The Boss Show Blog

Andrew Moss and The Executive Compensation Dilemma

by Jim Hessler

The CEO of a major British Corporation faced a shareholder revolt recently regarding what the shareholders viewed as excessive executive compensation. The CEO of Aviva, Andrew Moss, has tendered his resignation as a result of the publicity surrounding a rare thumbs-down vote from shareholders.

Oh, and by the way, the Board of Directors handed him a check for 1.5 million pounds on his way out the door. Poor sod.

Does executive compensation really matter? If an executive makes $10 million (not that unusual these days) and leads an organization of 10,000 employees, that’s $1000 per employee. That’s a significant sum for some employees if that money had found its way into their pockets instead of the executive’s trust fund.

This assumes that money in one place takes money out of the other, which is a shaky bit of logic. The argument is made that paying $10 Million to a talented and dynamic executive results in more jobs, higher pay for employees,  and higher stock value for shareholders. And sometimes it does.

But no one can determine the actual economic value a CEO brings to any company. The CEO is indeed of critical importance to the company, strategically, culturally, and financially. And honestly, I don’t hate or envy rich people—I really don’t. I just wonder what it does to trust in an organization when the people at the top are raking in such huge amounts, and when, as in the case of Aviva, that compensation seemed to have little to do with the company’s overall performance or value.

I was an executive in a Fortune 150 company. I was never close enough to the boardroom to get my hands on such lucrative compensation. But I was close enough to smell it. This company was led for years by a CEO I knew well.  And I thought he was, well … pretty worthless. He was a sycophant of limited ability and poor people skills. The company did not perform well during his tenure.

When he was finally shown the door, (the term is usually “stepped down to spend more time with his family”) he was given $4 million in severance – after making many more millions in salary and bonuses during his time as CEO. When I resigned from the same company I was given a box to pack up my things. I’m still ticked off about his $4 million crony’s payoff.

Are top executives overpaid? I can’t say they all are, but many of them make off like bandits while creating little value for the guys sweeping the floors and staffing the phones. Good riddance, Andrew Moss, and a tip of the hat to the shareholders who called you out.

Taming the Demon Email

 by Steve Motenko

Like most addictions, email can ruin your life.  Your work life, anyway.  (And by the way my wife responds when I open the computer on weekends, maybe your home life as well.  Okay, email is a home-wrecker.)

 I’ll never forget my first taste.  It was back in the mid-‘90’s, and a friend named Aol suggested I try just a bite.  At first I was just a social emailer.  Two or three a week.  No problem!  But the next thing I knew, it invaded my work life.  And then, obviously, my home life.  Before I knew it, I was in deep.  Way deep.

I found myself beginning to tremble when I didn’t have my smartphone in my hands.  But I stand before you here at this EA meeting to tell you that yes, you can tame the Demon Email.

In my role as Director of Ops for a sustainability nonprofit, I’m co-producing the largest series of virtual sustainability events ever offered.  At times, I’ve been fielding in excess of 200 emails a day.  I know many of you can relate. And yet, my email is now under control.

Here’s the key.  (As an executive coach, I should charge you for this … you owe me big-time.)  This is what I’ve been telling coaching clients for years.  Peter Bregman agrees with me – and he just wrote a similar post for the Harvard Business Review (http://bit.ly/KviWyW ), so I must be right.

• Guesstimate how many hours of time you spend on email per day.
•  Take 75% of that amount, and schedule it into your calendar every day, over one, two, or three segments.
•  Every day for a week, spend that amount of time – and only that amount of time – on email.  Set a timer when you start, and do only email for that amount of time.  When the timer beeps, you’re done emailing — until the next scheduled time slot.
• Adjusst the scheduled time slots as necessary so you’re always dealing with all the email that has to be answered, but none of the email that isn’t a priority.

 This practice will:

• force you to prioritize your inbox
• force you to be efficient with the time you spend on email
• keep you from multi-tasking (which is inefficient, despite conventional wisdom)
• enhance your focus
• enable you to let go of the emails that aren’t critical
•  free up time (25% of your previous email time, remember?) for bigger fish that need your full attention, your problem-solving capability, your real-time communication, and your creativity.

Will this always work for everyone?  Nope.  If you’re so important that your emails have to be answered within the hour, this won’t survive this practice.  If you’re a phenomenal prioritizer – or if you have all the time in the world – you don’t need this practice. 

But if you’re like me – “just one more email, please, just one more, before I flee this burning building” – then try it.  What have you got to lose?  You have a demon to tame.

Taking Beautiful Women Seriously

by Jim Hessler

Physically attractive people have a leg up in the world. There’s a demonstrated “halo effect”:  people make positive assumptions about someone who’s good looking.

Most of us would rather be good looking than not. It’s not a total curse.  But I do wonder about how many beautiful younger women suffer from not being taken seriously in the workplace.  Being a “looker” in the office may be a mixed blessing.

The first challenge is that women operate in an executive world still dominated by men.  And then most men aren’t entirely objective when a beauty enters their line of sight.  It would be nice to believe that when a male leader shows an interest in a beautiful woman’s career, that interest is professional, but often of course it isn’t – or at least not entirely.

There are women who gladly use this to their advantage, seeking the access, the promotion, or the sale that might be harder for someone else to get. But it’s got to be difficult for attractive women with more integrity – those who are not trying to leverage their looks into success.

The big issue is trust. How can a beautiful woman trust that the men she’s dealing with are being fair, judging them on their own merits, and holding them as accountable as anyone else?

Of course I don’t know what it’s like to be a beautiful woman. I am taller than average, I have a strong voice, and a full head of hair. I might have a little bit of an advantage over the short bald guys with squeaky voices when it comes to the assumptions that people make about me.

But it’s different for beautiful women. I’m not an object of desire. And if a looker is worried about being seen as an object, it might make it harder for her to trust the other person — and trust in their own talent and abilities.

Not All Opinions Are Equal

by Jim Hessler

Not all opinions are equal.  Opinions built on reasonable analysis and integrity are worth more than those built on lazy thinking, unexamined assumptions, bias, and dishonesty.

First, a brief history lesson, and then I’ll bring it back to the business environment.

When I was young, oh so many years ago, we had something called journalism in this country. Now we have entertainment masking as news.

Example:  More than 95% of the world’s climate scientists agree that global climate change caused by human activity presents a real and present danger to all life on the planet.  And that swift and massive action on a global scale is necessary to soften the inevitable planet-wide catastrophe.

A few decades ago, mainstream journalists would have routinely reported that, based on the preponderance of evidence, climate change was a monumental problem. We would have seen in-depth analysis, and we would have seen challenging and courageous interviews with corporate big-wigs. The big story would have been climate change is happening, and people who tell you it isn’t are full of hooey.

Now, the story told in the media is different. It’s about the supposed “controversy” regarding climate change. In fact there is no such story, but it’s easy for lazy “news” organizations to read a few blogs and trump up a debate—supposedly between equally legitimate points of view—about the subject. The story isn’t the news—it’s the debate about the news. That’s a big difference.

We no longer have mainstream journalism that speaks truth to power.  In its place we have entertainment masquerading as news. Instead of people in the media with an informed and well-researched point of view, we have people who watch the “news” along with us and then package it up as entertainment without encouraging us to think straight.

So what does this have to do with the workplace? For years now I’ve noticed an increasing reluctance among young business people to debate the important matters affecting their organizations and their businesses. People are more afraid to research, think, and then stake out a point of view, because most of the people they see doing that in the media are the crazies shouting at each other in a carefully orchestrated entertainment designed not to inform, but to be just outrageous enough to keep us tuned in until the next commercial break.

The debate between responsible people seeking the truth has turned into a circus sideshow.  My concern is that young business people have soured on the value of intellectual rigor, and no longer embrace their responsibility to think for themselves, and to responsibly debate matters of importance to their organizations.

GSA Leaders Take Heed

by Jim Hessler

If I were a leader in the General Services Administration (GSA) right now, I would:

• convene a serious soul-searching session about what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. This is a teachable moment. I would have employees at all levels of the organization weigh in on their feelings, their observations, their fears, and their suggestions for change. GSA leaders must encourage employees to vent internally rather than externally, so the agency can move as quickly as possible to solution mode.
• determine whether the Las Vegas scandal symbolizes a temporary loss of institutional control, or whether the organization is deeply corrupted and the culture is sick – and respond accordingly.
• ask my employees to hold their heads high. GSA is the butt of jokes and talk-show tirades. It’s important to remember that GSA provides valuable services to the entire federal government. I would ask employees to defend the agency and continue to be positive about its mission.
• avoid punishing all for the reprehensible acts of a few. While new auditing steps, oversight, and procedures will likely be necessary, these changes need to be balanced against treating your honest employees like criminals. The individuals who perpetrated this scandal are effectively terrorists – they have created fear and distrust. But the response needs to be measured. Your employees shouldn’t be held up in the equivalent of an airport security line because of what these morons did in Las Vegas.
• I would not eliminate future business conferences.  Some will say that conferences by their nature are wasteful and encourage bad behavior. Of course they do – anyone who’s been to an out-of-town business conference is well aware of those temptations. But there are ways to make business conferences effective, professional learning and team-building experiences.  For long-term organizational effectiveness, employees in a far-flung organization regularly need to meet in person and build relationships and shared understandings.

Change Agent, Heal Thyself

by Jim Hessler

As an executive, consultant, coach, and facilitator, I’ve long preached the gospel of change.  Constantly challenging one’s fundamental assumptions about business and the world – and adapting – are defining skills of leadership.

But while leaders (and consultants) preach change, the burden of change is borne by the people who have to live with the change. These are often employees who have gained expertise and comfort in the current way of doing things, only to have new thinking, new processes, and new technologies thrust upon them.

Now I have to cop to my own change resistance, especially around a lifetime of habits of communication. It’s time for me to get with the program and become an effective social networker. Uggh. As part of the generation of workers too old to care and too young not to care, I am going through my own halting, frustrating process of learning to market my business through FaceSpace and TwitterBook, or whatever they’re called. It’s not easy. I’m getting a lot of help, trying to understand my resistance, and holding myself accountable for taking small steps every day.

Change generates a sort of mourning.  The emotional sequence that accompanies a terminal illness – shock, denial, bargaining, and acceptance – seems to define my journey into social networking. I think I may finally be at the acceptance stage, and life goes on. I’ve started to recognize new habits and new creative energy replacing the resistance and frustration that was blocking my path.  With the help of my friends and with a hopeful spirit, I may yet “get it” when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Well, maybe not Twitter.

Old habits and old thinking must certainly die. But as with death itself, we have to move on. Now excuse me, I have to go update my LinkedIn profile. I don’t have to like change but I don’t have to hate it either.

The Poor Saps Who Work for the GSA

 by Steve Motenko

Outraged about the GSA scandal?  If so, you’re focused, I’d bet, on the idiots who created this mess.  Oh, the stupidity! 

But what about the 12,000 rank-and-file GSA employees who had nothing to do with the conference?  Forever, they’ll be tainted.  (Well, until the public forgets about the whole thing, anyway – which’ll likely be next Tuesday.)

Imagine you work for the GSA.  Imagine – okay, just consider it a thought experiment if you can’t wrap your mind around it as reality – that you’re a hard worker, a caring, efficient employee, who happens to be working for the feds because you actually think government can serve a useful function.  You’re not here to rape taxpayers.  You have a work ethic.  You have a sense of responsibility to the public trust.

And then your leaders go and pull this kind of unmitigated crap.   

What do you do?  Hope no one ever finds out who your employer is?  Tell everyone you actually work for a different GSA?  the Geological Sciences Association?

Here’s what you do:

• You hold your head high and tell people what a mess the government would be in if there were no GSA.
• You go to work every day focused on the service you’re providing to your customers – whoever they may be.
• You challenge anyone prone to throwing out the baby with the bathwater – challenge them not to indict an entire federal agency based on the moronic behavior of a few so-called leaders.
• You bring your colleagues together to ask, “What can we do to help ensure this never happens again?”  I don’t care how low your civil service rank.  Step up in some way.  Own your integrity, and the opportunity you have to take some action to manifest it – including the greater power in numbers. 
• You instigate ethical conversations in your corner of the enterprise.  When The Boeing Company was riddled with a series of humiliating, very public, and nearly disastrous ethical bombs some years ago, this huge company responded by encouraging every employee at every level to step forward and initiate a conversation around perceived ethical lapses any time they felt compelled to.  No Boeing manager was allowed to squelch this employee initiative.  Boeing saw a truly open culture as the only antidote to the ethical poison that threatened to bring the company down.

In the 1960s, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the courtyard of a New York City apartment building while, according to the New York Times, 38 neighbors watched from their windows.  Not one called the cops.

Never doubt that one person can make a difference.  If I were a GSA employee, this crazy scandal would prompt me to make a difference – in any way I can.  I’d start by recommitting to my own integrity in every interaction.  If enough GSA employees made that commitment, the agency’s reputation would weather this storm – especially with a public ever hungry for the next scandal.

The GSA Scandal and the Herd Mentality

by Jim Hessler

I’ve experienced the “hesitation at the crosswalk” often here in Seattle.  Several people are waiting for the Walk sign, politely and with respect for the law. Suddenly someone forges across even though the sign still says Don’t Walk. Gradually, then suddenly, one, several, or eventually all of the waiting pedestrians decide it must be okay. A quick study in the herd mentality, played out thousands of times in cities across America.

I’ve also experienced the herd mentality in another way. I joined a gym several years ago, and for the first six months no one – no one – left a towel on the floor. About six months in, gradually, then suddenly, people started following suit. Now it’s become okay to leave your towels on the floor, and I find myself frustratingly stepping over wet towels in the locker room. The herd mentality at work.

We like to think that we are morally independent ─ guided by our own values in most situations. Sadly, social psychology teaches us we are herd animals when it comes to our behavior. We see what others around us are doing and we take our cues.

Fortunately, a small group of people ─ even one brave soul ─ can stem the tide of bad behavior, and cause the herd to turn in a positive direction. Look at the GSA scandal. A few hundred people, at taxpayer expense, managed to spend over $800,000 at a management conference in Las Vegas. I wonder if anyone stepped up and tried to steer the GSA herd in a positive direction, and say, “No.  This is wrong.  We’re not here to act like kids on Spring Break.  We’re here to work and act like adults.” I wonder how many people came to the conference with positive intentions, and seeing their co-workers cutting loose, lost their moral compass and followed the herd in a stupid direction.

The herd mentality explains why the discipline of leadership is so crucial to the success of organizations and societies. The leader is often the person dropping their towel on the floor, unconsciously coaxing others to do the same. Likewise, the leader is often the person who, seeing someone else dropping a towel, says “Hey, please drop your used towel in the bin where it belongs?”

By the way, I always put my towel in the bin and never leave it on the floor. I also don’t steal towels. But I do sometimes cross the street when the sign says Don’t Walk, and when I glance back I almost always see someone choosing to do the same, following my despicable lead.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Neediness

by Jim Hessler

I’m in a lot of public spaces where pop music is part of the background ambience, but I don’t listen much to it. It’s just there, filling in the spaces, making us feel better so we buy more stuff.

But the other day I found myself listening more intently to the songs at the coffee shop, and I noticed a pattern. Some of the song lyrics are pretty disturbing when you tease out the intent and the meaning. Popular music lyrics (and yes, the librettos of most operas) are often variations on one of these themes:

• You’re the only person in the world for me.  You are so amazingly spectacular in every way that I can’t stop thinking about you all the time. Without you I am nothing.
• If you only knew how much I loved you, you’d probably love me back.
• When I’m with you I’m really happy and when I’m not, life is hell.
• Since you left me I’ve started smoking crack and stealing candy from babies, and it’s all your fault.
• In fact, if you don’t return my love I’ll probably commit suicide in a very public and violent fashion.

It seems like the lyrics of these songs represent a real need to either 1) be validated as a human being by the passionate and possessive affection of another, or 2) be the center of someone else’s universe.

Neither of these options sounds all that healthy to me. And these needy and insecure emotions show up in bad ways – even in the workplace. If our happiness depends largely on how much other people admire and need us, we form an ego identity around what we perceive or hope their feelings are regarding our value and attractiveness. It’s nice to be needed and wanted and maybe it feeds our ego to be at the center of someone else’s universe, but in the end we need something more substantial and intrinsic to stand on.

And yes I get it – a song lyric like this probably wouldn’t see many copies:

Hey baby, let’s enter into a mature and interdependent relationship in which we aspire to grow to our full potential as human beings in a mutually beneficial partnership…

No insipid rhyming couplets there, but maybe our bosses could get behind it if that’s the song we listened to at work.  If we took those lyrics to heart, we’d be more motivated, more productive employees.

Making It Real: Female Bosses

As much as we’d like to deny it, were all sexist.  Every man, every woman among us.  This week, take an honest look at how your own sexism plays out in your work life.  For example, think about your female colleagues – in what ways would you regard them differently if they were male?  How do your expectations of your female colleagues compare with your expectations of your male colleagues? If your boss were the other gender, what difference would that make to you and your working relationship?

And once you’ve answered those questions for yourself, have a chat with a colleague or three about them – especially someone of the opposite gender.