Slacking at 700 Emails a Day
March 21, 2006 | Filed Under Technology, Managing
Less is more is all the rage.
One area of focus is the workplace, which may be a bit of a misnomer given the difficulty many people have in completing their work.
Anne Fisher at Fortune has an idea: slack off. Ms. Fisher quotes Peter Capelli, a professor of management at Wharton, on the cumulative effect of this work-life fatigue:
“On the organizational level, what you get is, everyone is so focused on running flat-out to meet current goals that the whole company is unable to step back and think.”
At the end of the article, one company mentioned approvingly is Google, which adopts such attributes of a laid-back culture as lap pools, massage rooms and pool tables. Stacy Sullivan, the company’s HR director, notes that:
“We want to take as much hurry and worry out of people’s lives as we can, because a relaxed state of mind unleashes creativity,” […] “And everybody’s on flextime here, so we don’t reward face time or working super-long hours. We just measure results.”
Sounds fun. Are you hiring?
Then I spotted a link below the article that promises to talk to big-name company leaders about “How I Work.” Scroll down to see the link to Google VP Marissa Mayer (the link says “I’ll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight.”). Part of her relaxed culture is dealing with 700-800 emails a day; one tactic is catching up on the weekend.
Sound fun? Well, while Ms. Mayer apparently isn’t a statutory insider, I’m sure she is well compensated. Nice crib, by the way. Or is it her office? (Ed note: my treadmill has clothes hanging on it).
If others at Google are interested, Merlin Mann has a few new email handling hints. One astute observer calls it tyranny.
The FBI may have the best solution: don’t give your G-men email. Google apparently can’t do that with its G-women.
Flu Pandemic and Disaster Planning — II
March 16, 2006 | Filed Under Technology, Managing, In the News
Spring is in the air.
And so are migratory snow geese potentially carrying H5N1 to the United States. Maybe arriving stateside by this Fall.
When I first wrote about this last October, a few colleagues thought the post was for the birds.
Today the New York Times weighs in, with an informative article about what some businesses are doing to get ready for a potential pandemic.
Consider this:
“I tell companies to use their imagination to think of all the unintended consequences,” said Mark Layton, global leader for enterprise risk services at Deloitte & Touche in New York. “Will suppliers be able to deliver goods? How about services they’ve outsourced — are they still reliable?”
Experts say that many essential functions would have to continue despite the likelihood of a depleted work force and more limited transportation. Up to 40 percent of employees could be sick at one time.
One company in Hong Kong learned from the SARS outbreak:
Among the prepared, HSBC, a global bank that started as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and remains the dominant bank in Hong Kong, has an especially detailed plan for avian flu, drawing on its experience with SARS. The company has been making preparations for employees to work from home, but is also preparing to divide work among multiple sites, an approach that appeared in only 37 percent of the plans in the American Chamber survey.
The article also references a Deloitte & Touche survey on business readiness, a summary of which is here.
It may be more palatable for some businesses to focus on general contingency planning. Response plans for an anthrax-type scare could also be used in an avian flu outbreak.
That the flu is arriving to the United States now appears more of a when than an if. The worldwide human death toll from contact with infected birds may be around 100. When or if mutation happens that would permit human-to-human infection? That’s anyone’s guess.
They are coming, they just may not be too welcome this year:
Bearing Witness
March 15, 2006 | Filed Under Tactics, In the News
It’s not every day that a mistake on the job can result in life-changing consequences.
TSA in-house lawyer Carla J. Martin is squarely in the news over alleged improper coaching of witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing prosecution. This supposedly occured after Judge Leonie M. Brinkema issued an order last month barring contact with witnesses, essentially sequestering them so their testimony would not be corrupted. In fairness to Ms. Martin, there was also allegedly improper contact by others working on the government’s case.
The witnesses in question were aviation officials who could testify for the government about what they would have done had Mr. Moussaoui told the truth about pre-9/11 planning when he was arrested. Such testimony is considered essential in obtaining the death penalty against Mr. Moussaoui, who earlier pleaded guilty to government charges.
Ms. Martin, and her lawyer, have declined comment. Ms. Martin’s mother, Jean Martin Lay, didn’t get the memo and spoke to the New York Times:
“She was so devastated,” Ms. Lay said in a telephone interview from her home in Knoxville, Tenn. “She said she just didn’t hear the judge.”
Ms. Lay said her daughter was in the courtroom when Judge Brinkema issued the order on handling witnesses, but was probably concentrating on something else “instead of being mindful.”
Being mindful. That is something essential for every lawyer to do every day.
More on the proceedings from SCOTUSblog; there’s also good audio from NPR. Some think life without parole is a more appropriate punishment anyway.
Ms. Martin was forced to run the press gauntlet in heels as she left the courtroom:
The 1% Solution
March 14, 2006 | Filed Under Managing, Selling the GC, In the News
Just when the tide seems to be breaking offshore, there’s a reminder that some people swim against the current.
UK publication The Lawyer just served up an interview with Tim Morris, group GC of Carphone Warehouse, a fast-growing UK telecom firm.
Mr. Morris apparently likes to see the legal work up close:
Since Morris’s arrival at Carphone Warehouse, he has taken the in-house legal function from one extreme to the other. Carphone Warehouse used to outsource 99 per cent of its legal work but now outsources just 1 per cent.
“We’ve brought most of the legal work in-house,” Morris says. “A lot of the work is corporate and it was work that I knew we could do in-house.”
And for those doing the remaining 1%, don’t think it will be easy to cross-sell services to Carphone Warehouse:
Morris doesn’t deal with law firms so much as he deals with people. He has maintained close working relationships with Ashurst corporate partner Stephen Fox and Olswang corporate head Adrian Bott since they were drafted in to advise on Carphone Warehouse’s flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2000.
I guess the much touted one-stop shop law firm model may not work in all cases.
So another competitor for law firms emerges: the client itself. And those lawyers who can both find work and mind clients, well they are worth their weight in gold.
Old Men’s Club?
March 13, 2006 | Filed Under Governance, In the News
Another slice of board diversity?
The New York Times reported over the weekend that a fertile source for board members of Morgan Stanley turns out to be CEO John Mack’s private golf club:
Two of the first directors named to the firm’s board last summer are members of Mr. Mack’s own club, the Golf Club of Purchase in Westchester County, as are two of his recent appointees to the investment bank’s management committee.
I should not be surprised–perhaps it’s just a coincidence. But then you read something like this:
“A C.E.O. wants a guy with shared experience and values, a guy, say, who gives him putts within three feet,” said Peter J. Solomon, an avid golfer who runs his own investment bank, referring to the practice of letting a fellow golfer finish a hole without a last short putt. “So many C.E.O.’s are isolated in their own boardrooms. They need to have people with whom they can discuss personal and confidential matters.”
A guy. Here’s the Morgan Stanley board roster. According to the Times, Messrs. Sexton and Bostock are Mr. Mack’s golfing pals. And the lone female member: Dr. Laura (as in D’Andrea Tyson, Dean of the London Business School).
I think a better place for old-line firms to find new-idea board talent may be a night club rather than a golf club. What could the board of Morgan Stanley learn from a young female entrepreneur from China or India? Probably a hell of a lot more about where markets and business are headed than from someone who walks around the golf links looking like this:
Board diversity is a long-running goal of many forward-thinking companies. A major focus has been to increase representation of women and minorities.
At some point will boards also consider members for recent, relevant experience? Not just for age (that’s a no-no), but for their mastery in new markets that are yielding much of the top-line growth for many companies. Many current board members have executive experience that pre-dated the Internet, mass adoption of technology, and the explosion of international markets.
Instead of more grey hair, a few boards could perhaps use some purple hair.
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