The Acceleration Trap

This month's issue of the Harvard Business Review has a good article about businesses that consistently take on more than they can handle. We're working on a Strategic Plan for a local firm that falls smack dab into this category. They're a perfect blend of "there's nothing we can't do" bravado coupled with roughly 90% of the senior leadership team actively looking for new jobs (behind the scenes) because they're completely burned out.

We're walking this client through a well-defined process of clarifying their strategy, focusing on key priorities, filtering all new projects and terminating nonessential tasks. It's common sense when looking in from the outside but when you're firmly enmeshed in this type of behavior (i.e., demanding a high level of urgency on a daily basis), it's hard to break the mold.

I know because here, at the best job ever, I would respond in much the same way as the survey data cited in this article. Specifically, >80% of trapped company respondents agree to the statement, "I work under constantly elevated time pressure" and they a) don't see a light at the end of the tunnel of intense working periods or b) regularly get a chance to regenerate.

Because our activities are all client-facing (i.e., we don't assume any nonessential, internal tasks), we cannot terminate projects. We can, however, filter out the time consuming, hand holding projects with needy clients that don't pay well and focus on bigger fish with deeper pockets -- but then we lose sight of the small mom and pops with whom we love to work.

Helping small companies to succeed is often more rewarding than attempting to tackle the pathological dysfunction that's inherent in so many large organizations.

So where does that leave us? Hire more consultants? Maybe but then we have to manage more people and manage the culture. Right now, we're lean and mean and we get along famously. Should we establish more realistic deadlines with our clients? Not a bad idea but we've already set the ridiculous expectations that we're now managing to. "Sure, we can summon the forces of nature. It would be our pleasure."

The most realistic ideas for our company to adopt from this article would be to systematically insert periods of calm in order to recharge our batteries and take a moment to reflect and feel proud of accomplishments.

Yeah, that'll happen.

Office Porn

My boss (talking about one of our clients): I love him. If he wasn't happily married, I would run off with him.

Me: What about Joe? (Name changed to protect the innocent.) I thought he was the man!

My boss: Wow, him too! Did you see his gross margins?

Sign Sign Everywhere a Sign

I have two clients with very different signage adorning the parking spaces by their respective front doors:

• Client #1: "Our customers come first" (four spaces/identical signs)
  
  
• Client #2: "Parking reserved for the CEO" (three spaces/signs for Founder, CEO, President)
  

In one of the latter parking spaces, a giant black Cadillac Esplanade is parked. In the space next to it, a Mercedes.

Where would you rather work?

Unless everyone at client #2 is making heaps of money and is being treated exceptionally well, I think the signs signal, at the very least, a ridiculous, internal pecking order. I'm not sure I would want to put in the requisite hours in order to pad someone else's wallet especially if the effort comes with an extra dash of hubris.

Thanks but no thanks.

Rude Behavior

My boss took a call from her daughter yesterday while we were meeting and promptly said, "I cannot talk right now; I'll call you back tonight." I appreciate the minimal interruption given we have limited time together.

When I worked at Amex, one of my bosses used to take calls from his wife and little kids in the middle of meetings and actually carry on lengthy conversations with them about nothing (e.g., "What did you do in preschool today, Jack?") while we sat there. Obnoxious. Disrespectful. Horrific waste of time. Standard for him.

It drove my coworker Marsha, who sat right outside his office, absolutely bonkers. So, whenever I was in a meeting with him, Marsha took to dialing "9" to get an outside line (to avoid being ID'd) and called him. The phone would ring, he would pick up, she would hang up and he would comment, "I keep getting hang-ups lately." Oh really?

Made me smile.

Do More

When I worked at American Express, I had some of the best co-workers in the world. Smart, driven, professional. We all worked exceptionally well together -- which was incredible given that our incentive structure actually encouraged us to compete against one another for the biggest piece of the "bonus pie." Regardless, one of my co-workers and I used to spend early Saturday mornings together, with our laptops, drinking coffee and compiling research at the now defunct DT-UT on the Upper East Side. And it was fun.

In addition, our senior management team was also amazingly strong. Very intelligent, strategic and fair. With that said, I believe Amex may have coined a "skips a generation" talent management ethos. Our directors were completely clueless, spineless, and devoid of inspiration.

One of my first directors used to ask us to go around during our staff meetings and share what we were working on. One of my co-workers stated, week after week, "Nothing. I'm bored out of my mind and you need to give me more work." No joke, one day he came in and announced that he had hired a new guy to offset our workload. No discussion beforehand. No input in the interviewing or hiring process. And a complete moron, to boot.

This same co-worker, Marsha, and I spent months working with HR (mainly her effort, not mine) to develop a new sales compensation model that was equitable, controllable and would drive the right behaviors. After presenting it to our team and requesting feedback, I stopped by my boss' office where he and Andrew, the new hire, were writing numbers on the white board. "What are you working on?" I asked. Their response, "We're assigning bonuses to the sales reps." Completely arbitrary. Pulling numbers out of their @#*. Not even a piece of paper to highlight anyone's performance. Nice work. I'm glad I worked so hard at nothing.

But my favorite boss at Amex was a woman who didn't give a crap what any of us did -- as long as we made her look good. She would sit in her office, feet on the desk, and shoot the breeze all day long with anybody/everybody. She told us about her weekend blow jobs, abortions, dates, bowel movements, etc. She would break in the middle of meetings and ask urgently if anyone had a tampon. And she insisted on repeatedly sharing with us how she personally molded Henry, a successful co-worker who had been with Amex for years, into who he was today. I'm surprised he never killed her.

The straw the broke the camel's back for me came when, after working hard all year, I had lunch with this woman. I drank iced tea; she had two glasses of wine. She was wearing blue jean overalls and Candie's shoes; I was in a suit. She proceeded to tell me that she fought hard for me to get a fabulous bonus but that two things worked against me: 1) I was too nice and smiled a lot and 2) I wore a brown sweater that was too big on me.

Note to self: stop smiling, wear spiked heals and start talking about my sex life. Or leave the company.