Kent Blumberg

7 alternatives to New Year's Resolutions

Everybody's talking about resolutions today.  My search of Technorati turned up more than 76,000 posts using the word.  However, resolutions often don't work, and they may even be bad for your health.  This is particularly true when we focus on trying to fix some perceived shortcoming (being overweight, for example).

It doesn't need to be that way.  Here are seven alternatives to the resolutions tradition.

"Influencer" - Making change happen in your organization

Are you frustrated at your inability to persuade people to make the changes needed in your organization?  Are you tired of talking, cajoling, pleading, and ordering people around?  Are you in search of a completely different approach to change?

If so, you will want to pick up a copy of Influencer: The Power to Change Anything (Patterson, K., Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switsler. (2008). New York: McGraw-Hill.

The authors, all of VitalSmarts, previously collaborated on bestsellers about Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations and now turn their talents to change leadership.  The book is in two parts, the first covering the basics of change leadership and the second setting out the details of six influencing strategies.

Knowing what drives you and others increases your effectiveness

Knowing what's important to you makes it easier to decide "what's next" for you.  Knowing what's important to others makes it easier to persuade them to do what you need them to do, to give them meaningful recognition, and to communicate your ideas in a way they will understand.

I often work with executives who are confused about which of many possible next steps makes the most sense for them.  As long as they are looking only at the next step it's often impossible to decide which to choose.  Once we sort out what's really important to that person, however, the choice becomes clearer.  My job is to periodically remind them of the core motivators we have discovered and ask them which next step seems to most honor those motivators.

On the other hand, my business owner clients sometimes encounter an employee with whom they just can't seem to connect.  Rather than fire that person and try to find someone else for the job, a bit of understanding about values and motivations might be just what the doctor ordered.

Here are a few tools to help you sort out what's important.

Know when good enough is good enough

Sometimes we don't know when to stop.  We keep revising an idea, a blog, a plan and are never satisfied enough to actually push the button and release our work.  Why and when should we settle for "good enough," why do we sometimes get caught seeking perfection, and how can we find the right balance?

Filling your skills gap

If you are in business, at any level, chances are pretty good you are suffering a skills gap.  This is the gap between the skills you and your organization have now and those you need in order to flourish. 

The gap is caused by rapidly changing jobs, by demographic changes (aging and retiring workforce, fewer new workers), by educational systems that aren't producing people with the skills needed to thrive in today's business world, and by a lack of investment in training and development by businesses.

Visually turbocharge your thinking and communications

[image by Duncan Hall]

Sometimes words or numbers just don't cut it.  When you find your thinking stymied or blocked, try drawing the problem.  When you are having trouble communicating, try a drawing or other visual representations.  When you want to easily remember a complex set of information, consider the power of a drawing.

Here are some examples.

Shield customers from unintended consequences

My friend Mike Schaffner writes today about his frustrations with a "customer friendly" alarm clock at a DoubleTree hotel.  It seems that back in 2005 the hotel chain introduced new clocks with simple to use alarm controls.  Unfortunately, it is impossible for the customer to set the time on the clock (engineering must do it, apparently), and the clock in Mike's room had not been reset to Daylight Savings Time.  So he ended up using his Blackberry alarm and ignoring the hotel's clock.

In this case, the customer paid the price of an unintended consequence.  The hotel offered to find a maintenance person to come up and adjust the clock, but why should Mike have to stay awake waiting for them to show up? Why didn't the hotel adjust all the clocks when Daylight Savings Time began?  Better yet, why did they design a clock with no way to adjust the time?

Good questions.  The answer:  the chain fell afoul of unintended consequences.

Here's the question for you:  what unintended consequences are your customers dealing with and what are you going to do about it?

Please throw out your performance review system

My opinion:  annual performance reviews are hammers looking for nails to pound, and hurting employee engagement, productivity and health in the process.  If you have any say in the matter, please throw out your performance review process.

Here's why I believe that, and some alternatives you might want to try.

Should you hire specific experience, or the ability to learn and lead?

[Updated March 2, 2008 with notes from Time Magazine's March 10th edition.  Updates are marked with "*"]

Two blog postings last week got me thinking about hiring decisions.  Eric Brown asserted that we ought to "...hire the best person you can regardless of the number of years of experience..."  On the same day, Growing Business Link carried a brief piece extolling the virtues of the generalist.

So the question is, should you hire for very specific experience, or should you hire a generalist who has proven her ability to lead and to learn?

I say the latter - usually.

Company mission - why bother?

People don't bring their hearts and souls to a business that exists solely to make money for its owners.  According to research by Amy Wrzesniewski, as reported in 12: The Elements of Great Managing (Wagner and Harter, Gallup Press, 2006), people want to work for an organization with a higher purpose - a mission that means something to them.  And those same people want to understand how what they do individually contributes to the larger organizational mission.  Fail to provide that mission, or fail to provide a connection from each employee to the mission, and you will fail to build a great company.