A “good company tag” is critical to a company’s ability to attract, motivate and retain the best and the brightest, thus gaining competitive advantage in the marketplace. Internationally, those companies that are voted as Best Companies to Work For also yield higher returns for shareholders. In fact, employee attitudes are directly linked with company performance, according to Watson Wyatt’s Human Capital Index. Additionally companies that are considered good employers have a strong identity and image in the marketplace. . Employer branding is the
process of creating an identity and managing the company’s image in its role as an employer.
As organizations are complex, open systems, single interventions are not enough. The employer brand has to be aligned and congruent with what the company delivers to the employee, customer, public and shareholder. The factors that impact the employer brand are:
1.Reputation/ integrity
2.Culture
3.Recruitment / orientation
4.Pay and benefits
5.Work /Life balance
6.Leadership and management
7.Performance management, growth and development
Of these seven factors in the employer branding model, four have proven to be crucial for a large majority of high performing employees. These are:
• Culture
• Pay and benefits
• Leadership and management
• Performance management, growth and development.
Only two of these four factors form a crucial part of the employer brands of majority companies:
• A highly developed culture and outstanding leadership
• Management qualities.
Brand Misalignments
Most employer brands fail to recognize the importance of “performance management, growth and development” and “pay and benefits,” respectively. Delving more deeply into these factors shows where highest misalignments occur. High performers expect:
• Multiple career paths to be open to them
• Supervisors to ask them for feedback
• Regular feedback on their own performance
• A transparent system for determining variable pay.
Most of the employers do not regard these as crucial elements of their employer brand. However, high performers show considerable expectation for their compensation. High performers consider base pay to be the most important part of their compensation package. Interestingly, employees who have high expectations of growth and development opportunities consider variable components of compensation almost as important as base pay, whereas other employees have far greater interest in base pay. High performers believe that their efforts and contributions to the company should be remunerated far above average compensation levels.
Is There a Pattern in Employee Expectations?
As “quality of leadership and management,” “culture,” “pay and benefits” and “growth and development opportunities” are considered to be the most important factors within the employment deal for a vast majority of high-performing employees, is there any pattern in these? Research shows that “Culture” and “leadership and management” are factors that prove to be significantly correlated to each other. Employees who have great interest in culture tend to have high expectations in the quality of leadership and management. A culture that is neither well developed nor aligned with the company’s leadership and management practices is unlikely to appeal to a high performer.
Priorities of Employers of Choice
Employers of choice have built much of their standing on their reputation as “exciting places to work.” They regard their reputation as an essential part of their employer brand and tout
this image among graduating classes and in the job market. Biut there is more to their success than mere smart publicity campaign. The brands of the employers of choice have much higher
congruence with the employment deal expectations of their high performers. This holds especially true for the high quality of their “culture” and the good quality of their “leadership and management.” Most companies only partially meet the expectations of their most valuable employees. Answers to the following questions can avoid such a mismatch. They build a basis on which an employer brand can be built successfully:
• What types of employees are fundamental to the success of the business?
• What do the high-performing employees expect from the company?
Answering the above questions enables the employer to build a brand that reflects its business and culture and is attractive to targeted employees. Besides the company needs to share and live the brand. The employer brand may not remain a secret for HR professionals, but should be widely disseminated and shared within and outside the company. The employers of choice have proven that well-developed employer brands help attract and retain talent. A strong employer brand shows what a powerful means of differentiation an employer branding can be. It can be thus be concluded that a remarkable reputation, perception and image in the job market builds on both the attractiveness in factors that are of fundamental importance to high performers as well as elaborate efforts, which make this attractiveness visible in the job market.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Building better ‘First Impressions’
Controlling our “blink” responses
Experts believe that our awareness of the fact that we make snap (often unconscious) judgments about people and situations can provide the opportunity for controlling our “blink” response. The key is constant awareness of your ability to thin-slice and think without thinking. Then there is the necessity for each of us to be aware of and control our thin-slicing. Experts are now more convinced than ever that we make snap decisions about situations and people, unconsciously, that bring into play all of our biases. For example all candidates interviewed for a position deserve the same treatment and the same attention to factors other than race, religion, appearance and size.
Any decisions that we make based on our thin-slicing must be accompanied by the recognition that we do make important decisions using this process - unconsciously. Take the time to gather a larger pool of data before going with your initial gut reaction. While you may be right, you can be wrong. And, there is the constant opportunity to unconsciously discriminate, make poor hiring and networking choices and to trust or distrust employee stories for all of the wrong reasons. We are challenged to work with people who are not just like us. After we notice the differences (blink), we need to constantly demonstrate that we honour and appreciate the differences.
Knowing Your Body Communications
It's time to get to know your body. If you don't know where you hold your tension, and most people don't, take a tour of your body, so you can know what needs the most loosening - -and exercise. Are you shouldering the world's responsibilities, or perpetually drooping? Or, in your determined drive toward success, do you plant your feet solidly on the ground in a life gesture of hostility, defiance or taking ground? Perhaps you have a forward leaning posture, with the head tilted slightly forward, as if you are ready to spring into action, expressing a lifelong pattern of flight away from psychologically threatening situations, when you thought it was part of your make-up to leap forward to new opportunities. To be depressed is, in fact, to press against yourself. To be closed off is to hold your muscles rigid against the world. Being open is being soft. No instinctive muscle clenching, such as in the jaws. Hardness is being uptight, cold, separate, giving yourself and others a hard time. Softness is synonymous with pleasure, warmth, flowing, being alive, drawing other people toward you rather than forcing them away.
Expressions & Muscles
When you are misaligned and tense, you expend outrageous sums of energy doing the everyday gestures of life. Since the body is a high viscosity substance, that is 60 percent to 80 percent water, the bonds are floating in a relatively fluid environment. Yet, over time, despite that apparent fluidity, you have tightened the muscles around every major experience of pain, fear or anger, and continue to tighten them each time you think you are experiencing similar situations, thus guaranteeing that you make your own pattern of uptightness familiar and increasingly habitual, until it becomes a permanent condition you no longer recognize as not normal. We all hold great muscle tension around certain bones in blind remembrance of fearful events, long after the actual events are often long forgotten. You may never recall what initially made you afraid, but you can note where you body reacted to protect itself and spend more time in your exercise and massage or other body work to relax and loosen those muscle groups. In Western society, people usually hold the tension somewhere in our upper body whereas in many Eastern cultures the tension tends to be held in the lower body. If you don't begin a regular practice of exercise and stretching, you are guaranteed to lose mobility sooner as you age and rob yourself of the most positive and alive personal presence you could offer the world every day.
We go through life making decisions, closing down and limiting ourselves unconsciously. Stay open literally by getting in motion more frequently. Stand and stretch at least every twenty minutes when you are sitting and working. Try to walk, hopefully in sync with someone else, in fresh air and sunlight, at least thirty minutes a day. One of the safest and most natural ways to move closer to others is to walk with them. Walk and talk on the way to the meeting. Walk with your friends/colleagues, rather than sitting with them. Motion is emotional and makes every event more vivid and memorable. Literally move towards the one that matters in your life and loosen up together. Your life may depend on it. In fact, why not get up right now and take a stretch, look around, call someone and suggest a walk.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Experts believe that our awareness of the fact that we make snap (often unconscious) judgments about people and situations can provide the opportunity for controlling our “blink” response. The key is constant awareness of your ability to thin-slice and think without thinking. Then there is the necessity for each of us to be aware of and control our thin-slicing. Experts are now more convinced than ever that we make snap decisions about situations and people, unconsciously, that bring into play all of our biases. For example all candidates interviewed for a position deserve the same treatment and the same attention to factors other than race, religion, appearance and size.
Any decisions that we make based on our thin-slicing must be accompanied by the recognition that we do make important decisions using this process - unconsciously. Take the time to gather a larger pool of data before going with your initial gut reaction. While you may be right, you can be wrong. And, there is the constant opportunity to unconsciously discriminate, make poor hiring and networking choices and to trust or distrust employee stories for all of the wrong reasons. We are challenged to work with people who are not just like us. After we notice the differences (blink), we need to constantly demonstrate that we honour and appreciate the differences.
Knowing Your Body Communications
It's time to get to know your body. If you don't know where you hold your tension, and most people don't, take a tour of your body, so you can know what needs the most loosening - -and exercise. Are you shouldering the world's responsibilities, or perpetually drooping? Or, in your determined drive toward success, do you plant your feet solidly on the ground in a life gesture of hostility, defiance or taking ground? Perhaps you have a forward leaning posture, with the head tilted slightly forward, as if you are ready to spring into action, expressing a lifelong pattern of flight away from psychologically threatening situations, when you thought it was part of your make-up to leap forward to new opportunities. To be depressed is, in fact, to press against yourself. To be closed off is to hold your muscles rigid against the world. Being open is being soft. No instinctive muscle clenching, such as in the jaws. Hardness is being uptight, cold, separate, giving yourself and others a hard time. Softness is synonymous with pleasure, warmth, flowing, being alive, drawing other people toward you rather than forcing them away.
Expressions & Muscles
When you are misaligned and tense, you expend outrageous sums of energy doing the everyday gestures of life. Since the body is a high viscosity substance, that is 60 percent to 80 percent water, the bonds are floating in a relatively fluid environment. Yet, over time, despite that apparent fluidity, you have tightened the muscles around every major experience of pain, fear or anger, and continue to tighten them each time you think you are experiencing similar situations, thus guaranteeing that you make your own pattern of uptightness familiar and increasingly habitual, until it becomes a permanent condition you no longer recognize as not normal. We all hold great muscle tension around certain bones in blind remembrance of fearful events, long after the actual events are often long forgotten. You may never recall what initially made you afraid, but you can note where you body reacted to protect itself and spend more time in your exercise and massage or other body work to relax and loosen those muscle groups. In Western society, people usually hold the tension somewhere in our upper body whereas in many Eastern cultures the tension tends to be held in the lower body. If you don't begin a regular practice of exercise and stretching, you are guaranteed to lose mobility sooner as you age and rob yourself of the most positive and alive personal presence you could offer the world every day.
We go through life making decisions, closing down and limiting ourselves unconsciously. Stay open literally by getting in motion more frequently. Stand and stretch at least every twenty minutes when you are sitting and working. Try to walk, hopefully in sync with someone else, in fresh air and sunlight, at least thirty minutes a day. One of the safest and most natural ways to move closer to others is to walk with them. Walk and talk on the way to the meeting. Walk with your friends/colleagues, rather than sitting with them. Motion is emotional and makes every event more vivid and memorable. Literally move towards the one that matters in your life and loosen up together. Your life may depend on it. In fact, why not get up right now and take a stretch, look around, call someone and suggest a walk.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Why ‘Blink’ Matters : The Power Of First Impressions
Your Body’s A Movie!
Your body is a hologram of your being; a three-dimensional movie that is constantly on, showing others how you feel about yourself and the world. People are consciously reading your body language and they subconsciously react to your bodily signals. As you walk through life, it’s important that your body is saying exactly the same that your spoken words are conveying. The secret is all in understanding a code. It is a most elaborate code that is written nowhere, known by none and yet understood by all." How do others perceive you? How soon do you realize that you are getting tense? How well do you anticipate their unspoken feelings? You ability to understand these signals has an enormous impact on how well you get along with others. Successful people believe their success is attributable to a pattern of mutually beneficial interpersonal relationships, as much as it is due to technical skills or business knowledge. Your communication and the image you present create the first impression - often the lasting impression - on the people you meet.
Blink: First Impression in Seconds
Professional speakers and trainers have long asserted that people make up their minds about people they meet for the first time within two minutes. Others assert that these first impressions about people take only thirty seconds to make. As it turns out, both may be underestimates. According to international research, the ‘first impressions’ decisions may occur much faster - think instantaneously or in two seconds. These findings have serious implications for organizations.
According to this research, we think without thinking, we thin-slice whenever we “meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.” This is true as snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick: they rely on the thinnest slices of experience … they are also unconscious. People thin-slice because they have to, and they come to rely on that ability because there are lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot. Whenever we have to make sense of complicated situations or deal with lots of information quickly, we bring to bear all of our beliefs, attitudes, values, experiences, education and more on the situation. Then, we thin-slice the situation to comprehend it as quickly as possible. The implications of this concept have astonishing significance for our personal reactions to most situations.
It’s this ability to think without thinking, to make snap decisions about situations and people in a “blink”, has significant implications for how we interview and hire staff. It plays havoc with how we view ourselves and our ability to interact with people who are different than ourselves. It impacts how we develop friendships with people at work. It affects our networking and business relationship building. It affects who we believe in a work disagreement or confrontation. At the same time, this ability we have as humans, to quickly make judgment calls, saves lives, provides interpersonal insight, recognizes fake artifacts, allows us to assess situations and take action quickly and can even predict the future of a relationship. So, it’s not an ability you want to discard, even if your first snap decisions or judgment calls can also be terribly wrong.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Your body is a hologram of your being; a three-dimensional movie that is constantly on, showing others how you feel about yourself and the world. People are consciously reading your body language and they subconsciously react to your bodily signals. As you walk through life, it’s important that your body is saying exactly the same that your spoken words are conveying. The secret is all in understanding a code. It is a most elaborate code that is written nowhere, known by none and yet understood by all." How do others perceive you? How soon do you realize that you are getting tense? How well do you anticipate their unspoken feelings? You ability to understand these signals has an enormous impact on how well you get along with others. Successful people believe their success is attributable to a pattern of mutually beneficial interpersonal relationships, as much as it is due to technical skills or business knowledge. Your communication and the image you present create the first impression - often the lasting impression - on the people you meet.
Blink: First Impression in Seconds
Professional speakers and trainers have long asserted that people make up their minds about people they meet for the first time within two minutes. Others assert that these first impressions about people take only thirty seconds to make. As it turns out, both may be underestimates. According to international research, the ‘first impressions’ decisions may occur much faster - think instantaneously or in two seconds. These findings have serious implications for organizations.
According to this research, we think without thinking, we thin-slice whenever we “meet a new person or have to make sense of something quickly or encounter a novel situation.” This is true as snap judgments are, first of all, enormously quick: they rely on the thinnest slices of experience … they are also unconscious. People thin-slice because they have to, and they come to rely on that ability because there are lots of situations where careful attention to the details of a very thin slice, even for no more than a second or two, can tell us an awful lot. Whenever we have to make sense of complicated situations or deal with lots of information quickly, we bring to bear all of our beliefs, attitudes, values, experiences, education and more on the situation. Then, we thin-slice the situation to comprehend it as quickly as possible. The implications of this concept have astonishing significance for our personal reactions to most situations.
It’s this ability to think without thinking, to make snap decisions about situations and people in a “blink”, has significant implications for how we interview and hire staff. It plays havoc with how we view ourselves and our ability to interact with people who are different than ourselves. It impacts how we develop friendships with people at work. It affects our networking and business relationship building. It affects who we believe in a work disagreement or confrontation. At the same time, this ability we have as humans, to quickly make judgment calls, saves lives, provides interpersonal insight, recognizes fake artifacts, allows us to assess situations and take action quickly and can even predict the future of a relationship. So, it’s not an ability you want to discard, even if your first snap decisions or judgment calls can also be terribly wrong.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Customer Service Lessons in Web-enabled world
Customers are increasingly getting more spoilt for choice thanks to the forever growing range of purchase options and changing lifestyle necessities. All this makes it very difficult for monitoring all the changes and predicting the impact of scores of new trends. Often these force new service compulsions that may put a sudden burden on your stretched staff and finances. For example in these recession hit days, travelers are demanding low cost travel options where discounted travel fare is insufficient. Hence the tour operator has to discover new vacation destinations, cheaper travel option and even cheaper stay destinations without compromising on the quality of experience and travel safety. For this you need to strike low cost deals with your regular hospitality service partners (hotels, restaurants, transporters) without reducing the overall quality of the travel experience. Every vendor in the customer value chain may need to be convinced by you to reduce his profit margins to sustain the traffic volume of tourists. Like low cost hotels could offer shared bus service for guided tours instead of exclusive cabs, while they continue to provide free meals (buffet) and airport pickup and drop facility (again shared bus-trip). Customer intimacy through innovative ‘more-value-for-less’ service packages is key to sustaining better customer loyalty. You can easily collaborate to outsmart bigger competitors, thereby ensuring customer loyalty dividends continue to accrue to you. Additionally you could use growing number of customer referrals to get more business by using real customer testimonials on your website and e-mailers/direct mailers to mailing lists created with active help from delighted customers. This way you will not only spread the good word (customers helping their friends to get the best travel deals) for enhancing their reputation but also significantly reduce your marketing and sales costs (while increasing its effectiveness). These sales effort cost savings can be passed on to further reduce the price of your offerings to make you even more price competitive in difficult times ( a friend in need is a friend indeed!).
Global competition, Local Problems-Thanks to the web, global businesses are now accessible to their customers on a 24X7 basis. It is no longer sufficient for you to be the best business in the local area, as you now have to compete with the world’s best in terms of products as well as customer service innovations e.g. online ordering e-commerce facility for your local clothes boutique. Free trade capitalism is tearing down trade barriers and technology is making even distant global businesses available locally. Thus customers around the world are now flooded by a growing array of competing products and servicing options: all at bargain pricing. Internet savvy customers of today are more spoilt for choice and usually choose the best price and product options. You now need to constantly enhance you web-presence to ensure that its content is regularly updated and local USPs are properly leveraged. For example customers love local availability of urgent service providers like chemist stores. Not mentioning your local address (with area code), telephone numbers and extended business hours could easily kill your many local availability advantages as your website may not show up in local searches in popular search engines. Local SEO of your website is thus a necessity that you need to implement on your business website to sustain higher customer loyalty. For if you’re not there when a customer needs to reach you, how can he be loyal to you? When any of your local contact details change (telephone number, cell phone, additional phone numbers, e-mail IDs, and URLs), you should promptly inform your regular customer base and also update these facts on your website. Keeping your customers in the dark about new changes can harm your business.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Global competition, Local Problems-Thanks to the web, global businesses are now accessible to their customers on a 24X7 basis. It is no longer sufficient for you to be the best business in the local area, as you now have to compete with the world’s best in terms of products as well as customer service innovations e.g. online ordering e-commerce facility for your local clothes boutique. Free trade capitalism is tearing down trade barriers and technology is making even distant global businesses available locally. Thus customers around the world are now flooded by a growing array of competing products and servicing options: all at bargain pricing. Internet savvy customers of today are more spoilt for choice and usually choose the best price and product options. You now need to constantly enhance you web-presence to ensure that its content is regularly updated and local USPs are properly leveraged. For example customers love local availability of urgent service providers like chemist stores. Not mentioning your local address (with area code), telephone numbers and extended business hours could easily kill your many local availability advantages as your website may not show up in local searches in popular search engines. Local SEO of your website is thus a necessity that you need to implement on your business website to sustain higher customer loyalty. For if you’re not there when a customer needs to reach you, how can he be loyal to you? When any of your local contact details change (telephone number, cell phone, additional phone numbers, e-mail IDs, and URLs), you should promptly inform your regular customer base and also update these facts on your website. Keeping your customers in the dark about new changes can harm your business.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Friday, May 14, 2010
Observations about self-organizing leadership roles
Anne Stadler: South African, North American, European and now an India loving yoga instructor + leadership thought leader transforming student lives @ SOIL shares her inspiring leadership evolution realities in today's modern world
My culture’s habits of leadership are drawn from an experience of organizations that value hierarchy and heroic cultural myths. Most of the organizations in our public life have a pyramidal structure that came into being as the organization’s entrepreneurial period gave way to the need for stability. In such a structure, roles are defined and rigidly codified; new possibilities struggle to emerge; power is centralized rather than distributed. Change is experienced as threatening, a struggle, and destructive—to be avoided. Order and control are maintained at all costs.
Is this way of leadership sustainable? What can we learn from natural self-organizing systems that sustain themselves?
In the forest on the way to Second Beach near La Push:
I follow a path that winds among ancient trees and giant stumps. Roots upended in grotesque shapes shelter shallow caves. A cedar looms beside the trail with some of its great branches upraised to embrace both the heavens and the earth. Its roots stand tall as I am, embracing a ghostly nurse log that provided sustenance for its seed a hundred years ago.
Everything grows. Everything finds a niche. The rocks communicate an impression of permanence. The trees give impression of solidity and strength. But uncertainty is the condition of life. The tipped up root bases twenty feet across show how vulnerable these giants are to torrential storms. Mushroom spores remind us of unseen forces at work. Life and death is everywhere. Death gives rise to more life. Only my belief in the permanence of the present moment gives me the illusion of certainty.
As I observe the disorderly order of the forest, I reflect that contrary to my experience with corporate life and such organizations, there are many roles in self-organizing leadership. The one you express freely and congruently is the one that matches in any given moment, your evolutionary need and the evolutionary need of the group. Arnold Mindell calls this being a “time-spirit” in the group. The informal structure--the way things get done-- of any lively group reflects this. Someone shows up as the healer, someone as the teacher, someone as the joker, the mother, etc. and whoever is appropriate for that moment helps that individual and the group thrive and evolve.
Several experiences of living in an open space organization have shown me that when stewardship is vested a circle of leaders, the appropriate leaders emerge at the right time to help the group discover and do the practical work for which it came together. We saw this in Spirited Work, a seven year open space learning community of practice, 1998—2005, (see www.Sunyatagroup.ws, Archived Articles) and in the recent emergence of the Journalism That Matters Pacific Northwest Collaboratory (www.jtmpnw.org)
It is important to know and observe the place we live in, even as we are trying to sort out the human relationships to get work done. The place itself is a vital mirror and guide for how we live well and sustainably.
In organizations that are not aligned with the underlying flow of self-organizing, emergence is characterized by struggle, chaos, conflict, and imposed order. An organization that uses the co-creative practices I’ve identified earlier experiences ease and creative flow.
Disturbance is a navigational signal that the group or individual is out of synch with the underlying processes of Self-organizing. Thus disturbance becomes an invitation for remembering the calling and correcting the course.
My working hypothesis:
In a self-organizing world, sustainable organizations are impermanent, provisional opportunities for creation and practical activity: “collaboratories”, places of experimentation, co-creation and community. We can sustain our joyful participation in the complexity of our living Universe by experimenting with simple practices of co-creation in order to live well, wherever we live, with whomever we attract.
- Anne Stadler - www.soilindia.net
My culture’s habits of leadership are drawn from an experience of organizations that value hierarchy and heroic cultural myths. Most of the organizations in our public life have a pyramidal structure that came into being as the organization’s entrepreneurial period gave way to the need for stability. In such a structure, roles are defined and rigidly codified; new possibilities struggle to emerge; power is centralized rather than distributed. Change is experienced as threatening, a struggle, and destructive—to be avoided. Order and control are maintained at all costs.
Is this way of leadership sustainable? What can we learn from natural self-organizing systems that sustain themselves?
In the forest on the way to Second Beach near La Push:
I follow a path that winds among ancient trees and giant stumps. Roots upended in grotesque shapes shelter shallow caves. A cedar looms beside the trail with some of its great branches upraised to embrace both the heavens and the earth. Its roots stand tall as I am, embracing a ghostly nurse log that provided sustenance for its seed a hundred years ago.
Everything grows. Everything finds a niche. The rocks communicate an impression of permanence. The trees give impression of solidity and strength. But uncertainty is the condition of life. The tipped up root bases twenty feet across show how vulnerable these giants are to torrential storms. Mushroom spores remind us of unseen forces at work. Life and death is everywhere. Death gives rise to more life. Only my belief in the permanence of the present moment gives me the illusion of certainty.
As I observe the disorderly order of the forest, I reflect that contrary to my experience with corporate life and such organizations, there are many roles in self-organizing leadership. The one you express freely and congruently is the one that matches in any given moment, your evolutionary need and the evolutionary need of the group. Arnold Mindell calls this being a “time-spirit” in the group. The informal structure--the way things get done-- of any lively group reflects this. Someone shows up as the healer, someone as the teacher, someone as the joker, the mother, etc. and whoever is appropriate for that moment helps that individual and the group thrive and evolve.
Several experiences of living in an open space organization have shown me that when stewardship is vested a circle of leaders, the appropriate leaders emerge at the right time to help the group discover and do the practical work for which it came together. We saw this in Spirited Work, a seven year open space learning community of practice, 1998—2005, (see www.Sunyatagroup.ws, Archived Articles) and in the recent emergence of the Journalism That Matters Pacific Northwest Collaboratory (www.jtmpnw.org)
It is important to know and observe the place we live in, even as we are trying to sort out the human relationships to get work done. The place itself is a vital mirror and guide for how we live well and sustainably.
In organizations that are not aligned with the underlying flow of self-organizing, emergence is characterized by struggle, chaos, conflict, and imposed order. An organization that uses the co-creative practices I’ve identified earlier experiences ease and creative flow.
Disturbance is a navigational signal that the group or individual is out of synch with the underlying processes of Self-organizing. Thus disturbance becomes an invitation for remembering the calling and correcting the course.
My working hypothesis:
In a self-organizing world, sustainable organizations are impermanent, provisional opportunities for creation and practical activity: “collaboratories”, places of experimentation, co-creation and community. We can sustain our joyful participation in the complexity of our living Universe by experimenting with simple practices of co-creation in order to live well, wherever we live, with whomever we attract.
- Anne Stadler - www.soilindia.net
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Experience True Freedom: Here's How!
Anne Stadler: South African, North American, European and now an India loving yoga instructor + leadership thought leader transforming student lives @ SOIL Here she discuses how leaders can leverage the power of meditation to improve themselves and the lives of people around them
Freedom exists when my Self connects to the Self of universal consciousness. Synapse happens when that connection is present. I feel/sense “I am that!” I experience delight, deep peace & flow. Whatever I manifest practically resonates with the Self-organizing at the heart of the living Universe.
Hypothesis: My aim/intention is crucial. It lands me in exactly the consciousness I aim for. My aim: Self to Self; my fire to THE fire at the core of life.So, I begin by dedicating each endeavor, relationship, and activity to serving life.I open my awareness to the unknown, the unnameable, so that my actions may be informed by the larger field of universal consciousness that is life…through meditation.In meditation, I try to divest myself of all stories, preconceptions, assumptions & expectations about the situation, person, or place that I’m attached to.
I follow delight, my sense of “Yes!”
I embrace what/who I attract.
I listen.
I pay attention (observe). I notice whether I am attached to something or irritated by it, and practice releasing that in the moment.
I do/make as love/attraction/guidance calls me.
I learn.
I reflect.
I complete what I am called to do.
I give thanks and celebrate.
I’m doing this practice daily as well as in the midst of collective activities I am called to do, with the same habitual regularity as brushing my teeth.
A Collective Practice:
“A mass of fire reaching upward from earth into the heavens is the robust, united, burning, radiant soul.”Emerson
What are essential co-creative patterns that foster a mass of fire—the united burning, radiant soul-- leading to evolution and wholeness?
Here are the minimal patterns and practices I, with others, have been noticing and experimenting with.
Treat everything as a learning opportunity.
Start by asking a question:
What are we called to do here together that we cannot do separately?
This opens me/us to the field of learning/action appropriate at this moment. It surfaces the manifestation possibility emerging from the universal intelligent field. Then invite a small group of people essential to the undertaking. In self-organizing system, a larger group or community forms from a small group, a fractal of itself.
We focus on these questions:
1. What is the calling we’re answering?
2. Who are we? What experience does each bring? What gifts?
3. Where are we?
4. What can we do together?
5. Who else needs to be here with us? Then WE invite and welcome a wider circle of others: extending and attracting a larger circle that reflects the “whole”.
Welcome: (the circle of the whole)
Hosting is essential. ALL work in co-creative relationship IS a gift exchange: I/We/Now! The purpose of welcome and hosting is assuring people that just as they are, they belong in that circle of relationship and are essential to the well-being of all.
At the beginning of any gathering, people need to know:
1. What is the purpose of the gathering, and the question we are addressing?
2. Who am I, and am I welcome just as I am?
3. Where are we? Walk around, look, and listen to the place we are in.
4. What is the abundance that has come together?
5. What are the gifts each one is bringing?
Exchange gifts: What are we here to do together?
Invite each person to take responsibility for what they love & care about in relation to the purpose and calling question; either through opening a marketplace as in Open Space Technology, or via another method of self-organizing, so that people can initiate a gift exchange of inquiry and potential action.
This affords the opportunity for my evolving Self to engage with others’ evolving Selves in service of the collective’s evolution. It is the gift exchange that IS the root of the word “community” (From the Latin: “com”, meaning “together”; “munus”, meaning “gift”.)
After a period of action/exchange, reassemble the whole circle:
1. Converge: What is the synthesis that this particular circle has to offer? Using all intelligences, working in small self-chosen groups, bring forth the synthesis of new knowledge that each group can offer in answering the question for which the whole circle assembled.
2. Reflect: What is the “aha”, the transformational learning gift we each want to offer so the group can learn as a whole? What wants to happen next?
3. Celebrate/Close: What is the appreciating and celebrating we want to do as we close this particular chapter in the life of this particular circle?
- Anne Stadler - www.soilindia.net
Freedom exists when my Self connects to the Self of universal consciousness. Synapse happens when that connection is present. I feel/sense “I am that!” I experience delight, deep peace & flow. Whatever I manifest practically resonates with the Self-organizing at the heart of the living Universe.
Hypothesis: My aim/intention is crucial. It lands me in exactly the consciousness I aim for. My aim: Self to Self; my fire to THE fire at the core of life.So, I begin by dedicating each endeavor, relationship, and activity to serving life.I open my awareness to the unknown, the unnameable, so that my actions may be informed by the larger field of universal consciousness that is life…through meditation.In meditation, I try to divest myself of all stories, preconceptions, assumptions & expectations about the situation, person, or place that I’m attached to.
I follow delight, my sense of “Yes!”
I embrace what/who I attract.
I listen.
I pay attention (observe). I notice whether I am attached to something or irritated by it, and practice releasing that in the moment.
I do/make as love/attraction/guidance calls me.
I learn.
I reflect.
I complete what I am called to do.
I give thanks and celebrate.
I’m doing this practice daily as well as in the midst of collective activities I am called to do, with the same habitual regularity as brushing my teeth.
A Collective Practice:
“A mass of fire reaching upward from earth into the heavens is the robust, united, burning, radiant soul.”Emerson
What are essential co-creative patterns that foster a mass of fire—the united burning, radiant soul-- leading to evolution and wholeness?
Here are the minimal patterns and practices I, with others, have been noticing and experimenting with.
Treat everything as a learning opportunity.
Start by asking a question:
What are we called to do here together that we cannot do separately?
This opens me/us to the field of learning/action appropriate at this moment. It surfaces the manifestation possibility emerging from the universal intelligent field. Then invite a small group of people essential to the undertaking. In self-organizing system, a larger group or community forms from a small group, a fractal of itself.
We focus on these questions:
1. What is the calling we’re answering?
2. Who are we? What experience does each bring? What gifts?
3. Where are we?
4. What can we do together?
5. Who else needs to be here with us? Then WE invite and welcome a wider circle of others: extending and attracting a larger circle that reflects the “whole”.
Welcome: (the circle of the whole)
Hosting is essential. ALL work in co-creative relationship IS a gift exchange: I/We/Now! The purpose of welcome and hosting is assuring people that just as they are, they belong in that circle of relationship and are essential to the well-being of all.
At the beginning of any gathering, people need to know:
1. What is the purpose of the gathering, and the question we are addressing?
2. Who am I, and am I welcome just as I am?
3. Where are we? Walk around, look, and listen to the place we are in.
4. What is the abundance that has come together?
5. What are the gifts each one is bringing?
Exchange gifts: What are we here to do together?
Invite each person to take responsibility for what they love & care about in relation to the purpose and calling question; either through opening a marketplace as in Open Space Technology, or via another method of self-organizing, so that people can initiate a gift exchange of inquiry and potential action.
This affords the opportunity for my evolving Self to engage with others’ evolving Selves in service of the collective’s evolution. It is the gift exchange that IS the root of the word “community” (From the Latin: “com”, meaning “together”; “munus”, meaning “gift”.)
After a period of action/exchange, reassemble the whole circle:
1. Converge: What is the synthesis that this particular circle has to offer? Using all intelligences, working in small self-chosen groups, bring forth the synthesis of new knowledge that each group can offer in answering the question for which the whole circle assembled.
2. Reflect: What is the “aha”, the transformational learning gift we each want to offer so the group can learn as a whole? What wants to happen next?
3. Celebrate/Close: What is the appreciating and celebrating we want to do as we close this particular chapter in the life of this particular circle?
- Anne Stadler - www.soilindia.net
Fusion Brand Marketing Mantras
According to latest global marketing research reports, online-offline coordinated brand marketing consistently boosts brand impact at 60% less cost than piling on more offline advertisements in the right conditions. Marketers need not abandon traditional, offline efforts entirely; but should add better researched online promotions to current campaigns. Media combinations grab greater attention as multiple media together has greater impact than an individual medium on its own. Fusion brand marketing approach is here to stay. Here's how it helps and should be sustained:
Momentum boosts conversion- Consumers today prefer to gather comparative information about products / services from online and offline sources to make a better informed decision. Each media exposure builds on the other by helping the consumer in its unique way, at different stages in the buying cycle. If the brand messaging is consistent across various online and offline media, the repetition captures and retains consumer's attention better. This increases chances of a higher conversion rate.
Sustained relationship-building increases repeat business - Integrating offline and online mediums increases customer touch-points leading to a stronger relationship. Email fulfillment / event invitations to offline customers are cost effective and user friendly their readership can be tracked (click-throughs). Similar an offline event can build an online learning community of loyal customers.
Interactivity increases marketing efficiency - Internet Marketing offers the unique opportunity to engage customers in a convenient manner that can supplement offline initiatives. Offline business can register participants online for a special promotional scheme and then interact with consumers to even gauge their preferences. Intelligent tracking of the overall campaign performance with coordinated online and offline campaigns effectively eliminate waste.
Intelligently executed online-offline commercials build brand impact with target audience much better than expensive commercials with beautiful celebrities. Real people love authenticity conveyed to them in a convenient manner.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Momentum boosts conversion- Consumers today prefer to gather comparative information about products / services from online and offline sources to make a better informed decision. Each media exposure builds on the other by helping the consumer in its unique way, at different stages in the buying cycle. If the brand messaging is consistent across various online and offline media, the repetition captures and retains consumer's attention better. This increases chances of a higher conversion rate.
Sustained relationship-building increases repeat business - Integrating offline and online mediums increases customer touch-points leading to a stronger relationship. Email fulfillment / event invitations to offline customers are cost effective and user friendly their readership can be tracked (click-throughs). Similar an offline event can build an online learning community of loyal customers.
Interactivity increases marketing efficiency - Internet Marketing offers the unique opportunity to engage customers in a convenient manner that can supplement offline initiatives. Offline business can register participants online for a special promotional scheme and then interact with consumers to even gauge their preferences. Intelligent tracking of the overall campaign performance with coordinated online and offline campaigns effectively eliminate waste.
Intelligently executed online-offline commercials build brand impact with target audience much better than expensive commercials with beautiful celebrities. Real people love authenticity conveyed to them in a convenient manner.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Smart Brand Building
Businesses can save time and money by proactively evaluating important customer needs from their online presence/offerings. Their web-presence and the overall marketing plan should be cohesively integrated to compliment each other for meet organizational goals cost effectively. Every brand marketing initiative needs to support and enhance the other – seamlessly. Small & Medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack the marketing budgets of their larger competitors are amongst the greatest gainers from internet marketing and online customer services.
Internet marketing is highly adaptive; thanks to its ability to monitor ongoing results accurately and quickly change ongoing campaigns in real time for best possible results and Return on Investment. Online branding can greatly benefit from proven traditional/offline marketing initiatives like yellow pages advertisements, direct mail and display advertisements.
Similarly brick-and-mortar businesses need to effectively leverage Internet to promote themselves and get more business. Leveraging the synergies of online and offline brand innovations together can help you maximize impact of even a shoestring marketing budget.
Branding Success Mantra-Follow the customer
‘Customer is the king’ and brand- marketing' primary motive is to serve the information needs of the targeted customers. As it is expensive and risky to change consumer habits, integrated marketing strategies need to follow customer preferences rather than creating them where traditional marketing methods are firmly entrenched. For example, in case of popular sports events, television is the primary means of viewing them.
Web based brand-marketing needs to compliment the offline viewing by intelligently made contests and co-branded (with the sports event brand) informative advertisements / memorabilia. At the same time smart TV advertisement placements can drive traffic to the web based advertisement for special promotional sales related to the sporting event. A well planned media plan creates the required customer attention.
Significantly it also generates useful leads with word of mouth /viral advertising as interested fans spread the word around of compelling campaigns. The brand promotional synergies these online-offline commercials generate build a sustainable brand salience, provided it makes a tangible difference to consumers’ life. Hence while TV advertisements en-cash the mass appeal of sporting events; the online promotions leverage the convenience and interactivity of the web medium.
The increased time consumers spend engaging with the online and offline advertisements of these brands in positive ways allows smart marketers to build higher awareness and brand preference
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Internet marketing is highly adaptive; thanks to its ability to monitor ongoing results accurately and quickly change ongoing campaigns in real time for best possible results and Return on Investment. Online branding can greatly benefit from proven traditional/offline marketing initiatives like yellow pages advertisements, direct mail and display advertisements.
Similarly brick-and-mortar businesses need to effectively leverage Internet to promote themselves and get more business. Leveraging the synergies of online and offline brand innovations together can help you maximize impact of even a shoestring marketing budget.
Branding Success Mantra-Follow the customer
‘Customer is the king’ and brand- marketing' primary motive is to serve the information needs of the targeted customers. As it is expensive and risky to change consumer habits, integrated marketing strategies need to follow customer preferences rather than creating them where traditional marketing methods are firmly entrenched. For example, in case of popular sports events, television is the primary means of viewing them.
Web based brand-marketing needs to compliment the offline viewing by intelligently made contests and co-branded (with the sports event brand) informative advertisements / memorabilia. At the same time smart TV advertisement placements can drive traffic to the web based advertisement for special promotional sales related to the sporting event. A well planned media plan creates the required customer attention.
Significantly it also generates useful leads with word of mouth /viral advertising as interested fans spread the word around of compelling campaigns. The brand promotional synergies these online-offline commercials generate build a sustainable brand salience, provided it makes a tangible difference to consumers’ life. Hence while TV advertisements en-cash the mass appeal of sporting events; the online promotions leverage the convenience and interactivity of the web medium.
The increased time consumers spend engaging with the online and offline advertisements of these brands in positive ways allows smart marketers to build higher awareness and brand preference
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Online Branding Benefits
Transforming marketing-Online medium has changed many rules of branding, customer services and even product packaging. Growing global competition with the customer spoilt for choice at the click of a mouse makes online branding more challenging than ever. While offline branding can have the luxury of time, e-branding needs to evolve and be relevant to changing needs and tastes instantly.
Localized Focus-Online businesses have the advantage of instantly contacting global customers at a fraction of offline business costs. However this has its own localization challenges. People do not change their preferred choices for the sake of limited offerings of a business; they simply go to the competitor. Online branding thus needs to be adaptive to localized needs instantly. For example for an online apparel store, customers in different geographic regions have varied choices as per their local conditions. Depending on the local IP of the e-visitor the online store front presents locally relevant branding (culture, tone) and product offerings.
Friendly adaptive branding-Majority of customers are averse to dramatic changes and appreciate brands that are friendly and adaptive to their changing needs i.e. speak their language and are simple. Online branding needs to narrow its focus viz. target regions rather than be generalist. Brand campaigns need to be highly interactive too to succeed in today’s customer focused online business environment.
Technologically Superior -The web gives a technological edge over offline branding mediums. For example an online advertisement not only informs but also facilitates purchase fulfillment through secure e-commerce transaction. Different types of online promotions can even allow online customers to engage in e-conversation with others users for a better informed choice, without having to move. Online branding thus leverages technology to add new paradigms to customer convenience.
- Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Localized Focus-Online businesses have the advantage of instantly contacting global customers at a fraction of offline business costs. However this has its own localization challenges. People do not change their preferred choices for the sake of limited offerings of a business; they simply go to the competitor. Online branding thus needs to be adaptive to localized needs instantly. For example for an online apparel store, customers in different geographic regions have varied choices as per their local conditions. Depending on the local IP of the e-visitor the online store front presents locally relevant branding (culture, tone) and product offerings.
Friendly adaptive branding-Majority of customers are averse to dramatic changes and appreciate brands that are friendly and adaptive to their changing needs i.e. speak their language and are simple. Online branding needs to narrow its focus viz. target regions rather than be generalist. Brand campaigns need to be highly interactive too to succeed in today’s customer focused online business environment.
Technologically Superior -The web gives a technological edge over offline branding mediums. For example an online advertisement not only informs but also facilitates purchase fulfillment through secure e-commerce transaction. Different types of online promotions can even allow online customers to engage in e-conversation with others users for a better informed choice, without having to move. Online branding thus leverages technology to add new paradigms to customer convenience.
- Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Transforming Failures into Success
The Truth behind Failure
The HR is always hard working, talented, and committed as a team, yet people can easily fall prey to circumstances beyond their control and find themselves in the midst of a failure. In reality, the real tragedy of today’s business environment is not the opportunity lost because of the failure; rather, it is our response to those feelings of failure. Underneath the surface, there are three hidden emotions tied into our feelings of failure that we don’t typically talk about. They are fear, guilt, and discouragement. These emotions sabotage our long-term success because they rob us of our God-given talents, passion, and purpose. For example, fear immobilizes us in the present, guilt makes us look back at things we should have done or done differently in the past, and discouragement saps us of hope for the future. When fear, guilt, and discouragement gang up, they not only rob us of our strength to overcome adversity, but they also rob us of our destiny.
Transforming Failure into Success
Over the years, our culture has done us a great injustice. We’ve been taught that winning is everything and losing is to be avoided at all costs. As a result, we live a life desperate to avoid feelings of failure. The truth is that failure is a necessary component for our long-term success. These five principles will help you transform feelings of failure into motivations for success.
1 Failure knocks our ego down a notch
Often; our egos give us a false sense of power, which ultimately can cause our demise. When our ego gets too big, it’s easy to lose focus on what’s really important because we try to control those things we have no control over. Ken Blanchard, a well-known author, defines ego as “Edging God Out.” Failure has a tendency to knock our ego down. While this can be painful, it teaches us to let go of things beyond our control. We learn that the world doesn’t revolve around us. This is an important lesson because we come to understand that our work is about serving a purpose beyond ourselves. It’s at this point where we begin to relax. Because we’re no longer in control, purpose takes over where fear once resided, forgiveness overtakes our guilt, and hope replaces discouragement. How often does your ego prevent you from turning failure into success?
2 Short-term failure is a stepping-stone for long-term success
A common thread of all great leaders is their use of failure as a springboard to success. Rather than an obstacle, failures become stepping-stones for their personal growth. When we take the time to look, we find that every setback has a blessing in disguise. Just as success leaves clues, so does failure. The key is to look beyond the immediate feelings of failure and discover all the possibilities that await. How can you use failure to your advantage?
3 Failure gives us freedom
Too many people stay in situations they dislike simply because they’re afraid of failure. They prefer to stay inundated with urgent daily pressure because their fear of failure makes them work harder and harder. Often these people try to keep their grasp on the façade of being successful. What these people don’t realize is that failure actually gives them freedom. They now have the freedom to pursue other interests, to open a new business, to find a more fulfilling line of work, to secure a job with better hours or better pay, and even to design a life that offers a better balance between work and family. Before you dwell in the depths of failure, ask yourself, “How can my failure give me freedom?”
For Failure makes us grow stronger…
Whether we like it or not, failure is a part of life. The question is whether it makes us weaker or stronger. An insightful person once said, “Life is a grindstone; whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you’re made of.” We can become victims of circumstance and let failure break us or we can grow in character and allow failure to shape us. Many times, it’s not the big failure that harms us; rather, it’s a series of small failures that wear us down and discourage us, which is the worst ill of all. Discouragement causes us to die a slow emotional death. It happens over time without our ever realizing it. It’s during times of failure that our character is developed. We need to have the courage to move forward with perseverance when we have no energy and want to give up. Instead of letting feelings of failure rob you of hope, ask yourself, “How can I persevere today?”
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
The HR is always hard working, talented, and committed as a team, yet people can easily fall prey to circumstances beyond their control and find themselves in the midst of a failure. In reality, the real tragedy of today’s business environment is not the opportunity lost because of the failure; rather, it is our response to those feelings of failure. Underneath the surface, there are three hidden emotions tied into our feelings of failure that we don’t typically talk about. They are fear, guilt, and discouragement. These emotions sabotage our long-term success because they rob us of our God-given talents, passion, and purpose. For example, fear immobilizes us in the present, guilt makes us look back at things we should have done or done differently in the past, and discouragement saps us of hope for the future. When fear, guilt, and discouragement gang up, they not only rob us of our strength to overcome adversity, but they also rob us of our destiny.
Transforming Failure into Success
Over the years, our culture has done us a great injustice. We’ve been taught that winning is everything and losing is to be avoided at all costs. As a result, we live a life desperate to avoid feelings of failure. The truth is that failure is a necessary component for our long-term success. These five principles will help you transform feelings of failure into motivations for success.
1 Failure knocks our ego down a notch
Often; our egos give us a false sense of power, which ultimately can cause our demise. When our ego gets too big, it’s easy to lose focus on what’s really important because we try to control those things we have no control over. Ken Blanchard, a well-known author, defines ego as “Edging God Out.” Failure has a tendency to knock our ego down. While this can be painful, it teaches us to let go of things beyond our control. We learn that the world doesn’t revolve around us. This is an important lesson because we come to understand that our work is about serving a purpose beyond ourselves. It’s at this point where we begin to relax. Because we’re no longer in control, purpose takes over where fear once resided, forgiveness overtakes our guilt, and hope replaces discouragement. How often does your ego prevent you from turning failure into success?
2 Short-term failure is a stepping-stone for long-term success
A common thread of all great leaders is their use of failure as a springboard to success. Rather than an obstacle, failures become stepping-stones for their personal growth. When we take the time to look, we find that every setback has a blessing in disguise. Just as success leaves clues, so does failure. The key is to look beyond the immediate feelings of failure and discover all the possibilities that await. How can you use failure to your advantage?
3 Failure gives us freedom
Too many people stay in situations they dislike simply because they’re afraid of failure. They prefer to stay inundated with urgent daily pressure because their fear of failure makes them work harder and harder. Often these people try to keep their grasp on the façade of being successful. What these people don’t realize is that failure actually gives them freedom. They now have the freedom to pursue other interests, to open a new business, to find a more fulfilling line of work, to secure a job with better hours or better pay, and even to design a life that offers a better balance between work and family. Before you dwell in the depths of failure, ask yourself, “How can my failure give me freedom?”
For Failure makes us grow stronger…
Whether we like it or not, failure is a part of life. The question is whether it makes us weaker or stronger. An insightful person once said, “Life is a grindstone; whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you’re made of.” We can become victims of circumstance and let failure break us or we can grow in character and allow failure to shape us. Many times, it’s not the big failure that harms us; rather, it’s a series of small failures that wear us down and discourage us, which is the worst ill of all. Discouragement causes us to die a slow emotional death. It happens over time without our ever realizing it. It’s during times of failure that our character is developed. We need to have the courage to move forward with perseverance when we have no energy and want to give up. Instead of letting feelings of failure rob you of hope, ask yourself, “How can I persevere today?”
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Friday, May 7, 2010
Pointers to HR- Supporting Mentoring As a Culture
If HR wants to establish a mentoring culture within the organization, here are some proven mentoring best practices.
•Set organizational goals. Don’t establish a mentoring program just because it is a good business practice. Develop a mentoring program based on solid business goals such as increasing diversity or making your organization a better place to work.
•Find out why the talented employees you wanted to keep left you. Talented employees want exciting challenges and great development opportunities. They leave because they are bored. Mentoring is a key to attracting and retaining talented employees.
•Develop people to their fullest potential. In order to develop your people, provide training opportunities, challenging projects and assignments, feedback, coaching and mentoring. In one study with people who had experienced real mentors, half of them said the mentoring experience “changed my life.” Those are powerful words.
•Foster mentoring for women and minorities. Ten years ago, when I began a new job, I sat with female colleagues during company presentations, and wondered, “Why are the guys up there and we’re not?” One of my first job assignments was to develop and manage a mentoring program. We included a special group mentoring program for women. Today, many of the young women I knew ten years ago at that company, have, in fact, climbed onto the stage themselves. Mentoring helped move women into the ranks of vice president, senior vice president and division president.
•Point to the money. Losing talented employees and wasting talent costs companies money.
Two points that are often missed by most HR departments when it comes to spreading the mentoring culture, but are really important from an employee perspective are:
•Allowing mentoring to continue past retirement. The trait most attributed to older employees is the willingness to give maximum effort. These employees are also rated as highly results-driven, very likely to retain what they learn; and low on their need for supervision. Many of the older employees plan to work at least part-time past the traditional retirement age. These characteristics demonstrate eager workers who may be well suited to be brought back as consultants and mentors after their retirement.
•Ensuring that the mentoring is compatible with people’s values and work style. Mentoring involves being collegial, talking, sharing (not telling), and developing solutions together. It is also optimistic, which is typical of most employees. We’ve found that when generations work together in strategic, business-related activities such as mentoring, everyone benefits. The mentee builds new business knowledge, and the mentor often gets reenergized and reengaged in business opportunities. We find unique satisfaction in nurturing these synergistic relationships.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
•Set organizational goals. Don’t establish a mentoring program just because it is a good business practice. Develop a mentoring program based on solid business goals such as increasing diversity or making your organization a better place to work.
•Find out why the talented employees you wanted to keep left you. Talented employees want exciting challenges and great development opportunities. They leave because they are bored. Mentoring is a key to attracting and retaining talented employees.
•Develop people to their fullest potential. In order to develop your people, provide training opportunities, challenging projects and assignments, feedback, coaching and mentoring. In one study with people who had experienced real mentors, half of them said the mentoring experience “changed my life.” Those are powerful words.
•Foster mentoring for women and minorities. Ten years ago, when I began a new job, I sat with female colleagues during company presentations, and wondered, “Why are the guys up there and we’re not?” One of my first job assignments was to develop and manage a mentoring program. We included a special group mentoring program for women. Today, many of the young women I knew ten years ago at that company, have, in fact, climbed onto the stage themselves. Mentoring helped move women into the ranks of vice president, senior vice president and division president.
•Point to the money. Losing talented employees and wasting talent costs companies money.
Two points that are often missed by most HR departments when it comes to spreading the mentoring culture, but are really important from an employee perspective are:
•Allowing mentoring to continue past retirement. The trait most attributed to older employees is the willingness to give maximum effort. These employees are also rated as highly results-driven, very likely to retain what they learn; and low on their need for supervision. Many of the older employees plan to work at least part-time past the traditional retirement age. These characteristics demonstrate eager workers who may be well suited to be brought back as consultants and mentors after their retirement.
•Ensuring that the mentoring is compatible with people’s values and work style. Mentoring involves being collegial, talking, sharing (not telling), and developing solutions together. It is also optimistic, which is typical of most employees. We’ve found that when generations work together in strategic, business-related activities such as mentoring, everyone benefits. The mentee builds new business knowledge, and the mentor often gets reenergized and reengaged in business opportunities. We find unique satisfaction in nurturing these synergistic relationships.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Making Enterprise-wide Mentoring Successful
Don’t establish a mentoring program just because it is a good business practice. Develop a mentoring program based on solid business goals such as increasing diversity or making your organization a better place to work. Here are ways to ensure mentoring is successful enterprise-wide:
Provide new perspectives. Encourage older workers to stop defining themselves in terms of their job titles and start reflecting on skills they have built, and knowledge that they have amassed. Today, jobs are about more than just upward mobility. Mentors can share their vision and career histories so that younger employees understand what they can learn through lateral career moves and on the job experience.
Share information. Mentoring can help employees quickly learn about other levels within the organization. Says one mentor at a Fortune 1000 company, “As a leader, it has helped me to see the obstacles we inadvertently put in people’s development.” Mentoring can also help mature employees learn from and understand other generations. For instance, younger employees can help baby boomers with technical skills or provide marketing insights about a new generation of buyers.
Build skills. Mature workers benefit from being mentors by having the chance to learn more about and practice listening and coaching – skills which require maturity, confidence and experience to fully employ.
Reduce generational conflict. Most frequently reported generational conflicts are differing expectations regarding work hours, certain behaviors at work (e.g., use of cell phones), and acceptable dress. Another common issue is feeling that co-workers from other generations do not respect one another. Organizations can reduce generational friction with effective communication, team building, mentoring and recognizing the efforts of all workers.
Enable knowledge transfer. As older employees retire, they take with them volumes of experience and information. Good working relationships between older and younger generations are critical in ensuring that this institutional knowledge is not lost as mature workers retire. The greater the mix of generations in an organization’s workforce, the more important knowledge transfer becomes and the more powerful intergenerational synergy can be. Mentors can often manage, explain and process this information differently and at times more effectively than managers.
In our experience, we have seen older employees are reluctant to mentor younger employees because they are afraid that once they share their knowledge, they will become extraneous and lose their jobs. In fact, in today’s fast-paced business environment, it is the SMEs (subject matter experts) who can capably and articulately share what they know who are the most valuable to their organizations.
Reward, mature employees for mentoring. To entice experienced employees to become mentors, organizations should reward and recognize them for their contributions.
Talk up mentoring in meetings, in speeches, in newsletters, in performance appraisal discussions and include mentoring in corporate awards programs. And, most important, don’t replace mature mentors with their mentees before they retire or mentors will quickly conclude that being a mentor is a very bad idea.
Ask mature employees about someone who enabled them to succeed. In one study of people who had experienced effective mentoring, half of them said the mentoring experience “changed my life.” Those are powerful words. It is equally powerful to know that you were the person who changed someone else’s life.
Share mentoring results. Study after study in which mentors and mentees are asked how satisfied they are with the relationship report that the mentors are more satisfied. It just feels good to help someone else. Says one mentor; “It has been rewarding to be able to help people at critical stages of their career by helping them analyze where they are in their careers. Mentoring gets people in the right groove for long term career success.”
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Provide new perspectives. Encourage older workers to stop defining themselves in terms of their job titles and start reflecting on skills they have built, and knowledge that they have amassed. Today, jobs are about more than just upward mobility. Mentors can share their vision and career histories so that younger employees understand what they can learn through lateral career moves and on the job experience.
Share information. Mentoring can help employees quickly learn about other levels within the organization. Says one mentor at a Fortune 1000 company, “As a leader, it has helped me to see the obstacles we inadvertently put in people’s development.” Mentoring can also help mature employees learn from and understand other generations. For instance, younger employees can help baby boomers with technical skills or provide marketing insights about a new generation of buyers.
Build skills. Mature workers benefit from being mentors by having the chance to learn more about and practice listening and coaching – skills which require maturity, confidence and experience to fully employ.
Reduce generational conflict. Most frequently reported generational conflicts are differing expectations regarding work hours, certain behaviors at work (e.g., use of cell phones), and acceptable dress. Another common issue is feeling that co-workers from other generations do not respect one another. Organizations can reduce generational friction with effective communication, team building, mentoring and recognizing the efforts of all workers.
Enable knowledge transfer. As older employees retire, they take with them volumes of experience and information. Good working relationships between older and younger generations are critical in ensuring that this institutional knowledge is not lost as mature workers retire. The greater the mix of generations in an organization’s workforce, the more important knowledge transfer becomes and the more powerful intergenerational synergy can be. Mentors can often manage, explain and process this information differently and at times more effectively than managers.
In our experience, we have seen older employees are reluctant to mentor younger employees because they are afraid that once they share their knowledge, they will become extraneous and lose their jobs. In fact, in today’s fast-paced business environment, it is the SMEs (subject matter experts) who can capably and articulately share what they know who are the most valuable to their organizations.
Reward, mature employees for mentoring. To entice experienced employees to become mentors, organizations should reward and recognize them for their contributions.
Talk up mentoring in meetings, in speeches, in newsletters, in performance appraisal discussions and include mentoring in corporate awards programs. And, most important, don’t replace mature mentors with their mentees before they retire or mentors will quickly conclude that being a mentor is a very bad idea.
Ask mature employees about someone who enabled them to succeed. In one study of people who had experienced effective mentoring, half of them said the mentoring experience “changed my life.” Those are powerful words. It is equally powerful to know that you were the person who changed someone else’s life.
Share mentoring results. Study after study in which mentors and mentees are asked how satisfied they are with the relationship report that the mentors are more satisfied. It just feels good to help someone else. Says one mentor; “It has been rewarding to be able to help people at critical stages of their career by helping them analyze where they are in their careers. Mentoring gets people in the right groove for long term career success.”
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Handling negativity complexities in organization
When You Are Not in Control of the Negativity
Negativity often occurs when people are impacted by decisions and issues that are out of their control. Examples of these include: corporation downsizing; understaffing that requires people to work mandatory overtime; budget reductions; and upper-management decisions that adversely impact members of your staff. Under these circumstances, as a Human Resources professional, try some of the following ideas.
•Identify any aspects of the situation that you can impact including providing feedback in your organization about the negative impact that is occurring. (Sometimes decisions are made and no one understands or predicts their outcome. Sometimes you can influence an issue or a decision if you practice personal, professional courage and speak your mind.
•Listen, listen, and listen. Often people just need a sounding board. Be visible and available to staff. Proactively schedule group discussion sessions, town meetings, "lunches with the manager," or one-on-one blocks of time.
•Challenge pessimistic thinking and negative beliefs about people, the company, and the work area. Don't let negative, false statements go unchallenged. If the statements are true, provide the rationale, the corporate thinking, and the events that are responsible for the negative circumstances. Share everything you know about a situation to build trust with the workforce.
•Ask open-ended questions to determine the cause, and the scope of the negative feelings or reaction. Maybe it's not as bad as people think; maybe their interpretation of events is faulty. Helping people identify exactly what they feel negatively about is the first step in solving the problem. You can't solve a fog of unhappiness. Help people create options, feel included, and feel part of the communication and problem solving.
•Recognize that, sometimes, a negative outlook may be appropriate.
Working with Others Who Are Negative
If the negativity emanates from an individual, we can:
•Inform the employee about the negative impact her negativity is having on co-workers and the department. Use specific examples that describe behaviours the employee can do something about.
•Avoid becoming defensive. Don’t take the employee’s negative words or attitude personally.
•Focus on creating solutions. Don’t focus on everything that is wrong and negative; focus instead on creating options for positive morale. If the person is unwilling to hold this discussion, and you feel you have fairly heard her out, end the discussion.
•Focus on the positive aspects and contributions the individual brings to the work setting, not the negativity. Help the employee build their self-image and capacity to contribute.
•Compliment the individual any time you hear a positive statement or contribution rather than negativity from them
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Negativity often occurs when people are impacted by decisions and issues that are out of their control. Examples of these include: corporation downsizing; understaffing that requires people to work mandatory overtime; budget reductions; and upper-management decisions that adversely impact members of your staff. Under these circumstances, as a Human Resources professional, try some of the following ideas.
•Identify any aspects of the situation that you can impact including providing feedback in your organization about the negative impact that is occurring. (Sometimes decisions are made and no one understands or predicts their outcome. Sometimes you can influence an issue or a decision if you practice personal, professional courage and speak your mind.
•Listen, listen, and listen. Often people just need a sounding board. Be visible and available to staff. Proactively schedule group discussion sessions, town meetings, "lunches with the manager," or one-on-one blocks of time.
•Challenge pessimistic thinking and negative beliefs about people, the company, and the work area. Don't let negative, false statements go unchallenged. If the statements are true, provide the rationale, the corporate thinking, and the events that are responsible for the negative circumstances. Share everything you know about a situation to build trust with the workforce.
•Ask open-ended questions to determine the cause, and the scope of the negative feelings or reaction. Maybe it's not as bad as people think; maybe their interpretation of events is faulty. Helping people identify exactly what they feel negatively about is the first step in solving the problem. You can't solve a fog of unhappiness. Help people create options, feel included, and feel part of the communication and problem solving.
•Recognize that, sometimes, a negative outlook may be appropriate.
Working with Others Who Are Negative
If the negativity emanates from an individual, we can:
•Inform the employee about the negative impact her negativity is having on co-workers and the department. Use specific examples that describe behaviours the employee can do something about.
•Avoid becoming defensive. Don’t take the employee’s negative words or attitude personally.
•Focus on creating solutions. Don’t focus on everything that is wrong and negative; focus instead on creating options for positive morale. If the person is unwilling to hold this discussion, and you feel you have fairly heard her out, end the discussion.
•Focus on the positive aspects and contributions the individual brings to the work setting, not the negativity. Help the employee build their self-image and capacity to contribute.
•Compliment the individual any time you hear a positive statement or contribution rather than negativity from them
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Monday, May 3, 2010
Managing and Solving Workplace Energies
Workplace Energies
Our workplaces are at times seething with hostility and negativity. No matter where the bad vibes came from, it’s up to us to help make the atmosphere more positive, productive and supportive. As a Human Resources staff member, you usually do not control the situation that is causing the negativity. Perhaps no one in your workplace does. How you address negativity depends on whether you control it and how it started in the first place. The timeliness of your intervention also has an impact. Addressing negativity prevents workplace violence, promotes workplace safety, and creates positive employee morale.
Controlling Organizational Negativity
This is a best case scenario. You have received feedback about negative rumors and you know that the underlying cause of the negativity is based on faulty information, incorrect assumptions, or deliberate misinformation. You may receive feedback that a new policy or procedure is not understood correctly. In each of these circumstances, we have some control over the information, the situation, and the communication. We can solve the problem and communicate well to overcome the negativity.
To influence this situation positively, use a systematic problem-solving process with affected employees to quickly improve identified areas of negativity. Many Human Resources offices launch a complete investigation, and by the time the facts are gathered, the negativity is out of control. Don’t fall for this trap! Include employees who are closest to the negative situation in the problem-solving process. A good cause analysis should be done so that all possible causes of negativity are effectively identified. It is not enough to say, “We have low morale.” You need to identify exactly what is causing low morale to have any chance of improving it. Solicit widespread input to each step of the action plan you develop so that solutions are “owned” across your organization. Involve as many people as you can in its development and in its implementation. Implement your chosen solutions quickly. Then, periodically assess if your work plan is progressing as per agreed milestones. At each step of the problem-solving process, communicate as much information as you have about prevailing negativity and its solutions. When focused solutions selected in your action plan are rolled out, people in the organization are not surprised as they have effectively participated in its information exchange at each step.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Our workplaces are at times seething with hostility and negativity. No matter where the bad vibes came from, it’s up to us to help make the atmosphere more positive, productive and supportive. As a Human Resources staff member, you usually do not control the situation that is causing the negativity. Perhaps no one in your workplace does. How you address negativity depends on whether you control it and how it started in the first place. The timeliness of your intervention also has an impact. Addressing negativity prevents workplace violence, promotes workplace safety, and creates positive employee morale.
Controlling Organizational Negativity
This is a best case scenario. You have received feedback about negative rumors and you know that the underlying cause of the negativity is based on faulty information, incorrect assumptions, or deliberate misinformation. You may receive feedback that a new policy or procedure is not understood correctly. In each of these circumstances, we have some control over the information, the situation, and the communication. We can solve the problem and communicate well to overcome the negativity.
To influence this situation positively, use a systematic problem-solving process with affected employees to quickly improve identified areas of negativity. Many Human Resources offices launch a complete investigation, and by the time the facts are gathered, the negativity is out of control. Don’t fall for this trap! Include employees who are closest to the negative situation in the problem-solving process. A good cause analysis should be done so that all possible causes of negativity are effectively identified. It is not enough to say, “We have low morale.” You need to identify exactly what is causing low morale to have any chance of improving it. Solicit widespread input to each step of the action plan you develop so that solutions are “owned” across your organization. Involve as many people as you can in its development and in its implementation. Implement your chosen solutions quickly. Then, periodically assess if your work plan is progressing as per agreed milestones. At each step of the problem-solving process, communicate as much information as you have about prevailing negativity and its solutions. When focused solutions selected in your action plan are rolled out, people in the organization are not surprised as they have effectively participated in its information exchange at each step.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Humour & Employee Morale
In today’s uncertain work environment, humor isn’t an option; it’s a necessary way to boost morale. When employees clown around, they’re not wasting valuable time, they’re making use of one of the few tools available to increase and maintain their esprit de corps. Laughter may not change the external reality, but it can certainly help people survive it. This has been proven in some pretty dire situations. Psychologist cite examples of how a group of Auschwitz inmates put on shows to provide laughter for the camp population so as to make jokes to save ourselves from deep depression. Somehow these people, on the brink of death, realized that their morale and survival depended on keeping their ability to laugh alive. As a group, they took the time and energy to make it happen.
Even though nothing could be as horrible as Auschwitz, people in almost all workplaces can learn from this example. Take the time and energy to share humor. Those brave concentration camp inmates proved that humor is a choice, and no matter how much adversity people face, whether at work or in their personal lives, they can still choose laughter. In fact, the worse a situation gets, the more important it becomes to make that choice.
Making It Happen In Your Organization
So what can organizations do to encourage the use of humor as a coping mechanism? We can usually turn boring announcements into a stand-up comedy routine. CEOs/top management should empower people to believe that work should be fun too. They can easily set precedents through their own behavior, and by encouraging employees to enjoy their jobs, they make it safe for the people they employ to use humor by leading the way.
And the payoff? Employees will be more enthusiastic about their work as they will love working for the company because it was so much fun. And their enjoyment will be reflected in higher productivity and better client interactions. In order to help employees use humor, organizations need to provide them with the tools and to set an example. Like in a client organization I started every training group with an exercise called “the rubber chicken toss.” i.e. providing crisis counselors with baskets of toys to use as stress-busters, and made it clear that humor was encouraged as part of our organizational culture. These relatively inexpensive interventions did nothing to change the adversity the group faced, but they did create an atmosphere in which going to work was still fun. I often had crisis line workers tell me that one of the reasons they kept coming back was because of how much fun they had. And if a crisis line, where workers regularly deal with suicide can be made fun, so can any workplace!
Laughter as A Tonic!
As more and more organizations reengineer, merge, restructure, downsize, right size, and even capsize, employees confront uncertainty on an almost daily basis. The rules keep changing in terms of what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to do it, which they do it for, and whether they get to do it at all. And since most have little or no control over the making of these rules, the result is often a sense of powerlessness that translates into increased stress, decreased wellness, demoralization, absenteeism, and lower productivity, all of which affect rates of employee retention. And we all know that people are an organization’s number one asset, and losing them costs money. So the big question for both individuals and organizations is: how do you keep up spirits, continue to work effectively, and maintain health and sanity in a crazy-making situation? I often use my team of welfare workers to spread cheer through events of laughter. This effectively repels despair, cynicism, bitterness, or negativity. As one worker stated, “We could either cry, or we could laugh, but you can only cry for so long. We’d had enough of crying, and it was time to do something else – so we laughed.”
Organizations need to encourage employees to take control over the one aspect of the situation they do control - how they choose to respond to it. And on those days where workers feel overwhelmed, overworked, and have no idea what’s going to happen next, the only rational, life-affirming response is to go find some colleagues, and break out the clown noses, and leverage the energy of life giving humour. And it costs no money and also enhances intelligence as the basis of humour is knowledge combined with empathy.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
Even though nothing could be as horrible as Auschwitz, people in almost all workplaces can learn from this example. Take the time and energy to share humor. Those brave concentration camp inmates proved that humor is a choice, and no matter how much adversity people face, whether at work or in their personal lives, they can still choose laughter. In fact, the worse a situation gets, the more important it becomes to make that choice.
Making It Happen In Your Organization
So what can organizations do to encourage the use of humor as a coping mechanism? We can usually turn boring announcements into a stand-up comedy routine. CEOs/top management should empower people to believe that work should be fun too. They can easily set precedents through their own behavior, and by encouraging employees to enjoy their jobs, they make it safe for the people they employ to use humor by leading the way.
And the payoff? Employees will be more enthusiastic about their work as they will love working for the company because it was so much fun. And their enjoyment will be reflected in higher productivity and better client interactions. In order to help employees use humor, organizations need to provide them with the tools and to set an example. Like in a client organization I started every training group with an exercise called “the rubber chicken toss.” i.e. providing crisis counselors with baskets of toys to use as stress-busters, and made it clear that humor was encouraged as part of our organizational culture. These relatively inexpensive interventions did nothing to change the adversity the group faced, but they did create an atmosphere in which going to work was still fun. I often had crisis line workers tell me that one of the reasons they kept coming back was because of how much fun they had. And if a crisis line, where workers regularly deal with suicide can be made fun, so can any workplace!
Laughter as A Tonic!
As more and more organizations reengineer, merge, restructure, downsize, right size, and even capsize, employees confront uncertainty on an almost daily basis. The rules keep changing in terms of what they’re supposed to do, how they’re supposed to do it, which they do it for, and whether they get to do it at all. And since most have little or no control over the making of these rules, the result is often a sense of powerlessness that translates into increased stress, decreased wellness, demoralization, absenteeism, and lower productivity, all of which affect rates of employee retention. And we all know that people are an organization’s number one asset, and losing them costs money. So the big question for both individuals and organizations is: how do you keep up spirits, continue to work effectively, and maintain health and sanity in a crazy-making situation? I often use my team of welfare workers to spread cheer through events of laughter. This effectively repels despair, cynicism, bitterness, or negativity. As one worker stated, “We could either cry, or we could laugh, but you can only cry for so long. We’d had enough of crying, and it was time to do something else – so we laughed.”
Organizations need to encourage employees to take control over the one aspect of the situation they do control - how they choose to respond to it. And on those days where workers feel overwhelmed, overworked, and have no idea what’s going to happen next, the only rational, life-affirming response is to go find some colleagues, and break out the clown noses, and leverage the energy of life giving humour. And it costs no money and also enhances intelligence as the basis of humour is knowledge combined with empathy.
-Anshumali Saxena www.soilindia.net
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