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Volume 7, Issue 5      In This Issue:   Iacocca’s nine Cs of leadership   The Great debates about 360 degree feedback   Group mentoring: Strategies for success in mentoring   Performance management process checklist   Hail to the Chief Eccentric Officers   Storytelling and the art of persuasion   Why you can't get any work done   Running on an empty tank   Time off: The europeans do it right   Becoming a sales winner: Advice from Bill Walsh   The nine most common hiring mistakes   Keep your keepers: 16 cost-effective ways to grow your company   Leadership skills training survival kit   Tickling the keyboard: 10 spreadsheet tips   Onboarding: new considerations for senior leadership   Retaining high potentials   Inc. 500: A view from the top of the entrepreneurial economy   Leave 'em laughing   How a teenager's hobby became a booming online business   Mattel: Getting a toy recall right   Medical symptoms you shouldn't ignore   Ten eating habits to avoid   10 Fashion trends you can't ignore Iacocca’s cine Cs of leadership I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten [I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses]. I call them the “Nine Cs of Leadership” - says an excerpt from former Chrysler Chairman and CEO Lee Iacocca’s Where Have All the Leaders Gone? Enter, Robert Nardelli, who private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management named the new Chrysler’s CEO and one with numerous sobriquets, including “The Turnaround Specialist”, “The Hatchet Guy”, “Tough Job, Tough Guy”. The list goes on...When asked by Fortune in April, what he would be doing if he were to be back as CEO of Chrysler, Iacocca, in his characteristic style, put it bluntly: [Here’s Iacocca’s C-list, not only for Nardelli, but for all corporate leaders, as listed in his book...] Read the article.  Back to top The Great debates about 360 degree feedback Each of us wants to know how we’re doing at work. We especially want data from our supervisor that tells us that we are doing well. We have a great need to know how others view our work but we want the information in a kind and gentle fashion. When learning how to provide effective feedback, managers discover how to give meaningful feedback in a way that ensures the employee shares meaning, my favorite definition for communication... Read the article.  Back to top Group Mentoring: Strategies for Success in Mentoring Effective relationships and learning are the mainstays of organizational success today. Organizations that find meaningful ways for their employees to connect are more likely to realize greater productivity, enhanced career growth, freely flowing innovation and overall improvement in employee performance. Group mentoring is a value-added tool for connecting employees and advancing learning within the organization... Read the article.  Back to top Performance management process checklist Regular emails from readers ask hundreds of questions each year. Patterns emerge about the toughest situations you face in your organizations. These are the ten toughest, but most frequent, questions you send my way. Performance development planning in most companies should have concluded by now. The third quarter is underway and employees deserve a concise understanding of their expectations for this quarter. They also like timely feedback about how their work was perceived during the second quarter. That said, the best goals are measurable and employees should "know" how they performed. Still participating in an old-fashioned, traditional performance appraisal system? Your organization needs this information... Read the article.  Back to top Hail to the Chief Eccentric Officers View Slide Show Whole Foods' John Mackey is typical of a new breed of downright peculiar chief execs whose personalities are lightning rods for the companies they run. For years, Whole Foods (WFMI) founder and Chief Executive Officer has preached corporate openness and integrity. He has even gone so far as to place a list of salaries in each store so that all employees can see what any co-worker is paid—from the person in the corner suite to workers at the cash register. But Mackey's nothing-to-hide image recently took a serious dent thanks to one of the former hippie's other notable personality traits: his unpredictability. Responding to government queries about Whole Foods' plan to aquire rival natural foods chain Wild Oats, Whole Foods disclosed that... Read the article.  Back to top Storytelling and the art of persuasion Our columnist talks to author and executive coach Robert Dickman, coauthor of Elements of Persuasion, about telling your story and making sales. Robert Dickman is an executive coach who teaches about using stories and narrative strategies as they relate to corporate communication. I do a great deal of coaching myself and I have found his five story elements very useful for understanding why some leaders achieve long-term changes in behavior, while others do not. He and his partner, Richard Maxwell, both of whom have backgrounds in the entertainment business, have just written a book, Elements of Persuasion, that lays out their whole theory in a light, breezy style. I met with them recently. Here is an edited version of our conversation: In the last few years storytelling has gone from something tolerated around the water cooler to a recognized skill in organizational communication. Why is that? There are two things everyone in business does on a daily basis... Read the article.  Back to top Why you can't get any work done Slide Show: The Worst Workplace Distractions Workplace distractions cost U.S. business some $650 billion a year. Here's how managers can keep employees focused. Sly Kodrin, vice-president for operations at a hinge manufacturing company in Alliance, Ohio, likes to maintain a shop floor that balances passion with productivity, allowing his 75 employees to listen to music and socialize, as long as it does not interfere with their work. But when a stamping press operator brought golf clubs to work one day and began swinging at rolled-up work gloves while he was in charge of an automatic stamp press, Kodrin's line had been crossed. "Most people, I tend to believe, thought it was funny at first," Kodrin says about the incident, which rose above the ordinary distractions of equipment noise, weather, blackouts, and news of the day. But the humor dissipated quickly [It is estimated that American businesses lose around $650 billion a year through workplace distractions, such as]... Read the article.  Back to top Running on an empty tank We expend huge amounts of emotional and mental energy every day at work. You need to replenish periodically to avoid crashing and burning. One time about 10 years ago, for no apparent reason, I broke out in hives. I couldn't for the life of me imagine what I'd eaten or drunk or rolled in that would have caused these awful red spots to appear. I asked my wise voice teacher, Winifred, for advice, and she filled me in on the Barrel Theory of allergy. Your body is like a barrel, she said. We can only take so much exposure to allergens without any trouble. When the barrel is full, that's it: One more chemical in the dry-cleaning fluid on your suit or the wrapper on your ballpark hot dog, and you've got hives. Often, it's not any one thing that does it, but the accumulation of toxic stuff that just fills the barrel to overflowing one day. At work, we have things to do and people to see and deadlines to meet all day long. And as we work, we expend tremendous amounts of mental and emotional energy. Some days are productive and empowering; others are frustrating, boring, or crazy-making. The good news is that the energy doesn't all go in one direction; our work can fill our fuel tanks up as easily as it can drain them. Little things like praise and companionship and encouragement give us the energy to keep going. Ever notice how there's one recurring meeting or event (often connected with budget time!) at your job that sucks the energy out of you—while other activities give you extra juice? It's good to pay attention to these energy-giving and energy-draining aspects of your job. The truth is, you can't run a race on an empty tank, and if your job is taking more fuel than it's giving you, you're going to hit empty. There are a few ways to keep the needle on your fuel tank out of the red zone... Read the article.  Back to top Time Off: The europeans do it right I applaud a whole continent shutting down for a month. The only way we can really shut down and enjoy time off is with our colleagues' help. Ten years ago, I was living on the road—way more than was healthy. We expect to see 25-year-old management consultants living out of suitcases, but when you're in your 30s and have small children at home, a heavy business travel schedule is a major encumbrance. Two weeks every year, if I was lucky, I'd get to pack up the kids and the gear and take a family vacation. But there was a problem: The work didn't stop. Even when I was hiking in the mountains or sitting on the beach, counting heads bobbing in the waves, my phone would ring... Read the article.  Back to top Becoming a sales winner: Advice from Bill Walsh Bill Walsh, legendary former football coach of the San Francisco 49ers recently passed away. I met him eight years ago at the airport in San Jose, California. He was sitting all alone and no one seemed to notice who he was. I had to look at him several times to reassure myself it was really Bill Walsh. At the time, I was the vice president of sales working for a Silicon Valley software company. A year earlier, I had read his 550-page book, Finding the Winning Edge. Now, I'm the type of person who will bother a stranger but it took some courage on my part to approach him. He seemed somewhat surprised when I introduced myself and told him that I really enjoyed his book. Then he asked what I did for a living and why I liked it. I told him I was in sales and what made the book so interesting was how he drew upon history and the military strategy of generals—such as George Patton and Erwin Rommel—and then applied it to football. While Finding the Winning Edge is an exhaustive description of his football philosophy intended for other football coaches, I think many of the concepts are very r elevant to salespeople today. In remembrance, I would like to share seven of the book's most important principles about what it takes to become a winner... Read the article.  Back to top The nine most common hiring mistakes Mistake 1:Relying only on interviews to evaluate a candidate. A study conducted by the International Personnel Management Association in February 1999 analyzed how well job interviews accurately predict success on the job. The surprising finding: The typical interview increases your chances of choosing the best candidate by less than two percent. Mistake 2: Using successful people as models... Read the article.  Back to top Keep your keepers: 16 cost-effective ways to grow your company Employees matter. No, really, think about it: Your competitors have access to the exact same resources as you—which means infinite choices exist for your customers, and for your employees as well. According to Joanne G. Sujansky, Ph.D, CSP, if you're not seeking ways to nurture employees and meet their needs, they will seek greener pastures—and your customers will follow them over the fence. "Many leaders don't realize that the rules of business have changed almost overnight," says Pittsburgh, Pa.-based KEYGroup's founder and CEO Joanne Sujansky. "The old paradigm says that your primary focus should be on keeping your customer happy. The new paradigm says the employee has taken over that spot. Keep her engaged and she'll keep your customers happy. Neglect her needs and she won't be so concerned about keeping her end of the bargain. In the end, not only will she go elsewhere, your customers may follow suit." Make no mistake: when employees start searching for greener pastures, it's a bona fide disaster. So the million-dollar question is: What are the secret little things that will help you keep your employees engaged and productive? And how can you do it without breaking the bank? Here are 16 easy-to-plant and inexpensive "seeds" that will help your pasture be the greenest for your future and current employees:... Read the article.  Back to top Leadership Skills Training Survival Kit Executives need to realize that the application of leadership hasn't changed in a millennium. Sure, some of our demographics may have changed but all that does is forces us, as leaders, to apply the basic concepts and theories in alternative ways. So, why don't we "just do it?" It's because both new and old leaders can lose sight of the most fundamental tenets of leadership. Sometimes we aren't motivated. Sometimes the "time" just doesn't seem right. Maybe we sometimes forget some of the basics. Leadership Skills Training Survival Kit for New & Experienced Managers Leadership Law #1:... Read the article.  Back to top Tickling the keyboard: 10 spreadsheet tips Basic shortcuts to smooth the use of Excel. It may not be one of the seven wonders of the digital world, but for CFOs, nothing compares with Microsoft’s Excel for performing calculations, tracking a variety of business items, and making forecasts of what the future might hold in store. The problem is that the program is so complicated that few busy finance chiefs can ever use more than a handful of Excel’s many capabilities. When things get complicated, it may be most helpful to start simply—and when it comes to computing, you can't get much simpler than the keyboard. Following are 10 essential keyboard shortcuts that have the power to streamline how to use Excel. While the focus is on using Excel 2003, most of the shortcuts apply to older and newer versions as well. One thing is for certain: the bigger the spreadsheet, the more time the shortcuts can save... Read the article.  Back to top Onboarding: new considerations for senior leadership Why is onboarding important? If for no other reason, it's because corporations do it more frequently than ever. The statistics speak for themselves — according to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 25 percent of the U.S. workforce has been at the same company for less than one year. Younger workers today will change jobs an average of 10 times before they turn 40. Recruiting consultancy Spherion reports 45 percent of all workers want to change jobs every three to five years. Mergers and acquisitions also drive the need to bring aboard many individuals within a fairly small window. Achieving a Day 1 integrated workforce requires intensive planning and execution on multiple levels, including culture, training and human capital governance. This is especially true in that... Read the article.  Back to top Retaining high potentials According to a recent study by the Society for Human Resource Management, 12 percent of the workforce, on average, voluntarily resigned January through August 2006. More-current statistics do not look any more promising — a February 2007 survey by Salary.com revealed that nearly 66 percent of tenured employees (people who have been in their positions for three to 10 years) plan to look for a new job in the next three months. The threat of increased turnover is grabbing the attention of management, as well as human resources. The productivity costs of losing 12 percent of your workforce is certainly enough for companies to take action, but when combined with the financial and market impact, addressing retention issues quickly escalates to the top of upper management's priority list. Studies show employee turnover can cost companies up to 40 percent of their annual profit. That's for the turnover of all employees, regardless of their performance levels. The financial impact of losing a significant number of high- potential employees (those who have been identified as your future leaders) can be exponentially higher. Who are these people who can dramatically affect a company's bottom line? The criteria for being identified as a high potential varies among organizations, yet nearly all share these traits... Read the article.  Back to top Inc. 500: A view from the top of the entrepreneurial economy The word solutions is probably overexposed: It appears in the names of 33 of this year's Inc. 500 companies. But what the heck; it elegantly encapsulates the secret to the success of most of these businesses. Customers come to the market with a problem. Our honorees send them home without one. Quantitatively, these companies are obviously exceptional, with 2006 aggregate revenue of $16 billion, median revenue of $10.5 million, and median three-year growth of 939 percent. Qualitatively, they tell us much about the way we live now. Legislation Nation New laws and regulations are a burden, unless they're an opportunity... Read the article.  Back to top Leave 'em laughing Barbara Ashkin on why customers come back to a company that rocks. Just because we're a serious company doesn't mean customer interaction has to be dull or depressing. We provide excellent service, but also brief, bright moments in customers' days. They love us for it. People chiefly approach Cxtec over the phone or online. Most voice systems are awful: Press this to get this department, blah, blah. When we installed a voice over IP system we said, how can we make this fun for customers and expressive of our personality? We recorded a dryly humorous message and gave people a few extra options. Press 4 to hear the lion roar. Press 5 to hear a funny joke. Customers call and think, okay, these guys are different... Read the article.  Back to top How a teenager's hobby became a booming online business From her basement office, Ashley Qualls has made Whateverlife.com a destination for millions of teenage girls. No rich relatives? No professional mentors? No problem. Ashley Qualls, 17, has built a million-dollar web site. She's LOL all the way to the bank. Late last year, Ian Moray stumbled across a cotton-candy-pink Web site called Whateverlife.com. As manager of media development at the online marketing company ValueClick Media (NASDAQ:VCLK), he was searching for under-the-radar destinations for notoriously fickle teenagers. Beyond MySpace and Facebook, countless sites come and go in the teen universe, like soon forgotten pop songs. But Whateverlife stood out. It was more authentic somehow. It featured a steady supply of designs for MySpace pages and attracted a few hundred-thousand girls a day. "Clever design, a growing base--that's a no-brainer for us," Moray says. He approached Ashley Qualls, Whateverlife's founder, about incorporating ads from ValueClick's 450 or so clients and sharing the revenue. At first, she declined. Then a few weeks later she changed her mind. He was in Los Angeles and she was in Detroit, so they arranged everything by phone and email. They still have yet to meet in person. When did Moray, who's 40, learn that his new business partner was 17 years old?... Read the article.  Back to top Mattel: Getting a toy recall right John A. Quelch is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. "The success of the recall will be determined by the percentage of affected products that are returned." Mattel has been criticized heavily for having to recall not once but twice in as many weeks 20 million toys manufactured in China with lead paint and/or loose, potentially dangerous magnets. Clearly Mattel did not have sufficiently tight quality control procedures in its supply chain to compensate for the extra risks of outsourcing to relatively new Chinese subcontractors. Clearly there were design flaws in the toys with the magnets that could come loose. But Mattel deserves praise for now stepping up to its responsibilities as the leading brand in the toy industry. What has Mattel done right?... Read the article.  Back to top Medical symptoms you shouldn't ignore In Pictures: 10 Symptoms You Shouldn't Ignore When people have heart attacks in the movies, they clutch their arms to their chests and double over in pain, crying out for help. In reality, the signs of a heart attack are much more subtle. Since symptoms can include mild pressure in the chest, lightheadedness and sweating, it's often hard for the average person to identify one. That's what researchers at the Yale School of Medicine found in a study of 24 women 55 and under who'd had heart attacks and were admitted to a hospital. It showed that 42% didn't recognize the warning signs. Despite the fact that 88% of the women had a family history of heart disease, many thought they had indigestion or heartburn, and half waited more than an hour to go to the emergency room, says Judith Lichtman, associate professor in epidemiology at Yale and lead author of the study. Why the laid-back approach to their health?... Read the article.  Back to top Ten eating habits to avoid In Pictures: 10 Eating Habits To Avoid You've probably heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But did you know it also tends to be our most habitual? Many eat breakfast--typically a heavily time-constrained meal--in the same place every day, and as a result, make the same kinds of nutritional choices. For some, that's a bowl of cereal and fruit, while for others, it's a glazed doughnut. In moderation, doughnuts are fine. Everyday? Not so much. But bad habits like this are hard to break. Whether you started eating poorly because of your hectic schedule, as a way to deal with stress or if you grew up on fast food, the impulse becomes ingrained over time. Changing these behavioral patterns also takes time, as well as motivation and patience, says Jenny Lindsey, a registered dietitian at Virginia Tech... Read the article.  Back to top 10 Fashion Trends You Can't Ignore In Pictures: 10 Fashion Trends You Can't Ignore   David Wolfe, creative director of The Doneger Group, a fashion-forecasting firm in New York City, is like a typical 20-something. He spends his time listening to the latest indie bands, hanging out with hipsters in the park, watching countless hours of MTV and browsing trendy boutiques, trying to spot the next fashion trend. But one thing sets Wolfe apart from his peers: He is almost 70 years old. "Just because I am well past retirement age doesn't mean I can't see a trend," muses Wolfe. "I've been doing this since the '60s. I can spot a trend before you can say 'Wow, that's cool!'" As one of the nation's leading fashion forecasters, Wolfe advises companies like Liz Claiborne Inc. on what executives, designers and creative directors should be paying attention to in fashion. The big trends he is predicting for 2008:... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive ExecWatchsm? Perhaps you know a peer within your organization, or associate at a partner company that would benefit from applying to receive this publication. Inviting a friend to experience the benefits of joining the BusinessWatch Network is easy! Just FW: this newsletter to the person you know who may have an interest and ask them to click here http://www.businesswatchnetwork.com Your friend will be glad you did! 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