Entries Tagged 'Entrepreneurship' ↓

I just love this article written by CATHY L. GREENBERG & JOHANNA DILLON. This is very much what I have been trumpeting through my work career and still is by signing my email ‘be happy’.

Last thursday,after some 8 years, I revisited Rogers House, the place I have toiled for decades. I had the joy of meeting  some old colleages and be reminded of the days where we were a happy group and enjoying benefits for us and the owners.

How eventful, when today my heart is filled with joy as I celebrate the day when our Lord Jesus has risen from his tomb, signifying the victory of life over death for all mankind. As an Easter gift I would like to share this with you.

Any company can profit from a natural resource it already has—happiness. The secret is to engage your best talent through whole-brain function to overcome fear with appreciation. It’s teachable and transferable. Use happiness to improve performance—and deliver profit-providing useable insights.

Whole-Brain Function

Think of something that makes you smile—for example, praise from a trusted mentor. Now, think of something that makes you frown—for example, your mentor goes away from your life tomorrow. She is your favorite co-worker, the one who believes in you and pushes you to be your best, but she’s dying and leaving work today. Hold a visual of your time together and the threat of her leaving forever, both at the same time. Can you balance joy and fear in your mind?

If you say yes, I won’t believe you. It’s impossible to feel fear and appreciation simultaneously. You can’t feel hope or appreciation while experiencing sorrow, guilt, or anger. You can’t experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously. Whole-brain function is required to make decisions, but first you must engage your emotional state before taking action. Unfortunately, you will only use that portion of your brain that is available; in many cases, that state is fear, anxiety, or grief. In the best of all worlds, it’s appreciation—an attitude of gratitude.

As a behavioral scientist, executive coach, and business consultant, I want everyone to know that being a happy company is the single greatest transformation a company can take to retain talent, improve its competitive position and top-line revenue.

Let’s start with five HAPIE principles:

• H – Heartfelt, humble, inclusive, inspirational, innovative leadership
• A – Adaptive, enthusiastic, emotionally intelligent employees
• P – Profit for all who contribute to return on people (ROP), in addition to ROI
• I – Invigorated stakeholders, vendors, and clients who market the company
• E – Engaged, constructive, community partners who share their success

From these five traits emerge a set of behaviors that create a positive, transformational climate of inspiration and happiness. When applied together, they pave the way for a culture of appreciation or a Happy Company Climate.

Happy Organizations

Few leaders understand the importance of engaging energy like “happiness”. In a hard-nosed, numbers-based business, they misinterpret happiness to be a time-waster that doesn’t support bottom-line results. Cynics imagine everyone singing “Kumbaya.”

Here’s the truth.

• Corporate happiness is a deep commitment felt when people engage their sense of purpose while contributing to a fulfilling corporate mission.
• Happy companies see reality through a positive mindset, even in adversity.
• It perceives the market as a place of abundance with many opportunities.
• Great leaders choose optimism over pessimism because a positive culture inspires creative, pragmatic approaches and draws out the best in people.
• Honesty pervades a happy company, infusing it with personal respect, appreciation, and trust and contributing to business success.
• Every stakeholder and community respects and appreciates happy companies because of their constructive force that enhances the quality of life.

Happy companies create optimal conditions that enable the ultimate engagement of our mission at work. They are best prepared to succeed long term. Everyone wants to work in a profitable, happy company.

The Truth Really Hurts

Why do few companies apply these principles and achieve “happiness = profit”? They focus on reacting to problems and fear, which blocks their ability to engage happiness factors.

Most companies are only vaguely aware of their fear-based state because they spend more time trying to focus their energy on solving problems rather than building on the success of their strengths. Management does not know how unhappiness severely hurts performance. Why? Because they lack skills to perceive, measure or change behaviors known as happiness factors to bolster success, or how unhappiness causes failure. Leaders of unhappy companies know they are struggling and get stuck. Despite their best efforts, they can’t match their competitors. Employees work harder, even though they try to work smarter—”the faster I work, the behinder I get!” Unhappy companies only sustain positive energy for short bursts (during a crisis) but fear poisons productivity with politics.

The best leaders know you can’t run a successful, dynamic business based on fear. Fear prevents people from contributing their best and hurts profits through increased absenteeism, turnover, and redundancy.

In many organizations, fear is a dominant management technique.

• We fear missing a deadline, losing a sale, or receiving unfair treatment (even if we make the numbers).
• We induce fear based on unknowns in business; we fear many things—our competitors, their high-quality or low-price alternative, missing profit projections, even successful growth that may be too much to handle.
• We have financing fears: of interest rates, bond rates, exchange rates or a downturn in the capital markets.
• We have conflicting fears: management fears spiraling wages, healthcare, and possible strikes; labor fears abusive management and low raises.
• We even fear weather that might disrupt our production, our delivery, or our customers’ buying patterns.
• And some fears haunt us all: terrorism and the cost of war.

Fear has many immeasurable costs—talent, wellness, and energy. Yet, fear is everywhere. It so saturates our spirit and cultures that we accept it as “normal.” But does fear motivate us to perform better? No. Fear is a limited motivator because it triggers a state of activated stress which results in a limited set of responses: freeze, flight, or fight. These old-brain behaviors limit whole-brain function. Often the reaction is fear-based hostility, a primal, reactive reflex. Fear is great for split-second survival, but it thwarts long-term prosperity because it “short-circuits” higher thought, shutting down the part of the brain that enables us to see possibility. Fear drains both the individual and the franchise of energy and imagination. Instead of motivating us, fear depresses our spirit of innovation and can even kill us physically through stress-related illnesses like high blood pressure, heart disease, alcoholism and diabetes.

What’s the good news? We can beat our wiring, even though fear and imagination still operate in different parts of our brain. Fear-based management behaviors mimic our caveman ancestors; biologically the behaviors are identical. Our primal emotions are the same, since fear trumps reason.

Try this exercise. When we see a lion about to pounce is our fear-based reaction healthy? Are we dreaming of a peaceful coexistence with nature? Think again. Those in the past who pondered such crises often died.

But if fear wins every time it is activated, then in today’s world, where wild animals wear suits, live at desks with access to unlimited information, commute on planes, and join boards and committees, how can we overcome our biology?

Happy people and healthy companies think before they react and apply enabling coaching techniques to explore and engage the best in everyone. They learn to recognize fear and apply HAPIE principles of positive psychology. Primal emotions, while required for survival, short-circuit the higher emotions needed for performance as a competitive weapon in the war for talent. Emotions and thought are closely entwined. While fear can drive us down, optimism can elevate us because it reshapes behavior and enables us to bond, find strength in numbers, feel appreciation, achieve creativity, and create a sum greater than our parts.

Happy companies succeed because people engage using positive, reinforcing emotions that maximize their diverse strengths. Their people constructively work together, find meaning and satisfaction in their work, and deliver high-quality service and products that positively contribute to their franchise and society. Profits follow naturally. Now, you can see now how Happiness = Profit!

I am invited to  a HR seminar on next Friday  3rd April at the Hilton hotel. Some 150 professionals will flock to discuss the challenges of HR in Mauritius for the coming years with the background of greater mobility of the work force and the economic and financial adjustments of the world. I am told that the liberations would be pod casted live.

Perhaps  one of the main theme in HR could be the hiring of people. Matching people to jobs which have been clearly defined.

Stephen Covey had much to say with his laws of hiring in my work active days.  The fundamentals  are still valid,one needs to adjust and supplement  Stephen Covey’s ideas  with today’s reality. I am a great believer of  “you are allowed to copy me provided you improve on me” as we shall not start reinvent the wheel all over again.

10 Laws of Hiring

How do you break those bad hiring habits? Here are my 10 laws of hiring.

1. First, realize that hiring is more important than training. Most executives hire on the basis of urgent need. Because they desire most earnestly to fill the position or solve a pressing problem, they believe most easily that virtually anybody will do. They read resumes and interview candidates with eyes and ears of hope, but hope, writes John Updike, “reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.” They don’t explore in depth the complete track record of that person. They don’t find out the pattern of that person’s motivations. And when they don’t pay the price in the hiring process, they pay ten times the price later with the problems that come down the road. They may then try to train, mentor, coach, and counsel people in an attempt to compensate for bad hiring decisions.

2. Pay the price to know each other well. Let them know you and the mission of your organization, so they have to make a decision before you ever hire them. Take the time, even if it takes a few weeks, to go in depth with the person. Let them know you and your vision and mission. They need to feel in harmony long before they make the decision. Also, you need to know them, particularly in the gap areas of their lives—those things they don’t write in their resumes. Pay the price to get to know these people. Don’t be in a rush.

3. Start with the person’s early life, and ask him or her, “What is it that you did very well that you loved doing?” You might ask, “What did you really enjoy doing when you were in grade school?” “What did you do well?” “What made you feel good about yourself?” “What did you really love about your childhood?” “Tell me a little about the paper route you loved.” When he or she talks about the paper route, you may discover this person is very proactive and took much initiative. Ask, “How did you collect the money you received?” “Did your parents drive you around?” “Did you get yourself up early in the morning?” “What did you do well that you loved doing, starting from your early years?” Then ask about high school and college, and you will see what the pattern of their life has been.

4. Study the life pattern, and you will begin to discover their deepest motivations. You may find, for example, that the pattern is one of independence, not one of interdependence. That teaches you a lot. It may be a pattern of self-glorification rather than contribution, or the opposite. When you see eyes light up, you begin to realize this is what excites this person. When you ask him or her about high school, college, graduate school and first jobs, you begin to see patterns that persist over time. Now, people can break those habit patterns if they are sufficiently self-aware, have strong desire, exercise their talents, set themselves on a new path, and surround themselves with a strong social support group. Still, it’s not easy.

5. Determine if the person’s habit patterns, motivations, values, and lifestyle fit well with the culture of your organization. Generally, I find that those motivational patterns persist in the future. You can tell if people are independent or interdependent, selfish or service oriented. You can begin to see the totality of their lives. You can then better determine if they will fit well with the culture of your organization.

6. Allow team leaders to hire and fire. To take the time to hire right in every position at every level would be difficult, if not impossible, unless you allow team leaders to hire their own people. The personnel department or human resource department shouldn’t do any hiring. They should do the announcing, screening and processing. The people who should be hiring are the team leaders. Candidates should come before the teams, present themselves, and get to know each team member. When people approach me for a job, I tell them, “I don’t do the hiring. You’ve got to sell yourself to these people, and they are going to get to know you.” Even when my personal friends approach me, I say: “You have to go through the process.” Most of them are not hired. It’s also the team that does the firing. If some people aren’t pulling their oar, it’s the team that throws them overboard, not the helmsman.

7. Seek to build a complementary team in an interdependent culture. If you are trying to develop an interdependent culture, you don’t want to hire independent-minded people because the fit isn’t there. You have to decide, “What do I need and who do I want on my team?” The natural tendency is to clone yourself rather than to set up a complementary team where one person’s strengths compensate for your deficiencies. Since likeness attracts, you clone yourself, and your strength becomes your weakness, rather than saying, “Where am I strong, and what are my deficiencies? I’ve got to hire for strength in my areas of weakness. That means I need to hire people who are different from me. That means they are going to do things differently. Am I emotionally prepared to go in that direction?” Most entrepreneurs are not. But entrepreneurs and corporate managers alike must learn: don’t clone, complement. That takes a lot of emotional strength, and a lot of self-awareness.

8. If you must choose one among many good candidates, invite those who aren’t hired to keep trying. If all six hiring choices are good, you say to the other five, “Keep us in mind. Keep at it. Now is not the right time, but come back in six months.” When people make a second, third, fourth, or even fifth attempt to get in, they usually do. That’s a measure of the power of their motivation. People who are highly motivated usually get the job they want. They begin to adapt themselves; they learn the culture; and they learn how to make an effective presentation.

9. Avoid being shocked and surprised at entry or exit by having clear criteria. Train the people who do the hiring to use the same criteria you were hired under. Set guidelines and criteria for team leaders to work with when they are hiring their own people. The criteria should come from your mission statement. If the culture buys into that mission statement, then the criteria is written in people’s minds and hearts. Our own Client Services Group is a good illustration of this. They have inside themselves these criteria for hiring.

Also, departure should not surprise or shock an organization, yet it often does because managers fail to practice preventative hiring, nor do they anticipate turnover and attrition. So, they allow a key position to go vacant for six months. The more all members of the culture have the criteria of the mission statement inside them, the less shocked they are with hiring and firing decisions. The less members of the culture have those criteria, the more shocked and dismayed they are when someone departs. They wonder “What is happening around here?” Then they wait for the next shoe to drop. “When is it going to happen to me?” They feel guilty or depressed about the person being laid off—and that usually robs them of their highest level of motivation and contribution.

The more all team members share the criteria of world-class performance against world-class standards, the fewer people are shocked when someone leaves the organization. The more the criteria is based on performance rather than the politics, on principles rather than the principals, the more congruent your hiring and firing is with the concept of principle-centered leadership.

10. Create a covenant, not just a contract, and have a few ceremonies. Remember: when hiring, you’re creating an economic marriage, hopefully one based on covenant, not contract. In a covenant relationship, both parties give 100 percent instead of 50-50. In a covenant relationship, there are really two decisions: the decision of one party to hire, and the decision of the other party to be hired. That produces a powerful covenant.

In a typical employment contract, only one party (the person who is doing the hiring) is making a decision and commitment; and so both parties feel that the relationship could end at any time. The relationship is transactional, not transforming.

Also, when entering into a covenant relationship, you expect to pass through some sort of ceremony, symbolism, initiation, or rite of passage. Consider: what ceremony would best symbolize the “covenant” that comes with joining this organization? For example, many churches baptize their new members; many clubs have an initiation ceremony; many schools have an orientation; many families have a celebration with the birth of a child. In some way the new person gets inaugurated into the society.

Being Hired Right

The proactive person is smart about being hired right. To be hired right means knowing full well what you are coming into, having common expectations, and hammering out clear performance and compensation criteria. Ambiguous expectations lead to disappointment, because people act in good faith in the beginning, but as events transpire, and expectations are violated, they get into an accusatory spirit, defensiveness, and adversarialism. Then they look for evidence to support their claims, and, of course, they find the evidence. It’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To clarify the expectations up front, create a win-win performance agreement, a mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas. First, identify specific desired results in terms of quantity and quality, targets and timelines, allowing people to select the best methods and means. Second, set guidelines in terms of principles—go light on policies and procedures to allow for individual initiative and judgment. Third, identify available resources, including yourself, to assist people in meeting goals. Fourth, define accountability—performance standards along with evaluation criteria (usually a combination of measurement, 360-degree feedback, and discernment). Fifth, agree on consequences: rewards, compensations, and possible punishments.

Take the time and make the effort to hammer out those guidelines and the criteria for assessment. Before you make the decision to be hired, get to know the organization—its leaders and its vision, mission, and values—and know how you will be evaluated. Then think about it; talk it over with your spouse, mentor, or advisor. Ask yourself, “Am I really prepared to give myself to this?” If the answer is yes, you come onboard well prepared to succeed.

The hiring process should be one of the best proofs of the win-win spirit of your organization.

I am lucky to have been exposed to on-line communications for over three decades. The airline industry as far as the early sixties communicated on line: first with telexes then later through a network of computer terminals. This form of communication is quite distinctive to the normal written letter and mail mode. Communicating through emails which is now the most common way requires different reflexes. Texting and SMS are invading our communications sphere. What are the rules to obey? Do you consider the usefulness of the message sent to your addressees?

This recent article, entitled ‘Mere Words’ from the web highlights some aspects we have to watch out in particular with the internet.

Mere Words:

How to improve your online communication

by Barbara Neal Varma

You’re trying to figure out why your wife’s brother just sent you a flaming e-mail-at work, no less-when a message pops up from your boss with only question marks in the subject line, (that can’t be good), your daughter texts you to ask for permission to stay overnight with her “BFF,” whatever that is, and you’ve got close to 200 e-mails all with red priority flags like ants on your screen. You rub your gritty, glare-strained eyes and wonder: When did simply communicating get to be so hard?

You’re not alone. With today’s popularity in e-mailing, blogging and texting, more than half of our conversations are written instead of verbal. While convenient, experts say confusion can easily occur when the usual visual cues such as facial expression are not present. “It’s easier to spot signals when meeting someone face-to-face,” says Dr. Will Reader of Sheffied Hallam University in his recent study on online social networks. “It’s harder to spot signals online.”

So how do we get our messages safely across the virtual divide? Follow these easy steps to make your electronic communication more clear and comprehensible.

At Work

Get to the Point – Ever receive an e-mail so long it made your Starbucks turn cold? Or do you stop reading after one paragraph? Studies show that the attention span of online readers is significantly shorter than those reading printed material. “In research on how people read Web sites, we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across,” says Web page usability expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen. He recommends using half the word count or less than conventional writing when composing electronic messages.

Another good habit to practice: write in active, not passive voice; “Jill promoted Jack” instead of “Jack was promoted.” The latter begs the question, by whom? Busy business folks don’t have time for mysteries.

Begin your message with your main points: your question, your answer, your researched information then fill in the details behind instead of starting with a yawner of a preamble. Think of any follow-up questions your recipients may have and address them in your original message to avoid a rush of return e-mails.

Get it Right – Every social scientist or hiring official will tell you within the context of face-to-face communication, appearance means everything. Political correctness aside, people tend to form quick impressions based on others’ outward appearance, the golden rule for every dress-for-success seminar. Don’t let typos or sloppy grammar ruin your good image online. Remember, your e-mail has the potential to be shared with every other colleague and client in the company. Avoid leaving a legacy of cyber errors with your signature at the bottom. Don’t depend on Spell Check to catch every spelling mistake. Some misspellings make perfectly spelled words by themselves and, therefore, don’t generate a red squiggly line alert.

Keep it Professional – Hey, no one likes to be YELLED AT. Using all caps in your message means you are shouting, and if your recipient is the company vice president or an important client, he or she might not appreciate your uppity tone. Remember, your readers are not seeing you on their computer monitor, they are seeing your words; guard them and your reputation well. “My e-mail is a piece of professional communication that speaks to the person who wrote it,” says Human Resources Director Diana Clark during a recent career readiness seminar. “Don’t use slang,” she advises. “Don’t use capital letters. Don’t use inappropriate dialogue with a co-worker. Somebody else is going to see that, then it goes to the boss.”

And save the winsome daisy background and jumping graphics for your MySpace page. There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no room for emoticons (smiley faces and their winking cousins) in business e-mail. Using cartoons to punctuate your prose just looks, well, cartoonish.

At Home

Think Before You Send – “Susan” stared at the computer screen, not believing her eyes, but there it was: a flaming e-mail from her brother listing everything he felt she’d done wrong regarding their elderly mother’s care. His words were harsh; he said things she had no idea he was thinking, let alone willing to say. But that’s the point: he hadn’t said them at all. He’d e-mailed her instead.

Social psychologists liken these e-mail eruptions to the “road rage” phenomenon when otherwise calm folks suddenly become avenging drivers, exhibiting symptoms of outrage and anger not consistent with their everyday behavior. The key and catalyst in both road rage and e-rage is the perceived sense of privacy and power the car/computer conveys.

So what to do if you are on the other side of a hostile e-mail? First, like in any good emergency, stay calm. Your options are to respond in kind (tempting…), respond with calmer words to explain your side of things, or ignore the e-mail but pay attention to the sender and give them a call. You might discover there was more emotion to the message than sincerity and with a verbal conversation, you can better figure out the core problem. If the message is truly an attack on you, your family, or your golden retriever, simply delete it without reply and perhaps restrict your interaction. You’ve learned something about this individual and how they prefer to handle stress-by venting at you.

Be Versatile – Sure, you may yearn for the good old days when talking to someone meant they were actually in the same room, but with today’s variety of virtual communication, you might just as easily have a conversation with your friend in Timbuktu as you do with your next door neighbor. Instant messages, Web blogs, Facebook, MySpace; today’s technology has advanced our ability to stay in touch almost to the point of Star Trek’s famous “Beam me up, Scotty” communicators. Cell phones, especially, have become the new communicator to the current generation of teens and twenty-somethings, bringing forth a whole new cyber-lingo with enough acronyms and abbreviations to seem more code than conversation.

Take a computer course, learn how to use the latest e-mail programs and read that instruction manual for your cell phone that you’d tucked away thinking you already know how to use a phone, right? As you become more proficient at the many and varied ways to communicate today, you will not only expand your circle of friends and family ties, you’ll be opening up opportunities for connecting with others on a world-wide scale.

Practice Safe Text – On the one hand, e-mail lets us be ourselves. There’s no worry about spinach stuck in teeth or a lock of hair out of place. Men don’t even need to shave first. For those interested in meeting a potential dating prospect online, all this lack of posing and pretense makes e-mail conversations particularly personal: It’s just you and your chat partner with nothing between you but mere words.

But it’s that very bubble of easy intimacy that makes the Internet a virtual land of opportunity for imposters. Every year thousands of Internet users fall victim to identity theft, lulled like Cyrino’s Roxanne into believing that the message sender is who they say they are: a long lost friend, an enticing new acquaintance. A new-found love.

If you’re meeting new people online, practice the art of privacy until you are sure he or she (do we really know which?) is who they write they are. Don’t disclose your shoe size, your favorite American Idol candidate or your social security number to someone you don’t know well, and communicate via computer only in those contexts where you feel safe. Add a little restraint to your online chat and don’t fall for good-looking Subject lines suddenly appearing in your inbox. The person behind the prose might just well be a wolf in e-clothing.

Creating a sense of ownership has been a gained battle for me at Rogers.In 1986 the idea was mooted following a strategic brain storming with Eric Mafat of  the planning  department and the plan was rolled out in 1988.

I recall articles written by Bob Nelson I read, which encapsulated my road map to enhance the sense of ownership at all levels. It was thrilling working thereon and I had great satisfaction deploying the strategy. The guys acted as if they owned the SBU’s where they were working. This was particularly satisfactory when the large Air Cargo organisation was reorganised in autonomous smaller SBU’s and smaller SSU’s – support service units.

My motto was small is magic, and small is empowering. SME.

I regretted that later  after I left this division, the new management policy was based on economy of scale.

Eight Factors of Ownership

We have identified eight factors for creating a sense of ownership. These elements empower and motivate people in any size or type of organization, although they are perhaps easier to cultivate in smaller organizations.

1. Having the thrill of the flame. When workers are highly connected to the products, processes and services of the organization, they are “close to the flame.” They have a passion and excitement about their jobs and what the organization is trying to do. This is easiest to do when all employees can easily understand, relate to, and agree with what the organization is trying to achieve. Thus, it becomes important to have clear, simple and widely communicated goals.

When a business is started, this passion exists for the entrepreneurs. As the company grows and as the management and ownership of the company are separated, it becomes more difficult to keep the flame blazing. A growing organization becomes a more diverse and complicated entity, due in part to having more people, locations and products.

In large organizations, the connection to the flame must be systematically made through communication and delegation. Work units need to be small and autonomous so that people understand how they fit into the organization and so that they feel they play an integral role in the company.

2. Understanding personal impact on profit and loss. Every person in the organization needs to understand how his or her job and department relate to the profit and loss of the organization. This involves knowing how you directly or indirectly help the organization to generate income—that is, how what you are doing relates to how the company self-perpetuates itself through further earnings. Understanding the current profit-and-loss nature of the business gives employees a sense of pride when they know they can do things better or cut expenses and thus make more money for the organization.

To give people a greater sense of profit and loss, make sure they know the financial priorities of the organization and use that information as a criteria for making decisions. Emphasize current data over year-end data. Having timely information allows employees to have influence more frequently and to feel more direct involvement in the business.

3. Having autonomy and independence. People feel autonomous when they feel supported in what they do, recognized for who they are, and treated with respect. Individuals have the right to live their lives and be themselves in the organization. They have the right to do what they need to do to be effective and productive without being constrained—as long as they do not negatively affect job performance, client relationships, or invade other people’s rights.

Related to independence is the degree of risk that comes from being given responsibility and authority to make things happen. In the best-run companies, you can take risks. There are no rigid guidelines, only parameters for getting things done. There is room for you to innovate and come up with new ideas and an open environment for listening to new ideas.

Risk is an important element of an ownership system. In new and small companies, people take a lot of risks. There isn’t a lot of “covering up” or systems in place to minimize risk. People are encouraged to take appropriate risks to get their jobs done.

4. Being self-reliant. Related to autonomy and independence is self-reliance. People who have a sense of ownership have a lot of control over themselves that extends beyond the organization. They tend not to be guided by reams of rules and regulations, but instead prefer to have self-responsibility. They are treated as adults, with a sense of fairness and equity by the management of the organization, yet also with a distinct individuality.

Well managed organizations encourage employees to have more control, accountability and responsibility for what they do. In such companies, people are motivated to understand the programs, products and processes and to assume more self-accountability and responsibility—and thus become more self-reliant.

5. Having pride of association. When pride exists in the organization, people are more committed to what they are doing. When pride exists, people understand what the organization stands for, its values and fair dealings; they feel highly committed to what they are doing; they have enough information to do it well; they are accountable for their actions; and they look forward to going to work everyday.

While such pride is particularly evident in organizations where you can see and experience the product, it may also be evident in service organizations. Nordstrom, for example, demonstrates high commitment to the client through outstanding service and employee empowerment. Nordstrom’s employees are expected to use their best judgment to help the organization reach its stated goal of providing exceptional service to every customer.

6. Being able to influence others. Having the ability to influence others means that you can make things happen both inside and outside the organization. You develop a personal network based upon your ability to influence people—not just because of your official organizational title or position.

Your ability to influence determines, in large part, what you can get done. In your department, for example, your ability to positively influence others to be excited about achieving the department’s goals is a significant part of effective team building. Outside of your immediate area, there is a network in the organization of who you are, what you have accomplished and how you make things happen. This serves both as a means to obtain results, but also as a way to develop positive working relationships that will be of further value to you in the future. Outside of the organization, you have a resource and contact base that you can draw upon to help meet organizational needs.

7. Having personal accountability. Personal accountability means defining your job in such a way that you are accountable for it; you can take pride in it; and you are very responsible for it. Getting work done is driven by an internal forces and motivations when it is very clear who is responsible for results. Risk is allowed and encouraged because individuals are held accountable for their actions. Yet penalties within the organization are consistent with risk taking. Individuals who fail at various tasks have to be handled carefully so that there is not a nitpicking about mistakes. The overall perception in the organization must be that risk taking is encouraged and that the individual is still valued even if he or she fails at a task.

8. Recognizing individuals and giving credit. If you want to build a sense of ownership in your organization, start recognizing people individually for outstanding achievement. Since you want to encourage workers to have high association with the organization, recognize them when they excel. Recognition is best when it is individualized. Specifically use the person’s name in a group setting, write individual letters of recognition and make specific references in communication media.

Recognizing people in print is important because is it so very personalized. In the movie industry, for example, everyone involved on a movie is mentioned in the film’s credits. An innovative form of individual recognition is found at Esprit in their use of employees to model clothes. By the photos are the names of the employees and their job in the company.

In addition, organizational successes need to be celebrated in a corresponding manner to the size and level of the success. A new contract signing might serve as an ideal opportunity to gather everyone who assisted with making the contract possible for a thank-you lunch, whereas the exceeding of annual profit goals by the company might call for a day of off-site celebration by all employees.

Fresh from the press of T Printers, managed by my old pal Charles, I receive my copy of ‘Putting People First’ second book authored by the Mauritian born Canadian Kin Tue-Fee.

I went through the book the last day and found it to be an easy to read compendium of elements that any manager and any entrepreneur  should have. As far as I am concerned the content is not new, but the book is handy and worthwhile buying as it provides the owner the possibility of having at hand in the same document the essentials of managerial and leadership knowledge to perform in a work environment. I understand the book may serve as a memo of Kin Tue-Fee’s lectures and courses.

I had the privilege of meeting Kin on several occasions on his visits to the island. I recall vividly his address to the Rotary Club and his gift presentation to the Toastmasters club of Port Louis. Kin is a seasoned speaker and conducts seminars across the world.

Kin Tue-Fee was born in the beautiful tropical island of Mauritius. He now lives in Ottawa, Canada with his wife and three children.

Kin’s interest in the field of personal and professional management and development goes back about thirty years. In the pursuit of his self-enhancement, he has attended numerous conferences, seminars and workshops on management and leadership topics. In 1997, he published his first book: Become your best – Principles of personal management and development.

As an executive in the public service of Canada, he has acquired a wealth of experience and knowledge that he wants to share with supervisors, managers and leaders who are ready and willing to put people first and make the most of their employees’ potential. He spent the last ten years researching, studying, experimenting to prepare and write his first book.  His second book, just published, is entitled “Putting People First.”

As a coach and an educator, he intends to introduce this fascinating concept of putting people first to as many supervisors, managers and leaders as possible with respect, empathy and love.

I congratulate Kin for the work he has to put in for the production of the book bearing in mind that he is himself the Publisher, thus taking the challenge and burden of ensuring the success of the sales and marketing of the book. It is with great pride that I am introducing this publication to you my blog readers and recommend you to buy this Canadian product printed in Mauritius.

You probably saw on the newspapers that the Government of Mauritius has appointment a consultant to brand Mauritius. I record the last article on L’Express on the 5^th February 2009.

Who is this firm how do they operate? What is their track record?

We are now in the business of Nation Branding.

By definition, all emerging industries are very creative but also very chaotic, and it is hard to find the trend-setting individuals among the booming chaos. But at Nation-Branding we thought it would be interesting to end the 2008 year with a special feature with some names to a field which is not only rising, but is also somewhat surrounded by secrecy.

I found of the net a list of the 10 most influential nation building experts and our chosen expert is on the list.

Fiona Gilmore is one of the leading experts and authors on brands and branding. She co-founded Springpoint, a global brands and corporate identity consultancy, with its headquarters in London. In 2003 she founded the country-branding consultancy Acanchi and has worked in initiatives with the authorities in the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Zambia, Bahrain, the Isle of Man, Lebanon, Mauritius, Wales, Northern Ireland, Belfast, Britain, Hong Kong, and the Blue Mountains of Australia.

I am reading the publication of the repositioning of Spain by Fiona in 2001.

Most of the time, you get what you ask for? I wonder what was asked for in this case. What were the deliverables asked for by our government?

Let us hope for the best.

Was I being fair to my entourage? What is being fair to someone?

Treating your customer fairly? Do I  need to discriminate? How?

The following article has the advantage of questioning ourselves on the subject:

The Myth of Treating People Fairly and Equally

By Jeff Mowatt

I’ll just come right-out and say it. I believe that treating customers fairly and equally is a mistake. It’s unprofitable. It belittles customers and employees. And it’s unethical. There, I’ve said it.

Certainly, we should treat people fairly – but not equally. I’m not advocating some Orwellian decree that ‘some animals are more equal than others’. This has nothing to do with a customer’s value as a person. It has to do with bending so-called ‘rules’ to give exceptional customers the kind of unique service they deserve.

In my many years working as a consultant and trainer with dozens of companies and bureaucracies, it’s unfortunate that I continue to encounter employees who buy-in to the myth of the virtue of treating all customers equally. If this is the case in your organization, consider this scenario…

Imagine that as part of your daily routine, you stop into your local convenience store to buy a coffee and newspaper. The store employees know you by sight. One day you find yourself needing to change a $100 bill. You stop in, pick up a couple of items and pay for them with the hundred. The store has a policy that they don’t accept hundreds, so the cashier simply refuses you. You are fully aware that they make more than that much change every 15 minutes. You also know that when added-up, you’ve given them hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of business over the years. Yet they refuse to grant you this slight favor. How’s your customer loyalty now?

Refusing your $100 bill would have been an incredibly bad decision on the part of the cashier as well as the management who created the ‘rule’ that permits no exceptions for the store’s best customers. The problem is that by definition a ‘rule’ treats everyone equally – whether it’s fair or not.

What If We Treated Our Children This Way?

Imagine the consequences of a parent treating their six-year-old and seventeen-year-old equally. That would mean telling the younger child, “Make sure you are home from grade one by midnight!” Most people appreciate that it makes sense to treat children fairly. It would, however, be a mistake to treat them all equally, and apply the same rules regardless of their ages. That’s more than just a mistake; we might even call it immoral.

We Already Discriminate in the Workplace

There’s a certain irony to taking this approach to the workplace. The same individuals who assume that all customers should be treated equally, often have no objection whatsoever to the organization offering preferential parking and restroom facilities to customers with disabilities. Yet, that’s a blatant example of treating customers fairly but not equally. I don’t know of anyone who objects to organizations giving better parking spots to the disabled. Yet, every day we hear employees using inane statements like, “If I did that for you, I’d have to do it for everyone.”

The challenge for business owners and managers is providing the kind of training and authority that front-line employees need, so that they will make more appropriate on-the-spot decisions for customers.

The Truth About Word-Of-Mouth

“What happens when customers talk to each other?” That’s one of the most common concerns I hear from employees in my training sessions where we address this subject. They are afraid that if they accommodate one customer’s special request, then that customer will talk to other customers, and the employee will be pressured to do the same for everyone, which, of course, they can’t do. In other words, they’re going to have a lot of unhappy people out there if they accommodate special requests. This is the kind of convoluted logic that stems from the underlying belief in treating everyone equally (not necessarily fairly). Another way of putting it is: I’m afraid that if I provide an extra service for one customer (because we made an error or the customer does a lot of business with us), then I’m going to disappoint other customers whose circumstances don’t warrant the extra service. So to avoid disappointing some people, we’ll just make a rule that no one gets special treatment. That way, we’ll just disappoint everyone, including customers whose unique situation deserves extra service.

Customers understand the concept of fairness. If I’ve never been to a particular convenience store and suddenly walk in just to change a hundred-dollar bill, I’m not likely to get outraged when the employee explains that they don’t have enough change on hand so they can’t help me. If, on the other hand, I’m doing business there every day, I’m more likely to be upset if my store won’t make change for me when I know they make that much change every fifteen minutes. If they do make an exception for me because I’m a good customer, I’m not going to rush out, phone all my friends, and tell them, “Hey, my convenience store made change for me, and they don’t usually accept hundreds!” Customers rarely go out of their way to talk about good service. The occasion when customers share information about a business is when the service is bad. Bottom line: employees needn’t worry about possible negative ramifications of taking extra care of good customers. What they should be far more concerned about is the negative impact of treating all customers the same.

I was watching THE SECRET, DVD lent to me by a friend. It is about the law of attraction.

Any idea was it is? The movie was made based of the book authored by Ronda Byrne. It has to do with the power of Positive thinking. Whilst working ‘towards’ better mental strength is excellent on the other hand, as taught by my NLP experience, we require also to draw from the ‘away’ elements.

Cultivating positive thinking is great to maintain and develop one’s mental growth. How would you fend away the negativity that is all around?

*** Article: How to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Negative Emotions – By Judith Orloff, M.D. ***

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In my new book, “Emotional Freedom,” I emphasize the importance of learning how to stay centered in a stressful, highly emotionally charged world. Since emotions such as fear, anger, and frustration are energies, you can potentially “catch” them from people without realizing it. If you tend to be an emotional sponge, it’s vital to know how to avoid taking on an individual’s negative emotions or the free-floating kind in crowds. Another twist is that chronic anxiety, depression, or stress can turn you into an emotional sponge by wearing down your defenses. Suddenly, you become hyper-attuned to others, especially those with similar pain. That’s how empathy works; we zero in on hot-button issues that are unresolved in ourselves. From an energetic standpoint, negative emotions can originate from several sources. What you’re feeling may be your own; it may be someone else’s; or it may be a combination. I’ll explain how to tell the difference and strategically bolster positive emotions so you don’t shoulder negativity that doesn’t belong to you.

This wasn’t something I always knew how to do. Growing up, my girlfriends couldn’t wait to hit the shopping malls and go to parties, the bigger the better — but I didn’t share their excitement. I always felt overwhelmed, exhausted around large groups of people, though I was clueless why. “What’s the matter with you?” friends would say, shooting me the weirdest looks. All I knew was that crowded places and I just didn’t mix. I’d go there feeling just fine but leave nervous, depressed, or with some horrible new ache or pain. Unsuspectingly, I was a gigantic sponge, absorbing the emotions of people around me.

With my patients, I’ve also seen how absorbing other people’s emotions can trigger panic attacks, depression, food, sex and drug binges, and a plethora of physical symptoms that defy traditional medical diagnosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than two million Americans suffer from chronic fatigue. It’s likely that many of them are emotional sponges.

Here are some strategies from “Emotional Freedom” to practice. They will help you to stop absorbing other people’s emotions

Le manager agité est le titre de l’article du mois de Raymond Villancourt chez qui je suis abonné depuis des nombreuses années.

La recherche du calme et de compréhension est juste dans ce présent des remous de l’économie et du monde financier. Nous vivions des moments d’effervescence intense,  a quoi bon de courir dans tous les sens?

Composer avec le chaos ambiant. Soyons patient, en attendant que le nouveau paradigme apparaisse. L’eau est trouble, ce n’est pas le moment de s’agiter et de chercher son chemin, survivons et composons dans la situation actuelle. Je propose un repli de regard vers soi.  C’est un moment de mettre de l’ordre chez soi, d’augmenter sa productivité interne, de questionner son mode fonctionnement. Je n’ai aucune doute que les mécanismes économiques et financiers se transformeront et nous aurons à nous y ajusté. J’entrevois déjà des normes d’un monde plus écologique se mettre en place, plus égard vers une économie renouvelable.

Je vous recommande la lecture de son article et la visite de son site.

I recommend you to read an article from the Mc Kinsey Quarterly which retained my best attention. The article was very timely for me as I was reading the chapter relating to leadership style in ‘Pour quoi j’echoue en Management’ of Maurice Thevenet. The five dimensions of leadership explained in the article provided a visual summary for me.

‘Meaning, Managing energy, Engagement, Positive framing and Connecting’ are the five aspects that the leader of an organisation should look at continuously.

The four perquisites, i.e. Intelligence, tolerance for change, desire to lead, communications skills are required to have an effective impact on the organisation. Presence, belonging and resilience are the engines of the leadership.

I have my day today, ‘Maha Shivaratee’ holy day, with the reading of both this article and Maurice Thevenet books.