2013-05-25T15:06:41-04:00 Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=edward-muzio Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Edward Muzio Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2782724 2013-03-19T17:00:39-04:00 2013-05-19T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
It doesn't sound too difficult since only two people in the house leave things there. Yet, for months, I failed.

I did all the right things. I articulated a positive end state, we agreed upon the benefits of it, and we committed to new behaviors. I'm not saying I launched a full corporate change program at home, but I tried hard. And I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm a guy who does behavioral change for a living.

Did I mention that I failed -- miserably?

It would be nice to blame the people who wouldn't cooperate, but half of them were me. I was the one who wanted the change, and I failed repeatedly to bring my behavior into alignment with it. This was irrefutable: every evening, half the content in the junk pile was mine.

And so, every evening, I'd categorize each piece in the junk pile and move it to its proper place, all while blathering on about keeping the counter clean. Bag It and Nag It: a labor-intensive, band-aid solution that lasted until about 10 a.m. the next day.

This probably sounds familiar if you've tried to change group behaviors at work. Maybe you're trying to get people to interact more respectfully, or to be more customer-focused, or to file reports on time. You assemble everybody, agree on the future state, generate a plan and some excitement, and then... nothing changes. So you name the behavior, put up posters about it in conference rooms, and make it a standing item at the weekly meeting. Bag It and Nag It. Unfortunately, if you're honest with yourself, you see little progress, from "them" and from you. But at least you're working on it and you can feel good about your efforts toward your change program.

Let's get back to my problematic counter. As it turned out, my solution didn't require a change program... or a patented approach to collaborative enablement, or a cloud-based database of competencies and values, or any other such impressive thing. Instead, we put four bar stools along the length of the counter.

Boring, right?

It was indeed boring -- and accidental. We'd been shopping for awhile and finally discovered a set of stools that we liked. The day I put them in place, the counter cleared up, our miscellany found new homes, and my Bag It and Nag It routine evaporated. Although we don't eat at the breakfast bar often, although there are no new placemats occupying space in front of the stools, although the counter is still just as close to the front door and just as open and available as ever, the change happened anyway, without fanfare.

It didn't take a program. It only took a nudge.

Previously, you entered the house and saw a large, convenient location to drop anything on hand. Now, you enter the house and see a place where someone might sit and enjoy a drink or meal. Whether or not anyone is sitting in them, the stools teach you the purpose of the space. Now, you're no more inclined to throw car keys and mail on the counter than you would be to drop them in a flowerpot or to toss them in the fridge. That's not what the space is for.

Let's go back to the workplace. Remember that change you were trying to make? Remember the meetings, the jazzy posters, the constant attention, and the blossoming change program? Remember the lack of progress?

Don't misunderstand; I support well-managed programs. Launching a product, growing a manufacturing line, and entering a new market require strategizing, planning, publicizing and energizing. Everyone needs to understand the goal and get on the same page about the plan. That's the stuff of good change programs.

But changing behavioral patterns -- changing culture -- is different. It's a subtle, gradual process. Current behavior grows from previous environmental cues; people mostly behave in the way the environment has taught them they should. If conversations aren't respectful, disrespectful speaking has been modeled. If focus isn't on customers, another group has been demanding it. If reports aren't filed on time, something else has been more important. Trying to change behaviors like these with a buzz word, a plan, a party, and a program is a futile recipe for Bag It and Nag It. You'll get busy and accomplish little.

The trick, instead, is to find the environmental "nudges" that will cause the system to teach the new behaviors -- to figure out where to put the bar stools. Maybe this means repeatedly having some highly visible, respectful conversations. Maybe it means incentivizing customer request resolution times instead of data entry. Maybe it means moving a due date out of the busiest week of the month.

In my work, "placing the bar stools" often translates into introducing new behaviors that complement rather than conflict with the current state -- things like improved decision-making processes. Such changes must be acceptable both in terms of visible and invisible requirements, which is no small feat as survival and power dynamics come into play. But it can be done.

When we succeed, change occurs subtly and without fanfare. It's not a program; it's a nudge. People adopt new behaviors, they forget old ones, and it doesn't feel like we did much. It's hard, in fact, to brag about it at all.

So, how can you nudge culture without becoming a nag? That depends upon your current culture and your desired change; it's something you must discover yourself. But one thing is certain: If you're running around every day playing Bag It and Nag It, spending more and more time on your change program, and getting nowhere, then it's probably time to start looking for bar stools.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2832161 2013-03-08T18:57:23-05:00 2013-05-08T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ SXSWedu, waiting to hear Bill Gates deliver the closing keynote and pondering a question my wife asked me this morning: Are you going to talk to him afterward?

My first instinct was to say no. I know he'll be barraged with fans after his talk, if he even chooses to stick around at all. That line doesn't sound too appealing. More importantly, I don't have anything important to say to him. At least, nothing that makes the mob scene seem worthwhile.

That was my answer when she asked. But now, I'm thinking a little differently. In fact, I've come up with something that I would very much like to say to him: "Thank you."

This didn't occur to me last night because, to be honest, it's not that obvious. I don't know Mr. Gates, I'm not making a living selling PCs, and I never worked at Microsoft or with his foundation.

But, upon further reflection, I missed something important. I'm sitting here in the early part of being middle aged, I have my own business consulting with companies of all sizes to increase output and reduce stress, and I'm well on my way to becoming one of the world's foremost experts on teaching groups of people how to interact with each other most optimally. I'm already doing things in that arena that only a handful of others in the world know how to do. From my point of view, I have a pretty sweet job.

And, in a very specific way, I have Bill Gates to thank for that.

I began my career at Intel, where the seeds of what I now know were first planted. I started as an entry level engineer, straight out of school, and over the course of about 10 years, I moved upwards and into management and leadership roles, always with increasing complexity.

My upward and lateral career mobility provided the foundation upon which I now rely to run my business and support my clients. That movement was made possible by the tremendous growth in the semiconductor industry in which I worked. And that growth stemmed from the initial insight and hard work of a very small number of people, among the most important of whom was Bill Gates.

Let's face it, not many people run worldwide, cross-industry, future generation technical development programs at age 25. I did. I was given the opportunity party because I was capable of doing it, and partly because the job needed doing. Bill Gates was instrumental in creating the world which gave me the opportunities which I continue to benefit from today.

He, of course, has no idea of my existence, much less of my gratitude. This morning, sitting here, it occurs to me that he should.

Maybe he doesn't care. It's easy to imagine that he has more important things to hear about than me. But having worked with a large number of leaders, I happen to know that the good ones rarely perceive even a small fraction of the good they do, or the positive ripple effects they create. That's the reason behind my newfound desire to talk with Mr. Gates, and it's also the concept underlying the two main points I felt were worth the pain of pecking out this post on my iPhone.

First, if you're a leader or manager, don't forget that your behavior has ripple effects into the lives and futures of others, and in ways you probably can't imagine. A father makes or misses his young child's theater or sports event because of how you manage. A teen decides to follow in mother's footsteps, or not, based upon how well mom seems to be treated at work. Economies and opportunities emerge next year based upon how well you run your business this year.

Second, don't neglect the other half of the equation. Your life was almost certainly made better by a supervisor, manager, or leader along the way -- probably by many more than one. If you get the opportunity, say thanks. It's a great way to encourage more of what we really need: good leadership and management at all levels.

-------
Post script: As it turned out, Mr. Gates had to depart immediately following his remarks, so I didn't get a chance to speak with him. But, who knows, maybe he'll read this post. I hope so.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2542840 2013-01-20T01:00:20-05:00 2013-03-21T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
But we survived, as most all movers do. And as things settle down and I grow tired of unpacking, I find myself with a little more energy to reflect upon the current events most prominent in the media. As I do, I find myself more certain than ever of our need for complex thinking and problem solving. We're not going to solve the problems that plague us in society and business until we incorporate sufficient complexity into our solutions.

Here's a mini-experiment to illustrate my point: For part one, choose a recent problem or scandal that's received sufficient media coverage to be commonly recognized. It can be gravely serious, like the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy,* or more absurd, like Manti Te'o and his fictitious girlfriend. Now, choose 10 acquaintances, ask them what they think, and notice their answers. Try not to share your thoughts, just listen for theirs.

I suspect the majority of responses you'll get will be in the form of definitive statements. Conversations about Sandy Hook will likely lead to strong opinions (for and against) gun control, mental health programs, and individual responsibility. Talking about Manti Te'o will lead to one-sided statements about how Mr. Te'o should be punished, or how he should be absolved. No matter the topic, if you question the person's response or offer a contrary opinion, you'll most likely get stronger and stronger statements of the same position. It would be pretty easy to get into an argument here.

Don't fall for it. Instead, move on to part two: Wait a few weeks, and then approach the same individuals again. This time, tell them that you have a friend who needs to move across the country and is weighing the financial and logistical pros and cons of hiring professional movers versus renting a truck and doing it himself. Again, ask them what they think and notice their answers.

If your experience is like mine, you'll get very different types of answers this time around. Sure, your conversational partner's first answer will probably be his or her own preference. But a little questioning here is much less likely to lead to an argument. "You say you'd hire movers no matter what," you might ask, "but what if I told you the extra cost is enough to landscape the new house?" Or, "Sure, you and I might choose to rent a truck and do it ourselves, but my friend doesn't have a drivers' license." It's much more difficult to end up in an argument here; pretty quickly, you'll find your way into the exploration of pros and cons.

I did this mini-experiment entirely by accident over the last few months, but it taught me an important lesson: Exploring real solutions instead of entrenching ourselves in opinions and positions is not something we need to learn; it's something we need to do. The person who readily acknowledges in one conversation that every decision has tradeoffs, and then turns around 10 minutes later and declares that the answer to our economic problems is the obliteration of one of our political parties doesn't lack the skill of complex thinking and problem solving. He or she simply isn't using that skill.

I could ask why. I could do some research and come back with the causes and corrections for this phenomenon. But, since I have so much unpacking to do, I hope you'll allow me to take a shortcut. We don't really need a "why" -- all we need is a solution. And we know from experiential learning that the key to positively influencing adult behavior lies in getting individuals to practice existing skills in novel contexts. Our solution, therefore, is simple: We must take our existing complex thinking and problem-solving skills and use them more often.

The next time you're making small talk about current events and you find yourself ready to argue for an oversimplified, blanket solution to a complex problem, pause for a moment. Fully engage your cognitive powers and think through the myriad considerations involved in a simple decision like "rental truck vs. professional movers." Then, appreciate how the issue you're discussing has many more interdependencies, considerations, and unknowns than the simple dilemma. When you find yourself reflecting more than speaking, asking more than telling, and working harder at understanding the situation than you are at defending your position, you'll know you're headed in the right direction.

I'd very much like to join you in one of those conversations. In fact, they're the only kind of conversations I really want to have anymore. Unfortunately, I'll be too busy unpacking.


*Author's note: I struggled heavily with whether to bring up Sandy Hook in this article, especially side-by-side with such a relatively inane "current event." The truth is that I still find it quite difficult to talk about and even think about Sandy Hook, and my heart goes out to each of the victims and their families. It was very tempting here to name a few less traumatic events and leave it at that. But I believe that if we as a society are to learn from our catastrophes and prevent them recurring, the topic of this article -- leveraging our complex thinking and problem solving skills to find real solutions -- is absolutely essential.

For more by Edward Muzio, click here.

For more on emotional intelligence, click here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2102133 2012-11-20T14:01:59-05:00 2013-01-20T05:12:01-05:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
Actually, that may not be so lucky for them, or for you. Your perspective on employee engagement creates a trap, and it's one into which many of your fellow Illuminati are falling. Ironically, it's caused primarily by your increased attention to engagement relative to your less evolved peers.

Those lesser managers just don't care if their employees are engaged or not. Some of them don't even know it! They stumble through their management careers under the misconception that if the employees aren't happy, it's the employees' problem. Employees can quit if they want to, and be replaced. The unenlightened have no grasp of the hard and soft costs of disengagement.

They're wrong, of course, and that's how the trap is set: If what they're doing is wrong, the opposite of what they're doing must be right. So if not knowing or caring whether your employees are engaged is wrong, then taking full responsibility for your employees' engagement must be right.

And so, in proper highly-evolved form, you take ownership. You ask employees, in person and via survey, whether they're engaged and joyful at work. On its face, it's a reasonable line of questioning: "How well are we doing at keeping you engaged, and how can we do better?"

The trap slams shut. You've just notified you're employees that it's your job to keep them happy. They respond with a list of demands. They can't be happy until they're given higher salary, greater responsibility, a more impressive title, a view, and a bean bag chair. But there are only so many raises to go around, so many projects to do and titles to have, and so many square feet in which to pile the bean bags. So you find yourself negotiating: Give Penny the promotion, Tammy the Title, and William the window. And have HR announce that bean bags pose a trip hazard.

Suddenly, nobody's happy. You've failed at employee engagement, because you can't give them what they want. But where did it all go wrong? Was it overly demanding employees, scarce salary budgets, or draconian job title guidelines?

Sorry, but it was you. No matter how well-meaning you are, "I'll make you happy" is a recipe for disaster, at work and in teen romance. When you try to take responsibility for another person's happiness, you create a dysfunctional, dependent relationship.

Avoid the trap. Attend to engagement without promising happiness. Build an environment that allows people to grow without putting yourself in the role of Santa Claus. Tell employees it's up to them to find their own engagement, and up to you to encourage and support them in doing so. Be honest about what needs to get done for your team to succeed, and the fact that it won't all be fun. And teach employees to troubleshoot their own engagement issues. Help them to work toward what they most enjoy even as they perform their jobs well today.

As your employees improve at their current jobs, they'll have more options and directions in which to grow. As they learn to troubleshooting engagement problems and recognize what they enjoy, they'll move into work that engages them at a higher level. Over time, the entire system will evolve toward greater employee engagement, and attract even more talent. In the process, it will thrive.

That's engagement done right. It's exciting, it's positive, it attracts and retains great employees, and it builds community through productivity. And, it's better than a giant pile of bean bag chairs.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1831699 2012-08-31T13:03:49-04:00 2012-10-31T05:12:02-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
Congratulations, you're amazing. Now, please quit screwing it up.

Maybe I should start by saying more about your intelligence and importance, because I'm not kidding about this. It's been proven time and again that we humans develop a sense of what's acceptable by watching what other people do, especially when we're unsure ourselves. Thanks to the internet, your actions are now on display to a larger audience than ever before. And since the internet is relatively new, socially speaking, we're all still figuring out how best to use it to interact with each other. Your ability to exist in such a complex context proves your intelligence, and every action you take in that context today carries the implicit suggestion that other people should repeat that pattern tomorrow. You are a teacher, with influence and reach your parents and ancestors never dreamed of having.

Moreover, behavioral patterns tend to spread beyond the contexts in which they originate; what we learn in one situation, we practice in others. This means your actions teach people how to behave not only on the internet, but also off of it! The behaviors you demonstrate in blogs and social media sites today are likely to turn up in marriages, familial relationships, and workplace interactions tomorrow.

You're really that important.

So please keep this in mind -- scribble it in crayon it across your monitor if you have to -- as you cease and desist your demonstrations of three positively horrendous behavioral patterns on the web.

First, stop commenting or blogging when your only intention is to show how dumb someone else is, and/or how smart you are.

There's no value here. Showboating and name-calling does not change the "dumb" person's mind, it does not make you look intelligent, and it does not inspire any useful conversation. All it does is to encourage both you and the other person to become entrenched and inflexible, and to encourage everyone watching to join the fray by egging on one side or the other. This goes way beyond merely wasting time and energy: Once all the heels are dug in, and everyone has committed publicly to their alleged opinions, nobody is willing to learn more, even when new information arises.

That's right, each time you practice this behavior, you cause yourself and everyone you involve to become less able to learn -- which, since things constantly evolve, can only translate to one outcome over time: You all get a little dumber.

Second, stop commenting or blogging when you feel an overwhelming need to repeatedly share a personal traumatic experience -- especially if you are using that experience as an excuse to write angrily about why nobody can understand your position.

Life gives all of us negative experiences, sometimes overwhelming ones. Writing out your stories can help you to put them into context, to get perspective, and to recover from pain or setback. Journaling, however, is a private affair, shared with a select few (if anyone). The internet, on the other hand, is a broadcasting system, not a therapeutic system. Work through your experiences in the private counsel of an appropriate support network -- perhaps family, friends, or a therapist -- before you admonish your boss, your kid's teacher, and an untold number of strangers for their inability to understand your pain.

Of course, I'm not saying that you shouldn't share a relevant story or a personal anecdote as part of an online dialogue. But if you're sharing it mainly to create an emotional response -- or if you're sharing the same traumatic tale repeatedly -- you're likely entrenching yourself in the emotion you're trying (and probably failing) to create in others. Your own ability to move beyond your trauma will be more difficult if you become too publicly committed to your pain. And, even if your conclusions and viewpoint never do change, your indictment of such a wide audience for their failure to care about your needs only reflects badly upon you, not upon them.

Third, stop relaying opinions fed to you by others as if they were your own.

If your political party, religious organization, parent, spouse, employer, or favorite brand of toothpaste has a standard position on an issue, and you want to state it, fine -- but give credit where credit is due. Disclose that the origin of the position is not you. If you agree, wholly or partly, explain the reason for your own position independently of the canned argument provided for you. Try also to include in your comments room for the notion that some people will disagree. Consider listing one or two reasons why someone might see the issue differently, and addressing those without employing personal attacks. You have probably changed your own mind in the past, which means it could happen again in the future. Try not to break ties with everyone who thinks differently.

Actually, you probably should avoid allowing any opinion to limit who you are, place bounds on your interactions, or alienate you -- but this is especially true of opinions that aren't even yours! Make it a habit both to think independently and to show that you do. Otherwise, as you become entrenched in the beliefs of others, and isolated from those who might disagree, you will have given away your precious right to your own thoughts, and encouraged others to do the same.

That's it, just three changes: Don't try to make other people look stupid, don't try to create emotion using your personal traumas, and don't state opinions formed by others as if they were your own. Maybe I'm wrong, but these seem like reasonable requests. They might require a little extra effort, but I'd argue it's energy well spent since it can only improve your reputation, increase your credibility, and make you a role model of useful, functional interactive patterns.

Frankly, it's the only way of comporting yourself on the internet that befits your high levels of intelligence and influence on our shared future. So please, start today. Quit screwing things up.

For more by Edward Muzio, click here.

For more on wisdom, click here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1765517 2012-08-13T10:40:12-04:00 2012-10-13T05:12:11-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ make you slow down, and they don't tell you anything you don't already know. And yet, if you have one on your daily commute like I do, you know how that digital display of speed inspires nearly every driver to tap their brakes, in a way a normal speed limit sign never has.

Why is that digital roadside display so much more powerful than the same information when it's displayed on your dashboard? The answer, it turns out, contains the secrets of getting people to adjust their performance not just on the road, but at work too.

First and foremost, the roadside display presents objective feedback as an interrupt. The information is factual, and it's presented in on a sign that's bright, colorful, dynamic, and a little unusual. And while it's easy to unconsciously tune out the information we see regularly -- speed limit signs being one of them -- it's a lot harder to tune out something that interrupts your normal perceptions with something unexpected. So, the information is more likely to get through your filtration system and reach your awareness.

I've written about automotive interrupts before. If you've ever been in a room with a group of people and a TV in the background -- in a busy hotel lobby, for example -- you already know the power of an interrupt. The news blares from the TV continuously, and is more or less ignored by most hotel employees and patrons as they go about their business. But if a sharp tone emanates from the TV, and the words "we interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special update" are uttered, attention shifts. Most conversations stop, and most eyes turn toward the screen. Interruptions win attention.

Besides being an interrupt, the speed limit display is also a form of instant feedback. That's the second reason for its effectiveness: It shows you exactly how fast you're going in comparison with the standard. Sure, you could garner the same information by reading a conventional speed limit sign, and then checking your own speedometer by comparison. But that would require two steps -- reading here and reading there -- plus the cognitive action of comparison. While that's not terribly difficult to do, it's a whole lot easier not to do it. As a result, you just keep driving without making changes. But when the work is done for you -- when you see your speed side by side with the limit -- in a fraction of a second you know how your performance compares with the guideline. Now, you're left to decide what to do with that information.

That's the reason fundraisers like to display a thermometer or other graphic indicating how much money has been raised relative to a preset target. The graphic does the work for you, instantly demonstrating how much more is needed. You're left with only one assignment: to decide how to act upon the fact that there's a gap.

Speaking of information, the third reason that the digital speed limit sign is so effective is that it's showing your speed not just to you, but to other drivers as well. If you're speeding, people are going to know it! So, even though it's displaying objective data -- and not judging you in any way -- the roadside sign is telling other people what you're doing, thereby placing social pressure on you to conform.

Extensive psychological research has repeatedly proven that other people influence both our perceptions and our willingness to act. As it turns out, the question of whether you're willing to break with social norms -- to speed, in this case -- most likely has a different answer based upon whether others will know that you're doing it. By the way, the research is pretty convincing that you'll disagree with that last statement -- asserting your autonomy from such pressures -- and that you'll be wrong. When it's apparent that others can see what you're doing -- when your speed is posted on a billboard, side by side with the posted limit it exceeds -- you feel much more pressure to correct the situation than you would if the information were displayed privately in your car.

Finally, the roadside sign system works because the correction is self-policed. I suppose there have been instances of police with radar traps set up adjacent to the digital displays, but in general you don't usually see the two together. The digital displays give you actionable information, but they leave the decisions about what to do with the information to you. Thanks to the social pressure, you're likely to bring yourself into compliance.

There's a good chance that the self-policing increases the effectiveness of the system. When you pass a live radar trap, the control is externally imposed. So you slow down, pass the trap, and speed up again, with the goal of avoiding a ticket. But when you pass the digital sign, you make the decision to slow down on your own -- or at least you think you do, since you're unlikely to recognize the social pressures involved. And since it feels like your decision, you're a lot more committed to it. Think of the difference between how you work for a boss who watches over your shoulder, and one who tells you she's relying on you to check yourself: You're a lot more committed when the responsibility is yours.

How can you apply the principles of the digital speed limit sign to the workplace?

Let's imagine you have an employee who does some sort of routine work, and is falling short of the target production rate. First, find a way for the objective feedback to interrupt the person as she works: Post a checklist on the wall in front of her desk where she is asked to mark off each task as she completes it. Second, make the difference between current and expected performance clear: Design the checklist to contain the target number of items expected for the day, so she can see how far she has progressed by how many items are left unmarked. Third, make it visible to others: have someone come by once a day and comment positively if she is ahead of schedule. Fourth, make the system non-judgmental and self-policing: don't allow that reviewer to comment negatively if she is behind schedule, and don't allow her management to collect her checklist at the end of the day. Allow her to correct herself.

Implement that system, and your employee's output is likely to jump up. And that's not just me speaking hypothetically. The example comes from a performance improvement case study that yielded substantial productivity improvements.

So the next time you pass a digital speed limit display, remember: it's not just a way to get everyone to slow down -- it's a model for changing human performance, subtly and effectively.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1638595 2012-07-02T12:03:15-04:00 2012-09-01T05:12:12-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
I'm not looking at economic indicators, unemployment rates, or trade balances, mind you. My optimism is fueled by the way some of my favorite businesses seem to be treating their customers. Recently, some well-known businesses have become so bullish on our economy that they don't even want my money.

Want proof?

First up is a big-box retailer. It's a place my wife and I shop regularly; a place that also appeared regularly on my mother's shopping agenda when I was a child. Over the years I've grown to respect this organization for both quality and service. Their prices are good, and when I've needed help, it's been there.

In this case, I happened to arrive about ten minutes prior to closing time. It wasn't just me, mind you: a good number of customers filed in alongside me that evening. And as we crowded toward the door, I looked up at the employee stationed there, ready to smile my hello.

"The store is closing in seven minutes," he glowered in return. "Move to the back of the store first, then shop toward the front." I listened with surprise as he repeated his mantra over and over again, to customers ahead of me and behind me, until I was out of earshot.

In my mind, a cartoon: I see myself in a crowd of customers, standing in the parking lot, our fists filled with cash and held high in the air. The greeter faces us, corporate logo on his vest, with his arms crossed, scowling: "If you wanted to give us that money, you should have planned ahead. Now, it's inconvenient for us to take it."

Story number two takes place at the drop-off center for a major nationwide shipper, the one I trust to move quite a lot of materials and equipment around the country for my keynotes and training sessions. They're quick and efficient, and over the years their record with me has been nearly perfect, with any glitches getting dealt with quickly and politely.

On this recent day, I happened to be dropping off a cardboard box, a suitcase of materials, and a shipping tube. As always, my outbound shipments bore pre-printed labels that direct bill my corporate account. All I needed from the clerk was for him to take the materials from me. That's all. Just take them.

He began by notifying me that my box wasn't allowable because I re-used it. Only brand new, never-used boxes are allowed, he chastised. Next, he informed me that I shouldn't be shipping suitcases at all. Soon, he alleged, they planned to stop accepting suitcases entirely -- and I should know that. Finally, he found fault with the way my tube was taped. If I don't know how to use the tube, he groused, I shouldn't try. His objections -- all of which turned out to be factually false, by the way -- each led to a minor skirmish, ending with him begrudgingly agreeing to do me a favor and accept the shipment -- but just this once.

Another mental cartoon: I should have brought a burly assistant with me to hold this clerk down, so that I could more easily stuff my money into his pockets.

Story number three happens aboard one of my favorite airlines. They have good prices, good service, and good performance, and they've been a standard part of my business for years. They don't even lose my bags!

On a recent afternoon I sat on a plane, at the gate, during boarding. It was summer, in Texas, and it was hot outside. And, it was hot inside. The interior was easily eighty degrees and warming. Everyone was sweating, and my wife and a few others had begun to complain that they felt dizzy. Dizzy! It was so hot, in other words, that passengers were experiencing adverse health effects. So I did what seemed reasonable: I asked a flight attendant to request that the captain crank up some air.

"Oh yeah, right," came her surprising reply. "They don't listen to us. But they'll listen to you -- you should write a letter when you get home." Stunned, I pointed out that a letter next week wouldn't help my dizzy wife now. But the flight attendant didn't really answer. She just shook her head and mumbled something about corporate policies associated with not running the air conditioner at the gate.

One more mental cartoon, aided perhaps by a bit of heatstroke: my flight attendant sits in customer service training class. "Remember," the instructor cautions, "by the time you meet our customers, we've already got their money once. Who cares about next time?"

If you run a business, at any level, I don't need to tell you that our climb out of recession is in its early stages -- so we hope! You, like every other business, have been forced to do more with less over the last several years -- staffing, training, and support systems have often been compromised. So as things turn up, even just a little, the stress of those cuts is magnified. Your people are more overwhelmed, your training is more inadequate, and your systems are less able to keep up.

It's painful, I know. But be careful that your employees -- and you -- don't start to push away the business that comes with recovery. If we're going to climb all the way out of this mess, we're not going to do it by turning away customers.

Take my money -- please.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1507836 2012-05-11T12:57:05-04:00 2012-07-11T05:12:13-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
I could be bored. I could be hard at work on my laptop. But I'm neither. Instead, I'm enthralled, watching an interaction play out between a child and his parents, and pondering its implications to the workplace and to society in general.

What do the antics of a young family stuck at the airport have to do with our economic and social futures?

Let's start with what happened: The parents decided to let their child run around a bit, presumably to burn off some energy. What first captured my attention was the unbridled joy of a kid set free. The place was big and empty, and the kid was small, so the net effect was to suddenly liberate this young boy to do whatever he wished. He ran, he jumped, he peered under empty seats, and he generally enjoyed himself in what I must admit was an adorable way. Spirits were light, and excitement was in the air.

That is, until the unthinkable occurred.

Now don't worry -- nobody got hurt, and nothing bad happened. That was my assessment, anyway, but in light of the parents' reactions, I may have been wrong. The child, in all his youthful exuberance and naiveté, did a terrible thing: He ran under one of those "tensa-barrier" ropes -- you know, the ones used in airports, theaters, and crowded places to organize people into lines. And this kid did it with impunity. He shot right under without giving it a second thought -- he didn't even duck! And he continued his jubilation on the other side, at least for a few milliseconds, until his parents came down on him as if he were pointing a loaded pistol at a policeman.

The barrier in question, I should explain, was intended to direct passengers in and out of the boarding doorway. Had it been unlocked, had there been passengers lined up, or had there been an airplane nearby, it might have been fair to say it was "in use." But nobody was congregating, no flight was waiting, and the door at the gate was closed and locked. At the moment, this particular barricade defined a boundary between unused airport space, and more unused airport space: an empty line to nowhere, populated by nobody.

Now, as I'm watching the parents direct the kid in no uncertain terms to "get back over here," I'm fascinated by their swift and decisive action in enforcing what can only be called an arbitrary boundary. I'm also a little amazed by the fact that, as the situation plays out and the kid refuses to return voluntarily, both parents seem unwilling to cross the boundary themselves.

I know the argument: If they let him cross the boundary now, he'll learn that it's OK to cross it whenever he wants. If they cross it themselves, he'll learn the same lesson. Only by enforcing the rules consistently, and role modeling compliance themselves, can the parents ensure that in the future he'll abide by whatever boundaries are set up.

That's precisely what has me thinking about our workplaces, and by extension, our futures.

You see, if I'm a leader or manager, and I let an employee violate a boundary now, I teach my employees that they can again violate it in the future. And if I don't comply with the boundary myself, my employees will learn the same lesson through my example. Only by enforcing the rules consistently, and role-modeling compliance myself, can I ensure that my employees will abide by whatever boundaries are set up. The story for leaders and managers is the same as the story for parents.

I know that. I agree with that. I teach that. For important boundaries -- rules about not smoking in the flammable chemical storage room, about treating people with respect, about handling confidential material correctly, leaders and managers must walk the talk. They must be diligent in both role-modeling and enforcing compliance. Otherwise, bad things happen.

But what about less important, more arbitrary boundaries? What about bureaucratic policies, time-wasters, and distracters? What of rules requiring four signatures to spend $5 on office supplies? What about -- in short -- barriers defining lines to nowhere? How do we differentiate between rules that must be followed and rules that are, well, no longer appropriate? More importantly, how do we teach the entire workforce to do so?

Here's my problem, and it's one for both leaders in the workplace and parents in the airport: We need rules. And yet, we don't want to teach people to follow every rule and obey every rule, regulation, and boundary condition regardless of who set it out or how appropriate it is.

Do we?

Do we want employees who, when told by a corrupt manager to doctor the records and perjure the company, will do so without raising an objection?

Do we want children who, when told by an authoritative stranger that they had better get in the car right now, will do so without making waves?

Do we want a nation of people who, when faced with an important and difficult decision -- one involving multiple, complex considerations -- will prioritize sound bites of advice found on Facebook ahead of their own cognitive abilities?

I don't. I want employees who, in the face of complexity, continue to strive to achieve useful goals rather than stopping all progress and waiting for someone else to provide the answer. I want children who, when presented with unusual direction from an unrecognized authority figure, ask questions rather than blindly complying. And I want a nation of people who, in response to the challenges faced by our society, bring to bear their substantial intelligence rather than assigning blame and retreating into excessive, mind-numbing entertainment.

This implies some difficult decision-making, and some hard work, on all of our parts. It requires those parents to decide at what age it's time to stop saying "we always obey these barriers, no matter what" and start talking about the purpose of the ropes, and when they do and don't matter. It requires leaders and managers to decide which rules and guidelines must stand, and which should be questioned. It requires all of us to think a little harder, spend a little more time questioning, and take a little more risk.

Of course, it would be a lot easier to raise a nation of children, adults, and employees who will simply line up, physically and metaphorically. It would be much, much more convenient if people would sit down and shut up when they're told to do so. But given the problems we face today -- and given the fact that our economic and social success increasingly hinges on innovation and development -- I don't think the easier path leads where we wish to go.

I think, as I sit here in the airport, that it's going to fall to all of us to take the more difficult road. Maybe I'll start by writing this article. Maybe a few parents will start by crossing a completely arbitrary line, while explaining why. Maybe a few managers will start by asking their employees which rules don't make sense, and then helping to change them.

How might you start?

For more by Edward Muzio, click here.

For more on emotional intelligence, click here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1396590 2012-04-02T15:21:53-04:00 2012-06-02T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ coming up. More and more people seem intent on roping others into emotional, one-sided conversations with strong moralistic overtones, based only upon their own agendas.

If you're one of those people, you should know that I have a secret weapon which protects me from this sort of lunacy. So move on. Pick someone else. Because regardless of which side of the fence you occupy -- or which fence you deem important -- if you come at me with this kind of brainless banter, it's not going to work out.

Of course, as with any good secret weapon, you won't see mine coming until it's too late. At first, you'll just find our conversation annoying.

Why?

To begin with, I won't agree with you.

When you emotionally and emphatically express your morally justified opinion, you're not seeking dialogue. What you really want is agreement. The fact that we're all more comfortable surrounded by people who agree with us is old news -- and, it's why web giants like Google and Facebook have become so skilled at presenting us with content supporting our viewpoint. (Here's a video about that.) We love to be told that we're right, and the internet has spoiled us: The mainstream, the fringe, and the wacky alike all find reinforcement on the web. And now, we expect it in real life.

Agreement feels good. Unfortunately, it further entrenches people in simplistic positions, and it doesn't lead to real solutions for complex issues. So even though I might concur with what you're saying, if you come at me with brainless banter, I'm not going to agree.

It gets worse: I also won't disagree with you.

This may seem less annoying, but trust me, it's not. Your polarized point of view -- "if you're not with us, you're against us" -- is basically a conversational demand designed to give me only two options. If I won't say that you're right, then I'm supposed to say that you're wrong. Once I do, I provide the perfect opportunity for you to pull out your supporting information, dig in your heels even deeper, tell yourself that I'm misinformed, and commence feeling justified and superior. In battle, in politics, and in social media, animosity strengthens positions.

The internet has spoiled us here too, goading us toward this sort of thinking. After all, one of the most exciting comments you can leave on a blog or Facebook post is vehement disagreement: It captures attention, it's fun to write, and it usually earns a response. But simple dualistic thinking doesn't lead to real solutions for complex issues. So even though I might be opposed to what you're saying, if you come at me with brainless banter, I'm not going to disagree.

It gets worse yet: I'll ask you to explain an opposing position.

Now this is really annoying. When you've finally finished ranting, just when you think I'm about to reinforce your opinion by either agreeing or disagreeing with it, I'm going to turn around ask you for a different one.

At first you'll laugh, and try to make a joke of my request. But I'm going to keep pressing. "Wait!" I'll exclaim. "Surely we could find a few people as intelligent and thoughtful as you, but with the opposite perspective. How would they justify their position? How is their information different from yours? Why don't they have access to the information you have? Why don't you have access to the information they have?"

Now you see my secret weapon: I won't share my opinion until you've convinced me that you understand both sides of the issue well enough to have formed yours. This breaks me free of the conversational rules you were trying to impose. You don't get the encouraging feeling of my agreement, you don't get the exhilarating feeling of my disagreement, and you can't proceed under either of your planned scenarios. Really, my secret weapon leaves you with only three options:

First, you can keep reiterating that the "other guys" are dumb, misinformed, and unethical. But this makes it apparent that you don't care much for understanding the situation -- you just want everyone to do what you want -- which puts you in the company of two-year-olds. The more apparent that becomes, the more likely you are to walk away from our conversation, and my secret weapon will have stopped you in your tracks.

Second, you can set aside your black-and-white dogmatism and your corresponding indignant emotions, and think critically and carefully about the other side of your issue. If you started out seeking real dialogue, there's no problem here, and our discussion will continue without a hitch. But if brainless banter was your goal, my secret weapon will again have stopped you in your tracks.

Third, you can simply decide that I must disagree with you, even though I won't say so, because I have not yet actively agreed. That will allow you to apply the "misinformed" label to me, and relax into the fact that my stupidity and lack of candor further justify your position. And if you're very lucky, and particularly inattentive, you'll leave it at that. Of course, if you're less lucky, and a bit more attentive, you'll have a gnawing sense that something went wrong in our interaction, but you won't know what. And if you're really unlucky, and relatively clever, you'll realize with embarrassment that you never even discovered my opinion because you didn't finish elaborating yours. But no matter how it turns out for you, as you can see, our conversation will have ended without drawing me into the fray. My secret weapon, once again, will have stopped you in your tracks.

So, I hope you see that brainless banter is powerless against my secret weapon. If you're intent on starting it, please do us both a favor and don't choose me. Let's just talk about business, or about our families, or about the weather. Have you seen any good movies lately?

On the other hand, if you're trying to replace brainless banter with intelligent conversation too, I invite you to duplicate my secret weapon and make it your own. Use it constantly and unflinchingly. If you do -- and if enough of us demand intelligence in place of banter -- maybe we can begin to squelch the brainlessness more permanently.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1271717 2012-02-14T12:21:16-05:00 2012-04-15T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ for reasons outlined here, but you can find it easily. It's become equally impossible to avoid the follow-up comments posted by the same man, in which he claims that as a result of posting the video he has been investigated by, cleared by, and congratulated by child welfare and police officials. I guess it's not hard to believe that some people saw the video and called in complaints, although from what I saw -- and what he claimed -- most of the feedback was positive.

I must admit that, to me, the whole story is useful in one specific way: It demonstrates what's wrong with our "modern," information age society. Since I'm quite certain that I don't mean this in the way that everyone else seems to be saying it -- and, with only a slight flinch at the notion that somebody somewhere may have a gun pointed at his or her monitor -- I'd like to suggest three ways in which we can learn from this story what (not) to do:

First, the whole world has an opinion. Droves of people -- millions, if you believe the frustrated dad himself -- are weighing in on everything from this random guy's parenting skills to the appropriateness of his daughter's comments to the safety of his family. This is all based upon eight minutes of video in which he is, obviously -- OBVIOUSLY -- having a bad day. Would you like your life summarized in eight minutes? I can think of plenty of eight minute segments of my life that would not adequately represent the whole thing. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of eight minutes of my life that do represent it.

And yet, millions of people burned eight minutes of their own lives glued to the video. Then they spent countless additional minutes sharing it along with emotional opinions regarding the fitness of a man they've never met, to raise a child they can't see, under circumstances they don't know. That doesn't sound particularly clever to me. Actually, I think it's one of the biggest downsides of the information age: At least 10 million minutes wasted that surely had more productive uses.

Even worse than wasted time, the second problem is that stupidity has somehow become empowering. I can't be the first one to say this -- and please, don't shoot your computer -- but shooting a computer is a little bit... dumb. I'm not in any way saying that the man is dumb. You can't meaningfully draw conclusions about his intelligence level from a video clip, but indications suggest that he's not dumb at all: He's thoughtful and articulate, he's attempting to set boundaries for his daughter, he's concerned with teaching her accountability and responsibility, and he knows how to fix computers (which alone makes him a genius compared to me). But a smart person can do a dumb thing, and everyone seems to love this story for the dumb thing: The shooting of the computer has become a sort of battle cry for good parenting.

Why? He could have given the computer to charity or auctioned it off on eBay, arguably with a more useful message to his daughter. "We don't take things for granted in this family" seems far closer to his intended parenting lesson than "If it's mine, I'm allowed to shoot it." Yet, with support from his wife (and later his throngs of online fans) he gravitated instead toward an insanely over-the-top act.

This brings us to item three: Drama creates drama. "Ah," you say, "but shooting the computer sends a message. To just take it away wouldn't have been as impactful." Well, if by impactful you mean dramatic, then I agree. If by impactful you mean entertaining, again I agree. I can't imagine a more dramatically entertaining choice to watch than a frustrated dad emptying his .45 into his daughter's laptop. The problem, however, is that drama begets drama. I'm an expert in workplaces, not families, but this bit of truth applies to any human system: One set of dramatic overtures leads to another, until finally somebody has to break the cycle.

When I meet an executive who whines about how his team is incompetent, I can guarantee his team will be constantly whining about his inability to lead. Here, I see a dad complaining bitterly about the fact that his daughter is -- ahem -- complaining bitterly about him. It's easy to say that it's her fault that he's all worked up, but it's hard not to get a strong inkling as to where the daughter got her dramatic streak in the first place. Sure, in workplace situations, it's hard to do determine "who started it." But in parenting, isn't it much clearer where the buck stops?

The point here is simple: Behavioral patterns get copied. Pause for a moment, please. I do not mean to say "OMG! People are going to see this and start shooting their kids' electronics!" (That sort of response would be yet another example of too much drama.) I just mean that this frazzled dad, through a well-meaning act of destruction and drama, probably created more of the same. The useful piece of his actions -- setting boundaries, restricting privileges and forcing accountability -- would have probably engendered a dramatic response from his daughter no matter how he did it. But the over-the-top delivery can only serve to intensify it. In the end, the girl isn't any more grounded, nor her laptop any more unavailable, than it would have been with a more moderately delivered message. But unfortunately, dad planted more seeds of drama than were necessary, and some of those seeds are likely to grow.

When the whole world has an opinion, stupidity becomes empowering because drama is entertaining. As a result, behavioral patterns get copied, and drama creates more drama. In real interactions, where understanding, communication and alignment are the goals, somebody has to break the cycle and end the drama. I know this to be true from my own research and experience, and I am certain it applies to this likeable and frazzled dad.

Of course, that's just my opinion. You don't have to agree with me, but please -- don't shoot.

For more by Edward Muzio, click here.

For more on emotional intelligence, click here.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1199165 2012-01-11T11:19:24-05:00 2012-03-12T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
Unfortunately, it's not really a joke. Nods, knowing glances, and subsequent comments by audience members confirm that many of us work with someone who fits this bill perfectly: A person who uses busyness as a screen to avoid work. And now a recent article on The Onion, "Work Avoided Through Extensive List-Making" further confirms the reality behind the gag. Satire is only funny when based on reality, and The Onion authors did a remarkable job creating a piece that's at once hilarious and depressingly on-point.

But the real reason I love this particular story -- The Onion's fictitious tale of Julie Smalley, who is too busy prioritizing to do any work -- is because it illustrates not only the problem of being "too busy to work," but also one of its major causes. Though many people hail prioritization as the answer to workplace overload, I contend that it's often as much a cause of the problem as it is a solution to it.

That may sound sacrilegious, especially coming from an author purporting to be a thought leader in workplace productivity. At the very least, it's counterintuitive: I've asked numerous people how they respond to workplace overload, and one of the most frequent responses I get is to set aside time, prioritize the current workload, and push back on less important items. It's common-sense, it's well-accepted, and it also happens to be a strategy I use myself from time to time.

So what could possibly be wrong with prioritization? Consider three strikes against it:

First, prioritizing is reactive, not proactive. Effective prioritization begins with a list of things that's too long to do and includes some unimportant ones. That means that at the individual level, you can only start to prioritize in a meaningful way after you've been wasting your time and energy, at least a little.

Second, the widespread use of individual prioritizing leads to wasteful behaviors. If I need you to do something for me, I can just ask you to do it. But if I know that you're constantly prioritizing and evaluating your workload, I have to make sure that I not only ask you for what I need, but also make you understand that what I want is more important than what other people want. This leads to an arms-race escalation in which I -- along with anyone else who's talking to you -- work continuously to find new ways to emphasize my importance over everyone else's. As a result, you have to continually find ways to discount these overstatements in order to keep making accurate priority tradeoffs.

Third, prioritizing is time consuming to begin with, and it becomes even more so as you get busier. The secret to doing any sort of work in increasing volume is to find ways to achieve more output with the same input. Automation, batch processing, and skill development are simple examples of scalable approaches, allowing a person to create more results with the same amount of effort. The process of prioritization, however, is not scalable: The busier you are, and the more complex your tasks, the more difficult and time consuming it becomes to prioritize them. It's simply not a scalable strategy.

Now I'm not saying all prioritization is bad. I'm speaking above about prioritization of work at the individual level, as a response to overload. Certainly, at the group and organizational level, it's necessary to make have priorities and make proactive priority decisions: Your organization can't launch every product imaginable, or upgrade every system it has, in the same year. At the beginning of a new round of work -- and, for that matter, at any other time that it becomes clear that the group can't do everything -- proactive prioritization of group objectives is absolutely necessary.

I also concede that the reactive, individual prioritization I describe above is sometimes necessary. When you find yourself overwhelmed, you may need to be a little like Julie Smalley, locking yourself in your office and sorting through the demands on you. But to say that this activity is the answer to overload is like saying that mopping the floor is the answer to leaky pipes. It may work as a clean-up mechanism, but it's no solution.

In fact, if you reconsider the three strikes above, you'll realize that prioritization is actually quite insidious. It creates a vicious cycle, or what those of us with engineering degrees call an "open feedback loop": You wait until you have too much work, then you start prioritizing, the prioritization creates inflated claims of importance and takes up your time, making you even more overworked, at which point you redouble your prioritization efforts, ad infinitum.

The escalation never ends, and the logical conclusion is that you ultimately become Julie Smalley: so busy that you aren't doing anything. And whether this happens consciously or unconsciously is beside the point. You'll notice that it isn't clear from The Onion's article whether Ms. Smalley is intentional or simply incompetent in her avoidance of work; to her coworkers saddled with picking up the slack, it doesn't much matter.

The alternative, unusual as it may sound, is to teach people what you're doing proactively so they'll stop asking you to do other things. Here's a video explaining how you can accomplish that. If you're endlessly prioritizing and sorting your to-do lists, I suggest that you -- ahem -- make watching this video a priority.

Say No Without Saying No
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1149937 2011-12-15T15:23:00-05:00 2012-02-14T05:12:02-05:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
For my part, I discovered the article in my Facebook news feed, posted by a friend along with a mildly outraged comment about the damaging effects of paranoia in relationships. He, of course, was passing along something from his own Facebook feed, which presumably came with similar unflattering commentary. Suffice it to say that between Facebook rants and direct comments, lots of people were talking about how this post was garbage and didn't deserve to be taken seriously. In fact, if it wasn't for all the people complaining about the attention the post was getting, it wouldn't have gotten much at all.

We all know the internet is no discriminator when it comes to value. You can post a video capturing previously unseen oppression and heroism, or one that captures the poorly lit interior of your closet. You can post a photo depicting human kindness under extreme duress, or a blurred shot of your left foot taken by accident while you were intoxicated. And, you can write blog posts of any length, of any quality, and on any topic. It doesn't matter if your thinking is clear or muddled, your research real or fabricated, or your writing articulate or obtuse. You can always post.

The Internet does, however, discriminate based upon attention. Web algorithms from Facebook to Google excel at presenting you with the stuff other people find interesting. Content that gets more hits -- more posts, more eyeballs on it, and more people passing it along -- also gets featured most prominently in news feeds and search results. Content that gets ignored by readers also gets ignored by algorithms. Programmers may lack the technology to duplicate our human minds, but they can certainly keep track of how we're using them. If other people cared, goes the coded logic, you probably will too.

All of this leads to a somewhat counterintuitive conclusion: If you come across content which you find disagreeable, distasteful, or just plain idiotic, it might be best to just... shut up. Don't waste your time firing up your righteous indignation, raking the author over the coals in the comment section, or forwarding message to your friends under the heading of "can you BELIEVE this?!" Just move on. Go to a different post, or a different site, or maybe get off the Internet entirely and do something in real life. Not only do your responses raise your own blood pressure, but in the world of the Internet, those comments are your votes.

The voting metaphor itself, of course, isn't limited to the Internet. In retail, for example, it's often said that you vote with your wallet. You buy the products you find valuable and ignore the others. Widely bought products turn a profit, widely ignored products prove unmarketable, and manufacturers learn what to keep making and what to abandon. This way, it doesn't take long for the garbage to get identified and tossed out.

Of course, when you're shopping, it's fine to commiserate with a friend about your disgust over a certain product. As long as you don't buy it, your vote isn't cast. Things are different on the Internet. Here, every comment, share, and forward is a vote. Every email you open has the potential to alert the sender that it caught your eye. Every click on a blog post casts a vote for it to be displayed to other people. Every ounce of attention, positive or negative, feeds more power to the content receiving it.

That's the power of shutting up: it keeps you from voting for what you despise.

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not saying you shouldn't use the Internet as the fantastically interactive media that it is. When you come across content that you find valuable, or in cases where you wish to participate in a meaningful debate, you should interact profusely. State your case, share the link and join in the conversation. On the other hand, when you come across complete drivel, you should seriously consider withholding your involvement.

What if you feel extremely strongly about the issue? What if the author is coming down against something close to the fiber of your being? Issues like religion, national pride, and the safety of our children come to mind -- perhaps even issues like faking the use of contraception. What should you do -- what should we all do -- when encountering content that crosses the proverbial line?

I suggest a simple approach: First, prepare a scathing email -- to the author, to the editor, to whomever -- in which you articulate your disgust. Get all of your anger out of your system. Just don't send it. Instead, when you're done, save it. Wait a week or two, until you've calmed down, and then return to your angry diatribe with the intent to create a second edition.

In your new revision, convert your email about what you were against into an article about what you support. Instead of writing in opposition to your nemesis, write in favor of your cause; instead of calling the boneheaded author's integrity into question, extol the virtues of those who oppose that person; instead of pointing out flaws in the author's logic, create a flawless argument of your own.

In other words, instead of complaining about the insanity of faux contraception, write about the importance of honesty in relationships.

When you're done, you will have gone from complainer to creator. Take your new creation and find a place to post it, be it Facebook or a blog. Now, sit back and let your supporters -- and your detractors -- cast their votes for you.

Granted, only a precious few articles -- and a precious few topics -- merit this kind of response. For all the other garbage out there, don't be fooled into helping publicize it, and don't let it increase your stress levels. Just let it go quietly by.

As you do, be sure to smile knowingly to yourself as you wield the power of shutting up.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1093013 2011-11-16T17:48:21-05:00 2012-01-16T05:12:02-05:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/
My parents, you see, are talented chefs. And for the better part of my childhood, we lived in a house that had a breakfast bar facing the kitchen. Since I was -- ahem -- a chatty kid, on many evenings I sat at that counter and talked with one or both of my parents as they prepared a meal. I didn't realize that I was learning to cook by osmosis.

Had I known, I probably would have resisted. In fact, on several occasions, my Mom or Dad tried to teach me. "You should know how to do this," they would declare in a parental tone, and either invite me to help or begin narrating some boring chopping or sautéing process. In response, I would immediately tune out or disappear. Thinking back, my parents could easily have used "come learn to cook" to get rid of me when they wanted to have a private conversation. Maybe they did.

Still, for every time they scared me off by offering to teach me, there were probably five or ten instances in which they didn't. Usually, they interacted with me in other ways. They allowed me to pilfer food from the cutting board, asked questions about my day, and laughed as we teased each other about a variety of silly things. It was during those moments that I learned what they were doing, and it's those moments I remember now when I break out the ingredients and intuitively know how to use them.

If kids dislike lectures, adults despise them. If kids tune them out, adults resist them with force. So I tell this story as a reminder, not for chefs with their kids, but for leaders and managers with their teams. Whether or not your people are learning anything from what you're saying to them, rest assured, they're learning from what you're doing. And just like teenage-me, sitting at that breakfast bar, they might be learning without either one of you knowing it.

Rather than worrying about this, or ignoring it, I suggest that you use it to your advantage. Your ability to model patterns of behavior that support a higher-output, lower stress workplace is one of your greatest assets. Consider a few suggestions, taken from my book Make Work Great, of what you might choose to role model:

First: Speak about output, not about process. I've written before about the tremendous power in monitoring the content of your conversation. When you tell employees how busy you are, how many meetings you have, and how full your calendar is, you teach them that success lies in chaos and busyness. On the other hand, when you speak only about the useful output you're producing, and how their output relates to your own, you show them that they provide value to you and the organization through their output. By subtly encouraging them to spend more of their own informal conversations on output instead of process, you also nudge them away from gossip, toward productive conversation about what they're trying to accomplish.

Second: Discuss why work matters. When employees work on things that don't benefit the company, they waste time and money. When they work on things that don't engage them, morale and output can suffer. Work will always include some wasted time, and some undesirable work. Both should be acknowledged. If you speak regularly with your employees, both about how their work matters to the company, and about how it provides personal incentive to them, you'll increase their sense of ownership of their work. At the same time, you'll encourage their sense of commitment to you and each other. Of course, you can't promise to make everyone productive and happy all the time -- such a promise is a recipe for disaster. But just by having the conversations, you will learn which work is most important, and which people are most inclined to do various parts of that work. As a manager, that kind of knowledge can only help.

Third: Take time to plan meetings carefully. When a leader or supervisor calls a meeting, the whole staff watches to see how it is run. A well planned, carefully run meeting shows that the leader respects employees' time. By extension, this means he or she expects them to respect each others' time as well. A poorly planned gathering, such as one held solely to save the manager the trouble of speaking to people individually, sends the opposite message, that "my time is more important than yours." That kind of message is not only disrespectful, but also problematic; imagine what happens in the group when everyone takes up the same attitude toward each other.

I learned how to cook by role modeling alone. I didn't know I was learning, and my "teachers" didn't get credit for the teaching until long afterward. Your people learn how to work in the same way: from you, through your actions, without knowing it's happening. Your influence, though invisible in the moment, is substantial.

You can create a workplace in which people take ownership of useful work that matters to everyone involved, and treat each others' time and effort with respect. Or, you can create one in which people pass blame, avoid responsibility, and try to place themselves ahead of everyone else. Just remember that you make your choice not through what you say, but what you do.

Whether you like it or not -- and whether anyone notices or not -- the rest happens by itself.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.986079 2011-09-29T14:46:47-04:00 2011-11-29T05:12:01-05:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ an article lamenting our leaders' handling of the national budget. I was bold enough to include a few improvement suggestions, speaking not as a political pundit but as an expert in group interaction. According to readers, my suggestions were both brilliant and moronic, both viable and impractical. Actually, the only consistent theme in the feedback was intensity. Clearly, I touched a nerve.

I'm a huge fan of our country and government. The structure our founding fathers designed was brilliantly ahead of its time, and has served us extraordinarily well for over two hundred years. Compare where we are now to where we started -- you can't argue with our track record! So I asked myself: Given all this success, why is our nation's leadership such a sensitive topic? The answer, I suspect, is that it seems to be somewhat out of synch with our needs.

So, although I'm in no way suggesting we abandon the fundamentals of how we run our country, I do think we may want to update some of our old processes with our new knowledge. To that end, I humbly offer four truths of human interaction that are only about fifty years old. Though far too recent to have been comprehended in our founding fathers' original design, these truths seem very relevant today:

First: Group work ceases to be effective if more than seven people are involved. You can push this boundary a little, but any meeting or assembly with ten or more members really should be used only for status updates or to ratify proposals already crafted. This means that appointing subcommittees to study complex issues and to create recommendations is a good instinct. Unfortunately, those subcommittees frequently include more than 10 members. So, they struggle to produce meaningful output, not due to a failure on the part of the members, but due to a simple design flaw. For a group to be productive, limited membership is just as important as a clear charter.

This brings us to the second truth we should consider: Effective group work requires open interaction between equal contributors with different perspectives. A clear charter and well-defined output requirement, handed to just any seven people, isn't enough. Those individuals must be able to interact openly and respectfully with each other, and they must have relevant and diverse viewpoints. This carries two implications: First, overly rigid protocols like "Robert's Rules of Order" hinder the process. Rather than pre-defining communication paths, it's better to define topics in advance and then let dialogue flow openly around those topics. Second, group members must be carefully selected. Subcommittee organizers must seek members who have both disparate opinions and the necessary interpersonal skills to share them respectfully. Each member of the group shares responsibility for avoiding personal attacks, controlling behavior, and withdrawal of participation. Each must be qualified for that job, and together the entire group should span the space of possible viewpoints.

The goal of all this -- the goal of group work in general -- is to enable information to pass smoothly between individuals so the best decision can be reached. This brings us to the third truth: Overly rigid hierarchies stifle information flow. Most of us working in industry have seen power create isolation; we know that every leader with substantial authority must combat the tendencies of underlings to say only what he or she wants to hear. People must be asked, encouraged, and required to speak the sometimes-uncomfortable truth to those above them. Otherwise, bad information invariably leads to bad decision making. That's the reason my previous article suggested that our leaders work on a first-name basis: it's a step toward greater approachability. For the next step, our leaders should consider socializing, dining, and informally interacting with underlings and constituents as frequently as possible. Routinely, genuinely breaking down the barriers of hierarchy -- without ceremony, structure, or video cameras rolling -- allows both parties to exchange real, useful information. Leaders become better informed, and they gain the respect and understanding crucial to real support.

Respect and understanding also lead to popularity, of course, but we must remember the fourth truth: Popularity, absent information, doesn't lead to good decisions. A fair bit of time and energy (and money) is spent by our leaders in an attempt to influence voters, so that a particular candidate or position might "win" an election. But the sound bites employed in this process are so heavily biased, and so brief, that they don't contain much information. Some voters tune them out, others are swayed by carefully crafted emotional pull. We must collectively realize that neither result leads to well-informed votes by well-informed voters. We must remind our leaders -- and ourselves -- that a real "win" is when our country gets the best solution to a problem or the best person for a job. We must emphasize, with our leaders and with our media, the importance of educating voters instead of swaying them. We need votes cast from a position of information.

I realize that by presenting ideas from the perspective of human interaction instead of politics, I present an uncomfortable problem. Some of what I suggest would be difficult to implement, and some readers will immediately label it useless. On the other hand, improving complex systems is rarely easy. I submit that, like gravity, these four truths remain true whether or not they are convenient. Instead of finding reasons why we can't incorporate them into our politics, let's look for ways that we can.

I think, if we find some, we'll all be better off. After all, our government is not just a political system, but a human system, and a pretty good one. But if I'm reading current sentiment correctly, the one thing all of our disparate interest groups can agree on is that we have some room for improvement. Why not start with what we've learned together?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.936805 2011-08-26T12:15:00-04:00 2011-10-26T05:12:01-04:00

Edward Muzio http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edward-muzio/ Center High-Mounted Stop Lamp (CHMSL) was born. This fantastic safety improvement at minimal cost seemed to be a brilliant innovation, and before long it was passed into law as standard equipment.

Today, everyone has a CHMSL. It's still a decent idea, and it's still believed to reduce accidents -- by about 4 percent. What happened to the other 31 percent? Simple: now that every car on the road has one, the CHMSL isn't all that noticeable anymore. It has receded into the realm of everyday noise, where it is much easier to ignore.

Given the title of this piece, you probably see where I'm going here. I'd like to suggest that we all just... relax a little about social media. Sure, it's trendy, and in some situations it is clearly useful. But like the CHMSL, it may not turn out to be the big deal everyone thinks. I'm starting to suspect that when the newness wears off, social media will turn out to be more of a 4-percent kind of thing.

Before you label me heretical and force me to display a scarlet H on my author biography, consider a few signs that we're in the middle of a "social media bubble."

First, nobody is criticizing it. Everything in the real world has pros and cons, but have you noticed how rarely social media gets critiqued?

I'm not talking about raising information security concerns ("How do I keep some weirdo from seeing my kid's pictures?") or about comparing platforms ("Google+ vs. Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. Twitter vs. ... "). Those conversations rage on, like debates about wiring and wattage for the bulb in your CHMSL. I'm talking about more basic questions about the real utility of the technology for business.

Here's one: How long will it take for social media users to recognize, get bored with and tune out the predictable patterns of their news feeds? New parents post baby pictures and medical updates, young professionals work late or go out drinking, students have to study or are on break (woo hoo!), retirees are out on the boat with the grandkids, and everyone checks in at Starbucks at least once a week. Now that we've all been doing this awhile, not only have our statuses become more predictable, but they've also become harder to find. That's because they're buried in real advertising, and in faux ads masquerading as other status updates. I don't know about you, but I'm already starting to ignore my feeds.

As the CHMSL went from 35-percent effective to 4-percent effective, each additional unit on the road was a fraction less noticeable than the last. What if every dollar (or hour) invested by your business in social media, starting today, has a fraction less benefit than the dollar (or hour) before it? How would that change your social media strategy?

Speaking of which, your "social media strategy" brings up my second reason for suspecting a bubble: The trendiness of social media is leading to unwise resource investments. This is classic bubble behavior, and in the case of social media it looks like this: we expend resources developing pages, campaigns and interfaces based on platforms that could change at any time. Remember when Facebook switched the button on group pages from "Be a Fan" to "Like"? Any company whose materials said "Be our fan on Facebook" had to change the message immediately or risk looking disconnected. Between websites, printed materials and ad campaigns, some companies took months to get it straightened out.

Maybe your business is creating a page on a social media platform that will break when designers rearrange the site. Maybe it's designing a radio or TV campaign destined to be awkwardly mismatched to the unforeseeable future state of your news stream. The longer the time horizon on your efforts, the more likely they represent a questionable use of resources. You wouldn't build out an office complex without a long-term lease, and you shouldn't build out an ad complex on an unstable base. And yet, when it comes to social media, everyone does it and nobody questions it. To me, that cries "bubble."

Actually, Facebook's "Be a Fan" and "Like" features also illustrate my third reason for suspecting a bubble: Social media has moved from innovation to refinement. When they first came along, group and business pages on Facebook were an innovation that opened up some major possibilities. But was the move from "Be a Fan" to "Like" really such a big leap? Now we have Google in the mix, and they will no doubt present some advantages. Yet even their own interface seems to admit that "Plus 1" and "circles" are the same thing as Facebook's "Like" and "lists," albeit dressed in more fashionable clothing.

In the early days, social media providers cleverly hung a bare bulb in your car's back window where nobody could miss it. In the last few years, they've given you better wiring and a nice plastic lens, so that your bulb would light more reliably and look more attractive. Now, is Google+ simply leading the charge to replace your bulb with a stylish cluster of red LEDs? As gorgeous as it is, I'm not sure it's an innovation. It might be just one more CHMSL in a sea of red, bright and shiny.

We're not doing anything new anymore, but we persist in acting like our minor improvements are earth-shattering innovations. Again I feel compelled to say the B word. This time I'll refrain.

Instead, before I close by suggesting that we refocus on the fundamentals -- and, lest I be saddled with labels like "luddite" and "technophobe" -- let me be clear: I am both a user and a fan of social media. I think it facilitates communication in new and interesting ways, and I believe we've yet to discover all the clever applications for it. I'm all for continuing to explore. I just hope we can stop short of declaring it the end-all, be-all of business and media. Let's avoid wasting money, time and energy on mob logic at the expense of substance.

If that means I have to put a scarlet H on my author biography, fine. Maybe I'll also make one out of red LEDs and hang it in the back window of my car.]]>