Harassholes Y’all

Someone brought me a copy of this photo from their office. 

It says:

Stop Harassholes Y’all

Not bad. 

Harassment plus as*holes = Harassholes. 

Thank G-d, there are some very good people and managers out there.

But unfortunately not everyone is, and so there are also some real stinkin’ abusers too. 

These types of people should never be in power, since they misuse it!

They do not use the power they have been entrusted with to advance progress, and do good for the organization and its people, but rather they clumsily wield power for their own selfish, personal pleasures and vendettas–bullying and harassing others–and simply because they can.

Belittling others, making them feel stupid and worthless, and then going after them for whatever they want. 

Through intimidation, they keep others from talking…shhh! hush!

Emotional, verbal, and even physical abuse can be common. 

I remember one colleague telling me how their boss would literally throw things at them in their office while they had to sit there “taking it.”

Another has a boss that makes them do the stupidest, most trivial tasks–completely worthless stuff–just to prove a point…that they’re in charge. 

Marginalization, threats, bullying, abuse, harassment…it goes on and it shouldn’t!

In some cases, the harassholes are even protected from someone above.

Money, power, honor…more, more, more!

But G-d sees these people too and eventually cuts the bad ones down to size. 

My father used to say:

G-d does not let any tree grow into the heavens!

Eventually, I am pretty sure that harassholes end up getting some very BIG hemorrhoids or something from above that teaches them to use G-d’s gifts for the good, and to properly love, care, and empathize for other human beings–G-d’s children!

I never knew why hemorrhoids existed in this world, but there is a purpose to everything under the heavens. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

In The Know or Dark

So here is one way that some people can (try to) manipulate you–positively or negatively. 

They can help either to keep you “in the know” or “in the dark.”

As we all know by now, information is power!

When you’re in the know–you are a trusted agent and a valuable resource; you have more dots and more connections between the dots to make; you are able to analyze what’s happening and make better decision going forward; you can lead with knowledge, wisdom, and hopefully understanding. People come to you for advice, guidance, and because you are a true asset to the team, your superiors, and the organization. 

When you’re in the dark–you are untrusted and unvalued, you may actually be seen as the enemy who needs to be marginalized, put out or taken out! You are kept out of meetings, uninformed or misinformed, and so you become more and more intellectually worthless. Further, others are implicitly or explicitly told that you are poisonous and not to get caught up in the pending slaughter.  A colleague of mine put it this way: “Don’t get between a man and his firing squad.”   

So with others, there can be information alliances as well as information warfare. 

To a great extent, you are responsible for keeping yourself in the know. You need to build relationships, bridges, and networks. You need to read, observe, and talk to lots of people. You need time to digest and analyze what you learn.  And you must build your information store so that it is ready and actionable. 

But to another extent, there are others–superiors, competitors, bullies, abusers–who just might seek to keep you in the dark and bring you down. Not everyone is your friend…some maybe just the opposite. (Wouldn’t it be nice, if we all were just friends!) But showing you the intellectual ass of the group is a powerful nut that once superimposed as an image, cannot be easily distilled. There is plenty of groupthink to go around. And taking out a perceived enemy diffuses their power to everyone else.  What a lousy coup by some nasty f*ckers!

Why some friend and others foe you–who the heck knows. Perhaps some is chemistry; some is tit for tat; some is personal bias and bigotry; and some just the crapshoot of fate. 

In the end, keep doing your part to enhance your value, your friendships, and your integrity. The rest, you have to be vigilant about and realize not everyone wants the lights kept on. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Leave The Bad Bosses Behind

So an executive colleague reminded me of something about bad bosses:

People don’t leave jobs, they leave [bad] bosses.

It’s very interesting and so often true. 

Of course, people leave for all sorts of reasons, but one of the most important aspects of job satisfaction for employees is their boss!

When you have a good boss–someone with integrity, good communications, trustworthy, fair, and who empowers, develops, and supports you then that goes a very long way towards positive employee engagement and retention. 

However, when the boss is a bad apple and usually everyone knows it, then there is often a mass exit out the organizational door. 

Occasionally, the organizational culture is bad too, and that attracts those bad bosses, promotes their bad behavior, and keeps their bad butts in the corner office seats–this situation is even worse because bad culture and people are mutually reinforcing. 

For the good people out there, leave the bad bosses behind and never look back. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

It Rises To The Top

So one of my friends who is dealing with some bad people in his work told me about his situation using a very interesting descriptive phrase:

“Cream may float to the top, but other things float too!”

Ah yes, in many cases the best (“the cream”) climbs/rises to the top of the corporate ladder and extraordinary people are recognized with positions of leadership and influence to progress things. 

But in other cases, some really bad people (i.e. the sh*t) floats to the top based on lies and baloney promises and payback, malevolent power grabs, undermining of the competition, nepotism, or plain old corruption in the leadership suite. 

Yes, both the cream and the crap float to the top.

It is important to recognize who is who, and what is what. 

Not everyone who occupies the corner office belongs there. 

In some cases, they should never even be allowed in the building. 

In the end, you gotta believe that the stars shine, and the sh*t stinks and that’s how you know who is at the top when. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Nothing Personal

There’s this funny line that some managers use with their employees.

It’s when they harshly criticize, pick on, or even bully their hard working and good people.  

What do they say when they do it:

“It’s nothing personal.”

Ha, that’s sort of funny, but really it’s sad. 

I asked an executive colleague about this and this is what they profoundly said:

“It’s my favorite line when the boss says it’s nothing personal. Of course it’s personal. Is there anyone else in the room!”

When people misuse/abuse their power to hurt others whether at work or even in other situations like with small children or anyone else in a subordinate position:

– That’s not business.

– That’s not professional.

– That’s not being a good human being.

People are not punching bags because someone else is having a bad day. 

We need to rise above the occasion and be better than that. 

It’s better to be humane, compassionate, and emotionally intelligent. 

And not just because someday, we are all in that position where someone bigger is facing off against us.

But rather we need to behave kindly to others, because they too are G-d’s children and our brothers and sisters, and it is the absolutely the right way to behave–whether it’s business or personal. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Good IT Gone Bad

So over and over again, good IT goes bad in a flawed decision-making process. 

Even with the best laid plans and governance processes in place, somehow decisions get politicized, go bad, and projects fail. 

Here are some of the popular reasons why this happens:

1) Someone has something to prove – Often their is a person incoming to power who wants to show off what they can do. Instead of focusing on what is best for the organization’s mission and people, they put themselves first. IT becomes not a tool for efficiency and effectiveness, but rather as some project rushed through for someone’s resume and narcissist career progression. Time to add another notch on your IT belt!

2) Someone used it, saw it, or heard of it someplace else – So why follow a structured decision-making and vetting process for new technology, when Joe Schmoe already has the answer of what we can use and what we should do. Perhaps, Joe Schmoe used the technology in another place and for another reason, but that’s what he knows and instantaneously, he’s the maven, subject matter expert. Or maybe, Joe Schmoe attended a vendor conference or read a trade mag on the airplane and now he is guess what, the all-knowing on the topic. Get ready to pull out your wallets to pay for the wrong thing for your needs and organization, but it’s okay becuase Joe Schmoe assured you it’s great!

3) Someone wants to use technology like a Swiss army utility knife – Let’s just buy this amazing tool; it can slice, dice, chop, mince, or Julienne; actually there is nothing this IT tool can’t do. Buy it and use it for all your technology projects and needs. Why buy specialized tools, when you can have one that does everything–it will be your data warehouse, cloud provider, handle all your transactions, and be your artificial intelligence all in one.  Don’t worry about the complexity, integration, training, support or how good it does any specific thing–just trust us!

In general, it shouldn’t be so easy for leadership to get sold and fooled by the wrong people with the wrong agendas. Yet, these things seem to take off like a speeding locomotive, and if anyone tries to step in front of it, career splat for some unfortunate well-meaning character!

Some leaders and organizations only seem to learn by making the same IT mistakes again and again–it’s costly to their mission and to their stakeholders, but someone is making out like a bandit and it’s on their dime. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Get Out Front Leadership

Thought this was a good photo of leadership.

I’ve seen other depictions of this such as when the commanding officer leads the charge of his advancing troops versus the other guy yelling orders from way behind the front lines. 

Here the idea of the leader is of being one with his people and helping pull his own weight!

Much more inspiring and effective than “the boss” who is yelling/barking orders at the others from on top the mound of work that the others are trying to move forward, and he is just adding to the weight of the load being pulled.

To really understand the mission or business, the leader has got to get out of his/her ivory tower perch and see things up close and personal on the front lines. 

You can’t really know the enemy you’re fighting or the hill your trying to take if you never even seen it firsthand. 

Leaders aren’t above the job or over the staff, they are effective when they are part of the solution (and not part of the problem) with the people that they are attempting to successfully lead. 😉

(Source Photo of Comic: Andy Blumenthal)

Prove Them Wrong

So I was recently teaching a certification class. 

And this was a very high-caliber class of professionals attending. 

One gentlemen was a wonderful African American who I will call John. 

As part of one of the class assignments, John,  a very successful man, told of how as a young man growing up in the DC projects, a neighbor told him something very hurtful and potentially devastating to him.

The neighbor angrily said, “You’ll never be anything in your life!”

And John described how he pursued his education, his career goals, his family, as well as philanthropic pursuits to give back to the community–and he went quite far. 

He told with great emotion and tears in his eyes how ten years ago, he went back to his old neighborhood to thank this neighbor for motivating him (even though in a negative way) to go as far in life as he did. 

You could hear a pin drop in the class–I think a lot of people could relate to this story in their own lives. 

I know that I for one certainly could. 

For me, while I am a simple person and have not gone so far, I have certainly had an interesting life and lots of wonderful opportunities.

Yet, I too remember more than 20 years ago, when I had taken a job in a wild pursuit in my youthful ambitions that one crazy boss that I was briefly working for who was considerably older than me and with his own business abusively said to me one day, “You’re not half of what you think you are!”

BAM! Like a huge sledge hammer hitting me right across my head–I was still relatively young and impressionable.

Also, I came from a pretty blue collar-type working family and although upwardly mobile, and I was certainly trying to become “more,” I never really felt at all entitled. 

Anyway, the story this student told really brought my own experience hurling back to me from my past. 

In the class, John said–you have to go out and “Prove them wrong.” 

And while I don’t exactly feel that proving others who wish us bad to be wrong is the point, I do agree that we shouldn’t let any of these negative nellies in our own lives drag us down. 

We all have our mission in life–and it’s up to us to become the best people that we can–and to hell with everyone who looks down on us, discourages us, maybe are competitive with us or jealous in some way, or simply don’t wish us the best. 

So John is right–go out there and do great things! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Team, It’s Not About You

This mug on teamwork was really funny.

Teamwork (noun):

1) A group of people doing what I say.

2) Work done that I can take credit for.

Of course, this really isn’t teamwork, unless you consider it the “I Team.” 

Yes, this is sort of sterotypical of bad bosses:

– They take the credit for the team’s work when everything goes well.

– But they pass along the blame when something goes wrong. 

Has this ever happened to you?

It reminds me of another funny saying about how greedy, narcissistic people think:

“What mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.”

In other words–mine, mine, and mine, why thank you!

The best bosses are humble and giving. They make sure everyone knows what the goals are and are working efficiently to achieve them. 

The credit goes to the indivudals and team who are working their butts off, and when appropriate, the boss will take the heat to help others save face and enable them to press forward with the mission. 

I remember one of my colleagues who is a supervisor and he was called out for doing a great job. Immediately he goes, “It’s my team that make me look good.” And knowing this person, that wasn’t just talk or a show…he was completely sincere. 

That’s leadership and an impressive human being–someone to emulate!

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Micromanaging Your Customers

Standing in line at the store the other day, I’ve got to to say that I sort of really resented this ridiculous check out line.

We are not in kindergarten and do not need little footsies and signs to tell us where to stand, how far apart, and who is up next in the line.

Actually, it’s really not all that complicated–we can figure out to lineup in front of the counter and wait our turn civilly.

Micromanaging your customers (or for that matter your employees) is a pretty stupid idea.

Get your own house in order–and do a good job servicing the people that are paying you (or working to make you a success).

How about you take your little feet over behind the counter and get the line moving that much faster and stop making us wait so long to begin with to give you our business.

Happy Black Friday…loosen the reins a little won’t you and you’ll find a happier customer (and employee) base and make some more money in the process. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)