Sticky solutions to your everyday business challenges
Question: My company starts the year by assigning every employee 10 – 12 goals. We do a pretty good job of keeping on track with those for a couple of months before we start to derail. New projects come up. Client demands change. Or, the CEO just decides to take us in a new direction mid-year. By the end of the year, almost nothing on our performance review resembles what we did during the year. Do you have any suggestions for how to get out of this pattern? P.S. I’m the Director of HR!
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Welcome to the fourth issue of CEE News!
It’s that time of the year again. Just after Thanksgiving and a few weeks before Christmas. We can savor the memories of great food shared with family and friends without panicking about what gifts to get for them.
It’s also a good time to pause and look back on the year before diving headfirst into 2016. Before you get caught up in 2016 goals, take some time to deliberately reflect on where you are today. Here are a couple of quick tips to help you do so.
Appreciate the journey. If you’re stressing yourself out with a ...
Sticky solutions to your everyday business challenges
Queston: I manage a group of people who are mostly around my age, in our mid-30’s. We work long hours together and often go to dinner or drinks after work. Recently, over lunch, an older colleague told me to be careful about making friends with my staff. Am I crossing a line between being a manager and friend?
Answer: There was a time when it was considered best for managers to keep a personal distance from their employees. The school of thought was that friendship was a slippery slope to favoritism. Today, however, we ...
A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence
This section of the newsletter is where we usually focus on one business that is getting leadership right. This month, we are departing from that pattern to spotlight a group of businesses that chose to do something extraordinary this year – they refused to open on Thanksgiving.
In recent years, Black Friday mania has crept further and further into the Thanksgiving holiday. Some stores open at midnight while others open as early as 5:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Although holiday sales make up the lion’s share of annual ...
Welcome to the third issue of CEE News!
Once upon a time, the world was a more predictable, slower moving place. Most companies could operate effectively using the same structure created over 100 years ago to best suit our manufacturing economy. Employees were placed under managers, and managers under executives. Decisions came down from the top and action lived at the bottom—taking days, or sometimes years, to implement.
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Sticky solutions to your everyday business challenges
Question: My manager told me to let my team fail. I am reluctant to let that happen. I don’t want to disappoint our customers or demotivate my team. Do you have any suggestions for me?
Answer: When your manager tells you to “let people fail,” it’s likely meant to encourage you to empower your people, let go of the details, take a step back, and be willing to let your people mess up from time to time. If team members never get a chance to risk failure, you may be too protective of them. Failure can be a powerful ...
A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence
In May this year, Stephan Aarstol effectively doubled the per-hour earnings of every employee at his business, Tower Paddle Boards. Yet payroll didn't budge. Aarsol did this by exploiting the insight that, for startups, time is a more malleable resource than money. So instead of giving his employees salary raises, he reduced the company workday to five hours.
Aarstol, you may recall, is the guy who froze during his 2012 pitch on ABC's Shark Tank, but still walked off with $150,000 from Mark Cuban. Today, he and his team ...
A closer look at companies executing leadership excellence
In May this year, Stephan Aarstol effectively doubled the per-hour earnings of every employee at his business, Tower Paddle Boards. Yet payroll didn't budge. Aarsol did this by exploiting the insight that, for startups, time is a more malleable resource than money. So instead of giving his employees salary raises, he reduced the company workday to five hours.
Aarstol, you may recall, is the guy who froze during his 2012 pitch on ABC's Shark Tank, but still walked off with $150,000 from Mark Cuban. Today, he and his team ...