Vignettes

Some Things Aren’t Better With More Drums

Some Things Aren’t Better With More Drums

True Story. We had a Company All-Hands somewhere in Las Vegas, and every employee was handed a bongo drum on the morning of the second day. The goal was to learn a beat and play in some synchronized fashion – I think this was to teach us that we all play a part in the symphony of our Company’s success. However, about 2 minutes in, you could see that loud banging was probably not what most people needed at that moment. A nap and some ibuprofen were probably better suited for them. However, everyone survived, and we had a great year, so maybe the bongos worked.

Challenge: Don’t drink at Company events; if you do – drink…it…slowly. You never know what the next morning’s team-building activity might be.

Does this resonate with you? Have you ever been involved in some team-building activities that probably weren’t the best ideas in hindsight? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Never Look Them in the Eyes

Never Look Them in the Eyes

There are so many presentation mistakes that can happen. In my experience, I had the slides on an auto-timer somehow (flipping one slide to the next every 15 seconds), rendering my clicker thingy useless, and it felt like I was wrestling a bear on stage. My talk track and slides were out of sync the entire presentation. At one point, I even said, “This is just like my nightmare last night…(looked down)…except I have clothes on…so that’s good.” So believe me when I say this: if you present – know your content because you never know what can happen. Do not read your slides, and don’t make people read lengthy ones, either. If you need help, please pick up any book from Garr Reynolds or Nancy Duarte.

Learning: If you are assigned to present to others (and need a slide deck), know your slides and content well enough not to read off them.

Does this resonate with you? Have you ever fallen asleep at a presentation (or wish you had)? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Unlimited PTO

Unlimited PTO

Unlimited PTO seems like a great idea, and if it is, in fact, Unlimited, it is. I have a slightly cynical view on this topic because Unlimited PTO was a solution to the Business problem of carrying over PTO on a balance sheet. And, studies have shown that it’s resulted in less time off for employees. In short, the idea was not born out of the employees’ needs and has not benefited them. It does have potential, however. If you are a manager or leader, you must ensure your team takes time off (for their mental health). If you are an individual contributor, it is your responsibility to take time off. For both parties, it is best to be clear on what that looks like and how the work gets done to make it happen.

Learning: If you are interviewing for a new job and the company offers “Unlimited PTO,” it’s worth a moment for you to ask what the average person in your role would take. If the answer is “Unlimited,” then you move on as you are asking for easily quantifiable data. If you have a current job, plan out your time at the beginning of the year and discuss it with your manager.

References and Resources

Unlimited vacation seems like a dream. Here’s why it’s not as great as it sounds by Jo Constantz and Bloomberg; Type: Article

Avoid the Hidden Costs of Unused Paid Time Off by Ian Cook/Visier; Type: Article

Does this resonate with you? What are your thoughts on “Unlimited PTO”? We’d love to hear from you.

Make Sales, Not War

Make Sales, Not War

Have you ever noticed how violent the language in Sales is? Kevin murdered it…just killed it this quarter. We’re going to annihilate the competition. And so on. Such violent rhetoric has been around for a while, and not just in sales – in 2011, Steve Jobs declared a “holy war” against Google. In the 90s, the Big Consulting firms recruited like this: “We hire two kinds of people — hunters and skinners. Hunters bring in the kill, and skinners turn the kill into food.” We can change. We should take a stab at change. Don’t you think?

Learning: Competition is healthy, as is a desire to win, but do we really have to kill each other to ensure market dominance? We are talking about Marketing technology, NOT a Tom Clancy novel.

References and Resources

The Violence in Your Business Language Diminishes You and Your Company from Moshe Engelberg/Inc; Type: Article

New study reveals the powerful and bizarre effects of using violent rhetoric at work from JD Harrison/Washington Post; Type: Article

Does this resonate with you? Have you seen any change in Sales language away from violence? We’d love to hear from you.

No, No, Not Your Baby

No, No, Not Your Baby

“Your Baby is Ugly” is an unbelievably strange business phrase that essentially means, “Your tool or application that you are so proud of is pretty bad.” It’s a strange one. What makes it even stranger is that it’s really only used in the context of someone proudly showcasing their ability to make the hard choices, as in, “I’m not afraid to call our baby ugly.”

Learning: Can we all agree that Babies should be off-limits to business jargon? Especially if bathwater is involved or it involves a baby’s qualitative features. Some business jargon is better than others but try (please) to avoid this one.

References and Resources

Calling Their Baby “Ugly” by Operational Excellence Society; Type: Article

Does this resonate with you? Have you ever heard someone actually use this phrase? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Focus Is Every…

Focus Is Every…

There is a lot of noise in the working world. Managing the onslaught, from Slack to Teams to Email to Texts to everything else, is critical. Below are three ways to control the noise and boost productivity.

  • Time Blocking: Set aside two times daily for updates and reprioritize.
  • Turn off notifications to limit distractions.
  • Focus on essential tasks first.

Learning: Distractions block your quality and productivity – Limit them and control them (as best you can).

Have you figured out how to manage the noise? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Moments Before the Big Meeting

Moments Before the Big Meeting

Murphy’s Law is like that ex-boyfriend who appears out of nowhere at your most vulnerable moments at work: the moments before big presentations, conference calls, deadlines, and interviews. Chad just pops up in those moments and cooly says, “Hey!” Don’t blame Chad; it’s Murphy’s Law – what can go wrong will go wrong.

Learning: Be kind to yourself if something goes wrong in a key moment. It happens so often that it has a name – Murphy’s Law.

Does this resonate with you? Have you ever experienced Murphy’s Law? We’d love to hear from you.

The Invisible Truth

The Invisible Truth

“Transparent” has recently been used interchangeably with “authentic.” I think it’s an odd one because no leader is going to be “transparent.” They should share ‘the why’ for any critical business decision, but no one should expect any leader to share everything.

Learning: When change comes, it’s natural to want more information, but if your leader or boss is giving you ‘the why’ of a business decision, that’s the best place to start. Aiming for “full transparency” is often just a delay tactic. If you are a leader, there is much more to an authentic leader who builds trust and credibility than being “transparent.”

Does this resonate with you? What are your expectations of Leadership in sharing key business decisions? We’d love to hear from you.

Improv at Work

Improv at Work

I really can’t stand team-building exercises. I always feel like it’s forced fun. And I’ve been through so many team activities from pasta making to ax throwing to go-kart racing; I feel like I have done it all. Are our teams any closer because of them? I have no idea. So when I heard we were going to do a virtual team meeting with another team-building exercise, I was thinking, “Here we go again.” And when I was told I was going to lead it, my appropriate response should have been, “Come again?” Instead, it was “Absolutely – I love team activities. Of course, I’ll do it.” Yeah – I’m a hypocrite. And so are you, so get over it.

Two weeks ago, I ran our team activity. 90 minutes of improv and it was pretty spectacular. Do I think the team is closer because of it? I have no idea, but I do believe we all had a good laugh and with any hope, learned something in the process. Below is the activity I ran and of course, I had a PowerPoint to go with it. Because Powerpoint = Fun.

In preparation for the exercise, I had everyone do the following:

  1. Watch any improv (I suggested Middleditch & Schwartz on Netflix)
  2. Watch this video about improv from Big Think
  3. Create one slide that is the ‘un-me’ of you and send it before Day 1 to the moderator. The slide should contain pictures, words, and anything that helps to describe the opposite of you – the ‘un-me.’ The last point here, you have to give your un-me a name.

Powerpoint Presentation – with Speaker notes added

Slide 1: Styles of Humor

4 Styles of Humor (According to Psychology Today) – in order of appropriateness at work
  1. Affiliative – This involves telling jokes about things that everyone might find funny. The goal is to use humor to bring people together to find humor in everyday life.
  2. Self-Enhancing – This is being able to laugh at yourself, such as making a joke when something bad has happened to you. Trying to find the humor in everyday situations, and making yourself the target of the humor in a good-natured way.
  3. Aggressive – This involves put-downs or insults targeted toward individuals. When it is intended to threaten or psychologically harm others, it is the type of humor used by bullies. 
  4. Self-Defeating – Putting yourself down in an aggressive or “poor me” fashion is called self-defeating humor.

The intent of the Slide: Talk about Humor as it pertains to work. Understanding types of humor will help prevent the wrong use of humor in the Improv exercise to follow.

Slide 2: Benefits of Humor at Work (Partial List)

  1. Increases employee engagement
  2. Decreases employee turnover
  3. Increases employee job satisfaction
  4. Increases employee productivity
  5. Prevents employee burnout
  6. Reduces absenteeism
  7. Increases company loyalty
  8. Improves morale  
  9. Creates a more positive work culture
  10. Increases profit

The intent of the Slide: To discuss the value of humor. This slide should be used as a way to understand the baseline within the group. Ask questions like: Do you agree? Would you add or change anything? Note: Here’s the resource list for those folks that don’t buy it.

Slide 3: Dangers of Humor in the Workplace

  1. Distraction – Humor can be inappropriate if it distracts from the intended goal. Stress is real, and sometimes distractions are necessary – however, humor should be used in moderation, like everything.
  2. Division – Humor can be used to unite folks. However, those that embrace humor and those that don’t could be a source of clear division. Be careful.
  3. Disparagement – Humor can be downright mean. I think of people that say incredibly mean things on Slack and then add a “LOL” to the end. That does not make it ok. Nor is it ok to say something mean and follow it with a “Just Kidding.” Humor should not be aimed at anyone – we aren’t in the sandbox throwing Tonka trucks.

The intent of the Slide: To discuss that humor can go too far and that there are limits and risks. Here’s a full article on the above items.

Slide 4: What is Improv?

  1. Short Form vs. Long Form – There are two main types of Improv. Short Form is a small story and can be 2-5 minutes. Think of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Long-form is usually 15 – 90 minutes and is usually one story layered on top of itself. “Middleditch & Schwartz” is a great example of this.
  2. ‘Yes And’ – This is a key principle of improv. Translated another way, you can’t reject the information you are given. You have to take what you are given and build, grow, react to it – whatever. But you can’t reject it. This principle is critical as it will force you to focus on listening – which we all could work on.
  3. Gifting – This is another principle of Improv. This is the idea that you are in a partnership with your Improv team, and your goal is to set them up for success.
  4. It Doesn’t Need to be Funny – This isn’t really a rule, but I think some people don’t think they are funny, so they don’t try improv. By the way, those folks are usually the best at Improv.
  5. Keep it Simple – This is the idea that you want to be wary of introducing too much into your Improv. Keep it simple.
  6. Beware of Turns – Sometimes, someone introduces a complete shift in direction. These can be absolutely hilarious, but everyone needs to pay attention. This is another reminder of the necessity of active listening in improv.
  7. Give each other a name – This is a rule in my improv class. Having a name gives people something to build from. Not a hard-and-fast rule here, but it’s a good one.

Improv Exercises

Here’s the section where we did the improv over Zoom. Included is a list of what we did and what seemed to work. I would always ask for volunteers whenever possible.

  1. Improv Warm-ups – I asked everyone to turn off their microphones and cameras and just stretch. One minute of stretching – if we had more time, I would have had more stretching. However, we had one rule – no checking email, no slack – only stretching.
  2. One Word Sentence – We started with “One Word Sentence,” which has every person in the improv group introduce a word to form a sentence. The sentences continue until there is an end to the story. The beginning starts with “Once upon a time..” and ends with “The moral of the story is…” I asked for four volunteers for this exercise, assigned the order, and joined in as the 5th person. It went in order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then back to 1 until the story was complete.
  3. Debate with One Word Sentence – This is the same sentence format but in a debate format. One team of 3 is the ‘Pro’ team, and one team of 3 is the ‘Con’ team. I asked for volunteers, set the order for each team, and then solicited topics for debate. The group selected “The Royals should have greater authority,” and we began. I was the moderator and asked each team to introduce themselves, and then we were off on the debate. It was pretty fantastic.
  4. Un-Me – To break up the day, we went to people’s Un-Me slides and had everyone guess the person. It worked well as it’s fascinating to see how people see themselves, and doing an “Un-Me” disarmed folks and loosened everyone up.

After running this session, I asked for feedback from the group. The element that stood out was the “gifting” side of Improv. There is a lot to learn from Improv, but that bit offered a key takeaway for everyone.

Resources and References

Humor that Works by Andrew Tarvin

Improv at work

Supporting Music

Fell on Black Days by Soundgarden (I miss Kevin and Bean)

Hash Pipe by Weezer (The kings of Nerd Rock!)