Make Results Matter More than Face Time

Every smart employer knows that results matter more than face time. Judging employees chiefly on the number of hours they log in at work is not only demoralizing but does little for company performance. In fact, sixty-nine percent of employers report that supervisors at their organizations are encouraged to assess employees' performance by what they accomplish and not just by the hours they work.

This statistic — from the 2012 National Study of Employers conducted by Families and Work Institute (FWI) — indicates there is movement in the right direction. After all, it's obvious why employers encourage supervisors to focus on results. In this competitive, 24-7 economy stretches across the world's time zones, adhering to the notion that presence equals productivity is simply out of date.

But there are two problems: One, employees don't fully buy it. And two, many managers don't really know how to do it. About two in five workers think that if they focus on achieving results instead of punching the clock, their careers will suffer, according to FWI's Workplace Flexibility in the United States. Moreover, managers don't have the tools they need to accurately measure results.

So what can companies do to prove to skeptical employees that results really matter more than time worked and give managers the data they need? 

Here's what one company did.

Ryan, LLC - Getting rid of a sweatshop culture

Ryan, a global tax firm headquartered in Dallas, Texas, had a business problem. CEO G. Brint Ryan started the company in 1991, growing it from a two-person organization to a 1000-person one. He was proud of the business's track record, helping Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies solve complex tax problems. But in 2007, a disturbing trend developed. "We started experiencing a rapid loss of talent. And I'm not talking about just general talent — I'm talking about the stars," Ryan says.

He realized his firm had developed a "sweatshop reputation". People felt they were working long hours even if it wasn't necessary to get the job done. Ryan and his leadership team decided to experiment with re-focusing the company on results. He describes what they were aiming for:

We wanted a results-based work environment where if you meet financial results and you meet client service scores, you can work whenever you want, wherever you want . . . work when you're most productive, when you're most engaged. And we'll change the culture so that what really matters are results.

This was a radical change for the company. And required they rethink how they measure performance. Managers were skeptical. "The biggest concern was the fuzziness of flexibility. They simply didn't know how to manage teams when traditional boundaries were removed," says Delta Emerson, the company's executive vice president and chief of staff. Even Brint Ryan himself was concerned. He admits that he and his partners were "scared to death" the organization would fall apart.

Still he felt it was a bet they had to make. So they spent considerable time creating a system to support the new culture. The tool, called Success Measures, allows employees to easily track their own performance through an online dashboard that aggregates client service scores, revenues, leadership, core competencies and other firm-wide initiatives.

Each functional team has its own team page in the dashboard that displays the team's "scores" based on performance in key areas such as meeting financial goals and client service. Each employee's overall score in these key areas contributes to their team performance, similar to a baseball team's individual averages and statistics.

The employee's overall score is a weighted average of his or her scores in the areas of client service scores and financial goals (which account for 80% of the score), and firm-wide initiatives, leadership management and core competencies (20% of the score). Employees are only scored in categories that are relevant to their position.

This system worked. Since 2008, when the initial tool was introduced, voluntary turnover dropped from an average of 18.5% to less than 10%, compared with the industry average of 21%. At the same time, client service scores increased — 97% of clients rated them as good or excellent in the performance of their service.

"Probably the most remarkable statistic — the one that I think I would share if I had one thing to share with any CEO," says Ryan, "is this: in 2009, in arguably the worst economic conditions in my generation, we posted record profits and revenue. And then in 2010, we beat it again."

There are four things any company looking to change its culture of face time can learn from Ryan's experience:

1. Base it on a real organizational need. In this case, it was the loss of top performers. Brint Ryan knew he had to do something to stop the turnover or the company would be in trouble.
2. Create a way to measure individual and team performance. This is the crux of their success to date. As described above, instead of tracking hours spent at work, employees are held responsible for their performance.
3. Don't adopt a results-focused initiative off the shelf. Although the company shopped around for programs that could plug and play, it settled on a customized approach, recognizing it needed something to fit its unique needs and culture.
4. Fine-tune the process. In addition to employee surveys, Brint Ryan and Delta Emerson, hosted town hall meetings to hear directly from employees and gauge how the new system is working. After a town hall, leadership posted the problems employees raised on the company's intranet site along with action steps to resolve them.

What does your company value more: the hours you work or the results you produce? If you work in a company with a results-focus, please share your story of how it is working.

Make Results Matter More than Face Time
Ellen Galinsky

To Motivate People, Give Them Something to Be Proud Of

While people expect fair pay for their services, we all know that money isn't king. Nevertheless, when it comes to business we all too often act as if it were. We think purely in terms of salaries, bonuses, and people's positions on the org chart. While we pay lip-service to the idea that people may have non-financial motivation for their work — acknowledgement, appreciation, pride in accomplishment, enjoyment and so forth — we spend all our time working out how to incentivize our workforce with financial rewards.

What an awful way to think about people! Yes, money and status matter, but it can be inhibiting soul-destroying and morally corrupting for managers when companies place too much emphasis on them At some point, after all, doesn't exaggerated pay feel like a bribe? 

In my experience by far the best way to motivate your employees is to find ways that they can take pride in their skills and their knowledge. When you do this, you very quickly discover that people stop being passive followers and start to share their insights and ideas. Instead of being loyal to their pay checks they become loyal to the company. 

To illustrate, let me share something I witnessed as consultant to a western private equity investment firm on their investment in a sawmill located in a small, secluded town in Northern Russia.

One of the problems the German manager of the mill faced was integrating some disaffected employees, whom according to deeply ingrained local practice he could not fire. Ivan was the worst of the troublemakers. His heavy drinking on the job and bad temper constantly created problems for his foreman and fellow workers. 

The mill was in the process of installing a new slicing machine that would vastly improve productivity and quality. One of the management routines I had introduced was a daily brief "brainstorm" meeting between management and the Austrian technician sent by the supplier to help install the machine. 

Unfortunately the workers lacked the technical know how required to communicate and work effectively with the Austrian technician. Furthermore, there were scarcely any qualified technicians in this remote place. As we were discussing the problem, the secretary who was taking notes said, "Believe it or not, the only one that understands a great deal about technical matters is Ivan". 

So I met with Ivan early the following morning before he had drunk too much and could still function. I looked him straight in the eyes and said "Ivan, the company needs you for a complicated and important task that only you in this factory can perform successfully" and proceeded to explain the work he would do with the Austrian technician and the bonus he would receive upon successful installation. 

He pondered for a second and said: "Will do". His behavior from then on changed completely. No drinking, no fighting, no trouble. Instead he cooperated seriously and effectively with the Austrian who was enchanted by his intelligence and technical skills. Not only was the machine installed in record time but Ivan's qualities inspired the German Manager to appoint him as Technical Director of the mill.

Ivan didn't need to do this. He was reasonably well paid and his job was secure. What made the difference was that we had given him an opportunity to be proud of himself by allowing him to put his expertise and skills to good use. It's precisely this kind of intervention that managers are supposed to be there to do. 

So when you're thinking about ways to motivate your work force, always acknowledge and praise their worthwhile contributions and try to find out more about their interests, their backgrounds, their skills. These will give you insight into their non-financial, intrinsic motivations, which, as Ivan's transformation illustrates, can be far more powerful levers than money.

To Motivate People, Give Them Something to Be Proud Of
Charalambos Vlachoutsicos

Support Your Team... Quietly

Helping people deal with emotions is a key leadership skill, especially in times of crisis. Your tone may effectively quell negative emotions or promote beneficial emotions, and improve camaraderie, trust, and team performance.

But recent research into the field of social regulation shows us that how you support your people can make a real difference. It turns out that caring delivered in an indirect, implicit manner tends to have a greater positive impact than support delivered in a direct, explicit manner. In other words, people get more out of compassion when they don't know they're getting it. (I presented these findings at the recent Neuroleadership Summit held in New York in October; you can view it for free on the Summit website.)

Whereas implicit forms of caring unfold relatively automatically, explicit caring involves conscious goals to regulate emotional responses and monitor their effect. So, implicit emotional regulation may include the "chameleon effect," where we unconsciously mimic the body language and tone of a conversation partner, or react to the opinions of the group around us without even knowing it. By contrast, we are using explicit social regulation when we deliver tough, constructive feedback — or support and guidance after a setback — by carefully choosing the way we frame our messages in either neutral or positive terms. Explicit regulation also occurs when we attempt to consciously mirror the verbal style and/or body language of someone we wish to persuade.

One study of explicit regulation illuminates the ways people hear indirect feedback as opposed to something more forceful, in your face. Research by my colleague Niall Bolger at Columbia shows that caring and support delivered in an indirect, implicit manner tends to have greater positive impact than support delivered in a direct, explicit manner.

Implicit support is invisible to the recipient and doesn't call attention to the fact that you're offering support. For example, you could indirectly offer advice to a coworker or employee by noting that you think they're doing fine. But, you would also explain that were you in their situation, you might need help; then you would "think out loud" about what you would do in that situation. By contrast, managers who make it obvious that, "I'm here to help," or lead off by saying, "let me tell you how to handle this," tend to threaten self-esteem and autonomy by highlighting that their direct report is being evaluated negatively for performance.

Consider Bolger's research involving couples where one partner was studying for the bar exam (which is known to be extremely stressful.) Niall found that when the giving partner gave support, but the receiving partner (who was studying for the exam) was not aware of receiving it, the benefits were far more pronounced. Such instances of implicit, "invisible," support occurred when the giving partner reported being "listening and comforting," but the receiving partner said no support was being offered. In such cases of invisible support, anxiety and depression were lessened, particularly at times when stress was at its highest, just before the exam.

In another study from Niall's lab, women were given a highly stressful public speaking assignment and an associate of the experimenter (status unknown to the subjects) was prepared to offer support in two ways. One involved the associate pointing out where the individual preparing for the speech needed help and explicitly giving advice about different aspects of the speech. In the second approach, the associate noted that his counterpart didn't need much help but talked about parts of his speech that could use some more work and ideas about how the speech could be improved. Once again, this implicit means of offering support lessened anxiety for the speech-giving subject by indirectly offering them guidance and a downward social comparison (the confederate is worse off than they are) to bolster their confidence and avoid threats to their autonomy and sense of self-worth.

By conveying the belief that the person you're coaching can cope with the situation, and offering yourself as an indirect example of how one can fail but find ways to succeed, you can communicate that they are competent while still imparting guidance. As a result, you can support their sense of self-control and lessen anxiety at the same time.

Remember that the influence you have emotionally is also affected by your social context. Closeness and intimacy increase the effects of social regulation, and being in a position of power means those below you will be more attuned to your social cues and more likely to mimic or take them on, while at the same time they will also be dealing with greater levels of stress and fear because of your position of authority over them.

If you want to explicitly help others with their emotions, think twice about jumping in to fix their problems or telling them that you're there to help. Look for ways to help people see for themselves that things will turn out ok, provide a shoulder to lean on when requested, and offer advice indirectly without calling attention to the fact that they seem to be buckling pressures of a tough day at the office.

Support Your Team... Quietly
Kevin Ochsner

Where You Sit Determines What You See

What do you see in this picture?

Depending on how you look at it, you'll see the silhouette of two faces or a vase. It's a classic illusion that psychologists use to demonstrate that all of us have biases that influence how we interpret events. To some extent we see what we unconsciously want to see.

Understanding this kind of perceptual distortion is crucial for getting things done in organizations. Most projects or processes require collaborative work with people who come from other parts of the organization — different functions, levels, locations, or business units — and who see the world differently. If you assume that these people perceive the assignment or challenge in the same way that you do, you'll be severely frustrated or disappointed. In fact, you'll be on much firmer ground if you start with the assumption that each person comes to the table with a different spin on the situation.

The first thing to do in any cross-organizational assignment is to develop alignment and create a shared understanding of the problem, the situation, and the expectations. For example, one diversified technology company recently launched a project to improve the effectiveness of their sales force, involving collaboration between teams in the field (sales and sales support) and corporate. Team members from the field came in with the goal of reducing "bureaucratic distractions" from corporate functions. In contrast, the corporate representatives wanted the field folks to comply more quickly to data requests so that they could better target sales opportunities.

Given these different perceptions of "the problem" the team easily could have become trapped in unproductive blaming or hardened their positions. Fortunately, the team leader understood the different perceptions and encouraged everyone to listen, repeat, and appreciate each others' starting points. 

Eventually each side realized that both positions were valid, which opened up the possibility of joint problem solving. So over the next few weeks, the team figured out which data requests provided the most value, and which could be streamlined or eliminated. Based on these insights, the team sparked a significant improvement in the sales numbers over the next six months.

Of course, overcoming perceptual bias is not a one-time exercise. Just because the people in our example learned how to work together on one project doesn't mean that they won't revert back to their earlier blinders when they reenter their regular environments. In fact, there is a Stockholm syndrome effect for most people in organizations, in which they take on the biases and attitudes of those around them. Not long ago I was talking with an executive who had recently been promoted from a business unit to the corporate center. 

She was complaining how the business managers all wanted to do things their own way and not comply with cross-company standards — and then sheepishly admitted that she was one of those non-compliant managers only weeks earlier.

One of the best ways to overcome ongoing perceptual distortion is to rotate between functions, levels, and locations. This doesn't have to be as drastic as changing jobs or restacking cubes; it might mean regularly having lunch with someone from another part of the company or volunteering for a cross-functional project. 

This way, you'll gradually gain a broader perspective and not get so locked into any one silo. But even if you do move between areas, don't assume that others see things the way you do. All of us see the world in different ways — which may make alignment that much harder, but at least makes things a lot more interesting.

Where You Sit Determines What You See
Ron Ashkenas

3 Valuable Ways to Invest in Yourself

Investing in yourself may be the most profitable investment you ever make. It yields not only future returns, but often a current pay-off as well. The surest way to achieve a better quality life, to be successful, productive, and satisfied is to place a priority on investing in both personal and professional growth. The effort you put into consistently investing in yourself plays a large role in determining the quality of your life now and in the future.

Investment options

1. Develop your skills
Improving your skills doesn’t always mean investing in higher education, though that’s surely an option, and perhaps a necessary one depending upon your career field. Investing in your knowledge and skills can take many forms. In addition, expanding your level of knowledge and skill isn’t limited to the business arena and doesn’t necessarily need to be formal. There are many “skill investment” avenues.

• Advance your education -  extra classes, advanced degrees, relevant certifications, are all valuable investments. Take classes, either in person or online.
• Utilize available training – enroll in workshops, attend conferences or participate in webinars.
• Expand your knowledge – there’s lots of information available on nearly any subject imaginable. Read books, articles, white papers, anything related to the talent or skill you want to work on. Keep current – stay abreast of the latest trends or advancements. Subscribe to publications, read blogs of experts, and follow the latest news.

2. Explore your creative side
There is a fountain of creativity within most of us that has never been tapped or certainly hasn’t been used to its highest potential. We may need to unearth, and hone our individual creativity. Creativity, in any form, helps us to grow personally and professionally, to view problems and solutions in different ways and to utilize other parts of our mind that may have been previously untapped. It’s important to keep in mind that creativity has many faces. It’s far broader than being a painter or sculptor; it’s also about trying new things.

• Learn a new language –  take a class or use language training software
• Try gourmet cooking – enroll in a formal class, by a new cookbook, or ask someone you know who enjoys cooking in a different way.
• write something – a book, short stories, poetry, anything
• Explore the outside world – try gardening, bird watching, or landscape photography
• Enjoy music – play an instrument, learn a new one or join a music group of some kind.
• Create something tangible – paint, sculpt, make pottery, make jewelry or design your own clothes.

Choose some form of activity that you have never tried, haven’t practiced in years, or have never explored fully.

3. Nurture your mind and body
Nurturing both your mind and body allows you to have more to give now and  in the future, more energy, more knowledge, more compassion, more ideas, greater strength, physical and mental endurance.

Expand your mind. Learning new things and keeping your mind active even in simple ways helps to grow and maintain your mental ability.

• Read – anything and everything
• Explore culture – attend performances, listen to different style of music, travel, or join an organization or group comprised of people from different backgrounds.
• Open your mind – engage in conversations with those who disagree with you. Look at an argument and try to make a case for the opposing point of view.
• Keep your mind active – play word games, (yes, even Words with Friends counts,) board games that include strategy, or try using your brain to perform simple calculations rather than relying on a calculator.

Care for your body. Your body is like a well-oiled machine. If you care for it in the way that you might maintain an expensive car, it will perform marvelously and last for a very long time. Remember the basics:

• Give it high quality fuel –translation: make healthy food choices as often as possible. What you eat does play a large role in your energy and ability to perform. You truly are what you eat.
• Don’t push it too hard – translation: rest and relax often, slow down and don’t overload your system. Also, don’t shift gears too quickly; it causes stress and damage to “your machine,” A.K.A. your body.
• Get regular and necessary maintenance – translation: go to the doctor when your sick – don’t put it off until you totally break down. Better yet, use preventative maintenance; get check-ups, take appropriate vitamins and pay attention to irregular or erratic behavior.
• Polish the exterior – translation: take care of the outside too. Many people dismiss this as frivolous and self-indulgent, but it’s not, as long as you don’t go overboard. We’re not talking about facelifts and Botox, we’re talking about getting a fabulous haircut, and wearing clothes that make you feel confident and attractive.

Investing in yourself truly makes a difference in your life, your well-being, and your ability to thrive and perform to the best of your ability. The extent to which you invest in yourself, mind and body, not only shapes the way you interact with the outside world, it often reflects the opinion you have of yourself. Your future is in large part determined by your willingness and ability to invest in yourself now.

3 Valuable Ways to Invest in Yourself
Royale Scuderi

A Practical Approach to Reading Signals in Data

Big data isn't new. A wealth of database information has been lying dormant in companies for years — only now we have the technology to understand it. Using new tools and methods, you can use that information to make better predictions (and decisions) about your business.

Here's one way to get started: Imagine a matrix — a spreadsheet, if you will. The rows capture something you know about one interaction. That interaction might be a sale, or some other single activity (often referred to as a "case"). The columns are aspects of that interaction; sticking with the shopping analogy, columns might be how you paid, or at what time of day the sale occurred. These are known as "signals," because they may help predict some future target variable. It might be, for example, what else you might want to purchase, given a current purchase.

Depending on what you're measuring, it might look something like this:

Your goal is to build this matrix, and have it be as large and as complete as possible. If you're like most companies, you likely already have some data in databases and your web server logs. It's where your data is not complete that the new methods can be applied. Finding, storing, and merging all this data requires computational horsepower, network, and cheap storage; the rapid increase in smart phones is just one way that each of these has become ubiquitous over the past few years.

This means that to get more accurate results, you'll need to expand your data set. There are a couple of ways to scale up the amount of data you are using to make better predictions:

First, you can add more cases. This is, for example, how retailers make sales inferences. Adding more cases (rows in your spreadsheet) reduces the likeliness of statistical outliers and random variance in your measurements, so you can be more confident in the outcome. A retailer will have a lot of transaction data it can use to make inferences.

But the more powerful way is to add signals. Adding signals (columns) allows you to do two things: First, it can reveal new relationships, enabling new inferences — with a new variable, you may see a correlation in the data you never realized before. Second, adding signals makes your inferences less subject to bias in any number of individual signals. You add cases, keeping the same signals, to make your understanding of those variables better. In contrast, you add signals to make it possible to overcome errors in other signals you rely on.

Although much of the discussion of big data has focused on adding cases, — in fact, the common perception of "big data" is being able to track lots of transactions — but adding signals is most likely to transform a business. The more signals you have, the more new knowledge you can create. For example, Google uses hundreds of signals to rank web pages.

The evolution of underwriting — the process of judging loan eligibility — is another big data success story that's still being told. Historically, underwriting was done by someone who knew the applicant. Prototypically, a bank officer would make credit decisions for applicants based on the applicants' "character" — which church they attended, which school their kids were in, etc. Underwriting based on a credit officer's opinion used a lot of perspective about the applicant, but wasn't very scalable — there are only so many loan officers in the world. And, of course, the officers were using a small number of signals, and so there was systemic bias in the process.

In the early 1970's, Fair Isaac rose to global prominence as a provider of the standardized FICO score that supplanted much of the credit officers' role. The standardized score massively increased credit availability and thus lowered the cost of borrowing. However, FICO scores have their limits. The scores perform especially poorly for those without much information in their credit files, or those with relatively bad credit. It's not FICO's fault — it's the math they use. With fairly few signals in their models, the FICO score doesn't have the ability to distinguish between credit risk in a generally high risk group.

The way to address this is to add more signals. For example, thousands of signals can be used to analyze an individual's credit risk. This can be everything from excess income available, to the time an applicant spent on the application, to whether an applicant's social security number shows up as associated with a dead person. The more signals used, the more accurate a financial picture a lender can get, particularly for thin file applicants who need the access to credit and likely don't have the traditional data points a lender analyzes.

Fair Isaac has millions of cases to use, but more signals give a better product. In this case, they can produce a more thorough picture of an individual's credit score than the industry standard, and the result is lower cost credit to a larger number of people.

As we used to say at Google, "Opinions are great, data is better." Big data is both cases and signals, but signals win in the end. Instead of spending your technology time and dollars to get additional cases, use these resources to get additional signals that allow you to find new relationships.

A Practical Approach to Reading Signals in Data
Douglas Merrill

Stop Micromanaging and Learn to Delegate

You've gotten feedback from your manager as well as word of rumblings within your team: You're seen as a micromanager who tends to get into the weeds — and stay there. You produce great results but senior management sees you as an operational manager and questions your ability to let go and operate at a strategic level. Wait a minute, you think. Who are they trying to kid? Delegation sounds great on paper, but you're responsible for some major projects, and management expects flawless execution. How can they have it both ways?

Managers prone to micromanagement fall prey to several misconceptions about delegating to staff. The first is the assumption that delegation has an on and off switch. That is, that they either delegate totally to all direct reports in all situations or not at all. They fail to assess each subordinate's ability to operate independently and don't put in place the "eyehooks" of implementation — the check-ins, milestones, and metrics — that promote predictable execution. And they forget that there are times when they need to get directly involved to get a major initiative back on course.

Chronic problems with delegation can cripple your team's productivity and create a major impediment to your own career success. Lee Monroe is a cautionary example. Superbly trained and the proverbial "smartest guy in the room," he put himself squarely in the middle of virtually every decision his organization had to make. Progress within his team ground to a halt, several key people resigned, and Lee ultimately left to pursue other interests. Once seen as one of the corporation's rising stars, senior management came to the conclusion that he lacked the ability to operate at a higher level.

If you'd like to delegate and leverage your team more, your starting point lies in the answers to two fundamental questions: 1) Where can I add the greatest value to our team's performance — and as a result, where should I be spending my time and energy? 2) What skills do I need on my team to accomplish our goals and allow me to play that value-added role? You won't be able to let go overnight. Instead, put in place a six-month game plan that allows you to delegate more and devote your time to the issues and activities that add the greatest value. Be specific. Where do you intend to devote more time: in the marketplace with customers? Dealing with future-oriented strategy or major cross-functional initiatives with peers? And where will you spending less time, for example, in long, detailed project planning meetings with direct reports.

Next, evaluate your staff. Which team members are highly capable and can be stretched to take on more responsibility and operate more independently? Who are the talented people that, although green in their roles, can get up the learning curve quickly with coaching and guidance? Who are the team members that even with coaching can't or won't step up? Then use this information to plan your delegation strategy and re-shape your team.

As you give more responsibility and autonomy to your most capable direct reports, focus your conversation less on how they should approach a task and more on the what and why. For example, why is the initiative important? What's the scope of the task and what is their level of authority: to make the decision or bring options and a recommendation to you for approval? What are the key issues they need to address and resolve? Who are the people in other groups they need to collaborate along the way? What are the key milestones and check-in points and what are your expectations for communication during the course of the initiative? By contrast, with less experienced people you are trying to help move up the learning curve toward greater independence, it's appropriate to be more prescription about the how things are to be done. Similarly, your check-ins will typically be more frequent and detailed.

To reinforce their delegation efforts, many managers deputize a staff member to monitor due dates and key deliverables on their behalf so things don't fall through the cracks. They also incorporate follow ups on major initiatives into regular team staff meetings and create metrics that help the team know if things are on track. In the process they create a positive peer pressure within the team, since staff members don't want to have to present an update to their peers that shows an important priority falling behind schedule.

It's important to realize that other people won't do things exactly the same way you would. Challenge yourself to distinguish between the style in which direct reports approach tasks and the quality of the results. As you delegate more and coach those who need it, test whether you have been successful in expanding people's skills so they can operate more autonomously and whether you've made a fundamental change in how you're spending your time and energy. If the answer is yes, you have succeeded on several fronts. You've increased the organizational capability of your group, and you've demonstrated the bandwidth to take on a broader range of responsibilities, a win-win for your team and your career advancement.

Stop Micromanaging and Learn to Delegate
John Beeson