Official Aphorisms

The Trust Factor

Beware of the guy who's telling you during an interview: "What we're trying to build in this company is trust. Trust is one of our core values." This means that that individual, your future boss, is most probably incompetent and relies on others to tell him what, how, when is done, and also insecure, most probably realizing that through his lack of skills and knowledge is at the others' mercy.

The Advantage of Being Ambiguous

My boss was telling me that he had to choose between Will and Bill for the new promotion as a product planner.
Bill is a smart, opinionated guy who's always trying to come up with a solution. Will is mostly talk and not the
greatest individual when the last thing you need is to go out with empty hands from a meeting where people were expecting results. He is also the type of non-committal guy.
In the end my boss picked Will and he explained me why: "Bill is too much into the solution mode. Will is saying: I don't know about that. Maybe it's possible, maybe not. We need to discuss more.
We need people like Will for this role, who leave the door open, you know?"
And who's going to close it? I was about to ask, but I never did it.

Respect in the Workplace

In any workplace there are about 85% opportunists, who have no clue about "what gives" and "what's up" in the project, and about 15% good people, honest workers, who will never get promoted and you will never use their references. And this is the dilemma you're facing: whose respect you should strive to earn? Whose respect is worth it? Whose respect is giving you a sense of fulfillment?

Useless to say that if you choose to take sides with the 15% club of achievers without future, you will become one of them. And your career may take a turn... to anonymity.

So, after all, it may not be such a dilemma.

Interview

I believe that a good tennis player who lost an important match must feel like I felt after a recent phone interview: Oh, boy, did I talk too much and too fast or what? And what got into me to go through that whole rambling when he came up with a simple question that required a short, simple answer? I suddenly felt the total silence at the end of the wire, the cold drift of disaproval: what could the guy have thought about me? And I could have done so well... This job was right on my alley... I had all my basis covered, only had I been smarter. Less excited. I practiced those scenarios the guy mentioned every day during the last few years, as they are part of my job, god dammit, and I am pretty good at it. Only that during this interview I left the impression of a rookie, a damn beginner who struggles to find his path. Disapointing... Really. really disapointing... 

Listening to the Other

Any manual covering the topic of communication in the office is going to emphasize that in any conversation the listening skill is paramount. Some go as far as saying that if you do not have it, you fake it. Listening does not help solving issues: it helps the guy who's trying to come up with a solution to feel good when his ideas as rejected. For the simple thing that the rejecter is a pompous ass who thinks he's always right. And when he fakes the listening, he's doing the poor guy in front of him a favour. That adding to his panoply of skills the generosity.
Therefore listening makes better persons from those who fake it. It's twisted logic here: becoming better through the rejection of a good thing.

Maslow's Pyramid Reversed

There is this Maslow's pyramid that describes pretty well where the people are in the structure of the organization. Most of them are at the ground level, where what they do can be summed up as fight for survival: I'll do what my boss is telling me to do, even if it's wrong and I don't condone, because I have children to raise and a mortgage to pay. This is where the new hires are placed right from day one: since they have no clue where they put the "office traps" and who's going to stab them in the back, they are cautious, always ready to hide if the danger lurks.
On the top of the pyramid there are a few lucky ones, who feel that the work environment is conducive for their creativity and they become the drivers and promoters of the new technological waves. These are the people who make a difference, and they get there after years of hard work and accomplishemnets. Or this is what they say.
Personally, whenever I moved from a company to another, I entered through the top of the piramid, geared up to be the champion of the novelty and make a difference. And after years of good accomplishments combined with marginal failures, I managed to get to the ground level. I always parted ways with my company fighting for survival.


The Executive Boos

A harsh boss, who always chooses to impose his way on the others, ends up creating a vacuum of power around him. That is the perfect life support for yeomen, sycophants, opportunists or plain liers. The smart, hard-working, reliable people are his last line of defence, although the most powerful, but have no visibility into the boss' battlefield and no orders to be engaged. This is the way the tyrant bosses die: left without a reliable guard, they get butchered  through their own avarice for power. Stabbed by their own "ode to the boss" singers.