In an article in Inc Magazine, Jason Fried (co-founder of 37 Signals), talks about working with a remote team. He describes mostly the upsides, but there was one part which particularly caught my eye. He says he’s often asked ‘how do you know work is getting done if you can’t see people doing it?’ His response is: ‘Observing work take place is not the same as seeing work get done’.

I noticed it because we’re often asked a similar question about feedback. Where employees are remote, people ask, how do I give feedback? A simple answer is: you can still see their work. You know what they’re supposed to be doing and to what standard and it’s easy to give feedback on that.

There’s a multitude of other things you can give feedback on, even if you’re not in the same office. Take phone calls. Are they on time to conference calls? Are they prepared? Do they contribute to the discussion? Do they support others? Do they sound like they’re listening? Are they available when you call outside of scheduled calls? What’s their voicemail like? Do they return your calls? Do they return other people’s calls? How do they sound on phone calls? One subject, ten reasons to give feedback.

There’s an article in Inc magazine about Tim O’Shaughnessy, LivingSocial CEO, in which he describes how he works. There were a good few things where you I wondered how effective they could be, and then I got to a description of ‘Ignite’ presentations.

An Ignite presentation, I discovered, is a five minute Powerpoint presentation with 20 slides. Yes, that’s 20 slides in 5 minutes. Apparently, it’s supposed to ‘ignite’ the audience. The thought of 20 slides in 5 minutes made me quite dizzy. It’s one every 25 seconds. I’m not sure I read that quickly – and I read quickly.

It seemed to me, that it’s the wrong answer to the question. How to get the audience excited isn’t answered by more powerpoint, it’s answered by being a better presenter. Connecting with the audience and allowing them to connect with your passion.

Has anyone seen an ‘ignite’ presentation and want to talk me out of this view?

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201203/liz-welch/the-way-i-work-tim-o-shaugn…

Our recent podcast about Internal Service providers brought up a theme that occurs relatively often in Manager Tools – what CAN be done? Sure, there’s a bunch of laws about what can and can’t be done. But in a lot of places what ‘can’t be done’ is a function of what’s been done in the past, or ‘unwritten rules’.

An article in Texas Monthly discusses Southwest. Southwest had had a ‘no furlough’ policy which was under threat in the downturn in air travel after 9/11. The CEO said that the policy wouldn’t be broken – and that forced the company to find other solutions to the lack of revenue. There were a variety of solutions, including one which came from the employees: discontinuing lawn services – instead, the employees brought in their own lawn mowers. Essentially, Southwest asked: if we’re not going to furlough people, what can we do?

In another example – one that’s perhaps easier to follow – the article describes Southwest’s recruiting process. “Since the company was so picky about it’s requirements, it hired only one percent of all applicants”. That’s having your barriers high and sticking to it, even in the face of empty seats. It’s tough, but if you decide that’s your standard, then you have to solve your other problems other ways.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/2012-03-01/feature

There’s an article in the February 6th edition of Fortune discussing Salesforce.com. In it they say “You can learn a lot about CEO’s by what they keep in their office, but with Benioff, we’re mostly baffled”.

I think the Manager Tools community can get this with the two clues which are in the article. (In fact, I think most of you will get it with one, but I’m giving you two). Number One: “…a phrase Benioff uses in conversation about his business as often as he puts !!!!! in emails…”. Number Two, from the description of his office: “In addition to the framed magazine cover stories and standard-issue notes from US presidents, … there’s a .. bobblehead of Powell, with a handwritten note from the general, saying only “Oy!”, a lava lamp from Google; Kermit the Frog, an animatronic donkey sporting a Cal-Berkeley yarmulke…”

There’s a bunch of other clues in the article, but I think that’s enough for you to know, if you ever met him, what the most appropriate conversation style would be. Prove me right?

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/tag/salesforce-com/

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Donald Rumsfeld gives his advice on running good meetings in Bloomberg Businessweek. He starts with what we would agree is the most important item: start on time. He adds, finish on time too, which we’d agree with too.

Later he says, ‘the reason for talking is to be understood’ – which of course made me think of our recent High I and emails cast. What most of us do, most of the time, is just talk – or type. We don’t think about how the person we’re communicating with will understand our message.

As hard as it is for me, as a high D, to write someone’s name at the beginning of an email and to finish with regards, Wendii, if they started their email with my name, I do it. And the results of that simple change, convince me that Rumsfeld is right. The small change is worth it. There is no point in talking, if you’re not going to be understood.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/donald-rumsfeld-how-to-run-a-meetin…

An article in Wired Magazine describes a series of experiments from the 40’s, based on the animation of two balls. “In the first film, the red ball races across the screen, touches the blue ball and then stops. The blue ball, meanwhile, begins moving in the same basic direction as the red ball”. When asked to describe what happened, people said, the red ball hit the blue ball and caused it to move – drawing a conclusion they couldn’t possibly know.

In a later experiment a small blue ball moved in front of a larger red ball – and the subjects said, the red ball is chasing the blue ball. When I read the description, I leapt to that conclusion too. It can’t be true – the balls are inanimate, but we seek to explain things and we use the words we know. When we’re having to quickly assess a new situation for a threat, this is obviously a useful ability.

But we use this skill in situations where we should not. That’s we spend part of the explanation of the Feedback Model explaining behavior. When we give feedback, we have to describe the behavior – the red ball and the blue ball are moving in the same direction – not the conclusion we draw – that the ball is being chased. Because we can’t know that our conclusion is right – and if we get it wrong, it takes the effect out of the feedback. When giving feedback, we need to stop ourselves drawing conclusions.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_causation/all/1

In a short piece in Bloomberg Businessweek, Douglas Conant, former President and CEO of Campbell Soups gives his thoughts on writing thank you notes. He’s a big fan, apparently, having sent 20,000 in his 18 year tenure.

The most interesting part for me, was that he says he kept his notes short – 50 – 70 words. Talk about lowering the barrier. How hard can it be to pick up a box of thank you notes, and writing 50 -70 words each time you see something that it’s worth saying thank you for?

The other way to lower the barrier and say thank you more often, is to say thank you for smaller things. Really – I have a reminder each week which says ’send thank you notes’. Sometimes, I have to work really hard thinking about who I want to thank. I’ve sent thank you cards to a person who made my world better by being cheerful every time I saw her. She pinned it up in the communal office where she worked, and EVERYONE knew about it. It wasn’t trivial to her. So don’t worry, just say thank you.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/how-to-write-a-thankyou-note-092220…

At a conference recently I talked to someone who is looking for his next career step. When I asked who he’d talked to, he told me he was looking to find the right people to talk to in other departments.

There’s definitely value in finding the right person – we’d all love to find the perfect mentor who jumpstarts our career first time out. Meeting the right mentor is like other kinds of relationships though – you have to kiss the frogs before you find the prince. Instead of finding the right person, just start meeting people. Use any introduction you can get.

I’ve noticed in the US, people are much more likely to speak to strangers than I’m used to. That’s how I found out how delicious black raspberry icecream is – a guy recommended it to me, when I was just stood in the supermarket. It never hurts though, even though I find it odd. So reach out – you never know what the positive result might be.

On PersonnelToday’s website, there’s a summary of a report of a survey by XpertHR which says that in the UK at least, employers say there are too few graduates to fill entry level positions. I was intrigued by this, because we hear a lot of ‘the last 2/3 graduating classes haven’t got jobs due to the recession and are therefore stuck’.

80% of those surveyed though, said that the problem was the actual number of graduates, but the quality. They ‘faced difficulties recruiting graduates due to a lack of skills, knowledge or the attitudes of the candidates’. According to the article, this is the second survey in as many weeks to have this finding.

What strikes me about this statistic is that two of the three, graduates can easily change, themselves, without any cost. Changing your attitude is as easy as deciding to. Getting more knowledge is as easy as going to the library (and most graduates have access to their college library for several years after they leave). Skills is harder, but there’s nothing to stop you practicing your excel skills at home. If the problem for graduates getting jobs really is just skills, knowledge and attitude, it’s an easy problem to solve.

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2012/02/01/58316/too-few-applican…