One great thing about the holidays is that it makes choosing a topic easy.

What do you do New Year’s Day? Does it have significance for you beyond hangovers, bowl games, friends and food?

Is it a day of reflection or one for making resolutions?

I’m not a believer in resolutions, but people keep making them. Common wisdom says A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.

Mark Twain agrees with that senitment, only puts it far more strongly, New Year’s Day – Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

Resolutions are often made in the heat of the moment and the ability to see them through stems from MAP or, as Cavett Robert puts it, Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.

‘Resolution’ has another meaning that resonates much more than the New Year’s type and one into which I fully buy; in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

I also like the words of Edith Lovejoy Pierce to describe this day, We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

Finally, in an effort to offer a bit of insight, dare I say wisdom, on the first day of 2011 I share with you the words of P. J. O’Rourke, If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult.

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What are your goals in 2011? Hike productivity? Juice creativity? Motivate your people? Strengthen retention?

Whatever they are, the best way to accomplish them is to engage your people.

Uninspired advice, since you hear it all the time, but this is a great time to actually start the wheels of engagement turning.

And you do it through conversation—face-to-face, verbal conversations with your team—whether it’s composed of the company VPs or a small group of staffers.

Notice the emphasis on ‘conversation’ which, in this case, means everyone talks.

First you describe the goals, not a laundry list of everything that needs to be done, but specific goals that you honestly believe can be accomplished in 2011, with a subset for Q1.

Then you shut up and listen to your people.

Not just let them talk, but really listen and hear what they are saying, even when what’s said doesn’t agree with your ideas.

But if you shut up and hear nothing then recognize that for what it is: a great insight into the culture you created, not to mention the fear and distrust in which you are held.

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I suppose I should apologize, although I’m not really sorry. It’s the end of the year and this is what I was in the mood to do. It’s one of the worst rhymes I’ve ever written, but that doesn’t change the value of the meaning in the message.

Christmas is past the year’s almost done
it’s gone by so fast I really am stunned.
In one short week 2011 will dawn,
meaning the potential of this year is gone.
Did you accomplish all that you planned
or did time drain away like grains of sand?
To prevent that happening this coming year
execute wisely and ignore the fear.
Fear is sneaky and will try and stop you,
while ignoring it is a tremendous break through.
Stay focused on the goals you set
and you’ll have your best year yet!

Be sure to read Friday’s post for a look at the changes coming to  MAPping Company Success.

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I read a great post by Jennifer Miller on the ubiquity of ‘perfect’ in descriptions and the dangers of embedding perfection as a goal in corporate culture.

It reminded me that ‘perfect’ and ‘perfection’ are right up there with ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ on the overused/abused scale—more, actually, since they represent a condition beyond human abilities.

Humans don’t do absolutes particularly well.

They do better on a strictly personal level when they have absolute control over all parts of the equation, but even then their score leaves much to be desired—just consider the infidelity statistics.

Add to that the fact that the standards themselves are a moving target. Even those that seem to be absolute, like murder, have a definition that changes with societal attitudes towards what constitutes a victim.

Since humans so often fall short of perfection, society and corporations codify the definitions to make it easier to adhere to them. That’s especially important when it comes to ethical stances, which is why condoning deviations, as described yesterday, is so devastating to the organization.

The take-away is simple: never establish goals that set you or your people up for failure.

If you are prone to talking in absolutes, “we will always…” here is a simple rule to guide you.

“We will always” is acceptable if you are discussing well defined intangibles, such as ethics and values that apply equally to everyone in the organization, but isn’t applicable in setting tangible goals, such as quality rules for defects.

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I think Harvard’s Jim Heskett poses some of the most thought provoking questions in his “What Do You Think” forum of anyone on the web and his readers generate some of the best commentary.

In the current forum he asks, Is Profit as a “Direct Goal” Overrated?

In his experience, the most profitable companies are run by people who don’t focus on profit.

Almost to a person, they treat profit as a by-product of other things to which they devote most of their attention, things such as a focused strategy that delivers results to carefully-selected customers while pursuing policies and practices that leverage results over costs, hiring people with the right attitude (one that fits with the organization’s culture), and proper training and organization (often in teams).

Heskett cites Obliquity, a new book by British economist John Kay, who argues that business problems cannot be solved by drawing a straight line between cause and long-term effect because they are so complex, a manager’s information so incomplete, the competitive environment so complicated, analytic techniques so inadequate, and the number of things over which a manager has control so limited, that it is impossible to make the connection with any assurance.

Tony Hsieh is adamant about not focusing on profit, but that didn’t stop him from building a billion dollar company.

Take a few minutes and read both Heskett’s thoughts and his readers’ commentary. (The forum is open for comments until July 28.)

Not surprisingly, many of them disagreed and felt that profit is the right focus.

I think that it may have been true in the 20^th Century, but it certainly isn’t in the 21^st.

What do you think?

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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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A few weeks ago I told you about my client who “acquires houses out of foreclosure, rehabs and rents the properties, then sells the properties to investors” and the consequences of the unintended craziness involved in the auctions in Texas.

Unintended consequences sometimes seem to be the primary result of human actions. It is safe to assume that no one planned to cause global warming or the current economic meltdown.

These are just unintended consequences, but each one is much, much larger than the sequence of intentional human actions which led up to it. Given that we do not have perfect foresight, unintended consequences appear to be truly unavoidable. But they don’t have to be tragic.

Goals, Judgment, Flexibility, and Transparency

We can reduce the negative effects of unavoidable consequences.

Consider a sailor navigating a sailboat into a harbor marked by a lighthouse. Unfortunately, this sailor does not have GPS or an electronic autopilot, so he has to steer the boat manually, using the tiller. He sets the boat on a course to the harbor, using the lighthouse as the marker. Almost immediately the wind, waves, and tide push the boat off course. The sailor constantly corrects the boat’s heading to keep it on course for the harbor. Sometimes the boat has to change course to avoid larger ships heading into port. Most of the time the boat is off course, but due to the sailor’s constant corrections it makes progress toward the goal.

Passengers on the boat may not know how to sail, but they can see the lighthouse and can use the radar screen to track the progress of the boat amidst other ships. They can tell, for themselves, that the boat is on track and making progress.

The sailor has a clear goal and uses his judgment and flexibility to keep the boat heading to port. The analogy to our economic situation is obvious—while the sailor is guiding the boat to a safe harbor; our economy feels like it is careening out of control, heading toward the rocks.

Things to Think About

Given that most of us cannot significantly influence the government or the national economy we need to look closer to home.

• How do you guide your business?
• How does your team set goals?
• How do you encourage transparency?
• How much freedom do you allow your employees to use their own judgment?
• Do your policies look like the US Constitution (only 4,440 words) or like the US Tax Code (over 400 volumes)?

One More Consequence

Recently I have found a new opportunity, much too interesting to pass up. To pursue this new opportunity with the attention it deserves, one unintended consequence is that I must let go of this blog. With great appreciation for you readers and with many thanks to Miki Saxon, who gave me this opportunity to speak directly with you.

I close with the heartfelt wish that you follow your dreams all your life; that you may fulfill your dreams and that they may fulfill you.

Sincerely,

What do you think about when you take stock of your life? What do you strive for? What makes you feel successful?

Before I go into this there is a caveat I want to make very clear.

What I’m about to write is NOT a judgment call—having been brought up in a judgmental family I don’t judge. Sure, I have opinions, we all do, but I don’t judge. The most I can say is “X isn’t right for me, but Y is.”

I might recommend Y; I might even argue passionately regarding the merits of Y, but in the end it’s your decision and you need to tweak/modify/change Y to fit your MAP—if you decide you have any interest in it at all—because Y is a product of my MAP and no two MAPs are identical.

Back to taking stock.

In a post at LeaderTalk, Becky Robinson says, “I still have more than half my life left to live… Still, with each birthday I feel the anxiety of wondering if I am living up to my potential. … Often, I can’t wake up from my daydreams of a disciplined and directed life long enough to make that life happen. … I have learned from experience that I need both [self awareness and willingness to change] if I want to be successful in life and leadership.”

To me, it was a very sad post. Sad because the focus seemed to be both personally judgmental and set such store on such an intangible as ‘leadership’—which is, in fact, a description applied and substantiated by others.

But that is probably just me. I’m very different.

I’m substantially older than Rebecca and have bounced, and occasional blundered, through life opening doors as the mood moved me.

I’ve made and lost money as well as friends as our lives diverged.

To paraphrase something I read somewhere, “a person should be judged by the number of people s/he brings to success,” and based on that I am enormously successful.

If I have any guiding philosophy it’s the same as Google’s—do no evil. I work very hard at not hurting anyone by word or deed, advertently or inadvertently. I doubt that I’m always successful, but it’s a goal about which I’m passionate.

I do not lie, cheat or steal.

If I were to have a tombstone when I die (I won’t, since I’m being cremated and scattered) I think I’d like it to say, “Miki worked hard to do no evil, hurt no person and give back more than she took.”

What would you want on yours?

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Last week I promised to provide you with a simple, amazing tool that would help identify goals for each of your people and a whole lot more.

It’s the GSA (Great Skills Assessment) that uses a spreadsheet to monitors both hard and soft skills. If you already do something similar this post may open your eyes to additional uses.

The best reviews help people grow, not by beating them over the head but by laying out an achievable plan for improving areas in which they are weak.

An accurate GSA that’s frequently updated makes it easy to identify what will enhance a person’s value to the company in meeting its corporate goals as well as progressing on a desired career path.

Its value increases by merging individual assessments into one for the whole organization that you can use when planning projects.

And it’s invaluable when it’s time to fill an opening; a complete GSA is the best guarantee that you won’t end up with all your group’s skills in one area and gaping holes in others.

There are many ways to approach assessment creation and usage depending on your MAP and attitude towards inclusiveness and openness, but here is how my clients do it.

1. Looking at the template you’ll notice that the first three sections are public while the fourth is marked private. Start by sending the public part of the assessment template to each of your people and ask them to list their skills and rate them on a scale of one to five. Ask them to include not just the skills that they use at work, but all their skills, such as those they use at home or in volunteer work. You may be pleasantly surprised at the unknown depth and variety of abilities you find in your organization.

2. Post the results on your department intranet and ask everybody to add to each other’s profile—this includes you. Many times people have skills and abilities they ignore because previous bosses didn’t value them, but peers are apt to notice and comment and you may value stuff of which they aren’t aware.

3. Once everyone is finished (for the moment, you should encourage people to keep their profiles updated) you want to discuss specific results separately with each person, especially those that diverge from your own knowledge or opinions. Be patient; by the end of the conversation the two of you should be in agreement on both skills and ratings.

4. The private section of the soft skills is completed by you and should remain private. Use it as a guide when you’re coaching, assigning roles, helping the person prepare for their next career move, etc.—and to evaluate your own managerial success. If the public skills improve and goals are met, but you don’t see improvement in the private areas then look in the mirror since those skills are typically a direct reflection of management.

Combining the goal-setting procedure described last week with the GSA makes it easy to identify, define and agree on each person’s goals, both short and long-term.

Success today means constantly reinventing yourself and your organization—I call it continual course correction and the GSA makes it much easier.

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The foremost thought to hold in you mind when creating a positive and powerful review culture is that it’s similar to Chinese cooking—most of the time is spent in preparation, whereas the food cooks quickly.

(Note: terminology can be confusing; ‘goal’ and ‘objective’ are interchangeable as are ‘appraisal’ and ‘review’.)

Here are the underlying steps that you need to learn, practice and absorb into your MAP.

Annual reviews alone don’t work even when that’s all your company requires.

To succeed people need semiformal feedback each quarter along with constant, informal daily input and coaching focused on helping them achieve the goals set forth in the previous annual review. (More on goals later.)

Reviews are the same as every other management task—they require good planning, open communications and accountability on both sides.

The first step to painless reviews is to commit to doing

• one HR-blessed annual review, with full paperwork, during the last two weeks of December;
• four quarterly reviews within the first week of each quarter; and
• constant, informal, ‘how am I doing’ feedback all year long.

Remember that

• any time you set a goal it needs a delivery date to be real; and
• never make commitments you either can’t or aren’t planning to fulfill.

First tell your people what to expect, then post your commitment on the department intranet and tell every person you hire how it works—and follow-through.

When you commit publicly you make yourself accountable.

Good reviews aren’t about filling out a lot of paperwork, whether by hand or computer. Yes, you need to follow company guidelines and use company approved forms, but as stated at the beginning, those are the mechanics.

The secret of a positive review culture is defining exactly what you want a person to accomplish during the year, discussing the goals and refining them together, in other words, the heart is the interaction between you and each person on your team, because one size does not fit all.

The result is that your people not only know exactly what their goals are, but they own them.

Setting Goals

• The basic rule is to never set more than three to five major goals in a year and the exact number depends on their size and complexity.

• Annual review goals should be high level, complex, and take 12 months to accomplish. They can include hard skills, such as technical certification, and soft skills, such as improving presentation skills.

• All goals should be quantified. “Be more willing to share” is a self defeating goal because it offers no way for the person or you to measure improvement; it becomes totally subjective, a matter of opinion and a source of contention at next year’s review. Instead the goal might be “Increase time spent sharing knowledge 10%” and agree on what the baseline is currently.

• Work together during the discussions to break down large/complex annual goals into smaller, more manageable goals that can be achieved each quarter and still more bit-sized pieces for each month, week and even day.

The cool thing is that achieving a constant stream of smaller goals keeps people motivated and prevents the large goals from overwhelming them.

And before you start complaining about the time involved, perhaps you should go back and read your job description or, better yet, go back a little further and think about all the lousy reviews you’ve had along the way, either because they didn’t happen or because they were all form and no substance.

Then think about, hopefully, the manager(s) who saw the value and used reviews to challenge, stretch and juice your growth, so you were ready for a promotion that put you in their shoes.

Then decide which one you want to be for your people.

Be sure to come back next week when I show you a simple, amazing tool that helps identify goals for each of your people and also has some terrific side benefits.

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