culture

The Mood Elevator and Secrets of an 80-Year-Old Triathlete

The Mood Elevator and The Secrets of an 80-Year-Old Triathlete

Guest post by Dr. Larry Senn

I don’t know how to say the word “retirement” as the concept is foreign to me. I tell people “how can I retire from my purpose” which is to help more and more people live life at their best mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

The Mood Elevator is the best tool I have found to support me and others in that purpose. And Senn Delaney the firm I founded 40 years ago is best at creating healthy cultures where that purpose is alive. I still love writing about the Mood Elevator, speaking about it to groups and being an active partner in a firm that teaches it as part of shaping the culture of companies around the world.

Most weeks I am traveling around the country meeting with, coaching and facilitating culture shaping session. Weekends and most mornings I am running, biking, weight lifting or swimming as part of training for the half dozen sprint triathlons I do each year. I win most in my age group because I’m often the only person in the group (last man standing).

The Mood Elevator is the best tool I have found to support me and others in that purpose.

Family is incredibly important to me, and I am committed to being fit to keep up with all of them including a teen age son we had when my wife was 52 and I was 65. I’m blessed to have raised a very adventurous family with 5 children and 5 grandchildren so in the summers you’ll find me water skiing, off road motorcycle riding, zip lining, or jumping on the trampoline with my kids and grand kids.

This is probably not what most people picture for an 80 year-old so I am frequently asked “how do you do that?”

I think it is largely based on having a purpose which inspires me to need to be my best. For me that purpose is family and the work I do. I can’t do that if I’m not at my best and I can’t be at my best mentally and emotionally if I’m not at my best physically. That belief and the understanding that you use it or lose it and the body is a sacred gift provides me motivation and some discipline. I tell people that when I look at a chocolate chip cookie I see my 17 year old sons face– and I don’t eat it.

For those who want to know some specifics here are my tips from the 82-year old triathlete:

  1.  If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. This motto came from Dr. Kenneth Cooper who wrote the original book titled It states that the body doesn’t wear out; it rusts out from lack of use. After reading this book I changed my mindset on movement, I had always been an athlete growing up but once I started my business and I got busy I stopped making the time for exercise. This book encouraged me to develop a regular cardiovascular exercise routine and I started running 50 years ago, and I haven’t stopped since.
  2. Aerobics and Beyond. There are three important types of exercise that I make an effort to incorporate into my routine: aerobics, anaerobic, and stretching. My aerobics is my running- I also swim and bike ride which I picked up after I did my first triathlon at 70 years old. For anaerobic, I do strength training. Strengthening your muscles helps with core strength which prevents back injuries and improves posture, it increases bone density, and increases your metabolism which can help with weight loss. The last and perhaps most neglected form of exercise is As we get older we become stiff and less flexible, I notice in some elderly people that when they’re driving they can’t even turn their neck far enough to see what’s behind them when they’re driving- this is an image that motivates me to stretch regularly.
  3. Foods You Choose. There is so much information that I have read over the years on what the best food to eat is. I do firmly believe that the food I eat has had a profound impact on my health. I haven’t had to be on any medication, I have had no sign of high cholesterol, blood pressure, or any other medical issues and my doctors are often astounded when they do my blood work on the kind of shape I’m in. Below is the foods I have tried to avoid and what I incorporate daily that has helped me keep healthy.
What I avoid:
  • Saturated fats from dairy products, processed or red meat, and the wrong oils (saturated or trans fats) found in most processed food
  • Simple carbohydrates and non-naturally occurring sugars found in pastries, desserts, soft drinks, white flour, and most fruit juices
On the other hand, these are what I try to get plenty of:
  • Vegetables, whole fruits, and nuts like almonds and walnuts
  • Protein mainly from legumes (beans and lentils) and other plant products. If more protein is needed, I use plant-based protein powder supplements. For meat, I choose fish, such as wild caught salmon or tuna.
  • The right oils, especially those that have high omega-3s
  • Fiber from vegetables, as well as grains such as brown rice, oatmeal, and whole wheat
  • Antioxidants, such as those found in blueberries, acai berries, and pomegranate juice
  • Water, while limiting juice consumption and cutting out fish

 It took me a while to develop and implement these habits and guidelines for myself. All it takes is a small step towards bettering your health. From my experience, it has been so incredibly worth it and allows me the gift to play with my kids and grand kids and do the work I love.

About Dr. Larry Senn

Dr. Larry Senn pioneered the field of corporate culture and founded in 1978, Senn Delaney, the culture shaping unit of Heidrick & Struggles. A sought-after speaker, Senn has authored or co-authored several books, including two best-sellers. His newest is The Mood Elevator (August 2017), the follow up to his 2012 book, Up the Mood Elevator. You can learn more about Larry and his work at his website, www.themoodelevator.com.

 

Employee Investment

Why Invest in Your Employees?

So the economy is doing okay.  It’s booming for some and busting for many others.  Whatever your company is doing, booming, busting, or somewhere in between, investing in your employees is a must.

Employee Investment

Employee Investment

Now, I know you’ve seen the image above before, probably many times, and it’s cliche notion resonates with many professionals.  The thing is, is that it’s true.

One of our clients whose business is currently in a busting period, made the strategic decision to continue the investment in developing their leaders.  This was not without significant consideration and influence.  The argument  that ultimately won over the stakeholders was that very few to no other company in their industry would be continuing this investment in their leaders during this economic malaise and making this investment demonstrates their benevolence towards the employees. And, the evidence revealed itself shortly after the conversation when companies laid-off and terminated contracts of tens of thousands of employees.

Developing employees, managers, and leaders requires not just a financial investment, but an investment in time and effort. Organizations with successful employee and leadership development programs prepare their employees with lifelong skill sets.  They also demonstrate organizational trust and an eagerness to build loyal employees who thrive on growth and want to remain as members of the organization.

Studies have shown that companies with employee and leadership development programs are six times more likely to increase employee engagement, and have a 2.5 times higher productivity rate than organizations that have yet to implement a career development strategy (Scales, 2012).  They stay with the company because they want to, not solely because they need to.  When the economic fog rises in the near future, not only will our client have a ready workforce, but they will be engaged and positioned to scoop up the talent their competitors sent packing.

Another study conducted by the World at Work association shared that only 51% of employers feel confident about retention of top talent as the economy improves.  Rest assured that out client who made the investment in their leaders has a much higher level of confidence in their ability to retain their top talent and it’s directly related to the investment they’ve made while times weren’t so good.

One more thing, they made the Great Place to Work List too in their state.

If you’re in a similar position and unsure what do to next let us help you.  We put employee and leadership development systems in place with extraordinary development activities, leading towards exponential results.

EDGE – Where Leadership Begins,  is a Human Capital Consulting firm, focusing on three primary areas to help you achieve exponential growth.  We can serve you in many ways, however our focus is in the areas of Talent Management, Organizational Development, and Leadership Development.

For immediate inquiries, contact Dan Freschi at (414) 301-3343 or email info@edgebmc.com, and visit our website at www.whereleadershipbegins.com.

HR’s Business Case for Talent Management

Today’s global economy is forcing a shift in the role human resources plays in organizations, moving from a transactional-administrative role to a strategic partner and facilitator of an organization’s most important asset – its people. However, projects in human resources and their functions may find it particularly difficult to obtain funding, and are typically one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight. This unfortunate reality is principally due to human resource’s inability to align a credible business case followed by positioning it with key executives as having a quantifiable, direct impact on the bottom-line of the organization. Breitfelder and Dowling (2008) suggest human resources sits in the middle of some of the most compelling and competitive battlegrounds in business, where organizations deploy and fight over that most valuable of resources, their talent. Therefore, building a business case for talent management has become a strategic imperative for human resources professionals that will buttress an organizations ability to achieve its goals and objectives and in due course improve the performance of the bottom-line.

What is Talent Management?
The term talent management was conceived many years ago and initially referred to the programs used to manage and develop the top talent in an organization. Today, it has transformed into a key strategic and sustainable competitive advantage for organizations who are looking to recruit and retain talented employees throughout an organization. Where it was once for only the hand-picked few is now for many employees throughout an organization. Talent management today can be viewed from a holistic and strategic view and may be defined as a method to optimizing human capital through integrated organizational processes designed to attract, retain, develop, motivate and deploy employees, with the goal to create strong culture, engagement, capability, and capacity that meets current and future organizational objectives. Avedon and Scholes (2010) suggest talent are employees with strategic importance to the purpose and objectives of the organization. However, in today’s workplace it has expanded beyond the strategic few at the top to the strategic many deep and wide in the organization.

Building the Business Case
When building the business case, human resource leaders must structure it in a way that business leaders can understand the need. Building the business case for talent management begins by defining a strategy in the context of the business strategy. In other words, the strategy should help the organization to achieve its business goals through focusing on its talent. Business leaders understand the need to make money and talent management, when done well, makes money (Bersin, 2012). Therefore talent management needs to move away from just being a human resources project or program and forward towards being a true sustainable business strategy.

Strategy is about change and should not stand alone as a management process (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). A talent management strategy needs to describe what the changes will be and how the changes will happen. Strategy maps can help by describing the changes an organization would like to bring about and, just as importantly, the systems and processes that ensure those changes happen. Kaplan and Nadler (2001) see strategy maps explaining what will be different and how organizations change in a cohesive, integrated and systematic way. In that same vein, human resource leaders will face a nearly impossible challenge to persuade executives to fund a business case for a talent management strategy if it fails to reflect a genuine understanding of the business. Consequently, strategy is also about a series of choices to do things differently than competitors so to provide a unique and attractive value proposition to attract, manage, develop, motivate and retain key people. (Kaplan and Nadler, 2001). Mapping a talent management strategy will be integral in demonstrating how an investment in talent management processes and programs can deliver value to the organizations customers and the bottom-line.

Organizational Benefits
Organizational benefits of a talent management strategy will vary depending on the industry and mission, vision, and goals of the organization. Bersin (2011) adds that talent management is not something to copy from a book and that the strategy will be unique to the organization as well as the benefits. However, a structured talent management strategy will systematically close the gap between the current human resources in an organization and the talent it will ultimately need in order to respond to business challenges in the future (Smith, Wellins, and Paese, 2011). Closing this gap will mean the organization will be able to remain competitive and retain key talent, attract new talent, and assemble plans for key roles and people in the organization in order to allow for proper development experiences. According to a study by The Hackett Group, Inc. (2010), they found that organizations with strong talent management strategies were like to see an increase in their bottom-line earnings by 18 percent. Additionally a Bersin study from 2010-2011 showed that organizations deployed strategic talent management saw twice the revenue of other organizations, 40% less employee turnover, along with 38% higher levels of engagement (Bersin, 2011). So, the evidence is clear, organizations that spend money and time on strategic talent management efforts will see their investment essentially pay for itself.

Conclusion
Organizations that deploy effective strategic talent management practices truly understand that talent is a key competitive advantage. Building the business case will be the hardest part for human resources professionals, however, they can help themselves by genuinely understanding the business and seek and give guidance to the executives who generally do not want to invest their time in these processes. Building the business case and coupling it with a strategy map will provide for a simple and powerful way for the human resources professional to demonstrate value and communicate visually how the strategy can be executed. Additionally, it will be critical for the human resources professional to decouple the strategy from being just a human resources initiative but instead a whole organization or business initiative. Doing this will allow for human resources to be viewed as a true strategic business partner. When organizations leverage strategic talent management practices they can project confidence to their market and remain nimble and flexible regardless of the market conditions.

References
Avedon, M. J., & Scholes, G. (2010). Building Competitive Advantage through Integrated Talent Management. In Silzer, R. F., & Dowell, B. E. (Eds.), Strategy-driven talent management: A leadership imperative (73-116). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bersin, J. (2012, January 22). The Business Case for Talent Management: Steve Ballmer Agrees. Retrieved from http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2012/01/The-Business-Case-for-Talent-Management--Steve-Ballmer-Agrees.aspx
Breitfelder, M.D., & Dowling, D.W. (2008, July-August). Why Did We Ever Go Into HR? Harvard Business Review, 86, 39-43.
Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. (2001). Building Strategy Maps. In Kaplan, R.S. & Nadler, D.P. The Strategy- focused organization: How balanced scorecard companies thrive in the new business environment (pp. 69-105). Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
Smith, A.B., Wellins, R.S. & Paese, M. (2011). The CEO’s Guide To: Talent Management A Practical Approach. Pittsburgh, PA. Development Dimensions International. Retrieved from http://www.ddiworld.com/ddiworld/media/booklets/ceoguidetotalentmanagement_bk_ddi.pdf?ext=.pdf
Study Finds Experienced Talent Management Brings Higher Earnings & Other Benefits. (2010). HR Focus, 87(3), 8-9.

Impact of Culture on Global Businesses

Like a personality is to an individual, is culture to organizations. Culture impacts every aspect of an organization from its top executives to its newest employee to its latest office environment in India. Organizational Behavior author and Management Professor John Schermerhorn asserts organizational culture is the collective values, beliefs and norms that develop over time and guide the behaviors of those who are part of the organization. Another way to make concrete an abstract concept is to think of culture as the glue that binds and shapes how employees execute the organization’s vision and mission and how customers and communities perceive the organizations value. With the explosion of the global business environment the impact of culture is even greater than before. Therefore organizations that are conducting business in global locations must work to become a local company and integrate the local culture into their business practices. When they succeed they can reap huge rewards, but when they fail they may leave a mark that may be unrepairable to the members of that culture and their own business.

In order for organizations to reap rewards and potentially increase their value, leaders of the organization must focus on becoming a localized organization. When leaders adapt their business practices to match the culture and exert effort to avoid any potential misinterpretations of cultural customs, they are demonstrating a level of respect to the culture and building a foundation of trust. When organizations make the decision to go global, the impact on organizational development (OD) is just as imperative as sales or logistics. In a training capacity, OD should take into consideration language barriers and cultural differences in the context of how content is delivered. Change management also becomes a major element for OD, they must taking into consideration how the culture deals with and delivers change. According to Dr. Dan Denison, Chairman & Founding Partner, Denison Consulting, organizations that value culture and respect members’ participation may generate a return on their investment almost twice as high as those organizations that fail to consider culture.

Organizations that recognize and value culture, especially in a global business environment tend to have exponentially better performance in their respective markets. Organizational culture directly affects performance management in large part due to the climate the culture creates. Dr. Benjamin Schneider, professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, shares that climate focuses around two critical areas 1) how the organization behaves on a daily basis and 2) what the goals are of the organization, these then reveal and make visible how employees understand policies, practices, and rewards. Blake Ashforth of Wayne State University, reinforces that culture, a collective idea of values, beliefs and norms, determines the climate’s policies, practices, and rewards that are considered relevant by its members. An example of this would be if an organizational culture supports a climate of providing a reward, such as a bonus, for a high level of performance. However, in the global business environment, organizations must ‘customize to the culture’ their performance management and rewards, for instance employees in many European countries prefer to receive time off from work, where in Asia employees may prefer additional monies.

For business leaders to continue to be successful in a global environment there are many strategies they can use to develop and manage their organizations. On such strategy this must include the recognition of not just one corporate culture, but their host country culture and that there are many subcultures. Author Guy Saffold suggests that when recognizing the many subcultures, business leaders recognize the varying cultural features spread throughout the organization and their cross-sections of interactions. Saffold adds, it is critical for leaders to understand that culture creates the climate of the organization and climate also acts in a way to modify culture. Claremont Graduate University Professor of Management, Vijay Sathe, shares that with a better understanding of an organization’s culture, management can appropriately enter, deviate from, and change the culture needed to continue their success in the global business environment. While organizational culture remains an abstract concept to many, it’s important for business leaders and employees alike to embrace the culture or find one that is best suited to meet and challenge their professional and personal goals.