The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

Both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are being considered for important jobs. Their respective supporters have already spent much time bloviating about how little experience the other candidate has, when ultimately, American voters tend to vote not on skills and experience, but on character, values, and attitudes.

Which is exactly what Bill Catlette and I have long advocated is the way employers should hire, but far too often don’t. It’s what we call “hiring for fit”. The best hires seem to happen when we narrow the field of candidates first on character, values, and attitudes - the potential to be happy, productive, and successful in a given job in a given organization - and then refine our selection on other factors, including experience.

Neither Palin nor Obama have the years of government experience that Biden and McCain have. Governor Palin has held elective office for 13 years; Senator Obama for 10. Arguably, Palin has more experience running a government than the other 3 combined.

But when it comes down to making the choice in November, the vast majority of voters will make their selection based on who they feel the candidates are, what they stand for, and what they believe, rather than what they’ve done.

I wouldn’t know much about Sarah Palin, except that I’ve been to Alaska three times in the last 16 months. Alaska’s the only state I’ve been to (and I’ve been to all 50) where ordinary citizens, from across the political spectrum, spontaneously talk about their governor, and only in positive terms. She beat a guy with lots of experience. Because she wasn’t elected on experience, but on values and attitudes. Palin has the highest approval ratings of any governor in America. On my most recent trip, someone gave me a copy of the governor’s biography, Sarah, by Kaylene Johnson. As of this morning, it was ranked #14 by amazon.com, and is out of stock until September 13.

Obama packed Invesco Field this week with 80,000 fans and has energized and enthused more voters and potential voters than any candidate since I’ve been old enough to vote. Millions of Americans are excited about and committed to him, but it has nothing to do with his experience. Again, it’s his character, values, and attitudes.

Americans are values voters. Barack Obama and Joe Biden. John McCain and Sarah Palin. May the better team win.

This is a house down the street from us, thanks to Tropical Storm Fay. We were lucky at our house. Nothing big fell on us, and because we live on one of the few hills in Jacksonville, Florida, we escaped flooding. Although we’ve been without power for going on 36 hours now, at least we’re safe, which is more than I can say for the mushy food in our freezer. We’re fortunate. We have friends, family, a Starbucks with electricity, and Marriott Rewards points.

It seems that those of us in Jacksonville anticipated Fay’s arrival longer than we did the announcement of Obama’s veep selection. She taunted us for most of the week, closing schools and businesses prematurely, days before the first breeze was felt. Then she finally got here…with a vengeance, dumping more than 12 inches of rain (after dropping twice that amount on Florida’s Space Coast, just south of here), and blowing winds up to about 60 mph.

Fay was no Katrina, and she’s done less total damage than the trifecta of Florida hurricanes in 2004. Still, we we’ll all be happy to see her fall apart and disappear. And for our electricity to come back.

One of my best friends is the managing partner of a good-sized local accounting firm. One of the firm’s employees, who recently moved here from Maine, expressed great anxiety about her first tropical storm, and asked her boss, “What are we going to do?!” My friend confided in me that at first he wanted to say, “What we’re going to do is turn on our windshield wipers and come to work.” But on further consideration, wisdom prevailed. He told everyone to use their own judgment about coming to work the next day (Thursday). In reality, conditions were fine on Thursday, and it could have been business as usual. But, as my friend reasoned, it was one day, and in the grand scheme of things, one day won’t mean very much.

Natural disasters, or in our case, natural inconveniences, are costly and disruptive. No question about it. Our small business has lost productivity, and the storm has put me behind on upcoming client obligations. But I’ll catch up. And so will my CPA friend. As he said to me on Thursday, when the rain was just starting to fall, “I really think everyone could have come in today. Several of us did. But I’m not going to make a big deal of it. I’ve got a really good group here, and it’s only one day. Besides,” he said with a wink, “I read a book that said something about - if you take care of people when they’re having a rough time of it, they’ll remember that, and take care of your customers. I’m gonna give that a try.”

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

Another of the excellent speakers we heard at the National Speakers Association convention in New York last week was Bill Strickland, President and CEO of Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and Bidwell Training Center, Inc.

Talk about someone who does meaningful work! His story is much too long to detail in this blog, and I certainly can’t do him justice. Besides, he’s been written about in Inc, Fast Company, and tons of other publications, and you can read about him there.

In a nutshell, Bill Strickland is a social innovator who runs a company to train and give substantive (not empty) hope to poor inner-city kids, welfare mothers, and others in the Manchester area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’s taking his highly successful model, which educates people in the visual, culinary, and other arts, and replicating it across the country now.

Here’s just a little of what Strickland said, that stuck in my mind:

• “The only difference between rich people and poor people is that poor people don’t have any money.”
• “People’s behavior is a function of how they’re treated.” (Where have we heard that before?)
• “We have fresh flowers all over the center, because these people deserve to see fresh flowers.”
• When he had his center designed in Pittsburgh, he wanted it to be flooded with light. The people who learn there have lots of darkness in their lives. Strickland knew that light would change their outlook, and their behavior. It has.
• The walls of his center are covered in valuable art. Skeptics told him the art would be trashed within a month. In the 22 years since he started the practice, there’s never been an act of vandalism at the center. Reminds me of a point made by John Houseman in the classic training film, Brain Power, by Karl Albrecht, in which Houseman reminds us, “We get what we expect to get. What are you expecting?”

We heard lots of polished, eloquent speakers at the NSA convention. Bill Strickland was not one of them. It was, instead, his message, not his delivery, that blew me away.

Thanks, Bill Strickland, for being an Extra-Miler.

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

Bill Catlette and I have been at the annual convention of the National Speakers Association this week in New York City. One of the highlights of the convention was a town hall style session with 2 titans of the travel industry, Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott Hotels, and Dave Barger, CEO of JetBlue Airways.

Bill and I often speak from the platform about these 2 companies, as exemplary companies to work for. Hearing their respective CEO’s speak made it easy to see why we do.

Some highlights, first from Marriott:

• Marriott’s parents, the hotel chain’s founders taught him “take good care of your employees, and they’ll take good care of your customers.”
• One key to the success of Marriott Hotels is training. Training represents an enormous proportion of the company’s time, attention, and money.
• Another key is providing opportunities for advancement. By far, most Marriott managers started in entry level positions in the chain’s hotels, and were motivated by the strong connection at Marriott between performance and promotion.
• Bill Marriott spends a huge amount of time circulating among his thousands of properties to see the people who work there. “I can’t make strategic decisions unless I know what’s going on, and I can’t do that if I’m not there.”

From JetBlue’s Barger:

• Barger recently took a 50% pay cut.  (He was asked about this, he didn’t bring it up. I know the person who asked the question, and he was not a plant.) “We’re going to be flying less, so our people will be earning less. So I should, too.”
• “This is not a fuel business. It’s a people business. What keeps me up at night is not the price of fuel. It’s how we motivate our people to deliver the best product, especially in these tough times.”
• “We don’t talk about ’survival’ at JetBlue; we talk about ‘winning’.”

As much as I was impressed by what these guys said, I was even more impressed by who they appeared to be. I left the session with the feeling that I had just spent 90 minutes in the presence of a couple of guys who were not only brilliant, but really nice, ordinary (though extremely wealthy, especially Marriott) folks.

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

About a month ago, my 20-year-old daughter, who had been studying in Scotland, stepped gracelessly off a curb in London, and broke her left foot. She received excellent emergency care in London, and then even better care at Crosshouse Hospital in her adopted home in Scotland. After her visit there, she called and told me “This was the best medical experience I’ve ever had.”

A week later, the semester finished, she flew back home to Florida, and went to an orthopedist here in Jacksonville. This twirp turned out to be arrogant, rude, and condescending. He may have been clinically adequate, but his people skills were a zero on a scale of one to ten. He had apparently forgotten that he had been appointed, not annointed, to his position in the practice, and my daughter vowed that henceforth, she wouldn’t let him touch her with a ten-foot pole. We later learned that this guy (we’ll call him “Dr. A”, for [well, you know…])  had earned himself a widespread reputation as an A-number-one jerk, but that his colleague, “Dr. C” was kind, empathetic, highly skilled, and the sort of doctor who took his professional oath seriously.

When we called the practice (of more than 30 physicians) to ask that her follow-up be handled by Dr. C, we were told that, because of our insurance company’s rules, she would have to remain in the care of Dr. A. Smelling a rat, I checked with the insurer, who reported that they had NO such rule, and that if Dr. A. was found not to be satisfactory, then we had every right to seek the care of Dr. C, or any other doctor on their provider list.

Five days and 12 phone calls later, after I confronted the practice manager with the lie she had been caught in, the transfer from Dr. A. to Dr. C. was finally approved. The problem had nothing to do with insurance company rules, but rather the protocol in the practice. “The doctors don’t usually transfer patients among each other,” we were told. “It reflects poorly on their monthly reports.”

In other words, this was all about the doctor’s ego, and his paycheck. Lost in all of this was ANY consideration of the patient’s health and wellbeing. This pompous excuse for a doctor put his own interests ahead of those of the patient whom he had charged nearly $1000 for 15 minutes of his time. Professional? Hardly.

Lots of lessons here, but I’ll focus on 2: 1) The next time you hire someone for a position, consider not only their technical skills, but also the all-important attitudes and values.

2) Professionals, especially those in a service business, would do well to remember that their primary obligation is to those who “favor them with their custom”.  Everything else is secondary at best. Feeding the ego should come well down the list.

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

The death this weekend of Tony Snow, former Fox News editor and White House Press Secretary, leaves another void, as did the recent death of Tim Russert, in the ranks of honorable American journalists.

Of course, the passing of Tony Snow, a Committed conservative, and former spokesperson for a highly unpopular president, will be mourned less audibly by the mainstream media than was that of his contemporary, Russert. In fact, I’ve been watching CNN on the plane all morning, and Snow’s death has not been mentioned. There are, after all, more important things to keep us apprised of, like the birth of Angelina Jolie’s twins.

Tony Snow had the ability to communicate, report, opine, and engage with others without the mean-spiritedness that we see in so many in the political and journalistic arenas. He was clearly George W. Bush’s best press secretary, and maybe the best holder of that job we’ve seen in a long time. With his death, and that of Tim Russert, we’re left with the likes of Wolf Blitzer, Bill O’Reilly, and David Gregory, to grind their axes in an ever decreasingly civil discourse.

I admired Tony Snow’s willingness to tell his boss he was wrong. A clip aired this weekend by Fox News, where they knew Snow best, and respected him most, showed the press secretary in a lively spar with President Bush. “I’m not going to say that,” he said to the president. “That’s BS.” The two laughed, and Snow prevailed.

We could all probably benefit from those we lead telling us when we’re full of it. So, here’s an assignment: Have a one-on-one with someone on your team. Challenge them to tell you something you’re absolutely wrong about. Something you think is golden, but that they know is bunk. Make sure they know they can tell you the truth safely, and then act on what you learn.

It would be a fitting tribute to Tony Snow.

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

When I first started my consulting business in 1989, a good friend gave me a Harvard Business Review reprint of what he described at the time as a classic article on time management: “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?”, by William H. Oncken and Donald L. Wass. I enjoyed the 1974 article’s entertaining style and highly useful content, and it has had an influence on me for lo these many years. Since then, this one article has become HBR’s #1 best selling article reprint ever.

When Bill Catlette and I wrote our latest book, Contented Cows Moove Faster, last year, we assserted that a leader can’t hope to inspire Discretionary Effort (Oomph!) from people until that leader has first gotten himself or herself squared away, including learning to manage the priorities that demand time and attention. To that end, we included a recommendation in the book to get the article (re-released by HBR in 1999), read it, and apply it. Since then, both Bill and I have made that recommendation countless times from the speaking platform and in the training classroom. And I suggest that if you haven’t read it - do so. You can buy it online, from harvardbusinessonline.com for $6.50. From the home page, type “Management Time” in the search block. 

Several months ago, I was booked to speak for an organization called TEC (The Executive Committee) in Dallas. Over the past 10 years, I’ve spoken for dozens of TEC groups, made up of the CEO’s and senior executives of small to medium sized (and some larger) companies. About 2 years ago, TEC changed its name to Vistage, but a few groups (in Dallas, Florida, Wisconsin and other places) have retained the TEC brand. The chair of this particular TEC group in Dallas, I was told, was a fellow named Dr. Don Wass. Dr. Wass’s office made arrangements for the engagement, and yesterday, I flew to Dallas to make today’s presentation.

While I never forgot the classic “Monkey” article, frankly, I did forget the name of the alphabetically second-listed co-author. I always referred to the article, saying “by William H. Oncken.” As the alphabetically second-listed co-author of two books, I know these things happen.

So imagine my surprise this morning when I showed up to speak for this TEC group, met Don Wass, and discovered that this gentle, thoughtful, smart TEC chair, with a PhD in psychology, was half the duo who had penned this classic piece of management literature 34 years ago.

This evening, I had dinner with Don Wass and his wife Helen. I learned that, sadly, William Oncken died several years ago. But his friend and co-author, Don Wass is very much alive and well, and he and Helen, with whom he’s traveled to all 7 continents, are enjoying their adult children, their grandchildren, and Don’s life as a TEC chair in Dallas.

Who knew?

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

You know, I just have to comment on this. Right now, I’m sitting on a Delta plane, watching CNN on the seatback satellite TV screen. About a half-hour ago, the network showed the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapshot reading on the big board at the New York Stock Exchange. The DJIA was, at that moment, up by 38.43 points. The caption on the screen was STOCKS LITTLE CHANGED.

Just now, they showed the same board, this time showing the Dow was down by 36.05 points. The caption: STOCKS TUMBLING DOWN.

Now, who wants to try to tell me that the media, especially the Ted Turner network, isn’t biased, with a preference for spinning to the negative?

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

The Credit Union National Association has been holding America’s Credit Union Conference this week at the New York Hilton. It was my pleasure to be the speaker for one of the conference’s Thought Leader Sessions yesterday, June 30. The topic was “Contented Cows MOOVE Faster - Work is Contractual…Effort is Personal.”

In researching the Credit Union industry in preparation for the presentation, I learned some great examples of what Discretionary Effort (or OOMPH!, as we call it) looks like in a Credit Union.

It’s OOMPH! when…

• A member service representative arrives in the branch two hours early, because she can’t wait to get to work…not because there’s something at work that can’t wait.
• A lending officer takes loan documents to a member’s home, because she’s broken her leg, can’t drive for a month, and has no one to drive her to the credit union. Oh, and it’s really OOMPH! when he stops by the grocery store on the way, to pick up bread and milk for her.
• A teller balances her cash drawer at the end of the day, and is free to go home, but instead, stays to help a fellow teller who’s having trouble balancing.

What does OOMPH! look like where you work? Let us hear from you.

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 his co-author and business partner Bill Catlette, 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.

Tim Russert was not only a highly respected journalist, as a Vice President at NBC News, he was a manager, and a real leader. And by all accounts, he was the kind of leader who did a remarkable job of inspiring OOMPH! from those who called him “boss”.

During all this weekend’s tributes to Russert on his and competing networks, I’ve been struck by the descriptions of the man, not the journalist. He listened to the people entrusted to his leadership. He cared about them as human beings. He recognized that they had lives outside their work, because he had a life outside his work. And he spent time finding out about what was important to his employees.

When you’re gone, or retired, or have moved on to another phase in your career, will people talk more about the quality of the work you did? Or the quality of the person who did the work?