Happy Holidays

Kevin is enjoying a bit of a vacation as well as putting some finishing touches on a few projects. He will return to this space the week of January 10, 2011. Enjoy some family time during the Holidays and Kevin will see you in the New Year.

How To Get Thrown Out Of An Expensive Italian Restaurant

On Filter-Free Fridays™ you get the opportunity to tell businesses, organizations and people how they are doing - in a non-hurtful way.
Last Friday, my wife and I headed out for some Italian at one of the city’s most expensive Italian restaurants. We had never been to this particular restaurant before but the reviews showed well.
We ordered a glass of red wine, the Caprese salad to start and my wife ordered the House Specialty Lasagna and I ordered the Veal-stuffed Cannelloni. They brought fresh bruschetta on crostinis as their welcome. Delicious - well as delicious as you can make tomatoes in December but well spiced and flavorful. The Caprese was alright I suppose - but again made with out-of-season tomatoes - it was good.
Then the main courses arrived straight from the oven in the same dishes. We had to wait several minutes before we could taste since it was piping hot. When we did, my wife thought the bechamel/tomato sauce (which the pastas were swimming in) tasted more like Campbell’s Cream of Tomato soup, both pasta dishes were overcooked (disintegrated when touched) and there seemed to be a lack of any sort of seasoning. Have you ever tasted veal or lasagna without seasoning? Well it’s tastes like … uh … nothing.
The “pepper girl” came by a few minutes later and asked if we wanted fresh pepper. I simply replied, “I don’t think that’s going to fix it.”
She immediately summoned our server (turns out he was the owner) and when asked, we simply said that the sauce tasted like tomato soup, the pasta was overdone, there was no seasoning and therefore no taste and perhaps it was the worst pasta I have ever had in an upscale restaurant (true).
“Well then this place is not for you,” he barked and angrily gathered up the dishes. “I will pay for what you’ve eaten. You can leave at any time,” he barked and then threw the dishes into a tub in the kitchen (really he threw them). And we left.
If it doesn’t taste good, don’t eat it anyway and then pay for it. Say something. The worst that happens is they ask you to leave. I suppose I could have said everything was “fine” but then I would have been lying and the next customer who ordered the same dish would get an expensive mouthful of nothing.
On Filter-Free Fridays™, you’re not just helping the business get better, you’re making it better for the next person. Tell the truth. They need to hear it.

Take The Christmas Party Away From The Office

You can’t erase a memory because once that memory has been committed to … uh …memory, it’s there forever. And that includes the Christmas celebration drinks at the office and the consequences and responsibilities that follow.

If you want to toast with your co-workers, pick a neutral location away from the workplace. Do not, under any circumstances, allow alcohol to cross the threshold of your workplace.

In addition to being responsible for the behavior of your people under the influence, allowing alcohol into the office makes you responsible for virtually everything that your people do between the time they leave the office and actually arrive at home. That includes how they get home. But host an event in a bar or hotel ballroom, and then the responsibility is on the host facility to ensure their guests don’t get too drunk and disruptive.

Do not host a party in the workplace. Your workplace is for working. Bars are for drinking. If you want to have your people enter into a high-performance mindset when they walk through the doors each day, don’t allow them to come out of that mindset while they are in the office by creating a memory of drunken or lascivious behavior fueled by alcohol. Focus.

Build your culture of high-performance by keeping focused. Assess every activity (including the Christmas party) to ensure that you are not sending your people mixed messages. Doing so creates difficulty for managers and hurts your Culture.

If you want to celebrate with your people, take it outside.

How To Finish Christmas Shopping 10+ Days Early

I’m finished my Christmas shopping altogether. In fact, I finished 12 days early and it took me all of a few hours to get it all done. Every gift was well thought out, well planned and the day went virtually stress-free. Did I mention that I’m a man?

Each person on my list will get an appropriate gift and gifts that have meaning for them. How? They told me what they wanted.

I carry a Blackberry and over the course of a year, I have many interactions with the people on my Christmas gift list. In conversation, they will usually give up some piece of information about something they’ve seen, heard about or just gotta have. I simply enter that information in my Blackberry. Then, come Christmas shopping, I simply pull out the Blackberry and purchase a few items from their individual lists. Hey, it’s exactly how Santa does it. You know the “making a list and checking it twice” thing. At the heart of it all is a list. Make one and you take away your stress.

Look you can’t manage Christmas or your family but you can manage how you find the perfect gift - pay attention all year long. Write it down. Get it into a list or a database of some sort. Then, in a few hours, after you’ve mapped out your stores geographically, you are done in no time.

The busiest and most stressful time of the year are the 10 days leading up to Christmas at the malls. Why, if there were a better way, would you put yourself through the stress year after year? You get to enjoy quiet times at home while others are losing their minds at the mall.

Now give yourself a daily reminder on your Blackberry starting December 26 to pay attention to the conversations going on around you. Don’t worry, once you start entering things into your lists it will simply come naturally.

Meanwhile, good luck out there. I’m home with my cup of tea, feet up, stretched out on the leather sofa watching the original Miracle on 34th Street on the big screen. Yes Virginia, there really is an easy way to be Santa.

Has Casual Friday Gone Too Far?

The backlash has started. Companies across North America are fighting back and actually placing rules and stipulations on Casual Friday attire. The Reason? Apparently people can't be trusted to make their own appropriate clothing choices. But more likely, managers have been completely ineffective at establishing and communicating a set of boundaries for staffers to operate in.

Some organizations are refocusing and re-naming their Casual Fridays "First Date Fridays" and encouraging their employees to dress as though they were attempting to impress a first date by wearing something appropriate and sophisticated. Others are banning jeans outright so they don't have to deem one pair of jeans acceptable and another not. No flip-flops, no tank tops, no shorts, no halter tops and yes, underwear ... always. Other organizations are offering their employees the chance to dress down (just a little) for a donation to a charity.

Right now the data is being gathered to determine whether Casual Day is leading to a slide to casual service, casual language and casual productivity. I will bet it does. If you lower the standard in one area of your workplace you end up lowering the standard in all areas. Casual is casual no?

The problem is that for the employee, Casual Fridays make the day all about the clothes (or lack of them in some cases) and not about the work anymore. If your people aren't grasping the whole "dress responsibly" thing, it's likely because you, as a manager, have been ineffective in getting the message across.

Casual Fridays is as much a test of communication and Culture as it is about wearing your comfy clothes for a day. If you want your people to dress appropriately, articulate effectively what you would like to see. Otherwise, you'll be putting out fires from staff members who are offended by the dress of other staff members.

Casual Fridays can work but like the other four days of the week, there are standards that must be adhered to.

Oh, and for a chuckle, watch this short clip from CBS's The Office about Casual Fridays.

How To Deal With Bad Parkers At The Mall

It’s the Holiday season. I know this because the malls are full and so are their respective parking lots. The problem is that there could be more parking available if not for the selfish displays of a few drivers who could care less how they park.

Strange isn’t it that people can go to the mall to buy a beautiful gift for a loved one while at the same time thumbing their noses at everyone else. They don’t care how they park, they don’t care that they take up two spaces and they certainly don’t care that they inconvenience you. No because they’re selfish, self-absorbed little idiots who, if they understood the spirit of the season, would park respectfully to allow others to have a happy holiday season as well.

So here’s my solution: it’s Filter-Free Fridays™ so the gloves are off. Right now, cut and paste the following and put it into a Word document four or five times on a page. Make it 16-point type and a bold font and when you print them out, cut them into strips:

• Hey selfish jerk, thanks for parking with such lack of courtesy during this Holiday season. It’s obvious that whatever gift you bought today won’t matter because the Spirit of the Season is apparently lost on you. The truth is, I left you this note because you parked liked a selfish jerk. I didn’t damage your car but you might not be so lucky the next time you don’t think about others. Wake up - oh and Happy Holidays. (www.filterfreefridays.com)

Carry a bunch of these in your car this Holiday Season. You’re going to need them. It’ll take the edge off when you place one under a windshield wiper. Then you can go shopping smiling - with the full Holiday Spirit inside of you. And if you see someone parking like a jerk, correct them before they walk away from their car. I’ll bet most sheepishly return to their cars and park properly. Embarrassment works.

When Managers Make People Wait

Don’t you just hate standing in line? Banks have that long cattle pen (moo). Airports have the same line, even though you’ve already checked in AND put your own luggage tag on your luggage you still have to line up to give someone the bag. Huh. And now even stores like Best Buy make you line up like cattle (moo) if you want to return something to their store. It seems that buying is efficient - returning will eat up a good chunk of your life.

Organizations have become quite competent at making customers wait and you’re likely quite aware of how long your customers are forced to wait. But have you considered how much your employees wait?

Employees who are forced to wait, especially waiting for fellow workers, cause your people to think. When they think, they reflect on how bored they are waiting, When they discover how bored they are, they blame the job. When they discover how boring the job is, they disengage.

But you, as a manager, can Tweak™ the disengagement out of your people and get them to actively engage. Tweak™ing can identify problems and boredom before they become problems. Tweak™ Management creates dialogue between employees and managers.

Remove wait times for your employees and they actively engage. But only managers who communicate with their people regularly will be able to eliminate boredom. Otherwise, your people sit around waiting to speak with their managers about how long they are forced to wait.

Mission Statement or Vision Statement?

In my mind, both are important but NOT interchangeable at all. If asked which were more important, I would say, “it depends on who you’re asking for.” Here’s why: the Vision Statement is the long-term forecast and goal-setting of where you would like to be in 1 year, 2 year and 5 year increments. Mission is how you get there - daily.

For the organization as a whole, Vision is the more important of the two as it sets up where you want to end up.

However, for the employees, Mission statement is far more important as it determines what needs to be done today.

The problem is when organizations have such a bland and generic Mission Statement, no one knows what they are supposed to be doing. It’s called a Mission statement because it’s the mission: what you’re supposed to be doing. When a good Mission statement spells it out, it makes it easier for employees to make the right decisions.

Would your Mission Statement allow your people to make the right decisions or is it so muddled and mundane that your people don’t take it seriously?

Every department of an organization should have their own Mission Statement that specifically outlines the duties and Culture of the department within the larger framework. A departmental Mission works because, when in doubt, your people can look to the Mission Statement for the right thing to do. If it isn’t spelled out, your people will do whatever they think is best - based on their perception of the right thing to do.

Managers, if you want to be spending less time putting out fires and more time being able to coach your people better, develop a Mission Statement for your department that keeps your people focused, on-task and engaged.

How Managers End Up With Average Staff

Take stock of your employees right now. You are about to separate your people into three categories.

1. Category 1: how many of your people could you consider to be the best in your industry - the high-performers?
2. Category 2: how many of your people would you consider to be at least average (competent) and do decent work?
3. Category 3: how many of your people would be considered below average?

I will bet that the largest number of your people end up in Category 2.

So why is that? Why are you hiring and managing only average people to turn out average work?

Most managers will make the excuse that 80% of workers are considered average - when in fact it is 1% of workers who are average (right on the mid-point) and 99% either above or below average. It is nothing more than an excuse because it lets managers off without having to try harder to coach their people to become higher-performers.

This is how managers end up with an average staff - they accept that this is the hand they have been dealt and then make excuses for not wanting to make it better - because it seems like a lot of work. But then those same managers complain that their staff members aren't engaged on the job. Huh. Imagine that.

It's not workers who have an attitude of "good enough," it's their managers who have it. Good enough lets you off the hook of having to coach better, communicate better and to take more of an active interest in their development.

Yes you do have the time. You just have poor priorities. You're not a paperworker or a meetinger. You're a manager. So manage - priority one. Make your people better and want to be better. You are the coach - they are the players. Are you going for an average season or are you going to attempt to win the championship.

The job is "people-work not paperwork." Re-prioritize.

How Speaking Up Saves Your Money

I received my American Express bill last month as usual. The amount owing was a few thousand dollars - so I paid it, in full. Even though I charged nothing to card for the next month, I still received my American Express bill this time with an interest charge of $7.80 owing.

Huh? But I paid it all off last month.

I called American Express where they happily explained to me that the interest had accrued a few months prior and that was the reason that $7.80 in interest was still owing.

"Well then you sent a bill that wasn't complete," I offered, "and if you send me a bill and it shows an amount owing on it and I pay it before the due date, then we should be square. You sent me a bill that was not complete and I don't think I should have to pay more than you billed me for."

I was asked to hold for a moment. The clerk then returned telling me that he had waived the interest owing.

How many people would have simply accepted the convoluted excuse about interest accruing months previous and simply given up. If every month, 100,000 people were to do that worldwide, then the credit card company would generate $780,000.00 of new income monthly.

The first excuse is to test to see if you'll go along with it. When you don't go along, you get rewarded.

Speak up. It's Filter-Free Fridays™ - a day when you speak the truth - to help, not to hurt. Stop being taken advantage of. Stand up for yourself. Use your voice.

People-work Not Paperwork

It's the simplest management philosophy ever: people-work not paperwork.

Your job as a manager is to manage people. Make your people your first priority - always.

Your paperwork and meeting with other managers should be secondary to managing your people. After all, the title is Manager - not paperworker, not meetinger. So do just what the title says - manage.

• Move your meetings with other managers to off-hours and lunch-hours.
• Stop hiding behind paperwork in your office.
• Stop making phone calls from anyone but your people more important than your people.
• Start engaging your people the same way you want them to engage themselves in their work (if you won't do it, why should they?)
• Start giving your people honest, consistent feedback.
• Expect them to trust you not because you're their manager but because you take an active interest in their success.

If you aren't touching each member of your team at least once a day, you're doing it wrong. Someone's going to do it better and your good people will be inclined to go to work for them instead.

People-work not paperwork. Now get out of your office and go meet the people you're supposed to be leading.