Last time I discussed the top “mindsets” that we bring to work. For those of you who like things defined, here goes—mindset is “a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.”

Most of us bring some “habits” to work on a regular basis. After doing a lot of interviews and research, I came up with five. What I like to call the 5 M’s. Machine, military, motivation, measurement and entrepreneurship (okay, that’s not an “M” word. I put it in because that is one of the problems with mindsets, they tend to lock us in to a limited way of viewing the world).

According to your votes, the mindset that you most often bring to work is machine. 35% of you chose it. Next was military with 27%. Followed by motivation, the choice of 17%. Measurement, 15%, and entrepreneurship at 6%.

Each of these mindsets served a purpose at one time. The problem is that they tend to live on long past the point they continue to provide value. Take the top response, machine. A smooth running machine is a very effective way to run a business. The problem? Machines don’t do so well when it comes to creativity and initiative. And those are two things that most businesses can’t do without today.

In addition, all of the mindsets share two basic problems. First, they tend to struggle when it comes to handling complexity. A new competitor, a worker shortage or a lawsuit against your company aren’t things that any of the 5 Ms can really cope with. The problem is that today’s workplace is all about complexity.

But there is an even bigger problem—control. All of these mindsets do best when there is a heavy hand running the show. And that heavy hand may have helped 60 years ago to make the trains run on time, but today many businesses are starting to realize that the brains of their people are a terrible thing to waste. So rather than trying to produce a certain result from people, more organizations are realizing they have to create a place where the best efforts can flow out of people.

So we need to develop a new mindset, one that gives more control to the people who actually do the work. Not for some soft headed share the wealth idea, but because organizations need to extract everything they can from their people’s hands, heads and hearts (okay, that will be the last bit of alliteration for this column).

Ultimately I’m not going to try to sell you on exactly what new mindset to adopt. My point is simply that we need to become more aware of the mindset we bring to work each day. And not forget the creativity and control as we go along our journey at work. Just realizing this should help us all to better navigate our workday more successfully.

QUOTE.
“No more good can be attempted than the people can bear.” Thomas Jefferson

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. You can also hear workplace911 on BlogTalkRadio weekly. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Mindset. What is the context that you bring to work each day? Your personal way of seeing the world that influences your problem solving and decision making at work? I think mindsets are one of the most important, and least talked about, issues in today’s workplace. Why? Because I think most of us go to work each day with the wrong one. Here are the 5 most common mindset “M’s” that I see in today’s workplace along with a few of the problems that are associated with each.

1. MILITARY. Max Weber believed that the most efficient way to get a job done was through a rule-driven, impersonal bureaucracy. His most influential book title tells you everything you need to know about his world view—“The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” It’s easy to make fun of Weber’s rules. But look around your workplace and you’ll see that the only thing more resilient than a cockroach is a bureaucracy. Ironically, even the US military is encouraging the troops to show more creativity and initiative these days.

2. MOTIVATION. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is the landmark title from Dale Carnegie that says everything you really need to know about motivational management. Carnegie was a master salesman who created the fundamental techniques of handling people (don’t criticize, condemn or complain, give honest and sincere appreciation and arouse in the other person an eager want). What is pure gold in the hands of a master like Carnegie, unfortunately is distinctly un-motivating in the hands of a novice.

3. MACHINE. This is one of the most popular ways to look at work. With proper fuel and maintenance, well, work will work like a machine. The “father” of the machine mindset at work is Frederick Taylor. For example, he broke down the process to make Ford’s Model T into 7,882 steps. He then determined that of these steps, 715 could be done by men with one arm and 10 by blind men. The only problem is that Taylor’s world really has no place for creativity or intelligence. Oops.

4. MEASUREMENT. Walk into the Toyota building in Tokyo and you’ll see three portraits. The first is of the company’s founder. The second the current chairman. And the third is of an American mathematician, W. Edwards Deming. Lean production, quality and reducing waste were all hallmarks of Deming’s teachings. But my favorite lesson from Deming is number eight of his famous fourteen points. “Drive out fear.” Deming’s measurements can do a remarkable job of improving quality but once again this philosophy is extremely limited when it comes to creating new markets and products.

5. ENTREPRENEURIAL. [Yes, this is not an “M” word. And that is another aspect of “mindsets,” do your box you in and limit your flexibility?] Do you know when the word entrepreneur was first coined? J.B. Say, a French economist, first coined the word in the early 1800’s. Peter Drucker talked about how systemic entrepreneurship is the secret behind many of the most revolutionary innovations in the workplace. The only problem is that most organizations can only maintain an entrepreneurial environment for a relatively short period of time before bureaucracy begins to gum up the works.

Next time I’ll talk about an entirely new mindset that you can bring to work. One that is complex enough to allow you to tackle those really tough challenges at work.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Also check out his newly revised best-seller “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

I’d like to raise a few topics that I don’t think got discussed nearly enough.

First, the economy has changed quite a bit over the decades.

Here is a question: What was the year that for the first time service workers and white collar workers outnumbered blue collar workers? 2001? 1990? OK, we’ll go out on a limb here — 1985?

Nope. The first time that blue collar workers were outnumbered in the economy was 1956 (from “Revolutionary Wealth” by Alvin and Heidi Toffler). I know that was a really long time ago, because that is the year I was born.

So much of the complaining about the loss of jobs to immigrants overlooks one important fact. the economy has changed dramatically.
With millions of illegal immigrants assumed to be working in the United States, you would think that there would be a huge backlash against them. Think again. According to the New York Times only a minority of Americans want tougher laws against illegal immigrants.

But we’ve all got to stop pining over the lost manufacturing jobs and deal with the economy that we have, not the one we wish we had. And immigrants play a huge role in keeping our current economy moving forward.

The second point: you’d be in the streets too.

If you think about it, this issue should be personal to everyone.

Sam, Lena, Joseph and Fay. Those names might not jump off the screen to you, but they have a lot of meaning for me. They’re my grandparents.

They were born in Hungry, Russia and Germany before they took that long trip to America. Each one has their own precarious story of their journey out of Europe. And it wasn’t necessarily a walk in the park once they got here. Each had to take his or her place at the bottom, mostly figuratively, but sometimes literally — living in the ghettos, working for the bare minimum and having to fight for their place at the table.

And they were all lucky enough during their lifetimes to achieve their little piece of the American dream — owning a home, becoming leaders of their community, being able to take a vacation. But to a person, all would probably say that the point when they’d realized they’d really made it was when their kids didn’t have to start at the bottom — and this group of elementary school dropouts saw their kids graduate college and even graduate school.

Now it’s your turn. How far back do you need to go to find people who fled their homelands to come to America? One generation, two, three?

Third, drawbridges don’t work.

In a land of immigrants, it’s remarkable to hear people screaming to pull the drawbridge up, now that they’ve landed in the “land of opportunity.” It’s remarkable that people want to kick out all illegal immigrants currently working in the country, or that so many complain about all the resources these immigrants are using.

I think it is important to remember something that my grandparents all knew by heart: “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! Cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” The poet Emma Lazarus wrote these words that we all associate with the Statue of Liberty.

I think that this is the classic case of people who live in a glass houses throwing stones. We are all the descendents of immigrants. Let’s all seek to honor our relatives by appreciating the latest batch of people who struggled to come here so that they could create a better life for their family.

Fourth, this debate isn’t going to end any time soon.

Given the turbulence of the economy, there will always be people who try to blame our problems on people who aren’t in a position to fight back. So get prepared to hear this debate over and over again in the coming years.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

This week’s blog should get me in a lot of trouble. But I think it’s time that someone points out that many of the biggest business consultants, authors and speakers run really crappy businesses of their own.

Okay, I’ve heard all the jokes about consultants. All go basically down the same path—a consultant is someone who borrows your watch and then tells you what time it is. But this is someone much worse. I’ve discovered that many of the biggest advisors to business run shops that are much more poorly managed than many of the corporations that pay them such lofty fees.

Ironic isn’t it?

Take consultant number one—I’ve confided the real names to my editor, but dear reader you’ll have to give me some slack here, because these guys are my colleagues, and in some cases my friends.

Consultant number one has had a series of best selling books, he commands top dollar on the speakers circuit and chances are that you’ve heard or seen him at one time during your career. He is so volatile that he is barely able to hold on to staff for more than a year. He says he’s a great listener, but his staff says to me that he yells far too much to ever hear a word they say. His office might as well have a revolving door on it.

Consultant number two is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. But his company is remarkably dysfunctional. Its top leadership seems to change with the seasons. More than any other, this company almost seems to be dedicated to violating every principal that it espouses in its publications and presentations with its own people. It is a rudderless, often contradictory and cruel place that talks about sharing the credit but seldom does.

Consultant number three has built a company with some of the lowest morale anywhere. It’s hard to sort out where the battle lines are worse, in the executive suites or in the trenches. At one point I actually got to see some of the company’s internal survey results and couldn’t imagine that any of this company’s customers own results were that pathetic. Employees felt that management was more likely to knife them in the back then pat them on it. Although there was a lot of talk about values, the organization seems to only hold one value dear, and that is making the sale.

Woody Allen once said that those who can, do. And those who can’t, teach. Clearly those who really can’t do something become top-priced consultants.

So what can we do about this? I’m not suggesting that anyone throw out the baby with the bathwater. Each of these three people I referred to above has an important message and strategies to share. I just believe that corporations need to do a better job of due diligence with the messengers it picks before it starts ramming the fad of the week down its own people’s throats.

Look at each possible vendor as a little laboratory for their own principals. Ask for proof that they eat their own dog food and practice the very principals that they are foisting on you, and the rest of the business world.

Many of you are probably saying to yourself that this doesn’t really matter. It all goes back to the “Hawthorne Effect”, remember, that’s where a company turned up its lights and found that productive increased. Then when productivity stabilized they tried turning the lights down and found—like magic—that productivity magically increased again. The lesson, is that over the short haul almost anything you do can potentially increase productivity.

So Corporate America do your homework. Just because someone is a brand name, don’t assume that their principles work in the real world. That’s the bad news. The good news, is that the due diligence isn’t that hard to do. You just have to take the pulse of the employees who work for the company you are thinking about hiring. Ask to see recently survey results and staff turnover rates. I can guarantee that often you’ll be surprised by what you find.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Thanks to Myers Briggs and a host of other workplace personality tests, it seems like everyone in the corporate world is either an “ENTP,” or their collaborative style is “Red,” or their leadership style is “Homer” (I made the last one up, there is currently no test to determine if you are like the head of the Simpson clan.)

Take a test, get the results and instantly you’ll have a clearer understanding of who you are and you’ll suddenly become insanely effective at work.

I vehemently disagree. Not only are these tests mostly a waste of time and money, I think they are dangerous.

But first let me quote a favorite scene from “Seinfeld.” Jerry is being forced to take a lie detector test by a woman that he wants to date. Since he knows that he’ll be caught in a lie, he goes to the best liar he knows, George Costanza, to ask for advice. George’s reply sums up everything you need to know about what’s wrong with self-inflicted personality tests, “Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it to be the truth.”

And that is why I think these tests are so bogus. Because they don’t pursue an objective view of your performance, but simply quantify our own self-deceptions. And that’s where the danger comes in.

The most valid take on your personality comes from the people you work with. They watch you, they know when to trust you and when to run away from you. Even your craziest colleagues can often offer insight that you won’t find by going knee-deep in your own gray matter. Without some external input from the people who see you on a daily basis, you are just filling out forms and recycling your own misperceptions.

I admit, these tests can be an ideal starting point for a conversation with the people you work with about who you are and how you can do a better job. But they usually aren’t, because people hold the results so close to their chest—like they’re an immortal truth.

It’s like hearing your own voice (you didn’t think you were going to get through this entire column without a metaphor, did you?). Your voice sounds one way when you hear it inside your head. But have you ever noticed how it sounds totally different when you hear it on a tape recorder that is played back to you? It’s no different when it comes to meaningful feedback, the most helpful comes from outside your own head.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of self-deception as much as the next guy or gal—heck, not a Keanu Reeves movie goes by that I don’t think that I could have provided a much more compelling performance. The problem is that these tests claim that they offer some objective truth and can cost a lot of money.

If you don’t believe me, then start talking to your colleagues about what they believe they do very well. Undoubtedly you’ll hear things that will make you double over in laughter. Mr. Disorganization will tell you that he’s totally on top of all of his projects. Ms. Only-In-It-For-Herself will tell you what a great team player she is. And your boss will tell you that his people love him.

Which leads up to the big question—what are your blind spots?  What do you hold very closely about your approach to work, or your values, that is just as laughable as Mr. Disorganization, Ms. Only-In-It-For-Herself or your boss?

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to put those number 2 pencils away any time soon. Keep taking your tests. But just remember that a dose of truth from a trusted coworker can provide you a lot more valuable input than just probing your own gray matter.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Also check out his newly revised best-seller “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Flash mob. I was faintly aware of the concept. Mostly it had to do with pillow fights and Michael Jackson tributes. Then on Saturday I stumbled upon one. It left me remarkably hopefully. Really. And there is even a business point here, but first more on the mob.

My daughter Frankie and I were walking across the Seattle Center grounds. We suddenly noticed that there were hundreds of people milling about. You just got the sense that something was in the air. So we wandered over. The energy was palpable.

There seemed to be a focal point, at one end of the park. We decided to check it out. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a gymnast started doing cartwheels and forward rolls across the field. It was incredibly dramatic.

Then approximately thirty dancers started dancing to the song “Don’t Stop Believing.” Clearly there were two star-crossed lovers. When the woman leaped into the man’s arms the crowd exploded in joy.

Now is when the really freaky part starts. Hundreds of people started dancing to the music. It felt like every aerobics class that I’ve ever seen, that everyone else was privy to dance routines and that I hadn’t gotten the memo.

Remember, I had no idea what was going on. It was like a Broadway show suddenly burst upon us. Amazing, intoxicating, but most of all very fun.

Later I learned that this was called Flash Mob Seattle. That there were videos online that taught the dance moves and that the core group of dancers that started off the festivities had gone to a rehearsal. But that didn’t diminish the remarkable energy from the young kids, old people and everyone in between.

What does this have to do with work? I saw the power of our technology not to isolate people, but to bring them together. In a remarkable way.

Tools are tools. But I felt a sense of community in that gathering that I’ve hardly ever felt in my life.

Here is a link to another gathering that happened on the same day. Unfortunately you miss the initial gymnast, but you’ll get the rest of the performance (there is an ad at the beginning of it, but it’s for the local paper not me). http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/video/mediacenterbc3.html?bctid=77243206001

Community, the amazing thing, once you get a taste of it you just want more and more. At least I do. It got me thinking about all the ways that people have to communicate, to collaborate and to create community. Here’s to an amazing new set of possibilities.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Also check out his newly revised best-seller “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Support The Troops. Support The Troops. Support The Troops.

This is the newest “wallpaper” in the United States. You see it on bumper stickers, in commercials and hear it in conversations. Based on the number of times you see or hear the phrase, it’s hard to imagine that we could do anything more to show the troops that we’re behind them.

Think again.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly one-in-five veterans age 20 to 24 are unemployed. This is THREE times the national average. According to the government, approximately a quarter million veterans leave the military annually. So we’re talking about many thousands of soldiers who served their country and have returned to an unemployment line.

These unemployed former soldiers list a variety of reasons for the high unemployment rate, according to a poll by CareerBuilder—the lack of available jobs where they live, employers not understanding how the skills acquired in the military translate to the civilian world, the lack of a college degree and the inability of the soldiers themselves to adequately show what they learned in the military in interviews and resumes. Sure these veterans could probably do a better job of presenting themselves and their experience in the employment dance, but I believe that based on their sacrifice, it is incumbent for corporations to meet them more than half way.

A disclaimer: I have never served in the military. And it doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines of my writing to see that I, like the majority of Americans, believe that enough people have died in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s time for us to get the heck out of there.

As much as I may disagree with our government’s staying in a place where we’re not wanted, I do think that our soldiers have tackled a really tough assignment and the vast majority have represented their uniform and country well. I’m not sure that I’d advocate that returning vets should get special treatment, but for the youngest of the returning soldiers to have three times the unemployment rate of non-vets is embarrassing. And wrong.

But it gets worse. According to the survey by CareerBuilder, eleven percent of veterans don’t identify themselves as veterans on their resume. While another seventeen percent do so selectively. Support the troops, NOT.

People who put themselves in harms way should be appreciated for their loyalty and sacrifice. To not appreciate their ability to work as part of a team, their disciplined approach to work, their problem solving skills, the ability to work under pressure, respect, integrity and leadership is overlooking the skills and talents that they’ve already proven on the battlefield. It’s time that employers looked beyond the limitations—the lack of a college degree, etc.—and to appreciate what these potentially talented and dedicated job candidates will bring to a corporation.

Support the troops by hiring them, it’s the least that we can all do.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

Ready for that corner office and a reserved parking spot? Tired of waiting for your boss to die? As a service to you, my readers, I’m going to give you a much easier path to a fancier office, bigger paycheck and higher quality headaches.

Take the following quiz and you’ll immediately know if you’ve got what it takes to be a leader. The only thing that will then hold you back from making that magical leap from being the delegatee to being the delagator is to convince the management that this test is much cheaper than extensive evaluations and actual accomplishments in determining the “keepers” for your company. But then again, Ms. or Mr. UpWardlyMobile, this is a small price to pay for potentially huge jump up the corporate ladder.

The answers, and what your score means to your career, appear at the bottom of the column.

1. Define “Management by Objective,” “Reengineering” and “Theory Y Management.” 10 points
2. What is the number one employee complaint? 10 points
3. What is your company’s vision statement? 25 points
4. What is the most precious resource for your company? 15 points
5. Which best describes your approach to leadership? 15 points
–a. I deserve my obscene paycheck and options because I make the tough decisions
–b. If indicted, I’m ready to claim that I really didn’t know what was going on
–c. All of the above

1. Give yourself 0 points if you had any clue about what “Management by Objective,” “Reengineering” or “Theory Y Management” means. If you have no idea, give yourself 10 points. You should know by now that old fads are not worthy of the bandwidth of an up-and-coming executive.

2. The number one employee complaint—“it’s too cold.” The second most common employee complaint? “It’s too hot,” according to a study by the International Facility Management Association. Give yourself 10 points if you got either of those answers correct. But give yourself 15 points if you refused to answer the question—because the only employee complaints that should concern you are those of your people.

3. Okay, vision statements from most organizations are forgettable platitudes that should make any sane person wretch. But remember, you want to join the ranks of people who spent days at some fancy resort to come up with this BS. So give yourself 25 points if you can recite your company’s current vision statement. Unfortunately this isn’t hand grenades or horse shoes, so close doesn’t count. To get the points, you’ve got to nail it perfectly.

4. If you answered that the most precious resource for your company are the employees, give yourself 20 points. If you said your boss, subtract ten points from your total. You should know that sucking up should always be focused on the person who signs your paychecks and not a silly quiz at a web site.

5. If you chose obscene paycheck AND claim that you didn’t know what was going on in the company you were running then you must work on Wall Street.

Scoring:
85—Check your pants, I think they might be on fire
70—Get ready to say goodbye to your cube
50—Don’t you have better things to do than take online leadership quizzes?
30 or below—Remember, without followers, there wouldn’t be any leaders

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Check the revised edition of his Wall Street Journal best seller, “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

You’d expect the “father” of the cubicle to be a proud parent. Heck, his invention multiplied faster than rabbits. But you’d be wrong.

Thirty years ago, Robert Probst was seeking to create the perfect place to work for the office furnishings company Herman Miller. In search of the “office of the future,” he designed the perfect environment for maximum satisfaction and productivity. He called his creation “the action office.”

Yep, the cubicle. At the time Probst was looking for something better than the open bullpen that was the norm for much of the last century. He wanted to create a space that would allow privacy, personalization and the maximum in flexibility. For example, his original creation had a variety of surfaces that you could work from each that was a different height.

So much for privacy, personalization and flexibility. Just before his death in 2000, Probst called his creation “monolithic insanity” in Fortune.

There are many reasons why the “action office” devolved in the cube. Soaring real estate prices, corporations trying to get more bang for the buck by packing employees in like sardines and even the tax code (corporations can write off cubicles much faster than they can write off their investment in walls in an office building).

There is a part of me that believes that the successor to the cube will be emptying out our huge office buildings in a massive wave of telecommuting. This makes sense for so many reasons—spiraling gas prices, increasing real estate costs and the fact that so many homes now have broadband access. The only problem with this picture is that we barely know how to manage the people we can see at work, so few of us have the foggiest idea of how to manage people we can’t see.

Which leads back to the “action office.” It’s clear that business is now 0 for 2. The bullpen didn’t work. The cubicle has spawned Dilbert and a massive amount of griping from most of the people who’ve worked in one.

So what is the answer? I think it involves combining the best of the future with the best of the past. The first part of the equation is really figuring out what jobs can be done by telecommuting. And what workers and managers are up to this challenge. Once these jobs are moved out of our buildings then we’ll actually have the room to turn the cube back into the “action office” that Probst originally envisioned. With fewer people they can be bigger and hopefully employees can have the ability to tailor them to their needs.

For all the talk of productivity, I’m surprised at how little of the conversation addresses the place where most of our work actually gets done. If more of us engage in this conversation, hopefully, we’ll be able to put the “action” back into the “action office.”

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Also check out his newly revised best-seller “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.

I’ve gotten a lot of email through the years. And most of it has been difficult to read—people who were cruelly fired, who are being hassled by coworkers or who have done something truly stupid (just this morning I just got an email from a woman who told me about how she sent her resume and cover letter to her current boss).

If you have a particularly macabre sense of humor it is possible to find my mail funny. But mostly it makes me sad.

So given the negative nature of most of my correspondence, the last few weeks have been a revelation for me. I’ve been working on a new business venture and I’m part of a team of four people putting together a business plan. One guy I’ve worked with on my last two books, so we have a bunch of history working together. The other two people were total strangers when we started. I barely knew either of them either personally or professionally. Another complicating factor is how different our expertise, world view and just general make up are from each other (that’s make-up in terms of approach to the world and not our use of rouge).

If this column had a sound track, you’d probably be hearing Steven Stills in the background singing “Love the One Your With.” (Don’t recognize it, then just ask the nearest boomer and they can hum a few bars for you).

Please note, I didn’t say that we were all singing “Kumbaya.” No this is a room full of Type A personalities. The key is as remarkable as it is simple. We all listen to each other. In fact, I can think of multiple areas where we all had hard and fast rules for what we wanted. We listened to the other people involved and either modified what we previously thought was essential.

I can hear what you’re thinking. It’s like a committee that produces lowest common denominator work. Not at all. We are actually able to draw the best from each person and then make it even better through our brainstorming.

One simple trick, we call it placeholders. When we have a name or idea that is good, but its clear to at least some of us that we could probably do better, we call the existing best effort our placeholder. We use it, but we’re always on the lookout to make it better. This is just one technique we’ve developed to not settle for okay, but to push for the best.

This experience has given me hope. It is possible to work with people who you like and respect and accomplish a lot in the process. You better sit down before you read this next sentence—not only is it possible to find colleagues that you can work with, I believe there are even a few sane bosses out there. The challenge is to find ‘em.

Okay, I’m sure that most of my regular readers think that either this blog has been hijacked or that I’ve lost my mind. It’s hard to argue with the latter argument, but after year upon year of horror stories from the cubicle world, I want to take a moment to report that work can be uplifting, collaborative and fun and not just a long process of letting all of the air out of your tires.

I’ve decided to go positive. I’ve learned from Allan, Shari and Jon that collaboration is a wonderful thing. Sure there are tough times, but the more brains you have at the table the better the quality of the work and the more fun you’ll have.

A few words for those stuck in a less than great working environment. I understand that people have mortgages, orthodontist bills and families to feed. That said, I’m hard pressed to say that there are just some jobs that are better to have in your rear view mirror. A paycheck just isn’t worth daily bouts crying, being yelled at or just feeling miserable. Hopefully this blog can play a small role in reminding you that there are saner possibilities out there.

I’ve also heard through the years from people who’ve taken a bad work environment and turned it around. Mostly through “random acts of kindness,” or building community, trust and support in a place where none exists. It’s not easy, but like flowers growing up through tiny cracks in a sidewalk, it happens.

There is a saying from an old court case, “Work time is for work.” But that doesn’t mean that it has to be a prison sentence—something to be endured. Work can have meaning, collaboration and, dare I say it, fun. But it probably won’t just fall in your lap. You’ll have to seek it out, but it’s out there.

About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. Also check out his newly revised best-seller “The Boss’s Survival Guide.” If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.