Categories
Musings

What a Decade!

All the media’s Best/Worst lists of the previous decade prompted my own look back at 2000-2009. It was a great decade for me professionally and a mixed one personally.

Professional Highlights

  • My book on internal marketing, Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care, was published in 2007 by WME Books.
  • My business, Quality Service Marketing, reached a milestone in 2008 – 20 years in business!
  • I met wonderful people who attended my speaking engagements & training workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. This travel also enabled me to reconnect with many dear friends and colleagues.
  • I started this business blog in 2005 as my first foray into social media, and it allowed me to establish new relationships around the globe.
  • I expanded my learning and expertise from my work with terrific clients and support from colleagues.

Personal Highlights

  • The profound loss of my beloved parents, brother, and father-in-law (April 2006 through December 2007)
  • Celebrating 35 years of marriage with my husband Michael in 2009, and I’m looking forward to the next 35 years with him!
  • Son Jason’s college graduation in 2004 (even with his moving back home) and his recent engagement to Ashley (which means we’ll return to empty-nest status sometime soon?!)
Categories
Musings

Expanding My Involvement in Social Media

Most people who know me know I’m slow to adapt to technology (with the exception of this blog that I’ve been doing for nearly five years). So it’s no surprise that I’ve resisted getting into Twitter and Facebook – despite the urging of business associates and family … until now.

I’ve collected a file folder full of “how-to” articles and tools for using Twitter from social media experts. But I was curious about what other small businesses were doing with it, so I surveyed several colleagues to learn about their experience. I got some great advice while also taking comfort from a few who are still deciding when/if to join the fray. [Special thanks to those of you who responded to my questions.]

My biggest hesitation (besides the technology thing – seriously, I’m not even experienced in sending text messages!) is the time issue. It’s a major concern my colleagues tell me, yet they are finding ways to manage it by tweeting once a day to a few times a week.

Guess I’ll have to take that jump further into the social media pool.
Stay tuned …

Categories
Engagement

Thoughtful Quotes for the Workplace

Here is more employee engagement advice, and it comes from an unusual source.

I’m getting ready to retire my 2009 pocket calendar for the year; it’s the kind that features quotes each week.

Paging through it I found the following quotes that are applicable to employee engagement:

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”  George S. Patton

“Delegating work works, provided the one delegating works, too.”  Robert Half

“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.”  Albert Einstein

“Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.” Jimmy Durante.

“We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.” Hegel

 

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing

A Gift to Improve Employee Engagement

This holiday, give the gift of employee engagement … and it’s free!  Employee Engagement Advice Book is a new e-book written by members of the Employee Engagement Network (EEN) and compiled by network host David Zinger.  EEN members (including me) share advice – limited to one sentence each – on how an organization can improve employee engagement.

The book contains over 200 contributions from people who are passionate about employee engagement, including several featured in this blog: Terry Seamon (see his advice on page 6); Kevin Burns (page 9); Paul Hebert (page 28); and Richard Parkes Cordock (page 35). (My contribution is also on page 35.)

Recurrent themes include communication (especially listening), valuing employees, empowering them, recognizing their efforts, and leadership involvement. It’s worth scrolling through to find the quotes that resonate with you. Pass it along and share it among your colleagues … to inspire them and/or reinforce their employee engagement efforts.

Happy Giving!

 

Categories
Engagement Marketing Training & Development

Zappos Culture Book: Best Ever Business Reading


Zappos.com’s 2009 Culture Book is here (!) and I’m thrilled to add it to my business library – next to the previous edition that I got on my visit to Zappos last year.

The book is written by Zappos employees who share what the company culture means to them. It’s a beautifully designed and produced book, supplemented with color photos and captions that capture the true spirit of Zappos. The book includes Zappos core values, a brief time line of the company’s 10 year history, and, most important, what the people who live the Zappos culture have to say about it.

Regardless of where they work in the company (customer loyalty center, merchandising, finance, technology & project management, Kentucky warehouse, marketing, etc.), Zappos employees share how valued they feel as members of the Zappos family … how they engage in “serious fun” … how they’re empowered to do and be their best … how they live the company’s values … and how truly happy they are to work at Zappos everyday. (Would your employees say the same? Honestly, I don’t know that many companies whose employees love their workplace.)

Zappos Culture Book should be mandatory reading in every undergraduate business class, MBA, and leadership program.

Read this book to your kids at night, and I swear they’ll tell people “When I grow up, I want to work at Zappos!” This is no fairy tale – Zappos is for real.

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Memo to Senior Management: Take Care of Your People

Memo1

I found this great quote from Dr. Judith M. Bardwick:

“When people are perceived as a cost and not a resource, when they are treated as a liability and not an asset, when no one seems to know or care that they are there, they don’t work well, and they don’t stay.”

Who are these ‘people?’

They’re your employees … your contractors, vendors, and consultants … your partners … and ultimately your brand advocates or – depending on how you treated them – your brand adversaries.

Categories
Engagement

Breaking Up (with Clients) is Hard to Do

Self-employed consultants can’t risk becoming disengaged from their client work, especially if they want to maintain their professional brand; i.e., reputation and credibility.

They can, however, voluntarily leave a client. While this is a viable option, it’s not easily made.

Consider this situation that a colleague described to me.

“I quit my long term client – even in this terrible market. Doing projects with them was ruining my health and after seven years of various engagements, the last one was just too much to tolerate and I left. They have become a horrible entity – not paying bills, imposing a terrible climate of fear and austerity on their people, making consultants and contractors beg for seriously eroded wages …

Its employees have also felt this pain, exist in an environment of fear and anger, and are nowhere near the can-do proud enthusiastic workforce I was introduced to when I first started consulting with this client. The company imposed extreme austerity measures on its workforce … while sitting on huge reserve assets and bragging to Wall Street about how they could weather this recession just fine.

I am proud of myself for quitting. I’ve had other small projects over the last several years, mostly  at this client. But now I need to learn to do something else …”

In my own 20+ years experience as a consultant, I know how difficult it is to walk away from a client, especially in such a tight market. (To those of you considering the ‘glamour’ of going solo, keep in mind: everyday you’re self-employed, you wake up unemployed!) So I’m proud of my friend for having the courage to leave and preserve her mental & physical health, despite the economic uncertainty.

Fellow consultants who care to share: what did it take for you to voluntarily leave a client?

 

Categories
Engagement

“The Power of Federal Employee Engagement” – Not Just for Feds

Even the U.S. government is focused on employee engagement these days. A study by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board explored the link between employee engagement and outcomes, and the results confirm “employee engagement has a strong, positive impact on organizational outcomes in the Federal sector.”

The study found six drivers of Federal employee engagement:

  • Pride in one’s work and workplace
  • Satisfaction with leadership
  • The opportunity to perform well at work
  • A positive work environment
  • Satisfaction with received recognition
  • Prospects for future personal and professional growth.

The federal government competes in the same labor market as the private sector and is similarly challenged to improve outcomes within budget constraints. Despite differences in the public vs. private workplace, ALL managers can learn from the insights and recommendations found in this study.

You can find the special report The Power of Federal Employee Engagement. [Source: the Employee Engagement Network]

Categories
Engagement

Employee Engagement Today (and Tomorrow)

I was recently asked to speak to a management group. When told the topic was “How to Engage Employee’s in Today’s Economy,” I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. It’s a popular subject these days, but seriously, how is engaging people now any different than engaging them in good times?

I’m not talking about HR-focused firms looking for new ways to better engage their employees. What gets me are those companies for whom employee engagement is a totally new concept. You know the ones where “our people are our greatest asset” is mere rhetoric (by the company) and wishful thinking (by the employees).

These companies are primarily interested in learning about engagement because they’re looking for a quick fix. But when it comes to effectively engaging employees – by means of a workplace that fosters open communications, trust, respect, and leadership – there is no instant remedy. As they’ll learn when the economy improves and their employee turnover rate soars.

Ever the optimist, however, I figure better late than never … maybe this time they’ll learn.

Categories
Marketing

New Book Integrates Marketing, PR and Social Media

Just released – Marketing Public Relations: A Marketer’s Approach to Public Relations and Social Media by Gaetan Giannini, a new textbook that covers a truly integrated approach to promotion using both new and traditional media.

Wait – a textbook? Why would I be excited about a textbook? Two reasons:

  1. While the subject of public relations (PR) is usually taught in schools from either a communications or journalism perspective, this book covers PR from a marketing perspective. Gaetan, a former marketing exec who is now an assistant professor and department chair at Cedar Crest College, wrote the book because he was unable to find a suitable text that integrated current PR and marketing practice in the new media landscape.
  2. It’s a great reference for business practitioners – those new to marketing and marketing generalists who know the value of PR but don’t apply it everyday.
    According to Gaetan, this book “recognizes the similarities between PR, word-of-mouth, and social networking media and creates a framework for constructing marketing strategies that incorporate these highly credible and cost-effective tools.”

The book explains current PR applications (“Non-Media Connectors and Word-of-Mouth”) and updates traditional PR practices (“The Press Kit and Press Release,” “Selling the Story,” and “Crisis Management”). It also features a full glossary (in addition to defining key terms throughout each chapter) and index.

The book is reasonably priced for a textbook – around $90. Quite a bargain for a business reference book considering the price of a costly PR mistake.

To learn more, check out Gaetan’s book-related blog on Marketing Public Relations.