As detailed in this New York Times set of infographics:
Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to kill thousands, destroy the Twin Towers, harm the Pentagon, and — most importantly — completely change what the world pays attention to and how everyone lives their lives.
Monetary cost to the US so far: $3.3 trillion. That forced one of the most powerful nations in the world to invest about $7 million for every dollar Al Qaeda invested in planning and executing the attacks. That’s one hell of an ROI.
Of course, we’re talking evil here. We should never forget what has been done to us and the toll it had on our nation, our lives and our souls.
But we can also flop the lessons learned. Turn evil power into good power.
In the world of today’s business: The small and nimble can force the powerful and mighty to completely change how they approach planning, executing, treating their workforce, satisfying their customers. The small, fast and nimble can win the noble war of doing more good for more customers and more employees than those businesses currently in power.
(Full Disclosure: Headline applies to all of us…Including us here at Hacking Work…So it’s always important to seek out diverse views on any subject, and then make up your own mind.)
Information Week recently claimed, “Millennials Aren’t The Little Devils IT Imagines: Research suggests 20-somethings think highly of IT organizations and don’t flout IT conventions as often as some of us might expect.”
They cite new research by GigaOM Pro and IT support vendor Bomgar — (Warning: Go back to our headline, then look at what Bomgar does) — that suggests the Millennials have more respect for the IT organization than most of us give them credit for.
They cited that while about 80% of IT managers think Millennials’ tech expectations are very different than what they provide (…We agree!…), and up to one-third disregard corporate policies (…We found it to between one-third to two-thirds, when including all workers of all ages, an including all types of workarounds…) — yet only 10 out of 400 Millennials described their actions this way.
Duh!!!!
Does a fish describe being in water as being “different” or swimming in his own way as “disregarding Neptune’s policies”????
The data collection and interpretation still assumes a Corporate’s Way/Good, Not Corporate’s Way/Bad way of thinking.
Corporate CIOs: Your Ass is Still Grass
How about asking Millennials something like “Since childhood, is it normal and acceptable and good for you, when using any tech device, to quickly work around it if the device/system didn’t give you what you wanted immediately?”
They’d respond: “Duh. Of course. Workarounds are not ‘different.’ That’s just what we do. Whatever Corporate supplies us with will always be just a starting point. Then we take it from there.”
Also: Doesn’t it defy both logic and common sense to find that 80% of a group of people have different expectations from you than what you’re supplying…And then conclude that all is A-OK…No problems? There’s a lot more benevolent hacking going on out there than is captured by any IT vendor’s surveys!
Think long and hard about which lens you use when interpreting Millennials views and behaviors. Which lens you use could be the difference between a very engaged workforce and a very disengaged workforce.
The aptly named Hardlywork.in displays your Facebook newsfeed as a spreadsheet for the ultimate in clandestine slacking.
Just authorize hardlywork.in to access your Facebook account. It will a generate a fake Microsoft Excel document that lives in your browser, with each row corresponding to newsfeed post, and columns for notes, comments, and more.
Hacker: Cat Jary, Alexander Music School, Granada, España
Inspiration: Picked up a copy of Hacking Work and was reenergized to keep fighting the good fight.
Situation: Cat is a classical cellist from London, and one of the founders of a popular music festival in a small mountainous, rural, agricultural zone of Spain: Music in the Mountains, or, in Spanish, Música en las Montañas.
The Goal: To fund restoration projects of the mountains themselves, fresh water streams, and for a way of life in the region. To date, local musicians and hundreds of others from around the globe, such as the Robinson College Choir from Cambridge, have performed in the yearly festival.
Poor and Corrupt Leaders Deserved to Be Hacked! Says Cat: “The local town promised funding, but most often it never materialized — even after concerts were performed. Recently the town has started winning prizes for this project, but the local mayoress took credit for all the work, while pocketing the profits and funding for other purposes. As with many poor leaders, her people are terrified and dare not speak out against her, it goes badly for their families afterwards.”
“I have dedicated my life, my money, and my musical experience to all this, and many of my pupils, colleagues and friends have have also given very generously of their time, money and expertise. The only way to right the wrongs are to hack around local policies and procedures, and bring this to the attention of higher authorities. A group of writers and musicians in Granada are starting a petition which will go world-wide, and is a cry for justice for the mountain villagers.”
“Twenty years ago I hacked around my corrupt bosses who were controlling a youth orchestra, and the result was they all got sacked and I got promoted. The orchestra was delighted. That was scary, but succeeded.”
“Thanks again for Hacking Work: The principles of hacking and the inspiring examples, have helped me have the courage to keep on hacking when the cause is just.”
The Benrath Senior Center in Düsseldorf faced a challenging problem with their Alzheimer’s and Dementia patients: lost in their memories, they sometimes get disoriented, and wander off. This can have serious consequences…they can get hurt or worse. So the most common solution is to aggressively confront the reality of the situation, which usually involves quickly catching and then locking up the patients. Which just feels cruel. But what else are you supposed to do if you want to keep them safe?
The Benrath Center found another way. They built a bus stop. A bus stop to nowhere. There was no bus, only a bench and a sign.
Shortly after, a patient had an episode, and no one tried to stop her and lock her up. They just let her let her walk out and sit at the bus stop. A nurse came out to wait with her. No conflict. No forcing back. Just hangin’. Eventually, the patient forgot why she was there, and the nurse simply said “Let’s go back in.” Now, the nurses even use the bus stop intentionally, taking the patients there to sit until their episode passes.
The strategy is simple: Why not allow that other world — wherever the Alzheimer’s patient is running off to — to be true, for just a beat… and then lead them back to the real situation. This approach is now being implemented throughout the institution. For example, one patient was a baker before he came down with Alzheimer’s. In the Center, he kept wanting to get up at 2am to start baking. Previously, they used to always correct his “bad” behavior and force him back into bed. Now, they just let him get up and bake, and he’s much happier and the Center is getting great baked goods!
The Big So What:
What’s This Got to Do With How Leaders Lead Others?
Everything.
photo: oddee.com
Everyone in every workplace is going change. Often requiring deeply personal changes. And the normal human tendency is to avoid embracing change until it’s absolutely necessarily. (e.g., The Kübler-Ross Model from Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 book, On Death and Dying: The Five Stages of Grief: 1. Denial, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression, 5. Acceptance) People are going to stay in the first four stages for as long as they can, or until someone creates a “bus stop” where they can process things faster and move on to Acceptance.
Mostly because they have no other choice, leaders are forcing massive amounts of change on everyone in their company, yet hardly any leaders are building bus stops. The manta is “The bus is leaving. Get on the bus or get thrown under it. Now. That’s your only choice.”
Maybe a responsible leader’s role needs to be different. Maybe it’s building better transitions into the new way of being. Maybe it’s about building better bus stops, and not just forcing the buses to run morebetterfaster. Maybe.
Bad-Ass Hack: Evaluate your manager, and make him/her responsible for YOUR productivity.
photo: under30CEO.com
What Makes It Bad-Ass: Tracking your managers’ productivity — and documenting how they do/do not support your efforts — takes the traditional power structure and turns it on its head. The more your coworkers pitch in on doing this, anonymously or otherwise, the more weight your analysis will have. Your manager will be on the hook to HIS boss AND to you, which is how it should be in the first place. The result? You get to be more successful and the company as a whole benefits.
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Managers who walk over their employees are under a mistaken impression that they are supposed to be serviced, when in fact they’re supposed to be helping those employees be more productive. Fixing this misunderstanding helps the company succeed.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: Managers with Napoleon complexes really don’t like being held accountable for their laziness, and will probably be really pissed off. Be careful; don’t get yourself fired.
Getting Started: 1. Create a wiki list associated with your department or team goals and/or activities. List some useful metrics, like dollars saved by your manager’s department, and track them carefully, Key will be that the data must be able to be validated by your manager’s boss. 2. Circulate the page among your coworkers, so, as a team, you’re all documenting complaints and anything that will help the team improve. Keep working on the list as a team until you feel you have enough data to show specific areas that need improvement. 3. Now it’s time ingratiate yourself with your manager. Share the wiki list with him or her and explain how concerned you are that his/her team is getting their due credit or support. (Reverse psychology: You’re really tracking his/her report card and about to turn it in to the Big Boss…But by first inviting him/her to participate, you’re giving your boss a chance to improve on those metrics first.) It’s only fair to give them a chance to address the complaints, right? 4. If your manager does participate, you all have a powerful tool with which to present to the Powers That Be to get more credit or support or change for your team. If your manager chooses not to participate… Oh, well…Then it’s either time to take it directly to his/her boss, or, failing all that: you now have ample evidence that it’s probably time for a new job.
• • • • • • • • • • 12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO COMPLETELY CHANGE HOW WE ALL WORK
image: modis.com
1. Seek two mentors: One twice your age, one half your age.
Technology is changing unbelievably rapidly. Each generation has wildly different tech experiences even within the generation. But tech isn’t the reason. It’s what that’s doing to create wildly different attitudes about personal productivity. With each new tech NextGen, each segment within the population is becoming more bold and cocky about asking for what they need to be their best. (Positive things!) Learn from them. Also, with age comes some wisdom. Do seek out the aging sages in and around you. They will temper that cockiness with ground truths that do not change over a lifetime
2. Question your leaders, often: “Explain to me again how you’re adding value in how my time and energy are being used?”
3. Question yourself, often. “Am I changing enough to demonstrate that I respect and trust people? How much value do I place on other people’s time.” Time and attention are today’s most precious assets that can never be replaced. Most people in today’s knowledge and service economy get their job done by using a portion of someone else’s life. How well do you do at that? Are you mindful, concerned and respectful about how you use their life to get your work done?
4. Get your fingernails dirty, often: Experience your company’s systems, tools, and processes from the user’s perspective. A guaranteed eye-opener! Our rules, tools and infrastructure are becoming more bossy than our bosses. Today’s infrastructures drive everything. Look at what you are handing off to people to use from their perspective. Change the rules, tools and procedures based on what you learned. And if you’re not empowered to change them, hack them… benevolently, of course.
5. Share Open Source, social media and crowdsourcing measures, tools and philosophies with one main goal: Changing the conversation. Before actual change, usually comes mindset change. And the key driver of mindset change is changing what we all talk about. If everyone starts having conversations like “why isn’t it as easy to get my work done here as it is at home, when I get to use my own smart device, when I use the cloud more freely?,” etc. Change the conversation to “How easy is it for me to do great work?” That one conversation will change everything!
(Here’s one conversation starter: The SimplerWork Index. Download it. Share it. Change the conversation at your company.)
THE NEW WORK CONTRACT
OUR VIEW, FROM THE WORKFORCE TO LEADERS
DEAR LEADER:
A funny thing happened on the way to the revolution.
Your emphasis on productivity and cost-cutting forced us to change how we think about the war for our talent. For that, we thank you! Your ability to stay focused on the bottom line has inspired us.
We had gotten lazy about controlling our own destiny. We figured if we focused on customers and profits, continuously changed and grew, drank the corporate Kool-aid, and did great work — we’d be the masters of our own fate. Boy, are we glad that the 2008-2010 financial crisis woke us from that fairy tale. Wasn’t a fun way to get it, but get it we did.
So we watched what you do. We studied how you constantly push for greater returns on investment to ensure your own future. Based on what we learned, we have rewritten our work contract. You are not effectively managing the assets we provide, and we’re calling you on it.
Decent pay, appropriate benefits, great culture and leadership — all are givens in this contract. Important… but baseline issues. After that, it gets interesting, and personal.
This new covenant between us cuts to the heart of who owns, controls, and sets the rules for productivity. Specifically, how much value you create for us when you organize our work.
It’s pretty simple, really.
More and more, a big piece of the working capital you leverage to get stuff done is ours. You want us to spend our assets — our time, our attention, our ideas, knowledge, passion, energy, and social networks — on work that you think is important. That means, more and more, we’ve got to think and act like investors.
We are students of the marketplace, have learned quickly, and need to audit your efforts: Are you making productive use of our assets? Would an hour invested in a competitor’s firm provide a better return? Are you creating better communities than we can find outside in the networked world?
We were becoming slaves to your infrastructure: That which was supposed to help us now dictates too much of what we can’t get done. The tools we have outside of work are leapfrogging past what we have at work — your love of lingering bureaucracy, legacy technologies and deeply embedded procedures are killing us.
Throw out much of what you thought you knew about creating a “great place to work.” A new work contract is hitting your shores. We call this new covenant Work 2.0. Our relationship with you must return more value on our working capital.
And here’s the thing: Don’t treat us like investors and we’ll hack our work. We’ll join the underground armies of top performers who are bypassing your sacred structures and breaking all sorts of rules just to get their work done. Like them, we’ll take matters into his own hands to increase our own productivity and achieve better results that way.
HACKING BIG BROTHER: Reduce Your Digital Footprint…Now!
Bad-Ass Hack: Workaround Corporate Spying and Bypass Corporate Firewalls. Why should Big Brother have all the control? Why do you have muddle through without access to tools and resources you need? Why should you tolerate them spying on you? If you need access to YouTube or social media or freeware email and messaging services, you should have it! If you don’t want The Man spying on your every keystroke, you should be able to bypass that!
What Makes This Hack Bad-Ass: What can be more bad-ass than working around, bypassing and ignoring the very things that were designed to keep you in line?!
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Ooooooo, this blasphemy. Anarchy. Breaking the rules must be bad for business, right? Quite the opposite! While there are always some trouble-makers in most any crowd (…people will be people, right?), the vast majority of the workforce want to do their best for the company and for their customers. But because their employers put in so many safeguards to protect against the actions of the few baddies, the good people have way too many barriers placed in front of them. Risk-aversion is killing business’s ability to get stuff done, to be productive and efficient, to be great.
This bad-ass hack is fantastic for business’s ass! It frees good people to do great stuff.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: 1) Never share information with anyone who wasn’t authorized to have it, *especially* when jumping the firewall, 2) Never hack selfishly. 3) Never hack for any of the seven deadly sins. (No porn, no greed or hoarding, no revenge or wrath, no lack of diligence or getting out of virtuous work, no enhancing your own vanity.) 4) Do no harm. Don’t jump firewalls or surf banned sites in ways that will harm anyone else.
But how can you get around Big Brother? Here’s how…
Getting Started: 1. Go here.Follow the instructions to download and install Ubuntu on a USB stick. 2. Go here.Follow the instructions to set up a VPN account. 3. Boot your USB stick onto your laptop or workstation and follow these instructions, to configure VPN connection for Ipredator.
What This Does: Accessing the internet through the VPN encrypts all your internet usage! Running your workstation or laptop with this configuration on your USB stick (with the USB stick plugged in) means everything you do is stored in “virtual space” on the hard drive. Do anything you want online with that USB stick installed and Big Brother will never “see” what you’re up to. Simply unplug the USB stick and reboot your machine… The VPN on that stick encrypts all your internet traffic, and the reboot drops all the data off your machine. Cool, huh?
Alternatively, you can try this, which accomplishes the same thing, but is a little slower.
For more “how to” and “how does this work?” information and advice, go here.
Voila! No more Big Brother! Almost as good as throwing a sledgehammer through a big screen! (To psych up for this hack, check out Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad above. When 1984 [or, now 2011] won’t be like 1984.)
* Obligatory Disclaimer: There is no magic bullet, and your boss may have done something clever we hadn’t thought of here. Be careful out there!
• • • • • • • • • • 12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
We all need heroes. During October 2010, we got many. On Oct 13, the entire world cheered! After more than two months entombed half a mile beneath the Chilean desert, the last of 33 trapped miners was pulled to safety. Not only were the 33 hailed as heroes, so were the hundreds of individuals and firms from around the world you united to save them. Amazing story that many of us will remember forever!
At the time, the entire world was focused on all the ways those behind-the-scenes heroes help. From oil-drillers lending their expertise to how to go get them, to manufacturers of the capsule that brought them out, to iPods sent down fully loaded with Elvis and lots more…even to the psychologists helping them deal with the effects of long-term entrapment. NASA was even called it for its experience in helping crew members deal with long periods of isolation while in outer space.
At least those were the official stories.
Later, after the men were saved, we learned how those official strategies and tools were hacked.
Drugs were smuggled down to them in letters from wives, girlfriends (sometimes both), and friends.
Porn was also smuggled down to them because officials were not dealing with their “greatest need” after air, food and water.
Yes, the official channels of tools, support, discipline and structure were absolutely necessary.
But so were the underground channels…the hacks. Those 33 men made sure to workaround the system to get their needs met.
Maybe there’s something we can all learn from these heroes?
It would have huge signs in the window, GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.
Want to challenge that?
Fine.
illus: cs.cmu.edu
How much would you… (not your boss or your company…you…) pay for all the technology you’re forced to use? (Remember that you can get by with an iPhone or Android phone, lots of free or cheap apps, and a few more integrated services that can all now go through the Cloud.)
How much would you pay for the flow chart that specified who does what in your current work process as well as the gatekeepers to enforce it? (Keeping in mind that you can crowdsource most any of that…for free, or close to it.)
How much would you pay for all that strategic thinking inside the current 2011 company plan to be “boundaryless and innovative, while at the same time cutting costs by seven thousand percent”? (Considering that most strategic plans are overwhelmingly about cutting costs, protecting the company’s ass, and low on TRUE innovation and empowerment.)
That’s what we thought.
If the design of work were a business, it would have gone out of business decades ago.
Simple, to the point. Get your head into the clouds! (Your mindset, your attitudes about change, about risk-taking, about taking charge of your career and your work…)
When Business Week wrote this great article, The Power of the Cloud, they were writing from an entrepreneur’s perspective. “World-class business technology used to require millions of dollars and months of installation. Now all you need is a couple of days and an Amazon gift card.”
The opening diagram that accompanies that description is a comparison of a tech startup in 1999 and in 2011. Entrepreneurship and the Cloud: Play it again, Sam; I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
But, oh how the biz world is still missing the point! The cloud is not just a boon to startups…It’s a kick-ass jump-start for any benevolent hack inside any company!
Corporate IT still making you jump through hoops to their tune? To the Cloud! HR or Accounting or Logistics still forcing you to do things their ways? To the Cloud!
When we did the early research for Hacking Work, we found that the number one hack was to jump over Corporate’s firewall, doing your work “out there,” then bringing it back “inside.”
With the explosion of the Cloud, that’s just getting easier and easier!
Hack away, hack away, hack away, all.
Up, up in the clouds!
We’ve all heard that tired parental outburst: “Eat your parsnips. People in India are going to bed hungry.” And many of us had an equally lame retort: “Then why don’t you send them what’s on my plate.”
Although their approach might have lacked meaning for many of us, our parents’ message is worth remembering: “Be thankful for what you’ve got. Others are less fortunate than you.”
This message is particularly poignant when we compare the current woes of our world. Thousands dying of a tsunami in Japan vs. one U.S. state stripping the rights of public workers to collective bargaining. Radiation tainting food supplies vs. the price of fuel raising the prices of fresh fruit. Private citizens in Egypt encircling a museum to protect its ancient national treasures during an overthrow of its government vs. private citizens encircling state capitals to get more charter schools. And, of course, not being able to get a wifi connection when you realllllly need it, or having to walk more than three blocks for a latte is horrifying, right?
Don’t get me wrong. All woes, big and little, complex and simple, deserve meaningful solutions. And heaven knows, money and education, healthcare and more are super crucial issues.
But as I travel the world consulting on corporate change, I hear howls and groans focused on wasteful meetings, lousy managers, or being thrown into [company name here] jail for standing up for yourself in front of senior execs.
C’mon. Grow a pair. Deal with it and move on.
Compared to the real woes of the world, the majority of workplace woes should be hacked without any hesitation at all. Just do it. Period.
Hack the shit out of corporate stupidity, NOW!, so you have the energy and passion and time left for real woes, that are even more deserving of your attention.
CAREER MANAGEMENT: Shove slackers and others overboard…now!
Bad-Ass Hack: Get your peers fired. We all have to work with douchebags at some point. If we could ensure that they got shit-canned, everyone’s life would be sooooo much better.
illus: art.vassar.edu
To be clear, we’re not advocating malicious actions against others, or violating your own ethics. We’re talking about the fact that all slackers and other “bad apples” are pulling you and everyone else down, and yet most companies and managers refuse to do anything about it. Time for you to step in with very appropriate actions for the situation!
What Makes This Hack Bad-Ass: You work hard, and they’re making you work harder. Getting them fired gives them an opportunity to improve themselves — somewhere else.
How It Could Save Business’s Ass: Bureaucracies have a hard enough time succeeding as it is without having to put up with human wastes of space. Sadly, HR has few means for getting rid of them unless they’re axe-murderers or worse. In many ways, these bad seeds keep HR in business… creating all sorts of rules and procedures and boundaries and checklists that have to be enforced and forced on all of us because the slackers and cheaters remain un-fireable.
This hack saves business’s ass by ensuring that more of the best and brightest stay instead of getting frustrated and shackled by stupid rules designed for the bad apples…and by ensuring that the laggards who are pulling all of us down get booted.
Potential Downsides to Avoid: 1) You probably won’t be going to heaven if you inappropriately get people fired, 2) If you get caught, bad things can happen to you. 3) making enemies is never good.
So how to shove the slackers overboard without encountering those downsides? Here’s how…
Getting Started: 1. Figure out who you just can’t keep working with. 2. Determine what metrics would make a really solid case for them getting the boot. Good examples are: Numbers of reports written, lines of code developed, customers obtained, hours spent in the office, numbers of donuts eaten — whatever it is that your bosses will find compelling. This is key: metrics that your bosses care about! You may have other compelling (and extremely valid) reasons for booting them off your team…But what keeps this hack good and not evil is that you’re focusing management’s attention on what the company cares about. 3. Make a graph that you post anonymously, with no labels indicating what the chart is about and definitely WITHOUT the offender’s name on it, and post their numbers every day. Slowly, on the sly, explain what the unlabeled chart means to those on your team — people you trust and who have similar views of slackers. Over time, everyone in the office *except* the target will watch the chart, chuckling as the end drawns nigh. Eventually, word will make its way up the food chain to your boss. That boss will be compelled to take action, nobody will have to point any fingers, and the office as a whole will breathe a little easier.
We have seen this hack work again and again. Sometimes it’s to get a slacker fired. In one example, a team posted on a white board all the local stores and eateries where the corporate credit card (which they were forced to use) was NOT accepted. No one said anything for months as the list grew longer and longer. And the boss passed this whiteboard every day. Eventually, the boss figured out that it was time to address the situation. Other credit cards were finally permitted for corporate expenses.
Go forth: Manage your career. Get slackers fired.
It’s good for business, it’s good for your team, it’s good for your customers.
• • • • • • • • • • 12 Bad-Ass Hacks: We’re publishing one-a-month throughout 2011. Got examples of Bad-Ass Hacks? Please tell us about them. We’d love to post yours!
Safe Zone Hack from Steve: I’ve just finished your book “Hacking Work”. I absolutely agree with the need for it, and was overjoyed to see that others see this need besides myself! I’ve been working in SQA and business analysis for 13 years, and have pushed for this entire time, thinking I was alone.
officepolitics.com
The problems we need to hack around are cause by the fears of extremely egotistical people (senior executives) that they will be less important if they admitted what needs to be fixed. They will sacrifice absolutely anything to maintain their illusions, including their company.
I have a perfect example of this sort of self-destructive behavior…
Several years ago I was hired as a manager on a project critical to the companies’ survival. I received carte blanche from the parent company CIO to make all changes needed. My user-centered workarounds: I immediately redesigned all tools for users, removed penalties for reporting problems, instituted penalties for NOT reporting them, restructured the team, and built custom processes to identify and eliminate the sources of issues. Performance improvements were 300% within 2 months, documented annual ROI was solidly 7 figures and everyone on the project loved the new working arrangements.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: However, I later learned the CIO was angry because someone else came up with successful ideas. He reversed my changes, created new draconian reporting rules to cut performance, and doubled our workload twice. After still meeting deadlines, he laid off the entire group. Major clients left because their needs weren’t met, and company morale dropped to nearly zero because of this one person’s ego. This example is also only one of many.
The Root Cause Reason Behind Our Need to Hack: The only way I see this issue changing is to remove the executives as a hindrance. Since they refuse to choose to change, they need to either be forced to change or removed. By force, I don’t mean logically. I mean they do it, or their ego is shattered or they get fired. This means putting in corporate controls that allows workers to control the fate of executives, attaching negative consequences to executives for poor company performance (i.e. lead anchor and gold staircase, no gold parachute). Either that, or start new companies using these new principles that are vastly more efficient. Then push the dinosaur companies into extinction one by one until they either change or completely or get replaced by the new generation.
I’d prefer a more cooperative way of doing things, but the global economy isn’t waiting for us to change. Besides, you can’t have a logical discussion with irrational people, and the people making decisions usually fall into that category.
Safe Zone Hack by Alan: A free book goes to Alan Hill for this two-part post on Hacking Your Jerk Boss. Congrats!
This hack requires the following: Courage: Cold Sweat Difficulty: Master Yield: Beyond eternal bliss, Victory
(In case you’re wondering, Alan is following Bill’s format for his Courage Meter, an interviewing and reporting device he employed in his book, Simplicity Survival Handbook)
bp.blogspot
Part 1: How I Learned to Stop Fighting the System In this link to his own blog post, Alan tells the story of how a US Army buddy, Norma, taught him to stand on principles, and move on if you need to…but that it’s useless to argue with someone who’s just enforcing the bureaucracies rules. Until that time, he was just unnecessarily pounding his head into a wall that was never going to budge.
Part 2: Emotional Leverage In another link to his own blog post, Alan refers to Norma’s arch-nemisis, Sergeant First Class Ojheda, and that he got what he deserved — a transfer away from those he was bullying. Alan’s key lesson: Hack workarounds, but never become one of the bullies…they’ll get theirs, eventually.
With all the bad news about hacking these days, isn’t it nice to know that there are amazing people out there doing amazing things for people in need?
That’s the idea behind Random Hacks of Kindness, a global collaborative of techies that bring the brightest hackers together to volunteer their time to solve real-world problems. Techies from NASA, the World Bank, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and more work on solutions such as Carrot, a resource management tool that helps NGOs coordinate their efforts during natural disasters…and like I’m OK!, an app that can be pre-loaded into one’s mobile phone and sends out messages to pre-defined lists if you’re ever in one of those disasters.
Hackers helping real people in needs…Now that’s what we’re talkin’ ’bout!
SAFE ZONE Hack by Brigitte: I’m a senior executive at a Paris-based multi-national company, and our culture is entrenched French — meetings systematically start late, run late, have no agendas and rarely produce recaps. So I book 15-minute meetings with people, knowing they’ll never happen that way. And when people don’t show up or can’t manage their time, I either email them, informing what was decided without their participation, or I reschedule at a time and under circumstances that are convenient to me. Voila! People start respecting my time and my initiatives get done faster than many other executives’.
In my role as Mr. Simplicity, I train everyone from admins to senior executives on how to get to the point… (BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front… and… Know, Feel, Do: How to quickly connect w/ people on three levels… Intellectual, Emotional, Action.)
hooverzbiz.com
But the twitter age has hacked even me.
Check out three.sentences.es.
It teaches everyone how treat emails as SMS text messages.
Duh! D’oh! Hacked.
In it Paul Graham tracks the history of hacking of governments, computers, copyrights and more, and then concludes:
“When you read what the founding fathers had to say for themselves, they sound more like hackers. ‘The spirit of resistance to government,’ Jefferson wrote, ‘is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.’
“Imagine an American president saying that today. Like the remarks of an outspoken old grandmother, the sayings of the founding fathers have embarrassed generations of their less confident successors. They remind us where we come from. They remind us that it is the people who break rules that are the source of America’s wealth and power.
“Those in a position to impose rules naturally want them to be obeyed. But be careful what you ask for. You might get it.”
They cite 
Your emphasis on productivity and cost-cutting forced us to change how we think about the war for our talent. For that, we thank you! Your ability to stay focused on the bottom line has inspired us.
We all need heroes. During October 2010, we got many.
When Business Week wrote this great article, 
Although their approach might have lacked meaning for many of us, our parents’ message is worth remembering: “Be thankful for what you’ve got. Others are less fortunate than you.”
