The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

I love my work. I hope you do, too. And because I enjoy what I do, I am, quite frankly, really eager to get back to it on this first real work day of the new year.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays as much as the next person. We celebrate Christmas in our family, and I love Christmas, and all that comes with it. For the few days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s, I enjoy sleeping late, taking a little downtime, spending extra time with my family, and not having a lot of deadlines. But, it seems, in our business, the world pretty much goes away for about a month, between early December and early January. That’s more than 8% of the year. With a recession going on, who can afford that?

I’m not advocating workaholism. If you don’t believe me, check out this blog tomorrow, when I’ll be reviewing a book entitled The Daily Six, by John Chappelear. It’s all about life balance. And so am I. But, if we have to work (I do, and I suspect most of you reading this are in the same position), let’s get on with it! Enough of this holiday “parade rest”. I’m ready for folks to answer their phones, get things going, and to get fewer “Out of Office Reply” emails.

In our book, Contented Cows Moove Faster, Bill Catlette and I describe what it takes to get people to put more “Oomph!” into their work. While most of it comes from the quality of one’s leadership, a notable portion comes from the nature of the work we get to do. Notice I didn’t say have to do.

My hope for you this year is that you’ll get to do some really cool work. Work that makes a difference, and work that you enjoy.

I love what I do. And I can’t wait to get back to it!

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

In our most recent book, Contented Cows MOOve Faster, we wrote about the added boost given to employee engagement and productivity when people are able to work in their sweet spot, and their occupation becomes far less a job, and more of a “calling.”

In a recent post on Bloomberg.com entitled, “A Wall Street Job Can’t Match a Calling in Life” , author Michael Lewis ( “Moneyball,” and “The Blind Side“) wrote an excellent piece in response to a query from a young Wall Street banker who now finds his job unfulfilling. Lewis capped his sound advice to the young man with the following statement: “I think you’d be happier if you stopped thinking of what the world had to offer you, and started thinking a bit more about what you had to offer the world. Real excitement isn’t just in whatever you happen to be doing, but in what you bring to it.”

As so many around this country, and indeed the world are now getting the chance (whether they asked for it or not) to contemplate what they will do next, our hope is that one of the things they will think long
and hard about is, “What is my calling, my passion, my real purpose in life?” Whenever we can find a way to marry the answer to that question with our work, our days seem shorter, and life is a lot more rewarding. Whether we can find that marriage or not, it is well worth it for each of us to seek ways to spend as much time as we can in our sweet spot.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

If George W. Bush can plant a smooch on the face of Barbra Streisand, and if she can accept it graciously, couldn’t the rest of us agree, at least during this season of goodwill, to bury our differences, and just all get along?

For those who are open to this idea, here are some specific suggestions:

1. Let’s give Barack Obama a chance. Even those of us who didn’t vote for him. He won. Let’s evaluate his effectiveness as president once he starts the job, and has a few months under his belt. For now, let’s wish him well. We need him to do well. If he does, so will the rest of us.

2. Let’s lay off Sarah Palin. She lost. Until she runs again for national office, she’s not a threat to her detractors. Let’s let her govern the state of Alaska (a job which, by most accounts, she does exceptionally well). When she does again seek national office, then a debate about her qualifications (but not her family or her legal recreational pursuits) is fair.

3. Let’s drop Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Obamas have. Dredging him up at this point serves no useful purpose that I can find. I’d just as soon not hear his name nor his rantings ever again. I’ve let go of my ill will toward Rev. Wright. If the media will let me forget him, I hope to be able to keep it that way.

4. Select someone, maybe at work, or in another part of your life, who has aggrieved you this year, and give it up. Get over it. Forgiveness has a wonderfully restorative effect on the forgiver. You don’t have to make a big deal of it. I don’t think you even have to tell the other person about it. Just start treating them the way you did before they did whatever it was that made you mad.

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

Throughout the year, we address ourselves to workplace issues and ways that managers can improve business outcomes by earning the benefit of the Discretionary Effort of their employees. Once or twice a year, we turn the tables and address an issue that workers at any level would do well to concern themselves with. In view of the eroding employment market and rising concern on the part of employees all over about how to hang onto their jobs, I’ve assembled a crassly worded compendium of ten things we all need to avoid doing or being, especially right now. (Feel free to post in the break room if you dare, tee hee.)

10. Calling Them Out in Public - Nobody likes to be called out or have “their bumper climbed on in public”, including your manager. If you’ve got a beef with your manager, or anyone else for that matter, deal with it in private.

9. Going Over Their Head Without Discussing the Matter with Them First - Before you go up the chain with a complaint, it’s only fair to let your manager have a chance to hear the matter and remedy it. If that doesn’t work and you’re still determined to advance the issue, go with your manager to the appropriate level to get the matter resolved. Don’t sneak around them.

8. Calling Out Sick at the Last Minute - Self Explanatory

7. Letting Them Get Blindsided by Your Mistakes - No one likes nasty surprises. When (not if) you screw something up, man up and admit it. Don’t wait for it to be discovered.

6. Petty Interpersonal Conflicts Between Employees - We’ve all got enough drama and difficulty in our lives these days. Don’t add to it because you can’t or won’t play nice with others.

5. Promises Made and Not Kept - If you agree to do something, do it, without fail, period.

4. All Talk, No Do - Be a doer, not a talker.

3. Whiny, High Maintenance Employees - Call attention to yourself with your good work, not your “neediness.”

2. Know it Alls - Don’t be guilty of being a “legend in your own mind.”

1. Negativity - If you’re consuming precious time and oxygen with negativity, you’re the weakest link… least valuable asset… most expendable, got it?

Our friend, Joni Doolin, CEO and Founder of People Report, authored an excellent piece, Your People, Your Brand for this month’s issue of Fast Casual.  Anchored on the premises that  your employment brand drives business outcomes in a big way, and that your people DO have a choice about where they work, the piece offers some excellent practical advice for leaders. Check it out.

Let’s keep it short, sweet, and simple today. Amidst all the hoopla about our limping economy, new (?) tide of politicians, and terrorist attacks in India, let’s get beyond ourselves and say a special thank you to the brave men and women of the U.S. military who have forgone stock options, comfort, time with loved ones, and personal safety to put themselves in harm’s way for us.

We’ve never asked readers of this column or our free monthly leadership e-zine, Fresh Milk for a dime, and don’t plan to start now, but I am asking that, before launching into holiday madness mode, you go to the Army and Air Force Exchange Service or the USO , crack open your wallet, and show some support for the folks who are looking out for us. One of my favorite ways is to buy a bunch of the 550 minute Global Phone Cards and, in my travels, simply hand them to DCU clad troops in the airport, together with a simple Thank You. Do it… today. They’ll feel better, and so will you.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

For better than a decade we have maintained that working for a jerk, or otherwise incompetent leader is a waste of precious time, and injurious to your career. Now there is evidence that the damage goes beyond that.

In a piece in TheStreet.com, Stanley Bing recounts a report by a Swedish team who studied the health of 3,000 males who worked for “lousy managers.” According to their report, which was originally published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, it seems that those who “deemed their senior managers to be the least competent” had a 25% higher risk of serious heart problems, and those with a long history (4+ years) working for a bad manager had a 64% higher risk… Yikes, I can see the worker’s comp. claims piling up already.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

Much is being written and said these days about sustainability as it pertains to environmental, economic, and social activities. Because of an increasingly global arena, and factors such as overpopulation, the need to maintain commerce at a high level, lack of education and the like, achieving sustainability in any meaningful way is a real struggle. Nowhere is the issue of sustainability more important (and difficult) than in the workplace.

In the early (pre-email) days of FedEx, or Federal Express as it was then known, company founder, Fred Smith used memos printed on bright red paper (red memos) as a way of communicating important thoughts or instructions (okay, orders) to the management team. We probably didn’t get more than one or two such missives a year, and, as memory serves, they frequently pertained to the announcement of a company-wide hiring freeze. Freeze meant just that - freeze. By the time the red memo landed on your desk, the bean counters had already applied a giant tourniquet to the payroll, and, barring special dispensation from Smith himself, no new names would be added, period.

Those of us who were actively involved in recruiting dreaded the arrival of each red memo, as it often meant that a lot of our recent efforts were about to go to waste, as offers could not be extended to candidates in the pipeline. As big a pain in the a** as this was, we silently appreciated what was going on.

You see, Smith was quick to hit the brakes in a slowing economy because one promise he had made to every one of us was that we would never be sent home due to a lack of work, unless the very survival of the enterprise was at stake. It wasn’t a formal policy as much as a personal promise. Still, the net result was that, whenever the economy slowed (and it did), and whenever we found ourselves temporarily overstaffed because a big project (e.g., Zapmail) crashed and burned, we were able to keep both eyes on our work, and worry about customers, rather than whether or not we would have a job.

For the same reason that FedEx stopped just shy of having a no layoff “policy”, wise managements studiously avoid making Big 3 (automaker) type commitments for benefits that employees haven’t earned, and the company simply can’t afford. Doing so is nether smart, nor sustainable, and in the end, it does no one any good.

Much has changed in the intervening years, most particularly the social and economic construct - the ‘deal” if you will, in the workplace. Terms like job security and loyalty have all but vanished from the workday vernacular. One thing that has not changed, however, is the fact that people who are proud of their work, and who feel that they are treated with respect and consideration are a lot more prone to part with copious amounts of their discretionary effort, or what we call, Oomph.  For this reason, organizations desiring to exit the current rough patch with their better players still on the “home” side of the field would do well to think about both the effect AND the sustainability of their employment practices.

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

In the main, I agree with Mitt Romney’s well written editorial in yesterday’s New York Times, in which he advocates steering the big 3 American auto manufacturers through a managed bankruptcy filing, rather than extending emergency loans. There is just too little reason to believe that the respective managements, employees, and the UAW remoras will “get it” without the water-boarding that the bankruptcy process imposes. That conclusion was confirmed in yesterday’s congressional hearings when, under questioning, the three CEO’s affirmed that, despite the dire economic circumstances they were testifying to, they had all arrived in Washington separately by non-commercial air transport, and that none of them had plans to sell their corporate jets.

That said, American businesses, not just the automobile companies, compete each day against competitors around the globe with a significant headwind by virtue of the share of healthcare insurance premium that most medium and large American businesses incur, and the majority of their  foreign competitors do not. Indeed, with the average corporate share of health premiums somewhere in the $6000 range annually per employee, the average employer operates with an immediate cost disadvantage of somewhere around $3 per hour. For a little perspective, I heard this morning on CNBC that the GM health care plan is the world’s largest purchaser of Viagra.

I will submit that one of the best things we could do as a nation for our economy (and the auto industry) would be to stop having the imbecilic “tastes great” vs. “less filling” arguments about how to fundamentally change our badly broken healthcare delivery system, and get about the process of devising a system that is more efficient, fair, and effective. Perhaps then, if GM could buy more steel for their cars and less for their employees…

A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com

Owing to my father’s hospitalization, I have spent a good bit of the last two weeks shuttling back and forth between my home in Tennessee and his place in West Virginia. Not unlike a lot of other people, my life is now made less pleasant by having a nasty cold. I don’t know whether to thank the hospital housekeeper who spent ten minutes in Dad’s room sneezing and snorting, the kid on the plane who coughed and gagged the entire trip, or the clerk at Rite Aid who sneezed in my face with nary a thought of covering up.

But I do know this - coming to work, or traveling via public conveyance while ill with a communicable disease or condition is inconsiderate and counter-productive, not to mention potentially dangerous to infants, the elderly, people with disease, and weakened immune systems. You’re not doing anybody any favors… stay home. But you already knew that.

That said, I know that us manager types,  in the interest of “getting the wash out”, have been known to apply subtle (and not so subtle) pressure on people to work when perhaps they shouldn’t, or, to look the other way when a loyal worker makes a valiant effort to go the extra mile by working thru some sort of crud. Let’s do the right thing this cold and flu season. My bet is people will appreciate the consideration, and we’ll actually get more done.

Gesundheit!