An interview with Dr. Theresa Welbourne about her recent recognition from the Academy of Management- Learn her thoughts on being the first women recognized for this prestigious award.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Theresa has been recognized with the Distinguished HR Executive Award.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/11/prweb10106705.htm?goback=%2Egmr_3665687%2Egde_3665687_member_185504457
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Once again why benchmarking does not help with employee survey work
Benchmarking employee survey data leads to the wrong conversations -thus the wrong actions and zero results in most cases.
I was just watching a short video that Mark Effron posted on the problems with benchmarking. He joins a distinguished group of scholars and authors who have been discussing why benchmarking does not work for the last few years. The two people who come to mind are Mark Huselid and Jac Fitz-enz.
It's great to hear someone else explain why benchmarking makes no sense. Despite the logical case against it, the process continues to be used. Let me add my two cents to the discussion (ok, it may be more than two):
* Benchmarking is a going backwards exercise. The data you are comparing yourself to were collected in the past. It's like comparing your stock price today to the average stock price of your competition from last year. Who would do that?
* Benchmarking focuses your managers on the wrong stuff. Benchmarking is a deadly denial barrier; it allows conversations to be diverted to why a score is higher or lower than data that are irrelevant. Time is taken talking about things that really don't matter when you could be focused on gleaming insights from the data about what is happening today in your own organization.
* If you are going to benchmark, why use just one data set? When we do compensation studies, we always use multiple data sets because we know there are problems with the data.
* When you collect data matters. At eePulse we have been doing surveys (short energy pulses) as frequently as weekly since 1996. We know for a fact that when you collect your data impacts your results. Trends are better than point-in-time data, but when stuck with point-in-time data at least be clear about what the time period of collection does to your results. Benchmarking does not take this fact into consideration.
Mark Effron's short video on benchmarking
Friday, November 9, 2012
A smart piece with tips for boosting employee morale:
http://www.the-hr-blog.com/2012/10/employee-morale.html So which tip do you think is the most effective?
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Random energizing moments
Learn how to energize and re-energize employees to drive growth.
or ... make sure your processes don't de-energize and kill innovation and growth.
Article link
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
The newest Leadership Pulse is now open!
Take it now to find out what are driving today's businesses: http://www.eepulse.com/LeadershipPulse
Monday, October 15, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Entrepreneurship lessons from the world of children
I was in the grocery store this week picking up some things for my parents. This statement alone may shock many people who know me because I really dislike going to the grocery store. However, they wanted bologna. I haven't eaten bologna since the days of my mom packing my lunch. So .. standing at the counter, I asked the person working there what exactly is in bologna. It's one of those questions you probably don't really want to learn about; however, the person helping me did not know. So she came out from her safe area to the outside customer space, lifted up the glass and then read the label.
Then I looked at the counter a bit more and found some tapioca. I asked her what exactly tapioca was. By now she was getting mad at me, and I realize my curiosity did not find a home in the grocery store. My husband was with me and listening to the conversations, so as we strolled the aisles, he picked up a box of tapioca. You would have loved the description on the box -- tapioca was -- well -- tapioca. That's all it said.
That's when I had a flashback. I remember my children constantly asking "why - why - why." I sometimes got annoyed with them in the same way that the person at the meat counter was finding my two questions troublesome. At first, she had fun learning what exactly was in bologna; she took a risk and walked from her safe spot behind the counter to the area where she did not have to be (in front with the customers) and explored with me. But after the first adventure she was tired of it.
After this experience, I started looking at my student business ideas. I'm teaching an entrepreneurship class. We're using story boards for the business planning process (virtual story boards), and the students are asking questions about each others' ideas. The questions are incredibly good; the students with the original ideas are reforming their ideas and getting more clarity every day. However, as I read I wondered if the student with the idea was getting annoyed. Answering questions and listening to comments about your idea are hard to do. Then you have to change your original idea in response to what you learn -- also annoying. However, as the ideas evolve, they get better. The students reached out of their "safe" zones and by exploring with their peers, they were able to improve upon their ideas.
WHY WHY WHY ????
The magic process is the "why" question. If you ask enough why questions, you can invent new processes. If you ask why, you can be entrepreneurial. Because when you ask WHY you find that sometimes there are no good reasons for why, and there are multiple ways to improve products, services and processes.
This week -honor what we learn from our children. Use the magic WHY question to become more entrepreneurial in your own work. And when someone asks you why, take pause, think and go out of your own safe zone to explore the answer together.
Monday, May 21, 2012
What I Learned from the Most Effective Leadership Practices Competition Winners
by Theresa Welbourne, PhD
Not Another Contest
Contest Process
And the Winners Are
Winners - Category
Robert J Remenar - CEO/President
- President and CEO
- Nexteer Automotive
Philip Potloff - C-Level non CEO/President
- Chief Information Officer
- Edmunds.com
Patricia Hill - Senior HR Executive
- Chief Learning Officer
- NISC
James W. Miller - Director Level
- Executive Director of Production Control and Logistics
- Nexteer Automotive
Steve Spicer - Leader in a Non-Management Role
- Global Business Line Sales Manager, Electric Steering
- Nexteer Automotive
Carol Walewski - First Line Manager
- Engineering Supervisor
- Yazaki North America
Hilary Simmet - Co-Winner Non-Profit
- Community Director
- Michigan March of Dimes
Melissa Van Dyke - Co-Winner Non-Proffit
- President
- The Incentive Research Foundation
Metrics
What we Learned from the Most Effective Teams
LISTENING AND DOING
The Nexteer Automotive Story
Listening is an Undeveloped Art Form
Friday, April 27, 2012
Energize or re-energize your teams to improve performance
I meet a lot of managers who want to energize their teams. There are many reasons teams become de-energized. The draining years of recession, working more hours than they have in the past, success coming far and few between, waiting for new business to come, layoffs, lack of confidence in leaders and strategy ... and the list goes on. The reasons are many, and they don't matter. What's important is moving forward with an energizing strategy.
Working with managers and organizations around the world since 1996 in doing this work, we've learned what many of you already know. Communications is at the heart of energizing. However, when most people hear that, their reaction is to solve the communications problems by doing things that do not have a positive impact on energy. Leaders and executives start to think about ways to do more top-down communications. The answer is more newsletters, more meetings, and more emails. These are the things employees actually find annoying and de-energizing.
What employees want when they ask for communications is more:
LISTENING AND DOING
The art of listening and doing needs to be taught and requires tools. Managers are trained at talking and communicating down; there is much less time and attention given to the act of listening. And even less attention is given to learning how to listen and then select what information to act upon.
It's not a skill you develop in a one-day seminar. We've instituted 6-month programs for managers to change habits by practicing new ones. These new habits are formed by using new tools to help managers listen, do and energize.
DIRECTION
We also find that what employees do want information on is direction. The continuous sidetracking is making employees, managers and even CEOs frustrated. Strategically addressing the need for direction dialogue can have amazing positive results on improving employee energy at work.
WHY ENERGY?
You may wonder why I am talking about energy. With over 1 million data points on employee energy at work, my research shows that energy predicts individual, team and firm performance. That's why this phase of work was developed. If energy matters for performance, then the next question is how to help improve energy at work.
Check out the energy core metric at:
www.whatsmyenergy.com
If you want to learn more about the manager intervention work, contact info@eepulse.com
Monday, March 19, 2012
Women in initial public offerings
- Having women on the top team improves the first day gain in stock price.
- Having women on the top team improves the first 90-day stock price gain, first year gain and gains up to 3 years post IPO (that's all we investigated).
- The woman factor also positively affects earnings.
- These results all control for other factors, so the "science" is done to account for other things that may be spuriously affecting the numbers.
- The number of women never goes over 50% (that we've seen so far at least).
- We just finished coding 2011 to see if this finding still holds up, and even though experts would say the market has changed a lot, we still get positive effect for women in management teams of IPOs.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Engaged in what?
Monday, January 23, 2012
Start-up people
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
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
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.