The Modern Fool

Although most often associated with English courts of Medieval and Renaissance times, the Court Jester has actually appeared throughout history as an important member of Royal Courts around the world.  Jesters came in two flavors, the "natural fool" and the "licensed fool".  The natural fool appears to have been pure entertainment for the court, and was often afflicted with some type of mental or physical disability.  (This period of history was not known for its political correctness!)  The licensed fool was a completely different case.  Their job was to be critical of the Monarch and the Court - often using fairly severe ridicule to make his point.  Court Jesters were given great latitude by their Monarch, allowing them to say things that no other member of the Court would dare to say.  They often made enemies of powerful members of the Court, but as long as they were favored by the Monarch, they were safe.  For example, a story is told of a Persian Fool who, when the Shah asked whether there was a shortage of food, said: "Yes, I see your Majesty is eating only 5 times a day."   Fools were also often responsible for telling the Monarch bad news.  When the French fleet was destroyed by the English Navy in the Battle of Sluys, the French Jester told King Philipe VI that the English Sailors "don't even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French."

I believe the modern corporation has revived the ancient tradition of the Court Jester.  The modern Court Jester is now known as the advisory business consultant.  The business consultant is now a fixture in the boardrooms of many powerful CEOs and corporate elite.  You have probably seen them - they hover near the seat of power, acting as personal advisors and confidants to their corporate monarch.  Just like the Fools of Olde England, the business consultant is often the only member of the executive team that can truly be openly critical of anyone or any idea without fear of repercussions.  As long as they are favored by their benefactor, they can wield enormous power, and they may have more direct access to the top decision maker than any other member of the executive team.  Very few people outside of the top corporate tier are even aware of the business consultant, let alone the influence they carry.  They are paid to stay behind the throne, and they are often very good at working from the shadows.

From where I'm sitting, that sounds like a pretty sweet gig.  Sure, your picture isn't going to be displayed in the company's annual report - but in many companies, you may enjoy a much longer tenure than the majority of the senior leadership team.  But more importantly, the business consultant enjoys a freedom of thought and action that is found nowhere else in the corporation.  In most corporations today, it seems that to get to the big table, one of the most important skills is the ability to interpret, process and respond in veiled and encrypted corpspeak.  No one speaks their mind and everything that is said must be instantly and carefully analyzed for hidden maneuverings that may result in a loss of status among your peers.  This seems to go beyond mere "politics" - it seems to have risen to the level of a TV drama - every week there is a new crisis, and alliances shift every 10 minutes.

Only the business consultant seems to be above the daily fray.  It's not that they are unaware of the nonsense - they are absolutely listening to, and understanding, the corpspeak debates - it's just that they are much more likely to cut through the BS and say what really needed to be said without trying to hide it within multiple layers of personal ladder-climbing moves.

I find this a curious example of human behavior - and I also find it fascinating that this type of behavior has been present within groups of powerful human beings for thousands of years.  What is it about the human condition that causes this model to so often be repeated?  It baffles me why a corporate president would populate the executive offices with the best minds they can find - and then still feel the need to hire an external consultant as a "trusted advisor".

I suppose it is possible that the executive business consultant is simply another status symbol - like the corner office, the first class travel and the $1000 designer shoes - all the cool kids have at least one.  If that is the primary purpose, that's very disturbing.  These same leadership teams are downsizing employees, shrinking benefits and requiring employees to take unpaid days off to meet analyst estimates - and yet they are paying a business consultant an amount equal to the salary of 3 or 4 employees.

Another explanation is that the use of consultants may be seen by the executive team as a way to reduce personal risk.  When a decision goes bad, it at least gives the president a way to deflect some of the blame - "Hey, I was advised by the best consultant in the industry and we did everything they said to do.  No one could have known this was a bad idea."  Of course, the consultant will be fired, but the president might survive.

I know this sounds cynical - and (of course) no executive would ever admit to these reasons - but I think they make about as much sense as having a roomful of bajillion dollar senior executives that need a consultant to tell them how to run their own company.  At least the medieval courts had an excuse - the royalty was composed of Lords & Ladies that inherited their posts, and eventually, the royal gene pool started getting pretty shallow.  As far as I know, inbreeding isn't typically a problem in corporate boardrooms - yet...

Artificial Intelligence

No, this is not another story about killer robots....

I just finished "Patches", a science fiction short story by Lesley Choyce.   It is about a dystopian society where all human beings were connected to a central information store called "The Source" through a skin patch that provided a direct interface between the human brain and "The Network".  The Source was sentient, and had taken control of The Network and all humans, issuing pain and information through the patches to maintain order in society.  An android appendage of The Network made a statement that all human beings were equal and they were no more than a collection of their biological parts.  His belief was that because the Network contained all the information known to humans (by tapping directly into their brains and all other data storage devices) it also possessed all the actual knowledge in the world - because knowledge and information were identical.  A small group of humans, struggling to free themselves from the Network, completely disagreed, and said that knowledge was much more than simply a collection of information.

I think this story points out a very likely failure in a machine ever achieving true artificial intelligence.  It seems very plausible to me that a machine would be unable to discern the difference between information and knowledge.  I think this concept may be one of the fundamental barriers that must be overcome for any machine intelligence to achieve sentience.

Unfortunately, many corporations are falling into this same trap - and I believe IT professionals have merrily led the corporate leaders down this false trail.  Since the beginning of the computer age, we have been chanting the power of information - and we have said that without good information, a company cannot make good decisions and is doomed to failure.  Heck, even our own names for what we do: "Information Technology", "Information Services" or even the old "Data Processing" show that we are focused on the collection and management of the information - not the knowledge that information represents.

There is no better example of this than the typical corporate HR form used to apply for a new job.  A couple of years ago, I wrote about the ridiculous amount of information an applicant must provide in order to apply for a job using the typical online recruiting systems.  I would claim that most of this data provides nearly zero additional knowledge to the company - it certainly is not used during the typical hiring process, or if it is, it is used only in the most crude way to filter out candidates and reduce the size of the potential candidate pool.

The same is true for a vast amount of other information gathered from all across the corporation.  There are massive amounts of data being collected, massaged and reported that provide little or no additional knowledge to the company.  This represents a huge expenditure of corporate resources for absolutely no business value.  It also demonstrates a fundamental problem within many corporate boardrooms: the inability of senior business leaders to define the key metrics that are used to run their company.

There are certainly some companies that have defined their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and they really do use those metrics to make tactical and strategic decisions.  If you work in one of these companies - you are fortunate - count your blessings.  It was only when I moved to a company that did not have defined KPIs that I learned that it was even possible to run a large corporation without good business metrics.

What is really sad is that it seems these companies do not understand or recognize the issue.  To them, sitting in an Executive Team meeting and suddenly asking:  "How did the flood in Thailand affect our sales to Southeast Asia compared to how our sales were affected in 1980 by the election of Ronald Reagan?" is a critical data point that will drive all future corporate strategy.  The rest of the executives turn to the CIO and say:  "That's a simple report, you have all the data, right?"  And the CIO's response is (of course) "I'm sure we do, we'll have that for you later today."

After delaying 3 critical projects and pulling four straight all-nighters, the report is finally produced and scheduled to run weekly for the executive team meetings.  However the CIO is mad that your data warehouse and business intelligence tools are so poorly implemented that you couldn't meet his expectations.  When the report is sent to the executive team, there is a "thank you" reply from the CEO - and nothing is every heard about that report again.  Six weeks later, you check the logs for that report, and you find that there has been exactly one person who has ever accessed the new report - the IT analyst who was tasked to make sure all the reports run successfully every week...

OK, the report criteria I used for this example was fictional, but everything else was a regular occurrence.  The senior leadership believed it was perfectly acceptable to ask any random "I wonder..." question and the data would be available and the report easily produced.  It never occurred to them how disruptive their seat of the pants management style was to everyone involved in producing those ad-hoc reports.  And even worse, the ad-hoc reports were often not actually used for anything - they were apparently just an idle thought that wasn't actually the basis of any decision making process.

In some companies, this behavior is combated by purchasing more ad-hoc reporting tools in an attempt to provide the executives and their staff the ability to run their own reports.  That may work in larger companies where their is enough staff to cater to the executive whims - but not in companies that run much leaner.  Unfortunately, expecting executives to do their own ad-hoc reporting is a foolish hypothesis - it's simply NOT going to happen, and the result is the worst of all worlds - you have spent the money on the easy to use tools, you do not have the staff to do the ad-hoc analysis, and the executives are still asking the questions and looking at the CIO to provide the answers.

Now, let's say that you are finally fed-up, and you decide to launch a new business intelligence initiative.  The consultants tell you that step 1 is to define the KPIs that are used to drive the business decisions.  So, you go to the executives, and you ask:  "What are the key metrics that drive your decision making processes?"  You get a blank look, followed by the typical executive 2-step shuffle that makes this your fault for not providing the executive with the proper information for them to make *this* decision.  You have no choice but to beat a hasty retreat and rethink your chosen career path.

When you get back to your office and calm down, you realize a startling fact:  the executives do not really know how they make decisions.  They *are* making decisions - they do it every day in all parts of the business - but they simply can't define what information they use to do it.  Even more frightening, you also realize that if they have not defined those metrics, there is absolutely no way the decisions they do make can be consistent, logical or data driven.  Good grief, no wonder the decisions often seem to be somewhat random - they *are* somewhat random!

In an ideal world, the key business decisions are driven by specific data elements and threshold values.  Above the threshold, the decision is X, below the threshold, the decision is Y.  If you have all the key operational metrics defined, your business can almost run on remote control.  At least, that's what the business consultants and best selling authors say.  Of course, in the real world, there are always un-quantifiable factors that influence the decision.  It might be office politics, shareholder sentiment, perceived risk or simply a hunch.    However, should you let those influences drive your decision in the face of opposing data?  Of course, if you do not have the data (opposing or otherwise), then those influences are all you have.  That doesn't seem to me to be a prudent business strategy.

Developing KPIs really is difficult, I'm certainly not trying to say it is easy, because it is not.  You must force yourself to determine the key operational decisions, and also determine what data you use to make those decisions.  In addition, you *must* also determine the threshold values for each data element.  Without a defined threshold to tell you whether to move the lever left or right, you are simply looking at data without a business context.  You may find that some of your decisions are based on trends - upward, flat or downward - once again, without knowing how you will use the data, seeing the data will not help you make the decision.

I suspect that some executives do not really want to define their decision making processes.  They may believe, or want others to believe, that their decision making is a combination of unique insight, luck and magic that is only found within their well-paid head.  If I was an investor in a company with leadership like that, I would be very, very nervous.  I don't want to invest in unique insight, luck and magic - that might be OK for betting the longshots at Santa Anita horse races, but not my 401k money!  I want leadership that can articulate how they run the business, and I want to know that they aren't just flying by the seat of their pants.

I urge all business leaders to take a critical look at the information they are collecting, processing and reporting.  If you can't directly link the data to a specific business decision - then stop collecting and reporting on that data - it's a waste of your precious resources.  Encourage employees to question all requests for new data and new reports.  "Because the VP wants it" is NOT a good reason.  Every report should have a purpose, and "I've always run that report on the 3rd Tuesday of every month" is NOT a valid business purpose.  Don't just collect information - always strive to create knowledge.                            

The Big Lie

Is honesty a dead concept inside corporations?  Why do managers lie to their employees?  Is it all just to protect the company against litigation?  "Open and honest feedback" is a catch phrase in the majority of corporate statements on ethics and values - but I believe the reality is that the vast majority of corporate leaders refuse to give *any* feedback - and when they do - it will be (at best) corp-speak: legally blessed yet completely meaningless.  At worst, it will be a complete fabrication - a lie to satisfy the employee and make them shut-up and get out of their office.

I recently read a blog (sorry - I didn't save the link) by an HR recruiter that said that the primary reason many companies do not provide feedback to job candidates is that often that feedback simply starts an argument with the job candidate and leads to job candidates responding with an abusive reply.  I'm sure that's true - especially when the interview was as ridiculous as some of the interviews I have been on - and you then find out that it was a waste of time because they promoted an internal candidate or they give you a BS reason that is an obvious brush off.  Of course, some candidates are also just jerks - and they would blast back at any failure to be hired.

However, is that really a good excuse for a company not living by their own corporate values?  Perhaps they should change the corporate values to say "Open and honest communication, when it is convenient and doesn't lead to conflict."  In addition, even a system generated "thank you for applying, however you have not been selected for this role" is FAR better than simply providing nothing back to the candidate.  How rude do you have to be to invite a candidate in for a face-to-face interview, then simply never respond to the candidates phone calls or emails asking for a status?  Are you really that busy, or do you simply have so little thought for another human being?  I suspect the latter - because job candidates are not really people - they are just resumes or names in a database.

Of course, it's not just the recruiting process where honesty is dead.  Lack of honest communication runs rampant through organizations.  I pity the poor employee who actually believes the senior executive when they give the "I have an open door policy" speech.  The typical senior executive wants to hear only "It's done" from their employees.  If you are part of the inner circle of a corporate leader, you can see the planning that goes into the half-truths, misdirection and spin-doctoring at the top - of course, you won't see the planning that goes into the spin applied to *you*...

The typical justification for not being honest when speaking to employees is that managers "must do what's in the best interest of the company."  If they actually told the employees that they will all be replaced within a year with lower cost offshore contractors, the employees would all bail and the corporation would grind to a halt.  So, the managers lie.  They say that the future looks bright.  They say that you are a key member of the team that will lead the company into the future.  They say that there are no plans to cut staff.  They say these things at the same time they are working with HR to eliminate your position, meeting with candidates to "upgrade" you for another resource and/or working with offshore staffing firms to move your job to Bangalore, Bucharest or Shenzhen.

Once upon a time, when a company wanted to use a different technology, the project would include training for the existing IT staff so that they would be able to work with and support the new technology.  Now, the existing staff is simply replaced with new resources already trained in the new technology.  If there are still older legacy systems that also need to be supported, contractors are hired until those systems can be replaced.  The IT staff is rotated with the systems, and since the typical life of an IT system is 3-5 years, that is also the maximum time you can expect to keep your corporate IT job.

OK - so looking at this from the CEO's position, what's wrong with this scenario?  He's getting the best IT resources for the lowest cost, and he doesn't have to continuously spend money to train his internal staff.  After all, once they are trained, they might just leave the company for another gig anyway.

I see several issues with this short-sighted strategy:

1. No functional business knowledge continuity - It is tempting to believe that the tech geeks in your IT department don't need to understand how your business operates.  That is dead wrong.  The more the technical staff knows about how the business operates, the better your systems will match your true business requirements.  Translating functional business requirements into technical system designs is the absolute key to any successful technology project.  It is the difference between happy & efficient users, and an expensive pile of useless HW & SW.  Fail to recognize this at your peril.

2. Failure to form a Business-IT partnership - If you have fallen into the fallacy of believing your IT staff doesn't need to understand your business, then it must follow that you believe all business knowledge must come from the business users.  Congratulations, what you have just established is the typical Business vs IT organization where neither understands the other's world, and the business sees IT as simply a group of techies that need to be told what to do.  Conversely, IT sees the business as demanding technophobes that have no clue what they are asking IT to build.  There can be no partnership without understanding, and there can be no understanding without knowledge being shared in both directions.  This requires the ability to build long-term relationships at the employee level - not just at the executive table.

3. Lack of Innovation - It's all well and good to hold the CIO responsible for the long-range IT strategic vision - that's his job.  However, the CIO often does not see the day-to-day technical challenges that are faced by his staff.  It is very common for these daily challenges to drive ideas for improvements in processes and systems that represent the source of innovation within the IT department.  If your staff is composed of specialists in your current technology and augmented with low-cost contractors, you may very well have limited the amount of innovation that will be generated by your staff.  An employee looking at a maximum of a 3-5 year gig has very little incentive to maximize efficiency - particularly if that efficiency means a new technology that will ultimately result in them being replaced with another specialist.

4. No commitment - You are simply fooling yourself if you think your employees are unaware that a new technology means the end of their job.  They absolutely do know - they know because they are not receiving training on the new system, and their role on the implementation project is limited to "data conversion and migration" or "legacy system interfaces".  It will only be a personal desire to do good work that will keep your staff motivated.  You haven't earned their commitment and, quite frankly, you don't deserve it.  You will blame your project manager and the project team for not hitting their milestones - but really, you should be looking in the mirror to see who is to blame.

I'm not an executive (clearly!) but to me, the possible gains from this type of short-term thinking does not seem worth it.  Not when very expensive, business critical systems and projects are on the line.

There is another solution - don't lie to your employees.  If you believe a new system will mean an employee will be replaced, then be honest with them.  Tell them the end date, and give them an incentive package to stick around and hit that date.  The money is a pittance compared to failing to complete the new project.  Companies want it all - they want their employees to be happy little trolls toiling away in the salt mines, and they also want the ability to sweep them to the gutter when they aren't needed any longer.  But it won't work. Even the flying monkeys knew she was an evil witch.

    
  

Corporate Role: Henchman, Evil Sidekick

I often place people I meet into stereotypical fictional roles.  Many fictional authors keep their characters in these roles because it is very easy for the readers to identify the role and build out the rest of the character's personality in their minds without requiring the author to explain why the character made every decision or took every action.  If a character is identified as the evil stepmother, then it's no surprise to anyone that she hates the beautiful stepdaughter.  Of course, the real world is not supposed to work this way.  Real people are all complex beings capable of a wide range of thought, action and personality.  Or are they?

My own character seems to shift - some days I'm the noble but generally ineffective Tonto from the Lone Ranger, sometimes I'm the well-meaning but bumbling Dr. Watson from Sherlock Holmes and other days I am definitely a "Red Shirt" on a Star Trek Away Team waiting to be blasted to smithereens or turned into a block of salt by an alien.  I'm rarely the Hero or the Villain - generally I'm a supporting member of the cast.  In the past, being the trusty sidekick has generally been a good gig - yeah, I get knocked on the head or shot in the leg, but usually, I'm soon ready for the next adventure - and it's much better to be a sidekick than a faceless member of the crowd or an evil henchman.  As the baby mastodon living under Fred Flintstone's sink would say, "it's a living."

However, I have recently run into people in the workplace that are most definitely occupying the role of Evil Sidekick - and they seem to be doing it with glee and gusto - and they are thriving in their villainous role.  These folks are not just aggressive personalities or bullies - they really do believe they need to hold everyone around them down, destroy anyone who disagrees with them and that any aggressive action they take against co-workers is justified and sanctioned by their bosses.

I find this perplexing.  We live in an age of political correctness, corp-speak and brand protection uber alles - and yet - corporate leaders allow and encourage the Evil Sidekick to disrupt business processes, sabotage projects, assassinate peers and work completely outside the "open and honest" communication channels that the rest of the employees are required to follow.  Why?  The typical answer whispered in closed door discussions when the Evil Sidekick is not around is:  "because the CEO/President/C-level VP likes him and wants him to question and challenge the status quo."  Hmm - I have many problems with this explanation.

1. Why does the current corporate culture require an Evil Sidekick to question and challenge the status quo?  In a healthy organization, shouldn't ANY employee be able to challenge the current processes?
   
2. Since the Evil Sidekick disrupts and destroys all ideas and processes he does not control, how do you know the results obtained by the Evil Sidekick really are better than a collaborative approach?
   
3. Once the Evil Sidekick has destroyed all his peers and demoralized his underlings - then what?  Where does the Evil Sidekick fit in your long-range vision of a successful company?

I want to make it clear that an Evil Sidekick is NOT the same as a Court Jester.  The Court Jester had an important job - he was an advisor to the Crown to prevent the Court from becoming a group of yes-men.  That doesn't mean the Court Jester is allowed to assassinate the rest of the Court - if he tries - then the Court Jester has become the Evil Villain or the Evil Sidekick.

I suppose one reason the CEO/President/VP allows the Evil Sidekick to run unchecked is because the CEO/President/VP is (of course) NEVER the target of the Evil Sidekick.  He/She is Evil, not stupid!  If anyone complains about the Evil Sidekick, the CEO/President/VP just assumes the complainer is a weak whiner.  The fact that at the same time the Evil Sidekick is whispering in the King's ear that the complainer *is* a weak whiner also doesn't hurt.

The Evil Sidekick is poison to a corporation.  In my humble opinion, a smart business leader does not allow the Evil Sidekick to exist in their organization.  No matter how great a superstar you believe them to be, one employee can never produce enough to equal the harm done by tearing down everyone around them.  They are NOT providing healthy, constructive debate - they are simply jerks.  Excise them from the organization like the cancerous tumor they are!

    

What Happened To The 70's?

The completely laid-back teens from the 70's are now running our corporations with an iron fist. What happened to them? Why are they now overly-sensitive to ANY voices that do not march in lockstep with the drumbeat of the corporate galley-slave task masters?

I was a teenager in the 1970s - and the '70s were a time of great contrasts - it was after the drug heyday of the 1960s, yet my high school was full of stoners who got high at lunch - and drug use by high school kids was significantly higher in 1977 than it was in 1967. Being "born again" was the backlash away from the free love generation, and yet in 1975 the incidence of Gonorrhea was 3X higher than in 1965. The 1960s might have taught everyone how to do it, but in the 1970's more of us actually did it. The 1970s gave us Debbie Gibson, Andy Gibb and the Bee Gees, and it also gave us Van Halen, Ted Nugent and Kiss. It was a strange and confusing time to be a teen - but it was also considered relatively stable compared to the turbulent social upheaval of the 1960s and the worldwide economic and political changes of the 1980s.

The teens of the 1970s went on to create Microsoft, Apple & Dell and we also built the Space Shuttle. They powered the economy that destroyed the Soviet Union and tore down the Berlin Wall. In the 1990s, they were the middle managers who created the internet and drove the dot-com explosion. And now, they are the senior executives who run companies with an iron fist - controlling how their employees dress, speak, act and use the very technologies they helped to create. What the hell happened to them? How did they go from smoking pot, listening to Ted Nugent and having sex in their Camaro's (well, probably not Bill, but other kids were!) to now ordering the monitoring of their employee's email messages & Facebook posts, and purging anyone who does not march to the beat of their Armani-suited corporate drum?

I am very worried about the state of our corporate environment. The college graduates entering the corporate world today must be prepared to suppress their individuality for the sake of the corporate brand they now represent. They will be told that protecting the brand is their most important job - more important than any personal belief or idea they may have. Oh, the orders will be shrouded in corp-speak and called an "Employee Handbook", "Statement of Values" or "Social Responsibility" - but make no mistake, the primary purpose for them is NOT to protect the employees - it is to protect the brand FROM the actions of their employees.

Conform or die.

If we quash all individuality and self-expression, we also eliminate creativity and innovation. And that's what has me so confused. Why can't today's senior executives see the danger? Is it as

simple as the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely" adage? Have they really completely forgotten what it was like before they got their preferred parking spot and corporate credit cards? I do NOT believe that only the uptight do-gooders from high school ended up running corporations. That just isn't the way the world works!

Some of you might recognize this situation - it seems to be very similar to the early 1960s, when corporations hired the Mad Men to make sure their brand was seen only as the corporation wished it to be seen. Of course, it was easier then - there was no internet, no blogs and no youtube that could instantly give anyone's words a worldwide audience. Control the media ads, and you controlled the hearts and minds of the entire world. Unfortunately for the corporations and the Mad Men, the early 1960s turned into the late 1960s - and the corporations became "The Establishment" - hated and shunned by an entire generation.

Is that where we are headed? Another social revolution? It is undeniably true that societal and cultural norms rarely stay constant for very long. We move in cycles - just as the conservatism of the Victorian age led to the Roaring '20s, and the stability of the 50's Happy Days led to the riots and protests of the 60's. I really have no idea what is coming - but I do think we're approaching an inflection point where something will change. Happiness in our jobs and careers is becoming a scarce commodity. We're working harder and longer than at any time since the sweat shops of the industrial revolution gave rise to the labor movements, unions and communism.

I know this sounds very maudlin. It is meant to portray my frustration at the fear & inequality

the average corporate employee (AKA drone)

must currently endure. It appears the old counterbalances of labor unions and entrepreneurial opportunities are weak and no longer effective at limiting the barely legal abuses of the corporate overlords. I'm certainly NOT advocating a return to a time when the unions held huge amounts of power that caused ridiculous inefficiencies in businesses. I believe an employee *should* be paid based on their skill and performance - not only on their years of service or payment of union dues. HOWEVER - when the corporate environment is built to provide all benefits to the top leadership at the expense of their employees, I call BS. That is theft - theft of the employee's skill and hard work without the compensation of job satisfaction and a career path for the employee.

There's no easy answers for this one. The corporate masters will continue to tell their serfs that they should be happy to have any jobs in this time of economic upheaval - and then they will drive home in the Mercedes, Porsches and Maseratis that they bought with their $6 million/year total compensation packages. Meanwhile, their employees are reading the latest email from the CEO telling them that in order for the company to make their forecasts, the employees will have a choice of using 5 days of vacation this month or taking 5 days of unpaid leave.

Let me know when the next generation takes over as our corporate leaders. Maybe the teens from the 80's will do a better job. Then again, maybe not...

The Corporate Noose

Yes, I know its been FAR too long since my last post. I wish I had a really good excuse, like my new job has kept me too busy, or I was traveling on important secret business for the CIA - but alas, the best I can do is admit that I've been spending all of my time playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. It's not even a particularly good game - just a completely mindless distraction. But ENOUGH - I am going to try to keep the words flowing. In this case, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Quincy, MA on a business trip - and between the boredom and the two vodkas I had with dinner, I think I am ready for a new installment of "Bumped His Head". The real question is: Are you ready? Too bad - I really don't care either way...

What is the dress code where you work? Do you even have a dress code? If not, you should thank the gods. I do, and it seriously chaps my hide. I consider "Business Casual" one of the greatest evils in corporate America. It represents much that is wrong with the corporate life, and it symbolizes exactly how idiotic and narrow-minded the vast majority of our world's economic & social leaders really are. But first, a little history lesson...

Most of what we consider modern "formal dress" can be traced to European royalty and their courtesans. Probably the man who most influenced man's modern dress was Beau Brummell. Brummell was an Englishman from the late 18th century who is considered the father of English "dandyism". Brummell, who was a friend of the future King George IV, was himself NOT a member of the royal class, but had many associate and friends within the socialites of England & France. In fact, Brummell was most famous for simply being famous, and for being considered the pinnacle of style - which makes him the 18th century equivalent of Paris Hilton.

Brummell was extremely fastidious about his appearance. He rejected the standard breeches, ruffled collars, powder and wigs of the aristocrats and instead introduced a much more understated dress consisting of close fitting trousers, jacket and a complexly knotted cravat. He also meticulously bathed and groomed himself. It was said that he took 5 hours every day to groom and dress himself, which means that I suspect he didn't have a 1.5 hour commute in L.A. freeway traffic. Dandyism eventually became a social & political statement by non-aristocrats against the upper classes. When the middle class could adorn the epitome of style, they were essentially thumbing their noses at the aristocrats.

Fast forward to the present. Today, the perfectly tailored suit, dress shirt and silk tie is the uniform of the corporate elite. The term "The clothes make the man" is more true today than it has been in the last 30 years. But why? Why are the clothes I wear important to my employer? Am I somehow a smarter or more productive employee because of the color of my pants or the length of my shirt sleeves? Does wrapping my neck in a tightly knotted piece of silk cloth make my thoughts and words more important and worth listening to? According to many corporations, the answer is apparently YES. But I say the answer is a resounding HELL NO!

The late 1990's were a great time for the casual dresser. The tech explosion on the west coast meant that employers were more interested in what you knew and what you could produce rather than how you dressed. Jeans, shorts, sneakers and t-shirts were the standard uniform. Then the tech bubble was popped. The tech worker was once again considered an outcast social misfit that needed to be put into their place by their betters in finance, sales and marketing, and part of that return to power was the return of the corporate "dress for success" mindset. Of course, in my view it was not the tech guys who were responsible for the tech bubble and the crash - it was the finance, sales and marketing dweebs who over-leveraged, over-hyped and over-sold the ideas of the technologists. And for doing that great job - those finance, sales & marketing boneheads became the CFOs & CEOs running today's corporations.

Today, we are struggling to recover from a near economic collapse. A collapse primarily driven by those same finance, sales & marketing leaders. This time they over-leveraged, over-sold and over-hyped the insurance & financial industries. And STILL, they remain in positions to dictate the dress codes and social norms of corporate America. Why? I have no freaking clue. Tell me - when were you happier with your job, your life and your financial future - the late 1990's or today? If your answer is the same as mine - you have those captains of industry to thank.

Remember those old episodes of Bewitched and the Dick Van Dyke show? Old Darin Stevens and Rob Petrie wore their gray flannel suits everywhere. They could be just sitting around the house, and they would still be wearing a suit and tie. Even in the 1960s, did anyone really do that? I can't believe they did then, and I know they don't today. When we think the corporate secret police aren't looking, we wear jeans, shorts, sneakers and t-shirts. We have no problem being seen by our neighbors, friends and family wearing casual clothes - and yet on Monday morning we set aside our own preferences to satisfy the whims of the people in the corner offices.

They say things like "We must project a professional business image" and "It shows respect for our customers" - I say: Bullcrap! It's about control - the ability for an executive to dictate and control every employee in a very personal way. That exercise of power gets them off - and it makes them feel better about their own self-doubts. It makes me wonder what those executives are attempting to compensate for - but I'll let you fill-in your own details. They also use the "slippery-slope" argument to claim that if there wasn't a dress code that employees would show up wearing gangsta' baggies, Hitler costumes and G-strings. I have a simple solution to that - how about we simply let people wear whatever they want AND we let everyone else point at the stupid people and laugh derisively? There's nothing like good 'ol peer pressure to weed out the outliers who haven't got the sense to know the difference between casual and idiotic. Let's face it, there are some people that it just doesn't matter what they wear, they will still end up with their picture on peopleofwalmart.com.

To those who say "What's the big deal, it makes your boss happy, just do it!" I say, you're right, how I'm dressed shouldn't be a big deal - in fact, it shouldn't matter at all! I think what we need is collective courage - the courage to stand up, pull off the corporate noose, put on our jeans, and show the task masters that we will take this idiocy no longer. I'm mad as hell, and I don't think you should take it any more! So - lead the charge - convince all of your co-workers that they should dress however they want every day. Tell your boss to pound sand - make them decide whether wearing slacks and a tie is more important than running the business.

And what became of Beau Brummell? His lifestyle eventually caught up with him. He was buried in debt, and he died alone, penniless and insane from syphilis. That's hot!

High-Tech Worker In A Low-Tech Company, Part Three - The Final Chapter

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."

My good friend Billy Shakespeare dressed weird, but he really knew how to string words together. I sometimes wonder what he would think of blogs, facebook and twitter. I suspect he would have made some hilarious youtube videos. But I digress...

This is the third installment in the continuing remembrances of a high-tech worker in a low-tech company. The first and second chapters were very fun to write, and I hope they were just as fun to read. I suspect this will be the last episode in this theme for a while. As time goes by, the memories (and my brain cells in general) of that period are fading, and quite frankly, I'm simply ready to move on and put that horrendous experience where it belongs - swirling down into the cesspool of my past.

But that's the bad news. The good news is that I *do* have a third episode for your consideration. First, the standard disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Both of these stories are true and personally witnessed by yours truly. None of these are reposts from Snopes or anywhere else. Any similarity to stories you may have read elsewhere should be chalked-up to the fact that there are idiots everywhere and our species is doomed.

Now, I present the finale to this trilogy:

Doing Nothing *Is* Sometimes The Best Move
The Accounting processes used by corporations can be a bit complex - and that's why they spend millions of dollars to purchase and maintain expensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, and also why they often have large staffs of trained accounting clerks whose sole job is to use the ERP system to perform the transactions for purchasing, order entry, accounts payable, accounts receivable and all the other financial processes needed to run a $2B+ public company.

Or, you could do what my company did...

The primary requirement to be a member of our accounting staff seemed to be the inability to have any desire to learn. These departments included some of the longest tenured employees in the company - including several people with over 30 consecutive years working at the same jobs. I would like to be able to say that this long experience made them valuable members of their departments - but alas, I can't. What it did was make them completely impervious to any attempts to train them on changes to the systems and processes they used every day. We once needed to make a significant change to the ERP system that included several changes to the processes used by the Purchasing department. As part of this project, we partnered with an extremely experienced group of consultants who were experts in the ERP software we used. One of the first steps in the project was to have the Purchasing department step us through all of their key processes and use the existing ERP system to demonstrate what they did on a daily basis.

During one of these sessions, a Purchasing clerk was going through her operations and came to a step that involved submitting a job to be processed and then waiting for it to complete before moving on to the next step. After the job ran, she started to move to the next step, when one of the consultants suddenly said: "Wait - can you please go back and open the log file from the job you just ran?" The Purchasing clerk had a bewildered look on her face and said "What?" After explaining exactly what the consultant wanted the clerk to do, a file was shown on the screen that contained only one line of text. The consultant said: "That's what I thought, you don't need to run that job, it doesn't do anything." The Purchasing clerks (and their manager) were completely befuddled.

The consultant then went on to explain: "Look at the line in that file. It says 'No records found.' That means that job didn't actually do anything. That is exactly what it should say, because that job doesn't need to be run - it is useless." The Purchasing clerk then said: "But I always run that job, that's the way we've been doing it for years." But, she had absolutely no idea why she had been told to run that job, or what she thought it was supposed to do - all she knew was that it was step #10 in the process and she had been doing this dozens of times a day, every day, for 10 years. If we had not needed to make the system changes, she would *still* be running that job. True story!

Be Prepared!
Has there ever been a medical event as completely oversold by the media as the H1N1 Swine Flu? According to the news reports, we were on the brink of a disaster the likes of which had not been seen since the Black Death. Luckily for the human species, the wildfire has not materialized. In fact, to put the H1N1 pandemic into perspective, the CDC says that in a typical year approximately 36,000 people in the US die from flu-related causes - this is for ALL types of flu. To date, 320 cases of H1N1 have resulted in death in the US - much lower than many other strains of flu. Hmm - that doesn't quite sound like the level of mass carnage the media prepared us for during night after night of hyperbole.

Don't get me wrong - I'm very happy that the disaster has not materialized, and I'm all for the CDC making sure we are fully informed - even if the press completely misinterprets the data and turns it into a hype circus. But, the folks in leadership positions at large corporations are smart enough to cut through the BS and focus on the facts, right?

Then there's the company I worked for...

In the midst of the H1N1 media frenzy, I received an email from one of the mindless butt-kissers that was also my peer in middle management. The email wanted to know if we had developed an emergency IT response plan for the Swine Flu. Emergency IT response plan? WTF? Why would a company that runs restaurants need an "emergency IT response plan" for the Swine Flu? What was this, a scene from Andromeda Strain?

Now, let me be clear, the company operated and franchised restaurants. Those restaurants were essentially autonomous - the franchised restaurants could operate indefinitely without any support from the corporate office, and even the company operated restaurants could (and did) easily operate for days or even weeks without any IT support from corporate. But, apparently, a couple of attention whores in the corporate "risk management" department decided this would be a perfect opportunity to boost their own careers by capitalizing on the media hysteria surrounding H1N1. Like Alexander Haig, they wanted to assure the people that "they would be in control" during this time of crisis.

In my 25+ year career, I had never heard of ANY company having an "emergency IT response plan" for an outbreak of the flu. What's my plan? Well, how about this - we tell people to wash their hands and we muddle through with a short staff for a couple of weeks until the flu passes. There - I'm done. But (of course) it was even worse than this.

Apparently, this was not the first time the "risk management" boys had played this game. They had previously responded the same way during the "Avian Flu" outbreak, and they had actually convinced the IT management to prepare an "emergency IT response plan" specifically for an Avian Flu disaster. It should now be pointed out that since 2003 there have been ~300 confirmed deaths from Avian Flu *worldwide*, and *NONE* in the US. Whew - I'm glad those risk management experts are protecting our company from these disasters!

Good grief - this company had been experiencing declining sales for several years and was bleeding cash while executing a never-ending series of failed marketing campaigns. BUT - they were ready with a plan for how the IT department was going to respond in case 25% of their staff got the chills and diarrhea! True story!

I have no deep-meaning lesson to convey from these two stories. In my humble opinion, these were simply stupid people who were tolerated (and promoted) by equally clueless corporate leadership. I believe it is every thinking human being's duty to expose stupidity. I know it can never be eradicated - but it also should never be tolerated. As Bill Engval says: "Here's your sign."

This trilogy of business brainlessness has been fun - and very cathartic. But at the same time, it makes me incredibly frustrated and sad. Every one of the primary characters in the six stories I have presented is still gainfully employed in the same positions they held at the time I had the misfortune to work with them. As you read this, I'm sure they are merrily committing random acts of idiocy and making some other reasonably intelligent coworker do additional work in order to correct the senseless stupidity. My sympathies go out to those poor souls - I feel your pain!

The Church Of The Corporate Ladder

It's time to take the gloves off. At the request of a few friends who shall remain nameless (cough *gutless* cough) this diatribe is going to be a bit edgy and address one of the verboten subjects of polite conversations - religion. (pause for collective gasp from the blogosphere) No, I'm not going to debate the relative merits of snake-handling versus self-mortification, I want to talk about the hypocrisy of devout religious zealots who also happen to be part of corporate leadership.

So, first, I'll apologize - if you are a very religious person, you may find some of my comments offensive. Please recognize that I'm not attacking your religion - I am attacking the hypocrites who proudly proclaim their religious beliefs, but are also willing to take out anyone by any means necessary to further their own corporate careers. I freely admit that I am NOT a religious person - 8 years of parochial school saw to that - but I hold no animosity towards anyone who actually lives the teachings of their chosen religion. However, if you are just a wolf using your religion to ambush your opponents - then I suspect your God has a special section of the everlasting fire waiting for your @ss.

Religious corporate leaders really are a strange bunch. I have a hard time understanding how plotting and scheming the downfall of your opponents and your own rise up the corporate ladder fits in with God's divine plan. I absolutely understand how it might fit with the person's master plan. Let's look at the advantages the outwardly religious person might have in the corporate game.

First, there is the obvious - the ability to maintain a holier-than-thou attitude over everyone else in the room. *They* know the *right* thing to do, and anyone who disagrees is clearly aligned with Satan. Maintaining a pious and angelic look on their face is very important in order to pull this off. Of course, there is no outward condemnation of the non-believing heathens in the meeting, but a gentle "I'm not comfortable with the moral ramifications of this approach" is more than enough to get their point across.

They also have the advantage of holding everyone else to a higher standard than they themselves actually operate. They can hamstring their opponents by working behind the scenes on evil plans while constantly pointing out and being outraged at any less than divine actions taken by their foes. This continually puts everyone else on the defensive and makes them less likely to attempt their own initiatives for fear that their plans will not meet the moral standards set for everyone except the devout.

Look at one example - let's say in a fit of frustration you send an email to a co-worker complaining about the latest underhanded trick pulled by the resident religious hypocrite. In that email you drop a few f-bombs and point out a few shortcomings in the hypocrite's genetics. If that email were to somehow make it's way to one of the religious corporate leaders (even if it is not the actual target of your wrath) the outrage and retribution will be swift and overwhelming. You will be accused of being "vulgar" and of having morals lower than a crack whore. It won't matter if you have heard many others (including other religious hypocrites) using the same language or expressing the same sentiment - YOU are now the unclean, heathen outcast who will be declared an evil person by EVERYONE who fears they may someday be the target of the Holy Rollers.

I have absolutely no problem with a company being run according to a set of strict religious beliefs - as long as the rules apply to everyone on an equal basis. I may not choose to work there - but anyone who does knows and accepts the culture. What I cannot stomach is the hypocrisy of a company's leadership that pretends to adhere to strict rules - but only when it suits them, or when they know other people are looking.

I wish I knew of a suitable defense against this particular type of slimy corporate toad. However, I really don't have an answer. The best I can come up with is to simply get as far away from that company as quickly as you can. The senior executives CAN minimize the issue - by simply ignoring the sermons and being willing to tell the devout ladder climber to go pound sand. The only thing the halo-wearing scumbags will respond to is realization that their current path does not get them to the next rung of the ladder. However, if the senior executives lack the spine to stand up and tell the righteous reptiles to knock it off, you are screwed and you need to get out before you are branded with a scarlet letter.

It's been said many times that some of the greatest evil has been committed in the name of religion. I would probably modify that statement to say "in the misuse of religion." There's nothing inherently wrong with the vast majority of religions. If they help you get through the day, great. But when religion is used as a political tool for your own benefit, you are a bloated toad who should be skewered on your own pious pitard.

So - how about it? Do you know a particular jackass that claims to be an elder in his/her church, yet is not above bald faced lies and unethical behavior in order to advance their own career? I would like to hear your story of how a religious hypocrite screwed you over during their rise to divine status in the Church of the Corporate Ladder. Leave me some comments!

High-Tech Worker, Low-Tech Company - Round Two

A few weeks ago, I posted about a couple of the technology-challenged folks I encountered as a high-tech worker employed at a low-tech company. At the time, I mentioned that I had many more stories to tell, and I have received quite a few requests to post the next set of tawdry low-tech tales. So, here ya go! Once again I will make the same disclaimer that I made in part 1:

Disclaimer: Both of these stories are true and personally witnessed by yours truly. None of these are reposts from Snopes or anywhere else. Any similarity to stories you may have read elsewhere should be chalked-up to the fact that there are idiots everywhere and our species is doomed.

Now, for part deux:

Spaminator
Spam is the bane of the 'net. It is like the weeds that grow in your garden and in the cracks in your sidewalks and driveways - you can pull it, chop it or spray it and you may be able to control it for today - but it will always be back. There is one flavor of spam that has been around since the very early days of the internet - the fake notifications that tell of "secret" coupons or deals from well known national brands. Many large brands have been targets - including many restaurants, retailers, automakers, electronics companies, etc for anything from free cars (Honda) to free beer (Miller). You've probably all seen some of these, right? Did you ever think any of them were real? Granted, there are occasionally genuine offers that are similar - like this one - but come on, it's just spam, right?

Well, some people apparently take them just a bit more seriously...

One particular Chief Executive Officer was forwarded a well known spam that promised that our company would send a $50 coupon to anyone who forwarded the spam email to them. One of the store franchise owners had apparently been sent this email and wanted to know what the corporate office was going to do to stop it. This CEO immediately tasked the IT department to "stop these emails from being sent." Huh? It's spam! This CEO was dead serious - they thought there was some way for us to intercept and stop these emails from being sent - not just from our company servers, but from every mail server on the internet!

Our explanation that this is not how the internet works, and that there is no central control center we can call to have these emails stopped was met with the classic "you clearly misunderstood my last order - try again" look from the CEO. The head of the IT department eventually had to meet with the CEO and explain that this was not something we or anyone else could control, and that the vast majority of people in the world understand that these types of emails are just annoying fakes. A letter was then drafted and sent to all the restaurant owners, and a notice was placed on the company web site declaring these emails to be fake. I am willing to bet the CEO *still* believes we are just incompetent and there must be some way for those emails to be stopped. True story!

Anti-Social Networking
Internet discussion forums are a great way for people with a common interest to socialize, share knowledge and engage in healthy debate and disagreements. Forums are not new - they are as old as the internet. Many companies are using private discussion forums as a way to share information between employees, or with customers and/or vendor partners. Unmoderated public forums can get extremely unruly - but there are many moderated forums that manage to discuss very contentious issues and remain civil. Most private forums are much easier to manage - because (in theory) the members are all there for the same reason.

And then there is the forum that was built at our company...

The communications department wanted a discussion forum added to our private company portal. The users of this portal included corporate employees, the franchisees and the franchisee's employees. The public had no access to this portal or the discussion forum. Sounds fairly easy, right? There are dozens of free internet forum software packages available, and some of them are used in very, very active public forums. But, a private forum actually has a few unique requirements that are not an issue in public forums. The first is that we didn't want the forum users to have to login to the forum after they had already logged-in to the company portal. Since several of the best portals now support directory services like LDAP or AD, that wasn't a big problem and was easily solved.

However, the communications department and the marketing and legal departments apparently had a completely different view of how a discussion forum is used than I did. They were extremely paranoid that someone might post something that was not favorable to the company. I explained that could be controlled by having moderators police the forums and delete or edit any offensive posts. But that wasn't deemed good enough.

They decided that corporate employees could read the forum, but could not post. That would prevent a corporate employee from saying something that might be construed as putting the company at risk. It didn't matter that the corporate employees talked and emailed to these same folks every day - the forum was deemed "different". All questions asked by the franchisees and their employees would need to be posted by the forum admin who was also a communications department employee. If the forum admin did not know the answer to a question, then they would contact the relevant department, obtain an answer, and then post the forum response.

The brain trust also decided that the forum would ONLY be used for the franchisees and employees to post "Best Demonstrated Practices". If they knew about something that worked, they were asked to post a story explaining it so that the other franchisees could benefit. There was no Q&A forum, no general discussion forum - there were ONLY forums for them to post their tips & tricks.

Can you guess what happened?

Well, since corporate employees couldn't post to the forum, they typically visited the forum once, then left and never came back. Why should they? What fun is a forum unless you can participate? I suppose reading the posts from the franchisees could be interesting, but that leads to the second problem...

The franchisees weren't posting either. It seems that they weren't all that eager to share their "tips & tricks" with each other. They wanted to communicate with each other, and many of them did through email, but there was no way they wanted to post where corporate could see and know who was posting. In addition, since there was really no forum for them to post questions or just have general chit-chat with each other, the entire "social" aspect of the discussion forum was completely missing.

The result? Six months after launch, there had been a total of 6 posts to the entire forum - and that includes the post from the forum admin saying "thank you for your post" to the one guy who actually posted ONE "best demonstrated practice", and also the post from a franchisee who complained that the free item he had received from a franchisee conference had arrived broken. In short, it was a complete failure. The forum software itself worked great - posting was easy and simple. But the many weeks of effort to install, configure and modify the forum software were completely wasted by the desire to have complete control over how people engage in social interaction - completely missing the entire point of web-based discussions. True Story!

Well, there you go - two more examples from my files. Both of these stories share a common trait - the desire to control the uncontrollable. In the first story, the CEO needed to discover that it really isn't possible to control the breadth and speed of worldwide email communications. It shows a complete lack of understanding for how the internet has changed the dissemination of information - which is really, really scary when you consider this was the leader of a $2+ Billion company. The second story is also about control - the desire to control how people communicate with one another, and not recognizing that when you attempt that level of control, people will simply find a different way to communicate in order to bypass the oppresive controls. Don't worry - I have many more stories coming to future posts!