Work Daze

You’re a wonderful person, kind reader, and I’ve really enjoyed our relationship, but if you are expecting any further attention from me, better wise up. Starting today, you’re off my radar and out of my life. I’d love to spend more time relating with you, but honestly, you’re just no longer worthy of a place in my network.

If this seems harsh, let me recommend a few minutes of virtual networking with David Nour, the man who not only developed, but also trademarked the theory of Relationship Economics™. Nour has been described as a master networker, and if you think this is mere puffery, an article by Lori Davilla in “The Atlanta Journal-Constitution” reports that master Nour has a network of 2,018 people. He also boasts 240 humans in his “think tank,” i.e., “ deep subject matter experts who are great value to me,” and over 20 lucky individuals on his list of “2 a.m.’s,” people he can call anytime to “help him solve problems.”

Like the problems created by being called at 2 a.m. by a fellow you met over a bowl of cheese dip who now wants your help to solve his problems.

What I like best about the concept of Relationship Economics™ is the discipline it overlays onto the booming, blooming need to network. Instead of going off like a flibbertigibbet, promiscuously collecting business cards like a starving squirrel in a dish of cashews, Nour suggests a more focused approach.

“Don’t network just to network,” is #1 of his top ten recommendations. “Have a purpose and provide value.”

This strategy may seem harsh and rather devious, but as you scratch, claw and backstab your way to the top, certain old-fashioned concepts like friendship will have to be jettisoned. If you want a bunch of good-natured, like-minded cronies with whom to hang, join the Odd Fellows Lodge. If you want to get the executive suite, you have to build your network with people you can use.

This brings us to Noir’s second recommendation: “Build a target list of people you want to meet.” It doesn’t matter if these people are not within the reach of your current network. You’re going to leapfrog this bunch of losers as you scramble towards relationships with people who can do you some good.

“Think about who you need to get to know – your desired network,” Nour counsels. “Then think about who I know today, how can I be an asset to them, and how can I web my current relationships to those who I want to get to know.”

Let me give you a real-life example. Say, you want to meet Lindsey Lohan, the lovely, but troubled, party-girl movie star who, you’re sure, would respond positively to the stability offered by a pudgy, middle-aged, middle-management doofus like yourself if she were only part of your network. That your warm and supportive nature would be an asset to Lindsey is obvious, so now you need only “web your current relationships” to get to her.

Once you have laid it all out, the impossible becomes easy. Simply divorce your present spouse, giving her all your worldly possessions, creating a network hub with a respected process server, who will track you down like a dog in your room over the bus station, and who went to school with Lindsey’s Pilates teacher, who will get you addicted to crack cocaine, resulting in a court-ordered visit to a rehab facility, where you will be in the padded cell next to Lindsey, or Paris, or Brittany. And then, brother, let the networking begin!

[Female readers can substitute Mel Gibson, David Hasselhoff, or Scooter Libby. The principle is the same.]

To seal your networking deals, David Nour uses the apt, and trademarked, concept of Relationship Currency™. “Do something for 3 people every day,” he advises. “You will then touch 63 people in 21 days. Talk about a bank account!”

I know you regularly touch people, but asking to borrow five bucks for your daily Starbucks Vente Persimmon Mocha Frappuccino is not exactly building your relationship bank account. The idea is to be of use to the people you want to use. For example, you might tell a close, networked friend in your company about a terrific new job opening at a competitor. Then double –down on your networking portfolio by telling the boss about the shocking disloyalty of your networked ex-friend.

An ethics professor might be horrified, but trust me, Lindsay will be proud of you.

It’s summer time, friends, and you know what that means – time to count up
all those vacation days and then not use them.

You heard me right. To succeed in business today, you not only have to work
hard while you’re supposed to be at the office, you also have to work hard
when you’re supposed to be lapping up the sunshine.

If you wonder why anyone in their right mind would rather being drinking
office coffee than island margaritas, take a look at the next cubical over.
According to a survey from the Hudson company, 56% of all workers who get
vacation choose not to use all of it, and that shocking number includes a
truly deranged 30% who say they will take less than half of their days off,
off.

Can all these vacation avoiders have children so rotten and spouses so
miserable that they’d rather be in the office than on the beach? Or are you
the only one? Or, perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a method to their vacation
madness. By insisting on working while the rest of us frolic, these
wisenheimers build up so much credit with managers that they can goof off
for the rest of the year, while we’re stuck keeping our sun-burned nose to
the grindstone.

If you work at the kind of job where self-sacrifice is expected, it may be
time to start explaining to your family why this year’s vacation will begin
and end on the same Saturday afternoon. “Sure, we could jet to Jakarta or
cruise to Corsica, but I think we’ll have even more fun staying at home this
year, and really getting to know each other.”

If this gambit meets deaf ears, you can always try to send your family away
on vacation while you stay home. It will be a shame to miss spending two
rainy weeks stuck in a tiny, spider-infested cottage with your bored
children and your cranky spouse, but we must make sacrifices.

Taking the “Thanks, but no vacation for me” option is no option for Peg
Buchenroth, a senior vice president for human resources at Hudson. “Managers
need to make sure employees are taking sufficient time away from the
office,” she says. “The benefit of time off often comes through in improved
job satisfaction and greater productivity.”

I’m not sure about the satisfaction and productivity part, but I’ll bet that
your managers who have designed a brilliant plan for encouraging you to take
time off. Their abusive, unreasonable, and just plain dumb decisions make
work so darn unpleasant that you can’t help but run for cover, even if the
cover is only two weeks stuck under an umbrella stuck into the kiddy-pool in
your own backyard.

If you find you must take vacation – and I know you have a fierce boss at
home as well as at work – the least you can do is make sure you don’t enjoy
it. One proven way to insure vacation dissatisfaction is to pack your cell
phone and your laptop. The Hudson survey revealed that 35% of all managers
check in with the office frequently, often daily. [If you are on the other
end of a long-distance check-up call, make sure your manager feels needed.
Crank up the party when the telephone rings, so your boss can hear every
beer can pull-top pop. “We’re doing fine without you,” insist over a double
decibel dose of rap music. “Is it OK if I use the Christmas party fund to
pay the strippers?”]

Only 14% of non-managers call in from vacation, and I suggest that you
differentiate yourself from the crowd by being one of those who uses their
vacation to smile and dial. Call your boss at least three times a day to let
her know that you are concerned that your work will not be done to your high
standards. Constantly offer to fly back and “take the wheel before the ship
flounders and sinks on the rocky shores of incompetence.”

You’ll make a great impression, and with any luck she’ll let you return.

One final survey result is interesting to contemplate. 27% of the managerial
group report returning to the office more stressed than when they left, as
compared to only 16% of non-managers. Could the explanation be that our
managers are so egotistical they really do believe they’re so essential that
the company can not possibly survive without their presence?

You go ahead and answer that question. I’m going on vacation.

It’s a wonderful world in which we live and work, and if you don’t believe
it, just use your desktop computer to send a message to your laptop computer
commanding it to call your PDA to forward a message to your cell phone.

Get the point? We may walk around with pockets and purses laden with
electronic gizmos, but when it comes to trying to reach us, no one can touch
us. Unfortunately, there’s a problem with all this wonderful connectivity.
It would be nice to stay in constant touch with friends and family, yet the
person to whom we are most connected is our boss.

Historians are not certain when the first humans realized that all the
wonderful gadgets they had been given made it possible to be contact
anywhere, anytime. In my opinion, it was about 5 minutes after the first
primitive cave dweller first powered up his primitive Blackberry – two clam
shells connected by a string.

“Where’s the Tyrannosaurus file?” he heard his boss roar, interrupting a
blissful afternoon of hunting and gathering. “I need to know if these things
are vegetarian or meat eaters.”

The first primitive cube dweller certainly had the same experience, and the
same feelings, when an afternoon of field work at the Kit Kat Klub was
interrupted by a series of increasingly urgent series of beeps and buzzes
from the main office. The only difference was that the hot breath breathing
down the cube dweller’s back was a lot scarier than a Tyrannosaurus. Hey, a
dinosaur is a pussycat compared with an enraged senior vice president.

The very mixed blessings of our weird, unwired world were brought to my
attention recently by a survey conducted by Yahoo! HotJobs. According to the
press release that reached me on my PDA during my after-breakfast nap,
wireless devices like laptops, mobile phones, and smartphones are “blurring
the line between personal time and professional time.”

By “changing the physical parameters of the workplace and extending the work
day, professionals can work from anywhere and connect at anytime.” And
that, my well-connected comrade, is exactly the problem.

In surveying the survey results, what surprising me most is how few of us
resent the intrusion into our personal space. I may be wasting my time
spending my time off watching reruns of “The View” [the classic shows,
before Rosie replaced Star], but it’s my time to waste as I see fit. In the
Yahoo! HotJobs survey of 900 “office professionals,” only 26% expressed
frustration because the wireless devices kept them on a permanent corporate
leash. I guess the other 74% enjoy being pestered and pesterable 24/7.

These slaves to work not only need to get a life, they need to unplug
themselves from the unwired world, so they can have one. [As if more proof
was needed, the survey also revealed that 67% of the respondents “admitted
using a wireless device to connect with work while on vacation.” Now I know
a week viewing cheese making demonstrations in the Wisconsin Dells may be
less than riveting, but it beats the cheesy jokes of your boss during weekly
staff meetings.]

If you choose to unwire yourself and really unwind, Yahoo! HotJobs does have
tips for you. Unfortunately, the authors of these tips also have jobs –
HotJobs, presumably – and therefore do not understand the pressure under
which thee and me operate. For example:

• Don’t be afraid to say no.

Good idea. Try it this way: “No, it won’t be any problem to write that
report while I’m on vacation. No, it’s no bother at all.”

• Speak up.

You could try telling your boss you are overworked. No doubt, she’ll have
the perfect solution – unemployment.

• Plan fun and relaxation.

Instead of only using your PDA to plan your business appointments, remember
you can also use it to schedule relaxation periods. Here’s a fully balanced
schedule for a successful professional: 5 AM – 12 PM. Work. 12:01 – 12:09.
Eat leisurely lunch. 12:10 – 8 PM. Work. 8:01 – 8:04. Relax and contemplate
how lucky you are to have your job and your boss. 8:05 –2 AM. Work. 2 AM –
5 AM. Uncontrollable sobbing.

• Don’t overbook.

Be realistic about taking on more work than you can handle. Find out your
limit and then volunteer to do three times more. Sure, your family may
squeal when you bring the office copying machine on your vacation instead of
the Jet Ski, and OK, one of the kids may have to stay home to make room for
the senior sales manager, but you’ll be a hero when you return.

Here’s a question: are you a flower or a weed? It’s important that we answer
this botanical query because a new management craze is growing in the rich
loam of Mahogany Row. Your bosses are not satisfied with being masters of
the universe. Now they also want to be master gardeners.

The management mania for gardening is the work of Erika Andersen, a “New
York based organizational specialist and executive coach” to firms like MTV
Networks, Comcast and Bank of America. Not satisfied with spreading her own
brand of fertilizer in the executive suite, Ms. Andersen has now published a
book, “Growing Great Employees – Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary
Performers.”

According to the press release that turned up in my electronic compost heap,
the book was called “refreshing” by “The Harvard Business Review.” What
“Better Homes & Gardens” thinks about Ms. Andersen’s efforts was not
revealed, but I assume they were also positive. The book would certainly
look good sitting on any executive’s desk, and even a manager who didn’t buy
into her gardening philosophy could always use the handsome volume to throw
at any tulip or milkwort who refused to grow. And it could come to that.

“You can’t make employees grow any more than you can make plants grow,”
suggests the author. “What you can do: make sure you get the right people,
‘plant’ them in the right job, and create the optimal conditions for them to
grow.”

Of course, the whole gardening idea is simply a metaphor, and because I know
you’ve never met a metaphor you didn’t like, let me share the bounty of this
strange harvest. If your boss is going to treat you like a plant, you don’t
want to be a daisy, Dudley. You want to be a venus fly trap.

“Prepare the soil by listening” is the first rule of the gardener manager.
Listening, Andersen instructs, “establishes an open, nourishing environment
that allows ideas and people to flourish.” Unfortunately, as our author
points out, managers tend to do more talking than listening, a toxic dose of
horticultural foolishness under which we lilies of the cubical tend to
wither and die.

If your manager does not sufficiently nourish your soil, I suggest that you
be upfront with him, her or them. Stand up like a Sunflower at your next
staff meeting and declare, “This little buttercup is parched and wilting. I
need more nutrients if I am to grow and flourish.” If your boss won’t shut
up or listen up, feel free to grab for the donuts. Even a buttercup has to
eat to grow, right?

“Don’t be afraid to prune” is another rule for the executive gardener, a
grafting of the law of business with the law of the jungle that would scare
Luther Burbank. “Gardeners prune plants to encourage them in the right
direction and for more frequent blooms,” opines the author.

To avoid an unwelcome lopping off of your limbs, or your salary, I suggest
you make sure you grow in the right direction, right from the start. It’s
called heliotropism where I come from and what it means, in workplace terms,
is that you grow towards the sun – that is, the power source.

Since you are competing for executive sunshine with all the other plants in
your plant, I suggest put your whole body into the effort. Lean sharply
towards your boss when he or walks by your cubical. You can actually lean
into them when involved in a face-to-face. Get your stamen inches from
their pistil, and it will not only show that you looking for
cross-pollination, but, very likely, freak them out so thoroughly that they
will leave you alone.

“Re-evaluate when it’s not working” is the final tidbit of gardening advice.
“Some plants are invasive and impede their neighbors’ growth,” writes the
author. “They need to be moved for a better fit, either within the company
or without.” If your boss views you as a plant that would thrive better in
the rich soil of the unemployment office, better make sure you start
blooming. Otherwise, even the dandiest Dandelion could be yanked out of the
garden like an unwelcome weed.

If the situation is hopeless, forget headhunters. Submit your resume,
including genus and species, to the U.S. Agricultural Service and have
yourself declared an endangered species. This helps. I haven’t done any
useful work in years and still, no boss would ever risk pulling out a “late
Blooming marigoldman.”