#Leadership : 3 Ways to Use Data to Set and Track Your Organizational Goals…In Short, Employers — Recognizing that Data is Crucial in Goal-Setting and other Business Aspects — are Using Tracking Information to made Educated Decisions.

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Data is finding its footing in the workplace: A 2016 survey from i4cp found that 67 percent of organizations surveyed said they now use results from human capital analytics projects. This increase in the use of analytics shows a shift toward predictive practices that will likely have a huge impact on the way companies run their operations.

Free- Counting Abacus

In short, employers — recognizing that data is crucial in goal-setting and other business aspects — are using tracking information to made educated decisions. Here are some ways your company can use data to set and track your organizational and employee goals.

1. Define ‘OKRs.’

Objectives and key results (OKRs) is a popular technique that helps get whole teams moving in one direction. No more one-time “tips” and “tricks” for a quick boost that fails to sustain continued success. Instead, OKRs use data to create long-lasting solutions.

This way, companies can set objectives and come up with key results that are metric-based indicators of success. Companies can then make those key results visible, to encourage accountability at all levels of their organizations.

A May 2016 survey of 250 companies from Geckoboard found that those companies considered keeping their employees aware of key metrics and setting clear objectives the top important factors for company growth. When employees are given and are aware of specific targets to aim for, they are more engaged in their work and motivated because they know what success looks like.

So, how should companies start setting their goals?

The answer is to begin at the top. Set broad goals that are large in scale; then cascade the objectives down to your teams and individual employees. Define what the objective is and the key result you expect to be accomplished. For example, for marketers, that objective might be “Build brand awareness to create more leads and conversions.” The key result would be “Increase website traffic by X percent.”

Ensure that each key result is trackable and has a time frame. As the Geckoboard survey found, 92 percent of participating companies that tracked their metrics in real time had met some or all of their goals in the previoius 12 months — compared to 64 percent of companies that did not track in real time.

When tracking metrics like traffic, keep each team’s members informed about how their work is contributing to this goal. Objectives need to be large enough to break down into smaller steps; and these objectives should consist of several key results because every goal should have several possible routes to attainment.

Overall, data can drive performance and help teams hit their goals. Keep a finger on the pulse of the OKRs at your company and focus on organizational alignment.

 

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2. Align and track team members.

Set each employee up for success with realistic goals to aim for. When objectives seem out of reach, the team’s performance suffers. A study from the University at Buffalo School of Management found that even teams that had been successful in the past and had plenty of resources became less efficient when management set unrealistic expectations.

Don’t let that be you. Instead, structure each goal to build toward the organization’s overall goals. Provide real-time tracking and visuals so your staffers can see how they are progressing, and take corrective actions if needed. This will help leaders see how work is allocated.

Performance data adds depth and value to employee evaluations and informs better, more constructive feedback. It can also act as crucial evidence of, and show employees and employers alike where, each person is struggling — or succeeding. This information may help adjust organizational expectations and provide more accurate project-assignment and task allocation.

3. Improve quality of hire.

Goal-tracking data can inform your company’s post-hire quality metric to measure how your talent acquisition is progressing. Using performance data, hiring managers can provide detailed, informed opinions and solutions for newer employees to improve on, and determine what the hiring team should look for in future candidates.

It’s important to conduct surveys to measure your workforce’s satisfaction levels and analyze how your employees align with the company’s culture and values. This gauges how well the team is hiring for cultural fit.

Also, revenue-per-employee data helps determine your company’s costs of turnover and hiring. Recruiting goals factor into larger, organizational goals, which is why quality of hire is a crucial factor to measure and analyze.

Predictive analytics can be analyzed to guide the talent acquisition team to make better hiring decisions and improve its entire recruitment process.

 

Entrepreneur.com | August 2, 2016 | Andre Lavoie

#Leadership : 5 Things That Scare the Hell Out of Your Manager…You’re Expected to Produce Results and On Top of All That, Don’t Forget you Need to Make Sure your Employees are Happy, Productive, and Making Your Boss Happy.

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Being in charge can be scary. When you’re thrust into the position of manager, boss, CEO, etc., you’re suddenly not just punching the clock when you come into work — you’re expected to produce results and keep the whole operation from imploding. Leadership positions, though typically coveted for their prestige and higher pay, can be extremely stressful for those reasons. To put it simply, being the boss isn’t always the cakewalk you may have assumed it is.

Free- Women walking on Narrow Bridge

But there are some very specific fears that your manager or boss has related to their job. When you’re at the apex of an organization — or even a specific part of an organization — there are threats coming at you from all sides. You may have enemies among the ranks, sniping for your job. Something unexpected can happen, making you appear totally incompetent. Or, you might even sabotage yourself by believing you’re not good enough for the role.

 

On top of all that, don’t forget you need to make sure your employees are happy, productive, and making your boss happy.

But for the things that managers and those in leadership positions fear the most, we can look to a 2014 survey of 116 executives by Roger Jones, CEO of London-based consulting company Vantage Hill Partners. His findings, which he wrote about for the Harvard Business Review, revealed a handful of specific, key fears that many leaders had in common. Here are those five fears.

1. “Imposter syndrome”

If you’re not familiar with Imposter Syndrome, it refers to the feeling or idea that you’re not actually qualified for the job you have, or possess any kind of authority. You feel like an imposter — a fraud. And this is a big problem for many executives, according to Jones’s survey. In fact, it was the biggest and most prevalent fear among his respondents. “This fear diminishes their confidence and undermines relationships with other executives,” Jones wrote.

 

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2. Underachieving

When you’re in charge, you have more skin in the game. No longer can you show up to work, clock in, screw around for hours, and then feign effort to skate by. No, as a member of management and the leadership team, you’re now more invested in the organization, and that means seeing it grow and prosper. The biggest fear related to that? Coming up short, or underachieving. Many people who make it into management are overachievers to begin with, and to get a big promotion and then fail? It can be crushing.

3. Mutiny

Every workplace has its internal politics, and when you’re at the head of the table, many other people are going to be gunning for you. They might want to take your place, or simply see you fail. Perhaps it’s a jealousy issue, or some sort of personal vendetta. Either way, there’s going to be uneasiness among the ranks, and if it isn’t quickly snuffed out, you can end up with a mutiny on your hands. That is a real fear for many managers and bosses.

4. Looking stupid

Shame — or the avoidance of shame — is one of the primary factors that motivates our behavior. Nobody wants to look stupid or feel embarrassed, and we’ll do almost anything we can to avoid it. You probably lay awake at night, replaying some humiliating thing that happened to you as a child. Well, imagine something similar happening to you as the head of a workplace, or as the guy or gal in charge. You’ll never live it down.

Everyone’s afraid of looking stupid or incompetent.

5. Looking weak

Looking stupid in front of your employees is scary. But so is looking or feeling weak and powerless. Have you ever served under a boss or manager who wasn’t respected? You could walk all over them, and so could everyone else. That can be emasculating, deflating, and make you feel toothless — which makes it a very real, and very frightening fear for the people in charge.

Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger

CheatSheet.com | August 2, 2016 | Sam Becker

#Leadership : 7 Telltale Signs That You Have a Leader’s Mindset…Being a Great Leader is about Setting your Ego Aside and Putting your Team First. It’s About being Present in your Interactions. Most of All, It’s about Looking for Ways to Help your Employees Become the Best Versions of Themselves they can Possibly Be.

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Great performers don’t always make great leaders. Need proof? Just look to the sports world. Wayne Gretzky, Isaiah Thomas and Kevin McHale — all legendary athletes whose on-the-field success didn’t translate to storied coaching careers.

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Leadership, it turns out, is its own distinct set of skills — skills that can be cultivated and developed, just like any other. To paraphrase the great Vince Lombardi, leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And it all starts with the right mindset.

More than anything, leadership is just that — a state of mind. It’s the lens through which you see the world and the beliefs you bring to all your interactions with your team.

So how do you know if you have the leader’s mindset? Here are the seven telltale signs that you have the right frame of mind to be the leader your team needs.

1. You stop craving credit.
I’m not saying you defer it. I’m saying you literally stop craving it altogether. For leaders, credit becomes increasingly unimportant over time. In its stead, a desire to do the work you were meant to do, to the very best of your ability.

To a large degree, great leaders separate outcomes from their activity entirely and derive satisfaction from the work itself.

 

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2. You become more cheerleader/coach than player.
You realize it’s not about the work you do, but rather it’s about the quality of the work that others around you do.

This means you’re not focused on building presentations, creating systems documentation or making sales calls. Instead, you’re focused on creating the best culture and environment for your people to thrive. You’re inspiring and setting a vision that rallies people to become the best version of themselves. You’re removing obstacles from your team so they can do in the most unobstructed manner possible.

Great leaders focus less on doing and more on getting others to do their best.

3. You care about how you make others feel.
You understand that people like you primarily as a result of how you make them feel, and not how you look or how smart or cool you appear to be. It’s fine to have an edge, and it’s good to be bold, but good leaders are keenly aware of how people feel in their presence.

4. You begin to crave criticism.
Leaders are curious about criticism rather than defensive towards it. In fact, the best leaders actively seek it out because they know that criticism means there is likely an opportunity for growth and improvement. Remember, in every critical interaction, there is the potential for growth by the critic, the person being critiqued (aka, you) — or both!

The common thread….By now you’ve probably noticed a through line — it’s not about you.

5. You lead with curiosity.
This is especially relevant when dealing with people. Good leaders always give people the unreasonable benefit of the doubt. You should never lead with assumptions, unless they are positive ones.

Curiosity is a state of mind that not only makes you playful and interested, it ensures you’re always present. Many leaders feel a certain pressure to be perfect. They feel the company looking up to them and like they have to be on their A-game all the time.

But as my recent podcast guest Marcia Reynolds says in her latest book The Discomfort Zone, your team wants you to be present more than they need you to be perfect. Approaching everything with curiosity ensures that this is always the case.

6. Helping your team find their unique abilities is a top priority.
You realize one of your most important objectives is to help people find what energizes them the most, and then effectively aligning resources so they can spend most of their time doing those things (or more likely, that one thing).

This will not only give your team the greatest gift you can give them — the opportunity to do what they were put on Earth to do — it will also have wide ranging impact on your organization. When people are focused on their unique abilities, and not wasting their precious energy on things they don’t like or aren’t good at, magic happens.

7. You think about the long-term significance of your actions.
Good leaders are obsessed with timescale and the significance of their activities in the long run. If you’re keenly aware of the impact your actions of today will have on the future, you’re on the right track. You don’t sweat those actions that don’t create any future impact — like most emails.

You understand that as a leader, it’s most important for you to spend the majority of your time on what will matter three, six and twelve months from now. You hire people to worry about the hours, days, weeks and months. The significance and timescale of your activities will define your impact as a leader.

Extra credit –– You understand that your people want to see you live a rich life.
That is, they want to see that you’re not just a great professional, but someone who lives a full, rich life — someone who has a great and loving marriage/relationship, someone who is peaceful and tranquil throughout the day (showing mental and emotional health), and someone who takes care of themselves by eating properly and working out.

Why is this important? Because consciously or not, your employees follow your example, and focusing on having a well-rounded life gives them permission to have a well-rounded life as well.

Gone are the days when your employees are cool with their leader being really good at work, but terrible at everything else. That inspires very few. Great leaders take care of their people and themselves. Part of what we provide at SnackNation is the ability to demonstrate to your team that it’s not all about work; things like health, nutrition and well-being not only support performance, but are just as valuable, if not more so.

The common thread….By now you’ve probably noticed a through line — it’s not about you.

Being a great leader is about setting your ego aside and putting your team first. It’s about being present in your interactions. Most of all, it’s about looking for ways to help your employees become the best versions of themselves they can possibly be.

 

Entrepreneur.com | August 2, 2016 | Sean Kelly

#Life : 9 Yoga Poses You Can Do At Your Desk Without Looking Really Weird (Infographic)…Don’t Settle for Inactivity. Research by the Lancet Estimates that Inactivity Costs the World Around $67.5 Billion a Year.

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If you’re a yogi or yogini, you know the benefits of yoga on the body — it can help make you happier and improve flexibility and focus — but sometimes co-workers don’t exactly appreciate your mid-day yoga routine (this is no Ashrama).

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happy young business man portrait in bright modern office indoor

Don’t settle for inactivity. Research by the Lancet estimates that inactivity costs the world around $67.5 billion a year.

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Luckily, you can avoid inactivity while in the office. JFK Blog has compiled yoga poses that you can do at your desk without getting weird stares from the cubicle next door. Check them out in the Infographic below.

Ford Motor Company (Infographic)

Entrepreneur.com | July 30, 2016 | Grace Reader 

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#Leadership : How I’ve Learned To Fight Loneliness And Isolation As A CEO…When Everyone’s Looking to You for Answers, one CEO Recounts from Experience, the Pressures can be Intense.

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 Martin Senn, the former head of Zurich Insurance, committed suicide in May this year, less than three years after two other top Swiss executives took their own lives. It’s difficult to generalize from individual tragedies like these, but it’s just as difficult not to see a common thread. It’s long been argued that companies could do a lot more to support their employees’ mental health and well-being, considering that so many of those pressures arise in the workplace.

Free- Bench on a Lonely Beach

What’s clear is that CEOs aren’t exempt from the pressures. Many execs face intense scrutiny in their roles and bear the mental and emotional burden of guiding their companies to success and protecting their employees’ livelihoods—and that’s outside of any issues in their personal lives.

LONELINESS IN THE CORNER OFFICE

So many roll their eyes at the notion that highly compensated business leaders need or deserve special attention. And at a time when so many Americans struggle just to find a decently paid job, that sentiment is understandable. But it doesn’t diminish or negate the reality that the c-suite offers no shelter from psychological pressures—many of which are unique to those in leadership positions.

A survey by RHR International found that half of CEOs report experiencing feelings of loneliness in their roles. Of this group, 61% believe isolation hinders their performance. That’s a significant proportion of top executives who are suffering and not performing at their peak. Executive loneliness and isolation is bad for people and bad for business.

In my experience, fear and ego are two of the main causes of this kind of isolation. On the one hand, there’s fear of appearing inadequate and the concern that asking for help could make others doubt your judgment. After all, CEOs are supposed to have all the answers—the buck stops with you. Meanwhile, your ego is telling you that you really don’t need others to help make big decisions; who knows your business better than you do? Combined, these two factors can prevent even highly capable CEOs from turning to others for support when they need it most.

When times are good, you may not even notice this. It’s when your business faces real struggles that the risks and consequences of loneliness come into play. In the 2008—2009 financial crisis, my business was in desperate shape and everyone was looking to me for answers. I could feel the walls closing in. Here are some steps I was able to take to overcome those feelings of anxiety and loneliness and get myself—and my company—back in gear.

1. DON’T WAIT TO FIND PEER SUPPORT

For me, one of the most revelatory things was simply realizing that I wasn’t alone in being alone. Lots of other CEOs out there were experiencing the same challenges and going through the same emotions. I just had to look outside my own company and immediate circle to find them.

For me, the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), a group of CEOs from companies around the world, has been an incredible channel for connecting with peers who’ve had similar experiences. During regular meetings with my YPO forum group—eight to 10 CEOs or other top decision makers from non-competing businesses—we all share the challenges we’re facing and speak frankly about how we’re trying to tackle them.

In 2009, when BuildDirect was teetering on the brink of collapse, I confessed to my forum mates that in about a month’s time we wouldn’t be able to make payroll. This was an incredibly scary thing to admit, but just being able to say it out loud to others helped me unlock the creative thinking it took to come up with a solution.

Bottom line: There are other people out there who have gone through the exact same challenges. Finding them—even if it means looking outside your company—is a first step toward overcoming isolation.

 

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2. LET YOURSELF FEEL VULNERABLE, THEN LET PEOPLE IN

Vulnerability is all about inviting others into your world, making it a natural antidote to loneliness. The challenge is taking that first step and letting down your defenses. I’ve found that simply confiding in people from the get-go—essentially, trusting first and asking questions later—can dramatically improve ties with your team. While you never know what kind of response you’ll get, in my experience the benefits far outweigh the risks.

This isn’t a unique perspective on my part. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has spoken previously about the importance of vulnerability and transparency and the role they played when his company was struggling in 2008. Instead of trying to become the lone savior of Starbucks, Schultz helped his employees understand the challenges the company was facing and empowered them to become part of the solution. But he first had to let his own guard down as their leader in order to do that.

I’ve seen the power of this firsthand. During the crisis, I held a company-wide meeting and explained to everyone that we would have to shut down BuildDirect if we couldn’t figure our way out of the problems we were facing. Rather than drawing up a strategy behind closed doors and hoping for the best, laying everything out there in the open encouraged the whole team to take ownership of our challenges and work toward solving it, which we ultimately did.

3. STAY GRATEFUL WHEN IT’S HARDEST

When I think about how fortunate I am to have a loving family, good health, and the ability to make positive contributions to the world around me, it’s hard to get bogged down in despair or loneliness for too long. A 2007 study, in fact, found that gratitude led directly to “higher levels of perceived social support, and lower levels of stress and depression”—just one of the psychological benefits of simple thankfulness.

The challenge, as always, is remembering all of this in the heat of the moment. For me, maintaining this perspective is all about routine and repetition. I work hard to carve out dedicated time for family and friends—then try and protect that time when I do. My family sometimes takes trips to a cabin, and when we’re there, I do my best to make sure I give my full attention to things like swimming, campfires, and enjoying each other’s company—not work. That may sound simple, but any business leader knows how hard it can be. In the end, gratitude is almost like a muscle: It’s something you have to consciously exercise or else you risk losing it.

Media coverage of high-profile CEOs tends to ramp up whenever things are going really well or really badly, and that can add a real psychological pressure on execs themselves. For leaders who judge their success by that popular narrative, the pressures on them can build, sometimes with terrible consequences.

But great CEOs know—and always try to remind themselves, especially when it’s hardest—that it’s never about them. It’s about the impact that their businesses have on others. They build relationships and teams that pass credit for success onto other people. They stand in when mistakes are made, shielding their teams so that experimenting and learning can continue. As I’ve come to understand, win or lose, knowing it’s not all about you—and never has been—can make a big difference.

Jeff Booth is cofounder and CEO of BuildDirect. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffBooth.

 

FastCompany.com | JEFF BOOTH 07.27.16 5:00 AM

#Leadership : 10 Tips for Planning a Successful Company Conference…A Conference that Isn’t Planned Well can Impact your Career Like a Lead Balloon. If the Speakers Don’t Impress Attendees, or You Run Out of Food, It can be Talked About for Months Afterward…And you Might Shoulder the Blame, or at Least Share It.

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Planning a company conference can boost your career and visibility. It can strengthen company sales and morale, depending on its purpose.

Networking Diverse Group

Conferences are complex, though, and can be tricky to plan. A compelling agenda and great speakers are a must. But so are food, comfortable seats and a myriad of elements behind the scenes. Think air conditioning. Heat. Morning coffee.

A conference that isn’t planned well can impact your career like a lead balloon. If the speakers don’t impress attendees, or you run out of food, it can be talked about for months afterward … And you might shoulder the blame, or at least share it. 

So plan your company conference thoroughly. Don’t leave anything to chance. Here are 10 tips for planning successfully.

Initial steps:
1. Decide on a clear purpose

Successful conferences have a clear purpose. Do you need to motivate the sales force? Introduce a new product? Engage in team-building activities? Bring separate geographical regions together? The purpose determines much of the rest of the conference: its size, its speakers and the agenda.

 

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2. Brainstorm a wishlist

Once you have a defining purpose, begin to brainstorm. What would you — and the meeting committee, if there is one — most like to see? Do you want to engage dynamic and well-known speakers? Do you want plenary sessions, where the entire group of attendees gathers to hear speakers? Or do you need a series of break-out sessions on multiple topics? What about the conference venue? Should it be near the company? In an area convenient to attendees throughout the U.S. and overseas?

3. Create a budget

Once you have a purpose and wish list, set up your budget. Be sure to include all the categories you need. Set up a line item for each thing on your wish list.

Will you need paid speakers? Will meals be part of the meeting? How about the venue? What kind of conference rooms will you need? Plenary session rooms may have to accommodate several hundred people, while break-out session rooms may only need to accommodate 20 or so. Will you be hiring vendors to create printed or web-based material? For meeting-related information?

Create a list of everything you need and how much each item will cost, roughly. Then begin your search for a venue that can accommodate all of it. Look for meeting places that offer flexible meeting packages and are well equipped to handle your needs.

4. Narrow down the wish list and budget

Once you’ve paired your wish list and the budget, one of two things might happen. One: Your available budget and the wish list are a match! You can now start the planning stage in earnest.

If you have a shortfall in the budget for your wish list conference, revise the plan so it fits within your budget. If you planned eight breakout sessions over two days, for example, streamline it into four sessions over one day. If your desired speakers quote expensive fees, scout around for an equally good one who will speak to your business for less — or pro bono.

5. Research Available Dates

The planning period of a conference needs to be at least one year, and preferably more. Why? Because meetings have a multitude of logistics. You need a venue, vendors and speakers all available on a particular date. If your planning period is less than a year, availability of one or more of these elements may be limited.

You will need to place a tent pole in the form of a date before all the planning is complete. It’s a good idea, though, to research availability dates for 1) venues that can accommodate the number of people and type of meeting you want, 2) well-known speakers and 3) vendors. Once you have their dates of availability, decide on the meeting date(s).

The Rubber Hits the Road: Planning in Earnest
You’re now ready to begin planning the conference!

6. Book the venue

Set up commitments for the place where the conference will be held. If the venue will be responsible for preparing and serving meeting meals, set up commitments for those as well.

7. Hire the speakers and vendors

Make arrangements with any speakers. Send them the meeting date, time and any other material needed. Hire any vendors you will need.

8. Develop the agenda

You may have a good sense of what the agenda is from the initial brainstorming sessions. Or, you may at this point need to sit down and draw it up, point by point. Developing a firm agenda should begin immediately once the date for the conference is firm.

Related: Need Help Networking? 4 Rules to Remember.

Be sure to circulate the agenda so that all relevant parties have seen and contributed to it before it is finalized.

9. Publicize the conference

All meetings, whether internal or external to the company, should be publicized. If attendance is mandatory — say it’s a motivational meeting for the sales force — publicity will excite the attendees and let them know what the meeting is all about. If it’s not mandatory — rolling out a new product, so employees can attend or not — publicity can provide reasons to attend.

Publicity should provide reasons that the meeting will be beneficial for attendees. Use it as an informational channel as well, to let people know the dates, the agenda, the venue and any surrounding attractions.

Decide what the publicity methods should be. Web site? E-mail blasts on a regular basis? Flyers and brochures? A story in the company newsletter? A mix of all these?

10. Evaluate the conference

This post-conference step is sometimes skipped. It shouldn’t be. You need concrete and measurable feedback on the conference for attendees. A short questionnaire asking what participants gleaned from the conference is a good idea. Go back to your purpose here. If the purpose was motivating the sales force, what was their take-away? If a new product launch, did attendees learn valuable information about the product? Were they comfortable during the meeting? Did they find it valuable to their careers?

Conference planning is a great way to build your visibility and profile within a company. Because conference planning is complex, it needs to be handled with an overall plan in place and specific steps to execution. These 10 tips will set you up for a memorable conference.

Entrepreneur.com | July 30, 2016 | SARAH LANDRUM

 

#Leadership : Management is a Minefield- 10 Things the Boss Wishes You Knew…What Kinds of things Do Managers Wish Employees Better Understood? Here are 10 Things Bosses Wish Employees could Empathize with, to Realize that Being in Charge doesn’t Necessarily Mean that Every Day is a Picnic.

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If you’re a part of the rank-and-file, it can be hard to get inside the head of management or your company’s leadership team. They seemingly make decisions merely to anger or stir up the lower-level employees, and the boss can be amazingly inept or unable to respond to employees’ concerns. They can devise and deploy stupid rules with little logic or reasoning, and some even seem like they’re out to get you if you rub them the right way.

business woman with her staff, people group in background at modern bright office indoors

It can be hard to figure out what’s going on in the C-suite. But you have to realize that the boss is only human, and has a job to do. As difficult as it is to try and rationalize or figure out the logic behind some decisions, empathizing with the decision makers can be just as hard. Giving it a shot, though, may go a long way to explaining some of their flabbergasting decisions.

What kinds of things do managers wish employees better understood? Here are 10 things bosses wish employees could empathize with, to realize that being in charge doesn’t necessarily mean that every day is a picnic.

1. “I have a boss, too.”

You have a boss, and your boss has a boss. That means that the same issues or negative feelings you’re harboring toward your boss? Your boss is harboring many similar feelings toward their boss. Everyone’s a part of the chain, when it comes down to it. Even the CEO — they answer to shareholders.

 

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2. Honesty goes a long way

If you can get something done, great. If not, don’t pretend that you can — just tell your boss so they can figure out an alternative. If your manager or team leader is counting on you to take care of something, especially after you’ve assured them that you can do it, they’re banking on the fact that you will. Don’t blindside them at the last minute by coming up short. Just be up front about your ability to handle a given task.

3. Scheduling is very difficult

In certain businesses and workplaces, scheduling employees is a nightmare. If you’ve worked in a restaurant, for example, you have an idea of the juggling act that building a schedule can be. Many employees have school, families, or other jobs they need to attend to, and asking for a day off at the last minute isn’t as easy as slotting in another name.

4. 9:00 does not mean 9:10

Some jobs allow for some leeway in when you come and go to work. Others do not. If your boss needs you at work on time, that means you need to be there on time — not 10 or 15 minutes late. You may send the message that you’re not coming in at all, and send the rest of the staff scrambling to cover your station. Everybody’s late from time to time, but if you make it a chronic habit? You’re only giving your boss ulcers.

5. If you’re quitting, let them know

People quit jobs all the time. But there’s a reason the “two week” rule exists — it allows both parties, the quitter and and the employer, to have some time to cover their bases. Yes, companies lay people off with little or no warning all the time, but if you have a good relationship with your employer, or don’t want to burn any bridges on the way out, give a heads up so they can replace you.

6. They don’t want to be there on Saturday or Thanksgiving either

Yes, working nights, weekends, and holidays sucks. Nobody wants to be there, not even management. But the world doesn’t stop just because it’s your favorite holiday, or because it’s Sunday. Somebody has to work, and somebody has to take the reins. If you’re complaining about having to work Black Friday, your complaints are probably falling upon deaf ears; your boss is probably just as stoked to be there as you are.

7. The boss isn’t out to get you

Management doesn’t want you to fail. They’re not typically setting traps or land mines for you to walk into, to give them a reason to dock your pay or write you up. They want you to do your job and be good at it. If you’re doing well, it makes your manager look better. Sure, some employee-employer relationships can fray, but it’s rare that someone in charge is gunning for you. Paranoia isn’t going to help.

8. They’re your boss, not your friend

Ever hear about awful parents who try too hard to be “cool,” and let their kids run amok? It’s similar in the workplace. Your boss is there to manage you, not be your bud. While you may have a good relationship with your manager — which is great — you don’t need to tell them how trashed you got last night or invite them to smoke a joint with you during a break. Respect the relationship, and professional boundaries.

9. Management knows you’re screwing around all day

Do you really think nobody realizes that you spend half of your day surfing Facebook, Snapchat, and Reddit? They know — so you don’t have to scramble to cover your tracks every time you’re on your phone and somebody walks up behind you. Of course, if you’re on the sales floor or in a customer service position, then this can be a real problem. But managers know that you’re not always being productive.

10. Saying “I don’t know” is OK

Sometimes, you’re not going to know the answers. Not sure how to work a machine or piece of equipment? Ask for a run-through. Does a customer have a complicated issue or question? Don’t B.S. them, and give them bad information. Even if it’s a little uncomfortable, ask for help from a higher-up, and treat it as a learning experience.

Follow Sam on Facebook and Twitter @SliceOfGinger

 

CheatSheet.com | July 30, 2016 | Sam Becker

#Leadership : Learn When to Delegate and When to Micromanage…Micromanaging has become a Dirty Word in the Corporate World. It’s used by Employees to describe Overzealous Managers, who Don’t Trust them to Perform the Simplest of Tasks without Constant Intervention.

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Certainly, no one wants to work for a boss, who allows them no freedom, and who doesn’t want them to grow and gain experience by facing new challenges every once in a while. Additionally, a boss who spends all of their time obsessed with tracking their team members’ actions is probably not making the best use of their resources.

The Office

However, some tasks are so vitally important that you, as a small business owner, need to ensure they are done correctly. In such circumstances, it’s better to think of micromanaging as opposed to delegation.

Delegating and micromanaging both have their places. Several years ago, when my company only had one location, I could afford to oversee numerous aspects of the management without spreading myself too thin. Today, I have three retail locations, so I’ve had to learn to strike an effective balance between delegating and micromanaging.

When delegating, set your employees up for success.

As your business grows, you’ll inevitably have to hand over tasks that once fit comfortably into your schedule to other members of your organization. It arouses conflicting feelings in many entrepreneurs. While you obviously trust the people you’ve hired, you also want to make sure your baby is in capable hands.

When deciding whether or not to delegate, one of the worst things you could do is assign a task to someone who is unequipped to handle it. If they fail, it will be damaging to their confidence, your faith and the company. One of the best strategies for avoiding such a scenario is to follow the 70 percent rule.

Essentially, if you believe that your employee is capable of doing the work at least 70 percent as well as you then it’s beneficial to delegate it to them. Experts say that once you do decide to delegate, it’s important not to undermine the trust you’ve placed in them by letting your instinct to micromanage creep in.

 

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Delegating allows your employees to embrace new challenges.

Delegating tasks to your employees becomes a necessity as the demands on your time rise, but even if you have the time to work on everything yourself, you probably shouldn’t.

Most employees are more satisfied when they are given new challenges that allow them to expand their skill set in new and interesting ways. Of course, you’re far more likely to retain an employee if they are satisified with their job, and employee retention has important consequences on both your bottom line, and business culture.

Furthermore, asking your employees to take on new responsibilities is a cost-effective way of assisting them with professional development. They’ll have the opportunity to learn things that will make them more versatile contributors, and you and your company will reap the benefits of said versatility.

Don’t lose sight of what you’re there to do.

Eventually, I realized that there were very few things that needed to be done absolutely right in order for the business to be successful. When there are tasks that are critical to the survival of the company, such as hiring, raising capital and pursuing an acquisition, I make sure that I take control of the project myself.

Ultimately, your job as CEO is to focus on the one thing that you can do better than everyone else, which will facilitate the performance of your team and allow you to take your company to new heights. Avoid distractions from this one thing by delegating tasks that could easily be performed by others, and understand that delegating and micromanaging are both important skills for any leader to master.

 

Entrepreneur.com | July 29, 2016 | Fan Bi

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#Leadership : A 3-Step Technique for Deciding Which Advice to Follow…If you Ask 10 People for Advice, you’ll Get 10 Different Prescriptions. You can’t Act on All of Them so Which Person Do you Listen To?

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Whether it’s getting the green light for a new venture or securing the next round of funding, entrepreneurs are constantly faced with the challenge of communicating their business ideas and plans with stakeholders – board members, advisers and investors.

Free- Thinking Plasma Ball

In addition to serving as a status update, stakeholder interactions are huge learning opportunities for entrepreneurs, but they are largely underutilized for two reasons.

First, we tend to only share good news with our stakeholders and hide any bad news from them – for as long as we can anyway. In the Lean Startup world, we call this “playing success theater.” When you don’t expose the problems in your business, you close yourself off to new ideas that might become your next breakthrough insight.

“A business should be run like an aquarium, where everybody can see what’s going on.”
– Jack Stack, The Great Game of Business

Second, when we do get advice, we tend to want to follow all the advice we are given, especially when it’s coming from someone we respect or someone who is paying the bills. Left unchecked, this does more to distract and derail you than help.

“Advisor Paradox: Hire advisors for advice but don’t follow it, apply it.”
-Venture Hacks

If you ask 10 people for advice, you’ll get 10 different prescriptions. You can’t act on all of them so which person do you listen to? Should you listen to the advice coming from the person who had the most recent exit, or the person who made the most money?

Here are three ways to overcome this advisor whiplash problem.

1. Expose the problems.
Don’t pitch your advisors or simply seek validation by asking them what they think about your solutions. When you present skewed or selective data to advisors, you create bias, and their advice will be much less helpful.

Instead of simply pitching your solutions, objectively share your business model progress story, and let them uncover any problems. An effective way of telling this story is with a one-page diagram of your current business model depicted below using the Lean Canvas worksheet.

When sharing your business model story, don’t just read the Lean Canvas aloud, because people can read faster than you can talk. Instead, use your canvas as a visual aid. While your advisor is scanning the canvas, share the backstory behind your business. Answer the following questions:

How did you stumble on this customer or problem?
What’s been done so far?
What’s keeping you up at night?

2. Solicit possible solutions.
You can usually deliver an effective business model progress story within five minutes. With that out of the way, you are now ready to solicit their advice. This is the heart of the conversation.

Leaving the Lean Canvas open, in front of people, almost always evokes a reaction because it helps them visualize the entire business model, and they typically always have an opinion.

“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.”
– Charles Kettering

If needed, ask them specific questions to trigger the conversation.

What do they consider to be the riskiest aspect of this plan?
Have they overcome similar risks? How?
How would they go about testing these risks?

3. Test big ideas with small experiments.

The key is not taking the feedback you receive as judgment or validation but rather as a means for prioritizing what’s riskiest in your business model. If eight out of 10 advisors raise similar concerns, there’s a high likelihood those problems are worth prioritizing.

However, it’s still your job to own your business model. Remember that you are the ultimate domain expert of your own business. You don’t get a gold star for following advice but for achieving results.

Using validation techniques, such as customer interviews and split tests, it’s possible to test any idea or strategy by conducting multiple small, fast, additive experiments.

Your next course of action should be crafting such an experiment to test the efficacy of the advice. Then double down on the best advice (and advisors), and ignore the rest.

Entrepreneur.com | July 28, 2016 | Ash Maurya

#Leadership : How We Survived Getting Sued in Our First Year of Business…When People Talk about Running or Starting a Business, Oftentimes they’ll say Something Like, “We Need to be Careful, so we Don’t get Sued.” But, Deep Down, they Don’t Foresee that ever Happening; and, Unfortunately, It does Happen. A Lot.

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Battling a lawsuit is hard work, but it is possible for a small business to fight and survive. Doing so will require planning, cool heads and a legal team that is the right fit for your business. With those factors in place, your business will be in a position to not only survive, but to thrive moving forward.

Directions Man

When people talk about starting a business, oftentimes they’ll say something like, “We need to be careful, so we don’t get sued.” But, deep down, they don’t foresee that ever happening; and, unfortunately, it does happen. A lot.

Related: McDonald’s Mozzarella Sticks Are at the Center of a New Lawsuit

I know, because in my first year of starting a business, which I thankfully still own, we were sued by a company with deep pockets, years of experience and two high-end law firms on retainer.

And, back in those days, all we had to call our own were a sub-lease and a handful of employees.

Overall, it was a terrifying and expensive process, but our company survived. We made some mistakes, but we also got some things right, and today, looking back, I realize that the whole process would have been easier had I known some of the key insights that I’m now prepared to share about my first — and, hopefully, last — lawsuit.

How it happened.

Zilker Ventures was the initial name of the company I launched. But it was totally restructured in the wake of the lawsuit: We retained our entities, Zilker Ventures, LLC, and ChooseWhat.com, LLC, keeping Zilker as the top-level holding company for ChooseWhat, which in turn owns five other entities, each with its own website project.

All these efforts date back to 2007, in Austin, Texas, when our goal was to create a Consumer Reports-style resource for entrepreneurs through a series of websites. Our first website went live in early 2008, and saw immediate success, so we went on to launch two more that same year.

Then, in late 2008, our troubles began: Zilker received letters alleging we were violating a trademark with one of our websites, FaxCompare.com. The core of the dispute was that we were using a word that the plaintiff had trademarked to describe a general service type in addition to its brand name. We were also bidding on that word via Adwords and Bing.

The plaintiff alleged several other complaints — including unfair marketing practices — and eventually added patent infringement to the list. We disputed that any violation had occurred, and hoped the letters were simply a threatening tactic. Unfortunately, they were not.

Related: Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. Accused of Dishonesty in Lawsuit

In late 2008, Zilker received letters alleging we were violating a trademark with one of our websites, FaxCompare.com. The core of the dispute was that we were using a word that the plaintiff had trademarked to describe a general service type in addition to its brand name. We were also bidding on that word via Adwords and Bing.

However, the plaintiff alleged several other complaints — including unfair marketing practices — and eventually added patent infringement to the list. We disputed that any violation had occurred, and hoped the letters were simply a threatening tactic. Unfortunately, they were not.

And, eventually more letters arrived, notifying us that we were indeed being sued. To call this scary is an understatement; that’s why we initially looked into finding a fast way to settle and move on. But it became clear that going the settlement route would ruin our business.

My partner at the time, Gaines Kilpatrick, and I believed that we had done nothing wrong and that we had a case, even though we would be going against a company with more resources than we had.

We also knew that because we were young, we didn’t want to handcuff ourselves to a one-sided agreement that would impact our ability to grow the way we wanted to. So, we decided to risk losing the whole thing rather than be hamstrung from the start.

After all, we didn’t have much to lose.

 

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First steps

Our first step was to find a lawyer who specialized in online trademark disputes but wouldn’t bill for endless hours. We found the right fit through an industry contact. There were a few factors that madeTraverse Legal right for the company: its up-front quote for the work that needed to be done; expertise in the legal area in which we were involved; and access to the technology that would help us efficiently share information between our base in Austin and that of the firm, in faraway Traverse City, Michigan.

Our lawyer laid out all the relevant information from the legal perspective, and, using Basecamp, updated our project as the case moved forward, so that we could see what the firm was working on. That visibility was extremely helpful.

Even with clear communications, however, the legal process moved slowly, taking almost a year in the end — during which we couldn’t afford to stop running our business. We needed an operational plan so that Zilker wouldn’t languish while we worked through the lawsuit.

We responded by having my partner focus on the lawsuit, while I focused on the business. That decision helped keep Zilker from floundering, although we still needed all hands on deck for responding to time-sensitive discovery requests.

That was one of the biggest challenges for us. But it was critical for us, as the smaller company in the lawsuit, to keep the judge from postponing our trial date. We had fewer resources than our opponent and knew we couldn’t afford to let the process drag on.

In the end, our perseverance paid off. As the court date approached, we were able to reach a settlement (the terms of which I’m not legally free to disclose). The settlement set up a deal that worked for both parties; we both got what we needed to move forward with our respective businesses.

My advice, should you find yourself in a lawsuit

While our company made it through the process, one of the most time-consuming and worrisome parts was those overwhelming discovery requests. We had never been through this process before, and had no idea how to efficiently produce the documents that were required by the court.

Even at that early stage, our company ended up having to search, review, properly mark and reproduce hundreds of thousands of pages of material. We were going up against a much larger legal team that could process information incredibly fast, and any mistakes were noticed immediately and reported to the court.

In hindsight, I wish that we had developed a process to help streamline production of those documents. For our emails, I would have submitted to the plaintiff, and requested approval for, a list of keyword searches that we would run through our email clients (Outlook and Google Apps), as well as the format by which we would produce the emails before actually doing the work. I would have done the same for our server and each of our company’s computers.

Lessons, learned the hard way

A lawsuit is scary and costly, but we came out of ours with some important lessons learned:

Map out a plan. If you too get caught in a lawsuit, mapping out a plan to help keep your business on top of the court deadlines and discovery requests and understanding the biggest costs up-front will save you time and prevent nasty financial surprises.

Don’t rush to settle.The first was to stick to our position and be prepared to fight all the way to court. We made a mistake early on in seeking a settlement too early in the process, and the opposing party took advantage of that.

When you’re in a lawsuit, the whole process is a negotiation until you go to court; our premature desire to settle gave the opposing party leverage and a major negotiating advantage. Fortunately, we made that mistake only once, and were eventually able to maintain our position and gain a workable outcome.

Separate your projects into different business entities whenever possible. That way, a lawsuit against one doesn’t put everything at risk. Zilker’s websites were all connected and had no legal insulation from one another when the lawsuit hit, which meant they were all affected by the process.

Keep hold of your emotions. While it’s hard not to worry when you’re being sued, another piece of advice is to try not to let emotions get the better of you. There are serious lows to the process, and hopefully some highs, too. But the pendulum swings fast, and if you’re trying to keep a business going, it’s best not to let any of the highs and lows impact you too much.

Don’t burn your bridges. Finally, if the outcome is a settlement, you should come up with a policy for working with the opposing party in the future. Chances are, you might have to continue dealing with that company — or at least co-exist in the same industry — so, if at all possible, try to set yourself up for a healthier working relationship.

Related: 4 Potential Lawsuits to Watch Out for in Small Business

Battling a lawsuit is hard work, but it is possible for a small business to fight and survive. Doing so will require planning, cool heads and a legal team that is the right fit for your business. With those factors in place, your business will be in a position to not only survive, but to thrive moving forward.

 

Entrepreneur.com | July 28, 2016 | Leo Welder