Productive Workplace

Yesterday after the Associated Press reported on the results of a San Diego State University study finding that Generation Y (or Millennials) highly value compensation and vacation time, some in the blogosphere asked if, especially in this economic environment, Gen Y needs a wake-up call.

I don't think so – and I'm not saying that because I'm a card-carrying Millennial.  As someone interested in progressive people practices for a more productive workplace, I look at these two sticking points as the carrot at the end of a very lucrative stick for businesses.

Here are my top 5 reasons why I think Gen Y is entitled to its job wants:

1. It's now the most dominant generation in the workforce.  When you rise to that position and make decisions that benefit companies in both front-line and managerial roles, you get to call the shots when it comes to "skin in the game."
2. As Donna Fenn reports from a number of sources in her book Upstarts!, not only are record numbers of Millennials enrolling in entrepreneurship/MBA programs, but a greater share of those students than ever before are coming in with a business already in tow.  IMO, if these young people invest the ridiculous amount of time it takes to create and nurture a thriving business – and help our economy in the process through taxes and job creation – they deserve these two rewards.
3. As Penelope Trunk pointed out in a blog post I cited last year, Gen Y more readily embraces a proven leadership approach known as "fast failure."  Since our employee engagement research shows this can greatly improve innovation and thus productivity and customer satisfaction, again, I think Millennials deserve some just rewards for significantly scaling up a company's revenue and giving them a greater shot at achieving or maintaining profitability.
4. As organizational development guru David Lee argued on ERE.net last month, Gen Y doesn't beat around the bush on satisfaction – if they're not, you won't see them because they'll have left.  The cost-effective flip side of this for businesses is that they're much less likely than other generations to be "what the Gallup Organization calls ROAD Warriors — Retired on Active Duty."
5. Finally, as The CEO of YOU author Marsha Petrie Sue wrote in the California Chronicle, "Gen Y won't retire – they will reinvent."  Aren't greater pay and more time off fair tradeoffs for more productive ideas coming back from breaks and a longer work life spent helping companies improve their sales and bottom line?

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  Why?

The comments are coming in fast and furiously to Wally Bock's latest post on his Three Star Leadership Blog.  That's not surprising given his topic: first-line managers.

Bock cites a blog post by Tom Peters in which he goes so far as to call these managers a "peerless strategic opportunity" for innovation and growth.  Expanding Peters' case, Bock explicitly links nurturing these integral staff to more desirable outcomes in engagement, turnover, and, yes, profitability.

In addition to Bock's "boss's bottom line" that employee leadership development helps a company grow even as its key players do, he provides value in these three qualities to look for in first-line managers to assess their longer-term leadership potential:

• They talk to others about behavior and performance,
• They make decisions, and
• They enjoy helping others succeed.

I hope more leaders read the advice of Peters, Bock, and other respected authorities who are pointing to this pivotal cog in the machine of small business – and business in general – as one that can easily be improved, for the benefit of their bottom line, and ultimately everyone through the job growth more thriving enterprises create.

Related: We wrote an editorial a few years ago on the importance of new manager training to more robust (and productive) employee engagement and people practices, and it still holds up today.  Read it here.

Today Winning Workplaces announces the 39 finalists for our 2010 Top Small Company Workplace award, in partnership with Inc. Magazine.

We started our search in November 2009 for small and midsized organizations (750 or fewer employees) that engage employees and create a great workplace culture and, in turn, deliver improved business results.  Almost 500 firms completed our online application by the deadline in late January.

Our staff then pared these down to the 39 finalists that appear in the interactive map below.  Click on a marker to access a finalist's website, as well as to see when they were founded and their size and industry:

The next steps in the 2010 selection process include:

• Later this month our final panel of judges will choose this year's winners.
• These winners will be announced in the June 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine.
• The winners will be honored at Inc.'s conference in Denver on Oct. 27-29 (more info on this event coming soon).

If you know anyone interested in human capital strategies for a more productive workplace, I encourage you to share this post with them by using the button below.  Thanks!

Our former Top Small Workplaces judge Peter Cappelli, from the Wharton School's Center for Human Resources, was cited in a CNN article last week on lessons for U.S. bosses from their counterparts in India.

Cappelli provides a lot of good takeaways in the piece, based on his recent study of leaders and HR departments from close to 100 of India's biggest companies, but I think my favorite is:

A lot of U.S. companies in particular will say, 'We're not going to meet our quarterly numbers, so we've got to adjust everything in the pipeline to make sure we do.' That's a costly thing for the long term.

This falls under the Indian leadership lesson of taking the long view of growth and profitability – with average growth at a manageable 18% in 2009, it's a lesson our Top Small Workplaces share.  This strikes me as quite interesting, given that Cappelli's employee engagement research sample is the largest firms in India.

Other Indian leadership traits Cappelli advises American CEOs to embrace – which our Top Small Workplaces are already hip to – include:

• Have a social purpose
• Invest in employees through human capital strategies
• Trust your employees to tackle your biggest problems
• Act as "chief culture officer"

Related: We interviewed Cappelli when he came to our offices in 2008 to help determine that year's Top Small Workplace winners.  In the video below he shares some additional thoughts about a company can create a more productive workplace (click here if you can't see the video in your blog feed):

Today Winning Workplaces is formally announcing our partnership with a new, Chicago-based startup called Tix4Cause.

The brainchild of consumer products industry veteran Kevin Nemetz, Tix4Cause is the realization of Kevin's very cool idea: benefit charities of people's choosing with the up to 60% of season tickets that go unused, while at the same time getting those tickets to folks at fair market prices and providing ticket donors with a tax deduction.

Why is Winning Workplaces joining other charities on Tix4Cause's roster such as Heritage YMCA Group and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana?  Because we're a nonprofit and our mission to equip small and midsize businesses with proven, practical, and affordable team building and employee engagement activities is as needed as ever, as our president explained on her blog last week.

So let's connect the dots here:

• Your donation and/or purchase of event tickets through Tix4Cause...
• Helps support our fundraising efforts, which go toward...
• Three primary initiatives designed to help small organizations create a more productive workplace: our consulting and training services, our Top Small Company Workplaces recognition project, and our free employee engagement best practices information for company leaders and employees.

Here's our affiliate link to register (free) on Tix4Cause, after which you can donate your unwanted or unused tickets to our cause and purchase tickets for ours or other causes.  Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

In my last post I mentioned the employee satisfaction level (45%) recently reported by The Conference Board and concluded by asking "whose fault is this anyway?"

When I've asked similar questions, I get a range of answers.  Some are adamant that it is the leader's fault.  Some say the employee should switch jobs if they are so dissatisfied.  Others can't come up with an answer.

Here's the answer: It is the leader's fault and the employee's fault.  In organizations with an effective workplace culture, all parties have a sense of ownership. 

In creating a culture of ownership and in turn a productive workplace, we often write about what leaders should do.  I'm going to look at the flip side of the coin and point out what leaders shouldn't do if they want to contribute to a culture of trust, employee engagement, or team building.

1. As your organization's leader, DON'T be so intensely focused on results that you forget people are your most important means of getting to those results.  A quick story: Years ago, during the first six months of becoming a CEO, I learned this the hard way.   I overused the phrase "I expect" and the majority of my interactions with my team were about what they were doing to deliver the numbers.  Thank goodness a combination of my own experience, an executive coach, and feedback from a couple people on my team helped me realize that the intense focus on results was backfiring.  Clearly, a productive workforce requires building engaged employees. 
2. DON'T ask for input and then ignore it.  This approach squashes open communication in the workplace.  This approach says "I don't care about your ideas or expertise."  Without communication and caring, building trust is unlikely. Guess what?  Poor communication + minimal trust = less than optimal results.
3. DON'T decide that you are going to launch an initiative (large or small) to improve employee engagement unless you plan to follow through.  Not surprisingly, this reinforces a perception that you as the leader really don't care about employees and you can't be counted upon to do what you say you will do.  And that goes back to one of my beginning points: In a great workplace, the culture of ownership contributes to results. 

This list of "don'ts" is endless.  Have you been on the receiving end of a don't?  As a leader, have you learned a valuable lesson from a don't?  Those of us at Winning Workplaces would love to hear your story.

We've long argued, in part based on our own employee engagement research, that empowering workers to make on-the-spot decisions and to contribute to the strategic direction of an organization provides benefits for employees (increases their job satisfaction) and for companies (typically greater customer satisfaction because issues are resolved sooner and at a lower level; as well as increased employee loyalty and drive).

Here are two new sources that support this argument, for your reading and learning pleasure:

1. A review of multiple studies by The Cochrane Collaboration found that giving employees control over their work schedule improves their stress levels, quality of sleep, mental health, and alertness.  (HR Morning)
2. "HR Bartender" Sharlyn Lauby defines 7 types of power in a workplace culture and uses these traits as the basis for an exercise to help you pinpoint how you influence action from others.  (Human Capital League)

Related: Need more proof of the impact of this leadership practice?  Read this firsthand account by an employee of a 2008 Top Small Workplace (identified as a finalist in the post based on the timing of that year's winners announcement) on how it's changed his impression of a productive workplace.

I'm all for outsourcing when it makes sense for a business leader.  In fact, this week I retweeted Adam Toren's suggestion that busy executives can save time by outsourcing some of their more tedious household responsibilities.

But I think that if employee engagement or the workplace culture could suffer, then don't do it.  Building trust in the workplace, IMO, should always be the top item on any CEO's to-do list.

So therefore I can't endorse Douglas R. Palmer's pitch on the Small Business CEO blog to outsource your finance department.  I have two thoughts here as to why (in addition to the line in the sand I laid out above):

• First, while Palmer's list of the pros of doing this does make business sense, one associated risk is the loss or accidental distribution of sensitive information.  Even if you've thoroughly researched your options and chosen a winning partner, that can still happen.  Would you take that chance with your company's balance sheet and salary info?
• Second and more importantly from a productivity standpoint, keeping this function in-house is one more piece of the intellectual capital pie that can benefit from leadership, if not team, involvement.  One of the themes of our Top Small Workplaces over the years has been their ability to anticipate marketplace changes, which especially helps them navigate tough times like these, in large part because their leaders engage employees by sharing financial information with them and teach them what it means, which spurs actionable ideas on creating efficiencies and optimizing revenue sources.  If they outsourced their financial component, this outcome would be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Where do you stand here?

One of the comments we hear from small business leaders is that they often feel isolated – that they have to work hard to find peer validation for their efforts, and that they wonder how much impact they have outside their organization's walls.

As Management-Issues alluded to today, they have a HUGE impact, and therefore shouldn't feel so alone.  While The Conference Board's recent survey of 5,000 U.S. households revealed that over half of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, Management-Issues points to their poll of 200 CEOs around the same timeframe which actually shows that company leaders are "increasingly upbeat."

As Nic Paton writes,

While excellence in execution and consistent execution of strategy by top management remained the top-ranking challenge overall for CEOs, more growth-oriented challenges such as sustained and steady top-line growth, customer loyalty/retention and profit growth were all now getting higher ratings as "greatest concerns".

This shift presents business leaders with an opportunity to make inroads on two significant fronts: employee engagement to boost productivity (good for the company, and for the country), and to better satisfy their people at the same time.  The latter outcome is good in that it would likely reduce the currently high share of folks who are ready to jump as the economy improves – but, again, this benefits companies because less of their top talent would turnover, which reduces their recruiting and training costs.

So while CEOs may feel siloed in what they do in building trust in the workplace – especially compared with more tangible tasks related to managing product/service delivery and the numbers side – they should take comfort in the fact that their contributions to ensure progressive people practices for a more productive workplace bring real returns, for their business and for our economy's return to growth.

If you run a business, how optimistic are you for 2010 performance vs. 2009?

Just as employees crave recognition, organizations covet it, too.  In fact, that was the theme of my post yesterday on PrintingForLess.com.

I just heard that Winning Workplaces was named to the FastUpFront Small Business Blog's list of the Top Free Government Business Resources.  This designation joins others on our "mantle" including being named a Top HR Influencer for 2007 by HR World, and this blog being named a Top 100 Leadership Blog last year by BestUniversities.com.

We thank the FastUpFront Blog and the other two entities mentioned above for introducing more folks to us and our mission to equip small business leaders with proven, practical – and yes, FREE – team building and employee engagement strategies to improve their workplace culture and productivity.

In celebration of this recognition of our efforts, I offer these selected blog posts that will help you reward and recognize your employees, with minimal effort and cost:

• (Employee) Love Don't Cost a Thing*
• Employee Recognition on the Cheap
• How Important is Employee Recognition? Leading Book on It Gets Second Edition Makeover
• All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
• 10 Team Building Strategies of the 2009 Top Small Workplaces Finalists
• Nine Resources for Becoming an Employer of Choice

I was thinking about the title of this post this morning.  We've been hearing since at least late 2008 about rising unemployment, and even though it's leveled off, we're still not at a stage of job growth.  We're just not losing as many (relatively speaking) jobs per month.

Two other employment trends have been making headlines lately.  There's underemployment, where because of hour and pay cuts by employers so they can keep their doors open, people aren't making as much as they did before the recession.  Compounding this issue is the fact that often their employers are demanding more from them, leaving these folks with less time to look for a new job that would provide more pay.

Then, there's the tendency of businesses, especially small ones, to replace laid off full-time employees with temp workers.  The benefit for organizations is that they can manage current and even emerging job functions (as markets improve and they see the need) by paying someone less than they paid a FTE, and with less of a commitment if it turns out a temporary hire is suddenly not needed.

My fear is that if, as many econmists are predicting, economic/job growth is extremely slow for the next year or two, these three employment factors – unemployment, underemployment, and the rise of temp workers – will impede the adoption and cultivation of the qualities of a productive workplace.  These qualities, or hallmarks, include many of the workplace team building and employee engagement best practices we talk about on this blog.

You may ask, what's the harm over the next few years if this scenario does, in fact, play out?  For one thing, less cohesive workplace cultures – those that, for instance, don't rein in toxic managers – very often increase supervised employees' stress levels.  On a macro level, studies have shown this hurts our GDP to the tune of $300 billion annually.

This, of course, doesn't even begin to address costs such as absenteeism, turnover, and recruiting/training that could become even less manageable under this scenario.

Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?  If you agree – how do you think should firms, especially small ones, should respond?

Every day I hear another story that indicates so many leaders don’t get the strong connection between people and results.  When I first moved into a CEO role, I admit I didn’t always see the connection as clearly as I do now.  I was so focused on results, I neglected to pay as much attention to people.  Now that I have seen the research and gotten to know dozens of extraordinary companies who have great workplaces, I am ramping up my focus on employee engagement. 

Our mission here at Winning Workplaces is to inspire and assist organizations that want to create great workplaces that are better for business, better for people, and better for society.   These organizations have workplace cultures that include open communication, trust, team building, and...fun!  

Given the results of the recent Conference Board study, I’d say Winning Workplaces still has a lot of work to do.  In fact, that is an understatement.  The Conference Board reports that only 45% of employees are satisfied with their jobs.  Moreover, I was astounded to learn that the employees rate the best part of their day as the commute.  Yes, the commute.

As more and more baby boomers retire, I wonder if dissatisfaction will increase.  Why?  The most dissatisfied generation is Generation Y. 

Clearly, this situation says we have not only a lot of dissatisfied employees but, in turn, a productivity level that isn’t nearly where it could or should be. 

So whose fault is this grim situation?  The leader's?  The boss's?  The employee's?  More importantly, what do we do about it?  These will be the topics of future blogs. 

Let me know what you think.

One of the more fun (because it's obvious) examples of the payoff of employee engagement is the number and scope of business awards a company can apply for – and win! – on the foundation of a productive workplace.  Just look at the homepage of Top Small Workplace Gentle Giant Moving Co.'s new website.

Yesterday PrintingForLess.com (PFL), the Montana-based, online printing services firm of our Best Boss Andrew Field, announced that they won four 2010 Marketing Plus Awards from the National Association of Printing Leadership.  PFL took home the gold for sales/lead generation and direct mail marketing, and also the silver and a merit award for direct mail marketing.

Even though building trust in the workplace is a journey, PFL is crossing the finish line of a race that started with working on improving how managers interact with employees, and soliciting and acting on everyone's feedback for creating efficiencies in service delivery.  Field outlined his leadership approach that is paying dividends now in the form of these awards, which help with both employee and customer retention, at our annual conference back in 2006.

Congrats to PFL on their milestone here in their continuing quest to use progressive employee engagement practices to remain the #1 online commercial printing company!

For more on PFL, go here on our website and here on this blog.

I like Dragan Sutevski's comparison on his Entrepreneurship In a Box blog of running a business to being in a dream.  According to Sutevski, there are only a handful of factors keeping this experience from turning into a nightmare.

Number 7 on his top 10 list that he shared this weekend is employees:

Your employees can contribute to your business to be successful, but in the same time they can harm your business.  Employees are the heart and the most important resource.

Sutevski makes the case that although they represent perhaps the most important resource, your employees are still only that – a resource that can be useful or useless depending on how the leadership engages them and acts on their expertise.

In the right leader's hands – and in the context of the right workplace culture – employees can bring a company substantial bottom-line returns at every stage of interaction.

For example:

• Prospective hires, both those that join the workforce and those that are not the best fit: managers' interview questions lead to feedback that can influence product/service development and delivery.
• Once a person in "on the bus," employee engagement best practices such as mentoring, annual opinion surveys, and monthly or quarterly all-hands meetings can promote cross-department learning, as well as improve internal processes and external marketing.
• Promoting from within is particularly useful to building trust in the workplace, and keeps your knowledge base intact and strong.
• Employee exits, especially if they are voluntary, can also produce valuable feedback on improving of your culture and your customer satisfaction.

Go here to read Sutevski's top 10 list of resources to make your business life easier.  How do you rank employees compared to the other resources in terms of potential?

LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council can be a tough caveat for small businesses.  However, I think the benefits of acheiving this designation for your facility far outweigh the costs involved.

Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Cost savings – most typically in reduced water and electricity consumption.
• Local and national recognition, exposing your business to more potential customers.
• Increased ability to attract top talent who value eco-friendly (and generally employee-friendly) workplaces.
• Greater perception of "walking the talk" when it comes to the carbon footprint of your organization and its products/services.
• Maybe most importantly in this business climate where some CEOs are making headlines by using profits to fund lavish lifestyles that are out of touch with what most Americans are experiencing right now – writing a new narrative for the media in which the CEO is a hero for dumping profits back into the business in a way that benefits not only the company, but its employees and the greater community.

Winning Workplaces Best Boss Nicolas Thomley is enjoying all of these benefits based on the LEED Gold certification his company, Pinnacle Services, announced last week.  You can read their press release on it here.

Related: Read how employee engagement and team building strategies factored into the workplace "greening" of three other organizations in our network.

Regular readers of our blog are familiar with on-demand employee recognition solutions provider Globoforce.  I've mentioned them in these three posts, and their VP of Global Strategy, Derek Irvine, commented on one of them.

I just saw on PR Web that Globoforce is partnering with Aberdeen Group to host a FREE webinar March 4 on recognizing the right employee behaviors to achieve company objectives.  Stated learning takeaways for attendees include:

• What employee engagement truly is and how it differs from employee satisfaction
• How to build an engaged, motivated, and productive workplace
• When and where to implement employee engagement strategies to maximize its impact on business objectives and overall organizational performance

For more info on this session, click here.  You can register for it here.

"Am I already a Winning Workplace?"

This is one of the most common questions we get, and it really makes sense given the economy and, by extension, companies' ability to invest in their workplace.  They understandably don't want to spend any more than is absolutely necessary here.

One way to answer to this question is to benchmark themselves against applicants of our Top Small Company Workplace award with Inc. Magazine.  The process I've outlined below will allow you to do this:

1. Click on the title of this post to ensure you're just looking at this post by itself, and not with the rest of our blog feed.
2. Click here to print this post.
3. On the page that prints out, complete the "Your Firm" column below for each metric/practice of a productive workplace.
4. Once this is done you will get a rough* picture of how your people practices are contributing to your bottom line success.

Metrics

Organizational

Medical and Other Benefits

*This represents only a limited view of how well your organization is doing when it comes to the payoff of employee engagement.  There are many more factors than those shown here that go into creating a Winning Workplace.  For a more detailed picture, please contact us.

*Hint: As Dan Bobinski wrote on Management-Issues last week, you can't.  However, you can control your communications team building culture and the mechanisms therein to greatly increase the chance that your people will choose to listen.

The key is that they must make the choice to listen.  Once you get them over this hump, employee engagement – and with it, commitment and productivity – will be much enhanced.

The three overall strategies Bobinski shares represent a good starting place.  To help you go further with specific action steps, I've compiled a list of some of the listening tools the small businesses we've honored use, which I've written about before:

• Clearly communicate departmental objectives, and solicit input from your employees on what they can do to help achieve them.
• Ask employees for advice in areas where they have expertise.

(Source)

• Create a committee of employees at different levels and areas of responsibility that has "New Ideas" in its title – and as its objective.
• Same as above, but with the title/objective of creating and implementing workplace team building activities.

(Source)

• Implement "lunch & learns."
• If your firm is small enough – have your CEO conduct one-on-one career advancement meetings with those interested in a leadership role.
• "90 percent solution" – give employees 90% ownership in each project.
• Do 10-minute daily stand up meetings in departments.

(Source)

Are there innovative ways, in addition to the ones listed above, that you succeed in getting employees to tune in to your leadership and your mission and goals?

Consumer confidence is down – no doubt in large part because one in 10 Americans is still without a job.  That combined with mostly inaction from Washington has created a climate where entrepreneurs must (with due credit to Jack Matson) innovate or die.

Adam Toren wrote a great post on the YoungEntrepreneur site last week on this necessity.  Perhaps the most powerful of the five tips he shares to "keep your fire burning strong" is to guard against negativity.  As I've written here before, negativity results in employee stress, and that can wreak havoc on your ability to create a productive workplace culture.

Picking up and running with Toren's point on ridding your workplace of negativity, here are three road-tested strategies you can use to get there.  Use them in tandem for best results:

1. Hire slow.  Don't be afraid to bring prospective hires in for interviews with staff they would report to, as well as decision makers in other departments or areas.  Doing this will greatly increase the likelihood that they're the best person for you and, on the flip side, that you're the best organization for them.
2. Communicate with employees often, and give them a voice in how the company operates.  Frequent all-hands meetings and annual or semi-annual employee surveys are great action steps under this strategy.
3. Invest in employee leadership development.  We've seen that while some leaders think paying to advance workers' career development will lead them to jump ship, by and large they show their appreciation for their employer's commitment to their growth by staying put and instead looking for growth opportunities from within.  In turn, this helps keep your knowledge base strong and also saves on recruiting and training costs.

When you engage employees, do you do anything in addition to the above measures to make your organization a positive place in which to work?

If you own or run a business, would you like to experience strong revenue growth – growth that makes your enterprise highly coveted if you wanted to put it up for sale?

This is what Karen Oman realized with her Minnesota-based specialty job placement firm Certes Financial Pros.  (Winning Workplaces named Oman a Best Boss in 2003.)

She details her people practices to create a productive workplace, which led to the two business outcomes I mentioned above, in the following post, which is cross-posted on Oman's site Time to Breathe.  I thank her for agreeing to share her wisdom here.  Enjoy:

Cracking the Work/Life Balance Code Once and For All!

I just discovered the Yerkes-Dodson Law which was written up in the 70’s in the Harvard Business Review.  It says that with stress comes productivity...to a point.  But with too much stress, productivity plummets.  The resulting graph resembles an upside down U with stress on the x axis and productivity on the y axis.  So, just as we know that our stress-free zombie-like state is not productive, our overstressed state is equally not productive.  The secret is to back off the stress just enough to be at our peak in productivity.

So, if stress is coming on too strong, and we all know what that feels like, get out of there!  Take a walk, call a friend, read something funny in the broom closet, take deep breaths, or if more serious, call it a day and do what you love.  Don’t worry about the boss because, in the end, if you are the only one containing your stress appropriately, you will easily be the most productive person in the office.

I started my own company because after 15 years in corporate jobs, I couldn’t handle the stress any more.  As CEO of my new company, I granted flex hours, only gave deadlines when absolutely necessary, minimized overtime, tried to be transparent by over communicating, and even bought five executive vacation homes around the country that our employees could use free-of-charge (now available to you too at www.certifiedleisureproperties.com).

We unexpectedly grew to $20 million in 13 years.  When I decided to sell, 11 companies wanted to buy us because we obviously had a great culture, as well as off-the-charts productivity statistics.  As any of my corporate peers will attest, I was just your normal average CPA with nothing to predict this sort of result.  I just knew that if I didn’t stress employees and myself out, we would all have much better lives and I would succeed somehow.  Now, with the Yerkes-Dodson Law, I understand why we succeeded so well...and so do you!

Related: Get more employee engagement strategies from this webinar that Oman co-presented for us.