And Then I Held A Glass Of Water To Her Lips While She Was Tied Up

I wanted to make money. When I moved to NYC to get a fulltime job I was rich. I was making $40,000 a year. This was a huge move up from my prior salary of $28,300 a year.

I thought I should be able to hire a butler on that kind of money.

I bought a suit. I started looking at nice apartments. I figure I could afford the massive budget of $800 a month, give or take a "few hundred".

One time there was an apartment available uptown. I met the real estate guy. While we were checking out the apartment he accidentally dropped his suitcase and about a dozen porn magazines fell out. He apologized while he picked them up and stuffed them back into this suitcase.

I couldn't afford his fee of 5% of the year's rent. I had no money other than what was coming up on my next paycheck.

So I lived with my parents which meant I had to get on a bus at 6am and I didn't get back from the city until about 10pm each day.

Finally, I was hanging around Washington Sq Park doing nothing and I met Elias and he needed a roommate. It was just $300 a month. I got the futon and he got the couch. It was one room. The broken shower was constantly running and the kitchen was so bad I didn't set foot in it once.

We kept different hours so I was usually asleep when he got home. With a girl.

He and the girl would go into the bathroom and start having sex with her perched on him while the wall pushed back and forth, as if it were ready to burst and they would fall right through. My bed was against the wall and I'd try to sleep but also I'd stay up and listen.

Elias was a strong chessplayer and made his money gambling chess in the park. His brother Jorge maybe is the most talented chessplayer in history but never really pursued the game after he was a teenager.

One time I was sick and in the middle of the night Elias woke me and told me we were getting kicked out of the apartment.

Then I decided I needed to make even more money.

Nobody had websites then. I thought this was a big problem that I wanted to solve. Everyone needed a website.

My brother-in-law and I did a website for a diamond wholesaler on 47th street. "If you tell anyone you are doing this website," he said, in his thick Russian-Jewish accent, "I'm going to have to kill you." People say that as a joke but he was serious.

And now he's dead. He was looking for diamonds in an obscure part of Russia and his plane crashed.

Nobody on the street (known as the Diamond District in NYC) was allowed to know that a wholesaler was selling direct through the Internet. We charged $35,000 for that.

My take was $17,500 which I used to pay for a year's rent at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC.

It was all cash. I gave it to the owner of the Chelsea in a paper bag and he said, "are you a drug dealer?" I don't think he was asking this to see if I should live in his building or not. I think he was just curious.

Then we did HBO's website for close to $100,000. I was working at HBO and outsourced the site to my brother in law. Then we did AmericanExpress.com and LoudRecords.com, BadBoy, NewLine, and Miramax.com and TimeWarner.com and websites for The Matrix, the Wu-Tang Clan, Con Edison, and many others. We were in business.

I worked all day at HBO and then all night at Reset, the name of the company. We got an office, then we got a bigger office. We had big parties.

Maybe five other companies knew how to do websites in NYC at the time and we were the smallest but I like to think we did the most creative sites.

We did a site called "Shoebox". I asked one of my neighbors at the Chelsea, who was a professional submissive, if she would let us photograph and interview her and her girlfriend, a professional dominatrix who was around 7 feet tall and had some sort of extra chromosome that enlarged everything about her and made her constantly lactate.

They came over to our office where we had a big photo studio and they had about 20 pairs of shoes and all of their lingerie. The highlight for me was holding a glass of water up to Maria's lips when she was completely tied up and thirsty in between takes.

The site was so popular that Con Edison came over and said, "that's what we want our website to look like."

Nobody knew what they were doing.

It's hard to be a first-time entrepreneur. I should've made our services into a product, for instance, raised money, and aimed for a big IPO.

Instead we sold for a multiple of our profits. Maybe the only Internet company back then that was profitable. Stupid.

I knew technology but I knew zero about business. I wish I had just even one mentor then who could've told me about the business side of things.

We also wanted to try out different ideas. While we were running a website business we also tried to be a rap label, a producer of TV shows, and even a tea company.

We found a rap group we liked and almost signed them but then lost interest.

About half the companies we worked with had employees who asked for bribes in order to throw business our way. "Bribe" is a strong word. Sometimes it was more subtle. "Favor". Nevertheless, we always paid the bribe.

Humiliation was common for me. I'd fly out to California to pitch Jim Carrey's agent about doing his website. "This is going to be HUGE!" his agent said. "you HAVE to go to a party with us later tonight." And an hour later I would call for directions to the party and the agent would say, "Wait, wait, wait a sec. Who is this?"

Another time I hired someone to be CEO while I was still working full-time. He's a good guy but I didn't understand how to make a deal. He wanted 10% of the company that would vest in six months. In six months and one day he took his 10% and quit and made a sitcom for MTV.

Water under the bridge. We're good friends today.

We felt like we were the wild west. Rappers with guns would stroll into our offices. Trent Reznor would hang out throwing around ideas for the Nine Inch Nails website.

Miramax executives would scream at me over the phone if one pixel was out of place on their logo. One day we spent the day tasting different teas. We wanted to pitch Honest Tea but it didn't work out.

Clients would get shot and killed at awards ceremonies in the music industry. HBO one time wanted to buy us but that's when I had to admit that I was at both places and had to quit working at HBO.

My first day on the job I cried because I had no idea what to do or who to do it to and people stopped returning my calls after I left HBO.

Then we started getting calls to get acquired. One guy said, "I don't know a hamburger from a website but I know that a stock with an Internet company is going to go up." He was from a company that manufactured burn gels and they wanted to buy us so they could put ".com" at the end of their name.

I went on a vacation to Paris. There's a restaurant at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. The guy sitting next to us was celebrating. He had just sold a chain of Papa John's pizza stores. When I got back to New York he kept calling me and wanted to invest. Maybe he would've been my smart investor but we never took in any money.

Eventually we sold. Eventually people realized that it doesn't cost $75,000 to make a three page website about Dennis Miller. Eventually the entire web design business went bankrupt as an industry before it reinvented itself as "full services" in the Internet space.

I didn't know what to do after we sold the company. I felt totally lost.

I had money and it seemed lonely sitting in a bank account. So I bought a house. I rode helicopters every week to Atlantic City. I made a lot of new friends who all wanted something and none of them speak to me anymore.

I played poker every night for 365 straight days. "Ingrid says hi", Brian Koppelman, the writer of Rounders, wrote me the other day. Ingrid was usually in charge of the Mayfair Club, the best poker club in NY in 1999. Portrayed by Famke Jannsen in the movie.

Every day was a mask to fool someone into having a relationship with me. Into doing business with me. Into not firing me. Into buying my company.

When I actually had to "be myself" I went broke and lost all of my relationships almost instantly.

I no longer even speak to my partners in the business, all of whom are blood relatives. I was drinking, gambling, running businesses into the ground, spending, and betraying.

I could say, "I wish someone had given me advice" during this time but perhaps many people tried to.

I wish I could say, "I listened" but I honestly didn't have the ability to listen. I didn't even know what listening meant.

Listening is a more difficult skill than "Doing". Because you know the difference between "done" and "not done". But there's no line that tells you whether you listened or not.

This is the entire reason why the self-help business is a scam.

There's absolutely nothing that could've helped me. I would later lie down in the street and pray for a car to run over me while my baby girls were upstairs playing.

I wish I could re-live the entire experience. Like the blizzard of 1996 when we all went to work at midnight to finish a website and it felt so good to deliver. Or when I was scared I'd have to fire everyone because I lost a big client and didn't tell anyone. 

Now when people ask me what I would do differently I always say the same answer, "I wouldn't change a thing".

What's wrong with our star PM, Modi?

Can something possibly be wrong with the darling of crowds from Delhi to the US, one of the 20 most powerful men in the world, one who announces one hugely successful scheme every month (or is it every week)? Yes, of course.

You see, fan following and election results do not mean that the guy was right. Had majority approval indicated sagacity, Congress government in the centre and the Communists in Kolkata must be treated as highly sagacious people, for most part of India's history. But the voters of today say something else. And so will those of tomorrow. Let's leave TRPs for Arnab Goswami.

So, despite his highly impressive popularity rating, what's wrong with N Modi?

If one must start with a summary, it is this - He simply loves the stage too much and avoids cleaning up the attic. He is just not getting down to what really ails India, because doing that may not be glamorous enough.

Swacchta abhiyaan, Pradhan mantri jan dhan yojna, Make-in-India, Look global-connect local (or whatever), Yoga day, visit to Siachen, Man ki Baat etc are good things. I mean it. But dirty streets, poor not having a bank account, outsiders not manufacturing in India, relations with Australia & Japan, not doing enough Yoga etc are NOT what is wrong with India.

So, what IS wrong?

Saw it on TV recently that a child dies of diarrhoea in India every 10 minutes and 15 die of malnutrition every hour. A road accident victim dies every 4 minutes. We have ghastly figures of rapes, non action by police force, no teachers in government schools, unacceptably polluted air in our cities, government doctors cutting up females for tubectomy faster than a butcher cuts up goats, people waiting for 30 years to get justice, others being kept in jails for 15 years for terrorism and then released by Supreme court for 'No case'. That's what's wrong with India.

This is what keeps India at a disgustingly low 135 number position at the UN Human Development Index (HDI) in a list of just 187 nations. Did you know that nations like Gabon, Samoa and Palau, are ahead of India in that list? Did you even know the names of these countries till now?

Let us accept that Modi has been only a few months and all problems we see noted above are the legacy of the Congress misrule.

But has he taken even the baby steps necessary to correct this? Isn't it better to remind him now while there is still time, than at the end of term?

Cleanliness is best sorted out by penalising those who dirty the streets, by improving the number of safaiwallahs and the equipment they use, by improving drainage and by ensuring that every penny given for these schemes is actually utilised for the purpose. For how long will PM Modi, Amitabh Bacchan, Nita Ambani clean our streets? I suspect that they have other jobs to do as well.

Children education and school conditions have to be improved by putting more money in education and not by getting Coca-cola and NDTV to do what the government should be doing. HRD ministry will have to do more than pass instructions to IITs about unsuitability of non-veg, tamasic food for Indian students. Oh yes, it has happened. Even I didn't believe it initially.

Justice system and police system can easily be improved by increasing the number of judges and correcting the glaring deficiencies of the police force, which have been repeatedly brought out by several committees. Any move in that direction? None.

Anything wrong with Jan-dhan account yojna of the PM? Everything. Government’s decision to extend overdraft facilities without incorporating adequate checks is a potential harbinger of bad loans for a sector already reeling under its worst NPA crisis in years. This “will mean Rs 75,000 crore for 150 million accounts,” columnist Swaminathan Aiyer wrote in the Economic Times . “If these are not repaid, banks will lose Rs 75,000 crore at a time when the PJ Nayak Committee says they need to raise an additional Rs 5.8 lakh crore just to meet the new Basel norms for capital adequacy.”

As an overview, one sees that NO attempt is being made to make the existing system work. ALL effort is towards starting new schemes.

Another objectionable aspect of his policy is the deepening of the hindu-muslim schism and India-Pakistan divide. There is absolutely no doubt about this. All said and done, the UPA did keep a peaceful, war-less, border with the SAME neighbours. We know that a war puts the economy back by 10 years. Building up the economy incrementally and then causing it to slide down radically, doesn't make sense.

Manmohan Singh could have been excused for not taking up these issues because Congress had so few MPs that he just had to do what the allies wanted. That's not much of an excuse for any PM, but with 280 MPs, Modi doesn't have even that fig-leaf. He has enormous power and he knows it well. Remember, how he used the obnoxious ordinance route within days of taking over. For what? Not to do something for the poor but to change service rules so that he gets a Chief/Cabinet secretary of his choice! No one could stop him. So the question is - You know how to rough-ride over others; so how about doing it for the sake of the country! When Superman refuses to act in public interest, we must ask 'why not?'.

It is true that with this majority, no one can stop him. That is what makes his non-action in critical national issues, more worrisome. His is not a 'can not do' case; It is a 'will not do' one.

And what is the legacy he has from BJP? Remember how, with much lesser BJP MPs, Vajpayee came to within a whisker of solving the Kashmir issue. With 280 MPs, Modi can solve the Kashmir issue and all other issues mentioned above, before you finish reading this post. And as for Vajpayee's legacy of ethics, do not forget that he lost his government by just 1 vote, which he could have easily managed. Just asking for voice vote, not a division, would have saved his government. But Vajpayee was an ethical man.

Why don't we give Modi more time? Why not just tell the dying poor of India - 'भूख लगी तो सब्र कर, रोटी नहीं तो क्या हुआ, आजकल दिल्ली मे है, जेरे बहस यह मुदद्आ (If you are hungry, why not have patience? These days they are discussing your very problems in Delhi). The poor may turn around and say - खाक हो जायेंगे हम तुमको खबर होने तक ( At this rate, we'll perish before you get to us).

Is overall shortage of resources the real problem? Let me narrate a story on that. In a flood situation, a rescue boat came around a drowning man. When the boat master refused to pick up more of the drowning on the pretext that picking up more would topple the boat, the drowning man said, 'I agree that you have are overweight as of now. But what if you asked that rich man sitting yonder to throw off his golf clubs?'

Our problem is of governance and administration, not of economy. Nothing works, because no one takes the pains to ensure that it does. It is much easier, and paying, to start a new one instead. No one gets penalised for not doing what he is being paid to do. Indian government is a bottomless pit in which you can pour scheme after scheme, and get no results.

The answer lies in building a bottom in this bottomless pit. Let us ask Mr Modi not to start anything new and use his enormous abilities (no doubt about that at all) to make the existing provisions work.

P.S - The first few lines of the book 'Punished by Rewards' (Alfie Kohn) seem to describe well this situation of Modi frenzy -

There is a time to admire the grace and persuasive power of an influential idea and there is a time to fear its hold over us.------------ At the point when the objections are not answered because they are no longer being raised, we are not in control. Then we no longer have the idea. It has us.

What I learned from my son's first recruitment experience: A thing about Startups

Last week was a momentous one in my life: My eldest son, Guy, was offered his first job. Then twenty four hours later he was offered another job.

Given what I have dedicated my working life to, it has been a fascinating experience to observe the process of my own child attempting to enter the workforce for the first time.

Guy turned fifteen in August and immediately announced that he wanted to get a job. I encouraged him to do so as I had started a casual retail job at the same age and apart from earning my own money, I learned many valuable things about working with, and relating to adults in a formal environment.

As both his mother and stepmother had successful and enjoyable times working at McDonald's, and there being a local McDonald's within walking distance of his mother's house, Guy decided to apply to work at McDonald's. He successfully completed an online application and was invited to the local store to be interviewed by the store manager.

I deliberately stayed in the background while all this was going on, based on my (mostly-but-not-always-followed) parenting principle of 'if my son/daughter wants my advice then he/she will ask for it'. I resisted giving Guy any interview advice with the belief that he's a smart kid who is capable of looking after himself.

He returned from the interview.

'How did it go?', I asked.

'Pretty well, I think.'

'Why do you say that?'

'Well, at the end of the interview I asked him how I had done, and he said I was the best person he had interviewed today.'

There you go, I thought to myself. You don't need to give your son advice, he is confident enough to ask the right question at the right time.

Guy was advised by the McDonald's store manager that he should check online for notification about his application's progress. Some weeks went by without word. Again, I resisted the temptation to tell him what he should do. If he wants the job desperately enough, he will follow up, I thought.

While he was waiting to hear back from McDonald's, Guy applied for another job, at his local Subway. After his online application was accepted, he was scheduled for an interview at the store.

The day before the Subway interview, Guy decided to follow up directly with his McDonald's interviewer and found out that he was meant to have been advised some weeks before that he was successful.

About an hour before the Subway interview, Guy was offered the McDonald's job, subject to successfully completing some online training. Guy went to the Subway interview anyway, and was also offered the Subway job.

Guy now wants to try and do both jobs. He reasons that he is not guaranteed any amount of shifts at either McDonald's or Subway.

This is not what I would advise, but he hasn't asked me for my advice and given my successful track record of keeping my mouth shut with respect to my son's work-related decisions, why should I tempt fate now?

I was discussing this series of events with a long-term friend who is the respected CEO of a highly successful recruitment agency and father of two teenage children. We were discussing the issue of parental intervention in the lives of our respective children – where is the line between encouragement, suggesting, telling or simply trusting your child to work it out for themselves?

It's not clear, nor will it ever be clear, I don't think.

In the conversation, I said I couldn't recall my parents ever telling me what I should do with respect to my choices about education, friends, sport or career.

The only exception to that was one night my father waited up for me to get home from a late night. I was playing cricket the next day. I was a top order batsman who had some talent. My father gave me a big serve, the gist of it being that if I was committed to doing something then I should give it my best shot and not compromise my chances of doing well by 'burning the candle at both ends'. I proved my father right by being dismissed in a forgettable way for a low score the next day.

Needless to say, I ignored my father's very wise advice and my cricket 'career' finished up being a tale of unfulfilled promise.

This was the exception; overall my parents trusted that they had brought their son up with a set of values that enabled him to work stuff out for himself in his own time.

I started an economics degree without any real idea of where it might take me. I completed that degree four years later at the age of twenty-two, no further enlightened as to what career I might choose. I don't recall this lack of planning and rather haphazard approach of mine leading to any serious conversations, initiated by my parents, about 'my future'.

As Guy commences his work life I hope I am wise enough to continue to learn from the example set by my parents. Trust that each of my three children will be guided by the values that enable them to work things out for themselves and learn something from each of the choices that they make.

Naked is the only way to make it (Kim Kardashian)

Big vote of thanks to Kim Kardashian, who this week finally cemented her lesson to women of the world about how all this time we have been doing it wrong. All totally and completely wrong.

To think women across the globe are fighting to be heard, for a right to be educated, for a right to equal pay and equal positions based on merit, and to be respected as the fantastic creature they are. But all along they just needed a naked butt.

They are studying, working, juggling commitments and managing family and career.Yeah… no. Kim says strip off for money instead. It’s easier. (If you don’t know what I am talking about Google Kim Kardashian)

Kim is special, obviously. Known for nothing, but famous for being famous. A creation of great PR and society’s need for increasingly vacuous TV and gossip. Kim Kardashian is the epitome of what not to do. And yet seemingly the poster girl for how to succeed.

So now, with wealth and fame at her command — without having to ever get her immaculately manicured paws dirty — it was obviously time for Ms Kardashian to show the rest of us business women what we have been doing wrong in trying to establish our careers.

Yep. Who needs a degree and career when you can just strip naked for a magazine? I mean… Hello. That would save a lot of grief, time and effort for so many of us! All this time we have been strategic in how we look. Working hard to stay fit and healthy and covering up enough to ensure we receive respect in a business setting

Thank you Kim for letting every aspiring business woman and young girl know that “naked is the only way to make it”

Let me go back in time and tell all the women who worked hard to create a future for us all to not bother because Kim Kardashian will show us how it’s done.

Thank you Kim for also being a poster girl for successful women in porn in the 21st century. An industry I’m sure young girls are now considering because of you.

Don’t worry yourself too much though Kim, the rest of us will take on the responsibility of ensuring the millions of women wanting to be respected for their brains that it is ok NOT to get naked to get noticed.

Oh, and we’re assuming you’ll be donating your designer clothes to charity now that you clearly have no need for them?

NOTE: If you haven’t seen the pictures. Google it. I won’t have it on this site.

Ten Stupid Rules That Drive Great Employees Away

We met a guy named Vijay at a conference where he and I were speaking. About six months later, we heard from him.

"So I wanted to let you know, I'm out of here," said Vijay on the phone.

"What's the story?" we asked. "When we met you, you loved your job."

"I loved the job I thought I had, which is the job I interviewed for," said Vijay.

"That job never materialized. The company is trying to change its stripes, but it's hard."

"Let me guess," said my teammate Molly. "They told you 'It takes time to turn an ocean liner around.'"

Vijay laughed. "Those are the exact words my boss used! He's been trying to turn the vessel around for five years. That's too slow. I don't have that much time. I have things to do and places to go!"

"You couldn't see a path forward at your job?" I asked.

"I could see the path forward, and it's full of rocks and snakepits and quicksand," said Vijay.

"No good," we said. "Congratulations on your job search!"

"This place has a great brand name, but inside the company it's a weenie atmosphere," said Vijay.

"It's rules, rules, and more rules all over the place. Nothing but reasons why NOT to try something new. Life is too short!"

Vijay got a great job seven weeks later. It's sad to see great people like Vijay leaving companies.

I'm sure Vijay's CEO doesn't realize that his company makes it impossible for people to do the jobs they were hired for.

It's a new millennium - fifteen years into the new millennium, in fact. We don't have to manage our teams the way we did in 1962.

My dad put up with stupid corporate rules because his employer offered him a career path, job security forever and an awesome pension plan that my folks still rely on today, thirty years after my dad retired.

All that stuff is history. Employers who keep Mad-Men-era policies in place will keep driving their best people away until they spot the connection between policies, passion, performance and profits. Here's how it works:

The more policies, the less passion you'll get from your team.

The less passion, the less exciting the team's performance will be.

The less exciting the performance, the lower your profits will be.

Eureka!

Maybe this reminder will induce you to nuke one or more of these ten Talent-Repelling Policies if you're a manager. If you're not a manager, that doesn't mean you have to stay silent and complain to your cat about the stupid rules at work. You can speak up, at a staff meeting or directly with your manager.

Find your voice and speak! You were hired for your brains, weren't you?

Here's our list of Ten Stupid Rules that Drive Great Employees Away.

Stupid Attendance Policies

Salaried people don't need attendance policies. That's why they're on salary. If you're still dinging people for getting to work ten minutes late when they commonly stay an hour late every day, you don't deserve them on your team.

Stupid Frequent-Flyer Policies

Business travel is a grind. It takes years off your life. It's not easy being on the road and leaving your life behind. Your employees earn every frequent-flyer mile their business travel entitles them to. Those miles are theirs, not their employer's.

Any company stingy enough to steal its employees' frequent-flyer miles is not an employer that can grow your flame or take you to the next step on your path. Get them to change that Scrooge-y policy, or run away.

Stupid Dress Code Rules

We write dress code policies because we'd die of embarrassment having to talk to an employee face-to-face about his or her excessively club-by or beach-y attire. Too bad for us. We're managers, and sticky human topics are part of the job.

Get rid of the insultingly detailed dress code policy and simply remind your employees to dress for business.

You can add "If you're on the fence about whether or not to wear a particular ensemble or article of clothing to work, err on the side of caution and don't wear it."

Bell Curve Performance Reviews

Performance reviews in general are a bureaucratic waste of time, but the ones that force managers to fit their teammates into pre-set slots on a Bell Curve are disgusting and unworthy of the brilliant people on your staff.

If you truly don't trust your managers to hire wonderful employees, why did you make them managers? Bell curve performance reviews only encourage the hiring and retention of so-so employees, or worse. Get rid of them in 2015 and celebrate your team's briliiance!

Stupid Bereavement-Leave Policies

There are still employers that require their employees to bring in funeral notices in order to be eligible for a few days' paid bereavement leave. That's shocking and horrifying.

No doubt some employee way back when falsified a family death to get some time off, and ever since then the company has been writing its policies to prevent such a fraud from re-occurring.

That's idiotic, and heartless. It's never smart to write policies directed toward people you wish you hadn't hired. Trust your employees, and they'll trust you back.

Stupid Approvals for Everything

We'd expect any employer to require approval from higher-ups before you're allowed to spend a lot of money or hire someone new. We'd expect some required approval before you launch a project or put someone on probation.

Do we really need a manager's written approval for an employee to replace his ID badge?

We have taken nearly all the latitude away from the talented adults we hire. That's stupid and a waste of shareholder's money. More bureaucracy only slows us down.

Can we trust the people we chose to join our team to do simple things like order a new stapler without requiring a manager's written permission? If not, can we call ourselves leaders?

Stupid Disciplinary Rules

The idea of discipline comes from the military. We don't think that it would ever be appropriate to put our kids' piano teacher or our plumber on probation, so why would we do that to the employees on our teams? The idea of progressive discipline makes no sense in the Knowledge Economy we operate in now.

We are all adults. If someone goofs up, we can have a conversation about it. We can figure out where things broke down. If we don't trust a person to represent our brand, what good will probation or a written warning do?

Don't listen to people who say "We have to do this stupid stuff in order to fire people if they don't improve." That's completely false. I was a Fortune 500 HR SVP and I'm an expert witness in employment matters now. Anyone who sighs "We're forced to follow these old rules" is either lying to himself, to you, or both.

Stupid Feedback Mechanisms

Employee Engagement is a crock and a slap in the face to your teammates, most of whom would be happy to tell you to your face what your company is doing right and wrong. All you have to do is walk up to them and ask them, face to face, and listen to what they have to say.

Annual employee engagement surveys are a weenie's answer to the question "How are we doing, and how's the team?"

Do you ask your wife to fill out a survey and tell you how you're doing as a husband? She'd have a sharp answer for you if you proposed that approach.

Why should the valued collaborators you work with see things any differently? Lose the engagement survey and make it easy for your teammates to tell you what's working and what isn't, in the moment.

Stupid Hiring Processes

It's easy to fill job openings when you do these three things:

• Write job descriptions in English or your local language rather than corporate zombiespeak.
• Treat job applicants like valued collaborators rather than interchangeable machine parts or pieces of meat.
• Make the interview process fast and friendly, and remember that job candidates need to be sold as vigorously as your customers do.

It's hard to fill job openings when you use Black Hole applicant-tracking systems to screen resumes by means of keyword searching.

That's the world's worst way to hire people. Any employer that complains about talent shortages is barking up the wrong tree. Humanize your recruiting process and watch the talented people flow in!

Stupid Forced Ranking

Forced ranking, sometimes call Stack Ranking, is a process of lining up your employees and comparing them to one another, Best to Worst. It's easily the stupidest idea corporate and institutional weenies have ever come up with.

You can't stay and work for a company that treats like you like a two-by-four stacked up against other pieces of lumber, not when there are wonderful organizations that could use your help!

Your teammates deserve better. People are unique and whole in themselves. There is nothing to compare between one person and another -- thank goodness! Smart employers have always known this. Any organization that doesn't get it doesn't deserve your talents. Get on your path and find the people who do!

Questions and Answers

Why are there hot dogs chasing people in the header image?

They are weenies driving smart and capable employees away. Weenie policies have the same effect. Capable people don't want to put up with being treated like children or criminals, so they leave to go work somewhere else.

Why do companies install so many stupid rules and policies?

Fear is the reason. Fearful managers don't trust themselves to hire people they could trust to do the right thing. There is a tremendous amount of fear in many corporations, institutions and startups. Small companies are not immune to fear.

How do you make an organization more trusting and less fearful?

Talk about fear and trust. They are business issues. Don't pretend there is no energy in the place or that every single person can't feel the energy. Ask your team at every opportunity, in group meetings and one-on-one "How are you doing? What's new? How can I help?"

Do you have to be a manager to tackle workplace energy, and fear and trust?

No! There are lots more non-managers in any organization than there are managers. We all feed Godzilla, the bureaucratic monster, or we all starve him. Tell the truth at work. Say "I'm not sure I know how to complete this project" when you are uncertain.

Break the ice on the topics of fear and trust. Tell your boss "Some of these policies suck away a lot of time and energy and hold us back. How can we revise them or get rid of them?" Blaming managers for the bad energy at work is the worst thing you can do. It depletes your mojo and reinforces the idea that you are powerless at work unless you're a manager.

Are you powerless? You don't look powerless to me!