About Feedback ...

10 tips that managers can follow to make their feedback on their employees’ weaknesses as effective as possible. Before the Review 1.- Work on your employee relationships. 2.- Clearly explain performance expectations. 3.- Provide informal feedback between reviews. 4.- Collect concrete examples of employee behavior and decisions. During the Review 5.- Start with and focus on the good news 6.- Avoid making judgments 7.- Don’t just talk, listen Prepare for negative reactions 8.- Summarize the conversation and provide next steps After the Review 9.- Lay the groundwork for the next review

Managment Talks: The 4 Most Important Key Performance Indicators for Profesional Sellers

Don’t get me wrong. I love numbers as much as the next person and I agree that measurement improves performance and is essential to success. But I also know we can’t keep changing the rules of the game. Performance improvement comes only when we focus on the same metrics over time. We need to follow the right measurements and stay focused. What if you could only measure four things? Which would you choose? Instead of measuring absolutely everything under the sun, what if you were limited to just four points in your process where you could drop a meter and collect data? Choose wisely, because the increased focus on each of these four areas will be your source for improved sales performance. Choose the right metrics and there’s no telling how high you could soar.Choose the wrong ones and you’ll barely see the needle move at all. Which would you focus on? What are the four best places to insert measurement? Let’s take a look. Four Key Performance Indicators to Track Every Month 1. Lead Flow This is the number of new leads that are coming into the sales department each month. Get very specific and track both the total number of leads and also where each one came from. More and more managers are discovering that to increase sales you don’t need more salespeople; what you really need is more leads. 2. Number of Qualified Opportunities Created Measure the total number of new, qualified opportunities created in the month as well as the dollar value of each one. How can you count a qualified opportunity? Qualified opportunities are those who you've sent or presented a proposal focused on a need you hear about. What doesn't count as a qualified opportunity: sending the same email to 50 people on a list. 3. Conversion Rate The conversion rate is the number of new customers divided by the number of qualified leads. That will tell you the rate at which your leads become customers. 4. Booked Revenue Here we look at the revenue numbers, but we are going to break it down so we get the whole picture. You will want to keep track of three things: New business (brand new account) Business that is added on to an existing contract Renewal Business

Managment Talks: 7 common mistakes of inexperienced managers

Nobody is born a know-all, and managers are no different. Mistakes happen at all levels of experience, but they most often happen with rookie managers (hopefully!). But making mistakes is all part of a learning experience. That is, as long as you take away a lesson or two from your mistake, you’re one step ahead of the game. Below are some of the most common mistakes inexperienced managers make, and what to look out for. 1. They want to be liked more than respected Of course, everyone wants to be liked. But since you’re the leader of the team you also need to be able to make unpopular decisions and to deliver them to your team. The fear that you won’t be liked will make it less likely for you to do so. That’s why most inexperienced managers either don’t know how to deliver the hard news to their team, or don’t make the hard decisions in the first place, afraid of how their team might perceive them. 2. They micromanage As a manager, it’s easy to get drawn into perfectionism. You don’t want anything to go wrong. You want to make sure everything is perfect, because it will be a reflection on you if your team is any less than perfect. Chances are, if a manager is constantly bombarding team members with emails or dropping by to see how the work is going, he is suffocating his team members. Micromanaging disempowers team members, and even affects their confidence and performance, as it shows that you don’t trust them. While you should always expect the best work from your team, micromanaging is not the best way to achieve that. 3. They don’t delegate Delegating works both ways: you’re taking some tasks off your plate just as much as you are empowering team members and showing them that you trust them. Not only does delegating give you time to focus on your most important tasks, but it also gives your team members the opportunity to grow, as it allows them to gain new experience and develop their skills. It’s a win-win situation! 4. They don’t invest in employee development Whether it’s improving poor performers or assisting strong performers with career development, employee development is vital to employee satisfaction – and to the well-being of your business. Your business can’t grow if its people are stagnating. Evaluate what skills you need on your team, then see how you can enable the right team members to get those skills. 5. They don’t read body language The ability to read body language is a vital part of emotional intelligence. Good managers are able to understand how a team member is feeling and what they may be thinking, even when things are not spelled out. Of course, people will probably always hide some things from their managers. Developing this skill early can help managers prevent things like employee dissatisfaction that seems to come out of nowhere and avoid potential conflicts before they escalate. 6. They don’t adjust their management style Good managers know when they can be more hands-off and when they need to harden their grip. Different team members need different management styles, and your ability to provide that depends on how well you can adapt your style to different personalities. Of course, you’re not a chameleon and you can’t be the perfect manager for everyone. Neither should you try to be pleasing each and every colleague. But you do need is an understanding of how different individuals like to be approached, and what they respond best to. 7. They don’t give credit where credit is due It’s human nature to complain when something goes wrong, but to forget to praise all the good work. Pretty much everybody has had a manager like that at some point in their life, and you know it’s not fun. Team members need to feel their work is appreciated, and you really don’t need too much to show them that. Alternatively, inexperienced managers put the blame on individual team members. “Bobby wasn’t able to finish the project in time”, “Mary wasn’t in the office when she was supposed to,” etc. But since managers are the ones with the oversight, they are responsible for it. Don’t fall into the trap of placing the blame on your team members. Instead, see where you can make changes to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Managment Talks: Remote Teams

What is the real issue in remote teams? We’ll take a look at working in a remote environment and what that means for team collaboration. Remote teams are not a thing of the future - they’re today’s reality for many startups, as well as small and large businesses. And they might be the answer to a number of challenges in employee satisfaction and retention. The issue in a remote team is not the physical distance between employees. The issue reducing the psychological distance and increasing the cohesiveness of the team - challenges that all team leaders face, whether their teams work remotely or not. Remote teams might actually be the answer to a lot of problems businesses face. For one, you will not be limited to hiring people within a certain geographical area. You also skip the daily hassles of commute and give team members a certain autonomy over their working schedule - an important factor in motivation and job satisfaction. But remote teams also have to work extra hard at building a sense of community, shared expectations and values. Here are some tips to help shape the foundation of an awesome remote team and get stuff done together. Set high level goals and communicate them In any team, it’s vital to communicate expectations and to align everyone’s efforts to the same goals. By setting high level goals and clearly communicating them to your team, you ensure that everyone is working toward the same purpose. This way, each person can create their individual measurable and achievable goals that support the high level goals. Then each team member can go on and further break up goals into tasks. This is where communication becomes vital. Transparency is necessary not only so that team leaders are able to identify and address any gaps in the goals set by team members, but also so that the entire team can assess the impact of their goals on the overall well-being of the company and adjust their efforts when necessary. This will keep the entire team focused on the goals that really matter, and it’s a good way to communicate expectations. Keep your goals in writing Keep a history of all the goals, past, current and upcoming, as well as a history of all the tasks completed by your team member. They should be somewhere where all team members are able to access them, so they can reflect on their process and make adjustments where necessary. Emphasis on communication Communication is vital in any team, but even more so in a remote team. Aim to overcommunicate with your team members. It’s a thousand times better to have an excess of communication than not enough of it. Lack of communication causes so many frustrations in team members that it’s often hard to recover from it. Remote teams should aim for daily video calls. This will help manage the psychological distance they can experience. However, every communication should have a clearly defined purpose. For example, what's the purpose of your daily video call? Is it to simply share with each other what you’re working on? Or are you trying to solve a specific problem together? Get in some real face time Even in a remote team, it’s still important to get some real face time every now and then. Having a remote team is almost like having a long distance relationship. If you don’t see each other sometime, you might forget why you liked each other in the first place. One important time to see each other is the beginning of employment. This sets the tone for how the team members see each other, and how they will collaborate in the future. It also gives you an idea of how the new person fits on the team, and whether they truly align with your company values. Every now and then, schedule team retreats. Being together will create a sense of camaraderie among your team members. It will help build trust and as a result improve collaboration. Choose the right task manager It goes without saying that remote teams should always use cloud hosted secure products, so that the sharing of communication is frictionless. But this is even more important when it comes to task management. The right team task manager should ultimately reduce the exchange of emails and keep your inbox easy to manage. It offers transparency to what everyone is doing. It allows team members to have discussions over tasks. It keeps all attachments in one place.

Managment Talks: Iterate

So how exactly do you iterate? Iterating is another way of saying “working in increments.” When you iterate, you find a process that, repeated, will help you achieve your desired goal. The results of one iteration will be your starting point for the next iteration. 1. Plan your iterations. Start by chunking down your projects into customer facing increments - things that you’re building directly for your customers (releasing new features, design, user interface, etc.). You can further break down your work into team facing increments - work that will stay within your team and not be released (at least initially) to the customers. 2. Start with your first iteration: Build. Measure. Learn. Begin working on your first iteration. Here you can use the “build, measure, learn” methodology. This method is all about working in cyclical increments, all while focusing on feedback. So instead of working in a vacuum, without understanding how your product is affecting your customers (or even if it is wanted to begin with!), you are releasing often, analyzing the results and learning from them. 3. Begin building again. Iterations are all about moving quickly and adjusting to what you learn. So as soon as you have drawn conclusions from the first iteration, you go back to the beginning of the cycle, and start building again on your second iteration. Working in increments also helps you adapt to changing priorities. When you work in increments, you are able to stay flexible and change course if something doesn’t work as planned. The more you work on a project, the more you know. The benefits of working in iterations Some iterations are customer-facing, or geared directly at people who use or buy your product, others aren’t. When you’re working in iterations, you have the ability to release often so that your customers get value from what you’ve created so far very quickly. You also get feedback more often and can adjust to that. This way, you don’t waste time working toward something that your customer doesn’t want. Also, you can test out an idea you’re not sure about by creating the minimum viable product and getting feedback on it before you make a commitment. Zappos - initially, they started a website that allowed people to order shoes online. But they didn’t have any shoe inventory. The two founders would simply go to the mall, buy the shoes, and ship them to the customers. Of course this isn’t a feasible long-term business, but it is a quick and easy way to evaluate customer interest before putting in all your marbles. This kind of iterations allowed them to quickly achieve their company goals. Zappos reached the $1 billion yearly sales goal two years earlier than expected, and they were eventually bought out by Amazon. On the opposite spectrum is BlackBerry. Although there was a great market demand for touch screen devices, BlackBerry did not pay attention to what customers wanted. Lack of response to feedback caused them to lose a lot - until they eventually did do touch screen. The 30% feedback method Even when your iterations are not customer-facing, you still get lots of benefits from working in increments. For one, you can apply the 30% feedback method. This method encourages feedback from team members when projects are 30% completed, as opposed to, say, 80%, so that you avoid the projects going completely off target. The beginning of the project often moves faster than the last stretch, so you can take advantage of that and make sure you’re on the right course before investing too much time perfecting your project. Imagine you’re working on a project and you’re doing the best you can. Actually, you’re doing pretty darn good, but what you’re doing is completely besides the point. You’re simply working on the wrong thing. Wouldn’t you want to know that you’re going in the wrong direction as soon as possible? Combined, the "build, measure, learn" and the 30% feedback methods can help you power up your iterations.

Managment Talks: Setting Goals

What is the purpose of setting goals? At this point, you might be asking yourself: if we can’t plan perfectly, then what is the purpose of goals? If you see your work as a map, your goal is the destination on that map - the big red X showing where you want to get. Although our culture is oversaturated with talk about goal setting, we still fall short of achieving our goals. Distractions, procrastination and lack of prioritization are all villains trying to prevent us from getting where we want. So how can we slay these villains? It's quite simple: by breaking down your goals into tasks with these three easy steps: 1. Establish your goals Of course, before you break down your goals into tasks, you need to have goals. Not just goals, but well-established goals. If your goal is to sell 200 copies of your e-book, for example, what does this mean exactly? Selling 200 copies in a week or in a month? In what country? Does this include repeat purchases? A scientific review of behaviour change in diet and exercise shows that specific, challenging goals lead to better performance than vague goals. It’s very likely that this also applies to areas outside of nutrition and physical exercise. Get crystal clear about what you’re aiming for, and write it down. 2. Create a map of milestones Goals can usually be divided into milestones. Following our earlier example of selling two hundred e-book copies in a month, the milestones would look something like this: • determine the best channels to broadcast and advertise your e-book • determine the best channels to sell your e-book • sell at least 20 copies during the first week Milestones are still big steps, but they help you think of your goals in terms of what you need to achieve them - the logistics. Whether it’s new gear or new knowledge, you can begin to grasp what is necessary to get to each milestone. 3. Come up with a task list Now that you have a map of the milestones you want to achieve, you can come up with a task list. You don’t need to map out your whole goal from the start. Remember, you know less in the beginning than you will ever know. Start with the first milestone and go from there. If your first milestone is to determine the best channels for selling your e-book, here’s where you might start: • describe target customer • interview three target customers to determine which channels they listen to most • determine which channels did best in the past Weekly team task agenda to keep on track In a team setting, it’s important for everyone to be aligned and working towards the same goal. Consider having a weekly team meeting to look at how close you are to achieve your goals. This will allow people to see where the company is, and find ways to adjust where needed. It will also allow team members understand how each of them are contributing to achieving the company’s goals. A time to work, a time to play Sometimes it can seem that taking time off for yourself means you’re betraying your goals. You should be working, not playing. But working too much can drain all energy and creativity - for both individuals and the overall team. Leisure is closely connected to the creative process (the word recreation, a synonym for leisure, basically means returning to a previous state of ‘creation’). Taking time for leisure allows you to generate a positive flow of creative energy. Bringing this energy back to your work will help you to pursue your goals even more passionately.

Managment talks: Plan meaning

The real meaning of plans In task management, you need to understand that plans are exactly that: plans. They’re general schemes that help you decide where you’re going, what you’re going to do, how you might proceed. But you need to acknowledge that no plan is set in stone. At best, planning is a guessing game. It’s a general outline of how things might go, so it’s important not to get stuck on them. We don’t know enough to plan At the beginning of any project, we know less about what needs to be done than we will ever know again. We simply don’t know enough to plan. You can see how this is a bad time to make plans. How can you decide when things need to be done, if you’re not really sure what needs to be done in the first place? You don’t want your team to focus on meeting an artificial deadline you created for your plan. You want them to focus on great performance and getting closer to your goals. Don’t get us wrong though. We’re not saying that being flexible means letting deadlines slip. It just means that you’re always on the lookout for the best path to get where you need to go. That path might change as your project progresses and you know more about it. Being flexible is all about being open to reassessing your initial plans and changing as you go. The point of staying flexible There’s something to be learned from bamboo when it comes to flexibility. Bamboo is famous for being flexible and strong. But the interesting thing is that it is strong exactly because of its flexibility, not in spite of it. So in the face of adversity, bamboo bends, but it doesn’t break. Instead, it snaps back into shape as soon as the pressure is taken off. Similarly, being flexible in your task planning will give you strength. Flexibility doesn’t mean that you don’t plan. It means that you are able to reassess your plan often and adjust on the fly as circumstances around you change. That’s why your task list needs to be adjustable as you go. The ability to adapt to new situations is an asset that will help you get where you want faster. Let’s say for example that your team is working on a feature, but then you find out there is a similar yet conflicting feature that will work much better for your target market. Being able to change course of action will help you to keep an open mind to all the possibilities. There are countless stories of companies that changed course and found immense success as a result. Take for example Youtube: in 2005, the site started as a video dating site - very similar to HotOrNot. But when it did not gain traction, the founders abandoned the idea and focused on an online video sharing tool. Another good example is Flickr. The company actually started as an online role-playing game. But when the founders realized that they were solving a much larger problem, they decided to stop the development of the game and began focusing on simplifying online photo sharing. YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion, and Flickr was acquired by Yahoo back in 2005, reportedly for $35 million. Plans, if we get hung up on them, undermine our ability to stay open minded and positively respond to change. We want to follow our plans because we think that abandoning the initial plan means we’re somehow failing. But examples like YouTube and Flickr show us that abandoning the initial plan can really pay off. When a plan makes you rigid to change, then it’s failing to be good plan. So how can you apply flexibility to your task management practices in a practical way? First, try to plan your tasks in weeks rather than in hours. Have a general plan for the day, but don’t get hung up on them as long as you get to what needs to be done in the week. Second, make it a habit of reprioritizing - both daily and weekly. Don’t be afraid to move tasks from this week to the next, or from next week to this week. It’s one of the best ways that you can stay responsive to change as you learn new information. Third, allow room for creativity. Get into the habit of brainstorming possible solutions, and try not to dismiss options that are not part of the initial plan before really assessing them.

Managment Talks

Distinguish between the urgent and the important U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted to have said: “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.” Most people fail to manage their tasks adequately not because they are incapable of it, but because they don’t know how to prioritize. We have a tendency to focus on urgent activities - such as returning phone calls and responding to emails - but don’t leave enough time to focus on the truly important tasks. This way, we are simply keeping our head above the water, firefighting through our to-do lists, but not really progressing toward our goals. Take a good look at what it is you’re trying to accomplish, and how you and your team can get there. Once you dedicate some time to this, it will become clear to you which tasks are truly important. Dividing your to-dos into the ‘Important’ and ‘Less Important’ categories can help you keep your focus on advancing your goals. Choose your most important tasks The most important tasks are the ones that you should get done before anything else. They’re the reason your projects are advancing, why you’re getting closer to your goals. Decide when you’re writing your list what these tasks are, and prioritize ruthlessly during the day to make sure they get done. Use a visual way to prioritize your most important tasks - for example, place them at the very top of your list. It can also help to break down your projects into bite-sized tasks, and completing 5 to 7 of these tasks daily. By not overwhelming yourself, you make it more likely to actually complete the items on the list and advance to your goals. Focus on single tasking There’s power in doing each task on your list as if you’re doing nothing else. Give your full concentration to each of the tasks on your list. The benefits of single task focus are undeniable. For one, you’ll become better at anything you do, by pure virtue of you giving your full attention to what you are doing. You will become more effective at work, and the benefits of single tasking may even overflow in your personal life. Creating the right to-do list Everything starts with being able to write down (read: get out of your head) the tasks that need to be done. There is a right way and a wrong way to write down your tasks. So what does the right to-do list look like? Actionable: Start each task with a verb. Instead of writing out a task that says ‘bills’, have a task that says ‘pay the internet bill’. Using a verb will make it easier to take that action when the time comes. If you simply write a noun on your to-do list, you might forget what you actually have to do about that task. Similarly, your team might not understand what you mean if a shared task is not actionable. Flexible: It’s important to stay flexible and respond to change as it happens around you. That’s why you shouldn’t schedule your tasks down to the minute. Instead, your to-do list should reflect things that need to get done "this week" or by a certain deadline. Sometimes, things that are out of our control come up and we need to attend to them right away, like an urgent customer request. But don’t confuse being flexible with getting distracted from your to-dos! Don’t schedule your time to the last second. Instead, leave some leeway for possible deviations from the list. (Next week we will deal more with why there’s power in flexibility.) Does not include the obvious: We’re sometimes tempted to put every little thing we might do in a day on our to-do list. Of course, this will result in more items crossed off the list, which will really make us feel better about how ‘productive’ we are. Really, you should only be writing down tasks that you wouldn’t get around to unless they’re written down. “Create analytics report” is one of them; “check analytics numbers” isn’t. When you’re faced with two tasks that you’ve given the same level of importance, your brain will always choose the simpler one. So if we put every little thing we do on our lists - let’s say, check email - it would certainly look like we’re getting a lot of stuff done. But, in fact, we’re regally procrastinating. You also shouldn’t write down tasks if it’s faster to just do them. For example, you can reply to a quick email in less time than it takes to write down a task for it. Keeps a history of completed tasks: It’s nice to revel in how much you did on any given day, or keep yourself honest about how little you got done. Either way, it’s a good idea to keep a record of what you did, and not just so you can improve your practices and become more efficient. A full history of your completed tasks will save you time when you need to find certain info about what work was done pertaining to a certain project, when was the work done and whether it was completed before or after another task, or if you need to find information about what exactly was done and why.

Are you connected?

Be honest: how addicted are you to your smart phone? Do you feel lost without it? Do you struggle to leave those Twitter and LinkedIn apps alone? Does it sleep with you? One US study has suggested we use or check our phones up to 110 times just during the day and then as often as every six seconds in the evening. That’s a staggering amount of time we spend ‘keeping in touch’, so why when it comes to forging genuine, personal connections are we falling short, especially in the workplace? 61% of us now own a smartphone - or 75% among the under 30s - so in theory communicating has never been easier. Yet a recent survey* suggests we actually suffer a dearth of meaningful connections in our workplaces. Workers were asked whether they were satisfied with the quantity or quality of their relationships at work and the answer was a resounding ‘no.’ 81% complained their leaders don’t listen. 82% said their boss won’t praise them or give appropriate feedback. Research also highlighted how 28% of people rarely or never discuss future goals and tasks with their boss, although 70% wish they did. The figures are even worse when it comes to sensitive matters such as problems with colleagues. Then, while 64% wish they did feel able to take this up with managers or supervisors, only 8% actually do. This is deeply problematic. We know how vitally important it is to have good relationships with colleagues to help you feel good about yourself and good about your job. From an employers’ perspective, happy, engaged, communicating employees are more likely to be loyal to their organisation, support it, and put in discretionary effort. This is why good relationships with leaders are especially important – how often have you quit not because you didn’t like the job or the organisation, but your manager? “People crave a deeper human connection at work; they want to feel a more personal and authentic connection with their leaders and their peers that goes beyond what technology can provide,” says Ken Blanchard. “Without this human connection, the typical workplace is at high risk of becoming what I call ‘dysfunctionally connected.’” Creating connection in the workplace starts with conversation, yet most working people don’t have a shared leadership language to help them ask for what they want and avoid misunderstandings. This is especially difficult now because for the first time ever, we have five generations working together in the workplace, and many different cultures. Whether or not you use a leadership model, what is important is making sure our conversations are rooted in being clear that direct reports are given all the direction and support they need to achieve goals, goals that must have a clear vision when it comes to what success looks like. Building in frequent one-to-ones, either formal or informal, keeps conversation flowing and prevents resentment building up, as does providing regular and honest feedback. This is the glue of successful organisations, as is giving praise when praise is due, or redirection when a colleague steers off course. Starting difficult conversations at an early stage with ‘in order to get this job done I need you to...’ or ‘is there anything I can help you with so you can get this job done?’ is a far better approach than allowing a head of steam to build up at which point any conversation is going to become emotional. This approach helps leaders to be more in tune with their people’s needs and aligned with their own intentions. We all face common challenges in the workplace from time to time and our work environments are constantly changing. Today’s leaders need to learn how to assess a situation very quickly, respond to it appropriately, and then move on to the next challenge. Economics, globalisation, the lightening pace of change, our generation gap and cultural differences frequently take us beyond the edge of our comfort zones. If we are to become the kind of leader others want to follow, and help our people be confident, competent and motivated, our goal-setting, people management, performance monitoring and feedback stills must be in tip-top shape. Even in the digital age, one-to-one communication matters. And even if we communicate through technology, our approach still has to be human.