The purpose of a daily huddle is to align, communicate, and energize for the day. It’s not a gripe session.

Here’s how to do them:

First – a huddle is short. 5, 10 minutes max.

And it’s a standup meeting, for those who are able. Sitting down says “This is a meeting.” And nobody likes meetings. Standing up says “We’re getting back to work in a few minutes.”

Here’s what I recommend:

• Start by celebrating a quick win from the day before. And that’s one reason you do them daily.
• Then share any updates – stuff that people need to know before getting on with their day.
• Next, Ask if anyone has any needs or concerns that someone on the team can help with.
• Then, take a moment to teach something valuable. A tip, or maybe a success behavior.
• Finally, close with some encouragement and inspiration.

Then go back to work.

People ask me – Do we have to do them daily? Do you have to brush your teeth daily? Yes, that’s why they’re called Daily Huddles.

It’s simple, fast, and really gets everyone off to a great start.

Daily huddles.

The post Use Daily Huddles to Increase Team Performance first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Use Daily Huddles to Increase Team Performance appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

First things first, I’m a fan of women business leaders, for three reasons…

1. Selfishly, it pays the bills. By virtue of their prominence in the healthcare and education spaces, I’m proud to say that women leaders are within range of majority status on our client list.
2. Women are serious about improving their own game as leaders, developing teammates in their trail, be they male or female, and improving competitiveness; always. That said, as noted in McKinsey’s “Women In The Workplace 2025” report, only half of companies are prioritizing women’s career advancement. Clearly, we can and must do better.
3. In my occasionally humble opinion, they tend to be much better listeners.

On that last note, for many years, one of my role models was Judith Rogala, the first female senior operating exec at FedEx, in a rough and tumble business. Perhaps the greatest tool or tip I gleaned from her example was encapsulated in three short words that she used often, followed by a healthy dose of silence, whether in the boardroom, or with a group of FedEx Couriers:  “Tell me more.“

I can pretty well assure you that if you’ll install them into your daily operating language, followed by some appropriate silence, you, too will be well rewarded.

The post Two Ears, One Mouth…Tell Me More first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Two Ears, One Mouth…Tell Me More appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

Despite billion$ spent on internal corporate communications efforts, too few of us have an effective understanding of the fundamental goals and priorities at play in their workspace. Think we’re kidding?

On the spur of the moment, and independent of any job aids, ask each member of your team to anonymously list, in writing, off the top of their head, the unit’s top three priorities – just three. Gather the answers and compare. If you’ve got more than three people on your team and the answers are identical, we’d like to hear about it.

We’ve posed the same question to many groups of senior organizational leaders (usually in a boardroom, with the CEO present), and upon collecting the results, without peeking at them, offered to bet the CEO $500 that the team’s listed priorities are not all the same. No one has ever taken the bet, and when the answers are revealed, their refusal to wager proves prescient.

As we’re busily shipping institutional knowledge out the door, please make certain that the organization’s sense of purpose, direction, and priority doesn’t leave with them.

The post Are You Limiting Discretionary Effort? first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Are You Limiting Discretionary Effort? appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

1. Think of this as a Transformation rather than a Transaction.  What elements and outcomes of our organizational process can we become more adept at, reaching competitive superiority, and be known for in 6-30 months?
2. Starting with the leadership cohort, what does our team need to know, do, and be to pull this off with pace and aplomb? In what ways must our leadership focus change?
3. If your organization is at all labor intensive, you’ll move faster and with less friction if you “open the kimono” so that no one spends valuable time and energy wondering and worrying about where this winds up, what part, if any, they’ll play, and who will be left standing when the “Pop Goes the Weasel” music stops. In that vein, it’s not too soon to thoughtfully consider how you might best deploy the current staff.
4. Resolve, and make it known from the start that you will treat teammates with decency and consideration, no matter what.

The post AI By The Hearts, Heads, & Yes, Numbers first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post AI By The Hearts, Heads, & Yes, Numbers appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

It’s all too seductive, in recruiting, for example, to delegate the entire applicant screening and interviewing process to the bot. After all, we’re basically screening people in or out of consideration based on the presence/lack of certain stated skills or experience, described in relatively finite words and terms. Yeah, until the fully qualified open reqs outnumber the potential butts in seats; until a coding error on the tool translates three months of grad school or work experience into three years, OR, an exceptional, overqualified candidate is rejected without further consideration for something else. 

Many years ago, I became aware of an applicant screening tool used by a large (and one of the very few profitable) US airlines, with a reputation for hiring exceptionally nice, happy (and qualified) people, regardless of their job assignment. This was as central to their business success as the aircraft model they deployed. The “tool” was a recruiting assistant who presented as a receptionist at the office building housing HR and other corporate staff functions. 

She was a window into every applicant (including pilots) who showed up for an in-person interview (remember those?); taking note of their arrival time, manners, and interaction with other candidates while waiting; and yes, she had a vote in the applicant consideration process. If a well-qualified pilot applicant showed up for an interview and was at all condescending or irascible, he or she wasn’t going to work there no matter how much pilot-in-command flight time they had.

It worked… for decades, they’ve been known, and benefited from a reputation for having nice, happy flightcrew members. Ding! I’m inclined to suggest that if you’ve got a situation like this, take the advice that Col. Harland Sanders offered to the new owners of KFC upon closing the sale of his business: “Don’t F… with the gravy!”

HR professionals are beginning to feel considerable pressure from “bean counter land” to heavily automate these and other important parts of the business process, in order to extract the efficiencies that were promised on the front end of the massive AI investment. That’s as it should be, but let’s be very careful to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. 

The post On Babies, Bathwater, AI Recruiting, and HR first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post On Babies, Bathwater, AI Recruiting, and HR appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

1. 65%, 50%, and 47% of Low, Middle, and High Income US residents respectively fear “being left behind by AI.” In other words, executives are darned near as concerned as people south of them on the org chart. On a sector weighted basis, that’s a majority, folks.
2. Two-thirds of global respondents to the Trust Barometer Report (including the US) fear losing their jobs owing to recession, or having their company impacted negatively by tariffs.
3. In the “good news” column, while ‘losing trust’ in National Government, News Organizatons, and Foreign Business Leaders, respondents have gained trust by about 10% in their Neighbors, Co-workers, and their CEO; repeat, AND their CEO.

In view of these factors, we’re advising business and other organizational leaders (all levels) to:

1. Redouble communications efforts/frequency, speaking plainly and repeatedly, in multiple forums, with your workforce (and their families) about steps you are taking to manage risks (known and unknown) while advancing the enterprise. Staying mute on the matter of imputed risk doesn’t make it go away; it makes it worse. 
2. At appropriate intervals, address both the tangible benefits and job security issues, if any, head-on in plainspoken fashion. Be positive, but sober, and avoid making promises you can’t keep. Rather, “Here’s  what we DO know, and plan to do. We’ll keep you updated regularly, and as the situation changes either way, I’ll be back in front of you.” Be sure and keep the promise.
3. Remind your workforce, starting with managers, that the absolute best thing we can do is to keep our eyes on the ball, and look out for all the stakeholders, including customers, shareholders, and the ones standing or sitting right next to you. 

Go Seahawks!

The post Fear of Being Left Behind by AI first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Fear of Being Left Behind by AI appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

That’s rational and understandable. But what’s also understandable is the fact that many of those people who’ve slowed their roll have, to a degree, already unplugged, and are simply marking time, less productively. In effect they’ve quit, but keep showing up, and getting paid. As the job market becomes ever more spotty in certain fields, this could persist for some time.

We’ve noticed some of the byproduct of this in recent employee engagement surveys, where scores are trending downward, more than might otherwise be expected. (Stay tuned.)

Based on this trend, we’ve three pieces of advice for organizational leaders in the foreseeable future:

1. If your organization is at all labor-intensive, pay a little closer attention to workforce engagement levels. Be especially attuned (and responsive) to the “little things” like tardiness/absence patterns, the workspace ‘smile factor’, quality/productivity metrics, and yes, engagement survey scores.
2. Do not, repeat, do NOT reflexively shutter all recruiting measures, as some of the anticipated AI-related staffing cuts will go too far, or engender unexpected voluntary quits. Moreover, this could be an opportunity to pick up some especially good talent, so keep your lure in the water, as a wise fisherperson might say.
3. Embrace your fellow leaders a little more tightly for the next while, as we’re going to go through some things we’re not especially accustomed to, and will need all the “friendlies” we’ve got.

Together, we’ll get through this.

The post Why Engagement Matters Now More Than Ever first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Why Engagement Matters Now More Than Ever appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

Operating almost exclusively for three+ decades in the labor-intensive service sector (healthcare, financial services, hospitality, education…), business partner Bill Catlette and I are seeing early, but unmistakable signs that the approaching AI-inspired white-collar downsizing is real. Resembling an F-5 tornado on the horizon; there’s nothing subtle about it.

While prepping the planning notes for an employee engagement survey feedback session we’ll soon have with a client executive relative to her fresh, chilly, (and bracing) employee opinion survey results, I happened to read Rachel Louise Ensign’s piece in the 12/16 Wall Street Journal, “Spooked by AI and Layoffs, White-Collar Workers See Their Security Slip Away.” Suddenly, one of the likely underlying causes of the steep period-over-period drop in our financial services client’s survey scores may have become clearer.

Forgive what might appear a naked sales pitch, but if you operate in the labor-intensive service sector and aren’t currently using workforce engagement surveys on a regular basis to gauge the mental/emotional state of your workforce, you’re taking a risk; not unlike ignoring the fuel or temperature gauge on your car, or the lab reports associated with your last physician visit (gulp). Give yourself a “present” and see to it that getting (and using) regular workforce feedback becomes a habit early in the New Year.

The post Give Your Workforce a Present Next Year… LISTEN to Them Better! first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Give Your Workforce a Present Next Year… LISTEN to Them Better! appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

On the good side, Unemployment stayed relatively stable, and under the level of full employment. The US economy DID add a significant number of jobs in 2025, just not as many as in each of the last couple of years, and not as many as we thought, but then we don’t really know, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn’t really functioned since the government shutdown.

But, if you talk to people, and I do – the tide has turned, and the job market is NOT the fun place for job seekers it had been for the past few years.

So let’s look at where we are in the World of Work at the end of 2025.

1. The word of the year is uncertainty. The tariffs and turmoil in Washington have made it impossible to predict things based on what has always been. Employers don’t like uncertainty.
2. Today it’s a matter of skills scarcity vs talent shortage. Right now, we don’t have as much of a people shortage as we have a skills mismatch.
3. Workforce flexibility is on the rise. The old Return to Office vs Work from Home brawl has cooled, and in its place is a more nuanced landscape, but workers are still asserting their desire for more control, not necessarily just remote work. Things like shift flexibility are on the rise. Some companies have experimented with something called output-based scheduling, which simply means we’re going to measure what you actually accomplish, rather than the time you appear to be “on duty”.
4. AI remains the greatest unknown. Most employers haven’t yet read the manual on how to work it, so they’re “experimenting”, many without the guardrails that wisdom would recommend. Some will use it to slash their workforces. They may live to regret that. Others will deploy AI to make work better. And some will shift part of the workforce from whatever they’re doing now to AI Development. Still others will miss the boat entirely. Like I said, it’s a great unknown.
5. There’s a Renewed Focus on Leadership Visibility and Trust – maybe not in your place of work – but in many. Some leaders are figuring out that they have to get out there and be seen if they want to maximize their leadership effectiveness.
6. The Psychological Contract at work has changed – some would say not for the better. Many workers now view their jobs as a short-term mutual value exchange rather than a long-term commitment. And let’s face it – employers, for the most part, have created that monster. Turnover has stabilized. But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not because of increased loyalty.
7. But some things never change – the companies that won the best talent in 2025 are those that treated people not as “headcount” but as customers of the workplace experience.

So hang onto your hats – 2026 is just around the corner. Can’t wait to see what it holds for the new world of work.

Happy New Year everybody!

The post So Long, 2025 first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post So Long, 2025 appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.

Recent polls suggest that a growing number of workers would prefer paid time off or extra cash in lieu of a holiday party. What’s up with that?

Two things that we can see:

1. Owing to recent and newly anticipated (AI) economically-induced headcount reductions, many people aren’t in the mood to celebrate, or participate in a macabre seeming “last supper” with their workmates.
2. With US tariff-induced inflation outstripping wage growth with each passing day, a growing number of people need the money more than they need a holiday party.

Without playing the grinch who stole the winter holidays, we’d suggest the following, before locking in holiday celebration plans:

If you’re of the mind to do something to celebrate the holidays with your workmates, survey them this week as to the nature and extent of celebration, i.e., would you prefer that we:

1. Do Nothing, (contributing the amount saved to an employee welfare fund or charity)?
2. Have a full dinner or party celebrating the holiday season?
3. Have a more modest meal together as a work team, and award every employee an additional paid day off in the coming year?

The post Have We Lost “That Loving Feeling?” first appeared on Contented Cow Partners.

The post Have We Lost “That Loving Feeling?” appeared first on Contented Cow Partners.