WorkPuzzle

New Years Lessons From Last Year's Blogs

I trust you all have recovered from your New Years celebration and are back in the office, looking forward to a strong 2010.  If you haven't already, it's important to take time to reflect on what you've learned from last year and discipline yourself to make improvements in the upcoming year.

Allow me to make your reflections much easier by summarizing some of my favorite learning from this past year- As presented in WorkPuzzle, 2009:

1.  Surround yourself with resilient people.  Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz says:

“Psychologists consider [resilience] a key component of emotional health.  Resilient people, they have observed, are naturally better at containing their anxiety.  And that enables them to see in hardship the seeds of opportunity.  What would emotional resilience entail in the face of the current crisis?  The ability to resist being swept up in the global state of panic and to adapt as creatively as possible to one's setbacks and losses.”  (Resilience Revisited: Avoiding Anxiety Paralysis, Jan 2009)

2.  Although we at Tidemark source a very large volume of candidates for our clients through the use of technology, it should not substitute for the human work that follows:

"Personal connections produce results.  Work hard at making personal connections and becoming relevant, helpful, and engaged with the network of people you already know."  (Ben Hess, Feb 2009)

3. Work on developing the characteristics of survivors.  As learned from Laurence Gonzales in "Deep Survival":

a)  Move on quickly:  Resilient survivors have an uncanny way of moving through the stages of grief (denial, anger, depression, and acceptance) more quickly. They stop blaming, wishing and bargaining early on in the process, so as to focus their energy on a solution.

b)  Think, analyze, and plan:  Survivors quickly organize, set up routines, institute discipline at take correct, decisive action. 

c)  Celebrate minor successes:  Survivors take great joy in the smallest successes.  This provides relief from unspeakable stress, and helps create hope.

d)  Believe in a successful outcome:  Survivors admonish themselves to do their very best all of the time and convince themselves (despite what appears to be hopeless odds) that they will succeed if they continue to execute their systematic plan.

e)  Never give up:  Survivors are not easily frustrated and are not greatly discouraged by setbacks.
(Advice For Job Seekers Part 2, Feb. 2009)

4.  Look for people with grit:  Stick to rewarding effort in you and in others and you'll be on top of the next economic wave.  The data shows that if we praise talent and accomplishments, we get stagnation, and even failure.  However, in studies where "effort" was rewarded, the result was growth and greater success. 

Thomas Edison once said:

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up"  (Psychology Today)

Success comes to those who work harder... (Choosing Grit Over Talent, March 2009)

5.  Optimism is much more than a Zig Ziglar recommendation.  It not only will help boost your confidence, but will also improve your health.  (Why Optimism Matters, May 2009)

Spend some time rereading and reflecting on the depth of information and insight, and I'll follow up with more later this week...

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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.

Recruiting Women: What Do Women Really Want?

Earlier this year, Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, two Boston Consulting Group Partners, released their findings regarding some interesting research on the impact women have had on the economy.  Part of the research involved the launching of a survey website called What Do Women Want? The responses of thousands of women across the globe were analyzed.
 
You can read some of the early results on the survey website, or read a recent Harvard Business Review article on the topic.  As I looked through the results of this research, I was surprised by the overwhelming impact that woman have on the economy.  HBR puts it this way:

“Women now drive the world economy.  Globally, they control about $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years.  Their $13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same period.  In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than twice as big, in fact.  Given those numbers, it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer.  And yet many companies do just that, even ones that are confident they have a winning strategy when it comes to women.”

You would think that with this much opportunity at stake, more companies would focus their marketing efforts on reaching women. And, it turns out that many have given it a try.  However, most companies have failed miserably.  Why?  Because they don’t understand the needs and intricacies of women.  These failures are important to understand if you are selling any sort of product or service (including real estate), but they can also teach us a lot about recruiting.  Unless you’re able to craft your recruiting message in a way that resonates and impacts woman, you’ll be missing a significant opportunity.

The research on this topic is too extensive to try to summarize in this article, but it may be helpful to highlight one idea that really impacted my thinking:  When marketing to women, it is important to recognize the “stage of life” they are currently occupying.  This concept is summarized in the following graphic:

The research defines each of these segments, including how much of the population and income potential comprise each category.  Here is a summary of each segment:

FAST-TRACKER
24% of population; 34% of earned income
Economic and educational elite
Seeks adventure and learning

Subsegments:
STRIVING FOR ACHIEVMENT
15% of population; 19% of earned income
Job and recognition are priorities

INDEPENDENT WOMEN
9% of population; 15% of earned income
Works the most
Prizes autonomy

PRESSURE COOKER
22% of population; 23% of earned income
Married with children
Feels ignored and stereotyped

Subsegments:
SUCCESSFUL MULIT-TASKER
10% of population; 14% of earned income
Feels in control

STRUGGLING FOR STABILITY
12% of population; 9% of earned income
Constantly battles chaos

RELATIONSHIP FOCUSED
16% of population; 13% of earned income
Content and optimistic
Isn’t pressed for time
Has ample discretionary income
Focuses on experiences, not products

MANAGING ON HER OWN
10% of population; 9% of earned income
Single again (divorced or widowed)
Seeks ways to form connections

FULFILLED EMPTY NESTER
15% of population; 16% of earned income
Largely ignored by marketers
Concerned about health and aging gracefully
Focused on travel, exercise, and leisure

MAKING ENDS MEET
12% of population; 5% of earned income
No money for beauty or exercise
Majority lack college education
Seeks credit, value, and small luxuries

From a recruiting perspective, here are some important questions to ask yourself:

1. Which group of women are most successful in your organization today? Will the same group be successful in the future?
2. Do you know of women who are at one stage today, who could be inspired to move to a more desirable stage by building a career inside your organization?
3. Would it behoove you to spend less time focusing on particular groups of women in your recruiting efforts, so that you can increase your focus on the groups that have the highest potential return?
4. Can your messaging to candidates (advertising, phone screening, interviews) be customized to tap the interests and needs of the group with which your communicating?

As any guy will tell you, this is not as easy as it looks!  There is much more to learn and it may be frustrating, but the opportunities warrant the effort.  Happy New Year! 

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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.

Looking For ZEO Recruits?

Have you heard about The ZEO Personal Sleep Coach?  Regardless of your answer, you're probably wondering what it has to do with recruiting.

First, some words about The ZEO: It is a bedside contraption that monitors and charts sleep states (such as REM sleep) for a better understanding of when and for how long one experiences certain sleep states.  In addition, this company has developed and marketed a personal sleep coaching service which allows users to learn to improve these analyzed sleep patterns.

This product is capturing national attention, having been featured on NBC's Today Show and in The Wall Street Journal.  The product is a huge hit.

Now, let's move on to the information about this product that pertains to your business:  In 2004, a few students at Brown University were sitting around talking about the natural interest that most people have around the topic of getting a good night's sleep.  Sleep medications were on the rise as the fastest growing prescription medication, and sleep study clinics were developed in nearly every major city.

This group of young people (college age!) had the time, creativity and motivation to consider the possibility of developing a way for people to change their sleep habits for the better, driven and supported by the latest technology.

Have you ever noticed that young people are usually the ones who come up with ways of addressing old problems with new technology?  There is something contained in younger hearts and minds- some strange, elusive recipe of creativity, high tolerance for risk, little need for relaxation, abundant energy and competitiveness... that gives young people an edge in developing the next wave of innovative development in almost any field.

When is the last time that you've heard new strains of music genres begun by anyone over 40?  A study of history tells us that it rarely happens.

For example, I remember hearing Bob Dylan (one of the most important innovators of music, bringing the lyrical genius and deep meaning of folk together with the hard hitting melodies of rock and roll), interviewed by 60 Minutes when he was over 60 years old.  In this interview he was asked how he wrote some of his earlier work that everyone predicted would become so timeless.  His answer is at the heart of my point: 

"I have no idea how I wrote those great songs, but I can't do it anymore.. I've tried and I just can't do it."

If one of your goals is for your company to be recognized as an innovator in your industry, then you have to attract those who will creatively experiment their way into discovering new ways to sell, position, market, communicate and integrate new technologies for your services.

There is no question that in any industry, including real estate, those companies who recruit, listen to, and unleash the creativity of young people, will be the ones leading the way to better methods of conducting business in the 21st century. 
 
Allow me to remind you of the ages of some of the greatest innovators of the 20th century:

• Ransom E. Olds (Age 36):  Created the assembly line in 1901 
• Willis Haviland Carrier (Age 25):  Inventor of the air conditioner in 1902
• Marie Curie (Age 35):  Pioneered the study of radioactivity in 1903
• Albert Einstein (Age 26):  Invented The Theory of Relativity
• Orville and Wilbur Wright (Age at first flight 32):  Inventors of the airplane
• Gideon Sundback (Age 33):  Invented the zipper
• John Hammond (Age 23):  Invented radio remote control
• Philo Farnsworth (Age 21!):  Inventor of Television in 1927
• Walter Diemerm (Age 24):  Inventor of bubble gum in 1928
• Chester Carlson (Age 32):  Inventor of Xerography in 1938
• Jack Kilby (Age 35):  Inventor of Integrated Circuits in 1958
• Nolan Bushnell (Age 29):  Inventor of the Pong Video Game in 1972
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Ages 21 and 27): Inventors of the Personal Computer in 1976
• Bill Gates (Age 22):  Founded Microsoft and struck a deal with IBM
• Tim Berners-Lee (Age at concept 25):  Inventor of the World Wide Web (NO, not Al Gore)
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Ages 24 and 25):  Google founder

So next time that a 21 year old expresses an interest in giving Real Estate a try...

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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.

New Research On Multi-Tasking

I recently came across some new research out of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, assessing the best conditions for successful multi-tasking.

We all have multiple tasks to execute daily in order to be successful.  Whether you're an owner, C-level executive, realtor or manager of realtors, without a good strategy for multi-tasking, you're performance will suffer.

The results of this research will not surprise the best performers, as they have probably been utilizing the following strategy intuitively.  The findings, however, serve as a great reminder for all of us.

Two separate experiments both found the following two points to be the most critical with regard to successful multitasking:

1. While the best performance is found when people stop thinking about one task and fully transition their attention to the next task, it is difficult for people to transition their attention away from an unfinished task.  As a result, their subsequent task performance suffers.  Being able to finish one task before switching to another is, however, not enough to enable effective task transitions.
2. Time pressure (or a time limit) when approaching a task is needed in order to help disengage from the first task and thus move to the next task.  This time-constrained approach to switching tasks contributes to higher performance on the next task.

Most of us can relate to these findings - Most successful people have done this at some point, if not currently.  Personally, my best performance almost always comes when I begin the day by listing the most important tasks to be completed, estimate the time to complete each task, hold myself to it, and then move, one by one, through the list of tasks.

Ask your best performers and those who are lagging what they do to plan their day - You may find the above strategy to be the differentiating factor between them.

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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.

Black Friday Recruiting: What Are Your Candidates Experiencing? Part 2

On Monday, we discussed the poor circumstances that most candidates encounter when they look for a job or investigate a career change.  When simple research techniques and metrics are used to quantify a candidate’s experience, it is no wonder that job changes are constantly cited as one of the top stressors in a person’s life.

While you can’t change the employment landscape for everyone, you can make sure that the candidates who interact with your organization are experiencing something positive and out of the norm.  If managed proactively, this can become a significant competitive advantage for your company.  The most talented people will be naturally drawn to organizations where they feel respected and valued for the contribution they can make to a team.

Here are some ideas regarding how you can take the negatives from Monday’s discussion and turn them into positives in your company:

1.  70% dissatisfied — 70% of the candidates and 28% of hiring managers indicate they are dissatisfied with the hiring process (Source: Staffing.org):

Ask yourself this question:  Why do retail companies go through the trouble of ensuring that their customers are having an enjoyable experience in their stores?  It is obviously because those customers are the source of the company’s revenue.  I don’t mean to sound overly harsh in this statement, but if you run a real estate company, where does your revenue come from?  That’s right—your agents and (looking into the future) your perspective agents.
Maybe it’s time to change your frame of reference.  Treating candidates like you’d treat a customer makes much more sense from a business perspective. 

Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes—what kind of experience would you want to have if you were interviewing with your organization?  Try surprising the candidate with something that would exceed their expectations.  Even if a candidate does not become an agent, the person could still eventually become an actual customer that takes advantage of your company’s services.

2.  46% failure rate — 46% of U.S. new hires must be classified as failures within their first 18 months (fired, pressured to quit, required disciplinary action, etc.) (Source: Leadership IQ):

Keep in mind that these metrics represent the hiring results of companies at large—many real estate companies are even worse.  What causes someone to fail in a job?  There are many reasons, but one cause that researchers consistently identify as being at the top of the list is that the new hire is a poor fit for accomplishing the tasks necessary to be successful in the job.  In hindsight, the mistakes made in the hiring process usually become clearer.  But, how do you recognize the problems before the hire?  

As earlier suggested, treating candidate like you’d treat a customer can help you avoid these missteps.  Think about how real estate is sold—the essence of the agent’s role is to help the client make a connection between their personal and financial circumstances, and the house that best fits their needs. 

Helping someone make a career change is very similar.  People need assistance and coaching as they try to figure out how a job change could work in their life.  What they don’t need is a judgmental attitude, trait responses, or indifference.  If you’re willing to take on a positive career counseling approach with high-quality candidates, I think you will find you’ll become better at making the right selections.

3.  Only 30% of organizations measure quality of hire, and only a handful specifically define and measure recruiting process failure: 

If you’re a regular WorkPuzzle reader, you’ve often heard that it’s difficult to improve what you can’t measure.  Don’t assume you know what the candidate is experiencing.  Instead, collect data and act on that data.  To measure the candidate’s experience, have a third party call the candidate after the interview and collect some anonymous feedback.  You’ll be surprised what you learn. 

I’ve given you a way to address three of the twelve metrics that Dr. Sullivan documents in his original article.  Hopefully, you are getting the idea of how these issues can be addressed and turned into positive differentiators for your company.  One thing we know for sure, if your recruiting process and results systematically improve, your company’s financial results will improve as well.

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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.

 

What Your Science Teacher Should Have Taught You About Thanksgiving

In the spirit of the season, I thought it appropriate to share the research that relates the benefits we can expect from being grateful.  We covered this topic last year, but this is something we all need to be reminded of occasionally.

Did you know that scienctists have something to say about gratitude?  What your parents taught you about being thankful, has been shown to greatly impact the work environment. 

Selfishness comes naturally to most people.  Wishing for more, rather than being thankful for what we have is a theme portrayed in nearly every classic holiday film or tale.  Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carole, George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, and the Grinch in The Grinch who Stole Christmas were all finally saved from their selfish ambition to recognize and savor the smallest treasures of what they had.  

Gratitude can be simply defined as the acknowledgement and pleasure in having received.  For centuries, the topic was ignored by serious scientists because most believed the concept should be left to the realm of philosophers and theologians.

More recently, as serious researchers began studying gratitude in earnest, they found some surprising benefits for both organizations and individuals.

Gratitude is responsible for significant enhancement of mood, and it increases prosocial behavior (i.e. being kind and doing things for others).

Researcher and professor, Dr. Robert A Emmons, writes in Positive Organizational Scholarship: The Foundations of a New Discipline:

"The cultivation of gratitude may be important in organizations not only because of the direct effects of improving organizational climate, but also because as a cognitive strategy, gratitude can improve individual well-being and lower toxic emotions in the workplace, such as resentment and envy.

…Studies have shown that employees’ happiness and well-being are associated positively with performance, morale, commitment, and can reduce absenteeism and staff turn-over.  The techniques to improve gratitude, a key ingredient in positive emotion, could enhance individual and organizational well-being."

If you're coaching those on your team, or trying to recruit the right people for the future, focus part of your effort on the trait of gratitude.  You'll not only be thankful you did (from a performance and culture perspective), but you'll also find yourself becoming a more appreciative person, yourself.  That's a win for everyone involved.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lessons Learned In Moneyball

If you haven't already, I would highly recommend reading the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael M. Lewis.  This book details the true story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and their General Manager, Billy Beane, who was the first GM to question long held biases in recruiting and use only objective analysis in picking undervalued talent to win ballgames.

Between 1997 and 2008, under Beane's watch, the A's compiled a 976-804 (.548) record, which was the third-best record in the American League, and fifth best in all of baseball during that time frame.  In addition, the A's won four American League West titles (2000, 2002-03, and 2006) and secured one AL Wild Card spot (2001).  Over the last nine seasons, dating back to the 2000 campaign, the A's have compiled an 815-641 (.560) record, which is the third-best record in the American League and fourth-best mark in the Majors.

How did Beane accomplish this?  It wasn't with large sums of money.

"The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed.  Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time.  The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more empirical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball.

Rigorous statistical analysis had demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and the A's became convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact.  These observations often flew in the face of conventional baseball wisdom and the beliefs of many baseball scouts and executives.

By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, are competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, who spend over $100 million in payroll.  Because of the team's smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far." (Wikipedia: Moneyball)

That was in 2002.  And the A's record of wins didn't really begin to falter until 2007, when at least ten other teams began to copy the A's formula for successful recruiting.

And what is that formula?  It boils down to this:  The strategy is to find players who have the highest on-base percentage.  They really don't consider hitting percentage - They go as far to say, "We don't care whether they even look like an athlete."  If they are good enough to play at the college or minor league level, get on base, and then know how to work the count to get a lot of walks...they want them.

This new way of analyzing baseball players is called:  Sabermetrics (the analysis of baseball through objective evidence).

"Moneyball has made such an impact in professional baseball that the term itself has entered the lexicon of baseball.  Teams which appear to value the concepts of sabermetrics are often said to be playing 'Moneyball'.  Baseball traditionalists, in particular some scouts and media members, decry the sabermetric revolution and have disparaged Moneyball for emphasizing concepts of sabermetrics over more traditional methods of player evaluation.  Nevertheless, the impact of Moneyball upon major league front offices is undeniable. In its wake, teams such as the New York Mets, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Washington Nationals, Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, and the Toronto Blue Jays have hired full-time Sabermetric analysts."  (Wikipedia: Moneyball)

The question for all of us is this:  What subjective and flawed assumptions have we all accepted without questioning regarding sourcing, recruiting, coaching and agent performance?

Those brave enough to question the status quo through statistical analysis may find ways to succeed that were never previously discovered... 

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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 Three Rules Of Scalable Recruiting - Part 2

As promised, here are the Three Primary Rules for developing a scalable new agent recruiting process:

Rule #1:  There is no replacing a guaranteed, consistent, and large number of high quality candidates across the entire calendar year.

Rule #2:  Because of this large influx of candidates, one must have a system that tracks and enables consistent contact with every candidate from- first interest- through interview- to hire, so as to minimize any candidates falling through the cracks or being lost to competitors.

Rule #3:  Finding a manager who can consistently execute the above rules should be considered an anomaly.  You can find managers who are good recruiters, but to replicate their methods is extraordinarily difficult because they’ve developed their own personal system.  If you depend on the managers alone to do your recruiting, you’re running the risk of inconsistent recruiting.  In our experience of directing large flows of candidates toward managers, we’ve found that they simply aren’t wired to complete the tasks required to contact each candidate at the frequency we’ve seen essential for good results.  This is not an insult to managers.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Good managers are wired to be good at interactions, leading, inspiring, coaching, and of course… their own, individual, idiosyncratic, style of recruiting.  They are very good at sitting across the desk from a candidate and inspiring them to become an agent - Our numbers consistently show that most managers convert 25% of their interviews into new agents who are excited about joining their company.  So… get them a lot of people to interview!

[Addendum to Rule #3:  If you are executing on Rule #1 (having a consistent, large volume of candidates), then a central recruiting coordinator who is “wired” to handle the large number of tasks it takes to execute Rule #1 is essential.]

Because of the first two rules, companies must simultaneously execute two recruiting systems.  One system should encourage the development and accountability of each manager recruiting through their own personal methods, and the other should include systems built with the first two rules bolted on the side.  Remember, I am talking about a “scalable, repeatable recruiting system.”  This must be a system that allows everyone to do their best work every day.  It must not be a system that requires dependency on any one person, nor should it be difficult to replicate.

And most importantly, everyone involved must appreciate each other’s work across all parts of the process, for each piece takes an enormous amount of consistent work.  Sourcing large numbers of candidates, funneling these contacts toward interviews, trying to convert these into hires, etc…all are pieces of an important puzzle and must be acknowledged. 

When the above rules are followed, it will not only have a substantial impact on improving results, but will also reduce the level of frustration for everyone involved.

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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 Three Rules Of Scalable Recruiting

We’ve recently had the pleasure of presenting at the Realty Alliance Conference in New York City, during which time we touched base with many of our clients, in addition to meeting roughly forty other leaders in the real estate industry, whom we previously only knew by name.
 
Preparing for the presentation provided me with a good excuse to spend some time boiling down some of what we’ve learned over the past five years regarding recruiting.  I initially came up with a very long and rather cumbersome and detailed list of rules, but soon whittled it down to a concise and potent list of Three Rules.

Before sharing these rules with you, allow me to briefly review some important principles around science and research design that has given us the ability to deduce these rules.
 
When one sets out to improve results of any kind, one must do more than analyze just the results.  However, many business people do just this, especially where preconceived beliefs and biases have been in place for many years.  Excuse the exaggeration, but what many people end up doing, is simply looking at the results exclusively, and demanding, “Give me better results today than I had yesterday,” or simply, "We need to get better results!"

What happens under these conditions is that a very wide variety of systems and methods become adopted by those who have been charged with the task of “delivering results.”  These haphazard systems contain such personal and idiosyncratic twists that the methods are impossible to replicate across all territories or offices.  When this occurs, the organization loses any ability to replicate any success, and instead becomes dependent on a few superstars who are the only ones who can pull off their own personal method of recruiting (or any other task for that matter).

The scientific method is a much different process than the above.  The scientific method regarding any sort of improvement sets out to:

• Determine all variables that might have a significant impact on the result.
• Manipulate those variables until the results are significantly improved.

 And then most importantly…

• Assess if these same variables can be similarly manipulated and the results replicated in other environments (across offices, corporate cultures, territories, country, etc.).

In essence, this is what we, at Tidemark, set out to do five years ago - And we want to thank many of our clients who have allowed us to experiment in their backyard.  Many of you are likely aware of several of our methods derived from the above process.  (If you aren’t, please contact me.)

I'll give you a couple of days to chew on the above information.  See if you can guess what we've figured out to be the Three Simple Rules to Scalable Recruiting.  I'll include them later this week.  Stay tuned... 

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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 Case For Loyalty - Part 3: Contributing At Work

In the last couple of posts (1, 2), we’ve discussed loyalty from the perspective of personal relationships.  Without the ability to be loyal to those around you and maintain relationships with people who are loyal to you, it is difficult to find happiness and maintain a sense of well-being.

Today, we’ll turn our focus to workplace relationships and performance.  Does loyalty have an impact on how you’ll perform as an employee and a leader?  More than you might imagine...  

The authors of  Why Loyalty Matters site an extensive study conducted at Harvard Business School (Heskett, Sasser, Schlesinger), that boils down the critical elements of employee performance.  This study is unique because it focuses specifically on the factors that must be present for an employee to provide outstanding customer service (i.e. meet the needs of a customer). 

Here is what the researchers learned:

1. Capability: Capable employees can deliver high-value service to customers. This implies that employees have the training, tools, procedures, and rules to deliver good service.
2. Satisfaction: Satisfied employees treat customers better than their dissatisfied counterparts.
3. Loyalty: Loyal employees are more willing to suppress short-term demands for the long-term benefit of the organization. As such, they may, themselves, place a priority on good customer service. Loyal employees also stay with their organizations longer, reducing the cost of turnover and its negative effect on service quality.
4. Productivity: Productive employees have the potential to raise the value of a firm’s offerings to its customers. Greater productivity can lower costs of operations, which can mean lower prices for customers.

Doesn’t it seem that loyalty is out of place on this list?  I understand that a person must be capable, productive, and generally happy to provide good customer service.  But loyal?  Although it may seem odd, the research strongly demonstrates this connection.

If you are responsible for recruiting and coaching those on your team, this information should have an impact on how you perform these functions.  Can you expect an agent or an employee to consistently satisfy your customers if they do not feel loyal to you and your organization?  Don’t bet on it.  Does it make sense to hire new agents and employees who have demonstrated high performance, but have a pattern of disloyal behavior?  Again, this is not a formula for long-term success. 

But, how can we reconcile the necessity and benefits of loyalty when we work for companies, who through no fault of their own, must participate (at times) in disloyal behaviors towards their employees?  I thought the authors did a great job of addressing this point:

“So the belief by some that employee loyalty is dead is absolutely, without a doubt, wrong [based on the research sited above]. Loyalty is critical both to a company’s long-term success, and to our own happiness [see the second posting in this series].  As famed management expert Tom Peters once observed:

‘I think loyalty is much more important than it ever was in the past.  Today loyalty is the only thing that matters.  But it isn’t blind loyalty to the company.  It’s loyalty to your colleagues, loyalty to your team, loyalty to your project, loyalty to your customers, and loyalty to yourself.  I see it as a much deeper sense of loyalty than mindless loyalty to the Company Z logo.’

We spend far too much of our lives working not to derive some pleasure from it.  But doing so requires that we build strong connections with others.  And strong connections are build on loyality.”

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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.