Susan Scott's Blog, page 90

Fierce Tip of the Week: Any Single Conversation Can

It’s easy for things to become over complicated. Our world moves at lightning speed, and because of that, a lot of noise is created. We can spend our days not doing the work we want or need to be doing.

This week focus on quieting the noise and get back to the basics. Do this by focusing on the relationships most central to your happiness and success. By engaging in conversations with those that ground you, inspire you, challenge you, or invigorate you, you give yourself the opportunity to hone in on what makes you, you.

Return the favor, and if someone comes calling on your door to chat, be open to it. Remember that we’re all going down our own path, and that while no conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a business, a life – any single conversation can.

Fierce Resources: Work to Live? Not Here, We Don’t

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published on the Bloomberg website and was written by Megan McArdle.

Work to Live? Not Here, We Don’t reacts to a recent article in The New Yorker titled, The Cult of Work, and adds that in addition to the common reasons why people have a hard time obtaining a work life balance, many jobs have become so specialized there is a larger penalty for handing off work to others.

“When people complain about work-family balance, they frequently complain that two people who each work 30 hours a week are paid much less than half as much as one person working 60 hours a week. Surowiecki notes that it’s more expensive to hire two people (benefits, desks, etc.). But that’s not the only cost. In specialized jobs, two people who are each working 30 hours a week may actually be much less productive than one working 60 — even if working 60 hours makes each of those hours much less productive than they could be.”

To read the full article, click here.

Lower Operating Costs through Collaboration

This month we’ll join healthcare professionals in Houston, Texas for the Talent Management People in Healthcare Summit. The healthcare industry is an industry all about people, and the conversations that do or do not happen are critical to the success of the organizations that make patient care their top priority.

A challenge facing many leaders within the healthcare industry is how to keep a high quality of care when faced with ever rising operation costs.

One of the great ways leaders can engage teams and save money is through collaboration. Fierce client, Presbyterian Senior Living  (PSL) faced the challenge of having 25 locations across four regions, where the different locations provided different services to varying types of clients. A question that arose for them was how could leadership ensure that employees were engaged and felt empowered to problem solve at a local level so that their customers and the bottom line benefited?

The key is a common language. When there is a shared understanding, employees are able to leverage and ensure miscommunication is minimal.

Presbyterian Senior Living used the Fierce Team model, also known as the beach ball model, as an inclusive approach to planning and conducting meetings. This ensured employees participated and offered their perspectives. This type of collaboration conversation ultimately saved them money.

“One executive director of a center told us about a beach ball conversation that saved over $321,000 of revenue,” said Brian Parks, Executive Director at St. Andrews Village a PSL location. “They weren’t capturing all the reimbursement they could because the team was not working well together” added MaryAnne Adamczyk, Senior Vice President Corporate Relations at PSL. “They now use the beach-ball conversation model to delve into problems.”

When you provide your leaders with a tool so they can tap into the knowledge of their teams, you not only tap into a wealth of information, you provide the opportunity for your employees to help boost the bottom line.

Are you attending the People in Health Care Summit? If so, what conversations are you looking forward to having?

To read the full Presbyterian Senior Living story, click here.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Stay Persistent, Keep Having the Conversation

Today in the United States we honor and celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a visionary, a leader, and above all else, persistent.

This week I want to hone in on how that persistence manifested. Dr. King understood that change would happen when there was the opportunity to build relationship. In order for Americans to be truly free, all people needed to be able to have a conversation. To talk, to learn about one another, to share their similarities, these were necessary to realize that we are more alike than we are different.

Being a millennial, I can at times take for granted, that in our not so distant past, two people of a different race couldn’t even share a table, a bathroom, or certain section of a bus. Relationships are built in those small moments, in those everyday occurrences that make us who we are.

If you read Dr. King’s most famous speech, “I have a Dream”, he calls for our nation to give everyone the chance to have those moments. He encouraged conversations to build the relationships, free of fear of prosecution or death.

I believe that Dr. King would be proud of the progress that has been made since his untimely death almost 46 years ago. And, there is still more to do.

More conversations need to continue to happen. There are relationships that need to grow. There are voices that are still unheard.

This week, stay persistent and keep having the conversation.

Fierce Resources: Everyday Workplace Training

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published on the Training Magazine website as part of their current issue, and was written by Roy Saunderson.

Everyday Workplace Training challenges trainers to look at how they bring the learning to their employees and whether old practices need an update. From peer-to-peer training, flipped learning, and massive on-line classrooms; technology and innovation have given us many ways to stay current.

“With today’s rapid, technologically interfaced work world, we now are reminded that education and training are an everyday occurrence and will never end. It is reported that technology-based independent learning now accounts for nearly one-third of all workplace education and training… Today’s companies will place even greater value upon those employees who continue to learn required, updated knowledge and skills.”

To read the full article, click here.

Accountability, Listening, Culture: A Trainer’s Work is Never Done

“Sometimes it seems like the different groups all speak their own language. Finance speaks Accounting. IT speaks Tech, and the Consultant speaks Consultantese. We need to understand each other’s perspectives. And in order to do that, we need  a shared language.” - KELLY PAINE, Accounting Manager & Change Management Lead for Cosmos, Costco Wholesale

Words like accountability, culture, and listening get thrown around a lot in a trainer’s world. As a trainer you strive to help build cultures that are all of these things, and you spend your days facilitating information, so that your company can be nimble and productive.

It’s not an easy job blending all the different learning styles, personality types, and competing interests into one strategy. Some adopt it quicker than others. Some are more appreciative. Some classes challenge you to your core. And what you have to remember day in and day out, between deadlines and training sessions, is that these terms are all about people – dynamic, living, breathing, flawed, innovative people.

The trainers certified in Fierce are the life blood of our organization. They provide us with feedback, innovate with us, and make us a better organization. That’s why we’re so excited to attend the 2014 Training Magazine Conference and Expo next month in San Diego. We will be joining Fierce facilitators and all different kinds of trainers to talk about learning. We’re also very proud to share that this year Fierce CEO, Halley Bock is co-hosting a session with Costco Accounting Manger & Change Management Lead, Kelly Paine.

If you’re a trainer and you’re attending Training Magazine this year, we can’t wait to talk with you, to listen to you, and to say thank you. Thank you for all your energy, for the studying, continuous learning, and dedication you show each of your companies, so that every employee can have the tools to listen more, in order to build a stronger culture.

Click here to learn more about our session with Kelly Paine at Costco at the Training Magazine Conference and Expo, next month in San Diego.

To learn more about the Costco story, click here.

Fierce Tip of the Week: Be Accountable, Listen to Yourself

This month Fierce is focusing on listening, and that can apply to both listening to others and to yourself. One of the voices we tend to ignore often is actually our own. Perhaps it’s because it comes from inside our own head that we immediately dismiss it, and it can prove more valuable than we give it credit.

One of the principles of a Fierce Conversations is to obey your instinct, and the skill involved in doing that is not shutting down the internal conversation that is happening within yourself. Instead, this week be present to your internal dialogue, wrestle around with it, fight with it, praise it, and then, if appropriate, share it.

Why? Because to ignore it would be a disservice. As humans we are gifted with a mind that is both known and mysterious. Our ability to reason, internally rationalize, and yes, talk to ourselves is both a luxury and needed for survival.

So this week hold yourself accountable and listen to you. You might be surprised by what you hear.

Fierce Resources: How Much Does It Cost You to Avoid the Feeling of Risk?

This week’s Fierce Resource was first published yesterday on thought leader and entrepreneur, Seth Godin’s blog.

How Much Does It Cost You to Avoid the Feeling of Risk? asks us to examine how often and to what lengths we go to in order to not feel risk.

This week on the Fierce blog we focused on listening fiercely, sometimes that can be a risky thing.

“How many experiences are you missing out on because the (very unlikely) downsides are too frightening to contemplate?Are you avoiding leading, connecting or creating because to do so feels risky?…It’s easy to pretend that indulging in the avoidance of the feeling of risk is free and unavoidable. It’s neither.”

What listening opportunities are you missing if you avoid the feeling of risk?

To read the full blog, click here.

 

Fierce Predicts Drastic Changes to Traditional Business Structures in 2014

The Title-less Workplace, Flexible Work Environments, and Real-Time Reviews Take Hold

We anticipates major changes in the workplace will occur in 2014 as “old-school” management protocols and practices give way to fast-moving – as well as more productive and more satisfying – models for engaging employees.

“The pace of change is not constrained to the external manifestations of the business world; the changes occurring inside office walls are happening just as quickly,” said Halley Bock, CEO and president of Fierce, Inc. “Over the course of 2014, we will see new approaches to management and employee communication evolve in business-altering and business-bettering ways.”

Fierce, Inc. predictions for 2014 include:

1. The business world goes flat as hierarchical titles disappear. Fast-moving organizations, most notably Zappos, are dispensing with tiered managerial hierarchies and adopting a “holacracy” – an organizational system that equally distributes authority among all members rather than a few individuals. The business models of many companies, especially those in the tech industry, rely less on title-structured environments, but instead depend on the instantaneous assembling and disassembling of teams to quickly solve problems. This philosophy will take hold in the tech space and make inroads into other industries.

2. Flexibility most sought after perk for millennials. Evolving the workplace to retain millennial talent is a growing priority as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts this segment of the workplace population will comprise a majority of the U.S. workforce by 2030, reported in a recent Wired magazine article. Compensation will remain an important consideration for millennial workers, but it will be trumped by employers offering expanding levels of workplace flexibility – schedule, location, and even the ability to spend time on ventures outside of company business. In addition, flexibility to explore diverse growth experiences throughout departments and business units as a means of career advancement will become a must-have “perk.”

3. Annual performance reviews continue down the path to extinction. The accelerated demise of the annual performance review continues. Nothing could be more telling than Microsoft’s discarding of the once hallowed stack ranking system, reported in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal. Organizations that want to retain talent need new approaches to reviews. Real-time conversations that allow workers to course correct quickly will become the norm, improving morale, as well as individual and organizational performance.

Does Becoming a Leader Make You a Bad Listener?

I once worked for a manager who, when I was first hired, shared that she prided herself on being a great listener and that her door was always open. Early in my training, other managers shared her sentiment, and told me how lucky I was to work for her – she was such a great listener.

Then, I spoke with my teammates, and they had a very different opinion. They told stories of rushed meetings and clip responses. They told stories of going to her with an issue, and then she would throw her hands up with frustration. They shared that she always had time for other managers and very little for her own team.

It wasn’t long after hearing these stories that I experienced firsthand my new manager’s “great” listening skills. In our first touch base, she asked me how I was liking my new position and what I found most challenging in my first two weeks. I said maybe 20 words the entire meeting. Mostly, she talked about how I should solve the challenge I’m facing.

This week’s Fierce tip is to share a story of a time when someone’s listening impacted your life. This is my story, and one of those instances when you learn what you don’t want to do as a leader.

I believe that before my manager was in a leadership position she listened to everyone really well. I saw how she handled issues with other leaders and she definitely talked less and listened more. Yet, she did not do that with her team and often made us feel like we were more of a burden than an asset. To be fair, she was responsible for a lot of deliverables and much of her days were spent in meetings. Where was the time to listen?

Between time constraints, deadlines, and an ever mounting to-do list, taking time to connect and listen to team members can be difficult – even if you’re the type of person that prides yourself on it.

Do you think it becomes harder to listen as a leader?

Also, we want to hear your stories about a time when someone’s listening impacted your life. Share your stories on on Social; we can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Comment here on the blog. Five people will win a copy of Fierce Conversations signed by author, Susan Scott.

Use the hash tag: #listenfiercely