SmartCEO Honors— Then Interviews— Mitch Weiner

"Some folks see things as they are 

and ask why.

I see things as they could be 

and say why not"

Good Morning Folks,

I recently attended an awards gala to accept SmartCEO’s 2016 Future 50 award on behalf of FSO. This prestigious event was held at Capitale in New York City, and had more than 550 executives in attendance. The companies honored by SmartCEO were chosen based on achievements in revenue and growth, as well as the entrepreneurial spirit that is essential for leadership and success. The Future 50 award is a reflection of FSO’s strength and success, and I am very proud to be among those honored.

Following the ceremony, I sat down with SmartCEO for an interview to discuss how FSO is (re)IMAGINING the future of business and how it impacts results. Have a look at a brief video:

The 2016 SmartCEO Future 50 award validates what Crain’s Fast 50 and Inc. 5000 have confirmed: We are a five-year-old startup company that has taken the market by storm. The future is bright - and we have only just begun!

Learn more about the award on SmartCEO's website.

I would like to extend my thanks to all of our employees for all that you do, and to our clients for the privilege of serving you.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others 

without getting a few drops on yourself.”
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We Also Own One Of The Largest Staffing Companies In New York

Did You Know That We Also Own One Of The Largest Staffing Companies In New York?

Good Morning Folks,

You know us as FSO, part of the Forrest Solutions Group (FSG). But did you know that FSG also owns Forrest Solutions Staffing (FSS), one of the largest staffing companies in New York?

Business leaders and decision makers have turned to FSS continuously for almost 40 years for all their hiring needs.

As a "people" company, we know talent better than the rest and actively retain unsurpassed talent through our team of seasoned recruiters. 

• Nearly 40 Specialized Talent Consultants
• 5 Times New York Staffing Association (NYSA) and American Staffing Association (ASA) Temp Employee of the Year Award Winners
• Breadth of candidates range from a traditional temp in all verticals, to CIO, and everything in between
• Pioneers in Temporary, Temp-to-Hire, and Direct Hire Talent Solutions
• Behavioral Interviewing to Match You With the Best-Fit Talent

Talent needs and market conditions change and evolve.  We work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure that we are meeting and exceeding the needs of our clients and stop at nothing short of Total Customer Satisfaction.

To see how much time can be saved— and how much stands to be improved— when searching for the best and brightest candidates, call me personally at (212) 204-1193.

Have a GREAT Day!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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“Good People Are Hard To Find"

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Welcome to 2016!

"As we head into 2016 it's important to take this moment and reflect on the past but more importantly how you will personally effect the future."

Good Morning Folks,

I hope that each of you had a wonderful holiday season and were able to spend time with family and friends.

Thank you for your efforts during the past year. I hope you all feel the sense of accomplishment from within. And... thank you all for the presents, cards and the good words at our social events, training meetings and more as we closed out the year. The feedback drives me hard and fast every day, so keep it coming. 

Today starts what will be our best year ever. We are fortunate to have a wonderful team of leaders, staff, support folks and excellent clients and services that the marketplace is has embraced. 

Steve, Jim, and I are arm and arm to ensure, as a team, we bring a passion and DNA like never before, while delivering the greatest place to work.

The ELT has planned very exciting times ahead, and I am very excited for an awesome 2016! Our goal continues to be to WOW! Next week we will have our 2015 AWARD CEREMONY to RECOGNIZE our TOP employees for all of their hard work and achievements. This is my absolute favorite FSO celebration and I can’t wait to cheer you on.

Employees know that your owners believe in you and you have to believe in yourself to thrive. Strive and thrive. Think about it. Today is resolution day. If you have any or not, it's a great time to think about, "how can I do it differently," how can I (re)IMAGINE, and how can I be the leader I deserve to be?

Life is full of challenges: personal, family, health, financial, business and more. How you approach them and lead the way is what you have to manage. Attitude is everything. Keeping strong and positive. Never letting the world see you sweat and making the responsibility yours to win and overachieve.

2016 will be a year of growth for all as business professionals and allowing you to exceed all your goals. With your excitement and daily care there will be nothing that stops us. 

Welcome to 2016 at FSO – let’s MAKE IT HAPPEN together.

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"Ultimately, passion is the driving force behind success and happiness that allows us all to live better lives."

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A Few Of My Favorite Things

While Mitch takes some family time-out for the holidays this week, he's left a few links to some of his most popular recent posts. Enjoy!

Throw Back Thursday: Everybody Leads; Everybody Cares
“This Will Always Lift You Up”
‪http://goo.gl/GWdcnc ‬

TED Tuesday: Jeff Iliff: One More Reason to Get a Good Night’s Sleep
http://goo.gl/64CTn3 
#aGoodNightsRest

TED Tuesday: Life Is Beautiful (A TED Playlist)
Wonderful reminders for the season of gratitude and joy!
http://goo.gl/3ZNL8E 

Inspire ME Friday ==> Letting Go of Keeping Up
“The tendency to compare oneself to other people is fundamental”
http://goo.gl/d3FTTn 

Inspire ME: Purpose is eternal, limitless, and absolute.
“Do you, everyday, purposefully move towards your goals?”
http://goo.gl/8LR8ws 

Ted Tuesday— “Modern work is about solving brand-new problems every day, flexibly, in brand-new ways.”
http://goo.gl/Iy8Pqd 

TED Tuesday: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Meet the women fighting on the front lines of an American war 
http://goo.gl/CKBTbO 

Inspire ME Friday: Appreciate Me
What can you celebrate right now?
http://goo.gl/8KZmvY 
#InspireME

At FSO, We Are Thankful For You
http://goo.gl/4meqKl 
"Stop being afraid of what could go wrong 
and start being positive about what could go right". — zig

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"It is never too late to be what you might have been." 

~~ George Eliot

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Getting On Well With People You Work With The Most Fulfilling Part of a Job

"Positive working relationships and feeling good while at work are really important when looking at overall employee health and well being."

Good Morning Folks,

Just under half (42%) of workers felt positive relationships helped them to feel good at work, compared with a mere 14% for hitting their targets.

In the survey of more than 1,400 workers by HR Magazine in the UK, "having a good work/life balance was the second (40%) most common reason for feeling good at work, followed by receiving praise (26%) and earning the trust (16%) of their boss."

The survey also revealed only 4% of workers felt team activities including 'away-days' made them feel good at work.

Organizations with healthy, happy employees can find they see improvements in productivity and results. The survey results demonstrate how looking out for each other's well being and having a good work / life balance is essential."

Ar FSO, It’s to the credit of our fast-paced and results-oriented environment. Our team members are all energized by our growth, leadership position in the marketplace and the integral role they play in our success. At FSO, every team member matters. In fact, due to the very nature of our business, without our people and their unique skill sets and perspective, FSO would not be the leader that it is today.

The FSO culture celebrates the differences of our people and what we all collectively bring to the table. One of our most important characteristics is the diversity of our team members… our backgrounds… the way we think… the way we see the world. All of these different perspectives are critical to our success and speak directly to the culture here.

Clients also say that our company excels at attracting people with a great work ethic and an upbeat attitude. “They are very positive and incredibly helpful, considerate and kind,” said the COO of New York-based media giant, who uses FSO to staff the mailroom and front desk and fill administrative posts. “The first candidate they send me usually nails the criteria I’m looking for, so my time isn’t wasted meeting five people in order to hire the right one.”

This is what underlies the difference between the happiest jobs and the most hated jobs. One set of jobs feels worthwhile, while in the other jobs, people can’t see the point.

The problems in the most hated jobs can’t be solved by job redesign or clearer career paths. Instead the organizations must undertake fundamental change to manage themselves in a radically different way with a focus on delighting the customer through continuous innovation and all the consequent changes that are needed to accomplish that.

We believe in lavishing praise, giving sincere thanks, looking for the best in everyone, never criticizing and catch ‘em being good! We set the precedent, telling people what they are doing right, and specifically why they are of value— raising the bar to a higher level.

The result of this philosophy is happy customers, workers who can see meaning in their contributions and soaring profits for those clients who place their trust in us.

In the spirit of the season.... CHEERS!

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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"Not happy with their job? Then let me have it. I just want to work."

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Only 51 More Days Till The Happiest Time of The Year... Unless...

Photo: BitterSweetColours

"There'll be parties for hosting

Marshmallows for toasting

And caroling out in the snow

There'll be scary ghost stories

And tales of the glories

Of Christmases long, long ago

It's the most wonderful time of the year"

Good Morning Folks,

It's love at first chill with Christmas already in the air. 

New York City is always great but I think it's magical on Christmas! It's bustling with so much energy and life. Everyone is walking briskly, smiling, saying hello, preparing to tip and thank the service people who support and make possible the great lives they enjoy in a very special place.

Such expressions of gratitude are an emotion so powerful it can transform ones mood from darkness to healing light and renew our zest for life.

Being grateful is an attitude of deep appreciation for the realities that surround us "moment to moment"...each day of our life.

But you don 't have to wait for Christmas to be happy. If you are stuck in a dead end job or responsible for back office support and get greeted in the morning by the Debbie Downer receptionist face, find deadlines unmet, critical support staff calling in sick, criticism rather than compliments from the boss, voice mail loops and layers of management bureaucracy instead of answers, FSO can change your destiny. Because happiness lives, breathes and starts everyday with you smiling right here. 

FSO is driven by passionate people and the value they create. They are passionate about their work. Their passion and enthusiasm are the fuel that ignites our success. If there's one thing that FSO lives and breathes everyday – it's the employee experience. We focus on motivating and driving the hourly employee to deliver great service with a skip to their step, twinkle in the eye and fire in the belly.

Growing our folks is my legacy. My care. And my passion. 

Such happiness is contagious –– when the boss has it, it trickles down throughout the entire organization and beyond to its clients. Happiness can spread to everyone who has a dream, a goal, and the will to change. Happiness can elevate and inspire people to make real and lasting changes in their own lives. Today, an enormous opportunity exists to (re) imagine and reinvigorate your workplace and workforce with FSO.

Clients like to think of FSO as the Ritz Carlton of the outsourcing business. Our team takes great pride in all that we do for you. We're all about making the Hospitality service, a pleasant and seamless experience, every single day. Whenever, wherever and however, our Team we'll always be there. 

We continually strive to go "above and beyond" with our clients to provide the most enjoyable experience with the finest personal service and facilities and fulfilling even the unexpressed wishes and needs.

And we always deliver the rare, exceptional level of service that is really worthy of your gratitude. Unlike those Christmas envelopes you'll soon be delivering then shaking your head pondering "for what"?

There is  a poem. by an unknown author I discovered on Kate's site...

Smiling is infectious
You can catch it like the flu.
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner
And someone saw my grin.
When he smiled I realized
I’d passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile,
Then I realized it’s worth.
A single smile just like mine
Could travel round the world.

So, if you feel a smile begin,
Don’t leave it undetected,
Let’s start an epidemic quick
And get the world infected!

That in mind please enjoy with my compliments this amazing version of the #1 Christmas anthem of all-time, based on the movie of the same name, It's the Most Wonderful Time featuring Natalie Cole and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

If you'd like the words from the song, go here. If you'd really like to get into the spirit f the season by viewing photos of New York at it's finest from the source of the one featured above go here.

And if you'd like to turn those outsourcing frowns to smiles, talk to us, witness us. We'll   take you on a tour of client sites and and let you taste the FSO experience first-hand where you'll see how different life has become for some of the best known-brands in the world.

Call me personally at 212-204-1193.

Feel the FSO Experience - and ensure everyone around you does too. 

Here's to a wonderful week!

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. 
It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” 
~~ Ashley Montagu

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Speaking of Changing Fall Colors, A Leader's True Colors Are Revealed in Tough Times

"Regardless of where you work, always continue to learn what makes leaders successful and what makes them fail" 

Good Morning Folks,

As I have often reminded our teams, anything is possible. Regardless of where you work, or what you do, always continue to learn what makes people successful and what makes them fail.

Because.. The most important resource in the entire universe is YOU. Products, services, innovation, ideas, breakthroughs – they all exist in your head, your heart and your hands. The output of your thinking, the engaging of your heart and the enlistment of your hands create profound results.

“Successful people do what unsuccessful people can’t do”. Find me anyone with skip, fire and twinkle who wants to learn and grow, and I will promise you a career in my company, never just a job. No one ever sets out to be average at FSO, we need to be the best at everything we do.

I am forever grateful to you all for being such a loyal audience and for the great feedback you've been sending my way. I really appreciate it!

Great leadership seems easy when things are good and everybody's happy. When times grow tough, however, a leader's true colors are revealed.

Ten years ago, a group of U.S. soldiers tasted combat for the first time in Sadr City, Iraq. Bill Murphy Jr. got to know one of the junior U.S. leaders in that battle when he wrote a book about West Point and wartime.  

Murphy chronicles the lives of representative 2002 graduates of the United States Military Academy. A former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and an army veteran, Murphy was protégé of celebrity journalist Bob Woodward and has military experience that may have helped him connect to his subjects and perhaps encouraged them to be open with him. He also reported from Iraq for the Post. Here's an excerpt from In Time of War that first appeared in INC:

Dave Swanson was a 26-year-old lieutenant then. He's out of the military now, and we talked recently about what he learned by leading 40 soldiers in 82 straight days of combat. Most of us probably won't be taking a platoon into a hail of gunfire anytime soon, but applying these principles can greatly improve your effectiveness as a leader, no matter what challenges you face. 

1. Control your fear.
As bullets whizzed by him for the first time, Swanson says he was very much afraid. However, he realized he had to subdue his fear because his soldiers were looking to him for clues as to how they should react. 

Courage doesn't mean the absence of fear, and of course being a leader certainly doesn't mean charging ahead blindly in the face of adversity. It does mean you can't allow your fear to become contagious. Your team needs to believe you're in control of yourself, if they're to have confidence that you can make smart decisions in tough times. 

2. Remember that the mission comes first.
You owe a lot to your team for giving you the privilege of placing their trust in you. First on the list, you owe them a goal worth dedicating their efforts to, and you need to demonstrate that you're willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it. 

"I say complete the mission at minimal expense to the people," Swanson says. "Every military leader will publicly say that the mission comes first, but we always accomplished the mission with the soldiers in mind."

3. Remember that the mission comes before you, too.
The only way that "mission-first" mantra can work is if your people truly believe that you will put the mission before yourself, too. In a life-imitates-art moment, Swanson says that in the heat of combat, he thought of a line from the 2001 HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers: "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier." 

In combat, this means being willing to risk your own safety for others in the unit and the mission. In other contexts, it means demonstrating that you'll sacrifice your personal short-term interests for the team's goal. Otherwise, how can you ask them to do so? 

4. Rely on your preparation.
Swanson spent years preparing for battle. He had been an enlisted solider, he spent four years at West Point, and he trained for nearly two years after graduation. While training alone will never quite prepare you to lead in real life, he says, it's as close as you can get to the real thing. 

The same principle applies in any leadership context. Think ahead of time about how you'll react to tough situations, so you can free your mind in crucial moments to react and adapt quickly. 

5. Be tough, but human.
"To those who have been in combat," Swanson explains, "you live by hardness, intuition, and compassion." 

As an example, he stayed awake and on duty for 60 straight hours at the start of the battle, pushing himself until he physically collapsed, but he also found moments of humanity and even humor in the heat of combat. Your team needs to know that you're tough, but also that you're reacting to the world around you like an engaged leader, not a machine. 

6. Encourage your people.
Business is rarely a matter of life and death, but war certainly is. One of Swanson's soldiers, Specialist Jacob Martir, was killed in action during the months of fighting, and several others were wounded and sent home to hospitals in the U.S. 

"It absolutely ate me alive to lose anyone in the platoon," Swanson says. However, he realized that it fell to him to encourage his soldiers and inspire them to keep going. "They were all special. The next day after any [casualty], I would remind them that each of them had already sacrificed themselves for each other on a daily basis--and how, if required, I would sacrifice myself for any of them." 

7. Communicate effectively.
In the heat of battle, it's easy--almost natural--to shut down everything else and focus exclusively on the job at hand. That's a dangerous inclination, however. It's important to make communicating what's going on a priority as well. Your team and all of your stakeholders need to know what's going on, or they can't contribute. 

"Early on in combat, radio communications weren't always the greatest, but that was no excuse," Swanson says. "When technology fails--and it always does at the worst possible moment--you need to have backup ways of getting and giving information." 

8. Use your resources wisely. But use them.
Especially in the first days of combat, Swanson's unit dealt with destroyed and unarmored vehicles, and insufficient supplies of almost every sort. More important, confusion, combat, and casualties left them critically short of soldiers. 

At the same time, they made full use of everything they had. At the end of the first week of fighting, for example, Swanson reflected that he had personally gone through ten 30-round magazines, meaning he had fired 300 bullets at the enemy. Just about everyone else in his platoon had, as well. 

9. Imitate the leaders who inspire you.
When Swanson had to act in the heat of battle, especially when his soldiers' eyes were on him, he thought back to the lessons he had learned at West Point, and some of the other leaders he had known and respected. He also found himself asking a question that has circulated for years among military leaders as a sort of joke: "What would John Wayne do?"

"Regardless of where you work, always continue to learn what makes leaders successful and what makes them fail," he says.

We have amazing employees, customers and leaders at FSO. Thanks to our employees for all you do for us, and to our clients for awarding us with the privilege of serving you.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"Excellence is not an act, but a habit"

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