Management Craft

Talk about stress...Turn off the Tech

Talk about stress... who knew that some of the causes of stress can be from technology.  Wait a minute, isn't technology supposed to make us feel less stressed?  Do you feel more productive with or without your emails, mobile phones, and the internet?  Do you feel like a rat experiment every time your phone beeps with a text message.  Beep... pick up phone    beep... pick up phone    beep... pick up phone, etc. 

Give your brain a rest by giving it exercise that doesn't demand technology.  Here's a book called Train Your Brain.  Engage your team by starting out a meeting with a brainteaser or a math problem.

And check out this great post on Management Issues from Myra White about the technology treadmill.  And BTW, I have never given anyone a chance to overhear my conversations in the bathroom stall... that is just something I don't do!

Company Job Sites and Internal Branding Breakdowns #SHRM

Check out this article from SHRM about how companies ought to approach designing their sites for job postings and careers. (BTW - this article by Dave Zielinski requires SHRM membership to read, so here is the Cliff Notes version of the article):

Set up: "After Maureen Solero perused her company’s careers website through the eyes of a potential job applicant, she knew changes were in order."

Problem: Our company's job sites might not be designed to get the best talent in the door. Are you making people jump through too many hoops and making them click too many times? Is your site user friendly? Is the information you have on the site PR Spin or does it engage and interest people? Does it seem trustworthy and real? Are you telling your story and does the application process match that story? Are you drawing talent to your sites from places where they are? Are you encouraging (versus discouraging, which is more common) ways candidates can contact you or others in the organization? Is your site mobile friendly?

Opportunity/challenge: "With more people visiting corporate careers websites for jobs information, and with recruiters emphasizing those sites as recruiting and employment branding tools, making your site easy to find, applicant-friendly and rich with information about current employees, work culture, benefits and development opportunities may be more important than ever."

This is such a pet peeve of mine and a HUGE source of lack of alignment between the external brand, the stated internal brand, and the actual internal brand for many organizations. Does your company say that it wants to attract the very best talent and that theirs is an exciting and engaging culture only to then force candidates into an impersonal and frustrating application process? This is too common and I don't think that companies understand the potential impact including:

• Top talent - those folks who have lots of options - won't put up with the process and you will never know they exist. From the article: "Solero was concerned that the difficulty of navigation would create unacceptably high drop-off rates as candidates grew frustrated and left the site." Yes!
• If your site is unwelcoming/frustrating: From the beginning, you are communicating that candidates (and thereby employees) are not special and that you do not want to connect with them.
• Forcing people to post their application information in your predetermined online forms may make it more uniform to review applications, but it strips out the nuances that might help you get to know your candidates more fully. How will those who shine, shine?

I know that recruiting teams have a challenge in terms of how to process and evaluate all the resumes and applications they get. But if your system turns away the very people you want to attract, it does not matter if it is more efficient.

Your site design should be driven by your desired internal brand. Your approach to talent acquisition should reflect how you want employees to feel. This is tough, but it is also the right approach. A few months back, I noticed a job that had been posted on many job websites. I wondered if this was a good strategy because this shot gun approach will surely up the numbers of applications and resumes they get and make it harder to carefully consider people. A more targeted search strategy might have served their needs and goals better.

What do you think? I applaud the Ms. Solero for looking at her company's job site through the eyes of a potential applicant. We should all do that and we should take a fresh look at how we would design our online career portals based on how we define our desired internal brand.

Onboarding starts with the first "hello."

Virtually Boring = More Boring! Give Great Virtual Presentations

My pal, Wayne Turmel (a.k.a. Great Web Meetings Guru, a.k.a. The Cranky Middle Manager), has a great new book out called 10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations. You can download a free excerpt here and I would recommend that you do. I had the opportunity to take an early peek at the book and think you will get a lot out of it. I love the chapter on building compelling content.

Although this is one of ASTD Press's 10 Steps series books (you might recall I write one too, 10 Steps to Be a Successful Manager), Wayne brings his usual wit, charm and entertaining personality to the book.

We all need to learn how to be great at giving virtual presentations. The only thing worse than being a boring presenter in person is being boring and ineffective in the virtual. As a participant it is not so bad, however, because we can always read email or trim our toe nails. As a presenter, however, you don't want to think that you have driven people to do other things.

Fireside Chat with Francois Gossieaux @fgossieaux Hyper-Social Organizations

How is social media tapping into primal human needs and how ought this change how we lead and manage? Check out this podcast!

During this 30 minute podcast, I chat with Francois Gossieaux, coauthor of a very cool new book called, The Hyper-Social Organization. I get a ton of free books from publishers and never get around to most of them. But when I saw this one, I contacted Francois post haste. Check out what he means by the following quote:

"After reading this book, you will better understand the impact of Hyper-Sociality on your human capital needs and your organization chart, and grasp the management skills that you will have to develop."

Indeed, this is not a podcast for just tech fans - all managers listen up! The book is born from the Tribalization of Business study and has tons of great examples. I think every manager, leader, project manager, and entrepreneur should both check out the book and apply its ideas to become better influencers, leaders, and partners.

You can listen to my podcast with the Francois by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here.

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog. You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name or Fireside Chat.

Art of NonConformity, Review from @TnVora Art of Happiness, Too.

My pal and fellow blogger, Tanmay Vora, just put up a review of the Art of Nonconformity by Chris Guillebeau. THIS is a book title that I wish I had thought of first! Can't wait to check it out, but since I am only about a million years behind in my reading, I thought I would share Tanmay's review with you because the book will likely be out of print by the time I get around to blogging it (I guess this could be called a book review hijacking - I like it!). Here is a snippet from his post:

I loved it when Chris divided all our work in two parts – “’busy work (responding to things)’ and ‘legacy work (creating something that outlasts us)’. Each chapter has number of such useful ideas that will help you surge ahead.

Ah yes, wonderful point. I know we should not need anyone to tell us that we can design and live our own lives, but it is nice to have someone point out all the potentially unintended ways we slowly move from being on track and on purpose to being automatic and on autopilot (with marketers and our society-driven perceptions of what defines success programming many of our moves and whims).

Check it out and do YOUR thing with gusto.

This is not related, but I guess it really is - I was looking for a good video for something coming up and ran across this great talk on TED.com from Dan Gilbert about happiness. I love the line, "he's got a heart of gold, don't touch the fruit cake."

Crowd Accelerated Innovation #TED

I love this TED video from Chris Anderson about Crowd Accelerated Innovation. Do you see how managers and leaders could use this? And how might the idea of "crowd - light - desire" apply to how we lead and build culture? And how should knowing that your employees can go online and easily find and be inspired by someone interesting, passionate, and intelligent (thousands of these somebodies, in fact) affect your approach? How will you get the attention and interest of your employees knowing that you have global competition for their discretionary efforts and engagement?

#SOBCON 2010 - The Rockies Edition

If you would like a day and an evening of intellectual buzzing, bubbling, and catalyzing, check out the SOBCON2010 Colorado conference in September. My pals Terry and Liz - both with bubbling brains and then some - are hosts, MCs, and chief connectors. Don't expect a buttoned up business conference, this one will be decidedly more sloppy and special.

Free Webinar on Multi-Directional Coaching - Join Me Wednesday!

I will be offering a 60 minute webinar for the ASTD Benchmarking Forum this Wednesday, July 28th at noon EDT. They have some slots left and you can attend by clicking and registering here. Here is the title and description of the session from their web page:

Catalyzing Coaching Up and Down the Generations

 
Coaching is a great learning tool. Often however, we see coaching as something that the "sage" imparts to  "newbies." With four generations in the workplace and work practices and preferences changing faster than a hummingbird on espresso, we need to foster a coaching environment where people give and receive coaching up, down, and sideways in the organization. During this interactive webinar, Lisa Haneberg will offer several strategies and practices learning professionals can use to catalyze multi-directional coaching in their organizations.

The primary target audience for this webinar is training, HR, and OD pros, but even managers and leaders who coach a lot will benefit. I hope you can join in!

White Paper: 3 Reasons Virtual Teams Fail- and How To See it Coming by Wayne Turmel

Ten years ago - heck, five years ago - few people worked on teams with geographically dispersed members. Today, this is very common. Every manager needs or will need to learn how to manage and inspire team members they regularly see "live."

Pal and witty guy Wayne Turmel (a.k.a. The Crank Middle Manager) has written this helpful white paper: 3 Reasons Virtual Teams Fail- and How To See it Coming. You can down load it for free by clicking on the link. A couple interesting quotes from the paper:

• "70% of managers above 1st-level supervisor now have at least one team member who is not co-located with them."
• "Technology and online tools are great but they are effective only if they are used to create context and human connections. Mere data transfer will result in short-term time savings and long term communication problems of the project."
• "A good project requires a mix of synchronous (people can talk at the same time) and asynchronous (people use them at different times) tools to be truly effective."

Phil's 10 Commandments for Social Media

I love this post from pal Phil Gerbyshak called, 10 Commandments of Social Media. Check it out. Here is a snippet:

4 - Thou shalt not act like a stuck up jerk, no matter how many folks are following you on any/every platform.  In fact, I would say ESPECIALLY if you have a million folks who follow you. Seth Godin is a very friendly guy who responds to email, blog posts, and other things directed at him. If Seth Godin can make time to reply to email, so can you!

I think many of these are good habits for in-person communication, too. This is an awesome list, thanks, Phil!