Reasons why we fail...

"Luke: I can’t believe it.

Yoda: That is why you fail."

My research into the traits of influencers and achievers continues, and as I turn more pieces of this puzzle around to fit the whole, more ideas appear to me as a fit for this space.  In this edition, reflections on falling short — more precisely, why we fail despite ourselves.

1. Like Yoda said, you just don’t believe it. 

The crucial part of Yoda’s dialogue with Luke is “believe.”  The human brain is a powerful problem-solving and prediction making machine, and it operates via a multitude of feedback loops. What matters most in the feedback loop dynamic is input — what goes into the loop that begins the analysis-evaluation-action process, which ultimately results in an outcome. Here’s the kicker: if your input shuttle for achieving a goal lacks the critical, emotionally relevant component of belief, then the feedback loop is drained of octane from the start.  Another way to say that is — why would you expect a convincingly successful outcome when you haven’t convinced yourself that it’s possible?

2.  Other people have convinced you of your “station.”

I’ve always thought the “know your station in life” idea to be among the most pernicious we humans have ever come up with.  The only version of it I like is Tennessee Williams’:   “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”  Love that Tennessee Williams.  What’s more pernicious than the idea itself is that it’s often heaved upon us by other people, and they convince us that we are what we are and we’d better just live with it because, well, that’s what we’ll always be.  Really? Says who? Show me the chapter on predetermined stations in the cosmic rule book, please. This also gets back to the feedback loop dynamic, because if this external “station” scripting is part of your input, you can expect sub-par outcomes all the time.

3. You don’t want to be a disrupter.

The word “disrupter” has taken on such a heavy, mixed bag of meanings in the last few years.  Reading both popular psychology and business books, I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing to be.   One thing seems certain — the notion of disrupting anything–of being the water that breaks the rock–is scary to most of us.  Reason being, disruption is perceived as a threat to our threat-sensitive brains. Disruption means that consistency, stability and certainty might get jettisoned for a time, and that puts our hard-wired internal defence system on high alert. Sometimes, though, you have to override the alarms and move ahead anyway.  If you never do, you’ll never know what could happen.

4. You think, “what if I die tomorrow?”

We all think this from time to time.  And you know what, sure, any of us might die tomorrow — all the more reason not to waste time thinking about it and hamstringing yourself from going after what you want to achieve.  Would you rather die as a monument to mediocrity or as someone who never quit striving?  Which leads to the next one…

5.  You wonder how you will be remembered.

The rub here is simply that, if you “die tomorrow,” will people remember you as someone who clung to stability like an existential life preserver — and is that what you really want?  I know for a fact that many people do want exactly that, because it’s a comfortable niche to occupy on the obituary page.  ”She/he was a good person, good friend, good….”  Good is fine, but it ain’t great. You can’t strive for great achievements by dropping anchor in Goodville.  My take on this is: it’s OK to wonder how you’ll be remembered, but don’t let thoughts of “good and nice and stable” effect that all important feedback loop, because if you do your brain will be happy to oblige with lots of good and little else.

6. You think there must be a pre-established role for your life, and you might be screwing with  it.

This one also touches on the “station” idea discussed above, but it goes deeper than that. We humans are prone to believing in something psychologists call“agency.”  We want to believe there’s a reason for everything, and that everything has a prime mover — an agent, whether human or otherwise. So, we think, what if there’s a reason we are what we are — what if celestial agency has determined it so?  Should we be messing with that?  The error in thinking here is clear — agency is a figment our brains rely on to manage difficulty with as little trauma as possible. The first thing to do is recognize that, and then recognize that the role for your life has only one true agent — You.

7. Your career appears to be well-established and that’s good…right?

Well, maybe that’s good, sure.  The question becomes, is “established” what you really want?  Maybe it is, and that’s cool. But if “established” means you can’t reach beyond certain imposed parameters to achieve anything else that you truly want, then maybe it isn’t so useful after all.  Like most things, this is a personal choice and it doesn’t have a right or wrong answer.  But it’s worth acknowledging that you may very well be “establishing” yourself out of greater achievements.

8.  You are afraid of losing what you have built.

A totally legitimate fear, and one we should kick out of our perspectives as quickly as possible.  Here’s one example why:  Remember this little thing we’ve been suffering through for sometime now called a recession?  Remember how many people lost all or nearly all they’d “built” during these last few years of economic erosion? The reality is, you can lose everything in a heartbeat through no fault of your own, so why allow that fear to stop you from reaching out for what you really want?  This goes in the same basket as “I could die tomorrow.”  Yes, true, we can lose, we can die. So what? Push forward.

9. You think, “maybe I’ve hit my ceiling.” 

The proverbial “ceiling” — so long have ye been with us, and yet so little have ye given us.  I side with the late great Peter Drucker who said (paraphrasing from this classic article on Managing Oneself) if you reach a point in your career where you think you won’t progress any further, then start focusing on the next part of your life.  Actually, he added, you should start thinking about the next part of your life well before you begin it.  The point is, forget about ceilings and focus on achievement. When you start using the cultural shibboleth of the ceiling as an excuse, you are achieving nothing and will continue to do just that.

 10. Confusion about where to go.

Of all of these 10 ideas, this one is to me the most difficult because it plagues me almost constantly. Gearing up the cerebral feedback loop for achievement is one thing, but without a sense of focus and direction, all of that energy isn't going to yield very much in the end.  My experience has been that sometimes you have to let the energy flow for a while without too firm a sense of direction and see if focus emerges organically. Once it does, you can then nurture it into a more structured method for getting where you want to go.

COURTESY:-  http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/08/07/the-10-reasons-why-we-fail/

10 reasons your top talent will leave you...

Have you ever noticed leaders spend a lot of time talking about talent, only to make the same mistakes over and over again? Few things in business are as costly and disruptive as unexpected talent departures. With all the emphasis on leadership development, I always find it interesting so many companies seem to struggle with being able to retain their top talent. In today’s column, I’ll share some research, observations, and insights on how to stop the talent door from revolving.

Ask any CEO if they have a process for retaining and developing talent and they’ll quickly answer in the affirmative. They immediately launch into a series of sound-bites about the quality of their talent initiatives, the number of high-potentials in the nine box, blah, blah, blah. As with most things in the corporate world, there is too much process built upon theory and not nearly enough practice built on experience.

When examining the talent at any organization look at the culture, not the rhetoric – look at the results, not the commentary about potential. Despite some of the delusional perspective in the corner office, when we interview their employees, here’s what they tell us:

• ·         More than 30% believe they’ll be working some place else inside of 12 months.
• ·         More than 40% don’t respect the person they report to.
• ·         More than 50% say they have different values than their employer.
• ·         More than 60% don’t feel their career goals are aligned with the plans their employers have for them.
• ·         More than 70% don’t feel appreciated or valued by their employer.

So, for all those employers who have everything under control, you better start re-evaluating. There is an old saying that goes; “Employees don’t quit working for companies, they quit working for their bosses.” Regardless of tenure, position, title, etc., employees who voluntarily leave, generally do so out of some type of perceived disconnect with leadership.

Here’s the thing – employees who are challenged, engaged, valued, and rewarded (emotionally, intellectually & financially) rarely leave, and more importantly, they perform at very high levels. However if you miss any of these critical areas, it’s only a matter of time until they head for the elevator. Following are 10 reasons your talent will leave you – smart leaders don’t make these mistakes:

1. You Failed To Unleash Their Passions: Smart companies align employee passions with corporate pursuits. Human nature makes it very difficult to walk away from areas of passion. Fail to understand this and you’ll unknowingly be encouraging employees to seek their passions elsewhere.

2. You Failed To Challenge Their Intellect: Smart people don’t like to live in a dimly lit world of boredom. If you don’t challenge people’s minds, they’ll leave you for someone/some place that will.

3. You Failed To Engage Their Creativity: Great talent is wired to improve, enhance, and add value. They are built to change and innovate. They NEED to contribute by putting their fingerprints on design. Smart leaders don’t place people in boxes – they free them from boxes. What’s the use in having a racehorse if you don’t let them run?

4. You Failed To Develop Their Skills:Leadership isn't a destination – it’s a continuum. No matter how smart or talented a person is, there’s always room for growth, development, and continued maturation. If you place restrictions on a person’s ability to grow, they’ll leave you for someone who won’t.

5. You Failed To Give Them A Voice: Talented people have good thoughts, ideas, insights, and observations. If you don’t listen to them, I can guarantee you someone else will.

6. You Failed To Care: Sure, people come to work for a pay-check  but that’s not the only reason. In fact, many studies show it’s not even the most important reason. If you fail to care about people at a human level, at an emotional level, they’ll eventually leave you regardless of how much you pay them.

7. You Failed to Lead: Businesses don’t fail, products don’t fail, projects don’t fail, and teams don’t fail – leaders fail. The best testament to the value of leadership is what happens in its absence – very little. If you fail to lead, your talent will seek leadership elsewhere.

8. You Failed To Recognize Their Contributions: The best leaders don’t take credit – they give it. Failing to recognize the contributions of others is not only arrogant and disingenuous, but it’s as also just as good as asking them to leave.

9. You Failed To Increase Their Responsibility: You cannot confine talent – try to do so and you’ll either devolve into mediocrity, or force your talent seek more fertile ground. People will gladly accept a huge workload as long as an increase in responsibility comes along with the performance and execution of said workload.

10. You Failed To Keep Your Commitments: Promises made are worthless, but promises kept are invaluable. If you break trust with those you lead you will pay a very steep price. Leaders not accountable to their people, will eventually be held accountable by their people.

If leaders spent less time trying to retain people, and more time trying to understand them, care for them, invest in them, and lead them well, the retention thing would take care of itself.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT...

COURTESY:-  http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/12/13/10-reasons-your-top-talent-will-leave-you/

Salary negotiation

There comes a point in every successful job interview when it's time to talk money. The standard advice to job applicants has long been to play it coy.

John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, urges applicants to "let the employer name a salary first -- it may be higher than you expect." Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, advises that "the right answer to the question, 'What's your salary range?' is almost always some version of 'I'm not telling you.'"

This often leads to an uncomfortable, even adversarial, game of chicken. If that's the sort of conversation you dread, here's good news: there are better alternatives.

A recent study out of the University of Idaho found that making a joke about a million-dollar salary actually increased subsequent offer amounts by more than 10%.The hypothetical applicant in the study's test scenario was an administrative assistant candidate who had listed her last salary as $29,000. When asked what salary she wanted in the new job, she either demurred or quipped, "Well I'd like a million dollars, but really I just want what's fair."

In the cases where the applicant declined to name any number, the average salary offer was about $32,500. When she joked about a million bucks, the average offer rose to almost $36,200.

The increase is a function of a psychological effect known as "anchoring." "When we encounter a number -- even an irrelevant number -- we fixate on it, and it influences our judgment," says Todd Thorsteinson, a psychology professor at the University of Idaho and the study's author.

But before you start throwing numbers around, you should consider the potential for backlash. "In practice, if one's negotiating partner opens with an offer that is too extreme, the most common response is to disengage from the negotiation," warns Rachel Croson, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas and director of the school's Negotiations Center.

Participants in Thorsteinson's study were not given the option to decline to hire the candidate, but were merely asked how much they would offer to pay her.

So should job applicants make a high-salary joke in hopes of increasing compensation?

MORE: Vote: Businessperson of the Year Round 2

Only if you're comfortable with the possibility that you might lose the job offer altogether, says Croson. Before recommending the strategy in general, she'd want to see a follow-up study that quantifies the level of risk involved -- for example, "what percentage of interviewers would be turned off by the joke and choose to find a different employee."

Being the first to talk numbers can still pay off, though. The standard advice -- to dodge the question -- ignores the very real effects of anchoring.

The key is information, says Croson, who has taught negotiation strategies to undergraduates, MBAs, and executives for 18 years. If an applicant knows the salary range for a given position and can name a number at or near the top of what a company is willing to pay, being the first to throw out a dollar figure is always to her advantage.

Challenger still prefers to play it safe. "Companies are all over the map," he says. "The same position may pay 20% more or less, depending upon that company's specific salary structure."

But with company-specific salary data available from sites like Glassdoor.com, today's job candidates have at least a fighting chance to set a high anchor and come out ahead.

Croson also recommends researching the culture of a corporation -- is it individualistic and competitive? Then tough negotiation is fair game. In other environments, aggressive haggling won't play as well.

It's important to remember, says Challenger, that "you're negotiating with someone who may be your next boss, setting up a relationship for the future."

Croson agrees. "Neither side wants to look like a jerk ... or a creampuff," she says.

Things to learn when fired from a job...

There are some things worth being fired over. Sometimes your personal values don’t mesh with the company’s (regardless of what the company’s “Values Statement” says). Back in 2008, at Smith Barney, we had sold supposedly low-risk investments to our clients. But instead of their value declining modestly during the downturn, they went to very close to $0. I never found any evidence of wrong-doing; but I did recognize that we had nonetheless breached our clients’ trust, regardless of what the small print said. I proposed that we share part of the losses with them – both because it was the “right thing” to do, but also very much because sharing the impact of the hit would, I thought, be the “right business thing” to do. There were others who disagreed; after much back-and-forth (and many “no’s”), my team’s argument won the day, but it was clear I wasn’t long for the company.

Squeeze every bit of personal development out of the experience. Ok, this one can be hard. But in the first few weeks out of the company, I made it a practice to ask anyone and everyone what I could have done better or how I could have managed the situation more effectively. This was hardly pleasant, but surprised people into an invaluable honest discussion.

 …..But don’t listen to your “frenemies.” But know who to listen to. I remember a verysenior, very connected, very savvy woman who very kindly told me that my career was over, that having a falling out with a large company was a career-ending event, regardless of the reasons. She authoritatively told me that a man might be able to have a next career chapter, but a woman couldn’t. I chose to completely ignore her.

Cut the cord with the old workplace more quickly than you may want to.  Here is where I made a real mistake. I continued to speak regularly to my former colleagues; my reasoning was that I wanted to be helpful to them and continue to coach them. The truth is, it was a sad drag for them and for me. I should have closed that door faster.

 It’s important to have connections outside of your company. This is pretty self-explanatory. But it’s easy to tell yourself you’ll form these connections later, since few people plan to be fired and the return on this investment can be hard to see, when there are always more urgent matters.

If you’re able to, don’t make any big decisions right away. I had a friend tell me shortly after I left “When something like this happens, you think you’re thinking straight, but you’re not. You won’t think straight for at least three months.” If you have the luxury of avoiding any major career decisions that long, the perspective you gain after decompressing can be valuable.

Nobody cares as much about it nearly as much as you do. I promise.

….But candor helps with future employers. Evading the question wasn’t a particularly good idea in 1985, when your awkward silence may have been a give-away. In this age of social media, it’s an even worse idea.  Own it.

Good results help even more. Let’s face it: it’s one thing to be swept out of a company because a new manager wants to put his own team in place and another because you didn’t deliver business results. In finding that next job, be fact-based and specific on the business results you and your team achieved in the prior one.

If you don’t get fired at least once, you’re not trying hard enough. This isn’t quite true yet, but it is becoming truer. As the pace of change in business increases, the chances of having a placid career are receding. And if in this period of rapid change, you’re not making some notable mistakes along the way, you’re certainly not taking enough business and career chances. 

You can’t beat someone who won’t give up. Yes, I read this on a bumper sticker, but it’s still true.

Five self defeating behaviours to avoid...

In turbulent times, it's hard enough to deal with external problems. But too often people and companies exacerbate their troubles by their own actions. Self-defeating behaviours can make any situation worse. Put these five on the what-not-to-do list.

1. Demanding a bigger share of a shrinking pie

Leaders defeat themselves when they seek gain when others suffer, for example, raising prices in a time of high unemployment when consumers have less to spend, to ensure profits when sales are down. McDonald's raised prices three percent in early 2012 and by the third quarter, faced the first drop in same-store sales in nine years. The executive responsible for that strategy was replaced.

At bankrupt Hostess Brands, bakery workers refused to make concessions (though the Teamsters did), thereby forcing the company to liquidate, eliminating 18,000 jobs. By trying to grab too much, the bakery union could lose everything.

This happens to executives too. A manager in a retail company demanded a promotion during the recession, because he was "indispensable," he said. The CEO, who had cut her own pay to save jobs, fired him instead. Greed makes a bad situation worse.

2.Getting angry

Anger and blame are unproductive emotions. Post-U.S. election, defeated Mitt Romney blamed his defeat on "gifts" that "bought" the votes of young people, women, African-Americans, and Latinos for President Obama. Losing the Presidency is a big defeat, but Romney further defeated future electoral prospects with public bitterness and insults. History might remember the bitterness, not his gracious concession speech.

Anger hurts companies too, especially if misplaced. Years after a tragic explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 in which 11 people lost their lives, BP was back in the news with a record fine and criminal charges. Former CEO Tony Hayward defeated himself and damaged the company in the public mind by issuing bitter statements about how unfair this was.

Angry words leave a long trail. An employee in another company who threw a temper tantrum over a denied proposal was surprised that this episode was still recalled two years later, overwhelming his accomplishments. He was the first terminated in a reorganization. Bitterness turns everything sour.

3.Giving in to mission creep

Sometimes self-perpetuated decline occurs more slowly, through taking core strengths for granted while chasing the greener grass. I can't say that this is happening to Google, a company I admire, but I do see potholes ahead — although driverless cars are an extension of mapping software close to Google's core strength in search. But should Google expand its territory to be a device maker and communications network provider, building a fiber-optics and mobile network? This could be mission creep. Perhaps Google should focus on improving Googling.

Trying to become something you are not while there's plenty of value in who you can be self-defeating. For professionals, this can mean branching out into new fields while falling behind in the latest knowledge in the field that made their reputation. People can get caught in the middle — not yet good enough to compete in the new area, while losing strength in the old area.

4.Adding without subtracting

A related form of self-defeat is to allow bloat. Adding new items without subtracting old ones is how closets get cluttered, bureaucracies expand, workloads grow out of control, national budgets go into deficit, and people get fat. It takes discipline to cut or consolidate some things for every one added. Too often that discipline is missing.

A technology company tacked on acquisitions without integration, which made acquired companies happy. But one consequence was 17 warring R&D groups and the lowest R&D in the industry. Bankruptcy followed. Growing without pruning is bad for gardens and for business.

5. Thinking you'll get away with it

Whatever "it" is — lying, cheating, foreign corrupt practices, or swallowing extra bites of chocolate — lapses cannot remain secret for long in the digital age. Believing otherwise is delusional. The mistake will show up somewhere — in routine audits, unrelated FBI investigations, smartphone photos by strangers, or the bathroom scale. In the ultimate example of self-defeating behaviour  too many otherwise-intelligent politicians, military leaders, and CEOs think with their zippers, thereby jeopardizing companies, countries, and careers.

Happily, there's a cure for self-defeating behaviour: Get over yourself.

Humility prevents self-defeat. A desire to serve others, an emphasis on values and purpose, a sense of responsibility for long-term consequences, and knowledge of both strengths and limitations can make it easier to avoid these traps. Google has enjoyed outstanding success, but that doesn't mean it will succeed at everything. The bakery union that fought Hostess into liquidation had solidarity, but perhaps it, too, should have eaten a little humble pie.

COURTESY :-http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/11/five-self-defeating-behaviors.html

How to know if the candidate fits your office culture

Motivation to do the work is the universal trait of success.

 If you want to improve your interviewing effectiveness, consider this simple idea the next time you’re conducting an interview: 

New Hire Success = Ability to Do the Work Times Motivation to Do the Work 

Ability is actually quite simple to assess, especially if you use the two-question interview approach I suggested in an earlier post. Motivation to do the work, on the other hand, is a bit more complex, and quite frankly, more important, since this is the universal trait of success. 

To get the motivation part right you need to uncover the candidate’s intrinsic interest in doing the actual work required (not competency to do it), the new hire’s likely relationship with the hiring manager, and the person’s ability to work effectively in the company’s inherent culture. Collectively, competency in relationship to interest and fit drives motivation. 

Most interviewers get much of the competency part right, but miss on the fit and motivation part. Since I could write a whole book on this topic, I’ll use this post to focus only on the cultural fit part, since this is the hardest to pin down. For example, in a recent online training program I asked 50 hiring managers from the same company to define their culture. Here were just some of their responses: 

1)   work hard, play hard

2)   have a sense of humor

3)   fast-paced

4)   friendly and warm

5)   like a box of chocolates

6)   intense

7)   a place to create your own destiny

8)   youthful and exuberant, but wanted to hire people of all ages

9)   collaborative, but independent

10)  getting too bureaucratic

In other words it was everything, yet nothing.

If you don’t want to try the random approach, here are some ideas you might want to use to assess cultural fit:

Pace and Position on the Corporate Life Cycle: having worked on more than 1,000 different hiring search assignments and projects, it’s pretty clear that the dominant driver of company culture is the pace of the organization and where it is on the corporate life cycle. Companies that are growing fast and moving from an entrepreneurial start-up to a well-managed company are culturally far different than large scale-organizations that are well-run, but slow to change course. Messed-up companies on life support are a different breed entirely. Examining the environment of a person’s best accomplishments provides a good sense of the types of cultures where the person thrives.

Job Structure: some jobs are more free-flowing (creative marketing), others highly structured (accounting), some are heavily supervised (call center), and others allow for more independence (field sales reps). In addition, I like to categorize jobs by their primary emphasis (maintain, improve, build, create, etc.) and match people accordingly, based on their past accomplishments. When the job structure and the company pace are out-of-alignment, like implementing public reporting systems in a Facebook-like organization, expect cultural shock throughout the company.

Managerial Style: Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model suggests that managers need to adapt their style to best suit their subordinates’ needs. Since few managers are adaptable enough to do this, a simpler solution is for managers to hire people who already fit their preferred style. Managerial style ranges from the very directive to the very loose with big steps like supervisor, trainer, coach and delegator filling the spaces in-between. Subordinate needs vary from those requiring heavy direction and supervision to those wanting none. The in-betweens include those that are trainable, coachable and manageable. Since the relationship with a person’s manager is so important to job satisfaction, performance and motivation, it’s vital to get this part of the assessment correct. Few companies even consider it, hoping to fix the problem later.

Adaptability and DISC: I recently described a super quick means to categorize a person’s personality into four dominant styles: Director, Influencer, Supporter and Controller. The point of the post was to suggest that many people can adjust their style to handle changing circumstances, and many can’t. To improve the chance of a good cultural fit, it’s best to find people who have successfully adapted to different cultures and rapid changes in the past. Rigid people fight change, so look for this and avoid hiring people who haven’t demonstrated an ability to perform at peak levels in a variety of different situations.

Cultural fit is hard to describe and more difficult to assess. Start by examining a person’s major accomplishments and dig into the organizational pace, the types of jobs where the person excelled, the style of the person’s best managers, and the person’s ability to modify their business personality to changing conditions. This will give you a good picture of the candidate’s ability to fit your culture. Cultural fit drives motivation. It should drive your assessment, as well.

courtesy :- http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121112112646-15454-cultural-fit-is-much-more-than-affability 

In defense of "THE COMPANY MAN"

Do you feel underappreciated at work? Does the next promotion seem decades away, elusive and completely out of reach? Are lesser mortals at your workplace smoothly orchestrating their career progression, much to your disbelief?

Such feelings are common at any workplace. As a business school professor, one of my roles is to serve as a sounding board to students when they run into career difficulties. Once in a while, my students (who are usually working while earning their MBAs), will share similar concerns and ask me if they should switch companies or careers.

One school of thought endorses systematic career exploration even when there is no dissatisfaction with the current work environment. This belief system says that one’s resume should always be on the block. Many people see it as a stigma to remain at the same company for a long period of time. As a result, corporate tenures are getting shorter, and the Company Man seems a relic today.

But my aim is to offer a counter argument. It’s not always necessary to change companies to advance your career. Quite often, it’s possible to engineer your next career move right where you are.

Before changing your company or career it’s worth remembering the old adage “festina lente” – make haste slowly. If you are contemplating a change, consider the following:

Do you want a career change or a company change?

If you merely want to change your line of work, it can often be accomplished within the same company.

Jack Welch, the legendary former chief executive of General Electric, started as a chemical engineer, and gradually took on different roles within the company before landing the top job. Interestingly, he too contemplated leaving GE at one point early in his career. If he had succumbed to this impulse, he may not have had such a formidable career.

Every individual, however outstanding, will encounter a nadir at some point within his company. But that doesn’t mean one has to quit.

Success requires endurance and resilience. Quite often, if you stick around, the environment may change in your favor. A bad boss may be removed by your current company, or a new position may open up for you in another department within the same company.

But how long should you put up with a bad situation? The answer depends on your specific circumstances, but you should keep in mind that hiring managers generally don’t view candidates who have stayed in a company for less than two years positively.

It takes time to build a legacy: There are a number of examples of “lifers” who have stuck around with a company for most of their corporate careers. Besides Mr. Welch, other examples include Narayana Murthy of Infosys 500209.BY -1.43%, Sam Palmisano, who spent most of his corporate career with IBM IBM -1.58%, and Ellen Kullman, the chief executive of DuPont, who started there in 1988 as a marketing manager.

It’s hard to envision the legacy that these individuals have built without a focused commitment to a single place of work.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, talks about the 10,000-hour rule, which basically says that to achieve excellence in any profession, one needs to commit at least 10,000 hours of practice. Assuming a modest 50-hour work-week, to achieve competence, you may have to spend at least four years on a job.

If you have already invested decades in developing specific expertise, your best work could still be ahead of you, and it may not make sense to throw it all away as a result of short-term frustrations.

But sticking around for a long time in the same domain doesn’t mean you should stop learning and stop looking for innovative ways to do your job.

Don’t underestimate the time needed to reestablish credibility: Even if you have a stellar track record, when you join a new place, you need to work hard at reestablishing credibility, and convince your new colleagues that you can do it all over again.

You may have good intellectual and technical skills, but those are only good enough to get you the job. In senior management positions, it’s more important that you demonstrate empathy for your co-workers and have the ability to navigate political structures. Understanding the politics takes time and this is harder to do if you keep moving from one company to another.

The more time you have spent with your current company, the greater will be the depth of your social connections. Job hopping may therefore be more suited to younger people.

Do an honest self-assessment: Sometimes when I speak to restless employees, I find they haven’t taken an honest inventory of their own capabilities. They are unduly optimistic in the evaluation of their own merits, and excessively critical of their workplace.

If an employee is endowed with a major behavioral flaw, such as poor communication skills or inability to work in a team environment, it will not help to move to another company.

When the fault lies within you, you are better off staying where you are and focusing on self-improvement first.

However, if after careful deliberation you find that it’s not you, but an un-supportive boss or your company practices that are holding back your growth, it may be time to move on. In this case, make sure you do your homework and that you have the full support of your new company and new boss.

COURTESY :- http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/11/02/career-journal-in-defense-of-the-company-man/?reflink=djm_naukri_career_journal&othersrcp=15079&wExp=N

Interview questions...

Many, many years ago I was contacted by a business owner who had heard me speak at a business leader’s conference. He was clearly desperate. He implored me to tell him the two questions I had said were all you needed to ask to fully assess competency for any position. He was looking for an operations VP, and being a full-time executive recruiter at the time, I told him I would be happy to reveal my secret assessment technique, but we needed to meet in person and discuss the actual job first. He refused, demanding the questions on the spot. Sensing panic, I relented. Before proceeding though, I asked him what was so urgent that he needed the questions instantly. “The candidate is in the waiting room,” he quietly confessed. 

After getting some sense of his business and the position he was trying to fill, I told him to follow these  instructions without compromise, then call me as soon as the interview is over. 

1)   First, do not meet the candidate in the office. Take the candidate for a tour of the manufacturing facility, instead.

2)   As part of the tour, stop at work stations that best demonstrate some of the biggest operational problems the person taking the VP job would have to address immediiately. These turned out to be poor factory layout, too much scrap, outdated process control measures, and excess raw material inventory.

3)   At each work station, describe the problem for a few minutes, then ask the candidate “if you were to get this job, how would you fix it?” Then have a 10-15 minute give-and-take discussion around his ideas. Based on this, evaluate the candidate on his insight, the quality of the questions and the soundness of his approach for implementing a solution.

4)   When you’re done with this line of questioning, ask the candidate to describe something he’s already accomplished that’s most comparable to the problem needing fixing. Spend another 10-15 minutes on getting specific details about this, including names, dates, metrics, type of equipment used, how vendors were managed, how labor problems were solved, who was on the team, how these people were managed and the results achieved. Don’t be satisfied with superficial or general answers. I told him he must push to get actual details even if painful, and especially if he already thought the person was hirable.

5)   Then move on to the other work stations, describe each problem, and ask the same two questions   

6)   It should take at least 90 minutes to complete the tour. When done, tell the person you’re impressed with his background, and will get back to him in few days after seeing some other candidates. Then call me and we can discuss your reaction and figure out next steps. 

The call came three hours later. The owner’s insight was profound. He said the candidate aced the problem-solving questions, but didn’t have any evidence of achieving comparable results. He told me the candidate was assertive, insightful and clearly understood the problems that needed to be solved. However, the owner said the candidate’s answers to the comparable accomplishment questions were vague, shallow and short. He went on to say it was like talking to two different people. One was eloquent, animated and confident, describing how he’d solve the problems. The other was like a fish out of water, hesitant and unsure, lacking details, along with confidence. He concluded the candidate was probably a great consultant or staff person, but one who couldn’t be left alone in charge of a factory. This was rather insightful when you consider he only had a 10-minute course in interviewing under his belt. 

He then gave me the search assignment. We filled it in about a month. The person hired took the same tour, to the same spots and answered the same questions. The difference though was our candidate could not only tell the owner how he’d solve the problems, but he had also accomplished something comparable. Also critical to this true story, the person hired was not from the same industry, had different academic credentials than listed in the job-description, and had less overall experience. More important, not only did he successfully eliminate the initial four problems once on-the-job, but another half-dozen or so, too. 

Moral: If you know what you need done it only takes two questions to figure out if a candidate is competent and motivated to do it.

COURTESY : - http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121028234540-15454-guinness-record-for-the-shortest-interview-course-on-record

Customer care...

This article depicts the emotions of the dissatisfied customer, how deficiently the company failed to provide the satisfactory services to the customer. This customer, Michael, got so much disappointed that he published an article on the internet expressing severe grievances against the poor services rendered to him. He is satisfied with the quality of the product but yet services offered after the sale of the product failed to persuade him.

This article is the best example of how a dissatisfied customer can damage your goodwill and cause reduction in your company’s profits. Now, this article is available on the internet and can be accessed and reviewed by thousands of people resulting tangible and intangible loss to the Skype Company. It clearly shows that one dissatisfied customer can spread around a word and tells other 20 people not to pursue this product.

Therefore, customers’ satisfaction should always be kept on TOP priority. Company should exert optimum efforts to satisfy its customers. Manufacturing or developing companies should bear in mind that there are three levels of a product which are -

1.    Core Product – Benefits

2.    Actual Product – Quality, Branding, Colour, Features, Style

3.    Augmented Product – Customer Care, Warranties, Delivery, Installation

Skype Company’s representative or the customer care unit failed to render the expected quality services resulting in the dissatisfaction to the customer. Customers are more concerned with the product and the services provided to them when they have paid for that product, the same incident experienced by Michael in this article. Therefore, to succeed in this global village, Skype needs to improve its services to generate more satisfied and contented customers. 

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION:

 The customer satisfaction is defined as the degree to which customer expectations of a product or service are met or exceeded.

 Corporate and individual customers may have widely differing reasons for purchasing a product or service and therefore any measurement of satisfaction will need to be able to take into account such differences. The quality of after-sales service can also be a curial factor in influencing any purchasing decision. More and more companies are striving, not just for customer satisfaction, but for customer delight, that extra bit of added value that may lead to increased customer loyalty. Any extra added value, however, will need to be carefully coasted.

 The strong relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty is widely known, as are the dramatic financial benefits of keeping existing customers versus acquiring new ones. I am quoting the saying of Professor Claes Fornell, Director of the National Quality Research Center, University of Michigan and Chairman of CFI Group, “as long repeat business is important and as long as customers have choice, there are no shortcuts: you have to satisfy your customer or they will find someone else who will.” Therefore, companies have to pay significant attention on the customer satisfaction which leads to the customer retention.

There is a famous saying that “Customer is always Right.” In today’s competitive global market, companies have to provide the best quality product and other augmented services in order to satisfy the customers and also to retain them resulting increase in the profits.

If I compare the Skype product of Online Chatting Service Software with the MSN or Yahoo Online Chatting Service Software is almost the same or even the Skype product is slightly on the better edge but the thing which has made the major difference is the Customer Services rendered by the MSN and Yahoo Companies, is exemplary. They are achieving customers’ loyalty by providing them the satisfied services.

Following are the few suggestions for the Skype Company to excel in this highly competitive global marketplace –

1.    Skype Company should provide the relevant information readily available to its valued and esteemed customers for the ease of communication.

2.    Skype Company should initiate the training programs for the improvement and development of its staff members specially who are in direct customer contact.

3.    Skype Company should adopt the proactive approach of handling customers by calling and asking them the assistance, if needed any.

4.    Significant importance to be given to the customers.

5.    Customers’ feedback and suggestions should always be happily accepted and welcomed as it provides you the platform to understand the customer wants for further improvements.

In the last, I will sum up my review on the attached article by saying that it is far less costly to keep existing customers than to win new ones. Loyal customers buy more products and help in bring in more business by recommending your product to others. So if customer loyalty is the goal, then the company’s efforts should begin with the knowledge of what constitutes value to his customers and the market.

Company should always keep on improvising so as to achieve a greater profitability. This can be achieved by knowing the market well, i.e. understanding exactly what the customer needs. By discovering what the customer’s needs, the company can begin to understand how its products and the services provide value for its customers leading to the customer satisfaction and resulting in the retention of the customer.

CUSTOMER :- http://www.hozpitalityplus.com/profiles/blog/show?id=3268079%3ABlogPost%3A264568&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post