People Remember Your Worst Moments

I’ve previously posted on why people tend to remember your worst reasons for your decisions (see here). This is true of all kinds of behavior – Tom Cruise spends a lot of time in the public eye, but what most people remember is his bizarre behavior in this video of an interview with Oprah.

Via Newmark’s Door, here are two entertaining collections of famous worst moments:

Seven Great Talk Show Train Wrecks

The Twenty Weirdest TV Interviews of All Time

It’s obvious, but if you want to be an effective manager, don’t say or do stupid things.

Management Stress and Meetingitis

Via Newmark's Door, Secretgeek on "The Deadly Cycle of Meetingitis." Here’s an excerpt:

1. Q:What do managers do when they're stressed?
   • A:They call a meeting.
2. Q:What gets managers stressed out?
   • A:When projects are not making progress.
3. Q:When do projects fail to make progress?
   • A:When people spend too much time in meetings.

Secretgeek is talking about programming code crises, but the cycle applies to any situation which creates manager stress. The important part of this cycle is the root cause – it’s not the status of the project, it’s the manager’s stress.

Secretgeek’s solution:

Communicate more, in order to meet less. Be proactive in your communication. Don't wait for them to call a meeting. Tell them what's going on. Produce regular reports. Don't "promise" to produce regular reports -- just produce them. Let them listen in on some of your day to day chatter. If you have daily standups, bring the manager in. Stop baffling them with technical mumbo jumbo. Feed them edible slices of information. Walk them through it in bite-sized chunks. Give them documentation tasks to keep them feeling important. Give them communication tasks. Draw pictures for them to stick on the wall of their office.

Keeping manager’s in the loop obviously helps, but in my experience managers only calm down when they develop confidence their people are on top of the issues and elevate them when necessary. It takes time and positive experience for people to develop that kind of credibility with their management (more on that here). Unfortunately, that level of confidence may never develop if the manager believes progress is a result of their involvement and not their staff’s work.

Why I Don’t Promise to Keep Secrets

When someone starts off with, “Between you and me…”, “In confidence…”, “Off the record…”, etc., I stop them, immediately, and tell them this story.

Back in 1993 I was a middle manager at Home Savings of America, managing a group of income property workout officers. I was based in Los Angeles, and some of my direct reports were in New York. On one of my trips to New York, a peer manager based in New York who also reported to my boss took me aside and said she would like to talk to me about a problem, but that I had to promise to keep it in confidence.

I agreed. Everybody likes a secret, and being taken into someone’s confidence is flattering. It developed that one of my officers disagreed with her handling of some issues, and the dispute had ended with some very inflammatory comments by my employee which clearly fell in the category of sexual harassment.

If you work for a company of any size you have been through sexual harassment trainings (probably more than once), and pretty much everyone now knows if this sort of thing occurs it gets reported to the Human Resources department, end of story. But, those guidelines were not in place in 1993. I also knew that the proper handling of this would have been for the woman to report it to our boss, but I also knew why she didn’t. Our boss would have handled the problem with a hammer, and the New York manager was hoping I would take a gentler approach to solving the problem.

Which I did, starting with a strong talk with my employee which left him badly shaken and contrite, and an apology from him to the woman he harassed. I followed up a few weeks later with the New York manager, and she was happy with the result. I was feeling good.

Until a week later, when my boss called me into her office and (justifiably) ripped me a new one for leaving her out of the loop. It seems the story was just too good for the New York manager to keep to herself, and the people she told thought it was too good to keep to themselves, and eventually the story made its way to my boss.

If a secret is so compelling it needs to be a secret, it’s so compelling it will eventually come out. Now, when someone starts to tell me a secret, I stop them and tell them that I will act as I see appropriate, which may mean disclosing the secret. I share the above story with them. Almost always they tell me anyway, and I am free to take the appropriate action without tying myself in knots trying to preserve confidentiality.

Proximity Matters

When work involves sharing information, the people involved should sit together. The reason why is captured in a passage I came across describing how currency brokers work in the London Review of Books:

Brokers in major money-market currencies don’t work as individuals, but in teams of up to a dozen or more, sitting close together in subsections of large, open-plan offices. Good eyesight is useful – trainees still sometimes called ‘board boys’ write unfilled bids to borrow and offers to lend on whiteboards surrounding clusters of brokers’ desks, and you can occasionally see a broker using binoculars to read a distant whiteboard or screen – but a more crucial skill is ‘broker’s ear’: the capacity to monitor what is being said by all the other brokers at nearby desks, despite the noise and while at the same time holding a voicebox conversation with a client. As one broker put it to me: ‘When you’re on the desk you’re expected to hear everyone else’s conversations as well, because they’re all relevant to you, and if you’re on the phone speaking to someone about what’s going on in the market there could be a hot piece of information coming in with one of your colleagues that you would want to tell your clients, so you’ve got to be able to hear it coming in as you’re speaking to the person.’

When you first encounter it, broker’s ear is disconcerting. You’ll be sitting beside a broker at his desk, thinking he’s fully engaged in his conversation with you, when suddenly he’ll respond to a question or comment, from several desks away, that you simply hadn’t registered.

I know this idea runs counter to tradition in a lot of places – usually seating is by seniority (all the executives in the corners and along the windows) and functions. In my industry (mortgages), loan officers are in one section, processors in another, underwriters somewhere else, and closers are over there). This is an organization-centric arrangement – good for the egos of managers who can look over their domain, and good for training people within their function. But, separating functions requires information handoffs, and inevitably there are fumbles and failures to communicate. For example, I’ve heard closers asking customers to resubmit information directly to them because it’s easier than finding out if it’s already been provided to someone else in the work flow.

Putting people in earshot of each other greatly reduces the effort needed to keep everyone in the loop, and results in better execution. It’s also much harder to maintain “us versus them” distinctions when everyone sits together.

Give Me a Reason

Everyone who has raised a child has gone through the “Why?” stage. Humans are wired to figure things out, and asking why is often the most direct route to understanding.

In his book Why? Charles Tilly outlines a framework for how this question is answered. There are four approaches: Conventions, stories, codes, and technical accounts.

1) Conventions are standard explanations of an event which don’t attempt to establish causality (e.g., you explain to a friend you have not responded to an email because you are swamped at work). You and your friend both know this is not literally the reason (after all, you’re not at work 24 hours a day), but your friend accepts the convention and does not make you account for every minute since you received the email.

2) Stories are more detailed narratives which provide more details and present a simplified causality model. If you are a 20 minutes late to work, a conventional comment about traffic being bad will probably suffice. If you keep your spouse waiting 20 minutes in a restaurant for an anniversary dinner, you will probably have a very detailed story establishing you left with plenty of time, the nature of the accident causing the traffic delay, etc.

3) Codes explain actions by referring to existing rules. For example, an employee is not reimbursed for five 40 mile business related trips but is reimbursed for one 60 mile trip because the policy is no reimbursements for trips less than 50 miles.

4) Technical Accounts are detailed explanations of events which attempt to prove causality (or at correlation) with evidence. An example is an engineering study explaining the failure of a dam.

Here is how the rejection of a loan might be explained:

• The borrower had bad credit (convention)
• I approved a loan to someone who had multiple late credit cards just like this applicant and the prior loan defaulted…(story)
• The investor will not buy the loan if the borrower’s FICO score is below 600 (code)
• Studies have shown that borrowers with FICO scores below 600 default 40% more frequently…(technical account).

Each approach has drawbacks. Conventions are by definition incomplete and don’t fully establish causality or educate. They’re fine as a kind of shorthand when nobody really cares much about the answer, but are usually inappropriate when someone really wants to know why.

Similarly, codes are a shorthand explanation which don’t educate (except about the code itself) or explain. Saying an investor won’t buy a loan if the FICO score is below 600 doesn’t explain why that’s the investor’s policy any more than “Because I said so!” explains to a child why they have to go to bed at 9:00 PM. Codes work best when everyone understands the reasons underlying the code already.

Stories are extremely effective at conveying values and information. Like asking “Why?”, narrative explanation and understanding seem to be hard wired into humans (picture cave dwellers huddled around the fire listening to stories of the day’s hunt). However, if you’re using a story to convey a truth, you need to make sure your story represents a truth, and not an isolated instance. For example, your story about how dangerous unleashed dogs are because you were once bitten by one will not resonate with someone who spends a lot of time around unleashed dogs at a dog park. Also. stories are seductive, and as discussed in in a previous post people are all too willing to accept them uncritically.

Technical accounts use evidence and establish causality to answer the question. They are the nuclear weapons of explanation – after a good technical account you really know why. The problem with technical accounts is they tend to be boring, and more information than the audience is looking for. They also tend to be limited in scope – it’s hard to establish the why of big events conclusively.

Given each has drawbacks, which is the best form to use? They can each be appropriate in certain contexts. Tilly introduces the concept of “superior stories”; stories which draw on the strengths of a narrative format, but which are underpinned with the evidence and causal links found in a technical account.

What Do Successful Personal, Reporting, and Client Relationships Have In Common?

John Gottman can watch a married couple interacting for 15 minutes and predict with 90% accuracy whether that couple will still be married 15 years later. Based on his system, I think he would probably be able to predict the success of manager-subordinate and salesperson-client relationships too.

Gottman looks at bids and bid responses between people to draw conclusions about their relationship. In Gottman’s terminology a bid is an attempt by one person to establish a connection, and a bid response is how the other person reacts to the bid. Responses fall into three categories: turning towards, turning against, and turning away. Some examples:

BID	RESPONSE
Husband (on the couch calling to his wife in the kitchen): “Honey, could you bring me a beer?”	Wife Turning Towards - “Sounds good, let me join you. How’s the game going?”
	Turning Against – “Get it yourself, you slob!”
	Turning Away - Silence
Employee sends an email with some requested information to a manager.	Manager Turning Towards - “Thanks for the quick response. Could you include some background on the Ragamuffin account?”
	Turning Against – “Incomplete as usual, where’s the background on the Ragamuffin account?”
	Turning Away – No response to the email
Salesperson following up with a call on some emailed information	Potential Client Turning Towards - “It was interesting but we’re not doing anything until the next budget cycle. I have your contact information and will let you know.”
	Turning Against - “Stop spamming me.”
	Turning Away – Doesn’t return the call

Gottman’s research shows contempt (on the part of either party) is the best signal a relationship is headed down the drain.

Here are some other takeaways from Gottman’s research:

• In a successful relationship, there are a lot of bids going on; a happily married couple may engage as many as 100 times in ten minutes while eating a meal. Not all of these bids get “turning towards” responses, but the ratio is high. Couples headed to divorce engage much less and have a much lower ratio of positive responses. Obviously, there are not going to be as many manager-employee or salesperson-client interactions, but an absence of interaction is bad, and a low ratio of positive responses makes infrequent interaction even worse.
• The overwhelming majority of interactions are trivial; even in the best relationships there is not a lot of sharing of deep feeling and soul searching going on. It’s the frequency and ratio of positive to negative responses that’s important, not the topic.

All this rings true to me in both my personal and professional relationships. What is truly amazing to me is how many managers and clients operate almost exclusively in the “Turn Away” mode, when a quick “Turn Toward” acknowledgment of an employee’s or salesperson’s effort is so easy.

I first read about Gottman’s work in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. If you want to dig deeper, I recommend Gottman’s book The Relationship Cure.

Listening Like Your Life Depended On It

You might like Thomas Friedman's columns and books , or not, but he's a very interesting guy. Ian Parker has a profile of Friedman in the November 10, 2008 issue of The New Yorker (synopsis here) which I highly recommend. Here's an excerpt:

In April, 1982, Friedman became the Times bureau chief in Beirut. Two months later, Israel invaded Lebanon. He reported on the invasion, the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the suicide bombings of the American Embassy and the Marine headquarters. "The biggest survival mechanism, being a Jewish Times correspondent in the Arab world, is listening," Friedman said. "It's a sign of respect, and if you will just listen to people and let them not just vent but say what's on their mind it's amazing what they'll let you say back."

Listening is a sign of respect, and even if your physical survival does not depend on it, the survival of your relationship with that person is always at risk. It's also hard work given our genetically wired short attention span. When you catch your attention drifting, think of Friedman's situation, and refocus on the conversation. You'll not only gain the respect of the speaker, you'll probably learn from what's being said.

Say It. Do It. Repeat.

James Kouzes and Barry Posner have conducted extensive surveys looking for the characteristics employees consider important in their leaders and coworkers. For leaders the top four attributes, in order of importance, are:

• Honest
• Forward Looking
• Inspiring
• Competent

Kouzes and Posner combine these characteristics into one; credibility:

"We want to believe in our leaders. We want to have faith and confidence in them as people. We want to believe they can be trusted, that they have the knowledge and skill to lead, and that they are personally excited and enthusiastic about the direction in which we are headed. Credibility is the foundation of leadership.”

While I agree this is what we want in leaders, I think putting excitement and enthusiasm under the credibility umbrella is stretching the meaning of the word. Some of the most credible people I know are dry as dust, and in my experience the level of enthusiasm with which a statement is made is inversely proportionate to its truth. So, in my formulation honesty and competence are the foundation of credibility.

Back to Kouzes and Posner. The four top characteristics employees look for in their coworkers are, in order of importance:

• Honest
• Cooperative
• Dependable
• Competent

There are two that overlap – our friends honesty and competence. So, in the work world (actually I think the entire world, but we’re focusing on work) if you can nail these two characteristics you are more than halfway there regardless of your role (especially since you’re unlikely to be viewed as inspiring or dependable if you’re a dishonest incompetent).

How does one come to be viewed as honest? You say things, and they turn out to be true.

How does one come to be viewed as competent? To the extent your job is to report on current conditions or project the future, it’s the same process as establishing honesty; you say things, and they turn out to be true. If your job is to produce something (for example, a report or a widget), you produce it as and when it’s expected.

This seems very simple, but every day, almost everyone screws it up:

• You say you will get back to someone, and you don’t
• The meeting starts at 9:00 AM, and you show up at 9:10 (even worse if it’s your meeting)
• You promise numbers to someone today, and give it to them tomorrow

To you, these are minor things, and the other people involved might think so too. How others react depends in large part on your history with them. If over time you’ve demonstrated you’re dependable and competent, an occasional lapse is not a big deal. But, if you don’t interact with the person often the event looms much larger. Fundamental attribution error is the tendency by people to attribute explanations for behaviors to personality explanations rather than situational explanations. You say you were late for the meeting because traffic was bad, and they think you were late because you’re disorganized, don’t respect the time of the other attendees, etc. If you haven’t already established a credible track record, it’s much harder to overcome this effect.

There are a couple of very simple things you can do to increase your success rate in “say it, do it.”

Don’t Say It. Before you open your mouth to say you’ll do something, take a breath and think hard about whether or not you’re going to perform. Offering to do something and then not doing it is much worse than not offering at all.

Say You Won’t Do It. Ironically, often the fastest path to building credibility is to tell someone you won’t or can’t do something. Note such a statement fulfills all the requirements for credibility building; you’ve said something (“I can’t do it”) and it comes true (you don’t do it). It’s obviously preferable to do things for other people if you can, but if it’s not going to happen you might as well build your credibility by saying so rather than undermining it by promising what you can’t deliver.

A final thought; if you just do it without saying it, no credibility is built. Too many highly capable people just handle problems as they arise without anyone being aware of their effectiveness. If no one knows what you are doing, you’re not establishing credibility. Of course, you can take this too far by grandstanding or manufacturing problems to solve. But, letting people know you’re handling things is good for you (it’s an essential step in building your credibility) and good for them (when something difficult comes up, they will be better able to assess your ability to take on the task).