All Posts in Office Politics

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Every week I send Keep the Joint Running to an opt-in list of subscribers. Every week I get a bunch of messages back — autoreplies about travel plans, messages that were undeliverable for one reason or another, and spam managers that ask me to click to confirm it’s a legitimate e-mail.

I also get returns like this one:

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This is an automated message from the mail server at [name withheld because I’m such a nice guy].

An email, apparently sent from you was not delivered because it contains one or more forbidden attachments. It has been placed in temporary Quarantine and will be reviewed by the mail administrator and released to the receipient (sic) if appropriate.

If you have any questions as to why your email was stopped, please call information security at 860-555-5555 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              860-555-5555      end_of_the_skype_highlighting [actual number withheld for similar reasons]

Please read the summary of the email content to determine why it was stopped.

image/jpeg

forbidden content type

Attachment: image001.jpg

image001.jpg

forbidden attachment

image/jpeg

forbidden content type

[a total of 13 images were listed, one of which was a jpeg of my smiling face]

objectionable content.

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The column in question was “Encouraging adulthood,” (Keep the Joint Running, February 6, 2006). The only possible objectionable content, if you’re wondering, was a reference to the less desirable afterlife alternative.

If Dante had only reserved a circle for the terminally stupid we’d know the ultimate destination of the clever soul who decided to establish this level of security. Because the next step is to ban pens and paper too (to eliminate the risk of nasty doodles), making employees chisel messages in granite. Then the business would be safe from all threats. Except, of course, the threat of employees beating each other to death with memos.

It’s like this: When you eliminate all risk, you eliminate all opportunity. I’m tempted to point out that this is yet another example of optimizing a part (security) at the expense of the whole (getting useful work done) except that we just finally put that subject to bed last week, so never mind.

Corporate America is at risk (get it?) of becoming the League of Frightened Executives. Don’t believe me? How many conversations have you been part of that included the fretful worry, “Someone might sue us!”

Well, yes. There are bottom feeders out there who will sue anyone at the drop of a hat, claiming the hat-fall traumatized their poodle. Does that mean you’ll never remove your chapeau again for fear of litigation?

Among modern corporate executives, the answer, too often, is a proud, resounding “Yes!” And there you are, running IT, trapped in the middle as usual.

The name of the discipline is risk management, not risk elimination. That means IT should be implementing policy, not writing it, and those writing the policy should be clear and explicit about what constitutes the right balance between reducing risk and doing business with as little friction as possible. My bet is that the filter that classified my smiling face as a risk was put in place because there was no policy to follow. Or if there was, it was written by a member of the League of Frightened Executives and stated, “Make sure no spam gets through.”

As a place to start on the path out of the madness, consider the following for your spam filter, which begins with the notion that your employees are adults and you should treat them accordingly: Ask each employee to establish a profile based on their personal preference. Level 1 gives them maximum protection from anything and everything they might find offensive. Level 3 filters out what is clearly spam, but will probably leave in some offensive e-mails they’ll have to deal with manually. Level 2 is halfway between (and if they couldn’t figure that out, it’s time to reconsider your philosophy of employee retention).

Will a setup like this prevent employees from suing you if one of them chooses Level 3, receives something obnoxious, and decides it’s your fault? Of course not. Our legal system needs something equivalent to a Level 3 spam filter but doesn’t have one. There is little or no filtering at the filing level, and probably not enough at the don’t-be-ridiculous level.

You can’t do anything about the risk of being sued. What you should be asking is whether the above policy increases your risk of legitimate lawsuits. It’s a valid question, for which I don’t know the answer.

Besides, if I shared my opinion and it turned out to be wrong, you might sue me.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

It’s hard to soar with eagles when you’re being pecked to death by ducks.

Many authors, yours truly included, have penned grand prose describing the challenges of leadership. From reading them you might think business executives have a powerful focus on grand purposes. You might think that’s why they’re where they are, and that you’re where you are because you don’t. And so, filled with grand visions of your own, you open the door to your office, ready to transform your organization, when an employee requests a few minutes of your time, only to ask:

“Why is it that Harry and June are able to take a half hour every day on smoking breaks? It isn’t fair to the rest of us who don’t smoke!”

Poof! There goes your grand vision, vaporized by the exigencies of day-to-day management.

The average manager deals with approximately 137 issues like this in a typical year: Smoking breaks; the employee who spends a half-hour futzing every morning before starting in on actual work; someone who resents being pressured to contribute to the birthday fund.

Issues, that is, that wouldn’t be worth your time, except that if you ignore them they’ll create friction in the workplace. As with friction in physics, they convert directed energy into heat while causing the machinery to grind to a halt.

Make no mistake: You are responsible for handling these distractions because you are responsible for employee motivation and team dynamics. The question is how to do so. There’s no single solution for all of them. There are, however, some basic dos and don’ts:

  • Do acknowledge the issue. You don’t have to agree that it’s important. You don’t have to commit to doing anything about it. You do have to make it clear that you’ve listened and understood. If you don’t, you’ll lose the trust of the employee raising the issue. That will just compound the problem.
  • Do make it clear that “fair” and “equal” aren’t the same. Different employees take on different assignments, have different personal goals and face different challenges. Just because you don’t treat two different employees identically doesn’t mean you’re being unfair to either.
  • Don’t equate irritation and unimportance. If an issue irritates you, that just means you’d rather not have to deal with it, not that you shouldn’t. For example, if you have an employee who routinely arrives ten minutes late, has a half-hour get-ready-to-work routine, and leaves fifteen minutes early and you ignore it, you can be pretty sure that in a year five other employees will follow suit. Why wouldn’t they?
  • Don’t equate irritation and importance, either. Sometimes, the employee whose arrival time is erratic works harder and longer than anyone else. Yes, she sometimes arrives at 9:30 am. When she does, though, she often works until 10 pm.
  • Do discourage backseat driving. An issue being valid doesn’t mean reporting it is valid. Employees who are busy keeping their eyes on when another employee shows up for work aren’t busy doing their own work. Make it clear that paying attention to how well each employee performs is your role (and, if jobs aren’t shift-work, point out the difference between attendance and performance).
  • Don’t try to be King Solomon. Presented with a problem, your instinct is probably to find a solution. That just encourages more of the same. Encourage employees to solve their own problems, and to recognize the difference between real problems and minor irritations.
  • Don’t allow “third-party offense.” If someone helpfully lets you know that while he doesn’t mind what’s going on, it bothers other employees, helpfully let the informer know other employees are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.
  • Foster a culture of adulthood. Many of these issues are variations on a single theme — “It isn’t fair!” That’s the battle cry of a six-year-old. Adults should shrug off the small stuff.
  • Don’t solve problems with policies. Every policy is a self-imposed loss of flexibility. Leave yourself room to maneuver. Policies, by definition, apply to everyone — they enforce equality at the expense of fairness.

And finally –issues like these are warning signs. When employees express jealousy about each other, worry about minor perks and slights, or otherwise spend their time and energy on trivial issues unrelated to Getting the Job Done, you’re hearing symptoms of two linked problems. First, they’re losing the trust in each other they need to function as a team. And second, you need to spend more of your time and energy creating enthusiasm for and ownership of the organization’s mission and goals.

Which is to say, leading.

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