Sunday, May 27, 2007
Buffalo Trip Report Abridged Version
Monday, May 14, 2007
A user's guide to meetings that don't really matter
I am a lame-duck manager for the next 81 working days. I will be replaced on September 1st. In turn I find myself very unmotivated to attend the various meetings that accompany my current job description. To make things worse, I have always hated meetings. They are such a waste of time. Over the years at these gatherings, I've entered the role playing game of doing the absolute minimum work while convincing those around me that I am an integral and interested member of the group. Case in point, several people have approached me in the halls and said to me "Mike, I'm sorry to hear you're stepping down as chair of the department, I always enjoyed your input at the meetings". Since I will be attending less meetings in the future, I now divulge my secrets for how to make others think you are there when you are truly...not.
Body Language
Did you know that most of your communication occurs non-verbally? For mimes it's a full 100%! I learned about non-verbal cues my first year in college. I remember one night at a bar leaning in to kiss a very attractive girl and receiving a distinct non-verbal cue of disinterest. She chose to use the non-verbal cue of a knee thrust to my nuts. Allow your non-verbal cues to sell your interest in the meeting by doing the following:
* Furrow your eyebrows and stare intently at the wall or some other object. Tilt your head a little to the side. While you are doing this you are actually thinking about the Victoria's Secret catalogue. But it's okay. No one knows this but you.
* Place your pen in your hand in a "ready for action" writing position. Get ready to write "notes".
* Take diligent notes every few minutes. Lean forward and write on a note pad. For example, here are the notes I took at this morning's meeting:
Speak up
Half way through the meeting, wake up and say something. It's not as compelling to agree with the discussion topic at hand. Disagree wholeheartedly with something. Disagreeing with a concept shows that you have familiarized yourself with the concept, weighed the consequences, analyzed them and come to a conclusion. Follow this up with a vague sort of solution that is so ethereal in nature that it's practicality can't be tested. Offering a solution makes you a innovative problem solver and not some sort of perfunctory prick. Talk in management phrases. Talk about the "box". People love the box. "Paradigm Shift" is another goodie. Something good to say might be:
"I think we need to re-examine our thinking on this. We're just thinking in terms of one box and packaging them into another box. We need to eliminate the box make a true paradigm shift in approach."
See? I showed the interest level of disagreeing, but I offered a solution. It's a solution that no one can challenge because it means nothing. That's the perfect kind of solution. It makes all other members feel uncomfortable and insecure. This causes them to change the subject and more importantly, allows you to quickly return to your daydream about that lady from Kettering who got the $300 question wrong on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. How embarrassing for her. She thought "Sir Mixalot" was knighted by the royal family. Sheesh!
Bring believable reading material
Always bring a large binder. Make sure the cover of the binder is labeled with something relevant. Lean back, open the binder and proceed to read your Iron Man comic book.
Used properly, these techniques will disallow the bureaucracy of the establishment to waste your time. Rather, you will have earned to right to waste your own time.
I wish you good luck and Godspeed.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
A new challenge
I'm going to take the Lunesta 7 night challenge
That's a free 7-day trial of the prescription sleep drug Lunesta. It's a bit of a misnomer because the real challenge comes on the 8th day when:
- Someone asks you the question "So, what did you do this week?"
- You try to get to sleep without it
- You try to resist calling your doctor for a refill
Yeaaaahhhhhh! I'm gonna take the challenge so I can pop a pill, lay down in bed and pump my fist in the air! Nanoseconds afterward, my arms will fall limp and my clenched fist will uncurl as I am propelled into an 8 hour coma.
Welcome to the world of EXTREME SLEEPING!
Monday, May 7, 2007
I just got a demotion!
Bah! I say that's bunk. I'm proud to say I just recently I asked my boss for a demotion.
And the good news is...he gave it to me.
On August 15, 2001, I became the manager (chair) of an academic department of college science teachers for two quarters. At least, that's how long I was told it would be. A Vice President decided she had spruced up her resume enough to leave for a better job. The dean filled her spot as interim VP and then my chair became the interim dean. He told me he would just be gone for a couple of quarters and that being an interim chair might be good experience. What he never told me was that the interim VP would become the permanent VP and that he would apply for the dean job and become the permanent dean and then everyone would twist my arm and tell me I absolutely had to apply for the chair job on a permanent basis.
And he sure as hell didn't tell me I 'd be gullible enough to do just that. And do it for 5 more years.
Actually, I can't be too hard on myself. I didn't have tenure at the time and it seemed like a fun job. And for a while, it was.
But being a chairperson of an academic department isn't like being an ordinary manager. If I was an ordinary manager of say, a product line where people made "widgets", things would be much more defined. You would be able to see if people were making the widgets correctly and enough of them. And if not, you could call a widget maker over, point out a defective widget and say something like "see how this widget is defective? We've got to get better at limiting these widget defects.".
But we don't make widgets, we make people. Actually, we don't make people, we improve people. Do you know how ambiguous a task that is? First of all, people are more complicated than widgets. They think in all sorts of different ways. They come into our "widget factory" with all sorts of varying potential and all sorts of varying attitudes. The potential ranges from those who have the potential to be the president of the United States (o.k. maybe I should give them more credit than that) to those who really might be better off entering the work force now. Their attitudes range from those who bake you cookies to those who will yell at you because you replaced their widget maker (instructor) with one they don't like because the one they had before suddenly died from lung disease in the middle of the quarter. I can't make this stuff up folks...
What's really a challenge is managing the widget makers. These people are tough to deal with at times. That's because they are the best damn widget makers in the world...and they know it. If they were bad widget makers, they would have to be really really bad widget makers in order to raise any red flags because most of the widgets don't complain when you give them good grades. But some of them do complain about everything else.
Now let's say you had a bad widget maker. Welp, you'd have to document their performance, wait a year and then document it again. It takes more than a year to fire a bad widget maker. If the widget maker has widget making tenure...forget it.
Widget making causes a lot of conflict. A lot of times the widget makers don't play nice with each other. So, the widget maker manager is only a good one if he/she has an open door policy to listen to all the tales about how one widget maker made a mess and another widget maker did something wrong and another widget maker whatever...It's also hard to control widget makers because of the diversity of the widget making job. Try running a department meeting for an hour. It's like herding cats...
