Start-up people

I just read a post on Fast Company about life in start-up companies. The author discusses what it is about a start-up company that makes it a hotbed of innovation and creativity.

Overall, start ups have a high sense of urgency, and in successful start ups, everyone has that high sense of urgency or higher energy level that compels them to keep moving forward and trying to succeed. The high sense of urgency results in people working together even when it may not be in their best personal interests to do so. High sense of urgency cultures are made up of start-up people.

Start-up people can be in a big company, self employed, in an entrepreneurial firm or working for a not-for-profit company. They are people who can work well when multi-tasking; they are people who are willing to take calculated risks and not be afraid of people laughing at their ideas. Start-up people get the job done without being told. Start-up people may not have the highest GPA or come from the top top schools; it's not easy to find them. Start-up people are fun to work with, and they make a positive difference in the firms that employ them.

I now have a team of start-up people in all the jobs I have .. in academics and in business. These teams are doing a lot with few resources. To all the start-up people on my teams, thank you!

To firms that want to hire and retain start-up people, let's talk. There is a way to bring them to your firm, or even better, to find them as I guarantee there are some in the midst of your current employee population.

Energy Pulsing for Higher Performance in 2012 and Beyond

Verb: Focusing, directing, aligning, and motivating employees to move forward together and along the right path to achieve incredible success; changing direction as needed quickly, becoming an organization with outrageously positive evangelists and raising the stakes to create a dynamic, high powered, high performance business. Driving a high sense of urgency and high-performance culture.

Noun: Continuous improvement, innovation, and engagement process.

Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne started her groundbreaking work on employee energy at work in 1993. Since then organizations all over the globe have used Energy Pulsing to improve performance, drive growth, sell more and navigate in high-change environments. eePulse built a proprietary technology to leverage the research and learning, allowing organizations to not just track employee energy but also to simultaneously implement powerful interventions that improve energy at work, align energies and drive innovation.

Traditional employee engagement surveys and processes are book ends. They help ignite conversations with employees, but they are limited in how they can drive performance because they are done infrequently, and they often do not address the real issues that affect energy at work. eePulse's research on energy is based on millions of data points, with people around the world. Energy predicts performance. Firms that track energy and use the Energy Pulsing process outperform their competition.

Start 2012 with Energy Pulsing in your team.

Call now or write for a 15-minute introduction and demo

+1-734-429-4400

info@eepulse.com

eePulse provides the technology for the Leadership Pulse. The Leadership Pulse is the only real-time learning process that allows all participants to receive personal benchmarking and trendmarking reports. Learn about trends in energy, confidence, change, business drivers and more. Learn from your peers; be ready for what's new in 2012.

To sign up for no-cost membership, go to www.leadershippulse.com.

CHANGE change management # 22 in the 2011 all time hits list at TLNT

My son, the budding rock star, is in the other room composing music and studying what he calls "real" all time hits. So he thinks I'm pretty ridiculous calling one of those "boring business articles" a hit - but I will use the word anyway.

In my little world of writing about business, I was just as pleased as a rock star might be to see TLNT today. One of the pieces I wrote in 2011 made it to the TNLT top 30 articles for 2011. The article is about CHANGING change management. When I wrote the article I wasn't sure if it would be well received or massively rejected because I am asking for a change in something that has been well regarded for many years. And that's the practice of change management. The key point in the article is that many of the models and methods used by change management consultants are just way too old. They are not build on the business environment we have today, which can be characterized as very high change and incredibly complex. The old models assume change can be managed, and that's where they start to go wrong. Change is continuous; it does not being and end. Companies that succeed will be, as Ed Lawler and Chris Worley say in their book "build to change."

If you are interested, take a look at the article.

Now... let me answer the really important question you have been wondering about. Who is my rock star son? What band is he in? What music does he play? Just as change management changes, so does the world of music. He's playing a new genre ... yes, things change everywhere, especially in music. No wonder they keep changing in business too.

Steven and his band:
http://tenementsmusic.com/

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Theresa

Breaking through the Entrepreneurial Growth Ceiling

I'm finishing up a paper that will be published next year. It focuses on something we call the Entrepreneurial Growth Ceiling. The concept suggests that entrepreneurial firms grow until they hit a ceiling. The thickness of the ceiling affects the firm's ability to grow. Thickness = problems to be solved.

What are some problems entrepreneurial firms face?

The obvious one is cash, particularly in today's economy. There are others. In the paper we talk about what they are, and then we examine the initial public offering (IPO) process, which offers money and other resources, as a potential solution for breaking the ceiling. The research shows that firms breaking through the ceiling with a tool kit that focuses primarily on innovation and people (human capital) are more likely to "win" post IPO.

The question I have for anyone readying this is whether you think this new knowledge applies to other solutions? What about mergers? What about raising venture capital money or acquiring funding in other ways? What about strategic self-funded growth?

Do you think investing money in your people and in innovation power firms to break quickly through the growth ceiling? What have you learned? The lessons of the last few years, with uncertainty and recession, may be even more important for people reading this blog.

Thank you for your contributions in advance.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS and I wish you the very best in 2012.

TurnOver TurnUnder and TurnIn

I recently attended a presentation focused on the topic of employee turnover. As I listened, I kept thinking about how much attention we pay to turnover. This is not surprising as we are seeing renewed interest in reducing turnover because economic conditions are slowly but surely improving in various areas, and employers are worried about losing people. These same employers always have been worried about losing their best people. However, the focus we take is on turnover -the big leaving event. Why????

Turnover is really part of a big continuous variable, and it's way at the end of that continuum and in the negative direction. If we think about what employees do within organizations, they can engage anywhere along the turning continuum. Here are three options:

* TurnOver - they leave. (at the one end, negative)

* TurnUnder -they stay but hide - this is often called "withdrawal" behavior (in the middle)

* TurnIn - they work to become a key part of the organization, and they bring other people along with them, inside the firm (at other end, positive)

What we need is to understand the continuum of events. What makes an employee turnin, turnunder and turnover? Then use that information to continually improve the work environment and ultimately the business.

I've been studying employee energy at work, and over the years have collected over 1 million data points analyzing how energized people are at work and what's energizing or de-energizing them. There are clues to the 'turning' challenge in this work.

* People TurnIn when they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. There are two interventions that employers can do immediately to improve their 'turn-in' rates:

1. Provide a way for employees, with no fear or risk, to submit new ideas and suggestions. Employees have reported that being listened to and having their ideas acted upon is more powerful than many traditional incentives.

2. Engaging in ongoing, real-time conversations with employees about priorities. I've called these "priority moments." The pace of change at work means that employees are getting bombarded with new work every day, and they just want to know how to reprioritize. Teach everyone how to engage in priority moment conversations.

* From the data we also can identity at least two ways to assure employees will "turn over" and run as quickly as possible away from their company.

1. Ignore problems when they occur; pretend the low performers are really doing ok; ignore bad customer experiences; do nothing when employees are angry and upset.

2. Fail to communicate to the point where employees lose all confidence in the top leadership team, the firm's vision and the people around them. Confidence, we find, is a key predictor of energy, which in turn directly predicts "turning" stage (turned-in, turned-under or turned-over).

* Below are two ways to assure your employees will "turn-under" or hide, try to keep under the radar and avoid being noticed, slowly withdrawing until they finally have time to turn-over.

1. Refuse to hold people accountable. If people are not accountable at work, then keeping quiet and laying low works incredibly well.

2. Provide no means for employees to speak up. People can become invisible and just "get along" fairly easily in this type of environment.

Getting to ideal, with most of your people being at the turned-in stage in the turning continuum does not take a lot of money or effort. It involves listening, interacting, and being agile and even admitting the need to be agile. It involves creating an environment where people are part of something bigger than themselves that they like.

Learn more at www.eepulse.com - articles ,tools and process available for your learning pleasure.