The Simplest Thing That Works

Thank you, Leslie!

Link: Making Your Garden Grow | Developing Your Employees.

Just today, I discovered this lovely series of blog posts by Leslie Levine, reviewing Growing Great Employees. She's extremely kind, and - even more important - she's simpatica. I love this word; it means - in both Italian and Spanish - one who is like-minded or compatible with oneself, and who is also an easy, pleasant and companionable person.

As I read Leslie's blog posts, I first thought - "Wow, she really gets what I'm trying to say," then "Oh, we're on the same page," and finally, "What a nice, easy, friendly way she has of writing." Simpatica!

So, thank you Leslie...it's very much appreciated.

Lesson Learned

How dependent are you on your computer? Has your computer ever died?

Until last Thursday, my answers would have been "very" and "no." Not only no, but no with dismissive arrogance: I'm a Mac person, have been one for 20 years, and have never experienced a crash. Macs are perfect, right? Backups - sure, kind of...well...actually...

Then, Thursday at 6pm, my trusty Mac Powerbook turned up its toes, gave out an extended death rattle, and stopped working. Auggghhh!!

Fortunately, I was able to get in a cab and race down to Tekserve, here in NYC. Bad news: they told me my hard drive was toast. Moderately good news: they told me they have an 85% data recovery success rate. More bad news: it would take a week to even find out whether they could salvage anything. Moderately good news: they could put a rush on it - and let me know by Tuesday, at the latest. Good news: they had a beautiful new Macbook Pro in stock for me to buy while I waited to hear the verdict (and freaked myself out thinking abou what it would take to recreate my output since my last back-up).

Suddenly, my answers to the first two questions changed to "completely," and "oh my god - yes."

There is a happy ending. Our good friend Scott Serota, who works at Tekserve, called us with regular updates, and let us know on Saturday afternoon that, after numerous attempts, they'd salvaged everything on the drive.

I felt kind of like I'd been pulled back from the very edge of a cliff.

And the moral of the story is: BACK UP YOUR DATA. I'm now going to be the zealot queen of backup. Every time I create something, I'm going to make sure there are two of it. At least two of it.

How would you answer the questions? Tell us your story!

Penguin Speakers Bureau - Live!

Link:
Erika Andersen - Penguin Speakers Bureau -
.

I just wanted to share with you the launch of the Penguin Speakers Bureau. They unveiled their excellent (I think) website last month; I'm honored to be included in their inaugural roster of speakers, in the company of authors like Ray Kurzweil, Harlen Coben, Mary Pipher and Eric Jerome Dickey. The link above is the page they created for me.

This leads me to one of the many unexpected things that's happened since Growing Great Employees was published. I knew (because my agent, my publisher, my brother-the-bestselling-author and my business partner had all told me) that part of what authors do - if they want to create an audience for their work and take best advantage of having been published - is speak to large audiences. Though I've spoken to groups in various contexts for many years, and wasn't nervous or anxious about it, I simply didn't know whether I'd like it.

The group work that I do most often is highly interactive and in-depth: I'm either teaching management or leadership skills, or helping senior teams envision and plan for the future of their organization. And that work I love: it feels as though I'm helping them to be more strategic and more effective in a very personalized way. I wasn't sure if speaking to large groups - mostly them listening and me talking - would be satisfying to me; whether I could be as helpful to the audience as it is always my goal to be.

Fortunately, now that I've been doing it, I find it has its own unique set of satisfactions, and that it does seem to be helpful to people. While I don't get a chance to interact personally with each attendee, I can still engage everyone with the topic in a variety of fun and personal ways. And - this is the feedback I'm getting, anyway - people are finding my presentations informative, thought-provoking and inspiring: they say they feel motivated and supported to behave in new ways or move in new directions.

And I want to thank two resources that have helped hone my skills in this endeavor. A couple of years ago, I took a communication skills course through Speakeasy, inc. that provided some great foundational skills. And earlier this year, I worked with a remarkable women named Isabelle Anderson, who really helped me to understand how to leverage my existing strengths as a speaker and develop new ones.

It's great to discover that something you need to do is also something you enjoy doing!

Forbes.com Video about Growing Great Employees

Link: Forbes.com Video Network.

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Forbes with long-time Proteus client Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group. We talked about the book, and about how Danny has worked with us over the years to help them create a culture of good people management and great employees.

Danny is a gifted leader, in addition to being a lovely human being, and one of the things he and his team have done really well - he talks about this in the video - is to make explicit those characteristics that are most essential to the organization they're trying to create. As Danny said, to get it out of his head and articulate it clearly, so that everyone is clear about what makes them who they are. He credits us with helping him see the importance of doing this; I credit him with truly understanding the importance, and then translating it into reality by building it into every aspect of his organization, from recruiting to hiring and training, to how they develop and promote their employees. You can find out more about how he does that in his book, Setting the Table.

In my next post, I'll talk more about this idea of "core competencies," and how you can use them to create the workgroup, department or organization you want.

HBR and GGE

OK, this is going to be just pure bragging. I found out yesterday that the March issue of Harvard Business Review has a quite positive review of Growing Great Employees. Here's what they said:

More than any other business activity, the management of people gets at fundamental tensions of human life. Business is hard enough without the insecurities of both boss and employee. So it’s refreshing to see a book that delivers current thinking on personnel practice while prodding managers to recognize the tensions. Andersen, a consultant, likens managing people to gardening and puts the art of listening to others — and to oneself — at the heart of each step. She challenges managers to reflect on how much they truly seek the success of their employees separate from the demands of their own egos. This well-illustrated book still has the relentless optimism of most advice books, but managers who read carefully will take a sobering message to heart.

I'm thrilled that the reviewer, John T Landry, picked up on some of the essential points of the book: that it helps managers focus on the fundamental nature of people management, which is about the essentially complicated arena of human interaction; and that listening is at the heart of successfully navigating those interactions.