Food retailers, wholesalers, suppliers and other food retail industry members met in Chicago to network, learn and engage at FMI Connect. We talked to Leslie G. Sarasin, FMI president and CEO, about the highlights from the show, which focused on catering to customers while improving operations and looking toward the future of the food retail industry. What were the top three key takeaways from FMI Connect for members of the food retail industry? FMI Connect focused on the imperatives of keeping ahead of the accelerating pace of change in food retail. Some of the catalysts driving this change include intense competition from new formats, the need for operational excellence, including speed to market, and meeting consumer expectations for transparency and customization — all of which can be enabled by technology. As I walked the Expo floor with our executive committee leadership, sat in on educational sessions and eavesdropped on hallway conversations, three themes were most apparent: Our customers may not always be right…but they’re never wrong. The U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2015 executive summary, which I highlighted during a keynote session at FMI Connect, focused on the changing value proposition among consumers -with value not being exclusively an economic proposition, but also one embracing beliefs and ethical standards. The Trends analysis demonstrates that as shoppers evolve, more of these consumers include wellness, non-GMO, food safety and animal welfare issues in their food shopping equation. It’s clear that as more people play a larger role in grocery shopping, the various definitions of "value"- not all of which are science-based - are increasingly difficult for our customer-service-driven businesses to target. In a sea of multiple values at play, providing options that address every customer’s set of concerns will continue to be the food retailer’s challenge and opportunity. Food retailers can be the solution center for family meals. Just as food retailers are being confronted with complex, fast-paced change, so are American families. The shape of the family has changed; the demands on family schedules have increased; and the combination has mounted an assault on that cornerstone of family time, the meal together. Families are looking for help and FMI believes their trusted local grocer can offer that help. We are urging food retailers to come together for the common cause of encouraging their customers to enjoy one more family meal each week at home than they are currently having. The social, health and economic benefits for both the family and the industry make this a no-brainer. The growing number of shoppers who’ve identified the consumption of fresh, less processed foods as their path to health and wellness would appreciate a convenient and variety-filled alternative that helps them avoid doing what — in their healthy heart of hearts — they’d rather not do, which is sacrifice nutrition and health for the sake of convenience. The pace of change is fast and furious. Competition is coming from all directions and from near and far, with traditional grocers competing for share of basket against restaurants, online outfits, mobile strategies, click-and-collect models, and even the local farmers’ markets. At FMI Connect, we explored new opportunities and encouraged the exploration of new potential partnerships, especially via Connect Business Exchange, or CBX. We designed CBX to solve business challenges by providing a format in which participants could reach beyond their normal range of trading partners and create opportunities for perceived competitors to become new allies. I hope to translate the success of CBX into new communications and marketing channels in the near future. How will these issues guide food retailers through the rest of 2015? I am confident that all the acknowledgements we’ve received from our members — both retail/wholesale and associate — to commit to promoting National Family Meals Month™ in September 2015, will result in a culmination of food retail resources and inspiration motivating families — however a family defines itself — to come together at home for one more family meal each week. While September will generate surround sound on what retailers have been doing to better serve their customers with every 1.5 times per week these shoppers visit their grocery stores, FMI will push forward on its business agenda of furthering the voice of food retail around menu labeling regulations, implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act, workforce and sustainability issues, to name a few priorities. How will they play into 2016, both in the industry overall and in next year’s FMI Connect event? It’s well understood that food retailers, more than ever, will be positioned as curators of products and services — all according to a particular set of values or beliefs held by their shoppers. As the association representing more than 1,200 retailers and wholesalers, it’s imperative that we, in turn, curate member feedback in order to help our members prepare for and execute against these customer-centric strategies. Based on what you saw at FMI Connect, what are the issues at the top of food retailers’ minds right now? And what issues are on deck? Working in the food retail industry is similar to meteorology — but we’re arguably more often correct on our predictions! We need to be mindful of weather patterns, but always prepare for the next storm. As an association, next year will be politically-charged, so we’ll be anticipating what a new presidential administration will present for our industry. FMI keeps a steady eye on the horizon to know the eminent threats, but through our research and information services, we’ve also become more sophisticated in scanning the more far-reaching environment, tracking the patterns beginning to form further away and making educated projections on what new legislative, regulatory and trend-worthy conversations to engage in on behalf of our members. For instance, FSMA implementation and menu labelling may be front and center right now, but we must also watch changing weather patterns in government agency nutrition considerations and how other disciplines, such as environmental concerns, are beginning to shape definitions of wellness. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: Food retailers find allies in social media followers Retailers, manufacturers look to strike the right balance on the front end How to engage millennials through customization and curation Food retailers come together at the dinner table during FMI Connect Experts: Using mobile technology to enhance the dining and shopping experience Q&A: FMI CEO Leslie Sarasin on the key takeaways from FMI Connect 2015 originally published by SmartBlogs

I recently watched a high school state track and field championship. At the beginning of the evening, the excitement among the athletes was palpable. Each athlete and team had such determination and grit — but, of course, not all of them were going to win their races or the meet. At the end of the evening, I watched as one coach brought his female and male athletes together. Some had won their events, others had placed, and others did not. The young women and men did not win their overall championships, though they came in second and third, respectively. It was clear they had wanted to do better. The coach rallied his team in the middle of the track, with their arms linked around one another, and talked about their journey through the season. He celebrated their accomplishments as individuals and as a team. After tears, hugs and laughter, the team walked away from this impressive display of coaching excited to train over the summer and head into the next season. Just as teams and athletes lose and move on, we can learn valuable lessons from how coaches and athletes manage what some might consider failure. Not all teams can be the champions of their sport — there can only be one. Coaches routinely work with athletes to help them manage failure and rebound to be even better. Here are some of the best tips I have gleaned from sports that can help employees (athletes) and managers (coaches) better manage setbacks and failures. 1. Clearly define success. Dictionaries define failure as a lack of success, but its true definition is personal and subjective. Amanda Scarborough, ESPN softball analyst and coach, stresses that coaches and managers must clearly define what constitutes success, mediocrity and failure. Lack of clarity from the coach about the ultimate goal sends conflicting messages and creates confusion and insecurity. Good coaches tell and show their players what they expect. Amanda also points out that winning the game may not be the only definition of success. Similarly, business managers must clearly define success, failure and mediocrity and outline specific outcomes and directions. Just as coaches review winning plays and techniques, strong managers provide examples of successful projects and outcomes, and coach their employees to the desired outcomes. John Wooden, the famous basketball coach, once said that the journey (the practice) is better than the end (the game). Wooden’s philosophy was never to stress winning; he believed the outcomes would simply be a result of the team’s collective preparation. 2. Fail fast and move on. In his book "Players First," University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari stresses the need for players to "fail fast" so they can learn from their mistakes, make corrections and move on. He explains that bouncing back faster leads to success faster. This advice also holds true in the business world. Gail Kelly, the CEO of Australia’s second‐largest bank, explains, "How are you going to learn and how are you going to innovate unless you fail? You need to fail fast, quickly, and then get up and off you go again." Adapting to a rapidly‐changing world requires the ability to fail fast, make the necessary adjustments and move forward with confidence. Managers can play a valuable role by helping their employees learn how to bounce back.Even successful companies embrace failures and figure out how to move past them proactively. The history of business has consistently shown the utility of failure a as springboard to success. Grey Advertising actively promotes the idea that one must try and often fail in order to succeed. On its company culture page, Grey highlights the quarterly Heroic Awards, noting that innovation occurs "by embracing the importance of trying, failing, dusting yourself off, and trying again." The award serves as a strong symbol for employees to know that it is okay to be imperfect and to keep working toward success. Similarly, in an October 2013 Forbes article, Halah Touryalai profiled the odyssey of the Domino’s pizza chain, which in 2009 put its CEO in a commercial to distinctively acknowledge that Domino’s pizza did not taste good. Patrick Doyle publicly apologized for Domino’s failure to deliver a quality product and promised to improve the recipe. This risky and honest move paid off. Domino’s 2013 revenue was $1.8 billion, it is growing faster than its competitors and opening more locations. 3. Recognize when to rally. Don Shula is the all-time winningest coach in the NFL. Spending 31 years as a pro football coach, he holds the record for most career wins and is the only coach to have had teams in six Super Bowls. Shula had a "24 hour rule," a policy of looking forward instead of retreating from the loss. He allowed himself, his coaching staff and his players only 24 hours to celebrate a victory or wallow over a defeat. During those 24 hours, Shula encouraged them to feel their emotions of success or failure as deeply as they could. The next day, it was time to put their focus and energy into preparing for their next challenge. Like the best coaches, managers should routinely stress to employees that everyone makes mistakes, and the sooner they accept this fact, the easier it will be to recover. As Margie Warrell noted in a recent article: "If you’ve made a mistake - whether taking the wrong job, or not delivering the right result, or simply not managing yourself or others as well as you’d have liked - the most important thing is never to let it define you." 4. Taking yourself out of the game altogether can be costly. Coaches stress that players need to have the courage to take the big shot, to reach for the prize instead of giving in to failure. Research shows that task-focused thinking after failure leads to improved performance. Self-talk that focuses on correcting errors and attaining goals will motivate you to keep trying and move on from a setback. The fear of failure can prevent employees from trying new things and achieving their personal best, so managers can help make it safe for employees to fail by emphasizing that failure does not define them, and by alleviating their self‐doubt by encouraging them to try again. As Michael Jordan said, "I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But, I can’t accept not trying." Managers must recognize that in business, as in sports, failure is possible and frequent. What happens afterward is what is important. I offer you these words to live by from coach Tom Krause, the co-author of "Chicken Soup for the Soul": "There are no failures - just experiences and your reactions to them." ​​ Christine M. Riordan Christine M. Riordan, PhD, is the 10th president of Adelphi University in New York. Her writing focuses on diversity and inclusion, leadership effectiveness, and career success. Follow her on Twitter at @Chris_M_Riordan.​  If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: Unleash your organization’s innovation potential Running scared when failure occurs Resilience: Your tool for success How do you motivate your team after an unexpected setback? Thinking of hiring an executive coach? Consider this 4 leadership lessons we can learn from sports originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education will shine a light on back-to-school teaching and learning trends during July. In this blog post, education leader Fred Ende shares how an interactive professional development summit revealed regional trends and future initiatives. As the temperature warms here in the Northeast, it’s a great time to talk about what’s heating up regarding teaching and learning for next year. After all, the Staples and Office Depot commercials have already started, so whether we’re ready or not, the 2015-16 school year is almost here. In our region, we’ve spent the last few years focused on changes brought along by the Common Core State Standards — or Common Core Learning Standards as they’re called in New York — and the implications of changes to our Annual Professional Performance Review system, which are set to change again this coming year, but we’ll save that for another post. As these initiatives have gone from "new" to "newer" to more "routine," districts in our section of the state have had the opportunity to move toward focusing more and more on their own personal initiatives. This past spring, we conducted a professional development summit with our districts. During this learning session, district leaders shared with us their current PD initiatives as well as those they hoped to focus on in 2015-16. We asked them to do this on large chart paper, and then posted these up around the room. We took time for a gallery walk, and then gave our district leaders an opportunity to reflect on what they saw and what that meant for our work as a region. When we analyzed the results of the charts, and thought about the conversations we had during — and after — our PD summit, we saw overlap around a number of themes. One take-away for us was that STEM/STEAM work continues to be a high priority for much of our region. STEM/STEAM But it isn’t just STEM and STEAM "content" that districts are interested in focusing on. Sure, this still remains important, with much work in our region focused on additional "on-ramps" to math acceleration, how New York will create new science standards, and what technology integration truly "looks" like. That being said, our districts also want to focus deeply on the thinking that exists in much STEM/STEAM work, the thinking that requires us to design, and just as importantly, to "do." Let me share three topics with you that kept reappearing in our analysis of the PD Summit charts: Makerspaces and making Computer programming and coding Mindset and mindfulness Take a moment to consider the connections between these. Do you see a theme? When my supervisor and I took a look at the results and engaged in discussion with district leaders over the last few months, we discovered that our districts, almost unanimously, were interested in pursuing topics where students — and adults) -would be thrust into scenarios where they were actively designing with both their hands and minds. In addition, these recurring themes spoke to the emphasis our region is putting on failing forward, the idea that the only way to truly succeed is by making mistakes, and more often than not, failing in such a way that requires you to rethink your entire process. And this is a great place for the laser of learning to aim for, right? Whether designing a makerspace, exploring the "If This, Then That" thinking process behind coding, or building metacognitive processes through an exploration of mindfulness, our districts are excited to delve even deeper into helping learners marry "thinking" and "doing." And who wouldn’t be? But this story doesn’t end there. As a regional education resource organization, we’re committed to helping our districts get there by fueling their fire for learning. My supervisor, who designed the structure for our district leader gatherings a number of years back, and I have used the information gained from our professional development summit to work with districts to design a coding subcommittee to help us chart the way forward. In our first two meetings, we’ve not only laid out goals for this initiative, but we’ve explored deliverables as well — a series of "Getting Started" workshops, a "Coding to Learn" conference and learning sessions for our district leaders tied to building an even deeper understanding of how, exactly, coding helps promote the love of failure. In addition, we’ve worked to create a makerspace support series that will begin with a number of introductory sessions. We held our first one two weeks ago and were overjoyed with the response. And later, a "Basic Training" that will run throughout the fall of 2015. How are we addressing mindset and mindfulness? We’ve teamed up with a wonderful consultant — a recently retired educator from one of our local districts — who is deeply familiar with Carol Dweck’s work and who is a certified mindfulness instructor. We’ll be providing three workshops tied to mindset, mindfulness and connecting these ways of thinking to instruction and assessment. What’s the big idea? Simply that when we identify what’s hot in a given region, we need to make sure we can help keep that fire burning. By extension, our needs are our districts’ needs, and the more effectively we can meet them, the more our region, as a whole, will benefit. Whether we can provide what amounts to kindling, or we can supply a much larger fuel source, we’re always better off lighting the fire of learning rather than letting it languish. Fred Ende (@fredende) is the director of SCIENCE 21 (www.pnwboces.org/science21) and currently serves as Regional Science Coordinator for Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES. Fred blogs at www.fredende.blogspot.com and at ASCD EDge. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering educational leadership, special education and more. Related Posts: Grow like the grass Whole child? Whole learner Be the change you want to see Moving from professional development to personalized learning How to rally your community around education Fueling the fire of learning originally published by SmartBlogs

Leading connected classrooms has become the rallying cry in many schools. There is a desire for all students to learn by interacting with people, place and planet, but this doesn’t always play well with legacy systems and desires to focus on test scores in schools. For schools that can reshape their success metrics, there is a more preferable road forward. Here are five key elements for building connected classrooms: Student voice. The best schools are amplifying student voice through publishing, creating and including students in important decisions. Connected schools have partnerships in the community and beyond. Service learning. Connected classrooms are truly weaving together their head, hands, and heart with their community and beyond. Connected classrooms are finding a way to create, make, and design everyday around real, authentic problems. Students as assets. Connected classrooms and communities see their students as assets, not liabilities. This means that they accept that some of the best ideas will come from the young bright minds throughout the community. Analyze where you are with these elements to truly see if your places of learning are approaching the threshold of quality connected classrooms. Robert Dillon is the director of innovation for the Affton School District in Saint Louis, Mo. He has the opportunity to speaker around the country on a variety of topics that support learning. Dillon just released his new book, "Leading Connected Classroom: The Heart and Soul of Learning."   ***** Tech Tips is a content collaboration between SmartBrief Education and GreyED Solutions. Have a tech tip to share? Contact us at techtips@greyedsolutions.com Miss a Tech Tip? Visit our Tech Tip archive. ***** Related Posts: No Related Posts Tech Tip: 5 elements of the connected classroom originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter. Which is harder: improving a slacker’s performance or getting a high-performer promoted? Getting a slacker to improve is more difficult: 70% Finding a way to get a high-performer promoted is harder: 30% Slackers Rule. Finding that slacker’s motivation is a tricky task. They have the skills but they’re simply unwilling to apply them. It’s inherently a motivation challenge and your job as their leader is to find a way to light their fire. First, talk with them. Get them to explain why they’re not excited by their work. You’d be amazed at what they’ll share. Consider changing their role, changing incentives, or eliminating dissatisfiers that prevent them from applying themselves. If you can unlock their motivation, you should see instant productivity improvements. Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of "Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results" and "One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership." Related Posts: How do you invest your time and energy in your team members? How effectively do you recruit and hire outstanding talent? How quickly does your organization make decisions? How does your organization deal with "bad behavior"? How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? Leadership : Which is harder: improving a slacker’s performance or getting a high-performer promoted? originally published by SmartBlogs

I urge you: Stop trying to motivate people! It’s frustrating for everyone involved and it just doesn’t work. An important truth has emerged from the compelling science of motivation: Motivating people does not work because people are already motivated. People are always motivated. The question is not if a person is motivated, but why. For example, imagine you have given the same requirement to three sales people: enter sales activity into Salesforce every week. It’s a mistake to assume they are motivated if they do it and not motivated if they don’t do it (or don’t do it well). Each of them is motivated, but with a different quality of motivation based on their reasons for using Salesforce, or not. Through a motivation conversation with each of them, you might discover: Jake inputs into Salesforce every week, but the quality of what he enters is subpar because he resents every moment of it — the only reason he’s doing it is to get you off his back. Debbie thought about it and concluded that she won’t use Salesforce; she values serving her clients and rationalizes that it’s more important to interact with them than sit in front of a computer. Lily chooses to capture her sales activity thoroughly and regularly because she believes she is contributing to more accurate forecasting and planning; using Salesforce is an act of organizational citizenship behavior that feels good to her. In each case, the reps have appraised your request (either consciously or subconsciously), come to their own conclusions and gone in their own motivational direction. The point: Instead of asking if people are motivated to use Salesforce, ask why they are, or are not, using it as requested. All your sales reps are motivated — just for different reasons. And, those reasons are things you can facilitate through a motivation conversation and they can potentially shift. Jake Through a motivation conversation, Jake may become aware that being pressured to use Salesforce to avoid "the stick" is harmful to his sense of well-being and doesn’t result in a quality effort. To be optimally motivated, Jake needs to use Salesforce for his own reasons that are aligned with his own values. That prompts important questions. Does Jake have clearly developed values around selling your products or services? Have you ever talked about values with Jake? A values conversation may be in order — not to share your values or reiterate the organization’s values, but to help Jake clarify his own values. It is impossible for you to help people align their goals to meaningful values if they don’t know what their values are! Debbie Through a motivation conversation, Debbie could explore her value for serving clients. Are drop-in meetings more effective than the 15 minutes it takes to enter information on Salesforce? Through Debbie’s mindful examination of her options, she might realize that by capturing information in a central place her support staff can proactively respond — benefiting her clients even more than do her spontaneous visits. Lily Having a motivation conversation with Lily, who is doing what you wish all your reps would do, gives her the opportunity to reflect on how good she feels about using Salesforce, reinforcing her dedication and sustaining her efforts over time. As a leader, you can learn to position your requests so your staff is more likely to experience optimal motivation, but the truth is: Every person is motivated for individual reasons. Your role as a leader is to have conversations with your people to facilitate their understanding of those reasons, the implications for their current motivational outlook, and their alternate choices. Motivation conversations with your staff won’t guarantee their shift from a suboptimal to an optimal motivational outlook, but they will help your people make more conscious and healthy decisions by understanding their underlying reasons for doing, or not doing, what is being requested. What they choose to do with their expanded awareness and your request might just surprise — and delight — you. Susan Fowler’s best-selling book, "Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work … And What Does," builds upon compelling science to provide alternatives to traditional approaches to motivation. She presents a cutting-edge framework, model, and course of action to help leaders shape a workplace where people flourish while producing sustainable results. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: How to increase your team’s productivity in minutes each month Who knows what employees really want? Trademarks of a great boss: Provide growth opportunities Closing the "discretionary effort" gap What would your best boss do today? Why motivating people doesn’t work — and what does originally published by SmartBlogs

Go back to school with SmartBrief Education’s new Remind class. Sign up to receive weekly updates with links to tips, tools and other resources for the back-to-school season. This month’s updates will explore Disruptive Innovation. We’ll share articles about professional-development trends, connected teaching and learning and ed-tech tips. Educators, administrators, students, parents and others will benefit from enrolling in the class. Join our back-to-school journey today! Related Posts: No Related Posts Join SmartBrief on Remind for tips, tools originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education will shine a light on back-to-school teaching and learning trends during July. In this blog post, educational psychology professor Dorothy L. Espelag outlines three ways to take bullying-prevention initiatives to the next level. "Kids will be kids." "It’s just a right of passage." These are two common phrases frequently used to justify and minimize childhood bullying. However, instead of giving kids a "thick skin," recent research sheds light on the dangerous mental and physical health problems associated with bullying. As a result, such research has sparked action in countless school communities, that are now in search of ready-to-implement solutions that will help cultivate more positive, safe classroom environments. Evaluating the damage One startling piece of research examined data from more than 4,000 participants in the U.K. Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children study and 1,273 participants from the U.S. Great Smoky Mountain study. After evaluating subjects at ages 13 and 18, the findings revealed that of the 680 13-year-olds who said they were bullied frequently — more than once a week — almost 15% were depressed at 18-years-old. Furthermore, of the 1450 teenagers bullied one to three times over six months time — more than 7% were depressed at age 18. In total, up to 30% of depression in the sample of 18-year-olds may be attributed to being bullied as a teenager. Additionally, there are long-lasting physical effects from this behavior. Recent research also found that those who have been bullied as children are more likely to be overweight or obese as adults, putting them at a higher risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses. Specifically, more than a quarter of women who were occasionally or frequently bullied as children were obese at age 45, compared to 19% of those who had never been bullied. The victims of bullies are not the only ones at risk, either. Witnesses to bullying and harassment are more likely to have elevated levels of substance abuse. The long-term effects of childhood bullying has caused many parents and schools to identify strategies and solutions to address harmful bullying behaviors and reduce the negative effects over time. Equipping your community to create positive change Having dedicated my career to bullying prevention research, one strong belief of mine, and what my research has revealed, is that any positive change requires a community-wide effort. Put simply, it takes an entire school community — parents, students, teachers, administrators and other faculty — to build a positive school environment that supports bullying prevention. It’s more than an awareness day, an anti-bullying policy or an anonymous tip line. While these are all positive steps, they are not complete. There has to be a more comprehensive, integrated approach to really achieve long term change. To change behavior and see long-term improvements in school climate, bullying needs to be addressed in three ways: Reporting incidents: It is vital for victims, bystanders and even bullies to know that they have a voice. Historically, the reporting of incidents has been done anecdotally, however, providing students, "digital natives," with the ability to report incidents from anywhere at anytime can increase reporting likeliness as well as increase the quality of the report. Reviewing the incidents: It is most effective for the bullying reports to be reviewed by selected, trained administrators. Because of the serious effects bullying can have, it is important for each incident to be reviewed, validated and documented. A formal review and documentation process can provide pivotal insight into school climate and hot topics that require further attention. Resolving incidents: To facilitate positive change, school communities should be equipped with research based restorative resolution strategies and techniques that facilitate teachable moments to deter future negative behavior. Bullying has become a nationally recognized problem, and it is time for communities to buy-in to treating it as such. With all 50 states having passed anti-bullying laws, the next steps are to equip all with comprehensive, effective resources to combat bullying. From the school bus drivers and janitors, to the parents, teachers, and students — all must be included in anti-bullying programs and given the necessary resources to react appropriately to incidents, before, during, and after they happen. Dorothy L. Espelag, is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering educational leadership, special education and more. Related Posts: No Related Posts Positive resolution strategies reduce bullying originally published by SmartBlogs

Water is the one integral ingredient you need to operate your restaurant. The food you serve, cooking you do and proper sanitation practices you use probably wouldn’t exist without water. But for restaurateurs, the big problem is you likely are wasting an enormous amount of the precious liquid every single day. Think about it. A seemingly small leak, if left unfixed, could literally cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year, and tens of thousands of gallons of water wasted (or more).   According to the Food Service Technology Center, these leaks — as well as thawing food under a running faucet — can drain you dry financially as well as impact our local streams, rivers and farms that all need water to survive. Use a drip gauge to understand how much leaks are costing you. You might be surprised! (Photo: NRA Conserve) So why aren’t we conserving more water? Perhaps we’re just thinking about it in the wrong way. Here are three facts that could help bring about that change: The cost of water is rising faster than inflation. According to Circle of Blue, a nonprofit water research organization, the price of water shot up 6% in 30 major U.S. cities in 2014 alone. That’s a 33% increase in water prices over the last five years. In contrast, according to U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, average inflation in the United States was 1.6% in 2014 and the Consumer Price Index (an estimate for inflation) rose only 9% from 2010 to 2014. Less than 3% of all water is fresh water. Yes, it’s true. According to the S. Environmental Protection Agency, only 3% of the earth’s water is fresh water and 97% is salty. The water we collect from streams and in aquifers is limited, and most countries, including ours, are vastly overusing these resources. These issues are summed up nicely in a National Geographic video: Why Care About Water? If you waste water, you waste energy and vice versa. Bet you don’t often think that water needs to be pumped into your restaurant, that it has to be treated in sewer plants, and returned to streams. All of this requires energy. Alternately, many power plants often need water to cool down equipment, which consumes water through evaporation. California serves as a good example. Twenty percent of the state’s electricity and 30% of the state’s non-power plant natural gas (i.e. natural gas not used to produce electricity) is used to move water to farms, houses and businesses. The average retail value of the electricity used across the state to move this water is approximately $9 billion a year. Think about these three facts when you see your employees wasting water, when you find leaks in your sinks, or if you’re over-watering your lawn to the point where water runs on the sidewalk. You may not currently have drought conditions in your area, but our water supply is limited and uses more resources than just the water itself. Visit the National Restaurant Association’s Conserve program for low-cost best practices on preserving your water supply. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: 3 easy and inexpensive ways to save water Q-and-A: NRA Conserve director talks restaurant sustainability Don’t get boxed in: How restaurants can save big with cardboard recycling 5 steps for practicing sustainability in 2015 Reflections on food culture: The forces that shape consumer behavior 3 facts to stop you from wasting water originally published by SmartBlogs

The Young Entrepreneur Council is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. Read previous SmartBlogs posts by YEC. If you enjoy this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our newsletters on small business and entrepreneurialism. How do you ensure that onboarding new employees is done efficiently — and without disrupting other employees? 1. Continually record and pass on knowledge We have our current employees continually update manuals and on-boarding materials as they learn something new about their role so that their knowledge can be passed down to future employees. I try to ensure that there is overlap between the person leaving and the person coming on board so that the new employee can learn from them and tasks can be seamlessly shifted from one employee to the next. — Diana Goodwin, AquaMobile Swim School 2. Systemize everything We’ve standardized the tools and equipment we use across the organization to make both on-boarding and day-to-day work more efficient. All developers use the same type of laptop, OS and software tools. When a new hire starts, they are up to speed within our codebase in an hour and can start contributing. We choose our tools carefully and invest time to ensure they continue to make us efficient. — Arian Radmand, CoachUp 3. Create a new employee Basecamp group We created a "New Employee Checklist" template in Basecamp that we use for onboarding employes. This does two things: it gets new hires familiar with Basecamp, our project management software, and it also helps ensure no steps are skipped. Employees are able to see all required tasks (choosing benefits, installing software, etc.) and check each one off as it is completed. — Brittany Hodak, ZinePak 4. Use training modules Creating systems and having a rough idea of what you’ll cover during training is just the beginning. Set up custom training modules so you can put new employees on autopilot and they can learn via written instructions, short videos and practical application. Start with the tasks every new employee will use like email account set up. Best of all, you’ll be able to observe how they work immediately. — Kelly Azevedo, She’s Got Systems 5. Create an employee wiki Create a wiki of all information relevant to a new hire: key policies and procedures, how processes are currently managed, and who is currently responsible for what. As employees develop new processes and institutional knowledge, they can add it to the wiki, making a living, breathing document that is relevant for all future hires. — Sathvik Tantry, FormSwift 6. Set them up with a partner/mentor In addition to providing new hires with the appropriate materials to study, it’s a good idea to partner them with someone who has plenty of experience in the same field. This allows the new employee to get up to speed as quickly as possible as he or she can watch and study what the mentor does. Gradually, the new employee should be given more and more tasks to complete independently. — Shawn Porat, Fortune Cookie Advertising 7. Make sure everything they need is in one place My employees are asked to be extremely independent, and are assigned deadlines with the absolute expectation of meeting them. New team members use Basecamp so every resource they need is in one place. I also use LastPass to provide access to other programs. By assigning tasks and giving full access to everyone, business goals stay completely organized. — Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now 8. Create a welcome committee The best practice to ensure a smooth incorporation process of new employees is to continually train mentors to be their go-to people. This person is always available to assist the trainee and make them feel like part of the team. They assume the responsibilities of a typical welcome committee, helping the trainee get accustomed to the company, its values, the office and their own daily tasks. — David Tomas, Cyberclick 9. Provide a strong support system We provide a strong support system for every new employee. First, we provide training that covers the company, leadership, benefits and procedures. Every employee is assigned a coach who explains the specifics of the job and assists with any issues the new hire faces. Our goal is to make new employees feel supported as they adjust to a new company and clients. — Alfredo Atanacio, Uassist.ME 10. Hold a welcome orientation On day one, we have a welcome orientation for the new employee by walking through the entire office and introduce him/her to everyone in the company one by one. This way both the new employee and existing team get familiarized with one another, minimizing any disruption. — Fenella Kim, Reliance Star Payment Services Related Posts: How can leaders can assess the work readiness of new graduates? When do you let an underperforming employee go? What resources can help entrepreneurs be better managers? Common mistakes leaders make during periods of fast growth What would you change about your company’s 2014? How do you efficiently onboard new employees? originally published by SmartBlogs

Organizations are made up of teams and individuals who execute specific tasks to drive a greater, overarching business goal. However, the link between individual actions and broader organizational goals is often unclear. Most employees, including leaders, do not realize the impact that their actions (or lack of) can have on business operations. When key business tasks are carried out, whether on small projects or large initiatives, accountable behavior is essential. It is most significant when expressed as timely follow-through on commitments despite shifting priorities, conflicting goals and role ambiguity. The need for accountability is clearly evident during moments that test leadership, but it can often go unnoticed when it comes to smaller, everyday activities and behaviors. If left unchecked, a lack of accountability can have a serious impact on business performance and operations. As such, spotting the signs early and addressing the issue strategically is imperative. Some signs of insufficient or lack of accountability are: Ongoing missed deliverables Duplication of effort Lack of ownership for the quality of work Giving excuses Blaming others Putting off important tasks Doing the minimum Acting confused and playing helpless These can all lead to missed deadlines, scapegoating, and overruns as well as severely impact productivity and business performance. According to our 2014 Pulse Survey, only 18 percent of respondents reported the highest level of accountability in their organizations. This reveals that the vast majority of respondents feel most individuals within their organization did not take account of their actions and honor the commitments they made to others as much as they could or should. The main reason for this lack of accountability is leaders themselves do not model accountability. In fact, according to Forum’s survey, less than half of leaders were seen as behaving in a way that promotes accountability in their people. They were unable to keep their promises, model responsibility, ensure clear goals and even provide necessary resources and abilities. Key behaviors that demonstrate a leader’s personal commitment to accountability and encourage peers to also take more responsibility for their actions are: Setting clear standards and expectations with teams around what accountability is and the importance it has on achieving and meeting goals/expectations; Defining who is accountable for successfully completing assignments and achieving objectives; Being open to feedback and problem-solving without placing blame when deadlines, tasks or deliverables are missed; Teaching and demonstrating how to address people when they do not keep commitments and providing guidance on how to interact when holding one another accountable; Applying appropriate consequences to team members who are regularly not able to meet established standards; and Empowering others to hold each other accountable by establishing standards, provided training and role modelling. While role modeling is a key behavior of high-performing leaders that influences accountability among teams, these leaders have to be careful that accountability is not seen solely as a disciplinary action. In such cases, accountability can become an overemphasis on the need to hold the workforce to account when it does not uphold its commitment. Instead, leaders can influence accountability by highlighting and celebrating achievements and giving positive examples during regular employee and team interactions so peers can learn from real experiences. By applying these practices, leaders and their teams can establish internal and external contracts, clarify the conditions that are needed to fulfill them, and provide a process of giving and receiving feedback to keep commitments on track, which can then provide a foundation for further measurement. For example, your organization is asked to roll out a program that came from the corporate office in Europe. Taking accountability means that instead of implementing it exactly as is, you localize the program, ensure that its spirit remains intact, and intended results are achieved and will go a long way. This way, you are not just ticking off boxes on a checklist — you also feel ownership in the actions taken to make the program work. Improving personal accountability is a vital step in increasing employee engagement, which in turn boosts productivity, as individuals are more inclined to honor the commitments they make to others and are energized to put in extra effort. If an organization’s workforce and leaders are aware of their responsibilities, enthusiastic about reaching individual and shared goals, and meet expectations, overall organizational performance will improve. At the end of the day, smaller, personal commitments count the most, as it drives employees to be responsible for their actions, engage in their work and effectively contribute to the bigger picture. Russ Becker is the president of The Forum Corporation. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: Business IS behavior Questions to guide you in understanding your organizational culture Ensure corporate citizenship with values accountability Create accountability for performance and values in your culture What would your best boss do today? How to nurture accountability with employees originally published by SmartBlogs

What do we mean by "student success"? The proposed Every Child Achieves Act of 2015, does not offer provisions for student well-being as a part of the definition of "achievement or student success." The questions become, then, if the vision for our system of education is "every child succeeds" what does this mean? How are we defining success in the 21st century? Are there going to be effective measures of success outcomes and new teaching and learning methods and/or counseling interventions that produce these desired outcomes? With the overwhelming psychological and physical well-being needs of young people today, why does this major policy not include student well-being? "The bill recognizes that states, working with school districts, teachers, and others, have the responsibility for creating accountability systems to ensure all students are learning and prepared for success" (Every Child Achieves Act of 2015 Summary). Is the assumption that if a child can read or meet proficiency levels in math and science that they are prepared for success in life, both personally and professionally? The Bill still requires the focus upon testing in three core subjects, with major changes being how to hold schools and states accountable for these academic outcomes. Where is the type of creative, new thinking that more accurately reflects the new methods for empowering student well-being? The most direct student success pathway: Self knowledge Our young people require additional support to succeed in school, careers and life. These supports are a combination of personal counseling for personal awareness about life purpose, dreams, and well-being; career counseling for career match or fit; and, academic curricula that supports the development of competencies. This view of student success that combines the personal, with the career, with the academic competencies represents a shift away from a system that still envisions learning about three subjects as the pathway to success in life. As an expert in positive psychology and producing psychological well-being outcomes from schooling processes, I suggest that if Senators Alexander and Murray shift their focus to psychological attributes of students, e.g. purpose in life, dreams for their lives, happiness and awareness of emotions, intrinsic motivations, among others, then students will succeed at much higher levels and will be better prepared for a positive life course trajectory — one filled with well-being. The breakthrough work being done in positive psychology, educational psychology, and mind, brain and education (MBE) certainly offers new definitions of success and pathways to achieve. The research overwhelmingly concludes that the most direct student success pathway is through greater self-understanding with all of the inner psychological attributions of the self. The compelling need for well-being in education The issue of child well-being is becoming more and more acute as life in modern society becomes more and more complex as evidenced by the American Freshman Survey, an annual report that is now entering its 50th year. The survey collected responses from about 153,000 full-time, first-year students at 227 four-year public and private institutions in 2014. When asked to rate their emotional health in relation to other people their age, only 50.7% of the students reported that their emotional health was "in the highest 10%" of people or "above average." It’s the lowest rate since the survey began measuring self-ratings of emotional health in 1985, demonstrating that college and career readiness standards need to include well-being standards and measurement of well-being outcomes. Academic skills or well-being understanding? Self-knowledge is the number one protective factor for children’s mental health and a positive life course trajectory. Educating for well-being requires that we teach self-knowledge in order to produce emotionally, psychologically, physically whole children who are equipped with essential 21st century attributes and flourish in school, careers, and life. To deliver on the promise of education in the 21st century don’t we owe it our students to consider their total well-being and positive life course trajectories as they pass through our classrooms? And not merely how well they do academically? Henry Brzycki has more than 30 years of experience providing leadership to the fields of education and psychology. Brzycki founded The Brzycki Group, where he pioneered positive psychology and strengths-based counseling methods. He is the author of "The Self in Schooling: Theory and Practice -How to Create Happy, Healthy, Flourishing Children in the 21st Century" and creator of the iSelf model. Related Posts: 5 new realities in education CTE: Creating opportunities for students Why we shouldn’t glorify billionaires who dropped out of school How is the U.S. faring in the great #skillsrace? How making expands students’ visions of themselves Student success: A new definition for the U.S. Senate originally published by SmartBlogs

When Old Navy turned 20 last year, they held a celebration meant to put the spotlight back on their fans — as well as earn some real-world buzz. Using 20-foot machines in Times Square and Hollywood, they recreated rasterized images of their fans’ selfies by blowing up nearly 1,000 balloons. How it works: Fans tweet a photo to Old Navy with #selfiebration, Old Navy’s community managers manually approve and prep the images, the machines illustrate them in balloons, and Old Navy creates a gif to tweet back to the fan of their selfie being blown up. But to make it a success, Old Navy’s Associate Marketing Manager of Social and Digital Media Angela Scibelli says they worked across teams to develop a fully integrated campaign. In her presentation at SocialMedia.org’s Member Meeting, Angela shares these key points: Influencers can be more powerful than you think. Angela’s team worked to create a party-like atmosphere around the physical spaces by bringing in social media influencers to pump up the crowd. She says that while she expected the influencers to bring a bigger digital audience, they weren’t prepared for the mobs of fans who showed up in person to meet their favorite Vine stars. Keep the barrier to entry low. After doing some market research, Angela’s team knew Old Navy target audiences were already sharing tons of selfies. To get them to participate in this campaign, they piggybacked on what their customers were already doing. Leverage your employees. While Angela’s team sent out email blasts to tell Old Navy headquarters employees to promote the event, she says next time she’ll include their thousands of store managers to spread the word even further. Watch Angela’s full presentation below: Check out her slide deck. Related Posts: Andy’s Answers: How EA puts social at the center of their media newsroom Andy’s Answers: How Toyota launched the new Camry through social media Andy’s Answers: How Keurig earns its customers’ love Andy’s Answers: How Dunkin’ Donuts learned to celebrate its fans Andy’s Answers: Why EMC had to rein in its "Social Sprawl" Andy’s Answers: How Old Navy brought a social campaign to the real world originally published by SmartBlogs

It’s time to tee it up, ladies! Too many women are left out of boardrooms and corner offices across America because they don’t play golf. This may sound extreme, but I’m not kidding. Think about it. Have you ever been asked to play in a work golf outing and politely declined? You validated your decision by saying that you "had too much going on" and could stand some quiet time in the office when everyone else was out on the links. What you don’t realize is that you just missed out on five to eight hours of quality time with your bosses, colleagues and clients. When do you have meetings that last that long? When have you ever sat with your boss for seven hours? If you think about it like that, you can’t afford to miss out on an opportunity like this again. The next time this happens, I implore you to say YES. Here’s why: You don’t have to be good. You don’t even need to be kind of good. You don’t have to wear a perfectly coordinated preppy outfit. You don’t have to know the rules. You don’t have to own the latest equipment. You do, however, need to bring the following to your day on the links: a polo shirt and an appropriate set of shorts or golf skirt (read: nothing too short), a set of clubs (you can rent them at most golf courses so don’t fret), golf balls (easily purchase in the course pro shop), the wherewithal to pick up when you’re playing slowly, and a positive attitude. Like many things in life, your golfing experience will be determined by your attitude and expectations. This is difficult for highly successful people to grasp because golf is a game of conundrums. For example, a stationary target should be simple to hit, and swinging harder should yield a longer shot. A good attitude will guarantee that you have a great day even if you couldn’t hit the ball in the air or hit it over the water. Golf is a difficult game in the beginning, which is why I recommend that people take lessons from a PGA or LPGA professional. If lessons aren’t an option right away, you can still say yes to whoever is beckoning you to join their foursome. Corporate golf outings are commonly played in a scramble format. A "scramble" means that everyone hits a drive, then you all drop your golf ball to hit your second shot from a selected favorable location, and so on. This serves as a "no-pressure" opportunity for those who are less golf-inclined. You could be the person who sinks the putt that saves the team. YOU could be the hero in the foursome! You will never know if you sit in your office responding to e-mails all afternoon. The best part about a golf outing is that (1) you usually get a prize of some sort for participating, and especially (2) the outing is typically followed by lunch or dinner depending on the time that you tee off. After a day on the links, this is the perfect time to unwind and relive the glory that you felt from the putt you made on No. 17. It’s also a perfect way to spend some more quality time with your group and network with others. People immediately have common ground. You can finally chat with that person that you always see at the copier because you can talk about golf! You never know, your playing partner may promote you to partner eventually — all because you made that putt! The big thing is to have fun, enjoy the fresh air with the people around you, and keep up with the group ahead of you. To keep up the pace of play (a hot button for most golfers), pick up your golf ball if you’ve hit it more than eight times and drop it on the green. You don’t have to keep score, but be honest, as too many people sink themselves in business dealings by cheating on the golf course. If you cheat on the golf course, there’s a certainty that you can’t be trusted in more important ventures. Here’s a little secret that all of you beginners out there must remember: We all started out with golf once, too. It was just as maddening for us as it may be for you. If you’ve whiffed the ball 90 times, we’ve whiffed it 990 times. You hit it in the water hazard. Well, there are about 10 dozen of my old golf balls in the lake at my home course. At one point, hitting it over the water was such a task that I started stocking my golf bag with range balls (I don’t endorse stealing range balls). It’s my sincerest hope that you say YES to your next golfing opportunity. And prepare to say YES to your next promotion! Katie Brophy is the women’s golf coach at Georgetown University. a graduate of Notre Dame with a degree in sociology, was a four-time National Golf Coach Association Scholar-Athlete, a two-time team captain and MVP at Notre Dame. She earned her master’s degree at Indiana and then finished her course work for her Ph.D. in human performance. John Keyser is the founder and principal of Common Sense Leadership. He works with executives helping them develop organizational cultures that will produce outstanding financial results year after year, and a striving for continuous improvement, theirs and their team’s. His contact information is john@johnkeysercoach.com and 202-236-2800. Related Posts: Women, leadership and improved success Emotional intelligence: Key to our success Are women less ambitious? Confessions of a corporate dropout Career success 2.0: An evolving definition Blazing your own path to success Teeing up for success: Saying yes to corporate golf events and other business golf originally published by SmartBlogs

(Photo:kaboompics.com/Pixabay) "We need to build a mobile app," is one of the most terrifying phrases that I’ve heard uttered over the past six months. Far too often, brands jump into building an app simply to check the box and without a thoughtful strategy in mind. Deciding to "go mobile" with no purpose is like deciding to go fishing without a fishing pole: success is highly unlikely without hooks. The impulse to go mobile is understandable, with more than 75% of mobile subscribers owning a smartphone and the average smartphone user reaching for his mobile phone 150 times a day (or far more in my case). Yes, not having a mobile app in 2015 is the equivalent of not having had a website in 2000. But I cringe when I hear marketers talk about mobile apps as nothing more than another "engagement" tool that simply replace the engagement tools of old. More often than not, marketers view the smartphone as nothing more than a screen that lots of people have and like to look at or a new form factor for a plastic card or a sheet of paper. And so, it’s no surprise that many marketers gravitate towards mobile app framework companies that promise to build them mobile apps, without any specific expertise in a utility that is meaningful to restaurant guests. These mobile app framework companies seem content with overpromising and under-delivering when it comes to utility, failing to deliver a compelling user experience and thus failing to deliver a meaningful return on the restaurant brand’s investment. I imagine the tradeshow floor conversation going something like this: Marketing Executive: We need to build a mobile app. App Salesperson: That’s great! We can build you a mobile app! ME: What could our mobile app do? AS: What would you want it to do? ME: What should we want it to do? AS: How about a game? ME: Millennials love games! Sold! The smartphone is so much more than a screen or a replacement for a plastic card or a sheet of paper. The smartphone is identifiable, contactable, interactive, web-enabled, location-aware and commerce-ready. The smartphone provides restaurant brands with a new way to do business with their loyal guests, enabling greater hospitality through enhanced service models that make the guest experience faster, more accurate, and more personal. The smartphone empowers the guest to order and pay from everywhere and the restaurant to accept orders and payments from everywhere. When restaurant brands come to Olo to build a mobile app, it’s always with this kind of reimagined service model in mind. Brands come to Olo to deploy a multi-channel digital ordering platform (call center, desktop web, mobile web, mobile app, and whatever comes next!) as the core of the mobile app experience. The restaurant brand then has a choice to make: 1) have Olo build the mobile app or 2) have a digital agency build the mobile app, utilizing Olo’s API for ordering-as-a-service. When restaurant brands want additional utilities (e.g. loyalty) incorporated into their mobile apps, they may want to choose the second option. Digital agencies like Bottle Rocket, Chaotic Moon, Push, Fueled, Fuzz Productions and Solertium are all solid partners to serve as mobile app developers, building on top of utility partner API’s to deliver a stellar mobile app experience. If your brand is thinking about "going mobile" or is stuck working with a mobile app framework company that’s incapable of adding the utilities to your mobile app that will make it worth a guest downloading and using, it’s time to rethink. To quote author and speaker Simon Sinek, "start with why." Why do you need to build a mobile app? What’s your brand’s purpose in going mobile? What’s the key utility that you’re hoping to provide? What would make you want to download your own app, if you truly think like one of your loyal guests? Decide on the utility that you want in your mobile app first and pursue relationships with best-of-breed utility players that can provide your brand with the utilities you need. Then talk to your utility provider partners about who they recommend build your mobile app. That’s the cleanest and clearest way to create a mobile app that your guests will love and one that will generate a meaningful return on your investment, not just check a box. Noah Glass is the Founder & CEO of Olo. Since 2005, Olo has helped restaurant brands increase revenue per square foot by delivering faster, more accurate, and more personal service through digital ordering. Today, over 10 million consumers use the Olo platform to order ahead and Skip the Line at the restaurants they love. _________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: How "grocerants," millennials and technology are changing the shopping landscape Does your business need a mobile makeover? Food retailers find allies in social media followers Experts: Using mobile technology to enhance the dining and shopping experience How the food industry is making sense of big data ‘We need to build a mobile app': agencies and utilities vs. frameworks originally published by SmartBlogs

When you are presenting your ideas, you don’t have to sublimate your personality. It may be your most important asset. Effective leaders know how to inject their personality into their ideas. How? One, think about what you want to say. Make a well-reasoned argument. Two, reflect on what your words really mean. Whom do they affect? What the benefits of your ideas? Three, add an anecdote from your own life — or lives of people you know — to make your message more memorable and compelling. Effective presenters connect with their audience on two levels: intellect and emotion. As a leader, you need to keep a balance between the two in order reach people’s hearts as well as their minds. Click here to view the embedded video. John Baldoni is chair of leadership development at N2Growth, is an internationally recognized leadership educator and executive coach. In 2014, Trust Across America named him to its list of top 100 most trustworthy business experts. Also in 2014, Inc.com named Baldoni to its list of top 100 leadership experts, and Global Gurus ranked him No. 11 on its list of global leadership experts. Baldoni is the author of more than a dozen books, including his newest, "MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership." If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader. Related Posts: The art of the sound bite Communicating in a crisis Exude confidence when speaking to your CEO, part 2 Exude confidence when speaking to your CEO, part 1 Developing your leadership presentation Put your personality into your communications originally published by SmartBlogs

There’s no shortage of research, articles, and infographics that express the importance of employee engagement and its direct impact on employee satisfaction, retention, performance, and culture at an organization. Managers must focus on the wants, needs, feelings, and emotions of each employees — all of which are critical for keeping a team running like a well-oiled machine. But at what point do these details become too much to track when combined with the everyday needs of the organization, needy customers, high-priority projects, and a full inbox? An important first step is to recognize that it’s not possible to do everything flawlessly as a manager! It’s perfectly fine to rely on some tricks and systems to keep you on track. After all, technology and automation are improving nearly every aspect of the business world, so why not consider using these concepts to help with employee engagement? Consider the idea of automating some employee engagement tasks. The examples below provide simple, powerful ways to keep up with the people-side of management while taking advantage of modern-day capabilities: Set calendar reminders for each of your employees’ birthdays and work anniversaries. Make sure to recognize them individually on those days and let them know you appreciate everything they do on your team. Pro-tip: Keep a stack of birthday and congratulations/thank you cards in your desk! Search SlideShare, LinkedIn, and Twitter to come up with a list of 10 to 20 ideas and activities to engage, recognize and reward your employees. Set a calendar reminder to use the curated items on this list every one or two weeks. (Try one of the links above to see the searches in action.) Set weekly or monthly calendar reminders throughout the next year to remind you to have coaching conversations, send engagement pulse surveys and check in on the health of your team members. Work with a local restaurant, flower shop, coffee shop, or bakery and schedule several "surprise" deliveries for your team in the next six to 12 months to thank them for their hard work. Use an automated system, (my company, Awesome Boss, is one), which can provide the following: Personalized coaching and mentoring tips delivered once per week via text message. Text and e-mail reminders for employee birthdays and work anniversaries. 80+ activity ideas to help engage, recognize, and reward employees. Employee profile pages to help you remember the "little" things that matter, such as hobbies and interests, the name of their spouse or partner, their favorite coffee, etc. 35 coaching cue cards to help you navigate nearly any coaching conversation. Automating employee engagement tasks doesn’t make you a bad or lazy manager. Quite the contrary! It means that you are dedicated to giving your employees the attention they need, and you’re willing to spend time crafting the proper work environment and work experience they deserve. Combined with regular 1:1 meetings, coaching conversations, and a personal touch, your team will be motivated, engaged, and ready to tackle any obstacle. B.J. Schone is the founder of Awesome Boss, which provides managers with a unique suite of tools to help them engage, recognize, and reward their employees. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader. Related Posts: Are you the wrong type of "engaged" leader? Entrepreneurs’ tips for managing employees with different worldviews Unlock employee engagement 12 questions to help you conduct effective stay interviews Why motivating people doesn’t work — and what does Managers: Is it possible to automate employee engagement? originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education will shine a light on back-to-school teaching and learning trends during July. In this blog post, Starr Sackstein challenges traditional grading and assessment systems, calling for a paradigm shift in which educators model the growth mindset and foster conversations about learning. Students are actively engaged in the process of learning, asking questions and participating in their assessment. Whether reflecting or self-assessing, students’ increasing metacognitive awareness is helping teachers create individualized plans for growth. Risks are being taken, and students are no longer asking "what did I get? or what did you give me?" Instead they are having discussions about what they know and can do and are collaboratively working to develop strategies for improvement. Amid the testing craze, there are pockets of teachers and schools shifting their attentions away from number data toward the enrichment of learning experiences. Students shouldn’t be defined by numbers, they should be encouraged to see learning as an opportunity for continuous growth. Throwing out grades does this. By de-emphasizing grades, teachers share the chance to focus on what students know and can do and establish protocols for deepening actual learning. This teaches students about mastery standards and determining what kinds of evidence support the development of it. It also encourages students to practice skills using new content to ensure maximum retention through formative feedback and discussion. How could we possibly grade innovation and creativity? What if instead, we helped students reflect on what they feel they learned and ask for evidence of what they suggest in their work? Consider the shift if teachers read this first or conversed with students about it before determining how well a student did. Feedback could be adjusted to provide specific strategies for areas students want to work on and then they can move at a pace that is appropriate for each of them individually. We can no longer herd students into a one-size-fits-all model and expect them to succeed. This is no longer the world we live in. Every child has strengths and challenges and they learn at different paces. If we can harness a system that enables students to do what feels right for them — with some pushing to ensure maximum growth -, then we can change the schooling experience. There will be people who will say this is impossible. They will say kids need grades and so do parents because it is all they know. We can all agree that just because people know something and are comfortable with it, doesn’t mean it is the best paradigm or situation. Schools need to model the growth mindset and foster conversations about learning, shifting gears away from dangerous evaluative systems that aim to put kids in a box based on how well they do on a test that often doesn’t even come from a teacher. Testing and grades often diminishes the learning process. How can one grade possibly encompass the value of any learning? If grades are meant to communicate learning, they do a poor job of it. At best, they tell a general picture without a nuance — a picture with blurry lines often heavily shaded with compliance and rule following rather than actual growth. Homework, extra credit and attendance are all things that are factored into grades that water down the true image of learning. In the upcoming school year, we must make a concerted effort to put the emphasis back on what matters and not do what is easy for the sake of ease. It’s time for all of us to start making big changes in education that support the trends in innovation. Let’s help develop learners in a meaningful way that celebrates growth in a plethora of areas instead of just high grades. Let’s see kids as three dimensional people, ready to expand and grow. How will you start? Starr Sackstein currently works at World Journalism Preparatory School in Flushing, N.Y., as a high-school English and journalism teacher. She is the author of Teaching Mythology Exposed: Helping Teachers Create Visionary Classroom Perspective and Blogging for Educators . She blogs for Education Week Teacher on "Work in Progress" in addition to her personal blog StarrSackstein.com where she discusses all aspects of being a teacher. Sackstein co-moderates #jerdchat and #sunchat and contributes to #NYedChat. In speaking engagements, Sackstein speaks about blogging, journalism education, throwing out grades and BYOD, helping people see technology doesn’t have to be feared. Follow her @MsSackstein on Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering educational leadership, special education and more. Related Posts: SmartBrief honors innovative bloggers: Meet this month’s winners Summer is a great time for self-paced learning What if all teachers were scholars? Channeling Goldilocks: Trying to get it "just right" Is tech helping you work smarter? It’s time to throw out grades originally published by SmartBlogs

Photo: Flickr user Abhishek Jacob Cashew nuts are soaring in popularity in the U.S. as snackers seek healthier options, and industry experts expect demand to grow further as snack brands include the nuts in new products and the ongoing drought in California drives up the price of almonds. In the U.S., they’re increasingly used in plant-based milks and as a base for vegan cheeses, creams, nut butters and desserts like Cashew Milk Frozen Dessert from So Delicious. They’re also part of a growing roster of new products, from mixes by Sahale Snacks to cereals and granolas in Kellogg’s new Origins line to TGI Friday’s branded Happy Hour Snack Mixes. Cashews make up half of all the tree nuts imported by the U.S, according to the Agriculture Department, and the country imports more of India’s cashew nuts than any other country, taking in 33,898 metric tons last year, up 13% from the previous season, according to the Cashew Export Promotion Council of India. Cashew trees originated in Brazil and were spread to new lands by the Portuguese about 500 years ago. They now grow in 32 countries where conditions are warm and humid enough for them to thrive in the wild, which means they don’t require all the irrigation and labor that go into growing almonds, pistachios and other water-intensive tree nuts, said K. Sasi Varma, executive director and secretary of the council. He and three of the council’s 230 member companies were on hand at the Summer Fancy Food Show in New York City last month. As California’s drought drags on and almond prices rise, cashews are growing less expensive by comparison, he said, and there’s an adequate supply because they grow in so many different parts of the world, including Vietnam, Nigeria, Brazil and Indonesia. "Even though India is the largest [by acreage], there’s not one region that dominates." Cashew nuts grow on trees, attached to a colorful fruit sometimes called a cashew apple. The nuts are the same no matter where they’re grown, but they may taste different from one country to the next depending on the way they’re processed, Varma said. "In India, they’re mostly fire-roasted. In that kind of processing the shell catches fire, that’s different from how they’re processed in Vietnam, for example." In developing cashew-growing countries, the nuts provide a source of economic development. It takes five or six years for new trees to bear fruit, and once they do they can be productive for as long as 35 years, Varma said. The fruits are used in juices popular in Brazil and in an alcoholic beverage called Feni that’s made exclusively in Goa, India, they’re most often discarded during processing, said Ganesh Nair, president of Dublin, Calif.-based cashew seller Karma. In addition to raw and roasted nuts, Karma’s newest product is Wrapped Cashews, which are air roasted with their skins on, which gives them a toasty crunch and doubles the fiber content. The roasting process is minimal, and it reduces the tannins which takes the natural bitterness out of the skin. With or without their skins, the nuts are high in calories but also high in fiber, protein and several essential vitamins and minerals, according to USDA data. "We haven’t made health claims yet, but we’re doing further research into the effects of antioxidants so we have more data to back up what we believe are the health benefits," Nair said. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: Who moved my seaweed?: The challenges of merchandising in the ethnic foods aisle Simple ingredients and sweet stories flavor the Fancy Food Show Food brands turn to fruits and vegetables to satisfy consumers’ snack cravings Beverage trends: Consumers gulp down coffee, natural, seasonal and premium Prepared foods report: New consumer behaviors hone in on fresh, healthy and sustainable Are cashews the new almonds? originally published by SmartBlogs

The internet can’t seem to make up its mind about who coined the phrase "chase two rabbits, catch none." Some people say it’s an old Russian proverb, while other attribute it to an anonymous Navajo wise man. Me, I’m pretty sure that piece of advice originated with the great hunter Elmer Fudd, because whoever came up with it clearly did so during rabbit season. Or was it duck season? Regardless of its provenance, the rabbit saying is a good principle to keep in mind when we design things. Just as a pair of rabbits will readily elude capture by heading in opposite directions, conflicting design objectives lead to empty hands Whether we are building a strategy, writing code or creating a PowerPoint presentation, a distracted design will not satisfy any of our goals. The plan will be muddled, the code won’t compile, and the charts won’t communicate. Usually this is because chasing too many rabbits makes things more complicated than they need to be. What does this look like? Consider the two charts below: the Army’s infamous "Afghanistan Stability / COIN Dynamics" slide and a chart from the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist’s Global Horizons briefing. I’d be hard pressed to say which chart is worse, but in either case that’s a lot of rabbits to chase. There is a better way, and it begins with being decisive, with establishing clear objectives and resisting the urge to run in opposite directions at the same time. To quote from "The Simplicity Cycle," when we are centered and focused, we can more easily avoid getting our design wrapped up in entangling complexities because our vision is clearer." In contrast, "being unfocused and frantically confused degrades our work and fosters unnecessary complexity in our designs, as we flail around and add components in the blind hope that some of them will make the design better." The key to outsmarting those rascally rabbits is to cultivate a discipline of choosing. Chase one rabbit today, then go after the other one tomorrow. Yes, there is a risk of picking the wrong one, but temporarily pursuing a less-than-optimal goal may be the only way to find out which option is better. It is important to choose wisely, but the most foolish choice of all is to divide our efforts between contradictory goals simply because we couldn’t make up our mind. Dan Ward is the author of "F.I.R.E.: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation" (HarperBusiness, 2014) and "The Simplicity Cycle: A Field Guide To Making Things Better Without Making Them Worse" (HarperBusiness, 2015). Prior to launching Dan Ward Consulting, he served for more than 20 years as an acquisition officer in the US. .Air Force, where he specialized in leading high-speed, low-cost technology development programs and retired at the rank of lieutenant colonel. For more information, visit his website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better, smarter leader. Related Posts: Unleash your organization’s innovation potential Why culture and leadership matter for disruptive innovation The smart creative: How to spot them, how to use them Inspiring creative thinking by debunking common myths Making room for risk in high-performing companies Chase the rabbit: A design lesson in 3 minutes originally published by SmartBlogs

All education initiatives, including those that involve technology, should be assessed by the impact they have on student learning. A good way to do this is by using student work as the measuring stick for success and efficacy. My district, Gurnee District 56 in Illinois, has a program called "Tech Trek," designed to encourage teachers to improve their technology skills. With Tech Trek, teachers can earn certification badges by creating higher-level SAMR lessons that aim to produce measurable gains in student learning. The system uses a game format in which teachers submit student work that demonstrates improved learning as a result of the new lesson design. The student work is then used to evaluate the teacher’s mastery of the newly-acquired technology skill. The program has been a great success. Teachers are now motivated to seek additional technology training. As you review programs for implementation, consider how you can use student work as an evaluation tool. Student work can draw a clear line to learning outcomes and serve as a fair, tangible way to measure program efficacy. Dr. John Hutton has served as the superintendent at Gurnee School District 56 in Illinois for eight years. He was one of 100 superintendents to be invited to a White House Summit in November 2014 as part of the national campaign to make all schools Future Ready. In March, he was named by the NSBA as one of the 20 educational leaders to watch in 2015. Gurnee School District 56 received the Apple Distinguished Program award in November of 2013. ***** Tech Tips is a content collaboration between SmartBrief Education and GreyED Solutions. Have a tech tip to share? Contact us at techtips@greyedsolutions.com Miss a Tech Tip? Visit our Tech Tip archive. ***** Related Posts: No Related Posts Tech Tip: Use student work to evaluate ed-tech initiatives originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter. How do you deal with "steamrollers" on your team? I coach them to be more sensitive: 68% I leave them alone — they’re getting great results: 9% I change their roles so they have fewer difficult interactions: 20% I send them to a different team: 3% Slowing down the Steamrollers. It’s hard to have a difficult conversation with a Steamroller because many times they’re turning out solid results. Tackle the issue head-on instead of avoiding it by changing their roles. They’re never going to drop the rough behaviors if they’re not coached on doing so. Don’t pass a problem along to someone else. Give the person the coaching they need to continue delivering great results without stepping on so many toes along the way. Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of "Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results" and "One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership." Related Posts: Leadership : Which is harder: improving a slacker’s performance or getting a high-performer promoted? How do you invest your time and energy in your team members? How effectively do you recruit and hire outstanding talent? How quickly does your organization make decisions? How does your organization deal with "bad behavior"? How do you deal with "steamrollers" on your team? originally published by SmartBlogs

Today, your pipeline depends on digital marketing. Customers aren’t taking the time to talk to your sales team before making a purchase; instead, they’re often relying solely on the information they find about you online to decide whether or not to work with your company. Because of this, it’s crucial that you understand and maximize your digital marketing strategy to attract and nurture leads through the sales pipeline all the way to close. As a business leader, you must ensure your marketing team is leveraging tactics that will actually support your brand and increase revenue. Here are the tools and trends proven to grow your sales pipeline: Mobile Today, 42 percent of mobile users consider mobile the most important resource in their purchasing process. Mobile isn’t the next frontier in business, it’s what’s happening now. When Google changed their algorithm to favor mobile-friendly sites in April, it became essential for businesses to have a mobile site. However, 90 percent of small business owners still haven’t optimized their site for usage on smartphones and tablets. Today, you need to make it easier for customers to make purchases through their mobile phones. Your ad strategy for mobile needs to be responsive to customer’s devices and should be based on previous data surrounding your site’s mobile traffic. It needs to acknowledge 60 percent of adults use their mobile phones or tablets to do research before making a purchase, meaning that the buying cycle may take place almost entirely on a customer’s iPhone. You also need to be aware of the new types of information customers can access through mobile. They’re able to gauge your location, prices and customer reviews: all elements of mobile shopping that can strongly influence your pipeline. This doesn’t just pertain to your mobile site: it influences your traditional marketing as well. 69 percent of mobile users will delete emails without reading if they are not optimized for their smartphone, while another 18 percent will simply unsubscribe. This doesn’t just say mobile’s important to your email marketing, it points to a larger trend: whatever can be read on mobile will. Be sure you’re ready for it: if you’re not, you’re missing sales opportunities. Sales/Marketing Integration For two departments so integrally connected, it seems like the turf war between sales and marketing isn’t slowing down. However, aligning the two is essential to grow your company’s pipeline. Encourage sales and marketing leaders to draft a service level agreement (SLA) that details lead requirements (and their potential exceptions), goals for marketing contributions to the sales pipeline, and a process to share data and content. Supplement it by sharing a CRM between the two departments. Then, track how marketing efforts result in new leads—and follow them all the way down the pipeline to determine marketing’s return on investment. By doing so, you determine best practices and track not only how many new leads you’re adding, but the revenue they bring. Automation Automation frees marketers up to track and refine their marketing operations without having to get too "in the weeds" with their tactics. It removes human error from the marketing equation, ensuring every email is deployed on time, every lead is reached when it’s most convenient for them and all prospects are contacted automatically across channels. For example, are you sending a tweet whenever you get a new email subscriber? Possible with MailChimp and Twitter Cards. Automation frees up marketers to concentrate on the bigger picture: creating effective content and developing impactful strategy. No matter the size of your company, automation allows your team to work at maximum efficiency. It also helps integrate their action with the sales team by making lead scoring effortless. With all of these features, marketing automation can help you gain 50 percent more leads at 33 percent lower cost per lead. Digital marketing is the key to growing your sales pipeline, lowering your costs per lead and delivering revenue. Don’t wait: embrace these techniques today. Avi Levine is the executive director of the Digital Professional Institute (DPI), a Chicago-based programming and digital marketing school, affiliated with Tribeca Flashpoint College. He has more than 10 years of experience growing successful business, including PhilterIt. Related Posts: Report: CPG focuses digital spending on branding, mobile, geotracking ‘We need to build a mobile app': agencies and utilities vs. frameworks 7 steps toward a successful presentation Live at #BMA15: How B2B marketers must adapt 4A’s Transformation 2015: Putting creativity and technology together to reach mobile consumers 3 digital marketing techniques to grow your pipeline originally published by SmartBlogs

When was the last time you let somebody know that you valued their work? Perhaps it was longer ago than you might think. According to a TINYPulse research report on employee engagement and organizational culture, only 21% of employees surveyed indicated that they felt "highly valued" at their workplace. One way to help employees feel appreciated is to have a specific conversation geared towards career development. These discussions, called "stay interviews," are gaining traction in the workplace and are credited as a way to counteract employee disenfranchisement. Even though the thought of formalizing this type of conversation might seem time-consuming, in the long run, it saves managers times. For example, in one study cited by the Society for Human Resource Management’s "HR Magazine," when a retirement community implemented stay interviews for their long-term nursing staff, turnover dropped by 72 percent. If you’d like to implement your own version of stay interviews with your team, but are unsure of how to proceed, here’s a framework to help you get started. Think of each of the categories below as "conversational domains"—sections of the stay interview that will help you organize your thoughts. It’s not necessary to ask every question listed below. Instead, pick those questions that you think best suits your employees’ current situation. Aspects of the job the employee enjoys. Start with the positives to uncover the areas that the employee most enjoys in his or her current role. Look for skill sets that could transfer to other projects or roles. What are the favorite parts of your job? What is it about your job that brings you energy? Which projects this year have you been most proud of? Why? Aspects of the job that are challenging for the employee. This topic may be a bit more difficult, as employees are sometimes concerned about appearing in some way deficient in their job. Encourage the conversation by saying, "You know, every job has aspects that are challenging …" What elements of your job do you find draining (or less interesting)? If you could change one part of your current role, what would it be? I’ve noticed that you tend to get stuck or frustrated when ____ happens. Have you noticed the same thing? What’s causing the frustration? Employee’s career aspirations. This may also be an area where employees might hesitate to fully disclose their goals, if they think that stating ambitions beyond your department will adversely affect their current job situation. Let’s blue-sky for a few minutes — if you could do anything for a living, what would it be? How can we bring a few of those "dream job" elements into your current role? What do you envision as the next step for you career-wise? I know that you might choose to eventually move on from our department and I’m completely OK with that …" As a leader, how can you help? The most important element of stay interviews is to assure employees that their contributions are valued. You also want to emphasize your support for their professional development. How can we reconfigure your current role to help you grow your skills? How can I help you on your professional development path? What should I start/stop/continue doing? What feedback do you have for me in the way that I interact with you? Leadership comprises many elements. Foremost among them is creating a work environment in which people feel valued. To keep your best and brightest "on board," leaders must communicate the ways in which they value their team members. One of the most effective ways to demonstrate faith in your team’s abilities is to give them a chance to describe their satisfaction — or lack thereof — with you personally in a face-to-face meeting. Use these conversation starters to help you keep your top talent and increase employee engagement in the process. Jennifer V. Miller is a writer and leadership development consultant. Her writing and digital training materials help business professionals lead themselves and others towards greater career success. Follow her on LinkedIn and sign up for her free tip sheet: "Why is it So Hard to Shut Up? 18 Ways to THINK before you Speak." Related Posts: Top talent walking out the door? Here’s how to get them to stay 7 leadership gift-giving ideas for the workplace Are you the wrong type of "engaged" leader? Do you speak "vision"? Managers as interpreters of important company messages Leadership tough love: Never judge or budge 12 questions to help you conduct effective stay interviews originally published by SmartBlogs