Richard Nantel

Last Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion about corporate blogging with my colleagues Janet Clarey, Tom Werner, and Gary Woodill. One of the questions I was asked was “should CEOs blog?” My short answer during this discussion was “yes.” Here’s my long answer.

For many, the title of CEO has become synonymous with privilege, moral depravity, and fat paychecks and bonuses rewarded regardless of whether the company is flourishing or going bankrupt. (To you few CEOs who have contributed to this reputation, I’m reminded of something Oscar Wilde once wrote: “Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.”)

REASON #1 FOR WHY YOUR CEO SHOULD BLOG: Tell the world that CEOs can be ethical leaders. Help eliminate the prejudice that surrounds this position. Attach a human face to the title.

If an outsider were to observe the staff of an organization without being told who’s who, chances are they would not be able to identify the CEO. She could be the person on the phone handling a customer complaint or the man restocking the shelves of the office supply cabinet.

On the last evening of the Innovations in Learning conference last week, I had a great conversation with the CEO of a successful software company. I mentioned that a current challenge I’m facing as CEO is that my responsibilities have increased yet I’m still doing most of the tasks I’ve inherited over my eight years at Brandon Hall Research.

I asked this CEO if he’s managed to shed some of the tasks for which he’s been responsible over the years. He mentioned that, until fairly recently, he was the person who cleaned the company bathroom.

This immediately made me feel much better about setting up e-mail accounts, formatting reports, fixing software bugs, and sending team members reminders to complete their time sheets and status reports. (I also immediately went out and bought a pair of rubber gloves to keep in my desk drawer just in case bathrooms appeared on my list of responsibilities.)

REASON #2 FOR WHY YOUR CEO SHOULD BLOG: If the person who cleans the company toilet can blog, so should your CEO. (This may, in fact, be the same person.)

If a person has acquired the top rank of an organization by climbing its corporate ladder, chances are that individual knows a heck of a lot about the organization. Consequently, the CEO is in a great position to write blog posts that provide deep insights into the company. Having such a CEO remain silent is a lost opportunity.

REASON #3 FOR WHY YOUR CEO SHOULD BLOG: Your CEO may not know where the size two coffee filters are, but he or she knows the industry and company very well and should be in a position to provide a big picture analysis. (I take that back. Your CEO likely knows where the size two coffee filters are.)

Lastly, the question, “should CEOs blog” seems strange to me. No one would dare ever ask “should sales reps/customer service personnel/software designers/[INSERT FUNCTION] blog?”

REASON #4 FOR WHY YOUR CEO SHOULD BLOG: Everyone should be encouraged to blog. Multiple viewpoints provide a better perspective. Sharing opinions and insights improves collective knowledge.

I just finished reading Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, which explores the psychological influences that can lead us to make bad decisions. One section of this book proposes that only four types of people exist in any group:

• Initiators who always have ideas, propose new projects, and are optimistic about the outcomes
• Blockers who are likely to question and block new initiatives
• Supporters who side with either the initiator or the blocker
• Observers who don’t take sides but prefer to just comment on the matter at hand

You would think you’d like to fill up your team with plenty of initiators and few blockers to help drive innovation. But, that would be risky. Initiators tend to be highly optimistic about any new idea. Without a sobering second thought by a blocker, energy can be wasted on bad ideas.

The risks are significantly higher in the airline industry. Research indicates that a large percentage of plane crashes have been caused by pilots who, as confident and optimistic initiators, attempted dangerous maneuvers. The other members of the cabin crew, too respectful of the captain’s authority and swayed by the captain’s optimism, remained silent. As the author describes it:

“A strong initiator can quell a blocker.”

To address this risk, airline cabin crews are being provided with Crew Resource Management training to learn to become potential blockers when faced with bad or overly optimistic decisions by those in authority. This training program was designed by NASA and is intended to catch bad decisions before they result in loss of life.

“When pilots spot a departure from safety procedures, they are trained to challenge the captain.”

Teams in any workplace should learn these skills. Those in charge need to learn to tolerate dissent. Blockers need to be given the freedom to voice concerns without reprisal and need to be encouraged to provide feedback.

Apple Computer is getting a lot of press these days, but the focus isn’t always on its computers, iPhone, or ubiquitous iPods. Rather, various sources have written about how Apple is run very much like a traditional top-down company. People are told what to do and then sent off to do it. If they do a bad job, they may get yelled at by the boss.

Who would have guessed?

Since reading about Apple’s old-time management style, I can’t help watching the “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” TV commercials more closely to see if the cool Mac guy has bloodshot eyes from crying in his cubicle.

According to Leander Kahney, author of a recent essay in Wired magazine titled “How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong“:

“Whereas the rest of the tech industry may motivate employees with carrots, Jobs is known as an inveterate stick man. Even the most favored employee could find themselves on the receiving end of a tirade. Insiders have a term for it: the “hero-shithead roller coaster.” Says Edward Eigerman, a former Apple engineer, “More than anywhere else I’ve worked before or since, there’s a lot of concern about being fired.”

Apple’s management style seems the polar opposite from what we hear takes place at most modern tech firms, including the world’s most powerful brand, Google. Leander Kahney writes:

“Google’s engineers have unprecedented autonomy; they choose which projects they work on and whom they work with. And they are encouraged to allot 20 percent of their work week to pursuing their own software ideas. The result? Products like Gmail and Google News, which began as personal endeavors.”

Google’s management style sounds idyllic, but I bet the reality of the situation isn’t so rosy. I’m certain there are some team members no one wants to work with and a bunch of projects that need to get done that no one wants to do. I suspect there are even days when the catered meals need salt and the massage therapist’s hands are cold.

From a talent management perspective, I think the Google style may work for Google but is at the experimental stage elsewhere. It’s not yet certain such a high level of freedom leads to greater happiness among employees or a more creative and productive team. Economists would surely say that, given such freedom, team members will inevitably choose individual self interests over what’s best for their colleagues or the company.

The opposite approach, though, of beating employees with a stick, will only be endured by the employee until a better job comes along. Making matters worse, when that employee does leave, he or she will be bitter and will do all he can to hurt the company.

As a reaction to the media attention being bestowed on the subject of positive psychology and happiness, Eric G. Wilson has written a book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, that focuses on the benefits of unhappiness. According to Wilson, melancholia can lead to inspiration and creativity. Would Vincent Van Gogh have produced such wonderful art had he not been depressed enough to slice off his ear? Nuff said.

Need more inspiration and creativity at work? Perhaps the problem is that you’re too happy. To embrace the miserable employee within you, you can do the opposite of what positive psychologists have learned generates happiness:

• Don’t pay attention to the present. Instead, just keep your focus on retirement. Only 15 years, 243 days, six hours, and 58 seconds left to go!
• Hate your coworkers. Working with people you like will generate a warm feeling of being part of a team. Think Jane down the hall in accounting is a nice person? Get real. She would stab you in the back just to get your stapler and post-it note dispenser.
• Hold grudges. Did Hank in the IT department publicly humiliate you by disagreeing with your idea to reinstall Windows ME on all department computers? Put his name on a mental list. Act cheerful around him. Plot your revenge. Wait patiently. People who forgive have been shown to be happier. Don’t ever forgive or forget.
• Eliminate your social circle. Having a rich social life significantly increases happiness. So, try to work from home. Don’t speak with your neighbors. Have your groceries delivered. Ask the delivery person to place the bags at the door. Leave the payment in the mailbox.
• Don’t exercise. Research indicates exercise can alleviate depression better than medication. Stay as still as possible. If you must go anywhere, take the car even if it’s just to the end of the driveway to pick up the newspaper.
• It’s all about the money. Can you believe some people win the lotto and keep coming to work? Morons. There’s only one reason for you to haul your body in each day: moolah. If your job is stimulating and generates a sense of achievement, you should immediately look for something else.
• Multitask like crazy. Immersing yourself completely in a task can lead to a state of “flow,” which has been proven to raise a person’s level of happiness. Check your e-mail and voice mail every minute, keep logged in to all your chat applications, keep your cell phone on at all times, and turn up the volume of that Youtube video while working on something else.
• Never be grateful. Something as simple as mentally making a daily list of five things for which you are grateful has been shown to make people happier. So never be grateful for anything. You deserve much more than you’re getting. Have you just received another raise? Like it’s enough! Other organizations would pay you twice as much.

I know. All of this sounds like a lot of work. But, millions of people have achieved unhappiness at work, and, by following these simple guidelines, you can too.

My teenage daughter has changed her mind repeatedly about a future career:

• For many years, her love of animals led her to consider veterinary medicine. A couple of trips to the vet’s with our own cat convinced her that there was just too much potential for gore in this career.
• After our first summer vacation on the coast of the Bay of Fundy, she considered a life as a marine biologist. What could be better than spending a life by the sea? But, although she continues to love the outdoors, she’s increasingly enjoying urban life.
• So, a career as a biologist has now been replaced with plans to attend art school and become an artist.

Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, would think she’s making a wise choice.

The premise of this book is that, in the western world, jobs occupied by knowledge workers will either shift to developing countries or be eliminated through advances in technology. According to Mr. Pink, the Information Age of the 20th century is being replaced with a new Conceptual Age, one where creators and empathizers will rule.

To prove his point, Dan Pink points out that:

“Corporate recruiters have begun visiting the top arts grad schools—places such as the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art— in search of talent.”

The book goes on to provide exercises to help logical left-brain types unleash their inner Picassos. According to Pink, creativity isn’t innate. It can be learned.

MFAs are the new MBAs. How cool is that?

Compared to many other species, humans have a long lifespan. Whereas geneticists can study more than 50 generations of fruit flies in a single year, the human species is more difficult to study from an evolutionary standpoint. Since a new human generation comes into being every 20 years or so, our rate of evolutionary change is significantly slower than that of fruit flies.

Evolutionary psychology aims to explain human behavior by considering the fact that the human brain has not changed very much in the last 10,000 years. Although technology is advancing at an exponential rate, we are, as Alan Kay, co-founder of Xerox PARC describes, “just cavemen with briefcases.”

Evolutionary psychology does a great job of explaining human behavior, from marriage, divorce, competition, war, etc. We may feel we are enlightened compared to past generations, but, in reality, we are still driven by the same urges that influenced our behavior 10,000 years ago.

Looking at humans from an evolutionary psychology viewpoint may explain why telling and recording stories is becoming an important part of formal knowledge management and learning strategies within many organizations. Telling and listening to stories has been at the very core of human communication since the dawn of time. As technology has advanced, our stories are now more likely to come from books, television, film, and the Internet, rather than from fellow tribe members seated around a campfire. But, stories still remain central to human life.

According to Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, organizations such as the World Bank, NASA, and 3M, among others, are implementing “organizational storytelling.” Mr. Pink reports that:

“Xerox—recognizing that its repair personnel learned to fix machines by trading stories rather than by reading manuals—has collected its stories into a database called Eureka that Fortune estimates is worth $100 million to the company.”

Organizations have for years been wondering how to capture the knowledge of their employees. Unlike traditional knowledge management solutions, organizational storytelling may be the most human approach to solving this problem.

Time to turn on the video cameras.

For a number of years, the media have been reporting that many countries will be facing a severe shortage of workers due to the impending retirement of the baby boomers. Increasingly, I don’t think this will be the case.

If they haven’t already begun to do so, many boomers will soon be taking a sobering look at their finances. For the vast majority, the possibility of retirement at the age of 55, 60, and even the traditional age of 65 will likely evaporate as they begin to crunch the numbers.

According to a recent article, The Real Price of Affluence, in the Globe and Mail, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith predicted that, as the population’s income grew, people would tire of acquiring material goods and would instead opt for more leisure time. This has not occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

In doing research about what our future workforce might look like, I came across an interesting article in the N.Y. Times titled In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich. The story is about Hal Steger, a 51 year-old Menlo Park marketing executive with a net worth of $3.5 million U.S.

Mr. Steger continues to work “12 hours a day and logs an extra 10 hours over the weekend,” not because he wants to, but because he feels he HAS to. Although Hal Steger’s wealth places him in the top two percent of families in the United States, when compared with his Silicon Valley neighbors, he’s just an average Joe.

Almost anywhere else in the world, $3.5 million would finance a care-free retirement. But, being “rich” is a relative term. If you’re the only person on your street with a hot new BMW, you’ll feel on top of the world — until your neighbor shows up with a shiny new Ferrari. Read the rest of this entry »

(Still on the subject of an aging workforce) The Coming Death Shortage, written by Charles C. Mann and published in The Atlantic Monthly, examines the possible effects of increased human longevity on society.

According to Mann, “From religion to real estate, from pensions to parent-child dynamics, almost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations.”

This is now changing.

We continue to live longer. Life expectancy in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century was 47. The 2006 Canadian census reports the average lifespan at 83 years for women and 77 for men. Most scientists predict this trend in greater longevity will continue. (A few scientists, including Ray Kurzweil, even believe that the rate of technological progress is accelerating so quickly that, barring accidents and catastrophes such as severe changes to our planet, many of us we’ll be living hundreds of years. Technology will simply be advanced enough to cure many common diseases.) Read the rest of this entry »

My last couple of blog posts have been about the ramifications of changing workforce demographics. Because of our aging population, governments will be encouraging people to keep working as long as possible to avert an impending labor shortage.

Some of those people will need to work. They will not yet have achieved financial independence. Many others, though, will be working because they want to, not because they need to. These financially secure older workers will want to stay in the workforce to remain active, keep intellectually stimulated, maintain social contacts, ward off boredom, support a cause, etc.

My mother was such a worker. When my sisters and I left home, my mother, in her 50s, got a job in the catalog department of a local Sears outlet. She didn’t need to work. (In fact, my father, a traditional bread-winner-of-the-family-type-guy, wished she would just stay home.) Read the rest of this entry »