Posts Tagged ‘Thank God It’s Monday’

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REAL Job Security

Monday, February 10th, 2014


There’s a terrible idea I hear once in a while, one that really has to die. “If everything falls apart when I’m on vacation, that’s just job security for me. It proves they need me!”

No, no, no. What it proves is that you don’t care about the health and well-being of your company, which in turn means you don’t care about the people in it—including yourself.

Proving that you don’t care is NOT a good way to prove your worth. Part of your job is to make sure everything goes on like clockwork even when you are not there.

I had a boss once who said, “If you can’t be gone for two weeks and have something in place to get your tasks done in your absence, you are not doing your job.” As a CEO myself, I can pretty much guarantee that a collapse in the Marketing Department registers as a black mark against Marketing from the head down, NOT as a gold star by the name of the manager who left town and let it collapse.

If on the other hand you come back after two weeks and your absence hasn’t caused so much as a ripple, consider it a demonstration of how much you care about the people and the place you left behind.

That’s REAL job security.

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Posted in Leadership | No Comments »

Agreements of Meetings

Monday, February 3rd, 2014


There’s nothing worse than a poorly run meeting—one that takes an hour to accomplish five minutes of work, or wanders in overlapping circles until everything is tabled for the next meeting.

Meetings are essential, but they don’t have to be pointless or painful. The key is to establish effective agreements for every meeting. For example:

Every meeting will have a written agenda distributed in advance.

Agenda items will be actionable—another one that too many meetings fail to follow. That means your agenda won’t include an item that says, “Holiday party.” Otherwise you’re in for a wandering half-hour brainstorm about the holiday party. Instead, you might say, “Choose location and set budget for holiday party – 10 minutes.” Boom! That’s actionable. Things will actually get done, and people will feel good about it.

Every meeting will have a designated timekeeper who will work to keep everyone on track and the agenda on schedule.

Those three agreements alone can transform meetings overnight from exercises in pointless collective misery to a driving force for your organization’s success.

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Posted in Staying Focused | No Comments »

Unreasonable

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Most of us live “reasonable” lives, looking at what we CAN do and using that as a guide to what we WILL do. Shoot for mediocrity and you’re guaranteed a bull’s-eye, every time. But aiming low and being “reasonable” doesn’t bring out the best of who you are. If you want to enliven your teammates, your kids, your friends, here’s a surefire way to do it: Make unreasonable requests of them.

When a person meets an unreasonable request, sometimes they shut down and refuse. But sometimes they react with fire in their belly. They pick up the Kryptonite, the one thing they’ve been told to fear, and eat it for breakfast—and their life is altered forever. Sometimes they take the power and know that life can be all about facing a series of impossibilities that they will work to make possible. They develop a “bring it” attitude to almost everything. And once they leap over tall buildings with a single bound, they know they can do it again. And again.

There is nothing like the confidence of a person who achieves more than they thought possible. And once one person in a department or company does it, it spreads like wildfire. Soon EVERYONE is doing the impossible.

The best part of an unreasonable request is that people can’t give you reasons why they can’t do it. They already know that your request is unreasonable because you told them so!

Decide to make the unreasonable possible, and amazing things WILL happen!

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Posted in Culture Transformation | 2 Comments »

Appreciation

Monday, January 20th, 2014

In his landmark book Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman reports on a powerful finding: a one percent improvement in culture results in an average two percent improvement in revenue. And the most direct way to build that culture is through a focus on appreciation.

Now when I say “appreciation,” you might be picturing a manager saying “good job” to an employee. That’s a good thing, of course. But the research shows that regular appreciation among teammates and peers actually has more impact on building confidence than appreciation received from a manager.

If you feel that your company lacks an atmosphere of appreciation, the answer is NOT to complain about it. The answer is to help create that culture. Express appreciation to 20 people around you, not just for what they do, but for who they are. Watch the faces of people whose days are made by your simple act of kindness. In no time at all, you will find yourself on the receiving end. When you help to create a culture of appreciation, everybody wins.

Appreciation has to be felt and reinforced on a regular basis or confidence erodes over time. Creating celebrations and high-fives around accomplishments of critical drivers builds confidence AND keeps team members focused on the right things.

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Posted in Company Culture Change, Culture Transformation | 3 Comments »

Overwhelm

Monday, January 13th, 2014

A Princeton study shows that work is more overwhelming than ever—or at least that’s our perception. Three-quarters of the workers in the study said work is more stressful than it was a generation ago.

That’s certainly true in some ways. But overwhelm often has just as much to do with a conversation going in your head as with the real world. When you tell yourself, “I don’t even know where to start,” a feeling of helplessness sets in. Every task seems to be shouting your name.

STOP. There are priorities here. Take a deep breath and figure out what has to happen first, what can wait until later, and what doesn’t have to happen at all. Then take the things that need to be done first and sort them further. Are they all world-endingly important? Which items can have the deadline renegotiated without causing a problem? Which can be delegated?

Suddenly the priorities are standing in line, waiting patiently for their turn. What had seemed like a mountain is actually an orderly assembly line.

Finally, stop telling others how overwhelmed you are. That adds to everyone’s feeling of overwhelm, and it gives the tasks in your head permission to jump out of line again. They are not in charge—you are!

Once you step off the treadmill of overwhelm, you’ll NEVER go back.

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Posted in Managing Stress | No Comments »

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