I find it amusing to read about research that proves what most of us already know—things such as healthy food costs more or that managers play favorites.
While 84% of those surveyed say favoritism takes place at their own organizations, just 23% acknowledged practicing it themselves, and 9% say it was a factor in determining their last promotion.
“I think the really interesting point is that almost a quarter admit to practicing it themselves, but only 9% believe that favoritism played a role in their own achievements. I guess it is therefore safe to assume that the other 91% believe they made it strictly on their own merits and hard work. Now I would call that either delusional, or defying the odds, though more likely the former.”
Many managers who believe they are fair are influenced in ways in which they are totally unaware.
When I was a recruiter I knew a manager who would not hire a blonde; he wasn’t aware of it until I proved it to him. Another manager refused to promote a talented woman until he realized it was because she looked like his ex mother-in-law.
Both of them worked through it, but before you can stop something you have to recognize that you’re doing it.
That means being aware of your personal prejudices and making a conscious effort not to let them influence you.
By the same token, you need to be aware when you’re playing to the boss-gallery because you figured out what floats his boat.
I’m not saying you have to admit it, but at least don’t kid yourself.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
I hear a lot from founders about the importance of fairness.
But when it comes down to unfair actions, mostly what I hear are all the reasons that “this is different,” AKA, rationalizations.
There are very few attitudes that qualify as universal truths, but this is one of them, so if you truly want to build a winning company, make this your mantra:
There is never an acceptable reason to treat anyone (employees, customers, investors) unfairly.
How do you know when you’re being unfair?
You know, whether you admit it to another living being or not, deep down you know when you are being unfair.
You can ignore your actions and the comments they incite; practice extreme awareness avoidance regarding your reasons, rationalize them as necessary, but you know.
The solution is simply to stop; no app, fancy action list, books to read, or research to do.
You know when you do it, so you’ll know when you stop.
Option Sanity™ ensures fairness
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
It’s funny, most bloggers release products, immediately write about them on their blogs and then all of their blogger friends write about them. It’s logical to do so, even reasonable.
So why haven’t I done it? Actually, I announced it in August, but there was no reaction or comments you, my readers, or any of the bloggers I contacted (but more on them in another post).
Going forward, I thought it would be fun to share some of the challenges, problems and results of our marketing effort, since it turns on subjects about which I frequently write.
In case you don’t remember, Option Sanity is a totally new, values-based way to allocate stock options, with a focus on fairness. It levels the playing field and even makes investors happy.
To give you a much better understanding of how it works, here is the video tour. There is additional information on the website and for those who are really curious, you can play with the full app demo and post your thoughts, opinions or questions here or on the review page.
Companies are pushing managers to do more with fewer resources than ever before.
Managers are searching for ways to motivate their people in a world where bonus money has dried up.
But for many employees it isn’t about money. Today’s workforce is far savvier and as long as they see that management, especially executive management is taking a similar hit, relatively speaking, they are willing to push through if their primary desires are satisfied.
In my 20+ years as a recruiter I found that people want to
make a difference;
be treated fairly; and
matter [to boss and colleagues].
There are other things you can do to show your appreciation and motivate your people without killing the budget, but they are worthless if you don’t supply the three on the list.
Assuming they are functional in your organization, what else can you do to tangibly show your appreciation, reward effort, lighten deadline-induced stress and just have fun?
Here’s a starter list to get you thinking
Chocolate—in any form.
Beyond chocolate use any/all kinds of food, fruit, cheese, etc.
Coupons for iTunes.
Buy stuff that can be taken apart so that each part becomes a prize. People can trade and swap parts with each other to complete their thing faster. (Small fountains, gadgets, etc.)
Buy annual family memberships to various museums, zoos, etc. (several to each). Most offer special visitation nights to member-only exhibits and holiday showings. (The memberships may even be tax deductible.) Use the specials as rewards along with loaning out the regular memberships.
Create company money worth $X that can be added together and redeemed for cash to use as they choose. You can have different denominations that add up over time with a max of ten bucks. Remember, it’s not about money it’s about fun.
Take the team to lunch for hitting deadlines.
Have one or more daily hero awards with a special trophy or cap to wear the following day.
Give annual Hero Awards (like the Oscars) at an awards dinner (maybe combine with your Holiday party). Projects and sales worked on could be like movies with various categories. Employees do the voting. This balances the instant gratification with longer term rewards.
Whatever you do, don’t forget your admin and support staff. They usually get left out of rewards/motivation programs, but they shouldn’t—they are the oil that keeps that machinery humming and things won’t run smoothly without them!
What do you do, or would like your manager to do in the line of motivation? Please take a moment and share your ideas with other readers.
A post on Harvard Business Blogs entitled Every CEO Should Write an Annual Memo To The Board caught my eye, not for CEOs, but for you. You may not be CEO of a company, but you are CEO of your life—your vision, your plan, your effort. You deal with the same problems as every CEO and you owe it to yourself to do the same kind of appraisal of the current and the coming year. Read the article and if you have problems tweaking it to fit you I’ll be happy to help.
Last is a story that will make you see red—at least I hope so. There is great controversy over the hiring of illegal aliens, but that’s not today’s focus. Given the reality of businesses hiring them the real question is do they deserve the same treatment as legal employees or does the fact that they are illegal give managers carte blanche in how they are treated? This isn’t a hypothetical question. Watch this video and share your thoughts on the manager’s actions.
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.
I have a question for you today and I’ll post my thoughts on the subject Monday.
I had a phone call from an executive today, “Jim.”
In short, Jim said that he understood why his boss was instituting pay cuts across the board, but had found out that the cuts were scaled with those who were young and single taking the biggest hit, older or married less and those with children the smallest.
This isn’t public information and when he asked his boss about the rationale, she said that the company had limited resources and that those with fewer responsibilities should be willing to make a greater sacrifice for the sake of those with greater ones.
Jim believes that this action isn’t legal and will open the company up to a lawsuit and even if it is legal it won’t remain unknown, will destroy employee trust and decimate the company’s culture.
The CEO sees it as the fairest way to deal with the problem.
Jim called looking for ideas on how to convince her that this is a bad idea; further, he would like to offer a better approach.
In Richard’s interview with Pat Lynch regarding the EFCA, she said that employers have a choice, either take care of their people or the unions will. Lynch identified four primary issues on which employees rate their job satisfaction:
Employee satisfaction with immediate supervisor
Employee voice – do employees feel safe in challenging the status quo, do employees believe their ideas will be considered
Employee perceptions of procedural fairness
Rewards and recognition – these go far beyond compensation, which is not a significant element of satisfaction. Recognition is extremely important.
Richard suggested to start with an online satisfaction survey to learn how employees perceive management and the company and then to act on the results.
He also said, “come back Thursday to hear Miki’s take on keeping employees happy,” which isn’t really fair since everything I write is about keeping them happy and I even have a post called that.
But I’m committed, so let’s do this again.
In today’s language, ‘happy’ means ‘engaged’, which isn’t a new topic—think buy-in, ownership, commitment, involvement, etc.
Although the terms keep changing the behavior has been consistently on management’s radar for decades. The funny part is that the way to achieve it is as old as humanity and ties directly to the Lynch’s four issues.
The big four of engagement are
respect;
encouragement;
support; and
rewards.
Although descriptions and phrasing may vary, when all is said and done it always comes down to these four basics.
It’s not as if this is secret management knowledge. There are thousands of books, hundreds of classes, dozens of blogs and forums all teaching variations on this theme. I read a good article on it last year, but it was the comments that had the real value.
The real question then is 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. 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 work around that, such as sharing their own expertise with each other during organized brown bag lunch sessions.
Number 4 usually involves money, but public recognition often ranks higher on the scale. And when there’s an authentic, provable lack of funds to provide significant rewards, every company can find other ways to prove that they value their people’s contributions.
There’s a final component that needs to permeate all ranks of management, it’s what I call the believability factor, BF for short.
Believability is a two-edged sword. A strong BF draws people to you; it helps them hear what you have to say; see the vision that you present; and underscores their willingness to follow your lead. Without it, even the straightest shooters may be casually dismissed.
The flip side is definitely worse, because con people, crooks and even murderers often have BF in abundance.
In short, this legislation would eliminate a secret ballot for union representation, replacing it with a public “card check,” one key difference of opinion is how the card check would give employees a free choice.
But, regardless of your opinion on the legislation, Pat Lynch believes it should be called the “Employer Free Choice Act” because it gives employers a free choice – either take care of their employees or the unions will.
Pat Lynch, Ph.D., university professor and CEO of Business Alignment Strategies has studied unions extensively, focusing on their impact on the American economy. I interviewed her recently to learn more about the EFCA.
She started with a long-term perspective of unions. Union membership has declined as a percentage of the workforce, roughly corresponding to the decline in the manufacturing sector of the economy, to a low of 7.6% of the private workforce as of 2008. Even though union membership in the public sector has climbed to 36.8% in 2008, total union membership is still only 12% of the entire US workforce.
In Pat’s opinion, unions believe EFCA will provide a significant opportunity to organize the newer businesses starting up in green industries. Especially with three key provisions in the proposed legislation:
No lower limit on company size. EFCA will apply to every company in the United States, whether 10,000 employees or 10 employees.
EFCA expands the definition of a union worker to include supervisors, in addition to line workers; with this expansion, unions can cover a much larger percent of a company’s workforce.
EFCA gives unions the right to access the company’s email directory for union communications.
Pat works with companies to improve employee relations. In her opinion, employees rate their job satisfaction on four primary issues:
Employee satisfaction with immediate supervisor
Employee voice – do employees feel safe in challenging the status quo, do employees believe their ideas will be considered
Employee perceptions of procedural fairness
Rewards and recognition – these go far beyond compensation, which is not a significant element of satisfaction. Recognition is extremely important.
Employers need to improve the actuality, as well as the perceptions, but it takes time. Pat recommends that employers start now—before the EFCA becomes law.
Start by offering an online satisfaction survey to your employees to learn how your employees perceive your team.
Then act on the results.
And come back Thursday to hear Miki’s take on keeping employees happy.
Although “money can’t buy happiness” may be debatable, it’s a fact that it can’t buy a strong, motivated workforce. For over 30 years I’ve been telling managers that people who join [the company] for money, will leave for more money.
Having listened to thousands of candidates during more than 20 years of headhunting, about 85% have the same top three desires—although not necessarily in the same order:
To make a difference.
To be treated fairly.
To matter [to boss and colleagues].
And there are lots of tangible ways to show appreciation, reward effort, lighten the deadline-induced stress and just have fun
What do you do to motivate your people without killing the budget?
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I find it amusing to read about research that proves what most of us already know—things such as healthy food costs more or that managers play favorites.
I hear a lot from founders about the importance of fairness.
Here’s a starter list to get you thinking
A post on Harvard Business Blogs entitled 
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.
In short, Jim said that he understood why his boss was instituting pay cuts across the board, but had found out that the cuts were scaled with those who were young and single taking the biggest hit, older or married less and those with children the smallest.
He also said, “come back Thursday to hear Miki’s take on keeping employees happy,” which isn’t really fair since everything I write is about keeping them happy and I even have a 
Because opinions run hot and strong on this proposed legislation, you should read both the 
Although “money can’t buy happiness” may be debatable, it’s a fact that it can’t buy a strong, motivated workforce. For over 30 years I’ve been telling managers that people who join [the company] for money, will leave for more money.
