Table: The World's Happiest Countries - Forbes.com

Table: The World's Happiest Countries - Forbes.com

Forbes.com

Happiness

Table: The World's Happiest Countries

Francesca Levy, 07.14.10, 05:00 PM EDT

By and large, rich countries are happier--and that's no coincidence.


Quantifying happiness isn't an easy task. Researchers at the Gallup World Poll went about it by surveying thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being.

First they asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a "life evaluation" score from 1 to 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their "daily experiences"--things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged. Subjects that reported high scores were considered "thriving." The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings. Click here for the full story.

Happiness
The World's Happiest Countries
Francesca Levy, 07.14.10, 5:00 PM ET

In the wake of their World Cup loss, residents of the Netherlands may be feeling depressed. But there's reason to believe they won't be done in by the agony of defeat: According to a recent poll, the country is one of the happiest in the world.

Championship-winning Spain, on the other hand, was swept with euphoria and national pride, but that may have been an unfamiliar feeling. The country ranks No. 17 of 21 European countries in terms of happiness.

The fact is good times probably have more to do with the size of your wallet than the size of your trophy shelf. The five happiest countries in the world--Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands--are all clustered in the same region, and all enjoy high levels of prosperity.

In Depth: The World's Happiest Countries

Video: Happy In Bhutan

"The Scandinavian countries do really well," says Jim Harter, a chief scientist at Gallup, which developed the poll. "One theory why is that they have their basic needs taken care of to a higher degree than other countries. When we look at all the data, those basic needs explain the relationship between income and well-being."

Behind the Numbers
Quantifying happiness isn't an easy task. Researchers at the Gallup World Poll went about it by surveying thousands of respondents in 155 countries, between 2005 and 2009, in order to measure two types of well-being.

First they asked subjects to reflect on their overall satisfaction with their lives, and ranked their answers using a "life evaluation" score between 1 and 10. Then they asked questions about how each subject had felt the previous day. Those answers allowed researchers to score their "daily experiences"--things like whether they felt well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged.

Subjects that reported high scores were considered "thriving." The percentage of thriving individuals in each country determined our rankings. For a complete list of countries surveyed, including the percentages thriving and their daily happiness scores, click here.

Money Matters
The Gallup researchers found evidence of what many have long suspected: money does buy happiness--at least a certain kind of it. In a related report, they studied the reasons why countries with high gross domestic products won out for well-being, and found an association between life satisfaction and income.

"Money is an object that many or most people desire, and pursue during the majority of their waking hours," researchers wrote in the report. "It would be surprising if success at this pursuit had no influence whatsoever when people were asked to evaluate their lives."

Indeed, Denmark, the world's happiest country, had a per-capita GDP of $36,000 in 2009, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. That's higher than 196 of the 227 countries for which the CIA collects statistics.

But there's more to happiness than riches. The Gallup study showed that while income undoubtedly influenced happiness, it did so for a particular kind of well-being--the kind one feels when reflecting on his or her own successes and prospects for the future. Day-to-day happiness is more likely to be associated with how well one's psychological and social needs are being met, and that's harder to achieve with a paycheck.

Take Costa Rica. The sixth-happiest country in the world, and the happiest country in the Americas, it beat out richer countries like the United States. That's because social networks in Costa Rica are tight, allowing individuals to feel happy with their lot, regardless of financial success.

"Costa Rica ranks really high on social and psychological prosperity," says Harter. "It's probably things systemic to the society that make people over time develop better relationships, and put more value on relationships. Daily positive feelings rank really high there."

Inhabitants of some rich countries are bound to feel happier. But happiness is elusive to define, and money isn't the only thing that influences it. Harter explains that the more abstract sense of happiness to which wealth contributes has a different effect on one's life than daily happiness.

"Each of us is two different people. We evaluate our lives periodically; we sit back and reflect and summarize things that have gone on in our lives to date," Harter says. "Another side is how you experience things daily. Daily experience affects your stress and your psychology. How you evaluate your life affects your decisions. It's important to think about how you can leverage that well-being."

In Depth: The World's Happiest Countries

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***********************************************************************http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Economic Scene - Study Rethinks Importance of Kindergarten Teachers - NYTimes.com

Economic Scene - Study Rethinks Importance of Kindergarten Teachers - NYTimes.com

New York Times - Economic Scene

July 27, 2010

The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers

By DAVID LEONHARDT

How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?

Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not — which raises the demoralizing question of how much of a difference schools and teachers can make.

There has always been one major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on a broader set of measures, like a child’s health or eventual earnings. As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”

Early this year, Mr. Chetty and five other researchers set out to fill this void. They examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive.

Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on test scores. Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had re-emerged.

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses. Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance. The tests that 5-year-olds take may pick up these skills, even if later multiple-choice tests do not.

Now happens to be a particularly good time for a study like this. With the economy still terribly weak, many people are understandably unsure about the value of education. They see that even college graduates have lost their jobs in the recession.

Barely a week seems to go by without a newspaper or television station running a report suggesting that education is overrated. These stories quote liberal groups, like the Economic Policy Institute, that argue that an education can’t protect workers in today’s global economy. Or they quote conservatives, like Charles Murray and Ramesh Ponnuru, who suggest that people who haven’t graduated from college aren’t smart enough to do so.

But the anti-education case usually relies on a combination of anecdotes and selective facts. In truth, the gap between the pay of college graduates and everyone else grew to a record last year, according to the Labor Department, and unemployment has risen far more for the less educated.

This is not simply because smart people — people who would do well no matter what — tend to graduate from college. Education itself can make a difference. A long line of economic research, by Julie Berry Cullen, James Heckman, Philip Oreopoulos and many others, has found as much. The study by Mr. Chetty and his colleagues is the latest piece of evidence.

•

The crucial problem the study had to solve was the old causation-correlation problem. Are children who do well on kindergarten tests destined to do better in life, based on who they are? Or are their teacher and classmates changing them?

The Tennessee experiment, known as Project Star, offered a chance to answer these questions because it randomly assigned students to a kindergarten class. As a result, the classes had fairly similar socioeconomic mixes of students and could be expected to perform similarly on the tests given at the end of kindergarten.

Yet they didn’t. Some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.)

Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better.

But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.

Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.

When I asked Douglas Staiger, a Dartmouth economist who studies education, what he thought of the new paper, he called it fascinating and potentially important. “The worry has been that education didn’t translate into earnings,” Mr. Staiger said. “But this is telling us that it does and that the fade-out effect is misleading in some sense.”

Mr. Chetty and his colleagues — one of whom, Emmanuel Saez, recently won the prize for the top research economist under the age of 40 — estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That’s the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn’t take into account social gains, like better health and less crime.

Obviously, great kindergarten teachers are not going to start making $320,000 anytime soon. Still, school administrators can do more than they’re doing.

They can pay their best teachers more, as Pittsburgh soon will, and give them the support they deserve. Administrators can fire more of their worst teachers, as Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, did last week. Schools can also make sure standardized tests are measuring real student skills and teacher quality, as teachers’ unions have urged.

Given today’s budget pressures, finding the money for any new programs will be difficult. But that’s all the more reason to focus our scarce resources on investments whose benefits won’t simply fade away.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

Access Content Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/business/economy/28leonhardt.html?scp=1&sq=the%20case%20for%20the%20%24320,000%20kindergarten%20teachers&st=cse

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Breaking the Bank? Insurance Executive Salaries Flat

Insurance Networking News

Breaking the Bank? Insurance Executive Salaries Flat

New SNL study charts changes in executive compensation, AIG chief Benmosche top in base salary but lags behind peers, subordinates in total pay

Insurance Networking News, July 28, 2010

Bill Kenealy

In its 2010 Executive Compensation Review, Charlottesville, Va.-based SNL Financial, a provider of financial data and analysis on the banking, financial services and insurance markets, examines pay packages across a number of lines of business for the 2009 fiscal year. While CEO base salary ebbed slightly (down .86%) for all insurance companies, there were some large variances across all lines, notes the report.

For example, while multiline and property/casualty CEOs saw base salary increases of 5.81% and 4.26% respectively, life/health and managed care CEOs saw a decline of 16.21% and 12.21%. Given the long-term nature of executive compensation packages, the fact these retrenchments occurred as health insurers came under increased scrutiny during the health care reform debate is likely coincidental.

The most intensely scrutinized of all insurance companies, New York-based American International Group, also reported some interesting numbers. While AIG President and CEO Robert Benmosche tallied the largest base salary at $3,077,622, his aggregate pay package of $4,639,188 placed him 96^th on the list of total compensation. That list was headed by ACE Limited Chairman, President and CEO Evan Greenberg, who netted $21,297, 698 in total pay. Jay Fishman, chairman and CEO of the Travelers Companies Inc., placed second with $20,102,833.

Indeed, the SNL report underscored the fact that base salary is only a small component of total compensation, averaging just 20.53% in 2009. In the case of AIG, four of Benmosche’s underlings earned more than he did. AIG EVP, Property/Casualty Group Kristian Phillip Moor pulled down $10,409,171, AIG EVP Life Insurance Rodney Owen Martin took home $9,990,550, AIG EVP Foreign General Insurance Nicholas C. Walsh was paid $8,962,420 and AIG EVP and CFO David Lawrence Herzog earned $6,068,346.

Another not unexpected finding is that compensation directly mirrors institution asset size. For example, in the case of CIOs, the median compensation was $971,225. The top earner for organizations in the highest percentile was $6,127,475, while the top earner in the lower 20^th percentile netted $604,169.

Access Content Source: http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/aig_benmosche_insurance_compensation_bailout-25366-1.html

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Breaking the Bank? Insurance Executive Salaries Flat

Insurance Networking News

Breaking the Bank? Insurance Executive Salaries Flat

New SNL study charts changes in executive compensation, AIG chief Benmosche top in base salary but lags behind peers, subordinates in total pay

Insurance Networking News, July 28, 2010

Bill Kenealy

In its 2010 Executive Compensation Review, Charlottesville, Va.-based SNL Financial, a provider of financial data and analysis on the banking, financial services and insurance markets, examines pay packages across a number of lines of business for the 2009 fiscal year. While CEO base salary ebbed slightly (down .86%) for all insurance companies, there were some large variances across all lines, notes the report.

For example, while multiline and property/casualty CEOs saw base salary increases of 5.81% and 4.26% respectively, life/health and managed care CEOs saw a decline of 16.21% and 12.21%. Given the long-term nature of executive compensation packages, the fact these retrenchments occurred as health insurers came under increased scrutiny during the health care reform debate is likely coincidental.

Advertisement

The most intensely scrutinized of all insurance companies, New York-based American International Group, also reported some interesting numbers. While AIG President and CEO Robert Benmosche tallied the largest base salary at $3,077,622, his aggregate pay package of $4,639,188 placed him 96^th on the list of total compensation. That list was headed by ACE Limited Chairman, President and CEO Evan Greenberg, who netted $21,297, 698 in total pay. Jay Fishman, chairman and CEO of the Travelers Companies Inc., placed second with $20,102,833.

Indeed, the SNL report underscored the fact that base salary is only a small component of total compensation, averaging just 20.53% in 2009. In the case of AIG, four of Benmosche’s underlings earned more than he did. AIG EVP, Property/Casualty Group Kristian Phillip Moor pulled down $10,409,171, AIG EVP Life Insurance Rodney Owen Martin took home $9,990,550, AIG EVP Foreign General Insurance Nicholas C. Walsh was paid $8,962,420 and AIG EVP and CFO David Lawrence Herzog earned $6,068,346.

Another not unexpected finding is that compensation directly mirrors institution asset size. For example, in the case of CIOs, the median compensation was $971,225. The top earner for organizations in the highest percentile was $6,127,475, while the top earner in the lower 20^th percentile netted $604,169.

Access Content Source: http://www.insurancenetworking.com/news/aig_benmosche_insurance_compensation_bailout-25366-1.html

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

10 Steps To Happiness At Work - Forbes.com

10 Steps To Happiness At Work - Forbes.com

Forbes.com

Business Basics

10 Steps To Happiness At Work

Helen Coster, 07.27.10, 06:18 PM EDT

It's not about finding the ''perfect'' job.

In Pictures: 10 Steps To Happiness At Work

Here's a pop quiz for anyone who's miserable at work. Which action has the biggest chance of improving your happiness? (A) Getting a promotion, (B) seeing your professional nemesis move to the Mongolia office, (C) focusing on the positive aspects of your job and trying to ignore the negative or (D) quitting in a fit of anger and landing your dream job elsewhere?

Sorry, says Srikumar Rao, the author of a new book, Happiness at Work. The answer is none of the above. To achieve greater happiness on the job, you don't need your boss to stop calling you at night. You don't need to make more money. You don't need to follow your dream of being a sommelier, or running a B&B in Vermont.

"The exact attributes of what you are looking for do not exist in any job," says Rao, who teaches a Columbia University course called "Creativity and Personal Mastery." He believes that the single biggest obstacle to workplace happiness is the belief that we are prisoners of circumstance, powerless before the things that happen to us. To change your job, he says, you must change the way you think about it. "We create our own experience," he insists. He relies heavily on Eastern spirituality and draws from many major religions. "The knowledge that we are responsible for living the life we have is our most powerful tool."

Rather than encourage people to focus on "positive thinking," Rao wants to banish the whole notion of good and bad events. "'When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade' assumes that you have been given a lemon and that a lemon is bad for you," he says. "I'm saying, first of all, if you've been given a lemon, is that a bad thing? You can train yourself to say, 'OK, this happened,' rather than label it as bad." If you think of events that occurred 10 years ago and seemed bad at the time, he says, you'll realize that many of those events led to something positive. He recalls a former student who was fired from his job and received a healthy severance deal. Six months later the company ran into trouble and all the remaining staffers lost their jobs without receiving a dime. The fired employee actually came out ahead.

Rao believes that in order to be happy in the workplace, you need to move from personal ambition to "greater vision" ambition. "Personal ambition is 'I want to be CEO,'" he says. "Greater vision ambition is, 'I want to lead this company so that people want to work here.'" He says that ambition hinders happiness as long as people employ an "if/then" model: If I get the promotion, then I will be happy. Rao says that a healthier and happier perspective is to think "I have a grand vision and I will try my best to make it work. If I succeed, wonderful. If not, wonderful. My purpose is to give it the best I've got.'"

If happiness comes only from within, then how can you tell if you really are in a legitimately bad situation, as opposed just needing to reframe the way you look at it? Rao says it's better to make a change from a positive place than from a point of anger. "You should make a change from the place of being grateful for your experience but ready to make a change and continue to grow."

Even in corporate America, where so much of work is every man for him or herself, Rao advocates inhabiting an "other-centered universe." If the nice guy gets passed over for a promotion, he still may succeed in less tangible ways or land an even better job down the road. "They may rise later in the shootout," says Rao. "I'm challenging the assumption that you need to be a dog-eat-dog person to survive in a corporate environment."

Author's note: For more information on happiness at work, check out two great resources: the Happiness Project blog, by Gretchen Rubin, and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's new book,Delivering Happiness. See also "The Real Value Of Happiness At Work," an interview with Srikumar Rao.

10 Steps To Happiness At Work
To achieve greater happiness at work, you don't need your boss to stop calling you at night. You don't need to make more money. You don't need to follow your dream of being a sommelier, or running a B&B in Vermont. So says Srikumar Rao, the author of a new book, Happiness at Workand the teacher of a Columbia University course called "Creativity and Personal Mastery." The biggest obstacle to happiness is simply your belief that you're the prisoner of circumstance, powerless before the things that happen to you, he says. "We create our own experience," he adds. Here are 10 steps to happiness at work, drawn from his recommendations.

(1) Avoid "good" and "bad" labels
When something bad happens, don't beat yourself up, says Rao. Instead, when you make an error, be aware of it without passing judgment. "Do what you have to do, but don't surrender your calmness and sense of peace."

(2) Practice "extreme resilience"
Rao defines "extreme resilience" as the ability to recover fast from adversity. "You spend much time in needless, fruitless self-recrimination and blaming others," he writes. "You go on pointless guilt trips and make excuses that you know are fatuous. If you're resilient, you recover and go on to do great things." (He also says that if you fully take his advice to avoid "bad thing" labels, you don't have to practice resilience at all.)

(3) Let go of grudges
Rao says that a key to being happy at work is to let go of grudges. "Consciously drop the past," he writes. "It's hard, but with practice you will get the hang of it."

(4) Don't waste time being jealous
"When you're jealous you're saying that the universe is limited and there's not enough success in it for me," says Rao. "Instead, be happy, because whatever happened to him will happen to you in your current job or at another company."

(5) Find passion in you, not in your job.
Sure, you can fantasize about a dream job that pays you well and allows you to do some kind of social good, work with brilliant and likable colleagues and still be home in time for dinner. But Rao warns against searching for that perfect position, or even believing that it exists. Instead, he advocates changing how you think about your current situation. For example, instead of thinking of yourself as a human resources manager at a bank, identify yourself as someone who helps other bank employees provide for their families, take advantage of their benefits and save for the future.

(6) Picture yourself 10 years ago and 10 years from now
Many problems that kept you awake 10 years ago mean nothing to you know. Realizing this truth will help you develop perspective.

(7) Banish the "if/then" model of happiness
Rao says that many of us rely on a flawed "if/then" model for happiness. If we become CEO, then we'll be happy. If we make a six-figure salary, then we'll be happy. "There is nothing that you have to get, do or be in order to be happy," he writes.

(8) Invest in the process, not the outcome
"Outcomes are totally beyond your control," Rao writes. You'll set yourself up for disappointment if you focus too much on what you hope to achieve rather than how you plan to get there.

(9) Think about other people
Even in corporate America, where so much of work is every man for him or herself, Rao advocates inhabiting an "other-centered universe." If the nice guy gets passed over for a promotion, he may still succeed in less tangible ways. "He may rise later in the shootout," Rao says. "I'm challenging the assumption that you need to be a dog-eat-dog person to survive in a corporate environment."

(10) Swap multitasking for mindfulness
Rao thinks that multitasking gets in the way of happiness. "Multitasking simply means that you do many things badly and take much more time at it," he writes. He recommends instead working on tasks for 20-minute intervals that you gradually increase to two-hour spans. Turn off any electronic gadgets that can be a distraction. He claims that with practice, you'll be able to accomplish much more and with less effort.

Access Content Source: http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/27/happiness-at-work-srikumar-rao-leadership-careers-advice.html?partner=daily_newsletter

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Why That Big Promotion Can Be a Curse | The Corner Office | BNET

Why That Big Promotion Can Be a Curse The Corner Office BNET

BNET Insight - The Corner Office

Why That Big Promotion Can Be a Curse

By Steve Tobak

July 26th, 2010 @ 11:41 am

You spend years, maybe decades, climbing the corporate ladder. Then one day, it happens. You’re named CEO. At that moment, a lifetime of dreams, hard work, and achievement come to fruition.

Being the consummate professional, you act nonchalant as everyone from loved ones to business contacts you hardly know shower you with congratulatory sentiment. But deep inside, your feelings overflow. This is the moment you’ve always lived for. This is your crowning life achievement.

And as the days go by and all the fervor calms down, you really start to settle into the role. It feels good. It feels right. You feel like you’ve died and gone to corporate heaven.

Until, one day, it all falls apart. All too soon, you’re yanked off that lofty pedestal and falling further than you ever imagined an ego can fall. And you find yourself desperately wishing you’d never ever heard of those three initials: C - E - O.

Sound overly dramatic? Well, it’s not. I can tell you from experience; it’s not. And it’s not just about CEOs; it can happen with any big promotion. Just ask Tony Hayward of BP.

I’m likely the only commentator who thinks so, but Tony Hayward is a good man and a good CEO who found himself in the mother of all no win situations. Even after some heated debate on my In Defense of BP CEO Tony Hayward post and now, assorted academians and crisis-management “gurus” squawking about how, in hindsight, Hayward Fell Short of Modern CEO Demands, I remain unconvinced that anyone in that position could have done better. I would love to see all the critics take a stab at it.

And now that BP is dumping its lightening-rod to save its brand and appease the American public, the media will have a field day with Hayward’s reported $18 million exit package, 90 percent of which is his 28-year pension, mostly as a senior executive, which accounts for all the zeros. He deserves every penny. And, he’ll be giving up a reported 546,000 share options and up to 2 million shares under a long-term incentive plan that today is worth about $13 million.

Or you can ask Yahoo’s Jerry Yang. When Yahoo needed a seasoned turnaround specialist, the board, in all its wisdom, took all of a week and decided to promote the co-founder and Chief Yahoo to CEO. Unfortunately, Yang was a novice who’d never run a company, let alone turned one around - an extraordinarily challenge for even the most seasoned and talented chief executive.

Yang promptly fell flat on his face, botching a sweetheart $33 a share bailout from Microsoft that would have netted Yahoo investors more than $20 billion. Instead, Yang reorganized again and again, a huge morale and productivity killer that resulted in one of the most crippling talent drains in corporate history. More than 100 executives jumped ship.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you should feel sorry for CEOs. They’re adults who are capable of living with their own decisions and actions. That’s how it is and how it should be. What I am saying is that it can happen to you. It can be a C-Level job or even a promotion to VP or GM. So, when you get that big promotion, here’s some advice I learned from experience that can save you a lot of pain and anguish:

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Self-importance isn’t real. On the contrary, it’s completely subjective, by definition. Never forget that you’re just a man or woman, no more, no less. You bleed and cry, just like everyone else. And what goes up, all too often, comes down in a hurry. The higher the pedestal you set yourself up on, the bigger the fall.

Look, running a company is heady stuff, but it’s also risky business. Most fail. A few don’t. Either way, there can be huge ups and down, and everything’s magnified if you choose to look at it that way. But that’s entirely up to you. If you ask me, and I’m sure Tony and Jerry would agree, you’ll be better off if you just keep your feet planted firmly on the ground.

Access Content Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=5198

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Driving Success: The Incredible Power of Team-Based Strategy and Vision Alignment

MCS Communications

 

 

Driving Success: The Incredible Power of Team-Based Strategy and Vision Alignment

 

By Charlie Sheppard

If your team is like most teams, your employees represent your biggest line item expense and your most valuable asset. This means your team’s ability to impact the company’s productivity - and ultimately, its profitability - depends on making sure all of your workers perform up to their full potential.

Despite the experience of many organizations, it is possible to turn strategies and plans into individual actions, which are necessary to produce a great business performance. But it's not easy. Many companies repeatedly fail to truly motivate their people to work with enthusiasm, all together, towards the corporate aims. Most companies and organizations know their businesses, and the strategies required for success. However many corporations - especially large ones - struggle to translate the theory into action plans that will enable the strategy to be successfully implemented and sustained. Here are some leading edge methods for effective strategic corporate implementation.

To survive in today’s marketplace, everyone must find ways to be smarter, more productive, and more cohesive. How can this be accomplished? Studies show a dramatic increase in both worker and business performance when an organization effectively sets and closely ties individual employee goals to the company’s overall strategy and a team’s overall strategy. The Cold, Hard Facts: "A mere 7%of employees today fully understand their company’s business strategies and what’s expected of them in order to help achieve company goals." Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, "The Strategy-Focused Organization," Harvard Business School Press, 2001. A Fortune Magazine study has shown that 7 out of 10 CEOs who fail, do so not because of bad strategy, but because of bad execution. In another study of Times 1000 companies, 80% of directors said they had the right strategies but only 14% thought they were implementing them well. Only 1 in 3 companies, in their own assessment, were achieving significant strategic success. The message is clear: effective strategy realization is the key for achieving strategic success. There is a strong business case to be made between using a team-based approach and execution. In a recent study, researchers found a strong correlation between a company’s financial performance and an effective goal setting process. Companies that more closely aligned goals across their organization enjoyed much higher levels of financial success. The study also found that employees in the weakest-performing companies did not clearly understand the connection between their individual efforts and the overall goals of their employers. These same people also reported feeling confused as to their roles at the company, which naturally resulted in unfocused - and therefore less productive - work activity.   Implementation is not for the meek. Your strategic plan is a beautiful twelve-meter America's Cup hull; the implementation plan is the sails and the crew. Your team won’t get very far without one or the other.  The main reason for doing a team-based strategy approach is the knowledge, context, and wisdom it creates with other members of the team.  This wisdom creates motivation for action. The problem with most vision statements and business strategies is they are handed out to the team.  The words don’t mean anything.  When the words don’t have a strong mental representation or an association, the vision fails to be either guiding or motivating.  When the words don’t link back to a mental image or a compelling story... the vision naturally falls flat and in the worst-case scenario the vision and strategy can be mocked.  How many of you have seen a printed vision or business strategy and ridiculed it in your own mind? Strategies and vision are not reality themselves, only representations of reality in the minds of people.  The better the words have representations in the minds of the team, the better the execution will be. No one has ever touched or seen a vision or a strategy. This means that every vision and strategy can have a misrepresenting or distorting effect.  Your job is to make sure the words have a compelling meaning. The main role of both a vision and strategy is to chart the course of an organization in order for it to sail cohesively through its environment. Strategy promotes coordination of activity. Without strategy to focus effort, chaos can ensue as people pull in a variety of different directions. Your vision and strategy defines your organization and focuses effort. Strategy provides people with a shorthand way to understand their organization and to distinguish it from others. Strategy provides meaning, plus a convenient way to comprehend what the organization does. Strategy is needed to reduce ambiguity and provide order. In this sense, a strategy is like a theory: a cognitive structure to simplify and explain the world, and thereby facilitate action. And yet, strategic direction has an inherent set of limitations as it can serve as a set of blinders to hide potential dangers. Setting out on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail into an iceberg. While direction is important, it should come from a thorough understanding of the current situation and the realization that the landscape is changing frequently. If the strategy is inflexible, there may be no peripheral vision to open other possibilities. We function best when we can take some things for granted, at least for a time. And a thorough understanding of where you are, where you are going and how you are going, to get there resolves the big issues so that people can get on with the details. If there is one thing that keeps a business strategy from doing its job, it is a lack of leadership. And not just from leadership at the top. There have to be good leaders at all levels of the organization. When you have a team of motivated people, you unlock the full potential of a team. That doesn’t vary for any kind of strategy. A team-based approach is the way to develop leaders throughout your team to help drive implementation. The beauty of a team-based strategic plan is that it comes fully loaded with individual contribution, buy-in, and ownership! Add to this the fact that the ideas behind the plan are understood and you will have both high relevance and accuracy for your organization. The second thing that’s extremely important is accountability. Accountability has to rest on someone who can fix a problem, and people have to meet their objectives.   These findings underscore the critical importance of effectively setting and closely aligning employee and business goals to drive the success of your company. Harness the winds of change   Change comes hard to a company's culture. When change is necessary, the leaders often find a hard struggle ahead because employees fight back in covert and even openly devious ways, thus slowing the progress. A culture resistant to change is one of the major stumbling blocks in implementing a new strategic initiative, vision or structure. Entrenched behaviors undermine any new structure from the beginning, robbing it of vital momentum and ensuring that implementation will fail.  When the winds of change get moving faster and faster even a grain of sand will have an impact when whipped up to maximum velocity.  Again, the way to harness the change is by having a team-based planning session to chart the course together. The top four business benefits of using a Team-Based Approach Increased operating margins Quicker execution of strategy Inspired performance Effective internal communications The top four dangers of using a Team-Based Approach Decisions are long, drawn out, and painful Each person has a different agenda of what strategy, vision, and goal alignment means Lots of talk and little action Personal agendas being driven inside of the process We propose that the best way to successfully implement a strategy is to have a team-based approach to the development of the strategy. You can use the following ideas to help you build your own team-based approach. Our Team-Based Strategy Development is a process that will assist an organization in using the collective wisdom of its employees in the development of a strategy. This process creates alignment and dedication to the strategy as it is being developed. Team-based strategic planning is intricate and complex. There are pitfalls along the way. But nothing works better in getting full alignment for a strategy and inspired implementation of the strategy. We recommend using a facilitator so that each team member can be free to fully express their ideas with out having to attend to the process. Use the following map of how to get the most by aligning your team and aligning your goals. Step 1: Present State Analysis. Do a SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), do a PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Sociological, and Technical), use Porter Five forces, (The threat of the entry of new competitors, The intensity of competitive rivalry, The threat of substitute products or services, The bargaining power of customers, The bargaining power of suppliers) and/or list out your strategic issues. The idea with step one is to get a complete analysis of the present situation in the mindset of the group doing the strategy.  You are creating a collective insight into the present situation for the whole team. Step 2:  Create a vision.  The more compelling your vision is, the greater the impact it will have.  A Vision is a visual image of the Future.  It is the task of the group to "discern" this vision, to give it form, and to find the associated words to communicate it. The good news is that by creating it together, the words will have an association for all team members. The vision should point out the unique personality of your function and or team. It will be forward-looking and connotes an ideal state.  It can be bold, attractive, and it may not be fully achievable. It should give insight into what the organization ideally wants to achieve. You should be able to derive business goals from an understanding of the vision of where you want to go.  It is the desired state in contrast to the present state captured in Step 1. Step 3: Create a strategy.  The strategy starts to set the themes of how you are going to get from Step 1 to Step 2.  These are the means by which you are going to accomplish what you set out as your goals.  You can look at product strategies, marketing strategies, development strategies, financial strategies, and service strategies.   You can create a broad level strategy.  The strategy statement should include the business themes for your business unit, the themes for your internal focus, and strategic fixes that need to be addressed.  The strategy issues affect the department’s long-term contribution to profitability and the corporation’s competitive edge. We break strategy down into two areas -- the Strategic Focus and the Strategic Objectives. Step 4: Strategic Focus Areas. Identify your two to five critical success factors.  Strategic Focus Areas are those broad categories where you must excel if you are to succeed with your internal or external customers. These are the statements that define the main activities the organization should focus on in order to achieve its vision.  They describe what the organization will focus on.  They are formulated to cover operational areas: Finance, Environment, Market, Human Resources, Organizational Culture and Climate, Product service and quality, Research and development. Step 5: Strategic Objectives. These are the quantitative expression of the Strategic Focus Areas.  For each strategic focus area define at a minimum one strategic objective.  The Strategic Focus areas are the broad categories that the strategic objectives start to define. The objectives should describe what the organization wants to achieve.  They are realistic.  It should be possible to derive action plans around them. They should be objectives that the organization can, for the most part, control.  The objectives are quantitatively formulated in such a way that it is possible to know if they have been achieved.  They will provide the milestones with which to track your progress towards fulfillment of the defined Strategic Focus Areas. Step 6: Action Plans. Develop your key programs and action plans. Action plans breathe life into strategy. What are the key programs that will allow your strategies to exist? List out your operational details that require action over the next 12-month period of time. Define what you are going to do, by whom and by when. What will it cost and what are the human resources necessary to accomplish the key program? These issues are critical to achieving financial and operating results for the coming year. Often, the Strategic Focus Areas, the Strategic Objectives and the Action Plans lines can get blurred in a strategic plan. As the lines between strategy and tactic get blurred, remember to not let the distinction of what you want to do or to work on get in the way of capturing the information. Placing the information in the "right box" is not as important as getting the information on paper. As time goes on, this becomes a living document, not something that is fixed in stone. Apply the following rule - "Even if our words aren't perfect, have we captured the intention of what we are trying to create?" If you can answer "yes" to this question, your strategy process will be a success and you will be able to implement and refine the document over time. Step 7: Operating Principles. Implementing a strategic plan throughout a team isn't all clear sailing. Old teams, and particularly new ones, have some predictable patterns - all derived from impatience, conflicting job demands, and the unsettling nature of a new environment. Many do not want to invest the time necessary for a team to outperform an individual. And yet, with a few agreed upon operating principles, you can alleviate much of the stress found in worrying as a team. Address the following questions to help provide a structure for interacting with each other. How are we going to interact as a team? What are the principles that are going to guide our behavior? The guidelines generated by answering these two questions will accelerate team performance so that you will have a fast start in your marketplace. Turning Strategy into execution will not happen without the people being an enthusiastic part of the effort. Easy to say; another thing entirely to make happen.  Every single person must know what they are doing, why they are doing it, and above all, must be fully committed to doing what they are doing.  If your methods enable every single person to know what they are doing, and why, and to be emotionally committed to it, then your process of turning your strategy into effective execution is probably working. The best strategies are ones not just developed by the leadership of an organization but strategies built by including everyone. Everyone is playing a dual role in developing the strategy. As a team you are collectively discussing reviewing, prioritizing and defining the strategy. As an individual you are also delivering a functional role in the implementation of the strategy.

 

 

Clear visions, combined with the right strategy, produce outstanding results.
MCS's Team-Based Strategy Development process can help your team create and execute on your strategic vision.

- Improve coordination of activities

- Focus common efforts

- Align action

- Accelerate growth

- Create a clear direction

- Allocate and leverage resources

Call 415-482-1100 or email MCS to talk further about our Strategy and Vision Development services

Terry Lee, Account Management: terry@mcscllc.com
Charlie Sheppard, Consultant: charlie@mcscllc.com
Mary Boren, Consultant: mary@mcscllc.com
Zemo Travathan, Consultant: zemo@mcscllc.com
Art Giser, Consultant: art@mcscllc.com
Mark Fourman, Consultant: mark@mcscllc.com
Jim Peal, Consultant: jim@mcscllc.com

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Insurance News - Finding Meaning is Critical to “The Good Life” Regardless of Age Reports MetLife Mature Market Institute Study

Insurance News - Finding Meaning is Critical to “The Good Life” Regardless of Age Reports MetLife Mature Market Institute Study


Finding Meaning is Critical to “The Good Life” Regardless of Age Reports MetLife Mature Market Institute Study
July 20, 2010 Business Wire

Surprisingly, the Young and Old Have Similar Priorities

WESTPORT, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The life priorities of younger and older Americans turn out to be strikingly similar, according to a new MetLife Mature Market Institute (MMI) study. The research, which compares attitudes toward having “meaning” or a sense of “purpose” in life for those age 25 to 74, revealed that while the extended recession has had a noticeable impact on people’s lives - particularly in financial areas – its impact has been relatively modest in terms of meaning and purpose.

“Meaning Really Matters: The MetLife Study on How Purpose is Recession-Proof and Age-Proof,” is a follow-up to 2009’s “Discovering What Matters,” which looked at the 45- to 74-year-old group only. A key finding was that “meaning,” particularly the importance of family and friends, is a primary component of living “the Good Life” for all age groups. Both studies, based on the work of leading life coach and best-selling author Richard Leider (The Power of Purpose, Repacking Your Bags), report that most adults want financial freedom, good physical and mental health, deep relationships, a sense of purpose and to feel that they belong, all synopsized as: money, medicine, meaning and place.

The study is accompanied by a worksheet that helps people plan for “the Good Life” by having them answer a series of questions that will lead to an outline for vision and purpose in their lives. The tool, “Planning Tips: Meaning Really Matters,” can be downloaded from the MMI Web page.

“Across the board, regardless of age, family and friends are most important above all else,” said Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D., director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute. “Further, people with purpose in their lives, tend to be living ‘the Good Life.’ Even though many have suffered financial setbacks in the past couple of years, their priorities remain unchanged. Purpose is age-proof and recession-proof.”

According to the MMI, for many, the financial challenges were also constructive and encouraged them to introduce new approaches for financial security. Many people reported shifting activities to those that cost them less, while boosting savings and reducing their investment risk.

The study reports being able to weather significant changes and transitions caused by “trigger events,” positive or negative, helps people achieve “the Good Life.”



“Achieving ‘the Good Life’ requires vigilant juggling of time and energy in all four synopsized areas so none are sacrificed,” said Richard Leider. “People must also be prepared for change, which has the propensity to derail those who are not able to roll with the punches. Being able to ‘unpack,’ to sort out what’s truly important, to extricate oneself from ‘limbo,’ being stuck and not being able to reprioritize, and to ‘repack,’ to get back on the road, is the key to dealing with the events that get in our way.”

The study also found the following:

Maturity “rocks.” Older people spend more time on meaning-laden activities, while those in the younger group focus on generating, managing and accumulating money. Conversely, younger people experience more change and are challenged to adapt.
Everyone has some lack of vision of their future and how they can get there at some point, but those with lower “focus” and “vision” exhibit less tendency to take positive action.
Having an imbalance of focus and vision impedes progress, so one’s response to re-establish this balance is critical. Those who can “unpack” old, non-productive habits and “repack” with new responses do well.

While most people experience some negative triggers, those with multiple recent triggers face the most difficult challenges.
Longevity has certainly been increasing over the past decades. Extra decades of living can mean a second or even third career, or time to volunteer, learn new skills, travel and forge long-term relationships.

“If people are dissatisfied with their lives – if they feel a lack of meaning – they can do something about it,” said Leider. “Discovering purpose is an ongoing quest and is likely to change a number of times as people grow older and their experiences change. Whatever their age, stage, work status or financial circumstance, they can explore their purpose, find other solutions and land on a new path.”

Methodology

In September 2009, 1,675 individuals between the ages of 25 and 74 participated in the online survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey, a global custom market research and consulting firm. Respondents aged 25–44 had household incomes of $25,000 or more and investable assets of $25,000 or more ($50,000 or more for 35- to 44-year-olds). Those aged 45–74 had household incomes of $50,000 or more ($25,000 or more if retired) and investable assets of $50,000 or more.

The MetLife Mature Market Institute®

Established in 1997, the Mature Market Institute (MMI) is MetLife's research organization and a recognized thought leader on the multi-dimensional and multi-generational issues of aging and longevity. MMI's groundbreaking research, gerontology expertise, national partnerships, and educational materials work to expand the knowledge and choices for those in, approaching, or caring for those in the mature market



Access Content Source: http://www.insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=208906&type=lifehealth


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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

Redeeming Yourself After a Leadership Disaster - Jeff Schmitt - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Redeeming Yourself After a Leadership Disaster - Jeff Schmitt - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review

Redeeming Yourself After a Leadership Disaster

1:23 PM Thursday July 22, 2010
by Jeff Schmitt Comments

Editor's Note: The following case is based on real events observed by the author in his profession. Some of the details have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

It could happen to anyone.

A mercurial client e-mails her long-time account coordinator, issuing new demands and intimating repercussions. Seeking guidance, the coordinator copies her manager. Initially, the manager drafts a reply to pacify the client. But he changes his mind and writes, "That woman makes my skin crawl" to his employee.

Just one problem: he sends the e-mail to the client.

Often, it's the cover-up, not the crime, that produces the most damage. Sure enough, the client replies in minutes, threatening to pull her account. Terrified, the manager claims his retort pertained to his employee. He adds that he'll review her complaints and coach his employee on her communication skills. Issue solved — or so he thinks.

Eventually, the coordinator learns of this treachery and confronts her boss. Initially, he claims it isn't a big deal, telling her to keep it between them and move on. However, the employee persists, compelling the manager to allude to potential discipline. So the coordinator clams up... until she learns the higher ups received her manager's cherry-picked version of events. Her reputation in tatters, she confides in her co-workers. Bad news travels fast — and the story ping-pongs across the company.

And so the manager is exposed. When times get tough, his coworkers surmise, he'll throw his reports under the proverbial bus. His good deeds and accomplishments are wiped away, as he loses his most critical asset: moral standing. Now, his rhetoric on accountability and teamwork is dismissed. Instead, the gap between his words and actions reinforce one point to his employees: we aren't in this together. His actions yield a clear cut and memorable narrative that defines him. Maybe the manager justified that he'd take the easy way out, just this once. But once is all it takes. Now, his people can barely look at him.

Certainly, you can argue there are worse sins. Physical and verbal abuse? HR draws a pretty hard line on that. Arriving late, leaving early and doing little work in between? Those tendencies are disheartening, but forgivable. No, our manager committed the ultimate sin: he didn't respect or stand behind his employee. Managers set the tone — and he demonstrated that he was only out for himself. His actions sent a clear message: employees are disposable and their reputations are acceptable collateral damage. Now, his people harbor doubts, watching and analyzing his every move, wondering if they'll be next.

Whether this betrayal reflected a moment of weakness or an innate flaw, this manager will need to repair the damage — or grow increasingly isolated and unproductive. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes. Instead, the situation requires an offensive straight from the public relations handbook. It begins with humility and contrition. That's right: a public apology, replete with references to what occurred, who it hurt, why it was wrong and the steps he'll take to ensure it never happens again.

Even if the apology strikes the right tone, it is only a start. In subsequent months, the manager must focus on quietly rebuilding his reputation. In particular, he must change his employees' perception and renew their trust in him. That means re-introducing himself, spending greater time interacting with his people and reviving relationships he once took for granted. Even more, it'll require daily (often unspoken) acts that reinforce he has their back, can deliver what they need, and cares about them personally. Beyond that, the manager must seek coaching, to become aware of other tendencies that could potentially undermine his leadership.

During this time, the manager will be under the microscope. A similar lapse in judgment would quickly negate the goodwill his rehabilitation has produced. While employees possess long memories, they can forgive more easily when they see progress. They know a manager who learns from his mistakes — and works to make himself better — can be far more trustworthy than someone who has never fallen short and suffered for it.

Jeff Schmitt is a regular contributor to BusinessWeek. He has spent 17 years in sales, marketing, project management, training, legal compliance, and recruiting. You can reach him via e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

The Miracle of Making Mistakes - Vineet Nayar - Harvard Business Review

The Miracle of Making Mistakes - Vineet Nayar - Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review

Vineet Nayar

The Miracle of Making Mistakes

8:30 AM Thursday July 15, 2010

Make no mistake: The fear of making mistakes is deeply ingrained in our psyche.

All through school, a mistake indicates the prospect of lower grades. Good students don't make mistakes. At home, mistakes lead to admonishments. Good children follow the rules. At work, mistakes have serious repercussions. Good workers get it right the first time.

But, in those very schools and organizations where we are marked down for making mistakes, we also learn that people often stumble upon great inventions. There's growing evidence to suggest that innovation flourishes when people are given the space to make mistakes. Even Mahatma Gandhi attached value to experimentation; he believed that "freedom isn't worth having if it doesn't include the freedom to make mistakes."

Why then don't we allow, much less encourage, making mistakes? Most of us, particularly in business, fight shy of them. We believe that people will see a faux pas as incompetence. We also feel that success is driven by our image as experts rather than as learners. And the measures of our performance are numbers such as sales, profits, total returns to shareholders, and so on.

Are these really the best measures of success? Consider an alternative. What if we were to ask employees what mistakes they committed because they did something differently? What did they learn?

Does that sound a little crazy? It may, but we have to bring the human element back in business; we can't function as extensions of computer programs. Some mission-critical and life-threatening tasks may have zero tolerance for failure, but not the rest of our work and lives. I'm not suggesting breaking every rule; I feel we should institutionalize the art of making mistakes; introduce a method for the madness; and innovate the innovation process.

Imagine encouraging an employee to keep trying to solve a problem until he or she makes, say, five mistakes. Imagine asking team members whether they have made their five mistakes yet! Trust me, if you aren't making mistakes, you're not learning — or, at least, you're not learning enough.

Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle? Can you relive the exhilaration of riding free, the sense of triumph as you broke free of the crutches of support? Now step back. How many times did you fall off the bike before that first ride?

I remember my first class in engineering school during which our professor asked us to dismantle an engine. We did that. Then he asked us to put it together and walked away. We messed that up big time and had to work at it for days. I learned more about engineering in that short time than I did in the next four years. Why don't you ask your employees to dismantle something and then, give them the time but not the help to put it together?

Do you have the nerve to encourage the mistakes that people will inevitably make on the path of discovery?

Vineet Nayar is CEO of HCL Technologies Ltd., leading global IT Services Company. His new book is Employees First, Customers Second (June, Harvard Business Press).

Access Content Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/nayar/2010/07/the-miracle-of-making-mistakes.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

5 ways to reach out personally at work | SmartBlog on Workforce

5 ways to reach out personally at work SmartBlog on Workforce

SmartBlogs.com

5 ways to reach out personally at work

By Mary Ellen Slayter on July 12, 2010

This guest post is by Baron C. Hanson, principal and lead consultant of the RedBaron consulting firm, based in Charleston, S.C. Follow him on Twitter at @redbaronUSA.

The Internet, e-mail, and ever-advancing PDA features have helped shrink the global business world down to efficient, backlit computer screens. However, fundamental human interactions, personal communications and healthy working relationships are suffering tremendously as a result. Here are five ways to deliberately reach out and revive old school voice-to-voice, handwriting-to-handwriting, and face-to-face interactions in today’s business world.

Pick up the phone.

Back and forth e-mail and escalating text exchanges can be the death of human and working relationships, especially during intense relays or negotiations. Phone calls invite dialogue and professional communication. So much intonation, insight, and information are lost when we cannot listen or express ourselves with our voices to important people, clients, and partners. Make it a point –– perhaps an emphatic new rule –– to pick up the phone and speak voice-to-voice after receiving that first e-mail communication. The conundrum is that cubicles make private discussions challenging. If pictures are worth a thousand words, phone calls are arguably worth a hundred, even if left on voice mail. A phone call also sends a clear message that your working relationship with that person and their organization is truly valued. Not all communications require a phone call. Texts and e-mails are indeed handy. Yet reaching out via phone when appropriate attaches your voice to future e-mails and texts, preventing important colleagues from feeling discounted and helping install rationality in the relationship going forward.

Mail a hand-written note.

Snail-mailed letters are actually worth more than any gold to personal and working relationships. Reach out often using your own handwriting. Today’s workforce has heard this truism a zillion times, yet people still foolishly ignore the mantra. No more excuses: Mail hand-written notes. Seek out an old-world, custom stationery shop nearby (local William Arthur suppliers are among the very best), or use official company letterhead to hand-write your “thank you” notes, suggestions to meet, or congratulatory words. If you see an old friend or potentially new associate recognized in industry media, reach out on paper using ink and a postage stamp. Look up their mailing address and make the time to scribe. Sending each viable associate you exchange business cards with –– socially or professionally –– a hand-written follow-up is a classic personal brand and relationship-building strategy.

Host a cocktail party, lunch, or supper.

Invitational gatherings that reach out are assumed to be a challenge to coordinate today, given everyone’s tight schedules. Plan and host deliberate social gatherings anyway. Whether in your city or on the road, invitations to gather for drinks, host a dinner at home, or attend a lecture or concert together are great ways to reach out and maintain relationships. The secret is to pick up the tab. Invitations say “thank you” for your important relationship, and lead to reciprocation in the future. Welcoming spouses and guest associates stimulates even greater relationship dynamics. Throughout the country, supper clubs, cocktail parties, and invitational events are the Golden Rules of vibrant and entrepreneurial cultures that reaching out to diverse professionals.

“In an ever-expanding age of E-everything, the effort of sending a hand-written note or printed invitation is worthwhile for the sender and compelling to the recipient,” says Emilie Dulles, of Dulles Designs in Charleston, which provides etiquette advice to wedding, corporate, and society event clients nationwide. “E-vites and texts are often lost in the electronic shuffle. Rapid-convenience messaging lacks personal intent. Customized stationery and gifts elicit excitement from recipients.”

Go see people face-to-face.

People trust, work well, and do business with the people who make the effort to reach out and visit them personally. Even if the visit is for five minutes, physically going to see people face-to-face adds tremendous value and relevance to future phone calls and e-mails. Whether the trek is across the street, town, the state, the country, or even an ocean, reaching out to actually visit key associates is what distinguishes fragile acquaintances from tight-knit relationships. Face-to-face meetings also prevent people from judging each other by their e-mail signature or website photo. Electronics are not people, and computer devices will never have souls. While e-mail, video conferencing, and PDF documents obviously save time and provide cost-saving convenience today, taking the time to go and see important people face-to-face is what opens doors to personal phone calls, handwritten letters, and supper invitations in the future. Make the effort to go and see important people face-to-face.

Give relevant gifts, especially books.

By mail or hand delivery, relevant tokens or mementos based on unique conversations and common interests amongst people are a capstone of reaching out. Gifts do not have to be expensive, just evidence you were listening to who they are beyond an e-mail address or desktop. Books on any subject are especially helpful for creating common ground and taking relationships beyond your website or brochure. Whatever a new client, loyal vendor, key associate, or personal friend may be passionate about, an insightful gift or book on the subject is a meaningful gesture that lasts. Gourmet olive oil, rare-batch wines, or international sports memorabilia are also examples of modest gifts that reach out personally.

The underlying theme of these five interrelated tips is to deliberately reach out, personally. These core tips set a personal tone early, proving that key working and personal relationships in your life are, in fact, important. At the core of the American economic turnaround is the reconnection, reinforcement, and rejuvenation of human relationships, as opposed to their electronic-only demise. There is a reason social media is so popular today, yet still so personally out of touch. Although the Internet, e-mail, and PDAs are technological “work-lines” for us all, reaching out to people via deliberate voice-to-voice, handwriting-to-handwriting, and face-to-face interaction is essential to business success and career sustainability.

Access Content Source: http://smartblogs.com/workforce/2010/07/12/5-ways-to-reach-out-personally-at-work/

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.

7 ways to unearth the truth in résumés - HR Specialist

7 ways to unearth the truth in résumés - HR Specialist

TheHRSpecialist.com

7 ways to unearth the truth in résumés

As unemployment continues to hover near 10%, the temptation to stretch the truth on a résumé is becoming harder for desperate job-seekers to resist.

That’s why experts say job applicants are doing more “creative writing” on their résumés these days. And hiring managers need to be more vigilant.

A study by business service provider ADP says that 46% of employment and education reference checks conducted last year revealed discrepancies between what the applicant provided and what the source reported. That’s up from 41% in 2006.

Lies vs. exaggerations

Applicants lie most about their education, followed by their reasons for leaving past jobs, salary, job titles, scope of duties and criminal records. Those straightforward lies are caught with deeper drilling by HR and hiring managers.

The other type of “lie” is the vague wording that, in some cases, covers applicants’ flaws. Here are the top 10 vague phrases used on résumés (and the percentage of times used). If you see them, ask for details.

1. Communication skills 12.6%
2. Team player 7.2%
3. Organizational skills 5.5%
4. Interpersonal skills 4.8%
5. Driven 4.3%
6. Detail-oriented 4.2%
7. Results-oriented 3.8%
8. Self-motivated 3.8%
9. Problem-solver 3.2%
10. Highly motivated 3.2%

7 ways to get the truth

Think of a résumé as the advertisement for a car. Something is being sold, and you need to adopt a “buyer beware” attitude before you drive away. Some tips:

1. Check for inconsistencies. Résumé-writing software can make anyone look good. Look for slip-ups in dates (such as overlapping start and stop dates) and contradictions between job titles and duties. Ask about time gaps in jobs.

2. Test skills. If an applicant claims to have proficiency in a computer program or can handle a certain machine, do a skills check. To avoid discrimination charges, test all applicants and ensure your test is business-related.

3. Check references, then ask for more. Demand that applicants provide phone numbers for all past employers, and make the calls. Also, ask for names of former supervisors, key vendors, etc.

4. Probe ‘self-owned business’ claims. Ask for details about their claims, including names and numbers of past clients.

5. Question academic credentials. Phrase some questions to determine whether the candidate really attended the schools listed. “Is James Smith still teaching accounting at that school?” If you made up the name and the person says, “He sure is,” you’ve got a fabricator on your hands.

6. Probe claims of supervisory duties. Ask questions like: "When you say ‘supervise,’ what did your duties involve? Did you assign work and evaluate the employees? Did you conduct performance reviews?" A true manager would have done that, and more.

7. Question claims of saving the company money or resources. Often, the claims are true, but they may be exaggerations. Comments like “made staffing change to cut clerical time” may mean he trimmed a half-hour off his secretary’s lunch hour. Follow up on such claims by asking for specifics.

Finally, don’t shrug off minor résumé exaggerations; they tell a lot about character and effort level. Also, don’t probe more deeply into the background of any particular group (females, minorities, etc.) or you’ll risk a lawsuit.

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Use this 'Memo to Managers' article to educate your supervisors. Paste the content into an e-mail, company newsletter or other communication. Edit as desired.

What facts should you ignore on a résumé?

Job applicants will include anything on a résumé or application if they think it will give them a competitive edge. But hiring managers need to be aware of what they can and can’t take into account when making a hiring decision.

Federal and state laws prohibit employers from discriminating against job applicants based on the person’s age, sex, race, religion, pregnancy or disability.

Even if the applicant includes information about these “protected” characteristics in a résumé or interview, it doesn’t give you an opening to ask more details. Ignore the info and move on.

Another legally dangerous trend: Recognizing the high cost of health insurance, more applicants these days are adding a “Health Profile” section to their résumés to show off their great health condition. The message: “Hire me, I won’t raise your premiums.”

But, again, hiring managers should ignore these comments. Instead, focus strictly on job skills, work experience, education and career progression. Rate the résumé strictly on the answer to this question: “How well could this person perform the stated job description?”

Reason: Basing hiring decisions on medical information could easily invite a disability or age discrimination lawsuit by applicants who didn’t get the job.

Résumé stats to disregard

• Age/birth date
• Health status
• Height/weight
• Marital status
• Political affiliation
• Race/ethnic background
• Religion
• Social Security number

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http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.