Measuring strength of Work Place

How do you measure the core elements needed to attract, focus and keep the most talented employees? Business Units were measurably more productive when employees answered positively on a scale of 1 to 5 to the following 12 questions.

Gallup
Analysis of performance data from over 2,500 business units and over 105,000 employees

12 Questions
Most powerful Questions

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2. Do I have the materials & equipment I need to do my work right?

3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4. In the last 7 days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? 5. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person? 6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development? 7. At work, do my opinions seem to count? 8. Does the purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important? 9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work? 10. Do I have a best friend at work? 11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress? 12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

Mountain Climbing
Getting great at what you do
Yes to all 12 Questions

Summit

Questions 11 to 12

How can we all grow?

Questions 7 to 10

Do I belong here?
What do I give? What do I get?

Questions 3 to 6

Questions 1&2

A great manager is a CATALYST

1. Select the Person 2. Set Expectations 3. Motivate the Person 4. Develop the Person

Catalyst: Ability to do four key activities REALLY well

4 Keys of Great Managers

1. Select the Person 2. Set Expectations
Select for TALENT Not simply experience, intelligence or determination Define the right OUTCOMES Not the right steps Focus on STRENGTHS Not on weaknesses Find the RIGHT FIT Not simply the next rung on the ladder

3. Motivate the Person

4. Develop the Person

TALENT
A recurring pattern of THOUGHT, FEELING or BEHAVIOUR that can be productively applied.

FILTER
A characteristic way of responding to the world around us. It tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. It is UNIQUE to you. Your filter and your recurring patterns of behaviour are enduring. Your filter more than your race, sex, age or nationality is YOU.

Key 1: Select for Talent

WHAT GREAT MANAGERS KNOW

People dont change that much. Dont waste your time trying to put in what can be left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough. Key 1: Select for Talent

Elements of Performance
Talents Skills Knowledge
Cannot be taught 4-line highways of your mind Recurrent patterns of thought, feeling or behavioural Difficult to transfer Can be taught by breaking total performance into steps How to do of a role Transferable Can be taught What you are aware of Factual knowledge things you know Experiential knowledge understandings picked up along the way Transferable

Key 1: Select for Talent

There are 3 Basic Categories of Talent

1. Striving the WHY of a person 2. Thinking the HOW of a person

3. Relating the WHO of a person

Key 1: Select for Talent

The implication is not that people cannot change. Everyone can change. Everyone can learn. Everyone can get a little better. The language of skills, knowledge and talents simply helps a manager identify where radical change is possible, and where it is not.

Key 1: Select for Talent

How managers find great talent

Know what talents you are looking for Study your best people

Key 1: Select for Talent

How to manage by remote control

Managers dilemma: how do you retain control and focus people on performance when you know that you cannot force people to behave in the same way?

Define the right outcomes and then let each person find his own route toward those outcomes
Key 2: Define the right outcomes

I want perfect people My people dont have enough talent Some outcomes defy definition

Trust is precious: it must be earned

the temptation to Control!!

Key 2: Define the right outcomes

Forcing your employees to follow required steps only prevents customer dissatisfaction. If your goal is truly to satisfy, to create advocates, then the step-by-step approach alone cannot get you there. Instead, you must select employees who have the talent to listen and to teach, and then you must focus them towards simple emotional outcomes like partnership and advice. If you manage to do this, it is something that is very hard to steal.

Key 2: Define the right outcomes

How do you know if the outcomes are right?

What is right for your customers?

What is right for your company?

What is right for the individual?

Key 2: Define the right outcomes

Let them become more of who they already are

Focus on each persons strength and manage around his weaknesses.

Dont try to fix the weaknesses.

Dont try to perfect each person. Focus on each persons strength and manage around his weaknesses. Do everything you can to help each person cultivate his talents. Help each person become more of who he already is.
Key 3: Focus on strengths

Casting is everything

If you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying them to do what they are naturally wired to do. You have to cast them in the right role. Everyone has the talent to be exceptional at something. The trick is to find that something. The trick is in the casting.

Key 3: Focus on strengths

Spend the most time with your best people

No news kills behaviour Its the fairest thing to do Its the best way to learn Its the only way to reach excellence And the best way to break through the ceiling

Key 3: Focus on strengths

Managing around a weakness

Devise a support system Find a complementary partner Find an alterative role

Determine if poor performance is trainable Determine if poor performance is not due to you as manager tripping the wrong trigger!! Determine if its a weakness or a non-talent
Key 3: Focus on strengths

A rung too far

Most employees are promoted to their level of incompetence. Its inevitable. Its built into the system.

Key 4: Find the right fit

The PROBLEM with climbing the ladder

One rung does not necessarily lead to another. The conventional career path is condemned to create competition and conflict. Why not create heroes in every role? Conventional wisdom programmes employees to hunt for marketable skills and experience to climb to the next rung. This thinking is often flawed.

Key 4: Find the right fit

BEFORE you promote someone, look closely at the striving, thinking and relating talents needed to excel in the role. After scrutinising the PERSON and the ROLE, you may still choose promotion. Since each person is highly complex, you may still end up promoting someone into a position where he struggles. No manager finds the perfect fit every time. But at least you will have taken the TIME to weigh the FIT between the DEMANDS of the role and the TALENT of the person.

Key 4: Find the right fit

Create heroes in EVERY role

Set up levels of achievement for EVERY role For every role, define pay in broad ranges, with top-end of lowerlevel role overlapping bottom end of role above Set up creative acts of revolt (special projects)

Key 4: Find the right fit

What Great managers do

Level the PLAYING FIELD Hold up the MIRROR Create a SAFETY NET

Key 4: Find the right fit

The art of tough love

Tough love is a mind-set. An uncompromising focus on excellence with a genuine need to care. It focuses great managers to confront poor performance early and directly. It allows them to keep their relationship with the employee intact. Even if the employee has to be let go. Understanding that each person possesses enduring patterns of thought, feelings and behaviour liberates managers who have to confront poor performance. Because it frees the manager from blaming the employee.

Key 4: Find the right fit

The art of interviewing for talent

Ensure talent interview stands alone Ask a few open-ended questions and then try and stay quiet Listen for specifics

Talent clues: rapid learning Talent clues: personal satisfactions Know what to listen for

The art of performance management

Keep the routine SIMPLE

Meet FREQUENTLY: minimum once a quarter

Focus on the FUTURE

Ask employee to keep track of HIS OWN performance and learnings

What great managers expect of every talented employee

Look in the mirror any chance you get Muse Discover yourself Build your constituency

Keep track
Catch your peers doing something right

How to operate if your manager is not quite perfect

If shes too busy, schedule a performance planning meeting If you are forced to do things her way, tell her you want to define your role more by outcome, than by steps If you receive inappropriate praise, suggest alternative ways If she constantly intrudes, ask if OK to check in less frequently than current practice

If your problems are of an entirely different nature, if your manager consistently ignores you, distrusts you, takes credit for your work, blames you for her mistakes or disrespects you then get out from under her. You deserve better.

What companies can do to create friendly climate for great managers

Keep the focus on outcomes

Value world-class performance in every role

Master keys that senior management of a company can use to break through conventional wisdoms barricades

Study your best Teach the language of great managers

End thoughts

Great managers make it all seem so simple. Just select for talent, define the right outcomes, focus on strengths and then, as each person grows, encourage him or her to find the right fit. Completing these few steps with every single employee, your department, division or company will yield perennial excellence.

End thoughts

NOBODY said all this is EASY! A great manager sometimes has to STRUGGLE to BALANCE the competing interests of the company, the customers, the employees and even her own.

End thoughts

The needs of the COMPANY and the needs of the EMPLOYEE, misaligned since the birth of the corporation over 150 years ago, are CONVERGING.
The intersection of the companys search for VALUE and each individuals search for IDENTITY are forces of change that have seeded into the corporate landscape for over 10 years. The best managers are those who know how to be CATALYSTS and speed up these forces of change.

Acknowledgements
All images from Flickr under Creative Commons licences

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