The Price of (Not) Speaking Truth to Power

"Are you familiar with the term willful blindness?" This was the question that floored the Murdochs at Tuesday's parliamentary select committee hearing because it cut right through the narrative News International executives have been spinning to counter the hacking scandal that has engulfed the media group in recent weeks.

Innocent ignorance has been NI's defense from the start. Rupert put too much trust in his key lieutenants, James could not be expected to know every detail of the NI operation and Rebekah merely delegated responsibility to her staff and relied on their good judgement. Those at the top could not be expected to know everything that was going on in NI and, besides, who could have anticipated that the work of a few rogue freelancers would undermine the entire News Corp empire?

As a performance, it was neither convincing nor original. We have seen and heard it all before from leaders during other crises. Consider the Royal Bank of Scotland, BP, Enron and Lehman Brothers, Fred Goodwin, Tony Hayward, Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay variously professed ignorance, surprise and contrition at the corporate disasters that occurred on their watch, but the fact is that they all had countless opportunities to step in and deal with the systemic failures that launched their respective crises.

Reminding leaders that there is a difference between ignorance and deniability is fundamental for an organisation's health and, perhaps, survival. The Murdochs looked distinctly uncomfortable when confronted with the concept of "willful blindness," a legal term that recognizes that if you intentionally fail to be informed about matters that make you liable, you are still responsible in law. In other words, it is a leader's responsibility to ensure that they don't turn a blind eye to practices or complaints that could seriously damage their organisation's operations or reputation.

In my experience, most leaders understand that they must foster open and transparent cultures, keep their eyes open and take seriously any suggestions of wrongdoing. But there is a huge gulf between knowing and doing and I am not at all convinced that leaders are able to translate fine words into action. How many leaders are genuinely prepared to listen to people from every level in the organisation? How open are they to criticisms of their leadership and wider organizational practices? How many employees really have a voice? 

What are the channels and opportunities for communication? And what, if anything, changes as a result of speaking up?

Let's imagine a likely scenario at News International. A mid-level reporter on the News of the World, you are aware of rumors that senior reporters are using "creative" means to obtain information, including phone-tapping. You watch as your colleagues fall into line when the editor tells them to do everything it takes to get the story. You feel the high when a great story breaks and the editor is pleased. Soon you are the one who is being asked to get the story. What do you do? Challenge the status quo and risk losing your job, or just get on with it and get the promotion and rewards you feel you deserve?

We know how the story ended at the NoW. Employees who spoke up against dubious practices were ousted, while the collective failure to challenge the same practices resulted in the newspaper being closed and hundreds of jobs being lost. Meanwhile their leaders resigned, having accepted millions of pounds in severance pay.

Now consider the same scenario in your organisation. Are you being asked to do the impossible by your boss? Is he or she oblivious to your requests to be reasonable? Do you have serious concerns about operations or the company's strategy? Do you have information that they really need to hear? Do you go out on a limb to challenge your boss or accept that there is nothing you can do? Do you risk losing your job for failing to get that message across?

It is not easy to speak truth to power, whether it is telling the boss he or she is wrong or owning up to one's own mistakes. Bosses have many means to intimidate — by position, power, personality or even wealth and a sense of entitlement. And even if they do not openly intimidate, most executives expect and assume that employees will not question them and company policy, or, if they do, that they will go quietly. Those who see wrongdoing and are impelled to speak up or "go public" can be condemned for not being team-players or branded as troublemakers.

Albert O. Hirschmann, a social scientist writing in the 1970s, suggested that employees who disagree with company policy have three options: "exit, voice, and loyalty." In other words:

1. Offer a principled resignation
2. Try to change the policy (speak truth to power)
3. Remain loyal "team players."

In truth, most people choose option three, the path of least resistance. This was the story at the NoW: its leaders probably turned a blind eye, staff swallowed their moral objections and did what they had to, knowing that lacked the power to change things and that they would probably be punished if they attempted to do so.

What are your thoughts on telling truth to power? What are your experiences or observations? Do you have a real voice in your organisation? As always, your thoughts and comments illuminate, inform and develop the discussion — so I look forward to hearing them! 

The Price of (Not) Speaking Truth to Power
Gill Corkindale
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:50:25 GMT

Nobody Has Time for Interns

Interns take note: energy and enthusiasm are no longer enough. You've got to bring something more meaningful to the table.

A friend and senior executive at Yelp recently shared how busy she was balancing a demanding job, a busy travel schedule, and a newborn at home. We were catching up at a Northwestern University alumni event; so naturally I suggested she take on a student as a summer intern. She looked at me square in the eye, without a trace of irony and stated, "I have no time for an intern."

Isn't the whole point of an intern to make your life easier? When an overworked young Gen Y executive says she has no time for an intern, isn't something wrong with our system? Interns aren't supposed to be a drain on time, energy or resources.

In practice, however, they can be. In today's competitive economy, where everyone is doing more with less, you've got to figure out a way to be value add from the start. Interns, you might just have to come up with your own projects, figure out how to insert yourself into team projects, or just navigate this crazy world of work all on your own. Here are several ideas of how to do that:

Take charge

One of the best ways to get ahead at work is to make your boss' life easier or better. If you want an internship at Yelp, Everyblock, or with a small-business start-up, go ahead and propose your own projects. Think about areas that interest you and where you can add value. Then go ahead and pitch yourself as an integral part of the team. Show your new employer how you're going to solve a specific problem, fill in a missing need, or simply be someone who can hit the ground running on a specific and manageable task. The "here's what I can do for you" line is a lot more powerful than an "I'm excited to learn and do whatever you ask of me."

Play to your strengths

Gen Y: You and your peers are tech-savvy to a degree most of your Gen X and Boomer counterparts simply can't match. You have an intricate and intuitive understanding of the power of social media and you're harnessing it in your personal lives daily. Think about how you can leverage your technological, well-connected selves to bring new skills to the marketplace. Can you set up online promotions for a company? Launch a twitter campaign, create and manage a LinkedIn group or beta-test a Facebook marketing push? Everyone wants to jump on the social media bandwagon these days, but many organizations don't have the technical know-how to do it. Social networking/marketing presents a great opportunity to work on bite-size, measurable projects that you can start and finish during a summer internship.

Use the multiple-choice strategy

Contrary to popular belief, asking someone "How can I help?" isn't all that helpful. Sure, your intentions are good, but asking your manager or boss how or where you can pitch in creates work for him in coming up with something for you to do.

If you really want to impress, go to your manager and use the multiple-choice strategy:

"Chris, I want to be as helpful as possible so I've thought about a few areas where I can jump in and help out. Would you like me to start pulling together materials for next week's meeting, compile results from last week's polling data, or research the local statutes that we're basing the data on?"

Give Chris two or three concrete ideas of ways you can help out. It shows that you're thinking about how best to put yourself to work. It also shows that you're in the know, demonstrating for Chris that you have some idea about the workflow that's going on around you. More often that not, Chris will take you up on one or two of your ideas, or the offer may prompt him to come up with something different entirely. Either way, you'll make it easy on him to put you to work. Mission accomplished.

Don't give someone the excuse to say they don't have time for you. Take charge of your workload, play to your strengths ,and make it hard for someone to refuse your overtures of help. 

Nobody Has Time for Interns
Jodi Glickman
Wed, 20 Jul 2011 15:51:44 GMT

How The Murdoch Email And Website Hacks Could Happen To You

This week News Corp. execs James and Rupert Murdoch were dragged before a investigatory committee of Parliament over the U.K.'s phone-hacking scandal. Meanwhile hacktivists LulzSec decided to take matters into their own hands, and targeted the website of News Corp. paper The Sun, replacing its homepage with a faked edition. Shortly afterward, LulzSec said it had also acquired a huge amount of corporate emails from the Murdochs. They've since pledged not to release them, lest they compromise ongoing legal cases against News Corp. and its executives, but the Murdochs may still face having their email dirty laundry aired in the future.

How is this kind of hack pulled off? We spoke to our expert adviser, Nick Percoco of Trustwave's Spiderlabs, to gain an insight, based on his expertise as an ethical hacker--hired to pull off these kinds of attack by companies themselves.

The Website Hack, Simply Done

Website redirects are pretty common nowadays--it's a relatively low-grade kind of hack, and the other large online hacktivist group Anonymous was itself a victim of a website hack this week.

One redirect involves gaining access to the Domain Name Server infrastructure--the code and hardware that directs a visiting web surfer's browser to an IP address when you type in a web URL to a browser address bar (because servers call themselves a relatively boring set of numbers rather than companynameX.com). Hackers can do this by either a frontal password-cracking assault on the domain account at the relevant third party Domain Name managing company, or by pulling off a social engineering trick.

As Nick points out to us, it's relatively easy to call up a company like this, acting all frustrated and pretending to be a power user from News Corp. (or whatever the target is, picking something newsy) and say "this is related to the phone hacking scandal and we need to make some DNS changes and blah blah...I need to reset my password." If you're lucky, the person you're speaking to will be fairly junior in the company, and probably in their career, and with chutzpah you get the passwords and then access. 

Percoco highlights how powerful this attack is: "If I were to gain access to someone's DNS system, I could redirect the website in probably 30 seconds." Because once you're in, it's just a question of filling in a webform, or editing a file, clicking "save" and then anyone visiting companynameX.com is redirected to a different IP address, where you have your alternative web page.

The Website Hack, Done More Cleverly

A more sophisticated attack on a target, Percoco says, involves "trying to hack into their infrastructure directly"--more like the hacking you see in the movies. In his work, Percoco's worked with larger companies that have thousands of sites in their infrastructure. Some may be old, set up for something like a marketing campaign that has since ended. 

This is the hacker's in-point, because a site that's been sitting online for several years, without being upgraded or checked from a security standpoint, is bound to have vulnerabilities. This is because the cutting edge of cybersecurity and attacks will have moved on long since, but the old site hasn't been maintained to keep up. A very similar method was actually used by the LulzSec to access the Sun's online presence, through a "retired" server that was used to manage the Sun's micro website content.

A third way in, especially with a site like the Sun, is through its Content Management System, the code that organizes how stories are published to its website. By hacking into this, via a known exploit or simply by cracking a user password (such as may be used by a journalist working remotely, to gain access to their account), hackers can then gain access to the published web content on a target's website directly, and chaos will ensue. It's not always tricky to do this, because we are all pretty bad at using secure passwords. An attack like this is roughly what hit Gawker Media earlier this year. 

The Email Hack

LulzSec's attack on News Corp.'s email system has potentially more damaging implications. It's easy to restore your website, but there's possibly plenty of compromising, or at least private, data in a high-profile user's email account.

If LulzSec gained access to News Corp.'s web servers and other systems, presumably they could also gain access to other accounts, says Percoco, perhaps even an IP administrator's account or someone else who has access to mail servers. Via these sources, hackers could gain direct access to the company email account. 

"Firstly I'd try to see if they had any external web-based mail system, like a Microsoft Active Sync system," says Percoco, and then it's a game of working out a user name and guessing a user's weak password (and hoping the system lets you try a large number of times without locking the account).

Or, assuming you've gained access to the company's network via a website hack, you may be able to work out where user-account data is kept and then extract it. When you crack it, offline, you'd have a list of usernames and passwords directly. Then it would be as simple as pretending to be a new device like an iPhone syncing up to a perfectly normal user account, and you'd identify to the network as a real user--and then their whole email history is synced to your device. This likely wouldn't raise red flags with IT since it's exactly what happens when a genuine user connects to a real account.

What You Can Do To Protect Yourself

News Corp. was pretty aggressively penetrated by hackers, who seem to have carried out a coordinated and sophisticated assault. But many companies are similarly vulnerable and would have their business compromised if 4GB of executive email was sequestered and plopped onto a file-sharing website. The defenses are manyfold, but pretty straightforward: Keep your web properties well managed, and ensure that no old "appendix" webpages are left online with vulnerabilities ready to be infected. This plan could even involve making sure there's good information sharing among IT staff--who tend to have a pretty high churn rate. Companies can check their online systems repeatedly, and also hire white-hat hackers to detect loopholes on contract--before a hacker with malicious intent does it for you.

How The Murdoch Email And Website Hacks Could Happen To You
Kit Eaton
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:15:30 GMT

Mind Mapping: A Simpler Way to Capture Information

This visualization tool can enable practitioners to make sense of large volumes of interconnected data and fast-track implementation of Lean Six Sigma.


Hospitals and health plans know that the high cost of care is squeezing the U.S. economy. That’s why so many of them are using Lean Six Sigma to control spending by refining internal processes—while still satisfying customers in a highly competitive market.

A major health care consortium based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area recently used Lean Six Sigma to find ways to improve its health insurance validation process and thereby improve customer satisfaction.  With a looming deadline before them, Ralph Jarvis, principle of Jarvis Business Solutions, and his staff used “mind-mapping” to kick off and manage a Lean implementation that resulted in a dozen ways for the hospital to improve its insurance validation process.

Mind mapping software uses visual shorthand to capture in one screen the kind of complexity and depth that might otherwise take many pages of text to represent. It does this by: encouraging the use of keywords and phrases, rather than full sentences; providing a library of icons that can be used to express graphically what otherwise requires words; and enabling users to place each piece of data into spatial context with related pieces.

As a result of this technique, the healthcare consortium team came up with a dozen ways to improve the company’s insurance validation process, which, when fully tested, is slated to be rolled out to 11 affiliated hospitals across Texas.

“The goal was to improve the patient experience by reducing wait times,” Jarvis said. “By improving the way it captured and reused information, the hospital could reduce the amount of paperwork needed to move patients within and between hospitals in the consortium."

What’s the Problem?


Jarvis’s Lean team decided early on to use the DMAIC methodology. Critical to DMAIC is the ability to gain a clear understanding of the “voice of the client.” Experience has taught Jarvis that while the client may have already identified a main problem, it often turns out that the real problem is somewhere else. Part of the Lean team’s job was to combine the DMAIC roadmap with empirical data to identify and then solve the real problem behind the validation process.

Jarvis and his team held initial brainstorming sessions with key hospital stakeholders. The goal was to gather ideas and insights that would help identify potential trouble spots. Jarvis knew that one of the best ways to manage the kind of divergent-to-convergent thinking typical of brainstorming was to use mind mapping.

As can be seen in Figure 1, mind maps capture information in a format that resembles the top-down view of a tree, with a central core, main branches that reach out from the center, and then branches that get smaller (sub-branches) and smaller (sub-sub-branches) the further out you go from the trunk.

Figure 1: Mind Map of Plan to Improve Insurance Validation Process

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using this visual metaphor to capture their thinking, the team discovered that what they thought was one problem was, in fact, three separate but connected problems: One customer-focused, one focused on the hospital and the doctors, and the third focused on insurance. 

A Better Way to Take Notes

For each problem they created a project team. Each team included from 15 to 20 participants, from senior executives to the data entry clerks. And each team used mind mapping to keep track of their progress.

Mind mapping made note-taking a central byproduct of their meeting process. One person on each team was responsible for creating the notes. Unlike most note-taking methodologies, however, mind mapping enables that person to be an active participant in the meeting. Projected on a wall or screen, mind maps gave each team instant feedback on its thinking process and:

• Created very accurate notes, with team members correcting errors or omissions as the notes are created.
• Kept teams focused and on track, their thinking displayed clearly before them.
• Turned into agendas for subsequent meetings, complete with assigned tasks and due dates.
• Provided a concise, content-dense way to archive team thinking.

However, the term “note taking” falls far short of describing the true power of mind mapping. Unlike typically static meeting notes, mind maps are alive and dynamic. As time passed and team members continually refined their thinking, they added new thoughts to the map and revised old ones.

Putting Meat on the Bones

Now that each teams had identified its respective problem, the next step was to add relevant data. The DMAIC road map is a data-driven process.  That’s why, as part of the DMAIC process, participants must agree at the beginning of the process to provide needed data. In a sustained environment, stakeholders from, say, accounting, IT, and process owners would capture that information through system usage. But in this case, the data wasn’t immediately accessible. 

One data set the hospital teams needed was a clear understanding of the current registration process (see Figure 2). First they mapped out the process itself: Someone has an appointment to see a doctor, they come in to the hospital, they register, and their insurance information is taken down— as is their address, medical history, doctor, appointment time and reason for seeking medical care.

Figure 2: Mind Map of Current Registration Process

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The team set about linking the maps to new information and data in the form of reports, spreadsheets, slide shows, and websites. The mind maps’ drag-and-drop functionality enabled them to place supporting data immediately adjacent to the relevant insight or idea.

The team also used mind maps to analyze “internal” data – the information that is created when individuals are able to react to external data and interpret the data based on insight born from intimate familiarity with the subject. This juxtaposition of information and previous experience is where some of the best thinking and planning can take place.

Rather than being seen as isolated items or bullets frozen into a list, mind maps treat each piece of data, each idea, as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can be moved around at will to find the place where they fit best (see Figure 3). This kind of flexibility invariably sparked creativity as team members could see, understand and build on each other’s thinking.

Figure 3: Example of the Flexibility of Mind Maps

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The fun part about any kind of consulting,” Jarvis said, “is when you get to brainstorm with the client, to extract information regarding the issues, regarding the problem. This is an opportunity to tap in on the creative side of your clients. Once analyzed, this information can lay the foundation for a successful project.”

From Bird’s Eye to Worm’s Eye


Analysis of this much information and ideas requires a degree of dexterity that traditional office tools are hard pressed to manage. Mind mapping uses visual shorthand to capture in one screen the kind of complexity and depth that might otherwise take 10 or 20 pages of text to represent. It does this by encouraging the use of key words and phrases, rather than full sentences; by providing a library of icons that can be used to express graphically what otherwise requires words; and by enabling users to place each piece of data into spatial context with related pieces.

This much information on one screen could be overwhelming. But another advantage of mind mapping over traditional business documents is the ability to selectively hide information. Mind map branches can, with the click of a button, collapse to reduce clutter on the screen and focus attention on a small part of the map.

Conversely, the branches also can be expanded to enable users to drill down to as much detail as they have stored in the map. By clicking on the “+” signs on the map, users can reveal additional information. That information can range from a quick thought jotted down on the fly, to entire reports, relevant emails, or information typed into a “notes” field associated with that branch. The chain links icon above indicates that additional documents or websites are hyperlinked to the branch.

The end result is an easy-to-manipulate, content-dense, and yet easily navigated kind of “information object” – a single document that gives users intuitive access to a vast amount and variety of information – all in one location.

With its initial analysis completed, the team then switched from mind mapping to project management to start optimizing the current validation process. Jarvis used a mind mapping software suite that included both mind mapping and project management capabilities to help them through this phase of the project.

Once Jarvis and his team implemented a number of control systems to monitor the reconfigured insurance validation process, mind mapping again served a key role as a concise visual overview of the new process – an information object to which new notes, screen shots, user input, and data could be added. In keeping with the final DMAIC stage of controlling the future state process, this single view helped ensure that the hospital could create a record of process imperfections and how they were corrected to keep the new process flowing smoothly.

Mind mapping’s ability to transform unstructured brainstorming into a highly structured project plan enabled Jarvis’ team to move quickly while still keeping its eyes on the main objectives established at the beginning of the project. The combined power of mind mapping plus project management supported his team through the entire project lifecycle, he said, and made it possible for the group to provide hospital management with 12 critical recommendations for its customer satisfaction improvement.

Adding to the Lean Six Sigma Toolbox

“What you're really trying to do with Six Sigma is to create a process that eliminates defects – all the things that don’t add value to the end customer,” Jarvis said. “You want to increase the customer's satisfaction with your products or services, and reduce costs associated with defects and inefficiencies. It’s all about focusing on what you need to get to the marketplace and satisfy the customer’s needs.”

Jarvis’ statement fits into a concise paragraph, but the process of following DMAIC from initial brainstorming through problem definition, data aggregation and measurement, process improvement, and finally control of the future process can be quite complex. Mind mapping is just one of the many tools that seasoned managers like Jarvis can implement with DMAIC to help streamline and simplify complexity.

Mind Mapping: A Simpler Way to Capture Information 

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:37:07 GMT

Building a Six Sigma Project Team

Following three simple rules can make the process of selecting and leading teams less painful and more successful.

If you were selecting a basketball team, what criteria would you use to select the players? What about if you were selecting an academic team? If the selection of a process improvement team were the objective, what criteria would you use?

The answers to these questions may seem simple, but Belts can sometimes make things complicated. For example, too much attention to politics and control can spoil a team’s chemistry. There are some standard rules, though, that can make the team-building process less painful and more successful for Six Sigma professionals.

Three Simple Rules

1) Don’t be too rigid. The makeup of a team will need to change a little as it moves through the process improvement phases. There should be a core group of members all the way through, but often there will be a shifting of other members depending upon what the team needs at the time.

There are three main types of team members: regular, ad hoc and resource members.

• Regular team members – They attend all meetings, unless advised otherwise, and participate in all team activities.
• Ad hoc team members – They participate only when the team requires their expertise.
• Resource team members – Their meeting attendance is at the discretion of the team leader. These team members are sources of information, coaching assistance or resources (time, money, etc.).

2) Match talents to specific needs. A process improvement team should include a process owner, a process expert, a budget and accounting specialist, someone from engineering (if applicable), and maybe even a stakeholder (customer). It also can be helpful to place people on the team who may work against you if left out. Being a team member will give them buy-in.

3) Determine a common purpose. The purpose of the team should come from building a common identity. The team should know what the business expects from them, as well as the known roadblocks and limitations.

Respecting the Team

The three rules are a good starting place, but team leaders still face many challenges. For instance, what should a team leader do if a team member is trying to sabotage the team’s work? The answer begins and ends with respect.

Positive team member behavior revolves around respect, built upon a willingness to show consideration and appreciation for others. With respect, there is progress and synergy (alignment). Without it, there is stagnation and disintegration. The team environment is a micro-society. A team that is respectful of others, and the team as a whole, will have the best chance of success.

The appreciation of diversity of opinion is the starting point of positive team dynamics. The point of putting a team together is to have a diversity of opinion. All opinions and ideas have value and contribute to developing a best solution or result. To be successful, team members should recognize and celebrate diversity of opinion. This means looking for the useful and positive in everyone’s comments and questions.

Agreeing to disagree is the adult method of dealing with conflict. This is how a team gains consensus. It also is a means to allow diversity of opinion to exist and drive the team forward. By agreeing to disagree, team members do not have to let go of their opinions to move forward.

Another important aspect of respect within a team is attendance. Team members have to be present in both body and mind in order to contribute toward the team’s success. If a team member is absent, that person does not contribute and slows the team’s progress. A team member who is present yet unengaged in discussions presents a similar problem.

Attendance ties in with the completion of action items. Because teams use tasks and timelines to move a project forward, action items become the vehicle for team progress. The team assigns action items to a responsible person and a due date is set. This makes the team’s progress predictable and the distribution of resources easier to control. When team members do not take action items seriously, the team cannot function.

When a team is functioning correctly, everyone is contributing –participating, voicing their opinions and adding their collective brainpower to the team’s efforts. One moment you’re giving information, the next you’re listening, and the next you’re negotiating. The resulting high energy level speeds the team’s progress. It’s also more fun.

Team Leadership

The team leader plays an important role in making sure that all team members contribute. This role may include asking someone’s opinion or slowing down a team member who is too dominating. In either case, every team member’s dignity is important.

The responsible person on a team is called a leader for a reason. A leader is expected to manage, not supervise the team effort. This implies that exceptional leadership skills are necessary for those responsible for overseeing an improvement team. Leader are more effective than supervisors, in this case, because leaders get their power from people being willing to follow while supervisors get their power from higher levels of management. In fact, a supervisory approach (a command and control environment) to team management may even prevent success. Process improvement is a “What do you think?” activity, not a “Do as you’re told” routine.

Team Member Behavior

Some types of team member behavior can hinder a team’s progress. An example might be team members who are there because it is part of their performance evaluation. These people aren’t there for the team, they are there to service their own needs. Such team members will usually find pleasure in hindering team progress with arguments that have no substance or by being unhelpful with action items.

The “card player” is another example of an ineffective team member. These people quietly pay attention to the ebb and flow of power. They align themselves with the winning side on issues and rarely express their real opinions. For them, it is all about keeping themselves on the “correct side” (the prevailing point of view) of issues. This kind of participation is more political than constructive. As a result, their contribution can bias the results of team activities, such as scoring matrices, brainstorming and multi-voting.

An especially dangerous attitude is associated with team members who are there to represent their bosses. These people follow orders. They will express the views of their bosses rather than their own opinion. If this behavior becomes a means of controlling the team, there will be problems. This boss’ opinion can be valuable as long as it is not subversive. The danger for the team is when the truth is suppressed or conclusions are biased because someone in a position of power is protecting the status quo or attacking something that the team is working on.

When Conflicts Arise

Dealing with conflict is an important team function. Not only is conflict unavoidable in a team environment, it is desirable. The team should cherish conflict that results from diversity of opinion. However, the team leader will need to intervene when the conflict becomes personal or destructive. The bulk of the responsibility for this job lies with the team leader, but some responsibility lies with the other team members as well. A set of ground rules will help the team prevent conflict from dragging it away from its mission.

The first rule is that conflict will be taken offline when it becomes a problem. During a meeting, this may mean taking a break, changing the subject or both. This strategy allows the conflict to be isolated from the rest of the team. Before reconvening, the warring parties must agree to disagree or to develop a plan to address their differences at another time.

Another rule is to obtain an agreement from all team members to assume a team-oriented perspective during conflict situations. The point is that the team’s focus is not on individuals. At an adult level of understanding it should be clear that, in most cases, what is good for the team is also good for the individual. It is not, “What’s in this for me?” Instead, it should be, “What’s in this for us?”

A team also needs ground rules for conflict outside of meetings. Conflict outside of meetings can derail the efforts of the team as effectively as conflict during meetings. Undermining teammates, or the team’s work, with people who are not team members will weaken the team’s efforts in favor of individual goals. Team issues are the team’s business, unless the team leader feels that the situation is becoming unmanageable. Then the team leader can go outside the team for help.

Dealing with conflict is all about respect. If a team has individuals who do not show mutual respect to their teammates, it will not be effective. From a team-leader perspective, there may come a time when a team member must be removed from the team. This is a severe action and is a last resort. Making an enemy of a former team member will create internal and external repercussions for the team.

Above all, the team must keep their eye on the ball and control the pressure to spend time on individual or political concerns. A team that maintains this focus has the best chance of success.

About the Author: Walt McIntyre has spent 30 years in the business world, holding positions from apprentice to vice president. Throughout that time he has worked in both the manufacturing and transactional sides of business operations. He is currently the chief operations officer of Nationwide Parts Distributors in Jacksonville, Fla., USA. He can be reached at walt.m@lmpiblog.com.

Building a Six Sigma Project Team Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:20:04 GMT

HR Metrics

Here are some sample HR metrics that can be used to measure performance:

Turnover

The rate of employees living the organization and being replaced by new employees.

Turnover = Number of employees who left the organization / Total headcount.

Cost of Turnover

Cost associated with loosing current employees and replacing them with new employees. Example: Cost of hiring, Cost of training, Cost of Overtime.

Involuntary Turnover (Termination Rate)

The rate of terminating employees due to poor performance.

Involuntary Turnover = Number of terminated employees / Total headcount.

Voluntary Turnover

The rate of employees leaving the organization based on their own decision.  

Hiring Cycle

Number of days from employee leaving the position to new employee starting to work in the position.  

Cost of Employee Training

Total training cost divided by total headcount.

Safety

Number of accidents per period.

Lost Time

Number of days lost per period due to absenteeism, accidents, sick days, etc. divided by total working days.

http://www.mrdashboard.com/HRMetrics.html

Quebec to Reduce Healthcare Cost Increases Via Lean Six Sigma

In an effort to keep the costs of universal health coverage down despite an aging population, the Canadian province of Quebec adopted a Lean Six Sigma-based approach, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

"There is no perfect health system, but we are striving for both excellence and sustainability," said Quebec's Minister of Health and Social Services Yves Bolduc, in a recent presentation at PAHO headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The focus on process improvement efforts such as eliminating ineffective or wasteful practices, promoting coordinated teamwork among health professionals, emphasizing integrated care models and encouraging the use of electronic medical records and tele-medicine has led Quebec to become home to "one of the best healthcare systems in the world," according to Bolduc, as quoted by the news source.

The resulting efficiencies - which include the reduction of unnecessary referrals and the improvement of patient outcomes - lowered the province's annual increase in healthcare costs from 5.7 percent in 2009 to 2010 to a projected 5 percent over the next three years, according to the news source.

Since 1970, it has been compulsory for every eligible resident or temporary resident to be covered under Quebec's Health Insurance Plan, according to the provincial government's website.

Quebec to Reduce Healthcare Cost Increases Via Lean Six Sigma
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:46:38 GMT

When a Leader Aims to Please

It's amazing how much one troubled employee can undermine a department's productivity. A staff member who routinely makes cutting remarks, elevates him or herself at the expense of others, or spreads undermining gossip can sink a department's morale fast. Otherwise positive and productive team members begin to dread coming to work, and the group's best thinking gets siphoned off the company's mission as everyone scrambles to stay out of the bully's crosshairs.

The question on the tip of everyone's tongue when this type of nightmare takes hold is, "Why doesn't senior management do something?" It's the job of the boss to enforce consequences when someone gets out of line. Emotionally exhausted peers often complain passionately and privately to their superiors in these situations. They fantasize that the troublemaker will be removed, put on probation, or at least given a firm reprimand. Unfortunately, in many such cases, justice seems to proceed at a glacial pace. What's the holdup?

When an office bully starts running wild, there are often two employees to blame. The easy one to spot is the one creating the emotional carnage. The less obvious, but equally culpable, individual is often the manager who fumbles the job of taking this employee to task promptly. The problem limiting this manager's potential is often embedded in his or her power style.

In my new book, Power Genes, I explore the link between a person's family history and the power style this person frequently displays on the job. These power styles emerge from the emotional and behavioral responses people internalize from dealing with authority figures in the family system.

Many of the best leaders and managers in the business world operate from the Pleaser power style. Pleasers are hard-working, inspire loyalty, and tend to listen thoughtfully to their clients and colleagues. When they are operating from their strengths, Pleasers can become the glue that holds a positive corporate culture together. 

Unfortunately, when their blind spots kick in, Pleasers can be so fearful of losing approval that they don't confront challenges promptly and directly.

Scarcity issues within the family system are at the heart of the Pleaser power style. Due to outside stressors, which can range from financial struggles to preoccupation with a sick relative, Pleasers often don't get the attention they crave from their caregivers early in life. As a result, many Pleasers grow up hungry for validation and hard-wired to take care of others. They are also easily disconcerted by the withdrawal of approval.

Roger, a vice president of sales and marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, was one such Pleaser. He reached out for coaching when one of his reporting senior marketing staff members was grabbing credit for other people's work and undermining his department's efforts.

"I'm at a loss when it comes to managing Cynthia," Roger confessed. "She's got other members of the team flying all over the country to visit our managed care clients, and she's grabbing credit for their hard work by cultivating a personal relationship with the president of the firm, Jonathan. Whenever I try to take her to task for this, she slyly reminds me that Jonathan hired her and insinuates that she's being groomed for my job. Frankly, I don't know whether this is true or not. I'm too busy burning the midnight oil around here to play politics. However, the more she exaggerates her efforts at the expense of the rest of the team, the more our clients are starting to notice that our team has problems."

Roger is the oldest son of an electrical engineer in the Midwest. Having grown up watching his parents struggle to make ends meet, Roger learned early in life to put his nose to the grindstone and support the people around him. While he longed to advance in his career, Roger had developed a bad habit of avoiding conflict. Years of longing for attention from his loving but preoccupied parents had conditioned him to avoid making waves. Unfortunately, Roger's need for approval turned into a handicap on the job; he wasted time because he couldn't express his authentic voice or manage his subordinates effectively.

What Roger really didn't want to waste was the firm's resources. Cynthia's overly zealous self-promotion was not only becoming costly in terms of morale, it was beginning to impact the firm's reputation. By studying the power style of the Pleaser, Roger began to realize that it was also becoming costly in terms of his personal reputation: the more the rest of the team complained about Cynthia, and the longer it took him to address this issue, the weaker he was looking as a manager.

When Roger realized that he needed to have a direct conversation with Jonathan about the way Cynthia was interacting with the rest of the team, the results surprised him. "I was wondering how long it was going to take you to come to me with this," Jonathan told him. "Frankly, if you hadn't trusted me enough to have this conversation, I might have had to start thinking about replacing you. Cynthia's going to be a great rainmaker, but you should be keeping her in line — not me."

Learning to overcome blind spots ensures that Pleasers won't lose their authentic voice and will be able to speak the truth when their subordinates — and their organizations — need to hear from them.

When a Leader Aims to Please
Maggie Craddock
Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:03:23 GMT

Enchant Your Employees

Enchantment defines a relationship with employees that is deep, delightful, and long-lasting. If you can enchant your employees, they will work harder, longer, and smarter for you — and, ideally, you for them too. Here are the ten best ways to enchant your employees.

1. Provide a MAP. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink explains the big three of what employees want from a boss: an opportunity to Master new skills while working Autonomously towards a high Purpose. There are lots of other things that might attract employees, but a MAP is what really enchants them.
   
2. Empower them to do what's right. A logical offshoot of autonomous work is that you trust your employee enough to make the right decision for customers. When you show this level of trust and empower employees, they do the best work that they can.
   
3. Judge your results and their intentions. Most managers are harsher judges of the results of their employees than they are of their own results: "You didn't meet quota, but I really tried to meet mine." This is the opposite of what an enchanting manager does. Be a tougher judge of your results than your employees.
   
4. Address your shortcomings first. Now that you know what to judge, now you need to know what to fix. No employee is perfect, but neither are you. Before you pontificate about what your employees should fix, talk about how you could have done a better job yourself.
   
5. Suck it up. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs is an enchanting guy. Why is he enchanting? It's because he's willing to suck it up and do whatever it takes to get the job done. Nothing is too dirty for him. Employees need to know that you'll do the dirty, hard, and frustrating jobs too.
   
6. Don't ask them to do what you wouldn't do. The flip side of the willingness to suck it up is that you never ask employees to do something that you wouldn't do. If you're not going to fly coach class from San Francisco to Mumbai, don't ask them to either. This is a great philosophy to apply to employees, customers, partners, and vendors.
   
7. Celebrate success. On the other hand, when your organization succeeds, take some time out to celebrate. Macho and relentless toil in the face of success (or failure) is over-rated. And the best kind of success, and the best way to celebrate success, is as a group.
   
8. Find a devil's advocate. A devil's advocate who argues against what management says is a good person. He or she will improve your product or service by pointing out weaknesses, foster internal communication because disenchanted employees have someone to talk to, and show that rocking the boat and divergent thinking is acceptable.
   
9. Tell them you want them. According to Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, the three most important words during the recruitment process is "We want you." This is true not only during the recruiting phase but everyday of your organization's existence. If you want to enchant your employees, ensure that they know they're wanted every day they come in and especially every night they go home.
   
10. Don't rely on money. I'm not saying you shouldn't pay people fairly — even well — but money is usually the enemy of enchantment. It can pollute relationships because it muddies the motivation: Are people doing this because it's their job or because they truly believe in the product or service?

If you embrace these ten recommendations and truly aspire to enchant your employees, you'll be a much better boss, and the world will be a kinder, gentler, and happier place.

Enchant Your Employees Guy Kawasaki Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:44:28 GMT

Living With Your Deadlines

Don't panic if your month is full of red marks!

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Douglas Adams, 1952-2001

Do you love deadlines? I bet you don’t. In fact, I can’t name anyone who loves them… Except it is in the witty sense that Mr. Adams puts into them. In fact, I hate the sound of them whooshing as they pass, luckily I’ve learnt how to live with them, and you can too.

Dealing with deadlines

Visualise them: This should be a no-brainer, but you’d be amazed at how many people fall in this trap. You need some calendaring system to track your deadlines. It does not matter if it is a fancy iPad application that syncs through Dropbox with your office server or a sheet attached with duct tape to your front door. Anything will work as long as you are consistent and use it.

The best tool should have at least a monthly view, to have a clear map of what waits to be done in the next 30 days. It should also be effortless to add a new task or check what is left to do: if it requires even a little of your energy or time, you’ll end up not doing and the dreared whoosh will come again.

Don’t fret out as they approach: The worse thing you can do when deadlines are looming is enter panic mode. If you think you can make it to the deadline there is no reason to get nervous… And if you don’t think you can make it, try anyway. A missed deadline is not the end of the world, but your boss/client will be happier if he knows you’ve given it everything you got.

Plan ahead of time: Another no-brainer that people tend to miss. As soon as you have a deadline for a project, start planning how you will solve it within this deadline. This can be working every day non-stop for 8 hours (a sign that this deadline was a too harsh) or doing X before Y.

If you don’t have a plan you’ll end up working twice as much as you would with a plan. And probably will add a few sleepless nights due to the anxiety of not knowing exactly what is left. More about this in the next tip.

Break the big into the simple: When you have long-winded deadlines (anything bigger than two weeks should go in this category), you should split the project into smaller sub-projects, and assign each of them their own mini-deadline. This goes together with planning: you turn a big and hairy project into a set of small furry balls you can always keep under control.

Don’t overdo this: there is no point in having a deadline each day for a certain project, but it will help having at least something to finish every 3 or 4 days.

Be flexible: Before agreeing to a deadline, estimate how much time this project will eat… And add half that to the result. In other words, if you think a project will only need one week, try to get a 10 day deadline. This is not to help your slacking, mind you. This is to allow for unplanned emergencies. Everybody has a tendency to underestimate a task’s difficulty, and even if you are just lucky and the deadline is very sharp, life can always get in the way. Very tight deadlines can be broken just by waking up to a strong migraine.

If you always add a small security gap to your deadlines, most of your projects will be delivered before the agreed deadline. This will put you ahead of the competition, nobody ever delivers before a deadline!

Do you know how to deal with your deadlines? Or are you just hanging from them?

Living With Your Deadlines
RBerenguel
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:00:59 GMT

Make Your Company a Habit

What makes you effective at work? Perhaps you'd say it is your excellent communication skills, your deep background in your field, or perhaps your ability to think on your feet. Chances are, you wouldn't focus much on your habits. Yet your routines are a powerful force that affects your daily behavior.

Habits are associations that relate aspects of your world to an action. Your brain is a habit creating machine that allows you to perform those actions without having to think. An organized workspace allows you to focus your thoughts on the difficult new problems that you face without having to think about mundane aspects of work like filling out routine forms, pulling out a sheet of paper to take notes, or picking up the phone to answer a call. Indeed, if you move to a new office you probably find the first few weeks uncomfortable because your old habits no longer work and you have not yet developed new ones. You suddenly find yourself thinking about all kinds of simple tasks.

Whenever there is a consistent relationship between the world and an action, and you repeat that action several times, you will develop a habit. This habit will form whether you practice the action deliberately or just repeat it in the course of your daily routine. Not only are habits crucial to your personal success, they are also central to the behavior of your customers. Unless you are in a business where you interact with each customer only once, your customers have habits related to their interactions with you. Here is what that means for your business.

Stop asking your customers why they do what they do. We all love surveys. You ask people questions, and they answer them. But if your customers are on autopilot much of the time, then they are not aware of many of the factors that influence their actions. That means that what people tell you in surveys and focus groups is not an accurate readout of what really influences their behavior. It is better to use methods to observe what people are doing than to ask them directly.

Learn your customers' habits. As much as your customers may like your business, they do not want to have to think about every interaction they have with you. Every time that you redesign a corporate website, a product's packaging, or a user interface, you are disrupting your customer's habits. Not only is it frustrating for customers to have to relearn how to do something they used to be able to do without thinking, each time your customer has to think, it opens up an opportunity for them to think about switching to a competitor.

Design for habits. When you do have to redesign something, make sure you know which aspects of the old design are influencing your customers' habits. Make an effort to keep those elements as consistent as possible to minimize the disruption of the new design.

Nurture new habits. Customers have to repeat a new behavior before it becomes a habit. The studies on habit development suggest that there are many factors that affect exactly how many repetitions that is, but 20 is not a bad start. Help customers repeat a new behavior enough times for a habit to form. Get to know how your customers interact with you and work to create that practice for them.

Influence the environment. Habits are affected by what is easily seen. If your customers need to use your product or service regularly, then you need to make sure it stays in their environment. For service companies, this means finding ways to stay front-of-mind. For product companies, make products attractive enough to be kept out rather than put away in a closet or drawer.

Disrupt habits for competitors. Chances are, there are at least a few people out there who could be your customers but are loyal to a competitor instead. Those people have habits too. Study the habits of people who use your competitors. Find ways to affect their environment to get them to think about their choices. Of course, you need to make sure that any changes you make don't disrupt the habits of the customers who are already loyal to you.

In the end, the importance of habits inverts a common wisdom about successful businesses. You may think that you want your customers to think about you often. In fact, you often want your customers to act without thinking.  

Make Your Company a Habit
Art Markman
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:10:52 GMT

Your Business Card Is A Billboard For Your Brand--What Does Yours Say?

If a brand can describe its core values and philosophy on its business card without a detailed description, the brand becomes a full representation of its vision.

I heard a story that a few years ago Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, happened to drive past one of his stores. In passing, he noticed something wasn't quite right with the characteristic blue stucco. So, he pulled over, parked, and went in search of the local manager. Needless to say, the manager was a little taken aback when the head of the company asked why this store had chosen to use this type of plaster. The manager proudly explained that this store had saved Ikea literally half the amount of money the company would ordinarily spend by using cheaper stucco of a far greater quality. As the story goes, Kamprad said: "I don't care how much it costs--whether it costs more or less--it needs to be removed." Within weeks the stucco had been replaced with the more expensive, yet poorer looking plaster--all in order to send the right message to the Ikea customers: We're careful about how we spend our money--even when it comes to our choice of stucco.

I'm often asked why some brands succeed and others fail. Ikea's ability to stay on message and maintain focus on its core vision is one of the secrets. They have an induction process. When any senior manager begins working at Ikea, they're shown to their new office. Much to their surprise, the office is empty. There's not a chair or a bookshelf in sight, let alone a desk. Within minutes, a few warehouse workers arrive with a stack of boxes containing all the components of an office--a desk, some chairs, bookshelves, and lamps. Attached to the packaging is a welcome message inviting them to personally sample the company's wares.

When a brand truly lives its vision across every touch point and in every possible scenario, predictable as well as unpredictable, it becomes clear how well managed the brand is. I have a simple rule of thumb: If a brand can describe its core values and philosophy on its business card without resorting to a detailed description, then the brand becomes a full representation of its vision.

A company that lives its vision will indeed be able to communicate its vision on its business card without having to explain it. If you're puzzled about how this would be possible, then think of what an Ikea business might look like. Bear in mind that Ikea is all about DIY--do it yourself. How do you think their design philosophy translates onto their card?

Well, at first glance, the business card looks kind of normal. It features the iconic blue and yellow Ikea logo. But when you look for the usual contact details, what you'll see is NAME….. EMAIL….. PHONE…. Under each feature there's a blank line, leaving a space for the bearer to fill in their personal contacts. DIY from another angle.

My mantra when building any brand is that a company must live their vision and stay true to their philosophy. Ideally, every core value that they have should be able to be expressed on a business card. If you're able to crack the business card challenge--you'll be able to crack every touch point your brand have with its customers.

I'd suggest you forget about stupid pens with your company name embossed on the side. I mean how many of these do you have, and can you remember a single one? I certainly don't. But then again, hundreds of business cards are gathered in my Rolodex, and I don't remember any of them either, with just a few exceptions. A few years ago one of the world's most experienced hackers took on work as a security consultant. Instead of handing me the usual kind of card, he handed over skeleton key kit, shaped and sized like a business card, but not in standard board--it was metal. It contained whatever was needed to open doors. Another business card I'll never forget is one handed over by an optician in New Zealand. This card combined the usual printed contact details, but as soon as I took it, I realised it was also written in Braille.

Which leads me to my tried and trusted napkin test. In my universe a powerful brand should be able to explain their mission in a single paragraph--the fewer words, the better. But what most brands forget is that their business card is indeed their "napkin," a blank canvas enabling them to communicate the essence of their brand (or fail to do so).

We live in a super-cluttered world where no one has time for anything. We're bombarded with text messages, TV commercials, billboards, and online ads, and so companies need to know what they stand for. It's a fact that you cannot remember more than three television commercials in a row, let alone recall the design of your average business card unless they manage to rise above the cacophony and stand out in a way that's completely relevant.

Why is this so important? Well, if you're really serious about building a powerful brand, you will need to crack the code of creativity first. This will allow you to stand out in the crowd, and more importantly claim ownership of the humble business card, because if you do, you will be on the right track.

It's the simplest and most difficult thing to do. For your brand to stand out and live its vision, you'll have to condense what its stands for in as few a words as possible. But once people have seen one of these distinct cards, they will not forget it.

So look at your business card with new eyes. Consider what will make your brand live, without having to explain it. The day you know your card has been saved, you can sit back, raise your glass and say, "Mission accomplished." Not only that, you can also toast the fact that you've created the very foundation for your future mass communication strategy.

Martin Lindstrom is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine’s “World's 100 Most Influential People” and author of Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best–seller. His latest book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, will be released in September. A frequent advisor to heads of numerous Fortune 100 companies, Lindstrom has also authored 5 best-sellers translated into 30 languages. More at martinlindstrom.com.

Your Business Card Is A Billboard For Your Brand--What Does Yours Say?
Martin Lindstrom
Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:30:03 GMT

The Happiness Dividend

Nearly every company in the world gives lip service to the idea that "our people are our greatest asset." Yet when the Conference Board Survey came out earlier this year, employees were the unhappiest they have been in their 22 years of tracking job satisfaction rates. Around the same time, CNNMoney reported a survey that indicated 84% of Americans are unhappy with their current job. And earlier this month, Mercer's "What's Working" survey found that one in three US employees are serious about leaving their current jobs.

Why is this lack of happiness at work important? Job satisfaction is not only the key predictor of turnover rates, in The Happiness Advantage, I make the research case for the fact that the single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce. A decade of research proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a myriad of health and quality of life improvements. Yet even those companies that do take leadership training seriously still ignore the role that happiness plays in leadership effectiveness.

Given the unprecedented level of unhappiness at companies and the direct link between the employees' happiness and business outcomes, the question is NOT whether happiness should matter to companies. Given this research, it clearly should. The real question is: Can a company do anything to raise the happiness level of an employee?

To test the ROI of investing in happiness, I wanted to find a company in the midst of high challenge. In 2009, I chose the auditing and tax accounting firm KPMG, as they were about to be hit with perhaps the most stressful tax season in decades after the banking crisis in 2008.

January to April is the most stressful time for the managers at KPMG, so in December, half of the managers in the study at the New Jersey and New York offices were provided a three-hour introduction to positive psychology research and how to apply those principles at work. The employees were then evaluated three times — before the training, a week after the training, and four months later in April — using a battery of standard metrics including life satisfaction measures, perceived stress, social support, perceived effectiveness at work and work optimism.

Every single positive metric improved significantly for the trained group between Time 1 (before the training) and Time 2 (a week after the training). This indicated that the training was an initial success, but the real question is whether the training would hold. There is often a "honeymoon effect" after trainings in which respondents feel totally changed, then immediately return back to their previous state as soon as they see their inbox.

Yet in this case, the effect held for the entire four months. Most significantly, the life satisfaction scores, which indicate personal and professional happiness, were significantly higher four months later as compared to how the managers were before the training, and also as compared to the managers in the control group. A brief three-hour training and a non-mandatory invitation to create a positive habit for 21 days created a high ROI not only in the short-term, but in the longer term as well.

Individuals can begin to do two things on their own. First, recognize that happiness is an advantage at work. This will encourage you to seek happiness in the present instead of waiting for a future success. As a result, your brain will have more resources necessary to accomplish your work. Second, you can literally train your brain for higher levels of happiness at work by creating habits shown to increase job satisfaction. In the training with KPMG, we suggested five:

• Write down three new things you are grateful for each day;
• Write for 2 minutes a day describing one positive experience you had over the past 24 hours;
• Exercise for 10 minutes a day;
• Meditate for 2 minutes, focusing on your breath going in and out;
• Write one, quick email first thing in the morning thanking or praising a member on your team.

Gratitude, focusing on positive experiences, exercise, meditating, and random acts of kindness are all ways to change the pattern through which your brain views work. And if you have other tips you've tried on your job, please share them in the comments! This research is only the beginning of understanding how to create and sustain a positive and engaged workforce. These findings clearly indicate that not only can a company influence the happiness of its employees with a short intervention and low investment of resources, but the effects are sustained even in times of great challenge.

In other words, investing in happiness pays great dividends. For a copy of the study, please contact me or visit goodthinkinc.com 

The Happiness Dividend
Shawn Achor
Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:16:27 GMT