Are You Too Old To Lead?

High schools are using Interactive White Boards which can seriously increase a student's attention by using moveable graphics, Internet connectivity and video - not to mention social media and instant messaging. Schools are also starting to ditch books in favor of laptops and iPads with digitized e-books, video connectivity, access to Wikipedia, social networking and collaborative messaging. Students are participating more in class because it's fun, it's hands on and it's exciting.

Now, when these same students finish school and enter the work world, they will encounter your trainers using archaic and (oh my God this is BORING) PowerPoint slides. They are asked to shut off their cell phones, are not supplied laptops but are given 3-ring binder manuals and no access to Internet video, no collaborative messaging and especially NO social media (because it is viewed as a time-waster).

Not much wonder these new workers think your workplace is a step back in time. Look, these kids are learning with technology you probably not only don't understand but arent even aware exists. Their parents (some of your workers) are helping them with their homework (with rudimentary knowledge of how it all works). Then, when the students become old enough to work for you, you take everything away from them because you don't know how it works.

Who looks like the leader now?

If you want to build a Culture that will attract these new workers, you had better be looking to the educational system to see what your workforce of tomorrow is using today. Stop being such an old fart and get with the program. Social media is here to stay. Internet video is here to stay. In five years, the high school students of today will be coming to work to use technology that hasn't even been invented yet.

If you're still having a difficult time with your email, maybe it's time you stepped out of the way and let people who can use the technology embrace it and run with it. Maybe they are much better able to relate to your up-and-coming workforce.

Jet Blue's Steve Slater Is An Idiot

Steve Slater, the now infamous former Jet Blue flight attendant who recently snapped on-board, showered passengers with his unceremonious tirade of expletives while he quit in a most public way, drank a couple of beers and then slid down the emergency slide (there was no emergency) is the kind of employee that coporate legal departments should make an example of. Steve Slater should be dragged into court and sued for his childish tantrum. Anyone who applauds this idiot is someone who is incredibly unhappy with their own job and they're living vicariously through a six year-old in adult clothing.

Sure, it may sound like something you want to applaud until you are one of passengers on that flight and are berated with a tirade of swearing and infantile behavior. If you were a passenger that day, you'd be writing nasty letters to Jet Blue expecting some sort of compensation for having to endure this childishness. You'd be questionning how a wingnut like this guy could get a job that required him to be responsible for your safety. You would question the screening process at Jet Blue and demand answers.

Here's the big problem: in this situation, Steve Slater had a problem with one passenger but by his antics, he punished all of Jet Blue's customers (on-board passengers) for the actions (alleged) of one passenger. He snapped and took his frustrations out on a full planeload of passengers who had nothing to do with it.

Like Slater, organizations are aften too quick to create Blanket Policies and unleashed it on everyone because of the actions of a few. Blanket policies are never perfect for every situation and they tend to alienate more than serve. Companies that issue new policies for everyone in response to a problem with one or two seems drastic - and idiotic.

I agree that employees need to be prepared to handle difficult situations but let's ensure that the preparation does not become a blanket policy - which is usually the choice of managers who don't trust their own people to solve problems nor do they empower them to do so. People will lean on and use the policy as an excuse to not take their own initiative and solve a problem (Sorry, it's company policy). And when your people start claiming "comapny policy" as an excuse for not serving customers, you will have a serious Culture problem.

Slater's stupid and selfish antics punished all passengers that day and directly hit Jet Blue's finances because of his childish arrogance. Jet Blue should sue his ass for damage to their reputation and then issue a free flight to the passengers on board that day as an apology.

Until there is a consequence to launching into tirades in front of customers, this will happen again because apparently, it gets you your 15 minutes of fame. And that is a sad indictment of our society.

Do Checklists Actually Work?

Checklists work for people who either need or like checklists. My wife is a great checklist person on those little, teeny scraps of paper. It's a system that works for her. My system involves only big items (appointments, proposals, meetings, etc) on my Blackberry. I make priorities first and then squeeze all the other little stuff to less-productive times of the day. The little stuff gets done after the big stuff is accomplished. I guess I'm more of a "rocks in the jar" kind of guy.

But some people are convinced that every little thing needs to be written down. And I suppose that's true if you're forgetful or you need to pat yourself on the back for feeling like you got a lot of things accomplished in a single day.

Here's the problem with list-building though: it doesn't overcome procrastination and lack of motivation. Having a list doesn't mean you'll get get off your fat butt and get it done. The motivation to get started is an attitude. The decision to procrastinate is also an attitude. Dealing with underlying attitudes is the part missing from most training - the "why do it now" especially when you don't want to.

It's why there is no universal Time Management course that works. If there were a Time Management course that worked for every person every time, there would be no need for any more Time Management courses because everyone would be doing it already - having already taken the course.

There are no universal communications courses because everyone has their own communication style. There are no universal team-building courses because each person's contribution and attitude towards their workplace is different.

If universal learning courses worked, there would be only one Time Management course, one Interpersonal Communications course, one Team Building course, one Supervisory Management course, one Sales course and, well, you get the idea. There would be one course only because it works and anything else would be a foolish waste of time and money - having found one that worked all of the time for all people.

So before you embark on investing in a new list-building program, ask yourself if you really want to do the job in the first place? If not, no list-building is ever going to work for you - or your staff. Address the "attitude" part of productivity first before you throw money and time at it. The illusion of taking some sort of action still doesn't solve the underlying problem. There's no single solution to each problem. Each employee is managed a bit differently if you're trying to get maximum performance out of each person.

Protect Your Culture From Bad Speakers

You've finally decided on a strategy to develop and improve your Corporate Culture. Of course, the purpose for doing this was to ensure that you were able to hang onto your really good people (as the market is about to experience a mass exodus of workers looking for something new and challenging - don't forget this very important point) and to be able to attract and recruit some of the best performers in your industry segment. One of the key considerations when building a strong Culture is a consistent effort in the area of ongoing learning for your employees. Keeping the employees ahead of the market curve makes your an enviable workplace because you're not following the market, you're leading it.

I read on one of the message boards last week about a "speaker" who has difficulty getting Play-doh and wire Slinkys through airport security. Are you kidding me? What sort of organization would be hiring a speaker to fly across the country carrying Slinkys and Play-doh and expecting their people to take their jobs and training seriously? Would you be lining up to work for that organization?

It is paramount that your people get good training, ideas and opportunities to stretch themselves but you've got to ensure that their learning is in alignment with your Culture initiatives. DO NOT hire workshop facilitators that work with Slinkys or Play-doh or cutting pictures out of magazines to create a dream collage - unless you run a daycare center. Never, ever let elementary school teachers as speakers talk to your people. High-performers will derive zero value from waste-of-time training and go in search of "professional" learning.

If you're going to create a new Culture, then everything you've done in the past may need to be re-evaluated. And that especially includes what your learning programs look like. Do not put "kindergarten teachers" in front of your people and expect them to be better prepared to respond quickly to market changes, customers demands and innovative thinking.

Once you've assembled your excellent team, do not jeopardize it with "cutesy" sessions. Protect your people from bad ideas, outdated learning and sessions that treat your people like children - if you want them to be market leaders.

5 Questions To Challenge Your Culture

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a Blog post called, Employee Training Ends At Competence.

At that time, I illustrated why organizations train an employee or manager only to a level of competence - not excellence. Here's a new reason: there's little loyalty to employers anymore so why would they train you to be excellent and then have you go off and work for a competitor with all of the excellent training still in your head?

The truth is that an employer is only responsible for making you, as either an employee or manager, competent. Nothing more is required. If you want to become excellent at your job then it's up to you to improve. Then, if you leave your employer, you take the training that you paid for with you.

So why don't more employees and managers pony-up and take the initiative to be their very best? Because their Corporate Culture doesn't demand it. Sliding by on "mediocre" is OK for these organizations.

And there is the conundrum: who goes first - the employer or the employee? Here are 5 questions to ask that should challenge your Culture:

1. Can you build a Culture of High-performance if no one is willing to step up and become a high-performer without the employer's investment?
2. Can you build a Culture of Accountability if everyone thinks the responsibility for making you better is on someone else?
3. Can you build a Culture of Service if no one is willing to serve themselves?
4. Can you build a Culture of Leadership if everyone else is waiting for someone else to lead the way?
5. Can you build a Culture of Excellence if everyone is satisfied with being trained to a level of competence?

At some point, these questions need to be addressed among all of the employees and managers - but only if you want your Culture, the pulse of how your organization works, to improve. Otherwise ignore this post and keep on doing what you've been doing.
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Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

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Approaching Tomorrow With Yesterday’s Training

I’m guessing you’ve noticed that the new staff at your workplace are getting younger – or are you just getting older? Either way, the truth is that the workplace is getting younger, staff are getting younger, customers are getting younger, clients are getting younger, suppliers are getting younger and managers are getting younger. But for the most part, training is getting old. You can’t run the same training program you’ve been using for years – certainly not if you want to be ahead of the uptake of the new youth in the market. If you’re still using your old training programs and vendors, you’re building a poor corporate culture right from the start. And that’s going to be a problem.
Training programs today need to:

• reflect the changing market for customers who are already researching you on-line before you speak with them the first time
• reflect that your business hours may need to undergo examination to better reflect when your younger customers are working (it isn’t 9-5 anymore)
• reflect that most people don’t even answer their phones, let alone return voice mails – are you reaching your customers the way they want to be reached?
• reflect that niche marketing is a reality and where you once bought all of your office supplies from one vendor, three or four are now better suited to serve niche needs
• reflect a new set of values through Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives – if you don’t have one, the younger workers won’t apply to work there
• reflect the fact that the Old Boys Club is dying and that the new workers don’t do business like the old boys – you need to get respect not woo them with golf
• reflect that management training had better be more focused on mentoring and coaching than policing new workers – they don’t respond well to “command and control” management

In 2015, 75% of the workforce will either be over 50 years of age or under 30 years of age. And the under 30’s are going to control the market shortly thereafter. So what are you doing to better reflect a new attitude in the marketplace?

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Kevin Burns - Management Attitude/Culture Strategist
http://www.kevburns.com

Creator of Filter-Free Fridays™
Creator of the 90-Day System To A Greatness Culture™

Coming Soon Kevin's 8th Book - "Your Attitude Sucks - Finding Your Excellence In A Wasteland of Mediocrity

Subscribe to Kevin's Managing with Attitude Blog by Email

How To Excel When Business Is Down

Jeffery Gitomer, perhaps America's top sales trainer, said yesterday, "When business is down, it’s likely morale is down. Invest in attitude training for every member of the team FIRST. The best way to get more sales is by creating more friendly and human interaction. The best way to gain loyalty from existing customers, and get more sales (the surest path to survival and growth), is by making service IMPROVEMENTS, not service cuts."

When business is down, there is greater competition for fewer dollars in the marketplace. My audiences always seem amazed to hear that 51% of buyers buy "Attitude" factors like staff, friendliness, approachability, ease-of-business, after-sale service and follow-up. A smaller percentage buy from you because of product knowledge.  

More people buy your Attitude than your knowledge. Pay attention to that. The companies who will be successful when times are tough are the ones who have the right customer-focused Attitude. A buyer expects you to have product knowledge but the competitive edge goes to organizations that address Attitude factors.

Attitude also happens to be tied for second as most popular criteria on job performance reviews: first, quality of work followed by Attitude and productivity. Attitude finished ahead of teamwork, goals, customer service and skills development. Why then do most organizations spend the majority of their training dollars on teamwork, goals, customer service and skills development if the top three criteria for how you judge your people aren't even in that list? When times are tough, you're wasting your money if you're not addressing Attitude.

45% of workers feel "work" is the biggest source of stress in their lives. That's about half of your staff who hate coming to work because they get stressed. Great Attitude to build a successful organization on.

Your Corporate Culture is nothing more than a collection of prevailing Attitudes in your workplace. You will never, and I mean NEVER, improve your culture without addressing Attitude. Without addressing Attitude, you will be never be more than an ordinary, mediocre organization. To go to a "Greatness" culture requires you to do something that none of your competitors are doing - like, change your attitude about Attitude.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture
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81% Looking For New Jobs in 2010

When the recession hit, you abandoned your people in favor of saving a few dollars. And that was a big mistake. I warned you several times over this past year to get back to business-as-normal and keep your people trained, talk to them, assure them that their jobs will be OK and to communicate with them about those you had to let go. But you didn't do it as you should have and now, today, proof positive of exactly what I told you would happen if you didn't heed my warning.

Reuters News Service announced today that 60% of workers will be actively looking for new work in 2010 and another 21% are actively networking to see what's out there. Can you do the math? 81% of the North American workforce are looking for another job, another employer and greener pastures.

That means that your financials are going to be hit hard in the re-training and on-boarding budget areas. The money you saved last year in training is going to be spent by three or four times next year. 2010 is going to be expensive for your organization. For the past two years, you've cut your training budgets just to save a few dollars and now you going to pay handsomely to search out, recruit, on-board and train new employees - which will cost you 1.5 times the annual salary for each lost employee (average cost to replace a lost employee).

Right Management, part of Manpower Inc. conducted the survey. "Employees are clearly expressing their pent-up frustration with how they have been treated through the downturn," said Douglas Matthews, president of Right Management, in a statement. "While employers may have taken the necessary steps to streamline operations to remain viable, it appears many employees may have felt neglected in the process," he said. "The result is a disengaged and disgruntled work force."

The collective Attitudes in the workforce are shaky and disillusioned right now. That is going to hit your corporate culture hard over the next 12 months. What are your plans to keep your good people from actively searching? Right now, it's their Attitudes you need to overcome. Change their Attitudes and you can change how hard you get hit by this wave of mass exodus.

Lousy time for "I told you so" but I did: on March 11, 2009 and again on June 26, 2009.

But it's not too late if you do something right away to turn those Attitudes around. I can still help - if you need it. Or, will you ignore this warning too.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Training - Killing Time or Filling Minds

Professional development courses that play like Kindergarten class having you build newspaper towers, run scavenger hunts or other useless games are not courses you should be paying big money for nor taking them incredibly seriously. It might be fun and the facilitator might have some lame "creativity" excuse but training is not play time - unless you work in a toy store. Professional development is serious. Do you want people who are more adept at the job or someone who is more playful?

The sad truth is that many of these play-date activities have made their way into so-called "leadership" courses - not to mention "team" building. The people in your company are looking to their leaders to lead - not play when the economy tanks or when sales drop or when your competition surpasses you.

Trainers, with little else to offer in the way of substance and learning, are incorrectly teaching you that it's OK to play. Look, I'm all for blowing off a little steam now and then and getting monotony out of the way but why do you have to pay someone to have your people play with blocks or dollar-store novelties or sticky notes or voting each other off of the island?

Just going out on a limb here: do you think that this playtime trend in training has anything to do with recent survey results that show workers waste 2.09 hours a day on the job? I'm just saying.

Let me offer a really solid piece of team-building, corporate attitude and culture strategy: stop making all of the decisions unilaterally. Give your team a real organizational problem or issue that is affecting your organization right now and let them come together and solve it. They will. In fact, you will probably be surprised at how good they are at it.

In the meantime, building paper airplanes or gluing new pictures to a dream-collage are not going to make you or your people any more creative or successful. It will not improve your corporate culture or the ability of your salespeople to sell more, your customer service people to serve better or your managers to manage better. A one-time creativity exercise does not magically unlock the brain's creativity for eternity as it applies to problem-solving in the corporate environment.

The truth is, most of the training involving arts and crafts, hugs, personal drawing, paste or chanting together really may only have about an hour of really solid information spread over a whole day. Never insult your people by treating their training as a play-date - if you want them to take you, the company and the work seriously.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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One Way To Stop Being Mediocre

Most training delivers only temporary motivational highs, so what should training companies do differently?

It's not the training companies that are the problem although sometimes the problem IS a bad trainer/speaker. Most times though, the problem is the people who hire the trainers and speakers.

Companies keep hiring the wrong trainers/speakers because they are trying to fix what they THINK is the problem. Most training addresses usually only the symptom and not the root-cause. Example: poor time-management is a symptom of poor self-discipline and an attitude of mediocrity (good enough). A time-management course will not solve the underlying issue and so, for a few days, there will me a motivational high which will dissipate over time and you will be right back to having the same issue in a few weeks or months.

The same can be said of communication skills, change, leadership, motivation, productivity, stress and team building: all useless training until you address the underlying values and attitudes. Besides, if these really were the problems, you would have solved the problem years ago. They already have been given the skills so why isn't it working?

If sales are down and you have a well-trained sales department, throwing more sales training seems wasteful. They have already been trained and were doing well up to now. Something else is going on. Sales managers, look past the numbers and see what's really going on. Maybe this recession has your sales team scared. Scared sales people do NOT perform well. Address the root-cause, not the symptom.

You can't expect brain-based training (courses and trainers who only know how to appeal to the brain), you have to get past the brain to that place where all of the reasons, excuses and justifiers for not wanting to be better are: attitude. "How to" is great if you have addressed the "why" people do the the things they do. Without the "why" (the underlying attitudes), your training will fall flat and end up in a pile of mediocrity - just like every other organization before you.

When you read the testimonials from trainers and speakers, read them. If they have a lot of "You were great" testimonials, then they will deliver a temporary motivational high. What you want to look for in testimonials is how an organization is different/better after training. Or better yet, an evaluation NOT filled out in the session - but filled out 3 months after.

Speakers/trainers take the stage for one of three reasons:
1) for the applause (ego stroke)
2) catharsis (working out their own problems using your group as therapy)
3) to make a difference regardless of applause or evaluation scores

Most trainers/speakers (80%) could fit easily into the first two choices. Only 20% actually do what they do to make a difference and without need to manipulate your people into getting high evaluation scores and standing ovations. (Any speaker/trainer who quotes evaluation scores needs to be liked. Attendees rarely score a trainer low who they like.)

If you want lasting results, you want training that makes your people a bit uncomfortable, makes them squirm and makes them voluntarily want to have better than mediocre results. Address the root-cause, not the symptom. But, if your people just want to have fun, hire a clown but don't call it training.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Mediocre Wanna-be Experts Can Do Damage

This question showed up on one of the networking boards from a "professional" speaker: "I've been asked to write an article on Cultural Competency as it relates to one's speaking skills. Can anyone help me define this term more clearly?"

Did someone just admit that they have no clue about the subject matter on which they are writing a contracted article? Will this article appear in a publication in which the writer will be seen as an authority on the subject? Will there be a disclaimer at the top of the page which reads: The author of this article is not an authority on the subject of Cultural Competency and, in fact, had no prior knowledge of the subject prior to this article. Please read this article for your amusement only as the author writes it from neither a depth of knowledge or a depth of experience on the subject? No it won't.


Some unsuspecting reader will probably ask the author to facilitate a workshop on the subject - a subject the author has neither knowledge nor experience in - just because they wrote an article. Asking a (un)professional speaker to speak on a subject not within his or her realm of expertise is like asking a car salesman to sell yellow-cake uranium to a foreign country. But sales is sales right? How about selling a photocopier to a person who wants to buy a postage machine? Both make imprints on paper - close enough.

Unfortunately, many (un)professional speakers will take the work and the money and they will be, at the very best, incredibly mediocre. At the very worst, they may actually do damage to your organization.

You may think that speaking is speaking right? Change that attitude. Think of it as professional training where people's minds, hearts and livelihood depend on the person at the front of the room speaking from either a depth of knowledge or a depth of experience.

Change your attitude on professional speakers being experts in everything. They are not. Do not allow these amateurs to mess with your people's minds. If the speaker you're looking at has more than 3 different areas they claim to be an "expert" in, keep searching. If you're expecting to make your organization better, get a real expert. Pay the money and do it right. Don't "cheap out" when it comes to your people. You can't afford it.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Stop Leadership Training Now

A 2-3 day leadership workshop is dangerous to staff morale. The term "management" should not be allowed to be sullied by using the fancy new "leadership" buzzword and by re-branding management workshops to make people think that are going to be anything more than managers anyway. We need managers - good managers. We don't need any managers who "think" they are leaders.

Nothing is more dangerous than a barely-competent manager who fancies himself a leader (except maybe a 1st year Psych minor). It's distressing when staff have to endure the arrogant "past-manager" who now thinks that as a result of his participation at a 2-3 day leadership course, he doesn't have to actually get his hands dirty doing that icky, hands-on manager stuff. Ugh. Trust me, allowing your manager to think himself a leader is going to create big staff problems.

We need managers - good competent managers. And management skills are something you CAN learn at a 2-3 day management workshop. You can derive tremendous benefit from that - if the focus is on target: management. Training companies would do well to stop lying to corporate America. Leadership is not management. Making organizations believe that they should stop management training and start Leadership training is a deception. Leadership is a personal skill. Management is a corporate skill.

If you're really speaking of leadership, you have to define "leadership" to get any benefit. And since there are 350,000 books alone on Amazon, that means there are 350,000 differing opinions on what leadership is. No one person has it right. It is all open to interpretation.

You can not transform a barely-competent manager into a leader in 2 or 3 days. That's ridiculous. And any training company that says they can do it is seeking only your checkbook. Leadership workshops are mostly "management" workshops re-branded anyway - which is a disservice to real life-long leadership commitments and it is insulting to think that a lifelong commitment that someone has made can be taught in 2-3 days.

Leadership workshops would have to change a person's context (the way they see the world), their philosophy (how they think about the world), their personal mission (what they are here to do in the world) and their contribution (what they offer the world). In addition, things like vision, values, ethics, morals, attitudes, opinions and beliefs will all have to be challenged. Leadership operates at that level. Then there is the impossible question to answer: why do people follow some people and not others? You can not have a leadership workshop without addressing these issues and there is no way it can all be covered in-depth, findings concluded and sufficient time allowed for participants to reflect on their lives thus far and where they wish to see themselves in relation to a world contribution (the big picture) in 2 or 3 days.

If you want your managers to be better managers, then send them to management workshops. Don't pretend that you're doing leadership. You can't teach someone how to be Gandhi in 2-3 days. You can't teach someone how to be Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill in 2-3 days. The best you can do is teach someone how to imitate these leaders. But imitation is fake. It is not real. And if it is not real it is not leadership. Leadership is internal - deep in the psyche. The rest is management. Call it what it is.

In every organization, there is ONE leader - the rest are managers. Get used to it. That's the way it is. The barely-competent manager who returns from a 2-3 day leadership course believing that people will follow him now because of his learning after a couple of days training course is not only still barely-competent, but he is now borderline arrogant as well. Yep, let's all line up behind that guy.

What you want are better managers. Stop pretending it's leadership because that is a real insult to real leaders - people who have spent their lifetimes garnering the respect that makes people want to follow them. You can't teach that in 2-3 days.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Greatness Is A Soft-Skill

You know, for being such a dominating force in the world of business, Corporate America really doesn’t have a clue about the stuff that REALLY makes business successful - you know, the people part of it?

If you think communication and presentation, management, human resources, sales and marketing, project and time management, customer service, administration, accounting and finance and purchasing are soft-skills, then you really don’t have any idea of why you are not the best in your market do you? Imagine telling the Human Resources director that they have no real technical expertise because HR is a soft-skill. Imagine telling the VP of Customer Service that her entire department is an unnecessary soft-skill. The same goes for accounting, finance and purchasing.

There are some training companies that would have you believe that sales, finance and management are soft-skills.

If it’s a skill you need to perform your job, it’s a technical or a performance skill. If it’s something that makes you a better person, it’s a soft-skill. It's that clear. There is no gray area here.

Let me illustrate: two job candidates sit in your office with exactly the same technical skill-set. Who do you choose? You choose the candidate with the better soft-skills (friendliness, confidence, optimism, etc.).

It’s exactly the same way your customers choose to do business with a particular sales person, or why some companies offer better service, or why some companies have better management. Given that the product is equal, the choice comes down to which personality you would prefer to work with. Your choice is based on a soft-skill.

If you want to improve the corporate culture of your organization, you can not do it without addressing attitudes and soft-skills.

The Attitudes and soft-skills of your organization are the difference between mediocrity and greatness. Oh, and by the way, greatness is a soft-skill.

The Attitude of What Goes Around

It's incredible how your organization sees soft-skills training as a luxury or worse yet, a tool to placate your people - lip service.

During this last year, as personal stress went up over the economy, your organization shrunk the training budgets - especially training budgets for for non-technical and "unnecessary soft training" like stress-management. How laughable and yet how sad, that an organization really doesn't care as much about their people as they do about protecting reserves of cash. So, stress goes up, productivity goes down, revenues drop due to decreased productivity and top management claims, "see, proof-positive there's a recession. We have to tighten our belts."

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: You need stress-management when stress is high. You need sales training when sales are down. You need confidence training when confidence is low. You need attitude training when attitude sucks. In fact, you need these programs on-going before you "need" it. And yet you claim to put your people first by cutting the help they need exactly when they need it because times are tough? You launch a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative and really only concentrate on "corporate" - not so much on social or responsibility.

Don't think for a second that your people aren't watching either. The moment times are good again and the economy has rebounded there will be empty chairs in your workplace because you failed your people exactly when they needed you. They will fail you when you need them. Rule of life: you get what you give.
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ROI In Training

If you can't determine whether you're actually getting your money's worth and a decent ROI (Return On Investment) after sending an employee to training, then you're doing the wrong training. Employee training is a waste without addressing the human component. Sorry but it's true.

For example: Time Management is a waste of time if you don't address self-discipline. Sales training is a waste of money without addressing confidence. Team building is really only tolerance-building: you really don't change people - you just get them to tolerate each other better.

If you want to get decent ROI then train your people to be better, decent human beings. They will be more willing to do what is necessary to help the organization move forward and more readily accept future training.

According to a recent survey by Adecco, one of the world's leaders in human resource solutions, an incredible 41 percent of Gen Y respondents said they would do something dishonest in order to keep their jobs. These behaviours include blaming coworkers for mistakes, setting up situations for co-workers to fail or even blackmailing colleagues. Good luck training that bunch to do honest, good work without addressing values and ethics.

Oh and stop sending jerks to management training. They're still jerks when they get back – but now they have a title.

As for leadership? Leadership is an attitude. Management is something you could do with a leadership attitude but it's not a pre-requisite for the job.

Just Got A Feeling

You have assembled a group of four university graduates into your interview room. All four graduated from the same university, all with relatively the same marks, and all are willing to work for the same money.

You’ve perused their resumes. They’ve all had the same basic life experiences, history and upbringing. So how do make sure that the candidate you choose will be a perfect fit with the rest of your staff, that your customers will like them and that they bring something to the table that is valuable to your organization?

You will trust your gut. It’s that same gut instinct that you’ve used to help make your business grow, to make good choices, to seize opportunities and to take risks. Your gut has been your best ally throughout your business career. Now you’ll make a gut-instinct choice for the best candidate.

You use your gut instincts, so why aren’t you encouraging the development of your employees’ gut instincts too? Instead, you train them in Time Management, Communication Skills and Team Building – all courses that appeal to the brain. You say you want your people to be more creative in solving customer problems but the courses you’re offering just teach them how to conform. You say you want new ideas and new innovations but you train them in last year’s old-school seminars using old ideas that are mediocre at best.

You’ve taken your cue from the educational system which is all about the marks and not about creativity. A University grad who finished at the top of his class doesn’t guarantee your organization any new ideas. “Top of the Class” just means someone knows how to study and remember course information and be able to regurgitate it when called upon.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: You need creative thinkers on your team who are not satisfied with “good enough.” Perhaps you have employees that are already capable of developing new ideas. But they don’t because since taking the Time Management course you sent them to, there’s no time for idle (creative) thought in their workday.

You want your people to develop new ideas and innovations. You want them to solve customer problems and internal productivity. You want them to be adventurous. You want them to treat others with decency. You want them to step up and be accountable. You want them to discover their leadership abilities. These are all personality and character traits and yet you’re trying to appeal to their brains in a logical way?

Soft-skills and personal development training is where you will find the skills your people need to succeed in the future. Build better people and you build better organizations. Get on it now or be left behind.

Old-School Training Are Like Cold-Meds

Why are the newest and weakest people in the organization tasked with the most important job in the organization: customer service? Why are not the CEOs, Veeps and Supervisors, the veterans of the organization, not serving the revenue stream to the organization – the customer?

At the end of the day, senior management is responsible ultimately for the financial success of the organization. So why then is the most important responsibility - the maintaining and development of revenue streams - left to the minions who are simply treating it like a job?

Corporate America needs an attitude adjustment. If the customer is king and without them the organization ceases to be, why are customers not being served directly by the kings? What consumers are experiencing today is service by dimwits - people who take a dim view of their work and do not use their wits in service of the customer. The solution from above is, "let's send our front-line people to another customer service seminar to improve our service."

So they hire trainers who are desperately clinging to last year's model of business service and are leaving the responsibility for improving their internal performance with a bunch of outside contractors. In essence, you've just said to your people, "Take this course and do it better OK?"

Corporate America may know how to make a profit but it sure doesn't know much about people. And it's people who make the thing run. As long as your people treat their jobs like a job, service will never improve. It can't. It's impossible to build any solid relationship-creating culture on a foundation of "Is it 5 o'clock yet?"

• Time management training to someone without self-discipline is a waste of time.
• Sales Training to someone lacking self-confidence is wasting your money.
• Teamwork training to someone without self-esteem creates a weaker link.

Customer Service, Time Management, Sales and Teamwork training are like taking cold meds for your flu symptoms: you mask the symptoms but don't really address the root problem. You're still sick inside even though you may look healthy outside.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The workforce is changing. Workplace values are changing. The people in the workplace are changing. So why are you still trying to run your business using ancient business models that are dying?

If people can talk to Presidents and Prime Ministers on social networking sites, your customers ought to be able to talk to the CEO. The old business model of "top-down - keep your customers at arms length - blanket policies" is not going to sustain your organization in the future. People around the world are creating conversations with people who matter. Why can't your customers talk to the people who make the decisions in your organization?

Your business model is sick and risks dying soon. Stop feeding it cold-meds and simply hoping it gets better.

Training – Necessary or Perk?

Are you treating training as a perk? If your organization has chosen to forego training sessions for your people at this time in our economy, then you are telling your people that training is not really necessary. You’re telling them that their improvement on the job is a perk. And that’s a horrible message to be sending your people at this time.

Employees are looking for reassurances right now: that they are valued, that their contribution matters and that business continues in spite of what the economy may be doing. If you’ve pulled your training programs until the economy gets better, you’re saying that you want your people to be nervous, to be frightened, to be uncertain and that is the message your people will pass on to your customers.

Training, the right kind of training, is not a perk – it’s necessary. In fact, training your people to become more confident, more resilient and stronger individuals is exactly the kind of leadership these times require. Not hosting continuing training sessions for your people because you may be scrutinized in the same light as AIG (after they were handed bailout money) is a follower’s way of doing business - not a leader’s way.

You need confident, resilient and strong individuals on the job right now. You need individuals who are not afraid of a turn in the economy away from the Boom times. You need individuals who, in spite of what the media may be saying, are confident that they can get a leg up on the competition.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: When the economy starts to rebound (and there are glimmers of that happening right now), will you choose to be ahead of the competition or lagging behind the competition? Second place is not leadership. Tenth place is not leadership. Leadership is an attitude of busting through the difficulties and not allowing reasons, excuses or justifiers to stand in your way.

Anyone can be a naysayer. That’s easy. But not everyone can say to their staff, “In spite of what’s happening in the world, we think we have a great shot at taking extra market share. We think you’re the people who can do the job and we’re going to make sure that you have the right tools, the right products and the right attitude to be successful regardless of the circumstances.”

Professional athletes are still being coached even if the stands are not full of fans and gate receipt revenues are down. The coaches of these teams aren’t saying, “We’re not coaching you to be any better until the economy is better.” No way. It’s “game on” right now. So how come you’re not coaching your players?

Training is not a perk. If you’ve pulled your training budgets, then when it does come time to train your people, they won’t take it seriously because you didn’t take it seriously when your people needed it most. In leadership, it’s not what you say that matters – it’s what you do. Your actions determine your outcome.

If you want your people to take their jobs seriously, to take their contribution seriously and to take you seriously, then you had better take them seriously. Your people are the one asset that never depreciates. Treat them like the investment they are. Invest in them and they will invest in you – regardless of where the economy is at. You will get what you give.

Globe And Mail Feature

Sarah Boesveld, a reporter with Canada's largest daily newspaper The Globe and Mail, asked me a few questions this week on whether or not I think it's OK to be laughing during the economic downturn. My answers appear in her story in Monday's edition of the Globe And Mail.

I will endeavour to post the full story here on Monday.

UPDATE MONDAY MARCH 9: OK, so the story went in a different direction than what I was commenting on so my comments don't appear. Sorry for the false alarm. (KB)

The 2% Economic Attitude Adjustment

I’m getting fed up with the media hysteria of the state of our economy. Sensationalism and ratings-grabs are leading the news these days and it’s sickening. Companies and their “Chicken Little” CFO’s are buying into the hysteria while sitting on piles of reserve cash. The sky is NOT falling. In fact, we’re perhaps better off than we were two years ago. How so? Think this way: the Canadian economy for the past three years was running too hot. When you run a car too hot, you do more damage to the engine than when you run it at a constant speed within the “moderate” range. When a machine gets too hot, it needs to slow down to allow the engine to cool a little. In other words, what we’re experiencing right now is a simple push of the “Reset” button. That’s how Canadian Business Magazine has described this time in our economy.

Now if you want to witness an economy out of control, let’s go back to Canada in the early eighties. The unemployment rate was over 12%, inflation was 12.5% and interest rates were over 20%. Twenty percent! Compare those figures to today (January 2009): unemployment at 7.2%, inflation at 1.07%, and the Bank of Canada Rate for January was 1.25%.

So, because the interest rates and inflation rates are so low right now, let’s just take a look at just the unemployment rate and talk about it. On average in Canada, for the last ten years or so, the unemployment rate has run around 5.2%, which means that 94.8% of people who wanted to work were working. Today, 92.8% of people who want to work are working. That’s a two percent difference folks. Two percent! How would a drop of two percent affect your business? No really. Seriously answer that question. Is your business on the brink of financial ruin with a drop of two percent in the employment rate? Seriously?

Interest rates are so low that borrowing money is almost free. Inflation is so low that you can almost guarantee that the prices you pay today will be virtually the same prices tomorrow. The market is consistent with its own performance over the past five years for the most part. So what’s with the panic?

Many people think attitude training is hokey and it's a soft skill that you can do without. But the truth is that if your people are quoting chapter and verse from the media about the sky falling and your people end up passing that uncertainty along to your customers, your customers are going to be uncertain about doing business with you. The attitude of your people transfers to your customers.

US President Obama has recently made a commitment to reduce the US deficit of 1.3 trillion dollars by half within the next four years. In doing so, the plan is to stimulate the economy by creating new jobs. When President Bill Clinton did the same in the nineties, he got rid of the deficit. And guess what happened? He produced 24 million new jobs. The US had eight years that were the most successful in the second half economically of the 20th century.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: The truth is Attitude, in this time of economic uncertainty, is far more important than fluff like Time Management. It's the attitude of your people, when they speak with customers, which will make you a winner in a “down” economy. It's Attitude that keeps your people's perspective in check when they hear the media say the sky is falling. It's Attitude that will cause your people to realize that business is in the toilet if you "believe" that business is in the toilet. If your people accept that they can't be successful while times are supposed to be hard, then you may as well close your doors until the economy gets better because you are going to bleed red ink.

Attitude is perspective. Change the perspective and you change the results. You can't do the same thing the same way everyday and expect to magically succeed. But once you change someone's perspective, once you change how they see problems, once you change how they believe things can be, you change results.

There are companies around the world who are succeeding in spite of the "economic downturn." Would you be willing to take the time to find out their secrets? I'll save you the trouble. Companies become successful when they don't allow excuses, reasons or justifiers to stand in their way. The Economic Downturn is nothing more than a convenient excuse for companies doing poorly. That excuse lets business off the hook for being mediocre. That's simply "Attitude" in play.

Leadership is an Attitude. Service is an Attitude. Safety is an Attitude. Success is an Attitude. Winning is an Attitude. Perspective is an Attitude.

None of it is measurable or tangible. But you won't find a single successful organization without it.

If your people are scared when they work or deal with clients, you're doomed. If they've got Attitude, there isn't a single thing that will ever stop them from achieving.

So, what's your next step?