Richard Nantel

I was fortunate to spend a couple of weeks in Paris this summer. My family and I walked for hours each each day, visited the world’s best museums, and watched the final stage of the Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées. This was an amateur photographer’s dream vacation.  My Flickr photostream is here.

In my first year in graduate school, a class in which I was enrolled required that we write and submit an essay each week. Whereas some of my fellow students hated that the class mark would be based exclusively on essays—some students preferred exams, class presentations, paper maché volcanoes, whatever—I was happy with this format. Writing came easily to me.

I submitted my first essay in the second class. In the third class, I received my corrected assignment. The professor had marked the essay a “C” and had added a small note: “You have serious problems with your writing. Please see me after class.” I was shocked and angry. I had written dozens of essays during my undergraduate years and had never received a negative comment about my writing. I went to see the professor, a man I had already classified mentally to be a total jerk.

The professor provided the following feedback:

• Rather than writing to communicate clearly, I was writing to sound smart.
• Sentences needed to be reread to understand their meaning, which made reading my work tedious.
• The content was poorly organized.

If there was any comfort in this meeting, it was that the professor mentioned I wasn’t the only student in his seminar with poor writing. Schadenfreude dulled the pain.

At the start of the next class, the professor announced that he would be marking the weekly essays as follows:

• Fifty percent would be awarded for the content
• Fifty percent would be awarded for the quality of the writing

And so began, in my sixth year of university, after two years of junior college, four years of high school, and seven years of elementary school, my education in the craft of writing. Each week, I’d receive my corrected essay. Annotations in red containing comments such as “What is the meaning of the word  ”it” in this sentence?” and “Run on sentence!” were everywhere.

Week by week, my writing improved, as did my opinion of this professor. He shed his label of being a total jerk, cruised through being seen as a compulsive nitpicker, was  transformed from being an obsessive traditionalist, and was on his way to being a professor with the potential to provide significant educational value. Now, more than 20 years later, I view this professor as the most important teacher I have ever had.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Michael Ondaatje. I’ll occasionally read an article in the New Yorker or other magazine that humbles me, writing that is so elegant and well-crafted that it’s a five-star meal in words. When I read something this well written, I realize learning to write well is a lifelong endeavor.

WHY WRITING WELL MATTERS

I think of this professor every time I read something poorly written. Sadly, that’s often. The quality of much of what I read in business and in the learning profession could be improved. So, my vote for the number one, most important skill required to succeed in the workplace is the ability to write well. Here’s why:

• You may be great at your job, but, if you don’t write well, the poor writing will eclipse the perception of the great work you do.
• Key decision makers are too busy to reread material to attempt to decipher the meaning.
• Poorly written communication will be ignored.
• A well-crafted piece will catch the eye of a superior, who is likely to interpret your excellent writing skills as a sign of your leadership potential.

POSTSCRIPT

The professor in this post is William Caplin, the James McGill Professor of Music Theory at McGill University. Professor Caplin, I’m ashamed that decades have gone by and I’ve never expressed my gratitude. Please accept my sincere thanks for your time and dedication. (And, if you choose to correct this post, please be easy on me.)

I was interviewed recently by Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and a co-founder of AC Growth, as part of the company’s Executive Interview series. Below is an excerpt. The full interview is available here.

To foster an environment of personal growth, leaders and managers need to be part-time psychologists. They need to understand what motivates their people and create an environment where employees are engaged, happy, and productive. Most people have a low tolerance for routine. They need to be given new challenges that stretch their abilities. Organizations need to provide their workers with all the tools needed to learn the skills necessary to meet these challenges. This includes learning content, time to learn, etc. The role of leaders is to match up challenging assignments with the right individuals (The challenge can’t be too hard or too easy). Leaders must be encouraging, supportive, and must understand the people that report to them on a personal level.

How does a manager begin this process?

You need to clue into the human factor – look at your employees as individuals with their own unique set of behaviors, norms, values and perceptions that may be the same or different than your own. Realize also that an individual’s psychological profile permeates team behavior as well and team behavior has an even higher degree of complexity and difficulty due to the individuals that make up the team. Finally, a company’s culture is a web of individual and team dynamics brought together under the stressful conditions of company performance. You need to understand all these factors to begin the process.

Leaders need to embrace their role in defining the culture of an organization. I believe wholeheartedly that old-school, Jack Welch-like leadership is dead or on its deathbed. There’s no way at all the newest generation of workers will put up with punitive, hard-nose managers and leaders. If you have that leadership style currently in place, then you need to change it quickly.

You mentioned that you need to communicate with your star performers, what’s the right approach?

Keeping the very top talent happy and motivated is very very hard. These high performers have achieved a lot and quickly get bored and unhappy. Many will sabotage their careers as an opportunity to rebuild and achieve new successes. The solution for these individuals can often be to allow them the opportunity to meet new challenges outside of the firm. The Google approach of giving these top performers 20% of their time to work on their own projects is brilliant and indicates that Google understands the psychological needs of its workers.

In general, leaders need to understand the need for time away from work. Mobile technology has created an always-on work culture and too many organizations are exploiting their ability to ask workers to be available 24/7. Expecting workers to always be working is like expecting an athlete to succeed by training hard every day. Successful athletes have scheduled rest days to recover and get motivated. Lack of a work-life balance will not keep your people engaged, happy, and productive.

What about the rest of the team, how do you motivate and stimulate them?

I can share with you from personal experience how to make this happen. As a leader of a company, I realized early on that you cannot ride the backs of your star performers to truly be a sustainable and successful company. I spent a considerable amount of time with my lower level non-managerial staff to understand what motivates them and how they could have a greater impact on the success of the organization. What I found was they had unique insights and perspectives that were exciting and well thought out about how to grow our company. They were just waiting for an opportunity to prove their ideas were sound. In the end, I promoted a significant number of these individuals to management and gave them opportunities to put their ideas to work – it was one of the best moves I ever made in my career.

The key to really being successful is to identify projects and initiatives that align with people’s interests and the goals and objectives of the company. This is by no means an easy task and may lead to a little organizational restructuring to make it happen. However, it is not as hard as you think if you are willing to take the time to get to know your people. I have to say as a manager, it is one of the most rewarding things you can do. If you focus on people’s innate interest in personal learning and growth, you will always have a motivated and engaged workforce.

The full interview is located at http://acgrowth.com/blogs/39-ac-growth-executive-interview-with-richard-nantel.html

Once again, Brandon Hall Research’s Workplace Learning Today, where I contribute daily, has been named one of Top 50 Human Resource Blogs by Evan Carmichael. We are rated first in the area of Talent Management.

I’m honored that I was invited to join the Research Advisory Board of AC Growth last week. The aim of AC Growth is to “provide the research and guidance you need to create and execute market-changing sales and marketing strategies to achieve revenue targets.” I accepted AC Growth’s invitation for a couple of reasons listed my Brandon Hall Research blog. The press release is here.

I’m increasingly interested in the sales and marketing business functions. I’m starting a number of Web-based companies this year. In February, I launched Petit Piot, an online jewellery boutique that features the work of some talented designers I know. Later this year, I’ll be starting a new software company in the HR/recruiting industry.

Starting a company is a quick way to learn that sales and marketing are crucial to success. If you think you can create a Web-based business and then sit back and watch the money roll in, you’re mistaken. Your sales and marketing strategies and efforts need as much attention as the site you’ve built.

I spent a fabulous week in Avignon last month. My days were spent cycling the country roads in Provence and visiting nearby towns. My photos have been uploaded to Flickr and can be viewed here.

One of the blogs to which I contribute daily, Workplace Learning Today, has been recognized to be one of the Top 50 Human Resources Blogs.

As of today, my colleagues Janet Clarey, Tom Werner, Gary Woodill, and I have collectively published 1163 posts to Workplace Learning Today since it was launched on August 12, 2008. We’re thrilled to have made this list after less than a year.

My colleague, Gary Woodill, has tagged me in a recent post, requesting that I provide you with seven things you don’t need to know about me.

1. I’m a figure skating dad.

My youngest daughter has been skating for, as she says, “more years than I’ve not been skating.” She’s 10 years old and began skating at the age of four. Two afternoons per week, we head to the rink. I sit in the stands watching her skate, and, like the ending Dr. Seuss’ the Grinch, I get choked up and my heart feels like it has grown “three sizes too big.” For the last six years, these afternoons have been high points of my life.

A few weeks ago, my daughter came in first in a skating competition. She had never before finished in the top three. She now has a gold medal on her bookcase. I sneak into her room when she’s at school to look at it.

2. I’m a cyclist.

I can think of few things I love more than to get onto a bike and ride country roads on a warm day. I believe bicycles are one of humanity’s greatest inventions. They are inexpensive, non-polluting, quiet, and contribute to health and fitness (as long as you don’t get crushed by a car.)

The biggest benefit for me, though, is that I always have more ideas and clearest thoughts while riding. I’m not sure if this is due to increased oxygen intake or entering a state of “flow.” Inevitably, the fastest route to my finding a solution to a problem is by riding for a couple of hours. Perhaps this is the type of thing John J. Ratey, M.D., is writing about in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.

I own two bicycles, a road bike made with a Russian-made magnesium frame that could ignite in a blinding explosion if it were to get too close to an open flame, and a single-speed, fixed-gear “winter bike.” (Yes, I ride in the winter, even with snow on the ground.)

3. I’m a musician.

I’ve been playing guitar since the age of 10. I stopped playing for quite a few years after graduating in music from McGill. I rediscovered my love for the guitar a couple of years ago. As luck would have it, my next door neighbor, Theresa, is a fabulous singer. She and I regularly get together to play a very eclectic repertoire that includes traditional Irish ballads, Leonard Cohen, Coldplay, et al. One day, we’ll let you hear us (maybe).

4. I’m considering a possible hobby building steel string acoustic guitars.

A spin off from #3. More research required.

5. I’m a (very) amateur photographer.

I have a point-and-shoot camera. I point it at things and shoot photos. No fancy gear (for now.)

6. I love to cook.

With the exception of one dish I made years ago featuring squid that could still be in the process of being chewed today had we not given up, I get no complaints from my family. By the way, speaking of food, I think Dave Ferguson’s description of salt cod as a “bit of misguided humor masquerading as food” is one of the funniest things I’ve read.

7. I believe we’re in a golden age of non-fiction books.

It seems as if, every week, a book is published that has the potential to change how you see the world. Could it get much better? Here are some of the best I’ve read in recent months:

The Brain that Changes Itself (Dr. Norman Doidge)

The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)

Survival of the Sickest (Dr. Sharon Moalem)

Well there you are. Seven things about me (published quietly on a Saturday, possibly under the radar).

We use a lot of collaboration technologies at Brandon Hall Research. We’ve built Web services-type software to manage our Excellence in Learning Awards, to update our research KnowledgeBases, to manage inquiries, and to track our time on various projects.

In addition, many of our working documents are online as Google Docs. We love the fact that a Google Doc is the unique, up-to-date version of that information and that multiple collaborators and viewers can access the information at the same time. No more e-mailing documents back and forth, which is so very “1990s.”

Cloud computing is so hip. All we need in 2008 is an on-ramp to the Web to access our applications and documents, right?

Wrong. We also need the clouds to work.

Here I am trying to wrap up formal mid-year staff evaluations, and I can’t access my Google Docs.

Google continues to report a server 502 error and asks that I try again in 30 seconds. It’s been 10 minutes, and this cloud is still broken.