Employee engagement is a hot topic these days; it’s also a function of corporate culture. And while managers may not be able to control culture there are many things they can do within their own department and even team.

One of the biggest is to show your appreciation of your people. Study after study confirms employees’ desire to feel valued; to make a difference and be credited for it. But how, with budgets cut below bone level?

Here are four simple actions that you can implement at no financial cost and that don’t require approval from anyone.

• Ask everyone, not just your so-called stars, for input, ideas, suggestions and opinions.

• Listen and really hear the response, discuss it, think about it.

• Use what you get as often as possible, whether in whole or in part, or as the springboard that leads to something totally different.

• Credit the source(s), both up and down, publicly and privately, thank them, compliment them, congratulate them.

If you’re sincere, you can’t lay it on too thick; if you’re faking it, they’ll know.

And if you’re foolish enough to steal the credit for yourself in the mistaken name of job security you’ll have the fun of explaining to your boss the plummeting productivity and soaring turnover that accompanies those thefts.

It’s easy to remember, just think ALUC.

Ask

Listen!

Use

Credit

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NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof comments that we finally elected an unabashed intellectual to the Presidency (it’s definitely worth reading), but what resonated more with me was the part that ties so closely with that CandidProf has been telling us.

“We can’t solve our educational challenges when, according to polls, Americans are approximately as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution, and when one-fifth of Americans believe that the sun orbits the Earth.

Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn’t realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.”

• I’ve met people who think that the “Middle East” is a country;
• a nurse once explained to me that the war between Serbia and Bosnia wasn’t racial because both sides were Caucasian;
• a business type told me that Arkansas and Kansas were next to each other like North and South Dakota;
• CandidProf says that his students don’t know that round means spherical, so they think the Earth is a disk;
• something like 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate.

I’m actually grateful for Palin’s error because it highlights the level of ignorance that has become acceptable and the condition of education in this country.

I’m not saying that it’s necessarily great in other countries, but I don’t live in them either and they don’t bragg about being the world’s leader.

Perhaps it’s time to turn our focus from being the ‘leader’ in fixing the world’s problems to being the ‘leader’ in fixing our own.

The stupidity exemplified in the No Child Left Behind law that has led to a lowering of already low standards in the name of receiving funding is criminal.

We need educational reform that isn’t test-based, but focuses on real learning including critical thinking and is adequately funded.

Funding that shouldn’t be the problem once we stop spending $70 billion a month on the war—not that I think much of it will go towards education.

The stupidity of parents in brainwashing their kids into believing they are special and entitled to good grades and good jobs merely because they exist is tragic.

This entitlement stupidity is likely to carry on to future generations, unless it gets good and stomped down when it comes in contact with reality.

What ignorance can you add to the list above?

What ideas do you have for combating the problems?

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A couple of weeks ago David Zinger wrote a great post regarding the so-called war for talent.

“I have always been troubled by the so called “war for talent.” Now, I am beyond troubled, I am angry with the use of this metaphor for those of us who offer our best in organizations.”

Take a moment to read David’s comments—they are provocative, true and well worth the time.

But I want to focus on something else today.

I have a major problem with ‘talent’—and human capital and human resources and stars—but especially with talent.

As a manager, you do not hire talent, capital, resources or stars.

You hire people.

The people you hire are rated, in the majority of cases, ‘talented’, or even ‘stars’, as a direct result of the skill with which you manage them.

I spent more than 20 years as a headhunter and I’ve seen below average employees turn into innovative contributors when exposed to a different manager and the opposite, when acknowledged stars suddenly become non performers because the management changed.

Actually, you don’t really hire people, you hire persons. Individuals with all the quirks, foibles, idiosyncrasies and idiotsyncrasies common to the human race.

And you hire them one at a time.

No manager ever hired a ‘workforce’; they built it, one person at a time.

Plural pronouns not allowed.

So no more talk about talent or resources or capital. Your job is the acquisition, care and feeding of your persons.

And why in the world would you involve yourself or your persons in a war?

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By CandidProf, who teaches physics and astronomy at a state university. He shares his thoughts and experiences teaching today’s students anonymously every Thursday—anonymously because that’s the only way he can be truly candid. Read all of CandidProf here.

Today’s generation of college students grew up with things handed to them.  Granted, that is not true for all of them, but it seems to be true for the bulk of my students.

Parents don’t want things to be as tough on their kids as growing up was for themselves.  Schools don’t want parents complaining.  So, the kids get everything just handed to them.

If they don’t work hard, then that’s OK.  They’ll still pass classes.

Do bad grades make them feel bad?  Well, then the solution is to simply do away with bad grades. A local school district several years ago did away with the grade of D because it had negative connotations.  So, now the lowest grade that a student can get is a C.  Other school districts quickly followed suit, since they looked bad for having lower grade point averages.

The Dallas School District even went so far as to revamp its grading policies to make it practically impossible for students to fail or to get low grades.

So, it is no wonder that students come to college without any work ethic.

Last week, we had a speaker come to campus who works as an engineer designing the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, the spacecraft that is going to replace the Space Shuttle.  She was amazing.  She was energetic, enthusiastic, and was very excited to be working with real spacecraft.

She gave a presentation where she emphasized how important learning is to succeeding.  She pointed out that all those classes that you think that you will never use have a tendency to teach you things that eventually turn out to be useful.  She is quite young, only a few years older than most of my students.

She has two bachelors degrees, and she is working on two masters degrees.  She is working full time and going to school nearly full time.  She is excited about what she does. She absolutely loves the space program and finds working with NASA to be a dream job.  It is FUN for her.  As she sees it, she is getting paid to have fun. So, she doesn’t mind working extra hours, taking on extra tasks, and working weekends, evenings, holidays, etc., if needed.

I was hoping that her enthusiasm would rub off.  So, this week, I asked my students what they thought of her talk.

One student said that she sounds really boring. Huh?  Boring?  She gets to work with spacecraft.  She gets paid to do things that she finds exciting and fun.  She gets to watch Space Shuttles launch.  She gets to use the simulators that the astronauts use.  She travels all over the country for her job.  She’s boring?

Another student said that she didn’t seem to understand that some classes are hard. Huh?  She has degrees in aeronautical engineering and astronautics.  She is working on degrees in spacecraft systems and human physiology (she is interested in how the human body works in space).  Hey, those are not easy subjects.  She has taken classes far more difficult than anything that my students have ever taken.

Another person said that she can’t understand how anyone could stay in school for so long, commenting that the speaker would probably have six degrees by the time that she is thirty.  So?  What’s wrong with that?

You get ahead by hard work. Many of my students come from fairly affluent upper middle class families, and they have had life just handed to them.

The speaker came from a family where her parents had to work hard and she didn’t have things just handed to her.  She learned to work for things.  That is why she is where she is.  Not everyone is going to get a job working with spacecraft.  She is, indeed, quite young.  But she has a very important job, with lots of responsibility, because of her hard work.

Someone like my students would not get her job.

I told my students that they don’t really have to work as hard as the speaker.  After all, we need people to be assistant managers at fast food restaurants.  They will rise to the appropriate level.

If they work hard, they will become leaders.  If they refuse to work hard, they will be followers all of their lives. I don’t think that they were very happy with me or what I told them, but that’s OK.

If only one of them listens and decides to work hard to get ahead, then I’ve done my job.

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Now check out a life warning

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Now let’s tackle some truly challenging differences between evolutionary variation and our business process for generating variations.

Last week we said, Evolution does not care about an individual organism and it does not even care about an individual species. In contrast, we care which particular variations fail and we care passionately about the success of our business. It’s not just business, it’s personal. Quite simply, this difference is insurmountable.

Prejudice makes your world go down

On the surface it seems outrageous to propose that our desire to succeed actually is one source of our failures, but the evolutionary model points in that direction. We cannot eliminate our preferences, but perhaps we can understand the impact of our preferences.

Note the polite reference to our preferences, when the more accurate word is bias or even prejudice.

Literally, a prejudice is a pre-judgment. While judgment is good and even necessary, pre-judgment, that is judgment before the data is available, is not good.

By understanding our prejudices, perhaps we can reduce the negative impact of those prejudices.

As business leaders we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, dispassionately weighing the facts and evidence, then rendering a judgment—like Solomon—upon the wisdom of any particular issue at hand.

Our self-image depends heavily upon this viewpoint, because it supports and justifies the many decisions we must make every day, usually with insufficient time and almost always with inadequate information to make the decision.

Many external factors affect our ability to make decisions, most of which are beyond our control. For instance, air temperature has a measurable effect on our attitude, so much so that we refer to a person as cold or warm. In a warm room our decisions tend to be more expansive and more generous. Lower the temperature a few degrees and we become colder, more calculating and stingy. Blood sugar level has a similar impact, with lower blood sugar correlated to cautious behaviors and higher blood sugar levels correlated to increased risk-taking.

No doubt you have experienced these variations in your own work. In the morning, after coming into the office from a cold commute and then drinking a cup of coffee, your actions may be just a little quicker, a little more cautious, a little less expansive and open. In the afternoon after lunch, you may be a little more relaxed in a meeting, a little more agreeable and willing to consider an unusual idea.

Also we are affected by internal chemicals such as testosterone, adrenalin, and endorphins. Testosterone, the ultimate male chemical, is correlated with feelings of power and control. Any perceived victory or accomplishment will tend to raise testosterone levels. In stressful situations our bodies release adrenalin, which triggers the well-known “fight-or-flight” responses. Endorphins tend to produce feelings of peace, and euphoria. Exercise typically increases endorphin levels, which leads to the feeling of relaxation and peace after a good work-out. We can change our levels of each of these chemicals by physical activities and also just by our own thoughts.

Outside the chemical and physical realms, our own brains tend to betray us. Tests demonstrate that our estimate of our own knowledge affects our decision making, even when our knowledge is wrong. As Will Rogers said, “It isn’t what a fellow knows that does him any harm. It’s what he knows that isn’t so.”

In today’s business, where change is so rapid, much of our knowledge is outdated, if not plain wrong. Small, subtle differences can have significant impact on the outcomes. Our ability to spot those subtle differences is limited to areas where we have very deep, very current knowledge. Technology and business change so rapidly that it is almost impossible to stay current across a broad range.

Finally, in business we work under short time frames, with incomplete information, and we care passionately about the outcome. Guessing what our customers will want tomorrow is particularly hazardous to our business health.  Truly we don’t have knowledge so much as prejudices, opinions and hunches. As Alcoholics Anonymous states, “The first step is admitting I have a problem.” So let’s confess together, “I am addicted to my prejudices.”

Prejudicial Checkup

• You just admitted you have prejudices. What are a few of your favorite prejudices? Name at least five.
• What external events or situations trigger your prejudices?
• What internal signals indicate that you are replaying an old, familiar prejudice?
• What internal images do you see, what words or voices do you hear internally when a situation triggers one of your prejudices?
• How can you interrupt your internal cycle of prejudicial thoughts? Perhaps you can stand up, count to ten, take a few deep breaths, or stretch.
• How can you protect your development teams and processes from your internal prejudices?

Nurturing New Variations—especially the ones we do not like

With this fresh understanding of our own prejudices firmly in mind let’s return to the first problem that limits our ability to produce variations – killing off new ideas too soon.

Knowing that our prejudices will inevitably lead us to kill off certain types of new ideas too soon, how can we design an environment within our business that protects them from our “best” instincts?

To thrive, new ideas need

• a champion;
• some time to grow;
• a few resources; and
• early exposure to testing by customers.

How do you provide these resources to your teams? It is not your job to nurture every new idea, but it is your job to provide the resources and patiently observe which ones grow. Most new ideas will eventually die, but a few unlikely ones will thrive, just like weeds.

How to move projects along

• Reinforcement from customers is extremely powerful—a few encouraging words from a customer can overcome almost any prejudice;
• set up small tests to demonstrate and validate critical elements early in the process;
• drive your development teams to put every new product in front of customers very quickly, much earlier than the development team believes it will be ready;
• full functionality of a few subsystems is much better than 90% functionality of the whole system; and
• remind your teams to fail fast, fail often, and fail small.

Checkup for Nurturing New Variations

• How do you encourage and support champions?
• How do you protect champions and new ideas from your own prejudices?
• How do you provide just enough resources to allow new ideas to grow?
• How do you expose new ideas to the testing of the marketplace? How quickly?
• How do you keep yourself out of the role of premature judge?

Next week join me to learn how our prejudices feed the vampires that suck the life out of our business—and what to do about it.

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By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.ballgroup.com.

They’re everywhere!  They’re everywhere!

The best opportunity in decades to create growth is being squandered.

Yep, it’s happened… just as it does every time there’s a fearsome economic downturn.  The cost-side micro-managers are back in force.

Forget about creating demand, because everyone knows that as soon as money gets tight people stop spending money.  Forget about inspiring the entire company to work toward a common goal of building long-term strength and market dominance.  It’s time once again to cut everything in sight and micro-manage every decision from top to bottom.

It’s nothing new.  But it is amazing that, despite decades of research that proves that companies who invest in demand-creation during downturn fair better during the downturn and much better afterward, the first thing that happens in most otherwise smart companies is to cut, cut, cut and manage, manage, manage.

It’s happening from the Fortune 100 all the way down to small regional companies.  And it is killing the future potential of those companies.

I just witnessed the most appalling and extreme example of my 30 years in the business world.  The holding company that owns a medium-sized, internationally dominant company fired all of the company’s top managers due to the economy.  We’re talking chief executive, head of international sales, head of international marketing, plus several others.  In their places, they put one cost-side micro-manager to “whip things into shape quickly.”  There’s no real need for much in between, because he is going to be dictating the limited strategies that everyone else will carry out.

I wish I owned one of their competitors who have wanted to overtake their long-term brand dominance, because this is the best time in their history to accomplish that goal.  Employees are demoralized.  They don’t dare try to make any decisions or suggest anything strategic.  All the brilliance that was the reason for their being hired is of no apparent value.  This is a plum ripe for the picking.

Now, this is obviously an extreme example, but the Wall Street Journal is full of examples of just this kind of thinking, as top executives pull back into a cave of cost-side micro-management.  Cari Tuna wrote an article last Monday in the Wall Street Journal about the damage done by micro-managers.  As she notes in a quote from one interview, “Who wants to be in a company where you are not allowed to think?”  She observes rightly that there is a complacency among employees of micro-managers.  But that only touches the surface of the damage done.

Such managers are the antithesis of leadership.  By taking charge to fix everything in sight, they not only demoralize the smart people they paid so much to employ, but they also make the company vulnerable to attack from a broad range of competitors who might never have believed they could effectively knock them out.

We just watched Starbucks decline dramatically even before the worst of the economic downturn was revealed.  That happened due to cost-side micro-management combined with a lack of understanding of what customers had actually been buying from them.

Magnify that exponentially, and you have what we are about to see in the marketplace.  Well-known companies and brands are going to be micro-managed into such weakness that we will see a very different set of leading brands in many product categories in five years.

How can you survive the economy and still maintain your strengths, so you have a bright future 6, 12, or 18 months from now?

1. Don’t lose sight of what your customers really have been buying.  That may take some new research, because most companies don’t really know why their customers buy from them.  Here’s a hint: if you think it’s due to your price, your product’s performance, your quality, your availability, or any other “functional” factors, you are wrong.  Managing those factors will only make you weaker at a time when you need to enhance the ego-satisfaction fulfillment of your customers.  In a downturn, people want to feel better about themselves (I call that “self-satisfaction”) and to believe that other people think better of them (I call that “personal significance”).  Miss those and you are imminently vulnerable.
2. Charge more than you think you can.  Almost every company out there believes they have to charge less than customers are actually willing to pay… even in a time of recession.  Every research study we have conducted (and that is tens of thousands) has shown that most companies in a category are over-delivering on price (meaning they could be charging more).  That’s a lot of money thrown away.  And remember: it takes an average of three dollars in gross income to generate one profit dollar lost.  So every dollar you don’t get is actually worth three that you have to generate later.
3. Stop measuring outcomes; measure causes.  Very few companies measure or track changes in the causes that drive the final outcomes they desire.   By only looking at final outcomes, it is impossible to know how to improve those outcomes.  You must understand and measure changes in the factors that drive greater demand and profitability and customer loyalty in order to affect sales, net profit, stock price, and all the other final outcomes corporate executives are held responsible for.

I say it every time I can.  This is the best opportunity in decades to grow dramatically and to come out on top in the 6 to 18 months a recession typically takes to cycle out.  Don’t allow fear to drive you into cost-side micro-management and undermine your chances to achieve that goal.

What steps is your company taking to remain strong and not become vulnerable?

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Jim Stroup over at Managing Leadership wrote a fascinating post on the effects of principles and political compromise on our Constitution.

For the political slant click the link, but I think that these ideas are just as true in the business world.

“If you rule out compromising your principles, then you become an ideologue.”

Can business people be ideologues? Of course.

Managers adopt approaches and then rigidly try to implement (inflict?) them on every organization in which they work with no consideration as to their appropriateness.

Robert Nardelli did that when he tried to impose stringent metrics a la GE on Home Depot, ignoring cultural differences and the realities of running a successful consumer business.

“…maybe they see a higher, joint goal of sufficient value… This sometimes takes a kind of discipline, stamina, and focus that can be stunning, and much more productive, powerful, and enduring…”

When senior managers open themselves up to input from all levels of their organization—instead of forcing the dogmatic use a certain methodology—the results include stronger engagement, higher productivity and more innovation.

In business, this means a focus beyond today’s stock price—a focus on the long-term, which is rarely appreciated by Wall Street.

Compromise isn’t synonymous with ethical lapse, either; it’s not an excuse to lie, cheat, steal or fudge the information or the numbers.

It is about listening to others; listening to those whose ideas are revolutionary; ideas that are atypical; ideas that buck the norm and go in a new direction and that takes a lot of guts.

In business, as in politics, compromise often means being willing to put your job on the line—but refusing carries the same potential cost.

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Last month I wrote an article linking to a study at Harvard on the dangers of hiring based solely on experience.

On a different, and seemingly unconnected subject, everyone has read and heard the term ‘risk’ and ‘risk assessment’ in conjunction with our current economic hell (sorry, I’m tired of all the euphemisms) and most of us wonder what the drugs of choice were for those who were paid to assess said risk.

Now I’m wondering what the drugs of choice are at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which apparently took titles and job description as proof of competency and hired Michael Alix, “the former “chief risk officer” of fallen investment giant Bear Stearns as a top bank regulation adviser…”

If it’s not drugs, maybe the folks at the Fed made their decision based on the old adage set a thief to catch a thief or to embrace the spirit of Halloween when they made the announcement.

As Malcolm Polley, chief investment officer at Stewart Capital Advisors commented, “It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house.”

Aren’t you excited? Your tax dollars at work paying what will be a hefty salary to a guy who played a major leadership role in the current credit crisis.

Ah, America, where so many white collar sins reap such rich rewards.

Hat tip to Mark at Biz Levity who turned me on to this news item and so hilariously skewered it.

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