I am usually a bit cynical regarding these types of articles.  My reasoning is this – each individual is unique in their motivations and rewards.  Attempting to place employees into set categories regarding global characterizations is a stretch.  Nonetheless, this article from Inc.com presents some excellent points and advice for employee engagement.

I do not believe you can overstate this one:

5. Employees want flexibility. In addition to deciding how they work, the experts say employees also appreciate having a say over when they work. Gunther has, of course, set up a radically flexible schedule for his employees that might not work for every office. But, he says, it has enabled him to find and retain top talent for Meddius. “We’ve had people who have taken significant pay cuts to work for us, because at their old job they were told to show up and be at the office between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.,” he says. “Generation Y is looking for a synergy between their personal lives and their professional lives.” Set up a flexible vacation policy or a telecommuting policy that enables employees to work from home. It involves a great deal of trust, but, as Pink says, “If you don’t trust your employees, you’ve got much bigger problems.”

This recession has lowered the drive for some employees on this topic, but it is still prevalent among the younger workers.  I love the last line as it is absolute truth.

I think the older generation has a palpable difficulty with telecommuting.  My discussions with many Boomer-aged managers have included comments basically stating that to be effective in the role, they have to be in the office every day.  My take on that commentary is that the manager is projecting their own approach into the position.  They may struggle in a remote role, but I’m not convinced that is always the case with the younger generations.

There are 9 other interesting points in the article so I recommend you read the entire thing.

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I made that up, Sinking Stock Syndrome, from some interactions I have had recently with a couple of small business owners.  Both owners suffered from this syndrome which had disastrously negative effects on their company, both in revenue and morale.

Here is how I define my newly-minted syndrome – an irrational hope that a grossly underperforming salesperson will miraculously turn things around and become a sales superstar.

It rarely happens.

The problem stems from the business owner who has invested in this failing salesperson.  Notice I used “business owners” – I do believe this syndrome is more prevalent among this group as they are closely tied to the business (i.e. financially, emotionally, historically).  They usually have a relatively accurate count of the resources invested in this salesperson.

The sinking stock analogy will be understandable to anyone who buys and sells stock.  When you purchase a stock, you expect (hope) it increases in value.  When it goes the other way, you encounter a sinking feeling as you have now lost money.  It is at this point that you need to make cold, objective decisions about the stock.  Is it going to rebound in an acceptable time frame or did you make a bad investment?

The temptation is to hang on to the stock with the expectation it will turnaround and at least get back to the buy price you paid so you can break even.  While you wait, the stock drops further and you have now lost more money.

Hope keeps you from dumping the stock.  The desire to earn back what you have lost keeps you from making the tough decision to sell.

Business owners can get caught in this same trap.  They know a salesperson is not performing and that they are losing money by continuing to keep them in the role.  Other employees see that this salesperson is not closing deals and they start to become upset.  This salesperson stays on the payroll even though it is clear that he/she cannot do the job.  At some point, the tough decision has to be made.  It can be to put together a get-well plan for the salesperson.  However, most times it is to part ways…or should I say cut your losses?

It is difficult, almost an admission of failure that hits the owner directly.  But it has to be done.

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Warning – psychology babble coming your way from Fast Company.  I encounter this effect often with clients:

That judgment is what’s called, in psychology, the Fundamental Attribution Error. Meaning that we tend to attribute people’s behavior to their core character rather than to their situation. So when somebody cuts you off in traffic, you think, “What a jerk!” You don’t think, “I wonder situation he’s in that’s causing him to drive so crazy.” Even though in those times when YOU have driven crazily, it was almost certainly because of the situation you were in—you were late for a job interview or a date.

May I make a suggestion?  The use of assessments introduces objective measurement into the situation which helps to limit fundamental attribution error.  Limiting subjectivity generally leads to better hiring especially with salespeople.

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I’ve bumped into a common tension point within a company – the battle between Human Resources and Sales.  My observations (and participation) of this feud is that it comes down to a fundamental difference in perspective between the two departments.

Human resources has the strongest internal focus of any department.  Their world exists within the walls of the company and then spend most of their time examining, building, adjusting, etc. that world.  Clearly this is an important aspect of building corporate culture.  A weak HR department has a significant negative impact on the entire company.  I have worked in those environments and they are tortuous at times.

Sales as the strongest external focus of any department.  Sales has to operate in the marketplace, in the prospect’s world, to be successful.  Hence, sales often has the least internal focus or awareness of any department.  My career has been molded in this environment so I am predisposed to this area.

An overly aggressive sales department can become feral towards the internal culture.  This disconnect is a difficult path to navigate in that the sales department slowly realizes that other departments contribute to their success (finance, ops/production, etc.).  A feral sales department can sow dissention throughout an entire company.

Yet, the natural tension that can occur between HR and Sales is often due to the external focus of the sales department.

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Inc.com offers up a timely article regarding employee blogging and the different pitfalls for companies who allow it.  Honestly, I haven’t put as much thought into this topic as the writer.  I did find these 10 points interesting (thought I don’t follow them):

1.    Remind employees to familiarize themselves with the employment agreement and policies included in the employee handbook before they begin blogging.
2.    State that the policy applies to both blogs for the company and personal blogs.
3.    Blog posts should not disclose any information that is confidential or proprietary to the company or to any third party that has disclosed information to the company.
4.    If an employee comments on any aspect of the company’s business they must clearly identify themselves as an employee in the blog posting and include a disclaimer.
5.    The disclaimer should be something like “the views expressed on this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of (your companies name).
6.    Blog posts should not include company logos or trademarks.
7.    Blog posts must respect copyright, privacy, fair use, financial disclosure, and other applicable laws.
8.    Employees should neither claim nor imply that they are speaking on the company’s behalf.
9.    Corporate blogs (located on your company website) require approval when the employee is blogging about the company and the industry.
10.    That the company reserves the right to request the certain subjects are avoided, withdraw certain posts and remove inappropriate comments.

Blogs open up a new liability for companies in that the information is disseminated to a large audience in an almost uncontrollable media.  Clearly employees are restrained by their potential termination if they cross a line.  I always think of the recently terminated employees – the restraining thought of termination is no longer in effect.

That leads to some interesting posts…to say the least.

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Saleshq.com offers up tricks for telecommuters in this article.  There are some solid points like this:

5. Communication

It’s very easy to forget the outside world when you work from home. While you do get to avoid the intricacies of corporate politics, it also means that you have to be your own advocate.

Make sure there are multiple ways for your boss and colleagues to contact you. Check your email frequently, and respond as immediately as you can. Keep your phone at hand, and make sure you call if there’s an office meeting. An instant messaging service works well for open communication if something changes last minute. For more long distance projects, make use of free video conferencing tools like Skype.

This fact is mission-critical.  One of my customers has a remote salesperson who works in the same small town as the office, but she telecommutes.  I’m not sure why, but that is a topic for another post.  Anyway, one of the things she has expertly established is her lack of availability during the work day.  What I mean is that the office can never get her on the phone during the day.  Cell phone, home phone…it doesn’t matter, their calls always end up in voicemail.

I find this fact appalling, but my customer tolerates it.  What I believe this does is free her up to do other activities during goal time for selling.  The office has now become accustomed to not reaching her on the phone so they think nothing of it.

If you manage telecommuters, you must have a communication channel (cell, text, IM, etc.) that always allows access to them.

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Full confession – I despise meetings.  I have spent much of my career sitting through insanely inefficient meetings – I prefer to call them “boil the ocean” meetings.  The topics in these meetings usually lacked clarity and focus so the meeting would drift…badly.  Of course, when your boss is sitting in the meeting (or worse, was the one who called it) it is difficult to exit early.

But alas, I have found an inspiring article with a fantastic idea.  This is from Inc.com (emphasis mine):

“Interaction should be constant, not crammed into meetings once a week. You just turn around in your chair and bounce an idea off one of the other 10 people in your office. Keep the floor plan open so people can talk to each other. As the company gets bigger, keep dividing it into smaller and smaller groups. Follow Jeff Bezos’s two-pizza rule: Project teams should be small enough to feed with two pizzas. At Hunch, we don’t have meetings unless absolutely necessary. When I used to have meetings, though, this is how I would do it: There would be an agenda distributed before the meeting. Everybody would stand. At the beginning of the meeting, everyone would drink 16 ounces of water. We would discuss everything on the agenda, make all the decisions that needed to be made, and the meeting would be over when the first person had to go to the bathroom.”

Caterina Fake is the co-founder of the photo-sharing site Flickr. Her new start-up is Hunch, a website in New York City that takes user input to make recommendations on thousands of subjects.

“When I used to have meetings…” – fantastic.  If I were there, I would drink a pot of coffee myself before heading into that meeting.

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This CNNMoney.com article is fascinating, at least to me.  A doctor opens up about his clinic/practice in terms of the financials of it.  As a small business owner, I have a complete appreciation for the decisions he has to make in terms of his business.  At the end of the day, it is a business.

If you think your business has to fund some extraordinary insurance policies, wrap your mind around this information:

Fixed costs for a private practice also include malpractice insurance. He pays about $7,000 a year for himself and $2,000 each for his two nurse practitioners. Schreiber admits that his cost for malpractice insurance is relatively low, compared to specialists such as ob/gyns, who pay upward of $100,000 a year.

I just about did a spit take that would have showered my laptop with coffee.  Anyway, it is an interesting read.

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I had this thought when talking to a customer – he has an employee to whom he pays a set wage (hourly pay, but same number of hours every pay period).  Week in and week out, there is no discernable, tangible output of work from this employee.  Does this fact make this employee’s pay infinite per hour?

Just a thought.

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I’ve been busy over the past week or two handling a myriad of business topics and tasks which has decreased my blogging time dramatically.  One item has come up during this time at one of our customers – a battle of wills amongst managers.  This is no small battle, it has turned into an ongoing war for which I am now in the midst of the battlefield.

Without going into specifics, I can tell you where we start in these situations – motivations.  The first place to look when there is interpersonal conflict within an office team is the motivation pattern for each individual.  In the instance with our customer, we have two people with almost polar opposite motivational patterns.

Here is why this matters – neither person can understand where the other is coming from, especially in terms of decision-making.  Each person finds the other one to be inconsistent, off-base and…well, wrong.  The relationship has deteriorated into acerbic communication.

Unfortunately, this customer did not assess this employee when they were in the hiring phase.  Instead, they made an emotional hire.  This employee has the skills to succeed in this role, but the hiring manager was never informed of the employee’s motivational pattern.  If he had been, he would have known the differences between the two of them and he could have managed through them.

I’m not sure the relationship is salvageable.  I am certain it was avoidable.

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