It’s more important than ever to get maximum return from your employees. Change-management expert Morris Shechtman tells you how… and it has little to do with increasing compensation.

They say that time is money. And while that old adage still rings true, in today’s business environment it might be more accurate to say that people are money, or rather, that the time and resources put into recruiting and training your employees takes money. And don’t forget that there is a direct correlation between employee productivity and your organization’s bottom line. So how do you get the best return possible on the investment you make in your workforce?According to Morris Shechtman, change management expert and author of the book, Fifth Wave Leadership: The Internal Frontier, you need to focus on internal issues and develop the workforce you have. Just because the current state of the economy means that more people are looking for work doesn’t mean that they are the right people for your company. Instead of viewing employees as expendable, Shechtman insists that you should be deliberately creating an environment where they can thrive.”Employee retention is still a very big issue,” says Shechtman. “It always will be, regardless of the state of the economy. After all, the key to long-term growth and productivity is a workforce that’s familiar with your company and in sync with your business goals. Your workplace should excite and motivate your employees, so they’ll want to stay around. And that means creating an environment that challenges people and helps them grow not just as employees, but as people,” he adds.”Most employees if given the choice between a nominal raise and a great work environment, will choose the latter. After all, so much of our lives are spent at our jobs. And making the job site an emotionally challenging and motivating environment is key to retention and productivity.”This theme – fostering what Shechtman refers to as “self-information” – is thoroughly explored in Fifth Wave Leadership. It essentially means that people want their jobs to teach them about themselves, to provide valuable information that not only makes them more marketable in today’s marketplace, but that also helps them become better spouses, better friends, better people.So how do you foster a growth-oriented workplace? Click here to read Morrie’s tips for getting the most out of your employees.

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Enjoy a fabulous lunch with Mark Deo and Morrie Schectman TOGETHER on March 15 at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. Morrie will be speaking about accountability and Mark will be showing you examples of how he has used viral marketing to create extradinary results for all kinds of businesses without spending a dime on advertising!To register for the C-Suite Briefing go to: www.revolutioninandout.com–Mark Deo

Today there’s a lot of discussion about vision, mission and goals. In fact I see many companies investing loads of time, money and effort in coming up with their “mission statement.” Usually this is a few inspiring sentences that are placed on plaques to hang on the wall or printed on the back of business cards or put on the company web site. Yet I’ve got to say with few exceptions this often amounts to a big waste of time!

The fact is few of these mission statements accomplish what they were intended to do. That is “motivate employees to perform at a higher level.” Ironically, however, after a month or so not even the CEO, let alone the employees can even remember one word of the mission statement. So does this mean establishing a mission for your company is a useless task? Not necessarily. Yet in order to understand how to make mission planning a valuable tool we must first understand WHAT a “mission” is. In short a mission is a course of action that a company decides to pursue. It is the road they will travel in order to ensure they arrive at their ultimate destination. It is their plan for achieving their vision. A mission is not something we say, it is something we do. Leaders of companies often make the mistake of developing their mission in the wrong way. They try to figure out what their mission is before they decide WHERE it is they want to go. Imagine trying to do this when going on a trip. Can you really plan HOW you’re going to get somewhere if you don’t know WHERE it is you want to end up? Remember the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland? Alice came to a fork in the road and asked the cat for his help. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where,” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. Isn’t the same true for us? As leaders we see our employees going in different directions or we’re just not able to maintain that consistent level of performance that others are achieving. Could it be because we are just a little unsure of precisely WHERE it is we want to get? Developing a mission is quite impossible until we establish a vision. A destination. We must be able to see it, feel it, smell it and taste it. This can NOT be accomplished by the employees or a consulting firm. While the vision should be shared by many, it MUST be totally owned by and burning in the heart of the leader of the company. Unless the CEO or UBC as I call them (Ultimate Big Cheese) is totally driven by their vision it will be meaningless in the arms of their employees. On the positive side however, I have noticed one thing that all great leaders seem to have in common. That is the ability to dream big dreams and create a powerful vision of the future. They seem to have the ability to imagine an ideal future well in advance of creating it. Your vision is an imaginary creation of the ideal life you would like to live, in every respect. You create it as an expression of the values you hold most dear. Brian Tracy says, “From the very day that you develop a clear vision for whom you are and where you are going in life, you begin to become a superior person, and soon you begin to accomplish superior results.” Here’s some advice on how you can develop vision for your company that will help to drive a sense of mission, improve performance and 1. Let your mind float freely – One of the great secrets of success is to “dream big dreams.” It is to let your mind float freely into the future and imagine that you have no limitations on what you can be, have or do. Imagine for the moment that you have all of the resources that you would ever need to achieve the highest goals to which you could ever aspire. Imagine you have all the time, money, people, contacts and intelligence that you could ask for to become everything that you could ever become. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream,” and what followed was a vision that changed a nation. That famous speech is a dramatic example of the power that can be generated by a person who communicates a compelling vision of the future. 2. Create your ideal future – Make a dream list. Let yourself fantasize. What would you like to do? Where would you like to go? What would you like to accomplish? And most of all, what kind of a person would you like to become? Since you attract into your life people and situations that are in harmony with the person you really are, what kind of attributes and qualities would you like to develop in yourself so that you can life the very best life you can imagine, surrounded by the kind of people you would most enjoy? John F. Kennedy did not live to see the achievement of his vision for NASA, but he set it in motion when he said, “By the end of the decade, we will put a man on the moon.” That night, when the moon came out, we could all look out the window and imagine. And when it came time to appropriate the enormous funds necessary to accomplish this vision, Congress did not hesitate. Why? Because this vision spoke powerfully to values Americans held dear: America as a pioneer and America as world leader. 3. Create a “shared vision” – I like to recommend a practical exercise to develop your organizational vision. By following this plan you may be better assured that the vision statement that is developed is a shared vision. Plan an uninterrupted time to work on the vision with your most key team members. At this meeting, take an hour to explore your vision. Agree on a rough time frame, say five to ten years. Ask people to think about the following questions: How do you want your community to be different? What role do you want your organization to play in your community? What will success look like? Then ask each group to come up with a metaphor for your organization, and to draw a picture of success: “Our organization is like: a mariachi band – all playing the same music together, or like a train – pulling important cargo and laying the track as we go, or “The value of metaphors is that people get to stretch their minds and experiment with different ways of thinking about what success means to them.” Finally, have everyone share their pictures of success with each other. One person should facilitate the discussion and help the group discuss what they mean and what they hope for. Look for areas of agreement, as well as different ideas that emerge. The goal is to find language and imagery that your organization’s members can relate to as their vision for success. 4. Caution: Do not try to write a vision statement with a group. (Groups are great for many things, but writing is not one of them!). Ask one or two people to try drafting a vision statement based on the group’s discussion, bring it back to the group, and revise it until you have something that your members can agree on and that your leaders share with enthusiasm. Only when you have a clear vision of the future that everyone is excited about can you begin working on the mission or path that you will take. Following this will be the goals or steps along the way. A clear vision will allow you as a leader to propel your company forward. It will make daily decision making far easier for every member of the organization. It will allow the organization to move initiatives forward with greater speed and agility. It will motivate a higher level of performance and commitment among your team. So don’t be afraid to DREAM BIG because no big thing was ever accomplished without some small person dreaming it first!

The young mother was waiting anxiously for her 12 year-old son to come home from school.

As the boy burst into the front door and leaped up the stairs, taking them two at a time, he gave his mother only the most cursory glance.

“I’m getting my glove and going to the park to play ball.”

“Not until we talk,” his mom cautioned.

“Aww, about what mom?”

“How was school today?”

“Okay.”

“What did you learn?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you have any homework?”

“No…Can I go Mom?”

“Okay, just be back in time for supper”

After her boy left the mom felt poorly about her inability to engage her son in a meaningful dialog about school. While she was truly interested in his schoolwork and felt she was asking the right questions, she wasn’t getting the answers that she hoped for. Yet, if he didn’t have any homework, there didn’t seem to be a problem in letting him go out and play. Still there was a nagging feeling that something was unsaid or unfinished.

How many managers have had that same feeling when talking to an employee or team member about the status of a project? How many salespeople have felt that way after talking with a client? Often times in business we seek to have a meaningful conversation with a customer or employee and get “stonewalled.” Is this because they are unwilling to put the time into communicating with us? Is it because they are uncommitted? How can we deal with this? How can we build enough value in our communication that people WANT to listen and engage in conversation with us? In order to understand this we need to look at the way we think when listening to others speak.

Thinking is inspired by questions. Einstein himself said, “It is important that we never stop asking questions.” Consider this: the average child asks 125 questions per day. The average adult asks six! But after a short time children learn to stop asking questions. Mom and Dad just don’t want to answer them anymore and the same thing happens in school. Teachers talk AT kids more often than with them.

Yet questions are the primary way that we learn. The great thinker and philosopher, Socrates taught his students by asking questions. He made them think in order to come up with the right answers. We now call this method of communication the Socratic Method.

Good questions take time and if asked incorrectly they can be an irritant and shut down communication rather than open it. In the dialog above the mother was getting nowhere with her questions. Yet imagine if she could have changed her questions to prompt a more meaningful response. She could have asked:

“Do you mean:..?”

Followed by:

“Tell me more.”

For example when her son said school was okay she could have said: “Do you mean it was okay meaning you’re glad it’s over or okay you’re looking forward to going back tomorrow?” This would open the lines of communication and give mom the ability to draw out her son’s thoughts and feelings about school.

In business we can use the same principle to elicit a more detailed response. For example if employees tell us that the project is going okay then we can say: “Do you mean that it’s almost finished or that you are on schedule? Tell me more about that.”

This works well with customers also. If a customer or client says: “we are not ready to move forward yet,” you can say, “I understand. Do you mean that something is preventing you from doing so or that there will be a better time to do so? Thank you for sharing. That’s interesting, tell me more about that.” Again this opens the lines of communication and gets us the valuable information that we need in order to customize the right solution for the customer.

This technique forces the person to take a stand on one of two options and give us more information. So the next time you get stonewalled either by a customer or team member try this technique. I have found it can work wonders on getting even the most tight-lipped people to open-up.

Recently, I was listening to the Tom Leykis show. I am a fan of Tom Leykis. He always has stimulating, shall we say, discussions that really get you thinking. And that’s what I like about the show. He was talking about the question, “Why should employees be loyal to their companies?” And, “Why should you be loyal to a company that makes you give them 2 week’s notice if you’re quitting, yet if they want get rid of you – your butts on the street tomorrow? Why should you be loyal to a company that you work for 10, 15, or 20 years, and then they just decided to down size one day, and you’re holding the bag. Why should you do your job better than the next person, when all they’re going to do is give you more work?”

Now I can really relate to this and maybe you can too. Let’s face it, a lot of us are in business for ourselves today because that’s the kind of thing we got sick of. We wanted to our own thing. Because we had a better idea. Like Ford. We wanted to do it “Our Way.” Like Frank Sinatra.But I began to think about the other side. Have you ever hired somebody, with all the good intentions in the world and then found out that they weren’t loyal to you at all? They were consistently late. They didn’t care about your business or your customers. All they cared about was their paycheck. They just took a day off, because, they felt like it.Or maybe you put a tremendous amount of time into training this person on your business, and they ended up stealing your clients? Many customer’s have come to me, as their consultant and ask me how to deal with a specific employee issue. They say, “Mark, I don’t know what I’m going to do with this person. I can’t get through to them. They’re constantly making mistakes, their slow as molasses, they have no sense of priority, their poor attitude is dragging the entire office down.”So I ask them, why don’t you fire them? They say, “Are you kidding, if I fire them, they’re going to take me to court and I know I’ll lose. Because it’s happened before. So I just live with it. But it’s costing me money, it’s costing me customers and it’s driving me crazy!”Listen folks, you can’t live with it anymore. We small business people can’t afford to make very many mistakes. We make a mistake and the big guys will chew us up and spit us out – lickety split. And you’re going to find yourself working for the MAN again. So “How Do You Build and Maintain a Winning Team.”If you have an employee problem, are looking for ways to get your staff to be more productive, or wondering how you can get your employees to get stuff done BEFORE you tell them to, then you will be interested in what I have to say.With the help of several member consultants of Virtual Consulting Net.com, we have prepared a “How To – White Paper” on developing and maintaining a winning team. It has been designed specifically for small business managers and provides specific step-by-step instructions for building a strong, loyal team. The good news is that it is now available FREE just for the asking. That’s right FREE!It provides detailed answers to the following questions:Recruitment

• What are the main factors in selecting the right person for the job?
• Isn’t it a crap shoot? How do you know if someone will work out?
• What can you do to find out about a candidates character?
• I often hear people say, “Uhhhg newspapers, I get such poor quality there.”
• Where do you look to find the right person?
• How do you get the right person for the right job?
• What are your legal rights?

Retention

• What can we do to keep good people?
• How can we hold them accountable to get their job done properly and timely?
• What if they don’t? What kind of things can we do to motivate people to be more timely, accurate and team oriented?
• How can I make my goals, THEIR goals?
• How do I get them to care about my company and customers?
• What if the positive things don’t work?

Legal Issues

• How do we let people go without risking a lawsuit?
• Do’s and don’ts when recruiting.
• When and how should I conduct exit and entrance interviews?
• How to ensure that your employees do NOT have legal recourse.

AND MUCH MORE. The program also includes the necessary forms for interviews, performance tracking, meeting logs and more. It also provides the names, telephone numbers and web sites for many employee related resources, including governmental agencies, FREE help lines, and small business consultants.Just so to www.smallbusinesshour.com and ask for the “Build a Winning Team” White Paper and we will rush it right on out to you.

I recently read an article that talked about a high-school biology class where nearly 25% of the students were caught cheating. Apparently they had plagiarized entire sections of their semester-long reports from various Internet web sites. The teacher had isolated the offenders and had given them a failing grade. The parents of these students protested that the failing grade was “too harsh” a penalty for their cheating children. Unbelievably, the school board agreed!

The article went on to point out that a Rutgers University study found that more than 75% of students cheat. The Internet has made plagiarism quite easy. There are many web sites where students can get ready-made reports for all kinds of topics. Schools also have access to software that allows them to catch plagiarists just as easily. But apparently they often choose NOT to use it. Why? Because they feel that policing plagiarism might hurt a cheater’s self esteem. In fact, many student groups have attacked the use of anti-plagiarism software as a potential violation of student rights!My question is… What will happen to these students when they have to compete in the real world? In the real world if you plagiarize, you suffer the consequences. That could mean litigation, retraction and most certainly professional embarrassment.Ok, I know what you’re thinking… What does all this have to do with business improvement?
Everything.If we really care for people, then we tell them what they need to hear. If we are too concerned about offending them or hurting them then we are in part responsible for their failures. Think of how much those high school students will be hurt in the future simply because parents, teachers and administrators were unwilling to bruise their fragile egos.Let’s face it many, if not most supervisors are at the very least uncomfortable holding their employees accountable. I am not saying that we should create an environment where perfection is the goal. I rather encourage peak performance rather that perfect performance. But it is critical for business owners, manager and supervisors to distinguish between a “mistake of the heart” or a “mistake of the head.” A “mistake of the heart” is a situation where an employee intentionally did something that was known to be wrong and tried to get away with it. A “mistake of the head” is when an employee is working hard to do the right thing but, for some reason, it does not work out that way. With mistakes of the head, we should be very lenient. With mistakes of the heart we should be quite strict.One way to ensure that we are creating an environment where mistakes of the mind are tolerated and mistakes of the heart are not is to make your expectations crystal clear to your staff. Over the years I have noticed that communicating expectations is paramount in achieving peak performance. The following are areas in which leaders should develop clear expectations for team members:1. Culture – Communicate your company’s culture clearly by modeling the kind of behavior that you want to see. If you are looking for more honesty and integrity then model honesty and integrity. Like it or not, they will do as you do, NOT as you say. This starts at the top. If you are a business owner, don’t expect your managers to accomplish this if you can’t.2. Rewards – When people do well we should congratulate them publicly. This should be done with great fanfare but in a genuine, sincere way. There’s nothing worse than phony flummery or flattery. Give sincere appreciation.3. Chastisement – When we need to provide chastisement or correction it should always be done privately away from any other staff member. We should be forthright in expressing our disappointment with the staff member’s poor behavior NOT anger with them as a person.4. Correction – When correcting make sure that you communicate the methods and procedures expected. This should include deadlines with non-negotiable dates as opposed to dates that can slip as well as priorities. What’s to be done first, second and so on.5. Performance – Paint a picture of the outcome for your staff. Show them a vision of a “good” job versus a “bad” job. Make sure they understand the degree of effort that you expect them to each contribute to the successful solution.6. Measurement – Establish a system to measure performance in small increments as well as a format for consistent communication. This forum will give you the ability to ask the right kind of questions to determine whether they are “on-track.” At this point you can provide feedback and make suggestions on course correction.7. Resources – Make sure that they understand the resources that are available to them. This could include staff, facilities, technology, equipment, outside consultants and so on. Encourage them to use the resources to their best advantage but in a cost effective way in order to achieve their goals.

As leaders it’s our job to foster integrity, honesty and honor. Team members look to us for confidence, guidance, direction and innovation. To whom much is given, much is required. As leaders we must hold ourselves to a higher standard than anyone else in our organization. Does this mean that we need to be perfect in order to achieve peak performance? Not at all. But is does mean that when we are wrong that we, as Dale Carnegie advises us, “admit it quickly and emphatically.”Remember your team members are not just a resource, they are PEOPLE. As I have said many times, we live in an age of relationships. How can you create relationships that go beyond just getting the job done? And how can we do so with integrity and honor?