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Around Memorial Day my webhosting service provider reconfigured their servers. Ever since my blogs have been all screwed up. After working dilligently for 2 months, I think it is time to find another provider. I apologize for the lack of posts and interaction. Between work, blog and life, it has been very hectic. As soon as I can correct the blogs, it will relieve one of my burdens. Thanks for reading.

Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the last century, died Thursday, at the age of 94. His wife Rose Friedman, who co-authored many of his books, survives him.

Friedman was awarded the Nobel prize in 1976. He has long championed the cause of political and economic freedom and the links between the two. He has originated, or been associated with, many breakthroughs in economics since the 1950s. He is best known for explaining the role of the money supply in economic and inflation fluctuations.

I remember reading about him and his works, watching him on television and heard him speak at a presentation in New York City in the 80’s. I admired him and his intellect. The world economy is better because of his thoughts.

Three of the biggest retailers have found that eliminating or de-emphasizing Christmas may have hurt sales. You may remember last year when they were very Grinch-like and removed any reference to Christmas from advertising and stores. Employees were barred from exclaiming “Merry Christmas” and had to substitute “Happy Holidays” instead.

But, sales were weaker at these stores. Therefore, the three have major campaigns to label seasonal merchandise as “Christmas” and not “Holiday”. Merry Christmas to Macy’s. Kohl’s and Wal-Mart. May your sales increase for acknowledging centuries of tradition.

There’s some surprises in the Salary.com 2005/2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey between what employees value and what HR professionals perceive to be important to employee job satisfaction. Many of us are at increased risk of losing our most valuable and productive employees.

HR professionals list the top factors of employee happiness as: Adequate Benefits, Friendly Co-workers and Fair Compensation, in that order. However, dissatisfied employees cite inadequate compensation, no opportunities for advancement, and no recognition for their work as the top three reasons for leaving.

The report states that turnover costs you 30% of the replaced person’s salary, but half of dissatisfied employees say they would stay another year for as little as 15 percent more in base salary.

How your team works is just as important as what your team does. Your team’s values build metrics and a common focus.Those values may include collaboration, innovation, customer focus or zero-defects.

For values to become more than a poster on the wall, team members must see them as personally meaningful. They then can become an important, emotional connection for employees. The key to developing passion is to allow team members to interpret or internalize the values as their own by having them ask questions such as:

• What do these values mean to me>
• How do these values make me feel?
• Is my on-the-job behavior consistent with these values?
• How can I do my job differently to better reflect these values?

If you do not value your team’s values, no one else will. Take the time to communicate your team’s values, and more importantly, live them!

Management involves coping with uncertainty. There are potentially endless factors that may go against your business plans. For example, your information systems may go down at a critical moment, your accountant may predict that you will miss earnings expectations, or a competitor or vendor may suddenly move against you. When one of these unexpected events ruins our plans, our first instinct is to find an excuse: “It’s not my fault. Everything is just going against me.” It’s easy to find excuses and many times there is, indeed, little we can do. Winning managers, however, take full responsibility for all aspects of their business.

Taking full responsibility is crucial. Managers and executives who don’t take full responsibility will devote the bulk of their psychological energy to defending themselves against their mistakes. Rather than focusing exclusively on observing their business or department, they tend to get sidetracked by a burning desire to avoid blame. In addition, while one is finding an excuse for an adverse event, no time and energy is devoted to anticipating adverse events and thinking of preventative strategies to neutralize them. Taking full responsibility doesn’t necessarily mean blaming yourself for “mistakes,” however. Taking full responsibility can merely mean sifting through all possible negative events and taking precautions to minimize their potential negative impact.

An awareness of all possible adverse events allows you to make specific plans. For example, if you know that your Internet line may go down unexpectedly, or that your computer may crash, you can make a backup plan. When all seems to go wrong, you won’t panic, but you can effortlessly take decisive action. If you intuitively feel that an adverse event will likely thwart your plans, you can stand aside or cautiously manage risk should time go against you. The more you consider all possible adverse events, the better you can plan, and the more easily you will come out of it unscathed.

It’s useful to consider all possible adverse events. That said, it’s important to remember your limitations. Some people go overboard when trying to figure out what can go wrong. It’s possible to take things a little too far. If you become obsessed with every possible catastrophe, you may become an extreme perfectionist who has trouble setting goals and starting projects. Other people may take so much responsibility for negative outcomes that they become excessively pessimistic. It’s important to take a more balanced approach. Be realistic. There’s only so much you can account for and only so many precautions you can take. But, if you consider what you can control, take all possible steps to control it, and at the same time, accept what you can’t control, you’ll work your day more effectively. You’ll remain calm and make moves decisively.

Everyone tends to avoid responsibility to some extent. There’s a very human tendency to build up our egos and feel good about ourselves, and when events don’t go our way, we try to block it all out. This general tendency usually helps us cope with most of the adverse events we encounter in our everyday lives, but it usually interferes with our ability to take preventative measures to control potential adverse events. In the end, by becoming astutely aware of what can go wrong and taking control, you can maintain your winning edge.

Your day can be fast paced. As a business person, you must sift through a barrage of information, from sales reports to P&L statements to balance sheets. It’s hard sometimes to make sense of it all, and to see which pieces of information actually impact your business in significant ways. What will happen next is never certain. Business plans that you developed may not match current economic conditions. When things don’t click, and fall into place in the way that you had planned, it can be stressful, confusing, and frustrating, but in all the confusion, it is vital that you keep cool and organized. Rather than try to do too much with the little time and energy you have, it’s vital that you stay focused.

The pressure to get things done in a short time can be a significant source of stress. And when your plans don’t seem to be working out, there’s psychological pressure to make difficult decisions quickly. Should you stick with your current plans, or look for new opportunities? There’s a need to be careful. You don’t want to make the wrong decision and miss out on a rare opportunity. When you feel that you have too much to do and not enough time to do it, it grates on your nerves. Suddenly, everything can seem unorganized, unstructured, and confusing.

One of the most effective ways to cope with the pressure to get more things done than you have time for, is to change your time perception. Time perception is the degree to which people perceive their use of time as structured and as contributing to a specific goal or set of goals. When you’re frustrated and unsure of what to do next, you can feel that you are moving aimlessly back and forth among alternatives and getting nowhere. It’s as if you are out of control. At these times, it is necessary to return structure into your life. When you perceive that your time is structured and that you are working toward a specific purpose, you will feel calm and satisfied.

When frustrated by business pressures, you can become an extreme perfectionist, afraid to make a mistake and unsure which path to take. To gain control, it is necessary to set clearly defined and realistic goals, and make specific plans for how to reach these goals. When you feel especially confused, it makes sense to pick a few projects or goals, and focus on implementing them. Which should you pick? Pick the ones that seem to match the current business conditions, but don’t get hung up on it. Many managers make the mistake of thinking that they must chose the one right plan or else they will miss out on an important opportunity or goal. That may be the case. You may indeed pick a project or goal that wasn’t the best, but you could be wasting more time deliberating among goals and projects than taking decisive action, which can restore a feeling of control and direction. Once you implement at least one item on your task list, you will naturally reward yourself, and feel that you have achieved a meaningful goal. You’ll feel back in control.

How do you know when to reengineer a process? I get this question posed to me during every engagement, usually about a specific process, and mostly from company executives and managers whose business has stagnated. As people start to view processes as a critical success factor for business, they naturally want to improve their processes to better fit their way of managing the business.

Business management is process management. If your management style does not include process management in your organization, it should.

Here are some factors to mull over when deciding how to handle a process change:

• size of the change,
• number of and specific people involved,
• your organization culture,
• single or multiple organization involvement,
• complexity of the current process,
• can technology be applied,

impact of results you seek.

You must question each step of your process. Getting down to whether or not each step adds value to the overall process, is a painstaking process in itself. Ask yourself when deciding to reengineer, whether you have the knowledge, the time, and the patience to walk through all the steps one by one, probably with multiple groups multiple times. While your department, division or management group may have something to gain, another group may end up feeling like they lost. Remember, just because you have figured it out and realize great savings can be had, your peers and associates may well take some hard convincing. So improve that process when you see huge gains from cutting or mutating many steps, when your change may make the difference between success and failure, or when adopting a new technology will allow you to leapfrog your current, out of date, processes.

There have been several well documented blogger firings from companies in the recent press, and it brings up many questions of legality, morality and human resources. There’s a good article at Workforce Management, but you’ll need to register for free to read it. Bloggers Find The Ax is Mightier Than The Pen recounts some of these recent firings and the questions that arise.

Do employees have the right to post online commentaries about their employers and jobs? Is it wise for employers to restrict these sites? And what happens when employees step over the line and post something that’s embarrassing or detrimental to co-workers or the company?

You’ll find some examples of employee blogging policy and recommendations from attorneys on how employers can address the Internet activities of their employees during and after work, while not infringing on employee rights.

Companies must understand that this isn’t just a random hobby that a few people are engaging in. It’s becoming a mainstream and widespread form of communication. Employers must recognize that unless they accommodate blogging, they risk losing good people.

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this!