Leadership Advice

No matter what business you're in, there will come a day when you'll be forced to sit someone down for a good old fashioned confrontation...

One reason that many organizations have not embraced flexible work programs is that middle managers fundamentally mistrust their employees. There is a pervasive belief that if an employee is “out of sight” his or her work will be out of mind. There is only one way to overcome that kind of basic mistrust: measure what employees produce, not how much time they spend on the job.

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.” Bill Gates said that, and he’s exactly right. More often than not, great accomplishments cause individuals and organizations to become comfortable with their way of doing things. Businesses turn static. Workers turn their focus inward. Even the most dynamic of organizations can turn complacent, thinking that what they are doing is right, that there is no need to change.

Employees, despite what you think or what they say, don't want to be coddled. They want to be successful, proud, to feel accomplishment and growth. All of the same things you want. They want to be mentored and coached. They want to be rewarded when they do great things. And, they even want feedback so they can get better.

Are you leading change? Smart people will resist your change initiatives for some good and valid reasons. Here are some practical solutions. 

If you want more productivity, perhaps you should manage productivity metrics and not just financial metrics. Here are five really useful, easy to apply metrics.

Neuroscience has good news for small businesses: Employees care more about “interesting work” than financial compensation. Here are six ways to think about applying the physiology of motivation in the office.

Too many otherwise competent professionals can’t bring themselves to discuss the most basic realities that define their teams: members who behave rudely, members who produce poor quality work, members who are dishonest, sacred cows that have existed for years. This is unfortunate because getting past these barriers is required for real performance improvement.

"I call these the Change Agent Bumper Stickers. Here are seven universal sayings that can comfort and guide anyone engaged in the effort of setting a new direction, orchestrating innovation, establishing a culture, or changing behavior."

"Getting fired is devastating for the employee, so don't make a bad situation worse by saying something stupid."

"When a remote authority sets incentives, people respond by manipulating the system. This fact is poorly understood by education reformers who are fond of pay-for-performance and national standards, by health care reformers who are fond of paying for quality, and by financial regulators."

In the network era, things you can’t see are more valuable than things you can. Building the capacity to create economic value through things such as innovating and enhancing brand reputation is as important, or more important, than generating specific results from a specific initiative. Twenty-five years ago, intangibles accounted for less than a third of the value of the S&P 500. Today, intangibles can make up more than 80 percent of that value.

Most companies, far from being hives of busy, effective executives, could instead be seen as "a few isolated islands of action amid an ocean of inaction," the researchers found

Leaders. Here are seven remarkably practical, powerfully useful things you can do year round to make your organization better. 

A yet-to-be published study, examined 17 firms without formal performance appraisal systems. Those organizations all reported low turnover, high employee morale and strong relationships between managers and employees. One finding: when feedback is "not going to be used to judge you or your fate in the company, you are more likely to be open about where you need to grow and it's going to be far more effective,"

A recent survey shows that 55 percent of employees say their performance review is NOT a fair and accurate representation of their performance, 67 percent say they found the feedback in the review to be a surprise, and 75 percent indicate that they aren’t given specific examples of their work to support the feedback they receive.

Want a more innovative company? Get rid of three kinds of people who block innovation and suck the energy out your team. When confronted with any of the following three people—and you have found it impossible to change their ways, say goodbye.

"The reason why so many organizations have so much trouble doing what they intend to do, on time, is because when they fail to meet a deadline, nothing happens."