8/18/2010

Speaking & Consulting Services - Alicia Blain - C.A.R.E. TM System of Leadership

Wed 18 Aug 2010

Yes, according to some of the people recently interviewed by the Miami Herald reporter, Cindy Krischer Goodman. I am a huge fan of  Cindy’s.  She writes for the business section of the Miami Herald.  Having been a corporate executive for over 25 years, I naturally gravitate to the business section of the paper and it’s usually what I read first.  Cindy writes about a lot of different topics that affect the business world. One thing is always consistent in her writing and is the reason why I follow her: she blends the human element to the often impersonal, fact based and stodgy world of business.  That is not an easy thing to do and that’s precisely what makes her articles stand out and pop.  Wouldn’t you rather read the facts and figures wrapped up in an interesting  story?  

Anyway,  in last Sunday’s edition, she wrote an article called “Recession Sparks New Attitudes for Gen Y“.  In the article, she interviewed some of the local corporate executives who felt that the Millennials currently working for them had indeed become easier to manage.  They were not being as demanding as they had been about fast tracking their careers.  They were staying longer too. 

 A big focus of the article was on Millennials working in law firms.  For years, Boomer lawyers have been going crazy trying to figure out how to deal with Millennials.  Having worked with lawyers and being acquainted with many of them, I can personally attest to the frustration they feel with their Gen Y staff.  I have shared with them many of the techniques I learned and developed as a result of putting my Millennial staff under the microscope.  Although skeptical at first,  these Boomer lawyers were able to see how I went from frustration to amazement as I got know and understand the Millennials. If I could do it, so could they.

I think the recession has touched all of us in some unexpected ways so it doesn’t surprise me to read about how Millennials are adapting to this “new normal”.  Millennials are extremely adaptable.  Look at the world they’ve had to live in.  Rapid change has truly been the only constant in their young lives.  No other generation, except perhaps the Veterans, has had to deal with such life altering events as they have over such a short period of time.  The recession has undoubtedly made them evaluate their situation and they will factor that into their outlook going forward.  Instead of seeing it as a negative, they will learn from it and grow from the experience.

However, leaders would be unwise to take the Millennials for granted and believe the corporation has the upper hand.  The current events may provide some tweaks to the traits and values of this young workforce but it will not eliminate them. I agree with Stan Smith in the article who believes Gen Yers are compliant for now.  That doesn’t mean that their values aren’t still there.  Savvy leaders will continue to find ways to connect with this young group. They will challenge their legacy leadership principles and experiment with new techniques that will be effective in leading  a very diverse and dynamic 21st Century workforce.

I like the ending quote from the article.  Richard Berkowitz, the  director of a local accounting firm learned something important by working with his Millennial staff:  “They aren’t going to walk in and become great. You have to teach them how to be great professionals.”

Isn’t that what leadership is all about?  What about you?  How are you leading during this recession?  What are you doing to help your staff become great professionals?

Fri 13 Aug 2010

Another flashback.  I was at a networking event this week and the subject of employee evaluations came up.  The Vice President of Marketing of a Fortune 500 company was talking about the new evaluation system their HR Department had just rolled out.  Mike, the VP of Marketing, was selected to be part of the pilot program to test the system and guage its effectiveness.

Mike was not thrilled with the new system.  Apparently, it was cumbersome and time consuming.  Although it allowed you to select from a list of criteria, it also forced the evaluator to comment on critical areas.  Mike didn’t like that part.  I didn’t want to remind him that as the head of his team, the more concrete and specific the feedback he gave the employee, the better the process was for the employee,  especially if there were improvement issues.

This discussion reminded me of the evaluation process that existed when I was starting out in my corporate career in the 1980′s.   The evaluation forms back then were not these fancy forms that are generated by an HR software program. Nowadays, everything is neatly and beautifully displayed and you have the ability to access the form online, give comments, and sign it electronically forever to be kept in your HR Department’s electronic repository.

Back in the day, the evaluation process was not as stringently followed as it is today.  There was a lot more flexibilitiy and leeway given to managers and department heads and as such, it was your responsibility to ensure that you prepared evaluations for your team members and had a formal review with them.  HR was not holding your hand through the process and sending you countless reminders as they do today.

For starters, the evaluation forms were very long.  They required you as a manager to write extensively in each of the categories and also give specific examples. Since the HR oversight was not as visible as it is today, the evaluation forms themselves were often hard to read.  The managers kept blank copies of the forms. Sometimes the blank forms were copied so many times that there would be words missing from the edges of the  form. The quality of the document could be so poor that the wording was hard to read.  Remember that I started out my career working for Citibank, not a slouch of a company by any means.

But here’s the great part.  The evaluations were handwritten .  As a reviewing manager, you had to handwrite each and every LONG evaluation form for each member of your team. Do you have any idea how time consuming that is and how much your hand hurts when you’re done? But here’s the even funnier part.  As an employee, if you had a boss with lousy penmanship you could never read or understand what had been written.   The running joke was that the more illegible the writing the better the review.  Why?  Because how can you improve or act on something when you can’t understand what your boss wrote?  So you basically ignored the review and convinced yourself that you were doing just fine.  Sometimes for giggles, if you had a boss with horrible handwriting you would ask them to decipher something he or she had written on the review.  Most of the times they couldn’t.  The writing was so bad they themselves could not understand what they wrote.  So how effective was that evaluation?  I’ll let you decide.

I shared that story at the networking event and a Generation Xer asked me why the evaluations weren’t typed.  I reminded him that PCs were still rare in corporate settings in the 1980′s and only secretaries had typewriters.  The staff and management did not.  You could opt to have your secretary type all the employee reviews but 2 things would happen:  she’d hate you for months to come since the forms were long and the timeline for completion was tight. You would be forcing her to type for days on end, backlogging her normal work. Secondly, evaluations were supposed to be confidential and nothing violated that confidentiality more than giving it to a secretary to type for you.  Typically only the very top executives on the team would do that.  These execs worked in very posh settings and their offices were removed from the rest of their team. Their secretaries were not only pretty isolated but very protective of the executives and their reputation so the chances of  a breach were minimal. The confidentiality issue was moot.  If you were lucky enough to receive a typed evaluation form you almost framed it because they were so appealing to read and understand.

The next time you complain about having to complete online evaluations for your employees think about what a pain they were back in the day.  Some things do get better with time.

What about you?  Do you have copies of  the old handwritten evaluations forms you received from your boss back in the day?  How legible were they? Can you imagine the look on a Millennial’s face if you gave them a handwritten evaluation today?

Happy Friday, everyone!

Wed 11 Aug 2010

You probably don’t think you do and certainly don’t purposely do it but chances are it may be happening.  The truth is that today, with 4 generations working side by side in most organizations, communicating is not as easy as it used to be.  Here’s an example.  I was at a client site yesterday and when I arrived, my client was in a tizzy and clearly flustered.  Apparently, they were testing their crisis management procedures and one of their key alert messages was left on people’s voicemails both at work and on their cell phones. 

The reason he was in a tizzy was that a large portion of their employees had indicated they had not gotten the alert and the managment group couldn’t understand why.    How could so many people miss the alert?  Were they purposely ignoring this step? Were they not giving a lot of importance to crisis management? My client explained that the process is clearly documented and that everyone is trained on how the system works. To make matters worse, word had gotten to the management team that some employees were complaining that they felt left out of the process.  They felt shut out.  Management was perplexed to say the least. 

Clearly, it was the wrong day for me to pay a visit to discuss the project they had hired me for.  But it turned out to be the perfect day to give my client an easy but overlooked lesson in generational communication.   I have seen it happen many times and the problem is so subtle and so imbedded in generational communication preferences that it easily gets missed.  In fact, instead of dealing with a much simpler problem,  it gets blown up into a much bigger issue.

After asking a few key questions, I realized the problem was that the organization was relying on its employees to buy into 2 basic premises that they clearly were not.  The first is that the organization assumed that just because people know and are trained on a procedure that they will actually follow it when they need to.  Time and time again, I have seen employees act in the exact opposite manner as the “procedures” require them to act.  Important things are often documented and not regularly tested to ensure the correct behavior is drilled into everyone’s thought process.  If you want it to sink in,  you have to put it in practice often. 

Most organizations don’t have the time or inclination do that. Even though crisis management is a key risk mitigator for all businesses today, organizations rarely test their crisis management procedures more than once or twice a year.  Will that frequency ensure you get the behavior you’re looking for in a crisis?  Probably not.  Employees are creatures of habit and extremely busy with their day to day work.  To get their attention and cooperation on key initiatives, you need to get them to practice, practice, practice. Otherwise, they will act as they choose, not as you need them to. 

The second premise was that the organization once again assumed that all employees accessed the same communication channel which in this case is the telephone/ voicemail system.  Big mistake.  Even though everyone has an extension at work and they can access voicemail remotely, how many people today do that?  Years ago, the percentages would have been high but today with the proliferation of texting, instant messaging,  emails and so on,  not everyone automatically checks their voicemails – at work or on their cell phones.  There are too many other ways for people to reach them when they need to.

I think most Veterans and Baby Boomers today still do a lot of their communication by phone or cell phone and have the habit of checking voicemails frequently.  Maybe some Generation Xers do too, even though I think they are more comfortable with emails.  Generation Y?  No clue that voicemail exists.  They don’t use it, don’t listen to it, don’t want it.  I can’t tell you how many times I left voicemail messages for my Gen Y staff only to find out days later, after I was frustrated and upset, that they never checked their voicemails. It simply didn’t occur to them to do it.  So you see what can happen when you use one form of communication to reach a diverse population.  The results are hit or miss.

In today’s hectic and technology rich world, savvy companies know that they must embrace multiple communication channels to ensure they are not shutting out segments of their employee base.  Veterans and Baby Boomers will get a voicemail alert, but for Generation Xers an email or better yet, a voicemail imbedded in their email will work, and for Millennials a text would do the trick.

Understanding how each generation communicates and what makes them tick is not a nice to have anymore.  To ensure that you are not unintentionally shutting out or neglecting your employees, you need to recognize their preferences and communicate your message in a variety of formats they will all embrace.

So how about you?  Still relying on traditional communication channels that no longer reflects the generational makeup of your team or organization? Maybe it’s time for a communication makeover?  Get your team to chime in on their preferences and you’re sure to never shut them out again.

Tue 10 Aug 2010

This has been a question I’ve noodled around for quite some time and it resurfaced as I was reading a ZDNET article by Zack Whittaker titled “Apple Overtakes Dell, HP as student laptop choice”.  Being in the IT field for as long as I have, I know the Apple vs. PC topic is a highly contentious one with both sides having very strong opinions and outlooks on the subject.  I don’t want to chime in on either side.  I’m really just curious about what are some of the possible changes in the corporate IT landscape as the 21st Century unfolds.

One thing I can say from my observations of Millennials:  they do appear to prefer Macs over PCs.  All the Millennials in my office had Macs as their personal laptops.  Some of them constantly badgered me about why we didn’t allow them at work.  I’m sure many IT leaders may be facing the same question from their young workforce today.  I really never had a very good answer for them except to say that PCs were the defacto standard in the company and as such, everyone had to conform to the standard.  It was a lame answer and the Millennials knew it.  At the time, I could get away with it because Millennials didn’t comprise a large portion of my team or of the workplace.

But will that lame answer work in the future, in the next 5 years or so when Millennials begin to represent a larger, more cohesive portion of the workforce?  We’ve talked about how the consumerization of IT is a huge issue for IT leaders and their staff.  This is another example of it. As students begin to prefer and embrace Macs over PCs,  this will spill over into the workplace.  Initially, Millennials may conform to the de facto standards imposed by organizations but will they do so forever? Remember, unlike other generations of users, the Millennials are not intimidated by or challenged by technology. They may take it upon themselves to test the de facto standard and push for change.  Will you be ready for that? 

I have two lovely twin goddaughers who started college last year.  My graduation present to both of them was to give them a laptop to take to college with them.  I gave them the choice of what laptop they wanted to get.  Their choice:  the MacBook Pro.  When I asked them why they chose the Mac, they simply said it was easier to use.  That comment piqued my interest and I started to observe Millennials when I was out and about.  I wanted to see if my goddaughters’ decision was unique to them or more pervasive within their group.   My first observation was that most of their friends also had Macs.  I took it a step further.  I am on the Board of Advisors at a local university’s Masters IT program.  At our last meeting, I arrived a few hours early and spent time in the cafeteria and other hangouts.  I counted the number of Macs and PCs I saw.  In my very informal and non-statistically based observation, I did find that the Millennials in my field of observation did carry more Macs than PCs.

My informal survey does somewhat validate the premise of the ZDNet article but more importantly, it may be pointing to a trend that will be unfolding in corporate America in years to come.    Spotting trends is not always easy but once I think I see one unfolding, I always like to research it and test it out to see if it has any teeth.  If it does,  I now have the ability to get ready for it instead of having it hit me like a 2×4 in the future.

What about you?  How aware are you of your surroundings?  Try doing your own Mac vs. PC Millennial survey and see what you come up with.  You can start with your own college kids and their friends.   As the saying goes  ” Forewarned is Forearmed”.   Today’s students will be your employees tomorrow.  The more you know about them, their preferences and tastes, the better you’ll be.  Let me know what you find out.

Mon 9 Aug 2010

I am always surprised how assumptions creep into our decision making process and often prevent us from seeing and leveraging great opportunities.  Asssumptions are stealth beliefs that we carry with us and we don’t realize are there.  Because we are not aware of them, it becomes very difficult to question and challenge them.  But I believe the successful leaders of the 21st Century will be the ones who become adept at finding ways to identify the assumptions behind their decision making process.  Once you understand what those assumptions are, you have taken a big step forward and can now begin the more difficult task of questioning whether those assumptions are valuable or detrimental in your ability to lead a 21st Century organization.

Let me give you a personal example of how assumptions crept into my decision making process.  As you know by now, I have spent a lot of time observing Millennials in the workplace.  One of their greatest strengths is their comfort with technology.  I have said many times that they don’t see technology as technology but rather as a way of life.   Because Millennials have always been around PCs and Macs,  those are their preferred platforms.  They have become experts on these platforms and leverage them in ways previous generations have not.

Their proficiency in those platforms automatically created an assumption in my way of thinking:  Millennials will never learn or embrace the old mainframe systems.  Mainframes are not something Millennials have been exposed to, learned in school or have worked on.  For them, the technology is outdated and not terribly exciting when compared to all the Web 2.0 stuff they love.  

That assumption highlighted a big problem in the future.  Mainframes are the backbone of many US industries and  large corporations.  Think about banking, healthcare, insurance, federal & state government agencies, utility, manufacturing.  They all utilize mainframes.  My assumptions around Millennials and mainframes made me wonder what would happen in the future as Baby Boomers began to retire? Who would support these mainframes?  Would we have to outsource all of our mainframe support and if so, for how long?  To me there was a huge gap brewing.  How were we going to pass the mainframe baton to the newer generations?

And then I came across this article written by Patrick Thibodeau in CIO Magazine called “ Daughter Follows Her Father Into a Mainframe Career”.  After reading it, I realized that another sneaky assumption had crept into my decision making process and was preventing me from tapping into a great opportunity.  The article talks about how at 12 years old, Kristine Harper’s dad took her into his offices as part of the now famous ”Take your Daughter to Work Day”.  Kristine’s father, Tom Harper, was a mainframe programmer and after showing his daughter what he did all day she said to him: “Dad, I love you, but if this was the last job on the planet, I wouldn’t want it”.  Now that would be a typical Millennial response when faced with the non-sexy but critical elements of running mainframes.

Fast forward to today.  Kristine is a 27 year old Millennial working in the research and development unit of company called Neon Enterprise Software, Inc. in Texas. Same place her dad works.  What does she do?  She works in the mainframe department!  Can you believe it?  A Millennial who actually CHOSE to work in mainframes.  But it gets better.  According to the article, Kristine actually has quite a prominent role in the mainframe community. She is part of a group that she organized herself called the IBM Share user group’s zNextGen project.  There are over 700 engineers, all of them Millennials, that are “looking to improve mainframe technology skills and find places to use them.”  This group will certainly lead the way in trying to close the gap that currently exists in the mainframe world between the retiring Baby Boomers and the much needed younger generation to replace them.  Through their example and vast social networks, they will undoubtedly get other Millennials excited about mainframes and others will join the cause.

Can you imagine the exciting opportunities that the companies that employ these 700 engineers have ahead of them?  These Millennials will surely bring their own unique approach to looking at mainframes.  They will see things and try things that the Baby Boomers may never have seen because they were so immersed in the old ways of looking at mainframes.  I’m sure they will give mainframes a much needed makeover and boost into the 21st Century.

Many leaders believe that Millennials don’t appreciate how and why things were done. They feel Millennials need to be led by the hand to see the forest from the trees.  Kristine and her Millennial Mainframe Posse clearly disprove these assumptions as well.  They saw an opportunity that probably their own bosses did not see. They collaborated as they do so well, and will find ways to blend the old with the new and develop and deliver a better product.   

Even as someone who has worked closely with Millennials, I would have let my assumptions get in the way in this particular situation. Instead of providing opportunities for Millennials to immerse themselves, talk to and learn from the mainframe experts, I would have “assumed” that the fit was not good. A great opportunity lost.  That’s why identifying and challenging our assumptions are critical techniques to lead effectively in this dynamic and ever changing workplace.

What about you?  How many times  are your assumptions getting in the way of innovation, of finding wonderful opportunities to do things differently and do them better? How many times is it getting in the way of seeing the value that Millennials bring to your team? In how many ways are those assumptions costing you and your organization? Watch out for those pesky stealth assumptions in your leadership approach.  They creep in there in ways you can’t even imagine.

Fri 6 Aug 2010

I ran into this website called Classic TV ads  that shows vintage commercials going as far back as the 1950′s.  What a great walk down memory lane.  They show you a list of commercials broken down by groups such as Eat, Drink, Clean, and others.  You can go into each section and see a quick description of the commercials.  Then if you want to see one, you just click on the one you want to see and voila, you’re back in time watching the commercial.

I have to warn you that some of the commercials especially the ones dating back to the 1950′s are very grainy and difficult to see but most of them are in great condition. They even have a group of commercials called Smoke.  Yes, they actually show you cigarrette commercials from back in the day.  Looking at some of them brought back so many memories because I remembered seeing them as a kid.  My favorite part in looking at the commercials was remembering the jingles.  There was a description for the Shake-A-Puddin commercial and instantly, I started singing the jingle.  So you know I had to click the video and sure enough, I was singing along with the commercial.  It was the perfect release from a stressful day.

 Can you imagine what Millennials would think of those commercials?  Share the link with them.  It’s good for them to get a perspective of things they have no knowledge of.  You’ll be amazed at what they will find interesting and weird. 

Happy Friday, everybody!!!

Thu 5 Aug 2010

Experts believe that Brian Davis paid well over 1 million dollars for his recent behavior on the golf course.  Many of you are probably thinking that Brian Davis did something bad, right?  The media is constantly inundating us with all the bad things that sports figures and celebrities do that this question automatically makes us think negatively.  But not in this case.

Here’s the deal:  Brian Davis is a 36 year old British Generation Xer who recently played in the PGA Tour at the Verizon Heritage at Hilton Head, S.C. Now I know what you’re all thinking:  I keep saying I don’t like sports but I keep bringing up examples of things that happen in the sports world.  Am I secretly a sports fan?  Truly, I am not but it just happens that really cool things are happening with sports figures that I think are worth highlighting. 

So Brian Davis is hitting onto the green in a sudden-death playoff  and apparently his golf club hits a reed when he does his backswing.  Well, as I’m sure all golfers know and I did not, a reed is considered a loose impediment and moving a loose impediment is apparently a big NO-NO in golf.   It came as a shock to me that there actually is a PGA rule that prohibits moving a loose impediment!  So instead of keeping quiet and seeing if the tournament director catches the mistake, Brian calls a penalty on himself.  Yes, he actually highlighted the mistake and requested that the two stroke penalty be applied to his game.  This decision automatically put him in second place giving the win to his opponent, Jim Furyk.

Is that not an unbelievable and refreshing story?  I was reading about this in my hard copy version of September’s edition of Success Magazine.  As I am writing this post, the online version of the September issue is not yet available but here’s the link to Success Magazine.  I’m sure the September issue will go online shortly and you can read it.  The name of the article is “The Most Important Golf Story of the Year (That you Likely Never Heard About).  The reporter’s name is Don Yaeger.

The article goes on to explain that interviewers and golf experts told Brian Davis that his act of integrity cost him over $1 million dollars in pay and sponsorship opportunities. Brian’s answer: “I just saw it as doing what I was supposed to do”. 

Here are the 2 things I love most about this story.  The first is that Brian was inundated with emails, texts and letters that thanked him for this wonderful act of integrity.  Imagine how many people became his fans and admirers by his decision to lose instead of compromising his principles.  I don’t even know who he is and I’m a big fan now!  The second thing I like is more related to leadership. It has to do with the notion of leading by example which I think is a forgotten leadership trait these days.   In the article, Brian talks about how he promised his son that he would buy a puppy as soon as he won a tournament.  So technically, even though he won the tournament, he didn’t officially win it.  Brian felt it was more important for his son to know that ” You have to do the right thing, even it if looks like it costs you.  I wanted him to know I finished second, but can hold my head high”.   What a great example of doing what is right regardless of consequences.

Oh and by the way,  Brian did not get the puppy because as he said in the article ” I wouldn’t be a good dad if I just got the dog anyway”.  Here is a Generation Xer not just telling us but actually showing us how to do the right thing.  I can already hear people disagreeing with me saying that Brian’s actions are more representative of his personal convictions than of his generation. You can certainly look at it that way and you would be right.  But, when highlighting people in my blogs, I always try to connect the person with his or her generation. This helps maximize and showcase the positive traits of the person’s generation wherever possible.  Too often, generational discussions center around negative impressions when  it’s more productive and useful to bring out the positive.   As a member of Gen X,  the generation that is often forgotten and overshadowed by Baby Boomers and Millennials, Brian shows the rest of us what it’s like to be a true leader living and leading proudly with integrity and respect. Kudos to Gen Xers like Brian Davis!  

What about you?  Does your integrity have a price?

 

Wed 4 Aug 2010

According to Bob Sutton, we certainly can.  Bob was interviewed in the McKinsey Quarterly.  The interview was videotaped and it’s not long and well worth the time to see it.  In the video, Bob talks about a recipe that he and his mentor came up with years ago that applies to leading in today’s tumultuous workplace.  According to him,  ”The recipe is prediction, understanding, control, and compassion”. 

Nice recipe and one that as leaders we often forget.  Especially the compassion part.  

So what about you?  What are you doing during these challenging times to show your team that you care about what they are thinking,  worrying about and feeling?  Remember that as things begin to stabilize in the economy and companies begin to hire, your team will remember what exactly you did or did not do during these scary times to make them feel part of YOUR team.

Enjoy the video!

Mon 2 Aug 2010

I’m on a kick lately combining technology terms with leadership concepts. It started when I blogged about patch anagement a couple of weeks ago. Don’t ask me what is behind the merging of the two.  I guess  it’s because I love both topics and am always reading stuff on each of them and extrapolating to the other. Take today for example. I was reading some articles on Windows 7 and I thought it was a great correlation to what many of us are facing leading in today’s workplace. 

We have become so comfortable with the leadership practices we’ve used over the years that it’s become sort of our Windows XP version – old reliable. There have probably been instances where we entertained the idea of making a change here or there but like Vista, it scared us and made us go back to old reliable. It’s like a comfortable sweater that we just put on without thinking.  That’s understandable.  We all like the familiar and feel at ease there. 

But what happens is that the workplace begins to show signs of change in a variety of areas. At first, you don’t even recognize the subtle changes and old reliable pulls you through.  But then slowly many things come together and if you’re lucky, you realize that the workplace of today is nothing like the one where you learned and perfected those leadership qualities. You venture to think that there might actually be something better than old reliable.  Awareness is the first step that will take you down the path of entertaining the idea of upgrading your old operating system of leadership.

How long has it been since you looked at your leadership style and practice?  When was the last time you checked to see how effectively you were leading your team? All of your team not just your direct reports?   When was the last time you asked for feedback from your team and peers not on how your team was doing but on how you were doing as a leader?  When was the last time you experimented with a new leadership technique or idea?  Did you fall back on old reliable instead?

In the months (and years) to come, as operating systems across corporate America are upgraded to Windows 7, we will all be excited about uising its new features and capabilities and we will forget the nightmare of Vista.  We will probably wonder why we clung to XP, our old reliable like we did. 

Can we do the same around our operating system of leadership?  Can we get a trial version to test out new features and capabilities that will make us better leaders in the 21st Century?  I know we can.  A lot is riding on our ability to do it.

It’s time to sunset our XP version of leadership and upgrade to the 21st Century edition.  How ’bout it?  Will you join me in piloting this exciting new edition?

Fri 30 Jul 2010

Had another flashback yesterday to my early corporate days.  I was at a client site waiting in the lobby for her assistant to “sign me in”.  It was a few minutes before 9AM so I got to witness the mad rush of employees scurrying to badge in before 9AM. It dawned on me that today’s corporate version of the 20th Century time clock had become the badge activated turnstiles found in most large organizations. But I digress. As I observed the staff passing by me I was struck by the casualness of their dress.  Now I don’t mean the typical casual Friday type garb.  I mean jeans, crocs,  T shirts – c a s u a l.

For someone who has seen corporate dress go from suits to khakis to jeans, it’s an amazing sight to see and shows me again how far we’ve come.  When I started out in corporate back in the day, there were only 2 types of suits you could wear – navy blue & dark gray.  Now granted, I worked for a bank so the stodginess level skyrockets but even still,  most corporate workers wore suits.  At the time, there was a very popular book called “Dress for Success” by John Molloy which all wannabe corporate types read because it explained what the corporate uniform was at the time.  We all embraced it.  Even the women.

There was  a “Women’s Dress for Success” edition which basically was a carbon copy of the one for men except it left room for a tiny little more splash of color and a few acceptable accessories such as a conservative pin or brooch.  Pantsuits were absolutely not allowed.  I remember that for years, I never wore a pantsuit to work.  All my clothes were suits with very long skirts or very conservative and boring dresses.  The colors: Black, navy blue, charcoal gray. We basically copied the men.  If you wanted to really go crazy you’d wear a kerchief with wild colors like pale pink or blue, light gray or white.  On the rare occasion that you wanted to be insanely different and wanted to wear, say a blouse with a pattern on it,  you’d avoid eye contact all day and pray that you wouldn’t be noticed too much.

We did everything we could to look like men.  Over the years, we started adding bolder colors to our suits, we occasionally wore a nice conservative pantsuit and in the summer months when our legs were a bit tanner, we threw caution to the wind and left our pantyhose at home.   After many, many years, we felt comfortable putting away our Dress for Success Bible. Actually many of us used its pages to stoke up the fireplace in the winter.

When companies began experimenting with casual Fridays, I remember thinking it was just a fad that wouldn’t last. Employees running around the company with khaki pants and nicely pressed long sleeve shirts or polo shirts?  Are you kidding?  Well, after a few years, I realized I had to go out and get another wardrobe for work.  Shocking… Oh, and by the way, I always thank Generation Xers for pushing the envelope and getting companies to accept casual Fridays and a less uptight dress code.

Casual Fridays led to casual everyday to finally,  the uber casual of today.  Employees are going into the workplace as comfortable as can be.  They express themselves not only in the casualness of their clothes but in the casualness of their accessories – whether that is a nose ring or a colorful tattoo on the arm or the leg.  My, how the pendulum on corporate dress has swung.  Some think it has swung too far. Of course there are still many industries (law, for example) and companies that have never embraced the uber casual of today but most fit somewhere in between. 

My philosophy: as long as it fits with the norms of your clients, you should be ok. It certainly beats wearing an uncomfortable navy blue suit with a stupid kerchief and pantyhose on a blistering 90 degree summer day. 

Happy Friday, everybody!  For those of you that still work in an office, what did you wear to work today?

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