Blog Posts

4 Ways to Leverage the Power of Thank You

recognition

Recently, more and more of my clients have asked me to provide them with the most current advice on how to effectively use recognition efforts to drive excellence with employee engagement. During these consulting engagements, I train their managers on the most meaningful steps for recognition, as well as how to avoid the most common mistakes. Here are four key takeaways in this regard that you can immediately use in your organization: 1. Appreciate and value “The Power of Thanks.” Years ago, I wrote a widely-published article that carried the very same title. It featured the following quote from ...

Hiring Right – Fine Tuning Your Recruiting Efforts to Avoid Mis-Hires

Recruiting and Hiring

The report card on hiring in North America is pretty poor and indicates that too many organizations are simply filling positions with “bodies,” as opposed to applying meticulous screening to avoid hiring the wrong people in the first place. As revealed in my New York Times Best Seller, Building a Magnetic Culture, 59% of all new hires are gone before the one-year tenure mark. As a result, these organizations encounter the significant costs of re-recruiting and re-hiring. All best-in-class organizations (defined as top 10% on employee engagement) have detailed processes for hiring and vetting candidates that applied detailed scrutiny. Simply ...

Zappos’ Experiment with Holacracy

I have long admired Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos for his out-of-the-box thinking and workplace innovation. Hsieh pioneered the practice of paying people to quit, which is one very effective way of transitioning unengaged employees to other pastures. He and his team also adjusted Zappos’ interview process to increase the focus on a candidate’s attitude, rather than just aptitude. Assessing these two metrics became tasks for two separate interview teams; a spot-on best practice. Then he introduced Holacracy to Zappos, and I started questioning whether his success streak will come to an end. The idea behind Holacracy is that there ...