4Cs Blog: Happy Employees = Happy Customers

And it Might Sound Corny

Google does everything well, including keeping and inspiring its employees. How they do it is not really a secret and to help others learn from their experience Laszlo Bock, the Head of People Operations at Google, has written a book called Work Rules.
Bock says it might sound corny but people really are the most important thing at Google. They take hiring very seriously and say that, despite receiving 2 million applications a year, they hire only several thousand of the 2 million applicants, which ‘makes Google 25 times more selective than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton’.
Google, Bock says, has actually built a sophisticated infrastructure that results in every application getting consideration—and the company even has a team to review applicants who’ve been rejected from the regular process, just to give a second look in case someone potentially valuable has been missed. Google is picky about who they hire and that has been one of their secrets for success.

"It's our people," he insists in an interview with Fast Company, acknowledging that it's the kind of answer that can sound a little corny. But it's also a reference to how intensely the company focuses on the hiring process—choosing people well and reaping the rewards from its selectivity.
Once you are hired by Google life keeps getting better and not just because of the perks. People matter at Google, "We actually did a survey once where we talked to the first 100 people hired at Google and asked them what made the place special, and one of the top two reasons everybody said was the quality of the people," he continued. "Another thing that’s special about the company: We give our people tremendous freedom. And we underpin our people practices with real science and data. We use science to figure out what makes teams work."

The Crucial Step is Overlooked

Ever notice how hard it is for companies to turn their plans into results? According to Harvard Business Review a full 75 per cent of organizations assess themselves as ‘poor’ at turning plans into results.
With the best of intentions, companies spend millions of dollars and hours developing solutions that don’t come to fruition. In his article titled ‘The Crucial Step 75% of Companies Get Wrong’, Fred Pidsadny, founder and President of FOCUS Management, says the answer is so simple that it’s often overlooked.

To Be Engaged Sometimes You Need To Disengage

So you are on vacation. Is that with or without your laptop?
I don’t think many of us can really go away and totally disconnect from our work anymore. It’s not like the old days when they only way you could get in touch with the office was to call from your hotel room. Some of us sneak in time online because we can’t help ourselves, we simply cannot disconnect, not fully, no matter how much caring family members accuse us of working all the time. Why do we do this to ourselves?

10 Ways to Get Candid Feedback

With so many articles and blogs written about bad bosses, do you ever wonder if you might be one? It is rare to find someone who is completely and totally self-aware. Most of us have a few blind spots about ourselves and don’t know all our strengths and weaknesses. Still, self-awareness is one of the most critical leadership competencies and is considered by many to be the single most important predictor of leadership success.
Feedback is one way to close the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. To make it meaningful and actionable you want the feedback to be honest, which is hard to get, especially from people who don’t want to offend or upset you.
Management and Leadership expert Dan McCarthy gives us 10 great ways to get candid feedback and he recommends that when you do get it, keep your mouth closed and just say thank you!

Well-Organized Meetings Are a Sign of Respect

There should be a zero tolerance policy for bad meetings. Bad meetings can be annoying and a complete waste of time. But don’t just complain about them….do something! If you call a meeting, respect your teammates by taking the time to learn how to run a good meeting. They will respect you in return and respect, as we know, is a key ingredient for achieving employee engagement and job satisfaction.
So if you have been winging your meetings so far, this blog is definitely for you!

Dan McCarthy writes a well-known, award-winning leadership development blog called Great Leadership. He recently published the simplest and most effective 8 easy steps on how to make a meeting tolerable and productive.

Why Having Happy Employees Is The Wrong Goal

Seriously, can anything be changed in 10 easy steps?

Nothing in life comes easy and in her recent article titled ‘Why Employee Happiness is the Wrong Goal,’ Liz Ryan steps up and says making happiness your goal at work is ‘insulting to employees.’ Why? Because happy is nowhere near sufficient to describe the relationship between work and a truly engaged worker.
Ms. Ryan’s article is a refreshing change from the litany of articles written about employee engagement because she captures the essence of the engaged employee, the one who gives discretionary effort, the one who goes above and beyond. And this employee as she explains, is not always happy!

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