If you are looking for breakthrough creativity/innovation/customer service/marketing, the last thing you need is employees who merely want “a job“. Meaning, any job where they show up, put in their time, get paid. What you need are team members, together on a mission.
Go read Four Simple Ways to Make Your Employees Happier.
(Ignore the word “Happiness” here; it seems a bit shallow. Think “fulfillment”.)
(Peaceniks, bear with this; there’s some excellent advice!)
I was a bit surprised to see this at Harvard Business Publishing, yet it makes perfect sense.
Why the Military Produces Great Leaders makes a case for “servant leadership“, a concept which I imagine appeals to those of us who cringe every time a CEO grinds a company into the ground for personal gain, then seemingly gets away with it.
Quoting Colonel Tom Kolditz, author of the post, “military leadership is based on a concept of duty, service, and self-sacrifice”.
“When serving in crisis conditions… transactional sources of motivation (e.g. pay, rewards, or threat of punishment) become insufficient… When followers have trust and confidence in a charismatic leader, they are transformed into willing, rather than merely compliant, agents”.
This is called “transformational leadership” – the kind of leadership that inspires everyone in a company to give his best.
Go read the article. It has additional insights and asks some thought-provoking questions. You’ll be a better leader for it.
Excellent, quick post over at Harvard Business Publishing and without giving too much away, having passionate employees starts with owners/managers/CEOs themselves.
(The attitudes of leaders have a huge impact on employees, so there are quite a few posts related to this topic. See The Power of Happiness Part I and Part II, Attitude Adjustment, the Day-to-Day Management Affects Creativity series, Part I, Part II and Part III and Negativity is Poison!)
It seems management, capitalism, and frugality have received a bit of bad press lately. Here’s an inspirational story posted at Harvard Business Review that shows redeeming aspects of all three.
The Boss Who Laid Himself Off tells of the selfless acts of a manager who no doubt impacted the lives of two talented, younger managers and their families, which of itself offers an important example. What many may not also see in this story is the idea of mentoring, then stepping aside to allow the next generation to energize and continue a company’s mission.
And the frugality angle? Well, do you think “Bob” could have done what he did had he been up to his eyeballs in debt? Living frugally and saving allows us the freedom to do the right thing.
Harvard Business Publishing has an excellent 10-lesson post about “organizations whose strong and adaptive ownership cultures give them a powerful competitive edge” distilling years of research and insight. In a sentence, a healthy corporate culture leads to happy employees and happy customers. Short, but very meaty post, much of which applies to Small and Medium Businesses. Chew well.
Behance Magazine has an excellent article on one of the consequences of Social Media; distraction. This ties in perfectly with one of my posts a few weeks back, “The Hidden Costs of Workplace Internet Usage“.
First off, I have to say that I take issue with their terminology. While they accurately discuss the root issue here, that of insecurity, they label the problem “Insecurity Work“. While constantly checking Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, e-Mail alerts, and Blog stats takes time and effort, it is the opposite of work/what you are paid to do/results.
That being said, check out the article: Tip: Reduce Your Level of Insecurity Work.
I have to admit that it’s a little painful to discover, or even worse, have someone point out, a weakness. The good news is that we have an opportunity to better ourselves and then help others. Isn’t that what management is about?
What a great Topic. Wait. Harvard Business Publishing? Really?
Oh, it’s Gina Trapani of LifeHacker guestblogging. Alles klar.
Great post over at Harvard Business. It says it’s about “being happy at work”. I say it’s about leadership. (That’s what happens when you put something on the InterWebs; you loose control as people can say whatever they want.) Skip the intro, head straight for the 7 ways to be a better leader, and ROCK your business.
Great post over at Creativity & Innovation, where Keith Sawyer explores the “tension between individual creative vision, and the collective genius of the group.”
In this Web 2.0 age, where collective knowledge is valued, leaders must keep in mind that “collective stupidity” also abounds. Often, leaders need to move ahead, even when support is lagging behind, knowing that eventually the group will catch on. And just as often, they need to listen.
Great post by Seth Godin yesterday on the difference between boring and remarkable.
Remarkable is a choice, involving risk, time and money. Choose any other path and boring happens by default. Excellent read.
And while you’re surfing, read Put a Dent in the Universe too.
“To truly be inspired for great work, you need to know that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something that’s making a difference and that your role in that something is significant.”
If your company or business doesn’t exist to make a difference in the lives of your clients and in the lives of your employees, why do you bother?
It seems happiness is a powerful force, not only affecting people we meet, but also cascading outward through up to three degrees of separation. Being Happy Affects Even Those You Don’t Know, details research carried out over a twenty-year period, offering these astonishing findings.
Study co-author James Fowler says, “To think about the way we’re connected to one another has caused me to take more responsibility for my own actions… If I head home in a happy mood, I’m not just making my son happy, I’m potentially making my son’s friend happy. I’m not just making my wife happy, I’m making my wife’s mother happy.”
Managers and owners, you can already tell where I’m going with this. (See Attitude Adjustment, the Day-to-Day Management Affects Creativity series, Part I, Part II and Part III and Negativity is Poison!)
Not a lot of CR blog fodder from 37Signals lately, until this caught my attention last week. Hire managers of one offers some great advice for the small, creative business owned and managed by an artist (used loosely) who would rather be doing what he loves than having to deal with the business of business. Clearly the business is important, though following 37Signals’ advice allows one to “to work more and manage less”.
“I make more mistakes than anyone I know. And eventually I patent them.”
-Thomas Edison
Harvard Business Publishing’s Discussion Leader Blog has a post about the value of learning from mistakes, which is an ongoing theme here at CR. (See here, here, and here.) The post is framed by current political discussion of choosing leaders, so for those of you who need a break, I’ve excised the good stuff and brought it here.
In choosing leaders “most people seek a litany of accomplishments that demonstrate sound judgment, and failure is considered radioactive.” This is a shame, as “the character and worldview of leaders are shaped not via their accomplishments but by their setbacks in the crucibles of challenge”.
Shifting gears slightly to look at “mistakes” in a business context, the post points to a Business Week cover story, saying that “breakthroughs depend on failure, and the best companies leverage their mistakes” and that “according to that article, ‘breakthrough innovation… requires well-honed organizations built for efficiency and speed to do that what feels unnatural: Explore. Experiment. Foul up, sometimes. Then repeat.’” (italics mine) This is a business principal known as “intelligent fast failure.”
So experimentation and honest mistakes should be expected and encouraged as many creative breakthroughs are happy accidents. Are we encouraging creativity and innovation in our workplaces through experimentation and fast failure? Or are we stifling creativity by quashing mistakes?
Is the end of management near?
These are some of the questions asked on Harvard Business Publishing’s Conversation Starter blog. The post itself has to do with larger corporations, though clearly applies to smaller companies as well. In a day and age where creativity is necessary for success, yes even survival, managers must adapt quickly and foster creativity.
Harvard Business School professor (and researcher) Teresa Amabile opines that we will need to reinvent management in order to:
Much of this is antithetical to “conventional wisdom”, but that’s the one of the keys to success, isn’t it? Sensing when conventional wisdom is passé and reinventing the “rules”.
“You need to have muscles. You need to have muscles on your muscles! You need to have muscles on your eyeballs!”
-Reg, Bouncer for the Salty Spitoon
Three Traits of a Tough Leader is a brief post on leadership traits on Harvard Business Publishing’s Blog, and despite the above SpongeBob quote, the traits all have to do with inner strength.
Toughness, defined by the author as inner resilience and character, is often overlooked, and yet is an essential leadership quality.
“Toughness matters because you need a leader who has the wherewithal to stand up for what she believes in, as well as stand up to others to achieve team and organizational goals.”
(I find humor in that the author apparently lacks the toughness to stand up to the politically-correct grammar-rewriting Nazis. Counting skills come into question as well, since there are actully four traits listed, in boldface type, no less. But I digress; I really like the post.)
Anyways, the four traits common to tough leaders are that they:
It take a tough man to make a tender chicken. Likewise, being humble and “owning up to failure, is not a weakness; it’s a measure of strength.”
(I’ve written about the freedom to make mistakes in Making Mistakes Must Be Corporate Policy and Making Mistakes Must Be Corporate Policy II)
Good reading. Check it out, then see where you might stand some toughening up.
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