The following is a guest post by Drake MacDonald.  Drake's brief experience in construction introduced him to the field's many shortcomings.  As an online writer and editor, he works to promote construction management education in the hopes of improving industry standards of communication and organization.

In the construction business, it is crucial for supervisors and employees to have a symbiotic relationship in order to build a healthy work culture.  However, in order to create such an environment, each construction management company must consider what can be done to develop a supportive workplace, how to inspire trust and leadership within the team, and how barriers that may inhibit productive transactions can be removed.  While this process sounds complicated, in actuality it is fairly easy to implement.  Simply utilizing the following ideas will allow you to establish a work environment that is not only healthy, but efficient and productive at every level.

The first step in creating a healthy work culture is for both employees and supervisors to be open to hearing and utilizing the ideas of any member of the construction team.  To ensure that all ideas are being heard, construction owners can encourage workers and supervisors to submit their ideas formally to the construction office.  Company owners should also encourage employees to share their ideas with their supervisors and other team members.

Secondly, although purpose is important to construction, it is also important that supervisors and employees utilize a process approach to managing each construction site.  When construction management is focused on process, team members are much more likely to meet the expected standards and complete each stage of construction with success.  Furthermore, the process approach allows construction work to be completed with greater efficiency and quality.

Thirdly, it is important that team members on the construction site have peer support and trust during the building process.  This can be facilitated by following through with all work orders and process standards.  Likewise, all members of the construction team should learn to cooperate and collaborate with each other on a day-to-day basis.  This means that each team member needs to be accountable for their work and must treat other members of the team with respect.  However, even with the most agreeable team, it’s inevitable that issues will arise that interfere with the construction process.  When such an instance occurs, it is crucial that the issue is addressed promptly with the entire team.

Ultimately if you incorporate collaborative behaviors, open communication, and a process approach into your construction company, you can easily build a healthy and profitable workplace culture.  Remember that construction teams can also focus on creating healthy work environments by utilizing economically green tools and materials that benefit the industry, workers, and clients.  With such a culture, construction safety is inevitable.  Furthermore, when you utilize these techniques, you can be confident that your team is giving their best.

Related: For even more employee engagement and team building strategies aimed at increasing job satisfaction and overall performance within the construction sector, click here.

• They do a wide array of things ranging from leadership and supervision, to performance management and employee development, to compensation and benefits to maximize staff retention.
• To both retain as well as attract top quality talent, they also embrace flexible work arrangements and recognition programs in a big way.
• Notably, they rank ahead of 14% of the world's richest countries in paid annual leave (with the big benefits to companies being workers who are far less likely to be burned out, and thus are more productive and less prone to leaving).

• From 42 U.S. states and territories.
• Represent more than 27 industries.
• Range in age from 3 to 99 years old – 50% are 10 years old or younger.
• Have 4 to 443 employees – 73% have 100 or fewer employees.
• They're also small when it comes to annual revenue: in 2010 they ranged from $200,000 to $404 million – though 96% of them had revenue under $100 million.
• This point I think is especially important when considering Lowrey's claim that the bulk of small businesses aren't growing: our 2011 award applicants increased headcounts 22% from 2009 to 2010, going from 74 to 90 employees on average.

Business owners attribute competitive advantage to their business model, value proposition, innovation, as well as the "smarts" I mentioned in this post on Patrick Lencioni's session (among others) at our conference last month with Inc. Magazine.  But as a new special report by Workforce Management makes clear, employee engagement is just as much a driver of competitiveness – and thus, revenue growth, market share, and other desired results.

One of my key takeaways from Garry Kranz's great report is the two graphs he shares on the most and least engaged workers by sector, as researched and reported last month by GfK Custom Research North America.  Sectors with the highest levels of engagement, based on GfK's survey of over 5,000 employees, include:

• Construction
• Professional/Business Services
• Information Technology

And those with the lowest engagement (or, conversely, highest disengagement) include:

• Retail
• Real Estate
• Education
• Manufacturing

Is your sector among those above?  (If it is, hopefully it's in the high-engagement group.)

I was curious as to how the sector representation of the recent winners and finalists of Winning Workplaces' 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award, and the remaining applicants – some 350 firms in total – compare to GfK's high/low engagement sector findings.  Comparing apples to apples (the same sectors in both surveys) here's what I found:

Undoubtedly, part of what made this year's award winners and finalists competitive was that they came from more sectors with typically higher engagement, and fewer sectors with lower engagement, when compared to the remaining applicant pool.

Here's the really interesting thing, though: despite our company research sample's small size relative to many of their marketplace peers – firms eligible for our award have no more than 500 workers – and, therefore, their more limited budgets for employee development strategies, in many cases they are still outperforming their often larger competitors.  For some people practices insight into how they accomplish this, see what Kenexa Research Institute Exeucutive Director Jack Wiley says in the Workforce Management report:

[S]ome organizations say they have managed to sustain engagement levels during the prolonged recession.  Typically, those employers systematically gathered feedback from employees, analyzed responses and implemented changes as needed, Wiley says.  "They measure engagement with the same rigor they apply to customer service or financial data."

This tendency is definitely in effect among the small firms that rise to the top of our award evaluation process each year – not just based on their engagement activities, but on the bottom-line results they bring, including lower turnover and higher average employee tenures.

One more thing: As I discussed in this post based on new university research, spending to cultivate more highly engaged employees is not truly working for you unless it is used to build a career path for them, especially for your top performers.  You should check out this revealing, related research I came across today via WorldatWork.  They share Right Management's new survey finding that 75% of organizations lost high-performing employees they did not want to lose during the past year.

Pay special attention to the last paragraph of the WorldatWork write-up: a Right Management senior exec cited supports the case of providing a career path for top talent to avoid losing these critical assets (at this critical time!).

This is a little late coming, but I wanted to supplement the takeaways I've shared on Twitter from our Leadership Conference last month with Inc. Magazine (see these five recent tweets) with a post here with even more on what I learned and got a refresher on when it comes to investing in your workplace for greater employee engagement, team building, and other profitable people practices.

I'm also happy to share some of the great photos Inc. took of the sessions.  My thanks to Rachel Kovar, Inc.'s Events & Conferences Manager, for supplying them.  Rachel and her team are busy getting ready for the 2011 Inc. 500/5000 in September.

Back to the June Leadership Conference...

June 16, 2011

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Patrick Lencioni of The Table Group gave a rousing review of the successful business practices he puts in a real-world context in his book of the same name.  He gave all attendees a copy of it – it's a great, short read, which I finished on my flight from Dallas back to Los Angeles.

His premise was that all the company smarts that CEOs care about and work to improve from day one – strategy, marketing, finance, technology – are only half the equation for successful firms.  The other half is creating a healthy workplace culture, with minimal politics and confusion, but high morale and, thus, productivity.  "Healthy is the multiplier of their smarts," Lencioni said.

A Top Workplace One Year Later: The New York Jets

Some of what Matt Higgins, EVP for the Jets, shared in this session – which took place just over a year after the team was named one of our 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces – was reflected in the Success Story we wrote on the company last July.  This includes the inclusionary leadership of the owner and head coach and the pervasive focus on listening to lower-level employees.

What was new here, to my ears at least, was how the Jets are being productive in their version of a particularly "down" time – the NFL lockout.  Higgins said they've taken it as an opportunity to send some of their staff to shadow people in other professions, ranging from firefighters to politicians, to promote continued employee leadership development.

June 17, 2011

How to Get Ferocious Commitment from Your People

I hadn't previously been exposed to the speaker of this session, Stan Slap, author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B: The Unbeatable Impact of Truly Committed Managers.  He spent a good deal of time explaining the differences between leaders and managers; while both work hard on consistency and passion, Slap said, what distinguishes managers from leaders is that the former can get away with faltering on these qualities, but the latter simply cannot afford to do so.

Also, based on what I've seen and written about in terms of the highly specialized, tight knit cultures of many of our award-winning small workplaces, I liked that he emphasized family as a core value that helps create more open, honest communication – which, of course, promotes better business results.

Creating a Culture of Customer Service

Since Winning Workplaces previously enlisted the expertise of one of our honorees, Headsets.com's Mike Faith (who moderated another session at this year's conference), to speak on this topic in one of our webinars a few years ago, I didn't think I would pick up many new tips.  Boy, was I mistaken.

Christopher Zane, founder and president of the wildly successful Zane's Cycles, said one of his main areas of focus is improving and leveraging relationships with his business customers in between sales by surveying them on potential new product features.  He also shared the story of how he fired one of his customers after the person unnecessarily berated one of his employees.  This made clear his belief in the long-term good of working with quality folks in all parts of their product lifecycle – not just employees.

Related: This conference was the culmination of our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award process.  We're gearing up now to launch our 2012 competition.  Click here for the latest news on it.

I love LinkedIn.  I've blogged before about its value, especially considering it's free except for your time (though there are fees if you want to post jobs there).  In the past I've used the business-themed social networking site to gather opinions on Zappos' "leaving bonus," and I referenced its Group feature as a lead-driving tool.

One of the best ways to use LinkedIn is to ask and answer questions.  I particularly enjoy going to the Small Business and Organizational Development sections and seeing what company leaders, managers, and other employees are talking about – and occasionally offering my opinion.  I did so last month in response to organizational culture consultant and speaker Marcella Bremer's question asking why building a productive workplace culture is often not on the agenda of CEOs, company board members, and other top executives.

My response sparked an email conversation in which Marcella and I compared notes on our respective firms devoted to leveraging employee engagement and team building strategies to improve companies' bottom-line results.  The enterprise she co-owns, OCAI online, is based in the Netherlands (people practices advancement is truly a small world!).

When I went to her site I learned what OCAI stand for: Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument.  Developed by Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, the OCAI operates based on what's known as the Competing Values Framework.  Here's what this looks like:

As you can see, as you go up on this graph you transition from core values supporting stability and control (some would say, command and control) to flexibility and discretion.  From left to right, the focus changes from internal and integration to external and differentiation.  Where a company lands on this graph determines its balance among four Organizational Culture Types: clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market.

What I find amazing is that when I go to OCAI's page explaining these culture types in greater detail, I find that, generally speaking, Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplace award honorees fall within the area of the graph I highlighted below:

That is, they have:

• workforces who say they feel like a family;
• leaders who see themselves, and are seen by their people, as mentors;
• strong emphasis on teamwork, participation, and consensus; and
• employees who take risks, within a culture that promotes individual initiative and freedom.

However, I think our honorees are also a hybrid – they might have cultures which generally fall within the area of the graph I indicated, but when you read their applications for our award, they have succeeded in using staff engagement activities representative of a clan or an adhocracy to propel their business squarely in the market sector of the graph.  This is another way of saying, they don't just treat their people well because it's the right thing to do – they integrate these practices into the "vaue drivers" OCAI talks about of increasing market share, goal achievement, and profitability.  I discussed this a bit more in posts in January and June.

So...where does your company's culture fall on OCAI's graph?  I think leaders would find it an insightful and useful exercise to survey their management teams and other employees on what they think, and see how it compares to their own assessment.

As Newswise reported two weeks ago, a University of Iowa study found that a good portion of the $134 billion that businesses spend annually on employee development strategies "could be wasted if companies don't assure their employees that they have a promising career with the company."

That's a huge chunk of change – savings that struggling small businesses, especially, would love to see back on their balance sheets.  To it in perspective, Standard & Poor's said Sunday that the U.S. bond market could lose roughly that amount if our economy loses its triple A rating as a result of the debt ceiling not being raised by the Treasury's August 2 deadline.

According to the study's authors at the UI Tippie College of Business, spending on professional development is most effective when it's tied to career advancement opportunities.  In fact, they argue, when it's not, turnover actually increases.

They also say that in addition to employee engagement activities like career counseling, "programs like mentoring and job rotations as well as good relationships with their immediate boss can create the feeling that career opportunities are available."

In fact, tying professional development dollars to career counseling is a practice the small firms that applied for Winning Workplaces' 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award earlier this year have used to great effect.  And by "great effect," I mean keeping their workers longer, so they end up spending far less recruiting and training new hires to replace those who've left for jobs where they see more long-term career potential.  This, in turn, helps maintain the knowledge base and facilitate the kinds of quality customer and client relationships which generate businesses' favorite revenue, repeat business and referrals.

Check out the charts below.  Among our sample of nearly 350 firms applying for our workplace award this year, those providing career counseling experienced better employee tenure on average than their peers with no professional development approaches.

We also saw that companies providing mentoring programs and/or job rotation – which the study authors also pointed to for the most "lean" spending on employee training – in addition to career counseling earned more average revenue in 2010 vs. who don't fund professional development practices.  And firms providing mentoring and job rotation, but not career counseling, were more likely to be profitable than those who don't fund professional development.

Related: For more workforce effectiveness tactics that are low-cost but high-impact, read this article on our website.

I love when things converge.  Today I was already set to tell you about an impactful new initiative Winning Workplaces launched this month in conjunction with our upcoming joint Leadership Conference with Inc. Magazine in June.  The Scholarship Fund we've established directs contributions from readers like you toward worthy business school students to cover the cost of their attendance at this event in Dallas, to help them on their path to using employee engagement to create a productive workplace culture in their startups (the funds will also help leaders of nonprofits attend the event for greater people practices learning – click here for more info).

Lo and behold, I received an email this morning from the Foundation for Enterprise Development, a nonprofit that (like Winning Workplaces) encourages entrepreneurs to foster a culture of innovation within their organizations.  The FED shared a press release on the winners of their national college essay contest, Creating Wealth By Sharing Wealth.  More than 400 students from 18 U.S. universities responded to the FED's call for both grad students' and undergrads' thoughts on strategies and practices for increasing employee motivation and participation in enterprise growth.

As the winning essay by University of California, San Diego MBA candidate Terry Williamson and many others received in this contest show, these young, aspiring entrepreneurs understand the link between creating a workplace culture of ownership and the increased potential to meet one or more bottom lines.  (One of the sessions at our June Leadership Conference will provide insights on how business leaders can meet no less than four bottom lines.)

With many of the students who participated in the FED's essay contest enrolled in business school, I think the fact that they have spoken so eloquently of this connection underscores the value that contributors to our new Scholarship Fund will receive.  Our donors will be helping to sow the seeds for more winning workplaces – and they will get a tax deduction thanks to our 501(c)(3) status.

For more information about the need for the Winning Workplaces Scholarship Fund and its impact, click here.

I was stunned to read The Huffington Post's headline last week that "Great Companies Don't Require Good Management."  The site was referencing a May 2010 interview with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, picked up by Bloomberg on February 17, 2011, in which the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said he weighed companies' pricing power more heavily than their management effectiveness when considering whether to invest in them.  He sometimes "doesn't even consider the people in charge," Bloomberg reported.

Maybe you could make the case that with large, public companies this investment approach holds – although personally I think the management team and strategy are important no matter the size and type of business entity.  However, with smaller, private firms – which as we have often written based on our own employee engagement research, must compete on quality rather than on price – not only is good management a required element of great companies, but these companies' long-term sustainability and growth hinges on it.

The small firms that apply for Winning Workplaces' Top Small Company Workplaces award are quite conscious of the equation through which investing in your workplace to improve the training and development of folks at management level helps the bottom line.  There is a causal relationship, as the five examples below show.  They represent selected 2011 award applicants' responses to our application question "Describe a management development or training strategy that has been particularly effective." 

Note the varied forms of ROI a focus on strengthening their management have yielded (which I've bolded):

Related: Our profile of success on Merkle Inc., the database marketing agency run by our Best Boss award winner David Williams, shows how they use learning-oriented team building strategies to increase management effectiveness.  Read it here.

Yesterday I shared the extent to which organizations in government services that applied for Winning Workplaces and Inc. Magazine's 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award use some employee development strategies to create a more knowledgeable and productive workplace culture.  Today I'd like to expand on this to cover ALL learning tools we surveyed, used by all 341 applicants for our award this year.

I've created a one-pager that contains a chart with 11 learning and development tools, in descending order of their use by our applicant firms.  Click on the chart image below to download the one-pager pdf.

You can use it to benchmark against adoption of similar approaches by your organization.

If you find it helpful, I encourage you to share it with others using the Facebook and Twitter links in the pdf.

According to this article from Federal News Radio, public-sector companies have their work cut out for them when it comes to using employee retention tips to keep top performers.  Smart retention strategies are particularly needed, the site writes, in the face of looming pay freezes and budget cuts.

Meg Beasley's article offers tips under four areas for improvement suggested in a new Booz Allen Hamilton report specifically on retention of federal employees.  Interestingly, what I found when I compared some of the individual tips the report offers to employee engagement strategies we just finished assessing among our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award applicant pool is that the dozen governmental firms this year are embracing them in a big way.

Here's what I found, under each of the four areas outlined in the Booz Allen report:

Teamwork, supervision and leadership

• Offer management development or training to new and existing managers: 100%
• Team-based acknowledgement of employee contributions: 42%

Agency mission and employee skills match

• Organizations with strategic plans: 100%
• Among those, strategic plan includes a strategy for improving organizational performance through its people: 100%

Employee development and support

• Offer mentoring programs: 58%
• Cross training: 67%
• Internally developed/delivered training sessions: 67%
• Outside sessions/conferences: 100%

Performance management, compensation, benefits and work/life

• Offer employee medical insurance: 100%
• Percent of employee premium paid by company: 90%
• Dependent medical insurance: 100%
• Percent of dependent premium paid by company: 90%
• Domestic partner benefits: 50%
• Bring children to work in an emergency: 42%
• Flexible working arrangements: 100%
• Bonuses based on company profits: 67%

And the big question on the part of CEOs and CFOs – what has this people practices investment gotten them when it comes to the bottom line?  While our governmental applicants recorded average 2009 attrition of 18% (I find the 5.8% figure from a separate but related report mentioned in Beasley's article suspect because it's so low), they also:

• All are profitable,
• Have average 2010 revenue of $49 million, and
• Have not-too-shabby average employee tenures of 3.7 years.

Stay tuned to our blog for more information soon on how our current award applicants in different industries are performing compared with their peers.  Click here to subscribe if you don't already.

The following is a guest post by Brendan Cruickshank.  Brendan is a veteran of the online job search and recruiting industry, having spent the past 8 years in senior client services roles with major sites like Juju.com and JobsInTheMoney.com.  Here he touches on employee leadership development as part of your people practices strategy for a more productive workplace.

Leadership.  Was there ever a topic about which more misinformation was conveyed?  Everyone wants to hire a leader, but few people really agree on what characteristics make up leadership.  Some people mistake overconfidence and extroversion for leadership.  Others think that leaders must have shown leadership in the past, by having held positions in which they were in charge of something.  Yet I find that it isn't necessarily so.

When looking for a leader, I don't necessarily care about confidence and extroversion.  What I want to see is a spirit of public welfare, which in the workplace means doing what is best for the good of one's coworkers and clients or customers.  I look for job applicants who lead by example, on the principle that actions really do speak louder than words.  And last, but not least, I look for leaders who can think for themselves.  Yes, thinking is a double-edged sword from an employer's point of view.  After all, you want your employees to accept what you tell them unquestioningly and do things your way, not their way...or do you?

Not if you want to hire leaders, you don't.  If you want leaders on your staff, you have to reconcile yourself to the idea that employees will find new ways of doing things, will question what you tell them, and will take the initiative to find other options that you may not have thought of.  Be grateful for this.  This continual process of thinking/questioning/creatively finding other options is the fuel that will help to propel your business forward.

Now that we've established that you really do want a leader (trust me, you do!), here are four ways to recognize one when you are going through your hiring process:

1. Leaders have a colorful work history.  There are exceptions, of course, but most of the time you don't really want to hire someone who accepted the first job that came along and placidly worked his or her way to the top in that one company or organization.  You may want someone who jumped from one job to another – someone who held each position long enough to learn something new.  A leader's approach is to learn something from every job, to take that opportunity to grow and develop and make the job into something different than it was before.  Once the learning potential of the job is exhausted, they make a horizontal leap to something else. Leaders seek learning; it's the food that feeds them.

2. Leaders have lives.  Leaders are not always focused on work (and you don't want them to be!).  They will work overtime if the job demands it, but they will also continue to seek learning opportunities and chances to make a difference.  That means they have hobbies, work as volunteers, or perhaps even run their own businesses on the side.

3. Leaders make eye contact.  Every job candidate should look you in the eye when you shake hands.  But leaders will keep continue to look at you.  They may be nervous as almost everyone is during an interview, but leaders are disciplined and focused.  They set aside their nerves and concentrate on what needs to be done.  And they refuse to be intimidated by the interview process.

4. Leaders ask questions (even if they suspect you don't want to answer them).  In fact, a leader may feel that the questions you don't want to answer, are the ones the most important to ask.  Leaders don't worry about antagonizing an interviewer with their questions.  Instead – and this again relates to refusing to be intimidated – they focus on getting the answers that they need.  They recognize that a job interview is not only a chance for the interviewer to form an impression of the applicant, but is also a critical chance for an applicant to form an impression of his or her potential future employer.  Leaders interview you, while you are interviewing them.

Are you starting to feel that you might be getting yourself in over your head with these leaders?  A good leader may make you feel that way!  But that's okay as once you hire that person, he or she will be on your side.  That is, of course, until the day when the position no longer offers any opportunity to learn or be challenged.  When that day comes, you may as well resign yourself to looking again – but that's okay.  There are many leaders out there, waiting for their chance to shine.

Winning Workplaces conducts employee engagement research annually via our Top Small Company Workplaces award with Inc. Magazine.  The 2011 award application period is open now and will close in 10 days, on January 14.

Many small firms are eager to "throw their hat in the ring" based on the prize: the 2011 winners will be featured in the June issue of Inc. Magazine.  But applicants, especially newcomers, are also pleasantly surprised to learn how the award helps them understand and improve their workplace – and thus their business.  This is a benefit they get from applying even if they're not named a winner in the magazine.

Here's what some executives whose firms applied in 2010 have said about what they got from the experience of applying for our award:

How the process informs the workplace culture...

• "I like doing a process like this because it reveals what processes we have done in the past that the team failed to do in the current year.  It also makes you think of several things you could do in addition to help build a team and better culture." (CEO, 17-year-old financial services firm with 87 employees)
• "Your application helped us see that we needed to spend more time on sharing company financials and developing a program for flexible work schedules." (HR director, 21-year-old consulting firm with 25 employees)
• "With the questions about how we performed against others in terms of revenue, it made us seek out some benchmarks.  It also prompted us to put down on paper about our corporate culture in sort of a manual." (President/Owner, 10-year-old software firm with 23 employees)
• "I found the application prompted several questions about the environment and leadership roles within our company." (Marketing director, 8-year-old consumer goods manufacturing firm with 26 employees)
• "There were some statistics that you asked for that we were not tracking to date.  It was a good exercise to go back and record this information and track it going forward, especially in terms of employee and hiring stats." (Business development director, 21-year-old professional services firm with 35 employees)

People practices launched or revisited as a result of the application process...

• "As I was answering your questions I started thinking of more things we could do to show the employees we care about them." (Owner, 16-year-old product benefits provider with 39 employees)
• "We are going to be having bi-monthly meetings with all employees vs. quarterly.  We also have implemented a Director’s team to work with their departments and identify employee development activities and open communications through departmental meetings.  This will increase our communications across the company." (HR VP, 16-year-old Internet/information services provider with 49 employees)
• "Going through this process has helped us cement a plan to develop a clearer reporting structure." (HR manager, 20-year-old home restoration firm with 44 employees)
• "We are adding two new bulletin boards in our lunch room where many team members come and go during the day.  These boards will offer information in areas where we feel more understanding might be needed." (Marketing director, 56-year-old industrial goods manufacturer with 84 employees)
• "It became apparent that we don’t have a robust Childcare Assistance Program.  That would be fairly easy to implement and one that could really assist our employees.  That will definitely be an HR to-do for 2010-2011." (Talent acquisition manager, 9-year-old consulting firm with 50 employees)

Identify what works and what you can improve upon in YOUR organization – apply today for the 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award.

The following is a guest post by John Durfee.  John is an Operation Freedom War veteran and a manager for Airsplat, the nation's largest retailer of Airsoft Guns.  Learn from his insights when it comes to workplace team building and employee leadership development from an armed forces perspective.

I left the military years ago, but the principles drilled into me are still part of who I am and who I strive to be.  In the business realm, I find that they are still front of mind as I work to be successful and help my company prosper.  I need to train a strong force, strengthen our defenses, and know the lay of the consumer landscape in order to defeat our competitors.  In all my reading, I've found philosopher Sun Tzu to be a valuable source of knowledge for helping me in both my military and business world campaigns.  Here are some gems of wisdom that I've used in my office:

Defense

"Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live.  When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory."

Strength and growth occurs when you are challenged.  Most of the time, when you're in a job for a long period of time, you can become comfortable.  And though you may end up performing the tasks you are assigned well, the danger that accompanies that is complacency.  You want to view your employees as always in training - always being challenged.  Regularly give them tasks that are a little beyond their current standard of abilities.  Have them start to take more responsibilities, while simultaneously giving fewer instructions. Provide them a goal without specifically showing the way.  You'll be surprised when you find them completing these harder tasks.  You'll be creating more independent and self-reliant workers who will stay productive and proactive.

Offense

"Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."

I work in a marketing department that uses a lot of online Web 3.0 sources to connect to customers.  We use Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, and more to bring our market presence forward.  However, our competitors have the same tools at their disposal.  The name of the game is flexibility and anticipation. Doing so allows us to make better offers to potential customers.  They show us what they can do, and in return we show them we can do it better.

A successful manager is one who is flexible and open to criticism of their own operation.  Ask your team if they have any input - foster an environment in which any idea is a possible plan.  This way you'll have the collective knowledge of the group.  If someone comes up with a great idea, let them use it as pet project to see the results on a small scale.  As Sun Tzu says, "To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

Related: Read our interview with Winning Workplaces Board Member Michael Mulqueen, longtime chief executive of the Greater Chicago Food Depository and a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Marine Corps.

It's been a while since I've written a counterpoint to someone else's thesis when it comes to anything touching leadership or employee development strategies.  I think my last one was this post in July arguing that imagination is not dead but alive and well.

Here I go again today.  Dharmesh Shah has a new guest post on his OnStartups blog by IDR Solutions CEO Mark Stephens.  In it, Stephens shares 7 reasons why you should work for a big company.  I actually agree with several of them, such as getting exposed to lots of clever people.  Yet, since Winning Workplaces is all about highlighting and maximizing performance in small firms, I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to take and explore the other tack – 7 reasons to work for a small business:

1. You also learn a lot.  With their flat hierarchies and greater tendency for the executive team to be "on the floor" with all other levels of employees, in great small firms learning is central.
2. You can excel as a big fish in a smaller pond.  Stephens notes that you can become part of a large community, and that's true – I'm not sure about his qualifier of "can," implying "optional"; if you're hired at a big company, you are part of a big community whether you like it or not.  In the employee interviews we do for the due diligence phase of our annual small workplace award, the theme of low- and mid-level employees getting to work on big projects, earlier in their career than they might at a larger firm, pops up again and again.
3. Many small companies also have lots of perks.  I am always amazed by the number of companies in our network with fewer than 500 employees that either have an on-site gym, or give vouchers for local gym membership as part of their health and wellness benefits.  They also excel when it comes to paid time off and workplace flexibility – perks that I've seen rank higher for employees as the economy has impacted companies' ability to keep pay and bonuses at pre-Great Recession levels.
4. You largely eschew office politics.  Again because of their flat organizational structure – not to mention the tendency of great small firms to heavily structure their hiring process for best results in bringing on people for workplace culture fit as well as raw talent, as we shared in detail in our people practices email this week – politics is much less of an issue.  This is a big advantage over large firms when you consider the implications of undue stress on worker productivity.
5. You have less time to reflect.  I read Stephens' use of "reflect" as "sit idle at times", and that doesn't appeal to me.  Nor do I think it appeals to most workers today, who are seeking tasks they can mark as completed for both their next performance review – to have measurable results to point to for promotions and salary increases, or to have ammo to stave off pay cuts in tougher times – and their resume to help their career long term.
6. More interaction with the community at lower levels in the organization.  Community-facing interactions are powerful for both promotions in the same company, and moves to new ones.  Small firms in our network including Phelps County Bank and Daphne Utilities excel at aligning community-facing objectives with their larger strategy, and giving low- and mid-level employees the opportunity to step up to tackle them, and gain experience on par with middle and senior managers.  It's a win-win for everyone.
7. Greater voice when the chips are down.  If you're a low- to mid-level worker in a big company, and the CEO says tough times have forced the firm to make some uncomfortable choices, what are the chances that you and your colleagues could have a frank discussion with the CEO that might change the definition of what those "uncomfortable choices" are?  If you work for a small firm, there's a much greater chance that you'll have a stake in the next steps – and the longer-term outcomes, which could mean the difference between staying on payroll or lining up for unemployment.  For reference among our honorees, see Corporate Ink and Bailard Inc.

What's your reaction to this list?

This new article about employee engagement on Management-Issues got me thinking.  While Brian Amble discusses the findings of a study of top executives in European and Middle Eastern companies, their response to one of the questions in particular is highly applicable to their counterparts in the U.S.:

• Nearly half – 47% – of C-suite executives believe they are most responsible for practices to get and keep employees engaged.
• 16% of senior directors outside the C-suite believe this.
• 13% of middle and line managers believe this.

Amble goes on to argue that the highest percentage of engagement ownership claimed by C-level folks represents a "self-inflated view" that's at odds with results of other studies finding that managers are most responsible for strong engagement – or a lack of it depending on their people practices.

On the one hand, Winning Workplaces has written in support of Amble's view that favors managers' ownership of staff engagement; most recently with the help of guest author, workplace coach Wally Bock.  On the other, though, we have attempted to balance the scale, giving voice to the feedback we routinely hear from small business CEOs as well as HR directors and managers in other areas – that based on the leader's vision (especially if they're also the founder), small company size, and a (usually intentional) flat structure, the leader assumes the role of "chief culture officer" and thus the task of guiding employee engagement performance.

I don't think there's a "one size fits all" solution – myriad factors will influence an individual firm's decision as to whose job it is to foster stronger engagement.  Still, if you have not already done so, you would do well to define what ideal engagement looks like and have a discussion among your team with the intention of assigning the best person to lead this effort.  After all, if no one leads it, how can you measure the success of the engagement activities that make up your workplace culture?

More on defining success of staff engagement activities...

Some of the questions we're asking the small businesses currently vying for a spot in Inc. Magazine next June – the prize of winning our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award – can help you define what successful engagement looks like, including in bottom-line results so you can determine a clear ROI for investing in your workplace.  Check them out:

• What kind of management development or training do new and existing managers and supervisors receive?
• Describe a management development or training strategy that has been particularly effective.
• How does the organization involve employees in important organization decisions?  Please give an example.
• Please share 1-2 examples of how your investment in people has improved the performance and results of the organization.
• Are there any distinctive, home grown or unique people practices you would like to tell us about that have not already been mentioned?

To answer these and many other questions that can provide you with a roadmap for cost-effective employee development strategies, complete our 2011 workplace award application.

As Newswise reports, based on employee engagement research by Florida State University business school professor Wayne Hochwarter,

recession-based uncertainty has encouraged many business leaders to pursue self-serving behaviors at the expense of those that are considered mutually beneficial or supportive of organizational goals.

This plays out in behaviors that Hochwarter's team classified using the biblical Seven Deadly Sins as a framework.  While the percentages attached to each of those "behavioral sins," based on feedback from more than 700 mid-level workers, is interesting, what appears further down in Newswise's article caught my attention more from a productive workplace standpoint: FSU found that employees with leaders who committed any of these "sins" said they cut back on their contributions by 40%.  Notably, they were also:

• 66% less likely to make creative suggestions, and
• 75% more likely to pursue other job opportunities.

Hochwarter's findings tell me that workplace qualities that some leaders might consider as soft (or at least far down on the totem pole of what they need to worry about day to day), such as trust, respect, and fairness, are not just "nice to do's" – they have a real impact on product/service delivery and quality, and company spending on recruiting and retraining.

This is one of the reasons that Winning Workplaces revised our Top Small Company Workplaces award application for 2011 to take a more in-depth look at how things like rewards/recognition and employee leadership development strategies impact business results.  Year after year of our small workplace award program, we see that happier, more highly engaged employees lead to better outcomes, while the opposite lead to a path of lower profitability and competitiveness in the marketplace.

Related: This is not the first time we've cited FSU's Hochwarter; click here to see the contexts in which we've previously mentioned him and his pioneering work on our website.

I like to think I'm fairly well connected to big news affecting small and midsized businesses – Winning Workplaces' core audience.  For example, I follow over 100 related thought leaders on Twitter.

But you know who tipped me off to American Express OPEN's launch of Small Business Saturday on Nov. 27?  My Facebook friends, who are not small business leaders.

That tells me this movement might have some legs.  And that would be welcome news for small firms, which are still pursuing creative solutions to stay buoyant in this tough economy, including employee development strategies.

Is your organization planning to leverage Small Business Saturday in any way starting this weekend?  Please take a moment and let us know by voting on our new LinkedIn poll.

While you're on LinkedIn, we'd love your take on...

• HR professionals: linking your metrics to business performance
• The source of employee motivation
• The value of performance reviews
• Getting a raise in 2010

As longtime readers know, Winning Workplaces' website and this blog explore team building strategies for growth within small and midsized organizations.  We focus on the 99% of firms that are small businesses (defined by the SBA as having 500 or fewer employees) because, as we state here, "they are the cornerstone of the American economy and because their needs have been underserved and under-resourced."

However, we also think it's important to share when the media cover employee development strategies in large companies.  Whether a company is big or small, if it succeeds in attracting like-minded people to the organization and empowering them to move the firm forward as it supports the individual's professional and personal development, it's a win-win for...

• People – employees are better prepared for positions of increasing responsibility, in their current firm or elsewhere.
• Business – countless studies show that job satisfaction goes hand in hand with productivity gains; not to mention, it also helps companies keep costs down because they don't have to do as much recruiting and retraining.
• Society – the best workplace cultures provide learning and development that make employees more marketable throughout their entire careers so they can provide for themselves and their families; they also tend to offer means to help workers give back to local and larger communities (ie, volunteerism).

In short, smart people practices are just that, regardless of the size company in which they're being used.

That said, I liked seeing this headline in my blog feed today from SmartBrief on Leadership, summarizing a Harvard Business Review article on the CEO of Foot Locker's thoughts on building trust in the workplace:

While you could argue that SmartBrief's use of "foot soldiers" with the brand name, Foot Locker, in their headline is a bit cheeky, I look past that and appreciate the fact that a household name is being used to help advance other business leaders' thinking when it comes to investing in your workplace.

Continuing on this theme, I thought I would help media outlets by providing some ready-made headlines that can be used with other big companies that rely heavily on employee engagement in their business models.  Here goes:

1. Try on employee engagement for size [Nordstrom]
2. Driven-down decision making can make your profits soar [Southwest Airlines]
3. Tips to freshen up your workforce [SC Johnson]
4. Leave no stone unturned when developing your employees [Google]
5. Walk a mile in your employees' shoes [Zappos]
6. Managers shouldn't just have a presence, they should collaborate [Cisco]
7. The still frames that go into a complete workplace culture [DreamWorks Animation SKG]
8. Keep a lid on office politics [The Container Store]

What do you think of the above headlines as they relate to each brand?  Which additional ones can you think of?

I read this new post by our friend Becky McCray on Small Biz Survival today – on how you can turn customer prospects into purchasers by repeating your message in different ways – and couldn't help but think there's a connection here to employee engagement for a more productive workplace.

Becky says seven is a magic number when it comes to branding; people often need to hear your message that many times before they remember it so that you're top of mind when they need something that you offer and are prepared to make a purchase.  An implication of this tendency on small businesses, she says, is that in general marketers need to have more patience and keep their message, such as a product promotion, going longer, spread out across more channels on which your audience spends time.

Importantly, she ends her list of small biz implications by suggesting that leaders turn inward and

Extend the same courtesy to your employees.  Repeat instructions in more than one way.  Provide the same info multiple ways.

We have seen this as a hallmark of small firms that rise to the top of our annual Top Small Company Workplaces competition.  From hiring interviews and mentoring of new hires, to frequent all-staff meetings, lunch and learns, the company Intranet, and employee recognition activities, financially successful small organizations achieve their results in part by communicating the same thing to everyone across multiple internal channels, multiple times.

In terms of building a sustainable, high-performance workplace culture, continually mentioning and linking tasks and metrics back to your mission and core values can help you keep a pulse on whether you always have the right people on the bus, working on the right things, to keep moving your business forward.

Related: Our next IDEAS newsletter will share proven employee development strategies.  Sign up here to receive it, and apply the "seven times" messaging philosophy discussed above once you've read the article!