Hiam, Alexander 1957-

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HIAM, Alexander 1957-

PERSONAL: Born August 1, 1957, in Chicago, IL (one source lists Evanston, IL); son of Edwin Webster (a manager) and Katharine Clarke (a composer and writer; maiden name, Watson) Hiam; married Heather Susan White, February 26, 1984; children: Eliot, Paul. Education: Harvard University, A.B., 1980; University of California, Berkeley, M.B.A., 1986. Hobbies and other interests: Soccer, sailing, natural history, painting.

ADDRESSES: Office—Insights for Training & Development, 69 S. Pleasant, Ste. 204, Amherst, MA 01002.

CAREER: Worked in management positions at companies in the Silicon Valley of California, 1980–88; Insights for Training & Development (consulting and training firm), Amherst, MA, director, 1988–.

MEMBER: American Marketing Association, National Association of Corporate Directors.

WRITINGS:

The Vest-Pocket CEO: Decision-Making Tools for Executives, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1990.

The Vest-Pocket Marketer, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1991.

(With Susan Angle) Adventure Careers, Career Press, 1992.

(With others) Closing the Quality Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1992.

(With Ken Blanchard, Charles Schewe, and Bob Nelson) Exploring the World of Business, Worth Publishers (New York, NY), 1996.

(With Roy J. Lewicki) Think before You Speak, Wiley (New York, NY), 1996.

The Entrepreneur's Complete Sourcebook, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1996.

The Portable Conference on Change Management, HRD Press, 1997.

Marketing for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 1997, 2nd edition, Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2004.

The Manager's Pocket Guide to Creativity, HRD Press, 1998.

(With Charles Schewe) The Portable MBA in Marketing, 2nd edition, Wiley (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Roy J. Lewicki) The Fast-Forward MBA in Negotiation and Deal-Making, Wiley (New York, NY), 1999.

Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees: New and Better Ways to Inspire Your People, Adams Media (Holbrook, MA), 1999.

Streetwise Twenty-Four Hour MBA: Power Workshops for Business Success, Including Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Motivating Employees, and Business Communications, Adams Media (Holbrook, MA), 2000.

Marketing Kit for Dummies, IDG Books Worldwide (Foster City, CA), 2000, 2nd edition, Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2005.

Making Horses Drink: How to Lead and Succeed in Business, Entrepreneur Press (Irvine, CA), 2002.

(With Geoffrey E. Meredith, Charles Schewe, and Janice Karlovich) Managing by Defining Moments: Innovative Strategies for Motivating Five Very Different Generational Cohorts—Postwar, Leading-Edge Baby Boomer, Hungry Minds (New York, NY), 2002.

Motivational Management: Inspiring Your People for Maximum Performance, American Management Association (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Alexander Hiam is a business consultant whose company, Insights for Training & Development (formerly Alexander Hiam & Associates), specializes in helping companies work with their employees so they are at their most productive. In addition to running his firm, Hiam lectures and speaks widely about this subject and he has created a number of training programs, such as the Creativity by Design and Commitment-Based Leadership courses. He has also written books to train managers on how to best hire, keep, and develop their employees, as well as how to improve the bottom line in ways that might be counterintuitive to some corporate executives. Among his published works are such titles as Closing the Quality Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies, Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees: New and Better Ways to Inspire Your People, and Making Horses Drink: How to Lead and Succeed in Business.

In Closing the Quality Gap Hiam sets out to prove that one of the best ways to increase profits is not to cut expenses but to instead improve product quality, which will then gain new customers for a company and boost sales and profits. Drawing on data from a survey conducted in 1991 by the U.S. General Accounting Office, Hiam points out that companies that have quality assurance programs have "measurable improvements in employee attendance, job satisfaction, turnover, safety and health, volume of suggestions, and productivity," as Earle Hitchener reported in a National Productivity Review article.

Employees are much more complicated creatures than many managers seem to think. While many bosses believe that money is the main motivational factor, in book after book Hiam has illustrated that employees wish to take pride in their work, have a purpose in it, and feel like they are contributing something important. They also, as the author indicates in his book Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees, wish to be challenged and receive honest and constructive feedback on their performance from their managers. Hiam has served as a consultant for numerous Fortune 500 clients, and over the years he has come to conclude that most of these companies do not know how to be motivators. His book serves as a manager's manual and includes surveys that readers are encouraged to copy and use at work. Although Margaret Steen, writing in InfoWorld, felt that Hiam's practice of categorizing employees into just four different personality types is a bit simplistic, the critic agreed with the "central message of the book … that it's crucial to align staffing and retention practices with corporate culture."

The author continues to analyze manager-employee relations in Making Horses Drink. Starting with the old cliché that one can lead a horse to water but cannot make him drink, Hiam says that managers cannot force employees to be more productive, but they can create an environment that will make productivity far more likely. "Hiam sets out to empower managers to make the transition from the traditional top-down style to a more inspirational and developmental style," related Peter Christensen in a Government Finance Review assessment. Managers, asserts Hiam, should not try to micromanage or control their employees by laying down the law with more and more written procedures and policies. Instead, as Christensen reported, they need to give employees challenging assignments and then allow "them to determine how best to accomplish them." Making Horses Drink includes numerous real-life examples to illustrate Hiam's points, and Christensen found this to be "both a strength and a weakness" in that some of the author's ideas are not practical, "such as employee-designed living quarters for pet gerbils," though many others are more to the point. Despite some of the "silly" suggestions here, the reviewer found that just having all these examples could stir ideas among readers. A Publishers Weekly critic also found fault with the fact that Hiam "doesn't directly link this leadership method to greater sales or earnings," but still concluded that the book "will be useful to managers of all stripes."

Hiam once told CA: "I write to communicate new insights into personal and organizational success. My goal is to help people succeed in their work and their lives. To achieve this goal, I integrate findings from the fields of management and psychology, and I do ongoing research and testing through my consultant and training firm, and sometimes in collaboration with academic researchers. There are so many useful and interesting ideas we can all benefit from that it is a pleasure to be on a lifelong quest to find and communicate them! As for my primary influences, my work is fairly idiosyncratic, but in general I'm very impressed by the 'humanists' in the field of psychology (such as Abraham Maslow), by the field of research in business management focusing on the importance of people and task structures in management (Ken Blanchard exemplifies this tradition), and by great writers and artists in all fields. There is no reason why writings on personal or business success need to be dry, contrived, or difficult—so as an author I try to incorporate some of the excitement and engagement of good writing into my work in these areas.

"My scope of subjects is rather broad, unlike most authors working in my areas. That's because I focus on the human factor and follow that trail wherever it takes me. As to how and why I began my writing career, I'm not even sure myself. I was dyslexic and a very poor writer as a child, and perhaps it was just pig-headedness that led me to want to write. But as the old saying goes, practice makes perfect, and I found that with daily practice my writing gradually became sufficiently fluid and easy that I was able to commit to a life of letters."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 15, 1992, David Rouse, review of The Portable MBA in Marketing, p. 1794.

Business Book Review, 1993, review of The Portable MBA in Marketing, p. 109.

Choice, January, 1993, D. Campbell, review of The Portable MBA in Marketing, p. 844; January, 1998, W. H. Brannen, review of Marketing for Dummies, p. 865; March, 2003, T. Gutteridge, review of Managing by Defining Moments: Innovative Strategies for Motivating Five Very Different Generational Cohorts—Postwar, Leading-Edge Baby Boomer, p. 1225.

Corporate Meetings & Incentives, November, 1999, "Need a Read?," review of Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees: New and Better Ways to Inspire Your People, p. 106.

Government Finance Review, December, 2002, Peter Christensen, review of Making Horses Drink: How to Lead and Succeed in Business, p. 36.

HR Magazine, October, 2002, Mike Frost, review of Making Horses Drink, p. 141.

Incentive, October, 2002, Jean Jaworek, "Battling the Workplace Blues," p. 12.

Industry Week, October 19, 1992, Sue Gibson, review of Closing the Quality Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies, p. 22.

InfoWorld, April 26, 1999, Margaret Steen, "Finding and Keeping Great Employees," p. 87.

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, winter, 2000, Shelley R. Tapp, review of Streetwise Motivating and Rewarding Employees, p. 63.

Kliatt, January, 1993, review of Adventure Careers, p. 29.

Library Journal, November 15, 1992, Joan A. Traugott, review of Closing the Quality Gap, p. 96.

Long Range Planning, October, 1993, Bruce Lloyd, review of The Portable MBA in Marketing, p. 152.

National Productivity Review, spring, 1993, Earle Hitchener, review of Closing the Gap: Lessons from America's Leading Companies, p. 285.

Payroll Manager's Report, July, 2002, "Exclusive PMR Survey: What Leadership Attributes Do Payroll Managers Need?," p. 1.

Philadelphia Business Journal, October 27, 2000, review of Marketing for Dummies, p. 23.