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Posts Tagged ‘corporatelife’

Networking from the heart

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, employment, jobs, networking, officework, Personal, Uncategorized, working, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2010| 1 Comment »

You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money,

Love like you’ll never be hurt,

You’ve got to dance like nobody’s watching,

It’s got to come from the heart if you want it to work.

– Kathy Mattea

Sometimes, I find myself rediscovering the obvious. When that happens, I’ve learned to pay attention, because it always means that I’ve forgotten something to which I need to pay more attention. A few days ago, I made the thirtieth or fortieth of these rediscoveries in my lifetime – this one to do with networking.

Most of my income these days comes from journalism, but I do pick up the occasional tech-writing, communications, or graphical design work on the side – especially since the rise of the Canadian dollar has reduced the converted value of my pay cheques in American funds. Consequently, like any consultant, I am constantly networking to keep my name out there.

The only trouble is, most networking events are at the end of the day. After eight to twelve hours of work, going out is often the last thing on my mind. I often feel like I have to drag myself out to the events, when, instead of meeting a room full of strangers, what I really want to do is sprawl out on a futon with a parrot or two.

Then, when I get there, I have to get into persona. Regardless of how I feel, I have to look and sound outgoing, and bring out my best small talk. I never have been one of those who believes in speed-networking, counting the evening’s success by the number of cards I collect, but I have usually felt that I ought to circulate when I was really more in the mood to find a good conversation with two or three people in some quiet corner.

Yet over the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking more and more than the typical networking event was becoming less and less worth my while. Part of the reason was probably the tight economy, and another part that many of the same people keep attending the local events. But it was only this week that I accepted that most of the problem was my attitude.

The revelation came because I was out at an altogether different gathering. It had nothing to do with work, or even technology – it was just a group of people with a common leisure interest. And there, when I wasn’t even trying, I got the first piece of consulting work I had picked up at public event in over a year.

If that had just happened once, I would have attributed it to serendipity. But the next night, under the same casual conditions, it happened again, which makes coincidence seem less likely.

The difference, I think, lies in the image I project. I like to think that I talk a good line of piffle, and can make myself likable when I make an effort, and to judge by how people respond, that is not completely my imagination. But when I am going against my inclinations and maybe trying too hard, I suspect that I am projecting – not falseness, exactly, but an impression that is less than completely genuine. Even if most people are unable to explain why, something about me does not seem right.

Should I be in the position of needing work, this lack of authenticity is compounded by desperation. Most people, I find, are made uncomfortable by the slightest hint of desperation, and will avoid people who show signs of it. A few will even try to take advantage of it, although that’s another issue.

By contrast, at genuine social events, people are more likely to be relaxed and able to enjoy each other’s company. Our attitudes create an atmosphere in which actual connections can be made. Although the contacts we make may be fewer than those made at a networking event, the ones we do make are more likely to run deeper. Paradoxically, the less we try to connect, the more likely we actually are to connect.

I’m thinking now that much of how we’ve been told about how to network is inefficient, if not a waste of time. When I consider how I react to most of the people at networking events, I suspect that I’m not the only person with authenticity problems in attendance. Many, perhaps most, I suspect have the same problems as I do to a greater or less degree.

Under these circumstances, is it really so surprising that so few of us connect? We all want something from such events – a connection, a lad, a job – and we are all trying so hard that most of us are being less likable than we could be. Moreover, if some of us do have something in common, we may never realize the fact, because we are too busy with our false fronts.

To suggest that we stop worrying about making impressions or collecting business cards may sound counter-intuitive. To go out and simply enjoy ourselves, trusting that we will make connections without really trying might sound irresponsible, and trusting too much to luck. And almost surely it will result in far fewer connections than a networking event. Yet the connections we do make when not trying too hard are likely to be ones that are meaningful to us. Best of all, they don’t result in hundreds of business cards that we keep in drawer for a few years before we throw them away wondering who exactly all these people might be.

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Interns and other slaves

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, employers, employment, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 3, 2010| 3 Comments »

I see that some American states are starting to investigate the use of interns as unpaid labor. All I can say is that it’s long overdue.

So far as I’m concerned, most companies that use interns are like John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” in the mid-1700s. Contrary to a popular misconception, Newton did not become a Christian and write the hymn, then turn against his job in the slave trade; instead, after writing the hymn, he remained both a Christian and a slaver for two decades before coming out against the slave trade.

Too often, companies are like Newton on a smaller scale when they hire interns. They may be environmentally conscious and contribute to charities in their communities, but their labor practices make them hypocrites hiding behind conventional business practices.

Understand, I am not talking about programs like Google’s Summer of Code that give small stipends to students who would otherwise be unpaid volunteers. Still less am I talking about companies who hire co-op students at proper entry level salaries, or about genuine apprentice programs. What I am talking about are companies that hire the young and aspiring for full-time work at far below what they would pay a new employee — if they pay them at all — while pretending that they are giving them something special.

The argument used to justify such internships is that those chosen gain valuable job experience. Moreover, because interns are generally untrained, their employers often argue that they require experienced employees to watch over them and redo their work if necessary.

However, the same arguments could be applied to new employees. In most jurisdictions, the fact that someone is a new employee is not grounds for denying them a living wage, so why should the same argument be considered valid for interns? In entry-level positions, new employees are often no more trained than interns are. New employees may receive a smaller salary while on probation, but even so they generally receive enough to live on.

When I was chief steward for the Teaching Assistant’s union at Simon Fraser University, we had a basic negotiating principle: a fair days’ work for a fair day’s pay. That is not the least socialistic (not that there’s anything wrong with that so far as I’m concerned; I can belt out “Where the Fraser River Flows,” “Solidarity Forever,” and a lot of the rest of Utah Phillip’s repetoire). Rather, it’s an insistence that our semi-capitalistic system live up to its own principles. Employees who are producing acceptable work for you deserve to be paid the going rate for that work; if their work is not acceptable, you fire them. The exchange of labor is as simple as that, and there is no excuse for making an exception for interns.

The real reason for underpaying interns — as if anyone couldn’t guess — becomes obvious when you notice that many companies delay filling full-time positions until after the interns have left at the end of August, or hire more interns than full-time staff. Such cases make clear that interns are simply a cheaper (or free) pair of hands. When you keep this reason in mind, all the the pious claims of helping interns by giving them experience becomes the modern equivalent of claims that 19th Century slaves were housed and fed better than in their homelands, or benefited from exposure to Christianity. All these claims are simply excuses for unethical business practices that conventional morality chooses to ignore because they are convenient.

True, some companies eventually hire the best of their interns. But only a handful of interns are ever so lucky. Besides, companies might as well ask new employees to pay a premium for their position, because, by giving a company cheap labor, that is basically what interns are doing when they are later hired as regular employees. No matter how you look at it, the fact that some interns are hired full-time doesn’t justify internships any more than the fact that diligent slaves were sometimes freed justifies slavery. Interns may be better off than slaves (although, considering what I’ve heard about certain gaming companies, I sometimes wonder), but the scope of the ethical dodginess doesn’t change the basic situation.

Low-paying internships would be objectionable under any circumstance. However, what makes them worse is the pretense that they are anything other than a cost-saver. At least if companies would say, “We hire interns because we save money that way,” an honest discussion could take place. But, instead, they hide what they are doing by claiming that they are the benefactors rather than exploiters.

This claim is an ethical dodge that Newton would have understood. But at least he eventually saw his own contradiction. There are few signs that, left to themselves, companies that exploit interns ever will.

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What job skills do English majors have?

Posted in Bruce Byfield, careers, corporate communications, corporatelife, education, employment, English majors, Personal, reading, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2009| 3 Comments »

What skills do English graduates bring to the job market? More than you might think – and far more than all the jokes about their unemployability would have you believe. In fact, many of the skills developed by English markets while reading novels and poems make them ideal for senior positions.

To start with, English majors may be comfortable with reading. I don’t mean simply that they can read; I mean that they can read with some ease. Many read as instinctively as they hear. It has become a reflex in them to read whatever words are put in front of them.

Moreover, because they are comfortable with reading and have practiced it, they can read more quickly than most people.

These may seem like minor skills, but when you consider the number of reports, emails, memos, and other documents that the average manager has to plow through every week, they mean increased efficiency; I’ve known at least one politician who found that the worst parts of being an elected official was reading the weekly paper work.

Even more importantly, English majors may have learned not only to be comfortable with reading, but to have gained some skill in it.

If you look at the comments beneath almost any article published online, one of the first things that will probably strike you is how few people can read a comment in context. More often, people take things out of context, and come up with the most fantastical over-simplifications, exaggerations, and misreadings.

Nor, naturally enough, can the average person summarize accurately. In fact, most of the critical skills that English majors learn when producing essays are beyond the average person. After all, you can hardly analyze or compare accurately when you haven’t read accurately. These skills are especially important if you need to keep abreast of legal matters, but they matter almost as much when you are writing marketing copy, producing a white paper on technology, or writing a business plan or competitive analysis.

Finally, like most Art students, whose grading is based largely on essays, English majors have probably learned to research – to find sources, absorb them quickly, and evaluate them both on their own and in comparison to other sources. In other words, they have learned to process information, and reach conclusions that are logically based upon that information. This ability is continually useful in daily business, and, on the Internet it can be invaluable. After all, what is the Internet, if not a giant library waiting for an expert to use it?

Of course, not every English graduate possesses these skills. Because the subject matter of English Departments is subjective, students can coast through them more easily than they can in other Departments. Even in English graduate school, you can find students who don’t read unless they have to, and whose essays have more to do with striking a pose than actual analysis.

But, having been a product manager and a director of communications, I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve looked down at the task that I’m doing and realized that what I learned taking an English degree has helped me breeze through it.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, English major do graduate with employable skills – in fact, ones that will help them if they ever become managers or team leaders among the creatives. The only problem is, they don’t realize everything they’ve learned, so they don’t express it.

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Why freelancers are best-equipped to survive a recession

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, career choices, careers, corporatelife, employment, freelancers, Personal, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2008| 13 Comments »

Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail ran an article about freelancers who were considering finding full-time work in response to the recession-cum-depression of the last couple of months. Being a long-time freelancer myself – and someone who has never been happier than when working for himself – I found some wry amusement in the assumption that freelancing is riskier than full-time employment. Not only do I believe that freelancing is generally safer than full-time employment, but I suggest that freelancers are better equipped to weather the uncertain economy.

Admittedly, a recession is a bad moment to begin a freelance career, if only because so many other people may be attempting the same change. Obviously, too, a freelancer’s ability to survive depends on what services they offer; for instance, if you offer web design services, in hard times people might be tempted to put off improvements and changes to their web pages as non-essential.

However, in general, freelancers have distinct advantages in troubled times:

  • Freelancers are already established: As full-timers are laid off and try to support themselves on freelancing, established freelancers already have the contracts and – most importantly – the reputations to keep themselves employed. Many of them have an established customer base, and they can focus on assignments rather than on marketing themselves – a process that usually takes a few months.
  • Freelancers are more versatile: Full-time employees are generally slotted into narrow specialties. By contrast, freelancers can offer new, related services as the opportunity or need arises. For example, if you are a technical writer who finds that clients are putting off updating their documentation, perhaps you can branch out into public relations or graphic design.
  • Freelancers are used to working on multiple contracts at the same time: While full-timers often have the luxury of concentrating on one project at a time, most freelancers juggle multiple projects at the same time. Part of the reason may be freelancers are so afraid of being without income that they often overbook themselves. However, an even larger part of the reason is that they don’t always find a single project that brings in enough income by itself. A recession simply makes this situation even more likely. So, in this sense, the habits of the average freelancer become a useful survival mechanism during a recession.
  • Freelancers have established social networks: In any sort of job-hunting, connections are important. But, while full-timers often neglect networking because of their false sense of security, freelancing is like constantly looking for work. The result is that freelancers may be prepared to replace work lost to the recession with other assignments.
  • Freelancers are better prepared psychologically for losing work: Many full-timers invest a lot of their self-image in their employment. When they lose their position, they are devastated. But freelancers do not nurse the full-timers’ dream of a job for life. They expect to work on many contracts during their careers. So, when one contract is canceled, it means very little to freelancers – unlike full-timers, they are not devastated. While they may regret the loss, freelancers know that some work will never materialize or be canceled, even in good times.
    In other words, a recession is only a freelancer’s regular situation intensified. They know how to deal with the situation, and don’t need to change their attitudes to survive – unlike full-timers.

I’m not surprised that The Globe and Mail could find freelancers who were considering full-time employment, but I suspect that they are in a minority. Although all the freelancers I know are alert to the economic situation, they seem reasonably confident of their ability to survive it. Unlike full-timers, they find little new in troubled times.

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On company time

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, careers, corporatelife, ethics, hypocrisy, leadership, management, management theory, officework, Personal, work, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

One of my pet peeves about business is the constant consternation among executives about employees doing personal business on company time. Even if the transgression is just a few minutes browsing on the Internet, it’s viewed with the greatest concern. Business experts talk earnestly about what such loss of productivity might mean to the nation, and devise ways to spy on employees, or to block web sites that employees might like to view. Doing business on company time, they gravely explain, is the worst sin of our secular age – stealing from your employer. What annoys me is that such concerns are a grotesque hypocrisy.

I’m not talking, you understand, about the extreme cases, where a middle manager spends five or six hours a day on a gambling site, or a system administrator watches porn all day. Such behavior is obviously unacceptable to anyone. I’m talking instead of people who take five or ten minutes a couple of times a day to read a news or hobby site, or to dash out on a family errand.

Of course, even this behavior was unacceptable thirty years ago, when people worked regular hours and rarely deviated from them. After all, the lost time quickly adds up.

But the workplace is different today. Instead of receiving an hourly wage, the average office worker is on salary – a ploy that forces them to work hours of unpaid overtime. Especially in high-tech, the norm is to take advantage of this situation, putting heavy pressure on those who leave after eight hours and implying that anyone who doesn’t devote evenings and weekends to the company are not being good team players and letting everyone down. More than once, I’ve encountered supervisors who had a habit of starting meetings ten minutes before the end of the day and forcing people to work overtime, knowing very well that the social pressure would keep most people from objecting.

And only rarely does anyone get a day off to compensate for their extra hours. Rather, unpaid work has become the norm.

Under these circumstances, how dare employers complain about the loss of half an hour or an hour a day when they are averaging twice that in unpaid overtime from their employees? If anything, they ought to be glad that employees are taking short breaks. Otherwise, productivity would decline steadily after about nine hours. By taking those breaks, employees are actually making better use of the time actually spent working, because they are more refreshed than they would otherwise be.

An employer with any knowledge of human nature should be glad that employees know how to pace themselves. Otherwise, employees risk falling into the unproductive habit of a resident doctor I once knew. When I asked how she handled the thirty-six hour shifts that are part of the hazing ritual for new doctors, she explained, “I try to make all my decisions in the first twelve hours. After that, I just try not to make any mistakes.”

Anyway, what choice do employees have except to conduct personal business on company time? When employees are working long days, often the middle of the day is the only time they have for errands or personal business. Very few stores are open at 10PM – assuming that someone staggering home after a fourteen hour day even has the energy to stop to shop.

At any rate, employees are doing nothing that many executives haven’t done for years. Despite all the pep talks about the importance of leadership, the average manager works far less strenuously that the average employee. The exceptions are those who have a hands-on approach, and lend a hand in anything that needs doing, and they are usually in a startup. The average manager thinks nothing of doing exactly the sort of thing that annoys them when employees do them.

And perhaps that’s the problem, Maybe the executives who worry about productivity are simply irked that average employees are claiming perqs that used to be reserved for them alone.

When companies pay overtime or don’t cajole and threaten free work out of their employees, and managers set an example of dedication, then they will have a right to complain about what is done on company time. Until then, so long as employees put in the number of productive hours listed in their contract, they have every right to reclaim some of their free time.

So far as I’m concerned, the employees aren’t the ones who are stealing.

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On hearing that a former employer has closed

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, corporatelife, employment, humor, officework, Personal, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2008| 1 Comment »

The other week, I heard that a former employer had gone out of business. I reacted with the same pleasure that an octogenarian might feel on reading the name of an unpleasant former colleague in the obituaries. I was glad to see the company go, and my only surprise was that it had crawled along as long as it had. I had been expecting to see it go under for years.

As you might guess, I was not particularly happy there. I used to take long walks at lunch, regardless of the weather, just to get away from the place, and would amuse myself by composing words to a parody of “Chantilly Lace” that I called “Genteelly Bored.”

Part of my unhappiness was the circumstances. It was my first full-time position since the dot-com crash. After being one of the powers at two different companies, I felt demoted to be working as a technical writer again, no matter how often I told myself that no honest living was shameful. But I felt massively under-challenged, and chafed at having to take directions, although I remained polite.

But a larger part of the problem was that, having been a leader (of what quality I’m not sure), I knew that the company officers and executives were border-line competence at best. The CEO was not only fond of purges, which inevitably included people with key knowledge, but also of inflicting the latest management fads on the company. He was fond of regular, excruciating company meetings at which he kept showing the same slides over and over. When I left, he was trying retreats at which select members of the company would discuss a book on the management best-seller lists – a move which instantly divided the company into the privileged and the under-appreciated. He never did seem to understand that he was sending mixed signals, and, when I briefly shared an office with him due to overcrowding, he used to wonder why no one was passionate about the company.

The other executives were no better. The vice-president of toadyism, as I called the CEO’s right hand man, was infamous for making decisions without bothering to gather necessary information.

Another executive, a fundamentalist Christian, tried to take me to task for using, “Does anal-retentive have a hyphen?” on my screen saver. He thought it obscene, and was put out when I suggested that he had better things to do than chastise me over trivia and I refused to apologize on the grounds that I had done nothing wrong.

Then there was the testing manager, a little man who decorated his office in unread books and inspirational posters, and would spend hours designing spreadsheets with the largest color palette that I have ever seen. He worked long hours, and like to call meetings with me just before I was leaving for home. But at least he didn’t last as long as his probation.

“Blind leading the blind” was the phrase that kept occurring to me when I had to deal with any of these characters. But although interacting with them was bad enough, what was especially hard to handle was the fact that I had enough experience (and enough memories of my own incompetence) to know that they were mismanaging the company, and making what could only be a marginal business at best a loser. I discovered that to see incompetence that you know how to correct, yet to be able to do or say nothing is one of the most uncomfortable mental states possible.

Still, I shouldn’t complain. If I hadn’t been so uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have started trying to write a book on OpenOffice.org. The book was never published, but my efforts over the fifteen months I was at the company have since repaid my effort many times over as I cannibalized the chapters for articles. I also started doing a couple of other articles per month, and I still remember the pleasure when I had earned enough from articles to buy my new computer. There was another short contract between my work at this company and my transition to full-time journalist, but if I hadn’t been so bored, I might never have done the ground work for a career change. So I can’t say that the company didn’t do me an unintentional favor.

Still, I wish there had been a wake. I would have attended, if only to dance on the coffin.

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Advocacy in bureaucracy: The delicate art of starting avalanches

Posted in advocacy, Bruce Byfield, bureaucracy, corporatelife, hospitals, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on May 16, 2008| Leave a Comment »

When you are trying to get something done in a large organization, frustration easily sets in. Before you know it, you can start fantasizing about shouting and name-calling and finding a throat that your fingers fit around – while in reality you slink off, feeling helpless and foolish. However, as I was reminded this past week trying to get action from the local health system on behalf of my hospitalized spouse, the secret is to use more indirect methods.

The first thing to remember is to never show that you are losing your temper. Show anger, and you’re giving the bureaucracy a reason not to listen to you at all. If you have to, retire to the washroom to snarl or cry, or go for some strenuous exercise after your efforts are done. But while you are talking to the members of the organization, keep calm. Smile. Say “Thank you,” even if the person you’re talking to has done nothing but obstruct you.

At the same time, never give up. In the typical bureaucracy, most people want nothing more than to go about their work quietly, and with a minimum of fuss. If you keep showing up, then after a while, they will be more likely to help you so that you go away and stop disturbing the quiet of their days. Calm, polite insistence should be your goal.

In addition, remember that you have to play by the bureaucracy’s unwritten rules – even if you are trying to get its official ones changed or rescinded (or maybe I should say especially when you are trying to get the official ones changed or rescinded). That means you need to have a simple, clear statement of what you want done, usually expressed in terms of a concrete action or two.

Even more importantly, the need to obey the unwritten rules means that your main strategy is to get allies in the system. Who can make your request a reality? Or – often more to the point – who can exert pressure on decision-makers to act in the way you want? Find out, and get those people on your side, advocating your cause within the organization. They know the structure far better than you have any hope of doing, often on an unconscious level of which they probably aren’t aware. Moreover, the more of your allies that surround the decision-maker, the harder the decision-maker will find resisting your request.

Finally, never forget your objectives. With these methods, you have a strong chance of realizing them. But if you’re expecting the decision-makers or the people who have been obstructing you to apologize or show any remorse for their lack of helplessness or failure to live up to the alleged ideals of their organization, you’re fantasizing. Settle for getting what you want, and keep polite even as you get it. While the primitive part of you might like to rub in the fact of your victory, resist the temptation, just in case the decision-maker balks at the last moment. Your purpose is not emotional satisfaction – it’s realizing your goals.

Getting a bureaucratic organization to get something done when you’re an outsider is like starting an avalanche. Anyone can set a boulder or two tumbling down the hill, and the result can even be spectacular. But finding the right pebbles to shift so that a large part of the landscape permanently moves (and doesn’t take you with it) is much harder. It requires patience, indirection, and an understanding of the landscape. But, in the end, the results can be farther-reaching than any expression of frustration or anger.

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Public relations that works

Posted in Bruce Byfield, corporatelife, journalism, Personal, Public Relations, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , on February 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In another blog entry, I criticized public relation managers for not doing their job well. Doing so expressed a pet peeve – and one that I feel perfectly justified in holding, since I’ve done public relations work myself. However, in the interests of fairness, let me describe two PR types that do know their jobs.

One manages communication for a non-profit organization whose activities I often cover in my articles. On my request, he sends me each of the organization’s news releases directly – but didn’t do so until I specifically asked him to. Once the release is sent, he knows that I can be trusted to follow up on it if I have permission from my editors to develop a story based on it.

When I ask for an interview with one of the people he represents, he gets back to me in a few hours, knowing that, as an online journalist, I am on Internet time, and that a response in two or three days is frequently too slow for my needs; sometimes, his response is only to let me know that he has been unable to find someone who is travelling or otherwise busy, but he lets me know so I can work around the situation.

When I phone for an interview, he ensures that all participants is there, then leaves the call, rather than hanging around worrying whether any of those he represents will say something rash (which would be a waste of his time as well as a discourtesy, since his co-workers are formidably eloquent and experienced dealing with the media).

While I can’t say he is is an unmet friend, he is always professional and courteous, and stops to exchange a few pleasantries whenever we talk. But, most of all, he is dependable. I know that when something is in his hands, it will be efficiently and politely handled, and, in return, I try to conduct myself by the same standards.

The second example is a woman who is just as professional. However, while I don’t know whether the man in the first example has the least interest in the activities of the organization for which he works, this second example has just discovered the free software community, and is exploring it with enthusiasm. She gives the lie to those who claim that, to do PR, you don’t need to know what your clients do, because, the more she learns, the more useful she becomes to her clients and to the journalists who cover them.

In fact, the last story I wrote about one of her clients, she even went so far as to gather source material to help me make the deadline – not because I asked her, but because she was interested in the subject. The result was that I got the story out faster, to the satisfaction of both her client and me.

What both these examples have in common is that they understand that communications is about enabling everybody to meet their needs. Their employers or customers have stories that they want covered, and I have deadlines that I have to meet. By cultivating good relations with journalists like me, they ensure that those stories get told. and everyone wins.

By contrast, other PR agents have ensured that their employers’ stories have gone untold for reasons as trivial as their refusal to tell me what the story was they wanted me to cover; given my workload, I simply can’t afford to devote time to a story unless I know that it’s worthwhile and have some details to pitch to my editors.

Probably, too, the people I’m praising are also laying the groundwork for how their clients are regarded by the media in the future. Naturally, journalists try to be fair, and not to hold back on criticism when they think it’s deserved, but we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t respond well to people who make our lives easier.

My only concern is that the kind of PR epitomized by these people may be on the way out. One similar communications manager told me recently that, because she targets her media inquiries, only sending out a dozen or so a day when others send out hundreds, her employer sometimes gets testy with her. Apparently, those to whom she would report would rather have hundreds of emails sent out that are treated as spam than a smaller number that all get results. But in expressing such a preference for quantity, companies are only hurting their own publicity efforts. It’s the PR people who build long-term relations through efficiency and helpfulness that represent businesses the best, not those who copy the techniques of spammers.

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7 (Cynical) Steps for Reducing Stress at Work

Posted in corporatelife, employers, employment, humor, office parties, Personal, stress, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 25, 2008| 3 Comments »

Most articles about reducing stress in the workplace start with the assumption that you can do something to affect your circumstances. But unless you’re a company officer or director, you probably can’t do very much. You’re subject to the whims and cluelessness of the upper echelons, and the company’s main concern is usually to squeeze the most work out of you for the least amount of renumeration — and that means too much work to do, unpaid overtime, and most of the other immediate sources of stress.

At times, you may be tempted to beat yourself senseless, or even chew a leg off to escape these conditions. However, I have to warn you that the last one especially can ruin your chances of doing that half marathon you’ve always dreamed about. Besides, you will still need money, and a handicap pension isn’t enough for anyone to live on.

Instead, here are seven less drastic if cynical ways to minimize work stress. These are ways that the average career expert won’t tell you, because to do so is to admit that most of us work because we have to, not because we have a passion:

1. Never take a full time job when you can be a contractor instead:

Employers may dangle benefits before you in the hopes of enticing you to become a full-time employee. And, at first, you might be lured into agreeing for the sake of security. But, as I like to say, the main difference between contract and full-time work is that, as a contractor, you know when your job ends. You may even have a kill clause in your contract. By contrast, full-time employment can end without warning or any more compensation than required by local laws. The ugly truth that nobody likes to mention is that full-time employment is not much more secure than consulting. It also dulls your instincts for survival besides, so that layoffs hit you harder. Consultants know they can survive, because they’ve done so before.

Another big advantage of being a contractor is that you’re usually paid by the hour. That means that managers think twice about asking you to stay late, and that, when you do, you’re being paid — unlike everyone around you. You may still have to put in long hours, but at least you’re receiving hardship pay.

2. Avoid managers and company officers as much as possible:

The most productive and fulfilled people at most companies are those who are actually building the products that the company sells — the computer programmers, graphic designers, and other manufacturers. But somewhere about midway up the management hierarchy, employment stops being about productivity and starts being about ego. That means that, the more remote managers and directors are from what the company sells, the more likely than an encounter with them will be about making them feel good, and not about helping you with any problems.

You may be flattered if such people ask you for details about your work — but, believe me, they won’t remember. They’re not asking because they want to learn more and do their jobs better. Most of the time, they’re looking for a way to kill time. Granted, you might get some wicked stories to tell your co-workers about their ignorance, but that’s a poor return for the time you’ve lost.

3. Keep away from meetings:

Meetings are for those who have reached exalted positions where they are no longer productive. If you haven’t reached that stage, the average meeting will simply cut into your already too-short work time. Should anything important actually happen at a meeting, you can always read about it when the minutes are circulated in an email.

True, by missing meetings, you miss free food. But donuts and other typical meeting fodder only give you a sugar rush to leave you all the more attenuated after you come down. That process is a physical stress in itself.

4. Avoid company functions:

Career experts tell you that company events are a way to network. In fact, they’re a way for human resources managers to look busy (see #2). For others, they are an annoying interruption in a busy day. So, even though you’re dying for an excuse to knock off work, remember that what you’ll be doing is playing ring-toss in the hall or dressing up in a clown suit, and that embarassment is a form of stress in itself. If you’re shy, you’ll suffer agonies, and ditto if you have any empathy at all. Rather than attending a function, book off sick or claim an important task is waiting. Schedule a root canal for the time of the function. If all else fails, duck out early.

5. Go for walks at lunch, or eat out

Eating in a cafeteria — or, even worse, at your desk — only means that people can find you more easily and dump work on you, adding to your stress. Even if someone just want to ask you a question, you’re losing time that belongs to you.

Instead of making yourself a target, go out and remind yourself that there’s a world beyond work. Remembering this fact is one of the most reliable ways to put the pressures of work into perspective. But be sure to vary your walking routes or restaurant, or somebody might still be able to find you.

6. Don’t volunteer for extra work

If you’re feeling stressed because of your workload, the last thing you should do is take on extra work, no matter how good you think volunteering will make you look. This advice especially applies to taking work home on evenings or weekends.

Contrary to what the brainwashed and the ambitious believe, such volunteering rarely helps you get ahead. But it is almost guaranteed to age you prematurely. Even worse, it frequently means you are compensating for the fact that there’s too few staff members, and enabling management to dodge the problem.

Anyway, unless there’s a genuine crisis, you won’t have cleared your To Do list — you’ll simply have removed some items so that they can be replaced by new ones. Unless your company is heavily overstaffed, there’s always more work to do, and, for a surprising amount of it, whether you do it today or tomorrow doesn’t matter very much.

7. Don’t expect that working hard will lead to a promotion

The official myth in our society is that hard work is rewarded with promotion. That’s true in a handful of first-rate companies, but, in most work places, the better you are in your position, the harder time people have of imagining you in another one.

I’m not saying that you should slack off — after all, presumably you need the money, and losing your self-respect will only add to your stress. But if you insist on working hard, make sure that it’s for your own reasons and not for any expectation of reward. The chances are overwhelming that you won’t get one.

You’ll notice that none of these steps actually involve your workflow or work habits. That’s because stress at work is rarely about the work itself, so much as the conditions that surround it. In other words, getting organized, disciplining your email reading habits or any of the usual suggestions you get won’t do much for you.

Instead, recognize that you may be in an impossible position, and that the problem is just as likely to be in what’s around you than in you or your habits. And if that sounds cynical, reflect that, in a bad situation, cynicism is not a negative trait, but a successful survival mechanism. In this case, knowing why a situation is stressful can sometimes help you feel less stressed.

And if the situation continues, or gets worse, remember that sometimes the best way of dealing with stress is to move on. Just looking for work can help you endure your present situation a while longer (so long, of course, as you don’t let your managers know that you’re looking for work by slipping up and leaving your resume by the copier or by taking long phone calls with recruiters at work). Rather than enduring stress because you’re afraid of the unknown, have the courage to actively look for alternatives. If you’re like most full-timers, you’ll probably find that finding new employment is easier than you feared.

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The new face of business networking

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, careers, corporatelife, Joomla!, Personal, social networking, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A few years ago, the mechanics of business networking were simple. You attended an event – a cocktail party, or perhaps a seminar – and circulated like mad, collecting business cards. All that is still an important part of networking, but, thanks to the social Internet (AKA Web 2.0), it’s just the beginning.

This awareness has been growing in me for over a year, but I only became fully aware of this change last Saturday, when I dropped in at the end of the documentation camp for Joomla! that Rastin Mehr had organized in Vancouver. Like many of those at the event, Rastin is a computer consultant, and he quite frankly saw the event as a change to socialize with his associates. But was what was interesting to me was how he – and everyone else — went about it.

One of Rastin’s vocations is photography, so he took dozens of shots of the event, and immediately posted some of them to Flickr, the photo-sharing site. Naturally, many of those at the event logged on for a look, either at the event – since most people were carrying laptops – or in the next few days afterwards. Some made comments, and Rastin provided links on FaceBook. (He also took some videos using the built-in webcam on his laptop, which has the effect of showing everyone at their foreshortened worse as they peer up at the lens).

Meanwhile, several attendees blogged about the event, including Rastin and Monica Hamburg. Rastin’s blog was especially interesting as a form of networking, since he included his pictures of everyone, and wrote short biographies about those depicted (mine, which accompanied a picture that caught me with my eyes open, described my new West Coast bracelet as a chronoplate and me as a kind of journalistic Doctor Who – a comparison that delighted me, since I’ve been a fan of the regenerating Doctor for years). Naturally, people commented on those, too. Jeanette Duguay did something of the same, borrowing a picture from Rastin to illustrate her blog. People at other Joomla! doc camps also logged in, extending the networking to those who not only weren’t at the event, but who lived on other continents.

(Now, of course, I’m doing something of the same, writing about these blogs and linking to them – although not, in my case, with pictures).

As I write, Rastin has yet to post his video interviews, but I imagine that they will provide the same opportunities for continued interactions among the attendees.

And, as if the blogs weren’t enough, instead of dropping the business cards they had collected into a pile destined to be forgotten in a corner, people took those cards and made LinkedIn and FaceBook connections with them. Connections on such sites are sometimes dismissed as shallow – and many times rightly so – but they do have the advantage over business cards of keeping people automatically in touch, providing that they login semi-regularly.

In short, what social sites have done is to extend this networking event long past the hours in which it was held. Moreover, while they have provided ways to follow up on the encounters and perpetuate them. Whether in the long run they will help to make the connection more meaningful I can’t tell yet, but they certainly have created a better chance of lasting connections.

Most social network sites, of course, were developed for teenagers and young adults as an extension of their leisure time. They still serve that function, and probably always well. All the same, seeing how working professionals are using them, I can’t help thinking that the social sites have proved themselves at last Far from being frivolous, as mainstream dilettantes are always maintaining, they’re becoming ways to enhance the power of networking.

If you’re a professional seeking contacts, a FaceBook account is now as important as being decently dressed. And what you lose in straight forwardness, you gain in effective networking.

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