Master Class Three Voices January 2013

Editor's Notes

• #29: This is not about you and your advancement. It is about the team and customers.Reflect the passion and purpose of your founders.Develop self-respect, self-discipline, self-mastery.Soulfulness, depth of character, enduring values are key.Nurture humility, a shared sense of pride and appreciation.
• #46: Anyone in business has sat through more deathly dull PowerPoint presentations than you would inflict on the Taliban, tax collectors, and traffic cops together. Probably the only thing worse than another PowerPoint presentation is another PowerPoint presentation right after a heavy lunch.No question about it, a bad PowerPoint presentation can suck the energy out of the best ideas. The most exciting business strategy imaginable, rendered in a succession of turgid PowerPoint slides, suddenly becomes boring and blasé.Cartoonists love to poke fun at PowerPoint. There’s the famous New Yorker cartoon depicting the devil, interviewing a job applicant in Hell. Satan explains: "I need someone well versed in the art of torture. Do you know PowerPoint?"And there’s the Internet spoof of the Gettysburg Address. Created by Peter Norvig of Google, it shows a typical PowerPoint bar graph depicting four score and seven years. A few slides later, these bullet points appear:Key Objectives and Critical Success FactorsWhat makes nation unique:Conceived in libertyMen are equalShared vision:New birth of freedomGov't of / by / for peopleCringe a little and you can imagine similar PowerPoint slides for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" address or President Reagan’s challenge to Soviet leader Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.But now comes the truly alarming suggestion that PowerPoint may have been partly responsible for the Columbia disaster in 2003.Writing today in the Washington Post, columnist Ruth Marcus refers to one slide in particular that purported to assess the danger of the missing shuttle tiles before reentry. Presented to NASA’s decision makers while Columbia was still in orbit, the slide so condensed critical data that it lacked any impact. Worse, it may have contributed to minimizing perceptions of danger.Indeed the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded in part that "the endemic use” of PowerPoint was substituting for rigorous technical analysis in NASA."But NASA, like the rest of corporate and bureaucratic America, seems powerless to resist PowerPoint,” Marcus comments. “Just this month a minority report by the latest shuttle safety task force echoed the earlier concerns: Often, the group said, when it asked for data it ended up with PowerPoints without supporting documentation.”Marcus continues: “The deeper problem with the PowerPointing of America -- the PowerPointing of the planet, actually -- is that the [software] tends to flatten the most complex, subtle, even beautiful, ideas into tedious, bullet-pointed bureaucratese.”It is difficult to disagree, and yet all of us have sat through soporific lectures and sermons without any graphical illustrations whatever. Moreover, anyone over 30 can recall equally numbing presentations on old viewgraph projectors, with black-and-white acetate overheads littered with minuscule print. I have also seen a few masterful speakers -- too few, to be sure -- use a handful of elegant PowerPoint slides to good effect. So perhaps the real problem isn’t so much PowerPoint but the poor use of PowerPoint – a different thing altogether.The root cause? It is the business leader who gives lip service to the importance of communication but declines to professionalize his own competencies or to accept the wisdom and counsel of experts.Leaders of this sort typically overlook the exquisite potential of a compelling vision, grounded truth, colorful storytelling, creative metrics (of the kind that Reagan used so well), vivid explanation, real-world context, street-smart descriptions, and most important, dialogue with ground-level partners. Then they rely on PowerPoint as a crutch.Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can move the world.”I say, “Give people a straight-talking, far-sighted, right-thinking leader with something to say, and they will move the world for him.”Take a few minutes to laugh your way through the new! improved! Gettysburg Address by PowerPoint at http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg.
• #66: Open-book management (OBM) is a management phrase coined by John Case of Inc. magazine, who began using the term in 1993 (Aggarwal & Simkins, 2001). However, the concept's most visible success was by Jack Stack and his team at SRC Holdings (Davis, 1997; Kidwell & Scherer, 2001).The basis of open-book management is that the information received by employees should not only help them do their jobs effectively, but help them understand how the company is doing as a whole (Kidwell & Scherer, 2001). According to Case, "a company performs best when its people see themselves as partners in the business rather than as hired hands" (Case,1998 as cited in Pascarella, 1998). The technique is to give employees all relevant financial information about the company so they can make better decisions as workers. This information includes, but is not limited to, revenue, profit, cost of goods, cash flow and expenses.Stack and Case conceptualize open-book principles in similar ways.Stack uses three basic principles in his management practice called, The Great Game of BusinessHis basic rules for open-book management are:Know and teach the rules: every employee should be given the measures of business success and taught to understand themFollow the Action & Keep Score: Every employee should be expected and enabled to use their knowledge to improve performanceProvide a Stake in the Outcome: Every employee should have a direct stake in the company's success-and in the risk of failure(1992)Similarly, in 1995, Case made sense of open-book with three main points:The company should share finances as well as critical data with all employeesEmployers are challenged to move the numbers in a direction that improves the companyEmployees share in company prosperityIn a company fully employing open-book management employees at all levels are very knowledgeable about how their job fits into the financial plan for the company. However taking a company from "normal" to open is not as easy as just sharing financial statements with employees. The true success of open-book management is when companies allow numbers to come bottom-up (as opposed to traditional top-down management)(Johnson, 1992 as cited in Aggarwal & Simkins, 2001). While employees need to be trained to understand income statements and balance sheets; open-book's true triumphs are when employees understand the numbers to a level that they are able to report predictions to upper-management (Stack, 1992). In order to motivate employees to strive for change, open-book management focuses on a "Critical Number". The number is different for every company but it is a number that represents a prime indicator of profitability or break-even point. Discovering this Critical Number is a key component of creating an open-book company. Once discovered then a "Scoreboard" is developed that brings together all the numbers needed to calculate the critical number. The Scoreboard is open for all to see and meetings take place to discuss how individuals can influence the direction of the "Score" and therefore, ultimately, the performance against the Critical Number. Finally a Stake in the Outcome is provided which can be a bonus plan that is tied to Critical Number performance or it can include Equity sharing or both.
• #72: Do Away With Fine Printby DOUGLAS I. FRIEDMANBlog post  JUNE 15, 2009While watching television recently, I noticed an advertisement with a lot of fine print on the bottom of the screen. It was many lines long and impossible to read, not only because it was so small, but also because it was shown for only a few seconds.Even if the letters had been big enough to read from my couch potato position, I could not have read it that fast.The next morning, while reading the newspaper, I noticed an ad announcing a good deal on a product in which I am interested. At the bottom of the page, once again there were lines of small print. The lines spread all across the page, like footnotes that referred to numbers in the ad. I could not read it even with my reading glasses--it was that small.There is a parallel problem in insurance sales--fine print and fine print thinking.Here is an example: An agent with whom I spoke recently said he had inadvertently made a mistake on the funding for a complex matter. Dividends had been applied incorrectly. The error might affect the validity of the transaction. Worse, since there were several tax years involved, the mistake could not be fixed.Many mistakes can be corrected. I often have said that if a client is alive, the agent can usually figure out a way to correct the mistake. If the client is dead, well, a mistake can be hard to correct.Here, since the mistake did not appear to be correctable, the question for the agent was, should he say anything to the customer?However, I believe that professionals are obligated to deliver such information when an error might affect the customer adversely.That does risk upsetting the customer. But then again, once the error is revealed, the customer may be able to take steps (that the customer doesn't know are available) to mitigate or alleviate the error.When bringing such news, the customer should be informed that independent legal and tax advice may be appropriate.The point is that bad news is not something to bury in customer communications. This is not something for the fine print.If the error is not disclosed, the worse case scenario is that the client suffers damages due to the error, and only finds out about the error when damages occur.Picture the agent on the witness stand. "Yes, I knew about the mistake," the agent says. "Yes, I could have notified the customer, but I did not."Then this: "Why didn't you notify your customer?" the plaintiff's attorney asks. "Was it because you did not want to look bad?"The agent's response: Gulp!We see fine print everywhere. I don't understand why a legitimate sales idea suffers irreparably just from making the font larger on a disclaimer. Or in drawing attention to the possible downside of a concept. Or the risks involved.If you were the customer, would you not want to know these things? What does the agent have to lose by making such disclosures? Yes, that's right, the agent might lose the sale.But, if agent loses the sale because it was not suitable for the customer, isn't that a good thing? Do agents want to sell a policy to a customer who should not be buying it, because the underlying concept does not fit the customer's situation?Whenever I see fine print in sales materials, in my eyes the seller loses all credibility. It takes just too much effort to separate the good from the bad. I want a salesperson who knows that, and who tells me the good and the bad.Any customer with any sense at all knows that if the idea sounds too good to be true, it probably is.So, why not do away with the fine print? Why not be sure to inform customers of the pros and cons? The information should lead to a better customer relationship, more referrals and a greatly enhanced chance that the customer will be happy with the purchase.When that happens, it's like an apple a day and doctors, but this apple keeps the plaintiff's lawyer away.Douglas I. Friedman, a partner in the Friedman & Downey, P.C. law firm of Birmingham, Ala., is national counsel on estate and business planning for insurers. His e-mail is doug@fdlawfirm.com
• #96: 02/12/2009Matrix Management - Part 1Posted by Clayton Greer Many believe that matrix management is the best organizational structure to use in managing the development of new services as well as new products. To understand how this perception arose and whether it is true for software development companies regardless of company size, part 1 of of our series on matrix management will look at the its definition and its general history of usage.Matrix management thought leader David Gobeli defines matrix management, at its essence, as an organizational structure in which a traditional functional hierarchy is overlaid with some lateral or "sideways" structure of management responsibility or influence. Enterprises that develop new services and products often hire or contract functional specialists in engineering, marketing, product management, accounting, client services, operations and sales. These specialists are traditionally grouped by their function and form a team or department typically managed by an individual with some singular expertise in that functional specialty. Their grouping usually comes from frequently being in the same meetings, working on the same projects, receiving project responsibilities from the same manager, and having primary offices close to others of their specialty. Each functional group works on their portion of the new service or product being developed, and co-ordination is provided by the interaction of the functional managers or in combination with upper management.Those not yet exposed to matrix management organization, or critics of matrix management, might wonder what could justify moving from silo simplicity to the complexity of a "sideways" overlay. Wouldn't sideways equate to "cross-grained"? Tom Peters wrote over 25 years ago In Search of Excellence that a hopelessly complicated organizational structure "reaches its ultimate expression in the formal matrix organization structure [which] regularly degenerates into anarchy and rapidly becomes bureaucratic and non-creative."Before looking in detail over what types of lateral organization can be overlaid on a functional organization, it should be noted that another organizational structure that companies might use is a pure project organization. Every new product developed becomes a project which assembles a dedicated compliment of resources. This grouping brings the totality of all required specialties onto the project. There is no separation of the development tasks across functional team boundaries; teams are defined by the product they develop rather than the function they perform or corporate service they deliver. Clearly there is a logical continuum between functional management organization and pure project organization. Matrix management structures fall somewhere on this continuum.In matrix management, the functional (usually conceptualized as "vertical") and project (usually conceptualized as "horizontal") orientations are integrated in one manner or another for the life of the product being developed. Team members report simultaneously to both their functional and project managers. The "when" of "who" team members report to defines one of three commonly seen forms of matrix management: functional matrix, balanced matrix, and project matrix. In the functional matrix, an individual oversees the project across all the functional areas, serving primarily to plan and co-ordinate while the functional managers are responsible for managing and delivering their specific portions of the new product. In a project matrix, a project manager is chartered to deliver the product while functional managers only serve up available specialists and offer advisory expertise. In the balanced matrix, an individual oversees the project. This individual and the functional managers equally and jointly manage the functional portions and arrive at project decisions.So now that we know where matrix managers might sit on the organizational management food chain, we should ask why have matrix management at all? With two managers to report to, can the project even succeed, let alone flourish?Two of the main advantages of matrix management are that resources are efficiently used as specialists can be shared between projects, and that projects are better integrated as there can be a thorough follow-up on all details related to developing the new product across all specialties. But there can be other advantages: communication and quality can be improved through frequent interaction between departments, while keeping specialists together for professional development as new development projects come and go.Don't forget, however, that Tom Peters blasted matrix management. There are disadvantages beyond the obvious overhead of having double managers. Since matrix management deliberately overlays boundaries of authority to one degree or another, power struggles over direction and access to scarce resources can arise. Also, the counterpoint to increased communication and improved quality could be a decrease in market response and release time as multiple negotiations and shared agreements must be elicited. Team members also need specialized training to understand the motivation for matrix management and how to manage the stress of when and where to communicate and respond to different managers.
• #99: How Authentic Leaders 'Walk the Walk'by ALAN DEUTSCHMAN  •  SEPT. 18, 2009Leadership September 18, 2009, 12:08PM EST text size: TTThe best leaders take the same hits as their employees and stick to the primary values they promised to upholdBy Alan DeutschmanWhen Mark Fields became president of Ford Motor's (F) troubled North American operations in 2005, he quickly announced a turnaround plan called "The Way Forward" that would eliminate 45,000 jobs—more than one-fifth the workforce—and close 14 manufacturing plants. Fields also proposed cutting health-care benefits for the blue-collar workers who remained. He stressed the sense of urgency with his new slogan, "Change or Die," which he posted on the gates of the factories. As part of his case for change, he told Ford's employees that they would have to share the sacrifices to save the company.But Fields himself didn't share in the sacrifices: For cutting costs so fiercely, Fields was richly rewarded with a $2.3 million bonus that lifted his yearly pay to $5.6 million. Rather than moving to Detroit and becoming a full-fledged member of the community, Fields kept his family in Delray Beach, Fla., and commuted every weekend on the company's private jet. Is there any wonder no one wanted to follow Mark Fields?Being an "authentic leader" means two things. First, you've got to share the struggle and the risks with your people. Consider these examples:• In the early 1960s, when Warren Buffett was recruiting backers for one of his first investment partnerships, he plunged more than 90% of his personal savings into the fund.• When Hewlett Packard (HPQ) faced a recession in 1970, co-founder Bill Hewlett took the same 10% pay cut as the rest of his employees.• During the early years at Charles Schwab (SCHW), whenever the customer-service phone lines got really busy, founder "Chuck" Schwab dropped everything and answered calls along with everyone else at the company who had a stock broker's license.• Whenever Wal-Mart founder (WMT) Sam Walton traveled on business, he rented the same compact economy cars and stayed in the same inexpensive hotels as his employees.• For the first nine years that his Union Square Café was in business, owner Danny Meyer was there in person every day—clearing tables and mopping spills along with his staffers—as together they made it a top-ranked restaurant in New York City.• Ray Kroc picked up the wastepaper in the parking lot whenever he visited a McDonald's (MCD) to show cleanliness was a continual job for everyone—even the CEO.Along with sharing the struggle, there's another crucial requirement for authentic leaders: They must make sure their actions consistently reinforce the one or two most important values they hold up for their organizations. If you say that you're going to put customers first, for example, or that you put employees first, then you had better follow through, especially when you're forced to make tough trade-offs.Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com (AMZN) is one of the rare CEOs who has lived up to his stated aspiration to put customers first. Bezos repeatedly sacrificed short-term profits—and suffered the ire of Wall Street's stock analysts—by reducing prices and even publishing information on the Web site that discourages customers from buying certain products. Southwest Airlines' (LUV) cofounder Herb Kelleher lived up to his "employees first" policy by never laying off its people even when the rival carriers were laying off tens of thousands.Proof in the PuddingOnly your actions prove what's really most important. Danny Meyer fulfilled his pledge to put his employees first by banning smoking in his New York restaurants before it became the law—even though he risked losing good customers in order to protect workers' health. Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs has stayed true to his company's top value of enshrining originality in design—the essence of his "Think Different" campaign.Of course it's far more common for would-be leaders to fail to "walk the walk." While the Coca-Cola Company's official list of seven "values" includes "integrity" and "accountability," it nonetheless elevated Muhtar Kent to CEO even though he had been caught betting against his own company's stock based on insider information—then outrageously claimed not to know his actions were illegal.Even the most well-intentioned leaders often fail to walk the walk. Howard Schultz of Starbucks didn't live up to his own vision of the customer experience by putting relentless growth and expansion ahead of quality (as he admitted in a leaked memo).For examples of who does and doesn't walk the walk today, see the slide show.Alan Deutschman is the author of Walk the Walk: The #1 Rule for Real Leaders.
• #107: Michael Hogan's stormy tenure as president of the University of Illinois, and his resignation on March 22 (2012) after only twenty months on the job, offers yet another case study on the importance of humble, servant leadership and on the critical role of respectful, mutual communication as its energy and light.Here are a few articles for background: the Chicago Tribune's account of the resignation, the Chronicle of Higher Education's report, and the Chronicle's earlier piece (from March 8) on Hogan's communication problem with faculty at the University's flagship Urbana-Champaign campus. It is a sad case study indeed.My main question is intended to spark more intellectual curiosity than anxiety, but I cannot help expressing it with a tone of frustration: Just when will leaders learn?If anyone should have had some sensitivity to the challenge of real leadership, you'd think it would be a historian of diplomacy like Hogan. But no, even he committed some of the most egregious blunders we have seen in quite some time. Read the three articles to see for yourself.Last month the University's faculty protested. More than a hundred of its senior professors, the big names the University of Illinois cannot afford to lose, called for his ouster. Their complaints were classic: micromanaging, arrogance, bullying, insularity, and more. Above all, the complaints zeroed in on a profound lack of respect and empathy for the people Hogan sought to lead. Like too many leaders, he seemed to think it was all about him.The situation boiled over this week. Hogan said he had had enough, and he decided to quit.I fear that many putative leaders in business are in similar situations, but in their case, people don't speak out for fear of retribution in an uncertain economy. (The senior professors who called for Hogan's resignation are protected by academic tenure.) Hogan, and leaders everywhere, would do well to heed the words of Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British leader: "I must follow my people," Disraeli said. "Am I not their leader?"
• #108: New York Times:In the Undoing of a C.E.O., a Puzzleby JAMES B. STEWART  MAY 18, 2012When the activist shareholder Daniel Loeb confronted Yahoo’s directors on May 3 with the possibility that Yahoo’s recently hired chief executive, Scott Thompson, might have falsified his résumé by claiming to have a computer science degree, their initial reaction was disbelief. “Scott is a forthright, no-nonsense, straightforward personality and a likable guy,” one director said.But just 11 days later, Mr. Thompson’s credibility with the board was in shreds, Mr. Loeb and two of his allies had landed the board seats he’d been agitating for since starting a proxy fight earlier this year, and Mr. Thompson was out, despite his last-minute revelation that he was battling thyroid cancer.Interviews this week with people involved in the fast-moving events and the board’s decisions reveal how what at first seemed a small and improbable allegation from an annoying dissident shareholder turned into a major crisis, thanks largely to Mr. Thompson’s own evasions and missteps. In the end, the board had little choice but to sever ties with its chief executive of only five months and largely give Mr. Loeb what he wanted. (Mr. Thompson didn’t respond to a message seeking comment, and hasn’t made any public statement since leaving Yahoo. His lawyer declined to comment.)“This went to the basics of corporate governance,” a director at the time told me. “The situation was spinning out of control. We had to put our individual interests aside and give the company a chance to survive and regain its footing.” (Like others interviewed, he asked not to be named since the events remain under investigation by a board committee and outside lawyers. Shareholder suits are likely.)The crisis couldn’t have come at a worse time for Yahoo, an Internet pioneer and owner of what was once the world’s most visited Web site. Yahoo rejected a lucrative takeover bid from Microsoft in 2008, has struggled under intense competition from Google and Facebook, and has been dogged by management turmoil that it had hoped to end by hiring Mr. Thompson. “This was causing incredible turmoil and making the company even more fragile than it was,” the director said.After getting Mr. Loeb’s incendiary letter, which said Mr. Thompson had graduated from Stonehill College in Massachusetts with an accounting degree, and the college didn’t even offer a computer science major at the time, the board appointed a three-member committee to investigate. The departing board chairman, Roy Bostock, who had said he would be stepping down in July, was delegated to meet with Mr. Thompson.The board’s initial hopes that it was all an easily explained mistake were quickly dashed. Instead of offering Mr. Bostock an explanation, Mr. Thompson fumed at Mr. Loeb and his tactics. Mr. Bostock stressed that the only way to deal with the situation was to “immediately tell the absolute and total truth, whatever it is” and make it public, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. Unspoken but implicit was the understanding that if he’d ever misstated his credentials, Mr. Thompson should publicly admit it, apologize and offer to resign. In that case, the board would have assessed the situation, but might well have stood behind him. Mr. Thompson seemed to get the message, but said nothing more to clear up the matter.Almost immediately, directors began getting calls from some of Yahoo’s top employees and managers. Saying one’s major was computer science rather than just accounting might seem a minor discrepancy to some people, but not in Silicon Valley where Yahoo has its headquarters and where thousands of engineers live and work. “It was a very emotional situation for employees,” one person involved said. “They were saying, ‘How can I work for a company that has a C.E.O. who claims to be a computer scientist when he’s not? I can’t work here if that’s true.’ “Mr. Thompson began seeking pledges of support from some board members and executives without offering any further information, which bothered some board members. When a top manager, one of the people directly reporting to Mr. Thompson, said he couldn’t provide such support, Mr. Thompson told him not to reveal their conversation (the employee did tell co-workers, some of whom reported it to the board.) “Scott was trying to rustle up support, and when he didn’t get it, he tried to silence people,” a board member said. “This went straight to the trust issue.”Then a radio interview surfaced in a report by Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of All Things D, in which the host of an NPR program, Moira Gunn, asked Mr. Thompson point blank about his degree in “accounting and computer science.” Board members listened to the recording. Not only didn’t Mr. Thompson correct the statement that he had two majors, he added, “That’s really the background that I have, and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way.”Nonetheless the next day, at a meeting with Yahoo employees, he blamed the search firm responsible for placing him as president of PayPal, owned by eBay, in 2000, board members were told and read in media reports. He didn’t name the firm, but it was no secret it was Heidrick & Struggles, which promptly issued a statement. “Based on information in our possession, this allegation is verifiably not true and we have notified Yahoo to that effect,” it said.“That was the final straw,” a Yahoo board member said. “We never got this confirmed, but I presumed he had given them a statement or résumé that contained the false degree.”After a stream of phone calls that day reached a consensus that the company was in an untenable situation and that Mr. Thompson had to go, the Yahoo board met for three hours the next day, Friday. About an hour into the meeting, Brad Smith, a board member and Intuit’s chief executive, who was probably Mr. Thompson’s closest friend on the board, received a text from Mr. Thompson asking him to step out and take a call.When Mr. Smith returned, he reported, “It seems like Scott has decided to part ways with the company,” according to those present. Mr. Thompson told Mr. Smith that he’d had surgery for thyroid cancer several weeks earlier. (Board members were aware that he’d had what he described at the time as minor surgery, but not that it was for thyroid cancer.) Mr. Thompson added that because he was still getting up to speed at Yahoo, he’d waited longer than he should have for the surgery, and as a result, he had to take medication that might affect his performance over the next month or so and he might be groggy at times. “It was not a formal resignation,” a board member said, “just a conversation where he said he’d come to this conclusion.”The news prompted a long conversation among board members. Was this giving the board a graceful exit from a difficult situation — or was it a ploy for sympathy? “You can come to your own conclusion,” a board member said. Board members had been inclined to terminate Mr. Thompson “for cause,” which meant he’d receive no severance and wouldn’t be entitled to stock grants totaling $16 million. At the same time, they didn’t want to be unduly harsh. Advised by their counsel, Ron Olson, of the Los Angeles firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, they concluded Mr. Thompson’s medical situation should have no bearing on the terms of his departure. To replace him, they settled on Ross Levinsohn, 48, who ran Yahoo’s Web sites, as interim chief executive.At Mr. Bostock’s urging, they also resolved to end the battle with Mr. Loeb. Before the revelation about Mr. Thompson, they thought they could win the proxy contest. But a critical element was management stability and a strong chief executive. Those had now been abruptly removed. They’d offer Mr. Loeb and two of his allies three of the board’s 12 seats (rather than the four Mr. Loeb wanted), and Mr. Bostock and other directors would leave immediately rather than wait until July.After sleeping on their decisions, the board formally voted the next morning. Lawyers were dispatched to negotiate the deal with Mr. Loeb. Mr. Smith and another director, Maynard Webb, met with Mr. Thompson, who seemed resigned to the outcome and spoke mostly about his ongoing medical treatments. Others who spoke to him said he didn’t mention the résumé issue and his subsequent explanations, and seemed in denial that his credibility — and not his treatment for cancer — had precipitated his departure. “He did say that he was sorry he hadn’t been able to meet the board’s expectations,” said one person who talked to him. “I took that as an oblique apology, and I wished him well.” Others were much more angry. Yahoo’s news release said only that Mr. Thompson had “left the company.”Mr. Thompson now joins a lengthy and puzzling list of prominent people who have embroidered or falsified their résumés and were felled for doing so, including a former Notre Dame football coach, chief executives of RadioShack and Bausch & Lomb, a director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and an MIT admissions director.While the Yahoo matter remains under investigation, how and why Mr. Thompson’s résumé came to reflect the false claim that he had a degree in computer science remains a mystery. If it wants to solve it, Yahoo may need to add a psychologist to its investigative team.
• #109: By Heidi Stevens, Tribune NewspapersAugust 1, 2012Of all the surprises to spring forth from Yahoo's recent appointment of Marissa Mayer as CEO of the struggling tech company (She's 37! She's pregnant! It's 2012 and we're still debating whether pregnant women should work!), perhaps the most noteworthy is that the news is a surprise.Women have been outpacing men in college attendance since 1981. Thirty-six percent of women ages 25 to 30 hold bachelor's degrees, compared with 28 percent of men in the same age range, according to2010 U.S. Census Bureau statistics. Women earn nearly 6 in 10 graduate degrees, according to the Washington-based Council of Graduate Schools. In 2008, women surpassed men for the first time in doctoral degrees earned. Women make up 47 percent of the workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.And women, it's widely known, have babies.At some point, all of these facts were bound to coincide in some rather notable ways."I think it's fabulous that Yahoo hired as their next CEO a woman and a pregnant woman," says Judith Lichtman, senior adviser at the National Partnership for Women and Families. "I want to also note that had they not done so because she was pregnant, they would have been violating a federal law called the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. While they get kudos from me, let's also acknowledge they did the legal thing. They picked a star and she happens to be pregnant, and they didn't discriminate against her. Part of me says whoop-dee-do."And yet, the top reader comment on the Los Angeles Times' online story announcing Mayer's appointment? "Yahoo shot itself in the foot by hiring her. Everyone that has worked with a pregnant or new mother knows how little time such people dedicate to their respective jobs. I would have sold any Yahoo stock at the first news of her prego status."Comment No. 2? "Technology industry's toughest job. Upcoming mother. Pick one, not both. Do your child a favor, and pick the latter."Much hand-wringing and bloviating followed Mayer's now infamous tweet, "Another piece of good news today," announcing to her followers that she and her husband are expecting a baby boy. Few would declare the can-women-have-it-all debate finished — particularly a month after The Atlantic unleashed Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" story on our weary eyeballs — but it may be time to ask whether we can afford to keep this particular debate going.Ever-changing world"The world of work has been changing for 100 years, in terms of loss of agricultural jobs and manufacturing jobs," says Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. "Boys are not adapting nearly fast enough to the educational requirements of the jobs that are going to be there when they become adults. Women get it and men don't, at least at the margins."Mortenson contends that our education system, particularly post-elementary school, is failing our boys and leaving them ill-equipped to enter college, let alone thrive and eventually graduate with job-fetching degrees."The much larger issue is how boys are shutting down from education — which means work, which probably means marriage or a mutually supportive kind of role — far too early in life, long before they understand the consequences of their disengagement," Mortenson says.Indeed, 67.4 percent of men ages 25 and older were employed in 2009, the smallest share of men employed since 1948, according to "The State of American Manhood," a report by Postsecondary Education Opportunity, a monthly public policy newsletter. The median annual incomes for men peaked in 1973 and have declined ever since, according to the same report. In 2009, the median income was 13 percent below the 1973 level."You could say boys are at fault, but I happen to believe the school system, which serves girls very well, has failed boys," Mortenson says. "I've always said if you want to engage boys in learning, something has to blow up, catch fire, go very, very fast or require assembly."Fair points, all. But for now, we've got standardized tests and textbook-based learning and girls outpacing their male peers at every level. Which means Mayer's detractors — of both genders — may need to accept the reality of her and her female counterparts entering and rising within the workforce, in spite of their ability to bear children."No one should be shocked and awed that women are breaking through glass ceilings and assuming the highest leadership positions in corporate America," Lichtman says. "People don't marvel anymore that women are in the workplace, and I look forward to the time when nobody's particularly shocked by the fact that women are the titans of industry, be they tech or manufacturing or banking and financial services industries."Brighter future?And maybe the kind of titans who change the rules of the game."If she's willing to take a different approach and talk about job sharing and bringing in other voices and barter in brain power, that's where she could really shine," says Amy Jussel, executive director of Shaping Youth, a group that studies the media's influence on kids. "She could say, 'Let's look at this with a different set of eyes that can help lift me up and we can all win in this.'"When it comes to what we want to teach our girls, I hope we see her be a leader and not a boss," Jussel says. "A boss says, 'Go,' and a leader says, 'Let's go.' I hope she finds support from other women leaders and men leaders in the tech industry and other industries saying, 'This is an opportunity. Let's show them how this could be done.'"Then maybe we can look at this is a cycle-breaker."
• #110: Opposing ViewsBy Michael Flood McNulty, Fri, July 06, 2012For most Americans, getting fired from a job is a nightmare scenario. Not so if you're a CEO toiling away at one of the country's wealthiest companies.After just five hours on the job, Duke Energy CEO Bill Johnson was surprisingly removed from his chief executive post and given a stunning $44.4 million severance package. The bizarre turn of events illustrates the massive salary chasm between CEOs and worker bees in the economically sluggish United States.The lightning quick departure -- and monstrous payout -- is unprecedented in American corporate history and has left analysts wondering how it happened.According to the Wall Street Journal, here's what we know: Johnson (pictured) held a similar CEO position with Progress Energy about 18 months ago. At that time, Duke Energy and Progress Energy began a merger. Duke Energy, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the largest electric power holding company in the United States.That merger was recently completed, and Johnson signed a deal on June 27 to become the energy company's new CEO. Meanwhile, Jim Rogers was tabbed to become the organization's chairman.After only a few hours, however, Energy's board apparently had a change of heart. Johnson was out as CEO and Rogers was in. For the half day he served as CEO, Johnson was provided a compensation package estimated at more than $44 million, Forbes reports.The NY Times says Johnson was shocked by the board's vote but gave his resignation: "Mr. Johnson complied with the board’s request, which was made directly to him by Duke’s lead director, Ann Maynard Gray. He was shocked by the board’s action, according to a friend, and submitted his resignation on July 3, just hours before Duke announced that Mr. Rogers would take over."So Johnson walked into the job, probably had long enough to find the coffee machine, and was gone by lunch. For his troubles, he'll receive $7.4 million severance, a $1.4 million bonus, a hefty stock deal, and a $1.5 million lump-sum payout -- for a grand total of $44.4 million
• #116: The Payoffs and Penalties of Holding MeetingsMAY 18, 2012Title: Meetings Matter: Effects of Team Meetings on Team and Organizational Success (Fee or subscription required.)Author: Simone Kauffeld and Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock (Technische Universität Braunschweig)Publisher: Small Group Research, vol. 43, no. 2Date Published: April 2012There is real value in conducting good meetings, according to this paper, which finds that companies that held constructive group sessions could trace the dividends for years. But perhaps the biggest benefit of having a good meeting is not having a bad one — because the negative effects of bad meetings on employee satisfaction, team productivity, and company performance are much more dramatic than the positive impact of good sessions, the researchers say.Although it’s widely recognized that getting the most out of team members’ expertise requires interaction and the coordination of tasks and tools, research that links meetings to organizational performance is scarce. The authors of this paper sought to address that gap by discovering which types of communication and behavior led to productive meetings and which dragged the sessions down. The difference, they said, turns on how well a meeting stays focused on defining problems and their solutions and how well it avoids turning into a gripe session that proves demoralizing.The authors studied 92 teams from 20 midsized companies in the automotive supply, metal, electrical, chemical, and packaging industries. The teams met regularly for about an hour every two to four weeks, discussing a topic relevant to their activities or schedule. The sessions were videotaped and coded with a system that rated group members’ statements in 44 interaction categories.Three main criteria were used to judge the effectiveness of the meetings. First, the authors circulated questionnaires to measure group members’ satisfaction with the meetings. Second, the team’s objective performance following the meetings was judged. For example, at a manufacturing firm, a team’s productivity would be measured by the number of expected versus actual parts made within a certain time frame.Third, at various intervals — shortly after the meetings, and then a year later, and two and a half years later — the CEOs of the companies rated the development of their firm in terms of innovation, the streamlining of internal processes, employee turnover, the number of new products offered, and market share.Overall, teams succeeded (and their companies had higher productivity) when they used problem-focused statements during the meetings — especially when members defined the objective of a meeting in light of the issues facing them, provided different perspectives on highlighted problems, and framed their concerns in terms of potential solutions.Teams also got high marks when they used proactive communication — when members expressed interest in taking responsibility for the changes ahead or planned concrete actions. Meetings were also better when supervisors or facilitators had a strong voice, ensuring that the sessions stayed on point.By contrast, unstructured meetings negatively affected team members’ satisfaction, group productivity, and organizational performance. Particularly damaging were “dysfunctional communicative behaviors such as criticizing or complaining,” the authors write. Seeking others to blame and shifting responsibility wasted precious meeting time and could lead to “complaining cycles, in which one complaining statement is chasing the next.”Because meetings represent a unique opportunity for employees to discuss the negative aspects of their job in great detail, they pose a danger to morale if the complaining isn’t reined in and the discussion isn’t refocused on specific problems and their solutions.“Interestingly, dysfunctional communication appeared to affect team meeting success more than functional communication,” the authors write. “For example, the negative relationship between counteractive statements and team meeting success was stronger than the positive relationship between proactive statements and team meeting success.”
• #117: P is for purposeful. Every meeting should have a purpose. The purpose of a meeting should drive its time, its place, its agenda, and the selection of its participants. Avoid perpetuating any meeting held for no reason but habit, the fact that it has always been held on this day and at this time. If the purpose of a meeting isn’t clear, important, and acceptable to everyone in attendance, then it’s up to the leader to make it clear and establish its importance or to question the value of the meeting.E is for engaging. A meeting is a gathering of sentient, thinking human beings—not robotic automatons. It presumes that participants have something of value on their mind to share: an experience, perhaps, or an observation or a creative suggestion or even an impertinent question. If the supposed purpose of a meeting is simply and only to disseminate information at or to people, then engaging participants isn’t important. But if that’s the case, the meeting itself probably isn’t necessary, either. You could phone it in.O is for organized. Here is where the agenda comes in. The best meetings have a thoughtful agenda that reflects their purpose and their necessity. An agenda should be noteworthy for the alignment of its topics with the strategic intent of the organization, the inclusion of topics that are important to the mission and strategy, and the exclusion of topics that are trivial or tangential. Even if the meeting is quickly organized, it is still worthwhile to scribble down an agenda.P is for productive. Meetings should drive toward consensus, toward decisions that everyone can support. No one but the chief executive—and sometimes not even the chief executive—gets his way or her way all the time. But after a decision is reached, everyone in the organization should have the maturity and the loyalty to get behind the decision 100 percent. It isn’t necessary, and often it isn’t even possible or prudent, for a decision to be reached and announced at every meeting. But every meeting should plainly be headed in that direction.L is for leader led. Even on broadly democratic management teams, someone should be responsible for the meeting. All of us can remember attending meetings that got out of control, or that devolved into endless bickering and dickering, and none of us wants to go there again. The leader should draft the agenda, make sure the meeting starts and ends on time (incidentally, the only way to start and end meetings on time is to start and end meetings on time), build the momentum and impetus toward a decision, and generally meet the expectations for the meeting.  E is for efficient. Meetings are huge drains of an organization’s time. They should be kept as short as possible, but no shorter. All appropriate background information should be circulated beforehand. Presentations should be prepared and rehearsed and quite possibly taped and posted on an internal web site beforehand, so that the meeting itself can focus on discussion, deliberation, and decision making. Three special notes:I’ll surely be dismissed as an irrelevant crank when I say that boards and committees whose only reason for being is cosmetic, legalistic, or technical should be reconsidered and either abandoned or reconstituted and rejuvenated. Really, their hollow core isn’t fooling anyone.Also, after a couple of years of the increasing use of even long meetings by online connection, I am growing more skeptical about the ethic of relying heavily on GoToMeeting and its kin. Short or perfunctory meetings are fine online. But there’s something about face-to-face contact that inspires trust and confidence and therefore a following. Eventually, people will rediscover that. I say the sooner the better.Finally, for quick meetings of less than 15 or 20 minutes, and for participants whose work is primarily in an office, consider holding meetings in a corridor or place where there are no tables and chairs. People sit too much all day long anyway. By standing, they will be more energetic, more participative, and more alert.
• #119: The great economist Milton Friedman famously proclaimed that the only responsibility of business is to maximize its profits. Aaron Feuerstein disagreed. After a 1995 fire destroyed his Massachusetts textile mill, he spent his own money to keep 3,000 workers on the payroll while the factory was rebuilt. The decision cost him $25 million but earned him a reputation as a man who truly cared about people. Many companies proclaim that employees are their greatest asset. In an era of offshoring and downsizing, few believe the spin. Feuerstein stunned everyone by demonstrating that he was serious. He had the courage of his convictions, and it showed. Especially when so many companies say pretty much the same thing verbally, and when so few do much of anything to back it up, nonverbal communication offers a phenomenal opportunity to speak and be heard.
• #120: Wikipedia (retrieved 7 July 2012):Aaron Feuerstein (born December 11, 1925[1]) was the third-generation owner[2] and CEO of Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts.When the Malden Mills factory burnt down on December 11, 1995, Feuerstein decided not only to use his insurance money to rebuild it, but to also pay the salaries of all the now-unemployed workers while it was being rebuilt. Feuerstein spent millions keeping all 3,000 employees on the payroll with full benefits for 6 months. By going against common CEO business practices, especially at a time when most companies were downsizing and moving overseas, he achieved a small degree of fame.Feuerstein claimed that he couldn't have taken another course of action due to his study of the Talmud and the lessons he learnt there:"I have a responsibility to the worker, both blue-collar and white-collar. I have an equal responsibility to the community. It would have been unconscionable to put 3,000 people on the streets and deliver a deathblow to the cities of Lawrence and Methuen. Maybe on paper our company is worthless to Wall Street, but I can tell you it's worth more."—(Parade Magazine, 1996)It would cost Aaron Feuerstein $25,000,000, his CEO position, and a November 2001 filing of chapter 11 bankruptcy to 'do the right thing'. The company achieved solvency again with the help of creditor generosity and government subsidies. Malden Mills later garnered some lucrative Department of Defense (DOD) contracts for 'smart' products that interweave fiber optic cabling, electronic biosensors, and USB ports into polar fleece fabric. Malden Mills was awarded a $16 million dollar DOD contract in 2006.[3] In January 2007, however, Malden Mills filed for bankruptcy again and ended production in July.[4][5] The company's underfunded (by 49%) pension was abandoned due to sale of corporate assets.[6]Feuerstein is an alumnus of Camp Modin in Belgrade, Maine, and was the keynote speaker at the 75th annual reunion in 1997. Feuerstein is a member of Young Israel of Brookline.An Industrialist and philanthropist, for setting the standard for commitment to employees following a devastating fire at his Malden Mills manufacturing plant, he was awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award on March 13, 1998.[7]
• #128: These facts and figures have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and other publications.Hewlett Packard’s revenue has skyrocketed from $80 billion in 2004 to $115 billion in 2009, while Cisco Systems’ has risen proportionately even more, from $22 billion to $36 billion, but as IBM’s has stagnated, growing only from $95 billion to $96 billion, in the same time frame.In 2009, Hewlett Packard announced across-the-board cuts in employee compensation. Mr. Hurd took a 20 percent reduction, but only on his salary, which accounted for a small share of his overall compensation. Managers took a cut of 10 percent, salaried workers 5 percent, and hourly workers 2.5 percent.HP’s famed research and development budget was 4 percent of revenue in 2005, and hovers just above 2 percent now, a potentially devastating reduction for a company that is known for its innovation, and whose slogan is Invent.Under Mr. Hurd's tenure, more than 15,000 Hewlett Packard employees lost their jobs, while his total compensation during the last two years exceeded $72 million.HP employees recently gave the company only 1.6 stars, out of 5 possible, as a place to work. By comparison, two companies with whom HP competes for labor, Cisco Systems and IBM, get much higher marks: 3.5 stars for Cisco and 3.7 stars for IBM.Employees of Hewlett Packard give their former CEO an approval rating of only 30 percent, while employees of IBM give their CEO a rating of 40 percent, and employees of Cisco give theirs a rating of 60 percent.Prior to Mr. Hurd’s dismissal, almost two out of every three HP employees said they intended to seek employment elsewhere as soon as the economy improved.Questions: What do these facts and figures tell you about Mr. Hurd as a chief executive? What lessons can you derive for your own leadership? Do you believe that economic adversity invariably depresses employee engagement? How can a company whose employees suffer under a CEO restore their engagement in the wake of his departure?
• #134: New Delays at RIM to Be Questioned at Annual MeetingThe New York TimesBy Ian AustenPublished: July 8, 2012OTTAWA — A friendly crowd is unlikely to greet Thorsten Heins on Tuesday, when he makes his first appearance as chief executive at the annual meeting here of Research in Motion.Shares in the BlackBerry maker have fallen by about 95 percent from their peak in mid-2008. And last month, not only did RIM post a $518 million quarterly loss, but it also surprised investors by announcing that a new line of phones critical to its future would again be delayed.But the annual meeting may not be the only forum for shareholders to vent their displeasure. Several securities law experts and some investors say the delay in the BlackBerry 10, and overly optimistic remarks as recently as last week by Mr. Heins since he took over the top job in January, may also make RIM the target of shareholder lawsuits.“They’re going to get sued and they should get sued because I think a closer look at the record is likely to unearth knowing and willful misrepresentation,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, the former president of Apple’s products division and the founder of the software maker Be, who is now a venture capitalist and blogger in Palo Alto, Calif. “When the C.E.O. says there’s nothing wrong with the company as it is, it’s not cautious, it doesn’t make sense.”After disappointing shareholders in June, Mr. Heins gave a radio interview last week, wrote opinion pieces for two Canadian newspapers and took online questions from visitors to The Globe and Mail’s Web site. As part of a public relations offensive, speaking with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he forecast a sunny future for Research in Motion by saying, “There’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now” and denying that RIM was, as some investors believe, in a death spiral.In a statement, RIM rejected any suggestion that the company had misled investors. “RIM is well aware of its disclosure obligations under applicable securities laws and is committed to providing a high level of transparency, as evidenced by RIM’s decision to issue an interim business update on May 29, 2012, to alert shareholders that it expected to report an operating loss,” the company said.While securities laws vary in Canada, where RIM is based, and the United States, where its stock is also traded, companies are generally required to report promptly any developments that may significantly alter their financial state. The BlackBerry 10 delay is unquestionably such a change, Canadian and American law experts said.Any shareholder class action would also have to show that Mr. Heins or others within RIM knew that a delay was likely or a strong possibility when he was publicly boasting about the product’s progress and promising on-time delivery.The legal experts said repeated statements earlier this year by Mr. Heins and other senior RIM executives — that the BlackBerry 10 line of phones would arrive in stores as planned by the end of this year — could support this claim.For example, on May 1, at a conference for app developers in Orlando, Fla., Mr. Heins unveiled an incomplete prototype BlackBerry 10 phone and, along with other RIM employees, demonstrated features of its operating system.During the presentation, Mr. Heins repeatedly and enthusiastically told the audience that the new product would be out by the end of this year.“Every day I get questions about the progress on BlackBerry 10,” he said. “I appreciate all of the interest on our next-generation platform and I promise, I promise to you that the whole company is laser-focused on delivering on time and exceeding your expectation.”He added at another point, “We’re making good progress, and I’m committed to sharing the progress with everyone right up until the launch later this year.”Similar sentiments were offered at other developer sessions by other RIM executives over the following weeks.Exactly what changed between the beginning of May and the end of June is unclear. Nor is it apparent when Mr. Heins decided that the delay would be necessary.During a conference call to discuss the earnings, Mr. Heins said the volume of software that must be handled to integrate all of BlackBerry 10’s components “has proved to be more time-consuming than anticipated.”Even without the delay, many financial analysts were concerned that the BlackBerry 10 was already too late to market. The delay means that it will be facing off against new and improved phones and operating systems from Apple, Microsoft and Google.“There’s a high risk of litigation here,” said James D. Cox, a law professor at Duke. “The outcome of the litigation would be hard to predict.”Richard McLaren, a law professor at the University of Western Ontario, said that in Canada companies are required to immediately disclose major changes in their operations.“When you’ve used language like ‘laser focused on coming in on time,’ you’ve really raised expectations,” he said.Professor Cox said RIM might be able to avoid shareholder litigation for another reason: the company is in bad shape. Many lawyers, he said, may be unwilling to embark upon such a case because there is no guarantee that RIM would be around when it was resolved.Also, untangling share price drops caused by the delay in the BlackBerry 10 from the company’s other problems would be difficult, he said.Anita Anand, a law professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in investor issues, said that it might be unnecessary to challenge RIM’s disclosure through the courts.“If there’s a punishment to be had here, it’s already in the making,” she said. “The market speaks before any adjudication body.”The new phones, which RIM hopes will again make BlackBerrys desirable, were supposed to be on the market by the beginning of this year at the latest. But the company’s former co-chief executives put off that release because, they said, the company needed to perfect the new, more advanced electronics used in the new models.That delay is already part of one class action against the company. In securities filings, RIM has said that lawsuit is without merit.Unlike Samsung, Nokia and other competitors that use smartphone operating systems from Google and Microsoft, RIM began creating its own about two years ago. But Mr. Gassée said the effort was already too late.To jump-start the process, RIM bought QNX Software Systems, which is based here and which has long provided operating systems used in everything from automobiles to nuclear power stations. But Mr. Gassée said that the actual operating system, which essentially parcels out computing tasks and allocates the computer’s resources, was the smallest part of developing BlackBerry 10.The heavy lifting, he said, came from creating the complex software that enables apps to use the operating system and the phone’s hardware features. He estimated that Apple had spent about four years developing iOS, the operating system for the iPhone, before bringing it to market.Mr. Heins’s public relations campaign last week to talk up the company’s fortunes was widely seen as being, at best, overly optimistic, but unlikely to create legal headaches for RIM, experts said.In its statement, RIM said Mr. Heins was trying to outline the changes he had made over the last six months to turn RIM around.“His optimism stems from the fact that, unlike many commentators or analysts, he has actually seen the progress being made on BlackBerry 10 and is confident in its ability to play a significant role in the future of mobile computing,” the company said.Jill E. Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said the remarks were not surprising, comparing them to the talk of a used-car salesman.“Everybody expects the chief executive to put an optimistic spin on the company,” she said. “To be fair, we all know that RIM is a struggling company.”
• #145: The Gallup Organization, an American company known originally for its broad consumer and political public-opinion surveys, and more recently for its business consulting services in human resource management, offers a popular but simplistic approach to employee engagement. It strikes me and many others as, well, intellectual pretzels.In part to promote its consulting practice, Gallup devised a twelve-point checklist of factors that it asserts are closely correlated to employee engagement. Keep in mind that correlation is not causation; just because two phenomena show up together (like baseball and dandelions in springtime, for example) doesn’t mean that one of them causes the other.However, because of the proprietary nature of Gallup’s research and the absence of any peer review, its assertions are impossible for you to validate. None of that has stopped hundreds of large companies from adopting the paradigm, at an appreciable financial investment.The twelve-point Gallup checklist consists of these factors:1. Knowing what is expected of oneself on the job.2. Having appropriate materials and equipment.3. Having the opportunity to do what one does best every day.4. Receiving recognition or praise for doing good work within the past seven days.5. Having someone who encourages one’s development.6. Having a supervisor who cares about oneself as a person.7. Being heard and taken seriously.8. Feeling a connection to the organization’s mission.9. Having coworkers who are committed to doing quality work.10. Having a best friend at work.11. Receiving a progress report on one’s work.12. Having opportunities to grow and learn.Although this framework is probably the dominant reference point to employee engagement in business today, it has many critics who observe that certain of the variables (especially having a best friend at work) seem well-beyond the capacity of management to affect and, in any case, are of dubious causal relationship to real employee engagement.Gallup also sorts employees into three camps: engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged. It describes engaged employees as those who “work with passion and feel a profound connection to the company” and who “drive innovation and move the organization forward.” Gallup describes disengaged employees as “checked out . . . sleepwalking through their workday, putting time but not energy or passion into their work.” It describes actively disengaged employees as “acting out their unhappiness” and actually undermining “what their engaged coworkers accomplish."Gallup has not revealed just how it makes its calculations, but its business customers seem more interested in sheer numbers (perhaps to document a business case) than in the complexities of methodology anyway.
• #146: The Gallup Organization, an American company known originally for its broad consumer and political public-opinion surveys, and more recently for its business consulting services in human resource management, offers a popular but simplistic approach to employee engagement. It strikes me and many others as, well, intellectual pretzels.In part to promote its consulting practice, Gallup devised a twelve-point checklist of factors that it asserts are closely correlated to employee engagement. Keep in mind that correlation is not causation; just because two phenomena show up together (like baseball and dandelions in springtime, for example) doesn’t mean that one of them causes the other.However, because of the proprietary nature of Gallup’s research and the absence of any peer review, its assertions are impossible for you to validate. None of that has stopped hundreds of large companies from adopting the paradigm, at an appreciable financial investment.The twelve-point Gallup checklist consists of these factors:1. Knowing what is expected of oneself on the job.2. Having appropriate materials and equipment.3. Having the opportunity to do what one does best every day.4. Receiving recognition or praise for doing good work within the past seven days.5. Having someone who encourages one’s development.6. Having a supervisor who cares about oneself as a person.7. Being heard and taken seriously.8. Feeling a connection to the organization’s mission.9. Having coworkers who are committed to doing quality work.10. Having a best friend at work.11. Receiving a progress report on one’s work.12. Having opportunities to grow and learn.Although this framework is probably the dominant reference point to employee engagement in business today, it has many critics who observe that certain of the variables (especially having a best friend at work) seem well-beyond the capacity of management to affect and, in any case, are of dubious causal relationship to real employee engagement.Gallup also sorts employees into three camps: engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged. It describes engaged employees as those who “work with passion and feel a profound connection to the company” and who “drive innovation and move the organization forward.” Gallup describes disengaged employees as “checked out . . . sleepwalking through their workday, putting time but not energy or passion into their work.” It describes actively disengaged employees as “acting out their unhappiness” and actually undermining “what their engaged coworkers accomplish."Gallup has not revealed just how it makes its calculations, but its business customers seem more interested in sheer numbers (perhaps to document a business case) than in the complexities of methodology anyway.
• #153: Six Sigma is a business management strategy, originally developed by Motorola in 1986.[1][2] Six Sigma became well known after Jack Welch made it a central focus of his business strategy at General Electric in 1995,[3] and today it is widely used in many sectors of industry.Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in manufacturing and business processes.[4] It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization ("Black Belts", "Green Belts", etc.) who are experts in these methods.[4] Each Six Sigma project carried out within an organization follows a defined sequence of steps and has quantified financial targets (cost reduction and/or profit increase).[4]The term Six Sigma originated from terminology associated with manufacturing, specifically terms associated with statistical modeling of manufacturing processes. The maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.Contents  [show] [edit]Historical overviewSix Sigma originated as a set of practices designed to improve manufacturing processes and eliminate defects, but its application was subsequently extended to other types of business processes as well.[5] In Six Sigma, a defect is defined as any process output that does not meet customer specifications, or that could lead to creating an output that does not meet customer specifications.[4]The core of Six Sigma was “born” at Motorola in the 1970s out of senior executive Art Sundry's criticism of Motorola’s bad quality.[6] As a result of this criticism, the company discovered a connection between increases in quality and decreases in costs of production. At that time, the prevailing view was that quality costs extra money. In fact, it reduced total costs by driving down the costs for repair or control.[7] Bill Smith subsequently formulated the particulars of the methodology at Motorola in 1986.[1] Six Sigma was heavily inspired by the quality improvement methodologies of the six preceding decades, such as quality control, Total Quality Management (TQM), and Zero Defects,[8][9] based on the work of pioneers such as Shewhart, Deming, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, Taguchi, and others.Like its predecessors, Six Sigma doctrine asserts that:Continuous efforts to achieve stable and predictable process results (i.e., reduce process variation) are of vital importance to business success.Manufacturing and business processes have characteristics that can be measured, analyzed, improved and controlled.Achieving sustained quality improvement requires commitment from the entire organization, particularly from top-level management.Features that set Six Sigma apart from previous quality improvement initiatives include:A clear focus on achieving measurable and quantifiable financial returns from any Six Sigma project.[4]An increased emphasis on strong and passionate management leadership and support.[4]A special infrastructure of "Champions", "Master Black Belts", "Black Belts", "Green Belts", "Red Belts" etc. to lead and implement the Six Sigma approach.[4]A clear commitment to making decisions on the basis of verifiable data, rather than assumptions and guesswork.[4]The term "Six Sigma" comes from a field of statistics known as process capability studies. Originally, it referred to the ability of manufacturing processes to produce a very high proportion of output within specification. Processes that operate with "six sigma quality" over the short term are assumed to produce long-term defect levels below 3.4 defects per million opportunities(DPMO).[10][11] Six Sigma's implicit goal is to improve all processes to that level of quality or better.Six Sigma is a registered service mark and trademark of Motorola Inc.[12] As of 2006 Motorola reported over US$17 billion in savings[13] from Six Sigma. Other early adopters of Six Sigma who achieved well-publicized success include Honeywell (previously known as AlliedSignal) and General Electric, where Jack Welch introduced the method.[14] By the late 1990s, about two-thirds of the Fortune 500 organizations had begun Six Sigma initiatives with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality.[15]In recent years, some practitioners have combined Six Sigma ideas with lean manufacturing to create a methodology named Lean Six Sigma.[16] The Lean Six Sigma methodology views lean manufacturing, which addresses process flow and waste issues, and Six Sigma, with its focus on variation and design, as complementary disciplines aimed at promoting "business and operational excellence".[16] Companies such as IBM use Lean Six Sigma to focus transformation efforts not just on efficiency but also on growth. It serves as a foundation for innovation throughout the organization, from manufacturing and software development to sales and service delivery functions
• #157: Los Angeles TimesSafeway's Merger Loss Eclipses Labor WoesOCT. 23, 2003No one could accuse Steven A. Burd, the chairman and chief executive of Safeway Inc., of shrinking from his role of chief spear carrier for the supermarket companies in their battle with unionized workers in Southern California.Burd has been a most articulate spokesman for the notion that rising labor costs represent a mortal threat to the industry's profitability. He has backed up that position with hardball negotiations at Vons and other Safeway chains in the U.S. and Canada, sometimes even following through on a threat to shut stores if their unions don't fall into line.During a recent conference call with a claque of Wall Street analysts, he characterized the employers' attempt to hold down labor costs as "an investment in our future" and predicted that lost sales during the present work stoppage would prove to be "infinitesimal, compared to the cost of not doing this." Capitulating on this contract, he said, could cost Safeway as much as $130 million over its three-year term.Burd's math inspired me to do some arithmetic of my own. Assuming his figure is right (and I have no reason to doubt it), I calculated that by these terms it would take the company's local unionized workforce the better part of three decades to do as much damage to Safeway's bottom line as Burd did with a single merger deal in 1998.I am speaking of Safeway's notorious acquisition of the 113-store Dominick's supermarket chain in Chicago. Dominick's was a modestly upscale grocery when Safeway bought it from Yucaipa Cos., a Los Angeles company run by grocery magnate Ron Burkle, for $1.8 billion in cash and assumed debt.For Yucaipa, which had purchased the chain three years earlier for $693 million, this deal was a windfall. Under its management, sales had grown steadily, although they were flattening out a bit in 1997-98, just before Safeway took over. From that point on, as Safeway later disclosed, business at Dominick's headed straight down.By the time it placed the chain up for sale last November, Safeway was valuing Dominick's on its own books at about $315 million. That suggests the company squandered more than $1 billion of its shareholders' money on this deal. Compared with that sum, the $130 million that Burd is trying to shave from the local union contract may not exactly be "infinitesimal." But it is, well, way smaller.I don't wish to suggest by this that the supermarkets give the union everything it wants to settle the current conflict. As I have written before, both sides will probably have to give in on some cherished principles to reach a fair result.Nor is Safeway the only employer involved. Albertsons Inc. and Kroger Co.'s Ralphs chain are also participating, and both have taken a hard line against their unions here and elsewhere. All three complain that their markets have been invaded by warehouse stores, nonunion groceries and the penny pincher Wal-Mart, and there's no point in denying that these competitors represent a genuine threat.But there's always more than one way to address a business challenge, and some managements handle them better than others.That brings us back to Dominick's. Some analysts believe that Burd's first mistake was overpaying. Safeway maintains that it paid a fair market multiple. But by the reckoning of Andrew Wolf, an industry analyst at BB&T Capital Markets in Richmond, Va., who has been a Safeway skeptic, the price came to more than $16 million per store -- compared with the $11.3 million per store Safeway paid for Vons in 1997.That price, Wolf surmises, may have pushed Burd to recover costs quickly by cutting staff and replacing familiar local brands with Safeway house brands. "They took labor out of the stores and put their private-label products in because they get a few more cents' margin from those," Wolf says. "Do that too fast, and it's not going to work."While shoppers abandoned Dominick's, Safeway's financial reports, which don't normally break out individual chain results, spoke of sunny companywide sales gains, same-store improvements, rising overall profit. But in May 2002, an accounting change forced Safeway to disclose that it had reduced its estimate of Dominick's book value by $589 million since the acquisition.Six months later, Safeway dropped the other shoe, disclosing that same-store sales and operating profit at Dominick's had been falling steadily for almost as long as Safeway had been in charge. Burd said he would sell the chain unless its workers accepted a pay cut to match the scale at the chain's biggest local competitor.Safeway wrote down the chain by an additional $788 million, reducing its value to $315 million, and solicited purchase offers. One of these came from Ron Burkle, whose Yucaipa Cos. offered about $350 million to take the limping business off Burd's hands.(Safeway rejected Yucaipa's bid as inadequate, leading to a lawsuit in which Yucaipa contends that Safeway never intended to take its bid seriously because it would be too embarrassed to return the chain to the original owner at a huge loss.)Throughout most of this period, by the way, the same Wall Street analysts who now clamor for a lid on Safeway's labor costs gave Burd the benefit of the doubt. With the exception of a few analysts like Wolf, who downgraded Safeway in 2001, most have continued to rate it a buy. This may be a holdover from 1999-2000, when the company's stock doubled to a peak of $62.50. But from there they have ridden the stock down to the current price of about $22.It's curious how few of these analysts treat the Dominick's debacle as a blot on Burd's management, especially because at least two other Safeway acquisitions -- Texas-based Randall's Food Markets and Genuardi's Family Markets in the Philadelphia area -- have similarly failed to thrive under its ownership. To be fair, Safeway notes that two other major acquisitions have been quite successful (Vons and Carrs, an Alaska chain) and says the strategic missteps at Randall's and Genuardi's are being worked out.Still, while Safeway pleads that the poor economy and changes in the supermarket business are the culprits for the profit crunch, Burd is starting to look like the guy who's been through a few ugly divorces: The point comes when you have to wonder whether maybe he's the problem. At a recent round table sponsored by a trade journal, the moderator asked whether it was time for Burd to "step aside." (The consensus was that he still deserves a chance to turn things around in an upbeat economic environment.)One possible trouble spot is Burd's scorched-earth approach to labor relations, which often boils down to his threatening store closures if he doesn't win. On occasion, this negotiating ploy has worked, although its obvious limitation is that Safeway might eventually run out of stores to close.But there are signs that it is hampering Safeway's attempt to unload Dominick's. A pending deal with an unidentified buyer reputed to be a Minneapolis grocery chain depends on the union's cooperation, but talks have broken down. Rumors are circulating that Safeway may be planning to keep Dominick's after all, although that would mean dealing again with a highly suspicious union.If that happens, what would Safeway have gained by treating labor so truculently? Dominick's enjoyed labor peace for years before its acquisition by Safeway; just before the merger, it even stated publicly that it had "never experienced a work stoppage and considers its relations with its employees to be good."After five years of Safeway management, that idyllic world was a distant memory. Is this really the only way to get costs under control?Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. Michael Hiltzik can be reached at golden.state@latimes.com.
• #166: New York Times Magazine30 December 2012Adrienne RichB. 1929 | By CHERYL STRAYEDTHERE’S A LINE IN ONE of Adrienne Rich’s best and most famous poems, “Diving Into the Wreck,” that I’ve carried around inside myself like a brain tattoo for 20-some years: We are, I am, you are. Rich wrote many lines that meant something important to me over the course of her long career, but that one strikes me as core. In those six lean words, she bound us together — the entire beautiful and ugly mass of us made, by virtue of her words, indivisible. Indivisibility is classic Rich. She was a great connector of things: art to politics, love to rage, consciousness to action, society to self, power to wound, me to you, us to her.Raised comfortably in Baltimore in a house full of books by men, educated at Radcliffe College — where she didn’t encounter one female teacher — Rich was the married mother of three sons and the author of two well-regarded collections of poems published in the 1950s before she became radicalized by the feminism that would inform the rest of her work. Like many of her contemporaries who were unzipped by the political and poetic movements of the 1960s and 1970s, she began writing with a sense of personal rage and political righteousness that grew more powerful with the tumult of the times and of Rich’s burgeoning identity as a lesbian. She believed in the power of art, not only its beauty and necessity but also the real, raw, actual power of it. She agitated for poetry “as living language, the core of every language, something that is still spoken, aloud or in the mind, muttered in secret, subversive, reaching around corners, crumpled into a pocket, performed to a community, read aloud to the dying, recited by heart, scratched or sprayed on a wall. That kind of language.”And she wrote that kind of language. From the heart and the mind. From the gut and the crotch. She pulled us into the deep waters of her own darkest reckoning and made us understand that the reckoning was ours too. The ferocity of her vision was matched only by the tenderness at its root. She might write about the private intricacies of two women talking or arguing or making love, but her grander intentions thrummed beneath the consciousness of every word. Her work, she asserted, was “for people who want to imagine and claim wider horizons and carry on about them into the night, rather than rehearse the landlocked details of personal quandaries or the price for which the house next door just sold.”In her life, she claimed wider horizons, too. In 1974, when she won the National Book Award for Poetry (which she shared with Allen Ginsberg), she mounted the stage with her fellow female nominees, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, and together they vowed to share the prize on behalf of all women. Here again, I think of indivisibility, of Rich’s unwavering refusal to divide against not only herself but also a broader conception of identity. We are, I am, you are. She dreamed, famously, of a common language, and that is what she has left us with: language that made what was true, truer; what was small, bigger; what was silent, heard; what was fleeting, eternal.Cheryl Strayed is the author of “Wild.”
• #190: Enron's Values StatementRespectWe treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment.IntegrityWe work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it.CommunicationWe have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another… and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.ExcellenceWe are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.Statement of Human Rights PrinciplesAs a partner in the communities in which we operate, Enron believes it has a responsibility to conduct itself according to certain basic principles that transcend industries, cultures, economies, and local, regional and national boundaries. Because we take this responsibility as an international employer and global corporate citizen seriously, we have developed the following principles on human rights. Enron's Vision and Values comprise the platform upon which our human rights principles are built:VisionEnron's vision is to become the world's leading energy company—creating innovative and efficient energy solutions for growing economies and a better environment worldwide.ValuesRespect: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don't belong here. Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won't do it. Communication: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another…and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people. Excellence: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.Principles of Human Rights Enron stands on the foundation of its Vision and Values. Every employee is educated about the company's Vision and Values and is expected to conduct business with other employees, partners, contractors, suppliers, vendors and customers keeping in mind respect, integrity, communication and excellence. Everything we do evolves from Enron's Vision and Values statements. At Enron, we treat others as we expect to be treated ourselves. We believe in respect for the rights of all individuals and are committed to promoting an environment characterized by dignity and mutual respect for employees, customers, contractors, suppliers, partners, community members and representatives of all levels of Government. We do not and will not tolerate mistreatment or human rights abuses of any kind by our employees or contractors. We believe in treating all employees fairly, regardless of gender, race, color, language, religion, age, ethnic background, political or other opinion, national origin, or physical limitation. We are dedicated to conducting business according to all applicable local and international laws and regulations, including but not limited to, the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and with the highest professional and ethical standards. We are committed to operating safely and conducting business worldwide in compliance with all applicable environmental, health, and safety laws and regulations and strive to improve the lives of the people in the regions in which we operate. These laws, regulations, and standards are designed to safeguard the environment, human health, wildlife, and natural resources. Our commitment to observe them faithfully is an integral part of our business and of our values. We believe that playing an active role in every community in which we operate fosters a long-term partnership with the people with whom we come into daily contact. Strengthening the communities where our employees live and work is a priority. We focus community relations activities on several areas, with particular emphasis on education, the environment, and promoting healthy families. We believe in offering our employees fair compensation through wages and other benefits. We believe that our employees and the employees of our contractors working in our facilities are entitled to safe and healthy working conditions. Education and CommunicationBecause we take our responsibilities to our fellow citizens seriously, we act decisively to ensure that all those with whom we do business understand our policies and standards.Providing clearly written guidelines reinforces our principles and business ethics. Enron employees at all levels are expected to be active proponents of our principles and are trained to report without retribution anything they observe or discover that indicates our standards are not being met.Compliance with the law and ethical standards are conditions of employment, and violations will result in disciplinary action, which may include termination. New employees are asked to sign a statement indicating that they have read, understand and will comply with this statement, and employees are periodically asked to reaffirm their commitment to these principles.Furthermore, Enron seeks to require its contractors, suppliers, and vendors to uphold the same respect for human rights that we require of ourselves, and to include appropriate provisions in every new contract entered with these parties. When we are joint venture partners with other companies, we will work to gain board approval for similar measures in joint venture contracts with contractors, suppliers and vendors.
• #195: LEADERSHIP IQ ARTICLE:THE 3 REASONS EMPLOYEES HATE PERFORMANCE REVIEWSBy Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQIt’s not surprising so many people dislike performance appraisals; especially not when you understand why they don’t like them. When we surveyed 48,000 CEOs, managers and employees, only 13% of managers and employees and 6% of CEOs thought their year-end reviews were effective. (Note: that’s really not good). And there were three big reasons why.The first was a lack of differentiation: reviews aren’t synched to performance so there’s no real recognition for being a high performer (or consequences for being a low performer). It’s like being in a class where everyone gets the same grade, regardless of whether or not they did the work. Think about it: How many employees do you have with really bad attitudes that still get really high performance appraisal scores? Or how often does a manager give someone really high marks and then 6 months later call HR wanting to fire them?This problem is so big that 96% of employees in our survey said that high performers should get more rewards and recognition than low performers, but only 18% of employees said that actually happens.And the second reason why people really dislike performance reviews is because the boss’ feedback isn’t relevant. Employees are walking away from performance reviews shaking their heads and wondering if the boss even knows what they did this year. It’s not like people need pages of comments, but they do need something to work from.No reward, no recognition, and no constructive criticism from which to grow. Who can blame people for dreading performance reviews? Why even bother being there? But there’s more to why this situation exists. One reason is that most employee evaluations lack any real adult interaction. In fact, on a recent webinar we asked about 200 managers this question: During performance reviews, what percent of your employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher?Here were the results:• 1% of managers said that 0% to 25% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher • 14% of managers said that 26% to 50% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher • 36% of managers said that 51% to 75% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher • 48% of managers said that 76% to 100% of employees feel like a student waiting to get a grade from the teacher This is the third big reason why employees don't like performance reviews. Most managers conduct performance reviews from a student/teacher perspective. They sit across the desk from employees and say “this is your ‘grade’ and this is your pay” and they hope employees don’t have too many questions, because there are another dozen more reviews to conduct. And all this leaves employees sitting passively, dependent upon the teacher (the boss), waiting to be told what to do (which in this case is basically nothing). There’s zero ownership of self, and that’s an emotionally reactive place to be; and certainly not a place that invites people to assume responsibility for their own growth and development. The most effective way to move employees out of the student or child role is develop adult-to-adult relationships that include adult-to-adult dialogues. Adult-to-adult dialogue is when performance reviews begin to encourage employees to be logical, independent and self sufficient. And where employees learn how to self evaluate and self correct so they become more accountable, engaged and successful. This isn’t a passive school setting where these students need a hall pass to use the bathrooms. These are highly paid adults with insights and brains and the untapped capacity to take full responsibility for their own performance. But we need to better differentiate performance, provide truly relevant feedback/coaching, and most importantly, stop making this feel like a student passively waiting to get a grade. When done right, performance reviews will actually become a Performance Dialogue, and that’s a really great place to be.We’re hosting a webinar next week called Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and we’ll show you all the scripts and tools to make this an adult-to-adult dialogue (and eliminate all that passive student-teacher-grade stuff). There are still a few seats left, so be sure to check it out.Wishing you all the best,Mark MurphyFounder & CEOLeadership IQ
• #205: Here's the good news. You can discipline yourself to become a deeper, better listener, and you should. People will appreciate it. It's actually a straightforward process. To get started, recognize the four levels of good listening.The most basic level is simply alert listening. This is just being seriously ready and willing to listen. (Some of my coffee klatch friends will tell you I am often not even at alert listening, but that's before 480 milligrams of caffeine have begun coursing through my body.) If you cannot take time for a conversation when someone approaches you, say so, and agree on a time when you can.The next level is attentive listening. Here you are in the conversation, and you are deliberately seeking and absorbing information. It requires an investment of determination and sincerity. You cannot fake it, and multitasking is toxic to it. Clear your mind and expect to grow.Beyond that is active listening, a rigorous process for ensuring that two parties to a conversation fully and accurately understand each other. It was introduced in 1955 by Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, and it is still standard operating procedure in many organizations. Though a little on the laborious side, active listening is an especially good tool for taking the heat out of negotiations, disputes, and other tense relationships.Finally we arrive at affirmative listening, where you are demonstrating your real commitment to a full, candid, guileless exchange of information, insight, and intuition that honors and affirms everyone. Here you are determined to make that happen, and you are doing so with a nobility and innocence of purpose.
• #217: Mary Stitt, Sunrise Rotary Club of Arlington HeightsMary Stitt’s dual passions are literacy and polio eradication. After retiring as an elementary school principal, she joined Rotary.She’s gone on international immunization missions seven times, and counting. Mary Stitt served as principal of an Arlington Heights grade school for 25 years. After she retired in 1992, Olive Mary Stitt Elementary School was renamed in honor of her outstanding leadership. But Stitt didn’t stop there. Always active in church and community service, she then joined Sunrise Rotary Club of Arlington Heights.As a member, she has written numerous successful matching grant applications for projects such as a water pumping system in Chile, sanitation facilities in India, and wheelchairs for polio victims in Nigeria. She serves on the district literacy committee, and has hosted international exchange students in her home and collected books for South African schools. Stitt also keeps her passport current. She’s been almost everywhere except Antarctica. Church volunteer work includes laying bricks at a school in Zimbabwe and cleaning monastery grounds in Moscow. Through Rotary, she has participated in seven medical missions to immunize children against polio in India, Niger and Nigeria. She pays her own expenses, although she sometimes bunks with native Rotarians.“With Rotary, you work with Rotarians, and I like what they accomplish,” she says. “It’s service over self, rather than focusing on me.”During her spare moments, you’ll often find Stitt on Facebook. “That’s how I keep up with all the children who went to Olive and now have families of their own,” she says.
• #252: Our attitude toward others becomes their attitude toward us.Earl Nightingale
• #264: Be richly informed: In the age of the Internet and the smartphone, there’s really no excuse for passing along “urban legends” or political prophecies (“If Candidate A is elected, he’ll declare war on the Lilliputians.”), or for not knowing what Keynesianism or socialism really is, or for believing that spending increased more under this president than that president, or for believing anything the first time you hear it. For that matter, common business terms are readily defined online. As they used to say at the old Chicago News Bureau, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
• #267: Out of the night that covers me,Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds and shall find me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.