Horizon Point Consulting

Author: Mary Ila Ward

  • The Best Books to Give for Every Person on Your Christmas Gift List

    The Best Books to Give for Every Person on Your Christmas Gift List

    My reading list for 2014 has been shorter than my 2013 list for a variety of reasons- new baby, more time spent devoted to working with some wonderful clients and probably, most importantly, due to not setting a goal around reading this year (But that’s a post for another day- stay tuned for lots of good goal setting stuff soon to help us all kick off those New Year’s resolutions in the right fashion.)

    But, I have read some good ones this year and want to recommend my top picks organized for those hard to shop for people in which you may still be searching for the right gift.

     

    For the Business Person: Scale: Seven Proven Principles to Grow Your Business and Get Your Life Back Although the title of the book implies that this book is for business owners, the book is really for anyone that wants to work smarter not harder.

    Favorite quotes from the book:

    “The world doesn’t pay you for the hours you put in; it pays you for the value you create.”

    The right parking space for your company lies at the intersection of three factors: your company’s biggest strengths (your parking space must rely on what you do really well); your market’s deepest desires around your type of product or service (it must be something that your market values); and the open spaces your competitors don’t already own in the mind of your market (it is very expensive to move another company out of a space if they truly already own it). 

    For an article that says the same thing as the above quote for the job seeker check out:  Why Pursuing Your Passion is Not Enough

     

    For the seemingly lost and the youth contemplating direction for his or her future:  Steve Jobs

    Favorite quotes from the book:

    “Jobs also began to feel guilty, he later said, about spending so much of his parents’ money on an education that did not seem worthwhile. ‘All of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition,’ he recounted in a famous commencement address at Stanford. ‘I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay.’”

    “There falls a shadow, as T. S. Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.”

    “I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs later explained. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.”  

    For more on the thoughts this last quote reflects see: Leadership Lessons from College Football: The “Mediocre” and Team Success

     

    For anyone who wants to be better:  Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements

    Favorite quote from the book:

    “1.Every day, use your strengths. 2. Identify someone with a shared mission who encourages your growth. Spend more time with this person. 3. Opt into more social time with the people and teams you enjoy being around.”

     

    For the Avid Reader:  Get them an e-reader and encourage them to go digital.  I mostly made the switch to digital after extreme reluctance.  I like a book in my hand and lots on my shelves.  But, I have begun reading on my iPad through the Kindle app and love it. Most notably, I love that I can highlight and save quotes from books I’ve read and find them as references all in one place.   Let me tell you, this blog post was much easier this year with digital files than it was last year because I could easily find and quote my favorites with a click of the mouse.

    For the avid reader who is still reluctant to switch to e-reading:  Give them a subscription to Signed Firsts from Square Booksin Oxford, MS.  This classic bookstore just makes you happy when you walk in.  It is one of the last true, locally owned bookstores and they have a program where you get a book (sometimes two) a month which include ēnew releases, hardback and signed.   They mail them to your door each month and charge you monthly for the book(s) sent.

    What was your best read this year?

  • 5 Ways To Find Your Productivity Sweet Spot

    5 Ways To Find Your Productivity Sweet Spot

    Have you already started to think about your 2014 New Year’s resolutions? Before you do, consider how you can be most productive is a good way to frame those resolutions before you attempt to define them and then tackle them with the onset of 2014.

    Fast Company devoted much of its latest issue to productivity by highlighting productive people. These people all found their productivity sweet spot in a variety of ways. I could find no consistency in the activities or routines each person established, but there were several insights gleaned from the ways these highly productive and successful people in all walks of life found their sweet spots:

    1. Find what time of day you are most productive and maximize it. Find yourself getting the most done before lunch but waning by the time 2 pm rolls around? Get up early and maximize that time. Tackle your most important tasks in the morning. Hit your stride and motivation after dinner? Set aside your big tasks or activities that require the most thinking for that time of day.
    2. Eliminate distractions during your most productive times. You are definitely a morning person, but the first thing you do in the morning is check your email and you start your day bogged down before it even really begins. Don’t open your inbox until you’ve tackled what’s most important. Find yourself feeling inspired around 9 pm but your habit is just to sit in front of the TV? Turn it off. Distractions could be as simple as spending too much time making decisions that are simply distractions. For example, one person highlighted in Fast Company said she eats the same thing for lunch everyday. It eliminates the time it takes to get the lunch together and to think about what to eat. Supposedly college football’s most sought after coach does this too.
    3. Find what inspires you to be productive and engage in those Activities. Are you fueled by a good workout; a good conversation with certain people who stimulate your thinking or a good read that gets your creativity flowing? Set aside time to do these things. These activities are just as important if not more than getting to those tasks that demand your productivity.
    4. Use productivity “tools” to help you maximize your productivity, not as solution to lack of motivation. I’m intrigued by the productivity app Carrot. Apparently (I don’t use it) it lets you load your to-do list, and when you check things off the list, you earn points to get things for being productive. There are also apps and websites allowing people to earn money for losing weight. You pay for the service, and hedge your bets. But guess what? These sites make money. Why? Because most people don’t see their goals through to the end. People don’t lose weight not because the tool doesn’t work, but because the tool doesn’t generate the motivation needed to be successful. So vet your tools wisely. Use them because they help you manage your productivity not motivate it.
    5. Be passionate. It’s hard to sustain productivity if you aren’t passionate about what you spend most of your doing. As Joe Berkowitz stated in his feature in Fast Company, “If you love what you do, it’s easy to be productive.” Being productive for the sake of productivity isn’t actually productive. It’s just spinning on a wheel that leads to nowhere and helps no one. Find what cranks your tractor and spend more time on it.

     

    What tips do you have for maximizing productivity as we approach a new year with new resolutions?

  • 4 Tips for reconciling the irony of stress and productivity in the workplace

    4 Tips for reconciling the irony of stress and productivity in the workplace

    What’s impacting performance in the workplace more than anything else these days?  Many people would say it is stress, which is pushing some to the point of full-blown mental health issues.

    Consider how Graeme Cowan, author of Back From the Brink, describes this reality in the Fall 2014 issue of Global Corporate Xpansion Magazine:

    “In a hypercompetitive global economy, organizations must be ‘on’ 24/7. Yet this scramble for perpetual performance is taking a harsh toll on employees. They relentlessly push to get ahead and stay ahead- working longer days, emailing after hours, taking fewer vacations- often with little acknowledgement for their efforts. The result is a workforce that’s not just disengaged (Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report revealed that 70 percent of U.S. employees fall into this category), but also stressed and depressed. 

    And here’s the irony. The constant hustle aimed at increasing productivity and profitability actually decreases both.”[i]

     

    So what should you do as an employer to combat this irony?

    1. Assess both the level of stress and the causes of stress in your workforce. Developing and administering an organizational survey to assess the level of stress in employees can help you effectively develop a plan to reduce stress levels at the workplace through policies, practices and programs.  You can’t know what to change if you don’t know what the sources of issues are.  In addition, if you do put a plan in place, you can’t know if and how you’ve improved if you don’t have baseline measurements to compare.
    2. Provide stress management training to your staff.  Providing stress management training to your employees can help increase productivity and profitability in the workplace.  Hopefully you have committed to assessing the stress level of your organization (see #1) and have a skilled training provider that can take that information and develop a customized stress management program for your organization.
    3. Analyze your talent management processes, particularly your selection process.  Does it assess people for organizational and job fit?  For more reading on this, check out an article I published inHR Alabama– see page 16. If people aren’t aligned with the organizational purpose and the job purpose, stress is bound to ensue, leading to decreased productivity.
    4. Design policies, procedures and tools that allow people to work smarter not harder and that put controls in place to keep people from falling victim to the toll that working 24/7 takes.  

    For more food for thought on this see:

    Flexibility to Reduce Workplace Stressors

    Should Employers Ban Email after Work Hours?

    Stress Leave

    Need more help as an employee or employer to manage stress?   Download Stress Management: How to Deal with Stress in the Short and Long Term

    Stress Mgmt

  • Career Spotlight: Geneticist

    Career Spotlight: Geneticist

    Do you enjoy biology? Do you also like chemistry and mathematics? Do you think working in a lab conducting experiments and doing research is fun?

    If any of these things describe you, then a career as a Geneticist might be for you!

    What do you need to be a Geneticist?

    Education:

    Becoming a geneticist requires at least a Bachelor’s degree and most likely a Master’s degree or beyond.

    If you are a high school student, make sure you are focused on taking biology, chemistry and mathematics.

    Skills:

    Geneticists know how to:

    • Use scientific rules and methods to solve problems
    • Be active listeners and successfully communicate orally and in writing
    • Be critical thinkers and complex problem solvers

    Is the field growing?

    The projected growth is approximately 2%.

    What is the pay like?

    Graph Geneticist

     

    What’s the Holland Code* for a Geneticist?

    Interest code: IAR- Investigative, Artistic and Realistic

    Investigative — Investigative occupations   frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of   thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out   problems mentally.
    Artistic — Artistic occupations frequently involve   working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression   and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
    Realistic — Realistic occupations frequently   involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and   solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials   like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working   outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with   others.

    Source: http://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/19-1029.03

     

    If you are interested in learning more about Geneticists, check out ONET.

    Would you want to be a Geneticist? Why or why not?

    *Holland Codes are a way to classify a person based on their skills and interests as well as jobs based on the nature of the work. If you have an interest in knowing what your Holland Code is in order to match yourself to careers to pursue, you can read more about our assessment process.

  • 3 Questions for Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

    3 Questions for Balancing Empathy and Expectations as a Leader

    Quite a while ago, I wrote about the “Es of LEadership” with empathy being one of them.  Not included in these essential “Es” was “expectations”.   And as the article on empathy points to, sometimes managing expectations and having empathy seem to be in direct conflict.

    Setting, communicating, monitoring and maintaining expectations is a critical skill for leaders.  We must maximize performance of others through effectively setting expectations high and constantly pushing others to reach higher.  When we do so, we provide meaningful and challenging work, which has been shown to increase worker satisfaction leading to higher productivity (and profits).

    Yet also as leaders, we always need to put people first, realizing they have demands both inside and outside of work.  People are our greatest asset, and we must be able to put ourselves in others’ shoes to lead effectively.  In other words, we must establish an empathetic approach to leading with a genuine interest in the whole person.

    So what do we do when “e” of expectation seems to be in direct conflict with the “e” of empathy?

    For example, say you have an employee that is not performing their job satisfactorily.  You are aware that this employee is dealing with several difficult personal issues.  He/she is in the process of getting a divorce, has a mom that is suffering from cancer and has recently brought a troubled teenager into his/her home to support.

    You take off your shoes and walk around in his or hers for a bit to establish empathy towards them.  You feel for this person, yet they are not maintaining performance standards at work.  Do you talk to them?  Do you ignore the issue?

    Bottom line, when do you lower your expectation bar for the sake of empathy??

    Here are three questions to consider for how to respond when empathy and expectations seem to be in conflict:

     1.  Is the need to compromise expectations for empathy an established pattern or an isolated event?  In the above example, has the employee had an issue with performance before this set of personal issues arose or has the person been a star performer in the past? 

    2. Does acting in empathy enable a continuation of bad choices? As a leader, our job in not to take ownership and responsibility for bad choices others have made either inside or outside of work and their subsequent consequences.  If you ignore expectations or lower them, will it enable the continuation of bad choices that impact not only your business but also the person?  You may have heard parents call this “tough love”.  And tough love is still love and empathy is a component of love.  Maintaining expectations may actually be an act of empathy.

    3. Does empathy for one cause you to be lacking in empathy towards the whole? If we let someone’s performance suffer and it causes others who do a good job day in and day out to take up the slack that shouldn’t be their responsibility, then we aren’t acting as a leaders.  When we do this, we are communicating to those star performers that it is okay not to meet expectations. We are actually giving the person who seemingly needs empathy the green light to NOT act in empathy towards their team.  Realizing that our actions have consequences that impact the greater whole is important both for us and for conveying this message to others.

    If you walk through these questions and realize a person needs a break from responsibilities of the job in order to resolve situations and come back better able to perform and meet expectations, then my hope is that you allow that flexibility in your company policies for a leave of absence.   As Workforce magazine points out in its feature article- “A Monumental Problem” from the August 2014 issue, mental health, stress and burnout is a major issue in today’s workplace.  Sometimes the best thing to do is allow people opportunities to regroup and come back better for having that time.

    However, if you walk through these questions and realize that you are just avoiding confrontation with empathy as your guise, become the better leader by tackling the difficult issue of refusing to lower the bar.  Often, when we lower our expectations that we know are fair expectations given the person’s skill level and expertise coupled with what is needed for the job, lowering the bar is potentially the inverse of empathetic.   It sabotages putting trust in people and empowering them to do a great job. And at our core, we all want to be valued and trusted.  When we take that away from people by avoiding difficult issues, we aren’t acting as leaders and we aren’t being very empathetic.