Category Archives: Culture

A New Way To Retain Employees!

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them.  I requested Diet Mt. Dew be delivered and no one brought one.  Enjoy…)

I swear last product I want to talk about from HR Tech!  This one is near and dear to my heart because it’s about employee retention!  I know boring right!  No sexy, stealthy way to find talent or Jedi Mind Tricks to get your staff to perform better, just good old solid how the hell do we keep our people from leaving!  HR to it’s core.

The company is BlackBookHR, there new product is called Sense and it won best new HR Tech product of 2013!  I continually referenced them as BackDoorHR (because deep down I’m a 12 yaer old boy at heart).  I’m sorry about that Chris Ostoich, the Founder and CEO of BlackBookHR.  Chris is a really great person, with a really great story.  He’s one of those guys you route for. He couldn’t really even afford to have a booth at HR Tech, but won the prize for best product anyway! (He told me he could afford a booth, but thought there were better ways to spend the money – he’s right!)  Also, he brought his Mom out to Vegas to see him get the award!  Pure Midwest, baby!

Sense is a software which sets an engagement baseline for your entire staff.  Don’t worry that takes about 5 minutes for your employees to complete.  Then, each week Sense goes out and within 30 seconds re-measures to the baseline of each employee (through an email interface and quick point and select questions).

Here’s a quick example: An original question might be — “My company gives me the tools and resources I need to do great work?”  On a scale of 1 to 10 I say, “Yep, they do at an 8”.  Everything is going great at an 8, then a few months later my boss tells me he’s cutting some tool out of my budget I rely on.  That Friday Sense asks me the same “tools and resource” question, but this time I answer “1”.  The system ‘senses’ something went wrong with my engagement, and that I could be a flight risk, so HR is told.  HR then determines how to elevate this to my supervisor, or do they handle it themselves. Pretty cool!

Sense also does one other very cool thing and shows you how an employee influences within your organization.  Not all employees are created equal.  Some have major influence and connections, and one of those employees leaves, usually others follow.  Sense will show you who those employees are in your organization as well!

Beyond cool, is that some very big Fortune 500 types have been using this and the metrics show that it actually works.  Like reducing many percentage points off your turnover works!

How did Chris know this idea would work?  He lived it!

Chris isn’t from HR or even from IT.  He was a finance dude who had a feeling he could easily be talked into leaving his current company.  He saw others like him, and thought there is a way to stay connected and at least giving the company a chance to hang on to him, and show him some love, on those times when he was most vulnerable to leaving.  Long story short, he shared his idea with his company, and they listened, and they told him to get his ass back to work!   He did, on his own, building Sense!

Check it out – quickly!  Sometimes the simplest ideas and products have the biggest impact to our bottom line.   I have a feeling Sense won’t be around as a stand alone product for long.  My guess is Oracle, SumTotal, Halogen, SuccessFactors, etc. will come knocking on Chris’s door and offer him a huge pile of cash to integrate it into their own suite.  It’s that good.

Cool New HR Tech…that you might even be able to afford

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

Here’s a run down from the HR Tech Conference Expo:

BambooHR: Tagged as your “1st HR system” or “we love you, if you use spreadsheets as your HR system” – Ben Peterson, the CEO, was by far the coolest and nicest and real CEO (and maybe person) I met all week at HR Tech.  They don’t like to use ‘HRIS’ because small and medium sized businesses and HR shops don’t even really know what that means.  BambooHR is an easy to use HR system and nicely designed, for a very, very cheap price.  Don’t let the price scare you off — cheap, in this case, doesn’t mean they try and a one-size and process fits all perspective down your throat – they’ll customize for you – and still be cheap!  If you are looking for your first HR system, or to up grade your old system, and you don’t look at these guys, you should be fired as an HR professional.

Blissbook: “Employee Handbooks to Smile About”.  I know, I know — Tim, you’re talking handbooks!?  Here’s the deal.  They have a super cheap, super cool UI (user interface — BTW, no one at HR Tech talks English, they only talk tech).  So, you can put your handbook online and add video, and hyperlinks and all kinds of stuff, and they make it really easy.  Don’t think PDF of your handbook on your careers site, it’s more than that.  Think of it as a cultural narrative of your organization having it’s own website.  One issue I see them having, the examples they show are really cool and hip.  So you think you can do the same thing, the problem is content isn’t easy to write to be cool and hip.  If you aren’t creative, neither will your Blissbook.

SumTotal: SumTotal is like BambooHR, if BambooHR was a gigantic enterprise total HR solution for your business.  Let’s be clear, SumTotal is a big company, like Oracle, ADP, SuccessFactors, etc. Big companies have the resources to do some really cool things, and Sum Total did that this year.  They added the industry’s first Context-Aware user experience. What’s Context-Aware?  You know when you go online to a store and look at a really nice pair of shoes you want, you put it in the cart, but last second you decide, I just can’t get these today.  We all do it.  Context-Aware marketing is the Ad a few days later on the side of another site you’re reading where those exact same shoes you were looking at pops up and now are 10% off!  How does this work in an HR system? Let’s say you have an employee who is not reaching their sales goal.  SumTotal’s new addition will recognize the employee is missing their goal, and without prompting or any HR or manager interaction at all recommend a training course for this person to take to better help them make their goals and maybe even a mentor in the company they should speak with who could help them become better at their job.  I don’t do this justice — trust me, it was super cool!

Work4Labs:  Work4 does Facebook recruiting, in an industry where no one has really figured it out yet (do you hear that Facebook?).  Work4 makes an solution that makes it really easy for companies to get their jobs posted on their company Facebook page and help them navigate, very easily, how to search for talent on Facebook’s Graph Search.  Also, they do this for a rather cheap price!  (Cheap meaning the cost of one or two headhunting fees, so you can see a very quick ROI)  Matthew Brown, Head of Product and co-Founder, might be 24 years old, which also helps let you know these guys get Facebook!

WePow: Formerly known as Wowser.  WePow is a video interviewing platform.  They’re really good at branding.  They gave out royal blue Converse Chuck Taylors at their booth and had pairs for all the big name pundits in our industry: Kris Dunn, Steve Boese, Gerry Chrispin, John Sumser, William Tincup, Laurie Ruettimann, etc.  Those kinds of things make a splash and get a good buzz going about their product.  Apparently, I’m not a big name in the industry, I didn’t get a pair of shoes (which is really the only reason they get mentioned here!).  Also, apparently, they are “like HireVue” when I asked their booth crew what they did.  Thanks HireVue for being so good at marketing you now have become the Kleenex of video interviewing.

YouEarnedIt:  New up and coming awards and recognition firm, designed around delivering a product that small and medium sized businesses can use.  Think Achievers, for smaller companies, and a lot less money.  Much more accessible for smaller companies because you aren’t forced to purchase their catalog of merchandise/awards which usually carry an industry standard 20% markup.  They do have that as well, but much more cost effective than the giants in the industry.

More next week – I’ve got two companies – one really well known and one hardly anyone knows doing some really cool things!

The #1 Isssue At Every Organization

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

There are a few things we just come to know as fact in organizations.  If you were to ask anyone, at any level of your organization to come up with just one issue they have at their organization, hands down, without a doubt, across all organizations, the number one issue would always be communication!

Before I traveled to the HR Technology Conference, Halogen Software asked me to complete a Myers-Briggs Assessment (MBTI).  It had been many years since I did one, and they wanted to show off some upcoming additions to their talent suite and how they are utilizing MBTI to address the communication gap found in all organizations.  Halogen didn’t tell me anything about what to expect, so my guess was they were going down some lame path of using my Myers-Briggs in some sort of new selection functionality, but what I found was really something completely different and awesome!

By the way, my MBTI was ENTJ (What the what!? Don’t you love acronyms!) Basically, ENTJ, is one of 16 possible Myers-Briggs profiles of an individual and one of the most rare.  ENTJ is an executive profile, they get things done, they make decisions quickly and move forward.  Yep, that’s me.  My good friend, Kris Dunn, also took the assessment and was profiled as an ENTP.  Only one letter difference separates us, so basically we are the same in many ways: quick thinking, extroverted, creative, well read, etc. The one letter difference means I like to get things done and KD likes to talk about getting things done! 😉

Why do I bring Kris into the mix of this communication tool that Halogen added to their product?  Because communication happens between two or more people.  The reason all organizations have communication problems somewhere in their organization is because we try and solve communication individually.  “It’s Tim’s problem, he’s just a bad communicator.”  “Our managers don’t know how to communicate.”  “Our executives don’t know how to communicate.”  Halogen found out a way to put a tool in the face of every single person in your organization that helps them become better communicators, with every other single person they work with!

What Myers-Briggs does is not only show us how we are from a personality standpoint.  It also shows us how we like to receive and give information.  Halogen has integrated the assessment within their product, but took it a few steps further from a development standpoint and it allows you as an individual to compare your type to a co-worker’s type.  So, I’m having trouble getting along with Kris.  I go in, compare my MBTI type with Kris’s type, and the software gives me ideas and examples of how I can better communicate with Kris. Simple and effective. As a manager this is awesome, because I can now see how do I communicate with my team on an individual basis.  It was really powerful, and I didn’t see anything else like this being done from any other company.  It was one of the cooler advancements into an existing product I saw at HR Tech this year.

I can’t tell you how many times I meet with company executives who are looking to try and make their organizations better, or their leaders better, and it always comes back to communication and them wanting me to help them make individuals (or their organization as a whole) better at communicating.  The problem is, and which MBTI points out, this isn’t a one-way problem.  It’s two-way!  Want to solve your communications issues?  Find out how you get both sides to communicate like the other wants.

 

 

 

LeBron James Isn’t Good Enough For My Team

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Just putting together the roster for my annual Men’s City Rec Basketball team.  I’ve been pretty lucky in the past and have gotten some great players to come out and let me jump on their back to the championships.  As of right now here’s my roster for 2013-2014 season:

Current Starters (based on last years roster):

Point Guard: Craig Miller – Mid 30’s, 5’10”- still in ‘decent shape’ (this means he’s younger and faster than most of us).  He’s good for one wide open layup per quarter and one turnover.

Shooting Guard:  Don McCormick – 39, 6’0″ – He’s flat out money, I don’t think he’s missed a shot since 1998. Played DIII ball back in the early 90’s.  His job sometimes makes it so he can’t make games – we struggle in those games.

Small Forward: Marcus Jones – 47, 6’2″ – He’s our one black guy (we’d like more black guys, but it’s hard to find middle aged black guys in the suburbs who want to play with a bunch of white guys), he’s also the oldest guy we have.  Really never makes a mistake unless it’s a no look pass to one of us which we weren’t expecting.

Big Forward: James Brookes – 32, 5’11” – He’s not a basketball player, he’s a weight lifter.  Can’t shoot or dribble, but he’s good to hurt at least one opposing player each game, sometimes two.

Center: Mikey ‘Stretch’ McGee – 42, 6′ 5″ – He’s our tallest guy.  He likes to shoot the three.  Could have played D1, ended up going the CC route.  Currently he’s a UPS driver.

The Backups:

Point Guard: Me – 43, 5’7″- player/coach/manager – I get in if we are really up big or down big.  I’ve never seen a shot I didn’t like.  My philosophy: ‘Shoot till you get hot, then shoot to stay hot”

The 6 footers:  Ben, Jerry and Ken: All of these guys are 6 foot and basically play any position.  I lumped them together because they really are the same player. Solid, can do it all, just don’t make them run too many minutes at one time.

We are looking to add one more player to our roster this year.  We lost Billy.  He had to have his knee replaced and his real estate business was taking off again after the recession, so he’s out.  Here are the three candidates we have to replace:

1. Matt Smith – New guy in town.  He’s really in shape.  His wife is way hot.  He has a great basement man cave.  Seems like he would fit in with the guys really well.

2. Josh Moore – Another six footer.  He’s subbed for us in the past.  Likes to shoot (meaning he takes my shots).  The guys know him, but he rubs some guys the wrong way (mostly me, he takes my shots)

3. LeBron James – Yep! You read that correctly.  Let’s just say I have a connection.  Nothing in his contract to stop him from playing with us on Tuesday nights.  His schedule actually allows him to make 90% of our 12 game schedule.  We would own the league!

Seems like a really easy choice right!?  Wrong!  You see, I went to the guys to vote.  Knowing they would all laugh and Lebron would get his ‘Legion 124’ jersey shipped in the mail.  But to my surprise Matt Smith won the vote.  I couldn’t believe it, I had to find out why.  Across the board the guys came back with the following reasons why LeBron wouldn’t be a good fit for our team:  Wouldn’t find it a challenge, he would be bored, he was over qualified, he would end up quitting half way into the season, he wouldn’t take it seriously.

We had a shot a Lebron James for our team, and we didn’t take him.  Hard to believe, right?

It’s your reality.  Everyday you turn down great talent in your organization.  You turn down LeBron James because you’re scared.  We don’t say we’re scared.  We give ‘legitimate’ reasons like: “You’re over qualified” and “You wouldn’t find this position challenging”.  But we are just telling ourselves this, to make us feel better about making a terrible decision to turn away great talent.  ‘Being over qualified’ for a position is the single lamest reason to turn down talent that HR and Talent Acquisition has ever come up with.

The question is, would you turn down LeBron James if he wanted to join your team?

The Slowest Generation Ever!

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Here’s a quick little experiment to take in your office or department:

1.     Rank everyone by performance – first to worst.

2.    Rank everyone by how fast they can actually run.

3.    Check for correlation.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea if there is any correlation, it’s just a feeling I have.  People who tend to move fast, tend to be higher performers in my 20 years of HR Experience.  Also, there was a recent article out in the Wall Street Journal that examined how 25-35 year olds have been slowing down in endurance races as compared to prior generations at the same age.  From the article:

“They’re just not very fast. “There’s not as many super-competitive athletes today as when the baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s,” said Ryan Lamppa, spokesman for Running USA, an industry-funded research group. While noting the health benefits that endurance racing confers regardless of pace, Lamppa—a 54-year-old competitive runner—said, “Many new runners come from a mind-set where everyone gets a medal and it’s good enough just to finish.”

Now, a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn’t won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004.

Of the two Americans who won marathon medals that year, one—Deena Kastor, who is now 40—was the top finishing American woman at the marathon World Championships in Moscow last month. The other—38-year-old Meb Keflezighi—was the top American male finisher at the London Olympics marathon last year. Hunter Kemper, the 37-year-old winner of last month’s Chicago Triathlon, remains arguably America’s top triathlete as he aims for his fifth Olympics.”

So, how did your experiment work out in your office?  Does speed correlate to higher performance? If so, are your youngest employees faster or slower than other generations in your workplace?  Competitiveness, and incoming generations of kids who are all use to just ‘participating’ versus ‘winning’ might also have an impact to this as well.  This lack of competitiveness probably has more of an impact than anyone really understands.  More from WSJ:

“After finishing last month’s Virginia Beach half marathon in the top 2% of the 50-54 age group, Brendan Reilly was shocked to find he’d made the top 1% of the overall field—despite running 27 minutes slower than the personal best he’d set more than two decades earlier.

“I wasn’t thrilled,” said Reilly, a sports agent in Boulder, Colo., adding that “races are turning into parades.”

Is your workplace a race or a parade? 

3 Things That Gurantee Career Sucess!

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I’ve been given the honor to speak to some upcoming graduates at a prestigious university about what it takes to have a successful and sustained career.  Now comes the hard part!  What do I tell these kids!?  My first question to the person who asked me to come speak was, “Have you ever read anything I’ve written?”  She said yes, but I have a feeling she was lying as she frantically Googled “Tim Sackett” and tried to actually read something I’ve written.  Next she dropped the, “we don’t have much money, we can pay you”, which in speaking circles means, this is a one-time gig, so let’s have some fun with it!

I really took some time to think about all those great traits you need to have in having a long term successful career.  Great work ethic, ability to learn new concepts quickly, being adaptable, being disciplined, high attention to detail, getting along with others, having high Emotional Intelligence, finding purpose in your daily work, Perseverance, being trustworthy, taking initiative, managing up, being open minded, a change agent, a savvy networker, of course intellectual fire power, passion for what you do, someone of high morals and values, empathetic, willingness to fail, willingness to succeed, high internal motivation, ability to gain alignment, focused, positive accountability, follow-up skills, creative, pragmatic, ability to gain buy-in, ability to prioritize, works well in a team, works well alone, political organizational savvy, telling it like it is, effective problem solver, being self aware, effective decision maker, your ability to influence, learning agility, technical savvy, being proactive, being a great listener, being a great presenter, being optimistic, being committed, goal setting, expert communicator, managing conflict and making a great cup of coffee are all fantastic traits!  But how could I choose only 3.  That was my mission.  Give the kids 3 things that would guarantee their success in their chosen career paths.

I knew right away there were a few traits I wouldn’t choose, primarily because I don’t have them and, well, look at me, I have a blog, which means I must be successful.  You don’t need these traits to be successful:

1. Good Grammar. Only old HR ladies and copy editors care about grammar.  Once you get past having no mistakes on your resume, you’re home free the rest of your career — unless you want to be a paid writer.

2. Trigonometry.  No one needs Trig really, it’s just a public school torture device to keep kids in check.  Unless you want to be a rocket scientist, Trig is not a trait you need for a successful career.

That’s is really the only traits I could think of that weren’t important to your long term success of your career.

Then it hit me, after 20 years in the HR and Talent Acquisition fields, I knew!  There are 3 things that can guarantee you long term career success.  Here they are in order of importance:

1. Beauty.

2. Family Wealth.

3. DNA.

The first one was really a no-brainer!  Beautiful people always have jobs or job prospects. Let’s face it, we all love hiring beautiful people!  In fact the only reason you have ugly people working for you is there wasn’t a beautiful candidate.  The positive piece of this for the kids is that with enough money you can change your outward appearance and increase your chances for success!

Family wealth was fairly easy as well.  If you come from a wealthy family you can be a complete tool and still have lifetime employment and career upward mobility.  The rich get richer, and so do their kids.  Nothing says great hirer like your CEO telling you to hire so-and-so because he plays golf with me. Opportunities are rare, unless you’re wealthy.

The prospect of coming from the ‘right’ genes having an impact on long term career success intrigues me.  The reality of it is, the only way to have a sustained successful career if you have sustained long term health — that’s your DNA baby!  Some people never pick up a cigarette and die of lung cancer at 53.  Some people smoke 2 packs a day for 60 years and die of old age at 90.  You can’t teach DNA!

I can’t wait to share these with the kids!

 

 

It’s Super Not Stressful Being At The Top

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It’s common knowledge that leaders are very lonely and under super amounts of stress.  Well, at least that’s what we’ve been made to believe from 1950’s research!  There is new evidence out that has found it’s not all that bad being in a leader position.  From Scientific American:

When the executive or the general complains that they are “stressed,” we have to pay careful attention to what exactly they mean. They may have more emails in their inbox than they can get to. They may work long hours. But in most cases they can say no to requests and they can decide when and how to deal with challenges. They have much more control over how their lives are arranged than does the secretary who schedules their appointments or the janitor who cleans their office.

People so crave control over their lives that when control is scarce they will manufacture it. In studies by psychologist Aaron Kay and colleagues, people made to feel that they lacked control believed more fervently in a controlling God. They believed also in a controlling government, conspiracy theories, and superstitions. Someone has to be in control. Lacking control is associated with higher blood pressure, lowered immune function, and a host of stress-related diseases. Control is the essence of power, the linchpin binding status to stress.

So why did the executive monkeys drop dead of ulcers if control protects against stress? It turned out that the study had a fatal flaw. The monkeys were not assigned to be in the executive or helpless groups at random, which is the cornerstone of an experiment. The monkeys who learned how to use the lever to prevent shocks the fastest were “promoted” to executives. Those fast learners may have learned fast because they were especially upset by the shocks. If so, then it was not control that doomed them but their heightened stress response to being shocked. There is a lesson here, and not only in the scientific method. If you are trying furiously to control a situation because you are terrified of what would happen if you don’t, you are not really in control at all.

Turns out leaders have stress, but they also have power to control their environment more than non-leaders.  So, while we want to believe having ultimate decision making power is also powerful and stressful, it probably isn’t as much as those who don’t have any of that power surrounding you. 

Control, or better, one’s ability to control what happens to them is actually a higher stressor than just having a ton things to do, or even the feeling of being under a lot of ‘pressure’. Everyone has pressure, but those who have pressure and no ability to influence that pressure face a level of stress that can actually physically cause them harm to their health.

Want less stress in your life?  Reach a level in your career where you have more control of what actually happens!

Fillin’ Buckets

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Earlier this week my youngest son got to lead a small part of an assembly for the third and fourth grade classes at his school.  He was really excited about his part, he got to get up in front of everyone at the end and kind of lead a cheer — you know kids love being loud at school!  I asked him what the assembly was about, and he said, “fillin’ buckets”.  “What?”, was my reply.  He said, “you know, you can say some things that will fill someone’s bucket, or you can say some things that will empty their bucket.”  My reply, “Oh, you mean like making deposits into someone’s emotional bank account.” His reply back,  “No, filling buckets, it has nothing to do with banks.”

Fillin’ Buckets. Simple, yet hard.

Today, I want to make it easy for you to do two things: 1. Fill your own bucket; 2. Fill some buckets.

Here’s a list of things that will help:

1. Surround yourself with positive people. Even if it’s only one person.  Even if it’s only yourself.

2. Connect at a deeper level.  Anyone can talk about the weather or what TV show they watched last night.  Strive to go deeper.

3. Hug someone who doesn’t expect it.

4. Spend a little money on someone else.

5. Take 5 minutes to appreciate all that you have.

6. Eat lunch or dinner outside.

7. Tell one person, you don’t normally talk to, one positive, genuine thing about why you like what they do.

8. Unplug and listen.

One last tip.  Leaders, as many of you are that read this, tend to be bucket fillers, because it’s part of the ‘job’.  Great leaders are genuine in this, but it’s harder than it looks, because many times our employees feel like we might just be doing this because it’s part of our role.  Catch 22.  How do you combat this?  Fill the buckets of those above you.  Leaders rarely get their buckets filled.  Try it, you’ll be amazed at how it makes you feel.  There’s something remarkable that happens when you start filling buckets, you realize it doesn’t matter who it is that you’re filling, it feels good!

What am I doing today?  I’m fillin’ buckets!

 

3 Ways Your ‘Cool’ Boss Is Killing Your Career

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My wife and I have saying in our house:

“We never want to be the ‘cool’ parent.”

You know why?  ‘Cool’ parents are the ones you let their kids do things they shouldn’t be doing as kids.   It’s not my job as a parent to get my kids to like me – it’s my job to raise responsible adults who do better for their family and the world in general.  That means we say ‘No’ a lot.  No, you can’t got the movies at midnight. Yes, I’m aware the Brown’s allow this – they also allow their 17 year old son’s girlfriend to sleep over, and the teenagers to drink.  I would rather you shoot me in the head.

You know what’s funny?  I don’t think my kids hate me. (Kids – please don’t comment on this post!)  Kids like having boundaries.  They don’t tell you they like this, but when they have boundaries they act like better people. If you leave them without boundaries you end up with Lord of the Flies.

I’m not saying that being a leader/Boss/Supervisor is like being a parent. Okay, yes I am, it’s very much like being a parent!  Everyone wants to be the ‘cool’ boss when they first start out in a managerial role.  It’s very normal to think this, and go down this path.  What you find out quickly is that employees, much like children, don’t perform as well without consistency.  Things at work are going great, you’re the ‘cool’ boss, all of sudden times get hard, you lose a big client, and you have to make tough decisions, and your employees lose their minds.  This happens because you begin acting in a way you never have.  You begin hearing things like: “You use to be so cool.”; “You seem stressed all the time.”  These are signs that your subordinates think your friends.  Let me tell you a little secret — Friends don’t fire friends.  You are not friends with your subordinates.  You might be friendly, but that doesn’t make you friends.

‘Cool’ bosses who believe they are friends with you, also rarely tell you the truth about your performance.  Why? Because they don’t want to hurt a ‘friends’ feelings.  They hint at it, they run all around the bush, but they’ll never really tell you what you’re doing that is holding you back in your career path.  Here’s an example: “So Tim, tell me what does it look like for a promotion?” (I’ll be Tim the Cool Boss!) “Well, Mary, you know I back you 100%!  If anyone deserves it, it’s you, but it’s not my call.  I’m sure you’ll get it.” No, she won’t.

A ‘Cool’ boss can ruin your career faster than almost any single thing you run into in the corporate world.  While you might think the cool boss is great, the reality is your executive team knows.  They know this person lacks what it takes to move the organization forward, so they are probably stuck in middle-management for life.  A ‘cool’ boss lacks the credibility needed to influence decision makers.  This makes it very hard for your ideas to be seen and heard at an organizational level.

So, what are the 3 Ways you ‘Cool’ boss is killing your career:

1. They aren’t helping you get the most out of your talent

2. They won’t be honest with you and what you need to change

3. They don’t have the influence to move your career forward

How does it sound being the cool boss now?

$43/hr Fast Food Worker!

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There is this new, hip burger joint in Detroit metro called Moo Cluck Moo (alright, it’s a SmashBurger knock-off) which is becoming famous for paying it’s workers a minimum of $15/hr.  Okay, it’s not $43/hr, but the title was to prove a point and ask a question.  If you haven’t eaten at one of these new burger joints – they’re great! I mean great if you love a great burger, fries and shake and a ‘fast food’ meal bill of $50 for a family of four!  BTW – the sweet potato fries at SmashBurger will be on my death row menu.

How much should a fast food worker be paid?

Is $15/hr really a living wage?

$15/hr equates to about $30,000 before taxes.  Take out taxes,  health insurance co-pays, etc., and for arguments sake, let’s say that $30,000 is now $22,000.  $22,000 is fairly realistic, right?

So, $22,000 is about $1800 per month.  Let’s break down the expenses:

Crappy Apartment – $600/month

Crappy car payment – $250/month

Crappy car gas – $200/month

Crappy car insurance – $100/month

iPhone 5 – $100/month (you know this is true!)

Crappy Apartment utilities (electric, gas, cable) – $150/month

Food (other then your fast food meals you get while working) – $300/month

That’s $1700.  Let’s say we’ll leave the extra $100 for emergencies.

Is this living?

Now, let’s look at it from McDowell’s standpoint.  Unlike their ‘fast food’ friends at Moo Cluck Moo – which average check for a family of four is north of $40.  The average check for a family of four to eat at McDowell’s is probably closer to $25.  That extra $15 per check – does a lot.  It definitely makes it easier to pay $15/hr.

My point isn’t that we should be paying fast food workers more.  Someone choosing a career in the Fast food arts shouldn’t expect to make a ‘living wage’, they should expect to make a wage you can’t live on.  I love that Moo Cluck Moo is pushing the envelop in paying service workers and showing others that it can be done, on a small scale.  Can McDowell’s do it?  They could.  Are you willing to pay $15-20 more per meal for your family to eat at McDowell’s?  No, you’re not.  You will at Moo Cluck Moo – because it’s cool and hip and good.  But you can’t do that all the time.  It’s not sustainable on your living wage as a teacher, or accountant.  So, you sometimes have to go the cheaper route and eat at McDowell’s.

Simple economics will tell us that selling $.99 Double Cheeseburgers does not allow you to pay your hourly staff $15/hr and stay in business.  Charge $5 for that Double Cheeseburger and you can now pay $15/hr wages.  You will also have a drastic decrease in customers, so you’ll have to layoff most of your staff.  But those who remain will certainly be happy making $15/hr!

You can’t have it Fast — Good — and Cheap.  You must give up something.  Want McDowell’s to pay their workers a ‘living wage’?  Show them you won’t go away in droves when they double their prices.  You won’t do that.  If you won’t change — why should they change?