Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Advancing Partnerships in the Workplace

In their research, Gartner analysts Jeffrey Brooks, Heather Colella, and John Roberts found that CIOs believe current approaches to assessing executive satisfaction are missing something, and that IT organizations require a technique that puts the onus on line of business partners to articulate exactly what they need from IT.

Gartner has developed one such technique, which involves understanding the importance of a reciprocal relationship, refining value-added questions for business executives, and initiating the conversation in a way that promotes maximum participation.

Reciprocity

According to the Gartner EXP report, The Politics of Powerful Partnerships: “At the heart of a powerful partnership between IT and the rest of the enterprise is reciprocity: the exchange of equivalent advantages or privileges. Without reciprocity, IT cannot move from order taker to powerful partner.”

“Individuals decline to enter into reciprocal arrangements with those they consider significantly different in power and status. CIOs can create powerful partnerships between IT and other departments by systematically building IT’s power and status in key areas to reach equality with business peers.”

One way to do this is through regular satisfaction surveys. By benchmarking IT through four types of satisfaction surveys, Gartner suggested that CIOs will be armed with the information they need to have meaningful conversations with their business colleagues. These types include:

• Measuring satisfaction when a service desk ticket has been closed
• Measuring satisfaction at the end of a project
• Conducting annual IT satisfaction surveys with business users
• Conducting ongoing surveys and conversations with business leaders to get their qualitative opinions about IT

Value-added questions

A key role of IT, said the Gartner analysts, is growing line of business technology capabilities. CIOs can do this by creating a few open-ended questions for business colleagues to gain a clearer understanding of what their people expect of IT. As stewards of their organizations, the business colleagues can then interpret that information for the CIOs. Finally, CIOs can work with business colleagues to redefine and rethink how technology enables the enterprise.

Gartner’s thought-starter questions included the following:

• How is your personal success measured, and how well-positioned are you to achieve it?
• How do you leverage technology to drive better business results?
• IT tends to describe what it does in terms of services. What three services do you frequently use?
• If you could divorce IT, what would you look for in a new partner?
• If you were named CIO tomorrow, what would be the first three actions you would take and why?

Telepresence Robots Coming to an Office Near You

Using telepresence robotics technology by Double Robotics and others, organizations are virtually sending their employees on client meetings and speaking engagements every day. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

Telepresence is one of the few commercial applications of robotics technology that I’ve been genuinely excited about. Now that remote work is significantly on the rise, I view telepresence as a terrific means for professionals to virtually project themselves into an engaging human office environment.

Since I don’t have a telepresence robot myself yet, I checked out some opinions from those who have used them. Do the currentmachines live up to the hype, and are they a nightmare for IT staff to manage and secure?

In theory

Over at TechCrunch, Peter Hirst wrote about his colleague at MIT Sloan Executive Education, Paul McDonagh-Smith. Paul’s based in London, but his telepresence robot from Double Robotics allows him to present at a conference in Singapore first thing in the morning, then have a business meeting in Cape Town, South Africa and later that afternoon, meet with team members on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“In our office, telepresence robots are no longer a novelty, but an everyday tool we’ve been using to enable our remote team members to be more engaged,” said Hirst. “Double’s robot units are available regularly for team meetings or one-on-one visits. We all enjoy the ability to be truly present in our interactions with colleagues and clients — an experience that feels much more natural and personal than a phone call or a videoconference.”

In practice

Emily Dreyfuss is a remote worker at Wired. She lives in Boston, but most of her colleagues are in an office in San Francisco, and she was feeling left out. Her boss bought her Double Robotics’ creatively named Double, which sells for around $2500. The telepresence robot was Dreyfuss’ physical embodiment at headquarters. Instead of legs, she moved on gyroscopically stabilized wheels. Instead of a face, she had an iPad screen. Instead of eyes, a camera with no peripheral vision. Instead of a mouth, a speaker. And instead of ears, a tinny microphone.

At first, Dreyfuss was enamored with the experience. “It’s thrilling. I am in the office! There is the kitchen! There is Sam! Hi, everyone! I am here!” she exclaimed. Her robot, nicknamed Embot, attended meetings. “Plunked at the end of the conference table, my iPad head tracked the conversation, listening.”

Although Embot put Dreyfuss physically in the office, her co-workers could only see her face and not her body, and therefore were not constantly reminded how pregnant she was. “The visual reminder of my changed condition was not in their faces,” she said. “I have worked at places before where women start getting treated differently when their bellies show.

Dreyfuss realized, however, that current telepresence technology has its limitations. For one thing, people were always touching her robotic body without asking, either to help her move if she got stuck or just because they felt it. It was awkward for her – and her colleagues too. As one reported: “You know, when Joe lifted you up and carried you – with your face on the screen, it looked really inappropriate. Like he was cradling you in his arms.”

Embot was also a little rough around the edges technology wise. Dreyfuss couldn’t hear meetings very well. Robots, of course, live off power and and Wi-Fi, and signal strength proved to be a big problem.

For the rest of the article, check out QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

Build a Team of Business Olympians

With the summer Olympics saturating every social media site, news outlet and water cooler conversation, there’s one thing every business leader is wondering: “How do we create Olympic-level teams in our company?” Andrew Neitlich, the founder and director of the Center for Executive Coaching and author of the new book, Coach! The Crucial, Deceptively Simple Leadership Skill for Breakaway Performance, offers these eight strategies for leaders:

Understand the type of team that’s right for you

Many leaders talk in vague terms about teams, when sometimes they don’t want a team at all. Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith’s book The Wisdom of Teams notes the huge differences between a working group and a team. In a working group, people come to work, do their jobs, and go home. They don’t go out of their way for their colleagues, and basically want to get the job done and be left alone.

A team can increase performance exponentially compared to a working group, but it takes a lot more time, commitment, and effort to become a true team. In a team, people care about each other, go the extra mile, and figure out how to work closely together to perform at the highest levels. Many leaders set up incentives and structures for people to come together as working groups, yet they talk as if they really have a team.

At the same time, there are many different types of teams. In a symphony, everyone works together in perfect synchronicity, following the exact score. Contrast this to a jazz band, which encourages improvisation and creativity and sometimes creates the music on the spot. Getting back to the sports analogy, a winning basketball team has specialized roles for each player, and works fluidly to find openings, pass the ball, and make baskets.

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of coordination, there is the swim team or track team, in which players compete more or less individually in order to help the overall team win. If you don’t define what kind of team you expect, and support people to create that type of team, you won’t get the kinds of results you need.

Ask yourself: “What changes do we need to make in order to attract Olympic-level talent?”

Olympic-level teams have Olympic-level talent. If you want to attract Olympic-level talent to your organization, you need to be the type of organization – and have the type of leaders — where Olympic-level talent would want to work. For instance, hospitals strive towards the designation of Nurse Magnet by putting in place systems and structures that attract the best nursing talent. Every year certain companies make the ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list – and some of them make the list every single year without fail. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a smaller business, you can put in place the kinds of incentives, career paths, management team, and culture that encourage people to do their best and also tell others about how great it is to work with you.

For the rest of the post, check out QuickBase's Fast Track blog.

Debunking Age-Old Millennial Stereotypes

According to the Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau, in mid-2015, the millennial generation (comprising those born from 1980 to 1995) became the largest cohort in the workforce.

By now, millennials have been in the professional world since the early 00s. The oldest ones turn 36 this year and have progressed substantially in their careers. A 2014 Deloitte millennial leadership study illustrated that due to demographic shifts, the millennials are entering leadership positions an average of 10 years earlier than prior generations. In fact, at the time of the study, half of all global millennial respondents self-identified as leaders, meaning they had decision-making authority and direct reports.

Although millennials have had sufficient time to prove themselves, negative stereotypes persist. And if organizations want to grow and support multi-generational teams, we must dispose of these myths and treat millennials as smart, innovative and conscientious individuals who are dedicated to changing business for the better.

Stereotype #1: They’re entitled.

One of the most frustrating misconceptions of all is that millennials are lazy and expect to be handed a career without paying their dues. In a 2015 article, the New York Post cited a recent study finding that 71 percent of American adults consider millennials selfish, and 65 percent find them entitled.

“Millennials seem to have helped themselves to an extra portion at the entitlement buffet (which is all-you-can-eat, obviously, because it’s their right),” wrote Post columnist Mackenzie Dawson.

The truth is that millennials are eager to work hard, as long as they are empowered to do so efficiently and on their own terms. They may eschew bureaucracy and the status quo, but a 2014 Bentley Universityfound that 77 percent of millennials believe flexible hours are the key to better productivity and 89 percent regularly check work email outside normal work hours.

“I recognize that hard work will get me far in my career, but I understand the importance of balance and moderation that will lead to a happy life,” said millennial writer Erin Heilman in a recent op-ed for the Baltimore Sun.

Stereotype #2: They lack critical skills.

Many supervisors believe that the lack of basic skills is killing America’s young professionals. “The more I interact with millennials -- whether I'm interviewing them, overseeing internships or giving speeches to rooms of them -- the more I see it.  It's an entire generation that doesn't know how to communicate,” proclaimed theSilent Partner Marketing blog.

“Little emperor syndrome is one of the primary reasons millennials lack soft skills. Adults have catered to their needs their entire lives,” explained Heather Anderson in the Credit Union Times Magazine. Nobody locked them out of the house and forced them to entertain themselves, building imagination, curiosity and trial-by-error decision making skills.”

But, according to 2015 research conducted by DeVry University’sCareer Advisory Board, the skills gap for entry and junior-level professionals is narrowing. Hiring managers are increasingly finding desirable skills like flexibility, business acumen, problem-solving and communication skills in millennial candidates.

Millennials also bring innovation expertise, which is critical for organizations to remain competitive in the 21st century business world.  And, as businesses rely more and more on technology, millennial digital natives help companies navigate the space.

For the rest of this article, a collaboration between Yarden Tadmor of SwitchApp and myself, head over to Entrepreneur.com.

 

"Let's Grab Coffee and Chat:" The Kiss of Death?

In the Observer, writer Isaac Morehouse made a provocative proposition: the habit of grabbing coffee with colleagues or partners “just to chat” is killing our productivity.

“Let’s grab coffee and chat.”

According to Isaac Morehouse, those five words can be damning. Morehouse’s opinion is that when you become known for doing interesting things, like starting a business or writing intriguing articles, lots of people want to have coffee with you. Most of the time, he says, it’s a bad idea.

Morehouse continues:

“Face to face meetings can be valuable. There’s an energy that you don’t get any other way. But the cost is very high, and it’s rare to gain that energy with a stranger. Unless you know from interactions over email, social media, or phone that you and this person have mutual interests and will both be spurred to beneficial action by a coffee meeting, avoid it.”

“It’s not that coffee isn’t fun. That’s the problem. It is fun. But what’s scarce is conversation that leads directly to productivity. You get a quick high from talking about big ideas with cool people over hot drinks. Hammering out the next steps and taking them is not as much fun.”

“It’s flattering to be asked to coffee by someone who thinks your stuff is great. But it almost always eats away a huge chunk of your time and energy with very little in the way of a tangible outcome. You can feel like you’re doing something because your calendar is booked with coffee and conversation and you don’t have time for stuff. But busyness is not business.”

Oh man, he is so right.

Coffee costs more money than a Starbucks vente

Actually, when new contacts ask me to have coffee – or worse – ask to “pick my brain” (am I the only one who hates that phrase?), I hesitate. I know that these meet-ups are a drain on my productivity. For one thing, they usually take place in downtown Chicago – about a half hour subway ride from where I live and work. So, if you factor in at least an hour for coffee and an hour and half travel time to get to and from the coffee, you’ve probably eaten up half your work day.

And when you work for yourself, the saying “time is money” has a lot of significance.

I also have to admit that 90 percent of the time, grabbing coffee isn’t worth it from a business perspective. This is because generally speaking, people want to get information out of me and take advantage of my knowledge. They aren’t doing it maliciously, they simply haven’t thought about how the meeting can be mutually beneficial.

And therein lies my advice for people who wish to use coffee (and similar types of one-on-ones) as a productivity enhancer rather than a productivity drain.

First and foremost, take Morehouse’s point about action seriously. When you set up coffee with someone, communicate clearly what you intend to talk about, and what actions will take place immediately following the conversation. Brainstorms are fine, but take the next step and use the time with the other person to get your plan of attack off and running. In saving you a second meeting and numerous back-and-forth emails, you will have actually used the coffee date to drive productivity instead of detract from it.

Project Managers: Are You A Dreaded Presence in Town?

I have a good friend who’s an experienced data architect. Since I write about IT project management all the time, I recently asked him if he’d ever consider a PM job. To this he replied: “No way.”

I probed further about his rationale, and we came up with these five reasons why he dislikes project management and project managers and tries to steer clear of the profession whenever possible.

Project Managers are too structured

While every IT project team can benefit from some structure, my friend feels that PMs in general err on the side of micromanagement. They create cost and hourly estimates for tasks and then hold employees to them even when the scope of the project or the needs of the client change. “A lot of PMs act like it’s all about them and their process,” my friend says. “But we are the ones closer to the work and what actually needs to be done, so sometimes they just need to back off.

Project Managers are always justifying their existence

Remember last year’s post based on a LinkedIn discussion questioning whether PM was an actual title/legitimate job? My friend says that the majority of his interactions with PMs involve creating useless frameworks around work that’s already being done fairly seamlessly. “PMs always seem to be doing busywork,” he says. “There are loads of reports, documents, and charts that don’t do anything except show that the PM is working.”

Project Managers are meeting happy

PMs call too many meetings and spend too much time tasking every aspect of every project. “Here’s the thing,” my friend says. “We data architects are generally assigned six hours a day for development, and get to spend the remaining two hours doing meetings, phone calls, emails, and admin. But PMs’ meetings are so frequent and long that they are always cutting into development time. Of course, then they complain that we didn’t finish our tasks in the allotted hours.”

Project Managers don’t communicate openly

Have you ever heard the stereotype about teachers that says: “those who can’t do, teach.” The same is said to be true about PMs. Some assume that people become PMs because they weren’t skilled enough to be developers and as a result are insecure. They guard their power carefully and hold their cards close to the vest when threatened or stressed. “A lot of PMs won’t share the big picture with the team, so we might finish a task and be sitting there with no idea what to do next,” my friend tells me.

For the rest of the post, check out the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How NOT to do Change Management

Change management is difficult, especially when it involves a complex structure like an organization. But some techniques are better than others, and here are a few you’ll want to avoid next time around.

Driving from the bottom instead of the top

Any successful change strategy requires the enthusiastic involvement of managers and employees on the ground, and bottom-up goal setting is terrific for innovation and morale. However, unless you work in an organization with no hierarchy whatsoever, your proposed change won’t go anywhere without executive buy-in and ongoing support. So get it and get it early.

Assuming everyone shares your opinion

It’s a mistake to believe that the majority perspective mirrors yours, even if a certain point of view seems obvious. For example, it’s tempting to think that everyone would naturally support a flexwork or citizen development initiative, but without polling and/or focus groups with groups in all functions and roles across the organization, you really can’t be sure of anything. Even if you’re inhigh-growth mode and are under pressure to take action, do your due diligence before pulling the trigger.

Relying exclusively on logic

It’s necessary to build a bulletproof business case full of rational and objective arguments for your strategy, but don’t forget passion, fire, and story. Unless people can feel the problem you are trying to solve, they won’t be motivated to help you. There’s a happy medium here, though. You have to be able to create a sense of urgency without coming across as over the top.

Force-fitting a strategy that’s at odds with the culture

Corporate culture is an unseen, but tremendously powerful force. In any organization, so much goes on behind the scenes of organizational charts, mission statements, and annual reports. Gaining an in-depth understanding of what drives your culture is a critical step in undertaking any change strategy, even those that aren’t technically “culture” initiatives.

For more ways NOT to do change management, check out the full post on the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Friends Versus Clients: Where Do You Draw the Line?

By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to a recent Customers 2020 Report. Increasingly, customers of small businesses may be expecting owners to know their individual needs in detail and go out of their way to personalize offerings and the shopping experience. When this is done properly, repeat business can be the result.

But what happens when you please the customer so much that your relationship becomes personal? Claudia Mora, owner of The Beauty Vault salon in Fairview, New Jersey; Jeanne Nohalty, founder of design boutique Alley Cat Décor in Oak Park, Illinois; and Jason Sherman, CEO of dating appInstamour in Philadelphia reveal how they manage this situation.

Briefly tell us about an experience where a friend became a customer, or a customer became a friend.

Claudia Mora: Owning a beauty salon is a tough job. You have to be a best friend, a therapist, a stylist and so much more. You see the same clients at least once a week and they become friends, almost family. You talk to them about life, business and, of course, love. I go out for drinks with customers, and they often text me to make appointments instead of calling the salon.

Jeanne Nohalty: We’ve for sure had customers who have turned into friends. It’s wonderful and validates that you are doing your job well. Our key business focus is outstanding customer relations. We treat our customers exactly like friends and therefore see no difference in terms of how we provide service to a friend or a customer who walks in off the street.

Jason Sherman: Often, when my friends need help with their businesses, they turn to me. I tend to be careful, as one wrong move could end the business relationship as well as the friendship. In one case, I agreed to help a friend work on a new product website. 

What were the challenges associated with this situation, and how did you cope with them?

Sherman: It was challenging because she wanted a great deal of customization. The situation became very difficult. During this process, we became less friendly and more like business acquaintances. I even tried to reinforce our friendship by building a custom site for her anyway to show her how it would look, but she ended our contract anyway.

Mora: When I first opened up shop, I offered all my friends the "friends and family" discount, and sometimes I'd comp their services. One day, one of my best friends, who was a customer, said, "I don't need money off. Charge me as a regular client. I should pay the same price I’d pay anywhere else.” That was the last day I offered the “friends and family” discount.

For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.

The World of Compensation is Changing – with Far Reaching Consequences

Two big pieces of salary-related news hit the Internet recently. Credit card processing company Gravity Payments’ CEO was forced to defend his decision to standardize all employee pay to $70K, and the SEC finalized a long-delayed rule forcing businesses to share their “pay ratio,” or how CEO pay compares with that of the average company worker. How might these developments affect business productivity?

$70K Salary Policy Does More Harm Than Good

First up, Dan Price. Thirty year-old Price is the founding CEO of Gravity. He made headlines when he decided to fight income inequality by raising the minimum salary of his 120 employees to $70K. About 70 people got raises and another 30 had their pay doubled instantly. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time.

But, problems were apparent immediately. For one thing, a lot of talented mid-level and senior-level hires quit right away. Entrepreneur’s Steve Tobak can see why: “An entry-level new hire who just clocks in and out is suddenly making almost as much as a veteran supervisor who busted her hump for years.”

“Leveling the playing field all at once as he did breeds resentment and virtually eliminates the merits of meritocracy. You simply can’t raise the minimum salary that high without it having a negative ripple effect throughout the organization.”

From a productivity standpoint, I don’t know that raising people’s salaries when the act has nothing to do with achievement will have the hoped-for effect. Some employees may be motivated to work harder for a CEO who has proved himself to be a nice guy, but those who got jacked up salaries likely have no incentive to push themselves or do more on any given day.

Junior-level employees want to be rewarded, but the purpose of the reward is important. I believe that most people are more satisfied and engaged at work when they are recognized for actual accomplishments. And when they are satisfied and engaged, they are more productive.

If I were a mid-level manager, on the other hand, I think that unconscious negative feelings associated with income fascism would either directly or indirectly decrease my productivity. After all, why should I go out of my way to share my expertise and acquire new expertise on behalf of a company that doesn’t really value it? Someone should do an experiment on this, ideally before any other companies pull the trigger on standardizing pay.

For the other controversy impacting the world of pay, head over to Intuit's Fast Track blog.

Sustaining Enthusiasm for a Long-Term Project

In 2001, a team led by NASA principal investigator Alan Stern crafted the proposal for the New Horizons mission. Five years later in 2006, NASA launched an unmanned probe, a spacecraft weighing over 1,000 pounds, on the first-ever route to Pluto.

Less than a year later, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet,” but that didn’t mean anything as far as the epic New Horizons mission was concerned.

Fast Company recently shared an article detailing the muscle behind New Horizon’s formidable planning process, which spanned 14 years (9 if you start counting at launch) and more than 3 billion miles. The team relied on strong leadership, rigorous risk assessment, and of course, endless patience.

A huge part of the mission’s success was the team’s Longevity document, a list of requirements for ensuring the probe’s successful 2015 encounter with Pluto. The document detailed the uses of the probe’s spare parts and listed every New Horizons team member so they could be reached if their expertise was needed.

The team also compiled a spreadsheet of contingencies for when things didn’t proceed as planned, listing 249 items that might go wrong with either the spacecraft or ground-based operations. This document turned out to be critical when ground control temporarily lost communications with the probe earlier this summer.

Although the Fast Company piece didn’t directly address it, Stern and Chris Hersman, the lead engineer on the New Horizons project, had another intimidating task. How could they bolster their team’s excitement about a project where no immediate payoff was an understatement? Not everyone on the original team stayed on board through the 14 years between proposal and today, but many did. Here’s four ways Stern and Hersman kept them interested.

Communicate the Big Picture

According to Hersman, New Horizons is now flying through Pluto’s shadow, taking measurements from its atmosphere and probing to learn about the temperature, pressure, and composition of its surface. After hearing NASA publicly claim that the probe’s job is crucial to expanding humanity’s scant understanding of the outer reaches of the solar system, the New Horizons team was invigorated by the opportunity to participate in the making of history.

Play the Politics

Stern and Hersman likely reminded their people that the National Academy of Sciences ranked New Horizons as the space agency’s top priority during an every-10-years survey of its projects. The importance of the project and expectations were continually reinforced from above, making it easier for team members to keep their attention on the end game and the upward career mobility that would result from a successful mission.

For the rest, visit Intuit's Fast Track blog.