How to Get Fired!: The New Employee’s Guide to Perpetual Unemployment by Jeff Havens   Would you rather play video games and update your Facebook profile than suffer through a lifetime of stable employment? Does paying your rent seem like just too much of a hassle? Then you need How to Get Fired!, the only lecture guaranteed to ensure that you never become a productive member of society. A satirical masterpiece, How to Get Fired! introduces audiences to the Four Pillars of Poverty – fake your resume, establish your incompetence, destroy your work ethic, and alienate your coworkers – and will ‘encourage’ you to do the top ten things that most commonly cause employees to lose their jobs before wrapping up with a more serious discussion about how to successfully transition into the working world. Fast-paced, entertaining, and relevant, How to Get Fired! is utterly unique in the college market. To learn more, go to the Video Clips page and see for yourself why How to Get Fired! has quickly become one of the most popular college lectures in the country.

The first step is to frame your criticism with a well-chosen phrase that makes it sound like you’re actually trying to help the person you’re about to insult; that way, you will get the most pleasure out of their shock and pain. “No offense…,” for example, is an excellent choice for two reasons. First, nobody in the history of the world has ever said “No offense…” without following it with something moderately or entirely offensive. But more importantly, if the person you’re talking to gets upset, it’s really their fault, isn’t it? You weren’t trying to offend them – you just said so! – and they should really try to lighten up a bit. It’s airtight, and there are a lot of other phrases that are just as effective. “Don’t take this the wrong way…,” “I don’t mean to sound rude…,” “This isn’t going to sound the way I mean it…” – you get the idea.

The second step is the actual criticism itself – the meat of the insult, the heart of the wounding. All you have to do here is be original and descriptive. You want to hit people with something they aren’t expecting. “I don’t like you,” for example, is a very common insult, and as such is relatively ineffective at getting a reaction out of people. But if you were to walk up to a family member or coworker and say, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope you contract an intestinal parasite” – you’ll get so much more joy out of the expression on their face. The best insults take time to formulate, but the reward is well worth the time and trouble.

Now I suppose this approach could work both ways. That is, you could theoretically create original, descriptive, and meaningful compliments and praises for those around you. All of us need to hear those things from time to time, and just about anything is better than a half-hearted “Good job!” that sounds more like a way to fill silence than it does an earnest attempt at sincerity. I mean, just imagine the difference that a single word can make. “I love you” is well and good, but you’ve also said it a million times. But when was the last time you told your children or your spouse “I adore you,” or “I cherish you”?

Hmmm…

No. Never mind. Forget I said anything.

Jeff Havens is a former comedian turned college and corporate speaker. His latest comedy lecture, How to Get Fired!, helps prepare college students for their professional lives by ‘encouraging’ them to do each of the top ten things that most commonly cost people their jobs. The accompanying book, How to Get Fired!: The New Employee’s Guide to Perpetual Unemployment, is available in all popular retail outlets and online at www.Amazon.com and www.jeffhavens.com.

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In Reengineering Healthcare, we are joined by Jim Champy, author of Reengineering Health Care: A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking Health Care Delivery. Jim shares his thoughts on the recently enacted healthcare law and what business leaders can do to help promote better health and wellness among their workforce, including:

• the fundamental issues with our current healthcare system and whether the recently passed healthcare reforms will adequately address these challenges
• how reengineering can lead to more efficient, safer delivery of healthcare services
• the role business leaders should play in reengineering the healthcare system
• methods leaders can use to promote wellness within their workforce

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Jim Champy, author of Reengineering Health Care: A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking Health Care Delivery, is Chairman Emeritus of Consulting at Dell Services. He is recognized throughout the world for his work on leadership and management issues and on organizational change and business reengineering. Jim’s first book, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, sold more than 3 million copies and spent more than a year on The New York Times best seller list. He also authored the best seller, Reengineering Management: The Mandate for New Leadership, which was recognized by Business Week as one of the top ten best business books of 1995. His columns and articles appear in such magazines a Forbes, ComputerWorld, Sales and Marketing Management, Leader to Leader, and Baseline. To read Jim’s full biography, click here.

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This buyer’s guide will outline the ins and outs of the e-commerce world, and help you figure out where to get started. You will also receive multiple free price quotes from reputable e-commerce marketing providers by phone/email.

Whether you are starting an e-commerce site to compliment your brick and mortar store, or you are strictly an online company there are many factors you need to consider before you are up and running. This guide will help you navigate your way through every twist and turn en route to a successful e-commerce site design. You will also receive multiple free price quotes from reputable e-commerce web design providers.

There are laws and regulations you need to adhere to, as well as safety precautions to keep your customers safe from security fraud.

This guide comes with no obligation price quotes from professional and expert e-commerce web design providers – all pre-screened and qualified to best fit your e-commerce marketing needs.

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Jim Collins
American business consultant, author, and lecturer on the subject of company sustainability and growth

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Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times by Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen   When leadership matters most… Are you prepared to influence change and guide your organization in today’s ever-changing business environment? Riding the Tiger provides a rare opportunity to learn from catastrophic event that shook the foundations of a thriving global organization. Learn innovative leadership techniques and ideas for fostering changes that are essential for everyone in these challenging times.

Organizations are made up of both conscious and accidental cultures and turbulent times truly magnify both. The conscious culture comes from what’s written and documented. Its accidental culture comes about from those accepting and performing around unwritten or unspoken behaviors and norms passed from one employee to the next, and even one generation to the next. Most likely an employee “knows” that it is part of the culture, yet it has never been documented. Accidental cultures can create both positive and negative outcomes. Here are examples of how the accidental culture emerges: At one business, a team has an impromptu happy hour every Friday where they celebrate all their accomplishments, welcome new members and say goodbye to those leaving.

Another business tolerates leaders and managers that chastise employees in front of others. Yes, we’ve all seen this at some point in our careers and maybe you are currently experiencing this kind of culture in your organization. Obviously you would not see anything written that encourages this behavior which is why this is a good example of how accidental culture emerges. And in fact over time, it may become so acceptable that it is actually not considered a violation of core values when it happens.

Sometimes process leads to accidental culture. Many organizations require their people to complete times sheets (beyond the hourly workers). This is quite common in service organizations where time is billed to the customers. Logging hours spent on each project is a mandatory part of the job and yet while necessary, it can accidentally create a “watch the clock” type of culture.

As stated earlier, a conscious culture evolves from written and spoken goals, values and behaviors, and practices that are taught, measured and reinforced in the organization. There are distinct benefits to a conscious culture:

• Leaders more rapidly assimilating to the culture
• Employees more quickly understanding the range of acceptable behaviors
• Recruitment is easier
• It is easier to identify and take action when there is a lack of fit
• There is a likelihood of successful integration in the case of a merger or acquisition
• Systemic change is easier because there is no battle between the conscious and accidental cultures

The accidental culture generally emerges from the history of those before us and we massage and manipulate that history for our own preferences and norms. The reality is that throughout an organization’s life, additional norms, behaviors, and practices creep in. This is even more pronounced during turbulent times where positive and negative behaviors are magnified. Positive behaviors include greater pride, fierce loyalty to the organization, a stronger work ethic, broader collaboration, and boosted collegiality. Negative behaviors include fear, distrust, and anger that results in hoarding of information and unhealthy internal competition. If not part of the conscious culture, together both positive and negative behaviors bring about the accidental culture.

The “fallout” from organizations going through turbulent times, extends itself to the employees, their families, the public and many times the greater global community. Recall the ramifications of the volcanic eruptions over Iceland. It had a tremendous financial impact on the airline industry and those of us who fly hither and yon. It also resulted in many people being laid off. Peripherally, businesses (many of them small) all over the world dependent on the airline industry were also impacted. From taxi drivers, to hotels and the local flower shop down the street from where you live that could not import the special arrangements you wanted. The culture of an entire industry, those working for that industry and each of these examples were influenced.

Consider the recent Toyota crisis. Cultural differences between Japan and the United States brought about other challenges. In Japan, subtlety and withdrawal have very deliberate intentions, where in the United States they would be seen as arrogant or dismissive. Rooted in many aspects of Confucianism, Japan puts much more focus on the responsibility of the individual to others. Building and helping community is an expected responsibility and when an individual falls short in meeting those expectation there is great shame. There is, therefore, a great pressure to unite around ideas, projects and causes than what we might see in the United States.

Roland Kelts addresses this in detail in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, February 2010. According to Kelts, “…we tend to prize opinionated, headstrong mavericks who are often lauded for their capacity to stand out from the crowd. In Japan however, it is the individual who can facilitate and sustain maximum harmony among group members – the Japanese concept of wa – who achieves praise for leadership in society…”

Never wanting injury or death from such an event, in many ways their conscious culture of humility drove Toyota, a Japanese-based corporation, where Mr. Akio Toyoda took this as a very personal catastrophe and, again, according to Kelts…” a surer sign of a successful corporate leader in Japan is that he (they are almost all men) remains virtually invisible to the public eye, while his organization thrives, and face saving, allowing others to maintain their dignity even when they have erred, is tantamount to ensuring that all group members feel respected. Openly admitting a mistake, or forcing another to do so, invites embarrassment and disharmony. Far better to indirectly make or exchange concessions; indirection eludes confrontation, thus avoiding conflict.”

Do you see where we are going with this? When Toyoda testified on Capital Hill the entire exchange of plans for the event and his subsequent trip to Washington, D.C., were fraught with cultural mishaps and miscommunications. His apology was akin to the ultimate public humiliation. For the sake of Toyota and the global community he called upon all the strength he had available to do so. Toyota employees around the world saw him as a great leader and a hero. This selfless act helped to begin rebuilding the lost employee pride in the never-before tarnished reputation of Toyota. They felt more united and the organization began its recovery.

BP employees are also experiencing what it feels like to have shame introduced “accidently” into their culture. It’s quite common for employees to take on the embarrassment caused by of the actions of others and good leaders must recognize the need to care for these wounded leaders and employees. If the organization has planned and prepared well, many programs and systems will be in place for such turbulent times. If not then the road back will be tricky and filled with additional challenges because it requires shifting the organization’s culture to get it back on track. An event that rocks their world, such as the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, can be the catalyst that introduces many accidental elements into the culture.

Turbulence of any kind can affect an organization’s culture. To prepare for these changes, the necessary steps to protect and adjust the organizational culture must be planned, and this planning needs to be done before, during, and following turbulent times. This is an area where learning and development professionals play a primary role. Because they have regular access to more people than those in any other part of the organization, they are uniquely prepared to play a powerful role in its revitalization. They can gather information, facilitate learning solutions, communicate changes, assist in determining necessary cultural changes, and provide coaching for leaders to introduce and reinforce desired outcomes. Moreover, learning and development professionals, given their scope of responsibility, are well positioned to observe the organizational culture as it grows over time. And thus they also tend to be well aware that because people tend to be comfortable with the current organizational culture, for them to consider cultural change, a significant event must usually occur. Any major event can be the catalyst for shifting the organizational culture. Even so, attempting to change this culture could well be the most difficult project you will ever take on. Attempting to shift from the accidental culture back to the desired conscious culture is a daunting task. Here are four steps to regain or establish a conscious culture.

1. Identify all of the components of the existing culture. Include the written, spoken, unspoken and unwritten.
2. Facilitate what to keep, what to eliminate, and what to add. This step merges the positive accidental culture into the conscious culture and helps identify the negative accidental influences that need to go away.
3. Revisit your organization’s core purpose and values, and reorganize them if necessary. In order to get Toyota back on track, Akio Toyoda realized the need to shift his purpose to “serving the greater global community” in addition to caring for his employees, the team, neighbors, and protecting the organization. When documented as part of the conscious culture of Toyota, this shift has the potential to positively change the organization forever.
4. Communicate and reinforce the core purpose and values. A conscious culture can drown out the accidental culture only when it is consistently communicated and reinforced.

Let’s take a look at BP. Their perceived lack of disclosure and transparency has now become part of their accidental culture. In addition to impacting their brand, it is influencing the decisions of employees around the world. The collateral damage is well know, the small fisherman who must now close his family owned business after three generations and 30 years, the restaurant owners who are unable to provide fresh oysters for their guests and see diminishing sales as customers go elsewhere, the families who have survived one crises after another in the Gulf, and the thousands of species at risk for extinction. Had BP come forth earlier with the facts about how many gallons of oil were actually leaking into the Gulf perhaps better or faster methods might have been available for containment. Until the leaders decide to be more transparent and forthcoming with information, they will continue to have this consequence as an accidental component of their culture.

Looking further at BP’s culture, how will they overcome the shame that their employees are now carrying with them? This can be accomplished by adding to the leadership development agenda, measured steps to constantly reinforce the need to communicate with employees, to let them know everything about what is known and unknown. Beyond that, an organization like BP needs to invite their people to be a part of the solution (which is much more than capping the well in the gulf). BP could reap the benefits of maximizing the contributions of their dedicated workforce. If BP takes the right steps to reduce the fears of their people and to engage them in the process of revisiting their culture from the inside-out, then they will reap the benefits of having more than 100,000 brand ambassadors. Their employees and their culture could actually grow stronger as a result of this catastrophe. From their conscious culture, an aware, mobilized workforce could become a part of the story of BP’s turnaround. BP leaders need to “care for the wounded” and that includes their employees.

Remember healing always starts from within. These lessons don’t have to be learned in crisis. Organizations can create and sustain a conscious culture that welcomes the positive accidental influences and eliminates the negative, and learning professionals can be right there at the front lines, using leading through learning strategies to help their organizations.

Ed Cohen & Priscilla Nelson, partners at Nelson Cohen Global Consulting ( www.nelsoncohen.com), provide thought leadership and strategic guidance to leaders and companies around the world. They are co-authors of Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times (www.ridingthetiger.com) published by ASTD 2010.

Ed has worked in more than 40 countries with organizations including Booz Allen Hamilton, Satyam, Seer Technologies, National Australia Bank, Larson & Toubro and the World Economic Forum. He is the only Chief Learning Officer to lead two companies to ASTD BEST Award #1 ranking; Booz Allen Hamilton and Satyam Computer Services (only company outside United States to achieve this). To read Ed’s complete biography, click here.
 
Pris has 30 years of experience with Fortune 500 companies around the world. She has received international acclaim for her work in global leadership development, diversity and executive coaching. To read Pris’s complete biography, click here.

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The Business of Innovation is a five part series created by CNBC in association with IBM. Within each episode, Maria Bartiromo and a distinguished panel of guests discuss what it takes to be an innovation leader.

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In each episode, our co-hosts and their guests present a richer and deeper exploration of the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website. Their discussions identify benefits, define implementation methods, and provide examples to help leaders increase alignment and heighten accountability within their organizations.

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A key contributor to the cost factors associated with this balanced equation is the implementation timing of risk mitigating and preventing actions. Delaying such actions defers their cost until and only if such activities are needed to reduce risk. Subsequently, the better the organization’s ability to detect and respond to performance degradation evidencing an impending event the greater the deferment related cost savings. Without this predictive capability, risk mitigating and preventing actions need to be in place at all times, heightening short-term expenses and forfeiting the opportunity to avoid these costs should the associated performance degradation never occur.

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Additional Information

Additional information regarding organizational performance measures and their thresholds can be found in the StrategyDriven whitepaper series Organizational Performance Measures. These whitepapers are available to StrategyDriven Newsletter Subscribers and the subscription is FREE! Click here to subscribe today.

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How to Get Fired!: The New Employee’s Guide to Perpetual Unemployment by Jeff Havens   Would you rather play video games and update your Facebook profile than suffer through a lifetime of stable employment? Does paying your rent seem like just too much of a hassle? Then you need How to Get Fired!, the only lecture guaranteed to ensure that you never become a productive member of society. A satirical masterpiece, How to Get Fired! introduces audiences to the Four Pillars of Poverty – fake your resume, establish your incompetence, destroy your work ethic, and alienate your coworkers – and will ‘encourage’ you to do the top ten things that most commonly cause employees to lose their jobs before wrapping up with a more serious discussion about how to successfully transition into the working world. Fast-paced, entertaining, and relevant, How to Get Fired! is utterly unique in the college market. To learn more, go to the Video Clips page and see for yourself why How to Get Fired! has quickly become one of the most popular college lectures in the country.

Well then, fight back! If you would rather play video games all day than suffer through a lifetime of stable employment, here’s exactly what you need to do:

• Dress every day as though you’ve just woken up. Nothing says ‘disinterested in advancement’ like a man or woman too lazy to bother with basic grooming.
• Treat your job like college! In other words, do what you like when you like and ignore the rest. Show up when it suits you, skip meetings you expect will be boring or inconvenient, and save all your productive energy for the night before any project is due. You’ve had several years to perfect these skills, and if you continue putting them to good use you should ensure that the IRS never bothers to audit you. After all, why hassle a person without assets?
• Gossip! Remember how you’ve used your Facebook account to complain about the various problems of others? Well, no need to stop now! And since nothing on the Internet stays private, it’ll only be a matter of time before word trickles back to your boss about what you’ve been saying about him/her. And when it does, congratulations! You’ll never miss another mid-morning cartoon marathon in your life!

In all seriousness, those techniques are very effective at helping people lose their jobs. And if that’s your goal, you can stop reading now. However, if you actually want to keep a job – any job – for any length of time, here are a few things to consider:

• Under no circumstances should your parents accompany you on any interview. Nobody will hire anyone whose mommy and daddy need to do all the talking. Seriously, if they’re coming with you, why not just sit in the car and wait to see how it turned out. Then maybe they’ll take you out for ice cream afterwards!
• Do not use your social networking email as the contact email on your resume. It’s awfully hard to take anybody seriously when they ask you to contact them at vampiregirl23@facebook.com.
• Show up every day, on time. Not terribly profound advice, but it’s a habit school – especially college – doesn’t require you to develop. Your job will, though.
• Understand that you’re not going to start at the top unless you’re related to the person who hired you, of course. Otherwise, yours will be a slow and steady progression like everyone else’s, and if you want that progression to happen faster, you’ll concentrate on proving yourself first. If you expect to advance before you’ve demonstrated an ability to handle more and more difficult assignments, then you’ll be waiting for a long, long time.

There’s more to know and plenty of other behaviors to avoid, but this should get you started. So get out there and enjoy yourself because the ability to determine the path of your life, which your education has just given you, is a more incredible experience than you might expect. Don’t blow it.

Jeff Havens is a former comedian turned college and corporate speaker. His latest comedy lecture, How to Get Fired!, helps prepare college students for their professional lives by ‘encouraging’ them to do each of the top ten things that most commonly cost people their jobs. The accompanying book, How to Get Fired!: The New Employee’s Guide to Perpetual Unemployment, is available in all popular retail outlets and online at www.Amazon.com and www.jeffhavens.com.

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