the techExec Society

So You Want to Be An IT Star

2012-01-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

Success is not easy or simple. Even in the best of times, workplaces are fraught with changing conditions, political jockeying and limited room for advancement. And these are not the best times. Yet some IT staff manage to get noticed—and in all the right ways. What are the secrets of their success? How do some IT leaders manage to shine? Beyond the basics—energy, enthusiasm, passion for the work—four important behaviors can help catapult you to success.

Be good to your end users. First things first: If you want to get ahead, don't make people feel stupid. This advice can be especially important for IT folks, whose technical expertise can create a danger of doing just that.

People outside of IT won't necessarily understand tech speak, so you need to present information in a manner so they understand technology and what it provides to the company. You need to be able to translate technical information to them in the manner they can understand and assimilate and in a way that shows the benefits to the big picture.

Understanding how technology fits into users' lives is key to creating innovative IT solutions. Thinking hard about how to help someone else understand what you're saying may seem obvious for important presentations; doing it day in and day out may prove more challenging. But don't dismiss those small, cumulative interactions. In those daily interactions lie many opportunities for you to distinguish yourself by your energy, enthusiasm, and likability. This way, when a more senior job opens up, the support to put you in the position is there—not just from your boss, but also from other senior leaders. To make sure your likability quotient is high, focus on being open-minded. Make it a point to really listen to what someone is saying and process what you're hearing. Doing so conveys respect, and you also are likely to develop solutions you wouldn't have otherwise. End-user problems—large and small—are opportunities to build relationships that can advance your career. It's all in how you handle those situations that makes the difference. Don't make an end user feel dumb for not understanding; make them feel good about coming to you and asking what the problem is.

Go beyond the walls of IT and learn the business. IT leaders who want to move up must become business-savvy. Not just so you can talk the talk. Without understanding business users' work lives, it's impossible to deliver optimum technology solutions. I credit much of my own success with understanding how IT fits into my end users' work processes. It is a basic business truth that IT staff who want to climb the ladder must also become intricately involved in other areas of the business. It’s critical to educate your end-users on technology. My philosophy on the subject to my staff is clear: get involved with business users; go door to door and meet with them and their teams. I want my team to "give the customer some tool they may not even have thought of, that they can look at it and say, Wow, I'm glad we came to you." That's only possible if you understand how other groups are run and the challenges they face. Developing such a rapport also helps discourage the tendency of business users to create a shadow IT department. Key point: if you don't solve their problems with good solutions, they will go around you!

Understand the organization's structure and goals. If you want to move up the ladder of success, you need to create strategic IT. To do that, you need to know what top management values. Every company has a culture and those cultures reward different things. Key to moving ahead is knowing what to prioritize. This means, for example, knowing which projects to volunteer for and how to promote them to those above you. Knowing what the business defines as valuable is increasingly important the higher up you go so you've got to understand goals, and how IT can be used to achieve those goals I recommend not just looking for ways IT can create value but also being responsive when opportunities present themselves. One place where this comes into play is the IT budget. Managing IT like a P&L is key to moving up in the organization. IT should be adding value and helping differentiate the business. However, that's not possible if an IT leader's goal is simply saving money. Build into that budget what you need to do to create value.

Build Trust with your boss Trust is the glue that binds relationships together inside and outside of work. Without it, moving up is virtually impossible. And honest communication is a huge part of building trust with your manager. Share the good news—and the bad. Avoid the temptation to sweep bad news about a project or assignment under the rug. You may think you're sparing your boss but my experience has been that it's better to overshare than to undershare. The trick lies in knowing when and where to share information. Sit down and talk to your manager about how to communicate when problems come up. Most leaders don't like when information feels filtered, like something is being hidden but want to know what's going on. The last thing anybody wants is to be broadsided. Information sharing, when it comes right down to it, translates to respect. I think that it's very important to use chain of command in place and not circumvent your manager. It's his or her job to make you look better to the organization. And if you don't have that kind of trust you should look for someone you could have that with.

Re-branding the Help Desk and Creating the Value Proposition

2011-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

As a director of a customer care service center or help desk you accept the reasonability to craft, and then safeguard your organization’s value proposition. Is it best value, best quality, best service? Do you deliver on promises? Do you differentiate from your competition?

Here’s a checklist that I’ve used to help engineer a business process improvement initiative that focused on assessing the status of the helpdesk within the organization, evaluating internal processes, and identifying human resource management opportunities.

Using this checklist as a guide I was able to re-brand the center, re-educate staff on what matters to the client, and impact the real business side of the equation by improving retention and extending the customer-life cycle.

ORGANIZATION

1. Value recognition

• What value does your organization provide to the company?
• How is the call center's impact on customer retention measured?
• Do agents understand the primary goal of your organization? What are other key goals?
• Are your center's goals consistent with the company's objectives?

2. Stakeholder involvement

• Do you communicate regularly with other company departments? .
• Do you have an organizational chart?
• How is the staff organized?
• How are company managers involved in day-to-day operations?
• How does company management ensure that the call center is achieving its goals?

3. Unique functionality

• Which other units have responsibilities similar to yours?
• What customers do you serve

PROCESS

1. Policies and procedures

• Are call-handling policies and procedures documented?

2. Hours

• What are your hours of operation?
• Do they match your customers' needs? How do you know?
• What options do customers have for contacting the center?
• How do customers know how to contact you?
• How many toll-free numbers do you publish and where?
• Do customers always call the right number? If not, why not?

3. Contact management

• Are customer contacts tracked? If so, how?
• Are contacts tracked through provision of services?
• Is contact management automated?

4. Quality focus

• Do you have a quality-monitoring program in place?
• Do you measure agent performance or customer satisfaction?
• How is data collected and reported?
• What action is taken?

5. Performance measures

• Are performance measures established?
• Are the measures linked to customer satisfaction? If not, how do you measure customer satisfaction?
• What are the trends?
• Does an agent quality-monitoring program exist?

6. Call-handling consistency

• Do agents follow procedures consistently? How do you know?
• Are call-handling procedures available online?
• What resources do agents use to handle contacts (manuals, memos, training guides)? How are they updated?
• Do agents have to search through multiple sources to piece together responses to customer queries or requests?

7. Workflow

• What other departments/groups/individuals do your agents rely on for assistance or to fulfill customer requests?
• How do you track fulfillment?

8. Managing call volumes

• Are processes in place to ensure real-time response to changes in call volumes?
• How do you minimize customer wait times?
• What methods do you use to review how many calls are in queue?
• What do you do if calls are waiting?
• Are readerboards visible to agents?
• Are the agents required to react to the readerboards? How?

9. One-call resolution

• Is one-call resolution a goal of your center?
• How do you measure one-call resolution?
• What is your first-call resolution rate? What is the trend?
• Are there any bottlenecks in the current process?
• Do you have any recommendations for these bottlenecks?
• Why are calls transferred? Where are they transferred?
• Are calls transferred on a blind or warm transfer?
• How long do transfers take?
• What percentage of calls is transferred?
• On average, how many times is a caller transferred?

10. Issue escalation

• When are issues escalated?
• Do agents follow special guidelines to ensure issue resolution?
• Are dissatisfied customers referred to a supervisor? Yes.
• Is the goal customer satisfaction?

11. Market intelligence

• Are product and service issues collected and forwarded to the appropriate departments?
• Is customer demographic data collected and forwarded to the appropriate departments?

PEOPLE

1. Hiring profile/compensation policy

• What is your agent recruitment and hiring process?
• Is the agent's job description and profile documented?
• How long do agents/supervisors remain in their positions?
• What is the cost of hiring?
• Is pay performance-based, time-in-title, or pay-for-skills?
• Do you use team-based bonus programs?

2. Training/career path

• What is the training provided to new reps?
• How do you train call management/customer management/call handling techniques?
• How much time do you spend on call management training?
• Do you train customer advocacy?
• How do you reinforce training on the job?
• Do agents have to pass a test to graduate?
• Does each agent have a training plan?
• How do you measure training effectiveness?
• What is the frequency of training classes?
• What is the average size of training classes?
• How long does training take?
• What is the cost of training?
• Do you provide continuation, refresher on-the-job-training?
• Do agents receive software training?
• What career paths exist for reps and supervisors?
• What is the average time in title/position?
• What career development programs exist?
• Is the training staff professional and well-trained?
• Is the staff focused on customer satisfaction and retention goals?

3. Attrition

• Why do agents leave?
• What is the rate of attrition of agents?
• Describe your employee recognition programs.
• What is the policy on full-time vs. part-time employee usage?
• Are agents hourly or salaried?

4. Workforce management

• What system do you use for workforce planning and scheduling?
• Do you measure agent adherence to the schedule? How?
• What percentage of the agent's day is spent on the phone?
• What activities are completed during non-phone time?
• Are the activities done between calls or at specific times?
• How is after-call work measured?
• What is the estimated volume in each channel?
• What is the average percentage of occupancy?

5. Performance standards

• What are the standards against which agents are measured (call length, hold time, adherence to schedule, etc.)?
• Do they know that they are measured against these standards?
• How frequently are agents measured?
• Is there a performance planning and appraisal tool in place and used?
• Does customer satisfaction affect compensation or promotion?
• Do agents understand their role as customer advocates?

Creating Help Desk Superstars by Tailoring Learning Systems

2011-09-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Although there are many learning styles, my experience with developing people over the last 25 years reveals that three styles predominate. These three are not mutually exclusive; certain employees may rely on a combination of two or perhaps all three. Nonetheless, staying attuned to each employee’s style or styles will help focus your coaching.

First, there’s analyzing. Paul S. is an analyzer. He understands a task by taking it apart, examining its elements, and reconstructing it piece by piece. Because every single component of a task is important in his eyes, he craves information. He needs to absorb all there is to know about a subject before he can begin to feel comfortable with it. If he doesn’t feel he has enough information, he will dig and push until he gets it. He will read the assigned reading. He will attend the required classes. He will take good notes. He will study. And he will still want more.

The best way to teach an analyzer is to give him ample time in the classroom. Role-play with him. Do postmortem exercises with him. Break his performance down into its component parts so he can carefully build it back up. Always allow him time to prepare. The analyzer hates mistakes. A commonly held view is that mistakes fuel learning, but for the analyzer, this just isn’t true. In fact, the reason he prepares so diligently is to minimize the possibility of mistakes. So don’t expect to teach him much by throwing him into a new situation and telling him to wing it. As expected, I’ve found that this style conflicts in a help desk environment where ‘in-call’ training is prevalent or the norm.

The opposite is true for the second dominant learning style, doing. While the most powerful learning moments for the analyzer occur prior to the performance, the doer’s most powerful moments occur during the performance. Trial and error are integral to this learning process.

Jeffrey L. is a doer. He learns the most while he’s in the act of figuring things out for himself. For him, preparation is a dry, uninspiring activity. So rather than role-play with someone like Jeffrey, pick a specific task within his role that is simple but real, give him a brief overview of the outcomes you want, and get out of his way. Then gradually increase the degree of each task’s complexity until he has mastered every aspect of his role. He may make a few mistakes along the way, but for the doer, mistakes are the raw material for learning. Where ‘in-call’ training is the status quo for new hires, the doer is willing and able to pick up calls on his first day. Having a support system that fosters success for the doer ensures a win-win for both him and the clients he helps.

Finally, there’s watching. Watchers won’t learn much through role-playing. They won’t learn by doing, either. Since most formal training programs incorporate both of these elements, watchers are often viewed as rather poor students. That may be true, but they aren’t necessarily poor learners.

Watchers can learn a great deal when they are given the chance to see the total performance. Studying the individual parts of a task is about as meaningful for them as studying the individual pixels of a digital photograph. What’s important for this type of learner is the content of each pixel, its position relative to all the others. Watchers are only able to see this when they view the complete picture.

If you’re trying to teach a watcher, by far the most effective technique is to get him out of the classroom. Take him away from the manuals, and make him ride shotgun with one of your most experienced performers. Your phone system in the help center may have an option that allows one agent to listen to another and if you are using a remote desktop tool that software may allow sharing of support sessions between clients.

To ensure that everyone on your team contributes at their highest possible level, you as the leader must recognize and adjust for unique learning needs. Meeting the needs of your new hires may require tweaking the environment but your success as a manager will depend entirely on your ability to do this.

Customer Care Agent Management Strategy

2011-07-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

We all know that a company is only as good as its employees. Therefore, hiring and retaining top employees is a mission-critical part of any call center’s operations strategy. It is impossible to monitor each and every client touch-point so staff needs to be developed as trusted “brand warriors” delivering a consistent, distinguishing message at all opportunities.

Acquire Talent. People are your product. Your company should have a commitment to secure talented individuals with a high ability to perform in an organization that expects operational excellence. To hire the best people we must have a standardized selection process to distinguish top performers from mediocre employees. This is best achieved by establishing a multi-tier process that moves quality candidates through the hiring process in a timely manner, ensuring that exceptional people are recognized and given a reason to stay.

Establish a Culture where Excellence is the Norm. Talented performers expect excellence throughout the organization. We must empower our employees to add value at all levels. With this approach, accountability at all levels is a natural byproduct. Build a “pride factor” into your deliverables to create an environment where the entire population is committed to ensuring that everyone is contributing to a strong work product. In essence, client satisfaction must be as important to our call center agents as to all managers and directors of the company.

Be Flexible. Every day call centers struggle with the challenges of meeting client needs and juggling individual schedules and requests. Talented and experienced employees return performance and loyalty to employers who are flexible and considerate of work/life balance. Organizations that deploy rigid, inflexible scheduling exclude excellent pools of employees that offer significant people advantages. Your company should commit to schedule flexibility for call center agents. The result: higher employee retention as we work with employees around their school, family and outside interests.

Recognize. While optimal work performance is expected, without question, everyone enjoys recognition. In addition to monthly and annual awards for outstanding performance, do not miss opportunities to acknowledge effort in other meaningful ways. Financial incentives are only one way to recognize employees. Encourage executives and managers to walk the call center floor and personally congratulate and thank agents who are doing exceptional work. For example, your company could personally thank every call center employee by mailing a handwritten birthday card from the CEO, acknowledging the importance of their contribution and letting them know how much you enjoy having them as part of your team. We will exercise creativity in recognizing employees, and understand that the biggest impact does not always come from a financial reward.

Understand Impact and Target Incentives Accordingly. Incentives are a great way to add some extra energy around initiatives that need added attention. When determining an incentive program it is important that you understand what the improved behavior gets you in terms of returning dollars to the business. Everyone understands the importance of attendance within the call center industry. Your company should clearly define the worth of perfect attendance and structure an incentive program accordingly. One example: “Neglect your Rent,” a program paying an employee’s monthly rent or mortgage (up to $1,200 for full-time employees and $600 for part-time) for eligible employees with perfect attendance. Agents with perfect attendance are entered into a raffle in which one agent is randomly selected to receive free rent. This program drives excitement and also incites agents to go the extra step to arrive on time and keep their attendance record clean.

Share Information. Companies that are the best at what they do don’t hoard information; they share it. By letting your employees know what is going on at the company they become better employees and develop into a stronger part of our network. Your company should also have a intranet site that agents can check to stay informed about all the latest company and industry news.

Train for Career Progression. Opportunity for advancement has an unmatched impact on keeping employees motivated. By staffing your call center operation with talented and professional employees we can create a built-in cherry-picking system for other departments. In this way employees that started as call center agents can move on to higher positions within the organization. Hiring from within the company also has a significant impact on overall recruiting costs.
Mentor and Build Teams. All agents, especially new agents, need a mentor to guide them through their career. We should foster a mentorship atmosphere to develop tomorrow’s leaders and maintain a culture of excellence. Use a variety of methods to ensure all your employees are a valuable, contributing part of your team – and you will uncover problems that may have not been noticed otherwise.

Be Current. Only by using the latest technology can a call center offer its customers the best service and retain its best employees. We will create agent focus groups to identify technology issues and brainstorm about future enhancements. By interacting and performing as a team to identify and tackle technology issues, we improve your overall product and help retain quality talent.

Take Time for Fun. In the call center industry, attitude on the phone is vital to quality. Only by creating a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere can we ensure a positive attitude from our agents, and enjoy reduced turnover as well. By inviting top-performing agents to company functions such as dinners, and by rewarding them with perks such as event tickets, we will be able to keep “Call Center Burn-out” to a minimum.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Setting Up a HelpDesk

2011-06-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

1. Don’t: Configure the help desk application in a vacuum

You can imagine how difficult it is for a dedicated help desk manager to be gung ho about their new product and processes, spending hard-to-find time with great intentions designing something they think will accomplish the needs and goals for their service center, only to find out they’ve missed the mark completely. Reality is that a lot of people interact with the help desk and their needs for data from the application can vary wildly. Not taking those perspectives into account and having a myopic view on configuration is a sure-fire killer to the success of your new plans.

Do: Design and configure in a team environment and build it together. Be aware that your application is probably powerful enough to be used by other departments. Check with members of HR, procurement, facilities, etc. to gather their input at the beginning and see how seamlessly processes are adopted and utilized when everyone gets buy-in upfront.

2. Don’t: Implement too much of the application too fast

Solution feature sets today cover wide ranges of functionality such as incident, problem, change, asset, knowledge, service levels, customer self-support, reporting, and more. Implementing everything at once may make your support team feel like you’re trying to wash their faces with a fire hose. You end up with staff trying to use a new tool they are not familiar with, getting requests from users on how to do things, and becoming frustrated. You inadvertently create a culture of confusion.

Do: Implement gradually! Pay particular attention to how technically savvy your staff and users are. Start by getting your techs up to speed on basic incident and knowledge management features and then go from there. As a good rule of thumb, allow 30-60 days between enabling additional functionality. Also, don’t overuse the notifications. If a technician is flooded with an email every time an action is taken on an incident, the importance of those notifications is lost in the massive amount of mail received.

3. Don’t: Under estimate the power of knowledge management functionality

You have as much investment in your staff as you do in your ticketing system. Why incur the loss of that investment when the eventuality of employee turnover occurs? Not using the knowledge management capabilities of today’s solutions only exacerbates the problem and makes techs continually reinvent the wheel. Oftentimes the problem is simply a lack of communication about whose responsibility it is to capture the knowledge.

Do: Begin by realizing there’s a greater long-term cost to continually re-engineering the technical know-how of your support staff than there is a short-term cost of establishing an efficient and automated process for capturing and categorizing knowledge. Designate a weekly knowledge approver and give that person a specific day and time to maintain the knowledge base. This harvesting of knowledge will save you time and money in the long run.

4. Don’t: Categorize at too granular a level

Your new help desk software probably has the ability to categorize tickets to varying degrees. Many service teams get far too granular in their level of categorization. When this occurs it creates an inefficient use of the data you are collecting as well as excess clicks. It also often confuses techs who have to scroll through endless tree structures looking for the proper category to assign to a ticket.

Do: Think of what is most important for you to report on. Hardware failures? Printer failures? Training? If your application has decent searching capabilities, you don’t need to categorize to the nth degree. Start out with the minimum requirement of your reporting structure and add on later as the need arises. To assist in building a solid category structure, leave out actual problems, like “can’t print” as a level – that information goes in the Description field. If you find that for every category you are being redundant in your lowest level, you might be using a category field for data that needs to be captured elsewhere – such as a ticket level custom field. You might even consider inverting your category list!

5. Don’t: Fail to create an end user or customer self-support portal

There are definitely organizations where self-support does not fit. If your company is already capturing valuable knowledge content and your users are fairly tech savvy, though, you are costing your service desk time and money by not making that information available to your users. Why encourage calls if the users are able to help themselves?

Do: Create specific portals/desktops for your various sets of users. Allow them to view knowledge/FAQs and submit their own tickets. Be prepared to have to evangelize this new means of self-support to foster us¬age.

6. Don’t: Overlook importance of multiple escalations and notifications (SLAs)

Escalations, notifications, and service level agreements (SLAs) are fundamental parts of providing excellent support. Many of today’s help desk applications allow you to set up very complex, fully-automated SLAs, but oftentimes support desk personnel don’t take the time to set them up accurately or thoroughly. Tickets should not escalate and notifications should not be sent unnecessarily. They are also not one size fits all; an order request shouldn’t escalate the same as a “something’s broken” ticket.

Do: Use care in building your escalations and SLAs, and set up notifications according to the actions required. Identify the special cases where time is a factor, such as a critical hardware failure. Use caution when applying a time-sensitive SLA; for example, if a mail server fails, how will notifications be effective if they can’t be delivered? A page notification could be used instead.

7. Don’t: Let your product choice drive your process

If a help desk software application is so complex that you have to change all your processes and service culture, there will be too many costs involved and not enough buy-in from users. This often leads to the out¬right failure of the implementation.

Do: Don’t be too consumed with standards or immense feature sets. While you may feel like it’s a safe play to buy something that’s “standard certified” or has the most bells and whistles in the industry, if it doesn’t fit with your processes or culture and prove to be easy to use and manageable over time, it’s ultimately your job on the line if it fails.

8. Don’t: Under utilize templates and auto-population

Let’s face it, your service center directive will always be to do more with less. So make sure your staff are not manually entering data that can be pulled in automatically, or typing the same information again and again on common tickets.

Do: Create the most efficient and automated use of your staff’s time by setting up templates to record frequently occurring issues. A good templating tool that uses dependencies can be even better, especially if you can tie approvals to templates.

9. Don’t: Overuse queues

Many service desks will use queues to assign tickets to a group, which often results in everyone thinking the other person is working on the ticket. This common occurrence often causes confusion and misuse of time. This lack of accountability and confusion is easily avoidable.

Do: Designate someone to monitor the queue, reassigning incidents as appropriate. If your help desk software allows, use a distribution method that automatically assigns incoming incidents to remove the chance of incidents being overlooked.

10. Don’t: Be process rigid or bad practice addicted

Not to be confused with #7 above, don’t be afraid to evolve your service processes either at the implementation of your new help desk application or over time as your use of it changes and grows. Too often, when a software package is rolled out, it feels easier to simply get it going yet continue with the status quo service processes. This can create an inefficient use of the new package’s feature set.

Do: Change is often inevitable, so try to keep a fluid mentality towards the processes you rely on in your service center. Re-evaluate your procedures on a set basis (i.e. yearly or every two years) and determine if they still apply. Try not to carry forward processes or procedures just because ‘that’s how it’s been done in the past.’ Any good help desk software vendor will continually work to increase the power and efficiency of their solution, so don’t be so rigid in your ongoing processes that you aren’t willing to consider evolving them over time. Also, leverage content delivered from thought leaders in the industry to see how others are evolving their processes. Read whitepapers, search industry portals, attend industry events, view industry blogs, etc. to gain valuable insight.

11. Don’t: Sacrifice training your staff

Nothing undermines your service efforts faster than under-educated help desk staff. For example, if a technician isn’t aware that ticket information is automatically emailed to the customer, the wrong information can be released, causing irreparable damages. If they are un¬aware of what the SLA time values are for each priority, tickets can be misprioritized and agreements can be missed. If techs are unaware of the category structure, they may not know how to categorize a call without having to do a lot of searching for the correct selection. The possibilities for inefficiency and waste are too numerous to consider.

Do: Seek out training opportunities for staff in need, and be sure they are educated on the specific options available to them in your help desk software and the effect of those options. Remember that it’s easier to train/educate your people than it is to apologize for bad information sent to a customer. Also, put an emphasis on increasing the accuracy of your ticket information – for example, don’t include work history information in a ticket resolution because the resolution can be used on a knowledge entry. It’s not useful to read things like “called and left voice mail” when searching for a solution.

12. Don’t: Cut the communication ties to your help desk software vendor

If your service desk is not utilizing the full functionality of the help desk application you’ve purchased, you are not experiencing the maximum ROI available to you. If you have a feature request that could make usability more favorable, your vendor should be requesting that information from you on an on-going basis. If your staff are not proficient in the use of your help desk application, greater gains may be available with minor investments in training.

Do: Call your help desk software vendor and communicate your needs. When you have only partially implemented your tool, put an emphasis on seeking help to get it 100% optimized. If you have a vendor that doesn’t respond in a favorable or timely manner, con-sider that the next time your software is up for renewal. These soft costs are just as much a part of the value of your solution as the purchase price.

Lessons from the Road: 10 Must Have Business iPhone Apps

2011-03-24T10:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, I took my own challenge to travel ultra-lite on my last 4-day business trip…sans a laptop. Could I pull off two presentations, travel to three cities and still stay well connected with tasks and responsibilities back at the office? Here’s the 10 apps that stood out and allowed me to: edit two proposals, update my presentation on my office PC and then download it locally, print out the slides, organize and manage the travel, update my business contacts list, and much more. I might not leave my laptop home on my next trip but now I know if it’s left behind work doesn’t need to stop or slow. As a side note: being a road warrior for +20 years taught me that bringing the little things with just makes for a better experience, that’s why I loaded SlingMedia for the iPhone before I left so I could watch my favorite TV shows without having to learn how to use a new remote!

Quickoffice Mobile Suite

The next time someone e-mails you a Word, Excel or Powerpoint document, Quickoffice will open it and allow you to make quick edits from your iPhone. (Otherwise, you can open, but not edit, Microsoft Office files.) You can also create documents with the app, but it is far less useful for that purpose. Rather, Quickoffice offers a way to complete small work tasks easily while you are on the move.
Print n Share

Print & Share allows you to print documents, emails, contacts, web pages and photos wirelessly, right from your device. It really does add a much needed feature to the iPhone and the experience is seamless. The app's main screen displays six main choices for selection. You may choose to print a file, email, web page, contact or image. You may also use the iPhone's camera to take a photo and print it immediately. From this main screen you may also access the help menu and change the settings. Print & Share is truly an amazing application. It's convenience alone makes it worth the price. With this app, you're basically cutting out the computer as the middle man. Now, you can print a variety of files right from you device. It works on 3G or wifi and the whole experience is smooth and fast. The user interface is beautifully done, with seamless animations between pages and the incorporation of landscape mode. This is an app that will stay on my iPhone indefinitely. I strongly recommend checking this app out.
Dropbox

Got a Dropbox account? Then you absolutely positively need Dropbox for iPhone. It brings the cloud down to device level, providing fast and easy access to everything you've ever shared: documents, photos, videos, presentations, and so on. (In fact, it's a great way to stream videos you don't have room to store on your device.) It works both ways, too: You can upload snapshots and videos from your iPhone to your Dropbox account. The app is free, and works with both free and pro-level accounts.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer is a terrific free service that provides remote access to other PCs. TeamViewer for iPhone is the companion app that extends that accessibility to the device riding around in your pocket. This isn’t just screen sharing: TeamViewer gives you total control over the remote PC. Think of it: You can grab a PowerPoint presentation from a thousand miles away; shut down the PC you left running at the office; or just perform a computing task that can’t normally be done on a phone.
Evernote

The company advertises this as a personal digital assistant, and it’s an apt description. Evernote is a traveling notepad that synchronizes with desktop and browser software (also free). Use your iPhone to copy an image, take a photo, record a voice memo or jot down a note, and it appears on your computer (and vice versa). It also recognizes your written text, within limits. The free version stores a fair amount of information, but for $45 a year, you needn’t sweat the data limits.
Tripit

TripIt is a killer travel-management service that organizes your itineraries, reservations, and the like. It began life on the Web, but now -- well, you know the Apple catchphrase -- there's an app for that. With TripIt for iPhone, you can manage and share all your travel plans. The app itself is free, as is the TripIt service. All you do is forward all travel-related confirmation e-mails (from airlines, hotels, car-rental outfits, etc.) to plans@tripit.com. The service culls all the pertinent details from those e-mails and builds detailed itineraries.
MapQuest 4 Mobile

The stock Google Maps app is pretty good at giving you directions from point A to point B, but MapQuest 4 Mobile goes one step further with voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions -- much like you'd get from a bona fide GPS. It also offers automatic re-rerouting (in case you take a wrong turn), local-business search, and even live traffic updates. Before you spend $50 or more on a GPS app, take this freebie for a test-drive.
Genius Scan+

Want to save a whiteboard diagram for future reference? Keep your receipts for the accounting department? Photocopy a document when there's no copier around? You can do all that and more with Genius Scan+, which can save and send documents in PDF and JPEG formats, upload "scans" to sites like Google Docs and Evernote, and deliver everything to your PC via Wi-Fi, no syncing required. This ridiculously handy app sells for $2.99.
Linkedin

Contact management, networking. For many people, LinkedIn is a useful (but sometimes annoying) Web service. The LinkedIn iPhone app really lets the power of LinkedIn shine. For starters, the app lets you get rid of business cards and vanquish printed resumes. Who hasn't arrived back at the office with a pile of disorganized and creased business cards? Having access to the ultimate social network for professionals straight from your iPhone means you no longer have to swap business cards with people--you can just add each other on LinkedIn, on the spot. You’ll never lose another business card--and therefore lose a valuable contact--again. LinkedIn for iPhone also lets you view your entire network, and you can send and receive LinkedIn updates so that others know what you are working on and where you are.
MyPoint PowerPoint Remote

This cool app allows you to control your Powerpoint presentation from your iPhone. It does require some finagling to get it set up right but then it works pretty well. You will have to download a small app to your PC or Mac to make it work. Works with Powerpoint for Windows 2003, 2007, and 2010; as well as Powerpoint for Mac 2004, 2008 and 2011. Just adds a touch of “tech-iness” to what hopefully wouldn’t be just another boring PP slideshow.

Acculturation and Creating a Great Place to Work

2011-03-07T14:21:00.000-08:00

How many people working for you would describe your workplace as ‘great?” If you hesitate when answering that question, it may be time to give it some thought. Having a high turnover rate means that there are problems with the company culture. The last thing you want to do is spend your time recruiting, hiring, and training, only to see those people walk right out the door.

Why They Leave

So why is it, exactly, that an employee leaves a company? Some of the top reasons that employees report for leaving a company are:

1. They don’t have any friends at their office. This is a big one, because nobody wants to spend 40-plus hours per week at a place where they are surrounded by people that don’t think like them or that they don’t like. Talk about having anxiety on the way to work!

2. They don’t like the boss for whom they work. Sorry, I know that may bruise some egos, but it is the truth.

3. And if you want to know what the distant third reason is, it is because the pay just isn’t good enough. This is an issue that may or may not be something you can address, but it can impact the company culture if people feel woefully underpaid or find out the pay of those around them (and feel it is unfair).

Creating Comfort

It goes without saying that if you want to have a great place to work, you need to build a common culture in your company. What this means is that people need to share similar values, energy, and attitude. By doing so, this will automatically engender friendships. Plus, you need to be a great boss – someone who is loyal, trusting and fair to all employees.

But there is more that you can do to create a comfortable company culture that makes people want to stay, rather than clock out for good. Find what works best for your company, but consider the following things you can do to help:

* Help people feel proud and valued, and that their opinions and suggestions matter.

* Provide proper training, as needed.

* Welcome those things that are different about people, and embrace diversity.

* Reward the team when things go right, rather than just one person.

* Respect everyone, regardless of their title.

* Skip the corny team-building sessions and ask employees what they would like to do together, on occasion.

* Try to promote from within, whenever possible. This will give employees hope that someday it could be them that moves up.

* Give your employees credit for the company success. After all, you really can’t be successful without them.

* Pitch in and help whenever possible, showing that nothing is beneath you.

Positive Place

Creating a positive work environment is an effective way to retain your employees. But if you are thinking that an old foosball table will change the work environment, it won’t. In fact, if it is not genuine, it will be seen as a gimmick. The key is to allow the culture to develop naturally, with some guidance along the way. And if it is a foosball table that comes about, well, then it will be an even bigger hit.

Goals and Employees Success

2011-03-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

It's common knowledge that helping employees set and reach goals is a critical part of every manager's job. Employees want to see how their work contributes to larger business objectives, and setting the right targets makes this connection explicit for them, and for you, as their manager. Goal-setting is particularly important as a mechanism for providing ongoing and year-end feedback. By establishing and monitoring targets, you can give your employees real-time input on their performance while motivating them to achieve more.

So, how involved should you be in helping employees establish and achieve their goals? The key is to be hands-on while giving your people the room they need to succeed on their own. Here are some principles to follow as you navigate how to best support your people in reaching their objectives.

Connect employee goals to larger company goals
For goals to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions. Employees who don't understand the roles they play in company success are more likely to become disengaged. Critical: no matter what level the employee is at, he should be able to articulate exactly how his efforts feed into the broader company strategy.

Make sure goals are attainable but challenging
Since employees are ultimately responsible for reaching their goals, they need to have a strong voice in setting them. Ask your employee to draft goals that directly contribute to the organization's mission. Once she's suggested initial goals, discuss whether her targets are both realistic and challenging enough. Be careful though: your team members are likely to resent you if you insist on goals that are too challenging to accomplish. At the same time, you don't want to aim too low, either. If you are overly cautious, you will miss opportunities and settle for mediocrity. Even worse, poorly set goals can be destructive to employees' morale and productivity, and to the organization's performance overall.

Create a plan for success
Once a goal is set, ask your employee to explain how he plans to meet it. Have him break goals down into tasks and set interim objectives, especially if it's a large or long-term project. Ask your employee: what are the appropriate milestones? What are possible risks and how do you plan to manage them? Because targets are rarely pursued in a vacuum it’s important that help your people understand who they are dependent on to achieve those goals. Then problem solve with them on how to best influence those people to get the job done.

Monitor progress
Staying on top of employee progress will help head off any troubles early on. Review both long-term and short-term goals on a weekly basis. Even your high-performing employees need ongoing feedback and coaching. Ask your employee what type of monitoring and feedback would be most helpful to her, especially if the task is particularly challenging or something she is doing for the first time.

When things go wrong
Very few of us reach our goals without some road bumps along the way. Build relationships with employees so that they feel comfortable coming to you if and when problems arise. If your employee encounters an unforeseen obstacle, the goal may need reworking. First, however, ask him to bring a potential solution to you so you can give him coaching and advice. If his efforts to solve the problem fail, you will need to get further involved.

What about personal goals?
Some managers neglect to think about what an employee is personally trying to accomplish in the context of work. For example, if your employee has expressed an interest in teaching but that is not part of his job responsibilities, you may be able to find ways to sculpt his job to include opportunities to train peers or less experienced colleagues.

The first step is for you to understand what these goals are. Ask employees if they have any personal goals they want to share with you. Don't pressure them; they should only share these aspirations if they feel comfortable. Just as with work goals, you need to be sure personal goals contribute to your team, unit, or to the company. It's got to be a shared commitment to experiment and mutual responsibility to check in on how it's going. It's got to be a win for both.

When goals aren't met
There will be times, even with the best support, when employees fail to meet their targets. Hold people accountable. Discuss with your employee what happened and what each of you think went wrong. If the problem was within his control, ask him to apply the possible solutions you've discussed, take another stab at reaching the goal, and check in with you more frequently. If it was something that was outside of his power or the goal was too ambitious, acknowledge the disappointment but don't dwell on it. Do the diagnosis, get the learning, and move forward.

It's possible that you may have contributed to the problem. Be willing to reflect on your role in the failure. Were you too hands off and failed to check in frequently enough? Did you not review his work in a timely way? Have an open discussion about what you can do next time. "If you don't hold yourself accountable, they're going to have trouble with you," says Hill.

Principles to Remember
Do:
Connect individuals' goals to broader organization objectives
Show employees that you are a partner in achieving their goals
Learn about and incorporate employees' personal interests into their professional goals

Don't:
Allow employees to set goals alone
Take a hands-off approach to high performers — they need input and feedback to meet their goals as well
Ignore failures — be sure people have the opportunity to learn when they don't achieve goals

Being Perfect While Avoiding Burnout

2011-02-24T11:15:00.000-08:00

Not being able to enjoy what you have accomplished is a symptom of burnout and it can be fatal to your career. But being as good as you are it can be hard to delegate.
For truly success-driven leaders, there may never be a cure for the relentless pursuit of perfection. But for those who are willing to take a moment to reflect on what they might do differently, there is a cure: Shift your focus from your own success to your team's success. Here's how.

Lead, don't manage. Management is a discipline that must buttress every successful organization; things must be accomplished with people, resources, schedules and budgets. At the same time, the top person must not be involved in all these details. He or she must lead, but empower others to manage.

Enable others. Successful people are good at what they do; that is why they have a tough time handing off to others. Type A managers never let up; they revel in micro-management. Sadly, they drive good people away — and as a result, they must do more and more. But savvy leaders learn to break this cycle. Step back and let others manage not just the details, but also the decisions.

Take joy in others' success. Achieving personal success lies at the heart of ambition. But for a leader, personal success isn't really possible unless the whole team wins. When your team achieves an important goal, celebrate! Take personal satisfaction from seeing the people you have recruited and groomed succeed. Such personal satisfaction is important to keep your team feeling appreciated, but also to enrich your own life.

There is one more thing that leaders who aspire to delegate more must do: drop the invincibility act. And this one is tough. When you do so much well, it can be tempting to think you do everything well. Trust me; many successful people I know truly believe they are good at everything. Acknowledging limitations may be easy for mere mortals to do, but it is hard for executives who have either built a company or risen to the top of a large organization.

High-achieving people may intellectually understand the need for change, but still struggle to grasp it emotionally. For some, it will require a significant intervention, one that takes the form of a crisis to their health, marriage, family or career. There are many executives who have stepped back from the brink of striving to achieve goals at all costs and learned that leadership is not a solo act.

Leaders are those who have the self-discipline to understand their own limitations. For super achievers, this recognition is hard to swallow. The revelation comes when you understand how much you can achieve through others rather than by yourself. Accepting this can relieve stress, help you avoid burnout, and even result in better relationships with family and friends. And, curiously, when you delegate responsibility and authority to others so that the whole team wins, it has a way of leading to even greater success.

The 7 Must Interview Questions

2011-02-23T07:28:00.000-08:00

There are no magic bullets when it comes to job interview questions, but the way you structure your questions is important: It's the interviewer's job to create a framework for the discussion and prevent it from running off the rails. Every company's needs are different, but a good basic strategy is to ground the interview in questions about past job performance. Then throw in some situational questions to evaluate practical decision making, and learn a little bit about how the job fits in with a candidate's background.

Question #1: "How about those Eagles?"

Purpose: Develop the rapport needed to get the interview off the ground.
Every interview should begin with an icebreaker. It helps nervous applicants calm down and builds a sense of trust. If you have a 45-minute interview, you should spend at least the first five minutes trying to connect on a neutral topic. Make the person feel at ease and you'll solicit better information—and much more honest responses.

Alternate Version 1: "Did you go to the industry conference last week?"
Alternate Version 2: "Were you affected by the heat wave/cold snap?"
Alternate Version 3: "Did you have a good holiday?"

Question #2: "Talk about a time when you had to overcome major obstacles."

Purpose: Get a clear picture of the candidate's past performance.
Variations on this question should actually comprise your next several questions. Don't hesitate to guide the candidate through the variety of tasks (both tangible and theoretical) necessary to perform the job, and listen carefully to how he or she has handled such challenges. Pay attention to intangibles: some people are better at performing in interviews than on the job. If your candidate continually plays the role of hero or victim, that's a red flag that you're probably not getting the whole story.

Alternate Version 1: "Tell me about a time when you wrote a report that was well received. Why do you think it was successful?"
Alternate Version 2: "Describe a time when you hired (or fired) the wrong person."
Alternate Version 3: "If you had to do that activity again, how would you do it differently?"

Question #3: "What interests you about this position?"

Purpose: Find out how the candidate feels about the job and the company.
People apply for jobs for plenty reasons besides the obvious ones. Asking a candidate why he or she wants the position gives insight into their motivation. The answer may be personal (such as a narrative about what spurred them to seek a new job), or it may connect the candidate to the company: her experience with the brand, the mission statement, or the organization's role in the community. Any of these answers (or some combination) are acceptable—a personal answer can communicate trust, and a connection to the business indicates loyalty and a sense of ownership.

Alternate Version 1: "Where does this job fit into your career path?"
Alternate Version 2: "If you had to convince a friend or colleague to apply for this job, what might you tell them?"
Alternate Version 3: "What motivated you to apply for this job?"

Question #4: "Is there intelligent life in outer space?"

Purpose: Find out what kind of thinker the candidate is and how he deals with surprises.
This is your curveball, designed to make the candidate ad-lib instead of just reciting well-rehearsed answers. How much will he or she play along? As long as it's not too short or too long, virtually any response is a good one. But pay attention to attitude, the way the candidate approaches the problem, and the ease or difficulty they have in coming up with a response.

Alternate Version 1: "Why are manhole covers round?”
Alternate Version 2: "How do they get the cream filling inside a Twinkie?"
Alternate Version 3: "Why do people climb mountains?"

Question #5: "Imagine we've just hired you. What's the most important thing on your to-do list on the first day of work?"

Purpose: Learn about the candidate's judgment and decision-making skills.
This is an example of a situational question, which is like a behavioral question in that it's designed to assess judgment, but it's also like a curveball question because it illuminates the candidate's thought process. You want to see whether he demonstrates the competencies and priorities that are important to the job.

Alternate Version 1: "Say a coworker tells you that he submitted phony expense account receipts. Do you tell your boss?"
Alternate Version 2: "How would you handle an employee whose performance is fine but who you know has the potential to do better?"
Alternate Version 3: "What would you do if you got behind schedule with your part of a project?"
Question #6: "Why did you get into this line of work?"

Purpose: Measure the fit between the candidate's values and the culture of your company.
It risks a long, drawn-out answer, but this type of question will help you select candidates that fit your company's culture. It's not about finding people like you, or people with similar backgrounds that led them to your company, but about getting a sense of their values and motivations. Concepts like values and culture can be subjective and difficult to define, but you should be looking for someone whose work ethic, motivations, and methods match the company's. This isn't a quantitative measurement so much as a qualitative one. Coke and Pepsi may seem the same to people outside the soft-drink industry, but each houses people with different approaches to making cola and running a business. Hire for culture; train the task.

Alternate Version 1: "What do you like best about your current job?"
Alternate Version 2: "When did you realize this would be your career?"
Alternate Version 3: "What keeps you coming to work besides the paycheck?"

Question #7: "But enough about you. What about us?"

Purpose: Find out if the candidate has done his or her homework.
It's a cliché to end an interview with the standard, 'So, any questions?' But the fact remains that you really do want to let the candidate ask a few things of you. Reversing roles communicates that the company seeks an open a dialogue, and it helps you ascertain just how curious and knowledgeable a candidate is about your company. If he doesn't ask any questions about the job or the business, it's a safe bet his heart isn't in it. Listen for insightful questions that demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of the circumstances of the job, the company, the competitive landscape, or the industry.

Alternate Version 1: "Where do you think the company should be in ten years?"
Alternate Version 2: "What's your opinion of our new product?"
Alternate Version 3: "Have you seen the company's new ad campaign?"

Six Ways to Get Smart Handling the Help Desk

2011-02-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

Your help desk is staffed by productive workers. You expect your call volume to increase because of a new system update that affects a good chunk of your user base. But your budget doesn’t allow for additional headcount. What do you do? While the conundrum is hardly an enviable one, it isn’t the end of the world. In fact, there are some basic steps to take to get out of the bind.

1 User, help thyself. Put together a sample group of affected users, help desk technicians and project team members to brainstorm a sizable list of FAQs, and post the results on the help desk website as part of the launch communication. And strongly encourage the use of online knowledge bases and self-service ticket management capabilities.

2 Keep it simple. Make sure your online knowledge base is simple and easy to use by focusing on the 10 percent of problems that account for 40 percent of the calls. A too complex online knowledge base just brings users back to the telephone hotline.

3 Work those metrics. Make sure you’ve got very clear metrics around average handle time and average speed-to-answer, and train your team to use these metrics effectively. You’ll get more calls handled by the same number of people even those you already assumed were productive.

4 Go into triage mode. Ensure ahead of time that your help desk reps can recognize the difference between a low-priority and high-priority issue, and deal with the former quickly by opening a ticket and getting off the phone. Too many times, help desk techs do not discriminate the way they should during spikes, and the truly needy wind up waiting in queue excessively.

5 Bring on the superusers. Enlist some great business users early on in the project, and train them alongside the help desk. They can help with the surge of calls for weeks after implementations at their respective sites. Not only will this help you deal with the call surge, but it can also build a team environment between IS and the business at another level in the organization.

6 Show your support. Good morale boosts help-desk productivity. Most people leave a little in the tank each day, but help desk crunch time is when the staff needs to go home on empty. Showing how much you value your team will go a long way.

What To Do When Your Team Falls back on Old Ways

2010-08-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

Repositioning your company can be an invigorating move — it's exciting to take a fresh approach and go after new opportunities. But change is also risky and over time, the momentum behind it can wane. When that happens, it's not uncommon for individuals, units, or entire organizations to default to the old strategy. If your team relapses, how can you get things back on track and people re-focused on the new direction?

Start out right 
The best way to prevent your team from reverting is to avoid the tendency to get your most senior people in a room to dictate what the rest of the company will do. Instead, include as many people as possible in deciding on the strategy, especially those who will be affected by the change.. Unfortunately, many organizations don't take this approach, and launch the new strategy to the organization when it's a done deal. Managers in these situations are often straddled with the responsibility of keeping a team focused on and motivated to implement a strategy that they know — or care — little about. To stop your team from rejecting the new strategy in favor of the old, try the following approaches.

Build the urgency 
A frequent reason that teams revert back to an old strategy is they don't feel the urgency to change. Everyone in the organization needs to see the opportunity, not be told that there is one. If your team is stalled, engage them. Ask the employees what they would do to improve/modify/enhance the strategic direction so as to make it something in which they would have confidence — confidence enough to do something different than they have always done, Tradition is an unbelievably powerful force. They need to not only see the urgency of the need for a new strategy but also feel accountable for it. It all starts with enough people believing that there is a new opportunity and that they have a responsibility to pursue it.

Make everyone a choice-maker 
Under the old models where "strategy" and "implementation" are separate, organizations are divided into two categories. There are the "choosers" — those that make the decisions — and "choiceless doers" — those that are left to implement. When you treat people as "doers," instead of as the actors that they are, they feel their work is devalued and aren't motivated to do anything differently. When your team members relapse to the old strategy, ask yourself whether they understand their active role in the new approach. Don't try to get buy-in — that implies you have an idea and you want them to agree. Instead, involve them in generating ideas for how to get unstuck. As much as possible, push decision-making down. Create a "cascade of choices" whereby you let your people know that the new strategy implies that everyone has decisions to make.

Create a "guiding coalition" 
All change efforts include a "guiding coalition" — a diverse, cross-functional, multi-level group with different skills and strengths. This coalition is "not some dorky task force" but people who are excited about the change and ready and able to roll up their sleeves to drive it. If your team defaults back to the old strategy, consider bringing together a group of individuals who can take responsibility for pushing the change through. Choose the people who are most enthusiastic about the new direction and give them real work to do, focused on pushing the team forward.

Remove barriers and share successes 
Many regressions happen because people perceive a conflict between what they've been asked to do and the best interests of the company. Take a look at the barriers that may be standing in your people's way. For significant changes, you will likely need to alter IT systems, compensation models, and performance management metrics. An ineffective team or a non-collaborative culture can often be the biggest obstacle. Ask yourself if team dynamics or even your behavior could be seen as barriers. Regularly ask employees what's stopping them from doing work in the new way and ask how they think they should be removed.
Change also stalls when people believe the new strategy is ineffective. Even good company people don't want to do what's not working. It's critical to share success as it happens. Find unambiguous and visible accomplishments that serve as evidence that you're making real strides.

Stick with it 
Old habits are certainly hard to break. But to be successful with a new strategy, altering your routines is critical. Take this new way of acting, hold it in place until it becomes habit. When urgent business issues come up, it is all too easy to take your eye off the prize. Teams and individuals find comfort in an old strategy when crises come up. The best way to avoid this is to commit to staying focused. If you see the urgency beginning to slide, you need to go back and work on it relentless. Taking your attention away to tend to issues that feel more pressing can be a fatal mistake. If your new strategy can't serve you in all business situations, then it may be the wrong strategy.

Principles to Remember

You should:
• Push decision-making down so that everyone in the organization is making choices about how to act differently
• Ask your employees how to remove barriers to change
• Share successes as evidence that the new strategy works

 You shouldn't:
• Think of creating and executing strategy as distinct tasks to be done by separate groups of people
• Assume that current systems and processes will support the new strategy
• Allow urgent business issues to distract you from your new pursuit

Your People Need to be Passionate About Their Work and It’s Your Job to Make It So

2010-08-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Generating enthusiasm, or passion, for what you do is essential. It is doubly so in perilous times. When everything around us seems to be coming apart, a leader who has a passion for what he does is essential. Such a spirit fuels the engine of enthusiasm needed to spark the enterprise. More importantly, such passion is vital to convincing others that the work matters. It is easy to get discouraged by today's business news and so it is vital that someone, be it the CEO or another senior leader, serves as the organization's designated cheerleader.

Ultimately instilling passion for the work is not an exercise in rah-rah; it is a search for meaning and significance. So how can you cultivate passion for work in others and do it in ways that have significance? Here are some suggestions.

Focus on the positive. Passion in leaders can be palpable; you know in an instant that the executive cares about the company. In my experience, those senior leaders who stroll through the halls with a nod or good word to say to all are those executives who get things done. And it is because they are out and about, not cloistered in their offices on mahogany row. Rather, they are meeting with employees and customers, vendors and investors, getting to know issues and concerns. They also use these times to talk up the good things.

Address the negatives. Passionate leaders aren’t blinded by an unconscious positive bias of sorts; they know the score, precisely because they spend so much time out of their offices. They see firsthand what is working and what is not, and because they have a relationship with people at all levels of the company, they can more readily mobilize employees to solve problems. Remembering that bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.

Set high expectations. Those who care about the work and set a high standard challenge others to do the same, but they should remember to balance their approach — knowing to sometimes ease up on workloads but never on expectations.
As much as generating passion for the work matters, it is no guarantee of success, or even survival. Radiating passion is no excuse for ignoring attention to the fundamentals.

Yet successful organizations are more than the sum of fiscal prudence. Good ones are the collective values and aspirations of dedicated people who have made a choice to work there. Such organizations, be they in healthcare or manufacturing, consumer goods or hospitality, ultimately depend upon the commitment of individuals pulling together to make things work. That's why you need leaders who have a passion for what they do and are able to spread that passion to others so that people feel better about what they do, and ultimately, what they can do better.

Making the Case for Self-service

2010-08-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Three or four years ago the retail landscape started to morph, led by the ubiquitous ATM machine, self-service kiosks started to pop up at airports for check-in and fast food restaurants for order entry and gas stations for pump and go. With those changes my thinking was “what a great way to off-load rising labor costs by training the unsuspecting public….”

At first there was reluctance but as experience increased more and more customers sought out the consumer-friendly devices to make quick work of checking in, fueling up or ordering their favorite combo meal.

Today, consumers value self-service and attitudes have changed, but here is a disturbing thought, maybe it’s because consumers don’t want a relationship with companies any longer and that self-service gives the consumer the out they have been looking for.

To self-serve or not:

Walk in, find what I'm looking for, go to the counter to checkout.

Associate: "Hello, did you find everything you were looking for?"
Me: "Yes."
Associate: "Do you want to get our extended warranty on this product? It already has one year, but for..."
Me: "No, thank you."
Associate: "Do you want a bag?"
Me: "No."
Associate: "Do you have our rewards card? It's only $10 to signup and it will..."
Me: "No thank you."
Associate: "Will you be paying with your Branded-to-this-store Credit card?"
Me: "No," as I'm holding out my debit card.
Associate: "Would you be interested in donating $1 to charity?"
Me: "No."
Associate: "Okay, thats $10.87. No, it goes the other way." which always seems to be the opposite way it shows on the device.
Me: Tap tap tap.
Associate: "Do you want the receipt?"
Me: "Yes."
Associate: "Have a nice day.

versus

Walk in, find what I'm looking for. Go up to self-serve, scan, swipe, pay, walk out.

Don’t Drive Your Customers Away

2010-07-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

There are certain clichés in business that are dubious in their truth, such as “the customer is always right.” (I believe, “the right customer is always right!”) But one that is undoubtedly true is that it is cheaper to keep an old customer than to find a new one. With this in mind let’s look at some of the most detrimental errors small businesses make in this arena:

1. Ignore Your Customers. This cardinal sin can be achieved in person, on the phone, and even over the Internet. Many retail companies adopt a “10 Foot Rule” that requires customers to be acknowledged if the employee is within ten feet of them. Greeters at the door are not only good for Wal-Mart, and acknowledging customers by answering phones quickly and with a smile is just good business.

2. Make it Difficult to do Business With You. Customers shouldn’t have to work at giving you their money. And they shouldn’t have a fight on their hands if they need to return your product or are unhappy with your service. If you make it hard on your customers someone else is always willing to go the extra mile for them.

3. Display a Lack of Integrity. Whether this is simply staff making excuses for poor service or products, or engaging in sales or marketing practices that can be perceived as deceptive, being a trusted and reliable business is an absolute essential. No one likes to feel lied to or treated in a way that is less than honest.

4. Become Dull and Predictable. This doesn’t mean sacrificing reliability and standards of quality and excellence, but customers expect innovation. And people being people, they are stirred by positive surprise and delight – just because your business has been around for fifty years doesn’t mean it has to look and act like it.

5. Don’t Listen to Your Customers. We live in an age where product and company reviews are being posted for posterity across the Internet, and perhaps on your company’s own website. Therefore, it is critical for you to hear what your customers are saying and respond. This can also mean reviewing relevant blogs and social media channels, performing regular market research and simply talking to your customers.

Being a Good Boss

2010-05-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

I have worked for some pretty good bosses over the years, several of whom saw enough potential in me to invest close-in coaching on behaviors and beliefs needed to be a good leader. The people working for me today benefit from their insight as I’ve created my own leadership job-aid that influences my decisions and their work life more than they might imagine. I remind myself everyday that great leaders serve the people who work for them and affirm that:

1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me. I ask those who know for feedback.
2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day. I'm inclusive and seek wins for everyone.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough. I need to work on this one; I err on the side of being too easy.
5. My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my people from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well. We are a well-oiled machine.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is "what happens after people make a mistake?"
9. Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.
10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.

How to Get Immediate Value from Your New Hire

2010-05-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

There are many theories on how to correctly "onboard" someone to an organization or a team. Most focus on how to provide the new hire with the information and skills she needs to succeed. But that can only take the hire so far. They will need connections and an understanding of the inner workings and culture of your company to be truly successful. Whether they are transitioning from another part of the organization or are brand new, you can get then up to speed more quickly by going beyond the basics and explaining how things actually get done.

The road to success for the new hire is pot-holed with obstacles that must be maneuvered around in the four domains that new hires need to master: business orientation, expectations alignment, political connection, and cultural adaptation. The last two are often the hardest for managers to convey, and yet the most critical for the new person to understand. For managers the difficulty arises since they are embedded in the culture and not necessarily reflective about it. However, helping new hires understand the informal side of the organization will accelerate their acclimation. Follow these three steps to get your new employee productive faster.

1. Start early
Onboarding really begins with hiring. Start as early as possible in the process to expose your new hire to the organization's or unit's culture and to explain how work gets done. While selling your organization in the interview process is key to recruiting the right person, don't risk his eventual success by not being upfront about how things truly work. Be honest and don't allow your vision of how you wish your company operated to confuse your communication of the reality of the situation.

Always recruit for cultural fit as well as skills and experience and identify transition risks, such as capability gaps or tenuous relationships, before the new hire starts. If he is transitioning from another part of the organization, don't assume that he knows the culture. Companies, even small ones, often have different ways of doing things across units or functions.

The best onboarding process cannot overcome the sins of the hiring process.

2. Get them the right network
As the manager one of the first things you can do for the new hire is to ensure they understand how important the informal or 'shadow' organization is in getting things done. It is your responsibility to explain this, but they will only truly experience it by meeting their colleagues. As soon as they start — or even before — introduce them to the right people. If the informal organization is really important, then the manager can accelerate the new hire's political learning process by identifying key stakeholders and helping to establish connections. As the responsible manager you can also greatly increase the effectiveness of these meetings by creating an inventory checklist that provides cues and guidelines for these meetings, ensuring that the important and relevant data is covered. I try to ensure that the new hire knows ‘why’ they need to know each person on his onboarding lists so as to facilitate a meaningful conversation.

You also need to be sure early in the new job they meet with "nodes" or "culture carriers" — people who others go to for different kinds of information and insight. These won't necessarily be the people who have the highest rank or best title; instead they may be particularly connected middle managers or administrative assistants.

3. Get them working
This may seem like a no-brainer for bringing new people on board. Yet many companies start off new hires with a stack of reading and a series of trainings. Giving them real work immerses them in the way things function at the organization. This doesn't mean you should let them "sink or swim"; definitely provide the support they need. Doing this instead of busy work exposes them to the company culture, introduces them to the ways things get done, and helps them to begin making the critical connections they need to productively contribute.

Principles to Remember

Do:

· Hire for cultural fit as much as for capabilities and skill
· Introduce your new hire to "culture carriers" and "nodes"
· Explain how work actually gets done at your organization

Don't:

· Let a new hire stay in "learning" mode for too long
· Assume your new hire can't be productive from the start
· Rely on the org chart to help explain lines of communication

Write a Better Resume for the Tech Savvy

2010-04-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

In my hiring role for a software development company I see some of the worst examples of resume writing possible. The worst resumes I see fall into two large classes: those that string abbreviations and acronyms together in unreadable text and earn my immediate disapproval and the others that use boilerplate templates and outdated clichés like "self-motivated individual" and "results-oriented professional.”

You can't afford to send out another lifeless, sounds-like-everyone-else resume. What’s urgent is that you communicate to the hiring managers how you solve problems on-the-fly or leap over tall buildings in a single bound.

Here are ten of the deadliest resume phrases in use ("massive overuse" would be more accurate) and replacements for each one. You'll rewrite the replacement phrases to reflect your own accomplishments--and that's the key! We can't expect a worn out piece of resume boilerplate to stand in for our own pithy, personal examples and relevant experience.

Kill this: Results-oriented professional
Replace with your own version of this: I love to solve thorny supply-chain problems

Kill this: Excellent team player
Replace with your own version of this: At Dynamite Software, I partnered with Engineering to cut our product cost in half

Kill this: Bottom-line orientation
Replace with your own version of this: My accounting-process overhaul saved the company $10M in its first year

Kill this: Superior communication skills
Replace with your own version of this: I led a two-day offsite that yielded our 2010 product lineup and a $40K cost savings

Kill this: Possess organizational skills
Replace with your own version of this: Reduced customer-complaint resolution time from three weeks to one by revamping the process

Kill this: Savvy business professional
Replace with your own version of this: I'm a Marketing manager who's gotten the CEO’s book covered in trade journal

Kill this: Strong work ethic
Replace with your own version of this: I taught myself HTML over a weekend in order to grab a marketing opportunity

Kill this: Meets or exceeds expectations
Replace with your own version of this: Invited to join our executive staff at a strategy summit during my first year at the company

Kill this: Strong presentation skills
Replace with your own version of this: Was recruited to join Dynamite Software after my boss heard me speak at a conference

Kill this: Seeking a challenging opportunity
Replace with your own version of this: I'm looking for a software development company primed to grow its business in the Pacific Rim.

Get the boilerplate lead out of your resume today, and replace it with concrete, visual stories that bring your power to life. Trust me on this one: employers want the real you on the page.

What Your Employees Want from You as the Leader?

2010-03-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

I often have to remind myself that leading takes time and energy. Directing the feelings, attitudes, actions, and behaviors of a team is a big task. Often, I ask my employees, about what truly aggravates them and what they love about their work and me. To keep me on track, I've created this list of what employees want their leaders to do.

1. Tell me my role, tell me what to do, and give me the rules. Micromanaging? No, it's called clear direction. Give parameters so they can work within broad outlines and boundaries; let them find their niche.

2. Discipline any coworker who is out of line. The entire team must be accountable in a way that is fair but makes everyone cognizant of what is and isn't acceptable.

3. Get me excited. About the company, about the product, about the job, about a project. Just get them excited. Take time to talk about the business; not just work. Let them know how they fit into the big picture and how important their work is to the success of the company.

4. Don't forget to praise me. Motivate employees by leveraging their strengths, not harping on their weaknesses. If someone on your team is a great technician but is socially challenged, don’t force him into a customer-facing role but leverage him into your star level 3 tech.

5. Don't scare me. They really don't need to know about everything that worries you. They respect that you trust them, but you are the boss. And don't lose your temper at meetings because they didn't meet your expectations. It's often not productive. Fairness and consistency are important mainstays.

6. Impress me. Strong leaders impress their staffs in a variety of ways. Yes, some are great examples of management, but others are bold and courageous, and still others are creative and smart. Strong leaders bring strength to an organization by providing a characteristic that others don't have and the company sorely needs.

7. Give me some autonomy. Give them something interesting to work on. Trust them with opportunity.

8. Set me up to win. Nobody wants to fail. Indecisive leaders who keep people in the wrong roles, set unrealistic goals, keep unproductive team members, or change direction unfairly just frustrate everybody and make people feel defeated.

Your job is to make it practical for people to succeed. When you do this, everybody wins!

Workflow Facilitated Collaboration: Cost, Competitiveness and Continuity

2010-03-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

Collaboration means working together in a joint intellectual effort. More than 60 percent of the workforce believes colleagues can help them do their jobs better. Collectively, this means extending the potential of the enterprise. Companies have spent trillions on information management systems but that investment would mean little if it does not enable teams to collaborate, work smarter, connect to more resources, improve productivity, reduce time and travel, improve efficiency, and save money.

The primary parts of modern business collaboration reveal something about its power in transforming the enterprise. Let’s look at the four pillars of successful collaboration:

• Messaging — Enables teams and individuals to communicate and manage their interactions in an auditable manner. This is important for compliance and replicating success. In effect, it is establishing a proven template.
• Real time — Speed is crucial in collaboration because information and processes must be timely.
• Team — The group effort demands strong ties to the unit because only through teamwork will collaboration help people work smarter and drive business benefits by deepening valuable relationships, making better decisions faster, spurring innovation, and reducing costs.
• Social Networking — Represents the newest pillar in collaboration, where individuals share knowledge not only within the team, but the company itself.

As teams embark on collaborative efforts, there is a perpetual lifecycle of collaboration. This lifecycle also reveals the importance of workflow. There is a series of steps in collaboration, facilitated with workflow:

• Awareness — becoming part of a working entity with a shared purpose
• Motivation — driving to gain consensus in problem solving or development
• Self-synchronization — deciding as individuals when things need to happen
• Participation — participating in collaboration and we expect others to participate
• Mediation — negotiating and collaborating together to find a middle point
• Reciprocity — sharing and expecting sharing in return through reciprocity
• Reflection —thinking and considering alternatives
• Engagement — proactively engaging rather than wait and see.

The organization benefits throughout the collaboration lifecycle because it is financially healthy decision-making. The benefits of collaboration include improving the bottom line by addressing cost, competitiveness, and continuity.

First, collaboration cuts costs by reducing personnel, travel, and infrastructure costs by up to 80 percent. That is funding that in turn can be used to help grow the business. Bringing the right people together to create, share, discuss, and manage information and facilitate innovation means more productivity for less cost.

Second, collaboration makes an organization more competitive by increasing efficiencies, planning, and responsiveness. Personnel are empowered to be creative and participate in solving issues so business moves faster. And, controlled agility is built into collaboration with workflow. Fewer people need to be involved in the delivery or routing of documents, thus reducing the likelihood of lost or improperly routed information while insuring that the documents get to the right people as quickly and directly as possible. In addition, workflow-enabled collaboration reveals missed or overlooked variables that could lend greater value to the enterprise.

Third, collaboration is good for business continuity because it fosters improvement and enlivens operations. The carbon footprint is reduced. Audit trails are more easily followed. The company, through workflow and collaboration, builds an adaptive culture and agile enterprise that can duck and weave in the worst of economic times. Organizational know-how is captured for the future while establishing proven, bottom-line-driven processes that can be repeatable and teachable, perpetuating company capabilities. In addition, collaboration helps address compliance, eDiscovery, and Disaster Recovery.

Reforming Teams: 9 Critical Steps

2010-02-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

When we work with teams, we often find that members agree in principle, yet may not support the direction of the company.

How often has this type of scenario unfolded at your smaller business: The company decides to move sales (or marketing, or finance, or any other unit) in a new direction. An announcement goes out, a meeting is held, heads nod in agreement. Then day two merges into week two and that soon becomes month two. Somewhere in there you realize that no one is supporting the new direction. And there's no talk about it -- life goes on just as it did before. It's as if all the planning, meeting, and strategizing never happened.

First you're mad, then you blame yourself, then you wonder what you could have done to get the point across and keep things on track.

Thucydides, in his "History of the Peloponnesian War," wrote about the solution one general came up with in ancient Greece: "...burning their boats so as to have no hope except in becoming masters of the country." This legendary military decision eliminated all possibility of retreat. The troops knew there was no way out but through, and performance occurred because the situation narrowed the options to perform or die.

Now, business isn't basic training and you can't act like a Marine drill instructor at Parris Island to motivate your employees (much less burn down the office), but you can set the stage for excellent performance. How? Here are nine ideas any smaller business leader can start using immediately:

Specify the Destination
Your team needs to know what the new destination is and how to get there. How you communicate that influences whether you'll get there. Why that destination? Why is it important? Make sure the goal is worth pursuing, announce the new move, and make sure there is a specific launch -- a particular date and even an event will help your team remember that a large change occurred.

Make the Move Necessary
Those who want to hang onto the old boat will burn up with it. There must be a penalty for clinging to the old. For example, the point of demarcation might be a change in procedure. For example, changing the form of ID required to enter the building; after a certain date, you can't get in without the new. Mark the change with tangible and intangible elements to reinforce the desired behavior in all areas of the company.

Dismantle the Old Infrastructure
Don't continue to support the old business. If you've decided to let go of your router business, consider selling it, renaming it, or some other way of making it clear that things have changed in a fundamental way. Don't feed the old systems by providing them a large slice of the budget, mentioning them in company-wide meetings, or including them in sales off-site. They're gone -- bury them.

Talk About the New
With every meeting, there should be a conversation that acknowledges and brings the new product or department into focus. You've got to reiterate how important these new people, new roles, new products, or new processes are to bringing in revenue. Relate them to current operations; spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about the new. As a leader, you signal to your team what's important to you (consciously or unconsciously) by how much time you spend on it. If you tune in and talk about it -- the team will, too.

Only Hire in the New Focus
Look for people that match the new way of doing business, the new line of products. If engineering needs to regroup around Linux, don't hire lots of experts in Ajax or Perl. Make sure that every new hire extends your reach into the new space by providing knowledge and capabilities that will help you get where you're going.

Reward People Based on the New Focus
Compensation can sharpen performance. Salespeople in particular have an amazing ability to focus on their compensation plan. Use the plan to guide behavior so that your company reaps the rewards and gets the kind of results you wanted when you first determined what the new destination would be.

Minimize Maintenance of the Old
In the midst of a large change, it's easy to spend too much time and money on a product you're trying to move to life support. Determine the appropriate level of maintenance so that customers are taken care of, but don't spend a dollar more. Refer them to new models and services so that they migrate to what your organization is fully involved with.

Create a Crisis
Recently, an executive I know brought in Bain consultants to tell their board of directors why their current business has limited growth. The executive needed a third party to carry the message and signal loudly that the old business wasn't performing. This was a big company, but the idea holds true for smaller businesses as well. The board got the message because they saw the "suits" walking around holding meetings, which sent the signal more loudly than she could have done herself.

Put a Process Behind It
A process concentrates thinking and sends a subliminal message to the team that "this is valuable and it's here to stay." Make sure the team knows you think the new services offering is important by using a process for reinforcement. Eliminate support for the ad hoc methods that provide patchwork results. Stick with what's measurable and repeatable.
Your team certainly picks up what you say in meetings, on the phone, in e-mail, and over the course of the day. Additional input comes from what you do. Show people you're serious about burning the boat and taking a measured risk on that shiny new product, process, or initiative -- your revenue depends on it.

5 Essential Tools for Managing the Online Reputation of You and Your Business

2010-02-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

Want to keep up to date on what bloggers, Twitter posters and others are saying about you online? You need to do more than set a Google (GOOG) alert for your name. Tune in to these five free tools that do more to help you proactively defend your online reputation. 1. Addict-o-matic: Enter your name into the site, and you'll see the latest mentions arranged in boxes from sites such as Bing, Google Blog Search, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, FriendFeed, Bloglinks and more. Addict-o-matic also allows you to customize your results page by adding, deleting or rearranging the source boxes. 2. SocialMention: SocialMention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates and streams user-generated content. It allows you to track and measure what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, etc., in real time. The site aggregates information from over 100 social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg and Google. You can also set alerts for a keyword, which SocialMention will deliver to your inbox daily. 3. Technorati: Technorati is a search engine for blogs. You have two options for search: You can search mentions of someone's name in blogs and you can search blogs belonging to that specific person. Other sites to search blogs: BlogPulse and BackType. 4. TweetBeep: TweetBeep is like Google Alerts for Twitter. The site e-mails you when someone tweets your name, company or product (you can also track who's tweeting your website or blog, even if they've used a shortened URL like ow.ly or bit.ly). Also try Twitter Search. 5. Yasni: Yasni is a people search engine that provides an overview of someone's associated networks, including contacts, pictures and other publicly available information. In searching for a name, Yasni will aggregate mentions from sites including LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, Technorati and more.

So You Want to Be an IT Star

2008-05-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

7 Things You Must Do in an Interview

2008-05-05T11:05:00.001-07:00

When you are looking to make the Big Leap -- the one that puts you closer to the power centers of a business or organization -- the interview process will likely be different from what you've experienced before. The more senior the person or people you're interviewing with, the more definite their ideas are likely to be about what they're looking for. They know that their own continued success depends on hiring the best people.

So how do you prove your readiness for the big leagues? By thinking like a big-league player. This interview will be different from others, but it will be your best chance to impress the decisionmakers, so there are some key points you want to be certain you get across. Here are tips to help you succeed:

Show You Get the "Big Picture"

Any number of interview candidates may possess specific subject-knowledge valuable to a business. But the candidate who goes beyond mere information and displays an ability to use it well is more likely to get the job. Senior executives and managers generally want people who pay attention to and understand the broader view.

Tip: Demonstrate you recognize patterns and understand their importance; that you know how to use and synthesize information.

Find Out What Keeps the Boss Up at Night

Do your homework so you understand not only the job or promotion for which you are applying, but also the job of the senior executive above it. Do you know to whom this person reports, and what the top issues are for your boss's boss?

Tip: Make that knowledge part of your interview conversation. Show an interest not only in the specifics of the job, but in the product and markets for that company. Ask broad questions: "What do you think the potential growth in the Indian market is?"

Look for Answers

Senior managers are looking for candidates who are creative thinkers focused on finding solutions. It is less important that you show you know the details of the problems the organization faces than that you're able to demonstrate readiness to look for options and find solutions.

Tip: Think about problems in the past you've identified and managed to solve. Show readiness to tackle the tough issues.

Show Some Guts

Chances are whoever you're interviewing with got where he is by showing some moxie, and you should too. Top people need and want folks around them who are not afraid to speak up and will confidently assert their ideas. It is the only way to be part of the process.

Tip: Be ready with an example of a time when you weren't afraid to go out on a limb and your actions helped bring about real change.

Show Your Softer Side, Too

Yes, you should speak up and assert your ideas. But there will be times when the folks at the top will want-- will even need -- for you to go along once a decision has been made, even if you don't agree with it.

Tip: Think about past experiences you can discuss to demonstrate you're comfortable with the challenges of a dynamic environment.

Listen

Just as you want to make it plain in an interview that you are not too timid to speak up, you want to make it clear you are not over-confident or intent on dominating the process. Demonstrate you are able to listen without being too eager to cut off dialog.

Tip: Ask questions that reflect the concerns of the questioner in a constructive way. For instance, if you are asked what you would do in a certain situation, resist the temptation to answer before you've asked some questions of your own.

Keep It Positive

If there's one thing senior managers have a universal distaste for, it's whining. Remember, every hiring manager wants to hire a team player who will bring positive energy and real initiative to the job. Be ready with examples of positive suggestions about problems or issues that you took initiative on in order to demonstrate your people skills.

Tip: Steer clear of any criticism of prior managers, even if invited to offer it.

How to Ace an Executive-Level Job Interview

2008-03-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

You've been contacted by an executive recruiter about an opportunity to interview for a position at a successful company. The job the executive recruiter describes sounds perfect for you. You want the position so badly, you dream about it at night. To make your dream a reality, you need to ace the interview.

That's easier said than done. Job interviews are one of those occasions when you just have to be perfect. You need to spin a good story out of your work experience, but your story can't be too detailed or carry on too long. You need to appear relaxed, but you can't come off as too relaxed. You need to practice your responses to typical interview questions, but in the interview, your responses can't seem rehearsed. It's like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Everything has to be just right. And it's tricky.

Obviously, you've got to learn as much about the company and the people interviewing you as you can. The more you know about the hiring manager, the more comfortable you'll be talking with him or her. Similarly, the more you know about the company, the easier it will be for you to present yourself as the answer to the company's prayers.

This story walks you through the interview process, from preparation to follow-up. You'll get tips on how to make a strong first impression and answer interview questions, and you'll learn the verbal and nonverbal communications you should employ—and avoid—so that you can ace the interview.

Prepare
Interviews are designed to assess whether you, the candidate, can do the job at hand, whether you'll spring into action once on the job, and whether you fit with the company's culture and management team. To prepare for your interview, you should anticipate what questions you may be asked and craft quality responses to them. You should be prepared to answer the following questions:

What are your strengths? You should highlight the strengths the company needs to address its current challenges.

How would you describe your management style? You could say something like, "I used to prefer a top-down management style, but I've found that when I involve people in a decision it's easier to get their commitment and almost always results in a better outcome."

Why should we hire you? Again, explain how your strengths align with the company's needs.

How much money are you looking for? Be careful of this trap. If you ask for too much, you knock yourself out of consideration. If you ask for too little, you sell yourself short. A good tip is to quote third-party research and answer with a range. An even better approach is to ask the interviewer about the company's compensation philosophy (e.g., What are the components and how are they adjusted?)

You're certain to be asked about failed projects, so don't get caught off guard when the hiring manager tosses that one your way. Be honest without being defensive and beware of giving phony-sounding answers, such as "It really wasn't my fault," or "I warned them it wouldn't work."

When telling your interviewer about projects that went off track, be sure to describe the smart corrective action you took, the end result and the lessons you learned. For example, you might describe how you proactively involved others: "As soon as I saw that we weren't going to meet the customer's deadline, I immediately called a meeting with everyone on the project. We were able to renegotiate with the customer and minimize our losses. Ultimately the customer respected our honesty and was able to work with us on a solution." (For more advice on how to answer questions about failed projects, read Interview Questions to Avoid.)

Your interviewer will also ask you about your biggest flaw. Mention only one and describe the steps you've taken to correct it. For example, "I'm not good at speaking in front of groups, but I enrolled myself in an executive presentations program and have gotten much better."

Beware of mentioning flaws without realizing it. For example, if you say that you seek to avoid conflict at all costs, your interviewer might think you can't deal with conflict or that you have a "head in the sand" management style. Similarly, if the interviewer asks you if you've implemented a specific software package and if you haven't, don't say, "I haven't done it, but I can learn." That's the wrong answer.

For any question, a factual response isn't enough. You have to engage the interviewer with stories that make the facts compelling. When you're interviewing for executive-level positions, the hiring manager is looking for someone who communicates well, who's not going to be an embarrassment at a board meeting, and who can lead and inspire his or her staff. Rather than describe the functions for which you were responsible, describe incidents that illustrate how you handled problems and opportunities—and the bottom-line results. Create scenes, characters and action, but stick to the OAR model to avoid too much detail and digression:

O: What was the Opportunity or challenge you faced?
A: What Action did you take?
R: What were the Results?

Practice your responses with the aid of video, audio, a mirror or a trusted friend who'll give you honest feedback about how confident and knowledgeable you sound and look. You have to come across as spontaneous rather than rehearsed. Pat answers such as "I am a participative manager" or "I am a workaholic, working day and night until a project is done" can make you sound like an automaton. Don't go over the line that separates a polished answer from a slick one. In other words, don't try to sound like a superhero by beginning every sentence with "I", "Me" and "My" or by overstating your role.

Memorize key facts and dates—both about the company with which you're interviewing and your work history—so that you don't have to dive into your briefcase for the information.

Finally, don't think of yourself as an applicant for the job for which you're interviewing. You're a unique solution to the company's business problems. Thinking of yourself as a solution will give you confidence in your ability to help the company meet its strategic goals, and your confidence will resonate with the hiring manager during the interview. Thinking of yourself as a solution will also help you define your role in the new company, negotiate the compensation package you deserve and gain acceptance as a peer when you start working with the management team.

The Big Day
The day of the interview, arrive at least 15 minutes ahead of time. While you wait, think of yourself as the solution the company needs and assure yourself that the interview is going to go well. You should also use your time to observe employees coming and going: Do they look happy to be there?

When you're brought into the office or conference room where the interviewer is waiting for you, walk in with a smile on your face, your head up and your shoulders back. Shake the interviewer's hand firmly. Repeat his or her name with a smile when you're introduced. Repeat the interviewer's name at appropriate opportunities throughout the conversation. Everyone responds to hearing hisown name. It makes the interviewer listen more intently.

Don't sit until you're asked. Given a choice of seats, avoid the sofa. You'll sink into it like quicksand. Choose a hardback chair. Sit upright with your hands on your knees. Don't cross your legs or your arms. Crossed limbs unconsciously signal defensiveness.

While the interviewer speaks, show you're listening carefully by nodding your head and thoughtfully rephrasing her sentences. Make certain you understand the questions she's asking. Don't assume they're the ones for which you rehearsed answers. Try to divine what's behind each question. For example, the interviewer may ask if you've handled an SAP conversion, but really she wants to know how smoothly the conversion went, if was on time and within budget.

If you're unsure how to answer a question, take time to reflect on it or ask a clarifying question to give yourself more time to form an answer.

As you interact with the interviewer, stay lively. Gesture often and naturally. Smile at the least provocation. Smiling helps you feel you're doing well. Look the interviewer in the eye. If you're being interviewed by a group, maintain eye contact with everyone, one at a time, changing with each point you make rather than scanning the audience.

The interview is going to go well and you're going to feel increasingly relaxed. But take care not to become too relaxed, which can lead you to make a careless comment or acting too familiar. You should remain deferential throughout the interview. Don't say anything negative about your present employer, even if invited. Discuss compensation only if asked.

By the end of the interview, you'll probably be asked if you have questions. Whether you're invited to ask questions or not, always ask a few:

What are you looking for in candidates for this position?

How would I be measured?

What challenges would I have to tackle first?>/li>

Don't ask for any information about the company that can be found with a simple Internet search.

When the interview winds down, ask if the interviewer got the information he wanted. Offer to provide more information, especially if the interviewer hasn't asked you about something in your background that you believe is important to the position. Don't offer references until you're asked for them.

The end of the interview may be your last chance to make it clear you want the job. To do so without sounding desperate, make a positive statement of interest, such as, "I am vitally interested in this opportunity. Are there any concerns you have about my candidacy for the position?" Also ask about next steps. The first impression you make is the most important one of the meeting. The impression you leave at the end of the interview ranks second.

The Follow-Up
Take notes about the meeting as soon as it's over. Note areas where you feel you didn't answer adequately so that you can reinforce the subject matter in your follow-up correspondence. You'll also want to remember who said what as you plan the follow-up process.

Send a letter thanking the interviewer for seeing you, expressing once more why you're a good fit for the job and offering to provide any additional information the hiring manager may need.

Keep following up, methodically but without being a nuisance. The job often goes to the person who wants it most.

Success Strategies for Hiring IT Managers

2008-03-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

One of your key responsibilities as an IT executive is assembling a management team that not only meets the needs of the department but also contributes to the overall success of your company. While the managers you hire must possess hands-on technical abilities, it's equally important that their soft skills, including leadership, be well developed. Your challenge is to find candidates who possess a mix of both qualities.

Here are three of the most important qualities any manager must have:

1) The ability to retain and motivate staff. Competition for skilled IT professionals remains high, especially for hard-to-fill positions such as lead applications engineers, Web developers and network security specialists. As a result, keeping talented team members on board is essential. A prospective IT manager should be able to show what steps he or she has taken in previous roles that contributed to low attrition rates. For example, did the person lobby for a larger training budget to ensure staff were provided with adequate professional development opportunities? What forms of employee recognition did he or she rely on to ensure personnel remained motivated and satisfied in their positions?

2) Business acumen. A manager must possess a thorough understanding of your industry and your company's competitive advantages in order to ensure IT contributes to the bottom line. Does the prospective manager possess a proven track record of budgeting and strategic planning, for instance?

3) Communication skills. Seek out individuals who can not only communicate company goals and objectives to staff members but also help them buy into the firm's vision and keep them motivated when setbacks occur. A successful manager must also be able to "sell" IT's strategy to senior executives, who may not always recognize the role that the department plays in your company's success.

Having established those three qualities, how do you then go about evaluating whether a particular candidate measures up? Start by looking at the applicant's resume. Is there a record of success and increasing responsibility? Has he or she supervised staff before? Although a candidate does not need to have directly managed others in the past to be successful with your firm, the person should have experience leading project teams or supervising large-scale engagements.

During the interview process, involve other members of your team to see how the candidate interacts with prospective coworkers and mangers. Also devote significant energy to reference checking. Consider speaking with a mix of managers, peers and direct reports to get a more complete and balanced picture of the candidate. Ask the individuals you speak with if they can recommend others who can offer additional feedback. This is one of the most effective ways to gain candid information about an applicant.

Perhaps most importantly, make sure you are not neglecting your own internal candidates when searching for new managers. Internal employees are already familiar with your business and corporate culture and have likely formed collaborative relationships with colleagues throughout the organization. Plus, you can build morale by demonstrating a policy of promotion from within.

Hiring top-tier IT managers is always a challenge, but by committing the resources and attention this task deserves, your company will reap long-lasting rewards that ultimately improve the performance of the organization.

Six Ways to Sabotage Your Career

2008-02-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

Getting ahead in your career certainly has much to do with your skills and contributions, but a lot also depends on how you are perceived by your colleagues and managers on the job. The impressions you make with your coworkers and management can greatly affect your potential to advance. Are you taking the right steps or are you sabotaging yourself?

Here are six actions to avoid:

1. Saying no to your boss. Your supervisor comes to you, mentioning you'd be the ideal person to mentor a new hire in your group and asks if you'd have the time. You do, but you're not interested in the responsibility, so you decline the opportunity. Bad move. It's not wise to build a reputation as someone your boss can't count on. A pattern of "no's" can convince your manager to stop offering you any future opportunities, including ones you might be interested in, thus hindering your career growth.

2. Taking casual too far. The IT profession tends to be pretty informal, but that doesn't mean you can be unprofessional. Showing up to work in torn jeans and T-shirts and using overly casual language around the office doesn't send the message that you're intent on moving up in the organization.

3. Never volunteering to help. A task doesn't fall inside your job description, so you see little reason to take it on. If you're this type ? one who looks away when colleagues and managers seek assistance with projects ? you're showing that you're not a team player. If you must decline a plea for help due to your workload, the smartest move is to explain the situation and note when you will be in a better position to volunteer.

4. Failing to follow through with requests from managers. A department head has asked you to determine why her e-mail isn't filtering spam as well as it used to. You're busy with other mission-critical projects and put this request on the back burner, since it doesn't seem urgent. While responding to the request might not be an operational necessity, if you're routinely discounting the importance of requests from those higher up in the organization, you're leaving a bad impression. When in doubt, always put tasks assigned to you by managers at the top of your to-do list.

5. Being part of the rumor mill. When there's bad news to share or complaints to be made about situations at work, it's best not to be leading the talk at the water cooler. There's nothing wrong with having camaraderie with coworkers, but being associated with negative discussions makes you seem negative ? which won't please managers and can harm relationships at work.

6. Not heeding advice given by others. A receptionist in your department pulls you aside and mentions that you might want to get your activity reports into your boss more promptly because it's becoming an issue. Instead of taking the tip, you figure she doesn't understand the demands of being a programmer and you make no changes. A week later your manager is criticizing your tardy activity reports. Remember, if people feel compelled enough to offer professional advice, chances are it's serious and worth giving careful consideration.

As you start off the new year, it's the ideal time to evaluate your career and whether you're doing all you can to be successful. Make sure your own actions aren't derailing new opportunities from coming your way