The Winning Manager eNewsletter April-May 2011

THE WINNING MANAGER

Putting People First

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Editor: Dr. Wolf J. Rinke
Publisher: Wolf Rinke Associates, Inc.
(c) 2011 Wolf J. Rinke
Vol. 14 No. 2, April-May 2011
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Welcome to 14 years of helping managers like YOU achieve
dramatic improvements in performance, productivity and profitability.

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IN THIS ISSUE
1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
2. HOW TO FIX A DYSFUNCTIONAL TEAM
3. HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS--PART I
4. HOW TO FAST TRACK YOUR CAREER
5. HUMOR BREAK
6. ABOUT THE EDITOR
7. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

REALITY CHECK
"From an employee standpoint, a great place to work is one in which you trust the people you work for, take pride in what you do, and enjoy the people you are working with."
-Robert Levering

1. NEWS YOU CAN USE
TOO MUCH WORK CAN KILL YOU
A new study has found that office workers in England significantly increased their chances of having a heart attack by working more hours than their peers.
The study, conducted by researchers at University College London, found that employees who regularly worked 11-hour days or longer were 67 percent more likely to develop heart disease than those who worked seven- or eight-hour days.
ACTION STEP
Quit rewarding the behaviors you don't want. Instead improve your productivity and effectiveness by not oiling the "squeaky wheels." (See paragraph #3 and/or read "Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness," available at http://www.wolfrinke.com/squeakywheel.html)
Source: M. Kivimaki, et al. "Using Additional Information on Working Hours to Predict Coronary Heart Disease, A Cohort Study," Annals of Internal Med, 2011 vol. 154 no. 7, PP. 457-463. http://www.annals.org/content/154/7/457.short?cited-by=yes&legid=annintmed;154/7/457

2. HOW TO FIX A DYSFUNCTIONAL TEAM
Lack of engagement reducing performance and productivity?
Contact me. In over 30 years of consulting I have developed a unique and fail-safe conflict resolution process that in one day will get your leadership or other team back in working order. Differences will have been worked out and the team will walk away with written commitments that will be used by team members to hold each other accountable. As a result of this intervention, participants buy into a new reality which enables them to take team performance to the next level.
For details go to http://wolfrinke.com/conflict.htm or contact us at 800-828-9653 (USA) or 410-531-9280.
Two high value team members unable to work together? I can help. For details go to http://wolfrinke.com/conflict2.htm.

3. HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS--PART I
If you are a manager, leader or parent the fastest way to improve your productivity and effectiveness is to quit oiling the "squeaky wheels." Here is what I mean:
CEO Janice Maloney was at the end of her wits. Her company, consisting of nine offices in the Baltimore-Washington area, I'll call it the Can-Do-Mortgage Co (CDM) was falling apart. Sales were down, and that was during the low-interest go-go years when all of her competitors were not just thriving, they were going through the roof. Employee morale was shot. Her VPs were outright depressed. They seemed to be spending more time blaming and avoiding each other than coming up with innovative ideas to solve problems and increase sales. Meetings with her VPs, the few she still had, were so negative, and downright antagonistic that Janice avoided them like a plague. Yet day after day her calendar was full, responding to requests to meet with employees all the way from VPs to front-line team members. Generally, all of the meetings seemed to have a common theme. People were blaming, whining, and complaining about each other. What So-and-So did and didn't do. When she did visit with branches-something she knew she had to do, even though she hated it like a passion-people continued the common refrain of blaming, protecting their turf, and generally expressing a sense of helplessness best expressed by Tom a veteran team member: "This company sucks, everyone bitches about each other and no one does anything about it!"

Having come to the end of the road Janice engaged a consultant--alright so it was I--to find out what was going on. After completing an in-depth organizational assessment it became very clear to me that Janice had committed a number of leadership follies. One of the biggest, she had been paying a disproportionate amount of her available time to the troublemakers, the whiners, and the blamers. In other words she had developed the habit of oiling the "squeaky wheels."

When I went over my findings with Janice she protested that she had done exactly what she had learned in a leadership program that had advocated the importance of practicing Management by Walking Around. "This professor," Janice said, "started his program by asking everyone: 'What business are you in?'" He had made it around the room and executives were saying such things as: "I'm in the real estate business; the banking business, the automobile business and so on." "When he got to me, and I was pretty much the last person," Janice said: I answered: "I'm in the mortgage business." At just that time he got really excited and admonished all of us in no uncertain terms: "All of you have it wrong! You are all in the people business." Because the minute you assumed management or leadership responsibilities you gave up being in the mortgage business and chose to be in the people business. Because the way you achieve results is not by what you do, but rather by what your people do. And since your people are responsible for 85 percent of your success, it stands to reason that you must spend more time with your people." "And," Janice continued, "ever since then I've been doing just that, spending more time with my people. Visiting branches, establishing an open door policy, making myself available to listen to employees in small group meetings. I even set up a 'have breakfast with the boss session' on a weekly basis. And ever since I've been doing that," Janice continued, "all I've been hearing is whining, blaming and complaining." When I asked Janice what she did with the information she said: "I let people vent, listen very actively and try to be empathetic. And sometimes I talk to the other party to attempt to get the facts. And that is pretty much it," she said.

At this point I asked Janice to analyze the consequences of her own behavior. When she got stuck, I asked her what the following truism meant to her: "What you reward is what you get." "You mean to tell me it is all my fault?" she said. "Well," I responded, "not all, but quite a big chunk of it. In other words you have been 'rewarding' people for doing exactly the things you don't want: whining, blaming and complaining. And the people who have been taking advantage of that," I continued, "are the people who have lots to whine, blame and complain about." I then asked her, "How much time have you been spending with your top performers. You know your high performing VPs, your top sales people, and your 'water walkers.'" Janice looked at me startled. "Actually," she said, "very little. They are my good people-they don't have time to whine, blame and complain. In fact," Janice said, "ever since I've been listening to the whiners they've been telling me how overworked and underpaid they are. And so I have been transferring more and more responsibilities to my top performers." (A strategy which had truly backfired since more and more of her top performers had left the company.)

"I get it," Janice finally exclaimed somewhat excitedly. "I have been rewarding my troublemakers by giving them a lot of my valuable time. Not only that, I did not hold them accountable, and so they just saw me as a way to unload their troubles, complain about their co-workers and get further rewarded by having more and more work taken away from them."

"Right on," I said. "But what else did you do? What did you do with your top performers?" "I ignored them," said Janice." Actually, you did much worse than that," was my response, "you 'punished' them. First by shifting more responsibilities and work to them. And second, by ignoring them. The professor's advice was really good," I said, "provided you spend more time with the people who make you look great, and spend less time with the trouble makers--the squeaky wheels."

Time for a reality check

Now don't sit there all smug--thinking that you never do anything like that. Let's find out if you do. Quick grab your calendar, may it be electronic or hard copy. Now figure out what proportion of your time you spent with troublemakers and slackers during the past four weeks. If you spent more than 5% of your time with troublemakers, you are undermining your own effectiveness. If you want your team members to be positive, trusting, turned on, and tuned in, then you must spend the majority of your time with the people who behave that way, and help you succeed faster. What about the troublemakers--the squeaky wheels? Glad you asked, because I love to share a sure-fire smart step with you that will enable you to address this more effectively than ever before. Here it is:
Place the strengths and weaknesses of questionable team members on a balance beam scale. If the weaknesses consistently outweigh the strengths and any type of assistance such as training and coaching seem to have made no measurable difference, it's time to take other actions. First reassign the squeaky wheels (SWs) to an area that could potentially enable SWs to build on their strengths. (Please note, I'm not telling you to re-assign them just to get them out of your hair-that's just another way to reinforce the behavior you don't want! (Think about it, if I screw up long enough I get sent to a cushy job where no one keeps an eye on me. What a deal!!!) If that does not work, or there is no other place to assign SWs, it's time to take drastic actions--that's right, fire them. Better yet send the SWs to the competition! (If you are not smiling, read that again.) But whatever you do, expend the least amount of resources, energy and your valuable time on your SWs.
In the next issue of this eNewsletter I will share 11 SMART STEPS you can take to make sure you don't oil the SWs.
SOURCE: Based in part on my book "Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness," McGraw-Hill, available at http://www.wolfrinke.com/squeakywheel.html or if you prefer to earn 20 CPEUs order the book with study guide at http://www.wolfrinke.com/CEFILES/cemgt.html#C213.

4. HOW TO FAST TRACK YOUR CAREER
The fastest way to get to the next level is to learn from people who have been where you want to go. I've partnered with AthenaOnline.com to bring you 54 high-impact video mini-lessons that will help you fast track your career. Topics range from "Advancing your Career" to "Leadership in Tough Times." Each video mini-lesson is about 2 -7 minutes long. To get started go to http://wolfrinke.com/mgttraining.html. While there you can also take advantage of my on-line management and personal development training programs at http://wolfrinke.ontimetraining.com.

5. HUMOR BREAK
Since we just talked about firing someone, here are several phrases you may wish to use next time you have to engage in this unpleasant part of your job. And yes, this too is from my Squeaky Wheel book:
" I don't know what we'll do without you, but we are going to try!
" It's not that you aren't a responsible worker. In fact, you've been responsible for more disasters than anyone else in this company.
" I've always told you that it is not a good idea to mix business with pleasure. Today I'm going to break that rule. You're fired!
" Tell me-how long have you been with this company, not counting tomorrow?
" I've got good news for you. You won't have to worry about being late for work again.

6. ABOUT THE EDITOR
Dr. Wolf J. Rinke, CSP is a highly effective management consultant and executive coach who specializes in building peak performance organizations, teams and individuals. He is the author of 14 books including "Don't Oil the Squeaky Wheel and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness" and "Winning Management: 6 Fail-Safe Strategies for Building High-Performance Organizations" available at www.WolfRinke.com. Wolf is also an internationally recognized management/leadership keynote speaker and seminar leader who delivers customized presentations that combine story telling, humor and motivation with specific "how to" action strategies that participants can apply immediately to improve their management and leadership effectiveness. Preview a live demo at www.WolfRinke.com. To take advantage of Dr. Rinke's services contact us at 800-828-9653 or WolfRinke@aol.com

7. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION
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