The Purpose of this Blog

The purpose of this blog is to help people successfully adapt to the corporate/organizational/business world within which they may work. After effective adaptation, then individual growth may occur. This growth can take the form of job enrichment, promotions, pay increases, job satisfaction or simply feeling good about contributing.  Whether we work in a hospital, newspaper, service garage, not-for-profit business or the typical (what ever that is) Corporation, there are some axiomatic behaviors that, when effectively applied, will result in positive personal outcomes. And the converse is true! Becoming familiar with your behavior and the expectations of management is something that we all must master, else become slaves to a master.  

This blog is not specifically aimed at taking cheap shots at  management, yet many citings make specific references to mid-level management foibles. For the individual contributor, there are dozens of practical and useful lessons that are contained within the next pages. 

Joining HT as a buyer I truly had  died and gone to heaven, but didn't quite realize it. HT was the darling progressive corporation that was based on an inherent belief in people, and that, if given the proper training and care, people usually will exceed expectations. We had flex time, no dress code and were paid to think. 

Corporate life is a system. It’s a game. We play many roles. We speak a different language. We live in a different world. The intricacies of the corporate organization are a dynamic set of systems, processes and relationships. Many will be touched upon in this blog, some will be obviously glaring omissions and left to the reader to figure out on their own. Corporate “truth” varies from each institution, yet there may be some common threads. 

My dad worked as an office manager for a small mid-western construction company where he worked an 8 hour day, went home for lunch with my mom and made a decent income for our family. He knew his boss personally, knew where he went to church, the type of liquor he liked and visited with him every day at the office. They socialized together, played golf at the local links and enjoyed a classical and traditional Boss/Subordinate type of relationship within a small business context.  

Contrast to that model our working environment where many of us haven’t even met our boss face to face because the organization is “remote,” our interactions with people are via electronic signals (IM, e/vmail, teleconferences, etc.) and our teams are virtual. Our work organizational environment is non-natural and our relationships are more nebulous and protracted. It’s a novelty to have a “F2F” (face to face) staff meeting here at HT!

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that I feel compelled to write this. Now, more than ever, fundamental relationships with people are of utmost importance and our day to day organizational working relationships are tested beyond conventional standards. Early on in my career I created a file where I collected models, learning experiences, papers that I wrote and miscellaneous things that I noticed to be useful. 

One of the tacit assumptions throughout this blog is that most managers are competent and caring individuals. When we discus the axioms, we are referring to such competent managers. As in any distribution, however, if you lined up 100 managers, 10 of them would be bozos and are in the wrong profession. This is something we learned in Statistics 101.

This blog is written from the “American” business perspective, taking into full consideration that cultural variances may alter the applicability of the lessons. Notwithstanding this, however, our “American business model” has permeated the world and we are seeing diverse cultures adopting some of our best and worst practices. To the non-American reader take what is applicable and then leave the rest. 

I have found my years in Corporate America to be very fulfilling, changing jobs about every two years, organizations almost every six months and physical locations on the average of two times per year. It’s been a good ride and if I were to do it all over, there’s only a few things that I would change. Corporate America works. It works well as is attested by the brilliance of our economic social standards. Obviously, it is not a perfect system and I am not familiar with any perfect system anywhere.

There are no guarantees with what you are about to read. Each organization has nuances and behaviors that comprise its own culture; hence, there are neither cookbook answers nor guaranteed counsel contained within. This is my disclaimer! What works in one organization may not work in another. The information contained within, however, should conservatively apply in the range of around 50% at worst, based upon my observations of human behavior, management (sometimes different than “human behavior) behavior and the overall concept of leadership.

From the outset, let’s first focus on the concept of leadership and management, which are two distinct functions, each playing critically and equally important roles within any organization. Being a student of leadership, I am very frustrated with how loosely the term “leadership” is tossed around and, consequently, I have devoted an entire blog chapter to it. Clearly leadership is vital to any organization that is moving forward, yet it is my strong conviction that most individuals do not even have a solid definition for the term!  I have come to define management as the science of administration and organization of social organisms whereas leadership is the art of affecting change.