lost a customer and generated bad word of mouth. The good customer service I received didn't - and couldn't possibly - fix the overall experience.

Note that I said earlier that my negative JetBlue experience "broke my heart," not "inconvenienced me" or "pissed me off." This is a notable distinction, the language of a customer who is used to positive customer experience and not just decent customer service. The thought of having to potentially sever my relationship with JetBlue is not emotionless, nor one that I care to make. It would mean giving up a lot of good to avoid another potentially negative outcome.

In the end, these reasons don't excuse JetBlue for their recent mistakes, but they do mean that the company keeps me as a customer.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

01:07 am | 0 recommendations | 10 comments

Will Resumes Become Obsolete?

Last spring I had the opportunity to speak to a room full of women--seniors in college who were attending my talk to learn about how to apply social media to growing their careers.

The name of my presentation: The Impact of Social Media on Entrepreneurial Careers: Why I am Jealous of All of You.

I wasn't trying to be (that) provocative; I meant it. When I was a college graduate in 1994 (I finished a semester early, actually, I was so anxious about the job market and wanted to get a head start), getting a job was a different proposition. Sure, it was still about whom you knew; in the end, that's how I found my first "real" job. But I also sent out reams of resumes, attempting to convince people who didn't know, care, or need me that my experience as Features Editor of my college paper meant that I was especially qualified to answer phones. Finding work that pertained to my limited background was besides the point, I thought. I'll just take what I can get and work my way toward the ultimate job.

This philosophy--I showed my audience with a convoluted slide that included many arrows to many misguided iterations of the "ultimate job"--led to years of sub-optimal experience. It was tantamount to throwing darts at the Want Ads and then begging for the job.

"You don't need to do this," I told my audience. "With the rise of social media you won't have to."

Being a big fan of blogs and the effects of social media on marketing departments and media, I was being fairly predictable. But I mean it when I say that social media is revolutionizing the way we find work, and the way we find people to work. In effect, social media makes us all marketers of our professional wares. It makes attracting the right opportunities easier. It's our means of "warm" marketing. In a few years you may never have to send a resume to a cold lead, ever.

I gained my professional sea legs during the Web 1.0 era, when there were plenty of job boards and Websites that could supposedly help me find the right job. Lord knows I became very adept at searching them systematically and efficiently, but I never found employment through them. When I found any positions that were remotely interesting I pushed my resume into the digital ether, hoping for a human to call a day--hell, a week--afterward. That never happened. I never fit the rather limited descriptions of the ideal job candidate. Though sites like Monster.com helped recruiters sift through candidates much more quickly, I wondered if the service helped employers find the best cultural fits. I assumed, more for my ego's sake, that these sites helped them find good liars.

Craigslist came closer to connecting me with good opportunities--at least the jobs on this site included less, errr, traditional opportunities. The employers often sought a broader range of experience, and the site couldn't electronically weed out people who were not perfect matches, so I had more of a shot of having my resume reviewed by a human. But even here my background was reduced to a mere cover letter, and an email among thousands.

But then I started blogging. I won't get cocky and say I'll never need a resume again, but I haven't had to use one in years. The companies who needed to find me already knew my background and experience from my blog and my Linked-In profile. Or, they connected with others through social networking with others who had worked with me. Or they found me because they did a Google search under one of the categories I write about often and saw a philosophical fit.

Granted, not all of us write about business, or their professional prowess, on blogs. Some of us write about kids, or cats, or gingerbread-baking. But even these scenarios offer opportunities. Just as much as we are meeting professional candidates on Linked In we are meeting them on Dogster. Because all things being equal, as all eight-by-eleven-inch pieces of paper tend to be, we look at personal interests, special projects, stories posted to blogs, and personal insights into people to cess out what makes them different and hirable.

As the workforce shifts, and the boomers retire, leaving the much smaller group of Xers to take their place, and the tech savvy Gen Ys after them, I wonder if the resume will be a thing of the past. With the Boomers gone there will be a huge hunger for talent (it's begun already, but in 10 years we'll have a talent drought).

Recruiters will need to scout and solicit talent now, start relationships with talent before they are ready to take leadership positions. And with the Y Generation, which prefers flexibility and balance over the traditional perks, titles and salary won't be the primary attractors to companies. Pre-existing relationships with these companies will be. And recruiters won't be sifting through resumes, but finding better ways for candidates to find them.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

08:20 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Attack of the Crazies, or Rise of the Entrepreneurs

A recent report boasting the global rise of entrepreneurism encourages me; not only will workforce policy across the globe need to increasingly shift to accommodate the flex time, opportunities and innovation that we self-employeds require, the workforce has crossed into a threshold of optimism that's, well, a bit nutty... good nutty.

By definition, entrepreneurs are optimistic; we better be, when, as I mentioned in a previous post two-thirds of entrepreneurial ventures don't make it. We build businesses despite the odds. But the entrepreneurial process is one that I believe has only made me a more resilient and resourceful person. And you know what they say, what doesn't kill you...

According to the eighth annual study by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a global research project focusing on entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship,

Start-up entrepreneurs are the most optimistic—20.1% expect to create more than ten jobs and 50% growth in five years compared to just 7.5% of established business owners.

and

U.S. entrepreneurs have created most of the 6.8 million new jobs in the nation since 2003.

The growing prominence of entrepreneurial ventures is a good thing for corporations as well; after all, where do former entrepreneurs go in-between self-employed gigs? Who acquires their companies? Who is getting increasingly exposed to the entrepreneurial ethic, making them smarter and more agile?

According to the report:

30% of new business start-ups offer more in terms of innovative products and services compared to established business owners. U.S. entrepreneurs are early-adopters too of current technologies; 32% of start-up companies use the latest compared to just 16% of established businesses.

Entrepreneurs offer the workforce qualities that companies are seeking to stay competitive. We're innovative (we must be, or we can't grow our businesses with limited resources); we work holistically and cross-functionally (in the early stages we don't have the "luxury" of siloed departments and red tape; we must wear many hats); we see the big picture; and--perhaps most important--we execute.

Additionally, entrepeneurs don't expect handouts. Workforce Management Magazine points out that in 2001, 33 companies on Fortune Magazine's list of America's 100 Best Companies to Work For covered 100 percent of employees' health care, and that in 2006 that number was reduced to 14. Benefits are a nice thing, but they are dwindling. I haven't had them for years now; I've stopped expecting them and have learned to "rough it" in this respect. But for the majority of American workers who have never been self-employed this transition is bound to be more painful, akin to detox, with anger at their employers and anxiety a likely result--not good preconditions for top performance. The workforce will have to learn to accept more precarious long-term prospects. Employers will increasingly take the entrepreneurial tack with employees, offering performance-based bennies and making flextime a given, but also the stipulation that freedom is earned.

Results-based structures are standard for entrepreneurs, who are used to bartering services, offering low-upfront/high upside arrangements for people who can deliver, and altering major initiatives in a single deliberation--not after a fiscal year of failure.

A natural byproduct of more entrepreneurial ventures is increased venture capital. As stated in the GEM report:

VC (investment) in the U.S. has leveled out to $22-$24 billion in the last three years—way off its 2000 peak of more than $100 billion—but is a five-fold increase over the level in the early 1990s.

I see this trend as an increase in the demand for defensible businesses. In order to get the support they need entrepreneus must see business opportunity and know their markets. We must be able to see viable paths from A to B and to persuade others of our vision. This won't be the purview of MBAs any longer, but also of the stay-at-home mom with a part-time business and fresh college graduate, too. Business building will become a basic skill, like using the computer. Though not just yet.

This is scary news for corporations, who will continue to lose talent to entrepreneurism, but it needn't be. As I said, the rise in the enterprising spirit makes all of us smarter.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

08:38 pm | 0 recommendations | 1 comment

The Tipping Point for Companies That Fail

I've been reading a great book, Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers, by Mathew Hayward (Kaplan, 2007), which seemed to make its way to me at an opportune time. As a small business owner I constantly grapple with the magic combination of skepticism and confidence necessary to make smart business decisions. I'm convinced that company leaders with no confidence won't make it; there's simply too much competition for leaders who doubt themselves to prevail. On the other hand, as a "survivor" of the Web 1.0 irrational exuberance in Silicon Valley I also have to wonder, could a little bit of humility do a company good?

Hayward reminds us that, of the 500,000 new companies started each year, two-thirds fail. That's a lot of failure under what I presume must have been a lot of confidence. People don't start businesses to watch them fail; so why, then, do we bother when the odds are against us?

The answer: Over-confidence. On the whole, even in an ubercompetitive business market, entrepreneurs are positive, but often nutty, people with more confidence than most. We go into our ventures knowing others will fail and assuming we'll be the ones that come out on top. Put it this way, I've NEVER met an entrepreneur who said to me,

"Well, Company X really trounces us in sales and product quality, but we're hoping that enough people won't notice and that we'll survive. If not, oh well."

More likely I'll hear:

"Company X? They're good. They've got a good handle on the market, but we've got a better one."

On occasion, I'll hear this, which scares me:

"Company X? Never heard of them. Don't care. We're the only viable company out there."

or,

"We're number one in the space." (Said with no data, whatsoever).

or,

"We anticipate those numbers will double month over month." (Said with no historical data, whatsoever)

or,

"We'll be at (insert crazy number) in revenues by the end of the year." (Said with no current revenues, whatsoever).

Of course, there's nothing wrong with being Number One, or doubling your numbers, or blowing past targets, and there's nothing wrong with being positive about your company. But somewhere along an entrepreneur's journey lies a point of inertia and of reckoning, where the effort invested into a business begins to pay off, and where things grow beyond the entrepreneur's individual capabilities. Not all entrepreneurs make it to this place, but all of us want to--this is our Holy Grail. And those of us who reach this point come to a critical decision: How do we want to handle it?

This initial plateau is bittersweet: There's no going back to the ambitious and confident--but ignorant--state in which we started the business, and there's no going back to a red-tape-less environment either. There are more people involved, and with each new "generation" of hires, a bit more of the original vision is lost, diluted. Entrepreneurs, borrowing from the confidence that made them successful in the first place, are compelled to impose their confidence on their teams, and in the process of "pumping up" the team, the press, and the public about their corporate babies, some entrepreneurs begin to believe their own exaggerations and, ultimately, minsinterpret their success as their destiny.

A friend of mine tells me of a start-up she worked for in the midst of the late 90s' Start-up hoopla. She could check off every cliche on the list of the typical start-up existence--18-hour days, foosball, Krispy Kreme sugar binges. She was at a relatively low executive level at the time, a senior producer for her company (read: well aware of the company's performance). But, of course, no potential partner wants to hear that you are "ramping up" to an appealing level of traffic. They want to know that you've already reached the sweet spot of popularity and ideal demographic before committing to work with you. The business development people in her company always assured the partners that they were already at this zenith, miraculously; and, even more miraculously, they weren't questioned about it.

"These guys weren't out and out lying," she said to me, unwittingly defending them. "They truly believed that we would eventually hit these numbers. Problem was, they needed to close deals in order to get there."

A classic chicken and egg issue, indeed. Entrepreneurs become naturally adept at presenting the best sides of their ventures, this is a given. But at some point, the sales guys believed their own BS. When partners began to require accountability for the numbers they promised, they forgot they hadn't told the truth in the first place and began to demand performance from their internal teams (including my friend), who felt a bit blindsided. Where did these expectations come from?

More and more stressed out with each passing day, my friend and her team tried to do what they could to optimize performance, short of committing click fraud. Though my friend wondered whether her team's decision to use legitimate measures secretly disappointed the biz dev guys.

There wasn't much more that the production team could do--the site was what it was, and no more. Partners felt they were tricked, and they were. Amazingly, the last to acknowledge what happened was the Biz Dev team. One of the team condemned his clients as "too stupid to get it," another condemned her team for not meeting demand. But in the end, all of the stress and disappointment, and ultimately failure, could have been avoided if the Biz Dev team had presented their company differently--made a case, perhaps, for more reasonable growth, or even structured a partnership based on performance, so that the partner would have been encouraged by growth rather than disappointed when there wasn't enough of it.

The story I tell is a classic case of confidence--overconfidence, even--crossing over into a business danger zone: hubris.

In his book, Hayward makes a great metaphorical point:

"Just as the cure for heart disease is to reduce bad cholesterol rather than all cholesterol, the cure for hubris is to fight the sources of false confidence, rather than to reduce confidence altogether."

We need cholesterol, the healthy kind. Likewise, we need confidence to survive in the business world. But when hubris begins to gum up our thinking, bad things happen.

Hayward points to a number of examples, including the fate of accomplished expedition leader Rob Hall, a man who had successfully summitted Mt. Everest dozens of times and built a following--and quite a living--leading others who aspired to summit the peak.

Hall was a talented mountaineer, to be sure, but he was paid to make sound judgements, to determine whether conditions were good enough to attempt summiting, and to decide whether his clients were able to reach the summit. In 1996, during his final climb, he broke his own cardinal rule of proceding no further up the mountain after 2pm, when conditions often became impossible for climbing, and he decided to take his client to the peak. Neither he nor his client made it back--they died near the summit. Anecdotal accounts suggest that Hall became overconfident in his abilities to climb Mt. Everest. He had done it so many times that he assumed anyone who went with him would, too.

In the business world this is tantamount to promising to make an impossible deadline or metric and "killing" your resources to get there. For Hall he learned too late how limited his resources were. But even for businesses with many resources, hubris leads to massive misallocations, for making claims that the company ultimately can't support, for assuming endless supply or leverage, talent, or funds because leaders have come to assume that everything always works out. Famous last words, Dennis Kozlowski and Ken Lay.

Hayward provides guidelines for distinguishing confidence, overconfidence, and hubris:

--Confident judgement reflects our belief about who we are, what we can do, and what we know and can predict. Confidence can be built on either false or authentic platforms.

--Overconfident judgement arises when we overestimate what we can do, who we are, what we know, and what we can predict. It's an everyday mistake to be overconfident about our abilities. When overconfidence reflects authentic confidence, it need not be costly.

--Hubris arises when false confidence makes us overconfident with damaging consequences.

I'll add one more distinguishing point: Overconfidence becomes hubris in corporate cultures where any challenge or constructive doubt is immediately perceived as threatening; when people who provide the benefit of balanced analysis become enemies of the state, downers, or are no longer "team players", and are slowly eased out of the organization like an infectious splinter. These people become only too lucky to get edged out because now the company has become toxic with hubris, drenched in paranoia, stupid and clumsy.

So what's the happy medium? Personally, I don't believe there is one. So long as entrepreneurs are successful there will have to be an overabundance of confidence. But I'll go so far to suggest that into our overconfidence we inject some humility. We may believe we'll be unreasonably successful, but we'll employ reason anyway.

I like Hayward's cholesterol metaphor: sure sometimes fat is good for you, but even successful entrepreneurs need to eat their vegetables.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

10:32 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments

Climbing the Career Lattice: The New Way We're Achieving at Work

I've gotten quite a kick out of watching the HBO series Entourage. The main characters include a young, hot actor who' climbing his way to Hollywood stardom and his best friends, all of whom are finanically and socially supported by the actor in exchange for their undying loyalty.

The brilliance of Entourage is that it provides a telling illustration of the underlying culture, values, pecking order, and definitions of success behind a unique society. In this world, expensive cars and multi-million-dollar pay is a given. Expensive artwork, lavish fetes, and $2,000 courtside tickets to Lakers games are mere writeoffs--costs of doing business.

I'm sure that many enjoy the show because they marvel at the extravagance of it all. I marvel at it for very different reasons: I think, "If this is what it means to be successful in Hollywood, thank goodness I'm not an actor."

Aside from money and fame, think of all of the other "perks" that stardom entails: constant partying and Paparazzi. If I were that famous, I couldn't grab a latte or board a plane without someone critiquing my outfit, perhaps even putting me on the cover of People's Worst Dressed issue. I would be expected to have my hair and nails done at all times. I would be pressured to fit into dresses two sizes too small. My relationships would suffer because I had "yes" people and hangers-on as my companions. I would likely not know how to hold down a significant relationship because I wouldn't value someone with stability and reason, but rather someone who could boost my Q rating.

And my definition of success might be determined by my agent, as it is often the case in . As an actor, I may want to film a cool Indie flick, but my representation--the people who really call the shots--will tell me that I need to do a blockbuster first, or a vapid comedy, or some lame sci fi flick. I would need to follow a set of industry-defined rules before I could choose my roles and the course of my career.

When you look at stardom this way, being a successful starlet doesn't sound very appealing, does it?

And yet, many of us working stiffs make a similar tradeoff with our lives when we buy into the definitions of success within our respective industries. Whatever the definition, we feel we must go in whatever direction has been determined as "up". For most of us "up" means more money, a senior title, and more responsibility. Our bosses, or "agents" determine which projects will grant us promotions. And the underlying culture, typically very different from Hollywood's, requires a number of must-do's in order to make it. Maybe it's not constant partying, but pehaps it's contstant working. Maybe you are not expected to show your face at a Lakers game, but you sure as hell better make an appearance at the company holiday party, or an industry conference.

I remember working for a new media company in New York and learning right away that leaving by 5pm, or even 7pm, was frowned upon. The company prided itself on it's "always on" culture. The people there were young, intense and dedicated, so I played along, working seven days a week and coming to and from the office at ungodly hours. I never questioned whether I should be off seeing friends, or, perhaps, doing nothing, though today it's a question I ask myself every day--Is what I am doing most important to me? All forms of employment, sometimes even self-employment, come with their own sets of expectations and definitions of success. It would seem, however, that workers are now more than ever questioning them.

I read a fascinating article in Knowledge@Wharton: "Plateauing: Redefining Success at Work" (membership sign-in required) which delved into the shift in how growing numbers of workers, particularly women, are changing their careerbuilding standards, and what this means for companies.

"...people are still ambitious, and they are still driving. They just aren't driving for the same things they were driving for 15 years ago," says Executive Coach Monica McGrath, in the article.

On a vast level, people are asking themselves, do I even like the Lakers? What if all this time, I really just wanted to stay home?

The piece makes an astute point: While almost all workplaces assume that ascension is the objective of employees, it is in fact increasingly plateauing--maintaining a strong but steady level of performance while distributing overall focus to other areas of life, such as family or volunteer work.

In some cases the plateau period is forced, say, due to an unforeseen circumstance as having to take care of an ill parent, reducing focus on career. Though a growing number of plateau periods, are the result of employees actively deciding to focus on their kids, marriages, charity work, hobbies, or other forms of fulfillment.

A recent study by baby boomer media company ThirdAge concluded that upon reaching a peak in their careers, a significant number of workers develop new objectives behind their work. The K@W article confirms that many become more interested in mentoring, or giving back and establishing a broader legacy.

Gen Y workers have come to the conclusion much sonner that you are not what you do. According to a report cited in the K@W article, "Generation & Gender (2004)":

Among college-educated men of Gen-Y, Gen-X and boomer ages, 68% wanted to move into jobs with more responsibility in 1992, versus only 52% in 2002. Among college-educated women of Gen-Y, Gen-X and boomer ages, the decrease was even higher: 57% wanted to move into jobs with more responsibility in 1992 versus 36% in 2002

And more women business leaders than men (34% vs 21%, respectively) say that they have scaled down their career aspirations because the sacrifices that moving up the ladder entailed were too great.

This trend has companies worried: If you had to hire someone, whom would you choose, the person who says she would put everything down to finish a critical project, or the the woman who makes clear that she will be unreachable after five? Sure, we may give lip service to being in favor of flex time and work/life balance, but not when it impacts the everyday realities of a global workload.

And yet, this view is shortsighted. If the article is accurate, and all workers experience periods of plateau in their careers, the diversity in expectation may actually benefit a company. Imagine running a project with all hard-driving people all seeking simultaneously to enhance their careers. With only the most ambitious, self-serving types in the mix, there's less room for mentoring, or simply getting a task done for the sake of completing it. With everyone in a state of aggressive career building, there isn't enough learning or stability that would result from the long-standing types that are known for consistent, reliable performance.

"We need to replace the corporate ladder with a corporate lattice," says Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, senior advisor Anne Weisberg, who is developing a pilot program for employees that will approach their career planning according to self-defined, not pre-defined goals.

I call this concept "lateral benefits"--incentives that will motivate employees to not necessarily climb up the ladder, but more develop themselves personally as well as professionally. Just a few years ago more progressive companies approached this concept by putting foosball tables in the workplace, but today it means something much deeper. Among the hot new benefits of a new, lateral structure: limited commute, flex hours, independent projects, perhaps even 1099 status.

According to The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) latest report on 2006 Entrepreneurial Activity:

Buoyed by a strengthening economy, U.S. entrepreneurs have created most of the 6.8 million new jobs in the nation since 2003. These entrepreneurs are young (under 35), educated (52% with one or more degrees), and continue to choose the entrepreneurial, opportunity-driven lifestyle over more stable—and frequently-- more lucrative careers.

In Hollywood terms, our careers won't be about Blockbusters, Oscars, or even living in Hollywood. We will take the stage however we want to. And we'll tell you when we are ready to take our bows.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.

11:12 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment

What does it take for a company to change its financial karma?

Last week I wrote about how companies that don't invest in people don't grow, using advice that an unemployed friend provided about trusting in the flow of money. This is a bit of a "no duh" conclusion--one of the first rules of business building--but companies in the early stages of growth often forget this bit of wisdom. After all, it's tough to put money into new hires when you aren't paying yourself, just as it must have been tough for my out-of-work friend to take people out to dinner in his quest to find work. But he invested in the squishy, people side of business, trusting that by spending time and money on getting to know people, others would eventually spend time and money on him. He ended up finding a business partner for his new venture.

Still, companies that are more established (and supposedly wiser) also forget to invest in people--witness the company that goes public and must forego long-term investment in talent to make its quarterly numbers. Then there are companies--even whole industries--that unwittingly undervalue talent because managers forget that there are other ways of investing in people besides paying them. Here's what I mean...

My husband, a landscape architect, loves what he does. Since he started in his field he's told me of the challenges of keeping a project within budget. Often he and his colleagues must work beyond budgeted hours--with no additional pay--in order to complete a project. Promotions and salary increases happen, but slowly. He expects to work for up to several years before his next significant promotion.

Being the annoying bystander, I make snarky comments when he works long hours, "I hope you're getting PAID for this..." I say, knowing full-well how he's going to respond: "Regardless of how many hours we've budgeted for this project," he'll say, "it's got to get done."

Then I think of my friend, an attorney, whose firm bills by the hours he puts in. Sure he works hard--there's pressure to bill a specified number of hours, but he gets paid well, and there's continual incentive of promotion. This room for growth pushes him to keep working hard. Established law firms often invoice by a retainer or billable hour model, which typically provides pay proportional to effort. Like most firms in his industry, my husband's firm uses a project-based model, which often results in keeping costs contained, undercompensating employee hours and, in the longer term, undercutting opportunities to offer incentives such as raises and promotions.

My husband is not motivated by salary, but by loving what he does. Still, I often wonder, how much will love sustain him? In situations where I've not expected pay to match my efforts I worked for start-ups, which often require huge amounts of "love," or faith that a lower salary and/or longer hours will pay off financially or in an increased ability to personally impact the company. The opportunity to impact outcomes at a start-up have justified the trade-off for me.

However, in more established, mid-sized companies, employees have less impact on outcomes; they are compensated to build value in more limited ways. This can be a turn-off for more driven workers. A friend of mine, a successful entrepreneur, had to leave her first career with a consulting firm because the work offered her too little control over her chances for growth. She couldn't bring in new projects until she had X years under her belt, so she took a gamble and started anew. At first the money wasn't there, but the autonomy motivated her to stick it out with her small business until it paid her more than consulting. Companies that don't provide attractive pay or autonomy are in jeopardy to losing enterprising people like her.

How can companies entrenched in industries that don't immediately (or adequately) offer monetary compensation for performance maintain an edge? Two words: autonomy and control. Even if your company is midsized, you can offer incentives that translate to more of both. Some that come to mind:

1. Providing finder's fees and bonuses for business that employees bring into the company. Even if the fees don't add up to a significant monetary increase, you've given your employees a means of controlling their compensation and impacting the company.

2. Award "comp" days to employees who work beyond a project scope to complete work. My husband recently took a comp day after a 70-hour week; an avid cyclist, the ride he took that day more than made up for the uncompensated hours he put in the week before.

3. If you can't pay more, award more time--flex time, telecommuting capability, or time for outside pursuits.

At the end of the day, money means a lot but it isn't everything. There are other currencies you can use; whichever one you choose, you have to invest it in your people.

Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause and BlogHer.org.