The Genius Trick to Mixing All Natural Peanut Butter
Have you ever had to stir a jar of all natural or organic peanut butter? Halfway through did you feel like making a Workers' Compensation claim for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or Tennis Elbow? The good news is there is an EZPZ method to do this more quickly, less painfully, and at little to no cost.
What most people, including myself do is use a spoon and try to stir things in the jar or if I'm feeling ambitious, in a bowl and then putting everything back in the jar. The problem is a spoon is not an ideal tool for the job of re-integrating the oil into the peanut butter. Instead, try this.
A potato masher is a tool a lot of people will already have and if you don't, it doesn't cost much to pick up an affordable one. Just pour the oil on top into a bowl and scoop out some peanut butter. Mash until blended to your satisfaction and repeat. Since using a potato masher instead of a spoon, I've cut my time in half and as a bonus, look like a good husband for following through on my wife's suggestion.
The article The Genius Trick To Storing Natural Peanut Butter, No Stirring Required, which I shamelessly stole from to name this post, also has a nifty EZPZ trick for storing your all natural peanut butter.
Good luck and please try this. Your wrist and elbow will thank you!
Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.
Why Company Values Lists Feel Phony
Everyone who has worked at a larger organization has come across a statement or short list that summarizes the key values of the organization. This might be named core values or company values. Or substitute the word "principles" for "values" or the word "guiding" for "core." The wrapper may appear slightly different, but the good, gooey center is the same. Create a high level list that will help guide employees, in alignment with the corporate culture and with a view towards promoting organizational success.
You may have been around when a new or revised list has been rolled out with much fanfare. The best case scenario is the values already resonate with you because you immediately recognize these as part of the DNA of the company. In this case, the list serves as a periodic North Star to existing employees and provides a useful signaling function to prospective employees and new hires.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the proclaimed values to be met with a feeling of disconnect or even skepticism. Maybe these are aspirational values that bear little resemblance to current standard operating procedures. Or in the worst case scenario, maybe employees feel that the list is a complete and utter farce. I don't believe most companies would give a consultant a pile of money and invest precious hours of executive time just to come up with a list for PR purposes.
So why do otherwise loyal and well-meaning employees feel this way?
1. Old Habits Die Hard
Samuel Johnson observed, “The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
If a values list doesn't resemble current habits or in the alternative, acknowledge making a break from the institutional habits of the company, it won't ring true. Has HR shown there is a double-standard for the handling of executives versus worker bees? If so, then any declarations around fairness, equality or integrity might not be so well-received. I don't mean to pick on HR, this could be in any department or at any level. Remember, bad habits beat the crap out of good intentions on a daily basis. In fact, it jams it in a locker, gives it a wedgie, and steals its lunch money.
2. The Power of Conformity
I once had an opportunity to participate in a team-building session which used Improv Comedy. One exercise began with the first person being instructed to stand in place and come up with a move (e.g., lifting their arm or stomping a foot) and an accompanying sound and to keep repeating both until the exercise ended. Then, the second person would stand next to the first and come up with their own move and sound. And so on and so on. Now when you are standing outside the group, this looks pretty ridiculous. But as the group / human machine grows, it seems less odd. A kind of cadence forms. And when you finally join, this seems even more normal and after a while, there is a real sense of power in the whole group doing this exercise together, moving and shouting in unison. This is the power of conformity and if prescribed values are not being lived by a majority of employees, then they will never feel normal or right. Leaders instigate the change, but it requires a critical mass of followers for it to become a reality.
The video below shows, in the context of riding an elevator, how powerful the human instinct for conformity can be.
3. Money Talks, You Know the Rest
In an illuminating article from the Harvard Business Review We Don’t Shun Unethical Coworkers If They’re High Performers, Professors Rebecca L. Greenbaum and Matthew J. Quade write about how their research showed in general, employees who engage in unethical conduct are more likely to be socially rejected by their peers. This creates a signal that someone’s unethical behaviors are not acceptable and should be corrected. However, this shunning effect does NOT HOLD TRUE if the unethical employee has the reputation of being a high performer. A double standard exists based on a person’s contributions to the bottom line. This finding held true even for organizations that on the whole are considered highly ethical. A line from the article sums it up nicely, "There’s something about being a high performer that appears to mask concerns related to immorality."
Employees are aware that high performing employees enjoy the perks of that success. However, when these perks include immunity from company values, it becomes difficult, if not impossible for employees to wholly embrace such values.
There are no EZPZ answers here, but by recognizing and addressing some of the challenges related to Company Values Lists, organizations will have a better chance of getting employees to buy into the values, which is for lack of a better word, invaluable.
Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.
My Flirtation with a Career Limiting Move
Let's go ahead and get this out of the way. I'm not a huge fan of video conferencing.
In most instances, just getting it to work is like a sadistic game of IT Twister. The scale of the participants makes you feel like you've landed in Lilliput or Brobdingnag. It's less effective than meeting in person and not much better than a conference call. Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I must confess it doesn't have to be that way. Allow me to explain.
At certain KPMG locations we have video conferencing rooms that are designed specifically to work with a twin room in another location. I'm not talking about a really nice monitor or multiple speakers. This is video conferencing on steroids.
You sit on one side of a long, rectangular table that fits about 8 people. As you look across the table, you see a row of monitors as long as the table, with the life-size images of the people in the other room. If you look diagonally across the table at Jamie, it will appear to Jamie that you are turning your head to look at him/her, just as if you were in a room together. The acoustics are fine-tuned so as close as possible, it seems like you are talking to someone in the same room. As you might imagine, these rooms are in high demand and are often used for executive meetings.
Now we come to the part where I almost face-planted my career. I was scheduled to have a meeting with our international lawyers on a sensitive topic so I scheduled a meeting in one of these dedicated video conferencing rooms. I arrived early to prepare and no surprise, there was a previous meeting in session. I waited until a few minutes before our meeting was supposed to start and popped my head in to let the people know that we were waiting. Cue courteous nods and half-smiles - so far so good. Five more minutes passed, then close to ten. I could feel my patience wearing thin.
I'm glad I was feeling like my best self that day (must have had a good breakfast) because I resisted the urge to make a big stink about this APPARENT room squatting. After what seemed like an eternity, but in reality was probably no more than ten minutes, the group exits and I come face to face with a Board level muckety-muck. Brief salutations, handshakes, we head into the room and have our meeting with the lawyers and everything is copacetic.
One mistake I often catch myself making is being overly confident in my understanding of other people's motivations. For example, if someone is giving me a hard time, it might be squarely based on what I did. However, it could also be based on some baggage from another interaction that didn't go their way. It's important your thinking and any reactions are based on actual knowledge and not assumptions. To me, this is a key to harmonious relationships and without it, it's like trying to open a lock with the wrong key. It just doesn't work.
That day I was convinced that the meeting squatters at best had poor time management and at worst, were just self-important and inconsiderate. As it turns out, they were NEITHER. After our meeting concluded, I noticed something odd. The time on the video conferencing screen was different than the time on my watch. In fact, it was about ten minutes SLOWER than the correct time! So anyone using the time on the video screen would assume they had ten more minutes till their meeting ended when in fact they had already ran over. I contacted the IT folks and they fixed this, but I wonder how much frustration and unnecessary angst this simple disconnect had caused. The good news is that this event reinforced for me that you should be careful how you impute the motivation of others. Sometimes you are just projecting your own personality or insecurities. Sometimes people are having a bad, bad day.
And sometimes people are just hangry.
The EZPZ morale of this story is be slow to judge, quick to eat, and whatever you do, don't trust conference room clocks.
Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.