Am I Management Material? (Aaron Hurst)

Am I Management Material?

Most managers aren't management material. The real question is, how does your boss define management material and how could promoting you serve their needs and the needs of the organization.

What does your manager consider to be the traits of an effective manager? Sadly you also need to understand any bias they may have about gender or race. That will help you understand what you need to do to get them to see you as management material.

Easier said than done. It is often hard to understand how a manager defines management material, especially since many of them don't have a clear answer or may not have thought about it.

For the majority of folks it takes Sherlock Holmes skills to deduce the answer. You need to look for evidence.

• Who have they promoted in the past and who has been passed over?
• How do they seem to make decisions about promotions relative to other managers in the organization?
• Do they promote, as they should, to balance their skills and capacity? What do theyperceive as their skills and capacity gaps?
• What threatens them and their security in their role? What would threaten them and make them biased in a promotion decision?
• How can your promotion help them get promoted? What do they need to do to get promoted and how could you be part of that solution?
• What parts of their job do they dislike that you could do? How could your promotion increase their their job satisfaction?
• What are you doing now that your boss values and might be afraid they would lose if you moved into management? How could you backfill your work?

Then you need to be honest with yourself. Are you the person they want? You might be amazing "management material" but not the kind your boss values or needs right now. If that is the case, you need to look at how to find a new boss inside the organization or switch employers and find a boss that values your strengths.

Once you are confident you have a manager who is aligned with your strengths you need to find was to show them your stuff and ask them for coaching and mentoring in those areas. They need to feel ownership of your success and like they "discovered" you.

Welcome to management.

A Roadmap for Managing Mobile and Out-of-Office Workforces (Michelle Lanter Smith)

A Roadmap for Managing Mobile and Out-of-Office Workforces

If there’s one universal challenge business leaders have all faced in recent years, it’s their ability to adapt to change.

The advent, maturation and broad embrace of cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices have fundamentally altered the business landscape. Organizations today are more agile and flexible than ever before, as “adapting to change” has moved from the conceptual into the operational phase.

Much of this change is reflected in the composition of today’s decentralized workforce. The tools to support mobile communications and in-the-cloud workflow have been in place for some time. Today, company policy and attitudes have caught up, as workforce flexibility has become a major business imperative.

Employees working out of the office will hit 26% by 2015

Indeed, more organizations are turning to distributed mobile labor for a number of reasons — from freeing them from the conventional constraints of time zones and work schedules, allowing work to be done 24/7, to shifting resources to better manage budgets and more easily deploy resources regardless of geographical location.

Industry analyst IDC divides the mobile/remote workforce into three categories:

• Office-based mobile workers;
• Non-office-based mobile field workers; and,
• Home-based mobile workers.

While there’s a huge amount of variety in all three categories, a significant number of industries rely on distributed labor — including construction, health care, building services and maintenance, hospitality and entertainment, retail, manufacturing, staffing, and energy, to name a few.

By 2015, the percentage of employees who will spend at least one day out of the office will grow to over 26 percent, according to the Work Design Collaborative.

The increasingly mobile workforce makes time and labor management an immediate and growing challenge. Keeping up with a mobile distributed labor workforce requires flexible and scalable technology designed to adapt to today’s business and workforce needs. Companies require more than time tracking — they need deeper and broader visibility into an increasingly complex, hard-to- manage workforce, from insights into employee performance to the ability to build budgets.

How to “ground” a mobile management solution

The decentralized nature of a distributed labor force makes a uniform approach to time and attendance a business necessity and a real challenge.

Within any company, diverse functional areas — from Human Resources to Payroll, and Operations to the CFO — need a solution that is not only flexible and scalable, but also delivers information and data in a manner that allows each to make critical business decision that impact the bottom line. At the same time, a time and labor management solution needs to serve the demands of a distributed workforce working under different circumstances, in different environments and locations.

Going forward, a best-of-breed solution can “future proof” your organization for the trends that will impact workforce management, specifically distributed labor, in the years ahead.

• Seamlessly aggregate data from all types of collection modes and deliver the information in an easy to understand format. Regardless of where an employee punches in, the data needs to be collectively tied together. Aggregated data allows managers and supervisors to better manage labor from a cost-savings perspective.
• Address unique payroll rules and effectively manage compliance. The solution needs to account for federal and state wage and hour laws, as well as union contracts. The ability to generate a precise, detailed audit trail that can support compliance, wage and hour disputes, and internal benchmarking and tracking is critical.
• Provide analytical data reporting from the system once time and attendance is merged into the payroll process. This helps managers and supervisors set and adjust schedules and compare staff count to payroll to determine the most effective ways to deploy labor.
• Include GPS functionality to ensure security, accuracy, and compliance. This feature naturally lends itself to mobile time, attendance, and location tracking. GPS can capture, track, and verify where the employee punched in and provide a time stamp on the server to detect and avoid time theft and unauthorized changes.
• Handle data off-line and function without cell service or Internet connectivity. The solution should be able to collect data offline, save it, and relay it once connectivity is restored.
• Deliver data in real time so managers can make time and labor management changes on the fly, as well as utilize the device for multiple functions beyond time and attendance — such as email, presentations, payroll, and communication.
• Issue real-time alerts when thresholds such as budgets and overtime are being reached, or flag instances when employees have punched in outside the authorized work area or have failed to punch in.
• Facilitate use as an employee self-service portal. Value added features such as self-service reduces labor costs for both supervisors and employees. Employees can access time punch confirmation in real time and easily access information on accrued time off and work schedules, or submit time-off requests and receive instant approval. On a business level, self-service reduces time and resource demands on Human Resources and Payroll, while encouraging employee accountability and responsibility for their time, attendance, and scheduling.
• Provide administrative functionality. While mobile solutions offer flexibility and accessibility for distributed labor, supervisors can utilize mobile solutions, such as tablets, when they are “on the road.” A tablet can deliver real-time information and serve as tool to manage and process payroll, monitor overages, or track budgets regardless of location. Transparent budgeting tools can also be applied to help manage or reallocate resources.

Time management to workforce optimization

When the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act was deferred to 2015, many companies decided to shift their focus from “head count” issues to what they considered more immediate workforce concerns (though prudent organizations are implementing tools now to “game plan” potential scenarios if/when the employer mandate takes effect). But today’s distributed mobile workforce makes efficient management an immediate and growing challenge.

Indeed, the challenges require more than traditional tracking a fragmented, decentralized workforce. They require a configurable solution built around a host of best-of-breed criteria, including: centralized deployment with the ability to serve all locations, accurately track and manage labor expenses in real-time, integrate with ERP/HRIS, facilitate compliance, and guard against unauthorized changes.

Just as we’ve moved from preparing for change to managing change — which is to say, managing distributed workforces — organizations now need to think about “optimizing” distributed workforces.

Optimizing distributed workforces goes beyond time and labor management, and extends to monitoring tasks, tracking transportation and managing work orders.

In sum, it’s about giving organizations visibility into an ever-shifting landscape, enabling them to better evaluate the performance of individuals and “virtualized” business units, and more accurately correlate budgets based on real-time workforce data.

Michelle Lanter Smith brings 20 plus years of leadership to her role as Vice President of Marketing at EPAY Systems. She previously served as CEO of Hi-Impact Marketing & Sales Solutions, an integrated marketing agency, and as Chief Strategist at Brillante Multicultural Marketing Group, a multi-cultural marketing and PR agency. She got her start as an IBM Marketing Manager.

How A Culture of Appreciation Develops Engaged and Loyal Employees ( Margy Bresslour)

How A Culture of Appreciation Develops Engaged and Loyal Employees

Do you look forward to going to work? Do you feel valued and appreciated by your employees or employer? If you work by yourself, do you feel seen by others? If you answered, “no” to any of the above, you’re not alone.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 64% of Americans who leave their jobs say they do so because they don’t feel appreciated. Gallup reports that almost 70 percent of people in the United States say they receive no praise or recognition in the workplace.

64% of Americans who leave their jobs say they do so because they don’t feel appreciated

We all want to know that we are valued and appreciated.

When you actively appreciate and take an interest in the qualities, characteristics, and work of the people around you, you develop a culture where people love to work, are fully engaged, and where your customers and clients enjoy doing business with you.

Here’s how:

1. Recognize the benefit of appreciating and acknowledging individuals

Research confirms that individuals who receive regular recognition and praise increase their individual productivity, increase engagement among colleagues, are more likely to stay with the organization, and receive higher loyalty and satisfaction scores from customers. Appreciating others can make a difference to your bottom line.

Increase employee productivity by regularly giving recognition and praise

2. Gain an awareness for appreciation

If you’re not in the habit of appreciating people openly, begin by watching for behaviors, attitudes, and work that add value to you or the company.

3. Develop a commitment to appreciate

Make a commitment to express your appreciation. If this is a new habit, it might feel awkward or uncomfortable at first. The reward and benefit, however, of establishing the habit of appreciating others will pay huge dividends in the long-term.

4. Acknowledge specifics

The most meaningful appreciations are specific. What exactly do you appreciate? Details increase the impact and lets the person know clearly what you appreciate. Others may guess correctly how you feel or what you think about them, but they won’t know for sure unless you tell them. You strengthen the message by including specific impacts that the actions or qualities have on you, the team, or the organization.

5. Clarify roles, responsibilities and mission

It’s important for employees to understand their roles and responsibilities. Gaining clarity of organizational and personal goals and expectations help employees know how to meet or exceed expectations. Employees enjoy hearing how their contribution made a difference to the organization’s goals and its success. Employees are more likely to feel included and empowered when they understand the organization’s mission.

6. Follow through on commitments

Following through on commitments builds trust. It also communicates that the other person is important. Reinforce your organization’s values through how you treat each other. Let your employees know that you have their best interest at heart. We tend to support those who treat us well, believe in us, and take an interest in us.

7. Encourage openness

As a manager, recognize that other people have ideas and perspectives that might be useful to hear. When you seek and listen to others’ opinions and feedback, you are communicating that you value their ideas and insights.

8. Take the time to appreciate

We choose where to allocate our attention and energy. Meaningful appreciations don’t take much time to share. Words of appreciation typically can be spoken in less than 30 seconds. However, the value and positive impact of hearing words of appreciation can be huge and long-lasting.

9. Appreciation reinforces positive behavior

What you appreciate gets reinforced. By expressing your appreciation you indirectly communicate what behavior you’d like to continue to see in the future.

What you appreciate gets reinforced

10. Evaluate the effectiveness

Prior to starting your new focus on appreciation in the workplace, you might take stock of your employees’ productivity, your sales and profit, and employee turnover. It would be interesting to re-evaluate them six months later. I’d be curious what the difference will be.

What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Employee Engagement: You Better Recognize!

Posted on July 9, 2013

In its 2013 State of the American Workforce report Gallup states that employee engagement- the degree to which an employee is engaged in and enthusiastic about their work and thus acts in a way that furthers organizational interests- increases when managers focus on employee strengths.  A strengths-based management approach means that front-line managers maximize employees’ chances to use their strengths every day. They have daily interactions with employees to empower them and help them discover and develop their talents.

Employee recognition is a key component of strengths based management. This isn’t a reference to formal recognition programs or automated prizes. Giving employees a plant or a shiny pen on their 5 year anniversary doesn’t communicate worth.  At its core employee recognition has to be about communicating VALUE.

Employee engagement is shaped by employees’ perceptions of their value to an organization, team, and customer base. When it comes time to engage in employee recognition, leaders must put forth recognition efforts that draw attention to these contributions. Employees that report feeling valued at work report higher levels of engagement in their jobs. They also interface with customers more successfully, have fewer time and attendance issues and produce higher quality work product.

This is where front-line managers are critical to success. They are the only person in the work-life of the employee with both the power and opportunity to recognize employees (that is, to celebrate their value) on a regular basis. Think about it:

• —  Who sees employee behavior, performance and contributions most frequently?
• —  Who is the organizational “authority-figure” to the employee?
• —  Who conducts formal evaluation of employee performance?
• —  Who is charged with leading the team?
• —  Who sets the tone of the work environment? The culture?  The atmosphere?
• —  Who connects employees to upper management and executives?

The role of the front-line manager cannot be overstated. Frequent and targeted recognition is a key leadership strategy that must be embraced by managers at all levels to actively engage the workforce. How?  Here are 3 key components of front-line recognition that impact employee engagement:

Recognize Early and Often

You don’t need a spectacular accomplishment or formal occasion to engage in recognition. Celebrating small victories or accomplishments can have a huge impact on the morale of individuals and teams. Point out when something has been done well. Say “Thank You.”  And do it often. Research by Marcia Losada found that success in virtually any relationship requires a certain level of positivity, specifically 3 positive remarks for every negative one. Keep this 3-to-1 ratio in mind when balancing recognition and constructive feedback. Strive to direct positive comments to employees at least 3 times as often as you direct corrective or procedural feedback.

Be specific and personal

Getting a plant or a shiny pen as a gift is nice, but the impact comes from the note attached. Imagine getting that “5 year” gift with a note that said something like this:

“5 years ago this week you joined our team and we’ve truly benefited from your presence. Your commitment to your work makes all our jobs easier and your dedication to our customers in the form of your constant warmth and good cheer is invaluable. I probably don’t say it enough but please know: I am so glad you work here.”  Signed, (boss’s name)

What’s powerful about this for the employee isn’t just what was said…but that the author took the time to say it. The author took a moment to truly stop and appreciate someone’s contribution and note the specific examples that were articulated. That’s how you communicate value.

Celebrate everyone

Imagine you went to a meeting and, prior to its start, you got to pick one of 3 door prizes: A water bottle, a rubber band, or an iPad. Without hesitation most would choose the iPad, right? Clearly it’s the most valuable item of the 3. It’s flashy, slick, and contemporary, the superstar of the group.

This happens in teams as well.  It’s easy to recognize the superstars. They stand out. They bring something obvious to the group and as a leader you probably don’t have to work very hard to recognize them. But not everyone is a superstar.

Had you taken a few moments to examine the water bottle you would have found a sturdy, reliable device. It never leaks, it’s portable, consistent, and is always there when you need it. And the rubber band? Invaluable. It’s quietly strong, flexible, and can handle quite a lot of stress.

And neither will ever be an iPad.

Recognition is about celebrating the unique talents and contributions of every member of a team. It’s easy to lose sight of these gifts if employees work daily in the shadow of a high performer, but every employee brings something to the table. Take time to figure out what that is and celebrate it. Whether it’s administrative responsibilities, interpersonal interactions with clients, or how they relate to their co-workers, celebrate everyone, and help them see how their “routine” contributions produce powerful results.

In addition to impacting employee engagement, recognition reinforces the kind of performance and behaviors you want consistently out of your employees. High job performance is a learned behavior. And rewards, in the form of recognition and validation, provide emotional reinforcement to that ongoing learning.

(Did you find this article valuable? Please share it with others and comment below! Thanks! ~Joe)

Is Your Organization Really Just Perpetuating Mediocrity? (David Jardin)

Is Your Organization Really Just Perpetuating Mediocrity?

Companies can get a boost in performance and results by communicating standards of acceptable performance.

The best companies, the ones that stay on top, get better every day. One way they do this is by deliberately raising and enforcing standard levels of “acceptable performance.” This drives steady gains in individual and organization effectiveness.

Meanwhile, mediocre companies lose ground as they plod along, merely maintaining the same performance levels over time. Winning organizations move ahead while the mediocre, at best, merely run in place.How to get your organization past the “Mendoza Line”

Mario Mendoza played major league baseball from 1974 to 1982. Mr. Mendoza is best known for his woefully low lifetime batting average.

A player whose batting average is under .200 (i.e. just two hits for every 10 at bats) is said to be below the so-called “Mendoza Line.” Of course this standard of minimum acceptable performance isn’t mindlessly enforced – other pertinent factors are considered when making decisions to retain or release. Still, every big league player fears the associated stigma and risk of losing his spot on the team.

Following the practices below helps companies rise above mediocrity:

• Raise expectations – Research has shown that stretch goals drive higher performance so long as they are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and trackable (SMART).
• Align capabilities – Make sure the organization design fits the business strategy and talent is segmented based on forecasted productivity and value creation.
• Deploy capabilities -- It is essential to have the right people on board and to take the wrong people off board. And everyone needs to be in the right role because people can’t realize their full potential if they’re in the wrong position. Home run legend Babe Ruth started his baseball career as a pitcher before he was moved to the outfield giving him more at bats.
• Expand capabilities — Non-job-related development activities enhance job-related development. Examples include structured training; informal learning that is planned or spontaneous; coaching; mentoring; and working on cross-functional project teams.
• Let go — Exiting a person from the company is the last resort. This should happen only after candid conversations and reasonable efforts to find the right fit have failed.

How to assess your company’s readiness

Most people will step up if they know that staying in the lineup means they have to get better every day to meet or exceed rising expectations. And they’ll get the message if you explicitly communicate and rigorously enforce your organization’s “Mendoza Line.”

Companies can get a boost in performance and results by communicating standards of acceptable performance (i.e. “Mendoza Line”) and actively (and compassionately) managing folks whose performance is near or below it.

Here are some questions to assess your organization’s position and readiness:

1. Does our culture demand continuous improvement and high expectations?
2. Do people have individual SMART stretch goals aligned with the strategy?
3. Who would contribute more if they were in a different position?
4. Do we provide the right opportunities to let people expand their capabilities?
5. Do underperformers get a fair chance to improve? Are they treated with candor and respect?

So, is your organization driving sustainable high performance? Or is it perpetuating mediocrity?

David Jardin is a consultant with the iTM System GroupiTM System Group where he works with leaders and teams to make talent management simple, practical, and profitable. He began his career as a CPA and has spent more than 20 years in leadership roles in talent management and organization development with global companies including Citigroup, Coopers & Lybrand, Pfizer, and Tyco Electronics. Contact him at davidjardin@mac.com.

The Value of Workplace Conflict: Discomfort Says You’re Doing It Right (Patty Azzarello)

The Value of Workplace Conflict: Discomfort Says You’re Doing It Right

There are several things that stall progress, but one that occurs a lot is the human tendency to avoid conflict.

It’s almost impossible for a team to make progress on something new, without raising, and working through at least some uncomfortable conflict.

If you are avoiding conflict, you are avoiding execution.

Many teams opt for a false sense of agreement and pleasant-ness instead, because it’s more comfortable.

Vague is comfortable

Imagine a team conversation:

“We need to improve quality.” All the heads start nodding. Who would have a problem with that? Comfy.

Now imagine instead:

“We need to improve quality so we are going to cancel these two programs, and use those funds to fix these 3 product problems, and offer these top 5 customers free on site support for 3 months while we make improvements.” Now, that is worthy of some disagreement!

If you stay at the comfortable, vague statement of high level goals, you can’t actually do anything. Everyone leaves the room agreeing it’s important, but there is no clear agreement on specifically what you are going to do differently (and where the resources will come from). So nothing moves forward.

Get comfortable with clarity …  and conflict

Clarity is the secret sauce for execution. You need to be comfortable with the fact that creating real clarity is going to expose disagreements. It’s going to be uncomfortable.

Have the debate. Work through the disagreements. Get specific.

Only when you get really clear, and actively resolve unanswered questions and lingering disagreements, will you be able to execute.

Without this level of clarity, when you don’t meet your goal, you can’t see or point to what is not working — you just know you didn’t get there.

Discomfort means you are doing it right

As I bring teams through this process of getting real clarity, taking the time to hear the opinions and debate, we reach a point where everyone can see what they need to do differently, specifically.

It becomes clear what everyone needs to do personally to achieve the big goal. Everyone leaves aligned, knowing exactly what is expected, and how they will be measured on what they do moving forward.

Here are some ideas for how to do create clarity and work though necessary conflict with your team:

Clarify the desired outcome

First you need to be really clear about the desired outcome. What is expected?

Then:

• You need to break that big goal down clearly into smaller, concrete parts.
• You need to be clear about who is responsible for each piece.
• You need to be clear about how each piece is resourced.
• You need to be clear about what doing something different in each case means to the old way of doing something.
• You need to be clear about how the roles of specific people change.
• You need to be clear about not only what the new tasks and deliverables are, but what are the new behaviors and values that are expected at each level in your organization.
• You need to be clear about what skills are required and how you are going to get them.
• If you have to hire or train people, you need to be clear about where that funding will come from and how long it will take.
• You need to be clear about how the success of each task and role will be measured.
• You need to be clear about what the consequences are for not doing the new thing.
• You need to be clear about what will be communicated.

Go around the room

A final thing I do at this point in the process is to go around the room and ask each person to describe in their own words:

• What we decided to do;
• Why this is important;
• What you will tell your team, specifically;
• What you and your team will do differently as a result of this decision.

This ensures that everyone has internalized the decision and necessary actions, and gives them practice at talking about it in an aligned way amongst their peers. It also makes it clear that you expect them to talk about this with their teams and do something different!

Remove uncertainty

One of the most important things you can do as a leader is to remove uncertainty. It can feel uncomfortable to be so clear that it raises conflict.

Discussing the answer to all these kinds of questions out loud, with your team, although it opens the door to conflict and discomfort it is the only reliable way to move forward.

Otherwise you’ll still be talking about how important this thing is next year.

This was originally published on Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. Her latest book is Rise: How to be Really Successful at Work and LIKE Your Life.

Why We No Longer Need HR Departments (Bernard Marr)

Why We No Longer Need HR Departments

The time has come for HR (Human Resources) departments to call it a day. HR departments often portray themselves as a valued business partner for management and staff alike. However, how can anyone take a department seriously that refers to people as ‘resources’?

Nothing matters more to companies than the people who work there. Companies are nothing without the right people! And I am sure that not one, single individual wants to be referred to as a ‘human resource’.

So, the first point I want to make is that the name is wrong: very wrong. It signals to everyone that this department manages ‘human resources’ in a top-down fashion, i.e. managing humans in a similar way to other resources such as finance, property or machines. If departments can’t see that this is sending out the wrong messages, then they don’t deserve to be there anyway.

Another issue is that HR departments are trying to serve two masters – which, in most cases, is not very successful. On the one hand, they are there to provide support for the employees and, on the other hand, they are there for the company and the senior management to help manage (and monitor, discipline, appraise, etc.) employees. This conflict of interest can cause friction and in many instances HR departments swing to the ‘support the company’ side, rather than the ‘support the employees’ side.

There is more. We can argue about whether the name is right or wrong, or whether the focus should be on the company or on the employees, but what really matters is whether HR delivers value. I have recently seen a number of companies that shut their HR departments down completely; outsourced the function or reduced it to a minimum. The reason they have done it, and not suffered any significant throw-back, is because HR wasn’t delivering any real value. Most of their time was taken up with bureaucratic and administrative tasks or legal issues. If HR doesn’t deliver some unique benefits then outsourcing it makes a lot of business sense.

Other companies, however, have invested in the ‘people function’. They realize that they need people who ensure that the company finds, recruits, retains and develops its people. So here is what I recommend:

1. Don’t call it HR!
2. 2. Put two teams in place: a people analytics’ team and a people support team.
3. The role of the people support team is, as the title suggests, supporting all employees in the organization – from the front line to the senior leadership team. The tasks of this team include: helping employees with their development; ensuring staff engagement; identifying issues with morale and culture and generally looking after the well-being of the people in the business.
4. The role of the people analytics team is to look at people more scientifically and support the company with insights and analytics. The kind of questions this team would help to answer includes: What are our talent gaps? What makes a good employee in our company and how do we best recruit them? Which employees have got the highest potential? How can we predict staff turnover? Etc.
5. Outsource or automate the non-value adding part of HR.

As always, I am interested to hear your reactions. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Please let me know and share your views.