How to Be a Good Leader in a Bad Economy

 “My days are full of turnabouts. I have to go back on promises, reshuffle priorities, and I second-guess too much. It’s wearing on me, and I feel like I am spending hard-earned goodwill,” a member of an executive leadership team told me in one of our sessions. “I want to pause for a moment and talk about how I can be a good leader in a bad economy.”

On paper, this person was being a good leader by enacting tried-and-tested strategies to prepare for an economic downturn: becoming more hands-on and moving closer to their team, setting a faster pace, and asking people to handle bigger workloads. But instead of releasing energy and instilling confidence, these moves were wearing the leader down — and their employees, too. In their effort to build a fortress, they felt like they were about to burn down the house.

This feeling may be familiar to executives and managers who are anticipating a recession on top of the aftershocks of the pandemic. The common thinking is that each crisis makes people stronger and more able to cope. But this is not the reality. Compounding crises tend to make people more vulnerable — and more shaky.

This shakiness poses a formidable challenge. It means that some of the normal crisis responses people turn to won’t work as intended. Indeed, if leaders use the standard playbook as-written, much like our executive at the beginning of this article, they actually risk setting off a destructive spiral and making the crisis worse.

To succeed as a leader in this moment, I suggest three key balances people need to get right: moving closer without suffocating others; moving faster without turning frantic; and taking on or assigning a bigger workload without sacrificing relationships.

Moving Closer Without Suffocating Others

When there are rumblings of an economic downturn, the first response from leaders is often to move closer. More meetings are called, more reporting is required, more detail goes into every conversation. This is quite natural — leaders want to understand what is going on. They want to help find answers. They want to make sure their teams are on track and doing what they can to fix the situation.

Psychologically, however, the impetus to move closer is often a need to feel in control. Moving closer is a risky maneuver and a double-edged sword. On the back of the pandemic, where teams have learned to operate independently and with less oversight, a boss looking over their shoulder can feel like outright distrust and disenfranchisement. It also draws their attention away from doing their job and on to “managing upwards.” The outcome may be stifling instead of stimulating.

Further, if leaders move too close, they clog up their own bandwidth with details and micro-management. The worst-case scenario is when a leader formally takes over their subordinates’ role because they believe they can do better. At a financial institution I was observing, for example, a top leader was so frustrated about the prospect of losing a large client that he marched into a meeting his team was having with them and interrupted the dialogue. He was short of breath, sweating, and agitated, and stood behind his employees to watch and ask questions. He later explained that he was only there to “secure that you do your job right” and to “fire up the crew.” It didn’t work; the company lost the client, citing “a hostile, immature and frantic environment that made them uncomfortable.” The team eventually dissolved, and good people quit their jobs.

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To be sure, there are some legitimate reasons to move closer, like when leaders want to ground their judgment in first-hand experience or signal support by showing up on the frontlines. But they must remember that the point of moving closer is to motivate, energize, and support; not control, disengage, or sow doubt. A balanced approach is “touch and go,” engaging with teams on the issues they face, but also not taking the weight off their shoulders and onto your own. A good test is to make sure you don’t end up with a laundry list of things you need to fix for the team, but rather that your team knows their laundry list and understand that they now have control of the steering wheel again.

Move closer — but don’t hover — and have a clear exit strategy. Once you have seen enough, give the power back to your employees.

Moving Faster Without Turning Frantic

The second typical response is a healthy bias for action. In times of crisis, leaders cannot sit on their hands; time is of the essence. You can almost feel it in the jittery pace of meetings, as well as in a leader’s tone of voice or restless demeanor.

However, there is a fine line between urgent and frantic. Leaders must remember that the pandemic has made many people more brittle, not more resilient. Stress and mental health issues have skyrocketed. As a result, while most people understand the need of speed in a crisis, their tolerance for “pushy” leadership is much lower than it might have been prior to 2020.

To address this, leaders should examine the psychological traps they tend to fall into when economic times get tough. One common one is that people think they have less time than they actually do, so they come up with imaginary and self-imposed deadlines. “We need a solution by the end of the month” may create urgency, but if the better solution is another few months away, imaginary deadlines can sacrifice value in exchange for the illusion of speed.

Add to this the fact that leaders often exhibit less tolerance for dissent when things get difficult. They tend to become more ego-centric, so when others object to an idea or proposal, it’s quickly interpreted as resistance and obstruction, not as reflection or constructive feedback. Sooner or later, this pattern of behavior will lead to disengagement from the team and a sense of “false consensus” on ideas. While this might result in faster decisions, it can also hamper independent thinking and prevent better solutions from coming to the fore.

A balanced approach is to create a deliberate delay between ideas, decisions, and actions. Think of it as impulse control by design: Create structures and processes where you allow others (the board, external advisors, peers, or good colleagues) to vet and question your plans. You don’t have time or patience for endless bureaucracy, so design these processes to be fast and informal. Sometimes they can be as short as a quick phone call where you spell out what you want to do and test the immediate reaction of someone you trust.

Increasing Workloads Without Sacrificing Relationships

The third typical response to economic downturns is that leaders become more task-oriented and less mindful of relationships. Just like the frustrated executive earlier in this article, many leaders will ask their teams to take on a bigger workload. To-do list gets longer and longer because “more” feels better and “more” feels like responsible leadership. You might also hear versions of the statement, “We need to fix problems now, not coddle people.” As a result, off-sites are canceled, talent programs are put on hold, perks are cut, and courteousness and empathy go down the drain.

However, relationship work is not coddling; it is hard-core performance management. We have learned from the aftermath of the pandemic that good people rarely quit or “quiet quit” because their job becomes more difficult or because times turn harder. They quit because they lose faith in their leaders, their colleagues, or the future of the company. They withdraw because they feel unfairly treated or neglected. Yes, people go to work to complete the mission and finish their tasks, but more than anything they go to work because of the connection and community they feel they have with their colleagues. So, continue to invest in relationship-building. Maybe downgrade on the luxury, but still spend the time investing in creating connections. Go for five-star content, impact, and interaction, but in a three-star setting.

Part of doing this involves maintaining a balanced approach around relationship and task priorities. Be transparent with your team: What’s the nature and quality of work relationships you expect to see during a tough period? What kind of challenges and supports do you expect of each other? What kind of relationship compromises are you not willing to make, even if they would deliver short-term results? Ultimately, if you find yourself in an extended downturn, take a step back with the team and redefine what success looks like – and not only for the work tasks themselves.

. . .

Being a good leader in a bad economy has always been challenging. This time around is even more so because the usual burden of a bad economy may be compounded by the emotional disruptions of the pandemic. This means that leaders must turn the pages of the standard crisis playbook with care and moderation.

Leaders cannot stand still in the face of an economic downturn, but their bias for action and their instinctive responses — moving closer, moving faster, and increasing workload — must be harnessed. If these natural and legitimate leadership moves are not made in a balanced way, leaders may actually amplify the crisis.

3 Myths About Caregivers at Work

 Chances are there are many caregivers on your team: parents of young children, colleagues caring for elderly family members, and those supporting a sick or disabled child, sibling, or spouse. Effectively managing these employees starts with addressing your blindspots and assumptions about them. Here are some common myths you need to be aware of.

• Myth #1: School and childcare are back to normal. Employees who rely on daycare and schools to do their jobs continue to face constant, unpredictable scheduling conflicts. Evaluate flexibility and hybrid policies with this in mind, and if your organization provides backup care services to ease ongoing stressors, make sure your employees know how to access them.
• Myth #2: Employees who need flexible work arrangements are less interested in advancement. Flexible work is an essential resource for employees with caregiving responsibilities. Beware proximity bias, which could lead you to favor in-person employees over those working remotely.
• Myth #3: People aren’t talking about it, so it must not be an issue. Many people aren’t comfortable sharing about their caregiving responsibilities in the workplace because they’re worried about being penalized professionally. To foster transparency around caregiving, acknowledge it yourself. When people feel comfortable sharing their challenges juggling work and caregiving, you’ll be able to create policies that better support them.

Write Notes of Appreciation to Your Team - HBR

 Expressing gratitude to your employees can feel awkward or uncomfortable. But celebrating your team members, especially around important holidays, can be a powerful, generous, and motivating gesture. Try writing a card or email that goes beyond a simple thank-you note. To write an impactful note of appreciation, focus on your employees’ strengths. Start by highlighting a specific characteristic that you admire about them. Then, explain why you value that attribute, and provide a real-world example of how it positively impacted the team. For example, you might write: “I value your ability to creatively solve problems, turning challenges into opportunities for growth. This ability routinely helps our team unlock innovative ideas. For example, you found an opportunity to create an entirely new product when our subscription numbers were down.” Notes like these will help your team members see their own abilities through your eyes. They also focus your employees’ attention on what’s going well and signal to them that they really matter.

Prioritize Yourself to Prevent Burnout

 It can be easy to equate hours spent working with productivity. But this fallacy that long hours = success often leads to burnout. Here’s how to prioritize your personal well-being without compromising your professional growth.

• Find time to do nothing. One way to build in a moment of genuine disconnection from work is to take some time at the beginning or end of each day to journal or doodle your thoughts. Think of this as a daily reflection or brain dump to release the pressure of your work life.
• Learn to say no. To get better at declining requests without feeling guilty, reframe saying no as setting boundaries. Ask yourself: Who am I willing (or not willing) to give time to? What do I want (or not want) to do or achieve? When do I need to protect time, and when do I want to make myself available? What kind of work will help me achieve my long-term goals?
• Become more intentional about space. Dedicate specific places to your work and reserve others for relaxation and relationships. Drawing clear lines between your professional and personal lives will help you thrive in both.

Research: In Supplier Negotiations, Lying Is Contagious - HBR

 Imagine you’re trying to strike a deal with a supplier or you are a supplier trying to strike a deal with a potential customer and the other company’s negotiator lies to you. Do you A) respond with honesty or B) lie right back?

Choice A is for the white knights among us who strictly follow Kant’s categorical imperative of acting the way how you would want others to act. However, many people opt for the “tit for tat” behavior and choose Option B: They lie back.

But as our research — published in the Journal of Operations Management — found, there is a dark side to doing so. Lying once can be contagious. It can pave the way for lying again in other interactions or negotiations with people at other companies. Therefore, there are actions that companies should take to curb such behavior and prevent it from spreading.

Our Findings

We set up two experiments with 350 and 424 salespeople with B2B sales negotiation experience. In both experiments, participants acted as sales managers for a beauty and home care products supplier and engaged in negotiations over the product prices with purchasing managers from different customer firms.

Our results revealed clear contagion effects. Our first experiment showed that only 16% of participants who were on the receiving end of honesty lied in the final negotiation, but 55% of participants who witnessed deceptive behavior lied.

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In our second experiment, we made tweaks to make dishonesty somewhat less appealing and to check for the robustness of the results. The contagion effect remained: More than twice as many participants chose deception when previously witnessing it as those who were previously subjected to honesty. Inversely, both experiments also confirmed the contagion of honesty. Surprisingly, the frequency with which participants were exposed to a behavior did not change contagion effects overall. A single incidence was sufficient to spark contagion.

Preemptive Measures

Our experiments suggest that a company should be careful about whom it does business with, because in the end, its behavior is likely to be influenced by theirs. But how do you keep your company from being infected? The following measures may help:

Ensure your negotiating team has at least two people.

The mere existence of a second pair of eyes may make the lead negotiator more aware of his or her own behavior and, as a result, resist the kind of impulsive actions that lead to lies.

Strongly reinforce your code of conduct.

For example, you might require employees in negotiation positions to undergo biannual ethics training rather than the one-off crash ethics course at the beginning of employment that other workers often receive. You might also ask team leaders to remind employees about the company’s core ethical principles in monthly team meetings. Finally, negotiating teams could jointly review their behaviors after a negotiation to reflect on whether the code of conduct was violated. Knowing that one’s dishonest negotiation behaviors will be reviewed by colleagues may create peer pressure, causing that person to better adhere to the code of conduct.

Carefully screen the other company’s negotiators.

Certainly, some degree of dishonesty can be viewed as part of the negotiating game, but given that such behavior can infect your team and have lasting effects, you shouldn’t tolerate extremes. To that end, you could keep a record of other parties’ behaviors or have your team’s negotiators compare notes about previous interactions with the person in question.

If it turns out that the person was a bad actor, you could demand the other company replace him or her and explain why you are making that request. Or you could choose not to do business with that company.

During negotiations, you could also use software to identify bad actors. With the help of an automated language analysis program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count, we analyzed the phrasing of negotiation statements and found that, on average, honest statements had a higher degree of words reflecting analytical thinking (e.g., “know,” “cause”) and authenticity (e.g., “I,” present-tense verbs) and a lower degree of emotional words (e.g., “fear,” “happiness”) than lying statements.

While there is no vaccine, these measures may help your firm become more resilient against contagious dishonesty.

Workplace Management

We’ve all encountered situations that make us feel ashamed at work. Maybe you got a bad review from your boss or dropped the ball on an important project. How can you stop shame from holding you back?

• Identify whether you can learn from it. Sometimes shame is justified, indicating that you need to make a healthy change—for example, developing ways to be more timely and organized to achieve your goals. Other times, when you feel ashamed about something you can’t change—for example, being let go due to a reorganization—the shame is unjustified. In those cases, you have to let it go.
• Track it. Keep a log of when you feel self-conscious and prone to self-criticism. Use this to generate a list of incidents or comments that tend to incite shame for you. Putting words to your feelings in this way will get you into a problem-solving frame of mind.
• Rely on supportive, healthy relationships. Opening up to others exposes you to compassion and makes it easier for you to be compassionate with yourself. You’re not alone, and in relationships you’ll find that other people experience the feelings you’re struggling with, too.

5 Ways Startups Can Prepare for a Recession

 

With stocks down 20% from their highs, we are officially in a bear market. Many economists predict we will enter a recession in the next few quarters if we’re not in one already. What strategies and tactics should startup CEOs use to prepare for and survive a recession?

I’ve spent the last three decades in the software industry, including three stints as CEO as well as serving on the boards of 10 private companies and as an advisor to many others. I’ve led or advised companies through the dotcom bubble bursting, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Covid recession. While every downturn is different, in my experience there are some essential steps that startups should take when the economic environment deteriorates.

Take steps to extend your runway. Now.

When a recession hits, it gets a lot harder to raise capital. You need to extend your runway or your “cash out date,” so plan to survive on the capital you have. Only spend money to make to your product or service better or to drive new sales. No more “nice to have” expenses: Scale back on new initiatives, prioritizing only those that have a near-term chance of success.

In recessions “cash is king,” so you need to make sure you have enough to get through to the eventual expansion. Take on a line of credit to augment your equity capital. Interest rates are still reasonable and cheaper than new equity funding, even with rates rising.

Proactively embrace your best customers.

A recession is a perfect opportunity for you as CEO to strengthen your relationships with your biggest and most important customers. Remember they are feeling the threat of recession as well. Customers always want to meet the CEO of the company they have purchased from so this is an opportunity for you to hit the road, visit customers, and spend time with your salespeople. If you cannot have an in-person meeting, meet on Zoom. If you are uncomfortable selling, get over it.  I recently spoke to a founder/CEO with a technical background who told me he “learned to appreciate sales” even though he was uncomfortable selling at first. If you’ve historically thought your time was best spent on product, it’s time to reconsider: In a downturn, your best use of time is talking to customers and making sales.

Remember that it is easier and cheaper to sell more to existing customers than to land new customers. This is especially true in a recession as everyone is taking a second look at all expenses. If you are in a B2B business, visiting customers also gives you real insight into how happy your customers are and whether you are at risk of customer churn. If you run a B2C business, invest in rewards programs and other initiatives to make sure your best customers feel appreciated. Churn risk increases during recessions as companies prioritize their spending and pull back on new initiatives. High churn rates have a direct impact on company valuations. As a CEO you are in the unique position to lead by example and your employees will recognize your effort.

Stay close to your venture investors.

2020 and 2021 were frothy years for venture capital and many venture firms bid up start up valuations to unsustainable levels. Those same investors must now decide which of their portfolio companies to prioritize and support as the economy slows. Investors will need to reserve capital for subsequent fund-raising rounds for portfolio companies to see them through to success.

In 2022 down rounds are becoming more common. As a CEO, admitting that your company has a lower valuation can be very difficult. It’s important for you to communicate often with your venture investors to make sure they see your long-term potential.

Embrace your best employees.

Recessions force employees to re-think their career choices. If employees start to doubt the viability of the company, they will take the calls from larger firms in the market — regardless of their equity upside — that can pay more in current income, bonuses, and benefits.

Get ahead of this. Spend time with your best employees making sure you understand their mindset. Employees always assume their equity stake is based on the last round of funding, so down rounds create employee angst. Losing top talent will have a very negative impact on your company. Managing and maintaining your momentum is critical both in terms of retaining your top talent as well as recruiting new talent.

Several times in my career I got ahead of this issue by offering additional stock option grants to top employees to make sure they did not even take the recruitment calls. It works. It’s far easier to get ahead of retaining top talent than it is to try to counter-offer once your employees are entertaining other options.

Emphasize and rally around your unique culture.

In my experience as a CEO, culture was by far the most important determinant of employee retention. Employees know their market value, and most stay with you if they are compensated and happy and feel they are making a difference. Focus on culture and communicate your company’s uniqueness and value proposition.

At Black Duck Software, an enterprise security startup, we created an equity and learning culture. Every employee was a shareholder and viewed the company as their own. We created learning and education opportunities and employees felt they continued to learn and grow by being part of the company.

Unique and identifiable culture is critical to motivate your entire team ready to fight through adversity. It may seem counterintuitive to both reduce expenses and focus on culture. It’s possible because funding unique cultural events is not expensive. It really is the thought behind the gatherings that count and that have an impact on employee morale. At Black Duck we held a Star Wars lego building competition for our software developers. The event was widely popular as the developers were able to publicly display their creativity and have fun, and it did not cost much to pull off.

Every company’s culture is different, but now is the time to double down on it. A good culture will help retain talent and ensure that you’re able to make it through tough times.

. . .

Recessions are a natural part of the business cycles and companies of all sizes must weather them or wither. Startups face a unique challenge because until they become profitable, they rely on outside capital to fund their growth and evolution to maturity. To make it through and emerge even stronger, conserve cash, and pay close attention to your customers, investors, employees, and culture.

How Walmart Automated Supplier Negotiations - HBR

 by Remko Van Hoek, Michael DeWitt, Mary Lacity, and Travis Johnson

Walmart, like most organizations with large procurement operations, can’t possibly conduct focused negotiations with all of its 100,000-plus suppliers. As a result, around 20% of its suppliers have signed agreements with cookie-cutter terms that are often not negotiated. It’s not the optimal way to engage with these “tail-end suppliers.” But the cost of hiring more human buyers to negotiate with them would exceed any additional value.

Walmart solved the problem with artificial intelligence–powered software that includes a text-based interface (or chatbot) that negotiates with human suppliers on behalf of Walmart. Walmart Canada piloted the solution in January 2021 and used supplier feedback to hone the system. Walmart has since deployed the solution in three other countries, and Walmart operations in more countries plan to implement the technology soon.

This article shares four lessons on how to use automated procurement negotiations in ways that benefit both buyers and suppliers. Such systems can generate savings, improve the terms for both parties, and increase the flexibility and resiliency of a supply chain.

The Pilot

With advances in artificial intelligence (AI), Walmart began exploring the possibility of automating procurement negotiations for tail-end suppliers and licensed a software product called Pactum AI in 2019. The deployment was postponed because of Covid-19, but one of us (Michael DeWitt) resurrected the initiative a year later, in January 2021, for his organization, Walmart International.

Since Walmart already had experimented with the software in a sandbox environment, Walmart International moved directly to a small pilot in the company’s Canadian business. The pilot, which lasted three months, included a variety of stakeholders — 89 suppliers, five buyers, and representatives from Walmart Canada’s finance, treasury, and legal departments — and Pactum, the company that had created the underlying AI technology.

At the outset, Walmart International estimated that the system would yield a positive return on investment if the chatbot could close deals with 20% of the suppliers involved in the pilot. The retailer selected “goods not for resale” — categories such as fleet services, carts, and other equipment used in retail stores — and not products sold to Walmart customers. It decided to focus on suppliers for whom there was accurate data on payment terms and where there was clear opportunity to improve payment terms and secure additional discounts.

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Walmart International targeted payment schedules, hoping to negotiate early payment discounts or extended payment terms without discounts. In exchange, Walmart would offer suppliers the option to change Walmart’s right to terminate contracts immediately without cause (known as “termination for convenience”) to providing a 30-, 60-, or 90-day written termination notice. Walmart would also selectively offer suppliers opportunities for growth in assortment and sales volume in exchange for price discounts.

Internal buyers selected the suppliers to target and created training scenarios for Pactum AI’s machine learning algorithm. The scenarios were used to create structured scripts to guide suppliers through negotiations. Suppliers could respond to scenarios at their own pace.

Walmart International invited around 100 tail-end suppliers to try the solution. Eighty-nine agreed to participate. The chatbot was successful in reaching an agreement with 64% of them — well above the 20% target — and with an average negotiation turnaround of 11 days. Walmart gained, on average, 1.5% in savings on the spend negotiated and an extension of payment terms to an average of 35 days.

In post-pilot interviews with suppliers that engaged in successful negotiations, 83% of them described the system as easy to use and liked the ability to make a counteroffer and the time the system gave them to think about the negotiation at their own pace. For example, Ben Garisto, president of MIWE, a bakery-equipment manufacturer, said, “During in-person negotiations, you do not always have the questions in advance, and you are responding in real time. Other types of automated requests for proposals sometimes feel a bit like a template with little room to tell your story.”

Several suppliers, however, still would have liked to negotiate face to face. Other suppliers wanted a less verbose, more fluid script instead of prohibiting suppliers from backtracking to early steps in the negotiation.

After the production pilot, Walmart improved the scenarios and scripts and extended the solution to suppliers in the United States, Chile, and South Africa. So far, the chatbot has closed deals with 68% of the suppliers approached and generated an average savings of 3%.

Other companies interested in automating procurement can apply these lessons on how to develop and introduce such a system:

1. Move to a production pilot quickly.

The AI journey for many companies languishes in the proof-of-concept phase — fewer than half make it into production, according to Gartner. That’s because proof-of-concept phases focus on technical capabilities instead of business goals. Walmart decided to skip a proof-of-concept phase and to go straight to a production pilot focused on business goals.

Walmart’s “business owners” — people in charge of budgets and responsible for the spend with suppliers (for example, operations for store supplies and IT for hardware and software) — helped to create negotiation use cases and scenarios. Walmart’s buyers provided crucial subject-matter expertise on the negotiation scenarios needed to train the chatbot and nominated suppliers to participate in the pilot (based on which suppliers conduct enough business with Walmart to warrant a negotiation and which would welcome a chance to negotiate). The legal team made sure the chatbot’s script and resulting contract conformed to Walmart contracting standards and policy.

2. Start with indirect-spend categories and pre-approved suppliers.

Walmart began with goods not for resale (i.e., not sold to its retail customers) to minimize the risks to the business posed by the testing of a new procurement practice. Walmart also focused on pre-approved suppliers so the need to validate new suppliers wouldn’t delay the start of the pilot.

3. Decide on acceptable trade-offs.

Automated procurement requires precisely defining the boundaries of what the buyer is willing to concede in exchange for what it wants. For example, the AI chatbot needs to know the specific trade-offs the buyer is willing to give for, say, moving from full payments in 10 days after receipt of the invoice to receiving payment 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 days after receipt of invoice in exchange for improved termination terms and the opportunities for suppliers to expand their business with Walmart.

4. Scale by extending geographies, categories, and use cases.

Walmart’s motto for this project was to “nail it and scale it.” Successful production pilots helped Walmart sell the solution to other parts of the business. After the pilot in Canada, the United States, Chile, and South Africa, deployments in Mexico, Central America, and China are imminent. The categories have also expanded to include route rate negotiations for transportation and some goods for resale. Some mid-tier suppliers now use the system, and the chatbot is multilingual.

Scaling has increased productivity because the software learns from every negotiation, reducing the setup time for new categories. Additionally, the chatbot can run 2,000 negotiations simultaneously — something no human buyer can do.

One can see the trajectory: As terms and conditions become more algorithmic, fewer suppliers and parts of spend pools will go unmanaged. Procurement professionals will focus less on negotiating agreements and more on strategic relationships, exceptions, and continuous improvement.

Solve Your Team’s Meeting Overload Problem

 Is your team’s meeting culture broken? If you sense that meetings have started to create unnecessary friction, it’s probably time to intervene. Start by encouraging your team to adopt a “subtraction” mindset—that is, solving problems by doing less, not more. Ask your employees to actively consider which meetings could be shortened and which could be cut altogether. You might even go so far as starting from a clean slate, purging your team’s calendars for 48 hours to assess which meetings are truly necessary. Once your team has trimmed down its meetings, redesign what’s left to make the best use of that time. Which meetings can be restructured so that fewer people attend? Which can be shortened by moving work to asynchronous communication? Once your team has gone through these steps, the collective calendar will feel a whole lot lighter. Meetings are easier to fix when people do it together—when it feels like a movement, be it in your team, department, or entire organization.

A More Impactful Way to Recognize Your Employees

 The best managers are great at giving employees recognition. But how can you recognize them in a way that really makes an impact? Start by figuring out what matters most to them—and why. In your one-on-one check-ins, invite them to reflect on their recent work. Try simple questions like, “What are you currently working on that’s exciting and motivating you?” or, “What are some challenges you’re navigating these days?” Whatever their response, probe positively. If they have a hard time responding, ask casual follow-up questions to help them reflect more deeply. If they share an experience, draw their attention to their own effort and progress. At the end of the conversation, reflect back on what they’ve shared. You might say something like, “Thank you for all you’ve been doing; I had no idea you’ve been working through all that,” or “Thank you for sharing your successes: I’m proud of your work.” By the end of the chat, you will have demonstrated care for your employee and given them recognition beyond a generic “nice job.”

Managing an Under-Resourced Team

 Your team is understaffed and overworked. How can you intervene and support your employees—while continuing to deliver results to your organization?

 Start by being honest with yourself about what you can (and can't) get done. With this realistic outlook in mind, evaluate and reprioritize your team's responsibilities based on what’s most valuable to the organization. Which projects can you cut, which require more resources, and which can be delegated externally or to other teams? Ask your team for their input. Before you make any changes, make sure to also communicate with all your team's stakeholders to reset expectations around your new strategy. Finally, consider requesting more staff. Even if it’s not in the cards right now, making the case early could put you at the top of the list when budget allows.

Pitfalls to Avoid When Changing Careers

 

Making a career pivot can be scary, and it’s easy to get stuck in the status quo. In order to imagine and explore a different future for yourself, you need to overcome four common traps. Overthinking. Personal and professional reinvention is best served by doing rather than thinking. While it’s good to think things through before taking action, it’s easy to overdo it and get stuck in inaction. So, start small. Commit to learning new skills or making minor changes in your routine, and focus your thinking on the future, not the past or present. Procrastinating. If you tend to delay making big life decisions, ask yourself why. Be honest with yourself about what’s underlying your avoidance. Once you unpack your procrastination, it’ll be easier to take the first step. Self-sufficiency. If you tend to be reluctant to ask for help—or to accept it when offered—you may be falling into the self-sufficiency trap. To combat it, find someone you trust and let them know that you would like to bounce ideas off of them. A conversation partner can help you unlock new potential paths forward. Searching for the “right” answer. If you view decision making as either right or wrong, you’ll avoid experimentation that could lead to learning, growth, and fulfillment. Challenge this binary thinking and view mistakes as a necessary part of moving forward.

This tip is adapted from “What’s Stopping You from Reinventing Your Career?,” by Heather Cairns-Lee and Bill Fischer

 

What Great Remote Managers Do Differently By Raghu Krishnamoorthy Remote work brought a subtle but important shift in how employees expect their managers to work with them.

Meeting Overload Is a Fixable Problem by Rebecca Hinds, Robert I. Sutton To fix a broken meeting culture, start by canceling everything for 48 hours. 4 Types of Innovators Every Organization Needs by Andy Wu, Goran Calic, Min Basadur Generators, conceptualizers, optimizers, and implementers all play important roles in the innovation process. When Speaking Up, Timing Is Everything by Michael Parke, Subra Tangirala Sharing your ideas is critical to boosting your profile at work—but so is picking the right moment. What’s Stopping You from Reinventing Your Career? by Heather Cairns-Lee, Bill Fischer Four traps that hold leaders back.

Bring Intention to Your One-on-One Meetings

 

Bring Intention to Your One-on-One Meetings

The best managers recognize that one-on-one meetings aren’t an add-on to their role—they’re foundational to it. So, how can you make the most out of your face time with your direct reports? Set the tone. The mood and attention you bring to a meeting is contagious, so start out with energy, optimism, and focus. Turn off notifications and be present. Remind yourself as the meeting begins that it’s fundamentally about your employee’s needs, performance, and engagement. Actively listen more than you talk. Display genuine interest and acknowledge whatever your employee is bringing to the table. Ask questions to clarify and constructively challenge them. Stay vigilant about your body language and reactions to ensure that you’re creating a welcoming, safe, judgment-free space. Add your perspective. Once you’ve listened, give honest and specific feedback. Engage in collaborative problem solving by truly understanding the issue at hand, gathering information, identifying root causes, and creating a solution that you both feel good about. End well. Clarify takeaways and action items for both parties, including how you’ll support next steps. This will help build continuity between meetings and allow for needed follow-up.