There was a great commercial a while back (I am sure it was for $150 basketball shoes) that talked about a red-hot basketball shooter who was making every shot he took, far from the basket.  You know, the hardest shots.  And the commercial said that the fans starting yelling “Layup!” when he shot the ball from 35 feet away.  That’s hot.  And the implication of the chant, of course, was that he was shooting so well that even 35 foot jumpers were as likely to go in as the easiest shot in basketball, a layup.  That’s where you’re running toward the basket and let the ball roll off your fingertips right next to the basket.  Good basketball players almost never miss a layup.

That got me thinking about the easiest shot in a company – the corporate equivalent of a layup.  I think it’s blame.

If you’re a manager or even a “worker bee” in a large, bureaucratic company, maybe even one where people are secretly hoping you might fail [wait, that happens??], and you have a choice between the real challenge of trying to accomplish strategic goals that might attach words like accountability to your reputation or blaming others for the fact that you can’t seem to get anything done, which would you choose?  Too often it seems employees and managers are choosing the layup.    It could be all around you.  You hear phrases like,

• I’m just laying low and doing my job
• As long as I don’t screw up, I should be able to last here for a few more years
• When that project goes south, I don’t want to get blamed

I understand the very real risks these days of losing a job because you became a scapegoat for a failed initiative or because you “made waves.”  But do you really want to jump out of bed each morning and head to the office, fired up about laying low and hoping that when the blame starts flying, you’ve got your best teflon suit on?  Or maybe even slinging some blame yourself?

I get it.  It’s easy.   But if you lose your job for other reasons, like a downturn in the economy [wait, that happens???] and the best thing you can think of to put on your resume is, “I never got blamed for anything” you and your ‘references’ might be working harder than ever, without a paycheck, to convince a new prospective employer that you can add real value.  That’s no layup…

For those of us doing any kind of purposeful creative work is there anything more fun than brainstorming?  My favorite part is the “reveal” when the right idea is generated after rejecting or tweaking 2, 3 and 4 others.  What’s it like where you work?  Do you feel safe to put all ideas on the table?  Can you think out loud or do all your thoughts have to be perfect? How large is the brainstorming group?  Does it include at least some of the folks who do the work on the ground?

Some places need lessons in creating an environment where people feel safe and all ideas are shared. The good ones percolate up and leave the others behind.  I can do that – I can come and give you lessons in brainstorming.  The best/hardest  part is turning those ideas into action.  Not only is it fun but the energy generated drives the project, making it easier to fulfill your objectives.

Do you have employees that suffer from Chronic Complainitis? Symptoms include complaining about pay, their responsibilities, other employees, you – the boss… the coffee you make available free of charge… You name it and they’ve got a problem with it. And even worse, their bad attitude is contagious.

However, if you discipline the employee for being disruptive, it could come off looking like a personal attack, opening up the floodgates for claims of discrimination and harassment. What you need is a comprehensive code of conduct in your employee handbook. Once this is in place, you will have a fair standard to hold people to and deal with complainers quickly and decisively. Learn more about it by reading “Managing Whiners and Complainers: How to Handle Disruptive Employees” by our partners at Fisher & Phillips LLP. Click here to read the article.

Online shopping has never been easier or more convenient. At your fingertips is everything you could possibly want. And really, everyone needs a break now and again. We can’t be expected to work all day, non stop, right?

True. Everyone needs a break. But according to a recent survey, employees are planning on spending more than fourteen hours shopping online at work this holiday season. That’s nearly two full work-days. Not to mention, one in ten employees will spend more than thirty hours looking high and low for that perfect gift.

This is a great time to remind your employees of your computer use policy. You might also benefit from focusing more on results – as long as your employees are completing their work and it meets your standards, let them enjoy their freedom. Every company and manager is different, so use your personal touch to keep things on track this holiday season.

To read more about the study discussed, click here.

Online shopping at work is so prevalent, you’ll even find humorous e-cards on the topic. Click here to check it out.

Chet Holmes recommends that in order to acheive and complete the more important projects, to really reach your goals, you have the top 6 things you should get done each day, you should track this! You should make it your goal to get these things done, give them the priority.
Also, you should be tracking your employees top 6 things each day.
Now, maybe your list is 3 things or maybe it is just 1! But, if you get that priority completed each day, then you are achieving more than the average business owner.
The issue becomes how you manage the top 6 things each day! And your employees top 6…
Here’s a great way to do this, VERY quickly and for free! (Thanks for showing this to me Seth Godin)

http://teuxdeux.com/

Enjoy!

Christie Scott
“When Average is JUST NOT Enough”
www.christiescott.com

Here’s a multiple choice question with no right answer (btw, those are the ones I do best on…)

If you are applying for a business loan, and the loan officer is looking out the window as you pull into the bank parking lot, should you be driving:

1. an $80,000 BMW
2. a $2400 clunker
3. a middle of the road, non-descript but serviceable Honda Accord
4. it doesn’t matter

“Hmmm,” you’re thinking…  “True, there’s no right answer, and yet I am not sure what to say!”  Here’s the somewhat agonizing follow-up question:

If I am being honest with myself, which choice makes me feel “least uncomfortable” and/or most likely to get the loan?

More importantly, you’re asking yourself, why is Bob even asking me these stupid questions in the first place?

One of the biggest challenges of being an effective leader is balancing your personal, private style with the unintended impression it may leave on your teams.  Imagine this:  a CEO of a medium-sized consulting company visits a branch office.  He pulls into the reserved, executive visitor parking space in his $100,000 Mercedes and has a heartfelt meeting with the whole local team about ‘belt-tightening’ and even possible layoffs because the revenue numbers are below plan.  Not a problem, right?  He or she paid for the car with their own, hard-earned money.  Why shouldn’t they be able to live the lifestyle they choose, if they can afford it?  Why should that affect real business conditions that need to be addressed by everyone?

See – there is no right answer.  But there are many cautionary tales, from Bernie Madoff to Rick Wagoner.  As a leader, you have to have the smarts and lack of ego to genuinely see things as they are perceived by others.  Once you stop doing that, it’s like you’re on a high wire and you dropped your pole.  It’s only a matter of time before your outstretched arms aren’t good enough…

If you’re looking for a few helpful hints on how to better your business, the New York Times has a few recommended readings for you to check out. Here are a few quick tips from the books listed:

• Let people know what’s going on, and thank them for their efforts.

            – Sylvia Ann Hewlett in “Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business is Down”

• If you give your workers maximum autonomy, they will lead your business to higher productivity, profits and growth.

            – Brian M. Carney and Isaac Getz in “Freedom, Inc.”

• Before you set off to find a solution, make sure you are focusing on the right problem.

            – Ian I. Mitroff and Abraham Silvers in “Dirty Rotten Strategies”

• Business is all about adaptation.

             – Keith McFarland in “Bounce”

To get a more in-depth look at these insider tips, read Paul B. Brown’s “Helpful Hints from the Printed Page” by clicking here.

Employers – if you think that you may be giving your staff an extra day off before Thanksgiving or Christmas please do it in advance so that they can incorporate this special gift of time into their plans.  There is nothing so frustrating as to be travelling a distance for Thanksgiving to be told the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that you don’t need to come in Wednesday or come to work Wednesday AM to find a an email  saying that the office is closing early that day.  Yep, it is a nice thing – time off is always appreciated but what a difference it could be to receive that gift notice in advance so that the employee and her family can plan accordingly. How much easier would that trip over the river and through the woods be if you had the gift of extra  time on your side?

Two of my three children, who are pretty grown up now, are excellent bike riders.  By that, I mean that they appear to be able to ride bicycles around big cities while rarely striking other objects or falling and damaging themselves.  I attribute this entirely to my teaching methods when they were young and first wanted to ride a “two wheeler.”  I would take them to the top of a steep hill on their very first try, get them situated in the seat, and push them down the hill.   My wife would wait near the bottom with a video camera to capture the inevitable crash and trip to the ER…

If that sounds like a good idea to you, you’re probably one of those managers who, when approached by one of your talented young employees who has unilaterally decided they are ready to switch from being a developer to a business analyst, lead an important client meeting with a million dollar proposal on the line or run the biggest, most important project you currently have going even though they’ve never led a project before, says, “sure, why not, you seem ready,” pushes them from the top of the hill, contacts the filming crew, and goes back to your office before your coffee gets cold.

Learning to ride a bike takes balance, coordination, awareness of your surroundings, confidence and experience, which riders gain a little at a time as you slowly (sometimes VERY slowly) let go of the back of the bike.  Hmmm, the roles we talked about earlier seem to need the same skills.  With your employees, your job is teach them to switch roles, grow their skill sets, interact effectively with customers, and lead projects with nothing more than a skinned knee, not a trip to the ER.  But real mentoring programs that can build you a team of Lance Armstrongs take time, commitment and measurement to make sure they’re working.   Even though I believe that you should treat all your employees like adults, sometimes you gotta treat ‘em like kids…  ironic, huh?

Organizations often need specific, targeted amounts of communication, public relations, event or office organization support to push through a project, create an event or attain an objective. With a focus on small and critical endeavors, I offer experience and expertise to organizations that cannot necessarily make a full-time commitment to hiring additional permanent staff. In fact, you may have needed to cut your staff in this past year while still maintaining high institutional goals.

I offer project management for non-profit (and for profit!) organizations. Hire me as a relief to your overworked staff members, well-intentioned board members and inconsistent interns.

With years of experience in Special Events, Public Relations, Project Management and Communications, I offer:

– Project conceptualization through implementation.
– Event strategizing and management
– Deadline management though Microsoft Project (I can teach this program to your staff)
– PR support
– Examination of office communication systems
– Collateral (brochures, etc) creation and management support
– Interface with webmaster
– Extra set of hands toward creating and managing successful event
– Contacts including excellent graphic designers, writers, musicians, A/V, etc.

I am a clear thinker, team player and want to help you work efficiently to meet your objectives in these challenging times.

There are many two-word phrases that frighten managers.  Among the top ten, according to my highly non-scientific yet government-funded research include “involuntary retirement,” “bonus reallocation,” and “special project.”  But the most blood-curdling phrase has to be “bad attitude.”  When properly applied to one of your employees, nothing is more frightening and difficult to address. 

Now, the reason this is so scary is because it’s real.  I had the pleasure, in just this past week, of talking not only to a manager who has an employee with a bad attitude, but with a relative of mine who IS an employee with a bad attitude.  And let’s be clear – she relishes in it…  That’s scary.

And so, the most obvious way to deal with this is to perform a quick and effective I&L – Identify and Label.  Identify which employee has a “bad attitude” and then use that as a label every time his or her name comes up in “managerial conversations.”  Doesn’t solve the problem, but at least it lets everyone know that you know.

So if I&L is not the way to go, what is to be done?  Here is the painful prescription:

1. Get out your shovel, it’s dig time – most of the time, a ‘bad attitude’ is the accumulation, over time, of a series of perceived (or perhaps real) slights and transgressions that congeal into a systemic frustration with the organization, whose only outlet is that delightful passive-aggressive BA.  Assuming you weren’t there for the entire process, start digging.  See if you can get your employee to list, in painstaking detail, the litany of evils that have been done unto them.  Now you have context.
2. Race to the fork in the road – I gotta believe there are lots of marriage counselors out there who listen to a couples’ list of grievances and actually recommend they’d be better off apart.  This is key – if you and especially your employee don’t want to start fresh, the best thing you can do is help them find a place where they can start fresh on their own.  You have to be ready to do that.  But if they are genuinely willing to let the past go…
3. Build a plan and stick to it – create a mutually agreeable way to redress the top three (or one, or five, whatever) issues that, if left unaddressed, will  continue to irritate the wound.  But they have to be “forward-looking.”  In other words, don’t give someone a pay increase to make up for the 1.4% bump they got in 2002.  Build a compensation plan that rewards future performance based on a real change in performance and attitude.  You get the idea.

Why would you go to all this trouble to “save” someone who can just as easily be written off?  Well, I think there are two reasons:

1. It’ll make you a better manager.
2. In this cold and flu season, remember that BA’s are highly contagious.  Just one sneeze…

In 2007, Towers Perrin conducted a study of 90,000 employees worldwide and found that the number one thing employees wanted was a belief that senior management was interested in his or her well-being. Really!

To read more about this finding and learn what else will satisfy your employees, click here to read “One More Time: What Do People Want at Work?” by Steve Roesler of the All Things Workplace blog.

It has taken me quite some time to finally admit a truth.  I am a chicken.  I am not a big fan of roller coasters, though I do occasionally ride the more tame ones, I wouldn’t bungee jump off a porch, skiing down a black diamond slope seems more like punishment than “outdoor fun”,  and my idea of a “rush” is a 3 1/2 foot downhill putt for a buck.  Yup, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to make that diagnosis.

So you can imagine how much I admire people with guts.  And here’s one I just learned about, thanks to a Facebook post by my good friend Ilya and a little extra research.  He’s the founder of 37Signals and his name is Jason Fried.  37Signals, as you may know, is a software development company that makes, among other things, BaseCamp, and appears to have been there at the beginning of the creation of Ruby on Rails, a very popular open source framework for developing software applications.  What’s interesting is that none of what I just mentioned is why I admire him or think he has guts.  Here’s why.  This is an excerpt from an article about him in eWeek, talking about the team at 37Signals:

Want to work at home? Cool. Want to come in to the office? No problem. Want to take a few hours off in the middle of the day to goof off and look at Internet videos or read? Please do it; it’s encouraged, Fried said. He doesn’t believe in treating employees like children. 

It’s easy for anyone to read that and say, “yeah, that’s exactly how I would treat my employees too if I ran a software company.”  But let me tell you that, when you’re worried about revenue, billings, cash flow, customer satisfaction and the second mortgage on your house you took out when you started the company, and you walk past a team member who is napping at their desk, goofing off, or setting up his or her fantasy football lineup in the middle of the day, you’d be surprised how quickly every fiber of your being wants to ask them what the heck they’re doing.  If you don’t believe that, you’ve never been in that situation.  Walking by, paying attention to your own tasks and trusting that the rest of your team is doing the same no matter what outward indications you’re getting to the contrary takes real guts.  And from what I can see, Jason Fried’s got ‘em.

If you want to learn more about Jason or read some thought-provoking insights into how he views work, check out this article.  Unless you’re chicken…

I hear that there is pending legislation in many states, if not in Congress itself, that would “ban” texting while driving.  Have any of you actually texted while driving?  Are you that desperate to get a message to someone that the best way you can think of to do it is to try to type it on a tiny keyboard, possibly even hitting the same key three times to get a “C”?  And is the best way to get you to stop doing that the threat that you could be pulled over and fined at any second by a state trooper who “catches” you with his or her eagle eyes as you speed by at 77 miles per hour??

This is such a wonderful example of creating rules to make someone feel like they’re making a difference and controlling a situation they have no control over.  Sure texting while driving is stupid.  Sure it’s dangerous.  But so is riding a motorcycle without a helmet and many states actually REPEALED laws that made that mandatory.  And oh by the way, it’s just a tad easier for a cop to spot a motorcyclist without a helmet.

Here’s another one:  trying to “ban” employees from using Facebook or Twitter (or any of a dozen other popular uses of the internet these days) by creating a policy that “forbids” their use, or simply shuts down access from your network.

Two quick thoughts here:

1) how many of your employees are walking around with iPhones or some other device that let’s them use these applications anyway in spite of your ban?  How many will have those devices in 3 years?  Let’s be conservative and just say ALL OF THEM.

2) Don’t your employees have better things to do than ‘tweet’ with their friends all day?  Don’t they know that?

If you want to encourage your folks to focus on the task at hand, not unlike driving, isn’t a well-understood relationship between their focus, energy and dedication and outcomes that equally benefit your company AND them a better approach?  Oh wait, that’s a lot harder than issuing a policy or buying some super-duper firewall software…

None of us can do our jobs alone. Let me rephrase that – there may be some jobs that only require the work and input of a sole individual but I wouldn’t want to work that way. And in corporate America today, most of us find ourselves dependent on others to successfully accomplish our tasks. So what if they weren’t there? Or what if they decided to be extremely difficult or obstinate and simply refuse to do what you need them to? Worse yet, what if they sabotaged you and went out of their way to be sure you failed?

So if you aren’t working with creepy people like the above-mentioned, what are you doing to show your partners how grateful you are for their help and cooperation? In today’s lean workplace, everyone has more than enough to do and if, you want to be sure your needs remain a high priority with your co-workers or cross-functional team members, it helps if you show a little old-fashioned gratitude. Yes, turns out your mother was right – saying “Thanks” on a regular basis improves the relationship!

If you lead teams or staff, set the example. Thank them first. This doesn’t have to be a costly endeavor – in fact, most of my suggestions fall in the free or almost free category. Leave little notes of gratitude on the desks of your team members. Recognize some specific thing they did: “Thanks for getting that email out to the client before you left last night!” or “I appreciate how you always lend a hand to the newer employees.” Nothing fuels commitment and loyalty like an unexpected pat on the back. Leave other surprises such as a candy or a cupcake on each person’s desk or bring in cookies for the team. You’ll know you’ve set a good example when your team members begin to do this for one another. One of my former employees became known for his surprise thank-you ice-cream sandwiches!

Next, thank those who help your team succeed – the Quality Assurance staff, the IT people, the managers of people serving on your cross-functional team, etc. Your gratitude should be tangible but, again, not costly. When I managed technology teams, we would assemble baskets made of baked goodies and candies, all of us would sign a personal thank you note and then I’d deliver them to the Operations Center, Help Desk, Network Support and even our internal customers. That small expression of our gratitude for their hard work and support reaped many, many rewards in their willingness to go the extra mile for us.

So often I hear managers say, “They’re only doing their job. Why do we need to thank them?” Well, here’s why: It’s the right thing to do. Most of us work hard and would do so with or without a thank-you but we all like the occasional recognition of a job well done. So during this Thanksgiving season, make a new tradition in your workplace. Say “Thanks!”

If you’ve caught an employee fibbing about where they were on their day off due to sickness, or even caught them online on the day when they couldn’t even open their eyes due to a severe headache, then you will be relieved to know that this is becoming a growing trend amongst employees who play “sick”.

Playing around on the internet and posting messages on social networking sites during sick days, is a sure fire way that your employees can be caught in a lie. And you don’t even have to spy on them, because the proof is going to be there indefinitely.

If you’ve been awake for the last 2 years, you will know that social networking is exploding, and it’s not even close to being a fad that will fade in the next century. The most popular (8)  joints are:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Ning
• Myspace
• Plaxo
• Hi5
• Bebo

Now another issue regarding days off is a valid reason.  They will not only lie about not coming in, but they will also lie with proof.  I am talking about fake notes. Yes fake doctors notes and obituaries, just to get out of going to work. Here are a few websites who offer this service:

• www.jumptags.com
• www.phoneyexcuses.com
• www.myexcusedabsence.com
• www.thefakedoctorsnote.com
• www.bestfakedoctornotes.com
• www.scumdoctor.com

Hopefully you will never have to use any of these resources that I have provided for you here. But this is one blog post that you should keep in mind for your next faker.

Social media’s prevalence has surprised even the most technologically advanced of managers, first there was email, then there were Blogs, then there was MySpace and Facebook and now out of nowhere tools like Twitter and all the associated applications both on the internet and on cells / mobiles such as the Blackberry and the iPhone have put the world at our finger tips.

Now the only problem is that managers and employers don’t want employees spending time enjoying the world when they should be working. The problem is balance. If you come down too hard on employees then you are going to face the wrath of dissatisfied juniors who expect access to such tools regardless of your thoughts on the impact of productivity.

So here are some pointers to consider:

1. Blocking. Internet and social media blocking is a tool that many companies have decided to utilise to prevent employees from accessing these tools and websites. There are two problems with this. The first is that young people want to have access to these tools. The second is that there are ways and means around them that your employees will install on your computers and that is often times much worse for security of your network than just letting them use the sites.
2. Allow a select few. It may be better to work out whether or not you want a compromise. Some companies have blocked Twitter because it’s obsessive and so they allow employees access to say Facebook or MySpace but not to Twitter or the other instant messaging / communication tools. This is a good compromise as it doesn’t cut people off but it also ensures that there isn’t too much distraction daily.
3. Only during breaks. Discuss with your employees that utilising these sites is not a problem and that you understand but restrict it to say 15 mins x 2 in the morning and in the afternoon and their lunch break. You don’t have to enforce this but if you make people aware that this is the unofficial rule they will tend to stick with it. It also coincides with coffee times which generally are low productivity anyway so you really aren’t missing out on much from your employees then.
4. Get them to maintain your company’s. If some of your employees are savvy with the internet get them to maintain blogs / twitter pages / Facebook pages for your company in exchange for the privilege of utilising these services for themselves.
5. Mobiles away. There was a rule that most trading floors in the big banks used to have, that was mobile phones away. If you need to use a phone you have your desk phone for that. This cuts out the mobile phone usage of social media tools. It’s also just plain good habit, so that you keep your personal work separate.
6. Open work plan. People won’t do too much social media stuff if they are in plain sight of others that are actually working, or better yet, their managers. Make sure that you minimise office space, increase communication. Just provide a room that people can go into and make quiet calls from because everyone hates having to make private calls to their family or the bank etc. in the open.

These are just a few pointers. Remember these social media tools are hurting your productivity, but your employees will have come to expect access to these things, they thrive off them and it can assist your business. Just use caution and find the right balance to keep your productivity up and your workers happy.

Til later.

The Lad.

I am sure everyone has their own opinion about what a really tough job might be.  Cop, fireman, Shoe Disinfector at a bowling alley… Here’s mine:  How would you like to be responsible for making LeBron James a better basketball player?   And, oh yeah, what if you were a 38 year old former lawyer with a Russian dad and an Israeli mom?  And what if you never played competitive basketball or coached above the junior high level?  That’s a tough job.

And yet, that’s exactly what Idan Ravin does for a living.  A damn good living too, from what I can gather from Sports Illustrated (see, I do read other mags besides PM Network and Bowling Weekly…)  And how does he do it?  Among other things, he points out LeBron’s faults.  What???  Yup – he tells him he can’t dribble and makes him do drills to be better at it.  AND, LeBron pays him for this!!

So riddle me this…  Why is it so hard for managers to sit an employee down and find constructive ways to point out areas where they are weak and need to improve?  Is it because they haven’t earned the respect of the employee?  Is it because they’re afraid of “hurting the employees feelings?”  Or is it because they’re not trained to detect those weaknesses and see the connection to growth, productivity, effectiveness, or that company’s equivalent of winning an NBA championship??

Whatever the reasons, just recognize that you’re not doing yourself or your employee a favor by avoiding a conversati0n where you have to tell them they really don’t dribble very well.  It’s not easy.  It’s not fun.  But if Idan Ravin can do it to LeBron James, you can do it to your star player too…

The fact that 40% of workplace bullies are women, should make you wonder who’s really getting their work done. That victim has to put up with a lot of crap from a bully, while maintaining their quality of work. The reality is, bullies are a drain to your business, and could cost you thousands down the road. Even though the person doing the bullying is a manager or a top performer. So what should you do at this crossroads?

If your company doesn’t have a culture, now is the time to get one established along with a set of behavioral standards. A policy has to be written and signed off by all employees, even those out in the field. This policy will fall somewhere in between harassment and hostile workplace tolerance. Which actually should be ZERO. It should cover all the events that are considered bullying, i.e. screaming, shoving, setting traps, nagging, scheming and physical contact etc.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if women solved problems similar to men? Like either duking it out followed by a handshake and a beer. But this isn’t the case. What we have here is simply one woman picking another woman to pick on who appears to be a little weaker or presents some sort of threat to her position. Other factors could include stress on the home front, or just the need to be evil.

But if you would like to hear my opinion, i think that if a woman is taking her career seriously she wouldn’t have time to worry about what other women are doing and if she poses a threat, so MYOB.

No body likes a bully, and no business owner wants their profit to suffer because of a bully. Nor wanting to end up in court or face an act of violence in their place of business as a result of retaliation from the victim.

At any rate, action should to be taken immediately in order to exterminate the fire so everyone else involved can get back to work.

We decided to get a family portrait done, because it had been approximately 15 years since the last one, and it seemed like we should capture an image of our children before we have to steal one from their AARP membership cards.  So we searched relentlessly for just the right photographer, since this was such an important undertaking and we wanted it to turn out just right.  One photographer in particular impressed me a great deal.  He talked a good game and seemed genuinely interested in capturing the “Kreha Essence.”   As he became more enthused about the project, he reached into his equipment bag and took out his camera, a Kodak Instamatic Brownie camera that looked like it probably captured the drama of the landing at Normandy.

Needless to say, we moved on to the next photographer…  Now here’s what you’re thinking:  I’ve never seen a serious photographer who doesn’t also have a passion about their equipment, because his or her cameras are an extension of their art.  Of course not!  They understand that investing in quality equipment, even though it’s expensive, is a necessary cost of doing business, and, quite frankly, of making the right impression on some of their clients.

So why is it that some technology consulting companies can’t seem to find the funding to provide similar quality equipment for their technical staff?  What message does that send?

Just to round this out, I went to a panel discussion last week on using technology to market your company.  As we rolled around to the subject of tools, new media, etc. one of the panelists, the CEO of a small, growing company, actually said, “I wanted an iPhone, so I finally had to buy them for my staff.”  Nice message.

I realize how costly it can be to replace or upgrade laptops, servers, your network and other infrastructure that your teams use to do their work on a very short cycle.  Do you realize how costly it is NOT to do that…?

No, she’s not your long lost cousin, however, it’s the EEOC’s cousin, and certainly something you should be concerned about if you are an employer. Effective November 21, 2009 there will be a new regulation in place which “will protect Americans against discrimination based on their genetic information when it comes to health insurance and employment”.

GINA stands for Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, and the bill was finalized back in 2008. It’s a very simple rule that applies not only to employers, but also to the health insurance providers. As an employer, make sure that your group health insurance provider is not requesting genetic information from your employees, this will certainly keep you out of hot water.

You may order a poster from any compliance poster provider such as www.laborlawcenter.com or www.complianceposter.com. In the meantime, you can utilize this pdf for your reference http://www.eeoc.gov/self_print_poster.pdf

For more information go to http://www.genome.gov/Pages/PolicyEthics/GeneticDiscrimination/GINAInfoDoc.pdf

When someone comes to your business for the first time to start work it can be quite daunting. Particularly if you are a small / medium-sized business there may be employee cliques and little ‘things to know’ about people and tasks that can always be a challenge, even for the most intelligent of people.

From the employee’s perspective it’s like being back at school again for the first day. They will want to have a good idea of what’s going on so they don’t embarrass themselves but they will also want some autonomy to just make friends.

So here are a list of must dos when starting someone new:

1. Give them a job description. And not just the simple one you used in your newspaper or online ad for their position but a full-blown description of the functions and or duties you need them to fulfill as well as their reporting hierarchy. The more detail the better, but try to use to many superlatives or ultimatums in the document so that they feel like there is no creativity in their just (unless there isn’t).
2. Show them around. Make sure you introduce them personally to as many people as you can / need to. Ideally every person of their direct team mates / reports.
3. Have their IT waiting for them. There is nothing worse than starting a new job and your computer and email haven’t been setup yet. Make sure that this is done before they start. You awarded them the job so you know their details to do this with. Just get it down.
4. Have a team meeting. Inform every person of the position that they are starting in / who they are taking over from, and let everyone know what you expect of them with regards to integrating the new person. That way there are no excuses for either the current staff or the new person. It will also make them feel welcome. You can do this informally, but formally is better, just arrange coffee / tea for the board room for the meeting so that it does feel a little less formal.
5. Give them all the documents they need. Make sure that all the standard operating procedures are within reach and your business’ policies are accessible to the person. Most new people want to get a feel for their new company and these documents often give them some insight.
6. Get them out to meetings if possible. If they are a client facing role, take them along to meetings, they don’t have to do anything but having them there and interact with you and the clients will start to give them confidence. Do this as soon as possible without pressuring the new person

Hopefully these tips will help you integrate your new employees. The first 6 months are what I like to call the ‘critical time” where an employee decides whether or not this is going to be a long-term career play for them or not, so make a good impression.

Til later.

The Lad.

I created a poll in LinkedIn that is open for discussion for both employer and employee. I’m curious to see how much a job title really means, is it a confidence booster?

Is there an emotional connection to what your title is? Does it really matter what your title is, just as long as you do a good job? How far off the mark is your current job title, to what it is that you really do on a day to day basis?

Take the poll here:
If your job title were to change, would it affect the way you felt about your job?

http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/61636/yodqj