future you

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not speaking up usually pays off in the short-term. not voicing your disagreement with a decision, not adding your ideas into the conversation, and not defending others’ will more than likely keep you safe.

for now.

it’s easy to not voice your opinion because there’s no risk involved. not many people have been fired for something they didn’t say. except there is actually a ton of risk involved in staying silent. you’ve merely deferred that risk to the long game instead. some future version of you is going to have a problem to deal with and—knowing how bad news doesn’t age well—it will probably be worse than the problem you’re facing right now.

choose instead to direct the discussion. choose instead to be a part of the initial planning. choose instead to support and defend what you believe in.

it’s hard work now, but future you will thank you for it.

when you say you’re sorry, mean it

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livingsocial was recently hacked, affecting nearly 50 million account holders—myself being one of them. unfortunately in recent years these types of incidents are becoming more and more commonplace. but whether this type of situation is a common occurrence or not, it should never become trivial.

the email i received about the situation, however, seemed to treat it as if it was trivial. in the 269 word letter (not including boilerplate or tim o’shaughnessy’s sign off and signature), it wasn’t until the 247th word that there was ever an apology of any kind. that is far too long to wait to hear “i’m sorry” when failing to secure your customer’s personal information.

brand management 101: when you say you’re sorry, mean it.

the uncomfortable spaces

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as people and organizations, we all have limits to what we can do and things we merely prefer not to do. it’s our safe zone. it’s comfortable and we know it and it’s never surprising. we can anticipate what we’ll find and how we can expect to deal with it.

but growth happens in the spaces outside of our limits. when we choose to do and be what we’ve refused before, we become better versions of ourselves. more experienced and wiser about our surroundings. by pushing into these spaces we begin to find where our limits truly lie.

it’s foreign and unnatural to us. it brings with it an inherent risk. but you’ll find that the uncomfortable spaces are where the important work gets done. the question then looks more like this: do you want to keep living the same life, or do you want to become something greater?

let’s do some important work together.

“we’re all in this together”

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that’s a great line for a cheerleader. but not a real leader.

real leaders have unwavering faith in their organization’s ability to pull through and succeed even in difficult times. but real leaders also never lose sight of the hard facts. they understand when priorities need to shift and when people need to change and when their organization needs to reinvent itself.

they understand that when you’re all in it together, if you’re not heading down the right path, you all end up in the wrong place together.

before you play to win, it’s best to understand the kind of game you’re playing.

being good helps, but it’s not a prerequisite

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along the road to success you’ll see tons of good ideas that never panned out. great ideas—revolutionary ideas—which never see the light of day. crumbled pieces of paper, the back of en envelope, torn-up napkins all filled with tomorrow’s next big thing that never was.

and yet how often does it happen, we’re sitting on our couch, listening to the radio, or reading a book and think, “how in the world did i not think of that?” we see hundreds of examples of seemingly worthless products, overly produced songs, and such basic ideas that we can’t believe it ever was successful.

how? because the simple truth is this: good does not equal success. it’s impossible to predict which ideas will win and which ideas won’t because there are so many factors at play. being good helps, but it’s not a prerequisite.

if you keep waiting around for the right idea to come, or a good time to start that business, or the market to swing back to the center you may be waiting a long time. better to take a chance and boldly go. as they say, you gotta be in it to win it.

the wrong questions

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there has been a recent influx of questions about personal development on our corporate yammer site. however, they’re simply the wrong questions.

the question should not be about what skills or knowledge our clients are looking for, or what certifications and corporate boot camps are the best to pursue. it should be about what you want to do. about what excites you. about what you want to be doing for the rest of your life.

when did we stop believing in ourselves? when did we stop believing that who we are is good enough? stop worrying about what other people want. do what you want to do. learn what you want to learn. become the person that you were meant to become. people naturally gravitate towards that.

and if you can’t find work to match your skills and interests, it’s your job to create that work.

you owe it to yourself to be happy. stop asking the wrong questions.

less than human

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even now, some weeks after the yahoo! changes, the hot topic is still collaboration and productivity and what it all means. what’s better? how do you define better? what’s the best way to attain high levels of either one? which is right and which is wrong?

for some organizations, productivity is important. standardizing processes, reducing rework, optimizing output from people and systems, it all leads to less risk and lower costs. i have n number of staff active for x number of hours in a day and i am getting (x – y) hours or productivity out of those people where my job is to make y approach zero. costs are lower, profits are higher.

these organizations are in a race to the bottom. striving to be the cheapest. fighting to get the most out of each hour in their people’s day. optimizing. minimizing. less than human.

for other organizations, collaboration is key. interacting with people to share experiences, build relationships, and work on new ideas, it all adds to greater levels of trust and engagement. it doesn’t necessarily reduce costs, and there’s argument over how much extra profit those new ideas generate.

but it’s not a race to the bottom for them. instead, these organizations believe that you have to spend money to make money, and time wasted when two colleagues spend 20 minutes talking about where they’re from, and which school they went to, and what they’re working on isn’t time wasted at all. it’s sub-optimal, but it’s worth the investment.

so which is right?

it doesn’t make sense for a manufacturing company running an assembly line to desire collaboration over productivity because you need to turn out as many trinkets with as few defects as your plant can provide in a single day. it doesn’t make sense for an automobile dealership to desire collaboration over productivity because you need to move more cars and more people in and out of the dealership to hit your quotas. and because you’re special—in a certain market, with certain restrictions, doing a certain type of work—and most importantly because you’re in the business of doing things that other people tell you to do, it doesn’t make sense for your company, or your agency, or your organization to desire collaboration over productivity.

or does it?

we don’t need another mailbox app

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it feels like there’s an arms war going on surrounding email apps. which one is best? which has the most features? which will help you reach inbox zero? one of the latest—and most hyped—entrants into the email app arena is mailbox app.

but to me, it seems like we’re fighting the wrong kind of war. the reason so many people feel inundated by email is because we’re not using it for the right reasons. i wrote about this before.

why do people hoard emails and keep 400 of them in their inbox? why do we have overly complicated tree structures of file folders in our desktop mail applications when you need lewis and clark or holmes and watson to help you find anything once you put it there?

we’ve been using email as a means of passing and storing information for way too long, and it just doesn’t make sense. at work, files and information belong in a shared, open environment, not to be stashed away and hidden in some ridiculously named folder like “stacy” or “jim”. at home, personal email either needs to be saved (website registration information… something else?) or deleted. there is no in between.

we don’t need another mailbox app. we need to rethink the way we use email.

the desire for openness

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in the connection era where i can share tweets with local newscasters to get information related to my hometown area from hundreds of miles away, why do our organizations still follow a top-down approach to information dissemination?

your boss’s boss’s boss has something to share with everyone, so she tells your boss’s boss. then your boss’s boss tells your boss, this way he can tell you what his boss’s boss’s boss wanted everyone to know.

that simply takes way too long. plus, along the way, pieces of the news get misinterpreted and imagination and rumor fill in the gaps in between. now the whole message has changed and no one is better off for having had the information passed along to them.

the tools and technology exist to allow upper management to share information directly—and engage in conversations—with everyone inside their organization quickly and efficiently.

the only thing that’s missing is the desire for openness.

the perks of being a CEO

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there is a lot of discussion lately surrounding marissa mayer’s decision to discontinue the work from home policy at yahoo!

people both for and against the decision have stated their case ad nauseum, so i won’t do that here. (for the record i support marissa’s decision.) but one thing i wanted to comment on are the comments on marissa having a nursery in her office. they claim the ban on working from home is an attack on working parents—mostly working mothers—and that it’s unfair that she gets to take care of her child while other yahoos can’t.

but think about your own organization. how many perks do the people above you in the hierarchy get?

private jets?

company-issued smart phones?

better computers?

the ability to expense certain items you can’t?

in any hierarchical structure, the people at the top get more than the people at the bottom. that’s part of what drives people to reach those upper echelons. bigger offices, fancier conference rooms, personal assistants. if you’re not going to storm the castle in disgust at your own organization’s leadership for taking advantage of opportunities that you don’t get, then perhaps we should be a little more lenient towards marissa mayer.

it’s just the perks of being a CEO.