Many times the solutions we seek are waltzing around in full sight, but we don’t see them.  Let me give you a personal example.

I started RampUp Solutions in 1997, but finding a simple way to describe what we did took several years.

In the show Gypsy there’s a song that says, “Ya gotta have a gimmick” to succeed and I doubt that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

I wanted one clear, concise term that gave insight to RampUp’s coaching approach, not a couple of paragraphs—no matter how well written.

When the light finally went on I had to laugh. The term I settled on was MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the humor comes from the fact that I’ve been talking about mindset, attitude and philosophy my whole life—even using those terms.

But formalizing it never crossed my mind, which just goes to show how blind we can be.

There’s a reason ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ achieved the status of an adage more than a century ago.

Some people are focused on trees, while others have the opposite problem and focus strictly on the forest—neither offers optimal performance.

In my case it didn’t matter that much, sure, it would have been easier to create the company’s marketing messages, but it didn’t cripple us.

However, if your forests are made of people then it’s critical that you see them both.

It’s only by seeing your people as both individuals and collectively as a team that you can recognize the obvious solutions you miss when you focus on just one view.

Since Leadership Turn is ending December 29 I’ve been encouraging you to click over and follow me at MAPping Company Success.

Ducks in a Row will continue every Tuesday; check out Why ‘Cracked Pots’ are Good For Your Team and you’ll know why you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

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Did you know that as nimble as an ordinary bat is when flying it can’t take off from a level place?
If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and painfully until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then it takes off like a flash.

That’s also a good description of what happens to workers who aren’t given what they need to succeed.

Whether it’s coherent instructions, correct and complete information, additional training, viable feedback, or something else, without it they struggle to survive, let alone thrive.

If you want your people to perform and succeed then it’s your responsibility to provide the slight elevation from which they can launch themselves.

Identifying and providing that slight elevation is your responsibility, whether you consider yourself a leader or a manager.

That small height isn’t one-size-fits-all nor is it necessarily what works for you, which means you need to learn through interaction and discussion what constitutes a feasible elevation for each individual and provide it.

That’s your job, whether you are a CEO, team leader or anything in-between, that is what you are paid to do.

So if doing it doesn’t float your boat and give you an adrenalin rush every time someone takes off you’re in the wrong position. You may like the paycheck, but you’re leaving your people to shuffle in circles and setting them up to fail.

And doing so will come back and bite you at some point.

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Recently Dan McCarthy asked if there was a leadership crisis or is it a branding issue and I’ve been stewing ever since. (Please take a moment to read the post and the discussion.)

I’ve been stewing not so much because I disagree with Dan’s individual points, but because I disagree with the whole leadership-for-the-chosen-few attitude prevalent since the end of WWII.More than that, I am vehemently against the leader-as-a-silver-bullet school of thought.

The extent of this attitude has become glaringly apparent and the Presidential election is the highest profile example.

Yes, I voted for Obama, but not with any expectation that he could take office and resolve the global economic crisis, provide an abundance of high-paying jobs and reverse outsourcing, end our involvement in the wars and provide universal healthcare during his first year—or even his first four years.

There is no human being on the planet who could have accomplished any one, let alone all, of those goals.Hero-leaders, god-like leaders, God-as-leader—none are going to lead us anywhere because none is universally acceptable.

And it is time to stop looking to others to clean up our messes.

Real change starts as a grass roots effort, not as the vision of a larger-than-life figure with a title that is more like a target.

But we love to have a scapegoat; someone to shoulder the responsibility and take the blame for an effort doesn’t work—and that we can laud in the event that it does.

Remember when financial writers talked about share prices and compared 2005 prices to their pre dot bomb highs?

I think that comparing leaders/managers who functioned brilliantly during an up economy to those are performing now is just as ridiculous—there is no similarity between running a company in 1999 or 2006 and now.

Just as importantly, I believe we have a crisis in ‘followers’, both the actions and the brand.

Initiative is expected in the select ‘high potential’ few, but if you aren’t in that group initiative is often shot down. So, by de facto definition, followers are lower; a lesser breed from which to expect little more than compliance.

When high potential is identified early “late bloomers” are often nipped in the bud—or leave to flower somewhere else.

Developing and rewarding initiative, no matter the source, helps build leadership into a core competency throughout the organization.

That, in turn, builds strong, thinking followers and positions the company to thrive no matter what.

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People hate reviews, but done correctly reviews are a terrific tool to provide individual attention, improve retention and show your love—tention reviews as opposed to tension reviews.

I won’t bother explaining the latter; everybody has suffered through a tension review at least once in their life and probably far more.

The biggest difference between the two is in the level of communication and frequency.

Done correctly tention reviews happen constantly and are called feedback. Think of them as a manager’s response to the “how am I doing” sign implicit on every member of their team.

We all crave feedback, which includes

• sincere strokes (given publicly),
• constructive criticism (given privately),
• career growth (what we have to do to take that next step), and
• friendly general interest.

Truly great managers add

• how can I improve,
• what can I do to help you, and
• how can I help our team excel?

Another part of review love is inherent in the communications necessary to setting solid, intelligent goals for each team member—

• solid because they make sense and are achievable, while still being a stretch, and
• intelligent because each person can see how their own objectives support their team’s goals, which, in turn, support the overall goals of the company.

Tention reviews also recognize that individual annual goals often need to be adjusted as a change in the company’s goals sets off a ripple effect throughout the organization.

And for those managers’ who claim they don’t have the time because of their real job, I’m here to tell you this is your job—cut corners or ignore at your own peril.

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Yesterday I told you how monkeys lose productivity when treated unfairly.

Unlike the managers I described in that post, good managers know that unequal pay, but they also know that it’s not just a matter of title/grade.

Not everyone with the same title deserves the same compensation—in fact, to do so would be extremely unfair!

Most companies establish a range for each job and some guidelines within each range, but the guides frequently fall short of what’s needed in the real world.

How do you draw the lines to achieve fairness?

You might think that ‘fair’ is some kind of universal one-size-fits-all yardstick, but all the people I’ve talked with over the years define ‘fair’ relative to themselves and those around them.

Developers working in a small local company didn’t compare their salaries to the developers in IBM, nor to their bosses. They compared them to their peers, i.e., similar job, experience, background, company, industry, location and, lastly, title.

Workers are well aware that every position has a salary range; what they want is for their level within that range to make sense.

The problems arise when the person they sit next to gets X more dollars or a promotion for reasons such as those mentioned yesterday, reasons having nothing to do with skill, experience, attitude or actual work.

This is the critical knowledge that helps you develop working guidelines for your company’s ranges.

Let’s say that ABC Corporation uses a three-level structure in engineering: engineer I, engineer II, and senior engineer and that there’s a $20K range within each level. They currently have five people who are Engineer II. The salary range is $60K – $80K. Of the current people:

• Judy was recently promoted and is at $62K;
• Jim, $68K, and Craig, $72K, both have been working for six years. Although Jim has an MBA, he started in sales engineering while Craig had three years’ experience in a specifically needed skill when he was hired.
• Tracy is making mid-seventies with five years of direct experience; and
• Kim, at $80K and due for promotion, has a Masters’ and 17 years of experience, 5 of them in ABC’s field.

Although they’re all Engineer II, because the salary differences are based on factual points, not charm, politics, or managerial whim, the group is satisfied that they’re being treated fairly.

As usual, it’s not rocket science, it’s common sense—but I’m starting to think that common sense is rocket science these days.

But fairness is about more than just pay; please join me next Monday for further discussion.

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Few things are constant, but management stupidity when it comes to retention is one of them.

Before Wall Street pulled the rug out of under the economy global demographics made the need to cherish workers at all levels obvious.

Estimates of the national shortage run as high as 14 million skilled workers by 2020, according to widely cited projections by the labor economists Anthony P. Carnevale and Donna M. Desrochers.

Then came the downturn and executive retention stupidity is once again running rampant.

Two-thirds of executives at large companies were most concerned about losing Gen Y employees, while less than half of them had similar concerns about losing Gen Xers. nearly two-thirds of executives at large companies were most concerned about losing Gen Y employees, while less than half of them had similar concerns about losing Gen Xers.

The assumption is often that Gen Yers are the least loyal and most mobile, says Robin Erickson, a manager with Deloitte’s human capital division.

However, a companion survey of employees found that only about 37 percent of Gen Xers said they planned to stay in their current jobs after the recession ends, compared with 44 percent of Gen Yers, 50 percent of baby boomers and 52 percent of senior citizen workers who said the same.

Everyone surveyed worried about job security. Gen X and Gen Y were most likely to complain about pay. But a ”lack of career progress,” was by far the biggest gripe from Gen Xers, with 40 percent giving that as a reason for their restlessness, compared with 30 percent of Gen Yers, 20 percent of baby boomers and 14 percent of senior workers.

Gen Yers, meanwhile, were more likely than the other generations to cite ”lack of challenges in the job” as a reason they would leave, while baby boomers more often chose ”poor employee treatment during the downturn” and a ”lack of trust in leadership.”

Let me spell this out.

The economy will turn around.

The Boomers may stay in the workforce for now, but they will retire.

Gen Y is being held back because of the economy and may never catch up, certainly not fast enough to run American enterprise when the Boomers retire.

That leaves Gen X, which is being ignored.

Stupid attitudes towards employees is nothing new for the folks running companies, but this one is really going to come back and bite not just them, but our country’s competitiveness.

One can only hope that the stupidity is global, so we’re not the only ones dealing with it.

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What do you think about slogans? Do they resonate with you or do you just shrug them off?

The subject came up when a client asked me whether it was worth the effort of finding an effective slogan for a new program at his company; he said the idea surfaced because of the success of President Obama’s “Yes we can” during the last election.

Our conversation reminded me of an article last year about the futility of slogans in today’s world by Dan and Chip Heath, co-authors of Made to Stick.

Now, Made to Stick has some great stuff in it and they made some good points, but overall I don’t agree that snappy slogans have no value.

There’s a reason that slogans have been around since 1500’s and that’s because human beings respond to them. They started as battle cries that roused the troops and gave them something to scream when going into battle; something that in a few short words told the world who they were and what they believed.

The Heaths think that has changed.

“People don’t speak slogan-language today unless they’re trying to put one over on you. So when you hear one, you immediately become cynical.”

They say this in spite of the fact that the first thing all the groups they described did, corporate and non-profit alike, was to find a slogan that encapsulated their goals.

The problem comes if the slogan is all there is; the Heaths used this example to prove their point, whereas I think it proves mine.

“Recently, a task force of top execs at a large technology company was brainstorming about a new leadership initiative. It wanted the company’s managers to spend more time developing their people and less on giving orders. To make this happen, the firm would have to change the way those managers were groomed, paid, and evaluated. Yet, facing these epic changes, the task force felt the need to hammer out a slogan. It was a doozy (mildly disguised for confidentiality): “360-Degree Leadership: Because we all matter.” Just then, all the employees in the universe rolled their eyes.”

I’ve seen many similar slogans that deserved the eye rolls, but this one doesn’t.

If all the execs had done was to announce the slogan and tell the company’s managers that they needed to put more effort into developing their people, then the slogan would be cheap, feel-good talk and I would agree with the cynicism—but they didn’t.

The key to the difference lies in these words, “the firm would have to change the way those managers were groomed, paid, and evaluated.”

Assuming that the company followed through with the changes and educated its managers to their new responsibilities, then the slogan has teeth and it becomes a war cry that can rally the troops.

The stories the Heaths recommend are great; use them to explain; use real examples to show the words in action, but as good as they are for communication, you can’t scream them when going into battle.

Slogans can inspire and encourage; they can tell a story to the world in just a few words; the good ones can be a lifeline when there is nothing else to grab.

People like slogans, even Millennials; what they don’t like are feel-good words and empty promises wrapped up in a snappy package.

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It’s November, a time when the end of the year is suddenly much closer than you thought.

During the next two months people will be doing their best to tidy up all the loose ends, both business and personal, before the year ends.

Whether you do it yourself or have and executive team and thousands of employees, you can’t afford to focus only on wrapping up 2009; you need to plan for 2010.

The approach we use was drummed into my head since 1979 by Al Negrin, RampUp’s angel and chairman.

It’s called PBO (plans, budgets and objectives), but is very different from the old MBO (management by objective).

The critical act in PBO is to tie the plan to the objectives and to be sure that the budget, including headcount and other resources is adequate to support them.

For example, to achieve the objectives set for the marketing department requires increasing headcount by 5 people, but the budget for marketing only covers the cost of 3, so it becomes impossible for the manager to achieve the objectives.

Doing this actively sets your people up to fail—not the smartest approach for any manager.

And don’t sit quietly by if you receive an impossible set of objectives in the false hope that you can somehow protect yourself and your team.

In tight economies objectives often become more like wish lists; this is especially true after layoffs.

If your budgeting process is reality-based then there is no way to cut X% of a department’s headcount without reevaluating that department’s objectives as well as the company’s—it’s all connected.

Click these links to read a detailed explanation of PBO and how-to do it, and then tweak it to fit your own needs. If you need some help feel free to call me at 866.265.7267 or email miki@rapupsolutions.com, subject line about PBO (in case of filters).

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How do you define success? Do you (or your boss) look only at the numbers and other recognized metrics or do you go a step further and evaluate the harder-to-define areas? Numbers and other business metrics are important, but they measure mostly the present, i.e., short-term results. What does long-term success look like? How can you evaluate yourself in terms of long-term success? Do you care? If your answer to the third question is “no” then you probably won’t be interested in the rest of this post, but if it is “yes” read on. Whether you are a newly promoted supervisor or Fortune 100 CEO, one easy way to know if you are succeeding is to ask your team. Asking is like a 360 degree review without all the bells, whistles and forms. It’s immediate and gives you a fairly accurate reading of the trust level of your team. If you hesitate to do that or your people won’t provide honest feedback then

• Your hesitancy means you already know there is a problem and aren’t comfortable with, or not interested in, changing to accommodate the feedback.
• If your people won’t be honest then you have propagated a belief that the messenger will be killed and that belief is typically entrenched in a larger culture of fear.

Either way, the source of the problem is you—not your team or even the general company culture (unless you are CEO), just you. You made it happen and if you want to fix it I suggest you have a long talk with your MAP because that is where the problem lies. The good part is that it’s your MAP and your choice to change it. Your comments—priceless Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

Nii Dowuona started as a programmer, became project manager, then added engineering manager to his workload, picked up an MBA at night and is now VP of Development—all at the same company.

He recently shared four tips that he has worked to instill in his company’s culture.

Avoid giving unsolicited advice.
Always ask for permission first, and don’t be insulted if you’re refused. Reacting calmly will leave the door open for future conversations.

However, remember that people can’t/won’t solicit what they don’t know they need. It’s true that advice can be obnoxious, but suggestions can be offered differently or the advice can be phrased as a question that opens the subject up to discussion. The big problem is often not the offering, but the pushing. ‘I explained so nicely why you are wrong, but you still won’t do it my way.’ is what often is being passed off as advice.

Avoid “guilt trips.”
Never try to make your listener feel guilty. Few adults respond well to such tactics. Instead, straightforwardly ask the person for what you need, explaining the possible outcome of inaction.

This is so true and the same goes for hinting and expecting the other person to not only pick up on the hint, but also to interpret it accurately. Plus, it’s a boomerang whammy, because people who hint often become angry or disconsolate when the hint is missed/ignored or misunderstood.

Avoid offering hollow reassurances.
Don’t attempt to gloss over problems or try to hide the downside of what you’re proposing. Openly acknowledging the facts is the key to positive communication.

Glossing assumes the other party is too dumb to figure the downside out and comes over as insulting, contemptuous and condescending to the other person.

Avoid pressuring a person to change.
Allow team members to hold their own opinions and positions. Arguing won’t change those opinions anyway.

Pressure not only won’t change anything, it often makes the people dig in their heels; at the least, it eliminates any viable conversation on that subject and may cause the recipient to shut down to anything you say in the future.

Granted, none of these are rocket science, but stop and think about how often you do one or another.

What other acts do you work to avoid?

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