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| Volume 7, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 Top 10 toughest questions - Asked and answered
Employment ending checklist
Work like you're showing off
Train[ing] employee's to train co-workers
 Your brilliant second career?
Frenemies at work
Real life career changers
Steve Jobs' greatest presentation
 Learning to make the move to CEO
 Paychecks in '08: No big bump
 Leadership is a muscle
Message in a bottle
 Keeping your management system simple
The 2 percent solution: Managing merit pay
 Sales management mastery
Forging a sales culture across your organization
The top 12 presentation mistakes
Get the paycheck you deserve
 Love at first sight?
Kindness pays dividends
Good-for-you grilling
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Top 10 toughest questions - asked and answered
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.
I’ve written a how-to piece to answer each question you’ve asked. These articles address and answer your toughest questions.
1. How to Deal With a Negative Coworker: Negativity Matters
Some people exude negativity. They don’t like their jobs or they don’t like ...
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Employment ending checklist
Employees leave your organization for good reasons and bad reasons.
On the positive side, they find new opportunities, go back to school, retire or land their dream job. Less positively, they are fired for poor performance or poor
attendance or experience a layoff because of a business downturn. In each instance, you need an employment termination checklist to help the employee exit process go smoothly...
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Work like you're showing off
Factors That Drive High Performance
In my 27 years of working with a wide range of companies and organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to HR associations to small businesses, it has become painfully
obvious that, as the old saying goes, success “isn’t rocket science.” My job is to discover and report what high performance organizations and individuals have in common.
What do they do that others don’t? How do they think? What differentiates extraordinary performers from everyone else? It’s a shock to some people to learn that high
performance factors seldom have to do with superior talents or skills, and have much more to do with the simple act of making choices. I’ve come to think of high
performance as showing off. Showing off, as I define it, isn’t about bragging or arrogance...
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Train[ing] Employee's to train co-workers
Training is on my mind this week.
When you have the expectation that coworkers will teach each other upon their return from conferences or training, you magnify
the impact of time and money spent on the training and conferences. And, managers, in any position, need to know how to deliver training. Training is powerful when it comes from the boss....
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Your brilliant second career
Your work experience makes you a valuable commodity. Figure out how you want to parlay it into a new career for yourself.
have always wondered how a kid in his second year of college is supposed to pick a major and then, a couple of years later, dive into a career. At that stage in life,
most folks know almost nothing about the range of careers that are available and have so little life experience. It's no wonder that, in survey after survey, midcareer
professionals report that they "fell into" their areas of specialization. Few, if any, of us, after all, have childhood dreams of becoming a procurement manager, a process
engineer, or a human resources information systems analyst. And yet, here we are. What's exciting these days is that, with average job tenures getting shorter and
shorter and big-company lifetime jobs already a thing of the past, more and more midcareer professionals are finding job happiness in Chapter Two careers—sometimes in
radically different areas from the gigs they've held for the first 15 or 20 years out of college. Still, sitting in your cubicle at XYZ Corp., it can be hard to imagine
yourself taking the necessary steps onto a wildly different career path. Here are some ideas for getting started...
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Frenemies at work
How can a colleague be a pal one day and stab you in the back the next? Here's how to deal with this common workplace peril.
A generation ago, the workplace was a lot more formal than it is now. I am old enough, just barely, to remember when people in offices were called Mr. Smith and Miss Jones,
when bosses were on a higher plane vis-à-vis their employees than most bosses are now, and when telling a risqué joke at work was considered bad behavior. I'm not saying I
want those days back, I'm just pointing out some of the differences in the post-millennium workplace. These days, most business environments are more frenzied,
more casual, and more familiar than they have ever been. Another change is the abundance of very close, intertwined relationships that bridge people's professional
and personal lives. While it certainly wasn't unheard of for people to socialize with colleagues in the past, the sheer amount of time that people spend at work now has left
a lot of people with less time and inclination to develop friendships outside of the office. But the rules are different for these relationships than they are for ones that
have nothing to do with work, and you could easily find yourself with a "frenemy": that hybrid who is part friend and part enemy.
Frenemies at the Gate
A frenemy is a person you spend time with, enjoy talking with, and rely on at work—but you can't completely trust. He or she is so much a part of your working day that a
relationship that isn't strictly business between you two is not just assumed—it's unavoidable. And, day in and day out, it's not unpleasant. But at the same time you
have been burned by this person,...
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Real life career changers
A Navy vet and a former schoolteacher, like many people starting new careers, find much of what they learned in previous ones is applicable, even in a starkly different context
To Eric Green, co-managing a $50 million hedge fund in San Francisco isn't all that different from renovating a hospital in Estonia, which he did 10 years ago while in the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps. The Detroit native, who served for seven years as a lieutenant in the Navy before going back to school for his MBA, says skills he developed in his first career have transferred well to his new one.
Running a 50-Member Team
"An important component to the success of the mission is to communicate to the team how our work translates directly into a bigger, more-strategic vision of our senior military commanders," says Green, comparing his leadership in Estonia and San Francisco. "I use these same skills now in translating our strategy into our investment process." Green says that overseeing a 50-member construction team, and working with the local community to build support for the Navy's presence in the northern European nation, helped him understand the importance of attention to detail, and allowed him to develop the risk-management and people skills he needs in his current career. Green, who has an undergraduate engineering degree from the Naval Academy in Annapolis and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia, now spends his days researching investment opportunities in micro-cap equities, communicating with investors, and developing risk-profile models as a managing partner at Osmium Partners, which he joined in early 2005. Although many of his skills carried over, Green says it has been difficult learning "how to filter the signal from the noise" when it comes to using market data to develop business strategies and pinpoint opportunities for growth...
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Steve Jobs' greatest presentation
Our communications coach mines Jobs' introduction of the iPhone to offer five lessons for making an unforgettable pitch.
After a gorgeous afternoon of golf a few days ago, my nephew seemed anxious to get home, even skipping out on my invitation to dinner. He's a graduating high school
senior, so I assumed he wanted to hang out with friends. I was partly correct. He wanted to hang out with friends in line for the new iPhone.
Leave it to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs to create a frenzy that gripped every gadget fan in the country. The hype, however, started with what I consider Jobs' best presentation to
date—the introduction of the iPhone at the annual Macworld trade show in January. After watching and analyzing the presentation, I thought about five ways to distill Jobs'
speaking techniques to help anyone craft and deliver a persuasive pitch...
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Learning to make the move to CEO
Robert Simons is the Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
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You're a successful senior executive with 20, 25 years of experience under your belt. You've made your mark and stand just 1 or 2 rungs from the position of CEO.
Now what? As faculty chair of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (AMP), Professor Robert Simons has seen many such executives in his classroom. While
they come from countries around the world and from a variety of industries, they share a common characteristic. "They're at a point where it's valuable for them to stop and
reflect," says Simons, a specialist in accounting, management control, and strategy implementation. "Most are well along in their lives, with grown families. They want to
make a difference and do great things, but when they step back, they see that they've been in a bit of a rut, running between e-mails and meetings all day. There's a
realization that they only have so much time left, and that if they want to do something, they've got to move" ...
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Paychecks in '08: No big bump
With any luck, you may make more next year, but how much will depend far more on your bonus than your base.
Compensation experts are predicting average base pay increases below 4 percent next year - and a lot of that may go to higher health insurance costs, according to early
estimates. If you want to fatten your paycheck in 2008 without changing jobs, your best bet rides on the bonus. And now is the time to shine on the job if you want to secure a
big one on top of your annual pay raise. Managers will make their pay decisions for next year sometime between September and November, said Ken Abosch, the head of human
resource consulting firm Hewitt Associate's compensation practice. "Experience tells us there's a 'What have you done for me lately?' effect. It never hurts to finish strong,"
he said. Base pay increases are expected to be modest at best, even for star players. Since base pay is one of a company's largest expenses, there's a big push to keep a lid
on fixed costs, Abosch said. Hewitt and Mercer Human Resource Consulting each are surveying up to 1,000 companies, and their preliminary findings suggest base pay will increase...
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Leadership is a muscle
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In the business world, we're schizophrenic about leadership. We instinctively prize innate leadership. And although companies are clearly in
the leader-creation business, how far does the tolerance for believing that you can grow your skills go?" |
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Bobby Fischer was playing chess at age 6. Mozart wrote his first symphony at 8. Could it be that Jack Welch was firing direct reports at 9?
There's a long-standing debate about whether leaders are born or made. But let's not revisit nature versus nurture. Instead, let's ask a weirder question: Could it be that
your point of view on this issue is what actually makes you a better or worse leader? And if so, is nature or nurture the more career-enhancing POV? This psychological
puzzle starts with the research of Stanford's Carol Dweck. Her latest book, Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success, should be on every business manager's bookshelf. Dweck
has found that individuals succeed or fail based on how they think about intelligence. She says people have one of two mind-sets on the matter...
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Message in a bottle
The Bottled Water Quiz
Do you really know your bottled water? Test your knowledge...
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Stop and Think Before You Drink
Get Fast Company Senior Writer Charles Fishman's take on why bottled water is such a booming business, what its local and global environmental
implications are, and how a whole industry has grown up around supplying us with something that we do not need.
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Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.
The largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished
product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters,
"Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator. Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6
acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced
by another lake's worth of bottles. Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty. Bottled water has become the indispensable
prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it's in our cubicles at work; in the cup
holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it's rattling around half-finished on the floor of every minivan in America. Fiji Water shows up on the ABC show Brothers & Sisters;
Poland Spring cameos routinely on NBC's The Office. Every hotel room offers bottled water for sale, alongside the increasingly ignored ice bucket and drinking glasses.
At Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), the upscale emporium of the organic and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units sold. Thirty years ago, bottled water barely
existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15
billion. It will be $16 billion this year. Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times...
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Keeping your management system simple
The iPod is an icon of simplicity. How has a device with a single-click wheel and one button created a paradigm shift in music?
How has a device that's small enough to put in your pocket transformed the way people interact — or don't — in public spaces? How did Apple get it so right when other
manufacturers of portable music devices got it so wrong? It focused on simplicity — the art of delivering just what is needed, no more, in a way that is intuitive to the
end-user. This goes far beyond user interface design. It goes to the heart of the purpose, context and marketing of the iPod. To do this, Apple focused on three principles of simplicity...
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The 2 percent solution: managing merit pay
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Compensation is just such a major topic, it's something that companies have to constantly re-evaluate, talk to people about and certainly do research in the market," |
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Managing merit pay effectively contributes to creating a stronger workforce, and it enables businesses to reach their goals.
Certainly, merit increases are not a stand-alone solution, but when effectively deployed, they can be a valuable tool to help employees progress in their jobs and
careers. Although seemingly small — in the ballpark of 2 percent — merit increases can contribute significantly to aligning pay with performance for the business and
employees. First, as a point of clarification, the merit increase is just the component of the annual salary increase related to the employees' merit, and it does not include
cost of living, promotional increases or market adjustments. In its simplest interpretation, the merit increase is what allows employees to progress within the
salary range for their jobs. In contrast, cost-of-living increases move the whole salary range, and promotional increases move the employee from the range for one job to
that for the next. Effectively managing merit pay requires a system that establishes the following guidelines:
• Establish a pay philosophy that supports pay for performance.
• Coordinate with all other pay-for-performance programs.
• Understand external market conditions and ensure pay is market competitive.
• Communicate the financial incentives and how decisions are made.
Limitations of Traditional Compensation Programs
When developing compensation programs, many corporations make the mistake of either applying a peanut-butter approach — rewarding all employees equally — or applying an
unstructured program that might seem arbitrary and unfair to employees. Both of these approaches can lead to unsatisfied...
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Sales management mastery
Turn Your Sales Effort Into a Rocket Ship of Results
There's a war in today's business world—it's called "sales." And, if you want to win the war and get more market share, you must get yourself some true warriors. You need top producers. It's the top producers respond perfectly to rejection by becoming more
effective. They become more aggressive when someone is brushing them off. They're more persuasive if someone isn't buying. Top Performers know that the sales process is a
science. They understand that they must operate like scientists, constantly moving toward the sale. If you want to achieve maximum productivity and double your sales in
less than 12 to 15 months, you must ...
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Forging a sales culture across your organization
Culture is defined as the shared attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values of individuals in the same work environment—at least in the context of the business world—and most companies have a broadly defined organizational culture that provides its employees a means to fulfill the corporate mission.
But departments oftentimes compartmentalize their goals because their culture is too narrowly focused on individual functions—not shared across the organization—and sales often operates as an independent business unit, receiving little institutional support. Most companies would acknowledge that their mission is to ensure a healthy bottom line and build a strong customer base. And when you examine all the functional areas within an organization, sales bears the burden of fulfilling this mission. But you can ensure that your company's individual functions support the corporate mission by supporting and embedding a sales culture in your organization.
Measuring Your Sales Culture
To determine whether you have a sales culture, answer the following questions:...
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The top 12 presentation mistakes
Mistake #1: Overlooking "Murphy"
If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.
This mistake basically means that you walk into the room where you're going to present and something is wrong. LeRoux tells a story about a multimillion-dollar sales
presentation to which "Murphy" paid a visit—in the form of missing curtains and a boardroom window overlooking a huge pool surrounded by bikini-clad swimmers (you can
guess what the attendees looked at instead of the presenter). Remedy: Visit important presentation rooms at least a day in advance. If that's not possible, have someone take
pictures from different angles and email them to you.
Mistake #2:...
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Get the paycheck you deserve
Unless you are very wealthy or extremely good at winning lotteries, you can expect to be working for 40 years of your life or more. And while not everyone has what it
takes to become a top executive, you do have complete control over how far you go and how much you earn in your career.
You can crack the corporate success code—but only if you stop making career-killing mistakes. Stop wondering why your not advancing your career and learn to avoid these top 5 career-killing mistakes.
Career Killing-Mistake No.1: Not knowing the real purpose of your resume.
Of all the things critical to landing a great job, having a great resume isn't on the list because that's not its real purpose. And you cannot create a killer resume if you
don't know what that purpose actually is. The purpose of your resume is not to get the job. It's to be selected for the short-list of people that the employer wants to
interview. This ultimate decision is made in less than 10 seconds and not by the hiring manager. It's usually an administrative assistant who looks at the submissions and it
takes him/her at least 3 seconds to look at your name. Not understanding this means most resumes are thrown in the trash immediately.
Career-Killing Mistake No. 2: Not getting the answer to this important question before you start answering your interviewer's questions....
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Love at first sight?
One will make you money. One could break your budget. Yet, they are to be approached almost identically--most of the time.
The job interviewing process and the dating game are so analogous that professional career coaches compare the two as if they both involve a resume and rosé. Hardly. But
the similarities are striking. Carole Martin, an author and professional interview coach who has taught at the Haas School of Business at the University of California,
Berkeley, centers much of her tutelage on the notion of job interviews being like first dates...
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Kindness pays dividends
It might sound like an oxymoron, but Steve Harrison is a business ethicist. He's worked at the outplacement firm Lee Hech Harrison for 25 years helping fired employees get back on their feet.
In that time he's witnessed some pretty despicable behavior by companies. With the bad comes the good, though. And it's the kind behavior that he discusses in his new book,
The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies (McGraw-Hill, $24.95). Aside from just being a nice person, Harrison argues that small gestures such as...
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Good-for-you grilling
There's nothing wrong with occasionally indulging in a juicy cheeseburger and creamy potato salad at a barbecue.
But do it all summer long and a hot dog here and a handful of potato chips there may start to tip your scale. Rick Browne, host of the PBS TV series Barbecue America and
author of The Big Book of Barbecue Sides, traveled the globe for his upcoming book, The Best Barbecue On Earth. When it comes to cookouts, he says, we tend to overdo it. "Most
parts of the world, they cook the meat, fish or fowl with a little salt and a little olive oil to enhance ...
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