Dressing for Success

There's a strange concept about appropriate dress in a semi-tropic city like Tampa. High temperatures and humidity make people think that they can dress for work in roughly the same manner they dress to go to the beach. Not true in government offices like Hillsborough County, where the standard tie and jacket apply. Nor at the banks, where even low paid tellers are expected to dress in a business like manner. But in our office, the standard of dress sometimes slips to deplorable.

One day shortly after I arrived in Tampa, I was walking into the office and encountered a greasy haired, unkempt young man with a guitar over his shoulder. I couldn't believe that he was showing up to work dressed that way. "Heading to Woodstock?" I asked, but he was too young to know what Woodstock was.

A new CEO changed that. He enforced a dress code that had been written but not followed. There was an incredible amount of whining and wailing. No jeans? Might as well be working in the Gulag. Me, I supported the concept of a dress code. We might not be a coat and tie type of company, but I believe that when you dress sloppy, your work is sloppy. So if you're a recent grad or early in your career, here's some advice you would be smart to heed.

Clothing is more than what people see without interacting with you. It might not be "fair" for people to judge you on the basis of your attire, but facts is facts... they do. It is said that clothes make the man, or the woman. That's not true, but it does do two things: It makes the first impression on people you come into contact with, and it sets the tone for your work style and habits.

Let's look at impressions first. Remember the young man I saw going into our office? His appearance overrode any statement that his quality of work might have said. He looked like a slob, and the first reaction to anything he might have presented would be to think that his work was sloppy, too. And in fact, his work was shoddy, which makes my second point. When you dress like a slob, you do the work of a slob.

I'm not saying that you need to pop for Armani or Ralph Lauren for every day work wear. In fact, people who dress strictly to be fashionable are a bit out of balance. Your office has a dress code, written or not. If it's written that's easy - read it and use that as your minimum starting point. If there is no written code, look around to see what the standard is in the office. Then kick it up a notch. If everyone wears jeans, then make your minimum standard Dockers. And if everyone else is into Dockers, then it's dress pants or skirts. No skirts for the guys, of course.

Think you can't afford decent clothes? Nothing can be farther from the truth. You have a financial plan, right? I mean, you aren't so stupid as to be blowing every cent you make, are you? So put $50 to $100 per month into your clothing budget. And learn to buy quality. Price isn't always the best indicator of quality. Learn about the things that make a well made garment, and use it as a guide for your clothing investments. Ladies, don't dress in the office like you're going to the club. The key is professional, not sexy. Gentlemen, no polo shirts and certainly no t-shirts. Even in a casual office, dress shirts should be your standard.

So what happened to our dress code? Again, managers were afraid to enforce it. As part of our low expectations management style, managers allowed their staff to slide back into their old habits of dressing like they were going to the beach, or just finished the farm chores. In fact, we have an expression about Tampa office being "The Beach". Unfortunately, it's not a compliment or envy of Tampa's great weather. It's a slam at our work style. We dress like we're going to the beach, and we work like we're more interested in going to the beach. The people in the field see it in the results of the work we do for them. Now if we could only see it ourselves, we might motivate management to do something about it.

We have a Winner

We have a winner in the Name That Quote contest. What, did you think I was pulling your leg when I said there would be a great prize for the first one to guess the originator of the "nattering nabobs of negativism" quote? Not here, baby. My word is true.

Paul Jerome, Auditing Manager at Quality Carriers in Tampa, FL correctly guessed that Spiro Agnew was the one to utter those words in public. A little unknown factoid is that the phrase was written for Agnew by the great wordsmith William Safire. It must have been for an alliteration contest. The entire rant was:

"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club -- the "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."

Paul wins a hardcover copy of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. The emphasis is on the jokes, not the philosophy. But if you're caught reading it in public, you can claim it's existential reading. Of course, the giggling and guffawing might be hard to explain.

A Buddhist walks up to a hot-dog stand and says, "Make me one with everything". He then pays the vendor and asks for change. The vendor says, "Change comes from within".

Well, I thought it was funny.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that 2008 will be a successful and prosperous year for you.

If you’re like most people, you’ve made some New Year resolutions. And if you’re like most people, by the end of this week you will have blown whatever you resolved. Studies show the 85% of resolutions are destined for failure. And you wonder why you can’t change anything in your organization?

If you want to be successful with your resolution(s), here are some tips that I have found helpful:
1. Keep it simple but well defined. You aren’t going to bring about world peace in 2008. However, you might make your little corner of Earth a better place. Be specific in your goal – not “Start my own business” but “Start a logistics consulting company in Moose Jaw, SK.” Set a goal that is attainable, but not so low it takes no effort to reach it. Maybe you’re going to keep better organized this year. So instead of trying to implement some drastic new organizing system for every minute of every day, take one part of your life and straighten it out. Email in basket overflowing? Maybe you should unsubscribe from all those newsletters you don’t read anyway. Maybe direct your friends to your personal email address instead of your work address. Small steps will help you achieve your goal, and you’ll feel better when you achieve it. And once you’ve reached your small goal…
2. Make another small goal. What’s so sacred about New Year’s for making a resolution? What stops you from making a birthday resolution? Or a President’s Day resolution? Or just a “Hey, it’s Wednesday” resolution? Once you’ve achieved one small step, plan and take another. Think of it as a Continuous Improvement for your life. In the work world, we call that Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning “continual improvement”. The Godfather of Quality, W. Edwards Deming, made the process popular in post-WWII Japan, and today it is the foundation of the Toyota Production System. Kaizen methodology uses scientific methods to study an issue, implement small improvements and standardize work practices. Make it your mantra – small, continual improvements.
3. Visualize the goal. Years ago, I met a brilliant young Ph. D. named Patrica Pitsel in Calgary. Not as a client, although I probably could have benefited from a few counseling sessions with her. She was a fellow lecturer at the University of Calgary. She was working with hockey player Lanny McDonald of the Calgary Flames. Lanny was stuck on career goal number 499, and seemed to be hitting a wall. Try as he might, he couldn’t get the magic number 500. So she told Lanny to visualize how he might score number 500. Slap shot from the point? Rebound? Lanny thought he would score on a wrap around – come in from the right, go behind the net and tuck it into the left side before the goalkeeper could react. Guess how Lanny scored his 500th career goal – on the wrap around. So close your eyes and visualize how you are going to achieve the goal you have set. Then put into action the steps you need to make that visualization a reality.
4. Remember the PCDA cycle. Plan – Check – Do – Act. You spent time thinking about your goal. You’ve done the reality check. You’re putting steps in place to achieve the goal. But don’t be afraid to go back and review. Maybe your target has changed. Maybe your goal needs some fine tuning. Go back and repeat the cycle. Is the goal still important to you? Does the need still exist? Don’t be afraid to change the goal as circumstances change.
5. Don’t be afraid to fail. Fear of failure often stops us from even setting a goal. But if you don’t fail, you aren’t trying hard enough. Think in sports terms – if you aren’t shooting at the net, you can’t score. In hockey, the “shots on goal” count is always higher than the goals scored. In baseball, the strikes are always higher than the hits. But if you don’t swing or shoot, you’ll never score. So don’t let fear of failure hold you back.

And what are my goals for 2008? Well, last year I realized that I wasn’t the trim, athletic hockey referee I once was, so I started on a path to get back in shape. I’m going to continue that. Healthy eating and regular workouts have really become a way of life now. I’ve decided I’m going to aim at running a 5K in February. Following my own advice, my goal is “I will run in the Gasparilla 5K Race on February 9th”. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

May your 2008 be safe, prosperous and fun.

The Evil of Shirking Management Responsibility

I spent nearly four weeks away from the office before the Christmas break. Three weeks in Edmonton where we were purchasing a small company to get a toehold in the Western Canada marketplace. Then we took a cruise for a week. The cruise, our first, was very relaxing and we’ll definitely do that again. The three weeks in Edmonton were a mixed blessing – it gave me a chance to see nearly all my family, but the acquisition didn’t go smoothly. I should have known, but hope always springs eternal that one of these will go exactly as planned.

One of the things that I discovered was that I enjoyed being away from the “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the office (a prize if you can name that quote – email me by Jan.31^st). My employer is, as one customer once said, the “bastard stepchild” of the union of two large companies. And those two firms had completely different operating philosophies. One was a shirt and tie kind of place with lots of written processes and procedures. The other was a jeans and t-shirt place with an “anything goes” type of attitude. Put them together and what do you get? Chaos. Of course, egos were bruised as one side or the other had people appointed to management positions and changes were implemented. You’ve been there before.

But that was 8 years ago for crying out loud. And many of the veterans are still whining and moaning about how things used to be and how terrible their life is. We’ve had some tough financial times, and staff have lived through some layoffs and wage cuts. We even had a year where we had a mandatory day off per month without pay. I never had the day off, but the paycheck still had the deduction. Lots of people think they should be promoted and question the promotions that others get.

So I discovered that the negativism of the place has really been draining me. I heard that the temp agency we use has reported that some of the temps even comment on the negativism. In the old office, it was like bad karma. It was in the air we breathed. I think of CEO thought that moving to a new office would purge the evil, but it looks like it was packed and delivered to the new building as well.

Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace says "We engage in emotional contagion. Emotions travel from person to person like a virus." Well duh, was my first thought. But is it important? Does it affect output if staff are negative? Barsade’s findings: Employees' moods, emotions, and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations and leadership. Negative emotions yield negative results.

The negativism in our place is work focused. I’m not talking about the occasional grumps or bad hair days we all have from time to time. This is people being consistently negative about their jobs and the company. And you know what I think? If you don’t like your job or the company you work for, go get another job.

Managers are shirking their responsibility by not dealing with this issue. And it’s a front line managers responsibility to handle it. Part of the problem might be that it’s managers that are the disenchanted. Still, those up the food chain need to fill their responsibility by dealing with it.

It’s not a manager’s job to make the employee feel happy and joyous. As a manager, I can’t help you feel happy about life if you’re depressed over your spouse’s fidelity or your inability to make your car payment or any of the other pressures of life. I remember a great Youtube clip about a young man and older man on a bus in Korea. The older man was loudly talking on his cell phone and the young man politely asked him to keep the noise down. Bus Uncle exploded in a rant that went on for five minutes. I keep waiting for the kid to say “Alright, old timer. I asked you nice. Now I’m going to shove that cell phone…” But he never did. He was always polite and respectful. But one line from the old guy has stayed with me:

“Pressure? I got pressure. Everyone got pressure!”

When we go to work, we are on stage. We have a role to perform. And that means that if our emotions are in turmoil, we need to suck it up and put on our stage makeup and get on with the show. Everyone got pressure.

Being a manager means dealing with under performers. I find that managers fear this part of their job. It’s natural to want to avoid confrontation, but if you are a real manager, you have to deal with the issues that negatively affect performance. This attitude is toxic, and it has to be eliminated if the organization is going to grow and thrive. Positive attitudes are like oxygen. It helps things grow. Negative attitudes are like diesel exhaust. It poisons the air and kills things. And your responsibility as a manager is to make the business grow. Do your job.

More on managerial responsibility later.

Happy Christmas!

I appreciate excellence in teamwork wherever I find it. These guys bring their "A" game to a Christmas classic. Enjoy, and here's hoping you have a great Christmas.

A Little R and R...

My 2 week trip to Edmonton turned into a three week venture. We were purchasing a small company there that would be our foothold into the booming Western Canadian market. Things were taking longer than usual, and still weren't finalized when I left. But for the last week, Mrs. T. and I took a Caribbean cruise. It was our first cruise, but what a great way to relax. No cell phones, no laptop - OK, I brought the laptop but there was no internet access since I didn't want to pay $7 a minute for it. And why surf the web when you can spend your day like this:


And in spite of the great food, my net weight gain was only 1 pound. Fortunately there was a great workout facility on the ship. I even tried a Pilates class. And then was so sore I had to assume the above position for the rest of the day.

So Monday it's back to work after being absent from my desk for 1 month. Since leaving, I have a new boss, so this should be interesting.

What You Learn in Business School

There is a young woman in our organization that is soon to graduate from business school with an MBA. The company has paid for it. Good for her. But the fact that she is graduating highlights my feelings about the current state of college education, and Business School in particular.

It's my belief that, especially in the State of Florida, as long as you pay your tuition you will get a degree. No one ever fails. I have seen MBAs come to our company that were incapable of forming a simple declarative sentence let alone perform any complex business analysis. And I offer the following as justification for my belief:

A group of us are sitting in the lunch room finishing our salads. The topic of discussion has been the surgery a coworker has recently undergone as a result of an auto accident. Ms. Soon-to-be MBA, a member of the ME Generation, wants the conversation focused on her, so she announces that her sister recently had emergency surgery as well. Someone graciously asked what type of surgery she had.

"She had something removed" Brainiac answered. "Uhmmm, it started with "p"."

We all tried to think of body parts that started with "p". "Something pulmonary" someone offered?

Nope. "Planter's Wart" someone else thought? "Pancreas" was my hopeful suggestion. Nope again.

"Prostate" one of the sour old guys suggested, which drew a snicker from most. But it went over Ms. MBA's head. "Nope, not that" she said as though her sister actually had one.

"Oh! I remember!" she exclaimed in Barbie like fashion. "It was her pendix."

And with that, satisfied she had been the focus of our attention for at least five minutes, she got up and left.

There was a hush over the room. Finally, someone asked "Didn't she say the body part started with the letter "p"?" The room exploded in a combination of laughter and derision.

MBA indeed.