Book Short:  Vulnerability Applied to Leadership

Getting Naked:  A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty (book, Kindle), is Patrick Lencion’s latest fable-on-the-go book, and it’s as good a read as all of his books (see list of the ones I’ve read and reviewed at the end of the post).

The book talks about the power of vulnerability as a character trait for those who provide service to clients in that they are rewarded with levels of client loyalty and intimacy.  Besides cringing as I remembered my own personal experience as an overpaid and underqualified 21 year old analyst at how ridiculous some aspects of the management consulting industry are…the book really made me think.  The challenge to the conventional wisdom of “never letting ‘em see you sweat” (we *think* vulnerability will hurt success, we *confuse* competence with ego, etc.) is powerful.  And although vulnerability is often uncomfortable, I believe Lencioni is 100% right – and more than he thinks.

First, the basic premise of the book is that consultants have three fears they need to overcome to achieve nirvana – those fears and the mitigation tactics are:

1. Fear of losing the business:  mitigate by always consulting instead of selling, giving away the business, telling the kind truth, and directly addressing elephants in the room
2. Fear of being embarrassed:  mitigate by asking dumb questions, making dumb suggestions, and celebrating your mistakes
3. Fear of feeling inferior:  mitigate by taking a bullet for the client, making everything about the client, honoring the client’s work, and doing your share of the dirty work

But to my point about Lencioni being more right than he thinks…I’d like to extend the premise around vulnerability as a key to success beyond the world of consulting and client service into the world of leadership.  Think about some of the language above applied to leading an organization or a team:

• Telling the kind truth and directly addressing elephants in the room:  If you’re not going to do this, who is?  There is no place at the top of an organization or team for conflict avoidance
• Asking dumb questions:  How else do you learn what’s going on in your organization?  How else can you get people talking instead of listening?
• Making dumb suggestions:  I’d refer to this more as “bringing an outside/higher level perspective to the dialog.”  You never know when one of your seemingly dumb suggestions will connect the dots for your team in a way that they haven’t done yet on their own (e.g., the suggestions might not be so dumb after all)
• Celebrating your mistakes:  We’re all human.  And as a leader, some of your people may build you up in their mind beyond what’s real and reasonable.  Set a good example by noting when you’re wrong, noting your learnings, and not making the same mistake twice
• Taking a bullet for your team, making everything about your team and honoring your team’s work:  Management 101.  Give credit out liberally.  Take the blame for team failings.
• Doing your share of the dirty work:  An underreported quality of good leaders.  Change the big heavy bottle on the water cooler.  Wipe down the coffee machine.  Order the pizza or push the beer cart around yourself.  Again, we’re all human, leaders aren’t above doing their share to keep the community of the organization safe, fun, clean, well fed, etc.

There’s a really powerful message here.  I hope this review at least scratches the surface of it.

The full book series roundup as far as OnlyOnce has gotten so far is:

• The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, book)
• The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, book)
• The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, book)
• Death by Meeting (post, book)
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (post, book, Field Guide)
• Silos, Politics and Turf Wars (post, book)
• Getting Naked (post, book)

The Best Laid Plans, IV

I have had a bunch of good comments from readers about the three posts in this series about creating strategic plans (input phase, analysis phase, output phase).  Many of them are leading me to write a fourth post in the series, one about how to make sure the result of the plan isn’t shelfware, but flawless execution.

There’s a bit of middleware that has to happen between the completion of the strategic plan and the work getting done, and that is an operating plan.  In my observation over the years, this is where most companies explode.  They have good ideas and capable workers, just no cohesive way to organize and contextualize the work.  There are lots of different formats operating plans can take, and a variety of acronyms to go with the formats, that I’ve heard over the years.  No one of these formats is “right,” but I’ll share the key process steps my own team and I went through just over the past few months to turn our strategic planning into action plans, synchronizing our activities across products and groups.

• Theme:  we picked a theme for the year that generally held the bulk of the key work together – a bit of a rallying cry
• Initiatives:  recognizing that lots of people do lots of routine work, we organized a series of a dozen “move the ball forward” projects into specific initiatives
• Communication:  we unveiled the theme and the initiatives to ALL at our annual business meeting to get everyone’s head around the work to be done in the upcoming year
• Plans:  each of the dozen initiative teams, and then also each team/department in the company (they’re different) worked together to produce a short (1-3 page) plan on a template we created, with a mission statement, a list of direct and indirect participants, important milestones and metrics
• Synchronization:  the senior management team reviewed all the plans at the same time and had a meaningful discussion to synchronize the plans, making edits to both substance and timing
• Scorecard:  we built our company scorecard for the year to reflect “green/yellow/red” grading on each initiative and visually display the most important 5-6 metrics across all initiatives
• Ongoing reporting:  we will publish the scorecard and updated to each initiative plan quarterly to the whole company, when we update them for Board meetings

As I said, there’s no single recipe for success here, but this is a variant on what we’ve done consistently over the years at Return Path, and it seems to be working well for us.  I think that’s the end of this series, and judging from the comments I’ve received on the blog and via email, I’m glad this was useful to so many people.

The Best Laid Plans, Part I

One of my readers asked me if I have a formula that I use to develop strategic plans.  While every year and every situation is different, I do have a general outline that I’ve followed that has been pretty successful over the years at Return Path.  There are three phases — input, analysis, and output.  I’ll break this up into three postings over the next three weeks.

The Input Phase goes something like this:

Conduct stakeholder interviews with a few top clients, resellers, suppliers; Board of directors; and junior staff roundtables.  Formal interviews set up in advance, with questions given ahead.  Goal for customers: find out their view of the business today, how we’re serving them, what they’d like to see us do differently, what other products we could provide them.  Goal for Board/staff: get their general take on the business and the market, current and future.

Conduct non-stakeholder interviews with a few industry experts who know the company at least a little bit.  Goal: learn what they think about how we were doing today…and what they would do if they were CEO to grow the business in the future.

Re-skim a handful of classic business books and articles.  Perennial favorite include Good to Great, Contrarian Thinking, and Crossing the Chasm.

Hold a solo visioning exercise.  Take a day off, wander around Central Park.  No phone, no email.  Nothing but thinking about business, your career, where you want everything to head from a high level.

Hold senior staff brainstorming.  Two-day off-site strategy session with senior team and maybe Board.

Next up:  the Analysis Phase.

The Best Laid Plans, Part III

Once you’ve finished the Input Phase and the Analysis Phase of producing your strategic plan, you’re ready for the final Output Phase, which goes something like this:

Vision articulation.  Get it right for yourself first.  You should be able to answer “where do we want to be in three years?” in 25 words or less.

Roadmap from today.  Make sure to lay out clearly what things need to happen to get from where you are today to where you want to be.  The sooner-in stuff needs to be much clearer than the further out stuff.

Resource Requirements.  Identify the things you will need to get there, and the timing of those needs – More people?  More marketing money?  A new partner?

Financials.  Lay them out at a high level on an annual basis, on a more detailed level for the upcoming year.

Packaging.  Create a compelling presentation (Powerpoint, Word, or in your case, maybe something more creative) that is crisp and inspiring.

Pre-selling.  Run through it – or a couple of the central elements of it – with one or two key people first to get their buy-in.

Selling.  Do your roadshow – hit all key constituents with the message in one way or another (could be different forms, depending on who).

The best thing to keep in mind is that there is no perfect process, and there’s never a “right answer” to strategy — at least not without the benefit of hindsight!

People have asked me what the time allocation and elapsed time should or can be for this process.  While again, there’s no right answer, I typically find that the process needs at least a full quarter to get right, sometimes longer depending on how many inputs you are tracking down and how hard they are to track down; how fanatical you are about the details of the end product; and whether this is a refresh of an existing strategy or something where you’re starting from a cleaner sheet of paper.  In terms of time allocation, if you are leading the process and doing a lot of the work yourself, I would expect to dedicate at least 25% of your time to it, maybe more in peak weeks.  It’s well worth the investment.

Last week, I wrote about surrounding yourself with the best and brightest.  Next in this series of posts  is all about Creating an environment of trust.  This is closely related to the blog post I wrote a while back in my series on Return Path’s Core Values on Transparency.  At the end of the day, transparency, authenticity, and caring create an environment of trust.

Some examples of that?

• Go over the real board slides after every board meeting – let everyone in the company know what was discussed (no matter how large you are, but of course within reason)
• Give bad news early and often internally.  People will be less freaked out, and the rumor mill won’t take over
• Manage like a hawk – get rid of poor performers or cultural misfits early, even if it’s painful – you can never fire someone too soon
• Follow the rules yourself – for example, fly coach if that’s the policy, park in the back lot and not in a “reserved for the big cheese” space if you’re not in Manhattan, have a relatively modest office, constantly demonstrate that no task or chore is beneath you like filling the coke machine, changing the water bottle, cleaning up after a group lunch, packing a box, carrying something heavy
• When a team has to work a weekend , be there too (in person or virtually) – even if it’s just to show your appreciation
• When something really goes wrong, you need to take all the blame
• When something really goes right, you need to give all the credit away

Perhaps a bit more than the other posts in this series, this one needs to apply to all your senior managers, not just you.  Your job?  Manage everyone to these standards.

The Best Laid Plans, Part II

Once you’ve finished the Input Phase (see last week’s post) of producing your strategic plan, you’re ready for the Analysis Phase, which goes something like this:

Assemble the facts.  Keep notes along the way on the input phase items, assemble them into a coherent document with key thoughts and common themes highlighted.

Select/apply framework.  Go back to the reading and come up with one or more strategic frameworks.  Adapted them from the academic stuff to fit our situation.  Academic frameworks don’t solve problems on their own, but they do force you to think through problems in a structured way.

Step back.  Leave everything alone for two weeks and try not to think about it.  Come back to it with a fresher set of eyes immediately before starting on the final outputs.

Reality check.  Go back to one or two of the constituents you originally met with to begin laying out your thoughts to them – “try them on for size” – and get the unfiltered visceral reactions.

Next up:  the Output Phase.

How to Get Laid Off – an Employee’s Perspective

One of my colleagues at Return Path  saw my post about How to Quit Your Job about 5 years ago and was inspired to share this story with me.  Don’t read anything into this post, team!  There is no other meaning behind my posting it at this time, or any time, other than thinking it’s a very good way of approaching a very difficult situation, especially coming from an employee.

In 2009 I was working at a software security start up in the Silicon Valley.  Times were exceedingly tough, there were several rounds of layoffs that year, and in May I was finally on the list. I was informed on a Tuesday that my last day was that Friday.  It was a horrible time to be without a job (and benefits), there was almost no hiring at all that year, one of the worst economic down turns on record.  While it was a hard message,  I knew that it was not personal, I was just caught up on a bad math problem.

After calling home to share the bad news, I went back to my desk and kept working. I had never been laid off and was not sure what to do, but I was pretty sure I would have plenty of free time in the short term, so I set about figuring out  how to wrap things up there.  Later that day the founder of the company came by, asked why I had not gone home, and I replied that I would be fine with working till the end of the week if he was okay with it.  He thanked me.

Later that week, in a meeting where we reviewed and prioritized the projects I was working on, we discussed who would take on the top three that were quite important to the future of the company.  A few names were mentioned of who could keep them alive, but they were people who I knew would not focus on them at all.  So I suggested they have me continue to work on them, that got an funny look but when he thought about it , it made sense, they could 1099 me one day a week.  The next day we set it up.  I made more money than I could of on unemployment, but even better I kept my laptop and work email, so I looked employed which paid off later. 

That one day later became two days and then three, however, I eventually found other full time work in 2010.  Layoffs are hard,  but it is not a time to burn bridges.   In fact  one of the execs of that company is a reference and has offered me other opportunities for employment.

The Best Place to Work, Part 7: Create a Thankful Atmosphere

My final installment of this long series on Creating the best place to work (no hierarchy intended by the order) is about Creating a thankful atmosphere.

What does creating a thankful atmosphere get you?  It gets you great work, in the form of people doing their all to get the job done.  We humans – all of us, absolutely including CEOs – appreciate being recognized when they do good work.  Honestly, I love what I do and would do it without any feedback, but nothing resonates with me more than a moment of thanks from someone on my exec team or my Board.  Why should anyone else in the organization be any different?

This is not about giving everyone a nod in all-hands by doing shout-outs.  That’s not sustainable as the company grows.  And not everyone does great work every week or month!  And it’s not about remembering to thank people in staff meetings, either, although that’s never bad and easier to contain and equalize.

It is about informal, regular pats on the back.  To some extent inspired by the great Ken Blanchard book Whale Done, and as I’ve written about before here, it’s about enabling the organization to be thankful, and optimizing your own thankfulness.

Years ago we created a peer award system on our company Intranet/Wiki at Return Path.  We enable Peer Recognition through this.  As of late, with about 350 employees, we probably have 30-40 of these every week.  They typically carry a $25 gift card award, although most employees tell me that they don’t care about the gift card as much as the public recognition.  Anyone can nominate anyone for one of the following awards, which are unique to us and relevant to our culture:

• EE (Everyday Excellence) -is designed for us to recognize those who demonstrate excellence and pride in their daily work.
• ABCD (Above and Beyond the Call of Duty) -is designed for us to recognize the outstanding work of our colleagues who go Above and Beyond their duties and exemplify exactly what Return Path is about
• WOOT (Working Out Of Title) -is designed for us to recognize those who offer assistance that is not part of their job responsibilities.
• OTB (On The Business)-is about pulling ourselves out of day-to-day tasks and ensuring we are continually aligned with the long-term, strategic direction of the business.  We make sure we’re not just optimizing our current tasks and processes but that we’re also thinking about whether or not we should even be doing those things.  We stop to think outside of the “box” and about the interrelationship between what we are doing and everything else in the organization.  In doing so, we connect the leaves, the branches, the trunk, the roots and soil of the tree to the hundreds of other trees in the forest.  We step back to look at the big picture
• TLAO ( Think Like An Owner)-means that every one of us holds a piece of the Company’s future and is empowered to use good judgment and act on behalf of Return Path.  In our day-to-day jobs we take personal responsibility for our products, services and interactions.  We spend like it’s our own money and we think ahead.  We are trusted to handle situations like we own the business because we are smart people who do the right thing.  We notice the things happening around us that aren’t in our day-to-day and take action as needed even if we’re not directly responsible
• Blue Light Special  is designed for us to recognize anyone who comes up with a clever way to save the company money)
• Coy Joy Award is in memory of Jen Coy who was positive, optimistic and able to persevere through the most difficult of circumstances.  This award is designed to recognize individuals who exemplify the RP values and spread joy through the workplace.  This can be by going above and beyond to welcome new employees, by showing a high degree of care and consideration for another person at RP, by being a positive and uplifting influence, and/or making another person laugh-out-loud.
• Human Firewall is awarded if you catch a colleague taking extra care around security or privacy in some way, maybe a suggestion in a meeting, a feature in a product, a suggestion around policy or practice in the office.

In the early days, we read these out each week at All-Hands meetings.  Today at our scale, we announce these awards each week on the Wiki and via email.  And I and other leaders of the business regularly read the awards list to see who is doing what good work and needs to be separately thanked on top of the peer award.

Beyond institutionalizing thanks…in terms of you as an individual person, there are lots of ways to give thanks that are meaningful.  Some are about maximizing Moments of Truth.  Another thing I do from time to time is write handwritten thank you notes to people and mail them to their homes, not to work.  But there are lots of ways to spend the time and mental energy to appreciate individuals in your company in ways that are genuine and will be noticed and appreciated.  To some extent, this paragraph (maybe this whole post) could be labeled “It’s the little things.”

That’s it for this series…again, the final roundup for the full series of Creating the Best Place to Work is here and individual posts are here:

1. Surround yourself with the best and brightest
2. Create an environment of trust
3. Manage yourself very, very well
4. Be the consummate host
5. Be the ultimate enabler
6. Let people be people
7. Create a thankful atmosphere

Anyone have any other techniques I should write about for Creating the Best Place to Work?

The Best Place to Work, Part 6: Let People Be People

Last week, in this continuing series on creating the best place to work, I talked about being a great enabler of people, meaning you do your best to let people do their best work.  This week, I want to talk about Letting People Be People.

I wrote about topic a bit this last year when I wrote my series on Return Path’s Core Values, in particular the post on our value People Work to Live, Not Live to Work .

Work-life balance is critical.  I’ve worked in a grind-it-out 100-hour/week environment as an analyst before.  Quite frankly, it sucks.  One week I actually filled in 121 on my hourly time sheet as a consultant.  If you’ve never calculated the denominator, it’s only 168.  Even being well paid as a first-year analyst out of college, the hourly rate sucked.  Thinking about 121 gives me the shivers today…and it certainly puts into perspective that whether you work 40, 45, 50, 55, or 60 hours in a given week can pale by comparison, and all still let you have a life.  An average week of 40 hours probably doesn’t make sense for a high-growth company of relatively well-paid knowledge workers.  But at 121 you barely get to shower and sleep.

While you may get a lot done working like a dog, you don’t get a lot more done hour for hour relative to productive people do in a 50-week environment.  Certainly not 2x.  People who say they thrive on that kind of pressure are simply lying – or to be fair, they’re not lying, but they are pretending they wouldn’t prefer a different environment, which is likely disingenuous and a result of rationalizing their time spent at work.  Your productivity simply diminishes after some number of hours.  So as a CEO, even a hard-charging one, I think it’s better to focus on creating a productive environment than an environment of sustained long hours.

Work has ebbs and flows just like life has ebbs and flows.  As long as the work generally gets done well and when you need it, you have to assume that sometimes, people will work long hours in bursts and sometimes, people will work fewer hours.  Work-life balance is not measured in days or even weeks, but over the long term.  So to that end, We Let People Be People as a means of trading off freedom and flexibility for high levels of performance and accountability.  At Return Path, we create an environment where people can be people by:

• Giving generous maternity leave and even paternity leave, at least relative to norms in the US
• Having a flexible “work from home” policy, as people do have personal things to do during the business day from time to time
• Allowing even more flexible work conditions for anyone (especially new parents) – 3 or 4 days/week if we can make it work
• Letting people take a 6-week paid sabbatical after 7 years, then after every 5 years after that
• Having an “open vacation” policy where people can take as much vacation as they want, as long as they get their jobs done

As with all the posts in this series, this is meant to be general, not specific.  But these are a few of the things we’ve done to Let People Be People, which has created an incredibly productive environment here where people have fun, lead their lives, and still get their jobs done well and on time.

Short of declaring failure and shutting down your company, laying off employees is the worst thing you may have to do as a startup CEO. I’ve had to lay people off on three separate occasions. It was difficult and emotional—those days were the worst of my career, and probably rank in the top 10 worst days of my life, period. This isn’t firing for cause—employees aren’t being asked to leave because of their own failings. They’re being asked to leave because the company can no longer afford to keep them. It’s not their fault.

It’s a truly awful process. Some CEOs will fall into the trap of thinking that because it’s invariably messy, it doesn’t matter how you do it. I couldn’t disagree more. Layoffs are bad, but how you handle them makes all the difference in the world. Here are a few best and worst practices for orchestrating layoffs.

Best Practices

1. Cut earlier and deeper than you have to. You really, really don’t want to go through this a second time. Assume you have less runway than you anticipate, and cut early. Cut more employees than you think you need to in order to reduce the risk of a second round of layoffs. Things are always worse than they look, even when the situation is bad enough to consider layoffs. Financing will take longer than expected to come through, receivables will dry up, and so on. 

2. Remove poor performers. You have no choice but to remove people if their positions are being cut altogether, regardless of performance. However, you can also take this as an opportunity for some major house cleaning. Just be sure to work with someone (a lawyer) who can help you navigate the legalities—particularly if you’re dealing with employees outside the US. 

3. Plan your talking points in advance of meetings. When I’m planning all-hands meetings, I tend to write bullet-point notes and talk freely instead of scripting my comments—but not for this. A round of layoffs is likely to be one of the most emotional moments of your career, and when you face your employees to deliver the news, you won’t be in your usual headspace. Don’t wing it. Plan everything you’re going to say—both to the individuals being let go and to your team as a whole—in advance. How you handle these meetings will depend on the size of your company and how many layoffs you’re doing. Regardless, you want to communicate respect for and appreciation of your employees throughout the process. 

4. Follow layoffs with an all-hands meeting. Layoffs are emotional for the entire team. Follow up with an all-hands meeting to explain what happened, why you made the choices you did—preferably with metrics to back up your decisions—what’s next for the company, and whether people who weren’t laid off are at risk in the future. (Be honest!) Ideally, the people you’re laying off should be included, too. You want to honor and thank them in as public a forum as possible. For those who remain, it’s important to cultivate security and trust. However you’re communicating with your employees, you’ll need to increase your efforts, and clarity is always better. Let them in on the state of the business, financials, and expectations. You don’t want to skip over the pain that comes with layoffs, but you do need to be prepared to move forward effectively. 

5. Treat employees who were laid off with dignity and honor the work they did. This will come into play when we talk about what not to do, but it’s important to remember that they’re being laid off for no fault of their own. One meaningful thing you can do is help people find their next step. Promoting the profiles of your former employees on job boards, portfolio lists, etc., offering your own connections if it’s relevant, or giving excellent referrals when you can are all great places to start. Severance is also key. Be sure to consult your board and follow your company policies, if you have them, then be as generous as you can afford to be. If you can offer a safety net or bridge, do so. 

These folks will still be alumni of your company, so the way you handle them personally will impact how they talk about the organization, rate you on Glassdoor, and refer to you as a leader. Every step of the process matters—whether it’s how you broke the news, how public things were, how helpful your team was, how much you paid—and will impact your company’s brand as an employer and your own reputation as a CEO. 

Worst Practices 

1. (Per above) Do not assume, because layoffs are awful and messy no matter what, that it doesn’t matter how you do it. It absolutely matters. 

2. Do not treat the people you fire like criminals. Don’t hire security guards or bring boxes into the office before breaking the news. Think very carefully about what systems you need to restrict access to, when, and whether there are any loopholes. Sure, you don’t want someone to be able to download a whole list of contacts from HubSpot. But do you really want them to be cut off from their email, calendar, and personal contacts? Shouldn’t you work with them to set up an autoresponder or figure out what happens to their email?

3. Do not promise this will never happen again. You can’t predict the future. You can say “we made the best decision possible, so that hopefully we won’t have to do this again.” Offer reassurance through facts and transparency rather than empty promises. 

4. Do not delegate the responsibility for deciding to lay off employees. As the CEO, this decision is yours to own. Also, do not blame someone else or the economy. Circumstances contribute, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with you, and again, you’re the one making the decision. 

5. Do not make mistakes about who is on which meeting invitation list or which employment list. Double check the list yourself, then have someone else check it. 

FAQs

I held a webinar recently with about 20 CEOs on this topic, and there were a number of questions that came up with interesting crowdsourced answers. Here are some snippets of some of them:

Q: How much severance is the right amount?

A: This is impossible to generalize—if you’re really out of cash, you may have your hands tied. If you can stick to your normal policies, you should. Companies represented on the call tended to give 1-2 weeks per year of service. Other thoughts that came up were: (a) offering a long post-termination exercise period for vested options, (b) accelerating some vesting, (c) creating a Salary Bridge program, which we did once at Return Path. The Salary Bridge program offered people an additional X weeks of continuing severance beyond the standard package if they still hadn’t found a job (but were trying and could show us they were trying) after their severance ran out. Very few people needed this, but the goodwill from offering it was huge.

Q: Have you ever considered salary cuts?

A: Yes. Usually a big layoff will come with some kind of salary cut for those who are staying, even if it’s just executives or just you as the CEO (which is more symbolic than anything else, but symbolism matters). Companies also had experience with doing salary cuts and reinstating the salaries as soon as the economic situation improved. One company talked about doing a 5% salary cut but then offering everyone a 10% bonus based on company financial milestones. In situations like this, it’s also a good idea to share metrics. How many jobs are you preserving by making cuts? 

Q: Do voluntary termination programs work? 

A: They might make you feel better, but be wary of doing them lest you lose key people you don’t want to lose!

Q: Can I expect additional employee attrition after a layoff?

A: Almost certainly. Any time you jolt the system, you’ll produce some unintended consequences. People will feel less stable in their role. Do your best to reassure key employees—even to the point of bringing a couple of them into the know immediately ahead of a layoff—so you don’t lose more people you don’t want to lose. Be wary of offering additional compensation or bonuses for them to stay, unless you are promoting them into expanded responsibilities (which can make sense if you’re consolidating things). Offering some people a raise “for no reason” while you’re letting other people go isn’t a great look.

Q: What about customer communications?

A: Our group was very mixed on whether or not you should do proactive external communications about a layoff. If you run a B2B organization, being a little more transparent with customers shows them you care about them—and gives you an opportunity to talk to them about any changes that might affect them, their service team, or their service levels. In a B2C organization, you’re likely either going to do something public like a short, empathetic blog post, or nothing at all. In all cases, please make sure you have a well developed internal FAQ and clear policies about who can and can’t talk externally as a company representative before doing a layoff so you’re not caught flat-footed.

Layoffs are messy and unfortunate, but you can still handle them artfully as a leader. How you handle layoffs will impact how your company recovers, it’ll impact your reputation as a CEO, and most importantly, it’ll impact the lives of the employees you laid off. I talk a lot about having a people first culture. One of the things I’ve learned about building companies with this in mind is that it’s got to be true all the way through. Even when you resort to layoffs, the people come first. 

(This post also appeared on the Bolster blog.)

Self-Discipline:  Broken Windows Applied to You

Just as my last post about New Shoes was touching a bit of a nerve around, as one friend put it, "mental housecleaning," my colleague Angela pointed me to a great post on a blog I've never seen before ("advice at the intersection of work and life" — I just subscribed), called How to Have More Self-Discipline.  Man, is that article targeted at me, especially about working out. 

I think the author is right — more discipline around the edges does impact happiness.  But it also impacts productivity.  Not just because working out gives you more energy.  Because having your act together in small ways makes you feel like you have your act together in all ways.  As the author notes (without this specific analogy), it's a little like the "broken windows" theory of policing.  You crack down on graffiti and broken windows, you stop more violent crime, in part because the same people commit small and large crimes, in part because you create a more orderly society in visible, if sometimes a bit small and symbolic, ways.

I agree that the best example in the "non work" world is fitness.  But what about the "work world"?  What's relevant around self-discipline for professionals?  Consider these examples:

– A clean inbox at the end of the day.  Yes, it's the David Allen theory of workplace productivity which I espouse, but it does actually work.  A clean mind is free to think, dream, solve problems.  The quickest path to keeping it clean is not having a pile of little things to deal with in front of it, taking up space

– Showing up on time.  It may sound dumb, but people who are chronically late to meetings are constantly behind.  The day is spent rushing around, cutting conversations short — in other words, unhappy and not as productive.  The discipline of ending meetings on time with enough buffer to travel or even just prepare for the next meeting so you can start it on time (and not waste the time of the other people in the meeting) is important.  Have too many meetings that you can't be at all of them on time?  Say no to some — or make them shorter to force efficiency.  There's nothing wrong with a 10-minute meeting

– Dressing for success.  We live in a casual world, especially in our industry.  I admit, once in a while I wear jeans or a Hawaiian shirt to work — even shorts if it's a particularly hot and humid day.  (And even in New York, not just in Boulder.)  But no matter what you wear, you can make sure you look neat and professional, not sloppy.  Skip the ripped jeans or faded/frayed/rock concert t-shirt.  Tuck in the shirt if it's that kind of shirt, and wear a belt.  The discipline of "dressing up" carries productivity a long way.  Want to really test this out at the edges?  Try wearing a suit or tie one day to work.  You feel different, and you sound different

– Doing your expenses.  Honestly, I've never seen an area where more smart and conscientious people fall apart than producing a simple expense report.  Come up with a system for it — do one every week, every trip on the plane home, every time you have an expense — and just take the 5 minutes and finish it off.  Sure, expenses are a pain, but they only really become a pain and a millstone around your brain when you let them sit for months because you "don't have time" to fill them out, then you get accounting all pissed off at you, and the project's size, complexity, and distance from the actual event all mount

– Follow rules of grammar and punctuation.  Writing, whether for external or internal consumption, is still writing.  I'm not sure when everyone became ee cummings and decided that it's ok to forget the basic rules of English grammar and punctuation.  Make sure your emails and even your IMs, at least when they're for business, follow the rules.  You look smarter when you do.  Maybe — maybe — with Twitter or SMS you can excuse some of this and go with abbreviations.  But I wouldn't normally consider a lot of those formal business communications

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.  A little self-discipline goes a long way at work (and in life)!