8 Things We Want from Work

By David R. Butcher

Pay and perks remain important to workers, of course. Yet when it comes to what employees want most from their employer today, certain intangible priorities are center stage.

In this rapidly changing work environment, the best jobs are not necessarily those that pay the most. There are a number of other, intangible factors today's top talent looks for in an employer.

Here are some of those factors as we see them, in no particular order. . .

Work/Life Balance
A global survey from the Association of Executive Search Consultants recently found more than 85 percent of the 138 recruiters surveyed have had candidates reject a plum job offer because of work-life balance considerations, as we discussed a year ago.

Although people today feel pressured to work longer and produce more to protect their jobs, the biggest changes in the workplace over the last decade have come in employers' attitudes toward work, family and flexibility.

The good news is that eight out of 10 employees at Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For last year said that management encouraged them to balance their work lives and their personal lives — an increase of 11 percentage points from 10 years ago.

Sense of Purpose
People want to be enthused by what they do, to feel connected to their work and to be able to relate to what they do and what they produce.

To do that, people need to feel that their job has worth and purpose.

If a work environment is to encourage employee achievement, there must be a true connection between employees' work and their values. This gives workers the opportunity to have pride in what they do.

Personal Growth
Employees want the opportunity to develop, grow and build a career. To that end, good workers want to be challenged, to be trained and to continue learning on the job.

Personal growth opportunities enable employees to achieve their goals through their own skill, ability, talent and perseverance. As with a sense of purpose, individuals need to feel they are achieving something.

This only occurs when companies foster employees' ability to set goals, meet challenges and get feedback.

Recognition
Individual acceptance and appreciation are essential to feeling the camaraderie and worth of the workplace community. We're not talking about employees getting a ribbon each time they do their job successfully; it's what they were hired to do, after all.

Yet little signs of appreciation for a job particularly well done — a pat on the back, an "atta boy" — can make a world of difference in terms of workers' job satisfaction.

Empowerment
Most employees today seem to react favorably to empowerment, or being enabled to think, behave, act and control work and decision making in autonomous ways.

Empowerment is not an implementation, and it is only partly a strategy. Rather, it is a philosophy. It is the state of feeling self-empowered to take control of one's own future.

For an organization to practice and foster a culture wherein this state can thrive, company management must communicate honestly with employees.

Communication
Employees want to be heard — not just listened to, but really heard — by their employers as well as their colleagues. Trust between workers helps build camaraderie. And employers should be going out of their way to get feedback and ideas from their employees, both good and bad.

As we noted in October's 24 Questions to Ask Employees, "The truth may hurt, but not asking could cause even more pain."

Communication is perhaps one of the strongest signs of employee empowerment — from constant, honest communication regarding the strategic plan and financial requirements and performance, down to daily decision making.

Accountability
"The importance of building a strong ethical corporate culture is integral to the reputation, growth and finances of any organization," Rania A. Azmi of Alexandria University's Faculty of Commerce wrote in a 2006 study. "It builds a brand that attracts the best talent and creates trust among the stakeholders.

In many ways, this relates to employees' sense of purpose. As today's marketplace becomes increasingly conscience-focused, employees too are demanding more ethical business processes and performance from their employers to meet the "big picture," whether that means impeccable customer service or offsetting the company's carbon footprint.

A Hill & Knowlton report released in January, entitled Corporate Reputation Watch, found that almost three-quarters of the 530 MBA candidates surveyed worldwide claim reputation plays "an extremely important" or "a very important" role when considering employers upon entering the working world. Factors that drive reputation include quality of management, quality of products and services, social responsibility and use of corporate assets.

Fairness and Respect
People want to work for and with other people who will treat them fairly, with trust and respect.

In a nationwide survey of 500 workers conducted by talent management expert and author of What People Want Terry R. Bacon, when asked what matters most in their relationships with a manager, 90 percent of workers rank honesty, fairness and trust as the top three. (Source: American Management Association)

Honesty: "When there's bad news, for instance, employees should learn about it from their bosses before they see or hear it [elsewhere]," MarketWatch once said.

Fairness: Employees who feel they are treated fairly are far more likely to be happy on the job than those who sense an organization or its management team is being unfair — whether through racism, sexism, ageism, nepotism or favoritism.

Trust: Trust can come in many ways: employees being able to make decisions they can call their own, or doing their jobs without shoulder-hovering managers or comfortably depending on a fellow coworker to meet his or her part of the project's deadline.

A survey from Florida State University in December 2006 concluded that many people work for employers who don't keep their word (39 percent), don't give credit where credit's due (37 percent), talk poorly about them behind their backs (27 percent) and invade their privacy (24 percent). In other words, these people work for employers who do not respect their employees.

Yet fairness and respect should be mutual. For instance, employees should be able to work with a manager they can respect and learn from. You have to work for people and with people you trust.

Clearly, many of these qualities are interrelated. A lot of it simply comes down to employees feeling valued and respected, by their employers and by their colleagues.

Let us know the top qualities you look for in an employer.

(Thomas Net)

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Learn to innovate the CK Prahalad way!

Professor CK Prahalad has redefine innovation in his book, The New Age Of Innovation, co-authored by MS Krishnan. He distills innovation down to a simple business process and evolution, not a revolution.

Professor CK Prahalad said to innovate companies need to fold the future, not extrapolate the past. “We are not suggesting a revolution, we are taking about a planned, directionally consistent evolution. Therefore, we conserve resources and speed up the process of transformation.”

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18 Menaka Doshi’s interview with Professor CK Prahalad:

Q: When, where, and how, if there is at all such a specification in the life of a business, can this whole process of innovation be inculcated? Does it have to be right from the beginning, or somewhere in the middle? How does one decide whether you are ready to be able to inculcate this and what does it take to inculcate this transformation?

A: The starting point of the transformation is for senior leadership to ask a simple question, not what the world is today but where will our competitive landscape be 10-15 years from now? 10 years from now, 15 years old will be our primary customers. What will be their expectations? How will we fulfill those expectations?

The first principal for me is that you cannot go there from here. We have to start from there. In other words, you have to imagine and must have a point of view. If you have a point of view, then the translation is lot easier. So, they say folding the future is what is required, not extrapolating the past.

Second, you must have a point of view, only then can you say that okay, if this is my point of view, I can audit both the managerial and IT capabilities inside my company. Then, I can start by saying I am going to put one building block at a time and establish a milestone. So, I don’t take a big risk, I build one step at a time, but like a marathoner with speed and directionally correct.

We are not suggesting a revolution, we are taking about a planned, directionally consistent evolution. Therefore, we conserve resources and speed up the process of transformation.

Q: The companies that you cite as examples are companies that were able to recognize the change in the competitive landscape 5-10 years ago. The Googles, and Apples realised that technology is not going to be inaccessible to the poor but it is going to become a commonly accessible resource. The digitization of products, convergence, and social networking were things they were able to understand 5-10 years ago.

A: Everybody can recognize it now. But very few companies are figuring out how it will change their business.

Q: But will it still give you the advantage now? Don’t you have to be ahead of the curve?

A: Absolutely. It will give a tremendous advantage. For instance, I sell tyres and have lots of information about you and you have a lot of information about me. Now, when I come to sell the next round, I don’t have to sell you unique tyres. I can now give you a special deal. I know your drivers are very safe, and you only have long hauls. Therefore, I can give you a special deal. In other words, the switching costs for you has gone up, I can retain you much better. If you are selling only tyres on prices like old ware that was a transaction, now this is a relationship.

Q: But weren’t customer relationship managers doing this anyways for 10-20 years?

A: No, there is no way they could have done it. Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, is fundamentally a company’s view of the consumer and not the consumer’s collaborative dialogue. CRM has never been co-creation. That means you are a joint problem solver. Your involvement is as important to me and we jointly create value. We jointly partnership value. So, there is collaboration between the consumer and the company and there is also competition for value appropriation.

Q: You have mentioned the instance of ITC’s e-choupal network in a big way. You have recognised the gap of information and what it can do to the economic lifestyle of a human being and found a product to deliver to them in this space.

A: Suddenly, you find the so-called illiterate farmers checking the Chicago Board of Trade. That is fascinating for me. It is so empowering.

I also want to think about what co-creation does. If I co-create with you as a consumer, I reduce the risk of product development because you are helping me to define it. Since a lot of people are involved in helping me to figure out what it is, it reduces time and investment. Think about risk, time, and investment reduction. That is how you create value.

Q: Three points -- legacy issues, IT infrastructure and managerial talent -- to make in the Enablers of Transformation as you put it in your book and you have quoted a whole host of examples for each one of these. On legacy issues, you spoke of General Motors in the book. Would you like to take us through some of the work that they have probably done to fit your definition of innovation now?

A: Actually GM is a very interesting case. Look at the sheer size of the company; it is a country by itself and global, through acquisitions, wide variety of independence given to the subsidiaries, European subsidiaries versus US versus the far flung operations. If you look at any one time, there are probably 7,000 applications running on different systems. How they consolidate all that is a fascinating problem by itself.

General Motors is the world’s largest auto-maker with nearly 3,00,000 employees. It has launched a company wide drive to redefine its organizational structure. Roles and responsibilities are being shuffled to assure stronger control and management of critical business processes, breaking stereotypes and managers are being shifted from functional and geographic spans of control to global process-oriented roles to drive standardization. It is a step that has helped GM strike up balance between flexibility and efficiency.

When you have had a huge history under a large company like GM, you have to clean up this legacy before you can do many of the things that they are talking about. There is a big lesson for Indian companies. We are now globalizing and acquiring a large number of companies. We are not only going to get mini-cultures and sub-cultures in terms of managerial work, we are also going to get a large number of legacy systems.

The question is how do we put a price on the integrational legacy system, harmonizing these legacy systems and harmonizing the managerial culture.

Q: Implicit in your entire conversation has been the fact that you have to have world class IT infrastructure. It is something that we cannot get away from in today’s business environment. But that is something that you have stressed on again and again in all the logistics examples that you gave, including FedEx and UPS?

A: It has to be real time, event driven and not just transaction driven. That is where it is critical. It must be resilient and change-oriented. Therefore, the cost of the change must be low. It must be able to use the existing legacy system. You can’t throw away all the legacy assets and so how does it get into the legacy systems and bring an upgrade is an important point.

Q: You seem to see a serious lack of innovation in Indian IT. Are you saying they have lost the ability to innovate?

A: No. It is in the context of the ‘power of the dominant’ logic. IT companies have been extraordinarily successful. They have built a business model and changed their business. The underlying strength of innovation in IT has grown from cost arbitrage to quality arbitrage to quality technology arbitrage. Now, it is cost, quality, technology and in some cases innovation.

Q: Are there any instances in Indian IT where you can see efforts to change things?

A: There are some in HCL where you have embedded software building the entire integrated system. We talk about TCS doing the Ferrari deal. Those are very different value-added kind of activities. But still every large company does it. Infosys does it and so does Wipro. They all understand it. Just because everybody understands that the business model is going to be broken in the future, it does not mean all of them have the capability to change the business model ahead of time by design. It is happening slowly. Everybody is trying to get a little bit of consulting help in the front-end to change the business model. Everybody is trying to negotiate a different way of pricing.

But if you don’t change; the IBMs and Accentures are coming to India. They will get the same advantage. The idea is not to say IT companies in this country have lost their innovation advantage. That is not the message at all. The message is that just because you intellectually understand what needs to be done, does not mean it will automatically get operational. There is a gap between an intellectual understanding and an operational change. That is the gap that companies have to learn to bridge.

Q: In the course of the book, you have frequently mentioned three companies while giving instance of how this whole new age of innovation is going to play itself out. What do you think best exemplifies the innovation that you were talking about in companies like ING, ICICI, and Apple?

A: Apple has a unique way of developing software media solutions. It really understands that manufacturing is key, so is software. This is the stuff that makes Apple. The company is into software not hardware, but hardware is a carrier of the software, so people still need a device. The second thing that they have understood very clearly is that they can't do it themselves, so content has to come from a wide variety of people.

Q: Have you been able to distill a philosophy in the organization that allows them to develop?

A: The philosophy is co-creation.

Q: Have they been able to recognize that way ahead of the curve?

A: They use the term co-creation. The underlying philosophy is very clear. It is co-creation and a very user-friendly interface. If you use the i-pod, you will know how user friendly it is because ordinary people can use it and can download. So, in other words it is a very user-friendly interface.

Look at ICICI Bank and the transformation of the company through IT and business process understanding.

At the core of its business, is innovation and driving innovation is technology. The transformation of ICICI Bank from an institutional operation to a sophisticated, fast moving retail banking powerhouse is an outstanding example in capability building. ICICI Bank’s evolutionary business model is based on continuous innovation to offer world-class services at an affordable cost through technology mediated businesses and analytics. It has changed the face of banking in India. Today, with over 600 branches and 3,000 ATMs reaching over 10 million customers, ICICI’s assets are worth over USD 79 billion and is an example of transformation from within at its best.

They try something, if it works they scale like crazy; if it doesn’t work they kill it and that is very much the kind of thing that we are talking about. There is no one person doing it.

Q: Everyone in the company is responsible for doing this?

A: All the senior managers have to do it and all the middle level mangers have to do it. So, they have created a culture of aggressive, ‘we can do it’ macho approach. That is what people see outside. Internally, there is a method to how this happens.

They can make a mistake. The goal is not to say whether they will make a mistake. They have taken a very traditional institutional company in their vibrant innovative retail bank and they are moving globally very rapidly.

Q: While you were studying the strengths, were there any weaknesses that you thought could potentially be a risk to this entire innovating ability?

A: When you grow that rapidly, there are so many people who have to be trained. Somebody somewhere is not going to be compliant, is going to make mistakes, somewhere the business process is going to be broken. All these are risks. But the interesting question is do we slow down or do we keep going and put checks and balances to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

In other words, the risk is inherent in the rapidity of change and scale, incorporating so many new people into the system and building business processes very rapidly. All of them are potential risks.

Q: What is the message to the manager, to be able to inculcate this newly defined process of innovation in his or her team and across an organisation?

A: The best way to phrase is going back to Gandhi. You must be the change that you want to see. That is an important message there. In his own unique way, Gandhi probably captured the spirit of what this book is all about.

If you want to understand this new world, you must be a part of it. For people who are at senior levels of management, 45 year old and above and are not part of this generation, it is natural. Therefore, we have to reinvest in ourselves. To me, I had to do it myself. So, it is not as if I am asking people to do something that I don’t. You have to reinvest in yourself; you have to use these tools. You have to understand how people are evolving and changing and you must have a point of view.

People underestimate how critical this is. Don’t worry too much about everything that can go wrong. Think big and de-risk the change process. Take small steps, learn rapidly, scale fast and then move on. Taking a big risk is not smart, neither is it prudent and nor is it sustainable. Sometimes you can succeed but sometimes you will fail and you cannot compromise the organisation’s vitality. Lastly, engage all people. I have no interest in satisfied consumers or satisfied employees. I want excited consumers and excited employees. Create the excitement of making something bigger than ourselves.

(Money Control)

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Success Mantra: 'Take up challenges' call by De Bono

MANAMA: Lateral thinking inventor Edward de Bono yesterday urged a Gulf audience to challenge dominant ideas, boundaries and polarisation in order to improve themselves and their organisations. Mr De Bono was addressing a sell-out crowd of more than 300 delegates, VIPs and dignitaries from 10 countries during a highly-interactive one-day event in Bahrain, organised by Global Leaders.

"I ask you all to look at everything you do - even if it is satisfactory - and consider the alternatives," he said.

"If something is adequate, it blocks any further thinking on that subject forever.

"We are so used to dealing with problems, we ignore all the areas where we can improve - simply because they aren't causing us problems at the moment. But I want you to challenge it all."

The event at the Diplomat Radissan SAS Hotel, Residence and Spa, was opened by the Minister of the Prime Minister's Court, Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa.

"I am delighted to be back in a region that constantly breaks through the barriers of what is possible, a region whose leaders - both in government and in business - have facilitated an environment where nothing is impossible," said Mr De Bono.

Mr De Bono's latest project is to launch a Palace of Knowledge and this is something he has been talking about with the Maktoum Institute in Dubai.

"We need clearer thinking and that is not something we can expect from the United Nations because ultimately their people are representatives and not there to break through barriers," he told the GDN.

"Equally we cannot expect this from national governments because they will be seen as promoting their own interests. We need a neutral body and that is what I would like to set up."
"He added that the Islamic world could well be a place for such an institute as the Prophet Mohammed spent a lot more time writing about thinking than any other religious figure in history."

"Globalisation means we have access to better products, wider choice, and faster delivery times," said Global Leaders president Tina Schneidermann.

"But it also means that the very products and services we sell are becoming increasingly homogenised.

"The only way we can stand apart from our competition is the way in which our employees and our organisations thinks."

"Gulf firms have a duty to re-invest in the region, whether through ideas, innovation, or people," said event sponsors Addax bank chief executive officer Yousef Al Essa.

"They should look to add sustainable value to companies and projects."

The full-day conference was the latest in a series of thought leadership events to be held in Bahrain, organised by Global Leaders, following on from Ken Blanchard and Deepak Chopra.

(Gulf Daily News)

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Drucker's Take on Making Mistakes

In Peter Drucker's writing, he says a key strategy is to turn lapses into learning opportunities. And he followed his own philosophy

by Rick Wartzman

Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House when KeyCorp first began raising its dividend. The Beatles topped the pop charts. Martin Luther King Jr. led tens of thousands of civil rights marchers through Alabama.

For 43 straight years, the company's annual payout climbed, "a record we were extremely proud of," in the words of KeyCorp (KEY) Chief Executive Henry Meyer. That is, until earlier this month. The Cleveland bank, slammed by the weak housing market and an adverse tax ruling, announced that it would halve its dividend to 75 cents in a bid to save $200 million a year. It also said it would seek to raise $1.5 billion in capital.

"We think hope is a bad management strategy," Meyer explained. "We're trying to admit where we made mistakes."

Mistakes are part of life; they're part of business. But far too many enterprises spend time hiding them and running from them, rather than owning up to them.

Capitalizing on Candor

Given that, KeyCorp deserves much credit. Whether the company can now capitalize on its candor will depend, in large measure, on how management deals with those responsible for its stumbles. The smartest organizations, according to Peter Drucker, are those that turn lapses into learning opportunities.

"Nobody learns except by making mistakes," Drucker wrote in his 1954 landmark book, The Practice of Management. "The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make—for the more new things he will try. I would never promote a man into a top-level job who has not made mistakes, and big ones at that. Otherwise, he is sure to be mediocre. Worse still, not having made mistakes he will not have learned how to spot them early and how to correct them."

Drucker's tolerance for mistakes shouldn't be confused with him cottoning to incompetence. There are plenty of occasions, he believed, when employees should be let go. "Management owes this to the enterprise," Drucker said. "It owes it to the spirit of the management group, especially to those who perform well. It owes it to the man himself, for he is likely to be the major victim of his own inadequacy."

But he cautioned against overreaching: "That a man who consistently renders poor or mediocre performance should be removed from his job also does not mean that a company should ruthlessly fire people right and left." And he made clear that those in charge can't just turn around and blame those who work for them. "Whenever a man's failure can be traced to management's mistakes," Drucker declared, "he has to be kept on the payroll."

Batting Average

Among management's most common errors is putting a good person into the wrong job. After all, Drucker noted, "there is no such thing as an infallible judge of people, at least not on this side of the Pearly Gates." Whenever such a slip-up is made, Drucker counseled, it's incumbent on the boss to say: "I have no business blaming that person, no business invoking the 'Peter Principle,' no business complaining. I have made a mistake."

In the end, Drucker defined success not as being right every time. Rather, he wrote in his 1973 classic Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, performance must be evaluated on terms more akin to a batting average. (Slugging percentage might even be a more apt way to look at it: Sometimes you hit a single or a double, and occasionally a home run. But other times, you strike out. Maybe even with the bases loaded.)

In Drucker's view, not always getting a hit is not only acceptable; it's part of what it takes to be an organization of excellence. "A management which does not define performance as a batting average is a management that mistakes conformity for achievement, and absence of weaknesses for strengths," Drucker asserted.

Different Performances

A batting-average mentality, he added, allows for companies to accommodate different kinds of talent. "One man will consistently do well, rarely falling far below a respectable standard, but also rarely excel through brilliance or virtuosity," Drucker wrote. "Another man will perform only adequately under normal circumstances but will rise to the demands of a crisis or a major challenge and then perform like a true 'star.' Both are 'performers.' Both need to be recognized. But their performances will look quite different.

"The one man to distrust, however, is the one who never makes a mistake," Drucker continued, "never commits a blunder, never fails in what he tries to do. He is either a phony, or he stays with the safe, the tried, and the trivial."

Drucker not only penned these words; he lived them. By the 1950s, Drucker had concluded there was only one way to manage people correctly: by assuming that all of them will be responsible and self-directed as long as they find their work fulfilling. In 1960 a competing theory was articulated, which held that managers treat each and every employee as if they are inherently self-centered, lazy, and resistant to change.

But then along came psychologist Abraham Maslow, who in 1962 maintained that, either way, a single approach is silly. Drucker was quickly persuaded. "Maslow's evidence is overwhelming," he wrote, that "different people have to be managed differently."

The bottom line for Drucker was that he and others who'd shared his one-size-fits-all view of human motivation "were dead wrong." If only more people had the courage to say that—and then learn from it—a lot more things would go right.

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Rick Wartzman is director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

‘7 Habits' guru offers timeless advice

The Arizona Republic, 2 May 08

Nearly 20 years have passed since Stephen Covey became a business megaguru with his best-selling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Since then he has added The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, produced a slew of further variations on the habits theme and helped lead Salt Lake City-based FranklinCovey Co. into a multimillion-dollar enterprise best known for its effectiveness training services and time-management planners.

Covey comes to Scottsdale Wednesday as the keynote speaker at the company's Greatness Summit. Staying true to the "7" standard, we talked to Covey for effective insights into business and life today:

1 The 7 Habits philosophy and why it's important

When the book came out in 1989, 80 percent of the value added to goods and services came from manual labor and machines. Today, 70 to 80 percent comes from knowledge work.

Unless managers get with it and realize that people are the most important asset they have, they'll be mired in the old practices of the Industrial Age.

I'm proposing a break with the old way of thinking. You can see in history that nothing fails like success. It makes companies most vulnerable when the whole place is mired in Industrial Age, top-down, bureaucratic control, and rules and regulations take the place of human judgment.

2 The three circles of greatness

The first is personal greatness, using the seven habits and finding your voice. It's still relevant, and even more so, because unless people have integrity and the ability to synergize, they can't develop the leadership circle.

The second circle, leadership greatness, inspires others to find their voice. Inspire trust, clarify your purpose or what you're trying to accomplish, and align the systems. Then you unleash the talent of the person and the team.

Here's why you need the third circle, organizational greatness. If you don't institutionalize the principles of the seven habits and the four leadership imperatives, the organization won't last. It's totally dependent on who happens to be the leader today. And the real test of leaders is that their successors do better than they.

3 Managing a business in tough economic times

Involve your people in the problem and work out solutions together. Don't try to use the top-down approach and say, "This is what we should do."

Let them become economically literate - on the industry, the economy and their own company - so you have a very open-book management style with the employees. It's risky initially, but as their education increases, the trust goes up and the risk goes down.

4 How his ideas apply to small firms

In small businesses, entrepreneurial businesses, sometimes it is so geared around one person with a vision. They try to wear all the hats, but their strengths become weaknesses.

I just finished talking to an entrepreneurs' group in San Antonio. I asked how many knew their strengths and how many knew their weaknesses, and all the hands went up. I asked how many had created a team to address their weaknesses, and just one-fifth of the hands went up.

The problem is ego. They invest in the old ways because the old ways brought success. Until people can emotionally accept it, they'll have a hard time without that team.

5 Finding your next career

The basic approach is to be a solution to their problem. Do your homework on the economy, the industry and the company. Interview associates, customers and suppliers, and get to know their concerns.

It takes a lot of work, which is why most people won't take this advice.

6 What he's working on now

I'm working on a book on the end of crime. We're researching different cities that have a new paradigm based on prevention, not just on finding the bad guys.

Another book is Blessed are the Peacemakers. It's for attorneys and people who hire them, on how to communicate.

Other books are on how to bring character education into schools, how universities can transform communities, and one for college students on management.

Then there will be Live Life in Crescendo, which says the most important work you're going to do is ahead of you, with your children and grandchildren.

It's geared toward serving your community, not what's in it for you.

7 The Highly Effective man's typical day

When I'm on the road, I'm speaking during the day and at night, and I do pro bono work with families. I work with businesses, health care, government, military, heads of state. They are hungry for this. They just don't know how to communicate and they fall into the old paradigm.

When I'm not on the road, I spend a lot of time with my book projects. I stay away from meetings, voicemail and e-mail.

I have a team that does that so I can spend time at home. I find I can get more done then.

We have nine children and the 50th grandchild on the way, so I organize a lot of family things.

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The Key To Management: A Balanced Scorecard

Forbes, 29 April 2008

Ever try to keep a scorecard at a little league baseball game? After a while, you learn to track what's most important, ignore the niggling errors and just make sure there's a snack at the end. Well-managed businesses--large and small--use a similar approach.

The concept of managing by "balanced scorecard" has been around awhile. It boosts performance using a combination of metrics, goals and process improvements. The U.S. Navy, City of Newark and the Atlanta Public School System are just a few large organizations that have benefited from this approach. Small businesses can too.

"The big thing that a balanced-scorecard approach does is that it helps management focus on strategy and results instead of tasks," says Howard Rohm, chief executive of the Balanced Scorecard Institute, a nonprofit consulting firm. "When effectively implemented, companies improve performance by measuring what matters and prioritizing work."

Balfour Beatty, a $2.4 billion (sales) construction firm headquartered in Dallas is in the balanced-scorecard big leagues. "All of our scorecards are structured around people, process, customers and financials," says John Parolisi, a senior vice president at the company.

Parolisi uses multiple scorecards, each drilling down on a different aspect of the business. Each scorecard lays out 2-to-4 strategic objectives and 1-to-3 metrics per objective--so 2-to-12 metrics per card. "For example, we have a process objective called 'consistently deliver the signature experience' where we measure customer satisfaction through surveys," says Parolisi. "This is a critical metric for us." Other key metrics could include employee turnover rates or on-time delivery performance.

For many of us, Balfour's complex metric-management system is probably overkill. We'd do just as well with a little league version.

Alex Phinn takes this approach. Phinn, a little league coach, is also president of Griff Paper and Film, a 50-person manufacturer and distributor of protective films, silicone-coated liners and specialty labeling materials in Pennsylvania. Phinn started with a sheet of paper and chose a handful of important operating and financial metrics, including, open purchase orders and open quotes, as well as daily receivables, payables, cash balance and year-to-date sales (vs. the prior year). He also threw in some other tell-tale performance and quality indicators, like the number of employee absentee days and customer complaint calls. Phinn peruses these numbers every day over his morning coffee.

While large companies need all kinds of sign-offs to implement a detailed scorecard approach, the lighter flashcard version is easy to install for small business owners. Says Phinn: "Once my [three] bothers and I signed on to the daily flash report, we had all the executive approval needed."

Phinn isn't buying special Balanced Scorecard software (and there's plenty of it out there), nor is he hiring a lot of expensive consultants (there are plenty of them out there too). He's doing today what will make him quicker, better, wiser--and richer--tomorrow.

towards excellence>>www.globalpro.com.my

It's time to embrace risk management

With the debut of Standard & Poor's new enterprise risk rating for non-financials, execs need to start paying attention

By Prakash Shimpi
(Financial Week)

April 7, 2008

Since the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, non-financial corporations have faced increasingly strong regulatory and compliance requirements aimed broadly at increasing transparency in their business practices. Risk management has been addressed at times, but usually as an afterthought.

All this is about to change.

In November 2007, Standard and Poor's announced plans to introduce enterprise risk management into its credit ratings criteria for non-financial companies, a move meant to bring a level of consistency to evaluating not only the resilience and profitability of these firms, but also the quality of management.

S&P has been evaluating ERM in the financial sector for some time; now it will apply its ERM ratings criteria to industries as diverse as airlines, pharmaceuticals and retail. While S&P plans to tailor its proposed ERM analysis based on individual companies' unique risks, structure and culture, all companies will be rated against four major criteria that will serve as the framework for analysis—risk management culture and governance, risk controls, emerging risk preparation and analysis of strategic management.

ERM is anything but a trendy concept. In fact, its roots go back more than a decade. In 2005, S&P brought ERM into its ratings criteria in the insurance sector. Later S&P analysis showed that the strength or weakness of a company's ERM was a differentiating factor among insurers impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Those with weak ERM were unable to quantify their exposure, and many were hit with much greater losses than they had thought possible, while those with stronger ERM were able to quickly estimate losses that were within 25% of actual claims.

Several banking firms that implemented ERM and then successfully weathered a similar storm in the subprime market may also have influenced S&P's belief in ERM's value for other industries.

For companies outside the financial sector, taking an enterprise approach to risk management is a relatively new concept. And while only a progressive few look at risks holistically, S&P's move should be a wake-up call. To be sure, some companies with fresh memories of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance exercises will initially react with frustration. However, those who embrace ERM are likely to see a positive impact on their cost of capital and bottom line because S&P will draw a straight line from ERM ratings to better credit ratings. Although ERM won't eliminate risks, it certainly will prepare companies for difficult situations, thereby minimizing their negative financial effects.

In response to S&P's announcement, companies first must take inventory and evaluate any existing ERM processes against the four S&P criteria. Second, management needs to take action to remedy any inadequate processes. S&P will not implement these changes overnight, but it's reasonable to expect that it will start to give official ratings as early as 2009. Companies should start making changes now to prevent any adverse effects on their ratings scores and, thus, their ability to access capital.

ERM is only as successful as the priority it is given by senior management. The C-suite sets the tone for corporations by identifying priorities, and at companies outside the financial sector, ERM has rarely made it onto that list. S&P's initiative should elevate awareness about the importance of risk management and prompt senior leaders to establish a “risk management culture” that communicates the importance of ERM from the top down and forges a connection between business objectives and business performance.

Despite ERM's decade-long presence in some industries, we are only now entering an era when more companies will get serious about ERM and move from just talking about it to implementing robust methods that tackle a range of risks. And it's clear that ERM will need to be higher on the CEO's agenda if companies want to continue to maintain healthy financial performance.

In the future, the focus of ERM will shift from compliance, management and measurement to more business-driven results such as better loss optimization and strategic integration. Now is the time for corporations to honestly assess how well prepared they are to meet the portfolio of risks they face and begin to implement ERM as part of the complete business process. To do otherwise would just be, well, risky business.

towards excellence>>www.globalpro.com.my

How to Be a Great Salesperson

(Life Learning Today)

This article is for everyone, even for people who are not technically in sales. Why? Because we are all in sales. Anytime you are trying to influence someone’s actions or thoughts, then you are selling. The best selling happens when you are trying to meet someone’s needs. This is when you will be most successful. This guide will outline the top ways to become a superstar sales person.

I’ve condensed my greatest sales learnings from 17 years of sales experience and combined it with the very best tips from the best sales books all into this one article. I’m a big fan of reading books and I reference several of them at the end of this article. At the same time I’m a bigger fan of absorbing some quick basic information and then immediately applying it in real life.

Sales Concepts for Success

1. Be Organized. This is very important. Planning is absolutely crucial to success:
Establish your Yearly Goals and break them down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals so that you know what you need to be working on. Post your Goals in plain view so you see them all the time, especially your daily goals.

Be sure to do a Weekly Review of your Sales Funnel. Check to see that your results are matching up with your goals. If they’re not, then it’s time to recalibrate your strategy.

Plan your day everyday for maximum productivity and success.
Very Smart Practice: On a yearly basis (and quarterly basis too if you can), analyze what activities or clients brought you the most business? What activities were the least effective? Adjust your plan to do more of the high revenue producing activities and spend more time with clients and prospects who bring you the most business. Eliminate the less effective practices. Work smarter, not harder. Reviewing your results and adapting your strategy over time brings the sales process full circle.

2. Planning is Good, But Remember to Be Action Oriented. Makes your calls. Set appointments. Meet with clients. Have lunch with power networkers with whom you can learn and work for mutual success. Inspire prospects to take the next action. Be bold. There is no failure, just learning experiences. Balance your planning time with action time. Your plan doesn’t have to be A+ perfect. You can hone it over time. Plan and then get moving!

3. Uncover Needs. This is your most important task. If you don’t understand your prospect’s needs, you’ll never sell anything except by accident. So much could be written on this one point alone. But here is what you need to know in a nutshell:
Start with more open-ended questions where the prospect can talk a lot.
Make sure you keep quiet while the prospect is talking!
As your meeting is closing down ask more closed-ended questions which will be answered with one word such as yes or no questions. Be creative with uncovering needs.
Be direct when you can and be indirect when you sense resistance.
Don’t hold back because you think you’re prying. Remember you’re here to help. You can only do this if you understand your prospect’s needs.

4. You’re Here to Help: Meeting Your Clients’ Needs. The reason sales people get a bad rap is because of the ones who try to force feed their clients. That is not selling. That is bullying. Your true role as a sales professional is “Needs Consultant,” helping your clients meet their needs, solve their problems, ease their pain, and bring them joy. Sometimes you need to help clients become aware of what their true needs are. Many people go through life thinking they want X. Sometimes you need to help them turn on the light to illuminate their real needs which may be better served by product/service Y. Always confirm that you understand a need. Then match it with a benefit from your product or service that solves your client’s need.

5. Match needs with benefits. How do you do this? Complete this exercise so that benefits roll off your tongue easily when talking with actual prospects. Here’s what you do:

Title a sheet of paper horizontally or use a spread sheet with the columns: “Features” “Benefits” “Needs” “Benefit statement.”
Write down all the features of your products/services. Next to each feature, write down the answer to this questions “So What?” The answer to that will be your benefit. (You’ve heard about doing this before, but have you really done it? Don’t rely just on what the company puts out either. Be creative and come up with lots of benefits.) Example: Feature: Web access on your phone. So What?! => Benefit: You can access any information from anywhere.
Next take tiny yellow stickies and write down all the different problems, pains, desires, your clients and prospects have.
Under each problem write down what the need is. Example: Problem: Getting lost finding addresses when showing clients real estate. Need: Instant direction information.
Next take all your clients problems and match them to the appropriate benefit.
Write in the needs in the “Needs” column.
Last, write out a Benefit Statement for each feature that you can practice. Example: “You’ll never get lost again with the XYZ phone because it allows you to get information anywhere anytime.”
This exercise takes some time but it is one of the most powerful things you can do to prepare yourself for success. The best salespeople I know do preparations similar to this.

6. Tap into Feelings. Many people will start with a rational approach to making a decision, but in the end, how a person feels in their gut will often determine their final choice. Make sure you find out how they feel in addition to their rational needs. And it is important to use the language of feelings and to demonstrate that you understand. Examples: “How does it make you feel that your current advisor never calls you?” or “What was your feeling about that house we just toured?” A handy phrase is “I know how you Feel. I’ve Felt that way too. And what I’ve Found is..(insert helpful advice here)…” I call this the 3F’s.

7. Get a Read on Your Prospect. Here’s where you need to listen to your intuition a bit.
It’s helpful to assess the level of desire a client has for meeting their need. Where do they fall on the spectrum from desperate (will buy anything) to confident (their awareness and feeling of need is not high enough to spur action)? Use this analysis to decide how much time to spend with them. Don’t knock your head against a brick wall trying to convert someone who feels no pain. But if you see a need that they don’t, then be sure to follow up with them in the future. Be there when they start to feel the pain of their need. Example: Prospect who is looking at new cars, but is very emotionally tied to his old clunker. You can see that he needs a new car, but he can’t see it as clearly as you yet because of his satisfaction with his current car. Be in touch with him so you can be there when his beloved car bites the dust.
The other thing you want to read is your prospect’s personality and style. You will do well to somewhat mirror that style so that he or she will feel comfortable with you. Be too bold with a conservative person and you’ll lose them. Be too “soft-pedal” with a type-A person and they’ll be gone before you can blink. Be yourself, but be aware of how your prospect likes to interact and accommodate them.

8. Know What Your Goal is with Each Sales Interaction. This is important so that you will know when your interaction is finished. In sales you need to be efficient for both your sake and your clients’ sake. This will keep you from wasting time. The best way to do this is to actually write down your goals ahead of the meeting.
Example: I want to:
confirm my client’s top 5 “must haves” in a home.
get their 10-scale rating on each home I show them today.
know their favorite and least favorite thing about each home we see.
schedule our next meeting.
If there is a home they love, I want to establish next steps to keep the momentum moving forward.
ask if I met all their needs for this meeting.

9. Asking for the Sale and Closing. Closing is not just about asking for the sale, but continually moving towards that point. An example is asking for the next appointment and setting mutually agreed upon next steps for both you and the prospect.
Closing, of course, also means asking for the sale. It is amazing how many sales people climb the sales mountain and then fail to take this last crucial step. Don’t be one of them! Ask for the sale! What have you got to lose?
When should you ask for the sale? Once you’ve confirmed that you correctly understand a client’s needs and you’ve explained how the benefits of your product or service meet their needs, then ask for the sale. There are many ways to do this. This is where the art of sales comes in. Read your prospect and ask in the way that will get you a yes. This takes practice. So go ahead and practice, practice! Consult with other top sellers to learn how they speak and then use what will feel natural to you.
If you get a “no,” find out why. Are you dealing with a misunderstanding, an objection, a concern, or perhaps indifference? Explore the root reason for saying no. If the client still has a need and wants to meet it, and if you have a product/service that meets this need, then continue on. If one or more of these elements is found to be missing then it is time to move on to the next prospect. But at least you tried!

10. Follow-up and Service. Follow-up is your continued communication with prospects. Service is your continued relationship with clients.
Follow-Up: Unless there is no need to meet or unless the prospect tells you to not contact them anymore, make sure you find a way to follow-up that not only keeps you in contact, but also provides value, whether via phone, email, newsletter, etc.. This is almost like your audition to show how you will provide service once they become a client.
Service: Once you’ve made the sale, the relationship is just beginning. Make sure that your client gets the best service. Set reminders for staying in touch. It’s easier to make a new sale to an existing client than a prospect. And with a happy clients, you’ll be more likely to earn a referral.

11. Ask for Referrals. The 80/20 rule applies here. 20% of your clients will provide 80% of your referrals. Find those 20% and cultivate them. There are certain people in this world who really LIKE to help others with referrals. You can ask every satisfied client for a referral, but usually it will only be a handful that actually refer you business. That’s ok. And don’t be afraid to be specific about the types of referrals you are looking for. Treat these clients like gold and watch the referrals stream in. There are many ways to ask for a referral. Here are some ideas:
Actually ask for a referral upon completion of a meeting.
Offer an incentive for referrals. Put this on your website and all your marketing materials.
Send out a survey to clients asking their opinion of your service and would they refer someone, “if so please fill in name or call me. If not, how can service be improved? What would make you want to refer business to us?”
Host a seminar for clients (make sure it is valuable and serve food!) and request, encourage, or invite them to bring a friend.
Offer an affiliate program.

12. Perseverance. Sales is a numbers game: SW³ = “Some Will. Some Won’t. So What!” You won’t win them all, and that’s ok. We all know the baseball analogy of how even the best batters miss the ball about 70% of the time. So don’t sweat the individual sales loss. Just move on to the next. With that said you do want to analyze your result patterns over time and adjust your strategy when you want different results. The idea here is to stay disciplined especially on bad days, stay focused on meeting needs, and keep evolving your strategy, tactics and skills. Slow and steady wins the race. Stay upbeat and when you’re down get rest and/or seek out positive people to help lift your spirits.

13. Look for Opportunity. Always be analyzing situations. Is there a local event you can leverage? Watch the news. Always ask yourself, “Is there a need for my business in this that could help me reach my goals? Can I fit it into my schedule? Will it be more or less effective than other activities I have planned?” Look for opportunity, analyze it’s potential, and if it is worthwhile then strike while the iron is hot! If you observe yourself shying away from a high potential idea because it’s something you’ve never tried before, challenge yourself to do it! Seek out helpers or partners! Go ahead, amaze yourself!

14. Become a Networking King. They say eating lunch alone is wasted time. Depending on your field, you should set a goal for 1-10 networking lunches per month. You should attend at least three networking functions per quarter. They don’t have to be obvious things. It might be going to a golf tournament. It might be going to an art gallery opening. Go to where your prospects and industry colleagues hang out. Include networking goals in your overall goals. Like any of these elements networking takes time to build so take it slow and build upon your successes. And by all means, have fun with it!

15. People Buy from Positive People. Be enthusiastic in your own way. Be authentic. Take responsibility if things go wrong. Watch how you speak in front of clients. Don’t blame others. Don’t complain. Don’t trash the competition. Life is Good! Life is challening, and that’s what makes it fun! Let your passion show! And, of course, on the inside, believe in yourself. You can do it!

16. Be Driven. Tap into what motivates you and connect to that everyday. Is it helping people? Is it helping your family? Is it a lifestyle you desire? A home, a car? Find ways to to get your energy flowing. The best way to do that is to move your body. Do some jumping jacks, do some stretching up to the sky, do some crazy facial exercises, and then laugh. Now you’re ready to tackle your cold calling block, or your seminar, your meeting, whatever.

17. Be Your Own Toughest Critic. Be brutally honest with yourself. Are you making real progress? In sales, the numbers don’t lie. Of course at first you need to build, but make sure you’re getting some wins. If you’re not, then don’t get sad or mad, just figure out a new way. The best sales people I know are always tweaking their strategy. Don’t let yourself get comfortable. The only thing that should stay the same is that you constantly seek better ways to improve your results.

18. Seek Guidance from Top Dogs in Your Field. This is one of the most important items. Leapfrog your knowledge by learning from those who’ve already made some mistakes. Offer to take them out to lunch. Ask to “ride-along” on their sales meetings so you can observe firsthand their magic. Ask them the secrets to their success. And offer to help them out in some way to repay their guidance.

19. If I Trust You, I Will Buy from You. Honesty, Integrity, Credibility. Build this with your actions. Do what you say you’re going to do. Answer the phone promptly. Return calls ASAP even if to say, “I got your call and I will be free to talk at this specific time.” Write down questions you don’t have the answers to and then get back to them promptly. Saying “I don’t have the answer to that right now” is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of honesty. Following up on that question later is a demonstration of reliability. Use these opportunities well.

20. What is Your Unique Selling Proposition? What is your “elevator speech?” This is the 1-2 minute answer to “What do you do? And, why should I do business with you?” Be outrageously creative. Be memorable. Be concise. Continue to work on this over time to get it just right. And have fun with it!

21. Use the Simplest Method Possible for Tracking Your Sales Funnel. You will have Unqualified Prospects, Qualified Prospects, Best Few Prospects, and Closed Sales. Most likely your company will have a system for this. But if they don’t or if you have your own business, find the simplest system that will do what you need. There are two major players ACT! (software based) and Salesforce (online). And now there’s a new online player from 37 Signals called HighRise. It is free for 250 contacts or less. Above that there is a monthly fee. Make sure you’re constantly feeding your sales funnel and that prospects are moving along through to closing. Analyze what is working and what is missing in your approach.

22. Stay on Top of Your Field. People like to buy things that are shiny, new, and sparkly. If your product or service isn’t new, make sure it is “sparkly” in your clients’ eyes. How? Simple. Make sure that you are meeting their most current needs. Your product or service doesn’t need to be new, but it does need to keep up with customers’ ever evolving needs.

23. It’s Not About Price, It’s About Value and Relationship. People want to solve their problems and fulfill their desires and they want to feel good about how they accomplished that. That’s value. Value is also giving extras to your clients with no extra cost and no expectations. There’s value in a relationship too. People like to be comfortable and trust the person they do business with. Show them how your product or service will meet their needs and give them something to brag about with their friends. Bragging Example: “I bought my new car at ‘Medium Priced Cars R Us.’ Anytime my car needs servicing, I get a free loaner car. And this dealership has been ranked 5-Stars by it’s clients consistently for the last 5 years. The sales person was helpful and patient with us insisting that we take our time. And when it came time to negotiate, they were very fair. And since we’ve bought the car, our sales person has called us to see how things were going with the new car.”

24. Please, Don’t Be Afraid. Really! If you feel the fear or hesitancy inside you, break through it! You have nothing to lose! Remember you are here to help. If someone doesn’t want your help, if someone is rude to you, no problem. Just move onto the next prospect. There’s billions of fish in the sea! Don’t be afraid to fail either. Learn from your experiences. Analyze them. How can you do things better next time? Sales is a big puzzle. You don’t fall apart when two puzzle pieces don’t match, right? Neither should you with sales that don’t pan out. Sales is fun! Enjoy the ride!

25. Celebrate Success and Cultivate Balance. (Balance? What’s that?) No really. Take care of your body, spirit, and personal relationships too. This can be difficult for real ‘Type-A’ personalities, which many sales people are. Make this part of your plan. Schedule it in. If this is hard for you, then enlist the help of people you know are good at this. They’ll love it and it will help you.

The Characteristics of a Great Sales Person

Selling is a profession and not simply a job. It takes time, dedication and commitment to be successful. However it is a profession which pays for the personal commitment of the sales person. Many people outside of the profession are astonished at the amount of time and preparation required to be a successful sales person. The image of the peddler pushing his or her wares is long gone. Today’s sales person is dedicated, educated, highly trained, technically savvy and committed to their profession.

Implications to the Sales Person

Realistically review the nine characteristics listed below and assess your skills and abilities accordingly. While there is no pass or fail in this test, it does serve as a benchmark as to where you want to be if you wish to be at the top of your profession. If you see a need for improvement, develop a mini-plan for each characteristic. Develop your goals, objectives and a timeline to develop the skill. Skill development will take a specific plan and commitment to achieve.

The Application

What makes a great sales person? Here are nine specific characteristics that define success in a very competitive profession.

1) Positive

Attitude is everything. In the face of rejection, failure and endless frustrations, a great sales person is able to keep everything in perspective. They do not take things personally and remain upbeat and positive.

2) Persuasive

A great sales person is able to use of his or her skills, experience and expertise to be persuasive, bring people around to his or her point of view and ultimately make the sale.

3) Patient

A great sales person understands that selling today takes an average of eight calls before a commitment is made. They persist and remain on track until the sale is consummated.

4) Precise

The great sales person doesn’t need puffery or exaggeration to make his or her point. They use the precise details of the products to clearly represent the features and benefits of their products.

5) Polite

The great sales person minds his or her manners. They remain cool, unemotional and professional throughout the sales process.

6) Planning

The great sales person understands the value of planning their time and sales strategies to achieve their goals and objectives.

7) Prepared

The great sales person is prepared for every sales call, focusing on a specific reason or purpose for that call. They are prepared to handle objections and take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves.

8) Punctual

The great sales person understands the value of time. They respect both the time of the prospect and their own time. They make sure they are on time for their appointments and if necessary call to reschedule if they are going to be late.

9) Practical

The great sales person is both practical and pragmatic. They understand failure and rejection are a part of the job. They are able to keep things in perspective and walk away from unprofitable situations.

Something to Think About

Great sales people are committed and purposeful. With that in mind consider the following points:

1. As you review the nine characteristics listed above, think of the various situations where one or more of these characteristics allowed you to make a sale. Explain.

2. What characteristics do you need to work on and polish? What is your plan to improve this skill? Explain.

-- By Timothy F. Bednarz, PhDTimothy F. Bednarz, PhD is the Principal Partner of the American Management Development Group

(Call Center Directory, 20 Oct 08)