I’m a simplifier; more than that I really dislike complexifiers, but, sadly, their numbers seem to be increasing daily.

In work situations especially adding complexity is a way to demotivate the people around you (above, beside and below) and set everyone up to fail.

Sometimes what sounds like complexifying turns out to be just poor communications once you sort your way through what was said.

But there are a number of folks out there who honestly believe that complex equals smart and simple equals dumb. If that’s the case give me dumb every time.

Complexification isn’t a minor problem and often leads to major difficulties—think complex products like derivatives, Windows, phone menus in which you can get lost for days, low productivity, poor morale—the list is endless.

Here are four ways to know if you’re a complexifier

• Are you met with blank looks when you describe something?
• Is “huh” a typical response to what you say?
• Do you frequently have to repeat what you say?
• Are you constantly asked to explain what you mean?

And here’s what to do if you find you are one

• First decide whether it’s what you mean or how you think.
• If the problem is how you say it, i.e., the communications, take advantage of this post and if you want more help give me a call me at 866.265.7267.
• If it’s how you think then you need to look at your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and identify why you prefer difficult/complicated/elaborate/intricate/convoluted/confusing
• Changing MAP is a process that requires developing a special type of awareness

The great thing is that it’s always your choice.

Now a quick note about simplifying.

Brian R Nichols passed on a great idea in his comment on last week’s Ducks In A Row: A Tool To Make Reviews And Management Easier.
Here it is in Brian’s own words.

“The GSA looks like a good simple tool that I’ll have to try. Another simple tool I got from one of my former bosses is what he called a significant events log. It is basically a diary for each subordinate kept in an Excel worksheet. Both positive and negative comments are entered as warranted. It helps funnel the entire year into the review, not just the successes or failures of the moment.”

Call it an SEL Funnel; it will make your ongoing feedback and reviews even simpler while preventing selective memory from rearing its ugly head.

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One of the hardest things that growing companies face is the need to stop shooting from the hip.

I hear the reasons not to all the time, from startups, small biz, entrepreneurs, et al:

• It will ruin our culture.
• It stifles creativity. It’s for larger companies.
• It’s bureaucratic. It’s too time consuming.

“It” refers to the underpinnings of all successful companies. “It” includes the following in order of importance:

• Financial controls that include
  • monthly statements of revenues by product;
  • discounts;
  • costs by department;
  • cost of goods sold;
  • inventory;
  • receivables aging;
  • stock issuance;
  • cash flow;
  • manufacturing yields;
  • hiring by department
• Annual operating plan covering the above financial measures
• Organization charts and definitions of responsibilities
• Hiring process
• Long-term planning
• Centralized information technology implementation and planning

Whether it’s just you, or one, ten, fifty, or more employees, whether full time, part time or virtual, you need viable processes to keep you focused—think of it as coloring inside the lines.

Everything on this list can, and should, be scaled for applicability, but all are important to every business endeavor.

Those that don’t directly apply may be tweaked, e.g., manufacturing yields can change to productivity measures; a very few, such as “stock issuance” may be completely discarded if the action is truly warranted.

Sure, they can’t all be implemented at once, but none of them will happen as long as your MAP rejects or begrudges them—after all, you’re the boss (CEO/president/managing partner/owner) and people will follow your lead.

Finally, don’t confuse process with bureaucracy. Process is like MAP, it gets you where you want to go, whereas bureaucracy stifles whatever it touches; process, like MAP, is ever—growing, while bureaucracy is carved in stone.

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Considering the news with which we’re being inundated this seemed like a god time to offer up something a bit more positive.

Not sugar and syrup that you wouldn’t believe anyway, but the kind of one liners that are worth printing out and sticking on the monitor and taping to the bathroom mirror.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and it looks like work.” –Thomas Edison (Entitlement has more letters.)

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” –Mark Twain (If they don’t encourage you to climb they won’t offer a hand if you trip and fall.)

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.” –Benjamin Franklin (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter…)

“Live as if you are to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you are to live forever.” –Gandhi (Teach this to your kids and tattoo it on your frontal lobe—it’s the best advice you’ll ever get!)

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Three great interviews on tap today with lots to learn.Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the embed code to work for either video (the Washington Post and McKinsey may need lessons from YouTube:), but they’re both worth clicking over to watch.

First up is Anne Mulcahy, chairwoman and chief executive of Xerox Corporation, a company that she took over on the brink of extinction and turned around. “In 2002 this company lost almost $300 million, and by 2006 we were making over $1 billion.” Now that’s a turn around!

When asked what the secret was, Mulcahy said, “It isn’t a secret sauce. It’s actually fundamental communications, in terms of your ability to really get out there and be with your people, tell a story. People really have to begin to believe in a story to get passionate about the direction the company is going in, which hopefully you’ve been able to do through the way you articulate it, simplifying the complex so that people can get their arms around it and see how they can make a difference. There’s nothing quite as powerful as people feeling they can have impact and make a difference. When you’ve got that going for you, I think it’s a very powerful way to implement change.”

Next is a video interview with John Chambers of Cisco Systems. The dot com bomb blasted Cisco and Chambers brought it back. In the interview Chambers talks about managing in this downturn, how collaboration is the next phase of management style, change, and identifying market transitions. He also discusses how business leaders need to “earn back” public trust, how he is adapting the company and why he’s “far from a perfect leader.”

Finally is a great McKinsey print and video interview with venture philanthropist Jacqueline Novogratz.

“As a venture philanthropist, Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz leads entrepreneurial projects across the globe—many of which put women at the helm of emerging local businesses. In this video interview, she discusses her experience developing other women leaders, the way they have shaped her own approach to leadership, and the different leadership cultures she sees at play in the public and private sectors.”

Fabulous. Do click over to see the video and read the print part, also.

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Did you know that you can’t lead if you’re a lousy manager? No matter how many leadership classes you take, books you read and seminars you attend if you don’t build good management skills you won’t lead anyone anywhere.

(By the same token, and I’ve said this many times, if you don’t practice so-called leadership skills you’ll have a tough time managing today’s workforce.)

Steve Wyrostek, in a guest post at Brilliant Leadership, has a list of actions so you can figure out if you’re a bad boss or a good one. He says “that a managerial jerk can never achieve good, sustainable results.”

True, although bad managers are known for bringing lots of fresh blood into their area—and then spilling it.

The trouble is that you can be a lousy manager without being terrible, a jerk or downright evil.

Call it lousy by benign neglect.

These are the ones who leave their people alone to find their own way with little guidance and less feedback.

Rather than manage they often focus on the big picture, providing their people with a detailed vision of what the future holds, but no operational map of how to get there, how far they’ve come or how far is left to go.

Leadership skills are important, but they can’t come at the expense of good management.

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A few of weeks ago I wrote about how kids believe they are entitled to good grades for trying as opposed to achieving.

That post was sparked by Andrew’s comment and he also sent me an article about grade inflation in colleges showing that the trend is progressing unabated.

An article today in the NYTimes describes a new approach to grades,

“In Pelham, the second-grade report card includes 39 separate skill scores — 10 each in math and language arts, 2 each in science and social studies, and a total of 15 in art, music, physical education, technology and “learning behaviors” — engagement, respect, responsibility, organization…standards-based report cards helped students chart their own courses for improvement; as part of the process, they each develop individual goals, which are discussed with teachers and parents, and assemble portfolios of work.”

“I was never the A student, and it would constantly frustrate me,” Dr. Dennis Lauro, Pelham’s superintendent said. “Nobody ever bothered to tell me how to get that A, to get to that next level.”

I think that the approach is good since it focuses back on learning and not just on testing and it’s being adopted in various districts across the country.

The down side is that most districts don’t have the money or parental ability, not just involvement, of an upscale Westchester, NY suburb.

Currently grading in most schools, K-12 through college, is on a curve where the best gets an A. But as Dr. Thomas R. Guskey, a professor at Georgetown College in Kentucky, says “The dilemma with that system is you really don’t know whether anybody has learned anything. They could all have done miserably, just some less miserably than others.”

I agree. When people do average work they shouldn’t get an A because everyone else is below average or flunked.

If it can be made to work I think the idea of the kids working with parents and teachers to set goals to work towards and the sense of accomplishment that comes from achieving them is excellent; it’s motivating and prepares them for the real world of performance reviews—at least when they’re done correctly.

This could be a step forward, but it involves change.

“The executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, Gerald Tirozzi — who supports standards-based report cards — said that many educators and parents were far from ready to scrap letter grades, especially for older students, in part because they worry about the ripple effects on things like the honor roll and class rank.”

“I think the present grading system — A, B, C, D, F — is ingrained in us,” Mr. Tirozzi said. “It’s the language which college admissions officers understand; it’s the language which parents understand.”

And we certainly can’t expect adults to change or learn anything new just to improve kids’ education—can we?

This reminds me of something that happened decades ago. Women would taste baby food and if it didn’t taste good to them they wouldn’t buy it, so Gerber added salt in order to appeal to the adults. When the public finally woke up and screamed Gerber quickly changed the formulas.

Right now the public is whining, any suggestions on how to get them screaming?

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The best dressed Wall Street leaders

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Last week I promised to provide you with a simple, amazing tool that would help identify goals for each of your people and a whole lot more.

It’s the GSA (Great Skills Assessment) that uses a spreadsheet to monitors both hard and soft skills. If you already do something similar this post may open your eyes to additional uses.

The best reviews help people grow, not by beating them over the head but by laying out an achievable plan for improving areas in which they are weak.

An accurate GSA that’s frequently updated makes it easy to identify what will enhance a person’s value to the company in meeting its corporate goals as well as progressing on a desired career path.

Its value increases by merging individual assessments into one for the whole organization that you can use when planning projects.

And it’s invaluable when it’s time to fill an opening; a complete GSA is the best guarantee that you won’t end up with all your group’s skills in one area and gaping holes in others.

There are many ways to approach assessment creation and usage depending on your MAP and attitude towards inclusiveness and openness, but here is how my clients do it.

1. Looking at the template you’ll notice that the first three sections are public while the fourth is marked private. Start by sending the public part of the assessment template to each of your people and ask them to list their skills and rate them on a scale of one to five. Ask them to include not just the skills that they use at work, but all their skills, such as those they use at home or in volunteer work. You may be pleasantly surprised at the unknown depth and variety of abilities you find in your organization.

2. Post the results on your department intranet and ask everybody to add to each other’s profile—this includes you. Many times people have skills and abilities they ignore because previous bosses didn’t value them, but peers are apt to notice and comment and you may value stuff of which they aren’t aware.

3. Once everyone is finished (for the moment, you should encourage people to keep their profiles updated) you want to discuss specific results separately with each person, especially those that diverge from your own knowledge or opinions. Be patient; by the end of the conversation the two of you should be in agreement on both skills and ratings.

4. The private section of the soft skills is completed by you and should remain private. Use it as a guide when you’re coaching, assigning roles, helping the person prepare for their next career move, etc.—and to evaluate your own managerial success. If the public skills improve and goals are met, but you don’t see improvement in the private areas then look in the mirror since those skills are typically a direct reflection of management.

Combining the goal-setting procedure described last week with the GSA makes it easy to identify, define and agree on each person’s goals, both short and long-term.

Success today means constantly reinventing yourself and your organization—I call it continual course correction and the GSA makes it much easier.

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The media and most people are all enraged because many of the bailed-out companies owe taxes, but I don’t see the big deal.

“Nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies and 68% of foreign corporations do not pay federal income taxes…The Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined samples of corporate tax returns filed between 1998 and 2005…an annual average of 1.3 million U.S. companies and 39,000 foreign companies doing business in the United States paid no income taxes – despite having a combined $2.5 trillion in revenue. The study showed that 28% of foreign companies and 25% of U.S. corporations with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in sales paid no federal income taxes in 2005. Those companies totaled a combined $372 billion in sales for the largest foreign companies and $1.1 trillion in revenue for the biggest U.S. companies.”

This isn’t new; I remember hearing about it decades ago, so why freak out now?

The thing that really gets me is that AIG is suing the US government, which essentially owns it.

“A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.”

And even in this day and age $306 million is (or should be) more than small change.

Does this qualify as irony, stupidity or just good, old-fashioned insanity?

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Considering the business news for the last decade the title of this week’s quotes is more of an oxymoron.

And, IMCO (in my cynical opinion), it’s not over yet. I think more schemes, more unethical if not downright illegal actions and a whole lot more stupidity are going to surface globally before we get out of this tunnel.

With that in mind I offer up these insights to the human psyche.

There are two levers to set a man in motion, fear and self-interest. –Napoleon Bonaparte (He should know.)

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. –John Maynard Keynes (That was then, now the wicked men do wicked things sans greatest good for anyone but them.)

Corporation, n., An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. –Ambrose Bierce (But it doesn’t have to be that way.)

Earnings can be pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them.–Warren Buffett (Can you say derivatives, Madoff and hedge funds?)

If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization. –Robert Noyce (We really didn’t need anyone to prove Noyce’s wisdom.)

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