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Leadership: How to Develop an All-Star Management Team…Fact: Only 44% of Executives Will Remain with Their Current Company for 2-5 Years.

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Perhaps this story sounds familiar – after months or years of hard work, your company’s business is growing rapidly. In fact, it has begun to demand so much of your time that it is starting to feel like the wheels are going to fall off the proverbial bus. The next logical step is to augment your skill set with people who are more effective than you are in at least one discipline by forming an executive team.

SheepHerder

However, you may not know how to start this process. How should you break up the different roles? What intangibles should you look for in candidates? Which executive roles should you hire for first?

As Varsity Tutors grew, so too did the need to develop structured divisions within my company, each of which was responsible for different operational goals. How to structure the operational divisions, as well as how to structure each executive role, is heavily driven by nuances of your business model and the specific strengths of the individuals your recruit for each role.

 

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As a starting point, I recommend speaking with other executives and understanding how their companies have structured the executive roles. Does HR report directly to the CEO, should it report through the CFO, or should it report to General Counsel? All three are done in companies and the more conversations you have with other companies about what they have learned works best in this regard, the better informed you will be as you start bucketing key responsibilities and determining operational divisions.

Why do companies develop management teams?

Companies generally begin to develop management teams when their founders’ time available to manage important aspects of the business becomes a key constraint. An executive team can help a CEO more strategically devote his/her own time into growing the company and spend less time on the daily operational activities. For example, take CEO A, the founder of a technology firm – if she is approving every single in-office purchase, down to reams of copy paper, and every new hire, she probably does not have enough time for the big-picture strategic decisions that are necessary to properly grow her business.

How do I develop my management team?
Once you decide which executive roles to fill, the next step is to identify the right individual for each position. You can do this by:

Networking extensively

If you are looking to hire an executive, a generalized job posting is unlikely to be the best option. Instead, focus extensively on networking with investors, mentors, and peers at other businesses. They may know of individuals who have the relevant experience skill set you are seeking, and are operational rock stars. Before you reach out to your network, try to clarify your expectations for the role, as well as the specific skills and experiences that the ideal candidate will possess.

This way, your network can provide you with better referrals. The recruiting and onboarding process can be time-consuming and costly, so ensuring a great fit between the candidate and your company is essential to maximizing the probability that the person will be successful in the role.

Assessing for fit

Your new executive may be responsible for overseeing the activities of an entire department or team within your company, which only deepens the importance of that great fit. In addition to you personally meeting with candidates, consider asking members of that particular team to participate in the interview process. Do the personalities of the department and the potential hire complement one another?

It is often easier to find a candidate who suits the existing team than it is to ask an entire department to adapt to one person, and the first scenario is more likely to support your company’s long-term growth. This should not be a quick process – given the importance of the role, you should take time to get to know the person well prior to extending a formal offer.

Because executives typically report directly to the CEO or founder, you should also ask yourself how you would feel working closely with this candidate. A stellar résumé won’t make up for personal deficiencies that lead to internal strife. Even the most qualified person on paper may have a hard time integrating into your business if the chemistry is lacking. While fit can be difficult to assess, you can try asking yourself these questions:

Is there a match between the company culture and this candidate?

Is there a match between this person and the existing management team/staff? Will they work well together?

Does this candidate believe in our vision?

Does the candidate buy into our core business strategy?

What are the candidate’s key motivating factors driving him or her to join our company?
Providing opportunities for professional growth

Helping an executive develop professionally is not just about identifying the right candidate and elevating them to a new role. It is also about ensuring that you can keep that person and help them become more effective over time. Consider these statistics from multiple industries:
Only 44% of executives will remain with their current company for 2-5 years. More than half of executives pursue a new opportunity after five years, which can be devastating for a business. Onboarding a new executive can be time-consuming, but moreover, you also lose the creative thinking, insight, and organizational knowledge of the outgoing team member. These traits can be (and in many instances, already have been) crucial to your company’s growth.

Up to 76% of all executives are willing to consider new opportunities immediately. Why? These new opportunities may be more fulfilling if they offer significantly better chances for professional development.
Remember that executive teams are as intricate and shifting as any other group of staff members. Building an all-star management team is a continuous process. Just as you devote time and effort to recruiting the right candidates and supporting their professional growth, you should also devote time and effort to making sure that your executive team’s work environment is always productive, open, and rewarding. An all-star management team that is sufficiently supported can quickly become one of your company’s greatest strengths.

Chuck Cohn is the CEO and founder of Varsity Tutors, a technology platform for private academic tutoring and test prep designed to help students at all levels of education achieve academic excellence.

Leadership: ‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Illustrates Why ‘Goals are For Losers & Passion is Overrated’… Adams has a Chapter in His Book “How to Fail at Almost Everything & Still Win Big” Titled “Passion is Bullshit.”

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Dilbert” creator Scott Adams has a chapter in his book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big” titled “Passion is Bullshit.”

“When a successful person is interviewed, and you say, ‘What was the secret to your success?’ what they can’t say, because society won’t let them, is: ‘I was smarter, I worked harder, I had better connections, and I got really lucky,'” Adams tells Business Insider. “Instead, they go with a democratic trait: passion.”

Adams falls into the camp, which notably includes author Cal Newport, that believes pursuing something you love is not enough. Drawing from his own career, in which he became a successful cartoonist in 1995 after a string of failures, Adams says that finding a “system” is what’s necessary to get ahead.

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He makes his point in a colorful presentation, which we’ve published here with his permission.

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Businessinsider.com | February 13, 2015  | Richard Feloni 

http://www.businessinsider.com/scott-adams-on-goals-and-passion-2015-2?op=1#ixzz3RevcmEfg

Leadership:Manage Executive Onboarding Risk With Three Key Questions…Want to Avoid Being Part of the 40% of Executives That Fail in Their First 18 Months In a New Job?

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Want to avoid being part of the 40% of executives that fail in their first 18 months* in a new job? Answer three key questions before you accept the job to mitigate organization, role and personal risks:

  1. What is the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage?
  2. Did anyone have concerns about this role and, if so, what was done to mitigate them?
  3. What, specifically, about me led the organization to offer me the job?

Directions Man

Answer these questions during your due diligence. The most opportune time to complete this is between the offer and acceptance phases. Waiting until later or ignoring this step hurts your potential for success. Make sure you’re going to fit with the organization, that you can deliver what needs to get done and that you will be able to see and adjust to changes down the road.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of feeling that we should take a role because it’s what others expect us do to. Don’t do that. Make your own choices or you will fail, burnout, or worse, be generally unhappy eventually. Answer these questions honestly, before you move on.

In assessing onboarding risks, three steps can help:

  1. Leverage and supplement these questions about the company, the team, your new boss(es), and the major challenges and objectives you and the organization will face.
  2. Identify potential sources of information: scouts, seconds, and spies across customers, collaborators, capabilities, competitors, and conditions.
  3. Gather and analyze the information.

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Following are key questions to answer during due diligence to help mitigate risk.

Mitigate organizational risk.

1- What is the organization’s sustainable competitive advantage?

2- Are there any risks with the current customer base?

3- Are there any risks with relationships with significant collaborators of the organization?

4- Does the organization have the capabilities required for long-term success?

5- Do competitors pose significant risks to the viability of the organization?

6- Are there any outside conditions that will impact the viability of the organization?

7- If the organization is doomed to fail, you’re going to fail with it.

 

Mitigate Role risk.

  1. Did anyone have concerns about this role and, if so, what was done to mitigate them?
  1. Why does the position exist? Why did they need to create it in the first place?
  1. What are the objectives and outcomes? What are you supposed to get done?
  1. What will the impact be on the rest of the organization? What kind of interactions can you expect with key stakeholders?
  1. What are your specific responsibilities, including decision-making authority and direct reports?

If the role is set up for failure, you need to know that in advance.

Mitigate Personal risk.

  1. What, specifically, about me led the organization to offer me the job?
  1. Is this the company and role that can best capitalize on my strengths over time?
  1. Will I look forward to coming to work three weeks, months, or years from now?
  1. Will I fit with the culture?

If you don’t fit with the organization, you can’t converge well and you can’t lead.

Overall Risk Assessment

Figure out if you are facing a low, manageable, mission-crippling or insurmountable risk. If you are facing

A low level of risk – Do nothing out of the ordinary. (But keep your eyes open for inevitable changes.) This is as good as it gets. You’ll have a high likelihood of success.

Manageable risk – Manage it in the normal course of your job. This is the most normal case. There are always risks. Identifying the main risks in advance makes it that much easier to manage them.

Mission-crippling risks – Resolve them before accepting the job, or mitigate before doing anything else if you are already in the job. This is a tough situation. Not resolving or mitigating these risks means failure. You can’t ignore them. Face them and deal with them.

Insurmountable barriers – Walk away. Sometimes the situation is beyond your ability to control. When this happens, accept it and either don’t take the job or get out. Going down with the ship is a lovely, romantic idea – for others to fulfill. Not you.

 

Note this is adapted from The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan. Request an executive summary.

Click here for an overall executive summary of theNew Leader’s Playbook and links to each of its 250+ individual articles on Forbes organized by category.

Forbes.com | February 12, 2015  | George Bradt 

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Leadership: Replace Your Bad Leadership Habits In 2015..Leaders Become Micromanagers & Bottlenecks Abound When This Habit Goes Totally Unchecked

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Contrary to popular belief, leadership isn’t always a natural born trait. It’s possible to learn leadership and to become increasingly skilled at leading others in both personal and professional capacities. The flip side of this is that if one is a natural born leader (i.e., they have the traits that are commonly associated with leaders inherent in their personalities), it’s very easy to fall into poor leadership habits.

Change

This can be counterproductive and dangerous. Since the beginning of the year is so often about creating new resolutions, let’s focus some of that energy on quitting the really harmful leadership habits that often arise as the result of using tactics that worked in the past, a general ignorance of how to lead or being placed in a leadership role without proper training.

1- Bad Leadership Habit 1: Poor Communication

You know the type. One minute, they’re dashing off an email that makes virtually no sense and the next they’re requesting a three-hour phone call to go over a relatively minute project that you’re not even working on. Or they ask you to make something the very highest priority and then tell you to scrap the plan next week, just as you’re finishing your project plan.

Seventy percent of small- to mid-size businesses claim that ineffective communication is their primary problem. Poor communication usually stems from poor organization; it can lead to inter-office frustrations, dropped deadlines and missed opportunities. Leaders become micromanagers and bottlenecks abound when this habit goes totally unchecked. According to 360 Solutions, a business with 100 employees spends an average downtime of 17 hours a week clarifying communication, which translates to a cost of $528,443 dollars per year. Plainly put, this isn’t a habit you can afford to keep.

 

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Prone to affect: Managers/ Startup founders, skilled contributors moved into management

Replace with: Better organization. You don’t have to be a naturally organized person to organize your work life so that it works for you AND your employees. There’s no shortage of productivity hacks and note-taking or recording platforms that can help clarify your intentions. The examples listed above stem from poor time management and the erroneous assumption that employees can read minds. Practice by taking great meetings notes and having staff repeat instructions back to you.

Reduce communication by email if possible and allow employees with organizational skills to create processes that make it easier for them to do their jobs (even if that’s not the way you’ve always done it).

 

2- Bad Leadership Habit 2: Hoarding Knowledge

Do you have a star player on the team? Is she constantly coming up with new and innovative ways of doing things? Does she take initiative instead of waiting around for you to tell her twice? Congratulations, you’ve hired and trained this valuable employee well. So why are you so threatened? Some leaders fall into the trap of thinking like a line worker who doesn’t want to get passed over for a raise.

You’re not in competition with your employees. Yet you feel that if they become better than you at a given task, somehow you won’t be “king of the hill” — so you hoard knowledge in order to keep that star employee in her place. A study from the Academy of Management Journal discovered employees have nothing to gain from hiding their insights from co-workers, and just end up hurting themselves by doing so. Leaders have even more to lose by hoarding knowledge, as this can cause direct reports to become discouraged and disengaged when they find their efforts unappreciated or worse, criticized.

Prone to affect: Middle managers promoted over coworkers, those in performance-based cultures

Replace with: Knowledge sharing. We’ve all heard the platitudes that you should never be the smartest one in the room. What if leaders really began living it? Instead of trying to keep all the interesting knowledge to yourself, leaders should start giving away as much as possible to their employees while seeking out new information. Inexpensive internal tools like Evernote and Yammer are incredible ways to get over your perceived place at the top of the mountain.

 

3- Bad Leadership Habit 3: Doing It All

If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Right? This bad leadership habit can make your employees completely dependent on YOUR expertise, crippling their potential for growth. Do you find yourself correcting every social update, writing every job description, personally handling every slightly thorny case that comes across your desk because “they simply don’t do it properly”?

Trust me: If your organization, department or company could run with just one person, it would. And your employees will never be able to step in and assist in any meaningful way if you keep pushing them down. In fact, putting the smartest guy in the room in the middle of every important decision can result in entire teams, departments and even companies grinding to a halt.
Prone to affect: Change management alums, those managing entry-level staff, entrepreneurs

Replace with: Delegation the right way. Micromanaging is a bad habit, but sometimes it’s important to know how to tell a team how to do things specifically and exactly. Those times include: training and onboarding, during a merger or acquisition, serious complaints or quality control issues and new product or service lines. If none of these are the case, learn the fine art of delegation and in turn, actual leadership. When leaders focus their time on leadership-worthy tasks, a team usually rises to the occasion. You can help by allowing your team to have meetings without you, giving them guidance around the goal of a project rather than specific execution advice and by setting clear expectations.

 

Bad Leadership Habit 4: Equating Activity With Progress

This is one of the worst habits of all. Creating an environment where one must “roll the silverware” (former server-speak for looking busy) can create a lack of focus in your staff and take their eyes off the real goals. Look, not everyone can be “heads down” all the time. Humans need breaks in order for creativity to flourish. If you insist on a nose-to-the-grindstone mentality, you may burn out your employees before the afternoon slump.

Prone to affect: Everyone over 30 years old

Replace with: A better understanding of time management. “Turns out, the secret to retaining the highest level of productivity over the span of a workday is not working longer — but working smarter with frequent breaks,” wrote Julia Gifford about a study done by The Draugiem Group. By understanding how time management works and the importance of non-work-related breaks, leaders can allow their employees to be more productive and perhaps pick up a habit for how to be more creative and refreshed.

Are you ready to drop your bad leadership habits and become the very best leader you can be?

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry who leads Red Branch Media, an agency offering marketing strategy and content development.

Strategy: 3 Things Anyone can Learn about Damage Control From the Brian Williams Debacle…I Rarely see Advice that Will Help People Who have Been Caught in a Temporary/Permanent Reputation Failure, Indiscretion, or Outright Lie

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I travel a lot, and that means I spend time in airport bookstores.  At these shops, a big percentage of the selling floor is occupied by racks of self-improvement books with clever, compelling titles and handsome book jackets.

Brian Williams

It’s a lucrative phenomenon in the publishing industry — a universe unto itself.

We’re actually drowning in what has become a new industry of its own — from the iconic Ann Landers advice columns of the last midcentury to the writers, speakers, and thinkers trying to gain credibility and an audience by telling you how to live your life and develop your career.

These books are selling, so they must be inspiring people. I think to myself: The world must be getting better and better with all these human beings who have become residents of the improvement zone.

Do you think if you read all these books you could make yourself into the perfect human being? The perfect leader? Could you outpace your peers?

The real question is … Will these books help you immunize yourself against the pitfalls of reputational catastrophes and personal indiscretions?

I rarely see advice that will help people who have been caught in a temporary or permanent reputation failure, indiscretion, or outright lie.

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These may be people who have been highly successful, or at least on a hard-earned upward trajectory. They could do no wrong in the eyes of their employees, industries, communities, or the general public. A sudden nose dive and loss of oxygen in a career can be unnerving, unsettling. Sometimes it’s even fatal to a career.

But reputational management companies can engineer solutions and PR firms are at the ready. And for those who hire them, rehabilitation begins the minute the indiscretion finds an audience. Damage control begins, media assessments are conducted, review committees are formed, life-lines are extended, and the salvage operation is underway.

Newscaster Brian Williams landed in his current situation with a reservoir of good will and has been generally well-liked. That is more than can be said about some people who find their integrity challenged.

But now the noise about his mistake is deafening. Everyone has an opinion about what should happen as a result of his admission that he did not really fly on a combat mission helicopter in Iraq that took enemy fire. Here’s what he should do now — and what you should do if you ever find yourself in need of damage control.

1. Be honest with yourself.

This is the first and most critical step. This is fundamental to everything that happens next. There is nothing that will ever be more important.

Get quiet. Spend some time alone. Be wary of advice — it may be mercenary. Remember everything about the episode and write it all down.

So much is riding on your clarity about what happened and your willingness to accept the truth for yourself. Explain to yourself why you did it — and be brutally candid.

Self-deception often haunts the famous and can cause irrational decisions. There could be tremendous fear of loss — loss of stature, standing, money, and future. It is that very fear that could either ennoble the person charged or conquer him.

2. Thank the people who revealed the truth.

Show an attitude of genuine appreciation that these facts have come to light. Express relief, not anger or irritation, for the airing of the correct information.

Do so completely authentically, because that is the position you have come to on your own. Then you could say, “I am glad that these folks have come forth with the plain facts. Anything incorrect has gone on too long and it’s time to put a stop to that.”

People are more apt to be exonerated in the light than in the dark. So position a floodlight over the situation. The fact that your reputation has been tarnished by revealing wrongdoing is actually going to improve you — though it might not appear so at the time. Face into the head winds and they will carry you if you embrace them.

3. Take responsibility.

People do not react well to someone placing blame on another individual, group, or system. But they tend to respect strength that comes from shouldering responsibility for one’s actions.

Man up. This is not the end of life. You will go other rounds and regain your respectability if you do not try to make excuses or cover anything up. Don’t hide, but moderate your appearances.

For example, Brian Williams must regain enough credibility to as to be taken seriously as a journalist — and especially as a newscaster who is telling his listeners what is supposedly the truth every day. This is the breach that must be mended.

Situations like this — and very often they are vastly more severe — happen to leaders at every level.

Keep this column tucked in your mental pocket and take it out and follow it if you ever find yourself in a situation where your veracity is being challenged. It will start you off with a leadership strategy that just might lead you to a positive solution.

James Rosebush was a Reagan White House official and is now the CEO and founder of GrowthStrategy.us. His leadership column appears on Business Insider every Tuesday.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-regain-trust-after-a-failure-2015-2#ixzz3RMbVVKTi

Leadership: Cubicles Are the Root of So Many Problems at Your Company…That’s Why it’s Important for Leadership to Have ‘Big Ears’ & Be in a Constant Listening Mode to Keep a Pulse on Our Workforce

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Employees remain extremely unsatisfied with their careers, which impacts their performance and productivity.

office space cubicle milton

A January Gallup poll reported that only 31.5% of workers in the U.S. were engaged in their jobs in 2014, a slight increase from 29.6% in 2013. A majority of employees (51%) were still “not engaged,” and 17.5% were “actively disengaged” in 2014. The current level of 31.5% is the highest level of employee engagement since Gallup began the measurement in 2000.

Engaged employees as ones who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace, Gallup said. The group with the highest proportion of engaged employees is managers and executives at 38.4% while employees who work in manufacturing or production jobs recorded the lowest levels of engagement (23%).

Millennials reported they are the least engaged group at 28.9% and the dissatisfaction might be the result of not working at the jobs they had expected after graduation from college, the report said.

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Employees might be more engaged now than compared to 2000 because of improvements to the economy, unemployment and job market, the Gallup report said. The levels of engagement started to decline in 2008 during the financial demise, continued to fall in 2009 and did not improve until 2011.

Many employees are not engaged at work, because they feel a lack of a connection while their bosses continue to ask them to spend more time and energy at the office, said Gretchen Spreitzer, a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

“It’s not about pay and benefits, but to thrive, a connection is critical,” she said.

Connection occurs when employees feel connected to the work and to colleagues, clients or customers, Spreitzer said.

Employees who are thriving believe their work has a purpose. They not only care about it, but the work has meaning in some way, she said.

“People matter and are often the source of meaning at work,” Spreitzer said. “If employees believe that they have strong relationships with at least some colleagues at work, colleagues who they care about and who care about them, then they are more likely to thrive. Caring colleagues create a safe space for employees to take risks, have courage and grow.”

Once employees stop feeling engaged in the work they do, a “negative domino effect starts,” said Phillip Wilson, president of Labor Relations Institute, a Broken Arrow, Okla. employee relations consulting firm. If you are not satisfied at work, you don’t make as much effort and your work quality may start to slide. Your manager notices, and you start receiving negative feedback; in turn, your engagement starts to decline even more.

Effective bosses can stop this domino effect from going too far by creating an environment where employees feel comfortable bringing up concerns because the leaders are approachable, he said.

As employees are growing increasingly unfulfilled at their jobs, many bosses are taking notice to prevent additional turnover and headaches.

Managers should focus on developing the strengths of their employees and watch as their internal motivation grows, Wilson said.

Employees remain unhappy, because too many of them remain tethered to constant work email, are forced to work more because of a leaner workforce and possess an inability to focus on what one does best, said Cheryl Palmer, a career coach based in Silver Springs, Md.

Bosses can find solutions to these issues easily by giving employees an opportunity to recharge at work and create boundaries for when they are expected to respond to email, she said.

“Doing something as simple as allowing employees to take a break every so often without fear of reprisal can help employees stay engaged,” Palmer said. “Employees also will not feel as though they are always at work, because their personal boundaries are respected.”

Even though employers may not be able to always give people a position that aligns with their talents, “they can make an effort to find out what those talents are and try to assign them as much of that work as possible,” which will boost their productivity and engagement, she said.

What it often boils down to is what type of leadership exists at the company since there is no indication that the current level of employee dissatisfaction will improve, said Kevin Berchelmann, president of Triangle Performance, a Houston-based management consultancy.

“Engagement can’t be bought,” he said. “There is hope, and it’s not paying more money for benefits or compensation.”

Employees who receive genuine recognition for their work tend to thrive.

“I don’t mean a pat on the back with the perfunctory ‘good job,’” Berchelmann said. “I mean a face-to-face or phone call, explaining what they did in detail and how it improved the business. Be specific.”

Giving feedback is paramount. Many managers neglect to provide feedback often, and employees don’t know where they stand.

“Feedback is sorely missed by employees today, so find a way to make it happen,” he said. “Give frequent, relevant feedback to everyone you come across, even the high performers. They know they do a good job; they just don’t know if you know it.”

Employees want to know where the status of their performance, and a review of their work should occur more than once a year.

“They want to know where they stand, how they are doing, and they want to know what they can do to improve,” Berchelmann said.

Even something that appears insignificant such as knowing the employees’ first names can make a difference, said Wayne Bolio, a senior vice president, law and human resources for Nautilus, the Vancouver, Wash. exercise equipment manufacturer.

“Even with a company of over 300 employees, everyone is on a first-name basis as a result of our internal communications programs that keep us connected,” he said. “We know that in order to be successful, it’s critical to create a company culture where people are motivated and where collaboration is fostered and healthy lifestyles are encouraged.”

Nautilus has a low turnover rate, which is an indicator that regular meetings and two-way communication encourage employees to bring up issues or problems and or provide input for solutions, Bolio said.

“While voluntary turnover can be a by-product of disengaged employees, we also see an equal or greater risk in disengaged employees remaining employed,” he said. “Nothing can be more harmful than having a significant portion of your workforce actively disengaged and not fully committed. That’s why it’s important for leadership to have ‘big ears’ and be in a constant listening mode to keep a pulse on our workforce listen and solicit feedback in a non-threatening way.”

This article originally appeared at MainStreet. Copyright 2015. Follow MainStreet on Twitter.

http://www.mainstreet.com/article/why-working-in-a-cubicle-is-so-demoralizing-and-workers-are-demanding-more#ixzz3RLU0WwRU

 

Strategy: 5 Simple Steps to Improve Your Decision Making…Work from a Proven Playbook Instead of Trying to Reinvent the Wheel

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CEO’s/Mangers/Entrepreneurs are Natural Born Problem Solvers.  To solve difficult problems, you need to make difficult decisions.

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If your résumé is hard to read, no one will.

How well do You Make Decisions?

In this post, I will unpack five tips to help you improve your decision making process.

1. Don’t delay

Simple decisions are fun. You can tick them off your to do list and feel like you’ve accomplished something along the way. When the stakes increase and you’re faced with making a critical business decision, don’t delay because it’s difficult.

Dedicate a focused block of time each day to work through the pros, cons, risks and realistic outcomes of your decision. Consider the second and third order effects of your decision during this session.

Sweeping problems under the rug will not help you make better decisions.

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2. Shelve ego and emotion

Decision making can be difficult because you become too personally invested in how a decision will make you look and feel. Can you objectively solve the problem? Yes! List potential causes and put your emotion and ego on the back-burner.

Imagine your business isn’t generating enough revenue to hit your target. What is the specific cause of this?

  • Do you have a positioning issue?
  • Is your pricing right?
  • Do your potential customers know your brand?
  • What can help you solve these problems?

You will make better decisions by focusing on the facts instead of personal deficiencies. If you need help with anything in your business, from marketing through to customer service, you have options.

Self-awareness is an entrepreneurial power play.

3. Ask an expert

The decision you’re making has likely been made in the past. While the problems you’re trying to solve are unique to you, it’s highly probable that someone else has solved the same issue at a larger scale.

Luckily, managers/entrepreneurs are very approachable and love to help each other. To get an expert help with your question, research the influencers in the area you need help with, then send three of them a quick note to ask for their help. Serve up the facts, your thoughts and the options you are considering.

A neutral third-party to help you make decisions will keep you objective.

Work from a proven playbook instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

4. Question your data

You will never have complete data to make your decision. This is OK.

It’s still your responsibility to seek the right data. Relying on a friend’s opinion as a trusted data source may land you in hot water. Instead, use qualitative and quantitative customer feedback if you’re making a decision that impacts your customers. Use industry trends, research reports and ask experts in your field if you’re making a strategic move. The only thing that is worse than having no data is trusting the wrong data, so be vigilant about the inputs to your decision making process.

Seek trustworthy data and your decision making ability will skyrocket.
5. Plan for doomsday

The final step of decision making is understand the underlying risks of the decisions you make.

I like to call it planning for doomsday. Take 10 minutes to deeply consider the absolute worst case scenario of the decision you’re about to make. For example, if you need to let someone go from your business, what is the absolute worst case outcome? Perhaps they’ll sue you for wrongful dismissal or your team will lose their motivation. There are dozens of ways to mitigate the risks of each decision, but first, you need to clearly identify these risks.

Know your risks and you will rest easy when making decisions.

When you get a decision wrong, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, reflect on why it failed, then write it down to make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.

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Leadership: New Evidence Why Employees Are Burned Out…We are all Burning out Because We can Never Unplug. Work Chases Us Wherever We are & the Expectations Keep Growing

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No one can argue that our personal and professional lives have come together through the power of technology. This is especially true for managers/entrepreneurs who are working all the time and have no personal lives, but even for workers at major companies, the boundaries are gone between work and life.

 

burnout

While many of us know that we’re working constantly, I set out to uncover the story by surveying employees, job seekers and HR professionals with CareerArc, a global recruitment and outplacement firm. In our study, we found a disconnect between employers and employees on work-life balance.

While 675 of HR professionals think that their employees have a balanced work-life, 45% of employees feel that they don’t have enough time each week to do personal activities. To make matters worse, 20% of employees spend over 20 hours working outside of the office on the personal time working each week. This is bad for their health and their families.
It also leads to burnout. Employees are getting far less sleep these days because their managers are demanding more of their time. Professionals are answering their email on vacations and on weekends. Smartphones are always with us and as a result, we are getting emails constantly regardless of our location or the time.

This is especially true with global companies, where employees are connecting with people from around the world in different time zones. I ran into this when I was working for a company and had to take calls with Japan at night, then wake up the next day to work.

We are all burning out because we can never unplug. Work chases us wherever we are and the expectations keep growing. What can we do? Well, there’s actually a lot of things you can do to prevent yourself from falling into this trap, or simply breaking away from these chains. Here are a few tips:

1. Have two phones, one personal and one business. This way, you can shut your business phone off after a certain time and leave your personal one on.

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2. Tell your manager your concerns. Be upfront with your manager that your lack of time for personal activities is hurting your relationships with others. They should support you in helping you better manager your time if they view you as valuable.

3. Tend to your calendar. One of my secrets is that I block off certain periods of the day for going to the gym, going on a date or to a show. This way, it forces me to participate in those activities because I live and die by my calendar.

Dan Schawbel is the Founder of WorkplaceTrends.com, a research and advisory membership portal servicing forward-thinking HR professionals.

Strategy: 15 Tricks to Boost Productivity at Work…Only 17% of People are Able to Accurately Estimate the Passage of Time

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There are only so many hours in the day, so making the most of your time is critical. There are two ways increase your output — either put in more hours or work smarter. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the latter.

Cross Training

Being more productive at work isn’t rocket science, but it does require being more deliberate about how you manage your time. This post will walk you through 15 simple but effective strategies for increasing your productivity at work.

1. Track and limit how much time you’re spending on tasks.

You may think you’re pretty good at gauging how much time you’re spending on various tasks. However, some research suggests only around 17% of people are able to accurately estimate the passage of time.

There are only so many hours in the day, so making the most of your time is critical. There are two ways increase your output — either put in more hours or work smarter. I don’t know about you, but I prefer the latter.

Being more productive at work isn’t rocket science, but it does require being more deliberate about how you manage your time. This post will walk you through 15 simple but effective strategies for increasing your productivity at work.

Like this Article ??  Share it !   First Sun Consulting, LLC- Outplacement/Executive Coaching Services, is Proud to sponsor/provide our ‘FSC Career Blog’  Article Below.  Over 600 current articles like these are on our website in our FSC Career Blog (https://www.firstsun.com/fsc-career-blog/)  with the most updated/current articles on the web for new management trends, employment updates along with career branding techniques  .

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2. Track and limit how much time you’re spending on tasks.

You may think you’re pretty good at gauging how much time you’re spending on various tasks. However, some research suggests only around 17% of people are able to accurately estimate the passage of time. A tool like Rescue Time can help by letting you know exactly how much time you spend on daily tasks, including social media, email, word processing, and apps.

3. Take regular breaks.

It sounds counterintuitive, but taking scheduled breaks can actually help improve concentration. Some research has shown that taking short breaks during long tasks helps you to maintain a constant level of performance; while working at a task without breaks leads to a steady decline in performance.

4. Set self-imposed deadlines.

While we usually think of a stress as a bad thing, a manageable level of self-imposed stress can actually be helpful in terms of giving us focus and helping us meet our goals. For open-ended tasks or projects, try giving yourself a deadline, and then stick to it. You may be surprised to discover just how focused and productive you can be when you’re watching the clock.

5. Follow the “two-minute rule.”

Entrepreneur Steve Olenski recommends implementing the “two-minute rule” to make the most of small windows of time that you have at work. The idea is this: If you see a task or action that you know can be done in two minutes or less, do it immediately. According to Olenski, completing the task right away actually takes less time than having to get back to it later. Implementing this has made him one of the most influential content strategists online.

6. Just say no to meetings.

Meetings are one of the biggest time-sucks around, yet somehow we continue to unquestioningly book them, attend them and, inevitably, complain about them. According to Atlassian, the average office worker spends over 31 hours each month in unproductive meetings. Before booking your next meeting, ask yourself whether you can accomplish the same goals or tasks via email, phone, or Web-based meeting (which may be slightly more productive).

6. Hold standing meetings.

If you absolutely must have a meeting, there’s some evidence that standing meetings (they’re just what they sound like — everyone stands) can result in increased group arousal, decreased territoriality, and improved group performance. For those times when meetings are unavoidable, you may want to check out these 12 unusual ways to spur creativity during meetings.

7. Quit multitasking.

While we tend to think of the ability to multitask as an important skill for increasing efficiency, the opposite may in fact be true. Psychologists have found attempting to do several tasks at once can result in lost time and productivity. Instead, make a habit of committing to a single task before moving on to your next project.

8. Take advantage of your commute.

This goes for any unexpected “bonus” time you may find on your hands suggests author Miranda Marquit. Instead of Candy-Crushing or Facebooking, use that time to pound out some emails, create your daily to-do list, or do some brainstorming.

9. Give up on the illusion of perfection.

It’s common for entrepreneurs to get hung up on attempting to perfect a task — the reality is nothing is ever perfect. Rather than wasting time chasing after this illusion, bang out your task to the best of your ability and move on. It’s better to complete the task and move it off your plate; if need be, you can always come back and adjust or improve it later.

10. Take exercise breaks.

Using work time to exercise may actually help improve productivity, according to a study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. If possible, build in set times during the week for taking a walk or going to the gym. Getting your blood pumping could be just what’s needed to clear your head and get your focus back.

11. Be proactive, not reactive.

Allowing incoming phone calls and emails to dictate how you spend your day will mean you do a great job of putting out fires — but that may be all you get accomplished. My friend and business partner Peter Daisyme from free hosting company Hostt says, “Set aside time for responding to emails, but don’t let them determine what your day is going to look like. Have a plan of attack at the start of each day, and then do your best to stick to it.”

12. Turn off notifications.

No one can be expected to resist the allure of an email, voicemail, or text notification. During work hours, turn off your notifications, and instead build in time to check email and messages. This is all part of being proactive rather than reactive (see number 11).

13. Work in 90-minute intervals.

Researchers at Florida State University have found elite performers (athletes, chess players, musicians, etc.) who work in intervals of no more than 90 minutes are more productive than those who work 90 minutes-plus. They also found that top performing subjects tend to work no more than 4.5 hours per day. Sounds good to me!

14. Give yourself something nice to look at.

It may sound unlikely, but some research shows outfitting an office with aesthetically pleasing elements — like plants — can increase productivity by up to 15%. Jazz up your office space with pictures, candles, flowers, or anything else that puts a smile on your face. For other ideas on increasing your happiness quotient at work, see my post 15 Proven Tips to Be Happy at Work.

15. Minimize interruptions (to the best of your ability).

Having a colleague pop her head into your office to chat may seem innocuous, but even brief interruptions appear to produce a change in work pattern and a corresponding drop in productivity. Minimizing interruptions may mean setting office hours, keeping your door closed, or working from home for time-sensitive projects.

If you feel the need to increase your productivity at work, resist the temptation put in longer hours or pack more into your already-full calendar. Instead, take a step back, and think about ways you can work smarter, not harder.

Looking for more productivity tips? Check out my posts 7 Productivity Hacks Every Busy Entrepreneur Should Try and 5 Things Productive Entrepreneurs Do Each Day.

http://www.inc.com/john-rampton/15-ways-to-increase-productivity-at-work.html#ixzz3QoqXSq8v

Leadership: If You Want To Change Things, You Might Have To Break Them First…If you Want Your Company to Be Innovative, it’s Going to Take More, Much More, than Just Saying the Words

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“The problem with this company is it lacks an innovative culture,” said the CEO while asking his secretary to print out his emails for that day so he could check them, pulling out a pen at the same to sign the minutes of a meeting…

SheepHerder

Okay, I made that up, but the scene is played out all too often in the business world: managers who say they want an innovative culture in their company, a proactive approach toward what they still call “the new technologies” —when in reality they are talking about products and services that have generally been around for several years… how long does a technology have to have been in used by us before some people stop calling its “new”? — but who are unable to even consider giving up some of the oldest and outdated aspects of their own culture.

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The first thing you must have clear in your mind when talking about innovation is whether you really want your organization to be innovative. Managing genuinely innovative companies is a headache of the first order. Compared to the classic concept of a company where everybody has their job and their responsibilities are clearly defined, as well as their place in the hierarchy and roles properly assigned, managing an innovative company is like trying to herd cats, where just about every day, some nutcase keen to discuss the latest idea they’ve been reading about who knows where or has heard about from who knows who, and that in their opinion needs to be got going right now. Madness.

If you’re an “old school” manager, of the kind that look beyond the protective walls of your company with raised eyebrows and a large dose of skepticism, it’s very likely you think “all that innovation stuff” is little more than posturing, and that saying: “I’m an innovator” is pretty much the same as saying: “I keep up with fashion”, and that the implications of trying to develop innovation are enough to make you think twice.

Let’s face it, at the end of the day, you’ve been around the block a few times, life is short, and if you just carry on the way you have until now, there’s every chance you’ll make it to retirement (I swear I have heard that said by more than one manager over the years).
But if, after looking at the issue more closely, you really want to make your company innovative, then bear in mind the following: if you wanna change things, you gotta break things. You can’t ask the people who work with you to be innovative if the company where they spend hours working has always done things in the same way. It just isn’t coherent. It makes no sense. It’s not going to happen.

Businesses, all businesses, have a common enemy:isomorphism. The academic definition of isomorphism, which comes from the field of sociology, is something along the lines of the similarity of an organization’s processes or structures to those operating in the same environment.

All banks look like other banks, all electricity companies tend to be similar, all universities are practically identical, and all carmakers seem to be cut from the same pattern. If we were to be teletransported to the offices of any of these companies, it wouldn’t be so hard to say in which industry we found ourselves, because almost all the companies in that industry respond to any number of common stereotypes and all tend to look alike.

When one comes along that does things differently, managing in the process to overcome the established entry barriers, they tend to stand out. Tesla Motors stands out in the automotive industry because it is so unlike everything else in the industry, and is what the vast majority of observers would consider to be an innovative company.

At the same time, isomorphism doesn’t happen by accident. For example, companies look for efficiency, for optimization: so certain ways of doing things because it seems more logical, more efficient, to do them in that way; the most logical and efficient… at a certain moment, and in light of the technological advances of that specific moment.

On the one hand, isomorphism comes from the strengths of the industry itself, an infinity of rules, processes and standardization, or simply, from the progressive incorporation of managers and workers from other companies in the same sector, producing a kind of promiscuity or genetic crossbreeding that results in the characteristics of companies in the same industry mingle to create a common prototypes, an accepted standard.

If you really want to change things, if you really want to help create an innovative culture, then you’ll have to break things. You’ll have to identify the isomorphism and challenge it if your company isn’t going to seem like all the others. Identify all those people who contribute to things being done in the same way all the time: those who refuse to try new things, who seek comfort, those who are convinced they’ve seen it all… the disciples of isomorphism.

If they don’t want to change, show them that in this company and under your management, they are going to find an unequivocal vocation for change: no complicities, no privileges for the “old guard”, and no exceptions based on time served. If you want to be innovative, then don’t prop up those old structures any more, because each of these exceptions will be an obstacle on the road of coherence.

If you want your company to be innovative, it’s going to take more, much more, than just saying the words. You’re going to have to break things. Starting with old habits; today, rather than tomorrow.

Forbes.com |  February 4, 2015  |   Enrique Dans