The Sex Effect

"Sex and the City" has spurred lots of media coverage. Even the buttoned up Wall Street Journal did a thing on sexy dress in the workplace recently. Incidentally, someone who was at the movie premiere told me, contrary to rumors of a heart attack, Mr. Big bolts at an inopportune moment. That’s all I’ll say.

The fashions of Sex have inspired many a style in the workplace, liberated styles where women feel empowered to dress like women and not men. The Journal used the term “revealing” and then wondered whether it really meant “trashy.” The burning question: Has sexy office attire gone too far? Do revealing clothes really liberate, or do they merely reinforce old notions feminists have been trying to shed for 40 years.

Full disclosure: I’m a man, an idiot about these things. I am no more qualified to speak to whether or not women are shooting themselves in the foot than I am to whether or not the shoes they wear are some of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. That’s another topic I’ll jump on one of these weeks.

Men are helpless, ambivalent, even torn. If we had our personal druthers, we’d just as soon see more, not less. But, professionally it’s nothing but trouble. We know it. We’re hopeless.

Truth be told, it’s refreshing to see a woman dressed in something other than a stiff business suit. In fact, when women take fashion risks, it’s downright uplifting. They wear risk so well. They get their hair done funky, don a bold hat, or debut some out-there outfit, the equivalent of which a guy wouldn’t attempt on his life. They do it with confidence, as though it’s a nothing. A man would feel so insecure, he’d be lucky to make it through the day before he bolted to Macy’s for a golf shirt and cotton slacks.

From where that female boldness derives, I do not know. But I like it.

Men either look mostly acceptable at work, or they look like unkempt bums. They avoid risk, they reveal nothing, they fumble along in a fashion coma, hoping they don’t come off like they just spent the weekend on the couch or a bar stool. I’d just like to say right here and now, if I never see a guy with a baseball hat on backwards again, it’ll be too soon.

As far as girl garb goes (forgive me, I’m a sucker for alliteration), I don’t like bellies popping out from under short shirts. I don’t like butts popping out from low riding pants. There is a limit to how much cleavage should be bared, but short of that, I’m not certain what a woman has to wear to put her advancement opportunities in jeopardy.

What say you??

Calling All Apopheniacs*

The lamentation: Who has time?

The responsorial: Better make time.

“Did you read that article about social media in Ad Age?” “I wish,” she lamented. “Who has time for reading?”

“Did you hear what Steve Sanger had to say in his presentation at the Thrivent Forum?” “Nah, didn’t go,” he lamented. “I’m up to my eyeballs in alligators.”

“Did you see the Times this morning?” “I could no more fit a newspaper into my morning than eggs benedict or hot yoga,” she lamented.

I'm not impressed by people so busy they have no time to be students of their craft.

They’re shortchanging their professional lives and potential to make more money. They’re shooting themselves in the proverbial career-advancement foot. Worse, if they work for me they’re making it more difficult for my business to make money.

I understand we have full plates at work and for some, full plates at home. But not making time to follow trends or stay up on the latest developments in digital technologies, management techniques, and what’s happening in our specific industries inhibits our capacity to grow and makes it more difficult for managers trying to initiate strategies that create new revenue sources and stay well ahead of the competition.

*Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of the connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. It’s difficult to see those connections without staying current, seeking supporting data, frames of reference, and points of comparison: “Forcing the mind to higher knots of calculation.”

When those employees we managers count on to execute our strategies are so busy or worse, too lazy or complacent to “get it,” good things can’t happen.

Damned If You Do

A couple years ago I committed to having lunch with each of our employees. Didn’t make it all the way through the roster but came close. I was interested in what staff thought we could do to improve our productivity and our culture. Common response was, “Find a way to keep us better informed about what’s going on at the company, and explain why we do what we do.” (You should know that our company produces 20 different products and portions of our staff are fully dedicated to just one.)

I took what was said to heart, including the need for information. It spawned a weekly column for our company newsletter. The problem with “Messages from the President” is they’re mostly incredibly boring... a lot of PCBS.  We’ve all read them, and unfortunately many are ghost written by some poor hack in PR or communications. If they don’t appear authentic, lively and a little provocative, eyelids turn leaden.

Down side: provocative = hot water.

Of the 52 columns I did this year, two of them turned on me.  I did a column a while back talking about the eroding quality of life I’d noticed on Hennepin Avenue, particularly for theater and concert goers at the Pantages Theater. I’d watched a couple of hoodlums bounce a young woman around in a crowd one night and commented that we need to actively address harassment by gang members and thugs or our hospitality businesses downtown will be at risk. For that comment, I was deemed an “ignorant racist” by a young staffer.

A more recent column noted a magazine’s picks for the Best and Worst ads of 2007. On the “worst” list was an ad for Mars Bars in which two men inadvertently end up kissing and then making faces as though they’d bit into a lemon. Gay advocacy groups complained that it was demeaning. I commented that although I have absolutely no problem with men kissing each other on the lips, it doesn’t appeal to all men. For that comment I was a “homosexual hater.”

In neither case did I violate any discrimination or harassment policies. I’ve never been involved in a discrimination lawsuit. Indeed, most of the newsletter feedback I get is very positive and encouraging. But I wonder sometimes if there is any room for the reasonable expression of opinion by a CEO? Are sensitivities within companies so heightened these days, employees' radars so cranked up, that provocative topics should simply be avoided at all costs? Does being The Suit require a persona resembling either a lumpy bowl of oatmeal or a dissociated observer?

Employees Who Fib

Rightly, we are frustrated and unforgiving of companies who lie, CEOs who lie, moneychangers who lie, politicians who lie, clergy who lie—partly because we feel that we’re living up to a certain standard of behavior which they clearly are not.

What about employees who lie?

As a manager, I’ve been fed remarkable doses of  pre-meditated, bald-faced, double-dealing, mealy-mouthed spuriousness by some employees. Luckily few and far between.

Tit for tat some might say. “Workers always think management is full of s**t,” asserts Darrell Davis. Who can argue the corporate trust factor has sunk to record lows in the past decade?  People are innately distrustful of management and companies. You reap what you sow?

Not exactly.

In our company’s case, being straight with staff is part of our operating ethos. Some actually consider it a perquisite of sorts. If we’re straight up with people, we expect the same in return. An unreasonable expectation, perhaps. Laughable, perhaps.

Nonetheless, what does a company do when someone, treated as a valued and respected employee, lies through their teeth? Some might say, it serves you right, learn to become a better judge of character. Or it’s yet another symptom of the Coming Apocalypse, i.e., you can’t trust anyone.

Let me describe my encounter. Then you tell me.

We employed a guy for a few years. He was moving on up. And, he was good. A little too edgy, at times, a little too righteous, but very good. I thought he had potential to hold a very significant leadership role. So, along with his immediate supervisor (a long-time employee of the company), we tried to nurture the relationship. I went so far as to schedule a lunch with the three of us to ask him what role in our company he would most aspire to. He told us. It was a good fit. We proceeded to set it up for him, requiring months of planning, moving people around, interviews for replacements, strategic discussions, money spent—which he participated in. All along the way, I checked and double checked to make certain this was what he wanted, it being a sea-change for us. We finally moved all the pieces into place. The week we were to make our move, he walked in and resigned, informing me he was leaving to join a competitor, no less! Obviously he had been interviewing for weeks prior.

Get over it? I did.

The broader issue remains... stuck in my craw. There’s an inherent inequity and incongruity that requires companies to be as accommodating as possible to employees concerns and sensitivities, be straight, tell the truth, no lies, no BS, yet there’s no quid pro quo for employees.

If it had been me doing the lying he’d have sued for misrepresentation. With the shoe on the other foot I’m not at all certain a legal environment exists that would have allowed me to reciprocate.

I know where I would have liked to put that shoe.