Restructuring Drama

By Matt:

My company is going through a reorganization this week, and it has been pretty difficult. They kicked it off about five weeks ago when they told us, and announced to the press, that there would be a 15% reduction in workforce within the next 4-6 weeks. Since then we've all been anxiously waiting for the proverbial "hammer" to fall, and now the time is upon us. So far the week has been filled with a lot of closed door meetings, hushed hallway conversations, a general sense of foreboding, and the occasional awkward joke in attempts to lighten the mood.

This is the second restructure I have experienced in the corporate world, the first being last winter. Last year the slash-and-burn happened quickly and abruptly - an email was sent on a Friday morning, and throughout the day, one-by-one, each individual was called into their manager's office... some did not return to their desks.

This year, in attempts to be more considerate to employees, they gave us a long advance warning, and to their credit are doing their best to communicate issues delicately. But I'm not sure there is a way to do these things that isn't messy.

I'm curious to hear about reorganizations you have been through... is there a good way to do these things? Is it possible to witness 15% of your company being let-go and in the end say, "You know, that was a really positive experience"? I know we have some Human Resources readers out there, and would be interested to hear your take as well.

The Recurrence Of Annoying Meeting Invites

By Matt:

I don't know why, but as of late there have been a long parade of recurring meetings in my office being scheduled by various individuals who apparently don't know how to use the 'Recurring Meeting Tool' that is standard in any electronic calendar software.

So basically this means that instead of getting one invite for the recurring meeting, I get 24 invites for the same meeting scheduled to occur every two weeks throughout the entire calendar year. That's incredibly irritating.

I don't want to make any assumptions, so I'll quickly outline the steps you need to take to set up a recurring meeting in Outlook, which is what most offices use for their scheduling software:

1. Navigate to your Calendar and schedule the occurrence, and attendees, of the first meeting
2. Select 'Actions' > 'Recurrence' from the drop-down menu
3. Determine your recurrence options based on your projected meeting schedule... once a week, once a month, bi-monthly, etc.
4. Select 'OK' and 'Send' your invite

Now I grant that in cases where you have fluctuating schedules and a meeting time that cannot be consistent from event to event, the recurring meeting tool is not very helpful. In that case I recommend that you instead invite attendees to your recurring meeting via email - draft a message to all attendees and simply list the meeting name, purpose, and all projected meetings dates/times in the body of the message. This is generally a more efficient, and less intruding, way to schedule recurring meetings that don't occur on a consistent schedule.


More Outlook Tips @ Corporate Hack

Solution Process

By Matt:

This forward process in solutions is guaranteed to assist you in leveraging strategic capabilities toward advancing corporate winnings...

Solution 1: Have a process.

Solution 2: If there is no process, build a process.

Solution 3: If the process doesn't work, solution the process.

Friday Escape Plan

By Matt:

This post by Brad Hildebrand at Employee Evolution really cracked me up a few days ago as he outlines his evil and anarchist attempt to skip out on work... 5 minutes early:

Ever since the dawn of the soul-wrenching cubicle, we working peons have had little recourse against the corporate monolith that runs our everyday life. So in an act of rebellion, I recently plotted the most nefarious act I could think of, leaving at 4:55.... [READ MORE HERE]

Good luck with your attempts to get out of the office by closing time today. Have a great weekend!

Thinking Inside The Box: The Great Escape

Take A Deep Breath Before Responding To Your Boss

By Matt:

Last week I thought I would be risky and do something "innovative". Generally companies love innovation - it's one of those business-ish words that sounds really good and implies we're making more money.

I was working on a presentation to deliver to accounts and was experimenting with a way new way to present it digitally. I emailed the concept around, and well, apparently my little idea was a little too risky to be considered innovation... probably too many bureaucratic rules broken or something like that. I got an email back with several reasons why it wouldn't work and why we couldn't do it this way, and so on and so on.

Of course my initial reaction is to get defensive and fire back some snotty unfounded response, but I restrained myself for once. I took a deep breath, spent three minutes reviewing Jon's post on "Pushing Decision Making Down", and drafted an email response that I didn't even send until the next morning.

It paid off and my idea was accepted. Here's how I convinced management that I was right:

• Take A Deep Breath: Control the urge to fire back a quick response that isn't well thought out. Take a walk down the hall, go grab a Coke, play a game of Sudoku... whatever you need to do.


• Review Management's Reasoning: Management's negative response will generally include 1-3 reasons why you can't move forward with your idea or proposal. Write down those reasons - you will need to speak directly to them in your response and this list will serve as your outline.


• Back It Up: If you're going to convince management of anything it's going to be done with numbers and logic. Fill in the gaps around the outline you created and speak to the concerns by backing up your reasoning with valid statistics (money saved, dollars earned, etc.) and reasons based on productivity, efficiency, and valid comparisons to related examples.


• Write A Polite Introduction: Once you've nailed the facts, go back to the top and kick off your response with a short but polite acknowledgment of the reasonings you were given for denial. Something to the effect of, "Thanks for your note regarding my idea, and I appreciate your concerns. I've been considering your thoughts and wanted to respond to them as still I feel this can be an effective solution...."


• Proof And Send: Whenever you're having to fight for approval it's best to double-proof your words... make sure you haven't said anything antagonistic and that you've stuck to clear and concise facts. Once you're done, send away!
  

In my experience when you really back up a solid idea, and remove emotion from the equation, you can break through most resistance. It may not work every time, but that's ok... if you're not making progress after a couple attempts, it's probably not worth any more of your effort anyways. At the very least you'll be respected for your attempt and credited with thinking out of the box, and those are good qualities to have in the bank.

Quick Tip: Meeting Notes

This post was featured on Lifehacker on April 3, 2008. We wrote a follow-up post in response to the comments made which you can view here.

By Jon:

In the event you get pulled into one of those unbearable, often unavoidable corporate experiences called meetings, this quick tip will help you make a good impression on superiors while keeping you from zoning away into the ceiling tiles.

The simple secret: Take detailed meeting notes

Note taking engages your mind (stymies off that post-lunch energy crash), provides you with a personal account of the information, and lends towards bonus points by demonstrating you're an active participant. So even if you're not the official note-taker, try these steps during your next meeting...

• Write or type your notes in the margins of the meeting agenda (there should be one!)
  
• Use bullet point format - subdivide by topics discussed, paraphrase information, and boldly call out action points and those responsible for them
• If you are the official note-taker for the meeting, send notes to all meeting attendees; otherwise, only send to the meeting leader (you don't want to come across pompous)
• Send notes immediately after the meeting (no more than 5-10 minutes after the meeting has adjourned... why?)

The End Result
It's our experience that taking personal notes at meetings somehow breeds respect and approval from superiors, and managers enjoy having a simple list of bullet points and action items at-hand. The long and short - if you have to suffer through the meeting anyways, make it a valuable investment of your time by providing a valuable account to meeting organizers... you will be rewarded with respect and trust.

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Now Soliciting Unsolicited Rants

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We're looking for some great unbelievable stories about your life in the corporate world. Email your rant to thecorporatehack {at} gmail.com and we'll publish it here!

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Don't lie... sometimes things just really irk you at work. Like really hack you off. And you've considered blogging about it to tell the world and, wisely, thought better of it.

Well, we're going to offer you an outlet here at The Corporate Hack to give you an opportunity to release some of that steam building up inside. We're starting a weekly series here called Unsolicited Rant Friday where we allow our fine readers the opportunity to offer up to the world unsolicited rants about whatever it is about corporate life that is bothering the bejeebers out of them.

What we're really looking for is some great, unbelievable stories about life at the office... whether it's dealing with co-workers, coping with rules and bureaucracy, or the fact that it takes your computer 25 minutes to boot up in the morning. Feel free to change the names to protect the guilty, and we'll make sure your identity is safeguarded.

So if you've got any good stories you need to get off your chest in a public forum, send them our way. Email your rant to thecorporatehack {at} gmail.com and we'll publish it here!