Managing, retaining and hiring employees are three of the most important actions I any company of any size and in any location.
It’s ironically amusing that it amazed some of the biggest names in workforce research to find that minimally improved management yielded enormous payback. Of course, workers have been saying that for decades when they vote with their feet.
What’s worth as much as a 25% increase in your labor force, or a 65% increase in the amount of your invested capital? A one-point improvement in your company’s management practices! That’s the shocking conclusion of in-depth study conducted by researchers at McKinsey, Stanford, and the London School of Economics that looked at more than 4,000 companies in the US, Asia, and Europe.
Fred Wilson is a top VC who also has a ton of common sense; while his focus is startups his advice is applicable to any company. Here he discusses six requisites to retaining your people.
There isn’t one secret method to retain employees but there are a few things that make a big difference. (…) Communication…, Getting the hiring process right…, Culture and Fit…, Promote from within…, Assess yourself, your team, and your company…, Pay your team well.
The most successful people in business approach their work differently than most. See how they think–and why it works.
Every manager looks for good ways to learn about candidates and every candidate loves insight as to what they might be asked. Inc. suggests managers ask the same questions about previous jobs.
Go through each job and ask the same three questions:
How did you find out about the job?
What did you like about the job before you started?
Why did you leave?
Finally, when job hunting resumes are key, so it’s good to know why, when and how to better your chances. Here are six examples (five were hired) of using creativity to get noticed. After that, you need plenty of substance to back it up.
“One-in-five HR managers reported that they spend less than 30 seconds reviewing applications and around 40 percent spend less than one minute,” Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder said in a study released today.
Are you a member of ExpertCEO? If not I suggest that you check it out.
The community is populated by founders, startup executives and investors (angels and VCs), so it’s a great place to ask questions and get information.
ExpertCEO was founded by others who have been there and done that—or in this case heard that.
Many (most?) of us are or have been VC-funded and had boards loaded with VC directors. When a director is also an investor, and THEIR managers judge them only by their financial performance, well…it creates an interesting dynamic.
Through contributions from its VC members, ExpertCEO created a hilarious set of VC NonAdmissions: Things a VC Will Never Say.
Be sure to visit the site and see additional submissions from the membership.
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Last year, when I had more time, I occasionally wrote for Technorati; this article was published there first.
Company vs. Societal Culture
There are many companies and other organizations that pride themselves on their diversity and the effective programs that opened opportunities for women, but are they effective in changing the way people actually think?
Not so much.
MIT is an excellent case study, especially since it was an MIT study 12 years ago that triggered many changes; not just in academia, but in the corporate world, too.
However, changing organizational culture is easy in comparison to changing societal attitudes.
Let me use a bit of personal history to illustrate.
In 1977 I joined MRI as a recruiter. Fortunately for me the manager with whom I interviewed left and it was his second in command who actually made the decision to hire me (his predecessor thought I was too pushy).
I was given a choice of two areas, insurance and telecom, and I chose telecom.
Telecom meant engineering and included military, e.g., microwave, RF, radar, etc. I worked telecom for 12 years, migrating from the military/industrial stuff to commercial voice and data. Another woman worked a biomedical desk.
Although we were both in the top producers circle all 12 years I can still remember other managers at the beginning asking my boss how he managed us and what he did if we cried. And the (usually) unstated assumption by male recruiters that we closed our deals by sleeping with the clients. (I found this hysterically funny considering the number of clients, most of mine on the East Coast, and the time required for the “visits.”)
Today the accusation is more general, that women are promoted because they are women, not because they are good at what they do.
“No one is getting tenure for diversity reasons, because the women themselves feel so strongly that the standards have to be maintained.” –Marc A. Kastner, Dean of the School of Science, MIT
When I am working with clients to change/shift their company’s culture I remind them that the most they can hope for is solid functional change. It is unlikely, if not impossible, that their efforts will actually change the way people think.
And I always remind them how far away we still are from Bella Abzug’s definition of success, although I must admit we are much closer to that reality in politics.
“Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.”
“To the extent that creativity is about the recombination of existing ideas, then combining ideas that haven’t been connected before creates the potential to produce something new and useful.” –Roy Chua, assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School.
Research finds that innovation only results when there is a high level of affective trust.
…”cognitive trust,” an intellectual appreciation of another person’s skills, abilities, and reliability; and “affective trust,” an emotional belief that another person has one’s best interests at heart.
I have no research to back this up, but I bet affective trust is just as important to people with the same cultural background, but other differences, such as gender.
Over the decades I’ve talked with thousands of people and none of them were willing to take a risk or show their vulnerabilities to someone they didn’t trust, whether boss, colleague or spouse.
Finding ways to measure and improve affective trust in your organization will provide a sound foundation for creating a culture of innovation.
Yesterday I received the following email from Sean.
Hi Miki, I need some advice. When I graduated I accepted a position with a company I had interned with. The job isn’t terrific and I took it mainly because it gave me the opportunity to learn a lot in a short time and participate in various training programs. I was excited when my manager chose me for leadership training, which was supposed to fast track me into a more senior role. Pretty heady stuff for someone just a year out of college. The problem is that the leadership training feels more like brainwashing. But I don’t really have anything to compare to, so I thought I would write and see if this is typical.
Reading this reminded me of a post late last year by Jim Stroup over at Managing Leadership; I sent it to Sean and decided to share both question and answer with you.
As the modern leadership movement’s (MLM) many and various advocates compete for attention, we inevitably find ourselves being bombarded with simplistic insights, each one, its “discoverer” will argue, the very cornerstone of a brave new world that can be built only on its foundation.
As it happens, if you can dismiss the ludicrous promises made for many of these, what is left may still be useful to peruse, even thought-provoking and helpful.
Unfortunately, though, the intensity of our angst over how we each individually relate to the pseudo-vital subject of leadership can make it difficult to distinguish between the product and its packaging.
This is particularly so in the MLM – with its devastatingly misplaced focus on the uniquely special attributes of the individual. Leadership is what you are, they pontificate. What you are – if you are the right things – is leadership, they add with trivializing profundity.
An exceptionally unnerving quality can become embroiled in this unstable mixture when the advocates of a particular insight-based approach come to uncritically accept their own hype. They can then become dogmatic about it, almost fanatical. Even not-so-subtly intimidating.
A manager recently wrote me about just such a leadership sect, if you will. The group is a well-known leadership consultancy of international reach, and the beneficiary of explosive growth built on the back of a run-away best-selling book by the founder. This book presented the well-worn idea – but with spectacularly well-tuned spin in the telling – that there is an inseparable link between success and wisdom in one’s person and private life, and one’s business position and career.
This group had been hired by my correspondent’s organization to present its leadership training program to the outfit’s managers. It seems, though, that some disquiet was caused by the presenters’ almost glassy-eyed praise of the founding principles of the program philosophy. Evidently, it was even described to the attendees as something that would – indeed, that must – have a “spiritual” impact on them.
The last straw for my correspondent was when there appeared to develop real, personal pressure on the attendees to demonstrate their willingness to drink the Kool-Aid. It seems as though an inordinate amount of time was spent ensuring that each attendee had genuinely internalized – rather than merely stipulated to for the sake of the argument – the philosophical underpinnings of the program. Those that resisted drew unsettlingly focused attention, and it seemed as though the program would not progress until they capitulated.
At this point, the alarm bells sounding in this manager’s head succeeded in drowning out the liturgical droning of the acolytes. He left the multi-day workshop, which had been a requirement, and explained to his seniors why.
When you hear alarm bells yourself during any sort of presentation – especially a workshop like this one – always heed them. Try to determine what they might mean. And never let yourself be intimidated by those who want to rush you along into group-thinking lock-step with their positions without allowing you time for calm, clear deliberation. Get out of the hot-house and evaluate the comprehensiveness and consistency of the case presented yourself. Make your own decisions, and draw your own conclusions.
Certainly, don’t turn into a mindless “follower” of a “leadership” of this ilk. If you’re alert to the phenomenon, you’ll be surprised to find how much of this kind of “training” so dangerously fits this mold.
I highly recommend Jim’s work, and especially his book, if you are interested in debunking leadership myths and creating a leadership culture instead, nor is this first time I’ve recommended him to you.
This is the second set of political quotes (the first is here). I don’t know where you live, but I just received our 2012 Primary Voters’ pamphlet and it’s enough to make you weep. Granted, for years I’ve used my vote against someone I can’t stand as opposed to voting for someone I like, but there are some races that I can’t stand any of the candidates.
Before considering the candidates let’s give some thought to politics and politicians—conceptually, that is.
Oscar Ameringer provides a good basic definition to set the mood, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.”Wow; 25 words that say it all.
So how would you describe a politician?
According to Texas Guinan, “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.”
Nikita Khrushchev reminds us that people aren’t that different no matter where they are,“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” (Anybody else thinking Alaska?)
I find John Quinton’s description very apt, especially these days, “Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.”
But it is Henry Cate, VII who has the final word on politicians, “The problem with political jokes is they get elected.”
This is the second set of political quotes (the first is here). I don’t know where you live, but I just received our 2012 Primary Voters’ pamphlet and it’s enough to make you weep. Granted, for years I’ve used my vote against someone I can’t stand as opposed to voting for someone I like, but there are some races that I can’t stand any of the candidates.
Before considering the candidates let’s give some thought to politics and politicians—conceptually, that is.
Oscar Ameringer provides a good basic definition to set the mood, “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.”Wow; 25 words that say it all.
So how would you describe a politician?
According to Texas Guinan, “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.”
Nikita Khrushchev reminds us that people aren’t that different no matter where they are,“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.” (Anybody else thinking Alaska?)
I find John Quinton’s description very apt, especially these days, “Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.”
But it is Henry Cate, VII who has the final word on politicians, “The problem with political jokes is they get elected.”
Every so often I read something that seems to fly in the face of accepted practice or is contrary to previous expert information.
For example
According to the media it’s a given that the young, college educated, both students and recent alumni, are focused on following their passions, but, as the saying goes, it ain’t necessarily so.
…91 percent of college students and 95 percent of Millennials (here referring to college graduates between ages of 21 and 32) said that being financially secure was either essential or very important to them.
Our conscious mind is pretty good at following rules, but our unconscious mind—our ability to “think without attention”—can handle a larger amount of information.
“Guilt-prone people tend to carry a strong sense of responsibility to others, and that responsibility makes other people see them as leaders,”says Becky Schaumberg, a doctoral candidate in organizational behavior who conducted the research with Francis Flynn, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Organizational Behavior.
If you were publishing something you wanted people to remember would you choose a simple font or a fancy one that was more difficult to read? If you said ‘simple’ you’d be wrong.
Fancy fonts might be harder to read, but the messages they convey are easier to recall, according to boffins at Princeton and Indiana Universities.
Speaking of publishing; does freedom of speech mean you can use any words you want on the Net with impunity? Maybe, but words like ‘leak’, ‘flu’ and ‘gas’ could put you on a watch list.
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Cheating is nothing new, and perhaps the fact that cheating is so universal at all levels of school is partly responsible for the easy slide into various types of corporate cheating like Facebook’s infamous privacy stunts and its gaming words.
Many of Google’s recent actions seem to violate its “don’t be evil” mantra.
And according to Marco Camisani Calzolari, a corporate communication and digital languages professor in Milan, 46% of followers of corporate Twitter accounts are bots.
“The number of followers is no longer a valid indicator of the popularity of a Twitter user, and can no longer be analyzed separately from qualitative information.”
The financial industry may lead the pack when it comes to behaving unethically, but they certainly don’t have an exclusive on unethical behavior.
Company executives are paid to maximize profits, not to behave ethically. Evidence suggests that they behave as corruptly as they can, within whatever constraints are imposed by law and reputation.
Now it seems that the sleeping giant, AKA, the public, AKA, your customers, are waking up to the problem and their trust levels are plummeting—with cause.
Customers and users have no reason to blindly accept your word that you’re trustworthy, so don’t expect them to.
Companies from startups to giants have to prove they are trustworthy—not once, but over and over as long as they are in business.
Option Sanity™ is trustworthy.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
After the 2010 debut of the film “The Social Network,” which made Mark Zuckerberg and his band of Facebook friends famous: the public became enthralled with technology geeks much as it was with movie stars.
Two years before The Social NetworkJesse Draper, great granddaughter of California’s first venture capitalist, created and hosts the Silicon Valley Internet talk show “The Valley Girl Show” where entrepreneurs do stupid stuff in the name of “taking themselves less seriously.”
Considering the media focus on entrepreneurs can a reality show be far behind?
No, but don’t look for substance over form.
Among those is Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s colorful sister who left Facebook last summer and recently signed on to be an executive producer of a Bravo reality show that will chronicle the hard-partying life of 20-something entrepreneurs.
Watching anyone think and work on a computer is boring, but creative editing should effectively eliminate the thought, work and effort leaving only the stuff that will cause viewers to shake their heads and adequately feed the media hype machine.
Vivek Wadhwa’s, a Duke University researcher who worked with the Kauffman Foundation, survey of over 500 startups operating in “high-growth industries” showed that the average founder of a successful company launched his or her venture at the surprisingly high age of 40. The study also found that people over 55 are almost twice as likely to launch high-growth startups than those aged 20 to 34.
And gray entrepreneurs outpacing green ones isn’t an isolated trend that’s only occurred in the past few years. “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34,” says Dane Stangler, a research manager at Kauffman.
Of course, young, good looking, single, articulate folks in their twenties who can talk a great story about their world-changing app over drinks at a cool bar are better TV material than those who labor and then go home to spouse, family and mortgage.
My guess is the show will offer about as much reality as does the Real Housewives franchise.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name] Share the story of your startup today. Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch. Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Managing, retaining and hiring employees are three of the most important actions I any company of any size and in any location.
There are many companies and other organizations that pride themselves on their diversity and the effective programs that opened opportunities for women, but are they effective in changing the way people actually think?
Reading this reminded me of a post late last year by Jim Stroup over at 
This is the second set of political quotes (the first is 
Cheating is 
