I needed both a mental break, and something to jar my brain’s innovation center before I hunkered down to design and write a product strategy for a client, so I decided to watch this video monologue by Jaron Lanier. I had the privilege of spending a day with him in London, almost twenty years ago, at a strategy design session I was running for a global company, and I was fascinated by his thought process, his understanding of computers (some call him the father of Virtual Reality), and his ability to see connections and draw parallels twenty and thirty years into the future. Well, this video did not disappoint me. It will require patience, because it’s an hour long and like all geniuses, Jaron sometimes is hard to follow, but if you have time to dedicate to mind-bending. watch “The Local-Global Flip, or, “The Lanier Effect”. Unfortunately it does not run on the iPad, being a flash video, but this is one you should watch with your feet up on the desk and a glass of wine.
Lying, embellishing, and fibbing; oh my!
In today’s transparent world (aka The end of Privacy), I am always amazed when I hear about things people lie about and think they can get away with. I am amazed at how both sides – the person delivering the lie, and the person receiving it- go about the exchange and their reaction when caught lying, or realize they are being lied to. Here are some of the stories with the timing and facts slightly altered to protect the guilty and the innocent, which technically also makes me a liar, but that’s another story.
Lying on a resume – As part of a consulting engagement I was helping a client expand and round out their executive team and one of our talent acquisition strategies was to ask people in the business for recommendations. We put out some feelers and a friend of the company referred a candidate that appeared to be a perfect fit for a very senior position. After I conducted an introductory phone interview, I asked him to submit a resume and start the formal recruiting process through HR. Because this was a critical senior position, I expanded the normal HR process and personally called some of the senior executives he listed as his references. Everyone I, and HR, spoke to thought very highly of him, so I thought we had a perfect match. He had the references and the knowledge, and a Harrison Assessment confirmed our initial impressions about the fit with the culture and the position, so we made a contingent job offer, pending a formal background check. That’s when things got interesting. On his resume, this candidate indicated he had a degree from a well-known, but non US-based, university. So, our US background screening vendor contacted International Screening Solutions, which happens to be a company I know very well, to complete the international portions of his background check. ISS completed the criminal background checks in the two countries he lived at, but reported they could not confirm his educational credentials. Because occasionally the Americanization of foreign names leads to confusion when researching foreign records, I personally called him to make sure ISS had the right information. He appeared not to be surprised, and he proceeded to explain that he had graduated from a satellite campus and that has caused problems verifying his degree in the past also, but was willing to fax me a copy of his degree certificate. I thanked him for the explanation and asked him to do that, so we could proceed with the job offer. A week later, with HR yet to receive the fax, I called him again. He apologized for not faxing the information – because the actual degree was in a box at his parents’ house and they could not find it – but offered to set up a three-way conference call with the University so they could verify it. That’s when all kinds of alarm bells went off in my head. I politely declined that offer and asked him to simply provide HR with his student ID number or any other information ISS could use to formally verify his credentials. After another week without the information, I called him again; at which point, he proceeded to explain that he had completed half of the degree program and was planning to finish the rest at a later time, but got busy working and never completed it. I was just blown away. I can understand experience inflation on a resume, but how could anyone think they can flat out lie about something so binary (degreed or not) and easily verifiable (anywhere in the world) and get away with it. Needless to say, this candidate was immediately disqualified. The sad part is, had he put a note on his resume that he had only partially completed his degree, he was so qualified through experience that his lack of educational credential would not have mattered and he would have had the job.
Lying on a status report – Because of my expertise at the intersection of Operations, Technology, and Sales operations, I frequently work with clients on streamlining their sales management process. One particular sales executive of a client company was in charge of growing the business they did with a large channel partner. As part of my Sales Operations consulting, I worked with the company to establish a sales process that included a bi-weekly “sales funnel review” and I became a frequent attendee of the sales calls with access to all the Salesforce.com data. For six weeks this particular sales executive provided updates in SalesForce.com, indicating he was working daily with this channel partner company, conducting sales training for their direct sales team, responding to RFP’s of their clients, and having conversations with the client VP. It all sounded and read great, but there was no visible process with this channel partner increasing their sales volume, and we started getting uncomfortable with the sales executive’s story. So one of the executives decided to call the client VP to “check in on our service levels and get some customer service feedback.” In the process she asked the client VP if the sales executive was responding to them to their satisfaction. At which point the client responded with “I have not talked to your sales guy in a couple of months.” Needless to say, the sales executive was dismissed un-ceremoniously within hours of that conversation and the account was transferred to another member of the team. How would anyone think they can completely falsify conversations, provide written reports on imaginary progress, and not think they will eventually be found out, is beyond me.
Ripping a client off – There is a certain Air Conditioning service company in Tampa (where AC is a requirement not a luxury) that sent out an advertisement for “AC Cleaning service and inspection for $59 per unit.” Being on the road as frequently as I am, I would rather pay for preventive maintenance than have my family get stuck with a major problem while I am on the road, so I decided to try them out. My units are relatively new, but I fully expected that they would find “something to fix” on my AC units because the $59 barely covers the labor cost, but I was OK with that and prepared to repair whatever needed fixing. So my wife made the appointment which happened to be on a day I was working from home. The tech was a nice polite young man, who thoroughly cleaned the AC units, and then proceeded to tell my wife there were two worn-out parts, one on each unit, that needed to be replaced and he could do it all for $600 dollars. Normally my wife would just have something like that done without checking with me, but that day, since I was in my office anyway, she decided to ask my opinion. So I walked outside and asked the technician to give me a little more detail about the parts needing replacement. Without realizing I am an Electrical Engineer, I love all things mechanical, and know a thing or two about motors and engines, he put on a great show pointing them out and telling me the starting capacitors needed to be replaced on both units and because of the discount he was authorized to extend, we would “only” pay $265 for each capacitor and $35 for installation. At which point I simply and politely asked him to pack his bags, collect his payment for cleaning the units, immediately leave my property, and never again solicit business in my neighborhood because I would make sure none of my neighbors would ever use them. Why? Because a starting motor capacitor for AC units like the ones I have costs $9 and takes 5 minutes to replace! Charging $300 to do that was simply a way to rip customers off and take advantage of people who trust a technician’s word because they don’t know any better. I am sure, if I was not home, my wife who she is a good business woman and a great mother, but can’t tell you what a capacitor is if her life depended on it, would have approved the “repair” and not think anything of it.
My interview on the Malcolm Out Loud show
As much as I enjoy sharing what I know, being in front of a camera for 20 minutes made me a little nervous, but I think Malcolm is such a great guy he made it work http://malcolmoutloud.tv/index.php?shw=292&seg=a. And the bobble head segment was hysterical http://malcolmoutloud.tv/index.php?shw=292&seg=b.
Dealing with critics
A Jr. Executive I mentor called me a couple of weeks ago devastated because a senior executive in her company had criticized the way she managed her team, and she wanted to know what to do about it. That discussion prompted this blog. As usual, comments and thoughts are always welcomed at c.papageorgiou@ideasphere.com.
I believe criticism and feedback are the twin key ingredients for a “breakfast of champions.” Without these two elements we can’t grow, mature, or realize our limitations and blind spots. I believe that to be true in business, and, even on a personal level, I actively pursue critics and value people who give me their unbiased and direct feedback.
But is every critic legitimate, and is all feedback something to react to? Well, my answer, after many years of experience, is most definitely not!
I used to wrongly believe that every critic who had a higher position of authority, or was older and with more years in an industry, or had more money, had to be listened to. That turned out to be one of the mistaken beliefs I eventually corrected. Over the years, because of my work at Ideasphere Partners I spent plenty of my time as a change agent or in turn-around situations. Doing that, I have been criticized, but thankfully not as much as I have been praised, by company founders, board members, investors, union representatives, front line workers, other executives, etc. Even though praise is good for the ego now, criticism is good for personal growth tomorrow, so I developed a good nose for critics, their legitimacy, and the need to actually do anything about their criticism and learned to separate legitimate critics and valuable feedback from the “blowhards with an opinion.”
So here is my approach for qualifying critics and determining what to do, if anything, about their feedback.
First, I believe ignorance is not a legitimate point of view, so I try to assess whether the critic is a “critical expert”, or simply an “expert at criticism.” It’s easy to confuse the two, especially since sometimes they go together, but a critical expert is someone who has a legitimate point of view from where they provide criticism, where an expert at criticism is one who provides criticism, even when they are totally ignorant about the subject.
The first step is to always listen with an open mind. As my favored poem, The Desiderata, says “listen to others; even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.” Then determine what kind of critic you are dealing with and if it’s worth doing something about it.
First look for evidence, independent of the critic, that he or she is, indeed, a critical expert. Some evidence is easy to find. For example, consider the track record of the critic. What does that record tell you? One time I had an executive, let’s call him Joe, criticize my management practices as being too “results oriented” who suggested I needed to be less specific and demanding with my expectations of the management team reporting to me. I was concerned that maybe I was too hard on the team, and while I accepted his feedback as a true statement, I had to consider if I wanted to adapt my style to be closer to his. But here is the catch; this particular executive had a 90% turnover in his direct reports over the course of five years. Of the half dozen department heads who reported to him only one had been in the job for more than three years and each of the other positions had at least two, and some of them three managers rotate through it. This executive was fun to hung out with and was a likeable guy, but did not set clear expectations for his managers who eventually failed, or got frustrated of not getting clear directions and left. Clearly the track record indicated I should discount the criticism significantly. On the other hand, every time Paul provided criticism – a mid-level manager who was considered the toughest boss to work for, but a builder of talent who had trained many managers who went on to become executives of the company, and was widely respected, I not only listened, I took notes and found ways to adopt based on his feedback.
But maybe the track record is not available, or not clear! Then, perhaps, check the critic’s beliefs? Does he hold more true, and fewer false, beliefs? One critic I dealt with at some point during a turn-around project was absolutely convinced that money was the only motivator for people, men made better factory managers than women, and that Six Sigma and Lean manufacturing were fads that would never work in his factory. Needless to say, when it came to his criticism of my plans to improve the factory, I took all his feedback with a very large grain of salt.
Some people are good at hiding their beliefs behind seemingly logical arguments. So it’s also important to know if the critic has enough domain knowledge that is demonstrable better than the average. I remember one time I worked with a team to build a financial model to predict the impact of currency fluctuation on their business. I have an average understanding of currency and so did the CPA who worked on the project with me, and we thought we had put together something really good. Then I run it by a partner of mine who has advanced degrees in finance. He proceeded to show us how nuances we had not even considered, let alone model, could impact our results significantly. His criticism was spot on, so we started making changes based on his feedback. I should note, however, that we need to be careful of the “advanced degree” trap. It’s not enough that someone has a degree. After all, some people have to, by default, graduate at the bottom of the class, so look for evidence of agreement by other experts in the field before accepting the feedback as legitimate.
And finally it may be a good idea to investigate what biases the critic has which may have an impact on their view. All of us, humans that is, are susceptible to biases, conscious or unconscious. Even critical experts are not immune to that. I remember working on a project I thought was very clear cut and I was delivering even better than promised. But there was this one member of the board who kept criticizing what I was doing. For the life of me I could not figure out why. This was a director who had a track record of success, knew the right things to do, was considered an excellent director, and had significant knowledge of the subject. His feedback and criticism was starting to get to me, and I was beginning to doubt my approach to the project, despite the results it was producing. And then, another board member pulled me aside and delivered this insight! I was using an approach the other director had tried at a previous company, and failed with – one of the very few times he failed at anything – so he believed that approach would never work, contrary to any evidence. From that moment on I paid attention to specific criticism about specific points on the project, and ignored the general criticism about the approach.
So back to the call from my young friend; after we went through my checklist we determined her critic was an expert at criticism rather than a critical expert. He was criticizing everything and nothing. No specific expert opinion was provided, nor did this critic have any demonstrable knowledge of the area he was criticizing. Based on his track record he had a bias against younger; especially female, managers, and her educational credentials and experience far outweighed his. So my advice was to just listen politely, look for any kernels of wisdom, but generally ignore him; Until he provided technical feedback on specific technical items. Then, because he was a great engineer, with a solid track record of design, well respected in the industry, and a bias for creative solutions, listen carefully and do something about it.
Please help me make my tenth year at Camp Sunshine a record!
Dear Friends,
The work Camp Sunshine (www.mycampsunshine.com) does for children with cancer and their families is simply the stuff miracles are made from. It’s not often we can contribute to a miracle, and as many of you know, for the last nine years, my good friend Steve Brown, who has volunteered for over 20 years, and I, give a week of our time to be camp activity counselors teaching Karate to the 7-12 year old campers. For the last few years we expanded the program and enlisted another cool instructor with a black belt in Karate and a Purple Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Tara Freidman, and the kids just love it.
It is one of the most treasured and important things I personally do each year, and the motivation behind this (now annual) e-mail. Those of you who know me well can attest I am generally not prone to bouts of sentimentality for anything other than my own kids, except when it comes to our campers; Camp Sunshine deserves that for many reasons. Not only is it an organization run by some of the best and most caring people I know, and it is a charity worthy of a special place in our hearts; it also has a special meaning for me because of the relationships I have built with the kids, even some who are no longer with us, and our fellow camp counsellors over the years. Being part of the “Karate Crew” and spending a week at Camp with children that are undergoing treatment, or have survived cancer, and still come to Karate practice and give it their best is a very humbling experience that places the importance of many things I deal with on a daily basis in the right perspective.
Unfortunately, volunteering time – emotionally rewarding and contributory as it might be – is only half the job of those who support Camp Sunshine. As with every operation, until there is a cure, Camp Sunshine must raise money every year to support activities for the children and their families. Tugging at your heart strings to help us raise money is the real purpose for this e-mail. And this year, being my tenth year as a volunteer adds another dimension to my determination to raise as much money as possible.
Raising money, pays for children to go to summer camp and spend a week in an environment where living with cancer is not the exception, but rather the shared experience. This is an environment where children with cancer can be just kids, amongst other kids like them, enjoying their summer.
There are many events put together by the many friends of Camp Sunshine. For those of you that don’t know about those events, or cannot participate, I humbly ask you to help Steve and me raise money during our participation in the Keencheefoonee Road Race. The race is one of the major fund-raising events for Camp Sunshine and it is driven entirely by the camp volunteers. This is the most amazing group of people I have ever met in all my travels around the world. Even though they volunteer their time, each year on the Tuesday morning of camp, before the campers awake, they start their day with a 5k run , or – as is the case of old fogies like Steve and me – walk, on the famous road to raise money.
I hope you can find it in your heart, and in your wallet, to make an online donation to Camp Sunshine through the Online Donation link (http://mycampsunshine.kintera.org/roadrace2011/karatecrew_papachuck) before July 1st, the day I leave for Camp (or to send me a check made out to Camp Sunshine).
Please indicate you are supporting the Karate Crew and the Keencheefoonee Road Race. For your tax records, their EIN number is 58-1872217.
And if you are interested in volunteering for Camp and want to know what it feels like to be a part of such a great group, please call me anytime.
Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Camp Sunshine
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Chuck Papageorgiou
Ethical Behavior Assessment Tools…
It seems like everywhere I turn these days someone is talking about using one assessment tool or another, from the old stand-by, Meyrs Briggs, to some very sophisticated profiling programs. Even though it may be new to some, in the work I do for Ideasphere, I have been using many of the same tools for years to quickly assess existing management teams as well as hire new team members. I am personally partial to the Harrison Assessment, because it focuses on behavior that impacts daily work life and performance, rather than identifying underlying reasons for the behavior, but I think I have used every one of them at one point or another.
I value some the tools more than others, and take all of them with a grain of salt, but I do use them; They can give me a quick perspective on individuals and teams that can save me weeks of observation, which translates to a smoother, and more rapid implementation of any project, or turn-around I work on.
But here is the challenge; none of these tools tell you anything about the character of an individual, and I have yet to see a meaningfull test that can predict the ethical nature of one’s behavior. Regardless of people’s socio-economic backgrounds, education, credentials, or jobs they held at the time or prior, unfortunately, I have been surprised enough times by unethical, or illegal, behavior that almost nothing shocks me anymore. I have seen people flat out lie under oath, sabbotage coworkers by feeding them wrong information, mis-represent their own qualifications on their resume, cook the books to look good for investors, go back on verbal agreements, and use insider information to make illegal trades, that I would be justified to be somewhat cynical. But, and call me a softie on this one, I personally start by believing every person is decent, and give them the chance to prove otherwise. I always hope people will surprise me to the better and may times they do.
But I do believe there is one personality trait that is a good predictor of the potential of behavior that may go out of ethical or legal bounds.
It is an ingrained sense of entitlement, usually un-justified.
It has been my observation that, when someone deeply believes they are entitled to something, they will go to any length to attain it. This was also the conclusion of a friend of mine who is industrial psychologists and leads the assessment practice of a large recruiting firm. Through research conducted during a period of a couple of years, he also discovered that one common element for unethical behavior was a sense of entitlement about something around that behavior.
So be carefull about what you believe you are entitled to, because that may be the one thing that can cause you to display behavior unworthy of an operator, a manager, or even a decent human beeing. These are just some questions from experiences with people who displayed unethical behavior, even though, at their core, they thought of themselves as decent and ethical human beings.
Do you believe you are entitled to your discoveries, even though you developed them while employed by a company that makes it clear they own anything you develop while in their pay? If you do, be careful; this sense of entitlement may lead you to commit the crime of “Theft of Intellectual Property.” This is not something minor. This is a serious crime that, should it be pursued, can carry a jail sentence.
Do you believe you are entitled to a portion of the profits a company makes because of your contributions, even though you are not a commissioned sales person and the company does not have a profit sharing plan? If you work in accounting and have access to company bank accounts, this may lead you to steal directly from the company.
Do you believe you are entitled to a promotion because of the years you have been with the company, or in the industry, or your superior education, regardless of the opinions of your managers and co-workers? This may lead you to actively pursue making your peers look bad by pointing out imaginary short-comings, in the mistaken belief it will make you look better than them. Even though this is not illegal, it eventually catches up with you.
And finally, do you believe you are entitled to a job, regardless of your contributions? This sense of entitlement, may lead you to do less than expected of your job and try to cover it up with busywork, or excuses. Now this may not be illegal, but I would consider it highly unethical.
Me personally, I solved the business ethics problem. I believe I am entitled to nothing and have to earn everything. Problem solved! 
My four favorite questions
I was the guest speaker for a group of 100 or so executives talking about strategy, when one of them asked me to share the one question I ask myself on a regular basis that I found most useful. That got me thinking about a couple of questions I ask all the time, but I do not always hear others ask, so here they are; in no particular order. My four favorite questions I wish more people asked more often. If you have yours, please send them to me at c.papageorgiou@ideasphere.com.
1) Huh?
It’s not a sign of weakness to admit someone is talking over your head, or they are using terminology you do not understand. Like the amateur investor friend of mine who was ready to make an investment in a company with a product that was going to “revolutionize energy generation.” He was so sold on this product by the inventor that he wanted me to co-invest so he sent me some of the literature to review. Now, being an engineer, I fancy myself as a reasonably technical executive, but after the first paragraph, I have to admit I was totally lost. From what I read, it looked as if this “inventor” had built a functioning perpetual motion machine. So I called him, with my friend on the line, and asked him to help me understand the technology (without telling him I have an engineering degree) in layman’s terms. After a half dozen “Huh’s,” followed by “so help me understand this better because I am not sure how this would work,” the “inventor” resorted to the classic “this is too technical for the layman to understand.” When he dropped the word “quantum mechanics” in the mix, but could not articulate how that related to his invention, I knew this was a con. Had my friend asked a few Huh’s himself, he would have been spared the ribbing he will be getting from me for the next decade for almost falling for this classic con.
2) Then what?
I am amazed at the number of decisions being made without a single consideration for their subsequent impact. Like the decision to pursue an acquisition of a competitor without any consideration of the integration challenges or the post-acquisition market response. Or, asking the executive team to spend 20% of their time producing reports on a number of activities every week, without any plan of action to actually do something about or with the information. Or, the reaction to a competitor announcement of a new product, by a company announcing its own “me-too” product coming soon and diverting resources to produce it. In each of these cases, a simple “then what” might have saved the first company from the pain of having to take a significant loss because of the very high cost of integration, and the loss of critical customers who thought the merger was a bad idea. A simple “then what” would have resulted in a more meaningful reporting format with actionable items assigned to specific individuals and a better use of the executive team’s time. A “then what” question may have led the company to consider investing in developing the next generation of the product, rather than a “me too,” and taking market leadership position, rather than chasing the leader.
3) So what?
There is so much information coming at us so fast, that sometimes its meaning is lost, exaggerated, ignored, or generates a wrong reaction. Like a competitor issuing a press release they are working on “the next evolution of our industry” that sends the R&D group into a frenzy to get more resources. Or a disgruntled employee subpoenaing a manager to “testify in a wrong-full termination lawsuit” that sends the HR department into a panic and the complete investigation of the working conditions in that particular department. Or, the best one of all, a drop in revenue that causes the owners to re-shuffle the entire management team. A “so what” would have kept the R&D group focused on their next product release, which was truly the next evolution in the industry. A simple “so what,” would have kept the HR department from wasting thousands of dollars investigating a department and a department manager who had not a single complaint in fifteen years. And a “so what” may have stopped the ensuing turmoil from changing the entire senior management team of company for a revenue drop that was consistent across the entire industry and, instead, made them listen to their requests for investment in new revenue streams that was delivered to them at each board meeting, in a different light.
4) What’s the upside?
I owe this question to one of my clients, and a good friend, who always asked this question every time we had to make a decision. Like the executive who, after losing his job because of poor performance, decided to step in the middle of a custody battle between one of his former co-workers and their ex-spouse by sharing confidential information from the company with the ex-spouse. Or the investor in a company who decided to pursue litigation against the company founders after it failed and the founders declared bankruptcy. In the first case, the great feeling of sticking it to the co-workers (the upside), had the downside of the company deciding to follow the letter of the law and make no concessions to that executive. The investor in the second one had his day in court (the upside), but, since the three founders were all broke, he ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees with nothing so show for it.
