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.

Filter-Free Corporate Culture

I was fortunate to be invited to deliver a presentation to a gravel company last year. Since then, I have had a great relationship with several of the staff members. In fact, my blog posts regularly make their way through the emails of managers and supervisors - and I am thankful for that. Funny though, my philosophy of Filter-Free Fridays™ has been one of the more popular suggestions.

There are a few more inter-departmental phone calls and a better willingness to tell the truth on Fridays. The conversations usually begin with, "It's Filter-Free Fridays™ right?" Once they hear a "yep (with a knowing smile)," then they let go and tell the truth. And what a great place it is to work when co-workers don't bite their tongues for fear that someone might be offended - especially when there is little to be offended about. It's an even better place to work when, on Fridays, some of the guys go for a beer after work and talk truthfully about where they work - in full view of others - and they speak highly of their workplace. Can you say you do that?

In fact, in speaking with the HR Director today, I found out that the last five people hired have been as a result of being referred by friends already employed by the company. Imagine never having to put out another "Now Hiring" sign or an ad in a newspaper looking for people because they're lining up to come work for you. That's a solid Corporate Culture built on many ideas - including one of openness and honesty.

A funny thing happens to an organization when they embrace an idea that they like: they keep it at the conscious level in their brains - not the unconscious level. When you give people permission to speak freely, provided their utterances are not hurtful of demeaning, they will usually welcome the chance to not have to run every word through a filter before they speak it. And that is the concept behind Filter-Free Fridays™.

Fridays are the days you speak the truth, where you yourself become accountable and help others become accountable. Fridays are the day you take the protective plastic packaging off of your ideas and thoughts and you let people see the real you speaking your real truth in an effort to help, not hurt.

Eventually, every day becomes Friday. Once it does, it becomes an attractive Culture for others to want to join.

How Managers Are Causing Employee Disengagement

I wrote a post on my safety blog yesterday about the inherent problem with many corporate safety managers. In it, I made the point that Safety Managers, although well meaning, can sometimes sanitize a workplace so well (to be free of hazards and risks) that the employee doesn't need to worry about it - or think about it for that matter. And that's when trouble can begin. When workers don't think about their own safety, they open themselves to real danger.

But it's not just in safety that this is happening. Organizations are building processes and policies that are meant to be dummy-proof. Their employees don't even have to think about what they are doing because all they have to do is follow the procedure - the thinking has already been done for them. What you end up with is a bunch of mindless workers who simply check their brains at the door and become living examples of the walking dead.

Yet, in the same breath, managers complain about Employee Engagement levels and how their people aren't engaging as well anymore. On the one hand managers create foolproof procedures and policies by proactively doing the thinking for their people and in the same breath, managers complain that their people don't seem to care about the work they do. Why don't workers care? Because the work's not challenging that's why. They don't have to think. You, as a manager, somehow don't believe they are capable of thinking for themselves so you don't even let them try.

Take away the need to use one's brain and you take away the challenge of the work. Take away the challenge and people actively disengage.

So what can you do? You can stop telling your people how to do it and ask them how they would do it. It forces them to think. When they think, they engage.

Stop operating like an over-protective parent who childproofs the house resulting a world free of dangers and consequences. (Yep, that'll prepare a kid for the real world - sarcasm). Stop dummy-proofing your department. You want your people to mess up. People learn from messing up. Let them be who they are and then, as manager, help them get better by inspiring them to think for themselves.

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.

When Managers Suffer Upward Bullying

A bully is a bully and it doesn't matter who the victim of their efforts is: co-worker, subordinate or manager. According to a Chartered Management Institute (CMI-UK) Bullying At Work report:

• 39% of all managers have been bullied in the past three years
• 49% of middle managers said they had been bullied, making them the most bullied among the UK management population
• 70% of respondents said misuse of power or position was the number one form of bullying
• 17% of bullying was through physical intimidation or violence, making it the least used form of harassment
• 54% of women said they had been victims of bullying compared to 35% of men
• Only 5% said they would talk to HR first if they were bullied

Add to that the fact that this year, women accounted for 51% of management positions in the workplace and you can see where the real threat is to see the numbers of upward bullying incidents rise.

To create positive corporate cultures, senior management needs to become aware that upward bullying is on the upswing and must take immediate action to do 2 things:

1. to initiate bullying awareness campaigns throughout their workplaces (remember bullying can run both upwards and downwards so managers also need to take the training), and
2. to institute tough guidelines that bullying, either up or down, are immediate grounds for dismissal - and to stick to it no matter what

The problem is when middle managers approach senior managers to discuss issues of being upward bullied, they may be seen as unfit to manage or, at least, not capable of reigning in their staff causing many issues of upward bullying to go unreported - allowing the bullying to continue. A senior manager turning a blind eye to a mid-manager's cry for help could be interpreted as a misuse of power or position - another incident of bullying.

It's these types of sensitive issues which can decide whether you have a strong corporate culture capable of attracting high-performers and top talent or whether yours is just another mediocre (possibly awful) place to work masquerading as a professional organization that cares about its people. Great thing is that you get to decide.

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Consider Kevin to address this issue at your next meeting. Call us toll-free in North America 1-877-287-6711 or visit us at www.kevburns.com

How Managers Can Make Employees Care

Employees will care about the job about as much as their immediate supervisor cares about them.

Yes, I know I keep writing about this, but it's only because you're not listening. Look, this is important. If it wasn't important I wouldn't be wasting my time with it.

Plain and simple, your people don't care about the job because you don't care about them. Don't argue with me here. I'm right on this one. You (manager) only care about:

• how you look in their eyes,
• how you look to upper management,
• how competent you seem,
• how you stay within budget,
• how much respect you get,
• whether you get a perk,
• whether you get acknowleged from above,
• whether you get the right employee
• how well your department as a whole performs,
• how well your turnover or safety rates look,
• how well your department hits its targets,
• whether you get your bonus,
• whether you tow the company line,
• how to minimize disruptions,
• how to get them to stop in-fighting,
• how to make them friendlier to each other,
• how to get them to stop wasting time,
• how to make them like you.

If you want your people to care about what they do, then stop making it all about you and start making it all about them. You work for them. They don't work for you. You'd better get that one real quick or your Culture is going to suck.

When Managers Should Ignore Company Policy

"Sorry, we don't do that."

That was the answer I received when asked if the public-access computer at the print shop could connect to the Internet so I could print 4 sheets of paper. Which store? Hmm, let's just say it's an office products/computer/print shop store with a big red sign .... one word ... a place you can buy staplers and the little things that go in them. Got it now?

Turns out that you can't access your files on the Internet (Gmail, Google Docs, Yahoo, Hotmail, nuthin') from the store - regardless of the fact that data storage is moving "to the clouds" instead of on hard-drives. The problem is that some former employees were abusing their connectivity to the 'net and now, as a policy, the company-wide policy is to punish all of their "valued" customers because of the actions of a few idiot employees - instead of simply addressing the problem offenders.

"Sorry we don't do that," is not an acceptable answer if companies are completely capable of doing it - whatever "it" is. It is simply an excuse to do nothing instead of pleasing the customer.

Have you noticed that "company policy" is always in favor of the company and NEVER in favor of the customer? I do not believe any customer (or manager) should ever accept this as a final answer. So I searched out the store manager and tried again. I explained that I simply needed to log onto the 'net and only print 4 pages - important pages - and he could watch me if he wanted to.

"We're not supposed to do this but ...." he did it anyway. Five minutes later I was leaving the store, documents in hand and a great deal of respect for the manager who chose customer satisfaction over company policy.

Leaving your employees out to hang by forcing them to offer feeble excuses and policies to customers only serves to screw up your Culture. This is exactly when managers should screw company policy. Managers must empower their people to fix problems - regardless of dumb policy. And customers should hold a company's feet to the fire and force them to fix your problems - regardless of dumb policy.

On Filter-Free Fridays, do not accept "company policy" as an excuse for you not getting what you want. Policies only exist because people rarely challenge them. If enough people challenge a policy, it will be changed.

Take the filters off that prevent you from asking for what you want and stop allowing someone else's "policy" to be your excuse for not getting what you want.

What Managers Need To Be Afraid Of

I fly home from Whitehorse, Yukon today. Whitehorse is a small airport and you can see the runways from the baggage area - which, according to research would make people unhappy. Arriving in Calgary, it's a five-minute walk to the baggage carousel to wait for another 10 minutes before bags arrive. I hate that wait too. Now, I manage to fly with only carry-on so waiting at the carousel is a thing of the past for me.

People in airports, when forced to wait 15 minutes for their luggage tend to become unahppy. But give those same passengers a 15 minute walk to get their baggage and they are fine with it and much happier.

In essence, when you have time on your hands, you have time to think. Managers need to be very aware of this: the chances that you will be viewed as a bad manager increase substantially if there is not enough work and plenty of time to think. But you also risk looking like a bad boss if you pile the work on too much. You have to strike that balance. (By the way, pointless meetings are "think time" and can be detrimental to how your people view you).

When people have time to think because of boredom, your people don't usually think positively about their workplaces and their jobs. The tendency is to nitpick about little things. Give them time to think and those little things become big things.

Don't be afraid to give your people a little extra work. You need to be more afraid of them not having enough work. You are a better manager building a better Culture if you can find the right balance between not overtaxing your people and keeping them busy.

How Managers Can Avoid Staff Revolt

On the web, when someone posts a video up on YouTube, do you ever ask if they graduated from Film School? When you read a Blog post that resonates with you, do you ask whether the author has a degree from Journalism school? When you hear of or read a practical piece of business advice, do you question whether the source of the good advice is an MBA? You don't ... unless you have one of these degrees yourself - only then does it become important - but by ego more than substance.

You see, if you expect your staff, your employees and your co-workers to respect you because you have a title, then you are the worst manager ever. Thinking that people will respect you because you have a title is arrogant and divisive. It will ruin your Culture and create higher rates of turnover. The new generation doesn't respond well to following a title. But they will follow someone who has something of substance to offer. That's why professionally produced YouTube videos rarely get near the same number of views as a lone-figure video, shot in a basement with poor audio. The professionally produced video is going for the "look" while the lone guy in his basement is going for the "feel." The "feel" usually resonates more with viewers than the "look."

Remember that lesson. That's an important factor in the Culture you create. Your people want to "feel" what they do and you've got to find a way to deliver that. And as a manager, if you want to avoid a staff revolt, remember that fact.

The reality is that in the Generation Y (soon-to-be) dominated world, titles don't matter because virtually every one of them has graduated university as well. They need university just to keep up - unlike Boomers who got a degree with an expectation of an executive job (along with the power and perks that come with it).

The new measure is NOT how much time you spent in school. The new measure is NOT what title you have. The new measure is what you CONTRIBUTE. That puts a first-year Gen Y and a seasoned Boomer with 30 years experience on the same footing. Attempting to keep down a good idea from a Gen Y because they "don't have enough experience" just insults an entire generation and they will quickly be searching for other work.

On the radio, a good song is a good song, regardless of whether it's Top 40, country or folk music. In the workplace, a good idea is a good idea, regardless of how long the employee with the idea has worked there.

Let's not get caught up in tenure and seniority and pompous arrogance to the point where it affects Culture.

 

The Secret To Enagaging Generation Y

Everything in a Gen Y's life has involved "menus." Computer menus, web site menus, cell phone menus, Facebook menus and YouTube menus. For Gen Y, there have always been choices for what to do next - always.

Wherever there is a choice, there is a menu. Understanding this brutally important fact can transform your Culture in a very short time - which will be very usefull in attracting and retaining new talent.

The Gen Y world includes menus. The same rules applied growing up:

• would you like to play soccer, baseball or football? Menu.
• what do you want for your lunch tomorrow: sandwich, soup or money to go out for lunch? Menu.
• where do you want to work this summer - for your father, at DQ like last year or are you going to find something new? Menu.
• what university are you going to apply to: UBC, McGill or do you want to go to school in the US? Menu.

So for the poor Baby Boomers who can't quite figure out why Gen Y seems to have no initiative, it has nothing to do with initiative at all. If your Gen Y workers don't seem to be doing much it's because they don't have a menu of choices of what to do next. You're attempting to manage your Gen Y's like you would Gen X or Boomers and that's a huge mistake. You need to make sure your new workers have choices or at least a list of tasks that they can choose in which order they will accomplish them. That is, unless your Culture sucks - at which point it won't matter what kind of choices you offer - if the work sucks then really, what's the point?

But you can build a strong Culture of Accomplishment in your workplace by recognizing how your new workers think - they think by menu choices. Don't just expect all age-groups of workers to know what to do next. Give them choices and the work will get done. The new manager also needs to be a task-master driving collaboration and innovation. Don't just expect that your people to know what to do next. Given a menu choice of looking for something to do and doing nothing, most will choose doing nothing.

You don't have to develop menus for each person. One giant shared menu for workers will foster, better communication, better collaboration in accomplishing the tasks and develop a more engaged workplace delivering higher-quality results.

Generation Y has a good work ethic when given choices for what to do next and they will get the work done and in record time. Just don't leave them without a menu of choices. That's like the computer breaking down and the X-Box and their cell phone too, leaving them just one choice: to go back to bed. And that too, is a Menu.

How Marketing Connects To Culture

Speaking with a medical school student last week, she commented that she wished more time was spent on marketing a medical practice. I think she is going to be a bright doctor. It's something more medical professionals need to concentrate on to drive more profits to their practices. (By the way, they're called "practices" because they haven't been perfected yet.)

Marketing, however, isn't just advertising. Advertising is a very small component of marketing. In fact, if you simply made a few adjustments to how you interact with your steady stream of clients, you could slash your advertising budget substantially and still increase your business.

How you treat customers (patients) is marketing. The customer experience is marketing. How you handle customers on the phone is marketing. How long you make them wait is marketing. How you set up your waiting room is marketing.

Now here's the problem: if you do the marketing part wrong, you can have long dire effects on your corporate culture. Let me explain. The experience you give to your customers will be reflected back to you by your customers. Upset your customers and they will be upset with you - which creates an adversarial relationship - which, over time, creates an us-versus-them attitude and culture in your workplace. And the longer that culture exists, the more unhappy your employees will become with their jobs.

The less respect you offer your customers, the more damage you do in the long run to your own corporate culture. You will never turnaround culture until you accept an outward attitude of service which will create an inward Culture of Service. An outward Attitude of Accountability creates an inward Culture of Accountability.

If you want to build a strong culture, don't just do what your competitors are not doing. Do what they are not even prepared to do. Start with the experience you offer your customers if you want to start improving the Culture of your workplace.

How To Call Out The Workplace Liar

Do you step up and admit when you're wrong? What about your boss? What about your co-workers? What about that clerk who promised to do something but never did it?

Why are you so reluctant to man-up when you are wrong? Why do you hide behind a veil of lies and half-truths when you should be forthright?

Filter-Free Fridays™ are days when you turn off your filters that prevent you from telling the truth - and that especially includes hiding behind lies and blaming others for your screw-up. On Filter-Free Fridays™ you tell the truth. You turn off the filters that prevent you from hiding behind lies or hiding behind not wanting to tell the truth just in case someone's feelings get hurt.

When you hide the truth, you are lying.
When you say your experience was "fine" when it wasn't, you're lying.
When you say "good job" and it wasn't a good job, you're lying.
When you withhold your real feelings because you think someone might be hurt, you're lying.

You need a workplace of truth-tellers who can build a Culture of Accountability and be honest with each other and honest with customers.

How do you live with yourself knowing that you're living a lie? How can your co-workers ever trust you if you lie to them?

C'mon, it isn't that hard. Speak the truth. It's Filter-Free Friday™. And if you can't tell the truth, make up another lie for having to quit your job. Your customers and co-workers deserve better.

Culture of The Future Workplace

Bishop Carroll High School in Calgary is going paperless and bookless. In other words, everyone is getting a laptop and all of the text books will be digitized and on their computers. This single move alone threatens the book publishing industry. I was speaking with a small book publisher last week who was lamenting the growth of e-books and decline of hard books. I suggested then that the moment high schools and post-secondary institutions embrace the e-book to replace the text book, publishing as we know would change drastically and e-book sales would soar.

Knowing now that how we educate our workforce of tomorrow is changing, have you given any thought at all to what your workplace will look like in the future? Asking Gen Y's to step into a Baby Boomer designed workspace is not going to keep the bright minds of tomorrow engaged. In fact, asking a Gen Y to work from a cubicle is not going to work for you ... and neither are they.

Your workplace needs to be ahead of the curve if you want to attract and retain the best talent. Waiting until the new workers voice their dislike of their work environment (and they will tell you as they head for the doors) is going to hurt your Culture initiatives overall.

I've been saying this for a year now: think open-concept workplaces with no cubicles but randomly placed tables, chairs, sofas and a barrista working the coffee bar in the corner and you're starting to get it. No more hard-wired desktop PC's but Wi-Fi laptops and iPads connecting wirelessly to 42-inch LCD television monitors. No more hard-wired phones but each employee being given a Smartphone.

The office of the future will look more like a lounge (think Starbucks here) with open collaboration and ideas being thrown around which will raise innovation greatly.

This is exactly how the new generation of worker works best. Why wouldn't you encourage their best instead of forcing them to fit into an old-school mold of cubicles and quiet that they can't stand? Think about it.

How Twitter Networking Falls Apart

Senior managers don't like Twitter because of the premise of it: you are required to follow someone else to create a relationship. Leaders are required to follow. That's where it falls apart. The decision-makers don't have a lot of time for social networking because they have work to do. They are not selling something, they are leading something. So if a company is being represented on Twitter, then it's likely by a person without decision-making ability: an employee whose job it is to help create some interest and hopefully get more customers to buy something. In other words, someone else selling something.

Most people using Twitter each day are people trying to sell something - not buy. It's like standing in a Turkish Bazaar and having vendors yell and try to get your attention. For every one buyer, there are many vendors. That's Twitter.

Nope, Twitter is quickly evolving as a vehicle meant for the Ashton Kutchers, Brittney Spears and Paris Hiltons of the world. It's great for sports celebs to reach their fans. It's great for media personalities to wax opinions about events. It's even great for offering coupons and discounts on purchases (if your followers are actually reading your Tweets), but it is not a great place to build long-lasting relationships and create trust and credibility in delivering service to your clients.

If you've got time in your day to create a list of 5000 followers, to engage them, to converse with them and to build relationships with them, then you've got not much else to do I would guess. That makes you the person who has to choose between serving my needs as a buyer or serving your needs as a social networking maven. I would prefer to deal with the person who is too busy to be Tweeting 30 times a day.

Yes, I am on Twitter (@attitudeburns) and I have about 700 followers - 500 of which are likely not interested in my offering. So I will soon stop following them and they can stop following me. We're wasting each other's time.

Some people can make it work on Twitter. But for every one person who does, 10,000 people do not. It's just simple math. And the math always works. You will want to create a Culture of engaging your customers - not a Culture that shouts, yells and adds to the already noisy marketplace.

When Managers Fear Their Employees

Here's how mediocrity takes a deep-rooted hold in organizations: managers become afraid of their employees.

I think managers are afraid of their employees more than employees are afraid of their managers and that's why instituting change initiatives are so difficult. Managers want to be liked more than they want to be respected. They don't want to be the first to try anything for fear it falls flat. They don't want to be the target of a union grievance. They don't want to be reported to upper management for shaking things up a bit.

When managers take a "don't do anything to draw attention" position, then it becomes apparent that they are only interested in their own well-being and not the well-being of their company or their employees.

Most managers don't want to initiate Cultural change programs, initiatives and opportunities to innovate because of a possible push-back from their employees that may make them look dumb. So, managers do just enough to get the job done without rocking the boat. Make no waves, attract no attention, create no problems. Just get through this day and they are one day closer to collecting that pension. Sorry, but that philosophy is a prison sentence and trust me, it is reflected in the Culture of the organization.

If you're going to manage, then manage. Manage what is in the best interests of the employees and the organization as a whole. Doing nothing so as to avoid difficulty is not a strong position that attracts the best workers and the best opportunities. Avoiding difficulty is selfish and does nothing to improve the performance of your people, their performance or the company as a whole. And it creates a Culture of walking on egg-shells. Now doesn't that sound like a great place to work?

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.