Taking Care of Business - Part 6

It's probably been over a year since I've released one of my world renowned articles from the Taking Care of Business series. Your wait is over. The good news is that I've been very busy since our last discussion. I have been reading Sun Tzu's Art of War. Let me just say, this is a great little book. It's especially useful if you're a feudal lord in ancient China. But you can also apply its wisdom to your career. Like how to motivate employees through torture and how to take your bosses job, through assassination. You may ask, how is work like war? A wise man once told me, that (in work) the only person that will watch out you for you is you. In this sense you can easily compare your struggle against a rival competitor, a nasty boss, or a scheming coworker as a war against your livelihood. In tribute to the great Sun Tzu, I like to call this nugget of business wisdom:

Work is Hell



There are so many great lessons to take from The Art of War so it was difficult to narrow it down to just three concepts. But if there's one thing my MBA class on public speaking taught me about good presentations, it's that you never give an audience more than three points to digest. For some reason even the most intelligent crowds can't seem to keep it together long enough to absorb four points. Perhaps in future issues we can delve deeper into this great work. For now, mull these bad boys over as you think about navigating the hell that is your career.

From Chapter 1: Laying Plans, Part 18 - Part 25

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush him. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he has superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.

How do we apply Sun Tzu teaching on warfare to our every day working life? There is perhaps no more important thread that runs through the Art of War than the importance of secrecy and information. You must always keep the enemy guessing and never reveal weakness. Perhaps more important is to never reveal strength. If you have an advantage, never flaunt it - lest it be wasted. Be opportunistic in your decision making and pay attention to the conditions of others. By making plans in advance through the control of information, you will be able to position yourself for great success while others around you, with more resources and experience, falter.

From Chapter 3: Attack by Stratagem, Part 18

Hence the saying: If you know your enemy and yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

This chapter on strategy is an extension of the first two chapters about careful preparations. In fact very little of Sun Tzu's work discusses the actual execution of combat. While I would be the first to admit that I far prefer action to planning, there is little doubt that good planning can make the difference in success and failure in your work. Here in chapter three, Sun Tzu reminds us that we can not limit ourselves to studying the enemy. We must look inward and examine our own self. We must be wary of our own weaknesses and be realistic when we plan our work. If we do not understand how our co-workers and clients perceive us than we will never be able to predict the outcome of our interactions with them. If you are able to properly self analyse than you are better prepared to predict the outcome of interactions at work.

From Chapter 6: Weak Points and Strong, Part 7 - Part 9

You can be sure in succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places that are undefended. You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only defend places that cannot be attacked. Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. O divine art subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

Again Sun Tzu speaks of secrecy and information, specifically through the art of deception. But deception can be tricky, especially in the working world. We always have to be mindful of legal and ethical standards. Unlike love and war, there are rules and guidelines we must all follow in our work. But where you can deceive your "enemy", without compromising your ethical standards or office guidelines, you will find opportunity to improve your chances of success.

Well, there you have it, folks. Your crash course on office warfare boiled down to three points. Let me know how your next corporate take-over goes after employing some of Sun Tzu's tactics.

Taking Care of Business - Part 5

Do you remember listening to your grandfather tell you the stories about his work? Maybe he had just come home from the war and he was looking for a job, hoping someone would take a chance on an uneducated farm boy. Perhaps the local factory was hiring that summer and he was lucky enough to get a job and he only hoped he wouldn't let them down. Your grandpa may have given his blood, sweat, and tears for the "company," and ever since his retirement he has been living well off their pension plan and stock options. Perhaps your grandfather's story is a little different. Perhaps everything was "wine and roses" until one year before retirement. Maybe his golden parachute wasn't quite as gilded as the company told him it would be. I guarantee that our parent's story of company loyalty is even worse than our grandparents. I'm sure you can see where this is going? If you can't than you need to keep reading.


Today's installment on working for The Man is about the illusion of company loyalty and how at the end of the day the only person that is going to watch out for you...

...is you.

That's why I like to call this one:

- Looking Out For #1 -



I work in a business where I meet people from a wide array of different industries and business acumen. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard about their company forcing them to retire early, causing them to miss out on thousands of dollars in benefits. I can't even remember the number of times I've heard about people being laid off because they have outgrown their usefulness. My own uncle was the victim of a layoff, in no small part due to the deadly combination of a bloated pay-check and obsolete knowledge in a technical industry.

There was a time in my life that I thought I might give more than a decade to one employer. I no longer believe that will happen. Thankfully I've never been fired, or laid off, or let go, but I can tell you that I've come damn close. Luckily that new offer came at just the right time and I made the switch on my own terms. And even if you are prepared for the worst, sometimes the market just doesn't give you the chance to leave before the boom falls. I consider myself lucky. But I also consider myself a realist.

Ultimately you have to watch out for your own skin. Everybody is replaceable and none of us are an exception to that rule. So here are a few tips to keep in mind as you navigate the shark infested waters of your career path.

1. Play hard ball when you negotiate salary in a job offer. You'll never get another chance to be better positioned to get what you want. That's money in your bank today and that's better than money in your bank tomorrow. Don't make me explain the time value of money to you.

2. When your old boss leaves, take the opportunity to influence the filling of her position. Nothing can turn a great job into a shitty job more completely than a tyrant supervisor.

3. Somebody in your organization is getting tired of you so attempt to reinvent yourself every few years. That could be taking a promotion, making a lateral move into a new area, identifying a company problem that you have a solution for, or even leaving the company for a new position someplace else.

4. Watch out for crazy people, especially if they are in charge. Nothing can wreck a career more than really fucked up managers - even if they are not in your department.

5. Always keep your resume up to date and never turn down an opportunity to interview somewhere even if you aren't looking for a new job. You never know what surprise might be in store for you.

6. If you are tired of working for The Man... become The Man. But be warned, everyone eventually rises to the highest level of their own incompetence.

Taking Care of Business - Part 4

I'm here to tell you that there is a super-duper-secret way to making good money and doing absolutely nothing. Actually there are three. So read them all and feel free to pick which one you like best.

1. Be born into old family money. Oh, too late for that?
2. Win the lottery. Oh, not lucky enough for that?
3. Start your own pyramid scheme. Oh, don't want to be vilified by all of humanity?

Then I suppose you'll have to join the rest of us and do a little bit of work. Unfortunately this multi-part series is about maximizing your money and minimizing your work... not eliminating work all together. If that were possible I wouldn't be blogging from my office. I'd be blogging from the Bahamas.

So in the spirit of "nutting up" and accomplishing something Part 4 is called:

- It's not just wallpaper... It's also a meal ticket -



It doesn't really matter what you want to do with your life. I recommend getting a degree, be it high-school, college, or anything in between. Most people don't use their degree but it isn't about how useful American History will be to you when you are driving a cab, or how important College Calculus is when you are the manager of a hotel. It's about maximizing choices. If you want to work less and get paid more you want to be able to have as many choices as possible and for every degree you achieve the more choices (or options) will be at your disposal. The choices could be anything.

Perhaps you want to become a manager. Maybe you want to change careers. Unlike me you may actually want to be something specific when you grow up. A degree is the first step to having these options at your disposal. In this day and age a college degree can feel like a must and in many professional fields it is. Hell, you still don't have to know what you want to do when you grow up. I can't tell you the disparity in college degree disciplines amongst my co-workers and we all do the EXACT same job.

Equally important is the asinine perception that the more degrees you have, the more you are worth... and therefore are compensated accordingly. Of course this is relative to the field in which you work but, by in large, the people with paper on the wall have more paper in their bank account.

Of course it isn't all about money. A degree can give you credibility and some breathing room in your work. Say you slack off a little and only do a half-arsed job on a particular project. Perception is 9/10 of reality and you're going to be given some latitude because the boss is going to assume you know what you are doing. Why? The degree is the preconceived evidence that you know what you're doing.

Finally there is the beauty (or curse) of the EXEMPT job. What am I talking about? I'm talking about being salaried. This little perk doesn't have a clock-in and clock-out time. This is why all the dress-shirt types come in late, take long lunches, and leave early for the golf course? They aren't being paid for the number of hours they put in so why put any more than you have to. Of course the double edge on this sword is that when the job must get done, you have to stay late without compensation. Or you could be like The Q and be a salaried employee with overtime. But that's like the Holy Grail of jobs and those don't come along very often.

So that's it for Part 4. It isn't always fun and games and Lord knows I worked my tail off for my education, but I do feel very strongly that while I don't always USE my education in my work it IS the reason why I am able to do what I am doing today... and some days not doing!

Taking Care of Business - Part 3

I hate sitting in meetings. What I hate most are meetings that have no purpose. Meetings that exist just so those attending and running the meetings can feel important.

I've got an interesting situation at my office where a co-worker feels compelled to create work around an issue that really is none of her concern. Our supervisor has told us that this issue is being taken care of by another department and that we should focus on our jobs and expect some results on this issue soon. Nevertheless, my co-worker wants results NOW and is dead set on getting everyone involved in our department (accept our supervisor). So she scheduled a meeting. It's never more obvious that this is a pointless meeting. While my presence was not mandatory, it was requested.

Sometimes your pointless meetings ARE mandatory. In today's installment I'm going to talk about a tried and true way you can avoid attending those meetings that amount to nothing. I like to call this:

- The Conflict Solution -



The first order of business is to make sure you are not expected to present, run, or otherwise contribute in any way to the subject matter of the meeting. If this is the case than proceed with the plan, if not, you're screwed... go to the meeting.

Assuming you know you're going to be an innocent bystander to this office "circle-jerk" you can now begin with your plan. Go check your calendar. Let's say you have another meeting (one of consequence), or a series of meetings later in the week. If there is any opportunity to provide input as to the date and time of the pointless meeting, chime in. Suggest to the organizer that your Thursday is wide open. Then when Thursday arrives you can bail for the more important meeting.

Other examples of conflicting schedules include a meeting with your boss or any other boss up the corporate ladder. Call up the Associate Vice-President and see if you can schedule some time. Nobody will fault you for skipping out of a minuscule little staff meeting when the AVP is expecting you!

Finally there is the silver bullet of "get out of jail free" cards - The client meeting/phone-call. If you feel that you would rather jump off a tall building than attend this dumb-ass meeting, then simply bail. Tell them you had to take an important client phone-call. Better yet, leave the office for an hour and go see a client on-site. The bottom line is you don't have to subject yourself to every excruciating little pow-wow that comes up when you know that it will never amount to anything. Your time and sanity is worth far too much. There it is another easy yet fun way of working around stupid people in your office. Much love to you all!

Taking Care of Business - Part 2

In this second installment on the keys to living well and working less I bring forth one of my very old tricks. This is an easy one folks and it's an all time classic. Many of us do it without even realizing it. But if it's news to you, then get out your pad and pencil because it's a beauty. I like to call this one:

- Making a Lunch Break Out of Your Lunch Break -



How often do we put in that overtime? Have you ever had to work through lunch? Have you ever needed that all important mid-day break to run very important personal errands like going to the bank, the doctor's office, or the strip club?

Sometimes 60 minutes just isn't enough time and what if you have an overbearing boss or nosy co-worker that enjoys keeping tabs on you? Here's the trick... it's so easy you'll be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner.

1) Make it clear to said-nosy-ass-person that you'll be taking a late lunch today.

2) Make sure the offending nosy-ass person has JUST left for lunch themselves, preferably around noon.

3) Leave immediately after them and don't come back until 2pm.

When you return the assumption here is that you left around 1pm. And there you have it. You just made a two-hour lunch break look like one and today you had enough time to go by the bank, browse Best Buy, AND grab that gordito burrito from Chipotle!

Taking Care of Business - Part 1

I was on the phone with Dagromm last week and we were talking about work. I shared a little secret of mine that I have been using for years and (like many other occasions) he declared me a genius. He said that it's those type of things that they should be teaching in school and not all the math.

It got me thinking about all the different work-lessons we teach ourselves. The type of stuff that they don't tell you in the classroom. I'd like to humbly submit this little nugget of wisdom as one of a series that I plan to share. Call it a multi-part lesson in how to get ahead while doing nothing.

It's sort of a guide to maximizing your earning power while minimizing any actual work you do for a living. For me it typifies that goal of working to live and not living to work. I like to call this one:

- I love the smell of email in the morning -



As a parent to Lil' Magnum and Lil' Higgins my wife and I are often up in the early hours of the morning. Consequently, I tend to go ahead and leave for work ASAP. Whatever your reason for being at the office at the butt-crack of dawn, it's always important that people know how committed you are to your work. Never mind the fact that from 6:30am to 9:00am I'm catching up on all my favorite TV shows on-line. No, the important issue is that your boss and coworkers know how committed you are to having you ass planted at the office.

Now if you're lucky enough to be a non-except paid employee than you don't have to worry about this, because your time-card will tell the whole story. But if you are a salaried employee than you don't earn the benefits of overtime. It's great when you want to go sneak out for an extra long lunch and see Spider-Man 3, but it sucks when you are either working early or working late.

That brings us to the strategy:

I want to make sure as many people know that I'm working early (or late) so I send out emails. Perhaps it's a response you've been meaning to give a co-worker. Maybe it's an update on a project for your boss. Or even if it is the generic FYI to anyone and everyone, send it now! There's no guarantee, but I think there is a better than even chance people notice what time the email got sent. I know that one can program an email to be sent on delay but be wary of such attempts. You never know when the boss might actually be in the office early and discovers your little ruse. No, the best bet is to send the emails when you are actually in the office. Don't worry about actually working. Surf the net, download some music, or in my case - watch some TV! The best part about it is no commercials!