After careful consideration, Winning Workplaces has concluded that it will not be carrying out the 2012 Top Small Company Workplaces competition with Inc. Magazine.  In 2010 and 2011 we collaborated with Inc. on this recognition project honoring small and midsize organizations that use exemplary employee engagement and team building strategies to create more productive workplace cultures.

We are taking a step back and retrenching over the next few months while we work to redefine our major activities that will lead us to sustainability for the next decade.

If you have any questions, please contact either Nuala Novak or Ken Lehman at info@winningworkplaces.org or via phone at 847-328-9798.  Thank you.

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.

A key building block of a Winning Workplace is people practices supporting a focus on Teamwork & Involvement (more about the other 5 building blocks we believe in, and have seen in practice among the great small firms we've studied and recognized, here).

This involves team building strategies, of course, but it also relates to the extent that an organization acts as a means to empower its employees to improve the communities in which they live, and supports them during crises.  Our recent Success Story on Van Meter Industrial, a 2010 winner of our Top Small Company Workplace award, addressed this in detail related to the historic flood that hit its headquarters city – Cedar Rapids, Iowa – in 2008.

We've just weathered an even larger-scale natural disaster – Hurricane Irene, which devastated many East Coast states this past weekend.  True to form, many of the small businesses we've honored with both of our awards are offering assistance to individuals and businesses that were affected by it.  Here's a snapshot of what they're doing:

1-800-GOT-JUNK? (2005 Best Boss - Brian Scudamore)
As their business is based on junk removal, they're doing what they do best and clearing out flooded basements and storm debris.  Their call center and website have been slammed, and their northeastern U.S. franchise partners tell them that their schedules are packed.  Luckily, they work directly with insurance companies, so it takes some stress out of the process of mopping up after such a destructive storm.

Bersin & Associates (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Since many of their employees work remotely from the East Coast – they're based in California – they've helped them out in several ways: 1. Paying for one employee's monthly rent increase while they move into a new neighborhood 2. IT staff is helping people get their computers back up and running 3. Offered to help each employee financially with power outage issues.

Dealer.com (2010 Top Small Company Workplace)
This Burlington, Vermont-based firm shared on their Facebook page (which as over 2,200 fans) that much of Southern and Central Vermont has been hit hard and is in desperate need of help.  They also shared a link to a blog that's been set up to help Vermonters assist their fellow citizens.

Dyn Inc. (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Tom Daly, President and CTO of this Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company, provided a checklist on their blog to help ensure that company data centers are prepared for major weather events.  They then shared this on their Facebook page, which has over 4,700 fans.

Firespring (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Firespring, a comprehensive marketing solutions provider, instituted a policy allowing any client to essentially "freeze" their account and suspend payments until they were able to get back to business as usual.  Yet, by their own admission, they failed to recognize that many clients were utilizing their online file transfer and job submission utilities that automatically purged old data.  Since many of their clients went without power for several months, they lost valuable data when Firespring's system did its job.  When Hurricane Irene hit last week, it affected hundreds of their clients.  For the past several days, they have been closely analyzing data to ensure that all of them are still able to access their files and are actively engaged using their other web tools.  They were prepared this time.  Their support staff is also reaching out to clients to see if there is anything else they can do to help them.

Northeast Delta Dental (2005 Best Boss - Tom Raffio)
This dental insurance provider has invited employees and their families without electricity to use their facilities, and they are prepared to initiate fundraisers through their Helping Hands program as they learn about employees whose homes were damaged.  They have also activated their ListServ capabilities for their board members, resulting in an exchange of offers to help one another within the tri-states, which has proven immeasurable for their colleagues in Vermont who experienced extremely high flood waters and washed out roadways eliminating access to even basic services.

One Call Now (2011 Top Small Company Workplace)
This Ohio-based enterprise, which delivers automated phone messages to improve communication between and among organizations, has emailed their customers in the states affected by the hurricane. They offered them free upgrades to their existing service, ranging from free texting for 30 days free weather alerts until November 1, when hurricane season is over.  In addition, organizations who coordinate relief for the affected areas can get free call credits added to their accounts to help with their work.

Seventh Generation (2006 Best Boss - Jeffrey Hollender)
The marketer of environmentally responsible household products is donating some of them to make 1200 green cleaning kits for hurricane victims.  They've partnered with the Vermont Foodbank to build and deliver the kits to communities most in need. And they shared news of this on their Facebook page, which has over 260,000 fans.

Next Step: Review the above examples – is there anything you can do or adapt from them to provide better value to your employees, customers, or local communities/states?  (Or get set to do for a future disaster affecting your area?)  And how can employee engagement be a catalyst, or improved, through these efforts?

I am pleased to share with you the following guest post by Anita Campbell.  Anita is the Founder of the Small Business Trends website and CEO of BizSugar, an online community of small business owners.  Today she tackles a topic of concern when establishing great employee engagement and workplace team building strategies: not crossing the friend line with your employees to your business' detriment.  Enjoy!

Everyone wants – has a need, even – to be liked.  It certainly makes going to work every day a lot easier if the people you work with like you.  And because we spend so much time at work, it's only natural to want to cultivate friendships with the people we're with for so many hours every day.  The rules change when you're the boss, though.  There's nothing wrong with being friendly with your employees.  But you do have to draw the line, or maybe a few lines, to also avoid damaging your professional relationships with them, and to keep their respect.  Here are a few tips on how to maintain that delicate balance.

Don't Get Too Personal

You've probably read or been told that you should set boundaries with your employees.  But what does that mean, exactly?  It would be awkward to actually sit your employees down and go over a list of what subjects are okay to talk about, and which ones are taboo.  But it can also be difficult to establish those lines in a more subtle manner.  How you set those boundaries is up to you, but one of the most important things to avoid is getting too personal.

From time to time, your employees may have to reveal certain personal information to you if it's about something that may affect their work.  Having surgery can mean time out of the office, for example.  Or maybe they're getting a divorce, and must remove their spouse from their insurance coverage.  There's really no getting around that, as uncomfortable as it may be for everyone involved.  But those types of revelations should only go one way.  Need to be away from work for medical reasons?  That's all you need to say.  Getting a divorce?  Try to keep it to yourself.

Just like you wouldn't broadcast your problems on a business networking site, you don't want to let your entire office know what you're going through.  Your employees need to have faith that you are there to manage and help them, and although you want them to see you as human, you must try to maintain their confidence in you, and in the company.  Breaking down in the office because your spouse left you will damage that confidence.  Take time off if you need to, but keep your personal life personal.

Now, as with many rules, there is an exception to this one. If you're a small business owner, and you only employ a few people, it may be more difficult to separate your personal life from your professional one.  A startup can oftentimes create a camaraderie and a sense of ownership that employees in larger companies don't feel.  You may all be spending long hours in the office together to get those client proposals done, or inviting your employees' ideas and contributions to get your startup past one of the inevitable hiccups you'll run into.  If that's the kind of relationship you've built with your employees, you may feel more comfortable revealing some of the more personal details of your life.  Just remember to maintain your position as the boss at the same time.

Don't Get Drunk in Front of Employees

You'd think this one would need explaining, but think back.  Before you were promoted or started your own business, did you ever see one of your bosses get drunk at the company Christmas party, or the company picnic?  It happens more often than you might think, and much more often than it should.  Learn from those experiences, and don't be that boss.

It's okay to have a drink or two with your employees from time to time.  Most people will probably have a drink at a holiday party or other company event.  Or maybe you'll go out after work to celebrate landing a big contract.  Just don't overdo it.  Your employees do not need to see you slurring your words, or losing control in public.  It can be embarrassing, and make it very difficult for them to respect you once you're back in the office.  And let's face it, no one likes to have to babysit someone who's had a few too many.  Never put your employees in a position where they have to monitor you, or take your keys away from you.  It's asking too much of them, and putting them in a very awkward position.  No one appreciates that, least of all the people who are supposed to be able – and want – to look up to you.

Don't Play Favorites

Of course you're going to like some employees more than others.  There'll be one person you just click with, someone with whom you'd be very good friends if not for the work situation that requires keeping a little distance.  Because you can't hang out with that person the way you'd like to, you may try to compensate by treating that employee a little better than the others.  If you think you're being subtle about it, you're wrong.  The other employees will notice it, and it will cause problems.

Having several employees can be very much like having a family, especially if that's the kind of culture you've worked to build in your company.  Like a family, there will be some sibling rivalries, and competition for your attention as the pseudo parental figure.  Don't encourage it.  Everyone needs to work together, not against each other, and if it becomes obvious that you favor one employee over the others, the employees on the outs will band together against the favorite.  It's just human nature.  And nothing destroys morale more quickly in the office than feeling unappreciated, or as if the work being done doesn't really matter.  Treat all your employees equally but fairly, which also means that when one of them isn't performing, you take the appropriate action – even if it's your favorite.

The main answer is, yes, you can be friends with your employees, just not the same kind of friends you are with your non-work friends.  Be friendly, be fair, but keep the focus on work, morale, and productivity, and you'll get much more out of your employees than you would if you tried to make them like you all the time.  In other words – be the boss.

Related: As the boss, you may be concerned about getting too chummy with your staff to keep an eye toward building trust in the workplace. Yet, as we write about here, research shows a possible link between budding friendships among your staff resulting in more highly engaged employees when it comes to dealing with leaders and managers.

Congratulations are in order for 15 individuals and organizations that Winning Workplaces has previously pointed to on our website and blog for the value they provide small business executives as everything from examples of hyper-productive workplace team building and improving employee retention, to leading workforce researchers, to purveyors of proven yet cost-effective marketing and brand-building strategies.

The people and firms below were just named 2011 Small Business Influencers by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com.  The recognition is sponsored by BlackBerry, Infusionsoft, and Sage, among others.

The list of Champions includes:

• Norm Brodsky
• Jeff Cornwall
• Donna Fenn
• Inc. Magazine
• John Jantsch
• Rieva Lesonsky
• Becky McCray
• oDesk
• Dharmesh Shah
• YoungEntrepreneur.com

Honorable Mentions include:

• 37Signals
• Jonathan Fields
• Ladies Who Launch
• Network Solutions
• John Spence

Go to Small Business Trends for information on the selection process and judging criteria.

Congrats again to these and all of the honorees!

What do you think of their picks?

As longtime readers know, I'm a big fan of webinars.  Not just because Winning Workplaces has produced our own series of them for small business executives, but also because the barrier to entry on the technology side has become much more manageable, meaning that more business executives, researchers, and other experts can attract more attendees to sessions that address ever more niche topics.

As a result, there are more great webinars arriving every day.  And because many presenters offer at least some information for free (it's a great lead generation tactic if you put access to them behind a registration wall, as our blog provider, Compendium, has done well), you can get helpful new tips, or a refresher to help you reexamine how you're doing something, for virtually no investment other than your time.

If you are looking to not just do a one-off session, and instead record it for sharing or future sale, at a minimum you need to tell your attendees that it's being recorded.  For our own series, this announcement was handled by our great webinar vendor, ReadyTalk.  (Incidentally, part of what makes this firm great is their workplace team building and employee engagement practices; they won our Top Small Company Workplaces award earlier this year.)

However, you can, and should, go further.  From a tip I got from Small Biz Survival, I recently subscribed to Australia-based Des Walsh's monthly social media strategy improvement webinar series.  I listened to his recording from July today, and here's what he said as "housekeeping notes" before he dug into his topic, participation and engagement:

1. This webinar is being recorded.
2. Your attendance on the call signifies your acceptance that the recording may be published electronically, in print form, or on websites.
3. This webinar offers education for informational purposes only.  Opinions and suggestions expressed by the host, any guest presenters, or webinar participants are just that – opinions and suggestions – and should in no way be taken as business or financial advice.

You can do as Walsh did as the host and just read the disclaimers, or you can check with your service provider and see if they will cover all or part of the announcement (depending on your package or session needs, they may provide you with a moderator who will take care of this so your staff representatives or other presenters don't have to).

Does your business already use webinars?  If so, for what purpose – growing sales leads, adding customer value, to keep employees engaged, or something else?  I'd love to hear in the comments.

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.

Among the nearly 350 small and midsize organizations that applied for our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award earlier this year, 96% have a strategic plan.  No surprise there, right?  (In fact, I find it more surprising that in this tough economy, 4% are getting by without one.)

However, when I looked at the vast majority that do have a strategic plan guiding their customer service, sales/marketing, technology, and other investments, I found a big divide in revenue and likelihood of being profitable between those whose plans go further and include a strategy for improving company performance specifically through their employee engagement, workplace team building, and other people practices – and those whose do not.

Check out the charts below:

I wanted to bring this to your attention since our 2011 small-workplace award application was the first to dig deeper and ask about people-powered performance as a key element in company strategic plans.  This is further evidence that investing in your workplace makes business sense (as opposed to merely increasing employee satisfaction).

Does your firm's strategic plan rely on people-powered performance improvement?  I'd love to hear about your experience, including lessons learned.

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.

Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team was published nearly a decade ago, and yet it has proven so invaluable to entrepreneurs that it continues to show up on all-time best leadership book lists such as this recent one.

Why?  Because Lencioni shows how investing in your workplace to build exemplary team building strategies is not just good for business, it creates perhaps the ultimate competitive advantage.  The author and president of management consuntancy The Table Group argues that when your employees are all "rowing in the same direction," your company can dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.

A powerful statement, no?  It's one Lencioni himself will speak to in Dallas on June 16 at our joint Leadership Conference with Inc. Magazine.  (I booked my hotel and flight for the event this week and am especially excited for this session.)

Winning Workplaces has employee engagement research that supports Lencioni's claim.  In the application for our 2011 Top Small Company Workplaces award, we asked the essay question Please share 1-2 examples of how your investment in people has improved the performance and results of the organization.  I put the responses of the winners (which have been selected but won't be revealed until the June issue of Inc. comes out; click here for our 2011 award timeline) and those of the other applicants into Wordle to create tag clouds to see how prominent "team" was for both groups.  Here's what I found:

As you can see, among the winners teams are as important as the company.  That's profound by itself, but even more so when I show you evidence that their team-oriented people practices are having a tangible, measurable impact.  Also from our 2011 award applications, here are data on key organizational metrics by applicant group:

If a greater focus on teamwork can yield these results as a means to achieving industry and marketplace dominance – as we see with our 2011 workplace award winners – why not join me in learning the how-to's from one of the prominent thought leaders on this topic?  Click here for more info on our conference; if you register by May 6 you can save $300!

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.

Citing Edelman PR's 2011 Trust Barometer, yesterday the Whole New Web Blog argued that marketing success cannot be obtained without building trust with your customer base.  A separate, new post by Erik Deckers of Professional Blog Service shares findings from a MarketingPower.com report which show that companies appear to have an opening, in favor of customers' friends, to be the most trusted source for information which leads to a purchase.

Picking up on Deckers' post, the trick to benefiting from a decline in purchasers' trust in "people like themselves" (aka, friends) is that companies must be more visible on, and more savvy with, social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, a blog, etc, etc.

In addition to our usual discussion of team building and employee engagement strategies for making your workplace culture more productive, occasionally I've shared here tips and techniques for using these tools in ways that increase your ROI.  In light of the above research findings, I thought it would be helpful to put these insights all in one place.

Without further ado, I invite you to follow the links below to increase your social media cred – and thus build more trust with both past and prospective customers or clients:

1. Tailor your message when sharing links on your Facebook page
2. Put available phone numbers of LinkedIn contacts who belong to your Group into a cold call list, then reach out to them in the best way you see fit
3. Understand why setting up a company blog, or ramping up your blogging, can be just as effective as running typically costlier PPC ads
4. On Twitter, use TweetDeck to grow your follower base
5. Learn how to combine your blog with Twitter to turn listening into reputation building

Related: It's no secret that the younger generations in your workforce – Millennials in particular – are often most on the pulse of the latest technology trends.  Learn how to better engage employees in this workforce demographic with the takeaways in this Executive Learning Series webinar.

Jack Stack, founder and CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation, author of the best-selling book The Great Game of Business, and a past judge for our Top Small Company Workplaces award, gave one of my favorite responses to a question we've posed to successful business leaders as part of our interview series.  Answering our question on the benefits of open book management (OBM) on companies, he said,

I think most companies are "command and control," and they're optimizers.  They're trying to squeeze everything they can out of the organization – overhead and efficiencies, for example.

Well, if I do a really good job optimizing, I could probably only add one or two points to the net income.  But if I create an organization of innovators – of creators, entrepreneurs – and they come up with a new idea or a new business, the margins on being ahead of the curve, rather than trying to optimize, are much more profitable.

While Stack was talking about an alternative to command and control within the context of OBM, I think his feedback has implications for companies that use all manner of management systems.  Presciently, the article in which he shared these thoughts appeared in our August 2007 IDEAS newsletter; after another Q&A on him appeared in Inc. Magazine in May 2009, almost 2 years later, Stack was widely lauded for sharing and showing how bucking command and control improved the financials of his various businesses in the wake of the Great Recession (because it gave many other leaders a roadmap to do the same).

Even as we enter the second decade of the 21st century, command and control is still holding back many firms, as John T. Landry affirms this week on the Harvard Business Review blog.  I don't agree with his conclusion that despite success with alternatives to this approach – not as high profile as he (and I) would like to see – "we're better off accepting command-and-control as the default for organizational life."

I think there should be a new default mode.  In replacement of "command and control," I propose "engage and empower."  This seems to be the modus operandi of the organizations that rise to the top of our annual workplace competition, as I have discussed here many times based on their specific workplace team building and employee engagement strategies.

Your thoughts?

Lots of the business blogs I follow have spent part of this last week of 2010 sharing with their readers the posts that most resonated with them.  I'd like to do the same today in terms of what you found most useful this year that we've published on staff engagement activities to create a more productive workplace culture.

Below are your 10 most popular posts.  In addition to those of you who found us from a search on Google, Bing, Chrome, etc. (59% of readers), I'd like to thank the remaining 41% of you who arrived here directly, or based on a referral from another website.  We are grateful to all of our readers, as we think there's much more to be done to get the word out that great workplaces are "better for people and better for business," as we say in our tagline.

1. Top 10 Workplace Trends for 2010
2. 10 Best Practices: Offering Vacation Days
3. All Employee Recognition Roads Lead to Greater Company Productivity
4. 20 Proven Workplace Team Building Strategies
5. 10 Small Business People to Follow on Twitter
6. Team Building Improves Hospital's Productivity
7. Toyota Leads Again, This Time in Team Building During Down Times (written prior to their brake recall mess this year)
8. Three Benefits of Virtual Team Building
9. Two Inspiring Stories of Team Building
10. Top 10 Performance Bonus Practices of Our 2010 Small Business Award Finalists

Happy New Year!  Here's to a safe, healthy, and productive 2011!

"You CAN Manufacture in America," claimed the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program in a blog post last week.  They're right – but unfortunately their narrative was dwarfed this week by stories from the Associated Press and others that show more jobs were created overseas this year than in the U.S.

Manufacturing factors prominently among the industries hit by this trend.  As the AP writes,

American jobs have been moving overseas for more than two decades. In recent years, though, those jobs have become more sophisticated — think semiconductors and software, not toys and clothes.

This is underscored by these news bits I found, all published this week:

• Detroit fell from 29th to 45th place in a list of cities with the most manufacturing jobs (source)
• The Philadelphia, PA region lost 107,000 manufacturing jobs over last decade (source)
• The state of Kentucky lost 40,000 manufacturing jobs just since the start of the Great Recession (source)

What can we do to turn this trend around?  One solution is to support small, U.S.-based manufacturing firms.  As we have seen with applicants from this industry for our Top Small Company Workplaces award, the fact that they're so small and typically have one or only a few facilities – all or most of which are based domestically – and, just as important, their focus on innovative team building strategies and other people practices – can mean help for our economy in terms of their growth leading to more tax revenue.  Their financial success also means their workers have stable employment and a paycheck from which to purchase goods and services, supporting their local communities.

My evidence to back this up is derived from this section on the Bureau of Labor Statistics site; specifically the October 2010 data for all-employee employment, mass layoff events, job openings, and separations.  I compared this data to Winning Workplaces' employee engagement research as part of our 2010 award.  The table below shows what I found:

Now granted, the sample sizes are nowhere near similar.  But other than that, you're looking at apples-to-apples: the BLS data is for one month, and for our 2010 TSCW award applicants, I divided their total annual job openings, and openings as a percentage of their workforce, by 12 to get average, monthly data points.

The Job Openings as % of Workforce column is most revealing: across-the-board among BLS firms, it was 1.7%; among our sample of firms with productive workplace cultures, it was 2.7%.  That's 58% more job openings – and again, typically many more jobs as a share of total new jobs created and filled right here in the U.S. of A.

Dig Deeper: Want to learn what these great small workplaces are doing to engage employees and reap better results in everything from recruiting to less repeat work?  Check out the Manufacturing section of the Profiles of Success area of our website.  We recently added 6 new case studies that we wrote for the Hitachi Foundation – 5 of which are our award honorees.

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.

Last week I shared five management acronyms used by great workplaces that I thought should be on you radar screen.  One of our readers who enjoyed this post was Debbie Regnone.  Debbie is President of Resort Sports, Inc., a Florida company that creates custom events to "build camaraderie and team spirit."

She wrote us an email in response to our post in which she shared two more helpful management acronyms for a more productive workplace.  Here's what she said:

 Here is one more that I would guess you have heard of, but worth re-posting:

TEAM

T – Together
E – Each
A – Accomplishes
M – More

Nothing could say it better!  In management, work teams, employee engagement, community service and our homes...if we could all just remember to apply this concept FLOW (Fearless Leaps of Worth – I just made that up!) would be exhibited as individuals stepped outside their comfort zones, in like-minded groups, to meet goals and complete tasks AS ONE rather than BY ONE.

Our thanks to Debbie for her permission to share her thoughts here for the benefit of all our readers.

Related: One of our most popular posts is this one on 20 proven workplace team building strategies.  You can go to this page on Debbie's Resort Sports site for even more team oriented ideas, most of which will get your people out of doors.

A while back Winning Workplaces Chairman Ken Lehman wrote an editorial in which he urged small business leaders to use tried-and-true approaches to management, while shunning passing fads, to create a productive workplace culture for the long term.  Some of the fads he mentioned have been used so often by so many businesses (and certainly by the consultants who advise them) that they are known today by acronyms such as:

• MBO
• MRP
• MRPII
• ERP
• TQM

No doubt, to varying degrees these approaches have been helpful to many firms.  Yet, within the lens of fostering top-tier workplace team building and employee engagement strategies, there are some (more) acronyms you need to know.  These include:

• MBWA - Managing By Walking Around
• SMART - as in goals, for your directors and managers especially; we spelled out this acronym in this past post
• KOI - Kontinuous Operational Improvements; used very successfully in employee committee format by our Best Boss award winner Greg Wittstock of Aquascape Designs
• CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility; this list of employee engagement research and practice articles on our site address the wide applicability of this focus
• PIES - This is the latest acronym I've learned about; I covered it here last week

What acronyms not mentioned here have helped you better manage your employees and your business?  Please add a comment and let me know.

We sent our final IDEAS newsletter for 2010 to our email subscribers yesterday.  In it was this article sharing the results of our latest annual survey of winners of finalists of our annual award that assesses their ability to reap a payoff of employee engagement and team building strategies in the current economic climate.

One survey question whose feedback was saved for our blog was If you had a genie in a bottle that offered three wishes for your business today, what would they be?  We got tons of informative answers, but in the interest of your time I thought I would boil them down to a 100-word tag cloud courtesy of Wordle.  Here it is:

I'm sure you can identify with the words and phrases that appeared most often and are therefore largest in this visualization:

• Growth
• Health care
• Costs
• Sales
• Customers
• Employees
• Faster

As we mentioned in our survey article, over three-fourths of respondents are the CEO of their organization.  So the top wishes really are coming from the ultimate decision maker.

I have two questions for you based on the above – I invite you to answer them by adding a comment:

1. Which words that did not show up as prominently in respondents' answers are you surprised about?
2. What's your answer to our "three wishes" survey question?