Monthly Archives: November 2012
A time to reflect in who we are and what we do…
At Church, Sunday we met the pastor who had just returned from a seven week sabbatical. You see he had felt “burned out” from years of servant leadership. It’s both a love a calling and a heavy responsibility.
He said something that really caught my attention. He said:
“What do you do when you no longer like what you love?”
He had many words of wisdom that apply to all of us in our daily work whatever we do.
We all need to reawaken and rekindle the spirit that brought us to our calling.
I thought wow! That’s incredibly touching and I bet many of us feel like that from time to time.
He said, all too often people don’t know what I do but are quick to tell me what I have done wrong! But then I know I need to understand why. Sound familiar?
Sometimes we need…
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Is Tradition a good thing for business? The role of Human Resources.
The role of Human Resources is to create new traditions.
The number of times that I talk to business colleagues’ about the dichotomy of tradition versus future thinking is countless.
What to do with that conversation is the nectar of business performance.
Can you have both? Only if Tradition meets the following.
- Tradition must be of value to what you are doing.
- Tradition must not stop or hinder your progress.
- Tradition must keep up with the changing times.
- Tradition must not be used as a stick called” if it is not broke don’t fix it” or “we have always done that this way.”
- Tradition must not overpower progressive policies, protocols and practices.
- Tradition must be ingrained with creative and energetic “new” thinking.
The role of human resources
- Is to know the difference.
- To have the courage to implement the difference when it is required.
- To stand out from the crowd as a leader that understands the reasons for stepping from one to the other before many others are on board.
- To anticipate when the difference has to be applied.
To know all of the above and know that it is the role of human resources to create new traditions
picture courtesy of noreligionblog.com
Are you doing all the right things to keep your employees?
Keeping your (Productive) employees should be at the top of your daily list.
Productive, effective employees that are motivated; give better customer service, up your sales, are more involved and stay longer with the company!
(And if they don’t your, training and development just became an expense)
Here is my top ten list:
- Money does motivates and when it doesn’t it de-motivates!! It is as simple as that! Pay your employees their worth don’t take advantage of them.
- Constantly share information with them, don’t keep them in the dark! The more they know the more valuable they will feel and understand what they are supposed to do.
- Clear job duties, accountabilities and goals are a must! Your employees need to know who is doing what; clears up of a lot of misunderstandings and duplication.
- Ask you employees for feedback, who knows better what is going on than your employees.
- Challenge your employees, give them ownership of projects, and let them soar! They will feel more trusted and included. They will become loyal to you for giving them the opportunity.
- Give your employees room for growth; job training opportunities, day conferences, projects, and REAL tasks. This will show value, and growth.
- Encourage teamwork, group and inter department projects; give them a reason to work together.
- Manage from distance. Having the boss looking over your shoulder is stressful.
- Coach your employees. Instead of ordering them around, do this, do that, coach them to take responsibility. Great leaders coach and they create a leadership environment.
- Fire the losers! They will spread negativity like wild fire! This very action will actually grow respect among your employees. Having someone around just collecting the paycheck is frustrating for your team.
Remember one of the most important qualities is to let others grow. It is not your right to hang on to everything, or that it must be done your way, or you have to give all the solutions.
Original idea from Sister Mae I and a conversation with HRMexplorer
Picture courtesy of Google images
Long-term strategies and short-term operational excellence.
Every day I see companies make short-term decisions and decide that they will not hire the intern or the college student etc.
How did they get into that place?
I understand all to well the pressures on business. My role as a business, human resource architect of solutions that turns around business to profitability is to balance both the short term without sacrificing the long term.
What is clear to me is that strategies come in many “time frames”
My mantra is: You must do today to protect your future, without sacrificing today!
- Always have a clear vision of your mission. Never take your eye of the goal. You lose this and you may as well pack up and go home.
- Your game plan is to continue to reach those goals.
- Key metrics are absolutely essential AND the competences to identify them and deliver them.
- There is no mission without margin so day to day focus on operational excellence is a MUST.
- A bright Tomorrow will not come if you don’t deliver operational focus today.
Business has to ensure it has competences that deliver today AND the long term.
Too many are tempted to go for one at the expense of the other.
That is why many companies spend “ oodles” of dollars to train and develop their work force only to lay them off at the first sign of lower profits.
Remember: there are Six things business has to be great at…. at the SAME time.
- Operational Excellence.
- Strategic development of its core business platform.
- Long term partnering.
- Developing a curious leadership talent throughout its employee workforce.
- Keep the momentum going, once you lose that “sense of urgency” for the LONG TERM all you are doing is surviving.
- Nimbleness of thought and customer anticipation is paramount.
Picture : credit google images
Beware: Ideas are not welcomed here!
Are you and your organization being held back?
Are your co-workers saying, “Don’t rock the boat. Don’t bring your new ideas here they are not welcome!”
To often it is the co-workers that don’t want to change, learn or thinking forward! And it is often contagious! And it is allowed to continue.
A Business Health Warning!
Who do these “unchange agents represent”? Are they representing the organization or themselves? Statistics show that they are a pretty big minority but their influence kills organizations and they “outperform” those who are truly engaged.
The negative few overcome and outperform the positive majority!
If you don’t do anything about it your organization is not going to last very long! The “good” will leave and the “bad” will prevail.
Unfortunately there are too many folks who are stuck in “yesterday” and too many organizations that are not prepared to move the “jelly”. Too much “wobble” and not enough moving off the plate (bus).
Creativity to do something different, to move the organization forward, takes courage. It takes very little to say it has always been like that here and (this new stuff) will not work!
I often see the entitlement that people feel they have of having worked somewhere for a long time. I too often see lack of leadership or management.
The organization allows them the privilege to put down those folks with new ideas AND get away with it.
That’s when privilege becomes an entitlement and the entitlement starts to kill the very hand that feeds them.
Remaining spectacular with ideas brings value to you and the organization.
There are too many Naysayers in every organization who want to tell you what you cannot do.
It is time for every organization to look at those who they employ and who actively work against what the company needs to do to be competitive. Move them out! You will save millions of dollars and save your company.
Blog By:
Peter Lanc (HRMexplorer) Human Resources Executive delivering bottom line results through people strategies. Architect of Business and People strategies.
Peter is available for consultations and where profits need to be achieved.
HRMexplorer's Blog - Human Resources 