Take this management book and shove it

Among the books I gave away earlier this week was a whole passel of management and leadership books I collected during the course of my years as a middle manager in Great and Powerful Corporations.

Like Oz, those corporations were full of flash, short on substance. Both went bankrupt in the past decade (both emerged from bankruptcy, too, but that just emphasizes my point of management by smoke and mirrors).

The book I was happiest to dump was “Working with Emotional Intelligence,” which I picked up after a supervisor for whom I no longer have a scintilla of respect told me I lacked emotional intelligence. She probably would not have approved of my choice of “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office 101,” which I also hoisted into the giveaway pile on the grounds it used “mistakes women make” in the subtitle. I’m sorry, unwitting recipients of bargain books at Savers, but neither one softened my rough edges. Odds of me picking up Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book? 100 to 1. Lean into that.

When I’m looking for information to support my opinions of Big Business, I turn to Dilbert, which I check out daily over my morning coffee. I love Scott Adams. His is a philosophy I can believe in. I typed “bullshit leadership quotes” into Google and got this delightful result, written by Dilbert’s creator just yesterday. Here’s an excerpt:

“Consider the thousands of different books on management/success/leadership. If any of this were real science, all managers would learn the same half-dozen secrets to success and go on to great things. The reality of the business world is more like infinite monkeys with typewriters. Sooner or later a monkey with an ass pimple will type something that makes sense and every management expert in the world will attribute the success to the ass pimple.”

~ Scott Adams

The intersection of ‘a good leader’ and ‘what I’d like to see in a leader’

Is a good leader the same as what matters most to you in a leader?

These two questions crossed my mind as I was reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computers.

In a fit of insomnia, I read 100 pages of the 571-page tome in the middle of the night last night just after I found an article in November’s Real Simple magazine about “What Matters to You Most in a Leader?”

Real Simple was posing the question in light of Election Day, but it’s relevant in light of Obama’s inauguration, too.

Answers from Real Simple readers included:

• “An open mind and a tolerant attitude.”
• “Humility.”
• “Kindness and sympathy.”
• “The ability to help people with opposing viewpoints find common ground.”

Meanwhile, Isaacson uses words like “bratty,” “arrogant,” “demanding” and “harsh” to describe the perfectionist behind such products as the Macintosh personal computer and iEverything.

Which leads me to wonder, “Is what we want in a leader what we really need?”

After reading just the beginning of Jobs’ biography, I know I’d never have made it at Apple Computers. I would have hated working for such a jerk. Yet I admire the work of that jerk.

I wonder if, like a spoiled 5-year-old who gets everything she wants and then throws tantrums anyway, we’re getting exactly what we ask for in our politicians and business leaders?

Step right up, yessiree, and see the insurance swag

Trade shows are like a live interactive version of the Home Shopping Channel.

Some people end up wandering around among all the vendor booths, like sleepless zombies mindlessly eating bowls of brains in the middle of the night. Some people visit every single booth like they’re shopping the clearance racks at Macy’s, hoping to find The Deal That Changes Everything. Some are like hunters, tuning in at the appointed hour with the intention of satisfying a particular need.

I’ve attended hundreds of trade shows over the years and worked a few of them, most of them colorful scrapbooking related affairs.

Today, I got to see an insurance convention trade show.

Ooh, insurance. Settle down.

I’ve been married to an insurance salesman for four years but I had no idea how one hawks insurance products at a trade show.

Turns out, it’s with a lot of brochures.

But what was really impressive was the swag (when you don’t have fancy new cars or cooking demos or home decorating ideas, swag is where it’s at). In the drive to collect the most business cards, every other booth was giving away some sort of flashy electronic gear: iPad, tablet, DVD player, Kindle. Being October, mini Halloween candy was plentiful. And every booth had some sort of useful or strange takeaway: Reuseable grocery bag (imprinted of course), pens (my favorite was the hairy pen), sticky notes, playing cards, balsa wood toy airplanes, fly swatters, light-up bouncing balls, antibacterial soap, lint brushes, mints and my favorite: Specialty chocolate packaged just for the vendor (“like dark chocolate?” “Sure!”). The margarita mixing machine was the most clever, though. At 10:30 a.m.

My husband is the hunter type of trade show attendee: He had a specific intention and he worked those booths like a man on a mission. I was just the eye candy. Eyeing the candy.

Expectations are as important to define as goals

Heard a good question today to help one define one’s expectations.

Now to be clear, one’s expectations are different from one’s goals. A goal is something you don’t have but you want it. An expectation might be something you don’t have and you don’t want it — expectations sort establish the floor to your goals.

When defining one’s expectations, ask: “What would be really disappointing 2 years from now?”

“Two years” might be the time frame for a business plan. The time frame might be different if one was defining expectations for a party next week or how a child turns out as an adult.

But for a business, one’s goal might be: Have 10 ongoing customers by the end of 2012.

One’s expectation might be: I’d be really disappointed if I still have only the two customers I have now in two years.

Using the word “disappointed” seems to really help define the bottom.

I got this gem from a business coach named Lightning — what a great name! Click here to learn where a guy gets such a nickname.

Desktop transformation to make way for creativity

Before: My desk was a pigsty. How does this woman get anything done?!

Even those of us not going back to school this year could use a little “brand new crayons” inspiration.

You know how that new box of crayons simply demands to be used creatively? A clean desk is the same way. So in honor of the new school year, I cleaned my desk. I even dusted.

Now, I can get something done.

After: You can actually see the top of my desk. What a transformation!

Cleaning, by the way, is an excellent way to procrastinate.

“Second thoughts oftentimes
are the very worst of all thoughts.”

~ William Shenstone

 

What a perfect haystack means

Symbols remind us of what’s important. A wedding ring symbolizes a commitment. A lushly green, well-watered lawn symbolizes suburban perfection. A signed baseball symbolizes a brush with fame.

For my uncle, a perfect haystack symbolizes a summer’s work.

A meaningful stack of North Dakota hay, circa 1965.

I recently found a black-and-white picture of the haystack in my uncle’s collection of personal photos.

“You’ve had this photo for 40-some years,” I said. “There must be a reason you kept it so long.”

“That hay stack represented a finished job,” Uncle Lee said. “I don’t get many ‘finished jobs’ in my line of work now.”

Nowadays, making hay is highly mechanized. Round bales, created by a machine, dot the rural landscape around the little town where I live on the outskirts of Chicago.

But a century ago, hay was cut with scythes and moved with pitchforks, and haystacks shaped like little houses were fixtures of the Midwestern landscape. Square balers mechanized the process in the 1940s. As the farming industry moved to a more corporate operation in recent years, large round bales have become more common.

The biggest advantage of small square bales like those handled by my uncle is that they can be moved by one person without a lot of machinery.

Square hay bales must be stacked in such a way as to shed moisture and prevent rotting. My uncle estimates his haystack probably had 2,000 square bales in it.

“I probably handled those bales six times each,” he said. “That’s why I was in such great shape! The knees wore out of my blue jeans from hiking up those bales. I could throw them like you couldn’t believe.”

As the saying goes, you make hay while the sun shines. One has to cut it, rake it and bale it first. “Dad [my grandfather] had a brand new baler at the time,” Uncle Lee remembers. “Then I’d go out and put ’em in six packs — that’s the first time I handled ’em. Then I’d pick ’em up and throw ’em on the hay wagon (that’s two), then stack ’em again on the wagon (three), bring ’em home, throw ’em down (there’s four, right?), then stack them like you see here in the picture.”

The stack in that picture symbolized a whole summer of work.

“Wait, that’s five times, I think,” I said.

“Then in the winter time, you have to feed the cattle – I had to throw the bales on the ground for the cows.”

Six.

“I like everything about cattle,” said Uncle Lee, who grew up and made hay in the western plains of North Dakota. “I enjoyed that part of farming. I didn’t like seeding or combining, but one of my favorite times of year was when we moved the cattle to summer pasture. All winter, they were cooped up in the barnyards, but in spring we moved them to the open fields. They were like little kids! They’d kick up their heels and hit their heads together, they were so happy.

“I still like cattle.”

Early on, Uncle Lee left farming because there was no money in it and embarked on a career in education. He started out as a social studies teacher. Now, he’s a school administrator – the top of the stack, so to speak – in a small, rural school district in Wisconsin.

Lee in 1965.

“That’s probably why I prefer rural districts,” Uncle Lee said. “North Dakota built my foundation. It was a hard place to make a living: It’s got a short growing season. It’s colder than hell. Sometimes it doesn’t rain. It can be a very lonely, lonely place.”

But he learned what hard work can accomplish.

And the picture of his haystack symbolizes it.

The unsubscribe button in all its unsullied glory

The most potent weapon in the spam war:

The unsubscribe button.

Just about any reputable commercial email includes an “unsubscribe” button. It’s usually hidden in the small print at the bottom of the “INCREDIBLE ONE-DAY SALE” and “HURRY — QUANTITIES LIMITED” announcements, but it’s there.

I adore that button.

My Beloved has a second email address he uses for those fill-in-the-blank email forms required when you buy, sell or process anything on the internet, and he gets thousands of emails there a month. He gives his “real” email address to friends and thereby avoids having to wade through “eBay Update” emails, “News from MotorHead Times” and “Tool-a-Day Deals” whenever he signs on.

It’s one solution to the problem of spam, but I prefer having one email account. When I start getting unsolicited stuff from The Oprah Magazine, Prevention Magazine and “Best Deal Magazines (do I detect a pattern here?), I start getting clicking the unsubscribe button like a morphine drip.

It’s also a suitable option when a favorite retailer goes overboard with the email alerts. Yes, Eddie Bauer, you’re quite nice, but I don’t need a new pair of functional but trend-neutral chinos. Every. Single. Day.

Usually the unsubscribe button is quite effective. Apparently, clicking the “spam” button is kryptonite to online retailers, so they provide an unsubscribe button in the alternative and abide by your wishes.

So I was really surprised to get this email from Coach recently:

SIGN UP TO STAY IN THE KNOW

You used to receive Coach emails at this address, but you’re now missing news about our latest styles, collections, promotions, store openings and special events.

We respect your email preferences and will add you back to our list only if you click the link below:

• Click here to receive Coach emails & see what you’ve been missing.
• No, thanks: I’ll pass this time.

Coach, known for it’s classy but expensive leather purses, had been sending me, oh, a dozen emails a day (OK, not that many but way more than a girl on a budget needed), so I unsubscribed several months ago.

Then I ordered a classy but expensive purse at Coach.com.

And Coach apparently believed I needed constant reminders of their existence again.

So they send an email to a bona fide customer who unsubscribed.

Wow.

That’s ballsy if you ask me.

If I didn’t love Coach so much, I would have clicked the spam button, the red telephone equivalent of imminent nuclear attack.

But I didn’t.

Coach’s impudence aside, I recommend liberal use of the unsubscribe button.

Unless you’re subscribing or considering subscribing to this blog.

In that case, STAY IN THE KNOW. DON’T MISS THE LATEST NEWS FROM MINNESOTA TRANSPLANT. WE WOULD MISS YOU.

And other urgent upper-case declarations.

Something so pleasant about crazy

This entrepreneur’s perspective on Big Business echoes my own:

Entrepreneur Erik Martin: Yeah, you’re crazy to do this, but you’re almost more crazy to work at some big company.

Reporter Amy Standen: Erik Martin is general manager of the social news site Reddit and a NewME mentor. He says, sure, the odds of any start-up becoming the next Instagram or Dropbox, let alone Facebook, are long.

Martin: So are the odds of working at some big company that doesn’t give a crap about you and is making much more money off of you than they’re paying you.

This I heard on National Public Radio this morning as I was driving down the road, working for myself. And then I thought of crazy-like-a-fox Gnarls Barkley’s 2006 hit, to which I pounded out many miles while training for a marathon six years ago:

I remember when, I remember
I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space

And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much

Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly.

~ Gnarls Barkley

A new calling is calling my name

“Well, I’ve got a lot of callings. You can’t just limit
it to one. … Life’s too short to devote yourself to
a single thing, and luckily for me, I’m interested
in other things. And one must pursue those things.”

~ Charlie Trotter

Acclaimed chef Charlie Trotter announced he’s closing his famous Chicago restaurant, and he this comment above during a radio interview yesterday with American Public Media’s Marketplace. Trotter is turning from cooking to studying philosophy and political theory.

You go, Mr. Trotter! His words rang true with me as I launch a new venture: Clickago Storywerks. My role with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers has evolved from territory manager to member and membership rep, and now I’m in the business of helping people tell their stories and organize their pictures.

I’m a storyteller at heart, which explains why I’ve dutifully kept up this little blog for three and half years. (Hey! I’m now the No. 1 Google entry when you type in “Minnesota transplant blog” — it wasn’t always that way, people! I own that space, and in search engine optimized terms, that means something.)

I’ve been a newspaper reporter, a headline writer, a marketing executive, a communications director and a territory manager. But what’s always stayed the same is that I was working for someone else. Now, I’m going to try a new thing: Working for myself as a photo organizer.

Trotter said something else, too, that applies to people’s photo collections:

“Fine dining is the one luxury experience that’s pretty much available to everyone — not every day or once a week, but maybe once a year, because it only costs something like $100 an hour for the experience. And it takes 80 people to do. Whereas even the lamest plumber charges $115 an hour and he’s by himself. So fine dining is a luxury experience that is available and accessible to everybody.”

If people can spring $100 an hour for a fine dining experience, or $115 an hour for a plumber, I’m betting they’ll invest in a certified professional to help them enjoy their photos, too. While food and running water might rank high on one’s list of priorities, one’s stories and memories ought to be right up there. I spoke to 48 people yesterday morning at the Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin about organizing their photos — 48 people showed up on a Tuesday morning to learn how to tackle their projects! Like making a soufflé or installing an operational faucet, organizing photos isn’t for the faint of heart — it requires discipline, the right tools and technical expertise. Bring it on — I can help.

I’ve updated my Clickago blog, the little blog about family photos I started when I began with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers. I’ll still share photo ideas, but I’ll be talking about sharing stories in other ways, too, including books and blogs. Click here to see the made-over Clickago Storywerks blog.

Speaking of books, I’m publishing the memoir I finished last summer. Stay tuned for news on that front.

Let’s toast the pursuit of new things!

Wunderbar Wunderlist makes it virtually impossible to procrastinate

The latest app I can’t live without: Wunderlist.

It’s a virtual to-do list that works on all your devices (PC, iPad, iPhone, etc.) and can be shared with people who are important to you.

For example, I can share my to-do Wunderlist with my Beloved, and he can add tasks to it like, “Make an appointment with the dog groomer.” You could share lists with co-workers or a boss.

I can create a grocery Wunderlist that I can add to whenever I think of it (and so can the hubby) and when I’m standing in the grocery store, I can whip out my phone and ta-da! There’s what I need to pick up.

I started a books-to-read Wunderlist today — no more Post-It Notes all over my desk!

You can add dates to the list, too, so you’re not clogging up today’s list with stuff that needs to be done next week.

Best of all: Wunderlist is free.

Check it out: Wunderlist.