Have you noticed anyone in your team displaying any of the symptoms in this checklist lately: increased energy, activity and restlessness; excessively “high”, euphoric mood; extreme irritability; distractibility, or inability to concentrate well? Or how about unrealistic beliefs in one’s abilities and powers; poor judgment; increased sexual drive; abuse of drugs, particularly cocaine, alcohol and sleeping medications; provocative, intrusive or aggressive behaviour; denial that anything is wrong; or spending sprees (source: www.medicinenet.com)?

Most of my colleagues have managed at least one of these in the past few weeks. Happily, no one I know has clocked up too many. That would be worrying, because these are apparently the signs that someone is suffering from a bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression.

This is serious but under-discussed stuff. Mental health is the last taboo. But secrecy could be unhealthy too. And suppressing or ignoring concerns about the state of our psyches is probably not healthy either.

Continue reading “A kind of madness”

The new McKinsey Quarterly has an excellent interview with Brad Bird, the Oscar-winning Pixar director responsible for The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Among other things, Mr Bird describes how he persuaded Pixar’s animators to strike a balance between perfectionism and expediency.

There are purists in computer graphics who are brilliant but don’t have the urgency about budgets and scheduling that responsible filmmakers do. I had to shake the purist out of them—essentially frighten them into realizing I was ready to use quick and dirty “cheats” to get something on screen if they took too long to achieve it in the computer.

He describes the value of having what he calls “black sheep” in a team: frustrated but committed individuals who want to do things differently but haven’t had the chance to prove their theories. He also praises Pixar for offering staff optional classes that foster a well-rounded workforce.

If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system.

His peeves include “passive-aggressive people… who don’t show their colours in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away”.

With the Société Générale and Northern Rock sagas, it is a good time to be in the business of advising errant companies on how to restore their lost reputations. Leslie Gaines-Ross (left), chief reputation strategist at PR firm Weber Shandwick, has just written a book on the subject entitled Corporate Reputation, 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation. She braved Monday’s storm to give me her opinion on how ceos should apologise when they or their organisations make mistakes, while also addressing topics such as whether or not a company should engage with hostile bloggers. Listen to the 8-minute audio interview here.

Continuing with the theme of SocGen and angry bloggers, the French bank features in a rant from tompeters!, the management guru we knew as Tom Peters in a more conventionally punctuated age. Writing from his farm in Tinmouth, Vermont, tom has just used his blog to have a pop at Daniel Bouton, the bullet-headed SocGen chairman who is somehow still hanging on to his job after the Kerviel affair. It’s part of a broader tirade about executive pay. Other ceos who feel his wrath include Boeing boss Jim McNerney and Fidelity’s Peter Lynch. This is tom’s understated conclusion:

I don’t want The Law to muzzle exec pay. But I would like common sense to prevail, or at least make the occasional appearance. The 500 Fortune 500 CEOs are no more flawless, genius, etc., than my dog Dodger, who, trust me, via his own sort of Excellence, can reverse the tide and part the waters by producing a fart that carries on the wind from Tinmouth VT all the way to Wall Street.

The UK’s Combined Code on Corporate Governance requires public companies to comply with its recommendations, or explain why they have chosen to ignore them. As of today Marks and Spencer has a lot of explaining to do.

From 1 June, the company said today, Sir Stuart Rose will become executive chairman, effectively combining the roles of chair and CEO. This flies in the face of Combined Code orthodoxy. True, other colleagues are stepping up to take on some of Sir Stuart’s duties. Ian Dyson, currently finance director, will take on the additional responsibility of HR and operations. Kate Bostock, head of women’s wear, and Steve Esom, head of food, join the board.

Sir Stuart now says he will not leave the company before 2011, thus allowing his fellow executive directors time to build their case to win the top job in due course.

Shareholders and analysts will be concerned that this move formally concentrates too much power in Sir Stuart’s hands. One, L&G, went on the record with its objections only a few hours after M&S’s announcement.

Personally, I will take some of the governance gurus’ objections with an unhealthily large pinch of salt. Sir Stuart is clearly his own man, and has been well and truly in charge at M&S for several years. Lord Burns, the outgoing chairman, says that execs and non-execs alike at M&S are happy with the new arrangements. Where is the problem?

If Sir Stuart were a crook, or an incompetent, we might have grounds for concern. But this is someone who turned down the prospect of absolutely gigantic rewards, running M&S for Sir Philip Green’s private equity-style bid in 2004, and instead took the riskier and relatively much less well paid option of keeping M&S public. He has done an excellent job so far. If this is his chosen method of exit, and this seems to him to be the best way of blooding a successor, I think we should trust him and back his judgment.

Of course, if things now go badly wrong for him and the company I will be among the first to condemn him.

Along with the National Health Service, the John Lewis Partnership probably represents the UK’s most durable flirtation with socialism. The department store and supermarket group is owned by its 69,000 staff, who are called partners. Today, it was announced that they would each receive a profit-sharing bonus worth 20 per cent of their salary after strong trading in 2007.

As in the rest of the retail sector, average wages are still low compared with other industries. However, personnel managers in other sectors would do well to consider the additional ways in which the group’s knowledgeable staff are rewarded and kept loyal.

(more…)

Michael Hyatt is a brave man. Along with his fellow executives, the boss of Thomas Nelson, a private equity-owned publisher specialising in Christian titles, is compiling a book laying out the group’s long history - which dates back to 1798 - and its way of doing things.

Mr Hyatt decided to post a draft of the first chapter of the book on his blog with the aim of soliciting comments from employees and other interested parties that would help him to hone his prose. His post provoked a mixture of back-slapping and nit-picking. A response posted by ‘Nicole’ paved the way for the nit-pickers:

Fascinating story.

(Two copy editing errors in the final paragraph–first and third sentences.)

A second nit-picker claimed that the writing lacked creativity. A third suggested that the authorial point of view was inconsistent. A fourth fretted about whether he had missed out a couple of commas. A fifth claimed he had contradicted himself at one point. A sixth said the number “81″ should be spelled out and hyphenated. A seventh claimed his style was a little lacklustre.

Some bosses would never tolerate being corrected by their juniors in public. But nitpicking isn’t a bad thing if you view it from the primate’s perspective.

When primates pick nits out of each other’s fur, they are strengthening the social bonds holding them together as a group. Wittingly or unwittingly, Mr Hyatt has offered his staff a similar chance to demonstrate their shared sense of purpose by grooming him publicly.

Ook! An underling spots a split infinitive lurking near the ceo’s armpit, expertly nips it between her fingers and eats it. Ook! An incorrect usage of “that” is changed to “which” by another member of the troop. Ook! There goes a grocer’s apostrophe.

Precise use of language is central to any book publisher and no author is expected to submit an error-free manuscript. Given those two points, I can’t see how the public nit-picking could be harmful to Thomas Nelson and its leader. On the contrary, beware the ungroomed ceo.