It is reality that bloggers, coaches, academics, and other gurus write about how to engage the workforce, build cultures, develop leaders, motivate, and increase retention; companies pay substantial amounts to coaches and consultants to develop and implement programs; management agonizes on how to increase productivity through better use of its human resources.
It is reality that many companies are moving to “just in time” workforces; using temps and contractors at all levels with no health insurance, no vacation, no benefits—hire when you need them and dump when the project is done.
Business Week offers a comprehensive overview of this trend in a cover story entitled The Disposable Worker.
The forecast for the next five to 10 years: more of the same, with paltry pay gains, worsening working conditions, and little job security. Right on up to the C-suite, more jobs will be freelance and temporary, and even seemingly permanent positions will be at greater risk.
Obviously, there are people, especially at more senior levels, who have no problem with this approach; they relish the movement, change and challenge.
But they are the minority.
Everything described in the first paragraph is geared for companies that actually hire their workforce.
Typically, it’s a different set of experts who advise companies on outsourcing and temp workforces.
I ask you:
What will motivate workers to contribute at the level needed in today’s competitive global enviornment when they have nothing vested in the company?
Why should people who may not be there tomorrow put forth the initiative that underlays all leadership today?
How do you engage people when they have no idea how long they’ll be around?
In short, how do you get people to care when they know without a doubt that the company doesn’t care about them?
I think if I read one more op-ed piece saying the path to improving US education is paved with better teachers I’ll scream.
I’m not saying that good teachers aren’t important, but I don’t believe that teachers are the root of the problems.
Before I start with examples, let me ask you this: how well would you perform if you were
terminated for insisting that projects not only be done, but done on time;
poorly compensated in comparison to most people with similar education and experience, but in other industries;
subject to pressure, tirades, insults and having people constantly go over your head to change your decisions; and
shown little respect by your direct reports, indirect reports and management.
Does that sound like an environment that would encourage you to do your utmost? I actually find it surprising that there are as many good, dedicated teachers as there are.
Staying with the current analogy, direct reports = students, indirect reports = parents and management = administrators.
Teaching is like any other form of work—it thrives in a good culture, sags, wilts and gives up in a bad one.
The Dallas Independent School System is a good example of what is happening. DISD is where the teacher was fired at the instigation of parents for being too tough and giving homework—the fact that the kids scored well on tests didn’t count.
It’s DISD that hired new teachers in 2007 with no way to pay them leading to a $64,000,000 budget shortfall that grew to about $84,000,000 in 2008. Their solution was to layoff the teachers—no damage to the administration idiots—maybe they all took math from teachers who passed them rather than lose their jobs.
Her rise in DISD in a span of three years has been frowned upon by some observers. She was making $87,000 as a division manager in 2006 and ended her career grossing around $140,000.
Some DISD trustees had questioned an organizational chart change that left her husband overseeing the department that she worked in. Her boss was reporting to her husband.
Ya think?
And then there is the saga of Taylor Pugh, AKA Tater Tot, who was growing his hair so he could donate it to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients—but his suburban Dallas school saw it as reason for in-school suspension for violating the district dress code.
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Back to our analogy. How engaged, productive and innovative would you be working for a company where management performed similarly?
Dallas isn’t alone; it has plenty of company across the country.
So before ranting and blaming the dismal state of US education on teachers, check out your district and state administrations—and then look in the mirror.
When you’ve coached or written a blog for years you can find yourself answering the same questions over and over, but that’s OK. I’d rather have you drop me a line or use the chat box in the right frame than search for something and become frustrated.
And that’s what happened last night about 10:30.
“Ken” pinged me and asked if I remembered a post that talked about compensation and used a stool as an analogy for the company. He said he’d read it a few years ago and wanted it as part of a presentation for his boss.
No Problem. I’ve used that analogy with clients for years and in posts three times. After I gave Ken the URL he said I should post it again.
I agreed, but added a bit to cover the current situation.
Success is like a 3-legged stool—
Customers / equity-holders / employees
If one leg becomes too long, the stool tips over!
Taking care of the first two is a given, whereas taking care of employees seems to be based on the labor market.
If the market is hot, people are showered with money and perks, as the market cools, so does employee care.
Yes, you can buy people and you can replace people, but it’s very expensive.
In the kind of tough economic times we’re going through people understand when there are no raises and even when their compensation is cut to avoid a layoff.
But if that treatment extends only to workers and lower management, while executive compensation and perks continue, you can count on a steady exodus as business improves.
When the market is tight and companies are throwing cash, stock and perks right and left it’s the wise manager who remembers that people who join for money/stock/perks will leave for more money/stock/perks.
2010 is not only a new year it’s a new decade; are you looking forward to big changes in your life? I am.
I thought I’d take today to tell you about mine and you can use comments to talk about yours.
Fortunately it’s not just good things that end, but also the not-so-good and the downright rotten. That includes 2009 and converting a consulting service into easily useable software and creating a new form of “Help” that is actually useful and useable.
The biggest change on my horizon is (finally) the release Q1 of Option Sanity™, a SAAS (software as a service) product that’s been a bear to develop.
Another change stems from the demise of Leadership Turn, the blog I’ve written for b5 Media for the last two-and-a-half years.
Many of my regular readers from LT are joining our community and that will increase our interaction, i.e., more comments, discussions and requests to address topics of interest to you.
I’m incorporating 3 of Leadership Turn’s weekly features
Tuesday’s Ducks in a Row: offering what-to’s, why-to’s and how-to’s about culture, managing and motivation;
Thursday’s Leadership’s Future: musings and commentary on topics that affect where we go in the future, such as education, attitudes, etc.;
Sunday’s Quotable Quotes which will run in addition to the mY generation comic
Saturday’s article links will be under the new category of Expand Your Mind;
More of my own take on ‘leadership’—why initiative equates to leadership and how it should be a core competency and not just a vision by the person out front;
By the end of the month all my content from Leadership Turn (there were other authors previously) will be posted here and searchable from the main search box (we’re working out the technicalities now).
I have other major changes in the works, either too personal or too boring to share, but since those I’ve mentioned account for 85% of my focus you aren’t missing anything—suffice it to say I’m one of those dinosaurs who chooses not to live my private life online.
Management M&Mis a new weekly feature focusing on various management misses and messes. I hope you’ll send examples from your own experiences for me to use—anonymously, of course.
I found an interesting bit of idiocy in a recent McKinsey survey (free registration required),
Even though overall reliance on financial incentives fell over the past 12 months, a number of companies curtailed their use of nonfinancial ones as well. Thirteen percent of the survey respondents report that managers praise their subordinates less often, 20 percent that opportunities to lead projects or task forces are scarcer, and 26 percent that leadership attention to motivate talent is less forthcoming.
The technical term for this is ‘how stupid can you get’.
At a time when corporations large and small need the highest level of employee engagement just to survive, let alone thrive, they are making every effort to convince their staff that they don’t give a damn about them.
This attitude essentially says ‘you are worth neither money nor time, but I want you to work harder and produce more than ever before’.
The survey also touches on the reason for the idiocy.
…nonfinancial ways to motivate people do, on the whole, require more time and commitment from senior managers. One HR director we interviewed spoke of their tendency to “hide” in their offices—primarily reflecting uncertainty about the current situation and outlook. This lack of interaction between managers and their people creates a highly damaging void that saps employee engagement.
Well, doh.
The higher you move in an organization the more you are required to accomplish your goals through the efforts of others, but the less time you make to do that.
3M is one of the few companies in private industry that is still active in basic research; it pays off because the results are immediately available to the R&D groups.
What’s the secret to fostering this kind of culture; to getting disparate individuals and organizations working together?
Collaboration doesn’t happen by accident.
The company maintains a “…database of technical reports written by the more than 7,000 scientists at the company. Those scientists are spread between a corporate lab devoted to basic research, 40 division labs that essentially form a bridge between that basic science and the market, and 35 international labs.”
It enables “TechForum, an employee-run organization designed to foster communications between scientists in different labs or divisions.”
“Three years ago, 3M also created the “R&D Workcenter” networking Web site, which Mitra describes as a “LinkedIn for 3M scientists.”
But 3M knows that all the technology, all the meet-ups and all the talk aren’t always enough—the wrong kind of competition will quickly kill collaboration.
“Such sharing of resources is almost impossible when different units of a company feel they are competing against each other to deliver better financial results or the next breakthrough technology. But at 3M, employees are expected to collaborate—and are evaluated on their success.”
3M clearly tells its employees at all levels that they are expected to share across all boundaries, but just telling people doesn’t always work. It’s easy to share information without the added intelligence that makes the information truly valuable.
So they measure the success of the effort, not just the act. That is very different—it puts the money where the mouth is and taps into employees’ vested self-interest.
Terms come and terms go, but their meaning stays fairly constant.
Managers used to strive for employee buy-in, ownership, commitment, involvement; today it’s engagement.
Management has worked to develop that behavior for decades, whereas the way to achieve it is as old as humanity.
Disengagement is costly, “Gallup estimates it costs the US economy about $300bn a year and that 17 per cent of employees are “actively” disengaged. These employees each cost their employers $13,000 a year in lost productivity.” That was last year and I’d bet that 2009 will be worse.
Managers of organizations with a high level of engagement know that achieving that is as simple as 1, 2, 3—4.
The 4 acts of engagement are
respect;
encouragement;
support; and
rewards.
This isn’t exactly secret management knowledge. There are thousands of books, hundreds of classes, dozens of blogs and forums all teaching variations on this theme.
So if it’s that simple, why isn’t it put into practice more often?
If you don’t really believe in the value or numbers 1 or 2, you can talk all day and your people will hear what you say as hollow, i.e., no authenticity.
Number 3, support, includes skills training and career development, but how do you provide these when money is tight or, even in good times, when your company doesn’t believe in it?
Ingenuity—not just yours, but your group’s.
Your people aren’t dumb, they know when the company can’t/won’t fund training, but there are tons of ways to work around that, such as building up a broad departmental learning library and sharing their own expertise with each other during organized brown bag lunch sessions.
Number 4 also usually involves money, as it should. But when there’s an authentic, provable lack of funds to provide significant rewards, every company can find enough, monetary and otherwise, to prove that they value their people’s contributions.
Again, people aren’t dumb. If the CEO, execs or their boss fly first class or receive a bonus after telling people that the company can’t afford raises or rewards, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they disengage and eventually leave.
That’s it; not rocket science, but you must do it consistently, sincerely and with great enthusiasm—no matter what else is going on.
Today I have two offerings about money and those who have it and one sanity update.
Let’s start with the sanity. A couple of months ago I asked if women really were less risk-prone and cited a woman=led startup that was planning on doing geo-thermal drilling in the worst earthquake zone in the country; apparently that project has been delayed.
Next, in case you missed it, is the newest listing of the Top 10 for CEO pay. I couldn’t decide between the two versions, CNN and the NY Times, so here are links to both; each has slightly different peripheral content.
Finally, for 30 years the rich have been getting richer. Think about it, in 1977 the top one ten-thousandth of households took home 0.9 percent of the nation’s income; three short decades later it took home 6 percent, but what’s happening now? Will it bounce back and continue? This analysis offers good information and doesn’t require a degree in economics to understand.
Three weeks ago I told you about Jim’s quandary in supporting his CEO’s approach to layoffs, asked what you would suggest he do and in a follow-up post shared more about the culture, the CEO and ideas I’d given Jim. I also promised to tell you the outcome, it’s just taken longer than we expected.
Jim called yesterday and told me that he started by sending links to both posts to his CEO, “Sue;” when she reacted positively he asked permission to send them to the rest of the executive team.
Sue refused, saying that she wanted to send them herself, thanking Jim publicly for taking the initiative to start an alternative ball rolling and ask her executive team to bring still more ideas to a brainstorming session two days later.
Sue also said that she had been horrified by reader reactions; she had really thought that her approach was a fair one until she saw it through outside eyes.
Jim said that the entire exec team was super excited; all of them had been struggling; trying to decide who to lay off, when and how to maintain morale during and after the process.
Here is an overview of what happened at the meeting;
Sue had already discussed a pay cut with the board, but decided that increasing it to 50% would not just be a good gesture, but would help preserve jobs.
She also asked the executive team to accept a 25% cut, which they all did.
The savings from these two moves would prevent immediate layoffs and give them time to take more creative actions.
They agreed that it was important to level with all the employees simultaneously in order to squelch the rumors that had started flying.
The information would include the size of the cuts that Sue and the executives were taking.
The announcement would be by live webcast instead of email to avoid anyone forwarding it outside the company without thinking.
Each vp would schedule a Town Hall meeting immediately after the webcast for his department, including everybody.
After an open discussion and answering questions as transparently and honestly as possible they would ask their people to come up with every possible idea to increase revenue, save money and avoid layoffs.
They decided to set up a suggestion box on the company intranet to make contributing ideas simpler; they chose to use a wiki so that people could comment and add to other’s ideas, stressing that there were no dumb ideas and people should post anything they thought of.
They started implementing as soon as the meeting was over.
Most of the staff were blown away with the salary cuts they had taken. The meetings went over really well and suggestions are pouring in.
The really great thing is a number of the ideas related to increasing revenue, including new market opportunities. Jim says that the sales team really caught fire and is pushing ahead with these and several others that had been shelved for lack of faith.
Almost everyone agreed that they would rather take salary cuts or rotating furloughs to avoid layoffs.
To date, trust levels have skyrocketed, morale is sky-high and, best of all, the sales pipeline is up 4% and growing.
Sometimes bad stuff is the best stuff that can happen—if it is handled well.
It is reality that bloggers, coaches, academics, and other gurus write about how to engage the workforce, build cultures, develop leaders, motivate, and increase retention; companies pay substantial amounts to coaches and consultants to develop and implement programs; management agonizes on how to increase productivity through better use of its human resources.
When you’ve coached or written a blog for years you can find yourself answering the same questions over and over, but that’s OK. I’d rather have you drop me a line or use the chat box in the right frame than search for something and become frustrated.
2010 is not only a new year it’s a new decade; are you looking forward to big changes in your life? I am.
I found an interesting bit of idiocy in a 
Management has worked to develop that behavior for decades, whereas the way to achieve it is as old as humanity.
Let’s start with the sanity. A couple of months ago I asked if 
Jim called yesterday and told me that he started by sending links to both posts to his CEO, “Sue;” when she reacted positively he asked permission to send them to the rest of the executive team.
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