It got me to thinking that there are some practises at work that are generally accepted, such as reducing everything to a TLA (three letter acronym), but when observed a bit more closely, these practises can be revealed as a touch more wasted effort and time for exactly the same outcome or worse, an outcome less than satisfactory.

Here are a few time saving practises that could do with a review:

Lists

Writing a to-do list is something I’ve been encouraging my crew to do every morning. It can focus your thoughts and spoon-feed your day to you. The accepted wisdom is that a list can be got through quite quickly once you have your tasks written down and can systematically knock them out of the park. But, recently, my obsession with lists has calmed somewhat. I realised that the writing of the to-do list was not focusing me on the tasks at hand, rather it was actually making me miserable when I realised how much needed to be done. Further, I was finding that I was simply picking and choosing my tasks on my list and regularly the dull or more involved tasks were falling to the next day to-do list when I should have just eaten it and got them done. The to-do list has been scrapped. Now, when I know something needs to be done, I tend to just do it. And it’s amazing what you can achieve when you just buckle in.

Meetings

My lord, this is a favourite. Don’t we all just love meetings? Let’s meet and discuss this, and that, and maybe we can agree on some stuff or get some stuff done. But seriously, how many meetings are actually required to start work? How many times are you in a zone when some pillock requests a meeting that you know you don’t need because you could just as easily get the info over the phone?

OK, they can be crucial, but only if in the meeting there is a very clear agenda. Next time you find yourself invited to yet another pointless posturing meeting, try and start the meeting with, “OK, this is why I’m here. I came to find out about you, your company, your project, your needs and how you’d like to go about getting them (or whatever is relevant to your circumstances). Then I’ll field all the questions you have about me and my stuff.” People will thank you. They know you haven’t wasted their time, and conversely will know that you don’t want your time wasted. Everything you need to cover will be covered and best of all; both parties will know when the meeting will end.

Email correspondence style

If you work with techies, and I do, one thing you might have noticed is that when you email with techies, sometimes their reply doesn’t come in the form of another separate email, but in the body of the email you sent. Probably in another colour and font. I totally see why this happens. In theory, the answers are right next to the corresponding questions. Instead of wasting time on the art of communicating, there’s the answer for you clearly in another colour or font and nobody can say you didn’t get to the point. It’s really catching on. Sometimes my lawyer does it to me. And sometimes clients do too. I get it. But, mostly it’s a real pain in the arse to have to scan the email when what you really want is a nice linear communication style where you actually can create a meaningful relationship that could potentially lead to you not having to reply in colour and in a different font in the body of the email because you have actually got to know each other, each other’s styles and have a clear record of the line of thinking. Plus, your comments can be a real pain to find, if you’re like me, and archive every single email ever.

So, what I’m saying is. There are just some practises that could do with an overhaul. We do rather tend to just follow accepted corporate wisdom, but how many of us complain that we’re too busy, or that people aren’t getting things done. That’s because they are doing things, and looking super busy and professional, but the things they are doing is just filler. Posturing filler at that. Let’s try and remove the filler and make your job a touch smarter and a little less frenetic.

So, there are a few things that happen in the business world that have made our little team at 10collective wonder how some people can actually sleep at night. As recruiters we hear so many instances of unfair treatment from our candidates and our clients and want to help so damn badly, that it makes us want to scream. These are some of the things we’ve heard and thought were MESSED UP.

Check this out and tell us what you think. What do you encounter that makes you wonder how certain people can sleep at night?

• To the people who don’t know that the value others add might mean bending over backwards, but NEVER forwards. How do you sleep at night?
• To the departments that spank money unnecessarily, while simultaneously laying off people, just so they can get the same budget next year. How do you sleep at night?
• To the people who try to assert their power over their subordinates and service providers by using four syllable words meanly. How do you sleep at night?
• To the managers who slate former workers in front of their entire team and in the industry, making everyone else uncomfortable, fearful and diminished. How do you sleep at night?
• To the companies who don’t pay their bills to freelancers for no good reason. How do you sleep at night?
• To the people who think that shouting, demeaning and abusing others at work is OK. How do you sleep at night?
• To the manager who protested that one of their former team was being promoted when it had NOTHING to do with you anymore and they thoroughly deserved it. How do you sleep at night?
• To the people that demean your work without an inkling of what you do, how you do it or why it’s invaluable. How do you sleep at night?
• To the people who refuse to acknowledge that they are treating you like a ‘girl’ and not the ridiculously excellent talent you actually are. How do you sleep at night?

Alright – so you get the gist. A lot of people are getting trashed on this week. Can we try not to? Please.

The conference was essentially a huge gathering of Drupal fans, there to learn from each other, get to know each other, discuss their community contributions to the Drupal system and generally have a good time. Of course, there was debate, but nothing that wasn’t welcomed – all opinions were valid and important enough to consider for the growth and enhancement of the Drupal System, and the Drupal community.

On the Sunday of the conference, the founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert (http://buytaert.net/) gave a keynote presentation that essentially addressed where Drupal was going and what its vision was and whom it was most suitable for.

It was a super keynote, he was understated, clear, not there just to entertain or blow his own trumpet, or showcase the bells and whistles of Drupal. He was just giving us a nice account of where Drupal was headed. While he was talking about Drupal for small, medium or enterprise business, he also managed to comment on the Drupal Community ‘Ecosystem’ and tipped his hat several times to the community’s efforts in bringing Drupal to fruition and to the commercial world with incentives that essentially consisted of:

• Peer recognition
• Opportunity to flex technical prowess
• Ability to field questions in an open environment and with good humour
• Ability to recognise flaws and adapt quickly

…and hell, I was listening to all this, and figured, businesses could learn something from this.

What is this eco-system Dries was talking about? Or as I am now calling it ‘Geekosystem’…

Simply, it’s a community of people striving for technical excellence having been brought together by some smarty-pants with a clear and compelling vision. This vision fires the imagination, the hard work and effort required to achieve something grand, keeping people loyal and motivated, and maybe an opportunity to make some money along the way by taking what they learned and applying it somewhere commercial.

And if that’s not what a little business wants, what is?

What is vision and why is it important?

Your vision for your business is not a tool to use in your sales pitch to clients. It’s not your business plan. It’s this beautiful thing where you get to articulate your dreams for your future, for your crew’s future, for your business’s future, for the industry’s future. It helps shape what your crew needs to get there (without infringing on your strategy too much). Once you’ve infected the people around you with this wonderful thing called vision, when they believe in it as much as you do, then what do you think you have? You have a bunch of people around you who are motivated and loyal, they feel your business is heading somewhere good and they want in. The power of this cannot be underestimated because guess what happens next? Like Dries’ Drupal army, they work. They work their butts off because their incentive goes deeper than the usual gold carrot.

Money motivates only so far.

A few years ago some people I know started this awesome little website that paid you for referrals for people that they found jobs for. If the referred person got a job, you would get a slice of the pie via a referral fee. You’d think this would work really damn well, because people love to get money for helping you right? Wrong. Apparently the referral for reward system sucked because after doing their research people felt oddly self-serving helping you if they knew they would be paid for it. It made them feel they were taking advantage of their network, and turned the nice feeling of having helped someone out with a tip by diminishing it into a transaction. The business closed not 12 months in.

The Geekosystem, smarty pants that they are, have seemed to have learned this lesson way WAY before the business world has caught up. Guess what they did? They created Open Source – which is simply put, software that is almost completely free, managed by a myriad of unreal technical contributors, that doesn’t lock you into any sort of transactional relationship, and is as transparent as it can be. A load of people cottoned on and before you knew it, techies were participating out of sheer pride, technical prowess, and carried away by the wave of momentum and inspiration that this new approach to software development created. That was the reward, bud.

Businesses – take note. If you diminish your crew’s experience into a transaction when they come into work – if you make out you are entitled to their work because you pay them, be prepared to do a bugger load of exit interviews.

Transparency

In the Geekosystem almost everyone gets to see the innards of the technology: its greatnesses and its flaws. They continue to contribute. Sometimes poorly, sometimes brilliantly. The fact that they get to see the flaws in the system hasn’t seemed to shake their determination and resolve to roll with it.

What can we learn from this? Businesses who employ good people, who are infected with their vision, need to understand that even when they’re going through the shit, their team is unlikely to just up and leave. Damnit, most of the time they’ll rally and try and solve the issues and most of the time, your crew will appreciate you for letting them know what’s going on in the background.

Looks can be deceiving

Another thing that happens in the Open Source world is that you don’t get to see what every contributor in the Geekosystem looks like or where they come from. It doesn’t stop anyone having a go and it doesn’t stop someone from being excellent.

One of the other keynote presenters at the Drupal Downunder Conference was Dmitri Gaskin (http://dmitrizone.com/). He’s this 16 year old kid who, at the age of 8, decided he wanted to learn how to code. His mama bought him a book called ‘Java for Dummies’ and every night she’d learn a bit and teach him how to do it. Then, he discovered Drupal. So, this kid starts asking questions on Drupal community sites, gets involved with a few open source projects and before he hits puberty, the drupal community recognises him as some sort of whizbang programmer with Drupal.

At that point, nobody knew that he was a kid!

Guys (in particular – hiring managers), the Geekosystem has an organic system of peer review. They naturally weed out the goodies from the baddies based on quality of contribution. They don’t rely on external signals to indicate a person’s worth. They don’t care what you look like, or how old you are, or where you come from. Some of you should adopt this. Go for the substance over all this other crap we’ve been taught to rate when employing someone. Dig a bit deeper and past the tatts, black tees and ridiculous hairstyles, you might have struck gold. Just try not to let your natural prejudices get in the way.

OK – so this blog post is getting crazy big but you get the message. Let’s just take some of the principles from the Geekosystem and apply it into our businesses. I reckon it’s valuable. And I think we can learn something.

Well, it’s a load of piss isn’t it?

That’s what I call it when I interview potential candidates who can’t tell me anything about themselves without referring to the time when ‘we’ did this, or ‘we’ did that. What did YOU do? Do you always do what everyone else does?

I don’t know where it was learned, but a lot of people do rather seem to think it’s perfectly fine language for interviewing.

I guess I’m here to say it’s not.

When interviewing, what is the main priority of the interviewer? It’s to determine what you, personally, will be contributing to their team, to their work and their culture.

When you talk in terms of ‘we’ rather than pinpointing what it is you do, and have contributed, it sounds like you haven’t contributed anything at all actually.

When you can’t talk about yourself meaningfully, maybe you don’t really know, in depth, the thing for which you are being interviewed. At least, that’s what the interviewer is thinking.

When you talk in wee talk, what accountability do you actually take? Where can you demonstrate your learning? Where have you ever gone wrong? And conversely, what did you ever do successfully? No, the word ‘we’ doesn’t make me think you’re a strong team player, it doesn’t give you extra credibility – it does the absolute opposite.

The word and concept of ‘we’ is becoming so ingrained into our commercial lives that recently a Client amused me by regaling me with an issue that was becoming prevalent in his company. He said that every decision now had to be held in conference. Every idea had to be agreed upon in consensus. This has meant that nobody actually had any ideas of his or her own. Everyone had become so enchanted and reliant with the concept of collaboration that everyone talks in terms of ‘we’ because they don’t have to take accountability for anything that goes wrong. I mean, seriously, how long can this go on for?

I’ll finish with just this: If you say ‘we’, then urine trouble.

Unless you live in a cave, you would have heard a bunch of stuff around the News of the World hacking scandal currently rocking the UK and News Corp staff internationally.

Allegations of voicemail and message interception are rife and last night Rupert and James Murdoch faced a panel of UK MPs about their understanding of the entire situation.

We all know this stuff. Get on twitter for the whole #hackgate issue.

But one of the things that struck me during this whole scandal is that neither Brooksy (former big cahuna Editor in Chief of the NOTW Rebekah Brookes) nor Bigger Cahuna Rupert Murdoch have verbally accepted responsibility for the actions of their crew.

Brooksy wasn’t stepped down the moment this scandal broke, nor does it seem that there was any intention of her doing so of her own volition. Even when all around her were getting the chop.

Last night Murdoch may have claimed that he had been humbled by this experience, but he stopped short of actually saying, “The actions of my crew are a reflection of my leadership. I take complete and utter responsibility for this.”

I don’t know about you, but when my manager hangs me out to dry instead of protecting me, taking accountability for me and generally being the bigger man-ager – they are DEAD TO ME.

I’ve been running 10collective for nearly 3 years now, and there is NO WAY on hell, my crew will ever say that I don’t take all accountability for their actions. That’s what leaders do. They accept their people will make mistakes and to the public will protect their people, by frankly, being accountable for everything.

Didn’t Murdoch or Brooksy get taught this in their rise to the top? Did they not realise that the higher they are, the more accountability they must take for their people? Really?

I think this is the most disgusting part of the entire scandal for me. Not the hacking, sorry, I’ve assumed for a long time that it goes on, but the entire pass the buck attitude that seems to have insidiously permeated this affair.

When was the last time your Manager hung you out to dry? How did it make you feel? I bet you left that company pretty damn quickly didn’t you? And if it still goes on, tell me about it. Get it off your chest.

I had quite a few people ask me recently if I thought that the traditional CV was still alive and well. With sites like LinkedIn where your entire work history, plus a bunch of recommendations are for public view, and is easily downloadable as a PDF CV alternative, why do people need to bother with time consuming CV writing? I reckon it’s quite a good question actually. Why do we?

Here’s a few reasons why I think the CV is still important:

• Public sites like LinkedIn (which are totally important by the way) are just that – public. Your CV is private and confidential. It is implicit when you send somebody your CV that they not distribute it without your permission. This is good because on your private CV, you may create a narrative per project or per role outlining little things that you may not want others to read but are perfectly in order to outline who you are and what you have achieved in your career. ie. “This project was a massive disaster! We didn’t meet the deadline, we had scope creep you wouldn’t believe, BUT because of this nasty as process I was able to use this experience to make my case for the implementation of a true Agile methodology, migrate the development environment to Open Source and show my bones as a Leader of people” etc etc. You get what I mean? I think it’s super important for your next employer to know that even through some craziness, you can maintain a cool head, create a nice narrative on paper about things that other people might not really want anyone to know about and still really show off what you’re made of.

• People use recruiters for a reason. And recruiters use databases. A load of these databases use keyword search as their main functionality. I don’t want to get into a huge debate about how rubbish this is – it’s the way it is right now. If your CV isn’t searchable, then unless you have a recruiter with a ridiculously good memory, then you won’t be found for all of those delicious positions. This isn’t the way recruitment is heading I believe, but right now, searchable CV’s are how it is.

• Your CV must have a stamp of your style. You can’t do this with all online career history sites. They have their own template and that’s it. Yeah, recruiters tend to pull apart your nicely designed CV and format it into their own branding, but they get to see the original item and use this to determine if you get a look into their (sometimes exclusive) jobs.

• Hiring Managers are still a touch conservative in this town. They want all the info. All of it. Make it easier for them to want to see you. It’s a rule of thumb in the workplace hey? Make it as easy as you can for people to do what you need them to do. In this case, book you in for an interview, suss you out and hopefully at the end of it all, offer you a mad job.

Here’s a link to some CV’s that Julien found in an article today. I reckon they’re pretty damn cool. But, a word of warning – I don’t really care how great it looks – does it have the substance???

Insanely Cool Resumes

Recently I decided it was high time to do something about my burgeoning waistline and a little less of the good life I enjoy so much, (a thought that has crossed many of our minds I’m sure). “It’s long overdue,” I thought to myself. “Now is the time to start exercising, stop eating so much delicious soft cheese, less pub meals and I could certainly reconsider my drinking habits.” Ho hum…

One ponders the hey days of that long lost teenage physique, and then starts to consider their weight loss regime in an achievable, day-to-day way. Scientists and Dietitians have long been telling us that the most consistent way to lose weight in a healthy fashion is by eating a balanced diet, regular exercise, leading a low stress lifestyle with lots of rest and relaxation. Sounds great, easy as that then. Yeah, right!

Maybe it’s a by-product of modern life but those last few sentences don’t seem apply to the lifestyle of many people around me. Whether you’re a modern professional, a stay-at-home Mum, a truck driver or a working musician it’s hard in this modern world to lead a low stress, balanced, healthy life. If it were easy, our National Obesity rate wouldn’t be skyrocketing in the fashion that it is.

Surely there’s a simpler way? Lists of diets spring to mind; fad gimmicky exercise machines, crash dieting and weight loss in a pill or a shake, any form of quick TV advertised short cut that can take the hard work out of it. Will they work? Yes, probably. Will the weight stay-off. Unlikely.

Which brings me to my point about the life of a recruiter, which in its way is much the same as a weight loss regime. To get it right, it takes time, like anything in this life that’s worth doing. It takes thought, determination, planning, dedication, consistency, control and perseverance to achieve one’s desired goals. It’s a tough gig. More than most believe. You don’t build a strong client base overnight. It takes time and determination. There is no quick fix or shortcut, no pill or shake. To succeed in this industry takes time, a lot of hard work and determination. No sneaking to the fridge for midnight snacks and cold beers!

It takes time to win the trust and become the peer of your client. You could take the easy way out and swamp them with CV’s and hope that you’ll win merely on a percentage ratio but what client is going to want that? Will you really win in the end?

To have clientele that trust you implicitly, to such a degree that 9 times out of ten, they interview every candidate you present them purely because they know that you would not dare put forward a candidate that wasn’t more than suitable for the role is ultimately what you really want as a recruiter. You are the only recruiter that they trust to staff their office because you have run the miles, done the push ups and put in the hard work. That is a win and that is your pay-off. With that level of respect comes a feeling of pride and achievement. Something you don’t get by cutting corners but rather by sticking it out and sticking to your guns, making phone calls, seeing your clients and finding the best possible staff for them. This is the way that you will succeed. And if you’re lucky, lose a bit of weight.

I think this blog entry might upset a few people. The intention is not to do that, but it is an opportunity for those gainfully employed to take stock of a few things.

As a recruiter, I am privy to many things. These things can range from the type of food you feed your cat, to your most embarrassing work place stories, to corporate IP. Seriously, sometimes the 10collective interview room is more like a confessional. Lately, instead of the more colourful stories of torrid workplace romances and inexplicably unfair dismissals, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about stress. Lots of you seem kinda stressed.

According to this OHS Reps @ Work blog entry the causes of stress can be classified under one of three areas:

• Working Conditions
• Doing the job
• Work Relationships

As a recruiter I don’t have power over your working conditions, my Clients do. I also can’t control how you interact or are interacted with. After all, we place adults, not Wards. The only thing we can help you with is how you do your job and how that job is communicated to you. And even then, we walk a fine line. We can discreetly nudge our Clients in the right direction, or give them a tip about the best way to manage you, but, again, our Clients are adults and not Puppets. So, where do we start when we know you’re having a rough time of it? With you, of course.

If you are experiencing stress at work, but you can’t really pinpoint what is causing the stress, because the company is awesome and the people are nice, just ask yourself this first:

• Am I managing my time properly?

When you go home, have you achieved anything? If not, why not? I swear, from my own experience working in office-land, the ONLY times I have really got stressed or tired from work, were on the days that I came home and just knew, deep down, that frankly, I didn’t do anything. I could have been making lists, and emailing and talking to people all day, but what did I actually do exactly to achieve the things I am supposed to achieve? That’s right, zilch. I filled the day with tasks that looked incredibly complex, and performed such a show to have everyone believe I was getting through the things I needed to get through. But those are the days that can become your worst habit, and eventually, when you’ve done enough of them in a row, completely change how you feel about going to work.

So when you get home, what do you feel? You feel guilty dude. Totally guilty. And guilt makes you worry, makes you think about work, you can’t switch off your brain when you lay down to sleep, and it makes you not want to get out of bed the next day. Then you get tired, and you can’t do the work you’re supposed to do anyway.

So, are you stressed? Or are you guilty? Because if it’s the latter, you need to look at your workload. Is it real, or are your activities just time fillers? What can you do to manage your time better? Try these very basic guilt killers before quitting your job and getting a new one where the cycle of habitual work pain continues and your basic guilt turns into debilitating depression:

• In the morning, take five minutes to write down your goals/KPI’s
• Take five minutes to write down your essential tasks
• Just do them. Even better, do the hard annoying ones first. Eat them. And get them out of your mind.
• Get in a zone. If that means headphones in, do it. If that means, switching off your mobile, do it. Whatever it takes, do it.

The whole point is, that once those things that have begun to nag you in your mind are gone, you’ll be a far more pleasant, effective person to work with. And suddenly your job just won’t seem that bad.

That said, real Work Related Stress definitely exists. And at no point, am I saying it doesn’t. If you have given yourself a good hard performance review, and your stress still persistently eats at you, then call me. Then, I’ll get you another job.

“Oh The Horror!” is playing at The Dancehouse from 8pm on:

• Wednesday 28th October
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Please book online and come support the rock n roll theatre world!