Employees are the most important asset of a company? Maybe not.

We hear it all the time. It makes a nice sound bite. Leaders say, “The most important asset of our company is our employees. Yet, judging by the limited amount of time, money, and effort most companies invest in selecting, training, and coaching their people, I would guess that people were about #97 on the most important asset list. Leaders say it and HR types gripe that leaders don’t really mean it, but what if it is not true at all? What if people aren’t the most important asset?

I’ve been kicking around an idea and would love to hear other’s thoughts on this. What if the most important asset of a business isn’t its people, but its customers? It’s an interesting idea to consider. I suspect that if companies embraced that idea then they would actually end up focusing more attention on the employees. If customers are the most valuable asset, then we want to hold on to them, invest in them, and grow them. How do we do that? By developing systems and processes around the customer. By making them feels special, important, and welcome. By putting the customer first. And how do we do that? By carefully and deliberately finding, hiring, developing, and retaining the best people to deliver that experience.

Is more than just semantics? It seems that when we put great processes in place solely for the sake of the employee then it’s often just a half-hearted effort; vague altruism sucks money away from profits so employee programs don’t get the attention they deserve. However, when we hire, develop, etc.great people for the sake of the customer (and the customer’s dollar) then HR becomes strategic because it is directly correlated with profit. What do you think? Is this just wordplay or is there something to this idea?

The #1 Secret of Great Leadership

Pay attention leaders. I’m about to share the #1 Secret of Great Leadership. Countless books and articles have been written about leadership secrets and here I’m about to share it with you. I’m not even going to charge you or make you sit through a seminar or anything. Even though it’s free, it’s still a Truth that could determine the trajectory of your leadership learning curve and even your career. You might want to write this down.

Ready? The #1 secret of great leadership is – [drumroll, please] – there is no secret.  No, this isn’t the answer to some sort of Zen riddle, just a common sense truth. Leadership is always on display 100% of the time (even and especially when we might wish our own leadership wasn’t). We’ve all seen and experienced the good and bad, the miserable and the inspiring. We all know what makes for a good leader and what we’d never wish on another human being.

I’ve trained business leaders in the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia and one part of several different programs was to have people list the traits of the best leader they ever had and the traits of the worst leader. You know what? Across hundreds of leaders, across blue and white collar jobs, across industries, across cultures and countries, the answers were remarkably similar.

Notice, though, that the question isn’t a theoretical, “What are the qualities of great leadership?” but a very practical, “What were the traits and characteristics of your best leader – what really set them apart?” This isn’t an abstract question; it’s a question about your personal experience. In fact, I’m confident that you could answer that question right now and it would be very comparable to what everyone else says.

You don’t need another book or conference or weekend workshop to learn how to be an effective leader. Get a small group of people, individually answer the questions about your best and worst leader, then compare and compile lists. Take the list of the worst traits and DON’T do those anymore. Take the list of best traits and START doing them immediately.

Class dismissed.

Note to Self: Today Rocks!

Today’s the day. It’s the best day ever. It’s the only day I have. Yesterday’s gone and there’s never a guarantee that I will see tomorrow. Life’s uncertain, but I do have today.

It doesn’t matter who we are or where we are, this is it. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t plan as though I am going to be around a long, long time. That doesn’t minimize the emotional or physical pain I (or anyone) might be feeling right now. That doesn’t mean that life isn’t often very difficult. It does mean that this is all I have on planet Earth so I better enjoy it.

Easier said than done. It’s easier to be stuck in my ruts. Easier to be grumpy even when things are going well than happy even when they aren’t. Pain seems forever and happiness often seems temporary and fleeting. Pain and misery find us but we have to go looking for joy. Or is that a lie? Is joy all around us just waiting to be seen?

Some people look like every day is Monday. They frown, fuss, and drag themselves along whining about everything that’s wrong. What would life be like if every day I had the vibrant energy that people seem to get on Friday? Monday and Friday are just names on the calendar – a day’s just a day, so why not bring the fun and enthusiasm of Friday into every day? Enjoy every day? That’s not happy sunshine blind optimism, that’s reality. Today’s it.

Picasso said, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” I have decisions I need to make, actions, hopes, and dreams that I want to accomplish, relationships I want to strengthen or build. If we’re going to make it happen, today’s the day. If today’s the only day I have, it might as well be great.

Today’s a great day to be alive.

Training is Stupid

There is one and only one purpose for training: to increase performance. That’s it. Training provides new knowledge and skills that allow a person to perform better than they could without the information or practice provided by the training. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about training for leadership development, college classes, or even physical fitness.  Any training that doesn’t increase performance is stupid.

I once observed a safety training where the trainer was showing the participants how to fill out a government form. Not the most exciting topic to begin with, the training was so slow, dull, and unengaging that the trainer made Mr. Rogers look like Tony Robbins. The more experienced participants were getting caught up on reading spy novels. The others looked like they were wishing for sweet, sweet death – his or theirs, it didn’t matter. It was total waste of time and money, but the company was able to check the box and say that their employees had attended the required training.

I’ve also known trainers so charismatic and entertaining that everyone has a great time and universally gives the trainer high marks on their evaluation. Yet, said and done, the participants can’t remember what the program was about or don’t understand how to apply it to their own lives. A good time was had by all, but it was still a horrific waste of time and resources.

Sometimes the training is a hodgepodge of great ideas and techniques, but there is no plan to bring it all together so that the person can consistently apply it and improve. Every been at the gym and seen someone “training” their friend by almost randomly showing them different exercises? Information is dumped on them, but they have no understanding of how to truly apply it. There’s no plan, no tracking of progress, and minimal (if any) improvement.

The biggest challenge is that increasing performance means change. Scary word. Our performance gets better only when our behavior changes (we’ll never get better if we keep doing the same things). Changing others – even simply helping them change themselves – is incredibly difficult. That’s why most training fails us. It’s much, much easier to provide information and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to be entertaining, have fun, tell some great stories that kind of relate to the topic and call it “training.” It’s much, much easier to string together a bunch of ideas than organize them into a plan that will create ongoing improvement. It’s much, much easier to think of training as a one-time, check the box event than to approach it as an ongoing process. How different would training be if every aspect was scrutinized to determine if each bit of information was truly important and if it would create the changed behavior that leads to increased performance?

And here’s why we care. Company performance improves ONLY when individual performance improves. It’s painfully funny how many leaders insist on improving company performance without ever trying to create higher performance from each and every individual. Training is crucial to any company that wants sustained performance.

Except when it’s stupid…