WorkPuzzle

Agent Retention: Someone's About to Pull the Plug on your Bathtub

I've read numerous articles in the last month regarding a coming wave of turnover that is predicted to hit companies if an economic recovery starts to materialize.  The line of reasoning is that if employees have been treated poorly (from their personal perspective) during the economic downturn, they will be looking to make a move upon the long-awaited recovery.  The premise is that they’ve only remained with their present employer because there were no other options.  When new opportunities begin to emerge during a recovery, many will express their dissatisfaction by heading for the door. 

Dr. John Sullivan, a professor at San Francisco State University, wrote a recent article that summarizes the problem in this way:

“Study after study has confirmed the notion that many employees would have left their employers months/years ago had the option to do so been viable.  The economic downturn, combined with the mortgage crisis, has forced many frustrated, disappointed, and unmotivated employees to stay put.  The trend is not a new one and is consistent with past downturns.

While turnover rates are at an all-time low, they most certainly cannot be taken as an indication of a firm’s status as a desirable place to work.

Just as in years past, when job opportunities become more prevalent, employees will exercise their right to demonstrate just how much they appreciated the treatment they received throughout reductions in force, furloughs, clumsy mergers, travel freezes, and budget cuts.  The level of animosity among many will render most traditional retention approaches ineffective.

Some studies indicate that as many as two-thirds of employees are ready to go.  Unfortunately, few corporations are preparing today to handle the dramatic increase in voluntary terminations that will come tomorrow.”

Of course, Dr. Sullivan is looking at this issue from a workforce-at-large perspective.  However, many of the same principles apply to real estate businesses.  There is a lot of dissatisfaction among real estate agents.  In their minds, they’ve been forced to make a great number of sacrifices over the last several years, and numerous agents believe their company and their manager were at least partially to blame.  If a person has this mindset, it doesn’t take much to convince them that the grass is greener in a new organization.

Dr. Sullivan goes on to suggest that the first step to solving or lessening the impact of a problem is being able to measure factors that lead up to it becoming a reality:

“Retention metrics in most organizations begin and end with overall turnover by period.  Absent are metrics that measure the business impact of turnover and specific goals to mitigate predicted impact.  If your retention function doesn’t measure and report these five key metrics, chances are your efforts are under-managed:

•The cost of turnover.  Reporting a percentage turnover rate seldom excites executives, but converting that turnover rate to a dollar impact on business performance can establish the visibility on talent issues needed to transform a good recruiting function into a great one.

•Top performer/key employee turnover.  Often called regrettable turnover, this measure prioritizes the jobs and individuals based on the degree to which their leaving hurts the firm.

•Competitor win/loss ratio. This metric is simply the ratio of the number of top performers you have successfully recruited away from a competitor compared to the number of top performers who voluntarily terminated to join a competitor.  If a top performer quitting goes directly to a competing firm (vs. retiring), it raises the costs because it hurts the firm while aiding a competitor.

•Preventable turnover.  If turnover is occurring for silly or preventable reasons, the percentage of cases where that is true needs to be reported and fixed.

•Percentage of 'at risk' employees.  The best firms proactively identify high-priority individuals who present a high risk of leaving during the next one or two years.  Reporting the percentage of target individuals at risk alerts managers, helping them put into place proactive programs attacking retention issues before they get out of hand."

As we’ve discussed in the past, you can’t improve what you can’t measure.  If you start by measuring the impact turnover has on your organization, the strategies to minimize that impact will start to become evident.  
 
The good news in all this is that many of your competitors may not see this coming.  When your competitor’s agents start to gain some confidence in the economic recovery, make sure that you are well positioned to receive them with open arms…

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Great Managers And An Evening With Sha Na Na

I had the pleasure of spending last Thursday evening with Nicki Marcellino, Branch Manager for a Prudential California Realty office in La Jolla.  Nicki and I had originally met at a Palm Springs conference for Prudential California’s top agents, where I had been invited to speak.  It didn’t take long for me to figure out that there was something special about Nicki.  She had that calm authority that one feels instantly comfortable around.  Soon after meeting her, I was told by someone that she was the top manager in the nation.

At the end of the Palm Springs weekend, I casually extended an offer for her to give me a call whenever she came to the Seattle area.  Not much time went by, when, low and behold, I received an email from Nicki, accepting my invitation and extending her own—Tickets for my wife and I to attend, with her, a Seattle Symphony concert featuring her husband’s well-known band, Sha Na Na.  (If you recall, they made their debut 40 years ago at Woodstock, and have been playing ever since.) 

My wife and I had quite a memorable evening sitting next to Nicki during the very entertaining concert.  After the concert, we enjoyed dessert and conversation with Nicki and her husband, Jocko.

Now, the point of this story is to share what I feel makes Nicki Marcellino and other great managers so good at what they do.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several managers like her within the ranks of the organizations we serve.  If you spend time with these innovative managers, you’ll begin to see a pattern of similar characteristics.  Here is a summary of what I truly believe about exceptional managers.

Every great manager possesses:

1. A consistently strong work ethic.  These individuals aren’t just biding their time.  They love what they do, and set out to learn as much as they can so that they are constantly improving themselves as managers.  (By the way, by the week's end, Nicki is so emotionally spent that she has made a weekly tradition of attending Friday afternoon matinees to wind down...a well deserved reward!)

2. A calm authority.  When you're around good managers, you may have noticed that they never really seem to panic.  They believe things will go well, and those managed by them are drawn to this sense of calm and certainty, combined with expertise.

3. Confidence without a shred of arrogance.  When I introduced Nicki to my wife as “One of the top managers...” she interrupted and said without a shred of arrogance, “Number One Manager.”  This seems to be a consistent characteristic of some of the best managers I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.  Additionally, these folks don’t presume to know everything, and quickly concede that they can learn tons from their top producers.

4. An expectation of greatness in others.  And to back this up, they hold people accountable.  Great managers have no qualms about saying, “This is what your capable of doing, and if you don’t reach these goals, then you or I are doing something wrong.”  There is a competitiveness that comes through and naturally inspires others.

If you feel there are other essential characteristics that great managers share, please let me know.  In the meantime, let me just say thank you to Nicki for a more than pleasant evening at the symphony!

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: How Many of These Books Have You Read?

Are you looking for a good book to read this weekend?  Pick up a copy of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time and it may lead to a whole bunch of good reading! 

Here is the list of business books that made the list, published by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten (these guys are executives from a company called 800-CEO-READ) earlier this year:

You: Improving your life, your person and your strengths.

• Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
• How to Be a Star at Work by Robert E. Kelley
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
• The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
• What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
• Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
• Chasing Daylight by Eugene O'Kelly

Leadership: Inspiration. Challenge. Courage. Change.

• On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
• The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
• The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
• Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
• The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
• Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Tichy and Sherman
• Leading Change by John P. Kotter
• Questions of Character by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
• The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
• Never Give In! Speeches by Winston Churchill

Strategy: Eight organizational blueprints from which to draft your own.

• In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
• Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
• Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
• Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
• Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
• Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

Sales and Marketing: Approaches and pitfalls in the ongoing process of creating customers.

• Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
• Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
• Zag by Marty Neumeier
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
• How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
• Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
• Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Rules and Scorekeeping: The all-important numbers behind the game.

• Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
• Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
• The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Management: Guiding and directing the people around you.

• The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
• Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
• Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
• Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
• The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
• First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham and Clifton
• The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

Biographies: Seven lives. Unlimited lessons.

• Titan by Ron Chernow
• My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
• The HP Way by David Packard
• Personal History by Katharine Graham
• Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
• Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey
• Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Entrepreneurship: Seven guides to the passion and practicality necessary for any new venture.

• The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
• The Republic of Tea by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
• The Partnership Charter by David Gage
• Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
• Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
• The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback

Narratives: Six industry tales of both fortune and failure.

• McDonald’s: Behind the Arches by John F. Love
• American Steel by Richard Preston
• The Force by David Dorsey
• The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
• When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
• Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Innovation & Creativity: Insight into the process of developing new ideas.

• Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
• The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
• Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall
• A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Von Oech
• The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
• The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Big Ideas: The future of business books lies here.

• The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy
• Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
• The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
• Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
• Driven by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
• To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Takeaways: What everyone is looking for.

• The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
• Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
• Beyond the Core by Chris Zook
• Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
• What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
• The Team Handbook by Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel
• A Business and Its Belief by Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
• Lucky or Smart? by Bo Peabody
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
• Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
• More Than You Know by Michael J. Mauboussin

While I've read a lot of these books, I was surprised how many I've not read.  There is so much left to learn!

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Your Personal Employment Brand

Last week, I read an article written by Dan and Chip Heath in Fast Company that highlights the importance of emotion in marketing.  The Heath brothers are the bestselling authors of "Made to Stick."

These guys noticed that there is often a disconnect between the emotion that a company tries to relate in a marketing campaign, and the reality that truly exists. 

“Marketers caught on early that emotion sells product.  'Would your husband marry you again?' screams a Palmolive ad from 1921.  (Not unless you scrub with Palmolive soap, honey.)  Today, Heineken has promised warmer international relations via handoffs of Premium Light from mountain men to Indians to ballerinas.  And, of course, Axe has sold young men on the fantasy of hooking up with deodorant-loving nymphomaniacs. 

Emotional appeals are ubiquitous.  They're also interchangeable.  It would be just as easy to pitch Heineken as an aphrodisiac and Axe as a global harmonizer ('Peace starts in the pits').  And that's the problem:  It's all stick-on emotion.  Sometimes that works brilliantly (see: Corona).  Other times, it's as weird and clumsy as an adhesive mustache -- remember Carl's Jr. and Paris Hilton's sexed-up hamburger ad? Fortunately, there's a better and more sustainable way to create emotion:  Mean it.”

The article goes on to demonstrate how the impact of a marketing emotion can be greatly increased if there are concrete realities supporting that emotion, proving that it is a genuine representation of reality.  Emotion combined with integrity REALLY sells!

If you’re a hiring manager, this is a principle you cannot afford to miss.  People are drawn to you as a leader because of their perception of who you are.  You may have a prominent company brand, many desirable externals (ex. office location, physical appearance of the office, advanced business tools, etc.), and you may even present yourself in a way that people are naturally drawn to you.  That’s all emotion. 

But, if the reality of who you are matches what you project, the fireworks start to fly.  People want to work on teams with these types of leaders.  Your “personal employment brand” has the ability to attract (or repel) people with a significant amount of force.

Ask yourself this question:  What do people in your professional network really think of you? 

Then ask yourself:  Is this perception based on surface emotion and externals, or on the reality of what those in your professional community have experienced firsthand or have actually seen you do?

If you do not have a strong and believable personal brand, it is very difficult to be a successful hiring manager.  But, how do you repair (or build for the first time) your personal brand?  The quickest and most believable way, is through doing good deeds that support your emotional appeal.  The Heath brothers put it this way:

“Why not simply replace the fake emotion with a real one?  What if Downy started doing things to help struggling mothers -- and then used their ads to talk about the work?  What if Bounce retaliated by throwing its weight behind job seekers looking to bounce back from a layoff? What if all this good work raised the competitive hackles of the not-to-be-underestimated Snuggle Bear?  Perhaps it could sponsor a winter-coat drive.

What we're proposing here is an arms race of goodness -- a generation of companies that compete on real emotion rather than stick-on sentiments.  Maybe that sounds Pollyanna-ish.  If so, let us introduce you to some companies succeeding by meaning it.

Toms Shoes has a simple business model:  Buy a pair of shoes, and it'll send a second pair to a child who needs it.  This year, it'll send about 300,000 pairs of shoes to the developing world. And because it's the company's genuine passion to do so, Toms can take advantage of the word of mouth built into its product and spend dramatically less on marketing than other shoe companies.  When you mean it, convincing customers doesn't take as much shouting.”

Start working on your personal employment brand and you may find that recruiting is not so difficult.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Reframing Recruiting

Psychologists love to "reframe" any issue that causes conflict.  We can be borderline obsessed with reframing, and there is a reason for this:  Reframing has a way of dismantling defenses, exposing old myths, eliminating fears, and igniting productivity.

 What do I mean by reframing?  Reframing means helping others to look at a conflicting topic with a new set of eyes.  Put another way, it means viewing an old problem through a different lens.  Reframing requires stepping back and trying to determine why there is such resistance around a reoccurring topic of frustration, and discussing it in a new way.  Often times, it only requires small changes in language to accomplish large leaps in a-ha moments of clarity for everyone involved.  It can mean the difference between stalemate and responses like "Oh, that's what you meant?"

For example, a moment of clarity about reframing the task of recruiting came to someone on our team (Lee Gray) while she was doing laundry this past week.  Many of our clients know Lee, as she trains hundreds of managers across the country on the use of a recruiting tool called Talent Pipeline.  In her work with managers, Lee is able to experience firsthand the range of differences between managers who are quite comfortable with the various aspects of recruiting, and those who are intimidated so much by the concept that they have become paralyzed by fear, and thus struggle to move forward.

We all know that organizations need to recruit, and the importance of this goal is constantly emphasized by organizations to their managers..and rightfully so.  However, it has become quite clear to Lee that many managers begin to shut down emotionally as soon as the word "recruiting" is uttered.  Building a pipeline of "recruits" seems to be a task that is likened to having a root canal.

Instead of writing off this range of managers who feel this fear, Lee began to wonder (out loud in her laundry room I might add)... Why do some people with such proven people skills hesitate to engage in recruiting, while others don't? 

The culprit to the breakdown was the word "recruiting."  When she changed the language to "relationship building," managers began to relax.  This makes sense, given the fact that most managers are natural relationship builders.  That's why they do what they do! 

So, Lee's reframing is quite simple (as most reframing is):  "Focus on relationship building," and maintain a pipeline of those "relationships" you want to build.  Next, focus on the tasks that will help you build them.  Then track those tasks as a way to hold yourself accountable. Eventually, as a byproduct of your natural ability to build relationships, successful recruiting will follow.

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Best Places To Launch A Career: Can You Compete? - Part 2

Each of us has either experienced firsthand, or know someone who has experienced a mid-life crisis when it comes to career choice.  We understand the crisis that can result when a person feels that perhaps they've been "stuck" in the wrong job for the last 15 years.  We can even sympathize with the strong urge for a career change that some of us experience after dedicating so many years to a particular field of work.  

In fact, the majority of today's real estate agents have evolved from these types of crises.  Is it possible that you identify with these folks so much, that you've made them the primary, or even exclusive focus of your recruiting efforts?
 
In light of the information revealed by Business Week's recent survey (read Monday's blog for more on this), it seems that we are missing out on an enormous new resource.  Young college graduates are facing a crisis that most people don't have to consider until reaching their mid 40's.  They are leaving college with no prospect of being able to work in their area of specialty.

The good news for you is, they are hungry for a new direction.  Another Business Week article includes several examples of intelligent, motivated, new grads who have had to settle for very low-level jobs. Take for instance, Sasha Muradalih, a University of Miami graduate with a Masters in International Public Relations.  Unable to find a job, she is currently settling for clerical work.  Then there's Stephanie Haller, a graduate of Humboldt State University (BA in Journalism), who is currently Managing a Hollywood Video store.  The list goes on...

The point is this: It might be time to take advantage of this young, educated, and hungry generation, while they're ready and available.  They want to launch new and exciting careers, and many of them will make great agents.  One idea is to create a Manager development track that's more systematic, providing young people from a business/management education, with a vision of where they could be a few years from now. 

What have you got to lose?  Some managers have said it takes too much time to train people who are so young and may not work out.  This could arguably be a complaint about candidates of any age...anyone who doesn't immediately appear self-sufficient.  There is an answer to this:  Numbers!  Increase the number you source, which will increase the number of candidates you interview, which will ultimately increase the number of solid, young people you'll meet... who you know can knock it out of the park!

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Best Place To Launch a Career: Can You Compete?

Each year, Business Week conducts a survey of companies and new college graduates to assemble a rank list of the best places for new graduates to begin their careers.  This year’s research involved data from more than 60,000 recent college graduates and more than 60 of the nation’s top universities.

There was some shocking information revealed by the research this year.  For example, of 2009 graduates, only one in five people who applied for a job succeeded in landing one.  And those who were lucky enough to land a job are not getting paid much—it is very difficult to get an entry-level job out of college above $50K in today’s market.  Many jobs on the list begin at $35K or below.

Some industries were hit particularly hard with regard to entry-level hiring:

Hospitality:    -76.3%
Technology:   -55.4%
Transportation:  -41.6%
Investment Banking:  -39.3%
Telecommunications:  -30.8%

These percentages were derived by comparing hiring levels in the first half of 2008 versus the first half of 2009.  The negative values indicate the percentage of decline with regard to hiring in the respective industries.

Does this all add up to doom and gloom for you?  Not necessarily.  If you’re a real estate company (or any small business), that is able to offer a bright young person an opportunity to get ahead, you have a window of opportunity to acquire some very talented, young workers.

In today’s environment, you no longer have to compete with high salaries, signing bonuses, and company-provided meals. Instead, many new workers are realizing that it will take hard work and sacrifice to get ahead.  (As a side note.. Interestingly, Google—famous for providing their employees free meals—did not make the Business Week top 50 this year.) 

One person highlighted in the Business Week feature, an Operations Manager for Nestle, revealed that:

“...he wakes up at 3am to get to work an hour before his 5:15am shift—and often stays late.  He’s a good example of what it takes for young people unaccustomed to drudgery to get ahead these days:  hard work, long hours, and a willingness to make sacrifices.”

With the changes happening in the talent marketplace, here’s an important question to ask yourself:  Is it possible for you to begin competing for the attention of these young, talented employees?

Of course, the traditional wisdom is that a real estate agent needs to be a little older to match the demographics of their buyers and sellers.  While there is some truth in this statement, consider the fact that investment banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms consistently hire college grads, and with great success.  Is there some way you could make this work as well? 

These companies have learned how to grow talent by engaging people at a young age and allowing them to gain experience and build skills on the job.  There are some companies who are already taking advantage of this opportunity.  For example, of the top 50 companies on the Business Week list, the one that has grown college level hiring the most in the last year (up 75% from the previous year) is New York Life.  Their hiring model is not much different than that of real estate, and their compensation scales are among the lowest in the industry.  How are they successful?  Part of the answer is that they are smart enough to put themselves in the right place at the right time!

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Ben Hess.  Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.  Comments or questions are welcome.  If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email.  If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

WorkPuzzle Update: Improved Focus and New Publishing Schedule

Since December of last year, Dr. Dave Mashburn and I have been writing in WorkPuzzle with the intended purpose of sharing how a basic understanding of the psychology of the human mind can help in numerous ways to make individuals and organizations operate more effectively.  We’ve learned a lot in this process, and we hope you have too.  We're thankful for all the thoughtful feedback you've provided along the way.

At this point, we’ve established a base of more than 100 articles.  These articles are available in the WorkPuzzle archives and are searchable online.  Most of these articles have been written to cover the general and basic principles of psychology, business, recruiting, and other workplace issues.  Many of these principles are timeless, so hopefully you’ll find it useful to refer back to some of these articles as you have need for insight.

As we move into the fall season, we’ve decided to take a slightly different posture with WorkPuzzle.  As you may know from our past references, the majority of our company’s clients are in the real estate industry.  In order to better address the needs of these clients, we’ve decided to focus WorkPuzzle efforts on the issues that concern these companies.  More specifically, we’ll be focusing our discussions on issues that real estate owners and strategically-minded real estate managers face in the day-to-day execution of their jobs.

For those of you who are more “general purpose readers” of WorkPuzzle, many of the principles that we’ll discuss in upcoming articles can still be applied to other industries and work scenarios.  Our intention is not to leave you behind.  There will still be much written that can be applied to your unique circumstances if you're outside the real estate industry--it will just require a bit more creativity to apply.  As we grow in the future, we may also begin to address other specific industries in blogs parallel to WorkPuzzle.  We’ll keep you posted on what develops in these other areas...

Finally, WorkPuzzle has been published daily during the work week for the past nine months.  We have very strong and vibrant readership early in the week, but by Thursday and Friday our readership wanes.  We’ve hypothesized that perhaps people are more willing to assimilate new and creative information earlier in the week.  Or, maybe by the end of the week, you’re just tired of hearing from us!

In response to this trend, we’re going to start publishing WorkPuzzle twice per week, on Mondays and Wednesdays.  If you’re an email subscriber, you’ll receive your copy of WorkPuzzle on Tuesdays and Thursdays (email subscribers are delayed a day).  This change in publishing schedule will begin this week. 

As always, we appreciate your comments and feedback concerning WorkPuzzle.  It is our privilege to serve our readers, and we look forward to exploring new topics and applications in the months ahead.

Flow and Accountability

We all take for granted that when we step out into this round, rotating world we live on, that we won't go flying off.  We're held on by gravity.  The same gravity that can kill you if you jump off anything of any height.

This is a law..."The Law of Gravity."  As I have been preaching these last few months, there are laws that govern your work life, and laws that manage your happiness too...and they are connected.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (great name for a researching Psychologist) set out 40 years ago to determine what really gives people true and repeatable enjoyment.  What he found may surprise you.  It's actually work!  Not any kind of work, but work where you lose yourself in the activity.  I'm not just talking about enjoyable tasks, rather tasks that require accountability.

"What he found is that people of all ages, nationalities and interests in life report their involvement in activities in a similar way.  In a nutshell ‘flow’ happens when we become so absorbed in an activity that we lose ourselves and our sense of time is altered.  When we are engrossed we often have so little sense of ourselves that we do not feel happy – in fact we feel nothing.  (Or indeed we may even experience physical discomfort as may be case for a mountaineer or athelete.)  But afterwards we have such a strong sense of gratification that we construe the activity as enjoyable and satisfying and so such experiences contribute substantially to our feelings of happiness and well-being.

Activities which can induce flow are varied and numerous.  It could be reading a book, playing a sport or having an engrossing conversation with a friend.  Commonly it is something that we find challenging.  This is why many people experience flow easily in competitive sports where challenge and feedback are intrinsic to the activity.  If the talents of the players are mismatched – one is a beginner chess player, for example, and the other is a Grand Master then neither is likely to experience flow.  For one opponent there is no challenge and for the other it is too daunting and so not easy to lose oneself in the activity."

Want to duplicate this in your company?

Here are the eight ingredients of flow:

"1. The experience occurs usually when we are involved in tasks that we have a good chance of completing.
2. We are able to concentrate fully on the activity.
3. The task has clear goals.
4. The task is such that it gives us immediate feedback on how well we are doing.
5. Our involvement is ‘deep but effortless’ and this ‘removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life’.
6. There is a sense of exercising control over our actions.
7. Concern for the self disappears’ but paradoxically our ‘sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over.’
8. We lose our normal sense of time – we can feel either that it has speeded up (and passed quickly) or slowed down."    (Centre for Confidence and Well-Being, 2006)

In other words, if you don't build systems and ways to measure and compare those systems, you can't experience flow.  This serves as yet another law...one that reinforces the justification and value of good management and better accountability. 

Sham WOW! Overselling an Employment Opportunity - Part 2

Last week, one of our clients sent me some solicitation information his company had received from an employment assessment company.  The information was a sample report that candidates receive from the assessment vendor upon applying to a given company.

The report is intended to give the candidate some feedback concerning their personality, and some insight regarding their potential for success at the said company.  The report is well done from a graphical perspective.  The assessment results are presented in a box on the upper right hand side in each of four pages, thus the candidate can easily access the information.
 
The problem is that the assessment results boxes are surrounded by a series of testimonials from existing employees.  Most of the testimonial boxes contain pictures of attractive women, and the general theme of each testimonial is that the person found fulfillment in life by working for this company.

I think testimonials are helpful, and one or two might complement this report nicely.  But, this report contains seven testimonials in just four pages!  The testimonials take up as much space on each page as the assessment results, and surround the box that contains the information the candidate is trying to read.

It’s like we’re back at the fair and the “gadget sales guy” is desperately trying to get my attention for a few minutes to make a sale.  The neon lights are flashing as the candidate approaches this employment opportunity.  Naturally, defenses rise under such circumstances, and people become protective.  What is effective in separating a person from the $10 that is in their wallet at the state fair, typically has the opposite effect in an employment dialog.

I know the majority of you are probably not involved in candidate advertising and marketing, but many of you are involved in various other aspects of the hiring process, including prospecting for candidates and conducting interviews.  The same principles apply to these pieces of the hiring process.

Overselling your company and your team will have a very negative effect on your recruiting results.  While most of us can look at an advertisement and tell if something looks gimmicky, it is difficult for many people to realize how their conversations may contain many of the same traits.

Here are some quick questions that you can ask yourself:

1. What percentage of your conversations involve you talking versus the candidate talking?

2. What percentage of your conversation is spent talking about the candidate’s existing organization (or past experiences) versus your organization?

3. What percentage of your conversation do you spend talking about the challenges on your team?  Do you ever talk about how a candidate’s contribution could enhance your team?

I'm sure you can figure out the correct answers to these questions by reflecting back on past interviews, but can you determine if you're doing these things during a live conversation?  The first step is to make an effort to become more aware of what you're saying during a recruiting conversation, and then make adjustments if you find you are overselling.  To follow up, you may want to invite a trusted friend or collegue to attend one of your interviews and then provide you some honest feedback on this topic.  

Believe me, if your recruiting conversations sound like they belong in the gadget barn, better to find out so that you can make some changes.  First impressions can become last impressions if you don't "fix" your approach.