Rockstar Boss

Meetings are a disease. They kill time, productivity, life, energy and people. They are almost always a symptom of lack of clear and visible ownership of tasks – which is a problem usually only solved by kicking someone’s ass or firing them.

Never ever arrange or attend a meeting with a group of people unless you absolutely have to. Decline every meeting possible. Instead, figure out what needs done and go do it. Or nominate someone to do it. Just go fucking do it. What’s the point of wasting an hour talking about it?

If you have to be in a meeting:
- don’t start without knowing what the intended outcome is
- have a list of every item that needs decisioned and/or actioned
- record the list of actions, who is responsible and when it’s going to be done by
- shut the meeting down as quickly as you can, especially if the above isn’t going to happen

Yip, sad news – you’re going to have to be the asshole who sets the outcome/action/decision stuff and walks out if it doesn’t happen. If this worries you, read a book about minimizing fear.

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Email is a tool for conveyance of electronic data, not communication. Voices: they are for communication.

Don’t email. Instead pick up the phone or pull yourself up and walk to the person.

A conversation is worth a thousand emails.

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Before you get out of bed in the morning. Before you even open your eyes. Way before any chance for human contact… You have a chance to completely set your attitude for the day: useful or useless.

Useless
Oh crap, another day another dollar.
Is it the weekend yet?
It’s too frikkin’ early
Only eight days until vacation
Couldn’t be bothered

Useful
What’s the biggest thing I can get done today?
I’m going to get past the problem, and here’s how
Time to get up and change the world
Who’s life can I make a difference to today?

*Now* go have your first interaction with the world.

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Anything captured in electronic format is open and will be read by anyone.

The Powerpoint presentation deck will be seen by your competition.
The email you wrote to someone in confidence has at least been bcc’ed. Most likely forwarded with disclaimer “wasn’t me” preface.
The insider document, if it’s juicy enough, will make its way to wikileaks.org. If it’s not that interesting, highly likely your competitor will eventually get to read it.

Not one piece of this is bad.

Use it. Tell others what YOU want them to know. There are no electronic secrets.

Even better – be genuine and you ALL of the time. A lie means you have to remember even more stuff than you already do.

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Go for an entire week without absorbing any news. If it has a current affairs smell or reeks of social media, go do something else.

Quit updating Facebook and Twitter too. Linkedin, Slashdot, fark, TFLN and every other source of noise around you – stop it.

Whatever time sink that doesn’t help you play to your crowd: do not look at it.

So, what are you going to do now with all those hours of spare time?

Exercise. Spend dedicated time with your family. Meet someone new (online too). Think about what you really want to do. Do what you really want to do. Make a positive difference to someone else’s life. Read a book that has a cover that speaks to you before you read it. Try something you wanted to but were too scared. Close down anything that doesn’t make sense. Write the first or next 50 posts for your blog. Grab any video camera or flipcam or ipod nano and record yourself talking about whatever you’re happy about (and repeat until it makes sense). Draw a picture of where you are five years from now. Imagine what it would be like if someone in your family died today and figure out what you would do different if you knew this.

Cut out the noise. It doesn’t help you or anyone else.

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If you’re late for a meeting, late for a date, feel (and probably look) like death warmed up, have a rip on your shirt, a black eye, arrived at the wrong place first before finding the right one, wearing socks that don’t match, said something stupid, dropped the ball…

NEVER EVER APOLOGIZE

There’s no point. What’s done is done and any concession from you only shows you up as weak. In the band the lead singer can screw up whenever they want. Suck it up and give the crowd the show they want.

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It doesn’t matter what the medium through which it is delivered; a direct attack on someone never wins anything for anyone involved.

If you feel like you’re about to rip someone’s head off and piss down their throat – don’t. Walk away and give yourself until the next morning before you do anything.

By then you’ll have come up with lots of ways to shoot them in the knees that are far more subtle and less likely to draw attention to you.

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This post was originally written in August 2008 at a time when not a lot around me in business was making much sense to me. It has a heavy corporate focus, but the principles can be applied to other aspects of life.

We all work for someone. Even if you work for yourself, you’re working for the people who buy something from your company.

In the perfect world you would arrive at the office knowing what you have to do today. Better still, what you want to do. In an ideal world, you’ll arrive at the office knowing where you are aiming to be in your career and life a year from now. Maybe even two years from now. (if you’re in the public sector, maybe five years from now).

All credit due to John C. Maxwell and his book “Developing the Leader Within You” for the direction for this article.

Not surprisingly; the people above you in the corporate feeding chain are very similar to you. You have a lot in common with them. You work for the same company, understand the same products and have to deal with the same people – albeit from different perspectives.

When you’re looking over the shoulder of someone who’s controlling a keyboard and mouse, you’re going to see what needs to be clicked next to progress on to the next screen before they do. I can’t explain this… it just happens. In a very similar scenario, it’s really easy to see what management needs to do next when you’re looking over their shoulder. You know what needs to happen next, and you know what to ‘click’ to get there.

However, there are differences between a manager and a leader. And it’s not difficult to figure out when either is in trouble.

When a leader is in trouble, they:

1. have a poor understanding of the people they work or interact with

2. lack imagination

3. pass the buck

4. are not organized

5. cannot control emotions

6. will not take any risks

7. are defensive and insecure

8. stay inflexible, despite surrounding wisdom

9. have no team spirit or vision

10. avoid change

What do you do if you come across someone like this? Even worse – what if they’re your boss?

Make them feel like they are right. You cannot call them out and you really should not. The absolute best scenario is to visualize the outcome that makes the most sense, figure out a way to make the leader or boss gracefully recover from the situation (do NOT make them publicly look stupid – they are still your boss and may seek to change your employment status shortly afterwards!) and work as positively as you can to reach the desired endpoint. Your leadership qualities will shine through brighter.

Then watch closely for people peering over your shoulder telling you where to ‘click’…

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As I kick this off tonight I’m sitting on at least 150 notes and articles that I’ve written over the past four years, built from my 20+ years in the most fascinating worlds of business, commerce and human beings. Each note has some insight into the people who make things happen in this world, often contrasted with those who prefer the status quo.

Everyone is human but in life and work: anyone can be a rockstar. Lead the band, plan the tour, listen to the crowd, play for the fans, fill the tour bus with your gang and put on an amazing show.

Let’s see how this goes…

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