Archives for April 2016

People Cannot be Perfect

April 29, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“Each person is an idiom… an apparent violation of the syntax of the species.”
—Gordon Allport, American Psychologist, in Becoming

“People Are Like Apples”

Some of the best advice I’ve ever received relates to managing people. Many years ago, as I was getting ready to hire my first employee, I prepared a long list of ideal competencies. My manager laughed at my list and remarked that I was looking for a perfect candidate, one that I wouldn’t be able to find. He told me a metaphor about how “people are like apples” and encouraged me to look for a good-enough employee instead.

When you buy apples in a market, don’t look for spotless apples, but rather for good-enough apples. Spotless “choice” apples are not only difficult to find, but may cost more. Instead, look for apples that are good enough and may have one or two bad spots. When you get an apple with a spot on it, you can either remove the spot with a knife (almost always, the spot is not very deep) or simply eat around the bad spot, thus enjoying the rest of the “near perfect” apple.

Employees, bosses, colleagues, friends, relatives, parents, kids, spouses, and all people are like apples. Use a metaphorical knife to work around their imperfections, flaws, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies.

“Root for their better angels”

Last year, the ever-brilliant Ben Casnocha wrote a fascinating essay reflecting upon his “10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman,” the founder of LinkedIn and a Silicon Valley investor. As Hoffman’s chief of staff, Casnocha worked on various strategic aspects of Hoffman’s professional and personal initiatives. He also co-authored two books, Start-up of You (on career management) and The Alliance (on talent management).

Casnocha’s “What I Learned” essay is full of helpful management and leadership insights. Here’s one on people-skills:

One of Reid’s underrated gifts … is that he maintains very complicated portraits of the people he knows. He appreciates the full spectrum of strengths and weaknesses of a particular person. He’ll comment on a friend’s character flaw—say, self-centeredness—but in the next breath note one of their unique strengths. Flaws that cause others to completely disengage are, for Reid, “navigable” (to use a Reid-ism) en route to their better side. … If you make a mistake (or three) or if a weakness of yours gets exposed—you’re not dead to him. It’s just another data point in a rich tapestry in a long-term relationship.

Idea for Impact: Work around Others’ Faults

A Chinese Proverb reminds, “Gold cannot be pure, and people cannot be perfect.” People differ greatly in their capacities: some are stronger than others, some are better looking, some are better at science, some draw and paint better, and some are better athletes. Some make decisions through logic; others rely on intuition. Intelligent people are sometimes not physically very agile and are frequently socially awkward. Great artists sometimes cannot do enough math even to balance their checkbooks. Most people are smart in their specific spheres of competence, but are clueless in many other areas of human endeavor.

When working with people, work around their idiosyncrasies. Overlook and compensate for their imperfections, or coach them and help them work on their weaknesses. Being skilled at working with people in all aspects of life involves being able to fortify their strengths and making their weaknesses irrelevant.

How to Address Employees with Inappropriate Clothing

April 26, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Inappropriate dressing is one of those workplace concerns that is often ignored or forgotten until it becomes a problem. Revealing clothing can be an all-day distraction while a sloppy or untidy employee can project an unprofessional image about the entire company.

Some employees simply don’t get it when it comes to clothing choices for work. Inexperienced employees may walk into their offices wearing miniskirts, low rise jeans, baggy jeans that keep falling off the waist, baseball caps, spaghetti strap tops, low-cut blouses that expose the midriff, sandals, flip-flops, inappropriate tattoos, body piercings, or a three-day stubble.

Sadly, managers often avoid talking about inappropriate clothing because the highly sensitive and personal nature of those discussions makes them uncomfortable, especially when the offending employee is of the other gender.

Letting the problem fester makes the situation worse: each day the offending employee doesn’t hear an objection only reinforces his/her assumption that the clothing is appropriate and increases the prospect of a defensive reaction when a manager decides to finally address the issue.

How to Tell an Employee Who Is Dressed Inappropriately?

Dealing with unprofessional dress can be awkward, but it’s crucial to intervene directly, tactfully, and discretely.

Begin by having an official company policy on the expected work attire and making employees aware of it. Not only does a dress code set the standards for appropriate clothing, but it also provides a legal basis for addressing a problem without making it an issue of personal judgment. Given the modern-day relaxed rules concerning office attire, try to be specific as possible instead of using vague terms such as “business casual.” One best practice is to include pictures from dress stores for what is appropriate and what is not. Make sure the dress code is consistent with your company and industry’s culture and what your customers expect. Include policies regarding hygiene, personal grooming, tattoos, and piercings. Update the dress code to keep up with the latest professional, social, and fashion trends.
Meet the offending employee discretely and ask, “Aaron, are you aware of our dress code?” Then, mention the specific instance of the problem, “Some of your clothes are a bit more provocative than appropriate for our workplace.” State facts and not judgments. Relate any rebuke to a business purpose, viz., the need for a professional workplace or dress-appropriateness in customer-facing roles. Ask the employee how he/she could rectify the matter. If necessary, remind that employees must accommodate the employer, not the other way around.
Be sensitive about religious, cultural, and gender-related aspects of office dressing. A male manager who needs to speak to a female employee (or vice versa) should consider having the problem subtly and discretely addressed through another female employee. Consider including another coworker in the conversation as a witness to prevent a discrimination claim. Seek guidance from human resources.
If the problem persists, try to converse again but have someone from human resources present.

Idea for Impact: A manager can forestall a great deal of employee problems by being proactive about setting expectations. Managers can and should create an appropriate work environment by defining hard boundaries on office etiquette, respectful interaction, and dress codes and then actively addressing concerns before they become problems.

Inspirational Quotations #629

April 24, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

He who moves not forward goes backward.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has heard me laugh.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
—Richard Bach (American Novelist)

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, “God is, was and ever shall be.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

It is not well to make great changes in old age.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

It is always the secure who are humble.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

Find out What Your Customers Want and Give it to Them

April 22, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

“Nobody asked the dogs what they wanted”

Once upon a time, a pet-foods company struggled to sell a new dog food product they’d recently introduced to the market.

The company’s CEO called the department heads together to discuss why the new product wouldn’t sell.

The head of production said he’d done everything right; it wasn’t his department’s fault.

The heads of the sales, advertising, finance, packaging, shipping, and distribution departments had done everything right. None of them were to blame.

The CEO demanded, “Darn! What happened? Why won’t our new product sell?”

A junior staffer shouted from the back of the room, “Sir, it’s just that the dogs simply won’t eat our doggone food. You see, nobody asked the dogs what they wanted.”

Idea for Impact: Customer Focus Drives Company Success

Your research and development efforts will be successful only if they’re driven by a thorough understanding of what your customers want. Engage your customers. Pay close attention to their needs in every phase of product/service design including idea generation, product design, prototyping, production, distribution, and service. Remember Peter Drucker’s dictum that “the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.”

Why Doing Good Is Selfish

April 19, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consider the following legend about Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) from J. E. Gallaher’s Best Lincoln Stories (1898.)

The Fable of Abraham Lincoln and the Pigs

Once Lincoln was traveling in a mud-wagon coach along a swampy, rural area. His fellow passenger was his good friend and US Senator Edward Dickinson Baker, who later lost his life in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff at the onset of the American Civil War.

While they were conversing in the mud-wagon coach, Lincoln remarked to Baker that in doing good and evil, all people are motivated by selfishness. Just as Baker challenged Lincoln’s assertion, their coach crossed a rickety bridge over a slough (a large swampy marsh.)

Abruptly, Lincoln and Baker glimpsed a mother pig making a terrible squeal because her piglets were stuck in the swamp, couldn’t get out, and were in danger of drowning.

Abraham Lincoln As their coach started to head away, Lincoln yelled, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” The driver replied, “If the other fellow don’t object.”

With Baker’s approval, Lincoln jumped out of the wagon, ran to the slough, lifted the piglets one by one out of the swamp, and carried them to the dry bank of the swamp.

When Lincoln returned to the coach, Baker remarked, “Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in this little episode?”

Lincoln replied, “Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I would have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”

Psychological Egoism

Being moved by the plight of others—even the suffering of animals (or sentient beings to use Buddhist terminology) as in the aforementioned legend of Lincoln and the piglets—is considered a selfish deed per modern philosophy’s theory of ‘psychological egoism’.

Egoism has its roots in the philosophy of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE,) who argued that the human mind is driven by the need to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Egoism contends that deep down all our actions are motivated by what we perceive to be in our own self-interest. For example, if Tom saves Mark from drowning in a river, egoism contends that Tom’s seemingly altruistic behavior is actually motivated by his own self-interest to avoid potential social censure for not helping Mark or to be regarded a hero within his social circle.

Idea for Impact: Be Selfish, Be Generous

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

The great Indian philosopher Aurobindo wrote in Towards the Light, “The secret of joy is self-giving. If any part in you is without joy, it means that it has not given itself, it wants to keep itself for itself.”

The Dalai Lama once advised, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Per the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness, altruistic generosity encourages us to perceive others more positively. When we discover the suffering of others, we realize that those individuals could just as easily have been us. Intuitively, we contemplate “I feel their pain; I can’t let that happen” and are driven to helping others.

When we do something for others and lose ourselves in the service of others, not only do we feel closer to them, but also they feel closer to us. By focusing on giving rather than receiving and on contributing rather than consuming, our generosity can engender an outward orientation toward the world, shifting our focus away from ourselves.

As our whole perception broadens, we realize that the biggest beneficiary of our generosity is often ourselves: at the outset, we are filled with joy with the recognition that someone else is happier because of us.

Idea for Impact: If you want to feel good, help someone else.

Inspirational Quotations #628

April 17, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

He who is wise in the ancient law of Righteousness and is well-behaved will never go to the lower state of existence.
—Buddhist Teaching

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
—Cynthia Ozick

The sage never tries to store things up. The more he does for others, the more he has. The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: It will all be one a hundred years hence.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.
—Frederic Henry Hedge

Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Save Yourself from Email Overload by Checking Email Just Three Times a Day

April 15, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Email, instant messages, and alerts have evolved into our primary mode of communication. From project management to socializing, everything at work and in our personal lives centers on electronic messages. Many of us have found the unending tide of these messages unmanageable.

Research has shown that checking messages just a few times a day can help reduce stress and prevent the feeling of being incessantly ‘invaded’ by emails.

If you feel weary, annoyed, and unproductive from a daily deluge of messages, try the following techniques to regulate your electronic communication.

Turn off alerts on all your devices. Productivity studies have shown that people take 15 minutes on average to return to serious mental tasks (thinking about a project, writing reports, or debugging computer code, for example) after being interrupted by an incoming email or an instant message.
Maintain a zero inbox, i.e. consistently process all incoming email and get your inbox to zero messages. See my previous article on this productivity technique.
Set up and use subject-specific folders to hold your incoming and sent messages. This makes it easier to retrieve emails later.
Do not check emails continually throughout the day. Instead, process only three times a day: once in the morning, once during lunch, and then again before going home. Don’t waste the most productive hours of your day doing email.
Reserve time to focus on email. Set a time limit on your activities and blast through the messages without interruption. Stop when the time runs out. (Remember Parkinson’s Law: work will expand to fill the allotted time.)
When you process email,

If you can respond to a message in less than two minutes, do so right away.
If a response may need more than two minutes or you must look up information, defer it. Leave the incoming email in your inbox or file it in a ‘Draft’ folder. Dedicate the last email session of a day to respond to such emails and clear the Draft folder.
Delete, file, or delegate.
Process all emails and fully clear your inbox by the end of the day.

Tell people you correspond with the most (your boss, employees, peers) that you check email only a few times a day. Let them know that if they need to reach you immediately, they could come over to your desk or call you. If possible, encourage them to follow your email discipline.
Limit off-the-clock correspondence. Don’t make a ritual of catching up on work email after dinner or during the weekends.

Idea for Impact: If your inbox is driving you crazy, some discipline can help you process—not just check—emails and mitigate some stress.

Self-Assessment Quiz: Are You A Difficult Boss?

April 12, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you answered “yes” to any of the following questions, you need to reflect on and adjust your management style.

Do you give employees more critical feedback than appreciation, compliments, and positive feedback?
Do you undercut praise with criticism? In other words, do you deliver criticism with praise in the form of a “feedback sandwich,” undermine the positive impact of praise, and weaken the significance of the corrective feedback?
Do you give unfeasible or contradictory orders? For example, do you fail to give employees enough resources, time, and direction to get a job done?
Do you play favorites?
Do you reward “yes” people?
Do you avoid taking responsibility for your mistakes?
Do you focus on assigning blame and finding fault instead of fixing a problem?
Do you set deadlines and forget to follow up?
Do you micromanage too often?
Do you regularly coach your employees?
Do you invent busy work?
Do you stand up for your employees?
Are you sometimes self-absorbed and manipulative? Are you sometimes cold or abrupt?
Do you fail to give productive people encouragement, autonomy, and latitude?
Do you expect that there’s only one way to do a job, and that’s your way?
Do you raise your voice unnecessarily?
Do your employees avoid eye contact or dread meeting with you?
Do you act as if your team or organization would fall apart if you were to go on a vacation for a week? Do you expect regular updates from your team even while you’re on vacation?
Do you withhold information from your staff because it takes too much time to fill them in?
Do you ignore workplace concerns (inappropriate dressing, for example) until they evolve into problems? In other words, do you let concerns fester and let problematic situations get worse?

Inspirational Quotations #627

April 10, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Think you can, think you can’t; either way, you’ll be right.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!
—Og Mandino

Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
—Herbert Hoover (American Head of State)

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Life Is to You as to Everyone Else: What the Stoics Taught

April 8, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Mosaic of Alexander the Great, who Sucked at Geometry

Life is as hard for one as for another

Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius (Latin orig. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium) tells a story of Alexander the Great’s schooling.

Even at a young age, the hugely ambitious Alexander dreamt of conquering empires. He had no patience for formal learning. When faced with the difficulty of understanding geometry, he whined to his tutor, “Teach me something easy.” His tutor replied, “These things are the same for all, as hard for one as for another.”

Alexander, king of Macedon, began to study geometry; unhappy man, because he would thereby learn how puny was that earth of which he had seized but a fraction!

Unhappy man, I repeat, because he was bound to understand that he was bearing a false title. For who can be “great” in that which is puny?

The lessons which were being taught him were intricate and could be learned only by assiduous application; they were not the kind to be comprehended by a madman, who let his thoughts range beyond the ocean.

“Teach me something easy!” he cries; but his teacher answers: “These things are the same for all, as hard for one as for another.”

Imagine that nature is saying to us: “Those things of which you complain are the same for all. I cannot give anything easier to any man, but whoever wishes will make things easier for himself.” In what way? By equanimity.

You must suffer pain, and thirst, and hunger, and old age too, if a longer stay among men shall be granted you; you must be sick, and you must suffer loss and death.

On a related note, the great Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations (trans. Gregory Hays,) “Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.”

Idea for Impact: Put your problems and worries in perspective

Beyond the randomness (or providence for those of you with a religious bent) of where we’re born and whom we’re born to, life is generally fair to all and cannot be easier for anyone. The trials and tribulations of life are equally difficult for everyone. Complaining about others having it easier is futile.

Learn to play the hand you’ve been dealt. If you’re fraught with pain and suffering now, don’t ask, “Why is my life so difficult? Why can’t it be easier?” Take solace in the realization that even the greatest and the mightiest had their share of life’s struggles. Make it easier by viewing life with calmness, composure, and evenness of temper.

Archives for April 2016

“People Are Like Apples”

“Root for their better angels”

Idea for Impact: Work around Others’ Faults

Wondering what to read next?

How to Tell an Employee Who Is Dressed Inappropriately?

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“Nobody asked the dogs what they wanted”

Idea for Impact: Customer Focus Drives Company Success

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The Fable of Abraham Lincoln and the Pigs

Psychological Egoism

Idea for Impact: Be Selfish, Be Generous

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Wondering what to read next?

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Life is as hard for one as for another

Idea for Impact: Put your problems and worries in perspective

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