Eric Jacobson

Archive for the ‘Employee Engagement’ Category


10 Ways To Maximize Employee Involvement

In Employee Engagement, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management, Motivating Employees on May 4, 2013 at 7:09 am

Eric Jacobson Leadership

Here are 10 tips for how to maximize employee involvement:

  1. Have active ways to listen to your employees.
  2. Check often with employees to see if the information you are sharing with them is what they need and what they want.
  3. Share information about customer satisfaction with employees.
  4. Discuss financial performance with your employees and be sure everyone understands the importance of profitability and how they can contribute to profitability.
  5. Allow ad hoc teams among employees to form to address organizational problems and work with those teams to tackle the identified issues.
  6. Encourage employees to make suggestions for improvement whether those ideas are large or small.
  7. Take an idea from one employee and share it with other employees and teams and let everyone make a contribution to build upon that idea.
  8. Train!
  9. For long-term employees, find ways to keep their jobs interesting through new assignments and challenges.
  10. Conduct meetings around specific issues and brainstorm solutions.

“Involving people in the business is the most effective way to produce an organization in which people know more, care more, and do the right things,” said Edward Lawler III, Professor, University of Southern California, as quoted in the book, 1001 Ways To Energize Employees, by author Bob Nelson.


Seven Ways To Define Meaningful Work

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employee Satisfaction, Engaging Employees, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Skills, Management, Meaningful Work, Motivating Employees on March 23, 2013 at 4:31 pm

Eric Jacobson Leadership

There are so many good things to learn in the book, Helping People Win At Work, by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge. Among those is the section about how to define meaningful work.

Their definition consists of these seven attributes.  Work is meaningful when it:

  1. It is conducted in a manner that is “good and proper” in all respects.
  2. It positively affects our company and our communities, giving our work an impact that extends beyond ourselves.
  3. It provides learning and growth, offers challenges, requires creativity, pushes us to surpass limits, and creates exciting results.
  4. It provides recognition and rewards for our achievements.
  5. It allows us to succeed as a team while excelling as individuals.
  6. It allows us to enjoy the ride, bringing humor and fun into our work.
  7. It fuels passion!


Leaders: How To Build Trust

In Building Trust, Employee Engagement, Engaging Employees, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management, Trust Building on February 9, 2013 at 1:03 pm

Eric Jacobson Leadership

You can’t lead if your employees, team or followers don’t trust you.

Building trust takes energy, effort and constant attention to how you act.

To help build trust, follow these 16 tips, recommended by author Susan H. Shearouse:

  1. Be honest
  2. Keep commitments and keep your word
  3. Avoid surprises
  4. Be consistent with your mood
  5. Be your best
  6. Demonstrate respect
  7. Listen
  8. Communicate
  9. Speak with a positive intent
  10. Admit mistakes
  11. Be willing to hear feedback
  12. Maintain confidences
  13. Get to know others
  14. Practice empathy
  15. Seek input from others
  16. Say “thank you”


How To Give Constructive Feedback — 4 Steps

In Constructive Feedback, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, Employee Feedback, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Feedback, Leadership, Leadership Education, Motivating Employees on January 22, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Effective Listening

Eric Harvey and Al Lucia wrote a booklet called, 144 Ways To Walk The Talk. They provide the following great advice about giving feedback:

1. Make it timely – give your feedback as soon as possible to the performance.

2. Make it individualized – tailor your feedback to the feedback receiver.

3. Make it productive – focus your feedback on the performance and not the performer.

4. Make is specific — pinpoint for the receiver observable actions and behaviors.


Leadership Insights From Top Business Women

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, Employee Satisfaction, Engaging Employees, Leadership, Leadership Quotes, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leading By Example, Listening Skills, Management, Mentoring, Team Building on September 6, 2012 at 5:22 pm

Every year, the Kansas City Business Journal honors 25 women business leaders in the Kansas City metro in its “Women Who Mean Business” awards competition.

The winners are identified as those women in the community who:

  • are outstanding in their business accomplishments
  • have growth plans for their companies
  • contribute to the community
  • improve the climate for women in business

Key insights from this year’s recently announced winners include these comments and observations:

  • “Listen to people who know the business.”
  • “I’ve learned when I’m angry to walk away, calm down.  Never, ever, ever react in anger to anybody.”
  • “Loyalty is not something you can spot right away; attitude is.  Attitude is something you can’t teach.”
  • “Mentoring is opening doors for younger people.”
  • “Work hard, but enjoy what you do”
  • “If you don’t give back to the community, how can you be a whole person?”
  • “Our job as business leaders is to bring out the best efforts from the most people.  Give them something purposeful and meaningful, and great things will happen.”
  • “I try to find people that I respect not only professionally, but personally.”
  • “You have to be a good listener and a good problem-solver.”
  • Pay attention and enjoy where you are instead of worrying about what’s 10 steps ahead of you.”
  • “I’m always focusing on what is this decision going to look like five years from now.”
  • “I will not pretend I have all the answers.  I will seek input from others so I can develop the right answers.”

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Leadership Lessons From “Moral Of The Story”

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Guiding Business Principles, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Quotes, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leading By Example, Management, Motivating Employees on September 6, 2012 at 5:19 pm

I’m a big fan of best-selling author Harvey Mackay.  He writes about business, sales and leadership and typically ends his articles with a moral of the story.

Culled from his writings of the past three and half years, here are some of my favorites of his moral of the story endings:

  • Change your thinking, change your life.
  • It’s not enough to know how to do things – you must know why you do them.
  • If you live in the past, you won’t have much of a future.
  • If you want to outsmart the competition, you have to outthink the competition.
  • Don’t be afraid to make a decision.  Be afraid not make a decision.
  • What you learn on your first job will last through your last job.
  • Minds are like parachutes – not much good unless they are open.
  • If you can’t be an expert, hire one.
  • People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be.
  • It only takes a little spark to ignite a great fire.
  • Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing to do.

Mackay’s best-selling business books have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. They have been translated into 37 languages and sold in 80 countries.

Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive was a groundbreaking New York Times #1 best seller for 54 weeks.


How Marriott Excels In Good Leadership And Customer Service

In Customer Service, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Education, Leadership Skills, Leading By Example, Management, Mission Statement on August 25, 2012 at 12:15 pm

The next time you stay at a Marriott hotel look in the nightstand drawer for Marriott’s booklet that highlights its milestones and tells the Marriott story.

In the booklet, you’ll find the following 12 ways that Marriott practices good leadership AND customer service:

  1. Continually challenge your team to do better.
  2. Take good care of your employees, and they’ll take good care of your customers, and the customers will come back.
  3. Celebrate your people’s success, not your own.
  4. Know what you’re good at and mine those competencies for all you’re worth.
  5. Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action.
  6. Communicate. Listen to your customers, associates and competitors.
  7. See and be seen. Get out of your office, walk around, make yourself visible and accessible.
  8. Success is in the details.
  9. It’s more important to hire people with the right qualities than with specific experience.
  10. Customer needs may vary, but their bias for quality never does.
  11. Eliminate the cause of a mistake. Don’t just clean it up.
  12. View every problem as an opportunity to grow.

Kudos to Marriott.


Book Review: Rapid Realignment

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, Engaging Employees, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Listening Skills, Making Decisions on July 15, 2012 at 5:31 am

Spend some quality time with the new book, Rapid Realignment, and you’ll learn how to ensure that your strategy, customers, processes and people work seamlessly together in the service of customers and that those four elements continually realign in the face of constant change.

The authors, Dr. George H. Labovitz and Victor Rosansky, share throughout the book a series of case studies from Federal Express, Quest Diagnostics, Navy Hospital at Camp Pendleton, Farmington Savings Bank and a host of other organizations who have stepped up to the challenge of rapid realignment.

Key takeaways from the book include:

  • Vertical alignment describes a condition in which every employee can articulate the enterprise’s strategy and explain how his or her daily work activities support that strategy.
  • Each organization must have a Main Thing.  That Main Thing as a whole must be a common and unifying concept to which every unit can contribute.  Each department and team must be able to see a direct relationship between what it does and this overarching goal.  And, the Main Thing must be clear, easy to understand, consistent with the strategy of the organization, and actionable.
  • Growth and profits are surely the ultimate aim of every business organization, but they are outcomes of succeeding with the Main Thing.
  • Good bosses understand the value of giving subordinates a long leash.  In addition, best bosses listen, back up their employees, trust and respect their employees and provide feedback to employees.
  • Leaders foster engagement when they listen to their employees, create a common purpose, and give people greater ownership of their work.
  • Corporate culture is the product of four dynamically related components:  attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior.
  • The fastest and most  effective way to change attitudes and beliefs is to change people’s behavior and show them the beneficial results of the new behavior.
  • Organizational culture is revealed in artifacts and symbols, the stories people  tell, relationships, and the rituals and rules that guide behavior.

You’ll appreciate the Key Points summaries and the Things To Do suggestions from the authors at the end of each of the nine chapters in the book.

And, particularly timely are the book sections where the authors teach readers how to:

  • bring the customer voice inside your company through social media
  • use social media and digital technology to quickly identify points of misalignment

Labovitz is the founder and CEO of IDI, an international management training and consulting company, and professor of management and organizational behavior at the Boston University Graduate School of Management.

Rosansky is co-founder and president of LHR International, Inc.  He has more than 25 years of experience as a consultant, helping Fortune 500 clients to drive rapid strategy deployment and alignment.

Thanks to the book publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.


7 Ways To Build An Effective Corporate Culture

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Listening Skills, Management, Team Building on July 8, 2012 at 7:53 pm

Fortunately, most of my career I’ve worked in effective corporate cultures. If I put together the best of each, here is what made those environments effective:

•  Leaders led by example on a consistent basis and were willing to roll up their sleeves, particularly during tight deadlines or challenging times.

•  Employees clearly understood how what they did made a difference and how their contributions made the organization either more profitable or more effective.

•  The workforce included a blend of long-term employees with a rich company, product/service and customer history, employees who had been at the company for five to seven years, and then new hires with a fresh perspective and keen sense of new technologies and techniques. That blend worked best when the mix included virtually all A-players.

•  Top managers had a clear, realistic and strategic vision for how the company would grow and compete in the marketplace.

•  Employees were challenged and rewarded through growth opportunities, education and training and pay increases.

•  Leaders provided opportunities for the company and its employees to give back to the community. Sometimes it was through company organized volunteer projects. Other times it was by encouraging (and rewarding) employees to volunteer on their own.

•  A group of employees served on an activities committee with as little top management influence as possible, to plan at least monthly team-building, networking, education and charitable activities. This grass-roots approach helped ensure that the culture was shaped and influenced by employees and not only by top management. In this way, employees owned the culture as much as the management did.

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Book Review: The Collaboration Imperative

In Company Culture, Effective Communications, Employee Engagement on June 23, 2012 at 10:00 am

The Collaboration Imperative is a totally cool book.  If for no other reason, check out the book for its layout, graphics and incredible readability.  It may just be the model for many books to come – full of 60-second end-of-chapter wraps, bold graphics, Q&A’s with real-world business leaders, case studies, and lots of ways to test yourself along the way.  The only thing I would recommend adding are QR codes throughout the book to take readers to online videos via their Smartphones.

I recommend, however, that you also take the time to read the book by Cisco employees Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese.  It offers a wealth of executive strategies for unlocking an organization’s true potential through achieving the greatest level of collaborative success possible within that organization.

The authors explain that in organizations where collaboration excels, its employees:

  • Communicate openly across business functions and departments.
  • Are always aware of the company’s objectives and priorities, even as they rapidly evolve.
  • Perform multiple different roles during the day.
  • Self-select for projects based on interest, expertise and importance to the business.
  • Locate needed information in real time.
  • Work as mobile and distributed participants—even beyond the walls of the company—as partners, customers, contractors and suppliers.

The benefits of a collaborative environment are:

  • Employees contribute more important ideas and experiences.
  • Shortened product development and sales cycle times.
  • Increased productivity.
  • Increased speed between strategy to execution.
  • Saved money.

The authors show readers how to become a more collaborative organization through:

  • Culture
  • Process 
  • Technology

And, they explain that leaders within the organization must change their style from command and control to coordinate and cultivate.

Other takeaways for me from the book include:

  • Good ideas can come from anywhere, and the more voices you have, the better.
  • The conceptual thinker brings ideas to the table and the analytical thinker brings details that round those ideas in reality.
  • If you are not genuinely pained by the risk involved in your strategic choices, it’s not much of a strategy.
  • Trust anchors every successful collaborative team.

As background, Ron Ricci is the vice president of corporate positioning at Cisco and is also the co-author of the book, Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces.

Carl Wiese is vice president of Cisco’s collaboration sales.

All proceeds from the sale of the book are being shared equally by the Bill Wilson Center and the Stanford Cancer Institute.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

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