Companies and their needs evolve, they get acquired, they move their offices, they shift their business models and all too often their employees end up as casualties.  Career transition is nothing to be ashamed of.  It has become incredibly commonplace. 
 

Are you “always recruiting” for your company, and are you asking your team to do the same?  The best people can be found in the most unlikely places.

Growing an organization in these turbulent times is challenging.   Having a long-range plan is an important tool for achieving growth over the long term.  The short-term focus that has captivated so many companies creates opportunities for those that are patient and willing to invest in the future.  The best way to invest in the future is to get your organization talking about it today.  No better time than the current to begin working on your 2020 Vision.

The decision to hire someone with a different work style and approach is the easy part. The harder part is flexing your style as a manager to allow someone with a different work style than yours to be themselves and excel. Too often we try to change people to fit in to an organizations culture. The best companies leverage diversity as a strength. They try to hire people with diverse work styles, and backgrounds and most importantly they create space within the organization for people to play to their personal strengths.
 

I have worked for three companies in my career that had Ping-Pong (Table Tennis) tables in the offices.  The Motley Fool,Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner operation and Doosan Infracore International.  The existence of a Ping-Pong table in each of those environments was very telling about the type of culture that each company wanted to foster.

"Experience builds wisdom and while it is possible to be wise beyond one’s years, there is no substitute for experience."  Age diversity is the most interesting form of diversity to me, because it is the only form of diversity where each of us will experience being the majority and the minority at different points in our life.

Three Leadership lessons from an art and innovation workshop at the McColl Center.  Originally published in the Charlotte Agenda.

When working with senior leaders one of the biggest hurdles is to get them to see constructive feedback in a positive light. Too often leaders think feedback is an attack on them.   Referring to feedback as a gift opens their eyes to the positives.

Why does the word conflict get a bad rap and how to turn conflict into a tool for better decision making.

Earlier this year the image below was posted on Tumblr with the tag, “Is the dress white and gold or black and blue?”  That single post led to marital discontent, celebrity arguments, news channel mayhem and millions of views and shares on social media.  While the rough statistics showed that about 78% of people saw the dress as white and gold, the 22% who saw it as black and blue were actually correct.  The real dress is in fact black and blue.

here is a lesson here.  While we think we are all quite similar, we truly see the world through different lenses. 

As your organization scrambles to complete year-end performance reviews, ask the question “Why are we doing this at the busiest time of the year and who benefits from this approach?”  What you may find is that your process is not serving your organization and your employees very well. It might be time to rethink your approach to performance management. 

One of the most difficult tasks of a leader is to maintain a team of A players.  Steve Jobs once famously said “A players hire A players and B players hire C players.”  Research has shown that A players outperform B players 2x on essential tasks and 10x on creative tasks.  So why do so many leaders live with mediocre talent on their teams?  

As leaders it is the small actions that can have large impacts. Think about the last time you greeted your employees or customers in the office lobby or at the front door to your retail outlet. If you have never tried it, go for it. That small gesture will have a lasting positive impact. Learn how the actions of one school leader model the behaviors of a great leader.

As a former leader that I worked with always said using the military term, you want “Fewer soldiers, better fed”.  A headcount freeze is an opportunity to increase hiring not freeze it.  The problem is that too many organizations mix up the intent versus the impact.  It is important to be very clear on the goal.  If the goal is to freeze employee expenses (salaries and benefits) at their current level, then a headcount freeze can achieve the same result as a hiring freeze, but in a much more effective manner. 

The key to being a great actor is to be yourself.  Acting is not about impersonation, it is about originality.  The same concept holds true in the business world.  As a leader, the most important attribute you can bring to your job is your authenticity.  There is no one else like you in the world and that is what makes each of us special and different.  Too many people spend their working lives trying to be like someone else or adjusting their personality and approach to “fit in”. 

Cost cutting has become a standard operating procedure for many organizations, but there are hidden costs in cutting costs.  Culture suffers the most and the cost to a culture might be ireparable.

Valuing talent is the key to achieving sustainable results. With the right team in place an organization’s opportunities can be boundless. A focus on talent must start with the CEO, as she or he needs to show their commitment to hiring, retaining and developing their people even in the face of market headwinds.

Stop trying to block the exit door. Instead, focus on getting your employees engaged in opening new doors within your organization.

One of the biggest issues facing many our Groove Management’s clients is employee retention.  Turnover is up across the board.  Voluntary attrition rates continue to climb because the job market has heated up.  Employees are recognizing that there are a lot more opportunities in the marketplace than have existed during the past eight years.  With the aid of LinkedIn and other socialrecruiting tools, recruiters are doing a better job of identifying passive job seekers.  The end result is that companies are struggling to hold onto their top talent.

 One helpful activity I ask my clients to do is to create a visual career timeline.  On the X axis I have them create a timeline listing years from the time they graduated from high school to the present.  On the Y axis I have them create a legend for career growth.  The next step is to plot points on the graph that show each job or pivotal career cross-roads that they have faced.