February 2007 Archives

Short answer: continually give them advancement opportunities.

Now the long answer. The reality is that you won't be able to retain all the good talented staff that walk through your door. That's a given. For some reason they won't blend well into the organization or they will a short attention span and hop jobs (let's face it, it's not where employees stick around for 30 years anymore). I guess I can say I'm somewhat unique in that I've stayed at my first company post graduation for over 5 years without leaving, though I've had opportunities to advance. It is those opportunities to do more with my career that has been the key factor to stay longer and will be for employees your organization.

For many, staying at a company is a balance between "real" benefits and intrinsic benefits (job satisfaction, healthy work environment, knowledge expansion). Sure access to the health club is nice, but if I can leave work knowing that I made a difference, improved my work product, and can be recognized for it, I'm happy. That's what keeps me coming back in the morning and not dreading my job come Sunday evening when the thought of "having to go back to work tomorrow" pops in your head.

I hope employers feel that advancement doesn't always mean more money or a promotion. Advancement could include allowing an employee to:

• improve a skill-set
• have the ability to teach the organization a new way of doing business they have researched
• the ability to provide continual feedback to the organization

Employers should also look to:

• present new challenges to employees where their diverse skill-set can solve
• provide clear career path options (nothing is worse than coming to an organization and find there is no-where to go within the organization)

Eventually you will always tap out on what you can do for an employee, but as long as they feel that they can continue to contribute and be rewarded in some way, they will stay. So when was the last time you sat down with your employees and asked them how satisfied they are in their jobs? What can you do to make it better? Maybe you should.

I've been doing some site maintenance and made some changes as well as have some new features on the boards to implement.

First, navigation changes. I moved the "utility nav" that was located above the search box into the main navigation. Hopefully that will lessen any confusion.

Second, I fixed the search results template. Now that should look consistent with the rest of the site.

Third, I removed some dead RSS links. I had intended to provide some more granular RSS feeds for you to subscribe to, but it wasn't realistic at this time. But I may still do this. What are your thoughts? More granular or just a master feed? Let me know.

Fourth, I started to add a blogroll. This will be selected blogs and sites I read in my aggregator that I find valuable. I will continue to break this down by category and publish more feeds over the next few weeks.

Fifth, I hope the following additions will encourage more interactivity on this site:

• "Rate This" - for all posts and articles
• Comment form Overhaul - including a Comment Captcha - to hopefully lessen the comment spam
• Social Tools - links to allow you to bookmark with del.icio.us, Digg, Newsvine, and Technorati
• Question of the Week - a poll to let you share your opinion on relevant topics
• E-mail This Link - allowing you to forward an email to a friend about a post
• Print This - a nice printer friendly format for those who want to take an article on the road or show to a colleague

I am also making more of a commitment to blog more often. My intent is to blog about three times a week. This doesn't mean just three posts, but dedicating three active times a week to blog on what comes to mind and is relevant at that time. I also hope to write more posts that highlight what others are talking about with my opinion injected in it.

Finally, I will most likely be taking out a lot of the Website technical posts (not that there have been that many) as I have a sister site I'm starting to create that will focus solely on building a better Website and discuss technical and non-technical items. This should keep From the 21st Floor more focused on business topics, though the Web will always be part of that discussion.

Do you run your website and your blog off of the same software? Have you effectively launched your main Website using MovableType, WordPress, TypePad, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, TextPattern as well as your company blog? If you have, let's chat. I'm developing an article that explains how you can leverage a blogging software beyond just a blog, but as a lightweight CMS tool to run your Website as well. Drop me a note at fred (at) fromthe21stfloor [dot] com so I can learn more about how you have your Website set up.

Thanks.

I was recently at Tech Cocktail 3 here in Chicago and I put this site down on my name tag instead of my work domain.  Many asked me, what is From the 21st Floor?  It dawned on me that I really couldn't explain the purpose of this site concisely in a sentence.  I would say it is about looking at things from the big picture perspective.  That is true, but what I'm really trying to attempt (and I hope to get better at) is explaining how I look at things in a holistic point of view.  The "big picture" falls in that category, but maybe it will be easier to explain to others. 

The holistic point of view I see the world in relates to the balance between strategy and implementing actions to meet goals.  How often have you been in a meeting and heard about a new plan or idea that was going to be implemented and you thought to yourself "But what about that other plan we have?"  or "How does this meet our overall goals or work within or strategic vision?"  That is the world I see.  I think those questions all the time, and more recently I start to ask them in meetings.  I guarantee your company will waste more time and money on developing and implementing ideas that contradict your overall company goals than you want to admit.  This will be because you don't have a vetting process for major projects, and more importantly it is because your fellow employees can't recite what the company goals are.  And for the record, it shouldn't be "to make our shareholders money."

So I encourage you to understand what your companies strategic goals are.  Be able to recite it at a moments notice.  Why? Because when you are in project planning meetings or brainstorming sessions you can effectively ask "How does this idea work towards our strategic goals?"  More often than not you will probably get someone to pause and think about it because they hadn't before.

Coming back full circle, From the 21st Floor is about looking at business, goals, strategy, marketing, communications, the whole package from a holistic view--the big picture.