“You’re fired!”

Donald Trump has made those two words made famous since the start of his reality show, but they had power long before that.

‘You’re fired’ are fearsome words; words no one wants to hear form their boss.

They are the ultimate power source for managers, especially those who practice a top-down, command and control style.

The amount of research that has proven that approach to be passé is too great to be cited here (but it is easily googled). And the one place ‘you’re fired’ has never cut any ice is in politics.

It cuts no ice because those in a position to say it have no one to say it to other than their own staff.

Unlike corporate bosses, politicians can’t fire those who disagree with them; who actively work to undermine their vision; who publicly heckle and harangue them.

But at all levels, local, state and national, you see dozens of people running for office whose main qualification is having run a successful business.

Donald Trump is (IMO) a hilarious example of this.

Can you imagine him trying to manage Congress, since he couldn’t fire members that didn’t toe his line? And while Presidents do have that power over their Cabinet members, the political fallout from firing one is enormous.

No matter what political flavor you prefer, consider the applicability of the environment from which they are coming and the political environment to which they want to go.

It’s likely that the higher they were on the corporate or small biz ladder the less likely they will deal well with their loss of power and the reality of today’s politics.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5440002785/

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Here’s a fun fact that’s a great conversation starter, or ender, depending. Do you know who the largest employer in the entire world is? The Indian railway system with more than a million employees.

If that goes over well try this one. What is the most productive day of the workweek? Tuesday.

Speaking of productive, think about Henry Ford. His name invokes images of production lines, the Model T and a new mobility for America. It should also remind you of backyard BBQs, since Ford also invented charcoal briquettes.

These days it takes a real gaffe to discomfit a company—if you can do it at all. How times have changed. When Scott Paper Company first started manufacturing toilet paper they were too embarrassed to put their name on the package.

Cost cutting by the airlines isn’t anything new. In 1987 American saved $40K; doesn’t sound like a big deal until you know that it was done by using one less olive on each salad served in first class.

Here’s a tidbit that would cut deeply into consultant revenue if management actually used it. The average company saved over $7,000 for each employee suggestion that it enacted. Of course, first they have to believe it.

Today wraps up in enough irony to include a bow on the package.

Did you know that the original owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer?

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davef3138/2565322027/

Another month another Leadership Development Carnival hosted by Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender. It’s the perfect way to start your weekend. Click around and you’ll start Monday with great new tools and knowledge to jumpstart your week and your future.

Many thanks to our Carnival Leader, Dan McCarthy from Great Leadership, for allowing me to host this event for a second time.  Be sure to check out his latest post I’m Your Boss, Not Your Friend: 10 Reasons Why Your Boss Shouldn’t be Your Friend

Leadership

Need a little energy to get started on this month’s carnival reading?  Art Petty serves up some Leadership Caffeine: 5 Ideas for Creating a Tenacious Culture

Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership tells the story of when Susan was promoted to team leader, it was the highlight of her career, for about 12 hours in his post A New Boss who Shouldn’t Be One

At times, leadership can be less about your circumstances, what you were born with or what you’ve learned.  Benjamin McCall at ReThink HR explains Leadership is about what you have…

Tanmay Vora from QAspire Blog provides 10 Key Lessons on Leading Virtual Teams Effectively

Leaders shouldn’t just go along with the crowd, according to i4cp’s Productivity Blog.  They should be a positive irritant, as explained in the post Thank You for Being Irritating

Linda Fisher Thornton discusses Judging and Bullying: Are They Different? at Leading in Context

Changing Winds blog shares their thoughts for dealing with the rapid advancements in telecommunications technology in Leading in a Virtualized World: 10 Traits of a Cyber Leader

Jane Perdue at Get Your Leadership BIG On! talks about All the Broken Leaders

Guy Farmer at Unconventional Training discusses Leadership Training: Are You an Effective Leader?

Jesse Lyn Stoner tells us the story of what happens When Leaders Don’t Lead

Elegant Leadership blog gives a first-hand example of one of the most difficult patterns to change in the post Splitters Cause Mayhem

Erin Schreyer at Authentic Leadership blog asks Are You a Win-Win Leader?

Anna Farmery at The Engaging Brand outlines the 5 Pitfalls of Democratisation

Should a CEO seek to destroy their office?  That’s the question Chartered Management Institute asks in their post Do You Need a CEO?

Mike Henry at LeadChange Group gives us a list of the 13 Bad Excuses for Letting Poor Performance Slide

Do the Team a Favor – Get Rid of the Loser is Trent Cotton’s advice on his blog, A Driver Minded Guy Living in a Passenger Minded World.  He draws comparisons between toxic organizations and the phases a neoplasm must go through to becoming a life threatening malignancy.

Management

The first job of a manager is to provide clarity.  Explaining what “not” to do is one natural approach. Steve Roesler cautions us in offering direction with Management Direction: Does “Don’t” Mean “Do”? at his blog, All Things Workplace

We’ve heard the cliché that managers should hire slowly and terminate quickly.  The Thriving Small Business blog explores Why Hiring and Firing Decisions are Difficult

Working Girl Laura Schroeder shares her experiences on managing more experienced workers in Project Social: Young Manager

Over at Joe and Wanda on Management, Dr. Todd Dewett explains When Managers Should Address Performance Issues and provides a framework for intervening

Middle Managers Get No Respect! discusses the challenges of being middle management over at Management is a Journey blog

Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer, says You Cannot Punish People into Good Behavior

Andy Klein at the Fortune Group Blog reminds us Think creating value is only the sales team’s responsibility? Think again

Want some useful tips from Tina Fey’s experiences on SNL?  Check out Alex Drexel’s post, Lessons in Management from Saturday Night Live, over at Talented Apps

Executive Development

Jennifer V. Miller offers 5 Tips for Creating a “Speak Up” Culture over at her blog, The People Equation

David Burkus at LeaderLab discusses the potentially faulty assumptions of Jack Welch’s favored “rank and yank” method in his post The Topgrading Dilemma

The Bud to Boss blog reminds us of the 10 Common Mistakes Leaders Make Delivering Feedback

Is it really possible to “think outside the box” or is something else going on?  Miki Saxon shares her theory in Entrepreneur Creativity Grows in Boxes

All About Living with Life blog tells us Effective Ways to have a Successful Personal Brand

Mark Anthony McCray shares a great exercise for keeping a positive attitude in Get Some Balls!

Leaders can prepare for the future when they see emerging waves before they hit the shore.  But where are those secret clues?  Anne Perschel tells you the answer in The Future: All Upside Down & Inside Out

With technology distractions chipping away at our everyday productivity, it’s little wonder that so many people are looking for ways to get more work done.  The personal finance blog, MoneyedUP, offers 5 Ways to Get More Work Done

Succession Planning

Dr. Bret L. Simmons tells us why Leaders Invest In Their Employees

Developing Talent is the message from The CEO’s Desk blog

Richard Bosworth ponders the question What if…you appointed more women to senior positions?

Becky Robinson’s Weaving Influence tells a story about leadership, Spring and Hatching

Coaching

Meg Bear shares the secret to success in Want to Enhance Your Career…Get Happy on Tahlent blog

Mary Jo Asmus distinguishes between Compete, Cooperate, or Collaborate? at Aspire CS blog

Want to know The Forgotten Key to Effective Feedback?  Kevin Eikenberry tells us at Leadership & Learning blog.

No team in business or life could perform at a high level without a few unsung heroes.  Eric Pennington at Epic Living explains Sometimes It’s Better to be a Role Player

Louise Altman talks about Why Neuroscience SHOULD Change the Way We Manage People over at Intentional Workplace

Ken Klaus from Talented Apps writes Abandoning Successful Careers to Embrace Our Vocations: A Less Than Historic Lesson from the Life of Vincent van Gogh

We always want to share our experiences and how we solved problems.  Michael Cardus at Create-Learning blog explains why Your Solution Will Not Work For Me

Business Wisdom’s Bill Matthies says what’s more important than knowing you can’t do it all is determining what you won’t do.  Check out his post What You Won’t As Much As What You Will

And last but certainly not least, Lynn Dessert at Elephants at Work lists 20 Ways to Help Today.  It’s a resource for helping a family member, friend, or colleague who is dealing with job loss.

Image Credit: MykReeve on flickr

What’s important to you?

How do you want to be remembered when the time comes?

There are as many answers to these questions as there are people, but now and then I see one that really resonates with me and I save it.

And, like the best things we save, I like to share it with my friends.

I hope it resonates for you, too.

Life isn’t about how you survive the storm,

but how you dance in the rain. –Adam Young

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luderbrus/189623781/

Do you watch Shark Tank, the American equivalent of Dragons’ Den in the UK?

For those who don’t, it’s a reality show with entrepreneurs pitching investors on their companies.

Last Friday James Michell, founder of Pure Ayre, was one of the entrepreneurs.

If I had been shown just a clip of him I would have thought it was a put on.

Michell bumbled every question, giving minimum information and forcing the sharks to drag it out of him. He had burned through his seed money, but was responsible for nothing.

Several of the sharks were interested—in the product, not in Michell.

Each offered to buy the entire company as well as pay royalties, but only if he relinquished all involvement with the company.

Michell is a caricature of the entrepreneur who knows it all and can do no wrong—just ask him.

“I was incredibly insulted. They thought the only problem was me. They were making all these assumptions and they weren’t there. It was awful.”

Michell has a severe case of founder ego and it bodes ill for the friends and family that invested in the company.

The video is no longer available (at least 20 min of searching can’t find it), but see a critique here.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75001512@N00/3369027984/

Image credit: Sign Spotting

Go culture if you want to change.

Go culture if you want to innovate.

Go culture if you want to solve problems.

Go culture if you want better hires.

Go culture if you want to improve retention.

Go culture if you want to win.

I’ve spent decades saying go culture.

Culture is the font, the basis, the cause and the reason. It is the tao.

Need a bigger ‘brand’ to convince someone?

Click over to HBR and read Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time by Nilofer Merchant, author of The New How. (Or send them one of the dozens of links from my culture posts over the years.)

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Are you already a devotee of insanely smart hiring, in the process of changing after reading insanely stupid hiring or somewhere in-between?

Wherever your MAP is on the subject there is one thing about hiring that you need to wrap your head around if you want your career to flourish.

You can not hire stars, but you can create and maintain them.

This is as true of executives and management as it is of workers at all levels.

Think of hiring in terms of planting a garden—only these plants have feet.

You’re at the nursery and find a magnificent rose. It’s large, because it’s several years old, has dozens of blooms and buds and is exactly what you wanted for a particular space in your yard.

The directions say that the rose needs full sun to thrive, while the space in your yard only gets four to five hours of morning sun. But the rose is so gorgeous you can’t resist, convincing yourself that those hours from sunrise to 11 will be enough, so you take it home and plant it.

It seems to do OK at first, but as time goes by it gets more straggly and has fewer and fewer blooms.

Finally, you give it to your friend who plants it in a place that gets sun from early morning to sunset.

By the end of the next summer the rose is enormous, covered in blooms and has sprouted three new canes.

One of the things that insanely smart hiring does is ensure that people are planted where they will flourish, whether they are already thriving or are leaving an inhospitable environment.

I said earlier that people are like plants with feet. Abuse a plant, whether intentionally or through neglect, and it will wither and eventually die; abuse your people and sooner or later they will walk.

Insanely smart hiring also gives you a giant edge whether the people market is hot or cold.

By knowing exactly what you need, your culture, management style and the environment you have to offer you are in a position to find hidden and unpolished jewels, as well as those that have lost their luster by being in the wrong place. (Pardon the mixed metaphors. Ed)

These are often candidates that other managers pass on, but who will become your stars—stars with no interest in seeking out something else.

They recognize insanely smart opportunities when they see them.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ideonexus/3937284735

See all mY generation posts here.