Are You In A Personality Conflict?

If that is where you find yourself, here are some steps to take:

Be self-introspective.
Accentuate the positive.
Talk to the individual.
Keep communication channels open.
Treat everyone alike
Agree to disagree.

All of these are important, but most important are these three:

1. Be self-introspective. See what is the root cause of the personality conflict. Remember, as a manager, you aren't immune from errors, so you may have made a mistake in your dealings with the person, whether employee, colleague, manager or customer. Could that be the cause of the disagreement? On the other hand, could your work or communicative style be so different that you have no choice but to clash.
2. Accentuate the positive. If the person is making an effort to work cooperatively with you, despite differences in outlook, demonstrate your appreciation of the effort. If it's your manager, let him or her know that you welcome the effort.
3. Keep communication channels open. You can only do further harm to your relationship with an employee, coworker, or manager to cut off communication, even if it is only about work.

Thanks to AMA—American Management Association

 

How To Make The Most Of The Recovery

The economy is beginning to improve, but is your company poised to take full advantage? The best way to shape the economic recovery into the most profitable form for your company is to deliver more than your share of customer value.

Specifically, you need to develop differentiated products that provide benefits your customers crave—products they can't get anywhere else at a comparable cost. Doing so will accelerate your growth in the upturn and insulate you from the worst of the next downturn.

Your competitors won't be standing idly by while you innovate and grow during the improving economy. To stay ahead of the competition, you should keep a targeted focus on what sets your company apart in your industry. Are your scientists smarter? Do you spend more on R&D? Do you have a longer time horizon? These things can give you an incremental edge, but the best way to deliver substantial new customer value is this: Don't approach the problem the same way your competitors do.

Most businesses approach product development with a supplier-centric mentality, meaning they develop new products based on what they think their customers need. Instead, suppliers should use a customer-centric view, focusing on what their customers know they need.

Here are five strategies to provide greater customer value:

• Implement your customers' ideas, not yours. Most companies make the critical mistake of starting with the supplier solution and ending with market needs. But what if they inverted their process by starting with market needs and ending with supplier solutions? Actually, two things would happen. First, because B2B customers are more insightful, rational, and interested than their B2C counterparts, suppliers would learn much more about customer needs than their competitors. Second, they'd prime those B2B customers to buy their new product by engaging them with highly interactive interviews.
• Conduct B2B-optimized interviews. Of all the ways to learn about customer needs—telephone, mail survey, Internet—nothing comes close in effectiveness to face-to-face customer interviews. If the information being sought is new, complex, or ambiguous—as with B2B product design—the advantages of interviews become even greater. So is the customer interview a key fixture in most new product development processes? For many producers, the answer is no.
  
  Most new product discussions are actually customer-reactive meetings, not market-proactive interviews. You'll know a market-proactive interview when you see it. First, a team targets an attractive market segment. Then it schedules interviews with customers, prospects, and their customers' customers. Two-or-three-person technical-commercial teams prepare their questions and interviewing roles in advance. During the interviews, these teams use advanced listening, probing, and interviewing skills to plumb incredible depths…and the customers love it.
• Get everyone listening to the voice of the customer. Some large firms keep a small staff of highly trained VOC (voice of the customer) experts poised for action. These folks parachute into a project as dawn streaks the morning sky, interview your customers for you, and hand you a report of "what the customer wants." This is a flawed model. Most businesses chalk up thousands of face-to-face customer meetings during the course of a year, as sales reps, technical service reps, and others go about their normal duties—so why not train these people to become VOC experts? They've already gained the customer's trust, they know the customer's language, and there's no extra travel cost. Best of all, you'll develop a reputation among customers as "that supplier who really listens to us."
• Get quantitative. After you perform great qualitative customer interviews, you'll have dozens and dozens of customer ideas you could work on. But which ideas do you target in your new product design? At this point in the process, it's time to get quantitative. You need to understand which customer outcomes are most important and least satisfied. The metric I've developed for this is called the Market Satisfaction Gap. It tells you precisely which ideas the customer is eager for you to pursue. The Market Satisfaction Gap prevents a fortune from being spent on developing supplier-centric products that will make customers yawn. (Skip this step if you've got extra R&D resources you're trying to keep busy. But make this a priority if you want everyone working on projects that will catapult you out of the recession faster than competitors).
• Research your customers' alternatives. We often talk about competitive products. That's okay, but it's actually healthier to think in terms of customers' alternatives. For example, if your company makes structural adhesives, alternatives for you might be other adhesives, but they could also be welding or mechanical fasteners. In my experience, suppliers don't look at customers' alternatives rigorously or early enough during product development. Proper side-by-side testing requires answers to four key questions:
  
  1. Which attributes should I test?
  2. What test procedures should I use?
  3. What test result is barely acceptable?
  4. What test result leads to total satisfaction?

Research shows that only one in four new products succeeds once a project enters the costly product development stage. I doubt there is any other function within your company where this level of failure and waste is tolerated. Supplier-centric, instead of customer-centric product development is at the heart of the problem. The key to taking advantage of the recovering economy lies in changing the way your organization approaches offering new products. Start now and you'll be well on your way to shaping a truly great economic recovery for your business.

About the Author(s):- Dan Adams is president of Advanced Industrial Marketing, Inc. He is the author of New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth (AIM Press, 2008, www.newproductblueprinting.com) and is an expert in B2B new product development. He is a chemical engineer and holder of many patents and innovation awards, including a listing in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Thanks to AMA—American Management Association

 

Who Knows You Best? Not You, Say Psychologists

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — Know thyself. That was Socrates' advice, and it squares with conventional wisdom. "It's a natural tendency to think we know ourselves better than others do," says Washington University in St. Louis assistant professor Simine Vazire.

But a new article by Vazire and her colleague Erika N. Carlson reviews the research and suggests an addendum to the philosopher's edict: Ask a friend. "There are aspects of personality that others know about us that we don't know ourselves, and vice-versa," says Vazire. "To get a complete picture of a personality, you need both perspectives." The paper is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

It's not that we know nothing about ourselves. But our understanding is obstructed by blind spots, created by our wishes, fears, and unconscious motives -- the greatest of which is the need to maintain a high (or if we're neurotic, low) self-image, research shows. Even watching ourselves on videotape does not substantially alter our perceptions -- whereas others observing the same tape easily point out traits we're unaware of.

Not surprisingly, our intimates and those who spend the most time with us know us best. But even strangers have myriad cues to who we are: clothes, musical preferences, or Facebook postings. At the same time, our nearest and dearest have reasons to distort their views. After all, a boorish spouse or bullying child says something to the other spouse or parent. "We used to collect ratings from parents -- and we've mostly stopped, because they're useless," notes Vazire. What such data would show: Everyone's own child is brilliant, beautiful, and charming.

Interestingly, people don't see the same things about themselves as others see. Anxiety-related traits, such as stage fright, are obvious to us, but not always to others. On the other hand, creativity, intelligence, or rudeness is often best perceived by others. That's not just because they manifest themselves publicly, but also because they carry a value judgment -- something that tends to affect self-judgment. But the world is not always the harsher critic. Others tend to give us higher marks for our strengths than we credit ourselves with.

Why doesn't all this information add up to better personal and mutual understanding? People are complex, social cues are many, perceptions of others are clouded by our own needs and biases, studies show. Plus, the information isn't easy to access. "It's amazing how hard it is to get direct feedback," Vazire notes, adding that she isn't advocating brutal frankness at any cost. There are good reasons for reticence.

The challenge, then, is to use such knowledge for the good. "How can we give people feedback, and how can that be used to improve self-knowledge?" Vazire asks. "And how do we use self-knowledge to help people be happier and have better relationships?"

The first answer to these questions may be the most obvious, but not the easiest to practice: Listen to others. They may know more than you do -- even about yourself.

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Association for Psychological Science.

 

Cell Phone Risk - Cognitive Psychologists Show Conversations Lower Visual Abilities

August 1, 2005 — A study showed that the part of the brain that controls vision becomes less active when people focus on something visually while having a conversation -- underscoring the hazards of talking on your cell phone while driving. Human factors experts say hands-free phones do not lower risk. Drivers on the phone are four times more likely to have accidents.

LAWRENCE, Kan.--Sealing a business deal, talking with your friends, making plans, checking messages ... Just how dangerous is driving and talking on a cell phone? New research that proves driving and dialing don't mix.

Everywhere you look -- to your right, your left, at a light and speeding down the highway -- everyone's chatting on a cell phone. And if you're like Chris Rowe, you'll admit you sometimes concentrate more on the conversation than what's happening in front of you. "It distracts me from paying attention to other cars on the road," he admits.

Mixing mobile phones and motoring is a dangerous combination. But why can't we safely talk and drive at the same time? New research shows the reason is inside our brain.

"When we do talk and do some other task, it's very clear to us that your brain is not fully doing both processes at the same time," Paul Atchley, a cognitive psychologist at University of Kansas in Lawrence, tells DBIS.

Psychologists at the University of Kansas found the part of the brain that controls vision becomes less active when people focus on something visually while having a conversation.

Dr. Atchley says, "Even though their eyes are open, they're missing things that are in the visual world that might be critical for them, for example a car coming into an intersection."

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports drivers on the phone are four-times more likely to have an accident.

"Really what you need to do is just not drive and talk on the cell phone at the same time," Dr. Atchley says -- advice some drivers would rather not hear.

A hands-free phone is not the answer, either. Human factors experts say that doesn't lower your risk.

BACKGROUND: Backing up studies that show that drivers who use cell phones are more likely to have accidents, recent experiments by scientists at the University of Kansas show that observers engaged in a verbal task have a limited spatial attention window. The reason? They're less aware of incoming visual "cues."

WHAT THEY FOUND: Participants in the experiments were able to perform a simple task quite easily. But when half the group was asked to take on an additional verbal task, their ability to perform the first task was hindered. This indicates that even with the wide availability of hands-free devices for cell phone use in the car, there is still a significant risk involved when driving and talking on the phone at the same time.

THE PROBLEM: In the U.S., more than 190 million people used cell phones as of June 2005, compared to only 4.3 million in 1990. Studies have shown that motorists who use cell phones while driving are four times as likely to get into serious accidents. This happens in part because (a) people must take their eyes off the road momentarily while dialing, and (b) they become so absorbed in their conversations that it reduces their ability to concentrate on driving.

SPEECH AND THE BRAIN: Speech is a very complex function. There are two primary areas of the brain associated with speech: "Broca's area," located in the left frontal cortex, and "Wernicke's area," located further back and lower in the left temporal lobe. But scientists suspect other parts of the brain are involved as well. When we speak, we select words according to what we think the person we're talking to will understand. We activate the sounds for each word, and put them together in a sentence. We also choose which words to emphasize and how to pronounce them. All this information is processed by the brain and translated into movements of the mouth, jaw, tongue, palate, and voice box, among other areas.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Note: This story and accompanying video were originally produced for the American Institute of Physics series Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and are protected by copyright law. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

Scientists Afflict Computers With 'Schizophrenia' To Better Understand The Human Brain

ScienceDaily (May 6, 2011) — Computer networks that can't forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found.

The researchers used a virtual computer model, or "neural network," to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion.

Their results were published in April in Biological Psychiatry.

"The hypothesis is that dopamine encodes the importance-the salience-of experience," says Uli Grasemann, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. "When there's too much dopamine, it leads to exaggerated salience, and the brain ends up learning from things that it shouldn't be learning from."

The results bolster a hypothesis known in schizophrenia circles as the hyperlearning hypothesis, which posits that people suffering from schizophrenia have brains that lose the ability to forget or ignore as much as they normally would. Without forgetting, they lose the ability to extract what's meaningful out of the immensity of stimuli the brain encounters. They start making connections that aren't real, or drowning in a sea of so many connections they lose the ability to stitch together any kind of coherent story.

The neural network used by Grasemann and his adviser, Professor Risto Miikkulainen, is called DISCERN. Designed by Miikkulainen, DISCERN is able to learn natural language. In this study it was used to simulate what happens to language as the result of eight different types of neurological dysfunction. The results of the simulations were compared by Ralph Hoffman, professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, to what he saw when studying human schizophrenics.

In order to model the process, Grasemann and Miikkulainen began by teaching a series of simple stories to DISCERN. The stories were assimilated into DISCERN's memory in much the way the human brain stores information-not as distinct units, but as statistical relationships of words, sentences, scripts and stories.

"With neural networks, you basically train them by showing them examples, over and over and over again," says Grasemann. "Every time you show it an example, you say, if this is the input, then this should be your output, and if this is the input, then that should be your output. You do it again and again thousands of times, and every time it adjusts a little bit more towards doing what you want. In the end, if you do it enough, the network has learned."

In order to model hyperlearning, Grasemann and Miikkulainen ran the system through its paces again, but with one key parameter altered. They simulated an excessive release of dopamine by increasing the system's learning rate-essentially telling it to stop forgetting so much.

"It's an important mechanism to be able to ignore things," says Grasemann. "What we found is that if you crank up the learning rate in DISCERN high enough, it produces language abnormalities that suggest schizophrenia."

After being re-trained with the elevated learning rate, DISCERN began putting itself at the center of fantastical, delusional stories that incorporated elements from other stories it had been told to recall. In one answer, for instance, DISCERN claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing.

In another instance, DISCERN began showing evidence of "derailment"-replying to requests for a specific memory with a jumble of dissociated sentences, abrupt digressions and constant leaps from the first- to the third-person and back again.

"Information processing in neural networks tends to be like information processing in the human brain in many ways," says Grasemann. "So the hope was that it would also break down in similar ways. And it did."

The parallel between their modified neural network and human schizophrenia isn't absolute proof the hyperlearning hypothesis is correct, says Grasemann. It is, however, support for the hypothesis, and also evidence of how useful neural networks can be in understanding the human brain.

"We have so much more control over neural networks than we could ever have over human subjects," he says. "The hope is that this kind of modeling will help clinical research."

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of Texas at Austin.

 

New Tool To Assess Asthma-Related Anxiety Published In Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, And Pulmonology

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — When children or adolescents with asthma and their parents become overly anxious about the disorder, it may impair their ability to manage the asthma effectively. A new, effective tool to assess asthma-related anxiety is described in an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

A high level of disease-related anxiety among adults with asthma has been associated with an overreaction to asthma symptoms and overuse of medication. To assess asthma-related anxiety among pediatric patients and their parents, a team of researchers from New York University (NYU) School of Medicine, NYU, and LaSalle University (Philadelphia, PA) developed and validated a survey tool. Jean-Marie Bruzzese, PhD, Lynne Unikel, PhD, Patrick Shrout, PhD, and Rachel Klein, PhD, tested their Youth Asthma-related Anxiety Scale (YAAS) and Parent Asthma-related Anxiety Scale (PAAS) on a population of adolescents and their parents. The results highlight two key factors -- anxiety about asthma severity and about disease-related restrictions -- that are good indicators of overall asthma-related anxiety.

"This will be a valuable tool for asthma researchers," says Harold Farber, MD, MSPH, Editor of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Pulmonology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. "Now that we have validated measures for asthma-related anxiety in children and their parents, future research will be able to measure the impact of asthma-related anxiety on asthma outcomes. This will help us better understand how to deliver the best asthma care for our children."

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Publishers, via AlphaGalileo.

 

'Bad' Cholesterol Not As Bad As People Think, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — The so-called "bad cholesterol" -- low-density lipoprotein commonly called LDL -- may not be so bad after all, shows a Texas A&M University study that casts new light on the cholesterol debate, particularly among adults who exercise.

Steve Riechman, a researcher in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, says the study reveals that LDL is not the evil Darth Vader of health it has been made out to be in recent years and that new attitudes need to be adopted in regards to the substance. His work, with help from colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh, Kent State University, the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, is published in the Journal of Gerontology.

Riechman and colleagues examined 52 adults from ages to 60 to 69 who were in generally good health but not physically active, and none of them were participating in a training program. The study showed that after fairly vigorous workouts, participants who had gained the most muscle mass also had the highest levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol, "a very unexpected result and one that surprised us.

"It shows that you do need a certain amount of LDL to gain more muscle mass. There's no doubt you need both -- the LDL and the HDL -- and the truth is, it (cholesterol) is all good. You simply can't remove all the 'bad' cholesterol from your body without serious problems occurring.

Cholesterol is found in all humans and is a type of fat around the body. A person's total cholesterol level comprises LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol.

LDL is almost always referred to as the "bad" cholesterol because it tends to build up in the walls of arteries, causing a slowing of the blood flow which often leads to heart disease and heart attacks.

HDL, usually called the "good cholesterol," often helps remove cholesterol from arteries.

"But here is where people tend to get things wrong," Riechman says.

"LDL serves a very useful purpose. It acts as a warning sign that something is wrong and it signals the body to these warning signs. It does its job the way it is supposed to.

"People often say, 'I want to get rid of all my bad (LDL) cholesterol,' but the fact is, if you did so, you would die," the Texas A&M professor adds. "Everyone needs a certain amount of both LDL and HDL in their bodies. We need to change this idea of LDL always being the evil thing -- we all need it, and we need it to do its job."

According to the American Heart Association, about 36 million American adults have high cholesterol levels.

"Our tissues need cholesterol, and LDL delivers it," he notes. "HDL, the good cholesterol, cleans up after the repair is done. And the more LDL you have in your blood, the better you are able to build muscle during resistance training."

Riechman says the study could be helpful in looking at a condition called sarcopenia, which is muscle loss due to aging. Previous studies show muscle is usually lost at a rate of 5 percent per decade after the age of 40, a huge concern since muscle mass is the major determinant of physical strength. After the age of 60, the prevalence of moderate to severe sarcopenia is found in about 65 percent of all men and about 30 percent of all women, and it accounts for more than $18 billion of health care costs in the United States.

"The bottom line is that LDL -- the bad cholesterol -- serves as a reminder that something is wrong and we need to find out what it is," Riechman says.

"It gives us warning signs. Is smoking the problem, is it diet, is it lack of exercise that a person's cholesterol is too high? It plays a very useful role, does the job it was intended to do, and we need to back off by always calling it 'bad' cholesterol because it is not totally bad."

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Texas A&M University.

 

When Self-Esteem Is Threatened, People Pay With Credit Cards

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011) — People shop for high status items when they're feeling low, and they're more likely to make those expensive purchases on credit, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

When a person's ego is threatened -- by doing poorly on a task, by being told they're not as good as they hoped -- people sometimes repair their self-worth by purchasing luxury goods. Because actually parting with cash can be psychologically painful, researchers Niro Sivanathan of the London Business School and Nathan Pettit of Cornell University studied whether people might be more likely to use a credit card when feeling badly about one's self.

The researchers had people work on an ambiguous computer test, and then told half of them that their "spatial reasoning and logic ability was in the 12th percentile," which is a scientific-sounding way of telling them they're not very smart. They told the other half that they were in the 88th percentile, a perfectly fine performance. When asked how they might pay for "a consumer product that you have been considering purchasing," people who'd had their ego threatened were substantially more likely to say they were planning on paying on credit.

In a follow-up study, Sivanathan and Pettit asked 150 college students to think about buying a pair of jeans. Half were told to consider a pair of exclusive, high status designer jeans, while the rest were told to think about normal, everyday jeans. The students then went through the same computer test, and were told they had done poorly or well. The self-esteem threat made people willing to pay almost 30% more for the luxury jeans, and were more than 60% more likely to intend to purchase the jeans with a credit card.

Does threat make any purchase look good, or are luxury items particularly good at repairing self-esteem? The students who thought about everyday jeans did not increase how much they would pay for regular jeans when threatened, and the threat did not change their willingness to use credit over cash. Luxury items are especially effective at reassuring us of our value.

People are likely to resort to credit after threat to consume luxury goods, despite the interest and fees associated with consumer credit. Seeking luxury after threat, the researchers note, is a normal response. These studies are part of a psychological account of how relaxed lending policies -- for example high interest mortgage offers aimed at consumers of low socioeconomic status -- can have disastrous consequences.

Story Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by SAGE Publications, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

 

Perfect Chair For Low Back Pain - Ergonomists Design More Customizable Office Chair

February 1, 2008 — Ergonomists created a chair that allows users to adjust the lumbar supports asymmetrically, addressing what they found in research. Over 70 percent of those tested wanted asymmetrical support in the lower back. The new chair uses handles to adjust the right and left sides of the lumbar area.

Back pain sufferers may finally get some relief, especially during long work days.

Now, there's a new office chair that compliments your desk and your body.

For many people, another day at the office means hours of sitting, sitting and more sitting. And all that sit-down time can take a toll on a body, and one of the biggest causes of pain … your chair!

"One of the biggest common things when people are sitting is experiencing low back pain," ergonomist Teresa Bellingar, Ph.D., told Ivanhoe.

Now, ergonomists have a new chair, called Zody -- it's a high-tech place to sit with a unique feature -- handles adjust on the chair on either the right or left sides of the lumbar area, or low back area, for a customized fit. "So one of the things when you're looking at incorporating adjusments in a chair is trying to find the appropriate lumbar support … so that people don't experience as much low back pain when they're sitting," Dr. Bellingar said.

To design the chair, researchers study how volunteers sit while doing a task. Then while adjusting supports on the low back, pressure points are mapped out to show individual needs of back support.

"One of the things that we found, that actually surprised us in the study, was that 74-percent of the people in the study … wanted asymmetrical support in the lower back, meaning they wanted more support on either their left or their right side," Dr. Bellingar said.

Adjusting a chair for a perfect fit is a key factor in successful seating -- helping the chair to become a popular office need. Science helps makes a seat that no one wants to give up.

WHAT ERGONOMISTS DO: Ergonomists conduct research on human bodies and their interactions with tools, structures or furniture, to design the job to fit the worker, rather than the other way around. In the modern office, it most commonly relates to the physical stresses placed on joints, muscles, nerves, tendons, bones, even hearing and eyesight, along with other environmental factors that can adversely affect comfort and health.

The science of ergonomics deals with the interaction of technology and work environments with the human body, and involves anatomy, physiology and psychology in the design of chairs, desks, computer accessories, the design of car controls and instruments -- in short, any kind of product that could help relieve potential repetitive strain from a given job or task.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Note: This story and accompanying video were originally produced for the American Institute of Physics series Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and are protected by copyright law. All rights reserved.

 

 

Change Anything: Getting Personal With Performance Improvement

Are your direct reports in need of a career makeover? Do you ask them to step it up in every single performance review? Does there seem to be a disconnect between an employee wanting to improve and his or her ability to actually make it happen? If so, you're not alone.

While conducting research for our new book, "Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success," we found that 70% of employees who were aware that their manager was unhappy with their performance couldn't tell you what they were doing wrong or how they were going to change.

Luckily, our research also led us to a model of change that managers can use to motivate and enable their employees to take control of their careers.

The vital behaviors of top performers

Thirty years ago, we began researching top performers to find out exactly what they did that was so different from their peers. While top performers did many things well, there were three behaviors they did far better and more consistently than everyone else.

Top performers:

1. Know their stuff. They put regular effort into ensuring they excel at the technical aspects of their jobs. They work hard to hone their specific craft.
2. Focus on the right stuff. Top performers contribute to tasks essential to the organization's success. They earn direct access to critical tasks that the company values.
3. Build a reputation for being helpful. Top performers are widely known and respected by others not because of their frequent contact, charm or likability, but because they help others solve problems.

Knowing how a top performer behaves is only the first step to improvement. Next comes implementing these behaviors on the job.

Creating a change plan

We mistakenly assume our success depends on the amount of willpower we can muster. Managers often regard employees who should — but don't — change as lazy or unmotivated. However, neither assumption is correct.

There are six sources of influence that explain why we make the choices we do. Employees relying solely on willpower fail to consider the five other sources of influence that shape their actions. As a manager, it's your job to help employees see the full gamut of their behavior. Use these six sources of influence to help employees adopt the behaviors of a top performer:

1. Flash forward to the future. The best motivation is to help employees visit their default future — the career they'll have if they're repeatedly passed up for promotion. A 30-year-old employee earning $60,000 passed up for a promotion with a 2% raise will incur a lifetime loss of $59,780.
2. Invest in professional development. New habits require new skills. Help employees actively develop the skills of a top performer through training, workshops or books.
3. Hang with the hard-workers. The bad habits that hold people back are likely enabled or tolerated by others. Encourage struggling employees to associate with hard-working colleagues.
4. Find a mentor. Changing habits requires help. If you can't mentor a struggling employee, help her find a mentor who will encourage her progression and navigate career opportunities within the organization.
5. Put skin in the game. Reward employees for reaching short-term goals by tying small bonuses, rewards or incentives to their ability to meet their goals in their next performance review.
6. Control the workspace. Make employees' new habits easier by enlisting the power of their surroundings. If they'd benefit from close association with another team, relocate their office space.

How to change anything

According to our research, those who follow this model for change by learning the vital behaviors of top performers, and then engaging all six sources of influence are 10 times more likely to succeed. When your change strategy is informed by good science, the differences in effectiveness are not incremental — they are exponential.

This post is by David Maxfield, vice president of research at VitalSmarts and co-author of "Influencer: The Power to Change Anything." This April, he released "Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success."

Thanks to SmartBlog On Leadership

 

Identifying Employee Skill Gaps

Employees' own assessments of their learning needs can lead to more effective training programs.

Identifying the areas where organizations need to improve their capabilities most is an important step in any change effort. Such a skill is helpful particularly in times of cost-cutting—where limited training resources must be used to close the critical competency gaps that prevent companies from meeting business objectives.

However, many training programs don't yield the desired results. One reason is that they are usually launched without sufficient knowledge of where the gaps in employee skills exist. We find that a good way to pinpoint these learning needs is to survey employees and let them evaluate the current skill levels of their peers and estimate the skill level their group must reach in order to be successful. An added advantage of this inclusive approach is that it heightens employees' awareness of their learning needs and helps break down any resistance to learning new skills.

A manufacturing company that embarked on a major performance transformation was aware of the costs involved in a large-scale capability-building program. It chose to survey site leaders, middle managers, and frontline supervisors. Using a heat map to visualize the results, the company found, for instance, that while middle managers in one region needed training to improve several business competencies, those in another region had gaps in their leadership skills. Based on the results of the survey, the company realized it could save money and improve its chances of success by rolling out a program targeting the different competencies that each group needed to improve the most.

About the Authors:- Pierre Gurdjian is a director in McKinsey's Brussels office, and Oliver Triebel is an associate principal in the Berlin office.

Thanks to McKinsey & Company

 

 

Success With Pre-Employment Assessment Can be Yours In 4 Easy Steps

The general climate among HR and staffing professionals is that pre-employment assessment is a complex and confusing matter that is not really worth the hassle. Why is this so? My own research and experience has led me to the following plausible explanations:

Assessment can be complex: There is no one magic bullet and the choices to be navigated make constructing good testing programs a blend of both art and science.

Assessment is often oversold or mis-sold: Vendors often fit round pegs into square holes because they only sell the round pegs and their motive is to hammer as many pegs in as possible.

Testing is not fun: Let's be honest. Most applicants don't really enjoy doing complicated math problems or answering questions about how outgoing they are at parties. It is not hard to see why many firms would want to spare applicants from these forms of mild torture!

Where's the beef?: Many companies totally ignore the value proposition for assessment because they don't make a game plan for testing that directly allows them to see the ROI it can deliver. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!

Consumers do not follow best practices: When the consumer is not aware of the steps required to ensure success with assessment, they make it harder to achieve success. Failures often represent the end of the line when it comes to testing programs.

The reasons go on, but all of the above issues can be overcome more easily than you think. I don't want to downplay the complexities of assessment — they are real and they are many. However, I do feel that if you use the following four steps as your mantra, you will come out on the good side when it comes to assessment.

Above all, the key ingredients to making these steps work for you are:

• Make sure you complete each of the four steps together as part of a process that has sponsorship from the top of the organization.
• Partner with an expert. Be it a vendor, a consultant, or an internal resource. You need to be sure that you have someone in your corner who knows each of the four steps and who can shepherd the organization through them.

So without further adieu, here are my four simple steps for successful assessment programs.

Step 1: Understand what you are looking for

Before you even begin working on an assessment solution, understand the problem at hand. Take this investigation as high as you can, reaching toward the key strategic drivers for the organization.

Make sure you know the goals for the coming years and how talent provides the raw material for meeting them. Once you have checked in with the big picture, get down into the details. Create a solid blueprint of what performance looks like at a given job or group of jobs. Don't just go off a job description either! Clearly outline the knowledge, skills, abilities, values, behaviors, competencies, etc. that drive success. If you don't have the full picture of what value is, how the heck can you know what to look for in a candidate? You can guess if you want to, but the payoff is not going to make you a hero with the boss.

Don't get too hung up on vendors who suggest you use their test to set a profile benchmark either. While these solutions do have some value, letting the test drive your performance profile is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse. When you build a house, you usually approach the contractor with a full set of blueprints in hand. Assessment programs are no different!

Step 2: Choose assessments that measure the things you value

Nothing more, nothing less. Questions and content that cannot be tied directly back to the things you define in Step 1 of your process can be considered nothing but waste.

What is the value of an irrelevant question? It is only noise, and this noise can obstruct the truth. The classic best practice for choosing assessments is to create a test plan that grids out all the key things that you defined in Step 1 and identifies test or assessment content that measures each of them as part of a hiring process.

This step is fraught with peril. Vendors do not always make sure you create as little waste as possible during this step. They have a set of pegs and they are going to sell them even if some of them just don't fit.

So the key to this step is finding a vendor or partner that can provide thorough coverage of your value model with little waste. Listing all the vendor selection guidelines to be aware of is a whole different article. At a minimum I suggest the following:

• Don't hire a testing vendor with no I/O psychologists on staff
• Demand technical validation reports
• Check references from industries that are similar to yours, ask for stories of ROI and value
• Take any and all tests recommended by a vendor, and view the results from the perspective of the candidate. How would the test make you feel if you were an applicant?
• Don't focus on tests that leave huge spaces for inferences between test questions and job performance. Why not simplify things and use assessments that look like the job and feel like the job? Math tests and personality tests do work but they are so far removed from what is being asked of employees behaviorally while on the job that they introduce room for noise, error, and ill-will among applicants.

Step 3: Evaluate applicants via a consistent process that relies on multiple types of user-friendly data

Some of the biggest issues limiting the impact of assessment come in their use as decision-making tools. Assessment info is just one of many data streams that support hiring experts in making consistent and accurate decisions. The key to using assessment data effectively is to be consistent and to know both its limitations and its value-adds.

I see over- and under-reliance on assessment results happening in the decision-making process. End users either feel that the assessment can help remove any indecision they have, or on the other end of the spectrum, simply round-file the assessment results in favor of their own opinions.

As with most things in life, the sweet-spot lies somewhere in the middle. Implementing assessment requires some change management and some investment in an understanding of its value proposition as a decision-support tool. To the value an assessment program can deliver:

Equip end users with user-friendly reporting tools. Many tests come from a clinical tradition that involves tons of narrative and obtuse nomenclature. Whenever you are considering an assessment vendor, look at its reports and make sure they make sense and are as simple as they can be for getting the job done.

Ensure that key decision points are synced with your process. For high applicant volumes, there's no problem using an auto screening tool at the top of the funnel. For low volume, high-touch hiring, this is not as effective an approach. The key is to provide decision makers with the info they need, when they need it. Process and assessment should be tightly linked or waste will surely occur.

Train end users on the value proposition for using the assessments you provide in a consistent manner. Empower them to use the info to support their expertise. Assessment is an excellent way to confirm hunches or trends that an expert can see unfolding throughout the hiring process.

Step 4: Close the loop and evaluate

This is perhaps the step that is most often excluded from the game plan. It can be hard to collect the data required to show value from assessment. However, where there is a will there is a way. Nothing sells assessments like results. How do we show results? By making sure that there is a plan for "closing the loop" and evaluating the impact of an implementation on outcomes that are seen as important. Think about Six Sigma. Think about business intelligence. You will surely arrive at some examples from your own travels that clearly show the power of these tools for identifying waste and understanding the cause of trends in data.

Assessment has been offering business intelligence and process improvement opportunities for over 50 years, but many companies are not paying any attention.

As assessment becomes more of a strategic partner to organizations, it is doing so based on the success stories that it is providing via case studies and other tales of ROI. The companies that are paying attention are the ones that are telling the stories that the C-suite wants to hear!

It can be hard to track value because job performance measures are abstract or more qualitative in nature. However, if it is one thing that our present state of technology is providing, it is data. Billions and billions of data points are captured on a daily basis. Surely there is something we can work with here!

If you have followed the first three steps and leave the fourth one out, you are still leaving most of the value from assessment on the table. Here are some tips to help you avoid this unfortunate situation:

Plan for proving ROI from Day 1. When selling assessment, go back to the organization's strategic drivers and work to clarify what outcomes will have value to the bottom line.

Plan for a data feed that will allow you to see the impact of hiring decisions on these valued outcomes.

Don't fully rely on your testing vendor to do the above for you. Many vendors have their own agenda, and statistics are easily massaged to feed an agenda. Use your internal resources or hire an independent third party to ensure you get the real story.

Start small. Run a Proof of Concept or pilot study first to manage the process in a controlled fashion. Use the results as ammo to up the ante and gain leverage with the powers that be.

Be creative. Don't be afraid to think about things differently and to demand that your organization takes control and looks for new sources of value. You may be surprised at the interesting solutions you develop.

Assessment is not a risk as long as you use it properly. As with any power tool it is important to exercise caution, follow the instructions, use the right tool for the job, and wear the proper protective gear. Do these things and you are in the zone!

It is a jungle out there when it comes to choosing vendors but you will make things much easier on yourself if you educate yourself and see past the B.S. Simply do the work required to see if you are offered coverage for all four steps presented here.

If a vendor does not support all four of these phases, you are leaving money on the table. Many solutions you will find may skip steps in the name of speed and ease. This is not necessarily bad or evil; just don't expect the same level of value. The more time you spend optimizing at each step, the more value is likely to return.

Happy hunting!!!

About the Author:- Dr. Charles Handler is the president and founder of Rocket-Hire.com. Throughout his career he has specialized in developing effective, legally defensible employee selection systems. He has taken what he learned developing recruiting and selection solutions for a wide variety of organizations and combined it with his love of technology to help clients develop new models for employee selection. His philosophy focuses on combining sound science with innovation and practicality to create online hiring strategies that provide ROI and demonstrate the value of human capital. Charles has a Master's and Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology.

Thanks to ERE Media, Inc.

The New Thinking In Performance Appraisals

Annual performance appraisals are falling out of favor with HR professionals. Instead, companies are turning to a process of ongoing assessment and feedback.

 

Performance appraisal was once the unquestioned way of doing things, the familiar ritual in which employees and managers sat down for an annual evaluation. If the employees were lucky, they walked away with raises, often tied to a ranking on some sort of rigid numerical scale. Nobody really liked it, but in the old command-and-control style of organizational leadership, this seemed like a perfectly appropriate model for measuring performance.

But today, with the widespread emphasis on teamwork, shared leadership, and an ongoing struggle to find and retain qualified employees, it's a model that is falling increasingly out of favor, says Fred Nickols, a senior consultant with The Distance Consulting Company in Robbinsville, New Jersey.

In a recent survey conducted jointly by the Society for Human Resource Management and Personnel Decisions International 32 percent of the HR professionals surveyed indicated that they were "unsatisfied" or "very unsatisfied" with their organizations' performance-management systems. They cited deficiencies in leadership development, coaching, 360-degree feedback, and development planning. Twenty-two percent said that the greatest challenge they face is a lack of support from top management. Forty-two percent of the organizations that participated reported that executives do not even bother to review the performance-management systems that are currently in place.

If companies don't do annual performance reviews, however, what will take their place? More and more, organizations are turning to systems of performance management. That is what Nickols advocated in 1997 with his provocatively titled article, "Don't Redesign Your Company's Performance Appraisal System, Scrap It!" (Corporate University Review, May-June, 1997). Recently, authors Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins have devoted a book to the subject: Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire And What to do Instead (Berrett-Koehler December 2000), which is full of examples of companies that scrapped traditional performance-appraisal systems.

And although Nickols, Coens and Jenkins advocate an end to performance appraisals, that's just the beginning of performance management. It rests on the following basic principles, according to Nickols:

• Goals should be set and agreed upon by both the manager and the employee.

• Metrics for measuring the employee's success in meeting those goals should be clearly articulated.

• The goals themselves should be flexible enough to reflect changing conditions in the economy and the workplace.

• Employees should be able to think of their managers as coaches who are there not to pass judgment, but to help them achieve success.

The "what to do instead" in Coens and Jenkins' book is nothing less than a "whole cultural shift" in an organization, said Coens, an organizational trainer, employment law attorney, and educator in human resources.

Instead of measuring employees' performance and pointing out where they fall short, organizations will achieve more results by finding ways to fine-tune and improve their systems. So, rather than have hotel management ding a desk clerk in an annual review for being too slow in processing the check-outs of departing guests, it would be more productive to set up an express check-out system.

Jenkins and Coens cite several case studies in which organizations dumped traditional performance appraisals in favor of performance management processes that "decoupled" everything that is packed into the typical review: coaching, feedback, compensation and promotion decisions, and legal documentation:

• The 500-person Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department stopped doing traditional appraisals for all but probationary officers in 1989-1990, replacing them with a system of individual goal-setting, leadership-training, and employee involvement that extends to officers choosing which sergeants they want to work with, sergeants choosing lieutenants and so on.

  A U.S. Department of Justice study of 12 metropolitan police departments found Madison police to be the highest in satisfaction level among citizens, for both white and non-white communities. Each year, the department receives more than 1,000 applications for the department's two dozen openings.

• University of Wisconsin Credit Union, also located in Madison, replaced its appraisal system with an array of elective, flexible, coaching tools and formats. The result has been improved employee satisfaction and a dramatic reduction in turnover, Coens said.

The argument against traditional performance appraisals also was persuasive enough to get the attention of Bruce Mallory, vice president of financial services for SELCO Credit Union in Eugene, Oregon.

After contacting Nickols, SELCO scrapped the credit union's entire performance appraisal system. Instead of using a complex set of matrices to determine raises for SELCO's 200 employees, they opted to give individual managers a pool of money to work with every year. The managers could then award bonuses and raises as they saw fit. And instead of using a formal appraisal system to measure performance, managers were simply told that they had to sit down with the individual members of their teams and have face-to-face conversations on a regular basis. Four years after implementing this system, Mallory's only regret is that SELCO didn't try it sooner.

Today, managers just need to document that they have in fact had regular conversations with their employees. If there are problems, managers are expected to make note of it. This creates the paper trail that will support any eventual disciplinary action or termination. "We figure that we've saved at least $350,000 in time spent alone," he says. "It doesn't mean that we're spending any less time with the people. But it's time better spent. It's managing people differently, rather than managing the paper flow."

Part of that difference is the assessment cycle. It used to be based on date of hire, but Jane Weizmann, senior consultant for Watson Wyatt Worldwide, says it makes more sense to synchronize it with the organization's business calendar. "From the business's point of view, you want to be sure that you line up your needs with the employees' needs. And you want to make sure that you define the relationship between the two."

Thanks to Dayton Fandray / Crain Communications Inc. / Work Force

 

How Do We Launch An Internship Program To Help Curb Turnover?

It should be structured, provide value, define success, and it also should help interns understand your work culture, offer them coaching and prepare them for career advancement.

How do we launch an internship program that will help us reduce high turnover? We intend to provide training to equip new employees, mostly younger people, to eventually occupy full-time positions with our hospitality company. We are interested in curbing the costs of retaining people and also hoping to build brand loyalty with employees.

—Inquisitive About Interns, head of human resources, hospitality, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Dear Inquisitive:

Internship programs have traditionally been a great way to wade into the talent pool without making hasty commitments. Today, internships are less a test of potential talent and more a mutual "test-drive" for both the prospective employee and the employer. Smart companies realize that, as demographic and perceptual shifts toward work occur, internship programs also need to evolve. The best internship programs provide real work experience and an exposure to corporate culture, and they provide the company with a petri dish of prospective employees.

Internship programs are more important than ever before. The costs to a company of losing talent are significant, including undermining company culture, loss in productivity and an inability to execute strategy. The total cost of turnover ranges from 30 percent of a person's yearly salary for hourly employees, according to Cornell University, to 150 percent for salaried employees (Saratoga Institute, Hewitt Associates). The right internship program can prepare new employees in advance and substantially reduce costs associated with new-employee turnover.

As worker demographics continue to shift over the next decade, companies need to ensure that their internship programs are effective. Online tools are increasingly being used by companies to manage this vital process. The effective internship program must include the following:

• Create structure. Effective internship programs are structured, have clear objectives, and map the processes that turn interns into employees.

• Provide value. Make sure that the work or projects provide an opportunity to learn, expand upon education or areas of interest, and expose the intern to real work. Have interns identify what they want to gain from the experience.

• Explicitly define success. Remove all ambiguity regarding roles, responsibilities and expected results.

• Interpret the culture. Help interns understand and navigate their new environment by explaining explicit and implicit elements of your company culture. This will help interns get up to speed faster and, if they decide to join the company, there will be no question of what to expect.

• Coach to opportunities. Provide timely and constructive feedback to address opportunities for development or avoid behaviors that may undermine your intern's success. A huge part of the internship experience is learning how to succeed within the workplace. Ensuring their success requires active coaching.

• Broaden the horizon. Getting good talent in the door is half the challenge. Make sure your internship program explores a range of potential career opportunities. Although an internship may focus on one project within one department, ensure that the broader company, its departments and career paths are defined.

SOURCE: Dr. Thuy Sindell and Milo Sindell, San Francisco

LEARN MORE: Please read what should be considered before launching your college recruiting initiative.

Thanks to Crain Communications Inc. / Work Force

 

Do Not Compare Your Work

A mechanic was removing the cylinder heads from the motor of a car when he spotted the famous heart surgeon in his shop, who was standing off to the side, waiting for the service manager to come to take a look at his car.

 

The mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hello Doctor! Please come over here for a minute."

 

The famous surgeon, a bit surprised, walked over to the mechanic. The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked argumentatively, "So doctor, look at this. I also open hearts, take valves out, grind 'em, put in new parts, and when I finish this will work as a new one. So how come you get the big money, when you and me is doing basically the same work."

 

The doctor leaned over and whispered to the mechanic, "Try to do it when the engine is running."

 

Tips For Selecting Your Story’s Narrative Style

Before writers can share their stories, they have to decide what type of storyteller they're going to hire for a particular gig. Here are the job candidates:

First Person
For this narrator, it's all "Me," "Me," "Me." (Or, more precisely, "I," "I," "I.") But it's not that simple. The first-person narrator can be integral to the story, in which case they know only what they observe or discover. Alternatively, they can be a minor character, which may actually free them up to know more than the major players. The first person might also be once or twice removed from the story: They heard it from a friend or a friend of a friend (or some other indirect source).

But keep in mind before you hire this applicant that it's a challenge to keep the first-person narrator from telling too much, and that such a person is subjective and therefore unreliable. (Actually, that can be a good thing, dramatically speaking.)

First person is an effective device especially for action-oriented genre fiction: detective stories, thrillers, and the like, because this type of narration keeps the reader close to the action and privy to the cogitations of the protagonist, who is usually trying to solve a mystery or foil a plot.

Second Person
The second person ("You") doesn't get much work. You might think second person is the most engaging type of narrative, because it puts the reader in the thick of the action, but the device gets old quickly. However, it can be used incidentally, in a prologue or in one or more asides, cued by the first-person or third-person narrator.

Third Person
This narrative device ("He," "She," "They") is the most common, for good reason(s): The third-person narrator is an objective observer who describes and interprets the characters and their actions, thoughts and feelings, and motivations without direct knowledge. (That objectively doesn't always prevent the narrator from making satirical or otherwise judgmental observations, however.)

But before you leap up and cast this role, there's one more decision to make: Is this narrator omniscient, meaning they know all, or are they, like the characters, limited in their knowledge? Beyond that, is the third person partisan about the proceedings, or neutral? Consider, too, that just like a first-person narrator, the third person might be unreliable: An observer, whether they have limited or unlimited access to knowing what the heck's going on, may have a mischievous streak and decide to deceive the reader.

Tense
Regardless of who you hire, one more issue needs to be resolved: tense. Will the narrator describe occurrences in the present ("I steal over to the sofa and make sure the gun appears to have fallen out of her hand"), or in the past ("I stole over to the sofa and made sure the gun appeared to have fallen out of her hand.")? Just as with second person, a little present-tense narration goes a long way, but a short short story can be effective in that form, or you can introduce present tense in digestible morsels in a longer work, such as when a character is recalling an incident.

Choose tense and narration form carefully, and may the best person win.

Thanks to Daily Writing Tips

 

15 Purposes For Parentheses

Parentheses are versatile tools for writers. These examples illustrate their uses; use them to enclose the following:

Examples, directions, explanations, and clarifications:

1. "Retain ampersands when they appear as part of an official name (Barnes & Noble, Ben & Jerry's)."

2. "At that point, you may want to consult with a professional. (Refer to the Resources chapter for a list of tax advisers.)"

3. "Here is a selective glossary of editing and production terms. (Synonyms are in italics; cross-referenced terms are in bold italics.)"

4. "Precede the dollar amount with the initials US only to avoid confusion (in, say, an article about Australia, where the basic unit of currency is also called the dollar)."

Numerals that confirm a spelled-out number in a contract:

5. "The confirmation letter is due within thirty (30) days."

Abbreviations (usually) after the first reference to the full version of the term:

6. "The country's import and export levels are regulated by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

Note: If the abbreviation is well known or is used again within the next sentence or two after the full name, omit the parenthesized abbreviation immediately after it.

Numbers or letters that distinguish items in a run-in list:

7. "The constituent parts are (1) the thingamajig, (2) the whatchamacallit, and (3) the whatsit."

Note: Sometimes, only the close parenthesis is used in this format. However, usually, neither numbers nor parentheses are necessary in such cases.

Modifying words or phrases, or interjections:

8. "The writer will (one hopes) produce well-crafted prose."

9. "It turns out that he had (gasp!) told the truth."

Translations, pronunciations, or equivalents:

10. "She ran from the kuma (bear)."

11. "Stay at the warung (wah-ROONG) near the mall."

12. "The distance from Marseille to Paris is 771 kilometers (479 miles)."

The area code in a phone number or a unit in a mathematical or logical expression:

13. "(213) 867-5309"

14. "a(b) = c"

In-text citations:

15. "However, the literature is ambivalent on this issue (Howard, Fine, and Howard 1925; Marx et al. 1912)."

Punctuation in Parentheses
A full sentence in parentheses is capitalized and is followed by a period preceding the closing parenthesis: "Have these resources on hand before you begin. (Items listed in parentheses are desirable but not essential.)"

A partial sentence in parentheses is not capitalized and is not followed by a period but may precede a question mark or exclamation point: "Use a dark, fine-pointed pen (erasable pens allow for neat alteration) or pencil." "Now that you're finished (you are finished, aren't you?), we will proceed."

Thanks to Daily Writing Tips

 

A Cool Neurological Explaination For The Power Of Small Wins

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of the power of small wins, and following Karl Weick's classic article, have argued in Good Boss, Bad Boss and here at HBR that big hairy goals cause people to freak-out and freeze-up if they aren't broken down into smaller stepping stones. Small wins are also a big theme in Peter Sims great book Little Bets, which I wrote about last week. Well, today I learned about a cool article in CIO about a book by Shawn Achor called The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work.

Check-out the article. I liked it a lot, notably the 20 Second Rule "To break a bad habit, add 20 seconds to the time it takes to engage in that bad habit." But my favorite part was his neurological explanation for the power of small wins and dangers of big hairy goals alone:

Goals that are too big paralyze you. They literally shut off your brain, says Achor. Here's what happens to your brain when faced with a daunting goal or project:

The amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to fear and threats, hijacks the "thinker" part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, says Achor. The amygdala steals resources from the prefrontal cortex, the creative part of the brain that makes decisions and sees possibilities.

"We watch this on a brain scan," he says. "The more the amygdala lights up, the less the prefrontal cortex does."Breaking a big goal into smaller, more achievable goals prevents the fear part of your brain from hijacking your thinking cap and gives you victories.

Pretty cool, huh?  I have not read Shawn's book, but it sounds cool. Bosses beware, setting those big goals without breaking them into bite-sized people (or allowing and encouraging your followers to do so) will make you and your people dumb and uncreative -- at least if Shawn is right.

Thanks to Bob Sutton

 

How To Be A Good Boss

If you're a boss, what do your employees really think of you? If they had a choice, would they continue to work for you? What are the hallmarks of a good boss?

And as a good boss, what do you need to accomplish every day?

These are just some of the major questions Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton seeks to address in his new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best...and Learn from the Worst, which is a sequel to his stunning bestseller The No Asshole Rule.

If you're not familiar with Bob Sutton's books or blog, Work Matters, now is the time to get acquainted with his thinking, because it's invaluable to anyone running a team or business. Sutton teaches in a few of Stanford's schools. What sets him apart is the practicality of his ideas, something that remains elusive for many scholars that teach.

There is so much pragmatic wisdom in Good Boss, Bad Boss it's hard to decide what to focus on here.

Take "The Mindset of a Great Boss" -- a five-part series of questions such as, "Do you treat the work you lead as a marathon or sprint?" and  "Do you see your job as caring for and protecting your people, and fighting for them when necessary?"

There's "Tricks for Taking Charge," which comes with the caveat: "WARNING!! Learn to be just assertive enough!" The message: Don't become an overbearing jerk when you use these strategies.

He offers 10 tips on "How to Lead a Good Fight," which includes advice like "Encourage everyone to argue. Gently silence people who talk too much and invite those who are silent to jump into the fray."

There's "The 11 Commandments for Wise Bosses," which begins with "Have strong convictions and weakly held beliefs" as well as "The 12 Commandments of Bosses' Dirty Work: How to Implement Tough Decisions in Effective and Humane Ways."

There's "Bosshole Busters: Tips for Squelching Your Inner Jerk," which delivers rather provocative notions such as "If clients treat you like dirt, fire them if possible. If you can't, charge [higher] taxes, give employees who work with them combat pay, and limit everyone's exposure to these creeps."

There's the "EGOS Survey (Evaluation Gauge for Obnoxious Superstars)," which helps you answer the question of whether you are hiring and breeding greedy and selfish employees.

But my favorite is "Stepping Stones for Can-Do Bosses: Tips and Tricks for Eradicating Impediments to Action."

It includes nine such tips and tricks:

1. When your people suggest a promising idea, say (as often as possible): "Great! Do it" This is inspired by a UPS commercial, where two slick consultants propose cost-cutting ideas to a receptive client. The client replies: "Great! Do it." The consultants look bewildered and respond, "Sir, we don't actually do what we propose. We just propose it."In contrast, the best bosses and followers do what they propose.

2. Assign your worst smart talkers to shadow your best doers. Reward both parties if the smart talkers become more action oriented.

3. Fire or demote incurable smart talkers -- and let your people know why you did it. Beware of creating a climate of fear, so give people feedback and warnings first. But if you let these rotten apples stick around, they will infect others and produce vile consequences for all.

4. Say the same simple and good things again and again until the message shapes what people do. Use the philosophy espoused by former P&G CEO A. G. Lafley of keeping things "Sesame Street Simple."

5. Tell juicy stories about destructive things to stop doing. One manager tells about how he used to tune out the conversation and answer emails on conference calls. He kept missing important things, and his direct reports concluded that he didn't care about them or their work. Now he imagines his people are in the room, and governs his actions accordingly.

6. When in doubt, throw it out or don't add it in the first place. If you can't easily explain to each other -- and to customers -- the differences among your products and services, perhaps it's time to get rid of some.

 

7.  Fight the Otis Redding (Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay) Problem, aka "can't do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I'll remain the same." List all the performance metrics you use. Pick the three most important. Do you really need the rest?

8. Ask yourself and your people if you have practices that "everyone else" uses, but are a waste of time or downright destructive. Like performance evaluations. Like layers upon layers of approvals.

9. Link hot emotions with cool solutions. Crank up your people's fears and hopes to get their juices flowing, then direct that energy to effective and concrete behaviors.

Good Boss, Bad Boss isn't just good for business. It's just good advice, whether we're presiding or parenting. If you follow just 10 percent of Bob Sutton's guidance, you'll be a 100 percent better boss.

Matthew E. May is a design, creativity and innovation author and coach.

 

Thanks to Open Forum

 

 

Are You Working With Energizers Or Rotten Apples?

Bring on the Energizers

Rob Cross studies social networks: how information, ideas, and influence travel through the Web of relationships that compose every team and organization. A few years back, Rob and his colleagues were designing a survey to map the connections among employees within several big companies. They wanted to identify what kinds of employees were top performers and brought out the best in others. They hypothesized that people who were renowned for having expertise, spreading technical knowledge, and best positioned to gather and weave together information from others would be seen as top performers. At a professional services firm they were studying, an executive argued they were missing something:

We have some of the brightest consultants in the world here. But some are more successful than others, and it has much more to do with what I call buzz than a slight difference in IQ. Our high performers create enthusiasm for things. ... They create energy, and even though this is intangible it generates client sales and follow-on work as well as gets other people here engaged in and supportive of what they are doing.

Inspired by this insight, they added a simple question to their survey: "People can affect the energy and enthusiasm we have at work in various ways. Interactions with some people can leave you feeling drained while others can leave you feeling enthused about possibilities. When you interact with each person below, how does it typically affect your energy level?" The possible answers were: 1 = de-energizing; 2 = no effect/neutral; or 3 = energizing. The colleagues in their team or business were then listed, and each was rated by every coworker.

Rob and his fellow researchers were stunned by how strongly this "energy" question predicted performance evaluations and promotions, and whether people stayed with or left an organization. They also found that the most successful teams and organizations had networks filled with interconnected energizers. Cross and his colleagues have since dug into the kinds of people who are energizers and why they succeed. "Energizers" aren't necessarily charismatic and bubbly; on the surface, many are understated and rather shy. But all create energy via optimism about the possibilities ahead, fully engaging the person right in front of them right now, valuing others' ideas, and helping people feel as if they are making progress.

The late Gordon MacKenzie held a position at Hallmark Cards as "the Creative Paradox." MacKenzie was a successful designer, led innovative design teams, and taught inspiring creativity workshops to everyone from kindergarteners to CEOs. In Orbiting the Giant Hairball, MacKenzie described how he sparked positive energy when he was Hallmark's Creative Paradox:

I became a liaison between the chaos of creativity and the discipline of business. I had no job description and a title that made no sense, but people started coming to me with their ideas, and I would listen to those ideas and validate them. When you validate a person, what you're really doing is giving them power--like a battery charger.

Again, energizers don't need to be bubbly or exciting. When I think of a soft-spoken energizer, Lenny Mendonca comes to mind, a partner at McKinsey who has held senior positions including head of the strategy practice and chair of the McKinsey Global Institute. Before I met Lenny, my stereotype of McKinsey partners was they were smoothtalking egomaniacs. Lenny is exactly the opposite. I remember a great dinner that my colleague Hayagreeva "Huggy" Rao and I had with Lenny at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company (which Lenny owns). Huggy and I were touched by how encouraging and constructive Lenny had been about research we were pursuing. Huggy, an astute observer, pointed out how closely Lenny listened, how he saw possible value in every person and every idea and-- unlike the two of us--rarely interrupted. Huggy and I are just two of Lenny's fans; he has the same energizing effect on everyone who knows him.

Rotten Apples: Bad Is Stronger Than Good

Unfortunately, accentuating the positive isn't enough. The best bosses do more than charge up people, and recruit and breed energizers. They eliminate the negative, because even a few bad apples and destructive acts can undermine many good people and constructive acts. The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps's research on "bad apples." Felps and his colleagues studied what I call deadbeats ("withholders of effort"), downers (who "express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation," a toxic breed of de-energizer), and assholes (who violate "interpersonal norms of respect"). Felps estimates that teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples.

These rotten apples are so destructive because "bad is stronger than good." For most people, negative thoughts, feelings, and events produce larger and longer-lasting effects than positive ones. Research on romantic relationships shows that unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, chances the relationship will succeed are slim. When the proportion of negative interactions exceeds this "five-to-one rule," marital satisfaction goes way down and the divorce rate goes way up. Similarly, a study that tracked employees' moods found that the impact of negative interactions with bosses and coworkers on employees' feelings were five times stronger than positive interactions. Negative interactions (and the bad apples who provoke them) pack such a wallop in close relationships because they are so distracting, emotionally draining, and deflating. When a group does interdependent work, rotten apples drag down and infect everyone else. Unfortunately, grumpiness, nastiness, laziness, and stupidity are remarkably contagious.

The upshot is that as a boss, you can't wait very long to see if these destructive characters will mend their ways. You need to intervene quickly. If pointed and persistent feedback fails, do everything you can to expel the bad apple. A few years back, I was teaching student teams working with Wal-Mart to help frontline employees become more aware of the environmental impact of the products they sold. The project had tight deadlines and a high-pressure presentation for executives. One team complained that a member had missed most meetings and wasn't doing any work. When I talked to him, he admitted to "blowing off" his team because he was busy interviewing for Rhodes Scholarship and a job at Google--but insisted he was so talented that he deserved to stay on the team. This student thought he was so smart that he didn't need to do any work. But he was just a rotten apple. He dropped the class once I convinced him he was headed for a lousy grade. The team went on to do wonderful work, and the deadbeat did not get the Rhodes Scholarship or the Google job.

Thanks to Robert I. Sutton, PhD / Fast Company