Twenty mistakes bosses make

Stupid management mistakes never cease to amaze me. Every day I hear stories from people that leave me wondering why smart managers can be so dumb. And it just keeps happening.

Got a problem? Set up a committee?

Want someone to do something? Throw them in to the deep end with little training, then come down hard on them when they stuff up.

Ask your workforce for feedback, then ignore everything that’s been suggested.

Want to treat your staff like demented idiots who can’t think for themselves? Just micro-manage everything and talk down to them when they come up with ideas.

Susan Heathfield at About.com has come up with her own list of Twenty Dumb Things Organisations Do To Mess Up Their Relationship With People.

Dumb things include failing to tell people what they’re supposed to do and then wondering why they fail, adding layers of paperwork and bureaucracy to stop things getting done and treating people as if they are untrustworthy.

Another one is telling employees to change the way they are doing things without providing a good explanation why, and then sending them off to change management training, or Siberia, when they resist.

Does any of this sound familiar? Any to add?

Learning from business failure

What do Walt Disney, Bill Gates and Abraham Lincoln have in common? They all failed in their first business venture but they didn’t let that stop them.

It’s amazing how we regard failures as bad. When a business or project fails, it’s condemned for being a flop. That’s where we get the word “loser”, one of the most disgusting terms of the modern age! Failure doesn’t make you a loser. But try telling that to people.

Amazing too when you consider the different figures about your chances of succeeding in business. According to some estimates, two out of three small business will fail in the first year although I have seen other figures that have it at around 7.5 per cent. Still, if 8 out of 100 new businesses shut their doors every year over many years, there’s a big cumulative effect.

It not only applies to running a business. There are plenty of failed projects in the workplace too, which makes it relevant for employees too.

That’s what makes this piece from BusinessWeek, Starting Over When Your Business Fails so interesting. It talks about developing the ability in people to sit down and work out exactly what caused the stuff-up and ensure they don’t repeat the same mistake. Check the slide show too.

Also worth checking out is this other piece from BusinessWeek, How Failure Breeds Success. It gives examples of how some companies go about learning from flops.

Like at waterproof fabric maker W.L.Gore & Associates where managers behind flops are thanked, given trophies and then told write up what they learned from the experience.

So how many flops have you had? What have you learned from them? And do we put too much focus on success instead of learning from failure?

Can you mix friends and business?

So business and friendship don’t mix?

Tell that to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two PhD students at Stanford University, California who went on to create Google.

Actually, the Google story tells us that two didn’t get on at all when they first met.

“When Sergey and I met, we both thought the other was really obnoxious,” Page told BusinessWeek back in 2004.

But the two Trekkies shared a dream of building a computer as fast as the one on the USS Enterprise. So they managed to bury their differences and became close associates as they went on to develop the foundations of the world’s most famous search engine.

Still, as a rule, it’s not usually a great idea to go into business with a friend, unless you are prepared to lose a friend.

Partnerships raise a whole lot of questions. Do partners have to like each other in order to work together? How do you work out who does what? Does one partner have to be in charge, or do you split it 50:50?

To my way of thinking, partnerships are like marriage. Take out the sex, and you both still have to sort out issues of power conflicts, money, and resolution where you can hammer out your differences.

And like any marriage, that’s hard work and requires lots of mutual support.

Yes, there are always problems starting a business with a friend but there’s a real advantage when two people have a rapport. And if you want to go places, it’s always better when you don’t have to do it on your own.

That’s what interested me when Forbes decided to provide us with some good tips on How To Mix Business And Friendship.

They are just a matter of common sense: don’t split it 50:50, create an arrangement where one partner can offer to buy the other one out, put in place a lengthy vesting period of say 4 to 7 years so that one of the partners doesn’t slack off or throw it all in when the going gets tough, get someone to value the business, make sure you have the first right of refusal to sell a stake to an outsider if your partner quits, have an involuntary sale arrangement that allows you to buy your partner’s stake if he or she dies, and work out how much control you are prepared to dilute if you want to raise capital.

So does friendship and business mix? Have you had any experiences there and what advice can you give? How much of a rapport do you need for you to work with someone? And how do you know when it’s over?

How to stuff up a job interview

What are the biggest mistakes people make when applying for a job? What do you have to do to guarantee you won’t get past the first interview?

Recruiters and human resource specialists reckon the worst things you can do is producing a CV with lies and/or typos, turning up late, not preparing for the interview and knowing nothing about the company when you turn up, dressing inappropriately (jeans or gear showing way too much cleavage were cited as two of the most common incidents), swearing, giving inappropriate referees, and asking the interviewers not to contact your former employer.

Do anything like that, they say, and it’s a red flag.

BusinessWeek provides adds more with this piece and a slide show that lists more no-nos.

These include sounding too rehearsed, stalking HR (more than three or four calls and/or emails is not a great idea), asking the wrong questions (like “How much do you pay me?”), mucking up the salary negotiation process, failing to show enthusiasm, exaggerating your work experience, being rude and trashing your ex-boss.

Any to add? Any that you’ve experienced that you want to share?

Do you love your work or hate it? Or do you have mixed feelings?

If it’s mixed feelings, chances are you are more creative – and by implication, you’ll do better – according to a new study.

The study from University of Washington business school found that people who are emotionally ambivalent – the ones who simultaneously feel positive and negative emotions – tend to be more creative in the workplace than those who feel just happy or sad, or who lack any emotion.

Assistant professor Christine Ting Fong conducted a series of experiments where she found that people who have mixed emotions take it as a signal that they are in a situation that might contain lots of unusual associations, and therefore respond by being more creative and lateral.

The study also has implications for how you progress in your career. It found that women in supervisory positions were more likely to be emotionally ambivalent than women lower down the food chain, and women in high-status positions were more creative managers.

If the study is right, the implications for employers could be important. Does it mean, for example, that they have to create weird workplaces?

Fong says: “Due to the complexity of many organisations, workplace experiences often elicit mixed emotions from employees, and it’s often assumed that mixed emotions are bad for workers and companies. Rather than assuming ambivalence will lead to negative results for the organization, managers should recognize that emotional ambivalence can have positive consequences that can be leveraged for organizational success.”

I am not sure it means companies need to create odd working environments.

Still, to my way of thinking, this sort of study just confirms something about the way we are. Working life really teeters on a fulcrum of ambivalence. Do you save or spend it all now? Is it better to be part of a team or do you want to stand out from the crowd and achieve it yourself? People who can see the both sides of the equation, and who can take the good with the bad, would be more creative.

But then, I’ve come across lots of managers who are about as creative as a toilet seat. And lots of creative people who are totally happy, or totally sad. Nothing ambivalent about them.

How do you feel about your work? How do you respond to the peaks and troughs? And has being ambivalent got you anywhere?

So how do you feel about your work? Does it drive you up the twist one day, and then you feel ok about it the next? Do you give a toss? And if you don’t, has it helped you?

Top 8 ways to burn money

Having run a business 157 years ago when I was 21, and now in the process of developing a business plan for a start-up, you learn all about business mistakes. Even big companies make them. Leave them unchecked and everything goes belly-up.

The 8 most common mistakes I’ve noticed are:

1. Not planning. Every business needs some sort of road map that covers all sorts of possibilities and financial developments.
2. Not understanding the difference between cash flow and profit. One is what the accountants tell you, the other is the folding stuff that comes in through the door or into your account. And make sure there’s enough there to see you through the lean times.
3. Failing to keep an eye on your competitors. Even if you’re ahead, it pays to keep tabs and pick up new ideas and see where your weaknesses are.
4. Failing to keep your customers happy. More important than building your customer base. If you fail to do that, you end up losing them as soon as you get them in.
5. Spending too much money or going for the “hamburger and chips” solution of getting something that’s quick, nasty and of no real value. Top advice and services can make a huge difference and it’s false economy to skimp.
6. Keeping the accounts and business operations in your head. Wish I had a dollar for every small business owner I’ve met who does this.
7. Failing to stand out from the pack. You have to offer something that’s different, even if it’s just one point of difference. In managementspeak, it’s called a Unique Selling Position (USP).
8.Failing to look after yourself. Running a business is time-consuming, gruelling and it can chew you up. But again, it’s false economy to ignore the important stuff like family, friends, leisure and time out.

But there are other mistakes too.