Malcom Gladwell has selected Drive as this month’s book club book.  The book discusses how external carrots and sticks (What Pink calls Motivation 2.0) cannot explain why people spent all that time creating Wikipedia, Linux, or Firefox.  It cannot explain why people volunteer for non-profits, and it cannot explain what makes people truly connected to their jobs.

In DRIVE, Pink suggests a new model of motivation.

DRIVE: New Yorker Book Club page.

The folks at the Boots blog had nice things to say about Leading After a Layoff.

Here’s an excellent tip from the folks at LifeHacker.  Set up a Praise Folder to store all those good things that happen in February for the performance review in December.

Set Up a Praise Folder to Track Successes for Performance Reviews, Resume Boosts – Motivation – Lifehacker.

You might also want to check out evernote.com for storing random bits of information such as a Praise Folder.

As we start the new year, I thought I’d share Jeff Cohen’s Ten Tips to Take Charge of Your Career.

Who do you believe is most responsible for guiding your career?  Is it your boss, the company?  The answer is YOU!  Master these ten tips and you’ll be climbing the corporate ladder in no time:

1. Find a mentor:  Do you admire a particular senior executive?  Ask them to mentor you and show you what it really takes to reach their level in the company.
2. Volunteer for opportunities:  Raise your hand willingly and you’ll quickly become a valued team player.  Pretty soon executives will be fighting for your services.
3. Meet deadlines:  You need that by when?  Don’t led deadlines slip by.  Meet your deliverables on time, under budget, and as agreed.
4. Suggest a new project:  Don’t wait for your assignments.  Be proactive and suggest new ideas.  Become a brainstorming machine and you’ll be viewed a s innovative.
5. Be helpful and resourceful:  Jump in!  Lend a hand!  Say yes!  The more helpful you can be the more indispensable you’ll become to your organization.
6. Perform at the next level:  Say you’re a manager anxious to get promoted to Director.  Start acting like20a Director now.  Pretty soon your job title will match your effort.
7. Demonstrate your expertise:  Are you a computer whiz?  Do you love to present?  Let your unique strengths shine and you’ll be a high performer in no time.
8. Get involved in the industry:  Do you want to be an industry titan?  Start by joining a professional organization.  You’ll make connections and master the art of networking.
9. Respond to voicemails and emails:  Nobody likes it when their voicemails or emails are ignored.  Get back to people promptly and you’ll earn a go-getter reputation.
10. Enjoy the ride:  Don’t be afraid to smile at work.  If you flash those pearly whites colleagues will perceive you as an approachable, easy to work with partner.

Jeff Cohen runs Bold Road (www.boldroad.com), a writing, speaking, and consulting company that runs seminars, offers books & products, and consults people looking to reach their career, love, and life potential

Excellent point from Seth Godin on hiring vs. recruiting.  I wish I had thought of the difference in these two words because it is important.  The key to recruiting is to create a the job description table I work through in Leading After a Layoff:

List the following to make a great job description:

• Results—This is what you want the job to deliver
• Tasks—These are the tasks you expect the person to do to deliver the results.
• Skills—These are the learned skills that are needed for the tasks.
• Talents—These are the innate thought patterns that make it easy for the person to learn the skills.

Recruit people with the right talents and the rest is easy.

Seth’s Blog: The difference between hiring and recruiting.

Seth Godin is ostensibly talking about the publishing industry.  But read his blog post in terms of changing an employee’s basic nature, and you’ll get an equally valid lesson.

Seth’s Blog: You don’t have the power.

We’ve all reached that time of year where our company does annual planning.  Usually this means putting  managers in a room and getting them to create a PowerPoint presentation.  We really want planning to be more than that.

If you get put into such a PowerPoint generating room, remember the first step of annual planning.  Take some time to look at last year’s plan and ask these questions:

• What assumptions did we make last year? (You wrote them down, right?)  Did they happen?
• What goals did we set last year? (Please tell me your plan had goals.) Did we meet them?
• What tasks did we define last year (You made a list of tasks and owners…you must have.) Did the tasks happen?

And the big question:

• Did our plan work?

Only after you’ve looked at least year’s plan and determined whether it worked, do you have enough information to create next year’s plan.

Unless of  course, you didn’t document your assumptions, goals, or tasks.  In that case, you should do that in this year’s plan.

My tips and writing focus on the front-line manager–a manager who leads individual contributors.  So my motivation suggestions focus on putting people into roles where they have talent and connecting their contributions to their personal interests.

This blog posting looks at the question from the top level.  How do you motivate employees as an upper level manager?

Motivating employees.

Here’s a simple email tip that a coworker suggested.

When you are writing a controversial email, which you shouldn’t be, there is probably a better way to communicate this information, but perhaps you are being forced at gunpoint, be sure not to fill in the email addresses until after you’ve written the email.

Some email tools can accidentally send a partially written email.  I know mine has a tendency to send the email if I press ctrl-v with the intention of pasting something.  You may also accidentally send the email when you meant to press cancel.

Since there are few email systems with an undo button, make sure that you’ve written the email carefully, thought about it, slept on it, considered deleting it, and then if you really want to send it, fill in the addresses and press send.

Just don’t fill in the addresses until you are about to press send.

In my last blog post, I discussed the futility of sending large spreadsheets, or worse, PowerPoint documents, around the company looking for feedback.  Instead, consider using a free survey tool such as the one in Google Docs.

Here is an example survey:

Once you take the survey, you’ll be able to click on a link to see everyone’s dessert responses and another link will allow you to create your own surveys.

Google stores the data in a spreadsheet for you automatically. Here is the dessert survey spreadsheet.

This is much more efficient, and fun, than sending a spreadsheet around by email.