Power Performance
Power Performance

What Michelangelo Teaches Us About Talent Management

by Jay Forte Thursday Mar 11, 2010

It is not the same workplace. Gone are the industrial-age days of managers watching over and controlling employees’ performance. Today's intellectual and service workplace needs self-motivated, passionate, fired up and engaged employees constantly thinking, hunting for opportunities and wowing customers. To activate this requires a different management approach.

Power Performance

The Critical Difference Between Loyal and Satisfied Employees (and Customers)

by Jay Forte Wednesday Mar 10, 2010

In a great Op-Ed piece titled,"The Emotion of Reform," NY Times columnist David Brooks writes that unless a political party is passionate about an issue, it just doesn’t advance the issue’s progress. Republicans seem dispassionate about health care reform; Democrats seem dispassionate about helping small businesses. What each is passionate about takes all their attention, time and focus. What they are dispassionate about never seems to go very far.

Power Performance

5 Questions to Ask Both Employees and Customers

by Jay Forte Tuesday Mar 9, 2010

I am a frequent blogger about the power of questions and how they create the essential dialogue that moves information, ideas and solutions. The great thing in today’s intellectual economy is the questions you need to ask customers are the same ones you must ask employees. Both the service event and the workplace now are “human-based” — these events are personal and emotional — and both benefit from questions that engage and connect to our humanity, our sense of belonging, and to feeling important. Here are examples of effective employee and customer questions:

Power Performance

Are You Hiring the Wrong People? 5 Steps to Picking Winners

by Jay Forte Monday Mar 8, 2010

It is a difficult and personally troubling lesson when you hire someone you feel to be a good employee and are soon disappointed by the performance and the inability to live up to your expectations.

Power Performance

Have Employees Own Problems and Create Solutions

by Jay Forte Thursday Mar 4, 2010

At a business presentation this week, I was introduced to a new construction industry approach called the IPD — Integrated Product Delivery. It includes the constructor, designer and owner as a united front in the design and build process. All parties are included in the same contract and are, therefore, mutually accountable for quality, completion and cost control. This is an entirely new approach to construction. I thought of two things worth sharing as I heard Bob Caine, of Project Caine, mechanical and electrical engineers in Ft Lauderdale, Fla., explain the concept: 

Power Performance

Why Keeping Employees in the Dark Is Never Good

by Jay Forte Tuesday Mar 2, 2010

You know how the quote goes: “mushroom management, the practice of keeping people in the dark and every now and then dumping dirt on them.” You may know another ending as well. That approach may work for mushrooms, but it destroys performance in today’s economy. What had me thinking about mushrooms is a program I have to present at the Society for Human Resource Management conference in San Diego in June. My topic is workplace culture — and how it activates or inhibits exceptional performance.

Power Performance

People Don't Leave Jobs - They Leave Bosses

by Jay Forte Monday Mar 1, 2010

There, I said it. You should take it personally because more often than not, employees leave because of you, not because of their work. So, if that is true, then the reverse must also be true — employees stay because of you, not just because of their work. What is it about your behavior as a manager or a boss that activates their loyalty or terminates it?

Power Performance

When Making Your Next Hire, Think About M&Ms (Seriously)

by Jay Forte Thursday Feb 25, 2010

Think of an M&M — great candy filling on the inside, colorful candy coating on the outside. That is today’s worker — talents and passions on the inside, diversity on the outside. We choose M&M’s based on their filling — the candy coating is a bonus. We hire employees based on their talents and passions (inside) — their diversity (outside) is a bonus.

Power Performance

How to Reinvent Your Business -- Every Day

by Jay Forte Wednesday Feb 24, 2010

What is your process to challenge what you do and to regularly reinvent? Is it part of your normal workday?  If you are like most companies, reinvention is the response only when an obstacle or challenging event happens, like a recession, a new competitor, a bankrupt supplier, etc. Something from the outside forces you to readjust and reinvent. Otherwise every day’s approach is just like every other day.

Power Performance

4 Ways to Silence Employee Whining

by Jay Forte Tuesday Feb 23, 2010

Tough times — we are in one. We’ve had them before and we’ll have them again. What makes this one different is we have never been so connected during a tough time. We have the ability to share everything we feel with whomever will listen — and there are plenty who tweet, post, email and blog about how they feel. We have created a national whine center. Instead of solving, we have found places to commiserate about how bad things are. And these whine centers have moved into the workplace. 

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