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Busting Your Corporate Idol

Upward Management Do’s and Don’ts

February 4, 2013 by 1 Comment

Chapter 9: Paint Your Environment Part 15

Earlier in the chapter, I shared how I was productive but perceived as “not committed” at my last job before I left the corporate world.  In a way they were right: The company was not the most important thing in my life.  But, I was committed to producing high quality, professional work.  Frankly, I would have stayed longer if I had been promoted.

I’m happy with how things have turned out, but sometimes I wonder if I should have been more like Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, who used to hide her 5:30 departure to take care of the kids.  I wanted to make a statement, and went out of my way to let everyone know that after-hours was out of bounds.

Successful Upward Management requires firm boundaries and clear communication. For example, I did not answer emails in the evening. I didn’t ask permission not to answer, I just didn’t. My manager once told me how he learned not to expect a response from me to weekend emails until Monday morning, and he was surprised that he was ok with it.  Here is a little secret – I did check email once a day on the weekend, but I did not answer because it was never an urgent issue. I trained everyone not to expect an answer, and they stopped sending me email.

Poor upward management came when I got arrogant: I told my manager my strategy. It pissed him off, and rightly so.  I was showing off, and I think my arrogance held back my career in an unnecessary way. Had I to do it over again, I would have remembered that they are more senior, and should be treated with some deference and respect. I don’t mean ass kissing, but I tended to treat them like we were equals, which we weren’t.

I think my desire to champion workplace flexibility was a holdover from an earlier time in my career, when I thought that I was above politics. I could have quietly gone about keeping my life in balance.  I had what I wanted: a life that put people first, and I was no longer caught up in corporate idolatry.

Moreover, work was not the center of my identity. I had a growing community of friends outside of my company. Together, these helped me set boundaries, and limit my work to 50 hours a week.

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Why Did Sabina Feel Like a Failure At Work?

January 21, 2013 by 2 Comments

Chapter 9: Paint Your Environment Part 7

In the last post, Sabina said she “felt like a failure because the forecast was so off.”  I understand where she is coming from.  I have twice managed a product that was selling below the forecast.  The first time I felt terrible, but the second time I was annoyed but unemotional.  The difference?  By the second time I had busted my corporate idol, meaning that my personal identity was not longer tied up with the company.  I was clear in my mind that the most important things to me were my health and the people in my life.  And, I had a strong community that I knew would be there for me whatever happened at work.  Together, this gave me freedom to make different choices when “stuff happens” at work.

Let’s revisit Sabina’s situation, and look more deeply to see what she might have done differently.  She felt badly because the revenue was coming in at only 25% of the  forecast.  Looking at it objectively, the forecast had no chance – the team had cut out 2/3 of the features prior to launch, and the forecast was not changed because she was afraid the project would be canceled.

In circumstances like this, I recommend a two scenario forecast, like the one at the right.

Business Case For Good Template

Forecast With And Without Key Features

Let me explain how this would have helped in Sabina’s situation.  The red is the base case, and the blue includes the additional features. If Sabina had presented a dual forecast, the framework would have been set for the lower initial growth, and the need for continued investment to meet the desired revenue numbers in year 3 and beyond. Sabina’s fear that the project would be canceled held her back.

How would the company have reacted?  Maybe the project would have been canceled as she feared, or maybe the company would have accepted the lower forecast and the need for future investment.  In either case, the situation would have been less stressful than the slow withering on the vine that comes from the stigma of an underperforming product.

In addition, according to Sabina, the people who got ahead at her company were the “brown nosers,” which certainly wasn’t her.  Could she have been risking her career by speaking out?  Maybe, but unless she was willing to brown nose her career advancement was probably limited at that company anyway. Today Sabina has advanced in her career considerably, at another company.

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Does Your Job Increase Or Decrease Your Long-Term Happiness Potential?

January 7, 2013 by 2 Comments

Chapter 8: Secure Your Community Part 14 (Conclusion)

Community establishes hidden rules for behavior, and provides a set of rituals and customs to support these behavioral norms.  At work the rituals are things like regular all hands company meetings.  At home rituals may come from a formal community like a church, a family holiday tradition, or the informal get togethers with friends.

Many corporate cultures have an implicit company-first value system, which I have argued throughout the book promotes a modern form of idolatry. As I argued in Chapter 7, the first step to escape a life of Corporate Idolatry is to develop those parts of your identity that put people and not the company first.  However, the power of corporate culture can be so powerful that it takes a strong community outside of work to counter-balance it’s influence.

A relationship with a true community works in two directions; if you support the community it will support you in return.  A company relationship, on the other hand, is one way.  While a few companies like Southwest Airlines have a no layoff policy, this should not be taken as a lifelong commitment – there is nothing to prevent layoffs in the future. People who worked at IBM in the early 80s could not have envisioned the wide scale layoffs and loss of the generous pension plans in the early 90s.

I recommend a personal risk reduction strategy, to establish rituals that support a commitment to community outside the workplace.  The first of these rituals, which I will cover in the next chapter, is a Sabbath, a day without work.

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Four Ideas To Help You Get Your Life Back Starting Today

December 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 8: Build Your Community Part 11

Over the last few posts, I have explained why it is dangerous to put all of your happiness eggs in the work basket: Lack of diversification is inherently risky.  Would you put all of your money in a single stock?  Any financial advisor would say you are crazy to do so.  Diversification is the key to a sound financial strategy.  The same holds true of your connections to other people.  Market forces beyond your control  can turn the most wonderful of workplaces into the stuff of nightmares.

If your time profile indicates the risk of corporate idolatry, I suggest that some life diversification is in order.  There is no need to say  ”no” to the company – it will likely cause additional stress and may induce feelings of guilt.  Find something to say yes to, an activity that you decide is a higher priority than the company.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. Make a list of the things you liked to do when you were younger.  Is there anything you’d like to start again?

2. Join a class that a friend is taking.  At minimum you’ll get more time with the friend, and you might find something new that you really like.

3. If someone invites you to something, say yes!  (See this post on community opportunities.)

4. Put the new activity on the calendar – you will be far more likely to follow through if it is on the calendar.  One person told me her solution to a crazy time in the office was to sign up for 4 dance classes a week.  It gave her a “reason to get out of there.”

Sorry if you were expecting more earth-shattering ideas. It’s not complicated, just scary and hard to begin.  But once you start to connect with other people outside of work,  you will feel positive peer pressure to keep on connecting.

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The Weakness Of a Leader Who Is Too Strong

November 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 16, conclusion

Any way you slice it, Abraham was an extraordinary man.  He insulted the god/king to his face and wasn’t executed on the spot.  Whether it was by divine intervention as the stories tell, or because he was too powerful to kill, Abraham had it going on.

How did Abraham overcome a culture that was thousands of years old to form a new way  of thinking that today has over 4 billion followers?  In the words of Popvox CEO Marci Harris  “A dedicated team with shared vision can make amazing things happen, and still be standing long after others go home.”  Abraham’s vision had a strong element of putting people first, and the laws of God that he taught applied equally to all men, whether a king or a begger.  Abraham’s tent was open on four sides so anyone could come and talk with him, and he personally washed the feet of guests from the desert on the day he was circumcised at the age of 99.

While Abraham’s wealth, influence and followers increased over his lifetime, his story illustrates the weakness of the movement: it was hard. God was now an abstraction, unknowable and un-seeable.  It was harder for people to believe in the abstract God than it was to follow the multiple gods of the surrounding cultures, gods that everyone could touch and feel.

Early Judaism depended on single leaders to foster a group identity.  This did a great job of creating the religion, but it was hard to maintain in the long term.  Within a few generations of his death, the Abraham’s people, the Israelites fell back into idolatry.  This reminds me of descriptions in the book Good To Great of companies that achieved great results under a charismatic leader, but fell apart after the leader left.

What it took for the Israelites to get to the next level was a new leader, Moses the lawgiver, who brought written laws and “process,” to help create a way of life to support the values taught by Abraham.

And the same process holds for those of us trying to overcome corporate idolatry.  Each of us on our own can shift our identity to prioritize people over the company.  But for those changes to last, we need a community of like-minded people.

Who is your community?

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What Can We Learn About Layoffs From the Story Of Abraham In The Bible?

November 26, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity

In the last post, Janet solidified her identity as a people-first person (as opposed to a company-first person) only after she was laid off from her job.  The company culture was difficult, and put a high premium on putting the company first.  The story of Abraham in the Bible also starts with a journey.  Abraham leaves a society of idol worshippers, starting a journey into the wilderness. Abraham leaves at God’s command, which on the surface seems like very different circumstances than a layoff.  Hold that thought while we return to Abraham’s backstory, which is captured in the Talmud, a collection of stories and commentary that fills in the gaps in the Torah (aka the Five Books of Moses in the Old Testament.)

I shared the Talmud story of Abraham smashing the idols in his father’s shop at the start of Chapter 2.  These clay statues played a central role in Sumarian life.  To challenge idolatry was to challenge a foundational element of the culture, and by extension the power of King Nimrod. When Abraham was brought to court to explain, he did not back away from his central message.  “If you are so wise, King Nimrod, why do you worship gods made by human hands, and why do you call yourself a god when one day you will die like all men made of flesh and blood?”[i]  (You can read the whole story here.)

Nimrod proceeds to jail Abraham for a year without food and water, and then to throw him into a fiery furnace, both of which Abraham survived through divine intervention.  Let’s for the sake of argument, say that this is an allegory and not literally true.  How then, did Abraham survive, in an era thousands of years ago when the rule of the king was absolute, and “dead bodies floated along the Euphrates.?”[ii]  In my opinion, it is because Abraham was teaching a set of values that gained a following.  Rather than create a martyr, maybe Nimrod sent Abraham and his followers into exile.  It was only later reported that Abraham left of his own accord, to  ”spend more time with his family.”

What does this say about Abraham’s identity?

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[i] The Classic Tales: 4000 Years of Jewish Lore by Ellen Frankel. Jason Aronson Inc (1993) P 54-56.

[ii] The Gifts Of The Jews by Thomas Cahill Anchor Books (1998) p. 93

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Why Your Identity Matters To Work-Life Balance

November 20, 2012 by 5 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 13

In the last post, “Janet Wolf” described how her identity was wrapped up in the company, and how a layoff allowed her to realize that “she was above all that.”  What does it mean to have an identity wrapped up in the company?

Stanford Business School professor James G. March describes identity as an expected set of behaviors that apply in certain social situations. Put another way, identity is an automatic pilot that guides behavior without the need to stop and think what to do in a given situation.  An identity is reinforced by the social context, that rewards “behavior consistent with the definition of the identity and penalizing behavior inconsistent with behavior.”[i]

For example, a parent identity is reinforced by parenting-related activities, such as the appreciative smile that comes from going to the soccer game.  An identity that comes from the company is reinforced daily by the interactions, both positive and negative, that happen at work.  Some companies, like Google, go to great lengths to strengthen the identity of employees from the time of hire. (See this post on Nooglers.)

As I wrote earlier in the chapter, we all have multiple identities that apply in different situations.  Corporate idolatry arises when the company-first identity becomes dominant.  In the year I went from working 90 hours a week to 60 hours a week, I was in a virtuous cycle – the more time I spent at home, the more my parent/husband/friend identities became stronger, which in turn made it easier to work even less.

For Janet, her change in identity was catalyzed by a change in environment.  It was only when she was out of the workplace that she her non-work identity re-asserted itself.  In the next post, I will explore this dynamic further, and will return to the story of Abraham that was started in Chapter 2.

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[i] Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen by James G. March Free Press. (1994) p 64-65

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The Network: Insurance Against a Layoff

November 19, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 12 

In the last post, we met Janet Wolf, the power mom who set clear expectations with her managers that she would have time contraints and would always get her work done.  And she remained connected to her kids activities while consistently getting to do “bigger and better things” in her career.

Janet is a Wolf, someone who is concerned with both the success of the organization and the welfare of the people she works with. (see this post from Chapter 4 for more on Wolves.)  And like Harry Lobo, she found herself in a difficult political environment.  Janet described it as “ten smart guys at the top” who seemed to think that everyone else was “dispensable.”

Janet’s last manager at that company had “no desire to spend any time on talent management.  [His attitude was] ‘Get it done or else you suck and get out of here.’”  This was difficult for Janet, because her values put her priorities in a different place.  Janet thought that developing people was the key to successful long term success of the company.  And her network, both professional and personal, was huge, which was critically important after an unexpected layoff after five years.  Janet’s comments, which she shared with me a month after the layoff, illustrate how her identity quickly shifted.

“These people don’t value me, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not valued.  Your identity is so tied up with a company and a role but then you realize that you are above all that.  It doesn’t matter that you may or may not be affiliated with a company right now.  It’s been an interesting awakening for me, to realize that.  I’ll be ok.  Yes, I do want to do something exciting next but its ok if it takes a while.  It took a week for me to come to [figure this out].  I got so many calls and emails from friends.”

And given the size of her network, it didn’t surprise me that Janet soon had another position that she described to me as her “dream job.”

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Meet the Power Mom Executive, Pregnant Before Marissa Mayer Made It Hip

November 15, 2012 by 5 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 11

In the last two posts we met Sebastian Tate, who throughout is career has maintained a strong identity outside of the workplace, which has in turn helped him lead a balanced life.  On the other side of the spectrum were four women that I interviewed who all independently felt like an abused spouse in relation to the company.

Most people seem like “Janet Wolf” caught between competing identities. Janet has a Ph.D. from Cal Tech in Chemical Engineering, and worked after grad school for the Boston Consulting Group.  Janet is one of the most relentlessly positive people you’ll ever meet, and I was not surprised to hear that at the end of a long engagement the president of an electronics firm recruited her to become vice president of corporate planning.

Janet was very interested in the position, but was nervous because she was four weeks pregnant, and “wanted to make a good impression.”  (And this was  ten years before Marissa Mayer made it hip to be a pregnant executive.)   When Janet told the president, she was delighted to hear his response:  “Congratulations, I don’t care.”

Janet went on to be what I think of as the “power working mom.”  At work I doubt people perceived her as a mom, yet she was able to remain involved in her kids activities.  I asked her how she manages to do both.  In her words:

“I’ve been crystal clear with each boss – I have kids.  There will be days I need to leave early, or can’t get here early.  I got the work done and it was never a problem.  I got to move around to bigger and better things.”

What impact do you think Janet’s dual identity had on her response to difficult political situations at the company?

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A Step You Can Take Today To Relieve Chronic Overwork

November 13, 2012 by 4 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 8

If you are hoping for dramatic change in your life overnight, it isn’t going to happen unless there is a crisis.  The David model from the last few posts is a perfect example of this.  But if you’d like to change before you have a stroke or run screaming from the building hope is the best answer.  As I’ve written before, I went from working 90 hours a week to 60 hours a week in less than a year without changing jobs, and without anyone at work noticing.  Here are three steps to help you do the same.

  1. Remind yourself that you are the type of person who puts people first, and the company second.   As you make decisions, try not to think about the consequences of your actions – think only about what a person who puts people first would do.  (See this post on the Time Audit too.)
  2. Secure a goods night’s sleep every night by stopping work 1-2 hours before bed time.  When I made this change, my internal dialog went something like this.  My health is more important than work, so I will not check email after 9 PM to give me time to wind down before bed.  Keep this rule no matter what.  People at work will adjust, assuming they even notice.  And focus on the positive, the benefits of sleep.  You will feel the difference right away.
  3. Make people the priority in the moment.  For example, if it is story time, or you are having a drink after work with a friend, don’t answer your phone or listen to the message until much later. Imagine being on a date with someone, who says “It’s my boss calling, but you are more important to me, so I’ll listen to the message in the morning.”

Think about your life, and look for an easy win, the smaller the better.    All you need to do is show the elephant that change is possible, and it will start to move on its own.  Start with one change only!

What is one rule that you could put in place that would prioritize people over the company?  Post it here, to get the support of our community.

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You May Be Closer To Work-Life Balance Than You Realize

November 12, 2012 by

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 7

If you asked David before his stroke if it was healthy for someone to work 100 hours a week, I think he would have said “of course not.”  But I doubt if he  perceived himself at risk.  This is one of those positive illusions we discussed in Chapter 5.  People are not very good at evaluating themselves.  For example, most people think they are above average drivers, and “25% of people believe they are in the top 1% in their ability to get along with others.”[i] Larry Holmes, the former heavyweight boxing champion was asked if he was concerned about injury during a comeback in his 40s.  His answer: “You always think it will be the other guy who is hurt, not you.”

So I won’t bore you with statistics about the dangers of sleep deprivation and stress.  But I will let you know why learning the statistics have so little impact on behavior:  We are not of one mind.  While scholars like Plato and Freud have written about the different properties of the mind for thousands of years, the metaphor I like best is the Rider on an Elephant.[ii] The Rider is the rational, conscious mind, and the Elephant is the unconscious (emotional) mind.  The Rider can point the Elephant in a certain direction, but if the Elephant doesn’t want to go, it won’t.

At the end of the day, our emotions are in control.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t change them.  David’s stroke was an emotional jolt that led to rapid life change – he recognized how precious life was, and started to put people first. The moment I recognized my corporate idolatry changed me at the emotional level, which led to steady changes in my life as well.  And here’s the really good news: you don’t need to have a health crisis or a religious experience to change the elephant – a positive emotional carrot can be just as effective.

If you are reading this book, or even this post, you have already begun the process of reorienting yourself towards people first values.  There can only be one top priority, and consciously deciding that people, yourself, your friends, and your family come before the company is a critical step on the path.

What are things you have done to put people first?

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[i] Switch: How To Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath.  Broadway Books (2010) p 114. Amazon

[ii] The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.  Online PDF p. 4 http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/happiness-hypothesis-ch1.pdf retrieved November 12, 2012

 

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How To Change The Habit Of Stress

November 9, 2012 by 2 Comments
The Habit Loop

The Habit Loop

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 6

Prior to his stroke, David was living a life of corporate idolatry, where the company was the top priority to the detriment of his health and family.  After the stroke, David changed his values, and refocused his personal identity.  He was in the habit of deriving positive reinforcement from job-related activities, and shifted his focus to family related activities.  Remembering that a significant portion of idolatry derives from a collection of habits is an important clue to change.

In his book The Power Of Habit, Charles Duhigg explains that in a typical habit, there is some kind of cue that triggers a behavior that has a reward at the end of it.  For example, if someone puts a plate of cookies on the table in front of me, I will take and eat the cookie, even though I am trying to lose weight.  The cue is the cookie, the behavior is eating, and the reward is a burst of pleasure and sugar.  In addition, when my brain sees the cookies, it anticipates the pleasure, and I start craving the cookie, such that it becomes harder and harder over time not to take a cookie.

Habits are mediated by a primitive part of the brain called the basal ganglia which operates independently of rational, cognitive thought.  In other words, a habit is similar to a reflex, something we just do without thinking.  The best way to change a habit  is to disrupt one of the three stages of a habit, which means avoid the cue, change the middle behavior, or change the reward.

In David’s case, the work stress became a self fulfilling prophecy.  For example, Duhigg explains that checking email becomes a habit.  Executives get a reward from the temporary distraction a new email provides.  For me, I got an adrenaline burst from all kinds of work-related issues, and I think that was David’s issue.  The rewards for his people first values were calm and peace.

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See How David’s New Priorities Bring Him Work-Life Balance

November 8, 2012 by 8 Comments

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 5

In the last post, I wrote about a Midwestern VP I called “David” whose company-first value system led to 100 hour weeks and a stroke before he was fifty.  And while David recovered fully from the stroke, he was laid off less than a year later.  “Maybe I don’t have it anymore,” he told me in a quiet voice.  I knew exactly what he meant, because at one time the value I gave myself came from my job.  And I also knew that if I hadn’t changed my life a few years earlier, it could have been me with the stroke.

One thing David did have was a strong family – a good marriage, and three kids, a daughter in college and two boys in high school.  To make a long story short, David used this experience to change his life, which is markedly different in the next job.  David reconnected with people first values.  In order of importance his priorities became:

  1. Personal Health
  2. Family
  3. Work

It’s not that work is unimportant to David, it is just not as important as his health or family.  And this translated directly into a different set of priorities and decisions. For example, David:

  • Took a spontaneous trip to see his daughter in college
  • Stops working at five because he wants to have time to cook dinner with the family.  Previously, he was on calls and email till eight, and would get off the phone starving and crabby, running out to Taco Bell for dinner.  Yes, power male VP loves to cook.
  • When traveling to the corporate headquarters, he goes to the gym instead of going early to the office.

None of these changes is earthshaking in and of themselves, but they all stem from a shift in his personal identity, and they are now the rule instead of the exception.

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What Happens If Your Self-Worth Comes From Your Job?

November 1, 2012 by 1 Comment

Chapter 7: Secure Your Identity Part 1

When I finally resigned from the corporate world, I told everyone it was not because of the product, the company, or the people.  It was about my personal journey, to take care of the kids, and to figure out what to do next.  I was both lying and telling the truth.  In public, management was supportive, but in private it got nasty.  One person, pressuring me to work an additional two months, went so far as to say “You will never work in this field again if you leave the company in a difficult position.”  If I’d resigned to work for a competitor, they would have walked me out the door, and happily had a beer with me the following week.  But to turn my back on the system was heresy.

Leaving the corporate world was not the means to regain control of my life, it was the result of it.  I had been living with a reasonably healthy work life balance for a few years when I finally resigned.  A lot of it was about the circumstances of the position.  I was never going to be happy at that company, and needed space to figure out what to do next.

The change for me started when I recognized my corporate idolatry, that I was doing what was best for the company instead of what was best for people.

It came down to a fundamental question that I asked myself: Who are you?  I was a lot of people: a father, husband, son, friend, marketer and scientist.  But the one I thought of most, day to day, was the guy who worked for the genomics company.  I was the guy who was changing the world.  But on a deeper level, I was a guy whose self-worth came from the job.

I now understand that identity is not one thing, it is a choras.  And it is possible to consciously change the lead singer.

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New Values Brought a New Identity

June 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 1: My Corporate Idolatry Part 11

If I was a scientist in my first incarnation, and a marketer in my second, what do I call my third?  Writer, philosopher, father, and husband are all labels that fit my identity, but the one I like the best is storyteller.  Busting Your Corporate Idol: How To Reconnect With Values and Regain Control Of Your Life  is a book full of stories.  Each chapter begins with a story from my life.  And many chapters include stories from the thirty men and women I interviewed for the book.  Most were directors and vice presidents from mid-size to large corporations.  Each story provides a snapshot of the corporate life, which together craft a mosaic from a broad range of age, experience, and industries.  Stories were shared in confidence, and unless otherwise noted have been camouflaged and/or combined to communicate the humanity while maintaining confidentiality.

While the details of each story were unique, there were a number of broad themes that transcend industry and even level in the company.  So don’t be surprised if you “recognize” one of the stories they tell – it’s probably not the incident you are thinking of, but one just like it that happens all the time in the corporate world.

I recognized parts of my past life in the story of a successful vice president in Silicon Valley.  When the stress level was high, I found it very hard to depressurize and became more and more short tempered. Little things, like the kids being late for school, could ignite my explosion.  Another told me the following I kick myself for working myself to death, giving up my free time on weekends, [not] pursuing my hobbies, [not] spending time with my spouse.  And when a vice president from the Midwest told me about his recent stroke at the age of forty-seven, I saw my life as it could have been, had I not changed my priorities.

But don’t worry – you don’t need to leave the corporate world to rebalance your life.  My life was in balance for a few years before I decided to move on, and many of the stories I tell are from people who have already realigned their priorities to “bust their corporate idols,” people who are now living less stressed and happier lives.

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