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Webcast: Rebuilding Morale and Productivity in 2010

The key to maximizing your ‘precovery’ is to ramp up productivity as demand returns - but how do you do that in an environment where employee morale is dampened by workforce reductions and budget cuts?

In this webcast, I share 2010-specific strategies to re-engage your employees to and tap into their ‘discretionary effort’ to rebuild and sustain productivity levels.



You can also view this (and more Predictable Success screencasts) at Viddler.com and Vimeo.com.

7P2T2PXX7RA2

The Predictable Success Book Cover Contest - Results!

Thanks, everyone for taking the time to vote recently on the cover for my upcoming new book, "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There" - I really appreciate you all taking the time to help me out.

The final winner was cover #2. I've emailed separately the 25 people who voted first for cover #2 with details on how they can get their free copy of the book when it is published, but I'm thankful to everyone who voted.

If you're interested in the details and what we did with the information, read on. (Otherwise, again, thanks for your time - it really did help! If you'd like to receive regular updates on my progress toward making 'Predictable Success' a Wall Street Journal / New York Times Business best-seller by next summer, feel free to subscribe to the blog using any of the buttons on the left at http://PredictableSuccess.com/blog/ - it's free, and you can unsubscribe at any time.)

Poll result details

The poll results where immensely helpful and pretty clear cut. Of the 738 votes to date, each cover received the following percentage (if you want to refresh your memory of each cover, you can see them at http://PredictableSuccess.com/vote):

Click on any cover to see a larger version.
Cover 1 - 24%	Cover 2 - 35%
Cover 3 - 9%	Cover 4 - 31%

Two people said they didn't like any of the covers.

Cover #3 pretty much tanked - too uninspiring, too plain, too academic looking. Before we ran the poll it was my personal favorite and I would have likely chosen it, so that tells you (a) how little I know about book covers, and (b) how valuable the exercise was overall.

Cover #1 was third overall, but it was the clear favorite with two groups: female voters (where it polled an amazing 62%) and those who said that they didn't buy many business books. I might be placing a losing bet against female intuition by not going with #1, but in the end I agreed with the comments of many of you who said that while it was a great cover, it was just too similar to many other business books.

Cover #4 polled strongly, but received a large number of 'I've no clue what the image means' comments, and many people couldn't work out whether the rogue ball was going back into the 'chute' or falling away from it. The overriding sense from the comments was "I like it, but...".

The 'Domino' cover (#3) edged out the 'ball-bearings' as the first-choice winner by 4%. However, what made it the standout winner overall was the number of people (26%) who specifically mentioned it as the cover that most attracted their attention, even though they didn't vote for it (mostly because they felt the 'falling dominoes' image was somewhat negative and not in keeping with the concept of predictable success). In other words, almost two-thirds of everyone who voted had their eyes drawn to #2 first.

Given that the purpose of the cover is to get browsers in a bookstore to reach out and at least peruse the book, #2 far and away fulfills that criteria best. Most people liked it most, and a majority of those that didn't vote for it still where drawn to it.

So #2 it is. You'll see changes in the web site and promotional materials reflecting that choice in the next few weeks.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out - I really appreciate it!

Flagrant self-congratulation: Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company Endorses 'Predictable Success'

Forgive your author and consultant a little weekend's indulgence, but I'm exploding with pride that Alan Mulally, President & CEO of Ford Motor Company (and recently named 'Man of the Year' by Automobile Magazine) has this to say about my upcoming book "Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There":

"Les really captures the integration of key business processes, people, and leadership to consistently deliver a compelling vision, comprehensive plan, and profitable growth for the benefit of all stakeholders."

I'd like to thank Mr Mulally for being so generous to me with his time, support and encouragement during an incredibly demanding and pressured time for him, his company and the US automobile industry in general. He joins Marshall Goldsmith (#1 WSJ/NYT Bestseller with "What Got You Here Won't Get You There"), Darryl Hutson, CEO and founder of American Express Incentive Services, and Mel Haught, CEO of Pella Corporation in advance praise for 'Predictable Success'.

"Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There" will be published in June 2010 by Greenleaf Press.

3 Things You Must do to Retain Your Top Performers in 2010

In the last post, I outlined the seven main reasons your top performers are likely to leave in 2010. Here are the three steps you must take - now - to prevent that happening.

1. Re-establish a shared vision
To stay with you in 2010, your key performers will need to feel a renewed sense of shared vision - they've been 'running on empty' for long enough. But if you're like many business owners and managers right now, the thought of hauling yourself back into the 'vision business' is a daunting one.

After all the best-laid plans of 2007 and beyond were torpedoed out of existence, and after two years of wearying slog, dusting off the mission statement, pulling down the strategic plan and shaking the crystal ball anew feels like an exercise in futility and frustration. Weariness, lack of clarity and the pressure of other commitments all make this an unappealing exercise.

Here's the thing - while most businesses will be wakening to the need (and desire) to rebuild their vision sometime near the back end of 2010, that's way too late for you. Your best performers will be gone by then - substantially because of that self-same lack of shared vision.

As a business owner or manager, your biggest single challenge for the final couple of months of 2009 is to find from somewhere the energy and enthusiasm to rekindle a new shared vision for your organization, your people and yourself.

2. Provide a fresh challenge.
Part of the 'new' shared vision must be the provision of a fresh challenge for your top performers. As we saw in the last post, for your veterans and top producers, simply returning to life as 'normal' before the crash won't cut it. You need to find new responsibilities, new locations, new oversight, new authority, new horizons - new challenges, for your key people.

And vitally, agreeing those new challenges will require a higher-than-usual level of dialog with your people. In 2010, you won't retain your top performers by issuing them with a new challenge that you've simply delegated or imposed. Instead, you need to engage them in a dialog whereby you hear from them what they want to do next - otherwise, they'll take those desires to a hiring interview with your competitors.

3. Use trust to rebuild a sense of ‘fit’
Your key people (especially if they have been with you for three or four years or more) are feeling disjointed and unaligned - like they don't 'fit' with the organization the way they used to.

Rebuilding that sense of fit involves implementing both the points detailed above (re-establishing a shared vision and finding a fresh challenge for your key people) plus rebuilding a sense of trust.

As we saw in the earlier post, most people have had their trust in all institutions severely eroded in the past couple of years. Don't kid yourself - you're no exception: you and your business are included. No matter how upright you've been or how trustworthily you've behaved during the downturn, you are still the public face and subliminal fall guy for your employees' distrust.

Rebuilding trust (and renewing that sense of 'fit') will require one thing from you:

Consistent, predictably regular, and authentic communication.

In the next post, we'll look at what 'consistent, predictably regular, and authentic communication' involves.

7 Reasons Your Top Performers Will Leave In 2010

A recent spate of surveys and commentary confirm what has become clear from my conversations with top performers over the last eight to ten weeks: many of them will move jobs as soon as their existing employer is in recovery from the recent economic collapse - some as early as Q1 2010.

Why now? Why change jobs when things are getting better, not worse?

7. Weariness
Exhaustion, plain and simple. It's been a tough two to three years, and your top performers are tired. And you know the saying - 'A change is as good as a rest'.

6. Trust
Trust in authority has taken a battering during this last downturn, and you are the public face of trust for your top performers. Even if you've done nothing wrong and everything right, even if you're held in high regard individually, you represent the untrustworthy old guard. They'll move somewhere new to start rebuilding that trust.

5. Fit
Like an old set of dentures, your veteran top performers don't 'fit' in the organization as well as they did. You've changed, the business has changed, the industry has changed and they've changed. What was once a seamless relationship now has irritating edges, chips and crevices.

4. Spring, Easter, Bunnies, etc.
Business-wise this last few years have felt like winter to many people, and your top performers are no exception. They've been loyal enough to stay the course while things were really tough, but as soon as there's a change in season, and they can honestly say they've seen you through the worst of it, they'll go to warmer climes to start something new and fresh.

3. Challenge
Top performers want new, positive challenges. They can only thrive on negative challenges for so long. Your competitor's hiring process emphasizes new challenges, your 2010 'maintenance and recovery' plan does not.

2. Impact
Top performers need to feel they're making a real difference. Nothing is more frustrating to them than a sense of stagnation. Right now, your organization reeks of stagnation ('s not your fault - it's just a fact).

To them, your competitor looks like a bright new opportunity to make a real impact. And of course, your competitor will ensure that the opportunity to do so will be front and center in their hiring process (whether it's true or not).

1. Control
The #1 reason your top performers will leave next year is simple: to restore a sense of control over their lives. They have dedicated the last few years to loyally doing things they don't enjoy and wouldn't do naturally (retrenching, firing people, taking back tasks they'd long since delegated), and as soon as they can look in the mirror and honestly say they've got you over the hump, they'll go elsewhere, to restore the sense that they are once more in control of their own destiny.

None of this is inevitable, but unless you make changes now, it is very likely to happen. Next up - what to do to keep your top performers.

Two Reasons Why Your Organization's Culture (and Profits) Will Be Shredded in 2010

Next year will see an uptick in the business environment for most organizations and a full-blown recovery for some. And yet many of those self-same organizations will lose their culture, lose their way (and lose a lot of money) next year.

Why? Because of two highly disruptive, though avoidable, events:

1: Top performers will leave.

For reasons we'll explore in the next post, 2010 will see an exodus of top performers (including long-term veterans) from many organizations.

Obviously, losing top performers just at the point when they're needed to convert the fruits of an economic recovery is highly disruptive. Potential revenue will be left on the table, market share will go to competitors, operations will be error-prone and expensive, and efficiencies will go to pot.

But equally important - more so, in the long run - the departing veterans will take with them a big chunk of the 'institutional memory' of the organization's culture, and the departure of top performers will lower the performance bar across the organization as a whole.

2: The hiring function will implode.

In many of those organizations that lose their veterans and top performers in 2010, the hiring function will collapse, crushing out of existence the last remnants of the organization's current culture.

Already tasked with 'staffing up' to replace the not-so-natural attrition of the last two years, and additionally having to scramble to replace departing veterans and big dogs, many organizations will make expensive mistakes by hiring the wrong people - people who (for reasons we'll explore in a future post) won't stay with the organization for more than a few months.

The resultant 'double- or triple-dipping' - hiring (and losing) two or more people for the same position in a short time - will prove the last straw for the organization's culture: the revolving door will strip away the remaining vestiges of institutional memory. Who we are, what is important to us, and how we operate will be lost in the scramble to simply 'do'.

None of this has to happen to your organization, but failing to act now significantly raises the probability that it will.

In the next post we'll look at how you can minimize the likelihood of the first disruption (loss of veterans and top performers) from happening to your organization, but for today, here's the question:

Who are the keepers of your culture? Who, if they left, would by their very absence change how your organization operates?