Friday, November 30, 2012

Think Of Ways To Keep Employees Excited About Their Work

Everyone is concerned about good employees leaving their company and there is all the buzz and activity around talent development and talent acquisition. So why do so many companies throw money away towards employees thinking they will stay. Here are a few ways to keep employees excited and hopefully stay in your organization.

  1. Make sure employees have a voice in your company - don't provide them with lip service but a clear avenue to voice their concerns and you will see productivity increase.
  2. Clear all the unnecessary roadblocks - don't weight employees down with a lot of bureaucratic BS and multiple avenue to go through to get something done. It creates frustration, time, and money and they will leave if you continue to frustrate them.
  3. Get rid of the bad bosses - one thing that drives out employees even more that not having a good on-boarding program is a bad boss. Make sure your managers and supervisors are rated based on turnover, employee 360 feedback to ensure that you have the right people in the right managerial places.
  4. Free up some money - don't continue to hie behind the austerity thing, good employees can be compensated in a multitude of ways that won't beat the bank.
  5. Make employees futures real - grow your good employees in ways that they want, ask them don't just guess your way through.
  6. Make sure they fee invested - do focus groups, 1-on-1 with the CEO, provide them with visibility.
  7. Survey your employees - you should do this formally every 3 years and informally every year. It is worth the money and if you use online tools like SurveyMonkey it does not cost much at all.
I hope that these few tidbits hit home and you are practicing these in your organization. I know I did in mine and they worked, but we did not do them all at the same time.  

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Why Are HR People Like Spiders?

I had lunch with a dear and close friend yesterday and as usual we talked about human resources and how things are continuously changing. When I mean changing I mean the responsibilities and more involvement within the business. But as we continued to discuss the function there were several things that had not changed and to be completely honest they probably never will. So here are my HR spider issues:
  • HR always plays it safe when it comes to executive recruiting, that's when they are involved by the way. They will choose an executive search firm that is a big name over a small boutique firm. Why is that? You know the small boutique firms have a far better completion rate than the big 4 and they usually have lower overhead thus more pass on savings to the customer. In addition they will play a very hands on role in the search. When was the last time the person at the big 4 was involved in the search or you dealt with them. It was there lower level people who serviced you unless there was a billing issue. Yes this is a very big issue with me. 
  • HR will always play it safe when it comes to internal systems. I will not go into detail because it will take a year to mention all the issues. 
  • HR rarely goes out on a limb - yes that you and that was me in the early years. HR are not risk takers and when you are in business there is risk in everything you do so why not HR.
So, HR are like spiders in a lot of respects, they never change the way they do things. I would like to hear your thoughts on this topic, email me at wgstevens2@gmail.com. 


Friday, November 23, 2012

World's Simplest Management Secret


Forget what you learned in those management books. There's really only one way to ensure that everyone on your team excels.

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Management books have it all wrong. They all try to tell you how to manage "people."
It's impossible to manage "people"; it's only possible to manage individuals. And because individuals differ from one another, what works with one individual may not work with somebody else.
Some individuals thrive on public praise; others feel uncomfortable when singled out.
Some individuals are all about the money; others thrive on challenging assignments.
Some individuals need mentoring; others find advice to be grating.
The trick is to manage individuals the way that THEY want to be managed, rather than the way that YOU'd prefer to be managed.
The only way to do this is to ASK.
In your first (or next) meeting with each direct report ask:
  • How do you prefer to be managed?
  • What can I do to help you excel?
  • What types of management annoy you?
Listen (really listen) to the response and then, as far as you are able, adapt your coaching, motivation, compensation, and so forth to match that individual's needs.
BTW, a savvy employee won't wait for you to ask; he or she will tell you outright what works. When this happens, you're crazy not to take that employee's advice!
Unfortunately, most individuals aren't that bold, which is why it's up to you to find out how to get the best out of them.
And you'll never get that out of a management book.
There is no one-size-fits-all in a world where everyone is unique



by: 

Monday, November 19, 2012

Must-Have Job Skills in 2013


Even as employers remain cautious next year about every dollar spent on employees, they'll also want workers to show greater skills and results.
For employees who want to get ahead, basic competency won't be enough.
To win a promotion or land a job next year, experts say there are four must-have job skills:
1. Clear communications
Whatever their level, communication is key for workers to advance.
"This is really the ability to clearly articulate your point of view and the ability to create a connection through communication," says Holly Paul, U.S. recruiting leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting and consulting firm based in New York.
Richard Faust
For job seekers in particular, clear communication can provide a snapshot of their work style to employers. "I can walk away from a five-minute conversation and feel their enthusiasm and have a good understanding of what's important to them," Ms. Paul says.
As office conversations increasingly move online, some workers are losing or never developing the ability to give a presentation, for example. Others may be unable to write coherently for longer than, say, 140 characters.
"Technology in some ways has taken away our ability to write well. People are in such a hurry that they are multitasking," and they skip basics such as spelling and proofing, says Paul McDonald, senior executive director of Robert Half International,RHI -0.71% a Menlo Park, Calif., staffing firm.
2. Personal branding
Human-resources executives scour blogs, Twitter and professional networking sites such as LinkedIn when researching candidates, and it's important that they like what they find.
"That's your brand, that's how you represent yourself," says Peter Handal, CEO of Dale Carnegie Training, a Hauppauge, N.Y., provider of workplace-training services. "If you post something that comes back to haunt you, people will see that."
Workers also should make sure their personal brand is attractive and reflects well on employers. "More and more employers are looking for employees to tweet on their behalf, to blog on their behalf, to build an audience and write compelling, snappy posts," says Meredith Haberfeld, an executive and career coach in New York.
Ms. Haberfeld has a client whose employee recently posted on her personalFacebook FB +5.90% page about eating Chinese food and smoking "reefer."
"I saw it on Facebook. Her supervisors saw it," Ms. Haberfeld says.
3. Flexibility
The ability to quickly respond to an employer's changing needs will be important next year as organizations try to respond nimbly to customers.
"A lot of companies want us to work with their employees about how to get out of their comfort zone, how to adapt," says Mr. Handal. "Somebody's job today may not be the same as next year."
The ability to learn new skills is of top importance, says George Boué, human-resources vice president for Stiles, a real-estate services company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "We want to know that if we roll out a new program or new tools that the folks we have on board are going to be open to learning," he says.
4. Productivity improvement
In 2013, workers should find new ways to increase productivity, experts say. Executives are looking for a 20% improvement in employee performance next year from current levels, according to a recent survey by the Corporate Executive Board, an Arlington, Va., business research and advisory firm.
"When you are at your job, do you volunteer for projects? Are you looking for creative ways to help your organization," Mr. McDonald says. "The way to really differentiate yourself is to be proactive."
Companies that are considering adding workers in coming years want current employees to operate in growth mode now. "My clients are looking for employees that have a great ability to understand what is wanted and needed, rather than needing to be told," Ms. Haberfeld says.
Even hiring managers need to work on certain skills as organizations consider expanding next year. "The ability to spot talent and hire people has fallen out of use over the last several years," says Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist in New York. "As the economy turns around, companies will have to work harder to retain talented employees. Companies have trimmed the fat, and now they have to build the muscle."
Write to Ruth Mantell at ruth.mantell@dowjones.com
—Ruth Mantell is a reporter for MarketWatch. Read more at marketwatch.com.

Monday, November 12, 2012

5 Great Challenges Ahead for HR and Leaders


Whew! Glad that’s over. Now the election’s been settled businesses can go back to business, employees can get back to work and job-seekers can expect to find more open roles. Money sitting on the sidelines will come back into the economy as investment in people, training, technology and…..the real innovation starts to move forward.
Or will it? I feel as though we’ve had a Goodbye, uncertainty and Hellooo, uncertainty, moment. We’re still perched on the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff, waiting for leadership to show up. 2013 promises to be one of the most challenging years yet for Leaders and HR pros as they are forced to pick a path around healthcare regulations that haven’t been written, some level of tax reform that hasn’t been defined (er, Simpson-Bowles anyone?) and employee frustration with lack of growth, potential loss of benefits, and dimming hopes of retirement. Whatever your politics, we’re all in the same boat, and it’s listing badly. The leader’s seat is still vacant. Can you believe it?
Take a look at this 2012 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, Challenges Facing HR Over the Next 10 Years, and ‘developing leaders’ takes the number two spot of concerns HR must address as identified by  52 percent of respondents.  This is a big jump from the 2010 survey, in which a mere 29 percent of respondents named leadership development a pressing HR challenge. In business, as in the rest of life, leadership skills are critical now more than ever.
Taking the number one spot in the SHRM survey with 60 percent of respondents is ‘retaining and rewarding the best employees’.  This makes sense as a lead-in, since I’d argue the best employees are leaders – people leaders, management leaders, creative leaders, technical leaders or sales leaders. We need to fill the leadership gap, and fast.
Let’s look at the top five challenges to developing leaders and think a bit about how to address them. Here are five must haves for every leader – let’s start a revolution right now:
1) Invest in leadership development. Whether you believe leaders are born or made, companies still need to invest in their best employees to develop and sustain leadership qualities. We’re not talking advanced training in PowerPoint here; it’s a good tool, but at best it’s a tool. Real leadership training involves exposing your best employees to an immersive leadership environment, e.g. Harvard’s Executive Education Program or similar programs offered by MIT, the Kellogg School of Management, Wharton and other top universities. It’s a big investment, but it’s a form of long-term planning: build the best team you can, then invest to make them better. Your people will recognize the investment in them, and both the business and the individual will reap the rewards.
2) Create a culture of collaboration. Leaders are at their best when the company culture demands collaboration. Rewarding individual success is necessary but not sufficient.  Only in a culture of collaborators will organizations have developing leaders working together to bring other employees up and into the circle of leadership.
3) Develop communications skills. We may expect our leaders to be good communicators but too often it’s not the case. Communication styles vary widely; what may work for one organization may not work for another. This is part of developing a company culture: you need to set the bar high for communications skills, give people training where they come up short, and correct style mis-matches before harm is done. Good communicators build teams and trust; poor communicators create and feed uncertainty.
4) Drive and sustain real accountability. Leaders must be accountable. They can’t be like Homer Simpson (DO’H! It was like that when I got here – it ain’t my problem!); they must own the problems they need to solve and own their failures to be credible when claiming success.
5) Be human and reward emotional intelligence. Yes, I’m a huge fan of emotional intelligence; yes, it belongs on any ‘top five’ leadership traits list. As organizations work with emerging leaders HR must stay focused on helping new leaders hone their emotional intelligence. This is crucial. Leaders be human please.
Finally, Leaders and HR people must act now to advocate for employees of all levels – we too must be leaders. One way to start is to join with or support SHRM leaders when they visit Congress in DC this week to raise awareness of employer concerns about retirement security and employer-provided education assistance.  Our employees, and our developing leaders, need our support to fight against uncertainty about retirement, and they also need our support to ensure companies can help employees grow by ensuring education assistance remains available for associate, undergraduate, and graduate course work. In this new world of work employees will need to reinvent themselves over and over again; employers must be able to support them in this task.
HR and leaders alike have many responsibilities. Maybe among the most important is developing the next generation of leaders and being more innovative as times change rapidly before our eyes. Where would you start? I’d love to know.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Boomers Are Not So Anti-Social

In a recent survey it seems that the Baby Boomer Generation is the largest user of the social media sites seeking jobs. Yes, more than the Gen X & Gen Y generations. 

It is encouraging to see that the BB Generation has plugged-in and cannot be coined as luddite's. The survey which surveyed 5,268 job seekers actually found that 29% of Baby Boomers used social media compared to 27% of the Gen Xer's and 23% of the Gen Y's. 

Way to go Baby Boomers, you are not technically challenged.  

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Passing the Baton: What’s So Hard About Succession Planning?


a reprint from StrategyForcusedHR.Blogspot.com

One of the things I did best was provide a successor. Adam has the respect of the owners and the players, he has expertise in the very important areas of social media, international and television, all of which report to him.”
That was a statement this week from the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, David Stern, in announcing his retirement. Stern steps down on Feb. 1, 2014, 30 years to the day after taking charge of the league, and he will be replaced by Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver.

“I decided that things are in great shape and there’s an organization in place that will ultimately be led by Adam that is totally prepared to take it to the next level,” Stern said.

As the saying goes, “That’s what I am talking about.” I could almost see Stern’s checklist:
  • Identify new skill set needed for the future;
  • Hire for replacement;
  • Groom/Mentor with other needed skills;
  • Make the appropriate introductions as needed;
  • Work side-by-side as a true partner;
  • Announce retirement;
  • Pass the baton.
What’s so hard about succession planning?

Monday, November 5, 2012

Analogy: The New Way to Spot Strategic Opportunities


This post had so many readers that I thought I would re-post it. There is something very interesting in thinking beyond what you as a company can be Harley-Davidson and Ducati did just that. What does your company think about itself? 

When Charlie Merrill (the Merrill in Merrill-Lynch) envisioned banks as becoming "financial supermarkets" in the 1930s, he was describing a new strategic opportunity that no one else had imagined. Using a powerful analogy not only helped Merrill think through the idea of offering a broad menu of financial services to the middle class, but also aided him in selling the idea to others.

Traditional strategy development relies on economic analysis. The problem is that this approach yields opportunities that more than likely will also be discovered by competitors. And thus the power of strategy development tied to analogy: visionaries see opportunity where no one else is looking.

Writing in the July-August Harvard Business Review, HBS professor Giovanni Gavetti calls this looking at "cognitively distant" opportunities because they require a mental leap. "This way of thinking suggests that a crucial component of strategic leadership is the mental capacity to spot opportunities that are invisible to rivals and to manage other relevant parties' perceptions to get them on board."

Harley-Davidson and Ducati envision themselves not as motorcycle manufacturers but as providers of entertainment. Google re-imagined the Internet portal business not as a media business -- the model used by rival Yahoo -- but rather as a technology business. When you re-imagine your business, new ways to compete appear.

In addition to overcoming set ways of seeing things, the visionary has another monumental task: to convince employees and other stakeholders to buy in. Gavetti writes that former Kodak CEOGeorge Fisher clearly envisioned the company's future in digital, but couldn't change the corporate DNA, which was bound to film.

Want to become a thinking-by-association leader? The article preaches the use of structured associative thinking, which is a process for recognizing and working around out our own cognitive biases.

For strategists, reading The New Psychology of Strategic Leadership could be a fruitful way to begin thinking "outside the box."


a reprint from CBS

7 Search Strategies in B2B - HR Read Up on This!!!


November 5, 2012 - 6:01 am EDT - BtoBOnline.com 


The year may be almost over, but that doesn't mean marketers can't squeak out a few more good campaigns. Search, with its ability to change on a dime, is a good place to focus attention—especially since search “helps build strong brands by bettering brand-health metrics,” according to an August eMarketer report (“Search for Branding: Tools for Better Campaigns”). And there's never been a better time to jump into the fray, according to another research firm. Forrester Research's “U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016” forecast that search's share of the marketing budget will drop from 55% to 44% by 2016.

With more budgets going to mobile and social channels, marketers may continue seeing pay per click (PPC) costs drop as they have over the past four quarters. The latest Google results, for the third quarter released Oct. 18, found cost per click (CPC) dropped 15%, following 16% and 12% drops in previous quarters.
Cost doesn't matter, however, if marketers aren't executing campaigns correctly. To that end, experts suggested these seven strategies to help the b2b segment get the most out of its search efforts.

1) Don't automatically turn off PPC campaigns during the holidays. While it's true that b2b buyers are probably spending less at the end of the fourth quarter, there are still deals getting done, said Joseph Kerschbaum, VP at Clix Marketing. Many b2b buyers are starting to research purchases that they will make in the first quarter, so it's important to be out there in front of them, he said. One strategy that may help marketers get the most out of their ad dollars: Spread out your spending differently than you normally would. You might have 30 days worth of budget to spend in November but, instead of dividing it by 30, spend 80% to 90% in the three weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, leaving a smaller portion for that week and the following one, Kerschbaum said. In December, spend the bulk of your campaign funds between Dec. 1 and 21, ramping up again Dec. 30 and 31. “A lot of people come back to their offices before the new year to get a jump on their work,” he said.

2) Adjust your keyword list. Most people take the “if it's not broken, don't fix it” position when it comes to adjusting keywords. However, experts said marketers should be continually analyzing and reviewing their keywords, retiring underperforming ones and adding new ones based on industry research and natural search analytics. Many marketers avoid using comparison keywords since they tend to resonate with buyers who are very early in the purchase cycle. However, these types of informational searches may fit into a company's fourth-quarter strategy.

3) Add sitelinks. This strategy works well for paid and organic search, said Dana Todd, senior VP-marketing and business development at search company Performics. Sitelinks are part of an ad extension for Google that enables marketers to show links to pages from your website, in addition to the main landing page, beneath the text of your ads. They appear in two columns and usually give searchers quick shortcuts into your site as well as giving you more real estate on the actual search page since it extends your ad further on the page. It also pushes some of the competition and natural search results to the second page. “This is especially important when it comes to mobile since sitelinks fill out half the page on a mobile device,” Todd said. A telephone number should be one of those links since, especially on mobile devices, it gives prospects a way to instantly connect.

4) Complement your paid campaign with a display campaign. “Now that Google opened up the DoubleClick exchange and other ad exchanges that are serving Google ads, display is easy to add to a campaign, too,” said Loren M. Baker, VP-business development at online marketing provider BlueGlass Interactive. The combination of search and display gives marketers the ability to retarget customers who have gone to a site by clicking on a paid link. “You can target them with a display ad that maybe has the same message and images the searcher saw when they clicked through to the site,” Baker said.

5) Bring keywords through to the landing page. This seems like a no-brainer but it's one of the biggest mistakes that marketers make, Kerschbaum said. Whatever keyword or phrase that encouraged someone to click through should be featured prominently on the landing page—and that goes for any special pricing or language as well, he said. Nothing turns a searcher off more than having to dig through navigation or a lot of text to find what he or she was looking for to begin with.

6) Rethink your mobile strategy. According to Adobe Systems' “2012 Global Digital Advertising Update and Emerging Trends” report, CPCs remained lower for mobile traffic than desktop CPCs, but conversion rates were 20% higher, as was ROI. The takeaway: Mobile strategy is imperative. It's all about context in mobile, Performics' Todd said, so ad copy should be localized whenever possible. “If it's an explicit local query such as "Chicago business insurance' make sure [the prospect] knows you're really local by adjusting the ad copy or sitelinks to include a local area code on the call number or a physical address/neighborhood reference such as "Serving the South Loop since 1979,' ” she said.

7) Forget the daily budget. Search campaigns do best when they are based on accurate bidding—not a daily spending limit, Goodman said. It's OK to raise the budget one day and scale it back the next in order to capture the winning bid for your most successful keywords—those keywords that have been proven through testing and analytics.

HR needs to also rethink their search strategies for talent. 

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The CEOs Checklist


I came across this blog post (5/12) by Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, the Northern California venture capital firm. I thought it was important to get it out there so CEOs and HR leaders can see what start-up CEOs look at to generate new product development, growth, and employee engagement. I have preached these items over the years to the CEOs I have supported. Unfortunately, they do not always practice them as a daily ritual.
As a first time CEO, there were times when I would sit at my desk and think, “What should I be doing today?” This feeling was especially strong after every financing round closed. After our seed round, we had defined the product and the engineers were coding it. I didn’t code. After I hired the executive team and started delegating, most of the bases were covered.
Of course, there is always plenty to do at a start-up and the CEO is usually the head cook and dishwasher, but the question of where I should be productively spending my time continued to nag at me.
I was pretty aggressive about reaching out to other CEOs and mentors and this question was my biggest area of inquiry: “Hey, when you think back to when your company was my size, how did you spend your time?”
There were a number of suggestions that were specific to the company life-cycle stage like, “Get some alpha customers teed up” or “Get together a launch plan for Europe.” However, there were also some core, evergreen pieces of everyday advice that applied throughout the company’s growth:

Push the team

After you’ve hired rockstars in every essential VP role, it’s the CEO’s job to challenge them to do extraordinary things. Here are a few things I used to do:
  • Set aggressive goals. As a company we would set three goals every quarter and then I would individually negotiate three specific and measurable goals (such as “Hire a director of X” or “Meet with 20 customers”) for each of my direct reports that supported the company goals. Everybody needed to accomplish something more than just doing his or her job.
  • Give frequent feedback. In addition to giving extensive bi-annual performance reviews (see my previous post on the dysfunctional CEO), I would constantly pull VPs aside after meetings—“I like the way you handled that” or “Dude, that was a bit harsh”.  I’d keep in mind the “shit sandwich”, a piece of constructive feedback in between two specific, positive comments.
  • Hold weekly staff meetings. This was not a rote set of updates but a place where arguments were had and decisions made. After every meeting we’d send out a list of decisions and discussion points to all managers.
  • Schedule bi-monthly 1:1s. I’d usually spend an hour (no interruptions and paying attention!) going through progress on goals, how I could help, what’s going on within their teams, etc. The tone was positive, but I would constantly challenge them to do more with less.

Sell the vision

Shortly after our first round of funding, my co-founder, Scott Banister, turned to me and said, “I’ve heard you tell 100 different people a slightly different version of the same story. I had no idea you spend so much time selling!” He was right, I was constantly selling: soliciting investors and advisors, signing recruiters and PR firms, hiring employees, securing first customers, conducting company meetings, convincing reporters and sparring with industry analysts. They all demanded a compelling story, told with enthusiasm, and the CEO needs to be on the front line with these critical meetings that might turn into the tipping point between success and failure.
When I think about all the important things CEOs must do, succinctly and convincingly articulating “the story” is right up there. But there’s a catch: it must be told with both authenticity and passion—like it’s literally pouring out of them. We refer to the best of these entrepreneurs as “glow in the dark”.

Arbitrate disagreements

Half.com founder and CEO Josh Kopelman once told me that the thing he hated most about being CEO was when two of his smartest people would disagree and he would have to come down on one side: “These decisions were usually 51/49% and I was left having to console the ‘loser’.” He’s right. Arbitrating these disagreements is one of the hardest and most emotionally draining parts of the job, but many CEOs just avoid it and nothing breeds a horrible culture like a CEO who puts offs decisions or, worse yet, makes too many compromises.
I firmly believe that if the VPs aren’t periodically at odds with one another, then the company isn’t being nearly aggressive enough. Why can’t we get the customer feature in the next release? We should pre-announce new functionality and run under the ball! Great sales and marketing VPs constantly push the envelope with engineering, operations, finance and product.

Management By Walking Around (MBWA)

This is one of the few acronyms I retained from my undergraduate finance studies. I vividly remember reading it in some Management 101 textbook and thinking how simple and silly it seemed. Years later, I’ve come to believe that it’s a really important part of being a CEO. I probably spent three to five hours a week on MBWA and would put hour-long blocks in the calendar specifically for this purpose. Just a simple plopping down in an employee’s cube with a “Whatcha working on?” would yield so much valuable information. As the final decision-maker on so many difficult calls in a fast moving business, the CEO’s connection to the people that are actually writing code or talking to customers is critical. And you don’t get it from sitting in your office.

Talk to customers

A CEO should probably be spending about 30% of his or her time with customers, and this is especially true for an enterprise CEO. But this doesn’t mean talking with just the CIO or SVP, who most likely barely remembers signing the purchase order. However uncomfortable, I would insist on talking to the person actually using our product. I want to speak with the guy in the bowels of the data center, the one who probably comes into work without having showered and with bedhead. With just a slight prompting of, “Hey, I know you like the product but how can we improve it?”, he would unroll his manifesto of feature requests, bugs and other stuff to think about. Some of our best product ideas came on the plane ride home stitching together all the feedback.
Now, there are certainly a ton of other important activities—like raising money, setting a culture and hiring executives—that fall primarily on the CEO’s shoulders, but the aforementioned list includes the “responsibilities” I would hold myself to every single week.