We’ve all heard the saying, “If you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life”. Hopefully, most of us have found ourselves in a career path where we truly enjoy what it is we are accomplishing. But what if I told you that loving what you do, your daily motivation, and efficiency at work, can all be connected to one aspect? Talent engagement. After reading, “To Get More, Try Giving More ” by Ashley Lesko, it was made clear the influence talent engagement has on job satisfaction and work efficiency.

The more an individual utilizes their natural strengths the more pleasure they will find in their craft. Simply because, who doesn’t love doing the things they are good at? And no, this does not mean if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing to leave and never look back. It just means to find opportunities to engage your talents- even if that includes stepping out of your comfort zone.

For example, I’ve always been good with technology, analytics, and writing. The analytic and writing skillsets I developed from a communication studies background, and technology is something I’ve just always enjoyed. Therefore writing on sporting events for the local paper wasn’t an issue for me, but it became rather repetitive. One day I was asked to commentate some High school football games over the radio; I was excited yet also reluctant. Yes, I knew the language associated and the analytical numbers aspect of the sport and the radio technology was no challenge. But the job was still outside my comfort zone, I am a naturally reserved person until I become comfortable. Therefore the thought of my voice becoming known by thousands of people in my area did not ring well with me, especially the task of developing a radio personality. Yet I went with it; expressing myself and my talents in a new style. Fast forward to present day, and I love every moment of it and can’t wait until this upcoming football season where I will commentate again.  

Therefore, my advice to you; exploit ways to engage your talents at work and you will experience a happier, more productive, you.

By: Brooks Rynders

Former business school students, pop quiz – what’s the definition of a supply chain in an organization? One source talks about supply chain as the system that facilitates the flow (of products, services) through the business. Another explains that managing the supply chain is a must- have because “an optimized supply chain results in lower costs and a faster production cycle”. It includes all of the steps to get it from the producer to the customer.

Have you ever thought of your team as having their own supply chain? If so – knowingly or not, you have worked on your company’s Employee Supply Chain.

Definition: Employee Supply Chain– the end to end operational process of an employee’s impact on an organization:

• Acquiring – (producer) Stage of hiring decision, intake, onboarding/orientation
• Developing – Stage of skills training, performance management, and leadership development (transit, in-process)
• Retaining/Exiting – promotion, actualized leadership, and outplacement (retirement, attrition)

An optimized Employee Supply Chain (ESC) blends operation and HR tactics to maximize employee’s talent engagement, capacity & productivity. An optimized ESC strategically & strategically reduces uncertainty for an organization in employee expenses.

The goal is to optimize your Employee Supply Chain and maximize the value for one of your top organization expenses – your employees. It is a process for recognizing that support in a certain area, the decision to hire, the hiring process, the onboarding process… and then the development, growth, and evolution through the organization’s cycles – reviews and moves, and at some point – either promotion or attrition, to complete the chain, could make the difference in a bottom line by reducing overall expenses by 5-10% or more.

Anyone that has a hand in ANY part of Employee Supply Chain (ESC) as described above – has the ability to grow, influence and enhance the strength of their own Employee Supply Chain.

Business Dictionary notes that producers at the beginning of the supply chain (in the case of ESC, the initial decisions made by CFO’s, CEO’s, CHRO’s and hiring managers of the employee process) can only compete through the supply chain. Unless the rest of the supply chain improves, “no degree of improvement at the producer’s end” can make up the problems downstream in the supply chain.

So… that means – if you own:

• Initial Decision to hire (capacity, organization need)
• Hiring process (recruiting, interviewing)
• Onboarding Process
• Job Functionality (training, teamwork, interaction)
• Job Process (development, growth, and evolution through reviews, transfers)
• End of Job-Life (promotion, retirement, attrition)

… you have ownership of part of your organization’s Employee Supply Chain.

How optimized is your own team’s Employee Supply Chain? Let’s briefly take a look.

• Ineffectiveness –

  

  Having more employees than you need. You hired 5 people, yet you really only needed 3 people…. But didn’t realize that until 6 months later. Perhaps you weren’t equipped with the understanding of the capacity of the individuals – or the job. Perhaps you followed an example of a model that did not match with your business. Ineffectiveness is having wasted costs due to more employees than the organization needs in the business.

Potential outcomes… Employees in this group could be underutilized, overutilized undertrained and could have a sense of loss meaning/ understanding of their place in the company

Ask yourself…. How can you determine if you’ve hired effectively? What can you do to help to reduce ineffectiveness in the future?

• 

  Inaccuracy – Accuracy deals with timing – which can be everything. You know you will need to hire a business analyst to help shoulder some of the work – so you hire in Q1… but realize later that two other employees had the ability to do the work, at least until Q3. As a result, Inaccuracy and wasted time/ costs evolved you hired earlier than needed, as you could have delayed the hires, reducing employee expenses for the year.

Potential outcomes… Employees in this group may also feel underutilized if hired too early, or overutilized if hired too late (“you need me to do too much at once, I don’t understand!”). They may feel like a “5^th wheel” and a lack of connection to the company.

Ask yourself…. “What is the capacity of my team that I already have? How much do I know about the job needs that I’m hiring?”

• Inaction – Whereas the first two elements of loss in the Employee Supply deal with the hiring itself, the final one deals with the results when those have happened

  

  , or if the employee loses the drive to complete the job. Typically, an employee initially begins a job with 100% effort – once (s)he is trained, they perform (or generally want to) at 100%. Over time, due to many reasons (manager, lack of motivation, engagement, etc.), this effort decreases, resulting in a 70% or 80% output (productivity). Multiple this by a number of employees… and you suddenly find yourself with much less employee productivity… and paying the same price in employee expenses!

Potential outcomes… Employees in this group feel disengaged, unproductive – and may or may not know it. They tend to have multiple strengths or talents that are not being utilized and may be considered siloed into their current job instead of being able to contribute in other areas of their work.

Ask yourself “At what capacity do I think my team is? If they are not 100%, do I know why? Can we help them?”

How are you maximizing your employee supply chain? Share this… and share your story.

In additional news:

• Last month, I asked you how to “make” it as a manager. Thank you to the many of you that contributed and congrats to Curt from Dallas TX on his $25 Amazon gift card! Be on the lookout for the summary and results in upcoming months! Thank you!

 

It’s time for the Company Holiday Party, and figuring out how much you’re actually going to get done before the end of the year. For many, this time of year is when you look back on all of the successes, the failures, the ups and downs, the hires that came in that made you laugh and the fires that you were glad to see go (well, most of them). It’s the time to wind down – or wind up (if you’re in retail or anything remotely related to holiday shopping) and New Year’s Resolutions.

 

But… for many others – it may also be the time that makes you question “What am I doing here (in this job, department, company)? What did I even do this year?”

 You did. A lot. Run through this “I didn’t wait for anyone to get it done” checklist and see how many items you actually addressed in 2016.

1. Saving your ass-ets at work

• I didn’t quit my job, I fired my company
• Celebrate more – every day
• Keep yourself – and your people – sane at work
• Career advice for a 25-year-old
• Finding the best assets by accident

2. Getting it done

• Change your 10%
• Starting with your front line managers
• Roadblocks & Dynamite – doing more with less
• Hiring the best person to lead you
• Focus and multitask. Really.

3. The Strengths you didn’t realize you weren’t using

• Seeing your Unseen Picasso
• What you don’t realize you’re showing at work – every day
• The leader within you
• Aim higher & use your imagination
• Collaborate like your job depended on it

Did more than you realized? Perception is reality – recency bias helps you forget about the things you did at the beginning (of the year) – so you more than likely did more than you realize.

What represents 2016 to you? Share your link or story below… the ones that resonate the most in the group will be mentioned in next month’s article!

Last month, we talked about the impact of a direct manager and leadership team can have on an individual (I fired my company!)….  over 60% of employees leave your organization because of the manager and 90% because of the leadership team in general.  Many of you responded with your own viewpoint, and continue to share on your personal experience.

However, leaving your job doesn’t happen overnight (well almost never) – and, for the most part, it may take a while for you to decide to pull the plug….

What if there was a way to prevent you from making that decision? From having to find something new – that could be better, but may be worse?

What if there was a way to dynamite the roadblocks that are slowing you down at work?

Several years ago, a corporate director came to my building to do a walk through inspection and evaluate us on how ready we were for our peak season. We walked him through the building, pointing out all the things we had done well over the year since he had been there last, skipping over the things we hadn’t addressed (or, to be honest, didn’t want to bring his attention to).

Of course, he didn’t get to his position for accepting what he was told, and after a few times, he asked about one of our processes. We explained that the process was a one-off – we were different than other buildings, so basically we couldn’t be compared to other buildings.

He stopped us right there and asked if we did the basic process (similar to “do you breathe every day?”). We did. Then we were asked if it made any difference how we “breathed” – we still did it, and needed to figure out a way to get it done – in this case, in a faster, more efficient way.

We needed to take initiative.

Our team had been hiding behind all of the excuses of why we were different, how we shouldn’t be compared to anyone else – instead of realizing we were just “variations on a theme” and took initiative to find a way.

In the survey, over 80% of employees said they left their company because of a lack of advancement, not feeling connected to an organization, or problems with the work environment.

Is it possible that you could find a way around some of those roadblocks that could be very real – and make your own dynamite to take a different path, make a different road?

Initiative is about taking responsibility for your work, and making it your job to make it excellent (Millikin, 2016). Instead of “What am I required to do at work”, you say “How I can best help my peers, managers, company be the best they can be?”

So… let’s do it, you’ve said. How do I blow up these roadblocks that’s holding me back?. 

• Put yourself in YOUR customer’s shoes. Who is your customer? It may not be the external customer at all – but the accountant that needs your report by Thursday, so she can meet a deadline – and you get to it when you can. Your customer isn’t happy – but could you change that?

• What problems exist? You probably already know several in your workplace. What are the issues? What do you just put band-aids on because you feel you are engaged or your team doesn’t support you? It doesn’t matter. If  you can get it done – then do it. Don’t wait for support from someone else if you have the power to make it better (See #1 above). You’ll be surprised at what gets done when YOU start it.

• Find a better way. If you do a number of tasks you find menial or boring – brainstorm. Understand the reasons the tasks need to be done, and if so, find ways to make them more efficient. There could be a chance that you are NOT the best person to do it – and if you took on something that was more suitable to your strengths and job requirements, then you can get back to taking care of #1 (your customer, of course!)

Note this does NOT give you the right to march into your boss’s office and say I’m too important to be doing data entry. It DOES mean you should think about the implications, the cause and effect of your actions, and think about how you can better impact the team and organization.

Take a chance. Take initiative. Blow up those roadblocks that are keeping you from being what you know you’re capable.

About the Author

Ashley P. Lesko, PhD is a navy veteran and President of Square Peg Solutions, which is focused on helping companies discover (and take advantage of) their greatest unknown assets – their people. She also teaches at Queens University in Charlotte, NC and Harvard Extension School, based in Boston, MA. Her growing body of work on new and front line manager leadership and talent engagement has been presented to the Society of Human Resource Management, Charlotte Business Journal, Elite Training Day Loss Prevention Executive Conference, and will be featured in February 2017 at the Innovision Conference in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Dr. Lesko can be reached via e-mail at: ashley@squarepegsolutions.org and welcomes your ideas and challenges about what getting more out of your people by giving them more means to you.

 

So… this month is my birthday. And it has been…. For a few years

Each year, we celebrate the passing of one more year. One more year that we’ve lived 525,600 minutes (thank you, Rent), drank milk, ate our lunch, worked, had some fun, worked some more, thought about vacation, had some fun, and a few other things.

What about the other things? The peaks and the valleys, the highs and the lows? The breakups and the successes, the OMG and the Holy $#%^? The new friends and the near misses?

How do you celebrate your birthday?

For me, a birthday is a celebration. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what’s going on in your life. It’s a time for others to celebrate YOU. Whether Facebook or their iPhone tell your friends, family and colleagues that it’s your special day, or if they just plain old fashioned remembered – it’s a time to celebrate you.  You get taken out to dinner. You receive a gift, maybe even have a Chucky Cheese party (if you’re that kind of person) – all for you. People tell you “Happy Birthday”, and you say “Thank you”. You may even hear from friends you haven’t heard in a while, to see how you are.

For one day, it’s all about you. And making YOU feel special.

Which leads me to the question – do you know how to celebrate your people’s “birthdays”?

I’m not just talking about cake and flowers, and maybe a bottle of wine if you’re a REALLY nice boss. I’m talking about the celebration part. The “thank you for doing a great job” part. The “today, you should be special, because you did this” part.  The “I don’t even know what kind of sacrifice you made to get this done, but I recognize it, and I thank you for it”.

Get my drift?

Celebrate successes. Make them feel special. Even little baby successes – like learning how to complete that first power point without correction by the VP –  that may not seem much to you. THANK your people. It’s the basis of TWO of the 3 pillars of NOT having a miserable job – Anonymity AND Immeasurability (Lencioni, 2007), so obviously if you’re not doing it, then I won’t even charge you for the guidance and tell you that your people probably think you suck a little bit (ok, giving it to you straight, probably a lot).

And you’ve probably already seen this coming … why stop at birthdays?

For the people that work for you, day in and day out – that get it done every day – CELEBRATE successes. Finish a project that was 90% great, but 10% needs improvement? DO NOT only focus on the improvements (and yes, I’m honest, I still struggle with this!). Sing Happy Birthday to those that made it great (aka “make them feel special and appreciated”) and then the next day (when it’s NOT their “birthday”) tackle the 10% and raise the mark.

Try it. It won’t hurt. It may feel a little funny at first, but your people will like it.

Have your own way you celebrate “birthdays”? Share them with me – would love to hear them. (As long as you’ve said it to your team first!)