I met a young manager over the weekend. He works for a logistics firm and I know him from a training course he attended with me some time back. He’s a really nice, genuine guy as far as I can tell and someone who is just starting out on his management career. Lots of potential I would say.
I hadn’t seen him since he attended the course so when he approached me in the bar on Saturday evening, I couldn’t remember his name, but I never forget a face. Anyway, as we chatted briefly he explained how things were going and that he had recently been promoted to team leader, which was great for him.
But things weren’t working out too well at present, he explained.
In short, he had tried to build good relationships with his people, but it was back-firing because a few of them were taking advantage and saw him as being a soft touch.

Now, this is not an unusual problem for younger managers as they try to get the balance right in how they relate with their people, but it is not exclusively a problem for those starting out on the management ladder and I come across cases all the time where managers are too ‘pally’ with their employees, or too nice to them for their own good. So, I thought I would highlight the issue this rainy Monday morning in Dublin. Okay, maybe this is far from a concern for you personally, but do read on, because maybe it’s an problem for some of your junior managers and it’s no harm if you reflect on the issue for a few moments. If it is a problem for you – and that’s nothing to be ashamed of – it can be fixed over time, and having a better understanding of the issues and consequences involved will help you on that improvement journey.

I’ll start off by saying that there’s a certain type of manager I see reasonably regularly and I call them Befrienders. I use that label because, from what I can see, they aim to forge good relationships with their employees, based on having a pleasant and engaging personality. And there is nothing at all wrong with that in principle. That said, where the problem does arise is that some of these managers are too passive; they lack self-confidence and, as a result, seek to build relationships with people, not necessarily because they see it as the best approach, but in some ways they do so as a form of defense mechanism.

And this is what often happens to young managers when they first get promoted (some do go completely in the opposite direction admittedly) but many ‘newbies have this difficulty. And, as I said, being too passive can last well into a management career, or more likely it can place a ceiling on the potential for progression through the ranks.

Befrienders often fall into the trap of believing that if they ‘get on well’ with their employees then they will respond to this and that the work will be done to the standard required. Whilst this might seem like an approach that should work, it does not in most cases because these managers over rely on the bonds they have with their employees as their source of power and authority. I have noticed many times how managers in this category often have an exaggerated fear of being unpopular, which results in them striving for harmony with their people and they do their utmost to maintain it, sometimes at all costs it seems. For example, when I talk to Befrienders about work-related matters, they are often overly concerned with how their employees will respond to something they are planning to do, or they get unnecessarily stressed if their team seems down or de-motivated on occasions, which in reality is going to happen from time to time no matter how good the leader is.

I have noticed too how this desire to sustain positive relations frequently causes Befrienders to ignore underperformance or to fail to take action when things are not going the way they want. Usually they compensate for this by doing extra work themselves or more likely by an over-dependence on a few members of their team with whom they have a particularly close relationship. As a rule, these leaders have a propensity to sidestep challenging issues rather than confront them head on and difficult decisions or situations where potential for conflict is high are avoided, or at best long fingered. This softly, softly approach adopted by Befrienders also creates an environment where consensus is sought on every major issue, which is not only time consuming, but can also lead to a situation which I would describe as the ‘tail wagging the dog’.

This approach, if not dealt with, causes major problems in the long run because certain employees sense that it is they who are ultimately in control. In particular, I have seen how the more dominant characters in a team can take advantage of Befrienders at times, which in turn raises questions amongst remaining employees as to who is really in charge. This is a key drawback for this type of manager and increasingly they can allow their leadership credentials with their team to be eroded, particularly when the stronger individuals are given too free a rein. All of this naturally diminishes their ability to fully engage their people and the collective impact of these shortcomings means that teams led by Befrienders fail to deliver the level of performance possible; that is why they generally underachieve and only progress so far up the ladder.

So, if you personally, or more likely, if one of your direct reports is having the ‘befriending’ problem, here’s a couple of points - linked to the above - to highlight for them:

A manager can never be ‘one of the gang’
Regular readers amongst you will know that I am a big believer in the ‘participative’ approach to managing others. To a point that is. Yes, it’s critical to engage with people but it’s a fine line between being engaged and falling into the trap of thinking that real friendships with employees are possible. They are not – well rarely in my experience. True friends are to be found outside of work.

Never overlook underperformance
If you find yourself, or you see a junior manager in your team, allowing people to get away with things at work which are unacceptable, then that should immediately raise alarm bells. Most of us dislike confrontation, but ignoring an individual’s underperformace to maintain harmony will  lead to serious problems in the end.

Be direct, without being blunt
Often managers who struggle with confronting employees will dance around the subject when confronting someone, but people see through this and it only makes them look weak in their eyes. It’s always best to be clear, concise, calm and controlled, but get to the point all the same.

Short term unpopularity is inevitable
In any management role, unpopularity goes with the territory. And when it is a short-term phenomenon it can actually meant that the manager in question is doing a good job – shaking people out of complacency, pushing them beyond the comfort zone and so on. Long term unpopularity is of course something entirely different. The point to emphasize here is that being ‘respected’ is far more important than being ‘liked’.

For sure, these are all very basic points in the greater scheme of things but they were on my mind this morning following my encounter over the weekend. And they may not even apply to you, but I’ll bet that you can think of someone on your management team to whom they do apply. If so, step in and coach them through it – the reward in their improved performance as a manager will be worth the effort.

Having said all of the above, I want to make the final point that being an effective manager doesn’t mean becoming an asshole or turning into Atilla-the-Hun, but a bit of toughness is definitely required.

Without it, managers get walked upon.

Enjoy your day!

I have mentioned this before but Elephants are self-aware.
At least, they are, based on the findings of research conducted at Bronx Zoo with Asian elephants. According to a study reported in LiveScience, the researchers, using specially designed mirrors, proved that elephants can indeed recognize their own reflections, something until now it was believed that only humans, apes and to some extent dolphins could do. One of the results that surprised the researchers was just how quickly the elephants came to terms with their own image and began interacting with the mirror; they did not appear to mistake their reflections for strangers and try to greet them, as the researchers had suspected they might do. It is believed that this self-awareness contributes to the social complexity seen in elephant herds, and could be linked to the empathy and concern for others in the group that they have been known to display. Even now, the researchers believe we really only know a fraction about their true capacity for self awareness.

I really wonder about some humans though when it comes to their levels of self-awareness; there are people out there who just seem to live in a parallel universe from the rest of us.

For example, no matter where you live, you may have heard about the hullabaloo created by a woman named Samantha Brick, a writer and producer of some kind, when she recently wrote an article entitled ‘Why women hate me for being beautiful’. When I read the article I was expecting to see some majestic goddess appear in front of us given her own description of how her beauty had caused her so many problems. Now, I won’t comment directly on her looks, but Mrs Brick, under any measure of ‘beauty’, ain’t no goddess; not that looks should matter anyway, but she raised the issue and as a result deserved all the ricicule heaped on her – not because of how she looks, mind you - but rather for her total air of arrogance and inability to see that she was setting herself up for a fall.

Yes indeed, a lot of people really do lack self-awareness.

And sadly, it’s becoming almost acceptable to have no sense of self. In fact, TV producers seem to thrive on the fact that so many people are blind to their own failings; and they keep putting such individuals out there in front of the cameras, so that they can make complete fools of themselves. If you have ever watched a Reality TV show you will know just how unaware certain people can be about who they are, and more importantly, how they act. The behavior of some of the participants on these shows – even allowing for the editing for effect – is just beyond belief; apart from the cringe factor, what is most amazing perhaps is that, after the event, many of them do not even realize what they did, or worse still, think their behavior is somehow normal and acceptable.

Certainly, watching a family of elephants would be a lot more entertaining, and probably more educational, than having to sit through an episode of Big Brother, that’s for sure. Anyway, lack of self-awareness is clearly an issue for many in the population at large, but today I would like to focus on the issue in a management context. I do so because I genuinely believe that, for all managers, one of the fundamental building blocks of success is self-awareness:

Self Awareness and Management Success
Self-awareness may not always get as much attention as some other leadership traits, but I believe it is actually the most valuable in terms of raising performance. Being conscious of what you are good at, while accepting that you still have plenty to learn pushes you to constantly raise the personal effectiveness bar. That said, showing any sign of ‘weakness’ is still regarded as something to be avoided in many companies today when in reality it should be seen as a strength; your employees certainly see it in a positive light and it helps to build trust and credibility with them when they see that you are willing to admit you are not the perfect diamond. In terms of self-awareness, I think we can all learn a thing or two about self-analysis, and indeed humility, from former General Mills CEO Steve Sanger who reportedly once told a gathering of his colleagues that:

In my experience, managers who have high levels of self-awareness are not only better off because of that fact, but it tells us something more elementary about them. It takes honesty and real courage to admit personal failings and then to do something about them; so those who can make that journey possess the strength of character not seen in others who know themselves less well. The best performers in any field are always very self-aware, a point that Abraham Maslow the renowned psychologist made well when he said, ‘whereas the average individuals often have not the slightest idea of what they are, of what they want, of what their own opinions are, self-actualizing individuals have superior awareness of their own impulses, desires, opinions, and subjective reactions in general’. When it comes to effective management, this assertion rings particularly true.

Unique Selling Point
From what I have seen over the years, the best managers have what I would call a unique selling point: they do know themselves well and tower over others because of it. They understand what makes them tick, recognize their strengths and weaknesses and continuously work hard to build their capacity to lead. What I find particularly striking about these managers, though, is that not only do they understand their behavior but, more importantly, they take proactive steps to manage it. It is this action orientation towards personal improvement, based on their understanding of self, which I believe really sets them apart. They are constantly growing and improving as a result of their experiences, both on and off-the-job, and they derive real value from those experiences by reflecting on, and learning the lessons from what they encounter. Through regular introspection – but not of the navel gazing kind – they analyze their behavior, attitudes, and values and take meaningful steps so that they continuously iron out their rough edges.

Doing what comes naturally
When I ask those admired managers that I meet why it is that they push themselves to improve, I am often met with surprised looks. It’s actually not something they seem to consciously think about because it comes naturally to them to strive to raise their game. Often they will say that they do so because of a belief that standing still means falling behind in an ever changing work environment. Even though, for me, they have already achieved a high degree of success, they remain grounded enough to realize that the world of work is constantly evolving and this provides the motivation for them to keep building their capabilities. They understand too that there are twin forces at play
which if not responded to will quickly see them become obsolete as managers:

• On the one hand, employee’ expectations of their bosses are becoming increasingly more demanding and this trend is set to continue, recession or no recession; even if in the short term, talented people might have to put up with life under bad leaders simply because of a tight labor market.
• On the other hand, superiors too are always calling for better results from their managers at all levels throughout the business.

To keep pace with and respond to these dual pressures, the best managers appreciate that they must constantly push themselves; they know that staying ahead of the curve requires a real understanding of personal strengths and areas for improvement and constant attention to self-development if they are to meet the growing demands of superiors and subordinates.

By comparison, most of the underperforming managers that I meet– and unfortunately I come across quite a few – seem to spend a lot of time living in cloud-cuckoo-land and, in my opinion, it’s a major contributor to why they get so much wrong, so frequently. They only see the world from one perspective, theirs, and have a very limited or jaundiced view of themselves with the result that to varying degrees, they are often blissfully unaware of their shortcomings, or have an ability to completely ignore the signals no matter how weak or strong they may be. Even when they do recognize their failings they often seem incapable or unwilling to really address them.

To close for today, I think we should all constantly reflect upon our levels of self-awareness and apart from addressing our own shortcomings in this area, an important part of the management role is to raise the level of self-awareness in others where their lack of it is affecting their performance at work. But I do make a final distinction here; lack of self-awareness is one thing and we all suffer from it to some degree, but with the right mindset and support we can all raise it over time.

Self-delusion, on the other hand, is something far more worrying and certainly, my money is on the elephants over some people when it comes to their understanding of self.

Enjoy your day and the weekend!

Sometimes I upset people and I don’t even mean to.
It happened again yesterday.
I was working with a group of managers, exploring business improvement alternatives, and about half-way through the session, I had clearly upset some of them. But in doing so, hopefully I did them a favour as well.
Let me explain.

“I’d say we’re already leaders in customer service,” one of the group said, as we got onto the issue of the quality of the customer experience they currently offered and how it might be improved.
I love modesty and so I followed up with, “How do you know that?”
“Because our customers tell us that we are,” responded two of the managers, almost in unison, and I saw the glance between them which indicated that they felt they were dealing with a complete moron.
“And how do they do that?” I said, continuing to push myself along the moron-path.
“Because we use comment cards and last year we had an 80% satisfaction rating; this year, so far, we have raised it to 85%.”
“And how does that figure compare to the industry average?” I asked.

That last question was met only by silence. They didn’t have an answer to it, nor in my experience, do many companies. From what I regularly see, when it comes to really measuring the quality of the customer experience, generating an internal ’feel-good’ factor in terms of the score attained is often more important than generating a truly accurate picture.

Now, one thing I am not is a wise-guy, or a button pusher, but when I work with companies I genuinely do try to get managers to think more deeply about all key business drivers, particularly when it relates to an important dimension such as customer service. And this particular company that I worked yesterday is undoubtedly quite good at service delivery, but they aren’t leaders at it, no matter what they might like to think. Of course, I was very positive in highlighting what they had achieved in this area – which is significant - but I also tried to point out a few things to them about their view of being ‘leaders’ when it came to service delivery:

• First off, I emphasised that relying on comment cards as the sole feedback mechanism is pointless in my opinion because at best, comments cards are completed by somewhere around 5% of the customer base – and often only on the ‘extremes’, when they are either very happy of very disappointed.
• Equally, I explained, measuring internal year-on-year feedback scores is of course vital, but the result achieved is meaningless unless it is externally benchmarked and this applies not just to customer feedback scores but to anything measured. Increasing any result by 5% is better than a decrease naturally, but if the average industry performance for that particular item was a 10% increase, then they have in reality underperformed.

Anyway, the incident got me thinking about the customer experience in general and specifically on the issue of being a ‘leader’ in this area. For me, too many companies believe they are better than they actually are in terms of service quality and as a result they lull themselves into a false sense of security by having very narrow measurement systems, which are often only open to customers whom they know will give a positive response. For example, recently I stayed in a hotel in London and upon check-out the receptionist asked me if I was happy with my stay, to which I responded that I was. Very much so, it was a pleasant experience. She then asked me would I mind filling out their short comment card. If this is the approach taken all the time in that particular business, then of course the overall satisfaction result will give them a false reading.

And don’t just take my word for it that some companies overestimate how good they are in this area. A study on the issue by leading consultant Bain & Company confirms the scale of misconceptions. They studied over 350 firms and identified that 80% or so believed that they delivered a “superior experience” to their customers; however, when they surveyed the customers in those same companies, only 8% actually viewed them as truly delivering a superior experience.

Now don’t get me wrong, that is not to say there aren’t many companies around who do a great job at keeping their customers happy, but being a company that consistently provides a ‘beyond-the-norm’ experience, or is a leader in this area, is another matter entirely. Consider the following questions to review your own status as a customer experience leader:

Is the ‘Customer Experience’ viewed as a true strategic success factor in your business?
Managers in every company, or certainly the better ones, talk about customer service all the time. But much of that talk is of a ‘tactical’ nature and is focused on enhancing the customer experience on an on-going basis. This is good, necessary and indeed advisable. However, thinking strategically about designing and delivering a customer experience – reflective of a ‘leader’ in your sector – is a totally different matter and requires that the issue be fully integrated into your strategic decision-making process, brand management efforts, talent management strategy and indeed product or service development initiatives.

How passionate are your leaders about the quality of the customer experience?
It is impossible to run a business of any size without the management team being focused on the subject of the customer experience, so that’s not the concern here. But when you consider your managers, at all levels, is this an issue they see as something to be ‘done’ or ‘managed’ as part of their role, or does the quality of the customer experience really drive them, individually and collectively.

How concerned are your employees about the customer experience they offer?
You’re probably bored to tears with me writing about the subject of employee engagement, but a simple fact remains true: engaged employees deliver a great customer experience, which in turn generates loyal customers, which ultimately improves financial performance.

Do you consistently deliver on promises you make to customers?
Promises are easily made and are communicated to customers in a variety of ways, through your brand values, marketing and promotion efforts, online and direct booking systems and even on a one-to-one basis. How reflective is the experience you offer when compared against the promises you make? As part of this, consider whether you have designed and delivered a better experience for your target customers than your competitors offer, and whether that experience is delivered consistently. And again, how do you know this?

How much do you really know about your customers?
Think again about your measurement and feedback systems and answer this simple question: are they designed to really help you develop comprehensive insights into your customers’ expectations and evaluations, or are they designed to make you feel good about yourselves?

As part of your thinking here, do you know what your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is?

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Net Promoter Score is the result achieved when you survey your customers with the “would you recommend?” question. The concept was first developed by Frederick F. Reichheld from Bain & Company when he was examining the issue of customer satisfaction measurement. He found that many customer satisfaction surveys weren’t of much use because they were often too long or cumbersome, with low response rates and so on. Whilst exploring the issue, he found that one company, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, used two simple questions to measure feedback: one about the quality of their rental experience and the other about the likelihood that the customer would rent from the company again. Reichheld wondered whether it was possible to get similar results in other industries — including those more complex sectors than car rentals — by focusing only on customers who provided the most enthusiastic responses to a short list of questions designed to assess their loyalty to a company? He wondered whether the list could be reduced to a single question? And if it could be, what would that question be?

It turned out that, yes indeed, a single survey question could serve as a useful indicator of business growth. But that question wasn’t about customer satisfaction or even loyalty, or not in so many words. Instead, it was focused on a customers’ willingness to recommend a product or service to someone else. Reichheld found that in most of the industries he studied, the percentage of customers who were enthusiastic enough to refer a friend or colleague — perhaps the strongest sign of customer loyalty— correlated directly with differences in growth rates among competitors.

So, that’s where the NPS concept came from, and it’s easy to calculate. When you ask the question of your customers, “On a scale 0-10, how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” you identify three types of customers:

Soring 1-6 = Detractors
Scoring 7-8 = Passives
Scoring 9-10 = Promoters

Then, when you subtract the percentage of 0s to 6s from the percentage of 9s and 10s, that gives you your NPS score as the diagram below taken from netpromoter.com shows:

Using Customer Satisfaction as a measure is obviously fine, but what Reichheld’s research showed was that ‘satisfaction’ is not necessarily an indicator of ‘loyalty’ and it’s the latter that actually drives business growth. I think that the main reasons that NPS is growing in popularity as an indicator is that:

• It’s easy to understand and calculate
• It has been shown that ‘loyalty’ is an indicator of likely future behaviour
• And customer loyalty levels are shown to be correlated to business growth levels

I like the simplicity of the NPS measure I have to say.
I also like the ‘promoter’ concept in general and the focus in any business should be to create as many promoters for the business as possible. I also like how this concept can be used to explain how the customer experience fluctuates or evolves for a customer over time, as shown in this diagram from Bain & Company which shows it’s application in a banking context (Click on the image to get a closer look at it if need be):

At the very least, this type of application of the ‘promoter’ concept could form a useful part of employee training as regards the customer experience..

Having thought about the above issues, now ask yourself the question whether you belive you are a leader or a follower in terms of the customer experience offered? Think also how, if you don’t already do so, you might get your people to think more about generating promoters for your business, than simply thinking in terms of creating satisfied customers, important as that is.

Enjoy your day!

Ask yourself the following simple questions on this Monday morning:

• Would overall sales in your business increase if your best sales people felt even more motivated than they do at present?
• Would the general service experience you offer your customers improve, if those really top performing employees in each customer-facing department were encouraged to give even more?
• Would overall performance improve if those few ‘clock-watchers’ in the business either upped their game a bit, or were replaced by someone more productive?
• Would productivity increase if you could hold on to your best employees for longer?

Undoubtedly, the answer to each of these questions is likely to be yes; getting more from each and every employee always results in better results. Now, I have written about this fact many times, but today I would like to focus on a particular aspect of employee engagement which I feel doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.

Let me explain.

Most companies I deal with these days have fairly advanced systems and procedures for marketing to their customers. And, as part of this, the majority of owners and managers have grasped the notion that segmenting their customers is essential, because they understand that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ customer; rather, there are different types of customers who can be grouped or segmented according to common needs, preferences, behaviours and other factors. This concept, amongst other things, allows them to better focus their marketing efforts and can also help to tailor products and services to each specific segment. None of this is new of course.

But have you ever thought of applying the segmentation concept to your employees?

Now, what I mean here is segmenting your employees according to behaviour or performance, and not just by the broad-brush-strokes that we do at present, like Full or Part-time, by length of service or other general criteria. I mean really applying segmentation in a structured and formal way with the same objective as you do for your customers; to better identify and respond to their needs. I think there is significant scope for all businesses to think more about different segments of employees, and then tailor what is offered to them.

Now, before I continue, I’ll bet that I know what you are thinking right now. You are likely concerned that if you start to segment your employees, won’t you run the risk of being accused of favouritism? And the honest answer is that, if you do the wrong things here, then yes that is a possibility; but segmenting your employees does not mean treating some well and others badly: it means giving them what they want and need, just like you do for customers. And, for example, when it comes to your customers giving your top performing segments something extra doesn’t mean you treat lower producing segments badly, does it?

In my experience, very few businesses do fully acknowledge that the concept of segmentation can apply equally as well to employees and, if done correctly, can make a valuable contribution to engagement levels and business performance. When you think of it, no matter how big or small your team is, there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ employee is there? They each have differing interests, values, behaviours and are motivated by different things. For example, if you have an employee in the ‘satisfied’ category that I described last Friday, then having financial incentives which are based on increasing sales are likely to be of absolutely no interest to them, because all they want to do is come to work, do their job and go home (and as I said, if they do it to the standard required, then they make some contribution at least.) Of course, other employees with higher ambitions will be motivated in different ways.

So, how might you set about segmenting employees in a way that adds value to your business? Well, the first point to make on the issue of applying segmentation to employees is that, as with customers, it is not possible for you to meet the needs of each and every employee, so segmentation is in reality a form of compromise which allows you to capture the common needs and expectations of different groups of employees into a small number, say four or five, segments.

And what might those segments be?

There are no set rules here and just as you did when you segmented your customer base, you need to focus on some defined criteria which allow you to create definable segments which:

• Are distinct and recognizable from the wider group of employees
• Can be targetted individually
• Have longevity – of course, employees will come and go but the ‘segment’ must have permanence

As an example of how employees might be segmented, Watson Wyatt (now Towers Perrin), leading international experts on Employee Engagement, devised the Employee Segment Action Matrix which groups employees into five distinct workforce groups based on a matrix formed from an employee’s motivation to help the company succeed (commitment) and their level of knowledge about what to do to make it successful (line of sight). This results in five segments:

• Value creators
• Core contributors
• Aligned skeptics
• Lost believers
• Disengaged.

Here is a picture of that matrix:

Further details of these categories include:

As another example of approaches taken to segmentation, BlessingWhite, a second international expert in this area, describes five employee segments that vary by the level of contribution to a company’s success and the employee’s job satisfaction:
The Engaged – high contribution & high satisfaction. A most desirable group, yet one that still needs attention. Employers must keep these workers engaged or risk them falling into one of the next three segments.
Almost Engaged – medium to high contribution & satisfaction. A valuable group within reach of full engagement.
Honeymooners and Hamsters – medium to high satisfaction, but low contribution. Being relatively new to the company, Honeymooners are happy to be there although they haven’t yet figured out how best to contribute. Hamsters, however, may be working hard, yet contribute little to the success of the company; i.e., spinning their wheels.
Crash & Burners – medium to high contribution, but low satisfaction. These workers perform well, but are disillusioned and dissatisfied with the company. They have the potential to become totally disengaged while negatively influencing other employees.
The Disengaged – low to medium contribution & satisfaction. This group is “the most disconnected from organizational priorities, often feel underutilized, and are clearly not getting what they need from work.” If these workers can’t be coached to higher levels of engagement, an exit strategy would benefit both employee and the company.

For sure, these are just two examples of how to segment your employees, and you could adopt different approaches best suited to your needs – and make it as simple as you like. In terms of helping to identify segments (and indeed where each employee fits) a useful tool for providing you with the necessary information here can be your Employee Satisfaction or Engagement survey, but how useful that tool is for you will depend upon what questions it entails and what information it is providing you.
Another practical tool in the segmentation process can be your appraisal process and again if that is well thought through and rigorous, it can help you to identify even basic segments of employees, such as a scale with top performers at one end and those ‘satisfied’ employees we mentioned at the other.

Of course, it is worth noting that you will have negative employees but I personally wouldn’t be formalising them as a segment because, again as mentioned above, a segment should have longevity and you certainly shouldn’t tolerate negative employees over the long term: remember a ‘low performer’ or a disengaged employee is a different kettle of fish from a ‘bad performer’ who is having a negative impact on the business.

Once you have defined segments appropriate for your business, what then?

Well, just as you do with customer segments, you want to get a handle on what works best for each segment in terms of an offering; and the employee ‘offering’ is made up of everything from compensation, benefits, managerial style, communication, to name but a few concerns. And just as you do with customers, you can use focus groups with each employee segment to determine what they feel would help to engage them more with the business.

I really do believe that we will be hearing a lot more about segmentation in terms of employees in the years ahead. Everyone talks a lot these days about ‘talent management’ but you cannot get the best from someone if you don’t tailor their ‘work experience’, just as we do with the ‘service experience’ for customers. And again, I fully understand that you may have concerns about some employees feeling that they are treated differently and the answer to that is yes, they are being treated differently, but not badly. Plus, the package of measures available to your best segment i.e. top performers, is potentially available to all employees, if they demonstrate the same productivity and results – so it that sense you are not excluding anyone through the segmentation process.

Anyway, the segmentation issue was just something that I have been thinking about over the last few days, so I shared it with you today.
And it was a very simple incident that got me focused on the matter.
On the flight I took last Thursday there were two cabin-crew looking after our area of the plane and both were doing the same job. But one was doing the work with a big smile on her face, with lots of enthusiasm and a sense of enjoyment. The other had the most miserable face on her, a real sour-puss, and was just going through the motions; not rude really, just without any sense of feeling or interest.

Yet those two kids are probably treated exactly the same when it comes to compensation and benefits, or other aspects of their ‘work experience’. That doesn’t make any sense to me in this day-and-age and can’t last into the future if we are to get the best from our employees.

Hopefully, you’ll have gained some food for thought from today’s article to apply to your own business.

Enjoy your day!

“The very first time they came to stay with us, I fell completely in love with them.”

It’s not often that you hear an employee talk in such intimate terms about customers. But that’s precisely how this young manager opened her short story. She then went on to describe the ways in which she had helped an elderly couple who came to stay regularly at the hotel where she worked, and how over the years how they had become almost like family to her. It was a very compelling story because it was from the heart.

And it was powerful too because of what it said about the company she worked for. Now, as the regular readers amongst you will know, I don’t usually refer to specific companies in my articles, but this week I made a presentation at the OETKER Collection Executive Staff Meeting held at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes. And it was there that I heard the above story. It was one of many similar anecdotes told over the couple of days. These people have soul. So, for today, I will make an exception and refer to them specifically.

Although the individual hotels are well established – icons even – the Oetker Collection itself is relatively new and I really think it’s one to watch for the future; I certainly got the sense that there is something special happening with this company from the time I spent with them. More importantly, having listened and learned about the organization over the few days, I think there are important lessons to be gained for all of us – regardless of what business or sector you are in – as to what some of the critical drivers of success are in any business. Now, I’m not holding them out as being ’perfect’ – even they themselves wouldn’t do that - but there are certainly some valuable lessons to be learned from them. Yes, I have dealt with some of these individual principles before, but today I thought I would bring them together into one place.

So, here’s a few interlinked factors that I think make a real difference to company performance:

A strong unified senior team
At the heart of any successful organization lies what I call ‘real’ leadership at the top: and as I watched the Executive team at the Oetker Collection in action over the last few days, I was reminded just how important it is to have a strong core team, who guide business development and work from a shared sense of purpose. For certain, there were some fairly strong personalities around the table this week, highly experienced individuals who weren’t afraid to challenge each other, but their common vision allowed them to work through those differences for the better of the organization. They believed in ‘Co-opetition’ – there was healthy competition between the individual hotels, but total cooperation when it came to achieveing the common goal.

Regardless of the nature or size of your business, you should really think about how strong and united your core team is at present, be that made up of two, or twenty people.

Clear vision, brought to life
Now, the concept of ‘visioning’ gets a lot of negative press – and deservedly so because in many companies the process simply results in a meaningless – although often fancy – statement pinned to a wall somewhere, but little else of value. I saw again this week just how beneficial a vision can be in guiding development – when it becomes a real driver for the business. The executive team at the OETKER Collection seem to have made the most of the visioning process because they saw it as:

• a first step in differentiating the business from the competition.
• an opportunity to create a compelling statement which captured the ultimate goal for the Collection, what it is to become, why it is special, what it will deliver for its key stakeholders etc.
• a process which served to bind the management team, and employees, together in a quest for a common goal.

Still, as I have said many times before, visioning – no matter how well done – is a pointless exercise unless that vision is brought to life every day, and again I saw this week how the Executives at the Oetker Collection achieved that aim by translating the vision into measurable strategic goals and from that how they have created an effective strategy which is bringing those goals to fruition. Everybody in the room seemed 100% clear on where the business was going – and determined to play their part in getting there.

Regardless of your own particular business circumstances, you should really ask yourself how well developed and communicated your vision, goals strategies and plans are at present. Is there room for improvement on that front?

Stakeholder Focus
Another factor that was brought to life once more for me this week was just how focused the Executive team were on their stakeholders – from the owners who have set some challenging growth and profitability targets, to their customers (more on that later), to their employees and indeed to the local communities where the hotels operate. They clearly recognized that without these stakeholders, there is in fact no business; or at least not a viable one. And they don’t just pay lip service in this regard, but have defined structures in place which allow them to constantly stay closely in tune with their stakeholders needs and which also facilitate the measurement of their success at meeting those needs.

Structured Approach to Execution
In terms of bringing their vision to life and implementing the defined strategy, I was also quite impressed by how structured their approach to execution was across the diverse hotels in the Collection. Every driver of business growth, including finance, marketing, human resources, operations, ICT, engineering was represented at the meeting and it was noticeable just how integrated and mutually supportive their functional plans were.

Again, it’s the principle that’s important here and when you look at your own business you should be reflecting upon the ‘integration’ issue. Are there, for example, good linkages between your marketing plans and, say, what you are planning to do in HR in the coming year and beyond? Are the IT systems you use at present helping you to achieve your marketing goals in terms of data gathering? In my experience there can be quite a noticeable disconnect between the key functional plans in some businesses.

Leaders at all levels
Of course, having strong leaders at the top is vital – but so too is ensuring that leadership is effective throughout the business. Again, it was clear that at the Oetker Collection a lot of time and effort had been focused on recruiting, developing and retaining leaders throughout the business, right down to front-line supervisors who again seemed totally aware of, and committed to, the agreed direction for the business.

Think of the leadership issue with regard to your own business and reflect on whether the managers you have – at all levels – are up to the job, and totally committed to what you are trying to achieve? Are they making a real difference to performance and results?

Great Employees
For sure, there is a lot of hot air floating around about the concept of employee engagement but I really do think that it is the employees in any business who make the difference. And all the employees I met over the few days were simply oozing engagement and, the big nerd that I am, I spent a fair amount of time reflecting on the issue over the week. One of the things that struck me is that, in any business, there are different levels of engagement when it comes to employees ( I am only focusing on categories of positive employees for today):

• ‘Satisfied’ employees – for me, are those who are happy working for a particular business, they work hard and generally do a good job to the standard required, but without forming any real connection to the company’s vision. For them it’s a job. Every company has such individuals and they make a valuable contribution in their own right, but they could give more.
• ‘Motivated’ employees – these employees do give more; not only are they happy where they work, but they translate that happiness into increased commitment and productivity.
• ‘Engaged’ employees – these are those select individuals who are not only motivated but they truly feel a connection to the vision and values of the organization they work for. They are worth their weight in gold.

Now, in any business, you will find a mix of these ‘positive’ categories of employees but what was noticeable at the Oetker Collection was just how many truly ‘engaged’ employees they seemed to have. The employee turnover across the company is significantly below industry averages and apparently many employees had been with their hotels for twenty years or more, yet remained really committed to the business, but more importantly (or perhaps even surprisingly, given their long service) open and willing to change. None of this had happened by accident of course and their approach to Human Resource Management was both comprehensive and innovative.

Think about how engaged your employees are right now? Again, the concept of ‘engagement’ is not for ‘bigger’ companies and is not about how much money you can throw at the issue – an employee working in a local corner shop can be highly engaged if the ‘fit’ is right, and the right things are done to continuously raise their engagement levels. So, think about the engagement issue in your business and what more you might do?

Strong differentiation in the marketplace
Of course, every business seeks to define their USP and position themselves ahead of their competitors; nothing new in that. And the Executive Team at the Oetker Collection were no different, but what I found most interesting in their approach was how they were seeking to completely ‘tailor’ their products and services to the individual needs of their clients; despite operating large hotels with broad market segments, their strategy is to offer a very focused service experience to each and every customer. It’s certainly a challenge, but I like the philosophy.

Think of that ‘tailoring’ principle in relation to your business. What do you currently do to differentiate what you offer versus the offering of your competitors? More specifically, how do you currently design and deliver products and services specific to each segment? Can you do more, or something different here?

A Passion for Service Excellence
Quite simply, I was bowled over by the passion for service that I saw from the people I met this week, some of whom, as I said had been with the company for twenty years or more. It was a reminder – not that I needed one – that whatever business you are in, you will have customers of some kind, and ultimately the real driver of long term success is the ability to consistently outperform your competitive-set in terms of service quality and personality.

Well, I hope the above points might spark some degree of reflection for you, as you consider them in the context of your own business. And it is important to emphasise once again that the principles above are valid in any business, even if their application differs greatly to reflect organization type, size and ethos. It is also important to highlight once more that the Executives at the Oetker Collection wouldn’t hold themselves out to be perfect, but they are certainly heading in that direction, and what they are doing is worth exploring in the context of your business – you may be equally, or even more successful in some areas, or you might get some ideas on areas for improvement from thinking about the above principles.

The final point I would make about successful companies is that no matter what they achieve, or how positive the results, they never stop trying to continuously improve; and to do that they are almost obsessive about measuring and benchmarking their performance so that they have the necessary data to guide improvement decisions. And it’s that sort of mindset that really stood out amongst the Oetker Collection executives. They have achieved a lot, in fact, even over the past year, the hotels have won some fairly prestigious awards, so it would be easy for them to rest on their laurels. But they don’t.

And how do I know that?

Well, the topic they asked me to speak about was ‘Keep Reaching Higher’ – How to take quality to the next level?

Mindset matters.

Enjoy your day!

“Do you guys huddle every day?”

Blank stares all round.

“Cuddle?” shouted out some smart-alec from down the back.

Cue childish giggling from some in the room.

“No, ha, ha, very funny – I said huddle!” answered the speaker, sounding somewhat exasperated. “Don’t you guys huddle every day…?”

Not all jargon travels well. Or so I learned whilst speaking at an event yesterday. The audience, a group of young supervisors and managers, were attending a workshop on ‘Team Communication’. There were a number of us speaking at the event and the guy before me was from the US, and he used the term ‘huddle’, which as you may know is an American Football term where the team gets together in a little circle to plan the next play. He was referring to ‘huddling’ in a work context which is a well known term used in the States. On this side of the pond, we usually refer to them as ‘Briefings’; boring old stick in the muds that we are.

Terminology aside, I was amazed by the response when the group finally understood the question. Very few of them, in fact virtually none, held daily briefings with their teams. I think that’s a real shame and, even though I have highlighted this issue before, it is such an important contributor to team effectiveness that I think it is worth mentioning again.

Now, you are probably thinking that this is all a bit basic for you, and if you do, then I apologize. If you already do use briefings to good effect, then well done for that becuase you are in the minority – but even if you feel this is not directly applicable for you, you could circulate the content of today’s post to your managers and supervisors to get them thinking more about the issue of briefings, so hopefully the content here will still be of some benefit to you.

In my experience, briefings are completely under-used in many businesses and they either don’t happen at all, or are held intermittently, or only when something major or really special event is happening. I would strongly urge you to make the holding of a daily team briefing a ’non-negotiable’ for all managers in your business, for they have many benefits, ranging from:

• They provide an opportunity for quick, concise communication on day-to-day work matters.
• They allow you to give, and receive, feedback on a daily basis – so you can ’strike whilst it’s hot’ and eal with issues before they grow and fester.
• You can reinforce the notion of ‘team’ when you bring everybody together each day.
• They can help you gauge the ‘mood’ of the team and to identify if the team spirit is positive or not.
• You can often see if cliques are forming within the team simply by who stands with who each day – and particularly you can get a sense for how a new team member is assimilating into the team.
• They can help you to spot who the informl leaders in the team are and whether they are playing positive or negative roles.
• Although you never actually say this, subconsciously you are sending the message that you are the leader.
• They contribute to creating a culture of open/honest communication and build levels of trust.
• They allow you to continuously reinforce themes relevant to your business vision and mission.
• They save you time, as you can communicate a common message to all at once rather than having to repeat the same thing over and over to individual.s

I could go on, but suffice it to say that there are few things in business life which produce such valuable (and proven) returns as briefings do; and for what is in reality a relatively small investment of your time each day.

Making the most of your briefings

In terms of getting the most from your briefings, think about the following:

Pick a time and stick to it. It’s important that your briefings become a set part of the daily routine. Pick the most appropriate time to hold them and then stick to that consistently. Same time, same place, every day. Make it a habit.
Keep them short. Briefings should never become meetings and they should focus on priority/immediate concerns at hand. They are largely about you providing direction, guidance and feedback to your people whilst listening generally to concerns and gauging team mood and dynamic. Where more in-depth issues arise, you should acknowledge the concerns raised and then agree to discuss in detail at next team meeting. Briefings avoid all the pitfalls associated with meetings: they are short and streamlined, no more than 15 minutes max. They start and finish on time. They don’t ‘take people away from work’ because they happen smack bang in the work area, or certainly close to it.
Stay Standing . This might sound like a strange one, but I always found that by keeping everyone standing, this contributed to maintaining focus and keeping things moving at pace. When people sit, they tend to relax a little and  often when people are tired they either tune out, or want to be able to sit for as long at they can.
Delegate responsibility to others for the briefing. It is not
essential that you always deliver the briefing and it can be good to allow
others to lead them – it’s good development for key people in the team whom you
would see as potential future leaders.
Structure your briefings. Although they are generally informal, that doesn’t mean you don’t need to prepare for them, or that you just wing it each day. Remember, in the space of a few minutes you will want to:

• Inform – give them sufficient information to guide them for that day, or to update them on important matters.
  Involve – get their views on the matters at hand.
• Inspire – motivate your people in those few minutes, not bore them to tears.

None of the above can be achieved without some degree of preparation and a basic structure which keeps you on track, so:

Come Prepared
Before the briefing, take a couple of moments beforehand to gather and structure your thoughts. Be clear what you want to say and know what input you want/need from them. Make sure you are not being over-ambitious either in what you can cover within the allotted time.

Kick it off
Always try to begin in an upbeat way, without coming across as some crazy Mr or
Mrs Motivator-type. Start off by outlining the key areas you want to discuss and encourage their participation.

Now, an important point to remember here is what I wrote recently about delivering feedback. Whe praise is due, you should always start your briefing with it, as it sets the scene in a positive way. That said, on days where you feel you have been let down by the team, its best just to be upfront about it – not in a nasty, aggressive way, but simply letting them know what happened and what has to be done to put things right. Try to avoid the false praise leading to the big ‘but’

Over the period of a year, the team will see that when they do well, they get positive feedback and when they don’t, they are also told in clear and unambigious terms. In reality, by having this mix of good and bad feedback, delivered in the right way, the positive feedback will actually have more impact when given.

Keep it flowing
Briefings are pacy affairs, with the relavant points covered without waffle or hyperbole. You take the lead in the briefing, working through your prepared points, soliciting input from the team as appropriate and ensuring that everyone is clear as to what is required. For sure, as you are well aware, it can be a fine line in terms of allowing input from team members whilst preventing the briefing from morphing into a meeting – as such you may need to support your younger managers and supervisors when they first start to deliver briefings until they learn to get that balance right.

Wrap it up
You should summarize what has been agreed and quickly make sure that all individuals are clear on whatever tasks or duties you have assigned to them. It is always important to end the briefing on a positive note, and probably more so if you have had to give negative feedback during the briefing. But again, don’t go overboard on the energizing stuff.

Okay, I will leave it at that for today.

I know this seems like a really basic issue, but I would wager that if you look around your business you will see that briefings are either not happening at all, or are not being used to best effect. And remember, not holding a 10/15 minute briefing each day doesn’t seem like such a big deal; and on it’s own, it isn’t. But a 10 minute briefing held every day would lead to 3650 minutes of communication with your team over a period of 1 year, or in other words 60 hours !!!

That does matter.

Enjoy your day!

Everywhere you look these days…

“What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s ‘axes,’ which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.”

This was Greg Smith, a senior manager at Goldman Sachs, slamming the company in an Op-ed in the New York Times on the day he recently resigned. He added that ‘the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.’

Everywhere you look these days…

IBGYBG. Or better known as “I’ll Be Gone, You’ll Be Gone” – a phrase invented on Wall Street during the boom years which refers to getting the deal done and letting someone else pay for it. It was widely bandied about between hedge fund managers and traders as they suckered people into what they knew were lousy investments.

Yes,indeed, everywhere you look these days…

Business students cheat more than others students. Or so says a study conducted by a number of professors at Rutgers University which found that 56 percent of graduate business students — most of whom are pursuing M.B.A.’s — had cheated in some way.

Yes indeed, everywhere you look these days.

Pink Slime. Some food companies use ‘Pink slime’ in their meat products . Now, Pink Slime,  officially known as ‘Lean Beef Trimmings’ is exactly as disgusting as it sounds…basically it’s scraps of the lowest grade meat possible and other left-over material which is, and get this, treated with ammonia to kill off the bacteria before being used as ‘filler’ in various meat products. A huge number of well-known companies have used the product, or continue to do so. Years ago, when I was a student, I used to work part-time in a burger joint – and I remember how the window promotions said ’100% beef’ in the burgers. Yes, they weren’t lying - the actual beef that was in each burger patty was 100%, but it probably only made up 20% of the patty, the rest was Pink Slime.

Everywhere you look these days it seems that the world of business is full of, and how shall I put this, questionable business practices; yes, that’s probably the safest term. Sailing close to the wind, or even beyond it, is so commonplace in business life that you would be forgiven for thinking that the ‘bad’ outweighs the ‘good’ when it comes to many companies today.

Thankfully, that’s not the case. And what’s more, studies show that it actually pays to be ethical in the long run. For example, recent research indicates that the world’s most ethical companies are also the world’s most profitable. According to the Journal of Business & Economics Research, there is a positive correlation between an organization’s ethical behaviors and activities and the organization’s bottom line results. And what’s more, according to the World’s Most Ethical Companies Ranking™, even in recessionary times, it pays to favour good business practice over bad, as the graph belows shows where ethical companies (green line) outperformed the S&P index:

Now, you are probably starting to tune out at this point.
You know that you run your business ethically, so what I am saying here is probably of little interest to you. And I have no doubt that you do run your business ethically, but the question I would pose is different: my question is whether you are  maximising the potential for ‘ethics’ to be a key strategic driver, or a unique selling point for your business?
My guess is that, like most companies, you could probably do more on that front.

Let me give you a simple example. I was talking to a small business owner recently on this very issue and he would be one of the most ethical and honest people I know, so he runs his business in that fashion. But when I asked him how an employee, a customer, or someone external to the business would know whether he was more or less ethical than other businesses, he didn’t really have an answer.

It got both of us thinking.

I travel constantly and everywhere I go ‘Joe Public’ is pretty fed up right now; tired of what they view as ‘rampant unethical behavior’: constant massaging of the truth or shoddy practices be that from politicians, bankers and business people. Such sentiments – whether accurate or not - are hardly surprising given the tough times at present and how many people are hurting. There’s a lot of anger out there as to how we ended up where we are.
Still, I believe this presents a real opportunity for better businesses, of any size, to capitalize on this disgruntlement and use their ethical practices as a way of differentiating themselves from the competition. Sure, this is not a new concept, but I think in terms of timing, the opportunity has never been greater. And it’s worth the effort because there is plenty of research which shows that people (i.e. customers) are more focused on such issues these days – they may be spending less generally but they are spending more wisely and one factor is who is this business I am giving my money to?

If you do want to see how you can maximize the power of ethics for your business, here are some considerations:

What are your ethical principles?
If I was to randomly pick one of your employees and ask them what your business stood for in terms of ethics or values, could they tell me? For sure, maybe you have it written down as part of vision, mission and value statements but even then I find that in most companies the employees don’t really connect with those messages in any meaningful way day to day.
Ethics, after all, are not supposed to be abstract principles, they are meant to provide a routmap for the way we behave, the way we work, the way we conduct ourselves in life as well as business. How can that be if your people don’t have a ‘collective’ view – that guides every day action - of what your company stands for in ethical terms?

My advice is, if you do find that your people don’t really understand what you are about ethically as a business, is to work with them to define a couple of key ethical principles that will guide your efforts from here on. I think that the The Six Pillars of Character developed by The Josephson Institute of Ethics is a useful guide here in helping to pinpoint some priority values for your business.

Trustworthiness
Be honest • Don’t deceive, cheat, or steal • Be reliable — do what you say you’ll do • Have the courage to do the right thing • Build a good reputation • Be loyal — stand by your family, friends, and country.

Respect
Treat others with respect • Be tolerant and accepting of differences • Use good manners, not bad language • Be considerate of the feelings of others • Don’t threaten, hit or hurt anyone • Deal peacefully with anger, insults, and disagreements.

Responsibility
Do what you are supposed to do • Plan ahead • Persevere: keep on trying! • Always do your best • Use self-control • Be self-disciplined • Think before you act — consider the consequences • Be accountable for your words, actions, and attitudes • Set a good example for others.

Fairness
Play by the rules • Be open-minded; listen to others • Don’t take advantage of
others • Don’t blame others carelessly • Treat all people fairly.

Caring
Be kind • Be compassionate and show you care • Express gratitude • Forgive others • Help people in need.

Citizenship
Do your share to make your community better • Cooperate • Get involved in community affairs • Stay informed; vote • Be a good neighbor • Obey laws and rules • Respect authority • Protect the environment • Volunteer.

And when you have agreed some really core ethics principles, I would publicize them far and wide and especially to your customers. Shout about them. Let people know there is something special about your business. Trust me, you will be tapping into the prevailing mood.

Who are your stakeholders and how ethical are your dealings with all of them?
I have written many times before about the need to be stakeholder-focused in your business, but on this particular issue I think it is useful to sit with your management team and key employees and really explore how well your ethical principles are played out in real life? You might find that you can do more here.

How good are you at adhering to all legal requirements?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that you currently break the law, but I do see situations all the time where businesses ‘bend the rules’ a little when it suits. That doesn’t mean they are unethical but at the same time, where do you draw the line with the bending? In my view, regulations should be seen as minimum requirements, but the best businesses are always striving to do a lot more than the minimum forced upon them.

How open is the atmosphere within your business?
Employees should feel comfortable in speaking to their immediate managers, or those above, if they are unsure about the ‘right’ response to specific situations, or if they have concerns over certain decisions and behaviours. They should also feel that they can highlight concerns they have about unethical practices without been seen as a ‘snitch’ or a ‘goody-two-shoes’. In my experience, this is often the reason why bad practices become imbedded in the culture – when it first happens, people know it is wrong but are afraid to speak up and over time it just becomes an accepted practice. -harder to root out then.

How ethical is your marketing?
I regularly take a bit of flack when I raise the issue of ethical marketing with some business owners, as if I am accusing them of wrong doing, but I am not. However, marketing, by its very nature, is about putting your best foot forward and we have all seen examples of where the foot was put a little too far forward; from the special offer that wasn’t so special in the end, or the nice photograph of the product on the website which was a far cry from reality. It is always worth stepping back and asking yourself how ethical is your marketing?

The above are just some general questions that might give you some food for thought on the ethics issue; and remember the priority question posed was not whether you are currently ethical in how you run your business, but are you as ethical as you can be, and are you making the most of that fact in terms of differentiating your business from the rest of the pack?

I’ll leave you with this thought. Once upon a time Google operated by the motto, “Don’t be evil”. As the business grew in size, the motto made it an easy target for its critics…so they recently quietly dropped it. Now, I am not throwing stones at Google, but it will be interesting to watch whether the motto was dropped because of the hassle it was causing them, or was it standing in the way of practices they might want to introduce that don’t sit well with such a sentiment.

Only time will tell.

Enjoy the Easter Break and see you back here next Wednesday!

Ivan Pavlov was an interesting character. Well, he was, if you are a bit of a nerd like me who is interested in such things.
You probably came across his work at some point, either in college, or maybe on training courses over the years. For those not in the know, he was a Russian physiologist and a Nobel Prize winner and he discovered something rather interesting.

Briefly, when Pavlov was studying the workings of the digestive system, he did some experiments with dogs and found that when a dog encounters food, they produce large amounts of saliva which helps them to later digest the food; it’s a reflexive action. When the dogs see or smell food, they begin to salivate. Nothing too earth-shattering there, really.

However, he noticed that on certain occasions, when he or one of his assistants entered the lab – without carrying any food – the dogs still began to salivate; and what he later figured out was that the dogs had associated the ‘lab-coats’ with food. In a further series of experiments, Pavlov then tried to understand the role of various ‘stimuli’ on animal behaviour. For example, he struck a bell when the dogs were fed so over time they learned to associate the sound of the bell with food. After a while, at the mere sound of the bell, they responded by salivating.

In essence he had discovered the phenomena known as ‘conditioning’.

Now, undoubtedly conditioning is a very complex area and I’m far from qualified to explain such specialized topics. That said, in a very simple way, I have seen how people become ‘conditioned’ to act and behave to certain triggers in the workplace, and I think the issue is worth considering for all managers, even if it is at a fairly basic level:

Cultural Triggers
“Just give him a kick up the backside (not the actual word used, something cruder was applied) and he’ll do it. And if he doesn’t, tell him I’ll come down there and he’ll know all about it then. . .don’t let those guys on the floor jerk you around; you’re in charge not them. . .you need to grow a pair, if you’re going to survive around here (this sentence was interspersed with many words beginning with ‘F’).

Some time ago I travelled back in time: to a place where modern approaches to getting the best out of employees seem to be unheard of. For obvious reasons I can’t tell you too much about the particular business in question, but that little opening exchange above – between the General Manager and one of his direct-reports – was just one of many similar tirades I heard over the two days I spent in this business. To say there was a ‘them and us’ vibe going on between management and employees would be an understatement and it was a real macho place, with each ‘side’ trying to get the better of the other. I thought such workplaces didn’t exist anymore. But they do.

And this was a great example of how people had become ‘conditioned’ to act and behave in certain ways; issues were not really the cause of arguments or disputes in this business – mostly management fought with employees, and vice-versa, because as one manager said to me, ‘that’s what works around here’. I hadn’t the energy to explore the meaning of ‘works’ with him.

Now, it’s unlikely that you will have such extreme problems with cultural triggers causing your people to act and behave in certain ways, but you may still have blockages in this regard.

For example – and bear with me whilst a make a valid, but slightly long-winded point - in a former life I used to conduct quality assessments in businesses applying for a certain quality award. And when I arrived on-site, it was amazing how everbody treated me like an ‘inspector’ and started to react in very formal, and sometimes strange, ways; and particularly with regard to how they would try to pull the wool over my eyes. In one case, a manager was actually running ahead of me to different departments in order to fill in monthly quality records which hadn’t been kept up-to-date – I laughed when I saw the departmental record files completed for the previous 12 months, using the same pen and handwriting. I usually lose a pen once a week.

On the other hand, with another hat on, when I went into a company as a ‘quality mentor’ to help them implement systems prior to going for an award assessment, people acted totally different; they were more open, often identifying the pitfalls in the system themselves, and they did not fear me, nor the process.

Anyway, I’m probably rambling a bit, although I am trying to make a very important point; that being that we all carry baggage with us, and what was happening when I was seen as an ‘inspector’ was in a sense a throw-back for people to their school days, or to exams of some kind; and they were ‘conditioned’ to outwit the system, or never to admit a fault or mistake because they might loose ‘marks’.

This has major implications for how you, for example, manage performance or introduce various systems and procedures into your business. The manner in which such systems are ‘perceived’ by your employees can often trigger conditioned responses. Let’s say you introduced a new complaint handling and recording system – if your employees felt they might be punsihed if the number of complaints in their area was high, the conditioned response would likely be to under-report, so as to avoid that ‘punishment’. If they saw it as a positive development to help improve life for everybody, then they will be more likely to fully report all complaints.

Leadership Styles
The issue of leadership styles and how they can ‘condition’ others to respond in fairly predictable ways is no major revelation and obviously, if a manager has a bad style, or nasty approach, the consequences of that are fairly clear.

But sometimes, unintentionally, we condition our people in other ways too, which are perhaps less overtly damaging, but have consequences nonetheless. A classic example of this is when a leader ‘micro-manages’ their people; eventually, this reduces their motivation levels and stops them using their initiative. They wait to be told.

But there are wider considerations here too. In essence, as managers we can do to things when interacting with employees – we can make them feel better, or worse, as a result of our actions.

As managers, we can interact with an employee(s) in a way which makes them feel better, i.e. positive feedback, or even monetary rewards for achieved performance. This is known as Positive Reinforcement and encourages them to repeat that performance, or ‘conditions’ them that it’s worth their while to deliver that level of effort consistently. Negative reinforcement is the opposite, whereby we do or say something that makes an employee feel bad about themselves, but instead of encouraging them to change and improve, it has the opposite effect, i.e. if you criticize an employee in front of others – this is likely to lead to worsening of their behavior not an improvement.

Acceptable Behaviors
Sometimes, certain employees are allowed to act and behave in ways that are not entirely appropriate – not necessarily bad, but inappropriate – and this can ‘condition’ others into believing that such matters are acceptable. A simple example of this is what happens as regards meetings in many businesses. Often they start late, a few stragglers arrive when they want, and this simply conditions other people that it is acceptable not to arrive on time. Or maybe, during the meeting, attendees are allowed to hold ‘side meetings’ or to raise matters which are completely off the agenda – again allowing such instances to happen can, over time, lead to increased incidences of such negative behaviours.

I guarantee you that if you sit down and think about such examples of learned behavior, or conditioning, in your business, you will find there are plenty of examples and a majority of those, in my experience, will likely be examples of what I would call ‘negative’ conditioning.

Peer Pressure
This is linked to the above point, but is worth consideration in its own right. As you are well aware, peer pressure can have both good and bad impacts from a conditioning perspective; it all depends on who is exerting influence in the team.

Some ‘informal’ leaders can play a positive role in how a team functions, and through their behavior, they can create positive conditioning in others. The opposite is of course true, and you should think of how certain individuals might be serving as negative conditioners for the team as a whole. In my experience, there are always one or two individual in any department, or business, who – often operating under the radar – are exerting a negative influence on wider behavior within the team – particularly at times of change or uncertainty. Allowing them to do so, means you are running the risk of them negatively conditioning others (the more easily influenced team members that is) to act in similarly negative ways.

Finally, on this subject, don’t forget that you too are conditioned to act and behave in a certain manner; we all have predictive responses to various triggers. A significant contributor to the way you currently react to those triggers has been your upbringing, your family, your school and friends etc. You have in fact learned to behave in certain ways and the quality of that learning has been influenced by the various environments to which you were exposed: you have been exposed to good and bad learning throughout your life.

So, you are ‘conditioned’ to react in certain ways and you probably don’t even realize what you do well and what you do badly. To become an even better leader, you may well have to undo some of this conditioning and in effect relearn how to exercise greater control over your behaviour and reactions. Is this going to be easy? No, is the short answer. It can be done over time, but only with a strong personal commitment to do so and concentrated effort over the long term.

To wrap up, as I said at the outset, I think this whole area of conditioning is interesting and even if you explore it in basic terms, I think it is worth relfeting on the above points as to how they relate to you, and your employees. Of course, humans are complex beings, but Pavlov – and indeed many others –have highlighted that, just like dogs, we can all be conditioned to respond in predictable ways to external stimuli – as a manger, you simply want to ensure that any conditioning that is there has a positive and not a negative impact on your business.

Enjoy the day!

“I had a sh*t sandwich for lunch the other day.”
“Sorry?”
“You know what I mean…my boss took me aside at lunch recently and gave me a sh*t sandwich.”
“Sorry, I really don’t understand…never heard of that.”
“Of course you have; you know, when your boss takes you for a ‘chat’ and starts off saying nice things to you, and you just know there is a massive ‘but’ coming – and sure enough it arrives - then they dump all over you for a while, before they finish off with some more nice words: A sh*t sandwich. That’s what I got…”

This was part of a conversation  between two participants on a course I ran last week. We had been talking about the importance of feedback right before we broke for coffee, and then I heard one of the attendees describe the approach that had been taken to his recent feedback encounter with his boss.
It made me laugh.
Of course, I had known of that method for delivering feedback, but by its more official title – the ‘Praise Sandwich’ – and it is a widely promoted method for giving feedback to employeees. Not one I was ever a big fan of, I have to say. More on that later.

After coffee, and out of curiosity as much as anything else, I had a general discussion with the group about giving and receiving feedback and I was quite surprised that everyone in the group said they hated when their bosses used the Praise Sandwich approach with them; mainly, they generally agreed, because they always knew from the first sentence that they were being tee’d up for some bad news – why not just get to the point, then? was the concensus opinion. That said, nobody wanted to be given a ‘dose of feedback’ either, so it’s more a matter of finding the right balance.

Anyway, the incident got me thinking about delivering feedback and it’s importance for managers, so I thought I’d highlight a few points on the matter today.

First off, as a manager, regardless of your level, you are constantly delivering feedback – and indeed receiving it in various ways. Most of the time this can take the form of very informal feedback, done with minumal fuss, right up to more formal situations such as annual appraisals or coaching sessions.
Given it’s frequence, an inability to deliver feedback effectively will therefore cause you serious problems.
Now, some feedback – the positive stuff – is easy to deliver and in truth most minor feedback siutations pose no major challenges. However, when you get onto more serious matters,or when there are negative performance issues to be addressed, then delivering that feedback can become fare more challenging. And in my experience, managers who do struggle with this type of feedback do so for a variety of reasons:

• Lack of empathy – certain managers lack a real understanding of the needs and feelings of others, so they don’t recognize, or indeed care, about the damage they may cause with their comments.
• Lack of assertiveness – some people are by nature aggressive characters and as a result deliver their feedback in that vein, often in the heat of the moment when their blood is boiling, with the result that receiving feedback from them is the equivalent of being verbally assaulted. Other managers, particularly those new to the role, can be too passive by nature and this impacts on how they deliver feedback; they have a tendancy to dance around the issue without really getting to the point.
• Poor communications skills – the more serious feedback situations often require intense one-to-one communication with an individual which in turn calls upon all your talents as a communicator. When a manger lacks skills in this regard, they are naturally magnified in such situations.
• Focusing on personality not performance – on many occasions, managers can allow their dislike of an individual to influence the nature of feedback they deliver, and indeed the way they deliver it.

There are of course other many other reasons why feedback fails, but in my experience the above are prevalent.
Now, I always find it dangerous to be overly prescriptive about how to deliver feedback, because there are so many different parameters to consider; from the people involved, to the issues in question, to the history between those involved and so on. I think each manager needs to tailor their approach to giving feedback to match their skills and personal preferences.
However, to provide some general guidance, when working with managers, I always begin by trying to get them to stand back a little and recognize the wider issues at play when it comes to delivering feedback. And a well known and respected tool for getting that message across is the is the JoHari Window, which I have highlighted before in terms of explaining self-awareness. Called after the first names of those who developed it, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, the Window can – amongst other things – be a useful tool to understand how people react to feedback.

Briefly, the JoHari Window, shown below, consists of four panes or quadrants, based on the interaction of what is known/unknown to self and what is known/unknown to others. Luft and Ingham observed that there are aspects of our personality that we are open about, and other elements that we tend to keep to ourselves. At the same time, there are things that others see in us that we are not aware of. The resulting matrix can help to explain human interactions and communication in general, but in this case, we will explore it in the context of the impact of feedback.

The Public Area, sometimes called the arena or open area relates to information/feelings/behavior about ourselves that we are fully aware of, and that others are also aware of. We are comfortable with the fact that others know this about us.
The Blind Spot comprises information/feelings/behavior about ourselves that others are aware of, but about which we ourselves are unaware.
The Hidden Area comprises information/feelings/behavior that we know about ourselves, but which we keep from others for various reasons.
The Unknown area comprises information/behavior which both we and others are unaware of. This could be described as the subconscious.

One of the important assumptions underlying the Johari Window is that as the Public Area between different parties becomes proportionately larger, the potential for positive and valuable relationships increases. Also, since the model is dynamic in nature, the ‘panes’ within the window may change in size as a result of expansion or contraction of knowledge between individuals. When we receive feedback – in an effective manner and from someone we respect I mean – this has the effect of reducing our Blind Spot. And through the process of receiving that feedback, we build bonds of trust with the person which helps us to open up to them and, as a result. we ‘self-disclose’ or tell them things about us which reduces our Hidden Area – the effect of these two activities means that our Public Area is larger with that person.

What I find, having dealt with many managers on the feedback issue, is that when they really reflect upon and understand the power of feedback, this of itself helps them to improve their approach because they understand the damage they can do when they get it wrong.

Delivering feedback
As to how feeback should be delivered, again I think it’s dangerous to be overly prescriptive without knowing the individual in question – blanket advice may work for some but not for others. That said, there are some golden rules which I touched on when I wrote about appraisals recently, and they include:

• Time and place are critical when delivering individual feedback and it should never be given in front of others.
• The objective of any feedback is to create awareness in the individual, so that they can work towards improvement in the given area.
• The context (tone and body language) for delivering feedback is as important as the content (words) in terms of getting the employee to take it on-board.
• Feedback must always focus on performance, not personality and be directed at behaviours which can potentially be changed.
• Feedback must be based on evidence, not opinion, so when giving feedback you must have practical examples to support it.
• Hitting someone with a mountain of feedback once a year or every couple of months is likely to have little impact, it should be ongoing and address issues whilst they are fresh.
• The idea of giving feedback is not to ‘have a go’ at an individual but rather to help raise their performance, or change their behaviour in some way. As such, feedback should always be presented in a constructive manner; that said, there is no point in only focusing on positives, improvement comes from translating areas of underperformance into strengths, so negatives have to be addressed but in a helpful way.
• The goal of any feedback activity is not to tell the person the problem and the solution but rather to help them to identify their own areas for improvement and contribute to finding a solution. As such, question technique and listening skills are vital for leaders when giving feedback.
• If employees only ever hear negative feedback, then they will close their minds to it entirely and will simply go through the motions.

As to how to structure your approach, I think you have to find a method which you are comnfortable with, but I would personally avoid the Praise Sandwich approach because most people see it for what it is. Better to get to the point, I find, without being blunt or overly direct of course. Being upfront and opening with something like ‘I want to talk to you as I’m unhappy with X’ is a better approach than waffling on like, ‘Generally I am very happy with your work and you do a good job…but,’ The key here is the ‘context’ for how you say things i.e tone and body language.
However you open your more formal feedback sessions, you then need to use your communication skills and question technique to draw out the issues and potential solutions, rather than you telling them the problem and how to fix it. Of course, I would end on a positive note, but again without overdoing it either; the real praise will come later if they actually address the problem (s) highlighted about their performance.

Taking these points onboard when you deliver feedback, might not always mean that the individual in question will ‘love’ hearing negative things about their performance, but it will certainly leave a better taste in their mouth.

Enjoy your day!

A manager was sadly killed in a tragic accident.
Still, he had lived a good life and he soon went to heaven.
St. Peter warmly greeted him on arrival but there was a slight problem, “Before you come in,” he said, “I’m afraid there’s a new rule. You must spend a day here and in hell before deciding where you want to spend eternity.”

“But I know already that I want to be in heaven,” said the manager.

“That may well be, but nobody is admitted these days until they spend at least a day in heaven and another in hell, and then they can decide with certainty which is for them.”

So, the manager spent his first day exploring heaven. He found it a nice enough place, if a little boring, and everyone he met was generally pleasant and welcoming. The facilities were clean but somewhat frugal. Still, nothing much to complain about at all.

The second morning, he met St. Peter once more and following a quick chat, he found himself falling fast until he eventually arrived in hell.

And to his great surprise, it wasn’t such a bad place at all, not bad at all: lovely weather, nice pool, fresh cold beer on tap and a bevvy of beauties at his disposal. And what a party he had that night…one to remember, for sure. The Devil was even in attendance at one stage, and even he seemed a harmless enough sort.

Having enjoyed his overnight stay in hell, the manager awoke to find himself standing in front of St. Peter once more. “You’ve have spent a day in hell and another in heaven; now, you must choose between the two.”

The manager thought for a second and replied, “Well, I liked my time in heaven for sure, but I think overall I had a better time down below. I think hell is the place for me.”

With that, once more, he felt himself falling down but this time he arrived into a terrible place, full of unimaginable horrors. He demanded to speak with the devil. “This makes no sense,” he complained, yesterday I was here and it was a fantastic experience, today it’s completely different. What’s going on?” he asked.

“Aha, yesterday was your first day,” said the devil, “we were out to impress you. . .today, well…and, how should I put this…today, you see what it’s really like down here…

Okay, okay, it’s fairly corny I know, and probably an overly long-winded way of making a point. But when I came across it on the web the other day, I thought it was a nice little anecdote to highlight some points about the creating the right, and more importantly, the accurate impression for new employees.

Now, there isn’t a manager in the world who would argue against the importance of induction for new starts; yet, I continuously see how the process is mis-managed across businesses both large and small.
Sometimes, the process itself can be great, but as in our story above, its real purpose is to mask the failings within the business.
More commonly, though, inductions are unstructured and of insufficient quality to make a real impact.
For example, I was working in a small business last week and was talking to a young manager about his induction which had happened a few weeks previously. He told me that the induction essentially consisted of a hand-shake, a five or ten minute chat from the owner, and then he was assigned to a ‘buddy’. Nothing wrong with that approach of course – the buddy system is widely used – but it is a problem when the first thing your ‘buddy’ says to you is ‘let me tell you what it’s really like around here…”

Effective induction brings many benefits, for all stakeholders, which have been proven time and time again. But don’t just take my word for it. There is ample research out there which makes the case:

• One study by pay specialist IRS in the UK demonstrated that effective staff inductions can boost retention rates and productivity levels among new recruits. The survey of 158 employers – covering a combined workforce of almost 534,000 employees – found that “they can also determine workers’ commitment to the job, and identify whether they are in tune with the organisation’s wider aims.”
• Other studies showed additional benefits, such as that by XpertHR which found that “effective inductions create an enhanced ‘psychological contract’, leading to increased employee engagement, and a better corporate reputation.”

In my experience, unless you work directly in HR, most managers – particularly the more senior people – tend to give little thought to the Induction process; it’s not that they don’t value it, but it’s more of a case that they undervalue it, or expect that it is happening to the required level without requiring any real input from them.
Ask yourself the following question: when was the last time that you personally took a detailed look at the employee induction program in your business, or measured its outcomes?
Unless you have just joined the company and gone through it yourself, or as mentioned, unless you work in HR, my guess is (in fact, I would happily place a bet on it) that you will have little knowledge of what’s in it, or more pertinantly, how effective the induction is.

I think this is a mistake. When dealing with managers on the issue, I always try to get them to focus on the costs (and lost opportunities) associated with a poor induction: from the wasted investment on recruitment; to the potential loss of engagement that results from the employee not feeling part of the business; to the costs of mistakes that inadeaquately trained employees make. Again there’s plenty of firm evidence to highlight how costly poor inductions can be.  In fact, according to a leading UK training firm ,Thomson NETg, UK businesses are losing up to £2bn a year in employee productivity due to inefficient staff induction processes. According to their research, “based on average earnings in companies with just one new starter every year, the slow and often unorganised approach to induction is leading to at least a week of ‘dead time’ when employees join an organisation.”

Now, I won’t bore you with the minutiae of what specifically should happen as part of an effective induction process, but I would suggest you consider the following six questions as you take a step back and review your current approach:

Does the process adequately clarify aspirations for employees?
One of the key objectives of induction is that it should  help employees to fully understand what the company is trying to achieve, be that captured in vision, mission, goals and so on. The more an employee understands the big picture, the more they begin to see a role for themselves within that context – when they recognise the ‘journey’ the business is undertaking, they recognise they too can go places. What evidence do you have that tells you your current approach is achieving this objective at present?

Does the process adequately clarify expectations for employees?
On the flip side, the induction process should also help employees to fully understand what you expect from them, in terms of their job description, but also with regard to how they act, behave and generally contribute. Again, what evidence do you have that tells you that your current approach is achieving this aim at present?

Does the process help to build relationships between new and existing employees?
Naturally, no induction is going to ensure that a new employee gets to know everyone on the building, but does your existing approach help a newcomer to get to know the key people in the business at least - if only by name – and particularly starts the process of relationship building in an effective way with their work-mates?

Does the process help to build their capabilities?
Very few employees can completely hit the ground running without needing some training or coaching. Even experienced employees joining you can need ‘tweaking’ in the sense that they may well be able to do the job, but can they do it to the standard, or with the style, you require? How good is your existing approach to induction at helping you to first identify training/coaching needs and then in ensuring those gaps are addressed within the first few weeks?

Does the process raise their commitment?
This is often overlooked, but an important part of any induction process – and it really results from the above four things happening - is that it should make a tangible contribution to building the commitment and loyalty of a new employee towards your business. When someone feels you are taking time to welcome them, inform them, integrate them and so on, then they feel valued and respected – this in turn raises commitment levels. Of course, this takes time to bed-down but are employees more ’connected’ to your business after induction, or less?

Does your process create the real impression of your business?
I don’t need to say too much here, but the purpose of your induction should be that is shows the company in a positive light – but that experience has to be truly reflective of day-to-day life in the business. In other words, does the reality of working in your business live up to the expectations created in the induction?

In all walks of life, reality can fail to live up to expectations:

For sure, there are other aspects to induction beyond these six questions, such as finalising contracts, communicating terms and conditions, completing paperwork etc., but for me these are secondary concerns.
It is the ‘bigger picture’ issues around induction that matter most.
And yes, the answers to some of the six questions are easier to find than others, for example, you can watch an employee complete a task to see if they are competent at it, but measuring their levels of commitment or engagement are naturally harder to do.
It is for this reason that I think brief job chats at the end of week 1, month 1, quarter 1 and a more formal annual appraisal are so important to guage these intangible outcomes of induction, but again in my experience they are often overlooked.

Finally, all of us can think back to our first days in a job – even from many years ago. It sticks in our mind, often for decades, so the very least you want is for that memory to be a positive (and realistic) one.

Enjoy your day!