If you’re like most leaders, you’ve never before experienced a downturn like this.  Reports about the end of the recession mean little if your company continues to fight cash-flow problems.  You know that the term 'jobless recovery' is an oxymoron.

You cannot allow yourself to be afraid.  Others look to you for strength and guidance. You must give the best you have and move quickly, even when faced with incomplete information.

In his new book, Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, the best-selling author identifies the key rules to follow if you want to get the right things done in difficult times. They include:

· Pay attention to salespeople’s contributions.

· Accept guidance from your board of directors.

· Understand how various business functions must be aligned and coordinated.

· Communicate candidly and frequently.

· Respond to external pressures in realistic, yet positive, ways.

Uncertain Data

Projections and estimates are little more than guesses these days.  We won’t know when we’ve turned the corner, and we cannot envision the future shape and scope of our businesses.  What we can say is that change will present as both a danger and an opportunity.

Smart leaders are reshaping their businesses to carry on through whatever hard times lie ahead.  They are making changes now so they can emerge in better shape than before, ready for new growth.  They’re pouncing on new opportunities, devising ways to move faster and trying to serve customers in different ways.

  Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn

A record number of U.S. companies are beating earnings expectations but a big portion of their profits come from cost-cutting, disappointing investors who are hoping for boosts in revenue.  The worry is that without a meaningful upturn in U.S. sales, cost-cutting can only boost profits so long.

Barring acquisitions, your company will likely be smaller two years from now, according to Ram Charan.  In his new book, Ram Charan: Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn, the bestselling author identifies the key rules to follow if you want to get the right things done in difficult times.  

As bitter and painful as it may be, survival depends on cutting costs and raising cash. This is the time to narrow your focus and concentrate on your business’ core: the invaluable assets you can’t afford to lose.

No doubt you have heard "The Cookie Thief" poem by Valerie Cox from "A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul" Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen that goes like this:

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shop,
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book, but happened to see,
That the man beside her, as bold as could be,
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between,
Which she tried to ignore, to avoid a scene.

She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock,
As the gutsy 'cookie thief' diminished her stock.
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, 'If I wasn't so nice, I'd blacken his eye!'

With each cookie she took, he took one too.
When only one was left, she wondered what he'd do.
With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other.
She snatched it from him and thought, 'Oh brother,
This guy has some nerve, and he's also rude,
Why, he didn't even show any gratitude!'

She had never known when she has been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate,
Refusing to look back at the 'thieving ingrate.'

She boarded the plane and sank in her seat,
Then sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise:
There was her bag of cookies in front of her eyes!

'If mine are here,' she moaned with despair,
'Then the others were his and he tried to share!'
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief!

The Real "Cookie" Story

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person is me.

I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, What am I going to do?

In the end I thought Nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, That settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice…” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back.

A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

-Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“Cookies” 

Leadership by Sharing Knowledge

Knowledge is power and sharing it can build even more capability for the person sharing and the organization.   Yet, this concept can be a hard sell to those who have been raised on the belief that giving away their knowledge is surrendering their power.

Today, social networks are allowing us all to share our virtual cookies with people all over the world by practicing the law of reciprocity (www.LawofReciprocity.com).

Forbes.com reports that Flint, Mich., and Lincoln, Neb., have something in common: They are the two cities in the U.S. with the greatest difference between how many of their employers expect to add workers in the next quarter and how many expect to let them go.  But that's very good news in Lincoln, and very bad news in Flint.

In Lincoln, 21% of employers plan to hire soon, and only 4% plan to fire---a net difference of 17 percentage points. Pretty much the opposite is true in Flint, where 26% of employers are planning cuts to payroll and 9% are expecting to hire. That's according to employment services firm Manpower's latest United States Employment Outlook Survey.

Detroit, Mich., Dayton, Ohio, and Salinas, Calif., follow Flint, Michigan's end of the spectrum, all at -14% to -15% (exceeded only by Flint's, at -17%).

Those cities helped the U.S. as a whole achieve its lowest net employment outlook since 1962. This coming quarter, 12% of employers in the U.S. plan to hire and 14% plan to fire, for a national net employment outlook down 2%.  The Northeast is the hardest-hit region, at -4%.

The ranks of the discontented are swelling. 

As the economy continues its downward spiral, many able men and women are facing an involuntary retirement, as well as having difficulty in finding a new job. That is why a number of job coaching tip options have been created to help job seekers move from where they are now to where they want to be in today's tough times.

Here in Michigan, the epicenter of joblessness in the U.S. with a 15% unemployment rate, Wayne State University's School of Business Administration is sponsoring workshops and a new book, "Yes! You Can Land a Job; (even) in a Crummy Economy" authored by Therese Marie Boldt, a successful recruiter and career coach.  Wayne Business School Dean David L. Williams says, "Our main goal is to prepare students for their professions.  That entails not only theory and practice, but also the concepts Therese so aptly discusses [in her book] such as a positive, realistic attitude; self-knowledge; preparation; and perseverance.  In today's uncertain economy, our students are finding it more and more challenging to cross the commencement stage and step into their dream jobs."

Other universities and alumni associations are stepping up to assist their graduates in landing jobs in today's tough economy.  Our suggestion is that the college graduate job seeker put together an action plan with the emotional and financial support of their Baby Boomer parents:

First, buy the book, "Yes, You Can Land a Job" which is the recipe you need to follow.  However, you can't land a job just by reading the book; you much follow the recipe with the support and guidance of career counselor or coach. 

All college grads seeking jobs should consider contacting their university's career services office or alumni association for career coaching assistance...or...search the Internet for a personal career coach to put the book's recipe into practice.  

For all job seekers and those unhappy in their profession (without the slightest clue on how to seek a new opportunity), you can access a range of job coaching services from personal coaching to job coaching tips that can be purchased online.  Now is the time to custom tailor your approach to what's next for you.  Consider purchasing the low-cost 21 Career Transition Tips or sign up for a year's subscription to weekly email Job Seeking Coaching Tips to guide you through your career transition.

For joining a free social network connecting job seekers, recruiters and career coaches ready to share actionable knowledge for those making a career move, go to: www.CareerTips.us.com

Women love lists of what they have to get done.  There are too many things for her to do before she can relax. The more exhausted she feels, the more urgent it becomes for her to get everything done.

As an executive coach of working women, I know in a woman's brain there will always more to do.  It seems that Marcus Buckingham knows this also and has written a new book about what the happiest and most successful women have in common.  Here are five myths that Buckingham reports about the lives of working women:

Myth:  With better education, jobs and pay, women are happier and more fulfilled.

Surveys of more than 1.3 million men and women reveal that women are less happy compared with 40 years ago, and compared with men.

Myth:  Children want to spend more time with their working mothers.

1,000 kids were asked what they wanted from working moms.  10% said "more time."  More than a third wanted mom "less stressed and tired."

Myth:  Women are relegated to lower-level roles at work.

In fact, 37% of women hold managerial positions today, vs. 31% men.

Myth:  Flexible work options like paid leave allow women to feel happier at work.

Studies show a negative correlation between taking advantage of such options and a woman's self-reported daily happiness.

Myth:  Women would prefer to work for other women.

About 40% of women want to work for men, while 26% prefer a female boss.

 Marcus Buckingham: Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently

 Bob Prechter first released Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression during a stock-market high in 2002, and it quickly became a New York Times–bestseller. Now he has updated the book with 188 new pages for a second edition, and it looks like it, too, will be published near a stock-market high. John Wiley & Sons plans to publish the new edition in late October. Visit Elliott Wave International for information on how to pre-order the new edition from major online retailers. 

As was widely reported in the dark days of late February and early March 2009, Prechter called for the start of the biggest stock market rally since the 2007 high. Since then, the S&P has soared more than 60 percent in just six months to reach his target zone of 1000-1100. This is one reason why he decided to release his second edition now.

The first edition, which was published in early 2002, was "on the mark" with regard to our current economic environment -- so much so that it's uncanny. Prechter’s message has been good for investors who kept their money safe and for speculators who profited from declines. And he still expects a great buying opportunity ahead for those who can keep their money safe until it arrives.

Last month, I had an opportunity to talk with Ray Tomlinson, the guy who put the @ sign in your email, about his invention becoming the bedrock of communication.   And since less is more, I told Ray that I forgave him for filling up my email inbox everyday.

Email has had a good run as king of communications.  However, a new generation of social networking services is starting to take hold---services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others are vying for a place in people-to-people communication.  And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate--in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Email continues to grow.  In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008.  While the number of users of social networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

Consider, Twitter.  The service allows users to send a 140-character message to people who have subscribed to see them, called followers.  You can also create links to particular users in messages by entering Ray Tomlinson's @ followed by their user name or send private "direct messages" through the system by typing d and the user name. 

Of course, the obvious downside to the constant stream of messages is: It's a constant stream...and...that can make it harder to determine the importance of various messages.  That's why a number of Twitter software programs filter Tweets by tags, making it easier to follow a topic.

The big question is: Will the new services save time, or eat up even more of it?

Source: The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2009

Older Americans are normally at the front of the queue for shots against the seasonal flu viruses that circulate every fall and winter, and public-health officials and doctors strongly urge them to get one each year.  There's little wonder why: An estimated 36,000 people die in the U.S. every year from the seasonal flu, and 90% of them are 65 and older.

This Fall is different.  Boomers and older are nearly last in line for that shot.

The reason is the new H1N1 flu is largely sparing the 60-plus demographic, instead hitting children and young adults the hardest.  While it has spread like wildfire through secondary schools and colleges, and claimed more than 2,800 lives worldwide, few older people have even gotten sick.

That's because many people 60 and older were exposed to H1N1 viruses that circulated between 1918 and 1957.  Those earlier viruses were similar to the new H1N1 virus, so the immunity that some people built up then is helping them now.

A study by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that about one-third of adults age 60 and older had antibodies that protected them against the new H1N1 virus.  By contrast, children had none.

The pattern is similar to one seen in the deadly 1918 pandemic, in which death rates were highest among young adults, according to infectious-disease experts.  One possible reason is that older adults had been exposed to similar flu viruses in the 1800s.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2009

In seven years of studying the process of leading from below in hundreds of companies around the world, James Kelly and Scott Nadler of ERM, a global consulting firm focused on environment, health, safety and social management, identified clear patterns in how managers succeed---and fail---in facing their own management constraints.

These patterns suggest for the vast majority of business managers who are not CEOs, there are practical ways to play a leadership role that helps their companies, helps improve the impact their companies have on the world, and helps improve their career prospects at the same time.  The clear majority of managers studied found themselves stuck in predominantly service and/or governance roles performing standards enforcing tasks or providing resources for people to meet those standards.  Many expressed a desire to take on a leadership role but didn't see a clear way to do so.

Making the decision to be a leader

There are three painful realities about moving from service and governance roles to a leadership role:

1.  No one will tell you to do it.

2.  There will always be people who tell you to stick to the role you are now playing. 

3.  You have to earn the right to play a leadership role, often by succeeding in your current role first--which in turn only increases the expectation that you will keep playing that role.

In every case of successful leadership from below that Kelly and Nadler studied, the manager made a conscious decision to move beyond the service and governance roles, without waiting to be told to do so.  Two key ways to leadership roles are to reorganize your group to make yourself less essential (so you can free up time and energy for leadership) and open yourself up to influences from outside the company (by listening to customers, competitors, suppliers, the media and your personal business coach).

In deciding to take on the risks involved in a leadership role, it helps to understand that failure to lead is also dangerous.  In an age when job cuts are common at even the most successful companies, being a good manager who doesn't make waves is increasingly risky.  Those who take risks are more likely to keep their jobs and to be promoted.

Source: Leading from Below, The Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2007

As the major stock markets turned down in late 2007 and then started to rally in March 2009, many Baby Boomers who believed in fundamental analysis have begun to question its validity.  Unconscious doubt and worry often foil people's actions.  That is why boomers facing the funding of their retirement years want to know how best to invest their nest eggs. 

Famed technical analyst and Elliott wave expert Robert Prechter has long called for the bear market we are now in the midst of. (He views the rally of 2009 to be a bear-market rally not the beginning of a new bull market.)  But over the years, his methods of technical analysis have been criticized.  Here are his most succinct arguments as to why wave analysis outdoes competing forms of analysis.

Learn the Wave Principle and Other Forms of Technical Analysis. Elliott Wave International has just released The Ultimate Technical Analysis Handbook. This FREE 50-page ebook is dedicated solely to teaching reformed fundamentals followers to incorporate technical analysis into their own investing decisions. Learn more and download your free copy here.

Researchers at Thunderbird School of Global Management have developed a 91-question exam to assess employees' "global mindset."  This self assessment tool is used to determine how likely the executive is able to thrive in global roles, according to Mansour Javidan, the professor who designed the study.

An analysis of responses from the 6,000-plus executives who have taken the test found that scores improve when an overseas stint stretches to two years.  And managers under the age of 40 and over the age of 65 scored higher on the exam than those aged 40 to 64.  "Whatever the explanation,: Javidan says, "the biggest concern with that finding is that group is the one running the world right now."

Source: BUSINESSWEEK, September 28, 2009

Can a leader both act and be real?

This is a question with no easy answers.  But the feeling of not being up to the job, the belief that the role is too big, is something every leader has felt.  It is evidence that the role is greater than the individual--and thus worth taking on.  Accepting the risk of failure is the first step in becoming a leader.

Communications are critical to creating engagement and building a true sense of urgency. To that end, here are four steps for creating buy-in, courtesy of John Baldoni: 

 John Baldoni: Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders

1. Inform. Explain the situation in general and specific terms. Generality provides context; specifics provide expectations. For example, make the case for your initiative, ask people to support it and tell them why it’s necessary.

2. Involve. Once people understand the facts and what’s expected of them, they will decide whether to participate. Critical to gaining commitment is communicating "what's in it for me?" (WIFM). You must make the specifics clear and demonstrate what people will gain by supporting your initiatives.

3. Invite. Once people understand what’s expected of them, ask for their support. Never assume people will follow you until you ask them to do so. Be specific and persistent: "Can I count on your support for this initiative?"

4. Ignite. This final step is not always possible, but it separates the ordinary from the extraordinary. You must try to take individuals’ commitment and transform it into a collective willingness to work toward a cause greater than themselves. Excite their imaginations by talking about what will happen when your initiative is a success.

 Familiarize yourself with these five common barriers to change so you can stay on track: 

1.    Ownership: It’s easier to pass the buck than to stand up as a leader and take over responsibilities that may not even be yours.

2.    Time: Change always takes longer than estimated. Add 50 percent to 100 percent more time to your expectations.
 

3.    Difficulty: When a task appears to be easy, you may set yourself up for disappointment and frustration if you miscalculate the time required to complete it.  Anticipate troubles, and give yourself credit for small victories.

4.    Distractions: When the going gets tough, as it will, it’s easy to be distracted by competing goals, other interests and priorities.  Anticipate how easily you can become distracted; you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to regain your focus.

5.    Maintenance: Once you expend all of the effort needed to achieve a change goal, be willing to face reality.  It takes time for the new to become habitual. Give up too soon, and you’re back to square one.  Maintenance requires vigilance and perseverance—more than you may think.

Last week, I traveled to Upstate New York from Ann Arbor, MI via Canada.  While on the NYS Thruway, I stopped to get fuel at a Sunoco service center. 

After spending $30+ to fill the gas tank, I went to wash the bug marks off the car's windshield---but all four of the gas station's wash basins were bone dry....and....only two of the four had the long-handled washer/scrubbers.  I asked the attendant 'why?' 

In a surprised voice he said, "Oh!  I didn't  know they were empty."  And he took an empty bucket and walked to a place where he could draw water to refill the wash basins. 

Bottom line: those wash basins had been empty for hours, if not days, while this attendant sat reading a book or whatever.  Complacency is much more common than we think.  Employee and manager complacency is a huge problem here in the U.S. and will result in crumbling business for those companies that allow it to spread.  People gravitate toward doing whatever alleviates their anxieties and worries, and they will go to great lengths to avoid discomfort.

Often, complacency is invisible to managers and leaders, as well as the employees in its grip.  You, too, may be complacent and not even realize it.  That’s because success produces complacency and, for peace of mind, we often focus on success instead of our failures or gaps.

This problem is augmented by our tendency to replace a true sense of urgency and purpose with frantic activity and unfocused anxiety—what we call a false or misguided urgency.

Companies that succeed in redefining the job of the front-line manager can improve their performance remarkably.  Instead of administrative work and meetings, they should focus on coaching their employees and on constantly improving quality.

District managers, store managers, plant managers and line supervisors direct much of the workforce and are responsible for the part of the company that typically defines the customer experience.  Yet most of the time, these managers operate as cogs in a system, with limited flexibility in decision making and little room for creativity.

This limited flexibility can make companies less productive, less agile and less profitable.  Change is possible, however.  At companies that have successfully empowered their front-line managers, the resulting flexibility and productivity generate strong financial returns.  The key is a shift to front-line managers who have the time to address the unique circumstances of their specific stores, plants or mines; to foresee trouble and stem it before it begins; and to encourage workers to seek out opportunities for self-improvement.  In difficult times, making employees more productive is even more critical than it is ordinarily.

Abundance is actually the root cause of many corporate struggles with innovation.  Too much time or money often leads companies to continue following fatally flawed strategies. Their leaders create overly complicated solutions that overshoot customer needs.

In contrast, constraints often enable innovation in the retail industry. Over the last century, there have been numerous significant business-model innovations:

· Wal-Mart’s discount model

· Costco’s warehouse club model

· Inditex’s Zara fast fashion model

· Amazon.com’s collect-cash-before-you-contact-suppliers model

One explanation for the retail industry’s inventive business models is scarcity.  The constrained retail environment leads them to funnel creativity to where it can best be applied.

Entrepreneurs are another example of flourishing innovators.  They have no choice; if they fail to rapidly adapt, they run out of money. Bad times force discipline.

The Transformation Imperative

Survival really comes down to change or die.  In the Great Disruption, companies have two choices: Live with shrinking profits and increasing chances of extinction, or follow a completely different approach.

The most serious studies on education reform have concluded that the critical variable when it comes to kids succeeding in school isn't money spent on buildings or books but, rather, the quality of their teachers.

A study of the Los Angeles public schools published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution concluded that "having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap."  But, holding teachers accountable for how well they teach has proved to be a frontier that cannot be crossed.

Removing incompetent teachers from the classroom into a 'Reassignment Center' is based on a rationale that is undeniable: Get these people away from children, even if tenure rules require that they continue to be paid.  Most urban school systems faced with tenure constraints follow the same logic.

With executives under fire for driving their companies into the ground--and with them the global economy--conventional wisdom is becoming one of the damnedest things.

Turning conventional wisdom on its head, OOPS! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money harnesses behavioral science to assess and correct widespread leadership mistakes, including: annual bonuses, automatic pay raises, downsizing and spending big dollars to recruit talented people. 

From a business perspective, the most important thing we know about behavior is that it is the only way that any organization's outcomes are accomplished.  The principles of behavior are just as much a part of human nature as gravity and electricity.  While there is much yet to learn about behavior, what we have learned can be used to make significant improvements, not only in the workplace, but in all areas of life.

As gravity is a law of physics, behavior is a function of its consequences.  Getting the right behaviors to occur at the right time in the right way and at the right frequency is what separates the successful strategies from the unsuccessful ones.

Behavior is time and money.

Failure to understand human behavior from a scientific perspective costs organizations serious money and causes significant morale problems.  In organizations, what is reinforced is what gets done.

Most performance problems are solved when you create a culture where improvement is valued.  The smaller improvement you detect and reinforce, the better.  With frequent positive reinforcement people are more open to opportunities for improvement.  A positive performance culture is characterized by energy, excitement, and enthusiasm, as well as by people seeking information and feedback that will help them improve.

Contrary to popular opinion, you don't buy people's brains; you buy their behavior.

An employee value lies in how their intelligence is used to advance the mission and vision of an organization.  In today's economy with fast growth and rapid technology changes, the ability to develop people quickly to high levels of skill in short time frames is very desirable. 

As a manager, it is your job to retain and develop people.  Employee retention is not a human resource responsibility.  A part of any reward system for managers should be the number of employees they keep and promote within the organization.

There is a good chance that you already have many smart, talented people and spending some money and time to develop them is better than trying to entice and buy 'talent.'

Source:  Aubrey C. Daniels: OOPS! 13 Management Practices That Waste Time & Money (and what to do instead)

Many companies that have slashed 401(k) benefits plan to reverse those cuts within the next six months.

Fidelity Investments, considered the nation's biggest 401(k) provider, says that while employees are saving less of their pay than they were a year ago, more of them increased, than decreased, their savings rates in their 401(k) accounts in the second quarter ending June 30.  That reverses the trend of the prior three quarters when more workers cut back savings than increased them.

In addition, Watson Wyatt, a benefits and human resources consulting firm, plans to release a study saying 24% of companies that have cut their 401(k) matches expect to reverse those changes within the next six months.

Another 43% of companies that have cut 401(k) matches expect to restore the matches in the next 12 months, while 16% will restore the benefits over the next 18 months, according to Watson Wyatt's poll of 175 large companies in early August.

Fidelity says it sees signs that employees are startling to save again, possibly because of the market rally that has boosted accounts, or because of increased confidence in the economy.  Fidelity's data, based on more than 17,500 corporate 401(k) plans and more than 11.2 million participants, found that nearly 5% of employees increased their deferral rate in the second quarter, while only 3% of workers decreased their rate.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2009

Companies are now recruiting executives through such sites as Twitter, Craigslist, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Social media tools are especially attractive for small businesses eager to cut hiring costs.  Contracting a recruiter to find an executive who earns $150,000 annually can cost $15,000 in fees.  Posting ads on job search sites like Monster.com could mean spending hundreds of dollars--and precious hours poring over resumes.

In contrast, social media tools are mostly free and offer added value: candidates bring their own online networks, blog content and references, which speeds up the interview process.

David Bowman of Cincinnati-based Lucrum, a 100-employee IT consulting firm with 2008 sales of $15 million, admits that social media isn't a magic bullet.  "Its biggest drawback in recruiting is that it won't help you appreciate nonverbal communication dynamics," he says.  "While Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can provide a wealth of information about a potential candidate, they aren't substitutes for face-to-face communications."

Tableau Software, an 88-employee Seattle software firm, has mined social networks such as Craigslist, LinkedIn and Twitter to recruit employees.  But the company, whose 2008 sales totaled $20 million, has also reached beyond these sources to search for highly specialized workers.  Recently, they skipped LinkedIn and went straight to social-networking sites where Drupal enthusiasts gather.  Tableau hired a developer it discovered in the Seattle Drupal user group.

To be sure, social media enables businesses to find talented employees efficiently.  But getting to know the person behind the blog post, profile page or tweet is essential.

Source: FORTUNE Small Business (FSB), September 2009

Reducing anxiety during the economic recession is important for the mental and physical health of boomers.  However, knowing that you get what you tolerate can be important in handling today's challenges.

In a new survey of 4,435 full-time employees, 37 percent of respondents say they are now doing the work of two people, and 30 percent say they feel burned out.  A dysfunctional work environment, if left unchecked, can deteriorate to the point of employee burnout. Burnout is a familiar term these days: it's the physical or emotional exhaustion that results from long-term stress or frustration.  Chronic fatigue is a major symptom of burnout: one feels physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. Behaviorally, the burnout worker becomes cynical, indifferent and increasingly ineffective in the job. 

To reduce stress on the job, consider visiting this week's Blogging Boomer Carnival hosted by Laura Lee Carter, the Midlife Crisis Queen.

Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and other self-employed professionals have always struggled to take vacations, and the recession is making it even harder.

Competition among freelancers is increasing.

Being out of pocket can mean missing one of a diminishing number of business leads, and the rising tide of unemployed professionals has heightened competition for freelance work.

Guru.com, a freelance job site, saw its total membership grow to 906,979 in July, up 15% from the same month in 2008.  And rival Elance.com received 131,000 new applications from freelance professionals in the first half of this year, a 40% increase compared with the same period in 2008.  Applicants must pass an admissions test to join.

Some self-employed professionals may be able to stay connected to clients from afar using cell phones and other devices.  Some entrepreneurs are finding a happy medium by keeping close enough to their businesses while on vacation to handle emergencies.  In lieu of lengthy vacations, many self-employed professionals say they're taking a day or two off at a time to avoid burnout, usually tacking them onto a weekend or holiday.

Solo entrepreneurs may be able to take even more time off by enlisting trusted peers to temporarily fill in on their behalf, adds Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of Freelancers Union, a national membership organization in Brooklyn, NY, for independent workers.  "Build your network and start having people who you can outsource work to," she suggests.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2009

A series of studies conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, began during the Eisenhower Administration and have been carried out periodically ever since.

According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteensixties, 24.3 percent of American adults were overweight.  By the time of the second survey in the early 1970s, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a percent, and, by the third survey in the late 1970s, it had edged up to 25.4 percent.

During the 1980s, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 percent of adults now qualified as overweight.  In 1994, published findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that in just ten years, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds.  "If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic," another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

During the next decade, Americans kept right on gaining.  Men are now on average 17 pounds heavier than they were in the late 1970s, and for women that figure is even higher: 19 pounds.   the proportion of overweight children, age 6 to 11, has more than doubled, while the proportion of overweight adolescents, age 12 to 19, has more than tripled.

Something big must have changed in America to cause so many people to gain so much weight so quickly.  But what, exactly, is unclear--a mystery batter-dipped in enigma.

Today, attrition strategies can become a low priority.  After all, turnover is inevitable.  Employees come and go, people retire and die.  Yet, turnover can be a positive process that gives a business new people, new vigor and new ideas. 

On the other hand, turnover can also become a profit-killing liability that debilitates a company.  That is why talent management is important to every business.  The excessive costs of turnover are frequently overlooked but are an important factor that affects the bottom line.  Steps leaders take today in handling layoffs and other potentially culture-damaging decisions could affect staff retention for years to come.

That's true for all North American companies experiencing an economic global structural transition...including manufacturers, suppliers and consulting firms.  Within the consulting industry, a recent survey of 6,000 consultants by Consulting magazine found that more than half of consultants below the manager/director level plan to leave their current firm within the next four years and more than one-third plan to leave with the next two years.

In other words, when demand finally returns, leaders that haven't taken steps to keep their best consultants engaged and committed to their firm could find themselves with a severe talent shortage.

Because the market seems close to bottoming out, some boomers are into day trading to turn their 201(k) back into a 401(k).  The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Kennedy’s Trader’s Classroom Collection. Now, through August 10, Elliott Wave International is offering a special 45-page Best Of Trader’s Classroom eBook, free.

Aspiring traders typically go through three phases in this order:

Methodology. The first phase is that all-too-familiar quest for the Holy Grail – a trading system that never fails.  After spending thousands of dollars on books, seminars and trading systems, the aspiring trader eventually realizes that no such system exists.

Money Management. So, after getting frustrated with wasting time and money, the up-and-coming trader begins to understand the need for money management, risking only a small percentage of a portfolio on a given trade versus too large a bet.

Psychology. The third phase is realizing how important psychology is – not only personal psychology but also the psychology of crowds.

We need a better way to evaluate our business leaders, assert James O’Toole and Warren Bennis in a recent Harvard Business Review article (“A Culture of Candor,” June 2009). It’s no longer prudent to judge American corporate leaders’ performance solely on the extent to which they create wealth for investors.

Moving forward, a new metric is proposed: the extent to which executives create organizations that are economically, ethically and socially sustainable.

Wise leaders recognize that increased transparency is the fundamental first step. Broadly defined, transparency should mean the degree to which information flows freely within an organization, among managers and employees, and outward to stakeholders.

Roughly half of all managers don’t trust their leaders.  Exact figures and study results vary, but no data compiled over the last 7 years have shown more than 50% trust for company leaders.

The challenge facing mutual fund companies and life insurers is to transform volatile stocks into stable investments that offer retiring Baby Boomers predictable income or protection from losses.

As if that isn't hard enough to accomplish, they are trying to do it at a low cost to investors and in a way that doesn't lock up money for years, as has been the case with many traditional guaranteed investments such as annuities.

Appetite for these products was heightened last year when even conservatively managed funds delivered steep losses to those on the cusp of retirement.  Chief among the losers were most target-date mutual funds, which offer a mix of stocks and bonds tailored to an investor's expected retirement date.  Most were loaded up with stocks, based on the idea that even at retirement as investor could live another two or three decades and needed the growth potential.  The result was that the average target-date fund lost 32% in 2008.

The bear market also took its toll on many "payout" funds, which aim to deliver steady retirement income but don't guarantee it.  Sold by giants such as Vanguard Group Inc. and Fidelity Investments, many of these funds suffered big losses last year, which led to lower payments to investors.

Although more firms than ever are trying to come up with products designed to make stocks safer for older investors, the track record of such investments is mixed, at best.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2009

The Supreme Court's recent landmark employment-discrimination ruling might prompt employers to use tests more in making hiring and promotion decisions.  But it has others scrutinizing their existing tests to ensure they are free of bias.

"There's going to be a re-evaluation of what additional tools are available to employers," says Maria Konev, human-resources manager at Liquid Transport Corp. of Avenel, NJ.  Ms. Konev says she sometimes uses personality tests to help choose between equally qualified candidates for jobs or promotions, and would like to use tests more frequently.  Following the court's ruling, Ms. Konev says she is considering using personality tests more and giving other exams to dispatchers and drivers.

"It is a tool," says Paul Nolan, owner of Cincinnati-based Personnel Profiles, which designs and administers aptitude tests.  He suggests clients follow five steps, including an introductory interview followed by a skills test, a second interview, a drug test and a background check.

Doug Reynolds, vice president for Development Dimensions International, a Pittsburgh human resources and leadership consulting firm that develops tests for employers, says tests for hiring and promotion are most commonly used by retailers, manufacturers, telecommunications companies and businesses with large sales forces.   Mr. Reynolds says the court's "very public statement of support for an objective and validated" test should ease concerns among private-sector employers about using tests.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2009

For more information, go to: www.SelfAssessmentCenter.com 

The depth of this recession, plus widespread expectations that unemployment will keep rising into 2010 and remain high thereafter, may exert a powerful drag on the recovery.

Shortly after the 1990-91 recession, consumers went out and bought houses, cars and other expensive goods on credit, noted Richard Curtin, director of the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey.  That helped boost job growth in construction, manufacturing and other industries.

Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product.

However today, Americans have abruptly switched from living beyond their means to saving more and working down the debts they incurred during the bubble years.  This time around, because of the severe credit crunch, people won't be able to get financing as easily as they did in the 1990s--while many others who can borrow will be reluctant to do so, Curtin's survey's indicate.

Instead of leading the way to a more vigorous economy, consumers are saying they want to save and keep their personal debts low.  Americans socked away almost 7 percent of their after-tax income in May, the highest rate in 15 years.

That's what scares Howard Roth, chief economist at California's Department of Finance.  The nation's biggest state has been hit particularly hard by the housing meltdown, and its jobless rate is already hovering at 11.5 percent.

"If you look at the situation of consumers--home equity, it's gone away.   The stock market has wiped away retirement savings," Roth said.  "The consumers are not going to be able to spend as much as before."

Source: Ann Arbor News, July 2, 2009

What does it take to transmit bold new ideas to people who don’t want to hear them?

Transformational leaders:

·         Generate enduring enthusiasm for a common cause

·         Present innovative solutions to solve significant problems

·         Catalyze shifts in people’s values and ideologies

·         Demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the greater good

·         Help others get through crisis moments

·         Inspire people to want to change, creating a positive energy that sustains the change

·         Generate followers who will ultimately become leaders

The what of transformational leadership is reasonably clear.  It’s the how that’s usually obscure.

ð  How do leaders communicate complex ideas and spark others into enduringly enthusiastic action?

ð  What words do they use to inspire others to become new leaders?

ð  Why are some leaders able to accomplish the feat while others fail miserably?

Stephen Denning, a senior scholar at the University of Maryland’s Burns Academy of Leadership, makes the case for transformational communications in his book The Secret Language of Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2007). More than anything, it’s what leaders say — and the way they say it — that generates sustained energy and exponential results.

Many experts proclaim that leadership is solely an issue of inner conviction: You must find the leader deep within yourself.

Other experts encourage you to:

·         Become the person others will want to follow

·         Discover your strengths

·         Increase your self-awareness, self-regulation and authenticity

·         Become emotionally and socially intelligent

·         Visualize to materialize

·         Be true to yourself, and change will happen

If leaders’ own inner commitment to change is to have any effect at all, they must communicate it to those they aspire to lead. Leaders’ actions speak louder than their words, but in the short run, it’s what leaders say — or don’t say — that has an impact.

The right words can create: