Getting Smarter - Part 3

For the last 2 weeks, I’ve been writing about how making mistakes and changing our minds about something has taken on such a negative connotation that people are afraid to admit that they might ever have been wrong about something.

There is no doubt that the standards, as well as the stakes, are raised when you become a leader. The mistakes made by an up and coming young employee will likely bring much less damage to the company than the mistakes made by a member of the executive team. After all, when leaders make mistakes those mistakes can have long-term ramifications and can impact a far greater number of people than the average mistake. So, it makes sense at some level to hold our leaders more accountable for mistakes than we do for other employees.

But, whether you are a brand new employee, an employee with multiple years of experience, or a seasoned executive, mistakes will get made. You can bank on it. At some point in time, we all make mistakes. And let’s not forget that not all mistakes are made because someone didn’t think things through. Sometimes mistakes are caused by unforeseen circumstances or things outside of our control. In any event, the issue should never be “was a mistake made” but, rather, “how was the mistake handled? What happened when the mistake was discovered? What was learned from the mistake?”

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” - Abraham Lincoln

If we acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, then should it not then follow that everyone issues apologies for their mistakes?

I’ll bet that last statement made you stop and pause. After all, how often do apologies follow mistakes, especially in the business world? Not often.

Too many business leaders, at all levels of an organization, are so afraid to admit a mistake that they will do everything in their power to ensure that no one knows of it. They fear that admitting a mistake will be perceived as a weakness or will somehow cause doubts about their ability lead.

But I believe that the opposite is really true. I would much rather work for someone who acknowledges that they made a mistake, apologizes for it, and moves on than I would for someone who hides their mistakes.

I once had a co-worker who told me that he was a “lousy liar.” I assumed from that statement that I should not trust anything he said. Later, I discovered that his definition of being a “lousy liar” was that he was not good at it. “Lying is too much work” he told me. “I discovered long ago that I couldn’t keep my lies straight, so I just stopped lying. I was lousy at it.”

I wish more executives had his attitude toward lying. The truth is that most of them are lousy at it. And, while their employees may not publicly acknowledge their lies, those same employees are acutely aware of the lies. And, as a result, they don’t trust their leadership team.

It’s simple, isn’t it? When I lie, people find out about it. And, while they might not call me on it, they won’t trust me. And, if they don’t trust me they won’t work hard for me.

Maybe all executives should take a pledge to be “lousy liars.” It would build greater trust and create a whole new company culture.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Getting Smarter – Part 2

In my last blog entry, I wrote about how we punish politicians for imperfections. Once a politician makes a public comment, they are held to it forever. If there is something that they don’t know or understand and they make the mistake of commenting on it, they are forever branded by those comments. For some reason, we expect our politicians to be once and forever perfect. Or, said a different way, we don’t ever expect or allow our politicians to admit a mistake and learn from it.

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln

In business, everyone makes mistakes. In fact, many astute business leaders will tell you that if you are not making mistakes then you aren’t really trying. Not making mistakes means that you are sticking with the tried and true. Not making mistakes means that you aren’t trying anything new or risky.

I’ve written numerous times that one should not be afraid to make mistakes because mistakes are how we learn. Making mistakes is not only natural and human, but it’s a part of our very makeup. If you have children, you remember when they first started to learn to walk. They didn’t know how and they weren’t very strong, so they fell down a lot. But you didn’t scold them for falling down. Instead, you encouraged them to get up and try again. You didn’t expect perfection immediately and neither did they.

There’s nothing quite like the determination of a toddler trying to learn to walk.

But at some point in your child’s development the standards were raised. You began to expect bigger and better things and in some cases became less tolerant of errors and mistakes. As a result, your children may have stopped stretching themselves and started doing things that they were already comfortable with.

Take this into the business world and you see that the same logic applies. When someone first enters the workforce they make a lot of mistakes. But that’s ok, they’re still learning. As they move up the management or leadership ladder, those around them become less and less tolerant of errors. Part of the reason is that the stakes are higher. With higher stakes, there is less room for error. Hence, leaders become less inclined to take risks.

But, there is another side to this quandary as well. We have high expectations of our business leaders and managers and are unwilling to let them make mistakes. So what happens when they do make mistakes?

It’s simple. They refuse to admit them. They cover them up. They hide them and hope you won’t notice. They deceive themselves and those around them, rather than admit that they are human and have human failings.

And in doing so, they fail the very people and organizations that they have pledged to serve.

But…..I’ll write more about that next week.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Getting Smarter – Part 1

Now that our political elections are successfully behind us, I want to take just a few minutes to comment on something that appears to be an ongoing issue in the world of politics. The issue of “getting smarter.”

Confused?

I hope not. Let me explain. And let me explain exactly how this relates back to business and leadership.

Political ads for “John Smith” often are not focused on what John Smith believes or promises but rather focused on his opponent.

“Don’t vote for ‘Jane Doe.’ Jane once said it was our obligation to protect the Polar Bears at the South Pole. And everyone knows there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. Jane Doe is bad for our country.”

We could take this conversation a lot of different directions here. We don’t know the context of Jane’s statement. Maybe she was telling a joke and “Polar Bears at the South Pole” was part of the punch line. Maybe the quote is entirely out of context and hearing the whole statement would actually let this statement make sense. Maybe she goofed and just misspoke.

It doesn’t matter.

But, let’s assume for the moment that none of those things are true and that Jane was talking about conservation and really did not know that there are no Polar Bears at the South Pole. The question is: how long are we going to punish Jane for making a mistake? Since politicians (and business leaders) are human, there are some areas where they likely do not know everything. Like everyone else, they make mistakes, misspeak, or find themselves not fully knowledgeable about some issue.

“I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.” Abraham Lincoln

In our quest for, and expectation of, perfection from our political and business leaders we often hold them to unrealistic standards. We not only do not allow human error, but we force them into positions where it is worse to change their minds about something than it is to be wrong in the first place. In other words, it’s worse for Jane to “flip flop” on the Polar Bear issue than it is for her to admit that she was wrong and learned something.

In next week’s edition I’ll talk more about how this topic specifically applies to business leaders.


At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

More on the “No Friends” Culture

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the young entrepreneur who wanted to create a professional and business-like culture where people were team-oriented and professional, but did not socialize inside or outside of the office. To some people, this is likely a very appealing culture where they can effectively separate their personal lives from their professional lives with clear lines of demarcation. They no longer have to worry about “taking work home with them” in terms of discussing the office with their spouses and/or families. It also relieves them of any responsibility for having to take part in the seemingly innumerable fundraisers that their co-workers children might be involved in.

Ah… the relief of clear separation between work and home.

Thinking more about this culture made me think of a good friend of mine. We were close friends in High School and beyond. He was always a lively guy with a great sense of humor, quick with a joke, and always up for doing something creative or different. He was the kind of friend that I really appreciated because he helped me stretch myself and do things I might not do on my own, but he never crossed the line into things that were illegal or overtly dangerous.

After college, we were physically separated by hundreds of miles and, as many people do, drifted apart. This was prior to the time of the internet and Facebook, so for years I totally lost track of him. Occasionally, something would remind me of him and rekindle my desire for that friendship, but there was no easy way to contact him. His parents and family had moved away and I had no idea how to contact him.

Years passed and the internet made its way into our lives. Sure enough, one day I started thinking about him and decided to try and locate him. It didn’t take long until I had an address and phone number. And best of all, he was living in a location that I would be travelling to shortly.

To make a long story short, I had the chance to visit him and his family in their home. We quickly bonded again, and the weekend was filled with stories and laughter, fond memories and jokes, photographs and dreams. At the end of the weekend, his wife, whom I had never met before, pulled me aside. With tears in her eyes, she thanked me for my visit. In our weekend together, she had rediscovered the man she fell in love with 20 years earlier and it gave her hope for the future.

She went on to tell me that her husband was involved in highly classified work, a fact that had come out during our time together. Naturally, he was not allowed to discuss his work outside of the secure facility in which he worked. So he never brought his work home, which was a relief. But he also could not socialize with his co-workers outside of the office for fear that classified items might be discussed in public. He never had lunch or dinner with any of his co-workers, avoided places they might hang out, and had built a wall around his work life.

Unfortunately, that wall had been built around his home life as well. Since he had basically stopped talking at the office, he also stopped talking at home. It was the only way he could be sure of not letting anything inappropriate slip out. My visit and all of our discussions about the past had been safe ground for my friend, and he had returned to his former happy, almost gregarious self. And his wife loved him for it.

What is the message here?

When people understand what is expected of them, they will try their very best to comply. But, if those expectations are inconsistent with the type of person they really are, unintended consequences may well pop up. In this case, a happy and vibrant individual had complied with the culture of his organization and that culture had taken over his personal life as well. And I doubt that my friend is alone on this. My guess is that many people adapt themselves to their company culture even though it impacts their personal and private life.

Have you found that to be true? Have you worked in a culture that was contrary to your own nature causing you either to be miserable, or to adapt yourself and change the person that you were? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A “No Friends” Culture

I recently met a young entrepreneur who had opened his business about a year ago and was very pleased with the momentum his business was showing. His revenue growth was exceeding his projections, he was making inroads into new customers who held great potential for future sales, and he had moved into new office space that would accommodate significant planned future growth.

Yet, as we talked I could not help but notice the underlying tone of concern in his voice. The concern didn’t seem to match everything else I was hearing about his business. Digging deeper with my questions, his concern finally rose to the surface. It seemed that he was very concerned about the culture of his new company. He had a very specific culture in mind but was very unclear about how to integrate his desired culture into his growing organization.

What kind of culture did he want?

He wanted a culture where people worked hard and where they were very clear about their responsibilities and the responsibilities of the other members of the team. He wanted his team to work together efficiently to resolve issues with customers and vendors without having to rely on his personal intervention. He wanted skilled and competent people in his organization that would require minimum direction from him on a daily basis. But most of all, he wanted people who would not be friends with each other.

He went on to explain, “I’ve seen these companies where people do things together. They go out after work and have a drink. They socialize outside the office with a bowling or softball team. They have birthday parties in the office for different staff members, go to lunch together, have summer picnics and cookouts, and then there is the annual holiday party. I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that. I just want them to work together quickly, efficiently, and in a business-like manner. Can I create a culture like that?”

I won’t go into depth about his reasoning for creating this type of culture. I’ll just say that he is a very private person and draws a clear separation between his personal and professional lives. And he wanted his team to be the same way. A huge personal fear for him was that his team would become too social in the office and want to include him in their activities. He didn’t want to socialize with his team members inside the office or outside the office. And he knew that the more people he hired, the more challenging this would become for him.

“How can I make sure that I get the kind of culture in the office that I really want?” he asked.

The good news is that you can create any type of culture that you want in your organization. And an office of highly efficient, dedicated people who leave their personal lives at the door is really not unheard of. But the key to making sure that you have the culture you really want in your company is to clearly define your needs and expectations from the beginning.

“Define exactly the kind of culture you want in your office,” I told him. “Be clear and specific about your expectations with potential employees before you hire them. Let them know what you expect from them and what they should expect at work. Then hire the people whose expectations are in line with yours. But, here is the key. You MUST define the culture yourself right up front. If you don’t define the culture yourself, your employees will define it for you. And you might not like the culture they bring to your team.”

Now, here is the question for the readers:

Would you want to work in an organization that was clear and specific about NOT wanting social activities among team members inside or outside of the office?

I’ll gather the responses and post them in a few weeks. I expect the results may surprise a few people.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

It’s Not That Simple

I was catching up with an old friend recently and he brought up a couple of challenges in his life that were holding him back. Being a coach, this is a pretty common occurrence for me and I have to be careful to stay in “friend” mode and not go into “coach” mode. As I was listening, I thought to myself: “This just doesn’t seem like that big a deal. I wonder why this is holding him back?”

Eventually I spoke up and offered him a suggestion.

“Well,” he replied, “it’s not that simple.”

At that moment, I began to flash back to early in my career as a manager and leader. I was pretty new at being a leader, but I had a great rapport with my boss and could ask him anything I wanted. There were a number of things that we were doing as a company that I didn’t understand. Sometimes when I asked about these things I would get excellent answers that really helped me learn and grow. But sometimes my questions would be met with, “Well, it’s not that simple.” Whenever I heard that reply I knew my lessons were over because my boss never explained what wasn’t simple.

Eventually, that boss left the company and I found myself working for someone new. And, while our relationship was not as strong, that didn’t stop me from asking questions. Sure enough, a couple of the same topics came up that had met with such resistance from my first boss. But this boss wasn’t reluctant to talk about the reasons that things “weren’t that simple.” The more he talked, the more I learned. And the more I learned, the more I understood. And several of the problems were indeed quite complex; dealing with a lot of different issues and often involving a variety of personalities. I could clearly see why “it’s not that simple” could apply.

But there were other times that the explanations were convoluted, but not complex. And while navigating through these challenges could remind one of a maze, in some cases it seemed like it was a “kiddie maze” and not really all that hard. Of course, I didn’t challenge these statements from my boss. I wasn’t totally comfortable with our relationship. So I just accepted his explanations at face value.

As I progressed as a leader, I continued to hear, “it’s not that simple” on a variety of topics. And clearly, the person making the statement was correct. It really wasn’t that simple. But more and more I began to recognize that this phrase was being used by executives as a way to avoid addressing some issues. It was like an “executive code phrase” that was intended to shut down discussion on a particular topic. But as I became more experienced, I was also less tolerant of issue avoidance and I began to press for details.

It turns out that “it’s not that simple” really means, “For whatever reason, I’m not comfortable with this issue.” In other words, it really WAS that simple, except for some personal baggage being carried around by the executive.

Getting back to my friend, I asked permission to step into the role of coach for just a few minutes. With his permission I began to dig down into his fear. It didn’t take long to uncover his real issue, expose it as a FEAR (False Expectation Appearing Real) and help him realize that his problem really WAS that simple. With his new found knowledge, he was able to quickly eliminate this issue from his life.

Now back to executives; or maybe just back to human beings as a whole. How often are we using the phrase “it’s not that simple” to shield ourselves from confronting a fear (real or imagined) that should be addressed? The next time you find yourself saying, “it’s not that simple,” ask yourself what you are really afraid of.

Maybe it really is just that simple.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Do You Know How Talented Your Employees Are?

Contrary to popular belief, employees are human beings too.

That’s the message that I often share with managers and executives as we discuss creating energy in an organization. We believe that positive, productive energy is created through the intersection of a company’s culture, its leadership style, and the employees’ expectations. In general, we find that companies think a lot about leadership and how they as individuals can improve their leadership techniques. They talk a lot about the company culture, but don’t do anything to really identify what culture they want or even what culture really exists in the organization. But, when it comes to employee expectations, there is neither a lot of thought, nor a lot of talking.

In fact, when it comes to employee expectations, there is a whole lot of nothing.

Even companies that are “employee friendly” have a tendency to focus on making their environment open and accessible, but forget that, as human beings, employees have needs that must be met. Or said another way, employees have needs that, when met, can have a very positive affect on the bottom line.

What kinds of things do employees want?

Well there are a lot of things. And what they actually want can certainly vary from employee to employee. But one thing that all employees want is to be able to display and use their talents on the job.

Think about this. There are some things in life that you are really good at and that you really like doing. The more you can do of the things that you like and are good at, the better your results will be and the happier you will be.

The same is true of all of your employees. They have things that they are really good at, really talented at, and they want to do those things every day in their job.

Now, before I go any further, let’s pause and get real. If you are managing software development and one of your key employees is a talented sculptor, this does not mean that you should try and find a way to have them sculpt on the job. It does mean that every person has multiple talents and you should try and match their most relevant talents with the things you need to get done.

The only way to really tell what employees like to do and are talented at is to ask them. When you do this for the first time –actually sit down with an employee and ask them what they are really good at and like doing that could be applied to the job – you will truly be amazed at the results. It will likely start with a deep sense of mistrust or disbelief, especially if you’ve never shown any interest in your employees before. But you will soon uncover a plethora of talents and skills that you never new existed in your organization. And, you might well find yourself reassigning responsibilities based on the talents that you never knew existed.

Identify the talents of the people who work for you and find a way to put those talents to work in your organization and you will not only make your employees happier, but you will get a better quality result and improve your profitability.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Should You Do What You Love?

I recently had an interesting discussion with a friend around the idea of “doing what you love.” As many of you know, I’ve long been an advocate of doing what you love as a way to create a satisfying life for yourself and making money at the same time. Confucius is quoted as saying, “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” My friend took a different approach to this topic and one that I thought was quite interesting.

Her perspective was that it is ridiculous to get paid for what we love to do because we are going to do those things anyway. She believed that career decisions are about the kind of lifestyle that you want to create, not about what you love doing. In other words, you take a job based on the kind of life you want to create for yourself, not on the things that you like to do.

As I listened to her argument, I couldn’t help but think of the people I know who are unhappy with their lives; people who are making good money, have big houses and nice cars but are grouchy, stressed, and constantly depressed. I thought of myself 10 years ago with a high paying job that I literally hated going to every day. I had achieved “success” and was miserable as a result.

But this was a smart woman, and I was not about to just discard her argument as incorrect. I pressed on with my questions. She was an accountant, did she love doing accounting? This question really seemed to hit a nerve.

“I like accounting,” she said. “I don’t LOVE it.”

“Are you good at it?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m very good at it. But I don’t LOVE it. I don’t work at the things I love. I work to pay the bills. I work to create a life for myself. Then I can do the things I love.”

She didn’t sound happy to me. In fact, she has seldom sounded happy to me, which seemed to make my point. But she was adamant that loving something and doing it as a career were unrelated.

“I love cooking. I love baking. But I’m not doing those things for a living.”

She had a point there. I’ve tasted some of her cooking. And while she loves it, this would not have been a good career choice for her.

Another key point is that I love more than one thing. Like most people, I have a variety of interests that are not all related. For example, I love helping people develop. I also love baseball. If I took a job in baseball and no longer was able to develop people, would I really be happy?

I found myself rethinking the quote from Confucius. “Choose a job you love….” Hmm. That was a little different than “doing what you love.” After all, I love to sing. But I only do it when I’m alone…with the windows closed… and no one else is at home. Because I know that while I might love it, I’m really not very good at it. But, if I choose a job that I love versus one that I don’t love, is that really the key to happiness.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this topic. Should I accept a job because it affords me the lifestyle that I want, even though I may not like it, or be very good at it? Or should I look for a job that allows me to do what I love and utilize some of my skills?

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A Culture of "Learn and Leave"

“I feel like I’m running some kind of private tutoring company here. But I really don’t have any choice,” she said. “I hire someone, train them, and then as soon as they get productive, they leave and go somewhere else. It’s really a problem, but I don’t see any way around it.”
 
Needless to say, this client was not really running a private tutoring company, but she was running a small company that worked with a lot of big utility companies. And it seems that experience in working with utility companies is a pretty hot commodity in the marketplace. So the client would hire someone to get the work done, train them on how to do the work and deal with the utilities effectively, and the next thing she knew, they would be out the door to a competitor or to another company that had similar issues and challenges.
 
Her real challenge was that she was a small company that couldn’t afford to pay very much, and she really didn’t want to grow the company into something bigger that could afford to pay more. She liked being small with a handful of employees, but the turnover was making her life miserable. At times, she felt like her biggest contribution to society was in training people to go work somewhere else.
 
“I’d love to be able to invest in my employees, to watch them grow and learn new things. Maybe we could even get more efficient and improve our processes. But every time I get a good employee who excels at this job, they get a better offer from somewhere else and I’m back out there hiring again."
 
We talked at great length about the type of people she tended to hire (entry level) and the type of training and documentation that the new employees were given. In truth, she had created a very efficient system for training new people with clear instructions, screen shots from the websites they needed to work with, and even decision trees to help them maneuver through the chaos utility companies often create. It was all very impressive.
 
“Why do you think they leave?” was my question.
 
“Oh, they don’t just leave,” was her response. “They get hired away. I’m being targeted by these other companies who steal my employees.”
 
As a small company, she was not doing formal exit reviews when people left. All she knew for sure was where they were going. And they weren’t just going to one or two companies. There were a half dozen or so big companies that her ex-employees routinely ended up working for.
 
A little research unveiled the real reason behind her constant turnover. And no, she wasn’t being targeted by these big companies. Rather, she was being targeted by her employees. As a small company, she couldn’t afford to pay her people very much, but the skills she was teaching them were very valuable on the open market. And discussions about “who went where” after working for her were quite common and open in the office. Without realizing it, she had actually created a culture of “Learn and Leave,” where new employees quickly realized that the best thing this job had to offer them was a ticket to a better paying job. As soon as new employees realized the opportunities that were in front of them, they worked hard to soak up as much information as possible and then applied at their target companies for increased pay and benefits.
 
What’s the answer for this poor business owner?
 
The reality is that even slowing down the office gossip about the great jobs available outside of her company wasn’t going to eliminate her turnover problem. Eventually, she was going to face one of two choices – either grow her company to the point that she could compete salary-wise with these other companies or face the constant turnover that her “training organization” was creating.
 
After much thought, she decided to embrace the “Learn and Leave” culture that she had inadvertently created. She felt better knowing that she wasn’t being targeted by these companies and actually used the concept of future prospects as a way to hire even more talented employees.
 
At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees
 
When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.
 
 
Until next time.....
 
Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Who's In Charge Here? (continued.....)

In my last couple of posts, I’ve talked about how the person at the top of the organizational chart is not always the leader. Being a leader is really about influencing those around you and influence does not come automatically with a title. At first, this was a bit of a shock to me as I was convinced that since I had been given the promotion and the title, I really was the leader. But then I realized that to recognize the leader I really needed to determine who held the influence in the group.

What does influence look like in an organization?

In simple terms, when the person of influence speaks, others listen. Perhaps it shows up in a time of crisis when the entire team looks to one individual for guidance or inspiration. It can also show up in the creative process and in problem solving. There is generally someone who is the “first among equals” and who everyone wants to include in the discussion. In any event, the person with influence is fairly easy to spot. Of course, you do want to be careful to distinguish technical expertise from leadership influence, but that difference is not too difficult to spot when working with a team.

Most people overlook the fact that leadership is really bestowed on someone not by the management team, but by the team members. You’ve no doubt seen situations where someone was designated as the leader or manager only to be ignored by the rank and file. In reality, the team members are the ones who decide who they are going to follow. If it happens to be the appointed manager, that’s great. But if they don’t deem that person worthy of leading them, they won’t follow. My guess is that if you look back at your own career you can readily think of times when you ignored “the boss” and took your direction from someone else. This is a classic case of the leader and “the boss” not being the same person.

So the person who influences the team is really the leader and the one who is actually in charge. They may not have “signature authority” or the responsibility for writing performance reviews, but they are the unquestioned leader because of the way the team listens to them. They may gain their influence in a couple of different ways. Some people have influence based almost entirely on how long they have been around or because of their technical skills. Others gain influence through threats and intimidation, striking fear into the thoughts of those who dare to oppose them. The third and most powerful group gains influence because of their thoughts and ideas. I say that these are the most powerful because they are the leaders that people willingly following.

As you develop yourself as a leader, think in terms of influence. Do your thoughts and ideas make an impact on the team? Do they listen and like what you have to say? Does the team willingly follow your direction? Do people look to you for guidance and support?

If not, it’s time to give serious thought to what you can do to gain their trust, encourage them to come to you for guidance, and teach them to follow your lead in good times and bad. Remember, when you set yourself up as a person of influence within an organization, you are setting yourself up for a long-term role as their true leader.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Who's In Charge Here? (continued.....)

In my last entry, I talked about the first time I discovered that the guy with the title (in this case, me) was not always the real leader. It was kind of shocking to discover this since I thought my title brought leadership with it automatically. I mean, I was on the Organizational Chart, at the top, with a fancy title. Of course I was the leader.

In reality, organizational charts, titles, and salaries have little to do with being a leader. At its simplest level, leadership is about one thing – having followers. John Maxwell likes to say, “If you think you are leading and no one is following, you’re just out taking a walk.”

As it turns out, that’s what I was doing. I was taking a walk, and no one was following me. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to follow me, they did. They liked what I had to say. They thought my ideas were inspirational and that my vision for the department was both worthy and achievable. But they lived in the real world and, in this case, the real world was controlled by the computer operator, not the guy in the office.

It took me a few weeks to realize that they weren’t following me and a little longer to figure out who they actually were following. After that, I was able to determine the source of the computer operator’s influence (intimidation) and eliminate that influence. Once I did that, the team willingly followed me and together we achieved tremendous success. But the real lesson here was that title and authority did not equate to a position as leader; influence did. From that point forward, I began to look around to see who was really in charge in a variety of different scenarios. Whether I was at work, at home, or even in public, I began to notice that the people with the most influence, the people that we were actually following, were often not the same people as those who were supposedly in charge.

As my career progressed, I found that I was increasingly called upon to turn around troubled departments or organizations. Even though I worked for a variety of different people over the years, all seemed to readily acknowledge my ability to sort through process and people issues and turn organizations around. In many ways, I found myself specializing my career not based on my technical skills but on my ability to understand what was important to an organization, to plot a clear course to achieve the right goals, and to put the right people and processes in place to move forward quickly. In short, my job was to assume leadership in a poorly run organization and turn that organization in the right direction.

But, if I was going to assume the leadership role in an organization, I needed to understand what leader I was replacing. And that was often not the person who had the job before me, or the person at the top of the organizational chart. Instead, it was often another employee or manager in the organization.

But who?

That is the ultimate question. And I’ll talk more about how I learned to identify the “real leaders” in the organization in my next entry. Until then, I encourage you to review some of our past blog entries and explore some of our offerings at ECI Learning.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Who’s in Charge Here?

As a coach, I get paid to ask people questions. I don’t have to have all of the answers. But I do need to be able to identify the most important questions to ask, including the questions that the client may be avoiding answering themselves. This aspect of my job gives me a unique perspective on questions as I am always listening for good questions from others. And, I figured out long ago that the best questions are not the most complicated questions or the one’s that seem to show deep, thoughtful knowledge on a topic. The best questions are often the simplest questions.

I was recently talking about leadership with a friend and he asked me about the most important aspect of leadership. Now, that’s not really a great question for a couple of reasons. First, it’s hard to narrow down THE most important aspect. And, what I think is important may not match what someone else thinks is important for a variety of good reasons. Second, so many aspects of leadership are intertwined that trying to break them out individually and rank them in order of importance leads to circular thinking. After all, what good is being a great communicator (a must for a leader) if you have nothing worth communicating? What good is your ability to build trust and relationships if you really don’t maximize the strengths of others on your team.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

After a few minutes, my friend reworded the question. “Was there a time in your life when you believed that you were failing as a leader?”

That question made me pause and think. Certainly I had my share of leadership challenges along the way; times where I hit stumbling blocks that slowed my progress, but failure?

In 1984, I took over the MIS department for Garfinkels Department stores in Washington, DC. Garfinkels was a very high-end retailer where only the elite shopped. I was hired because of the challenges they were facing in both system development and the Computer Operations Department. And, while my passions lay in fixing and updating their systems, the more immediate problems were with Computer Operations. So I tackled those problems first; diving in from day one to identify bottlenecks, work through the processes, and move my team down the path to success.

Except for one thing.

I was alone.

No one was following me. Oh sure, I had a team of 15 people. But the truth was that they weren’t listening to me. They pretended to. They did what I told them to, sort of. But that was just on the surface. They were doing just enough to show progress and nothing more. I was a captain without a crew, a shepherd without sheep, a leader without followers. In short, I really wasn’t a leader at all because no one was following me.

It took me a few weeks of thought and insights before I realized the source of the problem. It seems that while I was the guy with the title, I was not the guy with the influence. And leadership means influence. While I had the title, there was actually a computer operator about 3 levels down the management chain that held influence over the entire organization. And she was not about to let some yuppie, college educated, suit-wearing weenie tell her or her people what to do. So, while I tried to lead the team in one direction, she silently led them in another.

This was actually a scenario that played itself out over and over again later in my career. Discovering that the person with the title was not necessarily the person with the power was a bit of a shock for me.

I’ll talk more about identifying who really has the power in the organization and how to get it back in next week’s blog.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

What Good is a Vision if it is a Secret?

I recently spent some time with the new Executive Director of a small organization. He was talking about his vision for the organization and was very excited about the possibilities for growth and momentum. His enthusiasm was palpable and he literally gushed about the possibilities. On one level, I was very excited for him. But on another level, I was struggling. You see, while I understood every word he said, I really had no idea what he was talking about. Try as I might, I could not grasp this great vision that he had, and I had no clear idea of where he thought his organization currently was or where he wanted them to go. I felt like I was trying to put together one of those 2000 piece jigsaw puzzles that are so popular now. You know, the ones that are circular in appearance so you can’t easily build the frame and have no picture on the box so you can’t tell what you are trying to create.

It gave me a headache.

But I was pretty sure that this was just me. Clearly, I didn’t have enough background to tie it all together. All I needed to do was ask the right questions to fill in the blanks for me, and it would all come together.

Or so I thought.

I began to talk with his staff about the new future of the organization and about their level of buy-in to the changes. As it turns out, about 2/3 of the leadership team was in exactly the same spot that I was. They had no idea what he was talking about, didn’t share his enthusiasm, and were frustrated to the point of giving up.

The other 1/3 of the leadership team seemed to share his enthusiasm and talked in glowing terms about the new direction. I was on to something; I knew it. I just needed to nail down the details and I would be as enthused as they were.

But the details were elusive. And it wasn’t just the details that were elusive, so were the concrete goals, common statements around the new end result, and even the facts that were supposed to be driving the new vision. But I was still sure that this was my problem and that I just wasn’t getting something here.

Finally, I called the 4 members of the leadership team who “got it” into a room so that I could sort this out. After about 20 minutes with them I realized what had really happened. These 4 members had bought into the enthusiasm of the new Executive Director but they really had no idea what his plan was. Not only did these people not understand the details of the new vision, they didn’t understand the big picture either. All they understood was how excited the Executive director was and they wanted to be a part of anything that generated this much enthusiasm.

As we talked, it became clear that they all believed the new Executive Director did indeed have a vision of a bright new future; a new direction with massive possibilities for the organization. But they didn’t yet know what this elusive vision was. They all had some ideas based on conversations they’d had with the ED, but none of their ideas were really in synch. In short, they were excited about a plan they didn’t understand.

I returned to the ED and began the long, painful discussion about the need for clarity and communication of his vision. “It’s not enough to have a great vision,” I told him, “if no one else knows what it is.” As you might guess, this was not a short conversation. He was convinced that he had clearly enunciated his vision to his leadership team and that they clearly knew the direction that he was taking the organization. It was only after he called them all into a room and asked them to repeat the vision back to him that he realized the fallacy in his thinking.

Having a vision is a great thing. But as a leader, you need to go out of your way to communicate and re-communicate that vision to ensure that your team understands it and buys into it.

Does your entire team really understand your vision for the future? Have you taken the time to find out exactly what they understand?

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

What Is More Important – Email or Employees?

I was just sitting here reading about another leader who claims that, in her organization, they really care about their employees and treat them as their biggest asset.

It made me wonder: “Why do we check email every hour or so, review our budget monthly, check our sales goals daily, review our departmental goals every quarter, but only sit down with our employees to review their performance once per year?”

If you want to know what someone THINKS is important, ask them. If you want to know what they BELIEVE is important, watch their actions.

People espouse the concept of employees being important because they are told that it’s true. They know that to be a good manager, they need to provide feedback to their employees on a regular basis. And they know that developing their team members is critical to their own success. So, when you ask them the question, they will readily tell you how important their employees are to them.

But their actions don’t match their words.

I recently worked with a client who had lost a key member of his team, sort of. I say “sort of” because, while the person was publicly acknowledged as a key member of the team, privately the client expressed doubts about this team member’s performance. In talking with the client, he expressed concerns over the quality of the work being performed, the dedication of the individual, and his ability to meet the goals laid out for him.

“Does Bob know you feel this way about his performance?” I asked.

“I’ve given him plenty of feedback,” was the reply.

Of course, when I checked in with Bob, I got a very different story.

“I haven’t had a Performance Appraisal in 3 years,” was Bob’s quick reply. “I have no idea how I’m really doing, since John doesn’t talk with me,” he said, “but I must be doing pretty well since I haven’t heard otherwise.”

Without going into details, let’s just say that there was plenty of fault on both sides. Bob was right in that he had not had a formal Performance Appraisal in 3 years. There had been a couple of informal discussions about performance that generally happened on the spur of the moment when Bob happened to be in John’s office when John had a concern. In those sessions, John had pointed out specific issues that needed to be addressed in Bob’s current work. And, it had been “assumed” that Bob understood that this was a much bigger issue.

“I really don’t like confrontation,” was John’s comment to me. “I mean, I’m not afraid of it, but I don’t like it either. So I don’t do it a lot, but when I give feedback I know I’m being clear.”

What is clear…is that whatever John’s message was to Bob, he wasn’t receiving it. I often say, “It’s not what I say that is important, it’s what you hear.” In this case, Bob wasn’t hearing the feedback at all.

Let’s return to the original question. Why do we check email every hour or so, review our budget monthly, check our sales goals daily, review our departmental goals every quarter, but only sit down with our employees to review their performance once per year?

Because providing feedback means talking to another human being and saying things that might not always be easy. Instead of dealing with what might actually be a minor issue, we hide behind impromptu meetings, negative feedback disguised as praise (and therefore confused by the recipient), and annual performance reviews that are generally too little feedback too late.

Consider this – if I knew that what I was doing wasn’t pleasing you, I would change it. But I can’t change behavior that I don’t know is wrong. Try talking with your employees as often as you check your quarterly goals, or even more often. And don’t rely on messages that you THINK are getting through. Ask the employee what message they received from your feedback. It is a great way to tell if your message is really getting through.

Your employees are certainly more important than your email. Perhaps it’s time you began to treat them that way.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A Culture of Criticism – Part 3

Over the last two weeks, we have been recounting the story of a company that unwittingly underwent a culture shift, moving from a culture that respected and engaged their employees to one that was built around blame and criticism. Eventually the change in culture overwhelmed the company, shifting it from a growing company to one that was struggling for survival. Luckily the CEO recognized that something was wrong and set out to discover the source of the problem and how to get it back on track.

The source of the culture change was traced back to the influence of the newly hired CFO and his deeply ingrained belief in “accountability.” The challenge was that he believed that “accountability” and “blame” were basically the same things. And, while he constantly talked about being “accountable for our actions,” the actual result was a constant focus on blame and criticism within the organization. Employees became afraid to act for fear of being criticized and blamed if something went wrong. The company became paralyzed, all creativity was sapped from the organization, and all of the employees who had made the company great had since left for other organizations.

Now it was time to rebuild the organization and return to the culture that had made it so great in the first place. The CEO knew exactly where to start. “First,” she said, “I need to replace my CFO again. He was the source of this culture change and a tiger doesn’t change its stripes. I’ll replace him with someone who values people and will get us going in the right direction again.”

True to her word, she set off in search of a new CFO. This time her interviews included questions about values and culture, helping her identify someone who shared her same core values. Her new CFO believed strongly in empowering people and encouraged risk taking. When problems occurred, she reviewed the results to identify the problems but used the experiences as a way to learn, rather than trying to blame individuals for their failings.

Unfortunately, this was not enough to turn the business around since the new CFO was now a minority in this thought process, surrounded by people who were used to operating in the “blame” mode. Many of the organization’s employees were not aware of the prior culture and viewed the new CFO with a jaundiced eye. The culture of criticism was now firmly entrenched in the organization, and a single new hire was not going to create the kind of shift necessary to suddenly make the existing employees develop a greater level of trust in their management.

Culture change in an organization is a slow process. It took about a year for the culture to move from one of openness to one of criticism. And, it took even longer to rebuild the original culture. The entire management staff had to be retrained to focus on the employees and to learn to trust the CEO and the rest of the executive team. There is nothing easier to lose or tougher to gain than trust. The management staff could not even begin to rebuild trust with their own teams until they had learned to trust the executives.

There are several lessons that can be learned from this company. First, culture is critical to the long-term success of any organization. Second, you need to pay attention to your culture so that it doesn’t morph into something that you don’t want. Third, rebuilding trust in an organization takes much longer than destroying it.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A Culture of Criticism – Part 2

In last week’s article, I told the story of a company that prided itself on being a great place to work; where employees felt valued and where the employees were encouraged to learn and grow on the job. Only something had changed. Profits were down, turnover was on the rise, and the CEO was becoming aware of a problem in the organization.

How did a really great company, one with a high level of employee engagement and a hotbed of creativity, turn into a company where employees merely put in their time each day, where criticism was the normal mode of communication, and where the employees actively avoided talking to their managers?

A few years earlier, the CEO had begun an active program to “upgrade her leadership team” and had started by hiring a new CFO from outside of the organization. He had all the skills required for the job and seemed like a good match. He quickly became a leader in the organization; not just because of his title, but because of the influence he had on all kinds of decisions being made. People knew that he had the ear of the CEO and was part of the future of the organization. When Bob spoke, people listened.

With the downturn in the economy, Bob had made “necessary” cuts to the training and development budget, just to help get through the downturn. He had convinced HR that they needed to be more concerned about legal issues and less about that “touchy feely stuff,” turning them from a “human development” organization into a legal compliance organization. And he had insisted upon accountability from all departments, which sounds good until you realize that to him “accountability” and “blame” were interchangeable.

The transformation did not happen immediately but over a period of close to a year. Of course, some of the more perceptive employees recognized the changes as soon as they began to happen and quickly, and quietly, left the organization. When these employees left, they not only took their talents and skills but also their leadership abilities, positive attitudes, and historical knowledge.

In other words, when these people left they took the foundation of the company with them. The best employees are always the first to recognize when things have changed and these employees always have options to go elsewhere.

If we pause for a moment, we might ask this simple question….

If these really were the best employees, why did they give up so easily? Why didn’t they fight to keep the organization in tact? Why didn’t they go to the CEO and let her know what was happening to her organization?

The short answer is that they did. They worked for a great company and they knew it. They did not want to let it go without a fight, but when they approached the CEO about their concerns, they were countered by the new CFO who had her ear and downplayed the loss of a few, easily replaceable staff members.

Where do we go from here? How does a once great organization reinvent itself again, regain the trust of their employees, and instill a sense of employee engagement?

We will discuss that in our 3rd installment on this issue next week.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A Culture of Criticism

“We like and respect our employees here,” the CEO told me. “We want them to grow with the company, develop their skills, broaden their horizons and be with us for the long haul. We provide them with regular feedback, and not just at annual reviews. Our managers are constantly talking with our employees, working on overcoming any performance challenges. Whenever possible, we try and promote from within so that we can create career paths for our key employees. We are VERY employee focused.”

Of course, these words were music to my ears. Creating a growth oriented environment that provides regular feedback is a great way to engage your employees. And engaged employees are happy and productive employees. Happy and productive employees lead to happy customers, increased profits, and a growing, thriving business.

It made me wonder what I was doing here. Why call in a consultant who specializes in creating an engaged workforce when everything sounded so good?

“Our employee turnover has been on the rise for the last couple of years and it seems to be getting worse, not better,” she told me. “At first the people leaving seemed to have good reasons for going elsewhere, but I’m a numbers kind of gal and the increase in the turnover rate means that I have to wonder what is going on.”

As it turns out, she was right to be asking questions. While she had worked hard to build a positive, growth oriented culture in the organization, she had turned her attention elsewhere in the last couple of years and had let her management team run things. Then there had been a drop-off in revenues and she had focused her efforts on some new products and systems that she hoped would help turn things around. What she hadn’t done was relate a drop-off in revenues, and a corresponding drop-off in customer satisfaction, to a changing culture in her organization.

“This used to be a great place to work,” one long time employee told me. “And I have hopes that it will be again. But things have changed the last couple of years. We used to talk with our managers all the time. In fact, we looked forward to it. But now we avoid telling the managers anything. It seems like every time one of the managers talks to you now it’s to criticize you for something you did, or didn’t do. I don’t like it here now. I do what I have to, and then I go home and forget about this place.”

I heard similar stories from other employees but often without the “this used to be a great place to work” preface. For employees hired in the last couple of years, they had never viewed the organization as employee friendly or a great place to work but, instead, as a place where creative ideas were discouraged and management seemed focused on finding fault with everything that was done.

What happened here? How did this workplace change from one that seemed to work so well to one that barely functioned at all? And why was the CEO seemingly so out of the loop?

We’ll explore these questions in part II of our story next week.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Where Customer Satisfaction Goes To Die

Recently, I was engaged in a conversation with some friends about customer service and some of our recent experiences. As is natural, the stories quickly deteriorated into laughable displays of everything customer service should not be. Story begat story about how a simple customer service issue quickly became a quagmire of bad systems, bad decisions, red tape, and rude customer service reps. Each story was rewarded with painful laughter, shaking of heads, and a general disbelief that anyone would ever believe calling customer service can ever be considered a good idea.

After nearly doubling over in pain from laughter about some of the experiences, I decided it was time to reverse the fields and tell a story about a good customer service experience that I had. I recounted the story about quickly reaching a human being to talk to rather than a lengthy, hierarchical phone menu. The person I dealt with spoke perfect English and I later learned that she lived and worked in Texas. When I described my issue, this person asked me a few intelligent, probing questions and then began to walk me through to a very satisfactory solution. I was actually pleased with the experience and told my friends the specifics of what worked for me and how it impacted my view of the entire company. This company, which I hadn’t given a lot of thought to before, suddenly took on a positive light for me, and made me think well of the entire organization.

My story was followed by another story from one of the listeners about an experience he had with a very small company that took exceptionally good care of him. He remarked how the positive interaction had impacted him and how, as the result of this experience, he had sent several of his friends to this same company to have work done. In this particular case, he had not been dealing with a customer service rep but just one of the employees of the company.

The simple truth is that each time one of our employees touches one of our customers it creates an impression of the company that has long term implications. When our experience with a member of the company is good, we walk away with a favorable impression. When our experience is bad or lacking in any way, it impacts us negatively, often giving us pause before using that product or service again.

There are certainly a number of factors that impact the way your employees or your Customer Service Reps treat your customers. Part of the issue is training. Have the employees been properly trained on handling complaints? Do they know how to disarm aggressive callers? Are they competent on the systems that they use to find answers quickly and efficiently?

Another key issue for Customer Service Reps is attitude. Do they honestly and sincerely believe it is their job to make the customer happy? Or, are they focused on handling calls within the 2 minute and 37 second guideline that they have been given? How do you go about instilling a positive attitude in the people who, after your sales team, have the most direct customer contact day after day.

I always find it somewhat ironic that “Customer Service” reps are often the lowest paid employees of an organization, receive the most training, and have the highest turnover. Yet these same employees are the ones who are talking directly to our customers. They have intimate contact with people who will likely decide, based on these interactions, whether they will ever buy from us again. Why is it that the people who come in direct contact with our customers are not the highest paid employees?

As you think about your customers and your desire to build your revenues and create long term customers, consider the impact that your Customer Service Organization has on your business. And then ask yourself these simple questions:

Is my Customer Service Organization structured and compensated like they are the key to long term customer satisfaction? Or have I simply created a cost center where customer satisfaction goes to die?

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

The Lost Art of Listening – Part 2

In last week’s blog, I recounted a “discussion” between two friends of mine where it was clear that neither side was really listening to the other. Instead, they were intent on making their own points in the argument regardless of what the other person was saying. It’s not exactly a secret that two monologues do not make a dialogue, yet too often that is exactly the way our discussions are treated.

Listening is something that most of us say that we do well, but few actually do. I’m sure there was a time in the history of man when people really listened to each other, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you when the time was, or why people stopped listening to each other. However, I can tell you some secrets to good listening that the best listeners employ and that make them “great conversationalists.” The secrets themselves are not complex and do not involve a lot of deep psychological understanding to employ. But, while they are simple to discuss, they are much more difficult to implement because they are “uncomfortable” and require a lot of thought. If you practice the techniques below, I promise you that you will be a better listener and that people will interact with you differently on a day to day basis.

Secret Number 1: Clear your mind
Just like Stephen Covey wrote in his groundbreaking book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” you must first seek to understand, and then to be understood.

When listening to another person, clear your mind of all thoughts and focus your attention 100% on the other person. Put aside your own perspective on the issue, or your feelings about the other person and make your mind a blank slate to be filled by the other person’s words.

Secret Number 2: Don’t anticipate the conversation
As the conversation starts, resist the temptation to leap ahead in the discussion to its “obvious conclusion.” Don’t try and guess what they will say next. Instead, let their words come to you in the way that they had intended. When we anticipate where the discussion is going, we often miss key points the other person is trying to make.

Secret Number 3: Don’t multi-task
Study after study has proven that multi-tasking doesn’t work. Although many of us feel that we can do two things at one time, the truth is that when we try and do two things at once, neither task gets the attention it deserves. This is especially true when we are trying to listen to someone else. When you are engaged in a conversation, give the other person your undivided attention. Not only will you hear more, but the other person will appreciate your efforts as well.

Secret Number 4: Pause before responding
Normally, when we are engaged in a conversation we develop our response while the other person is still speaking. Sometimes we key in on a word or phrase that they used, and sometimes we anticipate what they are going to say (see number 2 above). In either event, we begin crafting our response while they are speaking, and in doing so we tune them out, carefully picking the words in our response for maximum impact. Instead, try letting the other person finish their statements and then pause before you respond. In reality it will only take you about 2 seconds to determine the perfect response, because of the quality of your listening. At first, this might seem like the longest 2 seconds of your life, as pauses in conversations tend to be rare these days. But after a little practice, this will become natural for you and for your listeners as well.


At first glance, it might appear that following these guidelines for listening could lengthen your conversations, taking up more of your valuable time. In reality, you will find that you will save time overall because the conversations will be more meaningful, you will reach resolution quicker, and you won’t have repeat conversations because of items left unresolved.

What are some of the rules that you engage in listening? Do you have secrets to share that make you an effective listener? If so, I’d love to hear them.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

The Lost Art of Listening

I was at a meeting of a local service club, sitting at a round table with 7 other people. And, I was trying to keep track of about 3 different conversations that were going on. Suddenly, one of the conversations got a little more heated, a little more intense, and a little noisier than the others. Obviously this discussion got my attention and I began to listen to it more closely. It was a challenge to listen to the conversation and follow the argument because it seemed to be jumping all over the place.

Tempers flared as the conversation got more heated, with both sides making bold statements, and even accusations, about the topic at hand. It was not so much a back and forth debate as it was two people standing atop their soapboxes shouting out their beliefs. Fortunately, this conversation was finally interrupted by the scheduled entertainment for the evening and things quieted back down.

The actual subject being discussed by the antagonists is not really important here, and the issue was never really resolved. What fascinated me was the way the two people involved went back and forth, each one deeply entrenched in their beliefs and unwilling to yield to the other. On one level, the lively “discussion” made our table the most exciting table to be seated around. On another level, the lack of true communication was astonishing.

Later that same evening I spoke with one of the two protagonists and asked him about the exchange. Specifically, I asked him what point the other person was trying to make that had gotten him so upset. He rambled for a few minutes, focused mostly on “how stupid” the other person had been, before finally quieting down. I asked a few more questions about the incident, all meeting with similar responses, before coming to the obvious conclusion that my friend didn’t understand the point the other person was trying to make, merely that her statements had been “wrong.”

“But how can you debate the merits of her arguments,” I asked, “if you don’t understand what her point is?”

I’d like to tell you that a little light bulb went off in my friend’s head when I asked that question. I wish I could tell you that my friend realized he had been too busy making his own points to even listen to the other person’s perspective, but that would not be true. Instead, he continued his diatribe without pausing for thought.

I’m sure that many of you are aware of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habit’s of Highly Effective People.” If you are not, it’s a book you should read. Habit number 5 is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” It’s a valuable habit that we should all study and practice.

But how exactly do we do this?

What is the secret of understanding?

I’ll be writing about that next week.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time......

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

A Culture of Openness

A few years ago I got a call from a client after her first day at her new job. She had spent several years after college working for non-profits and was just experiencing her first days of life in Corporate America. She had hired me because she wanted help adapting to life in this new world, so I was anxious to hear about her experiences. But when I asked her how her first day was, her response surprised me.

“It was weird,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘weird’?”

She was working for a privately held company with about a dozen offices across the country. The company was headquartered back east some place, and on her first day on the job they were being visited by the CEO on day 1 of a trip to every location in the company.

“He talked to us about the former executive,” she said. “Apparently he had embezzled a lot of money from the company before getting caught and the CEO was telling us about it.”

I was intrigued.

“What did he tell you?”

“He told us how much money the guy had embezzled, how he had done it, and who had helped him. He also told us about some new accounting controls that were being put in place, and about a new auditing department that was being formed. I don’t know what to do. It was a lot to absorb on my first day.”

Digging deeper she was impressed by the open way the CEO had spoken about what had happened and how they hadn’t tried to cover things up. The other employees, she observed, had asked questions and probed the CEO, but none of them seemed to be overly concerned. This had also impressed her, but the fact that she was starting with such bad news had left her somewhat concerned.

Flash forward a few months and we were talking again and I brought up the issue of her work and her company.

“It’s really an amazing place,” she said. “Each month we get a note from the CEO telling us how we are doing in revenue against our plan, what big projects we are bidding on, which one’s we have recently won and lost, and anything else he thinks we might want to know about. It’s really pretty amazing.”

And how did this openness in the organization affect her and her fellow employees?

“Everyone trusts the CEO to tell us the truth and everyone knows what is going on. The openness from the top permeates the organization and there just aren’t any secrets. Our Office Manager takes the note from the CEO and adds comments on how these things affect us directly and what we can do to help. I really wasn’t expecting this kind of honest communication, but we all feel like we’re part of the team.”

When I pressed her for how this had impacted her productivity, she told me that she considered herself a professional and didn’t think she was necessarily working any harder than she would otherwise.

“But,” she said, “I love this place so much I’m not sure I ever want to leave. I just want to stay here and keep learning more about the business and find new ways to help. That has to count for something.”

You bet it does.

A culture of openness, like the one my client has been experiencing, reduces employee turnover and, therefore, holds down your costs. It also encourages employees to want to learn about new parts of the business and grow with the company. And while these things aren’t easy to measure on the Income Statement, they definitely impact the long-term growth of your company.

How can you implement a culture of openness in your organization?

It’s really pretty easy once you know how. It’s about communicating with your employees on a regular basis, being honest about the company’s business, and sharing news and upcoming plans. As I’ve written about before (http://ecilearning.blogspot.com/2010/06/3-keys-to-building-trust.html) and as my client found out personally, this kind of openness builds an undeniable trust within the organization – among the employees, among the leaders, and between the employees and leaders – that will take your organization to the next level.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

The Case for Ongoing Personal Development

When we are young, we are a sponge for knowledge. We want to learn anything and everything. As children, we see the “big kids” around us playing ball, and we want to learn how. A sibling is reading a story out loud and it’s a skill we want for ourselves. A little girl goes to a dance recital and immediately wants to start taking ballet lessons.

At some point in time, perhaps when our thirst for knowledge is replaced by a structured learning environment, we lose that overwhelming desire for knowledge of any kind and find it replaced by much more discerning desires. We no longer want to know everything. In fact, many of us try and wall ourselves off from knowledge that, while useful, we see no need for. At this point in time, you are probably thinking about your teenagers. For many, High School represents a time of survival rather than real learning. We believe that we know everything and just focus on getting through each day. The point of High School appears to be about learning to take tests to prepare us for that next level - college.

For most of us college is again a time for learning. The style of teaching changes, as does our style of learning. We control our schedule of classes to an extent we never considered possible before and we find ourselves drawn to certain subjects that may appear to be the path for a future career. College is also a time for great personal growth as we learn about living life on our own, managing our personal finances, etc. College may or may not be followed by an advanced degree, depending upon our needs and desires. With our college diploma or MBA firmly in our hands we step into the business world, assured of instant success.

Or are we?

For the second time in our life, we believe that we know everything. Oh sure, it may take us a few months to get used to our new environment, but that’s just temporary. Before long we have been promoted, advanced into the world of management and conquered the business world!

Unfortunately, there is so much that we have not yet learned about business, or more importantly, about people. What college can never prepare us for is the complexity of human beings, the challenges of dealing with co-workers, and how to deal with the politics of the workplace. Working through the complex business scenarios presented to us in our class work is a breeze compared to dealing with the egos, political agendas, and hidden alliances in the office.

It’s a little bit like learning the theory of how to fly an airplane and then sitting in the cockpit and actually trying to do it. We know how things are supposed to work. But how they work in real life is often very different than we learned in our text books. On the one hand, it’s the same stuff. On the other hand, being at the controls brings in whole new levels of complications that you could only imagine while studying the theories of flight.

How does this tie back into personal development?

While we are young and adapting to our jobs, we find these human issues all around us and we learn to deal with them. But as we rise through the ranks, the issues become more complex, more subtle, and more challenging. What worked well for us as an individual contributor, does not work well when we achieve the level of Manager. What worked well for us as a Manager is not nearly as effective when we achieve the level of Sr. Manager. And the techniques we mastered at these levels are woefully inadequate for the challenges of being a Director, a Vice President, or a C-level executive. We must continue to grow our skills, specifically our people skills, as we progress through the ranks. Those who do adapt and grow find that success follows them. Those who fail to change, fail to learn, and fail to grow find that they quickly top out.

What are you doing to ensure your ongoing personal development?

And equally as important, what are you doing to ensure the ongoing personal development of your key team members? Without their continued growth, your own career may well be short-circuited.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:
• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/

Lessons Learned – Lessons Forgotten

A few years ago I worked with a client who was looking for more from his team. They weren’t bad he had said, but they weren’t performing at the level he would have liked them to. I did a quick analysis of his team and came back with 4 factors for us to work on together.

1. Providing a vision
2. Defining roles and responsibilities
3. Creating accountability
4. Matching talents with roles

He clearly had a vision for his organization and how it fit into the overall company vision, but his employees were not aware of that vision and, therefore, could not buy into it. He thought the vision was clear, but as is often the case, it was clear only to him. Once we spent some time clarifying his vision and communicating it to his team, there was immediate improvement. Of course, having a clear vision that the team all bought into made it relatively easy to work with the team members and define their specific roles and responsibilities. While they all had their roles established before we started working together, those roles were fluid and were based on what they thought the goal was, rather than the actual goal. Once the roles were identified, we put the measurements in place to ensure that things were progressing and, last but not least, we made sure that we had a good match between the talent on the team and the jobs that needed to be done. It took us a few months to work through all of the details, but it was time well spent. Productivity increased, morale improved, and he began to feel good about his team again.

Flash forward about 3 years and I received a call from this client, again looking for my assistance. He had been promoted and was in a new role. As is often the case with any new boss, he wanted to make some changes in his organization. His vision was somewhat different from his predecessor and he was having challenges bringing it all together. He’d been with his new team for a few months and it wasn’t coming together as quickly as he would have liked.

I spent some time with his team and then sat down with him to discuss the plan for moving forward. I told him it was a 4 step plan:

1. Providing a vision
2. Defining roles and responsibilities
3. Creating accountability
4. Matching talents with roles

It only took a few minutes of discussion for him to realize that these were the exact same 4 items we had worked on together a few years earlier. These were all things that he knew were important, but that he had not taken into account in his new organization.

These were lessons that he had once learned, but somehow forgotten.

And the truth is that this happens to all of us. We learn lessons over time, but somehow forget the things that we learned. And we make the same mistakes all over again. We hire someone really smart and learn a lesson about the value of surrounding ourselves with talent, but then, for our next hire, we look for skills and forget about talent.

We spend the time to plan our project out and it turns into a major success, but then we create the plan for our next project on the back of a napkin. Or worse, the plan is only created in our minds.

We provide someone with honest feedback, presented in a way which shows that we understand them and that we want to help them succeed, and we watch them blossom. Then we turn around and give the next person feedback that hurts their feelings and creates a low sense of self-esteem. And, we watch this person fall apart in front of us.

We all learn lessons in life and yet, somehow, we all forget the lessons we’ve learned and we make the same mistakes all over again. We do it as children, we do it as young adults, and we do it as seasoned professionals. Over time, existing ideas are replaced with newer ideas, and new thoughts replace old ones. And this happens even if the old thoughts are good thoughts, relevant thoughts, important thoughts.

How do you ensure that you’re not repeating your past mistakes?

How do keep those lessons that you’ve learned fresh in your mind?

How do you continue to grow as a person and as a leader?

Often this journey is not one that we take on our own but, rather, with a trusted advisor, mentor, or coach. Having someone to assist you is one of the surest ways to ensure your own success.

At ECI Learning Systems LLC, we are dedicated to helping companies get the greatest return from their most valuable asset: their employees. We work with you to align 3 key organizational factors:

• Your Company Culture
• The Leadership Styles of your key managers
• The Expectations of your Employees

When these 3 factors are aligned, you create an energy in your company that improves productivity, reduces absenteeism, increases creativity, and positively impacts your bottom line. Contact ECI Learning Systems LLC today to get your free Workplace Evaluation.


Until next time.....

Dave Meyer
ECI Learning Systems, LLC
http://www.ecilearning.com/