Boss Should Be More a Parent Than Friend

Should you try to be a close friend to your employees or is there another way to approach the relationship. This short article on The Street weighs in…

Showing an employee you care means walking some fine lines. There's a difference, for example, between asking about someone's life and being nosy.

We all know, of course, about the critical importance of engagement to your company’s profitability and success…

Research has shown over and over that employee engagement is an important predictor of retention levels and productivity: Workers who feel deeply connected to their job are more likely to stay longer and do better work. To be engaged, employees need to believe that the person they report to cares about their life and career. Even Google, with its emphasis on tech wizardry, found during a recent in-house study that caring and concern were the most important qualities for effective managers -- skills that ranked well ahead of technical know-how.

And we also know  that highly engaged employees have higher levels of agreement that their managers care about them. But does that mean you have to make everyone who works for you into your BFF?
Read the whole article here.

Inspire Innovation in Your Company

December 16, 2009: Sparxoo.com

by Katherine Parsons

In a recession, marketing and innovation budgets are often the first areas to trim. However, these areas are more important than ever as consumers become extra selective about their purchases. Now is the time to differentiate your offering to stand out. Outlined below are simple tips you can reference to help inspire innovation in your company. We have distilled practices from some of the most innovative companies today into these five easy to implement lessons:

1. Shake it up. Sometimes routines can lead you into a rut. In order to stimulate innovation, shake things up. Move your desk or, better yet, have the whole office rotate pods. This will literally encourage you to see things in a new light and interact with new colleagues. Also, be sure to allow time to leave the office—to work virtually or just work in shops that might inspire the topic. For example, if you are researching health, go to an organic tea shop and work there. Listening to the conversations and sipping the tea will yield new insights. Furthermore, talking to people outside of your department, and even your company, further pushes thinking.
a. At Menlo Innovations, meetings are often continued outside—literally beyond the meeting rooms
b. At What If?!, no “home desk” keeps people from moving and meeting people

2. Play. Children learn through experimentation and interactions, yet as adults we are often reluctant to experiment. We need to reintroduce play into the environment and support the principles associated with it—including the risk of failure which often accompanies trying ones hand at new and unscripted ventures. An added bonus of play is employee engagement and building a sense of camaraderie and sportsmanship.
a. At Google, gyms and play areas encourage relationships beyond work
b. At Ideo, toys and visual, movable bulletin boards foster play and proptyping

3. Express yourself. Companies should allow employees the freedom of artistic expression and personalization as a way to make them feel “at home” in the office and to inspire their work. Moreover, encourage employees to dabble in areas that they are passionate about—even if it means having an artist try their hand at coding or vice versa. You never know where great ideas come from and what can inspire further innovation.
a. At Pixar, you design your own workspace in the way that inspires you
b. At Google , employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on personal “passion projects”

4. Put a stake in it. While it may not be possible for each employee to be a stakeholder of the company, it is possible for each of them to feel like their contribution matters. It is important to motivate employees to action, set metrics and goals to work towards and provide feedback and rewards along the way. Many innovative companies employee a networked, less hierarchical cross-functional team model to maximize employee voice.
a. At privately-held W.L Gore, each associate is an “owner” in the company
b. Pfizer solicits feedback from their employees via a suggestion box program that offers cash bonuses for employee actions that are put into action.

5. Nourish. With so much focus on business results and performance assessment, it is important not to overlook feeding the mind and body as well as the bank. This means focusing on corporate wellness initiatives and individual employees’ wellbeing. Studies have shown that spending money on these enrichment efforts does, in fact, pay off in the long run—a win/win for the employee and company.
a. At Google, besides a stellar free cafeteria, there are also numerous snack pods where employees are encouraged to refuel, refresh and converse
b. At What if?!, praise for the employees is written across the walls and ceiling in the hub area

5 Ways to Grow in Any Economy: Learn to Keep Your Company Moving Even When Things are Stagnant

December 23, 2009: Entrepreneur.com

by Jennifer Brown

Even in tough economic times, small businesses need to find new ideas, develop original products, and engineer fresh market approaches. These are the pillars of good business, and each is made from a mixture of creativity and expertise. While it may seem counterintuitive, it's entirely possible to implement strategies that drive not only employee engagement, but also innovation and, ultimately, sales--all without enormous investment in systems or people.

What can your company do to remain fresh, vibrant and alive--all without breaking the bank? Here are five ways:

1. De-emphasize office space
The traditional office space, where cubicles, the hum of overhead lights, and group politics preside, is not usually the most conducive environment for harnessing the most creative ideas. Giving employees the opportunity to perform some or all of their work outside the office can break this routine and cultivate an innovative workforce.

Often simply changing the physical working location to the café or tea house on the corner can produce a stream of new and valuable ideas. And many of these "third places" provide complimentary wireless internet access, have space for convening, and sell enough coffee to keep everyone alert. Writers and musicians know about the creative effects of a cafe's stimulating and relaxing atmosphere--why not CEOs?

2. Virtualize your workforce
In addition to being ineffective at times, the office space may be an unnecessary expense. The cost of maintaining an office space is usually the single largest line item when it comes to business overhead. Many small businesses have eliminated the expense by ceasing to rent office space and setting up virtually. Transforming your business into a virtual operation creates the new opportunity to hire and retain talented people from outside of your geographic area and frees up funds to be invested elsewhere.

Keep in mind, though, that while there are many benefits to virtualizing a company, the reduction in face time also necessitates a change in management style. Much greater focus is needed on project expectations and deadlines, as well as clear and consistent communication.

3. Leverage collaboration applications
At the beginning and end of the day, your business is about people--the clients you serve and the staff that you employ. Connecting these people in the right way is essential to creating and running a great company, and collaboration applications are excellent tools with which to accomplish this goal.

Collaboration applications create new avenues of communication that effectively improve team cohesion and break down the invisible barriers within a company. Intelligent implementation can turn a stagnant, sluggish company into one composed of engaged employees, who contribute more of their "discretionary time" toward the success of the company.

One excellent collaboration application is GoogleDocs, which creates an online conference table where ideas can be put forward, discussed and implemented. Every document created within the application is saved, so it can be opened and edited wherever there is an internet connection. Novice computer users will find GoogleDocs easy to learn and intuitive to operate. Likewise, instant messaging programs such as Skype or MSN Messenger enable fast communication through chat groups formed around departments or projects.

CPS Creative, a website design company, is a great model for its implementation of collaboration software. The company, which is almost entirely virtual, requires all employees to use the same instant messaging program and be online at designated times. All of the employees assigned to a specific project join the same chat group. Also, at the beginning and end of each work day, all employees check in with their colleagues in order to let them know they have arrived and left.

4. Invest in the skills of current employees
On a regular basis, companies face a host of small but necessary tasks that must be accomplished, like creating a Flash graphic for the website, writing a marketing brochure, or drafting a press release. Yet smaller companies cannot afford a dedicated IT department, marketing staff or public affairs coordinator, despite the fact that many of these tasks, like maintaining a functioning and well-designed website, are essential to attracting new business and transitioning from a struggling start-up to a vibrant and growing company.

Hiring new employees with the necessary skills is not the only solution; invest in the skill development of your current workforce. Your staff most likely either has the requisite capabilities to accomplish these projects or can quickly acquire them. The additional skills will undoubtedly be very marketable, which satisfies your employees while providing for the needs of the company.

One resource to help accomplish this is the website Lynda.com [http://www.lynda.com/], which provides online training in professional-grade applications like Adobe Dreamweaver and Illustrator--the required tools to build quality websites and produce stunning marketing materials.

5. Build cross-functional teams
Finally, one of the greatest methods for producing innovation in a company is to solicit contributions from the entire workforce. Taking your employees, who are the most knowledgeable experts on the company, and gathering them around a conference table will help your company develop innovative solutions with little investment.

CPS Creative once encouraged a non-technical member of their staff to try his hand at Flash design, something that he had never done before. After seeing his immediate aptitude for it, the company merged the product developed by the original Flash expert with the staff member's design, creating a better product in the end.

Regardless of the condition of the economy, companies should always looking toward expansion. Growing while revenue is stagnant is a difficult, but not impossible, task. Consider these five ideas: shifting the workplace away from the office, virtualizing the workforce, using collaboration applications, investing in new skills acquisition, and tapping into the talents of existing employees. All of these strategies are inexpensive and cultivate the essential ingredients of successful small (and someday large) businesses everywhere--workforce engagement, innovation and, ultimately, sales.

How to Keep Morale Up in a Down Economy

December 7, 2009: MSN Business on Main

by Toddi Gunther

Speak to employees at companies where cost-cutting and layoffs continue and it'll be clear that any talk of the recession being over isn't having much of an impact on workplace morale.

But while it might seem challenging to keep employees in this position focused, motivated and productive, it's essential for companies to engage them and inspire them to do their best. This isn't just talk, either, as studies have shown that high employee engagement correlates with strong business results like better performance, improved job retention, increased job satisfaction and organizational loyalty, and reduced stress.

"The willingness to go the extra mile, motivation to perform to the highest standards, creative energy applied to work, and interest in the company's success … is the secret sauce of successful companies," says Marcia G. Rhodes, spokeswoman for WorldatWork, a global association of human resources experts.

Ken Thomas, author of "Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement" and co-author of a measure of employee engagement used for management training and organizational change called the Work Engagement Profile, agrees: "It is a win-win [because] organizations need their workers to be engaged, but workers also want their work to be engaging."

Thomas notes that because today's work is more likely to be in the service sector rather than the manufacturing sector, more judgment and creativity are required from employees. "In this environment, then, good work isn't just about complying with routines and rules," he says. "It requires a deeper level of commitment and psychological involvement — a different degree of motivation."

To that end, small-business owners actually have an advantage over large corporations when it comes to keeping workers engaged. That's because "employees in small companies are much closer to the results of their work," says Cindy Ventrice, a workplace consultant and author of "Make Their Day! Employee Recognition That Works." And when employees can see the value of the work they do and make the connection between their job and the greater good of the organization, they are much more likely to be engaged.

So, in light of all the benefits of employee engagement, what exactly can small-business owners do to keep their employees loyal and productive? Don Lowman, managing director of strategic growth for human resources services at Towers Perrin, a global professional services firm, advises companies to do five things well for employees: know them, grow them, inspire them, involve them and reward them.

With that framework in mind, here are a few simple strategies that companies can use to initiate and/or improve employee engagement:

Spend time. Business owners need to spend time with their employees, answer their questions, and continually reinforce each employee's value to the company, says Rhodes of WorldatWork. "Money pays the bills but it doesn't engage the spirit, inspire enthusiasm or drive innovation," she says.

Implement recognition programs. Increasing the amount of recognition employees receive often increases engagement, says Ventrice. One strategy she recommends is to start a recognition notebook. A manager writes a note of praise or appreciation for an employee and then either passes it along to someone to do the same or leaves it somewhere for another person to write in. "It becomes a traveling trophy of positive comments and a permanent reminder of all the accomplishments," says Ventrice. Another strategy: Give away gift cards of small denominations for a job well done and then ask the recipient to name two or three others who helped to get the job done and give them gift cards, too.

Provide meaningful feedback. Communication, says Rhodes, even if negative, is what employees crave. According to a new Leadership IQ study, 66 percent of employees believe they have too little interaction with their boss. The study also shows that 53 percent of employees say that when their boss does praise excellent performance, the feedback does not provide enough useful information to help them repeat it.

While keeping employees engaged is hard work, the upside is that your employees will work much harder because of it.


Toddi is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor and currently is a contributing writer covering career management issues for The Wall Street Journal.

Leadership lessons from Obama, mismanagement tips from Scrooge

December 14, 2009: Morning Manager

by Harvey Schachter

U.S. President Barack Obama was criticized for dithering, taking too long to formulate his Afghanistan policy. But leadership expert Michael Watkins, writing on Harvard Business School's blogs, views it as a 'deeply deliberative' decision-making process that offers lessons for managers everywhere:

Gather the right minds

You can't hope to get the right decision if you don't start with the right inputs - and that includes the people involved in deliberating. Gathering the right minds around the table is key. Those minds must have the requisite range of expertise, opinion and "cognitive orientation" - you want creative and practical minds, analytical and values-driven minds and structured and flexible minds.

Decide how you will decide

To avoid degenerating into positional bickering, you need to outline a structure for deciding, with a set of distinct phases that should include defining the problem, establishing criteria for evaluating potential outcomes, generating and testing alternatives, and reaching closure. "The virtue of the phased approach is that it moves people through digestible experiences of education and adjustment, blunting the reflexive resort to position-taking, and avoiding premature convergence on an 'obvious' solution," Mr. Watkins writes.

Define desired outcomes

It's easy for the scope of the decision-making to either expand dangerously or get watered down. The best antidote is to define early and commit to a statement of desired outcomes. For U.S. President Barack Obama's team, that would have involved considering, up front, difficult questions, such as whether the goal in Afghanistan is to defeat the Taliban, and if so, over what time frame. Is it building civil society with the Afghan people? Is it buttressing stability in Pakistan? Is it getting U.S. troops home as quickly as possible? "The resulting mission statement, along with supporting criteria for rigorously evaluating potential outcomes, provides an essential anchor for the hard work of option generation and deliberation."

Watch your assumptions

The most dangerous things in the world are outdated assumptions, he warns, because they become the basis for flawed thinking. For example, we might infer that if "A" is true, "B" and "C" follow. But what if "A" is not true - perhaps it was once true, but no longer holds? He cites as an example: Is Al Qaeda still the primary threat to U.S. interests in the region? It's vital to bring the any fundamental assumptions to the surface and then test the soundness of those assumptions through careful and honest analysis. The idea is to build a shared foundation of facts and hypotheses on which the decision can be built.

Seek minority views

To get good decisions, you need disagreements, which will help you steer clear of "groupthink." Michael Roberto, in Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes For An Answer, suggests giving those with minority viewpoints a good hearing, appointing a devil's advocate, or setting up two opposing teams to debate the matter. U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden's strong opposition to a large troop increase probably helped the decision-making team in this vein.

Know when, how to end it

Be deliberate, but know when it's time to call the question. "Decision-makers like Obama have to set deadlines and other action-forcing events to bring the process to a conclusion. They must demand that everyone around the table support the outcome, even if there is not full consensus that it is the right way to go," he concludes.

POWER POINTS

Make a list, check it twice

On your last day at work before the coming holidays, leave a note detailing where you left off unfinished tasks; what tasks were postponed for your return; what needs immediate attention when you return; and anything else you worry you'll forget during your time off. Include a reminder to turn off your out-of-office e-mail reply and update your voice mail on your return. Ali Hale on Dumb Little Man

Tip from a coal miner's daughter

Marketing advice from country singer Loretta Lynn: "You either have to be first, best, or different." The Planning Shop Report

Repeat response

If you receive a few e-mail questions or requests that are repetitive, you can automate your response by writing your reply as a new e-mail signature on your e-mail program and having it available at the click of a mouse. This concept also works in BlackBerrys, under the AutoText feature. The Womack Company newsletter

Customers need more time

If you use daily deals as part of your e-mail marketing strategy, you may be missing out by leaving your customers insufficient time to see the e-mail and respond. A recent study by Pivotal Veracity found that e-mail recipients in August took on average 25.9 hours to open marketing messages. Retail E-mail

Picture-perfect meetings

Have you ever thought of hiring an artist to take minutes at your meetings? Bigger Picture is a Danish company that tries to make meetings, workshops and conferences more effective by capturing what happens at them visually rather than with words. If it seems like a stretch, perhaps a combination of visual and word minutes might work. Springwise Newsletter

Touchy touchpads

Most laptop owners have been frustrated by their cursor acting unpredictably when their wrist accidentally grazes the touchpad. TouchFreeze, a free software utility, prevents that by disabling your touchpad as soon as you start typing and then re-enabling it when you stop.

Lifehacker.com

Learning from scrooge

This is the season for readings of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, and management writer Phil Whitely says you should be paying attention early in the story to how Ebenezer Scrooge manages - or, more accurately, mismanages - his employee, Bob Cratchit.

We are told, for example, that Scrooge is mean and rich - the assumption being that those attributes are linked. By treating his employee poorly - Cratchit labours in what Dickens describes as a "dismal little cell" with "a very small fire," and has to warm his hands by the light of a candle - Scrooge saves money.

Writing in management-Issues.com, Mr. Whitely notes that Dickens doesn't pause to comment on whether, if the productivity of the clerk mattered to the business, the capacity of his fingers to function would be of commercial benefit to a profit-hungry boss. But many modern employers are equally oblivious, notes Mr. Whitely, who worked at an office where the IT server had air conditioning but the workers did not.

He adds that the most cursory risk assessment by Scrooge would have indicated that Cratchit was highly likely to seek employment elsewhere, and there would be no guarantee of finding a replacement of similar calibre.

"In Scrooge's rigidity and myopia, one can identify the genesis of the MBA: The pretence that employee welfare matters only to the employee and is a net cost to the business; the emphasis upon accountancy, rather than understanding the business; the ignorance of the links between employee engagement and business performance; the neglect of the risk of loss of talent through indifferent management and poor leadership," Mr. Whitely says.

It's a classic story in more ways than we may have realized.

Self-management: The pause that protects

A few weeks ago, Thomas Nelson chief executive officer Michael Hyatt let his anger get away, and took a cheap shot at another organization in his Twitter feed to 45,000 followers. It was a reminder to him that between a stimulus - something that irritates us - and our response, we have to ensure there is space for reflection. Think of it as a big pause button that you hit, before responding.

Give yourself time to cool down, and act more maturely than might be your first instinct. "It is amazing how different things look when you get a little perspective," he wrote on michaelhyatt.com. "Eight to 24 hours later, things almost always look different."

Six Tips to Boost Employee Engagement

December 3, 2009: Australian Anthill

by Persephone Nicholas

With one in five Australian workers admittedly unhappy at work, those companies that can keep their employees engaged have all sorts of advantages. Here are some tips to help your staff get the most out of themselves.

Shock statistic of the week: one in five Australians are extraordinarily unhappy at work.

According to Melissa Dunn Lampe of global research-based consulting company Gallup, unhappiness is a vice Australia can ill afford. She estimates this malaise, caused by employee disengagement, costs the country up to $42 billion each year.

The flip side of the coin, according to Gallup, is that organisations with an engaged workforce (employees who are switched on and passionate about their work) are 27 percent more profitable, achieving 50 percent higher sales and 38 percent above-average productivity. Building an engaged workforce can also reduce accidents at work by up to 62 percent, staff turnover by up to 50 percent and absenteeism by up to 27 percent.

The idea of a link between people’s feelings and their behaviour isn’t new. Yet Gallup’s survey of 6.1 million respondents worldwide, representing 700,000 workgroups in more than 100 countries, sheds new light on the importance of recognising and rewarding employee contributions in the workplace.

Dunn Lampe says employers need to give employees a clear sense of purpose by “creating environments where people feel they are making a contribution, not just coming in and doing a job, where they can link themselves to a higher purpose the organisation fulfils for society or for their industry in some way”.

Purposeful employees deserve appropriate feedback. Those who received feedback on their strengths were most likely (43 percent) to be engaged, followed by those receiving feedback on their weaknesses (33 percent engagement). Worst off is a groups she calls “the ignored”, who were assessed on neither strengths nor weaknesses — resulting in an engagement score of just 2 percent. “They are getting nothing and are extraordinarily unlikely to be engaged or give any discretionary effort to their work.”

Employers ignore employees at their peril. “You’d be mad not to have an institutionalised system to give people high quality feedback on a very regular basis. You’d be crazy to let your people stay in that ignored bucket because there is no way you’re going to get the most out of them.”

Employee disengagement results in ailing business and is linked to ill health and stress in disengaged individuals. “People who are actively disengaged are much more likely to have health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes and are much more likely to self-report that in the last month there were three or more days when they behaved badly towards their friends and/or family because of stress at work. The implications are huge for people’s health, life satisfaction and longevity.”

She says we must take responsibility for our circumstances. “A lot of times at work we create a situation, intentionally or not, that we don’t enjoy then whinge about it rather than taking some positive action to make a change in the right direction.”

Ironically, disengagement is no indication an employee will leave. Dunn Lampe counsels taking control. “For the benefit of your own health, seriously consider a move. Half of the people in Australia who are actively disengaged told us they intend to be with their current employer a year from now. Don’t do that to yourself. If you’re really unhappy at work, figure out a way to get out of there and get somewhere else.”

“Take responsibility for your own engagement. Talk with your manager and tell them the sorts of things in your role you most enjoy, solicit their assistance in tailoring your role so you do as much of that as possible. We all have things about our jobs we enjoy more than others but you can come up with strategies to do what you need to and get it over with so you can focus on things you’re naturally talented at.”

She has no time for self-pity. “If you’re one of those people who whinges, ‘I don’t get enough recognition for what I do around here,’ then my first question to you is, ‘When was the last time you went out of your way to give someone else some?’”

We must not lose focus in uncertain times. “When times are tough, people have less choice about where they’re going. Managers should focus on the basics and give people as much clarity and stability as possible, some hope for the future and show their humanity at work. Creating engaging workplaces is not complicated but it does require deliberate effort.”

Melissa Dunn Lampe’s tips for creating a more engaging workplace

1. Treat your staff as people first, then employees. Look at them as individuals and get to know them.
2. Show your humanity — ask for help when you need it and show compassion when appropriate.
3. Try, even in uncertain times, to create as much stability as possible. Be clear about expectations and priorities and define expected behaviours plus business outcomes.
4. Give recognition and praise generously. Encourage your people to be generous with one another and their subordinates.
5. Give regular, specific, positive feedback and correct inappropriate behaviour immediately.
6. Create a purpose-driven environment. People need to connect to something greater than themselves or simply achieving sales targets.