Favorite Firings Series: Bringing Pot Brownies to Work

In my last “favorite firing” post, I asked “what was this employer thinking?” This time, my question is, “What was that employee thinking?”

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported recently that a bus driver, whom I will call Driver MJ, brought double-fudge Betty Crocker honey brownies laced with marijuana to work and gave them to other bus drivers. Driver MJ was fired after an administrative hearing.

In the places where  I worked, this would have been known as a termination for being “too stupid to work here,” hence my question, “What was he thinking?” Most likely, Driver MJ wasn’t thinking, or was only thinking while under the influence.

Not only did Driver MJ lose his job, he faces criminal prosecution.

So this is a "favorite firing" because the employee's behavior was wrong on so many levels.

The more interesting questions in this situation involved the actions the employer took with respect to the three drivers who consumed the brownies.

The Facts:  When Driver MJ brought the homemade brownies to work, at least one of the other drivers allegedly asked whether the treats had any pot in them. Driver MJ said they did not.

When the three other drivers later realized the brownies had in fact been laced and they became dizzy, they stopped driving their vehicles and called for replacements. Thus, these drivers acted appropriately once they realized their driving was impaired.

The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System then placed the three drivers on paid leaves of absence and told them they could not return to work unless they submitted to drug counseling, as federal regulations of transportation workers require. One of the drivers accepted these terms.

The other two refused the terms for the paid leave, not wanting to undergo counseling because they had not intentionally taken the drugs.  These two drivers were put on unpaid leave.

Ultimately, the Federal Transit Administration waived the requirement that these employees receive drug counseling, and they were permitted to return to work

The Moral: Driver MJ caused far more problems than he anticipated, not only for himself, but for his co-workers. The other drivers did exactly the right thing and stopped driving, which prevented any injuries to themselves, their passengers, and the public.

The Metropolitan Transit System also investigated and took prompt action, which was appropriate. Some commentators have questioned why the MTS the drivers on an unpaid leave while pursuing the drug counseling issue. But based on the articles I’ve read, the MTS acted in accordance with federal regulations for transit workers.

Still, the right outcome in this situation is what happened: The regulations were waived.

If you had been one of these drivers, would you have objected to the counseling on principle, or been more concerned about keeping your job?

* * *
Please send me ideas for stories on workplace terminations for this series. If you have an interesting situation, please email me or leave a comment below. But please disguise the facts to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent) unless the situation is well-publicized, and then include a link to support your story.  I will only publish verified stories.

You Can’t Legislate Love, But Regulation of Romance in the Workplace Is Necessary

“You can’t legislate love,” someone with whom I worked told me once.  We were discussing our company’s policy forbidding a manager from dating or marrying someone who worked in his or her group.

One of the subplots in my forthcoming novel about a business in trouble deals with a potential romance between one of the corporate officers and a woman in another division. They have started dating, then they move into roles where she reports to him.

Love happens. What are co-workers in love supposed to do?

According to a recent article in Workforce Week, entitled Office Romance Policies Can Reduce Risk, 38 percent of respondents to a Career Builder Survey had dated a co-worker, and one-third of them married the co-worker. Once people are out of college and graduate school, the workplace is a great place to find romance.

But still, employers should have policies on workplace romances. Otherwise, the risks of harassment and other problems when love goes bad are too high. I’ve dealt with lovers who turn each other in for theft, with one employee stalking a former paramour, with love triangles (particularly serious when two of the three employees are still married), and with several couples caught in inappropriate situations in offices, conference rooms, and minivans in the parking lot.

At a minimum, office romance policies should require employees to keep their pants and skirts on, except in the restroom.

Beyond that, here are issues for employers to think about when adopting an office romance policy:

1. Forbid managers from entering into a relationship with anyone in their chain of command. The risks of claims of coercion or sexual harassment by the subordinate, or of favoritism by other employees, are too high. If a personal relationship does develop between a manager and subordinate, or if someone a manager is dating is moved into a position that creates a chain of command, require the manager to tell HR or his or her superiors, so they can decide how to handle the situation.
2. Integrate the office romance policy with the employer’s conflict of interest policy (as it pertains to nepotism), so  it is clear that no one makes decisions on the hiring, firing, performance, and/or compensation of a relative or person they are dating.
3. Make it clear that employees must treat other employees with respect at all times. Forbid any harassment, stalking, disparagement, or similar behavior. 
4. Integrate the policy with the employer’s social media policy – it isn’t just conduct at work that should be banned, but also public conduct (including postings on Facebook and the like) that disparages or harasses other employees.
5. Consider whether to ban dating between employees altogether. The problem with a policy that is this broad is that it requires a definition of “dating.”
6. Consider whether to ban “public displays of affecton.” This, too, can be difficult to define.
7. Some employers require “love contracts,” in which employees who are dating acknowledge in writing that the relationship is consensual and re-affirm their awareness of the anti-harassment and non-disparagement policies.
8. Consider whether the office romance policy should apply to dating consultants, customers, vendors, and other people with whom the employer has an ongoing relationship. This aspect, too, should be integrated with the conflict of interest policy.

No, you can’t legislate love, but you can try to minimize the problems that result in the workplace when love goes bad. (Or when love goes good.)

Have you had any experiences where romances in the workplace caused problems?

Empower Yourself with the Truth: Step Four = Recognize the Difficulty of Change

Last week, I wrote about office politics, based on Chapter 7 of Geoffrey M. Bellman’s book, Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge.  Now let’s look at Chapter 8, in which Bellman describes the realities of the change process and why it is so difficult.

In Chapter 8, Bellman lists nine realities of change. His descriptions range from a paragraph to a page and a half. I’m going to give a one-sentence statement about each reality, then explore a couple that struck me as particularly important for change agents today.

Bellman’s nine points about change are

1. Change is profoundly difficult: Most change agents overestimate their ability to bring about change and underestimate the organization’s ability to maintain its current state.

2. Rapid change is dangerous: By definition, change contradicts the established way of doing things, and we underestimate the difficulty of changing people’s ways, so change is likely to be slower than we would like.

3. Sound change is rooted in respect: As explained in an earlier post, [link] we need to respect the reasons why the organization is the way it is; if we do not, the organization will resist our efforts at change.

4. Resistance demonstrates power: Resistance is how the people in organizations demonstrate their strength; we need to involve them in the process so they help, rather than resist our efforts.

5. Perseverance is a lost art: Determining what changes are necessary in an organization is easy, compared with the difficulty of embedding the change into “how we do business” so that our changes maintain themselves.

6. Continuous innovation is crucial: We can’t move on after one huge change effort; making continuous small changes over time might be more effective.

7. Ideas must find their time: Our ideas for change might not fit the time, and old ideas that were passed over might be right for now.

8. We change changing organizations: While we are in the middle of our change initiative, the world and its impact on our organization continues to evolve – organizations are not static and we need to remain flexible.

9. There are perils to success: Once we are successful, people move on, and we must be prepared to change again.

And there, in nine steps, is Bellman’s discussion of how to bring about change. As I re-read this chapter, I recalled the following from my own experience:

• The organizations I worked in hated large-scale change initiatives. The organizational design folks took on change effort after change effort, and most managers resisted. Their resistance was not futile; they often could delay and sabotage even the best designed change effort. Maybe small nudges would have moved us further in the long run than large-scale programs that took legions of people who didn’t want to cooperate.
• One organization I worked in focused for years on “continuous improvement.” Some efforts saved a few thousand dollars, others saved millions. All improvements were celebrated. This organization was one of the more innovative groups I worked with.
• Change does not take place in a vacuum – no organization remains the same for more than one sales season, and often for far shorter. People change, customers change, we ourselves change. The reality of change is messy; it’s not a laboratory, it’s a marketplace.

* * * * *

In this four-week review of Part 3 of Bellman’s book on empowering yourself with the truth, we have looked at how we need to analyze our current reality, how to empower ourselves, at the realities of office politics, and this week at the difficulties of change.

What has your experience been with these issues? What has brought you success on change initiatives?

Empower Yourself with the Truth: Step Three = Recognize and Use Office Politics Positively

In my last post, I wrote about asserting your own power, with themes from Chapter 6 of Geoffrey M. Bellman’s book, Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge. This week, I am commenting on Chapter 7 of Bellman’s book, on the fascinating subject of corporate politics.

I once had a guy who worked for me who said he hated corporate politics. He was a direct communicator and despised people he thought spent their time positioning themselves to look good. But there is a huge difference between office politics and sucking up.

So how do we deal with corporate politics in a positive way?

1.       Recognize That Corporate Politics Are Real

The theme of this series of posts about Bellman’s book is “empowering yourself with the truth.” The truth is that any group of people is political. The words “politics” and “political” come from the Greek word for “city” or “townspeople.” Any time people gather, politics are involved.

Get over your dislike of politics. It’s real, and it’s everywhere. Bellman says

“Politics has been called the art of getting things done. . . . They are not basically good or bad; they are neutral, to do with as we will. Political goodness or badness flows from the intent and impact of our actions.” 

It’s your choice whether your involvement in corporate politics is good or bad. What are your intentions and impacts in your organization?


 2. Base Your Actions on Your Principles

As Bellman points out, being a political actor does not mean giving up your principles. In fact, here is a summary of Bellman’s steps necessary to integrate your politics with your principles:

• Know your principles 
• Acknowledge the reality of corporate politics
• Recognize that you are a part of the politics in your organization
• Understand that you will have to consider the political ramifications of what you want to get done
• Be clear ahead of time about what you will and will not do to use politics – who you will engage to support you and how. 

If you take these steps, you can participate in the politics of your organization without feeling like you are compromising your principles. Perhaps my colleague who so disdained politics needed to think about these steps.

3. Support Healthy Behaviors in Your Organization 

Bellman’s book, written in 1992 before the age of constant email and chats, is a little dated. He prefers face to face meetings over phone calls, memos and faxes.

But his point is that relationships are important in any organization, and relationships are best built face to face. How will you foster your relationships in today’s environment? In some situations, there is no substitute for the feedback and nuances of communication you can get in a face to face meeting.

Regardless of the communications techniques you use, you should find ways to connect with others in your organization. Determine what goals you share and how you can understand each other, even if you do not always agree.

Have your perceptions of office politics changed as a result of anything you read in this post?

Empower Yourself with the Truth: Step Two = Choose to Assert Your Own Powers

Last week, I began a series of posts on Part 3 of Geoffrey M. Bellman’s book, Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge.  The first post dealt with how to determine the current reality in our organization at four levels – knowing, understanding, respecting, and accepting.

Today, in a review of Chapter 6 of Bellman’s book, we look at how to empower ourselves to enable change in an organization.

1. Choose to Empower Yourself

One of the lines in Bellman’s Chapter 6 that struck home with me on this re-reading was

“How can a professional who regularly whines ‘I’m not in charge’ be effective?”

Think about that – someone who talks about not being in charge, who regularly says “’they’ won’t let me do something,” is someone who is giving away power. As Bellman asserts repeatedly in his book, there are always times when we are not in charge. It’s what we do in those situations that determines our effectiveness.

Bellman distinguishes between people who say “they won’t let me” from those who say “I am not going to do something, because it is someone else’s role.”  The first is a statement of blame and powerlessness, and the second is a statement of choice and power. The second person is assuming the responsibility for clarifying roles.

Do you choose where to play in your organization, or do you let others make the decisions for you?

And a corollary: Do you believe that at least a part of the answer to any problem lies within you?

2. Understand and Exercise All Your Powers

Even when our roles are narrowly defined, we have more choices and power than we think. First, we need to be very clear on what others think our role is, using the same techniques described last week – knowing, understanding, respecting, and accepting. Then, we have to think about our own beliefs about our role and what we can do.

According to Bellman, all of us have powers beyond what is set out in our job description. This section describes the powers Bellman lists, but I’m adding my perspective.

• The first power Bellman describes is our perspective – no one else sees the organization exactly how we do. We should be bold (though courteous) in offering our perspective.  Making our voice part of the organization’s analysis of a problem is how we exercise this power.
• We have options. Each of us chooses daily whether to go to work or to build our business or to engage in any of the activities we undertake each day. We can always opt out. If we don’t, then we owe the organization the best we have in us.
• We have discretion to shape our job where it is ambiguous (and most jobs have some ambiguity). Where your job isn’t clearly defined, take the responsibility to define it yourself, to expand or narrow the scope in the manner you think best. Someone may push back, but at least you have started the process of clarifying your role and exercised your power in that way.
• We sometimes have a long-term timeframe. In the chaos of daily problem-solving, it is often difficult to see the long term. Take the time to step back. Where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want your organization to be?

3. Assert Your Power

A woman I barely knew stopped me in the hall one day and told me I was a powerful woman. It was a day when I wasn’t feeling particularly powerful, and her words really struck me. I’ve questioned myself often about what she meant by that statement. I had a higher ranked position that she did, but I didn’t think that’s why she made the comment.

I think she recognized that I attempted to use my position to make myself visible on issues that mattered to me in the workplace: on work/life and scheduling flexibility for employees whenever possible; on the importance of building a diverse workforce to maximize the talent in the organization; on good management with a focus on employee engagement.

Taking on these issues wasn’t always easy, particularly for a regimented and introverted personality like mine.

But sometimes, asserting your power only requires showing up, showing that you care.

Where do you assert your power in your organization? Where could you assert more power?

Empower Yourself with the Truth: Step One = Determine the Current Reality

In May, I suggested that you explore your goals. You’ve now had several weeks to think about your goals. In this post, I want to return to Geoffrey M. Bellman’s book, Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge, and consider how we need to recognize and acknowledge current reality before we seek to change it.

As Bellman states, “If we are going to help change things, we have to know and appreciate our starting point.” He also says, “We don’t get where we want to be by fooling ourselves about where we are.”

How many people do you know who want to deny the current problems in their environment and think that their world as it is is perfect? How many others do you know who want to leap from what they know is wrong to their preferred perfect solution, without considering the challenges in moving from current state to ideal state?

Part 3 of Bellman’s book focuses on how to learn about our organization and ourselves – as it and we are today. I started writing with the intention of covering all of Part 3 in this one post. But as I re-read Bellman’s book, I decided the four chapters in Part 3 are so important that each one deserves its own post. So for the next four weeks, I’ll be writing on Empowering Yourself with the Truth, each post devoted to a chapter in Bellman’s book.

Bellman begins Part 3 of his book with Chapter 5, which discusses how to learn what the truth is in your organization. Bellman says that we have to examine the truth at four levels. Think about what you have done to know your organization at each of these four levels.

1. Knowing the facts

At the first level, we have to know the facts. Where does authority reside in your organization? What is the scope and power of your own role?

At this stage, we are researching like a disinterested observer. We watch, we ask questions, but our  purpose is like Sergeant Friday in the old Dragnet series – “just the facts, ma’am.”

We can learn a lot at this level, but we will learn more if we dig deeper.

2. Understanding how we got here

Beyond knowing the facts, we have to understand them. How did the organization evolve to its current structure? Why are things the way they are? What do the people involved think about the current state?

Developing understanding requires that we spend significant time with people who have been in the organization awhile. We don’t really have understanding until these folks think we understand them. This takes time, but is worth the effort.

Think of the power of getting the people in the organization to acknowledge that you understand them and the way things work. They will be much more willing to work with you in the future, if they think you understand them now.

3. Respecting the past and present

After we understand how we got to the current state, we have to respect it. Things are the way they are because mostly decent people made them that way. Recognize that there are reasons why the organization is structured the way it is.

You may not agree with the current state. You may see many problems in the organization. But if you don’t respect the people who came before you, who are the people invested in the way things are now, you will probably not have a lot of success changing the current state.

You need to meet people where they are – with respect – to change them. Bellman points out that this is a hard level for many of us to achieve. We may have such zeal for improvement that we can’t see the good in what has gone before us.  Work at trying to respect the current state.

4. Accepting the value of those who got us here

Beyond respecting the people who got us to the current state, to get to the fourth level, we have to accept their value. Acceptance goes deeper than respect; it requires honoring and recognizing the contributions of the people who went before us.

As Bellman puts it, if we get to this stage, we can say that we not also understand and respect the current state, “I also accept that the people in this department are smart, hardworking, interested in contributing, and valuable to the company.  You are the kind of people I love to work with.” How many new managers or other change agents can say this and mean it?

You don’t have to agree that the current state is where we should remain. But you do have to honor it.  This is even harder than respect, for  those of us with a passion for change.

* * * * *

Think about these four levels of getting at the truth in your own situation. Which levels do you feel comfortable with? Which give you some heartburn?

Challenge yourself. What will it take for you to truly respect where the people in your organization came from?  How will you accept their contributions – past, present and future?

Only after considering these questions will you know the current state well enough to start changing it.

Next week, we’ll look at how to work on empowering ourselves to make changes.

Difficulties of Reasonable Accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act

I recently attended a webinar on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), sponsored by the American Bar Association.  The primary points made during the webinar were

1. The amendments to the ADA passed in 2008 were designed to relax the definition of “disability.” Cases brought under the ADA should now focus more on whether the employer discriminated against the employee, and less on whether the employee is disabled.
2. Employers should be able to justify their attempts to accommodate the employee.  An employer should “stop; think; justify” any actions vis-à-vis a disabled employee.  This applies both to determining the essential functions of the job and to the discussion of reasonable accommodations to permit the employee to perform the essential functions.

One of the speakers during the webinar was Chai R. Feldblum, Esq., a commissioner with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  Commissioner Feldblum stressed that the EEOC does not want to preclude employers from getting their work done, nor reduce business productivity.  If an employer has its job descriptions in place that list the essential functions, and if the employer engages in an interactive dialogue with the disabled employee, then determining whether a reasonable accommodation is possible should be straight-forward.

My experience has been that the reasonable accommodation process is not as easy as Commissioner Feldblum makes it sound. Ideally, a reasonable accommodation can be found quickly, but often, the process is inexact and time-consuming.

Here are some of the problems encountered in finding reasonable accommodations:

First, there is the problem of keeping job descriptions up to date. In today’s workplace, jobs change quickly.  In a large company, it can be a full-time job for several employees to keep job descriptions updated.  And writing job descriptions is probably not the most efficient use of employees’ time – companies that seek to be nimble may not want to slow down to create job descriptions that will be out of date by the time they’re written.  Requiring that job description be written is one of the reasons lawyers and HR professionals get a bad name among managers, even when they point to the ADA as the reason for the requirement.

Second, while it is easy for an employer to say that a job function is “essential,” there are always other ways to get the work done. Since one possible reasonable accommodation is to “restructure” a job, an employer is always subject to being second-guessed on whether a particular job function is “essential” and need not be eliminated, or whether it is non-essential and the employer will have to find another way to get the function done, or do without the function.

Third, while the employer can set both qualitative and quantitative standards for acceptable performance, these standards are also subject to debate during the reasonable accommodation process.  If a leave of absence or a reduced schedule is a reasonable accommodation, then a production standard may need to be reduced along with the employee’s schedule.  How then will the employer get enough production out to satisfy its customers?

Fourth, the necessary accommodations of a disabled employee sometimes evolve over time, or require a good deal of experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t.  The attempts at accommodation may even be unsuccessful in the end, resulting in frustration for the disabled individual, as well as for his or her managers and co-workers. Sometimes the employee isn’t ready to stop working, even after many accommodations have been unable to get the employee back to a productive state.

These problems don’t even get to the issues that arise when the employee’s request for an accommodation is less than clear, when the employee doesn’t know what accommodation they think might work, or when other employees become upset at having their jobs changed because the employer is accommodating someone else.  For more information about the ADA, see the EEOC's website on disability discrimination.

The purpose behind the ADA is laudable.  The practice is often messy.  Even employers operating in good faith can find themselves in expensive litigation.  Who is to say what is “reasonable”? Even years of attempted accommodations may not be enough to satisfy the EEOC or a judge or jury.

What have your experiences with the ADA been? 

No One Has It All – We All Make Choices

The Internet this past week has been full of discussion about an article by Anne-Marie Slaughter in the Atlantic, titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All?”  Ms. Slaughter writes about the difficulties she experienced in holding a high-level policy position in the State Department, and why she ultimately returned to her role as a dean at Princeton University in large part because she needed to spend more time with her family.

She argues in the piece that women cannot “have it all” in today’s society, for a number of reasons. She says that we tell ourselves half-truths about “having it all,” such as believing we can “have it all” if we are committed enough, or if we marry the right person, or if we sequence our lives right.

But in fact, we cannot have it all.

And here I state my own beliefs, based on having lived most of my professional and family life:

          No one has it all.
          Everyone makes compromises.

I posted in March about women “opting out.” The truth is, we all opt out of some things and opt into other things.

I worked for more than 25 years in demanding positions in corporate America. You would recognize the name of my employer if I named the firm. I worked 60 hours/week, and managed to stay married and raise two children. I had many of the advantages that Ms. Slaughter had, but not all. I probably had other advantages she did not have.

And through it all, I made choices.

• I chose not to take job opportunities that could have separated my family and would have required a long-distance marriage and parenting.

• I chose not to have more than two children.

• I chose to leave work in time to be home for dinner most nights, and chose to quit working at home at  bedtime, rather than pulling all-nighters (though I had many sleepless nights from stress).

• I chose to live in the Midwest, instead of on the East or West Coast, where life seems more frantic.

Along the way, my husband made his choices as well. Some of his choices enabled my career, and some made it more difficult. And my choices had positive and negative impacts on his career and other activities.

Could I have done more at work? Yes. I held several senior positions in my company, but I could have risen higher and had more authority. Some of why I didn’t rise further was probably due to my choices, and some was probably due to how others perceived me, correctly or incorrectly.

But I had a very good career, and I left on my own terms. And I raised two children who are now successful young adults. I look back on these accomplishments with satisfaction, no matter that I could have had more.

I didn’t have it all, but I had most of what I wanted. And I was responsible for my choices.

I hope that my children – son and daughter alike – have more choices than I had. I hope they worry less about the choices they make. But the odds are, their lives will have some of the same difficulties as well as new ones that develop in the 21st century.

Life doesn't permit any of us to "have it all." It's not meant to be easy. Nor even fair.

Favorite Firings – Third in a Series

I’ve received some suggestions from readers on “favorite firings” to feature in this series. Here’s another good one. This story involves a situation that could have been tragic, but ended up being humorous.

The Facts:  A married female employee (we’ll call her Ursula) was having an affair with a male co-worker (John).  Ursula’s husband (Karl – not employed where Ursula and John worked) found out about the affair.

Karl was drinking one evening at the local pub, and decided he’d had enough of Ursula’s behavior.  He brought his shotgun into Ursula’s workplace and shot the lock off the doors into her department.

When Karl saw John, he aimed at John and fired, but thankfully missed.  Karl's bullets did destroy the soft drink vending machine on the premises, however.

After shooting at John, Karl sobered up slightly and raced out to his pick-up in the parking lot.

By the time Karl left, other employees had called the police. Karl was still drunk enough when he reached his truck that his driving was not of the highest caliber. He drove straight into the police car that had just arrived at the parking lot and still had its siren blaring and lights flashing.  The police easily apprehended Karl after the crash.

The company decided to fire both Ursula and John, because of the disruption and danger their affair had caused.  No, they weren’t fired for the affair itself, but because it led to danger to their co-workers.

John moved on with his life (presumably without Ursula).  But Ursula sued her employer for permitting her to engage in what she called “extracurricular marital affairs.”  In a rare display of prompt justice in employment cases, the judge quickly dismissed the lawsuit.

As a side note, Karl also sued.  He sued the pub for letting him get drunk. His case was also dismissed.

Not much has been heard from Karl or Ursula since.

The Moral:  The point of this story is not to make light of workplace violence, which is a serious problem and often leads to tragedy.  This case could have ended with employees and others dead or wounded.

In this case, the employer incurred some legal risk in firing Ursula and John, because their affair was not work-related behavior.  However, the consequences of them mismanaging their private lives had an impact in their workplace, and endangered their co-workers.

Because the employer treated both employees the same, there was no gender discrimination claim.

Many employees do not take responsibility for their own behavior and deserve to be fired. Ursula’s reaction in filing a lawsuit blaming her employer for her affair clearly fits this category.

* * *

Remember, if you have any ideas for stories to publish, please email me or leave a comment below.  But please disguise the facts to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent) unless the situation is well-publicized, and then include a link to support your story.  I will only publish verified stories.

Key Issues to Consider in Succession Planning

The novel I am writing centers on a family-owned business in which the CEO is suddenly injured and unavailable. He had not developed a succession plan for himself prior to becoming incapacitated.  And the business depended on him to resolve the conflicts between his warring staff members.

I’m sure the existence of conflicts between members of a CEO’s staff doesn’t surprise anyone who has worked in any corporate culture for more than a few months. What would happen in your organization if the person responsible for resolving disputes and making decisions were suddenly unavailable?

Conflict management is only one reason for a good succession plan. Succession planning is essential for insuring the continuation of the enterprise – making sure that the right people are ready for critical positions at the right time.

Here are some questions to answer as you consider the succession plan in your organization:

• What are your organization’s strategic goals for the future? How will your workforce need to change to get you there?
• Have you identified the key positions in your company for today and for the foreseeable future? (Needs may change, and your succession plan should anticipate future organizational needs.)
• Have you identified the competencies future leaders will need to have? (What educational, technical, and leadership skills and attributes will be important five years from now?)
• What training and developmental activities will your current staff need to ready them for the leadership roles of the future?
• How will you transition from your current organization to the structure and roles you envision down the road?
• While succession planning is necessary at the top of the organization, how far down should your plan go? Often there are critical technical positions that should be considered as well.

HR and key line officers should discuss these succession issues regularly, and keep the succession plan evolving. Otherwise, your organization will end up as dysfunctional as the company I describe in my novel.

Law Firm Management: An Oxymoron?

I’ve seen the workings of several law firms over the past thirty years, either through my own experience or that of friends and relatives. In most cases, law firm management is an oxymoron.

Everyone is dissatisfied – support staff, new lawyers, senior associates, junior partners, rainmakers, and senior counsel. While dissatisfaction is rampant in any work environment, lawyers tend not to understand management and even to scoff at its importance. Except when it comes to billing and collections.

There are some law firms on the 100 Best Places to Work lists, but they usually make these lists because of the perks they offer – such as working from home or on-site day care – that don’t require strong people management skills.

Here are some of the horror stories I’ve heard in recent years:

• Firms tell new law school graduates they will have jobs, but don't give the new attorneys any idea when their start date will be.  The prospective associates then fret over whether to commit to another job, and wonder whether they will be able to make the transition when the firm is ready for them. Firms are also slow to inform new associates about signing bonuses, salary and benefits.
• Managing partners and mentors leave senior associates in the dark about how partnership decisions are made.  In most firms, these decisions are highly subjective. Associates never know who blackballed them, and they might linger in limbo for years, thinking next year they’ll grab the golden ring for sure.
• Attorneys at all levels treat support staff as drudges, subject to verbal abuse and unreasonable deadlines. No judge would put up with this behavior from attorneys in the courtroom, but lawyers feel free to scream at their secretaries and paralegals in the office.
• The management committee sets partners’ compensation in secrecy, on the theory that if nobody knows what anybody else makes, no one will be jealous. But somehow the information gets out, or the speculation is worse than the truth. 
• Partners don't know whether they are truly “partners” under the law, or “employees” of a corporation. The firm's deductions from partner compensation may not match how the firm is structured on paper or how it operates in practice. Partners and employees have different rights under the law -- many employment laws, such as Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, don't protect partners, yet how many partners in today’s mega-firms truly influence the firm as owners?
• Senior attorneys feel shunted aside after thirty years or more of contributions to the firm. Many firms have no graceful way to ease an attorney’s route to retirement. Some old lawyers shuffle in to empty offices to read their mail; others leave disgruntled taking decades of experience that could help new lawyers in the firm.
• Even the partners with large books of business who bring in the most income to the firm feel under-appreciated. Firms don't know how to balance recognition of the relationships that brought in the clients and the work that keeps them.
• And even the firms’ Employment Practices groups treat employees poorly. You’d think this group would know to avoid sexual harassment, but unfortunately, harassers seem to be spread equally across the workforce.

Legal conferences these days are full of sessions about “practice management” and “project management.” But law firms would do better to add “people management” to their vocabulary and legal education programs.  Unfortunately, lawyers seem to think they are too smart for that “people stuff.”

Large firms usually have HR departments, but HR gets no more respect than the secretaries. When an employee problem develops, the attorneys have no patience, and ask HR to “deal with it,” meaning “Get rid of the person. Yesterday.”

Certainly not all firms fit the picture I’ve created. But many do. Do you recognize your firm in one or more points of what I’ve described? If so, what are you doing about it?

Favorite Firing: The Absent Nurse in the ICU (Second in a Series)

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the more liberal courts in the nation, declared in Samper v. Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, that attendance is an essential job requirement for some jobs.

This case arose under the Americans with Disabilities Act  (ADA) – a law with the laudable purpose of protecting the job rights of people with disabilities and requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities.

The Facts:  A nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) had fibromyalgia and missed a lot of work.  When she was absent, she could not care for the premature babies in the NICU – which was the essential function of her job.

As required by the ADA, the nurse and the hospital discussed accommodation of her inability to comply with the hospital’s attendance policy because of her disability.  The nurse wanted to be given an unspecified number of unplanned absences from her job, and to opt out of complying with the attendance policy at all.

The hospital had few nurses who could back up the employee in question, and said they could not accommodate her request.  The hospital worked with her through several years of poor attendance, and even permitted her to re-schedule her shifts on short notice. 

Finally, however, when even this flexible scheduling did not work to improve the nurse’s attendance, the hospital concluded they needed to move her to another department.

She refused the job transfer, continued to be absent, and even missed the meeting with her supervisor to discuss her attendance. Then she was fired for poor attendance, and she sued the hospital.

The Moral:  Even the liberal Ninth Circuit determined that attendance was an essential job requirement for a nurse.  As the Court said,

“Both before and since the passage of the ADA, a majority of circuits have endorsed the proposition that in those jobs where performance requires attendance at the job, irregular attendance compromises essential job functions.”

The Ninth Circuit agreed with its fellow courts.

In essence, the court held that you can’t take care of babies without being where the babies are:

“This at-risk patient population cries out for constant vigilance, team coordination and continuity.”

Good to know.  Employers do not need to “gut” their reasonable attendance policies, according to the Ninth Circuit.

But employers should keep in mind that this case does not provide leeway for employers to always  fire employees for poor attendance.  Some jobs can be done from home, or the scheduling of work time could be more flexible than a nurse’s shift.  A reasonable accommodation in these cases might well require that an employer not follow its attendance policy.

The health care sector is a growing part of the U.S. economy, and aging baby boomers will need more personal services in the years ahead.  These caregiving roles will always require attendance as an essential function of the job. 

By contrast, more and more jobs that are done today in offices will be able to be done from home as technology develops.  Attendance during particular hours will become less important in these jobs.  Even jobs requiring teamwork or customer service may be able to be accomplished through virtual contact, using social media, Skype, or other means of long-distance interaction.

Which of these competing views of the workplace will grow faster? An interesting question for the demographers. Are there any opinions among my readers?

* * *

I’d like to occasionally post about employee terminations that illustrate the state of the modern workplace.  As I wrote in the first “favorite firing” post, if you have any ideas for stories to publish, please email me or leave a comment below.  But please disguise the facts to protect the innocent (and not-so-innocent) unless the situation is well-publicized, and then include a link to support your story.  Only verified stories will be published.

The Progress Principle: What Can Managers Do to Make Employees Engaged and Productive?

I recently participated in an American Management Association webinar entitled The Progress Principle: Sparking Employee Engagement and Performance. The presenters were Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, co-authors of a book entitled The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.


1. Inner Work Life Drives Performance

Amabile and Kramer conducted a “diary study” of employees in seven different industries, asking them to describe daily their activities and feelings of engagement.  They coupled this diary information with numerical performance data. 
This study found that employees’ inner work life drives performance.  Inner work life consists of employees’ perceptions, emotions and motivations. 

Employees’ inner work life determines whether they are engaged and productive in the workplace. More specifically, positive perceptions, pleasant emotions and intrinsic motivation increases creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality.

2.  The Progress Principle:  Progress on Meaningful Work

Amabile and Kramer found that the most important determinant of whether employees have positive feelings about their work is whether they made progress that day on meaningful work – what Amabile and Kramer call “The Progress Principle.”

In the diary study, 76% of employees described making progress on their projects on their best days, when they felt most engaged.  By contrast, over 70% of employees described work-related setbacks on their worst days at work.

3.  The Power of Small Wins

A further finding of the study was that small daily wins in the workplace translate into a big positive impact on people’s inner work life.  Similarly, setbacks on projects in the workplace translate into negative impacts. 

Therefore, it is important for managers to help employees achieve regular forward progress on their work.  Managers should break big projects up into smaller segments with regular milestones, so that employees can feel forward momentum frequently.

4.  What Managers Can Do

Amabile and Kramer found that managers need to provide two types of support to employees to increase the chances of them feeling that they were making progress on meaningful work – project support and people support.

            a.  Project Support (Catalysts)

According to Amabile and Kramer, the catalysts that managers can use to support employees’ progress include:

• Clear meaningful goals
• Autonomy
• Sufficient information and resources
• Help with their work
• Learning from problems and successes
• Open flow of ideas
• Sufficient time for the work (but not so much as to remove all time pressure)

          b.  People Support (Nourishment)

In addition, managers can support their employees through

• Respect and recognition
• Encouragement
• Emotional support
• Affiliation and camaraderie

Co-workers are important elements in the workplace, but managers are the most critical link.

5. Daily Journaling

As a writer and journal-keeper myself, it intrigued me that Amabile and Kramer recommended that managers keep a daily progress review detailing what happened in the workplace that day to support and detract from progress.  They suggest that managers ask themselves each day “What one thing can I do tomorrow to foster progress in my employees?”

Employees own their own inner work life, but managers can and must support them.  Direct supervisors are the most important link between an employee and their engagement and productivity at work.

What can you do tomorrow to foster engagement among your employees?

Work-Life Balance and “Opting Out”

ForbesWoman published a thought-provoking piece on February 28 by Meghan Casserly titled “Why Is ‘Opting Out’ a Bad Word for Women?” 

I published a comment to that article shortly after it was posted, but the issue haunted me all last week.  Here’s what I think at the moment about the notion of women “opting out” of the workplace:

1.  Women choose whether to quit working for pay for many reasons. Usually it is a mix of work and family reasons, and a very difficult decision. 

I managed to continue working in a 60 hour a week professional career throughout the years my children were at home.  When my children were young, I got advice from family, friends and colleagues that it would be easier if I quit my position and took a “nice, part-time job” somewhere.  These comments made me mad, and I stayed through the worst of the sick kid years because I was stubborn.  No one was telling my husband to get a “nice, part-time job,” and I earned as much as he did and liked my job better than he did.

2. Women who receive significant positive reinforcement in the workplace are less likely to opt out.

I stuck it out while my children were at home, but I retired early.  By that point in my career, the psychic and monetary rewards I got from working were less important than the goals I wanted to accomplish in my life outside the workplace.  Had I still been receiving developmental opportunities and not had to deal with so many jerks at the office, I might well have remained.
So, yes, my decision was voluntary, but it was in part based on reduced job satisfaction.  Could my company have kept me?  Probably.  But only by satisfying my terms, which wasn’t going to happen.

3. Women have more choices than men.

Women are viewed negatively in the workplace when they opt out, but men are viewed even more negatively if they take more than a few days or weeks right after a baby is born.  This is just as unfair as the business assumption expressed in the ForbesWoman article that women are more likely to opt out, therefore, businesses don’t have to spend as much to develop them.

4. Both “staying in” and “opting out” are rational decisions, and they are very individual decisions. 

Each person will choose the best path for herself and her family at the moment the decision is made.  While it is human nature to impose our own values on another person’s decision, doing so doesn’t help.

5. Businesses do not accommodate family life.

This is true for both men and women, but in our society women get less push back for “opting out,” though I know many men who also have “opted out.”

It is rational for businesses to invest less in people they don’t think will stick around, but it becomes a chicken and egg problem. Women are less likely to stick around if they do not see the benefit to themselves – and investing in their development is certainly a huge benefit and a way to keep women engaged in the workplace. If businesses don’t invest equally in women as in men, why would women stay?

So are women (and men) making truly “opting out” on a purely voluntary basis, or are they being subtly directed toward the option that is easiest for business? My answer to that varies moment by moment.

The better question is:  How do we instead make work and home life both attractive options for women?

And the best question is:  How to we allow everyone – male and female – to create a rewarding life that balances work and family?

How Mediators Manage Their Own Biases

Many people ask me how I can be a neutral mediator when I have firmly formed opinions on the laws, proper workplace behavior, and many other topics that are at issue when I mediate.  I have several answers to this question.

First, don’t assume that someone’s experience and background determine how that person will view the facts of any particular lawsuit.  I’ve found that my experiences often lead me to want to favor the employee in workplace mediations.  I was a manager for many years, and an attorney representing management for even more years.  But because I have opinions about how managers ought to manage, I am quick to judge them when they fail to live up to my expectations.  I need to control my urge to impose my standards on other people (as we all do in so many situations in life).

Second, what is most important for mediators is not whether they express their opinions, but that they are aware of their biases.  Only when they have this self-awareness can they decide what to do about their prejudices.  Most of the time mediators can put their biases aside, sometimes they can disclose their opinions, and let the parties decide whether to proceed, and occasionally mediators – if they do not think they can manage the process openly and fairly – should step away from the case.

Finally, as a mediator I know it isn’t my decision whether or how a case should be resolved.  I am not the judge or jury.  My job is to help the parties come to a resolution that they both agree is better for them than a trial.

I believe strongly in the value of mediation, so I can generally put my opinions aside.  When I think it will help the process, I will give my opinions to the parties (known as being an “evaluative” mediator), but if I can’t put my opinions aside when needed, I shouldn’t be mediating the case.

But in most situations, it isn’t necessary to give my opinion.  I can manage the process toward what the parties think is an equitable result, even if it isn’t the best result from my perspective.  If the parties are satisfied, then I must be satisfied also.

Have you had experiences with someone who was supposed to be neutral who didn’t seem to be?