185: Banishing BS at Work with Jennifer Rock and Michael Voss

Pete Mockaitis
Jennifer and Michael, welcome to the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Jennifer Rock
Thanks for having us.

Michael Voss
It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s great to have you. And so I want to kick us off by hearing a little bit of the back story there when it comes to, an arm wrestling match determined whose name came first in your company’s name. How did this all unfold?

Michael Voss
Well, when we decided to start the company, as well as while we were working on finishing our novel, we indeed toyed with the idea of an arm wrestling match to see whose name would come first in the company letterhead.  We couldn’t do that though, because clearly Jennifer would win the arm wrestling match.

Jennifer Rock
Clearly.

Michael Voss
Yeah, so we toyed with a couple other things, maybe a Jiu-Jitsu match or a standing broad jump or something like that, but ultimately…

Jennifer Rock
And clearly if we went with who is better looking, Mike would win.  So it’s a toss-up either way.

Michael Voss
But ultimately, Jennifer and I had worked together for 12 years at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters and during a portion of that time she reported directly to me, so I determined that after six, seven years of bossing her around, that my only chance to get her to go into business together with me was to allow her to put her name first.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s good.  Certainly, whatever concessions necessary to make it happen, that’s cool.  And one of your works here is the book, the novel B.S. Incorporated.  What is the story of how and why this came to come into existence?

Jennifer Rock
Well, it happened actually about seven years ago.  Like Mike said, we worked together for a very long time at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters.  And I have to say the caveat – B.S. Incorporated is not the story of Best Buy.  In fact it as the fictional – semi-fictional story – of a big Midwestern company that is spiraling out of control.  And Mike and I…

I can point to the day that the idea of this novel came about – we were in a horrible meeting, one of those 4-hours, 4.5-hour awful project meetings that corporate people have to sit through, where some of the people had fallen asleep and the execs were arguing with each other and just tons of bad behavior.  Mike and I literally escaped the meeting; we went to a bar patio in the shadow of the headquarters building and we started swapping stories about all of the crazy and absurd and ridiculous and silly things we had seen throughout our 20+ year corporate careers and all the characters that we had known.

And there was a point where we just looked at each other and said, “You know, somebody should write a book.”  And we had taken notes throughout our careers and said, “You know what?  We should write a book.”  And we’re communications professionals by trade, so it wasn’t too big of a leap to put some words on paper, but it did take us almost six years.  But our first novel was published, and like you said it’s called B.S. Incorporated, and it’s an entertaining read.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  So now, within this entertaining read, what are some of the illuminating takeaways that professionals reading it can say, “Ah, I am enlightened and better able to…”  I’m tempted to use jargon and I’m really conscientious; I almost said “Add value”.  But, “Do better work”.  If they read the book, what are some of the ways they’ll be enriched in those ways?

Michael Voss
Sure.  And we very much were intentional about putting some themes in the book, some things that people can draw upon and apply to their own careers.  And one of the biggest ones for us is a concept we call “finding your crew”.  And in the book, in the story, one of our main characters, who has sort of grown up inside the company – he started in the warehouse and then went on to take an office job and ends up going back to his roots and learning some lessons about what it takes to be a good leader.  And we call that “finding your crew”, and it’s about finding those people and working with those people who share a similar set of values, the people who will have your back under any conditions, and really finding that core set of people you can count on day to day, and in your toughest times in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on, absolutely.  And I’m intrigued – just the word and phrase “B.S.”  I think that’s a rich… I think of fertilizer now, B.S.  Literally it’s a rich, fertile ground for discussion, because it shows up so often, and as communications professionals, I imagine that’s often what you’re doing, is cutting through the BS and seeing the core message and making sure that gets highlighted and told well.  So, could you maybe help us navigate when it comes to different forms of B.S. and what to watch out for?

Jennifer Rock
Sure.  And you’re absolutely right – as professional communicators we have spent our careers really coaching and counseling some of top CEOs and C-level executives in the country, some the biggest, most successful companies, in not circulating B.S. and cutting through that for employees and audiences.  And so, we really have spent our careers behind the scenes at companies in kind of sorting through the B.S.  And there’s a couple of things we’ve unintentionally become quite the experts in spotting B.S. in the workplace and figuring out how to cut through it.

And it doesn’t matter if you work for a big company or a small company or a non-profit or a Fortune 50 company – you’re going to have to deal with some amount of B.S. in the workplace.  And I’m going to throw out one for your listeners that is going to seem really counter-intuitive, and believe me, I’m a big fan of fun and humor, but one of the biggest things in the workplace, the forms of B.S., is forced fun.

And you can identify this really easily and it’s a trap, people – don’t fall into it, but it’s like the foosball table in the lobby, it’s the mandatory happy hours, the two-minute afternoon dance party, and the eye-rolling icebreaker exercises in meetings.  When you add all of those up, what happens is you’re looking at an environment where the leadership team is intending to make you happy whether you like it or not.

This kind of stuff is just much more organic when people, like Mike said, you find your crew, you find the people you hang out with, you find your work family.  One of the biggest forms of B.S. you’re going to find, especially to lure millennials into the workplace is this idea of forced fun.  And our biggest advice there is to just smile, grin and fly under the radar.  Try to be not at your desk when the forced afternoon dance parties happen; don’t play foosball in the lobby, get your work done, and avoid the forced fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, I think that makes a lot of sense and what’s cool about that is that you really don’t get in trouble for the most part for skipping the forced fun, whereas you would get sort of in trouble for not completing your responsibilities and what’s expected of you.  And so, what if you like the forced fun, like foosball lights you up inside?  Do you adjust the strategy there, or how do you think about that?

Michael Voss
I would say everything in moderation, Pete.  Certainly it’s there for you to be able to use it and to take your breaks, but I think the key thing really is to make sure you are demonstrating your skills and the unique things that only you bring to the table.  And there’s a lot of foosball players in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.  That’s true, yes.  So that’s one form of B.S. that shows up, is the forced fun.  What else?

Michael Voss
So there’s another one that we call “warring kingdoms.”  So this is when team works and goals and reporting relationships start to get undermined by a complex game of shifting allegiances and brutal backstabbing; it’s kind of The Game of Thrones that takes place in the office environment.  And the reality is, I’ve lived through a version of this.

We worked for a company in which it was well-known that the CEO was going to retire in about a year’s time, and people were lining up behind the two strongest internal candidates, one of whom was the Chief Operating Officer and one of whom was the Chief Human Resources Officer.  And people were just sort of placing their bets, their career bets, on who they thought was going to ultimately prevail and then would of course be in a position to help the careers of those who would help them achieve the post.

And our advice there really is to focus on doing what’s right for the company, not what’s right for any individual team or any individual executive who might be trying to line themselves up for a more high-profile gig.  If you focus your efforts on what the company needs, and that might be your customers, it might be internal customers in terms employees, it might be investors – whatever your specific role is in the company – focus on doing that to the best of your ability; don’t allow yourself to get sucked into the various factions who are trying to line up and play the political games.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh Michael, I like that so much because I think that that stuff is just… For me personally it just kills motivation in such a hurry.  And then I remember having this consulting – I was consulting at Bain – and someone had to introduce me to the concept of transfer pricing.  I said, “Transfer pricing – what’s that?”  And they said, “Transfer pricing is when one part of the organization is selling something to another part of the organization and they have to establish a price for what is that service going to cost.  And sometimes different parts the organization will bitterly fight and argue or even litigate over what should that transfer price be, when it’s really just shifting money from one pocket to the other.  And the reason they’re so invested is because of bonuses or incentives or other things along those lines.”  And I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, what a headache.  It’s your money.  It’s all one corporate bank account to another, under the auspices of one company.”  So, maybe I am naive, but it’s like, “Can’t we all just get along?”

Michael Voss
Yeah.  It’s such a cliche, but what if we all paddled in the same direction?

Pete Mockaitis
Totally.  And it seems like that’s good advice in terms of if you are serving the needs of the company, in terms of the customers or whomever, it’s hard for that to go deeply wrong and against you.  It’s like, “How dare you?  You’ve betrayed me.”  I guess folks have to be taking things extra, extra, extra personally, I think, for that to show up in a bad way, or maybe I’m being too naive here.

Michael Voss
No, I think that’s exactly right.  That’s well said.  It’s hard for anything to go wrong when you are focused on doing the right thing.  It really is.  Now, of course that can happen – on rare occasions you can lose your job for something that’s out of your control, of course – if company’s just underperforming – but in the situation that I described earlier, where people were lining up behind two CEO candidates, there was some fallout from it, of course, because those two individuals were keenly aware of who was and wasn’t on their side.  And one of them got the job and there were some people who left the company – some by their own volition and some not, based on where they had aligned themselves politically.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood.  Well, so now I’d love to zoom in a little bit about B.S. and perhaps the stricter, narrowest sense of just communication – maybe it’s jargon or meaningless mission, vision, values statements at some organizations; they don’t have much life or breath inside those words.  So, how do you think about that whole world, in terms of one – just sort of keeping your sanity or sense of humor amidst all of it, and two – just communicating well yourself?

Jennifer Rock
Sure, great question and near and dear to our hearts, being that we are professional communicators.  And you are absolutely right – jargon and academicese and legalese seeps into an organization, sometimes without them even realizing it, and certainly with mission and vision and objectives and strategies, and just in the simple fact of explaining to employees why they should be employees of this company, why a company is worth saving, why it’s worth working for.  People tend to use a ten-dollar word when a one-dollar word will do.

And so we spend a lot of our careers trying to get people to boil something down to a really clear and succinct message and something that’s going to resonate with people, which sounds really common sense but common sense sometimes gets lost in the process.  And one of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give, and it’s going to sound a little condescending but it’s absolutely advice that we have given companies and leaders – go find a second grader and explain your mission and vision of your company to a second grader.  And I’m absolutely dead serious about that.  If a child can understand what your company does and what it stands for and why it’s a good company to work for, that’s the type of language that you should be using.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh Jennifer, I like that so much, and I’m just thinking about enterprising second graders right now opening up little consulting shops.  It’s like, “Look…”

Jennifer Rock
Little Bains and Mackenzies of the world.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.  It’s like, “Look, if you can’t explain it to me, then it’s not going to fly, so I’m going to charge you $300 an hour.  So you can run it by me.”

Jennifer Rock
Pete, this is the new lemonade stand.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it’s so much better.  I love it.  And second graders could probably build websites very easily by now, given the trajectory of technologies and their learnings.

Jennifer Rock
You’re absolutely right.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good.  So could you maybe give us an example of something that was cluttered and clunky, in terms of its articulation, and then what it looks like when it’s simplified and done just right?

Michael Voss
Sure.  I’ll actually give you an example from our time at Best Buy.  Best Buy obviously is a consumer electronics retailer, and for years and years and years sold many types of electronics that all you had to do was go home, plug it into a wall and enjoy it.  And the technology has become more complex, as we want our phones to talk to our televisions, to talk to all of our other devices and all of these types of things.

And very early on, as the technology shift was happening, Best Buy engaged with one of the big five consulting firms, and I’m not sure which one it was – it may very well have been Bain or it may have been Accenture or Mackenzie or any one of those – but they coined a phrase called “ubiquitous connectivity”, and that was initially how it was rolled out to Best Buy’s executive team and even that next level of leadership underneath.

And the great story behind this is the CEO went home all excited about it and told his wife that the new strategy for the company would be ubiquitous connectivity and she said, “Well that sounds like a disease you are going to combat.” [laugh] And so after a little work with their crack communications team, two of whom you have on the line here today, we changed it to “the connected world”.  And then we began to create illustrations and examples of what the connected world would be for us as consumers, as these technologies came to fruition and really improved our lives.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great.  So then, why do you think the B.S. or the temptation to go into phrases like “ubiquitous connectivity” shows up in the first place?  Is it something psychological, like we want to look and sound and feel smart, and so that’s what we do?  It seems like nobody likes the phrase “ubiquitous connectivity” over “a connected world”, and yet we end up with it.  So, what’s going on there and how can we fight it?

Jennifer Rock
Yeah, I don’t want to place all the blame on the feet of consultants by any means.  We are consultants now, so let’s be clear.  But I think when you involve folks inside and outside the company – and I’m going to throw some things around that are going to probably make people angry – but when you get all the MBAs in the room and you get the consultants, who you are spending millions of dollars for their advice, you get the business school professors in the room, you get the people who want to be the smartest people in the room – I think that’s when the thesaurus starts getting thrown around and people start the war of words.

And I would argue some of the greatest literature that exists is something like Hemingway, which is still a classic and he barely has any words that are more than two syllables in a book.  There’s just something about the simplicity and the conciseness and the wonderfulness of a message that I think you’re absolutely spot-on – it gets obscured by the fact that you think you sound smarter when you use really big concepts and words, and people over-complicate things to the point that it becomes unintelligible.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  Okay, so I’m curious then, when you see that in a workplace, what are some of the best practices for calling that out, challenging it, simplifying it?  I think that this is probably something you want to really do with a level of tact and grace, as opposed to saying, “Oh you think you’re smart, huh?  That’s why you’re using those ridiculous words!”  What’s the graceful way to bring about some simplicity and goodness within the communication?

Michael Voss
That’s a great point, and you’re spot-on in that tact and diplomacy are key, in terms of that kind of coaching and counseling.  And there are a number of ways you can get at it.  I think one of the key things really is to be able to be nimble and quick on your feet and to be able to identify alternatives.  So when you hear a turn of a phrase, a humble way to do it is to ask, “Do I understand what you mean when you say this?  Are you actually saying X, Y and Z?”  And then you can gently remind the individual that, “Your audience might have a better opportunity to grasp it if you slow down and explain it that way and sort of break it apart for them.”

Jennifer Rock
And I would also add that nothing speaks like your audience.  So focus groups, go to your employees, go to your customers – whoever you are crafting the message for – and put a phrase like “ubiquitous connectivity” in front of your core audience and ask what they think of it.  Nothing replaces that good data and that good feedback of the people that you’re trying to influence with your communication.  Take that back to the leadership, take that input and their feedback.  And there’s a reason why wisdom of crowds is such a big trend – because it works.  Again, your audience is sometimes much smarter and can cut through the B.S. a lot faster than sometimes the people that you hire to help you do it.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s great, that’s great.  Well, as we’re getting to the final components, can you share any final thoughts when it comes to communication best practices that folks who want to be awesome at their job should know?

Michael Voss
I would just put in a plug for authenticity.  It’s very common for us just as human beings to try to be who we think we need to be in the workplace – we want to be smart, we don’t want to make mistakes, we want to say the right thing, we want to do the right thing.  And too often that ends up masking who we really are and probably hindering some of our best ideas and our best input and our best ability to connect with other people on a human level.

So, I would just always encourage people – be authentic, be who you truly are, own up to your mistakes if you make one.  It just makes you look human and it makes you look like you’re confident in yourself that you can own a mistake.  It will happen less and less frequently the more you are who you try to be.  The really tough mistakes happen when you’re trying to be something you’re not – those are the hard ones to own up to because you weren’t being true to yourself.  So, be authentic, be true to yourself, and you’ll be happier and you’ll be better at your job.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on, right on.  And final final thoughts before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Jennifer Rock
I think I’d just add on to what Mike said.  We’ve counseled a lot of executives with communications over the years, and besides the authenticity piece, also play to your strengths.  There are a lot of different ways to communicate – as a leader, as a business person, as an employee.  Not everybody’s great with written communication, not everybody’s great at social media.  Some people are better with a group of 12 people in a small, more intimate setting than they are speaking in front of a crowd of a thousand.  So, I would tell anybody who wants to be a better communicator, especially within the workplace – find the settings where you feel most comfortable and you can be most confident.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, very good.  So now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jennifer Rock
Yeah, I have a quote that I used to have up when I still was in a corporate workplace.  I had a quote that I had hung up next to my cube for years and years that said, “The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.”  And I love that because, again, being a communicator, being a writer myself, often times we want to work an idea to death.  And we draft and redraft and we rethink and we rethink, and sometimes the beauty is just knowing when to put the pen down and walk away.
Pete Mockaitis
Great, thank you.

Michael Voss
And I’ll come up with mine now too, and it goes back to the office politics and the warring factions we talked about.  And one of the quotes that I learned early in my career and I always try to remember it, is the old saying about, “Never wrestle with a pig.  You end up full of mud, and the pig enjoys it.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s fun, thank you.  And how about a favorite book?

Michael Voss
Personally I’m a big fan of the StrengthsFinder series put out by Gallop and a couple of researchers there.  So I think the very first one is First, Break All the Rules and the second one is Now, Discover Your Strengths.  To Jennifer’s point about playing to your strengths – that was a real eye-opener for me, in terms of self-awareness and understanding not only what I was good at and wasn’t good at, but the people around me as we all sort of read the book and did some soul-searching together.  It was really helpful in terms of our team dynamic as well.

Jennifer Rock
And I’d add to that that another great business book – obviously we’ve written a business place novel – but a great business book that really is in story form, a little more in-depth than a parable is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  And I would highly recommend that to especially any leadership team that is looking for some self-guided discovery on how best to get some principles and how leadership teams can work best together and avoid those warring factions and avoid the competition that often kind of tears leadership teams apart.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, very good, thank you.  Now, could you share with us a favorite tool, something that you use to be more awesome at your job?

Michael Voss
Boy, I guess I would probably have to go to my phone, and some specific apps within my phone just helping keep myself organized with my notes, application and a couple of different email apps that I stay on top of both our book business and our business business.  And then the other thing that helps me be awesome at my job is putting my phone down when I don’t need it, so I don’t get sucked into all the other ancillary things that you can be doing on your phone and really trying to use that tool to be productive for work.

Jennifer Rock
That’s a great one, and I’d say too, any time you can find a dashboard app that can display several things at once – there are a number of good ones out there, like Hootsuite and things like that, that allow you to keep track of different Twitter feeds or allow you to keep track of your sales data or your business data.  I’m a big fan of the dashboard and as much information as you can squeeze into one screen, the better.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you.  And how about a favorite habit, a personal practice of yours?

Michael Voss
For me it’s getting up in the morning and getting moving.  I like to get my heart rate up, whether that’s through actual exercise, which I don’t always have time for, but anything I can do to get moving a little bit right away in the morning and not just linger around the house doing the bare minimum.  Sometimes I may get the dog out for a little bit of a walk, even do some push-ups in the living room, ‘cause once I get my body moving I can tell my brain starts firing on all cylinders much earlier in the day.

Jennifer Rock
Oh, and I am a habitual list-maker.  Mike can tell you that I carry a composition book everywhere, and I’ve saved all of them throughout my career, and most of them are filled with to-do lists.  And especially when you own your own business and you are working on publicity for a book, working on a sequel to your first novel and dealing with everything else that you have in your life, lists are the only way that I keep track of things.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.  And is there a particular nugget, a piece that you share that tends to really seem to resonate, connect with people, gets them nodding their heads and taking notes?

Jennifer Rock
Wow.  I had a boss a very long time ago who was very wise, and I find myself repeating a lot of the things, little nuggets that he told me years ago.  One of the first best bosses I ever had.  And his little nugget which has served me really well as an entrepreneur and as I talk to other entrepreneurs is, “When you’re unhappy, move your camp.”

And it’s literally a camping metaphor – it’s if you’re on rocky ground or you’ve got a leak in your tent and you’re not under a good tree or something like that – you move your camp to higher ground or flatter ground.  But I’ve taken that into my career and I’ve used that with other entrepreneurs as well, that your happiness is your own domain and if you’re unhappy, find a way to get yourself happy – move where you are, do something different, start your own company, write a book.  Whatever makes you happy, it’s your responsibility to go find it.
Michael Voss
Mine’s a little bit different.  We had talked earlier about the warring kingdoms, but the truth is we can all sort of end up involved in what I call “hand-to-hand combat”, and that is you can get in silly little disagreements about whose turn it is to make coffee in the office or whose turn it is to buy the birthday cake for everyone who’s got birthdays in the month of July or whatever it might be.

And those are the little things that can get you bogged down and make you unhappy and not awesome at your job, because you’re engaging in this little hand-to-hand combat.  And so, I’ve always counseled my team members to try and avoid that as much as possible.  Focus on what’s most important and avoid the silly little office politics.  Focus on doing what makes you happy and what the company needs you to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, thank you.  And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jennifer Rock
I’d point them to our book website.  Everything’s all linked together, our business and our book site and all of our social media accounts.  And our book site is RockAndVossBooks.com.  You can find our novel from there that’s available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and wherever good, funny books are sold.  And you can find our business link as well.  We’ve got some interesting articles out there, some tips, some actionable tips that people can use right away if they want to improve communication, either for themselves or their companies.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. If you were to leave folks with a final challenge or call to action, what would it be?

Michael Voss
I think I would go back and just reinforce the authenticity piece, and just really be yourself and do that in your job, do it outside of your job.  We only go around once in this world, and be the best person you can be and be the most authentic, true to yourself person you can be.

Jennifer Rock
And I’d say when all else fails, go escape to a bar patio with a trusted colleague, have a cocktail, and tomorrow’s a new day.

Pete Mockaitis
Right on.  Well, Michael and Jennifer, it’s been so much fun.  I wish you lots of luck with your book and all that you’re up to!

Michael Voss
Thank you very much.

Jennifer Rock
Thanks for having us.