What Are You Waiting For?

I’m writing this blog on Sunday, Super-bowl Sunday.  Although the Colts are in the big game, my heart, and mind is somewhere else… as it has for the last four years.

Four years ago yesterday.  Las Vegas. February 6, 2006.

Me and a bunch of my friends had finished our “dinner” at 4.00 a.m., and went back to our rooms to sleep.  Around 6.30 a.m., my best friend Will rushed into the room, telling me that my dad had left a message for me on his cell phone.  He had heard it already, he told me he would stay as I listened to it.  I knew something was terribly wrong.

I’ll never forget that message.  My 75 year old father was yelling, screaming, and crying that my mom had stopped breathing.  He had performed CPR, gotten her breathing again, called 911 and was waiting for them to arrive.

Never have I felt so helpless.

Many of you know the story.  Mom was in the hospital for four days, then ten days in hospice before she died.

Are You Living Your Dreams?

What Are You Waiting For?

Dad lived for another few years in the nursing home.  The folks that took care of him were angels, in every sense of the word…

I gave a speech the other week for the group I’m associated with, ILG (I Learning Global).  I talked about the journey I have been on the last four years, and told the group of 100 here in indy and a couple of hundred around the globe about my own “dream-trip”.

And those ten words.

Dad:  Are You Living Your Dreams?

Me:  No

Dad:  What Are You Waiting For?

Those ten words.

So, I made a decision to start living my dreams, and help others do the same.  I’m a certified Dream Manager, building better futures one dream at a time.

Check out our new website at www.therydgroup.com.  Or better yet,  come to our first dream event here in Indianapolis on February 25 at the Art Center.  HRCI is providing three general CEU’s for attendees.  You can learn more and register for the event by clicking on this link.

Ten words.

A lifetime of change.

What are you waiting for?

Much has been written about Ayn Rand’s masterpiece (along with The Fountainhead  and Anthem).  Books and essays about her books and essays are as popular today as they were decades ago.  Some call the book a treatise on democracy, others say it’s about the evils of communism, still others claim it to be a love story between Dagny Taggert and the three loves in her life.

For me, it was about all of those things… and more.

A Facebook friend of mine, Trace, provides a catalog of political speech from some of the greatest minds of our American History as his status updates.   It’s a joy to read (I’m a poli-sci major) even if I don’t agree with some of what Trace puts forth.  One thing is for sure, Trace believes what he posts, and defends his right to post it and my right to occasionally disagree.  I’m not sure if Trace has tried to digest the behemoth that is Atlas Shrugged, so I’m giving back a little to him and sharing a brief encapsulation of a two-hour radio address that John Galt, a central character of the book, relays to the American People.

Amazing how Ayn’s words ring so true today…

For twelve years you’ve been asking “Who is John Galt?” This is John Galt speaking. I’m the man who’s taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You’ve heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man’s sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you’ve demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You’ve sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?

Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your ‘brother-love’ morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won’t find them now, when you need them more than ever.

We’re on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I’m telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason — that it was right to pursue one’s own happiness as one’s principal goal in life. I don’t consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else’s life.

Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he’s keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

You know that you can’t give away everything and starve yourself. You’ve forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it’s your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn’t built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.

If you’ve understood what I’ve said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don’t accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don’t exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don’t sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.

The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.

I always loved that song, one of my favorites from Sesame Street.  But that’s another blog for another time.  For the purpose of today’s blog, these three things actually do go together.

Conan’s last show was Friday night, the end of a tough “two-week notice” that lasted weeks longer than it should have.  But he ended it like a pro Friday night, taking the high road even as he was shown the door.

“Before we end this rodeo, a few things need to be said. There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC.  To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want. And what I want to say is this: between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over 20 years.  Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways.  But this company has been my home for most of my adult life.  I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.”

I know that Conan made his mom proud Friday night and he reminded me of a similar situation I was in nearly six years ago.  Some of you know the story of my departure from the organization that employed me for almost nineteen years, the last ten of those as VP of their employee loyalty practice.

Six years ago, a good friend and colleague provided me the opportunity to partner with him on a book on employee engagement. I received the proper approval from my boss and from our ethics officer and got to work writing the outline and first chapter.  When the book contract was on my desk ready to be signed, the owner of the company came to me and asked me to discontinue my work on the project.  I was given the choice between keeping my job and writing the book.  After much reflection, I chose the book, ending a nineteen year career with a company that I truly loved.

I gave my boss two-weeks notice, and as I expected, was asked to pack-up my office and go.  Word spread quickly, some of my friends and associates were shocked, some were angry, some knew that the decision was “just business”.   It took a while to clean out my office, you can accumulate a lot of stuff over nineteen years. I loaded up a cart worth of materials to take out to my car and walked over to the elevator to take my last trip from the fourth floor to the lobby.  I said my “good-byes” and pressed the down button.

And then I heard my mom talking to me, just like I’m sure Conan’s did Friday night.

I walked over to the president’s office and knocked on his door, interrupting a meeting he was having.  I asked him to step out for just a moment, and then like Conan, thanked him for the opportunities he had given me over nearly two decades and wished him (and his family) the best.  I walked out of his office smiling, knowing that my decision to choose the book was the right one and knowing that his decision to show me the door was the right one for him too.

I could have been bitter, heck I was asked to leave ’cause I was writing a book on employee loyalty… and I was the head of our employee loyalty research practice.  Ironic to say the least.

But how could I be mad at an organization who gave me chances to develop my interests, who gave me the opportunity to travel around the globe, who helped me discover my dream and then gave me the ability to live it.  How could I be mad at the men who provided me the resources I needed to take care of my family for twenty years?

Sometimes good people quit.  Sometimes good people get canned.  Sometimes things just don’t work out.  And that’s ok.  It’s not right or wrong, it’s business.

As it was with NBC, Conan, and little ‘ol me.

As Kenny Rogers sings, You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.  Know when to walk away, know when to run.  You never count your money, when you’re sittin’ at the table.  There’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done.

Nothing But Cowards

The headline in the WSJ today was awesome:  NBC to Pay Conan O’Brien $40 Million...The article continues… “the comedian’s exit agreement prohibits Mr. O’Brien from bad-mouthing his former NBC bosses, according to people familiar with the matter, but paves the way for him to land another TV gig within a year.”

No Bloody Clue

Obviously the brain-trusts at NBC haven’t read my books, attended my speeches, or read this blog.  Years ago, they were struck with a retention issue.  They had an older worker (Jay Leno) who was still providing a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.  Heck, he was still number one in the ratings.  But Conan, the heir apparent, was chomping at the bit for a big promotion.

So they “divided the baby in two” (a special shout-out to King Solomon for that one) and told Jay that he would have to give up his job in about five years and give it to Conan.  NBC was worried about losing their young hotshot, they put retention before loyalty and engagement.  But hey, it worked.  They paid out big bribe money to both of them, figuring that buying their retention was the best avenue they could take.

Never Believe Your Contract

And seven months ago, the change was made.  Conan ascended to his dream-job, following the likes of Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, and of course, Jay Leno. But what to do with Jay?  He was a dutiful employee, gave up his job even though he was (still) number one in the late night ratings.  He wanted to take his skills and talents to a competitor… as I say, he couldn’t move up, or move over, so he wanted to move out.

But NBC said “no” and came up yet another retention plan… Scrap all of the ten-o’clock dramas and retain Jay by giving him that slot every night of the week.  History be damned, retaining Jay was the priority.

Expectations were high, initial ratings were great, and then the bottom fell out of both shows.  Conan lost Jay’s audience (NBC knew they appealed to different generations, but went ahead and made the change anyway).  Jay couldn’t get his late night folks to tune in at ten, and local stations lost the lead-in to their eleven o’clock news.  Things were getting ugly.

And because retention was the number one motivator for the Peacock Network, they began losing money hand-over-fist.  Where the Tonight Show was a cash cow, it was now operating more like a big vacuum,  sucking up more money than it was making.

Not Beneficial to Comcast

So what to do, what to do?

And then, another variable was added to the mix. The M&A by Comcast.  A new look at the bottom line.  New eyes on old problems seldom turns out well.

Trial balloons began to be floated.  Move Jay back to eleven thirty, Conan to twelve-thirty, and that other guy can stay put at one-thirty (I know it’s Jimmy Fallon, back off, I’m on a roll).  Nasty barbs began to be tossed from Jay at ten, and then from Conan at eleven-thirty.  Letterman, who went through this same problem at NBC before he bolted to CBS got in on the act.  Jimmy Kimmel started making jokes from his perch at ABC.  The late night implosion at NBC was the butt of jokes, as was the original decision to keep Jay by moving him to ten.

National Biscuit Company

Sorry,  that has nothing to do with this blog, but did you know that Nabisco is short for the National Biscuit Company?

Anyways…

So here we are.  NBC is about to eat forty million bucks for Conan’s Golden Parachute.  Local stations are screwed ’cause the last sweep weeks (where local stations determine what they can charge advertisers based on their Neilsen ratings) were in November as night and late-night ratings plummeted, driving down future revenue.  Sweeps are coming again in February and NBC has to pin their hopes on the upcoming Winter Olympics in Calgary.  They must feel like Eddie Edwards, the comically inept British ski jumper who didn’t come close to winning any medals in the 1988 Calgary Games.  For those of you who don’t remember, he finished dead last in both the 70- and 90-meter jumps.

No Buying Commitment

But that’s not all.  NBC is now looking at spending tens (and tens and tens and tens and tens) of millions of dollars to resurrect their ten p.m. time slot.  Yea, they have to go back to the actors, writers, directors, producers, and all of the “back office” folks they gave their walking papers to.  They have to eat crow, admit their mistake, and beg for forgiveness.  None of us can take yet another version of Law & Order, and we all know that in this fiasco, NBC is the “Biggest Loser”.

NBC hasn’t learned this important lesson:  Retention is the outcome of engagement.  People stay because they’re engaged, they aren’t engaged because they stay.

Mr. O’Brien will be fine.  His stint on The Tonight Show lasted under one hundred and seventy-five days, depending on when they finally show him the door.  His severance package comes out to be about $230,000 for every day he showed up for work.  That should keep him happy for another year before he jumps to Fox and makes the big-bucks.

Never Bet Against Conan

As I have mentioned before, I am honored to be the special international advisor to my friends at APQC and their current benchmark study.  To that end, I am happy to announce the best-practice partners selected for Rewarding, Engaging, and Retaining Key Talent, APQC’s current study on human capital management. The three organizations below were selected based on secondary research and confirmed through voting by the study’s participants and the special adviser (that’s me!!).

Best-practice partners are showcased throughout the project, share their stories, and teach the “how” behind their success. Here’s why the following organizations were selected as partners for their strategies, processes, practices, and outcomes for rewarding, engaging, and retaining key talent.

• 3M engages employees through localized practices within each business, overlaid with standardized training, tools, processes, and templates at the corporate level. It conducts comprehensive employee engagement surveys at three levels of the organization: 1) a worldwide leadership survey, 2) a worldwide business unit engagement survey, and 3) custom engagement surveys for individual business units. 3M has correlated higher levels of employee engagement with higher levels of innovation.
• Infosys rewards employees through a system based on values such as customer delight, leadership by example, integrity and transparency, fairness, and pursuit of excellence. It strives to maintain its good reputation because company pride is an important element of employee engagement. Infosys has correlated higher levels of employee engagement with higher levels of profitability.
• Schlumberger identifies “high-value” talent and proactively works to reward and retain this talent. It conducts regular focus groups with employees and managers to incorporate the “voice of the employee” into the organization’s practices and processes. Eight to ten HR health checks per year globally, at all levels of employment, yield detailed feedback that is provided to management with specific action items. “Boundaryless” career paths at Schlumberger serve as strong retention mechanisms for talent enterprise-wide.

The list of companies who weren’t selected are world-class in their own right, including one of my clients, Bosley Medical.  I’ve already booked three speeches on the topic and expect about a dozen more as I integrate some of these learnings into my practice… Yes, life is good.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor and learning more from 3M, Infosys, and Schlumberger, contact Rachel Brill, Project Manager, APQC at 1-713-685-7270, or at rbrill@apqc.org.

Now, if only I could come up with some witty way to use APQC in a sentence.

But it’s true.

There has been a lot of talk recently about companies revisiting their 2008-09 decisions to freeze wages, skip bonuses, and stop contributing to their employees’ 401k’s.   It’s all good.

But it doesn’t matter.

Money is overrated: In fact, pay has little, if anything at all, to do with motivation in the workplace. So says author Daniel Pink in his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books). “Pay for performance has to be exposed as folklore,” he says.  Pink contends that, provided employees receive a baseline level of compensation, three other factors matter more than cash: a sense of autonomy, of mastery over one’s labor, and of serving a purpose larger than oneself.

OMG, Pink is talking about engagement.  Let’s explore an example…

Beginning in 2008 at Best Buy’s Richfield, Minn., corporate offices. salaried workers there were allowed to shape their work day, putting in only as many hours as they felt necessary to get their jobs done. Productivity increased by thirty-five percent and turnover fell sharply, according to The Harvard Business Review.

Nothin’ about cash in that story.  Although Best Buy didn’t save any money (these were salaried workers), getting fifty-four hours of productivity for forty hours of pay is a pretty good deal.  In addition, each incremental drop in turnover saved the company tens-of-thousands of dollars.

In 2005, folks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston decided to do some social experimenting. They tested the power of incentives by offering money to those who did well in games that included tossing tennis balls and recalling a string of numbers . What did the researchers at the Fed determine? Higher incentives led to worse performance — and those given the highest incentives fared worst of all.

Money talks.  But it doesn’t say “engagement”.  It only says “retention”.

Compensation needs to be “fair”.  Anything less and you won’t even get non-qualified people to apply for a job.  Anything more and you might never be able to get rid of them.

MONEY IS A SATISFIER, NOT A DRIVER OF ENGAGEMENT.

It’s about training and development, having capable and ethical bosses, working in a culture of ethics, and being provided adequate rewards and recognition, especially for Hi-Po’s.

I’m tickled Pink…

Sun and sand for this kid.

Anyways…

A job satisfaction survey by the Corporate Executive Board found that the number of dissatisfied workers in IT continues to increase.  They found the desire of IT employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — put in extra hours, make suggestions for improving processes, and generally seek to be actively involved in the organization — has dropped to its lowest levels since the survey was launched a decade ago.

In 2007, about 12% of the IT employees fit in category of “highly engaged” workers, but that has since fallen to 4%.  As Jaime Capella, a director for the Board said, “These are literally the most critical employees,” In addition, these critical workers are 2.5 times more likely than the average employee to be looking for new jobs, even today!

IT folks like to play with T&T (toys and tools).  They thrive on training and development.  They may only stay with your organization a couple of years, but while they are there, they are incredibly loyal.  They’ll bang out code 25 hours a day (they are IT, they know how to make that happen).

IT’s not that hard to figure out.

Yea,  I liked the play on words too!

Crazy how time flies when you are having fun, it’s a shame that time doesn’t stop flying when you aren’t.

Anyways…  let’s start this year off with a survey!!

Americans’ job satisfaction falls to record low

It’s a shocker, huh?

Not if you have been listening to little ‘ol me for the last three blog-years, or the last fifteen on the speaking tour.

But hey, the nice folks from the Conference Board do their annual survey every year (therefore the word “annual”) and the trends are pretty worrisome.   Consider the following:

• Only forty-five percent of employees are satisfied with their work, the lowest level in twenty-two years.  The number was forty-nine percent just a year ago, a ten percent drop in one year is pretty darned significant.
• Two-thirds of workers under twenty-five years of age are dissatisfied in their job.  That doesn’t bode well for their future… or ours.
• Interestingly, the most satisfied group of workers are twenty-five to thirty-four, however fifty-three percent of these folks were not satisfied in their job.  Being better than lousy is nothing to write home to mom about.
• Forty-three percent of workers feel “secure” in their job.  I believe that is forty-three percent too many.  Nobody is secure these days, nobody’s job is guaranteed.
• Fifty-one percent of employees say they are satisfied with their boss, down ten percent from a year ago, nearly twenty percent in the last twenty years.  Remember, employees quit a boss, not a company.  On occasion, they quit their crazy co-workers as well.

I won’t rant too much about the “satisfaction vs. engagement” thing.  Whether you call it employee engagement, satisfaction, morale, commitment, loyalty, culture, or happiness, the trends don’t lie.

The same trends show up in my own company’s biennial benchmark study (new one starting in about four months)….  Only forty-three percent of today’s employees are fully engaged, willing to go the extra mile for customers and likely to stay even if offered a little more money to go somewhere else.

And as I’ve said before, this is the difference between satisfaction and engagement; the actions and behaviors we look for from our employees.

As Lynn Franco, author of the Conference Board report said, “What’s really disturbing about growing job dissatisfaction is the way it can play into the competitive nature of the U.S. workforce   the road and on the growth of the U.S. economy, all in a negative way.

Engagement matters, perhaps more now than ever.

Let me tell you, it’s pretty tiny.   Teeny tiny.  Itty bitty.

A grain of sand in the Sahara Desert.

A drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean.

An ounce of integrity in Washington D.C. (that was for my friend, Randy).

But it just doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t matter.  Yea, a Meatballs reference.  Bill Murray, Chris Makepeace (yes, Rudy’s acting name), and Kate Lynch.

Some of us are still working.  Some of us are pretending to work, looking at the clock, wondering when our boss will either leave early, giving us the green light to do the same, or tell us to leave early, thereby getting our undying love and devotion… until Monday.

This time of year tends to be one of reflection and goal setting.  There must be something about the week after Christmas and before the new year starts that makes people “think”.   Some businesses like health clubs live and die on the New Year’s Resolution.   It’s not a promise, in fact a resolution is almost made to be broken.  The dictionary defines resolution as “the reduction or disappearance of a swelling or inflammation without suppuration“.

Oops, I think that was the wrong dictionary.   And please take my word on this one, don’t even ask what “suppuration” is.  Ick.  Remember, I used a medical dictionary to get my definition of resolution.  If your curiosity is too much, and if you’re still lookin’ at the clock chained to your desk, go ahead.   Go to www.dictionary.com and type in “suppuration”.  Go ahead.  We’ll wait.

Yawn.

S-U-P-P-U-R-A-T-I-O-N

See, I told you not to look it up.  Not my fault, I warned you.

Anyways…

Back to the goal setting.  Whether you call them goals, resolutions, promises, expectations, or dreams, putting them down on paper is important to do.   It’s the actual taking pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) that begins to create new thought patterns and beliefs.  You can think of things all you want, but unless you write them down somewhere, all they will ever be are abstract ideas.

It’s true.  There is data and stuff that proves it.  Don’t make me get numbers and junk.

In my process, I’m creating an overall BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) and then narrowing the focus into a number of smaller goals that will narrow down on different aspects of the larger goal (physical, financial, family, business, etc.).   Hopes beget dreams. Dreams beget goals.  Goals beget strategies.  Strategies beget tactics.  Tactics beget actions.  Actions beget change.

It’s the holiday season, there seems to be lots of “begettin’”.

For the first time, I’m also incorporating my dreams, not only my personal dreams that I want to accomplish in 2010, but also the dreams for a new business, The RYD Group, a company dedicated to changing people’s lives, one dream at a time.  With my partner and Senior Certified Dream Manager, Mary Beth Braun, we’re launching our business at the beginning of the year and have our first Recapture Your Dreams event scheduled for February 24.   It’s an exciting journey, and I’m delighted to be partnering with MBB on this effort.

Goals are dreams with a deadline.

Are you living your dreams?

Have a happy holiday, and a wonderful New Year!

Sometimes they are ingrained on a time period, like “Dewey Defeats Truman”, the famous Chicago Tribune headline from 1948.  How ’bout the famous New York Post headline voted one of the best ever, “Headless Body in Topless Bar” (1983).  Go back to 1935 and enjoy “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” from Variety.

But c’mon.  Don’t Pee On My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining.

That’s a keeper, in the hall of fame.  And better yet, it’s not something that somebody just wrote.  It’s something that somebody said.  Out loud.

Excellent.

The name of my new yet-to-be-created speech for 2010.

I know you can use the common “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes”, but those ten words are magic to my ears.

It’s can be a beneficial communication strategy between employees and employers too.  It’s the responsibility of both sides of the equation to make sure issues are discussed in an open, honest environment.  If employees don’t believe what management tells them they are much less likely to feel a strong sense of affective commitment, a personal & psychological attachment to the company.  It’s this feeling like part of the family that makes all the difference in terms of employee engagement and retention.  It’s what makes the hi-po’s perform highly.

One of the defining moments of any organization is when communicating a layoff to the employees, customers, shareholders, and community and civil leaders.   If these stakeholder groups believe in the integrity of the company and the senior leaders… if these stakeholders believe the reasons given for layoffs were honest and straight-forward… if these stakeholders believe the organization provided the appropriate level of severance pay and benefits… if these stakeholders believe.

If.  Bad to rely solely on “ifs”.  However,

If you don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining, then I’m more likely to believe most everything else you say.

If-then.  You can rely on a good if-then, especially those proven over time.

By the way, the person that used the line in a speech and later as the title of her book?

Judge Judy.

Oh Yea.  Now please don’t ask me anything about Aunt Judy.  It’s a tired subject.

Oops.