Are you one of the thousands of managers who spend your days trying to increase productivity and improve your company’s bottom line and you nights worrying that you aren’t doing it fast enough—if at all?
Does your company hire experts to teach motivation and employee engagement techniques?
Do you twist in the wind trying to implement complex, sometimes costly, approaches?
Why?
Why complex when some of the smartest CEOs, advisors and academics are all saying the same thing?
Simply put, in the words of Tony Hsieh, if your employees are happy they will make your customers happy; if your customers are happy they’ll spend more; if they spend more your bottom line will grow.
Saturday I gave you multiple links showing just how simple and inexpensive engaging your people can be—but not everybody reads Saturday.
So, instead of writing yet another post on engagement, I thought provide a video from Guy Kawasaki, who talks about how to “enchant” your employees.
His advice is simple and doable, although it does require the right MAP.
The only cost may be to your ego, since in order to implement it you need to change.
That’s because the reality we each live in is perceived through our own MAP and that perception is reality.
We filter our mental, emotional and physical surroundings through our MAP and, like snowflakes, no two people have identical MAP, so no two people perceive identically.
I can’t live in your mind any more than you can live in mine, so no matter how close our worldviews seem, they will never be identical.
Does perception influence corporate culture? Absolutely.
Look at Google, since it’s one of the most discussed corporate cultures it’s easy to compare perceptions. Outsiders usually mention the stock options, food, concierge services and in-house massages first, while insiders hottest buttons are the 20% time to work on their own ideas, how well they are heard, opportunity to make a difference, and respect shown at all levels.
Consider the manager, whether CEO or team leader, who describes his organization’s culture as flexible, open, fair and motivated, while the workers see it as inflexible and regimented.
Aside from bosses who don’t walk their talk, the difference is often perception, i.e., what is a tight ship to the manager is micromanaging to the staff.
Although culture is a product of MAP, everyone needs to be on the same page. That requires the culture-setters/enablers to listen to the perceptions of all those in their organization—especially when what they hear is uncomfortable.
Once heard, they need to act; they need to do what it takes so their people’s cultural perception is the same as their cultural vision.
“I thought the whole process was more geared toward problem-solving than to me talking about who I was as an applicant and I liked that.” Andrew Snyder, 25
Hiring is in the top three, if not number one, of actions that ensure success, because it is having the right people that builds the strong teams that juice creativity and make it possible for the company to pivot as needed.
Hiring well means interviewing well and while there are many approaches to hiring there is nothing that can take the place of a really good interviewing process and well-trained interviewers.
Teams are old hat in some industries, but in others they are considered radically innovative and startup Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School is in that category.
The year-old startup, more than three years in the planning, received 2,700 applications for 42 openings in each class.
The applicants were first screened by traditional methods (grades, SAT scores, etc.) and 239 were invited to interview—and that is where things changed.
Driven by research, Carilion decided that (1) excellent communication and (2) strong social skills were must haves for any candidate they accepted.
The first is a growing catalog of studies that pin the blame for an appalling share of preventable deaths (98,000 deaths each year) on poor communication among doctors, patients and nurses that often results because some doctors, while technically competent, are socially inept.
The second and related trend is that medicine is evolving from an individual to a team sport.
Rather than rely on an interview with one recruiter, Carilion utilized a different approach called Multiple Mini Interviews (M.M.I.)
The system grew out of research that found that interviewers rarely change their scores after the first five minutes, that using multiple interviewers removes random bias and that situational interviews rather than personal ones are more likely to reveal character flaws, said Dr. Harold Reiter, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who developed the system.
Here’s how it works,
…the school invited candidates to the admissions equivalent of speed-dating: nine brief interviews that forced candidates to show they had the social skills to navigate a health care system in which good communication has become critical.
MMI is used by eight other medical schools including Stanford and UCLA.
It’s a great approach, especially for screening out those who believe their vocation or actions confer god-like status—and the ego to go with it. Those types don’t play well with others and are rarely, if ever, strong team players.
I’ve been a fan of team hiring for years and done correctly the speed interviews bump it to the next level; a far smarter approach than Google’s algorithm or the normal one-on-one, with an introduction to a few team members.
For more than a decade at RampUp Solutions and for the last five years at MAPping Company Success I’ve coached and written about what managers need to do to motivate and engage their teams and what employees really want from their managers. Others have been saying similar stuff for far longer.
We’ve been telling them what is most important to employees, i.e., clear communications on everything, including where the team is going and why, support and opportunities to grow, etc.
Nothing you haven’t heard before, but mostly anecdotal—no hard science to support it, so we end up preaching to the choir, not converting the non-believers.
Like Google.
Google employees deal in facts and stats, stuff that can be munched, crunched and analyzed, and have little use for anything else.
“So, as only a data-mining giant like Google can do, it began analyzing performance reviews, feedback surveys and nominations for top-manager awards. They correlated phrases, words, praise and complaints.”
And guess what?
The data supported the same results that those of us without data have been saying for years.
But Google took it a step further and prioritized the list based on hard numbers.
And of eight core employee preferences do you know what came in dead last?
Technical skill and technical skill had been Google’s main criteria for promotion.
This finally brings us to my main point, which, this time, is supported by statistical research.
“Technical skill” covers far more ground than most people think. It refers to any hard science (math, engineering, chemistry, etc.), but also to soft sciences (psychology, social science, etc.), sales, finance, the arts—just about anything in which humans develop expertise.
The lesson here is that technical superiority does not predict success in a management/leadership role.
Managerial success is based on a person’s ability to connect in a meaningful way to those she manages and provide what each one needs to produce and grow.
Not new information, but now that it’s backed by hard science and with Google as the role model the choir just got a whole lot larger.
I was talking with a manager this week who was dreading doing his required annual reviews.
After describing his relationship with each of his people, he went on to tell me what he needed to say and how each would respond.
I asked why he was so sure and he said “because they always respond that way.”
Remind you of your own situations?
How many times have you had a conversation with a manager, peer or subordinate and walked away shaking your head thinking, “I knew I’d get that response.”
I know I have.
But did they respond to the content or the presentation?
I call it AMS syndrome and it infects all of us at various times.
AMS stands for assumption, manipulation, self-fulfilling prophesy and I first wrote about it shortly after starting this blog five years ago.
No one indulges in AMS intentionally; it’s purely subconscious. It’s driven by experience, not just our own, but friends, stuff we’ve read, movies, TV, etc.
Anything that seeds our thinking with expectations, whether specific or vague; those expectations convert into active assumptions, which causes us to present out content in ways that elicit the exact result we thought we would get, i.e., self-fulfilling prophesy.
This is the conversation I had with my client as well as emailing him the links I’ve included above.
I got this email from him today, “I’ll be damned, you were right. Reviews went great. Thanks!”
Think about all the information that comes your way, especially if you are an executive.
It’s usually shared at peer level and (maybe) one or two levels down.
But full sharing of that information should be embedded deeply in your company’s culture.
In fact, when information, particularly competitive and market intelligence, is widely disseminated throughout the organization it juices innovation and boosts productivity.
Why?
Because increasing the number of people with access to the information increases the odds for breakthrough thinking and reduces the risk of wheel-spinning.
An article on a competitor’s product can spark an engineer’s original design idea;
gossip about changing industry dynamics can prevent a stumble in marketing;
an investment report on a new service offering can suggest an innovative sales approach to a desirable customer.
Highly visible industry developments circulate swiftly and prompt immediate strategy meetings and fast responses, but the rest of the information often languishes; instead, it needs to be easily accessible by everyone.
Think about it, everybody in your company picks up valuable industry intelligence along with potentially valuable gossip.
CEOs receive strategy reports by investment firms, management consulting companies, along with high level information and gossip from the Board.
Managers receive reports from hired industry experts and publications.
Marcom and others interact with the media.
Salespeople gain information from customers.
Engineers and others observe competitive equipment at trade shows.
Admin and other support people hear and overhear stuff, often because they are ignored by those at higher levels.
People talk—at tradeshows, networking events, industry conferences and seminars, as well as at social events, bars, restaurants, etc. Most people spend at least part of that time talking about business-related topics.
Unfortunately, some managers derive their power through information control.
Smart managers make sure that the information is shared, up, down, and horizontally, by using internal blogs, intranets, wikis, etc. Further, they actively work to encourage everybody to read and discuss it.
Since the goal is to encourage everybody to share everything, no matter the source, all posts should include attribution; a public thank you to the person who took the time to share it.
Whether formal (reports, white papers, news) or informal (conversations, hearsay, gossip) the content needs to be accurately assessed and valued.
There is no way to predict what bit of knowledge will spark the creative process, so be sure that your people have full access everything available in an easily searchable format.
It is elegant proof of what Gladwell says, as well as a warning call to the stupidity of wasting our world’s human resources.
On a much smaller scale managers waste their human resources every day through “positional deafness,” i.e., only soliciting and/or hearing thoughts, ideas and suggestions from those at X level or higher.
I’ve never understood why managers expect workers who were consistently ignored and shut down to suddenly start contributing because they receive a promotion.
Nobody suddenly develops a brain as a result of being promoted.
If they were good enough to promote then they should have been good enough to listen to in their previous positions.
If they can’t contribute in the position for which they were hired, why hire them at all?
Even new grads hired for their potential need to be heard; they are like eggs and like eggs they must be cared for if they are to hatch.
Managers afflicted by positional deafness often experience high turnover and lament the lack of loyalty, especially in “more junior workers.”
But the term ‘junior’ is very subjective; for some managers it refers to those with just a couple of years of experience, for others it’s a level within the company and for still others it’s relative, with the baseline how long it took them to finally be heard.
It’s easy to know if you suffer from positional deafness, just consider the sources of your input over the last quarter and what you did with it.
Better yet, ask the people you trust to tell you the truth, not just what you want to hear.
I have to laugh every time I see a reference to Management-By-Walking-Around (MBWA) that creates the impression that it’s a hot new management tool.
Hot, yes; new, no.
MBWA dates to 1940 and is a management technique instituted by Dave Packard at the founding of HP; it’s “marked by personal involvement, good listening skills and the recognition that “everyone in an organization wants to do a good job.”"
I’ve written about it before and when I looked at that post I found little that needed changing, go here it is again.
Remember Management-By-Walking-Around? It’s an oldie, but a goodie.
Great managers work to spend at least 25% of their time wandering around chatting and building trust with their people.
Don’t have time? Maybe that’s because you never really thought abut the benefits. Getting to know your people this way helps you to
spot high-potential workers;
raise your trust quotient with employees;
improve retention;
attract talent;
discover molehills before they’re mountains, and, most importantly, it’s the best, if not only, way to
know what’s really going on.
But to work it must be the norm—that means it needs to be done constantly, not just when there’s a problem.
Consistent, casual visits make people feel comfortable and encourages them to chat—saying what they are thinking without editing it. To pass on information, rumors, and the like without wondering or worrying that it will boomerang and hurt them.
While wandering, you’ll hear enough to validate or repudiate what you heard from somewhere else. It lets you protect your sources—which means they’ll continue to pass on information—and it helps you avoid acting on erroneous information.
The higher you rise in the organization the more important this intelligence becomes.
One of the greatest dangers for any manager is getting isolated and hearing only a sanitized or slanted version of what’s going on within the group, department or company. This is especially true for the CEO and senior staff.
Bottom-line—get off your duff, out of your office, wander around, say hi, listen, be a sponge and soak it all up.
Invest the time—that’s what managers do—and it will pay off handsomely!
MBWA works best when it is embedded in your MAP, as well as part of your organization’s cultural DNA.
Did you know that there is no “real” reality?
I was talking with a manager this week who was dreading doing his required annual reviews.
Think about all the information that comes your way, especially if you are an executive.
I’ve 
I have to laugh every time I see a reference to Management-By-Walking-Around (MBWA) that creates the impression that it’s a hot new management tool.
Subscribe to MAPping Company Success 