What do (should) you spend your time doing?

As managers, leaders and professionals, what do you spend the majority of time doing? How do you know if you are truly adding value in your role? How would you assess your effectiveness in contributing towards organizational success? Unfortunately, many of us respond to these questions as follows:

• Attending meetings
• Taking conference calls
• Fighting fires
• Fixing something that is broken
• Trying to figure out what the &#%# is going on! (i.e. running around gathering information so you can ‘deal’ with things)
• Surviving – in other words, all of the above ^
• And in terms of assessing effectiveness – “not sure”

You get my point – we spend an awful lot of time doing things that aren’t adding value in our jobs as leaders. It is a real slippery slope getting sucked into all of these time wasters and often you are in this black hole before you even realize it. So how do we get out of this vicious cycle? The key is to focus on doing things that do add value because you KNOW they add value! Part of being a great manager and leader is thinking and acting as managers and leaders in order to move the needle forward for ourselves, our teams and our organizations. As managers and leaders we should be spending our time focusing on:

1. Talking to our staff – coaching, communicating, supporting, giving direction, providing clarity. This is perhaps the single most important function of a manager and a leader. It opens the channels of communication, engages employees and helps to retain your best talent.

2. Collaborating and breaking down silos – with our managers, in our departments and with managers of other departments. We need to be discussing common organizational challenges and to how to overcome them. Great managers and leaders work across departments to identify common foes and challenges (whether internal or external) and figure out ways to “win.” If you are too focused on “us vs. them” internally and engage in too much finger pointing, you are already creating silos with very high walls that may never come down.

3. Working cross functionally to develop and leverage your talent base – similar to point #2, however this focuses more on taking advantage of your current staff and their skills. For example, I have seen companies whose main service offering was technical resources. Part of the training and development they did with their staff was to develop their project management skills (via PMP certification). However, the staff only focused on technical projects for external clients. The irony is that at the same time, there were many internal/company projects of a non-technical nature that were screaming for project management talent to assist. As managers, these types of discussions need to take place so that managers are working together to identify and leverage these types of resources. It is a win-win-win. (A win for each of the managers of the departments working together in developing and engaging talent and a win for the employees as they get to develop their skillsets further).

4. Managing Change via the PDCA model – (Planning/Doing/Checking/Acting) – as managers and leaders, our role is to ensure we are setting the proper strategic direction for our organizations/departments – planning. In order to ensure the strategic plan is executed effectively, proper measurements, KPI’s and performance indicators need to be identified and aligned with the strategic plan. This needs to be boiled down to the staff level where they are given clear goals, objectives and KPI’s for their individual performance, then they are given the autonomy to execute on these plans – doing. Via departmental meetings and coaching, we need to be analyzing the day to day effect of our staff’s performance against the plan and providing feedback – checking. When adjustments are required or there is variance to the plan, it is our role as managers to make sure strategy and the work execution groups plans are aligned and if not, take improvement action to bring things back on plan/target – act. This simple 4 step model, as part of a formal management system that manages change and supports the basic concepts of continuous improvement methodologies has proven to be highly successful in many organizations.

So as managers and leaders of talent, let’s try and turn this spiral of doom around. Let’s make sure we are focusing on the 4 key elements to add organization (and personal) value in our roles. Feel free to use this as a personal blueprint to help realize your leadership potential and managerial success. As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Diagram by Karn G. Bulsuk (http://www.bulsuk.com)

Perfect Communication

It seems like lately I keep coming back to one of my favourite topics to blog about – communication. Communication(s) is probably one of the biggest challenges facing organizations on a regular basis and depending on who you talk to, it is either the easiest thing (in theory) to fix or the hardest. I find that organizations tend to make communicating with their employees harder than it needs to be. Time and time again, companies seem to hold off on communicating to their employees while waiting for “perfect” communications to be available. What is perfect communication you ask? My personal definition:

Perfect Communication – when organizations wait for all information to be present, known and available to them AND it is vetted through all required layers of management before being shared with employees. Essentially, it is communication that has all the ‘answers’ and ‘what-ifs’ known to the organization with a sanitized version being delivered to your staff.

My experience with this type of communication approach is that it tends to do one of several things to a company:

1) It greatly impairs/reduces decision making capability at all levels

2) It creates trust issues between employees and management and fosters a culture of secrecy

3) It causes employee disengagement/frustration with their supervisors and the leadership team

4) It fuels the rumour mill

5) It ultimately ends up impacting (in the constipated sense) all future communications that management has with its staff.

So why do organizations and leadership teams do this? Do they not think that their employees can handle only knowing part of the picture? Why do we wait for all information to be available before we tell our employees anything? With my latest theme of “your employees are SMART,” this is yet another example of treating smart people as if they were stupid. I firmly believe that leadership teams really need to focus on when is the right time to communicate something to its employees, even if that communication is “we don’t have any updates re. said matter right now but we wanted to let you know.” I am also a big believer in letting your staff know that you don’t know/have all the information but when you get it, you will share it with them. That way, you have communicated several times with your staff and are keeping them in the loop. Whatever you do, don’t wait for “perfect” communication to be available because it never will be. Don’t let the rumour mill take hold or let outside sources communicate with your staff before you do.

By delaying communication, staff will simply hypothesize ( rumour monger) about what really is going on and by the time you actually communicate with them it is too late. The rumour/speculation has become the truth and you face an uphill communication battle. When it comes to communicating with your staff, whether you have a small or large employee population, I subscribe to a simple model:

1) Tell them what you know – focus on the facts, the “known,” etc.

2) Tell them what you don’t know – it is ok to tell your employees when you don’t know something; they will appreciate your honesty and for being forthright.

3) Tell them that you will tell them when you know more.

4) When you know more – TELL THEM.

This way, you have a continuous communication loop and are actually finding more reasons to WANT to communicate with your staff. Communication builds trust, trust leads to retention.

I would love to know your thoughts? Can it be this simple? Do you find waiting for perfect communication makes things worse? As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Smoke Image courtesy of digitalart/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Smoke and Mirrors

The war for talent, employee engagement, attraction, retention, employment branding, recognition – no this isn’t an attempt to booster SEO for my blog. What I have just listed are a few, of the many, “hot topics” facing HR Professionals today. One of the challenges we face is getting our organizational leaders and managers to buy into the importance of these concepts and signing off on initiatives that will move the needle ahead on various HR programs.

There is, however, a more difficult scenario to deal with then the one mentioned above. That is, when you actually do get sign off to proceed with your HR initiatives but there is no true organizational “feeling” or belief behind the sign off. For example, you conduct an organizational employee survey of your employees and then go about developing programs, policies, etc. to help address the gaps discovered. However, there is no true organizational commitment to actually change anything – it is merely an exercise for the leadership team to be able to demonstrate that you “did” something. Essentially, it becomes a game of smoke and mirrors.

To put this in perspective, let’s say a company rolls out a program aimed at improving staff engagement – say, a new “Total Rewards Program,” or they create a new employee feedback program aimed at addressing employee concerns and suggestions. Then, the leadership team sits back, admires their new program/policy and assumes they have “fixed” the issues at hand. Naturally, they are very surprised when employee survey results, turnover rates, etc. indicate otherwise 6-12 months later.
So what is the problem? Well the problem (if you want to call it that) is that your employees aren’t stupid. That is right, I’ll say it again, your employees aren’t stupid. They know when you, as a leadership team, are simply doing something to say you have done something. They know when your new rewards program is simply smoke and mirrors and a glossy brochure. Addressing these key employee “hot buttons” is not a matter of developing programs and policies. It is a matter of changing organizational thinking and culture. That is, as a company, you have to WANT to change your people practices and invest in your employees because you BELIEVE they are your assets – not because that is a trendy thing to say. It is all about your organizational DNA, what you believe in and what ACTION you take as leaders to demonstrate the value of your employees.

I have always said it is better to be honest about your organizational warts and tell your employees when you know you stink at something but that you are working to improve it. Or, if you don’t want to change something, or can’t for some (financial) reason, explain that to your employees. At least you are being honest and they will respect that, but for heaven’s sake, don’t throw a new policy/program at them and tell them you have fixed something when your day to day actions (or lack thereof) show them otherwise. This only serves to increase resentment, disengagement and mistrust of the leadership team. Remember, if you have done your job properly on the recruiting side, odds are you have smart people working for you – they will smell insincerity a mile away and once the trust and respect of your leadership team is eroded, it is very difficult to get that back.

Going forward, if there is an issue or an organizational elephant in the room, say so. Tell your employees what you are committed to changing or not changing. Do not survey employees or ask for opinions if you are not 100% committed to listening and responding to them. Your staff is smart, they know that organizations can’t “give” them everything; however, they do want to be communicated with and respected. You start by having your actions line up with your words – no smoke, no mirrors no sleight of hand; just honest, straight up conversations with employees…..organizational warts and all. What about you? Have you engaged in the act of smoke and mirrors? What has been the result? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Smoke Image courtesy of twobee/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mirror Image courtesy of Just2shutter/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Time for a Change?

When do you know it’s time to start looking for a new job? I am sure many of you ask that question on a regular basis. The other weekend, a friend of mine asked me that very question as well. She was completely fed up with how things were going at her organization. She was tired of the micromanagement, the lack of teamwork, how things were all talk no action, etc. She was bound and determined that by Monday morning she would be applying to several jobs. My immediate advice (because it was solicited) was to advise that looking for/applying to jobs when you are feeling dissatisfied is the WORST time to job hunt. You make emotional and reactionary decisions. You can’t objectively evaluate opportunities because you can convince yourself that just about anything is better than where you are now. Essentially, you end up, many times, putting “lipstick on a pig” to make something else, anything else, look better.
So I advised my friend to wait – be patient. Let the storm pass and then evaluate things. If you find that when you are in a positive frame of mind, and you evaluate your current situation, that things still aren’t what or where you would like them to be, then that is a good time to evaluate other opportunities. This way, there is no pressure or urgency to make a change. You can be objective and in fact, will take a very strong stance in evaluating things. This will also ensure you cover all angles and a decision that is in the best interest of You Inc. is made.

Naturally, my friend asked me, “Ok then Mr. Smarty Pants HR type, how do I truly know it is time to consider making a change?” To that extent, I provided her, and now you, a baker’s dozen list of signs and indicators that it may be time for a change:

1. You find yourself “giving in” on business matters that you normally would stand your ground on
2. You work on placating difficult co-workers in order to make your job easier vs. addressing differences in opinion
3. You find yourself not participating or sharing (even withdrawing) in group meetings/settings
4. You start to watch the clock
5. You work to rule or continue to defer things to another day vs. applying discretionary effort
6. You use email more than you should so as to avoid having personal conversations (see points #2 and #3 above)
7. You find yourself in disagreement or conflict with each and every decision that “Sr. Management” makes
8. You actually use the term “Sr. Management” to explain why decisions are made and/or to describe why something isn’t working
9. When you read business articles about the Top 10 signs of poor company culture or poor leadership, you find yourself going, “check, check, yes, uh-huh.”
10. You utter the phrases, “that is above my pay grade, ” “that is the way it has always been around here” or “some things will never change” on a regular basis
11. People find you less and less approachable as even the smallest things start to set you off – whether it is an email, announcement or organizational change
12. High levels of cynicism, sarcasm and skepticism permeate throughout your interactions with co-workers as you don’t see the point in trying to change, make things matter, or work collaboratively for a greater good.
13. You no longer connect or can identify with your organization and what it is trying to accomplish.

Odds are that if at least four or five of these apply to you, it may be time to do some soul searching and figure out if perhaps a change is in order for you. What do you think? Are there any other signs that are missing? As always I welcome your comments and feedback.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

7 signs of the functionally dysfunctional organization

What exactly is “functionally dysfunctional?” Well, in its simplest terms, and in the business sense, it means that while your organization functions per se; that is, people show up to work, work gets done, people get paid, and things get delivered to clients, there is still something that isn’t working or isn’t ‘right.’ It is that feeling that something is amiss or not quite as it should be. There is an underlying malaise or things that are going on that prevent your company from realizing its potential or at the very least being fully functional. Basically, your company is functioning despite dysfunctionality being imbedded in its DNA.

The overall impact to you and your company is that your organization is simply not moving forward. Perhaps you aren’t growing, or you aren’t retaining your best people. Maybe employee satisfaction levels are low, or customers aren’t happy or perhaps product/service quality is poor. I am not saying that ALL of these things are happening but at least 2 or more of them probably are. The struggle for us as HR Pros is that often we are so immersed in the day to day grind of our roles we often don’t see these leading indicators or signs that something is wrong. In order to help you see the forest from the trees, or at least smell the smoke, here are 7 signs you have a functionally dysfunctional organization:

1. Department wins vs. organization losses – simply put, departments do things that make their individual department look good. It may not be in the best interest of the organization overall, but due to the dysfunctionality imbedded in the organizational DNA, departments do not consider organizational wins. It is every department for itself.
2. Decision making grinds to a halt during the absence of a sr. leader(s) – when all operational decisions require sign off, input, etc. from a specific member(s) of your senior management team, than you probably see this occur in times when these leaders are not present for stretches due to vacation, travel, meetings, etc. In essence, nothing can move forward without their blessing, so in its absence, there is a decision void created.
3. Competing interests / goal conflict – similar to the first point, this may be at a department or individual level. Managers/Directors do not have aligned goals or organizational goals are not cascaded effectively. The result is that people are left to define what is important to THEM and this results in organizational goal conflict. I.e. one department determines quality is most important while another supporting department determines delivery speed is more important – the end result is dysfunctionality.
4. Lack of clear organizational vision/strategy – If you ask your employees what is your organizational mission, vision, values, etc. and you can’t even get a response that is remotely close to what they actually are, than you have a problem. In terms of what you want to be when you grow up (organizationally) this has to be clearly articulated, cascaded throughout the company and led by example. Employees don’t have to recite the mission statement verbatim that is on the wall, but they do need to know what your company stands for and what is important to the organization. When employees give you a mish mash of responses in this area it means you have a dysfunctionality problem.
5. Personal arguments vs. constructive debate – another sign that things are functionally dysfunctional in your organization is that employees do not or cannot constructively discuss/debate work related problems. Everything turns into personal arguments and attacks, which usually manifests itself in HR babysitting (I mean counseling) employees on how to play nice.
6. Lack of clarity around processes and desired outcomes – when employees take any means necessary to get the job done, or whenever a business issue arises, there is never a clear path forward on how it needs to be addressed or even WHO the issue belongs to, than you have a process issue. Each work challenge is treated like it’s the first time the company ever faced it before. Your organization probably has no processes in place on how to function or worse yet; processes are in place but are never followed. In conjunction with this, you may have processes but there are no stated desired outcomes as a result of these processes. In essence, you do something for the sake of doing something.
7. Paralysis by analysis permeates throughout the organization – this is as a result of people being afraid to make decisions. Every little decision gets analyzed to death until father time takes care of the decision because an event beyond the organization’s control takes place. You often see this in companies where the purchase of a $500 piece of equipment is analyzed and debated by 4 or 5 people whose combined salary is about $500,000. Talk about not applying the right amount of rigor to that decision making process! Decision making breaks down and the level of dysfunction increases.

What about you? What have you seen? Any other signs of functionally dysfunctional organizations that I have missed? As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Image courtesy of ChrisGoldNY/Flickr.com

Organizational DNA

I often hear these organizational horror stories about companies with too little or too many policies or processes, or companies with a total lack of leadership and decision-making ability. I also hear of companies with poor quality products/services being produced despite efforts to change. The list of organizational dis-functionality goes on and on. It is not uncommon to hear stories about organizational leaders and their management teams expressing concern about why their communication “program”, or the new “employee recognition program” aren’t having the desired effects that they wanted. Worse yet, for companies that are subject to audit compliance based on their systems, (i.e. ISO) these audits often turn up shortcomings in existing systems.

Companies make adjustments, but at the end of the day, the desired change is either not realized or not sustained – something isn’t working. Often the rationale given for why things haven’t had any “organizational stickiness” covers everything from:

1) The employees don’t understand the new system/program
2) People are unwilling to change
3) “They” need more training
4) The company has grown too quickly
5) We don’t have the right people in the right positions

So why is that? Simple (in terms of explanation) – it is because the organizational change in behaviours and approach that are required to achieve the desired outcomes are not embedded in the organizational DNA!

What I mean is this – if you truly want to deliver a superior product or service and you have determined that being a process driven organization is the way to go, then you must embed that within your organizational DNA. The leadership team and managers must walk and talk process and link performance and desired outcomes back to processes. These processes must become a religion, a driving force for how business is done. They need to be believed, lived and breathed day in day out by the organization and its employees, in effect, becoming part of their DNA.

This is the same principle for the above noted communication and recognition programs. Too often I have seen company’s survey employees and when the surveys tell them that recognition or communication is an issue, the answer is to develop a “program” to fix things. There is no concerted effort on the part of leaders and managers to actually improve daily communication and/or recognition (make it part of their DNA). The answer is to develop and deliver a program, check that off of the “to do” list, and move on to the next thing. Any wonder it doesn’t work?

Whether it is to become process driven or improve communication, it simply can NOT be a check in the box exercise for your company. It is not something you do the bare minimum of so you can achieve a certain status, certification, or survey result. That type of thinking and approach is short term and myopic and it will simply lead to the activity of applying organizational bands aids to something (that isn’t truly embedded organizationally or believed in) that in the end won’t provide the company a desired outcome anyway.

Think of the need to embed things in the organizations’ DNA another way. Let’s say a company feels that a commitment to diversity is the right thing to do and makes sense for its business. So the company goes out and prints a bunch of posters, adds it to their values list and trains managers on “diversity.” At the end of the day, if the senior leaders don’t model the way, talk about diversity and what they see as the desired outcomes, and hold themselves and the company accountable for growing and supporting a diverse workforce, than it has become an exercise in smoke and mirrors. Your employees and the public will know that it isn’t something you truly believe in and it was simply a check in the box exercise so your next recruiting poster could say that you have a diverse workforce.

As an organization, and as HR leaders, your actions have to align with your words. It is all about believing in something and making it part of the organization’s DNA. Whether it is processes or people, ISO 9000 or employee recognition, you have to believe in it and do it for the right reasons. It has to be invested in and sustained and not simply dusted off once a year and given a cursory check. It all needs to be transparent for it to take root. Remember, your employees are watching – if they see it is something the company truly embraces, than they will embrace it. If it is a check in the box exercise, your employees will simply ride the wave until it passes out to sea and then wait for the next fad. Obviously, the desired change will not occur and you will be left asking the questions (again) identified in the first part of this blog post. What about you? What has been your experience organizationally? Do you believe something has to be part of your organizational DNA to have it work? As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Image courtesy of Victor Habbick/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Dealing with Bullying – Why school and work are the same

I have little tolerance for bullies. Whether at work or at my daughter’s school, I simply do not have much tolerance for bullying behaviour. Unfortunately, bullying still occurs far too often at schools and at work, and the parallels are uncanny. Both schools (including school boards) and workplaces have progressed over the past 10 years to developing and implementing various policies around bullying. Schools have anti-bullying campaigns, assemblies and days/weeks devoted to wearing pink in order to bring awareness to and stop bullying. Government departments and workplaces have implemented legislation and policies respectively to address bullying in the workplace. It is common now for many workplaces to have the words bullying captured in their harassment policies. I truly believe that schools and workplaces want to eliminate bullying of all varieties.

I do feel that schools and workplaces have made great strides in dealing with physical bullying. It is overt, tangible, fairly obvious and addressable. That is, if someone physical touches/harms etc. another student/worker, than the school/workplace brings that person into the principal’s office/HR’s office and addresses the physical bullying when it has been reported. They identify how the person’s actions violate the bullying policy and the student is either given detention, suspension or even expelled! The employee is given a verbal and/or written warning and/or even terminated. School boards and courts of law have also shown little tolerance towards proven physical bullying and have supported the schools/workplaces in their decisions in addressing this type of behaviour.

Where I believe a lot of this falls short is the verbal/psychological aspects of bullying. Schools struggle mightily in this regard. As the father of a daughter who experiences verbal bullying at school, it is a constant battle to have this addressed. Responses vary from, “well, if we don’t hear it,” or “the alleged bully denies saying those things,” to “well we can’t act on something there is no proof of.” The same goes for the workplace. Many workplaces simply aren’t equipped to deal with bullying in the workplace. Let’s face it, the bullies are smart. They know what buttons to press, how to act in front of the right people and are quite adept at manipulating situations to make themselves look ‘innocent’ (or they even outright lie).

As HR pros, these are difficult situations to investigate and come to conclusions on. It has been my experience (and feeling) that many people that experience workplace bullying are reluctant to come forward to anyone about it. They simply deal with it in silence and eventually move on to another job/company. (How is that for your employer of choice campaign!?) Worse yet, they end up going on medical leave to deal with depression and anxiety, when at the end of the day, if companies acted more swiftly and strongly, bullying could be dealt with. Now, I am not giving legal advice as I am not qualified to do so; however, I feel that as HR pros if we provide the right framework, work with our managers on appropriate behaviours and how to address those behaviours that don’t align with our company values and policies, we can make great strides in this area. Additionally, I believe that if HR or an investigator conducts a proper investigation into alleged complaints of bullying, than we need to have the fortitude to make tough decisions (even on the balance of probabilities) about the continued employment of certain individuals.  Look at your exit interview data, employee survey data and your HR files. What is the data telling you? What are the subliminal messages in the information? You can then figure out if 1+1 = 2 (i.e. there is a problem) or if you get some other number.

In the same vein, I think our schools need to take an equally strong approach to addressing verbal bullying. I know my daughter is reluctant to come forward to tell the teacher about being bullied as she doesn’t want to be seen as a tattle tale. However, we continue to work with her to make sure she does in fact bring this to the teacher’s attention so that she has a positive school experience and that others who may be being bullied also benefit from her actions. Schools need to be tougher on verbal bullying and shift the burden of proof a bit. If a student(s) keep coming forward about the same person(s) bullying them day over day, perhaps the level of diligence needs to be raised? Keep a watchful eye on alleged offenders. Perhaps even a preventative discussion about what verbal bullying is would be in order? Perhaps during these assemblies and campaigns, we also focus on verbal elements of bullying and how it won’t be accepted – actions need to match words.

Stronger messages must be sent, because let’s face it, children know when they being bullies…and when they are being bullied, much like adults in the workplace do. Schools and workplaces need to come to grips with the fact that bullying can’t always be seen and they must be prepared to take the tough steps to address it. Otherwise, I feel all these wear pink days are simply for show as we really aren’t talking about all elements of bullying. So I am looking for HR pros, managers and educators to raise the level of commitment and response to verbal bullying. Let’s stop accepting gossip, rumour mongering, slander,  and personal attacks in our schools and workplaces.  I know I will continue to fight the fight. What about you? What has been your experience? Do you see the parallels between school and workplace bullying? As always, I welcome your thoughts and feedback.

Image courtesy of Ambro/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It’s My (her) Prerogative

In the words of Bobby Brown, “It’s my prerogative, I can do just what I want.”  (for those of you that grew up in the 80’s try and get that out of your head now).  Or perhaps those are the words of Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo?  Last week I blogged about the Yahoo decision to revoke work at home arrangements and bring everyone back together under the same roof at Yahoo.  My initial goal with this post was to present a balanced approach to this situation and look at both sides of things – that is, the impact to the employees and the business imperative in doing so. After having read numerous opinion pieces about this and many blog posts, I can say that for the short term I have swayed a bit more to the company stance on this one.

Now, I have heard all the arguments such as the impact to parents, the fact that Mayer is copying Google, this will stifle the hiring of talented individuals as Yahoo’s competitors offer work at home arrangements and that work at home employees are in fact highly productive, etc. To those arguments I say:

Re. copying Google – Hard to argue with success
Re. impact to parents – Is the greater impact not having a job?
Re. talent hiring/productivity – Do we really think that this was a knee-jerk reaction by Mayer based on complete subjectivity and that she isn’t aware of the data?”

As I wrote in my last post, there is a lot about this situation we don’t know. (And good on Yahoo for not responding publicly). I am providing opinion based on assumptions that Mayer has communicated the business rationale and an end vision/desired state as a result of these changes. It is incumbent upon Mayer and her leadership team to articulate and lead this change. Yahoo is in a precarious state that requires its leader(s) to make tough (re. unpopular) decisions to move the business forward. Mayer has made the first of these decisions and I would hope her focus is that by doing this she will not only move Yahoo forward, but also eliminate the need to reduce her workforce i.e. layoffs.

I think that China Gorman said it best on her blog post, when commenting on the fact that she too agrees with the data around work at home arrangements and their benefit; however, as she puts it, it is all great “….except when management has lost line of sight into employee productivity. Except when the culture of work and communication has gotten inefficient and lost its discipline and rigor. Except when out of sight truly is out of mind.”

At the end of the day, it is Mayer’s (as CEO) prerogative to do just what she wants. Hopefully she is leading Yahoo through this change and not commanding it. Until we know more, we have to give her the benefit of the doubt that she feels this is the first step in turning Yahoo around in its innovative capabilities. This may only be a short term change as well until such time as the leadership has a better handle on its company capabilities and people strengths.  Despite the outrage, there are worse fates that being asked to come into work in person vs. working at home. Having been on both sides of the position reduction desk before, let me tell you, neither is fun to be a part of, especially when you are the one being “reduced.” However, given the choice between work at home or no job, I know which one I would take – especially if I knew what the “big picture” was in all of this and that there was a company trying to be saved here. As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.

Photo credit Jason Junker/Amazon