Monthly Archives: June 2012

30
Jun

Summer Thoughts on the Pursuit of Truth

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We mark the end of June with a few extra thoughts on the power of the “pursuit of truth” to unlock tremendous organizational productivity.

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

~Albert Einstein

At work, this can translate into embracing new information, even pursuing it, and making sure your team and peers value it as you do. No real innovation occurs until paradigms are challenged and tested. That takes open minds. Do you take an open mind to work, and push your team to do likewise?

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”

~Meister Eckhart

In this we see our constant admonition to our clients to put aside pre-conceptions and experience to give each bit of new information the chance to be appraised for its own worth. Never discount new ideas, just because they challenge your current understandings and preferences! Clear your mind of those filters. They can inhibit innovation.

“In order for a proposition to be capable of being true, it must also be capable of being false.”

~Ludwig Wittgenstein

While you must always value new information, you must also challenge it honestly. This is where those old experiences and filters can be useful, as long as you don’t assume the old is more likely to be true than the new! Each must constantly prove itself anew as time goes by.

We look forward to sharing more thoughts, and hearing yours, in July!

 

29
Jun

Employee Dissatisfaction Still the Norm in 2012 – Therein Lies Opportunity!

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Respondents to the 2012 edition of The Conference Board Job Satisfaction Survey indicated higher levels of job satisfaction for the first time since the recession began in 2008, finding that 47.2% of Americans are “satisfied with their jobs,” a slight rise over the previous two years. However, while the 47.2 percent satisfaction level recorded in 2011 is a positive sign, it is far below the 61.1 percent satisfaction rate recorded in 1987, the first year the survey was conducted.

Of course, this study measured the mindset of people six months ago (the surveys were conducted by Nielsen Company last Fall.) A lot has happened in that short time that may have moved the meter further towards higher satisfaction levels, although we suspect it still hovers just under 50%.

In our work, we see the improvement

Our own anecdotal tracking through the plans our clients share with us, and the results of the work we have been doing with their employees, tells us that people are increasingly coming to terms with the “new economic realities” post-real-estate-boom: Slower year-to-year growth, and a loss of the “home equity wealth effect,” but they are also gaining confidence in job security and see a returning potential for career growth.

  • This highlights once again the competitive advantage that organizations gain when they invest aggressively in employee development and engagement.
  • It also shines a light on the advantages that individual employees obtain when they set themselves apart by deciding on their own to be more engaged, action-oriented and forward-focused.

Disgruntlement Still Reigns

The report notes that, compared to the 1980s and ’90s, widespread dissatisfaction has been entrenched since the turn of the century.

“While we are seeing positive movement in the right direction, particularly as approximately 8 percent of U.S. citizens are unemployed, this trend may signal increased satisfaction with simply having a job rather than demonstrate increased engagement or happiness,” said Rebecca Ray, Ph. D., Senior Vice President of Human Capital at The Conference Board. “The good news is that there are bright spots here, particularly regarding the internal initiatives and actions that chief human resources officers and their teams can drive through organizations and have large impacts.”

Exactly! Those who invest in engagement see huge productivity benefits, often returning 10 times the investment made in training, coaching and mentoring.

Where did the report find specific reasons for the rise in satisfaction?

  • Job security
  • Wages
  • Promotion policies
  • Educational/job training
  • Bonus plans
  • Higher interest in their jobs
  • Better relationships with fellow employees
  • Higher level of recognition and acknowledgment from supervisors

All these higher assessments reflect the over many job aspects that were rated more favorably in 2011 than in 2010.

The Conference Board press release dealt in more detail with specific areas that you may find interesting:

  • Job Satisfaction More Positive for Younger Workers, More Negative for Older Workers
  • Job Satisfaction Varies by Income
  • More Employees Satisfied with Job Security and Wages; But Healthcare Plans, Workload and Commute Remain Sore Points
  • More Satisfied in Texas, Less so In New York

What do you think? Have we turned the corner? Will the satisfaction levels that the Conference Board survey measures next Fall pop above 50% at last?

 

 

26
Jun

Exploring 8 Rules for Creating Passionate Corporate Cultures (Round Four)

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Throughout June, we have been exploring the concept of creating and sustaining passion within a corporate culture, using an article by Paul Alofs as a starting point. Previously (here, here and here), we examined Mr. Alofs’ first six elements of a “passion culture.” Now we move on to address his final two points.

Unlike the first posts in our series, on these last two points we see real alignment between what Mr. Alofs is trying to say, and what we believe sets the foundation for a passionate corporate culture.

7. Create the space

Having your employees and executives fully engaged in your mission is certainly the most critical aspect of creating a highly productive corporate culture, but you can certainly accelerate the productivity increases by creating highly interactive work spaces that encourage collaboration and interaction. Mr. Alofs offers a great example.

“In cutting-edge research and academic buildings, architects try to promote as much interaction as possible. They design spaces where people from different disciplines will come together, whether in workspace or in common leisure space. Their reasoning is simple: it is this interaction that helps breed revolutionary ideas…Culture is made in the physical space.”

Does your physical space foster interaction, or does it perpetuate a mindset of corporate silos? Do people bump into each other in shared spaces, or spend their days hunkered down and isolated in work stations?

A fully engaged and energized team of people will work hard to overcome the limitations of their collaborative spaces, but if you can eliminate the physical barriers for them, collaborative productivity can grow more quickly!

8. Take the long view

Challenge short-term thinking! “Passion capitalists take the long view,” writes Mr. Alofs. This dovetails with our own passion for the “pursuit of truth.” Most organizations set ambitious long-term goals, but then ignore them in favor of short-term needs, usually driven by outside forces (economy, customers, financial analysts).

One of our great clients, a biotechnology company called Targacept, models a culture of inclusion and mutual benefit in the way they involve not just their own scientists in projects, but the vendors and fellow biotech companies with whom they will have to work to get their innovations to market. Their mantra is that clear communication, trust and the pursuit of truth among all their collaborative parties create long-term relationships that enable sustained success.

The truth is, if this week’s little victory compromises long-term competitiveness or corporate cohesiveness, it is Pyhrric and not worth pursuing. Only companies committed to the pursuit of truth will have the institutional, employee-level ability to properly assess which day-to-day goals to pursue that support long-term productivity.

We have enjoyed the exercise of exploring how to create a passionate corporate culture, using the ideas outlined by Paul Alofs. What do you think? How does your organization work to infuse passion from top to bottom?

Let us know in the comments section!

Find our previous posts about Mr. Alofs’ article:

Points 1 and 2

Points 3 and 4

Points 5 and 6

 

25
Jun

Exploring 8 Rules for Creating Passionate Corporate Cultures (Round Three)

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We have been exploring the concept of creating and sustaining passion within a corporate culture, using an article by Paul Alofs as a starting point. Previously (here and here), we examined Mr. Alofs’ first four elements of a “passion culture.” Now we move on to address points five and six.

Point 5: Be Ambitious

Each organization must have a mission that is reasonably attainable in the eyes of the employees.  Reasonable goals, however, still must be worthy of all the time and energy you and your employees are going to expend achieving them. If they think goals are achievable and worth achieving (a balance that is easier to strike if you involve the employees in goal development!), they will work hard.

“Ambition is sometimes seen as a negative these days, but without it we would stagnate,” writes Mr. Alofs. “You need a culture that supports big steps and powerful beliefs.”

We agree with powerful beliefs. Our only caveat is that you must ground beliefs in reality, make them reflective of your marketplace’s truths. Employees are pretty smart, and they are usually closer to the marketplace than senior executives, so they can spot poorly thought-out goals quickly. Conversely your employees can help shape appropriate corporate ambitions by helping winkle out the truth you need to know to create inspiring yet achievable goals.

Point 6: Celebrate differences

Mr. Alofs is spot-on with this one:

“Great cultures are built on a diversity of background, experience, and interests. These differences generate energy, which is critical to any enterprise.”

As part of our work with clients, we usually run behavioral and value assessments before each development session, and one reason why is that we share the group’s behavioral and values profiles with the session participants, to get them to realize how valuable each behavior and value system is in maximizing team productivity. We help them discover the utility of having all skill sets and values represented on a team. They see pretty quickly how a team of ‘dominant’ behavioral types with ‘theoretical’ value systems, for instance, would miss the creative impulses of a ‘high aesthetic’ who could channel the energy of the ‘high D’s’ in interesting new directions that would not occur to hard-chargers who simply “want the task done!”

Corporate diversity must be redefined as a concept that encompasses talent and mindset as well as background and skin color!

In previous posts we had differences of opinion with Paul Alofs’ Passion Culture thesis, but points five and six are solid!

What do you this about these two points? Or more generally, do you see value in focusing energy on creating a more passionate organizational culture, or is this recommendation more trouble than it is worth? Let us know in the comments section.

We will focus on Mr. Alofs’ last two points in a final post, coming in a few days.

 

15
Jun

Exploring 8 Rules for Creating Passionate Corporate Cultures (Round Two)

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We have been examining a thesis called The Eight Rules for Creating a More Passionate Corporate Culture by Paul Alofs. Previously we explored the first two steps. Let’s continue with numbers three and four, parts of which we have to take issue with!

3. Tend to the weeds

Mr. Alofs admonishes us to weed out whiners and complainers. “Identify these people and replace them,” he writes.

Wrong on many fronts:

  • First: Whiners are workers who have been allowed to disengage by poor bosses who neglected them.
  • Second: When they were hired, they met all the needs of the company, and probably started out incredibly positive and took a constructive approach to their job. Poor culture most likely ate away at their commitment, leaving them bitter. Most of these people are retrievable.
  • Third: They know the company and their job. Why go to the expense of replacing them when re-engaging and re-energizing them is far more cost-effective?

“A culture of passion capital can be compromised by the wrong people,” writes Mr. Alofs. True, but the most fervent believer in a culture is often the one who most talked it down at the start. Don’t throw that wheat out with the chaff. Redeem it and refine it through active re-engagement programs. People who truly don’t wish to buy into the culture will leave on their own in response to your earnest and true efforts to engage them.

4. Work hard, play hard

“Not many industries these days thrive on a forty-hour work week,” warns Mr. Alofs. “A culture where everyone understands that long hours are sometimes required will work if this sacrifice is recognized and rewarded.”

We agree that passion infused throughout an organization boosts its productivity, and that hard work and success deserve a lot of recognition and reward. But we also have seen countless of our clients actually gain more hours for their personal lives because they work smarter using our leadership tool set, so we can’t completely agree that the sacrifice of an eighty-hour work week implied by Mr. Alofs is going to be everyone’s reality. That should never be the goal, at any rate!

What do you think? Where do you stand on the role of passion in establishing a productive corporate culture?

We will explore the next two steps to creating a passionate corporate culture in our next post.

 

11
Jun

Exploring 8 Rules for Creating Passionate Corporate Cultures

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We are intrigued by a list of “Eight Rules for Creating a Passionate Corporate Culture” recently published by Paul Alofs in Fast Company.

We found a lot to like about the list generally, because we work so hard ourselves to teach companies how to engage the passions of their employees. We had to take exception to how he presented some of his rules, however, so we will take a closer look at each.

Let’s start with the first two, which made a lot of sense, although we would express them differently, as you will see!

1. Hire the right people

Alofs says to “hire for passion and commitment first, experience second, and credentials third.” We would state it differently: Credentials are a critical first filter, experience serves as the next hurdle, then explore “what makes the person tick” as the last step, which most hiring managers neglect to their later regret. Probing during the interview calls for questions like:

  • What do you love about your chosen career?
  • What inspires you?
  • What courses in school did you dread?
  • What two things would you change about the culture of your last employer? Why? What would have happened if those changes were made?

You want to get into the current cultural mindset of the potential employee, and explore his own passions to see how they mesh with those central to your organization’s success. Simply having a passion for “doing well and exceeding expectations” tells you nothing about how this future collaborator might behave on the job.

2. Communicate

Once you have talented, committed people working for you, you must engage with them!

Meet with all electronics off regularly (as often as weekly, far more often than annually) to examine results, lessons learned, areas of success and how to extend those victories, areas of concern and how to improve them.

“A fertile culture is one that recognizes when things don’t work and adjusts to rectify the problem,” writes Alofs. “As well, people need to feel safe and trusted, to understand that they can speak freely without fear of repercussion.”

At Bovo-Tighe “communication that counts” and “the pursuit of truth” are core beliefs embedded in our own culture and in the cultures of our clients, so we know they work. Paul Alofs seems to agree:

“Great cultures grow around people who listen, not just to each other or to their clients and stakeholders. It’s also important to listen to what’s happening outside your walls. What is the market saying? What is the zeitgeist? What developments, trends, and calamities are going on?”

To read more about the 8 rules for Creating a Passionate Corporate Culture, look for our next blog post later this week.

For our first post this month on this topic, click here.

 

7
Jun

Building and Sustaining a Passionate Corporate Culture

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(Programming Note: We are going to dedicate a series of blog posts in June to exploring how to build a corporate culture that sustains and renews the passion that launched the company, and is so necessary to sustain high levels of productivity.)

How do you keep passion at the core of your business as it grows? The bigger you get, the farther from the original source of passion each new employee starts. Enduring passion for our work must come from within each of us, of course, but companies can work harder at igniting that passion by building a better engagement culture.

We work with large organizations that really want to emulate the cohesiveness and energy that small companies often have. The key is capturing that original passion for the business that founders and long-time employees still have, but that newer hires may not share. This challenge also apply to any team leader trying to fully engage and energize his or her employees. Here are a few thoughts that can get you started:

  • Be inclusive: Find ways to make a new hire part of the club quickly, feeling just as valued as that first person you hired who is still your close professional companion.
  • Stay connected: Schedule reviews as often as weekly. Make skip-level interactions and 360-degree reviews a regular feature of performance assessment. Give access to senior leaders to multiple levels of employee, to the benefit of both parties.
  • Share knowledge: Set a very low bar on “need to know.” Everyone needs to know what corporate goals are, where obstacles lurk, how and why people are rewarded, among other things. Employees do not take ownership of tasks and projects unless they see how their work fits into the corporate whole.
  • Be equitable: Fewer preferences for time served! Or, at least, make those preferences performance as well as time-based. Avoid low-value rewards: The “company catalogue” of branded items cannot be the core of your veteran employee reward program. Get creative with what you use to recognize effort and longevity (or better, call them “current productivity” and “long-term productivity”)
  • Find the time (and a system) to properly recognize and reward employee contributions as you go along. Do that consistently, and the need to mark anniversaries with some small token of your esteem falls away.

We are just scratching the surface here, but the point is passion does not pass from employee to employee automatically. Infusing your organization with the passion you feel about your work requires a strong hiring process, a consistent managerial training process, and a leadership mindset embedded at all levels of management that keeps engagement as the core of everything you do.

Accomplishing this is hard work, but if you make it the hardest thing you work on every day, you will see huge gains in employee passion, energy and focus, and therefore in productivity.

 

5
Jun

Stop Hating Meetings: Fix Them Yourself!

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Meetings get a  bad rap. They are a waste of time, ineffective, occasionally confrontational and usually energy-sapping. At least, that is their reputation.

Yet, Corporate Americans spend more work time in meetings than in any other interactive activity. Why? Because meetings remain the best way for a group to productively communicate and push mutual tasks forward.

WebEx loves meetings, but it wondered if the rest of us do.

The good folks at online seminar vendor WebEx would probably be ecstatic if all of corporate America sat in virtual meetings all day.
After all, meetings are an inherent good for companies like WebEx
who actually make money off them! Knowing that they are an exception,
WebEx conducts surveys to see how the rest of us feel about business meetings.
And the results do not surprise us either:

  • 9 out of 10 people prefer to interact with people in any way other than meetings
  • Yet, meetings remain the leading form of interaction among all such methods:
Type of Interaction Minutes Spent Per Day
Meetings (in person or virtual) 61
e-mail 55
Telephone 40
Social Media 23
InstantMessaging 22

 

 

 

 

These results probably vary by generation, but we would wager that meetings remain the most prevalent form of interaction regardless of age.

There is a valid reason for this: Face-to-face meetings between people who work together are still the most effective form of group communication we have available.

Remember our hierarchy of how people absorb what you have to say:

The Words you Speak 7%
Tone and Pace of Your Words 38%
Your Body Language 55%

 

Only in meetings where you can both see and hear the speaker do you get the advantage of all three levels of communication.

Save the meeting from its wretched reputation!

The problem is not the fact of the meeting, but the people in charge and how they choose to run the meeting. Meetings are often poorly run, meander off topic, interrupt one’s work flow and force us to listen to blowhards and drones who do nothing but fill space. Conversely, well-run meetings energize us, enable better decision-making, push projects forward and raise productivity.

Run great meetings, and you will see your team’s productivity soar! To learn how, click on this article by our own David Tighe!

For a more graphic display of what the WebEx survey found, open this link.