Snakes and Ladders - Times Online - WBLG

How Rambo saves the (working) day

John Frusciante over at Topless Robot clearly has a bit too much time on his hands, which of course we like as he's used it as an opportunity to describe how Rambo would solve every day office dilemmas. Unsurprisingly, most of the time it involves the sort of weapons that get teenagers kicked out of all but the hardest schools.

The future is adidas (or Nike. Or maybe Reebok)

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review contains its annual list of breakthrough ideas for 2008. These include things that we've been hearing about for some time (peer-to-peer networks, employing Gen Y-ers) to those that could perhaps seem like old ideas rebadged (these days top executives need to understand the opposition, which is not the same as the competition, no siree) and the odd snapshot of a frightening future (MRI lie detectors and their potential workplace uses).

But the one that got my attention was a vision of the board meeting of the future that had executives in tracksuits walking on treadmills while discussing corporate mergers and whatnot. The idea is that physical activity improves brain activity and therefore workplace performance, not that seeing your CEO in lycra is enough to scare anyone into productivity.

Falling McStandards

News that McDonald's has won the right to offer academic qualifications has resulted in a predictable amount of ranting and raving about falling educational standards, and a forum on the BBC News website provides a taste of the reaction. But it is worth examining the comments closely. "How rediculous! (sic)" complains Rob from Cranfield. "Do they really expect anyone in Business/Industry/Education to take these McQualifications seriously?" Sarah Feehan from Liverpool chips in: "Not content with dumming (sic) down GCSE's and effectively scrapping A-Levels; in addition to encouraging plagerism (sic) and cheating, we now have the Mcqualification."

Though my favourite comment comes from Annette Jones in Bristol: "They do not know much about nutrition & good quality food, will they no (sic) much about anything else?"

I don't no, Annette. I really don't no.

Signs of the times

  Is this the worst sell-line ever? I saw this poster on a bus shelter in the east-end of London. The Polish city of Gdansk is famous for being the birthplace of Solidarity the trade union movement which helped overturn Communist rule in the 1980s. I'll be the first to admit  that rebranding the city as a tourist destination is more than a little tricky. But this?

Maybe nothing special will happen, maybe you'll leave as planned, maybe for some reason you'll decide to stay on, maybe . . .

Er, no, maybe not.

Advice about office romances

Valentine's Day is coming up and the social pressure to express your love by buying ill-fitting joke lingerie or booking an overpriced restaurant table is growing every day. But things could be worse: your love bunny might be not your old university boyfriend or the hot spinning instructor you met at the gym but the oddly hairy guy from accounts.

Please note, however, that getting him to do a Frank Lampard with his chest won't help - it's your shared employer, not his hirsutism, that's at issue here. Office love is a minefield that goes well beyond aesthetic concerns, a press release from Acas (the conciliation and arbitration organisation) helpfully reminds us. Here's its advice:

What to wear to a job interview

I used to think that the question of what to wear to a job interview could be answered relatively easily: a suit, polished shoes, tidy hair and discreet makeup (very discreet if your chromosomes are of the XY persuasion). Then business casual came in, I - and many others - started working in a non-suity profession and the prevailing advice shifted towards staking out one's would-be employer, assessing the outfits worn by its staff and dressing to match. Not quite as straightforward, but still manageable.

Now it has become much more complicated. A couple of pieces on CareerJournal.com tell us that new rules for interviewees now include:

Grave matters

Following on from my blog about standing still, John Naish reports in The Times that Samsung Electronics employees have taken it one step further by paying £165 each to play dead. They have discovered that being nailed in a coffin for 15 minutes is a cathartic experience. Dead weird.

Wall Street Bonuses

Catch this post on breakingviews.com, if you can. It highlights the fact that the big five US investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman and Bear Stearns) are paying staff a total of $66 billion this year. Yes BILLION. That's is more than the total annual income of Bangladesh (population 141 million).

This is obscene, as Hugo Dixon, the breakingviews correspondent, points out. It is also 9 per cent higher than last year. It simply makes no sense, considering how the investment banking industry largely created the credit crunch and have (boo-hoo) suffered huge losses from it.

This industry will be found out, eventually. But if your talents and/or inclinations are venal, unscrupulous, parasitic, oh-so-clever and knuckle-headed...I guess you should tuck in while the going's good.

Monkey Business

You wouldn’t guess it from my shambolic conduct in the office, but I’ve been on tens of training courses in my time. Managing conflict. Clowning. Spiritual intelligence. But if I had to pick the most ridiculous course it was one offered by training company 23Twelve, which, a few months ago, required a trip to the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in Kent to learn what gorillas can teach us about business.

I ranted about the idiocy of making an analogy between apes and officer workers at the time, but now the New Scientist reports that 'the office and the jungle are surprisingly similar.' The report continues: 'Both are ruled by stringent hierarchies, they are grounded in the need for co-operation, and complicated by the drive to compete. Add in the risk of hostile takeovers, a marketplace of favours and favourites, brazen opportunism and a long-held tradition of brown-nosing, and you can't tell the savannah from a forest of cubicles.'

The magazine sets out five 'rules of the jungle' that would apply equally in the office: avoid taking credit for work that is done collectively; keep in with your boss; don’t bear a grudge; be a team player; be a good boss. However, I'm still not ready to admit I was a baboon in originally dismissing the idea.

7 embarrassing breaches of workplace etiquette

I recently dropped my underpants while talking to a colleague. I wasn't wearing them at the time (I was dashing off to get changed into my running kit when I bumped into him) but there was still a moment of awkwardness, which naturally I filled by saying "oh look, my knickers are on the floor." I don't know what the correct etiquette is in such a situation, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it.

This got me thinking about other breaches of workplace manners; not all of those listed below are mine, I swear...

Watching bees with Bill

Ever since the time and motion studies of the early 1900s bosses have monitored workers in the name of productivity. This could now be taken a step further with the discovery that Microsoft has developed office spy software to monitor workers' productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

It is perhaps a little surprising that it is Microsoft that has filed the patent given that just three years ago The Times reported that "When it comes to monitoring employees on performance, Microsoft UK thinks that the perception of the employee as a ticking time bomb has gone too far. Recent research by Dr Carsten Sorensen at the London School of Economics, sponsored by the software giant, says that excessive monitoring is affecting productivity as employees react to guidelines rather than customers. In short, it’s time to return to trust."

But then we all change our minds. I'm not panicking though. In particular I'm not worried by claims that all this will make middle management redundant. No, no, quite the opposite - this will create jobs. Anyone who has read Dr Seuss's Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? will know what I mean.

A hopper full of bull

As any fan of the Coen brothers can tell you a hopper is somewhere to dispose of troublesome bodies -admittedly not the most efficient or tidiest method. So imagine my surprise when a friend of mine referred to a mutual colleague as having "lots of proposals in the hopper". Naturally I assumed they were dead. Well you would wouldn't you? Apparently not as the following instant message chat shows:

Suited sort: "He seems to have lots of proposals in the hopper."

Clueless journalist: "The hopper?"

Vodkapreneurs

Having your own perfume brand is no longer enough to claim top dog status, says Fortune. Now the best sort of proof that you've made it to the top of the luxury goods pile is about 80 proof - vodka, that is.

The magazine rates fashion designer Roberto Cavalli's tipple (pictured) the tastiest, while teetotal businessman Donald Trump's spirit is described as lacking finesse. Still, who needs finesse on a Friday night?

If all this talk of Trump is making you thirsty, read more about his hospitality habits in Carol's post.

Has it come to this? Degrees in financial services?

The time was when school kids wanted to be teachers, train drivers, astronauts or marine biolgists when they grew up. Now, it appears, they want to be financial advisers. Or at least enough do to prompt the ifs School of Finance and the School of Management at the University of Surrey to offer a four year degree course designed to offer comprehensive preparation for anyone considering a career in the field.

Considering that financial services accounts for about 16 per cent of our national output, it looks like a useful addition to the choices facing school leavers. It may not be as much fun as swimming with dolphins as a marine biologist or taking on G-forces in the upper atmosphere as a would-be astronaut. But teenagers that can bear the ribbing from chums, and the sheer tedium, will be making a thoroughly sensible career choice. No doubt.

But do we really want university courses to be this vocational?

Nerds 1, Jerks 0

I was always considered a little nerdy at school - this was based, as far as I could tell, on being good at science and wearing lace-ups. Now, I'm willing to put money on the fact that David Anderegg, child psychologist, academic and author of Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them was (is?) a nerd too.

Mr Anderegg describes nerds as "some combination of school success, interest in precision, unselfconsciousness, closeness to adults and interest in fantasy." His book is about nerdy kids and how to look after them. Bullying often leads kids to bend to peer pressure and hide their geekiness under a bushell. And "when these bright children start switching off their own lights to avoid being branded nerds, it is bad news for everyone - and for the economy."

Yep, as you grow up you discover that many of the highest earners - management consultants, investment bankers, lawyers and ...Times journalists (ok, perhaps not the latter) were considered nerds at school.

Stand like a tree, with lipstick on

Like many people at this time of year I am resolved to get fit and lose weight. Yet despite the best efforts of The Times Health Club I suspect I may be missing a trick.

There is a new fitness craze which is sweeping the corporate world - standing still. Yes that's right, not moving is a fast moving trend. Edge magazine reports that Zhan Zhuang or Qi Gong or Standing like a tree, as the art of stillness is variously called, is where it's at.

How to tell right from wrong: join a book club

I can't help feeling that it shouldn't be hard for people to tell right from wrong at work, or indeed anywhere else, but it seems that it is; European Business Forum devotes 13 pages to a discussion of businesss ethics and cultural sensitivity in its winter issue, for example.

Jimmy Hill for CEO

It's not the Oxbridge degree, Harvard MBA or track record of success that will get you to the top - it's your chin. A plastic surgeon with a ruler and a copy of Fortune calculated that 90 per cent of top CEOs have prominent chins while only 40 per cent of the general population fall into this category.

As one of my colleagues helpfully pointed out, this suggests that Jimmy Hill should now be running a highly-successful multinational corporation, if not most of the world.

Read the full story at BusinessWeek.com

Buzzword bingo

Heard this morning (8 jan 08) on Radio 4: "upskilling". 'Nuff said? Or should they be told to please stop pushing the envelope blue sky-ward on the lex-graph re-engineering front?

PS. Was I still dreaming or did someone utter "customer facing" on the same programme?

Heterarchy and me: a love story

I stumbled across this gem in the winter edition of European Business Forum:

"Since the mid-1980s, it has been argued that because subsidiaries are increasingly knowledge-rich, multinationals are moving away from a vertical model where knowledge flows top-down from headquarters, to a new model often referred to as heterarchy. A heterarchy is an 'integrated network' characterised by strong lateral links and interactions across sub-units. The role of headquarters is to design a process architecture rather than to exert control in a classical hierarchical sense."

You can read the full article on the magazine's website.

More women accountants with short CVs please

What do you have to do to succeed in business? You may get some idea if you keep an eye on the 2008 edition of The Power 100, which is being published by The Times over the course of this week. As it happens, it is a survey I have been involved with for five years now, and although everyone could - and should - argue about what makes a good business leader, I would make three key observations.

Work-life balance problems? Take this test to find out if you have an 'extreme' job

Hands up those of you who couldn't but help yourselves from having a little peek at your work e-mails while you were supposed to be on holiday? Yes - quite a few I suspect.

According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, successful professionals are working harder than ever before and find themselves in 'extreme jobs' - which she defines as one in which an employee works for 60 hours or more per week, is a high earner and holds a position with at least five of the following characteristics:

13 lucky management decisions

"Managerial decisions are risks", writes Stuart Crainer in the Winter edition of Business Strategy Review, London Business School's journal. Crainer continues: "Looking back, they may seem obvious. Of course, Intel had to get out of the memory business. IBM? Bound to be globally successful. Mickey? Great name for a cartoon mouse. But did Walt Disney know that he would make millions of dollars from a cartoon mouse? Did he know it was an important decision at the time? I don't think so. It wasn't a foolproof scheme to get rich quick, just a decision that worked".

He goes on to offer a myriad of great management decisions from his book The 75 Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made. Here we have picked 13 of our favourites:

Room 115 Tea Club News

When staff need to buy their own tea and coffee for the workplace all sorts of friction can arise - unless, that is, you have someone like John* to keep track of what's going on. A source kindly forwarded me his latest e-mail update:

"Hello everyone and welcome to the Room 115 Tea Club News for December 2007. The news for this month is very good in that we have a healthy stock of tea and coffee. The sugar level is holding its own, with milk being the main drain on our funds.

"An updated list of the current Tea Club funds and a 3D pie chart (not too sure what a 3D pie would taste like, though) of what the money was spent on during the year has been posted as normal near the kettle in the kitchen.

"Also, as I mentioned in my November issue, if anyone can think of a suitable (printable) name for our Tea Club, please let me know."

*not his real name.

The new year is a time for diets, not hasty job decisions

I imagine that you're reading this on your first day back at work after a week and a half of eating, drinking and sitting around with a bit too much time on your hands. The results of the first two can be dealt with by a month or so of good diet and vigorous exercise; the effects of having time to think are much trickier to handle.