Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

How to Enact Change in a Bureaucracy

Have you ever tried to drive in Los Angeles?

For those of us who have, changes to the notoriously frustrating transportation infrastructure have been a long time coming, but how do you enact change in a government entity that seems like the very definition of bureaucracy?

Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough and her firm, KH Consulting Group, recently worked with Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel to review the city’s transportation structures and recommend reforms. The ultimate goal was to reduce congestion by building highways, promoting alternative transportation, implementing traffic management technology and facilitating the use of bicycles.

For all of the details on how Gayla's team navigated the bureaucratic waters of LADOT and how you can enact change in your own bureaucracy, check out my Culture Beat column at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

Could a Good Culture Save Your Life?

If you have to get rushed to the hospital, you’d better hope it’s one where everyone is smiling, because according to 2011 research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, hospitals with strong cultures consistently report better patient outcomes.

I thought that care for heart attack victims was pretty standard in this country, but it turns out that’s not the case.  Patient death rates vary considerably, as much as twofold between the highest- and lowest-performing hospitals, and you’re more likely to survive in a hospital that has great team spirit.

For more on the life-saving benefits of good culture, check out my post at the AMEX OPEN Forum.

Being an Introvert in an Extrovert's World

Sherrie Haynie, a consultant with CPP, Inc., the publisher of the Myers-Briggs assessment, had this to say regarding introverts:

“Often, introverts describe how they interact with the outside world as a performance, and acting is work.  Similar to professional actors, introverts may appear enthusiastic, lively and entertaining.  However, many describe the experience as being ‘on stage’ – for an introvert to spend a significant amount of their day using non-preferred characteristics requires a great deal of energy.”

Wow.  I couldn’t have said it better myself, and I am, in fact, one of those introverts.

Eva Rykrsmith wrote a great piece on how introverts can be more effective at work.  For some other thoughts on how introverts can manage the stress of a role that requires extroverted behaviors, have a look at my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

How to Survive a Scandal

While writing my recent book Blind Spots, I had the opportunity to meet Patrick Rodgers.  Patrick was a lawyer who had been a notable member of his community since he was young, participating in the Kiwanis Club and his local Chamber of Commerce.  But one year, when Patrick’s brothers both passed away from cancer, Patrick neglected some important client paperwork and was disbarred.

It took him four hard years to regain his credibility and return to public service.  Patrick can’t change what happened in the past, but he now strives to remember his mistakes and incorporate the values of honesty and trustworthiness into his job as a mediator every day.  At the end of the day, Patrick is a survivor.

At some point in your career, you may find yourself embroiled in a scandal.  This is obviously not a great thing to have happen, but if it does, all is not lost.  Check out my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog for how to cope productively and come out on top in this situation.

Can Your Boss Count on You?

You know what I've realized in my tenure as a manager? The number one quality I appreciate most in a direct report is reliability.  By reliable, I mean a person who says she is going to do something, and then actually does it in the agreed-upon manner.

You’d think this one would be kind of a no brainer for employees, especially when it comes to the boss who hands out the paychecks. But time and time again, in both my personal and professional life, I come across people who nod and smile when I ask them to help out with something, make promises they never intend to keep, or volunteer to assist with projects because it makes them look good.

As a result, I develop the dangerous expectation that I can stop worrying about that particular aspect of the project, that I can count on this person to take care of it. And imagine how disheartened I am when the deadline approaches (or worse, passes), and I either have to nag my report to complete the task and put it back on my own plate. I’ve fallen victim to my mother’s old warning: “if you let someone else’s lack of planning become your emergency, you’re a fool.”

A lot of the time, people who don’t keep their word aren’t doing it maliciously. They fully intend to get the task done, but they forget, get distracted with something else, or keep telling themselves they’ll get to it eventually. Nevertheless, it’s exactly these types of situations that make me a manager who delegates reluctantly. I know that if a project is in my hands, I can control how and when it gets done.  But if I have to trust another person, it’s a different situation entirely.

I know that I’m not alone in this. If you want to be the kind of employee bosses love, do your job without being prodded, and once you agree to a task, don’t let it slide. Always meet your deadlines, and if something comes up that makes that impossible, give your manager plenty of heads up. Never underestimate the importance of being the person who brings peace of mind to the team, the person who makes it possible for the boss to ask once and then walk away confidently, knowing that the task in good, capable hands.

What is Your Advantage Really?

You probably already know that I am a huge fan of Pat Lencioni. I first met Pat when I wrote about him in the WSJ in 2009 and have devoured his various fables about executives jockeying for key positions and striving for self-actualization in fictional American companies. 

This week, Pat has released his first nonfiction business book, The Advantage.  In it, he argues that the difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.

Organizations are healthy when they are whole, consistent and complete and when their management, operations and culture are unified.  Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave.

In the book, Pat shares dozens of stories of his many years in the consulting world, along with advice for how we can conduct business in a new way that aligns the organization around a common set of principles and maximizes individual potential.  It's a must-read for established executives and up-and-coming large and small business leaders who recognize that the business world has shifted and want to build an empire based on traditional values like open communication, ethical behavior, trust, and teamwork. 

 

Pathological Lying at Work

I just called a colleague to ask him to participate in a third-party project I was working on.  I wanted him to join so that I‘d have an excuse to spend more time with him, and I found myself saying all sorts of things to get him to agree.  For example, the project wouldn’t require any time at all, and that it was the most meaningful initiative I’d worked on in years.

Some of my comments were half-truths, and some were pretty close to being outright lies.

Why We Tiptoe Around the Truth

I consider myself to be a pretty moral person, so it bothers me that I’m not always honest with co-workers.  It’s the worst when someone asks me my opinion and I don’t want to hurt her feelings.  Why can’t I just be straight with people?

According to Peter Bregman in his blog post for Psychology Today, the answer is that I don’t want to feel mean or rude, and don’t want the person I’m talking to disapprove of me for being mean or rude.  By lying to preserve someone’s feelings, I’m the one who feels better.

Lying Doesn’t Work

Subtly positioning things so they appear in a better light and massaging the truth to make it more likely to be embraced also makes me feel better too.  It also takes an exceptional amount of energy and apparently fools know one.

But even understanding that, I'm still one of Bregman's minions.  I still try to make things seem different than they are because it takes courage to be honest. I have to be willing to be vulnerable, and I’m not great at that.

Bregman says that honesty is much more compelling, powerful, and effective than the alternative. People want the truth.  They are willing to accept it far more often than we think, and respect other people and organizations for speaking it.  Truly honest people make it easier for others to identify with them, trust them, and ultimately value them as leaders.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

How to Get from College to Career: Advice from Lindsey Pollak

My good friend Lindsey Pollak recently released a terrific new edition of her well-loved book, Getting from College to Career.  In the midst of the craziness of having a new book and baby, she generously shared some thoughts about what college grads can do to improve their careers in 2012:

What made you decide to do a new edition at this time?  

We’re living in a time of such rapid change in the world of business and careers that five years ago, when the first edition of Getting from College to Career was published, feels like “the old days.” At that time the economy was good and we were at the very, very beginning of social media and smartphone usage. I decided to write a revised edition of the book to make sure that readers would have the most up-to-date, relevant and forward-thinking advice for their job searches and careers.

 What's the most important piece of advice readers should take away from the new edition?

The most important piece of advice in the new edition is the same as the original edition: take action every single day to find a job and build your career. More now than ever, the people who succeed are the people who take consistent action. Momentum matters.

The good news is that today’s job seekers have so many more tools they can use to take action – LinkedIn and Twitter have both grown tremendously over the past five years, more organizations are providing job postings by social media and text messaging and Meetup.com and other technologies make networking opportunities more plentiful.

 How has job hunting changed in the five years since you launched the original edition of Getting from College to Career? What new tips have you added?

The two biggest changes since Getting from College to Career was published five years ago relate to the economy and technology.

In 2007, there were plenty of available jobs for recent grads, so my advice focused on figuring out what you wanted to do and taking the steps to get hired into a full-time position. Since 2008, job openings are much more scarce so I added a lot more advice on alternatives to full-time employment, such as freelancing, post-college interning and taking on project work.

The recession has also meant that job seekers have had to become much better at marketing themselves to employers. I don’t think the phrase “personal branding” appeared once in the original edition and now it’s everywhere. Job seekers need to be able to tell a clear story of what makes them unique and how that uniqueness will benefit an employer. Generalists are out; specialists are in – even at the entry level.

In terms of technology, Twitter didn’t even exist when I wrote the first edition and now it’s a crucial tool for career research and networking. In this edition I also include recent grad-specific advice on using LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Apps, Skype and other tech-based tools for job seekers. Of course, technology is moving so fast (just look at the skyrocketing growth of Pinterest!) that job seekers need to keep an eye out for new tools that could help them stand out and get hired.

You interviewed a number of successful professionals and asked them to share what they wish they'd known before starting their careers. What answers most stood out to you?

I was really struck by the number of people who credited their success to two things – their relationships and their passion. Yes, a lot has changed over the past five years, but these are two elements of a successful career that are timeless: build and maintain authentic professional relationships and find a career where you’ll be doing work you love. I expect I’ll be giving that exact same advice five more years from now and fifty years from now.

In addition to being an author and speaker you serve as a global spokesperson for LinkedIn. Can you share your top LinkedIn tips for recent grads?

Absolutely! LinkedIn is a very important tool for recent grads and far too many of them are still not aware of how valuable professional online networking can be at the beginning of your career. Here are my top five LinkedIn tips for recent grads:

1. Write a profile headline that displays your desired career. Your headline does not have to be a job title. The best student headlines clearly promote who you are and what you want to do when you graduate. For example, "Honors Student & Aspiring Public Relations Associate." Or “Pre-MBA Finance Major Graduating in 2013.”
2. Include a ton of keywords in your profile. Recruiters search for candidates by keywords, so make sure your profile is full of them. Find relevant words and phrases in the job descriptions of the positions you want and then pepper them throughout your Summary, Specialties and Skills sections.
3. Connect with everyone you know. Build your network by sending personalized LinkedIn connection requests to everyone you know -- friends, family, neighbors, classmates, everyone. Next, send each personal a customized message (no mass emails!) to tell them you’re job hunting and to explain what position(s) you’re looking for. Request some advice or a phone call to talk further, or ask if they can refer you to anyone they know in your desired field.
4. Join your alumni group. Join the LinkedIn group of any college, university or graduate school you’ve attended. Once you’re a member, you’ll begin to receive updates on the activities taking place – discussions, job postings, event announcements and more. Jump in and start participating, just like you did in college!
5. Search the Student Jobs Portal. The Student Jobs Portal is a collection of all entry-level job postings on LinkedIn. Search by job function or check out postings from featured companies. When you apply for a job through this portal, the employer will be able to see your full LinkedIn profile along with your application.

Would You Give Your Employees All Your Money?

Profit sharing is the new black. But one company, software training firm Agile Learning Labs, has taken it to the extreme.

Agile’s six-member team is paid the same share of the company's profits, regardless of title or role. Apparently, there are big advantages. First, since it impacts them directly and equally, all team members are constantly looking out for the bottom line. Everyone wants to do what they can to support the sales director, because it’s the customers who are paying for dinner that night. “Even those of us who would normally have no customer contact are more aware of our clients and their needs,” says Agile co-founder Chris Sims. “This helps the business.”

Digging in the dirt

Despite the increased loyalty, personal investment and productivity that profit sharing engenders in staff, the decision to move to this model was not made lightly. Every member of Agile’s team researched existing models and contributed ideas. The sales director based his concept on Eliyahu Goldratt’s theory of Throughput Accounting, and the novelist creative director wrote a narrative describing the company’s environment under a new profit sharing model a la Pat Lencioni.

Agile claims that the logistics of the chosen model are simple and elegant. Because his team was small, Sims wanted to avoid a structure that was too top-heavy and required loads of administrative time. Here’s how it works.

This system still pays out a low-end base salary to everyone–no change here. The profit share is calculated once per month and is paid as a bonus in the next pay period. The company has retained an accountant and HR firm to vet its practices and ensure that it is operating according to state and federal employment laws.

Not for the faint-hearted

For risk-averse individuals like me, however, profit sharing is a bit nerve-wracking. Sims admits that outcomes are variable. “When we start the month out, we can’t predict what the payout will be. In our few months' experience, it has ranged from fair to excellent. So far the average is acceptable, but there's always the possibility of a slump,” he says.

And what happens when the company gets bigger? How can everyone receive an equal share of profits when the firm grows to 100 or more employees? Fortunately for Agile, Sims has already thought that through. “We may restrict the model to the core team at some point, but right now we’re experimenting with extending it to some of our independent contractors and it’s working well,” Sims says. “We intend to revise our methods as we go.”

Getting down to business

If profit sharing sounds palatable to you, there are a few things you’ll want to consider. The U.S. Department of Labor recommends that you first decide whether to set up the plan yourself or to consult a professional or financial institution. Then, you will want to create a written document that outlines how the plan will work day-to-day, arrange a trust fund for the plan’s assets, develop a record-keeping system and provide plan information to participants.

Sims suggests figuring out the simplest model that could possibly work and give it a try, remembering that the primary benefit of profit sharing is a sense of shared investment in the health of the business–not the cash. “Once you have that kind of buy-in, where people feel like pulling together in lean times as much as they do celebrating the flush times, the cash will begin to take care of itself,” Sims says. “And don't make instituting a profit sharing plan a cumbersome project, because then it will either never happen or you'll design something no one can understand or administer.” Sounds like good advice!

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?

 

How Over-the-Top Will You Go to Boost Employee Morale?

For some business owners, good culture is everything, and they will pay top dollar for it.  Mitch Goldstone is one of those business owners. Goldstone, who is president and CEO of California-based photo scanning service ScanMyPhotos.com, has no qualms about going way over-the-top for his annual employee retreat in Las Vegas. The price tag is a whopping $65,000.

Goldstone’s grand design includes meeting his 17 employees at the airport with chauffeured Rolls Royce Ghost limousines.  At the MGM Grand’s swanky Skylofts, employees receive nonstop attention from personal 24-hour butlers and mingle with celebrities.  They eat at five-star restaurants, score front row seats to Cirque du Soleil and third row seats to Elton John, and cap it all off with a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon.

Employees as First Priority 

Creating a culture of appreciation is one thing, but is this much appreciation really necessary?  Goldstone thinks so.  “Successful entrepreneurs understand that it is all about the employees; they are the fuel that powers a company's success.  Employees have to be put first, even ahead of customers, so you can’t be cheap and send everyone to a local restaurant.  No level of extravagance is too much to reward loyalty,” he said.

Apparently, it works.  Goldstone claims that his organization has zero turnover and that ScanMyPhotos.com recently marked its 21^st year in business.  The Vegas retreat cleverly ties into the company’s mission, too.  “Our business is to preserve millions of precious photo memories, and along the way, we want to create new ones for ourselves that we’ll remember forever,” said Goldstone.

Bonus Benefits

Employee morale aside, Goldstone and his advisors recognize the public relations value inherent in pulling off the most spectacular employee retreat anyone’s heard of.  All over the web, blogs are buzzing about ScanMyPhotos.com and prospective customers are flocking to the website.  In all likelihood, these new customers will pay for the revenue lost when Goldstone suspended operations for the retreat.

I suppose my question is: What kind of message does this send to companies looking to improve their cultures and create more desirable places to work?  Is culture about putting your employees in an elevator with A-listers, or is it about sending them handwritten birthday cards and ensuring they can pay the hospital bill if they get in a car accident?  Is it about letting them live like gluttons for a weekend, or it is about making retirement contributions that will help feed them until they’re 90?

Goldstone is the first to admit that Vegas isn’t everything.  ScanMyPhotos.com employees also receive benefits including free lunch and 100 percent health coverage.  And perhaps what says the most about ScanMyPhotos.com’s culture is the fact that the employees are willing to spend all of this time together and seem to genuinely have a blast.  I mean, hey, I’ve worked in cultures that couldn’t even make Vegas fun.

Here’s something else to consider: It sounds like the ScanMyPhotos.com culture has been a pretty nice one all along.  But if your work environment is unsupportive or even hostile and morale is really suffering, a gesture like this may well seem empty and contrived and has the potential to turn off employees even more.  If you really want to improve things, it’s simple: Listen and make gradual changes based on the feedback you receive.

For his part, Goldstone is now under pressure to keep the party going.  “The Vegas retreat was the experience of a lifetime…until next year.”

This post was originally published at the AMEX Open Forum.  Have you checked out my Culture Beat column yet?