Masha Pavlov , June 13, 2008
What is it? No its not a word I made up. No, its not a Russian word that I would say growing up either. It actually describes people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th (today) - and according to psychologists, there are about 21 million of us in America. Roughly 8% of our population wants to stay in bed for fear of bad luck on Friday the 13th. Some sources say it may be the most widespread superstition in the United States. Some people won’t go to work on Friday the 13th; some won’t eat in restaurants; many wouldn’t think of setting a wedding on the date.
Why do we have a fear of Friday the 13th anyway? What started all of the devilish discussion about the freaky Friday, bad luck day? There is a history actually, its quite amusing to read about. These kinds of myths and legends were essentially created by one religion demonizing another. One story about Fridays is from as early as the sixth century. Christian missionaries from England traveled to Germany or Russia (go Russia!) to stamp out other religions like the Norse goddess Frigg?, goddess of sky, love, fertility, and motherhood. As Christianity gained popularity throughout Europe, missionaries demonized her and demoted her to a witch even though many saw her as a beautiful woman. But, there were some who still believed in the power of Frigg and wanted to remain as her followers. As the Christians continued to shun Frigg even more strongly, her followers started meeting secretly in caves to worship her. This only added to society fearing Frigg and the speculation is that followers gathered in the caves on Fridays. Later, her name was linked to the derivative of the word Friday, which became known as the day of worshiping the witch. The belief that Friday was an evil day followed.
So is this really a reason to fear the actual day of Friday the thirteenth? Not for me, but others maybe. My thought is that if I pretend to be superstitious like this then maybe I can go home. Just a random thought.
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Alexander Muse , June 9, 2008
New studies out of France prove that smoking presents an increased risk for memory loss in people at mid-life. The study found a strong link between smoking and cognitive and memory problems later in life. The study explains,
“First, smoking in middle age is associated with memory deficit and decline in reasoning abilities,” they wrote in a report in the June 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine “Second, long-term ex-smokers are less likely to have cognitive deficits in memory, vocabulary and verbal fluency.
If you smoke, consider quitting before you forget how…
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Alexander Muse , May 21, 2008
Josh suggested in a post today that, “Your culture can be one of the hardest assets for you to protect.“ We certainly don’t have the whole culture thing figured out at Architel, but we have attempted to create culture through the creation of rituals.
For example, each Friday we turn off the phones at noon and keep them off until two for an all hands meeting and a communal lunch. All employees are required to attend the meeting where we discuss issues facing the company, individuals or the market in general. We reward employees who have gone above and beyond with certificates and gift cards. Finally, we serve lunch to the entire team. We have shared lunch with each other since 2003 and while it may seem like a small thing it is something many of us look forward to each week. Of course, we won’t be able to do this forever (i.e. we will eventually get too big).
Both current and former employees have told me that getting together as a group is/was their favorite part of work each week. Does your company have a ritual?
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Alexander Muse , May 20, 2008
I wrote a post titled, “Quitting your job, the right way…” last year and I thought it was worth reposting here:
There comes a time in most employment relationships when it is time to move on. Gone are the days of lifetime employment. Unless you get fired you will need to quit. My suggestion? Do it with class. Sit down with your manager and let him know that you are leaving and offer a minimum of two weeks notice. Regardless of how much you would like to slam down your resignation letter on his desk and walk out, consider that it is likely that your next job won’t be your last and that future employers might want to talk to your current boss. If you handle it right it is very likely that your current boss will provide positive references for the rest of your career. Handle it wrong and at best you won’t be able to get a reference and worst you might get a negative reference. On the other hand, I highly recommend employers providing a minimum of two weeks notice to employees regardless of the reason for termination. Get a release in exchange for the severance payment of course.
Penelope Trunk suggests the following:
- Go before things get bad. Lynne Prodger recently left her accounting job. “I’ve been really good about quitting jobs amicably,” she says. “I realized I was hitting a point where I was going to start acting out.” Like Prodger, you need to know yourself and be honest about how you’re feeling on the job so you don’t let your emotions get out of hand.
- Make a good first step. “The very first person that you should tell you’re leaving is your boss,” says Alexandra Levit , author of “They Don’t Teach Corporate in College.” “Your boss will be insulted to hear it from someone else.” Also, get your story right the first time and tell the same, optimistic plan to everyone. Prodger, for example, explained that she wanted to give freelancing a try, which shows positive vision for her career.
- Leave the door open a crack. If you’ve done good work, there is no reason you couldn’t come back later, when things for you and for the company might have changed. Especially as you begin to specialize in your career and lay down roots, the pool of possible companies gets smaller. So don’t close any doors definitively.
- Beware of the exit interview. “If you trash the company during an exit interview, it will follow you everywhere. In fact, don’t even bother to do one,” says David Perry , a recruiter and author of “Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters.” “Just leave on good terms and let them know you had a wonderful time.” Even if you didn’t.
- Resignation letter. Try to get out of it if you can. But if you really need to write one for legal reasons, make it short and gracious. You are not the president of the United States. The world does not need a public record of why you quit or what your aspirations are. Just a simple end date and a thank you will be fine.
- Trust that the company can continue without you. “People think the world is going to end if they quit their job,” says Prodger. “In my last job, everyone who quit thought everything would go wrong, but it’s easily fixed and everyone’s replaceable.”
- Set yourself up for a good reference. Perry is adamant that any negative parting will haunt your job hunts forever. “You want to be sure the trail you leave is a positive one,” he says. And although the law discourages past employers from dissing you to future employers, Perry says a recruiter can circumvent this hurdle. “I have never, in my 20 years of recruiting, had someone not answer questions about references.”
- Manage the in-between time carefully. “Burn no bridges,” warns Brendon Connelly , author of the popular blog Slacker Manager. Sometimes quitting a job is as loaded as dumping a lover. “I have quit a few jobs and there has been tension because it’s always been for something else,” says Connelly. “You need to lay the groundwork ahead of time for the transition.” Tie up loose ends at the old job and get your files organized to pass on to someone else. “You don’t want to give the old people the shaft.”
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Alexander Muse , May 15, 2008
Scott and I sat down with the owners of the INFOMART and came to an agreement that will almost double the size of our space here in the building by July 10th! The expansion will be used for a) reception space, b) open offices, c) conference rooms and d) a new server buildout room. This should allow us to grow our data center footprint by around 50% and open up two more client access colocation facilities. Perhaps we will have an open house in the Fall, feel free to come by and check out our progress!
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Alexander Muse , May 13, 2008
Far too often I hear our engineers saying, “No problem, this is a piece of cake. I can have it fixed in two minutes!” I cringe when I think about the likely fallout from those two sentences. More often than not the problem is more complex than we initially suspected and it will take far longer than two minutes to resolve. As a result of the initial assertion the client is going to be annoyed suggesting, “You guys suck! It took you two hours to resolve a very simple issue!” Instead you should consider a) increasing value and b) decreasing expectations, let me explain:
Increase Value: There is never an upside to downplaying your value (i.e. suggesting that ‘this is a piece of cake’). Get it? Your ego may swell a little when you suggest no issue is too complex for you to resolve, but the client will value your work less. What if instead you said nothing? Simply indicating you understood their request and that you would get back to them as soon as possible. If you were a bit daring you could even say, “Oh boy, this is going to be a challenge!” Either way, NEVER downplay your skills by suggesting that anything is ‘very easy’ or ‘no problem’. Obviously it is a problem or the client wouldn’t be asking you to fix. Lets face it, you are the expert ~ your expertise is valuable.
Reduce Expectations: Okay, lets get this straight, you have NEVER done anything worth doing in two minutes. You can barely have a conversation about what is broken in two minutes. You can’t create the ticket to document your work in two minutes. Literally, it is unreasonable to assume you could fix something in two minutes. So if you think it is going to take you an hour to do a task, estimate that it will take you two and then communicate to the client that it will take three hours. Empirically this will be an accurate estimate. When I suggest the 3x estimate rule many of you tell me that it is ‘dishonest’, but I assure you, after eight years of doing this 3x is far more accurate than 1x or 2x your original estimate. Lets face it, there are many factors outside of your control. Indeed, you may only spend 60 minutes fixing the item, but in the middle of that 60 minutes of work you answered three phone calls at 10 minutes each, talked to your boss for 20 minutes, went to the bathroom for 15 minutes and grabbed two cokes at 5 minutes each. Your 60 minute activity wasn’t delivered to the client 2 hours and 15 minutes. If you set the client’s expectation that you would have it done in 3 hours you would have delivered your work 45 minutes early.
If you can practice these two ideas I bet escalations related to your tickets/clients will be reduced by more than 25% if not more. Let me know how it goes.
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Alexander Muse , May 7, 2008
Josh at smbitpros asks, “What do you do when you have attendance and Punctuality problems?” Here at Architel we have a fairly liberal PTO (i.e. paid time off) policy, providing 18 days of paid time off for each employee. Earlier this year we decided to leverage our PTO policy as a carrot and as a stick to promote attendance and punctuality. For those who are late without an excuse we levy a 1/2 day PTO penalty. For those who have perfect attendance and punctuality we hold a drawing each month awarding the winners with their choice of a $100 gift card or an additional PTO day.
Our primary goal is to be able to predict who and when we will have engineers at the office each day. If we find an employee is habitually late we will recommend moving their start time - e.g. if your start time is 8AM, but you can’t get in until 8:30AM we may suggest that your new start time be 9AM. The actual time is not as important as the ability to predict whether or not we will have available resources to serve our clients needs.
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Alexander Muse , May 7, 2008
Mike over at smbitpros is writing about IT providers who discount their fees. He quotes a new report that most IT providers will discount their prices by 11.7%. He rails, “Most companies don’t even make a profit of 11.7%!” I would have to agree.
We strive for value pricing here at Architel. Of course, we don’t always hit the mark, but more often than not we do. Once we quote a price we stick to it. There is no negotiation. Why? We try to offer a quality service for a good value. Our model of aligned interest means that we need to make a profit if we can do our job well. The risk we take is that if we fail, we take the hit along with our client ~ a profit is NEVER guaranteed. This risk is why our prices are firm. If we can’t achieve a ‘potential profit’ in the sale process my advice is that we shouldn’t bother accepting the business.
Mike suggests, “What’s the solution? Start treating what you do as a profession of value, and not as a commoditized trade. Start having confidence. Take some courses in how to sell value instead of price. Get some guts and work on some creative and firm responses to prospects that ask for discounts. Whatever you do, get it through your head that if you continue discounting your prices, you are in the a race to the bottom of the field and an unprofitable business.”
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Masha Pavlov , May 1, 2008
Nearly everybody gossips at work. I guess it’s human nature, but people just like to talk about each other, and rarely does it do anything but add negativity to the workplace.
Well, at least one employer in Chicago decided to do something about it by banning gossip at his firm. Each of the employees at Empower Public Relations not only agreed not to gossip, but they also agreed that when an employee says something negative behind a co-worker’s back, he or she will be required to repeat that gossip to the person’s face. Can you imagine?
The policy gives the employees a chance to diffuse the rumors by setting the record straight. I imagine it also discourages people from gossiping in the first place when they know their words may come back to haunt them. Personally, I think it’s ironic that this is a public relations firm. It seems an unusual way to do PR.
I have to admit this policy is a little extreme but it’s a good idea to get rid of gossip at work any way you can. I’ve seen all sorts of surveys and reports, and gossip is nearly always one of the biggest complaints employees have about the workplace.
Gossip in the office is bad for productivity and bad for morale. Get rid of it and companies will make more money and people will be happier at work. All in all, it’s a perfect scenario…but I don’t think getting rid of gossip will ever happen. Of course, you can always call it networking instead; but, we all know that’s not exactly right either.
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Alexander Muse , April 29, 2008
According to Scott Moritz, when the 3G iPhone is launched this summer AT&T will subsidize $200 of the cost of the new iPhone.
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