Ironman Calling

If anyone would care to join me for Ironman Florida, you are more than welcome. (Photo credit: ZarrSadus)

Hello all, long time no talk. When I first started this blog, my intention was to force myself into a structured writing ritual that would allow me to produce a book. Don’t know why, but writing a book was always a goal of mine. Along the way, I thought I might actually be able to help a few people to manage a little more effectively. None of us are born great managers, it is a learned behavior. I know that many folks do not have a great manager to mentor them, so I was hoping that I could at least offer some guidance on how I feel management should be handled. I finished the book about two months ago. It has all of the content that I wanted and I just need to write a forward and a chapter introduction or two and it is ready to be proofread and published. It has been 99% done for two months, yet I cannot seem to find the motivation to complete it and publish it? Why is that? I am honestly not sure.

So having accomplished what I set out to accomplish what’s next? I don’t know. I can tell you that I have completely lost any motivation to write. Not sure how or why, but I cannot bring myself to write anything at this point. It is not a lack of ideas, but rather a complete lack of motivation. It has felt like a job to write anything for the last few weeks. It is no longer a labor of love. That concerned me, so I stopped writing. I suspect I will write again, but it will not be this week. I can’t produce quality content if my heart is not in it, and if I cannot produce quality content then I would rather not produce anything.

As for my immediate plans, I will finish the book before year-end and publish it. I don’t have crazy expectations on it changing the world, but I think it is a pretty good resource for managers so I want to ensure that it is available. If it sells ten copies, I will consider it a smashing success. I am also going to go back into the realm of endurance sports. One thing that has definitely suffered during my brief writing career, is my fitness level. I have put on a few pounds and generally feel out of shape. So to fix that, I have decided I am going to participate in the 2013 running of the Florida Ironman Triathlon. It is a quick 2.4 mile swim, 112 bike and 26.2 run. I have about 18 months to prepare and I have lined up a coach to help ensure I live through the training program. The Ironman race has fascinated me since I learned of its existence, but I have never had the guts to commit to it. I am locked in on it now and will get it crossed off my list before the end of next year. I would also like to knock out a 50 mile ultramarathon at some point, but we will have to see where that fits into my schedule.

So that’s what is going on. So many bloggers have come and gone since I started this blog, and I did not just want to go out without saying a word. I really don’t think that I am done writing, but we will see. I can tell you that training for the Ironman will require many isolated hours of running and biking that will give me plenty of time for self-reflection. Somewhere in there, I just may find my motivation again.

I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for the support that you have shown me. I am not going away completely; I will still try to actively comment on other blogs just so you don’t forget me. That’s all for now, but I will check back soon (I promise). If you are not signed up to get updates from me when I post, now would probably be a good time to sign up. Not sure when I will write again, but when I do it likely to be pretty good stuff.

One Of My Bigger Regrets

 I really do not have many regrets in life.  Partially because I make reasonably intelligent choices most of time, and partially because I am too arrogant to admit I made a mistake in the first place.  That being said, one of my greatest regrets in life has been my complete lack of effort in attempting to maintain relationships.  I am great at building relationships with the people I work with, but when we no longer work together for whatever reason those relationships quickly fade away.  I don’t make a strong enough effort to keep in touch with people.

 I have been making much more of an effort to reconnect with some of the people from my past.  I have harnessed the power of LinkedIn and used it to reach out to many people that I have not spoken to in years.  I have picked up the phone and called a few people as well. 

I would love to tell you that the result has been a magical rekindling of old friendships and I was able to pick back up right where I left off with all of my old contacts.   I would love to tell you that, but that would not exactly be the truth.  In some cases, I have absolutely reconnected and I think I actually brought some joy to the people I was reaching out to.  My call was unexpected and I was reaching out for no other purpose than I wanted to talk to them.  I think it made them feel very appreciated and special.  In other cases the calls were very awkward and I think they were waiting for me to ask for something or trying to figure out what my angle was.  Every call may not have had a fairy tale ending, but a few of them really made some old friends smile so I would consider the effort a success.

Here is my advice to you, reach out to an old contact today.  Call them, don’t email your communication.  I had a much higher success rate with the phone calls I made as opposed to the emails I sent.  If one of your old contacts is still local to you, then arrange to have coffee or meet for breakfast one morning. My career path would have been far better if I had taken the time to maintain relationships throughout my career.  It took me a very long time to realize the value of maintaining relationships.  Fortunately, I like to believe that I am still evolving so I am taking the necessary actions to correct my behaviors.  Learn from my mistakes and regrets and reach out to someone today that you have not spoken to in a long time.  Step away from Twitter and Facebook and actually connect with someone today.   

It turns out your Iphone can actually be used for more than updating your Facebook page. It can actually make phone calls as well.

Mid Year Report Cards

We are now mid-way through the year.  Now is the time to evaluate how you and you employees are performing?  Are you accomplishing the things that you wanted to this year?  Are you team members performing as you had hoped they would?

One of the basic principles of management is that you must have goals established for the employees that you are responsible for managing.  What do you want them to do?  How will you measure their success?  How should they set their priorities?  The goals need to be tangible, measurable and communicated.  That means that you have to write them down and review them with each employee.  I could write a whole series of posts on how to set goals for your employees, but I am not going to go into great detail about that today as I do not think that is where most managers fail.  Almost every manager I have every worked with has set some type of goals for their employees.  Some of the goals may not have been very tangible or measurable, but they at least had goals.  Where most managers tend to fail is on the follow-up.  They set goals and communicate them to their employees, but then they fail to ever mention the goal again until it is time to conduct an annual evaluation.  In most cases, both the employee and the manager have completely forgotten what the goals were. 

Today is the perfect time to dust off those goals that you set for your team at the beginning of the year.  Over half of 2012 is behind us now.  Look at each of the goals that you set for your team members.  Are the goals still relevant?  Are they measurable?  If so, what measurements have you been tracking?  How is each employee performing against their goals?  Take a few minutes and write down exactly how each employee is performing.  Have they had any truly exceptional moments in the first half of the year?  Make sure that you mention those moments.  Are there areas that they need to improve?  If so, develop a tangible plan on how you can help them to improve.  Put some benchmarks in place for the second half of the year where you can track their performance to ensure that it is indeed improving. 

Meet with each employee and give them a mid-year review.   Let them know what they did particularly well and why you appreciate them.  Let them know how they performed against their goals for the first half of the year and what you want them to focus on in the second half of the year. 

Management is really not rocket science.  It just takes a little organization and follow-up to drive performance.  Now is the perfect time to evaluate how each of your employees has performed in the first half of the year.  It will ensure that you have a great second half of the year.

Taking A Few Days Off

Every now and then it is good to completely unplug and spend a little time with your toes in the sand.  That’s what I am going to do.  I will not be posting anything for a few days, but I can assure you that I will miss you all and I will most certainly be back on Thursday July 5^th.

Have a great week!

MBN

I will try to come back with a better picture. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Appreciation, The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Happy Friday to you!  Friday is a great day to let an employee or a coworker know just how much you appreciate them.  You have the power to make someone’s day and since it is Friday, that positive feeling will likely stick with them through the weekend.  What could be better?  So what is stopping you from making it happen?

-Send an email to thank a co-worker for something they helped you with this week.  Include their boss if you want.

-Take the time to write out a thank you note for one of your employees that has really had a good week.  Be specific about why you appreciate them and the value that they add to your organization.

-Give a small gift card to your housekeeping personnel.  My office is always cleaned, trash always emptied and I never see our housekeeper.  She is like a housekeeping ninja.  It is one of those jobs that no one appreciates unless it is not done well.  I love the housekeeper we have, but I will bet she does not know how much I appreciate her.  Time to change that.

-Give a book to someone as a thank you.  I love when people recommend books to me.  I love it even more when they just hand me book.  You can thank them and help to develop them at the same time.

-Ask someone to lunch today that you do not normally go to lunch with.  Break out of your rut.  Talk to new people.  Forge new relationships.

-Go into your LinkedIn account and reach out to someone who you have not spoken with in over a year.  Just ask them how they are doing.   Actually connect with your connections.

You all are far smarter than I am.  You tell me.  What can we do today to make someone’s day?

Management Pet Peeves

I am not a big fan of anonymous notes. (Photo credit: S@Z)

As a manager, I definitely have some pet peeves.  There are things that instantly irritate me that I have very little tolerance for.  I think that some of my pet peeves may be unique to me, but others may be ones that you can relate to.  I decided to make a list of a few of my pet peeves to see if you are in agreement and I also want to hear what yours are.

1.  Anonymous Notes:  In twenty years of managing people,  I have gotten a lot of anonymous notes.  Most of them have been personal attacks on another employee or a manager and I can easily see why someone would not want their name associated with the note.  A very small percentage of them have been anything remotely useful.  My rule of thumb in business and in life is that if you are not willing to sign your name to it, then don’t put it in writing.  I get that it can be intimidating to talk to your boss on an issue, but I if there is something that is really bothering you then I think you need to build up the courage to have that conversation.  If you fear that your boss is going to penalize you in some way for bringing an issue up, then you may want to consider looking for a new job.  The bottom line is that the anonymous note serves no purpose.  If you have a great boss that will ensure that your issue is dealt with, then you are better off just talking to them about it.  If you have a bad boss that will not fix the issue anyway, then the note is a waste of time.  My company occasionally conducts anonymous surveys to gauge employee morale.  I always put my name in the comment section.  I want them to know it was me that said what I said.  Does anyone else have strong feelings towards anonymous notes?
2. Call Out Procedures:  People get sick and need to miss work.  I understand that, really I do.  If you are an entry-level employee, then I expect that you will call in as soon as you realize that you will not be able to make it in and just let your manager know.  Assuming this does not happen frequently, I will have no complaints.  What I don’t care for is when people have their spouse, or their child, or their parents, or anyone else call in for them.  Sure if you are in the hospital or you were involved in a serious accident then having someone else call in for you is perfectly acceptable, but if you have the sniffles then you need to make your own phone calls.  Don’t make me explain to your mother that I really need to talk to you.  Is this an issue for anyone else?
3. Late for meetings:  It annoys me when anyone is late for a meeting, but is especially annoying to me when the person that called the meeting shows up late.  I know I am not alone on this pet peeve.
4. Self Importance:  Some folks seem to think that they are more important than the rest of us.  They seem to believe that their issues should always be our priority and that they have the right to speak to people any way they like.  Every one of the people I work with is special, but no one is more special than another.  It is a team effort and I have little tolerance for those that cannot show appreciation or at least be civil to their teammates.    

I am going to stop my list here.  These are the ones that are fresh in my mind, but I am quite confident that I will come up with a dozen more as soon as I post this.  Maybe I will write a follow-up at some point in the future.  In the meantime, I want to know what you management pet peeves are.

How Engaged Should HR Be?

Today’s post was inspired by my good friend Melissa Fairman.  Melissa wrote a post on whether it is better for HR professionals to be engaged with the employee base or whether HR needs to be just a little stand offish in order to remain objective when they need to.  You can see her whole post here.

I have very strong feelings on this.  I have worked with more HR people than I can remember over the last twenty years.  The reason I can’t remember most of them is because they were completely irrelevant in my life.  They definitely appeared to be taking the stand offish route.  They were able to remain complete objective and completely useless. 

I always assumed that was the way that HR was supposed to behave.  Never heard from them, but if I needed to get guidance on an HR related issue then I knew where their office was.  It was only in the last couple of years that my eyes have been opened to just how bad most of my HR experiences have been.

I work with a truly outstanding HR manager now.  As I was preparing to write this post, I thought about the things that make her outstanding and one of them is clearly her level of engagement with all of our employees and managers.  I work in a building that probably has about 300-400 employees in it.  All of them know who she is and what her role is.  I don’t see how you can be a good HR partner unless you come out of your office every now and then and let people know who you are.  If you want to know what is going on in the organization, then get out there and talk to people every now and then.  If you want to proactively address issues before they become lawsuits, then get out and talk to the people and listen to what they have to say.

My HR manager also goes around and proactively stops by and speaks with each manager on just about a weekly basis.  She will just poke her head in and see if we are doing okay and what the big issues we are tackling for the week.   The first couple times she did this with me, I was polite but I really did not tell her anything.  Over time, she started to wear me down and I would tell her a few things.  She always listened attentively and then offered helpful suggestions.  After doing that for a couple of months, a funny thing happen; I started to trust her.  Here is a little heads up for HR professional just starting out, unless you take the time to build relationships with people you cannot expect them to automatically trust you simply because you are in HR. 

My advice to HR managers is to be an innie.  Engage with the employees and managers every chance you get.  Don’t go out drinking with them, but engage professionally in the workplace as frequently as possible.  Get out of your office.  Very few people will take the time to seek you out.  If you want to be a good partner and help your organization, then invest in a good pair of walking shoes.