start small but start

Starting is the best thing you can do. 

Starting a business? Find one or two loyal customers.

Starting running? Run for 5 minutes.

Starting swimming? Do half a length.

Starting a new job? Go easy.

Starting is the best thing you can do.

Motivation anyone?

Dealing with problem employees

What do you do when you have an employee who isn't really cut out for the role they are employed in.  How long do you put up with them?  How much time and effort do you put in trying to salvage a bad hire?

I recommend applying the following checklist to the problem employee.  Using this simple guide you can decide if a salvage operation is worth the effort or if you may be better off cutting ties and letting the person sail away into a =nother role that is better suited for them.

1. Can the person change?  So they're being a pain in the butt.  They aren't listening and carry on regardless.  The question is - can they change?  Is there a chance that with some coaching and help that the person can change? 
   If you think they can change then start working with them and enable them to change their view of the role and their place on the team.  If not - let them go.
2. Will the person change?  Does the person want to change and will the person change?  How much time and resources do you sink into a person before you realise that it just isn't happening with that person.
   If you think trhe person will change with the right motivating factors and environmental factors - excellent.  If not - let them go.
3. When will the person change?  Following on from the first two questions if you decide that the person a) can change, b) will change - it's time to start wondering about c) when the person might change.  How vital is that change and what are the timelines you have to work with?
   If you think the person can chnage their attitude and approach in a short amount of time and provide benefits and increase productivity - then great.  If not - let them go.

This is where the old 80/20 rule comes into play.  Is the employee an 80% employee or a 20% employee?Ask yourself honestly - how much time am I spending on this employee?  Both directly and indirectly.

If a problem employee or problem team take up 80% of your time - then you may have to consider letting them go.

Gravititation

People gravitate toward what they are good at. 

Does that mean we only do what we want to or are good at or enjoy?

Or should we let people do what they are good at and enjoy and let them loose on those projects only?

What about removing the dull tasks from someones role and letting them loose on a project of their own design?  Works for Google.  Could it also work for you?

Giving people the latitude to take a chance, reach out and test the boundaries will both enable your staff and grow the width of your business.

Just a thought.

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/auro/230377281/)

Acknowledging Your Team - Lt General Hal Moore

Lt General Hal Moore was one of the great battle field commanders.  He had the ability to lead, inspire and motivate those who were under him - with ease.  In this video the General praises those under him and gives credit where credit is due.



My question is - how do you speak of your team?  What do you say about them?  Here's a thought -

• People will act and react depending on the way you treat them.
• Respect is earned not given.
• Talk your people up not down.
• Tell anyone and everyone about how great your team is and watch the results come flooding in.

Giving respect, honor and priase to others who deserve it is the quickest route to achieving great results.

Morning Motivators

Not every day starts as good as the one before or the one after.  This led me to ask the question - how do you start your days that just aren't happening?

This morning I needed a good dose of humour and this what I came up with -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUlw4NT08Ds

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GazlqD4mLvw

Here are a few other (far more serious) ideas to help you get your day started -

1. Phone a friend.  Ring someone who is uplifting, genuine and you can have a laugh with.
2. Go for a walk - get out of your seat and get physically moving!.
3. Go to the mail room and collect the mail or call in to someone else's office and just say hello. 

Let me know what your strategies are for starting the day on the right foot are.  I'm very interested to find out.

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/guest_family/3039091702/)

Saying - Thanks

I found this video posted by Benjamin McCall on the PunkRockHR blog. Lets be honest - this is a damn cool idea and method of thanks from an employer!






How do you thank and acknowledge your employees?  How about giving them a day they will never forget.

Keeping It Real - Motivation

My recent reading list has included a lot of books that look at sports psychology and neuro linguistic programming (NLP).  There are a lot of lessons that are similar in sports excellence and in management excellence as well.

I uncovered the following list of motivating strategies that we can use as managers to ensure we stay focused and on target for our goals -

• Push the edge.  Look for a skill or weakness that needs work and start working on it.  Look for ways that you can encourage others to do better and improve their game. 
• Experience success.  Enjoy improving - an inch at a time.  Remember to enjoy the little successes.  When you string a lot of little successes together - then you will have some big wins.
• Change your thinking.  Learn from your mistakes.  Analyse, review and assimilate.  Remember what you've done well and focus on your wins.
• Get involved.  Be a part of decision making opportunities and involve others.  Take ownership of the goals and mission that you and your team are involved in.
• Praise others.  Look for the excellence in others and tell them.

• Vary training.  Make your professional development a mixture of technical skills as well as fun.  Focus on compliance and regulation requirements as much as you do for your management and people skills.
• Put yourself first.  Look after your body and yourself.  If you need a day off to relax your mental state, then take one.
• Find motivated peers.  Let others who are better or different from you challenge you and provide you with energy.  Create a support network of people that you can rely on to help you get better.  Hang out with people who will talk you up and will inspire you onto greater things.
• Think positively.  Be aware of the conversations that take place in your mind.  Are those conversations positive or destructive?  Practice focusing on the positive aspects of life. Don't ignore the negative but work on them and make them your areas of strength.
• Remember you dream.  "Spend time frequently  reconnecting with the real reason why you perform".

Adapted from: 'The Sport Psych Handbook' by Shane Murphy.

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jontravelphotos/2525995599/)

Making The Right Choice

What is the right choice to make in any given situation?  How do you know if the choice you are making is right or wrong?

I have been working through exactly this kind of situation.  It is a 'what should I do' situation.  So where should we start when it comes to making choices?

I go back to my annual resolutions, goals and objectives that I set for myself in December of last year.  Those goals are - 1.  Compliance, 2. Excellence and 3.  Teamwork.

So the situation arose where I had to pick between a good option that was mainly for my benefit or an option whereby I would forfeit personal gain in order to be involved with and develop my team.

Okay - so it doesn't sound that bad - but - giving up a financial reward for little effort isn't as easy as it may sound.  I was pretty keen on ensuring I got the best personal reward.  Until I started reflecting on where I am at and what is important to me in 2010.

So I chose to go with the team option.  Giving up a bit of money in the short term I decided was a poor way to get ahead when compared to the benefits and rewards of working with the team to grow the financial benefits and rewards for everyone.

Guess what - after I made the decision to stay true to my goals I had a pair of breakthrough moments.  One - the conflicting appointment was shifted so I can still make a personal gain, and two - I may have a chance to do something I have always dreamed of and may now be able to do.

Moral of the story - stay true to yourself, act and think with integrity and the rewards will come your way.

(Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/will-lion/3122985108/)

Human Capital Management

PeopleStreme.com have made this awesome video and posted it onto You Tube.  I have put it here and will add my contribution further down the page.

What value do you place on your work?  What value is placed on you?  Do you rate yourself or not?

Conversely - What value do you place on others work?  What value do you place on others?  How do you measure that value and is that measure relevant or accurate?

Here are a few facts of life as far as organisation's go -

• Size matters.  The bigger the organisation the less they know about you.  What happens is the more layers in an organisation the more removed you will be from the central services.
• Front Line Managers matter! The relationship between you and your direct manager is always the most important relationship you will have.  This is true if you are the cleaner all the way through to if you are a Director of the Board.  You must work with your boss!
• The HR Department matters!  Admitted in most organisations the only time you most people will interact with HR is when they are hired or if they are fired.  But it doesn't have to be that way!  Go out of yur way to meet the staff and make sure they remember who you are (for the right reasons of course).  It pays to make friends and keep them for as long as you can.
• The skills and abilities of your staff matter!  Update them!  Watch your staff.  Learn from them.  Be open to having your staff tell you where they think what sklls they need to work on and develop.  If you disagree you can help steer them in a better direction.  Create an audit or questionaire to work through at appraisal time to help lead and guide your discussions about where peoples skills are at.
• Coaching matters!  The best time to coach someone is when they are reflecting and considering their performance.  If your manager doesn'tdo this for you - tell them or look for another manager.

PunkRockHR posted a great piece on employee engagement a few days ago which ties in nicely with this post.  Head over there and check it out - WARNING: it will provoke a response.

People who are paid to do work will do a better job when they feel valued, understood and have the freedom to do what they have to in a way that makes sense to them (while adding value to the organisation).

Community Contribution

When you leave work what do you do?  Go home, kick back and relax.  Mellow out and wait for the next working day to come around?

What about contributing to your community?  Volunteer.  Give up some of your time and expertise to help others achieve their goals and dreams.

Here are a few ideas - Toastmasters, local Schools or Kindergartens, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, Sports clubs.

If you are reading this and you are in New Zealand here is a great example website -http://www.volunteernow.org.nz/.

Personally I enjoy helping out with events and organisations that are relevant to our family.  Examples - my daughters netball team, helping out at Toastmasters, helping the athletics club run their event days.  In the past - helping churches, kindy's and scout groups.

Take the expertise that you apply for-profit during the day and apply if not-for-profit in the evenings and weekends. Who knows - you might even enjoy it!

Talent - what do you do with it?

Every employee you have and person you know has a particular talent and tons of potential. The key is to figure out - what is that talent and how do you make the most of it?

Talented people generally are on the move (either upwards or sideways) and think they know where they are going. What you need as a manager to do is to provide a balance between untried ambition and actual skill. Provide a balance between new challenges and the development of new skills as well as the refinement and strengthening of current skills. Getting the balance between the two is hard - but the results are also very rewarding both for your business and the person concerned.

The other idea is to make every employee a CEO of something. Make them completely responsible for an idea or project. Give them a budget, authority and the right amount of support to make it happen.

Talented employees also need feedback and reflection time. The reviewing of KPI's and goals is a powerful motivator. Keep the KPI's short and aggressive. By doing this you, the manager, keeps close to the talent and you can gauge their growth. Where growth is quick - you can set higher targets and more complex problems. Where growth is slower - this provides a good time for both you and the talent to catch a breather before proceeding.

Note - not all talent is under 30! Some of the most talented people you have are over 30, settled into their jobs and are quite possibly bored. the mission is to identify them, lure them out of their secure place and unleash their hidden skills on the world!

KPI's for improved performance

Setting Key Performance Indicators and Targets for those who report to you works. Through having a discussion with the person you can define goals and targets for them to reach over a certain period of time.

KPI's are generally used for two things - ironing out small areas of inefficiency or business growth.

I like to set no more than 4 targets for my reports. Any less that and they become too easy, any more than that and the chances of being able to achieve them reduce exponentially according to the increase in targets listed.

Another thing I like to do is set a mixture of soft and hard targets. That is some targets are based on physical actions and outcomes, whereas soft targets deal with relationships and things that can't be measured physically.

Ongoing feedback and communication is vital and important but doesn't provide the necessary formal layout that an appraisal and KPI does. By defining goals and targets (and reviewing them quarterly) you can empower your reports to achieve more.

Staying Motivated

After taking annual leave, being sick or exiting a stressful time period at work it is easy to become tired and lack lustre.

Work standards fall and so does the quality of the work that is being out put.

Try these simple starters to help get you started -

• Read all your emails first. Clear all the distractions.
• Sort your tasks by rank - urgent, important, not urgent, not important.
• Assign days to the tasks. That is a particular job can be done on Thursday rather than Tuesday thereby reducing the stress and pressure.
• Delegate quick and easy tasks, then complete as many small tasks as you can.

After making some easy wins - you will feel more energised and better able to take on the big tasks that lie before you!

You may also find some more helpful hints here - mftrou.com, or the Harvard Business Ideacast 161: Stuart Friedman (iTunes).

Grow Your Own Leaders

Dr Emma Parry from the Cranfield University School of Management published a research paper that found - company's who invest into their own staff to create leaders and unleash their employees potential do better.

Here are a few interesting points of view of the managers interviewed from the published paper:

• it is better to grow your own employees than hire in,
• developing your own staff is a cheaper option than hiring in,
• staff retention and motivation increase when current employees are nurtured,
• it is a cheaper option to nurture your own employees.

(Source: Nurturing Talent, A Research Project by Dr Emma Parry, October 2008).

Staff development is one of the key areas for businesses to become strong, maintain their position and to move on and grow.

Another finding was that internal candidates may not always be the best choice though.

My personal view is -

• When a middle management sized position becomes open - it is best to promote from within. Keep the knowledge and experience and move it up.
• When a specialised or senior management position opens up - it is better to recruit from external sources.

External persons bring fresh perspective, new energy and different motivations.

Ambition

One of my key drivers that I have discovered is - ambition. This driver has both positive and negative sides to it.

"ambitious - Possessing, or controlled by, ambition; greatly or inordinately desirous of power, honor, office, superiority, or distinction; Strongly desirous—followed by "of" or the infinitive; as, ambitious to be or to do something; Springing from, characterized by, or indicating, ambition; showy; aspiring" en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ambitious

When possibilities exist in front of me - I produce high quality work with ease and am driven to succeed.

When I can't see the way - that's when I struggle.

So what do I do when I hit a blank spot? Here are a few things -

1. Spend time and energy on training. This is both educational and physical training. "No moss grows on a rolling stone".


2. Create a real sense of accomplishment. Look for small opportunities that exist that I may not have seen. I look for tasks and projects where I can create small wins which creates momentum towards big goals and tasks.


3. Seek support or ideas from others. All of us have blind spots. That is we can't see where we are missing opportunities or where we are blatantly on the wrong track. Ask, seek, knock - the answer will come.

Ambition is a great trait for people to have. But like most things in life - too much of a good thing can be dangerous.

Motivation

It is important to understand who you are. One part of knowing who you are is to understand what drives you. Where do you draw your motivation from? Knowing this will help you determine your actions and reactions to different situations. If you are lacking drive, energy or motivation, you may have forgotten -

"why do you do - what you do"

There are motivations such as fear or loss, but these motivations create more anxiety.

For example - "The squeaky wheel gets the sack" - is a tool of fear designed to motivate. But does it? It is more likely to make people anxious, nervous and unwilling to discuss possibilities both positive and negative.

This motivation phrase is much better - "The three great essentials to achieving anything worthwhile are; first, hard work, second, stick-to-it-iveness, and third, common sense." (Thomas Edison).

When you are able to see possibilities and purpose then your motivations change. You are able to be more positive and better able to react to different situations.

Self affirmation is another vital tool. Click here for more on positive affirmations (The Leading Edge Publications.com)

Ambiguity

Often times there is a lack of certainty around decision making and the direction of an organisation.

For the middle manager there is no real method of being able to accept change upwards.

So what do you do? Change yourself.

• Attitude - your attitude determines your altitude.
• Goals - define who you want to be, and where you want to go.
• Direction - think for yourself, understand the bigger organisation and consider where you fit in and if you can make incremental changes at your level.
• Communication - be honest and open. Let those above you know that you would like more openness and a knowledge of where things are going.
• Patience - don't be in a rush. Good things take time.

There are no silver bullet remedies for work situations that you have no control over. But you can control your attitude and your responses!

He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata

What are the key factors that motivate and inspire people to do their best?

People. Other people. Sometimes selfish ambition and greed, but usually for others.

Others better define us than how we define ourselves.