U.S. Competitiveness: What American Business Can and Should Do (In Its Own Interests): Guest Post

I came across this article by Edward Alden, the Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow, specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness and Director of the Renewing America Publication Series. And I think he nails it. The media and politicians have made the topic of U.S. Competitiveness a government issue, as well as a broader civic one. This is incorrect and Alden explains why.

The Key To Gen Y is Gen X

As I sit in the Leaf & Bean in Pittsburgh's Strip District this fine Saturday morning, the NY Jets are arriving at their hotel to challenge the Pittsburgh Steelers in tomorrow's AFC Championship game. Whats interesting about both teams is that arguably the key to their success thus far has been a handful of Generation Y players - young rookies or second or third year veterans who are no older than 23 or 24 years old. However, what makes players like the Jets' Mark Sanchez or the Steeler's Mike Wallace successful is the support, leadership, guidance and experience of the Generation X players around them. In short, for Generation Y to be a success they need Generation X.

Are You A Sailboat Or A Submarine?

Once in a while my eye catches the comments people leave on LinkedIn.com. I love LinkedIn, but I find the majority of the comments people leave to lack value and to be a waste of time. The topics aren't that great either - "How good are you at crisis management?", "One word or phrase to characterize your leadership style?". Silly topics that create inefficiency when 291 people actually take time out from producing to answer these rhetorical questions. Where is the value? However one question from somebody named John caught my eye "Do you believe you can motivate people?"

The Importance of Keeping Your Head Empty

This week I had the privilege of attending a private dinner with Elizabeth Gilbert, best selling author of the book Eat, Pray, Love. Now before you say 'huh?' let me just say I haven't read the book or watched the movie, but am aware it is a "chick flick" and that didn't prevent me from attending. You see, I find authors to have interesting perspective on the world and have often found their views helpful to me personally and in my work. I was not disappointed by Ms Gilbert.

The Battle For Talent

One of the challenges facing businesses of all sizes today is finding, developing and keeping the right talent. While unemployment is at record highs all over the world, and companies don't look to be adding great numbers of head count in the near future, one thing remains certain: good people are in high demand like never before.

LeBron, Cleveland and France's World Cup Team Lessons To Us All

A good friend and mentor of mine once said "Life's lessons are all around us. The trick is to recognize them, learn from them, and live from them!". It sounds pretty obvious but how aware are you of the world around you and all its lessons? And more importantly, are you applying these lessons to you and yours?

Are You Cut Out For A Career In Sales?

Like most people in business I spend a lot of time with sales people and/or selling myself. Often you don't think twice about the person in front of you who is showing you their product or explaining the benefits of their solution. You assume they are an authority on their product and focus on the questions that matter to you - will this address my problem? will it help me? can I/my company benefit from this. Of course you also assess whether the organization selling is right to become a partner to you and your organization, and often that starts with the quality of the relationship with the sales person in front of you. But once in a while I am stone cold surprised by the individual representing a company and its solution because they are just not an effective sales person. And it reflects poorly on their company, its products and its people.

Recruiting: The Problem With Resumes

Its been a grueling week of interviewing candidates. Lots of candidates. My client has a strategic initiative that requires a number of talented natural athletes with a mixture of skills and experience. The role doesn’t really exist today in the marketplace, although key components of it do in fairly established tactical functions in the manufacturing, automotive and aerospace industry. My client is in financial services.  What we are attempting is to elevate what is a traditionally tactical manufacturing role into a highly strategic relationship management position looking after some of the most critical parts of an organization at executive levels. Its pretty disruptive change internally, and highly difficult to find the right profiles externally. Forgive me for being vague, but client confidentiality comes first.

The Best Company In The World To Work For

Fortune magazine released its annual list of “100 Best Companies To Work For” and there is a new king at the top of the list. North Carolina based software maker SAS tops the list this year with some impressive stats as well as some very unusual perks that no doubt make employee satisfaction a key component of why the company has made this list for the past 13 years and is now number 1. However, this begs the question what truly makes a company great to work for? We have all worked at good companies and bad companies at some point in our career. But only a few have worked at truly Great companies. What makes a company a great place to work?

Recruiting: Strategic Game Changer in 2010

How good is your recruitment process? Do you have one? Do you care? You should. It may be a recession out there but there is a lot of talent looking for the right place to call home as we close the first decade of this century and go into what will be the defining decade of the first hundred years of the 21^st century. Yet many companies, big and small, don’t follow a recruitment process that defines who they are and what they are looking for, nor does it leave candidates with a positive impression of their company. There are clearly exceptions in the market that value their recruitment activities and have invested appropriately in process, people and communication, but they are just that, exceptions. It is imperative for companies, big and especially small, to have a well-defined strategic recruitment process that is followed and respected culturally. Companies that fail to do so will be at a strategic disadvantage to those who do. And when it comes to recruiting talent, every company, industry and geography is your competitor in the decades ahead.

The Thing About Leadership - Its Never About You

As a management consultant, I have the privilege of working with lots of brilliant, successful people, and from all over the world. And you know what their downfall typically is? Their own success. It’s an all-too-familiar story: entrepreneur starts a company, makes a brilliant call or two, makes a bundle, and then suddenly, miraculously, from then on he can do no wrong. But that’s not how it works. There’s an expression in investing: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Well, guess what. That expression applies to everything and everybody – entrepreneurs, executives, managers, business owners etc...

People - Part II The Need for Certainty and Uncertainty (6 Basic Human Needs)

Welcome back to the second in a series of blogs on People. In my previous post (4 Nov, 2009) I introduced the 6 basic needs that our brain has intellectually: certainty, uncertainty, significance, love and connection, contribution and growth. Understanding the 6 basic needs is key for leaders to manage their people and for the individual to better understand their relationships. Lets focus on the first two needs in this post, the need for certainty and the need for uncertainty.

People - Part I The 6 Basic Human Needs

People. People, People, People. You hear companies say it all the time. “Our people are the best.” Or another favorite is “Our people are the most important thing.” I even worked with an operations leader once who used to refer to our people as ‘people assets’. He was Detroit bred so he gets a pass from you touchy feely crowd. But unfortunately statements like these are more often buzz words without concrete meaning. I will be writing a series of blogs on people in the coming weeks and months because I believe now more than ever in corporate history there are opportunities for people to make a difference and for companies to differentiate with their people. And I fundamentally believe we can use the learnings from the dynamics of people management in the business world in our own personal interactions with people, be it family, friends or perfect strangers.

So where to start? The subject of people is as broad as the philosophical question ‘Why?’ Did you ever get that question as an essay in philosophy exams? I was fortunate to come across it twice in my academic days, once in high school and once in college. As my classmates scribbled away hundreds of words in response (this was pre-laptops in the class room sadly) I answered the question ‘Why?’ with ‘Because!’ the first time, and ‘Why Not?’ the second time. I won’t disclose my grade just yet but here is a hint - both teachers gave me the exact same grade. Now you might ask what does this little story within a story have to do with people? Okay, to bring this all back to the subject I have to tell you my grade to both those questions…I got 100% on both exams. As shocking as that may seem looking back, the point I’m making is simple, to the point and concise are almost always the best way forward. The same should be applied to people.

So how do you take one of the most complex, sophisticated and arguably intelligent animals in the universe and make them simple? I have always believed the answer lies in understanding what the fundamental needs of a human being are, and then catering to those needs. Its that simple.

I’m going to digress one more time by talking about me – I have a diverse background and my career is similarly broad. My experience can be described as a general manager with core skills in sales, business development (yes the two are different), operations and customer delivery. I am also a consultant in several areas of expertise. I am really good with customers and I am a very compelling salesman. But my biggest spike is people. That is what I do best. I assemble the right team of people and I make them perform at the highest levels. It has become a passion for me and to try and be as successful as I can with people I have studied the question ‘Why do we do the things that we do?’. I want to understand how does the brain work and why do humans act the way they do? (I’d like to pause here to call out one of my readers, lets call him Larry which is not his real name. Larry has become my ‘grumpy old man’ reader, like those two guys from the muppet show. He always writes me after my blogs to voice his opinion and I truly welcome and value them. I have asked him to post his comments but he is a bit shy I guess. Anyhow, Larry wrote me after my last blog to say I always talk about myself in my posts so I wanted to apologize to Larry up front for talking about my passion for people. Sorry Larry.)

So let me wrap up this first posting on people by saying this – to manage people successfully its not enough to set up a people culture in your organization and be positive all the time. In business there are times when we have to do hard things and say hard things. To get this right in the heat of battle its important that leaders and followers understand what makes people tick. I believe this means understanding the 6 basic human needs that the brain has. I’m not talking about sustenance or water, but rather the basic intellectual and emotional needs that each human being has, no matter how old, what nationality, what profession, where they live etc.

The 6 basic human needs are:

1)          the need for certainty;

2)          the need for uncertainty;

3)          the need to be significant;

4)          the need for love and connection;

5)          the need to contribute;

6)          the need to grow.

Think about these 6 and tell me if you think the list is incomplete. But I warn you, its not. We will dive deeper in understanding the 6 basic needs in my next People posting. Until then, be good to yourself wherever you are today…I’m boarding my plane to Newark. Cheers!