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Heroes – that lady is my hero

Today’s superb guest post is by my good Twitter buddy Chris Fields. Chris is an HR professional, with a Master’s from The Ohio State University. He consults and blogs at Cost of Work and you can reach him on Twitter and LinkedIn too. Chris – it’s a pleasure to have you here all the way from the US of A – the floor is yours:

That Lady Is My Hero

While online, I saw bits of a conversation from my friend Doug Shaw, he mentioned something about an open invitation to guest post on his blog and the subject matter is heroes. I’m always down to contribute to a blog, especially if I like the person and the blog. Doug has been swell to me for a long time. Now it was just a matter of doing something interesting.

I like to stir the pot a bit but this time the only hero that I could think of was a relative. That’s been done to death. Relatives are easy targets because you learn from them since you’re around them and so on and so forth.  But my mind would not shake this one and here’s why.

Not only is one of my biggest heroes a blood relative, she’s an inspiration of growth and sustainability. She dropped out of school in the 6th grade to work and help her mom & dad. Then she became a teenage parent. Her parents didn’t approve at all. She didn’t give up though. Turns out she was a really good cook. She would cook and clean the homes of the rich and wealthy. She made a decent living. One day someone she worked for asked her to cook for a dinner party. She did, and they loved it.

She continued to cook for families, parties and events and that blossomed into a small catering company. Armed with a 6th grade education, she began to carve out a nice little niche for herself but she knew in order to get better and be competitive she had to learn how to cook and bake more sophisticated dishes. So she went to cooking school. Her expertise spread throughout the city of Memphis. At her busiest time, the holiday season, she’d have 2-3 events a day; she’d cook anything from a full Kosher menu to a simple Christmas cake. As young kids and teens, we would help her prepare food, load the car and clean.

I remember looking out the window all night waiting for the headlights of her car to pull up in the driveway. And when she finally arrived well after midnight, she would be dog tired. Her white serving dress would be strained with sauces, drinks and other foods. We’d unload the car, look for any good left overs and do it all again. She worked hard for the money and she did well. She would always tell me “You have to work harder for yourself than you do when for someone else.” This from a lady that didn’t make it to high school. I keep mentioning that because I have 2 degrees (B.S. &Master’s) and she is still smarter than I am and more business savvy. The things she did instinctively, I had to learn in a university.

Did I mention she was my grandmother?  She passed away Oct. 2004. She’s always been my hero not ONLY because she’s was an awesome granny but the example of leadership, and wisdom she gave me. She taught me how to be a professional. That’s why that lady’s my hero.

 

 

Bad behaviour rocks!

Some of you know I run a little group over in LinkedIn land called ‘Is Bad Behaviour Killing Big Business‘. Julia Briggs joined the group just recently and in response to the group title she offered this:

‘Ah, but I love bad behaviour……because for independent consultants and ‘baby’ entrepreneurs like me it gives us huge opportunities.

Every time a recruitment agency hacks off a client or a candidate that’s another reason why my business venture will make it. And as an interim, every time a client does something jawdroppingly ‘stupid’ they needed someone like me to come in and sort it out.

So, I do hope we get to celebrate bad behaviour in this group and turn it into opportunities. For those of you in the IIM group you may have seen what was a spectacularly bad tempered and very dumb thread where members criticised a potential client’s opinion of interims……no thought of engaging with the potential client, or taking on board what he said (feedback is a gift)……and every time this happens I just thank my lucky stars.’

To which Jonathan Wilson replied:

‘So… bad behaviour may be killing big business by inspiring new business. Creative self-destruction where capitalism meets Marxism in Schumpeter’s neo-liberalism. Heady stuff full of opportunities for caring opportunists. Great stuff!’

And Ian Sutherland added:

‘There seems to be something here about conscious and unconscious behaviour. To me Doug’s point is often about bad behaviour being unconscious and then breeding further bad behaviour and indeed vindicating it.

Julia’s optimisim (and I do believe that every challenge presents an opportunity if you have the right mindset) is based on recognising bad behaviour and trying to do something about. Business these days especially big business (and previously successful business) has a huge organisational inertia. My guess is that in 90% of the cases that is just fixing the immediate mess (I’m a manager get me out of here!), but every now and then there will be a real desire to make things different and better.

Being conscious that it is bad behaviour is the start.’

And back to Jonathan again:

‘Very much so, Ian, and it raises interesting questions about the different perspectives of the self-employed (like most of us) and the employed. People express their real values very much more by their actions than by their words and the fit between them says most of all.

I don’t think anyone goes to work to do bad things, or to do things badly, but they will do things and allow things that they do not really believe are good things to do because they want:

to stay employed (for the money or the security or the company)

to avoid conflict or embarrassment with their boss or in front of their peers.

(I know from other research that intelligent, skilled people would rather risk death than embarrassment and have died as a result, taking hundreds more with them)

As businesses get bigger and older (a key transition is with the departure or death of the founders so the firm becomes entirely run by agents) it becomes less clear what they stand for and they lose the guiding light, “What would [the founder] do?”.

When firms become publicly owned the managers simplify (simplisticise?) the aim of the company as being to make money, because money is the most obvious (though often erroneous) abstraction of the concept of value. And because we delegate the management of the owning of shares to other agents (fund managers, insurance companies, pension funds) and they want to show they are doing a good job the focus on money and apparent profit is intensified and made even more short term. One year is a ridiculously short time to assess a company or a strategy, but public companies are made to report and be judged on their financial results every three months. This affects their behaviour quite negatively. When in order to incentivise them, senior managers are given bonuses (just for doing the job) based on that financial performance the perversion becomes destructive.

As you say , Ian, big companies do have immense inertia from their physical presence, established customer base, license to operate and their brand. And so some of their employees, up to and including the CEO, sometimes tend to tend undervalue that and take it for granted, even appearing to believe that they have an eternal right to do what they do. This then leads to the arrogance and complacency that eventually brings them down, but it is usually a long, slow corrosive process leading to an apparently sudden, shocking collapse.’

I love where this conversation is going, so much so I wanted to share it beyond the group. Thanks to Julia, Jonathan and Ian for giving me (and I hope now you) lots of food for thought. I’d love to know what you think about some of the points raised here.