Master Dilettante

I love Dilbert. I don’t know how Scott Adams stays so in tune with corporate life in America.

Having done six sigma work and having managed a team of analysts who generated dashboards, scorecards and other reports, I found today’s comic strip particularly humorous.

Despite the hype around this book, in part generated by Guy Kawasaki’s ~five blog posts on it, and despite my desire to be a deferential and gracious host (Professor Robert Sutton, Ph.D., the author, spoke at eBay), I must admit my disappointment with it. Perhaps my expectations were too high because Kawasaki hyped up the book and Sutton spoke at my workplace.

The basic premise — assholes in the workplace are bad for business and should be dealt with appropriately — is reasonable, but here’s why the book didn’t resonate with me:

• Availability Bias. The book presupposes the magnitude of the problem of assholes in the workplace. Naturally, the author appeals to the reader’s memories of any assholes encountered in the workplace to provide emotional support for the prevalence of the problem. These emotional memories, however, do not necessarily prove that the problem is significant. I have the opposite availability bias: I’ve been fortunate to work only at organizations with few if any assholes, so I tend to believe assholes in the workplace are the exception to the rule. (See, by the way, the Wikipedia entry on “availability heuristic” for further discussion on this cognitive bias).
• Fuzzy math. The few numbers Sutton cites to quantify the magnitude of the problem appear more as anecdotal and cursory than sound analysis. I was reminded of Steven Lewitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakanomics, except that the analysis in Freakanomics appeared rigorous, and wondered what Lewitt and Dubner might reveal in Sutton’s calculations.

While I found the diagnosis of the magnitude of the problem lengthy and un-compelling, the discussions on how to avoid being an asshole and how to deal with assholes were a quick, diverting read.

Overall, Sutton takes a titillating subject matter and pens a novel where an essay would suffice. In fact, Sutton’s short article, “Nasty People” in CIO Insight, inspired the book. The book is relatively short, but, instead of reading it, I recommend reading the synopses in Kawasaki’s posts and taking the Asshole Rating Self Exam (”ARSE”) on which Sutton and Kawasaki collaborated.

Source: The Wall Street Journal Online (12 April 2007).

Thanks to my friend E. for passing this along to me.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal Online published the content of an interview with Intuit CEO Steve Bennett. Bennett and I both joined Intuit in 2000. During my four years at the company, I was consistently impressed with its internal dedication to customer-driven innovation without the sacrifice of financial and operational rigor. The heart and soul of Intuit’s innovation is founder and Chairman Scott Cook. The rigor comes from Bennett and his GE roots.

The Journal article, including the capsule above, speaks to Bennett’s management philosophy. (See “After GE: Intuit’s Steve Bennett on why some General Electric alumni succeed — and some don’t“). Two concepts from the article caught my attention in particular:

(1) Process and Rigor v. Innovation

I’ve always been fascinated by Bennett’s application of GE practices to Intuit, a mature company striving to innovate. More broadly, I’ve been interested in understanding how best to reconcile process, rigor and innovation during various stages of a company’s development.

Intuit, with its QuickBooks, TurboTax and Quicken franchises now mature offerings, focuses on deep customer insight to inform product improvements, product line extensions and new products, and the company takes an ordered, rigorous approach to this process.

Compare eBay, around half the age of Intuit, and arguably much less structured in its approach to innovation. As eBay matures and faces revenue growth and margin pressures, the company is going through the challenging process of deciding how deliberate to be with its innovation and how “corporate” in its operating processes. A recent International Herald Tribune article, for example, describes eBay’s co-location of engineers and business as an effort to “break patterns” of previous operation in functional silos.

(2) Customer-driven v. Technology-driven Innovation

Tip #1 from the capsule above is potentially provocative these days in the Valley. The Valley is peopled with both business and technology folk, sometimes in the same individuals and sometimes distinct. Where two camps exist and respect between them is lacking, religious debates tend to arise around how to approach problems and who is creating value.

The present renaissance of technology startups features a mix of companies trying to solve customer pain points with technology and technologies in search of business or consumer applications. Arguably, the Valley is filled with successful businesses that started from opposite ends of this spectrum, and the success of technology-driven companies that later found compelling customer applications seems to defy Bennett’s wisdom. The difference may be in genesis v. sustainability: It might be entirely feasible to start a company based purely on technology, but the road to sustainable growth may depend more on a lasting customer-oriented mindset.

While I was in Australia on a recent business trip, a colleague and friend instant messaged me on Skype and, upon learning where I was and why, pronounced me “king of the boondoggle.” He’s not the first to comment – either admiringly or disparagingly – on my business travels. In the past 15 months, I’ve been to Sydney twice, Mumbai, Berlin twice, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. Is that really all that much?

Because so many have asked me, I feel compelled to set the record straight here and provide a few words of advice.

Proper discussion begins with definition of the term “boondoggle.” Alas, the entry on “Boondoggle” in Wikipedia refers to the “North American arts and crafts activity in which you use flat strings.” For example, see this key chain:

This is not what I mean.

Dictionary.com provides a definition that more closely resembles modern usage in the workplace:

Work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/boondoggle (accessed: February 22, 2007)

I think this is still a bit off, so I propose an operational definition that is more colloquially accurate in the context of today’s modern office:

A boondoggle is any business trip in which the amount of entertainment appears to be greater than the amount of actual work.

Please comment! Assuming for a few moments the relative sufficiency of this definition, I’ll now opine on boondoggle best practices.

Basic Skills:

1. Eliminate your desire to go. In the feature film, The Tao of Steve, Steve, a moderately successful womanizer, explains that the first step in seduction is the elimination of desire and, thereby, the inevitable accompanying behavioral perversions that will preclude one from seducing. Similarly, if you overtly ask your boss to fly you to Tahiti, your boss surely will resist this blatantly frivolous request. Instead, tell your boss that you couldn’t possibly go and that’s it’s a waste of time, but allow circumstances and others to put forth the inexorable argument that your presence absolutely is necessary on that island.
2. Have a legitimate business purpose. Once a potential travel opportunity has been identified, you must have an actual business objective to achieve once there. Good examples: conferences, meetings, research – in which you have a role to play. Bad examples: golf, sunning, gambling, boating, carousing, drinking, etc. Without this business purpose, you are on vacation.
3. Do your job. A common misperception among boondoggle novitiates is that once at the destination work can be dispensed with entirely. Witness the numerous individuals “let go” by companies after flying to exotic locations to attend conferences they did not, ultimately, attend. Do not fall into this trap. Do your job. Show up to meetings on time, engage, get the work you are paid to be doing accomplished.
4. Do not abuse your expense account. Nothing will get you in trouble with the powers-that-be faster. Expense actual, reasonable, work-related costs. Pay for anything personal yourself.

Advanced Techniques:

1. Go with your boss. Some may think that a boss on a trip will cramp one’s style. On the contrary, so long as you have a collegial relationship with your boss, his or her presence on the trip will both (a) provide immunity for any malfeasance occurring in which you are both engaged and (b) get you nicer, more expensive meals.
2. Manage post-trip impressions. The trip isn’t over once you return. Once you return, meet with your boss and review all that was accomplished. Explain how tiring the travel was and how much you have to catch up on now that you’re back. Demonstrate that you added value, because you did. Really.
3. Be careful with photographs. Photographs of you with colleagues inside meeting halls, posing outside of offices, presenting to large audiences – these are all acceptable. Photographs of you drunkenly dancing in a Chinese dragon mask in Singapore – these are not. (Believe me, I know). Video, in particular, is to be avoided. When distributing photos post-trip, take the time to create two separate albums, one for work colleagues and one for friends. Be sure to send the appropriate album to each group.

This is what I have learned that I pass on to you, dear reader. Please leave me comments on your own best practices.