Kevin Burns

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Workplace Expert - Management Consultant - Keynote Speaker Expert

Kevin Burns Quick Facts

Main Areas: Attitude, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Excellence, Service, Safety, Accountability
Career Focus: Workplace Expert - Consultant - Speaker
Affiliation: BGi Consultants

-based consulting organization. We offer strategic expertise in three specific areas: Human Resources and Recruitment, Middle-Management/Front-line Supervisors and also in the development of building Cultures around Corporate Safety. Our choice to excel in these three areas is based on recurring problems we see in many organizations - organizations who are not prepared to wait for the "right" employee and instead settle for the "right now" employee. Organizations that have no strategic plan in how they hire and manage people will always find themselves scrambling to fill holes in their workforce.

Instead, we believe that organizations must begin to look to a different model of attracting and managing workers. And here is an overview of the strategic direction that we offer to our clients:

1. Employee Effectiveness - is beyond simple Employee Engagement. Getting employees to engage on their tasks is easy. Making them become effective at their tasks takes a whole different set of skills and really, do you hire employees to be simply mentally present or results-based effective? It's the results of the job that matter far more than how well they stayed engaged while they did the job. Engagement of an employee is a matter of opinion. What appears to be disengagement by one might seem as creative pursuits to problem solving by another. Employee levels of engagement are in direct proportion to how their immediate manager engages them. No, we believe that it is the effectiveness of the employee that matters more.

2. Relevant Management - Research shows that, on average, a manager only actually manages employees 8 hours out of a 40-hour week. The rest is spent in meetings, putting out fires and handling personnel issues. You don't want busy managers wasting time on useless things that don't improve productivity. You want relevant managers, doing relevant tasks that get relevant results. People-work, not paperwork. Irrelevant managers keep busy doing unimportant things. Many of a manager's irrelevant tasks could be delegated. There will always be managers who want to get paid for the hard parts of management work without actually doing them. Offering feedback is one of those hard parts. One of the key components in making employees more effective is management feedback - often - daily if possible. A single golf-lesson annually won't make you a pro. In the same way, an annual performance review is ineffective. To build effectiveness requires regular feedback. Being available for employees and mentoring them and coaching them is relevant management.

3. Collaborative Safety - Collaboration builds teams organically: teams who watch out for each other, support each other and care about each other. The top-down "compliance" philosophy of safety, which many organizations employ, is out-dated because it dictates that employees aren't smart enough to look after each other and therefore, must have a set of rules, procedures and processes to comply with. That may be because these organizations are hiring the wrong people. However, Collaborative Safety ensures employees have each others' backs and builds a peer-based strategy of collectively avoiding danger and unnecessary risk. A safe workplace is a happy and productive workplace that easily attracts other high-performers

Free Articles & Book Excerpts

"Tough Labor Market" As An Excuse

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/02/tough-labor-market-as-excuse.html

Employee Tip #12 - You Are Not Entitled To Anything

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/02/employee-tip-12-you-are-not-entitled-to_06.html

How To Move Into Management

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/03/how-to-move-into-management.html

Five Tips To Engaging Employees

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/03/five-tips-to-engaging-employees.html

Customer Service Isn't Just A Department

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/02/customer-service-isnt-just-department.html

The Three Most Important Things In Life

http://www.kevburns.com/2008/01/three-most-important-things-in-life.html

Employee Training Ends At Competence

http://www.kevburns.com/2007/11/employee-training-ends-at-competence.html

Employee Tip #10 - Why Companies Don't Want You To Improve

http://www.kevburns.com/2007/11/employee-tip-10-why-companies-dont-want.html

Boss Tip #14 - Leading/Managing High Performers

http://www.kevburns.com/2007/11/boss-tip-14-leadingmanaging-high.html

Free Audio & Video Samples

Watch Kevin Burns Live Right Now

http://kevburns.com/video

Kevin Burns Audio & Video Programs

Kevin Burns Live - Trust The Process Audio CD

http://www.kevburns.com/store

Kevin Burns Books

Go Ahead. Give Me Attitude!

http://www.kevburns.com/store

This Got Me To Thinking

http://www.kevburns.com/store

This Got Me To Thinking ... Too!

http://www.kevburns.com/store

If It takes A Village To Raise a Child, How Then Do You Explain The Village Idiot ... and other things I've said.

http://www.kevburns.com/store

Knock Knock! Who's There? The Out-Of-Your-Mind Approach To Cold-Calling!

http://www.kevburns.com/store

Unleashing you! The 9 Key Principles To Living The Life You want

http://www.kevburns.com/store

Articles by this expert

SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.

39 total

Article

***Why Companies Don't Want You To Improve

If I were to ask you for one good reason why any company wouldn't want you to get better at sales, better at customer service, improve your communication skills, study leadership, become more productive or just be a nicer person, could you answer that question? Do you think you could come up ...

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Article

#1 In Sales Means Nothing

The sign in the front window of my local UPS Store reads. "#2 Store in Canada." I laugh every time I see it. It's too rare that you see a sign reading "#2" in anything. I get it though. Wayne and the staff at my UPS Store do a great job and give great service. They're always busy. Apparently they're busy enough to be #2 in Canada in volume. And if next year they're #3, I'm sure that's what the sign will read. But what about this #1 Salesman stuff or Salesman of the Year? Does it matter?

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Article

***Older Workers Still Have Value

Perhaps it’s my age but I find the best part of American Idol are the qualifying rounds to see who gets to go to Hollywood. Out of the tens of thousands of hopefuls only a few hundred are chosen as “good enough” to advance to the next round. It amazes me how many of the ...

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Article

***Working For An Under-Performing Boss

I received an email this week which asked for my opinion on high-performers. The email read, “It would be great to hear your ideas/tips for Bosses and Employees regarding working with “high performers”. I was specifically thinking about the high performance employee working ...

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Article

***How To Work For A Jerk-Boss

Michael and I have known each other for about fifteen years. Recently, he has been dabbling in the area of personal development. Not his. Yours. He is a personal coach and seminar leader who is getting ready to publish his first book. While he has been incredibly busy conducting his coaching ...

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Article

*** Safety Attitude's New Reality

Safety has become a big issue these days with not only the manufacturing, construction and heavy industry sectors, but also with a growing number of office-bound organizations. Safety is an issue that I take seriously. After all, I believe that safety is an Attitude – in the same way ...

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Article

***The Fine-Print Attitude Adjustment

So what do you think would happen if you stood up in a public forum and announced, “Our Company is in trouble and we now need a big injection of cash to keep our company going. If we don’t get the cash injection, we will be forced to lay off a lot of our workers, we will have to consider closing ...

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Article

***The New Referral Network: Are You In?

My friend Brian told me story a few months back. He had asked his early twenty-something receptionist to dig up a phone number for him. After ten or so minutes, the receptionist had not returned. Brian went to the front desk. "Have you found me that number yet?" he asked patiently. "The ...

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Article

The Attitude of "Good Enough"

If you've been watching TV recently, you will have seen the new commercials for GM. GM is now touting their quality - something the average consumer is certainly not used to seeing GM do. It first surprised me a little that GM decided it was time to start marketing quality over price. This is not something I'm used to from GM. In fact, not too long ago, there were commercials on television selling GM cars at one dollar over invoice. Quality wasn't an issue then. It was all about price. But now, it's all about quality. But is it?

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Article

***Memo from the Customer

I think I missed a memo recently. I must have. The memo I missed apparently stated that if you are a cashier, a salesperson or even a “sandwich artist,” feel free to have conversations with your co-workers, your friends and other complete strangers while “serving” your current customer. When ...

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Article

***Employee Training Ends At Competence

I got into a conversation recently (on a Human Resources Message Board) with a Management Consultant. His questions got me to thinking. He asked for a further clarification of my assertion that an employer's responsibility to improve its employees ends once they become competent at the job. The ...

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Article

The Hard Truth About Soft-Skills

There are 350,000 opinions (books) on “leadership” on Amazon. Corporate America can’t seem to draw a consensus on what leadership is so it’s really no big surprise that Corporate America can’t figure out what soft-skills are and why they are important either. You know, for being such a dominating force in the world of business, we really don’t have a clue about the stuff that REALLY makes business run.

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Websites & resources

SelfGrowth-published websites, downloads, and contributor profile websites connected to this expert.

3 total

Website

Kevin Burns - Author & Attitude Adjuster

Kevin Burns, Corporate Attitude Strategist, is a worldwide authority on Attitude and author of his forthcoming, “Your Attitude Sucks - Fixing What's Wrong With Corporate America” He is an outstanding keynote speaker. He is opinionated, blunt, direct, funny, thought-provoking, incredibly well-researched and usually … right!

Recently added

Website

Kevin Burns - Author & Attitude Adjuster

Kevin Burns, Author & Attitude Adjuster, is only one of a handful of world-wide authorities on employee engagement, service and safety attitudes. A seven-time author and international keynote speaker, Kevin Burns is the expert on developing attitudes that work.

May 28, 2009

Website

Kevin Burns - Author & Attitude Adjuster

Want to lower staff turnover, increase accountability, improve safety numbers and improve the morale and performance of your group of high-performing, overworked, undervalued and capable people both personally and professionally? That's exactly what we do.

February 25, 2008

Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Kevin Burns

There are people in every organization who are just looking for an opportunity to be offended. So at 9:00 tomorrow morning, walk up to their desk and offend them. Now they can actually be productive for a change.

If it takes a village to raise a child, how then do you explain the village idiot?

The things that happen today prepare you for what is coming tomorrow. That is called "the process." Trust it.

It’s not that people want us to fail; it’s just that they don’t want us to succeed. When we succeed, we show them what could have been done with a little effort.

When all else fails, there’s always success. Go ahead. Make mistakes. Get over it.

At the end of life, I’ve never heard anyone say, “I wish I’d been less successful and more stupid.” Get better. Get smarter. Learn as much as you can. Do as much as humanly possible.

The trick to consistently thinking outside of the box is to never get in the box in the first place.

People hire us for our skill and then fire us for the crap we bring with it.

With every bad job, bad relationship and bad event in our lives, there is only one common denominator. Figure it out and you’ll be free.

Life is like a hockey game: there are those who play and there are those who pay to watch those who play. Then there are those who show up late and ask, “What did I miss?”

We’re not resistant to change: just sudden change.

A routine is one step away from a rut.

Leadership is not a title or a position. It is a way of life and an attitude.

Contacting Kevin Burns

Kevin Burns - Workplace Expert - Management Consultant - Keynote Speaker
Engagement - Management - Safety

http://www.kevburns.com

#719, 105-150 Crowfoot CR, NW, Calgary, AB, Canada T3G 3T2

How to get started

International Attitude Expert Kevin Burns is a masterful communicator. He knows how to get your attention, how to keep it and how to get you to make profound changes in a short period of time. And if you don’t start making changes after your time with Kevin, well ... then you don’t want to!