Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

No Email Mondays

First there was casual Fridays. Now there's a trend towards No Email Mondays. I heard about this trend earlier this year but so far no one seems to be writing about it.

I tried to find out who started this trend and if delaying emails one day really makes a difference but I have come up with empty handed. It is non-Googleable.

I got to thinking about NO EMAIL MONDAYS because The Vision Thing, trackbacked to my post yesterday on Corporate Hide and Seek. In reading  how they used my post, I found this about NO EMAIL MONDAYS.

"someone told me that her management team implemented “no email Mondays". The logic here was that her team supposedly spent too much time reading and responding to emails, relative to their other responsibilities (no indication was given that the management team had anything other than anecdotal evidence for this assertion). Thus, “no email Mondays". This means that you can read your email, but not reply to any, until Tuesday.

Naturally, the loophole took about 30 minutes to manifest itself. “I found out that you can post-date messages in Outlook,” said one team member, “so I reply to all of my emails as they come in, but they don’t leave the server until 12:01am on Tuesday.”

So, I want to hear more about No Email Mondays.  Google isn't helping me. My hunch is that she is not the only one who has figured out this work around. First I want to understand what propelled companies to do this. Was it greeted with applause or scorn? How is it working? pros , cons? 

Is this a trend that is getting some legs? This is the second time I've heard about it. So there must be something to it.

Are there no phone call Mondays? No getting the mail Mondays? How about creating silent Mondays when no one at work talks to each other? Would people get more work done then.

The issue isn't email. The issue is why people are sending the email. Until you figure out the why, banning a communication isn't going to solve the real problem and I guarantee the real problem isn't email.

Were that it was.

Corporate Hide and Seek

The lengths some businesses go to hide their phone numbers makes a girl feel like they don't want to hear from her.  What's with that?

A couple of months ago I bought some software that I thought I could use on my Blackberry. When I realized the software was incompatible, I tried to look up the customer service number on the software company's website.

The didn't have one. They didn't even use traditional email. Instead, I had to complete a questionnaire that was  then submitted to their customer service department. Instead of sending me an email to let me know how the situation was being resolved, I was required to revisit their site and check on the status of my issue.

It's the new Corporate Hide & Seek. Corporations Hide their phone numbers and consumers spend hours seeking them out.

Over at Slate.com, Timothy Noah is making it part of his  personal mission in life  to Seek out phone numbers that companies are trying to hide.  It was Noah who gleefully published the phone number for customer service at  Amazon.com.In case you think you might need it it's 1-800-201-7575. ( I just checked and it is a working number)

Noah has not been as successful in getting the customer service number for iTunes.While he did find a number, it ended up as a dead end with a recorded message saying:

"If you're calling about a question relating to an iTunes music store purchase or gift certificate, please visit us on the Web at www.apple.com/support/iTunes and select the iTunes music store customer service link.

(Click! Dial tone.)

A classic bait-and-switch. Obviously, Apple Computer didn't know who it was dealing with.

I next tried 1-800-275-2273, a number I located, oddly enough, by logging on to Apple's "How To Contact Us" Web page. But all I could find there was "technical support," not customer service.."

Noah eventually called Apple Corporate Headquarters seeking the customer service phone number. He didn't get it. The Apple Operator said she would connect him with corporate customer relations but she wouldn't give him a direct dial number claiming it was just a button on her switchboard."

If anyone has the number, would you send it to Noah. He'll make sure the rest of us gets it.

Then there is advanced hide and seek. This is when you have the phone number of a business but instead of being placed in queue to talk to a customer service Representative,  you get a recorded message that all customer service representatives are busy and you'll have to call back later.

What good is having a number if no one will answer the phone?

This is a favorite hide and seek strategy of  the airlines and companies that are disciples of Six Sigma  Airline reservations systems do it to drive consumers to their websites to make reservations. Six Sigma companies do it to make sure their numbers sing.

It's actually called blocking calls. Here's what happens. When you are a Six Sigma company you  are constantly evaluated on performance. So let's say one of your performance standards is that you can't keep a customer on hold for longer than 5 minutes. If you do, your bosses will be very very unhappy. There are standards to keep.

This works great most of the year when you have an average number of callers. But in certain professions there are peak times of the year when call volume increases dramatically.

Oops...if you don't want to incur extra costs to handle the extra call volume then customers may have to wait longer to reach a real person. That will result in downward curve on performance time, Ugly Pareto Charts , and  most important,you will be hindering the CEO from reporting to the board of directors that the customer service metrics is in excellent shape and the team is performing at near Six Sigma.

Oh the pressure. What to do?  Go for the loophole. In this particular case, the loophole is that the customer service folks aren't  measured on calls that can't get through.  So as long as you block 20-30% of your customers from actually reaching you, you will still have great numbers to share with the CEO.

Don't you just love the new math?

Getting Fired For Taking a Slice of Pizza

The contest for the best " Why I got fired" story is continuing over at www.simplyfired.com.  My favorite so far is the guy who says he got fired because he took a piece of pizza out of a conference room.

I had been working for a mortgage company as a developer for 18 months and things were going well. Then, one day I saw that a different group in my company had just finished up a pot-luck and had some pizza left over. I thought they would probably end up throwing it away and I was kind of hungry so I went for it ... I took a slice of pizza.

Apparently the employees who threw this pot luck were planning to take it home and were offended by my action. Now I thought we were all basically on the same team and if someone didn't like what I did they would tell me so and I would apologize and maybe offer to pay for the pizza. These employees ended up telling their manager, who told her vice president about what I did.

The worst part about this is that I wasn't told about any of this until a month after the incident. No warning, no second chance.

I know that I left an impression because to this day my former coworkers refer to unattended pizza as "programmer bait".

What I love about this entire site is not so much the stories but the reaction and feedback the storytellers get. When I read this story I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that anyone would get fired for helping themselves to a slice of pizza.

However, there were plenty who took the point of view that "taking stuff without asking is stealing and stealing is a fireable offense."

Seeing the various reations to this story reminds me how important it is to understand the "values" different employees bring to the workplace. While my value system says taking a slice of pizza from a  conference room is no big deal, it is a big deal to some people.

Understanding the differences that make a difference can mean the success and or failure of a business team.

So for fun, why not order a pizza for your team today  and find out how they would react if someone helped themselves to a slice without asking. You could learn more about your team from that one discussion than you've ever known before.

Oh, the simply fired contest runs through August 26th.

Summer Lovin'

The military better step up its recruiting. If the reason they are giving for firing a four-star Army general is really the truth, then up to 60% of enlisted folks better be watching their backs.

The story--in today's USA TODAY-- is about a four-star general who was separated from his wife and just three months shy of retirment when he was kicked out of the military for having an affair with a woman outside of the military.

Sometimes you read a story and say to yourself, surely there's something else going on.

Under military law, Silliman  said, sex by a married soldier with anyone other than the spouse is adultery. An officer who left a marriage must have a final divorce decree or risk being in violation.

Although adultery is a crime under military law, typically it is prosecuted with other infractions. Perhaps the best-known case involved Lt. Kelly Flinn, an Air Force pilot who faced court-martial in 1997 for disobeying orders to stop dating a married man. The Air Force dropped the case and allowed Flynn to leave the service.

Observers speculate that the harsh punishment is in reaction to a recent sex scandal in the airforce where their top lawyer, Maj. Gen. Thomas Fiscus, was dismissed and demoted two ranks for affairs he had had during a 10 year period.

Give me a break.I'm not buying this story.

And as far as sex scandals go--just what is the airforce doing about the repeated charges that male cadets  have frequently raped the women cadets? Why aren't heads roling for that? Forget dismissals, let's have some court martials.

Peggy Vaugh, author of the: Monogomy Myth" and hostess of Dear Peggy.com a website devoted to the Beyond Affairs Networks shares some statistics that the military might want to review.

Conservative estimates are that 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an extramarital affair. These figures are even more significant when we consider the total number of marriages involved—since it's unlikely that all the men and women having affairs happen to be married to each other. If even half of the women having affairs (or 20 percent) are married to men not included in the 60 percent having affairs, then at least one partner will have an affair in approximately 80 percent of all marriages.

And, if that story isn't enough to make you roll your eyes, the New York Post has a juicy story  today about the head priest of St.Patrick's Cathedral. The headlines tell thes story:

REV.'S SECRET 'LOVE' SHACK

RECTOR'S LOVE NEST

As the lyrics from Grease say:

Summer lovin' had me a blast - summer lovin', happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me - I met a boy, cute as can be
Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those summer nights

Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?
Tell me more, tell me more, like, does he have a car?

Did the Coach Ask your Opinion?

It was, according to my friend Luisa, his dream job. He,a 20 something Generation X poster boy, had been hired by his Alma mater to work in the recruiting office. Thing went great until the NCAA Basketball playoffs.

An avid sports fan, Adam  was not  happy when his team did not do as well as he thought they should  in last years NCAA Tournament. Which would have been fine as long as Adam, a University employee didn't decide to share his displeasure with the coach via an email.

Th email, according to Luisa, included Adam's coaching tips--evidently something the coach did not appreciate.

The coach, not amused, pressed the forward button on his email service and typed in the name of the university provost.

Adam is no longer working at his dream job. One could ask What was he thinking?

The answer could be more a generational issue. Adam's behavior is quintessential Gen X. In an article about dealing with generations in the American Institute of Architect's Practice Management Digest there are some generalizations about generations that can be very useful to anyone who manages, works with or has to deal with Gen Xers.

Issues	Silent (61-78)	Boomers (43 - 60)	X (22 - 42)
Outlook	practical	optimistic	skeptical
Work Ethic	dedicated	driven	balanced
Authority	respectful	love-hate	unimpressed
Leadership	hierarchy	consensus	competence
Relationships	self-sacrifice	personal gratification	reluctance to commit
Perspective	civic-minded	team-oriented	self-reliant

My guess is that Adam was unimpressed with authority and hierarchy. As Luisa said, it was okay that he wrote the email, he just should never have pushed the send button.

NOTE: Luisa and Adam are not their real names. The account of the events were told by Luisa who heard it from a relative of Adam's.

Waynette, the customer isn't always right and other travelling observations

"Either her dad was expecting a son or wanted one," said Janie. We had just checked into the Baymont Inn in Lawrence Kansas for our 13th annual mother-daughter weekend.

Waynette was the reservation clerk. We didn't know it at the time but it was just her second week on the job.

What we did notice was someone who was making a lot of mistakes. It took a very long time to check in. When she handed Janie the check-in receipt,Janie noticed that Waynette had given us the room reservations for another guest.

The good news for us--- the other guest was paying $20 a night less than us. Thanks to Waynette's mistake we also got the room for $20 less.

It was during checkout that we learned that Waynette was very new to the job. We asked her to split the bill on two credit cards. This evidently was a task that had not been covered in basic training and the Baymont Inn must not be the kind of place that old college roommates go with their daughters for a weekend, requiring a split bill.

At one point Waynette's attempts to figure out the task was so excruciating --Waynette makes expansive facial gestures when she is thinking-- that we asked if it would simplify thinks if we just put the bill on one credit card.

Looking very relieved Waynette said yes, sharing that this was just her second week on the job . I, however felt that Waynette needed to learn this service,asked that she try one more time.

Success! We got the split bill and Waynette was very pleased with herself for figuring out this advanced billing technique.

Driving home my daughter Berit and I stopped at a very quiet Subway where we were the only customers. As we were sitting there, the staff decided to have a conversation as if we weren't in the room. The conversation was about customers.

"We're only human," said the Subway employee. "We're only human," she said again for emphasis. "That's what I remind myself and all humans make mistakes."

Continuing the conversation, she had this piece of advice for customers, " What gets me about customers is that they wait until the sandwich is completely done to say it's not what they asked for."Why can't they say something as we are making the sandwich? "

So if you are in a Subway and they make an error while preparing the sandwich, speak up. You'll make the staff much happier.

And finally, to the folks who run the gas station in Albert Lea Minnesota that has the humongous sign that says 24 hour Pay At The Pump-- can you explain to me why you close at 8:14 p.m. on a Sunday night?

Life after Google

Getting Fired is nothing new. Getting fired for blogging is a relatively new phenomenon. What do you after you've been fired by Google for firing? You start an online contest inviting other people to share their best fired stories. For details visit Simply Fired.

The contest began on Monday. Grand prize is a cruise. There's also the obligatory iPods.You need to get your entry in by the 26th of August.

In case you want to see exactly why Mark Jen was fired from Google, he has some of the posts on his new site.

"Hi everyone, mark jen here – the fired google blogger. my story has been covered in a ton of different channels, but here's a new take on it. i've taken clips from my blog entries and added some commentary, kind of like that commentary soundtrack on your dvds that no one ever puts on; of course, links to my full blog entries are included if you're interested (just click on the links :-P)"

The contest just began on Monday. T I think there's still  lots of opportunity to win that cruise. Here's a sample of the entries so far.

My official title was “office manager” of a small distribution plant but I was the only one who worked in the office. It sounded good. One day, my redneck boss asked me take the ‘company car’ (a 1974 gutted-out green Gremlin) to deliver a machinery part to another office a few blocks away. As I drove out of the parking lot, I accidentally ran the front passenger wheel off the edge of the road into a rain-filled ditch. It got stuck. I tried franticly to jog the car out by throwing it back-and-forth thru the gears. My boss spotted me and ran out of the building. Bad timing. Just then, I flipped the car into reverse and ran over his foot. Mud splattered all over his face, hair and clothes. He was fuming! The good news was that he was not hurt but there were some nasty wheel marks all over his left shoe and ankle. We finally got the car out. The following week he fired me-- after I left a forklift in gear and running. It smashed into the warehouse garage door and got imbedded.

Good luck. Have fun. Oh, and Harold "Thanks for the heads up."

FunnyBusiness : The Brand Manifesto

When a consultant ( that includes me) talks to clients about branding they usually get around to the explanation that your brand is actually the relationship you have with your customers, clients, etc.

Today many companies are creating Brand Manifestos-- as Jennifer Rice  writes at What's Your Brand's Mantra

"... a brand manifesto as a declaration of 1) the core intention of the brand, 2) the guiding principles of the brand, and 3) the policies that guide each department to effectively realize the stated intention. So unlike brand visions or missions (which only focus on intention), a brand manifesto should get into the nitty gritty of turning the intention into reality"

Since Sunday's breakout discussion on Citizen Journalism at the Blogher Conference, I've been thinking a lot about the core intentions of FunnyBusiness.

This is what you'll find if you read the "About" section of this blog. I've updated it to address some of the issues of blogging

This blog delights in telling tales out of school. It’s about what really goes on in corporate America, corporate England,corporate Israel, corporate Australia, corporate Argentina...well you get it.

The focus  of this blog is on the story, not who’s telling it, or what company the story is about. I’ll leave that to the investigative reporters. If these stories were attributable and on the record, heads would surely roll, departments would re-org and HR would be working overtime and chances are someone would be dooced.

These are real stories, about real people, who work real jobs, for real organizations. Only the names have been changed to protect people's employment. If you have a story that you want to share, share with me.

I couldn’t make this stuff up. Not the shenanigans, not the showstopping, not the hidden agendas, and definitely not the policy statements.

Take the vice president who invited her team for a holiday dinner even though her boss had sent a memo saying all holiday parties were canceled as part of the company’s aggressive cost-cutting measures. (The company had just announced 6,000 layoffs.) How did she pull off her holiday party? She had her administrative assistant charge the dinner and then she, the VP approved the charge. And where did she learn such devious behavior? From her boss of course, who had the VP charge their holiday get-together the week earlier.

That’s right. The guy who put a kibosh on everyone else’s holiday celebrating used the system to break his own rule. Is that what the HR department means when they talk about modeling behavior? Corporate America is my playground and I invite you to come into the sandbox to see what kind of fun people have been up to. There’s no end to the mischief making!

I do try to be honest. However, I'm not sure if I'm always fair.Can you be fair when you are writing from a point of view.? Can you be fair if you're telling one person's perspective of a story?  I'm not trying to tell you the whole story here, just a story.

Here's my promise: I will do the best job I can to be honest, to adhere to the basic principles of blogging ethics . I will include a note at the bottom of all posts when I've changed some one's name, job, location or sex.

I will also include a note when the post has been edited beyond spelling and basic grammar errors which, if you read my blog on a regular basis, know that I have a definite love-hate relationship with commas.

No chance of getting dooced here. I work for myself. I don't write about my clients. ( Okay, I may write about them after we haven't worked together for around three years).

Maternity Leave

Ouch. While I was in Santa Clara attending the Blogher conference I ran across an article from the Associated Press about the state of American Maternity leave.

"The U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act provides for 12 weeks of job-protected leave, but it only covers those who work for larger companies.

To put it another way, out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland."

I read the article at the same time I was being introduced to the concept of  Mommy Bloggers--a genre I just hadn't been exposed to but one that I will definitely share with my niece Rashelle who is becoming a mom in September.

Here's the thing. Even though my kids are now 16 and 21, I love reading the mommy bloggers.There's everything from the traditional online baby magazine format like Blogging Baby to Heather Armstrong's edgy Dooce, My friend Nancy White is blogging about a new genre of Mommy Blogging being offered by the March of Dimes called Share Your Story.

"Take a look at the amazing stories these women are writing. They are writing about their experiences of having a premature baby or a baby who has to spend time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)). Look at the comments. I hope a few dads start blogs as well, to bring their perspectives. (A fantastic daddyblogger is Snowdeal, dad of Odin who was also born prematurely. I'm in love with Odin - what a beeyouteeful kid!)"

Which brings me back to the status of American Maternity Leaves. According to some experts, including Jane Waldfogel a professor a Columbia University, the reason we are in the sad state of deplorable maternity leaves is that the American feminist movement didn't fight for it.

"The American feminist movement didn't want to hear anything about mothers," Waldfogel says. "They wanted equal rights for women and didn't emphasize special treatment."

The U.S. feminist movement has moved away from this viewpoint, but that hasn't led to a change in maternity rules. One reason is that U.S. women are used to having about three months off and consider it the norm, Waldfogel says."

What Waldfogel is saying may be absolutely true. I have no way of knowing. But my gut says to single out the early feminist movement as the root cause for nonpaid maternity leave is a bit like the entire male population of the universe blaming all their woes on their moms.

Way too Sigmund Freudish for my sensibilities.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

"In India, it's not like here, you don't get to choose your major. Your parents choose it for you. My parents thought the future was in technology and so that's what I majored in. I like math, but I don't like computer science."

His name is Dino. He drove me from my hotel in Santa Clara to the San Jose Airport. Dino was under the impression that all kids in the United States have freedom of choice when it comes to choosing their careers.

"You'd be surprised," I said to Dino. "I know lots of doctors, lawyers and teachers who selected that career either because they thought it would make their parents happy or their parents actively campaigned for them to choose a particular career path.

"I've never heard that," said Dino.

Meanwhile, Dino explained that he had always been interested in business and sports. He wasn't just driving a limo, he was building a business. In addition to this car, he told me that he has two more cars. He's very excited and very happy.

I didn't ask how his parents felt about his career path.

That was on Sunday. Today I had coffee with my friend Emil who asked if I've read "The World is Flat."

"Not yet,  It's on my summer reading list."

Emil said in one chapter Friedman talks about accountants and his prediction that in five years all of our tax returns will be done in India.

Which got me thinking about all the people who are now in their 30s, 40s and 50s who chose accounting because (a) they liked it (b) it was secure (c) their parents thought it was a good idea. Now what?

If Friedman's prediction is true, what are they going to do? And, if Friedman's prediction is correct, will anyone even want to become an accountant?

Will any college-bound student when asked '' What do you want to be?" answer... accountant?

Chances are if you ask a young child what they want to be when they grow up, they will probably respond with the traditional " fireman, policeman, teacher, movie star."

But, what will the 18 or 20 year old say?  They certainly won't say they're seeking a career in plastics. And, it seems like everything else is up for grabs.

Meanwhile, as I was getting out of the cab, I asked Dino if he got his nickname because his parents liked Dean Martin.

Dino stared back as if I had asked him to answer the philosophical question "what is the meaning of life."

"You have no idea who Dean Martin is, do you?"

Dino grinned and said no.

Another reminder that fame is fleeting.

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