by D. Kevin Berchelmann | May 28, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Human Resources, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
Monster.com, the veritable cash-producing employment machine, is laying off about 15% of its workforce. Big deal, eh??
Actually, I believe there’s a teaching moment here…
That monster is laying off, in itself is little news; the part that drives me nuts:
1. Q2 sales increased 25%, almost $60M,
2. Share price is up almost 2%, and
3. Earnings are down almost 28%, caused by a 34% increase in operating costs, driven almost entirely by legal fees associated with their options-backdating investigation.
In this age of Talent Management, these layoffs will be borne almost entirely by human resources & finance staff cuts — seems “centralization” of sorts now makes more sense.
The restructuring should save $150M, less $70M in associated costs, and another $80M they’ll use for additional product upgrades and advertising. In other words, first-year wash.
Creating intentional redundancy (decentralized support staff), then changing course on that (centralized), seems no different to me than poor decision-making in any other event; they merely needed a market-palatable basis for the decision to reduce staff.
Have you ever seen a company, on the eve of layoffs, say, “This reduction will hurt bad in many ways, and make it more difficult for us to accomplish our mission…?” Only with those near-death (then who really cares anyway?)
Short-term vs. long-term focus is obviously difficult. Senior leaders could have some relief from investors if they would merely personally commit to longer-term results. Most can’t (or won’t) do that, principally due to their lack of confidence in talent. A vicious circle, of course…
Too often, we view staffing “planning” as asking managers how many people they’ll need — effectively abrogating our responsibility for effective workforce management to an unskilled manager who believes — rightfully so, for his/her world — that vacancies should be filled, and more hands make for lighter work.
And though we (self included) popularly use words like talent management and such, much of this issue is best handled through good ol’ staffing plans. The issue we have, I think, is becoming an uber-leader and activist for these plans.
For instance, a position left unfilled for 3+ months, with no subsequent business limitations, is a position that should go unfilled/canceled, or at the minimum, intensely scrutinized.
Further, I believe companies like monster — who announces these layoffs about once every other year — are hiding behind them as a subterfuge for inadequate ongoing performance management. In other words, every couple of years, they whack the deadwood that should have been managed earlier. This is far too common…
We all do that to some degree; think of the times we’ve participated in a layoff. Being the intelligent, non-union creatures we are, we use “performance” as the litmus for who stays/who goes. Remember how easy it is/was to select some — if not all — of those being laid off under that criteria. Sure, some are difficult; but many are simple to ascertain, since they’ve been under-performing unscathed for a period of time before.
That’s “our bad.”
If we manage more, we layoff less.
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Apr 5, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics
The troops eat first.
In earlier times, this was a simple axiom, borne of logic: First came the horses, then the troops (foot soldiers), then the officers. Over time, it was shortened to simply, “the troops eat first.”
I would suggest that it’s just as relevant today as then, though for different reasons.
Leadership effectiveness simply means “Take care of your people — especially the good ones — so they won’t have to do it themselves.” I often tell C-level managers that “someone has to look after the well-being of your solid performers.” If you don’t do it yourself, the employee has to. Usually with the help of an outside friend, headhunter, or someone with influence and priorities other than yours.
Make sure they are “fed.” Developed, mentored, and given ample opportunity. Not necessarily a big, cumbersome, formal effort, but something that clearly shows them that, “Hey, I’m looking out for you — no need to look elsewhere for development & growth.”
The troops eat first, el generale…
by Triangle Performance Staff | Feb 6, 2014 | Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics
NPR just published a great article about the impact of “toxic leadership,” something that I think we all would agree is a problem, and not just in the military. (Army Takes On Its Own Toxic Leaders)
Aside from the horrifying findings of the research (toxic leaders playing a role in the suicide of our soldiers), the article paints a vivid picture of a very special type of leader, one that I have encountered in many places. The article speaks to a new definition printed in the Army’s leadership bible (Army Doctrine Publication) that most, in and out of the military, can relate. What’s interesting is that the Army went to significant pains to describe what leadership isn’t. In doing so, they’ve painted a vivid picture of what most of us have encountered somewhere in our career and hopefully use that experience to learn what not to do similarly to the Army’s efforts with their definition of “Toxic Leadership.” (Army Doctrine Publication 6-22)
The Army’s definition, while wordy (like most military regulations) can best be summed up in its first line:
“Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance.”
Have you ever run across someone like that who was in a managerial role? Someone who saw their employees, and likely their peers as a means to an end, typically an end that was completely self-centered in nature? If not, consider yourself fortunate.
So what is the cost of BAD leadership? In corporate America, we might see bad leadership tied to suicide but I personally think the suicide being committed most often is committed by our corporations rather than the employees subjected to it and what’s worse, it’s usually a slow suicide.
The cost of bad leadership can be measured in results, but more importantly the costs can be best measured in terms of results compared to said effort. Far too many organizations turn a blind eye to bad leadership because the bad leaders get results. How many times have you heard (or maybe even thought to yourself) “we can’t get rid of him; he gets results.” Maybe the thought should be “what is he costing us in terms of results we could be achieving?” These managers often do deliver results in the short-term but at a significantly higher cost than necessary. In many cases, those costs go far beyond hard dollars which is why they are sometimes easy to overlook. The real costs are frequently soft dollars that are harder to measure but carry much more impact.
Setting aside the emotion laced conversation of suicide, simply replace that with voluntary resignation or complete disengagement (quitting without leaving). Bad leadership negatively impacts the investment made in every new hire (military or corporate) by limiting the potential return (outputs) from that investment and significantly impacting the life cycle of the asset itself (separation or quitting without leaving). Longer-term, though suicide may not be a typical result of bad leaders in corporate America, the damage it does or can do to our current employees and future leaders is significant.
What makes bad leaders even more dangerous is that they tend to be very good at convincing those above them that they are good leaders and end up capitalizing on that false perception and get moved to even higher levels of responsibility. Their damage, then, is not localized and much harder to repair once discovered.
So what do you do about “toxic” leaders? I suggest that you treat them as what they are, a toxin. With toxins you usually have two choices, cut it out along with the damaged tissue (other infected leaders) or isolate the toxin by surrounding it with positive leadership and mitigate the negative impact. Most importantly, you have to deal with toxic leaders or like a real toxin in our bodies, the damage spreads and the longer it remains, the faster and deeper it spreads and dealing with the issue becomes more difficult.
So the question of the day is, do you have any toxic leaders?
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Feb 3, 2014 | Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics
Necessary evil. Pain in the rear. The management penalty. Performance reviews are called many things, few of them positive. What’s up with that?? One of the most important things we do as senior managers is setting, and managing to, performance expectations.
Why, then, do we anguish about it so?
The problem, of course, is we frequently confuse performance appraisals with performance management. We make the appraisal process so damn onerous that no one wants to do anything but the appraisals… forgetting, of course, why we do those silly things in the first place.
It’s because we don’t take ownership of the process. It’s not the form we use, the rating scale identified, nor the percentage of pay increase associated with various rankings. It’s that we just don’t see the process as significant in our pursuit for business success.
And that’s just wrong. The capital markets continue to get stronger – both debt and equity. Initial public offerings are coming back in style. The DOW is headed back up. It’s not about all the “other” resources anymore – it’s about the people.
People make us competitive, successful, and allow us to differentiate. Believe it, get used to it, and embrace it. It’s here to stay.
Having said that, what, then, do we do about those dreaded reviews? How can they help?
People want feedback. You do, your boss does. Your staff does as well. A good performance review is nothing more than feedback–feedback that you should be giving all along anyway. So, here are some tips to make the performance review process bigger, better, stronger, faster…
- Get it off-line. We don’t need the speed of digital; we need the effectiveness of face-to-face. Make an appointment; sit in a chair next to your staff member, and talk. Really; people have been doing it for years. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as you think.
Realize that the goal here is not a form… it’s managing/improving performance. Oh, yeah… we sometimes get so lost in the process, that we forget the real purpose. To manage and improve performance.
Let’s don’t attempt to simplify so much that we lose sight of that objective.
- Make it work, and then leave it alone. Everyone – I see this all the time – is constantly reinventing, changing, and modifying their performance review process. It’s just a form, people.
Furthermore, the choices are actually quite simple; there are only three performance results:
- (a) Doesn’t meet expectations,
- (b) Meets expectations, or
- (c) Exceeds expectations.
All else (in my opinion) are provided for comfort and conflict mitigation, not accuracy. More rating choices enables poor performance management, in my mind. The key is in the conversation, not the tool or the ratings, so don’t spend an inordinate amount of time here.
Performance management, conversations, dialog, and setting expectations ARE keys, so there’s the real focus. To that end…
- Train your managers. It needn’t be a two-day seminar, but give your managers the communication tools they need to do this effectively. Your success – and your company – depends on it.
- Use performance reviews as the foundation for year-long conversations about performance expectations and management. Set clear measurements. Revisit them frequently. Give periodic metric updates. Prevent surprises and manage performance in real-time. Help managers learn how to manage performance through conversations first; reviews, then, merely memorialize those performance conversations.
Performance matters. We all know this intuitively, yet we wrestle with the best way to manage that performance in our workplace. Own the process, decide that it’s about success, not perfection, and schedule that conversation.
Our success depends on it.
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Jan 20, 2014 | Brazen Leader, Kevin Berchelmann
Someone asked me recently if (a) the ethics in human resources are becoming suspect, and (b) if ethics can really be taught to anyone.
My first reaction, of course, was to nearly scoff at the “ethics” question, thinking that frequently, our profession may even OVER-think the ethics component in an otherwise common-sense situation.
Then, I gave it some more thought…
Typically, when people start in HR, they view their roles as more employee-centric; part ombudsman, part “good cop” manager-surrogate. They enjoy doing things that enhance “morale,” “feel-good,” and create perceived contentment within the organization, regardless of these things’ real value to their firm.
Then, we expect them to grow into “business partners.” Never mind the ludicrous nature of that moniker, the fact is they are ill-prepared. Their stereotypical nature of nurturing, consensus, and conflict-avoidance is clearly at odds with the profession’s emphasis on strategic contributions.
In trying to meld the two, I do believe ethics are sometimes abrogated, or at least marginalized by HR professionals. Believing they know what managers “want,” they may be too eager to deliver that, versus spending the time, angst, and conflict to drill down to actual “needs.” In not trying to be a “typical HR person,” they may skirt those very things that allowed them to perform ethically.
A common “compliment” these days to an HR professional is to tell them that they don’t ACT like one… this implication is that they are less intrusive, less employee-centric, and less prone to slow things down for appropriate process management (e.g. “compliance”).
Just my thoughts.
Lastly, of course ethics can be taught. Ethics is a topic, a subject matter. It can be taught to anyone with the desire and ability to learn. Ethical BEHAVIOR, however, is something different. Just like you can teach law to criminals, you can teach ethics to the unethical. Just don’t expect behavior changes.
Remember, you can’t train for integrity and work ethic, and you can’t fix stupid.
But that’s another post…
by Triangle Performance Staff | Jan 16, 2014 | Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics
The name Tony Dungy may ring a bell for many of you, but his name may not be readily paired with the following quote:
“The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. Vision will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve excellence. Only vision allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. Vision has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our vision is what we become in life”
While Tony may not be recognized by most as a leader of organizational transformation, I’ll bet that most of the players he coached along the way might disagree. The lesson in Tony’s words is summed up as “vision is where transformation begins; it provides both the destination and the inspiration needed for successful transformation.”
So what is this vision thing? In simplest terms vision can be defined as a “unique image of the future.” It is imaging what is possible–and then telling others. It begins in the mind’s eye–it is visual, not verbal—and it uses imagination (something many of us haven’t used for a while in our daily work).
Walt Disney was a great example. He died shortly before Disney World Florida was opened. The president of Disney introduced Walt’s widow Lillian Disney at the official opening with the words “I only wish Walt could have seen this.” Mrs. Disney walked to the podium and uttered just two words “He did.” The clarity of Walt’s vision for what could be is what inspired Walt’s brother Roy, to ensure that Disneyland ended up as more than just a vision.
Some belittle the concept and refer to it as the “vision thing.” Interestingly enough Bennis and Nanus discovered in their research that “attention through vision” was a key strategy in their study of the top 90 business leaders. So there must be something to that “vision thing.”
Here are some things to know about the power of vision as the cornerstone of transformation efforts.
- It differentiates your organization from others
- It helps in attracting, inspiring and retaining employees and creates a uniqueness that fosters pride
- Vision works the same way with customers as it does employees
- Vision is a powerful tool for giving investors something to believe in as the future is created
Effective leaders don’t simply impose their vision on others; they recruit others to a share vision. Especially in our digital age, when power tends to coalesce around ideas, not position. Selling and engaging others with a vision that contrasts the present with the possibility of a different future provides hope and it is hope that drives people to behave differently and to take action to help the vision become a reality. Discretionary effort ensues.
So how then does a leader access this “vision thing”? It starts with a word: Neoteny. Defined as “the retention of youthful qualities by adults,” it is actually much more. Neoteny is a Greek word that literally means the retention of those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth. Qualities like curiosity, eagerness, warmth, and energy. People are attracted to realistic optimism–it gives a leader the power to recruit others to buy into what they see.
By the way, this “vision thing” is not about words on a wall in the reception area. This is about the pictures that employees carry in their heads, pictures that inspire, direct and drive them as part of something bigger than themselves.
With a clear vision in place the only other things needed are the commitment and determination to continually reach toward the vision when it would be easier to go back to the way it was. So spend some time thinking about the vision that you carry in your head, articulate it and then spread it. Leading transformation starts with the leader seeing that “what is” is no longer an option, and then developing clarity about what is to be and then communicating the heck out of it. That is how championship teams and businesses are created.
