There was a lot of overlap and similarity between these successful hiring execs that centered around several consitent themes:

1. Always hire talent, even if you don’t have the perfect spot for them yet. The single most difficult task of any executive is finding and retaining talent. If you discover a gem of an employee, hire them and create a role for them. You never regret adding creativity, ingenuity and intelligence to your team.
2. Ask questions that require them to tell stories about their experience. Resumes are filled with dates, sales targets met, percentages of quota filled and numbers of direct reports. But these recitations of statistics and static observations don’t tell whether the job seeker will fit into your company and culture. Ask them to describe in detail how they managed their greatest failure. Or how they managed to get corporate support for a new, unusual product launch. How do they work? Who do they work with? What do they value? If their answers match your culture, grab them up.
3. Culture always trumps strategy. One lesson learned by virtually every executive is that a brilliant mind doesn’t always result in a successful employee. If the new employee doesn’t share your values and embrace the way you conduct business, they will not work out for you long term. They never do. Hire to culture, not just capabilities.
4. Rely on referrals for your best candidates. Put the word out to your network of friends and business associates announcing what you’re looking for and let your network generate a stream of referrals. Your friends will only refer those they believe are truly capable of doing the job because if the candidate fails, the referrer’s reputation is similarly diminished.
5. Don’t focus solely on hiring talent from your industry. It’s predicted that the average graduate coming out of college today will likely have dozens of jobs and will switch careers entirely several times during their worklife. Hire talent, aptitude and attitude, not specific industry skills. These are the people that can step into the roles that don’t even exist yet.

At one point he talks about a lack of imagination and uses Steve Jobs as a kind of anti-example:

And some of it, to be quite frank, Robert, is an appalling lack of imagination and guts on the part of these same CEOs who are complaining and pointing the finger at every else. You know, these guys are very good at cutting. They’re very good at blaming others. They’re a little less good at coming up with creative new products and services, and they’ve got a little flabby in that regard in the last few years where the focus has been on surviving and cutting, as it should had been. But they’re not the gutsiest group of people in the world.

Look, do you hear Steve Jobs complaining out at Apple about this?

It is true.  In the midst of high unemployment and little growth, Apple has managed to capture the imagination of the world with not one but two innovative new products.  Is it possible for simple creativity to save a company?

Well, it couldn’t hurt.  There’s plenty of evidence that investing in new creative ideas when things look worst is a smart move.  Partly because your competition is so much less.  Also because the talent and resources to be creative are priced lower.

But this isn’t a strategy just for CEOs.  Creativity is often driven from the ranks.  So whether you sit in a corner office or the middle cubical, cranking up the creativity may not just be a smart move.  It may be the necessary move.

Listen to the full interview here:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128519775

Dispelling much of the media hype about our country’s decline in manufacturing, overall manufacturing production in the USA has remained remarkably constant for decades. What has changed dramatically is the number of jobs used to generate our manufacturing output. Since 1979 the manufacturing workforce has shrunk by 40% and there’s every indication that it will continue to shrink since the productivity of manufacturing workers has never been higher.

The decades-long decline in manufacturing jobs reveals several important factors of the manufacturing job market that must be understood and acted upon by job seekers, manufacturing companies and government entities alike.

1. the lost jobs aren’t coming back. Just as the jobs for phone operators were replaced with digital switches that could handle exponentially more calls at a fraction of the price of an operator with a headset, manufacturing has embraced automation and will never return to manual processes.
2. new manufacturing jobs require higher levels of technical skill. Manufacturers need employees who add value to the manufacturing process. They don’t need a warm body capable of punching a button to activate a punch press 120 times an hour. If you can’t provide more value than a simple machine, you will not get hired. Employers are looking for individuals who can operate and program their automated machines. These new positions requires mathematics and computer programming skills that former machine operators never developed.
3. training is essential. Although there are thousands of machine operators who are potentially capable of updating their skills to include programming, these operators all need training. Solutions have to be developed privately and publicly to enable these workers to shift from simple machine operation to advanced programming, monitoring and operating.
4. essential skills need to be introduced in high-school. The new manufacturing jobs are higher paying because they’re more demanding intellectually. They require an understanding of advanced mathematics, logic and programming that are not imparted in the current high school curriculum. Students should be introduced to the skills that will play an increasingly large role in their professional lives so they will be better prepared to step into real-world employment opportunities with a solid educational foundation.

Experts tell us that the average worker would have to work a mere 10 hours a week to meet the productivity of their 1950’s counterpart.  The bad news is that the economy has calibrated itself for that productivity.  We expect things done faster than we used to.  Receiving a package in 3 days used to be fast.  Then overnight.  Now if we can’t download this instant we’re not interested.

A good example of this comes from a CNN blogger who tried to fit a shorter workweek in with the 24/7 new cycle business:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/08/14/cnn.workweek/index.html

The second big problem with shorter work weeks is the slow economy.  Many people view flex time as a major liability to their career assuming bosses have an “out of sight / out of mind” view of their performance.  Need to make cuts?  Who’s that guy I never see?  http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/worklife/03/29/flex.time/index.html?iref=allsearch

But a shorter work week can have some major benefits.  First, it can save on energy cost in terms of running office amenities as well as in commuting costs for employees.  There’s also a case to be made for frankly acknowledging the waste that often takes place in juggling work and life. A doctor’s visit, for example, may only take an hour but can easily eat up an entire afternoon of an employee’s time.  If these sort of activities were concentrated in extra time off, actual word days would become less diluted.

So from a management perspective, how do you implement a shorter work week to ensure these  efficiencies are working for you?  How do you turn a nice perk into a way to reduce overhead and improve effectiveness.  Here are 5 ways to start:

1.)  Make it Mandatory

Efficiency means that employees can’t be in the office.  Keeping strict working hours ensures that employees genuinely approach work more efficiently, but also means that no one will feel threatened by missing something important.  Any kind of flex time needs to be more or less mandatory.  If it’s not, natural competition will kick in resulting in greater inefficiency.

2.)  Manage by Task

Task oriented management means looking at what and employee delivers and when they deliver it instead of whether they’re simply available to work. Shorter hours mean less time to get something done, but also means you are judged on production instead of time.

3.)  Keep Meetings Short and to the Point

Less time in the office means less time for meetings.  It’s still important to touch base with people, but keep meetings short.

4.)  Beware of Too Much Email

An office that isn’t frequently together tends to email often.  The problem is the vast number of emails that crowd computers every day.   Keeping people in the loop doesn’t always mean hitting cc, however.  Encourage that problems and questions be addressed in meetings, phone calls, or in one to one exchanges.

5.)  Use Technology

There are terrific tools like Skype and an array of chatting programs that are great ways to stay in touch outside the office.  Also, document sharing has become easier with services like Google docs.  You may need to push along these relationships slightly with training or hardware, but they are fairly maintenance free after that.

Flexible working schedules and shorter hours simply means worker smart and not harder.  Managing this process also means rewarding smart work and enabling it.  The results could be higher productivity and a lower bottom line.

Email has the potential to dominate our time and attention if managed improperly, so here are a few email rules to live by that will help make all our digital lives a little easier to handle:

1. Summarize the reason for your email in the subject line.
   Yesterday I received a message whose subject consisted of a single word: cards. I had no idea what the sender was referring to. Was I supposed to buy cards? Play cards? Design cards? What type of cards? The possibilities were endless. Turns out the sender wanted me to print a document of theirs on my color laser printer. Rather than making me open the mail to discern its purpose and importance, the sender should have written in their subject line something like: need the attached printed in color by Tuesday. In an instant I would have known their intent and been able to prioritize their request, but instead I was compelled to open their message, read it, process it and then move on. Don’t waste your reader’s time. Do the courteous thing and summarize your message in your subject.
2. Make sure your complete name appears in the From: line
   Steve sent me a message yesterday. Steve who, you ask? I have no idea, since Steve didn’t include his last name in his email identifier. Like many of you, I know a lot of Steves. There are 15 Steves in my contact database. So, which Steve was this message from? I had to open the message to read his signature which included his last name. As important as you are, if your name isn’t Cher or Bono, be considerate and make sure that when you set up your email preferences that you include your entire name as your identifier so that your email recipients will know it’s you.
3. Create a Signature that appears automatically in every message.
   OK, even if I know it’s you and I know exactly how to get in touch with you, what do you think happens if I forward your message to someone else? Without your name, email address and phone number printed within your message, they have absolutely no way to contact you. Every email program provides the ability to create an automatic signature. You can even customize the signatures for multiple email accounts. It’s easy. Learn how.
4. Keep emails short.
   We’re all overwhelmed with email messages. There are days when I receive over 400 emails and dread the process of sifting through them all. Although most are junk mail, I still have to peruse dozens of messages to determine how to process them. Make it easy for your recipient and keep your email messages short and to the point. The best messages can be read in their entirety in the preview pane. Edit ruthlessly to keep your messages on point, conveying your purpose and the recipient’s obligations quickly.
5. One subject per email, only
   If you’re working with someone on more than one project and need to know the status of specific tasks, it’s preferable to send the requests in separate emails rather than pile them all into a single message. By sending separate messages, the recipient can reply to each message with a brief response that encapsulates entirely the status of that project and your emails can generate a thread of conversation dealing solely with one topic. Mixing multiple messages leads to confusion and inevitable oversights. Make it easier on both of you and deal with just one thing per message.
6. Reply immediately
   Get in the habit of replying to your messages as soon as you read them. Even if it’s simply to acknowledge that you received their message and will be getting back to them when you have more detail or have had a chance to think about the content of their message. They’ll rest easier knowing you received the message and you’ll have their message in your to-do queue.
7. Don’t hit Reply All unless it’s really, really necessary
   We have enough messages in our Inbox without adding unnecessary responses from 42 people invited to next week’s webinar or the 12 people playing softball after work on Thursday. Reply to the Sender only unless it’s absolutely necessary for every participant to know your plans. And really, how often is that?
8. Keep mobile in mind
   More than 70% of email messages are picked up on our handheld devices, not on our desktop computers. How should this shift in behavior affect your messaging? It makes it more important to keep messages brief, both in the length of your message and the size of any attachments that you include. Although you may not think twice about attaching your 5MB Powerpoint presentation to your email, your recipient will be cursing you as they wait for your entire message, complete with attachment,  to download on their Blackberry or iPhone. Send attachments only when absolutely necessary.

The bottom line: be thoughtful and courteous in your messaging to save everyone time, aggravation and energy.

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

(Actually, the comments section is really interesting.  There are over 700 comments on the topic and they’re pretty fierce and informative about PPT and its use in business and military circles.)

We’ve talked before about how deadly PPT can be to a presentation and about paring down slides to their essence, but this is a whole new angle.  The US military, according to the article, is using PPT to actually communicate complex ideas internally.  In other words, they aren’t just giving an engaging concept of what the plans are, they are delivering plans in this manner.  So it’s not just a summary — it’s the plan itself.

Many officers defend the practice, saying that it’s easier to create slides than to write a brief to communicate strategy.  Many companies take the same view.  It’s the old “no one reads anything any more”.  That’s true.  However, it can be difficult to actually communicate a complex strategy in a few bullet points.  You wouldn’t want your house built with a PowerPoint and not a blueprint, right?  Don’t let PPT replace a written document or strategy.

So what replaces it?

Personal communication is still a great way to gather ideas.  Whether it’s a brainstorming session or a more formal presentation, taking away PowerPoint can actually get you information more quickly and concisely.  Written reports are also not a bad way of communicating.  And asking for more details is probably not a bad idea.  Again, that can be done personally:  ”You say on page 7 that we’re going to grow these three markets, but how?”

The New York Time piece also points out something that many companies don’t consider:  the amount of time it takes to produce all of these presentations.  PowerPoint turns us all into graphic designers and gives the illusion of productivity when little may be there.

It’s true, the program does have its place.  If you need to give a presentation, and you must convey information visually, it can supplement a great oral presentation.  But to coin another military phrase, it does have the potential for mission creep.

Why This Can Be Bad

The problem with making everything about consensus building is that it pre-ordains mediocrity.  People build toward the positive point of least resistance and consider the point they’ve happily reached together the best outcome.  Often it’s a good outcome but not a great one.  Without risk, originality, or passion, ideas rarely have the chance to be great.

Solution: Force an Argument

Lay out 3 or 4 scenarios and have teams argue the pros of each.  Make it clear that no one can come to agreements. Everyone is right about the argument and everyone else is wrong.   Your decision can be nuanced, but the arguments don’t need to be.

Prepare for the Backlash

You may shock people with this approach, but think about it this way: the power of a decision often rests in one person’s hands.  So does the responsibility.  All that consensus building goes out the window when the buck stops at your desk.  Also, be consistent in how you assign decision making.  Put it in the hands of one person and not a committee.

The next consensus may be that you made a good decision.

1.)  Just Do It

For the reasons I mentioned above, you should have conference calls rather than putting off an important meeting before everyone is in the office.  Even in a small office, getting everyone together may be impossible.  A conference call can take care of business quickly and efficiently…if you do it right.

2.) Keep Them Short and  Stay Organized

You could figure that one out on your own.  That goes for any meetings.  Get to the point quickly, let people know why they’re there and set and stick to an agenda.  But you knew that already, right?

3.)  No seriously, keep it under 60 minutes

Two hours on the phone just isn’t productive.  An hour is even pushing it.  Try for something shorter.  Sometimes it can be easy for a small group of people to dominate a discussion without realizing that they’re carrying the conversation over the set time limit and beyond topics that most people on the conference care about.  Without body language as a clue, this is a particular problem.  This is why an agenda with time limits is important.

4.)  Involve Other People

Try to not to have any one voice go on for more that 6 or 7 minutes.  Delegating voices will keep participants involved and will make your phone conference more interesting.

5.) Record Yourself

Record yourself on a phone conference sometime and then take a listen.  You’ll be horrified.  But then you’ll get better.  I promise.  Listening to yourself helps to modify your voice without even trying.  You’ll annunciate more clearly, eliminate vocal  ’crutches’ you use (uh, you-know, ummmm, heavy breathing) and trail off or mumble less often.  The more you hear your voice, the better you’ll sound.

6.) Ask People for their Full Attention

It’s easy to switch off during a phone conference.  Don’t let that happen.  Strike a deal that you’ll only take up 25 mintues of their time, if they give their complete attention.  No computers.  No phone calls. Just ask and you’ll be surprised at how accommodating people are.

7.)  Create a Seating Chart

It’s easy to loose track of who’s where — if you create a chart, you can easily note who said what and when.  You can also check in with people who are silent and prompt them with questions:  ”Chloe, we haven’t heard from you yet, do you have any input?”

8.) Avoid Speaker

Three people sitting around a speaker phone talking to eight people on headsets is just annoying.  The technology exists to get everyone on a separate line — just use it.

9.)  Sometimes Mobile is Too Mobile

Ever have someone put their phone through security while they’re on a call.  Seriously?  Schedules are tight, but really?  If that happens, someone, somewhere hasn’t really planned correctly.  If you need someone’s attention for 25 minutes, get their attention.  Real sit-down-in-a-room-and-listen attention.

Follow these Top 10 Workplace Safety Tips:

1. Design a safe work area. Safety should be planned into your work areas from the start. How machines are positioned, where materials are staged, how product flows from one process to the next. Designing the work area with safety as a primary concern will result in a safe, efficient and productive workplace.
2. Maintain a clean work area. The most productive work areas are clean, neat and organized. Not only will you remove many hazards from a work area by keeping it clean, but you will also provide a more productive work environment for your employees.
3. Involve your employees in the safety planning. There is no one on your staff who knows more about the potential dangers on your production floor than the employees themselves. Get their input and follow their suggestions to engineer safety into their work areas instead of relying upon personal protection equipment to safeguard their health.
4. Provide clear work instructions. Make sure your employees know precisely what you expect of them by providing thorough training and clear, written instructions. Although they should be made aware of safety concerns, an effective safety program extends well beyond a list of things not to do. When you document your work processes, make sure that you include basic safety instructions that each worker reads and acknowledges.
5. Focus your safety efforts on the most likely problems. The most frequent safety violations are not the most catastrophic, they’re typically those that are smaller but more likely to occur. Strained backs from using poor lifting techniques or refusing to use lift assist equipment. Cuts from exposed edges or poorly shielded equipment. Injuries that would have been prevented if the employee were wearing their personal protection equipment. Although it’s necessary to plan for major safety concerns, your greatest impact will come from eliminating the small safety violations that contribute the most frequent injuries.
6. Encourage your employees to bring safety deficiencies to management’s attention. Safety is everyone’s concern and your employees should be actively encouraged to bring any type of safety concern to management’s attention. Then it’s your responsibility to act on their concerns and eliminate the safety deficiency. If you don’t, you’ll lose the trust of your employees and incur potentially severe liabilities. In the long run, it’s cheaper to fix safety problems than to ignore them.
7. Watch and learn how each employee performs their job. Even though you may have documented proper procedures for each work station, different workers may perform even the same job with undocumented variations. Watch how your employees perform their jobs to see if they’re following procedures, if they’re taking shortcuts that could reduce safety, and even to learn if they’re performing tasks in an improved manner that should be adopted by other operators.
8. Maintain all machinery in good working order. As your machines age and wear, your operators may make modifications of their own to maintain productivity. As the business owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you have a routine maintenance program in place so that your machines perform as well as they can and as safely as they can.
9. Avoid unnecessary hazards. Check your workplace frequently with a discerning eye to identify any new equipment or materials that could pose a potential safety hazard. Identify any changes and evaluate them for potential safety concern.
10. Revisit your safety guidelines every year. Nothing stays the same in your workplace. Your staff changes, your machines age or are replaced with new machines, and your plant layout may even change. Every change means that your previous safety guidelines may not be sufficient anymore and need to be revisited and modified to reflect your changing environment.

Current economic problems and high unemployment numbers are distorting many employers’ perception of the overall happiness and satisfaction of their employees. When unemployment is high and uncertainty in the job market reigns supreme, people with jobs tend to hold onto those jobs, even if they’re not fulfilled in their current position.

Finding and retaining talent may be the most important jobs that any manager performs. Talent is always difficult to find and those employees who demonstrate the greatest potential need to be invested in so that they remain challenged and invested in your company.

Now is the time to invest in their professional development. According to New York Times bestselling business author and organizational behavior expert Dr. Richard Boyatzis, you need to create energy and excitement around your most talented staff members to keep them engaged and enthusiastic. If you invest in them now, then they’ll be less likely to consider other employment options when they emerge (as they certainly will).

Sit down with your best employees to discuss how they want to direct their professional development. Do they need additional training? Do they need to become involved with other departments to develop cross-functional skills? Are there strategic projects that they can help develop and implement with other key members of your staff?

Find interesting opportunities that communicate your respect for their talent and potential, and they won’t jump at the first fresh opportunity that comes along.