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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?

 

The website Careercast.com has once again posted its best and worst jobs list. Anyone interested in employee engagement should take a look.

At first glance, it’s not that surprising – the top jobs, starting with actuary, are generally white collar, and those at the bottom of the list are physical and risky (roustabout – providing “routine physical labor and maintenance on oil rigs and pipelines” – takes the last spot on the “worst” list).

The list isn’t perfect, and the generalized criteria used won’t fit every individual circumstance. Take me, for instance. My previous career, historian, comes in at #5, far surpassing the ranking of my current job, public relations executive, which sneaks in at #79. According to the methodology, Historian ranks lower in stress, and higher in hiring outlook, and the pay is not that different. That wasn’t my experience. Academics have to go where the jobs are, and for me, living thousands of miles away from my family caused a huge amount of stress that was alleviated by moving back home, which changing careers enabled me to do. I have a hard time believing the hiring outlook in history is that great, especially since last Sunday’s New York Times Education Life section included the startling statistic that only 27 percent of today’s college professors are full time, tenured or tenure-track, down from 75 percent in 1960. And I don’t know where they came up with the income of $89K for a historian, unless they counted only full professors (ten years after I left the profession starting salaries are half that, if you’re lucky).

Still, dig into the methodology, and you may think about your employees in a new way.

The ranking categorizes information in five “core” criteria:

  • Environment – physical factors such as noise, toxic fumes, and degree of confinement, and emotional factors including degree of competitiveness and degree of contact with the public
  • Income – starting with a mid-level income and factoring in growth potential
  • Hiring Outlook – expected growth through 2016, income growth potential, and unemployment
  • Physical Demands – from sedentary (occasional lifting of 10lbs or less) to Very Heavy (lifting in excess of 100lbs, with frequent lifting of 5lbs or more)
  • Stress – considers 23 separate factors that may evoke stress, including quotas, deadlines, working in the public eye, hazards encountered, and meeting the public.

For each of these categories, the methodology provides detailed information on what was considered and how it was weighed.

How do your employees fit into this schema? Are they highly stressed? If so, why – by quotas, speed, and machines and tools used, or by deadlines, win or lose situations, and the amount of initiative required?

Careercast’s methodology provides another lens to help us analyze and think about how our employees see their jobs and their relationship to it.

Last Sunday’s Corner Office column in the Sunday New York Times featured Gordon Bethune, the former chief executive of Continental Airlines (for more background, and a crisis management classic, check out Greg Brenneman’s “Right Away and All at Once: How We Saved Continental”).

It’s a great column but a couple of things stood out:

  • On leadership: “I was a mechanic in the navy… You may have more stripes than I do, but you don’t know how to fix the airplane. You want me to fix it? You know how much faster I could fix the airplane when I wanted to, than when I didn’t want to? So I’ve always felt that if you treat me with respect, I’ll do more for you.”
  • On employee communications: “We never lied. You don’t lie to your own doctor. You don’t lie to your own attorney, and you don’t lie to your employees. And if you never lie, then when it hits the fan, and somebody says you’re wrong – you can say, ‘No, I’m not,’ and they’ll believe you.”
  • On the best compliment he received: “I always went out to the airport on holidays, and always made sure that I was there and I’d thank people for giving up their holiday to work… I’d always eat down in the break room where the food was being passed out. I went to sit down at this big long table with these two guys, and I said, ‘Anybody sitting here?’ And one of them said to the other: ‘I told you he’d be here. Give me my $10.’ He had bet that guy $10 that I’d show up.

Anyone leading people can learn from Bethune’s example.

 

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?

 

 

 

Nov 16

Winding Down

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.

Nov 02

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?

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  • I see by the snailpapers in Britain that a major literary agent has signed up a top journo there to write an “on language” type of book about CRASH BLOSSOMS in the English-language media the world over, for publication... Crash Blossoms
  • Well, This is pretty sweet content, I kind of agree so I am still enjoying this. Punch Line First, Please
  • Challenging word usage. Which words are now outdated and connote a past. For example; In your list the word “employee(s). The noun is replete with possibilities.One stands out as very empowering: Colleague. Other words... New Years Resolutions
  • I agree that there will be a great wave of resumes needed and a hiring blitz! Also, I think that most of the new job seekers are gettingmore and more web savvy and using blogs and social networking more... Prepare now for “resume tsunami”
  • Good insight! My boss would benefit from reading this. Prepare now for “resume tsunami”
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