I’ve been reading Hidden Business Treasures blog of late and have found some…well, treasures. Their post today – Stupid Motivational Tricks – provides an excellent suggestion to managers in regards to motivating their employees. We measure motivators using our assessments, but I think they hit on a more fundamental, over-arching principle that applies to all employees.

Employees have been cross-trained, sensitivity trained, multi-tasked and quality circled.
They’ve been enhanced, advanced, mission driven and value positioned.
They’ve even been downsized, right-sized, smart-sized and out-placed.

Don’t you think its time for just plain informed?

What motivates employees? The same thing that motivates you. Trusted members of any team must have access to the information that will help them do a better job. This is a no-brainer when it comes to your senior staff. You would never think of keeping critical resources and information from them. But far too many companies continue to think that marching orders or stupid motivational tricks will somehow substitute for “information literacy” skill-building.

Read the whole thing.

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BusinessWeek offers this article – Should I ‘fess Up to Lying on My Résumé? This one is going to leave a mark and I couldn’t agree more with the author. Some excerpts:

From your point of view, stating that you majored in philosophy when you didn’t wasn’t a “big lie,” but your employer almost certainly won’t share your view. Why should they? Your résumé reflects who you are, what you value, and how much you have achieved. If you lie about something as important as your résumé, what will come next? Lying to a potential client to get his or her business? Lying to your boss about how things are going? Telling a lie to make it easier on ourselves only damages our credibility in the long run.

And he is just warming up:

To be the best candidate for a job doesn’t mean just being the most skillful or knowledgeable but also being dependable, honest, and trustworthy. In other words, a smart employer values character as well as competence.

And towards the end, he closes with the point that always stands out in my mind:

You mention the irony of having taken an ethics course in college. What may be even more ironic is that you probably would have gotten the job without the lie in the first place.

That one hits close to home. One year ago we had a strong manager candidate for one of our customers. He was a great fit for the role and was offered the job contingent upon his background check. Turns out he did not have a Bachelor’s degree as he stated on his resume. The killer part of the equation is that a degree was not required. To make it worse, our customer said they still would have hired him had he just confessed. Instead, he rode it to the bottom of the sea and he was not hired.

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Destined for the circular file:

I am currently seeking full time employment with a company that I have the possibility to expand my resume.

The statement seems innocuous enough, but reread the last part. “Expand my resume” speaks volumes to their self-focus and little to what contribution they will make to the company.

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The recently sold StarTribune offers this article that states the top 3 resolutions are “losing weight, saving money and getting a new job.” Seems logical to me in talking with others. I have to admit, I am not a fan of resolutions, but a few paragraphs from the article caught my eye.

Research by Dr. Robert Maurer, based on the principles of kaizen (the industrial science of continuous improvement), can help you take the right small steps toward you next job.Example: By asking yourself one small question every day, such as, “If finding a new job were my top priority, what would I be thinking and doing now?” you can train your subconscious mind to deliver useful answers, because the brain loves questions.

According to Dr. Maurer, small incremental steps work because our brain is hard-wired to resist change. Even thinking about a major life change, such as finding a new job, can trigger the brain’s fight-or-flight response, which in turn shuts down creativity and thinking — and you get stuck. Small changes, however, can bypass that automatic defense.

The article continues later:

For your job search, try taking one small action every day, such as calling one relative or old friend for a networking conversation. At the end of 30 days, you’ll have made about 25 more call than most other job seekers, and you’ll be that much closer to your dream job.

I like this advice since it seems to me that many of my acquaintances either attempt to do too much, too soon in their job search or they do not make a change at all (even though they should). A steady, consistent, focused search is typically leads to the most successful outcome.

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