Let’s hope not.

When I first read the details from Kara Swisher at All Things D, my initial reaction was, “WTF is going on at Yahoo!?” A Silicon Valley-based tech company mandating an end to flexible work arrangements is like spotting a white elk…and then watch it charge you, ready to gore you on its antlers. It doesn’t happen very often and it when it does, it usually ends with a bloody struggle. We’ve entered an age when the old ways of working are no longer valid, where productivity and effectiveness are not measured by whether you’re sitting at your assigned desk, in your building.

Which is why there is a very real possibility this isn’t at all about flexible work arrangements at all. It’s about a most pernicious form of a corporate lie. This is a layoff in disguise. By forcing remote employees to return to the office – it’s worth noting that many remote workers will have to uproot and move to make this happen – Yahoo! is effectively telling their folks to either love it or leave it. I hope I’m wrong about this, but I can’t help having a nagging suspicion that something very dodgy is happening here that will do nothing but ratchet up skepticism and cynicism among their employees. Maybe there’s open and honest dialogue taking place within Yahoo! that’s more truthful as to the real objective behind this new HR policy. I hope so, but judging by the employee anger reported by Swisher, I’m betting against it. How can there not be a sense of broken trust between management and employees? And even if you’re not a remote worker, wouldn’t you question what else is coming that will impact you? <href=”http://allthingsd.com/20130222/yahoo-ceo-mayer-now-requiring-all-remote-employees-to-not-be-remote/?mod=tweet#comment-809029317 “>Matt Mullenweg of Automattic won’t be the only one trying to poach smart talent from this mess…and I’d say he’ll get quite a few resumes this week.

And yet, it gets more interesting when we read the original internal email from Executive Vice President of People and Development, Jackie Reses, announcing the policy. Never mind that it’s marked as “YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD”. It was forwarded to Swisher and she shares it at the bottom of her follow-up post.

What really fascinates me is the second paragraph of the email:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

Note the implications. That collaboration and communication only happens when sharing the same physical space. That working outside of the office space leads to less-than-optimal performance. That “speed” and “quality” can only be managed when the boss is sitting down the hall. That Yahoo!’s employees don’t know how the hell to work independently, achieve objectives without constant management oversight, and share ideas using technologies like the phone, IM, web-conferencing, and the like. To which, I call bullshit. That’s lazy, backward, and potentially business-suicidal thinking. And that’s not an employee problem. It’s a management problem that will further sink the company, no matter how many times they try to redesign their home page.

So, which is it? Is Yahoo! just trying to surreptitiously lay off a portion of its workforce? Or admitting it doesn’t have a clue about how people can work together to solve real business problems in 2013? Or is Yahoo! just rotting from the head down?

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

When I was a kid, I loved building things. I remember my grandmother had a couple of small streams around her house. You’d often find me building dams on those streams with pebbles and mud. When the dams fell apart, I’d just rebuild and try to make them stronger. I had a closet full of Erector Sets, Legos, and other construction toys. I fondly recall that I particularly loved my KENSTRUCT Girder and Panel Construction Set made by Kenner Toys.

Perhaps you’re asking why the hell didn’t I become an architect. The short answer is: I honestly don’t know. While I didn’t really excel at math, I was a pretty good geometry student. And when I did drafting as part of wood shop in junior high, I truly enjoyed it. Maybe I didn’t get the right nudges as a kid. Or maybe I did and ignored them.

But that’s not really what this post is about. I don’t want to pine for a past that’s long gone. And I don’t want to miss out on the future that’s to come because I’m wallowing in regrets. Instead, I want to honor the creative spirit that still resides in me. Because I still love to build things.

I taught myself HTML back in 1998 (and later CSS) so I could build a website for my organization. I taught myself the basics of relational database design so I could build a better way to manage customer information. I took a significant risk with a job so I could build a customer service team.

Why should being an entrepreneur be any different? I now find myself building all kinds of new things. I’m building a business called inspectiv and creating something I truly believe companies need: help improving their customer experience. I’m also working on an exciting side project as a product manager so I can help build something a group of customers desperately want and need. I’m writing a book on how to rediscover purpose in our work. And I’m helping my wife build her business – Austin Carrie Works – by delivering marketing and branding insight to her clients.

As an entrepreneur, I get the chance to be an architect every day. My raw materials may be different. And my finished product may be different, too. But everything I do is intended to bring an idea from my imagination into reality.

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)