I really, really love my clients at the company. I mean, in the past I’ve worked at companies where it’s usually an  “us vs them” mentality – management vs employees, company vs clients, you vs all. But that’s not how I feel these days about my clients. For whatever reason, it doesn’t matter what industry they’re in (from food conglomerates to digital media studios), what types of project’s they’re working on (mobile, social, web, design, whatever…) , or what state of their company (start-up vs established and all greys inbetween).

I don’t know how we got lucky, but I think it might have to do that we a.) do good work and b.) like attracts like. If you’re good people, good people want to work with you.

If anyone reading has any thoughts on what makes good clients go to good people, feel free to comment. I’d love to hear from anyone else on their thoughts. Is D&T just lucky?

all D&T clients - you're Da Bes

People in positions of power are afflicted with a severe problem: they don’t get yelled at often enough. Very rarely will they hear how they’re failing; how they can do better; or anything how their choices impact negatively/positively.

We as leaders need to be empathetic, willing and eager to hear what our colleagues have to say.

We as colleagues and coworkers need to be confident to provide direct, constructive criticism.

I err on the side that “the blame’s on me” whenever there is an internal issue, colleague matter, or generally bad news.

Here’s multi-billionaire entrepreneur Ben Horowitz’ assessment on messing up:

Even if you know what you are doing, things go wrong. Things go wrong, because building a multi-faceted human organization to compete and win in a dynamic, highly competitive market turns out to be really hard. If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of a 100. This kind of mean can be psychologically challenging for a straight A student. It is particularly challenging, because nobody tells you that the mean is 22.

When people in my company would complain about something or other being broken such as the expense reporting process, I would joke that it was all my fault. The joke was funny, because it wasn’t really a joke. Every problem in the company was indeed my fault. As the founding CEO, every hire and every decision that the company ever made happened under my direction. Unlike a hired gun that comes in and blames all of the problems on the prior regime, there was literally nobody for me to blame. 

I’m not a CEO but I am a CoFounder of the company. Ben makes it hit home in his assessment of the challenges Founders/CEOs get every single day. It’s a great article and definitely worth reading.

I’m going to make a “call to action” for everyone out there – figure out one major problem in your career, figure out the various stakeholders and their stances, and plot out a plan to resolve. I know most people are not CEOs or Founders, but  you can be the “Founder” of your career.

Ultimately, the blame’s on me. It’s also on us. It’ll only get better when we work to make it better, and recognize we need each other to make it better.

The mantra is "Do Good, Be Good" not "Do Average, Blame Others"

We’re planning a few parties at D&T.

And there’s a good reason: every so often you have to celebrate your wins. I think Steve Jobs said that (one of the few quotes I’ll use from the man…)

It take a lot of energy to win anything. So many companies that are scrappy just keep their head down and rack up victory after victory, never taking the time to stop and reflect. Working in that environment will burn out the good people at your company.

So I encourage to have parties, do cocktails, and generally recognize people’s efforts as much and as frequently as possible (particularly when those efforts aren’t obviously tangible. It’s hard for the HR director to feel like they’re rocking it.)

Parties coming up at DOM & TOM:

•  Ladies Night out #2
• Cooper Square House Party (Name pending)
• Beach Haus Corporate Retreat!

Uh, YES Party Kat is on the list. Party Kat is the REASON there's a Party. Duh....

After graduating college (age 21) I worked the following jobs:

• Film Projection specialist at a movie theater
• Television writer at a children’s show
• Theater producer
• Art/Gymnastics teacher
• Bartender
• Collections agent
• Administrative assistant

It took me seven (7) career changes to get to what I wanted to do, which I didn’t figure out until I was 26ish. That’s averaging a more than job a year!

Here’s my thought on this: Quitting a job is depressing, irrational, and completely necessary

Fun lessons I learned:

1. ) Film Projectionist  – If you’re doing a great job, no one notices. If you’re messing up you’re the fall-guy. Avoid these jobs like the plague

2.) Television writer – Easily the least-creative job I’ve ever done and after you calculate the number of hours you’ve worked, you’re making less than $5/hour.

3.) Theater Producer – As with most Not-for-Profits, raising money is 85% of the gig, 13% is managing personalities; 2% is producing art.

3.) Art/Gymnastics teacher – I learned almost all my conflict-management skills here. You’d be surprised how reasonable five-year-olds can be, versus their adult counterparts (especially parents)

4.) Bartender – The most boring job that exists. What I thought was a glamour gig for a young 20-something was really menial and stupid. If you have skills don’t do this.

5.) Collections agent  (Revenue Management!)- If you run a small business, get good at collections.  And it takes a lot to do it – cajoling, begging, demanding, threatening, etc.

6.) Administrative Assistant – If you’re sitting in meetings, meeting interesting people, and getting mentored this is great. If you’re running for coffee please quit ASAP.

Not-for-profits tend to be poorly run; corporate America has GREAT benefits but uninspiring that I think it’s…..intentionally so; and there are very few people in the any industry that really knows what their doing or how to manage people effectively. Working for corporations is a selfish world, people.  It’s very often a selfish, short-sighted, incompetent world. Which is why I needed to keep quitting – I assumed that “no, no this isn’t how people really work. I’m just in a bad company/place/department/industry. I need to try something else…go where people are competent and like each other.” Grass was never greener.

Now, I don’t consider those gigs as a waste of time. I picked up valuable lessons all throughout.  There are no detours in life – I carried a lot with me at DOM &  TOM. Basically, don’t work with jerks, be respectful and humble enough to assign interesting projects to coworkers, and for the love of God don’t do boring.

At least this counts for school credit....

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Happy DOM & TOM day!

DOM & TOM day is a company-recognized holiday for everyone at D&T  to take a 3-day weekend in April. Because, April’s AWESOME and everyone should go out and enjoy this springtime

No update for today – hope you celebrate this beautiful day!

booyah!

My friend Rich has  a great story to share:

He wanted an 8 pack set of abs, so he started the Paleolithic diet. The End.

Bam – that’s it. That’s his reason. Eat better, live better, for better abs.

I love this story tremendously. See, in the story he feels embarrassed that he’s doing all these great, healthy, life-changing things for what is ostensibly a narcissistic goal of physical aggrandizement. And I say “so what?” So what if the reason is not “good enough” by other people’s standards? The results are still the results. You can get a better reason later – there’s always room for growth. But to start the path of healthy body and mind, sometimes you just need any flimsy reason to kickstart your journey. In fact, I’d bet that the more petty the reason, the easier it is to coax yourself into doing it.

I want to lose 20 lbs so I can get laid more.

I want to finish top of the class so I can coast next year. 

I want to earn enough money so I can check out Barcelona for three months. 

I don’t often hear people say “I want to lose 20 lbs so that I offset the prevalent diabetes that plagues the men in my family when they hit their mid-50s…”  or “I want to earn enough money so that I can volunteer my time for more altruistic causes…” (And yes, it’d be a great thing if I did hear that). Those might be the long-term goals; those might be the real reason why you NEED to struggle, but those reasons may not be what gets you started.

And that’s where I’m going with this article. The reasons you start something may not be the reason why you stick with it, and it may not be the best reason to do anything.

now this is happening:

I shudder to think that anyone imagined how powerful creating the Slinky would be on the world's children...

“Take risks, but keep your overhead low.”

“Crowdsource ideas, but work in stealth mode.”

“Work in an open floor plan to keep communications open but leave your developers alone.”

Is it me or does most business advice feel contradictory?

Here’s my theory:

1.) Specific approaches are valid at specific circumstances in the company.

So perhaps it’s valid to take a risk on a new project, but not take a big risk on a new hire. Fine, I get that.

2.) Advice evolves as the people’s judgement evolves.

So while I was rash and foolish in my youth,  these days my experiences have taught me to be more prudent. Or perhaps my definition of “rash” and “prudent” have evolved, and years from now I’ll look back and say “now I know better…”

I wonder if I’ll ever know “best” – Like, the optimal decision to make for any course of action.

In any case, we see that this matter of contradictory advice, and therefore decision-making, can severely undermind one’s leadership. No one wants to follow a waffler; and no one can really lead without a coherent message. So when a break from a previous stance happens, it’s imperative that the leader realizes that he/she is breaking from the previous course of action and communicates that effectively to their team. Otherwise….it’s just going to look like you have a schizophrenic leader who doesn’t know what he/she is doing or why.

Heads we all get an incentivized pay structure; Tails we get stock options and fixed salaries