Tag Archives: Engagement

Culture: Key to Performance

Recently, I had the opportunity to address a group of HR leaders on how to improve decision-making within their organizations. (Thank you RWHRMA, Masters Series participants!) The premise of our time together was that better decision-making translates into superior performance and that there are definite ways to improve the quality of decisions. Most of our workshop was used to define the components and use of emotional intelligence (EQ). In order for employees–and managers/executives–to consistently exhibit high EQ, valuing and engaging others is a key.

A focus on others and their needs is a result of purposeful culture development. Paul Spiegelman, founder and CEO of The Beryl Companies, writing for Inc. on June 6, described Beryl’s “10 Cs of Culture:” 

1. Core Values

..when we implemented our values strategy at Beryl about 10 years ago, I began to see how they guided everyday decision-making and how employees referenced them in meetings.  I came to realize they are essential guideposts when developed, communicated, and executed in a consistent manner…We start every big meeting with a conversation about values and tell stories about how our coworkers live by those values on a daily basis.  

2. Camaraderie 

It’s about getting to know colleagues not just as colleagues, but what they’re like outside the office.  To do that, Beryl hosts dress-up days, parties, games, and events all the time..We include not only employees, but also their families.  We publish a bi-monthly full-color magazine called Beryl Life that is sent to the homes of co-workers.  

3. Celebrations 

You can’t underestimate the importance of recognizing your team..we developed a program we call PRIDE (Peers Recognizing Individual Deeds of Excellence).  This allows coworkers to recognize others for living up to Beryl’s core values.  

4. Community

Part of the fabric of a successful company culture is connecting with and giving back to the local community.  

5. Communication

I hold quarterly Town Hall meetings, which includes six meetings over two days..I also have informal “chat and chews” where I bring in lunch for 12 to 15 people and just ask one question–How’s it going?–to get the conversation started.  

6. Caring

Show your employees you genuinely care about them in the totality of their lives..Any manager can explain a situation on an internal website that identifies a coworker, and lists what’s going on (birth, death, injury, wedding, among other things).  That submission generates an email to me that is my trigger to send a personal notecard, make a phone call, or visit someone in a hospital.  

7. Commitment to Learning

Show your employees you’re committed to their professional growth. This can be done in small, incremental steps. 

8. Consistency

Culture is based on traditions..One-time efforts to improve the culture will feel disingenuous.  

9. Connect

Don’t isolate yourself at the top.  Connect with people at all levels of your company.  Get out of your comfort zone.  

10. Chronicles

Does everyone in your organization know how the company started?  Do they know the personal stories of the founders and what led them to build a sustainable business?  People want to know they are part of something special and unique.  

Do you get the feel that, at Beryl, you could fit in and feel engaged in the key conversation(s) that contribute to its success? What about your company? Do you have a culture that is engaging? If not, what can you do about it? What’s holding you back? Talk with your peers and come up with a plan, then implement it!

The Great Urban Entrepreneur

Five years ago, a pair of adventure loving buddies found a way to bring their love of thrills into an urban environment. They since have grown Red Frog Events into an $85 million business that hosts competitions during which teams solve clues and complete mental and physical challenges while discovering their city in a fresh way. Joe Reynolds and Ryan Kunkel have parlayed their $5,000 initial investment into a successful Chicago-based company with more than 60 full-time employees, three signature extreme races and a serious following.

The company’s most popular event, Warrior Dash, a 5K race packed with obstacles like a pond filled with logs, a rock wall, a tunnel of flames and a sinking mud pit, made appearances in 35 cities across the country in 2011 and drew 600,000 participants. This year the company is going international for the second time, taking its events to Ireland and Great Britain. Reynolds says, “When you’re really passionate about your business, you can see lots of tremendous opportunities.”

Nancy Mann Jackson says (in her Entrepreneur magazine article about him) “Reynolds had previously owned a house-painting company, but had no idea how to contend in the event-production business. What he did know was that he loved competing and creating fun experiences–and he wanted to share his passion with the masses. With hard work and dedication, he’s now doing just that. If, like Reynolds, you’d like to turn what you love into a viable business enterprise, start with these six tips:”

1. Don’t count on passion alone.

“Sometimes passion can blind you to the potential downside of your idea,” says John Torrens, a serial entrepreneur and an entrepreneurship professor at Syracuse University. “The one non-negotiable factor for any sustainable business is that they solve a problem for a specific customer segment in a way that is appreciably better than the next best alternative. Get as much feedback from potential customers as possible. No matter how great you think the idea is, you still need to understand what your market thinks.”

Remember the details. There are tons of ancillary functions that go along with running a business that must be performed well for it to succeed.

Dole out responsibility.  You’ll either have to delegate the primary work to others, or you may choose to delegate managing the operation to someone else so you can continue to focus on the primary work yourself.

2. Hire passionate people.

Having employees who share your zeal for the business will help your company succeed. For instance, at the Warrior Dash Louisiana in 2010, a series of tornadoes tore through the landscape during the event. Neither Reynolds nor Kunkel were in Louisiana, but the staffers who were managing the race stayed up through the night to repair the course and get all the obstacles ready again, so the competitors who weren’t able to finish could complete the course the following day.

3. Share your passion.

If you have a hobby, likely there are others out there who share that interest and would like to learn more about it. Sharing your knowledge can be a great way to build your business.

4. Keep the passion alive.

Reynolds and Kunkel make a point to continue competing in races themselves so they can maintain their love for running and recreation. Rather than feeling responsible for thinking of everything and micromanaging their employees, Reynolds and Kunkel empower their staffers to develop solutions to their own problems.

5. Prioritize fun.

Torrens says, “In the authentically passionate companies, everything grows from that passion, including the people, policies, branding and community relations. That obsessive focus on whatever it is that gets you out of bed can’t be faked, but it takes work to create the circumstances under which it can thrive. “

6. Expand your passion.

Reynolds launched Red Frog Events because he wanted to combine his love for adventure travel and competitive runs. But over the past five years, he and Kunkel have realized they are excited about producing recreational events in general, not just runs. This year they plan to enter the music festival industry, starting with their own Firefly Music Festival, which they hope will compete with some of the world’s largest such events.

American Restaurants Struggle to Stay Alive

Back in the late 1980s, the Turnaround Management Association was birthed out of a research project conducted at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As the lead researcher, I had the opportunity to personally pull together a bibliography of articles about businesses whose travails were significant enough to hit the national headlines in various business publications. From the research, we published a monograph and wrote articles about best practices that appeared in 46 national business periodicals in our first 18 months of existence as a trade association. As I and other involved with the Association moved on to other pursuits, TMA moved off campus, starting gaining momentum in chapter development, and now enjoys international members as well as domestic. One of the publications of TMA is the Journal of Corporate Renewal. The Journal‘s lead article for May discusses the struggle of restaurants in the United States to remain profitable.

Some interesting facts from the National Restaurant Association are cited:

  • Restaurants account for 4% of GDP
  • 10% of the U.S. workforce is employed in the restaurant industry
  • 50% of adults have worked in a restaurant
  • one-third of all workers had their first job in a restaurant
  • 48% of the average household’s food budget goes to restaurants (vs. 25% fifty years ago)

The bankruptcy filings of a number of restaurant chains since the recession began in 2008 is but one indicator of a model that is teetering on the brink of survival. The photo above is taken from a Food Network show entitled Restaurant Impossible, wherein Robert Irvine turns a restaurant around in 48 hours. The menu is revised, customer service issues are addressed, $10,000 of strategic remodeling is performed, the revenue and costs are examined for opportunity, and the restaurant owner is challenged to run the business at a profit going forward.

Macro trends in the recent few years towards buying more groceries or becoming value-conscious have definitely affected the top and bottom lines of many restaurant owners. Franchises, which account for about half of the restaurant revenues produced nationwide, have really taken it on the chin. Franchisees who own one or only a few stores have inadequate access to capital these days. Another big factor is the conflict of interest in most franchise agreements that are based on sales volume. The franchisor can implement discounting programs to increase traffic and sales volume, but the franchisee has less and less profit as a result of the agreements.

What can be done? Turnaround experts recommend a process of performing store-level profitability analysis, followed by benchmarking against peer stores. These analyses can highlight purchasing/inventory issues, training issues that are evidenced by waste, and theft/shrinkage that depletes the operator’s assets needed to produce a return.

There are many good consultants who can help a restaurant owner sort through the challenges and create a plan for growth and renewal.

No Freakin’, Entrepreneur

In a recent blog post Dharmesh Shah cites 8 examples of  things entrepreneurs freak out about. Do any of them sound familiar?

1. Your lead investor in a funding round backs out in the final stages. (By the way, when this happens, you’re almost never going to hear what the real reason is).

2. You get a certified letter in the mail from some big law firm you’ve never heard of (nobody’s heard of law firms, until they they do). The envelope the letter came in is the nice, creamy, heavy-stock kind. It’s more expensive-looking than the one you used for your wedding invitations. The letter uses a lot of words to basically say “you’re being sued”.

3. Your lead developer leaves. This is about half way into a project to rewrite your product in Scala, which he convinced you to do.

4. A very big customer deal you were just about to close falls through. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, except that you spent a bunch of time and money trying to get this deal done. Time and money you couldn’t really afford to waste.

5. You were about to be acquired, and now the acquirer has “gone dark”. Despite your best intentions, the team and you have been making decisions based on the impending acquisition. “It would be silly to do X, Y and Z when we’re going to be acquired next month…”

6. The production system that hosts all your customers came crashing down. And that live backup system you thought you had isn’t all that live.

7. One of your competitors just went and raised a ton of money. They’re blanketing the industry with PR, marketing, fancy new booths at tradeshows, local events involving a winnebago and taking out ads, seemingly all over the Internet. Potential customers, investors, friends and even your mom ask you about this big, bad competitor. You get tired of saying: “But their product sucks!”

8. Co-founder takes a job somewhere. Feels really badly about it. Promises to help out nights and weekends. You don’t have the heart to say: “Yeah, but it’s the emotional support I’m going to miss the most…”

Any one of these events can cause an entrepreneur to overreact. Rash decisions are often made to the detriment of the business and its team. Instead of knee-jerk reactions, try to remain calm and seek the counsel of your mentor(s). For perspective, consider that many others before you have encountered and survived similar challenges.

Better Feedback Models

Traditionally feedback has been seen as occurring externally between a customer and a provider and internally as flowing from a manager to a direct report. Many changes in the work environment, including self-directed project teams, matrix management, flat organizational structures, and doing more with less resources, lead employees to work more closely with one another and become less dependent on management to provide them with feedback.

The Feedback Cycle graphic below illustrates that, these days, we must recognize that feedback – from project team members, peers, and direct reports – is the primary way to give and provide information and suggestions to each other to improve work output and performance. We must also be certain to listen for emotions and feelings as part of the feedback process. Whether your role is within a multinational corporation or a small start-up, the need to look around you 360 degrees and see yourself and your work product as others see it is critical to charting your own and team success.

Within the field of emotional intelligence, there’s a best practice of trying to see matters from another’s perspective. It is in this ability to “be on the outside looking in,” observing our decisions as a series of choices based on information we have processed, that we gain insight, perspective, and mutually desirable outcomes. Intentionally studying how our actions will affect others, asking for their input, and incorporating a “win-win” scenario into our decisions makes for better management of self, projects, and others.

In the start-up world, the Feedback Model can be used to test and validate “fit” with co-founders, employees, strategic vendors, investors, professional services providers, and so on. If the other party is not incorporating your input into their communication, planning, and execution, they are not a good fit. Likewise, if we are not able to receive feedback from others, we will not be successful in executing our business/departmental/project strategy.