La guerra de las percepciones

Por: Damián Fernández Pedemonte

 

Paradójicamente, lo más cierto sobre el delito es su percepción.

Tenemos, por un lado, el dato incontrastable de que la población de los centros urbanos está muy preocupada por la sensación de incremento de la inseguridad: así lo expresa en las encuestas, en los medios y movilizándose. Por otro lado, a partir del análisis de la cobertura de las noticias policiales se pueden verificar varias estrategias de amplificación de la violencia. Esta constatación no puede menos que darles la razón a Raúl Zaffaroni y a Carmen Arguibay cuando sostienen que los medios exageran la inseguridad.

Obviamente, los delitos que narran los medios suceden, no son un invento. Pero por

cada uno, hay decenas de notas periodísticas, en cada medio. Las “olas de violencia”     -como la de asesinatos de policías del mes de febrero- son una forma de edición, de agrupamiento de episodios diversos bajo un mismo encabezamiento que los enlaza. Por un tiempo – en promedio, dos semanas- un tipo de delito acapara la atención de las secciones de policiales. Los otros, aunque persistan, desaparecen de la agenda pública, y cualquier delito del tipo al que corresponde la ola -asesinato de un policía- tiene más chance de salir a la luz y obtener abundante cobertura.

Así, por ejemplo, durante la mencionada ola de febrero hubo sólo tres hechos delictivos distintos (la muerte de Áldo Garrido, el 17 de febrero, de Leornardo Melliza, el 20, y Claudio Santillán, el 25) y de un tipo frecuente en otros momentos, en razón del oficio policial. La ola, sin embargo, bastó para cambiar la tendencia, a la que estamos más acostumbrados por las noticias, de ver a la policía en función de autora o cómplice del delito. Sin ir más lejos, muy poco antes, se sucedieron detenciones de policías por el secuestro del empresario Leonardo Bergara.

¿Entonces? Los delitos existen, la forma de agruparlos de los medios puede hacer que se tenga la impresión de que un tipo específico de delito ha crecido exponencialmente. Es probable que ahí haya más “violencia” en los medios que en la calle. La reproducción en la prensa de un clima de opinión facilita las declaraciones desmesuradas, los pedidos de soluciones drásticas, aunque la búsqueda de la eficacia y el castigo se lleve por delante las garantías de los ciudadanos y la racionalidad de las instituciones. La pena de muerte, la imputabilidad de los menores, el uso privado de armas, fueron tópicos que se dieron cita en esta ola, sobre todo a partir de las declaraciones de Susana Giménez, que operaron como autorización para expresar las opiniones más recalcitrantes en los comentarios de los diarios digitales y en los llamados a los medios (¡ya lo dijo la ídola!).

El gobierno podría serenar un poco el debate si mostrara estadísticas (¿por qué no las muestra?). De otros años sabemos que el delito tiene unos picos en los medios que no tiene en la estadística criminal. En año electoral, no es improbable el uso político de la noticia policial: el pueblo -ahora incluyendo en ese colectivo a la policía- desguarnecido ante la despreocupación gubernamental. Ahora bien, el gobierno también debería tomar en serio la percepción de la gente, ese nuevo campo de investigación que se llama “inseguridad subjetiva”, porque en comunicación política Si los individuos definen las situaciones como reales, son reales en sus consecuencias (William Isaac Thomas). Debe explicar su política. De lo contrario habrá que darle a la razón a la gente cuando dice que el tema de la inseguridad le tiene sin cuidado.

Maestría en Gestión de Contenidos

Muy querido graduado:

 

            Espero que estés muy bien. Este año FC comienza una Maestría en Gestión de Contenidos, dirigida a los profesionales de todas las industrias de contenidos (medios y nuevo medios, editoriales, entretenimiento, discográficas, etc.) que deben decidir sobre los productos con criterios de comunicación y de mercado a la vez. Es una propuesta innovadora en Argentina, aprobada por la CONEAU, que viene a cubrir un vacío en la formación ejecutiva. No es un MBA, en el que se desconozca las peculiaridades de las empresas creativas, ni una maestría para realizadores. Está pensada, más bien, para editores, programadores, directores de contenidos de Internet, productores independiente, emprendedores y un largo etcétera, que quieran actualizarse, y ver reunidos los factores críticos de la industria que se suelen tratar por separado (temas como tecnologías, audiencias, gestión del talento, derechos de autor)

 

            Como muchos graduados ya se desempeñan o aspiran ascender a posiciones de dirección quisimos, desde el Consejo de Dirección, fomentar la participación de ellos en esta primera edición de la Maestría, lo cual redundará también en la calidad del primer grupo de estudiantes que quede conformado. Concretamente, hemos pensado en destinar una parte significativa de nuestro fondo a otorgar becas del 50 % del costo de la maestría a todos los graduados interesados que muestren tener las condiciones para cursarla, con la posibilidad, además, de conversar un esquema de financiación.

 

            Ojalá, entonces, que nos veamos pronto. Mientras tanto aprovecho la carta para mandarte  un fuerte abrazo,            

 

 

            Damián Fernández Pedemonte

La clave del stress en tiempos de crisis

Va nota sobre descubrir las reacciones de stress y sacar provecho de ellas estratégicamente.

Use Stress to Your Advantage
12:15 PM Wednesday March 4, 2009

Peter Bregman | Harvard Business Publishing

 
A friend of mine sends me at least five articles each day about the economy. Each with a slightly different viewpoint about how to successfully manage through the next few years. Each suggesting that the future is unpredictable before offering a prediction and some advice.
One day I asked him what he was getting out of all this reading. His answer was immediate and clear. «Conserve cash. Reduce expenses. Continue doing your job the best you can. Stay the course.»
Great. That’s a reasonable strategy. We’re done then. No more articles. Let’s spend our time doing more productive things, or at least more enjoyable things, right?
But my friend keeps sending me article after article. And I keep reading them. Why?
First, maybe, just maybe, the next article will provide some insight the others missed — the secret to emerging from this economic mess better off.
Second, looking for that insight gives us a sense of comfort and control. It gives us something to do. We’re reading. We’re thinking. We’re discussing. We’re developing opinions. It makes us feel better.
It’s our Stress Reaction, what we do to manage ourselves through stressful periods of time. I don’t mean a particular stressful event, like having an irate client on the phone, but the kind of ongoing stress that’s impossible to pinpoint or allocate to a particular person or event.
How do you respond to your stressful life? What’s your Stress Reaction?
I recently cut my hair very short. Out of curiosity, I looked back through iPhoto to see other times I’ve cut my hair that short. There was 1998 when I first started my business, 2000 during the dot com crash, and around the births of each of my three children. Cutting my hair short is one of my Stress Reactions. It gives me the illusion of control. My wife used to joke about another one of mine — she loved when I had a big proposal to write because I always spent the first day cleaning our house.
A Stress Reaction can be a useful tool to maintain your focus and preserve your ability to move through times of uncertainty. A sense of control is invaluable when we lack real control.
Of course it would be ideal if we all had Stress Reactions that drove us to eat normal portions of healthy food every few hours, exercise daily, sleep eight hours a night, meditate morning and evening, and connect deeply and authentically with our friends, colleagues, and loved ones. But some Stress Reactions are destructive. They increase our stress rather than reduce it.
A client of mine, vice president of sales at a software company, told me his sales managers were worried they wouldn’t meet their sales goals in this economic environment. I asked how they were acting differently as a result of their nervousness.
«They’re micromanaging their teams,» he answered, «requiring more reporting, making heavy-handed suggestions on next steps and second-guessing team members’ decisions.»

This has the potential for a perilous outcome: sales people spend more time reporting and less time selling. They feel frustrated, impotent, and insecure. Their confidence plummets. That reduces sales. Which creates more stress. Which intensifies their Stress Reactions. And so on.
Another destructive Stress Reaction is withdrawal. We become uninvolved, aloof, occupied with other things. We hide in our offices. We avoid communicating.
A third common Stress Reaction is to get competitive. Sometimes that translates into working harder. Other times it feels political. At the extreme, you might become like Alex Rodriguez taking steroids — doing anything to get an extra edge.
So what can we do about these destructive reactions?
Pause.
Sit down, shut off your computer, take a deep breath and ask yourself «How am I handling the stress?»
Try to recognize your stress tendency. How do you act when you’re overwhelmed? If you’re not sure, ask the people around you. They’ll know.
Then ask yourself if it helps or hurts. If it helps, like cutting your hair, then by all means cut away. Even build it into your process.
Once I realized that cleaning the house was one way I dealt with the stress of writing a big proposal, I stopped getting frustrated about wasting that time and, instead, built it into my schedule. I started the proposal one day early with step 1: clean the house.
But if your Stress Reaction hurts? If you’re micromanaging? Avoiding? Being aggressively competitive? Something else?
Then take another deep breath and cut yourself some slack. It really is stressful these days and it’s bound to affect you. Getting frustrated with yourself will only make it worse (and getting frustrated with yourself for getting frustrated with yourself will make it worse still).
The amazing thing here is that noticing your Stress Reaction is all you have to consciously do. The rest mostly takes care of itself. Once you notice it, you’ll automatically start to mitigate it. And you don’t necessarily have to stop the behavior completely. Some of your Stress Reaction may be helpful even if too much is hurtful. It’s useful in turbulent times to manage more closely, withdraw to reflect, and compete a little harder than usual. It helps keep you on track and focused. Just remember to pause. And notice.
Meanwhile, my friend keeps sending me his articles and I, in my short hair and clean house, keep reading them.
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5 Estrategias esenciales para ir con propuesta y volver con cliente

Hace mucho, tiempo atrás (creo que recién nacía Australinos y eramos apenas 15…), hubo una discusión sobre qué poner y dejar de poner en una carta de presentación. Situación/contexto: vos con tu carpertita, tu mejor remera y tu cara de profesional, dispuesto a ganarte un nuevo cliente.
De haberme encontrado con la nota que les paso hoy, la hubiera enviado como respuesta. Nunca es tarde cuando la dicha es buena dicen. Que la lectura de estas líneas traiga dicha de nuevos clientes a unos; y a otros, bueno, nos conformamos con reducir en un 20% las visitas de los carpetita boys, asi como esos tan eternos llamados de 15 minutos (que en mi caso, suelo poner en alta voz para seguir con mi trabajo y contestar -en el silencio del minuto 15- «no tengo plata» o «pasame la propuesta por mail, gracias, adios!»).

Espero que les sirva…
Five essential strategies for highly effective initial meetings
(Jill Konrath)

Construir brandtopías – Clave para que una marca sobreviva paradigmas culturales

Comparto artículo sobre Branding. Espero que les guste y sirva.
Para sacarle mejor provecho, recomiendo hacer un paréntesis y leer de la página 97 a 100 del libro The innovator’s dilemma , cuando el autor citado lo menciona en la nota.
 
Buena semana.

Building ‘Brandtopias’—How Top Brands Tap into Society
Published: June 24, 2002 | Author: Martha Lagace

(Harvard Business Scholl | Working Knowledge)
——-
What are «identity brands» and why are they so powerful? HBS professor Douglas Holt explains how some top brands—including soft drink Mountain Dew—deliver imaginative stories that are perfectly attuned to society’s deep desires.
——
 
Customers value some of the most powerful brands in the world primarily for their «cultural value»: They provide imaginative resources that people use to build their identities.
These are what Harvard Business School professor Douglas Holt terms identity brands—and their market power cannot be attributed to the usual suspects of success: superior business models or cutting edge technology.
Holt is interested in what makes identity brands resonate. In his research, he focuses on the best-performing identity brands—the top 5 percent that have been extraordinarily successful with customers over long periods of time.
What’s the secret of long-running megabrands such as Mountain Dew, Nike, and Budweiser? The magical sweet spot when a brand delivers imaginative stories that are perfectly attuned to society’s desires.
His new research, which he discussed with HBS faculty at a marketing seminar on May 8, is part of a forthcoming book that focuses on identity brands that deliver extraordinary customer value over time.
«I’m interested in a question that I don’t think we ever really ask or address well, which is, ‘How does customer value work over time?’ How is cultural value created; how is it maintained; how is it destroyed?'»
With the strategic importance of brands climbing, understanding how certain brands achieve so much power in the marketplace is at the center of much discussion. The advice most often provided to managers is to weave the brand into the most potent popular culture trends. Recently, consultants and ad agencies began emphasizing the reverse: recommending that managers seek out the essential «DNA» of the brand. Many brands pursue these two models and do fine, says Holt.

‘Something different’
But the brands that interest him most, consumer brands that maintain the most powerful grip on the market for years running, don’t fit these models.
«The most successful brands do something different,» he says.
What the most successful brands do differently, he believes, is to target powerful ideological contradictions produced by society. Through popular culture, society paints a picture of its ideals: What is a successful person? What is the good life? People strive for these ideals and experience tensions when how they understand themselves differs from the standards society has set. These contradictions produce potent demands for what Holt terms utopian desires—the desire for imaginative constructions that will resolve the felt tensions.
Brands that successfully respond to these desires are what Holt calls brandtopias. Brandtopias champion resolutions to contradictions through the stories they tell, primarily through advertising. Consumers use these stories as allegories—through ads, for instance, consumers learn different ways of understanding their place in society. When they drink a soft drink or beer, or drive their auto, much of what they’re consuming is the allegory.
The demand that brandtopias sate is based upon the nation’s ideology as expressed in popular culture. So shifts in ideology produce ruptures in the marketplace for utopias. Holt’s model reveals that there comes a point when the best ad in the world won’t make a dent if its message and the cultural moment are not aligned.
One of Holt’s inspirations was to juxtapose how brands maintain cultural value in the face of cultural disruptions with research that examines how companies continue to deliver product value in the face of technological disruptions. Scholars such as HBS professors Clayton M. Christensen, well known for his research on disruptive technological change and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, and Dorothy Leonard, whose idea of «core rigidity» has become a strategic touchstone, set up the case for keeping an eye on technological change.
But Holt argues that’s not the whole story.

Brands that bridge cultural ruptures
«There’s disruptive cultural change, too,» Holt says. «The most powerful brands are those that are able to traverse disruptive cultural shifts. Many brands falter when disruptions hit. The most impressive brands are those that are able to use disruptions as a platform to enhance the delivery of cultural value.»
To analyze the pattern of cultural demand and the strategies that brands use for negotiating cultural ruptures, Holt devised a research method he calls a brand genealogy. He overlays the trajectory of the brand’s allegories over history—through analysis of ads supported by archival documents and interviews with managers—with American cultural history, focusing particularly on popular culture.
With this method, he is able to see the place of the brand’s allegories in the society, as well as how they gain and lose value. Holt finds that the allegories play well in periods of ideological consensus, which may span anywhere from five to fifteen years. But then restructuring of the economy and society requires new ideology. The new ideology pulls the plug on old utopian desires and creates new ones in their place.
The greatest challenge for a brandtopia comes when there is a major disruption in popular culture. The best brands, Holt suggested, read the new ideology forming in popular culture, and then transform the brand by inventing a new story that both draws upon the brand’s historic cultural authority and at the same time addresses a new utopian desire.

Mountain Dew
One brand that has consistently created cultural value, hopping across several cultural disruptions, is the soft drink Mountain Dew, according to Holt. Launched by a small start-up either in North Carolina or eastern Tennessee (the drink has two origin myths, he said with a smile), the high-sugar, high-caffeine, low-carbonation beverage battled very competitively against Coke and Pepsi before its acquisition by PepsiCo in 1964.
The brand’s initial success was premised on an allegory about hillbillies, which working class people outside America’s cities found valuable at a time when American ideology was all about engineering life and technological progress. Holt describes the geographical spread of Mountain Dew’s success, which reveals who the allegories play to. In large cities and urban and ethnic areas, Mountain Dew barely shows up on the radar. However, in the mostly working-class, non-urban metro areas in the Eastern half of the country, Mountain Dew «blew through the roof,» said Holt in his seminar for faculty. This pattern of customer loyalty has remained stubbornly consistent for forty years.
Holt showed how the value of the hillbilly allegory was destroyed by the hippie counterculture in the late Sixties. Mountain Dew responded with a new «redneck allegory» in the late Seventies that worked well with a new American ideology that had emerged. Once again, Holt traces this brandtopia from beginning to end and finds that it too melts down, this time in the early ’90s as widescale economic restructuring led to new ideals of success broadcast widely in television, film, and news. PepsiCo responded by finding a place for the brand in the emerging counterculture, developing a «slacker allegory.»
Holt also described the transformation of American ideology in the early ’90s. The country idolized extraordinary athletes like Michael Jordan and the new entrepreneurial «warriors» imaged by people like network giant Ted Turner and Bruce Willis in his film roles. Executives were now portrayed as similar warrior-athletes who ventured into out-of-bounds challenges like technical rock climbing. These were the masculine ideals that society held up as heroic. Meanwhile, Holt asked us to consider the life of a guy who was twenty years old and living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Such a young man was facing a very different reality. Factory jobs had mostly disappeared and now he was looking at a life stocking shelves in franchise stores for $9 an hour, fulfilling hourly quotas under the close supervision of a stressed-out boss.
Holt attributes Mountain Dew’s stunning success in the 1990s to PepsiCo’s nimble transformation of the brand to fit these new ideological circumstances. A new advertising campaign, «Do the Dew,» creatively combined high-octane extreme sports with the point-of-view of the slacker counterculture. The ads featured daredevil stunts juxtaposed with the ironic, unimpressed commentary of a group of teenage boys: «Done that.» «Did that.» «Doin’ it tomorrow.»
«The tensions that are produced between the nation’s ideals and the life one can actually experience produces a utopian desire,» Holt explained, «the desire for an affirmative identity that responds to what society demands.» For the disaffected young man in Green Bay, Mountain Dew’s «Do the Dew» campaign was a perfect fit: It resolved his anxieties about masculine identity by providing an affirmative, if sassy, alternative.
These ads increased sales by 40 million cases. From 1993 onward, said Holt, Mountain Dew has led the carbonated soft drinks category in share growth, and now has passed many rivals to rank third in retail sales behind Coke and Pepsi. Mountain Dew is now a $4.7 billion business, and this success can be largely attributed to using advertising to create the right allegories at the right time.

Brand equity through cultural authority
Mountain Dew ads have consistently championed an alternative idea of manhood versus American ideology, Holt said. Even though the allegory has changed over time, the brand’s consistency in supporting a certain kind of identity has earned it cultural authority.
People trust the brand to do «utopian work» for them, Holt explained. Successful brands «own a particular kind of metaphor that they apply to do identity work to heal a particular ideological contradiction.» In the case of Mountain Dew, its ads touched on a particular kind of masculinity allegory, he offered: «As opposed to the constraints of adult work life, the allegory celebrates a rebellious kind of manhood in which masculinity is earned by letting their libidos and their creativity have full and free expression. This is ideological territory that Mountain Dew owns, and their advertising continues to rework this territory as society changes.»
«To build brandtopias, managers need to ask different questions and create different answers than one finds in conventional branding,» Holt continued at the seminar. «How do we note the rise and fall of an ideology, identify it in popular culture, and figure out how the ideology impacts the brand’s customers?»
What marketers usually think of as unpredictable trends often have a structure that is deeply tied to what is happening in the economy and the society, he said. Understanding this structure and its transformation is crucial for the long-term success of brands that rely upon cultural value.
«For identity brands, brand strategy, as we conceive of it today, is often inconsequential,» Holt concluded. He calls for a new type of strategy, grounded in history that takes into account ideological contradictions that create utopian desires.

Cómo levantarse después de un despido

Dicen que la clave es usar la experiencia para obtener nuevos logros…

Four Ways to Bounce Back From Setbacks

4:35 PM Wednesday January 7, 2009

Marshall Goldsmith

Harvard Business Review

 This week’s question for Ask the Coach:
What tips/advice do you have for how we can face job insecurity and loss in the current economic climate?
Today’s business world is increasingly challenging–with economic unrest and rapid changes in infrastructure. Many good people have recently found themselves facing job insecurity and layoffs. I contacted my good friend and best-selling author Karen Salmansohn for some tips on bouncing back and even thriving in the face of adversity.
Karen, would you answer this question for us?
Karen: Sure Marshall, I’d be happy to!
1. To those of you who have just endured a career adversity, join the crowd–and by the way, it’s a very distinguished successful crowd.
Many members of the Fortune 500 Club could easily earn membership in the Misfortune 500 Club. Successful people are not people who never fail; they are people who know how to fail well. They have learned to use the leverage of a failure to push themselves up higher.
Bill Gates relishes the lessons of failure so much that he purposely hires people who have made mistakes. Roberto Goizueta, Coca-Cola’s CEO, says the risk-taker mentality is the very reason he hired back the guy who launched New Coke–a huge marketing failure. Goizueta recognized that you can become uncompetitive and dangerously inactive if you let «avoiding failure» become your motivator. «You can stumble only if you’re moving,» he says.
If you’ve recently stumbled and fallen in your career, re-focus on how your risky thinking makes you more knowledgeable. See work failure as «fullure»–full of many lessons.
2. Think like a lion about your firing. Graham Thomas Chipperfield, a lion tamer with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, was bitten by Sheba, one of his 500-pound lionesses
Before he got back in the cage with her, he analyzed the event from her point of view. First, he recognized that lions tend to think of the trainer as another lion. So, when he attempted to break up a fight between her and another lion–Sheba figured that he wanted to join fight!
Did Chipperfield blame Sheba for her inaccurate thinking? No. He took time to see the biting from her perspective. This is the same technique as that used by many therapists–beginning with Freud–called «mimesis.» Through such role-play from offending party’s perspective, patients can better understand why someone has «bitten» them and hopefully avoid being bitten again. If you’ve been fired, rejected, yelled at, take time today to see things from «Sheba’s Point of View,» so that perhaps you can avoid this happening again.
3. If you ask depressing questions, you will get 100% depressing answers. For example it does no good to ask yourself: Why didn’t I…? What if…? Why me…? Would you accept some of the mean questions you ask yourself if they came from an outside source? Doubtful! So you have to «stop ‘em and swap ‘em» immediately for these questions that bounce you upward: What can I do to move forward? How can I grow from this challenge? What’s within my control to change?
4. Shrink negativity into «nuggetivity.» Limit the amount of time you allow yourself to think negative thoughts to three-minute nuggets, three times a day. Set aside a specific time of day when you will allow yourself to think negative thoughts. Whenever a negative thought enters your head, tell yourself it will have to wait until your preset Negativity Appointment. Who knows, maybe you won’t even want to think negatively once this time swings around?
Marshall: Thanks Karen! What an uplifting interview. For more career and happiness info pick up Karen’s new book The Bounce Back Book: How to Thrive in the Face of Uncertainty, Setbacks and Losses, or go to notsalmon.com.
Readers: Your thoughts and ideas on this subject are greatly appreciated. Please send comments.

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Matrix Management

En este casi FIN  de semana, la primera de marzo – que como siempre nos bienviene con lluvia -, comparto con ustedes un artículo sobre matrix management. Me pareció interesante, voy a buscar más sobre el tema pero va un adelanto.

Una mini intro, matriz management es una forma de management mediante la cual las personas reportan a varios jefes. Por lo general uno funcional y el/los otro/s, operativo/s (en funcion de distintos proyectos que se lleven adelante). Sumado a los problemas que esto puede y de hecho trae, también está el de trabajar con tus compañeros para algunas cosas en calidad de compañeros y para otras (un poryecto x por ej) en calidad de jefe/subordinado. 

 

Surviving Matrix Management

11:33 AM Thursday June 19, 2008

Gill COrkindale

 

 

Matrix management has been around for 40 years, but there have been few challenges to its efficacy and viability. Most writers and management theorists remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but is it really the only alternative? Are there different ways to manage – for example, a truly integrated hierarchical/matrix system or do we need to think about a different system altogether?

Let’s take a look at a few fundamental questions to see if matrix systems are shaping up to the challenges of 21st century business. Here are some thoughts – drawn from my own experience and from Life in a Matrix, a great resource. Let me have your thoughts too.

Key challenges

·                                 Multiple reporting lines can reflect the interests of functions, geographical regions and product lines, but they can also cause conflict, stress and confusion among staff if managers’ interests are not aligned

·                                 Poorly defined management roles can result in turf wars or lack of accountability, which can erode organizational cultures

·                                 Self-managing teams and individuals can free up management time and allow creative and flexible approaches to work – but not everyone can make the transition to self-management

·                                 Organisations can set parallel priorities, but this does not always result in effective or efficient working

·                                 Matrix systems are vulnerable to constant reorganization, which can disrupt the relationships that make them work: knowledge, experience and organizational know-how can be lost easily

·                                 Responsive managers in a matrix can offer unparalleled opportunities for professional development, but inattentive managers can cause immense stress and over-work

·                                 It can be difficult to keep track of who is overseeing performance if project completion is the key focus for businesses

How do you lead in the matrix?

·                                 Make sure the culture is robust, supportive and you have the right values and behaviours in place

·                                 Ensure that you are a skilled communicator: networking, influencing, coaching and facilitating skills are paramount

·                                 Draw up clear goals, objectives, and performance metrics for managers and staff and see to it that they are aligned vertically and horizontally

·                                 Empower teams to make decisions and to resolve conflicts at an appropriate level

·                                 Don’t tinker with the structure, but let the networks and matrix evolve over time

·                                 Use your expertise and personal network to influence those over whom you have no formal authority

How do you work in the matrix?

·                                 Bolster your communication, networking and coaching skills

·                                 Think about who is making demands on your time and attention

·                                 Decide how much effort and attention each part of your workload requires

·                                 Work out how to manage priorities and where you can do trade-offs

·                                 Understand your managers’ situations and identify potential pressure points

·                                 Ensure that each manager is aware of your entire workload and push back against unreasonable or conflicting demands

·                                 Keep your manager informed about what you are doing and your progress

What are the possible effects of the matrix – on people and organizations?

·                                 Greater focus on short-term projects rather than long-term issues

·                                 Shorter attention spans as multiple projects are carried out simultaneously

·                                 Transactional relationships as managers and employees trade off priorities

·                                 More flexible – or more conflictual – management relationships

·                                 More open/supportive – or more political/destructive – organizational cultures

·                                 Greater uncertainty – more ability to deal with ambiguity or less accountability

·                                 More productivity, challenge and growth – or more stress, pressure and fear

What is the future for the matrix?

Seis tips para sobrevivir un despido

How to Be Fired
Six Simple Tips for Surviving a Layoff
by Martin Bihl

Published: December 02, 2008

They teach you how to design. They teach you how to write. They teach you how to take a client to lunch, and they even teach you how to get a job. But no one ever teaches you how to be fired. So in these perilous times, if you are one of the folks recently employment-free, let me be among the first to welcome you to your new life — or at least, to your new life for a while.

And while I’m not going to pretend that anything I say will make it enjoyable, I can offer some advice on how to survive it with a minimal amount of therapy. So here are six simple tips on how to be fired. Take them for what they’re worth. And tell me if they make sense to you. (Hey, it ain’t like you’ve got anything else to do.)

Step One: Get Fired
You’d be surprised how many people walk around for a couple of weeks acting like they’ve been fired before they are actually let go. Freaking out that they’re going to be laid off, moping around the office, and then it doesn’t happen, and they’ve wasted all that time when they could’ve been, I don’t know, working maybe. Or looking for a new job. Or drinking. Or anything. So don’t sweat being fired until it happens. It won’t do you any good.

Step Two: Freak Out
OK, you’ve been fired. Congratulations. The ax has fallen and it’s got your neck all over it. Well, at least that’s over. And while eventually it may all work out for the best, right now, it sucks. So freak out. Grieve. Scream. Yell. Throw things. Cry. Drink. Whatever. But get it out of your system. You absolutely, positively have to deal with it now, otherwise you’ll carry it around with you for the next 30 years. Which is okay if you don’t mind it rearing its ugly head when you least want it to. And it will.

Step Three: Decide on Your Story
«He who controls the story controls his destiny.» I think C.J. Cregg of «The West Wing» said that. But it’s true, and you have to assume that once you get an interview, the first thing they’re going to ask you (or maybe the second, after «Would you please stop shaking my hand?») is «Why did you leave your last job?» How you answer this will reveal worlds about you. Do you say, «I got fired and I have no idea why»?

That seems frighteningly uncurious and rather disingenuous — neither of which are qualities anyone wants to hire. Do you say, «I got fired and I hate those bastards and I will spend all my free time hunting them down like the dogs they are»? Hey, at least it shows passion. Either of these are better, however, than just standing there stammering. So come up with something. And then stick to it.

Step Four: Be the Brand
We are in the business of selling brands. Or at the very least, bringing them to life. We — of all people — should know how hard it is to be convincing about something that is ill-defined. So why would you go into the job market without a clear brand for yourself? I don’t know. And yet, everyone does it.

So after you’ve figured out what you’re going to say about why you’re suddenly so darn available, figure out why they should hire you. What’s unique about you? Or said another way, figure out why they should hire you and not the ten thousand other yahoos who’ve recently been sacked because the economy is in the toilet.

Want to be really smart? Take it a step further. Customize your brand to the people you’re talking to. You know, like you always told your clients they should do, for exactly the same reasons.

Step Five: Eliminate What You Hate
There will be a part of being fired that you really hate. (I don’t mean the being broke part. Everyone hates that — everyone with any brains at least.) So figure out what it is and figure out a way to get over it. Maybe you hate not having people to hang out with. Then go to Starbucks. I’m serious. Or maybe you hate not having a routine. Make one — get up, walk the dogs, read your mail, write something, whatever. Or maybe it’s explaining to your nosy neighbors why suddenly you’re wandering around the neighborhood in your pajamas at 11 a.m. I don’t know. But figure it out and get around it. Otherwise you’re going to add another level of stress to the stress of being out of work. And who needs that?

Step Six: Embrace Repetition
Face this fact: You’re going to be saying the same things over and over again. You’re going to have your elevator pitch. Or you’re going to have the thing you tell your neighbor. Or the spiel you make in an interview. Work it, polish it, refine it — but whatever you do, don’t get bored with it.

Usually when we’re presenting to a client, we only have to do it once or twice — maybe three times. We’re just not used to bringing the same enthusiasm the 10th or 15th time that we brought the first two times. And that’s exactly what you’re going to be faced with when you’re interviewing.

Our natural instinct, of course, is to adjust what we’re presenting. Not necessarily make it better, just make it fresher so we can keep the passion in it, because otherwise we’ll feel bored by it. But look — even though this may be the 10th time you’ve said this exact same stuff, it’s probably the first time this particular person has heard it. It’s new to them. Make it sound like it’s new to you, too.

Because the sooner you learn how, the less you may have to.