The AntiSyphus Effect

Let's meet to talk about meeting to plan the meeting...

I often say that meetings are the lifeblood of bureaucracy. I don't know anyone who enjoys meetings; and yet, we seem to have 'em all the time. I probably spend the equivalent of one full day or more each week in a conference room.

As much as I dislike meetings, however, I know that they are a necessary evil. So I'd like to share a few tips to help make your meetings a little less painful for all involved.

If you're hosting a meeting

• Identify the goal of the meeting: Are you gathering suggestions for an upcoming project? Is it a working meeting in which you need to get something done? Is the meeting simply to share information?
• Write an agenda for the meeting, and share it with the participants: I hate it when I'm invited to a meeting and have no idea what it's about. Share the goal and the agenda with the invitees. The agenda doesn't need to be a minute-by-minute, detailed map of the meeting; but a stated goal and topics of discussion would be a welcome change from an invitation with no explanation.
• Invite everyone who needs to be there, and only the people who need to be there: This should be a given, but I've gone to far too many "bloated" meetings to think that everyone operates under this premise. Don't make your meetings any larger than they need to be; alternately, don't leave out any key personnel.
• Start the meeting on time: Don't punish the people who show up on time by making them wait for the latecomers. If you get a reputation for starting on time, people will start to show on time, I promise.
• Keep the meeting under control: Use a flip chart to establish a parking lot; if someone brings up a point that's outside the scope of the meeting, write it in the parking lot for future discussion (instead of getting bogged down in an off-topic discussion).
• End the meeting on time: People are busy, and my experience is that most people are too polite to get up and leave a meeting that's still in session - even if that means that they're going to be late for another meeting. If you can't wrap up in time, schedule another meeting if you must; but don't hold everyone hostage.
• Wrap up with action items and next steps: If any tasks come of the meeting, restate them in the closing. Then, send out minutes that document the action items.

If you're attending a meeting

• Get there on time: If you accepted the meeting, then be prompt. And if you can't make it on time, then call the host and let her know you're going to be late.
• Participate: Don't fall asleep (I've seen it happen), read e-mail on your BlackBerry, or sit there like a lump. You were invited because your participation is needed, so be willing to share your knowledge.
• Put your cell phone on vibrate or turn it off: If you're expecting a call that you know you'll have to take, let the host know. Otherwise, ignore your phone and focus on the task at hand.
• Leave on time: If you have another commitment, don't stay past the appointed hour (thereby making yourself late to your next meeting). There really isn't anything wrong with saying, "Sorry, but I've got another meeting, so I have to duck out."

Stick to these basics, and you'll find that meetings will become a joy. Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration; stick to these basics, and meetings will become more productive and less painful.

What are your tips for making meetings worthwhile?

Stress for Success

Carmine Coyote of Slow Leadership gives us more food for thought in this entry about stressing for sport. Carmine writes:

Competing over stress is a badge of only one thing: being an egotistical, brain-dead jerk. If that’s what you want to prove yourself to be, step right up and get in line. It seems others are just as keen as you are to prove their stupidity.

I couldn't agree more. But what if you aren't actively engaging in competitive stress? What if you've gotten yourself backed into a stress corner? What if you want to decrease the amount of stress in your job, and get thrown a curve ball every time you try to disengage? Well, I feel your pain, because I've been there.

After my divorce five-and-a-half years ago, I was determined that my son would absolutely come first; after all, he needed me a lot more than my employer did. And for a time, I was able to do that; I modified my hours at the office (compensating by spending a bit of time in the evening working after Andrew had gone to bed), and was able to juggle my personal and professional lives with relative comfort. But after a few years, work started taking more and more of my time; it crept into every crevice of my life to the point where the only things I did were take care of my son and work (remote access is both a blessing and a curse, much like New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping). It happened so slowly that I barely noticed it.

A few months ago, I started to get the inkling that I might be working too hard. In my ignorant youth, I'd always been skeptical of the notion that many addicts might not actually enjoy the substance to which they're addicted. One day in early November, I realized that I'd become a work addict, and I didn't enjoy that addiction one bit; suddenly, I got it. Still, I carried on as I had for the past few years. I suspect that part of my drive to work comes from the fear that, as a single parent, I already have one strike against me due to my limits on time at the office. And so I worked that much harder to compensate; if I wasn't cooking, doing housework, or actively engaged with my son, I was working. On evenings. And weekends. And holidays.

Just like any other addict, I had to hit rock bottom before I was willing to make changes. My rock bottom came when first my son, and then I, got sick shortly before Christmas. The week that my son started running a fever, we had VIPs visiting our office, and I felt as though staying home would be something of a career-limiting move. Fortunately, my ex-husband's wife (or Andrew's bonus mom, as I like to call her) was willing to take care of him. Even more fortunately, it was a brief viral infection, and it passed quickly. That should have been enough to get me back on track; but it wasn't. Oh, I cried myself to sleep nearly every night that week out of guilt (my son almost never gets sick, and it broke my heart not to be there for him the one time he really needed me). But I went to work every day regardless.

It wasn't until several weeks later that the other shoe dropped: I started feeling ill about midmorning on a Monday. Once again, we had VIPs in the office, and so I felt I needed to be there. By Tuesday morning, I was fairly sure I was running a fever, and was developing a nasty cough. But I went to work anyway, thinking it was probably just a virus (and therefore wouldn't require a visit to the doctor). By Wednesday, I was really, truly too sick to function. There was no doubt that I had a fever, but I didn't know how high it was (the batteries in our thermometer were dead). I used my first sick day of the year, but only because I was sufficiently delirious from the fever that I was afraid I'd be dangerous behind the wheel of a car. Nevertheless, I was on the phone with folks from the office nearly all day, despite lengthy and painful coughing fits that left me gasping for breath.

That night, after getting new batteries for the thermometer, I found that I was running a fever of - are you ready for this? - 104 degrees. Did I finally go to the doctor? Of course not; I was still convinced that it would go away on its own, despite the high fever and increasingly frightening cough. By Thursday night, when I found myself obsessively checking my nail beds to see if they were turning blue from hypoxia, I realized that I had completely lost my mind.

On Friday, I finally saw a medical professional: I managed to avoid pneumonia, but had a nasty bronchial infection that required a course of antibiotics and some really potent cough medicine. When all was said and done, the cough lasted a total of three weeks or so. The residual effects, I hope, will be permanent.

I had vacation time scheduled for the last week of December. For the first time in far too long, I didn't check in at the office even once. No voicemail, no e-mail, no nothing. My son and I played mini-golf (I won, but only because he fell apart on the last hole), air hockey (he beat me soundly, and I'm still a bit irritated about that), and various board games. We went to movies, played with some of the new toys he got for Christmas, and generally had fun together. It was the best week I've had in a long, long time. And guess what? The business didn't go under without me, nothing happened that couldn't be handled by my colleagues, and the sun still rose in the mornings.

Since the first of the year, I have continued to put life back into my work/life balance. I'm not staying late at the office; I'm doing very few checks of e-mail before or after normal business hours. I have time in the evenings to spend with my favorite young person, and I've managed to find the time to start writing again. I'm sleeping better, my mood has improved; best of all, I'm much more productive at work, because I'm not constantly tired, irritable, frustrated, or ready to cry from overload.

I didn't share this story to garner sympathy; on the contrary, I hope that you think I was being a moron of epic proportions. No matter how much I was convinced otherwise, my job didn't stress me out - I did it to myself. And these days, when a colleague expresses surprise that I've already left the office a mere eight hours after arriving, I don't let it bug me. Because I know that when s/he's still fielding phone calls at 6:00 PM, I'll be enjoying a homecooked meal with my son; when s/he's responding to e-mail at midnight, I'll be sound asleep. And if my boss thinks that I'm less valuable because I've set perfectly reasonable boundaries (and she doesn't), then I would have to give serious consideration to finding a new line of work.

I'm lucky; it only took a bad case of bronchitis for me to see what I was doing to myself. It could just as easily have been a heart attack or a stroke. And I'll probably always struggle with the feeling that I need to do just a little more at work. But allowing myself to have a life outside of my career doesn't make me a bad employee; it makes me a better person.

If you find that work has overtaken your life and you need motivation to take back some of your own time, here's what I want you to do: close your eyes, take a deep breath, and picture yourself in the emergency room. Quick - who's there with you, crying and praying that you'll be okay? Those are the people who need to come first. And odds are that your boss won't be one of 'em.

Building solutions out of chaos

Yesterday, I introduced you to the seven dirty words of business. At the conclusion of that entry, we'd just finished walking through a brainstorming meeting, which left us in a room that was (with any luck) wallpapered with flip chart paper full of possible solutions to our business problem.

Today, my mission is to help you make sense of the chaos and figure out which of the many options is the best. Granted, you probably already have a pretty good idea of which solution is optimal (and I'm betting it's the one you thought of). Well, it's great that you've got a plan, but our goal is to get all the key people on board with a plan of action, because it's a lot easier to get everyone to do what's necessary if you can get them to agree to the solution. And I can tell you from personal experience that it's difficult to get buy-in when you force a plan down their throats.

So you've got this list of possible solutions. The first thing you're going to do is beat down every single suggestion on those flip charts. That's right: have the group play devil's advocate, and ask them to come up with every conceivable reason why each suggestion won't work (save "but we've always done it this way," of course); be merciless. This probably seems counterintuitive, but it's a good exercise because it takes the egos out of the picture. If the objective is to shoot down my suggestion, then I can't very well take it personally, now can I?

Now that you've gotten all the negative thinking out of the way, it's time to have some genuine dialogue. First, ask the group if they can agree on which possible solutions are completely out of the question (whether that's due to cost, time to implement, or some other logical reason). See? You've already shortened your list a bit.

Now you'll begin talking through the remaining solutions in depth. For each possible fix, you'll want to ask the following questions:

• Is this a long-term solution, or just a temporary fix? (Nothing wrong with bandages, but if you're looking for a long-term solution, a bandage just won't cut it.)
• Exactly how will this correct the problem and keep it from happening again?
• What resources will we need to implement this solution?
• Can this solution be broken? (This is critical; I've seen many a corrective action plan fail because it looked great on paper, but was easy to circumvent in the real world.)
• Will this solution break something else? (I've often seen this as well; you fix the original problem, but create five others in its place.)

At this point, you may find that some folks are unwilling or unable to get out of their original frames of mind, and they can't answer those questions effectively. Maybe they've got a personality conflict with the person who came up with the idea; maybe they're already emotionally or intellectually invested in another idea. Or perhaps they don't want to hurt someone else's feelings by shooting holes in a theory. Whatever the reason, you have to get them out of themselves if you're to get to an optimal solution.

I've found that using de Bono's Six Thinking Hats can be effective in breaking participants free of their preconceived ideas. Much like the "shoot down the solution" exercise above, the Six Thinking Hats tool can help people speak freely, because they're merely following the direction that's been given. Think of it this way: you ask Sally what's wrong with Joe's plan to modify the shipping software. But Sally and Joe are good friends, and she's reluctant to say anything that might rub him the wrong way. If, instead, Sally's "wearing" the black hat and therefore being directed to find the negatives, she's much more likely to give her real opinion: first, because she's doing what she's supposed to do; second, because Joe isn't going to take it personally, because she's performing the role she's been assigned.

In this fashion, keep whittling down the list until you've got a short list of solutions that will all work (no more than five). Then, identify which one will give you the highest degree of improvement with the smallest investment. I'm not suggesting that your goal is to do the minimum amount of work; but just as you wouldn't use a submachine gun to hunt duck, neither should you replace an entire CRM system to fix a single data maintenance function.

It really is possible to get a group of people (each with her own agenda) to come to agreement on a solution; but that can only happen when you get beyond ego, static thinking, and fear of speaking openly. I hope I've given you a few tools that will help the next time you need to get a group to come to agreement. Good luck, and happy brainstorming!

The seven dirty words

I'd imagine that most people who were pre-teenagers or older in the early 70s probably remember George Carlin's routine on the seven dirty words you can't say on television (and if you're too young to remember - lucky you! - you can quite easily find it via Google). As it turns out, there are seven dirty words in the business world as well; the difference is that not only are the seven dirty words of business not forbidden, they're used nearly every day, and by people who really should know better.

Imagine you're in a meeting, trying to resolve a recurring process problem. After everyone is in the loop on exactly what's going on, Joe makes a recommendation to change the procedure that's contributing to the problem. Joe's recommendation will make life easier for everyone and eliminate the problem; but as he talks, you notice that the people around the table look uncomfortable.

And then, it happens: Maxine looks Joe straight in the eye and says, "We can't do that." Joe makes a perfectly reasonable argument about how well it would work, and Maxine says them; she says the seven dirty words of business: "But we've always done it this way."

I hope that phrase puts your blood on a slow simmer as it does mine. If you ask me, there are few worse reasons not to take action than "but we've always done it this way." So what? Is there a law that says you can't switch things up? Is the world going to come to an end if you find a better way? I know that change can be scary, but without evolution we couldn't have this online discourse - because we'd still be living in caves.

What drives this unwillingness to try something new? In my opinion, it ultimately comes down to fear: fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of having to do more work, fear of becoming obsolete, possibly even fear of success. But we have to embrace and conquer that fear if we're to live our best (professional and personal) lives. If we don't get past our fear, it will paralyze us.

Let's get back to Joe and his creature-of-habit colleague, Maxine. When you're trying to make changes in the workplace, one vocal opponent can derail the best of projects. Sure, you can go over the heads of the naysayers and get the okay to move forward; but that kind of forced cooperation won't ever get you the kind of support that you can only get from total buy-in. The challenge, then, is getting buy-in from people who are resistant to change.

Although I don't love meetings as a rule (the lifeblood of bureaurcracy, is what they are), this is a situation that calls for a meeting. So here's what you do: gather a brain trust from all areas of the organization; be sure to include folks who are unfamiliar with the business problem as well as those who are directly involved. If you really want to generate good discussion, invite people from all levels of the org chart as well. This last tip serves several purposes: first, it'll give you the valuable input of the the people closest to the problem; second, consider it a development opportunity for some of the folks who are looking to move up; finally (and most important), it tells people that you value everyone's opinions, and not just those at the upper echelon of the company.

Once everyone is assembled, you're going to hold a brainstorming session. If you've never facilitated one of these before, you should know that there's one rule for participating in a brainstorming meeting: no suggestion is too outlandish; arguing against anyone's idea is absolutely forbidden, with no exceptions.

After you've presented the ground rules for the meeting, it's time to get the participants thinking creatively. In order to do that, you want to tap into their creative sides and loosen them up. I've found a great tool to do this is blind drawing: give each person a piece of paper and a (washable) marker. Then ask everyone to close their eyes and, with their eyes closed, draw a picture of where they wish they were at that moment. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I've found that it works every time: it removes all the tension from the room, and everyone can manage to draw - quite effectively, I might add - a fairly accurate interpretation of their dream spot even without being able to see. When they're done, have them swap pictures and see if the team can interpret each other's drawings.

When you're ready to get down to business, the first step is to get the group to agree on exactly what the problem is that you're trying to solve. This is critical, because if you're all trying to solve different problems, you'll never come to consensus. (In an upcoming entry, I'll walk you through conducting a root cause analysis; for today, we'll assume that this particular problem is simple enough that you know what's causing it without spending days on investigation.)

So, you've agreed on the problem; now it's time to come up with solutions. You, as the facilitator, are responsible for writing every last suggestion (preferably on a flip chart, so you can retain it for future reference; and Post-It flip chart paper is wonderful, because you can place the pages around the room as you fill them). Keep on writing until the ideas stop coming. With any luck, you'll have at least a dozen possible solutions to choose from.

Tomorrow, I'll write about how you'll start to filter those possible solutions to come up with the best direction to take. For today, I'll leave you with this thought: there may be many valid reasons not to move forward with a proposed action; "but we've always done it this way" is not one of them.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!

Remember the good old days, when you were what you ate? Life was simpler then, yes? Now, depending on which TV self-help guru you watch, you are what you eat, or what you think, or what you're grateful for, or what you already have, or what you want. There's an entire school of thought that says you attract what you focus on most; therefore, if you think about being broke all the time, for example, you'll merely get more of the same.

So much pressure to be positive at all times can be exhausting! (It can also lead to mediocre SNL skits and their spin-off merchandise.) Ironically, if you find yourself thinking negatively, you're likely to start beating yourself up for thinking negatively, which then makes you feel even worse (hey, maybe there's something to that "you get what you focus on" theory, after all).

Whether or not you believe that thought is power, in business it's critical to focus on what's important. And many companies, without meaning to do so, place too much focus on the negative.

I can fix that!

Consultants make millions of dollars every year helping businesses fix problems; problems ranging from low employee morale to inefficient processes and everything in between. Managers spend hundreds of hours in meetings each year researching who did what that caused a bad result. Of course organizations need to put energy into fixing what's wrong. It's appropriate and necessary to research mistakes and customer issues; it's appropriate to investigate problems. Root cause analysis should be a key ingredient in any effort to resolve significant business problems. And no manager can be effective if s/he doesn't work with team members to resolve issues.

But when we focus too much of our energy on problems, we sometimes forget to pay attention to what we're doing right. We think that the parts of our business that are working well may not need as much of our energy as the parts of our business that are crashing. So we turn our minds to solving the problems at hand. And if your organization is in the middle of a rough patch, it can seem as though all you do is deal with problems day in and day out. This can be demoralizing, even to the most optimistic of employees.

Stay too long in firefighting mode, and people start burning out and leaving. Your best people are the ones who will start bailing out first (because they're the ones who will easily find other jobs). As turnover increases, so does the workload of the folks left behind, which can lead your organization into a spiral of more problems, more burnout, and more turnover.

The Art of the Autopsy

Why not shake things up a bit?

Yes, you have to deal with the problems. But how about taking some of those analytical skills and putting them to work finding out what you did right? There's no rule that says root cause analysis can only be used to figure out what caused a problem; you can use root cause analysis to dissect your successes, too. This isn't some warm-and-fuzzy strategy to make your employees feel better; it's a way to identify what you're doing that works, and then identify CAPAs (continuing and positive actions - as opposed to the corrective and preventative actions identified in traditional root cause analysis) to help you repeat what works.

Conducting regular success autopsies can benefit your organization in a number of ways. First, it puts your attention on the positive (which does provide an emotional lift, and everyone likes to feel good). In addition, it forces you to sketch out, in detail, all the people, processes, systems, and environmental factors that contributed to your big wins. You'd be astonished at how many people are involved in the success stories  - people you might never have considered as active team members; people who might not otherwise get a lot of recognition for their contributions). Finally, it teaches you to brainstorm on ways to repeat all the small wins that add up to the big success stories.

In an upcoming entry, I'll outline the process of conducting a success autopsy. In the interim, you can start by putting a bit of focus on what your team is doing right. Spend a little time talking through why you had a good outcome; take the time to thank the unsung heroes on your team. Accentuate the positive.

Focus on what you're doing right, and you might just find that you'll have fewer problems to deal with over time. Then you can create an upward spiral that leads to more success, more productivity, and happier employees. Even Stuart Smalley couldn't find a way to put a negative spin on that.

Why everyone hates Starbucks

Well, perhaps I exaggerate just a bit. Perhaps there are some people who genuinely like Starbucks. I personally enjoy the coffee, but I hate the idea of Starbucks. And WalMart. And The Cheesecake Factory. And Olive Garden. And every chain restaurant and store in every mall in every town across the US.

One of my favorite pieces by Anna Russell (aside from the brilliant "Ring of the Niebelungs: an Analysis"), is "How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera." In it, Anna describes the "formula" used to write the well-known operettas:

As you know, you always have to start with a homogenous chorus. Now, I know a lot of people are going to say, "That isn't homogenous; that's homogeneous." But that isn't what I mean; I mean homogenous as in milk. All the characters are all the same; they're either all Japanese or all pirates or all... something or other."

What do Gilbert and Sullivan have to do with Starbucks? Simply put, Starbucks - and the other chains I mentioned above - are all about creating a homogenized experience. No matter where you are, you can walk into a Starbucks (or McDonald's, or Olive Garden, or...) and know precisely what the experience will be like. Some people find this comforting; I'm not one of those people.

There's a coffee shop not far from my house; it's small, comfy, and quirky. Locally-produced art hangs on the walls; metal sculptures and handmade soaps and candles are for sale. I've never been in another coffee shop like it. Sadly, this coffee shop opens too late in the morning for me to visit during the week; however, I stop there regularly on the weekends. Aside from the uniqueness of the wares, the people who work there actually build relationships with their customers (every time I go in, the owner asks how my little boy is doing, despite the fact that she's only seen my son a handful of times).

There are those who say that consistency is a good thing; certainly, it's good for the financial status of the companies who build national chains. However, we the consumers lose something critical in this age of mass-commercialization: we lose the character and relationship-building and expertise that can be found only in smaller scale, locally-owned shops. There's something just wrong about the fact that I can drive up Gallatin Road in Hendersonville, Tennessee and find that it looks just like State Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey. But I digress.

My point is, while it may be good for business to standardize for the sake of growth, it's not a good strategy for managing people. Despite what many corporate types would have you believe, you cannot treat your employees all the same. Can you treat them all fairly? Sure. But "equitable" doesn't have to mean "identical."

As a manager, you need to figure out just what it is that floats the boat of each member of your team, and then manage each team member accordingly. For example: I am an attention junkie. I'll readily admit it; I'm a frustrated performer, and I love an audience. If you want to motivate me, offer me the chance to give a presentation to an important customer. Put me on stage, baby - I'm there. But if you take someone who hates the spotlight, and ask him to give a presentation to a customer, he's not going to thank you for it. On the contrary: he's going to be terrified, stressed, and resentful. One employee's reward is another employee's punishment; ignore that at your peril.

Here's another example: let's say you have this terrific employee; we'll call her Jan. Jan's been with the company for several years, and she's a top-notch performer. Let's say that Jan's mom becomes very ill, and Jan needs to cut down on her time at the office. She can't afford to take FMLA, because she's the sole breadwinner in her family. However, Jan has a notebook PC and remote access to the company's systems. Jan requests that she cut back to four hours per day at the office, and assures you that she'll complete her remaining work at home.

In many large companies, the answer to such a request would be no, because "if I let you do that, then I'd have to say yes to everyone." Well, that's zero intelligence zero tolerance thinking; Jan is a particular individual in a particular situation. You wouldn't you give everyone who works for you exactly the same salary, and exactly the same raise every year; you offer salaries and raises based on experience and performance. Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, neither are any two people exactly alike. Why shouldn't you manage workloads and personnel performance individually? If you say yes to Jan, several things will happen:

• Jan will become your most loyal employee because you worked with her to create a solution that was viable for everyone.
• Jan's productivity will skyrocket, because she'll be less stressed and more prone to go out of her way to help you.
• Other team members - though they may resent it a bit at first - will come to realize that you actually care about them as more than just their productivity; this will increase their level of satisfaction as well. And I don't need to tell you that satisfied employees are generally much better performers than dissatisfied employees.

And don't tell me that you can't trust Jan to perform if she's working remotely. My philosophy is this: if you don't trust your employees to do their jobs, then either they shouldn't be there, or you shouldn't be there. If Jan has always performed well, then you can safely believe that she will continue to do so. Of course you'll need to monitor her performance to ensure that she stays productive, but you should be doing that even if she's working full-time in the office.

Don't let outdated beliefs about managing people dictate how you let your employees work; measure what's important rather than what's easy to measure (trust me when I tell you that face-time and productivity are not necessarily mutually inclusive). Unless the employees you're managing are in fact ants or bees, they deserve to be treated as the individuals they are.

What businesses can learn from Kevin Smith

I'm quite the devotee of Kevin Smith's films; "Dogma" is one of my favorite movies. It's a brilliant, biting satire of organized religion. I was watching it last week, when a particular line of dialogue resonated with me:

Serendipity: I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it.

Mind you, I've seen this film probably a half-dozen times, and it never occurred to me before; but during this viewing, as I watched Salma Hayek deliver that line, I realized that - with a small twist - this statement could apply to quite a few company leaders I've known over the years:

I have issues with anyone who treats employees as burdens instead of blessings. You people don't celebrate your employees; you mourn them.

How many managers have you met who complain about their employees? Who treat those employees - the very people who are keeping the company in business - as though they were untrustworthy, unreliable children? How many managers behave as though the only reason employees do their jobs is because they're kept on a tight leash?

Lesson: Your employees are the people who keep you in business. They're the ones who are manufacturing the widgets or providing the services your customers buy; in most cases, they're the ones who are communicating with your customers. Treat your employees with the care and respect they deserve if you want them to do the same for your customers.

I began to wonder if there might be anything else in the film that would correlate to life in the corporate world, so I watched it again. As it turns out, there are more parallels than you would think:

Metatron: Human beings have neither the aural nor the psychological capacity to withstand the awesome power of God's true voice. Were you to hear it, your mind would cave in and your heart would explode within your chest.

In the film, no one can speak directly to God; Metatron is the voice of God, and all direct conversation flows through him. I found this to be an interesting parallel to the chain of command that exists in many large corporations: when was the last time you saw the CEO having an actual conversation with one of the widget makers on the manufacturing floor?

Lesson: Spend time with the people who reside in the lower boxes on the org chart - and don't just make a show of it, either. Really listen to them. Those folks may have ideas that can help grow your business; and they'll provide you with a reality check that you just can't get from senior management.

Azrael: No, I was an artist, stupid! I was inspiration! A muse has no place in battle!
Serendipity: So after the fallen were banished to hell, God turned on those who wouldn't fight, and Azrael was sent down with the demons; something he considers a grave injustice.
Azrael: Ah, come on! Don't tell me you never questioned the judgement, Serendipity.
Serendipity: No. It never bothered me. So you were an artist; big deal! Elvis was an artist. But that didn't stop him from joining the service in time of war. And that's why he's The King, and you're a schmuck.

Office politics in the Great Hereafter; you gotta love it. In all seriousness, though, this is a spot-on interpretation of something that happens in businesses every day. There are people who, in a business conflict, flat out refuse to take a position or state an opinion, lest they take the losing side. Instead, these folks wait to see who wins the tug-of-war, and then agree with the victor.

Lesson: If you're in a leadership position, one of the things you're expected to do is use your brain; if you refuse to express what you really think, then you're not doing your job. Sure, sometimes you'll make a bad call, but that's to be expected. Failing to take a position in any conflict doesn't make you seem neutral; it makes you seem wimpy. Don't be that guy, because no one respects him.

Bethany: You're saying that having beliefs is a bad thing?
Rufus: I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

I don't even need to interpret this, do I? It's applicable to business without any translation.

Lesson: Holding tightly to beliefs about your market, your customers, or your employees limits your ability to navigate and effect change in the workplace. Beliefs can become outdated; ideas by their very nature are limitless. Don't let your beliefs get in the way of new ideas.

Bethany: But you'll be destroyed too!
Azrael: Have you ever been to hell? I'd rather not exist than endure that experience a second longer, and if I have to drag down everyone else with me... so be it.

Misery so loves company, yes? And human nature is such that everyone thinks that their problems are more important than everyone else's. Take human nature and add a few splashes of narcissism, and you have a recipe for people who will bring down the entire company if it will get them where they want to be.

Lesson: If you're miserable in your organization, then do what you can do to fix it. If you can't fix it, then leave. But don't take out other people in your quest for revenge against whatever slights you think you've experienced. It's unprofessional, and it won't make you feel better. Furthermore, even big business is smaller than you'd think, and people talk. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want a reputation as someone who will sacrifice other folks for your success.

Bartleby: We've paid our debt. Don't you think it's time... Don't you think it's time we went home? And to do that... I... I think we may have to dispatch our would be dispatchers.
Loki: Wait. Wait. Wait. Kill them? You're talking about the Last Scion...! And what about Jay and Bob? I mean... Those guys were all right.
Bartleby: Don't. Don't my friend. See, don't let your sympathies get the best of you. They did me once. Scion or not, she's just a human. And by passing through that arch, our sins are forgiven. No harm, no foul.

Ah, yes; the ever-popular loophole. This is the slippery slope of business (indeed, of life): any action is okay if you can find a loophole by which the act isn't against the rules (or if you can rationalize that it's justified).

Lesson: Loopholes are bull$#|^. If you have to ask yourself whether what you're doing is ethical, or if you have to find a way to justify doing something that's iffy on the scale of right-and-wrong, then the odds are that it's not ethical. And I hope I don't need to remind you of this, but I will anyway: just because a given act isn't illegal doesn't necessarily mean that it's right. Sure, sometimes doing what's right can hurt you (in the short term); but getting a reputation as someone who takes ethically-questionable shortcuts will hurt you far more in the long term.

Metatron: So once he's done with the firstborn, Loki takes his friend Bartleby out for a post-slaughter drink. And over many rounds, they get into this discussion about whether or not murder in the name of God is okay. Now, Bartleby can run circles around Loki intellectually, not to mention that Loki's already half in the bag. And in the end, Bartleby convinces Loki to quit his position and take a lesser one that doesn't involve slaughter. So - very inebriated - Loki tells God he quits, throws down his fiery sword, and gives Him the finger. Which ruins it for the rest of us, because from that day forward, God decreed that all angels could no longer imbibe alcohol. Hence all the spitting.

Once again, we have a spot-on interpretation of a situation that occurs all too frequently in businesses: you have one person who does something really foolish, and the business responds by creating a new policy that punishes everyone for the misdeeds of one.

Lesson: Take the time to identify personnel problems vs. process problems, and then address them accordingly. If you have one person who continually causes a problem, then you have a personnel issue; the solution is to deal with that one person. If, on the other hand, you have a number of people who are making the same mistakes, then you don't have a personnel problem: you have a process, training, or management problem. In the latter situation, then a new policy might be the answer (but you can't know that until you take the time to do a root cause analysis to see what's really driving the problem).

Bethany: You're going to lead me somewhere.
Jay: Me lead you?! Lady, look at me: I don't even know where the hell I am half the time!

No matter what you do, there will always be some employees who will think that company leaders don't know where the hell they are half the time. But that doesn't mean that you should behave in a manner consistent with that belief.

Lesson: If you don't know how to lead people, then it's your responsibility to learn. Read books, network with people you admire so that you can pick their brains, and talk to your employees. You can't go wrong by asking folks what you can do to help them be more effective. You can't go wrong by praising in public and coaching in private (you do already know that you should never chew someone out in public, don't you?). You can't go wrong by admitting that you don't always have all the answers; but you can go seriously wrong by pretending that you do.

Managing people isn't religion - and managers aren't deities. Don't make your employees go through intermediaries to talk to you; be available, be honest, do the right thing, and treat everyone with respect (even - especially - the people you don't particularly like). Be willing to admit that you don't know it all, and be open to new ideas from every level of the organization. Don't let your beliefs about how businesses should be run (or how managers should behave) get in the way of being effective. Trust your instincts, and trust your employees. Do those things, and you'll find that people will perform better than you'd ever dreamed.

Resignation

It's been said that the opposite of love isn't hate; it's apathy. I think that, with a slight modification, we can make this adage apply to our careers: the opposite of career passion isn't hate; it's resignation.

When you've done your best to make a difference, and you've been stopped in your tracks time and time again, it can be incredibly demoralizing. When you strive always to do the right thing for your organization (only to watch better politicians -- but weaker performers -- get the plum assignments and the corner offices), you might become somewhat hostile. When you've tried to inject a little creativity into your workplace (only to have your suggestions rejected because they were a little too creative), you might feel frustrated. And when you survive those types of situations many times over and for an extended period of time, one of four things will happen:

1. Your frustration will reach critical mass and you'll leave the company
2. Your frustration will reach critical mass, your attitude will tank, and your performance will deteriorate
3. You will become resigned to the situation, and will become a mindless drone whose primary goal is to maintain the status quo
4. You'll find a way to rise above it all; you'll learn to work the system to get what you need to do what you want to do, and you'll be a smashing success

Outcome #1 sounds good; and it can work out for you, if you're lucky and go about the process the right way. You see, politics and bureaucracy are nearly everywhere in the business world, and trying to escape them by going from one corporation to another is likely to lead you in a metaphorical circle right back into the kind of mess you're trying to avoid. Nevertheless, this is the direction that many people take. Just remember that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence; and when you're interviewing, the company is selling itself to you just as much as you're selling yourself to the company. Caveat emptor, my friends. That's not to suggest that you should stay at your current company even though the stress is killing you. What I'm saying is, if you're miserable enough to leave where you are, then you need to become a skilled interviewer of potential employers so that you can weed out the toxic environments before you're ensnared.

Outcome #2 is not good, no matter how you try to spin it.

Outcome #3 is what I believe happens to the majority of folks. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't, right? And since there's no way to know what the next company will be like, you might as well stay where you are; at least you know what to expect. It's true that your work won't excite you, and you probably won't fulfill your career aspirations. But it's rather like that pair of sweats you'd never wear outside the house: it doesn't do anything for you, but it sure is comfy.

Outcome # 4 is the ideal, if you can manage it. But it won't be easy. You'll probably alienate some people (colleagues, and perhaps even senior management, who are all about toeing the Company line), and there will be those who tell you that you're crazy. But if you have the personal strength to say, "I'm going to achieve this goal, or I'm going to get fired trying" and mean it, you might just have something going. Now, I won't lie to you: there is the possibility that you might be asked to get off the bus if you're continually challenging the system. However, if you're really approaching your work from the perspective of what's good for you and the company, that's not likely. And if you can drum up that kind of passion for your work, and network like crazy, you'll develop a name for yourself outside of your corporate home (I don't need to tell you why that's a good idea, do I?).

If you've ever read Fish! (and if you haven't, you really should), you know that one of the main themes in the book is that you choose your attitude. And I know it sounds like new agey, warm and fuzzy silliness, but it's true: we can't control much in this life, but we can control how we respond to the events around us. And you know what? Sometimes faking it can be helpful. If you can behave as though things are moving along according to plan, and if you can behave as though you're getting all the support you need to move your initiatives forward, you might be surprised to find that you start getting more support and moving forward on your pet projects.

When you feel as though you can't do anything right, and you're afraid that the corporate quicksand is going to pull you under, please keep the faith. You don't have to be miserable, and you don't have to be ineffective, and you don't have to spend your career just making do. Dare to do what makes you great (and everyone has some greatness), and refuse to accept the status quo from yourself. You have more power than you think to change your world. One of my favorite songs ever is from a horrible little movie called, "Bedazzled." The song played during the closing credits was by a band called Sister Hazel, and the lyrics of the chorus read:

If you want to be somebody else... if you're tired of fighting battles with yourself,
If you want to be somebody else, change your mind.

American society seems to perpetuate victimization, and it's very tempting (and convenient) to allow youself to believe that you're a victim of bureaucracy, poor management, or incompetent colleagues. But the truth is that, if you are unhappy at work, you can choose to overcome it or you can choose to wallow in it.

The future really is up to you. Choose wisely.