Do you treat your employees the way you treat your customers?

You may need some serious thinking before you answer this question.

Customers are your key to business survival. Initial few customers are very important and critical for your business to sustain. Over the period your customer base increases and when you have many customers, you start giving more attention to some over the others as they add more value to your business. To manage your customers properly, you divide them in groups based on the value they bring to your business. Some customers are always special to you and you will not hesitate to go an extra mile to keep them happy.

Similar to customers, employees are also a part of your business. If you replace the word “Customers” by “Employees” in the above paragraph, you will still find it relevant and true.

I agree - You cannot survive in any business unless you have happy customers, but without happy employees you cannot keep your customers happy. There are two schools of thought on who should come first. One school recommends putting employees first. The other school of thought, however, feels that customers should come first. Whichever school of thought you belong to, you need to come up with a winning strategy, which can help you to keep your customers happy and employees motivated.

Employees and customers both need your time, attention, and care. Keeping both of them happy is the only key to your success; after all they are the two sides of a coin called business. Do you agree?

In order to have trust, your must have accountability — it is not possible to get trust by edict.   Without accountability, trust is damaged, and repairing trust becomes a management time sink.

Accountability comes when there is alignment with both rewards and consequences.  We talk a lot about rewards and high performance, but we probably don’t talk enough about consequences.

There must be a shared upside when things go well and shared consequences when they do not.  There must be proper analysis around the root cause of problems — often when you dig into the problem objectively, you see that it’s really a lack of connecting the dots.

Without accountability, there will never be trust.  What are you doing to consistently require high performance from your team?  How is that helping build more trust and results?

Strategy

The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy by Paul Leinwand and Cesare R. Mainardi

I read this early in the year after reading the authors’ Strategy+Business article, “Do You Have the Right to Win?” (registration required.) This main point of the book is that unless your business strategy, portfolio of products and services, and your workforce capabilities are coherent, your business will suffer. This problem is very pervasive in business due to factors stemming from growth for growth’s sake without enough consideration given to whether it amplifies and leverages existing strengths or not. The book is not an epiphany on this topic by any means, but it does present a well-thought out framework for helping a business achieve this coherence in a shorter period of time. There are several interesting, real-world examples given to make the process more real and believable.

The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel

I owe a big thanks to my colleague Craig Martell, who recommended this book, which was referenced in The Essential Advantage. Craig had read TEA on my recommendation, read Lords of Strategy and said it was a very interesting read. I agree – TloS brings a historical context to the evolution of Strategy, following the rise of Boston Consulting Group, Bain, and McKinsey as well as the major waves (Position, Process and People) of focus in thinking about gaining advantage. The history covers not only the consulting firms themselves and the way they approached making money from their models and services, but also how academia puzzled over, studied, adopted, and contributed to the thinking around business strategy.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt

I had read a McKinsey article, “Strategy’s strategist: An interview with Richard Rumelt” (free registration required) a while back and was impressed by Rumelt’s matter-of-fact, no-nonsense approach to Strategy. Good Strategy Bad Strategy is written in that same style; that Strategy is key and that the problem is that many people mistake the wrong things for Strategy and/or think that since the world is changing so fast that something static like a Strategy that took two years to formulate and is now obsolete is a pointless task. Rumelt shows the error of that thinking and describes what constitutes a real and good Strategy (rather than a Mission, or Values Statement or a Financial Goal that is often mistaken for or substituted for Strategy.) He emphasizes how what really matters is the rigorous thinking that goes into developing your Strategy (at whatever level in the organization), how that thinking is tested and corrected, and then adapting your Strategy as a result. Rumelt provides a simple framework that helps guide that process.

Thinking

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

I owe a big thanks to my colleague and co-blogger Steve Hughes, who recommended this fascinating book about how we remember things and how that affects who we are and how we think. It’s written to follow the author’s year-long efforts to train his memory and learn techniques to compete in a memory championship. Along the way (which includes some very memorable characters who mentor him), he shares interesting scientific cases and studies. This includes the journalist with the real photographic memory (and the very mixed blessing that it presented) as well as the man with literally no ability to develop further memories past a particular date (and the touching story of his wife’s care of him for many years.) The book provides understanding and insights about memory (and expertise!) such as how our experiences and our malleable and sometimes faulty memory of those experiences shape how we think and vice versa (see next review.)

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman is most known for his work in behavioral economics (winning a Nobel for that work) and the notion that maybe economic models make too simplifying of an assumption when saying that participants in markets act rationally in their own self-interest. While this book has a fair amount in it that’s been published before in one form or another, nothing beats it for bringing the most important findings and their implications together in one tome. It’s a pretty big book, but you don’t have to read it from front to back. Yes, there are many other books out there that also cover this material, but having one of the foundational thinkers in this field (who also keeps working in it) reflect on how far it has come over the last few decades actually makes it fresh, since he both brings perspective as well as constantly questions what’s next to learn about the way we think. A good companion to “How We Decide” and “Nudge” (and Moonwalking, of course.)

The Jobless Recovery

Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

This is a short eBook that you can read in one (somewhat long) sitting. To oversimplify a bit, it addresses the real concern many express over whether there are ever going to be enough “middle class” jobs going forward. The book is timely in the context of another jobless recovery after the Great Recession (and its subsequent dips). The authors discuss the various arguments put forth to explain the frustratingly slow decrease in unemployment as well as the concurrent increasing disparity in the standard of living among the population. They introduce their argument that a lot of the slow recovery also has to do with the longer-term, increasing replacement of jobs that were previously thought to be safe from automation, by computers and robots. There are no pat answers, but the book does take a hopeful outlook on our ability to work through the issues; it’s whether policy makers will make it a shorter or longer period of suffering for those hit hard by these changes in the job market. It’s an important contribution to the thinking around the most crucial humanitarian crisis of our time.

Leadership

The Leader’s Checklist: 15 Mission-Critical Principles by Michael Useem

Here’s another short eBook that captures well the essentials to effective leadership. Useem presents both the checklist of 15 core principles as well as three real world examples of “leadership moments” that demonstrate the application of some of these principles (“The Leadership Moment” is a well-regarded book by Useem from a while back that uses the same technique to great effect. These “moments” capture both the context within which leadership is demonstrated or not, along with the essence of either the demonstration of effective leadership or the utter lack of it.) The list contains nothing you haven’t seen in one or another book on leadership: articulating vision, thinking and acting strategically, expressing confidence in those you lead, bias for action, decisive action, simple and clear communication, appreciate the diverse and distinct motivations of those you lead, delegate authority as appropriate, build leadership in others, manage relationships, help folks understand the impact your vision and strategy will have on their work, act with integrity, be alert for and discourage unwarranted hubris and risk, build a diverse top team, and place common interest first, personal self-interest last. What Useem does in a very succinct manner is help you get your head around that list and address how some items might have higher priority depending on the situation (i.e. your role, the company, culture, or country, the current crisis, etc.) This is where examples like the Chilean mine cave-in and the bail-out of AIG help you see how that works (or didn’t, as the case may be.) There are thousands and thousands of leadership books out there, so it’s good to find ones like this that give solid, practical guidance with examples.

Social Business

The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald

This book has been getting excellent reviews for bringing together and addressing just about every question people have about how to view social media risks and benefits. It’s a great source and reference for anyone who is wrestling with issues like policy, effective use, where to apply it and how, factors to consider when doing so, etc. It’s very thorough and is again one of those books you don’t have to read from cover to cover. It’s pretty well organized to help you find the areas you want to address. Most importantly for me, while it addresses many details that matter regarding successful implementation, it emphasizes that the most important factor is to identify the purpose of your efforts. What is your objective? How will you measure the achievement of that objective?

The Hyper-Social Organization: Eclipse Your Competition by Leveraging Social Media by Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran

I met co-author Ed Moran through Deloitte and picked up his book to get a better understanding of his thinking on how social tools can enable organizations to truly compete in ways they haven’t been able to before. Most importantly, this book puts the people first and recognizes that the technologies are simply what enable people to do what has been more difficult previously. It takes a forward-looking, imaginative look at how people using these tools can revolutionize your organization and your approach to doing business. A good portion of the book focuses on engaging with customers in what they characterize as “Tribes” – reflecting a sociological approach. Combined with a view of employees in the same way, it amplifies the social aspects and focuses your thinking on that perspective vs. thinking solely about how to apply the new technologies, but from a viewpoint that is closed to these new ways of thinking. Includes many useful cases.

The New Social Learning: A Guide to Transforming Organizations Through Social Media by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner

I ran into co-author Marcia Conner when we were both attending a Social Learning panel at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara. Marcia informed me she “wrote the book” on Social Learning and I have to say that she and Tony did a terrific job. This book starts off with some very intelligent observations on what really makes the “New” Social Learning so uniquely valuable to organizations. Why is it “New”? The authors emphasize that much if not all learning that truly changes you is “social”, so “new” social learning is about applying the new social tools to learning. The result is knowledge transfer and creation through natural, work-related connections (e.g. the enterprise social network), more and better-informed decision-making, and a better understanding of the context of work. I found a lot in here that reminded me of the “Flow of Knowledge” discussion in “The Power of Pull.” The best kind of knowledge transfer results in both the provider and recipient of knowledge increasing their knowledge. The “New” Social Learning helps a lot in making that happen.

Photo by betta design

Since we know that purpose is a key to motivation doing so not only protects the results, it also increases the satisfaction of the results.

A perpetual cycle of goodness, if you will…

but, connecting the dots is not really a one time concern.

As a leader, you need to build systems to identify places where people and processes are missing the connection.  You need to be looking out for any evidence that the dots are not lining up for people, and you need to fix it.

People get busy.  People are focused on other things, they can easily confuse what is locally important, with what is strategic to the business.  It is not their failing when this happens– it is a leadership failing.

You job is to connect the dots and keep them connected — when they are not, results will suffer.

OK, enough with the serenade… I’ve been thinking a lot these days, about asking for and offering help.

I’ve come to realize that most are reluctant to ask for help — and I’m noticing this has a huge downside.

In trying to think about how to help people become comfortable asking for help (read that one again, it’s deep), I think the trick is to focus on being more helpful.

So I want to know

• When was the last time you helped someone else?  Is it something you are doing regularly?  Is it a goal of yours?

• How do you think you could become more helpful to others?

• Do others think of you as helpful?

• When was the last time someone observed you being helpful?

When you come to terms with the idea that to be your best professional self you will need help — you realize that someday you are going to have to ask.  When you are a helpful person, it is a lot easier to ask others for help, since you already know that being helpful makes you feel good. 

Which brings me right back to the starting point…

There is a lot of help needed out there.  To satisfy this demand, we need more helpful people in this world — time for you to start picking up the slack.

I look forward to hearing about your progress.

At this time of year we tell each other Christmas is about sharing.
In the rest of the year we should be aware the same applies to Learning.

In many organizations we are good at updating our Learning History whenever we take some form of training, whether it’s formal or informal. One of my friends even described how she received an application for a job where the recurring mandatory ethics training was listed….

So we are good at keeping our Learning History updated, but what about all the times when we learn something by teaching others?

I’m not talking about telling your colleague that the help button is on the top right of the screen. I’m talking about those situations where we are responsible for teaching others – and often finding we learn a lot ourselves during this process.

• Have you been responsible for teaching your group how to create a new set of web pages?
• Have you been responsible for helping a new employee get up and running?
• Have you delivered an outstanding presentation and was asked to tell your group how you organized it?

…then hopefully you helped someone else, but I’m sure that YOU also learned a lot during the process.

So why not start adding this to your Learning History?

If your Learning History includes topics like “Was responsible for getting a new hire up and running in the HR department” or “Trained 12 colleagues how to create user friendly web sites”, then this says much more about your competences than a one-day course in “How to inspire your sales force” you slept through 3 years ago.

So  start telling your group – and yourself – to add relevant instances, where you were the teacher, to your personal Learning History.

This will raise the value of yourself and the people around you!

Merry Christmas
Anders Northeved

Deciding on who will get involved in the compensation allocation process varies from organization to organization and there is no fixed formula or hierarchy which suites all of them.

We usually have leads in organization structures to provide work direction to others. However, you may not want them to be included in compensation decisions. Hence, existing supervisory or position hierarchies may not work as your compensation allocation hierarchy for various reasons.

Who will get what in an employee stock options plan is decided by one set of people, usually middle or higher management, whereas how much performance bonus needs to be given to an employee is decided by a different set of people, usually immediate manager or lower management. Different types of the compensation decisions are taken by different people in management chain and it’s not your immediate manager who will always call the shots.

It’s likely that once you start allocating compensation to your people, you will figure out that you don’t have enough information to allocate compensation for some people and it would be better if a better suited manager decided their compensation allocation. You definitely cannot afford to create a new hierarchy from scratch in this scenario as the system is already live.

To summarize, a fully flexible compensation hierarchy is very much needed to meet your business requirements.

Does your compensation system provide this flexibility?

A checklist which can help you to perform a readiness check on the flexibility of your compensation system includes:

•  Ability to support a compensation hierarchy similar to or different from your existing HR hierarchy.
•  Ability to further customize the compensation hierarchy by including or excluding identified people or roles.
•  Ability to realign people within the customized compensation hierarchy on a real-time basis with zero downtime.
•  Ability to have different customized compensation hierarchies for different types of compensation.

Compensation is a fundamental reason people work and the above checklist will help you to put the right compensation distribution responsibility into the right hands, which will result in a robust compensation system.

 b

Sometimes, if they don’t see what you see – it is only because they are focused on doing what you asked them to do. State the obvious, and your team will thank you for it.

I remember, at an early stage start up, my manager dismissing a product performance flaw. “If we get a million hits a day, it will be a really good problem”. Sometimes, it is best to wait for something to become a problem.

Where we usually mess up is when we do address the scale problem. Product teams often only think of it as a product issue. Solving for a million hits is not just a product issue. It is a value delivery issue. It is about scaling support, scaling operations, scaling communication, scaling processes, scaling metrics. It is changing the way things work.

Are we thinking of our growth problems holistically?