Check out this interesting article. Shines a light on why the widely reported unemployment rate may not tell the full story.
There still is an American Dream!
There still is an American Dream!
The economy has improved and continues to improve and many business owners and executives sense real opportunity ahead, The American Dream is alive! What we must not forget is the hard work it has taken to survive perhaps the worst economic period we will ever see in our working careers. Please click on the links below to read about the hard work and literal survival skills it took for one young man to be in the position to pursue The American Dream.
http://magazine.wgaesf.org/summer2014#&pageSet=3
http://magazine.wgaesf.org/summer2014#&pageSet=4
You will see that the article is from the Summer 2014 issue of the Western Golf Association, Evans Scholars Magazine. Please click on the link on the right side of the article to learn how you can make more of these amazing stories possible.
The Afterword
Do you read the afterword of any book? I’m usually done when I finish the last chapter but this time I read on.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen in print as strong a statement as Stephen Covey’s regarding the importance of proactive recruiting. Covey was asked – “ If you had it to do over again, what is the one thing you would do differently as a businessperson?” His response – “I would do more strategic, proactive recruiting and selecting. When you are buried by the urgent it is so easy to put people that appear to have solutions into key positions. The tendency is to not look deeply into their backgrounds and patterns, to do the due diligence, nor is it to carefully develop the criteria that needs to be met in the particular roles or assignments. I am convinced that although training and development is important, recruiting and selection are much more important.”
Easy to say, hard to do! Absolutely, most organizations, unless they are growing consistently, fill positions when they are open – planned or unplanned. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look to be proactive when we can predict the need to add to staff.
I hope your business and personal year is continuing to go well and your New Year’s Resolutions (remember mine was to read more) are still intact!
Do Your People Read?
I’m sure they can, but do they make time? Do you encourage reading? Do you make time?
Habit #7 from Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is “taking time to sharpen the saw.” He describes it as “the habit that makes all the others possible.”
I believe of the Four Dimensions of Renewal that he outlines – Physical, Spiritual, Mental (reading, visualizing, planning) and Social/Emotional – that the most often neglected is the Reading portion of Mental renewal.
Every leader wants improved performance via new insights from their team. Where are they getting those insights, not likely from a focus only on their tasks and those of their direct reports. Encourage your people to read –try some assigned reading. In words quoted by Covey – “The person who doesn’t read is no better off than the person who can’t read.”
I hope your business and personal year is continuing to go well and your New Year’s Resolutions (remember mine was to read more) are still intact!
What Do You Reward?
How did your team perform against their goals in the all-important first quarter? Sales, production quality, cost efficiency, it really doesn’t matter: “you basically get what you reward!”
I’m rereading Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, some books really are timeless as it was published in 1989 and as of Sunday April 20, 2014 it remains in the Top 25 on the New York Times Bestseller list. In his discussion of Habit #4, “Think Win/Win” he writes “Win/Win can only survive in an organization when systems support it. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values.”
So if your team fell short of their goals in the first quarter, and April isn’t turning it around, it isn’t necessarily time to send your accounting and finance team on a “reforecast assignment.” However, it may well be time to involve your entire management team in rethinking how you are incentivizing and rewarding the behaviors which will lead to achieving those goals.
I will have more from Covey in the next installment. I hope your business and personal year is continuing to go well and your New Year’s Resolutions are still intact!
What is Your TCA?
I’ve been keeping my 2014 New Year’s Resolution to “Read More” and in the last month got through the John Steinbeck classic Of Mice and Men (can’t believe it was never assigned at St. Xavier High School), and two from Mitch Albom I had always promised myself I would get to – Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. All well worth the read but “TCA” comes from the book I mentioned in January, The No Asshole Rule by Robert I. Sutton, PhD.
TCA refers to “Total Cost of Assholes to Your Organization” and I’ll highlight just a few that will hit home for anyone who has had one or more of these persons in your organization.
1) Distraction from tasks – more effort devoted to avoiding nasty encounters, coping with them, avoiding blame, and less effort devoted to the task itself.
2) Victims and witnesses hesitate to help or cooperate with the offender and they don’t give them bad news.
3) Management time spent:
- Appeasing, calming, counseling or disciplining the offender.
- Calming employees who are victimized.
- Appeasing and calming victimized customers, contractors, suppliers, and other key outsiders.
Just to close on this book I believe Sutton says it best on page 87: “Having all the right business philosophies and management practices to support the no asshole rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, the right way.”
I hope your business and personal year is continuing to go well and your New Year’s Resolutions are still intact!
New Year’s Resolutions – An Easy One!
I don’t know about you but I’m in the habit of not only making New Year’s Resolutions, but writing them down. One of my dual purpose business and professional resolutions for 2013 was – “Be On Time” and seeing it regularly on page one of my 2013 journal helped me improve my punctuality throughout the year. For 2014 my dual purpose resolution is “Read More”, meaning more books, so I thought sharing excerpts from current and previous reads would be helpful in keeping my resolution and giving you some thought provoking ideas during 2014.
I read this book twice during 2013 because I liked it so much – how could you not be intrigued by a book titled The No Asshole Rule. The author, Robert I. Sutton, PhD, a Stanford University professor begins by stating we may call these people by other more polite names but “asshole best captures the fear and loathing I have for these nasty people.” I didn’t agree with all of his “Ten Steps for Enforcing the No Asshole Rule” but here are two that hit home with me when it comes to hiring and managing professionals:
Step 2) Assholes will hire other assholes. Keep your resident jerks out of the hiring process, or if you can’t, involve as many “civilized” people in interviews and decisions to offset the predilection of people to hire “jerks like me.”
Step 3) Organizations usually wait too long to get rid of certified and incorrigible assholes and once they do the reaction is usually, “Why did we wait so long to do that?”
I hope your year is off to an excellent start and your New Year’s Resolutions are still intact!
What Millenials Want
Interesting article from the Global CFO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited. He discusses the results of his firm’s survey regarding what Millennials (born January 1983 and forward) want to be when they grow up. It provides good insight as to what motivates this generation.
How to Reinvent Yourself After 50
I serve on a Task Force that was assembled to address the issues related to “experienced” individuals (over the age of 55) who are seeking career advancement, placement and fulfillment as well as the increased demand by employers for qualified candidates. A fellow member of this Task Force emailed this Harvard Business Review article to me and I, in turn thought it was very worthwhile to share here.
Time For Talent Management
“Time for employee evaluations – again – oh this will be painful!” I know I’ve heard that comment, heck I’ve made that comment! No one looks forward to this process; it almost never goes as you would like whether you are reviewing or being reviewed.
Owners and managers console themselves by believing all employees care about is the “money” part of the review. But were you prepared to offer them any concrete feedback on performance and where they need to focus their development efforts? Was the salary increase and bonus the only specific feedback you had to offer? One of the keys to an effective review program (one that fosters employee development, motivation and retention) is no different than any other mission critical business activity – Planning!
At annual review time it is important to gather information from various sources – the observations file you should have been keeping all year, internal performance measurement systems, and industry/professional association compensation data.
Now for something new in your preparation – talk to those you trust to recruit new talent to your organization. No one knows better what the keys are to keeping top talent.
If your organization is fortunate enough to have a dedicated Director of Talent Acquisition shouldn’t they really be your Director of Talent Management and be involved in acquiring AND developing that talent. Many Human Resources Professionals are expected to be generalists and they engage a recruiter for specific talent acquisitions. Encourage them to have the type of recruiter relationship that adds value to your talent development and retention efforts as well.