Zoom CEO: “I have Zoom Fatigue”

Well over a year into this, the comments in the Wall Street Journal are sad, perplexing, and give pause to what we have done all at the same time:

After more than a year of working virtually during the pandemic, executives in banking and technology are pushing back on the idea that workers should be able to do their jobs entirely from home in the coming months. Though some said they expect more flexible work arrangements to endure going forward, they say there are clear signs of burnout in an era of nonstop video calls.

Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, told a virtual audience of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit Tuesday that he had personally experienced Zoom fatigue. On one day last year, he said he had 19 Zoom meetings in a row.

The post goes on to report that, “like many companies, Zoom is planning an eventual return to its offices,” phasing in on-site work. The inquiry really should be what is holding these firms back? Many CEOs like that of JPMorgan have observed what anyone over the age of 50 knows:

Remote work doesn’t work well for generating new ideas, preserving corporate culture and competing for clients—or “for those who want to hustle,” Mr. Dimon said, adding he has been back in the office for months. 

The technology is wonderful, and for working on specific projects that require a shared document or dataset, Zoom, Teams, et. al., work exceedingly well. But you cannot replicate the energy of face to face collaboration, and I think our culture would do well re-thinking some of what we have done over the last year. 

Fog of Business War Turns to the Skills Sets of Generals as Leaders

With so much emphasis on how to reach millennials and the superiority of sitting around cross-legged on the floor of an open office design, it might seem odd that high-level military experience is sought after for leadership, but should it? From the Wall Street Journal, Generals Bring Battlefield Expertise to the Business World:

In the fog of war, and in peacetime, generals are trained to anticipate unknown risks, build high-functioning teams and make quick, strategic decisions in high-pressure situations. “They are the same traits necessary in the fog of business,” says Henry Stoever, a captain in the Marine Corps who is now chief marketing officer of the National Association of Corporate Directors.

…Companies, especially those in crisis, covet the reputational boost that comes from seeking the counsel of a former military leader, says Wendy Monsen, president of executive recruiter Korn/Ferry ’s federal-government practice. Whereas more than three-quarters of Americans trust the military to act in the public’s interest, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey, only 41% feel the same way about business leaders.

What is surprising to learn is that the leadership styles do not reflect the command and control caricature that we might think, “Rather than barking orders and enforcing hierarchy, military leaders who succeed in the corporate world know how to coax different groups into collaborating, says retired Army Maj. Gen. Michael J. Diamond, an organizational leadership consultant.”

In other words, these backgrounds not only bring the strength of strategic vision and experience but character and leadership traits that are associated with the most effective and successful leaders, such as emotional intelligence, the ability to collaborate and getting others to cooperate. Not to mention a keen understanding of risk assessment. See the full article here.

The Distinctive Skill Set of a Leader

What could you learn (or benefit) from a Harvard Business Review article from nearly twenty years ago? Quite a bit. Emotion Intelligence, according to its great champion Daniel Goleman is remarkable in terms of impact among effective leaders:

To create some of the competency models, psychologists asked senior managers at the companies to identify the capabilities that typified the organization’s most outstanding leaders…When I analyzed all this data, I found dramatic results. To be sure, intellect was a driver of outstanding performance. Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels. (From Goleman, What Makes a Leader? in The Harvard Business Review, 1998).

EI is arguably the skill set above many, if not all others that distinguish a leader who is able to move things forward because she or he is good with others, being first and foremost, at ease with themselves, mature, experienced and in command of themselves. Goleman identified five distinctive elements that identify leaders who possess emotional intelligence in action, shown in the table below:

Goleman Emotional Intelligence Five Characteristics

See an overview below from the HBR blog and re-issue of the 1998 article, What Makes a Leader.

 

 

 

Silos in City Hall: We were not meant to live this way

A look around any number at city hall buildings in the greater Los Angeles area or the bay area of northern California will reveal some remarkable similarities. For example, if you are a Baby Boomer or on the older side of Generation X, what springs to mind when you remember the interior of public school buildings? Beige walls, embedded lockers, barbaric bathroom facilities, etc., and a general layout that was strangely familiar (when visiting) from one school to the next. Some of these layouts may have come from educational theory at the time and likely, that so many of the buildings were built about the same time.

Similarly, many city halls were constructed at about the same time, during infrastructure ramp ups in the height of the industrial era. But the configuration and layout of these buildings reflected management theory from that era as well – those rooted in an authoritarian construct. If you look at the average city hall layout, it would almost appear as though it was set up in order to create silos preventing communication and collaboration. These floorpans almost seem to connote organizational disfunction that was by design.

This reminds me of the excellent story of the Omnibus Series Wool. In this post-apocalyptic story, you have what is left of humanity living in a massive subterranean silo with various levels that were responsible for functions that kept the silo going: mechanical and power, healthcare, food, IT, administration, etc. But these levels of the silo, while interdependent on one another, did not generally cross pollinate in the social sense, and they certainly did not communicate well. As the story unfolds, you discover the intentional impediment to both communication and cooperation among the various communities. And they certainly struggled at real problem solving, such as how to eventually live outside the silo. Something within the protagonist kept telling her, “we weren’t supposed to live like this.” (By the way, if Hugh Howey saw his great story being used to illustrate this point, he might recommend that I be ‘sent out to cleaning’.)

Back to city hall layouts. My guess is that the contribution to disfunction was not by design, and that the layouts may have worked well in an era that was highly stable and very slow to implement changes reflected in advancements in business and society. But that brings us to this present time. 2016-04-03_22-01-29Irrespective of what may have worked in the past, why do such physical and organizational silos still exist? I think the root of the problem was captured well in Government Finance Review:

Many local government managers have long appreciated the potential benefits of breaking down silos – the barriers that exist between specialized functions – within government. However, for just as long (and usually successfully), silos have resisted integration. There is a good reason why silos persist: Different tribes of government workers, such as police, fire, building inspectors, and even public finance, benefit from having distinct languages, cultures, and work processes, which help organize the complexity of highly specialized professional endeavors.

This problem is not easily remedied, and there are as many organizational and physical challenges are there are people within these work spaces. The article goes on, “Why, then, despite the impressive gains that can be achieved, don’t silos cooperate more often? It is because the human brain makes sense of complexity by storing information in categories.”

So what strategies will begin to change this culture? It begins with leadership and vision. What worked in a different era may have little relevance today. Where a system, framework, guideline, rule or even workspace only exists because it always has, is probably in need of significant evaluation and assessment. This is especially true given that the largest working group (sub-cohort) in the prime working age bracket of the workplace is now between the ages of 25-29. The age of memos and silos has long past, it’s high time we acknowledged it.

The Disciplines of Success for Leaders

What is required to succeed at a rigorous challenge requiring a long-term commitment? While recently participating in an exercise to answer to this question, I thought of a number of ways I could address this. Many of which are true in the perspective they convey. We certainly need inspiration. We need a sense of realistic hope. We also need the right application of building habits that will see us through the long haul. But when it comes to completing a long-term goal that occupies a great deal of willpower, much of our success comes down to discipline. The rigors required to attain a significant goal require what Peter Drucker described as the Effective Executive: first managing ourselves. Here are three core components of the disciplines of success: focus, perseverance and persistence.

Focus. The first of these disciplines is the ability to and application of focus. It is a self-obviating understatement to say we live in a world of extreme distraction. And we can thank the remarkable world technology (of which I am very thankful for) for this. We have always had to battle distraction, but never at the amplified and accelerated pace that we now contend with. The higher the aspiration of leadership, the greater the need for the discipline of single-minded focus.

This involves two points, the first is the actual skill set of focus, next is the development of habits in order to successfully apply this skill set. To develop the necessary skill set to sharpen our focus, we need to perform an honest assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. This is simply part of self-awareness and the continuous improvement process. Where we are already strong (possible interests, etc.), we may need only modify our habits to capitalize on those strengths. But where we need improvement we need to take deliberate action to ratchet up our deficiencies. From here, we need to take deliberate actions to develop habits that will enable us to apply the skill set of focus.

Perseverance. The act of perseverance sounds a lot like persistence, and at some point, perseverance certainly means exercising persistence as well. But the distinction between the two is the origin of the needed resistance. Successful completion of a goal requires perseverance regarding any number of life events that originate internally as well as externally. External challenges such as managing time, home, family and work may require foregoing discretionary personal time. Internal challenges will involve fatigue and emotions. Both sets of challenges require perseverance and only those who persevere at a long-term challenge will complete it.

Persistence. Closely related to perseverance is persistence. As mentioned before, both are related but distinct. Perseverance requires resistance to internal and external challenges. But persistence requires mental and physical output of energy not only to resist the forces of challenges, but overcome obstacles that would prevent a successful work product. There is much that can be said about willpower, the instinct of it, and that we generally quit too easily. Those with unusual, pre-determined persistence will be successful and see long-term challenges through to completion. This is the willpower of leadership.

Dated Policies and the Obsolescence of Command and Control

When you look around, what tips you off that policy may be out of date?

Dated Policy

The case has been made in recent years of the obsolescence of the average human resources department and its policies. But is the problem human resources or an overall approach? An article in Forbes by an industry expert makes the following assessment:

The traditional “Human Resources” programs which were designed in the early 1900s are rapidly falling away. Are they becoming out of date? The answer is yes.

If your HR and Learning programs are focused on building customer centric teams, empowering managers and people to make decisions, encouraging a culture of learning, teaching managers to coach and develop others – then you have moved to the Agile Model for HR. If your HR programs are still focused heavily on enforcing the rules, formalizing structure and centers of power, and putting leaders on a pedestal, then your HR and employee programs are probably holding your company back.

The lean, dynamic, open source and autonomous approach as cited above was what I read about more than twenty years ago in my undergraduate studies, but saw very little of outside of the tech industry, some small companies and a few unusual examples (organizational and leadership). But this problem is not limited to human resources – it permeates many aspects of business operations. I regularly equate this to doing business the way we did fifty years ago, only now with a computer on the desk. And command and control mentality goes right along with this failure not only to understand a radical and essential cultural shift, but how to tap into a talented labor pool. I’ve had several discussions with a colleague regarding why our industry does not generally attract millennials. I’m not sure there is one precise reason but clearly, value system, culture and command structure is completely at odds with this cohort.

In a recent post, HR Is Obsolete, a number of relevant reasons are cited for why, in the author’s opinion HR (in its lack of response) is obsolete. Here are some ideas from the findings:

The era that current policy reflects: when an HR department that was “created for the post-industrial revolution era as opposed to the information age.”…failure to implement technology that could automate operational tasks such as tracking compliance, licensure, etc…HR acting as surrogate instead of actually managing, mentoring and developing staff…dereliction of duty on the part of leadership regarding the hard work in hiring (no short cuts to getting the right person in the right role).

In a discussion about how to motivate staff, I had a boss declare in full volume, “my philosophy of leadership is simple, GET THE [EXPLETIVE] WORK DONE!” Here’s a helpful rule of thumb: if your attitude toward staff would fit well in an episode of Mad Men, your thinking is probably obsolete. Dated policies and approach are no different.

Smoking Safety - Australian Road Safety Council poster- 1950s

Leadership and Developing Cooperative Participants

Team building is about leadership and discernment. Different strengths are needed at different times in a given context. This is why fit, among other qualifications is so important. But within any type of organization, there is the need for leadership who does not simply lead or direct, but develops cooperative participants. It is well established (and pretty much common sense) that a leader is going to build a team by outlining and inspiring vision, direction, and a cumulative goal. But what tools are effective for constructing and leading such a team, and what are the positive outcomes?  Many a strong personality can cajole people into action, with dictatorial command from behind, or at the other extreme, running roughshod over people so far in front that team members are discouraged from participating. This of course is not team building at all. And the real loss is missing out on all the distinctive strengths and perspectives that each member of a creative and critical thinking team can produce together.

One author has suggested three skills to correct this error where the contributions of team members are not being taken advantage of: inviting genuine critical assessment and input without fear of retribution, receiving input while suspending judgment of it, and acting in a responsive manner to questions. Pretty simple, but requiring a great deal of confidence to implement. Leaders who do this though, will draw out ideas and creativity that people may not realize they had and find that motivation becomes less of an issue to try and generate and more of one to steer in the right direction.

The Lesson of ‘Good Enough’

Comparing and contrasting the birds-eye view with the worms-eye view

The higher a person ascends the ranks of financial operations, the more imperative it becomes to discern between certain levels of detail, and the need to push work products forward to completion. This is especially true in the budgeting aspects of financial operations versus compliance issues in accounting and auditing which can become exceedingly nitpick at times. Closely related to this is the need to learn to communicate financial information to other business professionals who are not financial specialists. This can proved to be exceedingly difficult for a highly competent analyst who frankly, loves “getting their hands dirty.” In other words, this is not meant in any way to trivialize the value of a highly detail oriented analyst. But it is meant to serve as a cautionary note to those who wish to exercise leadership that is built upon their years of financial expertise. Two quick thoughts may serve to illustrate this: the worm’s eye view and the bird’s eye view, each with its strengths and limitations.

The worm’s eye view will assist with a great deal of detail, but sometimes distorts reality due to its limitations of vision. This is not to in any way demean or devalue the benefits or the work of highly detail oriented people. It is simply to say, sometimes in order to complete certain types of work in a timely manner, decisions of priority must take precedence over the desire to continue with hedgehog-like determination and the quest for perfection that is sometimes not practical.

The bird’s eye view on the other hand, enables a panoramic vision of the whole while simply limiting detail. Both have their function in analytical work. But here is the takeaway. Leaders communicating financial information need to be able to deliver highly summarized, accurate information. Then in an instant, zoom into detail in response to a question, request for clarification, etc. Then zoom back out to high level – smoothly and reassuringly. Listen to a few quarterly earnings conference calls for effective and ineffective examples. For the executive leader, a careful distinction between the two approaches and the timing of the each is essential.

Shared Credit for Hard Work

The way to get things done, is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them – Benjamin Jowett

Credit for hard work is not something we should seek to avoid. But at the same time, should we not be overly preoccupied with acknowledgement if our goal is truly to produce our very best work product [as possible] with what is required of us right now.  Self-aggrandizement, overbearing personalities, and the inability to actively and empathetically listen, short circuit the team building process and the natural outworking of progress.

This disproportionate concern with acknowledgment runs contra to the concept of a team, and its accomplishments.  Goals and objectives can still be accomplished by an organization with leadership who tends to be in it for themselves, but who wants to live “one man’s dream” when you could experience all the benefits of healthy team effort? It goes without saying that at best, it is generally not pleasant for those who have to constantly to one person’s ideas to the exclusion of all others. But at worst, over the long haul, an organization will have to deal with the wreckage of only one person being heard. When contributors are heard, included and acknowledged, I think it will encourage not only being truly on board with an organization and its mission, but these same people can become the greatest advocates for changes needed in response to challenges.

Procrastination: An Overwhelming Sense of Dread

Sometimes when I procrastinate, I find it is out of a sheer overwhelming sense of dread.  This dread is knowing what needs to be done, and for whatever reason, perhaps outside pressure, truncated schedule, the mental or physical output of energy needed, or maybe all contribute to coming up with any and every rationale for not concentrating on the most important thing to be doing right now. An article that appeared in the Journal of Psychology from a decade ago asserts that this “self-regulatory avoidance reaction” or our inability to exercise the willpower or self-control needed to concentrate or direct our energies to the right task, is “core central to procrastination.” It is suggested that part of the resolution to procrastination is associated with understanding the behavior and then avoiding it. In other words, admit it with the intention of quitting it.  

In my early college years, the need for self-control in time management was self-obviating, and I regularly admitted it.  And the discovery of the to do list was nothing short of revelatory.  This was first suggested to me by a professor my very first finals week when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.  The reasoning was, “get all these items you are thinking about ‘out of your head’ so you can concentrate on the most important task right now, then, move on to the next one and so on.”  The very practical (and in some ways original work in modern time management), How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, outlines various tests and exercises for coming up with goals, objectives, and prioritization, and listing them out in different groupings, with each group having a special purpose, a similar method. Followed by the addition of monitoring safeguards similar to those set forth in the Journal of Psychology. 

For everyone within the organization from the admin to executive leadership and everyone in between, these principals are important. But for the executive leader, self-control in one’s use of time has tremendous implications. And this is our leverage: prioritization, improvement and innovation for the purpose of actually working smarter, rather than longer and longer. It’s one or the other. I have observed many over the years who put in excessive hours and sadly, this does not automatically translate into a great team builder, great leader, or someone who really takes advantage of the of the resources available to them, just someone who seems to be defined by long hours. I have also worked in these environments and have put in excessive hours myself because the whole culture and system required it, and I really do not think it has benefited me at all, besides reinforcing my work ethic. Learning to leverage available resources (the most significant by far being people) is critical to success. Time has it’s limitations – 168 hours per week – leverage is potentially limitless. As Alan Lakein encouraged his readers forty or so years ago to answer, “what is the most important thing to be doing right now?” Stop procrastinating and do it now.

Innovation Is Not Invention

“Above all, innovation is not invention. It is a term of economics rather than of technology. Non-technological innovations – social or economic innovations – are at least as important as technological ones.” Peter Drucker

Based on Drucker’s definition of innovation, when we as an organization, identify community needs and convert them into real-life solutions that affect the health, well being and happiness of a community, that is organizational innovation. This is what is particularly satisfying about working in the public or the non-profit sectors of business. These areas of work lend to mission oriented, values driven activity. But it does not have to be limited to there. With a different application of course, private sector (while a little less public mission oriented), can  be just as values driven and possibly contribute even more in certain contexts. This is the very positive side of understanding how we used to describe commercial activity years ago: business and society.

Improvement, Interdependence, Innovation

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships – Stephen Covey

 

I have always believed in continuous improvement, even before I knew of the technical origins of the concept. Appropriate stress in the form of a stretch for the improvement of the mind, reaching for goals and working hard is what keeps us going. And it makes life and work interesting, because our work is an extension of ourselves.  Do I really want to reach a point where I’ve gone about as far as I can go in terms of learning, working and improving? Frederic Wheelock quotes Roman satirist Juvenal as suggesting “the highest good in life is, mens sana in corpora sand – “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” ASICS company, maker of my favorite running shoe (used while struggling through a few marathons) adopted this phrase which comprises an acronym, and uses this as a guiding principal in its mission, translating to “concept…ideas…and innovation…to create the best product.”  I personally want to be continuous taking a healthy stretch, reaching for a challenge, and will this always find its context in moving beyond ourselves and where we are in our present state. More Wheelock’s can be found here, see ASICS mission here.