LinkedIn as a Garden

This week our Guest Blogger is Dan Olson of Star Collaborative. He is a master at working with LinkedIn and his business has experienced much success as a result of it.

Linked In as a Garden
The old adage ‘You can’t fake a crop’ is the main thought here. The most successful networkers I have encountered view LinkedIn as a garden that requires frequent care and feeding. Just like a gardener that constantly waters or weeds their plants, LinkedIn has a multitude of activities that require your attention before you can harvest something from it.

To increase adoption, and to make it more palatable, I suggest the following approach to tending to your LinkedIn garden: Plan on spending three sessions a week with your LinkedIn profile, for no more than ten minutes each time. A Monday - Wednesday – Friday rhythm has proven to be most effective, and helps keep you top of mind with your connected network.

Mondays: Write a recommendation for someone you know that has done exemplary work and is deserving of praise. Be genuine in your writing, specific in your comments, and choose people who have made a significant difference. Write the recommendation in Word so that you benefit from its grammar and spell check features, then cut and paste it into LinkedIn. Shoot for a 5 to 7 sentence write up.

I recommend that you write at least ten recommendations for others before asking someone to write one for you (pay it forward). In fact, I have seen many people who make a ten week commitment to this approach get spontaneous recommendations written for them by week four or five. People take notice of such activities and feel motivated to respond in kind. Posting recommendations is a great way to help people in your network get credit for the things that they have done, and helps them build their online brand.

Wednesdays: Post a book recommendation to your profile using the Amazon Reads module. You do not need to add any commentary, simply chose one business book that you think your network will be interested in or gain some special insight from. Since this takes only a minute, also post an interesting article to your status. Pick something that relates to your career brand or area of specialty (project management, logistics, marketing, etc.). Make sure you are posting something that has value and is interesting or provocative.

Fridays: Since you are undoubtedly always working on your resume, chose one interesting factoid or sentence from your resume and add it to your LinkedIn profile. Don’t fall into the trap that you need to spend eight hours perfecting your profile in one fell swoop. Most people who attempt this get burnt out by the activity, get frustrated with LinkedIn’s poor user interface, or loose enthusiasm for the work. Again, if you are viewing this as a long-term project, give yourself ten or more weeks before you see significant improvements or changes to your profile.
Since this cut and paste will take you mere moments, use Fridays as a day to find a group or forum on LinkedIn that relates to your career interests. Once you find an interesting group, join it so it is listed on your profile, and start interacting with the people there. Within your budgeted ten minutes of activity, you should be able to read the postings of others, answer a few questions, and ask a few of your own. This is a great way for you to help others, learn new ideas, and to further substantiate your online presence.

LinkedIn is a journey
So, what’s the net effect of this LinkedIn interaction regime?

1) It’s a great way to pay it forward and help others: Writing recommendations, posting interesting articles and books, as well as helping others in groups all contributes to good karma. Have an abundance mentality first when it comes to networking. It is the right thing to do.

2) It keeps you top of mind: Each time you do something to your LinkedIn profile, it sends a notice out to everyone in your network and shows up in their newsfeed and daily summary e-mails. I have found that people who show up three times a week are more likely to get attention and responses from people in their network. Those who show up more often get ignored as spammers, those who post less frequently are easily forgotten.

3) It keeps you engaged: As you work on these activities, with this frequency, it is easily absorbed into your daily routine, and will soon become a habit. It will also help you in your face-to-face networking since you will have more knowledge of the person in question through your LinkedIn interactions. Like Facebook, LinkedIn will allow you to monitor your colleagues’ work lives and interact with them constantly.

4) It builds your online brand: Linked In is the virtual storefront of your brand. Make sure that you are creating a compelling an accurate value prop for people to see and respond to. These activities will help build out a robust picture of who you are, making you a more valuable resource to the people in your network.

To me, LinkedIn is a journey, not a destination. You will never complete editing your profile or finding something new and interesting to add to it. There will always be another connection to make, recommendation to write, or question to post. If you use a pay-it-forward mentality, you can significantly help your colleagues in their career endeavors while making deposits on a karma bank account. If you help others via this tool, you will get back as much as you give.

Are you LinkedIn?

DoesYour Organization Have an Abundance Mentality?

"You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
-Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar was one of the best known motivational speakers of the 20th Century. He truly believed in helping others become successful. He practiced what I call an abundance mentality. It was not surprising he experienced a high level of success throughout his life.

In my almost 20 years as a coach and consultant, I have worked in a myriad of organizations. Sadly, seldom few subscribe to this abundance mentality or really practice this principle in their day to day culture. However, recently I was introduced to Dan Olson and Katie Frank. Dan is a Founding Partner and Co-Owner of STAR Collaborative (http://www.starcollaborative.com/), along with Ed Lefkow. Katie Frank is the Director of Collaboration.

STAR Collaborative provides staff augmentation services to help clients flex their project resources as needed. They supply organizations with experienced consultants that possess the right skills and abilities. Their focus includes variable resource management, project management, transformational change management and leadership development.

Within minutes of meeting Dan, he talked about having an abundance mentality. At STAR Collaborative they not only want to help their clients grow and succeed, but also help their cadre of consultants become more successful. Dan believes there is enough for everyone.

Dan shared several example that illustrate the company's abundance mentality. Recently he helped place an individual in a full time position. He intuitively knew it was a great match, and was not looking for any type of compensation. Their non compete agreement when a consultant leaves the organization is one day. Furthermore, I experienced Dan's abundance mentality when he sat down with me last week and shared a process for successfully utilizing social media as a marketing tool.

As I have thought about STAR Collaborative over the last week and their abundance mentality it raised the following questions:

• Do I believe there is enough for everyone?
• Is my business about competition and profit first, or doing what is in the best interest of the stakeholders (internal and external)?
• Is my organization truly client-focused?
• Do I engage, empower, and encourage employees to greater levels of success?
• Are information and other resources freely shared among team members?

As I answer these questions for myself, I encourage you to do the same for your organization. As is the case with STAR Collaborative, those organizations that listen, heed and practice Zig Ziglar's words will continue to experience high levels of success!

What is your commitment to practicing and living an abundance mentality?

Successfully Navigating Change

"The Universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it."

-Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Organizations and individuals respond to change differently. Some individuals and organizations embrace and are even stimulated by change. Others work hard to keep the status quo in place, and resist change at every juncture. Whatever approach to change you take, how we think about change is critical to successfully navigating through it.

Case in point is my recent relocation to Minneapolis, Minnesota after many years in Kansas City. Early in the summer of 2010, I made the decision to return to Minneapolis to help care for my aging mother. Not only was I uprooting my life, and consulting practice, but also building a new professional network in Minneapolis. Additionally, I was co-chairing a September fundraiser and preparing for the physical move. I had two choices at this point. I could focus on all there was to do and become overwhelmed or I could see the change full of possibilities. I chose the latter. As a result, I navigated the many changes with a degree of peace and serenity.

How do you think about change in your life? How do you think about change in your organization? Do you resist it or embrace it? The thoughts we think will determine how successfully we navigate through it.

How do you navigate through change?

In Transition

It is funny how time seems to go faster. I was amazed to realize it has been a little over one month since my last blog entry. I have prided myself on the consistency with which I post.

This is a time of great change for me both personally and professionally. I have had enormous "insights" this summer, reprioritized and as a result am relocating to Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this change and transition process, I have the opportunity to utilize all the skills I teach my clients. That which we need to learn we teach.

With that being said, I will take an intentional, indefinite sabbatical from blogging. At some time I will continue and reconnect. Thank you to those who have read my blog regularly and those who will be reading it in the future. It has been fun to share ideas with you!

Getting the Right People on the Bus

Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, acknowledges the importance of getting the right people on the bus. If you want sustained, ongoing results it is imperative to have the right people. I know this to be true as this is the second year of Co-chairing a successful non-profit event.

The success of the event last year was due to the team we assembled. We had the right people on the bus and did the following:

• Had a clear and articulate vision of what we were trying to accomplish. We communicated this regularly.
• Developed as a team the results we wanted.
• Placed the right people in the right positions on the committee. For example, we had the head of food service for a local school district handle all the food for the event.
• Were willing to work outside of our "job descriptions" to get things done
• Developed a deep respect and appreciation for one another.
• Had fun, fun, fun!!!

I know it will be bigger and better and more successful this year as the team has remained in tact. Having the right people on the we are following the same winning formula for 2010.

Do you have the right people on your bus?

Happy July 4th!!!

This morning it dawned on me how grateful I am to live in this country and experience the freedom I do. The most important freedom is choosing the thoughts I think on a moment to moment basis. Everything starts with a thought.

This 4th of July weekend choose thoughts that uplift and bring joy not only to you, but also others. Have a happy 4th of July!!!

Yes, Virginia, Better Workplaces Really Do Exist

By Leigh Branham SPHR

My coauthor, Mark Hirschfeld, and I spent the last two years writing Re-Engage: How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Employee Engagement in Extraordinary Times (McGraw-Hill, 2010). It is highly evidenced-based study of employee engagement. We are proud to say Re-Engage is, in fact, the most comprehensive employee engagement study ever conducted in terms of the number and diversity of employers--supported by 2.1 million employee surveys from 10,000 organizations, two-thirds of which have less than 1,000 employees.

The confidential surveys were completed by employees whose companies entered Best-Places-to-Work competitions held from 2004 through 2009 in 45 U.S. cities, with data collected by third party research firm, Quantum Workplace, Omaha, Nebraska and sponsored by American Cities Business Journals, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Re-Engage tells inspiring stories from the employers with employee engagement survey results in the upper one percent--Quality Living, Inc., Winchester Hospital, Nalley Automotive, Rackspace Hosting, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and Gaylord Hotels. These special workplaces scored high on the six Universal Engagement Drivers that we identified:

1. Trustworthy and Inspiring Senior Leadership
2. Managers Who Align and Engage
3. A Culture of Effective Teamwork, not “We vs. They”
4. Job Enrichment and Professional Growth
5. Valuing of Employee Contributions
6. Commitment to Employee Well-Being

We also provide readers the opportunity to rate their own employers on the six universal engagement drivers and their own self-engagement via a self-scoring web survey (www.re-engagebook.com). In each of the chapters dedicated to these six drivers readers will find practical how-to advice and best practices categorized within the challenges of organizational size, generational diversity, and economic downturn.

Not surprisingly, companies scoring in the top quartile of competing companies had 74% positive comments, while those scoring in the second quartile had 59% positive comments, those in the 3rd quartile had 40% positive comments, and 4th quartile employers had only 17% positive comments. In reading more than 200,000 survey comments, Mark and I identified some key themes in what employees are saying they need to be more engaged at work:

§ "Senior Leaders, Engagement Starts With You!"
For at least the last decade the conventional wisdom has been that "people leave managers, not companies." All too many senior leaders took this as license to delegate responsibility for employee engagement initiatives to middle managers and supervisors. Although direct managers are still extremely important to the engagement process, our recent data clearly show that senior leaders are the prime movers--setting the tone and shaping the culture. We recommend that senior leaders who want "Best-Place Employer" status for their organizations take the lead by setting a direction that employees believe in, dumping outmoded command-and-control mindsets, tapping the ideas of employees, eliminating "we-they" distinctions, forgoing excessive perks and bonuses, and holding managers accountable for treating people right.

§ "What Motivates Us Is Changing—Try to Keep Up!"
We cite 27 studies conducted over the last 20 years showing that more engaged workforces are more productive workforces. However, as times and economic conditions change, employees' perceptions of what's important changes as well. Just in the last eight years, since 9/11, Enron, the entry of Millennials into the workforce, the decline in company-paid health benefits, and the financial collapse of 2008 all have combined to effect changes in worker expectations. Employees are voicing their concerns that their employers are less concerned about their general well-being, more far more concerned about their job security, and more cynical about leaders, especially on the issue of caring more about the welfare of the organization than their own self-interests. We propose specific ways to deal with these concerns in ways that restore trust and the feeling of being cared for--practices that the Best-Places are using to stay abreast of employee expectations and remain the winning workplaces they are.

§ "Give...and We'll Give Back!"
Regarding benefits, there has been a dramatic shift among winning employers. Among other things, they are helping employees take greater responsibility for their own health in a way that also lets them know the company cares. In doing so they are reducing unnecessary health care claims and more effectively managing costs. Our finding is that enlightened employers are showing the way--shining the light on one “cure” for our health care crisis! We tell the compelling stories of winning workplaces that implementing progressive strategies reduce health care costs, improve communication with employees about changes in benefits, and take a more “whole person” approach—one that benefits both employee and employer alike.

§ "Help Us Manage Our Differences!"
Having four distinct generations--Millennials, Xers, Boomers, and Traditionalists--in the workplace (for the first time in history!) has made teamwork, communication, and one-size-fits-all employment and management practices more difficult. Our findings--that some of the least age-diverse employers are also the most engaged--is a sobering one. It means that unless age-diverse employers are doing extraordinary things to manage generational differences and promote teamwork while treating everyone as individuals, engagement levels will erode. Among the best practices we recommend that Best-Places employers use to overcome generational differences are these: training older managers to meet Millennials halfway by giving more feedback, implementing state-of-the-art "on-boarding" practices, providing generation Xers more varied, horizontal, and/or rotational assignments to broaden their experience when their path to promotion may be blocked, promoting "reverse mentoring" of older managers in web 2.0, and encouraging collaboration and social networking while requiring more face-to-face communication.

§ "Manage Our Growth So We Don't Lose the Team-Feeling!”
Companies want and need to grow. As workplaces grow larger than 150 employees, they tend to reach a tipping point that reduces teamwork and camaraderie. Workforce population growth can have a extremely negative and unexpected impact on employee engagement, a finding that other employee engagement researchers have not reported. Why not? Because until now no other research firm has had access to a database that matches what Quantum Workplace offers--insights based on 7,000 small and medium-size employers. We present case studies that explore this dynamic and reveal how some employers have grown larger while maintaining high levels of teamwork and engagement.

§ "Give Us Hope in Times of Uncertainty!"
Employee engagement, once thought to be primarily within the control of management, can be negatively influenced by outside forces if they rise to the level of our current economic downturn. Yet, in spite of these powerful external forces, Best-Places employers have actually increased their levels of employee engagement after the "economic Pearl Harbor" of 2008, while engagement levels at most employers have dropped precipitously. The authors identify five differentiating practices that winning workplaces are using to weather the economic storm and keep employees engaged. Specific practices include: holding "50-50" meetings where the CEO responds to any and all questions, creating company blogs inviting employees to submit money-making ideas for cash rewards, confronting poor performance, refusing to eliminate recognition events and cut training budgets, and insisting that overstressed and burned-out employees take vacations.

§ "Kill the Cookie Cutter!"
Much of the challenge facing employers today involves taking the practices we describe and making them live within their workplaces. We offer a fresh approach that helps employers apply their “signature” to the engagement practices we recommend. We caution managers and executives that they should not attempt to "copycat" or "bolt on" what other employers do. Rather, they should select from among the "leading" practices we present those that best serve the unique business objectives and meet the needs of their critical talent. This approach is bolstered by in-depth studies of some of the most engaged workplaces in America. We highlight employers like Rackspace Hosting, which has developed an employment brand that not only engages current employees, but acts as a recruiting magnet for those who buy into their “fanatical service” model.

Leigh Branham is Founder and Principal of Keeping the People, Inc., Overland Park, Ks. (www.keepingthepeople.com). For more information about Re-Engage, go to http://www.re-engagebook.com/ or contact Leigh Branham at LB@keepingthepeople.com.