Tag Archive for: talent management

A Song For Me at 23

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If I could tell my younger self what matters in professional life…I would tell him this.

I walked out of college a free man, but I didn’t know it.  I may have been a free man with a limp and a headache thanks to a few too many days on the football field, but I was free.

I had no money to speak of and drove my girlfriend’s car. Luckily, I now know, I also had no debt. Along with that, I think I had a healthy appreciation for hard work.

Still there are a lot of things I wish I had known at that age as they relate to business and executive life.  There are things you just don’t learn in school, and many of them relate to interpersonal or even personality-based observations. That’s why I’m writing this. I figured that I can put out a few points that I wish I had known at 23, and I figure they might help someone else along the way.

One thing is for sure, they will help you understand my professional worldview.  If you read this blog, you know that it’s about worldview, and these points represent scar tissue; none of them has been fatal (totally), and some of them represent processes that have made me the professional I am.  Read them, and then tell me where I’m wrong (or right).

____________________________

 

Dear 23-year-old self:

You are about to embark on a career.  It’s going to be fun, frustrating, and probably not as fast-moving as you would like, so I’m going to list a few suggestions here that will give you a leg up in your career, and perhaps in your life.  Many of them you won’t be able to understand until you’ve experienced the situations themselves, and that’s just life, but some of them might help you be better prepared for the situation.

  1. Invest the time on your own or in a class to learn principles of accounting and finance cold.  I know it’s an odd “reflection” to start with on a list like this one, but it’s true. Sure, your liberal arts education is valuable because it helps you to think…Sure, whatever.  But what’s really valuable is knowing how to assess organizations’ financial health, understand the time value of money, and peer into how decisions are made vs. how they should be made based on the numbers. No matter where you sit, knowing the numbers gives you a leg up, so you need the tools to learn how to know the numbers.  If you don’t know what a T-account is or can’t explain why a company would invest in a project that will lose money for five years, you need to go back to school.
  2. Acquire a healthy skepticism for title and wealth. These are not always an indication of the quality of person you are dealing with.  Like British accents, titles and wealth can lead you to a false sense of security that the person you’re working with is smart and accomplished, and that is in fact often the case, but not always, and the same goes for degrees and credentials–the guy with the engineering degree from State can often run circles around the Harvard MBA.
  3. Beware anyone who thinks work hours are defined by the calendar.  “My” holidays and “my” vacation are signs of a paycheck player.  If you’re on a professional track, opportunity comes at all times in all shapes.  That guy who calls you at 9 pm on a Friday?  He probably has something important to say.  I once had a manager answer the phone in Europe at 2 am local time when I called from the U.S.  I had no idea where he was, and he made no protest during the call.  I didn’t find out until later that week, after he had returned to the U.S., that he had even been in Europe when I called. I asked him why he answered, and you know his response?  “Might have been important.”  I love that guy.
  4. Working harder than other people does not guarantee you success or wealth.  It might provide you with some dignity, however.  Remember Boxer from Animal Farm?  He was the noble horse who always worked hard for the cause, no matter the direction.  The work didn’t take away from his nobility, but it did kill him–he literally worked himself to death.
  5. Learn and understand the snowdrift problem in game theory.  This one is kind of nerdy, but it’s real everywhere. There will always be people whose first move in a tough situation will be to wait for somebody else to do the hard work.  Be sure that you think about accountability carefully, and if you’re always the one shoveling snow, be bold enough to get out.
  6. Recognize that there are people without consciences, and they are probably better at the political game than you.  I once observed an executive execute the most deceptive game of bait and switch I’ve ever seen, and shortly after that, he offered advice and support to the person who had been baited.  The kicker?  The executive knew he was being deceptive–he offered his advice with the phrase “I don’t know why you would trust us, but here’s the advice.”  The nerve.
  7. Find a way to serve.
  8. Learn to manage for the short term, but get out of any situation that manages to only be short term, because your life will (hopefully) be long. It’s important to learn how to manage for the short term–to cut costs and rein in spending or maybe seek additional sales to cover a shortfall elsewhere. And it’s okay to manage to the short term–that’s where we all eat.  But it’s also important to realize that just as alcoholism is the diseased extreme of enjoying a good drink, short-termism is both a disease and a kind of addiction: The more you do it, the more it becomes insidious.
  9. Hotheads aren’t always bad.  I had a boss early in my career who was the greatest guy to ever throw his keyboard across a room; he was a tantrum machine, but he was also a guy who genuinely cared.  Know the difference between a grade-A jerk or asshole and a good person with a strong sense of duty but also a temper.  There is a difference.
  10. Where there’s no contract, there’s no contract.  Here’s a piece of advice that’s going to sound more cynical than it is.  No, I’m not saying “always have a contract”; I’ve negotiated multi-million dollar consulting engagements that were founded on the client’s trust and the consultant’s commitment to excellence, and I believe in the power of a person’s word and handshake. But, and this is an important but, many people like to use the ambiguity of no contract to gain advantage.  So my advice to you is to always know when there is no contract–know your counterparty/client/customer, and your boss (see what I did with that last one?), as well as you know yourself.  Don’t rely on contracts, but know when you don’t have one; no amount of flattery and gushy feelings at the start of a relationship will overcome the poor values of a counterparty who won’t define or fulfill commitments.
  11. Beware anyone who goes out of their way to say they are giving you friendly advice.  They probably are neither giving you advice nor being your friend.  True friends don’t have to reiterate the point; you know them by their deeds.
  12. Liquid net worth provides flexibility. Whether you’re a shop floor worker or a CEO, money is important, but it’s really liquid net worth that matters; I know plenty of senior executives who are miserable but completely locked down to a bad team, bad company, or bad leader due to their own financial choices.  Always keep enough liquidity on hand to be able to walk away without regret; that means you should accumulate a few thousand bucks when you’re just out of college, and it might mean hundreds of thousands of dollars once you’ve “made it.”  Financial handcuffs are tough, which brings me to my next point…
  13. People make really bad decisions when they’re under financial stress.  This can include executives cooking the books (or even “just” shading them surreptitiously) to make their bonuses, but it can also include things as innocuous as salespeople treating customers poorly or manufacturing workers doing their jobs poorly.  You really don’t want to have a workforce that’s worried about whether they can make their next grocery bill, and more than that, you don’t want a CFO who will make rotten financial and personnel decisions just to make a bonus.  The love of money is the root of all sorts of bad things–I read that somewhere.
  14. Care.  Yes, I mean that: Care.  You will be tempted (in fact, encouraged in some environments) to acquire social and emotional distance from the people some think you will have to hurt to be successful; it will come with the challenge to “do what it takes” to keep your job.  But don’t be fooled–care.  I was once offered a role that implicitly came with the need to fire a couple of people I had coached and mentored and whose capabilities were strong. It wasn’t the right thing to do, so I didn’t; I chose to leave.  On the way out, I was goosed with a comment and critique about not doing what it takes, but that’s just a consequence of caring.  You know what else is a consequence of caring?  Loyalty, love, the ability to sleep well at night.  In short, your life will be better because you took the time to care.
  15. Trust is cumulative…in both directions.  You will live life with a sense of trust in people you know you can rely on, but you have to learn to know when you have enough evidence to know you can trust someone, and also to know when you can’t. 
  16. Respect the dignity of other people.  There are a lot of instances in life when it’s easier to double cross, lie, shade the truth, and walk away–resist that temptation. Stripped bare, we all rely on others. So respect that, and you’ll go a long way.
  17. Life and business are not zero-sum games. You’ve made it through college, and maybe played some sports.  If so, you’ve gotten used to winners and losers, but life isn’t like that.  In life, there are winners of all sorts and losers of all sorts, and sometimes there are situations when everyone is a winner (or at least not losers).  Really effective executives I know think about when they are playing a zero-sum game and when they have the opportunity to grow the pie, so learn to realize the beauty of growing the pie.   Zero-sum games are in actuality very rare–we only make them common. On a related note,
  18. A spreadsheet can’t show you how to grow the pie.  Unfortunately, math without vision only leads to reductive incrementalism.  Very, very few spreadsheets would have predicted the rise of Standard Oil, the emergence of digital music, or the turnaround of Apple Computer. Numbers don’t lie, but they don’t think either. Vision has to be injected into that spreadsheet; don’t mistake tools and math for strategic vision.
  19. When it comes to people, where they (and you) stand depends on where they sit.  Upton Sinclair famously noted that it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on his not understanding it. Perspective matters, and if you get good at taking different perspectives, you’ll start to understand how other people think, although it does take time and practice.  By altering where you sit and then thinking about where you stand, you start to think interesting thoughts when it comes to business strategy.  Funny thing is, you also start to think differently about the world.  Perhaps John D. Rockefeller (of Standard Oil) really did save the whales; perhaps Steve Jobs is actually the cause of a generation of hearing loss and an epidemic of traffic fatalities; and perhaps, just perhaps, what you’re being paid to do isn’t good for the organization or the world.  Get beyond your salary when it comes to what right and wrong look like. Stretch your thinking, and be bigger than your smallness.
  20. No matter how much garbage they eat, seagulls are not really good creatures to have around. Seagulls fly in, beg for food, take a dump, and then cackle a lot; some people are enamored with them, but in reality, they’re just rats with wings (as we used to say back home on the Gulf Coast).  Seagulls live at the beach and the dump, and in human form, they often live in corporate environments.  My advice for you is to learn to be a problem solver, not a problem finder; cultivate a constructive approach to life, not just an observational one. Justify your existence, and don’t be a seagull.
  21. Know how to incrementally assess situations.  The incidence of “good from far, but far from good” in people and companies is increasing because the channels of communication are increasing; it’s far easier for companies to cultivate high-profile brands that cover up lowlife cultures.  On the flip side, it’s far easier for motivated individuals to learn a lot about any situation in a short time frame. Learn to assess situations at first glance, after a few minutes, after a few days, and after months.  Learn to take the time to sleep on decisions, and do your due diligence, but also trust your gut.  This is especially true about people: If people look and smell unethical even though they’re wearing ethics as a badge, disregard the badge and go with look and feel.
  22. Don’t be a “yes” man, but realize that being a “no” man is just as bad.  Yes men are common in any culture; they go along to get along.  It’s a fact of life, but not a very edifying existence, so find a way to have your own point of view or else you’ll be redundant.  But the opposite position is equally bad; the “no” man rarely encourages growth or expansion.  Try to think about growth as coming from a combination of yesses and nos, and live in the mess between the absolutes.
  23. Be exceptionally careful about “following orders.”  Just following orders can give you a mental freedom that allows you to ignore basic ethical principles, and ultimately it can corrupt your values.  Have the self-respect to reflect on orders, and recognize that they shouldn’t supersede your humanity.
  24. Your network is everything, but you have to know what a network is.  A real network is not the number of people you’re connected to–it’s the number of people who will do something for you if you’re in need, and there is a huge difference between the two. In my early days, people thought networking was collecting business cards; nowadays it’s probably LinkedIn connections–but both are wrong. Networking is finding reciprocal relationships that help you by your helping others.
  25. If you’ve made it this far, you probably already know this, but reading is a highly underrated skill.  I’d argue it’s second only to listening.
  26. Finally, and perhaps as a wrapper…Preserve your self-respect.  There will be plenty of times in your career when you’ll be faced with choices that can erode your self-respect; sometimes it’s just as simple as taking a call in the middle of a family event, and sometimes it’s worse. You’ll find months of your career that are bad for your health–it is going to happen. But even if one day you find that you have to make a choice you know is wrong but you have to do it to preserve a broader agenda or position, just be sure you know the stakes.

I’m sure you’re off to a fantastic career.  Enjoy it, and maybe one of these points will save you from a scar or two.

Sincerely,

Your much older self

How Rogue Can Work For You

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Sometimes, independence is the best policy.

 

Allow me to indulge in a little bit of personal storytelling to make what may be a useful point.

22 and a half years ago, I made a commitment to leave a small town in lower Alabama to head to college at Stanford University. In that day, before the internet, I had barely known what “Stanford” was when the football recruiter first came calling; I literally asked him where it was on the map. As a somewhat highly rated football recruit with a modest national profile, I was known to Stanford more than Stanford was to me. When I made that commitment, a little-known fact is that I received hate mail from my South-loving neighbors…some of it mailed anonymously, some of it sounded off in newspaper columns. My favorite was a column in the Birmingham news that ended with “somebody said go west, young man, and Geoff Wilson did.” It was a tough decision. It’s one that I still to this day don’t fully grasp how my 17-year-old self made. The easy choices were right there (Alabama! Auburn! LSU! Florida State! Tennessee!).

I went for the “total package” that was Stanford–academics, athletics, weather, diversity of thought, and, above all, teammates who seemed to be interested in being more than only ground-pounding hunks of meat. Very, very few people understood my choice. My high school football coach, after hearing (from me) that I had committed to Stanford, simply responded with “I figured that…”

Telling.

20 years ago, I had a life-changing experience on the football field. I had one leg collapsed and twisted in one of those awkward ways that leads to reconstructive surgery and contemplation of one’s future athletic life. It didn’t put me off the field permanently–I missed a season and then was a starting tackle in college for a couple more years followed by a sip of coffee with an NFL club after “recovering.” But, it did blow my confidence in some ways and either physically or mentally cost me a step or two. Physically or mentally…which one, I’ll never know, but it was just enough.

14 years ago, I watched my maternal grandmother take her last breath. A sharp, spitfire (she would say “shit-fire”) of a woman, she ended her life unsure of her surroundings and probably glad of it–I doubt she would have liked the nursing home. She had rescued my immediate family and multiple other wanderers from crisis, she always had a pot of something cooking on the stove (just in case somebody dropped by), and she would not hesitate to, ahem, tan a hide or two. Watching her take a final few gasps was formative.

5 years ago, I went through a rending and private self-evaluation and made a choice to leave a prestigious and altogether fantastic global professional services firm (that I still like and respect today) while on the cusp of partnership. I can still hear the “no, no, no” admonition of a firm partner and friend when I said I’d made that choice.  I was in search of more than I thought that firm could offer in terms of long-term stability, so I went corporate.

3 years ago, I lent moral and physical support as I witnessed a very close 40-something family friend lie on a hospital bed in my mother’s living room slowly choking to death during a brief and brutal fight with lung cancer.

2 years ago, it all came to a head in two ways, almost mystically but doubtless coincidentally.  First, I faced a choice of staying corporate and doing, as far too many corporate types do, what I was told to do because it would mean more money. This choice came to me in such a way that my own purposefully transparent values and aspirations were challenged in multiple ways.

Second, during the somewhat agonizing deliberation over how to consider that choice, I had the experience of being the first good Samaritan on the scene of an awful one-car rollover crash on an interstate highway in Alabama.  The driver, with his young son and their cat in the car, had gone into diabetic shock and run off the road at 70 miles per hour.  As my wife and I saw the dust cloud ahead of us and saw the small SUV rolling multiple times, she called 911 while I shouldered our car and sprinted (as it were) to the scene.  The boy and cat were fine–the driver was not.  As the only person on scene, I was magnificently ineffective.  I clawed and wrestled to open the driver-side door of the upside down SUV only to find…finality.

It put my personal dilemma about “corporate or not” into stark relief at a time when such contrast was probably best needed. I faced the choice of either doing–in the misguided words of another colleague “whatever it took” to be a good corporate player or, in the words of a senior executive I worked with intensely for years, “going rogue.”

I chose rogue.

I think without the formative experiences of a few broken dreams (dammit, I was going to play in the NFL for a long time) and witnessing a few times how we all end with broken bodies (thank you, Chuck, for admitting that the best part was “knowing how you would go.”), I couldn’t have done it.

I think that anyone reading this has areas of life where rogue is right. It might be in work, health, or family, but choosing to go against convention can be exceptionally agonizing but altogether rewarding.  Why?

First of all, there is a binding pressure on so many of us not to be creative.  Wait, what?  Yes. The pressure to be as uncreative as possible–to be proles in somebody else’s totalitarian society–exists.  That can come at work, but I’d argue it also comes in civic society–churches, service organizations, and government.  When you are presented with choices and asked not to think them through–especially when you are scorned for thinking them through–you are facing this sort of pressure.

Conventional thinking comes from doing what you are told, not what is thoughtfully considered.

Second of all, there is a subtle but extremely strong force that holds us in thrall with the herd.  It’s known as “risk.” We view departing the herd and thinking on our own as risky. In fact, many corporate, civic, and church cultures are founded on the notion that people must be trained to feel worthless if they are disconnected from the whole. But it’s just not true–some of the most world-changing observations and decisions have been made by people who ignored the risk of solitude and actually did things.  Do you think Martin Luther ran his ideas by the hierarchy?

I’ll riff for a minute on this second one, because it is an area in which the world has actually changed for the better over the past 10 years or so.  In decades past, individuals attached themselves to firms for the promise of stability. The social contract was that people who did reasonable work didn’t get fired; they were part of the firm.

That all changed during the rise of corporate restructuring and overwhelming (but in many cases necessary) focus on shareholder value.  The baby boomer generation (my parents) walked right into the maw of this reality during the ’80s.  Lifetime employment was no longer real. Defined benefits were gone.  The social contract had changed.

But people’s behaviors did not.  They still joined companies with the thought that the company was entering into a contract with them…to the extent that they would eliminate their own professional voices and outside-the-firm career development options in favor of being “all-in.” I’d argue that such was the case until about 5 – 10 years ago.  The younger generation has gotten wise to it, although not entirely.  The world has changed.  Nowadays, it’s easy to source and sell talent on the open market, and firms play less of a role in the matter.

For young professionals, this means that “what’s in it for me” amounts more to the immediate experience and pace a role in an organization offers vs. merely a “job.”

For talented professionals with a longer and strong track record, this means that the only reason to sign one’s life away to a corporation is that that corporation has committed to an explicit contract with that individual (I’m talking ink and paper–verbal contracts are basically meaningless even when you have recorded the conversation, trust me).  The only other reason I can think of is if the talented professional owns equity in the corporation.

So firms like yours and mine are left with three basic value propositions for the people they employ:  Professional development for younger people to increase their employability within your firm or somebody else’s, ownership of your firm so that they can enjoy the longer term fruits of their labor, or a contract that offers some risk sharing.  That’s what we can offer to today’s “roguish” workforce.

That’s it: Professional development, ownership, or a contract.

But that brings you to the realization that for seasoned, talented people, an employment contract without equity is essentially a consulting contract. So, then what?  Well, the short answer is that in today’s economy, unless you’re an owner or are receiving an out-sized investment in your own professional development, you’re a consultant anyway.

Might as well admit it.

That is the biggest change in the past decade: Senior talent can finally find its own level outside of the politics and impracticalities of a firm structure, and younger talent clamors for more professional development sooner than ever.  It’s the truth. And, the only people I know who lament “their people’s” newfound ability to go get a better deal are people who think that people they employ are “theirs” in the first place.

I’ll offer a couple of implications.  You might already see through my story above and say it’s totally anecdotal. To that, I say guilty.  But still…

For the individual: This article is a long way of saying that life is short.  We all end up the same way…broken.  Once we (that’s you) have invested the time and effort necessary to build an exemplary track record, we might as well have the self-respect to exercise our freedom to choose.  Choose where and with whom we spend our time and efforts, and how we are compensated for the risk we take.  Let’s choose, at least occasionally, to be creative.

For the corporate manager:  It’s important to realize that in today’s environment, exceptionally talented individuals are going to look for ownership or a contract that looks a lot like it.  As a corporate leader, be sure to investigate the benefits that the new epoch of highly talented free agents brings to you and your organization.  Oh, and because you do employ people (just as I do), remember that the contract is different now…  people are looking for an employment value proposition today and not simply a career.  Almost no organization can credibly offer a career anymore, so you might as well offer a value proposition that extends employees’ capabilities immediately vs. promising something in the future that may or may not happen. So, go beyond hire and fire. Consider sourcing talent in a more flexible model.

No matter where you stand, rogue can work for you.

 

Skill, Will, and…Micromanagement?

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Nowhere in the job description are the words “watch their every move.” 

Recently, I had the privilege of leading a classroom of MBA students through a discussion on influencing and team building.  During the discussion I dusted off the old “skill-will” matrix.

You know?  The skill will matrix?  It’s the one that lets you consider the people you lead by their level of skill and their level of will, and to lead or manage them accordingly.  It looks like this:

SkillWill1

It’s a useful tool at a superficial level.  It can certainly help leaders, especially leaders struggling to establish a leadership style, to handle diverse teams.

It’s kind of a Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” approach to leadership:  Know when to guide ’em, know when to excite ’em…

It brought to mind an interesting reality:  “Micromanage” isn’t on the matrix.

A lot of bad leaders (and good leaders in bad times) need to learn this.

Sure, people with a combination of low skill and low will need more direction.  They also might need to be redeployed against different work; and that’s the rub…If you are micromanaging, one of you is redundant.

Micromanagement is neither inspiring nor sustainable.

So What?  

This one is straightforward.  Two sides of the coin deserve discussion:

If you as leader find yourself having to micromanage, you are probably either deploying talent inefficiently (i.e., against problems that are beyond the talent), or you are insecure.

Figure out which it is and fix it.

If you as a follower find yourself being micromanaged, you are either under-delivering, or you need to insist on a heart to heart with your leader.

In either event, it isn’t a sustainable proposition; so why start it in the first place?

Use the matrix, know when to delegate and when to direct.  But, know when too much is too much.

What do you think? 

Why I Don’t Believe In Recruiters

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Recruiters are tools…on every level.

 

In case you haven’t noticed, I have a modest disdain for consultants and professionals who come from the “say anything” philosophy of life; I wrote on that here. Spin is a bad thing, confronting the elephants in the room is a good thing, and it’s really that simple.  In this case, I’m going to take it to a whole new level of hate, but that’s just in the spirit of keeping it real.

The title of this article is an homage of sorts to an aggressively atheist song by Art Alexakis of the band Everclear titled “Why I Don’t Believe in God.” In that lyric, Alexakis recounts scenes from a troubled childhood that sapped his ability to believe in anything related to God.  It’s one of those challenging thoughts that we all need at times:  Is our hatred of something related to bad people and experiences or related to a really bad game?

In this case, I’m going to hate on the game, and the players get their dose as well–all based on my subjective experience.

Sometime around 1995, I was deeply entrenched in an upper division football program at my university (yes, mine!). For anyone who doesn’t know, college football is all about the ability to recruit top talent.  “It ain’t the x’s and the o’s, it’s the Jimmys and the Joes” is how it’s been put in one form or another for a long time–meaning a great team comprises great players, no matter the scheme.

In that world, recruiting matters deeply.  Finding the right talent and convincing “it” to come to your football program are the two foundational moves of a healthy program.  It’s not the only thing, but it’s close.

So, one evening at dinner with the team, one of the assistant football coaches gets up from the table and says bluntly, “I need to go lie to some kids.”

He meant, of course, that he needed to go make the telephone calls to budding high school stars that assistant coaches were obliged to make. He needed to go “lie to some kids” about their ability to be better than the incumbent players, right away and on their way to stardom right now. Oh, and by the way, we really care about you and would never try to over-recruit your talent while you’re playing for us.  Just sign on the line, and forget about those other programs.

It was a thoroughly funny statement at the time.  After all, we were all elite players in a good program who had made our choices. In that world, it is the rare player who leaves a team.  And we liked this coach.  But, wow, the truth.

Fast forward 15 years, and that same group of budding football stars is now met with a plethora of headhunters.  The interesting part is that the recruiting pitch is hardly any different. “We have opportunities here.” “The career advancement potential is outstanding.” “The prior guys just didn’t have the horsepower.” “The company is on the upswing.” “We have no internal talent to fill this role.” “The prior fella just left to pursue other opportunities.” You know the drill–lie to some kids.  Only, in this case, it’s “stroke seasoned professionals with a shaded version of reality that could be construed as misleading.”

So, what happens?  Well, two things.  First, the headhunter gets paid, and second, you take the role and, as they say in the auto business, your mileage varies.  Recruiters, like stock touts and sports agents, have almost no stake in your success; their stake is in your decision.  Always be careful when dealing with anyone who only cares about your decision and not your health or success.

So, now we are down to it: Why I don’t believe in recruiters and what to do about it.

I don’t believe in recruiters because I believe the agency issues are real.  They have an incentive to lie, distort, and cheat to convince both sides of a transaction that the placement is good.  And they are doing it at the individual level; they are dealing with lives. The worst among them are no better than a Boiler Room broker dialing for dollars, except in this case, it’s dealing with entire livelihoods, not just components of someone’s savings.  The best among them know that score and go to work feeling icky every day.

Oooh, lie, distort, cheat?  Those are big, bad words, aren’t they? Well, yes, but just like Art Alexakis’s lyric on disbelieving, it’s my experience that leads me to the thought.  I have been on the client side, the candidate side, and  the observer side of headhunter transactions.  I have also witnessed the most corrupt personal ethics from individuals steeped in this profession.

That’s why I don’t believe in recruiters.

So, what is a corporate executive to do about it?

Well, the most important thing to know is that your best talent prospects already know everything I just wrote above.  They won’t be fooled by the players or the game.  You need to get ahead of that if you, in fact, have a great opportunity for them. Every recruiter from LA to New York will have already tried to pry them from their current roles with promises of candy canes and jelly beans.  You need to cut the crap and tell them why yours is the place to be.  Stop relying on recruiters; everybody knows they’re salespeople.  Sell the virtues of your company from the inside–don’t outsource it.

The second thing is to use recruiters for what they are: Market makers. They are exceptionally valuable in that role.  They are tools in your toolkit.

The third thing is to be aware of the perverse tendency of really great headhunters to embed and distort talent needs.  I’ve never met a headhunter who was good at assessing whether a company actually needed a certain type of talent.  I’ve also never met a headhunter who really wanted to know the company’s talent landscape; that’s the company’s job. But I have met really great relationship recruiters who convince executives that they are strategic partners. Here’s the test for you: How many times have your recruiters asked you to assess your internal people’s resumes (no ethical recruiter would try to share a client’s talent with their other clients, right?) to compare to the external candidates you are hiring? Very rarely, I’ll bet.

This post is all about the tendency of a certain professional niche to produce people and actions of questionable moral caliber. If you know this, and ensure that you are sufficiently isolated from it, you can make use of professional recruiters in the right way.  If not, you’ll just be another heavily stroked senior executive who was fooled by the game. Use recruiters, but don’t let them represent you.

Recruiters are tools…on every level.

Do You Know Your Dilbert Premium?

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Do you charge a premium for dysfunction?

 

I love Dilbert.

The classic comic strip by artist Scott Adams speaks to truths of the corporate environment.

As a matter of fact, the only people I have encountered who dislike Dilbert tend to be the ones whose behaviors the comic strip captures most perfectly.  In other words, they are offended.

What the Dilbert comics show best is the dysfunctions that crop up from management platitudes and organizational shortcomings.

They show the kind of dysfunction that overwhelms organizations…even some of the best organizations you know.  Leadership that believes “do something” is the answer exists in many, many forms.

I get a kick out of Dilbert’s send-ups of such stuff.  It puts on paper some of the rather ridiculous aspects of corporate environments (oh, and consultants) that make life miserable for people fighting the good fight.

Which has me thinking…

I like to think that a healthy part of running a healthy company is having people who value their own self respect and the dignity of others.  Those two things are really reciprocals of others.  I respect myself too much to be unethical, and I respect your dignity enough not to ask you to be.  Corporate environments that don’t foster self respect and dignity are worthy of leaving, as I’ve written before in many forms.  That’s a line that I won’t and I hope you won’t cross.

The real interesting question is about Dilbert dysfunction that falls short of the dignity line. How do you handle that? Do we need to define our own “Dilbert Premium” in our lives?  Do we need to place a price on dysfunction?

An anecdote

At a conference of consultants I recently attended, one of the participants related a story of a client.  It went something like this (and I’m quoting for effect, to be clear, I’m making up the quote):

“I was proposing on some work for a client who is known to be a real pain about fees and payment and scope. So, I was really careful to propose a lower than reasonable price for the work…”

What? Yes, that was my reaction.  What, you say?  You proposed a lower price for a potential client who is known as a pain in the rear?

Having served a few clients who were (a) known as jerks and (b) fulfilled that promise, I firmly believe that this guy didn’t have his Dilbert Premium worked out.

What is the Dilbert Premium? 

Think of the Dilbert Premium as the price of wading into dysfunction.  For a professional services provider, this is easy.  You know you have to go to the bottom of the septic tank to solve the problem?  Price accordingly.  Workers of this type are episodic.

The definition, then, of the Dilbert Premium is the increment or decrement you charge to your market value for dealing with particularly toxic or challenging environments or particularly attractive ones. 

Yes, that’s right, it works in reverse, too.  A lot of people make that calculation:  I like my job and the team, so I’ll take a pay cut. Still, it’s stunning to me how many people dislike the work, the people and the pay, and make no move whatsoever.  And by this, I mean seasoned professionals who are quite good at their jobs.

So, you work in a challenging business environment at a tough job with people you don’t like.  Name your price for your Dilbert Premium.  Is it higher pay? A better immediate working team?  Perhaps a change in job scope?  Those are all variables to consider.

How much do you charge to live with dysfunction? Do you just do your job, tolerate boors, and never ask for a raise? Are you expensive, or cheap?

I will write at some other point about how organizations’ cost of talent is directly related to reputation, growth, and leadership culture.  This one, however, is on you:  Do you price yourself appropriate to the dysfunction you will be asked to tolerate?

A second anecdote

I once took a lower paying role than an offered alternative on the theory (supported by historical evidence) that the Dilbert Premium would place the lower paying role far above the alternative; and, I was right.  The work, the people, and the pay were all fine. I never looked back.  If this is you, congratulations.

However, things do change, and as dysfunction mounts, you have to assess whether your assessed Dilbert Premium was, in fact, right.  If it was not…then look for the right time to make a change–a raise, a change in job scope, a change of team.

Ask yourself:  Do you charge a premium for dysfunction?  Should you start now?

Hiring For Smarts Isn’t What You May Think It Is

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Only hire people smarter than you, but know what kinds of smarts you need…

In the modern corporate environment, far too many executives are bent on taking the notion of “hiring people smarter than they are” to the extreme.  In doing so, they create talent cultures where glib, facile intellects have an advantage over specialists of all sorts; and this is a problem for strategy creation and execution.

These cultures will take an un-apprenticed person with a generalist skillset (or, in some cases, merely a strong presence) and explain away deep functional deficiencies as “flat spots” to be rounded out.  They will concurrently ignore deep specialists without the glib (and, yes, I do mean this as a pejorative–as it very much is) facade and deem them not fit for higher office due to capability deficiencies.

They make depth and breadth equal partners in talent evaluation structures, and then overweight breadth in the actual evaluation. In doing so, they cast off expert talents in favor of generalists ones.  They get it all backwards.  In spades.

Why it happens

This problem goes back to a notion whose origin is unclear to me: “Only hire people smarter than you.”  I agree with this… No, really, only hire people smarter than you!

It’s a good policy.  Sure, on its face, it’s a ridiculous notion. It’s one whose logic leaves the smartest people in the most junior roles, and a team of ignoramuses in the C-suite.

In a seminal Harvard Business Review article called Hiring For Smarts, author Justin Menkes reinforced the notion that intelligence rules. Hire for it.

But to think that way too purely misses the point.  The people you hire need to be expected to develop more depth than you have at something. That something may be as straightforward as managing your calendar or as complex as negotiating cross-border partnerships.  People who work for you don’t have to be broader than you, but they should (eventually) be deeper than you at something. They have to be smarter than you or they won’t provide you real effectiveness.

In other words, if you only hire people who look like you but who are only slightly less capable than you at everything you do, you are either (1) running an apprenticeship shop (and that’s fine), or (2) really not a good hiring manager.  If you are hiring apprentices, that’s fine, but you need to acknowledge it.  More common is reality (2).

Some common reasons for these deficiencies 

So, then, why are so many executives, even those who are otherwise avowed technocrats, failing so miserably at this by over weighting degree, background, and a glib social presence on their way to hiring generalists that have nothing special to contribute to the team?

Here are a few reasons:

  1. They cultivate a magnificently flawed hiring processes:  Without a doubt the most common reason is that hiring processes place more focus on personality and presence than capability and competence.  To be sure, rapport is important in an interview. But, capability profiles can’t be dismissed in the interest of rapport. Some firms solve this with tests, some with good cop / bad cop interviewing approaches, and still others (the world class ones) with interview approaches that are very common and calibrated to find both rapport / fit and capability.  If your hiring processes solve for glib generalists that look like mini-senior executives, then that’s what you will get.  Unfortunately, those profiles are too often the most difficult to upskill to the needs of their next job.  Like it or not, technical competence is much harder to gain in a short time than boardroom presence, and a lot easier to justify in the after action report on a bad hire.
  2. They are scared as hiring managers: The second most common reason for the misapplication of the “hiring for smarts” notion is that hiring managers are actually afraid of hiring people with more knowledge than them. They continually hire technical lightweights because they are afraid of bringing a threat to their own well being into the organization.  So, they explicitly hire for nice looking generalists who seem very smart but who lack depth.  If your hiring managers tend to be the experts at vetoing recommendations from peers who review their candidates, you might have this in action.
  3. They propagate tyrannical management practices: The third reason I’ll give is actually the extreme other end of reason 2. This one is the hiring manager who only wants things done a certain way (whether that way is good, bad, ethical, or unethical), and will hire absolute blank slates–or, simply yes man versions of themselves–to do it. These hiring manager profiles are common, and come with significant downside.  If your hiring managers pound the table against the notion of bringing in people with strong experience from elsewhere because it “won’t fit,” you might have this dynamic in place.  You also might have someone concerned that an outside expert could find the cracks in their empire. Watch out.

So What? 

The “so what” to this post is right there at the top.  Hire people for their smarts, but know what kind of smarts you need. Try the old double blind test:  If you strip out the name, education, and company names from the resume, does it still suit your needs for a sufficient and smartly deep person?

Why am I writing on this?  It may read as very “HR-centric” and perhaps outside the scope of a practice that is focused on strategy and performance.

Simple.

Good teams build great strategies.

Good teams are built through great hiring and promotion practices.

And…Too often, today, so-called “great” hires are judged by their cover letter, brand names, and presences and not a thorough vetting of their C.V. and true special qualities.

I’ve yet to see a good team built exclusively from very smart generalists.  The best of teams have a strong vein of hard won experience and depth within them.  They also have a strong willingness to listen to that experience.

I write this for the CEOs and senior executives in my life and practice, but certainly these thoughts apply to anyone charged with building a team through hiring.

Hire people smarter than you.  Just make sure their smarts emerge from functional or technical depth, and you will be ok.

Good luck, and please share any thoughts you have!

 

A Case of the Management Yips

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Feeling off your game?  People letting you know that you are?  Maybe it’s time to change things up.

One of the great realities of any mental game is the potential for the mind to short circuit it.

In golf, the emergence of mental short circuits that lead otherwise great golfers to make awful mistakes is known as the yips.

Some believe that at this very moment, Tiger Woods is suffering from the yips.  Many aging professional athletes resort to intensive therapy to avoid the yips.

The yips, to put it bluntly, stink.

If you want to see how bad the yips can be, you need look no further than former major league catcher Mackey Sasser.

I’ll link to a fascinating video by ESPN as a part of its 30 for 30 shorts series that illustrates in gory detail the way Sasser’s mind was rewired through a specific traumatic impact.

Here’s a link to the video.

Sasser, a catcher for the New York Mets organization, lost the ability to smoothly toss the ball back to the pitcher.

His was a colossal case of the yips.

The question

Have you ever witnessed a manager who is off their game?  Perhaps they used to be an engaging and warm leader. But, after years of constant delivery and pressure, they have deteriorated into a shell of their former self.  Perhaps, like Mackey Sasser, they have undergone a severe psychological stress that helped surface severe issues that were hiding under their former leadership profile.

Is it possible to get a case of the yips in business?

I think so.  And here’s why:  Like any other mental pursuit, working with and leading people takes energy, focus, and drive.  No, I won’t say that the average manager needs the mental acuity of the average professional golfer.  Still, if the mind of a pro golfer–used to repeating actions with extreme precision for year after year–can be completely tripped by the yips; then so can a manager’s.

The manager can go from being a great listener to being a constant critic.  He might go from being a a thoughtful problem solver to being a problem finder and complainer.

He might go from developing people to driving them away.

Sure, it’s possible that our formerly effective manager has gone off the deep end.  Or, it’s possible he has a case of the management yips.

So what? 

I bring this up for one reason, and I’ll write more on this at another time.  When a leader loses his way, he has to make a change. In golf, many a case of the yips is dealt with by creating distance from prior habits.  For instance, right handed golfers often actually start to putt left handed.  In a sort of ironic twist, they jump so far out of their old system that they relieve the hitches and glitches that come with the yips.

So, if you are a manager who has perhaps gotten off your game even though your processes, habits, and disciplines haven’t changed, consider jumping out of your system.  Change things up.  Look for fresh air, do meetings standing up. Stop taking calls in your office.

You might have a case of the management yips.   And, like so many other pressure and stress induced bad behaviors, the only way out is through.

What You Can’t See Can Hurt You

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Blind spots can limit your effectiveness and derail your career. As you get more senior, they can make other people’s lives miserable, too. Ask around.

I’ll state this out front:

I’m not sure an article of this kind can be written without a taste of irony. If you know me, you will see my blind spots pop out from the text or in your mind. If you don’t know me, you know somebody like me and will see the same. It can’t be avoided. Writing an article on other people’s blind spots is an invitation for the “pot-kettle-black” defense.

I can live with that.

The Curious Case of Blind Spots

What’s a blind spot?

To answer that question, I’ll refer to a tool called the Johari window.

Johari what you say?

The Johari window is an interpersonal evaluation tool that is fantastically simple and at the same time fantastically powerful when used in honest feedback cultures. It looks like this:

johari

Basically, it’s a shorthand way of categorizing all the things that either help or hurt you in interactions with others.

There are things you know about yourself (that means you admit that their impact is real, not that you know that the thing exists) and that others know about you (like, for instance, that you have a massive temper).

That’s the “Arena.”

There are things that neither you nor others know about you (like how you might perform in a life or death circumstance). Those things might be revealed to be good or bad.

That’s the “Unknown.”

There are things you know about yourself that others don’t know about you (like that you have massive anxiety attacks before walking into a high-stakes meeting, but are good at hiding them from others).

That’s your “Façade.”

And, finally, there are things that other people know about you that you do not know about yourself.

Those are your “Blind Spots.”

By the way, I encourage you to study the Johari window. It’s a simple tool that I have used throughout my career, although not with everyone. For those who have been the victims of a personalized Johari window session with me, I’ll admit now that the time I spent on the topic is a fantastic indicator of how much I care for them. It’s a tool of caring…seriously.

The Johari window is fully contextual. You may have a professional façade that drops the moment you walk through the door at home or at your local pub. You may have a personal façade at home that hides the tyrannical manager you actually are at work. It works both ways.

But why blind spots?

Blind spots can be brutal. They don’t have to be necessarily bad, but they can be brutal. And I’ll get to that in a moment.

Why focus on blind spots rather than the other areas of the window?  I’ll put it this way:  Your blind spots are a direct measure of both the integrity of the people around you and your own openness to feedback and change. The other areas are either your willful submission to feedback (Arena), your willful withholding and manipulation (Façade), or, as we say in the business, TBD (Unknown).

But blind spots are the people around you willfully withholding from you and manipulating you, which makes them dangerous.

How they are dangerous…

The danger of blind spots comes either from the distaste they create or from the lever for manipulation they create.

I’ll demonstrate with a benign examples, then extend to something more malignant.

Imagine a highly capable manager who has a habit of chewing a pen. Yes, it’s objectively a bad habit, but it’s one that is tolerated at many levels of the organization. Everybody the person is in meetings with witnesses the person chewing on his pen. Even the manager himself knows he chews his pen, so you might say the action isn’t really a blind spot. But blind spots aren’t about the actions themselves—they’re about the impact of the actions. And so when half the people who witness our manager with a writing instrument between his teeth are genuinely disgusted by it, our friendly manager is slowly and gently blackballed from higher management because of “presence” issues or some other HR euphemism.

Our highly capable manager is now capped out by a habit that could be solved by one bit of feedback. The manager thinks he has a crutch, but others think he has a disgusting habit. Somebody needs to talk to him, and he himself needs to ask about his own blind spots.

A more malignant blind spot that is endemic across workforces relates to good traits being used by others for ill gains. This is the realm of gender and equitable pay discrimination. One worker works for $60K a year, while the person in the next cubicle is doing the same (or less) work but making $90K. Some managers rely on these sorts of disparities. They rely on loyalty and trust as a kind of blind spot. The manager is aware of the disparity and knows that the worker is selling their time cheap, but the worker thinks the company is fair and worthy of loyalty.

Loyalty, then, can be a highly blinding trait (in at least some cases, it can even be considered blind loyalty). When a person who buys into the “team player” work mentality is working for managers who are covertly playing an “every person for themselves” game, these sorts of disparities become real. A pay culture built on loyal, naïve, and willing “suckers” is the pain of blind spots writ large.

Of course there are blind spots that are so bad they are almost comical. I once knew an executive who had a deep and abiding habit of bending the truth in highly visible ways. And I don’t mean white lies like “you look great today,” although those were legion. I mean lies that are so obvious and known to so many people that the executive became a bit of a hall-talk laughing stock because of it. This particular individual would frequently launch a whopper that was verifiably deceptive to the tune of “I just had a meeting with so and so” when so and so was never in such a meeting and perhaps not even in the building. Of course, as is often the case with highly effective liars, executives like this only need to fool the people who feed them.  That particular executive’s skill at and focus on upwardly targeted deceptions overcame the reality of their ineptness in all the others. Everybody, except their superiors, knew they were generally dishonest.

Don’t be that guy!

Which brings me to my final point. Really bad situations come from blind spots in high places. A senior executive who has a blind spot about his habits or weaknesses or tells, or the foibles of ego (or loyalty, for that matter), is susceptible to manipulation in ways that perhaps lower level employees are not.

Why?

Because typical senior executives have positions of power. They can make decisions that allocate real resources, and because of that, they are studied by others more thoroughly than anyone else. Nearly everyone these execs interact with in a professional context is looking for resources or sales or even just favor. Therefore, nearly everyone studies their interactions with these higher-ups looking for their blind spots. The only antidote is to maintain a set of healthy, close relationships with people who will challenge you and reveal your blind spots. Still, combine aggressive character study with ego, and you have a recipe that no close relationship can overcome. Years of flattery make some people impervious to the truth in these circumstances.

So what?

Why take the time to write on blind spots?  Because they are actually solvable, but they require diligence and discipline, and because they are highly deleterious to most true strategic approaches to career or company leadership. You may not chew pens, but you might ignore subordinates or interrupt peers or fall victim to flattery. All you have to know is that your blind spots can work against you, or in the worst of cases, actually be used against you.

Ask around, and if people say you have no blind spots, ask some new people.

90 Percent of Everything Is Crap

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Learning this one adage can release you to focus on what matters.

What’s the difference between a performance culture that focuses on the positive and one that focuses on the negative?

It’s okay to focus on the negative—the misses and the missteps—in defining performance, but success doesn’t live in the negative.

Here’s a funny observation: When we are down on people and processes and investments and strategies, we focus on what’s not performing.  We find the flaws.

You’ve probably seen it in play.  You read the performance review of a person who’s out of favor, and it’s rife with articulation of the negatives. “Fails to do this, avoids this, lacks this, shirks that.”  We become so quick to criticize based on flaws that we don’t realize something critical: Doing so is a losing strategy.  Why?  Because 90 percent of everything is crap.  This phrase, commonly known as Sturgeon’s Law, implores us to evaluate things based on their strengths, not their shortcomings.

Even the best of performers have a flaw, or ten.  If you focus on the negative aspects of people, strategies, and performance, you will inevitably find them, no matter where you search. So the most honest appraisal of anything is to look at the peak of its performance.  It’s to look at the 10 percent of a person’s work that reflects their best effort—what reflects their best performance—and then to compare and act.

I’ve witnessed talent processes that have clearly focused on strengths, and I’ve witnessed others that focused on flaws, but one thing stands out:  Talent systems that focus on flaws reject more good talent than those that focus on strengths.

Why? Because when their talent ecosystem focuses on flaws, business leaders who take on the hardest assignments run the highest risk of being fired, regardless of their intrinsic talent. When the same leader is in a talent ecosystem that focuses on strengths, their tough assignments become opportunities to show strengths that are not evident in other circumstances.  At worst, a very strong manager in a tough situation gets reassigned, not resigned to the dustbin.

The same can be said for strategy.  A strategy that racks up a few losses early can be thrown out when flaws are the focus, but long-term success depends on defining strengths, not avoiding weaknesses.

So, 90 percent of everything is crap.  Knowing that, focus on the strengths in the people and concepts around you.

5 Experiences You Need

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My career has been shaped by 5 core experience types. Perhaps those just starting out can get something out of these reflections.

I’m fortunate to have held many jobs over my lifetime (actually, growing up, I was “encouraged” to earn money). Fact is, things like shoes and gas cost money. I’ve held the following jobs in my short life (things that the Social Security Administration would know I’ve done…):

Farm worker (corn picker, potato grader, possibly not-so-legal farm truck driver)

Lawn mower

Roadside watermelon salesman

Retail sales associate

Ice delivery boy

Bouncer

Waiter

Dishwasher

Material handler

Loan processor

Investment analyst

Professional athlete

Production planner

Financial advisor

Cold caller

Tutor

Writer

Venture capital analyst

Management consultant

Corporate strategist

It’s a lot.

Now, before you say what a friend of mine said last weekend—”You sure have kicked around a lot in your career,” you must understand that necessity is the mother of work. I grew up with a healthy ambition to play sports coupled with limited sources of funds. The seasonal reality of the sports I played meant that I would cycle through work and sports in a periodic manner—finding a new job every few months through high school and during the summers in college to keep money in my pockets.

I’m blessed because of it; it gave me perspective. So I figured I’d share a reflection on what I think are the best experiences I’ve had from that long litany. I don’t mean the best in terms of my resume—I mean the best in terms of roles that taught me how to want to be a better professional.

I’d argue that these are 5 experiences that you need in order to grow as an effective but empathetic professional.  This is all, of course, one man’s perspective.  They are:

1. Sales. Any kind of sales

You haven’t really lived until you’ve cold called. As a relative introvert (when it comes to work style), I absolutely hated the notion of reaching out to people by phone or door to door, but  I also got a lot out of having had to do so. Once you have called on people and endured a healthy, consistent stream of rejection, you learn that being an A student really isn’t worth much in the real world. The real world is messy.

It’s also healthy to have had to sell things that are easy to sell. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to sell watermelons roadside during part of one summer in my teen years. It was a product that sold itself (although it never hurt to break open a melon and give people a taste).

As you get older and/or as selling gets more intricate and complex, the experience you gain from selling early on—the experience of influencing and dealing—becomes valuable in every environment. I’ve never seen a truly effective CEO who had no sales in his DNA. Do it. Sell something.

2. Personal service of any kind

Waiting tables is an example of a formative experience that anyone should have. When you provide a service in real time that people will reflect on, assess, and compensate in real time, you become attuned to other people in ways that I’m not sure you can find elsewhere.

There are all kinds of personal service jobs that fit here, ranging from the elite (concierge) to the important but more menial (shining shoes). What they have in common is the need to live up to another person’s standard at least once in your life. The value of that empathy, even if it’s merely learned and not intrinsic, is exceptional.

3. Work with a deadline

Having to work until the wee hours or through significant pain to deliver on a deadline is a formative experience. Learning to manage around deadlines as a writer, analyst, consultant, or delivery boy means learning how to assess a situation in terms of resource needs, capacity, timing, and costs.

Deadline work also teaches you to manage pain. Nothing taught me that better than football games. When you play ball, the game kicks off not matter what state your body is in, so you get ready, and you deal with the pain.  I always appreciated what I recall famous football coach Bobby Bowden once said about an injured player of his:

“He’ll be in pain, but we have a ballgame, and pain don’t matter.”

Deadlines can be tough.  Learning to answer the call regardless of pain is valuable.

I’m learning as I age that there are generational differences with respect to deadlines. I’d go so far as to say that there are some age cohorts in the workforce (ahem…millennials) who have, as a stereotype, significantly less appreciation for the urgency and precision that deadlines can demand. When those people mix with others that are more delivery oriented…they lose. Understanding what deadlines are and how to commit to and manage around them comes from critical experience.

4. Work that requires you to write

I first became a published author when I wrote an article entitled “Venture Capital in the Not-So-New Economy” while moonlighting for a consulting firm in 2001. I was volunteered to write a series of blogs (under deadline, surprisingly enough) for BusinessWeek Online while in graduate school, and now I write for fun. I have always found the absolutely necessary habit of stopping, structuring, and thinking when writing to be instrumental to my later career. Clarity of thought is a rare thing—I always strive for it, and sometimes I achieve it. Writing as a job and as a hobby is a fantastic developmental pursuit.

5. Work where there is no safety net

I still have in my file cabinet (somewhere) a two-year contract with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. There is likely no more pure meritocracy in the for-profit world than an NFL roster. You either produce, or you are cut. You tend to know where you stand right away, and  I certainly did—I lasted a few preseason games, and I was cut. I “failed.”

But that failure has made the rest of my career a cakewalk.

I spent more than 7 years as a client service staffer (that is, on the tip of the spear) at the world’s most renowned professional services firm. That firm is known as much for its brand and talent as for its “up or out” career development policy. There was, once again, a distinct feel that you either perform or you will be cut. While the environment was more humane than the NFL, this model was high pressure. It was a social contract understood by all. It made you sharp, and it created focus.

Once you’ve worked without a safety net woven out of bureaucracy, cronies, and obfuscation, you realize and recognize more and more of the bad behaviors that come from rent seekers and moochers. You also notice the really bad ones—the ones who tell everyone else that it’s a meritocracy while really just politically and financially feathering their nests. Their safety nets start to entangle their morals.

I’ve had the joy of diversity in the work that I’ve done. I’m so thankful that my life circumstances have afforded me the opportunity to work everywhere from a tractor to a delivery truck to a storeroom to a boardroom. I’m truly lucky.

I hope my perspective can be of help to you.