Work Daze

Attention, work slaves. Time to call a meeting of all your key people to choose a meeting time when you can hold a meeting on how to have better meetings.

Or not. One of the key problems with meetings is that so many of them are not essential, or even vaguely necessary. We’ve all had managers who love to meet simply for the pleasure of meeting. As the great French philosopher Louis Croissant put it, I meet, therefore I am (worth the gigantic salary I don’t deserve).

But all that wasted meeting time has finally reached the pencil heads. According to a recent “Theory & Practice” column by Phred Dvorak in The Wall Street Journal, companies are developing policies that, if they don’t result in fewer meetings, will make meetings more productive and less painful.

Or not. Consider the brilliant innovation practiced by a Silicon Valley start-up called Ruckus Wireless where “employees remove the chairs from some meetings so participants get to the point quicker.”

I embrace this technique 110%, but suggest you work up to it slowly by first removing the boss’s chair. Do it about five seconds before she sits down. This will make a lasting impression and demonstrate you are serious about saving the company time and money. You might also consider removing the conference table, the telephones, the electric sockets, the suspended ceiling, the window shades, the carpeting and the light fixtures.

Now that’s efficiency!

The Journal also references the effective meeting techniques of the director of employee learning at Southwest Airlines who does not start a meeting until she can figure out a reason for a “minicelebration.” One supposedly surprising basis for merriment was “a staffer’s purchase of a high-tech vacuum cleaner.”

Good heavens, if I was lucky enough to get such a prize, I’d expect more than a “minicelebration.” I’d demand a week-off, the better to vacuum the Astroturf on the boss’s putting green.

Another revelation for me is the fact that the need to improve meeting techniques has resulted in the birth of a new breed of consultant—the Certified Professional Facilitator. They could work on that title a bit – how about the Certified Professional Real Smart Super Duper Organizational Mastermind Facilitator – but you get the general idea.

Meeting facilitators get hired when companies finally realize that wasting time in stupid meetings results in wasted money. It also can be demoralizing to employees like thee and me who, let’s face it, are not too moralized in the first place.

One facilitator quoted, Janet Danforth, insists that her clients have a “clear purpose and agenda before they start.” They are also required to set a time limit and decide at the beginning who will make the final decisions. This seems a little harsh. I’m happy to sit in meetings for hours. My only requirement is that there are donuts. (When the custard-filled long-johns are gone, I’m gone.)

Another trick of the professional meeting facilitator is to ban the use of electronic gadgets like BlackBerry email devices and laptop computers. I suppose such a ban would encourage attendees to concentrate on the matters at hand, but how would we keep up with the latest critical developments on Nick and Jessica or Britney and Kevin? Yes, we waste time in meetings scanning the Internet for gossip, but think how efficient we are when gathered around the water cooler!

Speaking of innovations, one definitely must say hats off to the Intel Company for one of the brightest ideas in making meetings more effective. The giant chip maker is so insistent on maximizing productivity that it demands all new hires attend – you guessed it! – a four-hour meeting on “Effective Meetings.” This doesn’t make any sense, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps we should have a meeting on the subject.

Personally, I do not think that meetings need to change. Those of us who attend meetings must evolve. Since we are going to have to sit through an average of 5.6 meeting hours a week – and often it seems like 5.6 hours a day – we need to develop our ability to unfocus our brains and zone out. Like Zen monks, we must master mantras that transcend time and conference rooms. You can use my mantra. Simply close your eyes and say, “I am getting paid for this. I am getting paid for this. I am getting paid for this.”

If that doesn’t work, don’t despair. You can always play footsie.

In my day, we didn’t really have a name for parents who obsessed about their children—the kind of Mom and Dad who were, to be alliterative about it, fanatically fixated on their kid’s progress in school, in camp, in Pop Warner Football, or, in my special case, the American Junior Miss Pageant.

But now we do have a name, and it’s one that I can use in a family newspaper. Obsessive Mommies and Daddies are “helicopter parents,” referring, I suppose, to the way they hover over their children’s lives, always ready to drop out of the sky and help junior with pre-school frustrations or post-school job hunting.

It’s true! The helicopter parent phenomena is no longer confined to beating the competitive market for elite nursery schools and Ivy League universities, but also occurs in the job market. Today’s chopper poppa and momma advise their spawn on job offers, negotiate salaries and perks, and, in some cases, actually come along on the job interview, the better to testify on junior’s unique merits and qualifications.

I first read about this extreme form of parenting in Sue Shellenbarger’s “Work & Family” column in The Wall Street Journal. According to the HR folks Sue interviewed, the lobbying from—and surprise guest appearances by—parents at job interviews has rocked the usually unflappable HR world.

“It’s unbelievable to me that a parent of a 22-year old is calling on their behalf,” the college relations director for St. Paul Travelers, Allison Keeton, told the columnist. Ms. Keeton has another name for the helicopter parents. She calls them “kamikaze parents—the ones that mowed down the guidance and admissions offices” and are now moving into the workplace.

Once a helicopter parent has browbeaten a hiring manager into offering their offspring a job, the air attack does not stop. “General Electric made an offer to one recruit last fall,” Shellenbarger reports, “only to get a call the next day from the recruit’s mother trying to negotiate an increase in pay.”

If this seems like unseemly behavior, consider that the candidate was probably living at home, cramping Mom and Dad’s lifestyle to the max. 11% of adults 25-34 still live with their parents, the Census Bureau reports, up from 8.7% in 1980. This phenomena is connected the paucity of jobs and the high cost of living, if you call still being at home at age 30 “living.” [I know it’s a source of humor for movies and sitcom’s, but believe me, it’s less of a laugh riot when it’s your kid who’s fouling your empty nest.]

While showing up at job interviews strikes me as a bit excessive, even for a helicopter parent, I do see a positive place for kamikaze parenting, and that’s in the work place. Call me unfeeling, but my sympathies are not with the 20-somethings just starting out in the world of work, but with the 30-.40-, 50- and even 60-somethings who are struggling to stay employed.

For those of us facing sniveling supervisors whose idea of solving problems in the workplace is to send our jobs to Bangladesh, you’ve got to love the idea of having Mommy and Daddy drop in to defend you. And your parents should feel comfortable with the idea, as well. After all, it’s exactly what they did when you were terrorized by bullies on the playground.

Why not bring your mother to the weekly staff meeting? If she’s in a wheel chair or walker, all the better. Have her bake a treat for the staff—Betty Crocker Marijuana Brownies are always a big hit. Tell her to feel free to interrupt the flow of the meeting if she has something to share, like a full report on the surgery to cure her perforated bladder. [No executive summaries, either. We want x-rays, blood samples—the entire CSI-experience.]

I’d save Dad for those tough meetings with the boss. Even the most hard-headed, number-crunching executive will melt like a Hershey Bar in the Sahara when Dad tells about changing your diapers. With any luck at all, Dad can take this occasion to change his own diapers, thus demonstrating the circle of life and sending your boss running for the showers.

I guess the only problem you might face is if Mom and Dad demand a share of your paycheck for saving your job. If this happens, be strong. You’re a mature adult, a successful wage earner, and if your parents do not respect this, you’ll simply have to move out of their house.

Believe it or not, the rate at which you advance in your career may have less to do with the actual work you accomplish, but depend more on the subtle signals you send by your attitude, your clothes, even your hair.

Take me, for example. For some bizarre reason my co-workers believe I am a lazy slacker who does nothing but gossip and complain. This could be explained by the fact that I am lazy slacker who does nothing but gossip and complain, but I now realize that it has more to do with the fuzzy bunny slippers I wear at my desk. They’re comfy and toasty, but they might not be sending a signal that matches my merciless drive to succeed.

My introduction to the power of workplace signals comes from a recent “The Jungle” column by Erin White in The Wall Street Journal. Ms. White tells the sad story of a purchasing manager whose buttoned-up attitude and somber wardrobe left her typecast as a eagle-eyed “bean counter” who cared only about the bottom line.

Now if you or I were saddled with that stereotype we’d be nothing but delighted. A reputation for being sharp with a pencil is a sure ticket to the top, most companies preferring profits to other, less quantifiable attributes, like “being nice to small animals,” or “fun at the Christmas party when she gets a few drinks in her.”

As it happens, the dour purchasing manager found herself fighting her bean-counter stereotype. After extensive consultation with an image coach she changed signals, adding bright colors to her wardrobe and wearing more make-up. The result? She started sending the kind of signals that lead to a big fat promotion and a welcome move away from the hard-edge world of purchasing into the more squishy world of human resources where, I assume, she now goes to work wearing a bathrobe.

According to the Journal Jungle, there are a variety of ways to monitor the signals you may be sending. Think of it as a corporate SETI program, to evoke the program that scans the universe with powerful telescopes to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Not much chance of finding intelligence in your workplace, but you might get a sense of how your signals are received by the extraterrestrials with whom you work.

One way to gauge the messages you are sending is the brainchild of executive coach Linda Dominguez, of Coarsegold, California, who has her clients ask 10 or 12 co-workers to fill out a form detailing the client’s strengths and weaknesses. I have no problem with this technique, but just make sure you tip things in your favor by providing, oh, 3 pages of empty space for your strengths and a postage stamp size box in which participants can opine on your weaknesses.

Another consultant’s technique is to watch a videotape of yourself in a work situation, like delivering a presentation, or stealing paper clips from the supply cabinet, or crouching in a fetal position as your supervisor berates you for being a worthless drag on profitability. The idea here is to “notice nervous mannerisms that may contribute to an image you’d rather not project,” like weeping like a baby or bleeding from the ears.

Another technique for learning how you are being perceived is to pay attention to subtle workplace clues, like the gifts you receive on birthdays or the invitations you get to after-work affairs. And don’t expect that all the messages you are sending and receiving to bode negatively for career advancement. For example, that invite from an Executive Vice President to the Sunday smorgasbord at an S&M club may indicate that your decision to wear leather bondage gear to the company retreat has paid off. On the other hand, if your choice of black lipstick and Goth eye make-up isn’t flying at a Mary Kay kind of company, you’ll know it when the office manager decides that your company car should be a 2006 broom.

One final image issue that can cause problems is the problem of looking too young or too old. If you’ve got a baby face and tend to wear extremely youthful clothing, you may not be considered sufficiently mature for promotion. Suspenders and straw boaters may send the signal that you’re too old. That’s why I recommend wearing diapers and a bib. Young…old…they work for both, and suggest a nice mixture of youth and risk-aversion, signals sure to appreciated when gumming lunch with the big boss.

Just when you thought your job couldn’t get any worse, this happens! Now we not only have to deal with psychotic supervisors and combustible co-workers, but also have to face the possibility we could be struck down by the dreaded bird flu.

Now I am not a physician, but I have not missed one episode of Gray’s Anatomy, and after watching the antics of the young medicos on that program, it’s pretty clear to me that I could have been a doctor if only I was better looking or had a more active sex life.

[I also want to make it clear that I am not being an alarmist, but let’s face facts—the government has kept us in the dark regarding the alien invasion that has taken over key departments in your company. And yes, I’m talking about y-o-u, Ms. HR professional – or should I call you by your real name, Murplex 7.]

Anywho, the bird virus has so far only appeared in far-off lands like China and Indonesia, and until recently, it has pretty much confined to birds. Yet recent news articles report that the virus has also been seen in cats in Austria, which makes a certain amount of sense if you consider the work of the famous scientific researchers, Sylvester and Tweety.

Of course, the greatest threat of bird flu will come if the virus mutates itself to pass from human to human. Then it won’t be enough to boycott the Chicken Tenders at Colonel Sanders or replace the annual Thanksgiving Turkey with the pilgrim’s second favorite food, the Reuben sandwich. Once mutation has occurred, the virus will be able to pass through your office as easily as a rumor about outsourcing your department to Bangalore.

Unfortunately, staying healthy at the office is not easy. Just ask Dr. Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona who conducts studies on germs in the office (the teeny-tiny type germs. We’re not talking about your supervisor here.)

In previous studies, Gerba has found that an infected person can leave a “trail of viruses” on every surface they touch—viruses that can survive up to three days. Three days! In that much time, a virus can not only make you sick, but take over your job, cash in your 401(k), and set sail for Hawaii.

In his latest study, the Dr. Gerba has determined which professions are the “germiest.” Accountants are the germ-fest winners, no doubt because their jobs are so exciting and glamorous. Interestingly, attorneys rank the lowest in germiness, probably because no self-respected germ would want to be seen with a lawyer.

If law school isn’t an option, you may be asking what you can do to protect yourself against bird flu and the myriad of other dangerous illness that can occur at the workplace, like TBS – Terminal Boredom Syndrome – and a general loss of the will to live. Here are few tips from Doctor Bob:

1. Wear a face mask.

It’s more than Japanese chic. It’s a great way to freak out your fellow co-workers and best of all, it will keep you from having to speak up in meetings. Just raise your hand and say “Mmmf-ugh-er-mumblegurb-gurl-murf-erg.” Your boss will love you for participating and everyone will think you’re a genius.

2. Avoid the coffee room refrigerator

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health are trying to recreate the bird flu virus in a controlled situation because, after all, what else do they have to do? But not even the sickest and slickest scientific laboratory can equal the cauldron of infection that is the coffee room frig. There are germs in that biohazard hot zone that would bring down King Kong. If you must use the office Kelvinator to store your lunch, be sure to use the universal antidote – Ranch Dressing. That stuff can kill any virus.

3. No more chicken sushi

According to scientists it is no longer safe to eat raw chicken. This is bad news for those of you who liked to nibble on a raw boneless breast as a mid-morning energy boost, or lick a raw, frozen, chocolate-covered thigh for an afternoon treat.

4. The parrot has to go

Sorry, but your health comes first. The good news is that cooked parrot is perfectly safe. Too bad you’ve spent so much time training it to say “Good boss. Brilliant boss. Polly wants a raise.”