Category Archives: Functional Skills

Building a Positive Culture – the no jerk zone

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A very common question from managers is, “How do I build a positive, supportive, productive culture in my company?” This seems like a very abstract objective until you face up to some of the negative behaviors that can be found in many companies. When you identify these behaviors, and they are not hard to notice, you are then presented with an important opportunity to improve the culture and set a better standard of behavior. But, this requires you to be forthright and take action.

Here is an example. “What do I do with an employee who is disruptive, disrespectful, in short, a jerk?” Frequently this question concerns an employee who is perceived by the manager as very productive or a key player in the organization.

One of the first steps to take is to clearly evaluate the true costs of having this person in the organization. Jerks are like zones of repulsion that disrupt work all around. People avoid communicating, or worse, working directly with a jerk. Many people will have a hard time not reacting with their own negative behavior to fend off jerks. When you add all of this up, jerks are always a negative, no matter how individually productive they may seem to be.

(Before going on to the next steps, review your company personal policy carefully concerning disciplining employees and conditions for termination. You want to be sure to follow these procedures carefully. )

So, what to do? The first step is to confront the jerk. This is best done by direct observation and immediate feedback. Wait for the negative behavior to be demonstrated and immediately take the person aside to a private space and indicate to them that this kind of behavior will no longer be tolerated. Do not engage in a colloquy or argument. This is a policy statement, not an invitation to a discussion.

To be honest, you take this step, rather than just dismissing the person, because it is the right thing to do, not because there is much hope for reforming the bad behavior of an inveterate jerk. You are doing this because it is sound human resource management practice and because it is sound interpersonal behavior. Good management of people demands observing real behavior and taking corrective action immediately. And, surprise, surprise, sometimes better behavior breaks out!

Now, you must be ready to act. Sometimes, once a jerk is confronted about their behavior they will in fact make good faith efforts to change. If you see this, be supportive and provide immediate corrective direction when the person falls back toward the bad behavior. On the other hand, confronting a jerk may just as well cause them to flee, to quit. Be ready for this and have a replacement, or backup, in the wings. Finally, true jerks will revert to their natural behavior shortly and, without repentance, continue along. Follow your company’s procedures for terminating the employee closely. If you feel that the employee is unsalvageable, do the right thing for you, the company, and the employee, insist on termination not a transfer to another department or division.

You will be amazed at how others in your company will react to your handling this situation so well. They will know that you are not going to tolerate disruptive, disrespectful behavior and they will feel positively that you handled the situation with respect and care. So, you have taken a clear step towards a positive, supportive, productive culture in your company. There is much more to be done, nevertheless, you have taken a highly visible step.

There is a great article about this topic in The McKinsey Quarterly (May 2007), Building the civilized workplace: Nasty people don’t just make others feel miserable; they create economic problems for their companies. by Robert Sutton (opens in new window).

“Management Notes – the blog” Goes Mobile

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Last night I attended a meeting of the Web Innovators Group here in Cambridge. Among the new businesses that caught my eye was Mofuse.com a mobile site creation company.

As I have been learning, the next phase of the Web is emerging on hand held devices. There may be 600-700 million PCs in the world, but there are already over 2 billion cell phones and the forecast is for 3 billion soon. Most of this growth will occur in the developing world. With the next generation of devices looking more like mobile computers, this means that most human beings will, in one generation, go from no telephone service to full-blown access to everything on the Web. I will restrain myself from further imaginings about the impac this will have on how and what we do.

Looking shorter term, I clicked over to the Mofuse website and hooked up my Management Notes blog to their mobile site creator. If you have a suitable mobile device you can now read this blog on the go at: http://businesscoach.mofuse.mobi/

I do not have a suitable mobile device so I am waiting for feedback from this distant universe.

If Content Is King on the Web? – What Are the Best Modes of Communication?

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If you are trying to build traffic and adhesion for your business on the web, “content” is central to any strategy. But, what is this “content”? How do you decide what the content should be?

The answer to this question probably lies in some basic thinking about who your target customers are.

Jaffe Customer RolesIn addition it would be useful to think of the many ways in which you might communicate with your customers. On the web you have a lot of modes in which to play. As suggested by the excerpt ( shown to the left) from Joseph Jaffe’s Join the Conversation, a consumer can play a range of roles. So, in thinking about content, it may prove most productive to engage a parent of middle school children (in the Participant and Community faces a la Jaffe) in a conversation about barriers to better school performance in web community using blogging, bulletin board, or wiki techniques. Here your content expertise in middle school eduction can shine through in the discussion. And, you might even learn something about how parents view these issues.

A future departure for thinking about how to target and communicate with customers on the web is to lay Jaffe’s contribution of the Six Cs mentioned in an earlier blog article (opens new window) on top of his “Many Faces” idea show here.

Book Review – Join The Conversation: how to engage marketing-weary consumers with the power of community, dialogue and partnership by Joseph Jaffe

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In my continuing search to understand more about web-marketing, I have now read through Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-Weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue and Partnership by Joseph Jaffe (Hoboken, NJ: Joseph Wiley & Sons, 2007). This book is written in a somewhat tiring style of froth, frenzy, and chattiness. Nevertheless, it adds further fuel to the notion that the traditional marketing categories of the four Ps (in case you have forgotten: Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) are now quite outmoded. In place of the old tradition, Jaffe introduces the “Six Cs”: Content, Context, Customization, Community, Conversation, Commerce. Unfortunately, Jaffe does not develop the ideas behind Contecxt and Customization with any real vigor and in the end it is not clear even what these Cs mean.

Content is King

Content that is real, meaningful, and fresh in the eyes of the visitors to your website is king. There is a consensus that content is king. And, for most companies generating content is really hard work.

Jaffe spends most of his energies around Conversation, what is it, how to get it started, how to participate (listen), and how to build relationships on it. There are some good lists of characteristics of conversations and Dos and Don’ts.

Book Review – Marketing to the Social Web by Larry Weber

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Marketing and selling over the Web has been a required activity for almost every business I have been involved in for over ten years. In the last couple of years, the web has continued to evolve and now in some undeniably novel ways. The most notable are the appearance and enormous growth of “communities” or “social networks”. It is clear that the existing web marketing paradigm that focuses on pay-for-click advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) is being enormously enriched by the opportunities presented by social or community oriented environments. This later change requires real shifts in the approach and objectives for marketing on the web.

Just as I have begun to attempt my own synthesis of these changes, I have come upon Marketing to the Social Web: how digital communities build your business by Larry Weber (John Wiley & Sons, New York 2007). The author has extensive experience in the Web world and provides more than enough examples and anecdotes to illustrate his case.

The basic argument of the book is that the interactivity of the web is now producing completely new ways in which companies and customers can interact.

Weber develops seven steps to marketing on the social web:

  1. Observe – see where, what and how your customers do in the social web. Check out blogs, conversations, relevant content, etc.
  2. Recruit – enlist core participants who want to talk about your company, its products and services.
  3. Evaluate platforms – which platforms are best to reach your marketing objectives – blogs, reputation aggregators, social networks?
  4. Engage – this is all about developing and maintaining content – user generated and yours.
  5. Measure – develop metrics relevant to the objectives and measure.
  6. Promote – connect with other communities in the web.
  7. Improve.

Weber provides lots of discussion and anecdotes to illustrate each of these seven steps. Then he adds four strategies to expanding the reach of marketing on the social network – (1) SEO, (2) blogs, (3) e-communities, and (4) social networks.

This book is a solid contribution to understanding and participating in the ongoing development of the web world. This is esepcially so for creating a more productive balance between traditional web marketing, pay-for -click advertising and SEO, and the emerging world of the social web.

Managers: Don’t Answer That Question! – part two

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In the previous posting, I wrote about how managers are chronically undermining whatever formal delegation systems are in place and enabling dependency all around them.

One of the reasons managers answer so many questions from their staff and others in the company is that they fear that if they don’t, then really important issues and opportunities may be addressed incorrectly or sub optimally.

A key to getting out of the round of endless questions while still being involved in important ones, is to set some boundaries, some limits.

This might sound like this: “I want you to develop three solutions before you come to ask me a question. Ask your colleagues for help if you get stuck. But, in the case of the following critical customer, Immense Big Machines, Inc., I want to be informed of any issues involving delay or cost overruns in Project XZY.”

With the right boundaries set around your new rule, you can still be assured of being involved where you need to be.

Finally, to make your staff and others in the company comfortable about taking responsibility for solving problems and answering their own questions, you need to have environment in which mistakes are expected and dealt with positively. Remember, if you are not making mistakes, you are doubtless doing very little and learning not at all. Mistakes need to be analyzed and the lessons learned. Perhaps the only rule about mistakes is that they should not be repeated.

Note that this skill, “Don’t Answer That Question!” is a great precursor to grasping the opportunities for controlling your time. More discussion about this in my entry: Seizing Your Time – the first step in time management.