Funny how things don’t really change. In our businesses, we still adhere to the teachings of the Cult of Best Practices. We easily swallow conventional wisdom. We seek out industry benchmarks in order to know if our own mediocrity matches up to that of other companies. In short, we’re scared shitless to take the risk of going against dogma.

Except now, dogma has taken on a much wider definition.

The dogma of success. The dogma of perfection. The dogma of looking like we’ve always got our shit together. The dogma of needing that new Lexus. The dogma of being an easygoing, likable, agreeable employee. We all have some sort of dogma getting in our way. Well, that needs to end. Now.

It’s time for a lot more heretical thinking and doing.

What does being a heretic mean?
It means giving up best practices.
It means asking “Why?”…a lot.
It means going out on a limb and staying there.
It means having the guts to creatively destroy anything that’s old and busted.

What’s in it for us? Why not just stay easygoing, likable, and agreeable? Why not just keep playing it safe? Because safe is an illusion. Worse, safe is a trap that keeps us from fully igniting the fire of our imaginations and chasing new ideas that can truly change the world. Don’t know about you but I’m sick to death of playing it all so damn safe. I’m ready to commit random acts of heresy.

So…what dogma are you willing to give the finger to today? Share yours and I’ll share mine. Let’s go.

This is my first foray into audioblogging. Hope you enjoy it!

Let’s do something different this year. I’ve always had a passion for leadership and the work it takes to be a better leader in both attitude and action. That’s why I’ve decided the theme for 2011 will be Leadership. Don’t worry…the main topics of marketing, customer experience, and organizational culture will still be the primary focus of this blog and Bailey WorkPlay. We’ll just look at them primarily through the lens of leadership. What does this mean? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure yet, and that’s okay. We’ll explore this together. Here are some of the issues and questions I have in mind:

Marketing
The practice of marketing has changed significantly over the past few years. How can a leadership-focused marketing approach change how we communicate with customers and prospects?

Customer Experience
If a terrific customer experience is so vital to business health, why do so many businesses still struggle to make it happen? How would a leadership-focused effort improve the relationship between customer and business? And are there parallels between customer experience and an improved employee experience?

Organizational Culture
As an anthropologist, I believe culture is a wonderfully complex thing. It’s not something that can be controlled or engineered; rather, it can be merely guided. What role does leadership play in guiding the cultures within our organizations?

You have a part to play here, too. What questions do you have related to leadership? What problems do you face in executing marketing strategy or creating a better customer experience that would be improved with a stronger leadership focus? I hope that we have the opportunity to co-create something here together that makes our selves and our organizations even more successful in 2011. If you’re on Twitter, we’ll be using the hashtag #Leadership2011.

I can’t wait to get this year started. Let’s make it a great one together.

Companies spend billions on rent, offices, and office equipment so their employees will have a great place to work. However, when you ask people where they go when they really need to get something done, you’ll rarely hear them say it’s the office.

Further, he writes,

I don’t blame people for not wanting to be at the office. I blame the office. The modern office has become an interruption factory. You can’t get work done at work anymore.

Sorry Jason but you completely wimped out in this article. “The office” is an inanimate object and an easy target for scorn. Why not call out your peers in the executive suite for their apparent lack of interest and commitment in making the workplace better? Why not at least start to address the real reasons for why many offices don’t work right now? Maybe that’s not fair to ask considering that CNN probably asked for a typical fluff piece.

The “office” is just a container for all the human interactions and emotions that take place within it. If the office is seen as nothing more than a place for constant interruptions, for unproductive meetings, and for pointless interactions, is that really the fault of a place…or the fault of those individuals who inhabit it?

Here’s another thought: instead of just dumping on the workplace experience, let’s be more adventurous in how we try to fix it.

1. Let’s stop with the idiotic band-aids. Electing to skip a meeting, spend a day not talking to anyone, and collaborating solely through IM isn’t going to solve anything – short- or long-term. Actually, it just makes a mockery of the real issues that keep business from functioning full throttle.

2. Let’s realize what the workplace actually is. From the C-Level down, there must be a renewal in how we think about the value of employee interactions in business. What we’ve come to know as the “workplace” is an organic community, not a machine that can be engineered, where employees are just simple cogs. But that’s what most execs and managers have been trained to believe through decades of traditional organizational thought.

3. Let’s start dealing with the real problem. Improving the workplace isn’t merely a matter of action, it involves a change in thinking. But if we ignore the problems of poor communications, ineffectual relationships, and meaningless work, they’ll continue to persist. So what do we want to see more of in our workplaces? It’s time to stop putting on the band-aids, folks. Are you with me?

Yesterday, I sat in a workshop led by Tom Zender and based on his book, God Goes to Work: New Thought Paths to Prosperity and Profits. If you’ve been with me for a while, you might remember I used to write a blog called Alchemy of Soulful Work. As a matter of fact, I still own www.alchemyofsoulfulwork.com for the day when I get off my rear to write the book I’ve long planned to write.

It was an engaging and inspiring workshop where we were challenged to think how we could bring more of our spirituality to the workplace. Now before you get all squeamish that we participants were being prodded to proselytize, let me ease your concerns. In the workshop (and in my own personal belief) spirituality is not the same as religion – they are two very different animals. In fact, spirituality is a cornerstone to my philosophy behind soulful work.

I can speak from personal example that I’m a much better leader when I’m spiritually centered. I’m a better manager when I choose to see the inherent goodness and potential of my employees. I’m a much better employee when I operate from a we-focused mentality and not get caught up in the politics that sometimes appear around me. See, it’s not about beating people over the head with prayer and Jesus and religion. It’s all about being a positive yet non-invasive source of light in an environment that often desperately needs it.

All of which leads to a question: what stops us from practicing soulful work? Why do we choose to believe we have to divorce our spiritual life from our working life? Let’s start a dialogue and feel free to debate these questions.

Thanks to the good folks at Freelance Austin for offering me a stage to talk to their members.

Once upon a time I was a hiring manager, and perhaps if fate has its way again, I’ll be in a position with this type of responsibility again soon. But for now, I’m on the other side of the desk. After reviewing some recent hires by prominent organizations, a rather interesting pattern emerged: how similar the hires are to each other…and to the hiring manager.

Hiring people like us is safe. It means we don’t have to challenge our own comfort zones. We’re getting people who fit a mold that we’ve already defined as “successful.” But I’ll argue these reasons are built on bad assumptions, made worse by the constant pressures of change and innovation. Hiring people who fit a highly pre-defined mold is a sure path toward stagnation. If you’re in a hiring position, here are a few questions to consider:

• If you hire people with a similar background as you, do you think you’ll be getting the breadth of expertise and thinking necessary for your team’s and organization’s success?
• If you hire people who you think are going to usually agree with you, are going to get divergent outlooks to fill in your own and your team’s blind spots?
• If you hire people just like you, are you sure you know why?

I’ve been there and intimately know the challenges of making the best hires possible. Just be mindful of why you’re hiring a particular skillset or background. Is it to mimic your own identity and preferred beliefs of past success? Or is it to add greater depth and diversity of ideas to your team and organization?

photo credit: tsuda (via Flickr)

Now I’ve heard plenty of people talk about the necessity of getting things out of my head and onto paper or a screen – something visible so I don’t have to try to remember it all. It’s that process of trying to mentally corral all those sundry tasks needing to be done where trouble lies for most of us. When was the last time you knew you had several things to do, but couldn’t remember them all? Or worse yet, knew exactly all the things that had to be done that day and felt overcome by a feeling of hyperanxious dread?

That last feeling was mine this morning…until I heard this story on NPR’s Morning Edition. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich from Radiolab talked about an interesting experiment conducted by Stanford University professor Baba Shiv. It turns out that when we store all of these tasks (or anything really) inside our brain’s short-term memory, our rational self becomes overloaded giving our emotional self space to take over. It certainly gives greater insight into the panicky feeling I was wrestling with earlier today.

Here’s the page for Willpower and the Slacker Brain (but definitely listen to the audio story…it’s both entertaining and enlightening):

What do you think? Make sense to you?

photo credit: kristinized (via Flicker)

Vince Young’s story is still unfolding but haven’t we all been in his shoes before? I’m thinking specifically about our work. We’re good at what we do and receive accolades from our managers. Then, we make a mistake and are demoted to some form of a lesser role in the organization. Or we find ourselves entangled in a layoff. Or we simply find ourselves burnt out of the job. It becomes easy to just stop caring and giving our best. This quote from Young as told to Sports Illustrated’s Peter King shows how important it is to stay out of the muck and mire of self-defeating, internal dialogue.

A couple of times last year, when he was most frustrated, Vince Young would text Kobe Bryant, who had become something of a mentor. He’d write something like, “Man, I wanna play so bad. What do I do?” The answer would always come back from Bryant with something like this: “Stay focused. Work on your craft.”

When we’re faced with bad situations in our work, often the best solution is to remember that its temporary and can turn around at any point. We need to stay focused and committed to improving our selves and our capabilities. You never know when you’ll be asked to return to the starting lineup with a chance to be even better than before.

Management decrees (oh alright, if it makes you feel better we’ll call them “decisions”) often come from the same thinking: “This is a good decision from my vantage point and employees will just need to accept it.” These decisions don’t need to be weighed against whether they make sense to the employee, whether they mesh with their day-to-day experience, whether they make their working lives easier. The employee is supposed to follow the orders because the individual proclaiming them is their king boss.

For a more modern day example, CNN reports the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are seriously contemplating the idea of creating a tobacco-free military. At a surface level, it sounds honorable and makes sense since so many VA hospitals cope with the fallout of tobacco-related illnesses. But dig a little deeper and it shows the same misguided thinking that is the hallmark of one-way managerial decision-making: As your boss, I know what’s best and while I may pretend to care about what you think, I really don’t care enough to listen. If the Pentagon did listen, these are the things they might actually hear:

“When you’re tired and you’ve been going days on end with minimum sleep, and you are not getting the proper meals on time, that hit of tobacco can make a difference,” said Gen. Russel Honore, who was in charge of the Army’s training programs before he retired.

Other soldiers questioned whether this was a good time to stamp out smoking, given the Army’s concern with a high suicide rate. “For some, unfortunately, they feel that smoking is their stress relief. Well if you take it away, what is the replacement?” said Sgt. 1st Class Gary Johnson.

(Note: Let me say that I’m not advocating smoking or tobacco use. I enjoy an occasional cigar with friends, but also fully know the health risks. I’ve had my share of relatives who’ve dealt with the connected illnesses such as cancer and emphysema. But if you haven’t noticed, this blogpost isn’t about tobacco…it’s really about the hubris of managerial decision-making.)

There is something to be learned from getting out from behind the desk, the clinical wording of studies and the blind paternalism that passes for managerial decision-making. Demanding and decreeing change will likely get you nowhere at best; it might just cost you respect and influence among your employees. Bring your people into the decision-making process and learn how decisions will interplay with their daily working reality. Your decisions will be more relevant and your chances of having filth flung at you during company meetings will be lessened.