Kaiser blogs his ideas weekly on the Huffington Post — and Tuesday’s missive is an eyebrow-raiser, headlined “Why My Peers Are Angry With Me.”

It seems that Kaiser’s fundamental rule — a damn-the-torpedoes tack which holds that it’s suicidal to cut spending for programming and marketing, because that’s what brings in the crowds and the money and the donors in the first place — isn’t going over all that well among fellow arts managers who’ve seen no alternative than to do just that.

“One arts leader accused me publicly of living in a parallel universe. He was quite upset that his artistic director and his unionized artists threw my advice in his face when he felt he had to make programming cuts,” Kaiser writes.

Kaiser doesn’t say it in his post, but the fact that the Kennedy Center typically rakes in more than $37 million a year in federal funding for operations and construction projects — the Smithsonian Institution being the only other arts organization with a guaranteed mainline to federal millions — and that Kaiser’s pay package came to $1.11 million in 2007-08, the most recent documented figure, might indeed set it and him apart. Kaiser came to the nation’s capital after burnishing his rep with a two-year turnaround of London’s Royal Opera House, where the government subsidies are similarly generous.

Kaiser declares himself “completely sympathetic with the current plight of my fellow arts managers,” allows that “it is incredibly scary to go to work not certain if there will be enough money to make payroll” and ends with an apology: “I am truly sorry that I have caused problems for my peers. My goal has been simply to make their lives easier by suggesting ways to increase revenue. It seems that I have failed.”

Just a modest proposal from Culture Monster, Mr. Kaiser, but since the annual Kennedy Center Honors telecast revolves around lifetime achievement awards to the Bruce Springsteens, Steven Spielbergs and Diana Rosses of the world who typically have a tangential relationship, at best, to the nonprofit arts, why not turn it into a fabulous telethon where famous entertainers spend a few hours pumping for pledges and talking up the arts — with the proceeds going to the National Endowment for the Arts to redistribute nationwide via its grant programs?

We suspect that such a gesture might make your peers less mad at you.

Then, on June 2, 2006, Lockwood’s 4-year-daughter Lily woke up with pinkeye. She called a manager to request rescheduling a meeting since she wouldn’t be able to come to work. A half hour later, the manager called back with words that chilled Lockwood: Unless she resigned, she would be fired with or without cause.

Why? “It just wasn’t working out,” Lockwood says the manager told her.

Out of a job, Lockwood says she couldn’t pay the mortgage on her recently-purchased home, and she had to seek forbearance on her student loans. Worse, she told the Tribune, “My children had to see me stressed, depressed and anxious.”

Chicago’s human-rights commission’s final order found that Lockwood was the victim of “blatant” discrimination against employees with children, citing examples from its investigation such as a colleague being given the day off to sort out a home repair.

A lawyer for Professional Neurological Services told the Tribune that the company will appeal the decision.

Though some employers have embraced family-friendly policies, nearly 500 cases claiming family responsibilities discrimination were filed in U.S. courts between 1996 and 2005, up 97 percent from the previous decade, a 2006 report by the WorkLife Law Center found. In response, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2007 issued guidance on applying existing laws forbidding discrimination based on gender, pregnancy, or disability to protect caregivers of children and aging parents.

Lockwood’s case is the first involving parental discrimination to appear before the Chicago commission. “I’m excited because there aren’t too many opportunities in the employment arena to have the first of something,” Ruth Major, Lockwood’s lawyer, told the Tribune. “I hope it creates the opportunity for employers to pay more attention to this issue and take proper precautions so it doesn’t happen.”

The case is also significant for shining a spotlight on the growing power of local human-rights commissions. In the past, lawyers and claimants have shied away from taking matters before human-rights commissions rather than to state and federal courts, assuming that commissions would not award significant damages. Lockwood’s victory — a payment of $213,000 for her ($100,000 of which represented punitive damages), plus another $87,000 for her lawyer — will surely draw more cases before local commissions.

“While the scope of local laws may seem limited, their impact can be significant and costly for employers,” Stephanie Bornstein of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law told the Tribune.

While Western economies continue to stutter, a report forecasts that India will soon return to the high-growth trajectory it enjoyed before the crisis. At the same time, the new research published in this month’s Harvard Business Review shows that the heads of India’s biggest companies have a very different approach to leadership from Western bosses.

Peter Cappelli, Professor of management at Wharton University of Pennsylvania, was one of the researchers behind the study, and based on interviews with leaders and HR departments from 98 of India’s 150 biggest companies, he identified some of the key differences between Indian and Western bosses.

“In terms of lessons for managers elsewhere, one of the most important things is that Indian leaders lead with a sense of social purpose,” Cappelli told CNN. He said that every leader interviewed gave a specific social purpose as being the goal of their business. Those purposes ranged from improving healthcare in India, to getting cell phones to people who don’t have access to communication tools, and proving to the international community that Indian companies can lead in IT.

“Having a social purpose really motivates workers,” said Cappelli. “If you can articulate a social purpose for your organization and take it seriously it can have real benefits.” Indian firms invest an enormous amount in their employees’ training and development, and IT firms typically allocate 60 days of formal training for new hires and companies often spend months training even experienced workers hired from other firms.

The study said that U.S. firms have largely abandoned investing in employees, seeing it as a waste if they leave the business. It adds that employee turnover is estimated to be 30 percent in India, and investing in employees ensures the quality of those who stay at the company.

According to Cappelli, U.S. companies often think about strategy in terms of chasing customers or pursuing market opportunities, but Indian firms will more often start by identifying their strengths, identifying their customers’ needs, and then try to meet those needs.

“Indian companies do that by taking smart, motivated people, really engaging them and investing in them, and letting them loose to just beat on those problems, often with just trial and error approaches, until they come out with a solution that’s kind of out of the box,” he said.

Social Change: “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito,” Roddick used to say. Perhaps she had too little knowledge about the business world to know that it couldn’t be done, but Roddick set out not only to meet the needs of her stakeholders, but also “to courageously ensure that our business is ecologically sustainable, meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future.” In doing so, Roddick not only turned a profit but garnered a large and dedicated following of consumers who were onside with her vision.

Vision: Roddick used her creativity and imagination to come up with both a unique product line and corporate philosophy by which to operate. She also understood the importance of cultivating this spirit throughout her company, inspiring the free thought of others around her. It was in looking at the world through a positive and creative lens that Roddick was able to see the solutions ahead.

Experience: “If you can shape your business life or your working life, you can just look at it as another extension – you just fulfill all your values as a human being in the work place,” says Roddick. “If you are an activist, you bring the activism of your life into your business, or if you love creative art, you can bring that in.” Roddick used what she knew best to inspire and inform her business – her own experiences. Whether it was working in her mother’s café as a child, or bathing along side indigenous tribes in Brazil, Roddick brought in her own past to chart her future.

Survival: “For myself, I needed to earn money, to look after the kids while my husband was traveling for two years across South America,” says Roddick. Born out of a need to stay alive, The Body Shop has been infused with a survivor mentality since day one. It continues his trend today, making the most of every opportunity it can and remaining unsatisfied with the status quo.

Passion: “It’s not really work for me because I have no idea what work is anymore,” says Roddick. “It is so much a part of my life.” Since she was a little girl, the entrepreneurial instinct was cultivated within Roddick. The passion and determination with which she approached her business not only made up for her lack of business knowledge, but actually helped her in achieving her dreams. “I hadn’t a clue,” she recalls of her early days in business and that is what propelled her to the top.

It was while Roddick was running her first store that she learned the true nature of business: “It’s about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it. Now 30 years on The Body Shop is a multi local business with over 2.045 stores serving over 77 million customers in 51 different markets in 25 different languages and across 12 time zones. And I haven’t a clue how we got here!”

My book “You’ve Got To Be Believed To Be Heard” is a case in point. Before this morning, Tiger Woods lived a life of deception – lying to Elin, to his friends, and to millions of his public. He was not believed before his statement. He had to be telling a dozen or so lies a day to keep up his dual life. Has his deception changed? If he’s not believed, he won’t be heard.

So the question is can he regain our trust and his credibility? This was a messaging event where we had to see his heart.

Did we?

In a word, yes.

We saw a different Tiger Woods. Here is what he did well:

* He apologized. He had never had personally done that before. When he said “I’m sorry” directly to the camera, to the people he was trying to reach, several times, he looked like he meant it. Perception is reality in the mind of the perceiver.
* He was authentic and sincere. His eyes teared up (and if that is feigned and put on, then he is an acting robot.)
* He covered the bases, answering those questions he could, and leaving unanswered those he couldn’t.

It’s all about messaging, creating a positive experience that moves the ball in the right direction. He hit a long drive down the fairway.

Here’s is what was missing:

* This was a staged “press conference.” It began with the announcement in advance that he would take no questions. Immediately he was perceived as blocking, shielding, dodging, lying or otherwise obfuscating and having something to hide.
* I felt a few times the ‘professional’ polish on his statement – the words he was reading. He spent too much time on his Foundation, and other of his individual efforts. He didn’t have to spend the time on his business partners (and his thanks to Accenture – that was professionally appropriate but not in this personal statement.) I’m not sure his anger at the media was necessary. He showed humility for the first time – I would have liked to see it more coming from the heart than from a prepared statement that could be sure to get in his good side.
* The ending was awkward. Little things mean a lot. We were looking for the nuance. His smile came back very quickly from a painful experience of anguish. He hugged the first row, then stiffly walked off. And did he wipe his brow on the way out, or was he wiping his eyes. Either was OK, but I’d feel better about him if the emotion tone was consistent throughout seeing him come on and depart.

Ultimately, we’ll see. The words, and this communication experience he’s created, are an important first step. As he said, Elin will judge his behavior, not his words. So will we.

A couple of months ago we had him as one of the Ten Worst Communicators of 2009 – mostly because he shut up and did not communicate, much less speak openly. And whenever he did speak, he never really communicated whom he was even before his downfall. Lesson for all of us – if we don’t communicate openly and authentically, we just don’t communicate and will fail to get a believable message across. The Tiger has now talked.

So Tiger Woods is now out in the fairway, and close to the green. Tiger Woods next couple of shots in public will be critical to see if he ultimately makes a par or a birdie. Or a bogie if he does not walk his talk.

From my experience, there’s five rules to follow (more or less in order) to make sure your ideas are given the proper attention they deserve as you move from brainstorming to implementation.

1. Link the idea to its purpose.

Show or demonstrate why this specific idea will help to achieve the goal and/or address or eliminate the problem. This rule grows in exponential importance to the ‘unusualness’ of the idea. In other words, the more bizarre the idea, the more you need to anchor it in reality.

2. Make influential friends.

Involve key internal/external people throughout the creative process, if possible, sooner than later. Get a clear agreement on the goal or purpose of the idea. What do they expect? What criteria will they use to the judge the best ideas? Do they have any initial ideas (even if bad) which might suggest a tone or style? Can they help contribute to the creative brief? Can they join the brainstorm, or stop by after it’s finished? Can they help select or judge the ideas?

3. Sell the sizzle, not the meat.

Some ideas simply can’t be conveyed in words, no matter how eloquent the writer. The very best ideas need to experienced just as the intended audience might see it. Most of us can’t avoid using PowerPoint altogether (and no reason to, if you use it properly), but follow this guideline: use more pictures than words. Use mood boards or hire an artist or cartoonist to show the idea ‘in action.’ Make samples or hand-outs to put the idea in the hands of the person buying it.

4. Give it time.

Some ideas need to rise, like yeast in bread. Most ideas are rarely form perfectly from the start, and given the urgency of the situation or the passion of the brainstormer, many ideas are sold too early. They might need (more) research, or an expert needs to be engaged to help adapt an idea to a situation without homogenizing it. Often it’s better to sell an idea to one trusted and influential friend to get an initial reaction than to sell it too early to the widest possible audience.

5. Protect it.

From what? Criticism, politics, internal or personal agendas, inflexibility and assumptions.

Or, in a word, negativity. This is an entire topic unto itself, one that I’ll tackle here.

“A Picture Is Worth …”

But, before I go … I can’t speak enough about how important it is to sell ideas visually. In his book Memory Techniques, James Manktelow says 65% of people learn visually, 30% learn through hearing, and 5% through simulation (kinaesthetic). If you agree, then your best presentation should have elements of all styles to engage all members of your audience.

I also see an extraordinary amount of PowerPoint documents in my workshops on “How to Write in PowerPoint,” and it’s amazing to me still that so many documents are in black & white. If you still use colour only as a template element in PowerPoint, you’re removing the single most important element to draw the eye to your key messages. But key tip: don’t put the words in colour. Put the words in white in a darkly coloured box. Much easier to read, and will work no matter the quality of the data projector.

While some usual suspects like Apple and Google made the list, a number of small companies that have made a big impact in the innovation stakes are also included.

Here’s the top 20:

1. Facebook
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Google
5. Huawei
6. First Solar
7. PG&E
8. Novartis
9. Walmart
10. HP
11. Hulu
12. Netflix
13. Nike
14. Intel
15. Spotify
16. BYD
17. Cisco Systems
18. IBM
19. GE
20. Disney

The magazine has also categorised top innovators by sector, such as marketing, biotech, food, technology and transportation.

For Moore, meanwhile, nothing about the new arrangement will change a thing. He plans to do for the foreseeable future what he has done every day for decades.
“I may have given them the company,” he said, chuckling, “but the boss part is still mine.

Yet surprisingly, these two organizations with their rapidly shifting environments face similar challenges in motivating and engaging their employees. For Zappos, it’s about creating and maintaining passion in a call-center culture. For GE, it’s about keeping people engaged in a changing climate.

Named among the 20 Best Companies for Leadership in a recent BusinessWeek.com/Hay Group survey, both GE and Zappos put a premium on selecting, developing, and retaining strong leaders at every level. What sets them and the other companies on the list apart, however, is not just their emphasis on good leadership, but also how they approach it. They carefully tailor their developing leaders to fit their unique business strategies and organizational cultures.
In Bad Times As Well As Good

While the data suggest there is no one best way to grow leaders, the companies that do it best share certain key characteristics. The top 20 companies address leadership development on multiple fronts, from articulating how leadership behavior needs to change to meet the challenges of the future to managing their pools of successors for mission-critical roles. And, despite the chaotic, crisis-strewn atmosphere of the past year, they’ve continued to make leadership a top priority.

“The best companies for developing leaders recognize the value of strong leadership in both the good times and the bad,” says John Larrere, who heads Hay Group’s leadership and talent practice in the U.S. “Culturally they just cannot do away with leadership development, even in a recession. They don’t see it as a perk but as a necessity.”

People at the Best Companies for Leadership sense the urgency to develop leaders more than their industry peers. In fact, while 94% of respondents among the Best Companies for Leaders say their organization actively manages a pool of successors for mission-critical roles, only 68.6% of the other organizations surveyed report the same.
“Positioning for the Future”

Indeed, leadership feels different at the Best Companies. In the survey, more than 64% of respondents from the top 20 say people in their companies are expected to lead even when they are not in a formal position of authority. At other companies, that figure hovers around 35%. And respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership are significantly more likely than those from other companies to believe they will emerge stronger from tough times. They say their leaders are more likely to be involved in leadership development. And they are twice as likely to say that everyone at every level of their organization has the opportunity to develop and practice capabilities needed to lead others.

In the survey, respondents were asked about their companies’ current focus. Among all the respondents, 65.1% said, “positioning for the future.” Among the Best Companies for Leadership, the figure was 81.9%. Executives at the Best Companies for Leadership confirmed this in follow-up interviews. “Our culture is committed to leadership development,” says Jayne Johnson, GE’s director of leadership education. “Crotonville [the site of GE's corporate university] opened in 1956. Today more than ever, we need our leaders going to Crotonville. It’s these very leaders who will make us successful today and in the future.”
According to P&G’s (PG) Chief Human Resources Officer Moheet Nagrath, the primary way of developing future leaders it to offer “Accelerator Experiences,” a program that provides developing leaders the experience of running a small business with huge strategic potential. “We continually move people across regions and countries,” says Nagrath. “The more discontinuous the experience, the more you accelerate growth. We have to move people around businesses for them to become well-groomed.” One benefit of this experience, he says, is that it helps people manage in the organization’s matrixed environment.
Mapping Backwards

Nagrath notes that at P&G, “We start with the destination role and then help future leaders acquire a deep understanding of the role. It’s about understanding the individual from a deep perspective. We look at the timing for when a leader should go into the destination role, and we map backwards from the destination role to where they are currently.”

GE takes a different approach, identifying talented leaders early on, and placing them in stretch assignments, often before they think they’re ready, according to Johnson. “And we support them, with over $1 billion a year in structured training. But today, change is such a continual force that even we at GE are taking a fresh look at how to develop talent.”

At Zappos, a challenge is developing leaders at a pace that will accommodate the company’s growth. “We are projecting 30% growth in 2010,” says Rebecca Ratner, the online retailer’s director of human resources. “We will need more supervisors. How can we best integrate them into the company in terms of how they treat employees?” Noting that Zappos managers spend “10% to 20% of their time doing team building outside the office, our challenge is figuring out how to assimilate people into what we do.”
Events Outside the Office

For anyone coming in from the outside, she says, it’s not a typical recruitment process, where they meet with three or four people before either being hired or rejected. “What we do instead is spend seven to 10 hours over four occasions at happy hours, team building events, or other things outside the office. We can see them and they can see us.” The process seems to be good for retention. “In 2009, we will have a 20% turnover rate,” says Ratner. That’s impressive for call-center employees. What keeps people at Zappos? “We pay 100% of employee benefits,” says Ratner. But there’s something more, something Zappos calls its “wow factor.”

Says Ratner: “We can’t ask someone to wow a customer if they haven’t been wowed by us.” In fact, Zappos is so eager to wow employees and make sure who they hire is really committed that the company offers people $3,000 after they’ve been trained to walk away if they feel they and Zappos aren’t a good fit. Ratner is quick to point out that almost no one takes the $3,000 walk-away money. But many trainees return for more Zappos training to become managers and supervisors. Ratner admits that one of her big concerns is how to keep the wow factor alive as the company adds more people and ramps up its leadership development.

ABB, a leading provider of power and automation technologies, is also facing challenges posed by a double-digit growth trajectory, according to Julia Blake, vice-president for human resources at the company’s Power Products Division in North America. “We were growing our business and rapidly filling positions. Our challenge now is the rapid development of the organization’s bench strength,” says Blake. “We recognize that we need to accelerate development to get people ready to fill key positions. We want to get back into a growth surge and use development as a tool to retain talent as the business picks up.”

Survey respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership are 20% more likely than respondents from other organizations to say that people stay at their companies primarily for growth opportunities.
Three Types of Corporate Culture

Not only are the best-in-breed companies more urgent about leadership development; they also spend more time on it—and more money, too. In the survey, respondents from the Best Companies for Leadership were more likely to say that they invest in the development of even their mid- and low-performing employees. And when asked about time spent developing leaders, once again, the Best Companies for Leadership report investing more time than peer organizations in developing future leaders. While 16.4% of all respondents report spending 25 or more days per year developing senior leaders, 22% of the Best Companies for Leadership spend 25-plus days developing their top talent.

In an analysis of how survey respondents described their companies’ cultures, three categories of organizations emerged. Some, such as Zappos.com and Southwest Airlines, are modern, learning-oriented, fun workplaces. Other large, global giants, such as P&G and GE, are complex companies with cultures that are more traditional. And some, including ABB, are known as “collaboration for innovation” companies that accomplish work though self-organizing project teams and encourage employees to seek new approaches to solving problems.

According to Elizabeth Bryant, senior director of talent management at Southwest Airlines, the leadership-development process reflects the company culture. “It goes beyond formal training and is part of everyday life at Southwest, where employees at every level are exposed to leaders so they get to see how the leaders think,” she says. “Even informal mentoring and exposure to company executives helps to broaden people’s perspectives and stimulate their passion about the job.”
A Hunger to Learn

According to Jeff Lamb, Southwest’s chief people officer, the culture in which Southwest’s employees work every day is no different from the culture in which the airline develops its future leaders. “This kind of thing happens organically. There’s no course on how to get so engaged that you volunteer to come in on a weekend.”

Lamb insists that what makes the airline a great place for leaders is the same thing that makes it a great place for employees: “the freedom to be yourself … a lack of pretense; the hunger to learn.” He says it’s not about any kind of program or leadership training, or how well the company develops talent, but in “allowing people to enjoy their work.”

Concludes Hay Group’s Mary Fontaine: “The real thing leaders do is create environments that drive performance. Leaders engage and enable people. It’s that simple, but it requires a shift of focus from solely outcomes, production numbers, and revenues to motivating people so they’re passionate about helping the company achieve its goals.” Another key aspect of leadership, she says, is removing the obstacles that hinder them. She likes to quote a senior client at IBM, who says, “My job is to take the rocks out of the campers’ knapsacks so that they can run faster and further.”
METHODOLOGY

To conduct the 2009 Best Companies for Leadership study, Hay Group and Bloomberg BusinessWeek.com invited organizations from around the globe to participate. The survey was open to all employees of any organization and asked respondents to rate the leadership-development practices at their own organization. Separately, respondents were asked to nominate three organizations, regardless of size and industry, that they believed are the best at developing leadership at all levels.

A total of 1,869 individuals from 1,109 organizations completed the survey. Only responses on behalf of a parent organization were considered in the ranking process, resulting in a total of 740 organizations considered in the final ranking. In the case of multiple respondents on behalf of a parent organization, responses from those self-identified as “leaders” were combined, and responses from those self-identified as “employees” were combined, to allow comparative perspectives on the same organizations. For an organization’s final score, we calculated an average of the two group scores.

Respondents that completed the survey were from 98 countries, with 45% from North America, 27% from Europe/Middle East, 16% from Asia, 6% from South America, 3% from the Pacific, and 2% from Africa.

About Hay Group

Hay Group is a global strategic-consulting firm that works with leaders in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors to transform strategy into reality. With 85 offices in 47 countries, we work with more than 7,000 clients across the world.

Learn more about our Best Companies for Leadership research

Editor’s Note: The following companies who ranked in the 20 Best Companies for Leadership according to survey respondents are clients of Hay Group: 3M, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, IKEA, and Unilever

It seems that the reason being paid by the hour has more of an impact on employees’ wellbeing is that they give pay more attention to what they’re earning than those who earn a salary.

“Income was uncorrelated with happiness for salaried employees, whereas it was significantly associated with happiness for people paid by the hour,” the research published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin concluded.

“Hourly payment doesn’t make you happier per se,” said Sanford DeVoe, co-author of the paper. “Hourly payment makes you happier if you earn a lot of money per hour, but it makes you less happy if you very little per hour.

i beleive, “Salary is the main source of motivation for the employee . My question is why an employee do job? simpliest answer, is to have money to survive hsi life and needs. Money received in the fastest way can bring the motivation level very high.”

Salaried people have there living ways and job philosophy. Anything against, those philosophy are not welcome, at any cost . Even, there happiness definition is also different , even though they are working in one team , one organisation.

“The key thing is that it makes how much you earn a bigger aspect of how you define your happiness.”