Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Engagement Isn't Everything

Most know that diminished engagement has reached a crisis point – only 30 percent of workers are engaged. Eighty nine percent of Glassdoor users are either actively looking for new jobs or would consider better opportunities. And 93 percent of workers that took a new job did so outside their current organizations.

According to analyst Ben Eubanks, our mistake as HR professionals lies in thinking that our leaders are focused on engagement as a unique outcome. But engagement is typically not the end variable. Rather, CEOs want to move the needle on productivity, customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue. The key is to understand how employee engagement impacts all of these things.

For example, per IBM, employees who score highly on the experience index, which is correlated with engagement, gave 40 percentage points more discretionary effort and were therefore far more productive. Per Aon Hewitt, teams of engaged employees saw an additional 25 percent growth in Net Promoter Scores. The Corporate Leadership Council found that engaged employees have the potential to reduce staff turnover up to 87 percent, while Hay Group discovered that engaged workforces lead to 2.5 percent annual revenue growth.

In building a business case to focus on engagement, you must make an effort to use the same language as your leaders. Eubanks suggested that you gather data on these metrics (productivity, customer satisfaction, retention, revenue, etc.) as they currently exist in your business. Plot them against your employee engagement data and note any connections or correlations. What are your strongest conclusions? For instance, is there a team that’s driving the greatest business value that you need to focus on engaging and retaining?

For the rest of this post, please visit the SilkRoad blog.

Why AI's Not for Everyone

A recent MIT/Sloan survey of senior corporate executives showed they see artificial intelligence (AI) as the single most disruptive new technology, and nearly 70 percent said they already have AI investments underway.

Looking at these results, you might feel insecure. You might worry that you’re falling behind, and that your business will lose its competitive edge if you don’t get with the program (literally). And it’s tempting to march into your CEO’s office and demand approval for an AI strategy now. You might want to sleep on that, though, because in the project management domain, the timing might not be quite right.

We Don’t Have it All Figured Out Just Yet

As we talked about here last year, AI has made interesting strides in the last few years, particularly with respect to deep learning. To refresh your memory, deep learning involves training computers to recognize patterns in data and then classify and categorize them as a human brain could do instantaneously. This is cool to be sure, but in the enterprise, a lot of deep learning applications are still in their infancy. They have yet to solve specific business problems or notably increase bottom-line profitability.

One common problem is that most organizations still haven’t mastered big data and basic data analytics. While they’ve started collecting data, in many cases that data is just sitting around. And this data can’t necessarily be used for AI if it’s not in the right format and cleaned appropriately. So, before being able to realize the true potential of AI, you’ll need to first plan exactly how you intend to analyze the data you have and put it to use in the service of insightful business decisions.

AI is Tougher Than It Sounds

According to Brandon Allgood at Forbes, the complexity of AI is another reason to put off an implementation. “As the CTO of a company with a foundation in AI, trust me when I tell you that it’s harder to implement than you might think,” he wrote. “AI and machine learning are not commonplace today because we still lack a few essential building blocks, like a robust software infrastructure around core algorithms, or the interfaces to easily make use of those algorithms.”

In an article for Fortune.com based on the recent Brainstorm Tech event, panelists discussed the use of AI in small-to-medium sized businesses. “It probably makes no sense to dedicate limited resources to hire an AI expert, even if there were one available,” they concluded. “Maybe every industry needs an AI strategy, but not every business,” said George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity specialist.

“AI is just beginning, so having a strategy around it is a problem because you have to define what you’re talking about,” added Norman Winarski, founder of Winarski Ventures. “You have to be incredibly careful in how you deploy an AI solution, you need to think about how people will react, and it takes a lot of resources.”

For more, check out the full post on the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How to Manage Disruptive Organizational Events

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, a world-renowned thought leader on Project Management and Strategy Implementation, recently penned an article for CIO around PM fundamentals for mergers and acquisitions.

As he wrote: “Last year, some 40,000 companies changed ownership, for a total deal value of some $5 trillion, according to Thomson Reuters. That means people are managing 40,000 massive transformation projects – but how well are they executing them? And have they been planned using the best practices of the professional field known as project management?”

In the article, Nieto-Rodriguez cited 10 steps for leveraging PM to assist with mergers and acquisitions. These included identifying a unique problem or opportunity, examining alternatives and being selective about projects to take on, understanding the puzzle of how all of your projects fit together, defining a specific timeline, securing high levels of sponsorship, obtaining necessary resources, anticipating drag and overconfidence, imagining plausible kill scenarios, selling to internal stakeholders, and tracking metrics.

In a follow-up interview, I asked Nieto-Rodriguez how to best leverage PM in the event of other disruptive events that might occur in an organization. Here are some of his ideas:

Layoffs

Manage a round of layoffs as a project and appoint an expert project leader to execute it. In most cases, the rationale for the layoffs is clear and the PM should communicate it to the impacted stakeholders. The inception and planning of the project might take some time, as all of the details must be carefully defined. As opposed to traditional projects, the implementation part (or the layoff announcement) should be as short as possible. Your project plan should include support for both the employees leaving as well as the ones staying.

Reorganizations

Reorganizations are transversal by nature and impact several or even all of the departments within an organization. The project approach and its emphasis on clear objectives, tasks, and deadlines will bring focus to the proposed changes. Here again, the rationale has to be clearly articulated, including the benefits for employees. Avoid being in “constant reorganization mode,” which creates change fatigue when the organization is not able to recoup sustainable benefits from the new model introduced. Reorganization projects need time, sometimes a few years, to make changes stick and deliver the promised benefits.

For the rest of Antonio's advice, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Announcing My New Book Collaboration: Mom.B.A.!

When I met Karyn Schoenbart in the summer of 2013, I never imagined that I'd embark upon a partnership and friendship that would be one of the most defining of my life.

Karyn's the CEO of global market research firm The NPD Group, and today we publish the book we've been working on together for two years, Mom.B.A.: Essential Business Advice from One Generation to the Next.

The book asks the reader to imagine life would be like if your mother was the CEO of a global company. She could provide the type advice that would propel a career and help them overcome the many stumbling blocks that keep people from fulfilling their full potential at work. That's the idea behind Mom.B.A. 

Mom.B.A. is based on Karyn's lessons to her daughter Danielle, now an established businesswoman in her own right. And in it, we include lessons on everything from effective first impressions and workplace politics to relationship development, skill building, and priority-setting. Alongside current employment research and trends, Karyn candidly shares funny anecdotes, triumphs, and missteps as she recalls her journey from an entry-level market research position to CEO. By the time you finish reading, you'll feel like you know her as well as I do. 

We've fortunately gotten a lot of support from senior leaders in the business community, and here's my personal favorite endorsement:

"Sometimes, matter-of-fact approaches to our biggest challenges are hiding in plain sight. Karyn Schoenbart blends the learnings of her life into a set of guidelines notable for their straight shooting, and credible because they ring with the truth of her own experience. Karyn s excellence as a business leader, as a mother, as a philanthropist, and as a friend are not separate achievements, but instead part of one storyline and approach that she has weaved together beautifully for us in this terrific book." --Oliver Libby, chair and co-founder, The Resolution Project.

I thank you in advance for your support of my latest endeavor and hope you learn as much from Karyn as I have!

 

Being Overlean Could Be Your Downfall

Shazir Mucklai is a startlingly young angel investor and adviser in disruptive startups. He currently runs a six-figure PR firm helping startups commercialize their products and launch their ideas. I say that he is startlingly young because according to his LinkedIn profile, he is still in college.

One of things I love about working with millennials and Gen Z-ers is that they often excel at taking a successful idea and figuring out how to apply it elsewhere. When it comes to project management, Shazir did just that. In a recent article he penned for Forbes, he questions why PM should just be for big companies that can afford whole departments and experts.

Shazir argues that even the smallest start-up or team should implement PM strategies in order to bring clarity, focus and much-needed structure to the growth process and operations.  Project management is essential, he claims, because it facilitates the following:

Agreement on “Reason for Being”

 According to Shazir, many teams can only provide long-winded explanations of the features of the product or service instead of the benefit it imparts to customers. The question of “what does it do and why?” is usually answered fairly quickly after a project manager is engaged.

Agreement on Goals

 Many smaller companies have flat organizational models. But, says Shazir, if every member of a four-person team is the leader, there are four different to-do lists, each in a different order. Mismatched priorities can be resolved by setting strategic, overarching goals with help from a project management orientation.

For more where this came from, read the whole article at the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How to Prevent Organizational Drag

In their new book, TIME | TALENT | ENERGY: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power, Bain & Company partner Michael Mankins and his co-author Eric Garton identify the specific causes of organizational drag – otherwise known as the collection of institutional factors that slow things down, decrease output and performance, and drain people’s energy.

The book claims that the average company loses more than 25 percent of its productive power to organizational drag. This is often an inevitable complication of companies getting larger and instituting more processes and procedures. According to Harvard Business Review, organizational drag costs the economy more than $3 trillion each year in lost output.

As Mankins told writer Stephanie Vozza at Fast Company, the most common processes relate to expense management. “At most companies, there are spending limits and audits, and employees are tracked,” he says. “At Netflix, however, there is no expense policy. The only policy is, ‘Act in the best interest of Netflix.’ The company is telling employees, ‘We assume you are not here to rip off the company, and we’re not going to put in place processes that consume human capital, waste time, and zap energy.’ They tell employees to assume their best judgment, and they can be more productive if they’re not held back.”

This, Mankins claims, is why companies like Netflix are 40 percent more productive and have profit margins that are 30 to 50 percent higher than industry averages. Apparently, most organizations start off with roughly the same number of high performers, but organizations with less drag produce far more every day – and the difference compounds every year.

One secret of companies with less organizational drag involves putting a majority of star performers on mission-critical projects that are essential to the business. Another relates to the development of inspiring leaders. As Mankins says in the Fast Company piece, Dell recognized the productivity difference between inspired and average teams. “Sales teams led by an inspiring leader are 6 percent more productive than those that have an average leader. If you extrapolate that 6 percent it accounts for an extra $1 billion in annual revenue.”

For more on organizational drag, check out the full post on the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Making a Good Decision with Limited Information

Leaders do not always have the luxury of time when making a critical business decision, yet research shows that quick decisions are often remarkably solid despite time pressures. Here are six strategies for coming to the best conclusion in a non-ideal situation.

Strategy 1: Define Your Result

Consider why you must make a prompt decision now. What is the most pressing problem, and what do you need to have happen as a result of the decision? If everything worked out the way you hope, what would be the outcome? Don’t get too caught up in a detailed list of pros and cons, because inevitably, some listed won’t be as important as others. Recognize that every option will likely have a downside as there is rarely a 100 percent perfect decision. You simply have to do the best you can with the data you have available at the time.

Strategy 2: Look Both Short and Long-Term

Envision how your decision will play out immediately, and how it will play out down the road. Understand your organization’s short and long-term goals and evaluate your decision in relation to both of those. Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 method is one way to employ this strategy: think about the implications of your decision 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now!

Strategy 3: Reduce Your Risk with a Trial

If you are uncertain about the best path forward, can you test the impact of a particular decision on a small scale? For instance, can you implement a new process in a single department, or company-wide for only one month? Trials give you an out if a decision isn’t working, and also provide opportunities to modify your approach based on feedback.

Strategy 4: Talk to People Who Have Been There

Seek out those (either inside or outside your company) who have been in a similar situation and probe them about their learnings. You might also ask the opinions of those who will be directly affected by the decision, and those who are truly impartial. The more perspectives you can get, the better informed your decision will be. However, in order to protect yourself from analysis paralysis, don’t leave your inquiry open-ended. Instead, commit to a concrete decision after collecting points of view for a specified period of time.

For more strategies, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How to Keep Your Business Relevant in the Age of Automation

Much has been made about human jobs that will potentially be replaced by automation and artificial intelligence in the coming years. But where does that leave businesses that base so much of their success on intimate, human connections? And how can owners who are already struggling to stay in business today contend with the prospect of having to future-proof their companies? 

I reached out to three owners, Ben Landers, CEO of internet marketing firm Blue Corona in Rockville, Maryland; Laura Mignott, co-founder of DigitalFlash, an integrated branding agency in New York City; and Brendon Schrader, CEO of marketing agency Antenna Consulting in Minneapolis for their opinions on how they future-proof their companies.

How did you decide where to focus your business and how did present and future marketability play into that decision?

Ben Landers: Blue Corona wasn't launched in a startup lab with someone else's money. We bootstrapped the company based on a market need observed first hand. When you're in this process, you don't have the luxury of spending too much time worrying about the future marketability of it.

Laura Mignott: DigitalFlash is a brand elevation agency. We know that technology would always be there, but we are in the connecting people business. Technology is just another tool to help foster communication and one-to-one social interactions.

Brendon Schrader: My decision on where to focus both my business and our service offerings was based on an in-depth review of the marketplace and the identification of where we could bring innovation to a stagnant industry. This allowed us to identify the whitespace in market and ultimately influenced how we created a firm that could be unique now and into the future.

How might the rise of AI and automation affect your business? How do you keep abreast of these trends?

Schrader: There will always be new technologies and trends. What matters is that you pay attention to these trends early and clearly understand the impact they could have on your customers and business. My strategy is to set aside time every week to read, research and stay current on the issues facing our industry.

For the rest of the interview, take a look at the AMEX Open Forum.

Introducing Finland's Universal Basic Income Experiment

It’s not a new concept. In the late 1790s, American statesman Thomas Paine called for a universal payment of £15 per year to all his countrymen in exchange for the right to hold private property.  

First suggested over 200 years ago, the idea of universal basic income never quite went away, and in many circles, it’s actually picking up steam.  

Progressive Finland is officially the first sovereign nation to put it to the test. Two-thousand Finnish citizens, who were selected randomly from those currently receiving unemployment benefits or an income subsidy, will now receive €560 ($587) a month. Everyone gets the same amount of money whether they work or not. The pilot will run for the next two years, and may eventually expand to include all Finns. 

Why the renewed interest in universal basic income now? Stagnant wages since the early aughts is one major reason, as is the declining share of total income earned by workers compared with companies.  

In the private sector, though, the attraction is based on the fear that in the near future, many human jobs will be automated or otherwise taken over by machine intelligence. This notion has been gaining traction since 2013, when a paper by Oxford economists Frey and Osborne predicted that nearly 50 percent of modern jobs were at risk of computerization.  

For more where this came from, check out my new column on Mashable.

Tax Hacks for Business Owners

I'll never forget the first time I had to file taxes as a small-business owner. Between the myriad of IRS forms, deductions, payroll and quarterly installments, I was overwhelmed. I quickly learned that the best plan of action was to concentrate on how to file taxes throughout the year, rather than waiting until the precious few days before the early spring deadline.

This month, I spoke to three small-business owners who know a thing or two about how to file taxes. Along with her partner Beth Doane, Kelly Gibbons runs the communications firm Main & Rose in Los Angeles; Nick Pirollo is the co-founder of Philadelphia-based scholarship website Scholly; and Vincenzo Villamena is the owner of tax consultancy Online Taxman in New York City.

Some business owners view taxes as one of the least fun aspects of running a business. Why is it important to know how to file taxes?

Kelly Gibbons: Taxes are definitely an aspect of business ownership on which most people have a horrible perspective. We made a conscious decision to look at taxes as something positive. Filing taxes is a reminder of all the great things we take for granted living in a first-world country with countless opportunities. We want to pay our fair share and the focus should be on just that—paying the amount we should be and honoring why taxes are not a bad thing. It behooves owners to know tax law, to hire experts and to make smart decisions that benefit us now and for the long term.

Nick Pirollo: Taxes are logistically challenging and "giving away" money always hits home. It's for those reasons, however, that doing your taxes properly is an important business focus. I've seen a good number of businesses retain a lot more income by adopting better tax habits. The secondary benefits of proper planning are countless, including being better prepared for audits, seeing issues in your expenses and minimizing inconsistencies in your books.

Vincenzo Villamena: Tax planning is important because it represents an immediate and definitive short-term return of investment in accountant fees. Business owners can make decisions based on real analysis on the tax rates and associated scenarios.

What is your tax preparation process like?

Pirollo: My preparation officially begins in December, but because I don't manage my year-end filing in-house, it is important to manage the relationship with my accountant year round and make sure they are clued in before tax season rolls around. 

In December, I round out my books, gather any necessary paperwork and make projections for the remainder of the month in order to form a full picture of the business year. This means I am only making slight adjustments once December's final numbers come in. It also makes the coming year much more manageable, giving me ample time to get any extra cash in place to cover costs.

Villamena: We generally sit down with each client and look through their previous filed returns, examining improvement areas—for example, investment in capex before year-end, retirement plans, making an S-Corp election or declaring year-end bonuses.

Gibbons: We prepare well in advance with respect to our cash flow, and set aside more than we think we will need in order to compensate for higher earnings than what we may expect. This is crucial with a client-based business like ours.

For the rest of the interview, check out the AMEX Open Forum.