May 2007

Blaine Collins has a great post titled “Six keys to a new team member’s success” that I’d like to expand on a bit.

Blaine’s first paragraph is a perfect summary of his post:

Work teams often face situations in which new team members join the team. Teams can smooth the transition by providing a thorough orientation for these new members. When they gain knowledge about such things as process, procedures, and available tools, new team members can quickly begin applying their talents and skills to the team’s purpose.

I’ve been involved with a few organizations who had no idea how to set their new team members up for success….instead they seem to do everything (or nothing) to ensure that their new team members fail. When it comes to hiring new team members, the first thing a manager should do is to ensure that the team member fits…the 2nd thing they should do is ensure that the new team member has no doubts or second thoughts about their new position. This requires that a manager do everything possible to make it as easy as possible for the new team member to integrate into the team…which Blaine has very aptly described in his post. If a manager uses the ‘keys’ outlined by Blaine, the majority of the work of the planning for ‘on-boarding’ a new team member will have already been accomplished. According to Blaine, these “six keys for a new team member’s success” are:

• Partnering with a ‘buddy’.
• Understanding the culture.
• Navigating the organization.
• Utilizing the procedures.
• Accessing the tools
• Committing to the mission

None of the above ‘keys’ are new…but very rarely (in my experience) are they followed by organizations and team leaders. I’ve found that only the really good leaders/managers follow these key steps when integrating a new team member. Some managers spend quite a bit of time on a few of these key items, but most (again…in my experience) don’t utilize all six.

For example, I have a good friend who recently started a new job. His first day was spent sitting in a cubicle with a set of paperwork that he had to fill out. During this first day, he spoke to his new manager for a total of 10 minutes…and during that time he felt as if his manager really didn’t know what to do with him. His second day was spent reading a manual on the policies of the group and he spent a total of 5 minutes speaking with his boss. The first week continued on like this with very little interaction with his boss or the team and the second week wasn’t much better. Finally, at the end of the week he asked his boss what it was that he wanted him to focus on and if there were any objectives or goals he should be focusing on and he received a very non-committal answer of ‘we’ll talk about it next week’. To make a long story short, the manager never spent much time in helping my buddy integrate into the team and understand the objectives, mission, values or the culture. After about 3 months, he decided it was time to move on and find another position elsewhere. When the HR person asked him why he was leaving, he told them that he never felt like part of the team.

Think about the above paragraph…that manager spent 2 months searching for the right candidate. He found him, hired him and then lost him 3 months later. That has to be an enormous cost to the organization…2 months worth of searching, 3 months of not getting the most out of the new employee, and a probable repeat of the same cycle to find another employee.

This cycle of searching, on-boarding, training, etc easily be rectified using Blaine’s “six key’s.” By using these keys, a manager is giving the new employee a boost up into the organization rather than a push…that push just might be the push out of the organization.

[tags] Management, Leadership, Building Teams, New Team Members [/tags]

Sorry for the title…but I thought it was funny.

In a previous post titled “Rediscovering Linux (via Ubuntu)” I discussed my newfound ‘toy’ in Ubuntu & Linux. Well..the joy of that ‘toy’ has faded.

The joy turned to sorrow after about a month of constant tweaking, updating and configuring. One of my biggest pet peeves was the inability of Ubuntu 7.04 to run VMware on this machine (believe me..I tried to get it to work). The final straw came when I bought a Maxtor Shared Storage II Network Storage device and plugged it into my network and tried to access it from my Ubuntu server. I did get it to work, but found myself constantly changing User ID’s, Group ID’s and re-mounting disks…so I gave up on it.

That old Dell 8250 now has Windows 2003 Server (Standard Edition) running on it. I hadn’t looked at Windows 2003 Server in a long time but I have come to realize that I really like it. It is stable and reliable (so far). I’ve been able to easily setup Apache, PHP and MySQL (using Wampserver) and also have IIS running (go figure…Apache and IIS on the same box). In addition, I have VMWare Player on the 8250 so I can play around with other OS’s and appliances.

For me, Windows is still a much better solution. Sorry Ubuntu & Linux…I have moved back to the Microsoft side for now. I still like the idea of Linux, Free and/or Open Source Software but I don’t think it’s ready for prime time just yet.

P.S.

I still dislike Vista though
[tags] Windows, Microsoft, Windows 2003, Ubuntu, Linux [/tags]

In my many years of school and independent reading, I’ve run across a lot of theories about Leadership. Each theory seems to have its own idea of what it means to be a leader and what the term “leadership” really means.

I’ve read most of the major ‘leadership’ authors like John Maxwell, Robert Greenleaf, Kouzes & Posner and many many others and I am amazed at the amount of material that these authors have put together. Most of these books and theories on leadership are great pieces of work, but they tend to make leadership into something much more complex than it really is.

Leadership can be described using five traits: Integrity, Empathy, Openness, Foresight and Self-Awareness. These traits, which I’ve called Five Traits of Simple Leadership, make up those strengths that I feel really describe Leadership in a succinct and straightforward manner.

• Integrity is the first and probably most important Leadership trait. Without integrity, there are no other truths nor is there a base to lead from. When most people think of integrity, they think of honesty or ethics, however, integrity means so much more than just being honest. Integrity also means having the character that allows you to live your life according to your values, ethics and standards. Integrity breeds honesty, which breeds trust. If you, your partner, manager, or CEO don’t have an understanding of what integrity is, then they really don’t understand leadership.
• Empathy allows a person to understand and experience things from a similar frame of reference as others. This skill is vital to a leader because it allows a person to truly understand how your actions as a leader will affect others. Empathy not only allows you to be a better leader, but also a better human being.
• Openness allows a person to accept all views and positions on a subject, evaluate those views/positions and choose the best way forward for all parties involved. A close-minded leader will not accept inputs from others and will usually surround themselves with sycophants and agreeable people.
• Foresight is vital to a leader because it allows a person to combine the past, present and future into their thinking. This trait gives a leader a basis for making better decisions, which will normally lead to better strategic planning and operational excellence.
• Last but not least is Self-Awareness. Without self-awareness, the other traits are worthless. Unless you understand yourself and your own motives, you cannot understand or lead others.

Of course, none of the above information is ground-breaking. Most of these traits are found in other leadership models and they borrow heavily from the Servant Leadership mentality. That being said, I think most people would be hard-pressed to think about someone that they think is a great leader and not find these five traits.

[tags] Leadership, Simple Leadership [/tags]