It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

We all know change is the only constant, but is change linear? Does everyone see changes the same way? Does it even matter? And if it does matter, how does it affect your work as a manager? Read other Golden Oldies here

The other day I said to a friend that I’ve turned into a real wimp. He thought I was kidding and said that I was the last person he associated with wimping out on anything.

I was surprised, but as we discussed it I realized that what I saw as wimpiness he saw as strength.

That got me to thinking how often what one person calls wimping out may be another person’s greatest act of courage. Likewise, what moves one person can leave another cold.

It’s all relative depending on your MAP, the circumstances and even the mood you’re in.

Sounds obvious, but it’s important knowledge, not information, but knowledge—maybe even wisdom—for any person responsible for motivating others, whether at work or in everyday life.

Image credit: nookiez CC license

Good mood; weird mood; bad mood; silly mood.

We all have moods and those moods affect everything we do.

Moods are affected by all kinds of stuff, such as the weather.

Good weather = good mood; bad weather = bad mood.

In turn, our actions reflect our mood, rather than reflecting the real world; take online restaurant reviews

“The best reviews are written on sunny days between 70 and 100 degrees,” researcher Saeideh Bakhshi concluded. “A nice day can lead to a nice review. A rainy day can mean a miserable one.”

Likewise, the culture created by each boss actively effects moods, thus having a profound effect on workers creativity, productivity and a slew of other attitudes.

Bad cultures create negative moods.

Negative moods can lead to a procrastination doom loop, in which an individual perpetually delays important tasks while waiting for an angel of inspiration to visit.

When you’re the boss, no matter what you say or how you squirm, the culture that exists in your own organization is a direct result of you.

Flickr image credit: kuhnmi

The hourly base wage for fast-food workers in Denmark is $20USD, yet McDonald’s, Burger King, etc., are still profitable.

Try to sell a minimum wage increase to just $15 and you’ll be told that it would destroy jobs and close businesses.

But, as the song goes, it ain’t necessarily so.

Despite starting out with just a $35,000 investment in 1978, The Container Store founder and CEO Kip Tindell has grown his business to one that has 67 US locations and rings up annual sales of nearly $800 million.

Equally impressive is the fact that he’s done all that while paying his retail employees nearly twice the industry average.

So what does Tindell know that other bosses of retail businesses don’t? You get what you pay for…

• “The 1=3 rule,” i.e., one great employee is as productive as three OK employees, so he gets three times the productivity of an average worker at only two times the cost.
• Turnover is lower substantially reducing hiring and training costs.
• Annual raises up to 8% of their salaries, based on performance, but
• encourages managers to evaluate employees based on their value to the company.

The result is the average Container Store retail salesperson makes nearly $50,000; about double the national average for retail.

When it comes to wages, Kip Tindell is the Twenty-first Century’s Henry Ford.

Ford astonished the world in 1914 by offering a $5 per day wage ($110 today), which more than doubled the rate of most of his workers. (…) The move proved extremely profitable…

The minimum wage war should become a lot more interesting when Tindell takes over as chair of the National Retail Federation.

It’s a lot harder to argue with success.

Flickr image credit: Tomer Gabel

Performance reviews are a frequent subject of management gurus, the media and pundits of every variety, myself included.

More recently the focus has been on what’s wrong with reviews and how they often act as a demotivator.

A new article in strategy + business uses brain science to look at exactly why and how reviews demotivate.

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On another front, it’s Leadership Development Carnival time and the offerings are excellent. Click on over and I’m sure you’ll find information that will be of active use both at work and in your non-work life.

YouTube credit: strategy + business

What makes a great boss?

What traits do they have in common?

Obviously, great bosses are

• excellent communicators
• good at hiring,
• superb motivators,
• world-class team-builders, and
• caring mentors

Beyond those basics, with almost no exceptions, all are egalitarians.

That basic MAP trait permeates their actions and is apparent in their communications.

Great bosses, no matter the level of interaction, speak and act with the same respect, interest, appreciation, and consideration that they would want in similar circumstances.

Flickr image credit: Celestine Chua

Do you like your boss?

Or do you love your boss?

Obviously, the global staff at online luxury fashion retailer Net-APorter loves theirs.

The company was founded in 2000 and MARK Sebba joined in 2003—not the best of times for the dot com world.

During Sebba’s 11 years as CEO Net-APorter grew to €550m sales last year, 2,500 people and a valuation around €2.5bn

When he stepped down from that role the end of July his people found an amazing way to show their feelings.

The comments at YouTube are pretty cynical; saying that he must have known about the tribute, etc., but that’s not really the point.

Watch the faces of the staff and you’ll see emotion that can’t be faked.

Whether he knew or not, his staff’s feelings are very real.

YouTube credit: Diagonal View

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Today is Valentine’s Day and a good time to consider how best to show your love for your team.

Basically, there are two ways bosses show their love, either with cool tools or magic minutes.

Think about the old saying, “give a fool a tool and you’ll still have a fool,” which is frequently forgotten in our tech-happy world.

For discussion purposes, the term ‘fool’ denotes an underperforming person or group.

Showing your love by showering them with the latest, greatest technology or apps is unlikely to turn the fools around.

That’s where the magic minutes come in, because the majority of fools really aren’t fools.

They’re more like lost souls looking for a path to productivity, personal satisfaction and success.

Most people want their company to succeed, want to do their work well and want to feel good about what they do.

And whether you like it or not, when you chose to found a company you took on the duel roles of leader and manager.

That means your real job is spending whatever minutes are required to guide them to the path out of fooldom and into becoming an appreciated member of a powerful team.

It’s also one of the most important and satisfying experiences you will ever have no matter what happens to your company.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Parallels are constantly drawn between business and sports—building and motivating teams, leading in all its many guises and, of course, the importance and power of stars—whether first round draft choice or coder from the hot startup.

I am not a believer in stars and have written numerous times on why they are a bad idea.

I frequently told I’m wrong, especially sports-wise; I’m told that every winning team has stars or they wouldn’t be winning

Not true and thanks to Craig Bohl, North Dakota State’s football coach, I have someone to point who has a very winning team sans stars.

Since 2011, the Bison have posted Division I’s best winning percentage (36-2, .947), slightly ahead of Alabama (33-2, .943) and Oregon (32-3, .914). N.D.S.U. has beaten four Football Bowl Subdivision opponents in four years, most recently the defending Big 12 champion, Kansas State, in this season’s opener on Aug. 30, and is 7-3 against F.B.S. teams since 2006.

Bohl’s understands that with the right attitude and hard work he can build his own star team.

“A lot of our guys come from the farm or hard-working backgrounds, and we’ve leveraged that as we’ve developed our football team. It goes a little counterculture to the way college football is now, with spreads, up-tempo offenses and all those other things. We’ve taken a blue-collar approach on playing hard-nosed, physical, disciplined football, great defense, controlling the football. That’s how we’ve won.”

He’s pragmatic; he doesn’t believe his winners have to walk on water; they just need to be damn good.

“I don’t think there’s a team in the country that would absolutely destroy us, 70-0, or anything like that. Obviously, there are teams that have more talent than we do. I won’t deny that either. But I think we could hold our own with a lot of teams out there.”

Bohl’s approach isn’t rocket science, other than few other coaches want to bother building a team this way or prefer splashier players whose glory can provide a halo effect for coaches and teammates alike.

While Bohl qualifies as a star, and there is constant talk about who will lure him away, he doesn’t seem to be interested.

And he stays for the same reason talented employees always stay.

“When you find a place that fits your value system, the allure of ‘what the big time is’ is not such a big hook.”

Image credit: Ilco

Five years ago I wrote about a coaching assignment that was the result of the prevailing attitude of praising and rewarding kids. The manager had already had a similar conversation, but wanted the points driven home by a “third party expert.”

I had the dubious honor of explaining to a 28 year old why he didn’t get a bonus. I started by asking why he thought he deserved one, He said that

• he hadn’t missed a day of work during the year and
• had been on time every day;
• all his assignments were completed on time; and
• he’d done everything exactly as requested.

I spent 20 minutes explaining that 1) the things he listed were his job, what he’d been hired to do and for which, he agreed, he was fairly compensated and 2) the bonus was for people who had

• gone beyond their job description;
• shown imitative; and
• offered help without being asked.

The result of the ‘double dose’ was apparent the following year when that young man won a sizable raise and a merit-based bonus—not always the typical reaction.

I thought about that experience when I read Losing is Good for You, but what really drove home the importance of changing the current paradigm was the comment from KJ, a 24 year old college grad.

I’m 24 and a college graduate, and my peers and I were constantly praised from kindergarten through college. Like in the article, we all got trophies and certificates of achievement in grade and middle school, high grades in high school (partially so we could get into good colleges) and good grades for just showing up to class in college.
Competitive skills are not inherently developed; they are learned. What we have now is a group of young people coming out of college and high school who are just discovering that it takes more than showing up to succeed in life, and it is in no small part due to the “everybody is special” culture that we were steeped in as adolescents. (Emphasis added.)

However, what continues to amaze me is that after more than a decade in the workplace those who learned, changed and were promoted are still raising their kids as special, thus propagating the attitude.

And they do this while simultaneously bemoaning the entitled “it’s enough to show up” attitude of their new hires.

Flickr image credit: Ray Bouknight

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Do you use jargon or plain English when you are discussing stuff with your team or presenting to investors?

Every industry has its own jargon, AKA, terms and language, that people tend to use without thinking.

Any given time period has its own catchphrases and clichés—also used without thinking.

The problem is the former can make a discussion confusing, if not downright inscrutable, to some listeners, while the latter can render your words meaningless—or both.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but when discussing words an example often provides the same clarity.

And far be it for me to spend my time creating one when a perfect example has already been done.

Read it, heed it and take your own precautions to avoid doing it.

Hat tip to KG Charles-Harris for sending the article to me.

Image credit: HikingArtist