Toxic Teammates: The Wrecking Balls of Company Culture

Team Culture matters. It matters big. Someone can recreate your product, but if they cannot recreate your culture behind its success it is unlikely they will beat you in the field. Of course if they have a more constructive culture well they may just whip the rug out under your feet.

 One of the greatest impacts on team culture is not external but internal; from the very members themselves. Every now and again you are going to find that you have a Toxic Teammate. Like a poorly maintained commuter omnibus this individual spews toxic fumes through your team via their words and behaviour. Left unchecked they can pollute those around them and derail your efforts. 

The Critic as their name implies criticises everything. I mean everything. They are incredibly negative with nothing good to say about work, business, or the world in general. Every suggestion gets shut down by fault finding, every circumstance is a disaster and if they had their way we should all stay in bed every day because life is a miserable failure. Except of course that if you stay in bed you may choke on your pillow. There is no pleasing these people. Overtime their negativity infects others who in turn start failing to see any silver lining.

The Passive sits in the corner, unengaged, disconnected, and waits. They offer no input, wait to be volunteered, and have no motivation. They may go as far as fiddling with their phone or tablet during the meeting and if they were not there, well no one would miss them.

The Blamer, as opposed to The Passive, is often eager to volunteer. He promises high but rarely delivers. When he fails to perform somehow it is never his fault. There is always an excuse and some circumstance to blame for his laziness and ineptitude. What is worse is that he genuinely believes the excuses-he is not making them up. If he can get away with it, others will think they can too.

The Know-it-all never shuts up. This is the Deadpool of the team, just not as funny. Their opinion on how we should do it is broadcast loudly and incessantly. They offer help that is unsolicited but inappropriate. Often they do not have the expertise or skill to back up what they are saying. These are the characters that when they open their mouth in a meeting, and they will, that everyone groans inwardly. They believe they are helping, that they are useful yet often they are a distraction. Their inability to filter their input means that anything truly meaningful they say gets lost in the babble.

The Captain of the World is the pedantic rule bearer. They follow a complex set of laws that cannot be bent or changed. Say you get to the canteen and there is no one else there. Instead of going through the long set of railings that keep the usual queues in order you pop underneath them to get to the front. The Captain of the World is the person who complains and insists you go through them. These are people unwilling to change. They are motivated by a deep internal fear that something will go wrong and project this onto everyone else. 

Each type of Toxic Teammate needs to be dealt with. For many of us, we occasionally portray some of the behaviours outlined above. It is unlikely that most Toxics start out that way, they develop overtime as dissolution, laziness and entitlement creep into their mind-set.

Be on your guard for such behaviour in your life and in those of your teammates. Call out negative behaviour. Reward the positive. In calling it out, start by doing so privately. Deal with any root issues or circumstances that may have changed and caused a rise in the toxicity level. If it persists then you may need to have a more aggressive approach.

Act! Do not wait. Toxic behaviour spreads if not managed. Remove the Critic. Find a way to engage The Passive, consider moving them to another team or role that they are passionate about. Call the Blamer to account. Give the Know-it-all strict guidelines and parameters of operation. Get the Captain of the World to relinquish his title (or put them in charge of your Health and Safety Program where their pettiness may be useful).

We are all happier without toxic pollution in our lives and in our teams. Teams are made up of real people, with real issues. Facing them can be messy but it is far easier to plug a hole in a leaking barrel early than it is to clean up an entire oil spill.

Surviving Attrition : Avoiding Burn Out in Business

I woke this morning and drew back the curtains to find it grey and overcast outside. A drip from the gutter reinforced the fact that there was a fine drizzle that hazed the view. Inwardly I groaned at the thought of another dull day; the drip in the drainpipe echoing the drip of heaviness in my heart. On the way to work a streetkid, braving the damp in his tattered clothing, knocked at my window. Drip. I got held up at no less than three roadblocks checking for radio licences. Drip. The headlines that I drove past screamed of turmoil and shortage. Drip. I got to the office to find that a large order had just been cancelled. Drip. My bank had emailed me to inform me that another piece of paper was required in order to fulfil an external payment. Drip. The rent was due. I could go on. The continual drip of negativity and pressure is a slow attrition on a man’s soul. 

Attrition has multiple meanings in business. At its basic level attrition refers to loss and wearing down. Staff attrition refers to the voluntary leaving of staff due to events like retirement or seeking greener pastures. Client attrition refers to the loss of clients from your business and is a metric some businesses track. Attrition of the soul, however, you are not going to find in a list of business definitions. It is the wearing down of the drive and desire of a person. It is subtle and lethal to businesses. Unchecked it can lead to the tipping point where someone just throws in the towel with their business-even if there was still a chance of the company surviving the pressures it is under. This is the effect that leads to one last straw causing someone to crack under pressure with an ‘I just can’t take it anymore’. Let’s be honest-we are all under a lot of pressure these days, especially if you are doing business in Africa.

We will all have days when we wake up to find that our ‘get up and go’ has already got up and left before we could get started with the day. How do we survive the situation when the pressures of life and work threaten to make this a daily occurrence?

Start with a clear and passionate vision that is stronger than your trials. Focusing on the daily and menial can take your focus off the vision you had when you first started the company. Cynicism replaces exuberance as stumbling blocks come your way. Rekindle the spark. What are you passionate about? What makes you leap inside? Focus on that. Perhaps you need to retweak the plan or look at fulfilling the vision in a slightly different way.

Attitude matters in an attrition rich environment. Seeing opportunities rather than failures is often a matter of perspective. That cancelled order can free you up to take on another project. That product you are having to import-perhaps there is an opportunity for you to manufacture it locally. Yes, it will take effort to stay positive in the face of so much. One way is to embrace thankfulness. Gratitude resets your internal focus. Be grateful for the work that you do have rather than whining about how much you do not have. Be grateful that you have staff that are loyal enough to tolerate a few days delay in their salaries-and then pay them. 

On the topic of staff, it is easier to stay positive is you have a positive company culture. If all your managers and employees are complaining alongside you at the unfairness of life, the economy and the universe in general it is easy to have a ‘bitch fest’  Your vision needs your culture to survive. Reinforce those behaviours that promote the reaching of your vision and goal.

Embrace a strong external support network. This could be your church, your friends, and your family. We are not alone on this road through life, nor do I think we are meant to walk it in isolation.  Like-minded people with similar values and a positive outlook on life can pick you up when you are feeling down. Every now and again we need to ride on someone else’s faith for a short while till we are strong enough to step out on our own. Likewise there are people around you who may need a word of encouragement from you to help them get through their day.

The drip will probably be around for a while. There will always be circumstances that can wear you out if you are not careful. Build inner resilience and perseverance in order to survive.

One last tip here. There are certain health issues that can make it harder to be positive as they sap your energy. Parasitic infections, low vitamin levels, and a myriad of other conditions can make life very difficult and you may not be aware that you have them. If you are not well physically it is an extra burden that adds to the drip on your soul. Go see your health care provider, get checked out and treated appropriately. Then with renewed vigour take on the world.

The New Year: Prospects, Resolutions and Pain

As I write this article, gingerly using just one hand, my body is reeling from yesterday’s shock visit to the gym. The first session of 2016 (after a year’s hiatus mind you) has left me with various aches and pains that I would rather not have. Muscles I had forgotten existed are reminding me that they did not like being woken from their sedentary slumber. Combined with this is the inability to supplement my deadened energy levels with caffeine as I am on a detox program for the start of the year. As you can tell I am in the grip of New Year’s Resolution fever. This malady sees individuals attempting superhuman feats of denial and strength at the start of a year until the pain sets in and reminds them why they have failed to attempt this is the past.

Firstly I am not a resolution person; I prefer setting goals. Common resolutions are often set in the negative (quit, lose, give up are all negative ideas) and can be temporary (diets are short-term). Goals on the other hand are more positive and have a sense of achievement to them. Regardless of what you call your New Year decisions sooner or later a degree of pain is going to set in. Exercise requires effort. Losing weight requires sacrificing food. Writing daily requires cutting something else out to make the time for it. Bigger goals, like starting a business that aims to break even in Year 1, require even more effort. At the point of pain is where most resolutions fail. They fail because you can no longer rationalise that they are worth it, instead the effort outweighs the benefit and you throw in the towel.

Today I want to touch on a massive mental shift that can get you to push past the pain. Everything we do can be seen on either a ‘Have-to’ or a ‘Want-to’ mentality (except dying-that is a guaranteed ‘Have-to’). When faced with a task or a goal examine your speech. It will take one of two forms. Either ‘I have to do this...’ or ‘I want to do this...’. Even if you do not verbalise them the rest of the sentence in your mind is ‘or this or that will happen’. I can look at gym, for example, as ‘I have to exercise to lose weight or else I will stay fat and maybe die early.’ The flip side is ‘I want to exercise because I will be fitter, trimmer and have a great quality of life’.

The ‘have-to’ is followed by a negative consequence and is an attempt to motivate yourself out of fear. Fear is a poor motivator. Think back for a minute on times that you have had to do something. How well did you perform? Yes, you may have achieved the goal but you would have done the bare minimum required to do it. A ‘have-to’ is like a massive stick beating you from behind as you try climb a hill. You spend your life running just ahead of the pain of failure. Then when you hit the real pain-the effort required to succeed-you make a choice between the pain of the effort and the pain of the ‘or else’. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, the ‘or else’ just seems the less painful option.

‘Want-to’ has a positive consequence, a desired outcome. Rather than try pushing you from behind, the ‘want-to’ leads from the front and draws you to the goal. The pain of failure is so far behind you that when you hit the effort you push through keeping your eye fixed on the prize ahead of you.

Set some bold and realistic goals this year. Then make your goals into ‘want-to’. Alongside each goal set the positive benefits of achieving each one; how you feel, what you will have, what will have been achieved, the benefit to others. The brighter and bigger you can make this picture the more likely it will come to pass.

As a side note, if you are trying to get people to do something (like pay you) then incentivise it for them rather than just penalise it.

Now where did I put my gym bag? It is time for the second session.

The Christms Cheer

‘Get out! We are closing!’ The words echoed in my head as much as sound of the slamming door that accompanied them. Five minutes to closing time at a respectable (well not any more) gift store in an upmarket mall and that was the treatment I got as I tried to enter. Perhaps they had just had a bad day? I do not really care-I am their worst nightmare right now-an angry client with a voice. It is not that they have the monopoly on the card and gift market either; I could have, and probably will from now on, gone elsewhere. From me they have lost a lifetime of repeat sales over one 5 second interchange. What is more it is Christmastime-I really expected better. Or should I have?

This year I have noticed a strange hypocrisy around the Christmas season in Zimbabwe. There are gifts available, a better choice perhaps than many years past. Decorations are up, the essential carols play in the background over the Tannoy, a couple of places are even doing mince pies as a bonus addition. There is however this massive lack of goodwill and Christmas cheer. In many places we are playing lip service to a series of traditions with no really spirit behind it. For a holiday that embodies a religious festival there is little to show for the idea of ‘love thy neighbour as thyself.’

But then many businesses, their staff, and their ethic are not Christian so I can hardly expect them to embrace something that they do not believe in. Starbucks was the centre of controversy earlier this year when they issued a plain red holiday cup devoid of holiday motifs. They got accused of secularising Christmas and polarised America. The accusation was a little offside seeing as Starbucks have never put a Christian emblem on any of their cups in the past.

What then can we do about Christmas as businesses?

Attitude is everything here. None of the décor and fancy products matter if you are going to slam the door in my face when I try enter. Christmas is a great time to recalibrate your attitude. It is easy to become jaded over a year. It is easy to wear out your smile and energy levels to a snapping point. Christmas, with its message of love, joy, hope, and giving, is a poignant reminder of how far from ideal attitudes we have fallen. It is a chance to reset broken souls before the New Year breaks upon us. Attitude is a choice.

Goodwill should last past the season. There is much duplicity in a man who is only nice one day a year and spends the rest of it snapping the heads off staff. It’s like putting a small rock in a snowball and still expecting everyone to have fun during the snowball fight. The story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens that brings us the character Scrooge dwells on this. If Scrooge was only generous once a year he would still be a hated villain rather than a redeemed figure. Christmas specials and hype invoke a sense of drama that has a fixed end. When the decorations vanish back into the storeroom there is a tendency to pack with them the smiles and helpfulness that we showed throughout the season. Choose carefully what you put away this year.

Family is a big focus this season. We travel to be with them, have massive family gatherings over monster meals. We put up with Auntie Evie’s gaudy, knitted jumper that she made for us (again) simply because it is Christmas. Your staff and clients are part of an extended family of sorts-focus on them a little as well. It is not too late to send out a well-crafted Christmas Eve email of gratitude or to arrange an impromptu Christmas party during the last few hours that you are open. Like the goodwill this care should not die with the toll of the bell on the 25^th of December. Take this holiday to think about how you can connect better with your staff and clients in the coming year.

Have fun this festive season. Play with children, laugh with family, and let joy bubble out of you. Bring those emotions to the table next year as you return to work rested and invogorated. At this point let me take a moment to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and may all the doors you try enter be open this coming year!

The Art of Giving: The Practice in Business and Beyond

I have just closed my internet browser after an expansive and varied trawl through the web that may have seriously dented my data cap. What was I looking for-well almost anything really. It is Christmas time and with the holiday comes the expectation of gifts. There is this list of people that I want to give presents to so I was meandering through websites looking for things that may do. Amazon, ThinkGeek, ModCloth and other shopping sites are filled with more ideas that I could imagine-it opens your eyes to what is truly out there outside of little ol’ Zimbabwe. There are still two weeks to go in The Giving Challenge, the dare to give something away each day until Christmas-mine this last week included giving to a charity benefit for which I got rewarded with an electronic, virtual pet (at least I don’t have to clean up after it).

Gift giving is an art. It is easy to dash into a store late on Christmas Eve and load your trolley up with a bunch of chocolates and cheap bottles of wine that can be bundled into generic gifts for every member of the family. Real gift giving on the other hand takes time and effort, thought and planning; sounds a lot like running a business.

A gift communicates something. It communicates whether or not you really know the person you are giving the gift to. It communicates whether or not you have heard their needs-even if those needs are unspoken. A gift communicates that you may actually care. Wow would you look at that list of things a gift does- it looks rather like the same list one would attach to a great product that you are creating for your customers. Thinking of your product as a gift to your clients alters the way you do about creating it. A truly great product gives far more than any financial benefit that you may receive in exchange for it. Your product communicates something to its users-it is up to you to make sure that it communicates what you want it to say.

So how can you go about getting that perfect gift for someone or creating a phenomenal product?

Listen to people; and not just with your ears. Take in their words, observe the behaviour, look for where they are struggling. The grandmother who is telling you she needs nothing but a hug for Christmas while she struggles to open a tin of beans with a blunt can opener and arthritic hands really could do with a new tin opener (or a new set of hands but I understand that those are a little harder to come by). Look for the problems people are facing-a great product solves a problem or meets a need.

One of the greatest needs people have is time. It is a finite commodity and saving someone time opens them up to doing so much more. That is why the smart phone became so pervasive so quickly-it saved time (and space in your pocket) as you could do multiple things from almost any location. Time-saving devices are the perfect gift for the person who ‘has everything’.

I mentioned ModCloth at the beginning of the article as one of the sites I visited. They are a ladies fashion online store and when they started they were a game changer in the fashion world. The reason was they started a client-centric program to get feedback from their customers and relayed this on to design companies. This was the total opposite for an industry where fashion was a top down funnel (i.e. a large firm would decide what it would sell to its clients and the customers would be stuck with that range for the year). Taking time to be client oriented flies in the face of the ‘take-what-we-offer’ mentality that pervades many large scale corporations.

Gift giving should be an experience. We wrap presents to see people get the pleasure and surprise of ripping off the paper on Christmas Day to see what is underneath. We create an elaborate hoax around the figure of Santa Claus complete with milk and cookies laid out the night before to heighten the wonder and emotion for our children. Utilising your product, however mundane it appears, should have an experience attached. Maybe it is the ease of using the spare part you manufacture, or knowing that the plastic ware you sell will not crack in the sun. There is a story attached to your business-work on telling it well this festive season. And practice the art of giving great gifts-so few people do it that if you do then it will make you stand out even more.

The Giving Challenge 2015

In 1963 the film Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor was released. At the time, despite being the highest grossing film of the year, it made a huge loss against a 44 million dollar budget. Ten years later due to rentals and a number of television deals it finally broke even. Ten years of ticking over returns and deals to finally get to a point where it made money. Books that make bestseller lists for extended periods are not there because they have had one week of great sales, rather they are there because they consistently sell over time-even if it relatively few a day. It is the daily drip of sales over time that fills the coffers eventually. In the grip of a world fascinated by instant news and the momentary glory of a thousand retweets (before being drowned out by someone else’s noise) we have forgotten the power of daily showing up.

We are currently just under a month away from Christmas and I want to issue a daily challenge to all you Zachians who are interested in making a difference. It is a chance for you to show up every day and do something special. The Giving Challenge is to give away something every day between now and Christmas Day. It may be food to a streetkid, an extra something for your clients, or a gift to a staff member. Size of the giving is not important. Share a piece of business wisdom a day on your blog. Give a lift, not because you need to charge someone a dollar for fuel in your car but because you are helping someone get somewhere. Start giving. You can make it the same act every day or you can vary it as you go. You can start small and get bigger as we approach Christmas or you can stay at the same level daily. I don’t mind-this is your giving story that you are working on. In a season where things may be difficult financially and cash flows are harsh this is an opportunity to get away from thinking about ourselves and to think about others.

The secularisation of Christmas with its focus on material gifts has watered down the power of an act of generosity; thirty minutes helping an elderly person repair their home, creating and uploading a free piece of music online. The old tradition of helping someone cross a busy road had been lost to many of us.

Feel free to write and tell me your experiences as you go, especially of you do something really creative, but this is not some publicity stunt. If no one ever finds out about what you do then that is okay too. Nor is this levering some form of mystical karma. I have heard many messages that talk about the reciprocity of giving-that if you give then you get back more. I am not denying that this may happen but give simply because being generous is a better way to live.

Some of us need to start with giving in our families. By giving our kids an hour of our time a day, or giving an underappreciated spouse more compliments and face time.

The multiplier effect can be staggering. It is one thing for me to do an act of giving every day, but when you all join me, when you get your entire office involved, when your family starts looking for opportunities to give then we begin to make a real impact. Everyone wants a better Zimbabwe: what are you doing about it?

Be intentional about giving. Look for the opportunity. Set it in your mind every morning before you leave the house. Perhaps you are not sure where you can best make a difference, set the intention and the opportunity will jump out at you.

Push through daily for a month. Pay attention to how you feel, to your attitudes and internal emotions. Introspection may highlight a few areas that you need to work on. As you meet the needs of others perhaps a few solutions may present themselves that you could look at and scale into a business. Generate a habit of generosity in your life between now and Christmas. At the end of it we may just all be a little bit richer.

This Is Africa-The Need for Daily Input

The 2006 movie Blood Diamond is known for two things in its portrayal of the Sierra Leone civil war: one is Leonard Di Caprio’s horrendous accent, the other is a line he quotes to describe the reason for the situation he finds himself in “T.I.A This is Africa.” The phrase for many becomes the resigned excuse for any negative experience in dealing with the continent. Bribe requests and corruption, unnecessary delays in obtaining paperwork, powercuts in the sub-region can all be brushed away with ‘This is Africa’. I would love to see a situation where the phrase is turned about to be a positive one. ‘Here is your permit ahead of schedule Sir, of course it is early-This is Africa’. ‘This is Africa-we don’t take bribes here.’ Even if changing people’s perception of Africa seems a little far away; how about we just start with how people view Zimbabwe. If that seems too much, then just let us just start with ourselves; our businesses, our departments, our families, our lives.

Cinderella’s fairy tale gives us some insight here. Cinderella wants to go to the ball, her fairy godmother conjures up a carriage from a pumpkin for her to go in, she steals the heart of the price but has to flee at midnight when the magic runs out and she has to dive out her carriage as it turns back into a vegetable. Every day the ‘magic’-the input, the effort that you have put into creating something amazing in your business- is going to run out at midnight. There is a need for new input in the morning. In the same way that a marriage needs daily commitment and daily winning of your spouse’s heart to flourish so does your business.

You can dream of the day that you can leave your business to run itself and you just reap a profit at the end. Keep dreaming. At some level you and your staff will need to fight the natural tendency of entropy that has systems breakdown and causes relationships to degenerate. It takes effort to keep inventory in stock, to chase debtors that are letting you down, to hold a creative and positive environment at work. Realise that at that moment when you reach a point where you could step back and hand over your business that you face the opportunity to get bigger, to provide more, to work even harder, and produce even better work.

Your life and your work will not get better because of one magical day that changes it all. It will get better as you embrace the daily discipline of working, of building, of making each day magical.

Today pick one thing that you can do to improve your work or someone else’s life. Perhaps it is buying a round of coffee for your staff who are working later than normal. Maybe it is reviewing your customer contact policy or drafting your top client a letter of gratitude. Pointing out where your client relations are not up to standard and encouraging your staff to maintain or go beyond the set standard. There is always something you can do. Then tomorrow do something else.

We can dream of a better future. We can dream of a better nation. Our dreams need to motivate us to action every day. Every day that we put effort into our lives and businesses, every day that we fight the pull of second-rate and corruption, every day that we spend not settling for the excuse of ‘This is Africa’ is one day closer to seeing that dream come true.