culture | It's Worth Noting

Leadership

Are all your leaders worth following?

June 11, 2014

What if you walked into your business tomorrow, tossed the handbook and told your employees that from this point forward they should simply mimic the behavior of their supervisor or manager? Aside from giving HR and Legal a heart attack, would this shift result in better or worse behavior? Better or worse performance? Probably depends on the leader. If your company is like most, you have a least a few managers or supervisors that you don’t want to replicate. They may be high performers on paper, but they don’t align well with the company’s mission, vision and values. They don’t improve the culture, they undermine it. People make excuses for them because of their output or legacy, but you don’t want anyone to follow their lead. Having an exceptional culture and team is an all or nothing proposition. It’s impossible to accomplish if you’re unwilling to hold everyone to the same standards. Personalities…

Leadership Podcast

Seth Godin interview – “The casual lie of the flight attendant”

January 29, 2013

Seth Godin, bestselling author, blogger and speaker, let me interrupt his Monday morning to ask a few questions around the intersection of organizational health and culture and themes in his books The Icarus Deception and Linchpin. I think you will find Seth’s ideas and advice thought provoking and practical. Both video and audio of the interview are available below. If you are not currently subscribed to the It’s Worth Noting podcast, I invite you to do so and catch-up on episodes you may have missed. New episodes will go live about every two weeks. The focus will be interviews and conversations with business and thought leaders on organizational health and culture. Listen below or on other podcast players.

Leadership Podcast

Gary Vaynerchuk interview – “Employees are how you win.”

January 10, 2013

I recently had the opportunity to get a few minutes with Gary Vaynerchuk to get his take on organizational health and culture. For those not familiar with Gary, he gained notoriety expanding his family’s wine business into Wine Library TV. Building on his wine and social media hustle, Gary became a best selling author of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy and launched VaynerMedia, a brand consulting agency with a focus on social media. Gary’s enthusiasm and energy is contagious. I hope you find the thoughts and ideas he shared with me helpful for your organization. Listen below or on other podcast players.

Leadership

Forget sitting or standing meetings. Start walking.

April 18, 2013

What if the following could be said of your team meetings? They help us focus They help us get exercise They help us think more clearly None of these benefits could be said of a typical meeting around a desk or table, or even standing. If you want to improve your one-on-one and small team meetings overnight, insist that they take place while going for a walk. Walking meetings are obviously impractical for larger groups or if there is no way to avoid needing to look at a computer screen or document. Setting those two situations aside, here is how walking meetings can make a big impact: Without documents, slides and the like, attendees are forced to master their material and talking points. The result is more focused and engaging conversations. People are more apt to look forward to meetings that get them out of the office and moving around.…

Leadership Productivity

The power of 10x problem solving

July 28, 2013

Life in business and at home presents an endless array of problems to solve. Probably due to this relentless volume, it’s easy to get stuck in a routine of implementing solutions that will simply solve the immediate problem. It’s uncommon to routinely take the time and energy to identify good long-term solutions that will be scalable and flexible enough to handle growth and other changes. Unfortunately, the effect of routine short-term problem solving is that problems reoccur and accumulate. As the volume of reoccurring problems increases, it gets harder to have the time and energy to work on long-term solutions. It is a vicious cycle and it’s easy to get stuck. One easy way to either avoid getting into this mess or to claw your way out of it you’re already there is to start solving problems using what I call a 10X test. The next time you have a…

Leadership

I do not trust you

December 18, 2012

You probably trust most of the people around you. You trust their character, morality and ethics. You would leave them alone with the cash register or let them watch your kids. This is what most of us have in mind when we talk about trust. There is another type of trust that is just as important although rarely distinguished or discussed. Where we frequently lack trust is in someone’s competence. We do not have confidence in their skills or abilities. We are not concerned they would steal or act immorally, but we are worried that they would mishandle the task or responsibility. Whether you are the delegator, or the one being delegated to, we owe it to one other to actually talk through why there may be a lack of trust. Unaddressed, the assumption tends to be that there is a lack of trust in character, morality or ethics. If this…

Leadership

Have your team follow people, not plaques

September 19, 2012

You see them everywhere. Plaques up on the wall emblazoned with the company mission and values. They are even in many homes, lists of rules, values or platitudes to live by. There is nothing wrong with the plaques. Most of them look nice and communicate important messages about why a group labors together and invests in relationships. They communicate a set of standards to get everyone on the same page. The plaques are not bad. They are just not very effective on their own. What if instead of plaques, you put up pictures of people, historical or even better, coworkers in the office, with relevant captions to communicate the desired message? An easy example would be a picture of Lincoln with a caption such as, “Be honest like this guy” or “When life required him to fight a war, he went to the library and learned how do it.” A…

Leadership

How to know when you are hiring the wrong people

February 21, 2013

If you sit down for an interview and you, as the employer or hiring manager, have all the leverage, you are hiring the wrong people. When you only attract candidates who need a job, who are focused on saying what you want to hear, who have become professionals at interviewing, you have all the leverage. You are not trying to woo them, they are trying to woo you. You control the selection process, dominate salary negotiations and dictate start dates, job descriptions and other details. You have all the leverage. You are in total control. Unfortunately, you are in total control of a completely broken hiring strategy and process. You may get lucky and one of the candidates is great. The process will work occasionally, but not consistently. You are dependent on luck to deliver your next best employee and build a great team because your strategy and process is…

Leadership

Stop paying for performance

April 22, 2014

It’s a best practice of countless companies and a recommendation from even more consultants, advisors and the like. Identify the key metrics for success in your business, measure them and incentivize your team to hit or exceed those metrics with a reward, usually monetary. Pay for performance. The trouble though with typical pay for performance programs is that they only measure and incentivize outcomes. Sales quotas are a classic example. New revenue is measured and if a salesperson meets or exceeds their revenue quota, they get a reward. The measurement and reward system can be simple or complex, but ultimately it comes down to measuring and incentivizing specific outcomes. The challenge is that this system inevitably create a culture where the end begins to justify the means. The most cunning and sometimes least scrupulous employees get rewarded more than the most admirable and desirable employees since the former are willing to…

Leadership Podcast

Henry Kaestner interview – The advantage of revealing your true motivation

February 10, 2014

Henry Kaestner is a man of deep faith and tremendous success. He is the Chairman, Co-Founder and former CEO of Bandwidth.com, a disruptive telecom start-up that he and his partner David Morken grew from nothing in 1999 to over $140 million a year in revenue and over 350 employees today. More importantly, Henry is a Christian, husband and father, priorities that served as the foundation for Bandwidth.com’s culture and are the focus of a venture capital fund he now leads. In this podcast, Henry shares his perspective on how Bandwidth.com’s culture empowers employees to do amazing work, lead fulfilling lives and want to stick around. Follow-up resources: Simon Sinek’s Ted talk: How Great Leaders Inspire Action Henry Kaestner on Twitter Phonebooth hosted VoIP services from Bandwidth.com Listen below or on other podcast players.