by Adam L Stanley | Apr 2, 2016 | Leadership, Relationships, Teamwork
Top Traits: Defining the perfect employees
I recently wrote a series of blogs on top traits that define the perfect employee. I suggested that the perfect employee is:
(1) both talented and hard working
(2) shows pride in the work they produce, and
(3) is fun to work with.
Many of you commented on these and agreed they are critical traits. But some things were clearly missing from the list. I did not discuss things like “passion”, ambition, or loyalty. Do I think these are important? Absolutely. In hiring and promotion decisions, most managers consider all three of these as well as the quality of work. Do I think either of them make a perfect employee? No.
But a while back, I received an email from a LinkedIn connection, who asked the question “What do you do when your teammate has lost their passion for their work but still keep the other traits? They still work hard and have a smile on at the office (or worksite) but you know they don’t have a burning desire to deliver their work?” I found that question fascinating and thought I would reply here.
A few thoughts:
1) Is “burning desire” to deliver necessary?
Let’s face it. I don’t live to work. I work to live. Anyone that knows me understands that I find life fulfilling because it consists of my job, my family, my friends, and all kinds of other things. I’ve blogged about “Finding Balance” and while I don’t always listen to my own advice, I do feel I am pretty good with my priorities. While I think pride in work product is important, it is completely respectable if you truly feel that you would quit immediately if you won the lottery. 😉
2) Can an employee without passion be fun to work with, continue to work hard and have pride in product?
I tried it once. I was miserable, working with an awful human being that sucked the joy out of everyone around him. Of course I am generally very hard working and consider myself very talented (self-pat on back) so I continued to deliver, working hard to both deliver on needed changes while also engaging colleagues and trying to work on culture. But, eventually, it became harder and harder to put on that happy face. One day, one of my direct reports came to me and told me that he (and others) had noticed I just was not my normal self. I had lost my Henry V: my passion and drive to lead the troops into battle. The miserable individual was “winning” and none of those above me were willing to do anything about it. And my team noticed.
This overall idea of ‘employees without passion’ is a fairly common problem in the American workplace: Salary.com studies show that 23 percent of employees look for a new job every single day, and per Gallup only about 31.5% of American workers are engaged in their jobs.
Give or take, that means 7 in 10 people you work with probably lack passion (i.e. they’re not engaged).
That’s a huge number. On your way to get coffee, you’ll pass more people lacking passion than having passion for the work. If most people you work with are losing or lacking the passion and drive, what can be done? That brings us to our next question.
When an employee loses the passion
3) Can a manager help to reignite that passion and make the perfect employee perfect again?
Absolutely. Here is how:
- Talk to your employees regularly and help them find the kind of projects and challenges that inspire them to greatness. And when I say talk, I mean actually talk — not e-mail. Call them or stop by their desk.
- Share your business goals and objectives and illustrate how the work they do ties to the objectives. This is the idea of tying ‘purpose’ back to the overall goals and objectives of the place (how it makes money). Many organizations and managers miss the importance of this tie.
- Support passions outside of work. If an employee wants to participate in a community organization or charitable event, encourage it. Finding balance in life is hard, but having a boss that encourages you to enjoy those things that matter outside of the office makes it easier.
Here’s something thought-provoking to end on, courtesy of Thought Catalog and The Washington Post. There are two theories on passion at work: “fit” (that you need to find the perfect spot for you) and “develop” (that you can evolve to fit in at a place relative to your surroundings). Across four major psychological studies, researchers found equal levels of satisfaction in people who believed in “fit” and “develop” approaches. This goes to show that passion can be developed and cultivated, even in people who aren’t “believers”. A lot of the process of developing passion will come back to relationships, and especially relationships with your direct manager. That’s why the bullets directly above are crucial.
Be sure to view all of the Top Traits:
Trait 1: Hard working AND talented
Trait 2: Pride in work product
Trait 3: Fun to work with
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Related Posts:
Who Am I?
Expectations of Leaders at all Levels
Khalil Gibran on Leadership
Lessons from Henry V
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com
Follow me on Twitter | Connect with me on Linked In | “Like” me on Facebook
by Adam L Stanley | Mar 4, 2016 | Relationships, Technology
Another blog on eMail Etiquette
About a week ago, I had a four-hour flight. I completely cleaned out my inbox before I boarded the plane.
Inbox: 0
For once, I didn’t use the in-flight WiFi to check anything; I just relaxed, read my Kindle on Android, and slept as soundly as I could despite the guy behind me snoring rather loudly. When I landed, I turned on my phone (I swear, American Airlines, it was in airplane mode during the flight), and glanced briefly at my inbox.
Guess how many new e-mails I had? 20? 50?
Nope. I had 100 unread emails. So roughly 25/hour came in as I was 35K feet above — and this wasn’t even during core working hours.
I am not THAT GUY that wants to return to the days of snail mail. Nor am I one that says we must declare “email amnesty” or “war on email”. The fact is, e-mail made work effective, yes — and it allowed people on opposite sides of the globe to collaborate in a much easier fashion — but it’s also a giant hit to productivity. A big, fat, time sinking, eyeball tiring, emotions misreading, productivity drain.
Quick stats: 89 billion business-related e-mails were sent daily in 2014; by 2015, that number was 100 billion, and by the end of 2016, it’s going to be around 116B. That’s the equivalent of everyone on the planet sending 15-20 business e-mails per day (which is even more absurd if you consider that only around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today).
E-mail is a productivity problem because while it’s a way to discuss work and projects, it’s not actually work. Typically, e-mails indicate or reference work that needs to be done — and they do so in a distracting way. An average employee needs 64 seconds to recover their thoughts after reading an e-mail, and they get about 200 e-mails per day. Do that math. By and large, 11.2 hours of a 40-hour work week are spent on e-mails — or slightly over 25 percent.
We can do better. Here are some tips.
1. Stop the Reply All Culture
Watch this video on the e-mail tree. You’ve all lived through this. Reply-alls can be a nightmare, especially because they are deeply tied to hierarchy — as more senior leaders begin to respond, others feel the need to chime in. A reply all culture is awful for productivity.
Resist the temptation to reply all.
- Consider talking directly to the main point person on the project w/any concerns (Skype great for remote colleagues)
- If you must reply all, begin by thinking about your response and then ask a co-worker if you think it has value
The overall goal for e-mail communication should be value. Frankly, all communication should be about value. Think about the last person that trapped you in the break room telling you stories about their dog when you wanted to finish up an important project. No e-mail should be sent that doesn’t advance a project or an idea, encourage new thinking about a project, or communicate on a norm or deadline. If the value isn’t there, the e-mail doesn’t need to be sent.
2. Understand To vs. CC vs. BCC
If there were a Miss Manners for email etiquette, I believe she would suggest this:
- The “To” field is for the main person the e-mail is directed at, or the person with an immediate deliverable from it
- The “CC” field is for people who should have knowledge of the project, be it tangential team members or senior managers
- BCC should be used sparingly — in the wrong context without explanation, it can fray trust between collaborators; if someone is going to be BCCed, they can probably just be CCed
3. Consider reviewing email only once or twice a day
Being tethered to e-mail throughout the day is bad for productivity, as seen above. Try doing one sweep in the morning — but limit it to 20-30 minutes, as focusing on e-mail tasks first thing in the morning is a waste of a good energy period for most people — and then one in the afternoon. During the day, focus on deep work and perhaps (gasp) actually talking to people.
If you think to yourself you would be out of the loop only checking e-mail twice a day, well consider that going and talking to co-workers is another form of being in the loop that worked quite well before e-mail ever existed for business.
4. Think then write
This can be hard for some people because work projects do become emotional at times, even when we want them to be logical and process-driven — but please think before you write e-mails, as a major general rule. Virtually any e-mail sent can come back on you in a negative way (hardly an ideal situation), and you don’t want to be seen as a co-worker that clogs up people’s productive time.
There are dozens and dozens of potential rules for e-mailing, but above all, try to follow the same rule you should follow with conversations and meetings: add value and respect the time of others we work with. If you start from there, the rest should fall into place with practice. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Related Posts:
Put down your smartphones, people!
Five Core Skills every CIO must continuously improve
Khalil Gibran on Leadership
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com
Follow me on Twitter | Connect with me on Linked In | “Like” me on Facebook
by Adam L Stanley | Sep 19, 2011 | Relationships, Technology, Vendors and Partners
Vendor Relationship Critical Partnership Element #1: Expertise in new technologies
I recently ran an informal poll on LinkedIn that asked a relatively simple question:
Today’s IT leaders depend on a plethora of new players to drive change. What should CXOs most look for in a partner?
Here are the results ….
Aiming to cover each element in a separate post, I started with cost, which recieved a whopping ZERO in the poll as everyone said it was critical but not differentiating. John Vincent of Broadgate Consultants LTD guest blogged on Trust and Integrity. The second lowest vote getter, Expertise in new technologies, is my focus today and I will call this blog post Experts or Frauds?
Two Key Initial Thoughts
1. We don’t always care if you’re an expert if we don’t know you
I receive hundreds of emails from vendors asking for a bit of my time to tell me how their ground breaking technology can enhance productivity, reduce costs, increase flexibility, and otherwise demonstrate value through an era where technology changes daily. But, how important is expertise when selecting a vendor partner? Do you really want the BEST person in a particular area of technology even if they know nothing about your business? According to my poll respondents, and several people with whom I spoke, the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. Thus, this was a very low vote getter in the poll.
2. It’s hard to validate who the true experts are
Even if you could get beyond the fact that someone you’ve never met wants you to spend millions, tech expertise is frankly hard to prove BEFORE an implementation. As Peter Shankmen noted in his 2009 article in the early days of Social Media, for most new technologies, “there is no endorsement or accreditation to set apart legitimate industry leaders from bandwagon opportunists. The fact is, technology changes so frequently expertise is hard to quantify, and therefore its hard to separate the experts from the pretenders.
At Aon, we implemented the Microsoft BPOS suite of collaboration tools for colleagues around the world. When we began to consider the initiative early in 2009, there were few companies of our scale and size that had completed a migration to the full suite. None of our vendors could clearly demonstrate they had roadmaps nor tried and tested strategies for implementing BPOS.
Vendor Relationship Tips for CIO/CTO – Expertise
I sought out a few experts who have been on both the provider and client side and asked their opinions. With their input, I’ve generated this list of tips on how to manage vendor relationships based on expertise.
1. Focus on relationships
The pace of change in technology is so great that experts are harder to find and harder to prove. When in doubt, I ALWAYS try to work with trusted partners first. If a firm has consistently proven trustworthy and competent, they are more likely to perform well again. While every problem is different, core aspects of problem solving are repeatable. A focus on relationships of trust and integrity takes away some of the risk before the first day of the project. That said, your “regular†firm may not have skills in the area in which they are needed.
A good partner firm will “buy†and “build†new expertise but admit when they should opt-out.
Slalom Consulting Managing Directors Nate Roberts explains that “There are times when you need to go external and ‘buy’ expertise to respond to a trend or regulation, but, as a growing organization, we want to develop / ‘build’ our own talent. What makes our organization attractive are the career development opportunities and the investment we make in our employees. We like to build internally, but will look externally when necessary.â€
A trusted partner is willing to admit when they lack a certain skill. You as the client have the opportunity to either continue to work with the partner and find ways to augment their skillset or find a different partner with whom you are less familiar. If there is expertise within the firm, go for it. Law firms, for example, frequently have junior lawyers cover cases with “supervision†of senior attorneys. But you need to know that the expertise is strong enough to be a foundation.
“In today’s business climate,†Slalom’s Director – Organization Effectiveness Brian Tacik said, you need to hit the ground at cruising speed with the support necessary to be efficient, effective and more importantly without mistakes!†Several missteps in one of our major projects last year were caused by a vendor that frankly tried too hard to “learn on the jobâ€. In the end, neither party of the relationship wins when there is no honest assessment of expertise, friend or not.
“If that mutual understanding isn’t there, more often than not, it will not be positive for the partnership or lead to success for the client,†said Tacik.
2. Make sure you understand what expertise you actually need
In hiring a consultant a consultant the key word is “hiring”, said Scott Abbey, Senior Advisor at Eleven Canterbury, LLC and former CTO at UBS AG. “The fact that it’s short term or project based really shouldn’t matter and I would expect to use similar criteria,†he said. Depending on the project, Abbey might value direct experience and expertise more or less than other criteria. For example, he referred to a benchmarking exercise where benchmarking expertise was critical but when hiring for an organizational strategy role, general management experience and a track record mattered more than specific organizational strategy expertise.
In planning a major implementation, ask yourself do you need expertise in the technology domain, knowledge of how to use that technology in your particular industry, general knowledge of the vendors that provide the technology or all of the above? Is it critical they know the base code or just how it has been used to solve business problems? Do you need them to be a “Gold Partner†of the relevant software firm or is it better they be independent?
Most importantly, you must know your particular strengths as a good partner will be complimentary to skills you have on-site. We had great technical and architecture resources on our team when we built our new global network, but we needed a partner that knew local country providers, emerging security concerns, and had the ability to implement global change programs. Choosing a partner that is only good at the things you are good at is a recipe for failure. Picture both of you eventually having to do a lot of “on the job trainingâ€.
According to Slalom’s Roberts, “Success is not driven only by technology implementation, but with the holistic solution.†Thus, companies should remember that expertise in a particular domain without sound fundamental skills simply does not work.
3. Do your research
The Slalom Perspective: To be an ‘expert’ requires years of practical experience that creates knowledge and skills that can be demonstrated readily to clients. Expertise also needs to include both tales of success and tales of overcoming adversity. Credentials and certifications only validate that someone has studied for and passed a test, frankly. Our clients are less interested in hearing about what someone read in a book or what cert exam was passed and more interested in hearing about similar experiences.
If you are using a reputable firm with a myriad of available resources, review the qualifications of the team put together specifically for your initiative. Have they published any articles or studies on the subject matter of your business? Have they completed similar projects of a like scale and complexity. Are there other people in the industry that regular cite them as experts? Do they offer personnel with the necessary certifications? The right person and firm will not only understand their domain but also have the ability to relate to you, at least at a high level, how your business problems can be solved using their particular technology.
I have worked with one large consulting firm before and had to swap out multiple resources. While the firm had strong resources in house, none of the true experts were assigned full time to our initiative and thus we got the “rookies.†Ask the firms for explicit commitments on resources. Who will be assigned to the project and how much of their time will be committed? Get a chance to meet a few of them face-to-face and test their individual knowledge.
Every project requires a mix of skills and balancing the strengths and weaknesses of the team members, according to Abbey. However, Abbey disdains dictating team members or subcontractors once you’ve qualified the vendor. “I never want to be in a situation where there is a problem and the consultant or vendor has an easy out by blaming my choice, “Abbey explained.
If the firm is not a known quantity, expect to do a little more due diligence. Expertise is best determined using a variety of means: credentials, focused interviews, reference checks, and general market research. All of these methods must be used as someone may be fantastic at selling you on their expertise despite having no real track record of success. Which leads me to the next point, very important today …
4. Look for obvious signs of fraud
In his article, Shankmen provided a list of ways to tell your social media expert was not really an expert. The first two are applicable to ANY new technology in my opinion.
– They call themselves an evangelist, guru or expert, and no one else does.
– They use “expert†or “evangelist†or “guru†or our personal favorite, “influencer†as any of their user names
“Calling yourself ‘visionary’ is akin to saying, ‘I’m so attractive!’, tweeted Lew Cirne of New Relic, as it “may be best left to others to say.â€
I am truly amazed at how many self-appointed gurus abound on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn and other such sites. There are THOUSANDS of social-media experts on Twitter that have relatively few followers. Can they truly be called experts if they can’t build their own following? What is even more interesting is when you click through to their bio and see they really have no practical experience succeeding (or failing) in the space. An expert in BPOS (nee Office 365) that has never experienced the joys and pains of a global implementation is really not an expert.
Robert Caruso, CEO/Founder of Bundle Post, responded to my questions about expertise and suggested that within social media, there is really no such thing as an expert. “The medium is moving so fast and changing every single second,†Caruso said, and thus “it is impossible to be an expert.†Furthermore, he added, “Credentials do not matter. What have you done, what are your results are all that matter. If they can’t do it for themselves, how can anyone reasonably expect they can do it for or consult you to do it for [your firm]?â€
You should check out Robert’s blog on what he calls Faux Experts and the resulting attention it got.
5. Ask the vendor to “invest†in and take on risk within the initiative
How can a vendor convince me to work with them in the implementation of something that is so new that few people actually have experience? They can absorb some (or most) of the implementation risk. If they have other skills that are valuable and more known quantities, they can include those resources at a reduced charge. New technology should be an investment for both the client and the partner and firms such as Slalom are willing to price programs in such a way as to demonstrate this shared investment.
My experience both on the client side and provider side of major projects is that getting the vendor partner to take risk will be somewhat limited but critical. The newer the technology and the smaller the firm, the more difficult it will be for them to take risk. On the flipside, your bargaining power is greater with the smaller guys that depend more on each dollar of revenue. It’s usually impossible to get vendors to commit to any risk beyond their billings, according to Abbey. At a minimum, a strong incentive for performance to commitments is a payment schedule tied to successful completion of specific, defined deliverables with pre-agreed acceptance criteria.
Which is Most Important?
All five of the characteristics are important!! Critical!! The perfect vendor should have all five of the characteristics, but in the era where there is a new technology, a new tool, some new social media outlet popping up every day, which would YOU put FIRST? I would love to hear from you! Send me a tweet or post your comments below.
In relationship,
Adam
Vendor Relationship Series –
“Trust – Guest blog by John Vincent of Broadgate Consultantsâ€Â | “Have you MET the CFO? | “Experts or Frauds?”
3) Can a manager help to reignite that passion and make the perfect employee perfect again?
1. Stop the Reply All Culture
