As mentioned in a couple of earlier blog posts, making sure that the references check out and information on Resumes/c.v.'s is accurate before hiring someone, is critical and essential. This impacts the corporation on multiple levels:
1) Making sure that there is good "Job Fit" by contacting people who have worked with the individual before and how they have performed, and in "assessing" behavioral traits that fit with the position's benchmark, based on top performers.
2) Ensuring that the Ethics and Moral values of the person are consistent with the company's values, as this person's interaction with all levels of the company's personnel will have some effect, regardless of position within the company, from sanitary engineer on up.
3) Finding a replacement can take time and interrupts strategies or activities being handled by the individual in question and can set back the initiatives, by months to even years.
4) It affects the morale of of the company and personnel. The higher the position of the person or people in question, the broader the impact and negative affect on the company. In this most recent case at Yahoo!, which has been struggling to compete against Google, it casts ongoing credibility issues for the company, both internally and with shareholders. Morale and Credibility Issues follow Yahoo!
And:
5) In this case, it has affected not only the career of the individual who embellished his credentials, but also, regrettably another Board member.
Have all the shoes fallen yet? Only time will tell! There should be policy changes put into place to prevent a occurrence, that is clear.
Scott Thompson CEO of Yahoo! Resigns
Patti Hart of Yahoo! Resigns Over CEO's botched Academic Records
Showing posts with label Morale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morale. Show all posts
Monday, May 14, 2012
Monday, October 10, 2011
Innovation and Visioning in the 20th and 21st Century
In the earlier blog posting, below( http://executiveandhrguidance.blogspot.com/2011/10/innovation-in-21st-century-and-steve.html ), Steve Jobs was described as a visionary and futurist. He took ideas and morphed them, using newer technology, slimmer packaging, modernizing the appearance of an item, and/or recognizing there was a need (recognized or hidden) which could be addressed. Through his charisma and communication he could open new markets or grow existing markets at a much faster pace than had happened earlier.
In the 1950's NASA started designing the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Space programs around concepts that did not exist at the time. NASA helped to fuel innovation and new products by committing to a need in the near or foreseeable future by agreeing to purchase those items once they were developed within established time-frames.
The US Air Force did the same thing when they started conceptualizing the C-5A Galaxy(Lockheed). In this specific case, they identified the need to airlift large, heavy payloads long distances for what was called the Heavy Logistics Systems project. This aircraft was very sophisticated. It had multiple computer systems with backups, in case of inflight failure.
For example, at the time, if there was an error light, it would rank the probability of what was causing the error, the nearest location to land, the nearest place for obtaining a replacement part, and estimated downtime. Practically unheard of at that time, in the late 1960's.
Many of the advancements were never used because of fear of a possible crash and few simulators that could train pilots on it's use. The C-5 could land with cross-winds by heading into the wind, with the landing gear/wheels pointed in a different direction going down a runway.
Looking into the future and holding visioning exercises, helps organizations to remain flexible, with a view to change, while anticipating possible challenges and competitors, many which come sooner than expected. These exercises help to build teams while also coming up with new ideas or concepts that might not have been contemplated by the company, otherwise. They also contribute to the strategic plan and in many cases succession planning needs.
In spite of some saying that things change too fast to really plan, because the plan is outdated before it is written, they overlook the benefits in building more dynamic, cooperative, and communicative organizations while improving morale, engagement and the strong possibilities of identifying innovative or improved processes or products/services.
Shouldn't your organization contemplate visioning sessions? If not, why not?
In the 1950's NASA started designing the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Space programs around concepts that did not exist at the time. NASA helped to fuel innovation and new products by committing to a need in the near or foreseeable future by agreeing to purchase those items once they were developed within established time-frames.
The US Air Force did the same thing when they started conceptualizing the C-5A Galaxy(Lockheed). In this specific case, they identified the need to airlift large, heavy payloads long distances for what was called the Heavy Logistics Systems project. This aircraft was very sophisticated. It had multiple computer systems with backups, in case of inflight failure.
For example, at the time, if there was an error light, it would rank the probability of what was causing the error, the nearest location to land, the nearest place for obtaining a replacement part, and estimated downtime. Practically unheard of at that time, in the late 1960's.
Many of the advancements were never used because of fear of a possible crash and few simulators that could train pilots on it's use. The C-5 could land with cross-winds by heading into the wind, with the landing gear/wheels pointed in a different direction going down a runway.
Looking into the future and holding visioning exercises, helps organizations to remain flexible, with a view to change, while anticipating possible challenges and competitors, many which come sooner than expected. These exercises help to build teams while also coming up with new ideas or concepts that might not have been contemplated by the company, otherwise. They also contribute to the strategic plan and in many cases succession planning needs.
In spite of some saying that things change too fast to really plan, because the plan is outdated before it is written, they overlook the benefits in building more dynamic, cooperative, and communicative organizations while improving morale, engagement and the strong possibilities of identifying innovative or improved processes or products/services.
Shouldn't your organization contemplate visioning sessions? If not, why not?
Thursday, September 29, 2011
How much information do you Share with employees and how much should you?
The article who's link is below, brought to mind numerous issues on this topic. First, to be clear, transparency is good, but at times too much transparency may not be. It is finding the balance and evaluating the issues involved, which determine how much information to give out. The ramifications can be far reaching and should not be taken lightly.
Two cases in point based on real situations in my past experience:
1) A senior executive who was a country/regional manager was going to be relieved of his responsibilities. His replacement was en-route to the country to inform him, and take over the position....he passed away on the plane. The company did not have anyone else with the right experience to replace the country/regional manager. As it turned out he was never replaced, and in fact was moved back to corporate headquarters and retired as a Senior Executive VP.
Imagine if the Senior Executive would have known that he was going to be replaced? We would have lost an excellent executive or, had he known he was to be relieved, he might have soon moved to another company or had bad morale. As it turned out, it worked out well for both parties.
So not having total transparency might have been the best policy in this case. You decide.
2) We were a major producer of a commodity chemical. We had gone to the industry we were supplying and asked for increases in prices and volumes in order to help us stay in business. This was being driven by regulations and new regulations that were to be imposed on manufacturers in the State in question. Our customers weren't responsive or receptive to our proposal. Consequently, it was decided that we would shut down the plant due to environmental costs which were prohibitive and with impending additional regulations and required investments, the product line would not be able to obtain a return sufficient to make the hurdle rates required.
Being a responsible supplier, we went to our customers and informed them that we would provide adequate product for a year so that they could slowly replace our supply with other supplier's product. We would keep our employees for the year to operate the plant.
We just wanted our customers to know so that there would not be a disruption in supply when we shut down. Within less than 6 months, we had no sales and had to shut down much sooner than we had expected. This negatively affected our employees sooner than might have been the case, had we not informed our customers of our intentions. As a result our employees had to look for new positions sooner than anyone expected.
So transparency in this case may not have been the best approach, at least to give customers this much lead-time. You decide.
How Much Information Do You Share with Employees?:
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/how-much-information-do-you-share-with-employees/?ref=business
Two cases in point based on real situations in my past experience:
1) A senior executive who was a country/regional manager was going to be relieved of his responsibilities. His replacement was en-route to the country to inform him, and take over the position....he passed away on the plane. The company did not have anyone else with the right experience to replace the country/regional manager. As it turned out he was never replaced, and in fact was moved back to corporate headquarters and retired as a Senior Executive VP.
Imagine if the Senior Executive would have known that he was going to be replaced? We would have lost an excellent executive or, had he known he was to be relieved, he might have soon moved to another company or had bad morale. As it turned out, it worked out well for both parties.
So not having total transparency might have been the best policy in this case. You decide.
2) We were a major producer of a commodity chemical. We had gone to the industry we were supplying and asked for increases in prices and volumes in order to help us stay in business. This was being driven by regulations and new regulations that were to be imposed on manufacturers in the State in question. Our customers weren't responsive or receptive to our proposal. Consequently, it was decided that we would shut down the plant due to environmental costs which were prohibitive and with impending additional regulations and required investments, the product line would not be able to obtain a return sufficient to make the hurdle rates required.
Being a responsible supplier, we went to our customers and informed them that we would provide adequate product for a year so that they could slowly replace our supply with other supplier's product. We would keep our employees for the year to operate the plant.
We just wanted our customers to know so that there would not be a disruption in supply when we shut down. Within less than 6 months, we had no sales and had to shut down much sooner than we had expected. This negatively affected our employees sooner than might have been the case, had we not informed our customers of our intentions. As a result our employees had to look for new positions sooner than anyone expected.
So transparency in this case may not have been the best approach, at least to give customers this much lead-time. You decide.
How Much Information Do You Share with Employees?:
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/how-much-information-do-you-share-with-employees/?ref=business
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Analyze, Decide, Lead says Columbia's Business Dean
It is interesting that even Columbia's Business School is talking about "...weaving topics such as decision-making and ethics into classes across all disciplines." Assessments can help along these lines, and in pre-hire, ethics can be assessed, and of course a good background check will help validate the results.
Both good decision-making and ethics can help drive engagement in an organization. The reverse can have detrimental effects on an organization's engagement from entry level, to Front-Line managers and to all management levels in an organization. This effects motivation, morale, and indirectly profitability and retention.It is the responsibility of HR and Senior Management to ensure that people with good ethics and with good common sense/decision-making abilities, are brought into the organization, as this helps to increase the asset value of the company, short and especially long term.
The question is, is your organization and HR focused on these issues, from Pre-Hire, On-Boarding, Training and Promotion? Don't you think that they should be? Shouldn't they be part of your Core Values? The decisions made today lead to the sustainability over time.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303365804576429974256934518.html
Both good decision-making and ethics can help drive engagement in an organization. The reverse can have detrimental effects on an organization's engagement from entry level, to Front-Line managers and to all management levels in an organization. This effects motivation, morale, and indirectly profitability and retention.It is the responsibility of HR and Senior Management to ensure that people with good ethics and with good common sense/decision-making abilities, are brought into the organization, as this helps to increase the asset value of the company, short and especially long term.
The question is, is your organization and HR focused on these issues, from Pre-Hire, On-Boarding, Training and Promotion? Don't you think that they should be? Shouldn't they be part of your Core Values? The decisions made today lead to the sustainability over time.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303365804576429974256934518.html
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Performance Evaluations - How to start?
Performance Evaluations can be the most critical and stressful part of Management regardless of whether it is for, or as, a front-line Manager, Senior Executive, or CEO. It is a critical component/activity as it identifies areas of proficiency and developmental areas for the individual and sets the stage for the coming period of performance for the employee.
Done well, it can be invigorating, supportive and motivating. It gains heightened engagement from the employee and this cascades and helps to build engagement within the organization.
Done poorly, it can result in an employee(s) who can: become demotivated, have poor morale, and can become a critic of any and all operations or activities within the group, division or company. Obviously, this needs to be avoided at all costs.
One of the easiest ways to start the evaluation process is to clearly communicate what the process of the performance evaluation will be. Communicate how it is to be initiated, the forms that will be used, metrics and standards employed, whether it will use a 360 review process, and what input the employee will have in the process. Obviously, the final Performance Evaluation or Review will be a document placed in the employee's Personnel File and should be communicated accordingly.
Done well, it can be invigorating, supportive and motivating. It gains heightened engagement from the employee and this cascades and helps to build engagement within the organization.
Done poorly, it can result in an employee(s) who can: become demotivated, have poor morale, and can become a critic of any and all operations or activities within the group, division or company. Obviously, this needs to be avoided at all costs.
One of the easiest ways to start the evaluation process is to clearly communicate what the process of the performance evaluation will be. Communicate how it is to be initiated, the forms that will be used, metrics and standards employed, whether it will use a 360 review process, and what input the employee will have in the process. Obviously, the final Performance Evaluation or Review will be a document placed in the employee's Personnel File and should be communicated accordingly.
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