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#Leadership : 4 Warning Signs You Have A Toxic Company Culture…Make a Point of Practicing Early Detection, Because If you Protect your Culture, you’ll Protect your Future.

March 16, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When I took my first job leading a large team, I was sure I knew how to spot a toxic culture. And I was sure that I didn’t have it in my team. I was wrong.

We had issues (many of them were my fault). It wasn’t long until I was a young leader with a toxic staff situation. If you’ve found yourself in that situation, know that you’re not alone.

Just like our bodies, most teams don’t stay healthy without a disciplined effort. I have come to believe that teams will drift toward some level of unhealth unless their leaders are watching vigilantly for the warning signs.

Now that I’ve helped several hundred clients build their teams, I’ve come to recognize there are several early warning signs to toxicity. And just like our physical health, early detection can be the difference maker between staying healthy and becoming terminal.

Here are four early warning signs to look for, and what you can do to fix them.

Sign #1: Rapid Growth Is Killing Your Culture

Believe it or not growth can be the root of toxicity. Growth is great. It’s fun. It’s the goal of all entrepreneurs. But when growth hits breakneck speed, culture is almost always at risk.

Just ask the folks at Zenefits, the three year old Silicon Valley startup that had a $4.5 billion valuation last year. A recent Forbes article outlined the CEO’s troubles that led to his resignation, and a Vanity Fair article outlined some of the cultural mishaps that have made a bad problem even worse.

David Sacks, the company’s new C.E.O. said, “It is no secret that Zenefits grew too fast, stretching both our culture and our controls.” A memo that was sent to the Zenefits staff banning use of the stairwells for smoking, drinking, eating, or inappropriate physical interactions in the stairwell were just a few of the major red flags that their culture was toxic. Many are speculating that the loss of their culture may end up being the death knell of a company with a great idea.

Are you in growth mode?

Take an inventory and make sure your culture can keep pace with your rate of growth. Double down your efforts to guard culture, even if it means slowing down a bit. Assign someone on staff the job of auditing how well your cultural values are being lived out. Growth is an addictive drug. But just as good culture is a Petri dish for growth, rapid growth can be the casket for culture.

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Sign #2: Nobody Talks About Problems

If nobody on your team is vocalizing the issues they see, or suggesting ways of improvement, one of two things is probably happening.

Either you’ve created the most successful company in the history of business and you know everything, or people don’t feel valued enough to think their opinions matter.

Transparency and the ability to raise issues is a hallmark of good culture and a smart team.

At Google GOOGL +0.06%, transparency is a cornerstone of the culture. As Lazlo Bock, head of People at Google, said in a recent interview, “The benefit of [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][transparency] is not just that people feel trusted…The other benefit is they’ll know what’s going on. They’ll make better decisions and they’ll create better products.”

When people feel that they can speak up appropriately without a fear of retribution, they feel valued. The culture goes from a toxic one to an innovative and energetic one. Giving your staff a platform to voice their thoughts lets them know that their ideas matter, which in turn leads to them innovating and creating better ways of doing things.

What vehicles are in place in your company that allow team members to bring up concerns and be transparent? How could you improve awareness of those vehicles to the whole team?

Sign #3: Everybody Talks About Problems

While you want to give people a place to feel heard and valued, the number one toxin I see kill culture is gossip. A workplace full of complaining, negativity, and back talk is a workplace that will have high turnover and low productivity.

The solution?

Declare war on gossip.

My friend and client Dave Ramsey has a “zero tolerance” policy at his office about gossip. They simply do not tolerate it. Does this mean that nobody can bring up concerns? Not at all. He and his team have a motto: “Negatives go up; positives come down.” That means when there are problems, people are encouraged to take that problem “up” to their superiors instead of gossiping with colleagues.

When there is positive feedback, team members are strongly encouraged to send those “down” to team member under them on the org chart. It makes the staff feel valued, keeps the leadership informed of potential issues, and creates a sense of unity for the team. Most of all, it provides solutions to problems. Sideways complaining and blame shifting not only spreads ill will, it leaves problems festering with no real solution.

Do you have a clear policy on how complaints and concerns should be handled? How can you reiterate that among your team?

Sign #4: The System Becomes More Important Than the Mission

Many well meaning leaders hire, fire, strategize, and conduct business in a way that puts old systems ahead of their mission.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard something along the lines of “that’s the way it’s always been done,” as a reason for leaders making the decisions they do.

There’s certainly a place for sticking to the things that have been successful in the past, but doing things out of habit instead of mission will suck the life from your team and create a toxic culture.

People are rallied to vision and work hard for a mission they believe in. They want to be part of a company that stands by values, but isn’t a slave to systems that block achieving goals. The key to striking that balance is having a litmus test that can be used to decide whether to follow the system or not.

Ed Young is a pastor and friend who has a great test. He says, “Every church is a non-profit, but it has a profit. And that profit is life change.”

If a decision that will affect great life change means circumventing a system, they go for it. But if there isn’t enough potential life change to warrant breaking the system, they go forward with their proven processes.

What litmus test could you implement to tell people when to follow a system and when to ignore it?

I’ve seen these warning signs take root in really great teams over the years. The teams that address them early are able to make change and charge ahead. Those who don’t, suffer the consequences.

Make a point of practicing early detection, because if you protect your culture, you’ll protect your future.

Forbes.com | March 16, 2016 | William Vanderbloemen

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#Leadership : 6 Easy Tricks That Will Make You Way More Productive…“Time is What we Want Most, but What we Use Worst.” –William Penn

March 15, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge—there are only 24 hours in a day. Since even the best ideas are worthless until they’re executed, how efficiently you use your time is as important as anything else in business.

I’ve become fascinated by productivity secrets because some people seem to have twice the time, and there’s no better way to reach your goals than by finding ways to do more with the precious time you’ve been given.

It feels incredible when you leave the office after an ultra-productive day. It’s a workplace high that’s hard to beat. In my experience you don’t need to work longer or push yourself harder—you just need to work smarter.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” –William Penn

I’ve learned to rely on productivity hacks that make me far more efficient. I try to squeeze every drop out of every hour without expending any extra effort.

And my favorite hack also happens to be the easiest one to implement. It’s so easy and useful you can begin using it now.

1. Never Touch Things Twice

That’s it. Never put anything in a holding pattern, because touching things twice is a huge time-waster. Don’t save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it, delegate it, or delete it.

2. Eat Frogs

To pull this off you’re going to have to eat some frogs. “Eating a frog” is doing the least appetizing, most dreaded item on your to-do list. If you let your frogs sit, you waste your day dreading them. If you eat them right away, then you’re freed up to tackle the stuff that excites and inspires you.

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3. Fight the Tyranny of the Urgent

You’ll also need to master the tyranny of the urgent. The tyranny of the urgent refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. This creates a huge problem as urgent actions often have little impact. The key here is to delete or delegate. Otherwise, you can find yourself going days, or even weeks, without touching the important stuff. You’ll need to get good at spotting when putting out fires is getting in the way of your performance, and you’ll need to delete or delegate the things that hinder real forward momentum.

4. Say No

No is a powerful word that you’re going to have to wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully and efficiently fulfill them. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Learn to use no, and it will lift your mood, as well as your productivity.

5. Check E-mail On A Schedule

If you aren’t going to touch things twice, you can’t allow e-mail to be a constant interruption. You should check e-mail on a schedule, taking advantage of features that prioritize messages by sender. Set alerts for your most important vendors and best customers, and save the rest until the scheduled time. You could even set up an autoresponder that lets senders know when you’ll be checking your e-mail again.

6. Avoid Multitasking

To make my system work, you’re also going to have to avoid multitasking. It’s a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully. Never touching things twice means only touching one thing at a time.

Bringing It All Together

We’re all searching for ways to be more efficient and productive. I hope my productivity hack helps you to find that extra edge.

What productivity hacks do you rely on? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Forbes.com | March 15, 2016 | Travis Bradberry

Your #Career : 19 Signs your Company Doesn’t Care about You…One of the Biggest Reasons People Leave their Jobs is Because they Feel UnAppreciated.

March 14, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

“People come to work for more than a paycheck,” says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert, leadership coach, and author of “Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job.” “They want to feel that their contributions are making a difference. If an employer cares about your long-term growth and happiness, you’ll feel a much greater sense of purpose, and reward.”

Michael Kerr, an international business speaker and author of “The Humor Advantage,” points out that Google’s internal research into what makes a great leader at the company found that one of the key ingredients for was “expressing an interest in employees’ well being.” He says Facebook also conducted a company-wide study to seek out the key qualities that made their managers so great, and again, one of the top factors was “caring for their team members.”

“It can seem paradoxical when a company invests so much time in hiring and training an employee, only to eventually squander that asset,” Taylor says. “It’s important to be sure your employer cares about your success and job satisfaction, because without that genuine support, it’s hard to stay motivated, feel that you are part a larger team, and produce your best work. It’s a downward spiral. You could stagnate in your career — unless you notice the signs and take decisive action.”

Here are 19 signs your employer doesn’t care about you:

Your boss doesn’t offer any support, guidance, or feedback.

If your boss doesn’t take the time to offer any feedback, guidance, or support you as you work toward achieving your goals, it can be seriously detrimental to your career, says Kerr.

Taylor says if your boss seems primarily concerned with the tactical aspects of your job and project completion — and less so with whether you’re advancing your skills or being challenged by your work — they probably don’t care about your success.

Yes, he or she may just be a bad boss, but if you see they do positive things with your coworkers, but not you, it’s a bad sign.

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You’re not compensated fairly.

This is one of the most tangible signs, says Taylor.

“An employer that’s not concerned about what you can offer won’t compensate you properly or fairly. Even if you request a performance evaluation, you may be told it’s not necessary, or just ask any questions you may have. The suggestion may even arise that you take a pay cut.”

Monetary signs like this can be blatant red flags that you should start job searching, or you can hurt your long-term career advancement, not to mention experience much distress, she explains.

You’re passed over for a promotion you deserve.

This is another blatant sign. You’re doing excellent work — work that is superior to your colleagues’ — and yet someone less deserving gets a promotion you were in line for.

They never ask you for input or ideas.

If your boss or employer doesn’t care about your ideas or opinions, they probably don’t care much about you, says Kerr.

Your calls for help or resources are ignored.

A company that doesn’t care about your well-being will largely ignore your requests for assistance or tools you need to deliver the best results, Taylor says. “Or they may just make it difficult by making false promises, or dragging out the process to truly address your needs.”

There’s a lack of inherent trust.

“For example, if your boss is more concerned about getting a doctor’s note to justify your absence from work rather than asking about your health and what they can do for you, this obviously reveals concern for you only as a commodity,” Kerr explains.

Plum projects no longer come your way.

You may suddenly lose a project you were handling, or you may no longer get those that relate directly to your expertise, says Taylor. These are never good signs.

Your boss bullies you.

“When they use bullying tactics or give you ultimatums, you may have a problem on your hands,” says Kerr. “Any threatening or intimidation style of behavior that is dismissive of your emotions and reactions means they really don’t care about you as a human being.”

You rarely find out about project outcomes.

“One red flag is that you will contribute to a project, but after it’s completed, you don’t know what the results were,” Taylor says. “You may be fortunate enough to hear it through the grapevine, but you feel as if you are not part of a larger picture.”

They don’t include you in any decisions.

It’s an especially bad sign when your boss is making decisions regarding your career or workload without first consulting you, Kerr says.

You get important company news after everyone else.

If you feel you’re the last person to hear about major company developments, you can easily feel that you don’t count. “You may hear things secondhand or by happenstance,” says Taylor. “It can kill your morale when the event directly applies to your projects.”

Your boss isn’t interested in your personal life … at all.

Some managers try to keep work relationships very professional and avoid talking or asking about your personal life — but if you notice your boss asks your colleagues about their weekends, or their kids, or their new puppies, but not yours, this is a bad sign, says Kerr.

You only hear from your boss when you screw up.

Here’s a big sign: You never hear praise from your boss when you do things well – which is 99% of the time. But if you make just the smallest error, you get an email or invited into their office.

“This is a key sign that they may be taking you for granted and only concerned about your work production,” Kerr says.

Nobody wants to accept your help.

“When you first sense these signs, your immediate reaction may be to contribute more and perform better — but even that may be met with resistance,” says Taylor. “Your boss seems to be circumventing you with no apparent cause. Unfortunately, when there is no explanation, the cause can be due to posturing or a land grab by managers who are rising stars, who want to see their own team members advance. Without the support of your manager, it’s hard to swim upstream.”

It’s best to take action through direct communication, while you seek greener pastures, she advises.

Your boss turns down your requests for a more flexible schedule or better work-life balance.

“If they consistently demonstrate a lack of concern over how working overtime might be affecting your family life, or immediately dismiss requests to switch schedules in order to attend an important family function, this can be a huge sign that they really don’t care about your personal well-being,” Kerr warns.

It’s hard to know where you stand.

“At companies that are political or more concerned with the bottom line, you will languish in a state of the unknown,” warns Taylor. “You can’t get prompt answers. Employers may either be complacent, expecting your long-term loyalty, or they may be on the fence as to whether to keep you on the team. The circumstances may be related to cost savings, politics, market trends, or other factors.”

Still, she says, the result can be maddening. “Studies continue to show employees would rather know they’re under-performing than remain in the dark.”

They make demands of you during holidays or your time off.

Does your boss not respect your weekends, vacations, or holidays? Requesting that you stay in constant touch or finish a project without any concern for how it might impact your time off is a bad sign they don’t care about you, says Kerr.

They blatantly tell you they don’t care about you.

“There are still old school managers out there who will constantly remind their employees outright that they can be easily replaced or that other people would kill to have their job,” Kerr says. “Any comments such as these that treat you only as a commodity reflect a lack of genuine interest in your personal well-being.”

They don’t fight to keep you.

The final sign is this: When you tell your boss you’ve been offered a job elsewhere, or that you’re exploring other opportunities, they don’t fight to keep you.

Businessinsider.com | March 14, 2016 | Jacquelyn Smith

#Leadership : #ProductivePeople -5 Ways #SuccessfulPeople Tackle Monday Morning…Great REad!

March 13, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

One of the most popular posts I’ve written on this blog is How Successful People Start Their Day. It seems like every Manager/Entrepreneur is interested in learning how to get ahead early. But starting every day isn’t the same as starting a Monday. Mondays are proven to be harder to face.

Many studies have shown that on Sunday afternoons, most people start to feel depressed. Maybe you’ve felt it. Work is coming. The weekend is over and it wasn’t all you imagined it would be. The pressure of another week of performance begins to hit early. There are hundreds of reasons why, but Sunday afternoon and evening is generally a downer.

No wonder Monday seems to be so, well… Monday.

Over the years, I’ve studied how people can ramp up for the work week. I’ve come to believe that there are not naturally “Monday” people, but that there are disciplines people follow that help them beat the Sunday blues and ramp up for the work week ahead.

Sleep, but don’t snooze.

Managers/Entrepreneurs are notorious for burning the candle at both ends, but the National Sleep Foundation says that you cannot catch up on lost sleep. There may be no more important night to get rest than Sunday night, and no better remedy for Sunday blues than a solid night’s sleep. The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Sleep is the best form of meditation.”

On the flip side, do NOT hit the snooze button. Dr. Rafael Pelayo of the Stanford Sleep Center says that by hitting the snooze button, you are telling your body “false alarm!” That results in a more groggy and slow wake up than if you just went ahead and got up when the alarm goes off. Monday is enough of a drag on its own. Hitting snooze only digs a deeper hole for you to climb out of.

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Get Physical.

Getting the body in its proper state often precedes the mind and emotions coming its way. If there’s any day this is most true, it is Monday.

An article by Ron Friedman of Harvard Business Review sites countless studies that show exercise not only motivates and improves work performance, but also pulls us out of a slump. One study found that when a group of people suffering from mild to moderate depression exercised (i.e. strength training, running or walking) for at least 20 to 60 minutes 3 times a week, they were significantly less depressed 5 weeks later. The benefits were immediate and were maintained for these participants as long as they consistently exercised.

I’ve taken this message to heart and have made it a practice to never take both Sunday and Monday off from working out. If I do skip Sunday, Monday morning workouts are a must.

Want to beat the Sunday blues? This Monday, get out the door and walk or run.

It doesn’t have to be a P90X workout. Cosmopolitan Editor-In-Chief Joanna Coles makes a Monday walk with her dog a must and says it helps her start her week. Many of my best ideas have come on Monday morning walks with Moses, Vanderbloemen Search Group’s Chief Canine Officer.

Mondays can leave you low on energy and more unwilling to workout than normal. Here’s an old trick I’ve used on myself for years:

I lie to myself.

I’ll head out the door saying “I’m only running 10 minutes, then I’m quitting.” Turns out, I have never wanted to quit once I was out the door and moving for 10 minutes. And I almost always felt better afterward. By releasing some stress, and some endorphins, you will likely kick your body out of the funk Monday can bring.

Keep email in check until you get to the office.

Dave Karp, CEO and Founder of Tumblr, says that he will not respond to email until he gets to the office. I’ve found this to be especially effective for Mondays. The beginning of the week is the time when you set your mental state for the week. Stay focused on the big projects ahead and devote brain power there. The distractive power of email can take your brain away from big planning and into minutia that can wait. Honestly, when is the last time you had a Monday email that had to be dealt with right away?

Never quit (or make big decisions) on a Monday.

There’s an old saying, “Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.” That couldn’t be more true than on Mondays.

In our work helping churches find their key staff, Monday is the number one day for resumes to come to us unsolicited. People get bummed out on Sunday afternoon or evening, come into work Monday, and decide that they have had enough. After working with tens of thousands of candidates, we have come to believe that Monday is the number one day people quit their job.

But quitting on a day you’re down is a really bad idea. In fact, making any major decisions when depressed is almost always counterproductive and later regretted .

Making major decisions on the day when you’re down can have serious consequences. Most big decisions can wait until Tuesday, particularly if you start to shape your schedule around the idea.

When I was younger (read, when I knew everything) and leading churches, I thought it was a great idea to start Monday with marathon meetings filled with big agendas and decisions. I even scheduled our board and committee meetings for Monday nights. I was dead wrong. Turns out, not every day was designed for intense decisions.

Schedule work that has tangible results on Mondays.

Just like working out will help you out of the low points, so will working on projects where you can see immediate results.

Behavioral Psychologist Kelly Lambert has done a lot of research that shows handiwork can pull us out of depressed moments. When we knit a scarf, for instance, Lambert says, the brain’s executive-thinking centers get busy planning.

Spend your Mondays with a punch list of attainable goals.

Do tasks and projects that can be completed and have a box to check. Maybe it’s organizing your desk, planning a month of your calendar, writing notes of encouragement to staff, or knocking out some of those menial tasks you never seem to “have time for.” I have learned to keep a running “Monday punchlist” throughout the week so that I have some projects ready to go before I ever get to the office. If you’re anything like me, you will find that finishing a to-do list will do wonders for your soul.

I’m sure there are other tips out there for getting out of a low spot, and maybe some of you don’t suffer from post-Sunday Blues. But if you do, know that you’re not alone, and that they will pass.

I know when I was preaching, as much as I loved it, I often thought, “Sunday seems to come around every seven days!”

The good news is, Tuesday does, too.

Forbes.com | March 13, 2016 | William Vanderbloemen

#Leadership : 4 Keys to a Killer Interview Process…One truth I’ve learned in that experience is: The Most Expensive Hire you Will ever Make is Hiring the Wrong Person.

March 9, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Throughout my career, I’ve made both good hires and bad hires, and I have helped hundreds of clients find their key staff.

One truth I’ve learned in that experience is:

The most expensive hire you will ever make is hiring the wrong person.

Culture, momentum, growth, and morale are just a few of the casualties that come in the wake of a bad hire. In the vast majority of bad hires I’ve seen, there’s one common denominator: a rushed or short circuited interview process.

The old adage is truer to me now than ever: Hire slowly, and fire quickly.

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As I continue to learn how to hire thoroughly, I’ve run across four key components of a thorough and effective interview process.

Use Video Questionnaires as Part of the Process

Simply reading typed out answers just doesn’t cut it anymore. For whatever reason, it’s easier to get a read on people when you’re hearing them talk and watching their body language. There’s no replacement for face to face interaction (see below), but a great way to filter who you should sit down with in person is by having candidates submit video questionnaires specific to the job you are filling. It might sound like a bad version of “The Bachelor,” but what you will learn in a five minute on-camera interaction will help you narrow your candidate pool in the initial stages of your search.

Do yourself, your clients, and your staff a favor, and make sure you invest in an intentional hiring process. It may take more time, money, and energy than you’d like, but it’s a decision that’s too important for cutting corners.

Meet People In Person

Video questionnaires have become a big part of our search process, but I am not a fan of virtual interviews. Why? Not because I am old school or slow to adapt. It is because over 55% of our communication is nonverbal, as Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer in body language research, discovered.

In my work with churches, I tried building a more affordable search solution by cutting out face to face interviews. It sounded like a great idea, but turned out to be a miserable failure. Even though we used the same team, the same process, and had the same database, client satisfaction cratered from nearly 99% (with face to face interviews) to 65% (with virtual interviews).

Even though you can see facial expressions over video, you cannot perceive the 55% of nonverbal communication over video. There are certain qualities, skills, and weaknesses that can only be discovered when people interact face to face.

I’ve come to realize that unless the person will be doing their job virtually, you cannot do their interview virtually.

Yes, flights are expensive and time is precious. But the most expensive hire you’ll ever make is hiring the wrong person. Do yourself a favor and take the time to do in-person interviews.

Peter Drucker is credited as saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I believe this now more than ever.

Include Your Team

Earlier in my career, I thought that doing 360 degree interviewing was an abdication of leadership and a sign of indecisiveness. I was so wrong.

Nowadays, my team has incredible weight and influence on the people we hire on. There are a couple reasons for that.

First, every department lead I have knows the needs of their team better than I do. We’re all on the same page in vision, mission, and values, and they’ll know who will make things run better and fill in the gaps we have as a company.

Secondly, they may be able to pick up on some good or bad traits a candidate has that I might miss.

Finally, including your team in the interview process will protect your culture better than anything else. Nobody will produce better hires for your company than the best hires you have made. Don’t overlook including your key team members in the hiring equation.

Culture Over Competency

My friend Cliff Oxford wrote a great column some years back titled, What Do You Do With The Brilliant Jerk? I hired way too many of those over the years. I saw a rock star and hired them irrespective of whether or not they would fit our team. I’ve vowed not to make that mistake again. It’s never worth it.

Peter Drucker is credited as saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I believe this now more than ever. If you ask our team what our five year plan is, they would look at you like you were speaking a foreign language. But ask them what our culture is like, and they will rattle off our nine values and how they see them lived out at work. Culture is at the core of who we are, and that’s a huge reason for the success we’ve had.

When I hire new people, my first thought is “Do they fit our culture?” When I include others in the hiring process, it’s to protect culture. If they do, then I’ll take a look at things like skills and competency. If they don’t, it’s not even worth a look. The team is more effective when everyone is on the same culture page; and when the whole team works more effectively, the business thrives. Hire strategically. Hire competent workers. But in my experience, if the culture piece isn’t there, the rest is all for nothing.

You can teach skill, but you cannot teach cultural fit.

Do yourself, your clients, and your staff a favor, and make sure you invest in an intentional hiring process. It may take more time, money, and energy than you’d like, but it’s a decision that’s too important for cutting corners.

Forbes.com | March 9, 2016 | William Vanderbloemen

#Leadership : Why We Seem To Be Talking More And Working Less — The Nature Of Work Has Changed….The Real Reason That we Communicate More is Because, Today, we Need to Collaborate More to Be Effective.

March 7, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Are communication technologies like Slack, Yammer and Skype actually helping us, or just getting in the way? Certainly, they have made it easier to communicate, share information and collaborate with colleagues, but what if all that extra communication is actually preventing us from getting important work done?

In a recent article in Harvard Business Review, Bain & Co. partner Michael Mankins estimates that while a typical executive in the 1970’s might have received 1,000 messages a year, that number has skyrocketed to more than 30,000 today and argues that we may “have reached the point of diminishing returns.”

I think just about everyone can see his point. Today, the amount of meetings, emails and IM’s we receive can seem overwhelming and it’s increasingly hard to find uninterrupted quiet time to focus and concentrate. However, the nature of work has changed. The real reason that we communicate more is because, today, we need to collaborate more to be effective.

Today, Machines Do A Lot Of The Work For Us

First, consider how different work was 20 years ago, when Microsoft had just released Windows 95 and few executives regularly used programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. We largely communicated by phone and memos typed up by secretaries. Data analysis was something you did with a pencil, paper and a desk calculator.

Now consider how Mankins performed the study he described in the article. He writes, “My colleagues at Bain and I have studied these effects using people analytics and data mining tools.” It’s safe to assume that all that data was collected and analyzed electronically and shared instantly with the press of a button.

It’s also safe to assume that he and his colleagues spent quite a bit of time discussing what the results of all that analysis meant. 20 years ago, they would have had to set up a meeting or a phone call when they were all free, but today, they can toss around ideas between meetings, in airport lounges or even while waiting for an elevator.

As Mankins himself wrote in an earlier article, “Today, an algorithm can assemble many more facts about the accounts than any human being could easily process.” The truth is that we’re increasingly collaborating with machines to get cognitive work done and so it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re taking more time to discuss that work with each other.

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Problems Are Becoming Much More Complex

Another thing to take into account is that the work we do today is far more complex. Would Mankins have even undertaken his study without the “people analytics and data mining tools” made available to him today? Possibly, but it would have been significantly more onerous.

It’s also important to note that the trend toward greater communication is not just visible in industry, but in academia as well, where we can assume that researchers have more options to work quietly and without interruption. Yet they are increasingly choosing to work in teams and those teams outperform solo performers.

The journal Nature recently noted that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950 and the work they are doing is far more interdisciplinary and done at greater distances than in the past. It’s hard to see how any of that could happen without the improved communication technologies we enjoy today.

Clearly, technology is enabling us to tackle problems we wouldn’t have dreamed of addressing a generation ago. To work on these challenges, we are increasingly collaborating in teams and our work has become more social and less cognitive.

The Value Of Sharing Information

In the past, communication was often just chit chat. Valuable information was locked away in file cabinets and, if we could find it, we would have to make a hard copy in order to share it with anyone else. Yet today, even teenager with a smartphone has more access to information than a highly trained specialist a generation ago.

For a typical executive, the effect has been even greater. The new technologies that make up the Internet of Things collect information automatically from a vast array of sensors embedded in just about anything you can think of. This data, in turn, is analyzed through the use of other technologies, like Hadoop and Spark, to help us make sense of it.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re discussing all of the information we now have access to. We can glean new insights, share them with others and they can reply with insights of their own. The result of this collaboration is often even more collaboration, as we pull people in with a greater diversity of experience and expertise to get their take.

That doesn’t seem like wasted time to me. The truth is that nature of work is changing. The office is no longer a place where we access information—today, we can do that anytime, anyplace—but rather a place where we access people. It’s where we can meet face to face, communicate non-verbally as well as verbally, build stronger working relationships and collaborate more effectively.

Collaboration Is The New Competitive Advantage

To be fair to Mr. Mankins, his greater point—and the subject of much of his other writing—is that we should put more thought into how we adopt and use our newfound communication assets. Surely, we all spend time attending meetings, getting pulled into conference calls, reading and responding to messages that could be used more productively. And that’s frustrating.

However—and this is a crucial point—we don’t know those interactions will be fruitless until we actually have them. Further, while it’s easy to remember the frustration of having our time wasted, it is not much harder to recall times when we have come across a random thread of information that we were able to capitalize on by sharing with colleagues.

It is also those chance encounters that often lead to bigger things, precisely because we are able to share them, get diverse viewpoints and mobilize the efforts of others. Increasingly, we live in a social economy with collaboration at its center. It is no longer just efficiency, but agility and interoperability that makes firms successful.

So, while I take Mankins’ point about the potential for new communication technologies to unproductively monopolize our time, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, the cacophony of the constant barrage of communication can seem distracting at times, but it can also open up new worlds of opportunity. That is, if we are paying attention.

Greg Satell is a US based business consultant and popular speaker. You can find his blog at Digital Tonto and follow him on twitter @DigitalTonto.

Forbes.com | March 6, 2016 | Greg Satell

Your #Career : 18 Awesome Career Choices Most College Kids Would Never Think Of…For many Students, a College Degree Puts you On the Direct Path to a Certain Career, Such as a Doctor, Teacher, or Journalist. But for Many Others, the Future Isn’t as Clear-Cut.

March 5, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

Maybe you want to go to med school, but don’t necessarily want to be a doctor. Maybe you love maps, but aren’t sure how to incorporate that passion into a career. Or perhaps you just haven’t found anything that sounds appealing yet.

Mining engineer

Luckily, there are tons of great career options out there that many college kids have no idea even exist. In this helpful thread, Reddit users shared some of these under-the-radar occupations that most students probably haven’t heard of. And they pay fairly well, too.

Here are 18 of our favorites, including salary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, for those who need some inspiration finding their dream job.

Air traffic controller

USACE HQ/Flickr

Average annual salary: $118,780

“After school and training it pays an average of 100k a year, but there is an age limit to get accepted.” — Kate1320

“My father is an ATC at Pearson. 200k a year with brilliant benefits. He provided a great quality of life for my family.” — 1stOnRT1

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Court stenographer

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

“It’s a three-year program (on average — took me four to finish), but if you’re proficient in grammar, have strong language skills, have solid finger dexterity from playing an instrument or video games, and are able to work independently, it’s an incredible career.

“You work from home most of the time, lawyers very rarely schedule depositions before 10:00 am, you can make your own schedule, and the pay is great. Your pay reflects how hard you want to work and the jobs you’re getting, but I made 65k my first year and nearly 80k my second.” — Bad_Karma21

Dental hygienist

Boston Globe/Contributor/Getty Images

Average annual salary: $71,970

“I’m starting dental hygiene school in the fall and I would have never looked into it while in college. It’s only after I graduated and realized that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do that I started seriously doing some research. Most dental hygiene programs only require a certain amount of prerequisite courses and a standardized test score for admission. Most are also bachelors degree programs as well, so mom and dad are pleased and you’re spending the minimal amount of time you would earning a traditional university/college degree. Plus, salary starts at 50-60k a year with ridiculous benefits, at least in my area. Dentists treat their hygienists well!” — WinnifredBurkle

Industrial design

Screenshot from Netflix

Average annual salary: $67,030

“As a career, industrial design is a great fusion of art and engineering. The problems are challenging, the work is varied and creative, and design consultancies have some of the best work environments and cultures you could ask for. And at the core of it all, you’re tasked with answering the question, ‘What sort of future do we want to live in?’ Design is so much more than making things shiny.” — Grizzleyt

Anesthesiology assistant

Flickr/isafmedia

Average annual salary for similar position*: $97,280

“You have to do a premed track in undergrad, but then go to a two-year masters program which has 100% job placement and the average starting salary is about 120k. I never knew about it as an undergrad and wasted a few years getting another masters in an unrelated field.” — parallax1

*Some median salaries were not available via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so data for similar positions was used.

Geomatic engineering/Land surveying

flickr/axelhartmann

Average annual salary: $60,310

“Most surveyors are old. For instance, the average age of a surveyor in the state of California is in the mid to late fifties, which means you will definitely get a job out of college and you can quickly work your way up to a decent six figure income once you get your professional license.” — TheGeomatician

“Yes. Definitely yes. My dad actually worked for a surveyor for a while and has done surveying off and on as a technician. Made a livable income for someone who dropped out of college after a semester and funded a very heavy smoking habit. I’ve considered getting a side job with a surveyor in a year or two since part of my current degree involves Geographic Information Systems.” — da_asparagus

Packaging engineering

NashvilleCorps via Flickr

Average annual salary: $85,110

“There are only a few schools who offer this degree but the level of difficulty is not high and the unemployment rate after graduation is incredibly low. Also you are likely to be hired to Fortune 500 companies, (P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Bemis, etc.)” — Klarkson1273

Hearing-aid practitioner/Audiologist

flickr/_e.t

Average annual salary: $76,790

“Jobs jobs everywhere. Same goes for speech pathologists. Requires a grad degree and a lot of clinic hours, state certification, but the pay is great and jobs are plentiful. Work is rewarding too, helping people communicate who otherwise couldn’t is pretty rad.” — PaleoVision

Physician assistant

COD Newsroom/flickr

Average annual salary: $97,280

“The short of it is a two to two and half year long post-grad program, and then you’re able to work in the industry with a comparatively high level of independence and earning six figures doing something that results in one feeling as though they’re making some sort of difference.

“It’s not an easy way out, of course, but it’s so much less commitment than medical school, and with the way med school costs are going, it’s very possible that throughout the entirety of your career you can out-earn many doctors who don’t specialize in a particularly expensive specialty. And this also comes with the ability to change specialties without going back to school.” — You_Dont_Party

Hospital technology repair

flickr/digitalcat

Average annual salary: $48,540

“My brother in law works for a medical repair company. He made 55k starting, 15 an hour during the internship, and owned his own house at 23. They fly him around for free whenever someone out of state calls.” — CurioustoaFault

“As a former biomed technician, I can confirm that it’s a very solid industry to get in on. Medical equipment (even on the smaller scale, infusion pumps, defibrillators, and portable suction machines) are ridiculously overpriced, and with this comes huge maintenance prices too. I remember one week in particular, our team of four technicians working on a particular job billed $35,000+ for our company simply doing routine checks on certain equipment in one of the nearby hospitals.” — Bananaman_lives

Internal auditing

Flickr/Phillie Casablanca

Average annual salary: $76,670

Mining engineer

REUTERS/Pav Jordan

“It can be cyclical (bit of a miner lull right now in my specific resource/location right now) but on a good year it is white hot. I signed on to a $100k salary (plus bonus and benefits) straight out of my bachelors degree at 23 for a job that had me moving across the planet (Canada to Australia). The year I graduated we finished school in May and 80% of my graduating class had jobs lined up already and the remainder found jobs by the end of July.

“I was on the higher end for salaries (most making about $80k) There’s worldwide options especially if you get educated in a Western University. Mining Engineers in the US make a little less (~$65k) but for the amount of people working for $30k on masters degrees in other industries, you can’t really complain. You do have to be willing to live in remote areas.” — truffleshufflegoonie

Tower technician

flickr/thebusybrain

Average annual salary: $49,880

“I’ve been doing this for a few years and I’ll pull in roughly 60 to 70k this year. It’s great if you like working outdoors, like heights, and enjoy traveling. It’s hard to get bored when you’re in a new town every week working with guys who have your back. The cool thing is you don’t need a college degree, or any kind of education (Personally, I have my Bachelors in an unrelated field).” — IClimbStuff

Blacksmith

REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

Average annual salary for similar position*: $56,560

“Very few people know this, but blacksmithing is something still practiced in today’s society. Very few colleges have courses in it and I believe that mine is the only one that you can get a degree in it (Southern Illinois University of Carbondale). I am a student in this program. It is immensely fun. I have made knives, art, pedestals, hammers. I love talking about what I do but very few people understand it. And there is quite a job market for it too.” — FarlandMetals

*Some median salaries were not available via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so data for similar positions was used.

Funeral director

flickr/ncindc

Average annual salary: $52,130

“My friends whole family are morticians and funeral directors. Not one of them makes less than $50k. One of them finished mortician science school at 20 and started making $60k as an apprentice and in a couple years he’ll be a full blown embalmer making twice that.” — Austronano

Geospatial/geographic information systems

Derek Hatfield/Flickr

Average annual salary for similar position*: $64,570

“It’s basically the 21st century version of cartography and it’s a field that ranges everything from making maps (think Google Maps or Garmin), pollution tracking, civil planning, interpretation of satellite imagery, and countless other uses. It primarily centers around the use of GIS programs like ArcMap or GrassGIS to graphically represent quantitative data.

“Employers LOVE it and demand for it is high. It’s one of the few jobs you can do well in with a bachelor’s degree too, masters are rather specialized and go more into satellite work or high level statistics generally. Starting wages are generally 40 to 60k a year from what I’ve seen but there’s a lot of room to move around and move up the ladder.” — Shorvok

*Some median salaries were not available via the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so data for similar positions was used.

Technical writing

Vancouver Film School/Flickr

Average annual salary: $71,950

“It’s an interesting an exciting field for people with diverse backgrounds (everything from a liberal arts degree to engineering).” — Anonymous

“If you say get onto the back end of a high technology firm writing manuals for the operation of there equipment, you will be exposed to some of the latest and greatest that technology has to offer.” — WilliamOfOrange

Healthcare administrator

Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires/flickr.com

Average annual salary: $103,680

“I wish I knew about healthcare administration when I was soul-searching for a major. Good pay, good job availability, and it isn’t half-bad.” — Anonymous

“Most fields you can think of in business have a healthcare component that is ten times more complicated because it is in healthcare. Also, a lot of people in healthcare administration have started out in clinical backgrounds, lab techs, LPNs, physical therapists, etc. A lot of MDs are even getting their MBAs in healthcare administration.” — deliciouslyinked

Businessinsider.com | July 21, 2015 | Emmie Martin, Jacquelyn Smith and Rachel Gillett

#Leadership : How to Rewire Your Brain for Serious #Productivity …If your Meetings are Sputtering, Rewiring the Gray Matter May Help Get Employees Reconnected.

March 4, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

The co-founders of Aditazz, which uses software to design and construct hospitals and other specialized buildings, were beyond frustrated. Zigmund Rubel, an architect, wanted to design buildings in one direction, either from the outside in or from the inside out, depending on the project. Deepak Aatresh, the CEO and an electrical and computer science engineer, was interested in simultaneous outside-in, inside-out design aided by computation.

It was one of many seemingly irresolvable conflicts. “We knew we were well-intentioned, very smart, accomplished people, but it was hard to make forward progress,” Aatresh says.

This type of clash is familiar to neuroscience expert Ajit Singh, a partner at VC Artiman Ventures and member of the Aditazz board of directors; it has its roots in the brain. Innovation comes from combining disciplines, but people in different disciplines don’t think the same way. The idea that the right brain hemisphere controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked. But research shows that the left brain is more responsible for language, whereas the right takes care of spatial processing and attention. “People don’t select professions,” Singh explains. “Professions select people.”

These differences were interfering with decision making. Aatresh would schedule one-hour meetings for the startup team to make major decisions, but the conversation would go off-track. An hour would pass and little was accomplished. When he asked Singh how long decision making should take, the answer was: “I don’t know. Let’s let it go.” The solution was to create a lounge area with comfortable seating where people could sit as a group. Meetings began at 6 p.m., included wine and snacks, and had no planned end time. Some went as late as 1 a.m. But Aditazz’s best innovations came out of these sessions.

You may not want all-nighters, but Aditazz’s approach is broadly applicable. It works by creating a setting in which employees feel safe and open to collaboration. Making your people feel safe is key, because without that, “we go into protect behavior,” says Judith E. Glaser, author of Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results. “The amygdala takes over. The prefrontal cortex gets shut down.” The amygdala is linked to fear responses and pleasure. The prefrontal cortex enables empathy, intuition, higher-level social skills, and three-dimensional thinking, Glaser says. “It allows a level of innovation that’s off the charts in a way people have trouble explaining.”

“The idea that the right brain controls creativity and the left logic has been debunked.”

Glaser begins meetings by asking those present to describe what success looks like. When someone hears that others share his or her goals, it stimulates the rostromedial prefrontal cortex, which governs social decisions. “It says, ‘Let’s be friends. I’m more like you than you think,'” she explains. Singh made Rubel and Aatresh start meetings by telling each other that they understand their thought processes are different. “It sounds like kindergarten,” Singh says. “But over time, I saw there was a lot moreempathy.”

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That empathy led Aatresh to change his behavior. “Engineers love to go to the whiteboard,” he says. “I realized that’s intimidating to the intuitive people, because they know you’re going to force their thinking into those boxes.”

Now he sometimes ditches the whiteboard and wanders the room. Invariably, the architects are doodling while the engineers take notes. “For years, I believed people who doodled in meetings were time wasters,” he says. “Now I see there’s a connection between drawing on a sheet of paper and drawing one’s thoughts out.”

Neuro Lessons

Here are three places to reprogram for better performance.

1. Beware the Nonconscious

“People communicate powerful cues by body language. We process these cues nonconsciously, in a fifth of a second,” says Dr. Evian Gordon, CEO ofMyBrainSolutions.com. When we feel threatened, our nonconscious mode can assert itself. If someone says, “But I’m concerned” and crosses her arms, she can nonconsciously give a cue meaning she is switching off.

2. Mind Over Matter

Prime yourself for success by elevating your mood before a speech or meeting–for instance, with 20 minutes of moderate exercise, suggests Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute in New York City, and author of Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done. When stressed, try picturing something calming, such as a flower or landscape.

3. Make People Comfortable

New Jersey-based Pirch, a retailer of luxury appliances, uses neuroscience to create spaces where people feel safe and can enjoy themselves, says co-founder Jim Stuart: “We rationalize our choice of one store or another, but what really happens is that the nonconscious limbic brain hijacks your cerebral cortex. For the nonconscious brain, the priority is avoiding risk and seeking rewards.”

Inside the Mind of the Entrepreneur

Born entrepreneur? New research shows that some people are wired that way.

Greater Mental Flexibility

According to Heidi Hanna, author of The Sharp Solution: A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance, entrepreneurs excel at switching tasks quickly: “It may be from taking on too much at once or that multitasking is more important for their success.”

Higher Perceived Stress

“Most successful entrepreneurs say they have high levels of stress but thrive on it,” Hanna says. In their next phase of research, her team will look at biological markers to see whether stress is harming entrepreneurs or not.

Positively Above Average

A positivity bias is the nonconscious presumption that you are safe, whereas someone with a negativity bias sees threats everywhere. On a negative-to-positive scale of 1 to 10, the average person scores a 5.5, but entrepreneurs hit an average of 6.5.

Accurate and Agile

Entrepreneurs have above-average motor coordination. At first Hanna thought this was insignificant, but then she realized it might be linked to a key trait. “As I talked to entrepreneurs about what makes them different, they said they make quick decisions. If one turns out wrong, they’re confident they’ll be able to make it right.”

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

FROM THE MARCH 2016 ISSUE OF INC. MAGAZINE

Your #Career : Here’s Why #Facebook is Bad for You & Your Career…You might Think you’ve Earned a Few Minutes on Facebook after Completing a Task or Getting Through a Meeting, but Taking Frequent Social Media Breaks Can Derail your Productivity.

March 3, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

It probably happens before you even realize it. One minute you’re in the middle of a work project and the next, you’re mindlessly scrolling through your Facebook timeline, Twitter news feed, or even your LinkedIn connections to see if there’s a colleague you haven’t yet connected with. In some cases, you don’t even remember opening a new tab and navigating to the social media site, and there’s not even a new notification waiting for you because this is the second time in an hour you’ve done this. Not only should this habit be slightly concerning on a personal level, but it also has the potential to be a huge detriment to your professional goals. You might think you’ve earned a few minutes on Facebook after completing a task or getting through a meeting, but taking frequent social media breaks can derail your productivity.

We’ve written before about the dangers of using social media too much, especially Facebook. Social media can distort your perceptions of your friends, affect your mood in ways you don’t even realize, and is even linked to an uptick in depressive tendencies. An article from Psych Central summarizes a number of studies that have expounded on this idea. Using social media too much can often have a negative effect on a person’s self-esteem, especially since people tend to only post the best aspects of their lives on social media. The excessive use of Facebook and other social media sites is also linked to an increase in anxiety and trouble sleeping. In other words, you tend to get uptight and on edge after staring at your news feed for too long, so it’s no wonder that it’s a bad idea to spend your work breaks on the sites.

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Social media’s ‘distracted norm’

Avoiding social media during the workday has made several lists about how to be more productive in the workplace, and it’s not just because they occasionally have negative effects. For some people, checking Facebook regularly won’t lead to negative feelings. But even if you’re immune to social media, checking social media throughout the day is still bound to be a professional pitfall.

There’s a new ‘distracted norm’ in almost every sphere of life now, including the workplace, writes Forbes contributor Frances Booth. The author has written extensively about digital distractions, particularly in the workplace, and has found that phones buzzing in pockets, the easy accessibility of email, and even the habit of surfing the Internet lead to decreased productivity at work, even if you’re doing your best to ignore those digital distractions while on the clock. In one article, Booth asks how long it typically takes for you to switch from a focused work task to a distraction — with email or Facebook the common culprits. Is it an hour? Thirty minutes? Or is it (more likely) quick bursts of 10 minutes or less?

The larger issue here, Booth argues, is that easy work tasks get accomplished within a few minutes. You can easily reply to one quick email, post on social media for work purposes, or something else that’s relatively simple. But more complex work issues either get pushed to the side, or take way longer than they should. “If a task is too difficult or too boring, instead of working through this and sticking with it, the easy answer is to turn to a distraction,” she writes.
Number of Active Social Media Users by Network | FindTheCompany//

The fear, in terms of work productivity, is that innovation and creativity requires deep thinking. This means you can’t be turning to a distraction every five minutes. You need to sit with a problem, think about it for yourself before turning to Google to answer it for you, and be willing to work through an issue for multiple hours at a time. A Facebook dependency won’t help you accomplish that. “Giving in to distraction produces half-formed thoughts, unoriginal thinking, and the same old arguments again and again,” Booth argues.

Facebook has more than 1.4 billion users worldwide, so it’s easy to make that site the bad guy in all of this. But it’s not the only platform that leads to distraction, and it makes up just a part of what behavior science expert James Clear refers to as “digital procrastination.” Clear, in an interview with Entrepreneur, says that digital procrastination is a productivity killer, but it also can negatively affect other decision-making long after the work day is finished.

Fighting social media = less willpower

The reason is because you likely know you shouldn’t be checking Facebook every half hour during the day, so you try to resist the pull of social media while at work. But you’re using up a lot of your willpower to do that, which means you’re vulnerable later in the day to try to resist other bad habits you’re trying to break, like smoking or eating that second piece of cake. “Willpower is like a muscle,” Clear explains. “Every time you use a little bit of it — to resist going to Facebook or BuzzFeed or whatever it is — you’re flexing that muscle. By the end of the day…your willpower fades.”

Entrepreneur suggests trying an app like Freedom, which blocks social media sites and other select websites during the work day (or whatever timeframe you set up for yourself) so that you have no choice but to stay on task. Freedom charges a fee to use its services, but others like Cold Turkey have free options. “It takes the decision making out of your hands,” Clear said.

While we’re on the topic of work breaks, though, keep in mind that research does show that more frequent breaks for smaller amounts of time does help productivity throughout your work day. One study found that productive people often work for 52 consecutive minutes, and then take a break for about 17. Those might be arbitrary numbers, but give it a try to see if a similar breakdown works for you. Just opt for a quick walk or a chat with a coworker instead of logging into Facebook to see whose birthday it is.

CheatSheet.com | March 3, 2016 | Nikelle Murphy

#Strategy : How to Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile in 5 Minutes… Want to Attract More Clients, & Customers using #LinkedIn? Here’s a Simple, Copy-&-Paste Script you Can Use to Make it Happen!

March 3, 2016/in First Sun Blog/by First Sun Team

If you want to Discover How to attract Clients using LinkedIn , it’s critical to understand what your ideal audience on that particular platform wants… and what they don’t.

For instance, they’re not interested in reading an online version of your work résumé. (In fact, that’s about as far away as you can get from creating a killer LinkedIn profile.) They do want to know, as quickly as possible, who you are, what product or service you provide, and how that product or service can help them achieve their goals. They also have to know how to take next steps to working with you, so they are going to be frustrated if you don’t place your contact information in some strategic places.

I want to show you how to create a client-attracting, lead-generating LinkedIn profile in five minutes or less. Before I get there, however, I need to make one thing clear: If you want to attract your ideal clients and customers on LinkedIn, you must adhere to these two core tenets: Speed and Clarity.

The fastest way to ensure you deliver on those two key elements is to think about one simple reality: How most of us tend to consume content online.

Even as you’re reading this post, you’re likely flicking along on your phone or scrolling on your laptop, scanning and moving fast, stopping only when something stands out and grabs your attention. Your ideal customer is doing the same.

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When it comes to laying out your LinkedIn profile in a way that appeals to prospects who are quickly scanning to see if you have what they need, the “copy and paste” template below works as well as anything I’ve seen on the platform.

Best of all, the entire process should take less than five minutes.

The copy-and-paste template for generating Leads on LinkedIn.

(Note that I use ALL CAPS for sections like “WHAT I DO” and “WHO I WORK WITH” to help those headers stand out, since LinkedIn, as of this writing, doesn’t allow you to use bold or italic text on your profile page.)

WHAT I DO: I help [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][MY TARGET AUDIENCE] achieve [THEIR TOP GOAL] by providing [MY PRODUCT or SERVICE].

WHO I WORK WITH: I partner with [TARGET AUDIENCE or INDUSTRY TYPE] including:

[Insert Bulleted List of Job Titles, Industry Names, Client Types, etc.]

WHY IT WORKS: When you partner with [MY COMPANY NAME], you get the most efficient, effective, and affordable [PRODUCT or SERVICE] that [TARGET AUDIENCE] are looking for right now.

WHAT MAKES ME DIFFERENT: [Answer that question! What makes you unique/different/better than similar vendors or competitors? XYZ years of experience? Certifications/Patents/etc.? Something else?]

WHAT OTHERS SAY: [Copy and paste two-three testimonials in this area. Make them specific to the product or service you’re offering or the industries you’re serving. Focus on the results clients got from using your product or service. Include the full name of the person and his or her company to give your testimonials more legitimacy.]

HOW IT WORKS: [Explain how your process — “we start with a free evaluation, we do an analysis of your website’s SEO rankings,” etc.]

READY TO TALK? Feel free to connect with me here on LinkedIn, drop me a line at [EMAIL ADDRESS], visit me online at [WEBSITE URL] or call me directly at [PHONE NUMBER].

Look here: great LinkedIn summary examples.

If you want to see some great examples of how LinkedIn Riches students of mine have followed this format to near perfection with their LinkedIn profile summary sections, check out these profile pages:

Brennen Lukas (small-business owner niche)
Lisa Anderson (financial services)
Bernard Page (consulting)
Bob Losey (sales)
Alison Kemp (coaching/training)

Your turn — update your LinkedIn summary!

Time to take action! Copy and paste the template above into your LinkedIn summary section, then leave a comment below and let me know how it turns out!

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

PUBLISHED ON: MAR 2, 2016

BY JOHN NEMO

Founder and CEO, LinkedIn Riches@JohnNemoPR

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