Ah, the great debate.  Who is better – the Beatles or the Stones?  I can’t answer that for you, but though I love the Beatles, I have to choose the Rolling Stones.  Ok, maybe they should have retired twenty years ago, but their classics are still exhilarating.  One in particular provides great fodder for this blog entry.  Sing it with me:  “You can’t always get what you want…”  Great song, amazing punch line:  “You can’t always get what you want.  But if you try sometimes well you just might find, you get what you need.”  And of course the same can be said of work!

The budget you wish you had, the vendor you wish you had, the customer you wish you had, the boss you wish you had, the new team member you wish you had, the employee you wish you had, etc.  Come one, sing it out loud:  “You can’t always get what you want!  You can’t always get what you want!  You can’t always get what you want!  But if you try sometimes well you just might find, you get what you need!”  Paraphrased slightly, you can’t always get what you want and thus your goal is to maximize what you get out of what you do have.  This is leadership 101.  While it is fun and impressive to see solid leaders take spectacular teams (think of all of the sports examples here…) to great heights, it is far more fun and far more impressive to see great leaders take teams comprised of mere mortals to unforeseen heights.

Yes, we could talk about the processes and systems that support vendor selection, new employee hiring, you name it.  However, at the end of the day, you have to deal with the resources at hand.  Several key behaviors help explain how great leaders take teams from good to great.  Three in particular stand out:

Leverage Your Strengths

In the world of personal professional development, this has become (I think justifiably) the most popular mantra.  From a leadership perspective, this is not simply an individual strategy, it’s a team strategy.  While we can wax philosophical about the ideal set of team skills, you got what you got.  Maximize what you have by doing the following.  First, communicate clearly with the team to ensure each player knows his or her strength and is managing their time aggressively to ensure the team gets as much out of that strength as possible.  Second, as the leader, and to the extent your skills allow it, pick up the slack for the team where there are weak spots with particular skills.  That’s why they pay you more!  Third, borrow what is missing – use a temp agency, con a friend in another department to help out, find the creative short-term solution when needed.

Oil the Processes

So, how do the teams with few (or no) superstars beat the teams filled with superstars (or at least superstar resources)?  One of the best explanations is that they understand the fundamental processes supporting their work.  In basketball, this might be a keen understanding of blocking out to secure rebounds.  At work, this might be analyzing the order fulfillment process and removing any and all wasted time and resources not needed to get the customer the correct order on time.  Key fundamental processes executed flawlessly will give any team a very real shot to compete against teams that are more talented or teams and organizations with superior resources.

Put in the Effort

What’s the old saying?  Practice makes perfect.  It can be said many ways, but the take-a-way is the same:  many a resource deficiency can be overcome if you will work your fingers to the bone.  Welcome to leadership.  Many young leaders will often become initially dismayed when they realize that in order to really earn that extra pay and status associated with that new title, you often have work twice as hard – not a “little” harder, twice as hard!  The beauty of expending exceptional effort is that you not only get more done, but you learn a lot in the process for having invested yourself so fully while also sending positive signals to others about the value of a strong work ethic.

I don’t really care whether you like the Beatles more than the Stones.  Heck, you could be into disco for all I care.  I do care, however, about helping you cope with the fun realities we face as leaders every day.  One of the greatest challenges is to resist throwing in the towel or setting low expectations when you feel the team is somehow lacking skills and / or resources.  Great leaders know this is almost always the case – the real magic trick is taking what you have and pushing it to its full potential.

Thanks for stopping by – I hope this finds you and yours well:  happy, healthy and productive.  Many of you are aware of the injury my wife recently sustained.  She is on the mend and in good spirits.  We can’t say thank you enough to all of you – friends, family and all of growing members of the “Dr. Dewett” community for all of your help and positive thoughts.  When you get home tonight from work, I know you’ll be tired, but trust me here – hug your family and be grateful you have the opportunity to do so.  As always, thanks for all the feedback and be sure to stop by www.drdewett.com as the new site should go live by next week.  See you next time!

After my last blog post I heard from many of you.  Apparently you could recognize some of the not so productive leadership zingers in that top 10 list (Top 10 Most Outrageous and Unproductive Leadership Behaviors I Have Seen So Far This Year).  Several of you suggested I create a list that is the opposite of the abominations noted last time.  A few also told me to keep the posts shorter…guess I do get wordy sometimes.  Great suggestions!  Though sometimes I spend time making fun of employee and leader shortcomings, my main job is to talk about how we get it right sometimes!  So, though this list might not be as funny as the last, hopefully it will be more inspiring and useful – a reminder that in the midst of the absurdity that is the workplace, there is much to smile about.  Only 5 this time instead of 10, just to keep it concise.  Here goes – the top 5 most amazing and inspiring leadership behaviors I have seen so far this year:

5.  Brutal honesty about layoffs.  Far too often leaders shy away from real honesty because they don’t have a perfect crystal ball showing them when specific things will happen and, in general, they don’t want to give bad news, and because they feel that too much honesty could hurt productivity.  I know of at least two companies in the region where I live who chose real honesty with regard to possible layoffs – hats off to you.  They explained the business case to the employees, the conditions under which (based on key metrics) layoffs would happen, the process that would be used, the benefits to be given, etc.  Not a fun conversation.  However, they owned it, stayed honest and positive and as a result (based on feedback from managers I know in these organizations) kept the troops working hard instead of overindulging in the rumor mill and other unproductive behaviors.

4.  Creatively avoiding layoffs.  It seems that in each recession, the number of organizations that understand this idea increases – very cool.  Instead of thoughtless job chopping, let’s find ways to reduce labor cost while creating as little disruption in the supply of labor and while also minimizing the hit to morale.  This means early retirement buy-outs, unpaid time off, caps on hiring or pay increases, etc.  There have been many creative attempts to lower costs while not trimming headcount.  Kudos to all of the companies taking on this positive challenge!

3.  Paying people to quit.  This one actually got a lot of press.  Zappos, the amazing online shoe retailer, pays $1000 to new employees who quit within the first year.  They understand the cost of employees who are not productive, the cost of turnover, and the amazing value to be added by really engaged employees.  So why not take the ones who don’t fit and get them to leave as fast as possible?  Amazingly creative idea.  Apparently, 10% of new employees at the billion dollar company take the offer.  Look at the person in the cube next to you.  Admit it, don’t you wish your company had this policy?

2.  Leading by example.  This one was close to home for me.  For my day job I’m a professor.  My university and my college of business are having budget troubles just like everyone else.  The Dean of our college decided to do something proactive to help the situation and to send a positive signal to the faculty and staff.  He suggested that he, and all of the other Deans on campus, should take no pay raise this year.  He did not say this to a colleague in a quiet hallway chat or some safe college of business meeting.  He said it at a meeting with the other Deans and several top university administrators.  Great idea, great signal to send.  Eventually, the others agreed – class act.

And the #1 cool leadership behavior I’ve seen thus far this year is:

1.  Praising someone who questions you.  I have a professional colleague who shared the following story.  He is a mid level executive at a technology firm and is trying to figure out whether or not he’ll make it into the top executive positions at his company.  Recently he found himself in a meeting with several peers, several top executives, and the firm’s CEO (whom he barely knew and had only met a few times).  During the meeting he observed most participants showing clear deference to the CEO.  They did not question him.  They were quick to compliment him.  Being the most junior person in the room, my colleague was silent most of the meeting until finally he felt the need to speak up after the CEO made a particular comment.  He had a different view he felt the team had not adequately considered – and he concisely made his point.  Sitting in his office after the meeting, my colleague wondered whether he had somehow just burned a bridge by being so brazen.  Then he heard a knock at his door, looked up, and saw the CEO standing in his doorway.  The CEO said, “Thanks for bringing an original idea to the table.  You keep that up.”  Then he smiled and walked away.  Now that’s great leadership.

That’s all for now folks.  I hope you’re enjoying the remainder of this summer as much as I am.  Questions or comments, please give me a shout.  The latest podcast is done but my awesome web guy is out of town – it should go up in couple days.  See you next time!

It is probably too early in the year for a top 10 list, but this one couldn’t wait.  If you’ve been reading me long enough you know I’m equally capable of blasting leaders and employees.  Today’s target – leaders!  The zingers listed below are actual incidents that I either witnessed or was aware of through my network.  No names are provides since I wish to protect the stupid.  These are sure fire ways to crush employee morale and tank productivity.  A few are funny (and serious) and a few are just plain serious.  Enjoy!

10.  Reduce transparency in decision making instead of increasing it.  I’m a big believer in making your actions and decisions as a leader as transparent as possible.  That reduces ambiguity and increases confidence in your leadership ability.  When things get rough, as is the case now with this horrible recession, your goal is to increase transparency even more.  In several instances I am personally aware of in recent months mid level and senior leaders have taken the opposite approach.  They see the rough waters in the economy, they see ugly effects inside their organization (e.g., layoffs), so they hunker down and become more quiet and secretive.  It is a natural reaction to a perceived risk – but it is a nightmare in terms of managing employee perceptions.  The rule is simple – the rougher the waters the more you must openly explain what you’re doing and why.  If you allow even a little bit of ambiguity concerning your decision making to grow – it will spread like a wildfire.

9.  Kill a decent change-related idea and then offer nothing in response.  This is among the most insidious responses to change initiatives.  I had a front row seat for this one recently.  A person or group pushes forward with a change effort to address an area of organizational performance that everyone agrees must improve.  Everyone agrees the situation is urgent and the status quo is not acceptable.  However, a small group of powerful folks don’t like the specific answer the change team offers and/or they don’t like certain members of the team and/or they don’t like not being on the team.  So they throw their political chips on the table and derail the effort.  As if that’s not bad enough, they follow up by not stepping forward to attempt to positively craft a different solution to the challenge.  Instead, they simply go back to throwing peanuts at people from the back row.  Strong leadership teams will not allow change to be derailed in this manner, for if it is allowed too often cultures become toxic and no real change is possible.

8.  Trimming the staff too much.  Yes, times are tough.  Yes, there are absolutely positively times you need reduce headcount.  However, at least a few times recently I’ve seen organizations miss the opportunity to think more creatively about their options.  More than once I’ve seen people with one job become people with two and people with two become people with three as the ax continues to fall.  Yes, you save money in theory due to the reduction in headcount.  But what about the reduction in morale and productivity for those who remain?  It can tank in a hurry, along with some of your theoretical savings.  My advice, reduce the payroll if needed, but first think creativity about shortened work weeks, pay and hiring freezes, buyouts, pay cuts, or any of the many other creative possibilities that might be more productive in the long-term compared to simple (and sizable) downsizing.

7.  Say you will NOT do something, then do it.  There is no quicker way to thrown away whatever trust you have built up with the troops than to say what you will not do (or, what you will do) and then do it (or fail to do it).  Just ask Bush 1 – you’ll recall his famous statement “read my lips…”  In these difficult times I have heard many leaders swear they will not cut headcount, promise they will not strip away favored perks, promise they will share the pain right along with everyone else – you name it.  But not all of them keep their word.  Here’s a good idea – don’t commit to specifics if you don’t have to, commit to ideals.  Instead of promising you won’t cut headcount (a specific promise), say your goal is to ensure the safety of as many jobs as possible (an ideal you will strive for), though you must openly admit that is not guaranteed.  This level of candor will generally be respected, particularly if the leader in question is showing how they are sharing the pain (e.g., pay freeze, pay cut, no bonus).

6.  Demeaning someone with lower status.  I am ashamed we still have to talk about this one.  I recently saw a series of incidents where a valued administrative assistant was harassed (not sexually) by a senior person in the organization.  The reason?  The upset professional did not feel comfortable picking on anyone with the power to fight back, so he targeted a largely defenseless person.  He insulted her for no reason, he gave her tasks that were not appropriate, he threatened to tell unflattering things to her boss about her performance (she served as an admin for several people though only formally reported to one).  It came to an end only after people outside of their work unit caught wind of the behavior.  The “boss” in question did nothing.  The negativity surrounding this gross and infantile abuse of power spread quickly and soured morale.  Here is the good news – “no jerk” rules can work – use them!

5.  Create and publish rules about cubicle decorations.  I can’t make this stuff up.  It is astounding how much time and energy we spend on things that do not move us one inch closer to the goal line.  Shocking really.  This one came from a graduate student at a large technology firm.  In this organization, the HR policy book had ballooned into a bloated monster with rules dictating every little facet of cube life.  You cannot have plants over one foot in height in your cube.  You cannot use excessive decorations during Christmas or other recognized holidays – and Christmas lights are expressly forbidden.  Food is allowed in your cubicle, though any food with distracting odors should be avoided to ensure other employees are not disturbed.  Really?  Are you serious?  Organizations like this one had better get over the politically correct micro-managing mentality fast or they will very quickly loose the mental capacity to innovate and remain a viable entity.

4.  Fail to use a good crisis.  This notion has been around for a long time.  It’s simple, all organizations are in need of change and improvement.  When times are good, it is very difficult to mobilize people for change – they don’t see the need.  When times are tough, like right now, they may concede the need for change, but that does not mean they support it.  I mentioned earlier how risk makes many of us become hunkered down and rigid.  Nevertheless, when times are tough it is the greatest opportunity to make significant changes.  I mean fundamental changes to strategy, structure and personnel.  It has to be sold correctly – that’s a world to itself, change management – but there is no doubt that the best time is when the sky is falling.  What do we actually see?  Only a minority of organizations get it, the majority cling to the status quo and miss the opportunity.  Keep in mind that, ultimately, your success as a leader is determined by what you do when your back is against the wall, not what you do when the waters are smooth.

3.  Punish dress code violators.  Yes, it’s true, some folks don’t exactly know how to dress appropriately for their particular work environment.  Fine.  But do we need hordes of pages and policies and rules and HR folks walking around policing the place?  Apparently a few firms I’m aware of do feel this way.  Oops, that lady has open toe sandals!  Even though jeans are allowed on casual Friday, that guy has a small tear in his knee – violation!  Don’t laugh, these are actual examples.  Wow.  Stop bloating those darn policy manuals.  Here is the only question that matters:  is morale and/or productivity actually harmed?  If you genuinely feel the answer is yes, the appropriate leader should go speak to the offender.  A honest chat beats bloated policy books any day.

2.  Make hiring decisions based on anything bur merit.  This one kills me – and it doesn’t just affect hiring decisions.  I focus on hiring simply because that is one heck of a big decision.  On what basis should we hire someone?  Their work experience?  Congeniality in the interview process?  Well, how about whether or not they went to the right school?  Years ago I saw behavior like this in Tennessee (where they bleed Volunteer orange – and yes, I’m a Volunteer).  Now I reside in Ohio and apparently the Ohio State / Michigan rivalry is taken quite seriously.  So seriously, I’m told by someone in my network, that in one division of a particular organization no Michigan graduate will be hired as long as they can secure the services of an Ohio State graduate instead.  Isn’t it fascinating how in so many ways we never really left high school?

And the #1 most outrageous and unproductive leadership behavior I have seen so far in 2009 is…

1.  Saying no to a good game of employee dodge ball!  An acquaintance of mine is an executive at a large well known corporation.  For an upcoming retreat she suggested a spirited game of dodge ball.  Everyone cheered with glee, remembering fondly the ridiculous times that were had as children playing dodge ball at school.  Her mistake was suggesting this publicly – HR soon found out.  Dodge ball?  That means some people will not feel comfortable.  Some people will get hurt.  Some people could sue us!  One awesome opportunity for team building squashed.  This is a simple and wonderful example of how political correctness and our love of (fear of) litigation has stymied honest spontaneous fun at work – and it’s not fair!  Next time, she confided in me, she would not tell people about it before hand.  Instead when everyone shows up for the retreat, she’ll just pull out all of the red rubber balls and let the battle commence before HR knows what’s going on.  That’s the innovator’s spirit!

Sorry about that, just felt like writing a lot this time.  When you have time check out my latest podcast (which should be posted shortly) where I talk about the three golden rules of leadership.  Also, be sure to sign up yourself or someone you know for my newsletter.  Keep the feedback coming – if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just let me know at todd@drdewett.com.  Until next time – happy leading!

In my latest news letter I made a quick mention of training.  I’ve heard from a few of you that you’d like a little elaboration – this is going to be a long one, one I hope to expand into a short book soon – here goes!

Why we flush so many training dollars

The wonderful world of training.  A thing of beauty really.  A multi-billion dollar industry so in love with itself it can’t stop creating answers to problems you didn’t even know you had.  Work-life balance, conflict, group dynamics, leadership, communication skills, diversity, software applications training, advanced technical training in every imaginable functional area and even in a few that don’t exist.  You have a need?  Who cares!  We’ve got a workshop tailor made just for you anyway!  Two grand per head and you’re in.  But what do you have when you’re done other than the bill?  Not as much as you should have in my opinion.  Ever calculated the ROI on all those big training bucks you’re spending?  Didn’t think so.  Truth is, it’s very difficult to do and is almost never done.  At least ask yourself if you can subjectively or anecdotally point to some examples that seem to justify the thousands your group spends each year on training.  It can be difficult.  Especially for soft skills training.

How does it play out where you work?  Here’s a simple test for you, but it might hurt.  Especially if you’re in charge of the training budget.  Think of yourself and all of your close colleagues at work.  What training was this group provided over the last 12 months?  As individuals or as a group, what training did they receive?  Write it down if you have to.  Now, how much are they actually using the training that they received?  How much do you really know about how applicable the training was to their job?  How much do you know about what effect, if any, the training has had?  Stop it, you’re blushing.  So then why do we do all of this training?  Many reasons.  The most basic is that managers have hope.  They believe that sending a few people away to hang out with strangers for a day or two somehow changes them in a meaningful way.  Fast forward six months, not much has changed, but they fall prey to the same thinking again.  And again and again.  Another two grand down the drain.  It’s kinda like gamblers who believe in the possibility of getting rich even though they lose their shirts every time they saddle up to the poker table.  Don’t you folks realize that the odds are concretely fixed in favor of the house?  I’m not a moralist about gambling, I just don’t like bad odds.  You self-appointed card shark experts out there might counter by saying that if you know what you’re doing you increase your odds.  Touché.  Same goes for training, if you know what to look for you might just stop wasting your money.

Another reason managers send people to training is because there are policies, or at least pressures, to provide every employee with so many hours of training or educational credits per year.  If they are formal, they are often bad policies.  Great for the consultants, bad for the firm.  But managers feel pressed to do it out of the fear of having their budget cuts.  Budgets are like muscles – use them or lose them.  Once we get a dollar we don’t want to give it back even if it means sending folks to a basket weaving class they don’t need.  Somewhat understandable – maintaining or increasing your budget is an important part of your career.  In addition, we send people to training out of the need to “keep up with the Joneses” in the face of new trends and fashionable ideas.  Thus we send our people to learn about the latest guru’s ideas or even to throw fish back and forth for crying out loud (yes, that was popular a few years ago).  Typically, our training dollars are wasted.  Well, that’s a bit harsh.  They’re not wasted, they’re used as an exercise in breaking up boredom or to stir up positive emotions.  These are not bad things, but from the perspective of building actual skills that can help your organization, they are wasted dollars.

What good training looks like

As blasphemous as it might sound to some, training is not a right, it’s a privilege.  Training needs to be contingent – this time on the need for skills and the opportunity to develop current and future high performers.  Stated differently, good training involves the right people getting the right content at the right time combined with a meaningful opportunity to use the training once back at work.  I promise you that understanding this one sentence will help you get more value out of your training budget immediately.

The right people include employees with skill deficiencies or employees who would benefit from gaining new skills.  Not simply the employee who is next in the rotation to attend some inane class that everyone else has taken.  Many times we give people training they flat out don’t need.  Say, let’s give a paper pushing clerk in Accounts Payable training in conflict management (an arbitrary personnel choice, forgive me).  Why?  He never interacts with anyone!  Let’s promise leadership training to every high potential new hire!  They aren’t leaders, they’re not even first line supervisors yet!  Ideally, people are to be trained on skills they need when they need them.  Not when it’s their turn, not when the next class rolls around, but when they need them.  Notice I did not say exposure to ideas.  I said training.  Simply talking to people in an off-site environment is not only boring but doesn’t teach them much.  They need to build skills to make the dollars work.  This means that good training involves active learning and active learning means more than just lecture.

Since so much training is actually delivered using in-house personnel, it’s worth talking about what it means to create good content.  This same information will be useful to you not only in a training context, but for any presentation you deliver.  Content is an odd issue.  In terms of not wasting dollars you want good content that is delivered effectively.  It’s odd since finding good content isn’t difficult – delivering it is.  There is lots of mediocre content out there, but believe it or not most is pretty good and some is absolutely excellent.  The ins and out of SarBox or EEO laws, project management, conflict management, you name it – these are knowns.  Most areas are not rocket science.  Finding good information isn’t the hard part.  Finding good delivery is.  Two main issues here:  the trainer and then the structure and materials.  The trainer is a huge question mark.  A poor trainer, teacher, facilitator, or instructor can take the world’s best content and make it about as much fun as scrubbing the bathtub.  I don’t care if it’s your favorite song, if the guy can’t sing it’s fingernails on the chalkboard.  Conversely, a world-class instructor can take mediocre content and make it feel like pure divine genius.  This is similar to saying that a mediocre strategy can outperform a great strategy when it is executed well.  When the instructor is really good, he can mask mediocre content and people just don’t notice since the instructor is so full of energy and charisma.  More than a few politicians fit this bill nicely.

Next up, structure and materials.  These can help overcome some deficiencies in the quality of the content and instruction.  Good structure begins with realizing the limitations of lecture.  And I’m not just referring to horrible speakers that have no right to ever lay their hands on the microphone.  All but the very greatest speakers will lose an audience after a few minutes if it’s straight lecture.  Bill Clinton, major shortcomings aside, was an amazing speaker though even he still snoozed ‘em to death when he droned on too long.  If not lecture, what then?  Back to active learning.  Get people to do anything other than sit quietly and watch the talking head behind the podium.  Use questions to get the audience to share their experiences concerning the issues being discussed, have them break into small groups to work on activities related to the topic, move around and walk among them to keep them attentive.  There are a million ways to do something other than strict traditional lecture.  Lecture is great, but at the minimum, break it up with non lecture components so that they don’t have a chance to tune out as easily.

Other materials matter too.  Don’t have them listen to the finer details of how to manage conflict.  Don’t settle for passing around a binder full of notes highlighting the details.  Make them run through several realistic hypotheticals where they have to play the role of the manager or executive and figure out what to do.  Ideally, the examples and activities are not simply realistic – they’re funny.  Why talk about conflict management in the generic sense when you can talk about how a manger must address a NCAA sports betting pool gone wild in the office.  Some guy thinks he got cheated and causes a fight!  It all depends on your audience.  If you’re dealing with manufacturing foreman, use examples or jokes about sports or machines breaking.  If you’re talking to auditors ask them how to handle political donations made to religious cults.  If you’re talking to R&D professionals joke about how executives don’t know the first thing about good science.  Assuming your content is good – fun makes training stick.  So does any attempt to get knowledge in their heads outside of straight lecture.  Some psychologist types call this multi-modal learning.  They know that if we not only hear information, but write it down, manipulate it, talk about it, present it, debate it, apply it – it sticks in our brains better.  Which is nice, because as you know, human memory is not amazing.

That brings us to transfer of learning.  Even if you have the right people being trained, good content, and good instructors, it’s still not guaranteed that you’re getting real value for your dollar.  Not unless you get transfer of learning.  That means that what you learned is applied at work.  Two big challenges here.  The first is that we sometimes train people, for all of the aforementioned reasons, in stuff they don’t need or at least don’t need very much.  Abracadabra, they don’t use what was (hopefully) learned in training.  Wasted money.  The second is that you got the right people and content but there is a big time lapse between training and application.  You sent William to training on SAP since the class was open but you won’t implement the system for another nine months.  William won’t remember much, sorry.  The time lapse had better be no more than a few days, a couple weeks at the outside.  If you don’t think the person will be able to quickly apply what it is they are to be trained to do, don’t send them.  Keep the money or spend some of it on donuts for the group or some other social activity that will arouse positive affect.  Instead of sending one guy to training for a skill that is tangentially related to his job at best that he won’t be asked to use for years, think of all you could buy.  Donuts, a new water cooler, cool trinkets from the company catalogue, a night at happy hour, a catered lunch for the team.  The possibilities are endless.

Try calculating an ROI

Earlier I noted that calculating an ROI for training can be thorny.  It’s worse than a rose bush.  That’s probably an understatement, but nonetheless clever folks out there are getting better and better at doing just that.  Here’s the basics.  You need to calculate total benefit minus total cost and divide by total cost.  Multiply that number by 100 and you get your ROI.  Simple, eh?  Kinda.  Total benefit refers to how much money you saved and/or made as a result of training.  Sadly, the performance of your group or company is like any outcome – it is multidetermined.  That’s an overcomplicated way of saying that any given outcome (in this case individual or group performance) is determined by several things, often a huge number of things.  This simple fact causes social scientists fits!  Is the group performing better now because of the training, the amazing two new people who were added, the addition of a new manager, the change in policies that took place, the fact that you hired an intern, that you instituted a new employee recognition program?  Jeez, who knows…  Then you have total costs.  The two biggies here are the actual price for the training, or any overhead if the training was conducted in-house, and the cost of the time the person spent not doing their normal job.  Lots of ambiguity to say the least.

Having said that, there is some research and good common sense that tells us training can be beneficial.  Properly trained employees tend to perform better and companies who invest in training not only benefit from overall increases in organizational performance metrics but they also tend to see higher retention rates.  Good stuff.  Your goal:  don’t shirk on trying an ROI.  A lot of you simply rely on formal or informal comments from participants as to whether or not they “liked” the training.  Not a bad thing to know, but it speaks more to arousing positive emotion as opposed to building skills that add value to the group.  Positive emotions, I’ll argue until I’m blue in the face, are really great – and a hedge against absenteeism and turnover, but they don’t directly build skills or help the bottom line.  Thus, at a minimum, collect information about key group level performance metrics before and after training.  What is employee productivity like?  What are the key quality metrics?  What are the key cost or revenue issues?  What you choose will vary depending on the nature of the training course.  The point is that after training and some elapsed period of time you will have comparison data against which to judge your investment in training.  Not perfect, but it’s a good start.  Sound fun?  Feel free to call me and I’ll give the troops a good dose of positive emotion – they probably need it.  But if you want more confidence in your investment do what any good investor does and craft a means of examining the value of the investment over time.  Doing this gets you one step closer to not wasting training dollars.

Happy training – any great training tips or tricks or stories?  Send them my way at todd@drdewett.com.  To all of you reading this – if we are not yet connected on Facebook and/or Linked in – jump online and look me up.  Stay tuned, lots of planned changes on the site in the coming months.  Let me challenge you by leaving you this time with a great quote:

“100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.”  — Wayne Gretzky

See you next time!

It is now day twelve and I’m growing weary.  My wife and I recently sold our house and went for the upgrade.  Though we lost our shirt on the sale, we feel we have more than made up the difference with the great buy we just made.  However, in an effort to be kind to the couple who bought our home and the family who is moving out of our new home, we needed to stay in a hotel for a total of 17 days.  We chose one of the nice extended stay hotels – multiple rooms, mini kitchen, etc. – nice!  Not really.  It is day twelve and I’m tired.  The wife is cranky, the boys need more room to run around, etc.

The tough issues can be summarized as follows.  The place is cramped compared to a real home (which means poor storage and a living space that is a little too messy), the mini kitchen is far too mini to really be useful (thus we are eating out way too much), there is no real privacy, and there is an endless stream of strangers living in the same building with us.  Weird.  The good news is that someone makes the bed every day, takes out the garbage, feeds us breakfast and most dinners, there is a pool for the boys, and the remote control for the television works properly (my wife and I cannot seem to get ours to function correctly at home).

Believe it or not, I see leadership lessons in just about everything.  Here are five of the most useful leadership lessons picked up from the stay in our two room temporary abode:

1. Be careful what you ask for.  When we explored which type of hotel to use we quickly became a fan of the extended stay hotels.  Free food!  Imagine the hundreds we might save by eating the breakfast provided by the hotel every day, 7 days a week.  So easy, so fun!  In reality, I am now so sick of scrambled eggs that I may never eat another egg for as long as I live.  In addition, I’ve gained over 10 pounds.  The food just sits there, calling to you – very difficult to resist.  How this relates to work:  with all great opportunities there are great risks.  In fact, they tend to be proportional.  Did you get the big promotion?  Wonderful – a new title, more status and power, a hefty pay raise!  You are also under a bigger microscope, have larger numbers of constituents evaluating your work, and have a larger number of people directly working for you or affected by your decisions.  Did I mention the stress and longer hours?  This might all be completely worth it, but the point is valid and important – be careful what you ask for.

2. Beware the crutches you lean on.  In life we all have them, little crutches and vices – less than ideal behaviors that somehow help us cope and get through the day.  I certainly have a few.  For example, I like to drink alcohol.  Even if not an abuser, in the hotel I am getting a lot more questions and comments from my six year old than I otherwise would about why daddy likes beer and wine.  The confined space where we currently live forces me to be more vigilant about the example I provide to my children.  How this relates to work:  your team ideally should have some form of balance such that members of the team are very capable in a few areas you are less capable – that’s the beauty of a good team.  The danger is that when unexamined, balance can become overreliance.  A personal weakness can become a much larger personal weakness.  Do yourself a favor and perform an occasional audit of your skill set, and your team’s skill set.  Ask yourself whether your organization has the performance management systems and the training and development systems required to continually challenge and renew key skill sets.  Without your periodic audit and quality support systems those crutches can become a significant problem.

3. Poor resources are sometimes worse than no resources.  Our hotel room has a pull out sleeper couch.  The boys won’t have to sleep with us!  Night one:  the boys fall asleep with mommy and dad is unexpectedly stuck with the pull out bed.  My back is still recovering.  I would have been better off sleeping on the floor!  How this relates to work:  The classic work example here is hiring to “fill a hole” versus hiring to fill strategic needs.  Sometimes we need to replace someone or we need to add to the team due to growing responsibilities.  But we face a dilemma:  fill the slot quickly and risk not finding the “best” person or take as long as needed to find the “best” person but shoulder increased workloads until the hole is filled.  More often than you’d think, we choose the first option.  Depending on where you work, it can be next to impossible to fix poor hiring decisions.  Never forget that poor resources can be worse than no resources at all.

4. People know more about you than you think.  Every day a hotel employee enters my room when we are not there.  They see what we eat, what we drink, how clean or messy we are, what books we are reading… and they make assumptions about us as a result.  What messages are we unknowingly sending them?  Should I care?  How this relates to work: at work, you had better care!  The goal:  professional transparency.  People affected by decisions you make at work learn a lot about you – they know more than you think.  Your goal is to be as transparent as possible so that any assumptions they hold about you are based on an understanding of the facts.  Believe it or not, whether others view you as autocratic or democratic hinges less on the quality of the decisions you make than the quality of the explanations you provide.  By the way, the more you offer simple and honest explanations for your actions, the more others tend to accept them (even if they don’t completely agree with your position).  Nice to know.

5. Last one – you better practice what you preach.  The hotel where we are staying raves about how much they love service.  Good news for me and my family – they have backed it up every day we have been there.  When I need something (more towels, the garbage taken out, a new room key, more food, etc.) they consistently fill the request in a positive and timely fashion.  How this relates to work:  great rule – the amount of respect an employee has for you is inversely proportional to the size of the gap between what you say and what you do.  Saying potentially useful things (e.g., goals, behavioral standards) is only worth your time when your personal behaviors match the ideas you are preaching.  When you fall short of the goals and standards you offer others, your employees will hold you doubly accountable.  You are the boss, they can’t reprimand you, but they can:  smile less at work, come in late, leave early, stay quiet in meetings, mentally discount what you say, etc.  The list is long.  Good tip:  don’t shy away from positively preaching needed goals and standards – but be willing to admit when you sometimes fail to reach them.

That’s all for now.  I hope you are all enjoying the amazing warm spring weather.  I know a few of you are sharing motorcycle fever with me – be safe and enjoy.  A few of you also recently sent me interesting tidbits you learned or stumbled across in your leadership journey.  Please know that I encourage all of you to contact me and share any and all little gems you find – thanks!  I’ll see you next month – in the mean time tell someone you know to check out www.drdewett.com!  Happy leading.  J

This month’s entry will be a bit more story and a bit less lecture – ready?  This is a story about the airplane ride from hell.  A few years back while still in the consulting business full-time I was on a team serving an out-of-state client.  Every week, another plane ride.  In an effort to manage our budget we flew coach, though some of the senior folks flew first class.  Me?  I was in coach.  The best way for a tall guy to survive coach?  You guessed it – bulkhead seats!  Exit rows are good too.  The week in question we were coming home on a late night flight, but I was happy since I was in a bulkhead row.  There were three seats side by side in my section.  I sat in my assigned seat next to the window.  As time passed and we neared take off, nobody showed up to sit in the two seats next to me.  I stretched out a little and grinned – extra leg room in a bulkhead section and no other passengers sitting next to me!  Just then, a small commotion could be heard towards the front of the plane.  A few seconds later, a man appeared, and then another.  The first was a US Marshall.  Uniform, badge, large gun strapped to his side.  Oh joy.  The second man was a large disgruntled looking fellow with his hands and feet in shackles.  Holy you know what!

Some poor slob was going to have to sit next to the felon and … wait a second.  No!  They promptly sat next to me.  Everyone in the plane felt sorry for me.  You could read it on their faces.  Not only were the two seats next to me reserved for the US Marshall and the criminal, but the Marshall actually sat the shackled guy next to me!  Since I’m a fairly large person, one of my shoulders was pinned against the window and one was now rubbing up against a man who, well, I don’t know what he did but it can’t be good!  I did the only thing I knew how to do – I pulled out a book and began reading.  Trouble was, I was a bit nervous so I kept losing my place.  Finally the plane took off.  There was no turning back.  I kept reading, kept losing my place.  At one point I wondered if the felon noticed that I had not turned a page for some time so, for the first time, I quickly glanced at him.  He looked right at me and his eyes indicated that he was waiting for me to turn the page – he was reading along with me!

Just as my nightmare became really scary a flight attendant appeared.  She smiled and leaned in and said, “Sir, we have your seat ready in first class.”  I didn’t ask any questions.  I simply grabbed my stuff and followed her.  As I stood up and walked towards first class I noticed something interesting.  Everyone was still watching me.  They were not, however, smiling with great relief for my newfound freedom.  Now, instead of looks of sympathy they all had looks of resentment!  It was as if they were saying, “how dare you leave us back here with that guy!”  Turns out my boss noticed the US Marshall and his friend and also that there was an unused seat in first class and he conned the flight attendants into letting me have it rather than having to share my book with the felon.

As I sat in first class, firmly ensconced in the plush leather seat, I realized there might be a business less or two in this situation.

Lesson 1 – This too shall pass

Life throws a lot of curveballs.  That’s not the question.  The question is how will you react?  Pick the cliché you’d like.  Life deals you cards and it is up to you to play the hand.  You can’t control others, only how you react.  Glass half full or empty?  At the root of each of these ideas is the wonderful reality that “this too shall pass.”  The unpleasant moments, the setbacks, the uncertain outcomes.  They are all steps in a longer path, just part of the process, and the first trick to realizing this is to say to yourself “this too shall pass.”  It is an inevitable truth, yet hard to see when you are in one of those difficult moments.  What might I have learned if I had just realized this simple truth?  For one thing, I would have read more than 2 pages in 30 minutes.  The same goes for most obstacles at work.  We allow ourselves to become so emotionally wrapped up in the moment that we lose the long-term perspective.  We lose the opportunity to learn on the fly.  Incidentally, being in those odd situations, such as the one I endured on the plane, gives you a rare moment to feel like or relate to people you otherwise would not.  It is very difficult for people to “put themselves in someone else’s shoes.”  I don’t normally know what it feels like to have people feeling sorry for me, to feel pitied, to feel like an outcast.  I did that night on the plane and believe it or not that is terribly useful for me to remember when I make decisions that affect others.  It helps me remember to properly consider, and care about, how they feel.  In any case, not matter how difficult the moment – this too shall pass.

Lesson 2 – Fair weather friends stink

This is a difficult lesson, but one you need to struggle with because it becomes more important the higher you climb in the organization.  There are three types of friends at work:  personal friends, professional friends and part-time professional friends.  The personal friends are wonderful because they really know “you.”  They help you laugh and keep perspective.  Yes, it is true that you cannot allow personal friendship to improperly influence your decisions, but having a few friends at work can most certainly support positive morale.  Professional friends may or may not be your personal friends.  Professional friends are those people at work who sometimes are on your side of an issue and sometimes are at odds with you on an issue, but they always genuinely strive to treat you fairly and with respect.  They are the type of people who can “win” when you “lose” on a given issue and it feels okay because you know they acted with integrity.  Unfortunately, there are also part-time professional friends.  They don’t make decisions with integrity nearly as much as they try to focus on political winds and power building.  They will be your “friend” when it helps them and only when it helps them.  That night on the plane, all of the passengers who felt angry at me for leaving coach really reminded me of part-time friends.  Choose your friends wisely!

The final moral of the story:  a man in a gun might not be as scary as a man in shackles and both seem not so scary when you are sipping scotch in first class.

I hope you all have a productive and happy weekend.  See you next month

I just completed a rant on dreaming in the March 2009 podcast.  I meant every word, but I think it is worth sharing a few more words.  The podcast addressed two topics that I feel leaders often neglect.  The first was dreaming.  Boy oh boy, do we need to grow our capacity to dream.  The second was following.  The idea is simple, only dictators lead every second on every issue, 24/7.  Great leaders share the burden and sometimes really need to follow.

I’d like to add a third idea.  I share this idea at the risk of distracting you from the need to funnel some of your precious energy into dreaming.  Here it is:  you have to live today.  Dream of tomorrow, live today.  You have to realize that though you will never stop striving, never stop pushing and cajoling your team to greater heights, never stop dreaming – there is an exquisite beauty in today.  Today:  the state of being merely on the road towards future goals, the world of glass half full realities.  You are alive and, if you made the right choice this morning, smiling and plodding along, tending to the everyday necessities of leading others.  This includes massaging and reporting data, meeting with various stakeholders, walking through the same maze of office cubicles you see all too often.  Depending on your perspective, this is a predictable and dreary aspect of your career; or maybe it is the essence of your career.

Let me challenge you.  If you think the office life is the boring and difficult part, you are less likely to achieve your long-term dreams and professional aspirations.  Why?  Because the people and the tiny details that define cubicleland are the foundation of the dreams.  They are the tools, your partners.  Look at them closely and find the positive.  The same applies to your perception of your office, your car, your home – all of your current “stuff.”  If you cannot see the wonderment of what you currently have, in all likelihood you won’t be very fulfilled when you eventually achieve your dreams and replace your things with new and better things.

My advice:  get some perspective before it is too late!  Take a walk at lunch even though you do not believe you can spare the ten minutes.  Call an old friend for five minutes in the middle of the day.  Tell that colleague who just handed you the boring report how much you genuinely appreciate what they do to keep things moving around the office.  Try to articulate several reasons you appreciate being exactly where you are in life.  Don’t go home and talk to your friends and family only about “how nice it will be when…”  See the positive you have before you now so that you maintain the ability to appreciate what you have regardless of what happens as your career progresses.

Let’s be clear.  I love to dream.  I am simply advocating perspective:  don’t let the dream snub out your ability to smell the flowers right now.  If I’m being honest, my youngest son made me think about this topic recently.  He is almost two years old.  He only uses a few words right now and his physical dexterity is, well, that of a two year old.  I used to complain to my wife that I could not wait until he was older so that we could actually play catch or something that I wanted to do.  I become angry with myself now when I think about how many amazing playtimes I missed because of that lopsided future mentality.  It is a valid thought about the future – but only to the extent it does not detract from living fully in the present.  These days I’m happy to report that my favorite times involve playing tackle with my little boy, on his terms, no large vocabulary required.

Happy leading.

This topic has been all the rage for over a decade now.  I think I understand why.  Most households are dual income, lots of “latch key” kids, workers and professionals in the US always seem to be among the highest in the world in terms of hours worked per week, etc.  Too much work, lots of family issues to contend with, a desire to have what is now an underdeveloped social life.  I get it.  But is work-life imbalance really driven by the large number of hours we work?  Not really.  A lack of balance is not simply about too many hours.  It is really about the stress associated with those hours.  [As a quick aside – if you are a formal leader of others – you need to manage with stress reduction in mind.  Start with Dewett’s rules:  reduce ambiguity, be fair, stay positive.  More in my book Leadership Redefined].  Good news, stress associated with work-life imbalance can be addressed.  The effect of the number of hours on you is primarily determined by:

1.  Your fit with your current role and or boss and or vocation.  I hope most of you who are reading this are in the front third of your careers!  You can “fit,” well or poorly, with your current role, boss or vocation.  In the ideal situation you are a department head (role) for Suzy (your boss) over a group of staff accountants (accounting is the vocation) and you love everything about it.  Unfortunately, some of you do not want to be the department head (or you feel you are stuck there and are unable to move higher), you do not like your boss and you can’t even recall how you convinced yourself accounting was the field for you.  My point here is that if you will think about how much of the stress you have is due to poor fit (as opposed to lack of “balance”) you can begin the journey of exploring ways to find better fit.

2.  Your willingness and ability to grow.  Assuming you have decent fit, you very likely face many other challenging work-related issues.  The amount of work, difficult relationships, uncertainty about many outcomes ahead of you, etc.  Welcome to the club.  How well you practice personal professional improvement 101 says a lot about how much you’ll stress out.  This refers to systems of time management, self motivation and goal setting, seeking and using mentors and feedback, finding innumerable forms of training and learning, finding adequate time away from the office, and so on.

Yes, each of these two topics is huge!  Having said that – they are your targets.  Start thinking, reading and planning to find better fit.  Guess what?  When you have decent fit, the personal improvement part becomes really easy.  Good luck!

This week was my oldest son’s first school play.  He was Pig #2 in a version of The Three Little Pigs.  As I stood in a chair in the back of the room aiming my Flip video recorder it dawned on me that there were a few useful leadership lessons unfolding before me.  Try these on:

If at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

• The old saying still rings true and it is fundamental to understanding leadership.  As I watched the happy group of kids at the front of the room stumble over their lines, repeat botched words and look to their teacher for help remembering certain parts, I chuckled.  Same thing happens at work in one way or another every day.  Rarely is it the case that bold new ideas or efforts work flawlessly the first time.  Instead, they have to be adjusted, realigned and sometimes scrapped in order to move ahead productively.  Many a professional is humbled by these perceived setbacks.  Not the kids in the play.  They just grinned and tried it again.

Hard work in and of itself is to be appreciated.

• You want to motivate the troops?  Realize that great outcomes are only one target for your motivational efforts.  The other is great effort.  Without it, you won’t be seeing many more great outcomes.  The children in the play will not be accused anytime soon of being world class thespians.  Nonetheless, when they were through, the parents erupted in genuine applause.  The kids left willing and able to come back to school the following week and engage whatever learning activity the teacher might use – because their efforts had been positively received and appreciated, even if the outcome was not quite perfect the last time.

You want to lead, you need to get “into role” and take your job seriously.

• To me this means at least two things.  First, it means practice.  As my high school basketball coach liked to say “practice doesn’t make perfect – perfect practice makes perfect.”  Annoying, but I think it makes a great point.  Take the preparations as seriously as the real show and the show is likely to be a lot more entertaining.  The kids knew this and took their teacher’s advice.  They practiced at school for many days and at night with their parents – and it showed.  Second, you need to look and feel like a leader to be taken seriously.  For some that might mean a suit.  For others that might mean communicating with more candor.  It depends on the context.  For the kids, it meant slapping on the face paint, and for my son, it meant taping on fake ears and a tail.  When he said “not by the hair of my chinny chin chin” we all believed him.

That leads me to the last amazing lesson I learned from the kindergarten play.

The smallest among us can teach us the most amazing lessons.

• The room was full of very accomplished parents:  doctors, lawyers, executives and business owners.  The number of college degrees in the room must have tipped fifty.  Interestingly, the group of educated parents was not doing the teaching.  The five year olds were.  They taught us not to fear, to express ourselves with gusto, to work well with others to achieve our goals and to celebrate our hard work and achievements (which they modeled by eating cookies and juice after the play ended).  Truly excellent life lessons.

Imagine what I will learn when he makes it to the first grade!  I hope you are all off to a bright and productive 2009.