Absa ChatBanking on WhatsApp. What it’s like to be pregnant for two years…

As Product Owner of Absa ChatBanking on WhatsApp and a sensible accountable member of my organisation, I am allowed to talk about these things in my own capacity. Instead of a bunch of LinkedIn status mentions, I have put it all together in one place instead. This is not a press release, this is my personal blog.

The core team is a tight knit group most of whom have worked together for 2 years: (back) Sean, Jaco, Zenobia, Tim, Bianca, Amu, Karien, (in front)  Soo, not pictured : Jacques S, Zane.

To South Africa and the world, Absa ChatBanking on WhatsApp seems sparkling and brand new, but to me, Jacques Barkhuizen, Jaco Jacobs and the rest of the Express Team, we have finally brought into the world the fully formed vision of an idea we have been incubating, coding and testing for over two years.

Several seasons before we had our first meeting with Clickatell at the end of 2017 to discuss utilising their beta API access to get our working machinery into the end to end encrypted world of WhatsApp, the features you see working today – beneficiary payments, prepaid purchases and others, were turned on for the first time on ChatBanking on Facebook Messenger (July 2016) and three months before that a rudimentary version was first made available on Twitter (May 2016).

It’s quite surreal to hear people talking about Absa ChatBanking on WhatsApp, seeming to be amazed that it exists, wondering how we threw it together, or perhaps, thinking that we are using 3rd party software or systems to facilitate our payments and bank integration.

Nope and nope.

ChatBanking was built in house, by Absa staff, broken down then built up again, tested and trialled the old fashioned way, through long days, late nights and multiple releases. Although we appreciate our partners facilitation of the rails on which our service run and the elegance of the platforms on which we ride through API access (WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter), we do not allow any other entity or partner access to our systems or data. No one gets in there, no one reads our messages or gets to peer in the back to see how the sausages are made. We have a legal responsibility to our customers to ensure this continues to be the case.

Am I little sensitive about this? Am I being a little bit precious about credit where credit is due?

Probably.

The team and I… well it hasn’t been easy.

As a bank we made a strategic decision not to make a noise about ChatBanking until we were able to get it on to WhatsApp, which we hoped was imminent, all the way back in 2016.

It turned out that WhatsApp had their doors locked and bolted back then and we couldn’t get a sniff at it, so we decided to start working on Twitter messaging as a low risk trial, followed by Facebook Messenger, an awesome platform and interface, which despite its excellent flexibility and menu features, is not preferred by our customers (I still continue to hope that this will change in time).

No one had much interest in Messenger when we went live in 2016 even though we won 3 international awards for our efforts. It was forgotten moments later and most of our market never knew about it.  One of our competitor banks called it “smoke banking” (#neverforget and yes I have that tweet saved).

Internally and externally the message was clear – we needed to be on WhatsApp before anyone could get behind this product.

So we did what we needed to do. Whats that you ask?

• Several dozen hours spent in legal and compliance meetings debating safety and security, considering causality and fraud trends.
• More than 50 hours spent presenting to boards, panels and committees, at one of which I wore a Star Fleet Uniform.
• About 50 years, if your cobble together each team members individual conversations, animated emails and hallway debates, spent fighting for conversational bankings right to exist at all. Is it just cannibalisation of existing digital services? (short answer: No.) Should we NLP or should we not NLP? (Short answer: Not Yet). Is it impossible to secure? (No.) Do we have to sell our customers data to be on these platforms? (No, No, NEVER – not a single tiny piece).

I skipped two full nights of sleep in the last 30 days.  The first time it happened was 11 July 2018, when we “flipped the switch” to make ChatBanking on WhatsApp live and visible to our customers. We discovered pretty early a broader audience than expected would want access to the service and that our registration criteria was a little tight, which necessitated various fixes and changes which took us into the wee hours. At a certain point it made more sense for me to just have breakfast and carry on than go to bed.

The second time I skipped a nights sleep was on 1 August 2018, the day of the “official” press launch of ChatBanking on WhatsApp. Due to time zone differences, we asked all of the attendees at our launch event to hold off on releasing their stories, interviews and editorials until after 6pm SA time, as we knew that WhatsApp would be speaking to the press on the other side of the ocean at 10am in California, and we had agreed to align.

So at 6pm, there I was on my PC in my hotel room, hitting refresh, waiting to see what might happen, and happen it did! Local press releases and stories pouring in, then boom, The New York Times and a bunch of other mentions on the international stage. I stayed up till dawn watching the show.

Jacques Barkhuizen (top left) joined us for a victory hand pile on release night.

The team and I are feeling bruised and exhausted from a very long labor and realise that we have a very difficult untrained baby on our hands which we will need to successfully wrangle in the coming months and years, so that it can grow up to make its parents proud.

We believe in the infinite potential of conversational banking and its power to create seamless and inclusive banking experiences in the lives of our customers.

The revolution is here and the time is right. Everyone is going to be scrambling to be here and it is possible that by being first we could end up Betamax instead of VHS, when the next guys on the scene take what we have done and add the next layer, but know, that if that happens, we will be ready to snatch the baton back soon enough.

Brave. Passionate. Ready.

 

 

 

 

The Underrated Resource of Patience in Innovation

Let me describe a conversation. If you work in tech or innovation, you might recognize it. It goes something like this:

Product Owner:

“So how are we doing with the Such and Such Thingiemajig? Can we pull off The Magic by The Special Deadline? What about The Crazy GameChanger (!) we thought of yesterday, can we bolt that bit on and stay on track?”

Team:

“We have built the first bit of the Such and Such Thingiemajig. It broke all The Things, so we need to iron plate The Things so that they can survive it if we try again. We learnt that the things are actually not as great as we thought they were and we can pretend we didn’t find that out, or we can fix The Things. The Magic will slow Thingiemajig version 1 down, so we should do it next.

Would you like us to pretend that we have spent a single minute thinking about The Crazy GameChanger (!) we thought of yesterday, in the middle of this crisis we have with The Things?”

Product Owner:

“Yes please”

Team:

“The Crazy GameChanger (!) we thought of yesterday sounds like fun but yeah.”

*awkward silence, as everyone pretends they have thought through the new idea*

 

Now this conversation can continue in one of two ways.

As Product Owner, you can point out to the team that the subject of meeting The Special Deadline has been avoided and that this is completely unacceptable and that you have promised business this that and the other blah blah…

OR…

As Product Owner you can recognize that difficult conversations you might need to have with internal stakeholders to reset their expectations are actually your problem and your job (a subject that probably requires its own blog) and that the team have given you all the information you need to say; “I have gotten over x expectation. Let’s move on”.

If you can do that, the real conversation can begin.

Tiny Robots and Teamwork

I have been thinking a lot about sci-fi nanobots.

Set aside concerns over what is or is not possible right now in robotics – allow your mind to picture the Star Trek Borg style version – or the tiny bits that make up the Transformers.  Armies of microscopic robots, each good at one thing and together are good at a more sophisticated thing.  Capable of replication and when clipped together like brainy lego, able to build anything from a toaster to a giant tentacled Terminator universe space ship.  In your mind, they probably squeak and buzz like R2-D2 on a sub-atomic level, when communicating with each other.  The kind that you can describe any way you like because they don’t exist.

Picture what I mean? Good.

I have been getting excited about what a modern workplace could look like, if we decided to take a few lessons from the principals applied by nanobots, or rather by the fiction writers and visionary scientists who have dreamt up these robots.

(This is meant to be a fun thought experiment and nothing more – of course I cannot use the fictional behaviour of fictional things to make solid behavioural predictions.  I get that.  Promise.)

What could happen, if we did teamwork, like nanobots?

Peacocking and other workplace behavior

Throughout the animal kingdom, beasts of the air, land and sea have evolved plumage, markings and behavior to display themselves to their best advantage with the hopes that they be found the brightest, boldest and most impressive beast in town. If you dance the best jig, have the flashiest fins or the brightest bum you will be given the mating green-light ahead of duller, less equipped individuals, thus propagating the species and passing your genes of awesome on to future generations.

In our stressful competitive workplace environments it can be incredibly difficult to stand out from the grey. We might not be seeking a mate, but we are certainly hoping to be picked first for choice projects or promotions and we most certainly strive, most of all, to survive.

We court potential employers by putting our best foot forward on sites like LinkedIn and we show our tail feathers at network gatherings. Once we have landed the job, many of us recognize that we will slip into obscurity if we do not find a way to continue to exhibit our worth.

What behaviors have you developed to distinguish yourself?

Do you fall back on your lizard brain and posture and dance to get attention, or is your behavior moving you closer to your goals without compromising your dignity?

Is there a way to evolve a new kind of workplace behavior which allows us to distinguish ourselves without it having to come at the expense of others?

Consider the following examples of workplace posturing and courtship behavior. If you recognize yourself or a team member, it might be time to re-look your workplace communication style.

Peacocking – An obvious and grand display of superiority, most often exhibited in public through a copy all email or a monologue-disguised-as-question when in front of an influential audience. Example: “I knew when I came up with this idea that it would change the business, but not everybody was ready to listen. It is time we move forward from old ways of thinking.”

Guilty? Consider making an impression in a more subtle way as your posturing may be irritating to others. It is not a question of how awesome any one person is allowed to be, it is a question of how much applause they expect to receive along the way. Confidence means not always having to crow loudly about every small success. The occasional grand display is acceptable as long as you counter it by showing support for the ideas and contributions of others. Example: “We realized when we agreed on the idea that it would shake things up. I am excited to be a part of a shift of this magnitude.”

Line-Dancing – Disingenuous communication from management, to junior staff, which avoids addressing key issues. When managers tap-dance around the truth rather than confronting and explaining a challenging issue there is a dangerous impact on company morale. Many of your team members will find your comforting propaganda completely transparent and will go about inventing their own version of the truth over the water cooler, to fill the void. Example: “Our Finance Manager is leaving. I will not abide gossip on the matter. I expect management choices to be respected”.

Guilty? I am not suggesting that you start over-communicating high level company strategy, I am instead suggesting you consider sharing important details in a level-appropriate manner. Internal communication can sometimes feel akin to navigating a minefield but do not be discouraged. Sobering news can build unity in an organisation when delivered appropriately. Do not be afraid to appear human. Consult a communications coach if you need help in this area or request the mentorship of a respected communicator in your organisation. Example: “Our Finance Manager has chosen to pursue a position with our competitor. We were surprised at the news and due to our confidentiality restraint, we had to ask him to leave immediately and not work notice. It is going to be tough for us to cover the gaps in the next few months and that means extra work for some of the team. Please come and chat to me if you have any questions”

Singing for your Supper -The propensity to pass on the corridor talk of your peers to your manager, in the hope of currying favor, known in school yard circles as “telling tales”. Also included in this category is the inappropriate escalation of small departmental issues to senior management by email “bcc” (hidden copy) instead of allowing an appropriate time frame for the issue to be addressed and resolved on the ground. Parties who exhibit this behaviour may send a 1000 word email to the boss, often containing caps, bold and red high-lights when the person they should be talking to about it sits less than a meter from them and could have sorted it out in less time than it took them to type up the complaint. Example: “It has come to my attention that some of the product managers have not been submitting two copies of their travel documentation. I always make time to do my documentation as it only take minutes and if one product manager can do it we all can. I find it suspicious that anyone not follow process in this area and thought it should be brought to your attention and addressed immediately.”

Guilty? Start by recognizing the attention seeking nature of your behavior. You may attempt to comfort yourself with the idea that the bosses “need to know” about the issue you are bringing to their attention but it is important that I take that away from you. Managers do not respect tattle tales, even if some cultivate them, for their own reasons. Organisations are like families – you need to sustain relationships at all levels if you hope for co-operation to be extended back to you when you need it. Address the issue at the source and attempt to be a part of the solution. Only if all other methods have been exhausted should you escalate. Share when appropriate. You may still need to send that email, but instead of it just being a finger pointing whine, it should contain the solutions you and your peers have already discussed. Example: “In the product manager peer meeting we discussed how some of us find the travel documentation process cumbersome, which has led to some paperwork being incomplete in this month’s submissions. There seems to be ways in which time can be saved. Can we chat about this in our next department meeting and plan a way to catch up on the lost documents?”

You can probably easily think of several other inappropriate communication styles or behavior. Perhaps you can use this essay as the starting point to have a constructive conversation with your team around the matter.

As long as we are putting a foot forward, progress is being made.

Trainer for hire : For the love of continuous improvement, PLEASE stop pretending to be a business process expert!

I have recently put out feelers in an attempt to find training partners to complement our business. My job, as Group Training manager is to pull these strings together. If we do not have the in-house competence to get it done ourselves, we consult with experts to prepare our material or we contract them in to deliver the training on our behalf.

We have excellent trainers in our team – Call Center experts and technical experts among others – but we have to concede that we do not know everything about everything.

Take me for example.

I am almost 40 and know a few things about corporate retail, a wider range of things about communications and coaching and have assorted pieces of paper to back that up. I am a generalist and when things are no longer general, I need to call on specialists to ensure we deliver to the level required. That does not make me insecure and down on myself that makes me smart.

One of the areas which requires an intervention is the financial methodology behind our sales pipeline and how to more effectively analyse our metrics and use them to forecast more effectively. We also want to make better use of some of the sales data we receive on a regular basis to drive our business. We have smart processes, but someone with the chops in this area is required to deliver this high level training to our top managers. I am seeking this expert.

Why then, am I pestered by failed actors and junior sales people turned trainers and housewives looking for additional income, all of them insisting that they can do an excellent job working with our sales leadership and all of them telling me (with more than a little condescension in their voices) that it is “not about the numbers”.

Remember this guy? I am sick of this guy.

Really? Do I need to explain why I am not giving y’all the job?

Alright then. I will.

There are only so many emotive “you can do it if you BELIEVE!” The Secret inspired air-punching seminars any one company needs. Do these providers really feel they are giving me anything new? If they realize how stale and reprocessed it is, do any of them believe this fluff actually works?

Sales confidence does matter. We are currently investing in another specialist who is working with our teams on their delivery, their representation of status and their communications approach through the use of improvisational theater techniques. We are not afraid of new things and it made perfect sense to me to get a confidence and persuasion expert (theater and improvisation require an enormous amount of both) to work with our teams in a fun, impactful and non-conventional way.

This person is an expert.

Our Improv Sales Technique class in Lagos Nigeria, June 2014.

This is not someone who has never been on a stage pretending they know theater or someone who has never closed a sale themselves pretending to know the secret to sales success. Hell, if I wanted my team to learn how to cook, I would hire a Chef, right?

Why then, do we hire people that have only looked at pictures of food, instead of Chefs?

What I feel the majority of independent business trainers are doing is faking it and setting the whole industry back in the process. Training and facilitating is seen as a pit of money that anyone can leap into if they can spin a line of bull that will get them the job.

I know trainers who will walk into an organisation and ask them what training they need – perhaps even performing a flashy needs analysis. They will then pretend to be an expert on whatever it is that is listed. Accountancy? Suuuuuure! We know accountancy! Call centers? Surrrrre! We know call centers backwards! What you get instead is someone who can project their voice teaching your team a Wikipedia in a monkey suit version of what it is that they needed to learn. They would have been better off sitting on their own and tinkering and you are a whole lot poorer for it.

Your team are happy for five minutes – because they got a day out the office – but are entirely un-enriched.

I know trainers who have been contracted to train in a particular software and cracked open their first package of it a week before.

Who hires these fools?

I know trainers who couldn’t balance a brick on the back of a truck who are teaching management skills to large corporate banks. That’s right – A person with a high school diploma is teaching your post-graduate educated employees how to do their job better. Does that make sense to you?

I can see why they do it. Who wouldn’t want to make this sort of easy money? You can even tell yourself that it is not about knowledge, but about excitement and enthusiasm and motivation and stuffs. You can tell yourself, I am sure, that you are not a complete criminal.

Why is it that we understand perfectly well that some dude off the street with half a BA in underage drinking could not just declare themselves a Physics Professor and stroll into a university and give a lecture, yet we pay the same douche three times as much to lecture our employees on business processes essential to the successful performance of their jobs?

Um yeah, that’s nice, but we do not recognize that Institution.

Here is what I would like to see. I would like to see experts pretending to be trainers, rather than trainers pretending to be experts. I would like an accountant to teach my team about the advanced uses of a high level accounting package. I would like an experienced Sales Manager with a proven track record to teach my sales people about performance measures (nope… one year of selling t-shirts at the market does not make you an expert on corporate sales methodology). I would like some kind of doctor to teach my team about health and wellness management for stress reduction (Doctorate in Theology does not count).

The arts and farts can keep doing the air punching classes. There is still a place for that – just please – for the love of continuous improvement please stop pretending to be business process experts!

Images from Team Lead Training in Lagos May 2014

Talking to People 101 : Condescension

If you were attempting to solve a problem in a relationship with your romantic partner or a colleague at work, you might try to follow the oft touted advice; “Just Communicate More!”.

Discuss your problems and solve them through empathetic joint effort. It sounds so ridiculously simple.  Why then, does it often go so horribly wrong?

In today’s blog we will discuss a concept which is so simple that it is beyond my comprehension that full grown adults are not able to resist resorting to it :

Condescending attempts to control the behavior of others.

(you see what I did there?)

Person A : “I would like to discuss your over-reaction to my suggestion that you improve your performance using my tried and tested methods. I feel that if we communicate, we can solve the problem”

Person B : “WHAT?  MY over-reaction??  You @”#$##@@#@$ piece of #@$$@#@!”

Person A : “Just calm down”.

Person B : “CALM DOWN?????”

*The loud noise of a metal desk being torn from its moorings*

Please, starting immediately, remove the phrases “Just calm down” or “Relax already” from your vocabulary.  These phrases are the reason people do not like you.  You do not have the right or the ability to moderate the behavior of another person and even if you could, they will never forgive you for trying.  The most obnoxious or aggressive fool can only improve by moderating their own behavior and those phrases just give the person the impression that their emotions and the means of displaying them are invalid.

Try to remember the last time someone told you to “just calm down” (particularly when you were lodging a valid complaint or were digging deep to find the words to explain why you were hurt or offended) and you will probably recall that you were immediately 1000% angrier and more frustrated than before they said it.

If you feel the urge to use those phrases, ask yourself why.  Why do you need to control the emotional reaction of this person?  Are you in danger?  If you are in danger, then you are better off removing yourself from the situation or you are better off saying something which is less likely to escalate the situation such as “I can see you are upset” (stop talking – resist the urge to add something which dictates how they need to change their behavior.  The only way you are allowed to finish this sentence is by asking them what they need).  Acknowledging rage often diffuses it and is the difference between empathy and condescension.

If you were never in danger and all they did was raise an eyebrow before you demanded they calm down, perhaps you need to consider why you assumed and preempted their rage (and probably caused real rage in the process).

Condescension is a tool through which some people make other people feel as though their reactions or emotions are silly and unnecessary and is the verbal equivalent of patting someone on the head.  Don’t be that guy.

Try this instead :

Customer : “THE SERVICE IN THIS RESTAURANT IS DISGUSTING!”

(this might be an exaggeration, but it does not matter. You do not have the right to moderate their behavior)

Manager : “Maam, I can see you are upset. What can I do to fix the situation?”

(acknowledge, offer help)

Customer : “Yes, well, I am upset.  This is UNACCEPTABLE”

(don’t roll your eyes at them or leap to your own defense… I know they are repeating themselves… let them get it out and then it will be over. Do not say, “well you haven’t told me what the problem is!!!!”  Let them voice their frustration in whatever way they need to until you are able to get into the problem solving space. In extreme cases this may take several cycles).

Manager : “That is understandable.  Service is important and you are a paying customer.  What can I do right now to help?”

(acknowledge, offer help)

Customer : “If I don’t get my meal in the next two minutes I am leaving without paying!”

(maybe she will, maybe she wont, it does not matter and now is not the time  to tell her you will chase her with the cops)

Manager : “I will arrange to get the meal to you immediately”

(Don’t lie if you cannot do it.  If you were to say “I can understand you wanting to leave, but I am told your meal will take ten minutes as the order was mistakenly left unplaced.  Of course it will be free”  In most instances, she will accept that.)

In summary :

Eliminate the phrases “Just Calm Down” and “Relax Already” and anything similar from your vocabulary.  Do not use on adults, children, pets or anyone, ever again.  It won’t even work when you are swimming for the life raft.  It NEVER WORKS.

When someone expresses strong or alarming emotions which are directed at you, acknowledge their emotions, regardless of whether you agree with them or not.

Acknowledgement is not a doorway to correction.  Do not tell them how to behave – allow them to moderate their own behavior.

Offer help.  Help is : “How can I fix this?” “How can we work together to make sure this does not happen again?” and “what can I do right now to help you?”  Help is not : “How can I get you to understand…” or “How can I make you see…” or “What will make you stop crying?”

Advanced techniques :

When it is over (and only when it is over) if you do not wish to be constantly screamed at by the same person, you could consider approaching them and letting them know that it distressed you or worried you (own your own reaction and do not use blaming language) when they used that sort of volume/language (use non emotive terms) to express themselves.  It made you feel vulnerable, defensive, etc.  Accept that in some people, raising this topic will restart the cycle however it is a strong assertion method.  If you are always the one remaining calm but still standing up for yourself and declaring your boundaries, in most situations the person you are interacting with will recognize what you are and are not prepared to tolerate.  If that does not work after several interactions, then say “You are obviously angry, I am going to leave and come back when we can discuss this more rationally” and stick to it, every time.

People use tantrums and rage because they learnt at some point that it accomplishes things.  You can teach your family and partners not to relate to you that way, but when it comes to customers, resist the compulsion to teach anyone anything – the urge you feel to school others in a better way is your condescension in action – rather control the situation with kindness and empathy, allowing tense situations to resolve as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Gamer for Life

I have been playing the MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) World of Warcraft for six years now, off and on.

At the level I play at, the idea behind the game is to group together in a Guild with other real people, to fight monsters in dungeons and raids for points, gold and gear.   The better you get at it, the more likely you will be to be invited to do cool stuff at higher levels.  If you are unreliable and do not pull your weight, you will be publicly shamed and possibly even kicked (booted out a group in the middle of a fight after a vote from the rest of the group).

If you replace Guild with “business” and points, gold and gear with promotions, money and show off toys, it is not as different from your working life, as you might think.  Keep that working life comparison in mind when I describe the rest of the game.

A 10 man raid group – one of the primary play styles at high levels of the game – includes two “Tanks” – tough and hardy folk who are armored to the gills and who scream and shout at the monsters and get them to chase them and smack them thereby controlling the fight, six supporting “DPS” (damage per second) – less armored but more lethal characters who are supposed to kill the monsters and their minions as quickly as possible and two healing characters patching up the team as they go so that they can survive long enough to down the Boss (the big monster).

I mostly play a healing character named Furmanchu.  Fur’s job is to stand at the back and spam healing spells over the group so that as quickly as we get smacked down, we get healed up and recover.  It is a selfless job which requires that you have your eyes on the characters more than on the game but having said that, you cannot use the distraction of health bars and statuses as an excuse for stepping in fire and getting yourself killed.  You are still expected to leap about, run, avoid monsters (by making yourself invisible) and follow general tactics while concentrating on your principle function – keeping everyone alive – particularly the tanks who lead the fight and control the aggro.

It is not out of the question for a healer to deliberately sacrifice themselves or put themselves in harms way if this is the best strategy to preserve the tank or the health of the raid and we even have spells to accomplish this.  I can swop my health with that of another character, leaving me close to death.  I can choose to die under fire, as I can still heal for a further few seconds without being slowed by attacks.

A healer is an unsung hero.  When a big and impressive fight is won, it is the tank and the top performing DPS characters who will be smacking each other on the back and gloating.  When the fight is lost however, you can countdown in a matter of seconds before someone screeches at the healer in chat and demands to know why they were not saved or protected at the crucial moment.

Tanks win fights.  Healers lose them.

Why play a healer then?  There is something very satisfying about it which gives me a thrill at my very core.  Doing a job well, making a difference.  Doing something technical and difficult and being an important part of a high functioning team and yes, there is the dark martyr part – doing the shit that others are not prepared to do, because hell… somebody has to do it.

Only recently did I notice something interesting.

I ALWAYS play a healer.

I mean.. in LIFE.  Real Life.

I am currently a Product Owner. It is my job to protect the team. To fix the bits of them (and the system) which are broke, to assist them, to allow them to perform at their best.  I prepare the spells, I mean political stories, to allow the team to get their focus on their work without being laid low by AOE from internal stakeholders. I need to concentrate on the characters – the people I work with, yet I still need to stay in touch with “the game” (our competitive market place).

Architects and Developers create innovative products. Product Owners are who the business blames if these products are late to market, or don’t quite hit the mark.

Before being a Product Owner I was a Training Manager and before that I was a Personal Development Business Coach and before that I was in Advertising.  I will not belabor the metaphor but trust me, it applies in every instance.

I position myself as an essential supporting character with a specific skill-set. Please do not get the impression I want you to feel sorry for me. I am highly satisfied and stimulated by my job. It gives me enormous pleasure to make a difference and to connect with people one on one. Pro’s and con’s taken into account, that is my happy place.

I am interested to know if this is a general trend, or is just particular to me.

Are you a tank in and out of the game?  Are you a general performing DPS work-horse but not interested (or equipped) to take the top job along with all the aggro you will take for it?

I am not trying to conduct a scientific experiment here, I just think the idea that we game (and possibly compete in sport) in a manner which is in line with our performance comfort zone, interesting and I would love to hear from gamers and non-gamers alike.

5 Reasons those List and Tip Business Blogs are the Certain Path to Dismal Professional Failure

You know I am right, or you would not have followed this link.

I am old enough to remember a time when managers, on arriving in the office, would spend the hour between 7:30am (when the real career people arrive) and 8:30am (when the rest arrive) reading intelligent articles in business magazines and the parts of the daily paper which have to be read with two hands.

Like this, except I was a 26 year old woman with big hair.

You would pour a cup of coffee or perhaps a minion would pour it for you.  You would turn on all your office hardware, giving the old fax machine a chance to warm up.  Sitting in your comfortable chair with your feet up on a little foot thing behind your desk, you would read your daily capitalist devotional while your drives creaked and whirled into life and the less ambitious came scuttling in with predictable excuses about babies and traffic.

If someone was going to phone in with a croaky sick voice it was going to happen at about that time, so you needed to be at your desk to take the call, because cell phones were only on Star Trek and work got done in the office or not at all.  You would take this precious time, to feel managerial, before the working world woke up and started hounding you for action and your signature multiple times on printed bits of paper.

Nowadays, offices phones seldom ring because we can be reached on our cell phones walking between meetings, in the car and (more often than bears thinking about), on the toilet.  You no longer need to be sitting at your desk to check your email because your PC has shrunk and is now in a bag on your shoulder, or in your pocket.  You really have no excuse for sitting about in your office.  In fact, why do you even have an office at all you paternalistic dinosaur? Productive managers immerse themselves in the team blah blah at one of those timeshare work stations in a hall of glass with too much aircon.  Work gets done on the move or not at all.  If we see you printing something, we might beat you until you weep in shame.

Now more than ever I need an hour at the start of my day to feel managerial in a space which does not move.  I want something intelligent and a moment in time to absorb it.  Please.

Because I am a modern tech savvy Manager and not a dinosaur, I turn to the internets.  Give me management content please.  I realize I am not allowed to read it off paper, but what have you got?  Help me out here, repository of all of the worlds knowledge… what can I feed my brain with in the early hours?  Can you give me a few tips on how to be better at my job, for example?

Google “Management Tips” Search reveals (1^st page results) :

(One definition of “Tip” is “a piece of advice or expert or authoritative information”, but I think in the cases below the more British definition; “a place for depositing something (as rubbish) by dumping” is more appropriate.) 

These are totally real meaningful tips. Just like I am a totally a real manager of some important place (pic from Bloomberg blog)

Bloomberg Businessweek : 20 Tips for First Time Managers (with a slide show! Loved the pics so much I have included them) 

With gems like “Set Objectives”, “Have a Department Plan” and a pithy paragraph for each tip, I am prevented from wandering off to scratch my bum on a tree by a slide show of stock photos of models with too much gel in their hair sitting in boardrooms. 

These glasses make me look smart and help me to gaze into my future… it is super bright, I need to squint just a little and poke my chin with a pen to see it proper (pic from Bloomberg blog)

Entrepreneur : 10 Time Management Tips that work

Some interesting stuff here, got to say, reminds me of the yarns I would spin in my coaching days if I was low on prep. I secretly like this.  It is just the sort of thing that makes me feel that I am doing my management due diligence by reading it instead of finishing my monthly report.  But am I really spending my time wisely?  “Appointment Books work” says the sage.  How do we know this to be true?  What if people don’t look at appointment books? Could there be more complicated social reasons people miss deadlines and are late for meetings? Where is the research?  Did he just make this up?  I can also make stuff up. 

Oooh, I love it when you talk manager. Say “target” (pic from Bloomberg blog)

Harvard Business Review : 3 Tips for Resolving a Conflict

This is not even 100 words.  Also all “because I said so” style.  It seems to be a summary of a more detailed book.  Why are we so groovy with business writing declaring all sorts of things without having to back it up?

Maybe if they keep listening to Justin Bieber, no one will notice that I am twelve. (pic from Bloomberg blog)

7 Tips for Management Success

Generalized meaningless bumfff!!!  I did all of these things when I ran my store into the ground.  Show me the money.  How do you know this stuff???  Where are the records which examine one type of manager against another and then correlate this to the bottom line?  Studies like that do exist but you need to reference them and understand them and they do not necessarily say what you are assuming, which amounts to : Nice people get ahead.  Prove to me that assholes don’t make money for their employers.  Prove it.  I dare you.

Oh.  Before I forget, you came looking for a list of 5 meaningless assumptions.  Here you go :

• Business blogs have titles like “3 reasons for this” and “4 factors for that” because they get more clicks from folks like you and I looking for quick fixes and summaries. Apparently we are too busy for decent investigative journalism and business statistics.  We would rather read motivational drivel and ‘fun facts’.
• Blogs and articles like these take five minutes to write and can be read in two.   We find them deeply unsatisfying but churn through a few more as it passes time and we still feel we are making an effort to keep on top things in our industry/the working world.  We like to kid ourselves that way and hey, at least we are not on Facebook, we smugly declare.
• We are too lazy to read anything more than 200 words and its making us stupid.
• We are too stupid to know we are stupid and too lazy to think too much about that.
• The world of business bloggers is responding to our stupid and lazy so it is our fault not theirs that everyone has forgotten how to engage with meaningful content.

This blog took me about an hour to write, most of which was spent laughing like a horse at terrible business blogs.  I did no real research, but trust me, because my words appear on the internet.  Everything I have written is important and true and oh by the way, I am an expert (has WordPress, has studio photo.)

Why I work for a Boss

My sister released a blog today which made me want to release a reply.

Her blog explains why she does not work for a boss and how not doing so was not a decision made out of desperation, but a conscious and deliberate choice made long ago and one she feels empowered by.  Reading her words made me realize that I felt the same way about the exact opposite set of circumstances – my decision to work for a boss: a succession of big corporate bosses, to be precise.

This is not about a right or a wrong way to work or live, but I do find it interesting how we can be vocationally suited for such different situations, even two people as biological similar as my sister and I.

Informed by Cosmo Magazine, the movie “Working Girl” and the first season of “Sex in the City”, I wanted to be a career woman since I fitted my first bra.  I remember gazing longingly at stock photos of women with big hair in power-suits pointing at charts while their handsome male colleagues looked on, thinking “I want to be THAT”.

Like this except more hairspray… and more men.

When my friends disappeared to full time university in the months after high-school, I took the decision to study my degree part time while working full time and got my very first job (as a “Girl Friday”) in BUSINESS (a large commercial property company) in Sandton.  I had only applied for jobs in Sandton because I wanted to work in a fancy building with several floors and a lift so that I could stare out of a glass window like Melanie Griffith and I figured that was where you did that.

I wanted to become THIS Melanie…

I was right, but it was other women slightly more experienced and less 18 years old than me who were staring out of windows, I was Melanie at the start of the movie – all bad hair and greasy base and stuck in the windowless typing pool being hit on every five minutes by the office studs.

… but I ended up THIS Melanie…

In this chapter, my working experience mirrors my sisters.  It was horrid.  I worked for peanuts for a skeletally skinny female boss who stole my work and passed it off as her own and no one cared if I was dead or alive, let alone planned to position me for a promotion.

I quit that job after a dodgy experience with one of the studs.  I didn’t want the attention of these paunchy silly men and I did not yet know how to stand up for myself.  It was easier to leave than it was to make a case of it.

For a few brief moments I thought that perhaps I was not cut out for BUSINESS and I got a job as a reporter for a small town newspaper instead.  Perhaps I could get my Louis Lane on and that would still give me the chance to make charts and sit in boardrooms.

The reporting job sucked MUCH bigger balls than the Girl Friday position.  I was even more of a dogs body and I didn’t even get to wear cute suits.  The office was an armpit of a mini-factory in the wrong end of town and everyone was dirty and smelly.  I worked for a morbidly obese female boss who stole my work and passed it off as her own.  I wrote obituaries and took pics of prize winning dogs and attended snooze-worthy mayors meetings. No one cared if I was dead or alive.  There were no promotions.

I decided to try once more to find something in BUSINESS and my degree, my varied experience (and the bargain salary I was prepared to work for) got me an interview at the SPAR Supermarket West Rand Regional Office for the position of Advertising Assistant.  Come the New Jerusalem, THIS was more like it!  As soon as I got to the offices I knew I had to have the job.

A four storey building as big as a city train station.  Branded vehicles coming and going.  Dozens of staff bustling around and at least four boardrooms just between reception and the advertising office.

I got the job.  I worked for an insecure female boss who stole my work and passed it off as her own, but after she left, they gave the job to me!  I held the position of SPAR Inland Advertising Manager for eight wonderful years and although I worked damn hard, there was plenty of glamour, chart-pointing and window gazing in my tenure.

At SPAR we did this sort of thing every other month. This was how I cut my teeth on large group presenting.

Outside of the first years where I was waiting for my boss to get out of the way, my experience at SPAR bears no resemblance to the working experience my sister describes.  Here we part ways.  When you are the new grunt, life is shit, but once you crack through to management and you have proven that you have a brain and know how to use it (which takes at least a year), working for a boss in a large organisation is exhilarating and rewarding.  Climbing the ladder was thrilling.  I was (and remain) an awesome politician and I enjoyed building relationships, cooperation and team work.  If you have ever been part of a great school play you will know the rush you can get from performing your role seamlessly in a high-functioning team in which you are valued.  You know the delightful sugar high of the applause of your customers and peers.  BUSINESS did not disappoint me.  I ferking LOVED it!

I left the job I loved eventually.. it was time and I had reached the baked bean ceiling.  The mistake I made, was thinking it was “time” to go it alone.

Besides the other mistakes I made in my own business, it never suited me.  Don’t mistake that for impossible or unprofitable.  I was perfectly able to survive but every year I spent working on my own (5 in total) sucked a little more life out of me until I was able to admit to myself that I needed.. no, that is not strong enough… I CRAVED the team environment of working in an organisation.

I wanted a boss!

I had to romance my way into my last position which set me up for this one, back on track in a growing and vibrant multi-national organization, the Smile Group.

My new role, my new home. I am a joiner. I LIKE to belong.

I am highly self-motivated, I hate being micromanaged, I would quite like to go home early if I feel like it or take holidays on a whim, but even so, those petty considerations are not enough of a disincentive to put me off an organisational work environment in which I am a productive and happy Manager/Senior Manager and (soon enough) Exec.  I look forward with zeal and delight to spending years here, impressing the pants off of everyone and being a shining beacon of enthusiasm and innovation (thats what I do! *bounce* bounce*).

I make some sacrifices sure, but I am well rewarded with awesome heath care,  a solid retirement package, perks and a platform through which to make ripples in the world.  I have to work hard to keep my place on the platform, or someone else will take it, but the same goes in the solo world.  Here, I get to stand on the shoulders of giants and folks take my calls.

By working for a boss I am able to concentrate on my core competencies, in my case management, development and training; without having to worry about where my next pay cheque is coming from or paying the electricity bill at the office.  The coffee canister is always full, I have a nice parking and I ride a gleaming lift up to my nice window-lined office, with a view of Sandton (from Bryanston, but sure.. I can see it from my window!)

At the end the day, be the creature you are.