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Why is an Appraisal like an Ice Age?

That’s a pretty bizarre question – even for a blog title.  So, before I try to answer it  …and to give myself time to think, let me tell you how I come to be asking it.

Glacier

Metaphors

I have been pondering the use of metaphors in business and management theory.  If you have taken an interest in business books or management training for any length of time, you will have come across them – probably many.  Here are a few that come to mind:

  • Decision = Gate
  • Dilemma = Rubber band
  • Management styles = Greek Gods
  • Motivation = Pyramid
  • Negotiation = Ju Jitsu
  • Personality = Window
  • Progress = Traffic lights
  • Resistance = Onion

Some of these are more effective than others, of course.  All of them contain some elements of insight that make them useful.

Time to Play

I like models.  So I decided it’s Friday afternoon, and it’s time to play.  I wondered how easy or how difficult it would be to develop a metaphor for a randomly chosen management topic, using a randomly chosen concept.

Methodology

My methodology – and I followed this honestly – was this.

Step 1
I picked a compendium of management ideas [1] off the shelf and opened it at random to give me the subject of my model.

Step 2
I then picked a book filled with different ideas[2] that happened to be by my desk (having bought it last week at the wonderful Book Warehouse by Waterloo Station).  I opened it at random to give me the basis of the metaphor.

The Results: ‘Appraising Staff’  and  ‘Ice Ages’

Step 3
Brainstorming – is that a metaphor itself, I wonder?

So, why is an appraisal like the ice ages?

  • It can be a bit chilly
  • When it’s over it eventually gets warmer and things get back to normal
  • There is often a cycle of ‘advance and retreat’
  • If you want to be sure to survive it, you need to prepare well
  • It can move mountains, carve rivers and refresh the landscape – resetting expectations of how to live
  • It gives everything and everyone the opportunity to start again
  • It’s a bigger deal in North America and Northern Europe than in South America and Southern Europe
  • You can learn all about it in training, but the reality never quite matches expectations
  • When it’s all over you soon forget about it… until next time

Well, it can do with a bit of a polish, but it wasn’t hard.
Next week, why managing your career is like the Higgs Boson.[3]

In the meantime, why not have a go?
Put your favourite established or newly coined management metaphors in the comments.


1. Dorling Kindersley Successful Manager’s Handbook, page 454

2. Science in 100 Key Breakthroughs, page 126

3. Same books, pages 766 and 332 respectively, but I will find something else for next week, I promise.

In the meantime, if you want to play this game, but need to know what the Higgs Boson is, try this 8 minute animated video from PHD Comics.

The Higgs Boson Explained - PHD Comics

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Resistance to Negotiation

Over the last couple of weeks, we have looked at:

One of the things that most worries inexperienced negotiators is the question: ‘what if they say no?’ or even ‘what if they don’t like my offer?’

If these bother you, don’t worry.  Of course they will say no – several times: it’s their job.  And of course they won’t like your offer – unless it advantages them, rather than you; which would make it a foolish offer for you to make.  instead, start to see resistance as a part of the process.

Understanding Resistance

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook is a toolkit for anyone encountering resistance, and at its heart is a model to help you understand resistance, assess what is going on, and choose from the tools available.

The Onion Model

The Onion Model is a tool to uncover the layers of resistance.

Onion Model of Negotiating Resistance

With this model, you can see why resistance is so inevitable.  The first two layers are about meaning: they may not understand your proposal – so find a new way to explain it, or they may doubt why you made it, so be clear about the basis for your proposal.

Next comes doubt about your ability to stand by your proposal: ‘it’s too good to be true’ responses fit in here.  Provide evidence of your bona fides. Next comes the powerful rejection – probably because your proposal is not good enough.

But if it is good enough, credible and fully understood, they may resist for historic reasons: they may not like you but, more likely, they have some other reason to not want to do a deal with you.  Maybe your organisation misled them in the past, maybe another organisation did and, in their mind, ‘you’re all the same.’

This last layer is rarely about reality – more often it is about perception.  So you need to understand the basis of that perception and undermine it with counter evidence… always in a respectful way.  Try using an adaptation of the ABCDE process, a tool form the heart of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Other Pocketblogs about Handling Resistance

The Handling Resistance Pocketbook, by Mike Clayton

 

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What is your negotiating personality?

Last week, we took a look at negotiation and I want to return briefly to it.  In The Negotiator’s Pocketbook, Patrick Forsyth offers a nice model of how you come across as a negotiator.

Neotiation Personality

Projection

The way you are perceived – how confident, assertive and credible you seem.  In Patrick’s mind, this is ‘good’ assertion – respectful and appropriate, rather than domineering and aggressive.

Empathy

Your ability to assume your counter-party’s perspective and see things from their point of view, understanding what they want and how they perceive the situation and your actions.

Patrick gives a wealth of tips about ‘behavioural ploys’ that negotiators can use, to increase your projection and empathy.  I want to pick out just one:

Flagging

Not: ‘oh boy, this negotiation has been going on for ages, now I’m flagging’. 

Instead: ‘I’d like to flag up the next step’.

Patrick recommends using questions and statements that demonstrate where you are in the negotiation and what you think needs to follow in the process.  Because negotiation is a process, and it needs to keep moving until it reaches a conclusion – of one sort or another.

What made me think, was this statement:

never flag a disagreement’

… which Patrick doesn’t explain.

Never Flag a Disagreement

This statement caught me by surprise.  I didn’t necessarily agree with it.  I had to think why it might be true.  And then I realised: Patrick is right.  So now, I can explain it.

Flag a disagreement and the process stops.  When the process stops, the negotiation ends.  If you disagree, then flag the next step you need to take to move back into agreement.  Nice, Patrick, thank you.

Maybe, that should be Rule 5.

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The Rules of Negotiation

There are no Rules in a knife fight

No rules in a knife fight - Ted Cassidy in Twentieth Century Fox's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
No rules in a knife fight – Ted Cassidy in Twentieth Century Fox’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

There may be eight rules of Fight Club, but as Harvey Logan told us in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

‘Rules?
In a knife fight?
No rules!’

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I suppose the difference is that one is negotiation for fun (!) and the other is for real (within a fictional world).  But it raises the question:

Are there any rules in a real negotiation?

The Negotiator's PocketbookPatrick Forsyth thinks so.  Patrick is author of one of my favourite Pocketbooks, The Negotiator’s Pocketbook.

Early on in the Pocketbook, he sets out ‘Four Essential Rules’ of negotiation.
.

Rule 1: Aim High

This has to merit the status of a rule, doesn’t it.  After all, your best possible outcome, once the negotiation has started, is your opening position, so it had better be as good as you think you can possibly ask for without offending your counter-party and causing them to withdraw summarily.

Rule 2: Get the Other Person’s Shopping List

When I saw this rule, my heart sunk.  While in many negotiations, you will want to get your counter-party to reveal their opening position first (in case it is better for you than you had planned), this is not always the case.  That’s because the opener acts as an anchor and makes it very hard for you to come back with your own opening position that is in another realm altogether.

The counter-party is now stuck in one realm and you are being foolish.  If, however, you open first with your wild position, then it may indeed cause the other person to withdraw, but it will certainly change their whole perception of value.  It will re-frame the negotiation.

But Patrick is wise enough to frame his rule as being about preparation.  Do your research first, he is saying.  Now that’s a rule worth having.

Rule 3: Keep the Whole Package in Mind

How often we hear of negotiations failing over one inconsequential detail.  Inconsequential, that is, to an impartial observer.  But to the parties negotiating, who have become fixated upon it, this one point comes to betoken the whole matter.  That’s foolish.  I like this rule too.

Rule 4: Keep Searching for Variables

The concept of variables is central to the way Patrick describes negotiation and putting them front and centre is right. Anything that could be done, given, granted, requested, conceded, exchanged, varied – these are variables.  And the more you have, the greater your negotiating flexibility.  The greater your negotiating flexibility, the more likely you are to find agreement.  Keep searching for variables – and keep tweaking them.  Too right.

Rule 5: There is no rule 5

… or is there?  Patrick lists four.  What would your fifth be?  Do add your own ideas in the comments.

So here’s the deal

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve looked at searching for a New Job and keeping the Same Job.  Whichever you do, you may find the opportunity to negotiate.  If you do, keep Patrick’s four rules in mind.

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Same Job: New Job

Last week we looked at some tips if you want a new job.  But what if you want to stay in your current job, but want it to feel like a new job?

If only there were some way to revitalise your current job.  Well maybe there is.  And it all starts with the Flower Model of Job Satisfaction.

Flower Model

Lets take each petal at a time and see what you can do to boost your job satisfaction.  Effective action on two or three of these could transform the way you feel about your current job.

Motivation

What is it that really motivates you in your work?  David McClelland’s theory of ‘Motivational Needs’ can help you here: You may be motivated by:

The Need for Power: a desire to be in control – of yourself, yes, and others maybe. Certainly you will look for respect.

The Need for Affiliation:  a desire to be part of a team and to relate to other people, working together and being recognised for your contributions.

The Need for Achievement: a desire to do things, do them well, see results and sense progress.

Whatever you discover motivates you, look for ways to get more of it in the balance of your work.

Effectiveness

If getting things done and making a difference matters to you, then look for ways to take a more strategic perspective on your work.  What choices and decisions have you been pretending you can’t make?  It is time to be more precise in what you choose to do, and to seek more responsibility for making a difference.  So start with ‘what is the purpose of my job?’  and work towards focusing more on that and less on the trivia.

Creativity

Get involved in projects, take part in change, review how you do things or what else your organisation could do to serve your clients or customers.  Take time out to think, experiment and play.

Enjoyment

Start to look for the fun in the things you do day-to-day: maybe a robust argument about the next marketing campaign, perhaps a chance to design a new window display, possibly a decision to learn new techniques that will make you better at your job.  With the right attitude, discussion, design and learning are all fun – and so is just about anything.

Efficiency

Focus on one thing and look at how you can do it as well and efficiently as you possibly can.  Flow states are the optimum state of pleasure for humans. We reach them when we stretch ourselves to the limit of our capability, so transform a dull repetitive task to a striving for efficiency and not only will you free up time for creativity or relationships or enjoyment, but you will have more pleasure doing the task.

Relationships

The average worker spends more of their waking hours with work colleagues than they do with their family.  So make the most of it.  Look for new ways to enjoy the company of your colleagues – or look for new colleagues within your organisation whose company you can better enjoy.

Please Note:  This is in no way a recommendation to try out an inappropriate workplace relationship.  Far more often than not, it will end badly and make things a whole lot worse!

Management Pocketbooks you may enjoy

The Positive Mental Attitude Pocketbook will give you a heap of hints how to transform your attitude to a job you are starting to tire of.

The Management Models Pocketbook has a chapter on David McClelland’s model of motivational needs.

The Improving Efficiency Pocketbook will give you a load of ideas for… improving efficiency.

The Working Relationships Pocketbook will..  well, you get the idea.

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New Job

Maybe you are newly on the job market… a recent graduate without a job, a school leaver at the end of the summer, ready for work, recently redundant, or bored with your job and looking for a new one.  Or maybe you have been looking for a job for a fair time and are hoping for a new tip that could make the difference.

The Perfect CV

The perfect CV or job application does not exist.  The best one for this opportunity, at this time, with your skills, experience and personality is what you need to create.  Yes; you read that correctly – each CV and each application needs to be tailored to the role you are applying for and the culture of the organisation you are applying to.  This is not to manipulate the truth, but to make the relevant truth easy for selectors to find and appreciate.

What General Principles Apply?

There are some general principles, and these are important.  They will dictate in part the base document you create and in part how you adapt it each time.

Character First

There is an old saying: ‘hire for attitude: train for skills’ and many organisations apply that ethos.  What is becoming more evident is the desire to place character before capability.  Where there is an over-supply of skilled or experienced candidates, what really matters is character.  How can you use your application documents to demonstrate your character strengths?

As an aside, what can you do while you wait for that job, to develop your character?  Working at this is, itself, a sign of character and an important asset in your job search.

Stand-alone CV?

Your application documents no longer stand alone.  If an employer is interested in you, the HR department or interviewing manager may well punch your name into a search engine.  There is a debate in the HR profession around the ethics and the reliability of this, but the safest thing is to assume it will happen.  So do it yourself and find out what they would see on their screens.  If it is not good, fix it.

Pay particular attention to social media and use professional social media websites like Linked In to your advantage.

CV

Marketing

Printing your CV on Day-Glo paper may be good for attracting attention but will not attract an interview.  However, a well-laid out, carefully prepared and proof-read document with a little design consideration may help.  Look at the corporate style of the organisation you are applying to: download their brochures and reports from their website.  Are they traditional or modern in their design ethic?  Do they like dense information or a lot of white space?  Don’t copy their style, but do reflect it.  A small number of excellent applications will beat a vast number of low quality all-the-same ones – and save you on postage.

The Core Message

What is your SHA?  Your Specific Hiring Advantage – for this job, for this employer.  Build your CV and application around that one message.  Keep the content concise and relevant and address any criteria or clues you get from the job details, the advert, the organisation’s public image.  Two good pages are perfect.  Any more and it won’t get read.

A Really Good Cover Letter

… will grab attention on line one and leave the reviewer eager to read your CV and subconsciously biased in its favour.  The confirmation bias means if they like your cover letter, they will look for the good in your application and CV.  If the cover letter fails to impress (or worse) then they will notice every tiny flaw in your application and it will be scrapped (emotionally if not physically) long before the bottom of the last page.  Hone your cover letter to perfection – don’t treat it as a last minute rush job.  That would waste all of the other efforts you have made.

Be Honest

‘Character first’ was the first tip – and it is the last.  If they have the slightest reason to doubt your honesty, you are burnt burger and in the bin.  Avoid exaggeration and provide evidence.

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Innovation, Creativity and Heroism

Neil Alden ArmstrongNeil Armstrong died last week (25 August 2012).

He died a pilot, a professor, a scientist and a hero.

There are a lot of pilots, a lot of professors and a lot of scientists.  But if the word is to mean something worthwhile, there are few heroes.

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Hero

Like many words, the word hero has become debased somewhat, by overuse, but my 1988 Collins dictionary defines it well (although old-fashionedly in its gender assumption) as:

‘a man distinguished by exceptional courage, nobility, etc’

That’s my emphasis, please note.

Curiosity

One of Armstrong’s exceptional etc’s was curiosity.  And anyone who reads my own newsletter will know that I am a big fan of what NASA has started to achieve with its Curiosity rover, on Mars.

The development of this project was an exercise in astonishing boldness, heaped upon massive innovation, grown out of remarkable creativity.  And what makes it particularly appealing to me is that I believe curiosity to be the magic ingredient of creativity.

We choose to do these things…

In launching the Apollo space programme that put Armstrong on the moon, John F Kennedy made two key speeches: the first to Congress in May 1961 announced the goal of going to the moon.  Then, in September 1962, speaking at Rice University, he spoke at length about the project, saying:

‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.’

Is that not the nature of creativity and innovation?

What is the nature of heroism?

Innovation, by its very definition, is risky.  It is new, it is uncertain, it could fail.  But if it presents a challenge that is truly worthwhile, if it addresses a deep hunger for knowledge and a nobility of endeavour, then being prepared to take that risk, for its own sake, is heroism.

Neil Armstrong was a hero.

Neil Alden Armstrong was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, U.S. Navy pilot, test pilot, and university professor.
Source: Wikipedia

Born: August 5, 1930
Died: August 25, 2012

Education:
University of Southern California(1970)
Purdue University (1947–1955)


Creative Manager's PocketbookNurturing Innovation PocketbookProblem Solving Pocketbook

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The Seven Basic Principles of Body Language

Like so many people, I have long found the topic of ‘body language’ irresistible.  It feels as if there should be some deep secret – known only to adepts – and some magical understanding of our fellow human beings to be gleaned from its study.

Of course, neither is true.  Anyone can understand the signals that our bodies leak into the social environment and any understanding you gain is far from magical – it will remain flawed.

Continue reading The Seven Basic Principles of Body Language

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Memory: Problems and Solutions

Memory is an elusive thing.  Tennessee Williams described his play, The Glass Menagerie, as a memory play and his narrator, Tom, says of it:

‘Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental,
it is not realistic.’

Forgetting is inevitable

And that sums up the problem of memory: what we remember is only a representation of reality.  In her new Pocketbook, Vicki Culpin exposes some of the myths of memory and points out that  forgetting is inevitable.

If we know something happened, yet we cannot recall what, our brains strive to fill in the gaps.  And they do this with newly created memories based on suggestion and fantasy.  These are often known as false memories and are strongly associated with trauma.

Does this mean that all attempts to improve your memory are doomed?  Vicki exposes another myth here: memory is not like a muscle, so simply exercising it will not help.

There is hope

But the answer is a resounding no.  By using the right strategies and practising them until they become second nature, remembering facts and figures, names and faces can become easy and efficient.

Many of the masters of memory have always been magicians, illusionists and mentalists, whose ability to remember card sequences, for example, allows them to perform tricks that seem inexplicable.  When most people are challenged with the assertion that the performer ‘simply’ remembered a sequence of 52 cards, they find that even more incredible.

The truth is that these feats of memory are relatively modest to those who know the right method and, more important, are prepared to put in the many, many hours of practice to perfect its use.  For a great description of these methods and how they are used, take a look at Derren Brown’s excellent ‘Tricks of the Mind ’.

Practical Tips and Techniques

The Memory Pocketbook is a simple guide to how to improve your memory, filled with useful techniques and tips.

Memory

Improve your Short Term Memory

How often have you been told a phone number and, before you could write it down, it’s . . .

gone

One way we try to hold the number in our short term memory (STM) is by repeating it.  Vicki relates research showing that the faster you repeat the number, the longer it will last.  So not:

0 – 1 – 9 – 6 – 2 – 7 – 3 – 5 – 5 – 7 – 3

better:

0–1–9–6–2–7–3–5–5–7–3 . . .   0–1–9–6–2–7–3–5–5–7–3

and better still:

01962735573 . . .   01962735573 . . .   01962735573

Another Memory Tip

Grouping numbers really helps too.  Groups of three are particularly easy:

01 962 735 573 . . .   01 962 735 573 . . .   01 962 735 573 . . .

You probably felt yourself doing that automatically anyway.  If these two tips seem obvious, then there are 120 pages of other great tips.

So here’s the deal

Don’t just say ‘I have a terrible memory for names.’
If it’s important, do something about it.

Don’t think ‘I’ll never be able to memorise my presentation.’
If it will give more impact, learn how to remember it.

Don’t find yourself forgetting something on your shopping list: memorise it.

Don’t write your PIN in some weird and wonderful place: commit it to memory.

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Let’s sort out poor performance, Part 3: The Alternative

In the last two weeks, we have been looking at managing poor performance:

  1. The infrastructure you will need
  2. The techniques to turn poor performance around

This week, we are going to look at what to do if you cannot turn the poor performance around.

Poor Performance

First, however, I should say two things

  1. In many regions of the world, you will have laws which mean you need to do this properly, to avoid unwanted complications and problems.  I am not a lawyer and know the laws in precisely none of the legal jurisdictions of the world.
  2. The above does not absolve you of the responsibility to deal properly with poor performance and neither, if you take proper advice and act with care, need it stop you.

Consequently, the following is nothing more than some generic thoughts, which you need to test against local law and your organisation’s policies and procedures.

The Supremacy of Evidence

Rule 1: you can’t act effectively without evidence.  No manager can be effective unless you are constantly aware of your team members’ performance – and that means reviewing evidence of what they are doing and how it compares with the requirements of their roles.  Take into account also any external factors that are affecting their work.

Documentation and Record Keeping

You also need to keep records and document what happens.  Most procedures and, I am sure, most legal systems will require documentary records to provide solid evidence that can back up your judgements and so justify your decisions.  Some systems will require copious data gathering and recording, so be structured and methodical.  Also ensure that your records are kept under lock and key or in strong-password protected files.

Openness and Choice

Be open with the poor performer about what you are observing and the implications it has for their future.  Be clear about the choices they have and the implications of each choice for them.  You cannot make me perform to a specific standard, but you must let me know the implications of my choice not to.

Care and Compassion

Finally, you may want rid of me – for all the right reasons – but that is not a good reason to abandon all compassion for me as a human being and, more important organisationally – to disregard any duty of care that you have towards me during the process, while I am still employed.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

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