Too much money?

Once again, I'm going to take something to do in the world of sports and turn it into something to do with business, I hope. That's a bit of theme with me, isn't it?
Last night, the Washington Redskins gave Donovan McNabb, a man who is going to be 34 in about a week, a 5 year contract for $78 million dollars. He rewarded the Redskins for their confidence with an awful performance as my Eagles rolled to a 59-28 victory. The quarterback is like the CEO of the team on the field, and there has been a great deal of controversy in the last few years about CEO's and their pay scale. (See what I did there?) Many of these deals that CEO's sign with their companies are for salaries that are very high, but not nearly as exorbitant as people think. Where they make their money is in the giant bonuses that are in their contracts for things like stock price, productivity, or other measurable metrics that lead to a CEO picking up a check for a cool $10 million.
Relating it back to the game, McNabb was downright awful, and the Redskins have the option to release him and only pay him $3.5 million for his services. When many of these CEOs get fired, they have giant parachutes that the company is obligated to give them, so that they leave the company in worse shape with millions of dollars and stock options. It doesn't seem quite fair that you and I get fired when we do our jobs poorly, but when these people are let go after driving entire companies into the ground, they take enough money with them to be set for life.

Getting Ahead and Staying There

You've done it. Your company has become THE leader in your industry, either locally or even nationally. You're the company that others look to and say "We want to be like them." The steps that management laid out to get to the top have been achieved. Let the party begin.

But, after the festivities have ended, and the cake has been consumed, and the confetti has been cleaned up, and that goat that found its way into the party has been returned to the local petting zoo, what do you do?
If you just sit back and rest on your laurels, one of your competitors will run you down, catch you, and overtake you, putting you back to where you were at the beginning, and making that guy in HR's brilliant goat stealing techniques completely for nothing!
If you push people to keep striving to be better, do you run the risk of losing your workforce? Could they say "We are the best. We worked incredibly hard to get to the top. We did what you asked us to do! How could we get better?" Also, how do you chase someone and run them down when you're winning the race? Do you risk sending the signal that you don't have confidence in your employees to maintain their high level of productivity unless you've trying to catch someone?
To me, there has to be a balance between keeping motivation high, while making sure you're not pushing your employees into overdrive and running the risk of burning them out. Maintaining productivity is essential to any successful business, regardless of their standings in the industry. In fact, SPEAKING OF BENEFITS, here's an article about BENEFITS (Wow! Who would have guessed?) from MarketWatch...Clever way to put a link into an article.
So anyway, back to my original point. Once you get to the top, how do you stay there?

Great Potential, Unrealized

Every company that hires a new employee has expectations about what that employee will do for the company, how they will improve the company, and that they will be capable of carrying out the duties that they were hired to do. However, not every hire lives up to those expectations and some even fall far enough beneath expectations to be a disappointment. 

What do you do when you hire someone who can't do the things you thought they could when you decided to take them on? Obviously, if they're incompetent, you can let them go for failure to carry out their duties and move on to the next person. These are the easy decisions for an employer to make, but what about the ones that aren't so cut and dry?

If you hire an employee with high expectations and they just become a "middle of the road" employee? You can't fire them for failure to do their work if they're able to do their job well enough to not be a drag on the company. Do you realize that at least part of the blame has to fall on you for expecting too much from them? How much of your expectations came from the interview and how they presented themselves? What responsibility do they bear for not living up to the expectations? Is it just a question of motivation? Is there something you could be doing to get them to that point? Is there something they should be doing that they're not? Do you just have to accept the fact that they aren't who you thought they were and just go back to making sure they do their job as well as everyone else? Finally, how do you find a way to treat them right without being too hard on them for failing to live up to the employee that you thought they could be?

Punctuality

Ok, so today's post is going to be at least somewhat out of frustration at what transpired at work today, when a person I work with in a position of authority, making it difficult to refuse them, waited until 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave to ask me to proofread something they had written. Ok, fine, sure, until he handed it to me...30 pages. I'm happy to proofread something for my bosses, but give me time to do it within the timeframe that I've been hired to do it. I was there for an hour and a half longer than I'm supposed to be there, and I had a test at 6, which I subsequently did pretty poorly on.
On top of that, the document really didn't have anything to do with my job, so it was my time for something that doesn't benefit the organization. I hate people that say "That's not in my job description", and in fact, it's in this article of "Things to not say at work." This article, right here, this one! However, when it's completely irrelevant to the company as a whole? I think that just might cross the line. Not only did I have work that needs to be done for the company that I was taken away from, but I was doing this work that benefitted one person.
Ok, my question for my faithful reader(s)...What do you guys do when something like this happens? Has it happened to you? Do you just suck it up and do it? Do you try to rationalize why it's a bad idea with them? Do you just refuse to do it based on the "Not my Job" argument?
I'd like to hear from you guys on this, it really bothered me when I kept looking at the clock and seeing minute after minute of my free time passing me by...

"Conflict in the Workplace" Abstract

Conflict is defined as “competitive or opposing action of incompatibles: antagonistic state or actions”. In the business world, conflict is something that management must deal with constantly. Tension between workers, between the workers and their supervisors, between levels of management, and almost any other combination imaginable within an organization are all possible sources of conflict. Many businesses encourage creative tension as a way to spur the workforce and encourage competition as a way to move the company forward and motivate people to maximize their efforts. Additionally, as companies go to new methods, like Self-Directing Teams, new types of conflicts can arise which have not been seen before and will require new solutions. However, there are instances where this conflict goes too far, or is not occurring in a way that is productive to the company, and then it must be dealt with in a way that allows both parties to resume their duties without fear of recurrence. This paper will look at some of those conflicts that can arise in an organization, and the steps that can be taken to resolve those issues and improve the workplace environment for all employees. 

Crisis Management

In this class, we've talked a lot about the power of social media to aid your organization. But what do you do when its a hinderance to your business? When it's a distraction? What do you do when social media is providing employees with information that you don't really think they should have?
For example, I was in high school when September 11th happened, and my school went out of its way to hide us from what was going on. I'm sure they'd call it "sheltering"today. No teachers were allowed to turn on their TV's, all the computers in the library were shut off, and people didn't talk about it. We really didn't know how bad it was until we got home or got picked up, and kids' parents starting explaining it. I don't think that could happen today. Between smart phones and text messaging, it seems unlikely that an organization could keep information like that from people these days. What can you do then? Do you just let your employees find a TV or the Internet and just let them sit there, transfixed, or do you try to hide it and hope that productivity stays up? Do you have one appointed person, like a manager or supervisor, that informs people about a tragedy like that? Here's an article from United Business Media about how to deal with crisis management in the technology age: This! This is the link! Click here!
Obviously, if your business is directly affected by the problem, people deserve to know so that they can take the necessary steps to protect themselves and their families.
Do your companies have any type of plan in place for a situation like this? I'd like to hear them if you have them, or a story about whether or not they actually worked...