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Daily Dairy from Contented Cows
Sometimes it's the Little Things
Written by Richard HaddenWhat Do You Mean - Contented Cows?
Written by Richard HaddenWhat Do You Mean - Contented Cows?
Richard Hadden
What to Do If Politics Are Taking a Toll on Your Workplace Productivity
This week, I contributed to a piece Noreen Seebacher @writeNoreen wrote for CMS Wire about steps managers should take to deal with the continuing decline in productivity owing to U.S. election-related politics and governmental affairs distractions in the workspace. Here's a link: http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/politics-are-taking-a-toll-on-workplace-productivity-heres-what-to-do/ If you find it worthy, I'm sure Noreen and CMS Wire won't mind if you give them a shout out.
Helping New Leaders Stay Out of the Weeds
by Bill Catlette
Nearly every day we witness or experience the net effect of people having been thrust into front-line leadership roles without being vetted for leadership capability, and without the benefit of any management training. The evidence pile consists of long lines at retail shops because managers don’t know how to recruit, surly or inattentive front line employees who’ve not been coached, corrected, or had their own needs attended to, lowered performance standards that owe to a manager who sees their role as being more of a buddy than a leader, or staff vacancies because A-players got tired of having to work with turkeys and voted with their feet.
It’s the equivalent of tossing someone into the deep end of a pool and walking away, or, from the new leader’s perspective, stepping into the batter’s box with 2 strikes already against you. With frightening, yet predictable regularity, they flounder, gasp for air, and take untold numbers of people down with them, at immense personal and institutional cost. This doesn’t have to happen.
Here is some admittedly tactical advice for helping your new leaders stay out of the weeds:
Growing Pains - How Do I Fit in Around Here?
Richard Hadden
"If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you."
- Steve Jobs
People involved in the work of any organization, large, small, or somewhere in between, need to know how they fit in with the purpose of the enterprise. This doesn’t get any easier with growth. In small startups, everybody’s doing everything, including taking out the trash, and the customer line of sight is short, and straight.
But as we grow, it’s virtually inevitable that people will begin to lose sight of where they fit in and how their contribution matters.
In the 21 years that Contented Cow Partners has been in business (no, we can’t believe it either), we’ve worked with some companies that grew substantially, by acquisition, organic means, or both, during the time we worked with them. I remember, specifically, one CEO telling me, “When we had 300 employees, and I knew every one of them, it was easy for most of us to make the connection between our work and our customer. Now that we’re twice that size, we have to work four times as hard to keep that connection as strong.”
It's Not About the Phones
Written by Richard HaddenIt's Not About the Phones
Richard Hadden
If I hear this question one more time… I won’t be surprised. “How do we get these people to get off their phones and get their work done?”
First point: it’s not about the phones. The phones are irrelevant. They simply represent yet another distraction, and, let’s be honest, a tool which most of us (irrespective of generation) have rendered pretty much indispensable.
Second point: Please don’t rely on the law to solve this problem for you. It has little potential to do so.
In a day and age when we ask people to be electronically available more or less 24/7, we can’t really ask them to put away their phones when we want them to, but take them out when we need them to.
Last week, before speaking to an audience of 900 farming professionals in Chicago, I heard some sage advice from a successful entrepreneur whose farm provides fuel, food, and fibers to a large portion of the US, regarding this very subject. Here’s what he told me:
“I tell our folks, ‘You have a job to do. Here’s what we need, what we expect. I’ll reward you generously for meeting and exceeding our production goals, and for doing it the right way. Falling short will cost you. Because it costs me.
Sometimes Leaders Have To Put it All On The Line
Bill Catlette
In the late 1980’s I left a very good job because I refused to follow a direct order that, though legal, was contrary to both policy and practice of the organization. Moreover, carrying it out would have materially harmed the livelihood and careers of some good people for no good reason. I certainly didn’t take the matter lightly, as my family, like most, likes to eat and pay its bills. Yet, I’ve seldom looked back... until recently, when Acting U.S. Attorney General, Sally Yates similarly disobeyed an order (albeit more publicly), and paid a similar price. She got to hear the two words made famous by Donald Trump in his last job, without having to join the Screen Actors Guild.
I totally get the fact that people who refuse lawful orders in the workplace get fired. They have to, because no organization can or should tolerate insubordination.
That said, I don’t know whether Sally Yates was given a lawful order pertaining to the Muslim / Travel / Refuge Ban or not. But what I do know is that there is evidence aplenty suggesting that she firmly believed that what she was expected to do was wrong, and thus formed the basis for her refusal to comply. But this post isn’t about Sally, or me.
Three Essential Steps to Improving Your Managerial Coaching Results
by Bill Catlette
Few would argue that coaching has become an important part of any leader’s repertoire for improving human and organizational performance. Yet, most have given little thought to when, where, and under what circumstances coaching is most effective, let alone trying to define or understand its key components. Let’s try to shed some light on the latter, with an eye for things that can immediately be put into practice and used to move the needle.
Workplace Productivity in the Post-Inauguration Period
By Richard Hadden
Psst! Psst! Yeah, you. Look around. Listen. What do you hear? Does your workplace look and sound like it usually does? I bet it doesn’t. Odds are that more people than usual are paying attention to news portals, be it television, radio, social media, or other digital news outlets. I’ll venture too that there is more politics and civics inspired banter between co-workers than one usually finds 11 weeks post-election. The bad news is that while this is going on, other things aren’t, like work. Your productivity is getting hammered, and it’s only a matter of time before customers and shareholders notice. Here’s a prediction - It’s not going to end anytime soon.
So, Mr. or Ms. Manager, your workplace productivity is getting dinged as your staff spends considerable time every day wondering aloud about their new government, and perhaps worrying privately about their healthcare, their job, and what it means to be an American these days. For that matter, this isn’t a we vs. them thing. You’re wondering and worrying the same things. So, what do you do?
Coaching Session Part 2, Debrief
Written by Bill CatletteCoaching Session Part 2, Debrief
by Bill Catlette
NOTE: This post is a debrief of a mythical coaching session that was posted yesterday. If you haven’t already read that post, please do so before proceeding further.
The coach’s objectives in this case were to:
- Begin to build trust thru truth
- Engage in a somewhat jarring, but narrowly focused session keyed to the individual’s self-interest
- Define and arrest, albeit momentarily, unhelpful behavior
- Create the first step and timely follow-up on a path to improvement and success
Coaching, particularly at senior levels, is an intensely personal, trust-dependent process. Each party must believe that the other is sincere, competent and is an interested partner. The player (President in this case) must believe that the coach has his best interest at heart.
Five things that I liked about this conversation:
A 5 Minute Coaching Session With the President
by Bill Catlette
Understandably, lots of managers at all levels struggle to have work-related coaching conversations. Typically, they are not something we've learned about in school, we lack a method, and in too many cases, find ourselves without a good example. So, using a contemporary, very public situation that has played out of late, here’s one example of what a good coach might say if they had five minutes alone with the new Commander in Chief, and a mandate to make it count. Tomorrow, we'll dissect it and try to give you some tips:
Coach: Mr. President, I’ve been retained by the American people to provide you with some executive coaching, some fresh insight perhaps. My first question is to ask whether or not you are amenable to working with a coach, because it is truly your choice.
Prez: I’m not sure I feel the need, but for now, I’m willing to hear you out. You’ve got five minutes. Use them wisely.
Coach: I’m seeing some things that I believe are keeping you from being as successful as you can, and probably would like to be in your new job. Are you interested in discussing that?
by Bill Catlette
1/24/17 4:48P Memphis
Despite unprecedented increase in the amount of digital labor-saving technology applied to our commercial processes, the U.S. rate of productivity growth has effectively been sawed in half over the last decade. You heard that right, microchips and poor productivity in the same sentence. Federal Reserve Board Chairwoman Janet Yellen has declared this trend “a key uncertainty for the U.S. economy.” That’s about a 6.3 on the Fed-speak Richter scale.
While many are in pursuit of the next gleaming digital means to cut humanoids further, or even entirely out of the process in the interest of raising productivity, we’ve been stumbling around looking for (and finding) what world class process observer and branding expert Martin Lindstrom might term small data solutions… scraps and insights that are lying right at our feet that can be picked up and applied right now, many of them for free.
Like what? How about better ways of leading people so that they actually want to part with some of their discretionary effort in the workspace and thus contribute at a higher level. No capital expenditure involved. Here’s one:
Less Selfies, More Ussies
Written by Bill CatletteLess Selfies, More Ussies
Bill Catlette
As a leadership coach, I work with managers up and down the ladder, helping them refine and capitalize on their strengths, discover hidden (to them) weaknesses, and rehab or minimize the impact of the latter. In a world that seems bent on becoming more inwardly-focused, where everyone is running for their next gig, one thing that we seem to be spending more time and emphasis on is maintaining steadfast focus on three core aspects of this thing called leadership:
On Being the New Sheriff
Written by Richard HaddenOn Being the New Sheriff
By Richard Hadden
As of noon today, for those of us in the US, there will be, as we say, a new sheriff in town. Based on the popular vote, more than half (about 54%) of those who voted in November's presidential election were disappointed in its outcome. But the Electoral College vote is what counts, quirks and all, and so there we have it.
Because I've not been asked to proffer advice to the incoming president, I'll refrain from doing so. But the rest of us - those who don't have our names on skyscrapers - often find ourselves, willingly or otherwise, put in new positions of leadership, taking over from someone else. Here are some things that will help make that transition work better, when you become the new boss: