I’d venture that for 90% of employee performance problems, supervisors focus their solution efforts on the problem employee.

Helping the employee change. Demanding that the employee change. Talking to the employee. Writing up the employee. Training the employee. Disciplining the employee.

What if, though, the employee was not the problem?

What if problems elsewhere in the company were creating a situation in which no employee would look good?

What if their negative attitude was a self-protective response to your harsh, arbitrary and/or imperious leadership style?

What if their uncooperativeness was a response to the competitive bonus program in your compensation structure?

In this week’s podcast discussion, Claudia and I take a closer look at the problem of poor employee performance.

When acceptable performance becomes a problem, are we jumping too quickly to blame and punishment?

Could there be aspects of your corporate structure, culture, or your own leadership methods that might be setting the stage for poor performance?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Fact 1: People are growing, developing, changing creatures.

Fact 2: If you’re going to employ these growing, developing, changing creatures, you might want to design job descriptions that grow, develop, and change with said creatures.

Obvious, right? NOT!

Most job descriptions are highly focused (a good thing) yet uncritically rigid (a problematic thing) documents. We aren’t taking into account the facts of human development in how we structure our roles.

Furthermore, many supervisors do not want to “lose” their best employees to promotions or department transfers. As a result they squash, quench, and otherwise reject requests for growth, development, and change.

Are you afraid of losing your best workers if you promote them? Fighting their development will only result in either losing them to a competitor or losing their enthusiasm so that you wished they worked for a competitor.

In this week’s podcast discussion, Claudia and I look at the problem of retaining good employees.

Are you losing your best and brightest because there is no way for them to grow, develop or change?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

We’ve all received them. The polite email thanking us for our job application, but with regrets declining the opportunity to meet us in person.

The computer, it seems, decided that since the job requisition form specified a minimum of five years of experience and we only had four years of experience, that there would be no reason to explore our qualifications further. 

Can such talent search methods be serving us well? Could it be that our standardized job descriptions, computerized key word searches, and the use of unformatted text-only resumes are eliminating valuable candidates before we even have a chance to meet them?

In this week’s podcast discussion, Claudia and I look at the problem of finding good employees.

The challenge in a tough economy—when we’re receiving possibly hundreds of applications for any given opening—is how to make sure we’re meeting the unique, real-life people who would be the best fit for our team.

The options at either end of the spectrum aren’t practical. We cannot personally interview every single applicant.  The computerized culling cannot take into account important intangibles like industriousness, team spirit, creativity, working styles, or communication abilities.

How do we make sure we’re meeting and hiring the best people available?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

You’ve met them both.

One is the leader who views their employees as an expense to be minimized.

The other is the leader who views their employees as an asset into whom to invest.

The one is most often at odds with their team. Cracking the whip to make sure no one is slacking off. Squeezing out every last drop of effort, delaying promotions, denying vacations, and doing their best to protect the company from the unfortunate necessity of needing more hands and feet to get the job done.

The other leader is grateful to surround him or herself with a complementary set of skills, experiences, working styles and passions.

This leader is most often working in concert with their team. Building on strengths, strengthening weaknesses, expressing confidence, extending trust, and celebrating aggressive goals achieved.

Working with people, of course, has both its ups and downs. What is significant though is the beginning lens through which you choose to views these problems and opportunities.

Are your employees are an expense to minimize or an asset to maximize?

The lens you choose will have a radical impact on how you deal with four common employee problems.

Employees… What Are They Good For?
Week 1: Expense or Asset?
Week 2: The Problem of Finding Good Employees
Week 3: The Problem of Retaining Good Employees
Week 4: The Problem of Poor Employee Performance
Week 5: The Problem of Stagnant Employee Progress

What lens do you use when addressing employee problems? 

Listen in.

Each week the conversation will continue. Catch up on the entire series here.

Both our physical desktop and our computer desktop can get cluttered quickly. 

Some of us function well in cluttered environments. Others of us go crazy with frustration.

I once worked with a gentleman whose office was piled from corner to corner with files, books, and rolls of construction drawings. He knew where everything was. I still feel bad for the young intern who thought she was doing him a favor by cleaning it all up one year while he was away on vacation.

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I look at these two desktop worlds of wood and pixels, and do some thinking about clutter.

One of the issues in whether we can find what we need. The other issue is whether the cluttered desktops are making it difficult to focus and be productive.

In other words, can you recognize how clutter affects your ability to find things or to get work done?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

I got another angry email from Fred before I had a chance to respond to his first. Why doesn’t Nancy return my calls? Did I really need to receive so much information about Kendra’s breakup?

Choosing to communicate via phone, text, email, or social network is not only a matter of personal preference, but must take into account the recipients preferences as well.

Calling someone who never answers their phone is worse than futile. 

Leaving a long phone message for a busy person is almost a form of cruelty.

A new form of clutter clouds our focus with so many communication options available to us. Not only are there more means of communication than ever before, each person’s communication preferences vary.

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I discuss the problem of keeping track of this exploding world of communication options. What used to be a simple conversation can now be anything from a live video chat to an abbreviated text message.

How do you keep track of who responds best to a text message and who responds best to a personal call? How do you know which messages need to be delivered in person and which messages can be published on a public social network?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Where is that conversation thread? On my phone, my tablet, my laptop, or my desktop computer?

We are surrounded by dramatically new, increasingly fantastic, ever-changing tools. When do the new options propel us forward and when do they confuse, distract or paralyze us?

In this week’s podcast discussion, web developer Jorge Rosas and I take a look at the myriad new technology tools which are available to us.

Each new tool has the potential to create as many problems as it solves.

Some of us thrive with new tools and some of us get overwhelmed.

It wasn’t that long ago that a telephone had a single, very focused capability while a desktop computer had a different capability and purpose.

Now they are almost completely interchangeable. We can surf the web on our phones and talk to family in Asia on our computers.

For some the new tools have dramatically increased our effectiveness. For others the new tools have only increased the confusion and mess.

How many contact lists do you keep for phone numbers, email addresses, messaging user names, and residence addresses?

What are you carrying today? Your phone? Your tablet? Your laptop? All three? 

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Who ever thought we’d experience such a thing as “friend clutter”?

Personal news, corporate offerings, family pictures, and myriad invitations fill our inbox, our friend stream, and our messaging windows.

Contact comes from people we want to hear from and also from many we don’t really care to know so much about.

What’s one to do?

In this week’s podcast discussion web developer Jorge Rosas and I discuss all those social networks and the new form of clutter they can create for us.

How many social networks can one person belong to and still participate in any of them in a meaningful way?

How many streams of information can be flashing before one’s eyes before one cannot see any of them? Talk about potential distractions to someone trying to focus on getting work done!

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Would you believe I lost my notes for this blog post in all the clutter on my desk?

I hope not. While I definitely fall into the seriously cluttered category, such poetic irony is not my lot this morning. But it did make for a fun lead-in sentence.

Welcome to a fresh discussion on clutter.

Instead of simply declaring war on clutter as the arch enemy of all that is good and effective in the workplace, our special guest, Jorge Rosas, web developer and producer of this podcast, and I will think out loud over the next five weeks about how to figure out what level of clutter works best for you.

The possibilities for creating clutter seem to be growing logarithmically, and in order to stay effective we need to adjust quickly.

Not only do we have messy desks, we have messy computer desk tops. We have technology clutter. We have communication clutter. We have relationship clutter.

The disorienting piles in every category seem to grow out of control before we’ve even learned how to use them.

You’re going to enjoy this series. Clutter need not be our enemy. Nor is it a benign growth.

It’s an open question: is clutter your friend or your foe?

Clutter: Friend or Foe?
Week #1: Dispelling Myths About Clutter
Week #2: All Those Social Networks
Week #3: All Those Tech Tools
Week #4: All Those Communication Options
Week #5: All That Stuff On Your Desktop 

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.

Of the universities to which your child is granted admittance, he or she will have to decide one to attend. It’s an important decision, and it cannot be avoided.

Except that your child is currently twelve years old.

It is not yet time to make that particular decision.

Yet it would be a mistake to ignore or avoid the investigative and preparatory work involved in helping your child make the best decision possible when the time comes.

In this week’s podcast discussion with Van Wray of Amperant Advisors, we look at how to best approach these certain but distant decision points in our businesses.

Certain decision are coming.

We know they are on the way, but we don’t have enough information to make the decision yet. We cannot afford, though, to ignore, forget about, or minimize their importance in the mean time. What do we do?

Listen in.

Just now joining the conversation? Catch up on the entire series here.