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Beyond Work Hard/Play Hard: Building a Resilient Culture

The most surprising aspect of a SXSW Interactive workshop on corporate culture was how few people showed up and participated. “Beyond Ping Pong Tables: Building Better Companies” was by far the best discussion of that behavioral petri-dish we call culture I’ve ever attended. Led by a fascinating leadership trio, it condensed experience from the nonprofit, Wall Street, entrepreneurial and corporate worlds:

Jessica Lawrence, executive director of the New York Tech Meetup
Rasanth Das, co-founder, Bhakti Center (and former Wall Street banker)
Vipin Goyal, founder and CEO, SideTour (and former McKinsey consultant)
Culture is a major organizational success factor. Be intentional in cultivating it.

The takeaway: Each of us is a culture cop. Culture is everybody’s business. . Our values model our behavior, which shapes our culture. It starts with the CEO, but everybody else is part of the check and balance.

All too often this becomes a cult of CEO’s personality. Vibrant organizations understand this and intentionally transform this misplaced focus on externals into an organization-wide investment in the values that shape people’s behavior.

Casual cultures break down under pressure, as do dysfunctional ones. I’ve learned this the hard way first, as a veteran of IBM’s implosion in the 90’s, during the start up bust of the early 2000’s and again with a small agency. Warning: Disintegrating cultures are very painful and lead to their own form of PTSD. Practical tips from Lawrence, Das and Goyal:

Hire for culture over competence; ask candidates:

What books are you reading?
What was the last thing you googled?
What do you watch on TV/movies?

Think of the employee handbook as an articulation of corporate culture:

Considering a new job? Ask to read the handbook.
Check for vacation guidelines, maternity/paternity leave, and gauge it against your values
How does the physical space allow for interaction, concentration or lack of both? Does it offer multiple functional spaces? Common spaces for accidental intersections?

The hardest: Spend time talking about culture. It may be your biggest success factor:

Sacred cow bbq, where people list their nonnegotiables on post-its, prioritize and distill them into a list of values.
Write a corporate obituary, what do you want customers, employees to remember?

Food for thought – and action.

Who Put Brussel Sprouts in Every Shopping Basket?

What I want to know is this: Who engineered the comeback of brussel sprouts? Did I miss the tweets? Because the humble vegetable of my childhood, grey and waterlogged, has morphed into a supply side challenge.

Was it Mark Bittman and those classy NYT spreads? Some trendy chef in upper New York state, or even here in what was once a comfortably populist ATX (Tex Mex or a steak, anyone?)?

There’s been no humiliating name change (bruss?), as prunes have had to endure (dried plums?). They look the same: little cabbages, hard and round. No labor-saving innovations; still a somewhat tedious process that requires a colander, trimming, cutting, and unless you’re a roaster, a two-step cooking process.

They still, sauces and marinades aside, taste (and smell) like cabbages.

Was there a blog? A reality show (an island, 20-somethings, a case of brussel sprouts and lots of conflict?) Opeds?

Did Dr. Oz endorse them for their digestive qualities? Was it the source-agnostic but ever-purist French?

Where is the marketing team? I want to meet them.

Be Great

Each of us can be great — in our own way. Great human beings don’t spring full-blown from Zeus’ head like Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and inspiration. The trick lies in uncovering, then nurturing its seed.

Thanks to technology (and I include publishing), we’ve no shortage of examples — in business, the arts and politics. We can read, see and hear the stories of people who discovered their gift and then overcame their circumstances, doubts and fears to be bigger, broader and richer (if that’s what they wanted).

Work at being great -- in your own way. (Courtesy of Greg Bartley/Camera Press, via Redux, The New York Times) — Work at being great — in your own way. (Courtesy of Greg Bartley/Camera Press, via Redux, The New York Times)

Many of us have to dig to find our seed of greatness. Maybe it’s writing, or developing great relationships or designing gardens. But believing in ourselves — and our unique greatness — is pivotal. Otherwise, our hands are tied. We fail to act. So we have to look for examples and learn from others.

Take entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are energizers. They charge us up with their self-confidence and sheer drive. Last week I sat in on a talk by John Arrow, the brilliant young CEO of Mutual Mobile. Arrow told about his first entrepreneurial effort, a grammar school newsletter that was shut down for profiling students’ popularity. (Sounds a little like a Facebook prototype, yes?) While his co-conspirators were punished by their parents, he was praised for his business acumen. That chutzpah — and vision — has taken him far.

Or statesmen. Nelson Mandela believed in a cause so great it dwarfed the failure and suffering he endured to become an icon of humanitarianism. Bill Keller‘s coverage drew from a 2007 interview. Mandela was asked how he kept his hatred in check: “… his answer was almost dismissive: “Hating clouds the mind. It gets in the way of strategy. Leaders cannot afford to hate.” My sense is Mandela, although born the son of a tribal chief, was not always so adept a diplomat. I listened to a former colleague describe him as a “head knocker.” If that’s the case, then Mandela had to master his anger to achieve his goals.

Or musicians. A quote from the late, great Lou Reed, who as a young man had been through electroshock therapy, and in his music never seemed too concerned about popular opinion. He followed his muse:

I’ve never thought of music as a challenge — you always figure the audience is at least as smart as you are. You do this because you like it, you think what you’re making is beautiful. And if you think it’s beautiful, maybe they think it’s beautiful.

As we wind down another year, rushing madly along, let’s go for one thing: Let’s try for greatness. Or as Steven Pressfield puts it, … Follow your unconventional, crazy heart. Do the work.

Here’s to the Joyful Pivot

It’s not just Ben Bernake; sudden course corrections are the rule of the day. I used to worry about feeling stuck. Then I heard the musician Laurie Anderson say she feels stuck all the time. Now I worry if I don’t feel stuck; I figure if I’m comfortable, I’m not paying attention.

Most of us don’t make tough decisions until there’s a crisis. Detroit didn’t pivot — if that’s what it was — until it was broke. We lose a client (or worse, a friend), an elderly parent falls and breaks a hip, we lose our job.

Writing in Forbes, Martin Zwilling defines (the over-used term) pivot as a quick change in direction that keeps an organization grounded in what’s been learned. “(Startups that pivot) keep one foot in the past and place one foot in a new possible future.”

Nothing is more reassuring than the scent of possibility.

The trick is to separate setback from failure and train our eyes on the possible. I’m reminded of an anecdote the marvelous Laurie Anderson told during her recent visit here: It became clear that a collaboration with Brian Eno wasn’t working. Eno clapped his hands and said, “Oh boy, a problem. We can throw everything out and re-think the thing.”

That’s such a large idea: being Joyful when things don’t go as planned. Years ago, I worked with the talented producer Linda Batwin. I’d asked her help with a corporate project that wasn’t going as smoothly (surprise!). I was in a snit, and Linda said to me, not in a preachy way, but as someone working towards mastery: I try to enjoy the process.

So here’s to possibilities — and the process of working towards them with joy, wisdom and hopefully, a little help from our friends.

Over Deliver and Keep ‘Em Coming Back for More

“Do you know anyone in Togo?”

Brand loyalty is built on relationships.

I picked up the call over 20 years ago on a July 4th afternoon. The voice at the other end of the line belonged to an AT&T customer service representative who’d flagged a series of calls from my number to a tiny country on Africa’s Gold Coast. By going beyond her job description (or contract, or scope), she saved me hundreds of dollars and countless hours spent trying to straighten the mess out. She made my life a little easier.

Brand loyalty isn’t always logical, but it has a long memory. AT&T is an entirely different entity than it was then, but I continue to have an emotional connection with the brand. I told this story to an AT&T call center representative once when I was trying to untangle a bill. I’m not sure they got it.

The market has changed, as have my needs. AT&T long ago laid off the people who did what that woman did. I hope she is happily retired — or teaching companies how to bond with customers for life.

I recently moved into a building served by another provider and got a quick refresher on the bare-knuckles world of the consumer broadband industry: bait and swap, if-you don’t-like-it-take-your-business-somewhere-else. No brand loyalty there.

A friend once critiqued a piece of work I did, “Remember, over deliver and keep ’em coming back for more.”

On whatever scale you’re operating, those are words to the wise.

The Boy Who Wants to Be a Scientist

I took the iPod out of my young friend’s ear and suggested he would make a great mayor. “I don’t want to be a mayor, he said. “I want to be a scientist.”

I was impressed.

I have a young friend who wants to be a scientist.

“What kind of scientist?” I asked.

“An engineer,” and then he paused. “I want to be everything.”

My admiration grew. My friend is 10 years old — 11 next month. I met him at the Helping Hand Home for Children, where he’s spent the last couple of years after a rocky experience in the foster care system. Next week, he goes back to the family from which he was removed.

I replaced the earpod and looked at him. My friend is at the intersection of many of the great debates of our time — race, abortion, economic opportunity, multiculturalism. I don’t know why he was taken from his family, but whatever it was, it must have been pretty horrible. To become a scientist, a mayor, or a repairman in a power substation will require super-human work, hope and magic. If he fails to pull it off and becomes homeless, goes to jail or abuses his kids, we’ll be the ones who pay the price. Literally.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could make my friend’s path a little easier?

Solutions to complex problems happen when people begin to talk with one another. A few weeks ago, inspired by an editorial on civil exchange, I signed up for red bench training. The genesis of the idea came from Dr. Betty Sue Flowers, a business consultant, poet, educator and administrator and communicator (who is also a native Texan and former director of LBJ Presidential Library):

I think people don’t feel they have permission to talk about something that makes them as vulnerable as love, so we don’t usually talk about it in public. I once had the idea of having a red bench in every corporation. And the red bench to be an invitation to conversations that matter. So if you sat on the red bench, you were saying, I’m open to having a conversation about love, or a conversation about truth, or something that matters to me. Dr. Betty Sue Flowers

The red bench conversations encourage people to build relationships. (Photo courtesy of Christy Tidwell)

Civil exchange is a prerequisite for collaboration, which is the way most things get done. Note that Dr. Flowers proposed red bench conversations as part of a project she did for Royal Dutch Shell. Here in Austin, Interfaith Action of Central Texas runs a program built around the idea. iACT Executive Director Tom Spencer wrote the editorial that prompted me to act. Check it out in your community.

We may be able to begin a conversation that will help my young friend. He would make a great mayor.

Stand up straight!

I came of age during the dawn of the fashionable slouch. Despite my mother’s admonitions to keep my shoulders back, I conformed to the preferred silhouette: the pelvis forward, knees bent. It has not served me well.

Millennials, take heed. The long-term effects of gravity are not to be denied. If you start slumped, you may end up standing with your nose touching your knees. Be forewarned: Stilettos and brilliant leather bags that weigh as much as a mid-sized dog give home-court advantage to the earth’s pull. Downward. Full disclosure: I did my time tramping about Manhattan in Bruno Magli heels. I’ve reformed: Forget about sex appeal. Opt for good sense.

Bad posture is insidious. It’s formed gradually over hours, days, years hunched over one device or another, a lunch or dinner table, leaning forward, elbows on the table. These are habits — bad habits that constrict our breathing and crumple our digestive tracts. No good will come of it.

Then there’s sitting — and air travel. I recently took a flight to California thinking I was prepared. I’d torn an article out of the New York Times on in-flight yoga poses. The challenge proved to be miniaturizing them for coach class – a physical, spiritual and social exercise. I mastered one — raising my legs. The others are going to require more practice, and less concern about my seat mates. Perhaps they will want to practice alongside me.

It’s taken me eight years of yoga classes and relatively diligent practice to be able to recognize what it feels like to breathe. It happens when you stand on flat feet, weight balanced and your spine reaching upward (new muscles!). While I wish I’d started sooner, I’m grateful to have finally figured it out.

Summer is a good time to not just think about this but to do something. The air is bad. It’s hot. There’s more exposed skin. All good reasons to look the world straight in the eye, take a deep breath and breathe.

Perfectionism as the ultimate fake out

If you feel in need of a good, healthy slap in the face, I recommend Andrew Solomon’s brilliant Far from the Tree, a page turner of a book about those among us who are born different — the deaf, dwarves, homosexuals, children of rape. It’s required reading for the 21st century, especially for people like me who whine when we fall short of (fill in the blank).

Stop worrying and start making yourself and the world around you better. — Stop worrying about being perfect. Start improving.

Solomon’s Tree gives those us blessed to be born in the middle of the bell curve a benchmark with which to measure our own silly self-preoccupations, among which I must say, perfectionism stands out as a colossal waste of energy.

Fortunately, thanks to Brene Brown, population explosion, social media and the first amendment, perfectionism has fallen out of favor. Witness the snarky comments about the talented, drop-dead gorgeous Anne Hathaway. We don’t like to be shown up.

So, quick, while perfection is not trending, let’s try to figure out how to put all the energy we spend worrying about future outcomes into actually trying to make both ourselves and the future better. Case in point: public speaking has never been easy for me. I can suffer insomnia, panic attacks and temporary amnesia prior to giving a talk. Wouldn’t it make more sense to put that effort into preparing? Wouldn’t it be logical to just talk about what I care about rather than trying to sound like I have it all together?

Ever listen to “From the Top,” the radio show about young musicians? These kids spend four and five hours a day practicing their art and seem to thrive on the process. They’re focused, fun and innovative. They don’t whine. I hope they’re the future. Out with suffering artists and tortured, overly competitive achievers!

On a community level, here in Austin, which has always been a high-volunteer/low donation city, “I Live Here, I Give Here” program sponsored Amplify Austin, a day-long donation marathon, sort of like “1,000 Points of Light” meets Kickstarter. The result? $3 million for non-profits. What an improvement over whining!

The point is that making things (and oneself) better takes a lot of work, but not necessarily self-torture. Even moving forward is hard. But consider the alternative.

The other thought is — and this is a separate post — there’s a trick to weaving a story — about oneself, a client or colleague — that makes the process a lot easier — and more fun. It worked for Jane Austen (who doesn’t want to be Elizabeth Bennet?) and Scheherazade. Why not us?

So, let it go. Take a minute and do a little jig. Recite “The Owl and the Pussycat.” Go make something better.

Values and downsizing

I’m downsizing from a 2200 square foot house to a 640 square foot apartment. I always thought I’d be a little old lady in a rambling house with tomatoes and cats, but that may not be the case. I have to admit: it’s painful. I pack a box, then unpack it and add stuff to my Craigslist and Recycled Reads piles.

My mom’s books and Bibles; my dad’s medals and fishing gear. My piano and couches the dog (not me) sits on. Reckoning time: how much can I afford to store? Will I ever again (honestly) have the space to have these things with me?

My eureka moment came when I was staring at an anniversary clock my dad bought when he was stationed in Germany in the 1950’s. There’s no doubt my dad considered the clock valuable. He built a wooden packing box and encased it in straw like a nativity set. He bought extra globes in case of breakage. He shipped it back to the States, then to Turkey and back.

But the clock doesn’t fit anymore. It’s too delicate, and I’m not going to have space to display it. It’s going on Craigslist.

What I want to keep are the character traits the clock represents, the ones my dad drilled in — responsibility, tenacity, honesty, loyalty, hard work, a sense of fairness and punctuality (alas, that one is touch and go).

Luckily (some solace) It’s not just me. We live in a world with more people and fewer resources. Organizations have to be more agile, more collaborative and less tied to the shards of their pasts. A box full of memorabilia from my days at IBM: a hardbound commemorative issue of that grand benchmark of corporate publications, Think, resource binders doled out through continuing education programs and lots of award plaques. I only vaguely remember the projects. But the values I keep: respect for the individual, friendship, collaborative teamwork and innovation.

I’m hoping someone will see the clock on Craigslist and value it for something it represents to them. The past is precious, but there’s a lot more to think about, and I need to move faster to get where I want to go.

Reinvention and upside down tomatoes

I stopped into my favorite charity shop and watched a volunteer pull one of those grow-tomatoes-upside-down kits out of a bag. A botanical reinvention built on the premise that plants — like people, corporations and planets — can be reinvented to instantly adapt in ways that are painless, prompt, productive and profitable.

Reinventing the tomato plant -- upside down. — Reinventing the tomato plant — upside down.

Yes and no. Reinvention is systemic. It’s metric is survival. That tomato, for example, knows it’s supposed to grow up, so you’ll find it straining to turn itself upside upside down to be rightside up. This can be distressing to watch if you have rigid ideas of how things should be, but that’s the trade off.

I’m a boomer, raised on pap spun out by that evil genius of happy endings, Walt Disney. Did he know he was shaping an entire generation’s psychology? All those fairy godmothers, princes and ball gowns? I would have loved to have seen him locked into a joint script-writing project with the Brothers Grimm. The result would be very 21st century.

When Plan A and indeed B and C don’t work, I try to give myself a break. I realize I’m tapping my foot in anticipation of a fast, inside-out extreme makeover — fewer wrinkles, better real estate and clients who hang on my every word. Fascinating opportunities are out there. We just have to trash the old script — and pen a new one.

So, heave ho. We know what to do. Read the pundits. Keep moving forward. Cheerfully. It’ll soon be tomato season.