We all want more expertise to help us to do things better, right?  What if you had a team of experts who knew your industry?  What if this team spent lots of time studying your business from the inside gaining knowledge about your culture and your greatest opportunities?  What if they could help you make drastic improvements in your company?  What if they not only helped you, but what if they worked from the inside to drive those improvements and stick around to make sure the improvements worked out?   Would that be valuable to you?

Such a team is not cheap.  In fact, this team is very expensive.  However, before you start worrying about whether you can afford them or not, you need to consider that the potential return on investment is phenomenal.  This team can really accelerate your company's performance.  Would you consider making a significant investment for such a team?

You already have...

This team of experts are your people.  They are your employees.  You have already made the investment, but haven't taken all of the steps that you can to realize the full return.

If I could wave a wand and help businesses make one major improvement, it would be to help businesses realize the talent they already possess within their walls.  Our "wand" is People-Centric Planning and it works.

Your team is waiting....

The new year is almost upon us and this is the time to invest in your business.  It's time to invest your time, your talents, and your treasure to ensure that 2012 brings you everything you deserve.

Galt Consulting is working to develop resources for businesses to create healthy organizations where leaders can live and work within their strengths and passions.  All you need to do is take the first step.  The first step is a small investment in your time on Friday, December 16th from 7:30-9:30AM at 425 Downtown in Springfield, MO.  We will be hosting a very special Strategy Mastermind Group that will highlight changes in the format of the group that will help participants to build healthier organizations. 

Participants will be building their own "Playbook" of critical systems that will help to ensure success... and you are invited.  We will have a hot breakfast along with Dancing Mule Coffee. 

RSVP at http://smmdec425.eventbrite.com/

It's time to invest in your business for 2012 and it starts this Friday!

It's hard to believe that this year is almost over.  We are only a couple of weeks from Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the New Year.  2012 is almost upon us. 

This is a great time to look back at the past year.  What things did you do well?   What areas need improvement?  Did you end up where you wanted to?

I think it is very important to take a minute to assess your situation every once in awhile.  This is not just an opportunity to identify areas where you can improve, it is also a chance to develop a little perspective on how far you have come as a business.  Change looks slow from the inside, but when you take a step back, you might be surprised how far you've come in the past year.

Schedule some time with your team to talk about the past year.  Get their feedback on how they think things went.  Collect information on the accomplishments of the last year.  This is a great first step to make sure 2012 is even better than 2011!

I have told the story in the past about losing my wallet several years ago when I lived in an apartment complex.  I had dropped it in the parking lot and someone found it... but they waited a full day to contact me.   After soul searching through the afternoon and evening and overnight, the finder decided to do the right thing and I finally got a call the next day.   We met in the parking lot and he proudly handed me the wallet.  "Go ahead and look through it... it's all there.", he said with the look of someone who had taken great pride in the act.  I told him that wasn't necessary and shook his hand.  I then tried to hand him a $20 bill....  I could see the man visible deflate.  The pride was gone in an instant and he looked dejected.  Only later did I understand... by offering him the money, I had turned a triumph in morality into a financial decision.  For you Maslow fans out there, I knocked him down the pyramid.

Don't pull the rug out from under your employees.  When your people do something really great, allow them the honor of doing it for the right reasons (because they love what they do).  It is tempting to show your appreciation by giving them something in return... in fact, this is often encouraged in management schools.  This treats people like machines instead of like people.

Maslow showed us that people have different layers of needs.  If you are hungry, you probably aren't going to be very open to learning new concepts or pursuing more fulfilling avenues.  This makes sense from a biological standpoint.  We are hardwired not to get so distracted on our creativity that we forget to eat.

Since food has become a lesser issue for most people than it was for our caveman descendants, a new basic need is money.  Many people have a job they would love to do, but they don't do it because it won't meet their monetary needs.  We are hardwired to think this way. 

It is also easy for us to get distracted. 

I know many stories of people who were working in their ideal job and get fooled into a job that is much worse for more money.  They generally regret the decision.  It seems obvious to take a different job that pays a lot more... but truthfully, it is far from obvious.  Our instincts work to make sure we are fed before we look to be fulfilled. 

So as an employer, be careful not to distract your employees.  People often ask me about compensation and reward structures and I always respond with the same advice... "Pay Quietly".  Make sure your people are neither too worried about not making enough money or too distracted by opportunities to make more.  Make sure they are focused on doing the right things and when they do the right things, let them know you appreciate it from the bottom of your heart, not your wallet.

A manager sees a problem and decides to solve it.   Isn't that their job?

No.

Solving a problem in your organization yields 2 different rewards.  The first reward is the solution to the problem.  This can be significant or almost unnoticeable.  The second reward is the opportunity to get people in the organization engaged by allowing them to solve the problem. This is almost always very significant because people love the opportunity to develop solutions when it aligns with their own strengths and the purpose of the organization.

Managers often rob their employees of this opportunity thinking that they are helping out.  Then they get so busy solving problems that they wonder why their people won't get in the game.  The truth is that their people aren't being allowed to get in the game. 

A client of mine had a significant issue with scheduling their monthly employees.  Anyone who has done this before knows the complexities involved, especially when you try to be flexible and accommodate the needs of the employees.  Each month, the manager would develop the schedule, and each month the employees would complain about it.  The manager worked harder and harder each month to develop and better method for designing the schedule, but the employees continued to complain.

Finally, I suggested that the manager let the employees have a crack at a solution.  Remembering that we never want to empower a team without real power, we "drew a box" for the employees working on the problem... in other words, we gave them rules to follow (ex: no one works more than 35 hours a week).  The employees met and discussed various options.  2 things resulted:

1) The employees developed an innovative 4 day work schedule that they really liked and fit the rules management had laid out.

2) The employees discovered how hard scheduling is and gave the manager some slack.  They were suddenly thinking more like owners than like workers.  They knew the challenges of scheduling and appreciated how hard the manager had worked to get it right. 

The point here is that the manager could have developed the same innovative schedule, but the employees would have resisted it and would have continued to complain.  The opportunity would have been lost to get real engagement and buy-in from the staff.

So the next time you see a problem in your organization, ask yourself if this is an opportunity to engage your people.  Sometimes you'll want to just go ahead and solve the problem, but taking a little extra time to get your people involved will yield great results down the road and result in less work!

I put on some music on Pandora, pull up a chair, and put my feet up.  It's time to settle down to a good book.  Sound like a nice weekend activity?  Wrong.  It's Monday morning and it's time for me to start "work". 

When I started the Leadership Book of the Month club with Randy Mayes almost 2 years ago, it seemed like one of those dream jobs where you can get paid for doing something you would do anyway.  Little did I know that I was wrong about that in a couple of ways...  in a couple of good ways.

First of all, although I have always been a reader, I have never been so focused on reading and more importantly, on absorbing the material.  Each month we read a different book on the general topic of Leadership (a very broad topic).  Then we summarize the content into 3 Key Concepts, which forces me to really think about the core value of the book.  We then focus on 3 Action Items or ways that the concepts in the book can be immediately applied.  This focus helps make the material "stick" in my mind.

The other unexpected benefit of this job is that I find myself regularly applying the things we read in my own work.  When we read EMyth - Revisited, it inspired us to create a team of people to handle many of the roles necesary in a successful business.  "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar" has influenced the way I sell my services.  I can't even tell you how many times I have come out of a meeting with a client saying "we need to have a Crucial Conversation".  These concepts are making a positive impact in my businesses.

So I thought I'd take a break from my reading and let you know that as busy as I am, I personally find great value in learning and applying the knowledge I learn.  I hope you consider learning to be an important part of your job too!

I have already introduced to you the idea the company with most talented people wins... and then rejected that notion.

It's a misconception that there are "good" and "bad" employees out there.  Those of you who have had employees for any length of time will likely immediately disagree with me.  You've had some employees come in looking like rock stars and turn out to be poisonous to your organization through a negative attitude or plain incompetence.  You've likely had others that come in quietly and become solid, reliable and maybe even critical to your organization.

The myth that is propagated in the world of HR is that these "good" or "bad" employees entered the workforce being good or bad.  Yet I frequently see "bad" employees jump to other companies and become "good"... and vice versa.  I must admit that in my own career, I have likely played on both sides of the average line.  So this means that what you do with an employee once they enter your company has a large impact on how they will turn out.  I think there are 3 things that put an employee on the path of good or bad...

1) Natural Strengths - Every person is hardwired with a set personality.  Some people are very imaginative.  They live in the future and can think abstractly.  Others live within their 5 senses.  If they can't see, feel, hear, taste, or smell something, it doesn't exist.  These examples are opposites of each other and each can be a strengths or weakness in a given job.  You probably don't want an overly imaginative accountant just as you can't expect someone with very little imagination to create a new process or product out of thin air.  Science shows us that it is very difficult to change your personality and that working against your natural strengths is a bad idea that will cause stress.

2) Baggage - I am selecting some powerful language here, but these are the traits that have evolved within a person that impacts how they make decisions.  A person who has been nurtured their entire lives and have been given opportunities that fall within their strengths will likely enter a new job with a very positive work ethic and a desire to succeed.  A person who has been beat down by their previous employers  may enter a job more guarded or even with a chip on their shoulder.  Other baggage that enters the picture includes a person's integrity, lifestyle, and even their education.  Baggage is not permanent, although many people like their baggage and find change difficult.  The key to shifting a person's baggage is to change their environment.  (Sounds like a good future article!)

3) Engagement- An employee comes in with their natural strengths and their baggage, but the real question is now what do you do with them to help them become a rock star with you.  This is the area where you have the most control.  This is also the area that is commonly ignored within many companies.  The key to getting an employee engaged within your company is to put them in an environment where they naturally motivated.  Fortunately, we know how to do that.  People are hardwired to become engaged when they work in an environment where they get to 1) utilize their strengths, 2) with some autonomy, 3) for a common purpose. 

Some employees are such a bad natural fit for a job that they can't be salvaged (can they be moved?).  Some employees come with so much baggage (or pick up baggage through negative experiences within your company) that they can't get past it and can't be salvaged.  In my experience, these 2 scenarios where natural strengths and/or baggage are so out of alignment that they can't be saved are rare.  I would say that fewer than 5% of employees fall within this category.  When someone does fall within this category, the best thing you can do for THEM is to let them move on to their next position that aligns better with who they are.  As a friend of mine says.... promote them to their next job.

This means that for the vast majority of your people, all you need to do is find ways to help them utilize their strengths.  Give them some autonomy within their jobs.  Let them create some space within your organization where they can hit the ball out of the park regularly.  Work with them to define your company mission and vision and then refer back to that mission regularly as you work together. 

The result of this approach is nothing less than a renaissance of talent within your organization... coming from your own people.  In other words, the winning strategy isn't to find talent, but to cultivate it.

Knowledge is often based on a series of premises all stacked upon each other.  The science that took man to the moon started with the fundamental laws of motion.  Every once and awhile mankind's understanding of things gets askew because knowledge is built on shaky ground.  This occurred in the world of astronomy with the premise that the earth was the center of the universe.  This occurred in the world of navigation when it was assumed that the world was flat.

This week, I think I found a premise upon which a lot of poor knowledge has been built.  This time it is in the field of human resources and how companies are successful. 

I was reading an article sent to me by a friend of mine entitled "Why People Hate HR".  The opening line of the article was the premise that "Everyone knows that the company with the most talent wins."  I was barely able to continue reading.  It hit me like a brick.  This is truly the basis for modern Human Resource philosophy... and I believe it is fundamentally WRONG.

The premise that companies with very talented people win is backwards.  The truth is that winning companies are good at utilizing the talents inherent in their people. 

In my career, I've had the opportunity to work with world-class corporations like 3M and ADM.  3M in particular is well known in engineering circles as one of the best employers.  They get their pick of the litter so to speak regarding graduating engineers.  The attract the "best and the brightest".  Yet, in my experience within the company, and in my experiences with many other companies large and small, I don't see a difference in the quality of employees.  There really isn't more talent within a world-class organization than there is in a small organization. 

Great companies only LOOK like they have more talent because they are better at identifying the natural skills of their employees and putting them to use within the company.

My next few blog articles will aim at supporting this theory of what makes companies successful.  I hope you are open to consequences of this new way of thinking about HR and successful companies!

I often talk about motivation of an individual person, but what about the motivation of a team or organization?  What makes a team successful and well motivated? 

Teams are made up of people and it is very well understood how people are motivated.  People are hardwired to be motivated when they are have the autonomy to utilize their strengths toward a common purpose.  These 3 components, strengths, autonomy, and purpose, are the key to understanding how a team becomes well motivated.

If you team seems to be down or if driving them to action is a battle, it is time to go back to basics.  First of all, identify the strengths of the individuals.  This can be done via a variety of ways, including utilizing personality assessments.  Once the strengths have been identified, it is time to define the purpose of your organization.  What are you working for?  What does winning looking like?

Once everyone understands their strengths and the purpose of the organization, all that is left to motivate the team is to close the gap.  In other words, empower your people to use their strengths to realize your organizational purpose.  It really is that simple.  The details are easily worked out by your people IF you set them up with a system for having the critical discussions on what to work on and if you prioritize the things they are working on. 

This is why People-Centric Planning produces such powerful results.  It is a system for designed for how people work.  It allows them to close the gap between their strengths and the organizations purpose.  This is why one of our PCP clients achieved a 50% increase in profits.  This is why another PCP client went from 4-5% sales growth to hitting their sales target for the year in month 6.  This is why yet another PCP client saw their attendance averages from their students go from 50% to >90% in just a few months. 

People create dramatic results when they are put in the right place with the right system.  It can work for you!