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“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

In 1998, Dr. Spencer Johnson published “Who Moved My Cheese,” a business fable that would remain on the New York Times best seller list for almost five years.  Its message is as relevant today as it was when it was published over 20 years ago, and it remains a very popular business book having sold over 26 million copies worldwide in 37 different languages.  The central theme of the book is change . . . particularly about how we react to change.  Do we hunker down and wait it out in the belief that the change will pass and we’ll get back to life as normal?  Or do we embrace change as the “new normal” and look for opportunities that the new normal may bring?  Considering the international business conditions many of us now face . . . trade wars, embargoes, tariffs, etc. . . . change seems to be an especially appropriate topic right now.  Like it or not, we all live in a global economy, and our business fortunes are inextricably tied to those of other countries all over the world.  Even those of us who have no obvious ties to international markets, probably have customers or suppliers who do.  For more on change and how we deal with it in the 21st century, please read on.

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”    ~Will Rogers

Complacency is a disease that will kill us more quickly than just about any other disease we can think of.  A little paranoia, on the other hand, will keep us on our toes and force us to continuously scan the horizon for the next approaching threat.  In fact, in a very real sense, identifying the changes coming at us and devising defenses against them are the two most important duties any of us have as company owners and CEOs.

So what sorts of changes are we guarding against?

We need to be alert for any and all changes that could threaten the company, its mission, or its goals, but in general, such changes will fit into the following broad areas:

Competitive changes.  A new, bigger, better-financed competitor enters the market (think a local hardware store suddenly faced with Home Depot entering the market).  Or maybe an existing competitor comes out with a new, revamped product line with functionality your products can’t match.  Or maybe an existing competitor launches a new pricing strategy that requires a response from you.

Technological changes.  A so-called “disruptive” technology enters the market making your products or services, if not obsolete, at least less important that they were previously.  Or these could be production technologies that allow a competitor to produce at higher quality standards, higher tolerances, or higher volumes than was previously available.

Governmental/Regulatory changes.  Even if you’re not in a regulated industry, you can still be impacted by governmental policies, tax structure, and judicial rulings.  OSHA inspectors can walk through your door anytime they choose whether you’re in a regulated industry or not.

Social changes.  Could you face a public relations problem if your workforce is perceived to be insufficiently diverse in terms of ethnicity and/or gender?  What if your pay scales do not provide a “living wage?”  Could you fairly be accused to perpetuating a toxic environment for women and/or minorities?

Financial changes.  We are struck by either a depression or a recession.  Think 2008 all over again.  Or maybe it’s less dire, but interest rates are high and bank financing is increasingly harder to get.

So how do we effectively keep an eye on these various sources of change?

  • Stay close to your customers and suppliers. Talk to them regularly about developments they see coming.  Whatever forces impact them will eventually impact you as well.
  • If you belong to a trade association and/or chamber of commerce, make sure they have resources to monitor government activity at the local, state and federal levels. Make sure they are attuned to issues important to you and your business.
  • Stay abreast of advances in technology that could impact your industry. Again, a trade association could be helpful with this.  If not, an outsourced IT service may be able to be your “early warning” resource for emerging technologies that may be important to you.

Change can be good.  It can open doors to opportunities that didn’t exist before.  But you can’t allow yourself to be blindsided by important changes that catch you unaware.  Be guided by the “Doctrine of No Surprises.”  Make sure you have systems and eyes and ears positioned in such a way that surprises are unlikely.  Grant yourself permission to be a little bit paranoid.  Just because things seem to be rolling along with no apparent threat, a threat is out there . . . it just hasn’t become visible yet.

Be vigilant.

 
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“Create a company that’s a great place to be from.” (Part II)

We are experiencing an embarrassment of riches in this country . . . sort of.  The rate of unemployment in 2018 was just 3.9%.  To find a lower rate than that, you’d have to go all the way back to 1969 when it was 3.5%.  Good for employees, but not so good for employers.  Effectively, an unemployment rate this low means that everybody who wants a job has one or can get one.  In fact, there are now millions more jobs that need to be filled than there are people to fill them.  That’s bad news for employers who can’t be as productive as they should be simply because they don’t have enough people to get the work done.  Even worse, out of fear that they won’t be able to find adequate replacements, employers are holding onto poor performers who otherwise should be shown the door.  So employers are stuck in a situation where they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.  For more on a solution to this dilemma, please continue reading below.

“Create a company that’s a great place to be from.”   ~ Patty McCord   (Part II)

In our previous posting, we talked about the fact that small companies probably can’t hold onto their best and brightest . . . at least, not all of them.  Most of them are just passing through, but will stop at your place long enough to collect a few more lines on their resumes before continuing on to their next stop.  The average tenure among the Millennials and Generation Z is about 2 ½ years, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t try to beat that average.  Who knows?  With a little effort, maybe you can keep them in harness for an additional six months or even a year.  If you’re inclined to hold onto them as long as you reasonably can, here are some steps you can take to “Create a company that’s a great place to be from.”

  1. First and foremost, make your place “safe.” That is, make it a place where an honest mistake doesn’t get you fired, but instead, is treated as a learning experience.  Make yours a place where people feel free to express their ideas and opinions without fear of being ostracized or marginalized.
  2. Keep everyone in your organization as well-informed as possible about where the company is going and how it intends to get there. Operate by the “Doctrine of No Surprises.”   Sudden, unexplained changes in the company’s direction or operating procedures can be unsettling to your employees.
  3. People need continuous evidence that they are doing what’s expected of them and that they are valued members of your tribe.  No one should feel isolated or lonely.  When you pass someone in the hallway, make eye contact, smile, say “Good morning.”  It doesn’t take much to give people a sense of belonging.
  4. Recognize discretionary effort. You and everyone in a leadership position should be alert for people going “above and beyond.”  When you see such effort, recognize it and celebrate it.  From time to time, we hear managers worry that this sort of recognition may embolden people to ask for a raise.  Maybe it will and maybe it won’t, but one thing is for sure: an employee who feels that his or her contributions are unnoticed and unappreciated, already has one foot out the door.
  5. Offer constructive feedback . . . . not constructive criticism, constructive feedback. According to Employee Engagement expert Don Rheem, constructive feedback should be a regular, ongoing, supportive conversation between managers and their direct reports.  “We could all do this more in our daily lives,” says Rheem.  “When we hold people accountable, we should do it with less negativity.  Anything overtly critical is a punch to the brain.  In every relationship you have, it takes five positives to neutralize one negative.”

If you want to know what your culture is like at work, at home, or at any other gathering place that is a regular part of your life, Rheem advises asking one, simple question: “ How does this place make me feel?”  Do I feel fearful, on guard, demotivated?  Or do I feel I’m in my element, energized, and proud of my role?  There’s no question that money is important.  We all have to support ourselves in whatever lifestyle we have chosen.  But according to Rheem, “The future of work will be defined by how it feels rather than how it pays.”  We don’t think he’s wrong.

It’s instructive to remember the old axiom, “One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel.”  Likewise, one negative person can spoil an otherwise positive, upbeat culture.  We’ve all met people who have a victim mentality, who are always complaining, and whose glass is always half empty.  Their negativity is toxic, it’s pervasive, it’s contagious, and it exhausts everyone around them.  So be your company’s gatekeeper.  No matter how important the job is or how desperate you are to fill it, be tough, be real stubborn, and refuse to fill it with anyone who will not be a good fit for your culture.

Be guided by the old admonishment to “hire slow and fire fast.”  Despite our best efforts to the contrary, occasionally someone will slip into our tribe who doesn’t belong there.  When that happens, there’s no choice.  There’s no time to dilly dally and no time for a lot of hand wringing.  A source of negativity in your midst can do more damage and do it more quickly than you might imagine.  You’ve got to own up to the mistake, correct it as quickly and humanely as possible, and move on.

This may seem like a lot of work just to get a few people who are bound elsewhere to stick around for another few months, but the good news is, this also carries great benefit for the people who aren’t just passing through and who might be encouraged to stay with you for more than a few years.

Either way, if you “Create a company that’s a great place to be from,” it’s hard to imagine how that could turn out badly for you.

 
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“Create a company that’s a great place to be from.”

Small companies face a unique problem as they try to minimize turnover and hold onto their best and brightest employees.  Namely, they don’t have enough places to put them.  In practice, it looks like this.  A small company hires a young, ambitious person to do a certain job or perform a certain task.  This new go-getter tackles the work energetically and masters it in relatively short order.  Now he or she is looking around for the next big challenge, and therein lies the problem   . . . there isn’t one.  In a small company, the corporate ladder may have only a few rungs, so a talented, energetic, ambitious employee may very quickly get as far up that ladder as he or she can go.  Large companies can have similar problems, but they have the scale to deal with those problems more effectively than small companies can.  For instance, at a large company, when a budding superstar runs out of dragons to slay in Department A, we can move him or her to Department B or C or D or E where presumably there are still a few troublesome dragons to be dealt with.  In most small companies, that sort of opportunistic career path simply does not exist.  So what does a small company do to hold onto its best and brightest?  For more on this, please continue reading below.

 “Create a company that’s a great place to be from.”     ~ Patty McCord

 The bad news for small companies is this: you probably can’t hold onto the best and brightest . . . at least not all of them.  If you’re good at recruiting, many of them will pass through your doors, but most of them will be on their way to someplace else.  They will see you as a place to get some experience that will look good on their resumes.  If you’ve been in business for more than a few years, you already know that this is how it works.  Some big companies, as a matter of policy, won’t hire kids right out of school . . . they don’t want to deal with untrained, inexperienced rookies.  So by default, small companies are the training grounds for big companies.  It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.

As a small company operator, you really can’t buck the system.  You can’t go head-to-head with the big guys and try to match their compensation packages, their benefits, and their opportunities for advancement.  That would be crazy, so don’t even try.  If you do try, you will fail.

No, your only real option is to accept your role as a training ground for bigger companies, but figure out a way to make that role work for you.  Here’s how:

  1. Learn to recruit well. The best and the brightest won’t stay with you over the long haul, but while you have them, you can get a lot of benefit from them.  You can give them big, important assignments to complete, and they’ll be glad to undertake them because remember, they want impressive accomplishments to put on their resumes.
  2. Learn to be a good coach or mentor. You probably won’t have a formal training program in place for your new recruits, so instead, give them the benefit of your own experience.  Check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing with the tasks they’ve been assigned to do, and make sure they’ve got the support they need to complete those tasks successfully.
  3. Make sure they understand how the business works . . . not just the part they’re working on, but all of it. Teach them how all the various activities within the business contribute to the final products or services the company offers.
  4. Teach them responsibility and accountability . . . two vital concepts that most college grads have not fully internalized before they begin their first job.

Seems like a lot of work to train people who will ultimately use that training to benefit a bigger company than yours.  So what’s in it for you?

First, you’ll get the services of some young, ambitious, energetic, and talented people who won’t stay with you for long, but at least you’ll have them for a few years.  However, you won’t get them at all unless they believe the experience and training they get from you will be their stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Second, you’ll get a steady stream of goodwill ambassadors going out into the world and telling the world, not only about your products or services, but also about what a good place to work your company was during their formative years.  As your reputation as a good place to work spreads, your ongoing recruiting efforts will only get easier.

Third, and perhaps most important, as this parade of young, ambitious, energetic, and talented people passes through your place, you will be able to snag a few of them.  Most of them, as we’ve said, will be on their way to someplace else and will just keep right on going.  But a few of them might decide that being a big fish in a little pond is better than being a little fish in a Fortune 500 pond.  They might decide that getting in on the ground floor and helping to build something is, in its own way, pretty exciting stuff.  Or they might like the idea that, unlike their Fortune 500 brethren, they have direct access to their CEO.

It makes no sense to go against the flow and try to hold onto all the talented people you attract.  That’s a fool’s errand and it won’t work.  So your only option is to accept your role as the training ground for Corporate America and follow Patty McCord’s advice to, “Create a company that’s a great place to be from.”

 
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Motivation is all about passion. Discover what people are passionate about and you’ll understand what motivates them.

As business people, we invest a lot of time thinking about motivation.  How do we get our employees to work more efficiently, effectively, and productively?  Since the dawn of commerce, the favorite solution to a motivation problem has been to throw money at it.  The most obvious examples of this are salespeople who work for a sales commission, but there are lots of other places in business where the carrot-and-stick (if you do this, I’ll pay you that) is the preferred method of motivation.  We have bonuses, profit sharing, stock options, or the promise of a big hike in salary, to name a few.  Sometimes these sorts of monetary motivators work, but more often, they don’t . . . at least, they don’t work to the extent we think they should.  They may move the needle on the motivation meter a bit, but not nearly as much as we hoped.  So how can this be?  It’s absurd!  How can people fail to be motivated in the face of an opportunity to make more money?  For more on this puzzling phenomenon, and for a few thoughts on other approaches  to motivation, please continue reading below.

Motivation is all about passion.  Discover what people are passionate about and you’ll understand what motivates them.

In business, money seems to be the default motivator.  When we want someone to do something, or we want someone to do more of something, or we want someone to do something better, we come up with a scheme to funnel money their way if they do what we want done.  Unfortunately, money is not the universal motivator we sometimes think it is.  We all need money to live and to support the lifestyle we want for ourselves, but money is not necessarily what propels us out of bed every day.

  • Consider Tiger Woods and his astounding come-from-behind victory at the 2019 Masters Golf Tournament. If he could pull it off, he’d be getting a winner’s check for over $2 million.  But as he approached the 18th green with a 2-stroke lead, a big payday was probably the farthest thing from his mind.  He wasn’t in it for the money.  He was in it for the recognition . . . recognition that he had overcome enormous physical and personal adversity, had clawed his way back from the slag heap of has-been golfers, and rejoined the ranks of the most elite golfers on the planet.  As proof, he wanted to win his 5th green jacket, and he wanted to do it in front of his friends and family.  Money really didn’t even enter into the equation (although we’re sure he didn’t turn the check down).
  • Consider mountaineers. For the most part, nobody is paying them to risk their lives climbing Mt. Everest.  In fact, it costs them a fortune to mount an expedition for the privilege of enduring oxygen deprivation and horrific weather conditions.  It’s all about the challenge, not the money.
  • There’s a television commercial that has been running recently showing an off-road SUV crossing streams and climbing rocky mountain trails, and showing the SUV’s occupants rock climbing, kayaking, and doing other rugged, outdoorsy things. The announcer observes that animals do difficult, even dangerous things, because they must to survive.  Only humans do difficult, even dangerous things, because they think it’s fun.
  • While a few professional runners are in it for the money, most of the thousands of runners in a marathon are in it to prove (to themselves) that they can finish, or if they’ve run more than one marathon, to beat their own best time, but there is no monetary reward . . . only psychic benefits.
  • Doctors Without Borders donate time away from their lucrative medical practices, even risk their lives, to help people who desperately need medical care but have no access to it. Church goers will spend their summer vacation on “mission” trips to help those in need.  And countless charities depend upon unpaid volunteers to carry out their charitable work.

The point is, people can be motivated to do all sorts of extraordinary things, even heroic things in which financial gain plays no role whatsoever.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that motivation is a very personal, individualistic sort of thing.  What motivates you may not motivate me, and what motivates a third person may not motivate either one of us.  So in the end, you can’t motivate people . . . that is, you can’t dictate what they need to be passionate about. They carry their own innate motivation within themselves . . . in fact, they probably arrived from the factory fully equipped with motivation.  However, you can help them to discover the passions that truly motivate them, help them to focus on those passions, and help them develop those passions into tools they can use in both their personal and professional lives.

Some more bad news.  Helping people to discover the real motivating factors in their lives is tough, one-on-one mentoring work, and it won’t come easily.  It will require that you build real, meaningful relationships.  People don’t like to be manipulated, and they won’t willingly tell you what gets their juices flowing unless they trust that you won’t use that knowledge as a tool to manipulate them.  Hence the need to build a trusting relationship.  Still, if you end up with well-motivated employees who are passionate about what they do and who are willing to harness those passions to help the company achieve its goals, that’s a pretty good deal, isn’t it?

So the next time you’re considering some sort of incentive program to motivate your people, resist the knee-jerk urge of a cash offer.  You may still have to offer some sort of financial prize because people expect that in business.  But go a little deeper and consider if there may be a way to tap into something your people are truly passionate about.  If you’re able to do that, you’ll get a lot more than mere compliance . . . you’ll get the energy and enthusiasm that comes with genuine commitment.

 
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“We respond to the environments we’re in. If you get the environment right, you get the right behavior.”

Keynote speaker and bestselling author, Simon Sinek, tells a story about an experience he had at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas.  Sinek had stopped at the lobby coffee bar for a cup of coffee, and there he met a barista who was charming, engaging, funny, and just a joy to be with.  Sinek asked him if he likes his job, and the barista responded, “I love my job.”  Sinek asked him what the Four Seasons does to make him love his job, and the barista said, “Throughout the day, managers will walk passed and ask how I’m doing and if there anything I need . . . and not just my manager, but all managers.  I feel supported here.  I feel I can be myself here.”  Then he confided in Sinek, “I also work at Caesar’s Palace.”  “There,” he said, “the managers watch us to make sure we’re doing everything right and catch us if we do anything wrong.  “There,” he continued, “I just try to keep my head down, avoid getting in trouble until the end of the day, collect a paycheck, and go home.”  So at the Four Seasons, the barista is exposed to enlightened, inspirational leadership while at Caesar’s Palace, it’s just the opposite . . . misguided, oppressive leadership.  As a result, guests at the Four Seasons are treated to a barista who is charming, engaging, funny, and just a joy to be with while guests at Caesar’s Palace, who encounter the very same barista, experience a guy who’s just trying to make it through the day.  How about your customers?  Are they getting a Four Seasons experience or a Caesar’s Palace experience?  For more on this, please continue reading below.

“We respond to the environments we’re in.  If you get the environment right, you get the right behavior.”         ~ Simon Sinek

Logically, it follows then that if you get the environment wrong, you’re not going to get the behavior you want.

Establishing an organization’s environment is the job of leadership.  So when an organization is not getting the behavior it wants from its people, the blame lies squarely on the doorstep of the organization’s leaders.

There are lots of different leadership styles that will produce the behaviors an organization wants, and an equal number of leadership styles that won’t.  But let’s just look at the two leadership styles in Sinek’s example of the Four Seasons Hotel and Caesar’s Palace.

  • At Caesar’s, the leaders are acting like beat cops patrolling their areas of responsibility to make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do, and catching those who are not. That sets up an atmosphere of distrust where the employees do not feel supported, do not feel their boss has their back, and in fact, believe their boss will throw them under the bus whenever anything goes wrong.  Understandably, employees in that environment will say to themselves, “We’re going to be suspected, distrusted, and scrutinized no matter what we do, so our best course is to keep our heads down, avoid doing anything to attract attention to ourselves, and just make it through the day.”  So if you want a subdued, submissive, spiritless staff, Caesar’s shows the way to get it.
  • At the Four Seasons, the leaders are acting like mentors and coaches who genuinely want the people in their care to be successful. There, when a manager asks an employee, “How’s it going?”, it’s not a throw away question.  The manager honestly wants to know if everything is OK, if the employee needs anything, or if the employee needs help.  That’s not to say that employees there are treated with kid gloves who are never disciplined.  However, when discipline is required, it’s delivered in the “tough love” spirit of helping an employee to do the things necessary to be successful.  So if you want your employees to feel supported, to feel that their boss has their best interests at heart . . . if you want them to be willing to stick their necks out once in a while in the name of better customer service . . . the Four Seasons leadership approach may not be the only way to create the environment you want, but it’s a pretty darn good way.

NOTE: Among other things, good leadership is dependent on consistency.  There isn’t a single magical thing you can do right now today that will establish your credentials as a great leader.  Good leadership is the accumulation of a lot of little things, done consistently, over the long haul.  Being on time to a meeting just once isn’t going to do much for your status as a leader.  Always being on time to meetings for weeks, and months, and years, will.  Following through on one commitment may not even be noticed by those around you, but always following through on each and every commitment will be noticed.  If you ask one person in your care, just one time, “How’s it going?”, that won’t do much to burnish your image as a leader.  But if you ask that question regularly to all the people in your care, and if you take the time to listen intently to their answers, over time your stock as a leader will definitely go up.

We respond to the environments we’re in.  As your organization’s leader, it’s up to you to establish the values that are consistent with the environment you want, and consistent with the behaviors you expect from your people.  Do you want your customers to get a Four Seasons Hotel experience from your people or a Caesar’s Palace experience?  It’s a conscious choice that is yours to make.

 
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Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others.

Strong leadership is crucial to any organization.  Whether we’re talking about a commercial enterprise, a civic group, a church congregation, or a military unit, strong leadership is key to its success.  But leadership is not a one-size-fits-all proposition . . . there are lots of commonly recognized leadership styles, so it stands to reason that someone in a leadership role should understand what leadership style he or she is practicing.  After all, if a leader shows up one day as General George S. Patton and the next day as Mother Theresa, there will be confusion among the followers who will wonder, “Who’s going to show up to lead us today?”  That sort of confusion is generally not conducive to an efficient, effective, and productive organization.  So we did some research to identify and define commonly used leadership styles.  To see the results of that research and to see which of the leadership styles most closely fits your personality and temperament, please continue reading below.

Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others.       ~ Mwai Kibaki

In the course of our research on leadership styles, we turned up fourteen discreet styles without even trying.  Those fourteen include:

  • Democratic Leadership
  • Autocratic/Commanding Leadership
  • Laissez-Faire Leadership
  • Strategic Leadership
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Transactional Leadership
  • Bureaucratic Leadership
  • Visionary Leadership
  • Affiliative Leadership
  • Pacesetting Leadership
  • Paternalistic Leadership
  • Charismatic Leadership
  • Situational Leadership
  • Servant Leadership

That leads us to believe that if we put a little effort into it, we would turn up more, maybe lots more.  So for purposes of this post, let’s deal with only four styles . . . four that seem to be on just about everybody’s list of leadership styles.

Democratic Leadership.  When trying to solve a problem or make a decision, this leader seeks input from each team member in hopes of building a consensus.  Ultimately, the leader will make the call, but not until everyone gets a “vote.”

Autocratic Leadership.  This is the exact opposite of Democratic Leadership.  Here the leader keeps his or her own counsel and doesn’t seek or want input from anyone else.  Think “It’s my way or the highway.”

Visionary Leadership.  Here the leader creates a vision of where he or she wants to take the organization . . . a vision that is so exciting and so compelling that people are inspired and want to be part of it.  The typical response from followers will be, “Oh yeah!  That’s for me.  Where do I sign up?”

Servant Leadership.  In this style of leadership, the leader “serves” followers, not the other way around.  Here the leader’s job is that of coach, mentor, and enabler, aimed at making everyone on his or her team successful.  It’s an elegant style of leadership because when the leader focuses on making everyone around him or her successful, inevitably the leader is also successful.  That is, can you imagine a situation whereby everyone on a team is successful, but the leader of that team is not?  That’s not to say that the inmates should run the asylum.  The leader still has   responsibility for the overall performance of the team and has access to a wide range of remedies, including telling a team member that he or she needs to achieve success somewhere else.

In case it’s not clear at this point, we are a fan of Servant Leadership.  It’s not the right approach in every single situation.  For instance, in an organization that has a culture steeped in autocratic, hierarchical leadership, a servant leader may not be taken seriously.  But in most cases, especially considering that today’s workforce is better informed and better educated than any of its predecessors, Servant Leadership will be very effective.

In the research we did, we saw some opinions that leadership style should not be a reflection of the leader’s personality and temperament . . . that leadership style is simply a management tool and that we should have a variety of such tools at our command that we can use depending on the situation.

We disagree.

Your leadership style is a reflection of who you are, and unless you happen to be a gifted actor, you can’t fake it.  If you most closely identify with General George S. Patton, trying to lead like Mother Theresa is not going to work out well for you.  You are who you are and your leadership style should reflect that.  When conditions change, you may have to use your leadership style a bit differently, but you don’t abandon it and try to reinvent yourself into something else entirely.

Lead well.  The performance of your organization depends upon it.

 
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A Few Guidelines for Negotiating Successfully

Jack Kaine is an expert negotiator.  He has written about negotiation, given speeches about it, and he has taught it at Stanford.  He reminds us that the people sitting at a union bargaining table are not the only people who negotiate.  We all negotiate.  Every day.  We negotiate with employees over pay, benefits, working conditions, and a host of other issues.  We negotiate with vendors and with customers.  We negotiate with our spouse and kids about where we’ll go on vacation, who does what around the house, and who gets the car on Saturday night.  We negotiate with our friends about where we’ll meet for dinner.  So negotiating is a life skill, but a skill that some of us are better at than others.  If you suspect that your own negotiating skills are not what they could be, and if you believe some expert tips from Jack Kaine might help you up your game, please continue reading below.

A Few Guidelines for Negotiating Successfully

First, according to Kaine, most people think negotiating and bargaining are just two different names for the same activity.  Wrong.  Bargaining is a zero-sum game, and as such, it’s competitive.  One of us it going to win, the other is going to lose.  Negotiating, on the other hand, is not competitive, it’s cooperative . . . particularly when there is a symbiotic relationship whereby the parties depend upon one another.  In those circumstances, each party has more to gain by negotiating than not negotiating.

That said, here are some pearls of negotiating wisdom from Jack Kaine.

  • Be the first to speak. That gives you an opportunity to set the tone for the negotiation that’s about to begin.  Try to use words and body language that will promote openness, cooperation, and trust.  If the negotiation opens in an atmosphere that is adversarial, it will be very difficult to get it back onto a positive track.
  • If you want to be the best negotiator in the room, be the best listener. In the end, you need to understand what the other side is trying to do and how they’re trying to do it better than they understand it themselves. You’ll only get that by being a great listener. Not only will you learn something about what the other side wants, but since you’re listening and not speaking, you won’t be able to say anything that might get you in trouble.
  • Don’t argue. Arguing will only cause each side to get defensive and to solidify its position.  Instead, ask questions, lots and lots of clarifying questions aimed at understanding where the other side is coming from.
  • Don’t negotiate with yourself. Kaine asks you to imagine proofreading your proposal before entering a negotiation.  You get to the last page, look at the price that’s there, and say to yourself, “This is nuts!  They’ll never accept that.”  So you redo the proposal to reduce the price.  You just negotiated with yourself.  You made a concession that the other side will never appreciate because they didn’t know about it, they never asked for it, and they didn’t have to lift a finger to get it.
  • Never make a concession without getting something in return. If you make a concession without getting anything in return, you will damage whatever trust may have existed between the parties.  You will send a message that you were trying to cheat by asking for something that you didn’t really need.  For example, if the other side asks for a lower price, don’t just cave in and give it to them.  Instead, say something like, “Yes, we can meet the price you’re asking for, but then we won’t be able to provide free delivery as specified in our proposal.”
  • We want the outcome of a negotiation to last, to have staying power, but that will only happen if both sides get something they want. Work to understand the other guy’s motivation.  If you don’t understand what he wants and why he wants it, how can you put together a proposal that he will accept?  There has to be mutual gain.  Both parties don’t necessarily have to gain equally, but they each do have to gain something they want.

In summary, do not let a negotiation be come a competition.  It should be an open and honest exploration of what each side is trying to accomplish, and a commitment by both parties to get everybody as much of what they want as possible.  Only in very rare cases do both parties to a negotiation get everything they want.  But still, they will consider the negotiation a success if they feel they got more through negotiation than they would have gotten otherwise.

If you want to hear Jack Kaine himself discussing this stuff, just go to YouTube and search for him.  You’ll find quite a few of his clips posted there.

 
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6 Ways to Reduce Turnover and Keep Your Best People on the Job

Employee turnover is a fact of life.  It’s inevitable.  While we’d like to minimize it . . . particularly among out best employees . . . we can never eliminate it entirely.  And that’s a good thing.  From time to time, we need new people who bring fresh thinking and new ideas.  Still, we want to hold onto people as long as we reasonably can, and as long as it’s in the best interest of both the employee and company to do so.  As someone said, “Be a great place to be from.”  That is, be that place that your former employees remember fondly, that they are glad to have on their resume, and that they are happy to recommend to friends and relatives who are looking for work.  We know that most people who voluntarily leave a job do so because they have a poor relationship with their boss.  So if you want to minimize turnover, it’s up to you and your leadership team to avoid doing those things that tend to chase people away.  To learn what behaviors you and others in positions of authority need to cultivate, please continue reading below.

6 Ways to Reduce Turnover and Keep Your Best People on the Job

  1. Build trust. This is something you must work on continuously.  A solid foundation of trust, years in the making, can be undone by a single careless or thoughtless act.  So you and your managers need to religiously follow through on whatever you promise to do.  You need to hold yourselves to a higher standard of accountability than anyone else.  And you need to behave in ways that are consistent and predictable.  No one wants to work for a loose cannon who may go off at any moment without warning.
  2. Be fair in all things. Make sure your pay practices are fair . . . that everyone, regardless of age or gender, who is doing the same or similar work, is receiving the same or similar pay.  Make sure company policies are fair and are evenly enforced.  Be a role model for the company’s values.
  3. Be a macro manager. Not a micro manager.  Your employees are adults with brains.  Give them credit for that.  Having someone looking over your shoulder, breathing down your neck, and critiquing every move you make is both physically and mentally exhausting.  Plus, that sort of behavior eats away at trust (see #1 above).  It sends a powerful message that “they don’t trust me to do this on my own.”  As business guru Peter Drucker observed, “Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”
  4. Make it “safe” to fail. Nobody wants to live in fear that an honest mistake or a well-intentioned attempt to try something new will cost them their job.
  5. Create a respectful atmosphere. Don’t tolerate rudeness, incivility, or disrespectfulness.  People want to be where they feel valued and appreciated, and where their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and concerns are heard and understood.  As General Electric’s Jack Welch once said, “Make people believe what they think and do is important and then get out of their way while they do it.”
  6. Make sure everybody understands the business. Every employee should understand the company’s short- and long-term goals, the keys to achieving those goals, and his or her role in accomplishing them.  Reinforce such understanding regularly.

These six things are not intended to be a definitive list of all the things you should do to minimize turnover, but if you adopt any of these things that you’re not already doing, you will definitely see a reduction in the number of people heading for the exit.

 
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Exit interviews: the gold standard for determining how satisfied (or dissatisfied) your workforce is.

Exit interviews are an incredibly effective HR tool that can help you assess the health of your organization.  Yet in many companies, it’s a tool that is used sparingly or not at all.  Or it’s used in such a perfunctory manner that it doesn’t really produce any useful information.  Why?  Because it takes time and effort to conduct a good exit interview, and the company may not want to invest that time and effort in an employee who is leaving.  If you don’t see the value in exit interviews or if you don’t know how to use them effectively, please continue reading below.  We’ll try to explain why they’re valuable and how to conduct them so that they yield useful information.

Exit interviews: the gold standard for determining how satisfied (or dissatisfied) your workforce is.

First, exit interviews are not for everyone.  They should be used only for “keepers” . . . people you really wanted to hold onto.  People who are fired for poor performance or who are laid off are going to be hurt and angry and are unlikely to give you the sort of thoughtful, useful, helpful insights that you’d hope to get from an exit interview.

Still, why expend the time and effort to conduct exit interviews?  When someone announces their intention to leave, why not just tell them, “Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on your way out” and send them on their way?  Because good people are hard to find and hard to keep.  And because turnover, particularly among people whose service you value, is expensive . . . very expensive when you consider the lost productivity and efficiency the company will suffer while a replacement is found, hired, trained, and gets up to the speed of his or her predecessor.  If, through a good exit interview, we can learn as much as possible about why a valued employee is leaving, we can take steps to prevent other valued employees from leaving for the same reason(s).

OK, so how do we conduct effective exit interviews?  Here are a few tips:

  • The interview should not be conducted by the employee’s immediate supervisor or manager. It’s a well-documented fact that the main reason people leave a job is because they can’t stand their boss.  So don’t let their boss do the interview.  It should be done by someone else at or above the boss’s level.
  • The departing employee is unlikely to be forthcoming about the real reason(s) he or she is leaving. So whoever conducts the interview should have some interviewing skills and experience.  Not everyone does, and sending in someone who lacks such skill and experience is a waste of time.  An inexperienced interviewer will be unable to break through the employee’s defenses and get at the truth.
  • A breakup is a breakup, and breakups are painful. Just as it’s painful when married couples separate, it’s also painful when a company and a valued employee part ways.  So consider delaying an exit interview until the employee has been gone for a month or so.  This provides a “cooling off” period and allows the exit interview to be a frank and honest exchange without a lot of emotional baggage getting in the way.

The exact questions and the way they are worded should be a reflection of the interviewer’s style and personality, but here’s what you want to learn:

  • Why did the employee decide to leave . . . the real reason, not the fluff reason the employee will probably try to get away with. Bore down until you’re sure you’ve got the truth.
  • Was the employee’s immediate supervisor aware of the conditions or issues that were causing the employee to consider employment elsewhere? If so, did the supervisor make an attempt to address those concerns?
  • Did the employee’s immediate supervisor provide a positive working environment?
  • Did the employee know what was expected of him or her at work? Did he or she have the knowledge, skills, and tools to perform at or above those expectations?
  • Did the employee feel accepted and supported by fellow employees?
  • Was the employee’s work/life balance acceptable?
  • Did the employee feel that his or her ideas, opinions, and concerns were heard and respected?
  • Did the employee feel he or she was learning and growing in the job and did he or she feel there was opportunity for advancement?

This list of questions could go on forever, but you get the idea.  We want to know the reason . . . the real reason . . . a valued employee is leaving the company.  We want to know if there’s anything we could have or should have done to prevent the employee from leaving.  We want to know if whatever conditions, issues, or concerns have caused this employee to leave might cause others to leave as well.  If so, we want to know what we can do to address those problems so that they don’t cause further employee defections.

As noted earlier, exit interviews take time and they take effort, but done properly, they can give you the insights to your organization you need to shape it into the organization you want it to be, and an organization that people won’t want to leave.

 
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“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

Entrepreneurs are a strange breed and largely misunderstood.  Some people believe that all small independent businesses are automatically entrepreneurial.  Not true.  Many small businesses just plod along, day after day, following whatever formula got them to where they are, and never straying into new or uncharted territory.  The companion belief is that entrepreneurs don’t exist in large, publicly-held corporations.  Also not true.  Witness Apple Computer that started from small, humble beginnings, grew to be a corporate behemoth, yet is still very entrepreneurial.  Simon Sinek, one of our favorite authors and speakers, says that entrepreneurs are problem-solvers.  While that’s true, it’s not entirely helpful if we’re trying to distinguish what separates entrepreneurs from the rest of business people because all of us in business are problem-solvers.  As evidence, just try to think of a product or service that you’d buy if it didn’t satisfy a want, fill a need, or solve a problem.  To learn more about what it takes to be an entrepreneur (and to learn if you’ve got what it takes), please continue reading below.

 “The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”  ~ George Bernard Shaw

At their best, entrepreneurs are emotionally connected to their business.  An entrepreneur doesn’t start the business on a whim or because he believes he can make a lot of money with it.  He starts it for a higher purpose.  She has a problem to solve, or maybe it’s a problem for a friend or family member.  Regardless, she sees this problem and wants to find a solution.  But after a thorough search, he concludes that the product or service that would solve his problem simply doesn’t exist.  Undaunted, our intrepid entrepreneur decides to create the product or service she needs herself.  It’s a sort of defiant challenge to the marketplace whereby the entrepreneur is saying, “OK fine.  If no one else is willing to solve this problem for me, I’ll figure out how to solve it myself.”  That’s where the emotional connection is forged.  The entrepreneur is creating something, not for the fun of it and not for a big payday, but because there’s a significant problem that needs to be solved.

Unfortunately, many small companies that start out as entrepreneurial enterprises don’t stay that way.  Having found the solution to a problem that got them into business in the first place, they simply continue to churn out the same solution to the same problem, year after year, without looking for new problems to solve or finding new solutions to old problems.  That’s not what real entrepreneurs do.  Real entrepreneurs realize that true entrepreneurship is a journey, not an event.  It’s endlessly looking for problems to solve that no one else is addressing, and it’s constantly looking at solutions that are already in place and trying to figure out how to make them even better, more efficient, and more cost-effective.

Simon Sinek tells us that there are three questions that every organization needs to answer about itself.

  1. What do we do here?
  2. How do we do what we do here?
  3. Why do we do what we do here?

Most organizations can comfortably answer the first two questions, but many struggle with the third.  It’s particularly difficult for a larger, older, well-established company to stay in touch with its roots.  The founders knew “why” they brought the company into existence, but unless successive generations of leaders and managers have kept the company’s “why” alive, it probably fades from the corporate memory.  And when that happens, we’re left with “We do what we do because that’s what we’ve always done.”  That’s not the sort of inspirational stuff that propels us out of bed in the morning and makes us look forward to another day of “doing what we’ve always done.”

Apple Computer is a good example of a company that has kept its “why” front and center throughout its entire existence.  In the early days of the personal computer, they were these quirky little boxes that weren’t of much use unless you knew how to work in DOS, which most people didn’t.  Even mighty IBM produced a PC but wrote it off as a toy that would never have any real commercial value.  Then along came Steve Jobs who saw personal computers as a way to give the masses access to the same sort of computing power that until then had been reserved for the big mainframe computers of Corporate America.  So Apple’s “why” became “to give power to the people.”  And Jobs achieved that by eliminating the complexities of DOS and substituting menu-driven, point-and-click technologies that transformed the personal computer into a user-friendly, intuitive device that almost anyone could use.

So what is an entrepreneur?

  • Someone who brings creativity and innovation to problems that are not being adequately addressed by anyone else.
  • Someone who brings creativity and innovation to the concepts of “continuous improvement” . . . who is always looking for ways to improve upon the solutions to yesterday’s problems.
  • Someone who understands why the company does what it does and has an emotional connection to that “why.”

What do you say?  Are you that guy?

 
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