| In This Issue: |
| Message from Laura |
| Feature Article:
Engaged Employees are More Productive |
| Educational Resources |
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Time Tips and Traps |
| Laura's Blog |
| Hot Links |
| Words of Wisdom |
| Laura in the NEWS |
| Book Laura |
| Where in the World is Laura? |
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Subscription and Contact Information |
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Reprint Information |
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A holistic approach to increasing your get-up and go, from the productivity expert whose previous books showed people how to Find More Time and Leave the Office Earlier. If you want to be productive but are just too tired all the time, you need to read this book! Laura Stack combines invaluable insights and practical advice in this guide to becoming more energetic and more productive in every area of life. Stack describes the factors that contribute to low energy (the "energy bandits") and explains how to reduce their effects and build up or renew sources of positive force (with "energy boosters"). Available now from Amazon.com and at better bookstores everywhere. |
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 Find More Time. You can't add more hours to the day, but Laura will help you make the most of the time you have and get things done. Available now from Amazon.com.
Leave the Office Earlier,  Laura shows you how you CAN get more done than you ever thought possible and still get home to your real life sooner.Available now from Amazon.com.
More of The Productivity Pro's Resources |
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Featured Educational Resource from The Productivity Pro® |
Book Club for Laura
Stack's book SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best
(Wiley, 2010)
Click here for more
information.Audience: This program is
a low-cost, medium-impact developmental opportunity for high potentials in
leadership development programs and those emerging leaders wanting to become
high potentials.
Package A: $49 per person (sold in multiples of 10)
One hardcover copy of SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your
Productive Best (Wiley, 2010) per person
One softcover discussion guide per person
Leader guide, set-up instructions, and license to run the book club (delivered
in PDF format)
Six online videos by Laura Stack (to be viewed privately by each participant
prior to each book club meeting or as a group in the meeting)
Package B: add $100 per person (further discounts available after 100
people)
All of Package A plus:
One year of "live" monthly coaching webinars with Laura Stack just for program
participants
24/7 access to the SuperCompetent Discussion Forum, where we collect
participants' questions and share Laura's answers. Participants may ask and
respond to questions from other high potentials around the globe
Access to The Productivity University, our online LMS with 30+ hours of
training in myriad personal productivity topics, such as Outlook, time
management, concentration, handling timewasters, organization, discipline, life
balance, stress management, dealing with interruptions, planning, scheduling,
etc.
Discounts for individual coaching with Laura Stack for those with personal
productivity in their developmental plans
Click here for more
information.
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| Words of Wisdom |
| "Devising and maintaining
an atmosphere in which others can put a dent in the universe is the leader's
creative act." -- Warren Bennis, organizational consultant and scholar
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better. It's not." -- Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
"If you create an environment where people truly
participate, you don't need control. They know what needs to be done and they do
it." -- Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines.
"Are you in earnest? Seize this very
minute!/Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it./Boldness has genius,
power, and magic in it./Only engage, and then the mind grows heated./Begin, and
then the work will be completed." -- Dr. John Anster, Irish scholar (attributed
to Goethe)
"Employee engagement is first determined by the
attitude of the leader, not the attitude of the employee." -- Ian Hutchison,
author and CEO ("Chief Engagement Officer") of Life By Design
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Where in the World
is Laura? |
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These
are all private client engagements with Laura Stack. At this time, Laura does
not offer open enrollment seminars to the general public. If you're interested
in bringing Laura to your organization to present a training seminar for your
employees on the day prior or the day after one of these engagements below,
please contact John Stack for
special "piggyback" pricing.
August 2010
20::Luke AFB, Phoenix, AZ
23::Denver, CO
24::Sterling, CO
25::Denver, CO
28::Albuquerque, NM
30::Sioux Falls, SD
September 2010
11::Cologne Germany
16::Atlanta, GA
18::Birmingham, AL
23::Denver, CO
24::Flint, MI
27::Denver, CO
29::Tampa, FL
30::Montgomery, AL
October 2010
7::Englewood, CO
9::Nashville, TN
19::Palm Desert, CA
23::Adelphia, MD
25::Denver, CO
28::Denver, CO
29::Malverne, PA
November 2010
11::Denver, CO
15::Denver, CO
18-21::Scottsdale, AZ
December 2010
2-4::Vail, CO
13::Denver, CO
January 2010
8::Kansas City, MO
12-13::Las Vegas, NV
15::Los Angeles, CA
19::Detroit, MI
21::Virginia Beach, VA
Visit Laura's Calendar On-line for her complete availability.
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| Feature Article: |
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Engaged Employees are More Productive
Imagine that you're the coach of a professional football team--and that on a
really good day, maybe 10 of your 45 players are 100% committed to the team's
success. About half are kind of committed (as long as you rev them up with a
great pep talk first and keep pushing them, you can count on them to go out
there and perform). The rest? Well, those players show up, suit up, and sit on
the bench most of the time. They make the minimal amount of effort necessary to
squeak by, collect their paychecks, and go home. Can you imagine such a thing?
Oh, wait. That's a typical NFL lineup, isn't it?
All joking aside, my point is this: with a team like that, how many games are
you likely to win? I'm betting very few. Oh, you'll win some--against teams a lot
like yours. But a dedicated team like the 2008 Steelers would wipe the floor
with you, because too few people on your team actually care enough win.
Now, let's translate that analogy into the business environment. You're a
manager instead of a coach. Your team is still a team, but they're a bunch of
white-collar business professionals rather than athletes. So, given the
breakdown I've outlined above in terms of commitment, how well do you expect
your team to compete, either within the company or in the global business
environment? The answer, of course, is "not very." If you're a manager worth
your salt, this won't be acceptable to you. But you can't just fire all the
underperformers, or sadly, you might not have much of a team left. A more
effective solution is employee engagement.
You've probably heard this term before, and maybe you've dismissed it as just
another corporate buzz phrase. In some cases it is, but when taken seriously, it
becomes far more than that: studies have repeatedly demonstrated that employee
engagement is a significant factor in the success of any company, large or
small. Simply put, the higher the percentage of employee engagement, the higher
the employee productivity and the greater the corporate success.
So what is employee engagement, exactly? While not everyone agrees on the
precise terminology, the consensus is that an engaged employee is one who's
enthusiastic and fully involved with his or her job and organization, and who
makes a sincere effort to contribute to both team and company success. The
engaged employee is proud of what they do for a living and proud of where they
work.
As commonly articulated, employee engagement is a relatively new concept, dating
only from the early 1990s. The field splits employees into three categories: the
actively engaged, the unengaged, and the actively disengaged. Depending upon the
study, somewhere between 17-29% of employees are actively engaged. (Returning to
our football analogy, those are the players who are 100% committed to winning.)
About half--literally the "mediocre middle," as my colleague Mark Sanborn calls
them-- are unengaged. They may like their jobs, and they may be good at them, but
they don't really care much about the company's goals (often because they have
no idea what they are). At the bottom of the heap are the remaining
employees--again, 17-29%--who are actively disengaged. These are the people who go
to work just so they can get their paychecks. They're not committed at all, and
they couldn't give two hoots about the company's mission and vision, even if
they knew what they were. They're just marking time until they can retire.
Fortunately, these numbers aren't set in stone. It's possible for you as a
leader to change them, and it's crucial that you try. Indeed, it's the leader
who really makes the difference here: time and again, researchers have found
that the relationship between employee and manager is an excellent gauge of the
employee's engagement level. As the saying goes, workers don't leave companies.
They leave managers. If that sounds like it's all on your shoulders, well...to a
large extent, it is. You're the leader of your team, and to most employees,
you're the direct representative of the company--and possibly the only such
representative they encounter regularly. Along with everything else required of
you, it's also your responsibility to ensure that your employees are engaged to
the highest possible extent.
Why should you bother? Because by all accounts, engaged employees are
SuperCompetent employees: the type of people you build an organization around,
and the ones you count on to help take your organization to the next level.
According to a recent study by Gallup, world-class businesses (e.g., those that
make money hand over fist, have great safety records, and exhibit low employee
turnover, among other things) have engaged employee/disengaged employee ratios
of about 9.57:1, as opposed to a disappointing 1.83:1 for average businesses.
It's clear that, as the researchers put it, "The world's top-performing
organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives
performance outcomes." Gallup sets an engaged/disengaged benchmark of 8:1 for
successful, world-class companies, giving us all a standard to shoot for.
The Gallup researchers go on to note that actively disengaged workers cost
American companies an estimated $300 billion annually in lost productivity
alone. And here's another interesting statistic, this time from Serota
Consulting's 2005 study of 28 multinational companies: companies with high
employee engagement had share prices that rose an average of 16% over the course
of the study, whereas the industry average was just 6%. In 2003, a study by ISR
found that companies with high levels of engagement saw their operating profits
rise by nearly 4% over three years, while those with low levels of engagement
showed drops in net profits and operating margins on the order of 1.38% and
2.01%, respectively. (If you don't think those percentages sound significant,
multiple them by a few million dollars and think again.) And consider the fact
that in the long run, engaged companies outperform their less-engaged
competitors by up to 28% (one of the key findings of the Conference Board study
of 2006).
Clearly, engagement is a key driver in achieving and sustaining outstanding
productivity in any organization, if only because it dramatically increases
employee satisfaction and retention. Engaged employees are far more productive
and more valuable than the mediocre middle unengaged employees, or of course the
actively disengaged. Naturally, that affects the bottom line; so doing
everything you can to increase employee engagement is simply good business. That
being the case, you need to understand what factors drive engagement, and how
you can put them into play to engage your employees.
Now admittedly, some level of engagement is based on an individual's
personality; a bright, bubbly person is generally more easily engaged than a
dour one. Otherwise, engagement is driven by a number of interrelated factors,
including but not limited to:
Employee confidence that they can do their job properly, and will be allowed
to do so with minimal oversight
The nature and quality of the job itself
Access to training and career development
Opportunities for growth
Ongoing communication and feedback from management, especially in terms of
conveying information and congratulating good work
A clear understanding the company's goals, and why employee contributions
matter
Trust in the company and its integrity
Pride in the company, and their place in it
Opportunities to work in a team environment
Relationships with team members and other co-workers
Presence of a confident, competent, and (most importantly) supportive manager
who can lead by example
According to recent surveys, only about half of American workers trust the
people at the very top of their company org charts. But here's a factoid you
might be gratified to learn: about three-quarters trust their immediate managers
(including 44% of the disengaged ones). That's good, because again, it's a
critical factor in creating and maintaining engagement. Another factor in your
favor is that people want to be proud of what they do for a living and who they
work for. This will help in your quest to engage your employees and thereby
strengthen your corporate culture.
Gallup uses its Q12 measure to determine engagement; that is, twelve questions
that it asks every employee when assessing the topic. Some of these questions
may seem a bit odd, but together they identify what Gallup calls "strong
feelings of employee engagement." You may have seen this before, but here's what
they ask:
1. Do you know what is expected of you at work?
2. Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
3. At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing
good work?
5. Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
7. At work, do your opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
9. Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?
10. Do you have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your
progress?
12. In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
It's easy to see how these questions apply to the engagement factors outlined
previously--which should make it fairly easy to determine what you, as a manager,
need to work on in order to maximize employee engagement within your
organization.
Of course, you're never going to get everyone engaged; there will always be that
occasional sourpuss or cheerful non-entity you'll never be able to reach. But if
you can meet or exceed Gallup's 8:1 Engagement/Disengagement Benchmark, then
your team will outshine nearly all of the competition.
So how do you do it? By fostering an environment of excellence, in which the
cognitive and emotional issues that result in employee engagement are actively
addressed at all stages of the game. Motivate your team members in positive
ways: by walking the talk, leading by example, and making your personal
integrity obvious and clear. Let them know what needs to be done, and let them
know when they've done it right--and when they haven't. With few exceptions, your
employees also want the opportunity to get ahead and develop their skills. Help
them. You don't want to necessarily be their friend, but you do have to be a
leader in every sense of the term, and you want them to realize that they have a
chance to excel under your leadership. Remember: one of the strongest of drivers
for employee engagement is the employee's relationship with their manager.
You also have to take into account individual needs based on age, position,
experience, and other factors. Young people and those newer to the organization
are most interested in challenges and career growth, for example; older and
better established workers are more interested in stability, rewards, and
recognition. Realize too that a need for stability isn't necessarily
complacency; in the current economic situation, most people want all the
stability they can get. It would be easy to take advantage of this for your
short-term benefit, but I wouldn't if I were you. It won't do a thing to engage
lackluster employees, and it might decouple some who are already engaged.
Employee engagement should never be based on fear, even if it does seem to work
for Darth Vader. When things turn around, how long do you think they'll stay?
Increasing your ratio of engaged to disengaged employees can be a lot of hard
work. It's a task that requires not just strength, but flexibility and empathy;
not merely good communications, active coaching and counseling of employees, but
also careful consideration of each employee's individual character. So be it. If
you end up with SuperCompetent employees that make you and your organization
shine, it'll be worth every single minute of effort.
Make it a productive day! (TM)
(C) Copyright 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved. |
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Time Tips and Tricks |
To be featured in this section of our newsletter and
get a free eBook with our thanks, send your productivity tip or trick to
Becca@TheProductivityPro.com
with "Tips and Tricks contribution" in the subject line.
Critical Tips for Successful Team Execution
Over time, individual teams and whole organizations tend to establish a standard
pace. This pace can easily become unnecessarily lethargic. The trick is to
regulate the pace, keeping it as high as possible without provoking burn-out.
Executing at a brisk pace keeps your team energetic and fresh. Here are ten
acceleration strategies that can help you and your team pick up the pace.
1. Identify an "enemy."
2. Break the decision gridlock.
3. Develop contingency plans and workarounds.
4. Set the bar higher.
5. Establish momentum-building milestones.
...
To read the rest of the list and a description of each accelerator, click here
http://www.mylinkage.com/GILD/blog
to visit Linkage's Leadership Blog.
© 2010 Linkage, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Click here for additional Time Tips and Tricks
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Laura Stack, MBA, CSP
Publisher |
|
Messages from Laura |
Follow me on Twitter
Connect on LinkedIn
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Watch my video podcast
Subscribe to my blog feed
SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best
(Wiley, 2010) IS NOW AVAILABLE! Thank you! Thank you! SUPERCOMPETENT
was released on August 9 and is already officially a bestseller in the U.S., the
U.K., and Canada! We hit #1 in the Business Skills and Business Motivation
categories on Amazon.com and #40 overall. We were the #3 Mover and Shaker and
were also listed in the Hot New Releases! We couldn't have achieved this without
all of our online partners and friends. Please visit
www.SuperCompetentBook.com for a
listing of all those who helped. We are so grateful.
To celebrate, we have extended our bonus offer! If you purchase
SUPERCOMPETENT from any online or retail bookstore and forward your receipt
to Book@TheProductivityPro.com,
you'll receive free bonus gifts from me and several of my colleagues:
Dianna Booher is providing a free eBook Write to the Point.
Joe Calloway is providing the eBook Becoming a Category of One.
Eric Chester is providing the eBook Employing Generation Why.
Terri Sjodin is providing a free subscription to the Presenters post quarterly
e-newsletter.
Chris Widener is giving away his "Totally Motivated" eBook.
Mark Sanborn (who also wrote the Foreword) is providing you with access to his
in-depth Encore Assessment, a regular $25.95 value.
Ford Saeks is giving away his "Keywords Secrets" MP3.
I'm giving away an MP3 explaining the SUPERCOMPETENT culture and mindset.
Check out www.SuperCompetentBook.com and click the Bonus icon for more details.
Purchase your copy in any of these online stores:
1.
Amazon
2.
Borders
3.
Barnes & Noble
4.
Booksamillion
5.
CEORead
Lastly, email your receipt to
Book@TheProductivityPro.com. Enjoy!
Partnership announcement
The Productivity Pro®, Inc. is pleased to announce our partnership with Linkage,
Inc. as their exclusive provider of personal productivity content, connecting
high performing leaders and organizations to the futures they want to create.
Together, we are introducing the SUPERCOMPETENT® productivity culture globally
in the form of train-the-trainer, onsite, public, and online training programs.
This content will be the focus of Linkage's productivity-based offerings in the
Work of Leaders model. For more information, please visit
www.linkageinc.com.
Monthly Microsoft Outlook webinar: August 23, 2010: ADVANCED OUTLOOK
AutoArchive Old Mail, Reduce the Size of Your Mailbox, Archive Messages
Manually, Outlook Data Files, Importance, Sensitivity, Lock Your Email Text,
Delivery Options, Expire Messages, Have Replies Sent to Someone Else, Delayed
Send, Categorize Emails in Groups, Share Folders, Assign Delegates, Specify
Permissions, Access Other's Folders, Add to Public Folders, Use Outlook When Not
Connected, Create Personalized Fields, Add Your New Fields to Forms, Change
Default Forms, Deleting Forms, Writing Word Documents from Contacts, Printing
Envelopes and Labels, Add RSS Feeds, Add Heightened Security.
Outlook version 2003: 9:00 pacific/12:00 eastern
Outlook version 2007: 11:00 pacific/2:00 eastern
Cost is $39 with workbook and recording.
For more
information and to register click here.
Monthly Productivity Webinar: August
23, 2010
Thirty Best Practices for Scheduling Your Day in Outlook: Maintaining Your
Calendar Digitally. Using software to maintain your schedule can be extremely
effective, but if you're not careful, it can turn into a real waste of time for
both you and everyone else involved. Try to keep the following factors in mind
when scheduling your day in Outlook, Lotus Notes, or GroupWise (demonstrated in
Outlook).
Using third-party software to find convenient day/time of meeting for people
not at your company.
Converting emails automatically into appointments (no copy/paste).
Automatically find open meeting times without comparing calendars.
Track meetings by projects, team, or committee.
Click here for
more information.
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Laura in the News! |
Business Networking Advice
How to Leave
the Office at 5:00
How to Break Time-Sapping Habits
Laura Stack on avoiding social-media addiction |
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Recent posts:
Business Productivity: SHRM Interview on Social Media with Laura Stack
Time Management: Productivity-Boosting Sites on the Web
Work Life Balance: Video: Make Your Health Your Number One Priority
Top 50 Productivity Blogs to Watch in 2010
Time Management Video: Eliminate the Later Fact
Business Productivity Video: Handling Your Paperwork
Business Productivity: Stop Procrastination in Its Tracks!
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Hot Links |
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What NOT to do: 7 ways to ruin your resume
Honor Your Company's Working Contributors
Jobs For New MBAs Are Back--But They're Different
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