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“The best of all leaders is the one who helps people so that eventually they don’t need him.”

Ken Blanchard has been a prolific writer on topics of management and leadership.  He has written over 60 books, though usually co-authored with someone else.  If you’re old enough, you may remember his classic work, “The One Minute Manager.”   I recently stumbled across one of his books, “The Secret: What Great Leaders Know – and Do,” which he co-authored with Mark Miller (VP of Training and Development for Chick-fil-A).  In it, he talks about the five hallmarks of great leaders, and he has an interesting, graphic way of describing those leadership qualities.  Of course, every author who writes about leadership has his or her own list of essential leadership attributes, but if you’re interested in Blanchard’s take on what makes a great leader, please continue reading below.

“The best of all leaders is the one who helps people so that eventually they don’t need him.”

                                                            ~Ancient Chinese Proverb

First, Blanchard is a proponent of “servant leadership.”  If you’re not familiar with that leadership style, it’s the idea that a leader “serves” his followers . . . that the job of the leader is to help her followers to be successful.  In Blanchard’s words, a servant leader is serving, not self-serving.  So, a servant leader can be a disciplinarian when it is necessary, but for the most part, a servant leader is more mentor than boss, more coach than supervisor.

Anyway, against the backdrop of servant leadership, Blanchard uses the acronym SERVE to demonstrate the five characteristics he believes all great leaders share.

See the future.

Engage and develop others.

Reinvent continuously.

Value results and relationships

Embody the values.

See the future.  Great leaders have a vision of where they want to take their followers.  It must be a bright, compelling vision that followers can get excited about.  So every day is not just another day at the office, it’s another step toward achieving the goal.

Engage and develop others.  “Engage” in this context means to put the right people into the right jobs, and then to actively get both their hearts and their heads in the game.  Ultimately, these are the people you’ll need to depend upon to get you where you want to go, so ask for their thoughts, opinions, and ideas.  As to the “develop others” part, that’s just about like it sounds.  A great leader uses training, both formal and informal, and mentoring to help people to reach their potential.

Reinvent continuously.  Business moves very fast and will continue to move even faster.  Everywhere we look, conditions are fluid, changing.  To keep up, leaders need to continuously improve their skills and knowledge, and insist their followers do the same.  And the processes we use to do our work must be constantly scrutinized to find ways to do it better/faster/cheaper.

Value results and relationships.  Blanchard makes a point of saying it isn’t an “either/or” case of delivering results or building relationships.  Good leaders know we must do both.  Good leaders know that if they build strong relationships with their people, those people will move heaven and earth to deliver the desired results.  Entrepreneur and author Jack DeBoer put it even stronger when he said, “In your business decisions, risk only money . . . never people or relationships.”

Embody the values.  This is about building trust . . . about not only talking the talk, but also walking the walk.  For instance, if a leader purports to “put customers first,” but then subverts good customer service practices, how can his followers trust him?  And if she loses the trust of her followers, it’s unlikely they will follow her anywhere.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done.  As you’ve probably noticed, we have only talked here about what great leaders do, but we haven’t said anything at all about how they do it.  How, for instance, do they develop an exciting, compelling vision that will inspire their followers?  Or how do leaders “engage” their people in a meaningful way?  How do they build strong, lasting relationships?  For the answers to these and other “how” questions, you’ll need to get Blanchard’s book.  It’s only 115 pages long and is written as a business fable, so it’s a very easy read, but full of good stuff.  So if you’re interested in continuous self-improvement, as Blanchard suggests, reading his book would not be a bad place to start.

 
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“Life is what happens to you while you’re texting on your smartphone.”

In a recent blog, we posed the question, “Do we live to work or work to live?” and used that as a springboard to talk about Millennials. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement on specific beginning and ending dates for this generation, but it’s generally thought to be people born in the early to mid-1980s to the early to mid-2000s.  It’s important to understand them because, according to the John Maxwell Company, by the year 2020 there will be 86 million of them which means they will make up 40% of the workforce.  According to other sources, 70% of Millennials are looking for new jobs at any point in time, and their average tenure at a job is 1.8 years.  So Millennials have a vastly different attitude toward work and toward their workplaces than do the people who are trying to manage them.  We recently saw a Simon Sinek video (one of our favorite speakers on leadership and management topics) in which he talks about Millennials, why they are the way they are, and what Corporate America should do about it.  For a summary of his insights, please continue reading below.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re texting on your smartphone.”           ~Unknown                                                           

Simon Sinek says that while older generations attribute lots of negative behaviors to Millennials, the predominant one is a feeling of entitlement. He says there are four reasons Millennials tend to feel entitled:

  • Failed parental strategies. As kids, Millennials were constantly being told that they were “special,” that they could do and have anything they want just because they want it. Their parents would badger teachers for higher grades than their children deserved, and badger their coaches for a place in the starting lineup that hadn’t been earned. So it was a cultural shock for them when they left home and discovered that nobody else thought they were quite as special as their parents had led them to believe, and that their parents could no longer run interference for them.
  • Technology. Millennials, Sinek contends, are addicted to social media like Facebook and Twitter. As a result, they don’t know how to form deep, meaningful relationships, only superficial ones . . . superficial relationships that cannot support them when they run into trouble or experience stress. In short, they have no coping mechanisms for stress. That’s why depression is more prevalent among Millennials than it has been in previous generations.
  • Impatience. Millennials grew up in a world of instant gratification. When they want something, just go on Amazon and it’s there the next day. When they want a movie, they just stream it onto their computer. They can have anything they want at the snap of a finger, except deep, personal relationships and job satisfaction. Those take time and effort. As Sinek says, “There’s no app for that.”
  • Environment. Through no fault of their own, Millennials arrive on the doorstep of Corporate America ill-prepared to cope with environment they find there. And frankly, not only are they ill-prepared to deal with Corporate America, Corporate America is equally ill-prepared to deal with them. Yet deal with them it must. That means managers are going to have to provide more coaching and mentoring for Millennials, and do a better job of managing their expectations, than they have with past generations.

Obviously, we’ve been making some sweeping generalizations here about Millennials that may be true for many, but not true for all. We have met many young people who may be Millennials according to their birth date, but who exhibit none of the behaviors discussed here and who would be a pleasure to work with.  You’ve probably run into those people too.

Simon Sinek, if you’ve never heard him speak, is funny, articulate, and has a great message. If you’d like to watch his full discussion of Millennials (it’s less than 20 minutes long), use the link below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MC2X-LRbkE

 
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“The best ideas for improving a job come from those who do it every day.”

A lot has been written lately about “employee engagement” . . . some of it right here. The Gallup organization, which has studied it for many years, says employee engagement can be measured by the strength of the emotional connection an employee feels toward his or her company.  If the employee sings the company song, bleeds the company colors, and is fully committed to the company’s mission and goals, he or she is “engaged.”  If an employee is just punching a clock and collecting a paycheck, he or she is “not engaged.”  Gallup says 70% or more of employees nationwide fall into this “not engaged” category.  However, Gallup also says a company that increases its level of employee engagement will also increase its profitability and productivity, and will decrease its employee turnover.  But is capturing the hearts of your employees enough?  According to a friend and colleague, Nick Bizony, it’s not.  To learn what Nick believes is the real payoff, please continue reading below.

“The best ideas for improving a job come from those who do it every day.”

~ Jim Bleech, business consultant, speaker

Nick spent many years working with Fortune 500 companies, helping them to forge more collaborative relationships between management and workers. He pushed for higher levels of what he terms “employee involvement.” If employee engagement is about winning the hearts of employees, then employee involvement is about getting their heads in the game as well. After all, today’s workforce is smarter, better educated, and better informed than any workforce in history. So why waste all that brain power? Your employees have ideas about how their work could be done better/faster/cheaper, but if you don’t ask, and if they’re not engaged, they’re not going to share them.

There are several areas where employee involvement is particularly appropriate

  • Decision-making. When you need to decide something, do you huddle only with your managers, or do you involve everyone whose job might be impacted? Perhaps you can’t include everyone in every decision, but in many decisions, you can. And understandably, people want to have a say in decisions that will influence the way they work.
  • Problem-solving. As managers, that’s what we do. We solve problems. If there are no problems, there’s not much for us to do. But that doesn’t mean we can’t tap into the experience, skill, and knowledge of our employees to help us solve problems. With more heads working on the problem, we probably get a better solution than the one we may have come up with all by ourselves. Plus, asking employees for their help sends a powerful message that you respect and value their ideas and opinions. This can be a great morale booster
  • Continuous improvement. As the quote above says, if you want to improve something, ask the people who are involved with it every day. This isn’t decision-making or problem-solving. This is saying, “We’re really good at what we do, but how can we do it even better?” As you would expect, people get a real positive buzz when they see an idea of theirs put into practice.

Nick and I have had endless chicken-or-egg discussions about whether engagement leads to involvement or involvement opens the door to engagement. But we do agree that there’s a symbiotic relationship between engagement and involvement. An engaged employee will be more open to deeper levels of involvement in the company, but it’s also true that deeper levels of involvement will lead to even higher levels of an employee’s engagement. Ying and Yang. Each feeds the other.

If you’re that rare employer who has carefully crafted both employee engagement and employee involvement into your company’s culture, good for you! Just keep it up. But if you’re not that rare employer . . . and let’s be honest, you’re probably not . . . then you’re squandering a valuable resource. As a retiring General Motors employee once lamented, “For 25 years you’ve paid only for my hands when you could have had my brain for free.”

If you’re interested in learning how you might start down that path to employee engagement and employee involvement, please contact me. I will be happy to discuss it with you. And I’ll even bring Nick.

 
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Do we live to work or work to live?

Americans work hard . . . at least they work longer hours than their counterparts in the world’s largest economies. On average, an adult fulltime worker in this country works 47 hours a week.  If you filter out hourly workers and consider only salaried workers, that number rises to 49 hours.  Four in ten of all workers report working in excess of 50 hours per week.

So is this a problem? If your attitude is, “If you want work/life balance, you should go to work for somebody who gives a sh__,” then it probably isn’t a problem and you should stop reading here.  However, if you’re concerned about continued productivity gains and about positive employee attitudes toward their workplace, then yes, it is a problem, and you should continue reading below.

Do we live to work or work to live?

 It’s an age-old dilemma. If I work heroic hours (and get paid accordingly), I might be able to afford to lead the life I want, but I won’t have time to lead it.  On the other hand, if I work fewer hours (and get paid accordingly), I’ll have the time to lead the life I want, but I won’t be able to afford it.

On the surface, we might say that Americans are ambitious and are willing to work hard to get ahead. But that’s not necessarily what’s really happening.  Traditionally there has been a link between productivity and an employee’s paycheck.  The unspoken bargain was, “The more you can produce in goods and services, the more we’ll pay you.”  But that bargain was broken in the early 1970s when the compensation for the average employee (adjusted for inflation) essentially went flat as productivity gains increasingly went to fund CEO salaries and higher shareholder dividends.

Exempt employees (those not subject to overtime rules) are particularly at risk of abuse. In their treatment of exempt employees, bosses sometimes feel entitled to pile on the work assignments because they know they won’t have to pay overtime.  Many of these same bosses may not even think about it.  In their view, the 40-hour week is a thing of the past and working long hours is the new normal.

Enter the Millennials.

They are often unfairly branded as “lazy” and “entitled.” They are neither.  They simply reject the unspoken contract that says:

  • We expect you to work more than 40 hours without overtime compensation. That’s just the way it is.
  • We expect regular productivity gains from you, but don’t expect quid pro quo in your paycheck. That’s just the way it is too.

In fairness to employers, most are not trying to run “sweat shops.” They are simply perpetuating the contract that has evolved over several decades.  Still, it’s that contract that the Millennials are rejecting.  If they do feel “entitled,” it’s to have a life outside of work, and to be paid more if they produce more.  Unreasonable expectations, to be sure, but there it is.  Millennials are branded “job hoppers” because they tend to change jobs every few years, but really, they’re just looking for an employer that will offer them the contract they’re looking for.  When they don’t find that contract in one place, they move on to the next.

As this tug-of-war goes on between old school employers and new school Millennials, older generations are watching very closely. If the Millennials are successful in forging a new contract with the companies who want to employ them, you can bet everyone else is going to want that contract too.

During the Great Recession, with layoffs happening everywhere, people were grateful just to have a job. If that meant working longer hours for flat pay, so be it.  But now, with an active job market, people have choices, so if they can’t get the contract they’re looking for with you, they’ll look for it someplace else.  Enlightened employers have seen this coming for years, have already thrown out the old contract, and are working to forge a new one.  They are revamping their compensation plans and actively looking for ways to help their employees meet, not only their professional goals, but their personal goals as well.

Employers today have a choice: they can stick with the old contract in the belief that these damn Millennials will eventually fall into line and stop making so much trouble, or they can conclude that Millennials really are a harbinger of a new employer/employee relationship that needs to be taken seriously.

Which will you choose?

 
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“Time spent on hiring is time well spent.”

Even though the Great Recession is far back in our rearview mirror, the recovery has been painfully slow, particularly for small businesses. Small business owners have not gone on a hiring spree, in part, because they have learned how to get along without some of the positions they eliminated during the recession.  Also, because the recovery has been so slow, owners have been mistrustful of the sluggish economy and uncertain that it would support a larger payroll.  As a result, many small business owners are only now considering bringing on new people.  But having made the decision to hire, they now complain, “I can’t find people with the skill sets I need.”  If that’s your complaint too, please continue reading below for some thoughts about hiring wisely.

“Time spent on hiring is time well spent.”           ~ Robert Half

Consider how much time and effort professional sports teams invest in recruiting. Obviously, a lot.  They have armies of scouts at college and even high school games looking for that future Hall-of-Famer.  They watch endless hours of film for the same purpose.  And they need to watch the rosters of all the teams in their sport to see who might be on the trading block and who might be entering free agency.  I don’t know what percentage of a sports franchise’s revenue is spent on recruiting, but I’m sure it’s not insignificant.  So apparently, a sports franchise attaches great importance to getting the right players on the team, but shouldn’t other businesses be equally determined to get the best “players” possible on their team?

Large corporations do spend a bundle on recruiting. As a portion of revenue, they may not spend what their sports brethren do, but still they may devote significant HR resources to pouring through resumes, interviewing, attending job fairs, and visiting college campuses.

Not so with most small businesses. Most small business owners don’t worry about recruiting until there’s an opening that needs to be filled.  Then they scramble to find who they hope will be a satisfactory performer, bring him or her on board, and keep their fingers crossed that it all works out OK.  Then they put their recruiting hat back in the closet and forget about it until the next time they need to hire someone.  Unfortunately, such a haphazard recruiting process causes a small business owner several significant problems:

  1. an unnecessarily high turnover rate. As we know, correcting a bad hire is both expensive and time-consuming, and it has a negative impact on productivity.
  2. managers will tolerate under-performing members of their team much longer than they should because there’s no “pipeline” of vetted candidates available to replace them.

The problem is, recruiting and hiring are two different, distinct activities. Recruiting is the process whereby we carefully define what we’re looking for (skills, knowledge, experience, personality traits, etc.), identify individuals who fit our definition, and begin a preliminary dialogue with them.  Hiring is simply the act of bringing someone on board when the time and circumstances are right.

Small business owners will complain that they can’t afford “recruiters” the way a sports franchise or a large corporation can. And they’re right . . . they can’t do it the way the big boys do it, but they can do it, only differently.  Here are some thoughts.

Years ago, I had a friend who was a small business owner and was also his company’s top recruiter. He didn’t carve out time to devote to recruiting, he just did it as part of his normal daily routine.  He might notice a server in a restaurant who seemed to have good customer service instincts, an energetic stockboy at the grocery store, another parent he might meet at his daughter’s soccer game, a friendly teller at the bank, or the just-graduated-from-college kids of his friends and neighbors.  In all these situations, he would strike up a friendly conversation, offer his business card, and say something like, “I’m always looking for people like you.  If you’re ever interested in exploring a career change, I hope you’ll call me.”  Of course, not everyone called him, and of those who did, not all of them came to work for him, but enough did to make it all worthwhile.

Why not be like my friend? It doesn’t cost anything except a bunch of business cards, and it doesn’t take any time since you’re only doing the things you’d be doing anyway.  It just requires that you be sensitive to the people who cross your path and who exhibit behaviors that would fit well in your organization.

Then double down. Ask your managers to do likewise, and after they get in the habit, have them ask their direct reports to be 24/7 recruiters.  If you think it would be appropriate, offer a bounty to anyone who recruits someone that actually gets hired.  See?  Now you’ve got any army of recruiters out there just like the big boys.

This is just one idea for making recruiting affordable for a small business. With a little creative thought, you can probably think of others.  The point is, just as you want your sales force to always have new prospects in their sales funnel, you also want to have new employee prospects in your recruiting funnel.

I guess I would paraphrase Robert Half and say, “Time spent on recruiting is time well spent.”

 
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“Be the last to speak.”

Simon Sinek is one of our favorite speakers on business topics.  In our last posting, we talked about one of his “10 Rules for Success” . . . namely, the importance of continuous improvement.  He challenges us to ask, every day, “How can we make our company a better company today than it was yesterday?”  Now let’s look at two more of his rules involving communication.  He has some thoughts about, not only communicating internally, but communicating with the outside world as well.  To learn what “Simon says” about communication and the role it plays in success, please continue reading below.

“Be the last to speak.”      ~ Simon Sinek

Be the last to speak?  That’s a little counter-intuitive, isn’t it?  Shouldn’t a leader lead by speaking first in order to set the tone for the coming discussion and to establish a broad direction for that discussion?  Simon says, “No.”

To be clear, Sinek is not suggesting that a leader should be totally mute . . . only that a leader should not offer any opinions or conclusions until everyone else has had a chance to voice their opinions or conclusions.  Here’s why.

  • You want everyone to contribute, and you want them to feel their contribution has been heard and valued.
  • You want to get everyone else’s thoughts on the table before you weigh in with your own. If you start by offering your thinking, people may believe that you’ve already made up your mind and that it’s pointless to share their own thoughts.  Someone else may have a really great idea, but you probably won’t hear it . . . particularly if their thinking is at odds with yours.

But this is one of those things that’s easier said than done.  Even when someone is offering an opinion with which you totally disagree, you’ve got to be attentive and allow them to finish what they’re saying.  Be neutral.  Don’t give yourself away by nodding or shaking your head or by allowing any other telltale body language.

You can, and should, ask clarifying questions . . . they demonstrate that you’re engaged and paying attention.  However, a “clarifying question” that starts with, “Have you thoughtof . . . ?” is just a ploy to slip your own thoughts into the discussion.  Don’t do that.  Likewise, “Where was your head when you came up with that idea?” is also not a clarifying question.

We’ve been talking here about internal communications, but being the last to speak is not a bad idea for external communications as well.  We can learn a lot if we give both customers and suppliers an opportunity to air their problems and concerns before we pile on with our own agenda.  Salespeople in particular are prone to jumping immediately to product benefits without listening sufficiently to what the customer is trying to accomplish.

But Sinek offers another Rule for Success when communicating to the outside world.  Simon says, “Be authentic.”  When we try to be whatever we think a potential customer wants us to be, we risk gaining a customer with expectations that are not a good fit for what we truly do.  On the other hand, when we’re comfortable just being ourselves and representing ourselves honestly, we end up attracting the customers we’re best-equipped to serve.  Seems obvious, yet we still see companies causing themselves headaches because they’re so intent on “closing the deal” that they forget to be authentic.

Simon says, “Be the last to speak,” and “Be authentic.”  Pretty good advice no matter who you’re speaking to.

 
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“I do not believe you can do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and be in business tomorrow.”

For most of us, when we think about innovation, we think about companies like Apple, Microsoft, or Google. We think about breakthrough, disruptive technologies like the GraphicalUser Interface which took access to the Worldwide Web from the hands of a few geeks who could write computer code and gave it to the masses. In other words, we think about totally new, never-seen-before products or services.  But what about taking an existing product or service and making it better.  Isn’t that innovation too?  Or what about taking a bunch of ideas from a variety of unrelated sources and cobbling them into something new and unique.  Isn’t that yet another form of innovation?  The fact is, various forms of innovation are all around us and all of us need to participate in innovation.  Even if you’re a low-tech company that’s been churning out commodity-type products for many years, you better be an innovator or your years will soon come to an end.  For more about innovation and how you need to be thinking about it for your company, please continue reading below.

“I do not believe you can do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and be in business tomorrow.”                             ~Nelson Jackson

For most of us, innovation is not about rolling out the next high tech whiz bang product. It’s simply looking for ways to do what we do better/faster/cheaper.  Companies that have Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) programs in place might just as easily call them Continuous Innovation programs.  “Lean manufacturing” (**) is really just a highly structured CPI program. Companies that are engaged in “lean manufacturing” concepts are committed to finding ways to reduce waste . . . wasted time, wasted effort, wasted materials, and wasted money.  And the only way they can do that is through finding new, innovative ways of doing things.

(**)  As you may know “lean” started out as a way to streamline manufacturing processes, but “lean” concepts are applicable to any identifiable, discreet process within your business . . . HR, Administration, Sales, Marketing . . . all can benefit from the application of “lean” principles.

Simon Sinek, a business writer and keynote speaker, has an interesting take on all of this. He talks about “infinite players” vs. “finite players.”  “Finite players,” he says, “play to beat the players around them.  Infinite players play to beat themselves.”  In other words, infinite players ask, “How can we make our company a better company today than it was yesterday?”  And we ask ourselves the same question the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that, forever.  That’s the “continuous” part of Continuous Process Improvement.  It’s a circle and it never ends.  And it all depends on innovation.

The good news is, “better” is a very general, non-specific term that can be applied in a lot of different areas. How can we make our company a better place to work?  How can we achieve better financial results?  How can we achieve better operational results?  How can we compete better in our marketplace?

As you begin your day, you probably have a noisy cacophony of “stuff I gotta do” banging around in your head . . . reports that have to be written, deadlines that have to be met, customer problems that have to be solved, sales goals that have to be achieved, and on and on and on. Those are all important things that need to be addressed, but they shouldn’t get in the way of asking, “What’s the one thing we can do today that will make this a better company tomorrow?”

Simon Sinek challenges us to “Outdo yourself” everyday . . . to be an “infinite player,” a continuous innovator.  Are you up to the challenge?

 
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“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people. “

If you’re not a hockey fan, the name John McDonough probably doesn’t mean much to you.  But if you’re a Chicago Blackhawks fan, you probably have a shrine to him somewhere in your home.  He joined the Blackhawks in 2007 as President, and under his stewardship, the team’s season ticketholder base has grown from 3,400 to more than 14,000, the team has brought home three Stanley Cups, and has led the NHL in attendance for eight consecutive seasons.  Forbes Magazine has called his tenure with the Blackhawks, “The Greatest Sports-Business Turnaround Ever.”  Not bad for a guy who claims to have graduated 311th out of 356 in his graduating class at Notre Dame High School in Niles.  He spoke recently at the Aurora Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, and his speech was reported in the Daily Herald Business Ledger.  In that speech, according to the Business Ledger account of it, McDonough revealed what he considers to be the key to his success.  To learn what that key is, please continue reading below.

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.”                                                                                     ~ Steve Jobs

John McDonough’s key to success?  Hiring.  Not just hiring, but hiring well.  He says, “Hiring is the most important under-rated executive skill that there is.  If you hire well, you have a chance for really good things to happen.”  He further advises, “Step back and allow these brilliant people that you’ve hired do their jobs.  Ask really good questions, make sure they know you’re supporting them, and let them do their thing.  And . . . at some point, the students lap the teacher.  The reward for that is incalculable.”

Matt Mullenweg, founder and developer of WordPress, echoes McDonough’s advice.  “We focus on two things when hiring. First, find the best people you can . . .   And second, let them do their work. Just get out of their way.”

So Steve Jobs tells us we need a team to achieve greatness, and John McDonough and Matt Mullenweg tell us to get really good people on our team by hiring well.  Even “Good to Great” author Jim Collins weighs in telling us to get the right people on the bus and to make sure we put them in the right seats.

None of this is a surprise, right?  We’ve discussed it right here in many previous postings.  We know we need to hire well.  At least, we know intellectually that we need to do a good job of hiring, but somehow we don’t always do it.  Why do you suppose that is?

There are several reasons:

  • We’re impatient. Once we’ve decided to hire someone, whether it’s to fill a vacancy or to create a new position, we want it done now.  All the stuff we have to go through . . . writing job descriptions, advertising on job boards, working with recruiters, reviewing resumes, administering tests, and conducting interviews is just too tedious and time-consuming.  So we rush through it, cutting any corner we can, just to get all that stuff behind us and move on.
  • We panic. The open position is a key one, and we convince ourselves that filling it with the first person who walks through the door, has a pulse, and can fog a mirror is better than leaving it open for awhile longer.
  • We lack experience. If we’re a small company, we may not have developed a formal hiring process, or if we have, we may not hire often enough to get very good at using it.
  • We put too much emphasis on skills. We become enamored with his or her training, background, and prior work experience, and don’t put sufficient weight on personality and behaviors. We need to dig deeper to figure out how this person will fit into our culture and how his or her work behaviors will blend with the work behaviors of the people he or she will be working most closely with.
  • We try to hire on the cheap. We hire someone at the bottom of the pay scale for that position, but then expect that person to be a top performer.

So if you’ve made a decision to hire, discipline yourself to slow down, give “hiring well” the importance it deserves, and allow yourself the time to do it right.  If this is a key position, all the more reason to get it right.  Don’t allow yourself to be pushed into a hasty decision.  Find work arounds, stop-gap measures, bandaids, and anything else you can do to buy yourself the time you need.  If you need help, get it.  There are HR professionals and recruiters who can assist you, not only with finding the skills you need, but also with finding the right “fit” for your organization.  And while they may cost a few bucks up front, their cost is nowhere near the cost of a bad hire.

Finally, you don’t always get what you pay for, but more often than not, you do.  If OK performance is good enough, then OK pay is too.  But if you really need a top performer, you’d better be prepared to offer considerably more than OK pay.

When conditions require that you hire someone, don’t let it become a perfunctory task that you’ve just got to muddle through somehow.  Give it the importance it deserves and make it a priority, not just to hire, but to hire well.  After all, if you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, where will you find the time to do it again?

 
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“The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master.”

The stereotypical entrepreneur is a guy running around with his or her hair on fire, pushing all the buttons, pulling all the levers, and wearing all the hats.  We’re all wired a little bit differently, but ultimately, we all reach the limit of what we can do alone, and when we do reach that point, with a plate already full or overflowing, we don’t have the capacity to tackle new opportunities.  Mentally and physically, we’re out of gas.  As a result, the company stalls out and its growth track goes flat.  Obviously, when this happens, the owner has two choices: either start sharing the load (delegating) or accept the fact that the company has gone as far as it can go.  Most company owners recognize this intellectually, but emotionally they have a tough time letting go of activities and responsibilities that they have always reserved for themselves.  Does this sound like you?   If so, please continue reading below for some thoughts on how you can get around this roadblock.

“The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master.”

~ Sir Richard Branson

Famed business author and lecturer Stephen Covey has weighed in on this too.  He says, “People and organizations don’t grow much without delegation . . . because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.”  So why do so many small company business owners strangle their companies by insisting on doing everything themselves?  There are many reasons, but here are the most common ones:

  • They lack trust. They have convinced themselves (usually without any basis in fact) that nobody can do what they do as competently, as rigorously, or as responsibly as they can.
  • They lack trust 2. In some cases, in order for someone else to perform adequately, the owner might have to share company information that he or she has kept under lock and key and doesn’t really want to share . . . payroll information, sales data, profit and loss stats, etc.
  • They lack patience. They don’t want to take the time to train someone else to handle any of their responsibilities.  Typically, you’ll hear them say, “What the heck!  By the time I train someone to do this, I could have done it myself.”
  • They lack courage. They’ve been doing what they’re doing for a long time.  They’re good at it.  They’re comfortable with it.  They feel safe.  Leaving all this nice, safe stuff and venturing outside of their comfort zone makes them feel insecure.
  • They lack a management team. When an owner is wearing all the hats, he or she may legitimately complain that all the employees are worker bees without the proper experience or training to handle upper level management tasks.
  • They lack will power. Owners will often gravitate to duties and responsibilities that they consider to be the “fun” parts of the business.  In their view, doing what they enjoy is one of the perks of ownership, and they just can’t bring themselves to give any of that up.

So how do you get around some of these problems and become a world class delegator?

  1. Find ways to allow yourself to trust people. You can’t possibly delegate duties and responsibilities to people if you can’t trust them to competently and faithfully carry them out.  If you feel you need the legal protection of non-compete or non-disclosure agreements, fine . . . put them in place.  If you feel you need to test people on small assignments before giving them big assignments, do that.  If you want to see how they handle low level company information before you let them in on the more important stuff, that’s fine too.  Do what you need to do to develop trusting relationships with those around you or effective delegation will be impossible.
  2. Accept the fact that this is not about you. It’s about the company reaching its potential.  So put aside your personal fears, concerns, likes, and dislikes, and focus on what the company needs from you.  Decide which of your activities provide the most leverage for moving the company forward, and concentrate on those.  Get someone else to do the other stuff.
  3. Get over yourself. It’s unlikely that you’re the only person on the planet who can do what you do, so stop pretending that you are.  If you don’t have such a person already on board, then go out and find him or her.
  4. Don’t insist that people to whom you are delegating do things “your way.” Just because you’ve always done things a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the only way or even the best way.  Pay attention to the outcomes people achieve and don’t worry so much about how they achieve them.
  5. Take joy in being a coach or mentor who helps people grow. Effective delegation gives them an opportunity to do something new and interesting and challenging.  When you fail to delegate effectively, you rob them of those opportunities and leave them with routine, boring, mind-numbing tasks.  Ultimately, if they’re denied those growth opportunities with you, they’ll go find them somewhere else.

In poorly managed companies, particularly in those where job security is a constant concern, people are allowed to horde information and skills in hopes of making themselves indispensable.  In well-run companies, when delegation is working optimally, people at all levels of the organization are encouraged to push duties and responsibilities down to the lowest level at which they can be competently done.

When effective delegation is not present in a company, too many duties and responsibilities become concentrated in too few hands, resulting in an organization that is sluggish, top-heavy, and bureaucratic.  Effective delegation requires commitment and a good deal of work.  It involves building trust, coaching and mentoring, and helping people to develop new skills, but the payoff is huge.  Duties and responsibilities are more evenly distributed throughout the organization and everyone is able to participate in the activities of the company at a level that is appropriate for them.

 
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“Has anyone ever said, ‘I wish I could go to more meetings today’?”

Everybody complains about meetings . . . they’re too long, boring, and don’t accomplish anything. Or as humorist Dave Barry puts it, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’ “ Unfortunately, too many meetings in American businesses today deserve the bad rap they get. They are, in fact, too long, boring, and don’t accomplish anything. But they don’t have to be that way. On the contrary, well-conceived, well-executed meetings can play a vital role in communicating effectively, coordinating complex activities, and solving knotty problems. For a few thoughts on how to turn your meetings from boring, pointless affairs into dynamic, productive, useful sessions, please continue reading below.

“Has anyone ever said, ‘I wish I could go to more meetings today’?”  ~Matt Mullenweg

I don’t know who Matt is, but he asks a valid question with an obvious answer. But why? Why do people often dread going to meetings and consider them a waste of time. Most if not all of the blame lies at the feet of the meeting organizer. The organizer is asking people to take time out from their primary responsibilities to sit in a meeting room, so there had better be a good reason for it, and the organizer had better prepare well for it. When the organizer doesn’t prepare properly for the meeting and hopes to get away with just “winging it,” the meeting will be DOA.

Here are a few things that will help a meeting organizer to run an effective meeting:

  1. Start with the end in mind. What are you trying to accomplish, and is a meeting really the most efficient, effective way to accomplish it? Could you get the result you need with a few phone calls to the key players. Could you communicate just as effectively via email rather than in a meeting room? Treat calling a meeting as an option of last resort
  2. Publish an agenda in advance so people can come to the meeting prepared. And it is critically important that the agenda include an expected outcome. Are we going to solve a problem? Make a decision on a specific issue? Make the purpose of the meeting clear and compelling, and tell the people involved what they should expect to have accomplished when they leave the meeting.
  3. Think carefully about who you invite to the meeting. Be considerate of peoples’ time. Don’t oblige them to sit through a meeting if they are not needed. Whatever is being discussed, every person in the room should feel it’s relevant to them, and every person there should feel they have something to contribute.
  4. Manage the agenda. Start on time and move through the agenda items efficiently. Keep the discussion focused and don’t allow it to get bogged down on any one item. End on time.
  5. Get everyone involved and don’t let anyone monopolize the conversation. If someone is droning on and on, politely remind him or her that others need a chance to speak. If you have wallflowers in the room, you may have to work to draw them out. After all, if they didn’t have something to contribute, they wouldn’t be in the room (see #3 above).
  6. Check technology at the door. Don’t allow cell phones or iPads in the room. If you want peoples’ undivided attention, you can’t have them taking phone calls or responding to text messages.
  7. Follow up with a meeting summary. It’s not usual for people to leave a meeting with very different recollections of what was said and what was decided. So send a summary to each participant, detailing tasks to be done, by whom, and by when. Include any decisions that were agreed to by the group.

Dan Pink, noted business writer and lecturer, has an interesting take on what makes for a good meeting. He asks, does the meeting involve conflict? Anxiety? Tension? In other words, there has to be something important at stake . . . an outcome that we care about. And is there a reasonable expectation that we’ll be able to resolve something? He makes a good point. If there’s nothing important at stake and no outcome we care about, why are we bothering to meet about it?

Pink also notes that “omnibus meetings” . . . those that cover big things, little things, long-term things, short-term things, tactics, strategies . . . are usually ineffective. There’s such a potpourri of stuff on the agenda that people get lost as to what they’re supposed to do with it all. It’s better, he says, to have several short, highly focused meetings than it is to have one long catchall meeting.

Some companies are using daily check-ins (sometimes called, huddles) as effective communication and coordination tools. The idea is for every department, shift, or team to gather at the beginning of the workday for a “standing” meeting . . . no chairs. The unspoken message is, “we don’t need chairs because we’re not going to be here long enough to sit.” It’s a time for announcements, if any, to be made, but mostly a time to coordinate the unit’s activities so that everyone knows what to expect during the day and what they should expect to accomplish before quitting time. Five minutes max.

Beware of regularly scheduled meetings, as for instance a weekly “staff meeting.” These are meetings that people dutifully file into because their calendar says they’re supposed to, but they have no real idea what to expect or what is to be accomplished. Meetings like this are what make people wonder, “Why are we here and why are we wasting our time? This is pointless!”

Meetings can and should be indispensable business tools, but use them sparingly. And when you do use them, make sure meeting participants understand the importance of what’s to be discussed and the importance of what you expect the meeting to accomplish.

 
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