If They Won't Change, You'd Better Move On

Guest Post: Marshall Goldsmith

You know the people I’m talking about: she says she wants to change, but when it comes time to do so, she makes excuses and doesn’t follow through; or he says he’s eager for a new life, and then defends his old ways at every turn. It’s exhausting to keep up with the denial tactics, finger-pointing, arguments, and justifications that people who really don’t want to change can come up with!

If I’ve learned one thing over my 35 years as an executive coach, speaker and author, it’s this: change has to come from within. It can’t be dictated, demanded, or otherwise forced upon people. A man or woman who does not whole-heartedly commit to change will never change.

That seems self-evident, but I didn’t absorb this simple truth until my twelfth year in the “change” business. By then I had done intensive one-on-one coaching with more than a hundred executives, nearly all successes but a smattering of failures too.

As I reviewed my failures, one conclusion leapt out: Some people say they want to change, but they don’t really mean it. I had erred profoundly in client selection. I believed the clients when they said they were committed to changing, but I had not drilled deeper to determine if they were telling the truth.

Not long after this revelation, I was asked to work with Harry, the chief operating officer of a large consulting firm. Harry was a smart, motivated, hard-working deliver-the-numbers alpha male who was also arrogant and over-delighted with himself. He was habitually disrespectful to his direct reports, driving several of them away to work for the competition. This development rattled the CEO, hence the call to me to coach Harry.

Harry talked a good game at first, assuring me that he was eager to get started and get better. I interviewed his colleagues and direct reports, even his wife and teenaged children. They all told the same story. Despite his sterling professional qualities, Harry had an overwhelming need to be the smartest person in the room, always proving that he was right, winning every argument. It was exhausting and off-putting. Who could say how many opportunities had vanished because people loathed being pummeled and brow-beaten?

As Harry and I reviewed his 360° feedback, he claimed to value the opinions of his co-workers and family members. Yet whenever I brought up an area for improvement, Harry would explain point by point how his questionable behavior was actually justified. He’d remind me that he majored in psychology in college and then analyze the behavioral problems of everyone around him, concluding that they needed to change. In a mind-bending display of chutzpah, he asked me for suggestions in helping these people get better.

In my younger days, I would have overlooked Harry’s resistance. Mimicking his arrogance and denial, I would have convinced myself that I could help Harry where lesser mortals would fail. Fortunately I remembered my earlier lesson: Some people say they want to change, but they don’t really mean it.

It was dawning on me that Harry was using our work together as another opportunity to display his superiority and to reverse the misperceptions of all the confused people surrounding him, including his wife and kids. By our fourth meeting I gave up the ghost. I told Harry that my coaching wouldn’t be helpful to him, and we parted ways. (I felt neither joy nor surprise when I later learned that the firm had fired Harry. Evidently the CEO had concluded that an individual who actively resists help has maxed out professionally and personally.)

I often call up my time with Harry as a stark example that, even when altering our behavior represents all reward and no risk – and clinging to the status quo can cost us our careers and relationships – we resist change.

Posted with permission.

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Time Management--Making Things Worse

Guest post:

Tony Crabbe 

"Imagine your life without time, without a constant sense that you’re running behind, frustrated that yet again you are losing the battle against the irresistible force of the ticking clock. Imagine not wishing there were more hours in the day."

Find out more by reading the full article.

http://qz.com/447193/time-management-is-only-making-our-busy-lives-worse/

Link posted with permission. 

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David and Goliath

"If you do the calculations on the ballistics, on the stopping power of the rock fired from David's sling, it's roughly equal to the stopping power of a [.45 caliber] handgun."

--Malcolm Gladwell

Looking for ways to overcome giant obstacles in work and life?  Then take fifteen minutes to learn from a 2013 TED Talk by best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell.  

Click to hear the "The Unheard Story of David and Goliath." 

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The Overstimulated Mind

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

--Sir John Lubbock

The cover story of the 1 June 2015 TIME magazine is entitled, “Who Killed Summer Vacation?” A companion piece might be, “Who stole your life?”

As someone observed, the U.S. is becoming known as the "no-vacation nation."  The culprits identified in the article include the rise of the service economy full of unskilled and interchangeable workers; the decline of organized labor; that vacations are expensive when wages are flat; technology that tethers you to work; and insecure workers afraid to take off a week, let alone two weeks back-to-back.

The downside to this human and economic predicament is the potential for an unsafe, unhealthy, unreflective, and unproductive workforce. 

What’s happening to us?

Over time our minds take in more than they can process--and delete. There isn’t enough space between meetings to think about the latest great idea, let alone implement it. The result—is too much stimulation and not enough assimilation.

In an excerpt from the book, The Mature Mind by H. A. Overstreet, here is what we learn about an overstimulated mind which apparently begins at an early age:

We now know that a child is likely to be halted in its growth toward psychological maturity if it is subjected to too many stimuli that call for an immediate reaction and given too little leisure and privacy to assimilate what it has experienced.

It is simply not suitable for a child to have too many toys so that it never has time deeply to love one, or to be too consistently surrounded by people, or to be too always on the go, or to have so many activities organized for it that it never has time just to be itself in a kind divine idleness.

The process of psychological maturing is more than the process of receiving impressions, one after another. Instead, it is savoring these impressions until they yield their meaning.

It is the process of letting new experiences turn around and around in the mind until they find the angle at which they want to settle down among old experiences.

We as a people are, in many respects, like children who have been exposed to too many changing stimuli in too rapid a succession; we are both excitable and emotionally fatigued; both ready for the new, whatever it is, and unready for any of its meanings that are not on the surface: both ego-centered wanters of more and more and generous givers of what we have—less in the spirit of those who will divide their last crust than in the heart of those who feel that they will soon have something better to take the place of what they give away.

Overstreet penned those insightful words in 1949.

Stress is costly

What's the antidote to partial attention? Multi-tasking? Interruptions?

Mindfulness. 

A 2010 Harvard study found that people spend 47% of their days thinking about things other than what they actually do. That statistic goes a long way toward explaining why some are prone to errors, having to do the same tasks to get them right, a cost that eventually finds its way into the price of goods and services. 

Renewing the human spirit

Consider that in 2013 American workers with access to paid time off left 429 million vacation days on the table, an average of 3.2 days per worker (U.S. Travel Association).

The research also showed that while some employers allow workers to bank their time off from year to year or to receive payouts for unused time off at termination, nearly 170 million vacation days came from “use it or lose it” policies and vanished into thin air.

By not taking all the time they had coming, the study reasoned that Americans did $52.4 billion worth of work—for free. A seemingly good deal for employers, but in the end, not really.  

As summer approaches, more employers (The Motley Fool, TED Conferences, and Rand Corp.) are putting in place incentives to encourage scheduled idleness. It may not be as idyllic as "watching clouds float across the sky," but it does include going off the 24/7 grid for a time to achieve a rested body and mind. Even indispensable employees need to recharge their batteries.

A corporate HR vacation policy that helps renew one's outlook on career and life may be the most crucial bottom-line decision a business can make.

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Help Wanted

“Let us realize that: the privilege to work is a gift, the power to work is a blessing, and the love of work is a success!”

--David O. McKay

With college commencements getting underway here’s some news for graduates (and parents) that they may or may not want to hear—it doesn’t much matter where you went to school.  What matters is how you go, so says Purdue University President Mitch Daniels.

The former Indiana governor and onetime director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in Washington D.C., is basing this "how" idea on the results of a Gallup-Purdue Index, a national survey of 30,000 college graduates released for the first time in 2014. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, the survey is an attempt at quantifying not only what a graduate earns but also how well they are navigating adult life.

According to the study, only 39% of college graduates report feeling engaged with their work. In that group as many come from the top-100 schools as don’t. The three most important contributions that college makes to a sense of workplace achievement after graduation:

1.    Having one professor who made you excited about learning

2.    Feeling as though the teachers cared about you

3.    Working with a mentor

Graduates who marked those boxes on the survey were more than twice as likely to sense they are flourishing at work.

The Gallup-Purdue Index shows that only 14% of those surveyed said they had attained all three in college.

Other positive factors in the study from undergraduate life:

·       Working on a long-term project

·       Having an internship

·       Participating in extra-curricular activities

The point: Where graduates went to college barely registered as a predictor of job satisfaction according to the Index.

The benefits of college

While cost is a major consideration, and not everyone must go through a bachelor's degree program to succeed in life, the pay gap between college graduates and everyone else is near a record high. Among millennials, ages 25-32, earnings for college degree holders are $17,500 greater than those with high school diplomas only. This is according to the Pew Research Center.

In addition to total earnings over a lifetime, the short-term benefit of completing a college degree is employment. 

Unemployment rate by education level, adults ages 25 to 34:

No H.S. diploma 13.8
H.S. diploma, no college 8.4
In some colleges, no degree 7.2
Associate degree only 5.8 

Bachelor's only 2.0
Master's  2.2
Advance professional 4.4
Doctoral 1.1  

 

Source: U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 2015

Universal qualities

A great deal of attention is paid to technology in a 21st-century economy, and rightfully so. Yet technology is a sword that cuts both ways--it's a net job creator while removing routine work.

Since 2008, 44% of U.S. firms have reduced their headcounts in part because of automation.   Nearly 50% of U.S. jobs are at high risk of becoming automated in the next 20 years according to Oxford University research published in TIME Magazine.

How does anyone prepare for such an unstable work environment?  Keep learning; remain flexible, and avoid routine work. As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, people now in their 50s have changed jobs 11.3 times on average over their working lives.  New jobs require new skills.

However, in marketing to prospective students and parents may be colleges and universities are overlooking universal qualities and skills that employers seek when hiring--some of which can be honed while in the hallowed halls of ivy.   Or in certain cases, online.

The time to start developing the more sought-after hiring skills is when traditional students are in their college years. This is a period that allows for trial and error more so than a first or second career job where grading is often on a much harsher scale.

The well-rounded person

What are the attractive skills a person should consider pursuing that are just as integral to the education, training, and experience for specific kinds of jobs? The National Association of Colleges and Employers asked employers responding to their Job Outlook (2013) what skills they prioritize when hiring. Here are the top 10: 

1.    Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization

2.    Ability to work in a team structure

3.    Ability to make decisions and solve problems

4.    Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work

5.    Ability to obtain and process information

6.    Ability to analyze quantitative data

7.    Technical knowledge related to the job

8.    Proficiency with computer software programs

9.    Ability to create and/or edit written reports

10. Ability to sell or influence others

Note that soft and hard skills are evenly divided on the list. 

Orientations more than commencements

Higher education might want to focus on four areas that could make a significant difference in the college experience: build awareness for universal qualities in freshman orientations; enlist faculty to make application within a chosen field of study; place the qualities inside all degree programs, especially science, technology, engineering and math (STEM); and link the qualities with internships. 

Steve Jobs, a college dropout, often described Apple as “the intersection of technology and liberal arts.” That business model, a philosophical legacy from Jobs himself, is currently sitting on $194 billion in cash and long-term investments. 

Once inside an organization—high tech, banking, nonprofit—all who want to be engaged and contribute have to eventually figure out how to work with others to accomplish common goals.  This is where cultural fit comes into play. 

To achieve a higher level of performance early in a career it would be better to know what the hiring skills are at the outset of college life than learn about them for the first time at commencement. Or, during a job interview.  

Final thoughts 

In looking to the future, and based on the research, how can colleges identify, hire and reward more professors who are capable of helping students “light the wick” of learning?   

According to the Gallup-Purdue Index, teachers with a gift to inspire contribute much to how we learn, to our character-building and workplace achievement. That has proven to be my experience, for which I am grateful.

Strategist.com

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Best Places to Work

"Culture's what it's all about."

--J. W. "Bill" Marriott, Board Chair, Marriott International

In anticipation of working on a Marriott engagement, I went to Miami, Florida, to observe the grand opening of the Marriott Biscayne Bay Hotel. I remember asking my waiter at breakfast if CEO Bill Marriott would be here for the occasion. He pointed toward the serving area and replied, "There's Mr. Marriott in the kitchen."  

So it is that Marriott International, with a penchant for detail in its DNA, and now led by CEO Arne Sorenson, shows up as one of 12 companies that have appeared on all 18 of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For lists, currently ranked at No. 53. 

What the report has to say

If you're looking for ways to become a better workplace, the 15 March 2015 issue of Fortune is worth buying. The Best Companies list results from research conducted by Great Place to Work using a Trust Index survey distributed to a sample of employees at each company. Workers vote their companies onto the Fortune list using criteria related to the quality of their workplace cultures.

Here are three trends from the 100 Best report:

·     The best workplaces are getting better. Nearly two decades of comparisons can be made with the same basic methodology. In 1998 the average amount of training for managers and professionals was 41 hours. Hourly and administrative staffers received 33 hours. This year the numbers were 78 and 94 hours, respectively, nearly 80% higher

·     The best employers are better because more business leaders are focused on workplace culture as a competitive tool. Most firms on the list are winners in the marketplace and the workplace. Google explicitly attributes financial performance to benevolent people practices.

·     Each of the Best Companies has leaders who genuinely listen to their employees and craft specific policies and programs that suit today's workforce. Perks are only the tip of the iceberg in workplace cultures. As Scott Scherr, founder and CEO of Ultimate Software, observed: "The true measure of a company is how they treat their lowest-paid employees."

So who's No.1?

At the top of the list is Google, Mountain View, CA, with 44,862 employees and 2,500 job openings. Perks include free food; up to 12 weeks of fully paid baby bonding time.

Rounding out the top five:

2.   Boston Consulting Group, Boston, MA, with 2,701 employees and 1,000 job openings. Perks include: Social-impact leave of absence for up to three months.

3.   Acuity, Sheboygan, WI, with 1,039 employees and 150 job openings. Perks include no limit on tuition reimbursement; no cap on paid sick days for full-time employees.

4.   SAS Institute, Cary, NC, with 6,647 employees and 350 job openings. Perks include on-site childcare; fitness centers; pharmacy; and subsidized meals.

5.   Robert W. Baird, Milwaukee, WI, with 2,822 employees and 98 job openings. Perks include this rule: No jerks allowed. 

What else do we learn?

The healthcare industry is dominating the market for female talent by offering flexible work options and promoting many into leadership roles. 

The top five companies for women:

Meridian Health

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

Perkins Coie Law

Alston & Bird Law

Novo Nordisk Pharma

Other important takeaways

The tendency when reading these stories is to look at the perks. As good as they are, bonuses alone don't get companies on the 100 Best lists. What else to look for?

• That the essence of a great workplace is just that: an essence, an indispensable quality that determines its character. And to build a corporate organization around it. That process and practice are hard to copy since it is unique to each organization.
• Those high in the surveys focus on personal relationships, not transactions. "The key to creating a great workplace was not a prescriptive set of employee benefits, programs, and practices, but the building of high-quality relationships in the workplace," the report concludes
• Companies gain a competitive advantage by attracting and keeping the most valuable workers.
• Knowledge is becoming a commodity. What differentiates are those who excel at team building, collaboration, and cultural sensitivity. (Oxford Economics)
• The goal of leadership is not always having the best ideas but harvesting them from others.
• It's not wealth or prestige that motivates people; it's respect and peer help.

How influential is culture?

A company's culture ("the way people behave from moment to moment without being told") is even more critical than its leadership, according to a Deloitte survey of 3,300 executives. It's more valuable than corporate strategy.  

The culture was Merriam-Webster's 2014 word of the year.

Unfortunately, the report indicates that most employers need help figuring out where to begin when creating the necessary culture. However, the report offers some hints at what might be helpful:

Mission.         

Pursuing a bigger purpose and making sure everyone knows what that purpose is.

Colleagues. 

The best people want to go where the best people are.

Trust.             

Show people you consider trustworthy, and they'll generally prove you right.

Caring. 

Don't say it. Show it.

So what was Bill Marriott really doing in the kitchen?

Continued a long-held corporate tradition, established by his father, the late J. W. Marriott, Sr., when he opened the Hot Shoppes (A & W Root Beer) in Washington, D. C., in 1927. On that grand opening morning in downtown Miami, Bill Marriott cared for his employees, who now number just over 100,000 worldwide, ensuring they had everything needed to do their jobs. 

Leadership by example has proven essential to Marriott's long-term success. That includes attention to the correct details, especially when your name is on the door.

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The Problem with Models

This is a second post on the concept of “best practices.” (See, Are Best Practices Stupid?, posted 1 February 2015.)

These insights are from Peter Senge's best-selling classic, The Fifth Discipline. Do they make sense to you? 

1.    If a learning organization were an engineering innovation such as the airplane or the personal computer, the components would be called technologies. 

2.   For innovation in human behavior, the components need to be seen as disciplines. By "discipline" I do not mean "an enforced order" or "means of punishment," but a body of theory and technique that must be studied and mastered to be put into practice.

3.    A discipline is a developmental path for acquiring specific skills or competencies.

4.   As with any discipline, from playing the piano to electrical engineering, some people have an innate "gift" but anyone can develop proficiency through practice.

5.   To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. You "never arrive" as life is spent mastering disciplines. You can never say, "We are a learning organization," any more than saying, "I am an enlightened person."

6.   The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance. Thus an organization cannot be "excellent" in the sense of having arrived at permanent excellence; it is always in the state of practicing the disciplines of learning, of becoming better or worse.

7.   These disciplines of how we think, what we truly want, and how we interact and learn from one another are more artistic than traditional management disciplines.

 
Senge’s concluding thoughts

Practicing a discipline is different from emulating "a model." All too often, new management innovations are described in terms of the "best practices" of the so-called leading organizations. While interesting, such descriptions can do more harm than good leading to piecemeal copying.

Great organizations have never been built by trying to emulate another, any more than individual greatness is achieved by trying to copy a great person.

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