360DigitalInfluence

Ben Zimmer’s “On Language” column in this week’s New York Times Magazine was about crash blossoms – headlines that have been pared down so far they unintentionally allow for alternative meanings.

The term was coined when an American editor based in Sapporo, Japan, spotted the headline “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms” and wondered, “What’s a crash blossom?”

Classics of the genre include:

1. “Giant Waves Down Queen Mary’s Funnel”
2. “MacArthur Flies Back to Front”
3. “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up Germans”
4. “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim”
5. “Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge”
6. “McDonald’s Fries the Holy Grail for Potato Farmers”
7. “British Left Waffles On Falklands”
8. “Gator Attacks Puzzle Experts”

When it comes to editing, I’m a slash and burn girl – but as these headlines make clear, it’s possible to slash too much. In the case of the McDonald’s headline, for example, the three letter word “are” in between “Fries” and “the” would make all the difference in the world.

In an editing manual University of Oregon journalism professor John Russial wrote, “As the word count drops, the likelihood of ambiguity increases.” In this age of extreme brevity, where brief, pithy blog posts compete for our attention with text messages and 140 character tweets, are we trading brevity for clarity?

For the first time, eBossWatch.com, a website dedicated to helping people avoid workplace harassment and bullying, assembled a panel of experts to choose and rank the 25 Worst Bosses of 2009 in the U.S. and abroad.

The list is a carnival of horrors, but once the shock factor ebbs, some basic rules of the road emerge:

• Don’t harass your employees – about race, about or for sex or sexual orientation, about a disability, for ANY reason.
• Don’t yell at, swear at, insult, or bully your employees.
• Don’t punch or hit your employees.
• Don’t pay less than the minimum wage, refuse to pay overtime, or steal employees’ tips.
• If you DO do any of these things, don’t retaliate, threaten, or fire employees if they object or complain.
• If you observe others engaging in these behaviors, don’t join in or just sit by and laugh.

Listed out, these rules are ludicrous – or would be, if the cases cited didn’t make it so crystal clear that bad behavior in the workplace is more common as we might like to think.

Taken together, they provide a reminder that respect is fundamentally what it’s all about. As leaders, what can we do to make it a priority in 2010?

Today’s Dilbert cartoon is the perfect commentary on employee engagement - and a useful “heads up” for employers about how engagement efforts may be perceived in an atmosphere of cost-cutting. Just food for thought. Happy Thanksgiving!

According to numerous accounts, Americans’ New Years resolutions are fairly predictable. Not necessarily in this order, here are the top ten for 2009:

• Stop smoking
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Enjoy Life More
• Quit Drinking
• Get Organized
• Learn Something New
• Get Out of Debt
• Spend more time with Family/Friends
• Help Others

All worthy goals, to be sure – and as anyone in a leadership role knows, it’s important to have a goal. With that in mind, I’d like to suggest some resolutions for leaders to consider in 2010:

• Listen more than you talk
• Lead by example
• Show you value employees by asking for their ideas and input
• Communicate clearly, in plain language
• Say “thank you”

What else should leaders be thinking about as we look toward a new year?

Amazingly enough, it’s mid-November. With the holidays approaching, things are slowing a bit, meaning many of us have a bit more time than we’re used to. What to do with it? Take stock.

What were your key priorities for 2009? How many of them were you able to accomplish? What unforeseen events intervened – either to prevent you from achieving something you’d planned, or to redirect your energies? What are your key priorities for 2010?

Harvard Business Review blogger Tony Chan (also CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of Cue Ball, a venture and early growth equity firm investing in the information media and consumer sectors) recommends that every CEO write an annual memo to the board summarizing the most important lessons learned from the past twelve months as well as the four or five key priorities for the coming year. It’s a great idea for any leader, and could also make an effective exercise for a team meeting.

I stumbled across a great list of “Morale Mantras” today. It’s from David Lee, who writes the Mindful Manager blog for Maine Business. If every leader kept this list posted by their phone, there would be a lot fewer unhappy employees in the world! Thanks David.

Morale Mantras:
“Everything matters.”
“It’s the little things.”
“Don’t expect employees to care if they don’t feel you care about them.” “Whenever there is conflict, change, or morale issue, seek first to understand.”
“You don’t know what employees think until you ask.”
“When in doubt, ask. Don’t assume you know.”
“Don’t try to make employees feel like they matter; make sure they have the opportunity to matter.”
“Stay wired into the voice of your internal customers…your employees.”
“Make sure employees know that asking for feedback doesn’t mean you will act on every request or suggestion. But also make sure you let them know why you didn’t act.”
“An employee’s maturity level is strongly influenced by their manager’s behavior and the organization’s climate.”
“Having low expectations or being indulgent doesn’t create high morale, it creates an entitled, ‘what have you done for me lately’ workforce.”
“You get what you settle for.”
“How you interview, hire, and orient employees, tells them a lot about your organization and sets the tone for their stay with you.”
“You are a business, not a rehab center.”
“You are a manager, not a therapist.”
“Uncertainty breeds fear. Remove the unnecessary uncertainty caused by poor communication.”
“The more employees know about what’s going on, the less they fear what they don’t know about.”
“When employees have a strong ‘why’ they can deal with almost any ‘what’.”

OK, I’m a little late to the game, but I highly recommend Dan McCarthy’s leadership/management skills quiz, based on the book 100 Things You Need to Know: Best People Practices for Managers & HR.

I’ve been managing people for almost as long as I’ve been managed and I (humble expression here) only got six out of 10 right.

How’d you do?

Almost 33,000 Detroit workers recently participated in a survey about what distinguishes southeast Michigan’s top workplaces. Pay? Benefits? How their manager treats them? No – instead, workers said the key factors were how engaged their employers are with their workers, the direction the employer is heading, and how decisions are carried out.

We hear a lot about employee engagement, but this survey seems to suggest there’s a workplace version of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” For example, in general employees at small companies were more positive than those at large ones. Could be that at small companies, employers are more likely to engage with their employees directly?