A summary of things you should know about Widgets according to Rodd Wagner: Introduction In this episode Rodd Wagner shares an in-depth preview of his book, Widgets, where he discussesRead More
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]]>In this episode Rodd Wagner shares an in-depth preview of his book, Widgets, where he discusses 12 rules for managing employees as if they’re real people.
In his book Wagner provides important and actionable insights into the behavioral drivers of employee engagement – what motivates them, how they think, how they learn, how they act. The goal of the book is to teach you how to use reciprocity as a key motivator in employee performance, adapt new employees to the work environment, and become the best manager you can be.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who want to run an organization with a determination to engage, motivate, and positively affect employees as well as people in general.
I think two things make Widgets different. One is that I questioned all the assumptions because so many things had changed. This is not just another engagement book, I really took stock using research, trends, friend’s research, and powerful stories to really help a leader, manager, or entrepreneur understand where we are right now. I think the other thing that makes it different is that I did begin my career as a police reporter so my writing style is not that of a typical business book. I call it as I see it.
I would suggest starting with the first two chapters that lay the foundation but from there if people want to jump around it’s not a problem at all. Actually, in the case of this book, at the very beginning we give the reader a web address where they can take the self-assessment that emerged from the research that was used to write the book.
The most important point that I tell leaders who I am advising is that your employees motivation is in your hands, not because you control them but because people are so reciprocal. I guarantee that if you follow the twelve new rules of engagement they will do for your company what you need them to do.
There are twelve central chapters, one about each of the new rules. And then there are two chapters at the beginning of those twelve rules and two chapters at the end. The first two chapters start by framing human nature and our current situation.
The number one rule is get inside their heads, individualize and understand that person to figure out where they are right now.
The second rule is to make them fearless, don’t freak them out or have them so consumed by what’s going to be happening with the business that they can’t do their job.
Third rule is to make money a non-issue. Make sure that you are paying them competitively and generously so that it takes money off the table and they can concentrate on their jobs.
The fourth rule is to help them thrive. Make sure that what you are doing at the company is not burning them out.
The fifth rule is to be cool. This is not a rule that would have come up ten years ago but people want to work for a cool company and have an enjoyable time at work.
Sixth rule is to be boldly transparent and tell people everything you can possibly tell them. We live in an age of social media and they are going to find out anyway so you should be the one to tell them.
Number seven is to not kill the meaning. People come to your company because there is something about your organization that they already find meaningful.
Number eight is to see their future. We are future oriented people and you need to be as deliberate about where your employees will be in five years as where you want your company to be in five years.
Rule number nine is to magnify their success. Help your employee know when they’ve done a good job. Rule ten is to unite them and set up the conditions where they can be a solid team. Number eleven is let them lead. And the last rule is to take it to extremes.
The second to the last chapter of the book is a cautionary tale about all the dumb things that get done in an employee engagement work and how they can backfire on you.
And the final chapter is about what I call the Profitable Pursuit of Happiness. There are a lot of people in the engagement industry that say don’t make your people happy, just make them engaged by which they really mean shut up and get back to work. This is something employees won’t put up with.
If you want people to work as hard as they can for the company they are going to expect happiness in the bargain. (highlight to share)
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 06:58
“It’s not that corporations are bad and people are good. Corporations are powerful and people are reciprocal. How an enterprise wields its power determines how its employees will deliver.” – Rodd Wagner
I began my career as a newspaper reporter covering police and the courts and so I developed a very direct business writing style. I was frustrated by the way I saw my newspaper at the time being managed and so I went to business school and got a MBA. From there I migrated to a couple research jobs on the business side of media companies and eventually joined Gallup where I was a principle for twelve years. I’ve been a practice leader at BI World Wide for the past three years during which my colleagues and I have been doing the research that lead to the book, Widgets.
The Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton
Buy Widgets by Rodd Wagner on Amazon today
Visit WidgetsTheBook.com to learn more about Rodd and his book
Follow Rodd Wagner on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Make It Matter by Scott Mautz
Managing Whole People by Mark Herbert
The Hidden Leader by Scott Edinger
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Characteristics of A Great Leader
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Make It Matter according to Scott Mautz: Introduction In the episode Scott Mautz takes a deep dive into his book, Make ItRead More
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]]>In the episode Scott Mautz takes a deep dive into his book, Make It Matter, where he shows you how managers can motivate by creating meaning and personal significance.
In his book Mautz shares years of research, case studies, and techniques in an all-in-one how to guide for energizing, motivating, and encouraging employees to put in the most effort. The goal of the book is to help you add meaning to any organizational mission, find the internal significance of every employee, eliminate negativity from the workplace, and create unique opportunities of personal growth.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run an organization of 5 or more employees and are looking for the best ways to create a work environment that mimic the best places to work.
I am pretty certain that I am the first author to ever put data to the concept that creating meaning at work is a great way to motivate. I also include dozens and dozens of practical tools that you can apply the very minute after you finish reading the book.
I suggest reading it once through and then go back and use it as a reference guide.
If I had to pinpoint one thing it’d be the concept of what I talk about in that book of what I call profound performance. I’ve learned that when you facilitate meaning it not only drives the employees to engage, it takes them beyond engagement to elevate a performance in true fulfillment. There are so many things that can capture an employee’s time and attention very temporarily but meaning holds the engagement of the employees at the deepest and most fulfilling level that sustains over the long haul.
The book is divided into ten chapters.
In the first chapter, Why Meaning Matters, I really paint the case for just that. The truth is that way too many of us feel a lack of true significance and meaning in how we spend our precious hours at work. In this chapter I lay the case out and put hard data to how the creation of meaning can serve as a competitive advantage in what I call compassionate advantage.
I dive into chapter two, The Markers of Meaning, and things get really interesting here because I have found through my research that there are seven distinct markers of meaning that when you intentionally meet them you can drive meaning and fulfillment. The markers are divided into three sections, when you yield a calming and clarifying sense of interdiction, when you create conditions that lead to a satisfying sense of self-discovery and growth, and when you create conditions that engender devotion to ones work at a deeper connection between the employer and employees in a greater good. And I get really specific within that.
In chapter three I start to dig deeply into each marker meaning. This chapter, The potency of Purpose, I walk through very specifically how as a manager you can carve for yourself or carve out for your people a six step path to purpose. If you follow these six steps I can promise you that by the time you’re done you will have identified what you want your purpose at work to be.
I move on to the fourth chapter where I talk about how to leave your legacy behind. This chapter is broken into two pieces and the first part is called the five footprints of legacy. Then I round out this chapter with what I call The Five Step Footpath to Leaving Legacy Worthy Results at Work.
In chapter five I talk about the power of learning and personal growth at work. I spell out seven very specific ways you can craft an environment that’s rich with learning and personal growth.
In Chapter six I talk about the next core marker of meaning and way to create a sense of Significance at work which is to create a meaningful decision making and influence based culture as well. When people feel like they are a part of making decisions it is incredibly motivating and I spell it out as well as eight things you can do to create autonomy as a manager.
Chapter seven moves on to teach you how to create cultures of consequence and those are cultures that are built on a core of caring, authenticity, and teamwork.
In chapter eight we talk about meaning making leadership very specifically. I talk about how as a leader you can create meaning more so than any of your competitors and I go over four traits of meaning making leadership.
In chapter nine I go the other way and talk about cutting off corrosive behaviors or behaviors that can destroy a sense of certainty, confidence, or community.
I round off the book in chapter ten on how to weave all of the concepts together into a meaning making plan and I provide a couple of options for how to do that.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:29
“We are all at a pivotal moment in life; we just may not know it and you have to live as if you did.” – Scott Mautz
I am an author as of March 4th, when Make It Matter hit the streets. I am also a keynotes speaker and have a fulltime job as a director at Procter & Gamble where I run the company’s largest business. And over my 20 plus years at Procter & Gamble I have run a number of different businesses all multimillion dollars in size.
I have been studying the field of motivation for almost a decade and about seven years ago I discovered a stunning statistic that has been proven over and over again. Which is that almost 70% of us may actually be coated as disengaged at work and even if you’ve heard that statistic before, what’s stunning is that is doesn’t get any better. Year after year the data will show you it keeps declining so whatever we are doing to motivate clearly cannot be working. That has been haunting me for the last half dozen years and I really started working hard at trying to find a way to crack this code. I came across this concept that it’s not pay, it’s not perks, and it’s not promotion, it’s really meaning where you can bring significance into your work and make it matter more. That’s what kept me going and was the inspiration behind this book.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Buy Make It Matter by Scott Mautz on Amazon today
Visit ScottMautz.com to learn more about Scott and his book
Follow Scott Mautz on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Everybody Paddles by Charles Archer
The Hidden Leader by Scott Edinger
The Best Place to Work by Ron Friedman
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Recognizing Women’s Leadership according to Tiffani Lennon: Introduction In this episode Tiffani Lennon shares her book, Recognizing Women’s Leadership where she revealsRead More
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]]>In this episode Tiffani Lennon shares her book, Recognizing Women’s Leadership where she reveals the best practices and strategies for employing excellent people.
In her book, Lennon analyzes research from organizations with the smallest pay gap and the largest percentage of female leaders to help increase your company’s performance. The goal of the book is to help you ensure excellence, present findings on thousands of positions in hundreds of companies, and unveil the best employment practices from the most successful companies.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that own a business where female leadership exists and want to ensure their employment practices are producing optimal results.
Other books try to give explanation as to why women are not doing as well and what women could do differently. We looked at the major industries in the United States, the top companies within those major industries, and we looked at where women actually sat in leadership roles. We also looked at what they were earning compared to men and how they are doing in comparison to their male counterparts.
They can cherry-pick information or they can read all the way through. I welcome the skeptical reader as well.
It would be to ensure that people focus on performance, higher and promoting the best and brightest, and as a result women and men of color rise naturally.
The best part about this book is at the end we looked at the top performing companies in the United States to find out what made them as good as they are. They also happen to have a sufficient and in some cases the highest percentage of women leaders in their companies. We found a set of best practices to ensure the best and brightest rise and perform to their optimal levels.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to entrepreneurship and when we looked at that chapter what we found is that women entrepreneurs are not receiving the same level of investment as male entrepreneurs. We looked at who were investing in entrepreneurs and we created a list of the top investors in startup companies in the US. We looked at who they were investing in and why they were investing in them. What we found is that often times investors were more likely to invest in companies that looked like them and chase after the same kinds of companies.
In another chapter we looked at higher education and K to 12 grade. And what we found is that in much institutionalized sectors like education and banking, women were less likely to receive an inequitable pay. The pay gap was more predominant in those industries than in brand new industries. One of the things that we can understand from this and why female entrepreneurs may want to know is that there are opportunities for advancement for women particularly in new sectors like technology. Another way to understand the data is that really what we are looking at are long term systems and structures that are in place that create impediments in the industry. And we see some of that gate keeping as well in entrepreneurship in terms of external investors.
What we see in the technology field is that women are able to not only close the gap but also close in on performance. I did not expect to find that women are comparably performing to their male counterparts and in some cases they are excelling.
From there we jump to the medical field and look at hospitals for examples. In 2011 female CEO’s earned 57% what their male CEO’s earned at top grossing nonprofit hospitals. In looking at female CEO’s in leadership positions at medical schools we found that about 25.5% of the top leadership roles are occupied by women. One of the myths I think surrounding a lot of this is that there are not enough women in the pipeline. In business we know that women make up over 50% of the workforce and women are over represented in middle management roles. So we know that women are rising in leadership positions but we also know that they get capped. I believe the motivation for people to want to do things differently in the workforce is that when you insure that the best and brightest rise women naturally rise.
I believe that things are moving in the right direction if we can began to look at companies and know that their hiring and promotional practices are solid and based on objective criteria. We know we are there when the company is both performance driven and inclusive. Meaning not that everyone gets a trophy but rather everyone gets a seat at the table.
I am an attorney and researcher for Colorado Women’s College of the University of Denver. And I am in the chair of Law and Society program at the University of Denver as well.
In April of 2012 Marie C. Wilson who was the founder of the White House Project approached us with the need for another study where women are sitting in positional leadership roles. She asked if I was willing to do that and I said yes.
A History of American Law by Lawrence Friedman
Buy Recognizing Women’s Leadership by Tiffani Lennon on Amazon today
Follow Tiffani Lennon on Twitterand Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Leaders Open Doors by Bill Treasurer | The Front-Line Leader Chris Van Gorder | MOXIE: The Secret To Bold and Gutsy Leadership by John Baldoni
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Virtual Freedom according to Chris Ducker: Introduction In this episode Chris Ducker takes a deep dive into his book, Virtual Freedom, whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Chris Ducker takes a deep dive into his book, Virtual Freedom, where he provides the ultimate resource necessary for building a business with the help of virtual employees.
In his book, Ducker gives you a step-by-step guide to figure out the jobs you should outsource along with hiring, training, motivating, and managing virtual assistants. The goal of the book is to show you how to buy more time, become more productive, and build your business through virtual assistants.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs that have outgrown their daily tasks, are thinking about hiring other people, and are operating with a small, limited budget.
I don’t think there are too many books out there that really cover this topic properly. There are a few books that mention outsourcing but they failed to actually show you how to do it. This is your essential guide on finding, hiring, training, managing and working with virtual staff to help you run, support and grow your business.
You can jump in and out but it’s always best to read straight through.
Without a doubt it would be the 3 list to freedom exercise. The reason why this is the one thing that I would want people to take away from the book and take real action on is because it changed my life.
In the introduction of the book we talk about my personal burn out story where I hit burn out after working 16 hours a day for three to four years. I was building my business and had about 100 employees at the time and I hit a brick wall. It became very, very evident to me that I was no longer running my business, my business was running me. We put a plan in place by the end of 2010 to remove myself from the business and become a virtual CEO. Which is what we achieved and I have been doing it ever since. I only work four days a week, I have a three day weekend and I work five to six hours a day maximum. It wasn’t always like this so in the book I talk about my struggle and my demons in regards to that micromanagement and superhero syndrome. From there we set about helping the reader overcome their superhero syndrome that’s within them.
Section one of the book is all about finding and hiring virtual staff. We go through everything from being very real and mentioning the facts that although we would love to just hire one person to do everything in our business, it’s not possible. You have got to hire for the role not for the tasks. And then we start off the entire book by introducing our 3 lists to freedom. The first list is a list of all the things that you hate doing every day. The second list is a list of all the things that you struggle doing and the third list is all the things that as an entrepreneur you feel like you shouldn’t be doing
In section two we go through the actual training of your virtual staff.
Section three is all about managing your VA and we go through all the different types of VA roles and how to manage them properly. We talk about the difference between tasks and projects and how they are managed differently.
Section four is about going overseas or staying local and the pros and cons of doing that.
Section five is my favorite section of the entire book because it starts to really level up everything you are doing from an entrepreneurial perspective and building a real team.
We wrap up with a bonus section where I talk about the most frequently committed mistakes by entrepreneurs when they start building virtual teams and how to avoid those as well.
“Work on your business and don’t be trapped working inside your business.” – Chris Ducker
I am originally from London in the UK. I am a sales and marketing guy and was in the publishing business for a long time over there. I came over to the Philippines to deep dive into the outsourcing world in 2000. In 2004 I set up my first business and sold that in 2008. After that I dipped back into the 9 to 5 for almost two years and then in 2008 I decided to go ahead and start that entrepreneurial journey again which I’ve been on ever since. We now have almost 300 employees and are a multi seven figure business annually. I have a blog, a podcast and speak as well.
I have been involved in the outsourcing business for a long time and particularly since the 4 hour work week came out I have become more active online. It had become very evident to me that there were a lot of people in the same space claiming to be gurus that really had no idea what they were talking about. There were so many false truths being pushed out on the internet that it was actually starting to cause me problems in my business. I wanted to write those wrongs that were everywhere online and provide a resource and an essential guide to finding, hiring, managing and working with virtual staff to build your business.
Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Buy Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker on Amazon today
Visit ChrisDucker.com to learn more about Chris and his book
Follow Chris Ducker on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: The Suitcase Entrepreneur: Create freedom in business and adventure in life by Natalie Sisson | The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth: Entrepreneurship for Weirdos, Misfits, and World Dominators by Chris Brogan | Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Live Your Dreams, Ignite Your Passions and Run Your Business From Anywhere in The World by Jesse Krieger
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