Maximize Flow and Avoid Burnout at Work

The modern workplace has built in delays, interruptions and distractions that have a negative impact on productivity, engagement, and mental health. Companies can improve flow with leadership development and smarter work design. Here's how: https://youtu.be/FYYoBMgZKnQ

Find Your Flow and Avoid Burnout in the Post-Pandemic World of Work

Today's article is about the hidden costs of flow killers at work in terms of mental health and organisational performance, and how HR can lead the charge on minimizing distractions and improving flow across the business.

Flow is a mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed with a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In fact, when we talk about how engaged employees do their work, we’re basically talking about flow state.

Given the positive impact of flow on engagement and performance, why is the modern workplace plagued by so many avoidable flow busters?  Why do people spend 60% of their time on busy work, or work about work, instead of... well... actual work?

What do we mean by busy work?  It's stuff like replying to endless email threads, sitting in unnecessary meetings, chasing colleagues for input or suport, waiting for approvals, searching for information, or compiling information from different sources into new formats.

Interruptions and delays have a cumulative effect. First there’s the loss of focus, and the time (23 minutes) it takes to refocus. This can have a knock-on effect of creating more delays or unwanted downtime. The lost time has an opportunity cost that can be calculated.

 

Harder to calculate but still important is that it’s demotivating to be delayed or prevented from making progress, and constant interruptions are exhausting.  So, from a mental health perspective this is concerning, especially with so many people working remotely.

Technology has enabled organizations to digitalize and automate processes, but an average employee switches between job-critical applications as many as 1,100 times every day, or about every 36 seconds.  How much quality work  gets done in 36 seconds?

Technology has helped organisations digitalize but has also had the unintended consequence of turbocharging busy work.  And Corona - or more specifically, remote work - exacerbated this trend because organizations adopted more technology to meet and collaborate remotely.

On the one hand, remote work has a positive impact on productivity because it removes commuting (and in some cases, putting on pants) from the equation. But what about flow?  Here it gets a little muddy, because for many people there are various distractions at home, such as having your kindergarten close.

According to a recent study from MIT, knowledge workers spend more than 85% of their time in meetings, resulting in lower productivity and satisfaction, and less effective collaboration. 

Whereas removing 60% of meetings and replacing them with more targeted communication and project management tools increased cooperation by 55% and improved employees’ psychological, physical, and mental well-being.

One more thing to bear in mind is that meeting via conferencing tools can also lead to a state of online fatigue, which resembles an early stage of burnout.  The upshot is that remote work has many benefits but doesn't necessarily improve flow, and we have an opportunity to rethink culture, leadership, and how work gets done.

When remote work was new, most companies moved what they used to do online with new tools.  It worked well enough and got us over the hump, but people are tired and not necessarily able to do their best work because quality work requires focused attention. 

We can’t eliminate meetings, distractions, and interruptions but we can be smarter in our approach. We can, for example, control how much time we spend in meetings, on busy work, or switching between applications. We can take steps to limit interruptions and bake flow into our culture.

HR thinks critically about employee wellbeing, engagement and performance, and flow is a critical ingredient for all three.  HR can play a key role improving flow across the business by creating organizational awareness, developing leaders to minimize distractions, and partnering with key stakeholders to maximize flow in work design.

If you'd like to learn more about these areas of opportunity for HR to improve organizational flow check out this short talk about Flow at Work on YouTube.

 

https://youtu.be/iSRm7QE9yJ8

To conclude, there are enough distractions in the world and in the workplace and we can’t remove all of them, but we can be smarter and more intentional about how we work and how we use technology at work.

Leadership: The Art of Honesty and Affirmation

I've worked for and with some fantastic companies but one still stands out as a model of wise and pragmatic leadership and talent management:

RECRUITING:
Candidates had an opportunity to meet with employees at each level of the business, giving both sides an ample opportunity to sum each other up. Not surprisingly, their openness and attention to detail in the hiring process resulted in a high success rate among new hires.

JOB INTERVIEW: 
The partner who interviewed me exuded friendly, polished confidence.  The contrast to myself - I was in graduate school at the time - intimidated me for the first few minutes of the interview until I noticed he was re-phrasing everything I said to make it sound better.

For example, he saw on my resume that I was graduate student body president at UCSD and asked what that involved.  I said I ran meetings and sometimes met with the dean to discuss student affairs or speak at a campus event. He responded, 'Ah, so you're an experienced facilitator, negotiator and public speaker.'

The entire interview was like this and as we shook hands at the end of the interview he told me I’d made it to the next round and wished me luck.  Interesting, no?  He could have easily tripped me up with tough questions but he built me up instead.

COMPENSATION:
They paid less than competing companies and explained it like this: "We pay a bit less but we'll train you and give you so much practical business experience that you can walk out of here and earn three times as much after two years. Or stay the course and work your way up to partner." Sounded fair to me.

TRAINING:
There was a full-sized campus near Chicago to handle classroom training needs, but onboarding at my home office included an online simulation in which I spent a week managing a virtual project team. My simulated team members came to me with various problems, complaints and requests and it was my job to keep them motivated and productive. After the program concluded, an HR director pulled me aside to tell me I got the highest score ever on this part of the exam.

I hadn't done anything special.  I just followed two very simple rules that I have continued to follow in every leadership role: 1) I said yes to all reasonable requests from my team; and 2) I let people go with good grace when they were ready.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT:
My first manager gave me the best - meaning useful, not glowing - employee review I've ever had to date. I don't remember the specifics of the review. I received an adequate rating accompanied by some positive feedback about my hard work, discipline and quality output, yada, yada, yada. Then came the useful part that stuck with me.

'I've gotten some feedback about you that concerns me a little,' she said, after all the nice bits. Apparently I had a habit of asking the same question over and over again in different ways until I got the answer I liked.'  Several folks had mentioned it to her, and not in a good way.

This isn't all bad,' said reassured me. 'A good consultant and project manager needs to be tenacious. But you may want to tone it down a little.'

I leapt valiantly to my own defense: I was just seeking clarification. I was just trying to save everyone from making huge costly mistakes. I was just this and I was just that.

'Stop,' she said mildly with a hint of a twinkle. 'I know you have your reasons and I'm sure they are good ones. But here's the thing. If one person says something about you they may be biased. If you get the same feedback from several people, however, take a mental note and watch yourself in action.'

This excellent advice has served me well over the years and I hereby pass it on.

TAKEAWAY: Everyone knows honesty, good will, and building people up make great places to work.  Why don't companies insist on these qualities in all their leaders?

Breaking News: Meetings Make Us Miserable

In recent headlines, a large global tech company used data analytics to discover that people who get pulled into too many crowded meetings are miserable at work. 

My reaction to this can be summed up in a single word:

Duh!

I mean, the only surprising thing about this discovery is that it required analytics to figure it out.  Am I right?

Seriously, if there’s a bigger bummer than sitting in crowded meetings for 50-75% of your work week, it’s working for people who can’t figure that out for themselves without technology.

On the other hand, at least they took the problem seriously.  Too many companies either ignore the problem or fix the wrong thing.

They also used real data to correlate people's feelings (biased) with what was actually hapening in the business (unbiased), thus avoiding the tricky problem of getting people to tell the truth.  

Let's face it, even assuming there would be no repercussions for saying, 'You morons call way too many meetings!' people don't always know why they're miserable and can be quite expert at misdiagnosing their feelings.

So, I guess it’s a win, but I can't help thinking...

WHY DO PEOPLE NEED ANALYTICS TO TELL THEM STUFF LIKE THAT???

If you'd like to read more about why meetings are expensive and make people unahppy, check out htis article: Collaboration: $199/lb

And if you're interested in how to run happier and more collaborative meetings, read Games People Play: A Guide to Gamification for HR.

Undercover Boss

Are you an undercover boss wondering what employees really think about you? Check out these helpful tips from Starkiller Base Commander Kylo Ren as he shares his personal journey to connect with his employees.

 

Great leadership isn't about you

Photo credit: ionut-coman-photographer-459986-unsplash

There’s a lot of great – and not so great - leadership advice out there.  Unfortunately, most of it’s focused on the personality and behaviour of the leader, ignoring one of the most important jobs of a leader: building a great team.

This focus on the leader is due at least in part to a flawed belief that people leave managers, which is true to a point.  I mean, I’ve left a couple of bad managers myself, but like most easy answers it’s incomplete.  Here’s why:

Let’s say you have a crappy manager in a great company.  If the company’s so awesome except for your lousy manager, you would probably consider changing managers within the company before leaving entirely.  Oh, but wait – you probably wouldn’t have a crappy manager in a great company. 

See where I’m going with this?  It’s the company not the manager that ultimately drives you off.

Photo credit: daniel-cheung-129839-unsplash

Also, let’s not forget people also leave companies for bigger jobs or more money, things even a stellar manager may not be able to provide immediately for the asking.  Sometimes a better offer’s just a better offer.

So, more precisely, people leave bad managers, they leave companies that tolerate and reward bad managers, and they also leave good managers and companies for a better opportunity.

Back to mainstream leadership advice, which I will paraphrase here:

Leaders should be authentic, empathic, and humble; they should listen, encourage, and support the people on their team; they should invite ideas and experimentation; they should play well with others; they should communicate a clear vision; they should be available; they should be vulnerable (but not in a creepy way); they should be professional, results-oriented, and mentally flexible; and they should help people achieve their personal goals while working toward the strategic goals of the business.

Good stuff. But.

At the end of the day, no one succeeds in isolation and teamwork drives innovation, community and great culture.  That means that one of the most important things managers can do for their teams is cultivate a safe and inclusive place for everyone to contribute, so they bring their best selves to work.

That means more than having weekly team meetings and providing bonding opportunities like team events.  It means providing clear expectations about team behavior and recognition for collaborative achievements.  It means empowering people to work together, solve problems, and create an amazing team experience.  It also means tending the garden, i.e. hiring people who will work well with the team and promptly addressing toxic behaviours.

That doesn’t mean everything’s always perfect.  Sometimes it’s a process.  Sometimes there are growing pains.  Sometimes things take longer.  But the focus is always on making the team better.

Great leaders come in all shapes and sizes. They may be male or female, introverted or extroverted, tall or short, chic or shabby, suave or awkward, remote or onsite.  However, they’re easy to spot because they have one thing in common: They lead great teams.

You may also like:

Successful leadership is all about...

Top 10 tips for managers

How to find, hire and lead great talent

Teamwork or talent?

Diversity's the Secret Sauce of a Great Culture

My first boss Herman was a 2^nd generation Mexican American.  He ran a tight Jewish bakery counter and his brother Alex managed the kosher deli across the way.

My best boss ever – and I’ve only had a few over a long career I consider truly great – was French and female.  

(My worst boss was also female so please don’t take this as a general endorsement for female leadership, let’s just get better leaders, OK?)

I’ve had bosses from the US, France, India, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and Germany.  They all had very different management styles.

One boss called me a ‘penetrante Kuh’ - which means annoying cow - but he was German, so I didn’t take it personally.  In fact, I considered printing it on my business card.

I’ve hired and managed people from Canada, South Africa, Japan, Poland, Singapore, Russia, Finland, Spain, Mexico, Ireland, France, and the US.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Russians, Finns, Japanese, Italians, Canadians, Dutch, French, Irish, British, Spanish, Australians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Belgians, Indians, Romanians, Swiss, Scandinavians, and 2^nd generation Americans from pretty much every part of the world.

Some were younger, some were older, some were male, some were female, some were fantastic to work with while others were difficult, but they all offered something unique to the mix.

It was the best part about working, to be honest. 

I didn’t like everybody, nor did everyone like me.  That’s not the point.  The point is that they all added colour and flavour to my work experience, as I hope working with me did for them.

Interacting with so many cultures and personalities upped my game and having such a rich mix of colleagues and experiences kept me longer in each role than I might have stayed otherwise.

Diversity matters in ways we can’t measure.  It makes us more resilient, curious, compassionate, and open to new cultures, ideas and experiences.  It tests us and forces us to adapt, compromise and question our assumptions.

If your customer base is diverse, it stands to reason your workforce – in particular, the people who design your solutions or interact with your customers - should be, too.  Also, just to be clear, hiring locals in your non-HQ subsideriaries isn't true diversity.

I don’t think too many people reading this are likely to disagree, since diversity is now accepted as part of a successful business strategy, but I leave you with this food for thought:

A few years back I blogged about a Cornell University study that found once diversity reaches a critical mass of 20-25% at the leadership level the company realizes higher performance.  However, below that level diversity has a negative impact, possibly because everyone regards it as a necessary evil rather than a driver of innovation and business performance.

With that in mind, maybe diversity should be part of your company DNA, rather than an isolated and/or HR-led initiative.  

Just sayin.

You might also enjoy:

Project Social: Young Manager
How to Find, Hire and Lead Great Talent
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective 5-Year-Olds
HR and the Gig Economy

*Picture courtesy of Managing Your Elders.

Leadership Lessons from Taekwondo

Since becoming a ‘solopreneuer‘, I’ve doubled down on my taekwondo practice.  In fact, I’ll be spending the next ten days in Italy at a training camp practicing 3-5 hours per day in the hot sun, followed by my green belt test.  My family is coming along and my kids, as you can imagine, are delighted to spend their summer vacation watching me break boards.

Breaking a board in one shot feels great but if you had to hit the board over and over without ever breaking it you’d probably give up, which you can compare to some workplace situations.  Patty Azzarello wrote a great article (here) about becoming one’s better self – with way better hair - when work doesn’t go your way.  She’s one of the best at navigating difficult workplace situations, but it’s also worth exploring why leaders have to expend so much energy navigating instead of leading. 

You could argue that’s part of what leaders get paid to do.  Given that businesses need to run profitably, some competition for attention, mindshare and resources is inevitable.  Besides, friction can be a positive creative force, up to a point.

However, past that point it’s just wasteful and erodes trust.  How do you know where that point is?  Oh, you'll know. 

After that ‘People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses,’ meme went around for about the ten thousandth time, Christie Lindor resoundingly qualified that statement in a blog post that has received over 30K likes and more than 1000 comments, so I guess it struck a chord.  Here are the crib notes, but I recommend the entire article (and Patty’s):

Yes, people leave bad bosses but what they really leave is an entire organization.  Symptoms of the kind of culture people want to get away from include stagnant processes, increased toxicity in interactions, frustration with wasted time in meetings, lack of support from leadership during difficult times, gossip and bad mouthing, favouritism, and pockets of motivation being drowned in organizational inertia.

Wow, who knew?

Even a good boss in this kind of environment will lose people.  In fact, they may lose more than average because they are the ones coaching and developing people to be strong external candidates. In other words, if people are leaving in one part of the business, you may have a problem with a particular leader, but if people are leaving across the business, chances are you have a bigger problem. 

What can a healthy Taekwondo practice teach us about trust and motivation? Taekwondo is based on a martial arts discipline that is thousands of years old, when they never heard of new-fangled organizational models or open offices.  It’s strictly hierarchical and based on mutual respect between masters and students.  Advancement is merit-based but open to all.  New students are welcome and masters help and mentor beginners – it’s expected.  There are rules and forms and you follow them, period.  You work at your own pace but those who show up and work the hardest advance the fastest. 

And yet, although it’s very structured it’s also very creative.  You have to think and move fast, innovate by combining movements your muscles know by heart in new ways, and anticipate your opponent’s moves.  It’s a one stop shop for autonomy, progress, mastery, flow, and purpose.

There are real workplaces that follow a similar model.  My first job at one of the leading management consulting companies, for example.  The partners were responsive and generous with their time, project leads were expected to mentor, performance standards were applied fairly, and advancement was both merit and time-based.  In other words, there weren’t organizational limits on how many folks could advance so good people didn’t get stuck in career limbo, which creates unhealthy competition at many companies.  New hires were made to feel welcome with a proper orientation and a regular influx of new staff kept the organization fresh.  

I’m not going to say it was perfect - and believe me when I say the hours were long – but notice the similarities to a well-run martial arts practice. I’ve had many great jobs and work experiences since, but each time I break a board I wonder why more companies don’t put real effort into mentoring, recognizing contributions and creating opportunities for more individuals to grow professionally.  It costs money but it creates abundance.

Great leaders know you don’t engage people with surveys, performance evaluations or 2.3% merit increases.  You engage them by taking a genuine interest in their development; recognizing a job well done - or a board well broken; enabling them to master the moves; empowering them to try new moves; and helping them advance to the next level.

Here's me breaking a board.  As you can see, it's a team effort.

You may also like: How to Find, Hire and Lead Great Talent

How to Find, Hire and Lead Great Talent

I don’t believe in the war for talent.  Yes, there are some specialized skills that are challenging to acquire but since most people are dissatisfied at work for largely the same reasons involving company culture, managers and rewards, even ‘hard to find talent’ is open to making a change.

FINDING GREAT TALENT

You can hire great people without making extravagant offers or breaking the budget by following three simple rules:

• Be creative: Everyone out there’s looking for the same hard to find profiles, but what you really need is someone who can succeed in the job.  If you can’t get the exact skills you are looking for in your price range, look for transferable skills or consider bringing in a contractor to meet your short-term needs while searching or training someone (see my blog post on HR and the Gig Economy).
• Be flexible: There’s no shortage of qualified and hard-working people out there who, because hiring them feels risky, are often overlooked: moms returning to the workplace, remote workers, people who want to change careers, young professionals looking for growth opportunities, people not currently employed, semi-retired people, etc. 
• Have a talent pipeline: One of your jobs as a manager is to have a rolodex of potential talent you’d like in your team should the right opportunity arise.  If you have an opportunity to travel to events, talk to people, connect with interesting profiles on LinkedIn, and keep people in mind who applied for previous job postings. 

HIRING GREAT TALENT

So, those are some tips for finding and making yourself attractive to great talent, but the trickier bit is knowing who to hire.  Again, a few simple rules have served me well over the years:

• Have an audition: Ask your candidates to prepare a presentation to showcase how they approach work.  AI may help identify talent in future, but so long as LinkedIn keeps showing me Spanish speaking sales jobs I’m not holding my breath.  Profiles can be gamed but a solid presentation can’t be faked.  Inviting people who will be working with the person you hire will enable them to weigh in on and buy into the decision.
• Don’t be Goldilocks: I wrote a short post about Goldilocks Syndrome here.  You should always wait until you find someone who can succeed in the job and complement the team, but I’ve seen job posts with completely unrealistic expectations.  Similarly, don’t immediately write off people who seem too senior, as they can bring invaluable experience to the team.  Instead of ticking skills boxes, hire people who can learn, play well with others, and think on their feet.
• Hire people who can grow: According to the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, if you are selecting from a pool of candidates that all share a basic level of competence it doesn’t really matter who you hire, because they will learn on the job.  I totally buy into that, having learned coding on the job early in my career and pretty much everything else at an advertising agency in Tokyo.  An audition or trial period will help you assess growth potential.

LEADING GREAT TALENT

So now you’ve hired someone and it’s your job to help them be successful and grow professionally.  A few tips:

• Let people be stars:  Managing ambitious high potentials can be challenging, especially when they think their work is better than it is – it takes humour, lots of listening and putting your own ego on mute.  There’s also a body of thought leadership that is pro-team and anti-star, which I find interesting but limited.  In my experience, everyone has star quality if you help them find and express it at work.  
• Be dream compliant: At the recent Club Talentsoft event, Co-Founder Alex Pachulski predicted that organizations will need to become dream compliant and help people connect with opportunities (more about the event and his presentation here).  Money aside, the best way to keep ambitious self-starters happy is providing opportunities and encouragement to try things, grow, take responsibility and make visible contributions, and be recognized. 
• Expect people to move on: People leave bad bosses, but good people leave good bosses, too.  If you lead in a way that attracts high potentials and performers to work for you, and give them opportunities to grow, chances are they will at some point receive a better offer.  That’s OK, first because you want what’s best for them, second because they’ll go the extra mile for you to wrap up and/or transition projects before they go, and third because it creates opportunity for others on the team.  Voluntary attrition helps keep the team fresh.

Look, most of what we thought we knew about talent management has turned out to be wrong, and everything we think we know today probably will, too.  I believe part of the reason is a tendency to over-engineer talent strategies, but fortunately, basic leadership principles never change: 

If you hire people who love to learn, encourage collaboration and new ideas, recognize contributions, and weed out trust-destroying behaviours, you’ll never have trouble finding, hiring and leading great talent.

Get Off the Couch: Agility, Innovation and Failure

After a three-year hiatus spent living and breathing supply chain finance and building a truly exceptional global marketing team, I am re-launching Working Girl.  This is slightly ironic as I am not currently working per se, nor looking for a job.  However, after some reflection I realized Working Girl is my brand when writing about all things talent management, organizational development or human motivation. My latest blog post is about innovation.

Fail fast, learn, try again.  Catchy, huh? 

According to experts, embracing failure makes you more agile because – amongst other things - those who fear failure hesitate to act, and it’s rare to be hesitant and agile.  It’s like you can’t be an Olympic gold medalist and a couch potato, although you can sit on your couch and watch the Olympics.  Similarly, some organizations try to implement agility without getting up off the couch.

Although the ‘agile organization’ promises a long-awaited alternative to heavy processes that erode motivation and stifle innovation, it also gets used as a rationale to introduce uncoordinated workstreams; to cherry pick projects (and avoid all that boring stuff like planning and execution); or to spin underwhelming results as success.

It seems I’m not the only one on the fence about agility because while some experts sing the praises of failure in the innovative organization, others ask why innovation rarely occurs even at companies that embrace the whole 'fail fast' thing.

In a rapidly changing and competitive world, it makes sense to strive for holocracy instead of hierarchy; collaborative networks instead of siloes; rapid experimentation instead of fear of failure; participation instead of central decision making; bottom up brainstorming instead of top down directives; and innovation instead of stagnation. 

It’s easy to get buy in, too, because no one’s going to say, ‘Let’s not try new things.  Let’s not collaborate.  Let’s not innovate.’ 

It sounds great but…

I worked for ten years at a very disruptive and successful start-up where no one ever talked about failing, let alone failing fast.  I mean, sure, if you had to fail better do it quickly but the goal was to succeed with careful planning followed by rapid, coordinated execution.  Failure was acknowledged and usually forgiven but it wasn’t in any way romanticized. 

OK, there was this one senior exec who’d get up at each all hands meeting with a self-deprecating grin and say, ‘Yeah, we should have seen that coming,’ which we all found hilarious.  Good times.

I absolutely believe huge success can happen by trying lots of things – the lucky punch - but I also believe greater success is possible with ruthless prioritization and proper planning.  You may miss the lucky punch but trying out lots of free floating ideas without a cohesive strategy has a high opportunity cost and adds complexity to a shaky foundation. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in cross-team collaboration, iterative learning and letting people make mistakes.  Simply put, since top down decision-making and fear of failure are innovation killers, if you want to innovate and move fast you need to break down siloes, decentralize decision-making and make it OK to fail.  However…

My point is that how you do it matters.  Good execution and alignment can make all the difference between spectacular and underwhelming results.  Here are a few pointers from the trenches:

• Have a cohesive strategy: A strategy is not a vision or a statement of intent, it’s an execution plan to achieve your goals.  If there isn’t a coordinated execution plan, people will come up with their own, which is how you end up with siloes and competing priorities.
• Find the right balance: You can’t just innovate, unless you’re Thomas Jefferson working alone with independent finances.  You still need to do the business as usual stuff to be successfully innovative.  Some innovative companies tackle this by creating dedicated teams focused on new frontiers, others by dedicating a certain amount of time to pure innovation each week. 
• Don’t just pile more stuff on: A common mistake companies make when introducing agile processes is to introduce them on top of everything else rather than ruthlessly re-prioritizing to allow people to focus on innovation.  A good rule of thumb is that if people are too busy to think, they’re probably too busy to innovate. 
• Make it OK to say no: When companies decentralize decision making to empower people to say yes, they sometimes forget to empower them to say no.  In lean organizations iterative experimentation tends to put the highest burden on a subset of folks – in marketing this may be the creative team, for example.  Every great idea has an opportunity cost.
• Don’t diss the boring stuff: I’ve seen failure being celebrated as ‘learning’ while solid successes were ignored, and it wasn’t pretty.  Good people felt overlooked and upset.  The folks who keep the lights on while the innovators are off innovating also deserve to be celebrated.
• Keep your powder dry: I remember discussing a high-ticket dinner event for decision makers in an industry we weren't even targeting.  It turned out the organizer wanted to try that venue and proposed the event as an innovative experiment.  The key takeaway here is that self-optimization isn't innovation and steals resources needed for real innovation.
• Manage the process: I haven't yet seen an organizational model that eliminates the need for good leadership.  Someone needs to support teams, curate ideas, communicate the strategy, balance the workload, manage the budget, coordinate execution to eliminate duplication of effort, hold people accountable and ensure everyone has an opportunity to contribute.  
• Measure things that matter: Your website traffic increased 12%.  Your industry event attracted 150 people.  Your new white paper was downloaded 800 times.  You met your 3x coverage for lead targets. Great but so what?  Will it help you provide better service and – ultimately - sell more? 
• Listen to the naysayers:  Some naysayers are a real drag and seem to be against anything new.  Ignore them, but don’t ignore the input of people who have valid concerns about proposed changes.  Addressing these concerns – or at least considering them with an open mind – may help you avoid serious challenges down the road. 

At the end of the day, innovation has more to do with culture and mindset more than strategy or process.  If your culture isn't innovative, your outcome won't be either.

Picture courtesy of Innovation Labs.

Dave Ryan's Leadership Post

The following post was written by Dave Ryan, author of the HR Official blog.

Usually when we speak of the terms 'Leaders' or 'Leadership', it is used in a positive context to describe an endearing quality that an individual posses.  More often than not that is the proper context, but we also need to be wary because leaders are not always good, in fact history has taught us that very charismatic leaders appear to be wonderful, only for the masses to find out later of their sheer evil.

I have come to know this as a nearly life-long resident of the State of Illinois.  We have had some really bad leadership in this state.  Now I have become cynical almost to the point of being jaded.

For the record Illinois has had more than our fair share of bad apples.  But my point is this, look past the leader and what they say. If more people would question leaders about what they say and what they do some of these poor folks would not stray so far off course.  I don‘t know what happens to  folks when they attain power and influence.   It seems to overwhelm their moral compass and they lose sight of right and wrong, and they can rationalize anything in the name of greed.

Fortunately many if not most (at least outside Illinois) leader are honest, moral,  God-fearing people who do the right thing and are guided by that do-the-right-thing attitude.

When I ponder leaders I often think about the past and President Regan talking to Mikhail Gobachev,  they were leaders learning to try to trust each other.



R squared  was just saying check it out. That’s what I am talking about. We can run down the list.  If more folks had questioned Hitler, well,,,.    If some folks, in South Africa would have said “Hey Jim, what’s really in the Kool Aid” perhaps that might have turned out differently.    And not nearly enough folks questioned Ken Lay at Enron, had they, we would not have had the situation that we did there. Those folks were good leaders but they led – the wrong way.

So what you need to know about leadership is this – question it, make sure you are headed in the right direction with your Company, your group, your family.  You don’ t have to be disrespectful or rude in doing so, but always be wary.  You never know what a leader’s true motives are… especially if you live in Illinois.

CEO in the Cantina

What if your CEO walked into the company canteen and ordered the penne arrabiata?  Would you try to suck up or not even notice because you have absolutely no clue what your CEO looks like?

Of course, if your CEO is Darth Vader,there's really no excuse for not recognizing him.  Conversely, being able to kill someone with a thought is no excuse for acting like you can kill someone with a thought.

Warning: This video contains adult language.  Actually, I'm not sure why they call it 'adult' language.  But anyway, please don't watch if people - or Lego action figures - using adult language bothers you.  You have been warned.

Who Moved My Manager?

Josh Bersin recently wrote a compelling post about how the nature of jobs are changing.  Instead of functions, people assume roles, perform tasks and participate in projects.  They may ‘report to’ a number of people besides their own manager, from project managers to stake holders.  They may lead teams and manage projects without a manager title.

This is all fascinating from an organizational development perspective and Josh did his usual great job describing how high performing companies develop expertise and reward business results. 

But for those of us in the software industry, the technology implications are equally fascinating.

If we were going to design a new kind of business application to help companies manage a global, virtual, fluid, contingent, self-managing, project-oriented workforce in a constantly changing business climate, where would we start?

First of all, let's assume people work from anywhere, or at least anywhere with an Internet connection, so we’ll start with a Cloud-based application.  Collaboration and decision support tools also assume a looming importance in this environment, because the people who work together probably aren’t sitting right next to each other.

We also need our new application to be highly flexible in order to keep up with changing business needs.  It’s hard to be agile if your business systems slow you down.

In this borderless work environment the traditional 'management' role of the manager becomes less important.  People still need direction and leadership but classic top-down management gets in the way of collaboration.  Instead, people need visibility into the business information that shapes their decisions and autonomy to get the job done.

The traditional career development role of the manager also looks different in this environment as people plug into social networks, reach out to mentors, and broadcast their skills and experience in public forums such as LinkedIn.  Companies that want to retain top talent will provide tools that help people define their own career paths so they don’t feel they must go elsewhere for the next development opportunity. 

The formal annual manager performance evaluation is likely to evolve into less formal, more frequent peer reviews and feedback, supplemented by improved insight into work and business results.

Our new application should also help companies identify potential and develop talent in order to avoid critical skills gaps as the organization evolves and better align skills with critical work - across the entire organization, not just within the purview of individual managers.

It seems pretty clear that in this new world, the need for ‘managers’ will decline, even if organizations still cling to them out of habit for several decades.  At the same time, people will uncover new opportunities to become leaders in their respective areas of expertise, as Wally Bock noted in his recent post What if leadership wasn’t a promotion?

Which means that modern business applications must be designed to support leaders, not just managers.

Project Social: Popularity

One of the early goals of project social was to see how different themes drove more visits and comments. My project social partner Dave Ryan and I are occasionally (OK, frequently) baffled by which posts get lots of traffic, which receive the most comments and which are comparatively ignored.

Which makes it interesting to take stock at the beginning of a new year to see which posts were the most popular overall and compare these to the ones we thought were the best.  It turns out that personal preference is rarely a reliable indicator of popularity.

To demonstrate this point, Dave, Lyn and I are taking this opportunity to review our blog stats and find out which posts were the most viewed, the most commented and also list our personal favorite posts.

Lessons learned:

• People like trends, lists and carnivals. 
• Sometimes you strike a chord. 
• Sometimes you don't.
• That's all I've got.

Without further adieu, here are the top Working Girl posts of all time and be sure to check out what Dave and Lyn have to say over at HR Official and HR Bacon Hut.  It's like a little carnival! 

Top 5 Most Viewed: 
#1: Project Social: The Dark Side of HR - A hard-hitting look at the dark underbelly of HR, mahahahaha!!!
#2: The Top Talent Management Trends of 2011 - Find out if any of my predictions actually came true...
#3: Business Is About Community - A heart warming story of community in action at the workplace
#4: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective 5-Year-Olds - Now a best selling business book (just kidding)
#5: Top 10 Tips for Managers - This post is pretty much what it sounds like

Top 5 Highest Commented:
#1 January 5 Carnival of HR: Reflections, Resolutions, Predictions and Rants - A great new year line up of HR goodness from your favorite HR bloggers!
#2 Project Social: Let's Clique - Inaugural project social post
#3 The Top Talent Management Trends of 2011 
#4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective 5-Year-Olds
#5 On Leadership and Stinky Fish - Sorry, you just have to read it if you want to know what leaders and stinky fish have in common 

My Personal Favorites:
#1 Let's Not Overdo This Qualifications Things - Companies should focus more on problem solving skills than formal qualifications because after 6 months it's a wash what you did before.  (This advice obviously doesn't apply to brain surgeons.)
#2 Teamwork or Talent? - Why it's a crock to say that teams are more important than high performing individuals
#3 Well, You Can Always Pull a Tinkerbell - Before becoming a catty Peter Pan groupie Tinkerbell nearly destroyed Fairyland and then saved it with her amazing leadership skills and resourcefulness
#4 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective 5-Year-Olds
#5 I Want to Work for Diddy - An early post that explains everything you need to know about effective talent management

The Holiday Post...

...in which, instead of writing a new post, I link to several other posts and sites.

(What, you've never done that?)

But first, I'd like to wish all my friends a wonderful holiday...

Of course, many of you I know only as a small thumbnail but that shouldn't stand in the way of friendship or admiration.  I trust many of you are actually life-size and hope you enjoyed a wonderful holiday season with friends and family.

 We had a full house this year with Christmas coffee, a Bavarian breakfast for my husband's soccer team and a family Christmas Eve featuring a fondue with seven sauces and more presents for the kids that I remember getting throughout my entire childhood.  On Christmas morning the kids shook out their stockings, played with their new marble run and we started a new family tradition: building a robot.

My husband bought Lego Mindstorm for our 8-year-old daughter, who inexplicably understands electric wiring, motors and things of that kind.  Not from me, I assure you.  She assembled and programmed her first robot in about a half hour.  My husband helped at first but at some point he was just slowing her down.

The robot has a sensor.  As it approaches a wall it backs up and tries a different direction.  Then it asks for a color.  If you show it the right color it says, 'Fantastic!'  If you show it the wrong color it shoots you with a marble, thanks you and tells you to have a nice day.

That's my girl.  Her robotics skill is her own but she has my eyes.

Now then, here's some don't miss holiday reading for those golden hours while you're sitting around the fireplace with your family and an iPad in your lap, thinking that checking email feels too much like work:

Women of HR is running a 2-week 'Best of Women of HR' series.  Check it out!

Paul Smith has posted a wonderful holiday HR Carnival over at Welcome to the Occupation, full of  thoughtful and expensive presents.

Compensation Cafe is always worth a read but since this is my blog I'm going to point you to my own most recent post on creating value with a limited rewards budget.  While you're over there be sure to check out a few other posts, too - the Cafe is a great multi-writer resource for rewards, fair pay, appreciation, employee motivation or talent management.

And while we're on the topic, Happy New Year!

Good Management: How Do You Measure Up?

The importance of good management for engagement, retention and overall company performance has been a central theme of the blog from the very beginning.

In fact, one of my early posts on talent management boldly asserted that 'the quality of managers is the single most important thing you can get right.' 

Periodically I get sidetracked by other HR-related topics but I always have a hard spot in my heart for inept managers.

Which isn't entirely fair because most managers don't set out to be bad managers.  It's not the master plan, so to speak.  It usually just sort of happens through a combination of stress, neglect and poor communication skills.

This is either a wake up call or a golden opportunity for HR.  If talent matters, and surveys tell us that talent is both scarce and pretty disgruntled at the moment, corporate focus will inevitably start shifting to the people who manage that talent. 

Mediocre managers will need to evolve into leaders who can inspire people to give their best... and it'll take more than a memo or a KBO to make that happen.

Someone will have to offer managers the same support and leadership that is expected of them.  Someone will have to mentor managers and actively measure how effective they are, not just in terms of output and deadlines but also in terms of team performance, engagement and retention. 

Remember this: Poor managers tend to be poorly managed themselves.

As more is expected of them, managers will also demand better tools to support their improved management style.  Think about it: If you ask a manager to lead a modern global team (multi-generational, multi-cultural, remote, contingent, etc.) then saddle him or her with a cumbersome annual performance management tool or make it really hard to access workforce information from anywhere except an office computer you are failing that manager.

So here are some fun HR projects to consider that will help managers manage better and have the potential to create real business value in 2012:

• Define metrics to measure manager quality today and measure it.
• Put a manager mentoring and development program in place and execute on it.
• Provide managers with better management tools and access to relevant business data.

Did I forget anything?  Please, poke holes!

The OD Post: Squandering Talent and Hoarding Information

...in which I point you to my two most recent Compensation Cafe posts:

Turkey Talk: Squandering Talent - It was the day before Thanksgiving, OK?  I was fresh out of turkey puns.  Even to me, it happens.  This post includes a book review from Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers.  Since Malcolm Gladwell was recently named one of the ten top business thinkers of 2011, if you don't plan to read his book at least read this post so you don't sound ignorant about the whole '10,000 hours' thing.

Why Should I Help You?  I'm just nice that way.  Really, I'm very helpful.  Several people have said so.  Unfortunately, not everyone is as helpful as I am, which is why the topic of this post is how organizations can inspire people to share what they know.

Enjoy!