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| Volume 6, Issue 8 |
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In This Issue:
 Five of anything ice breaker
Job interview tips: How to interview potential employees
Magnify the retention value of your 401K plan
Workplace conflict resolution
 Building a better workforce
A perfect fit
 Best place to launch a career 2006 rankings
Karma Capitalism
 The quiet leader – and how to become one
Negotiating in three dimensions
 What it takes to be great
Best bosses
 Face of the future: The aging workforce
 Small employers, bigger paychecks
How to (legally) spy on employees
Stop that email!
Easy ways to ease up on your body
 Escape to the land of enchantment
The world’s most expensive steaks
Three performance principles keep you on target
The high cost of low morale
Valuing Contributions
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Five of Anything Ice Breaker
Looking for a winning team building ice breaker that you can use for meetings, training classes, team building sessions, and company events and activities?
My new five of anything ice breaker makes group cohesiveness and cooperation a
natural extension of the discussion when you use this team building ice breaker.
Take a look, too, at the piece I put together to help you make all of your team building activities successful...
Read the article. Back to top
Job Interview Tips: How to Interview Potential Employees
I admit that the last time I went on an actual job intervew as a job searcher was about twenty years ago.
I am lucky in that starting and operating my own business was the right decision for
me. For a client company, however, I have interviewed hundreds of potential employees
in the past couple of years. This has caused me to take a hard look at
interviewing employees from both sides of the desk...
Read the article. Back to top
Magnify the Retention Value of Your 401k Plan
You want employees to appreciate their benefits. You want your benefits to be significant factors in recruiting, retaining, and appreciating the services of employees.
Yet, so often they are not. I can remember introducing a new vacation accrual plan
that allowed employees to accrue vacaton much faster than under the old method.
(We went from giving another five vacation days every five years to enabling
employees to begin accruing the vacation time annually.) I don't think I'm alone
when I say the reaction was barely a yawn. One employee actually told me, "Well
you finally see the light. This is how it always should have been." Ouch! Nowhere
can an employer feel more unappreciated than with their employee 401k plan.
Tired of feeling as if your 401k plan doesn't get the appreciation and
participation it deserves? You can maximize the impact of your 401k retirement
plan to benefit the people you employ. These necessary and recommended actions
for publicizing your 401k plan
will help you create an appreciated, valued benefit
that helps you achieve your business goals...
Read the article. Back to top
Workplace Conflict Resolution
Do you have to help resolve conflicts at work?
You do if you are responsible for creating a work environment that enables people
to thrive. If turf wars, conflicts, disagreements and differences of opinion
escalate into interpersonal conflict, you must intervene immediately.
Conflict resolution, with you as mediator, is essential. Yet, few employees are
trained either to handle conflict personally or to mediate conflict between others.
Done poorly conflict resolution saps morale and makes an employee feel as if they won
or lost - neither is positive for your workplace. I've been interviewing potential
HR Administrators for a client company. One of our interview questions asks about
how the candidate would approach a specific conflict resolution situation. You would
be surprised how many of these candidates get it wrong. The actions they describe
they would take, or have taken in the past, serve to exacerbate conflict, not help
to resolve the conflict. Conflict resolution is an immediate priority for
your organization. You will want to read the steps to follow
in Workplace Conflict Resolution.
The article tells you what to avoid in conflict resolution and what to do in conflict resolution...
Read the article. Back to top
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Building a Better Workforce
What technology can (and can't) do to help companies optimize their most valuable asset.
Fifty years ago, a man wrote to Look magazine columnist Norman Vincent Peale,
asking, "What should a person do who is unhappy and bored in his job after twenty
years, but who earns a nice salary and hasn't the nerve to leave? He'll never go
any higher in salary and position, but will always have a job." In the
half-century since, many aspects of the employer-employee relationship have
changed — noticeably the assumption of guaranteed employment. But boredom
and unhappiness have not gone out of style, nor have companies managed to
achieve perfect alignment between corporate strategy and the day-to-day activities
of their workers. There remains only a tenuous connection between pay and
performance, companies routinely lay off valuable workers and then spend large
sums to recruit less-capable employees, and the incessant labeling of the workforce
as a company's most-valuable asset seems wholly at odds with the scant efforts
most companies make to optimize it. [More tellingly, when we asked CFOs where they
would focus attention if they wanted to increase the value their companies derive
from their workforces, two-thirds cited employee training. Yet when we asked what
drives employee effectiveness and productivity, only one in five CFOs pointed to
formal on-the-job training. The most common answer to that question, given by 60
percent of respondents, was compensation and other rewards, but only 22 percent
said that more-generous compensation and benefits were key to increasing the value
of the workforce.In short, CFOs seem conflicted about human capital, seeing in it
plenty of potential but also uncertain returns]...
Read the article. Back to top
A Perfect Fit
It's the middle of August and former Thomasville Furniture Industries CFO
Paul Dascoli, 45, is riding a 300-foot roller coaster at Cedar Point Park with
his two fearless teenagers.
But his mind is on a roller-coaster journey of its own, contemplating the
ramifications of a corporate reorganization that prompted him to resign rather than accept a diminished role. He has been toiling in a rented office for three
months, sending out résumés and working the phones. "It is intense and tiring," he says, "but you can't let up until a deal is done." Cut to the West Coast, where
Ashley Spencer has a different attitude toward her job search. On a whim, the newly minted CPA flew from Portland, Oregon, to New Zealand and spent six weeks
touring after leaving PricewaterhouseCoopers following her fourth audit season. Still not ready to work, the 25-year-old spent the next two months attending weddings
and visiting friends, expecting that employers would probably move quickly once they saw her résumé. Cruise south to San Diego and find Adam Luger enjoying life in a
similar fashion. Thanks to being laid off in June with a cushy severance package, the former Pfizer finance manager was free to spend a month in Germany watching the
World Cup, another visiting family, and plenty of hours enjoying California's
coastline. Far from worrying about his next paycheck, Luger, 32, deliberately delayed his job search until mid-August in order to embrace the summer. Then there's
40-year-old Scott Whitehurst. Wearied by the friction between two bosses, Whitehurst left his job as a divisional CFO at Novartis in Switzerland last February.
Since then, he has reconnected with his family and started rehabbing vintage race cars. As of August 15, he had interviewed at five companies, including Microsoft, but
is in no rush. "I'm looking for an environment," he says. "It's not about money. It's about finding people I enjoy working with. If I can't find that, I may never
work again." Most people don't relish the prospect of job hunting, but in finance, it's almost a way of life. Given inevitable reorganizations, layoffs, mergers, and pure
and simple frustration, many finance professionals end up looking for work every three to five years. And like Dascoli, Spencer, Luger, and Whitehurst, all must make
important decisions about what they want next and how they intend to get it. What's different these days is that many seekers have the luxury of choosing when and
where they go next. "Right now, the marketplace for financial candidates is hotter
than I've seen it in 20 years," says Ted Buyniski, senior vice president at
Radford Surveys & Consulting, thanks in large part to...
Read the article. Back to top
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Best Places to Launch a Career
2006 Rankings
Launching a Career in New York
The Big Apple can take a bite out of you, but
learning how to fight back is a key skill for
a young professional just getting her feet wet
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Determining which employers are best for entry-level workers is no easy task.
To find out, BusinessWeek used a three-part methodology. First, we surveyed
career services directors at leading U.S. schools to learn which employers were tops
on their list. We then asked those employers to complete a survey seeking information
on hiring, pay, benefits, and training programs, which we then compared with others
in the same industry. Finally, we obtained from Universum Communications,
a Philadelphia-based research firm, the results of its 2006 survey of 37,000
U.S. undergraduates, who were asked to identify their five most desirable
employers. The employer survey counts for 50% of the final ranking, while the
career services and student surveys count for 25% each...
Read the article. Back to top
Karma Capitalism
Times have changed since Gordon Gekko quoted Sun Tzu in the 1987 movie Wall Street. Has the Bhagavad Gita replaced The Art of War as the hip new ancient Eastern management text?
Signs of worldly success abounded as members of the Young Presidents' Organization met at a mansion in a tony New Jersey suburb. BMWs, Lexuses, and Mercedes-Benzes lined
the manicured lawn. Waiters in starched shirts and bow ties passed out vegetarian canapés. And about 20 executives--heads of midsize outfits selling everything
from custom audiovisual systems to personal grooming products--mingled poolside with their spouses on a late September evening. After heading inside their host's
sprawling hillside house--replete with glittering chandeliers, marble floors, and gilded rococo mirrors--the guests retreated to a basement room, shed their designer
loafers and sandals, and sat in a semicircle on the carpet. The speaker that evening was Swami Parthasarathy, one of India's best-selling authors on Vedanta, an ancient
school of Hindu philosophy. With an entourage of disciples at his side, all dressed in flowing white garments known as kurtas and dhotis, the lanky 80-year-old scribbled
the secrets to business success ("concentration, consistency, and cooperation") on an easel pad. The executives sat rapt. "You can't succeed in business unless you
develop the intellect, which controls the mind and body," the swami said in his mellow baritone. At the Wharton School a few days earlier, Parthasarathy talked about
managing stress. During the same trip, he counseled hedge fund managers and venture capitalists in Rye, N.Y., about balancing the compulsion to amass wealth with the
desire for inner happiness. And during an auditorium lecture at Lehman Brothers Inc.'s (LEH ) Lower Manhattan headquarters, a young investment banker sought advice on
dealing with nasty colleagues. Banish them from your mind, advised Parthasarathy.
"You are the architect of your misfortune," he said. "You are the architect of your fortune."...
Read the article. Back to top
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The Quiet Leader—and How to Be One
If you look
behind lots of great heroic leaders, you find them doing lots of quiet,
patient work themselves.
—Joseph L. Badaracco Jr
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It sounds almost paradoxical. A quiet leader? Yet quiet leaders—managers who
apply modesty, restraint, and tenacity to solve particularly difficult problems—are
more common than we think, says Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Badaracco.
In his new book Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing
(HBS Press, 2002), he describes what quiet leaders do and how they make their
workplace, and their world, a better place. Badaracco recently sat down with HBS
Working Knowledge Senior Editor Martha Lagace to talk about quiet leaders...
Read the article. Back to top
Negotiating in Three Dimensions
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“Negotiators sometimes can discover hidden sources of value and then craft agreements to unlock that value and overcome barriers created by poor deal design”
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Tactics, deal design, and set-up are three crucial components of the most effective negotiations.
Yet many negotiators focus only on the tactical part, running the risk of
undermining their own best interests. How can you negotiate more skillfully
and confidently with clients, partners, and adversaries as well as with
colleagues within your organization? In this Q&A, James Sebenius and David Lax,
authors of 3-D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most
Important Deals, discuss the common mistakes of negotiators, the power of
a three-dimensional approach, why negotiating is an essential skill, and where
the science of negotiation is headed. Negotiation is a core competence for life,
"not merely an important skill to be wheeled out for special occasions," they
argue. James K. Sebenius is the Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration
at Harvard Business School and a principal of Lax Sebenius LLC, a negotiation
strategy firm. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Program on
Negotiation at Harvard Law School. David A. Lax, a former faculty member at
Harvard Business School and investment banker, is now principal of Lax Sebenius
LLC...
Read the article. Back to top
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What it takes to be great
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| Born Winner? Golf champ Tiger Woods (pictured at 3 years old) never stopped trying to improve. | |
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| Woods (pictured in 2001) devoted hours to practice and even remade his Swing twice, because that's what it took to get better. | |
Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work.
What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett
the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into
the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told
Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's
a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't. Well, folks, it's not so
simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job,
because targeted natural gifts don't exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born
CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through
an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but
work of a particular type that's demanding and painful. Buffett, for instance, is
famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements
of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift
is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make
yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide
array of fields. Understand that talent doesn't mean intelligence, motivation
or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity
especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson
and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, "The evidence we have
surveyed ... does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of
possessing innate gifts."...
Read the article. Back to top
Best Bosses
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Five leaders who use innovative strategies and rewards to motivate employees.
You can offer all the benefits in the world, but the one that matters most to
employees is a piece of the action. Of the 18 honorees in Winning Workplaces'
fourth annual Best Bosses competition, 14 run companies partly or
completely worker-owned. That reflects a broader trend. The National Center
for Employee Ownership estimates that 9,225 companies were offering stock-option
plans, stock bonus plans, and profit-sharing plans as of July, up from 7,600 in
1999. Winning Workplaces is a nonprofit in Evanston, Ill., that helps
small-business managers improve their communication skills to make workers
more productive and happier. It assembled a team of respected judges, who culled
the 80 applicants by looking at factors such as employee satisfaction ratings and
by interviewing workers. The result? Eighteen Best Bosses - 17 from
commercial companies and one from a nonprofit. From companies that offer free
gourmet dinners during crunch times to a boss who lends top performers the keys to his convertible...
Read the article. Back to top
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Face of the Future: The Aging Workforce
While specific industries certainly face tight labor markets because of the
graying workforce, some experts say companies would be wise to tune out sky-is-falling prognostications of a widespread talent shortage.
Nadine West is a living, breathing rebuttal to predictions of a massive U.S. labor shortage in the near future. West is 73, sells homeowner and automobile insurance
for a unit of financial services company First Horizon National Corp., and has no plans to retire anytime soon. What keeps West on the job is the sense of community she
finds in her Memphis, Tennessee, office, as well as the satisfaction of making a difference. Most people know very little about insurance, says West, who has spent
four decades in the industry. "I enjoy helping and leading them." There are other people like West in her company, her industry and in the U.S. economy. They are part of
the reason why the alleged lack of talent looming from the aging of America is more a bogeyman than a legitimate worry for many companies. Peter Cappelli,
management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, likens alarms about a talent famine to breathless warnings from information technology
professionals that computer systems could fail catastrophically when clocks rolled over to January 1, 2000. In retrospect, of course, the Y2K hype was overblown.
With that example in mind, the current sky-is-falling labor predictions could easily be called Gray2K. It is true that in 2014, some 78 million baby boomers will fall
between the ages of 50 and 68. But partly because many of them will work beyond the age of 55, the U.S. labor force will continue to grow during the next eight years,
according to government projections. Other factors helping to soften the blow of baby boomer retirements include immigration and the prospect that U.S. companies will
send more work offshore. The real question surrounding the U.S. labor force in the next five to 10 years is where tightness in specific talent markets might emerge.
Already some industries, occupations and geographies are showing signs of a squeeze...
Read the article. Back to top
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Small Employers, Bigger Paychecks
Which way is the economy going? If executive salaries at smaller companies are any indication, the answer is sideways--at best.
According to a new small-business compensation survey released today by
Salary.com, median base salaries for most executives at small firms increased
this year over last. The median paycheck for marketing managers rose 4.7%, to
$136,100; head bean counters got a 3% bump, up to $155,000; and plant managers
took home $80,000, or 1.8% more. The annual survey spanned 11 job functions
(not including "owner") at more than 1,800 organizations, both privately and
publicly held, employing one to 500 employees....
Read the article. Back to top
How To (Legally) Spy On Employees
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Hewlett-Packard has given spying a bad name.
But when former Chairwoman Patricia Dunn spearheaded an investigation against
board members, staff and journalists, she was, in a way, simply following a nationwide trend. As technology has improved, risks have increased. As a result, most
corporations are now monitoring their employees closely. Press leaks, theft
of trade secrets and time wasting are big concerns. But the main reason is fear of lawsuits, says Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute, a
consulting firm that helps companies develop monitoring policies. Almost 25% of companies have had employee e-mails subpoenaed because of a workplace lawsuit,
usually involving harassment or discrimination. "Employers need to view e-mail as the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence," says Flynn. While employees may have
been slow to get the message, corporations are catching on. More than 75% of employers monitor their workers' Web site connections, according to a survey by the
ePolicy Institute, a consulting group. About half of all companies store and review computer files, and 55% read e-mail messages. About 26% of firms have fired
workers for misusing the Internet...
Read the article. Back to top
Stop That E-Mail!
What if you could ensure that no one in your company would ever send problem e-mail?
A growing number of companies are looking to do just that with software that
sifts through e-mail, IM and BlackBerry missives before they create legal or
regulatory exposure. "Those Foley e-mails should never have seen the light of
day!" quips Michael Rothschild, senior director of product marketing at one
firm, Orchestria, that offers such software. Indeed, if Orchestria had been
installed on House of Representatives laptops, perhaps those e-mails wouldn't
have gotten out...
Read the article. Back to top
Easy Ways To Ease Up On Your Body
Good health isn't just in the details, but small things can certainly add up.
Eat 100 calories extra a day and you could weigh ten pounds more at the end of the
year. Wearing the same shoes every day can strain your body. Regular exposure to
subway noise can not only affect your hearing, but also raise your blood pressure
and levels of stress hormones. A poorly organized workspace can result in back and
neck discomfort that shouldn't be ignored. "Those little aches and pains--that's
your body telling you something isn't right," says Alan Hedge, Ph.D., professor
of ergonomics at Cornell University. Fortunately, you don't have to overhaul your
life to keep small problems from becoming big ones. There are lots of easy ways to
take some of the burden off of your body...
Read the article. Back to top
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Escape to the land of enchantment
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| Snowy Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Santa Fe | |
Indulge in Santa Fe's beauty, history, art, architecture, dining and more.
The “City Different” may be the nickname the tourist board promotes, but for people
who live in this worldly city of otherworldly beauty, “Fanta Se” is the correct
term. Looked at cynically, the name refers to the “Fantasy Island” aspects of the
place: the too-cute boutiques, the soaring prices, the hordes of tourists jamming
the winding streets of the Old City come summer. On the flip side, though, “fantasy”
is a compliment highlighting Santa Fe’s commitment to the “aesthetic” aspects of
life: its world-class art galleries, its superb museums, its famed summer
performing arts festivals (which run the gamut from chamber music to opera to
flamenco dance), its renowned restaurants, and the eye-candy desert scenery
that surrounds it all. So few other American cities take the cultural and
artistic aspects of life as seriously, and in comparison, Santa Fe seems like a
fantasy world. Decide whether you think the Fanta Se approach is the right one,
on the following one-day itinerary....
Read the article. Back to top
The world's most expensive steaks
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| The private-order "103" Wagyu rib eye at Craftsteak New York | |
Wagyu accounts for all of ForbesTraveler.com's top ten entrees.
It's a steak with the texture of foie gras, and it comes from cattle that,
according to legend, are fed beer and massaged by human hands. In its raw state,
the meat is pale — almost white — packed with what Chef de Cuisine David Varley
of Las Vegas' Bradley Ogden restaurant calls "an ungodly amount of fat." This
marbled delicacy is the product of Japanese beef cattle, or "Wagyu," raised both
in and outside of Japan, and it dominates high-end steak menus internationally.
We spoke with chefs and managers at fine steakhouses worldwide, as well as
beef producers, butchers and meat experts, to compile our list of the world's
most expensive steaks. Wagyu entrees account for all of our top ten. Kobe beef,
an appellation that applies to Wagyu cattle raised in Japan's Hyogo prefecture
and adhering to production standards of that region, is perhaps the most famous
brand of Wagyu — and the priciest. Chef Varley's "Triple Seared" Japanese Kobe...
Read the article. Back to top
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Three Performance Principles to Keep You on Target
Immersed in the throes of what I believed was an eloquent exposition on workplace performance at a recent seminar, a not-so-impressed participant interrupted my flow
with a show-stopping question.
As the HR director responsible for providing learning and performance support, what
she really wanted were some sure things to avoid “screwing up” on performance
matters while hitting the bull’s-eye for her clients. As she said, “From all of
your years at this, surely you apply a few key principles to keep you out of trouble
and even generate success. What are they?” Blunt … demanding … practical. How do
I respond? Politely, I thanked her for the relevant, if disconcerting query. As I
felt my way toward a response, three principles began to emerge – ones that have
guided me for years, but which I had never clearly articulated...
Read the article. Back to top
The High Cost of Low Morale
Who in their right mind purchases a new automobile and proceeds to drive it across the country in first gear?
While that scenario paints a picture of complete lunacy, it’s really no different
than this chronic workplace problem: Leaders spend organizational time, resources
and energy to seek out the best and the brightest employees the job market has to
offer. But once these talented individuals are hired, management doesn’t always know how to bring out the best in them. Instead, it keeps them idling in first gear.
Ultimately, the scenario creates a situation where low morale prevails.Some business leaders who are guilty of this behavior know it, and others don’t. In either
case, though, few know what to do about the underutilization of their workforce. By focusing on performance management, business leaders can avoid paying the
prohibitive costs of low morale...
Read the article. Back to top
Valuing Contributions
There is an old Scottish joke: If you cannot see the Isle of Skye from the mainland, it is raining. If you can see it, it is about to rain.
This reminded me of some research evidence I read from The Centre for High
Performance Development here in London (www.cphd.com) that was borne out by its own work with hundreds of companies. It revealed that in dynamic, competitive
environments, people’s contribution to organizational performance is five times greater than in stable, comfortable environments. And if you can say your environment
is stable and comfortable, well, any moment it is about to change. As the world becomes more competitive, and the pressure mounts to move forward by leaps and bounds
rather than in increments, it is the creative energy of the majority of your staff that will carry you forward. It is no longer possible to rely on the few, while the
rest of us stew. If we know this, why do we do so little about it? Why don’t we spend more time on our people so that they can use more energy on improving performance
than fretting about how they are treated or covering their backsides to protect their position? You can take the e-mail test. If more than 50 percent of the e-mails in
your inbox entail taking positions, covering yourself and moving around useless information, you can be sure that most of the creative energy in your company is
being wasted. Here are my top 10 tips for bringing out creativity and ideas and rewarding staff for doing so without simply increasing the pay bill...
Read the article. Back to top
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