As companies grow and managers build their organizations they frequently talk about “weeding out” low performing employees—Jack Welch was a ninja weeder.

If that thought has crossed your mind you might take a moment to think about James Russell Lowell’s comment, “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”

As with weeds, there are better ways to look at under-performing employees.

Seeing a weed as food changes everything, just as seeing people’s potential does.

95% of the time it’s management failures that create weeds and those failures run the gamut from benign neglect to malicious abuse and everything in-between.

Weeds can come from outside your company, inter-departmental transfers and even from peers in your own backyard.

What is amazing is how quickly a weed will change with a little TLC.

“Weeds can grow quickly and flower early, producing vast numbers of genetically diverse seed.”

People grow quickly, too, and often produce innovative ideas just because someone listened instead of shutting them down.

And while trust that your attitude won’t change takes longer to build, the productivity benefits happen fairly rapidly.

So before you even think about weeding look in the mirror and be sure that the person looking back is a gardener and not a weed producer.

Flickr image credit: barockschloss

From an article about Tony Hsieh,

Although his admirers credit Mr. Hsieh with having created a unique (and unified) culture at Zappos, others point out that what he is doing is actually simple, and perhaps not so original.

I’d like to know who those ‘others’ are.

The best things usually are simple, have often been done before and I don’t think Hsieh has ever claimed his ideas and approach were new—but his execution is.

His approach is simple: happy employees make for happy customers; happy customers spend lots of money and return often.

Of course, if it’s so simple why don’t all CEOs and other bosses run their own organizations that way? Why do they pay $4000 to learn from him? Because the proof is in the Zappos pudding.

I’ll bet that Jack Welch never cared if the people who worked at GE were happy as long as they made their numbers—in fact, I’ll guarantee that no imperial CEO gave or gives a damn; nor do similarly minded managers at other levels.

Hsieh is more proof that great CEOs aren’t necessarily extroverts; don’t seek or require the limelight; nor do they actually fit all those profiles you read.

Rarely do articles focus as much on Hsieh the person as this one does. In terms of analyzing what makes Tony tick, and why others have so much trouble implementing and sustaining his simple approach, this bit of insight seems to say it all.

Then he quietly slipped out from the party. Employees talked affectionately about him after he had gone. “Sometimes I look at him, and I say, ‘He is such a dork,’ ” said Lauren Glassman, a buyer in the action sports clothing division, downing a goblet of beer. “But at the end of the day, we are all dorks.”

Want more on introverted bosses? Check out this post by Douglas R. Conant, President and CEO of Campbell Soup.

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

As I wrote last week, the days of telling women (or men) to choose between career and life are numbered.

Globally and domestically women are taking the bull by the horns, banding together and forcing change.

It may seem to be at a glacial rate, but change is change and you can see it more clearly in hindsight.

Recent studies show that women may be more likely to blow the whistle, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.

But the best news for women is found in numbers crunched in Europe—having them is profitable.

“European firms with the highest proportion of women in power saw their stock value climb by 64 percent over two years, compared with an average of 47 percent, according to a 2007 study by the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.”

That’s good news, because selling management on profit is far easier than selling them on doing something because it’s the right thing to do.

And be sure to check out Forbes list of the most highly paid corporate women, you may find some surprises.

Image credit: MykReeve on flickr

I’ve disagreed with Jack Welch many times going back to the start of this blog. In December 2006 I wrote Men Want A Life, Too in response to Welch’s comment.

“We do acknowledge that work-life balance is usually a much harder goal for women with children. For them, there is about a 15-year period in their careers in which the choices they make are not about what they want from life professionally and personally but about what is right for their kids. It can be a fraught time, since choices and consequences are more complex. That, however, is a topic for another column.”

It took two-and-a-half years, but he did return to that topic recently at the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference telling them that women need to choose between raising kids and running a company.

“There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.” (The article is from the Wall Street Journal and is the first link on this Google search page.)

Putting the comments together we have a high profile x-CEO who believes that the way to the top is for both men and women to make the tough choice and put their family second to their career.

Just let relatives, nannies (if you can afford them), daycare, schools, friends, gangs and the internet raise the next generation.

Why do comments like these come primarily from old, rich white guys?

What planet are they living on? More importantly have they bothered listening to today’s workers—and I don’t mean just Millennials.

As long as this is the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that runs companies that attitude will translate to corporate action and companies will face problems staffing. The recession won’t go on forever and demographically there’s a serious people shortage at every level and in every field.

If you really want to attract the best and brightest men and women then you need to recognize that their priorities have changed and if forced to choose the company will, in most cases, come in second.

And those candidates who do choose company over life may lack the empathy needed to innovate and market, let alone lead, the current workforce.

There are plenty of companies that already know this and have adjusted their culture accordingly, but most will be dragged kicking and screaming into the reality once the economy turns around, demographics rears its ugly head and they have no choice.

Image credit: bonewend on YouTube