Managers who see their people as objects to achieve a personal objective rather than as people who have fears, hopes, goals and dreams. To view other human beings as nearly a means to a end, rather than as ends in themselves is profoundly immoral.
_Steve Jobs understood something that a lot of companies try to do, but are rarely successful at. The more he advanced, the simpler his products became. In some instances, it's less about the product and more about the user.
For Steve, nothing is wasted, nothing is unnecessary. It doesn't happen by cramming in more, it happens through creativity and innovation, with a relentless pursuit of perfection. It means thinking through everything with the laser-focused goal of making it intuitive to the user. Every leader and every manager wants his or her people to work together; all pulling in the same direction, supporting each other, everybody pitching in to do their part in achieving the goal of the group. Steve would challenge his team to come up with completely fresh, original ideas. He had scoured the halls of Apple and elsewhere for people with the courage to be different, to be unconventional, to go beyond. Although he operates from the gut level when hiring, he's also very thorough. In searching for talent, you must not be put off by first impressions. You must find the real person, sometimes discovering a pirate where you least expected. Most corporations acknowledge employees by holding a little celebration for birthdays, employment anniversaries and so on. But for a product-centric company like Apple, celebrations, rewards and recognitions are focused around the company's stars: its talent and its products. Steve truly cherishes his people. It's not just that he knows he couldn't be doing all these great things without them: He lets his people know he knows. The lengths Steve goes to shower recognition, appreciation and reward on his people often left others in awe. "The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work."
~ Agha Hasan Abedi Negative attitudes are a lot like the common cold, it can start with just one employee, but soon everyone is feeling the effects and morale and performance decline. But unlike the common cold, there's a cure. Enthusiasm and positive attitudes can spread just as quickly-improving performance and increasing productivity!
Here are 5 tips for overcoming workplace negativity with enthusiasm: 1. Turn Barriers into Opportunities Look at negative behaviors and attitudes as opportunities for improvement. Now instead of dreading these issues, you can maintain your own positive attitude by controlling your response. Often negativity starts with negative self-talk—the looped messages that play over and over in our heads to darken our outlook and erode our confidence. 2. Replace Negative Self-Talk with Positive Self-Talk Negative thoughts lead to self-doubt and failure. Look for negative messages in your own thinking or in the thinking and actions of others. Try turning the negatives into positives. Positive thinking will result in positive actions and results. 3. Build Relationships Based on Trust Use positive attitudes and enthusiasm to build relationships. Negative attitudes make it difficult to trust others; and without trust you can’t influence positive change. Taking action to build trust will increase comfort levels and strengthen relationships. 4. Win People to Your Way of Thinking The only way to win an argument is to avoid it. When handled correctly, disagreements and debates are opportunities for positive change. When disagreements arise, show respect for the opinions of others, never tell someone they are wrong, and try to see things from the other point of view. 5. Disagree Agreeably The key question that we all face is, "How do we disagree agreeably and still have our ideas heard?" Keep the lines of communication open by trying to see things from a different perspective. Take the time to really think about how the other person thinks and why they feel the way they do. __ GE is all about finding and building great people, in direct accordance with Jack Welch’s passion for making people GE’s core competency. The secret to GE’s success in this regard is the system it employs to select and develop great people. In a company with over 300,000 employees and 4,000 senior managers, GE needed a structure and a logic, so that every employee knew and understood the rules of the game.
The heart of this process is the human resources cycle — full-day Session C human resources reviews at every major busi- ness location (held in April), two-hour videoconference Session C follow-ups (held in July), and Session C-II’s, held in November, which confirm and finalize the actions committed to in April. And that is only the formal structure. At GE, there is an informal, unspoken personnel review — in the lunch- room, the hallways and in every business meeting. That intense people focus — testing everyone in a variety of environments — defines managing at GE. Differentiating People All these people-centric endeavors, both formal and informal, are done in an effort to differentiate GE’s best employees and managers from the rest of the pack. Differentiation isn’t easy; over the years, the company used many kinds of bell curves and block charts to differentiate talent, in an effort to rank performance and potential (high, medium and low). Eventually, Welch found a ranking tool he liked — the “Vitality Curve.” Every year, the company asked each of its businesses to rank all of their top executives, in an effort to force these business leaders to differentiate their leadership. They had to identify the people in their organizations that they considered in the top 20 percent, the vital mid- dle 70, and, finally, the bottom 10 — by name, position and compensation. Those who did not perform to expectations generally had to go. While making these judgments is not easy, doing so is how great organizations are built, Welch felt. Year after year, differentiation raises the bar higher and higher, increasing the overall caliber of the organization in a dynamic process that makes everyone accountable for his or her performance. People (particularly those in the top echelon) must constantly demonstrate that they deserve to be there. Being Boundaryless One of Jack Welch’s passions as CEO of GE was to create a corporate culture devoid of the kinds of territorial walls that can sink even the best operations. This type of “boundaryless” culture (introduced at the company’s 1990 annual meeting) would remove the barriers among all the various functions at the company — engineering, manufacturing, marketing and the rest. It would recog- nize no distinctions between “domestic” and “foreign” operations. It would knock down external walls, making suppliers and customers part of a single process. It would eliminate the less visible walls of race and gender. It would put the team ahead of the individual ego. Rewarding Ideas Boundaryless would also reward people who recog- nized and developed a good idea, not just those who came up with one, encouraging leaders to share credit for ideas with their team, rather than take full credit themselves. The concept also opened GE to the best ideas and practices from other companies, like Wal- Mart’s process to gather and use market intelligence quickly (see box above). It would make each employee and leader at GE wake up with the goal of “Finding a Better Way Every Day” — a phrase that became a slo- gan at GE plants and offices the world over. Manager Types In 1992, Jack Welch discussed with GE’s leaders how to differentiate GE’s managers, based on their ability to deliver numbers, while maintaining GE’s values, includ- ing being boundaryless. He described four types of man- agers: ● Type 1: The manager who delivers on commitments — financial or otherwise — and shares the values. His or her future is an easy call. ● Type 2: The manager who doesn’t meet commitments and doesn’t share the organization’s values. Not as pleasant a call, but just as easy as Type 1. ● Type 3: The manager who misses commitments but shares all the organization’s values. This type might be given a second or third chance, just in a different environment. ● Type 4: The manager who delivers on all commitments, makes numbers, but doesn’t share the values. This type usually forces performance out of people, rather than inspiring it. GE could not afford the Type 4 manager. Welch immediately illustrated his commitment to these values by asking four corporate officers to leave the company, because they did not share GE’s values, particularly boundaryless behavior. Suddenly, “Finding a Better Way, Every Day” wasn’t just a slogan — it was the essence of boundaryless behavior, and by defining the expectations of everyone at GE, established the “social architecture” of the company. Over the course of three years, employ- ees used that architecture to hammer out a values state- ment for the entire organization, one that GE considered so important, it put them on laminated cards that all employees carry. Companies with mentoring opportunities are more likely to retain their people. To achieve this, offer a range of mentors for people at different career stages. Types of mentoring you should consider:
Buddy or peer mentors. In the early stages of a person's career, a "buddy" can help speed up the learning curve. This relationship helps the protégé understand how things work at the organization. Career mentors. After the initial period at a workplace, employees need to have a senior manager serve as a career advisor and advocate. Life mentors. A life mentor serves as a periodic sounding board when one is faced with a career challenge. Organizations can't necessarily offer a life mentor but they can encourage seeking one. Stand for people. Not a product or service or metric or number. Stand for real, living, breathing people and you will change the world.
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