Thursday, July 28, 2011

How "Positive" Thinking Sets You Up To Fail | Fast Company

FC Expert Blog


BY FC Expert Blogger Heidi Grant Halvorson Mon Jul 25, 2011


This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert's views alone.


I wish I could make the universe deliver wonderful things to my doorstep just by imagining them. I can't--and neither can you, no matter what anyone tells you. There is not a single piece of hard evidence that "visualizing success," and doing nothing else, will do a damn thing for you.


In fact, there is plenty of evidence that it will leave you even worse off than when you started. Scientifically-speaking, focusing all of your thoughts on an ideal future reliably leads to lower achievement. In other words, you are less likely to achieve your goals when all you do is imagine that you already have achieved them.


"Negative" thinking, on the other hand, has gotten a bad rap. This is mostly because the people who advocate "positive" thinking lump all the "negative" thoughts together in one big unpleasant pile, not realizing that some kinds of negative thoughts are actually necessary and motivating. There is a big difference between "I am a loser and can't do this" (a bad, self-defeating negative thought), and "This won't be easy, and I'm going to have to work hard" (a very good negative thought that actually predicts greater success).


In fact, study after study shows that people who think not only about their dreams, but about the obstacles that lie in the way of realizing their dreams--who visualize the steps they will take to make success happen, rather than just the success itself--vastly outperform those who sit back and wait for the universe to reward them for all their positive thinking. Whether it's starting a relationship with your secret crush, landing a job, recovering from major surgery, or losing weight, research shows that if you don't keep it real you're going to be really screwed.


A new set of studies by NYU psychologists Heather Barry Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen offers insight into why this kind of thinking isn't just useless, but actually sets you up for failure. These researchers found that people who imagined an uncertain and challenging future reported feeling significantly more energized, and accomplished much more, than those who idealized their future. The purely "positive" thinkers' lower energy levels even showed up in objective, physiological measurements. (Ironically, these studies showed that the more important it was to the participant that the dream come true, the more idealizing sapped their motivation!)


Kappes and Oettingen argue that when we focus solely on imagining the future of our dreams, our minds enjoy and indulge in those images as if they are real. They might be reachable, realistic dreams or impossible, unrealistic ones, but none of that matters because we don't bother to think about the odds of getting there or the hurdles that will have to be overcome. We're too busy enjoying the fantasy.


Admittedly, there are some people that might experience a benefit from visualizing a positive future or a vision board. People who are depressed, or have very low self-confidence, are more likely to think about obstacles, and only obstacles. They may need to be reminded that a positive future is possible, and a vision board when used hand-in-hand with some realistic thinking and planning, can be an effective tool.


Believe me when I tell you that I truly wish the Law of Attraction would work. I also happen to wish that Hogwarts was a real place, and that Antonio Banderas was my next-door neighbor. But wishing will not make it so, and that's exactly my point.


@FastCoLeadersFollow @FastCoLeaders for all of our leadership news, expert bloggers, and book excerpts.


To learn more about proven strategies for reaching goals (ones that actually work), check out Heidi's new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson. Her website is http://www.heidigranthalvorson.com/.






Heidi Grant Halvorson



Motivational Psychologist - New York City, NY




Heidi Grant Halvorson is a motivational psychologist and author of SUCCEED: How We Can Reach Our Goals. She is also a member of the Board of Directors at Columbia Business School's Motivation Science Center. She is the author and co-editor of the highly-regarded academic book The Psychology of Goals (Guilford, 2009), and has authored papers in her field’s most prestigious journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, European Journal of Social Psychology, and Judgment and Decision Making. Heidi has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation for her research on goals and achievement. Her writing has been praised by Carol Dweck, Peter Bregman, and Matthew Kelly, among many others.

Dr. Grant Halvorson is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and was recently elected to the highly selective Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She gives frequent invited addresses and speaks regularly at national conferences, and is available for professional speaking and consulting engagements, primarily in education and management. She received her PhD from Columbia University.

Her new book SUCCEED: How We Can Reach Our Goals is available wherever books are sold. Its publisher is Hudson Street Press, an imprint of Penguin.

Heidi also blogs about self-improvement, health, relationships, and parenting for Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com




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What Giving Gets You at the Office - Shawn Achor - Harvard Business Review



3:00 PM Wednesday July 27, 2011
by Shawn Achor Comments ( 6)


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The greatest metric for predicting job satisfaction and engagement is the social support perceived by the employee. And job satisfaction and engagement directly correlate with productivity. So the best and fastest way to more connected and therefore more productive is to receive more social support from others at work, right? Not so fast.


Some of the greatest discoveries in psychology occur when we decide to ask questions in a different way. Social connection is my favorite research topic, but until earlier this year, I had social support all wrong because I was asking the wrong question.


I had already found that social support was incredibly important. Based on the study I performed on 1600 Harvard students in 2007, I found that there was a .7 correlation between perceived social support and happiness. (That number may not sound sexy, but it is significantly higher than the connection between smoking and cancer.) Similarly, as I discuss at more length in The Happiness Advantage, the greatest metric for predicting the job satisfaction and engagement is the social support perceived by the employee. The more we have studied social support, the more we realize it is the key to every single business and educational outcome. Studies even show that high levels of social support is as predictive of longevity as regular exercise, while low social support is as damaging as high blood pressure. That's amazing.


We put warning labels on smoking packs; maybe we should put warnings on companies that have low social support.


Since social support is crucial if you want to raise your brain's happiness or productivity, we set out to test the amount of support you feel in your life. We started with the kind of questions scientists had been asking for the past twenty years: "Are you receiving meaningful connection and support in times of trial from your friends? Are you receiving support and a belief that you have a high potential from your parents? Are you receiving a congenial and supportive environment at work? Are you receiving the benefits of social engagements from your managers at work?"


So what's the problem?


The past two decades of research on social support has mistakenly focused on how much social support you receive, not how much social support you provide. It turns out, that giving feels better, does more for you, and provides greater returns in the long run, than getting ever does.


Instead of looking at what your manager was providing to you, we looked to see if you took the initiative in developing work relationships, whether by, say, inviting your coworkers out for drinks or commenting on their Facebook posts. We looked not at whether your parents were providing support to you, but whether you were actively attempting to support them with love and encouragement. We looked not at whether your friends were there for you, but whether you were there for them.


The findings were extraordinary. We have identified several types of social support providers in the world based upon their scores including "work altruists " (top quartile), and "work isolators " (bottom quartile). A work altruist provides the most social support; a work isolator provides the least.


True work altruists (those who provide the most) are more than twenty times as likely as work isolators to make up for the work of other employees in an effort to help them. It seems that they do this mainly in the interests of co-workers, rather than in the interest of the company. Work altruists aren't huge proponents of rigid work rules and making sure that everyone (including themselves) is showing up on time — rather than just want to help their co-workers. Only 2% of work isolators help others with their work.


Amazingly, we found only 5% of work isolators are extremely engaged in their jobs. 95% of people who provide no social support at work have no work engagement! True work altruists are about ten times as likely to be highly engaged as work isolators.


In fact, more than half of true work altruists get along "extremely well" with co-workers. Only about 20% of isolators get along extremely well with co-workers. Work altruists are twice as likely as work isolators to be satisfied with their jobs and almost 2/3 of work altruists have excellent relations with supervisors.
Given these statistics it may not be surprising that only 7% of selfish isolators have received a promotion in the last year. About 40% of each of the other three groups received a promotion. So if you're not giving at work, you're not going to be getting a promotion either.


This research I believe adds a critical new component to the field of positive psychology. It also gives you a clearer picture of how you can feel more connection at work: by being a facilitator. It's good news for altruists who may worry that by giving, they're shortchanging their own careers, and it gives isolators good reason to rethink their reluctance to reach out.


In an era of do-more-with-less, we need to stop lamenting how little social support we feel from managers, coworkers and friends, and start focusing our brain's resources upon how we can increase the amount of social support we provide to the people in our lives. The greatest predictor of success and happiness at work is social support. And the greatest way to increase social support is to provide it to others.


**My research in this area is still under way. If you have examples of how you or someone you work with provides social support at your company, I'd love to hear them.






Shawn Achor




Shawn Achor is the founder of Good Think, Inc. and the author of The Happiness Advantage. In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for "Positive Psychology," the most popular course at Harvard at the time. He holds a Masters from Harvard Divinity School and has spoken in 45 countries to a wide variety of audiences, including bankers on Wall Street, students in Dubai, and CEOs in Zimbabwe.


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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Why Being Certain Means Being Wrong - Ted Cadsby - Harvard Business Review

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2:05 PM Monday July 25, 2011
by Ted Cadsby Comments ( 19)


Of all the headwinds we face as decision-makers, the power of one overshadows all others: our need for certainty. It is typically more important for us to feel right, than to be right — a difference that didn't matter much in the lives of our ancestors, but now matters a lot.

Certainty is the feeling of confidence we have when we've figured things out. Our physiology is geared to move us quickly to eliminate the uncomfortable tension of not knowing — the mild stress response our bodies trigger when we perceive that we have lost control because we don't understand. It is this tension that motivates us to figure things out like the mysterious rustle in the bush, the confusing betrayal of a friend, the promotion we didn't get — all the minor and major problems that confront us every day. Only certainty, in the form of the calm feeling of knowing, can replace the tension of not knowing. Settling on an explanation triggers a "lockdown" of our minds, in the same way that a fertilized egg locks out competing sperm.


As the female ovum floats down the fallopian tube, a few thousand sperm (of the 300 million that initially began the journey) search it out. One sperm will be the first to pierce the egg's outer wall, triggering a chemical reaction that makes the egg's wall harder and impenetrable to competing sperm.

The mind is like an egg; the sperm are the myriad possible explanations for any given problem the mind tries to solve.

Just as the few thousand sperm are stronger than the millions that perished along the way, some ideas are favored over others: our "fittest" explanations are those that cohere with all of our other beliefs and values — they are easily integrated with everything we already "know." But just as one sperm will get to the egg first, even if more genetically fit sperm are available, the urgent drive to reduce the tension of uncertainty pushes us to accept the first reasonable explanation we craft. Our mind becomes "fertilized" and the calm feeling of knowing instantly infuses us, stopping our search for alternative explanations.
The lockdown of our minds serves an important purpose: Generations of our ancestors wouldn't have survived had they constantly second-guessed their conclusions. In a harsh environment characterized by straightforward challenges that demanded quick responses, an indecisive caveman was a dead one. The rush to certainty became our standard operating procedure for two reasons: i) because we needed speedy thinking, and ii) because speed did not force a significant tradeoff in accuracy. The risk of interpretive error is low when you are confronted by a charging tiger or bush of lush berries because the cause-effect relationships in these straightforward situations are not convoluted or ambiguous. Even today, the majority of micro-decisions we make every hour are fairly straightforward, so there is no reason to second-guess or reflect on the limitations of our senses and intuitions.

But the whole speed-accuracy tradeoff falls apart in a world that tosses up complex problems. The need to be certain gets in the way of accuracy when it comes to problems that have multiple, interwoven causal factors that are difficult to unbundle. Complex problems require exploration, multiple perspectives, and a variety of possible explanations, before it is safe to draw any conclusions. Many complex problems can only be tackled with experimentation because they do not converge to definitive solutions. But a mind that is "fertilized" by the first satisfying interpretation is closed to the more subtle and complicated explanations that are often better. It is our mind's lockdown feature that makes certainty the #1 enemy of effective decision-making in the face of complexity. Think of all the business failures that were avoidable if it weren't for the hubris of leaders who were unwilling to revisit their faltering strategies, or the public policy failures that could have been mitigated, or our personal relationships that would run so much more smoothly if we weren't so certain that we were right all the time.


But there is an antidote to premature certainty: Adopting a mindset of "provisional truth."

Provisional truth requires that we think of our explanations as hypotheses — always subject to replacement based on new information or alternative ways of structuring existing information. Provisional truth means challenging our interpretations with disconfirming evidence and alternative perspectives. Provisional truth does not preclude drawing conclusions or taking action; but it demands that we be skeptical about our first reasonable explanations in the realm of complex problems. It keeps us humble and mentally flexible, constantly asking ourselves if we've really got everything figured out and responding, "Probably not."


Complex decision-making requires we defer the feeling of being right, by tolerating the tension of not knowing. It is hard to fight our physiology — the product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution — but our innate craving for certainty undermines us in a modern, complex world. We are not hardwired to suspend judgment. We are not designed to explore multiple interpretations after arriving at one that appears to work. We are not constituted to resist concluding. We operate on the assumption that our thinking is objective, thorough, logical, and penetrating to the extent that it quickly and reliably gets us the right answers, no matter how complex the challenge is. If only it were so.






Ted Cadsby


Ted Cadsby is a corporate director, principal of TRC Consulting, former executive vice-president of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and author of two books on investing.


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Learning Optimism with the 24x3 Rule - Anthony Tjan - Harvard Business Review

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9:47 AM Tuesday July 26, 2011 Comments ( 14)

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[Increase Your Generosity To Receive Optimism. Suspend: The Critic In You, Your Disbelief And Your Premature Dismissal For: (1) 24 Seconds, (2) Then 24 Minutes, (3) And Finally For 24 Hours]


One of my greatest mentors was the late Jay Chiat of TBWA Chiat Day, an iconoclast in the field of advertising with a constant imagination for possibilities in business and life. Jay embodied the three traits of a "lucky attitude" that I described in my last post: humility, intellectual curiosity, and optimism. Of these three characteristics, it was Jay's optimism which was perhaps his greatest lesson to me. He inspired people to embrace optimism — inside themselves, and also, as importantly, in others. It is a gift to understand how to project, share, and inspire with optimism. It is an even greater act of generosity to be inspired by optimism from others and to be willing to receive it.


The capacity to be a natural recipient of ideas and other peoples' optimism is what makes for the ultimate optimist. You may be open to experimenting with new things, but do you truly see the good in something before the bad? The order of this thought process is critical: to try and see everything good in an idea before seeing anything bad. While most of us like to think we do, and would therefore self-describe ourselves as optimistic, more often (if we are truly honest with ourselves) we are natural critics (even cynics). Experience brings wisdom, but its collateral damage is that it can jade one against new concepts, turning many of us into Pavlovian skeptics. Whether we openly say it or not, we often think of what might be wrong with someone or something before we try to understand what might be right or good. The temptation and reflex for cynicism is usually more common than a natural responsive optimism. Cynicism is indeed the enemy of optimism.


Here's a practical tool for the skeptic or cynic in all of us: the 24x3 rule. The next time you hear an idea for the first time, or meet someone new, try to wait 24 seconds before saying or thinking something negative. This reinforces a foundational skill of good optimists and good leadership. That basic skill is listening. As you gain the ability to listen and pause for a brief 24 seconds before letting the critic in you bubble to the verbal surface, move to the next level and try to do it for 24 minutes. At 24 minutes, you are able to give more considered thought to the idea and think more carefully of the many reasons why it might actually work, why it might be better than what is out there, and why it might just topple conventional wisdom.


And yes, you should also work towards the ability to wait 24 hours — one single day — before pondering or verbalizing the cons against something. Of course, most times this will not be possible. Our minds cannot compartmentalize so easily, nor shut off our past experiences. But the 24x3 rule is a type of reflective meditation for developing a more optimistic approach towards people and ideas. The simple guideline of 24x24x24 is just a good reminder that a prerequisite of optimism is to have a willing suspension of disbelief.


This is not saying in any way not to be a healthy critic — it is absolutely essential in business leadership to be a critic — but rather that inspirational leadership and effective mentorship require a bite-your-tongue, wait-to-be-a-critic mindset and attitude. Start with the pause button for 24 seconds and stretch it towards being able to ponder positively for 24 hours. Mastering the 24x3 rule will make you a more enjoyable and inspirational leader to be around. In increasing your generosity to receive optimism, you will be rewarded with new possibilities that others have prematurely dismissed.


Anthony Tjan


Anthony Tjan is CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Ball. An entrepreneur, investor, and senior advisor, Tjan has become a recognized business builder.



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We Don't Know What We Don't Know - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review

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8:33 AM Tuesday July 26, 2011 Comments ( 11)


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"It is a law of human nature," David Brooks writes in his newest book The Social Animal, "that the more men you concentrate in one happy pack, the more each of them will come to resemble Donald Trump. They possess a sort of masculine photosynthesis to start with — the ability to turn sunlight into self-admiration. By the law of compound egotism, they create this self-reinforcing vortex of smugness, which brings out the most-pleased-with-themselves aspects of their own personalities."




How do you not love a man who can write a paragraph like that?


What makes The Social Animal the most satisfying and important book I've read in a very long time is that Brooks so brilliantly and evocatively explains why we've gone so far off course in this country, attributing it not to bad policies but to human failings we haven't begun to recognize, much less acknowledge.


Brooks' core argument is that the vast majority of us have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we're influenced instead by peer pressure; impulsive and reactive emotions; a deep and bottomless need for admiration and status; overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future; the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and precious little capacity to delay gratification.


"The unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind," Brooks writes. "[They have] a processing capacity 200,000 times greater than the conscious mind." Tragically, this interior domain remains largely terra incognita, a vast unexplored territory full of resources and potentials we haven't begun to tame or to tap.


Instead of drawing on our rational faculties to more deeply understand our interior impulses and motivations, we too often use our prefrontal cortex to rationalize, justify, minimize and explain away the unconsciously driven actions we've already taken. "A man hears what he wants to hear," Paul Simon sings in The Boxer, "and disregards the rest."


In short, we have an infinite capacity for self-deception. Or, as Brooks puts it, "People overestimate their ability to understand why they are making certain decisions. They make up stories to explain their own actions even when they have no clue about what is happening inside."


Worse yet, the most powerful among us have a tendency to bloviating certainty — swatting away doubt and choosing up sides precisely because not having answers feels so uncomfortable and potentially threatening. Opinions, in turn, become polarized and rigid. Just consider the current budget negotiations, marked as they are by a blatant disregard for logic and a perilous potential cost to the greater good.


What Brooks argues for, and embodies in his writing, is something he calls "epistemological modesty" — substituting humility for hubris. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. Modesty is warranted, Brooks argues, because there is so much of ourselves we don't and can't know. "People with this disposition believe that wisdom begins with an awareness of our own ignorance," he explains.


I've read Brooks' op-ed columns in The New York Times for years, but it was only with this book that I understood what sets him apart from his journalistic colleagues. It's his unwavering willingness to grapple with issues rather than simply pontificate about them; to embrace nuance, ambiguity and paradox rather than choosing up sides; and to be forever open to learning and to being changed by what he learns.


What Brooks lays out in The Social Animal is a path to a more meaningful life — one that balances action with introspection, confidence with restraint.


Describing the person who aspires to such a life, Brooks is transparently autobiographical when he writes, "He (tries) to remind himself of how little we know and can know, how much our own desire for power and to do good blinds us to our own limitations. He pays attention to the sensations that come up from below. He makes tentative generalizes and analyses ... He continues to wander and absorb, letting the information marinate deep inside."


I also learned from reading this book why I can't possibly assess it objectively. Each of us, he argues, consciously and unconsciously seek out people in life whose values, opinions and sensibility most mirror our own. It's humbling to recognize that I delighted in his writing at least in part because it so persuasively and stylishly confirms much of my own world view. If you resonate with what I've written, it probably confirmed a lot of yours, too.



Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and connect with Tony at Twitter.com/TonySchwartz and Twitter.com/Energy_Project.


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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Fewer big employers offer new employees DB plans: Towers Watson | Business Insurance

Posted On: Jul. 26, 2011 3:09 PM CENTRAL




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Jerry Geisel


The number of large U.S. employers that offer a defined benefit pension plan to new salaried employees continues to fall, while the number offering only defined contribution plans continues to increase, according to a study by Towers Watson & Co.


As of May 31, 30% of Fortune 100 companies offered a defined benefit plan to new salaried employees, the New York-based consultant said. That's down from 37% at the end of 2010, 43% in 2009, 47% in 2008 and 83% as recently as 2002.



“The decline of traditional DB plans is striking,” Towers Watson noted in an article posted last week in Insider, a company research publication.


Employers are phasing out both traditional defined benefit plans and hybrid plans, such as cash balance plans, which legally are defined benefit plans that combine elements of defined benefit and defined contribution plans.


Just 13 Fortune 100 companies offered a traditional defined benefit plan as of May 31 to new salaried employees. That's down from 17 in 2010, 19 in 2009 and 23 in 2008.


Major change


That’s a major change from the 1980s, when traditional defined benefit plans were the norm at the nation’s largest employers. In 1985, for example, nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies offered a traditional plan to new employees.


Hybrid plans, which grew rapidly until a flood of lawsuits challenged cash balance plans as being age discriminatory, also are being phased out.


As of May 31, 17 Fortune 100 companies offered hybrid plans to new salaried employees, down from 20 at the end of 2010 and 24 in both 2009 and 2008. Hybrid plan sponsorship peaked in 2002, when 35 Fortune 100 companies offered the plans to new salaried employees, according to the Towers Watson research.


Defined contribution rules


As defined benefit plans are being phased out, the vast majority of large companies now offer only defined contribution plans, especially 401(k) plans, to new employees.


As of May 31, 70% of Fortune 100 firms offered only defined contribution plans to new salaried employees, up from 63% in 2010, 57% in 2009 and 53% in 2008. As recently as 1998, just 10% of Fortune 100 companies offered only a defined contribution plan to new salaried employees.


One key reason for the shift away from defined benefit plans in favor of defined contribution plan is a change in employer focus, according to Towers Watson.


“Employers have changed their focus from providing retirement income to workers who stay until retirement to providing a more uniform level of retirement-directed capital accumulation for all employees,” the consultant said in the analysis.


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Friday, July 22, 2011

How to Reward Great Ideas | Inc.com

Your employees may never say no to a bonus, but that doesn't mean it's the ideal way to credit their work. Examples from Foursquare and other innovative companies show how to make your rewards as creative as the ideas they're rewarding.


By Drew Gannon @drewgannon
July 19, 2011
 

Projet Créatif, video game developer Frima Studio's program for pitching product ideas, requires its employees to work for the company for a year before presenting an independent project. That was too long for David Moss to wait. Less than a year after joining Frima, Moss compiled a creative team to start designing Ravenmark, a mythological adventure for young boys set in fourteenth century Scotland.



Originally designing Ravenmark as a digital short, Moss and his team were inspired by the innovative nature of Projet Créatif to do more. "We thought, this is a creative project," Moss says. "We're supposed to be able to pitch about anything we want so let's make a TV show."



So in March 2010, the Ravenmark team presented its idea to a jury of their peers. "Everyone was kind of confused that we were pitching a television show," Moss recalls. "But by the end of the presentation, everyone's eyes lit up and they could see the potential."



The jury decided Ravenmark was a smart idea; Frima's upper management agreed. Moss and his team were given time and funds to develop Ravenmark. With Ravenmark ready to hit the market, Moss maintains ownership of his idea and will get part of its revenue throughout his career.



For plenty of creatives, Moss's opportunity is a dream come true. Frima, like many online creative companies, understands how to foster and reward its employees' ideas. But rewarding great ideas is vital to the success and productivity of any company. According to a study by employee motivation agency Maritz, 55 percent of employees strongly agree that the quality of their company's recognition programs affects their performance, but only 10 percent of those polled are satisfied with these efforts.



Especially at fast-growing small companies, ideas are king and should be acknowledged. But rewarding great ideas should include much more than a token bonus. There are lots of strategies for rewarding productive creativity; some are tangible, others are intellectual. Some recognition is public, some private. Determining the best reward programs for your company takes time and a profound understanding of your employees' motivations. But the right program will not only recognize great ideas but also bring more to the table.



Before You Start Rewarding, Foster an Innovative Culture



Long before your company can reward the great ideas, you must first foster the creation of those ideas. According to Maritz, driving performance requires companies to focus on their No. 1 asset: their employees. "What drives innovation?" Mike Barbee, COO at Maritz Loyalty and Motivation asks. "It's not coming from technology or processes. It's coming from people."



Programs such as Frima's Projet Créatif are an effective way to foster such innovation. Since it started last year, 10 ideas have been pitched, and six of them are in production. Ravenmark is the first to reach a marketable stage. At its core is the idea that employees judge each others' ideas without the initial influence of senior leadership. "Ideas don't just come from upper management," says Steve Couture, Frima's CEO. "You need a channel to listen to all ideas."



Other companies feature similar opportunities for idea pitches. At Foursquare, the company behind the location-aware app of the same name, employees in its New York City office are welcome to showcase ideas in the form of a venture capital pitch in what the company calls Demo Days. They're held almost weekly.



"People can show what they're working on just to get a fresh set of eyes on something or to propose a major new direction for the company," says Morgan Missen, Foursquare's head of talent. "Our employees love the opportunity to share what they're thinking, and as a growing company we don't really have a choice not to innovate. It's mutually beneficial."



Firstborn, a creative digital agency also based in New York City, also capitalizes on mutual benefit, allowing its employees to work on side projects so long as present their findings at a semi-regular open forum called Group Therapy. "It's not about giving people time to experiment," says Firstborn's president Dan LaCivita. "It's transferring knowledge to the rest of the company."



When ideas are flowing, it's time to decide which ideas are worth rewarding. The good ideas—the ideas that will improve, grow, or transform the company—deserve the most plaudits. But, distinguishing these ideas, especially when they require time to mature, is sometimes difficult. That's why produce delivery company The FruitGuys prefers a different method.



"We try to encourage and reward all ideas that come up," says CEO Chris Mittelstaedt. You want a culture that celebrates almost the wackiest of the ideas for the bravery in putting it out there."



Dig Deeper: 7 Steps to a Culture of Innovation




Points, Prizes, and Other Perks



When great ideas emerge, bonuses are the most common solution for companies with a large enough cash flow. Although an extra check is rarely unwelcome, many more creative options exist to reward employees in a meaningful way.



While Projet Créatif stands to showcase major innovations, Frima also recognizes smaller ideas with a rewards system call Frima Points. When an employee comes forward with a fresh idea, they earn points which can later be traded for tangible gifts. Frima's gifts, such as payment for babysitters, home repair services, and the like, emphasize work-family balance—a core value for Frima—while also fostering productivity.



"We've found that if people spend more time at home with their families than doing household chores on the weekends, they come back to work on Monday ready to do better work," Couture says.



At RockYou, a social game developing and advertising company, great ideas are recognized monthly with their You Rock Awards. Driven by peer nominations, RockYou awards employees for solving a problem, designing a game or otherwise showing innovation. You Rock nominees spin a wheel to choose an award such as concert tickets, an extra day off, or an iPad. All You Rock recipients also receive a golden bobble-head cow trophy.







"I don't actually know the relevance of the cow," RockYou's CFO Steve van Horne admits. "But it's a source of pride for employees to have on their desk."



At Firstborn, innovation is rewarded not by a trophy, but with a three-week vacation. Recognizing that their employees put forth great ideas on a daily basis, their accomplishments culminate in this extended paid time off after five years. "Whether you take a cooking class or go to Europe or sit at home and play video games, it's realizing people want to have that break to get a mental refresher," LaCivita says.



Dig Deeper: 5 Atypical Employee Benefits



Create a Culture of Acknowledgement



In many small businesses, spending money on extraneous prizes is not feasible, but other rewards options still stand. Especially in growing companies, employees are rewarded most through verbal acknowledgement for a specific idea or simply being part of a team that daily embraces innovation.



"In terms of traditional compensation rewards, it tends not to motivate our employees," says Missen about Foursquare. "It's not why a lot of us joined. We have a lot of unmitigated stars in the company that receive press and praise. Recognition and idea implementation are more important."



The FruitGuys, Mittelstaedt constantly reminds himself to call attention to those collaborating under him. Inspired by the "five R philosophy" his company employs with their customers, he makes sure his employees are remembered positively for their efforts. (The other R's include being respectful, responsive, realistic and responsible.)



"A leader is not the greatest person in an organization, so they shouldn't be the one getting the glory," he says. "Helping other people get the glory or acknowledge a success is in our unwritten code of conduct."



For smaller companies, like The FruitGuys' 25-strong, such personal recognition is manageable. Other alternatives like having employees nominate one another and training managers to recognize ideas as they emerge prevents upper management from overlooking great ideas no matter how small and also helps maintain a sense of intimacy no matter how large a company grows.



Dig Deeper: Rethinking Employee Awards




No Two Employees Are Alike



From its research and experience with clients, Maritz postulates that the best reward programs involve purposeful choice on the part of both employees and employers. Roughly only 30 percent of employees who want to be recognized in a certain way – for instance with cash bonuses, public recognition, or symbolic awards – are recognized in that way. Communication about what employees want versus what the company is able to provide helps determine the best options.



"Rewards always need to be meaningful, memorable and motivating, but there's not a one size fits all solution," Barbee says. "By offering choice to your employees you get much more engagement and can drive the kind of results that they want."



Open and frequent communication with Firstborn's 70 employees is a key part of how the agency determines its reward policies. "Some people need that time away more than others. Others may want a nice bonus instead," LaCivita says. "As a company you employ individuals and you are a team, but at your core you're still individuals with different feelings and different needs. You really need to talk to everyone and know who they are as people to really know how to reward them."



As important as honoring all your employees' accomplishments is, companies should be wary of overcompensation. At ngmoco (stands for "Next Generation Mobile Company"), a free-to-play gaming company, rewards are limited to those ideas that exemplify the core values of delight and ownership.



"Delight means setting and exceeding expectations, ownership means carrying a project through to its end," says Justin Hall, ngmoco's director of culture and communication. "If you just reward people for working long hours you're rewarding them for being inefficient and if you reward people for being on time, you're rewarding them for something expected. You have to make sure your expectations permeate across the organization so that the great ideas have a chance to be recognized."



With rewards and recognition natural sense of competition may arise, something healthy for companies seeking a truly innovative culture. Companies should recognize a group with great ideas when merited, but LaCivita maintains that there's nothing wrong with recognizing an individual doing something incredible.



"If a group comes to the table and one person has had the eureka moment that inspires everyone else, I don't think it's wrong to tell or show that person how much his work mattered," he says. "That's how innovation works."



Dig Deeper: 10 Tips for Boosting Employee Morale




Give More to Get More out of Your Workers



With one critical eureka moment often comes the expectation that more great ideas will follow. One of the easiest ways to both recognize innovation and guarantee more in the future is to let your most creative employees take on more responsibility.



At ngmoco, two engineers realized the benefits of creating a gaming platform that would allow downloads both for android and iOS devices. Today ngmoco's efforts center on that platform. The two engineers serve now as vice president of global technology and director of first-party technology, respectively. Similarly, The FruitGuys' head of customer service worked her way up from answering the phones thanks in part to her creativity in leading weekly meetings.



Added responsibilities do not necessarily translate to promotions, however. Given the freedom to choose their next projects or assignments allows great innovators to work in the most inspiring possible environments. "Foursquare's employees come in wanting to work on anything they think they could help the company improve," says Missen. "It's the low fruit, the slow gazelle, and they can fix it."



For Moss, Ravenmark has provided new opportunities for new creative projects. While Frima's jury considered Ravenmark's future for a week before reaching a decision, Moss estimates deliberations took ten minutes for his most recent pitch. "Just showing that level of trust and confidence in the fact that I know what I'm doing, that's all I need," he says.



The employee loyalty built by Frima's recognition of innovation turns any short-term costs long-term investment. "It's important to find creative people, great resources," Couture says. "But it's even more important to keep them when you have them. We keep them by rewarding them."



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Thursday, July 21, 2011

How much feedback is too much? | Heidi Grant Halvorson | SmartBlog on Leadership

By Heidi Grant Halvorson on July 20, 2011 Comments (0)



Everyone needs feedback. It’s hard to get motivated to reach a goal or complete a project, and impossible to stay motivated in the face of difficulty, when you aren’t sure if you are on the right track. None of us are truly comfortable flying blind. For any leader or manager, giving frequent, carefully crafted feedback is one of their most important (and most challenging) responsibilities (as I’ve written about here.)


Feedback should be frequent — but how frequent? Much has been written about the futility of the traditional annual review, and how it offers far too little too late in terms of useful information. So we can probably all agree that feedback needs to be given more than once a year … but once a month? A week? A day? Every hour on the hour, like a traffic update?


Since feedback is a good thing, you might think that you really can’t have too much of it. But according to new research, you’d be wrong.


Receiving feedback, it turns out, comes at some significant cost. Processing what you are being told (whether it’s positive or negative) and responding to it appropriately (or even inappropriately) creates cognitive and emotional demands that can interfere with learning and performance.


In fact, if you plotted the relationship between feedback frequency and performance out on a graph, it would look like an inverted U. In other words, as feedback frequency increases, performance improves … until it starts taking a nosedive. Past a certain point, receiving and responding to too much feedback becomes a liability because it takes your attention away from the work you need to do.


For example, in a study conducted by University of Michigan researcher Chak Fu Lam and his colleagues, participants engaged in a 70-minute-long defense simulation exercise. They were given feedback either two, four, seven or 14 times. Lam found that overall performance increased with increases in feedback frequency until it peaked at seven instances (i.e., every 10 minutes), but it went significantly down when feedback was given 14 times (i.e., every 5 minutes).


Interestingly, the effects of receiving too much feedback were most pronounced during the early learning phase, when participants were trying to get the hang of the task. So having to turn your attention away from what you are doing to process feedback is most disruptive when you working on something new and unfamiliar.


Unfortunately, there can be no hard-and-fast rule about how often you should give your team feedback. The ideal amount will vary according to the nature of the work they do — the duration of projects, complexity, how motivated they are, etc. But here are some strategies to keep in mind when you are trying to find the sweet spot:




  • When your employee is taking on a new project in an area in which they lack experience, be careful not to overwhelm them with frequent feedback. They will need their energy and effort to be focused where it belongs. Instead, make it clear that you will gladly provide feedback and guidance when they ask for it.


  • Keep feedback straightforward and to-the-point, to minimize the amount of time employees will spend wondering what you meant. Whenever possible, be specific about what they did right or wrong, and make concrete suggestions about exactly what they need to do differently.


  • When in doubt, ask your team directly if they would like more, or less, feedback. People generally have a good sense of whether it’s a help or a distraction.


Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D., is a motivational psychologist, researcher, and consultant. She blogs regularly about goal-setting and leadership for Fast Company, Huffington Post, and the Harvard Business Review. Her new book is Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals




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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Working for Love or Money? Employees Say Love Matters More

WorldatWork Newsline


July 13, 2011 — When they're on the job hunt, would-be employees prioritize finding a caring company, fulfilling work and better benefits over dollars and cents, according to a survey by Monster.com in collaboration with employee benefits provider Unum.

In the survey of 468 job-seekers, the top-rated item on would-be employees' wish lists was a company "that truly cares about the well-being of its employees."
Eight-seven percent of those surveyed rated that quality very important in their job hunt — and the result was nearly identical for both the employed and unemployed respondents.

Other priorities for people seeking employment were:



  • A challenging and fulfilling position, which 84% of respondents identified as very important.
  • Job security, rated very important by 82%.
  • An attractive benefits package, which 74% of those surveyed rated very important.
Coming in lower in the rankings were questions of dollars and cents: A high base salary was very important to 66%, and bonuses were very important to a little more than half of those surveyed. The survey, which also polled human resources leaders, showed a strong connection between caring for the well-being of employees and financial protection beyond the paycheck:
  • 86% of HR leaders indicated that making sure employees and their families are taken care of should something happen to them is an important reason for providing financial protection benefits.
  • 82% of workers agreed that being offered financial protection benefits shows that a company cares about the well-being of its employees.
The research is consistent with findings of a recent survey of nearly 400 human resources decision-makers commissioned by Unum in partnership with Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. That study found that the role of corporate culture is perceived as critical to driving engagement, recruitment and retention of a quality workforce:
  • An attractive benefits package and an ethical, transparent culture were more likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff than were a high starting salary and job security.
  • Being a company that cares about the well-being of its staff was twice as likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff as providing a high base salary.
Contents © 2011 WorldatWork. No part of this article may be reproduced, excerpted or redistributed in any form without express written permission from WorldatWork.
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11 ways to build trust within your team | SmartBlog on Leadership

By Lead Change Group on July 19, 2011 Comments (14)

 


Trust is flexibility. It allows you to achieve more than you ever thought you could. Trust lubricates relationships and provides freedom of movement necessary for great team achievements.


Without trust, just like the moving parts of a car, your team will either break down or rust. If you continue to attempt great achievements, friction between members will cause the team to overheat and lock up. If you give in to the inertia, your team will simply coast until it stops and begins to rust. Either way, achievements will just become too difficult. At critical moments, someone won’t be available or misfortune will mysteriously occur.


To avoid either the breakdown or the rust out, you must do things to keep the parts working together and maintain flexibility.


  1. Give Win First. No one ever created a win-win relationship without letting the other person win first. If you refuse to let the other person win, you force everyone to contract and withdraw.
  2. Listen and learn. Attention, focus and time are scarce commodities. Consider how much (or little) time you spend focused on a single activity or person. Actively listen to others and work to understand them twice as long as normal today.
  3. Appreciate and value others. Simply forcing yourself to listen and focus doesn’t mean you will learn. Appreciation is the point at which you engage. Bring energy to maintain the connection with others out of your own internal desire. Appreciating and valuing another person builds trust. (Hat tip: Monica Diaz’s book “Otheresteem.”)
  4. Remember what you hear and see. If you appreciate something, you will process and consider it in a way that will help you remember. As you remember what you hear and see, others rest more in their understanding of you, and that builds trust.
  5. Trust others. Nothing betrays trust more than the lack of trust. Most often, people who won’t trust others do so because they can’t be trusted either. If you would never steal from someone else, why are you always afraid the other person will steal from you? Trust first.
  6. Find solutions. Begin with the belief that the other person can succeed. Don’t tell them their idea won’t work. Help create ways to make them successful.
  7. Make a sacrifice. Sometimes the solution to someone else’s problem is a sacrifice on your part. Be willing to be the solution to your teammate’s problems.
  8. Learn from your mistakes. Don’t make the same mistake twice. People will forgive errors made by genuine people attempting to do the right thing. Work hard to avoid repeat mistakes.
  9. Make it right. Even though errors can erode trust, you build trust when you fix a mistake well. Be proactive and do the right thing.
  10. Give generous credit and praise. People want to matter. If you help people be important and valuable, you become valuable.
  11. Do what you say. It all comes down to this. If you are not capable of delivering, people will like you but not trust you to lead.


Act like an owner and take care of your team. If you don’t do the routine maintenance, your team won’t be able to perform when the opportunity arises.



Mike Henry Sr. - Leadership Developer, Coach, Trainer, Speaker. Helping Leaders Grow Leaders. President Lead Change Group



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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A Brand is Bigger Than Performance - Nigel Hollis - Harvard Business Review

12:50 PM Monday July 18, 2011
by Nigel Hollis Comments (3)


Not long ago, a popular post on HBR's site, by Dan Pallotta, was headlined "A logo is not a brand." That is a familiar enough declaration, and not far from the phrasing I use myself on the subject of brands. I clicked on the link expecting to find a familiar argument. But what I found was very different.


Dan's smart observation is that "Brand is everything, and everything is brand." By that he means that all the things a business does — not just its logo and visuals, but also its strategy, call to action, customer service, communications with customers, and people — combine to determine what it stands for. Thus he concludes, "Ultimately, brand is about caring about your business at every level and in every detail, from the big things like mission and vision, to your people, your customers and every interaction anyone is ever going to have with you, no matter how small." To Dan, a brand is essentially a performance promise incarnate.


But I would add that there is more to "everything" than this would imply, and it's what determines how much a brand is actually worth. If a brand is shaped by everything its owner does, it is also shaped by everything else associated with the brand in the minds of its customers.


If you think about why brands are important to marketers, the answer is simple: in a competitive context, a brand marks an offering's differentiation from alternatives. It is what drives customers' predisposition to buy an offering and pay a premium for it. To Dan's point, differentiation is most meaningful when it is intrinsic; that is, based on relevant, tangible, and positive performance that can be experienced through the senses. Intrinsic differentiation can come through in the look, feel, sound, smell, or taste of a product. A case in point would be Red Bull, a brand that promises to "give you wings." Whatever the effect of ingredients like taurine, any tired mind or body will receive a boost from the extra sugar and caffeine the brand contains. Similarly, Dyson became a successful global brand because its vacuum technology was demonstrably better than existing brands of vacuum cleaner.


However, meaningful differentiation can also be extrinsic; that is, not based on the attributes and ingredients of the product or even of its provision. Distinctive communication, provenance, a track record of innovation or, increasingly, social and environmental responsibility can all form the basis of a brand's perceived, positive edge. The success of Johnnie Walker in the last decade was driven by the association it established with a changing ethos in its customers. Its "Keep on Walking" message tapped into an emerging sense that success was marked not by status for its own sake but by continued personal development. Part of the triumph of this branding was in the adaptation of its execution for local cultures around the world.


A brand is the ideas, the memories, and the feelings evoked every time someone thinks of the brand. When those mental associations make the associated product or service more salient, more interesting, or more compelling than the alternatives, they create value.


So Dan is right, "everything is brand." And everything a brand does should be aligned to deliver a meaningful experience. But the sensory experience of transacting business with a brand, while it may be the cornerstone of the brand experience, is far from the totality. Brand experience encompasses everything from the first impression of a brand to the latest interaction with it, from a positive association with it created by its funny TV ad to a negative one from a neighbor's discussion of its shortcomings. It is the job of marketing to shape expectations, frame experiences, and keep as many associations as possible both positive and salient. If they do their work well, the result will be the creation of value for both brand owner and brand buyer.


Nigel Hollis


Nigel Hollis is Executive Vice President and Chief Global Analyst at brand research consultancy Millward Brown, and author of The Global Brand: How to Create and Develop Lasting Brand Value in the World Market.


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It's Not What You Say, But How You Say It- Steve Tobak - | BNET


BNET.com

By July 18, 2011


Communication is about content and delivery, fifty-fifty. But when it comes to leadership, it’s all about the delivery. Of course what you say matters, but how you say it, how you relate to folks, is what differentiates great leaders from the pack.


That means you can have innovative ideas, indeed you must, but if you can’t deliver them in a way that connects with people and relates to them in a meaningful way, you won’t get results.


Here’s a perfect example from the season premier of Restaurant Impossible with Food Network chef Robert Irvine. A family had thrown its entire life into a restaurant for 30 years, the place was failing, and the owners were more than a half a million dollars in debt.


After it finally sunk in that he’d made just about every possible mistake in the book, the owner was depressed, demoralized, and seemingly inconsolable. And yet, Irvine - the taskmaster who’d gotten his start in the Royal Navy - was able to turn things around.


He put his hand on the guy’s shoulder, looked him right in the eye, and told him how much his family and employees needed him now. Indeed, how much Irvine needed him to help him turn this thing around and not give up. There was genuine empathy and caring in his eyes. Strictly no BS.


If you’ve ever watched Irvine work, you know what I’m talking about. The guy’s a helluva leader. Yes, I know it’s TV, but I’m telling you that some executives and leaders have that ability. Most don’t. I’ve known plenty of both kinds, and to be honest, I’ve seen myself as both kinds.


Early on, I was a brash, aggressive, distracted, young executive hell-bent on “making it” and driving results. Later I learned the importance and motivational impact of genuinely connecting with people in a meaningful way.


That transition doesn’t happen all at once, it’s a process of continuous improvement and the learning never really stops. So, wherever you are in your journey to the top, I’m sure these 5 tips will help to improve your delivery so folks will want to be a part of whatever it is you’re doing.


  1. Look people straight in the eye and really “see” them. If you take one thing away from this post, this is the one. It’s huge. I can’t say exactly why, but when you look someone straight in the eye, you’re initiating a potentially deep connection that can’t be achieved any other way. It also shows respect, i.e. there’s nothing more dismissive and demeaning than not “recognizing” someone by looking directly at them.
  2. Be direct and genuine. The big problem with political correctness is that it’s hard enough to be straightforward and direct with people as it is. The whole PC thing just adds layers of complexity that make it so much harder to be straightforward in a work environment. Actually, the more direct and genuine you are with people, the greater their sense of trust and the more respect they’ll have.
  3. Executive presence isn’t about power and domination. This is perhaps the biggest misconception about executive presence. It doesn’t come from command and control, it comes from connecting and relating, from sharing your passion in a way that’s meaningful to others. It breaks down barriers.
  4. Learn to be a storyteller. People relate to stories and storytellers. People don’t remember facts and figures or even logical arguments as well as they remember stories. They also find it easier to connect with storytellers. If you really want to relate to people in a deep way, tell them stories they can relate to.
  5. Increase your self-awareness. How you say things is more about how you feel than what you think. If people have trouble relating to you or respecting you, chances are you’re not as self-aware as you think you are. The only way to change that is to find out what employees, peers, and your boss like and don’t like about how you communicate. Being open to feedback is the only place to start.


Steve Tobak

Steve Tobak is a consultant, writer, and former senior executive with more than 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He's the managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a Silicon Valley-based firm that provides strategic consulting, executive coaching, and speaking services to CEOs and management teams of small-to-mid-sized companies. Find out more at www.invisor.net Follow Steve on Twitter or Facebook.


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