DASHBOARD GROUP

Kissing Bricks

In Employee Engagement on May 29, 2012 at 7:00 am

I sat on the start/finish line in row 8 for this year’s Indy 500, and had a front row seat to one of the most unusual traditions in sports.

After winning race, Dario Franchitti came out to the middle of the track, knelt down, and kissed the famous one yard wide strip of bricks that marks the start/finish line.

It is traditions like these that make the Indianapolis Motor Speedway so special.

Great organizations use traditions – like kissing bricks – to build a high-performance culture.

So, if you are trying to improve engagement within your organization, take a careful look at your traditions. There are lots of ways, such as:

  • Special on-boarding traditions that indoctrinate every new employee.
  • Over-the-top birthday parties.
  • Unusual ways of celebrating big sales wins.

In a way, it does not really matter what traditions you have, as long as they are memorable, meaningful, and consistent. These kinds of things don’t cost much, but can pay rich dividends.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

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Four Sources of Talent

In Leadership, Strategy on May 21, 2012 at 7:32 am

In a recent conversation with a prominent venture capitalist, I asked him, “What is your portfolio companies’ greatest challenge?”

His answer: “Finding good people.”

Top performers are, by definition, very rare. Obviously, every organization wants them.

To find them, leaders should consider the four sources of talent:

  • Hiring entry-level people and developing them yourself. Entry level people are a blank slate and thus have little or no baggage. However, it can take a long time (and a lot of training) to develop people into fully productive contributors.
  • Hiring seasoned professionals from your direct competitors. This can be a double win, since you gain talent and your competitor loses talent. However, these people come with baggage, and will need to be “reprogrammed.” Obviously, your competitors will try to steal your best people right back.
  • Hiring seasoned professionals from “adjacent industries.” For example, a construction company could hire someone from an architecture firm and retrain them to be a project manager. However, these people will require significant retraining, and many won’t be able to make the transition.
  • Hiring seasoned professionals from totally unrelated industries. For example, in 1983, Apple hired John Sculley to be their CEO. Sculley was from Pepsi, and had no experience in the computer industry. This case did not work out so well, but there are many success stories as well.

Each of these four talent strategies has pros and cons. Given the scarcity of top talent, leaders would be wise to consider using all four.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

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Give Them Saturday Off

In Leadership, Performance Management on May 14, 2012 at 7:58 am

A few weeks ago, on April 25, 2012, the International Association of Administrative Professionals marked the 60th anniversary of Administrative Professionals Day®.

This recognition has gone through several name changes during the past 60 years. It began as National Secretaries Week in 1952. The name was changed to Professional Secretaries Week in 1981, and became Administrative Professionals Week in 2000.

Regardless of what you call it, celebrating and recognizing the contributions of the administrative professionals in your organization is important.

Awhile back, I was in a meeting where an executive team was discussing what the organization should do for their administrative team on Administrative Professionals Day. The senior executive said something I’ll never forget:

“Give them Saturday off.”

Of course, they already got Saturday off. So, this leader was sending a clear message.

This organization had the most talented and committed team of administrative professionals I had ever seen. Virtually all of them had college degrees. Some had master’s degrees. They routinely went above and beyond the call of duty, often refusing to record their overtime.

Just don’t ask me why.

The Shift Points blog is designed for Fast Lane leaders who want to leave their competitors in the dust.

Shift Your Thinking … Accelerate Your Results.

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