Anne Giles Clelland

Don't Take It Personally

“Don’t take it personally.”
- One guy too many

“…ay, there’s the rub.”
- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

If one more business guy tells me one more time, “Don’t take it personally"...

What do you mean, “Don’t take it personally”?!  It is personal. I am a person, I am doing business personally, therefore I take business personally.

I define “taking things personally” as being the instrument of my fate, responsible for my choices, and responsible for the consequences of my choices.  If I see myself as the leader of my life and my company, then, you bet, what happens is about me personally.  Telling me “Don’t take it personally” is telling me to extinguish myself.

That said, I can’t say I’ve found taking business personally a particularly gratifying process.  Starting a company is so risky, and building a business so onerous, I have found myself often personally strained, frayed and depleted by the sheer enormity of the task.  Business is hard on a person.

I’ve been given the “Don’t take things personally” advice often enough, though,  and have found it well-meaning but so unhelpful, that it merited a step back and a look for a pattern at setting and circumstances.  It could still happen, but I can’t remember this being uttered to me by a woman.  In any case, in each instance when the advice was given to me by a man, I was personally upset.  In each case, the subtext of “Don’t take it personally” was “You’re so personally upset that you’re professionally absent.”

People do business with people.  If I’m personally upset, I’m unavailable for business.  Light on, shop door closed.

Yet, I treasure taking my life personally.  I cherish beyond price the depth and breadth and richness of my personal life. 

So what do I with my premise:  “I am a person, therefore I do business personally”?  What do I do with the advice, “Don’t take business personally?”

I think the premise is flawed and the advice is flawed.

It's not how to “take” business.  It’s how to “do” business.

There’s the rub.

New advice to self:

“Don’t do business personally.  Do business strategically.”

If I do business strategically, rather than personally, I take business results and business relationships into consideration with regard to my strategy.  I don’t take them personally.  I’m free to “take it personally” in my personal life as intensely and as acutely as I choose.  My business life becomes excitingly, fascinatingly, engagingly about strategically achieving a vision.

My experience is that an either-or dichotomy like this doesn’t always hold true.  In an age of transparency, where the personal-professional divide is as clear as broken lines on a road in a rain storm, I’m still going to tweet pics of my cats to my company’s Twitter feed.

My guess is that if I can operate more generally within the context of this new insight - doing business strategically rather than personally - the number of times I hear “Don’t take it personally” will decrease.  That’s because I’ll be fully and professionally present to do business.

Scar

"...destroy all of my beautiful wickedness? I'm gone! I'm gone!"
- The Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz, 1939 film

"When I was young  I longed for scars
like my father's   They were the best
scars on the block...
'It's the ones you can't see that kill you'..."
"Scars," Peter Meinke

LBJ taught me the wonder of scars.

I got a few in the 70s, which, following LBJ's lead, I shared in mutual fascination with the fellow scarred, my mother protesting because their location required me to unzip my jeans.  It was the 70s.

Looks like in the 10s I'll be getting a new one for all to see.

I asked Dr. Aaron Prussin, "If it were your wife?"

"It would come out," he answered.

I'll have a parotidectomy on February 15, 2010 for this.  Since the facial nerve runs through the parotid, or salivary gland, in addition to some other possibilities, the major risk of the
two-and-a-half hour surgery is that my face will sag like a Dali clock.

Here's a detailed text description of the surgery and here, on YouTube, is how Dr. Soh does it in Singapore. (Spoiler alert: The needles come out at 4:46 and the knife at 5:18, which is when I stopped watching.)

Feel free not to click on the links here:  I'm going to look like this at first except mine's on the right side.  Hopefully, I'll look as good as Andy does eventually.  You can sit on my left when we're out to dinner if I develop Frey's syndrome.  Apparently, I'll have a nice dent in my neck, too.  A dent in the neck is better than a hole in the head.

The bottom line for this CEO is that I'm probably just not going to be too good lookin'. Ah, well. 

For my cool speaking gig on April 7, I'll bring props.

The procedure will be done out-patient at Montgomery Regional Hospital (which is amazing because they cut OPEN a guy's head in the ghastly video - okay, I looked) and I'll call on Friday, 2/12 to find out when the surgery is scheduled for Monday.  Dr. Prussin suggested I schedule no meetings for a week afterward.  I think that's to protect everyone from the Dali face thing.

He says for sure, long-term, I won't be able to feel my right ear lobe.  Maybe that's the time to finally get my ears pierced.

If you're not into scars like LBJ, or not into the CEO of the company that provides you service or with whom you partner being out of commission for awhile, I can understand that. If you wanted me the way I was, that makes complete sense to me.  For the change to come, small or large, the concern it may cause you, and the time it may take away from you, I am profoundly sorry. 

Dr. Prussin thought I might want to restyle my hair towards my face, rather than away from it, to hide the scar.

It would just get blown back.  I'm face forward, going fast.

The Year of Revenue

"How would you like your hot dog?” the hot dog vendor asked the Buddhist monk.
The Buddhist monk replied, “Make me one with everything.”

- Remembered, possibly incorrectly, from The Accidental Tourist

As 2010 begins, and the eighteenth month of the founding of my company passes, this is The Year of Revenue.

I loved that start-up phase.  It was a perfect match for my idea-driven, acutely lived life.  Open to every thought and possibility, of my own and others, I experimented, I created, I launched, heart pounding only from the exertion of my own mind.

The trashing David Rose gave my angel investor video pitch - "...the video completely fails as an angel investor pitch!" - was uncomfortable, but not intolerable, because I didn’t know then what I know now.  He’s right.  It does fail.  Developmentally, though, when I made the video a year ago, “Why I love Handshake 2.0” is where I was as a company founder.  I, my idea, and my passion for my idea, were one.

The proof of the value of a business idea is not in how much it’s loved, but in how much revenue it generates.

While I couldn’t hear that, even bear it, during the start-up phase, I’m ready now.

At the end of 2009, my email inbox needed its own server, my desk shouted a confetti of ideas jotted on quarter sheets, and my business model - so predictably and tediously entrepreneurial - looked like a house painter’s pants - lots of color, no picture.

I’ve had the great idea.  It’s time to execute it.

In 2010, I aspire to Buddhist monkhood.  I am a) practicing consciousness, b) practicing discernment, specifically thus:  “Oh, I’m having an idea.  Is it one we know, based on our experience and business model, will generate revenue?” and c) choosing to what I give my attention, i.e. if the answer to the revenue question is "no," letting it go.

This takes discipline.  Instead of wrangling other entrepreneurs, I have to snap the reins on myself.

On an execution scale of 1 to 10, for the first 17 days of 2010, I give myself an 8.  My inbox is less full, my desk less cluttered.  I’ve had lots of ideas, and I’ve given the tempting ones a little more time than I would have liked, but the ones to which the revenue question answer is “yes,” I’ve given TLC.

I've never seen an About page that has "Wow!" in it, but mine now does.

And if David Rose is at the next VT KnowledgeWorks Entrepreneurship Summit, why, I've got the colors of my business model in a big picture One-Page Summary ready to apply to pitch.  If I'm selected, my pitch won't begin with, "What I love about Handshake 2.0..."

Did I love the heady, intoxicating, high-low start-up phase?  You bet.  For my head, heart and spirit, that’s a match.  Could I be a serial entrepreneur?  Possibly.  But a series begins with a success. 

Let The Year of Revenue begin.

Nudity is the New Transparency

Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough...
- Losing My Religion, R.E.M.

See me, feel me
Touch me, heal me.
- Go to the Mirror!, Tommy, The Who

"What you say on Twitter may be viewed all around the world instantly. You are what you Tweet!"
- Twitter Terms of Service

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
- Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, in The Huffington Post

"Corporate transparency is touted as being good for a corporation's image, and is a key ingredient in compliance and governance. Transparent companies inspire more trust...But is such corporate transparency really such a good thing?...Still, opacity (or intransparency) is an even bigger risk. Not showing what you're doing is simply not accepted anymore."
- Frank Buytendijk, Vice President and Fellow, Enterprise Performance Management, Oracle, on his blog

"...there's no use trying to resist. You're already naked."
- Clive Thompson, The See-Through CEO, Wired

"Six drops of essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce...and now for the tincture of tenderness..."
- Professor Weirdo creating Milton the Monster

"You're only as sick as your secrets."
- Saying known in therapy and recovery circles, probably most famously uttered by Carrie Fisher

As a CEO, how transparent do I have to be? On my corporate bio page, next to the standard shot in the biz suit, will I need a tasteful nude pose like the Ladies of Rylstone?

While “transparency” as a business term became common after corporate financial and ethical violations, corporate leaders themselves have been asked to adopt personal transparency as they blog and tweet.

What is the purpose of personal CEO transparency?

In the business-to-business realm, if people do business with people, and people do business with people they know because they believe they can trust them more than with people they don’t know, and trust is perceived as decreasing risk, whereas not knowing people with whom they might deal is perceived as increasing risk, how much do people need to know about people to do business with them?

If people know not only a company’s mission, products, services, and financials, but its founder and leader - what he or she thinks, feels and does - are they more likely to do business with the company?

If the CEO presents himself or herself beyond “what you see is what you get” to transparency – being able to see through surface appearances – will that engender that "It's who you know" trust that increases the likelihood of business?

If the answer to "Will people do more business with my company if I am a transparent CEO?" is probably "Yes," then it might be time to find a discreet photographer.

If you’re familiar with triathlon togs - trisuits - then you know I’ve already pretty much been nude in public, especially when emerging from the swim, especially when I forgot to lock the porta-potty door in front of lines of hundreds of waiting triathletes.  I’m desensitized.  No big deal.

What I hear fellow CEOs struggle with is nudity of the heart, mind and spirit. I hear their concerns about the consequences of dismantling privacy fences, of secrets revealed, of that deepest fear - of not being accepted for who we truly are.

For me, I’ve had my dark nights of the soul.  I’ll have more.  I’ve had what Schmidt describes as “something that you don’t want anyone to know” and realized I didn’t want to know it, either.  Like the cartoon character Milton the Monster, though, I’m comprised of both the sinister and the tender. Like R.E.M., I’m torn that I’ve said too much and not enough at the same time.  And I’ve experienced, and witnessed, the risk and terrible cost of Buytendijk’s “intransparency,” of the sickness of secrets, almost unto death.

I think a secretive path, corporate or personal, is fraught with peril.

As a CEO, I have chosen a great deal of personal transparency.  Will it result in more business for my company?

Maybe not more.  But I bet my company, and companies with whom we can do good business, will recognize each other. I’m not a fan of attempting to control what others think and feel, of attempting to "make" people accept a "projection of a corporate image," regardless of the reality of the corporation.

From my company, what you see is what you get, and then some, down to the skin if need be.

The Champagne of Content

I took very seriously, and found myself reacting strongly to, Mark W. Schaeffer’s The best business opportunity in social media marketing.

I read this, “...content is a SEVERE bottleneck for most companies,” and nodded with heartfelt concurrence.  Content is king and queen, but so few companies, especially small ones, have the time or the content-creation skills to get their own content kings and queens into the conversation.  Very, very difficult challenge.

I read more and nodded more.  “The need for content seems insatiable. This exacts more pressure on companies to not only develop ‘meaningful’ content, but content that will knock your socks off.  Every day.”  Yes, yes!.  “…the price companies are willing to pay for content goes up.” Yeah!  We create content for companies!  Yeah for high prices for content!

Then this:  "There will be plenty of content-whores around for everybody." 

Then this:  “So here’s the business plan:  Come up with a posse of technical writers/content whores who can churn out blogs on a variety of subjects (maybe organize by verticals) and fill this out-sourcing market niche.”

Mark Shaeffer is a fine writer and thinker and I consider him an online colleague.  He even included me in his peacock.  He  wrote a blog post.  He writes a lot of blog posts.  What was my strong reaction about?

To me, the term "content whore" devalues the person, the transaction, and the act. 

If I describe myself as a content whore, I feel unvalued. I see the clients who pay me to write fine content for them maligned, i.e. they certainly didn't think they were paying for prostitution services when they signed the dotted line.  And the act itself is devalued.  I won't write just anything for just anybody for money.  I accept clients for whom I can write with my best self.

I value online content so profoundly that I create it and create it and create it, most days starting at 4:30 AM.  To quote Mark, "Every day."  I see online content as a new and evolving art form.  I’m thrilled to be part of what seems a revolution in how we communicate.

Do I churn out content?  I create a lot of content.  But the churning is within.  It’s from striving to create art.

I’ll be teaching a seminar in January entitled "The Art of the Blog Post."  When I define a Handshake 2.0 blog post, I use a sonnet as a metaphor.

A content whore.

I find reading Mark's blog {grow} always informative, often inspiring, and occasionally provocative.  I found myself provoked by his recent post to have greater clarity about what I do, why and how and where I see the best business opportunity in social media marketing for my company.

Content churners are welcome to mass produce Boone’s Farm wine.  It will certainly do.  We attempt to create the Dom Pérignon champagne of content. It's for celebration.  Customers abound for both.

To those who might consider me a content whore, I say, "You can kiss my..."

Actually, no you can't.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be a Freelancer

As a 15-month, bootstrapped start-up with one friends-and-family loan and no other outside funding, I hire freelancers per piece and per project to assist with the work of the company.

The “free” in freelance means just that - free to be allied with oneself, not with a company, free to say “yes” to work one likes, free to say “no” to work one doesn’t, free to work with a company for awhile, free to not work with it for awhile, ever, or ever again.

The “free” in freelance is an ideal match for my company’s enterprises, particularly for business news site Handshake 2.0.  For Handshake 2.0, I seek excellent content, not good content.  Excellent content is born of free creation from the heart and mind of a person’s deep expertise and talent.

On Handshake 2.0, we currently average at least one post per day.  If 365 freelancers contributed from their hearts and minds only once per year, that’s a plethora of top quality content for Handshake 2.0.  And that’s a lot of freelancers with a new publication to add to their publication lists and a new link to their sites.  Oh, yes, and I pay.  To the best of my ability, on the day I receive the invoice, I write the check.

A developing challenge for me as a company founder is that I’m finding fewer freelancers applying for freelance positions.  I’m finding more people who need work turning to freelancing who then apply for a position.

Although I’ve been deeply fortunate to experience exceptions, for the most part, those who turn to freelance content creation do so because they have a skill, not because they have a passion for creation.  As a result, they gamely create adequate to good content, not excellent content.

Do I see potential in them to create excellent content?  Yes.  Does my start-up company have the time or resources to employ, coach and support them while they learn?  No.  Can I ask them to reach more deeply into themselves and create more powerful, distinctive content?  Not for the pay I offer.  Someone who needs work needs to crank out a post, then look for more work. 

In a down economy, a former employee turned freelancer is not free.  Writing developed when domestication of plants and animals gave people time to think and create.  While hunting and gathering, i.e. seeking the sustenance of a job?  Hunger is not a free, or creative, state.

In a new, entrepreneurial enterprise, the company founder is not free.  An established, domestic state is five years away.  Now, I hunt and gather revenue intently to feed this newborn baby of a company.

A fine, local company closes its doors today, laying off all of its employees. 

More freelancers.

To create real jobs in the future, not just freelance work in the present, as a company founder I must, day after day, create excellence.

I am deeply uneasy with the paradox of realizing that, in order to create excellence, I need to offer work to those who want to create, not to those who need work.

***

Photo credit:  Jennifer Greger

Lessons Learned from The Social Media R.O.I. That Was, Then Wasn’t

When a client of my digital public relations agency, Handshake Media, Incorporated, called and said the video we had created for the company - uploaded to YouTube, posted on our company’s blog, Handshake 2.0, and showcased in our company’s Twitter stream and on our company’s Facebook page - had resulted in a phone call for an appointment, I was ecstatic.  Return on investment - R.O.I. - from a social media campaign!  It worked!  Having been without a salary for a year as the founder of a start-up, I dubbed the effort The $50,000 Video.

I found out a few days ago that the phone call did not ultimately result in an appointment.  No ROI from a social media campaign.  I updated the post:  "In terms of ROI, my $50,000 video is now a $0 video."

Lessons learned:

• When I accept a client on an exchange-of-services basis, I need to serve that client as if it were a full-paying client. I’m not proud to realize that I did not follow up with this barter client as I should have, or would have believed was professional and ethical to do.  I assumed the last news was the latest news.  That’s both illogical and a poor business practice.
• When I accept a barter client, I need to be in a position to offer full service. As my company evolves, the timing may be better than at others for such an exchange. I need to make thoughtful, conscious choices about this.
• I need to manage expectations - both my own and those of my clients.  When I once heard a guy say, “I am a manager of expectations,” I wanted to run, not walk, from such a dour, drab, numbing statement. And, yet… I wrote business plans in exchange for future stock options during the heady days of dot-com.  I could wallpaper a room with plans from never-businesses.  I can fall prey to one-hit madness. Would I want a single YouTube video, one Twitter tweet, one sparkling blog post to “go viral”?  You bet!  And I know my clients would, too!  Do I have a secret wish with each post and show and tweet that this might be the one?  Yep.  But to quote Marshall Sponder, “...sustainable results don’t come from a quirk, they come from sustained effort - and there may be ups and downs. I like to think the same thing is true about Social Media.”

The experience was troubling and, frankly, humiliating, and the lessons hard and well-deserved.

Yet, I'll  finish with this wisdom from Adam Singer:  “Embrace imperfection. Part of social media means, well, being social. And our social interactions are by their very nature imperfect. Some of the best blogs on the planet are hardly perfect, but that’s not what makes them compelling.”

May my sustained effort on behalf of my clients generate sustainable R.O.I.

A Start-Up Evolves - The Hunter-Gatherer Stage

When I’ve worked as a contractor for companies, I knew I was a hunter-gatherer for hire.  I wasn't to be part of the metaphorical agricultural revolution of a company, but a task completer.  I was to find this herb for this purpose, deliver it, then done.

I found being a contractor very satisfying if these conditions could be met:

• Tell me what you want to have happen as a result of my work.
• Tell me what the rules are.
• Tell me the criteria by which my work will be evaluated.
• Tell me when it’s due.
• Praise me and pay me.

As I contractor, I knew it was the work, what I brought to that work, and my ability to execute with regard to these criteria that created my value.

When I’ve worked as an employee for companies, I’ve found the experience more complex.  A company expects an employee to be both contractor and team member, both hunter-gatherer and communal farmer.  Synergy is the goal.  I’m expected to be one of the parts that creates the greater whole.  Synergy requires that I not only generate good work, but build relationships, and interact within those relationships within the context of, and to further, the company’s mission.  What’s wanted of me, what the rules are, and by what criteria I will be evaluated, although occasionally defined in job descriptions, can be intangible and amorphous.  It's a rich experience, but different from that of a contractor.

As a contractor, it was my work that was valued, not my contribution to the synergy of a company or community.  Therefore, I was not tied to, obligated to, or necessarily loyal to the company with whom I contracted.  I had lots of gigs, worked for lots of companies, and could accept or reject a project to find this nut or that grain at will.  I didn’t have the context, connections, or benefits of “belonging” to a company but, at the time, that met my personal and professional needs.

But if I didn't work, I didn't eat.  Like a hunter-gatherer, I was free to wander, but I didn't have the safety of a salary and its hut full of food when a storm hit.

As the founder of a company with a one-year anniversary under its belt, what I need from those with whom I work - contractors, interns, even professional service providers - is execution.  I share this condition with a contractor:  My company is in the energy intensive hunter-gatherer stage of evolution.  If I don’t find food, I don’t eat.  As my company becomes established, we'll stage a revolution, domesticate our plants and animals, and develop a corporate culture of synergy.

In the meantime, I need contractors who can execute.  I need fruit right now.

What I give up by having contractors rather than employees is their loyalty, their commitment, their evolution into what they could become while planting roots in my company.  I lose the chance to have my own synergistic relationship with the employee.  I heard a new employee of a company within one week of being hired refer to the company as “we.”  No one says “we” about my company.  Not yet.

But as a company founder in the hunter-gatherer stage, what I lack is time.  If I myself, or contractors who work for my company, don’t execute - “find food,” a.k.a. generate revenue or directly support the generation of revenue - I grow weak from hunger.  The weaker I am, the less power I have to “find food,” to meet with potential clients, to design products and services for the demands of the market, to execute my company’s strategy.

The greater the maintenance required by contractors, the less time the founder has to found the company.  The greater the ability to execute by contractors, the more time the founder has to found.

I've heard a statistic for which I don't have a source:  80% of a manager's time is spent in human resources, i.e. in wrangling personnel.

I hear that and I feel hungry.

The ecology of a start-up can be fragile.  This is normal, natural, and expected in a company’s evolution.  Ultimately, the success of a start-up depends upon the strength of the founder.  Thirteen months after launch, this founder is feeling strong and is founding as hard as she can.  At times maniacally.  Always determinedly.

Tomorrow, she will welcome employees and synergy and revolution.

Today, she welcomes contractors who find and deliver herbs.

Dear Meddling Employee

When I came home from the very first day of my very first job as a teenager, I told my mother, "They don’t pay me enough!  I did this and I did that..."

My mother said, "The company doesn’t work for you.  You work for the company.  And your job is to make money for the company."

As an adult, I can see the complexities of the employer-employee relationship and note that, taken to an extreme, "make money for the company" can result in a sweatshop.  Still, my mother taught me two fundamental business principles:

1. To be a company and to stay in business as a company, the company needs to make money.
2. To be able to pay an employee, a company needs to make money. An employee practices enlightened self-interest by helping the company make money.

***

Ninety-eight percent of my work career has been spent as an employee and one percent as a sole proprietor.  That last one percent - this past year - has been spent as an employer, as “the boss.”

I have thought often over the past year of writing a letter of thank you - and of amends - to each of my employers.  I had no idea the price they paid personally and professionally to create a salary and benefits for me.  I had no idea how my work habits, occasional defiance, and occasional personal crisis disrupted the process by which they were able to create that salary and those benefits for me.  For whatever the reason, when I wasn’t working or was working inefficiently, I wasn’t making money for the company.  I was costing it money.

I write a workplace advice column for Valley Business FRONT, and the column on the meddling employee has generated several comments and a thoughtful response by Jim Schweitzer. 

A central issue of the discussion is the role of the creative employee - who may seem on the surface to be a meddler - in an organization.

I’ve worked at several organizations that treasured creativity.  At the finest, as employees, our continuing education - of our own choosing if accepted by a review committee of peers - was paid for, including transportation and lodging.  In-house, we had expert guest speakers in a variety of fields, quarterly workshops, and annual retreats.  I thrived in that environment and, through those experiences, created more valuable products for the organization.  The organization’s investment in my creativity yielded significant returns.  I made money for the company.

I have written that, as the founder of a one-year start-up company, I have taken no salary.  I yearn to provide creative opportunities for the contractors and interns who work for my company.  I simply do not have sufficient revenue to do it.  Currently.

I see a very difficult tension between creativity and profitability.  On the one hand, a company is dependent upon innovation to create products and services for which the market might clamor with demand.

On the other hand, if a company doesn’t execute its innovations, it won’t generate revenue to support itself.  If it doesn’t have revenue, it can’t support its creativity and innovation.

Therein is the daily judgment call - even the moment-to-moment judgment call - of company leadership:  How do I foster space for creativity and innovation for my organization at the same time as I foster execution of the more linear demands of staying in business?

***

As I mentioned in my comment on the meddling employee post, I have meddled and I have been meddled with, and I suggest a self-examination of motivations for each party.  Answering "What are we doing and why?" can be hugely instructive.

Elements of the “why” are universal.

I heard this at a workshop years ago and haven’t been able to find to whom to attribute it, but I think it expresses the essence of being human:  “What we most want is to know and be known, to love and be loved, to touch and be touched.”

And my husband is the first I’ve heard to articulate this principle this way, so I do attribute it to him:  “Ultimately, each of us wants to be valued.”

So I’ll conclude this way:

Dear Meddling Employee:

Value your work, this company’s work, and my work by contributing your work to this company in a way that helps it continue to be financially successful. 

If you are frustrated, please let me know directly and as specifically as possible what could change to free you to do your best work.  If what you request aligns with the company’s vision, and it’s within my power and the company’s means, I will do my best to make it happen.

If you feel as if you’ve tried to communicate this to me, and I haven’t been able to hear you, then maybe that’s a limit on my part, or a mismatch for both of us, and our work together is not a fit.

I hired you, or my predecessor hired you, because you and your work are valued.  My greatest hope is that we can continue to work together for the good of each of us, all of us, the company, and the greater good.

Sincerely,
Your Employer