Recruiting Animal

Does A Mean Boss Lower Productivity

From: How much does your relationship with your boss matter - April 2, 2012 (edited)

The bond between manager and employee is the prime predictor of (1) Daily productivity and (2) Retention

1. US companies lose $360 billion a year to lost productivity from employees who have poor relationships with their supervisors.

2. Employees with strong ties to their manager bring in more money than those with weak ties.

3. “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”

People who agreed were more productive, contributed more to profits, and were more likely to stay long-term.

4. Employees worked for two different supervisors on alternate days. They had good rapport with one but not the other.

On the days with the bad boss, their average blood pressure shot up.

A 15-year study found that employees who had a difficult relationship with their boss were 30% more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease.

But what about this?

Good companies are not wrong to be tough on employees.

From: Respect Employees: Be Tough On Them, Andrew O'Connell, Harvard Business Review, Nov 15, 2010 (edited)

You Need Focus

From: GlobalPost - Google scared this 27-year-old entrepreneur - Matt Lynley March 28, 2012 (edited)

Google Drive, is an online storage service not yet released.

When rumors of its existence popped up, it spooked Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, which was an all-purpose online storage company.

Levie changed direction. He turned his company into online enterprise storage service and now it's worth more than $500 million.

Why didn't Google scare him out of business?

Google has lost its touch. Google Wave and Google Buzz were flops after drumming up a ton of excitement.

What happened to Google?

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box says:  Google is trying to do too much. It's fighting wars with Facebook, Microsoft and Apple — and it just isn't killing it in any one specific space.

Box is already way ahead in the enterprise. Google will probably be more geared toward consumers, and Google isn't too interested in jumping into a spot that's not already occupied with Apple, Microsoft or Facebook.

From: The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson - Harvard Business Review,  April, 2012 (edited)

Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page, who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded.

Jobs gave him some advice.

“The main thing I stressed was focus. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down.

"They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.”

Page followed the advice. In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as Android and Google+, and to make them beautiful the way Jobs would have done.

 

Consensus

From: The Economist, The Faith and Doubts of our Fathers (edited)

The founders of the USA didn't want people to fight about religion or have political disputes which were religious in their intensity.

They wanted to create a state run by a political system to which people with utterly different ideas could offer loyalty.

People who disagree over things they regard as ultimate usually can’t compromise. That's one reason for the separation of church and state.

Here is Jefferson on the topic:

“Let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.”

 

Leadership

From: Peter Hitchens - In Memoriam

Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’.

By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid.

I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it. I don’t have much of this myself, so I recognise it (and envy it) in others.

I have a memory which I cannot place precisely in time, of the two of us scrambling on a high rooftop, the sort of crazy escapade that boys of our generation still went on, where we should not have been.

A moment came when, unable to climb back over the steep slates, the only way down was to jump over a high gap on to a narrow ledge.

I couldn’t do it. He used his own courage (the real thing can always communicate itself to others) to show me, and persuade me, that I could.

Heroic Idol Worship

Obviously, Steve Jobs accomplished something. If the story I heard is true, Apple made the personal computer popular, IBM tried to play catchup, they let Microsoft handle the operating system and that was the start of the personal computer culture that we live by today.

Jobs' career has been a dramatic story. He hired a CEO to run Apple, was then fired by his own recruit, then became the CEO again and not only rescued the company from bankruptcy but took it to new heights.

What his exact virtues are, however, have never been so clear to me. I'd read that:

-- He was a visionary who saw a world full of personal computers when few other people could see any reason for it.

-- He was a tyrannical boss who was obsessed with detail.

-- But, mostly, I'd read that he was a great showman.

This article - The First Time I Met Steve Jobs - features comments from people who met Steve Jobs or worked with him so it might give us a better idea about what all the worship is about.

Some of it is surely idol worship. The article starts out telling us that a 3 minute meeting between Frank Sinatra and Harlan Ellison, the science fiction writer, changed the latter's life.Then it goes on to quote people who enthuse about the time they met Steve Jobs for 2 minutes.

Here's something pathetic -- though I'll give the guy a break; I don't think he takes it quite so seriously.

I ran into Steve Jobs once on a sunny afternoon on Madison Avenue. He was with his family.

I complemented him on a recent speech. He thanked me and we shook hands.

At that moment Michelangelo's Creation of Adam popped into my head.

Some people are charismatic, it's true, but I have to wonder if Ellison would have been so impressed by Frank if Sinatra had not been hugely famous already.

The same thing can be seen in relation to famous religious figures. If you saw someone on the corner - who wasn't famous already - and he told you that he had a message from God, would you believe him? Probably not.

But if your parents (and millions of other very ordinary people) told you that he was the real thing, you might.

There's a sociology term for this kind of social influence but I can't remember what it is.

Here's another quote from the article:

Steve had an uncanny ability to see right through a concept and if there was any weakness he would find it and improve it.

In Canada, we had a famous pop-star leader in Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Everyone in western Canada hated Trudeau but he was still held up to the public as a philosopher king -- and this ability to understand ideas quickly and see their consequences was one of the things I remember reading about him.

I've read accounts of meetings with Lenin in which the similar things were said.

I think I've read the same thing about Castro as well in a bio by Tad Szulc. It's hard to say that Castro hasn't been successful on the world stage but Cuba itself seems to be a mess so I'm not sure what this kind of praise means.

In Praise of Hiring Managers

PLAY - Stupid Hiring Managers

Last week I told you how pathetic executives can be when they step into the role of hiring manager. And today I want to give you an example.

About 6 weeks ago I had a phone conversation with a VP of Sales. He was looking for a senior sales person, someone who handled big accounts worth millions of dollars.

He gave me a minimal idea of what he wanted but when I asked him about the compensation package he said he didn't know. He's the VP and he didn't know.

I said: "Look, HR has already given me a base. I just need to know how much commission the person is going to earn at quota." "I'll get it for you later," he said.

Within a week, I had two candidates. Both of them were great. Within two weeks they had been interviewed by the hiring manager, another VP and a sales engineer.

There was no doubt they could do the job but then the VP said, "Find me more people."

I said: "Okay, but first you tell me what these guys are missing because I think they're pretty good." No reply.

Then I said, "Well, do you have any idea what the money is now?"

He said: "I have some tentative figures from the president."

I said, "Send them to me." So he did. The base was lower than what HR gave me and the base and commission package was way lower than what the two candidates were earning.

"Do you want someone more junior?" I said.

"No," he said. "I need people just like them."

Then he said he'd pass the number one candidate on to the president for an interview and I didn't look for anybody else.

The candidate spoke to the president on the phone and he thought the meeting went very well but then I got an email from HR:

The president thought your candidate was ok but did not stand out and for this reason, we want to continue the search for additional candidates.

In addition, the VP and president both feel that your candidate has good experience, he has bounced around too many times from job to job and although he has explained his moves we still feel that this is still a problem.

Regarding compensation, the president wants to wait until the candidate has been chosen before we start discussing that.

The guy has 4 interviews before they tell me he moved around too much.

So, I called the candidate and told him he was out and then I said to the company: "It seems like the president is a key part of the selection team so before I go back into the field I'd like to speak to him to find out he's looking for.

"And you know what else? I'd like to get an idea of the money because I don't want to bring someone in and then at the end of the process find out that the money isn't right?"

So HR sends me an email:

Dear Animal,

I didn't say that your candidate was out of the running. I just indicated our concerns. Let's put everything on hold right now. Don't you look for more people.

So, listeners, you make up your mind. Was I too tough with this company? And Company: The guy who's on hold? The guy who didn't stand out? He earned over $300,000 last year. And the number 2 candidate, he earned $250. You think they don't know what they're doing? I think they do.

And before you tell me to find someone else I want to know exactly what you're looking for. And if you're the president and you want me to find someone you like, you'd better take the time to speak with me.

Update: On Friday I spoke to the internal recruiter. Great guy, he is working on the search with the president. And you know what the president wants? A junior guy. Hahaha. And the money? Who needs to know about money? He'll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Over and out.

 

Matalone on Leadership

Source: Mary Ellen Slayter (edited)

Leadership is getting results from others.

You must communicate clear expectations

Know how to hire top talent

Be inspirational = motivate based on individual needs of your people.

Show them you care about them not just as employees

Constantly develop them to be the best they can be.

Why you start business?

I’m a bad employee and got fired a lot! 

Like most entrepreneurs, I am very independent, self motivated, pro-active and results-oriented. That means I am very impatient, controlling and aggressive. 

I have learned to manage my behavior to the situation.

Describe your approach to hiring?

Have a clearly defined strategy of where UR going (3-year business objectives). 

Define the roles required to achieve your objectives. 

We developed a Performance Profile™ to assess existing staff and identify  the best candidates and their strengths and weakness. 

You must include retention strategies which are all about effective leadership. 

Our process and tools can hire you the best people in the world for any role. 

I can’t guarantee they will stay if you have lousy managers.  People quit managers, not jobs.

What’s the most important trait you look for when you’re hiring?

The most important is the ability to create results in a timely manner. 

Otherwise it depends on the role.  Each has its own set of traits. 

 

Old-Fashioned Respect

From: Comments, Margaret Wente, We’ve institutionalized teacher abuse, Globe and Mail, May. 26, 2011

Where I am from, if you disrespect the teacher, you get whipped; and parents are not even allowed to enter the school.

I'm from South of Russia, from a Cossack community. In our lands, you walk through a school, all you hear are sounds of pens and pencils writing, teachers talking, and children only speaking up if asked something by the teacher.

All adults in our society, teachers included, carry a nagaika and do not hesitate to use it on a insolent youth. It happened to me a few times, and it hurts like hell itself. Very, very effective.

No, where I am from, you do not see drunk, disrespectful, rude, arrogant youth. When a elder walks into a room, if any young ones are there, they stand up, remove their hats, and bow.

In the street, you do not pass an elder who is walking before you without asking permission, it is rude.

On public transport, you would see, an elder comes in, on a bus, or a commuter train, even if it is not full, young ones right away jump up to yield their seats.

Discipline, respect, culture, it is beaten into you from a young age where I come from. And we are proud of that. The rest of Russia envies us for our ways.

Real Leaders Do Unpopular Things

Billy Christian has an interesting posting about leadership called McGuinty’s Bold Plan

In it, he congratulates the premier of Ontario for harmonizing the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) with the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The message is that a real leader will do unpopular things.

"Thursday’s budget," Christian says, "showed that he is a genuine leader." Why? "He has the courage to take a big political hit."

The Globe and Mail highlighted the fact that common consumer purchases like coffee, muffins, gym memberships, golf and Internet fees and vitamins would become more expensive. McGuinty knew that this kind of attack was coming but it didn't stop him.

Ironically, in spite of his praise for bold public action, Christian also implies that sometimes a leader should be deceptive.

He claims that Brian Mulroney slit his own throat when he made the GST a visible rather than a hidden tax. "The visible tax irritated people" and "it destroyed his popularity forever."

Instead of billing the public directly at the point of purchase he could have imposed the tax on the producer or importer who would have added it to the price and passed it onto the consumer. This would have achieved the same effect without damaging the leader's relationship with a short-sighted public.

Inotherwords, if you're dealing with ignorant, prejudiced, narrow-minded people it's unwise to give them information that will only inflame them because it's more than they can understand.

This is a conservative idea of leadership. I'm thinking here of conservatism as a political and social idea that manifests itself in a structured society in which the leading roles are reserved for people who deserve them by virtue of their knowledge and character.

Since the leaders have greater understanding than the popular masses they are not obliged to be fully transparent with the lower orders or to deal with them as equals. The common people govern themselves  more by emotion than deep thought and so, like children, don't have to know everything.

 

 

 

Leaders Don't Need Pomp

Vice President John Adams wanted Americans to call their president “His Highness, or His Most Benign Highness — not because he wanted a king but because he sought, through titles, “parade,” and “ceremony,” to harness that “passion for distinction” that he believed to be the strongest motive for virtuous behavior.

Madison, resisting anything that smacked of aristocratic or monarchist pretension, persuaded Congress to settle instead on “the President of the United States.”

As he saw it, “the more simple, the more Republican we are in our manners, the more rational dignity we shall acquire.”

“The principle of society with us, as well as of our political constitution, is the equal rights of all,” Jefferson explained; “and if there be an occasion where this equality ought to prevail preeminently, it is in social circles collected for conviviality.”

With proud simplicity, Jefferson set the tone by walking from his boardinghouse to his inauguration. That day, he declared, “buried levees, birthdays, royal parades, and the arrogation of precedence in society by certain self-stiled friends of order, but truly stiled friends of privileged orders.”

Myron Magnet, The Great Little Madison, City Journal, Spring 2011