Do you know what The Onion is? If not, it’s a satirical newspaper and website that is hysterical…you should read it.

I’ve been a big fan of The Onion for years…but I didn’t know it was a 160-employee company…that’s huge for what I thought was just a funny website/newspaper.

I ran across a NY Times interview with the CEO of The Onion…I had to read it because, well…its an interview with the CEO of The Onion for goodness sake.   Gotta be some funny stuff there right?

Well…I was surprised.  Nothing funny about it….there’s some excellent leadership tips here.

The CEO, Steve Hannah, has a hell of a head on his shoulders.

The interview, published in Business Day’s Corner Office series under the title “If Plan B Fails, Go Through the Alphabet“, is wonderful.

My favorite part of the interview was the 2nd & 3rd question/answers:

Q. How do you interview job candidates?

A. I have two basic questions in mind: “Can you do the job, and would I enjoy spending time with you?” I want to know where you came from. I want to know how many children are in your family. I want to know where you fit in and what your role was. I want to know what your mother and your dad did, what influence they had on you. I find that, without overstepping my boundaries, most people like to talk about themselves.

Q. What is it you want to know?

A. I want to know whether you were a kid who was entitled, whether you worked hard, whether you excelled at school, whether you held summer jobs, how hard you had to work, whether you got the jobs yourself, whether you got promoted. I want to know if you’ll work hard. I’m hopelessly old-fashioned. I want people who really want to work hard. And I absolutely loathe a sense of entitlement.

Excellent stuff.   Nowhere does he say that he wants to know what school they went to or how much margin they made their last company.  He wants to know who they are and what they can do.  Period.  My kind of hiring approach.

Jump over and read it for some extremely good leadership insights.

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• Onion: “Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling” (boingboing.net)
• The Onion News Network Is Coming to IFC (nymag.com)
• The Onion Gets User Responses To Twitter Ads (socialtimes.com)
• What’s Your Plan B? (Or C-Z?) (trueslant.com)

• Silence is a Leadership Trait by Samuel Bacharach

  Quote: Between the words, between the actions, between the political strategies, leaders must create silence. Silence that allows for ideas to be absorbed. Silence that allows for emotions to settle. Silence that allows for bonding and healing. Silence that allows people to sit unthreatened and unchallenged.

• How business hoodwinks itself by Sigurd Rinde on thingamy

  Quote: Your focus slowly shifts from idea, customer understanding, and free-thinking development to efficient production/service delivery, better channel deals, development restricted to “what you know” (i.e. what your production/service can handle) and your customer relationship shifts from “curious partnership” to “pushy marketing” (adding “social” to the CRM does not count).

• The Missing Link in Strategic Planning by Jamie Notter on Get Me Jamie Notter

  Quote: You never stop listening and engaging your system in an ongoing conversation about what is valuable, what works, what matters, and what has meaning. It’s not just monitoring. It’s engaging in ongoing conversations. It’s allowing ideas from the periphery to bubble up. It’s much more precise definition of what works and why.

• Keeping Data Safe From IT Snoops by Mike Schaffner on Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

  Quote: IT has the keys to all the sensitive data in your company. This includes not only payroll and personnel records, but also financial records, trade secrets and intellectual property, data regarding pending acquisitions, product launches or other strategic decisions. A rather scary thought if you don’t trust your IT folks.

• Too Busy to Onboard Your New Executive? I Don’t Get It! by Tim Tolan on Fistful of Talent

  Quote: With the cost of human capital to a company’s bottom line, much more attention needs to be paid in developing a comprehensive, well defined on-boarding plan. Period.

• Bad for the Customer, Good for the Stock Price: Wait, What? by Charles H. Green on Trust Matters

  Quote: There will be the more-than-occasional situation where the right thing to do is simply not the profitable thing to do. That’s when you find out who’s ethical, and who’s simply hustling their own customers.

• Giving away a magician’s secrets by Seth Godin on Seth’s Blog

  Quote: if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

• Rise of the Marketing Technologist by Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist

  Quote: Marketing technology isn’t just software you buy — it’s also software you create. Web applications, widgets, Facebook apps, iPhone apps, Android apps, interactive ads, the semantic web, and even the connected features of your products are now part of marketing’s realm.

• Square Pegs, Round Holes, and the Peter Principle by Terry Starbucker on TerryStarbucker.com

  Quote: right hiring decisions go beyond core competencies. The personality profile also has to match.  Because ultimately, that is what you really cannot chang

• Narratives Over Numbers by Fred Wilson on A VC

  Quote: I would encourage all entrepreneurs and everyone who is selling something to someone to focus on narratives over numbers, particularly when you are in the initial meeting. If the person you are pitching bites, there will be an opportunity to go over the numbers later. But you have to get yourself that opportunity and story telling is the best way to get there.

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

I just read a ‘call for papers’ from Cutter IT Journal with the title “The Great Recession Fallout: Will CIOs Be Elevated or Exterminated?”  It doesn’t look like they’ve posted this latest call for papers on their website, but you should be able to find it there sometime soon.

While I’ve already been thinking about this topic for some time (an example can be seen in last week’s post titled “The Future of IT & The CIO“) it’s good to see  there are other folks thinking about the same thing.

A passage in the email really made me stop and think about what we (industry, IT & CIO’s) are doing.  Here’s what caught my eye:

No longer singularly pursuing either an innovation or an efficiency agenda, CIOs may now need to pursue both as their firms are driven by both the need for efficiency and the fear of having an obsolete business model. While CIOs have for some time been asked to contribute in strategic and tactical ways, has this recession pushed them too hard down both paths?

Take a look at that last sentence and think about it. We’ve been pushing (and been pushed) to do ‘more with less’ for quite a while now.  We are being asked to be strategic and tactical.  Our IT Staff are being asked to be both technical and business savvy at the same time.  This is a fact of life…but is it a reality?  Are we really able to do everything asked of us?

Can you really focus on the strategic and tactical at the same time?  Can you really expect your technical staff to interface with the business?  Have we cut our staffs and budgets so far that we’ve cut out ability to deliver real value? Are we running on empty these days?

Great questions (I think anyway).

Can you (or your team) really do it all?

There is a point at which you and your team become overloaded.  In a normal economy, this overload could be offset by hiring new staff, but in this recession there’s no new staff and many organizations aren’t bringing in new contractors either.  At some point, the overload becomes too much and you and/or your team need to pull back the effort or you’ll overload your circuits and burn yourself or your team out.  Just like the fuel gauge shown above, you and your team will be running on empty.

The New CIO needs to know when they can take on the extra work and responsibilities and when they need to push back at the organization to ensure proper staffing levels.

In addition, the New CIO must ensure that they have the right mix of IT staff.  If we’re being asked to be both strategic and tactical, you better have some folks who can do both.  If you have to interface with the organization, you better make sure you have IT staff who can interface with the business.

Lastly, as I’ve said before, in this age of doing more with less, the New CIO has to lead by saying no as much as they can.  The organization has to understand what the IT group is capable of and what will take additional staff and/or budget.

Keep your eye on your team and make sure they’ve got a bit of fuel left at all times.  Keep working hard and moving closer to your goals…but make sure you aren’t killing your staff.

Take a few minutes and ask yourself and your team: Can you really do it all?  If the answer is no, start building a business case for what needs to change, how it needs to change and why. That business case needs to land on every leader’s desk within the organization and you’d better drive hard to make the changes necessary.  If you don’t you might just find yourself looking at a staff who’s running on empty and an economy that has just moved out of the recession…and you’ve got no way to do what needs to be done to take advantage of the changes.

That said, if your organization was working right, the recession would be the time to invest in additional staff and projects…not cut staff and projects.  But that’s a topic for another post

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

Do you know the full capabilities of your team?

Sure…you know what their resume’s said.  You think you know their backgrounds and their experience…but do you really know your team?

Do you have a developer who, in their free time, is extremely active in the blogosphere and the social media world?  Do you have a project manager who really wants to make a lateral move into service management?

Do you really know your team?  If you don’t, you may be leaving a lot of talent, skills and passion on the table.

Dangers of Hidden Talent

Leaving talent untapped is unforgivable to me and should be unacceptable to you. We live in a world where we’re expected to do more with less and rely more heavily on people’s knowledge & skills to make our businesses work.

Knowing this is the case, why do we hire a person, train them (do you train your people?) and then forget about them?  Why do we ignore the idea of talent management and human capital? Read more of my thoughts on those topics here and here and if you’re looking for a great book on Talent & Competitive Advantage, check out Talent : Making People Your Competitive Advantage (amazon affiliate link) and/or Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty (amazon affiliate link).  Both of those books are excellent.

Do you have regular meetings with your team?  Do you talk about their careers?  Do you know that your star programmer is a widely read blogger?  Can you use the talent and passion of that programmer to more than just develop the next application?

Hidden talent doesn’t just sit within your front-line teams.  Did you know that your Director of Technical Support is working on her Masters of Fine Art in Creative Writing?  Are there things she can do to provide more value to the organization than just leading the service desk?

Hidden talent is hidden profit, hidden revenue and hidden advantage.  Hidden talent can also be the death of your team if it isn’t uncovered.

Uncovering Hidden Talent

Do you know what drives each of your team members? What really gets them excited in the morning?  I’d bet there are a few people on your team that aren’t that happy in their current role and who are looking for something else to do.  Rather than lose them to another company, why not help them find something more interesting within your team and/or organization?

What can you do to help them become happier and more engaged? Could you get your programmer / blogger to work on more projects where he can use his writing skills?  What could your Tech Support Director provide to the organization now that you know she’s extremely interested in creative writing?

Of course you can’t make everyone 100% happy all the time.  People still have jobs to do…but if you take some time to talk with your team about the career ambitions and do what you can to help them reach their goals, you’ll be amazed at the response you’ll receive from them.

What can you do to uncover hidden talent?  Simple…talk to your team.  I mean really talk.  Try to understand their aspirations and what drives them.  Look for their hidden passions & skills.  Work with your team to uncover the hidden talents and you’ll see new vigor from your team.

Finding the Talent – A New CIO skill

So…time to add one more skillset to The New CIO’s job requirements…that of Talent Miner.  Of course, this role can be fulfilled by any member of the IT staff (and anyone else in the organization), but as the top dog in IT you’ve got to lead people in this area.

The New CIO needs to get things done with the resources given to them…but those resources might be able to provide  more value than originally thought…if you look for the hidden talent. “Doing more with less” is the mantra these days…find those folks on your team who are passionate about something and find ways to let them bring that passion to their job.

Uncover the hidden talent within your team/organization and watch the growth that occurs.  Fail to uncover that talent and you’ll fail to reach the potential of your people and your team.

Join me next week for another article in The New CIO series.

Why Authenticity is More Important Than Ever by Aaron Strout on Citizen Marketer 2.1

Is Free The Future Of Enterprise Software? Yes And No. by Aaron Levie on TechCrunch

Trust and Integrity Build Careers by Scot Herrick on Cube Rules

Is It Really Just About Strengths? by Steve Roesler on All Things Workplace

Some companies are like 8 year-old boys by Martin Proulx on Analytical Mind

Mr./Ms. CIO, Tear Down This Firewall by Steve Rubel on The Steve Rubel Lifestream

Employability by John Bishop on Leadership is a Verb™

Using Social Media in a Major Library System by Kevin Palmer on Social Media Answers

Learning To Listen by Jono Bacon on JonoBacon@Home

Leaders Should Strive for Clarity, Not Transparency by John Maeda on HarvardBusiness.org

When Strategic Planning Gets Locked in the Basement by Paul Barsch on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

How to Stop Micromanaging Part 1 by Rosa Say on Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

How to Stop Micromanaging Part 2 by Rosa Say on Talking Story with Say Leadership Coaching

Laying Out Your Online Experience by Chris Brogan on chrisbrogan.com

Signs of weak management by Mark McDonald on BLT: Business Leadership & Technology

Why Managers Should Care About Employee Loyalty by Timothy Keiningham and Lerzan Aksoy on Jobacle.com Blog

Apparently I can’t count   I started the blog in 2006 so it’s my blog’s THIRD birthday!

I started this blog on July 14, 2006 with a blog post titled “The Strategic Use of Human Resources“. My first post was an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my MBA program of the same title….not exactly the most exciting stuff in the world but it wasn’t bad.

When I started this blog, I didn’t have a plan. I still really don’t. Many people tell me to pick a topic and focus…perhaps they are right. But that isn’t me. Sure, I can focus….but why should I be forced to do so on my own blog? I see this blog as a place to share my thoughts and help people understand who I am.  I write about what I want but try to remain within the Technology, Strategy, People & Projects arena.

I have found a few topics that are of great interest to me. Specifically the intersection of marketing & technology and how enterprise 2.0 (and 3.0) is changing and will change business in the future.  I’ve also started off The New CIO series where I’m planning on taking a look at the role of the IT group and CIO from a different perspective. So far, I’ve written 3 The New CIO articles and have plans to write one article per week (released every Thursday).  The published articles so far are:

• The New CIO – An introduction
• The New CIO: Social Media and the Enterprise
• Keeping your IT staff Engaged and Happy – The New CIO Series

So I’ve finished up 3 years and I’m entering the fourth year and I’m going strong.  I passed the 400 posts mark in June (~2 posts per week) and 1000 comments that same month. I also bumped over 1000 RSS subscribers sometime in 2009…but never really saw when it happened. Twitter and friendfeed have helped grow traffic but at the end of the day, this blog isn’t about traffic…its about delivering good content to those that like to read it.

Top 5 Commented Posts

• Blu Domain: Poor Service Defined
• A Book Review of “Website Optimization”
• Some Thoughts on Sitecore CMS
• Ramblings on Social Media
• John Madden’s Lessons for Leadership

My Top 5 visited posts

• The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking
• Factors affecting Productivity – IT, Management and Process
• Some Thoughts on Sitecore CMS
• Blu Domain: Poor Service Defined
• Competitive Advantage and the Resource Based View of the Firm

Would you be surprised if I told you that the top 5 keywords from Google had to do with the these top posts?   Probably wouldn’t be. What are the top keywords?

• linear thinking
• factors affecting productivity
• bludomain
• blu domain
• sitecore review

So…those are the most visited and commented posts on my blog after 3 years…but what about my favorite posts?  Here’s a few (in no particular order):

• Common Sense and Technology Selection
• Competitive Advantage – The Human Capital Approach
• Factors affecting Productivity – IT, Management and Process
• The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking
• Keeping your IT staff Engaged and Happy – The New CIO Series
• The New CIO: Social Media and the Enterprise

Hope you’ve enjoyed the time like I have.  And I hope to be on here for much more time to come.

KISS: The Difference Between Strategy and Tactics – and Why It Matters by B.L. Ochman’s blog on B.L. Ochman’s WhatsNextBlog

Whom to Pay is More Important than How Much or How by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz on HarvardBusiness.org

The Freemium Company LifeCycle Challenge by Mark Cuban on blog maverick

Why You Need to Fail Peter Bregman on HarvardBusiness.org

Agile or Not Agile by Ed Gaeta on UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley

Writing Complete User Stories on Tyner Blain

Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise by James Turner on O’Reilly Radar – Insight

Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability? by Jacob Morgan: on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Think like a general manager by Tim Walker on Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Community is a Characteristic of a Great Working Environment by Wally Bock on Three Star Leadership Blog

The Pendulum Swings (Slowly): An IT Tuesday CCrit by Steve Levy on No Secret

Can “Best In Class” Culture Make HR a Revenue Center? by Kris Dunn on The HR Capitalist

“Don’t Try” – Charles Bukowski’s Advice to Creators by AMy Harrison on Lateral Action

Ten Questions Every Leader Ought to Be Asking by Lisa Haneberg on Management Craft

The Impact of Social Media on Branding by John Moore on Random Thoughts of a Boston-based CTO: John Moore’s Weblog

Enterprise 2.0: Culture Is as Culture Does by Hutch Carpenter on I’m Not Actually a Geek

Empowering Leaders: Hand Over Your Keys on Mountain State University LeaderTalk

Today’s CIO is having a tough time. They’re being asked to do more with less.  Budgets are being slashed.  Projects are being canceled.  Tough times indeed.

What can the CIO do to make it through?  Well…many are working their staffs harder and longer.  Because, you know its time to do more with less, right?

Wrong.  Well…actually it is right…but Doing More with Less doesn’t mean you’ve got to cut your staff to the core, work them to death and ignore their personal development.

So what can The New CIO do to keep the IT staff happy, engaged and working hard?

First, understand the type of people that seek out careers in IT. Then understand what drives them.  Once you understand what drives them, give them the opportunity to work on those things that excite them.  Maybe your IT Operations guru really wants to be developer…find a way to make that happen. If your technical support lead wants to move into project management, find a way to let her work her way into a new role.

Keep focusing on personal development, listen to your team and lead your team. Do these things and you’ll have a happy & engaged IT staff who will work hard for you in good times and harder for you in the bad times.

Let’s take a look at what drives IT professionals (and perhaps many other non-IT folk).

Dreams

Many IT professionals are inquisitive and love the idea of their job.  They got into IT because they love technology and they love finding creative ways to solve problems.

Then…they get a job in ‘the real world’ where they are asked to ‘do more with less’ and worked harder then ever.  For the most part, these IT pro’s are happy working hard. They like their jobs.  They like a challenge so they do whatever it takes.  Until they realize that they aren’t appreciated.

The IT employee (and group) takes a beating from the organization when things go wrong.   The email server crashes?  You hear things like ‘those IT guys can’t do anything right’. People within the organization can’t understand why it takes so long to get anything done in IT.  They don’t realize that the IT staff is way understaffed and overworked…those things don’t cross their mind.

The IT Pro wants to do the best they can but for various reasons (overworked, stressed out, disengaged, etc) they can’t.

Disappointment

IT folk are a fickle lot.   When they feel under-appreciated (or not at all), they can get defensive and morose.  It doesn’t take long for a happy IT professional to be disappointed.

The dreams of the ‘fun’ they thought they’d have while doing what they love soon turns into a nightmare of disappointment.  They don’t feel as though they get to have any ‘fun’ because they’re so busy doing more with less.

The IT Pro is disappointed.  They are struggling to keep up with current technology.  They have to sneak some time to try to pick up new technology.  They buy books at the bookstore and try to learn new programming languages.  They try to keep up…but without a strong focus on personal development from IT leadership, the IT Pro is left alone to toil on their own.

Disengagement

Disappointment inevitably leads to Disengagement.

The IT professional has worked themselves till they are bone tired.  They don’t feel appreciated by the organization.  They feel overworked and underpaid (even though they make decent money). The IT professional has put their heart and soul into their job and, in their eyes, they’ve received nothing for their effort other than a big ol’ shiny turd landing on their desk.

Now…you’ve got a highly trained & extremely technical IT professional who’s heart isn’t in their work. They don’t feel loved.     They feel overlooked, overworked and tired.  They are on the verge of disengaging from their job…and that isn’t good.

What can The New CIO do to make a difference?

First, understand your staff.  Understand what drives them and what excites them.  Then, let them spend some time doing just that.  Push personal development & training as a top priority. Follow Google’s example of letting their folks work on personal projects for a percentage of the time.  Let your team pick up new technologies and see what they can do.  Don’t be afraid to sniff around the open source world for your next big platform or project.   If you’ve got to cut costs and projects, look at the open source world as a way to cut platform costs and let your team loose on the challenge of integrating open source into the enterprise.

Second, communicate, communicate, communicate. Oh…and don’t stop communicating. Communicate to the top of the pyramid and communicate even more to the individual contributors.    Talk about what’s being worked now and what’s being planned.  Talk about the successes and failures. Discuss your plans for the short- and long-term.  In other words…talk to your team and the organization constantly. Tell them what you are thinking…be open and honest and you’ll get some great feedback…if you listen.

On that note, the Third thing The New CIO has to do is Listen.   I capitalized that on purpose BTW.  Listening is a skill that must live within The New CIO.  You’ve got to listen to your team’s needs and to the organization’s needs.   Work on your listening skills and not just the skill to hear what people are saying…you’ve got to listen intently to what your team members & the organization are not saying.  You’ve got to understand the real issues at hand…not just what comes out of someone’s mouth.

Fourth, The New CIO must understand the business.  Truly understand the business.  What does this have to do with keeping your team engaged?  Lots.  It’s hard to provide technology for an organization if you don’t understand what the organization does.  Understanding the business, and communicating that understanding to your team, will help you craft your vision and strategy for technology services.   By understanding the business and building the information technology strategy for the organization, you and your team will have a full understanding of why things are being done and where you are headed.

Lastly, The New CIO has to lead. Leadership is a key factor for keeping your team engaged. There’s nothing worse than a CIO (or any manager) who can’t make a decision and/or back their team up.  Leadership is more than ‘being in charge’…it means standing up for your staff when things are tough.  It also means that The New CIO is the person in the organization leading the charge to find better, cheaper and faster ways to get things done.

Conclusion

The New CIO has a lot on their plate.  In addition to the old standards of running technology teams, setting strategy and keeping the lights on, The New CIO has to focus on the softer skills.  Selecting the right people and keeping those people engaged in their work is a difficult job but must be at the top of the list of priorities for The New CIO.

The mantra today is ‘do more with less’…..don’t let that creep into your mind when it comes to your people.  Keep developing them, keep them happy and you’ll be amazed at how much an engaged IT team can do even in the tough times.  Keeping them engaged during the times of ‘less’ will provide an amazing advantage when the ‘good’ times come back around…you keep your team happy today and watch the exponential increase in output when the budgets come back.

Join me next Thursday for a new edition of The New CIO where I’ll be talking about the chasm between Strategy & Tactics and what we can do to close the gap.

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I think so.

The modern day corporation was developed to build ‘stuff’.  To build ‘stuff’, organization was needed.  To keep the organization flowing, management was needed.  Management created processes, procedures, flowcharts, operational efficiencies, human resources, etc etc etc.

Many of these things are necessary to manage production.  To build a car, you have to have an assembly line that is run by processes.

These operational processes were built to take the humanity away from production.  Processes are built to force compliance into an agreed to standard of doing things.

Processes kill individuality. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing on the production line or in mission critical areas. You wouldn’t want an airline pilot to be flying be the seat of her pants…you want to feel comfortable in the knowledge that they are following a set of procedures.

Processes are a good thing for an airline pilot…but what about someone trying to work in Customer Service or in the marketing team of an organization?

This operational mindset fails when you move into other areas of business.  The people facing areas require a much more humanity driven approach.  In these areas, people should be allowed to be people. Employees should be allowed to speak with their own voice and use their given talents.

Look at Zappos as an example.  Their Customer service reps have the authority to do whatever it takes to make the client happy.  The service reps don’t read from a script or follow a process…they help their customers. They have the authority to recommend their comeptitors if needed.  I’ve even hear that they can buy from their competitors and have the order shipped overnight to the client just to keep them happy.

What does Zappos management tell their reps?  “Use your best judgement“.  Zappos allows their employees to be themselves and USE THEIR JUDGEMENT. That’s what I mean about bringing humanity back into business.

Zappos used this approach to reach $1 billion per year in revenue. That’s BILLION. They’ve gone from zero to $1 Billion in less than 10 years. What are the other shoe companies doing?   Building processes.  Building operational efficiencies.  etc. etc.

Amber Naslund touched on this subject a few days ago.  She asked the question “Why IS it so hard to be human?“  She writes:

We’ve always drawn lines between business and personal. We’ve been told not to cross the streams, that business and personal are expressed in different languages somehow, and as marketers, we sure as hell developed a vocabulary all our own for the “business” application (often whether or not anyone was speaking that way).

Zappos has kept things human and so have a few other companies that understand the power of letting their folks be themselves. By telling their employees to ‘use their best judgement’, Zappos is letting their employees wing it.

Amber touches on this a bit too. She writes:

Winging it makes businesses especially uncomfortable. We have strategic plans, business plans, processes, flowcharts, and procedures all designed to make sure we color inside the lines. That we reduce the variables and mitigate the unexpected.

Exactly.  Businesses have built processes to mitigate risk.  But these same processes mitigate humanity as well. They kill individuality.

Perhaps you’re calling me a knucklehead right now…I am….but that’s beside the point. Processes are OK. Processes are good for certain parts of a business. Just don’t kill individuality by processing it out of your employees.

The only real advantage organizations have today is their people. Technology and processes can be mimicked…people can’t.  If you hire the right people and let them loose to do what they do best, you can bring humanity back to your business.

Give your team some ability to wing it and you’ll see how much they’ll surprise you. They may even stick around after the recession is over if they feel valued and trusted enough….but that’s a post for another day.

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Anger, fear, depression and fatigue. These are the feelings of many employees today. And those emotions don’t get checked in at the door. A bad economy has many employees feeling stressed out and apathetic about their jobs, resulting in “employee disengagement.”

Employee disengagement is a fairly new business term; it used to be called employee commitment. Once considered one of those ‘touchy feely’ subjects that had many managers rolling their eyes. Today employee disengagement is silently costing US companies billions of dollars. Gallup recently estimated that employee disengagement costs US employers $300 billion every year. This statistic really validates common sense; it stands to reason that employees who are genuinely committed to their employers and jobs are more productive. Engaged or committed employees usually take fewer sick days and generate an average of 43% more revenue. This problem is often ignored because it is difficult to measure, something most managers like to do – can’t measure it can’t manage it right?  But the cost is real and of particularly concern at a time when companies need maximum productivity.

Ignoring the problem is usually bad strategy any time, but particularly when the stakes are so high. Today’s organizational leader has a unique opportunity to reverse this trend. Here are a few suggestions:

• Be aware of your emotions. What you do, say and, don’t say, communicates. What messages are you communicating? For the sake of the company, if not yourself, confide in friends and family, read books and be aware of the image you’re projecting. Saying and doing nothing also communicates, but probably not the message you’d like.
• Lead by Example: Demonstrate the importance of work-life balance. Employees are working extra hours out of fear or concern. Demonstrate the importance of work/family balance. Spend time with your family and let your employees know it’s okay to do the same.
• Be Aware of Your Breathing. Under stress we often take shallow breaths, which only heighten our anxiety. Taking deep breaths can help your focus and reduce stress. This is another of those little things that can make a huge difference.
• Exercise. The pressure to skip exercise during times like this is enormous. However exercise is a powerful stress reducer that will allow you to function at your best. You might also look into yoga or meditation.
• Insulate Yourself From Bad News. Don’t feel guilty about walking away from bad news. A person can only take so much doom and gloom before it impacts your attitude. Take time away from bad news to refresh, and remind others and yourself that this is temporary!
• Gratitude is King: In times like this, gratitude is often one of the first emotions to melt away; yet a heartfelt thank you is exactly what many employees need to hear. Make a conscious effort to recognize good work, and encourage positive behaviors. The dividends are huge and it doesn’t cost a cent.
• Prioritize & Focus: Risk managers have to do more with less, so regularly prioritize your work. Jettison busy work and let employees clearly know which projects get top priority, and which can get by with ‘good enough.’
• Candid Meetings. Set aside time with your employees for candid conversations about the current situation, and keep the informal discussions going as long as they’re productive. Unless you clearly state what is going on, people will ‘creatively’ fill in the gaps, and that can create a toxic environment. The only caveat is that you set the proper tone, which is one of solutions. It’s fine to discuss concerns but be aware of excessive complaints that serve no useful purpose.

And perhaps above all else, regularly remind everyone (including you) that this situation is temporary. Good times, and bad, never last forever. Things will get better!

Michael Sebastian has experience as an IT business analyst, project manager, team leader and Chief Information Officer (CIO) at various companies like Arthur Andersen, AT&T, County of San Diego, and TDIndustries.   He holds advanced degrees in business and information technology, is an adjunct professor at Touro University, and a member of Society for Information Management and the Association of IT Professionals.  Michael can be reached at MWSebastian@gmail.com.