Wally Bock left a comment today on a post at Leadership Turn. In part it said,

“When I was responsible for hiring management trainees years ago, I discovered that grades and degrees and schools didn’t tell me much. What I looked for where two things. Could a prospect write? If not, there was no need to go farther. The other thing I looked for was actual work experience.”

Wally would have trouble hiring anyone these days considering the atrocious stuff written by students and grads who are so busy texting that they can’t be bothered to learn to write readable, coherent, English.

It’s a good thing that writing isn’t most managers make-or-break or offers would be few and far between—and I don’t just mean new grads.

I don’t have a great desire to be forced to decipher hip-hop, Valley Girl, Ebonics, Spanglish, Country-Western, 18-wheeler or all lower case with no punctuation in order to communicate.

None of these may matter in private life, but they don’t contribute a whole lot in the context of what it takes to make it today.

Several years ago I wrote Good writing fast—an oxymoron and last year I asked, “Are most people loosing their minds while I am losing mine? during another minor rant.

I’m not a total dinosaur, if all that’s wrong in most communications is a misplaced semi-colon or an occasional preposition at the end of a sentence who cares?

People don’t realize that, consciously or not, they’re judged by what they write, just as they are by what they wear or drive or went to school—even people whose own writing is terrible will downgrade others for the same thing.

If you can’t write and want a future take classes; if you’re people can’t write send them for training.

And if you won’t/can’t do that, there is one simple thing you can do to improve your writing.

Read. Turn off the computer and the TV; take off your iPod and turn off your phone; pick up a well-written book and READ. It doesn’t matter if it’s great literature, a biography, mystery, or hilarious chic lit.

Read every chance you get and make more chances; pay attention and you’ll be amazed at how fast your writing improves.

Image credit: sxc.hu

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I have very smart readers from all over the world. That means a variety of cultures, experiences, politics, attitudes and ages that provide a wide range of MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

I’d like to take advantage of that diversity to ask some questions.

I ask them because either I haven’t heard ideas that strike me as solving anything or because I haven’t seen them directly addressed. I honestly want a range of answers, not necessarily ones with which I agree, but a stimulating conversation! To that end I’m offering only the questions, no commentary or opinion.

I hope you’ll treat this post as a conversation among friends, perhaps over a good bottle of wine on a Friday afternoon.

Please add your own queries, whether you want to respond to mine or not.

If it turns out you like this feature we can do others in the future.

• Relatively speaking, how global is the sense of entitlement so visible in certain areas today?

• Can people at any level in an organization drive real cultural change if it goes against the “leader’s” MAP?

• How large a role does ideology play in the business world?

There’s nothing like something free to add an incentive, beyond the bottle of cyber wine, to a good conversation, so I’m going to give away a copy of Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict Into Strength by Diana McLain Smith to one lucky participant—no matter where you live.

Conversations involve lots of give and take, back and forth, therefore every comment posted will be assigned a number. At midnight February 28, I’ll enter the total numbers into Random.org and announce the winner on this post. So the more you add to the conversation the more chances you have to win. How cool is that?

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Would you like to work for a company where the 401K matching on 5% of salary is as much as 11%? Where you can become a manager earning $62,000 plus bonus and company car with no college degree, no Union, no trade—nothing but hard work.

Of course, you’ll have to put up with snickers and even scorn if you mention your job in public.

All of that is what’s available to the 6,700 managers at company-owned McDonald’s restaurants.

“While an average McDonald’s grosses $2.2 million a year, seasoned managers who motivate employees and keep customers coming back can add more than $200,000 to that total.“Restaurant managers are in the most important position in our company,” says Richard Floersch, McDonald’s chief human resources officer.”

Moreover, with corporate culture being recognized as the moving force behind corporate performance, why is it that articles about changing culture in major corporations employing mostly skilled, well-paid workers, such as IBM, are met with serious discussion, while changing it in major corporations with mostly minimum wage earners, such as McDonalds, is marked down as hype?

Why was a cultural change at IBM seen as key to the company’s survival, but instilling pride in the workers at McDonalds, Taco Bell and KFC is viewed as hype, “Raising spirits is cheaper than raising salaries.”

Why do we expect young people to take pride in their first ‘real’ job, or care about the customer, when they were laughed at for the same attitudes/actions in their minimum wage job?

Why does our society denigrate those who work low-paying jobs, when they are honest, hardworking, raise families and even pay taxes, which is more than you can say for their wealthier counterparts?

In the same vein, why is the four-year grad, with a degree paid for by mom and dad, considered a better candidate than the one who took longer working ‘non-professional’ jobs to pay for the same degree from the same school?

Maybe companies need to wake up. No matter what their family’s economic status, I haven’t seen the same high sense of entitlement in kids who spent their summers working in average and minimum wage jobs as I have in the ones who worked frequently overpaid jobs for their parents or didn’t work at all.

How far can you really rise when you start on the counter? Ask Karen King, President of McDonald’s USA East Division.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink what we, the people, look down on and what earns respect.

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My apologies for the short time lead, but I only received this yesterday.

You have an invitation from PBS’ Nightly Business Report to participate in creating their list of 30 Most Important Innovations from Last 30 Years

Here’s all the who/what/where/when info, all you have to do it go for it!

Media Alert: PBS’ Nightly Business Report

30 Most Important Innovations from Last 30 Years

In 1979, the first spreadsheet software was introduced, Sony rolled out the Walkman, ESPN began broadcasting sporting events to cable TV companies, and on public television, Nightly Business Report made its debut.  To celebrate their three decades on the air, PBS’ Nightly Business Report has teamed up with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to select the 30 most important innovations from the last 30 years.

The full list will be announced on Nightly Business Report, in a special half hour program, next Monday, February 16, 2009.

The criteria upon which the innovations were judged:

1.  Did it have a direct and/or material effect on quality of life?

2.  Did it address a compelling need?  Did it solve a compelling problem?

3.  Was it a fresh, new breakthrough?   Was there a “WOW” factor?

4.  Did it change the way business is conducted?

5.  Did it increase the efficiency of how resources are used?

6.  Did it spark an ongoing stream of new innovations on top of the original innovation?

7.  Did it lead to the creation of a vast, new industry?

For more information, or to speak with a Nightly Business Report representative, please contact Mark Ballard at 212-255-8455 or mark@rosengrouppr.com.

Image credit: flickr

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My apologies for the short time lead, but I only received this yesterday.

You have an invitation from PBS’ Nightly Business Report to participate in creating their list of 30 Most Important Innovations from Last 30 Years

Here’s all the who/what/where/when info, all you have to do it go for it!

Media Alert: PBS’ Nightly Business Report

30 Most Important Innovations from Last 30 Years

In 1979, the first spreadsheet software was introduced, Sony rolled out the Walkman, ESPN began broadcasting sporting events to cable TV companies, and on public television, Nightly Business Report made its debut.  To celebrate their three decades on the air, PBS’ Nightly Business Report has teamed up with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to select the 30 most important innovations from the last 30 years.

The full list will be announced on Nightly Business Report, in a special half hour program, next Monday, February 16, 2009.

The criteria upon which the innovations were judged:

1.  Did it have a direct and/or material effect on quality of life?

2.  Did it address a compelling need?  Did it solve a compelling problem?

3.  Was it a fresh, new breakthrough?   Was there a “WOW” factor?

4.  Did it change the way business is conducted?

5.  Did it increase the efficiency of how resources are used?

6.  Did it spark an ongoing stream of new innovations on top of the original innovation?

7.  Did it lead to the creation of a vast, new industry?

For more information, or to speak with a Nightly Business Report representative, please contact Mark Ballard at 212-255-8455 or mark@rosengrouppr.com.

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Now see how it should be.

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And the result when it’s not.

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I’ve mentioned from time to time that there are the two basic principles that you need to believe in if you want to implement the kind of culture that I and most other pundits describe.

Here’s the first one.

People are intelligent, motivated, and they genuinely want to support their company in achieving its objectives.

Sadly, many managers don’t believe this. They may say they do, but deep down their thoughts run more along the lines of ‘people are stupid, lazy and don’t really give a damn’.

I’ve know managers who would actually say this out loud, while in others it’s buried so deeply they may not even realize it themselves—but they all manage accordingly.

The second principle is even more open to distortion.

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Based on the games so many managers play perhaps we should rewrite it—

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Not dribbled out over the course of the project, given grudgingly or only when asked and then only the narrowest parameter forcing the employee to return over and over.

You would think that managers would do everything in their power to create an environment that enabled the highest levels of creativity and productivity.

But for better or worse, what they produce in fact is a reflection of their MAP.

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The global environmental climate may be warming, but the global business climate is frigid, with even colder weather ahead for business in the next few years.

Without a doubt, most companies will face declines in sales, escalating bad debts, elimination or reduction of credit lines, forced reductions in labor, and significant internal adjustments in work assignments. How will your corporate culture withstand the upcoming business ice age?

Corporate Culture Snapshot

Corporate culture statements focus on “people values,” in contrast to corporate mission/vision/business statements, which focus on business objectives. A quick survey of corporate culture statements shows that many companies identify their employees as their most important asset. They also list their most important values as virtues as integrity, teamwork, accountability, and innovation.

For the sake of this post, let’s accept that the company actually means these good words.

How do you, as a business leader, honor these values in the current frigid business climate? More importantly, can your corporate culture actually help your organization to weather this storm?

The Situation

You are the leader/manager of a team of 25-50 people—a department or even an entire company. At the emergency leadership planning session last weekend, your sales team presented a revenue forecast 20-35% below last year. Your finance team predicted that bad debts will triple this year and credit will be unavailable, which means you need to find an additional 10% cash in your operations.

Worse yet, your employee payroll costs will grow by 3%, driven by increases in unemployment insurance and other state/federal payroll costs. Employee costs are 65% of your total expenses, so no matter how creative you are you know that the solution must eventually include reductions in employee expenses.

The Challenge

In stressful situations most people and organizations tend to circle the wagons, collapsing inside a small group of senior execs who run the business. Cultural values such as integrity, teamwork, and innovation are great for the boom times, but in difficult times our instinct is just the opposite. Our cultural statement that “people are our most important asset” rings hollow when we know that we must reduce employee costs by one third. How can we expect teamwork when reductions will inevitably pit team leaders against each other for inadequate resources? Who will volunteer to leave the team? Fear can constrict communications and limit feedback.

The Process

Ironically, your corporate culture statement may point the way to an effective process. If people are, in fact, your most important asset, communicate with them right now.

They are already talking with each other, already guessing about the challenges facing the organization and guessing at the possible solutions, which can start rumors that are usually far worse than the reality.

Bring them into the process at every level by opening the communication channels. Describe the challenge in as much detail as possible and in as many different forums as possible—send group emails, set up group meetings, and meet personally with the key people on your team.

Share the uncertainties also. Of the three common corporate virtues—integrity, teamwork, and innovation—the responsibility for integrity falls most heavily right now on you. Tell the truth to your team. Don’t wait and don’t hide in the uncertainties.

Structure the challenge then ask your team for recommendations. Your corporate culture emphasizes teamwork and innovation. Now is the time to count on those virtues as your team develops solutions.

The Solution

The solutions will be unique for each team and for each situation.

While each solution contains a set of action steps, the larger and most valuable elements of the solution are team ownership and acceptance. Grass-roots solutions developed by the teams almost always gain greater ownership and acceptance than top-down solutions imposed from above. However, grass-roots solutions are almost always messier.

How will your organization tolerate and accept a number of grass-roots solutions, each unique and each with distinct peculiarities? That is one of your challenges as a leader.

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Last week I wrote about both the need and approaches for management to communicate bad news openly and honestly. Wes Ball commented on the need to keep employees involved, which is what I was planning to talk about today.

The language of employee involvement keeps changing, so if you want to do more research, “engage,” in its many forms, seems to be the term of choice for now.

There are five basic rules that must be followed when your focus is to create, enhance or increase engagement.

Rule One: Engagement is based on trust. If employees don’t trust their management then management can forget about engaging its employees.

Rule Two: Engagement requires involvement. Asking for employee input after the decision(s) are already made is a con and breaks trust.

Rule Three: Engagement is based on fairness. Treating a select minority as royalty and the rest like replaceable dirt disengages everyone (including the royalty) and breaks trust.

Rule Four: Engagement requires management to make its decisions first for the sake of the company, second for the sake of the group and third for the sake of themselves. Done in any other order break trust.

Rule Five: Engagement requires courage, authenticity and genuineness (see Notes). Any form of lie/cheat/steal/trash breaks trust.

And while Rule One is the primary rule it is also the corollary of the other four.

Engaging your people, whatever your level of management, starts in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

No matter how well taught, implementing the mechanics of engagement can proceed no further than your belief in, and adherence to, the five rules.

If your MAP acknowledges a need to break the rules don’t waste your time on engagement efforts, because they are doomed to fail. That energy would be better used on recruitment, since your attrition rate will be far higher than any layoff could account for.

NOTE: Two of the best sources on engagement mechanics are Steve Roseler and David Zinger.

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