Archives for category: Staff Meeting Resources

Book and TV Review: Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac

October 24, 2022 //

After I reviewed both the TV show and book, Five Days at Memorial, I swore I was not going to make a habit of this.

And yet here we are.

Super Pumped, the book, is an in depth look at the rise and fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Impeccably researched, and detailed, it goes into the twists and turns of the Uber story. A story of hubris, a complete lack of ethics, a toxic working environment, and a deep dive into the cult of personality that often surrounds tech founders and CEOs. The book also has a few gonzo moments as the author finds themselves part of the story they are covering for both for good and bad.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, the TV Show, is the first season in an ongoing anthology series. The second series will be based on a forthcoming book, also by Mike Isaac, on Facebook. The TV show does an excellent job of capturing all the major beats and intrigues of the book, while also adding a distinctly more human face to its subjects. Kalanick is much more fleshed out in his relationships with girlfriends and family. There is also much more focus on how much the key figures start out liking each other rather than just being marriages of convenience. However, how much of this is “added drama” is unclear. But given the attention to detail of most of the rest of the story, I am inclined to believe the implication if not the actual events themselves.

Where the TV show really shines is in its portrayal of the side characters and their experiences with Kalanick and his “Bro” culture. Episode five is an extraordinary study in sexual harassment and a dysfunctional Human Resources department as experienced by regular employees. Another scene that stands out is when (spoiler) Kalanick’s girlfriend is breaking up with him, an event that clearly affects him, but yet he stops the argument so that he can answer an email on his phone. The book certainly focuses on the sexual harassment aspects of Uber’s culture, however, the visceral nature of the TV dramatization makes for uncomfortable viewing without straying into exploitative / voyeuristic territory. A thoughtful selection of scenes from this episode would make an excellent starting ground for understanding sexist work cultures and how to avoid them and the sexual harassment that ultimately results for managers – both new and old.

The story of Uber and Travis Kalanick is an extraordinary one and is worth your time as a cautionary tale and as a reflection on our cultural blind spot when it comes to convenience. What kind of world do we live in where convenience trumps ethics and the celebration of behavior this is, not to put too fine a point on it, despicable? Does success excuse bad behavior or does success breed a lack of respect for the rules? Does startup culture, which embraces out of the box solutions, also include the idea that as long as you are successful all will be forgiven?

While Travis Kalanick is undoubtedly an extraordinary individual, the TV show rarely makes the viewer feel anything other than deep unease if not downright dislike. The book, while less personal and emotional, is able to illicit sympathy for Kalanick during a meeting with the author and, when out of spite, one of the Uber board members leaks details of Kalanick’s departure from Uber – humiliating him, when the agreement was for a face-saving departure.

By the nature of a TV show, even a series, it can’t go into the detail that a book can. It is interesting that Super Pumped the TV Show starts when Uber is already a reality and uses conversations between protagonists to comment on its past founding and early days. Whereas the book starts from Kalanick’s previous start up and Uber’s humble beginnings as an idea of Garrett Camp when he could not get a cab. Likewise, the TV show ends with Kalanick’s ouster as CEO whereas the book continues into the intrigues of finding a successor and the settling of various lawsuits.

While Super Pumped the book is very much worth your time; Super Pumped: The Battle of Uber, the TV show, is the more extraordinary piece of media. Incredibly watchable, and a useful tool for managers when it comes to toxic internal cultures, the TV show is worth staying up till 2:00AM, as I did, to watch the entire thing in one hit.

Both will also make you download the Lyft app.

Tags culture, HR, human resources, lyft, sexual harassment, Startup, tech, toxic, uber

Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, Movies, Staff Meeting Resources

Book Review: Measure What Matters by John Doerr

May 7, 2022 //

Ever have books that hang around in your book pile for way longer than would seem rational?

The book’s premise was obviously interesting enough to find its way into the pile in the first place, but repeatably fails to be interesting enough to make it the next step and actually be read. I don’t know how long Measure What Matters has been in my possession, but it has been a while.

Of course, as is often the case when finally getting around to reading a long overdue book, one thinks the book is great. I suspect my reticence is to do with the books subject matter: goal setting. I have a complicated relationship with goal setting, or more precisely with goal setting as it is usually described to people in the business world. I’ve often found that systems of formulaic goal setting overly burdensome and lacking in coherent structure. However, how can one not be intrigued by a book that describes Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as soulless numbers!

Measure What Matters touts a system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) which are used in multiple different formats by companies such as Google, The Gates Foundation, and Bono’s One Charity. What soon becomes clear, however, is that what Mr. Doer is proposing is a culture shift in how companies measure performance and direction. It also has the acceptance that with OKRs there will be failure. In fact, if there is not failure, team members are probably not setting ambitious enough goals. What also resonates is the duality of goals for leaders of teams, but with the teams themselves setting their own goals on how the team can get there. A mix of top down and bottom-up objectives.

The culture shift in Measure What Matters is pervasive, extending into employee reviews and relationships between teams, supervisors, and leaders. The book is also honest about implementation and change management – steps often overlooked in this kind of book. Filled with examples for what works and does not, Measure What Matters is almost a spiritual partner to that most revered of business books (well by me anyway) Traction by Gino Wickman. (I have never reviewed Traction for my site due to being just too intimidated by it.)

A great example of “honest” OKRs rather than the “soulless” KPIs is the example given of an objective of reducing office cleaning costs by 25%. At its most basic, the simple measure of whether the costs went down by 25% could mean that the goal was achieved. However, Mr. Doerr not only suggests ways of measuring the quality of cleaning, but also suggests that to be a true OKR the person responsible for this OKR should have their office in the area being cleaned – thereby being directly affected by the key results of the objective.

This is not a book of cold and soulless analytics. This is a book that reminds us that there is more to business objectives than math. That the way to achieve greatness is to have greatness as the objective. To be motivated by failure as much as by possibility.

For once, I am excited about a book about goal setting and goal setting in general. Having a road map helps, but understanding that emotion and intuition also have their place helps more. Measure what matters is a bible text for the modern manager.

Tags Gates Foundation, Goals, Google, KPIs, objectives, OKRs, One

Categories Books, Business, Leadership, Management, personal development, Staff Meeting Resources

Staff Meeting Resources: Part Zero

January 23, 2021 //

I’ve been holding staff meetings in veterinary hospitals since I started in veterinary Medicine in 2005.

That is a lot of monthly staff meetings. In 2017, it occurred to me perhaps others could use some of this information for their own meetings in the same way that I used this information from where ever I stole it from. You can find Part One on The Client Centered Practice here, Part Two on Team Building Exercises and Games here, and Part Three on Communication Tools here. What I did not cover in these initial three articles was how to actually best hold staff meetings. This post is an attempt to rectify that oversight.

Meetings get a bad rap, and it is usually because they are badly organized, and don’t obey some basic rules.

Meetings should not be about delivering information. Meetings should be for discussing things. If a lot of information is to be delivered, consider writing an email or a white paper and distributing the information beforehand.

All meetings need an agenda. In an ideal world, this agenda is distributed to all attendees before the meeting to allow them to prepare or bring any supporting documentation they may need. Agenda items need to be given an allotted amount of time. This prevents over stuffed agendas that cannot be gotten through in the time allowed. Participants should be encouraged to submit items for the agenda ahead of time. Always leave time in the agenda for any other business, but keep to time limits (see below). Any other business, should be a last-minute catch all, not the method by which participants submit their agenda items.

Start on time. End on time. One of the reasons meetings get a bad rap is because we allow them to run on longer than they are scheduled for. Nobody will complain if a meeting ends early. Ending on time also provides other stakeholders the assurance that employees will return to their normal duties by a specific time. There are managers who lock the entrance to meeting rooms at the meeting start time to exclude a anyone who does not turn up on time. While this has a certain “shock value,” it does not trust employees to be adults, or recognize that things happen and that employees have other responsibilities particularly when we ask them to attend a meeting in the middle of their day.

Make attendance easy. If the COVID 19 pandemic has shown us nothing else it has shown us the benefits and the drawbacks of virtual meeting tools such as zoom. However, while tools such as Zoom do not provide a complete replacement for a person being at a meeting in person, they do provide a good enough presence to make them an option for employees who are not on site or who would have to travel into work only for the specific meeting.

Consider attendees days off and the hours of their shift when setting the date and time of meetings. If there is an employee who needs to leave at a certain time, try to adjust the agenda to allow the items most relevant to them to be addressed before they have to leave.

Pay employees for meetings. Meetings are work – therefore employees should be paid. If a meeting is held over lunch time, provide lunch. It is the least that an employer can do.

Do not make meetings a vehicle for complaints, and negative opinions. Meeting should be able working together as a team to solve problems – ensure that the language of the meeting. This starts at the top. If the agenda is all negativity, and all the things that are wrong, that is the meeting that will result.

Meetings should be limited in size if possible. Jeff Bazos, the CEO of Amazon, is famously quoted as saying that a meeting should be able to be fed by a single pizza. There is a lot to this.

I believe that once meetings get above 12 people, they become unwieldy, and back and forth discussion becomes either impossible or impossible to control. Of course, there will always be times when “all hands” or “town hall” type meetings need to be held, but understand their limitations and consider if your goals would not be better served by holding multiple smaller meetings. Departmental meetings, for example, may serve your business better and provide better opportunities for engagement.

Where town hall meetings can work very well is to provide context for an announcement, good or bad. These single-issue meetings, can act as a pressure value and allow concerns to be voiced, or addressed, in a relatively controlled environment.

If meetings are a routine affair, and they should be, keep the meeting’s agenda structured. A structure that I used when I used to hold townhall meetings was:

Performance results
Customer service metrics results
Small items
Team building exercise
Main theme

Examples of main themes can be found in parts one and three of this series, and examples of teaming building exercises can be found in part two.

I continue to use structured agendas even in very small meetings to ensure that the continuity for one week / month to the next.

Minute Meetings where possible. Keeping a record of decisions, and things that are to be followed up on is essential if meetings are to become more than a group of people talking. Minutes hold people accountable because they do not rely on the memories of participants.

I believe meetings are important, and that good meetings are a sign of a healthy culture. I also believe you get out of meetings what you put into them – and that does not mean a fancy PowerPoint deck. Just because meetings are held does not mean that they are useful or even needed. Meetings are expensive and time consuming. To make them work, and for them to be relevant, takes effort and energy. It also takes commitment from all involved.

Without that, meetings are all talk.

Tags agenda, all hands meetings, Amazon, Jeff Bazos, minutes, presentations, team building, townhall meetings, zoom

Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Staff Meeting Resources

I know…

May 5, 2020 //

batman-4946610_640

I know this is difficult
Because it is difficult for me too.

I know you are scared
Because we are all scared.

I know you are tired
Because everything is harder.

I know you are frustrated
Because what should be simple is fiendishly complex.

I know you are wanting this to end
Because the end is not in sight.

I know you want to get back to normal
Because normal was awesome.

I know you are glad to be busy
Because the alternative sucks far worse.

I know you value your teams
Because we all feel the same way.

I know we can do this
Because we kick ass on a daily basis.

Written as the introduction to a staff meeting.

Tags COVID 19, meetings, Scared, staff meetings, team building, teams, teamwork

Categories COVID19, Leadership, Management, Staff Meeting Resources, Veterinary

Movie Review: The Founder

February 10, 2018 //

founder
I have been reviewing books for a number of years now; however, movies have always been my passion and on occasion I have used movies in staff meetings for the accessibility of the message, and for more personal management lessons. I decided that it was time to share some of these. Please note that this review does contain spoilers for the movie and is more of a reference for interesting scenes and themes.

The Founder is the true story of The McDonald Brothers, who created the first McDonald’s Burger Restaurant, and Ray Croc who saw the potential in what the McDonald Brothers had created and turned it into the franchise and behemoth that we know today. Starring Michael Keaton, as Ray Croc, The Founder is certainly a cautionary tail about choosing your business partners, but it is also a story about realizing potential, and understanding your business and your customers.

The movie starts by following Ray Croc as an ice cream mixer sales man to bad drive in restaurants. While it is obvious that he is an archetypal slimy sales man, the patter he uses is surprisingly modern and essentially comes down to “build it and they will come.”
When he comes across the McDonald Brothers’ restaurant, it is different from any that the traveling salesman has come across in the past: Bulk sales of three items, no plates or utensils, and the food is received in 30 seconds rather than 30 minutes.

While the story of how the brothers reached this point is interesting on many levels, the 20-minute mark is of particular note. The McDonald Brothers take their staff to a tennis court, lay out their new kitchen design in chalk, and have the staff act out the “speedy system” that will allow them to make burgers like nobody else. What is most interesting about this sequence is the McDonald Brothers attention to detail and choreography of how their staff moves. They recognize that they are creating a system and that it has to be right or it will not work at all – even if that mean them redesigning the kitchen multiple times.

At the 50-minute mark the discussion of franchising, and the potential for a drop in standards, is examined in detail. This in turn leads to the realization that franchise owners should be sales people who are wholly vested in the venture, and looking for an opportunity, rather than just investors looking to make money anyway they can. Again, this plays into a central theme of the movie – chose who you go into business with wisely.

One hour and 18 minutes marks the real revelation of the McDonald’s story. That the McDonald’s franchise is not in the burger business at all, but actually in the real-estate business. Rent provides steady revenue and it is capital that fuels expansion.
Things start to go seriously wrong for the McDonald Brothers at the one hour and 29-minute mark with the breaking of their contract with Ray Croc and how Ray Croc sees business. A significant take away from the movie is that the McDonald Brothers and the Ray Croc have fundamentally different views on business, what a business should be to the community, and how a business person behaves.

It is certainly a cautionary tale.

While it would be a mistake to paint Ray Croc as a mustache twirling villain, his ethical standards are dubious at best. Re-watching the movie, with the benefit of knowing what happens, it is interesting to note all the places where the McDonald Brothers treat Ray Croc less as a partner and more as an employee. They frustrate his attempts to monetize the franchise, and are unbending in their standards even if that creates a significant impediment to the creation of a viable business. One can certainly see the position that Ray Croc finds himself in, and while his solution is mean and dishonest, it is not one of his making. Unlike most business stories where the good guy visionary’s do battle against the dark hearted managers, “The Founder” is more a tale of restrictive managers with a good idea and a visionary with dubious morals.

A thoughtful viewing of “The Founder” should provide pause for anyone going into a partnership, and it should also serve as a cautionary tale of the value of communication in a business, the miracle of systems, and the power of vision.

Tags bad behavior, fastfood, franchise, mcdonalds, partnerships, restaurant, Visionary, vison

Categories Business, Customer Service, Management, Movies, Staff Meeting Resources

Staff Meeting Resources Part Three: Communication Tools

May 29, 2017 //

I’ve been holding staff meetings in veterinary hospitals for 10 years.

That is a lot of monthly staff meetings.

It occurred to me perhaps others could use some of this information for their own meetings in the same way that I used this information from where ever I stole it from.

I’m envisioning this being an ongoing resource for those who have to come up with topics for discussion or team building.

You can find Part One on Customer Service here and you can find Part Two on Team Building Activities here. Part Zero, on general meeting structure and etiquette, can be found here.

I have removed a lot of the hospital specific information and so please feel free to add, rearrange, and generally change the information to suit your practice, or business. I’m going to try and keep similar subjects together. This week we are looking at communication tools. There are a lot of pictures here which are either royalty free (from Pexels.com) or I have created so you are welcome to use all of them. If you do end up using some of this I’d love to see your slide decks, pictures, or presentations.

ABCDE

We do a stressful job.

We, hopefully, try to keep the drama to a minimum.

We don’t always succeed.

When dealing with other people it often makes sense to question ourselves to help resolve an issue. If we intellectualize our emotional interactions it can help change behavior, and explain the connections between our actions and their consequences.

This system is based on Albert Ellis Cognitive Behavioral Therapy model, but it can be adapted to everyday interactions and is particularly useful for those who have a habit of repeating the same behaviors again and again.

ABC

A = An Activating Event. Something happens. It could be something another person says. It could be something that happens that to you:

It could be your spilt coffee,
or someone ran their car into the back of yours,
or your boss told you off for something that was not your fault.

These are all “Activating Events.” Things that are not in your control.

B = Beliefs about those events. When something happens to you, you have a belief about that event:

“I’m so clumsy and stupid I’m always spilling things,”
“That person who ran into the back of me can’t drive, or certainly should not be allowed to,”
“My boss is a jerk, I’ll show him, let’s see how he likes it when I go slow, and don’t talk to him unless I have to.”

C = Consequences of those beliefs. Having those beliefs leads to consequences:

A spilt coffee leads to questioning your ability to do anything, this makes you nervous when handling physical tasks, which in turn makes it more likely that you will spill or drop things.
You leap out of your car and immediately berate the person whose car just ran into yours, making sure that the person understands just how angry you are and how it is all their fault and that they can’t drive and should have their license taken away.
Your boss becomes exasperated with you as the quality, and particularly the speed, of your work deteriorates.

Consequences lead to more activating events that become self-perpetuating:

You stop doing any physical task with breakables or liquids.
When the police arrive you are placed in handcuffs for being disruptive and out of control.
You receive a written warning for insubordination, not being a team player, and having a bad attitude.

And in turn you have similar beliefs out these “Activating Events:”

“I’m so stupid and clumsy I can’t do anything, nobody trusts me and nobody should.”
“That guy and his crazy driving got me arrested, I’m going to get him.”
“What jerk my boss is, I’ll show him, I’m calling in sick tomorrow because I know they will be really shorthanded without me.”

abc

Activating events and the beliefs we have about those events lead to consequences, which in turn lead to more activating events which we have beliefs about which lead to more consequences.

abcabc

So how do we break this cycle?

It is important to understand that our beliefs about activating events are all in our head. They are what we think about the activating event, but they are not necessarily correct. Those beliefs that lead to consequences are really not connected to those activating events. We make those connections.

So when an activating event happens, we need to “D”ispute the belief we have about it if those beliefs lead to bad consequences, or consequences that get in the way of our happiness, career and general well-being.

abcd

By disputing those beliefs we gain new “E”xperiences. This in turn will lead to positive activating events which can re-enforce our new beliefs.

abcde

Our beliefs about activating events are a prism through which we see the world. We choose how to experience things. It is helpful to imagine a wall between activating events and beliefs. And it is our beliefs that act as a filter which leads to the consequences we want. We are responsible for our own experiences, and if we want to change those experiences we need to look at our beliefs about activating events.

[It is useful at this point to play out scenarios that staff members may have experienced, or that you all have experienced, and see how they fit into this model.]

Making your Job Easier – First impressions.

[This is very much a discussion based item. I am giving my opinions and how I would use them in this exercise. You may have different opinions and so may your staff. The point is to get people to understand that first impressions matter and that although it may not be right to base a relationship on first impressions, people do it all the time because of a lack of there data. If we can think about appearance and how others will interpret it we can at least have a discussion about presentation issues.]

First impressions matter.

They matter because you make decisions about other people and other people make decisions about you. Now we can control whether we act on those decisions to a certain extent, but we have no control over how others view and act on their first impressions.

I believe that the better a first impression you can make the easier your job becomes. Your first impression is a tool that you can use before any other and it takes minimal effort.

Who is this man? What are our first impressions of him? Is he at home? In his office? What kind of job does he do? How professional is he? Would we be happy going up and talking to him? What would we think if he talked to us?

What I take away from this picture:

Professional in a casual field (shirt, neat hair, type of laptop.)
Working away from his office (cell phone visible, laptop, and no cables to either).
Concentrating and busy, but seems approachable.

Who is this man? What are our first impressions of him? How does he compare to the previous photo?

What I take away from this picture:

Stressed!
Could also work in a casual field but difficult to tell if he is working or not (dress, stickers on laptop – note it’s the same laptop.)
Obviously in a coffee shop, but laptop is plugged in which seems to suggest given his demeanor that he does not want to be there as he has had to charge his computer.
Unapproachable.

These two individuals could be dealing with the same issue, in fact they could be communicating with each other. But from first impressions they are very different while essentially doing the same things and they could even be from the same company in very similar circumstances.

pexels-photo