I admit it, I read a lot. I find myself very curious about many things not the least of which is the viewpoints of other people. Since I wrote my last post things have been pretty crazy.
I am working with a client to help build a bridge between philanthropy and businesses as one part of a new model to address some of our issues around the management of health and the delivery of health care.
To many it may be just a matter of semantics; but I see philanthropy as different than charity. Philanthropy to me has a connotation of investing in a larger cause or purpose. I am not saying charity is bad, but I rather like the idea of making investments in societal infrastructure to achieve a better quality of life for everyone and more comfortable for me. I don’t really like codependency between adults in any form very much.
I also see the management of health and delivering health care as being related, but different. I think that managing health is a collaborative effort that involves patients/people, providers, payers, educators, etc. in investigating and creating solutions; hopefully on a proactive rather than reactive basis.
My clients organization is mission driven, they are a not for profit. We have had interesting discussions about how their role in delivering health care is really the how of what they do rather than the what. It is really a delivery mechanism rather than the goal itself. We have been discussing of late whether the role of his team is actually an important bridge to that larger mission because it allows people from the community to get involved in a lot of ways that is not direct care giving.
I saw a statistic last week that said over 75% of people are not feeling fulfilled in their jobs. I know from my work in employee engagement that less than 30% of American workers consider themselves highly engaged and in many cases they feel they don’t trust the senior management of their organization or the leadership of the country. I find that very sad, but also a significant opportunity.
Continued Reading...
Well by tomorrow we will have survived our first week of 2012! I have to say for me so far my cautious optimism continues to hold out. Part of it may be bluntly that I live in Phoenix and we have been experiencing unseasonably warm, sunny weather. I know there are those who love the seasons, but bluntly I have lived on the East Coast and in the Pacific Northwest long enough that warm, sunny weather doesn’t bore me.
I am also kind of jazzed to see the stock market up a bit. I will be honest I don’t pay a ton of attention to it as a small business owner. I kind of tend to gage what is happening with the economy by my personal reality- do clients call me to do work and can they pay me once the work is done.
I am starting to hear more and more people talk about doing things differently as well. I won’t say it has become a movement yet, but I seem to be encountering more people recognizing that doing things the way they have always been done may not solve our problems and that working collaboratively rather than finger pointing may even yield some positive results.
Continue Reading...
I had mentioned before how I had the opportunity to attend a webinar based largely on Stephen M.R Covey’s (or Covey Jr as I like to call him) book, The Speed of Trust, and how I found his discussions of the trust dividend versus the trust tax very interesting.
Over the last week I have had a chance to participate in a number of activities that I found to carry through on a similar theme for me at least and I thought I would share that perspective.
As anybody who has read any of my stuff knows I am a big believer in relationships; I think it is important however to distinguish investing in relationships versus transacting. I think of this as “three dimensional” versus “two dimensional” relationships.
Over the last week I have been the beneficiary of several people who took an investment approach.
Continued Reading
I think it was Einstein who I paraphrase in saying- Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Yet still we persist.
I read a lot. I read blogs, articles, books, etc. I am always curious to benefit from the thinking of people smarter than I am which I have calculated to be about 95% of the population of the world at this point ( if you have any doubts just ask my family).
I see illustrations that kind of make me go huh daily. One that caught my eye today was that the U.S. Postal Service is going to extend the amount of time it takes to move a piece of first class mail to reduce expenses. It seems that a combination of shrinking demand and increasing expenses for operations is causing them to lose more and more money. Their biggest single expense is the cost of retirement benefits and retiree medical benefits. It must have eluded me as to how reducing the level of service you offer is going to address either of these issues.
Continue Reading...
What’s the core of leadership? I have often wondered about this. Like everyone, I have worked for individuals who have the capacity to inspire and energize an army, and I have also worked for people who would have been a better match for jobs where they could have worked without ever encountering people. But recently, I read an interesting quote, and I believe it defines the true core of leadership.
I just read an article on BNET http://bit.ly/9d7KjH about customer service in an industry that sadly needs it.
We had the opportunity to experience the “hospitality” of the U.S. airlines quite a bit this last week. I personally got to experience it returning from a preliminary relo trip and then two of our guests who flew in to attend my daughter’s college graduation got to experience it on steroids.
They stranded one of our guests on the way home and the other both coming and going! The almost pathological indifference to their customer’s situation was mind boggling!
Contrast this to the level of service described in the enclosed article on Virgin Air. The other interesting thing about this article is that it describes the process used by Virgin Air to hire and select their employees and then the training they put them through before they ever set foot unsupervised on a flight.
Continue Reading...
I have to admit I found that particular metaphor very catchy when I encountered in Nilofer Merchant’s June 2 blog post on the Harvard Business Review site. Her blog post titled People Aren’t Cogs discussed some of the same issues that have perplexed me for decades- why don’t more organizations get the fact that investing in the talents and abilities is not only a critical strategy, but it is good for business?
I think the following two quotes sum up the conventional wisdom that continues to be proliferated in most organizations-
"Companies have a hard time distinguishing between the cost of paying people and the value of investing in them."
- Thomas A Stewart
1948
Continued Reading...
I have been kind of following a post on the Harvard Business Review blog about a hypothetical conversation between a CFO and a CEO that goes something like this – “The CFO says, ‘what if we invest in people through training and development and they leave us for a competitor? ’
The CEO responds ‘what if we don’t and they stay’.”
To date that post has received close to 400 “likes” and 350+ comments ranging from anecdotal to pedantic dialogues on the merits of both positions with the occasional shot at why HR stinks thrown in.
I personally despise the term human capital. As I have said here before the term to me implies something very transactional and short term. We lose sight of people as individuals. The combined talents and abilities of our staff do represent a significant asset and investment, but here is a news flash -
Continue Reading...
Maybe it was the few days I got to spend in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains last week with a number of truly talented students, faculty, and industry leaders representing the biomedical engineering field. The venue at Clemson University was amazing and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to describe many of the people I had a chance to interact with as brilliant.
Whatever the cause I found myself very thoughtful and contemplative as I flew west and receptive to new ideas and the interpretation of ideas I had previously.
I am a big fan of the site BNET.com. I feel like they provide a lot of value added content, but this week they were on fire. A couple of articles/posts particularly stood out for me.
Making the transition from individual contributor to manager or entrepreneur to “corporate” executive is one of the most difficult shifts most of us will face in our careers. A study conducted by a national management consulting firm a few years back indicated that more than 40% of newly appointed managers fail in their first 18 months on the job!
As a consultant working with many entrepreneurs attempting to grow their businesses either for continuity purposes or for sale I see them experience many of the same issues.
In many cases these issues boil down to developing and maintaining effective relationships.
Our educational system has a bias towards “technical” skills and individual achievement. Winning means getting the best grades and “setting the curve” as an individual.
“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships”
Charles Simic
Last week as I mentioned in my blog I had a chance to talk with my sister in law; a very talented communications professional, about iconic brands, connections and related concepts.
We talked about what creates an iconic brand, she felt the elements include among other things:
- A defining brand truth. Think about the concept of a defining brand truth. It articulates value statement not only to your customers, but also to your employees. It allows them to commit rather than merely comply.
- A set of in transient principles. Great brands refuse to compromise on their principles. They may change a process or a look, but they retain their essence. What they represent is foundational and consistent.
“When the pace of change outside an organization becomes greater than the pace of change inside the organization, the end is near.”
John R. Walter, President, ATT
Our current situation is in turmoil. We are facing the most significant recession since the 1930’s, we see businesses closing or cutting back. So far at least half of the financial bailout hasn’t yielded significant results. Banks are still not lending.
Here are a few other “pre-meltdown” considerations for you as well-
Eric Allenbaugh, a Lake Oswego based managed consultant published an article describing the three primary cultures represented in corporate America-
You may already be familiar with Compliance to Commitment™, which I have also referred to as forging employee engagement as a strategic weapon in your competitive arsenal. While much of the information I have shared previously has been anecdotal, a recent white paper from the Peppers & Rogers Group, Engagement - the New Competitive Advantage, provides additional validation for developing employee commitment to improve your business.
One of the first things the Peppers & Rogers study distinguishes is a new view of engagement relative to the traditional view of intellectual, behavioral, and emotional levels. To describe those a little more fully, the intellectual level is when an employee agrees with your company vision statement, and/or a customer values the attributes of your brand. The behavioral level, recommending or purchasing your product or service, is when you start to see energy or discretionary effort. The third level, the emotional level, is when you actually see “buy in” and enthusiasm. You can see how, in some ways, this approach parallels Ron Willingham’s three dimensions of congruency: I think, I feel, and I am. Willingham pointed out, and Pepper and Rogers agree, that the emotional “buy in” is much more impactful than the intellectual appeal.
Continue Reading...