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| Volume 7, Issue 8 |
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In This Issue:
 Create a very merry holiday season
The five causes of employee negativity
Rise above the fray: Options for dealing with difficult people at work
Top 10 toys of 2007
 Boost your presentation performance
Sales lessons from the Yankees
 Liz Ryan: Five management traps
Performance reviews: Do's and don'ts for employees
Judgment: How winning leaders make great calls
Management time: Who's Got the monkey?
Losing key talent? Give executive women more choices
A better way to deliver bad news
 'Classic truths': Top 5 do's and don'ts of opt-in email list building
 Authenticity over exaggeration: The new rule in advertising
 Putting an end to end-of-year reviews
 Finding candidates with the right fit
Making the best managers
 How to keep your employees happy
Is your strategy sticky?
How to survive your office party
America's most obese cities
 45 world-changers
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Create a very merry holiday season
You can thrive, not just survive, and create a wonderful holiday season this year. You just need to do four things:
* keep your expectations rational,
* take care of yourself,
* take control of your time and limit your commitments, and
* embrace your family and friends.
These tips will help you reduce stress, relax, and breeze through the holiday season feeling grounded and in control...
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The Five Causes of Employee Negativity
The typical workplace has its ups and downs in terms of employee negativity.
Many workplaces are trying to be employee oriented. But, even the most employee oriented workplace can shudder under the weight of negative thinking. When employers understand the causes of employee negativity and put in place measures to prevent
employee negativity, negativity fails to gain a foothold in the work environment. I’ve written about how an employer can prevent negativity from occurring at work. I’ve also written about
what to do about workplace negativity that already exists. The persistent question I receive from managers is: What really causes employee negativity?...
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Rise above the fray: Options for dealing with difficult people at work
Some People Are Difficult People. Difficult people do exist at work. difficult people come in every variety and no workplace is without them.
How difficult a person is for you to deal with depends on your self-esteem, your self-confidence and your professional courage. Dealing with difficult people is easier when the person is just generally obnoxious or when the behavior affects more
than one person. Dealing with difficult people is much tougher when they are attacking you or undermining your professional contribution. Difficult people come in every conceivable variety...Are you convinced that in almost all cases you need
to productively deal with your difficult coworker? Good. Then here are ten ways to approach dealing with difficult people...
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Top 10 toys of 2007
The 2007 List is out! Our Top Ten Toy list for 2007 includes some of the best and most innovative toys of the year.
The best toys were judged based on several criteria like enjoyment level, uniqueness, ease of use and toy safety. It's also interesting to note that, once again, electronic toys seem to dominate the the market! There are only a few hot toys like the Barbie Princess Rosella doll which are non-electronic. All things considered, 2007 seems to have brought out some great toys. Have a look!
1. SmartCycle Physical Learning Arcade System
The top 10 toys of 2007 list would be incomplete without Fisher-Price's SmartCycle . The Smart Cycle is a stationary bike meant for preschoolers which plugs directly into your TV's A/V jack. The little ones pedal their way through various adventures on the TV screen. The included software, Learning Adventure, has three options...
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Boost your presentation performance
We've all heard the statistic that people fear public speaking more than death. It may be an urban myth—but death? Wow, that’s some powerful fear.
Look, if you're in business and you work in any department where you need to communicate with others—inside or outside your organization— then, guess what? You've got to make presentations. But there is some good news. Often this fear is
actually presentation performance anxiety—which isn't life threatening. Rather than live in fear of your next presentation, you need some ways you can build confidence in your presentation skills. Increasing your presentation performance will reduce
your fear and accelerate your career. So how can you improve your presentation performance? I use the term "presentation performance," because, just like sports, there are certain techniques, tactics and strategies you can master. Are some people
better presenters than others? Of course! But you can become a better presenter over time as well. Interestingly, it's not the act of presenting that causes all of the angst; it's the doubt in your presentation itself—your message—that often causes the
pain. Ever notice that some of the strongest actors and actresses become absolute boors and goofballs when they're accepting an award or sitting on a talk show couch? It's because they no longer have a script, a solid story to tell. Here's seven tips
that will help you significantly boost your presentation performance...
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Sales Lessons from The Yankees
The falling-out between the Yankees and Joe Torre happens every day in business. Here's what salespeople need to know so it doesn't happen to them.
This time of year salespeople begin to reflect on their performance. Was it a good year? Was it a great year? Some will say they earned what they wanted, so it was a great year. Others will hang their hat on an account they won. But as Joe Torre,
former manager of the New York Yankees learned, employers have a single data point for measuring success that dwarfs all other statistics. After the Yankees were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, rumors began to swirl that Torre
wouldn't be asked to return as manager in 2008. He had just finished the last year of a three-year contract, so there were decisions to be made. Interestingly, many say his best managerial year was 2007, a year in which the team was eliminated early
in the post-season but rallied from a 14-game deficit during the regular season. As manager of the Yankees, Torre took the team to the post-season every year. No other team is enjoying a winning streak of this magnitude, but that wasn’t enough. Torre
said when he arrived at the Yankees' executive meeting in Tampa, he saw a room full of successful business executives who wanted to continue that success. Torre is a former baseball player, broadcaster, and manager, but not typically described as a
businessman. He was caught off-guard by the business presence in the room. Following the meeting, team president Randy Levine explained that...
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Liz Ryan: Five management traps
Is your organization really equipped to deal with knowledge workers? Make sure you're not hung up on outmoded concepts that don't serve today's workforce.
Remember the phrase "Atomic Age?" Sounded so modern and zippy at the time—and sounds so hopelessly retro now. With the workplace becoming more global and more virtual by the femtosecond, atoms are out and electrons are in. As every working person knows,
we can create more value electronically in a few minutes now than our grandparents' generation of workers could do in a week. But organizations haven't caught up to the knowledge-worker reality. Way too many employers still manage their troops as though
it's 1945. Is your organization clinging to any of these leftover Atomic Age leadership mechanisms? Ditch them now. They're slowing you down, and you won't get access to your most talented team members' gray matter by managing them like
old-fashioned worker bees.
Atomic Age Vacation Rules
It made perfect sense in 1950, when my dad was hired straight out of Georgetown, to give each newbie two weeks of vacation and let him work his way up to three and four weeks' vacation. But today, when the War for Talent is in full swing, how can a
hiring manager offer a talented midcareer pro two weeks of vacation with a straight face? We should key vacation allotments to years in the workforce, not to years spent within our walls. When I think about Atomic Age vacation rules, I think of
those electric fences people plant in the ground to keep their dogs in the yard. Here's the problem...
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Performance reviews: Do's and don'ts for employees
It may seem like just a pain, but it’s smart to work as hard on your review as you do on your job.
It's time for your annual performance review. Why, it seems like it was just yesterday that you wrote out those goals for 2006—you know, the ones you promptly
forgot and can’t find right now. But much as you may dread this annual ritual, you shouldn’t. Here are some tips for getting the most out of it.
Do Take It Seriously
For many of you, this is the one chance you get every year to communicate with your manager about...
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Judgment: How winning leaders make great calls
Excellent decisions don't often happen by accident. In this excerpt, the authors highlight the elements—and the masters—of effective action.
When Jim McNerney became CEO of Boeing (BA ) in 2005, the company was in crisis. He was Boeing's third chief executive in three years. Two years earlier, Phil Condit had been forced to resign the job as a result of various ethical violations alleged
to have taken place under his watch. Next, a widely respected former Boeing president, Harry Stonecipher, had been called back to the CEO post by the corporation's board, only to be edged out himself after revelations of a liaison
with a female Boeing executive. The improper behavior that surrounded Condit's ouster, purportedly including the acquisition of thousands of pages of proprietary documents from rival Lockheed Martin (LMT ) that were used to help Boeing win
contract work from the government, had prompted a Justice Dept. investigation. Boeing's senior ranks were demoralized, and employees throughout the organization were frustrated and embarrassed. McNerney had watched events unfold from his seat on
the company's board of directors. He was acutely aware that the crisis would represent a watershed in his leadership and afford him a chance to reenergize the corporation. In response, he agreed to...
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Management time: Who's got the monkey?
Solving your employees' problems for them? Teach them new skills instead.
You're racing down the hall. An employee stops you and says, "We've got a problem." You assume you should get involved but can't make an on-the-spot decision. You say, "Let me think about it." You've just allowed a "monkey" to leap from your
subordinate's back to yours. You're now working for your subordinate. Take on enough monkeys, and you won't have time to handle your real job: fulfilling your own boss's mandates and helping peers generate business results. How to avoid accumulating
monkeys? Develop your...
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Losing key talent? Give executive women more choices
Because more professional women are waiting to have children, companies need to be more creative in the benefits they offer.
Five of the current crop of Presidential contenders have small children. Brownback, Dodd, Edwards, Obama and Thompson collectively have 10 children under 10. The New
York Times recently tallied them up, noting that six of these children had dads deep into their sixties. I don't begrudge these seemingly dedicated dads their
scrumptious, late-in-life children, I just wish these choices were more available to women. The data is quite startling. A survey of high-echelon professionals we conducted at the Center for Work Life Policy shows that a large number of successful women fail to have children—a third of high-achieving professional women are childless...
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A better way to deliver bad news
Is your critical feedback building up employees—or tearing them down?
That dreaded moment has come: You're delivering critical feedback to an employee. Despite your best efforts, the conversation is a disaster: tempers flare, the employee gets defensive, your relationship grows strained. What happened? Like most
managers, you probably inadvertently sabotaged the meeting—preparing for it in a way that stifled honest discussion and prevented you from delivering feedback effectively. In other words, you most likely engaged in restrictive framing—a narrow, binary, and frozen approach to feedback: You initiated the conversation without considering...
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MarketingProfs 'Classic Truths': top five do's and don'ts of opt-in email list building
A myriad books and articles have been written lately about the validity of opt-in lists, which are advantageous both for click-and-mortar and for brick-and-mortar companies.
Once you have targeted names in your company-managed list, you can cross-sell and up-sell those existing and potential customers your offerings—a proven less-expensive way of increasing revenue and creating customer loyalty. We know some
tried-and-true tips and tricks for building your list. There are five key points to consider and five glaring points to avoid when creating opt-in lists from the very beginning...
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Authenticity over exaggeration: The new rule in advertising
Imagine the glee of marketers at the dawn of the Internet era—could anyone imagine a more sophisticated, precise way of reaching consumers?
By tracking the purchasing habits of its prey, marketers could respond with targeted advertising and special offers, resulting in (of course) increased sales. The past 10 years have seen some level of this direct marketing model bear out. But according
to an HBS working paper to be published in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, consumers are using technology to learn about marketers, rather than the other way around.While product consumers use sites such as eBay, YouTube, and Facebook to
gather information and share opinions on how they spend their money, an entirely new marketing philosophy is called for, one in which the marketer no longer controls
the message. In "Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketing, and Consumers," HBS professor John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, research director of Canada's Mobile MUSE
Consortium, pinpoint 5 qualities of success in this new world of digital media marketing. In this new reality, it's the consumer who runs the show for the
most part, not the marketer—in fact, forget the "consumer" label altogether. It's too limiting...
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Putting an End to End-of-Year Reviews
Performance assessment can be more than 30 minutes of uncomfortable conversation followed by a raise.
The only truly effective annual review may be the one Santa conducts on children, and even that rarely influences behavior for more than a month before the holidays. In the business world, human resources executives and line managers consider annual
reviews largely a waste of time, according to a survey from OnPoint Consulting, a human resources firm based in New York City. Employees aren't sold, either. A recent study by Salary.com found that more than 60 percent of workers doubt reviews boost
performance. The criticisms are legion. Annual reviews fail to motivate people long term; assessments are often perfunctory; problem resolution gets postponed; and the ritual is painful for all concerned. In response, some CEOs are starting to rethink
the process, emphasizing more frequent feedback and in-depth evaluations, says Steve Gross, who heads the performance and rewards consulting practice at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. "Employees want the feedback, and companies want a better sense
of whether an employee is at risk of leaving," Gross says. Here's how two companies scrapped their blunt-instrument reviews and created in their place precision tools
for performance management...
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Finding candidates with the right fit
About 20 percent of hiring decisions made for salaried jobs end in failure.
Failure rates for hourly jobs are even worse, frequently reaching levels of 50 percent or more, according to recent research by Kronos Inc. It is astonishing companies tolerate these failure rates, given the costs associated with poor job
performance and staff turnover. It is even more surprising because everyone in the staffing process has a vested interest in making the best hires possible. Hiring managers directly benefit from hiring good employees and bear much of the pain and
frustration that result from hiring the wrong person. Recruiters' reputations are made (or broken) based on the quality of candidates they find for their clients. Even candidates recognize it is rarely in their best interest to be hired for jobs
they are ill-suited to perform. Given that everyone from the CEO to the prospective employee has an interest in making effective staffing decisions, why do companies
make so many poor hires? Two of the top reasons are that...
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Making the best managers
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The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work."
– Agha Hasan Abedi
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More than a dozen years ago, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras published one of the top business books of all time, Built to Last.
They analyzed what differentiates visionary companies from their peers and documented some of the successful habits the great ones displayed. In 2001, Collins published Good to Great, helping to shed light on how good organizations can
transform themselves and become truly great. Although these two business classics differentiated good from great on the organizational level, it's important to also investigate on the individual level what differentiates good managers from the
stars. This is a timely discussion...
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How to keep your employees happy
Work is, well, work. But a few companies understand that in order to get the most out of their staffers--and keep them--they need to have fun. At least sometimes.
Take Nugget Markets, a 10-store northern California grocer. Turnover is 12% among its 900 full-time employees. That's relatively unheard of in the grocery industry, where average turnover is 8% higher. CEO Eric Stille attributes it to Nugget's
culture. Management shows employees they are valued with dance parties, field trips, unexpected financial giveaways and lots of free food. "We want our team to know how much they're appreciated," says Chris Carpenter, Nugget's COO. "That's the number
one thing we want them to understand." That's not a priority for many employers. But it should be...
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Is your strategy sticky?
Whit Alexander, a co-founder of Cranium, the company that manufactures the hit Cranium board game, recalls a time that he called a Chinese manufacturing partner to discuss a concept for a new plastic game piece...The Chinese manufacturer balked. "It's not CHIFF," he said.
[A strategy comes to life through its ability to influence thousands of decisions, both big and small, made by employees throughout an organization. A strategy is, at its core, a guide to behavior. A good strategy drives actions that differentiate the
company and produce financial success. A bad strategy drives actions that lead to a less competitive, less differentiated position. A lot of strategies, however, are simply inert. Whether they are good or bad is impossible to determine, because they
do not drive action. They may exist in pristine form in a PowerPoint document, but if they don't manifest themselves in action, they are irrelevant. To understand the problems that can render a strategy inert, it's useful to review how the process of
strategic communication is supposed to work. The leaders of the organization--those at the top of the pyramid, so to speak--have the best macro view of the organization and where it's headed. They are in the best position to pick a strategic direction.
Next, the people who populate the base of the pyramid must understand the strategy and make decisions that put it into practice. Finally, the frontline people, who will always have more recent and accurate information about what competitors are
doing and how customers are responding, must be able to...]
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How to survive your office party
There's a legendary story told frequently this time of year at a large New York public relations firm. As it goes, a new hire fresh out of college has too much to drink at the company holiday party.
She shares a cab to the same neighborhood with one of the firm's vice presidents and, well, she barfs in his lap. Probably not what you'd call a good career move. Don't be that person. Be merry and festive--have a few drinks and laugh with your
colleagues. But don't overindulge. If you get drunk and act foolishly, no one will forget, and it's likely to negatively affect your career. Instead, use this as an opportunity to mingle with higher-ups and staffers in other departments. Holiday
parties are a great opportunity to meet important people at your company in a less formal setting. "The most important thing employees should always...
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America's Most Obese Cities
We are heavier than ever.
Once considered an affliction of the lazy and indulgent, obesity now affects about one-third of Americans. The epidemic has swept up the wealthy, middle class and the poor; city dwellers, suburbanites and those in rural areas; and people of all races
and ethnicities. The causes, researchers say, are numerous. These include a diet of calorie-dense but nutrient-deficient food found in grocery and convenience stores, public planning strategies that favor motorists over walkers and cyclists, and
simply bad habits. And while the causes are many, the costs are enormous. Obesity's associated costs add $93 billion to the nation's medical bill annually. Each year, 112,000 people die from obesity-related causes, and the condition is responsible for
an increased risk of chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease...
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45 world-changers
Slideshow: The giant of the microfinance world, ACCION provides partners in 25 nations with technical assistance, financing, and guarantees.
Those institutions, in turn, will support 3 million entrepreneurs this year with loans of typically less than $1,000. The idea: Tiny investments, multiplied on mass scale, drive huge gains in income and employment. accion.org
Merging market forces with humanitarian instincts, Acumen funds entrepreneurs offering critical services to people living on less than $4 a day. Its 24 investments--in enterprises ranging from...
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