Five tips to keep your company task force on task.

As private and public sector organizations grow and change, internal committees become an increasingly important way to integrate different parts of the business and get things done.

While internal committees come in many forms, and can be called task forces or working groups or committees, they are essentially a way to bring together a mix of people with different skills and perspectives to address corporate-wide priorities and cut across departments and geographies.

Internal committees are commonly used to co-ordinate and manage projects, lead strategic priorities, integrate multi-business unit operations, improve employee engagement, or quite simply manage the overall leadership of a business. When managed well, internal committees can add significant value, strengthen communications, and serve as an agile organizational design practice that most businesses can't do without.

Unfortunately, for many larger, more complex organizations, internal committees are not well managed, resulting in wasted time and energy - and lost opportunities.

In fact, many organizations don't even know how many internal committees they have, let alone what they do and what resources they consume. In the worst of cases, internal committees trip over each other, duplicating and confusing the efforts of other committees as well as core business units.

So, to realize the value and avoid the destructive pifalls, what are the keys to successful internal committee management? Here are five tips.

1. Know what exists

Have an inventory of your committees, task forces and working groups, and know how they support the business and complement each other.

Not doing so will run the risk of perpetual confusion, fragmentation and duplication, unknown and misaligned resource allocations, and muted or failed outcomes. To actively manage your company's range of committees, you need a dedicated point-person accountable for their oversight, and responsible for co-ordinating their internal governance.

At one progressive client, this role was actively led by the chief human resources officer, and included quarterly updates to the executive team.

2. Make it clear how committees are formed

It's essential to have clarity through the company as to how committees get created in the first place. Have guidelines for their creation, structure, composition - and how they come to an end. Anything less could result in a "wild west" culture where managers can create committees at any time, with increasing levels of internal dysfunctionality and resource drains as more committees get added to the mix.

One Saskatchewan-based energy company has instituted a simple but formal set of protocols to guide committee creation, resource deployment and performance expectations.

3. Have a clear mandate

To reduce redundancy and improve productivity, committees must be clear about their mandate, roles and responsibilities, and how their recommendations and decisions connect with management processes.

Ideally, each committee should have simply documented terms of reference specifying its objectives, how it works, how it measures its performance, and, most importantly, how it fits into the broader organizational structure.

4. Track performance

Taking the time to plan, measure and understand the level of effort and cost of each committee and of the collective portfolio of all the organization's committees will serve you well.

When this tracking is done, most organizations are initially surprised to see how much time and financial effort they are putting into internal committees. Invariably, these profiles result in portfolio streamlining, better balancing of individual commitments and resource allocations, and greater clarity of committee mandates. In other words, committees suddenly become more efficient and effective, and better complement the broader corporate structure.

5. Hold committee members accountable

Key to the success of your internal committees is formally recognizing and holding people individually accountable for their committee commitments and results. This is especially important since committee participation is usually a part-time effort over and above a staff member's full-time job.

While most employees will have an interest in participating on a committee, other competing priorities and commitments can be distracting. Careful management helps to balance these competing interests and focus efforts.

Companies can see an immediate benefit when they begin to take a formal and practical approach to managing their internal committees.

In one particular client case, a newly appointed CEO suspected that the number and mix of internal committees simply hadn't been managed, with the costs and complexities far outweighing the benefits to the business.

With a comprehensive inventory and an assessment of related costs and benefits, the CEO quickly made changes. This began with the recognition that while internal committees were useful, there needed to be executive commitment to formally managing them as a strategic portfolio and as part of the company's organization design. While the transition to formal and better portfolio management of internal committees took time, this company made them a priority and is now reaping the benefits.

Internal committees can be a useful organization strategy, but if poorly managed, they can create decision-making and organizational confusion. Thoughtful and practical management of internal committees will guarantee a higher rate of return.

Our primarily mobile health care team does 11,000 visits every day to care for people and allow them to remain in their homes. With 6.4-million visits annually, we have an almost unheard of opportunity to collect data, test and prototype, and improve quality. But from a business standpoint, there are some real challenges for leaders of mobile staff when it comes to communication. It can be difficult to share your vision, build strong bonds and encourage engagement.

Despite my occasional longing to be able to see everyone all at once, there are untold advantages to a mobile work force. I believe that harnessing the strengths of these independent problem solvers may just be the secret of innovation.

Let me share with you some of the strategies we've implemented. I hope they get you inspired and energized.

Love the one you're with

Are you spending time hoping your mobile workers will magically check the company intranet more frequently? Or come to the head office more regularly to connect? News flash - they won't. The key we've found is to work with the inherent strengths these dynamos bring to your team. Think independence. Agility. Adaptability. Empowerment. Develop ways to tap into their natural talents. We recently implemented SoapBox - to gather and share ideas in a virtual way. It builds on our pre-existing virtual community and taps into the insights of staff who see clients every day. We've allowed the community to grow organically, and although it has been an investment, we believe we will see better results based on this strategy.

Video killed the radio star

It's obvious that technology can bring people together to socialize in ways we never thought possible. But sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that if we load up our mobile workers with tech gear, everything will be beautiful. There are so many components to technology and the mobile worker: Will they use it? How long will it be relevant? How much does it weigh when you are dragging it around?

But perhaps more importantly is the idea that we cannot ever lose sight of the fact that technology is an enabler and not the outcome. True innovative technology can transform human interaction for the better.

We are the world

To truly connect and galvanize your work force, you need an anthem - a mission - a bandwagon everyone can jump on and feel great about. Exceptional leadership takes people on a journey to a better place.

Finally, we recently held a company event where we brought everyone together. We offered employees three different ways to participate: in person at movie theatres across the country, via live webcast, and we made it available immediately afterward so anyone who missed it could watch it later.

Search "Leadership" online, and you'll find a million articles offering advice on how to be a better leader. Eleven simple steps, nine strategies, five leadership tips - we're inundated with so-called education and training about how to lead well. The question remains, if the road to great leadership is so easy and accessible, why are there still so many ineffective, demotivating leaders who crush the potential of their employees and organizations? Eight years ago, I met "courage in leadership" expert Bill Treasurer, at an author retreat of Berrett-Koehler, the publisher of my first book Breakdown, Breakthrough, and was immediately impressed. I watched him quietly lead, and build a collaborative and open space for discussion, feedback, and dialogue among a diverse group of authors and publishing professionals. I liked him instantly and felt this man truly walked the talk. So I was excited to learn he has a new leadership book out called Leaders Open Doors out this week. Bill is Founder and Chief Encouragement Officer of Giant Leap Consulting, and the author of Courage Goes to Work. In his books, he shares his pioneering work in the new organizational development practice of courage-building. Bill insights have been featured in over 100 top publications, and he draws on his experience as a former member of the U.S. High Diving Team, during which time he executed over 1,500 high dives from heights that scaled to over 100 feet, requiring intense levels of courage every day to succeed as a top athlete. I caught up with Bill to ask him about his courage-focused brand of leadership, and what he teaches leaders to help them inspire, motivate and lead individuals and organizations forward. Kathy Caprino: Bill, we read so much about what makes a great leader today. What do you think is missing in all this advice we're inundated with? Bill Treasurer: Despite

As leaders in the accounting profession come to understand the business case for diversity and inclusion, they often have a similar quandary.

"The next natural question is, 'So what do I do about it?' " said Kenneth Bouyer, CPA, chairman of the AICPA National Commission on Diversity & Inclusion and EY Americas director of Inclusiveness Recruiting.

New tools released Monday at the AICPA fall Council meeting are designed to answer the question of how to expand diversity and inclusion at a business or firm-and across the accounting profession as a whole. Both tools are available at aicpa.org/diversity.

The Accounting Inclusion Maturity Model gives firm and business leaders an opportunity to perform a comprehensive self-assessment of their progress in fostering diversity and inclusion. Firms and businesses can use the model to assess their practices in the workforce, workplace, and marketplace, and in community and supplier relations.

A second offering, the Recruiting and Retention Toolkit, highlights best practices for attracting, recruiting, and retaining a diverse workforce.

The National Commission developed the tools using the input of accounting leaders and others. The tools are part of Institute-led efforts to help the accounting profession better reflect the diversity of the clients and public that CPAs serve. In 2012, 11% of the people employed in the United States were black or African-American, and 15% were Hispanic or Latino, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics research.

In that same year, blacks or African-Americans accounted for 4% of the accounting employees and 2% of the partners at CPA firms, according to the most recent AICPA Trends supply and demand survey. Hispanics or Latinos made up 5% of the accounting employees and 2% of the partners at CPA firms.

While the maturity model will help leaders understand where their businesses and firms stand with relation to diversity and inclusion, the toolkit describes specific methods for improving their diversity and inclusion.

"This is going to answer the 'Now what?' question," Bouyer said. "This toolkit will be a playbook to help you devise a strategy and a focus."

The toolkit describes the business case for focusing on diversity and inclusion in the accounting profession, and provides steps businesses can take to improve their diversity and inclusion. It includes best practices for:

* Attracting diverse candidates. This section discusses how organizations prepare themselves to be attractive to under-represented minority candidates by doing such things as obtaining leadership buy-in, setting clear short-term and long-term goals, and assessing employee engagement around current opportunities for creating a more inclusive work environment. "What does your brand look like?" Bouyer said. "How are you positioned to be successful? How well do your folks in your organization understand the need and why you're focusing on this space?"

* Recruiting a diverse workforce by perfecting job postings to better define how candidates will fit into the larger picture, developing recruitment plans, training recruiters and human resources professionals to recognize the obstacle of unconscious bias, and delivering consistent interview experiences for all candidates. Bouyer uses a fishing analogy, saying that leaders and recruiters may need to fish in a different pond to catch different kinds of fish. "You have to do different things to attract diverse talent," he said.

* Retaining under-represented minorities at an organization. Tips include conducting "stay interviews." Turning exit interviews on their heads, these give employees an opportunity to share what's working for them-and what can be done to improve the overall workplace culture."You're not the only organization that's interested in the power of diversity and inclusion and diverse talent," Bouyer said. "So your folks will be highly sought after in the marketplace. You have to think about different retention strategies to retain and ultimately advance this really talented group of people that you're spending a fair amount of effort to get into your organization."

As more organizations use the maturity model, an anonymized database will be built to allow them to benchmark where they stand on diversity and inclusion compared with similar organizations.

On Sales Leadership: How To Make Your Numbers, Every Time



Not all startups will employ a direct sales force, but many will. When they do, the value of the company and its ultimate success or failure often hinges on how well that distribution channel is built-out. In a prior blog, I described how companies can go astray by building out the sales team too early or in the wrong way.

This post addresses some core values or best-practices for sales leaders and individual sales reps. They are also very useful for the entrepreneur CEO to understand and embrace.

The list actually comes from an informal mentor and long-time Silicon Valley executive, advisor and investor, Joe Schoendorf, a consummate salesman to be sure.

Joe's Rules of Sales:
1. LISTEN
2. Know Your Competition Personally
3. Take a Consultative Approach
4. The #'s Are Sacred - Make Your Numbers, Meet Your Goals
5. Keep The Customer

Taking each in turn:

1. LISTEN

Listening is one of the most difficult skills for people in general, but it's a critical skill for a salesperson, at least one that wants to actually address a customer's needs and concerns. Yet, it's remarkable how many sales people actually score poorly on this attribute, as I'm sure many of you in both the customer and co-worker camps can attest.

A great salesperson is a lot like a detective or investigative journalist. It's all about getting the facts and understanding the situation or problem the customer is trying to address. In that effort, the most powerful question a salesperson can ask is "why." To illustrate the use of these most important three letters, consider this hypothetical dialogue below:

Customer: I need a CRM system.
Salesperson: Why?
Customer: I want to track my customers.
Salesperson: Why is that important?
Customer: So I can better understand what they have bought, and what they might want to buy next.
Salesperson: Why will that make a difference?
Customer: If I better understand what they want to buy, I can do a better job of ordering and making sure I have it in stock when they place the order.
Salesperson: Why does that matter?
Customer: I will have fewer abandoned sales, and I won't be ordering inventory I can't sell.
Salesperson: Why is that a priority?
Customer: My gross margins are 40%, and my competitors are north of 50% - I need to get my financial metrics in-line with or to be better than my competitors.

As a salesperson, how much better able is the one who asked "why" five times going to be in addressing the customer's ultimate objective and win the business, than the one that said, "Oh, you need a CRM system? Let me tell you why mine is so great."

2. Know Your Competition Personally

Few sales people have the luxury of selling a truly unique or monopoly product. All too often, there are competitors with decent to even better features, who have good reference customers, and who command a decent share of the market. Knowing your competitor personally makes you far better able to anticipate their moves, know how they are going to attack you, and how you can best thwart them.

A favorite sport of great salespeople (and great marketers) is to lay landmines or traps for competitors. In essence, you set a customer's expectation and desire for a product feature, supplier quality, or other attribute that is unique to your product, and, most importantly, that the competitor lacks. When the competitor walks in the door, the customer wants to see or hear about things that the competitor doesn't have or is notably weak at.

3. Take a Consultative Approach

A more systematic approach to the "listen" attribute, being consultative means being authentically focused on understanding and solving a real customer need, not simply jamming your product in where it may or may not actually solve the real problem. It also means being logical and quantitative to the greatest extent possible about the ROI of the product.

At my last company we implemented two different tactics to enhance the success of our sales team's consultative sales approach. First, we hired MBA's in our existing product development operation in India, to build quantitative and qualitative profiles on every major prospect. They would peruse prospect's 10-Ks and 10-Qs (annual and quarterly SEC filings for public companies), analyst conference calls, press releases, articles written about the business, its financial performance and health, etc. They would then look for specific product-related challenges and metrics, and build models tying those challenges back to the prospect's financials, and finally deliver that analysis to the sales rep who owned that account.

Then, once actively engaged with the prospect, we would perform an in-depth benchmarking and ROI analysis of their product operations to understand the prospect's key business objectives and financial metrics. This allowed us to demonstrate quantitatively how our products could move the needle on their key business metrics.

4. The #'s Are Sacred

Make your numbers, meet your goals. Salespeople are hired for one reason - to drive revenue. If they fail, the company fails (a fact product folks can sometimes lose sight of). Salespeople must always be disciplined and goal-oriented, relentlessly moving current sales opportunities forward to the next step or stage, while also consistently prospecting for new business to keep the pipeline full. Salespeople must also be thoughtful about both their opportunities and their pipeline, ensuring that they are asking all the hard questions (no happy ears!), looking under the rocks before the customer (or a competitor) does, and employing limited company resources wisely.

Great salespeople also need to be transparent. An overly optimistic forecast (intentionally or not) means resources may get added that aren't needed, decisions may be made that aren't based on reality, and of course, revenue numbers are missed - a painful occurrence that the entire company feels. On the flipside, an overly pessimistic forecast is also harmful. The resources required to support the additional unforecasted business may not have been hired, unnecessarily stressing the professional services and support teams, perhaps even the product teams.

Be honest and accurate in the forecast, and then work like hell to deliver them. It's your sacred commitment to the company as a star salesperson.

5. Keep The Customer

It is far easier, cheaper and faster to sell to an existing customer, than a new one (here's a good infographic on the costs). It takes significant marketing and sales efforts, company resources, and time to win a new customer. Selling to an existing customer has a lower barrier to entry (you don't need permission to call on an existing relationship). You should also have far greater insight into an existing customer's needs and future plans, giving you the opportunity to help them plan your offerings into their information technology roadmaps, which can provide a significant, long term advantage. And most importantly, an existing happy customer is a brand advocate that will create leverage and network effects for future sales to new customers. In short, you worked hard to gain the customer's initial business and trust - don't lose it - it's far too valuable.

As an entrepreneur/CEO, you will never go wrong embracing these values, as well as instilling them in your sales leadership and sales teams!

How To Find A Great Mentor -- First, Don't Ever Ask A Stranger

Today I heard from a lovely new connection on LinkedIn LNKD +2.63%, who responded to a recent post I shared about Why Your Job Search Has Stalled Out. He asked a question I hear frequently from professionals who know that mentorship is important to their careers, but don't know how to achieve it.

He asked:

"In my pursuit of THE job (not just any job), I have so far addressed all your recommendations but mentorship. This is the stage where I have stalled out. I have found many professionals that have shared my dreams and are now big successes in the industry, but find myself hesitant in approaching them and asking for help. These hesitations may be due to me not wanting to come across as needy, but I think they mostly stem from lacking the trigger words that would inspire acceptance of such a request. I really need help in this area and humbly ask for your help in the follow-through of this job hunting step."

I'd love to tackle this question, because so many people I speak to are struggling in their approach to finding mentors, and are ending up disappointed, angry or confused.



Below are the top 4 tips I can share about finding fabulous mentors, and making the most of the help you receive:

1. There are no "trigger" words that will help you get mentoring from a stranger. Don't bother.

First, it's critical to know that, to find great mentors, you don't want to reach out to strangers. That's not how you'll find them.

Sheryl Sandberg, in her book Lean In, likens asking strangers to be mentors to the behavior of the main character in the favorite children's book Are You My Mother? The book is about a baby bird that emerges from its shell in an empty nest, and goes in search of its mother. The little bird asks everything it sees (a kitten, hen, dog, cow, steam shovel), "Are you my mother?" The answer is always the same. "No!" This is just like a professional asking a stranger, "Will you be my mentor?"

Sandberg says:

"If someone has to ask the question, the answer is probably no. When someone finds the right mentor, it is obvious. The question becomes a statement. Chasing or forcing that connection rarely works."

Instead, find great mentors through the inspiring people you're already interacting and working with now. They need to be people to whom you have already demonstrated your potential - who know how you think, act, communicate and contribute. And they have to like, trust and believe in you already (why else would they help you?). They also need to believe with absolutely certainty that you'll put to great use all their input and feedback.

Strangers (especially people in the media and the public eye who've become "huge" successes, as the individual above mentions) will virtually always have to say "no" to mentoring requests from strangers. Why? Because their time is already spoken for, and they're drowning in similar requests. Secondly, they don't have a relationship with you, and therefore can't know how you operate or if it's a great investment of their time to help you.

2. What can you do to get on the radar of strangers whom you admire?

Don't ask for mentorship, but follow their work, and be helpful and supportive. Give, and give more. Tweet out their posts, comment in a positive way on their blogs, share their updates, start a discussion on LinkedIn drawing on their post, refer new clients or business to them, and the list goes on. In short, offer your unique voice, perspectives, experiences and resources to further the action and conversation that these influencers have sparked. Understand that you are able to be of service to them, and go out and do it.

3. Be someone who is enjoyable to mentor.

The third piece of attracting empowering mentoring is in how you operate in your career and your life. Are you somebody you yourself would like to mentor? Are you open, flexible, resilient, respectful? Are you eager to learn, and committed to modifying how you're interacting in the world so you can have even more success, reward and happiness?

- Be great at what you do - while this sounds obvious, it is the most important thing you can do to get noticed.

- Ask for more responsibility - be sure to have specific ideas for how you can contribute in deeper, more expansive ways. Be creative/think outside the box.

- Don't be a wallflower - participate in all meetings even "optional" ones. Volunteer to represent your team on important department or enterprise-level initiatives. Prepare ahead of time so that you can meaningfully advance the discussion.

- Promote the success of others - your generosity and openness are critical to your success, and will be remembered.

- Build your support network - reach out to groups within your company and outside your line of business. Learn what they do and how you can help them succeed.

4. Put yourself in a potential mentor's shoes.

Finally, whenever you're in a quandary about how to get help from someone, put yourself in their shoes. If the tables were turned, what would you want to see from this individual asking for help? If you were inundated with requests for help every day, what type of person would YOU choose to assist, and why? Go out and become that person that others would love to support and nurture.

The role of company chief executive brings with it all sorts of challenges, from dealing with the nitty gritty of making decisions daily to formulating strategies to take your company forward.

That's why it's important to stay focused on the vital things which keep the wheels turning and the whole enterprise on track.

Here are five things a CEO should stay focused on:

1. Real relationships
Real relationships with staff, with partners, with customers and with consumers all start with your everyday interactions.

As both a leader and a manager it is important to establish real relationships and engage your staff, starting with everyday interactions. How well do you know your staff, their families, what really motivates and inspires them?

I try to connect with members of the team each and every day and maintain an openness and transparency which enables real relationships.

After all, you are really a caretaker in terms of your leadership of people, teams and businesses and you want to ensure you grow and develop the team while you are leading them and that your relationships with those team members transcends your current role.

Every CEO has at some stage in their career reported to a manager and in my experience those managers/CEOs that have inspired and motivated me the most are those I have had a real connection with. Not "tick the box" type stuff but the real type - relationships which last and are based on mutual honest and respect.

Interestingly, all of my business mentors today are previous managers and all exhibit great integrity, openness and honesty - these are all based on foundations of real relationships.

Fifty per cent of employees have admitted they would leave their current job if they had the opportunity to being better recognized elsewhere.

2. Daily deep data
I start every day with an extra hot coffee and a review of the previous day's figures. This is so important to understand how the week, the month, the quarter and the year is really looking. Anecdotal evidence is simply not sufficient in business today, and without being able to grasp the data you have little else.

I also expect my team to start the day with data (coffee optional), and find that a shared sense of where we are leads to a far more productive team and business and a more fulfilling work experience.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) analysis of the July 2012-June 2013 financial year indicated poor strategic management as the highest cause of business failure, with 42.2% of failed businesses nominating this as the key reason for closing their doors.

3. Absolute accountability
You must focus on the most important things and ensure your team has total accountability. While this is a common mantra, it is one which is often easier said than done. Too often the focus is on less important pieces of the business and we get too involved in areas where your team are more than capable (and it is their role) to make a decision or take an action.

Accountability will enable the team to learn how to fail (fast) and develop their skills along the way. While there are times where you may need to lend your expertise, try where possible to enable explicit accountability as it will help achieve a more scalable and successful business, and your team will be far more motivated, passionate and productive.

Understanding what needs to be achieved to reach a goal is important but ensuring that adequate accountability is in place is paramount. Too often I have seen ambiguous team goals that don't stack up to business success and have led to underperformance.

As Stephen Covey noted, "accountability breeds response-ability" and I believe that accountability really breeds ability. You must own it.

4. Eat your own dog food
Love your product. You must know your product and use it - always!

I can always tell when I have a coffee from a barista who doesn't drink coffee it just doesn't seem to taste as good. I am using our products we provide every day, and businesses where the team use and love the products each and every day have a deeper level of understanding and a more productive output.

My pet hate is the team member who does not know our product in detail - there is absolutely no excuse in my experience for this being the case. If you feel good about your product, your consumers and customers will as well - which is great for business. You'll also be your harshest critic and ensure you continue to move in a direction from mediocrity to perfection.

I had a recent example where we were working through a mobile solution and it just wasn't panning out - loads of bugs and issues. The team found out that they were using a different advice to the majority of our users which was quickly fixed!

5. Enjoy yourself
Life is not a dress rehearsal. You must enjoy yourself and get the most out of work and business as you spend the majority of your daylight hours at work. I have been fortunate in that I have enjoyed almost every job I have had. When I haven't, I have made a conscious decision to proactively move on to find something that I enjoy.

Enjoyment in the role will also increase your team's motivation and, ultimately, the success of the business. I am yet to meet a successful leader who doesn't enjoy what they do.

At the same time, you need to maintain a work-life balance - this work-life balance obviously differs by person - but at the end of the day family and extra-curricular activities keep your life in balance. These are things to be encouraged and promoted in the workplace rather than things to be guilty about.

Statistics show that happy employees stay twice as long in their roles as those who are dissatisfied.

Here are five steps to take to help you build a strong thought-leadership campaign: 1. Clarify your purpose. The most successful thought leaders have a purpose and a clear definition of what they want to accomplish. They also understand the time and dedication it can take to become influential. Before embarking on a thought-leadership program, consider your goals and what you want to achieve. 2. Identify your voice. Thought leaders have a strong, identifiable and distinct voice that sets them apart from others. Their voice is their brand and their audience knows exactly what they stand for and what to expect from them. Most important, they don't stray from their brand identity and instead look for opportunities to make it even stronger. 3. Write. One of the defining characters of thought leaders is their ability to effectively communicate their expertise and knowledge to their audience. A great way to get your thoughts and experience noticed is by writing contributed articles, op-eds and blog posts. 4. Build an active online presence. Great thought leaders have mastered the art of sharing and putting their message and brand out there. 5. Be a mentor. Great thought leaders have strong ideas that live on through the people they have influenced and helped out.

Satisfying your customers isn't good enough in today's competitive markets. Meeting their needs falls short of earning their loyalty. You need to dazzle them; leave them "breathless" whenever they touch your organization.

Here are three steps leaders can take:

1. Hire human-being lovers - people who have an innate desire to serve their fellow human beings. People who get absolute joy from serving and do whatever it takes to see someone's eyes light up.

Customers can't be delighted if an employee would rather be taking inventory.

You can't train people to "love humans." You can train them to "grin" with a smile in their voice, but that's the extent of it.

To select the right candidate, the recruitment interview should always start with the question "Do you love humans?" If you get goosebumps from the answer, hire the person. If not, show them the door.

2. Trash dumb rules - policies and procedures that infuriate customers and drive them kicking and screaming to other organizations.

Rules have a legitimate management control purpose but if they drive business away because customers are unwilling to play by them, what's the point?

Have fun with the idea. I struck a number of "dumb rules committees" to seek out and destroy senselessness; I made it matter by holding my leadership team accountable for implementing the changes.

Rules that serve the customer requires their engagement. Ask them for their input in rule design; they will be impressed that you are open to asking for their help.

Empower your front line to bend rules in special circumstances when they don't make sense to a particular customer and their loyalty is in jeopardy. Not every policy will be acceptable to every customer, so allowing some flexibility is required.

Don't worry, your employees won't give away the farm. Provide them with the skills to balance the needs of both the company and the customer.

3. Turn "oops" into "wow." Sure you do your best to avoid making mistakes, but they will happen. That's life in any organization.

The good news is that if your service recovery is remarkable when you disappoint one of your customers they are more loyal than if the mistake never happened. So how to recover?

Fix the mistake fast and then blow the customer away by surprising them with something they don't expect.

Surprise is magic. People expect the screw-up to be remedied but they don't expect the extra personal attention you give them to atone for the mistake.

Speed is critical. A recovery succeeds only if it is delivered within 24 hours of the oops. After that, save your energy for the next one coming your way.

Leaving people breathless is not rocket science; it's about delivering basic human needs. We want to feel special, treated as individuals and delighted by surprise.

Stand-out leaders understand this and create organizations to deliver.

Tips for communicating better with your employees



Are you satisfied with the level of communication from your agency leaders?

My organization, the Partnership for Public Service, and Deloitte, recently analyzed the government-wide responses to three employee survey questions to see how federal leaders were doing regarding their communication with workers. The results were not very encouraging.

Overall, the analysis found that only about half of federal workers government-wide are satisfied with the level of communication they receive from senior leaders, and the percentage of positive responses has been declining since 2009.

Only 45 percent of federal employees, for example, responded positively when asked in a 2013 survey question whether they are satisfied with the information they receive form management regarding what is going on in the organization. In addition, just 48 percent of federal employees reported being satisfied with the extent to which managers promote communication among work units. Managers were more successful when it came to communicating the goals and priorities of the organization, with 58 percent registering a positive view.

The bottom line is that federal leaders can and should do better, and in the process they'll help improve employee satisfaction with their jobs and workplaces. To create a more engaged and motivated workforce, agency leaders need to establish an effective communications strategy that includes keeping employees apprised of important developments, providing clarity on goals and priorities, and establishing a means to receive and respond to feedback.

As a general rule, the Partnership's analysis found that agencies receiving high marks from employees on leadership communication tend to be proactive, making a concerted effort to keep workers informed.

Here are some approaches that could help federal leaders communicate better with employees:

Make communication a consistent priority. Establishing effective leadership communication requires a long-term focus, not just short-lived initiatives. There are multiple venues where employees can receive information from senior leaders, ranging from quarterly call-ins to in-person and virtual town hall meetings. NASA, for example, hosts a virtual executive summit that allows Administrator Charlie Bolden to connect with employees in diverse geographic locations using online tools. NASA's managers also actively seek employee feedback through focus groups and surveys, customizing questions based on their immediate relevance to the agency.

Communicate through multiple platforms. In order to effectively communicate with all staff, agency leaders should use multiple platforms. From more conventional means of leadership communication, such as one-on-one discussions and emails, to more innovative communication methods, such as video conferencing and social media, leaders should leverage a range of platforms to communicate with employees.

Maintain open lines between leaders and employees. Effective communication is only possible when those in top positions maintain open, direct lines with employees. Agencies can foster such communication by hosting office hours where employees meet directly with leaders, and by organizing webinars that allow leaders to overcome geographical hurdles and engage employees located outside agency headquarters.

Implement employee suggestions. Soliciting employees' opinions is an initial step toward improving agency communication. Simply collecting these ideas, though, does little to improve satisfaction if employees believe agency leadership does not use their feedback. When leaders implement ideas generated by agency staff, employees receive a clear message that their voice is both heard and valued. The Department of Transportation (DOT) launched an online community, IdeaHub, where agency employees can submit and collaborate on ideas to drive innovation and change. Once these ideas are refined, they are communicated online to everyone at the agency and to the individual who originally submitted the idea. By doing so, DOT's leadership demonstrates that communication with employees is taken seriously.

Read Also: Shearin Group Training Services News

I'm delighted to have been invited to speak at Information Age's Data Leadership 2014 conference on 30 October. In my session, I'll be sharing tips for building a BI Centre of Excellence (COE) in an enterprise environment, based upon my experience of constructing and managing IT services at big enterprises for the last 12 years.

I'm currently in the process of helping to construct a data visualisation COE based on Tableau Software at a Tier 1 Investment bank in London.

To give a flavour of what I'll be speaking about, I've identified five areas fundamental to creating a successful Centre of Excellence. But if you have any questions ahead of then, ping me on Twitter.

1. Choose the right tools

There are a ton of tools out there. And a lot of them aren't that great. Enterprise users are time-poor, under constant pressure to deliver and generally impatient. For the long-term success of any COE, it is fundamental your applications are easy to use, agile and feature rich.

I've been trying to achieve the holy grail of a great BI stack for years now, and finally it seems like tools are emerging that allow this vision to be a reality.

When evaluating applications, always look for agility and ease of use. Most of your users won't have much time to learn the tool; they probably won't read much of the documentation and also probably won't have time to attend any training courses.

They'll want to fire-up the application and dive right in. As a result that experience needs to be great from the off. Then once they're running with it, can they generate their content or achieve their desired results quickly?

They'll generally be happy to trade off some of the more advanced functionality for a tool that gives rapid results.

2. Choose the right partners

It's not just about the application. Is the vendor able to support your vision? Ensure your tool choice is backed up by a company that is dynamic, proactive and truly values its user community.

How does the company conduct itself? Do you as a subject matter expert feel that your opinions matter? If you've got an issue can you get it to the people that matter quickly? And will they take notice of you?

With truly great companies, you'll find yourself getting to know the top brass and support teams. You'll be participating in industry events and asked to share knowledge with other customers. You might even get an award or two from them.

With the best organisations, you'll see enhancement requests from user forums making it into new releases regularly. You'll see offers from them to come to your organisation and help with training, demos and Q&A sessions, and they'll be constantly interested in how you're using the tool and the value you're getting.

Bad companies will just sell you it and then go quiet.

3. Build your service for ease

Your service must deliver on two key fronts. Firstly, it must allow users to express themselves, without smothering them in red tape. Secondly, it must be as easy as possible to support. Making both central to your service construction will give the best possible chance for success.

Big enterprises generally feature a lot of bureaucracy. Users will already be dealing with enough of that on a daily basis and won't want your service adding to it. It's critical to be able to deliver a service that gets users onboarded quickly and with little fuss.

Then, once they're onboard, it's vital that your service allows them to use the functionality of the tool quickly, easily and with as much flexibility as possible. There's no point implementing a cool, agile BI tool and then miring your users in process.

That service also needs to be supportable. Chances are your support team will be light on bodies and pretty much flat out the whole time.

To be a true COE, you'll want your team to be focusing on the good stuff, helping users get the best out of the tool, training people in advanced functionality and focusing on the industry best practice of the subject area.

To do that, you'll need to have chosen the right infrastructure and technologies and implemented them well, supported with solid but agile IT processes.

4. Don't sit back and admire

So you've got a great service? Don't sit back and think how great you are.

Your power users will be wanting more and more. It's vital to have an overall BI vision. How are you going to expand your offerings and deliver even more value to your users?

I'm creating a Tableau COE. That takes care of data analysis. But what about data modelling and management? Data integration and mining? They all form part of the overall BI stack and your users will want that.

Maybe not immediately, but they'll eventually ask the questions, so to remain in control you'll need your master plan.

5. Focus on community

Really successful applications and companies are backed by an almost fanatical level of community support. Making the most of this aspect, both internally and externally, can turn a good service into an amazing one.

Creating a great community takes a lot of dedication. Obviously having the right tool and implementing it well is fundamental. It's a lot easier to foster a culture of appreciation with a tool that users love to work with than with a turkey that makes their lives harder than it should be.

But get it right and you'll see the benefits. Users will be blogging and discussing the merits of your latest functionality releases, as well as suggesting their own enhancement requests.

Brilliant blogs will spring up, guiding newbies and experts alike on how to get the best out of the tool and much more. This can all be replicated internally as well as externally.

Eric P. Bloom: 6 tips on maximizing your staff's client service



As a manager, never forget the importance of teaching and emphasizing the importance of client service to your staff.

I was in Washington, D.C., for the second time in three weeks to provide training to a client. On my first trip to Washington, I was able to stay at a Marriot Fairfield Inn right next door to my client's office. For the second trip, however, I was forced to stay at a hotel about three miles away because there was a convention in town and my hotel of choice was filled.

On the morning of the last day of my second trip, I returned to the Fairfield Inn with luggage in hand. The person behind the registration desk recognized me from my prior stay at the hotel and asked me if I wanted to check it. I told her that not being able to secure a reservation at her hotel because of a local conference, I had stayed a few miles away at a different hotel. I went on to say that I had come to the hotel that morning to ask if they would please check my suitcase for a few hours so I would not have to bring it to my client's meeting. Being a frequent Marriot client, she happily agreed to provide me assistance and even offered me cup of coffee as I was leaving the hotel. This may seem like a trivial, easy and no cost way to help a customer. Well, it is, but for the customer, it was of great value.

The moral of this story, for managers of all types and professions, is to remember the importance of fostering a culture of customer/client service within your team. Small acts of kindness, common courtesy, and remembering to follow up on client requests are of little or no cost. They also can pay great dividends in the way of client/customer satisfaction, repeat sales, follow-on contracts, and/or top rated performance reviews for you and your team.

As a manager, there are a number of things you can do to help instill a can-do client service attitude within your staff:

1. Hire people who by their nature are friendly, outgoing, and like to please others.

2. Be sure that your team members correctly understand their level of authority regarding customer-related interactions. This allows your team to comfortably go the extra mile to help customers without the fear that they have overstepped their authority.

3. Provide training to assure everyone in your team has the technical ability to perform needed tasks. This will allow them to properly complete the requested assignments.

4. Provide training in cultural awareness. This protects your team from accidentally insulting customers of different cultures and/or embarrassing themselves in front of others.

5. Provide training in active listening, conflict resolution and other interpersonal communication skills. These types of skills can dramatically enhance customer experience.

6. Treat your team with respect, fairness, and professionalism. If your team feels they are treated well, human nature is such that they will naturally be better to the customers they serve.

In closing, I don't know what type of hiring, training, or employee treatment is being done at the Marriot Fairfield Inn. What I do know is that, from a customer's perspective, whatever they are doing, they are it doing right.

The primary advice and takeaways from today's column is to know that:
- It is important to foster a culture of customer/client service within your team.
- Small acts of kindness, common courtesy, and remembering to follow up on client requests are of little or no cost.
- Great customer service pays big dividends in the way of client/customer satisfaction, repeat sales, follow-on contracts, and/or top rated performance reviews for you and your team.

Until next time, work hard, work smart, manage well and continue to build your professional brand.

Eric P. Bloom is the president and founder of Manager Mechanics LLC, a management training company specializing in information technology leadership and is the governing organization of the ITMLP and ITMLE certifications. He is also a keynote speaker, nationally syndicated columnist, and author of the books "The CIO's Guide to Staff Needs, Growth, and Productivity," "Your IT Career: Get Noticed, Get Promoted, and Build Your Professional Brand" and "52 Great Management Tips." Contact him at eric@ManagerMechanics.com, follow him on Twitter at @EricPBloom and @MgrMechanics or visit www.ManagerMechanics.com.

Congrats. You had the job interview. Now, your work is done, right? Wrong.

In today's hypercompetitive job market, effective follow-up after the interview is a must, and failing to do it well might cause you to lose out to another candidate.

The line between being persistent and being a pain, however, is blurry at best. So to help you sort things out, I sent a query to my colleagues in the careers world - recruiters, career coaches, hiring managers and CEO's - asking for their best follow-up advice.

I received more than 60 responses on topics ranging from thank you notes to handling rejection. Here's a summary of their 10 best tips:

The Thank-You Note
On this point, everyone agreed: A thank-you note is a must. Most of the pros recommended you send one via email within 24 hours of the interview. Several suggested a handwritten card as a supplement when a personal or creative touch might be especially valued.

But if you really want to stand out, you need to do more than just say "thanks for your time." The experts suggested these techniques to make your thank-you note shine:

Reference an article of interest. Include in the note a relevant article, link or book recommendation relating to a topic that was discussed during the interview. It's a value-add for the interviewer and will reinforce your industry expertise.

To really make an impact, Jene Kapela, a South Florida-based leadership coach, says you should write a blog post on a topic discussed during the interview and then share the link to the post in your thank-you note.

Include supporting documentation that illustrates your ability to do the job. You don't want to overwhelm the interviewer, but adding one or two carefully-curated examples of your work (non-confidential work samples, press mentions, etc.) can be a smart way to show off your expertise.

"It helps show you are the real deal," says Tyson J. Spring, head of New Business & Strategy for Elever(Professional, an Austin, Texas recruiting firm.

Provide a follow-up response to one of the key interview questions. Ever draw a blank or give a less than stellar response during a job interview? Use your note to modify, correct or amplify one of your responses.

Todd Cherches((, CEO (of BigBlueGumball, a New York City-based management consulting and coaching firm, offers this example:

When you asked me about my single greatest accomplishment in my last job, I apologize that I drew a blank. However, immediately after leaving, it hit me that I should have mentioned I was voted the top salesperson in my department for 2013, and proudly received a special recognition award at my company's year-end national convention. Continue reading…

All successful CEOs have one thing in common: They're able to maintain a big-picture perspective. It's also something successful moms have in common, says Zenovia Andrews, a business strategist, speaker, author and mom who coaches entrepreneurs and CEOs on time and budget management.

"In business, CEOs implement a process that achieves efficient time and resource management in the most cost-effective way; sounds a lot like a mom, doesn't it?" says Andrews, founder and CEO of The MaxOut Group, a company devoted to empowering and tea ching entrepreneurs development strategies to increase profits.

"If every mom were a CEO, America would rule the world!"

Andrews, author of the new book "All Systems Go - A Solid Blueprint to Build Business and Maximize Cash Flow," (www.zenoviaandrews.com), suggests the following tips for moms to better manage money and time.

- CEOs utilize apps, and so should CEO Moms. When a CEO's personal assistant isn't around or, if it's a small business and she doesn't have one, then apps do nicely. There are several apps for moms, including Bank of Mom - an easy way to keep track of your kids' allowances. Set up an account for each child and track any money they earn for chores or allowance. The app also allows you to track their computer and TV time as well as other activities.

- Measurement is the key to knowledge, control and improvement. CEOs have goals for their businesses and Moms have goals for their family members. In either case, the best way to achieve a big-picture goal is to identify action steps and objectives and a system for measuring progress. Want to improve your kids' test scores, help your husband lose weight or - gasp - free some time for yourself? There are four phases to help track progress: planning, or establishing goals; collection, or conducting research on your current process; analysis - comparing information from existing processes with the new one; and adapting, or implementing the new process.

- Understand your home's "workforce." A good CEO helps her employees grow and develop, not only for the company's benefit, but for the employee's as well. Most people are happiest when they feel they're learning and growing, working toward a goal, which may be promotion within the company or something beyond it. When they feel the CEO is helping with that, they're happier, more productive, more loyal employees. Likewise, CEO Moms need to help their children gain the skills and knowledge they need not only to succeed in general but to achieve their individual dreams.

- A well-running household is a community effort; consider "automated" systems. In business, automated systems tend to be as clinical as they sound, typically involving technology. Yet, there's also a human resource element. Automated systems are a must for CEO Moms, and they tend to take the form of scheduling at home. Whose night is it for the dishes, or trash? One child may be helpful in the kitchen, whereas another may be better at cleaning the pool.

About the Author: Zenovia Andrews, www.zenoviaandrews.com, is a business development strategist with extensive experience in corporate training, performance management, leadership development and sales consulting with international clients, including Pfizer, Inc. and Novartis Pharmaceuticals. A sought-after speaker and radio/TV personality, she is the author of "All Systems Go" and "MAXOut: I Want It All."

If your job involves leading others, the most important thing you can do each day is to help your team members make progress at work that feels meaningful to them.

To do so, you must understand what drives each person, help build connections between each person's work and the organisation's mission and strategic objectives, provide timely feedback, and help each person learn and grow on an ongoing basis. Regularly communicating about development - having coaching conversations - is essential. In fact, according to recent research, the single most important managerial competency that separates highly effective managers from average ones is coaching.

Strangely, at most companies, coaching isn't part of what managers are formally expected to do. Even though research makes it clear that both employees and job candidates value learning and career development above most other aspects of a job, many managers don't see it as an important part of their role. Managers think they don't have the time to have these conversations, and many lack the skill. Yet 70 per cent of employee learning and development happens on the job, not through formal training programs. So if line managers aren't supportive and actively involved, employee growth is stunted. So are engagement and retention.

Can you teach old-school, results-focused line managers to coach their employees? Absolutely. And the training boosts performance in both directions. It's a powerful experience to create a resonant connection with another person and help her achieve something she cares about and become the kind of person she wants to be. If there's anything an effective, resonant coaching conversation produces, it's positive energy. Hundreds of executive students have reported to me that helping others learn and grow is among the most rewarding experiences they've had as managers.

You can be significantly more effective as a manager - and enjoy your job more - by engaging in regular coaching conversations with your team members. As you resolve to support their ongoing learning and development, here are five key tips to get you started.

LISTEN DEEPLY. Consider what it feels like when you're trying to convey something important to a person who has many things on his mind. Contrast that familiar experience with the more luxurious and deeply validating one of communicating with someone who is completely focused on you and actively listening to what you have to say. You can open a coaching conversation with a question like "How would you like to grow this month?" The language you use is less important than your ability to clear your mind, listen attentively and create a connection that invites your team member to open up and to think creatively.

ASK, DON'T TELL. As a manager, you have a high level of expertise that you're used to sharing, often in a directive manner. This is fine when you're clarifying action steps for a project or when people ask you for advice. But in a coaching conversation, it's essential to restrain your impulse to provide the answers. Open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching. You succeed as a coach by helping your team members articulate their goals and challenges and find their own answers. Doing so helps people clarify their priorities and devise effective strategies for achieving their goals.

CREATE AND SUSTAIN A DEVELOPMENTAL ALLIANCE. Although your role as a coach is not to provide answers, supporting your team members' developmental goals and strategies is essential. Let's say that your employee mentions she'd like to develop a deeper understanding of how your end users experience the services your firm provides. She suggests accompanying an implementation team on a site visit next week, interviewing end users and using the interviews to write an article on end user experience. You agree that this would be valuable for both the employee and the firm. Now, make sure that you give your employee the authorization, space and resources necessary to carry out her plan. You can also highlight her article as an example of employee-directed learning and development. Follow-up is critical to building trust and to coaching effectively. The more you follow through on supporting your employees, the more productive your coaching becomes, the more your employees' trust in you grows and the more engaged you all become.

FOCUS ON MOVING FORWARD POSITIVELY. Often the person you're coaching will get caught up in detailing her frustrations. "I'd love to spend more time building my network, but I have no bandwidth. I'm at full capacity just trying to stay on task with my deliverables. I'd really love to get out to some industry seminars, but I can't let myself think about it until I can get ahead of these deadlines." Venting can provide temporary relief, but it doesn't generate solutions. Take a moment to acknowledge your employee's frustrations, but then encourage her to think about how to move past them. You might ask, Which of the activities you mention offers the greatest potential for building your knowledge and adding value to the company? Could you schedule two hours of time for developmental activities each week? Are there skills or relationships that would increase your ability to meet your primary deliverables? How could we work more efficiently within the team to free up and protect time for development?

BUILD ACCOUNTABILITY. In addition to following through on any commitments you make to employees, you should also hold your employees accountable for formulating and implementing developmental plans. Accountability increases the positive impact of coaching conversations. If an employee plans to research training programs that will fit his developmental goals, ask him to identify appropriate programs along with their costs and the amount of time he'll need away from work, and to deliver this information to you by a certain deadline.

Coaching your employees will build stronger bonds between you and your team members, support them in taking ownership over their own learning and help them develop the skills they need to perform at their peak. It also feels good. At a coaching workshop I led recently in Shanghai, an executive said the coaching exercise he'd just participated in "felt like a bungee jump". I was delighted to see that this man, who had arrived looking reserved and a bit tired, couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the evening. He was far from the only participant who was visibly energized by the coaching experience.

So go ahead and take the interpersonal jump. You will love the thrill of coaching conversations that catalyse your employees' growth.

By Monique Valcour

A local expert provides five recommendations on a topic useful to small business owners. This week, management consultant Ellen Castro talked to staff writer Hanah Cho on being a "spirited leader."

Castro is a Dallas-based motivational speaker, management consultant and author of Spirited Leadership: 52 Ways to Build Trust. She works with startups, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies as well as nonprofits.




1. Change your thoughts, change your world
Thoughts have power. Be positive, constructive and solution-focused. Begin today walking into every meeting with the thought: "I am a champion. I am equipped." Live from the possibilities. You are far more powerful than you imagine.

2. We are our choices
Your choices define you - not your DNA, past or environment. With faith and better choices, spirited leaders live a life of authenticity and awesomeness. Be the first to smile and be generous with encouragement and praise.

3. Live consciously
Everything communicates. There are no neutral actions. You are always on stage. Everything either adds to your credibility or detracts from your credibility. Credibility is the foundation for trust and meaningful conversations that inspire and motivate innovation, collaboration, teamwork and greatness.

4. Redefine failure
There are no failures, only learnings. Everything is a coaching moment. Everyone is your teacher. The only "failure" is not getting back up. Learnings build character, strength, compassion and wisdom to better serve others - to help their paths be easier, lighter and brighter.

5. It's all about trust
Spirited leaders know that life is for them. They believe that everything works together for good. They trust they are always moving forward regardless of appearances. Setbacks are simply setups for comebacks. They radiate their message with a confidence that allows others to skyrocket to success regardless of external factors.