Feeling Minnesota

Great story from Foxnews.com – Nesting at Work: What Does Your Office Say About You? Recently, a friend forwarded me an e-mail exchange that had kicked off a brief, surreal dustup at Natural Resource Group, a small environmental consulting company in Minneapolis. Here’s how it began: “Rich, I noticed that there is a deer head in the office next to you. Is it yours? If not, do you know whose it is? If it is yours, I will need you to keep the light off in that office and close the door as we have auditors touring the offices today. Also, if it is yours, you will be taking it… Read More

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Gen Y Workers Want…

This: “a high level of connectivity and collaboration with employees at all levels of the organization – but especially with young, like-minded professionals.” According to a short article in Managesmarter.com’s What Gen Y Wants At Work. The one item we have seen the most in this generation: Connection. This is often lacking. Just over 80 percent of Gen Y workers say they feel disconnected from the information flow, politics and career opportunities in their organization. We have seen some fairly brash Gen Y candidates, but I think the confidence many of them exude is valuable. This generation has an incredibly flattened hierarchical mindset. They view the company org chart in… Read More

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Time-Outs At Work

Yes, you read that correctly. This is the topic covered in SHRM’s February issue of HR Magazine. The article titled “Days of Contemplation” (membership required) has the tagline “Have a problem employee? Give him a time-out to decide whether to come back fully committed or to move on.” The article discusses the use of paid decision-making leaves or “days of contemplation.” Here is the premise behind it’s use: Adult learning theory will tell you that when you treat people like adults, they will respond in kind. Unlike formal discipline, which tends to punish workers formally for substandard job performance or inappropriate workplace conduct, decision-making leaves are much more subtle. More… Read More

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Soft Skills Development

An encouraging sign from M.B.A. programs as reported by CareerJournal.com – M.B.A. Programs Hone ‘Soft Skills’. From the article: The schools are responding to employers’ growing interest in soft skills. Executive suites are increasingly composed of managers running far-flung operations who must attract and retain knowledgeable workers. That puts a premium on skills such as communicating and brokering compromises, says Warren Bennis, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and author of a best-selling book on leadership. “It isn’t just nice — these interpersonal skills,” Mr. Bennis says. “It’s about stuff that’s necessary to lead a complex organization.” We’ve been observing this shift first hand… Read More

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How To Manage Gen X and Gen Y

CareerBuilder.com’s latest newsletter features Managing Outside Your Generation which discusses the differences in managing Gen X employees vs. Gen Y employees. The article is a good, hands-on read for any manager. To cut to the summary statement of the article: Generation X requires more training, whether on-the-job or through continued education, and feedback on a regular basis. Generation Y also requires a higher amount of feedback than what you may be used to, but they also desire greater flexibility and the freedom to run with a project once it is assigned to them. Good advice and insight. Then there is this specific suggestion: If you are not doing so already,… Read More

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Filling The Leadership Gap

CareerJournal.com provides an interesting look at one Minnesota company in Manager Shortage Spurs Firms to Grow Their Own. Schwan found itself with a significant shortage of leadership talent that is symptomatic of the national hiring landscape. The tight labor market puts a premium on retaining top talent and raises the cost of outside hires. And leaner corporate structures make it harder for managers to naturally hone their skills through incremental steps up the ladder; companies must instead formally teach them. Demographics play a role, too: The looming retirement of baby boomers is forcing companies to think about replacements. Schwan has developed an internal solution to combat this problem: Schwan is… Read More

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Engaging Gen Y Employees

BusinessWeek.com’s How to Keep Your Team Talking is a bit of a how-to guide on running a brainstorming meeting. That, to me, is not as intriguing as looking at the management implications of properly handling Gen Y workers. The younger generations crave involvement in their work roles. They crave a purpose, a meaning, a mission more so than any generation before them. This mission goes beyond monetary rewards. They long to make a difference in the world through their work. This distinction is important because it points to the fact that they long to be engaged (to borrow a buzzword from the article). The idea behind engagement-mania is that when… Read More

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How To Recover From A Big Mistake

Yahoo Hot Jobs offers Bounce Back After A Big Mistake. The article provides 6 steps for recovering from a significant error. This topic is of great importance in hiring strong salespeople. Sales requires people who have a unique ability to handle rejection and move on without flinching. Similarly, strong salespeople take responsibility for their actions, including failures. And let’s add one more – strong sales managers hold their salespeople accountable and do not accept excuses. You can see how interrelated all of these topics are to sales success. This article offers straight-forward advice for dealing with a big mistake. Here is the one that caught my attention: 1. Own it.… Read More

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Bosses Gone Wild

Super Bowl week leads to this article from CareerJournal.com. I am a big Tony Dungy fan and the article provides an interesting look at his managing/coaching style (an excellent style in my opinion). The excerpt that I enjoyed: The vice president of marketing at a Silicon Valley company attributes rapid turnover at many West Coast technology companies to what he calls “screaming-bully bosses.” One such boss, a body builder who liked to show off his strength to managers by doing 25 pushups at the start of meetings, called him at all hours to scream about things that had gone wrong. A second bully boss, the CEO of a semiconductor-network start-up,… Read More

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The Etiquette Of Retention

Does ‘Thank You’ Help Keep Associates? from CareerJournal.com takes a look at turnover/retention issues at a major law firm. Scary, I know. However, there is a good lesson in here in regards to retaining top employees. First the setup from the article: Faced with a surge in turnover of its associates, the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has been putting on a charm offensive to hold onto junior lawyers. The presentation showed that the New York firm, now with about 625 lawyers, lost 31% of its associates in 2004 and 30% in 2005. The average associate attrition rate for law firms of about that size or bigger for… Read More

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