If you are a manager, from team leader to CEO, you need an elevator pitch if you plan on succeeding.

No, not one that sums up your skills and value, but one for your team.

Like any good elevator pitch, it should be short—a narrative to which people can relate describing the mission and a compelling one-sentence reason to commit.

And make no mistake; you will need to continue crafting them as the team’s mission changes to reflect evolving company goals.

Image credit: le on flickr

Ahh, Saturday. A day to relax, read a few blogs, learn something and maybe take in a flick. And I have it all for you today.

First off we have the yin and yang of employee motivation and retention as brought to you by CIO and HR.BLR.COM.

Let’s start with CIO and an article that explains how corporate policies and procedures kill employee excitement, passion and innovative actions.

Then click over to read a white paper by the University of Scranton’s Sarah K. Yazinski describing how you can minimize turnover and increase positive attitude in the process.

And from a small business owner who grew his business from himself to three companies with combined employment of 104 people, a concise description of how he did it and his four keys to motivating his people. I like his attitude when he says, “There’s an old saying: “A fish rots from the head down.” Corollary: It also rocks from the top.”

Finally, the movie. The NY Times review of Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! is very intriguing, but the reader comments will give you a more diverse view with which to make your final decision.

Enjoy your weekend!

Image credit: MykReeve on flickr

Years ago when I was a headhunter I recruited “John,” an inarticulate hardware engineer who wore his hair like Willie Nelson, had a beard streaked with gray, no-fashion clothes and was a bit vague about the world.

But John was brilliant and a genius in his work. He could look at a circuit design and know that it wouldn’t work, although he couldn’t always explain why.

The vp he worked for at the time ignored him, dismissed his opinion, built the circuits anyway and was shocked when they wouldn’t work.

All that changed when I stole him for a client whose focus was content, not looks or delivery.

“Jim” had no belief in intuition, but a deep belief in what he called ‘unconscious pattern recognition’, which, he said, was why John knew a bad design when he saw it.

John told me years later that Jim was the only person in his whole career who seemed to appreciate and value his skills.

According to Jim, in many ways John was a pain to manage, but his value to the product development effort more than off-set the irritation factor. He said that if managing people was easy managers wouldn’t be paid a premium.

And that brings us to the point I want to make.

I’m really tired of hearing managers constantly complaining about

• needing to hire ‘self-starters’ so they can focus on building their leadership skills;
• the amount of time they spend settling team member disputes;
• how childish their people can be; and
• how the time spent hiring take them away from their ‘real’ work.

If you choose to become a manager you need to understand that

• no matter your level your people will always take precedence over everything else, because without people there is no company;
• people do become childish when thwarted or upset and that one reason that you make more money is that it costs more to hire a trained, adult baby-sitter than a teenager;
• few stars are born, rather they are the result of how they are managed; and
• if you don’t like the above three points you shouldn’t be a manager.

Management isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, so how do you know if you are/will be good at it?

Look in the mirror and answer this question:

Would you be happy and engaged if you reported to yourself?

Image credit: arte ram on sxc.hu

Are the people you manage productive? Are they innovative? Do they outperform comparable teams?

Do you struggle to learn the latest leadership and employee engagement techniques only to find they have little or no real effect?

Steve Roesler did a great post on the subject of focusing and directing people’s passion in which he says,

“Employee engagement implies that there are vast numbers of workers malingering on the job–and we have to “get them engaged.”

I would suggest that there are vast numbers of managers who don’t know their people well enough to orchestrate work in ways that lift people’s desire to engage.”

The italics are Steve’s, the bold is mine.

The great difference between learning management, leadership and employee engagement techniques and learning about your people is in the focus—’I’ vs. ‘them’.

Too many managers focus on improving ‘I’ instead of knowing ‘them’.

Managers guilty of this are either blindly unaware of the consequences, haven’t learned that there is nothing they can learn or do as a manager that will offset an under-performing team or a combination thereof.

All that studying may bulk up their resumes, provide great talking points when interviewing and may even help land them their next job, but it’s unlikely to increase their retention rate, salaries and promotions in the current one.

Image credit: raichinger on sxc.hu

Image credit: danzo08 CC license

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a discussion going on at Business Week, offering readers the chance to weigh in and comment on serious workplace topics. My error was in misreading that June 30 was the last day to comment—the discussion is still going on. Additionally, there’s a place to offer up stories, pictures and videos of your own wacky experiences in the workplace or just to enjoy others’.

A couple of decades (give or take) ago Terry Dial, who eventually became vice chairman of Business Banking at Wells Fargo, told me that “People are 90% of our costs as well as the key to customer service and satisfaction. The only thing that should take priority over hiring a new employee is keeping a current one.”

Wise woman, Terry, and way ahead of her time.

Now comes another wise woman via Phil Gerbyshak’s interview with Sybil Stershic at Slacker Manager.

Stershic’s written a book called Taking Care of the People Who matter most: A Guide to Employee Customer Care. The meaning of the title hits the nail on the head, “It’s based on the impact employees have on customers; namely, the way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers!”

Is it true? Does it work? Tony Hsieh built Zappos on this principle.

Read the interview (Phil is always worth reading) and at the end you’ll find a great deal on the book.

What do you do to take care of your people?

Image credit: Windsor Media