Negotiating an Ending
April 18, 2011
Recently a new client posed a different kind of employment question. She’s a hi-tech executive working for a small private company where she is a partner – since she put up some original capital.
After 8 years, she would like to move on and has already been approached by a larger public company. We’re working on what she would like for pay and benefits, but to my surprise, she hadn’t given much thought to her exit strategy.
“My boss knows I’m unhappy, but he doesn’t care,” she says, “That’s why I want to leave.” I asked if she had tried to negotiate her departure, just like she was trying to work out a deal at the new company.
He response was a short, “Why bother,” adding that it would involve options, her original investment and a host of other issues she didn’t want to deal with. “I just want to see the look on his face when I walk in and quit,” she said.
I guess she didn’t really expect me to react, since she had asked me to help with her new job, not the old one. But I was slightly incredulous.
Why wouldn’t a negotiated settlement, with possible severance and recovery of some portion of her original investment be enough incentive to at least approach her current boss.
Her major worry was that she would be fired on the spot, a scenario that, after some evaluation, she concluded was not very likely.
She was so frustrated with her job that she was blinded to what she was leaving ‘on the table’ just for the short-term satisfaction of telling her boss off.
I pointed out that since she was just in her 30’s, leaving with at least a ‘non-negative’ settlement and her reputation intact was probably even more important than the financial aspects. I guess I got her attention and she has agreed to at least think about approaching her boss.
She’s fortunate in that she already has a new offer and not everyone can walk into their boss and demand a severance package, but it’s worth noting that how you leave a job can be just as important as how you start.
JaMarcus Russell’s Coach
April 15, 2011
I read with some interest this week that personal coach John Lucas has quit as an advisor to former NFL quarterback Jamarcus Russell.
- JaMarcus Russell
What interested me was not the actual facts of the situation but more the online reaction. For you non-sports fans, I would point out that Mr. Russell was talented college football player drafted to the NFL and signed to a $40 million contract by the Oakland Raiders. After four unsuccessful seasons, where he was accused of being out of shape, unprepared and a poor leader, he was released and has not played since.
John Lucas is a former NBA player, and drug addict who has turned his life around and now, as a personal coach, helps young athletes get their careers back on track. Lucas had been working with Russell in Texas.
Apparently, Lucas ‘fired’ Russell this week and has told the young man to leave Texas where Lucas is based.
Of the 60 or so comments I read, many focused on the sad state of Russell’s career, but more than a few reacted to the coaching relationship. Things such as, “If he needed a personal coach, he must have been in bad shape,” or ” Only losers would need a coach.”
I can’t vouch for Mr. Lucas’s skill, although he has a pretty good track record, but it was a bit dismaying to hear that view of coaching. Does the general public feel that only people in tough situations need help or that coaches are a last-ditch method to get things turned around?
Personal coaches can help anyone with decision making – even coaches need a coach. The list of ways that a personal coach can help a client is endless.
Usually my reaction to situations like this is simply “any publicity is good publicity,” but it would seem that the coaching profession needs a little PR help.
Most of my clients don’t feel they are losers, but that’s not a particularly good sample, since they obviously are already using a coach. But maybe one of the large international coaching organizations needs to do some research to find out what people think about the profession.
Tsunami’s Big Winner on Big Island
March 30, 2011
At the risk of sounding a bit callous, it’s not too early to count Michael Dell as a potentially big winner from the Japanese disaster.
Four Seasons at Hualalai
Mr. Dell owns the Hualalai resort complex on the Big Island of Hawaii and while his two major resort hotels suffered significant damage and are now closed, it looks like the long-term impact will be positive – for him.
Both hotels, The Four Season’s Resort and Kona Village have loyal fans – albeit on distinct end of the resort spectrum. Kona Village offers a kid-friendly, family oriented, no-frills package which is popular with a wide variety of customers including Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs.
The Four Seasons caters to the upper end of the income scale and the Hualalai location has long had the highest occupancy rate of any Four-Season’s run facility.
Both resorts are currently closed – the Four Seasons until April 30 and Kona Village permanently.
But don’t shed a tear for Mr. Dell, insurance will cover most if not all his losses and will also allow him to complete some much needed renovations that were planned, but he would have had to finance on his own. Don’t look for construction photos anywhere though, the resort is keeping a tight lid on any information and employees who have been called in to work have to sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to reveal the extent of the damage to the resort.
Workers are racing to meet the April 30 deadline when the insurance coverage for employee wages runs out and many locals have doubts about an on-time completion. Several island fund-raisers, including the annual Cancer society’s Cattle Baron’s Ball, April 16th, have already had to find new homes, but the events will be held.
Workers at the Four Seasons who have been impertinent enough to post, what they thought were innocuous pictures of storm damage, have faced disciplinary action, including firing.
Guests who were not able to be accommodated in the adjoining Hualalai condo/home complex, were shifted to nearby hotels, providing a bonanza for the Mauna Kea, Hapuna Prince, Mauna Lani and Fairmont Orchid properties – although they certainly are not getting the ‘Four Seasons Experience.’
As for neighboring Kona Village, many of the small homes, or hales, were knocked off their ocean-front foundations and a number were destroyed. Rebuilding would require permits under new building regulations with much larger setbacks, so Mr. Dell has decided just to convert the property into an extension of the Four Seasons.
Kona Village has always had the better beach, but if the county approves, that beachfront will now be surrounded by several hundred new rooms at $800-$3000 per night, in place of the $3,000 per week package plans that Kona Village featured.
Sounds like a win-win situation if you are Michael Dell. He wins on both ends. We’ll see what happens when the actual applications get filed – the natives are already upset.
Making Money From Emotions
March 25, 2011
A week or so ago, I posted an item about identifying emotions by reading facial expressions. It was a local test that expanded on some well-known international studies about the universality of emotions.
To me it was an interesting exercise in emotional intelligence, but, as we all know, there may be other uses. Leave it to the folks at the MIT Media Lab to figure out a way to monetize your smile. Yes, there’s an App for that.
This week’s Science Friday on NPR has all the details. I don’t have any comments beyond, it figures. Let me know what you think.
Re-inventing the Wheel at Google
March 19, 2011
A week ago the New York Times, featured an article on a lengthy study done by Google on management practices.
I’ve been stewing about it ever since.
Despite Google’s protestations, it seems to me that they spent a year re-inventing the wheel so that their “data-driven employees” will understand their rationale in trying to improve the performances of the managers.
The study uncovered 8 secrets to better management and Google then ranked the ‘secrets’ and began implementing them. I’ll let you read the list and their implementation on your own, but any executive coach or organizational development consultant, or even any good manager could have created the list and developed a blueprint for implementation.
Yes, having data being behind your plans adds credibility, but so would successful implementation by a professional. What Google really found out what something that every other business discovers: technical expertise does not make you a good manager. Or put another way the skills that you need as an employee are not the same as those that you need as a manager.
I guess in all their vaunted testing they never realized that while logic and test-taking skills may be able to predict employee success, they do not translate directly to the ‘soft skills’ that managers need to make their employees better. Now, as competition grows and other businesses are stealing their employees, they have discovered that managing a staff takes some skill and actually translates to the bottom line.
I worked with first-time managers in a variety of industries and the one unanimous concern they have is that the technical skills that got them noticed as a potential manager have nothing to do with the skills they need once they are promoted. I guess it’s good to know that a year of research by Google has led to the same conclusion.
If that’s not re-inventing the wheel I don’t know what is.
Google has been in the fore
Thinking About the Brain and Pain
March 8, 2011
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the brain recently. If you’ve read any of my book review posts you know I have an interest in how the brain works and what makes us, us.
But, over the last three weeks there seems to be a convergence of sorts. Two weeks ago the Wisdom 2.0 Conference was held in Mountain View. Billed as conference seeking “deeper meaning” in the modern technology-rich age, the event focused on mindfulness and trying to get participants to ‘be’ present, rather than always looking to something in the future.
The speakers were among the biggest in the field. If you are not knowledgeable in the field, trust me, those in the know, such as my wife, told me the people on stage were the thought leaders. What was more interesting to me was the attendees – well over half the crowd was made up of coaches of one type or another.
There were a few physicians, a couple of psychologists and many practitioners of mindfulness, or meditation of other holistic practices, but the largest group seemed to be coaches.
A key focus of the event was the effect of mindfulness on the brain and the enhancement of cognitive abilities.
Around the same time several articles came out noting the impact of the brain on pain.
One of them suggested that a patient’s expectations would impact their pain level and that the expected outcome of a surgical procedure was affected by a patient’s psychological state. My wife, the pain psychologist, has been telling me this for years.
Then, last week I attended a meeting of the Northern California Association of Pain Psychologists to listen to a lecture by Dr. Sean Mackey of Stanford on what happens in the brain when we experience pain. I had recently finished Melanie Thernstrom’s “Pain Chronicles” which I found quite compelling so I thought lecture would be interesting. Plus my wife didn’t want to drive alone.
Dr. Mackey is head of the Stanford pain program and is known world wide for the studies they do trying to isolate how the bran processes pain and other emotions.
Finally, I was brought full circle back to the Wisdom 2.0 coference by a New York Review of Books article on V.S. Ramachandran’s The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human
I’m not sure what all this means but it seems clear the topic is pretty hot.
Think about it and let me know what you think.
Numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,
February 26, 2011
If you have ever wondered where the numbers we use came from…take a look. It’s really quite elegant.
Arianna and Patch.com
February 7, 2011
I’m a big fan of Patch.com and their local news gathering operation – even if they are owned by AOL. It was interesting to hear Arianna Huffington being interviewed today about the puchase of her Huffington Post site by the AOL content empire (at least in their own eyes).
The only AOL division she chose to name while answering question on The PBS Newshour was Patch.com. I’m not sure if it was a random thought, or if I should be nervous that Ms Huffington will start monkeying around with what has become a pretty successful formula for local news gathering.
AOL and Arianna had conference calls with all the AOL properties which will be under her control but singling out Patch.com would make me a bit nervous if I was one of their local editors. I’m not the only one expressing concern.
Only time will tell, but I really hope I don’t wind up reading local news as dictated by the folks in Washintgton D.C.
How Not To Compete in a Digital World
February 2, 2011
As a former professional photographer I was sad to hear that my local photo shop, was going to close – so I decided to stop by and see what was up. The manager insisted that they were not going out of business, – just looking for a smaller location. There have been published reports of the imminent demise but I figured I’d play along with his story if they hadn’t made a formal announcement.
But I couldn’t help thinking the store was textbook example of how not to compete in a digitally based, internet-centered world. I’ve patronized the store for many years. They processed my film ‘in the old days’ and when I had questions about what digital camera to buy, that’s where I got advice. And to pay them back for the service I bought three cameras from them – even though I knew I could get them cheaper online.
They are a family-run two-store chain where I used to have to wait in line for service. No more, the store is pretty much deserted as film has disappeared and people discovered they could order good quality prints online, or simply upload digital files to a website where grandma and grandpa could log on and see the kids anytime they wanted.
That was about 60% of their profit.
Then, when web sites made it possible to compare prices online and postage-free, tax-free delivery was available from anywhere, the rest of their profits started to melt away.
My local store never bothered to put up a website that was anything more than a place saver. There was no on-line store to buy anything. There was no listing of products beyond general terms, there was no buying advice about how to choose the best digital camera and there was no online marketing to make sure that even their most loyal customers knew they were still around.
In short they just seemed to stick their head in the sand and hope it was just a poor economy and that business would come back. The store manager says they are working on all those things, but I’m afraid it may already be too late and my main street will have a vacant store front and just a bit less traffic.
The tragedy is, it could have been avoided with a little effort put into leveraging the expertise and good will they had built up over 20 years of business. There are numerous example of small local businesses who have able to survive in the digital age but unfortunately there are many more who simply become case studies of how not to compete.
An Answer When You Need It
February 1, 2011
You can’t scan many blogs before you find a rant from someone who had to deal with a customer service ‘telephone tree’ and came away much worse for the experience.
I’ve done it in this space and have read many others. So, I thought it would be appropriate to give credit where credit is due and offer a compliment when things went right.
I had a question for my local bank, about a form they sent. So I dialed the customer service number listed and was pleasantly surprised to hear a real person answer. I asked my question she gave me an answer and I hung up in stunned silence.
Maybe businesses are starting to get the message.