Fun at R&R!

Raseri, Inc. had so much fun on our recent trip! It may have been raining, but that didn’t stop 650 attendees at this year’s R&R, held at Eden Roc Renaissance Miami Beach, from having a great time! On September 20 – 23, sales office owners, their assistant managers, friends, and family relaxed by the beach in the Southern Florida sun.

Some highlights: A cornhole and dodgeball tournament to raise funds for Operation Smile (more than $3,600 was raised and donated!), a neon-themed dinner, and a spectacular pool party. The talent competition was a big hit as well, with winners receiving cash prizes. The first place winner even had $500 donated to Operation Smile under their name! Throughout the weekend, everyone had a chance to rest and relax – Raseri’s way of recognizing the sales professionals who work hard every day on behalf of our clients. By providing them with a great venue, food, and entertainment, we are able to really recognize their accomplishments and set the pace for next year.


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How To Make Your Employees Feel Like Superheroes

BY PATTY AZZARELLO

 | 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

I once got this in a message from a former employee:

When I worked for you, I thought I was Superman. I have occasionally reflected on why that was. Not sure I know all the answers, but the things I do know are that the environment was real, the energy was high, and the crap was low.

It was wonderful to get that message. Those first 10 words sum up for me, in a pretty profound way, what I believe being a good leader is about.

I used to wonder why I was so lucky to have such remarkable, talented, experienced people want to work for me. I realized that a big part of it boiled down to what was in that note:

1. I got the right people in the right roles.
2. I let them be amazing.
3. I got the crap out of the way (people really liked this!).

Here's how you can tackle each step to foster employee satisfaction and a memorable culture:

1. Get the right people in the right roles.
Are you leading the team you need? Or are you leading the team you have?

There is nothing more important as a leader than to build a team underneath you that is so capable that you can free yourself up to solve higher-order problems. Too many managers think the job is to make the best of the team they have. That is not the job.

The job is to develop, and if necessary change, the people--so you get individuals who are well suited for their roles, and a highly capable team that can do what the business needs now and in the future.

If you find yourself needing over and over again to personally step in to make key decisions or do strategic work that you hoped one of your staff would handle, you have someone in the wrong role. You need to make a change.

I realize this sounds harsh. But you have choices and you don’t need to be a bad person to build a great team. The good news is that getting the right people in the right roles is great for them, it’s great for you, and it’s great for the business. There is no downside except that it’s hard to do. So…

GUT CHECK: Is your desired outcome to grow the business or to keep people in their jobs?
Here are your choices:

Grow the business: If your desired outcome is to grow the business, then you need to get the right people in the right jobs and eliminate the people who are not capable enough.

Keep jobs: If your desired outcome is to have people keep their jobs you have two choices:

• Move them to different, lower, or sideways jobs, and free up the key jobs to be filled by stronger people.
• If you can’t or won’t do this, then don’t waste time and energy signing your business up for strategic growth. If you are not going to change the people, find a less ambitious business model you can execute with the team you have.

2. Let people be amazing.
Okay. Now that you have the right team of highly capable people, give them important work, support them, step back, and let them be amazing.

Don’t just delegate work. Delegate power.

Let people make big decisions and solve big problems. Let them do great work they can be proud of.

Give them recognition. Be an active spokesperson for their efforts. Show them trust and respect, and make sure they get the credit for their accomplishments--they will move mountains for you. Get out of their way!

3. Get the crap out of the way.
As a leader a key part of your job is to create a work environment that is good to work in.

Uncertainty, worry, and unnecessary complexity all drain energy and trust out of the organization. If you want to create an environment where your people can thrive, you need to actively and continually remove the sand that creeps into gears.

Here are some ideas to get rid of the de-motivating crap.

Remove uncertainty:
• Make, clarify, and communicate decisions.
• Don’t let questions and rumors fester.
• Don’t leave people to wonder what is important, or which direction to go.

Remove negativity:
• Discourage unproductive, negative talk. No one can complain without offering a proposal.
• Eliminate people who drain energy out of the organization.
• Remove any managers who are bullies, or who block communication.

Be accountable:
• Have clear plans with measures and accountability.
• Address missed deadlines with consequences and action plans. (You’d be surprised how much positive energy this creates.)
• Face up to, and fix broken strategies.

Find the magic
When you get someone in the right role right that aligns with their natural strengths, abilities, and ambitions, magic happens.

They thrive. They grow. They do amazing things. They feel proud of what they do. They are motivated and energized.

When you get a whole team of people who are in the right roles, the team becomes unstoppable. And then you are free to look forward and lead (and keep vigilant at removing the crap, which takes actual time).

Your job is a leader is to create that team--a team that can amplify what you can do. Otherwise you are at the helm of a team that is constrained by you, not led by you.

Patty Azzarello is the author of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life. Follow her @pattyazzarello.


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Failure Is The Only Option, If Success Is The End Goal

BY LARRY WEINZIMMER AND JIM MCCONOUGHEY

 | 

SEPTEMBER 7, 2012

If learning happens through trial and error, then you need to try, and more importantly, you need to err.

There are two sides to every story: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times; you take the bitter with the sweet; every rose has its thorn. However, in leadership, we often miss out on half the story. Most discussions focus on what leaders "should do" rather than on what they "should avoid." The result? We talk about success, but seldom talk about failure.

In The Wisdom of Failure, we discuss a common theme among industry's greatest leaders--their most important lessons have come from trial and error. Unfortunately, many of us don't pursue the trial because we are fearful of making error. Jim Owens, former CEO of Caterpillar Inc., told us we actually learn more from our failures than we do from our success. He states that our most important lessons as leaders come from our toughest losses.

Mistakes are part of taking healthy risk. They provide us with new ways of thinking and give us new insights into how we can improve as leaders. Real failure doesn't come from making mistakes; it comes from avoiding errors at all possible costs, from fear to take risks and from the inability to grow. Being mistake free is not success. Still, we avoid challenges and hide mistakes. We don't like to talk about them and bring attention to them. It's safer to look the other way or sweep them under the rug. That's why so many leaders have the same struggles over and over again.

So, why don't we embrace challenges and become accepting of mistakes--to learn from them and ultimately grow from them? And if learning from mistakes has so much value, why is it taboo to even talk about mistakes in the context of business and leadership?

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

We are all evaluated on how well we perform our jobs. Not surprisingly, companies pay their employees to succeed, not to fail. The better the performance review, the better we are compensated. However, performance reviews inherently reward us on our short-term success and penalize us for our short-term mistakes. Rarely does someone receive a performance review spanning several years. And personal growth from mistakes is an evolutionary process. It takes time. Mistakes today usually hurt our performance evaluations in the short term. Moreover, in entrepreneurial firms, making leadership mistakes are not only amplified, they can destroy an entire company.

So what do we do? We avoid them. Consider the Thomas Edison quote "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Do you think he would have lasted in today's business environment? We have created an evaluation platform where successes are celebrated and failures are not. Remember, "failure is not an option."

IDEO founder David Kelley believes failure is not only an option, it is a necessary ingredient for success. Rather than punishing employees for failure, he and his leadership team encourage employees to be comfortable with bad ideas--one of the reasons IDEO is one of our most innovative companies. He believes that without freedom to pursue bad ideas, employees will miss many good ideas.

A Culture Of Perfectionism

We live in a culture that values perfectionism. As children, we were told "practice makes perfect." We learned that making mistakes was bad, that we need to always "color inside the lines." We learned that to succeed we needed to "strive for perfection."

Perfectionism is one of the biggest deterrents of learning from mistakes. People become so fixated on not failing that they never move forward. They focus on the upside risk associated with failing, rather than the downside risk of not trying at all. How did Tom Watson, former CEO of IBM, react when one of his executives made a $10 million mistake? Instead of firing him, he viewed the mistake as an investment in training and development. Why? Watson realized taking healthy risk will often result in failure, and that a culture of perfectionism can be paralyzing to progress.

Losing Balance Between The "What" And The "How"

To advance our careers, we are encouraged to build social capital, to gain respect, and to create an image of professionalism. Managing the way others view us becomes larger than reality. The result--we become overly concerned with achieving the goal rather than considering the process--and the goal is to succeed. Rather than focusing only on the what, great leaders also focus on the how. If aspiring leaders are too driven to succeed, they may lose sight of what is most important. They become so enamored with success that they avoid failure. What was once considered a strength, eventually becomes a detriment. The more success they achieve, the more failure becomes unthinkable--and the downward spiral begins.

The Failure Paradox And Its Irony

The truth is every great leader makes mistakes. Unfortunately, there are only a limited number of mistakes you can make before proving yourself an unworthy leader--you can only fall off the corporate ladder so many times before your climb is finished. And the higher you get, the more severe the fall. The failure paradox is that in order to succeed we need to know failure.

And here is the irony. There are critically important lessons to be learned from failures.

Yet we live in an environment where we can't afford to make mistakes. As George Ruebenson, former President of Allstate Protection told us, great leaders have an innate ability to learn by observing key takeaways from others' mistakes. He credits much of his success as a leader to the observations he made of others' mistakes early in his career. Bottom line: Great leaders have the ability to learn the tough lessons--without paying the price.

Larry Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughey are coauthors ofThe Wisdom of Failure: How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price.

Larry is an endowed professor of management at Bradley University. He is an internationally recognized speaker and advisor to numerous Fortune 100 companies on issues relating to strategy and leadership.

Jim is an experienced CEO, sought-after business development and community leadership expert, and an active fund manager for venture and early-stage capital investments. Jim's particular focus is working with small to mid-size organizations to identify and evaluate strategic growth opportunities.


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