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| Volume 6, Issue 7 |
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In This Issue:
 Companies that love their customers
 The new science of hiring
Do your employees possess the right competencies?
Choose your weapon
You got attitude!
Inc 500: The complete list
 Smarter career moves
My big break
The narcissistic CEO
How to get fired like a man
Instant Messenger etiquette
 Best Bosses
 The Darker side of goal setting: Why goal setting fails...
How to hire an employee: Checklist for hiring
 Best (hiring) practices
 Negotiating when the rules suddenly change
The power of ordinary practices
Are we ready for self management?
On managing with Bobby Knight and “Coach K”
 The 10 biggest mistakes marketers make-#1
The 10 biggest mistakes marketers make-#2
Not your fathers sex shop
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Companies That Love Their Customers
The winners of Fast Company's 2006 Customers First Awards transform ordinary transactions into entertaining experiences -- delighting customers and showing
everyone else the way.
This special online section builds on Fast Company's September 2006 cover story on
the winners with more winners and lots of multimedia. Find out who else we think
is worthy of a mention, hear directly from some of the winners in podcast
interviews, and take a look through our slideshows. And let us know what you think
about customer service. For the first time, Fastcompany.com has built a special
database to capture your votes and your experiences. Scroll down for the Customers
First rating and commenting tool and weigh in on companies and their customer
service. Browse through the ones we've included or add a new listing of your own...
Read the article. Back to top
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The New Science of Hiring
Care to dramatically enhance your chance of finding great employees? Trade in
your gut instincts for a systematic approach to interviewing, testing, and
evaluating job candidates.
What was her company missing? Susan Bowman asked herself that as soon as she
plopped into her chair at Tri-anim, a medical-supplies distributor in
Sylmar, California. It was two and a half years ago. Bowman had just joined the
company as head of human resources, and her highest priority was improving
the company's hiring. When she arrived, the HR department was basically shut out
of the hiring of salespeople. Bowman wanted to make it more useful, especially
after she noticed some hires were fantastic and others were disappointments.
What Tri-anim was missing--and Bowman fortunately recognized this--was something
most employers in America have been missing: Conventional job interviews don't work.
A typical interview--unstructured, rambling, unfocused--tells the interviewer
almost nothing about job candidates, other than how they seem during a couple
of meetings in a conference room. But what are these people like late at night
and under pressure? What motivates them? How smart are they? Have they handled
tough projects? Do they prefer working alone or are they better with a team?
Regular interviews assess barely any of this, and in fact are miserable predictors
of job success. In technical terms, they have a .2 correlation with predicting
success. Discouraging, isn't it? It would be--except that industrial and
organizational psychologists are on the job, seeking the best ways to evaluate
job candidates. A focused three-part approach can make the hiring process
as standardized and objective as possible--and can help predict the best
performers. The system starts with what is called behavioral interviewing, in
which candidates are barraged with tough questions about how...
Read the article. Back to top
Do Your Employees Possess the Right Competencies?
Measuring soft skills in an objective manner helped a hospitality company find its perfect fit. Could it work for you?
The work environment at a major hospitality company had shifted dramatically. For
the first time ever, the general managers would have to market and communicate
the company's services utilizing the Web and e-mail.Historically, the company had
hired based on hard skills and experience alone, but had seen too many people
fail. Repeating the same mistake was not an option. It turned to me for assistance,
as the company was about to embark on evaluating soft skills and
interviewing candidates in a more thorough, focused and objective manner.
What the company was to discover surprised nearly everyone...
Read the article. Back to top
Choose Your Weapon
Remember that not all employee evaluation tests are suitable for hiring. (Myers-Briggs, we're talking to you.)
Here are 10 extensively validated, highly respected tests that are...
Read the article. Back to top
You Got Attitude!
All employees have attitudes that can positively--or negatively--affect
the performance of your company. Here's how to determine what your employees'
attitudes are and how to use this information to ensure they're fulfilled
by--and productive in--their work.
Visualize a cartoon showing a man dressed in a business suit ready to leave
for work. With his hand on the doorknob, he says to his wife, "If I'm not back in
15 minutes, it means I got on the bus and went to work." How many people go to
work with an attitude similar to this? When did you-- or your employees--last feel
this way? Are they wishing Monday morning were actually Friday afternoon? We all
have attitudes. However, are your employees bringing the right attitudes
and motivations to the job? Misdirected and inappropriate attitudes will impact
your company and bottom line. In the late 1990s, our company participated
an international study that examined the attitudes of one job category. This
research led to the discovery that 92% of top sales professionals in both the U.S.
and Germany had the same key attitudes and motivations. This compelling
statistic revealed that appropriate attitudes/internal motivations impacted
job performance. Even today, this statistic hold true! So how can you determine
and gauge your employees' attitudes, and subsequently, the possible affect they
might have on your company? Here's a four-step plan that will help you determine
your employees' attitudes...
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Inc. 500: The Complete List
From iPod accessory makers to health-care service providers, they represent the fastest-growing private companies in America. Browse all 500 rankings
and profiles...
Read the article. Back to top
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Smarter Career Moves
Before we were a workforce of telecommuters, the United States was a nation of relocators.
As recently as the 90s, location transfers were commonplace and companies were
quite generous with moving allowances. Firms readily footed the bill for anyone
they wanted to transfer from Los Angeles to Louisiana. They'd pay the movers’ bill,
pay temporary housing costs and even spring for a transferred employee’s
mortgage closing costs. As you may have noticed, corporate purse strings are
much tighter now. With the exception of a few elite employees and high profile
new hires, chances are you’ll have to pay more out of your own pocket to complete
your relocation. The hassle and expense may explain why the number of
transferred employees dropped from 368 people on average per firm in 1998 to 291
in 2002. But now, with a stronger economy and a tighter labor market, relocations
are on the rise again. In 2006, expected relocations are 412 on average per
firm, according to Worldwide ERC, the relocation trade group. If you’re among
those being transferred, here is what you need to know to get the most for your
move...
Read the article. Back to top
My Big Break
Sometimes it’s by design; sometimes it’s just a stroke of dumb luck. But
in everyone’s career, there is bound to be a moment or decision that will alter
the course of their professional lives.
When they look back, they’ll remember and identify that moment as “My Big Break.”
We asked the founders and chief execs of 10 leading companies--including
Chrysler, Wipro, Best Buy and Palm-- to tell us about the most crucial moments in
their careers. What we learned about their individual stories surprised, humored
and occasionally touched us. We think you’ll get a lot out of each of the stories
told by the business leaders profiled in this debut edition of “My Big Break.”...
Read the article. Back to top
The Narcissistic CEO
What do Bill Gates, Osama bin Laden and Henry Ford all have in common? Answer:
their desire to change the world, albeit in bin Laden's case it's not for the
betterment of humankind.
The desire to change the system is a defining element of narcissism. And while it
can be inspirational to work for someone like that, interacting with a narcissist
CEO can be torture. Don't expect praise. Get used to hearing the word "I." And be
able to take lots of harshly worded criticism. There is always the option of avoiding
a narcissistic CEO, but these days that will prove difficult. Narcissism is virtually
a requirement to become head of a company. That's because narcissists tend to
like drama. They are attracted to big change and risk. Investors expect
substantial returns and want their CEOs to take risks to deliver them. "It used to
be that CEOs weren't asked to do extreme things," says Don Hambrick, who along
with Arijit Chatterjee, both professors at Penn State University, developed a test
to determine whether a CEO is narcissistic and to what degree. "They changed the
rules so as to encourage more extremism, more flamboyance, go-for-broke types." Do
the names Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Bernie Ebbers ring a bell? Each of them
produced results. But getting there wasn't easy--for their employees...
Read the article. Back to top
How To Get Fired Like A Man
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Forced out of her Hewlett-Packard CEO role, Carly Fiorina, America's most
powerful businesswoman walked away with a severance package totaling more than
$21 million, plus millions more in stock options, salary and bonuses.
She's not the only savvy female business leader packing a golden parachute. Edna
Morris negotiated a rich bounty before taking the helm as president of America's
largest seafood restaurant chain, Red Lobster. After the Orlando, Florida-based
company hit rough seas, she was forced to abandon ship. While other women might
have lost their bearings, Morris, now executive director of the James Beard
Foundation, tells PINK magazine her financial package allowed her to float for
months while she considered her next move. "You owe it to yourself to negotiate
an appropriate package," says Morris. "It enables you to move forward to find
exciting possibilities where you can make the difference you want to make in the
world." Here are six golden rules to remember when you approach the negotiation
table, according to Kathleen Dahlberg, a former top-level executive at BP, Amoco,
Viacom and Burger King Corporation, and president of Open Vision, which provides
insight to technology-based companies...
Read the article. Back to top
Instant Messenger Etiquette
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Office communication just isn't what it used to be.
For folks over 40, the following instant message may look like nothing more
than gobbledygook: "#s look gd… lnch @ 1/ back l8r." But for younger employees,
it's just simple shorthand for: "The numbers look good. I'm leaving for lunch at
1 p.m., and I'll be back later. "Instant messaging isn't just a new technology,
it's also a new language. One that's especially easy to over rely on, misinterpret
and misuse. That goes for co-workers of all ages. The recent crop of grads, those
born in the early 1980s, a.k.a Generation Y, has marched boldly into the adult
workforce over the past four years. They've brought with them a set of
technological tools that makes fax machines, voice mail and spreadsheet software
look positively quaint. They've grown up with scanning, text messaging and Googling,
and they're not about to stop once they've hit the working world. Nor should they.
Those skills are big assets when it comes to multi-tasking and productivity. But
they're also a nightmare for many of their bosses, those over 35 who understand
that while technology is a useful tool, it doesn't replace relationship building
as a primary means for doing business. Today's bosses can't understand why their
young recruits, for all their brains and technical acumen, hardly ever come over
and actually talk to them...
Read the article. Back to top
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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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The Darker Side of Goal Setting: Why Goal Setting Fails
Why don't most people set and achieve personal goals, career goals and business goals? Goal setting is a positive, powerful practice when it ignites enthusiasm
and provides clear direction.
When practiced poorly, however, goal setting also has a serious downside which
can undermine your success. Poor goal setting makes people cynical, wastes their
time and fosters confusion about where to concentrate actions and energy. How does
such a potentially successful practice as goal setting, go wrong, so often? Take a
look at The Darker Side of Goal Setting: Why Goal Setting Fails...
Read the article. Back to top
How to Hire an Employee: Checklist for Hiring
Want to recruit and hire a superior workforce?
This hiring checklist
will help you systematize your hiring process, whether it's your first employee or
one of many employees you are hiring. The checklist helps you keep track of
your recruiting efforts. The check list communicates both the recruiting and the
hiring process and progress in recruiting to the hiring manager. This hiring
checklist is a work in process; your feedback and comments are welcome. I've
just expanded and improved the checklist based on feedback and the additional
articles now available on the site....
Read the article. Back to top
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Best (Hiring) Practices
In today's tight job market, recruiters should avoid alienating potential candidates—who may share their bad impressions with others.
When Sarah Breiner interviewed for a prestigious post-college program at
General Electric (GE) in the fall of 2004, she figured she'd spend the majority
of her on-site meeting discussing her internship and academic experience. Boy was
she wrong. One recruiter she met with asked hardly any questions about her
and, instead, arrogantly talked about his own work experience and how he achieved
his career goals. "He was tooting his own horn," says Breiner, a graduate of New
York University's Stern School of Business. "I got a bad taste in my mouth.
So throughout the day, while meeting with other people, I asked more probing
questions." Because of Breiner's negative interviewing experience, GE lost her
to investment bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM). At JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs (GS),
where she currently works, Breiner feels that teamwork and her background were
valued more highly during the interview process. SELLER'S MARKET. Contrary to
popular belief, the employer isn't always in the driver's seat. And, as the job
market continues to improve and more candidates receive multiple offers, companies
have to work harder to attract a large, high-quality pool of applicants...
Read the article. Back to top
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Negotiating When the Rules Suddenly Change
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“NHL general managers who were willing to delegate would have been better positioned to see the big picture.”
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How can you negotiate when the rules suddenly change, and no one knows whether your particular market is headed up or down?
Regrouping from the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season due to failed
labor negotiations, National Hockey League (NHL) teams and players faced this
challenge in July 2005 when they radically restructured their collective
bargaining agreement (CBA). The new CBA instituted a uniform cap (as well as
a floor) on team payrolls. It also set maximums and minimums for individual
contracts and declared many more players free agents, allowing them to sign
with whatever team made the richest offer. Imagine that you're an NHL general
manager. You have a month, at most, to fill your team's roster before training
camp begins. What's your strategy? If you expect that your rivals will go on a
spree and overspend for big-name players, it would be smart to sit back, protect
your budget, and then scoop up the excess talent. But if the other owners
move cautiously in this new terrain, it would be in your interest to aggressively
sign stars before the market heats up. Either strategy carries risks. You wouldn't
want to blow your budget on a few marquee players and have little left to round out
the team. Then again, there's no point in holding lots of cash with no one
worthwhile to spend it on. Conventional negotiation theory doesn't say much about
how to craft and execute strategy in such dynamic markets. Assessing your
walkaway point is useful in stable situations but less helpful if you don't
know whether your options will get better or worse. It pays to look for
strategic insight from contexts where uncertainty, risk, and change are the
only constants. Military science, in particular, offers powerful lessons
for negotiators, whether they are settling disputes or making deals. As it
says in Warfighting: The U.S. Marine Corps Book of Strategy (Currency, 1995),
"The very nature of war makes certainty impossible; all actions in war will be
based on incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information." Many
negotiation scholars have shied away from drawing parallels to battlefield
strategy, due to its associations with violence and brute force. In fact,
contemporary theory of maneuver warfare is surprisingly nuanced and supple.
Three axioms apply to negotiators who must cope in volatile environments...
Read the article. Back to top
The Power of Ordinary Practices
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“My guess is that a lot of leaders have very little sense of the impact that they have.”
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| Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
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Teresa M. Amabile's research centers on how the work environment can influence
the motivation, creativity, and performance of individuals and teams.
A recent study focused on the influence of team leaders on these factors.
Professor Amabile and New Business publisher Mike Roberts recently discussed her research:
“I believe it's important for leaders to understand the power of ordinary
practices. Seemingly ordinary, trivial, mundane, day-by-day things that leaders do
and say can have an enormous impact. My guess is that a lot of leaders have very
little sense of the impact that they have. That's particularly true of the
negative behaviors. I don't think that the ineffective team leaders we studied
meant to anger or deflate the people who were working for them. They were trying
to do a good job of leading their teams, but lacked an effective model for how
to behave.”...
Read the article. Back to top
Are We Ready for Self-Management?
In the early 1990s, Taco Bell's management was faced with a dilemma.
It wanted to create thousands of new locations, including stores and kiosks,
at which its line of Mexican-themed products could be sold. At the same time,
it was experiencing a shortage of capable managers in a fast-food industry known
for low-paying management jobs. One part of the solution was to create
fewer, higher-paying management positions. The other was to train thousands
of entry-level workers at its stores to manage themselves. This enabled Taco
Bell to assign one manager to several stores and to increase the "span of control"
for area managers from ten or so units to several times that many. Under
the "self-management" initiative, employees were trained and given new technology
to enable them to hire, train, and supervise their new colleagues; manage
the day-to-day inventory of the store; handle the resulting receipts; and deal
with personnel problems themselves under the supervision of a "floating"
manager responsible for several such stores. They received above-market pay,
partially in the form of performance incentives. The result?...
Read the article. Back to top
On Managing with Bobby Knight and "Coach K"
Is it better to be loved or feared?" Machiavelli asked.
At Harvard Business School, Professor Scott Snook uses this classic quote to
help students become more effective leaders. Using two of the most successful
college basketball coaches in history—coaches with as divergent leadership practices
as can be imagined—Snook asks students to confront their basic assumptions about
human nature, motivation, and preferred styles of leading. Bobby Knight, also known
as "The General," is the head coach at Texas Tech University. He's a fiery,
in-your-face taskmaster who leads through discipline and intimidation, which
some critics say goes too far. Knight was fired from a long career at Indiana
University for grabbing a student, and prior to that he was filmed clutching one
of his own players by the neck. And then there was the infamous incident during a
game when Knight tossed a folding chair across the court to protest a referee's call.
Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, leads the men's basketball program at
Duke University. Instead of fear, Krzyzewski relies heavily on positive
reinforcement, open and warm communication, and caring support. For Coach K,
"It's about the heart, it's about family, it's about seeing the good in people
and bringing the most out of them," says Snook. Different styles, yes, but the
results are similar: After long careers, both have similar win-loss records for
their teams and are acknowledged as top coaches in the collegiate ranks. So what
do Knight and Krzyzewski tell us about leadership?...
Read the article. Back to top
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The 10 Biggest Mistakes Marketers Make—#1: Merely Handing Off Leads to Sales
Do members of your company's executive team—along with your peers throughout
the organization—see the connection between marketing and the cash flowing into
your company's coffers?
If not, they probably view you as merely a tactical tool (brochure writer, a
trade-show participant, Web-site "put-it-upper"), not a true strategic partner.
And they likely underutilize marketing. To deliver maximum value for your firm,
you'll need to correct their misperceptions of marketing's value. How? Avoid the
10 biggest mistakes marketers make. Adapted from book I wrote with Allen Weiss and
Dave Stewart, Marketing Champions: Practical Strategies to Increase the
Power, Influence, and Business Impact of Marketing (Wiley, 2006), this article is
the first in a 10-part series designed to help you demonstrate the link
between marketing and hard, cold cash...
Read the article. Back to top
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Marketers Make—#2: Using Metrics That Don't Matter to Top Management
In the 1970s, the Polish government set out to make its furniture industry
more competitive in the global economy. To that end, the government rewarded
furniture factories based on the total weight of their products manufactured.
As a result, the citizens of Poland now have the world's heaviest furniture,
according to a March 4, 1999 article in the New York Times.
Of course, Polish officials didn't intend to produce heavy pieces of furniture;
they wanted to increase production. Yet, as this example reveals, performance
metrics can't produce their intended outcomes if they don't measure what really
matters to the business. As a marketer, you have no shortage of metrics at
your disposal—including brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and ad readership,
to name just a few. However, your CEO and CFO, as well as your firm's shareholders,
care less about these metrics than they do about others—particularly cash
flow—and though these metrics are generally not part of the marketing vocabulary,
they should be. They enable you to tell the story of how marketing contributes to
your firm's performance. Use the wrong metrics to communicate marketing's value, and
you risk producing a lot of heavy furniture. How to select the right metrics? Master
the marketing metrics audit process—or Marketing MAP—by applying these seven steps...
Read the article. Back to top
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Not your father's sex shop
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Adult stores clean up their act, seduce a new crowd.
TEMPE, Ariz. — I am taking lessons on sexual lubricants from Trista Windels, and
it’s disconcerting. Windels is a pretty, waifish 19-year-old blonde with
startling green eyes who was raised in the tiny town of Detroit Lakes, Minn. I am
older than her own father. Yet despite her growing up on a dairy farm and never
having seen sex lube before last year, she has already told me at least three
things (mostly having to do with the sensual opportunities presented by silicone)
I didn’t know before beginning my training as a salesperson in the Fascinations
“romance superstore” here. I'm temping at the store to experience what it's like
to peddle erotic goods for a living and find out who's shopping for them. At the
moment, though, I am in the back stock room with my five fellow trainees, all under
25, all of whom have decided working in an adult store selling toys, lotions,
lingerie, porn and bondage gear would be a great way to make some money. None of
them are phased by the idea. Not one bit. In fact, if it weren’t for the shelves
and boxes full of penis-shaped vibrators, a row of floggers and stacks of DVDs
with titles like “The DaVinci Load,” Windels’ lecture could easily be taking place
in the back room of a Nordstrom or a Lowe’s or a village antique store, for that
matter. "This whole store is about customer service,” she drills between sips of
Red Bull. Wear your uniform (maroon polo shirt, black or khaki pants and black
shoes) whenever you are on the floor. Name tags always. No freaky piercings that
show. Be professional. We are, Windels tells us, “romance consultants.”...
Read the article. Back to top
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