Management Craft

After Katrina: It's Time for Companies to Shine

The US is aching as it begins to come to grips with the loss and damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. In times like these we can be numb or we can step up and be our best.

People want to help and companies have the opportunity to make good things happen that show their employees, and the world, they care. Here are a few ideas that I recommend managers bring to their HR departments or staff meetings:

• Match funds that employees give to help the hurricane victims.
• Sponsor a family, and together help set up a family with temporary shelter (hotels, or rooms in homes), flights to relatives, and the essentials.
• Support local relief teams.
• If your staff has specialized and needed skills, offer a team to help.
• Arrange a volunteer day to help local agencies collecting and bundling supplies.
• Donate sick or vacation time to help others or send a team to help.

And I am sure there are many more ideas based on your company and location.

I have been to New Orleans many times and have very fond memories of the place, people, and general ambiance. I hope things begin to improve for the people in the region.

One gripe - I am sick of hearing dramatic coverage about the gas prices. It will be what it will be. We should do what we can, but the gas prices are no tragedy in comparison to the pain people are suffering on the gulf coast, in Iraq, in the Tsunami region, and in many other countries torn by poverty, starvation, and war. In the end, perhaps the high gas prices will convince a few more people to toss their gas guzzlers and the world will be better off.

Funny Management Lesson

I have to share this comment offered by Tom Foster to my posts about scrapping performance appraisals - it is too clever and funny to let sit unread at the bottom of the post.

"It was such a brilliant idea; I couldn't believe no one thought of it before. Brilliant! I had just created the Spousal Performance Appraisal. A thing of beauty, complete with a five point scale from "never meets expectations" to "always exceeds expectations."

It covered menial stuff like dirty dishes, taking out garbage, a section on finances, timeliness of bill paying, even a scurrilous section on bedroom behavior. There were specific questions about noxious odors, remembering birthdays and anniversaries.

I took this brilliant idea to my testing ground. "Honey," I said. "You know we have been married for a few years now, and I thought it would be a great idea to do a performance appraisal on you. In fact, I have created this form for you to fill out on yourself and then I thought we would talk about your ratings versus my ratings. This will surely reveal several areas where you could do better. We can finish by writing up this page called the Spousal Improvement Plan. Three months from now, we can sit down and see how you are doing."

I was somewhat surprised at her response.  -TF"

Seems pretty absurd, I know. So why is it not also absurd to treat a work partner like this? It is.

I'm Focusing, Like a Laser Beam, on Focus

I have been itching to tell you about my next book adventure, but my agent and publisher are still working through the tiniest of details. I will tell you more about the publisher and dates and such when that's all settled.

In the mean time, I have a book to write! I am writing a book called Focus Like a Laser Beam for publication next June. After this book comes out, I will follow it up with 2 Weeks to a Breakthrough. I know, I was planning on doing the breakthrough book first, but my new publisher wants to do them in the reverse order. (I will still be offering 2 Weeks to a Breakthrough programs beginning in early Winter).

I am looking forward to writing Focus Like a Laser Beam. As you might imagine, it is about focus. But I endeavor to take a fresh and helpful approach to the topic and not just rehash the same old advice to get more focused.

Will you help me? I have created a survey about focus and would like you all to take it. And I'd like you to ask all your business pals to take it. It will take about 15 minutes to complete. I realize this is a lot of time, but I would really appreciate it.

To thank you for your help, I am going to give away two $50 Amazon.com gift certificates. I will randomly select two completed entries to receive the gift certificates. In case you are interested in how I will do this, the results will export to Excel, each person's response will be on one row, with a row number. I will use an online random number generator to select two numbers and the persons whose survey responses end up on these row numbers will get the certificates.

In addition, I will email the results to anyone who completes the survey. I will share some of the results on this blog, too, but not as much as will be received via email. The survey will remain open for the next two weeks and will be closed on Sunday, September 11th at noon Pacific time. I will do the drawing and send the gift certificates during the week of Sept. 19th.

Click here to take survey

Feel free to also share a comment with reflections about the survey or about focus in general.

Thanks!!!

Look Between the Boxes

I like this post on Frank's Focused Performance Weblog called, Between the Boxes. Picture a process doagram, or a project pr process doagram. Boxes and arrows. Most people focus on the boxes, missing a hige opportunity to improve how the work flows and passes from one stage to the next. I have often said during talks about management that is it between the boxes that great management can shine. Here is a choice bit from Frank's post:

"There's usually a lot more performers in an effort than there are project or process managers, so the boxes, tasks, and subprocesses that are identified usually get a lot of attention. More attention often needs to be aimed at the arrows, handoffs, and deliverables. Most of my project plans have quite verbose task descriptions, often necessary to help clarify and define the outputs of the task in order to fully define completion for the performer of the work. I wish I could put information on the arrows, defining the actual deliverables, in PM software like can be done in software designed to map processes."

Calling my calling!

Lifehacker offers this short but sweet post on how to turn your hobby into a career. I think we make things more complex than they have to be sometimes. If you read books or articles about people who have done this, they often share the same basic steps - they created a plan, then worked the plan.

Evelyn writes this thoughtful post about responding to ones's calling, called so What Now: Responding to Your Calling.

"I believe it's a natural tendency to believe what comes naturally to us is a simple skill that everyone else possesses in droves too. The less we struggled to acquire said skill the more we assume it's so ubiquitous that it's not marketable (a.k.a. nice hobby). The less we struggled to acquire said skill the more we assume it's as ubiquitous as air, for instance."

Further, Evelyn says,

"There are so many ways to evade our calling it's not funny. Yet we're like iron filings to a magnet. We can't resist...forever."

I have always wondered how many people know what their calling is. Do you know? It might be easier to notice what someone's calling is and share that with him or her than to figure it out for ourselves. Many of us don't have the hobbies that could fuel our passions because we have set up our lives to be too busy.

Should we be helping each other out? Does anyone know of a good way to determine one's calling? Is a calling something we naturally do well or something we love and are drawn to? It might be both, but does it need to be both?

I have always been drawn to writing, but I was not good at it in school. My writing has developed over the last five years and I still have a long way to go. I am very drawn to quantum physics, but I stink at math. Then there are things that come easily to me - facilitation, coaching, training, OD, speaking. And then there are things that I am passionate about - New Mexico, fountain pens, cowboy boots, sunsets, convertibles, motorcycles, scenic hikes, lavender, chile peppers, dogs, my cats, my important relationships, full music. How does this fit into the mix - does it? What, if any of this, is my calling?

Is it a calling when it can benefit the world? Do we have just one calling or can many of our interests become a calling?

In a recent post on 1800CEOREAD, Todd offered this juicy bit from Tom Peters called Make it Real...N-O-W.

Do It ...NOW....There is no room for procrastination/dawdling in the pursuit of big "dreams".

Some people take a lifetime to figure out their calling. Some never do. Doing cool stuff now. That has great appeal. Perhaps it is not about determining the calling, but about actualizing a calling. Perhaps it is about taking a look at the things you are drawn to, things that naturally come easy to you, and things you love, and determining which is most actionable? Then acting.

What do you think?

Double the Trouble, Double the Pain

Here are a couple updates on two recent rants - performance appraisals and online recruiting practices:

Regina, over at HR's Brand New Experience, offers this great example of good thinking that goes terribly wrong in the execution relating to online recruiting and brand alignment. The post is called Cool Job - Director Employee Brand Engagement. Here's a great slice of Regina's post:

I wonder if potential candidates have the patience and wherewithal to cut and paste their resumes into the black hole and all the meanwhile destroying their own personal brand by doing such a thing… So I thought - any smart candidate would go directly to website and apply there or find a name, etc.   Unfortunately, I actually couldn’t get the careers section of Enterprise website to work.  Ironically, their own employer brand at risk, yet again!!

This job sounds like it could be a good job but the process already has me baffled. It leads me to question how a company claiming to engage employees can do it when they themselves deliver a very questionable recruiting touchpoint and experience.  DETAILS MATTER!!

================================

On to my favorite topic.....

Talk about double the pain! This article from Management Issues. called Appraisals on the Increase, makes me want to scream. Apparently many companies are so fond of their performance appraisal system, they are subjecting everyone to twice as many reviews per year. Here is a disappointing quote:

Although the link between appraisals and pay is rarely a major reason for setting up an appraisal scheme, half the organisations surveyed use the results to help decide pay rises and almost a third to determine bonuses.

Ugh!

1. There is no good major reason to set up an appraisal scheme (perfect word, by the way).
2. Connect pay raise decisions to the appraisal and you might as well hire robots.

Adrian, over at the Coyote Within has taken up the cause and is doing a series of posts trying to defend the reasons for appraisals. So far, performance appraisals are getting a "does not meet requirements" rating from Adrian. Here's the conclusion from post #1.

Clearly, the argument that performance appraisals accurately tell employees about their performance over the previous period is untenable. Performance varies all the time. If the purpose of feedback is to aid development, the only sound practice is to give it immediately after each event, when it's most likely to be accurate. Besides, with all the circumstances fresh in everyone's minds, it's much more likely lessons can be learned and suitable coaching give. Doing anything else is a waste of time and a gross distortion of reality.

The Wild World of OD

David Lorenzo discusses OD in his post called the Power and Value of Effective Organization Development. Here are a few of his points and my 2 cents...

David: It is curious how even people who make a living in OD talk about "not having a seat at the table" and "not understanding the strategic importance of people in an organization".

While I know some OD professionals have this complaint, I myself, have not had this problem. In fact, I was more likely to be asked to sit at more table than I thought practical. Perhaps I have been lucky, but once I earn respect, the leaders and execs I work with have been very inclusive.

David: This leads me to my big take-away from our meeting:  When I raised the issue of focusing on "work group" specific improvement, the group just glossed right over it - electing to focus on initiatives that centered primarily on executive level impact.

I am with David on this one. Work group development can make a huge difference and it is where I spend a lot of time. Execs come and go and can only have so much influence. You get a work group knocking the cover off the ball and wonderful shifts begin to happen (and they outlast any one individual).

David: If we do not win this argument, OD professionals will always be branded "support personnel" and will appear less strategic.

OK, my comment here might not be very popular with my fellow OD types, but here goes. I think many OD professionals are their own worst enemies. When I attend OD conferences, I simply want to gag. Some of the basic issues discussed are fine, but the themes and research that is going on does not match up with what will make a difference to most companies.  As a discipline and function, many have lost touch with being a business leader first and foremost.

Case in point, below I have copied one hour of breakout sessions at the OD Network Conference (I did not delete or add any). Check out these titles. Now do you think that if you asked the top CEOs how they want OD to contribute, they would say these things? To be fair, all these topics are not worthless, but they are worded in ways that do not represent the function well with business leaders, I think.

• It’s Not Personal: How a Systems Perspective Provides Insight into Relationship Breakdowns.
• OD, Creativity and Transitions
• Inventing the Joint Strike Fighter: A Case Study of International Collaboration Startup
• Simple Rules: Organizational DNA
• Appreciative Inquiry Case Study: Achieving Service Excellence in the City of Anaheim
• HR’s New Role: Becoming a Strategic Business Partner (Pardon me, but this is not new and has been a conference topic for 20 years. Perhaps talking about this at conferences is not working.)
• A Dialogue on OD and Corporate Values: Where Do They Converge and How Do They Differ?
• Legal Levers for OD
• Organizational Development and Social Change – A Practitioner’s Dialogue
• Ethical Business…An Oxymoron?

I think this is part of the point that David was making (more diplomatically than I did). Don't get the wrong idea from this post, I love OD work. It is in my blood and it is one of the things I think I do best. Perhaps I just do a different kind of OD.

 

Management Craft Turns One!

I can't believe it - I missed my own one year anniversary!

Management Craft was born on August 7, 2004. It is amazing the amount of ground the blog has covered. As I look back, I am pleased with the growth of the blog and feel fortunate to have such great readers - you. I thank you for your time and attention.

I love it that you dig the blog.

I love it that you challenge me.

I love it that you care about these topics.

Here's a big, virtual, platonic, kiss for you all!

This is post #417. I have posted on EVERY business day since the beginning (even if only a lame post).

Here are the posts that have out shined the others in terms of traffic:

• #1 Without a doubt is: How to interview potential employers.
• Leadership is just one thing.
• An alternative View of Management and Leadership
• And the posts I have done recently on scrapping performance appraisals and the hiring system have also been popular.

I have had fun creating this blog and will continue to reinvent it with your input. Sometimes - not very often - but sometimes, I feel at a loss for words. It would be helpful to know the topics you want to hear more about.

Please leave a comment with your ideas for the future.

Thanks also to all the fellow bloggers out there that have made this experience fun and who have welcomed me into their community. You have taught me so much and I love the way we have gotten to know each other over the web.

I hope the next year is even more interesting than the last!

Evidence that conversations MATTER!

I found this article interesting from Chief Learning Officer called. Research: Poor Conversations Equal Disengaged, Dissatisfied Workforce. This makes perfect sense to me. Here is a snippet:

"The success of a business can be predicted by studying the conversations people have at work, according to new research by global human resources experts Career Innovation (Ci). “You can tell a thriving business by the tense of the conversations taking place—companies whose conversations focus on the future will be the more successful,” said Jonathan Winter, Ci director.

Ci found that employees who have conversations with their managers about issues relating to their futures are more engaged and perform better at work."

I am a social constructivist and I believe that reality is created in talk. I have seen that to change the current reality, you need to change what people are talking about. This article reinforces the importance of what managers and leaders talk about and the quality of their dialogue.

The article has lots of interesting data that should tell us all that having an open and comfortable culture of conversation with our team members pays off in results and retention. Here is another stat from the study:

"Engagement and satisfaction findings include:

• Employees with issues they want to discuss are 20 percent less engaged with their jobs than their colleagues without issues to discuss.
• Employees with issues they want to discuss are 30 percent less satisfied with their development than their colleagues without issues to discuss."

I need a new website look - Any ideas?

I have been doing a lot of research recently and have been visiting a lot of author and speaker websites. I have decided that my website stinks in comparison to most. I need a redesign. I think most of the content is OK, but I might want to fix some of that too. My brother, who is professional programmer, but not a designer, has been doing all the programming for my site's functions thus far. I have never had any help in the overall design of the site.

When I say website, I mean my main website for my business, www.haneberg-management.com. I also own the URL www.lisahaneberg.com but currently it just goes to my website.

My site also needs to continue being a commerce site to sell books and e-books and such.

But I want the site to reflect my color, my expertise, and..... more me in a way that is also attractive to my target audience (business leaders, press, etc..). Classy, clean, but also provocative.

If you know of anyone that you would recommend I talk to, let me know and share this with him or her. You can send me an email at lhaneberg at gmail dot com. But please no general SPAMMY type stuff - just real people who you personally recommend.

I will accept ideas and proposals for the next couple weeks and see where I am at.

Thanks!