by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Jan 25, 2019 | Brazen Leader, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Uncategorized
A look at relevant leadership news this past week.
The government shutdown continues. The Libertarian in me says this should be great, since it means fewer government employees kicking around. The reality is, regardless of political persuasion, an emotional impasse like this represents an abject failure in leadership. All of the leadership.
Picture a for-profit company, with co-owners, each retaining exactly 50% ownership. Unable to agree on a specific, smaller strategy, they refuse to deliver anything to their customers until they each get what they want. Oh yeah, and they tell employees they won’t be paid, but it’s the other owner’s fault.
Kick all the bums out.
Buzzfeed is laying off employees… again. This time, 15% (200+) are gonna get pink slips.
“BuzzFeed’s board recently agreed that the company needs to start turning profits…” Now that’s some cutting-edge thinking right there, Lou.
The very definition of lousy leadership? Nearly a decade in a services business (defiitely not a startup), $300M in revenue with double-digit annual growth, NEVER made a profit.
Wait! New strategy… let’s save our way to prosperity by laying off revenue machines, er, I mean “employees.” No one’s ever tried that before…
Sears continues its meteoric demise. Like a train wreck, this shit’s hard to watch. While unsecured creditors say they’ve been bamboozled, Eddie Lampert says he’s been an oasis in a desert, providing much-needed financing at critical times. It’s sorta like the illicit “fence” that gives you 10 cents on the dollar for your valuable stuff, so you can keep making dope buys. Both of you may be complicit, but the fence is the only one making all the money.
On a side note, having witnessed this myself, the only people that come out of a bankruptcy smelling like roses are the law firms. Keri Grant, a paralegal for Weil Gotshal & Manges (sounds like a punk rock band) on the Sears case, billed almost $175,000 in November at $405/hr. According to salary.com, a senior-level paralegal makes $33-41/hr. Not a shabby delta in rates for a punk rock band.
Walgreens pays $269M (that’s million) because they cheated.
Client: How much for some of that newfangled #ethics consulting and training?
Consultant: I dunno, around $100k I suppose…
Client: What?!? Sorry, waaaay to rich for my blood… we’ll DIY.
As my granddaughter used to say, “okey-dokey artichokey…”
Oracle continues the Silicon Valley trend of tech companies. allegedly low-balling and under-promoting women and people of color. They stand to join an esteemed list of companies, including facebook, twitter, google, et al.
The part that amazes me… with all this alleged egregious behavior, these firms continue to win best-places-to-work and related awards. Oracle even has a specific webpage devoted to “Corporate Citizenship Awards,” which include (just a few):
- Best Diversity Company by Diversity Careers magazine
- Top 50 Employers for women engineers by readers of Woman Engineer magazine
- Top 50 Employers for workforce diversity by readers of Workforce Diversity for Engineering and IT Professionals magazine
- Top 50 Employers by readers of Equal Opportunity magazine
All the awards mentioned above occurred during the time period the Feds have alleged Oracle was systemically underpaying women, blacks, and Asians relative to their peers (to the tune of some $400M+)
Give me an old-fashioned, Houston-based oil & gas firm where – surprisingly to some – diversity is real.
On a more positive note, Ford Motor Company workers will receive profit-sharing bonuses of over $7,500 per worker. This even after Ford’s Q4 operating loss. All the while rival GM is laying off over 15% of its workforce and shuttering a half-dozen plants.
Not to confuse Ford’s CEO Jim Hackett of being a pushover; he’s made it clear that 2018 sucked big, and he wants everyone (employees) involved to “…bury the year (2018) in a deep grave, grieve over what might have been and become super focused on meeting, and, in fact, exceeding this year’s plan.”
I think he means it.
That’s a wrap for This Week in the Rear.
Be Brazen.
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Jan 14, 2019 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
Did you get the things accomplished that you set out to do at the beginning of the year? Most of them? Some of them? Any of them??
If so, great. If not, why not? Now–right now–is the best time to answer the following questions:
- Regarding those things successful last year, what made them so? Was it because of me and my leadership, or in spite of? For those I lead, have I appropriately recognized their successes?
- If we failed to accomplish some of our plans, goals, or objectives… why? Was it because we failed to do something we could have done, or were there really—really–circumstances beyond our control (honesty is important on this one)? For those I lead who performed less than satisfactorily, am I addressing that performance appropriately?
While you’re asking questions, how have you performed as a leader? Have you asked anyone… like those you lead? If not, now’s the perfect time. And I don’t mean just “hey, Jane, how am I doing as a leader?” Strangely enough, that might not actually elicit a meaningful response.
Consider a 360 survey if you haven’t had one, or haven’t had one recently. I’ve had lots of clients asking for them of late, so something good must be in the water.
Alternatively, you can DIY with something simple, like Start, Stop, Continue.
Sit down, one on one, with those you lead directly. Tell them you want—need–their feedback to improve, and to make their jobs better (and likely easier). Tell them you’ll be asking three questions, and you would like at least one input or response for each question. Then ask…
What should I Start doing that I’m not doing now?
What should I Stop doing that doesn’t seem to help you or others?
What should I Continue doing that you feel is positive?
Ask the questions, then shut up while they answer. No defensive drilling down, no “but what about…?” comments, nothing but “thank you for that input.”
If you’d like a simple worksheet for this, you can download by clicking on the image to the left.
And don’t forget to follow up with them in a few months to see how you’re doing with their inputs.
Be Brazen.
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Jan 9, 2019 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Human Resources, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
Speaking with a potential client, she asked about the process to “rebuild” their culture. 
The ensuing chat was interesting (I would call it “great!,” but the client hasn’t signed on yet…!)
First, culture isn’t actually “rebuilt.” It exists — in complete form — in every organization.
You may not LIKE the culture, may want to CHANGE the culture, but remember: It’s a change management effort, and has all the corresponding efforts and challenges of any organizational change process.
A specific culture can START anywhere within an organization, though it can only really be DRIVEN by the top. The top controls processes, most extrinsic motivations, environments, and sets values and acceptable behavior (the whole ‘lead by example’ thingy).
To change culture, all levers must be congruent… policies must match behaviors; values must be supported by procedures and accepted norms; compensation must match desired behaviors, actions, and results.
They’ve all got to work together, and when changing a culture (vs. maintaining), you really can’t afford even small inconsistencies.Without over-stressing my keyboarding skills, desired culture change will never take place via “programs,” off-sites, workshops or other isolated events.
It’s gotta be the whole enchilada. It must have complete support of the senior-most staff, and necessarily reinforced (in part) via performance management.
In other words, it’s kind of a big deal…
Be Brazen.
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Nov 28, 2018 | Brazen Leader, Human Resources, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
I received the following question from an HR Director in the midwest:
Contingency Fees: What’s the value? It seems that the fee percentage in permanent placement ranges from sometimes less than 20% to 30%+ of the candidate’s first years salary.
So, what’s the diff??
Where’s the value change between the 20% firms and the 30% firms?
Though I do not conduct contingency searches today, I spent many years in the Director/VP desk wondering much the same thing…
The answer, however, isn’t mysterious.
The difference is frequently just timing. If a recruiter or firm’s current production is down, volume low, or revenue a bit off for the week/month/quarter, a firm may take closer to 20% for that particular search, instead of their customary 25-30%.
Perhaps they already have a couple of ringer candidates in the hopper, and they low-ball just to close a quick sale.
Maybe, they’re new at the business, and right now they just need to pay the bills (surely I don’t have to make all the obvious cautions here…).
Maybe, they’re just stupid. I doubt that, but let’s include all possible answers.
Now, having said that…Here’s the part that really gets me:
I spent a good many years in senior-most HR roles. A manager/company that will quibble over 5-10% on a $100K search for a valuable contributor to their organization, is so colossally short-sided and pound-foolish that it takes my breath away.
A hiring company’s bigger concern should not be whether the fee is 20%, 25%, or 30%; or whether the fee includes just base comp, base plus bonus, etc… The hiring company’s sole concern — SOLE concern — should be “Can this firm deliver one or more solid, successful candidates to fill my serious need?”
If not, then 15-20% is certainly no bargain; if yes, then we’re spending way too much time quibbling over a few thousand dollars.
Just my thoughts…
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Nov 20, 2018 | Brazen Leader, Executive Improvement, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
In this final related blog entry, I’m closing out the “5 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” I outlined in a recent article.
This fifth law is something we all wrestle with mightily. It’s caused many a manager or leader to be ineffective, or less than fully effective, and robbed many an employee of the benefits of nearby, accessible leadership.
Law #5. Employees need their managers to be leaders; they don’t need a shoulder, a buddy, a simpatico, or a commiserator. If you want a friend, buy a dog.
We really do struggle with this. Everyone wants to be liked, and it always seems difficult to decline a beer after work, or something similar.
I’m not advocating a monk-like existence, disallowing any contact with your troops; merely reminding you that they would like to have a friend, but they need a leader if they are to be successful.
You do want them to be successful, don’t you?
Thanks for your patience as I moved through these 5 irrefutable laws (at least in my opinion). These laws are fairly intuitive, and certainly not rocket science… or brain surgery… or rocket surgery.
They are simple management and leadership axioms that have passed the test of time.
Sometimes, it’s the simple things that work. Try it sometime — you just might like it.
Cheers,
by D. Kevin Berchelmann | Sep 28, 2018 | Brazen Leader, Human Resources, Kevin Berchelmann, Miscellaneous Business Topics, Organizational Effectiveness
Someone recently asked me to give them a general overview of incentives. Never-mind the cliff-notes request format, we simply over-complicate this stuff.
Understanding incentive compensation is simple, and is largely human nature:
1. That which is rewarded is repeated,
2. You don’t get what you want, hope for, manage to, or request — you get what you pay for (as a tenet of compensation, not necessarily a life philosophy), and
3. Simplicity wins.
Exception, contrarian arguments like you mention are just that, and based more on opinion than empirical evidence.
Well crafted incentive schemes will generally work when we can show that:
1. Working harder (bigger, better, stronger, faster) will improve my job performance, and
2. My improved performance will create rewards, perhaps an increase in salary or valued benefits, and
3. I value these rewards.
(oft-paraphrased from Vroom, though not sure his was original)
Again, simplicity wins…
