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Corner Office: Karen May of Google, on Conquering Fears of Giving Feedback

December 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Q. You consulted for many companies before you joined Google full time. What are some common mistakes you’ve noticed in training programs for employees?

A. One thing that doesn’t make sense is to require a lot of training. People learn best when they’re motivated to learn. If people opt in, versus being required to go, you’re more likely to have better outcomes.

You can also influence people to come to training. If a group of people go through some kind of program and they like it, then you ask them to nominate someone who might find the program beneficial. If the invitation comes from a colleague or a manager, you have that kind of peer-to-peer influence that says: “I got something out of this. You might, too.” Then the people who come are motivated. They assume they’re going to get something out of it. You just create a much different vibe than, “I was told I have to show up to this thing.”

Another “don’t” would be thinking that because some training content is interesting, everyone should therefore go through it. If something is interesting under particular conditions, it can lose its magic when applied to everyone.

Q. Other pitfalls?

A. Don’t use training to fix performance problems. If you’ve got a performance problem, there is a process to go through to figure out what’s causing it. Maybe the person doesn’t have the knowledge or skill or capability. Or is it motivation, or something about relationships within the work environment? Or lack of clarity about expectations? Training is the right solution only if the person doesn’t have the capability. But what I have seen in other places is sort of a knee-jerk reaction by managers to put someone in a training class if somebody isn’t performing well.

Q. Many C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed talk about how hard it is for people to give direct feedback. Have you seen that, too?

A. Absolutely. I would say it happens for a couple of reasons. It’s simply harder to give difficult feedback than positive feedback or no feedback. It’s harder because it can be an uncomfortable conversation. It creates tension. You might be disappointing somebody or potentially leading them to feel worse about themselves.

If you’ve identified something that isn’t going well, then you’re likely to be asked, “How do I fix it?” If you don’t know the answer, you might not want to start the conversation. I think that’s the primary reason managers don’t give feedback. They’re willing to give the feedback, but then they won’t know how to help fix it, so why start the conversation?

As a coach, I was often in the position of giving people feedback they hadn’t heard before, after I interviewed a bunch of people they work with. It was always difficult for me, too. Just at a human level, it’s difficult to tell somebody that something that isn’t working about them. But I came to find that people are incredibly grateful. If I’m not doing well and I don’t know it or I don’t know why or I can’t put my finger on what’s not working and no one will tell me, I won’t be able to fix it.

And if you give me the information, the moment that the information is being transferred is painful, but then I have the opportunity to change it. I’ve come to realize that one of the most valuable things I could do for somebody is tell them exactly what nobody else had told them before.

Q. How often does that have a positive outcome?

A. People can do something with the feedback probably 70 percent of the time. And for the other 30 percent, they are either not willing to take it in, it doesn’t fit their self-image, they’re too resistant, in denial, or they don’t have the wherewithal to change it. And the reality is that most change happens in small increments. So if you’re watching to see if someone’s changing, you have to watch for the incremental change. It’s not a straight line.

Q. Other insights about giving feedback?

A. We do something in some learning programs with our leaders where we’ll put them in a fast-paced exercise and ask them to give feedback to each other, spur of the moment, based on the experience they’ve had together during the day that they’ve been together. I actually named it “speed-back” instead of “feedback.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/30/business/karen-may-of-google-on-conquering-fears-of-giving-feedback.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Bucks: You Don’t Want to Be an American Idiot

August 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

As I note in this weekend’s Your Money column, it’s times like these that tempt us to send a message to governmental leaders who won’t make hard choices and take our stock market money to countries that seem safer.

I will admit to having those feelings myself last weekend, but I know better than to invest on the basis of emotion. Still, the desire to flee the United States and Europe for places that seem more stable forces all of us to look at the actual split between our home country and others in the stock portion of our investment portfolios.

Too many people exhibit a home bias toward local stocks. The knee-jerk reaction I had recently would suggest a contempt bred by familiarity.

Acting on either is a bad idea, though. For people in the United States, having about a third of your stocks outside the country seems to be the rough consensus of the asset allocation experts I consulted this week.

But the market is made up of people like you. So how are you splitting up your stock money?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a0b6efcdc2f76b076092c6b46d91c957

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Wall Street Shrugs Off Death of Bin Laden and Turns Attention to Earnings

May 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The three main indexes initially rose as investors tried to assess the future of global security. But shares lost their momentum as the session wore on.

“The Osama bin Laden situation really had a nice impact at the open,” said Douglas S. Roberts, the chief investment strategist for the Channel Capital Research Institute. “It looks like a lot of that might have been short-covering.”

Jeffrey Kleintop, the chief market strategist for LPL Financial, called the early rise a knee-jerk reaction.

“Then a thoughtful process comes out,” he said, “that maybe the risks have shifted.”

At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was 3.18 points lower, at 12,807.36, while the broader Standard Poor’s 500-stock index lost 2.39 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,361.22. The technology-heavy Nasdaq lost 9.46 points, or 0.33, percent, at 2,864.08.

The S. P. health care index was up more than 1 percent after Teva Pharmaceutical Industries said it had agreed to buy the biopharmaceutical company Cephalon for $6.8 billion, a deal unanimously approved by the boards of the two companies.

Teva shares rose more than 3 percent, to $47.27, while Cephalon was up more than 4 percent at $80.11.

The dollar was mixed. The euro rose to $1.4846 from $1.4806 late Friday, while the British pound slipped to $1.6683 from $1.6706. The dollar rose to 81.30 yen, from 81.20 yen.

The dollar has been weak across the board, with United States interest rates low and some central banks beginning to lift rates. Debt limit negotiations in Congress are not helping, said Brian Dolan, the chief currency strategist at Forex.com.

The Treasury Department said it would initiate emergency measures on Friday to keep the federal government’s total borrowing under the maximum allowed by law, as Congress continues to debate the terms of any increase in the debt ceiling.

“It is still a weak dollar environment,” Mr. Dolan said. “That is the significant takeaway: the dollar downtrend is very much intact.”

The Japanese and South Korean markets were already 1 percent higher before President Obama announced late Sunday that American forces had killed Bin Laden in Pakistan.

By the close, the Nikkei 225 index had gained 1.6 percent, to 10,004.20 points, the first time the index closed above 10,000 since the devastating earthquake and tsunami struck the country on March 11.

In Europe, the Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, slipped 0.1 percent. The CAC 40 in Paris rose 1.85 points and the DAX in Frankfurt rose 0.18 percent. London markets were closed for a bank holiday.

On the economic front, the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said its index of manufacturing activity dipped to 60.4 in April but remained above 60 for a fourth month. That was down from 61.2 in March and 61.4 in February, the fastest expansion in nearly seven years. A reading above 50 signals growth.

In addition, construction spending rose 1.4 percent in March, helped by an increase in spending on home-improvement projects.

In other corporate news, Arch Coal said it would buy the International Coal Group in a cash deal worth $3.4 billion that will create one of the world’s largest coal producers. Arch shares fell 2.2 percent to $33.53, while International Coal rose more than 30 percent to $14.43.

Dish Network and the EchoStar Corporation have agreed to pay TiVo $500 million to settle a patent infringement lawsuit involving TiVo’s video recording technology, putting an end to a long and costly legal battle. Stock in TiVo rose more than 3 percent to close at $9.86.

Many analysts cautioned, however, that Bin Laden’s death could stoke, rather than ease, worries about oil supplies and global security in the longer run if it led to retaliatory attacks.

Energy stocks were lower. Crude oil slipped 41 cents to settle at $113.52 a barrel in volatile trading in New York.

Spot gold fell $18.35, to $1,545.35 an ounce.

Silver prices dropped more than 5 percent on Monday, a decline attributed to a decision by the CME Group, which is the parent of the Chicago Board of Trade, to increase the margins for futures trading on silver.

In the bond market, the benchmark 10-year bond gained 2/32, while the yield fell to 3.28 percent, from 3.29 percent late Friday.

David Jolly and Bettina Wassener contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/business/03markets.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

German Firms Move Toward Postnuclear Economy

April 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the early 1990s, the company placed a bet on the renewable energy sector and started to make compressors for the emerging biogas industry. Jörg-Peter Mehrer, the fifth generation to run the business, says he believes he made the right move — especially after Chancellor Angela Merkel announced last month a safety review of Germany’s nuclear industry in light of the disaster in Japan.

“This is a market that keeps expanding,” Mr. Mehrer said. “The government’s decision is very positive.”

Mehrer, which was exhibiting its products at the Hanover International Trade Fair last week, was just one of many companies, large and small, that were seeking an opportunity in what may turn out to be a significant reordering of energy sources in Germany, Europe’s largest economy.

The show highlighted the different paths European countries are taking toward energy security. While some of Germany’s neighbors, like nuclear-dependent France, home to the giant contractor Areva, criticize Mrs. Merkel for what they call an exaggerated, knee-jerk reaction, Germans seem determined to move toward a postnuclear economy — even though they acknowledge the switch will be expensive.

Many companies at the exhibition said that they had begun to position themselves in the market more than a decade ago, even before the former left-leaning government passed a law in 2002 to close all of Germany’s nuclear plants by 2022.

The conservative Mrs. Merkel, pushed by her pro-business coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, reversed that decision last year by agreeing to keep the nuclear plants operating well into the 2030s.

She argued that nuclear power would be a “bridge technology” until the renewable sector was sufficiently developed. Nuclear energy now supplies 22.3 percent of Germany’s electricity while coal provides 42 percent, natural gas 13.6 percent and renewable energies 16.5 percent, according to the Environment Ministry. The change, however, caused confusion among companies and gave the opposition Green Party, long opposed to nuclear power, a new sense of purpose. The disaster last month in Japan reignited the debate, which reached a pitch not seen in any other European country.

In response, Mrs. Merkel ordered seven of the 17 nuclear plants closed for three months while the rest underwent stringent security checks. Some of the oldest plants are expected to be closed permanently, whatever the outcome of the inspections.

But it was not enough to prevent her party, the Christian Democratic Union, from losing power last month in Baden-Württemberg, a wealthy southwestern state it had led for 58 years. Instead, the once-negligible Greens emerged triumphant and will lead a state government for the first time in Germany.

In part, this reflected the deeply ingrained respect for the environment that transcends political divides in Germany.

Yet such a revolution is even more telling in a state where many of Germany’s famed Mittelstand companies are based. These small and midsize family businesses, like Mehrer, are the backbone of the country’s export-dependent economy.

Mr. Mehrer, 40, says he is not sure what policies the Greens will pursue now in Stuttgart, the state capital. But for him, one thing is certain: “Growth is in renewables.”

The view was echoed around the vast trade fair, where the latest in industrial technology was displayed.

Sebastian Sax, a project manager at Schneider Electric, the global electrical systems company, said Mrs. Merkel’s decision was good for his business, too. “We focus so much on energy efficiency,” he said. “It’s something we have been doing for many years.”

ABB, a Swedish engineering company with a large presence in Germany, was also enthusiastic.

“Closing nuclear power plants is good news for ABB,” said Ake Andersson, technical manager of one of the company’s motors divisions. “This is about developing ways to use energy more efficiently.”

Of course, support is not universal. Big nuclear energy companies like RWE and Siemens, which built all of Germany’s nuclear power plants, have balked at Mrs. Merkel’s turnaround.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=eb07f0d999207f0dc14aed708db7773c

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