I recently changed companies and had written myself a task to blog about this very topic while I was at my old job. I read this wonderful blog posting by one of my favorite career bloggers, Patty Azzarello, and I thought she did a great job of summarizing an incredibly important topic that I think gets missed by a lot of managers.

The points that resonate best with me:

1) People may tell you they are leaving this job for more money, but there is definitely another reason. If they really liked what they did, felt appreciated, and felt their work really mattered, they wouldn’t leave the job to go to another where these things were not true but they just got more money. Or, if they did, they would likely soon regret it.

2) The way to empower people isn’t to tell them *how* to do their job, it’s to tell them the results you want and let them decide how. I had a previous boss who was not good at this at all. He would dictate how he wanted the job done which meant that it left no room at all for creativity. His employees felt that they were just button pushers instead of creative brains who got to do fun things. This basically crushed the spirits of everyone who worked for him. What was even worse was then he would frequently change his mind which meant the work they had done (the way he had dictated it would be done) then no longer mattered…

3) … which brings me to the next key take-away which is if you’re going to change directions, at least recognize the work folks have done. Patty Azzarello uses a great example of folks who build a Lego robot (which makes me happy since I love Legos and worked one Summer for a professor to improve the experience of his Lego robotic class). In Patty’s example. this is like either throwing away this great robot once someone finishes it, or, worse yet, disassembling it in front of them. It’s better to recognize them for what they’ve done and give them closure. Yes, you created this great robot. Let’s recognize it for what it is, what we can learn from it, etc. And now let’s work to create this new robot and see if we can’t use some of the lessons we learned with the last one, but if not, you at least did a great job with creating the first one.

4) Both in this posting and a few others Patty has written, it is critically important to communicate (over and over and over) the company strategy because while it may make sense to upper management and you may all be aligned, if you can’t communicate to everyone else both what the strategy is and how it impacts them and what you want from them, it just ends up getting lost in translation.

I highly recommend reading Patty’s blog posting on this, since she has a great way of summarizing things incredibly effectively, but these were key lessons that seem to be important no matter what company I’m working for. They all seem to struggle with this in their own way.

It is for this very reason that I waited about 4-5 months before accepting the COO position at my (now-previous) company. I wanted it to be very clear with the CEO as to what he thought he was creating the position for and what I felt my areas of responsibility were. It actually was working out great until a recent strategy change that eliminated the need for my role.

So how do you go about setting those expectations? Well, it likely depends on what it is you will be doing. Some jobs are likely clearer than others, especially if there is a written-up job description that already exists. This is a great place to start. I am also a firm believer in documenting these expectations (like in a job description) so we all can confirm that yes, we are indeed on the same page. But what do you do when the role you’re being asked to do is a bit more ambiguous (for example, the COO role at my company)? The previous COO performed duties very different to what I felt my role should be. Not to say that one is right and one is wrong, but I felt my strengths and skillset were better suited for different responsibilities. So, like my mom has so well-trained me to do, I went looking for a book. Turns out, there really aren’t many books at all written about the COO. There are TONS about being and acting and doing things like a CEO, but COO? Not so much. Well, luckily a couple of guys figured this out before I did and published a book called “Riding Shotgun: The Role of a COO”. This book talked through why someone may want to hire a COO and then gave multiple examples of companies that had COOs and whether they were needed, etc. The answer isn’t always “yes, you need one” or “no, you don’t”. It really depends a lot on the reasons behind hiring one. So, I set off to figure out why it was that our CEO wanted a COO and what I felt my role could and should be.

Some key things I learned (some of which seem obvious, and they may be, but it was good to see someone else reiterate that it was important):

1) You want a very clear understanding of where the CEO’s role is and where the COO’s role is. There may be some overlap, but you really want to have this well-defined. Plus then you each know what decisions you are responsible for making. Maybe one is completely outwardly facing and the other completely internally facing, but either way, define it and write it down!

2) It is incredibly important to have trust between the CEO and COO

3) Communciation between the CEO and COO is of utmost importance. Even bcc-ing each other on key emails is a great way to just inform the other of things happening within the company.

4) There are many reasons why a COO position may be created; perhaps another layer of management needed before the CEO, perhaps because there’s too much on the CEO’s plate, perhaps because the CEO is good at some things but needs someone to complement him in others. But whatever the reason, it’s good to understand why because that helps to create the “what” part of the expectation.

5) If the COO role didn’t exist previously and now a number of direct reports will be reporting to the COO instead of the CEO, they may be tempted to still go straight to the CEO. The CEO needs to push those folks back to the COO to “walk the walk” as it were. This again can be backed up with well-documented and published roles that go to the management team.

6) Defining up front is the expectation is that the COO role will lead to the CEO role or not, and, if so, when (roughly) that might happen.

So, this is a small example of how setting expectations ahead of time are important (and it may seem to not apply for other positions, but I think is equally as important). So, before I accept any role now (even if I’m just taking on a new project), I work to set those clear expectation before I invest too much time and energy into it. I make sure of what I’m delivering, when I’m delivering it, and then work to get a quick outline of the format I’m delivering it in to ensure that all of these align with my boss’ expectation. This helps avoid issues later on and tends to keep things on-track. It’s not to say that things couldn’t change later, but then both parties are making a conscious decision about what is changing and what might need to fall to a lower priority.

The author of the article talked about a lot of cheap dinners to make, but one he left off (which is fairly cheap and very quick to make) is just a sandwich or a salad. If you don’t mind washing your own lettuce (vs. buying the bag of pre-washed lettuce), it’s a very cheap thing to get and goes a long way. Sandwiches are easy as well. Some lunch meat and a loaf of bread also can go a long way to feeding a family (certainly cheaper than McDonald’s). I think starting with some of these quick and easy meals will make the transition a little easier for parents. Invite your kids to come up with fun combinations of what to put on a salad or sandwich and then name their creation. These are things that make that process fun for everyone and allow your kids to take pride in what they made (and hopefully that pride will make them more interested in eating it!).

I have a personal passion around eating good food, and I continue to find ways to get involved. I hope that sometime in the near future more of the low income kids in my neck of the woods find ways to eat healthier. Until that time, I’ll continue to cook up a storm in my own home and invite my nephew to join in the fun of cooking. Maybe someday soon he’ll choose some new “exotic” foods like chicken that isn’t fried, salads that aren’t just pasta, and fruit that doesn’t come rolled up.

The other thing that I learned was that with our new change in strategy, while everyone could nod their heads and repeat the words coming from the top, when I asked them to elaborate on what they thought that meant, where the boundaries of what we did now are vs. what we did before, etc., I found that no two answers were alike. In fact, multiple folks’ answers were “we’re going back to doing what we used to do a year ago”, however we had at least 10% of the company that wasn’t there a year ago (including me!). So we’re finding out what the strategy should be by asking co-workers what we did a year ago. No joke!

I continued to push my CEO to more clearly communicate what the real strategy was moving forward, to document this, to answer specific questions coming from “the troops”. If the company as a whole doesn’t know what they are doing, they will all row in different directions. Patty Azzarello just recently had this blog posting on why people don’t do what you say. Patty highlights that for the upper-level management, they were intricately involved in creating that strategy, so in their heads, it makes perfect sense. However, everyone else who wasn’t there for all those sleepless nights of churning through the details doesn’t internalize what you want them to really grasp after hearing it once or even two or three times. The other really important point she makes is that we should thank employees for what they have done so far, especially if that work is now no longer valid based on the new strategy. One of my direct reports championed major changes to our website (and I mean major) that had us moving in the right direction of our old strategy. Unfortunately, when that strategy changed, those changes were no longer needed and may have even hurt the new strategy. But I let her know how pleased I was with all her work and that the work had done exactly what she had set out to do, even if that was no longer needed.

In her blog entry, Patty highlights the steps to go through in order to really truly communicate the new strategy. One of the most important steps (in my mind) is communicating it over and over. Having folks be able to repeat it back, ask questions, internalize it. Without this, they may still be rowing in 10 different directions (or maybe have even increased to 15!) because they each heard a very different message from you.

So yes, communicate. Do it again. And again. Ad nauseum. The key is making sure you’re not just sending out email after email or sitting in a meeting saying exactly the same thing with the same people staring back at your with blank faces. Document what the strategy is and email it out. Invite questions from your employees. Do some role playing where you can say “we have a customer who is calling about XYZ. How would we handle that call?”. Understand areas in your strategy where people get what you’re saying and where they need more clarity. And then work to clarify that. Have your upper-level managers communicate back to you what they think the strategy is in their own words. Is it consistent with what you think it should be? If not, guaranteed they are getting questions from their direct reports and won’t be answering those in the way you expect, but most likely their version is the one their reports will hear loud and clearly. Is that what you want?

Companies have to worry about the same thing. It’s important for companies to focus on how they can continue to keep their company alive (and growing). However, if a company has a natural resource they are tapping into, they need to consider the lifespan of that resource both for the environmental reasons of it not being there, but also on what their company’s impact will be if they use it up.

In my job, we met with many companies who weren’t really interested in the environmental sustainability side of their data center, however when you told them that by just turning up the temperature in their data center (which wouldn’t impact the equipment they had in a negative way), they could add more cooling capacity and therefore be able to accomodate their future IT growth, they perked up. Environmentally, it still had a positive impact (no extra data center to be built, no more CRAC units needed to be added, etc), but we could speak the language they understood which impacted their company’s bottom line.

I think it’s important when talking about the ROI of any kind of capital expense, it’s best to talk about the sustainability of those changes, both environmentally and financially. Heck, feel free to even throw in the PR aspects as well. But by speaking about sustainability from many aspects, the end result is sure to speak to many people.

So, recently I’ve been reading quite a bit about green data centers and LEED, and I continue to be asked questions by folks I know about whether data centers can be LEED certified. There was an article that a fellow volunteer, Bill, sent me back in the fall of 2010. It talked about a data center IBM had in North Carolina that was certified LEED gold. What’s interesting to me about all of this is that USGBC hasn’t actually issued a new version that includes data centers yet (it’s actually in the works and reviews are going on now). So how can these data centers claim to be LEED certified? Well, ultimately, these data centers are buildings, so if the building can be certified, the data center can as well. I must admit, though, I’m really excited to see how the new version of LEED shakes things up a bit and excited about how my company can help with data center consulting in the process.

The same fellow volunteer also sent me an article from the Northern Colorado Business Report talking about HP’s “new” data center in Ft Collins. I put “new” in quotes because HP had that data center ready and running back when I still worked there (and I left in November of 2010). It just took a while for the press release to actually happen. This facility is really quite advanced. It uses some really great energy efficiency techniques (such as air side economization) to avoid having to air condition the room because the weather in Colorado is perfect for this kind of application. Mind you, this is also an R&D facility, so if anything goes down, all those salaried engineers will just have to log back in late at night to finish up their work when things are back online. No customer business is conducted in there at all. But, kudos to HP for doing it because they understand what is mission critical and what isn’t and play within those boundaries!

My new company’s CTO will actually be giving a free webinar this week on air-side and water-side economization in a data center. It should be quite educational in case you’d like to watch (either real-time or after the replay is available). It’s methods like economization that I think will play a big part when the new LEED version is available.

So, will you find LEED certified data centers now? Yes, but they are certified by the LEED version currently available which doesn’t specify data center specific items now. But it should be soon when the new version is available which will take into account many more data center specific issues. I am looking forward to it!

I then was poking around my list of tasks on my home computer today and ran across a blog entry from one of my favorite career coaching blogs, www.azzarellogroup.com, called “Defending your honor (and your budget)“. She emailed this out just over a year ago, and I thought it was very timely that I re-read it again today!

My main take-away:

People at all levels of a company always feel they need to prove that what they are doing adds value. No surprise there. The problem is in how they do that. Patty Azzarello argues that while data and metrics are great, it’s not just about those. It needs to be about some of the emotional side of things as well. For example, don’t just talk about how nifty the technology is that you’re creating, talk about how it will make the company more money, or save the customer money. Don’t talk about total number of leads you brought in on the marketing side, talk about “qualified prospects who are ready to engage”.

It seems far too often we talk about things that don’t necessarily tie back to the company’s main strategy (which is usually get more qualified customers, make them happy and earn lots of money). It seems simple enough, but I think far too often, each part of the business doesn’t understand how they personally contribute to that directly. This is something I’ve been working with each of the managers in our company to help drive them to understand that. It’s a learning process for all of us, but I think we’re making headway.

So, I agree completely with Patty and wish that more folks spent the time thinking about how what they did benefits the company and the customer rather than how it supported the one specific item they were driving.

The speaker was Dr. Robert Atkinson, president of ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation). The main focus of his talk is how people always complain about how much electricity data centers use, and therefore how much they contribute to greenhouse gases, when really they save a lot of carbon emissions by replacing other activities that people used to do instead. He says that for every unit of energy consumed by IT, you actually save 6-14 units of energy that you would have spent elsewhere. He gives a number of really great examples:

1) Videoconferencing and teleworking. These ones are more obvious, but the corresponding savings (both of energy, but also time, I might add) are pretty amazing. He reports that in 2007, teleworkers saved 840 million gallons of gasoline reducing carbon emissions by 14 million tons. If an additional 10% of the workforce telecomutes, the US will save 3.3 billion sq. ft. of office space and reduce green house gas emissions by 28 billions tons).

2) Eliminating CDs and CD cases. So many folks buy mp3s now, and it’s great for the “instant music” part, but also for the environment! He reported that if we got rid of all CDs and CD case production, we would save 42 million gallons of oil every year and 1/2 a million tons of greenhouse gases. That’s amazing! Not to mention it won’t clutter up my house as much.

3) Eliminating the need for so much paper (by having e-checks, boarding passes, bills, books, newspapers). Not to mention that by downloading a book, it also then reduces the need to drive back and forth to a store to purchase it. However, even purchasing a book online and having it shipped to your house saves gas vs. driving back and forth to your house, because the people shipping the book aren’t just driving to your place!

4) IT allows us to crunch a bunch of numbers and tell us how to make our processes more efficient. He used the example of UPS reducing truck travel by 28.5 million miles by using better software.

5) Smart Grid technology and how it can help reduce energy usage and costs

6) Green Building controls: controlling lights, temperature and overall energy efficiency.

But, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also try and make our data centers more efficient on their own (since then we are being even more efficient than driving our cars back and forth to the book store). Virtualization of computers is one huge way to get savings because you not only have the electricity savings from less IT equipment, but then you also have less IT equipment to have to run cooling to, so you save on not having to run the infrastructure as much as well. This kind of thing is exactly what my company works on, green data centers, which is exactly why I’m so excited to be working there! To me it’s about how we use less energy. We all know that we’ll continue to use energy (living without any energy is really unreasonable to expect), but how do we be most efficient in how we do that?

And,on a personal note, I have converted to just buying almost all of my music off itunes. I miss having the CD liner notes, but I do feel a bit better about myself for doing it. And I can quickly turn it into a running mix to take with me!

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/is-eat-real-food-unthinkable/?hp

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/a-food-manifesto-for-the-future/

It was interesting to me how much these tied into that conversation with my other co-worker earlier in the week. The first article even mentioned Oprah challenging her staff to go vegan for a week (but bought tons of fake meats, which have quite a long list of ingredients and aren’t actually that heathy for you). I was amazed at how much the article’s author, Mark Bittman, had echoed what my co-worker and I had talked about the day before the article was published! How do we encourage people to eat fewer processed foods. Period. Forget high fat vs. low fat. Forget meatless vs. meat. Focus on what the hunter and gatherers of ages ago could have made. I guarantee they didn’t have low-fat, trans-fat free anything. It just was what it was.

The second article made me smile as well. The same author, Mark Bittman, suggested the following ways for growing, preparing and eating heathier food that is also healthier for the environment:

1) No more government subsidies for processed foods. This includes the big one: stop subsidizing corn. This was actually a long topic of discussion at the delicious dinner party I went to last night where our hosts made pretty much everything from scratch. Yum!

2) Start subsidizing farmers who grow things for direct consumption. What a concept! Encouraging growing things that don’t need to go through 4 steps before we eat them? Yay!

3) Break up the USDA and empower the Food and Drug administration. As Mark put it, “Currently, the U.S.D.A. counts among its missions both expanding markets for agricultural products (like corn and soy!) and providing nutrition education. These goals are at odds with each other; you can’t sell garbage while telling people not to eat it…”. I couldn’t agree more. He also said that the Food and Drug Administration has to be empowered to protect consumers from the various food disease outbreaks we’ve had in recent years. All the local farmers I’ve bought food from have never had any problems. Hmm… coincidence? I think not.

4) “Outlaw concentrated animal feeding operations and encourage the development of sustainable animal husbandry”. If you’ve ever seen Food, Inc., you’ll never want to eat animals from the large-scale feeding operations anyway. How do we just get more folks to view the movie? Or price meat based on how likely it is to make you sick with one of those disease outbreaks I was just mentioning, with the ones that will make you sicker being higher priced so that we can help pay for all the folks that end up getting sick from it… If only. And, make meat cost what it really does cost. It’s not cheap, it’s only cheap because corn and soybeans are so subsidized. Maybe then we’ll all eat less meat which is both good for us and the environment.

5) (And this is my favorite of his suggestions): “Encourage and subsidize home cooking”. Awesome. Perfect. Not only is it better for us health-wise, but it is also better for us emotionally. When we cook at home, we often then eat at home with our friends and family, making us all-around healthier and happier people. Cooking should be a stress-reliever. It should be fun, and creative (hmm, now I’m thinking about starting cooking classes to ward off diseases like Alzheimers).

6) “Tax the marketing and sale of unhealthful foods”. If we make Happy Meals look awesome for kids, how do we expect them to make healthy choices?

7) “Reduce waste and encourage recycling”. I can’t count how much food I see tossed in garbage cans at every restaurant I eat at. How do we make portion sizes smaller? Encourage folks to bring their own to-go container? Compost it if they truly can’t eat it?

8) (This one is my second favorite): “Mandate truth in labeling. Nearly everything labeled “healthy” or “natural” is not. It’s probably too much to ask that “vitamin water” be called “sugar water with vitamins,” but that’s precisely what real truth in labeling would mean”. I have nothing more I can possibly add to that one. Enough said.

9) And, finally, “reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution”. Going “green” is more than just buying solar or wind energy. Agriculture plays such a huge part and, as a nation, we are pretty ignorant about what that part is. Corporations need to help us get there and need to be motivated (aka taxed more or less, depending on what they do) to help us get there.