Funny article here from Inc.com about a CareerBuilder.com survey – Survey: Late Employees Lie. As many as one in four employees admit to making up fake excuses for arriving late to work, a new study reveals. Amazing that they invested the resources in running a survey on this topic. I always wonder about surveys regarding lies – maybe the respondents are lying in the survey? At any rate, a good closing line from the article: While hiring managers said they typically don’t question an employee’s excuse for being late, 27 percent said they usually don’t believe them when they do.
Continue ReadingA Quick Lesson On Millennials (Gen Y)
ABCnews.com offers a comprehensive article explaining some traits of the Millennial generation – Meet the New Millennials. The lengthy article provides many different insights into this generation. Here are some anecdotal highlights: “We recently had to tell a young woman employee that this was not an underwear optional workplace,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “This generation needs to be deeply coached about wardrobe, and a lot of them are used to getting up at 10 or 11 a.m. Forget about them showing up to work at 8 or 9 a.m.” “They grew up with an ‘everyone gets a trophy’ sense of entitlement,” he said. “They are members of a generation that thinks… Read More
Continue ReadingA Lack Of Ethics
First off, I didn’t know government workers were ever fired. Then I read this CareerJournal.com story At the Pentagon, Employees Fill ‘Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure’. The gist of the story is that this Pentagon lawyer keeps a website of ethical violations that occur within the government sector. Some humorous examples: -Take the case of the Customs and Border Protection officer who landed a government helicopter on his daughter’s grade-school playground… -Two Veterans Affairs bureaucrats were charged with overbilling the government and receiving kickbacks from a supplier. “The product?” Mr. Epstein dryly notes: “Red tape.” It was more than 100,000 rolls of a special type used to prevent tampering with prescription-drug orders.… Read More
Continue ReadingAnnoying Aspects Of Meetings
Inc.com offers a quick article about annoying meeting items – New Study Reveals Why Meetings Are So Unbearable. From the article: Of 1,037 full- or part-time workers polled, 27 percent ranked disorganized, rambling meetings as their top frustration, followed by 17 percent who said they were annoyed by peers who interrupt and try to dominate meetings. Surprisingly, respondents considered BlackBerry use less intrusive than people falling asleep during a meeting €” 9 percent of respondents were bothered by co-workers nodding off, compared to just 5 percent who said they get frustrated by others checking e-mail. Checking email? That makes me laugh since a certain someone in our company Rock Star has… Read More
Continue ReadingTurnover Trouble
Turnover is trouble for any company when it is not controlled. To use a timely analogy, it is similar to a forest fire. A controlled burn clears out a section allowing it to be repopulated with fresh, new trees. An out-of-control fire can destroy an entire forest in a short amount of time. Obviously, extreme turnover is typically a sign of a “churn-and-burn” organization. However, a small, controlled amount of turnover is valuable to an organization’s overall health. But what about a company with no turnover? Is it healthy? This question is difficult to answer in a vacuum. Number of employees, company revenue, market trends, etc. all play into the equation. Yet, problems will… Read More
Continue ReadingAssessing Cultures Before A Merger or Acquisition
Last week I posted on a democratically-run company and the challenges they face. Today I came across a business article from our local Pioneer Press titled Lawson’s clash of cultures. The article speaks to locally-based Lawson Software and their acquisition of a Swedish company. There are distinct differences in business approach between the US and Europe: The problem hasn’t been the technology. It’s been cultural, especially getting Swedish employees accustomed to a new way of doing their jobs, Debes said. “It’s the Nordic region, so you’re talking about a socialist culture where, even though there are no formal unions, the employees act like they’re unionized,” he said. They expect management… Read More
Continue ReadingUbiquitous Communication
Yesterday I posted on communication blindness. Today, I stumbled upon CareerJournal.com’s Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy? A stunning thought that I have never considered. Yet, I suspect Gen Y has some ideals that favor this approach. Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary’s 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited. Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year. At first blush,… Read More
Continue ReadingCommunication Blindness
Anyone who has managed salespeople knows how difficult a task that can be. We see it often in companies where clouded communication occurs daily. I think most of you could name numerous situations throughout your career where management communication simply broke down or worse, did not even occur. SellingPower.com’s article – There€™s No Communication Around Here! – dives right into this topic. Clear communication covers many transgressions. We’ve posted about this topic numerous times since it is so important. In case you had doubts: The latest Watson Wyatt Communication ROI Study found that companies with effective communication practices have a 19 percent higher market premium and a 57 percent higher… Read More
Continue ReadingA Shot At Perfectionism
Since I work with perfectionists and am not one myself, I was drawn to Penelope Trunk’s latest article – Breaking the Perfection Habit. Let’s just jump into it: Here are the reasons I can’t stand perfectionists: €¢ Perfectionists procrastinate because they’re scared of not being perfect. €¢ Perfectionists are hypercritical to the point that they can’t support people around them. €¢ Perfectionists can’t finish a project because they can always think of a way to improve it. €¢ Perfectionists are phony, because no one’s perfect and they can’t handle showing that in themselves. Well, that is direct, isn’t it? I harass one of our perfectionists for always making a left… Read More
Continue ReadingGo To Your Strengths – The Art Of Playing Dumb
Red Bird and myself are fighting over the chance to claim this CareerJournal.com article – The Art of Playing Dumb To Deter Unwanted Tasks. Jared Sandberg is an entertaining writer and I highly recommend this article. At first I thought it was tongue-in-cheek, but it is not. This ability is a real artform. Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do — without ever having to admit it. For junior staffers, it’s a way of attaining power through powerlessness. For managers, it can juice their status by pretending to be incapable of… Read More
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