Wednesday, November 30, 2011

In Search of…..Excellent Leaders - Ken Nowack - Envisia

November 20, 2011 by Ken Nowack

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.”

George Carlin

To stimulate research on the topic of poor leadership, Robert Hogan in 1990 suggested that the base rate of leadership incompetence was between 60% and 75%. Other research has confirmed that approximately one out of two executive leaders fail in corporate America. These leaders seem to consistently lack emotional intelligence, be overly controlling, poor at delegation and problem solving and perceived to be untrustworthy.

Leaders may be made but clearly finding the ones that are born with “leadership set points” would appear to maximize the success of organizations.

Based on several recent surveys (e.g., Abderdeen Group and Rocket-Hire), the utilization of assessment tools for pre-employment selection and promotion is approximately 60% to 70% across all industries with some projections of increased use in the next 12 months of about 14%.

Of those using pre-employment assessments across job levels, the most popular approaches continue to be evaluation of work history, candidate interviews, skill and aptitude tests, and personality inventories. Which approach to measuring key aspects of potential talent’s knowledge, experience and competence actually do a good job of predicting future success and performance? The table below summarizes a large number of recent meta-analytic research studies in the industrial/organizational psychology literature across diverse industries, job levels and different measures of job performance and success.

The numbers in the column are called validity coefficients and they can range from 0 (no association with performance outcomes) to 1.0 (perfect association). This table is based on very diverse industries for leadership positions across all levels using a wide variety of specific measures of success, salary, promotion, and performance in mind. In the industrial/organizational literature, it is not unusual to find that most assessments today are only modest at actually predicting future success of leaders in any industry—regardless of how it is defined and measured. The use of two or more of these pre-employment and selection methods doesn’t dramatically increase predictive validity but relying on only one approach may lead to erroneous hires and selection decisions (e.g., relying only on personality inventory results or interviews).

Any of these methods can be used for selecting talent as long as they are based on a systematic job analysis summarizing relevant knowledge, skills and abilities required for successful performance. There are many ways to establish validation of a pre-employment assessment with the most common methods used including content validation (showing a link between the job requirements and the content of an assessment) and criterion related validation (showing a statistical relationship between the assessment and some measure of performance) methods.

What We Know About Selecting Successful Leaders in the Future

A number of practical and important observations can be made by looking at the relative average predictive validities (correlation coefficients) ranging from the highest (.54 for work samples) to the lowest (.01 for age).

No specific assessment approach is statistically very strong in predicting success or performance although work sample simulations, cognitive ability tests for entry positions and more structured interviews are the strongest.
The standard “mutual seduction” interview is probably only modest at predicting future performance. Predictive validity increases as interviews become more structured, based on a comprehensive review of the position requirements and based either on specific situations that can be reliably evaluated or behavioral samples from the past.
Interests are relatively weak at telling us much about future performance or competence (just watch the television show American Idol and you can see this in action). However, interests are strong predictors of job satisfaction and turnover so it is important to get a sense of what will maximally engage talent. New research suggests that job specific interests might be stronger in predicting performance and turnover.
Although reference checks have legal restrictions that minimize their usefulness, in concept they should be pretty revealing if you can get information to be shared by previous colleagues, peers and employers given the predictive power of peer and supervisory ratings.
Minimize stereotypes about the value of talent with particular educational backgrounds and age—both are virtually useless for making predictions about future leadership success.
Those who demonstrate cognitive ability seem to learn more rapidly and assimilate information. Cognitive ability tests are known for potential adverse impact and are often viewed more negatively by prospective candidates. At higher levels there is a compression of mathematical-logical intelligence making these type of assessments less useful (predictive) but still the more of it you have the greater the job performance.
It’s not how smart you are but how you are smart. Interpersonal competence, self-awareness and social awareness (ingredients of emotional intelligence) are probably better predictors of who won’t succeed than who will. Be careful about overstated claims about the predictive power of emotional intelligence on job performance.
“Show me” assessments or simulations appear to be universally strong predictors of leadership success. These types of measures have been incorporated into assessment centers with strong predictive validity and little or no adverse impact. Because they are designed around the job in question, candidates also respond much better than to pre-employment approaches that don’t appear to be immediately relevant to the position (e.g., intelligence tests, personality inventories).
Personality measures are modest predictors of job success with two “universal” or generalizable factors typically found to have the strongest association with job performance across diverse settings: conscientiousness (driven, dependable, organized, achievement oriented, responsible) and emotional stability (self-confident, even tempered, adaptable, resilient, emotionally well adjusted).
When job performance depends on leading and influencing (e.g., sales and managerial positions) extroversion is a significant personality predictor and for customer service oriented positions interpersonal factors (agreeableness) appears most strongly associated with performance and success.
In positions requiring creativity and innovation, a personality factor often referred to as “openness to experience” is quite predictive.
There isn’t much argument that selecting and promoting the best leadership talent is a strategic competitive advantage. However, what approach to use for “human handicapping” is an important decision when companies, large and small, begin to introduce specific assessment methods for pre-employment hiring and promotional decision making. Most are significantly better than chance and some are certainly better at increasing the odds of predicting high performers.

If only it was as easy as the final scene in the baseball movie called The Natural where Roy Hobbs breaks his precious bat and tells the bat boy “Pick me out a winner Bobby” with pretty dramatic results (and even better score by Randy Newman)….Be well….

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://results.envisialearning.com/in-search-of%E2%80%A6-excellent-leaders/

Three Star Leadership Blog: Getting the Right People in Leadership Roles

Wally Bock

11/29/2011

How do we do a better job of picking leaders? How can we pick more of the people who are most likely to succeed and less of the ones who simply can't do the job? Dr. Ken Nowack and Dr. Ken Blanchard took a shot at those questions recently.

Ken Nowack's post was "In Search of…..Excellent Leaders." He reviewed the instruments, tools, and techniques companies use for selecting leaders. He identified twelve things that we know about selecting leaders, beginning with this.

"No specific assessment approach is statistically very strong in predicting success or performance although work sample simulations, cognitive ability tests for entry positions and more structured interviews are the strongest."

Ken Blanchard comes at the same issue from a different angle in his post "How to Identify a Future Leader." He says this.

"I think the best way to identify a potential leader is to ask people: “Who do you enjoy working with? Who do you respect in the workforce?” The names you hear in answer to those questions are the kind of people you want to identify as potential leaders and promote."

Art Petty recently posted something similar to Blanchard. In his post, "You Have No Business Leading Others" Art suggests three core questions to ask before turning anyone loose in a leadership position. Where Dr. Blanchard asks others for their opinion of working with the candidate, Art asks questions about the person's behavior.

All of this is good and helpful, but not enough. When I look at either the Aon Hewitt study, "Top Companies for Leaders" or the Hay Group’s "Best Companies for Leadership" I see another, important piece of the choosing leaders puzzle.

The companies that are best at developing leaders use a variety of techniques and tools. They ask a variety of questions about candidates. But they add something important: a rigorous and disciplined evaluation that fits the regular cadence of the company.

In those companies, evaluating individuals to identify development opportunities is part of the rhythm of the business. They expect every manager to do it.

There are three important results. Managers develop the ability to evaluate others for the next level and beyond. The people who are developing get the benefit of many evaluations by different people. And when the time comes to select someone for promotion to a leadership role, there's a pool of judgment to draw upon.

Boss's Bottom Line

The best evaluation systems supplement well-chosen tools and questions with human judgment developed through a disciplined rigorous process.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Contact Wally about coaching, consulting, or speaking t your group.

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2011/11/29/getting-the-right-people-in-leadership-roles.aspx

Thursday, November 24, 2011

A Serving of Gratitude Brings Healthy Dividends - NYTimes.com

November 21, 2011

By JOHN TIERNEY

The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us.

Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.

But what if you’re not the grateful sort? I sought guidance from the psychologists who have made gratitude a hot research topic. Here’s their advice for getting into the holiday spirit — or at least getting through dinner Thursday:

Start with “gratitude lite.” That’s the term used by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis, for the technique used in his pioneering experiments he conducted along with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami. They instructed people to keep a journal listing five things for which they felt grateful, like a friend’s generosity, something they’d learned, a sunset they’d enjoyed.

The gratitude journal was brief — just one sentence for each of the five things — and done only once a week, but after two months there were significant effects. Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out.

Further benefits were observed in a study of polio survivors and other people with neuromuscular problems. The ones who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling happier and more optimistic than those in a control group, and these reports were corroborated by observations from their spouses. These grateful people also fell asleep more quickly at night, slept longer and woke up feeling more refreshed.

“If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep,” Dr. Emmons advises in “Thanks!” his book on gratitude research.

Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness. Sure, you may feel obliged to return a favor, but that’s not gratitude, at least not the way psychologists define it. Indebtedness is more of a negative feeling and doesn’t yield the same benefits as gratitude, which inclines you to be nice to anyone, not just a benefactor.

In an experiment at Northeastern University, Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno sabotaged each participant’s computer and arranged for another student to fix it. Afterward, the students who had been helped were likelier to volunteer to help someone else — a complete stranger — with an unrelated task. Gratitude promoted good karma. And if it works with strangers ....

Try it on your family. No matter how dysfunctional your family, gratitude can still work, says Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside.

“Do one small and unobtrusive thoughtful or generous thing for each member of your family on Thanksgiving,” she advises. “Say thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture. Express your admiration for someone’s skills or talents — wielding that kitchen knife so masterfully, for example. And truly listen, even when your grandfather is boring you again with the same World War II story.”

Don’t counterattack. If you’re bracing for insults on Thursday, consider a recent experiment at the University of Kentucky. After turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!”

Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation. The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser. Not surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics by subjecting them to especially loud blasts — much louder than the noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations.

But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students: the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful. After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism — or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics.

“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky. “It helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy. “It’s an equal-opportunity emotion. Anyone can experience it and benefit from it, even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

Share the feeling. Why does gratitude do so much good? “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”

Try a gratitude visit. This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”

Contemplate a higher power. Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.

Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger.

“As a culture, we have lost a deep sense of gratefulness about the freedoms we enjoy, a lack of gratitude toward those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom, a lack of gratitude for all the material advantages we have,” he says. “The focus of Thanksgiving should be a reflection of how our lives have been made so much more comfortable by the sacrifices of those who have come before us.”

And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself —

Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.

Is that too much of a stretch? When all else fails, remember the Monty Python mantra of the Black Plague victim: “I’m not dead.” It’s all a matter of perspective.

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/a-serving-of-gratitude-brings-healthy-dividends.html

Monday, November 21, 2011

Why you need to perform a reputation audit today - CBS News

November 17, 2011 9:48 AM
By Dave Logan

Excerpts:

Here are the steps:
-- Make a list of people whose opinion of you matters -- from your ability to do your job, to your chances for advancement, and to your standing in the industry.
-- Schedule time with each person, saying you want to discuss something personal and important. Don't make the process a big deal. For those who want to know exactly what you're doing, you might send them the link to this blog post.
-- In each meeting, say you value the person's opinion and want to ask a question: "What's my reputation?" Make it clear you don't want to know who is saying what, and you're not asking what this person thinks. Rather, you're asking what the word on the street is about you.
-- Most people will start off positively. Try not to smile or show relief. Most people will also bring up a few negative points. Try not to seem disappointed or frustrated. Just take notes on what you hear, and say "Thank you." Don't agree or disagree with what you hear, offer a defense or an explanation. You're here to get information, and express gratitude for receiving it.
-- Be prepared for the person to ask you the same question about themselves. Have an answer ready, but don't volunteer it if the person doesn't ask.
-- At the end of the meeting, ask if you can come back with follow-up questions.
-- Repeat for the other people on your list.

About Dave Logan: Dave Logan Dave Logan is a USC faculty member, management consultant, and the best-selling author of four books including Tribal Leadership and The Three Laws of Performance. He is also Senior Partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm, which he co-founded in 1997.

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57326072/why-you-need-to-perform-a-reputation-audit-today/

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply | Governance Center Blog

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply Governance Center Blog

Governance Center Blog

Nov, 18 2011

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. increased 0.9 percent in October to 117.4 (2004 = 100), following a 0.1 percent increase in September, and a 0.3 percent increase in August.

Says Ataman Ozyildirim, economist at The Conference Board: “The October rebound of the LEI — largely due to the sharp pick-up in housing permits — suggests that the risk of an economic downturn has receded. Improving consumer expectations, stock markets, and labor market indicators also contributed to this month’s gain in the LEI as did the continuing positive contributions from the interest rate spread. The CEI also rose somewhat, led by higher industrial production and employment.”

Says Ken Goldstein, economist at The Conference Board: “The LEI is pointing to continued growth this winter, possibly even gaining a little momentum by spring. The lack of confidence has been the biggest obstacle in generating forward momentum, domestically or globally. As long as it lasts, there is a glimmer of hope.”

The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) for the U.S. increased 0.2 percent in October to 103.5 (2004 = 100), following no change in September and August.

The Conference Board Lagging Economic Index® (LAG) increased 0.6 percent in October to 110.9 (2004 = 100), following a 0.1 percent increase in September, and a 0.2 percent increase in August.

For full press release and technical notes:

http://www.conference-board.org/data/bcicountry.cfm?cid=1

For more information about The Conference Board global business cycle indicators:

http://www.conference-board.org/data/bci.cfm

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply | Governance Center Blog

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply Governance Center Blog

Governance Center Blog

Nov, 18 2011

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. Increases Sharply

Says Ataman Ozyildirim, economist at The Conference Board: “The October rebound of the LEI — largely due to the sharp pick-up in housing permits — suggests that the risk of an economic downturn has receded. Improving consumer expectations, stock markets, and labor market indicators also contributed to this month’s gain in the LEI as did the continuing positive contributions from the interest rate spread. The CEI also rose somewhat, led by higher industrial production and employment.”

Says Ken Goldstein, economist at The Conference Board: “The LEI is pointing to continued growth this winter, possibly even gaining a little momentum by spring. The lack of confidence has been the biggest obstacle in generating forward momentum, domestically or globally. As long as it lasts, there is a glimmer of hope.”

The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) for the U.S. increased 0.2 percent in October to 103.5 (2004 = 100), following no change in September and August.

The Conference Board Lagging Economic Index® (LAG) increased 0.6 percent in October to 110.9 (2004 = 100), following a 0.1 percent increase in September, and a 0.2 percent increase in August.

For full press release and technical notes:

http://www.conference-board.org/data/bcicountry.cfm?cid=1

For more information about The Conference Board global business cycle indicators:

http://www.conference-board.org/data/bci.cfm

Commercial Insurance Prices Going Up - CFO.com

Risk Management - November 17, 2011 - CFO.com US

Everything except D&O insurance appears to have hit bottom.
Sarah Johnson

A near decade of declining rates for three out of four commercial lines of insurance seems to have ended. A recent benchmarking survey shows a slight uptick for general liability, property, and workers' compensation.

In the third quarter, the average renewal premium rose 1.2% for general liability, 1.6% for property, and 2.1% for workers' comp, according to the RIMS Benchmark Survey, which is put together by Advisen, a risk-data analysis firm. Only directors' and officers' (D&O) insurance premiums fell, by an average of 1.9%. "We've seen some stabilizing in pricing over the last several quarters, with prices falling just slightly or having no change, but this is the first time we've seen three of the four lines trending upward since 2004," says David Bradford, editor-in-chief at Advisen. The soft market began soon after premiums "skyrocketed" in 2001 and 2002 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and stock market woes during that time, he says.

Bradford attributes part of the recent shift upward to the rising level of catastrophic events around the globe (such as Japan's earthquake earlier this year), which has resulted in underwriting losses for insurers. In addition, as the economy has improved -- however slight -- insurers' capacity has fallen as companies need more insurance. Higher head counts, for example, mean a greater need for workers' compensation.

D&O insurance, on the other hand, is where insurance buyers will still see rates more in their favor, relative to other lines they need to buy. "The D&O market is characterized by a glut of capacity," says Dean Klisura, who heads U.S. risk practices at insurance broker Marsh. As a result, buyers have seen premium reductions of as much as 10%.

This is true despite increased litigation and unfavorable equity markets, Klisura acknowledges, and may be partly due to the number of boutique firms specializing in D&O that cropped up after the financial crisis.

Still, observers of the insurance market emphasize that, overall, commercial insurance rates are competitive. The RIMS survey reflects only average rates, and many buyers are still able to negotiate for lower premiums, Bradford says.

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www3.cfo.com/article/2011/11/risk-management_commercial-insurance-prices-going-up-general-liability-property-workers-compensation-do

Friday, November 18, 2011

Build Your Personal Value Proposition - Bill Barnett - Harvard Business Review

11:06 AM Thursday November 17, 2011
by Bill Barnett Comments ( 12)

Executives set value propositions for their products — the target market segments, the benefits they provide, and their prices. It's why a target customer should buy the product.

But value propositions go beyond just products. Your personal value proposition (PVP) is at the heart of your career strategy. It's the foundation for everything in a job search and career progression — targeting potential employers, attracting the help of others, and explaining why you're the one to pick. It's why to hire you, not someone else.

The question is this: How do you develop a powerful PVP?

Take a look at Steve (name has been changed). Steve is a tall, 54-year-old manufacturing executive. Steve's interest and skill at manufacturing operations is the cornerstone of his PVP.

It's hard to know what you're really good at. You need more than the ordinary, convenient categories. I seek the kinds of things where I fit naturally, what I enjoy. That's not consumer products, not hard science, not financial institutions, and not an enterprise that's pursuing something other than long-term financial objectives. I look for operations-intensive companies who can benefit from significant performance improvement. I take floundering institutions and go build things. It's not quite turnaround, not slash and burn; but it's a far way from peaceful stewardship of assets. I'm a go-build guy.

Steve targets companies from $150 million sales up to $1 billion. He doesn't want start-ups, where everything would need to be set up, or a company so large that he couldn't know people down the line. He prefers private companies. With no experience with the special duties of a public corporation's CEO, he feels it doesn't make sense to have to learn all that on the job at this point in his work life.

Steve also emphasizes his view of the right atmosphere: "I'm not at all into sleazy places, nor into industries like tobacco, alcohol, or casinos. Ethically-challenged places are no fun." We could debate whether those industries pose ethical issues, but that's not the point. They aren't right for him.

Steve's leaving out the great majority of corporations, but that doesn't limit him. He gets three or four calls a year asking him to consider a corporate CEO position. Those calls come both because he's a strong candidate for jobs where he fits and because the people who call know that. They don't call about everything. They call about positions that connect to Steve's PVP. It's easy to understand where he's strong and what he wants to do. His PVP is distinctive, unlike what similarly qualified executives might say about themselves.

Here are four steps to develop a strong PVP:

Set a clear target. The PVP begins with a target, one that needs what you have to offer. You'll prefer some directions, not others. Targeting will make you most effective.
Identify your strengths. It may sound obvious, but what you know and what you can do are the foundation of your PVP. Hone in on what those are.
Tie your strengths to your target position. Don't leave it up to the employer to figure out how your strengths relate to what she needs. Let your PVP tightly connect you to the position. Connect the dots for her. Consider her perspective and know why she should hire you or promote you.
Provide evidence and success stories. Your strengths may be what an employer is "buying," but your achievements are the evidence you have those strengths. They make your case convincing. Some people prepare a non-confidential portfolio to showcase that evidence in a vivid way. They collect reports they wrote that had impact. They pull together facts on measurable achievements such as sales growth or cost reduction.

Steve's target — mid-sized, privately-held industrial companies that need significant operations improvement to enable growth — is an excellent example of the first of these steps. He's setting himself up in his distinct target area, where his network knows him well. His past success demonstrates that he has the capability and emphasizes his strengths. In all of this, Steve's intrinsic quality is critical to his success, but it's not the whole story. It's through his PVP that Steve's making the most of his talents.

As you think about your own career strategy, think about Steve and his narrowly defined and distinctive PVP. What's your value proposition?

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/a_value_proposition_for_your_c.html

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Insuring life's quirky perils - William P. Barrett - Forbes

Excerpts:

Insuring life's quirky perilsEveryone knows about long-established insurance for home, car and health. But other coverages out there can afford protection for narrow perils of modern-day living, often at a surprisingly low cost.

1. Change-of-heart protection
2. Wine collection
3. Green upgrade
4. ID theft
5. No-show wedding photographer
6. Travel
7. Pet's life
8. Kidnapping 9. Damaged wedding gown
10. UFO abduction

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mjf45emgl/insuring-lifes-quirky-perils

CEOs are Paid for Performance - WorldatWork Newsline

WorldatWork Newsline

Nov. 8, 2011 — As the furor over CEO compensation at U.S. companies remains high, new research shows that the pay of executives is closely aligned with their actual performance. High-performing companies tend to have relatively highly paid leaders while low-performing companies compensate their CEOs at much lower levels, according to a new study by Pay Governance, LLC.
A review of 2011 SEC proxy filings for nearly 400 companies demonstrated strong alignment of a company's stock price performance with realizable CEO pay. Executives at high-performing companies earned more than their counterparts at firms delivering less value to shareholders. These findings do not support charges by critics in the media, public, and among regulators, government officials and some shareholders that CEO pay is generally not proportionate with the company's performance.

"Contrary to claims made by compensation critics, there is a very strong relationship between pay and performance as reflected through realizable pay," said Pay Governance managing partner Ira Kay. "These findings are consistent with other pay-for-performance research we have done on thousands of companies over the past 10 years, as well as industry studies performed for many of our clients."

The Pay Governance study found that over a three-year period, cumulative realizable pay from stock incentives at high-performing companies was $19 million — 55% higher than at comparable low-performing companies. Similar results have been found in other studies conducted by the firm.

The gulf between high- and low-performing companies is consistent with striking differences in total shareholder return (TSR). The high achievers realized a 5.6% TSR over three years compared to -8% for the others. For a typical company with a $10 billion market cap, this disparity translated into a difference of almost $1.4 billion in valuation.

Most critics of CEO pay tend to only look at pay opportunity — target cash compensation and the value of equity incentives on the date of grant — which can create the appearance of high pay compared to performance. Pay Governance conducted its evaluation of CEO compensation using a realizable pay metric — the best representation of an executive's actual pay during a particular time period. This figure is the sum of actual cash compensation earned, the aggregate value of in-the-money stock options, the current value of restricted shares, actual payout from performance share or cash plans, plus the estimated value of outstanding performance share or performance contingent cash.

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/adimComment?id=56958&from=wwnew_editorial_4611

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman | Video on TED.com

Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman Video on TED.com

Amazing!

Video 14:49

Talks

Yves Rossy: Fly with the Jetman

SpeakersYves Rossy: Jetman

About This Talk

Strapped to a jet-powered wing, Yves Rossy is the Jetman -- flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works, Rossy takes the TEDGlobal stage to share the experience and thrill of flying.

Why you should listen to him:

On May 7 of this year, Swiss pilot Yves Rossy stepped out of a helicopter 8,000 feet above the Grand Canyon and ... took off. Wearing a rigid wing powered by four model jet turbine engines, Rossy flew for eight minutes over the mile-deep trench, soaring over the red rocks before parachuting down to the Colorado River far below. It's the latest exploit in a life powered by one dream: to fly like a bird.

Wearing his single wing, Rossy really flies, steering with the movements of his body. In the last couple of years he has crossed the English Channel, flown over the Swiss Alps and performed aerobatic loops around a hot-air balloon; for his next quest, he is developing a new kind of parachute that will enable him to fly as low as 200 meters.

"It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Yves Rossy!"

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://www.ted.com/talks/yves_rossy_fly_with_the_jetman.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-11-15&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Monday, November 14, 2011

Does bad credit make you a bad employee? - CBS News

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently

Huffington Post

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.

Posted: 03/18/11 08:40 AM ET

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer -- that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others -- is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

Here are nine things successful people do differently:

[1] Get Specific

When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight" because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague -- be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10 p.m. on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

[2] Seize The Moment To Act On Your Goals

Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide in advance when and where you will take each action you want to take. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g. "If it's Monday, Wednesday or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work"). Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300 percent.

[3] Know Exactly How Far You Have Left To Go

Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress -- if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently -- weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

[4] Be A Realistic Optimist

When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

[5] Focus On Getting Better Rather Than Being Good

Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality and our physical aptitudes are fixed -- that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong; abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

[6] Have Grit

Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking -- well, there's no way to put this nicely -- you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

[7] Build Your Willpower Muscle

Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body -- when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching or try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up or just not bother, don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur (e.g. "If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

[8] Don't Tempt Fate

No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it, you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time. And don't put yourself in harm's way; many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

[9] Focus On What You Will Do, Not What You Won't Do.

Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g. "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior; by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want change your ways, ask yourself, "What will I do instead?" For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like this: "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember: You don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

(For more on using each of these strategies, check out my new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals.)

This post originally appear in the Harvard Business Review.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, is a motivational psychologist and researcher. She writes about the scientifically-tested strategies we can use to be more effective reaching our goals at work and in our personal lives. Her new HBR eSingle is Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, and her most recent book is "Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals" (Hudson Street Press). She is also the co-editor of the academic handbook, "The Psychology of Goals," a regular contributor to the BBC World Service's "Business Daily," an expert blogger for Fast Company and Psychology Today, and a guest blogger for Harvard Business Review. Her website is www.heidigranthalvorson.com.

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Sunday, November 13, 2011

[Had A Perry Lately?] The Science Behind Perry's Brain Freeze - All Too Human - NYTimes.com

November 10, 2011, 4:08 pm

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Sometimes even a healthy brain doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

Nobody may know that better than Rick Perry, the Texas governor, who suffered an embarrassing memory lapse during the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday. Mr. Perry stops midsentence as he struggles to remember the name of the Department of Energy, one of three federal agencies he has often said should be eliminated. A pained look crosses his face. He stammers. He starts over. He changes the subject. But the words don’t come.

How the gaffe will affect Mr. Perry’s political aspirations isn’t known. But among brain researchers, the moment is a fascinating display of a common human experience: the brain freeze.

“There are a lot of potential explanations for why it happened,” said Daniel Weissman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist who studies attention. “A lot of things are going on when we try to recall memories, and problems at any stage could lead to failure.’’

Mr. Perry is not the first public figure to suffer an embarrassing memory lapse. Earlier this year, the singer Christina Aguilera forgot the words to the national anthem as she performed at the Super Bowl. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. misplaced a word in the oath at the swearing-in ceremony for President Obama, prompting him to readminister the oath the next day.

Brain researchers note that countless memory lapses like these happen to the rest of us every day, whether it’s walking into a room and forgetting why you are there or being unable to recall a name that’s on the tip of your tongue.

Some memories, like the name of the first president or a child’s birthday, are so strong that recalling them is effortless. But when the information is relatively new or used less often, we must rely on the brain’s ability to strategically search our memory for the hard-to-retrieve information. During this process, we engage the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which interacts with the medial temporal lobe, the part of the brain that forms and retrieves memories of facts and events.

When all goes well, the medial temporal lobe acts like a library’s card catalog system, pointing to the locations in the brain where different parts of the memory are stored and allowing the memory to be recalled. But in Mr. Perry’s case, it appears that something went wrong, and the search turned up the wrong card or looked in the wrong place or was interrupted.

The culprit could have been distraction, experts say. Just before the gaffe, Mr. Perry looked directly at his opponent Ron Paul, which suggests the glance may have disrupted his train of thought. Or it’s possible that Mr. Perry’s mind may have started moving ahead to his next point too quickly, leaving him muddled in the moment. Stress also can impair the function of the hippocampus, which is also involved in memory retrieval.

“Trying desperately to fulfill the promise you made at the beginning of your utterance, then, under the bright lights, with the stakes still very high and getting higher, stress bad and only getting worse, the time late and getting ever later, grasping for straws offered to you by your competitors in a debate — the problem is only compounded,’’ Neal J. Cohen, a University of Illinois professor of psychology who studies human learning and memory, said in an e-mail exchange.

Another possibility is that Mr. Perry has had other cost-cutting conversations with his campaign strategists, and those memories were interfering with his ability to recall the details of his current plan. Such interference from past memories occurs, for example, when we leave a grocery store and stare at a sea of cars in the parking lot, realizing we have forgotten where we parked.

“As you search in your memory, there are all these very similar memories of parking at the grocery store that are interfering with each other,’’ said Dr. Weissman. “If there had been discussions of cutting other departments, it’s possible that there was somehow interference from those memories, and that’s why he couldn’t recall it.’’

Recent brain research has used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans to watch brain activity during lapses of attention during a monotonous task. The real-world equivalent would be driving along the highway, only to discover you have driven well past your exit. The research suggests that during familiar tasks, a brain region called the default mode network kicks in and the brain gets lazy.

“We think that it gets lazier — or less diligent — with respect to the external task because it thinks it knows what is going to happen next,” said Tom Eichele, a neurophysiologist and adjunct professor of biological and medical psychology at the University of Bergen in Norway.

Whether it was stress, competing memories or distraction that caused Mr. Perry’s brain freeze, it’s clear that he’s not alone.

“I thought it was a pretty everyday experience,’’ Dr. Weissman said. “We’ve all had this happen.’’

About Well - TARA PARKER-POPE

Healthy living doesn’t happen at the doctor’s office. The road to better health is paved with the small decisions we make every day. It’s about the choices we make when we buy groceries, drive our cars and hang out with our kids. Join columnist Tara Parker-Pope as she sifts through medical research and expert opinions for practical advice to help readers take control of their health and live well every day.

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Saturday, November 12, 2011

How the Rift Between Sales and Marketing Undermines Reps - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - Harvard Business Review

HBR Blog Network

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

10:18 AM Monday November 7, 2011
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson Comments ( 12)

It's no secret that sales and marketing executives don't always see eye to eye.

In a recent Corporate Executive Board survey, sales executives' top terms for their marketing colleagues included "paper pushers," "academic," and perhaps worst of all, "irrelevant." On the other hand, marketing executives called out their sales counterparts as "simple minded," "cowboys," and flat out "incompetent." Strikingly, across several hundred sales and marketing responses, a full 87% were negative.

Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference. That must change. In today's historically difficult selling environment, the rift between sales and marketing seriously undermines even the best-performing reps. In previous posts (here, here, and here), we've described a gifted kind of sales rep we call Challengers. Challengers excel by creating constructive tension with customers through unique and surprising competitive insights. However, all but the very best Challengers will struggle to source and package those insights unless they have organizational support — especially from marketing.

Yet much of the sales support marketing provides falls short because it's focused on teaching customers about the supplier's business, not the customer's. Worse, the function responsible more than any other for differentiating your solution in the marketplace often churns out collateral and sales tools that look and sound exactly like everyone else's. Where's the teaching in that?

Don't take our word for it. In a recent study, public relations expert Adam Sherk analyzed the most frequent terms in company communications, and the results were eye opening. Here are the top ten: Leader, leading, best, top, unique, solution, largest, innovative, and innovator.

Sound familiar? Most companies' marketing materials make generic claims like "an industry leader with decades of experience helping global customers achieve business objectives through unique solutions and uncompromised value." Blah, blah, blah. When customers hear such commoditized messages often enough, they stop hearing them altogether. So, you say to your customers, "Our solution is unique," and your customers don't believe you. Why should they? Your message sure isn't. Their reply? "That's fantastic. Can I get a discount?" After all, why should your customer pay more for your solution when it sounds exactly like everyone else's?

So what's the alternative? In our book, we share case studies of companies whose marketing organizations have gotten it right.

Here are four rules Challenger marketing organizations live by:

1. Identify your unique capabilities, not all your capabilities

In their excitement to tell the world about their broader "solution," most marketing organizations fail to identify the handful of capabilities that truly set them apart. Sure, your products are "faster," "newer," "smaller," "bigger," or "greener," but why does it matter? If customers see no difference between you and the competition, anything you teach them will simply wind up in an RFP headed for a price-driven bake-off. Bottom line, if you can't identify the unique capabilities customers should be willing to pay you for, they're sure not going to do it for you.

Answer the question, "Why should our customers buy from us over anyone else?" It's a simple question, but often proves surprisingly hard to answer. It's shocking how many companies are unable to identify what truly sets their solution apart.

2. Focus on the unique capabilities your customers currently undervalue

Most marketing organizations naturally focus on capabilities customers disproportionately value. The thinking goes: customers want it, we're best at it, so that's the core of our value proposition. The best marketing organizations, however, are far more interested in promoting capabilities customers under value. Why? Because their primary goal is to teach customers new perspectives, not reinforce existing ones. The best teaching opportunities often spring from the question, "What is it that customers fail to appreciate about their business that leads them to undervalue our capability?" The answer provides a strong foundation for insights that challenge customers' thinking.

3. Design messages that lead to those capabilities, not with them

Virtually all marketing collateral suffers from the same flaw. If the first five pages — and the first ten slides — of your collateral or sales pitch deck are about you (and they almost invariably are), you've got it wrong. Build messages that lead to your unique capabilities. In a teaching conversation, the supplier enters the conversation at the end, not the beginning.

4. Calculate the ROI of changing behavior, not of buying a solution

Finally, equip reps with an ROI calculator that shows customers the value of behavior change. Surprisingly, the best ROI calculators are supplier agnostic. They're built to convince customers to do something, not to buy something — to take action on whatever new perspective you've just taught them. Of course, when customers ask, "Wow, who can help us do this?" the rep must be able to legitimately say, "Let me show you how we're uniquely able to help make this happen."

Successfully challenging customers' thinking is a team sport. Does your company set up Challengers to succeed? Pull out the latest piece of collateral produced by your marketing organization. Does it equip your salespeople to teach customers about their company or about yours?

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Matthew Dixon is Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board's Sales and Service Practice. Brent Adamson is Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council, a division of the Sales and Service Practice. Their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, is forthcoming November 10, 2011 from Portfolio/Penguin

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Friday, November 11, 2011

Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar | Video on TED.com

TED - Ideas Worth Spreading

Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar

Speakers Pamela Meyer: Lie detector

Pamela Meyer thinks we’re facing a pandemic of deception, but she’s arming people with tools that can help take back the truth

Video 18:51

Why you should listen to her: . Social media expert Pamela Meyer can tell when you’re lying. If it’s not your words that give you away, it’s your posture, eyes, breathing rate, fidgets, and a host of other indicators. Worse, we are all lied to up to 200 times a day, she says, from the white lies that allow society to function smoothly to the devastating duplicities that bring down corporations and break up families.

Working with a team of researchers over several years, Meyer, who is CEO of social networking company Simpatico Networks, collected and reviewed most of the research on deception that has been published, from such fields as law-enforcement, military, psychology and espionage. She then became an expert herself, receiving advanced training in deception detection, including multiple courses of advanced training in interrogation, microexpression analysis, statement analysis, behavior and body language interpretation, and emotion recognition. Her research is synthetized in her bestselling book Liespotting. "All forms of self deception make us vulnerable to the scam, the con, the false promise, the bad hire, the unwise promotion, the faulty new product."

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Access Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/pamela_meyer_how_to_spot_a_liar.html Pamela Meyer: How to spot a liar Video on TED.com

Does Setting Major Development Goals Work?

Gallup Management Journal

03 November 2011

by Brian J. Brim, Ed.D., and David Liebnau

When it comes to their own development, there's something irresistibly appealing to leaders about setting stretch goals. Just selecting one feels like an achievement. And the idea that with enough energy, focus, and initiative, meeting a single goal could dramatically improve a whole company and turn an executive into a better, more developed "super leader" -- well, who could resist that?

Slight shifts, born from your strengths as a leader, can create positive momentum in your organization.

Hard as it may be to refrain from setting major leadership development goals, it's probably better if executives resist. Gallup has worked with many leaders and managers over the years and has seen that setting stretch goals -- such as deciding to become a leader who can inspire others like Martin Luther King Jr. -- rarely works, for several reasons. Leaders must be reasonable about who they can and cannot be.

Setting reasonable developmental goals is important because as human beings, we all have solid pathways established in our brains that make up our core personality or self-image. Because of this, thinking that achieving a big objective will transform us overnight is not very realistic. We must be more patient. Change takes time and persistence, and it's best accomplished through slight shifts.

One way to think about your development as a leader is to imagine yourself as a ball rolling along in a groove. Leaders tend to stay in their groove. It fits them. It's their identity. It's easy. To make sense of how this groove develops, consider the difference between actions and practices.

Actions are the behaviors that you do with little thought. They are part of your repertoire, and they yield consistent and predictable results. The actions a leader usually takes are determined by the "groove" he or she has developed over time. But how can you grow as a leader if you're forever contained in this same groove? You can't, and that is where practices come in.

Practices are interventions that enable you to establish new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. They are essential to expand and develop your identity. To grow as a leader, you must slowly and steadily expand the groove. Adopting new practices enables you to access a different level of possible actions and create new opportunities.

Development is not about "jumping the groove." It's about "expanding the groove," or taking the best of who you naturally are and pushing the boundaries of those elements to grow as a leader.

Expanding the groove

The best way to expand your groove is gradually, by applying slight-shift practices. Stretching your boundaries a little at a time gives you a chance to test and reflect. It allows you to build on the best of who you are, replay your highlight reels, and analyze your successes and struggles. As you build on what's working and correct what's not, you start feeling more positive about the changes you see. Then you want to do it again.

Slight shifts emphasize evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change. You accomplish them by establishing realistic practices that enable you to experience and understand new behaviors, which in turn allow you to change and grow for the better.

A participant in a leadership development session offered a perfect example of how to make a slight shift through effective practice. This leader was a highly focused individual. Although she cared deeply about her employees and knew she should spend more time with them, her strong work ethic pushed her to spend most of her time "chained to her desk," as she described it.

So she set a major development goal to "become connected as deeply and meaningfully" as her predecessor, a beloved leader who left a legacy of meaningful relationships throughout the organization. She tried to achieve her goal by completely reorganizing her schedule and priorities in an attempt to institutionalize contact with her employees. She scheduled a flurry of weekly group meetings with different parts of the organization. But she just didn't get the results or the sense of real connection that she was looking for. Her activities felt "forced" because her major stretch goal wasn't based on who she was.

After taking part in a leadership development session, she began to look at the problem differently. She thought about what changes would work best for her instead of trying to mimic her predecessor, and it prompted her to try something new.

In the end, what worked best for her was to say "yes" more often. She made it a goal to say "yes" one time per week when she was asked to join the team for lunch, a birthday celebration, or a walk around the manufacturing floor. She realized she was more effective one on one or in small groups that evolved spontaneously rather than in larger, more formal settings. She also started asking questions to learn more about the people in her organization. She found out, for example, that one person was running in a half-marathon, and that prompted a great conversation because she was an avid runner herself.

She soon realized that she was more energized and more productive after each "yes," so she extended her leadership practice to saying "yes" at least once a day. Interacting with her employees daily is now part of her routine.

Easy, but effective

Applying slight-shift practices seems easy -- maybe too easy. But that's the point: When leaders are asked to do something they have the confidence to do and they see immediate success, they gain confidence from the positive feedback. Confidence and success drive them to repeat it. That's how sustainable development and wider grooves are created, and that's how great results happen.

Gallup has seen this approach work repeatedly. Over a six-month period, one company saw a jump in employee engagement, as measured by Gallup's Q¹² employee engagement metric, from the 70^th to the 80^th percentile and a 6% increase in overall per-person productivity. Before this organization started using the slight-shift approach to leadership, performance hadn't varied much over the prior three years. One leader told Gallup that this slight-shift approach meant he took five minutes to deal with problems on the spot rather than putting them off and leaving them to fester.

Slight shifts, born from your strengths as a leader, can create positive momentum in others that will ignite the soul of an organization. It doesn't take much effort. It doesn't feel audacious. But slight shifts can be effective and permanent -- and you can start practicing them now.

Brian J. Brim, Ed.D., is a Practice Consultant for Gallup. He is coauthor of Strengths Based Selling (Gallup Press, March 2011).

Learn More >>

David Liebnau is an Advanced Learning & Development Consultant and Executive Coach for Gallup.

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Cyber Security in the Boardroom | Governance Center Blog

The Conference Board
Nov 10 2011

Cyber security, and the importance of management and board engagement on the issue, has been generating a lot of discussion lately. Indeed, the spate of security breaches has made it clear that no organization is immune and that, as a society, we must develop a level of tolerance for the fact that our information is accessible to those with the determination and resources to go after it.

Even if we resign ourselves to the risk of a breach, however, there are steps that organizations can and should take to reduce the likelihood of a breach and to mitigate the impact and disruption if one does happen. Companies are responding. Strong solutions are emerging from the security industry, but also from business leaders across all industries. Yet there remains one last frontier of corporate cyber security: the boardroom.

With boards rapidly migrating to digital interactions, managers and directors should be doing all they can to manage the security risks that come with the digital realm.

To be clear, the digitization of the boardroom, through the introduction of iPads, boardroom portals, and other technology brings great benefits. Reduced shipping costs (not to mention the related reduction of CO2 emissions), ease of delivery, and increased document retention capability are just a few of the many benefits. And many would argue that enhanced corporate security is another important benefit. After all, do your directors really destroy all of their board books after each meeting?

These points are all well and good, but it isn’t all upside with technology (as I’m sure a director or two would be quick to point out). Ultimately, the security of your boardroom is only as strong as its weakest link. So here are a set of questions that directors should be asking themselves:

1) Do I understand the security protocol for our board documents?

2) Do I, or does my organization, have a process to scrub my mobile device if I lose it?

3) Do I have the appropriate security programs and practices in place on all computers I use for company business?

4) When reviewing board documents, am I aware of my surroundings? (This question is as important for paper documents as for digital ones. Yet when the computer screen is up versus papers lying on the table, documents are more visible.)

5) Do I know who to notify in the event of a departure from company protocol?

Technology demands a balanced approach, one that allows for new ideas and workflows to be introduced to our organizations, but also one that takes the realities of the world around us into account. As the recent U.S. intelligence document, Foreign Spies Stealing US Economic Secrets in Cyberspace, points out, China and Russia have been bankrolling hackers who plunder corporate files. This suggests that the resources of these cyber thieves will not dry up any time soon.

While cyber security has become an issue of increasingly intense focus for management and boards over the past year or so, it is important to pause for a moment and take a good look at the behavior of the board. It could mean the difference between creating a sound cyber security infrastructure and enabling the unintended release of key corporate data.

- Marcel Bucsescu

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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Leading Across: From Competing to Completing - Leadership Wired - The John Maxwell Company

Leadership Wired - The John Maxwell Company - November 1, 2011, Issue 1

Leading peers can be tricky since you’re simultaneously cooperating with and competing against them. For example, athletes on the same team contend for a limited number of positions in the starting lineup, yet compete together on game day. Musicians within an orchestra vie for the first chair, but then harmonize their talents to delight audiences with their music. Coworkers jockey for prestigious assignments but afterwards combine their skills to advance the mission of the organization.

Healthy work environments depend on competition and cooperation. Both are necessary in order to win. Either too much competition or a deficiency of it can damage team dynamics. In an overly competitive work culture, the natural antagonism of competition turns teammates into enemies and deters cooperation. Conversely, in an environment absent of competition, the aversion to conflict snuffs out critical thinking and stifles initiative.

Arriving at suitable levels of competitiveness at work begins by acknowledging that competition has benefits and drawbacks.

The Upside of Competition

1) Competition provides feedback. Until we match our skills against a competitor, we seldom know the extent of our strengths and weaknesses.

2) Competition calls forth our best efforts. Runners don’t set world records in practice; they break them when racing against other elite athletes.

The Downside of Competition

1) Competition can become personal. We use the phrase “friendly competition,” but oftentimes competition is anything but friendly and ends up fueling personal animosities.

2) Competition can warp our view of success and failure. In a culture obsessed with winning, we can be tempted to measure our self-worth by the outcome of competition.

Completing Instead of Competing

To have the most influence with your peers, put completing fellow leaders ahead of competing against them. Endeavor to make your teammates better instead of trying to prove that you’re the best. If you spend time adding value to peers, you’ll eventually become very valuable to them. The following tips will aid you in adopting a healthy perspective on competition in the workplace:

Switch your standard of comparison. We tend to compare ourselves to other people, when we should compare ourselves to our potential.
“I'm not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.”
~ Celine Dion

Reevaluate your definition of success and failure. First, resist the temptation to define yourself by wins and losses. We can only control the effort we put in, not the outcomes we experience. Second, move from an individual to collective notion of accomplishment. Rather than being solely preoccupied with personal advancement, learn to see success as helping others to victory.

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
~ John Wooden

“You will accomplish more in the next two months, developing a sincere interest in two people than you will accomplish in the next two months, trying to get two people interested in you.”
~ Tim Sanders

Adopt an abundance mindset. There are many lanes on the highway to success. Search for win-win partnerships with fellow coworkers in which you both stand to gain something valuable. Sharing resources or lending assistance to others enriches rather than impoverishes you.

“The more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to…rather than detracts from…our lives.”
~ Stephen Covey

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QUOTES - COMPETITION

"When the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes—not that you won or lost—but how you played the Game."
~ Grantland Rice

"I may win and I may lose, but I will never be defeated."
~ Emmitt Smith

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well."
~ The Olympic Creed

"Winning isn't getting ahead of others, it is getting ahead of yourself."
~ Roger Staubach
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This article is used by permission from Leadership Wired, John Maxwell's premiere leadership newsletter, available for free subscription at www.johnmaxwell.com/newsletters

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Annual Survey Reveals Emergence of New Compensation Practices | Governance Center Blog

The Conference Board

Nov 08, 2011

This week, The Conference Board issued its The 2011 U.S. Director Compensation and Board Practices Report. The report is based on a survey of 334 public companies jointly conducted by The Conference Board, NASDAQ OMX, and NYSE Euronext between April and June 2011. The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) and the Shareholder Forum each endorsed the survey by distributing it to their members and readers. Participants in the survey (corporate secretaries, general counsel, and investor relations officers) were asked to provide information on a wide range of corporate practices, including: board composition and leadership, director election practices, anti-takeover practices, compensation practices, risk oversight practices, CEO succession planning practices, board-shareholder engagement practices, and policies on director performance assessment and retirement. Findings constitute the basis for a benchmarking tool with more than 120 data points searchable by company size (measurable by revenue and asset value) and 20 industrial sectors.
Major findings include:

Director compensation correlates more with company size than with industry. Median total compensation of board members ranges from $46,843 in the smallest companies to $190,000 in the largest. “This finding underscores a likely correlation between the rising director compensation levels observed in the last few years and the expanding array of governance and compliance responsibilities expected of boards,” said Tonello.

Computer services is the sector that most emphasizes equity-based compensation. When it comes to compensation mix, computer services is the industry with the lowest percentage of total director compensation awarded in cash retainer (26.6%); and the sector that placed the greatest emphasis on equity-based compensation (stock awards and stock options), which surpasses 70% of the total.

Boards continue to strengthen their member independence. In approximately one-third of companies in the financial services sector and one-fourth (1/4) of those in manufacturing and nonfinancial services, boards adopt a policy on independence setting standards that are even more stringent than those established by the security exchange on which the company is listed.

Majority voting is the predominant model of director election in the largest revenue group, but it remains rare for a director to fail to receive the required vote. There is a direct correlation between company size (measured both by annual corporate revenue and asset value) and the adoption of majority voting policy for director elections. In the largest revenue group, for example, 80% of companies adopt some form of majority voting; of those, 86% supplement it with a mandatory resignation policy. However, only 3% percent of companies (all in the manufacturing sector, and mostly with annual revenue of less than $500 million) reported having one or more members of their board standing for reelection in the 2010 proxy season who failed to receive the required majority vote.

Reimbursement of proxy solicitation expenses remains uncommon. The reimbursement of proxy solicitation expenses remains a marginal practice. The sector reporting the highest level of adoption of such a policy is the financial services sector, with a meager 7%. The policy tends to be favored by smaller companies.

Board portals are more widely introduced by large financial companies. Less than a majority of corporate boards across industries use a board portal, where directors can securely access board documents and collaborate with other board members electronically. However, this technology is more widespread in the financial services sector, where it has been introduced by almost 73% of companies with asset value of $100 billion or greater.

New compensation practices are emerging. A range of one-fourth to one-third of surveyed companies have an anti-gross ups policy in place, with the percentage of companies adopting the policy increasing with corporate size (as measured both by annual revenue and asset value). Approximately 24% of financial services companies impose a retention period for stock awarded to employees as part of their annual compensation, with a concentration among the largest companies (73% in the group of those with asset value equal to or greater than $100 billion). Despite growing interest in the practice among compensation experts and advisers, bonus banking remains uncommon; even in the financial sector, only 7% of respondents reported having such a policy in place.

Peer-group benchmarking is widely used to determine executive compensation. More than three-quarters of companies reported in their proxy statement the names of individual companies composing the peer group used for compensation benchmarking purposes; the larger the company size, the higher the percentage of companies providing this type of disclosure. The responsibility of determining the peer group is most frequently assigned to the compensation committee; however, 40% of manufacturing companies and 38% of nonfinancial services companies reported that their senior management was also directly involved in the selection process.

Most companies conclude that they are not exposed to a material compensation risk. Across industries and size groups, a large majority of companies, after reviewing their compensation policies and practices, concluded and disclosed that such policies and practices are not reasonably likely to have a material adverse effect on the company.

Compensation consultant fees tend to be lower than the amount for which disclosure is required. Across industry and size groups, a large majority of companies did not disclose the aggregate fee paid during the reportable fiscal year for compensation-related services and for additional consulting services, since the fee amount was lower than the $120,000 threshold for which securities laws mandate disclosure.

Financial companies widely rely on a dedicated chief risk officer. When analyzed by size, nearly all of the financial companies with asset value of $100 billion or greater avail themselves of a dedicated chief risk officer, and in most cases (70%) the CRO reports directly to the CEO.

Smaller companies review their CEO succession plans less frequently. The revenue analysis reveals an inverse correlation between the frequency of the review and the company size, with 32% of companies with annual revenue of $100 million or less indicating that their boards review the CEO succession plan not annually but only when a change in circumstances warrants it (e.g. retirement, sudden death or illness, or other emergencies).

Formal board/shareholder engagement policies begin to emerge. About a quarter of surveyed companies adopt a board/shareholder communication protocol, with the highest percentage found in the financial sector and among the smaller size group.

For more information regarding the report or to download a copy of the report:

https://www.conference-board.org/publications/publicationdetail.cfm?publicationid=2040

- Barbara Blackford

Access Source And Its Great Content: http://tcbblogs.org/governance/2011/11/08/annual-survey-reveals-emergence-of-new-compensation-practices/

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