21 Management and Culture Contradictions

What organizations say they want and what they do is in complete opposition:

1. you say you want your people to become leaders and independent thinkers but you send them to cookie-cutter leadership schools making them followers of someone else's doctrine.
2. you say you want to attract people with strong skill-sets but advertise titles and job descriptions and base who gets an interview on looking simply at a resume.
3. you say you want to attract, hire and retain the best but you take out mediocre ads just like everyone else and post the same "Now Hiring" signs as everyone else - attracting the available, not the best.
4. you say you want to have a strong Culture of Excellence in your organizations but at the first sign of financial crisis, you cut, slash and burn budgets that would help build morale.
5. you say you want to have strong managers capable of handling issues but you force them into pointless meetings and force them to fill out reports no one looks at.
6. you say you want to have your front-line staff be more engaged in their work but you don't empower them to make decisions.
7. you say you offer an innovative place to work but institute blanket policies and refuse to be flexible with work hours, job duties and telecommuting.
8. you say every person is important but don't encourage senior executives to get out of their ivory towers and press-the-flesh with front-liners.
9. you say you have open-door policies but won't say the hard things that need because your fear of offending or hurting is greater than your need to be honest.
10. you say everyone in the company is equal yet senior management act like they're members of an exclusive club of perks and benefits.
11. you say you encourage ideas and free flow of thoughts but rarely implement employee's ideas or even respond to many of them.
12. you say every employee is important but you only give awards to and reward your salespeople.
13. you say you offer superior customer service but when polled, only 8% of customers agree.
14. you say you want more sales built on your value proposition but at the first sign of competition, you crumble on your value cut the price.
15. you say you want fewer meetings but you keep on meeting to find ways to reduce the number of meetings.
16. you say you have the best staff but you put hiring in the hands of old-school HR departments who, by their very results to date, have proven incapable of finding that staff.
17. you say you want high-performers but don`t arm middle-managers with the skills to coach high-performers.
18. you say you want to grow but aren't prepared to make a major investment in that growth without absolute certainty.
19. you say that you want to be the best but compare yourselves to mediocre and low-performing competitors.
20. you say that you really care about being better than you are but no one is prepared to take the risks and make the moves that elevate the organization for fear of personally looking foolish.
21. you say that you want loyalty from your employees but slash their jobs when shareholder profits are in jeopardy.

You say a lot of things. But the measure of organizational success isn't in what you say - it's in what you do. So what will you do today?

When Managers Get In The Way

You are never going to help your people get any better if you insist on sitting in your office or sitting in a meeting with other managers. Management is not an exclusive club where you waste your days in boardrooms talking about the same stuff you talked about last week, or pat yourself on each other's backs for a job well-done, or to create greater divides between you and them (your employees). No, your job as a manager is to get off of your ass and get out, walk around: meet people, talk to people, handle issues for people, compliment people, encourage people, ask people, listen to people, sometimes fire people, but never forget, you are NOT the most important person in your organization. Thinking that creates an fractured Culture.

You are a manager. So manage. Don't hold court in your ivory tower. Don't separate yourself from the very people who are looking to you to do your job properly so they can do theirs. Manage.

There is a culture of entitlement that shows up in management that makes some believe that they, by virtue of their title, are above the other employees. If you believe that, then you probably suck as a manager. The only difference between you and one of your employees is that you have a greater responsibility to your people than they have to each other. They are depending on you to help them do their work more effectively. And you can't do that effectively from the boardroom hobnobbing with other managers or from your office.

You have an office - yes you do. But you should only be using it as a place to hang your coat and to place pictures of your kids. Your work needs to be done on the floor. You can handle your emails among your people on your Blackberry. Get away from your desk phone. There is no one else more important to talk to than the people who you work for (they don't work for you - you work for them - remember that).

Inspire, teach, motivate, mentor, compliment, correct, coach and empower. That's the job of the new manager. If you disagree, then you're in the way. Step aside.

How To Profit From Corporate Mediocrity

“Sometimes there’s company policy and then sometimes there’s just common sense. I’d much rather have you leave my store happy rather than pissed off so I’ll exercise a little common sense and excuse the policy.”

That was a quote from a retail store manager yesterday after I attempted to understand the fine print when it came to the “Buy One Get One Half Off” promotion they were running.

I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to understand why a simple promotion had been muddled with extra rules and regulations. Some items don’t qualify for half-off but do qualify for first full-priced item. It wasn’t clear, at least not to me so I asked to speak to a manager who I hoped would be able to explain it.

I had four items. The first item, if I would have overpaid by $10 would have qualified me to save $35 on the second item. The third item, if I would have been prepared to overpay by ten dollars again, would have saved me another $30 on the fourth item. So by overpaying by $20, I would have saved $65 – netting a $45 discount.

The manager saw the ridiculousness of how the promotion was structured and ended up discounting my second and fourth items anyway.

Speak up. It’s Filter-Free Fridays™. If it doesn’t make sense, say something. Not every promotion has been well thought out. Don’t assume they have. There are mediocre people working in every organization doing mediocre work and offering mediocre ideas. When you speak up and question them, it forces them to think things through and to get better at what they do. And you might end up saving or even making a little money in the process.

Fighting The 5¢ Fee For Plastic Bags

Request from a reader: Would you please address the issue of paying 5 cents for a bag to put your purchases in before leaving the store? I'm sure there is enough markup to cover the cost and carrying out the items un-bagged leaves me, the consumer, open to charges of shoplifting and is also opening the door to easier shoplifting for those that take part in this kind of thing.

Response: I agree with you that the 5¢ charge is ridiculous. In fact, I think the charge should be 25¢ and it should be imposed at every store - not just a few. I understand your point of shoplifting so put magnetic anti-theft strips on every item (a cost covered by extra bag fees). Bags were free when we didn't think about the cost of cleaning up all of the free plastic bags in landfills.

But the market is changing and so must we.

I think the discussion really has nothing to do with whether or not a store can cover the cost of a plastic bag. The question is whether a store can cover the cost of what the plastic bag does to the environment in the long run? The bag fee is to make consumers decide whether they REALLY need a bag in the first place. And, if the bags continue to be free, you'll probably see a 3% jump in your property taxes to cover off the the cost of cleaning up all those free plastic bags in the landfill. You're going to pay one way or another.

But the discussion shouldn't be just about shopping bags. There should be another 25¢ charge levied on each plastic disposable diaper (not 25¢ per box but each diaper individually) sold. In addition to the 82,000 tons of plastic a year and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp -- 250,000 trees used to make a year's worth of disposable diapers, these materials are trucked away, primarily to landfills. It is illegal in most U.S. states to dump human waste in landfills. That law is simply unenforced when it comes to diapers.

I am all for charging 5¢ for each compostable vegetable-gluten bag in the stores - a fee I would gladly pay. These bags break down in landfills in less than a year.

Customer Service isn't just about fawning over customers and trying to kiss their butts. It's about being a "service" to the lifestyle of the customers and customers' families now and in the future.

Every organization needs to have a conscience in today's marketplace. And every organization needs to have that conscience drive both their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy as well as their Corporate Culture initiatives. Personally, I think it is incumbent on business to re-shape how the consumer thinks - not just bow to what consumers are used to. Consumers only demand what they know - not what they don't know. So change their minds and make a difference. Your employees will carry the torch of their work meaning something.

How To Score High In Customer Satisfaction

"Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line and continue to hold."

Your call is very important to us? No it isn't or you'd have picked up the phone by now. You say it's important but your actions say otherwise.

Your customers are watching that what you say and what you do are in sync. Most times, they are not. Why do you think you don't score "perfect" in your customer satisfaction surveys? Hello! You started by making them wait. You will never get a high score starting out that way.

Whether it is virtual or real-life, those long lineups of "cattle pens" (think banks here - moo) force your customers to wait in line to solve their issue like you're doing them a favor by allowing them to stand (or wait on the phone) in your line. Their business is NOT important to you or you'd be serving them in a far timelier fashion.

This is not a McDonald's or Tim Hortons lineup (people can choose any place for coffee or a burger). Your customers have chosen to call your "support" center or need an answer or want to access some of their own money. This is how you treat the lifeblood of your organization?

Unfortunately, this philosophy swings down into your Culture too. If this is how you CHOOSE to treat your customers and hold them in low-priority regard, your employees can only imagine what you think of them.

Don't TELL me my call is important to you - show me. Then show your employees how important their contribution is to you too.

Stop being so bloody mediocre. Just because "everyone" else does it this way doesn't make it right. But keep doing this if you want to keep your customer satisfaction rates low, keep on treating your customers like they're not the most important aspect of your business. But don't be surprised if they go someplace else - oh, and your good employees too.

You are NOT an employer or organization of choice, you are simply an employer/organization of convenience. Make people wait and it's not convenient anymore.

How To Stop Ridicule: Embarrass Them First

Would you tell someone if they had toilet paper stuck to their shoe?

What about if their skirt was tucked into their panythose?

What if a man's fly was open? Would you say something? It would mean that you were looking there.

What if their breath was really awful? Would you speak up then?

What about if they were being ridiculed for having bad body odor, would you say something then?

Filter-Free Fridays™ are the days you tackle these nasty little chores. It's the day you speak up and tell the truth in a non-hurtful way. The idea is to say something that helps - not hurts.

Think of it this way: if you were the one with the bad body odor, the bad breath, your fly open, skirt tucked into your pantyhose AND had toilet paper stuck to your shoe, wouldn't you want to be told?

Sure, it might be a little embarrassing for them in the moment but at least it won't be an ongoing problem that creates constant ridicule for them long-term. It's actually pretty simple and you'd probably be surprised how much they would appreciate not being the butt of jokes later.

If only Filter-Free Fridays™ had been around when I went to high-school - I could have told my science teacher that he should stop cutting his own hair, take a breath mint and to stop wearing red socks with a black suit. But then I guess he was just cultivating stereotypes of science geeks and personal deportment.

How Motivational Speakers Can Ruin Culture

Which do you think would be a better use of your time and resources: watching an episode of reality show Big Brother with backstabbing and in-fighting or hiring a professional speaker to speak to your staff? The answer may not be so simple.

What if it was a choice between a two-minute YouTube inspirational video on Gratitude or a bad motivational speaker spouting platitudes like "fake it 'til you make it" or "wear a smile until you feel happy" or him spewing outdated information from twenty years ago that doesn't work anymore?

The last one is a no-brainer isn't it? You'd choose the YouTube video for sure. So how do bad speakers get hired to spew bad information to good organizations and risk making the organization worse? It happens when the people who hire consultants, speakers and trainers don't do their due diligence.

You can NOT afford to be taking these kinds of risks with your people. Do NOT let regurgitations of old, worn-out, passed-due-date ideas infiltrate your organization. You would never let ten year-old refurbished vehicles be the choice of a company car. You would never purchase ten-year old computers and software to give to your people to improve their performance. Why then would you allow old, tired "motivational" speakers get in front of your people without checking them out first? Think people. Think!

Start following blogs of experts, consultants and speakers and follow and read them religiously. If you like their ideas after a few months, hire them. If it's the same old tired crap that you know doesn't work anymore, stay away from them. Simply "unsubscribe" from their blogs and newsletters but do NOT hire them just because they are "speakers." You have no idea of the damage you could do to your people and your Culture.

Just like your industry, there are a handful of high-quality speakers and then there is a majority of terrible speakers. Make sure you know who you're hiring. Oh, and just because someone might be a member of a professional organization, shouldn't make them an easy pick. No speaker is "perfect" fit for every organization regardless of what their website might say. Don't ever hire from a web site, a brochure or even a referral. Find out for yourself. Do the work. This is important.

Who Would Want To Steal Your Crappy Managers?

What would you do if 25% of your managers, salespeople and IT people handed in their notice within the next six months? Are you prepared to roll over that many of your key people? Do you have a plan?

Well you had better get one. Survey results today show that's exactly what is happening: 27% of Canadian workers are looking to change companies within the next 6 months. But if your organization has a wage-freeze on right now, that number jumps to 34%.

“Organizations caught in a tight race for survival can ill-afford wide-spread desertions, especially if the people who are lured away are their best performers,” notes Greg Leach, Senior Vice President and study author. “While the sudden departure of any single group would derail any organization, it appears that the greatest threat may be the potential loss of managerial talent. This could lead to a domino effect that could bring the organization to its knees”.

Asking your people to keep on doing more work for the same or less money is creating a Culture crash. Your people have had enough of same pay, lousy work-life balance and you asking them to show loyalty to you while you show a disregard for them.

Worse yet? 31% of managers are looking. Sorry, but that's going to collapse your Culture if you lose 3 in every ten managers. It is true that an employee doesn't quit the company - they quit their manager. But the converse is true as well: good managers keep good employees. You will likely only lose your good managers. Hey, who wants your crappy managers? Your competitors don't want your lousy managers. They want the good ones so you will just lose the good ones others want. When that happens you will suffer the domino effect of employees leaving right after their managers do.

What's your plan now?

How To Pay Your People Less Money

Workforce attitudes are changing. A recent survey from HSBC Bank Canada found that four out of five respondents agree that being financially secure is important to their tomorrow, but not to the detriment of leading a balanced life and pursuing personal passions.

According to the survey, "practically all Canadians (97 per cent) want to lead a balanced life and particular priorities include: ensuring that their family is well cared for (91 per cent); wishing to travel (89 per cent); contributing something meaningful to society (87 per cent); and living a greener lifestyle (84 per cent)."

In the survey, Canadians overwhelmingly indicated a desire to spend more time with their families (87 per cent). What that means is that if given the choice between getting a high-paying job with high-demand of hours worked or a more moderate-paying job with much more time to spend with family, most would likely opt for the "family" choice.

Workforce Attitudes are changing. You can't expect to own your employees' lives like in past. The new generation of workers won't stand for it. The collective mindset of the workforce is changing: they want to work less, spend more time with their families, travel more, contribute to society (preferrably through their work) and have a more balanced lifestyle they can feel good about.

You can pay people a little less if you don't work them so hard. Separate your people from their families and you will end up looking for a replacement. That costs you money in on-boarding and your Culture will suffer by being known as a tough place to work.

But then, if you as a boss don't have a decent life-work balance (as opposed to work-life balance), how in the world can you relate to what will attract good employees?

How To Handle Arrogant Businesses

I can admit when I am wrong. It just doesn't happen very often - the "being wrong" part, not the admitting it part.

Last week, for Filter-Free Fridays™, I blogged about how you can't just lie to businesses by saying everything was fine when it wasn't and then go home and trash them on the Internet. In fact, I said, "Businesses want to be better. They want to serve you better. They want to offer you better products and service. They want to offer you innovative new ways of improving what they do to make your experience that much better."

And I was wrong.

Not every business wants to be better. In fact, some businesses are so full of themselves that no matter what you say, they will treat you like an idiot and make you feel as though they're doing you a favor by allowing you to do business with them. Those are the businesses that need a swift kick in the revenues.

I encountered one of those businesses this week. After dealing with a constant turnover of sales reps over a seven-month period, my frustration got the better of me. The new sales rep was more concerned about looking good than serving us well. So, I was honest and forthcoming. I told them face-to-face what I thought they might improve but they refused to listen. I told them directly how disappointed I was with their service but they refused to listen. I told them what we initially agreed on but they attempted to arbitrarily change the contract by adding items and clauses not previously spelled out. I did this in-person, in writing and in telephone conversations. And still, they feel that I need to pay more money than what we agreed so that I can be served less.

So now, I will warn others to keep clear of dealing with banquet staff at a particular hotel in the Ottawa area (and if you are an Ottawa area meeting planner or are considering hosting a Ottawa area conference or event, I would be pleased to offer you the name of the hotel and all of the awful salespeople on the inside. Just shoot me an email). I just know that this expereince will become a story in one of my presentations that I will end up sharing with thousands of people. Whoops.

When businesses refuse to pay attention to professional customers, then maybe they'll pay attention when they are forced to see the (dis)satisfaction of their customers telling their stories on the Internet or in other public forums. But then again, maybe not. There comes a time when you are forced to use the court of public opinion if you want to warn others. And that should be the spirit of your efforts: to warn others - not to be vindictive.

Arrogant businesses need to be knocked a peg or two and you are just the person to do it - especially on Filter-Free Fridays™.

Why Divorcees Make Lousy Managers

"How you do one thing is how you do everything."

That's the same principle you hire people by: their past performance being the prime indicator of their future performance. You ask people the stupidest questions during interviews that have nothing to do with their ability to do the job and base their candidacy on the answers to meaningless questions like:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Tell me about a situation when your work was criticized.
• What makes you angry?
• Tell me about the most boring job you’ve ever had.
• What changes would you make if you come on board?
• How could you have improved your career progress?
• Where could you see some improvement in you?
• What do you worry about?

By the way, these questions were taken from an HR LinkedIn group discussing the "best" questions to ask in interviews. Judge for yourself but if these are the "best" questions to ask in interviews, I think HR is in trouble.

Applying the same logic as used in job interviews, if a potential manager were divorced, it could be argued they can't communicate well or work towards solutions or negotiate settlements. That logic would say that divorcees make lousy managers. But stupid HR questions are overlooked when it comes time to being considered for manager aren't they? Of course, because the best indicator of an employees capabilities are hands-on experience - not their past personal lives.

So, in order to overcome the ridiculousness of inane questions that are meant to take up time in an interview, why not change your Culture to consider "test-driving" employees for a few days - even up to a week. Pay them for their time to job-shadow, integrate with other employees, study their on-the-job abilities and base their suitability on what they do present-day instead of asking them what they worry about.

Who cares if they're good at rehearsing smart answers for dumb questions and instead consider the "training camp" philosophy of sports teams. They show up to camp and their on-the-job abilities are judged for suitability. I'll bet you find a better crop of good future-managers this way. And it won't matter what their past looks like will it?

Culture Bounce: Why Culture Initiatives Fail

Here's where most Culture initiatives fall down: in the "Culture Bounce" pictured here.

Senior Management sends a new policy initiative downstairs with the expectation of implementation (or they would have consulted with their mid-managers and front-line workers prior to the decision). Notice that the policy decisions only travel one way: down. Mid-managers are expected to push the policy down onto front-line workers and have them buy into it.

But here's where policy decisons inevitably hit their "Bounce" point. Employees will want to question the "why" of new policy decisions - change resistance makes people ask questions because they want to feel like they have some control over the "how" of their work. Employees will look at it from their own perspectives and then send the ball bouncing up through mid-management hoping that their suggestions will spark a re-think from senior management. But if the ball never gets back up to senior management, it forces mid-managers to make excuses or to put their foot down and force the initiative down their throats - thus creating a more fragmented Culture.

It's "Bounce" that creates the Corporate Culture of Apathy. Feeling like there is no one listening to them or by feeling powerless, employees will begin to disrespect their workplaces and their bosses.

It's at the point of the "Bounce" that employees test their superiors. If the "Bounce" won't allow the ball to permeate the Executive floor, no matter how much you want to influence a positive Culture change, the old, existing Culture will swallow the new initiative.

If you want to have your policies be more readily accepted, you must eliminate the "Bounce." Culture is NEVER created at the Executive level. Policies and influential direction may be created at the executive level but Culture is always created at mid-manager level and below. Culture is "how we do things" which is decided by employees - regardless of the processes.

Recognizing how the "Bounce" works will help you build a stronger Culture initiative.

Shoot For The Middle Of The Pack

Sports teams invest heavily in their people: the best training equipment and expertise, the best coaches and assistants and finally, that competitive edge, sports psychologists. Because sometimes, even the best athletes need a little mental advantage to help them reach a new performance level.

So what do you do to invest heavily in your people? Do you have the best trainers, equipment and expertise? How about the best coaches and managers? Even your best managers will come to a point where the student outperforms the teacher. What's your plan then?

How are you going to get your people to be the best in your industry? Or are you OK with establishing a Culture of Mediocrity?

Maybe it's just easier to do nothing special. Maybe it's easier finishing near the bottom of the league every year. How many teams do you think shoot for finishing near the bottom every year? Maybe it is easier to not even try to create a Culture of Performance. After all, if you try then you have to do something about it. Maybe it's better that you play it safe and shoot for the middle of the pack. There's no effort required in being ordinary.

You Big, Fat, Two-Faced Liar

You've seen it. I know you have. There are a lot of businesses, especially restaurants, who specifically ask, no make that "plead" with you, to tell them how they are doing. (See photo)

Businesses want to be better. They want to serve you better. They want to offer you better products and service. They want to offer you innovative new ways of improving what they do to make your experience that much better.

So they ask important questions like, how was your experience today? And do you know what you do as they attempt to access your expertise as a customer to improve themselves? You lie right to their faces and say everything was "fine."

Even when they print it on their menus how much your feedback means to them, you still lie to them and tell them everything was fine. Then you go home, tell your friends to never go there. You tell your followers on Facebook and Twitter not to go there. You trash them. Even when they come right to you and try to get an honest conversation going, you lie to their faces. And then, when you are a safe distance away and know that they have turned their backs, you ruin their business.

On Filter-Free Fridays™ you tell them exactly how it was. Don't be a jerk about it. Just be honest. Offer something constructive so they can be better at what they do. On Filter-Free Fridays™ you grow a pair and HELP them - don't hurt them.

Or just stay out of their place of business and stop ruining a business. You are not entitled to ruin them just because they had a little too much salt in their soup and you didn't have the courage to say something.

Harsh? It's Filter-Free Fridays™ - get over it.

Taking An Entire Staff Hostage

A senior executive with an aging, ailing mother moves closer to her creating and hour and a half commute to the office. Once at the office, he spends the vast majority of his day on-line communicating with his regional managers in their respective territories.

After a few months, he discovers that the hour and a half commute each way still only allows him to manage his managers from a computer terminal. He decides to cut out the wasted three hours each day and communicate with his managers on-line from home. He schedules his in-person meetings two days per week and works from home three days per week. Any senior executive could see the intelligence in that decision.

But what about applying the same rules to general staffers? Are you asking your people to show up to the office and work their whole day on-line because it is necessary or because you don't trust that they're working at all and you feel you need to keep your eye on them? Be careful how you answer that because your Culture will be more aligned with your thoughts than your actions.

Maybe one or two lazy employees are screwing around and not being productive but don't hold a great staff hostage because of one or two idiots. (Why are they still working there if you already know who they are?) What kind of message are you sending? Are you causing your staff to be focused on results or focused on the clock?

The difference is the Culture you create.

First Step to Changing Your Life

The motivational speakers tell you, "Change your thinking and you change your life." What a load of hooey (one of the reasons I so dislike motivational speakers). Not the "change your life part" but the "change your thinking" part.

To change your thinking requires you to become conscious of every thought, every word and every action. You must be conscious of what you are about to say or do before you actually say or do it. But in order to change requires you to be completely accountable foreverything you say, do and think. That's unheard of when cultures of blame and finger-pointing are so prevalent and so accepted in the workplace.

Yes you CAN change your life but you have to stop lying to yourself and others first.

Cowards Write Online Reviews

... when they don't bring their concerns either by telephone or face-to-face first to those they are trashing.

Look, anyone can write a bad review and many do - especially the cowards who refuse to voice their opinions to the businesses they trash online. It's so easy to hide behind anonymity. Businesses serve you face-to-face. Businesses ask you how they did face-to-face. What bothers me is when people repond "fine" when asked how everything was and then go home and trash them on the Internet, trash them on Facebook and Twitter and tell their friends to stay away - all unbeknownst to the people who could have corrected the situation, had only something been said.

Filter-Free Fridays™ are the days you step up, grow a spine and honestly (not hurtfully) tell a business how they are doing. If the restaurant meal isn't right, send it back, don't lie and pretend everything is OK.

How can a business improve if you won't tell them what is wrong? Not saying anything and pretending everything is OK is selfish. Yes, I said it is selfish. Because the people who are about to follow you: to order that same meal, to hire that same contractor, to buy from that same car dealer or whatever will now experience the same poor service or product because you were too afraid to tell them it was wrong.

Is it the fault of the business when they get trashed in their reviews? Sure, sometimes it is. But I'm willing to bet money that the vast majority of problems could have been solved if only someone hadn't grown feathers (turned chicken) and instead offered up an honest critique - face-to-face.

Do it differently starting on Filter-Free Fridays™.

Judge Slaps Hand for Texting While Driving

News story in the Calgary Herald this morning is about a judge who cracked down on a texting driver.

In my mind, the penalty for running into the back end of another driver on the highway while texting should be more than a couple of thousand dollars and a 90-day suspension of a driver`s license. But it`s a start I suppose. 

Since the Province of Alberta still has yet to enact their cell-phone while driving legislation, this judge hit the 20 year-old in question as hard as he could.

To the government powers that be, demerits are the answer in addition to fines and license suspensions. Demerits cause insurance rates to rise for bad drivers. Make careless drivers who text while they drive pay attention to the road by making them pay attention to the long-term consequences of putting other drivers at risk. You will never get people to change until you make the consequences dire.

You build Cultures of Safety by educating, legislating and shifting perceptions and attitudes. When you make the penalites severe enough, people make different decisions.

Do You Work For A Good Boss?

Do you work for a good boss? If you're a manager, are you a good one? Bob Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule recently penned a list of ten signs that you work for a good boss. It was too good to pass up.

You work for a good boss if he/she:

1. REALLY listens to what you say, doesn't just pretend.

2. Is careful to give you as much -- or even more -- credit than you deserve.

3. Sticks-up for you behind your back.

4.  Takes care not to embarrass you.

5.  Apologizes sincerely and completely when he or she does something that upsets or hurts you.

6. Goes out of his or her way to make it easier for you to mesh the challenges in your personal life with your job.

7. Is respectful of your time.

8. Takes time to learn your quirks and idiosyncrasies -- and accommodates them within in reason.

9. Goes the extra mile to make sure that you succeed at your job and keep developing skills.

10. Doesn't bullshit you about your weaknesses or screw-ups -- tells you the truth.

Go ahead, make a copy and leave this anonymously on your boss's desk.

When It Is Time To Quit

When I was a smoker (hey Barack Obama is still a smoker) I would use this excuse: "Quit? The whole world hates a quitter." People would laugh. But then I quit smoking. What I learned is that sometimes it's OK to quit.

Here are some other examples of when it is OK to quit:

• when you don't find any joy whatsoever in your work
• when you fight thoughts of hurting someone physically
• when your spouse is a serial cheater
• when your boss or co-workers are abusive
• when your values don't line up with what you do or who you're with
• when you finally come to realize that the path you're on is not where you want to be (change university majors, etc)

Then there are times when it's OK to encourage other people to quit:

• when they display unhappiness about their work
• when they complain constantly about the people they work with
• when they are holding back the team
• when you can see that they are going the wrong way and won't admit it to themselves
• when the rest of the staff refuse to work with them
• when their values clash with the corporate values
• especially when they need a little nudge to get out of the no-win cycle because they're afraid to do it themselves

On Filter-Free Fridays™ it's your task to tell the truth: to yourself and to others. Sometimes you just need to finally quit in order for you to be able to go do the thing you're supposed to doing. Every person has some sort talent but sometimes you end up staying in something that you're not right for, just because you're too afraid of what the future might bring. Being familiar is not necessarily the right thing to do.

Sometimes you hire not the "right" person but the "right now" person. Sometimes the "right now" person needs a "right now" job instead of the "right" job. And sometimes you end up with Mister or Mrs. Right-Now instead of Mr. or Mrs. Right. In instances like this, when the fit isn't right, quitting may be the right thing to do.

As a manager, sometimes you need to occasionally encourage a staffer to quit when you know that they are always going to struggle with the job, the hours aren't right, the values clash, personalities clash, you get the picture. On Filter-Free Fridays™, sometimes you just have to cut people free so they can go find what they are right for.

 

Mission Statements And Employee Engagement

"It is our mission to dramatically initiate performance based opportunities as well as to proactively leverage existing quality leadership skills to meet our customer's needs."

Huh? Is that your mission statement? Cripes, could you be just a little less specific? Not much wonder you can't get your people to engage. They don't know what you do.

Here's the deal: if your mission statement isn't absolutely specific about what you do, how will your people ever know what TO do?

"But," you complain, "I'm just a manager. I don't have any say in the mission statement."

"Horse-pucky," I say. Develop a departmental or work-unit mission statement. Get your staff involved in writing their own mission statement. Get them real clear on what they're supposed to be doing and they will do it. And they will engage because you engaged them in finding their purpose.

Managers manage. They don't throw their hands up and say they don't have any power to change it. That's not managing. That's excusing.

No more excuses. Call a staff meeting for Friday at 10 in the morning and work for two hours to craft your departmental mission statement. If you can't get it done in two hours, then that's a sign that your department has no leadership. So, you won't be using the word "leadership" in your mission statement.

Advice: craft something. You can always revisit it at any time to smooth it out. But do something. It doesn't have to be perfect - it just needs to be something specific.

When Employees Shop Online At Work

A new study shows a 52% increase in online shopping during work hours and a whopping 75% increase on Wednesdays between 9 and 4. That means that your people are shopping online when you think they should be working.

But you've blurred the lines of work by giving your people Blackberrys, by sending text messages and emails at all hours of the day and night, by calling them on cell while they're on vacation and by interrupting family get-togethers on weekends. Your business doesn't stop asking your people to work at 5 o'clock. Why should they not be able to do personal stuff on company time if they're getting company stuff done on personal time?

But that's good for the people who never seem to leave the work behind. What about those who only have to perform work between 9 and 5?

There's a old notion that says a person compulsive shopping is an attempt to fill a void in their soul. If your people are shopping online during business hours, then they're probably just filling a void left by not having meaningful work, something they can be proud of. They are disengaged employees because you, as a manager, aren't engaging them.

But then there is the Gen Y worker who, we are told, are great multi-taskers. No they are not. Gen Y has simply always had many things going on at one time. They find it easier to concentrate on several tasks at once because doing just one thing is boring - so they jump from task to task to task. So they could be shopping as a release from the boredom of putting together your latest D-U-L-L PowerPoint presentation - which will just be riveting at the next (far too lengthy) staff meeting. (Oh, and stop thinking that PowerPoint is engaging. It's no more engaging than overhead projector slides.)

People shop when they are bored or when you take their personal life away. Don't blame them. It's a response to boring work from boring managers.

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.

--

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.