Your Word Alone is for Sh&!

Try to build a business case for your clients that is chocked full of your ideas and your ideas only. Just try it. I’m willing to bet – despite how well you’re liked and respected in your organization – that your word alone doesn’t amount to much. I used to believe that if I thought it was a good idea, everyone else would think the same. That naiveté got a big fat slap in the face…quick.

So fill your pitches and presentations with lots of references to independent third parties who support what you have to say. No matter how benign or elementary your idea may seem, most people in a position to make a decision about it are risk averse. Independent validation mitigates risk and they usually need some of it. As it turns out, websites, digital print, and blogs don’t carry anywhere near the weight (figuratively or  literally) a good old fashioned white paper, published study, or periodical does. So every now and then, download and/or print off some of those studies. Categorize and compartmentalize them. And then pull them out when you really need them. Or at the very least make sure you go out and get you some when you’re working on the next big thing…

To make this easier for you, imma share a way to get access to some of this risk mitigating goodness…for free. Yes, that’s right; for the low low price of free, you can get your hands on some of the latest and greatest pundit pontification by coming here to HR Fishbowl. All you have to do is go to the “Free HR Resources” page, search, and download away. Now, I can’t promise you that your doing so won’t result in an uptick in junk mail –  but by now you’re used to that.

I’ll try to feature one piece a week…here’s the first:

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“Leaders Drive Productivity: Building a High-Performance Environment?”

Are you building a high-performance work environment? It is the challenge of today’s leaders to create the circumstances that stimulate improved performance and execution from their employees. To achieve this, the key question for business leaders is not “why” high performance, but “how”? In this paper, SuccessFactors helps you determine if your business has the leadership capital it needs and how you can: