I heard from a friend who had been laid off that she recently found a job, which made me very happy to hear.  Others are having some luck in finding opportunities to at least interview for, so I believe all these are signs that we are moving forward.

Almost every business owner I have spoken with recently is looking for new ways to do business.  The old ways aren’t working very well, so we need to explore and investigate new methods for offering value to our customers, since it looks as if this is the key thing that many companies are looking for. They will spend their resources, providing they know they are purchasing value and useful strategies or products that will provide a return on investment.

So in my mind, we need to be sure that whatever approach we use in the marketplace ought to be directed toward understanding what issues the customer is facing and how we can enable the customer to get there faster and with a good return on investment.   If we can do that with them, then they will buy our proposals.

Maybe this will be the new wave of the future.  You will need to market yourself for the innovative solutions and services you can provide that help customers put added dollars to the bottom line.  Showing the return on investment will help you to distinguish yourself from others.  People are looking at the numbers, so if you can calculate out how much the investment will return to or save them, you might be heard more frequently.

It makes you wonder.  What is wrong with me?  Aren’t I doing a good job?  Can I do something different to get promoted?  The true answer to this question really depends on the person and the circumstances.  But more often than not, it is an issue of people not seeing you in the new role or having questions about how effective you might be in the new role.

Let’s take a look at some real situations, names removed, of course, to protect the candidates.

1.  Dan was hired to manage various projects at a small company.  He was a loyal worker who took his responsibilities seriously.  He took pride in doing a good job and worked well beyond the expected hours in order to make sure nothing was overlooked and that he did all the work as planned.  In meetings and when working with others, however, he was not a team player.  He procrastinated and some team members had the experience of having to pick up the slack, since he didn’t have his part finished according to the due dates the team had agreed on.  When it came time to discuss performance, Dan looked for a promotion to a manager level.  He wasn’t given the promotion.  The reason, which he had difficulty accepting, was that if he couldn’t manage his own work in a timely way, how will he be able to oversee the work of others?  His response was that doing the work and managing the work were two different skills.  His manager said this was true, but how did he expect to manage team members who had previously had to do his work because he didn’t get it finished on time and failed to ask for help?

2.  Michael had responsibility for dealing with customers in a sales situation.  He was an excellent source of knowledge and advice to his customers.  He knew how to negotiate a favorable deal and he always followed up to ensure that everything arrived as planned for the customer’s order.  Customers loved him.  But in handling his coworkers, he was directive, he was demanding, did not listen, and often inappropriately teased coworkers in front of others.  A manager’s position came up and he felt that he was next in line for the job.  He was passed over for someone whom he had trained.  He seriously considered quitting.  Aren’t I good enough?  Haven’t I produced a lot of business for the company?

3.  Joe was consistently late for work and often left early for various personal reasons.  He took long lunches and coworkers wondered why he got away with this when he was the first one to complain when they needed a few extra minutes.  He thought he was definitely management material.  While his work was good, his personal attitude was a real source of discussion for many people in the organization.  When he wasn’t promoted, he had difficulty understanding that he was undermining his credibility by holding himself to different standards than others.

All three of these individuals were passed over for the same reason, the reason being that they held themselves to different standards than they held others to.  Dan wasn’t really a team player and didn’t really care if someone else had to pick up his work.  Michael didn’t treat his coworkers the way he treated his customers.  And Joe felt that he didn’t have to abide by the company policies.  These issues are all attitude issues and are one of the most common reasons employers state as the reason they will pass someone over for a promotion.

If you want to get promoted, even though it is hard to hear, you need to be professional in everything you do. Whether it is working on the team, interacting with others or making sure that you abide by company policies, people who get promoted are usually the ones who get the basics right first. Don’t let things that you can control get in the way of getting promoted.

The second group, the service providers, are companies or organizations that provide services to the population, the elderly, home health care, governmental agencies, and those organizations where people go to get help for a particular need.  There are a good many opportunities in these sectors for jobs.  Nursing and health providers, lab positions, claims managers and insurance positions, support staff in hospitals and institutions, clinics and medical facilities have openings as well.

If you want to get noticed by these potential employers, how will you do this?  Here are some ideas to help you along.

1.  Make sure to read the job qualifications and only apply if you can meet these qualifications.  Many on-line search engines use coded queries to pick out those applicants who list the specific experiences presented in the job posting.  If you have the experience, then show it in your application in the terminology used to describe the position in the job posting.  Don’t trust that someone will read your written responses and be able to figure out that you really do have the experience, particularly if you didn’t list it the way it was stated in the job posting.   You are probably dealing with software doing the job of the initial screening and it will do this through a word-matching and number of years matching process.

2.  Follow the directions.  If the posting says “no calls, please”, then don’t call, unless you know someone who works at the company who can put in a good word for you.  You want the potential employer to know that you understand how to follow directions.

3.  Meet the deadlines.  If the posting says “submit your complete information by Friday, April 5, then have your information completed and submitted by close of business on Friday, April 5th.

4.  If you need special certifications for particular jobs, such as licenses or training, be sure that you have completed this training, testing, or classroom activities, and that you have the proof of your successful passing of any tests required.  If you are interested in particular jobs, such as nursing or lab technician positions, then go to school and get your certifications while you are looking for a new job.  This way, you may be able to get your school to help you find a job in this area, as many companies recruit from local training institutions.

5.  If you graduated from a college, go back to your alma mater and ask them for assistance with job hunting.  Many colleges have excellent staff who can help you find a new position and often have requests for people of a specific background, just waiting for someone to express interest.

The long and the short of it is that there are still  jobs out there.  The caveat is that the job you think you want may not be the one you will find.  A lot of the old standard jobs aren’t available any longer.  But there are some new jobs for you to consider.   Be open minded and look at the posted experience requirements.  If you can comply, go ahead and apply.  Be persistent every day.  You just might find a job you will really enjoy and one you never expected you might get hired for!

People change when the pain of change is less than continuing to do things as they always did.  So, in the case of cultural integration, some work needs to be done to disable old habits and preferences of the merging organizations, either to come to new consensus on what the culture will be, to impose one of the cultures on the whole organization, or to begin again to devise a new culture.  There are no in-between strategies here, folks.  This is one you have to make a decision around and then put the plan in place to make it happen.

The best way to do this is to go through the basic steps an organization does as it is devising a culture.  Build the mission and vision, decide how to communciate this vision and mission across the organization, execute the communication plan, communicate some more, communicate one last time, and then insist.

Rewarding demonstration of the cultural expectation is a positive way to make sure people follow the new expectations.  Enabling teams to determine how they will live the new cultural vision in their teams is another way.  And of course, taking action to prevent slipping back to the old ways of doing things is important as well.  Always recognize the successes that teams make in this area, as it proves not only to the organization but to all team members that living the culture is important.

We worked with an insurance agency many years ago that struggled with the integration process for some time before they finally developed a new organization.  It was painful, as it always is, because of the idea that two different organizations were coming together for very specific reasons.  The reasons, however, got mired in the details over who is in charge, what is the chain of command and what are the authority levels of each of the partners.  These are key questions that needed to be answered prior to throwing all the people together at one location, but then they didn’t invite us to help until six months after the combination occurred.  Lessons learned.

So if you are considering an integration, merger or acquision, think about the questions of which organizations/teams afford the most likely cultural model to follow, who will be in charge, and what is the new level of decision making in the combined organization.  And communciate the answers to these, and other key questions, up front before you put the structure and organizational charts on paper. It makes it so much easier when you have the strategy in place and know the answers to these questions.

Here are some of the terms that we have used and that clients have adopted for their internal use.

• Prudent risk taking – this means that people are able to make decisions on the basis of limited information and that they will rely on their intuition or their gut reaction to choose a course of action
• Act with urgency – this means that when opportunities arise, individuals with rise quickly to take advantage of the situation, particularly when their is an obvious gain at stake
• Strong resiliency – this means that people are able to bounce back quickly when things go wrong.  They are able to move forward in the face of setbacks or challenges.
• High energy – this means people have the gas in their personal tanks to drive action consistently throughout the day
• Low urgency – this means that people have less drive than may be needed to achieve success in an organization

So where did these terms come from?  Most are adaptations from the scales within our assessment tool, the ECI Behavioral Insight.  Interestingly enough, as clients begin to utilize metrics, they begin to think in those terms.  Such tools provide an objective benchmark system against which to compare various individuals or groups of individuals within an organization. They become descriptors of the culture and enable team members to understand what good behavior looks like.

In a way, I suppose, this is a compliment to us and our work.  To me, it is a way to know that we have made a positive impact on an organization and perhaps helped people to understand what the cultural expectations are.

One problem she faced was having to manage a large number of hourly workers.  These people were handling a lot of transactions each day, were responsible for entering complex data accurately, and had to answer a lot of inquiries to move transactions through the process.  Unfortunately, they were also stressed out and had many items on their agendas, some typical to a traditional hourly workforce.  The vast majority of her team members were women who were single heads of households trying to make ends meet while juggling children, elderly parents or other problems that faced them.  For many, work provided the only stable environment in their lives.

She learned early on that the best thing she could do for the team was to establish a fair set of rules and guidelines for work and to ensure that these were followed consistently for everyone on the team.   Within her team, she had a number of supervisory staff, many of whom had worked their way up to their positions through their own hard work and through promotion.   In her mind, it wasn’t the hourly staff who caused the majority of the issues, but rather the way in which some of the supervisors handled the problems.

Favoritism, giving a break once and having the break expected every time, not having the courage to take action when a problem first began, and ignoring some issues all were actions that caused workers to become problems.  I certainly am not saying that the majority of issues arose from the supervisory staff, but had the supervisors followed the rules consistently and applied them fairly, many of the people who became problem employees would have been reformed or gone before becoming problem employees.

People become very resentful of problem employees, even though as a leader, you probably aren’t hearing much from anybody.  The impact of the problem employee is often far-reaching.  Other team members end up taking messages and answering phones, picking up the slack for their troubled worker partner, and generally feeling as if they are being used by the organization.  And the impacted team members are unlikely to speak up, since that might make them appear as if they are complaining.

Once the problem worker is gone, however, there is often a sigh of relief.  the hidden impact of problem workers can be significant.  Since it is a new year, it might be a good time to discuss how supervisors are handling people with problems.  Your remaining team members will be greatful.