Performance Reviews: Why Scrapping Them Makes Sense

I am of mixed emotion on Performance Reviews because first and foremost, I do NOT believe in formal employee performance reviews as a whole. I think that if a manager is engaging his/her people daily, there is no need for a formal review quarterly or annually. Many employees view the annual review as a legal requirement for the organization to defend itself should need be. That stresses the employee.

Too many managers are lazy in speaking regularly with their employees and they depend on a few sheets of paper once per year to be the one time that their is any meaningful dialogue between manager and employee. The truth is that an employee's performance review is more indicative a manager's effectiveness at communication and coaching. The only upside to formal reviews is that it forces "absent" managers to communicate with their people - which, on the downside, can create animosity based on a poor review because of poor management.

Employees will engage only as well as managers engage the employee. If the manager is engaged with the employee, performance can be guided daily so that any need for a formal review becomes obsolete. A manager should have a conversation with his/her individual team members daily, no excuses, to hand out an "atta-boy," something to work on or just even having a heart-to-heart - but something that touches the real person inside.

Rarely do you see a document handed to a new employee which clearly states the metrics in which they are to be measured over the next year. In all fairness to employees, having a document that they can post at their desks which outlines the very things they are being measured on makes it easier for the employee to work toward achieving a good score. In other words, "tell me what I am going to be measured on and I will do only that."

But the most crucial part of a performance review, if you're going to do them, should be the employee's review of their immediate supervisor. This is far more important than the review of the employee. The employee is only ever going to perform as well as his/her manager. That's a given. Rarely do you find the magnanimous manager who encourages the employee to perform beyond the manager's ability to coach. So the most important document becomes the review of the manager by the employee and NOT the other way around.

Look, people don't leave their jobs. They leave their bad managers. So, it would stand to reason, purely by the numbers, that the department with the highest staff turnover and lowest performing employees would have the worst manager running it. Conversely, the department with the lowest turnover and highest performing employees would likely be run by the most engaging manager.

Employees are only ever going to perform as well as their managers allow. Poor employee reviews all coming from one department are more indicative of the manager than the employees. And it is for this reason that employee reviews should be scrapped. If you have a lousy manager, you will have unhappy, disengaged, poorly performing employees who get a poor review as a byproduct of their bad manager. Mediocre managers = mediocre employees. Managers who engage with their staff fully will likely have staff who are fully engaged - more productive, higher achieving and more fulfilled in their work.

Making the employee the sole person responsible for performance creates a lose-lose scenario and hurts performance Culture. You cannot review the employee until you have fully engaging, openly communicating, strong managers who are able to derive high-performance from their employees. You don't need a formal review if you have daily interactions and conversations one-on-one with your employees.

Annual Reviews were designed by Baby Boomers who, at the time, believed in only communicating with employees if and when something needed to be addressed. So, why do them? Organizations do them because it's what they've always done - which certainly doesn't make it right. It just makes it old. With all of the advancements in gadget technology, we're still using old, outdated HR technology in trying to get people to perform better.

Performance Reviews are old-school. They are the equivalent of a high-school report card - which, unless you had all "A"s, you were afraid to show your parents. Same rules still apply. Everyone wants to get an "A" but it's hard to get if the teacher sucks. But the best teachers, and the best managers, are the ones who encourage high-performance and equip their people with the tools to do it for themselves. That doesn't happen in a formal environment annually. That happens by engaging every single day.

How To Improve Workplace Communication

How many times have you read a memo that used so much jargon and "professionalese" that you had no idea what was being said? How many times have you read a report at work filled with gobbledy-gook phraseology and had no idea what point the writer was trying to make? What about managers who, in an effort not to stir up any controversy, use words so carefully that the point becomes unrecognizable?

Most times, people will hide behind not wanting to offend so badly that they offer nothing of substance to the conversation. They gasp with horror when someone says something so direct that they think someone might be offended by it. Is this your workplace? Everyone walks on eggshells so as not to offend? People swallow their feelings and ideas for fear of being singled out, ridiculed or hurting someone`s feelings?

So what do you do? You grit your teeth, stomach your way through it and resent your workplace. You protect yourself in an effort to not lose your mind? You begin to despise your job. You go home at day's end and bitch about it to your spouse. Ooh, I'll bet that makes the relationship special, huh?

Look, if you can't offer up an idea or make a point without fear of recrimination in your workplace, then that Culture will suffocate you and your creativity. Engagement will drop. Morale will tumble. Productivity becomes barely non-existent.

That's why you need to embrace to idea of Filter-Free Fridays™ in your workplace. Filter-Free Fridays™ rules are simple:

• speak your truth in a non-hurtful way
• if someone claims being offended ask them why directly and ask others if that person should be offended
• do not bite your tongue or swallow your feelings
• be direct but sensitive to others
• be firm but not overbearing
• honor yourself and refuse to be bound by conformity in making a point
• encourage others to shed their "filters" and have an honest discussion for a change
• take it slow - one day a week being direct to start and then progress from there

Practice by speaking up. Send the food back if you don't like it, Refuse to accept sub-standard service and never using the word "fine" as an answer to "how was everything?" Because it's Filter-Free Fridays™.

Why Customers Don't Care How Good You Are

Customers don't care how good you are. They care about how good you are .... for THEM.

Motivational speakers will boast about anything nice said about them like, "he received a 4.2 out of 5 from our delegates." Huh? Isn't that for internal use? Then there's, "our group really liked him" or "he was fun, entertaining and lighthearted," or "our people warmed up to her quickly." How exactly does that make a business different? How is the group now better than when you arrived?

But what about outside of speaking? Being liked is not a measure of organizational success or strategy. How many friends you have on Facebook is not indicative of your ability to help make your organization better. Your Twitter follower-count doesn't help build healthier bottom-lines for your customers. The fact that you've worked hard to connect with 2600 people on LinkedIn says to me that you don't do much with your day. So how is your organization going to benefit from you?

If you want to build a Culture of Performance, you've got to start with what it is you bring to the table that benefits the organization. Each person plays a role in Culture. It's not about how much you are liked. It's about how much you are respected for your contribution to bettering your workplace and your customers.

What are your specific strengths? How is your organization better because of you? Get your people to answer those two questions and you have a solid foundation to build a Culture of Performance.

Look At That Dufus - And Other Things You Think

Picture yourself standing in a bank line. OK that's not really a stretch to think about standing in a bank line because if you go into the bank, you'll stand in line.

So pretend you're in the bank. You see a guy about mid-twenties walk into the bank with long, curly, unkempt hair, a scraggly, long beard of four-to five inches wearing a too-small blue suit, wrinkled yellow shirt with skinny black tie and Jesus sandals on his feet. What's your first thought?

Is it , "Oh he looks like a hard worker?"

Is it, "I'll bet he gets the girls?"

Or is it something like, "Ha ha ha, look at this clown?" (Using your inside voice of course.)

You make judgments like this. Your people make judgments like this. Your customers make judgments like this. So, how come you aren't working to remove these kinds of judgments in your workplace? This is exactly the kind of stuff that prevents an mediocre Culture from becoming a great Culture.

In the absence of information, people make judgments and come to their own conclusions. If you want to improve the Culture of your workplace, you've got to start conversations that knock down the barriers to information and also take away the judgments. Workplaces will never be cohesive if people feel uncomfortable around other workers.

Remember, people bring their boatloads of old baggage from every other job and life experience they've ever had. If their past bosses couldn't be trusted, they won't automatically trust their current boss. If co-workers stole from them in past, they won't trust their current co-workers. If they were back-stabbed once, they'll be cautious about letting anyone get close to them again. Old baggage comes with new workers. Old baggage can fill up a workplace if you don't start having conversations with your people and earning their trust and respect.

How Senior Execs Can Look Like Dicks

Business is not a reward system for senior executives. It's not an old-boys club anymore - which really sucks for those who have spent the better part of their lives trying to get to the C-Suite to cash in on the opulence and drunken orgy of delights (the way some senior execs run their shops) only to find out that once they get there, the rules have changed.

The Gordon Geckos of the world are far fewer in number - although not quite extinct yet. Even Trump isn't the icon he once was. In fact, this past weekend saw a monumental signal of the change in corporate values. Led by Warren Buffet, 42 of the world's billionaires vowed this weekend to give half of their money to charity. 

Stop taking big bonuses for cutting jobs. Stop making other people's pain a way to score points for your financial reward. It's sending the wrong message and your Culture suffers - not to mention you look like a dick.

When you cut jobs and create pain to reach your bonus targets, you create an Us-Versus-Them Culture. When people stop working WITH you and instead work FOR you, they treat the work like just a job. When it's just a job, they no longer engage in their work. When people no longer engage, costs rise, productivity drops and so does your bonus because the margins get skinny.

Smarten up and start making the work about the people you serve. As a senior executive, it should be your honor to serve the people you work with. Don't think for a second that they should be serving you. That's not how it works - if you care about the Culture that results from that thinking.

How Whiners Can Kill Corporate Culture

In politics, the candidate who shakes the most hands and kisses the most babies usually wins.

From personal experience in radio, the DJ who attends more events, shakes hands with more people and then talks about those same people on the radio next day usually wins the ratings.

In corporate organizations, the person who speaks to employees most often usually wins the hearts and minds of the employee.

Now you might think that the person speaking most often is a manager - but you would be wrong. The person who speaks most often in any organization is usually the one who complains the most because the managers are afraid to stand up to whiners and publicly take them on. They're either waiting for an OK from upper management or hoping that a series of memos will eradicate a vocal dissenter.

Huh, what color is the sky in your world?

Misery loves company. So complainers will talk incessantly until someone agrees with them about how "bad" the workplace is. A single complainer can infect an organization so badly that it can affect the Culture of the workplace and consequently how the organization serves it customers.

The problem is that most managers feel they have to run every little thing through upper management and Legal because they don't feel like they are supported to handle something like this themselves - at least that's been their experience. You see, that's the wrong attitude because in the absence of any message from management, an employee will follow any voice, even a dissenting voice - because it's the only one speaking.

So here's how you take on the whiner: you speak positively to each individual member of your team every single day and you compliment something specific they do individually - and do it with meaning. A ten-second encounter between manager and employee each and every day will do more to create a workable Culture of trust and an engaged employee than any formal performance review.

Once an employee is engaged, no complainer is going to be able to pull them off of their game.

The person who speaks most often with the best heart and best intentions will usually win the war for hearts and minds.

Two Choices When You Screw Up

You set up an appointment with your spouse to meet for lunch during your workday. Your spouse arrives a few minutes early to make sure you'll both have a great table. You, however, forget about the lunch date altogether. You get the reminder when your cell phone rings and an upset spouse at the restaurant is awaiting your arrival but you're a half hour across the city. What do you do? You have two choices:

1. Wait a day and then issue the following statement in an email: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to attend and fulfill the scheduled appointment. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused." (Who's "we?")
2. Fall all over yourself with remorse and, while on the phone, gush, "Sorry. Sorry. I'm so sorry honey. Oh my God. How can I make this up to you? Will you forgive me? Please. Please. Please forgive me. I'm so sorry."

If you picked the first choice, well, you're an ass and you should be divorced and living on your own. It should actually help you figure out why you have no "real" friends because real people with real feelings usually make the second choice.

• If you accidentally spill your coffee on a stranger at Starbucks, you make the second choice.
• If you swing around quickly at the photocopier and your elbow hits a co-worker in the face, you make the second choice.
• If you accidentally track mud on your shoes onto a neighbor's white carpet, you make the second choice.

You make the second choice because you're human. You have feelings, emotions and compassion. You apologize when you mess up. You try to fix it immediately, or at the very least, find a way to make up for your mistake.

You don't wait a day or two to run it by the Legal Department to make sure your ass is covered and then put out some lame diatribe on paper which neither fixes the issue or even takes accountability for your actions. No, you step up and be a big boy and take the heat. You apologize then and there.

So today, on Filter-Free Fridays™, you stop speaking "professionalese." Today, you speak human. No jargon in your emails, your memos, your phone calls, your meetings and especially your interactions with co-workers and clients. No, today you treat everyone and act like a human for a change and you let people see that you have a personality. Take off the filters that prevent you from being human on the job for a day. Go Filter-Free.

Kevin Burns - Management Attitude and Culture Strategist

Why Team-Building Rarely Works

Anne Thornley Brown wrote an interesting article on Why Companies Are Cutting Team-Building. In it, she offers these four reasons:

• too much focus on activities of questionable value
• not enough focus on results
• too little tie-in to the business
• no attempt to measure return on investment

And she's not wrong, but she's not entirely correct either. The problem is that Team-Building rarely includes adjusting Culture initiatives to support the Team-Building initiative.

What that means is that you can send you people out into the woods for a few days, sing a few verses of Kumbaya and get them to work together, but the moment they get back to work, if they have already built silos, the ingrained Culture will swallow the newly-minted Team-Building effort.

You see, Culture is stronger than any course. Culture is "the way it is." And in order for "the way it is" to change, you have to take aim directly at the problem. People working together isn't the problem. The team isn't the problem. The existing silos and work-flow based on working inside of silos is the problem. The Attitudes of why your people don't want to work with each other is the underlying problem. That isn't solved by pretending to like each other for a weekend or forcing them to work together when they don't want to. They know the Team-Building effort is only for a few days so they'll suck it up and grit their way through it. Then, come Monday, it'll be back to business as usual.

Team-Building, without addressing the underlying Culture, is like painting a car and hoping the new paint will stop the engine from burning oil. Nice effort - wrong place. You've got to get under the hood if you want to fix the problems. A new coat of paint won't cut it. It's the engine that's malfunctioning - not the paint job. You've got to fix the Culture - not the behaviors that result from the Culture.

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.

Why Courier Companies Are Hated

I got a phone call from a courier company the day after they attempted to deliver a package. No one was home - for one hour. That's when they showed up. The call came from an automated system from the company's 1-800 number announcing that because I wasn't home when the delivery attempt was made, I would have to drive eight and a half miles to get my parcel - and past two retail locations of the store I purchased from.

I was not joyful that the company had called me to tell me that I would have to drive over eight miles now to get a parcel that was at my door earlier today. However, I would have been joyful had they called ahead to tell me a day or two in advance that my parcel would likely be delivered on one of two days. I would have been ecstatic that I didn't have to expend my time and money to retrieve a parcel that the courier company was paid to deliver. Besides, if I have to pick it up, it's not courier anymore - it's mail.

For those that may be unfamiliar with what courier companies do when they are unable to deliver a package, here's how it works. If a parcel is unable to be delivered, it must return to the depot where it is offloaded from the truck and loaded onto another truck to go to a retail location for pickup the next day. There is increased handling, wasted fuel (two trips with same package) and lost time for every parcel that can't be delivered because no one was home.

So, I began to think that if a courier company is able to tell you where your parcel is (tracking), which truck it is on at this moment, the hours that a pick-up location will be open and they already have your phone number to be able to generate the call, why can't they call ahead a day or two to announce when the parcel is likely to be delivered? That way, if I wasn't going to be home, I could make arrangements with a neighbor to accept the parcel for me and leave a note on the door for the courier to deliver next door.

The way I see it, the infrastructure already exists to automate calls so why not improve the delivery rate, reduce lost revenue from additional handling and substantially improve customer satisfaction by calling a day or two before? Any organization can call you to tell you that they didn't deliver. How hard would it really be to re-program the automated phone system to call residential numbers a day or two in advance?

Sometimes, all it takes to provide excellent service is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Are you forcing your customers to go out of their way to do business with you? Does your service policy and procedure benefit you or your customers? The answer to that question really is the difference between mediocrity and greatness.

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.

Why People Don't Get Promoted

When walking through the mall, what makes one store more appealing than another? Once inside that store, what makes one clerk more approachable than another? How do you choose who is going to sell your house, who is going to sell you a car and who is going to be your life insurance agent?

Oddly enough, you make decisions on every one of these things every single day, in the same way you decide which restaurant is going to feed you lunch, which coffee shop is going to pour you a cup and which parking lot you're going to park in.

And when it comes to dealing with co-workers, you do the same thing: you choose who you talk to, you choose who you ask advice from and you choose who you will ask for lunch. Your co-workers do the same with you. So if you're not getting asked for lunch, asked for advice or talked to much, they're not picking you because of something you're giving off.

This explains completely why people get passed over for promotion, why customers do business with competitors and why some salespeople prosper and others struggle. Some people are just more approachable than others. People deemed unapproachable don't get promoted - plain and simple. I mean, what senior manager is going to promote someone who no one will approach or talk to? Maybe your current boss is one of the unapproachable. Good thing it's Filter-Free Fridays™ huh?

So, on this Filter-Free Friday™, are you going to ask your co-workers why they don't talk to you like they do others in the office or are you just going to accept your mediocre performance for another week and watch someone else get promoted ahead of you ... again?

Filter-Free Fridays™ are the days you offer your opinion to others in a non-hurtful way. It is also a good day to get real, honest feedback about how you're doing. If the Filter-Free Fridays™ concept isn't alive in your workplace yet, maybe you need to be the first to send everyone a link to www.filterfreefridays.com and talk about how your workplace can get involved in making communication more meaningful and honest and give your customers more good reasons to keep doing business with you.

Filter-Free Fridays™ don't hurt. In fact, they offer you the chance to speak with purpose instead of swallowing your feelings. Let's be grown-ups? Isn't it about time you finally talked about the stuff no one wants to talk about so you can get the elephant out of the room? I mean really. It will make your whole organization more approachable.

3 Business Questions To Ask Right Now

It's summer and for most businesses, it's a little slow - except for companies like road construction, golf courses, air conditioner repair and sales. You get the idea. If your workplace is a little less hectic at this time of the year, why not start some conversations to generate some new ideas and give your organization an honest rating of how you are doing?

Here three questions every organization should be asking itself. All of your people should be involved in the conversations - they are part of the problem and solution:

1. Are we serving our customers the very best that we can or are we taking the "easy" way (identify what the easy way is)?
2. Are we talking to each other enough and creating that Culture of teamwork (identify what you should be talking to each other about)?
3. Are we actively finding the very best talent to join us or being lazy and just accepting those who apply (are you getting the best or the leftovers - this should identify where you stand in your industry)?

The difference between mediocrity and greatness is in the answers to those three questions. Why not start some of the conversations today.

Study: 75% of Tomorrow's Workforce Cheat

I found a copy of an article I had written on a web site in the Netherlands, with the web site owner's name replacing mine as author. I called him on it. He explained that he didn't put the article together but had used a student in the Philippines to research and write articles. That's plagiarism.

I found another one today, with my name removed and "Admin" listed as the author. I am tracking it down now. The picture of "Admin" shows a young girl, perhaps late teens or early twenties. That too, is plagiarism.

I read in the newspaper recently, a report from the Canadian Council on Learning that shows three quarters (75%) of first-year university and college students cheated at least once in high-school.

Students, apparently don't see plagiarism the same as their professors. High-school teachers are turning a blind eye to it - or not bothering to check it at all. That, unfortunately, gives students the impression that plagiarism is acceptable. I mean, really, what's the difference between downloading someone else's work and calling it your own and downloading music from peer-to-peer sites and not paying for it. Theft is theft - but the message is that it's acceptable in high-school if teachers won't address the behavior. This is creating a Culture of cheating in high-schools.

According to the newspaper article, "David Johnston, the associate vice provost of enrollment and the registrar at the University of Calgary, said students who are accused of plagiarism in their first year often do so out of ignorance. 'What we find is that students coming out of high school don't have a clear idea of what plagiarism is,' he said. 'The Internet has made it easy for students to do what they think is research. They cut and paste without citing the source.'"

Here's the management challenge of tomorrow: managing workers who feel stealing someone else's work is OK. If that is the rule, is stealing credit for an idea OK? Is stealing clients from co-workers OK? How about stealing someone's lunch from the lunchroom or coins on a desk or tech gadgets?

If 75% of your new workers have plagiarized or cheated in recent years, how are you going to manage a group of workers who believe that plagiarism and cheating are acceptable?

Be firm and clear that there is a zero tolerance on cheating if you don't want this group of new workers to infiltrate and poison the Culture of Accountability in your workplace.

How To Stop Workplace Pettiness

If you ran a retail business in a shopping mall, you would notice a huge difference in the amount of staff required during the month of December versus the month of January.

Now take a look at your own organization, and ask yourself where there are peaks and valleys of performance required. January might be slow in retail but it is an extremely busy time with, say, snow removal. Snow removal business is dead from April through November but pretty good for golf courses.

Every organization has busy times and slow times. So what's happening in your workplace right now? Are there a few empty spaces from bodies who are on vacation? Is the work still getting done? So what then, is a full staff and how many do you actually need?

Perhaps you've convinced yourself that you need a certain number of staff for a full 12 months of the year, when in fact, you might be able to suffice with skeleton staff for six months and add staff during peak times.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating mass layoffs. There's a reason that I bring up the discussion of potential over-staffing: when employees are not challenged in their work, they get bored. When they get bored, they disengage from their work. Employees are also much quicker to find fault with their workplace, have internal conflicts with each other about petty things and will contribute to reducing the quality of Corporate Culture in your organization.

If you want to stop pettiness, finger-pointing and boredom, keep your people busy - but not to the point where you're burning them out. If you want to ensure your Culture remains one of high-performance, don't give your people opportunity to just sit around waiting for something to do. Nothing will contribute to lower morale more than unproductive time to be bored. Your organization will pay the price.

Don't simply assume that the way you've always staffed has been the right way. Study every part of your business because each part of your business contributes to your Culture.

When Staff Complain About Bonuses

Seven hundred employees make submissions for ways to cut inefficiencies in the organization. Of the seven hundred submissions, six are chosen. The CEO personally pays prize money to each winning submitter of up to $500 from his own pocket.

This is the same CEO who achieved at least $500 million in annualized cost savings, including reducing executive compensation by $12.4 million by slashing the number of vice-presidents from 144 to 79. But the organization still lost money. That's why the bonuses to staff were paid from the CEO's pocket.

The furor over staff getting bonuses are coming from outside of the public organization (it is government run) who fear that staff are being paid a pittance in bonuses while generating ideas which will bring the CEO more money in performance bonuses for himself.

But the fact still remains, and what the opposers seem to not fully understand, is that there were seven hundred submissions from staff. Seven hundred staff knew of ways to streamline the organization. That's a lot of staff who are willing to help their organization get better.

Disengaged staff rarely offer ways to improve. They simply complain. Engaged staff will find inefficiencies. Offering a bonus as a thank you for paying attention on the job helps the organization. (Offering bonuses as an incentive to work, however, will actually create more problems - these bonuses were not an incentive but a "thank you" after-the-fact for their ideas).

Have you ever noticed that it's the staff members who would never do enough to become eligible for bonuses who are usually the first to complain when others are bonused?

Filter-Free Fridays™ Implementation Strategy 2

In Part 1 of the Filter-Free Fridays™ Implementation Strategy, we discussed having a lunchtime social event in which staffers were invited to give and receive ratings on the Approachability Scale.

After everyone has had the opportunity to reflect on their scores, gather up all of the little pieces of paper and average up all of the ratings. Then, later in the day, announce the department's overall "Approachability" rating.

Then, set out to create a strategy to determine what the barriers are to approachability within the department: both from staff and from customers (whether they be external or internal).

In order to accomplish that, you will need to remove some of the barriers to approachability that exist in the department. For example:

• If people are not answering their phones and choose to screen their calls hiding behind voicemail, that's a barrier to approachability.
• If people don't return email or their phone messages, that's a barrier to approachability.
• If there are dominant personalities who hog the conversation at staff meetings, it prevents shy staffers from articulating their thoughts - another barrier to approachability.
• Telling a customer (internal or external), "I'm swamped - you're going to have to wait" is a barrier to approachability.
• An unfriendly receptionist or poor or run down reception area is a barrier to approachability.
• Managers with closed doors are barriers to approachability.
• Feeling overwhelmed by workload is a barrier to approachability.
• Not wanting to participate in making the workplace better is a barrier to approachability.

These are all problems found in most every organization. Your people know who the worst offenders are and, in fact, the worst offenders know who they are. It's time it was talked about. Filter-Free Fridays are the days you speak the unspoken.

I encourage you to send out an email to every department staffer on Thursdays reminding them that "tomorrow is Filter-Free Friday™" and encourage them to bring their honest, open and non-hurtful communication with them to work, their best unfiltered ideas to improve the work-flow and their best unfiltered ideas for innovation to make the workplace a better, more approachable place to work. Perhaps consider erecting signs on the wall, at the coffee station and other high-traffic areas reminding your people about your Filter-Free philosophy on Fridays (put them up Thursday nights and take down at end of business Friday to ensure that staff don't become "blind" to them by seeing them every day). Make Filter-Free Fridays™ an event.

The challenge is to make your workplace more approachable. You will never achieve that if the barriers to approachability aren't being talked about openly. By implementing a Filter-Free Fridays™ workplace strategy, you will begin to change your Culture from one of silo-building to one of openness and transparency. You can't tear down silos without open communication.

60% Of Workers On The Hunt

According to CareerBuilder Canada's mid-year job forecast, 60% of Canadian workers, who have jobs now, are going to chuck their jobs and go in search of something new.

Why? Well, according to the report, "When asked why they wanted to leave their current jobs, one-quarter of workers said they felt over-worked, their work environment changed during the recession and they had resentment about other workers being laid off. One-third of workers said they felt overqualified for their current jobs, while 43 per cent said that a lack of interesting work was the main motivator for changing employers." (Source: Calgary Herald)

31% of Canadian workers are actively looking now and expect to jump to a new job within the next 12 months while an additional 29% will do so once the economy improves again.

Meanwhile, 58 per cent of Canadian employers said they plan to hire in the second half of the year focusing on IT, customer service, sales, administrative, business development and accounting/ finance.

According to the survey, forty-six per cent of hiring managers said they fear their top talent will leave their organizations as the labor market improves. Top talent doesn't leave a job when they're happy. They leave when they are unhappy with the job, the company, and more specifically, their immediate manager.

I've been harping on this a while but NOW is the time to get to work on transforming your Corporate Culture. Because once the high-performers go, there's not much left to attract new high-performers. Get to work. Clock's ticking.

8 Reasons To Understaff

A 2:30 in the afternoon, after most of the restaurant staff had been dismissed until supper hour, one cook, one waitress, the assistant manager and the owner's wife were able to seat, serve and feed 45 senior citizens whose bus tour stopped at the restaurant without warning. What you may not know is that the cook LOVED his job, the waitress made it her mission to serve her best, the assistant manager had cooking experience and the owner's wife wasn't going to let excuses get in the way of a big payday.

The waitress and the owner's wife served the customers. The cook and the assistant manager worked as a team, split the duties and didn't miss on a single meal. There was not a single complaint. Everyone was served their meal in under twenty-five minutes. Compliments abounded. Deservedly, the skeleton staff gave each other a high-five at the end of the hour.

Later that night, with a full complement of staff available and not more than twenty patrons in the restaurant, food quality was inconsistent, waitresses argued over tables, customers complained and kitchen and wait staff blamed each other.

So which would you rather manage:

1. a seriously understaffed group of highly engaged employees with a heavy workload risking burnout, or
2. a full complement of staff including a mixture of engaged, disengaged and actively-disengaged employees with a light workload

Give me the understaffed, highly-engaged group any time. Here's why:

• the risk of burnout is low when people love their work and engage highly into it
• there is no time for excuses when it's busy
• people only become territorial and disruptive when they think they are better than others (entitlement)
• actively-disengaged is like a cancer in an organization that needs to be removed before it spreads
• other engaged people are attracted to exciting and vibrant workplaces of high-productivity
• people complain when they are bored so the point is to keep fewer people busier and make the work mean something
• waiting for the "right" employee is smarter than settling for the "right now" employee
• it's far easier to build a strong Culture when there are no actively-disengaged employees fighting you

Look around your department right now and figure out whether this is the team that will win you a championship when you need to or is it a team that is likely to miss the playoffs? Then make your decisions from there.

Why Customer Service Courses Don't Fix Culture

I drove out of my way today to gas up the truck and to pick up a few groceries. There is a gas station and grocery store just two blocks from my house, but I drove about a mile out of my way because I normally get superior service at the other store - but not today.

The teenage gas jockey filled the truck to $43.87 - but didn't bother rounding up to $44.00 - that would have required an effort of adding thirteen cents to the gas tank. If you've ever had to add up your monthly fuel receipts, you appreciate rounding up. He didn't wash the windows either. In fact, I drove back to the pumps to have him wash the windows because the sign reads "Full Service" - not half-service.

In the grocery store, the checkout clerk completely ignored us. No announcing of the total, no eye contact, no "thank you." Not a word was spoken. No smile on her face. Simply boredom with a side of "I don't want to be here."

It used to be that I would get exceptional service at this grocery store and gas bar. The manager, who I've spoken with many times, is a gregarious man who is always smiling and speaking with customers. But the store has developed a service problem, one the manager hopes to correct with part-time courses and certifications in customer service. The courses are voluntary with a duration of six months.

Here's the problem: staff must desire to serve customers for voluntary customer service courses to look attractive. People who are bored with their jobs won't make a 6-month commitment to learn anything. They're watching the clock. Customers are an annoyance. They're actively disengaged from their work. This isn't a "service" problem - it's a Corporate Culture problem.

Doing just enough to not get fired has become "how we do things" around this store. If poor service and a lousy attitude aren't aggressively discouraged, then they are passively accepted. It's stuff like this that creates an awful culture. No 6-month course is going to change that because the people who love to serve customers will likely be the ones who sign up take the course - not the ones who NEED the course.

Before you seek out the long, hard, expensive way of addressing your service problems, make sure it's not a culture problem first. If only 10% of your staff want to improve and 90% want to remain actively disengaged, your culture will swallow your service improvement attempts. You need to first create a culture that supports your improvement efforts.

Demote Managers Who Don`t Answer Phones

Like you, I have a telephone on my desk. I can't actually remember a time where I didn't have a telephone on my desk. I think it's an important tool in communication with clients, suppliers and associates. Sure, it might occasionally get used to call my mom - but it gets used nonetheless - that's my point.

The difference between my telephone and your telephone is that I answer my telephone when it rings. Heck, I even go as far to use it to return phone calls when someone leaves a message. Unlike the many of you who have become rude, disinterested parties who have an office phone you use to check voicemail messages you're not likely to return.

The tool that once tied satisfied clients with service-oriented humans has somehow, over time, become an interruptive device. Checking your email in silence has become more important than talking to clients, co-workers and suppliers somehow. You now let your incoming calls go to voicemail so you can screen your interruptions. How incredibly selfish of you.

We all know, for a fact, that you have a telephone on your desk and we know whether you return your messages or not. In other words, we know if you're being a jerk.

This is perhaps why, when a company promotes themselves as actually having a live human answer the phone, it presents them with a marketing opportunity to overtake their competition. Rogers now has Live Agent: a toll-free number you call to actually speak to a human. No word on whether the phone is answered in a third-world call center or not but think of how revolutionary this idea is. No voicemail hell. No phone tree frustrations. Just people who answer their phones and guide you to the right department. Also, no word on whether anyone in the departments actually answer their phones or not but you get the idea.

You will never develop a Culture of Service or a Culture of Excellence if the people in your organization don`t answer their phones or return their voicemails. It`s impossible to create a working Corporate Culture if you don`t place some measurement to see if people are actually using their phones or if they are in fact, hiding behind them - as the rest of the world suspects.

You are NEVER too busy to speak with a client. If your office doors are open, you`re OPEN. That means your phones are open too. Answer them and stop being so rude.

There is no argument that can be made for creating silos in your workplace. Anyone who attempts to justify NOT answering phone calls and messages should be put on probation immediately - and demoted if they are in management. Arrogance has no place in building strong Corporate Culture.

How To Win Back Unhappy Customers

I made a harried phone call at 4 pm to track a flower order - one I placed online but one that hadn't been delivered on the day it was supposed to. The company web site had taken my order, my credit card info and my delivery instructions and sent along a confirmation. But no phone number, no store ID and no person to contact. So I started calling the individual stores.

First store - 4:00 pm: (the closest geographically) "Nope, we didn't get the order here. How did you place it again? You could try this number and take your chances. Good luck."

Second store - 4:25 pm: "No it wasn't our store and I don't know how to help you. I don't know the codes to get into the system to find out where your order went. I just started working here a few weeks ago and I can't help much. But try this number (same as first store gave me). What? They're not answering? Hmm, then I don't know what to do. Sorry."

Third store - 4:30 pm: "I'm not sure who would have gotten the order but let me make a couple of calls and I'll call you back (which she did ten minutes later with the number for the fourth store)."

Fourth store - 4:45 pm: (a forty minute drive away) "Yeah we got your order and we'll call our delivery guy to get that out to you pretty quick here. Oh, you're not going to be home? Oh yeah, it does say you'd only be there until 5. Well what do you want us to do? Forget it? Really? Well OK. Yeah, we can refund your money but that's going to take a couple of days. Sorry."

But here's where it all changed. The fourth store called back the next morning and the store manager, who personally had messed up the order, offered this: "Mr. Burns, I am so sorry what happened yesterday. I messed up. I didn't read the order right and I wasn't on the ball. There are no excuses. I'm so sorry that we missed the special occasion. But the buck stops here. I'm the one who messed it up and I'm the one who is going to fix it. Your credit card has been reimbursed but I still want to send you your order today and I will pay for it, if you will accept it, as well as a $25 gift certificate in our store. Will you accept my apology and allow me to fix what I messed up? Please."

That's how you build strong service and win back lost customers: you are accountable, responsible and you make it right, no matter what it takes. People mess up, sure they do - and most would make up some lame excuse to not have to put their tail on the line. Some will protect themselves instead of keeping the customer. Some will use the "I just work here" clause to abdicate responsibility. And then some will damn the torpedoes and do it anyway - just to make it right. I am now a satisfied customer - one who is prepared to cross the city to get my flowers from here on in.

There is "WOW" or there is "not-wow." Fourth store gets a WOW - even though they messed it up the first time. That's how you win back unhappy customers.

Fascinating Innovation Example

How much fun could you have if you didn't let "societal norms" dictate how your organization approached innovation? How easy would it be to install a "fast lane" going into a subway station - for those that just wanted to catch their train a little quicker?

You change your attitude on simply accepting the way it's done currently and instead, develop a vision where people can have fun while doing something completely mundane.

Escalators move slow and stairs can be dangerous when you're in a hurry. How would you quickly and efficiently move people to the bottom of the stairs and, at the same time, allow them bring out their inner child while catching their train?

Why not consider a slide in a subway station? Watch the video.

Stat: Women Hold 51.4% of Management Positions

Women now hold 51.4% of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1% in 1980. That's a continually growing market - 100% growth in 30 years. And there's no sign of it slowing anytime soon because honestly, women are just overall better managers - especially when it comes to having the skills to manage Generation Y.

The truth is, in this time of change, the old-style "command and control" model of management is dead. Any organization that continues to embrace that model is already seriously disadvantaged in the market when it comes to recruiting and retaining quality staff. As I've said repeatedly, coaching and mentoring are the new models of management today and overwhelmingly, women are better at it than men. Here's why:

• Women adapt better to new situations.
• Women are more likely to delegate and more likely to reward people.
• Women are better inspirational mentors who encourage underlings to develop their abilities and creatively change their organizations.
• Women managers tend to have more of a desire to build than a desire to win.
• Women tend to be better than men at empowering staff.
• Women encourage openness and are more accessible.

As it turns out, men are still more confident and make quicker decisions than women in management. But when it comes to building strong Corporate Culture, women managers are more likely to have a bigger impact with their management style.

So if your organization is not yet embracing the new reality that there are more women managers than men, then you may need to rethink your Culture to figure out why.

Filter-Free Fridays™ Implementation Idea

Filter-Free Fridays™ can be a powerful tool in the workplace. Encouraging your people to have open, honest dialogue in a non-hurtful way can realize improved results in the workplace. It is safe to say that when employees are forced to bite their tongues and swallow their feelings, they harbor resentment, for their co-workers, managers and the job. This will create actively disengaged employees. But open, honest and direct dialogue can go a long way to improving the workplace morale and subsequently, engagement levels.

So, if you are considering implementing the Filter-Free Fridays™ concept in your workplace, let me offer you a simple exercise that a departmental staff (of 50 or less) could start with.

On Friday (it is called Filter-Free Fridays™ after all) at noon, the department buys lunch and has it brought in to the office (pizza, sandwiches, wraps, sub-sandwiches, etc): something people can eat without the need for dishes - there's less clean-up. Once everyone has had their lunch and before the smokers head out for a butt-break, start the 5-minute exercise.

The Approachability Scale

Time needed: 5 minutes
Materials for each participant: one piece of notepaper and a pen or pencil
Difficulty: easy and meant to be light-hearted

Ask each person in attendance (managers included) to rate themselves on a scale of 1-4 (there is no middle number on this scale) on their level of approachability. It is important that each attendee assess themselves truthfully in how easy they believe it is for others to approach them (engage in conversation, ask a question, etc). The rating scale is as follows: 1 is being difficult to approach and 4 being easy to approach. Please make sure this is explained. Ask each person to write their number on the piece of paper but tell no one else their number.

The second part of the exercise is to now turn to the others and ask at least five others (can be more than 5 but not less) to offer a rating. So, Participant A would ask 5 others to rate them on a scale of 1-4 on how easy or difficult they would find it to approach them. Then Participant A would write down every rating offered. Then, Participant A would offer a rating to each of the others they spoke with in return.

This part of the exercise should take no more than 3 minutes to complete. There shall be no explanations as to why one participant assesses a number to another participant. Just get the number, give a number back, both write down their scores and then move on to the next person.

Once the 3 minutes is up, call everyone back and have them average their 5 answers. Then ask them to compare it to the number they gave themselves and offer the following:

• You have just experienced what it is like to be told the perceptual truth on this Filter-Free Friday™. It is the truth as others see it - which can be a far cry from the truth you see.
• In the last few minutes, people have rated you based on how THEY feel about approaching you. Remember, these numbers are people's perceptions of you.
• If the average you received from others is lower than the rating you gave yourself, you can ask yourself what you might need to change to become more approachable.
• If the ratings from others was higher than you gave yourself, then you may have to study why others rate you more approachable than you rate yourself.
• If your self-rating and the ratings of others was about the same, then congratulations, your perceptions are in line with others. You're telling yourself the truth.
• And that is the purpose of Filter-Free Fridays™ - to tell the truth in a non-hurtful way. Each of you has offered your co-workers a glimpse of the truth in a non-hurtful and fun way.
• So for the rest of the day, remember what day it is: Filter-Free Friday™. I encourage each of you to stretch yourself a little bit today and to offer your truth in a non-hurtful way.

Then dismiss them for the rest of the lunch hour.

This exercise is not meant to be feedback on work performance. This is a simple social exercise meant to foster a little trust, camaraderie and most of all, honesty in communication. Good luck with it.

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.
--
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

Why Culture Will Defeat Strategy Every Time

Merck CEO, Richard Clark, is quoted as saying, "Culture eats strategy for lunch."

If you don't think that corporate culture is the most important thing in the building, then you're just not getting it. Culture is the pulse of your organization. It is the "how we do things here" or how things are NOT done in many instances. Culture is the result of the collective attitudes in the building coming together and either working together or falling apart together.

Culture is what determines how well you serve customers, how well you serve each other and how well you deliver results. All of the business strategy in the world will never get you to a better result if you don't address the culture first. Here's why:

• your Culture is too strong to radically change your processes - Culture will slow down and ultimately defeat change
• if your new initiative seems like more work without the employees being consulted, the Culture will defeat it
• if your managers aren't strong on promoting a new initiative, the Culture will defeat them too - since how management acts is part of the Culture as well
• if an apathetic Culture exists, all of the sales and customer service training in the world will not crack the Culture
• most business strategies foolishly leave out any attempt to improve the attitudes of their people in an attempt to improve the organization - that's where Culture lives: in your people

Culture needs to be moved gently for lasting change to be affected. Culture is the KEY to successfully implementing strategy. If you are not actively choosing to address Culture in your organization, then you are, by default, allowing the existing Culture to swallow your initiatives whole.

Oh, and on a celebratory note, this is my 400th career Blog posting. Thanks for reading and inspiring me to keep writing.--
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

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?

--
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

Why Culture Is More Important Than Strategy

A Bain & Company survey showed 9 out of 10 senior executives believe that the role Corporate Culture plays in an organization is as important as Business Strategy.

I disagree.

I believe the Bain & Company question was flawed therefore giving the appearance that Corporate Culture and Strategy are two different things. They are not. Corporate Culture is the result of Business Strategy and therefore one cannot exist without the other. Any company seeking to separate the two or believing that they are not one in the same will struggle with their Culture and therefore will struggle to find high-performing salespeople, quality managers and top talent throughout their respective organizations.

Corporate Culture IS the strategy.

You don't build a Culture around success: you build success around a Culture.

• With a poor culture, there is little success - maybe accidental success but certainly not consistent.
• You cannot build a top-performing organization with mediocre people and have it sustain for any period.
• If you had a poor Culture and were achieving accidental success, would it matter to you to improve your Culture?
• You won't attract the best people in the industry by creating a mediocre Culture environment.

If the point of the exercise is to be the industry standard to which your competitors are measured, wouldn't you want to assemble the best and the brightest minds in your industry to be able to lead your industry segment?

So now, do you have a plan for building your culture? If you don't have a Strategy for attracting the best and the brightest, improving your current people and eliminating those who don't fit in then you will become just another mediocre organization who can't seem to figure out why your competitor is stealing your best people and why there seems to be so many excuses when times are tough.

Corporate Culture IS the Strategy. All lasting success stems from that.
--
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

A Filter-Free Friday™ Salute to Excellence

I'm going to hazard a guess that you are sitting at your desk reading this. When I'm not standing on a stage, I spend a lot of time sitting - in front of the computer researching, writing and responding to emails. It was time I found an ergonomic chair that didn't tire me out - and yes, you can fatigue by sitting in a poor-posture chair. The way I see it, you spend 8 hours a night in a bed that costs thousands. Why sit in a two hundred dollar chair without proper support and ergonomic design for 5-8+ hours a day?

After reviewing chairs online for about a week, I started visiting office chair stores. I sat in sixty chairs over the course of five days and in that time, found only one chair that seemed to fit (I realize I'm sounding a bit like Goldilocks here but it's important that the chair be juuuuust right). But I still had one last stop to make: Lifeform Chairs in Calgary.

Lifeform (the Mortensen family) has been making chairs for five generations. You'd think that being around that long they'd have it figured out. Well they do. And they still do it the old-fashioned way: they construct them, assemble them and sew them by hand right in their Calgary factory and then ship to all parts of the world. Ten thousand chairs a year are manufactured here.

My first sit in their Executive Series Ultimate High-Back chair had me sold. That's my new chair in the picture - and yes that's a mouse pad attached to the chair - something they can also do. There are five levers under the chair that can adjust the chair like nothing you've seen and another lever (for lumbar support) on the back. I even got to pick the actual hide of leather (no kidding - a full hide). Seven days later, voila - done.

My sales rep was Chief Operating Officer, Chris Mortensen. He knows chairs - and he knows how to assemble a great staff. I met many of the staff and I have concluded Lifeform, in addition to building an excellent product, also has an excellent corporate culture. They build a product that is far ahead of anything else I had seen - including (in my opinion) Herman Miller, Steelcase, Humanscale, etc. Not much wonder the employees are happy - they are in a class by themselves. That's a good feeling to go to work with.

So, on this Filter-Free Friday™, I speak my truth and give my tip-of-the-hat to Lifeform Chairs of Calgary. Pardon me if I don't get up to salute you. This chair is really comfortable.
--
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

Study: Top Managers Are Nice Guys

A recent study by Green Peak Partners in collaboration with a research team at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations showed some amazing findings about who makes the best manager.

Overall, people who are nice people tend to lead a higher-performing department that those who are harsh, hard-driving, "results at all costs" managers. Hard-drivers actually diminish the bottom-line. It turns out, the managers who get the best results and make more money for the company are the self-aware managers who are exceptional at communicating one-on-one with their people. This is exactly what I have been saying: managers need to be more like personal coaches than policemen.

Here are some other findings of note:

• Bullies, often seen as part of a business-building culture, were typically signs of incompetence and lack of strategic intellect.  
• Poor interpersonal skills lead to under-performance in most executive functions.
• "Self-awareness," should actually be a top criterion in choosing managers.
• Executives who change jobs frequently are often trying to outrun a problem, and that problem often has to do with how they 'fit' in the workplace.
• People with multiple siblings tend to be better managers.

The future of management is NOT time-wasteful courses like Time Management, Conflict Resolution or Personality Profiling. The future of successful management is in developing your managers to be better "people." Make them be better coaches, mentors and people with feelings and you will attract and retain great people who can learn from and be valued by their bosses.

The market is changing. Old style thinking and old-style courses haven't been able to solve the problems because the problems still exist. But the philosophy of "make people feel like they mean something" improves engagement, loyalty and recruiting for top talent.

But only do this if you WANT to be better than mediocre. Otherwise, ignore my words and do nothing differently.
--
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

Ethnic Cultures And Corporate Culture

The workplace of the future is going to be colorful. Here's why: record levels of births among minorities in the past ten years are moving the USA a step closer to a milestone in which NO ethnic background commands a majority.

According to USA Today:

• minorities accounted for almost 49% of U.S. births in the year ending July 1, 2009, a record high
• 48.3% of kids under age 5 are minorities today
• only 19.9% of people 65 and older today are a minority

That means that in 15 to 20 years from now, those kids under 5 today will be entering the workforce. Almost half of the workforce will be minorities - meaning there will be no real majority. There will be a lot of diversity in the workplace.

Senior managers, your workplace of the future had better have a culture of "culture inclusion" if you want to be able to attract the best and brightest.

We all come from somewhere. We all have our backgrounds and diversities. Expecting your people to not celebrate where they came from is not good business.

You can't hire a high-performer and expect him or her to perform to a high level by stripping away everything that made them who they are. They are not workers - they are people who come to work. Don't forget the people part if you want to build a strong corporate culture.
--
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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Why Requested Referrals Are Bad For Business

It's golf season and you know what that means? It means that mediocre salespeople who are mediocre golfers will be inviting their mediocre clients out for an mediocre day of golf in the hopes of pressuring the mediocre customer into giving an extraordinary referral to another mediocre potential customer. And all because it was simply not another ordinary day at the office.

If your people are pressuring your customers into referring you to others, you need to ask yourself: are you worthy of the referral?

If your customers are not referring you without pressure then they are not ravings fans. They're just customers who think you're ordinary like everyone else. Why would a customer refer a mediocre sales rep to others? Because the customer feels indebted by an afternoon of free golf - which has nothing to do with your salespeople or your product.

Instead of attempting to extort a referral from a client, how about taking that five hours of golf and strategizing ways to improve your culture of customer-focus make the customer experience better so that you develop raving fans who are prepared to shout from the rooftops for you? It sure beats some lame, half-hearted, feigned-indifference referral.

Managers, be very aware of what your sale people are doing on the golf courses with customers. They may be actually harming your company while bolstering themselves. Pressuring customers into giving referrals drives a wedge between your company and your customers - especially if you're really only average.

Then there is the follow-up question: are you prepared to enter into a new client relationship with complete honesty built on the back of a pressured referral solicited by a customer's feeling of indebtedness?

Want a referral? Earn it. Don't beg for it.
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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 Trash Your Corporate Culture for $10

Last week, Subway Restaurants fired an employee for giving two 6-inch sub sandwiches to victims of an apartment block fire. Heidi Heise, in Dartmouth, NS, was summarily fired for giving the two sandwiches to neighbors left homeless by a fire - and failing to write it down.

Sometimes the "right thing to do" is more important than the rules. Heidi guessed right but she got fired. The victims of the fire were homeless and now Heidi is jobless. Heidi was right. Subway was wrong.

This was a bad call from Subway for a lot of reasons. Here's why: the employees still working for Subway probably now think that Subway is an awful place to work (employees always side with an employee who gets fired for doing something good). Subway, when they could have championed such a beautiful gesture, stomped it and now will have a hard time finding employees who will trust their managers. You can bet that customers are also giving them an earful because it's Dartmouth and people in Dartmouth help people when they're down.

Despite all of their advertising promoting themselves as a healthy place to eat, Subway's brand has been tarnished by some bean-counting, short-sighted manager who thinks the rules are more important than doing the right thing.

Rival Quiznos has offered Heidi a job and are raising money for the fire victims. Any thing Subway does now will be too little too late.

Total cost of the two sandwiches: about ten bucks. Cost of the hit to their Corporate Culture and customer loyalty: priceless.
--
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