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How to Be a Leader, Not Just a Manager, Even Working from Home.

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How to Be a Leader, Not Just a Manager, Even Working from Home.

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Nothing in the business is as valuable as the people, and nobody can help you more than an empowered team of like-minded people. Over the past twenty years, we had a few turning points for our company when we had to make significant changes to catch up with the world around us. Every time, our team helped us, supported us, and collaborated with us to make these changes happen. I could not even imagine doing all that on my own.

This is how I learned that leaders lead by inspiring others, while managers focus on what needs to get done on a daily basis. Both are needed, but only one will truly inspire your team to move through even the hardest times.

In the beginning, a lot of our team had to work nights and long weekends, just like any other start-up. Our management team always stayed with the teams even if we could not help them professionally. I always made sure that the team had something to eat (as simple as getting them a take-out or ordering a pizza) or could get home if buses were no longer going (driving them myself or getting them a cab). We lead by example, not just by telling our team what to do.

As a result, in 2008, our CTO and a few trusted employees opened our first US-based office. These people left the comfort of their established lives at home, they encountered a profoundly changing environment around them, and they practically had to travel halfway around the globe. However, they did it for us and with us. Some of our employees practically became part of the family.

How did this all happen? Through connectedness. When it comes to connectedness, it is essential that people feel that they are still working together even when no one is around.

Here are 5 tips to lead your team to a place that feels truly connected:

1. Make sure that everyone understands the common goal. Think of that as providing your employees with a North Star to guide them. It is the only way to align their efforts and your company’s vision and goals.

2. Make sure that they have enough means to communicate effectively. During COVID-19, we introduced multiple tools for our employees: forums, corporate discord servers, group chats on Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, etc. There are hundreds of products available on the market right now, so choose what works best for your business.

3. Ensure that your teams have at least one daily meeting where they share what they did yesterday to make you all closer to the goal; what is their commitment for today, and are there any obstacles on their way right now?

4. Visualize! Visualization is one of the most effective tools to keep everyone connected—Burndown charts, shared documents with progress, kanban boards, etc. There are plenty of instruments for visualization that allows everyone to keep track of what is going on. And that helps them to feel connected to the company and each other.

5. Make sure that information is being spread around. When people are working from home, you lose osmotic communication. So find ways to connect them. We introduced things like a monthly newsletter and town hall meetings. We share all the news and everything we think is essential in a newsletter. And then we assemble everyone at a general meeting, where anyone can ask management anything. Or share their information with everyone if they want to. That helps a lot.

Above all, ask questions and listen to your team. As leaders, you’re there to motivate, so listen hard and often.

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Gehtsoft USA LLC is a software development and agile consulting company from Raleigh, NC. For more than 20 years, we help businesses to develop and support their products, resolve their IT problems, and do the Agile transformation of their business processes. Our technical experts, certified technical trainers, professional scrum masters, and product owners have a unique skill set and experience.

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3 Tips For Leaders To Steady The Ship When Employees Lose Their Balance

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Company leaders and managers have a big responsibility in overseeing employees. But they can’t see everything, and sometimes there’s more going on in a worker’s life than meets the eye.

Employee disengagement or burnout isn’t always apparent, and some employers may be in for a surprise if and when the COVID-19 pandemic winds down. One study shows that 57% of U.S. employees say they are burnt out, with many likely to leave their job after the pandemic is over. And a Gallup survey reveals that the percentage of engaged employees – those enthusiastic about their workplace – is under 40%.

What the numbers mean is leaders need to learn how to spot and help out-of-balance employees, says Mark McClain, CEO and co-founder of SailPoint and the ForbesBooks author of Joy and Success at Work: Building Organizations that Don’t Suck (the Life Out of People).

“One challenge leaders and managers routinely face is to recognize when the people around them – peers, colleagues, but especially subordinates – are out of balance or are heading in the wrong direction,” McClain says. “Beyond the potential impacts on their personal lives, you want to try to head off the negative effects such imbalances can have on their roles in the company.

“This may seem imposing, but you have to pay attention as a leader. No employee can run at a crazy pace forever, yet some companies let people run themselves right out of the building. Other workers who are disengaged can be harder to spot initially.”

McClain offers these tips for leaders to spot, address, and help out-of-balance employees:

Make work-life balance part of your culture. “You can expect much from your employees, but you don’t want them to fry themselves,” McClain says. “You don’t want them to harm their health, their family, or their relationships. If you have good people, ideally you’ll grow them and help them work toward their vision of a healthy work-life balance. The sooner leaders confront imbalance in the equation, the more meat they put on the bones of company culture.”

Screen out for potential burnout. Some companies hire knowing they will overwork people or take advantage of their ambition to work extra hard and advance up the corporate ladder, McClain says. But that approach can lead to burnout and departure, which costs companies in terms of replacing them. “There are always going to be ultra-motivated climbers,” McClain says. “But exploiting them is beyond bad. Those who can’t stand it get out, and the HR departments plan on the fact that every four or five years, only 15 to 20 percent of those hires will be able to move up the ranks. These types of organizations instead should invest in pre-hiring assessments to screen out those who value a life outside of work. Doing so would save the companies money and turnover.”

Be a counselor. It’s not an invasion of privacy for a manager to show concern in an employee, McClain says, and probing is necessary to help the employee. “Like it or not,” he says, “being a counselor of sorts is part of managing people. Getting to know them as people, and their work styles, is what makes spotting imbalances possible. It’s why good managers pull employees aside and say, ‘Hey, you’re here, but you’re not engaged. Is something going on?’ Managers who take that step are able to uncover issues and steer their employees to the help they need.”

“Many companies talk about caring for workers until they’re blue in the face,” McClain says. “But when you put in place the pieces to help them succeed, leaders walk the walk – and everybody wins.”

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Mark McClain (www.markmcclain.me), ForbesBooks author of Joy and Success at Work: Building Organizations that Don’t Suck (the Life Out of People), is CEO of SailPoint, a leader in the enterprise identity management market. McClain has led the company from its beginnings in 2005, when it started as a three-person team, to today where SailPoint has grown to more than 1,200 employees who serve customers in 35 countries.

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Critical Skills for the Future Workforce

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If you conduct a search for critical future workforce skills, words like “resilience,” “adaptability,” and “critical thinking” will undoubtedly appear pretty high in your results. Not so surprising, given the year we’ve collectively just endured and the level of uncertainty that doesn’t appear to be abating any time too soon.

Advancements in technology, robotics, and automation were quickly driving us toward significant workforce change and a need to upskill or reskill teams even before the global pandemic put more pressure on the gas. Now, many of those skills require nuanced approaches as we embrace more remote work, distributed teams and virtual connectivity – and terms like “liquid” are being used to describe the blurred lines in what the workforce of the future will look like.

The good news is that global mobility professionals are well equipped with the right blend of skills and knowledge to meet the changing needs. Because mobility sits at the intersection of talent acquisition and retention, compensation and benefits, tax and immigration, payroll and other HR functional areas, the role has become increasingly critical to business success.

Resilience

As 2020 clearly demonstrated, mobility requires agile practitioners who can guide the company as the workforce environment rapidly evolves, helping organizations respond immediately to emergencies, recover, and then reimagine business to stay relevant. Corporations have met the challenges imposed by COVID-19 in a variety of ways, encouraging flexibility when it comes to the employee base. We’re seeing far more attention paid to the personal situation of individual employees and a greater willingness to allow different approaches to achieving harmony between work and personal life.

While many relocations or cross-border assignments may still be on hold in the current environment, the surge in remote work has opened up talent pools, making it possible for companies to move jobs to people. GM teams have the big-picture view about what talent and skills are available, in what locations, and where there may be gaps that can be creatively filled.

Initiative

Mobility houses a level of expertise in many crucial areas, including tax and immigration, and can act as a hub of information on these subjects. This helps streamline processes and provides the organization with the tools and insights to make smart decisions with respect to employee work location requests as well as meeting company plans for growth. Knowing the actual work location of every employee adds complexity to the job while highlighting the need for full awareness of any potential consequences.

As one GM professional put it – many functions, including some of those in broader HR, operate in the more traditional, “black and white” space. Mobility professionals are problem-solvers and critical thinkers who are comfortable working in some of what might be called “gray” areas to find solutions. Greater levels of cross-collaboration and learning between mobility and other core functions of the business, including talent acquisition and reward, will help position organizations to be ready to meet future challenges and staffing needs.

DEI Support

Another benefit of a broader talent pool is that mobility can be a powerful tool to help foster greater diversity, equity and inclusion. We’re beginning to see a heightened focus on holistic skill sets as opposed to just one’s previous job positions or titles, which can open the door to building a more diverse global workforce. Mobility can be instrumental in executing a leadership talent plan that ensures cultural awareness is a top priority, too. International assignments can be strong talent acquisition and development tools, and help pave the way to success in a global marketplace.

Technical Expertise and Analysis

Mobility uses technology in multiple ways, including tracking and reporting on global employees, helping to manage program spend and finding ways to reduce costs, and speeding communication throughout the organization. As the tools and skillsets continue to evolve, predictive analytics will continue to play an important role in helping the business understand which individuals might be best suited for assignment success and why.

Mobility uses data to present a compelling story. Gaining greater comfort levels with statistics is critical as a more evidenced-based approach is becoming increasingly important when making business decisions and demonstrating the ROI of an assignment. While understanding the numbers is vital, integrating the human element to the discussion is a significant advantage mobility can provide to conversations about policy, process or procedures. Consistent administration and delivery of HR benefits to the employee population – including mobility – has been a guiding principle for corporations, and although the pandemic has altered this approach to some extent, it remains important to analyze decisions in terms of setting precedence while maintaining equity.

The critical skills needed for the future blend the technical, people, empathy and communication arenas, and talent mobility professionals bring a healthy mix of all of them to the table.

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Leah Johnson is Sterling Lexicon’s Director, Client Solutions, and has worked in the global mobility industry for more than 20 years. She has held management positions in business development, operations, account management, and consulting, and had the opportunity to live and work in Tokyo and Hong Kong for six years. She initiated destination services in Hong Kong for a relocation management company and directed global mobility for Goldman Sachs in the APAC region. She graduated from Colgate University, earned an MBA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and maintains a Senior Certified Professional (SCP) certification from SHRM.

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6 Facets Of Human Needs That Drive Business Success.

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In good economic times and bad, some businesses find a path to success while others are forced to board up their windows and doors.

What’s the difference between those that soar and those that flounder?

Ultimately, business success comes down to how well the people who work for that business perform, says Jeanet Wade, the ForbesBooks author of The Human Team: So, You Created a Team But People Showed Up! (www.thehumanteambook.com).

And employee performance, good or bad, usually can be traced to leadership – whether company leaders want to admit it or not, she says.

“When teams break down and employees disengage, leaders and managers typically don’t question their own strategies,” says Wade, founder of the consulting firm the Business Alchemist.

“Instead, they blame the people assigned to carry out those strategies. If they are feeling charitable, leaders and managers say those people were bad fits. If they aren’t feeling charitable, they call them whiners, complainers, or failures.

“But in about 80 percent of cases, I believe it’s not that the people are the wrong people for the job, but rather that leaders aren’t prepared to handle what I call ‘human moments’ because they fail to understand and address these natural human needs.”

Wade says there are six facets of human needs that leaders must take into account in order to expect teams to perform at the highest level possible.

Those facets are:

Clarity. In too many workplaces, Wade says, people are unsure what’s expected of them or how their jobs fit into a larger plan. “People on teams sorely need clarity, or they’ll lapse into confusion,” she says. “Specifically, team members must understand the purpose of the team itself, their role within it, the team’s outcome goals, and how their team fits within the larger organization.” 

Connection. Human connection is indispensable to healthy teams and is premised on connection to common core values, physical place, and a larger company culture, Wade says. The trick is in creating those connections. Wade suggests one way is an exercise she refers to as 3-2-1. People in a group are asked to share three events they’ve experienced, how they responded to them, and how those events impacted them. Then they share two childhood stories or coming-of-age adolescent memories. Finally, they share one of their biggest fears.

Contribution. Wade says teams within an organization should never exceed 15 people, and leadership teams should be even smaller. The reason: The larger the team, the less inclined individuals are to contribute. “One of the best things we can do as leaders is to acknowledge the human psyche’s need to contribute and to reward it,” she says.

Challenge. Leaders and managers often are hesitant to challenge others, Wade says, not wanting to push people or make them uncomfortable. “But when we withhold opportunities that challenge people, we ultimately deny others an important human need,” she says. “The trick is to make sure challenges are productive. They should be difficult, but not so overwhelming that people withdraw if they fall short.”

Consideration. Everyone feels the need to be recognized and valued, Wade says. Unfortunately, leaders and managers often spend so much time on toxic or poor-performing people that they neglect everyone else. “You can’t obtain and retain top talent if you don’t show them respect and consideration at every stage of the journey,” Wade says. “They must be recognized for good work, thought about for promotions, and reminded of how critical they are to the organization.”

Confidence. Confidence is fragile and can be easily shaken, Wade says, which is why it’s critical for leaders instill confidence in their teams. People fearful about failing become hesitant, avoid difficult challenges, and are less productive. “But if you have confidence, even the hard stuff doesn’t seem so daunting,” Wade says. “When leaders, managers, or facilitators help build confidence in their teams, they can inspire others to achieve audacious, improbable goals.”

“When all six of these facets are fully accounted for in teams,” Wade says, “people are able to gel with one another, operate harmoniously, engage in healthy disagreement, and achieve important objectives.”

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Jeanet Wade, the ForbesBooks author of The Human Team: So, You Created a Team But People Showed Up! (www.thehumanteambook.com), is a Certified EOS® Implementer and the founder of the consulting firm the Business Alchemist. As a facilitator, teacher and coach, Wade helps companies implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a set of business concepts, principles and tools that help business owners and executives run more successful businesses.

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Keep Covid Stress out of Your Customer Communication

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Pandemic stress-related toxic communication can creep into your customer communication. Don’t let it! Set the example, nip toxicity in the bud, protect your team from incoming, build in rest, celebrate the good stuff, and codify that positive voice in your company style guide.

As we think about healthy communication at work, we’re reminded of the saga of Away. The direct-to-consumer luggage company experienced such massive growth that it couldn’t keep up with demand. As customer requests piled up despite the customer service team’s 16-hour workdays and canceled vacations, executives blamed the team for not keeping up. They reportedly became so toxic that the team virtually imploded, service quality plummeted, and the story unfolded in an unflattering media exposé.

This moment finds us with a different kind of anxiety. Pandemic-related stress is at an all-time high, and people are bringing it to work. It can show up in ugly ways, too. In a survey we conducted of 1,000 professionals, 38 percent said they experienced toxic workplace communication since shelter-in-place began. Yikes!

What about when that nastiness starts to seep into your interactions with customers? Even if underneath the surface, unhealthy customer communication can damage your satisfaction scores…and your brand.

Here are 12 steps you can take to help your customer success team stay positive and put all kinds of good vibes out into the universe.

Acknowledge the stress

Your customer success team are people, too. They’re dealing with the strain of a deadly pandemic, economic anxiety, and lots of “togetherness” with family members at home. Even if you can’t fix these problems, simply acknowledging the stress they undergo is a long way for their state of mind.

Care for your employees

Maybe it’s quaran-tinis every other Friday. Or a well-timed “wellness day.” Or a cupcake delivery to employees’ homes. Whatever your flavor, invest in ways to remind your employees that you value and care about them. In turn, they’ll value and care for your customers.

Be ground zero

As a leader in your company, you set the tone. Consider yourself “ground zero” for the kind of communication you want your customers to experience. The empathetic, upbeat, and kind words and messages you model to employees are the same your employees will use with customers.

Know what it sounds like

Know what unhealthy and toxic communication sounds like. Unhealthy communication includes words and turns of phrases that are exclusive, condescending, or passive-aggressive, and toxic communication.

Tool for it

There’s a raft of new tools out there to measure customer interactions, including Gong, Chorus, and Writer. Outfit your teams so you can address unhealthy or toxic communication. But give them a heads up so they know you’re doing it, and approach the oversight with sensitivity.

Nip it in the bud

As soon as you see or hear ugliness, call it out immediately. Approach the person in private. They may not be aware of their behavior, so be specific and help them understand the customer impact. Later, anonymize the example and discuss the topic more broadly with the team.

Enforce the rules

If the toxic communication persists, take action. Taking a hard-line right away sends a clear message and ensures compliance from the rest of the team. Let them know that, even if they are on the receiving end of ugliness, it needs to stop with them – no exceptions.

Protect them from toxicity

Any customer-facing team knows what incoming feels like. Equip yours with the appropriate responses and escalation processes to remove themselves from an abusive situation. They need to feel empowered to set boundaries and know that you have their back.

Create a pressure valve

Acknowledge the absurd and lower the team’s stress. Bill Gates describes a “Mail Merge couch” from Microsoft’s early days. Team members sat (or laid) on it while taking support calls related to the product’s frustratingly complex feature. The inside joke helped them blow off steam and laugh at their situation.

Let them rest

As we learned from Away’s cautionary tale, the stress of being on the front lines is exacerbated by lack of sleep. Prepare and plan for people to get the rest and downtime they need, even if you have to bring in temporary reinforcements or other teams need to chip in.

Recognize key moments

Just as you suss out the nastiness, find and recognize the good stuff. Amplify and celebrate examples – large and small – of the behavior you want. Especially call out positive responses in the face of negativity. Create a “good karma” award and make a big hoopla out of it.

Make it stick

Make healthy communication a thing in your company culture. Get on the same page with the other executives about the voice, tone, and behavior norms you want to promote internally and externally. Then, make them stick by codifying them in your employee guidelines and brand style guide.

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May Habib is co-founder and CEO of Writer, an AI writing assistant for teams. 

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How Your Leadership Style Affects Company Culture

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When you think of company culture, many things may come to mind. Of course, there are the flashier aspects of company culture (think in-office happy hours or team bowling outings). There are also more subtle elements, such as how workspaces are arranged. While these are undoubtedly parts of a company’s culture, they are not what is at the core.

The culture of a business starts at the very top. The leadership styles of executives set the tone for a company’s internal culture. Leadership affects all aspects of business, including perceived values and goals, communication norms, and employee engagement.

Aspects of company culture are most effective when they solve a problem that employees care about. When improving your company’s culture, think about the issues that affect your staff and the solutions that could be implemented to resolve them. Then, sell this idea to your team. If they truly believe in the “why” that backs up an idea, they are more likely to get behind it.

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Joel Patterson (www.JoelPatterson.com) is the founder of The Vested Group, a business technology consulting firm in the Dallas, Texas area, and ForbesBooks author of The Big Commitment: Solving The Mysteries Of Your ERP Implementation. He has worked in the consulting field for over 20 years. Patterson began his consulting career at Arthur Andersen and Capgemini before helping found Lucidity Consulting Group in 2001. For 15 years he specialized in implementing Tier One ERP, software systems designed to service the needs of large, complex corporations. In 2011, Patterson founded The Vested Group, which focuses on bringing comprehensive cloud-based business management solutions to start-ups and well-established businesses alike. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baylor University.

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10 Tips For Navigating Business Growth

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When running a business, you are constantly striving to promote growth. Once things start to take off, there’s often a whole new set of challenges that must be addressed. Here are a few tips I’ve found useful when navigating a period of business growth and expansion.

1. Don’t Lose Sight of Your “Why.” Seeing your business grow and thrive is exciting, but it’s important to stay focused on your mission. A rapidly growing business can sometimes take off in a direction that doesn’t align with your core mission. Periods of growth are an opportune time to reflect and realign with your “why.”

2. Learn to Delegate. As an entrepreneur, you often begin by handling almost every aspect of your business. As your business expands, you must delegate to manage your workload. If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by your organization’s growth recently, look over your responsibilities. Are there aspects of your workload that could be handled efficiently by someone else?

3. Hire with Culture in Mind. Retention of quality talent is essential to the long-term success of a business. When searching for new hires, consider how candidates will do in your company’s unique culture. Of course, credentials are important, but the candidate that looks the best on paper is not always the best fit.

4. Listen to Your Customers. Your customers are the life force of your company. Never lose touch with what your customers want out of your brand. Especially in periods of rapid growth, be sure to focus on customer experience. You can show customers you care through meaningful communications and requests for feedback.

5. Encourage Employee Feedback. Speaking of feedback, it’s vital to listen to your employees as well. During periods of growth, lots of things shift and employees are invaluable sources of information. Their insight into what needs revision or improvement can help your business grow with grace and agility.

6. Analyze Your Inefficiencies. In addition to listening to employee feedback regarding ways to improve your business, seek out inefficiencies in the processes you currently have in place. Is there a manual task that could be automated? Are employees spending too much time on tasks that don’t benefit overall productivity?

7. Reduce Regulation Risk. A growing business has to be on the lookout for new government and industry regulations! Growth can take many different forms﹘ expanding your markets, utilizing new sales channels, teaming up with a distributor, rolling out new products, etc. Big changes like these might mean dealing with new or different regulations. Be sure to do your homework to ensure that you’re in compliance.

8. Integrate Your Processes. When a business is just starting out, the decision is often made to go with the most economical software solutions. This can mean patching many different systems together, which can be especially problematic during high-growth periods. Disparate systems will struggle to keep up with the demand, causing internal issues as well as a diminished customer experience. Switching to a comprehensive business management system allows all departments to communicate effectively and efficiently. It also allows you to access all the data you need at any time, rather than having to gather it from multiple programs.

9. Make Scalability a Priority. When thinking about how to navigate growth in your business, always consider the scalability of your decisions. Demand fluctuates over time, and (if things keep going this way) you will need to account for more growth in the future. Make sure the solutions you implement now can support growth in the future as well.

10. Bring in an Expert. All of this may sound daunting to tackle on your own, but the good news is you don’t have to! Partner with someone that can help grow your business and find software solutions that make business processes more fluent and efficient.

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Joel Patterson (www.JoelPatterson.com) is the founder of The Vested Group, a business technology consulting firm in the Dallas, Texas, area, and ForbesBooks author of The Big Commitment: Solving The Mysteries Of Your ERP Implementation. He has worked in the consulting field for over 20 years. Patterson began his consulting career at Arthur Andersen and Capgemini before helping found Lucidity Consulting Group in 2001. For 15 years he specialized in implementing Tier One ERP, software systems designed to service the needs of large, complex corporations. In 2011, Patterson founded The Vested Group, which focuses on bringing comprehensive cloud-based business management solutions to start-ups and well-established businesses alike. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baylor University.

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The WFH Vs. Return-To-Office Debate: What Employees, Bosses Should Consider

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Many Americans have been working from home full-time for a year now since COVID-19 hit the U.S. And many prefer that arrangement to a traditional office. In a survey, 65% said they want to work remotely full-time after the pandemic.

That could pose a problem for them and their employers.

Given the availability of vaccines, many companies are planning to ask their employees to return to the office. But a sizable number of workers might balk – or even walk. In a survey by LiveCareer, 29% of working professionals said they would quit if they couldn’t continue working remotely.

“The reality is that some jobs just don’t work remotely and some people don’t work well remotely,” says Cynthia Spraggs (www.virtira.com), a veteran of working remotely, author of How To Work From Home And Actually Get SH*T Done, and CEO of Virtira, a completely virtual company that helps other businesses work virtually. “Companies have time to plan for both – and so do employees.

“Many employees now expect to be able to work flexibly. Some companies will use a hybrid approach, and others will go back to full-time in the office. But if employees are not given the choice to work from home, some will look for other employers that do offer that. Companies need to assess which jobs are best done remotely and assess their employees to understand which ones benefit the company most by either working from home or returning to the office.”

Spraggs offers these thoughts for workers, business owners, and managers to consider in the WFH vs. return-to-office debate:

The WFH type. “At this point, it should be relatively easy to assess who is thriving and who is miserable in a WFH setting,” Spraggs says. “What we’ve found is, regardless if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, the perfect WFH employee is someone who embraces life and who has passions and interests outside of work. They work efficiently and are strong performers because they see work as a means to fund their life.”

The traditional office type. Spraggs draws a stark contrast between people who thrive working from home and those who are much happier commuting to a traditional brick-and-mortar office environment. “These individuals have strong social relationships through work and require the camaraderie that an in-office environment provides,” she says. “For many, especially those focused on the corner office, work is their life. These are the ones who pull down 80-hour weeks to move up the ladder. They stay glued to their boss, and likely are the ones who just won’t function well at home. Sadly, they are also likely your VP.”

Weigh how your company thinks of you. “Although we all like to think that companies care about employees,” Spraggs says, “the harsh reality is that employees are a unit of production and companies will migrate to the setup that senior executives mandate. Do you really want to work for a company that isn’t prepared to accommodate what makes you most productive and happy? Better sharpen that CV and get ready. Plan now and work your networks.”

Management realities. For many companies, even with the environmental, health, and productivity advantages that remote work brings, Spraggs thinks some simply aren’t going to embrace WFH as an opportunity to streamline operations. “They are going to want to return to the ‘old normal,’” she says. “A good number of senior management people didn’t do well with the WFH environment because they view WFH through a lens of slacking-off employees, lower productivity, and lower ROI. So it’s likely these companies are not going to make the investments in training, home-based bandwidth, VPNs, and tools to make it work.”

“There’s coming tension in many companies between what will work best for management and what will work best for the employees,” Spraggs says. “We may see a big migration in workers going to fully virtual companies.”

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Cynthia Spraggs (www.virtira.com) is the author of How To Work From Home And Actually Get SH*T Done: 50 Tips for Leaders and Professionals to Work Remotely and Outperform the Office. She is CEO of Virtira, a completely virtual company that focuses on remote team performance. Before taking leadership of the company in 2011, Spraggs worked with large consulting and tech companies while completing her MBA and research into telecommuting.

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Who’s the Best Person for the Job? 5 Tips to Find ‘Culture Fit’ in a Candidate

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Many factors go into a company’s decision to hire someone: the candidate’s experience, talent, skills, and ability to communicate, for starters.

But while a sparkling resume and impressive job interview are still important considerations, a job prospect’s ability to fit the company’s culture has never been more critical in the hiring process, says Joel Patterson (www.JoelPatterson.com), a workplace culture expert, founder of The Vested Group and ForbesBooks author of The Big Commitment: Solving The Mysteries Of Your ERP Implementation.

“Companies head into a new year full of uncertainty and are coming off a year of so much change and disruption,” Patterson says. “These challenges test the strength of a work culture, and as companies seek stability, adaptability, and growth, finding the right culture fit is the most crucial factor in choosing a new hire.

“An aligned team will work far better together, be more productive individually, and feel more satisfied in their roles overall. And with more people working remotely, keeping your culture strong and your workflow cohesive is imperative. Adding new people should only serve to enhance it.”

Patterson offers five tips on how to hire for culture fit:

Define and document core values. “First of all, ensure that your company has a set of values, which are the foundation of the culture,” Patterson says. “Company values show what the founder and management hold as important and the behaviors they expect employees to uphold. Spend time analyzing and fine-tuning your company values and document them into clear, specific words.”

Display company culture on the website and social media. “When researching the company, job candidates should get a glimpse of the work culture before the interview and decide if it fits them,” Patterson says. “The company needs to be clear about its core values and promote its environment so it can appeal to the best candidates. Value statements conveyed in content, slides and videos should appear in the company’s careers section, corporate blogs, and social media posts.”

Ask culture-focused questions during the interview. It’s vital for those interviewing candidates to have a firm grasp of the work culture and to ask questions that relate directly to it. “The interviewer should build a picture of who this candidate is both inside and outside the office,” Patterson says. “Ask them things like, what’s their most positive personality trait and their worst, and why for both. What type of team do they thrive in? Have they read our values? Which one resonates the most with them? What have their past relationships with co-workers, managers, and clients been like?”

Let candidates interact with staff. A prospect can say all the right things during an interview, but how they interact with employees can be more telling about whether they’re a culture fit. “Those who do well in interviews and make the short list should be brought back for extensive interaction with staff members,” Patterson says. “You can determine a lot by how engaged they are, what questions they ask, and how employees react to them generally in normal conversation.”

Research your process. Between hirings, Patterson says it’s a good idea to ask around and see if your process reflected your company culture. “Ask recent hires what worked and what didn’t,” he says. “If possible, track down candidates to whom you offered jobs but they turned them down. Find out why. You can always improve your hiring practices so they better align with the company culture.”

“Company culture provides your team with direction and is effectively the glue that binds the team,” Patterson says. “To keep improving it means hiring with culture fit top of mind. Employees who embrace your culture boost morale and productivity and positively impact future recruiting.”

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Joel Patterson (www.JoelPatterson.com) is the founder of The Vested Group, a business technology consulting firm in the Dallas, Texas, area, and ForbesBooks author of The Big Commitment: Solving The Mysteries Of Your ERP Implementation. He has worked in the consulting field for over 20 years. Patterson began his consulting career at Arthur Andersen and Capgemini before helping found Lucidity Consulting Group in 2001. For 15 years he specialized in implementing Tier One ERP, software systems designed to service the needs of large, complex corporations. In 2011, Patterson founded The Vested Group, which focuses on bringing comprehensive cloud-based business management solutions to start-ups and well-established businesses alike. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Baylor University.

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How Management Consultants Can Fix Knowledge Management

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There is a scientific, philosophical, and organizational side to knowledge that executives should at least be aware of in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. Scientific knowledge is objective and manifests itself as provable and verifiable knowledge or truth, while philosophical knowledge clarifies that truth is inaccessible. The key for executives is that organizational knowledge, unlike scientific and philosophical knowledge, focuses on enhancing effective performance. Answering the questions executives often ask: “What works?”

Based on this view, this kind of knowledge empowers the capabilities of an organization, and actively improves its competitive advantage in the marketplace. Executives are already aware that organizational knowledge takes an objective approach and can positively contribute to a firm’s performance. This is why executives care whether knowledge is organizational or not? The simple answer is that if organizational knowledge is not shared and managed, companies may become obsolete, taken over, or acquired. The key is how to use this knowledge, enhance it, distribute it, and capture it.

Every executive is held to the grindstone of maximizing financial and non-financial measures—their careers are tied to company performance measures. Every executive also knows that company performance measures can illustrate whether knowledge management is contributing to bottom-line improvement. This article articulates a different approach and introduces a new perspective of knowledge management by showing how knowledge management consultants can help companies to better manage knowledge, meaning that organizational knowledge is power and can be used as an asset when competing with rivals. This is my experience of working with a team of top-level management consultants around the globe.

Consultants can look at three-step processes of knowledge accumulation, integration, and reconfiguration. This model to managing knowledge reflects a more strategic and practical perspective, as it is process-oriented and most applicable in the context of leading organizations. Consultants know that applying this model is advantageous and good sound strategic implementation. In this model, organizational knowledge is accumulated by creating new knowledge from organizational intellectual capital and acquiring knowledge from external environments. In the process of knowledge accumulation, the exchange of knowledge with external business partners can develop innovative environments.

Consultants can play a strategic role in expanding knowledge accumulation by applying incentives as mechanisms to develop a more innovative climate and managing effective tools to acquire knowledge from external sources. They can particularly develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Acquiring knowledge about new products/services within our industry.

-Benchmarking performance with competitors or industry.

-Using feedback to improve subsequent practices.

-Utilizing teams (e.g. committees or management teams) to manage knowledge resources.

-Developing and implementing education or training programs.

-Carrying out a career path program or recruitment program to acquire experts.

-Conducting organizational events (such as a “knowledge contest” or “knowledge fair”) that promote knowledge activities.

Secondly, consultants can improve knowledge integration by facilitating knowledge sharing around the organization. In fact, they can positively impact knowledge integration by creating expert groups and enhancing dynamic relationships among employees and departments and within companies. A systematic process of coordinating company-wide experts will enable companies by developing a more innovative climate within organizations. Further, it can be seen that some qualities indicating a high-performing expert group (such as trust and reciprocity) are highly overlapped with the definition of organizational effectiveness describing organizational capabilities in creating trust and reciprocity. Based on this view, it could be argued that effective coordination of company-wide experts itself can provide a significant contribution to organizational effectiveness, thereby developing a climate that all leaders aim to create. In particular, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Monitoring or controlling organizational knowledge to keep products or services in line with market requirements.

-Regularly assessing knowledge requirements according to environmental changes.

-Linking the knowledge sharing system using various software and programs.

-Defining “core knowledge” or “core competence” areas.

-Using expert groups to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of organizational knowledge.

-Disseminating organizational knowledge among employees.

-Rewarding individuals or teams based on the quality of knowledge generated.

Thirdly, the knowledge within organizations needs to be reconfigured to meet environmental changes and new challenges. In this process, knowledge is globally shared with other organizations in the environment. Consultants can promote knowledge reconfiguration by improving networking with external sources and developing relationships. Further, they can also inspire organizational members to network with more successful companies. It is evident that networking with external business partners improves effectiveness, thereby providing directions for chief executive officers to develop a more effective corporate vision incorporating various concerns and values of external business partners.

Moreover, it is believed that networking with other companies contributes to the effectiveness of learning, which in turn empowers human resources by creating new knowledge and solutions. Accordingly, the process of knowledge reconfiguration can play a crucial role in enhancing organizational effectiveness. Especially at the corporate level, consultants can develop a workplace which is highly effective in:

-Creating knowledge alliances with suppliers, customers, or other partners.

-Sharing knowledge management visions and goals with external partners (such as suppliers and customers or other partners) to develop collaborative activities, shared goals, and trust-based relationships with them.

-Extending (or linking) knowledge-related policies or rules (measurement, rewards) with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Linking our knowledge-sharing system with external partners (such as customers, suppliers, or other partners).

-Facilitating and implementing activities such as conferences, contests, seminars with external partners.

In conclusion, organizational knowledge must be guarded and not shared with the competition. Any leak of such information may expose the organization and increase the operational risk. The three processes of knowledge management mentioned above, when carried out correctly, can prevent further operational risk in today’s knowledge-based economy.

One important dimension that all leaders world-wide can learn from this article is that knowledge management consultants can help clients’ companies to address the current gaps in knowledge management performance and improve their competitiveness in today’s uncertain business environment.

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Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.