Four Insane Office Pranks for April Fools by Aaron Hurst

Four Insane Office Pranks for April Fools by Aaron Hurst, CEO of Taproot Foundation and Slater Institute

 

 

One of the great joys of being a CEO is being able to punk your team on the first day of April. What tricks do you have up your sleeve for April Fools Day at your office? Here are some of the winners from my playbook.

1) Dress Code

April 1st is a great day to email the team to let them know that with success comes the necessity to dress the part. It needs to sound like an email from HR and include a date and time (later that month) for a company-wide webinar on the new policy. Ideally include some photos of dress that is acceptable and unacceptable now. Alternatives: you are working to recruit more Millennials and need the staff to dress more "Millennial-friendly".

2) Unexpected Merger

What better day to announce an unlikely merger or acquisition than on April 1st? The key here is to make sure the email reads and includes the details and tone of a real email announcing a merger. It also needs to be a viable merger or acquisition idea that the team would find shocking but believable. The best is one in which the partner is an organization adjacent to your category and not directly in it.

3) Site Hacked

Your website is your storefront. It is critical that it represents your organization well. When your site is down or busted it often sends the organization into a tailspin. You would't want it to appear a mess for the outside world, but your tech team can display an alternate home page that is only seen by your team on April 1st. Make it look like a competitor hacked your system and turned your home page into an ad for their services. Or just puts some not so subtle bugs on the page that would quickly catch the attention of every member of the team when they get to work in the morning.

4) CEO in Prison

While I was traveling in China, my assistant sent an email to the team and board stating that I had been detained in China by the government for suspected spying. In the email they introduced an interim-CEO with a link to a (was my muppet alter ego). This one had great potential but blew up on me. Several board members from Fortune 100 companies didn't click on the video, thought it was real and engaged their corporate counsel to rescue me from China. They weren't very happy when it turned out it was a prank. Sorry, again.

Ever been victim to a good office prank or orchestrated one of your own? We want to hear about it!

Posted by: Aaron Hurst (Originally written for Linkedin.com) 

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Three Deadly Career Traps, and How to Avoid Them



Three deadly career traps, and how to avoid them



One minute a business leader is master of the universe, and the next no one returns his or her calls. How can you avoid this sort of nightmare?

While there are no guarantees in life, there are classic errors that cause smart people to self-destruct. If you avoid these traps, you can protect your career and preserve your ability to be effective.
These principles don't just apply to CEOs. If you are hiring others, you have some degree of power over them. If you purchase goods from other businesses, you have a degree of influence over those vendors. But, yes, the more responsibilities you take on, the more these traps need to concern you.
1.The "ego-driven blind spot" trap: Like the rest of us, you are not perfect. One of the biggest challenges to acquiring power is that fewer and fewer people are willing to give you objective feedback.
If you suddenly are praised as a genius, your internal alarms should sound. You're not smarter than ever, you're just surrounded by people who dare not point out weak points in your reasoning. Everyone has flaws, and it is crucial that you both understand and monitor your own weaknesses.
Set up systems that enable you to detect potential dangers along the paths you are pursuing:

• Encourage employees to submit anonymous feedback.
• From time to time, hold meetings at which the sole purpose of all gathered is to play devil's advocate with regards to your existing strategies.
• Foster a culture in which it is a badge of pride to "beat the control," which means putting forth a strategy that can be proven better than the existing one.
• Engage objective and independent observers whose role is to second guess you. Even if 90% of the time they can't convince you to change course, those occasions on which they prevent you from veering off the road will be invaluable.

2. The "repeat past successes" trap: Successful people tend to repeat the strategies that made them successful. While this often makes sense for a time, the only constant in our world is change. It is difficult to name a company that has had the same level of success for ten years' running. Likewise, over a five to ten year period, your access to information and the sophistication of your technology changes radically; you have to adapt as these fundamentals shift.
I'm not suggesting you follow every fad. Hype and overblown promises abound. But never stop testing your own skills and strategies, even in ways that may seem silly to you. For example, I'd encourage even top executives to invest a little time in learning to code. You are not going to become a programmer, but you won't be able to understand the detail that underlies most businesses unless you understand the details involved in programming.

3. The "use power too personally" trap: It would be futile to count the number of leaders who fell from grace because they crossed a line and used power to have an affair or otherwise feed their own desire for pleasure. This may be the biggest trap of all.
If you want to not only maintain a successful career, but also help lead your company in the right direction, then use power for the benefit of others:

• Empower your employees, so that they can delight your customers.
• Enrich your investors, by viewing their faith in you as a solemn responsibility.
• Enhance the communities in which your organization operates, by understanding that your success is only sustainable if theirs is, too.

Putting things in perspective
The harsh reality is that career traps are just as common as career opportunities. Remain confident but humble, and don't step into an obvious trap.

Article Written by Bruce Kasanoff -
 

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Image credit: Flickr member Niklas

Why You Are Unhappy At Your Job

Unhappy at work? Time to make some changes.

A whopping 60 percent of Americans would choose a different career if given the chance. That says a lot about our happiness levels.

Finding a fulfilling career is, in itself, hard work. We all want the security of a job that fulfills our creative aspirations, but many employees across the U.S. are struggling. So what’s the solution? Undoubtedly, you don’t have complete control over factors like your boss, money, co-workers, and assigned tasks. But there are reasons you hate your job that you can change.

Here are five reasons you don’t love your job:

1. You’re unorganized. Organization clears your head. When’s the last time you organized your inbox, updated your computer and mobile device software, or cleaned your workspace? Disarray causes anxiety, so get organized if you want to feel fulfilled creatively.

2. You’re stressed. By nature, work causes anxiety. But we all have to do it. If you aren’t taking time to step back and breathe, your stress will only get worse. Take the time to relax every day, not just on the weekends.

3. You’re not taking care of your body. Are you finding yourself reaching for junk food in the office vending machine? Are you overcaffeinated? Hitting up happy hour too frequently? Taking care of your body is the first step to unwinding, so pay attention to what goes in it.

4. You don’t like your colleagues. You see your colleagues each and every day. If you don’t get along on a personal level, it can be difficult to be in the same office together each day. Try to practice empathy when dealing with your coworkers, and understand that they have a lot going on in their personal life, too. If someone seems angry or upset, take it as a sign that they need space.

5. Your finances aren’t in order. Just how much do you pay attention to your spending? Are you throwing money away on unnecessary items like clothing, expensive coffees, or new gadgets you don’t need? Getting your finances in order will afford you security. If you can’t reconcile your finances even after addressing your own spending habits, talk to your boss, or band together with other workers who are feeling the same.

In addition to the above reasons, it is necessary to consider the big picture. Before you automatically assume it's just your job, consider if you are in the right industry or with a company that matches your core values.

Before throwing in the towel, consider which aspects of your job you can change in order to make your work life less stressful and more enjoyable. Learning to love your job -- or just falling back in love with it -- is hard work, and it often takes a level of introspection and self-awareness that some of us inadvertently lack.
(Image courtesy kalexanderson, Flickr)

About Ilya Pozin:
Founder of Ciplex. Columnist for Inc, Forbes & LinkedIn. Gadget lover, investor, mentor, husband, father, and '30 Under 30' entrepreneur.