I’ve noticed the topic of “sustainability” is piquing the interest of an awful lot of businesspeople of late. I believe it’s an issue worthy of serious consideration but I have a few questions before I proceed:

• How are we defining the term? Do we agree on what it means?
• Is there anyone on the inside (developing sustainability policies, setting sustainability objectives, implementing sustainability practices and procedures, etc.)?
• Are most of us aligned with the status quo (i.e., standing on the shore, waiting for some other fool or brave soul to test the water)?

There are plenty of references to sustainability floating around the web. In Quality, we continually refer to a practice known as the “5S’s”, the key “S” being “sustainability”. Sustainability is often linked with the construction business, LEED certification being the hottest topic in the industry. Our friends at ISO – the International Organization for Standardization – have issued a number of standards that directly or indirectly address the issue, such as:

• ISO 15932, “Sustainability in Building Construction – General Principles“;
• The ISO 15686 series on “Building and Construction Assets – Service Life Planning“; and
• ISO 14001, “Environmental Management Systems“.

I’m curious to know what all of you think, so I’ve started a poll on LinkedIn — look for “What’s the status of your organization’s ‘sustainability program’?”. For those of you who have a LinkedIn account, I hope to hear from you soon. (For those who don’t, it costs nothing to sign up.) I’ll post the results for you in the near future.

Thank you for your time, as always.

Steve

To some, there’s an enormous difference between expectations and objectives. Our expectations are based on such factors as “the social contract”, our knowledge, and our personal experience. Objectives are rational, exhibiting little, if any, measurable bias, and are clearly communicated.

Our expectations reflect our personal biases. Expectations are often unstated — they are somehow expected to be understood. For example, we expect that adult pedestrians will not haphazardly dart in and out of vehicular traffic. That seems like a reasonable expectation, doesn’t it? We don’t often hear or read of pedestrians being killed as they burst or wander into traffic. The car is bigger, heavier, and faster — why would anyone risk serious injury or death?

Expectations being what they are, many are not met. They are often burdened by others’ expectations. For example, you expect the businessperson on the street corner, on their cellphone while dragging a wheeled suitcase along, is going to look before crossing the street in front of your car. They, on the other hand, expect every vehicle operator to see and yield to them. Someone’s expectations will be dashed, probably both.

One thing expectations rarely are, and that is “based on empirical evidence or sound policy“. Suspicions and hunches aren’t evidence. Too often, a manager comes up with “that’s the way it’s always been done”, or “that’s the way I’ve always done it and it’s always worked.” (Always? Really? Show me the numbers that bear that out.)

“It ain’t braggin’ if you c’n back it up.“
“Dizzy” Dean

Another thing expectations never are, and that’s “communicating well with others“. The essence of a well-run company is establishing SMART objectives that everyone in the organization understands and agrees with.

If you want your expectations met, you have to state them as clearly and precisely as you can to everyone responsible for meeting them. You have to get feedback from those people so you know everyone’s on your wavelength.

“A moving target is hard to hit.“
Lucy Ricardo (“I Love Lucy”)

Do this and your expectations are no longer mere expectations — they are the company’s business objectives. Unstated expectations will always be unmet expectations.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) announced the release of a new Web tool yesterday (May 19), designed to help employers understand their responsibility to record and report work-related injuries and illnesses. This tool promotes compliance with Human Resource (HR) requirements 0f Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations.

Your employee policies and procedures should address HR compliance issues like OSHA recordkeeping. The OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor helps employers and those responsible for organizational safety and health quickly determine:

• Whether an injury or illness is work-related;
• Whether a work-related injury or illness needs to be recorded; and
• Which provisions of the regulations apply when recording a work-related injury or illness.

To help you determine what action(s) to take, the OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor leads you through an online questionnaire. To see the OSHA Recordkeeping Advisor and questionnaire, see www.dol.gov/elaws/osharecordkeeping.htm.

This Advisor is one of a series of online compliance assistance products from OSHA.  The elaws (Employment Laws Assistance for Workers and Small Businesses) Advisor is developed by DOL to help employers and employees understand federal HR employment laws. For a complete list of elaws Advisors, visit the elaws web site at: www.dol.gov/elaws. To learn more about DOL’s occupational safety and health program, visit the OSHA web site at www.osha.gov.  For help with your employee policies and procedures check out the Human Resources Policies, Procedures and Forms manual from Bizmanualz.

“Collaboration” is one of the newer buzzwords to make its way into the businesspersons’ vocabulary. Social media — a hot buzzphrase itself — like to emphasize the fact that they’re designed to enhance collaborative activity. One company (not ours) goes so far as to claim its collaborative software “can accelerate team productivity, improve interactions, and support innovation“.

“I call that bold talk…“
True Grit (1969)

What Does It Actually Mean to Collaborate?

Collaborate means “work together to accomplish a goal”; the word comes from Latin, “work with”. Collaboration implies that two or more people are working as equals (or close to it) to make something, to solve a problem, etc. John Lennon and Paul McCartney collaborated on much of the Beatles’ early work, for example.

What does it mean to collaborate within your organization? Do employees cross boundaries all the time, or do they stay in their comfortable little silos? As a leader/manager, you may think it’s not possible to collaborate with employees. You might picture yourself “up here” and your employees as “down there” — you might feel if your employees get the notion they’re your equals, you won’t have control of the organization.

I say you’ll never see true collaboration if you have that mindset. Your employees may be able to collaborate without you, but you not collaborating with them? Do you discourage independent thought, or the sharing of ideas? Do you not want your employees to grow? If so, you’re in more trouble than you know.

Why Do We Collaborate?

We’re essentially social beings. Some of us think we work well independently. While that may be true at times, over the long road of life we need others to help us accomplish tasks and achieve goals. We need input from other sources, whether it’s measuring devices or people, to assure ourselves that we’re doing the right thing in the right way, or at least headed in the right direction.

Collaboration can help ensure and improve quality. There’s this old saying that ”too many cooks spoil the broth”, but that’s only true when the cooks are working at cross-purposes, each trying to stake their claim as the best cook. That’s obviously not collaboration.

Collaboration comes about through a shared vision, shared priorities, and shared objectives. We get things done when we work together, don’t we?

“No man is an island, entire of itself.“
John Donne, poet (1572-1631)

Who Should Collaborate?

Collaboration should not be confined to your company. You can’t afford to keep it to yourself. Successful firms collaborate with everyone — their employees, their vendors, their customers. Every time you interact with someone, that’s an opportunity for collaboration, right? So, the answer is ”everyone”.

When Should You Collaborate?

As important as it is to collaborate — as much as it helps you and others accomplish — it can’t possibly be a “24/7″ activity. We all need time alone to think, review, contemplate, and decide. And there are, of course, those personal needs and interests that make us complete and help us collaborate much better.

For instance, if my Bizmanualz colleagues and I are together the entire workday, reading the same material, eating our lunches together every day, even spending every break period together, we wouldn’t get the cross-fertilization of ideas that we would if we occasionally spent time tending to our own interests. Another way to put it: When you spend a week or two on holiday with your family, aren’t you just a little sick of one another toward the end? Don’t you need a little time apart?

How Do You Ensure That Your Employees Continue Collaborating?

Collaboration cannot be a one-time event. Treat collaboration like any business process. You can model it on the Deming (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle, for example. Of course, I’m not suggesting you write a collaboration procedure — you really can’t. Some of the best collaboration comes about spontaneously, after all. You wouldn’t want to restrict the collaborative process by saying, “It has to be done this way“.

Instead, you should write up guidelines for sparking or encouraging collaboration so your employees will recognize — and be prepared to take advantage of — problems or opportunities that are solved best through collaboration. You need to make it part of your company culture. While they’re working together, people should be inclined to take note of what works and what doesn’t, so they can add to the collective knowledge and continually improve the process of collaboration.

To get your employees to collaborate…

• Provide the right atmosphere;
• Provide a common vision and sense of purpose;
• Provide your employees with the means and the time to collaborate freely;
• Don’t do anything that would restrict collaboration or encourage “siloing”;
• Open up as many avenues for collaboration as possible, including software; and
• Lead by example.

Other Resources

• Sampson, Michael, “The Right Way to Get Employees to Collaborate”, Information Week, 9 May 2011
• Anderson, Chris, “Why Should You Publish Your Policies and Procedures Online?”, 3 Jan 2011
• Burrier, Dan, “Create Better, Collaborate Better“, Harvard Business Review (online), 25 May 2011

Last April 17, I read the news on the Internet, as I do every day, and saw a report that an Indian firm, Godrej & Boyce, produced the last typewriter and was shutting down its Mumbai factory. The story seemed plausible to me — I haven’t used my Brother daisy-wheel electric in eons and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve seen anyone use a typewriter to dash off an angry letter to the editor, let alone get their daily work done.

A little more than a week later, it was announced that these “RIP, typewriter” stories were all wrong. There are still companies manufacturing those old-fashioned mechanical marvels and if you want one — seriously! — new and used typewriters are fairly easy to come by.

Many people who grew up entirely in the Internet era are waxing rhapsodic about “the satisfying ‘clickety-clack’ sound of the keys” and ”getting in touch with the basic creative process, like it was back in the days of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Kerouac”.

“It all comes back to the basics.“
Dave Thomas, “Wendy’s” founder (1932-2002)

Well, before I dismissed these people as daydreamers, I had to think about how we communicated in the pre-word-processor, pre-smartphone era. True, the typewriter was not encouraging or forgiving but it made you plan…carefully. It made you pay attention to details.

Documents in those times (portrayed so effectively in movies like “The Front Page” and TV shows like “Mad Men”) were thoroughly edited and revised before being released. Calling back hundreds of design documents or proposals — or hundreds of thousands of newspapers — simply wasn’t practical. And once word got around that you were careless or sloppy or didn’t get the facts straight, your reputation was ruined.

“This is Bensinger. Give me a ‘rewrite man’.“
The Front Page (1974)

In the 21st century, business documents, news stories, blog posts, tweets, etc., are generated at alarming speeds. In fact, the speed of communication has become the main driver of communication; the message itself is often an afterthought. Thoroughness, accuracy, and attention to detail — in short, the quality of communication — have suffered significantly.

This may not mean much to the casual tweeter or blogger but to business, reduced quality of communication can be toxic. Deadlines are important – second-place finishers don’t usually get championship rings — but so is quality. First-place finishers can have their trophies taken away.

So, as a business leader — think about your policy, procedure, email, or other document you’re about to issue. Isn’t it worth the extra few minutes to get it done right?

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OnPolicy is a new document management system from Bizmanualz, designed to help ensure high-quality communication by automating the document review-and-approval process, organizing your policies and procedures, making them readily available when and where they’re needed, and ensuring periodic reviews of all your documents. See the OnPolicy website or email us (info@onpolicy.com) for more information.

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RECOMMENDED READING

1. Jacob, Shine, “Typewriters About to Become a Page in History”, Business Standard, 17 April 2011 – http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/typewriters-about-to-becomepage-in-history/432497/.
2. McCracken, Harry, “Rumors of the Typewriter’s Death: Greatly Exaggerated”, Technologizer.com, 26 April 2011 - http://technologizer.com/2011/04/26/typewriters-not-dead/.

Unfortunately (for some of us), it’s that time of the year again. All over the USA and even outside the country, individuals (like me) are filing their Federal and state tax returns at the last possible moment. I’m sure a number of companies are bound up in the rush to beat tonight’s deadline, too (my friends who are CPAs are overwhelmed with work right now).

Not only is tax preparation exceedingly time consuming — it’s confusing and frustrating. You wish someone had all the answers, but even the “experts” don’t seem to.

Studies are conducted practically every year by governmental and private organizations that indicate the US Tax Code is virtually impossible to understand and enforce.  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) web site has thousands of policies, procedures, guidelines, and forms. These documents apply to individuals, businesses, non-profits, and/or governmental entities.

The opportunity for error in preparing a tax return — whether you rely on a professional tax preparer, tax preparation software, or your own wits — is enormous.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found over and over that those who are subject to the Tax Code, as well as those who are responsible for enforcing it, routinely make mistakes because they don’t understand the Code.

There’s a valuable lesson here for every business, no matter where you’re located or what business you’re in:

1. Review your policies and procedures regularly. The last major revision of the US Tax Code was in 1986; before that, it was 1954. 25 years (or more) is far too long between revisions.
2. Make sure your policies and procedures are clear and concise. Don’t make them so large and cumbersome that even your own people don’t understand them. Reduce complexity and you reduce the opportunity for error.
3. Cover the details but don’t obsess over them. Trying to address every possible circumstance — sometimes known as “paralysis by analysis” — generally causes much more trouble than it solves.
4. Train your personnel carefully and thoroughly. Retrain them regularly, too.
5. Get a variety of inputs. Involve the people who are using the policies and procedures — those who are subject to the rules and regulations — in the design phase, long before you start implementing any code.
6. Be sure your eyes and ears are always open. Be sure you don’t have a closed mind. Get feedback from the user in as many ways as you can. Encourage suggestions for improvement.
7. Keep adequate records at every stage. Be sure they’re organized, legible, and easily found when you need them and be sure to have a backup copy offsite.

Maybe you’re thinking, “I’ll never have to worry about that problem. I don’t plan on getting nearly that big.” Perhaps, but it’ll be easier if you plan well ahead of time rather than happen into a difficult situation because you didn’t plan, will it not?

Do you notice any of the IRS’s problems — long and unwieldy documents, lack of feedback, etc. — creeping into your own business?

REFERENCES

1. “10 Ways to Avoid a Tax Audit”, Wall St. Journal, 15 April 2011 (reproduced by Yahoo Finance) – http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/111960/avoid-tax-audit-wsj
2. “How to Survive an IRS Audit”, Motley Fool, undated - http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/taxes/how-to-survive-an-irs-audit.aspx

Are you a “good” boss?  Google’s “Project Oxygen” has taken a lot of time — a couple of years, actually — to study what makes a good boss. Their “people analytics” staff has come up with eight key attributes of good managers within their organization.¹ Among those eight attributes are:

• Technical expertise (as you might expect of a tech firm like Google);
• Having a clear vision and strategy for “the team”;
• Helping your employees with career development;
• Be productive and results-oriented; and
• Be an effective and empathetic leader.

What shouldn’t surprise us is that of the eight attributes of a good manager, the “ability to work well with one’s employees” was ranked first in Google’s study. “Technical expertise”, which Google had considered an absolute necessity to being a team leader, was ranked at the bottom.

You may recall that in the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about the qualities of great leaders and what makes true leaders different from others.   Mostly, what separates leaders from mere managers are those intangible qualities, those “quirks” of personality that stump psychologists and sociologists to this day.

What makes for a good manager and exactly how do we quantify it? Well, it’s been tried — a number of times — but Google is putting their own spin on the concept. Despite past failings elsewhere, the people at Google think it’s possible to make the process of grooming leaders a reliable, repeatable process. Their goal is to make the process of hiring and training leaders like any other human resources procedure.

This should be welcome news to every other HR department if Google’s HR can do it right. Managing people, with all their complexities and variations, is (at best) extremely difficult and statistical analysis is helpful only to a point. The chief problem with “data driven management” is that people can’t easily be reduced to a set of predictable behaviors and outcomes — we are only human. Every statistic has to be taken with a grain of salt² but even more so when human behavior is the focus.

I’m going to follow Google’s Project Oxygen to see if there’s any merit to it. I sincerely hope so but I don’t harbor lofty expectations, either. Google may have a world of resources behind them but — people being people – it’s not a sure bet that Project Oxygen will deliver the goods.

So, what do you think? Can Google be successful — at something not so technical — when many other companies before them haven’t been?

NOTES

¹Bryant, Adam, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss”, New York Times, 12 March 2011 — http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html.

²Seife, Charles, Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, Viking Press (23 Sept 2010). ISBN-13 #978-0670022-16-8.

I’m at that age where I have one or more doctors run annual tests to gauge my health. At least once a year, I see my primary care physician, a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, and other assorted  health care providers. They compare my current numbers — height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol count, and so forth — with the numbers typical of a person of my age and gender, as well as with my historical numbers.

If my numbers are improving or if they’re above average, they let me go for another year with just a light warning to do this, or don’t do that. Now, there’s nothing in the law that says I have to get an annual checkup; it just makes good sense to me to know if I can proceed “as is” or if I need to take some kind of corrective action. Here’s another example: I’m averaging seven years’ ownership per automobile in the time I’ve been driving¹, a fact that I like to think is due to my attention to routine preventive maintenance.

The same is true of my bank accounts and my personal relationships. Regular, careful attention to details helps ensure that very little falls through the cracks.

If it’s important for an individual to routinely measure events and processes and analyze them in light of reasonable expectations and history, isn’t it reasonable to expect that businesses would do the same?

Which begs the question: Is your company measuring its performance? Is it doing something substantial with those measures, like improving its processes? Regardless of whether your company is required by some standard or regulation to measure its progress toward objectives, doesn’t it make good business sense to always look at how you’re doing in comparison with certain reference points (your own past, your goals, competitors’ performance, etc.)?

It’s been proved many times and in many ways: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Do you agree or disagree?

NOTES

¹The average jumps to over eight and one-half years when I count just the new vehicles I’ve owned.

During the “beta test” phase of developing our OnPolicy™ document management software, our beta testers have been coming up with great questions, some of which we thought we’d share with you in advance of our formal launch. For example:

1. What document formats are supported by OnPolicy™?

The OpenSource code behind OnPolicy will support many common document formats, such as:

• Microsoft Word (“.doc”, “.docx”);
• MS-Excel (“.xls”, “.xlsx”);
• Adobe Reader (“.pdf”); and
• Some limited-format and unformatted file types (“.rtf”, “.txt”).

2. Why are all of our documents converted to “.pdf” files?

In OnPolicy™, released documents are converted from their native formats to “.pdf” to lessen the likelihood that document “Readers” — personnel assigned read-only access to documents — can modify your documents.

3. Where are our documents stored?

All documents are stored in a “SAS 70 Type II Certified” data center, which is also one of the largest colocation facilities in the central United States.

4. How do we know we’re the only ones who have access to our company’s documents?

We’re using all available means to reasonably secure your data, including:

• Dedicated servers;
• Encryption;
• Firewalls;
• Periodic backups; and
• Password protection.

5. Can I set different access levels for different users?

OnPolicy™ Administrators can create users and assign them roles (e.g., Reader, Editor). Roles define responsibilities and accessibility of documentation and features.

6. Can documents be deleted?

• You can upload, download, and delete documents from your account at any time. Your documents are also backed up regularly.  But, as per document control, released documents can only be deleted after their retention date.

7. Can documents be recovered?

• Deleted documents are retrievable for an agreed-on period of time for as long as your OnPolicy™ account remains active.
• Note that recovery time depends, in part, on the number and size of files to be recovered.

If you have other questions about OnPolicy™ software-as-a-service document management, please:

• Visit our OnPolicy™ website, http://www.onpolicy.com;
• Call us (314-863-5079);
• Send us an email; or
• Visit the Bizmanualz web site, http://www.bizmanualz.com.

We’re happy to be of service.

A LinkedIn acquaintance of mine has shared what I think are some remarkable insights regarding leadership.  His group, Followership, is dedicated to a better understanding of what’s demanded and required of us when we are in the role of follower.

In the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about what qualities our leaders should possess (and too often don’t) but we haven’t talked about one of the most important parts of leadership. To be a leader, you have to have followers.

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”
Gen. George Patton, U.S. Army (1885-1945)

Why don’t we get the kind of leaders we want more often? Is it because we don’t know how to follow? How many of us follow our leaders passively? How many of us play an active role in ensuring the success of our leaders?

It’s sometimes said that leaders are made by their followers, and vice versa. From that, it should follow that if we’re to get leaders who embody those traits leaders should have, we as followers should embody many, if not all, of those leadership traits ourselves.  Those traits include:

1. Self-respect (and respect for others);
2. The ability to communicate well;
3. Integrity of character;
4. Humility;
5. Courage;
6. Persistence;
7. Dedication;
8. Commitment;
9. Willingness to accept responsibility; and
10. Decisiveness.

How about you? What kind of followers do you have? What kind of follower are you, especially if you’re a leader? Tell us what you think.