Reputation Defender

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Rick Turoczy

It’s about time. And it’s genius.

While the design doesn’t really do it for me, the concept behind ReputationDefender is a very, very solid one. An internet shredding and sanitation service of sorts.

And it’s needed. If not today, then tomorrow.

Listen up, kids.

At some point, someone is going to find that not-deleted-quickly-enough photo of you on your MySpace page or that snarky comment you made on that one blog that one time, still living on life support in the Google cache or the Internet Archive. And that little piece of evidence could be damning.

Or it could just be misleading. (There’s still stuff floating around claiming that I’m a “Flash expert,” for example. Now, it would take a vast stretch of the imagination to make the leap from thinking a Macromedia Flash 3 expert would be an Adobe Flash 9 expert, but still.)

Today–election day in the United States–is an especially poignant day to mention this. Because, with life online, it’s important to remember that we’re all living under a microscope.

If it’s online, someone will find it.

It’s not a question of if, but simply a question of when.

Posted in Online, Reputation | Leave a comment

Is it Too Late Once the Job is Posted?

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Toby Lucich

When I become disenchanted (before disenfranchised but after focus has faded), I’ll often start drumming through the help wanted ads online. Monster. HotJobs. Indeed. Craigslist. This surfing is done in lieu of completing the management reports that no one reads, or instead of documenting my daily processes so that my replacement can onboard more quickly. Or instead of lending a hand to the other cubies that are neck deep in one-off management requests.

My interests have turned away. Maybe not indefinitely, but certainly at this particular moment in time. You (Employer) do not have my attention.

The funny thing is, I don’t want another JOB. I want to be engaged. I want to be challenged to deliver results. I want to think that the company was really hoping I would apply, and not the multitude of candidates that have slogged in that same rut at some point in the past. I want to think that I bring something different to the table than just anyone that could have sat in that chair after a few rounds of “where have you been” and “what have you done”.

But I’m wondering: by posting jobs on boards, are companies already telegraphing me that they simply want to hire someone to fill the seat? That they are simply looking to put a name on the org chart? That they have no better hiring options that going out to the masses at large and running a blind solicitation for anyone that thinks their resume can clear the HR filters (human or otherwise)?

I wish companies would begin soliciting for the results they need, and not the shoe size of the guy that last held the role. If the crappy results you got from the last guy that was sleeping at his desk were worth $40k, I’ll sign up to deliver that same product in 2 work days a month – I just don’t want to sit onsite all month long. Or go to the meetings about work that isn’t getting done because people are sleeping at their desks (or in conference rooms on other floors).

Which brings me to: if you have job openings, put finder fees on the roles and tell your staff. Get them engaged in finding the right people to grow your business – these will likely be good people that are already engaged elsewhere.

  • They may not be the textbook solution for the work, but have delivered comparable results in the past.
  • They will likely ask you hard questions, about your culture, your future, and their opportunity in the company beyond this initial job opening.
  • They will expect more of you. And you should be prepared to ask more of them.

For employers – Try to remember that, when you get that flood of resumes, they were likely crafted at work somewhere else. If you are only offering a job, don’t expect too much of your candidates that come in blind.

For individuals – BUILD OUT YOUR NETWORK. You don’t want to be a blind candidate pulled meaninglessly out of a stack of resumes, where it looks like a whole host of folks could do an equal job. Try to always begin your conversations about a new role with at least one advocate (ideally, fan) on the inside to sing your praises.

If you’ve not done it yet, hit LinkedIn, and start connecting. Today’s peers are tomorrow’s door-openers (and I mean that in a good way).

Posted in Bus, Results, Value | 4 Comments

More than 50 ways (to motivate you) to leave your manager

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Rick Turoczy

Dumb Little Man isn’t so dumb. Take a look at the 50+ Ways a Manager can get Employees to Quit. Other than likely having a few more to add to the list, my only change would be the title of the post.

You see, in my mind, this is a list of more than 50 ways your manager can quit you. Because it’s the manager’s responsibility to serve her/his employees. Not her/his superiors.

But I still couldn’t resist the Paul Simon nod. Because I like to think I’m funny and witty.

File this list under the classic “People don’t quit jobs. People quit people.”

For you managers, are you guilty of any these? If so, it’s time to be thinking about cleaning up your act.

Posted in Accountability, Employment, Management | Leave a comment

Advice for entrepreneurs? Guess what? It's useful inside corporations, too

Posted on November 7, 2006 by Rick Turoczy

I’ve been noticing more and more blogs, articles, and insights focused on entrepreneurs (which could be, quite possibly, because there are simply more and more of them). In my simplified view, this means one of two things or possibly both: 1) Those folks have more time on their hands to do what they want, now that they’re on the other side of the desk and/or 2) There is a great deal of need for these types of articles that result in fame and fortune.

Okay, maybe the second one is wishful thinking. Where was I?
Oh yes. I just stumbled across a really good one over at MyBrainBlog, entitled Super Branding… and a cape.

Here’s some guidance he offers to the entrepreneurial, small business owner:

Rescue a few high-profile victims and use their word of mouth, endorsements, and referrals to help spread the word. The Daily Planet never misses a chance to print a front-page story about Superman saving the world. Save someone in the business world and see if you can make the front-page of your local business paper. City Hall was constantly heaping commendations on Batman. Do some of your own amazing acts of service heroics and perhaps your Chamber of Commerce or other civic organization will honor you with an award of your own. The people you save will definitely tell (and re-tell) about the time you pulled their fannies out of the fire.

But here’s the thing: That advice is good for anyone, small business or otherwise. And, to be honest, so is 80% of the advice in the all of the ever-growing multitude of entrepreneur and small business blogs. It doesn’t matter if you’re a cog in the system, an independent consultant, or pulling shots at your local coffee house. You’re not the target market, but this advice can be just as useful for you.

So, if you’re interested in staying with a company, don’t think that means the entrepreneurial blogs, articles, and insights aren’t for you. They are. They’re all just as applicable to you as they are to Joe-or-Jane-I’m-going-out-on-my-own.

So spend some time with the small-business blogs. Those kernels of wisdom tend to work for everyone. They just tend to be focused on a different type of role, not a different type of person.

You just have to change your frame of reference.

And now, for the gratuitous plug.

You could spend your valuable time searching for these little gems. Or you could just sign-up for the More than a living RSS feed, and we’ll send them to you as we find them. (If I were an attractive, intelligent, busy, and soon-to-be-more-fulfilled person, like you, I would choose the latter.)

Posted in Branding, Entrepreneur, Inspiration | 1 Comment

Accountability: Effective Managers Go First

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Rick Turoczy

ChangeThis. Always a good source for inspiring manifestos. Manifesti? Manifesta?

Anyway, for you managers looking to make a real difference, why not try leading by actually, well, leading?

How far are you willing to go to facilitate change in your organization? Management expert, David Maister, says you’ve got to be willing to go first. And he means all the way, even to the point of resigning if your change efforts fail. Instead of saying “Charge!” to the troops, say “Follow me!”

Accountability: Effective Managers Go First

Posted in Accountability, Inspiration, Management, Manifesto | 1 Comment

Separation Analysis – What Companies Fail to Understand

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Toby Lucich

A friend recently left his most recent job to go it on his own, no small feat when you think about the comfort that comes from being part of a larger organization.

The funny thing is, this seems to be a growing trend. An increasing number of 30-somethings in my network find the prospects of independent contracting or small business start-up more attractive than the security of large established organizations. In lieu of regular exempt paychecks and calendars chocked with meaningless meetings, these folks are gearing up and heading out into their own efforts, soliciting and landing projects that let them focus on really doing the work they enjoy, without the requisite overhead and political hassles of the corporate environment.

But as these matured professionals head out, where is HR in this to try and understand the trend? Most of the exit interviews (when they occur, which is more infrequent than I had always thought) I’m hearing about completely miss the point, and beg questions that don’t do much to close the gap. Without a doubt, the #1 and #2 reasons I’m hearing are:

  • I’m asked to do more with less, and see no possible upside in the future. Even if I succeed, it simply courts more arbitrary demands for the impossible.
  • My manager simply can’t perform at the level to which hey’ve been promoted. They are a hinderance, and more dangerously, have no concept of what it takes to actually get the real work done. They commit the crimes of false assurance to senior management, and demand the impossible.

So who’s role is it call this breakdown to the attention of senior management? No one wants to be the messenger with an arrow in their heart, but HR is in the position to gather good details, and in turn, ensure that senior management has good visibility to the exodus of middle managers that should be providing the candidate pool for upcoming leaders.Stronger exit questions should include:

  • What was the cause of your departure (work-life balance, autonomy or lack of, other personnel, company practices or values)?
  • Where are you headed, and what makes that more attractive?
  • What would it take to keep you, or alternatively, interest you enough to return in the next 12-24 months?
  • What one thing would you recommend management change at the department level? What one thing would you recommend management change at the organizational level?

Getting the right people on the bus is critical, but so is keeping them once they’re on board.

Posted in Autonomy, Bus, Entrepreneur, Value, Work-life balance | Leave a comment

Developing Solvers, Not COGs for the Wheel of Complacency

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Toby Lucich

The 21st century business spends less time doing transformation work (processing raw materials) than it does synthesizing information – true in developed countries and increasingly the case in developing economies.“Hiring profiles will change—indeed, in some tacit-intensive industries, such as software and hospitals, they already have. Managers in these organizations have redefined their job descriptions and criteria in order to hire people who can solve problems, work under ambiguous reporting relationships, and network. But the pool of experienced tacit workers is finite, and demand is increasing; companies already feel the pinch. In reaction, they may cast a wider global net for tacit talent. One thing is clear: for tacit interactions, selecting and motivating talent are core processes that drive effective outcomes.”Remember that employees (human capital) is an appreciable asset. Unlike a car that can be run hard and will eventually hit the second-hand lot, strong recruiting, development and promotional practices can take a relatively new resource and mature them into a powerful problem solver with unique knowledge of your business’ quirks and demands.

But training today’s tacit workers isn’t quite as clean as production labor. The work can’t be learned in a day, and unlike Henry Ford’s assembly line, there will be variability that requires judgement on the part of your staff. Here are a few ideas to help your team stay in the Solver zone and not see their work as just a cog in the corporate wheel.

Encourage challenging questions. The time won’t always be right for these tangential discussions, but be sure to come back to them. Inventive thinkers aren’t always the best at staying on task, and may need more time to lock new ideas away in their minds. Help them get there, and reap the reward.Recognize that fresh recruits may not maximize your team. When you are hiring, think about the long-term fit for the company, not just your team. It is quite likely that your fresh hire is gunning for something else within the firm or may drift toward a better fit when they get oriented. It is far better to be the fountainhead of thoughtleaders within your company than a horder of intellectual horsepower, and strong relations throughout the business only help you work across functional boundaries – an age old challenge.Keep good procedural documentation. You are what you measure, and nothing says task measurement like procedural documentation. Consider making this a performance requirement for the first quarter when you get a new team member in a new role. Their fresh perspective needs to be maximized, and documenting what they do to keep the business humming makes it much easier when they are ready to move on to bigger and better things. You’ll also love it when they are on vacation and you have to backfill them.

Posted in Bus, Creativity, Develop, Measure | Leave a comment

A Focus on Results? Fancy That

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Toby Lucich

I can’t really conceive of a results-only work environment. This sounds like a fixed-bid, sub-contractor kind of gig, where expectations are easily spelled out, and results easily evaluated. (And evaluation of the results seems like the real challenge.)

This hasn’t held Best Buy back from taking the plunge. In a Workforce Management article “Throwing out the Rules of Work”, Patrick Kiger gives readers a new view of how a publicly traded company can overhaul the “balance” that never seems equitable. When employers and employees move beyond the classic (and thankless) dance we’ve been doing for years, you get Results-Only Work Environment – ROWE.

The geniuses behind making ROWE work have now spun out as ResultsRx, a Minneapolis-based consultancy. Consultants Ressler and Thompson have clearly struck on that magic mix of excitement and motivation that resonates employees and employer alike.

This kind of change is staggering.

When I think about the common dialogues in business on the topics of accountability and results, most discussions still center on the work that leads to the deliverable or decision, not on the end result. (Uh hello – haven’t we all heard “begin with the end in mind” by now? Habit 2, thank you.) We’ve been dialed into the sad dance for so long, that it is almost inconceivable that high quality results can come from anythign but endless hours sloggging in the cube.

Ew. Not just a stale notion, but getting moldy.

The basic proposition that we as individuals can exchange the delivery of results for compensation (instead of time for money) brings us full circle through the age of Ford’s assembly line and back to the world of artisans. While I don’t have a cobbler’s bench set up at home, I do have the 21st century equivalent.

When business can place a value on the results, and not just the hours of slogging in the trenches, the nature of the relationship changes. Not only do I as employee feel valued, but I as manager can begin holding people to delivery timelines and meaningful results, not just near-misses on or about the due date. No more time down the toilet in useless meetings. No more ‘analysis-paralysis’ without actionable conclusions.

I’m taken by the idea of ROWE, if only because it offers the hope of being a consultative resource within my company, valued for delivery and respected enough to be given autonomy with my time.

If you’ve developed/ envisioned/ lived a better alternative, I’d love to hear about it.

Posted in Autonomy, Employment, Habit 2, Value, Work-life balance | Leave a comment

Personal Brands Matter in Tacit Work

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Toby Lucich

Labor revolution has taken us from transformational to transactional and now to tacit work. Personal brands matter most when what you buy is intellectual property. You aren’t going to make your name based solely on the hours you work, or the volume of paper you shuffle in a day. You need to strut your hard-won wisdom when it matters, and come out on top in this revolution by being a key influencer within and outside your organization.

This isn’t our father’s marketplace – with so much information and so many alternatives, there is not only an overload of options in the market, and getting your voice heard is just one of many sounds echoing in your management’s ears. Getting ahead isn’t just having the strongest experience, the best analysis, or the most correct argument- you need to learn to differentiate to accelerate.

I’m not suggesting you run out and chop a mohawk down across your skull, but I am suggesting that you need to think about how you stand out, both within your organization and in your professional market at large (depending on the size of your pond, this can be locally, regionally, or even internationally). If you are tired of being treated like another guy from [insert department here], give your audience good reason to perk up to your message.

A few recommendations for differentiating, which is so central to tacit business services:

  • Manage your personal brand. Don’t get trashed at company parties unless you are “that guy” (in which case, you can stop reading now). Remember that you are a sum of your interactions in each individuals eyes, and value of your advice is based on a perpetuating perception that you are competent – and most often right.
  • Think before you speak. This sounds easy- but we both know better (your mother has been telling you this for years). If you are senior enough to be advising on matters that require experience and understanding, be wary of the counsel you provide off the cuff. Speak clearly, speak plainly, and give your listener context – you’ll look smarter for it.
  • Value of Advice is Proportionate to the Cost of Said Service. Put another way, people have come to expect that they get what they pay for. Check the urge to give out too much free advice, because you can’t build a consulting practice (within a business or across businesses) on that model.
  • Help those around you grow the value of their tacit service offerings. Think of this as “pay it forward”- helping others become what they will one day be is a terrific investment. Even when the immediate financial reward isn’t visible, remember that your direct reports today could be your managers in your next engagement.
Posted in Branding, Employment, Management | Leave a comment

Offering more: Blendtec and 'Will It Blend?'

Posted on November 6, 2006 by Rick Turoczy

Creativity is a big motivator for many folks. And a fun atmosphere doesn’t hurt at all.

With those things in mind, would you like to work at Blendtec?

Yeah, me too.

They seem to doing things right.

Posted in Creativity, Fun, More | Leave a comment