"The brand of you" is killing me

Management guru Tom Peters' cover story in Fast Company is now an icon of a super-heated era, tbe origin of a species of employee for whom work is more means than end and a cause of a hangover without a cure. "The brand of you" was rooted in the emergence of the knowledge worker at a time when the compact between industrial-age companies and their long-standing work forces was crumbling and technology was remaking the nature of market influence.

If a person was to succeed in business, so the story was now being told, he or she could not rely on an employer to create opportunity and a career path. It was up to each of us. We each had to distinguish ourselves, to establish ourselves, to brand ourselves. Rather than see business as a top-down hierarchy, it needed to be viewed more as a salon or flea market where individuals gathered to pursue jointly their individual careers. It led to incredible innovation and productivity; and it led to ever-faster cycles of boom-and-bust.

It has evolved as workplace theory to where we are now: People are drawn to the purpose of a company, not that it is a company. It is the meaning of the work that creates cohesion and it is the presence of the right mix of people that provides its energy.

If we are knowledge workers, then there must be people from whom we can learn. If we are there to learn, it must be persistent. And if it is persistent, the rewards must reflect growth. Lose, or see slowed, any of these elements -- purpose, growth, reward -- and the cohesion degrades. When cohesion degrades, purpose is questioned. When purpose is questioned, the business model becomes unsupportable.

In this environment, a manager certainly needs to be more than a solid practitioner of the business at hand -- a teacher, he or she must also be part meterologist, alchemist and empath. This is the way others assess the "brand of them." Do you know without asking? Can you lead without rank? Do you have a historical sense of tomorrow? Can you create new "jobs" for the same people every 9-to-12 months or so? Otherwise, they'll change them on their own. In the you-branded world, everything happens at once or not at all.

Success walks a fine line between obsession and disintegration. Focus too much on the pace of things and the pace will overwhelm. Focusing too much on the breadth of things will leave you breathless. Balance requires finding allies and forming a team of parts who agree on priorities. This argues for a "small group" approach to business.

It is counterintuitive to the business mantra for growth -- quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year -- and so with few adherents. But those few know that growth can be defined in many ways and so they cohere in ways that give them a chance to create a lasting impression in a fast-changing, fast-evolving, fast-forming and fast-evaporating business environment.

Now that is quite a purpose.

Seize today

At some point in their lives, companies, individuals and institutions will get caught up in a public crisis. All at once, their mostly uninspected lives are klieg-lighted and exposed, their actions judged by others, not on the basis of understanding mores but measured against the values of the viewer. Whew!

With crises arising at such frequent intervals, the advice for handling them has become routine. Begin by telling all at once. Being the source of the bad news can earn public support for what comes next. And what comes next is a set of changes in the “business as usual” that become a part of the brand of the company, individual or institution in the glare.

A former colleague once outlined an infallible script for those caught in the headlights. He called it the “three R’s – regret (We are sorry this happened), reform (Here is how we’ve changed) and restitution (Those harmed will be whole).” A good plan that can help set the stage for a second act.

But as technology has made information persistently immediate, as the flat world has intensified competition and the “qualities” of zero-sum, retail politics have become the style of business, such an approach, once thought glib, is now akin to classical music: complex, deliberate and hard to master.

In its place is arising an approach informed by a single word: Today.

The new script plays upon the anxiety caused by the gap between a reality averaged on facts-and-figures and the real world where each of us lives. It is the gap between good unemployment statistics and the bad mood of people when asked about their economic futures. It is the gap between a soft housing market and how hard it seems to buy a home. And it is the gap between wanting to stem illegal immigration while hoping to find affordable help for work few others want to do.

Straddling these gaps and still functioning takes a lot of muscle and mental control. So, individually we focus less on the future and not at all on the past. Collectively, the strain of maintaining our balance makes us susceptible to this new approach; we are willing to listen to any story that helps get us through today. And more and more it is a story that challenges us more than it informs us.

As a result, the spotlight today may be as hot, but it lingers less. It is on and gone. If we play the right cards, those caught in crisis can spend less time on regret and nearly no time at all on reform and restitution. No matter the mess, we are too distracted to take things more than one day at a time. It is always “today,” and has been more so since September 11, 2001.

The sound bite now goes something like this: “Mistakes were made, but there is too much as stake to let what we did undermine the value of what we do.” I heard this on the news just today. You?

I am reminded of the character of Reverend Leroy created by the late comedian Flip Wilson. Rev. Leroy was a bit of a flim-flam man who led the “Church of What’s Happening Now.”

At the time it was an inconceivable conceit to think that a man who stood for good would be so howlingly bad or that any church would be so currently temporal. It may be that Wilson wasn’t as much a funny man as he was a futurist and we may all be members of his congregation.

Improving the mental health of organizations

Most of the business problems we face daily come without instruction. Worse, the information at hand is generally incomplete. Solutions – decisions – depend on our ability to fill in the blanks of what we know with what we believe; to paint a picture of what might come next by studying the details of the photo of the past; and to trust our instincts by having learned from our mistakes.

The questions can be big (market expansion or acquisition?) or small (single-serve coffee dispenser or ten-cup brewing for the kitchen?). They can involve bricks-and-mortar (new or remodeled space?) or process and policies (can I trade my unused vacation for cash?). But they all involve people; and it is the presence of people that increases the uncertainty.

Like the student actor who in encouraged to understand a character’s motivation in order to play the role, a manager must have the same insight to have a chance at making the right decisions. Most successful companies have been able to operate at the intersection of their market mission and personal ambition; one fueling the other for a better bottom line and higher self-esteem among employees..

But people are not as consistent as brick, mortar or a ten-cup coffee pot. We are mercurial and easily offended, we are ambitious and susceptible to flattery; we are smart and naive and we want the support of our colleagues even as we act in our self-interest. It all makes successfully managing a group of people to a business goal -- over a long period of time -- the hardest job on the planet. What works at any given moment may lead to chaos in the next.

Consider the fine line between independence and indifference. It seems clear that companies need to cultivate the willingness of their employees to make the right decisions. The kind of over-the-shoulder oversight that can create organizational confidence may chafe at some people yet be seen by others as support. Ultimately, when given the chance to operate more freely, most are energized, but some will feel abandoned.

Knowing who falls into which group can propel a company. Miscasting will close any play early in its run. High stakes; few instructions. It falls to a company’s managers to know enough about their colleagues to make only an occasional mistake; but not to know so much about any one employee so that decisions become personal or, worse, made not at all.

Avoiding or delaying correcting the mismatch of people and assignment has greater effect on a business than does making the mistake in the first place. The psychology of a workplace and the economic value of a consistent culture can be unhinged if it appears a bad pairing is allowed to persist. It becomes no longer a small problem, but a big one; casting doubt on every decision.

It can also instill the unwavering belief that there is quite a lot that can be read between the lines. And, when cracks appear in the culture of a company or it acts, in the eye of its employees, counter to its mission, these blanks are filled in more with what is believed than what is known.

As many companies, politicians and institutions know, it is easier to squander a reputation that it is to rebuild it. What many don't know is that un-doing a bad decision can have a more positive effect on the bottom line than making the right decision out of the box. Not because it is harder to do (it is) but because it is a show of respect for the good work of everone else.

Distractions

The first post to this blog noted it is an experiment to see if something valuable can be captured from the images of the day. It is an attempt that will be judged later by me and others as we choose, but one insight appears clear (note the date of the last post and the date of this one!), it is easy to be distracted.

At first blush, being distracted doesn’t seem too awful a crime. It can be an endearing quality; the mark of genius or a commitment to fewer, weighty principals or the result of a long day saving the planet.

If the right priorities are set, things will get done. Whether in a business setting or a personal one, we all have more we need/want/ought to do that we have time to address.

There are many ways to bring order to the chaos. We make lists, drawing comfort from the lines crossing through what needs to be done as they are done. We can delegate, easing the load by sharing what must be done. We can stockpile, hoping it won’t need to be done. And we can deny, concluding that it really doesn’t have to be done.

More than taming chaos, each is a way to prioritize responsibilities; they offer a fighting chance at getting things done. Yet each is susceptible to disruption by the distractions of new or additional responsibilities of the sort that created the need to set priorities in the first place.

Unchecked, though, little gets done beyond revising the priorities; making a new list. Sometimes a momentary crisis is the priority, but get distracted by too many and it sets the stage when only a crisis can lead to action. Companies do not decay overnight, government does not become distant in a day, Scrooge did not become Scrooge in a season. It happens over time, the result of being distracted and losing track of priorities.

Priorities are tactical expressions of what we deem to be important. As time becomes shorter, the decisions become harder. The noisier the marketplace, the greater the need to be quietly confident. The faster the pace, the surer need be the footing. And the longer the list of distractions, the deeper the need to understand the person, company, institution we want to become.

Losing sight of the center is terminal. It begins quietly with diminished contact and creates a heightened sense of self-reliance. It leads to a loss of trust among colleagues and moves on to disrupt the compact with customers. It manifests itself in hierarchy and leads to loyalty oaths. And it eats away at the business, social or personal value that helped set the priorities in the first place.

It is a story that plays out regularly in court rooms, auction houses and in government hearing rooms. It is a story about investors getting pennies on the dollar, customers left without support, executives copping pleas and calls for legislation to guard against human nature.

That is a point from which we are too easily distracted: human nature. Just as “we are easily distracted” should be a caution in a company you might join, a customer you might sign or an organization you might support, “we know who we are” can be the best hedge against getting lost in the day-to-day. A shared understanding of the mission we are on is a roadmap in strange territory, it is insurance against the dangers of being distracted.