The Most Important Promise
August 30, 2010
We’re all in the promise business. If you’re a marketing leader, your brand makes a promise that the rest of the organization must keep. If you’re an executive, you’re making promises to your people that your fellow leaders and your HR team must keep. If you’re in sales, you make promises to customers that the product/service must keep. And the list goes on…
We make little promises to our colleagues every day too.
- I’ll be in that meeting at 11.
- I’ll have that deliverable to you by Tuesday.
- I’ll call my friend at that vendor this week.
All of these promises matter. Their sum total equals a big chunk of our credibility with those around us. They’re the unwritten fabric that holds the whole thing together.
But they aren’t the most important promises.
The most important promise you make is the promise to yourself.
- I’ll have that tough conversation (the one I’ve had 50 times in my head) before this week is out.
- I’ll speak up instead of wall-flowering at the next senior staff meeting.
- I’ll take a risk with that client rather than playing it safe.
- I’ll set aside 30 minutes a day to actually think vs. just react to what’s flowing through my email in-box.
The sum total of these promises equals a big chunk of my credibility with myself. And that really matters because if I don’t trust myself, why should anyone else?
Velcro or Teflon?
August 24, 2010
Much has been written about making your message sticky. Here’s a different perspective on the stickiness question: Is your organization velcro or teflon?
Let me explain.
When we work with clients who are trying to bring their vision to life, they inevitably come to a place in the process where they need to communicate with their organization and perhaps business partners. But they want to do more than just inform. They want to engage, energize, dare I say excite people. They want their people’s eyes to shine and their feet to move.
Leaders rightly think carefully about the message. But even with all of that planning, sometimes the message just slips on by their organization barely noticed. And here’s my theory: maybe the message was fine, but the organization is just teflon. Nothing sticks. It’s a nice feature on a frying pan. It’s exasperating as a leader.
Why does this happen?
I submit a few reasons and invite your input too:
- Teflon Coat 1: The track record of the organization: How many messages, initiatives, and “new days” have these people been subjected to over the years? If the organization has started things but never finished them, tried and failed without acknowledging the failure, or announced great intentions without consistent follow-through, you can add a nice layer of slick teflon.
- Teflon Coat 2: The track record of the messenger: If the person delivering the message has an unknown or spotty record of following through on promises, add another coat of teflon.
- Teflon Coat 3: The context for the message: Leaders most often choose emails as the way to deliver a message. (Spray on more teflon – you lose all of the energy and personality of a more in-person message.) If they deliver the message in person, they often hide behind a scripted powerpoint presentation. (Slightly better than email, but still suspect and rarely engaging.)
How do you make your organization more velcro and less teflon?
- Keep your promises.
- Follow through.
- Acknowledge partial successes and outright failures (resist the urge for straight happy talk!).
- Choose messengers with street cred.
- Put personality, passion, and interactivity into the delivery. (That’s right, communicate in person or on video. Grab a marker and draw it. Ditch the deck.)
Then that sticky message may just stick after all.
A Purpose Wake-up Call
August 10, 2010
Tom Little
Many of you probably heard about the killing of 10 NGO aid workers in Afghanistan late last week. For most of us, this event was one more in a line of senseless deaths to which we are exposed on a regular basis. To our family, it was personal.
Tom Little, the optometrist who led the aid team, has been a family friend as long as I can remember. While his family spent most of the last 35 years living in Afghanistan where Tom used his skills to bring eye care to rural Afghans, their US base was usually in the upstate NY town where I grew up. In fact, their current home is less than a mile from the one where I spent my childhood.
As often happens when you’re a kid, I didn’t really know Tom and Libby very well myself. They were grown-ups, after all. But they influenced my family in many ways nonetheless. And in death, he got me thinking.
Most of us (me included), spend too much of our lives and work trying to achieve objectives that in the long run don’t mean a hill of beans. Most of us spend too much energy envying others, plotting our political rise, and being ticked off with those around us. Most of us get sucked into ourselves and our own stories.
I’m sure Tom had some of those tendencies too. He was human. But he had something else. He was crystal clear on his purpose – to bring eyesight (and eventually other basic care like dentistry) to people who would never otherwise have access to it. In life he had no glamor. In death he has great honor. Through it all, he had vision of a different kind – and that vision fueled his efforts when nothing else would.
It makes me think – what purpose is driving me? What purpose is driving you? What purpose is driving your organization? Is it worth it? What could we do to make it more worthwhile?
Making leaders “greedy for new things”
July 30, 2010
Here’s something I’ve seen many times in my work with growth-oriented clients. The leadership team works hard to free themselves from the burdens of everyday business, go off-site to remove distractions and engage each other (and people like me) to imagine the possible.
Then it happens. They have a list of promising growth projects staring them in the face and they all get a certain look…
You can almost hear the audible pop of circuit breakers blowing and see little puffs of smoke from people’s ears as gaskets blow. ”We already have so much – too much – on our plates. How will we do this too?”
Perhaps in their anguished cry lies the answer. Years ago, Peter Drucker suggested several policies for organizations who are trying to grow aggressively. Here’s policy #1:
Abandon what is no longer productive or is a mistake.
While not novel (think of Jim Collins’ “stop doing list”), it’s one of the simplest yet most difficult policies to enact. How often do we take the time to dig into our existing portfolio of work and say, “That project (or process or whatever) had its day. But its day is over.”
So before shelving your growth projects (which is certainly a better option than just loading everyone up and hoping it comes out it the wash), here are a few questions to ask:
- Is there any way I can streamline what I/we do today? Where is the wasted effort and energy? How often do we just keep doing things the way we do them (or allow our team members to do so) even though we know they’re leaking effort all over the floor? My BPI/Lean/Six Sigma friend, Mike Posdal (aka The Process Doctor), once saved a hospital significant money in how they ran their kitchen for goodness sake! Do you think maybe we’re leaking effort too?
- Can I use this challenge as a way to have an under-utilized person reach more of their potential? One way to free up our high potential leaders is to challenge them to train one of their staff member to take over 20% of that up-and-coming leader’s responsibilities. Yes that takes time (and yes, they may resist because they love being that go-to person on whom everyone counts). But it will either provide additional challenge and opportunity for yet another person in the company – or reveal that these team members have reached the limits of the capability and/or interest. Which leads to…
- Is it time to supplement or upgrade our talent? I leave this to last because it tends to be expensive, time-consuming, and (most paralyzing for many leaders) emotional. But in this age that seems to be a permanent do-more-with-less era, we can’t afford to have the “less” people still onboard be less than stellar, eager, and with huge upside potential. And let’s face it, there are many capable, hungry people out there to choose from right now.
So maybe over-loading vs. shelving those growth projects is a false choice. Perhaps there’s more capability hiding in your organization if you just take a few moments to look. It’s certainly worth a try…
What we can learn from pledge drives
June 24, 2010
Here’s a thought: An old sales adage goes, “Always be closing.” I think it’s wrong and here’s why.
I’ve been listening to NPR for the last 20 years. (At the same time, I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.) And in those two sentences, I’ve probably convinced both conservatives and liberals that I’m an idiot in record time.
But I digress.
Any NPR listener (or public television watcher) knows the regular ritual called a pledge drive. Listeners loathe it and it always sounds to me like the poor staff members they corral into pleading for funds would rather be anywhere else than on air, repeating that phone number in increasingly desperate and cringe-inducing ways. (I’m looking at you, WBEZ Chicago.)
Like many people, I’ve mastered the art of turning off the station and clock-watching until I know regular service has resumed. (Before any NPR narcs report me, we’ve been consistent donors for all of the 20 years I’ve listened.) I just can’t bear to listen to it.
But then, one of their reporters did something different the other day. Instead of begging for money during his pledge drive shift, he explained his job. He told how, because we support the station, he can go to city hall to report on Chicago government (always something happening there!). He talked about how he attends trials so that he can bring us the story without all 3 million of us trying to cram into the court room. He was witty, matter of fact, and – interesting!
And curiously, I did something new. I listened. I was intrigued. I wanted to pledge more than I ever have in the past – not out of guilt or pressure, but because it made sense to me and his story engaged me.
How often do we pitch instead of engage? And how often do people around us – clients, colleagues, employees, suppliers, bosses – turn the channel and wait for us to shut up? Sure, we can’t see them physically hit the switch, but that light goes from their eyes as they wait for us to… shut up.
What would happen if, instead of pitching and closing, we informed and shared and engaged?
What if you just reduced irritants?
June 7, 2010
I had coffee with a seasoned and bright marketing executive last week. He said something that stuck out to me:
Most of the time, you can differentiate your company/product/service/brand by just figuring out what irritates customers about companies in your industry and eliminating those irritants…
Little did I know that I would have an object lesson the next day…
Some of you may be fans of big box electronics stores. If what I say from here on offends you, I apologize up front. Against my better judgement, I went with my wife to a VERY well-known big box store to shop for a camera yesterday. True, based on past experience with this particular retailer, I was primed for dissatisfaction. They lived down to my expectations.
In 15 short minutes, all of these things happened (and I’m not making any of them up):
- The person at the front door greeted us cheerily, but offered no guidance on how to find what we were looking for. When we told him that we had a camera on hold and asked where it might be, he pointed blankly and said, “Customer Service.” (Only later did I realize why he appeared chained to his post at the door.)
- Once we found the camera section, a different salesperson approached us every 60 seconds or so (again, I’m not exaggerating) offering help. My wife had a printed copy of research in her hand, but we would only just begin to refer to it before we were interrupted by another salesperson. The irony – they probably thought they were being helpful. In reality, they were getting in the way of us buying something!
- At one point, we did have a question about their return policy. We waited another 19 seconds for the next salesperson to show up (as if on cue) and asked our question. “It used to be 14 days, but now it’s 30 days,” Stoffer said. We confirmed that we could return it within 30 days for a full refund. ”Yes,” Stoffer said, “full refund. If you’re not happy, just bring it back.”
- With the camera chosen, we moved on to memory cards and batteries. Another (yes, different) salesperson approached us (one aisle away from the cameras) and offered to help. My wife asked a few simple battery questions. He looked at her blankly for a few seconds and she wondered if he had not understood the question, couldn’t read English, or had had a slight stroke right then and there. Instead, he finally pulled the staff radio earpiece out of his ear that had been distracting him from listening to the customer right in front of him and then successfully answered the question.
- Finally, we went to check out. At the register, yet a different sales associate rang up the order and confirmed the return policy: 14 days with a 15% restocking fee! Stoffer had clearly been making stuff up!
- We mentioned that our buddy Stoffer had said 30 days and 100% refund. The service manager looked appalled and immediately paged Stoffer’s boss over the earpiece radio system. (I could just imagine some customer in the Battery Departments getting a blank stare from their sales associate as the mayday call went out.) Regardless, the service desk confirmed that we were going to get the less generous policy.
- Before telling us to come back, the greeter at the door asked to see the purchases, our receipt, a picture ID, and a note from my mother. (OK, I made that last part up.)
In 15 short minutes, this big box store (that spends millions getting consumers like me to come into their store) got $400 from us and we had their true brand confirmed for us: lots of product selection, poorly trained salespeople, and a lousy shopping experience. I’ll go back to avoiding them – until I can’t.
PS Here’s the irony. The service manager could have (almost) turned this around by simply saying, “You know what, Stoffer was mistaken but we stand behind our word. I’ll personally write your terms on the back of your sales slip and if you have any trouble with a return, I want you to contact me by name.” It’s highly unlikely we will return the product anyway. But it would have made a real impression on us.
Rant over. Now, the troubling question: in what ways does my company irritate our customers? And in what way does yours? The answer leads to job 1 for next week.
Getting (and keeping) your stars on board
May 26, 2010
HBR’s May 2010 cover article touts a provocative finding:
1 in 4 “high potential” leaders intend to leave their companies within a year.
When I saw that finding, I both raised my eyebrows and nodded my head. In some ways, it’s surprising that up-and-coming leaders would jump ship just as the economy is beginning to pull out of the Great Recession. You might think that all of the uncertainty surrounding the recovery (speed?, double dip?) would lead people to hold their hands.
But a side comment from a senior leader at a recent strategy session – and my own experience – made me realize that some people will play their hands aggressively now. We were discussing the long-term trends and current business condition of this high-growth organization. Out of the back of the room – and barely heard during the discussion – a leader looked at me and said:
The trouble is that the good people are the ones you lose at moments like these…
So true. The law most of us have learned over the years is that highly talented people are among the first to jump because they have options and they have strong belief that they can contribute in other organizations. Oh yes, and they have very high expectations.
So what can we do? The authors of the HBR article have several suggestions (click here to access the article). A while back, my colleague Leslie Miller and I published an article in The Journal of Leadership Studies (click here to get our article) aimed at helping talent-dependent organizations discover their strengths and weaknesses at attracting and retaining talent. Besides being a whopping example of poor timing (the article came out when wave after wave of talented workers were losing their jobs!), the article suggests seven indicators of an organization’s ability to keep cranking out great talent.
Among the seven indicators we suggested were:
- Recruitment success (or yields) – do people accept our offers?
- Recruitment quality – do our new hires meet or exceed expectations of customers and managers?
- Promotion success – do newly promoted associates predictably excel in new roles?
- Promotion velocity – do rising leaders see a rapid and feasible path for advancement?
Regardless of what indicators you use, capable talent is almost always a significant limiting factor for high-growth organizations. Leaders who own the issue (vs. hoping HR will figure it out) have a much better chance of achieving their ambitious growth goals. With the economy opening up some, that may be more true now than ever.
What reactions do you have to the indicators Leslie and I outlined? What did we miss? I’d be interested in hearing from you!
Real values
April 5, 2010
Anytime organizations are charting their futures, the topic of values comes up. And when you bring it up, I can guarantee one thing: at least 40% of the room will give you that cynical look.
Really? Another values exercise?
Why is that?
Here’s my experience-based hypothesis: Most of the time, values are created through a fairly intellectual, sterile process that churns out motherhood and apple pie. ”We are customer focused” and “People are our greatest asset” may be intellectually true. But too often, these sorts of values reveal the lowest common denominator and ooze political correctness.
Maybe the few people in the room understand them and believe them for the 90 minutes they’re talking about them. But as soon as they’re on paper (and posters and websites) they lose that freshness and relevance that would make them useful. They are what we wish we would be – or maybe what we want others to think we want to be.
Regardless, these sorts of values are often worse than useless. They are endless sources of cynicism in our organizations and among the companies who interact with us.
My colleague Paul Krause used an ingenious method to get at much more authentic values in a recent engagement. Rather than gathering a bunch of leaders in a room to discuss values, he wanted to discover the values that were already active in the organization. So he conducted very brief interviews with a broad group of staff members and asked these simple questions.
- What makes your proud of your organization? What stories do you tell when you want to brag?
- What makes a good hire?
- What do you fight for? What do people feel so strongly about that they work to ensure others behave in a certain way?
- What derails a technically competent employee?
- What do others say about your organization?
- What attracted you here?
After identifying themes, he tested those themes through a simple survey. Sure enough, he discovered the five real values that drove decision-making and a sense of connection among the associates.
Everyone has values. They just aren’t always the ones on the glossy posters. What are yours?
Leading Through Bad News
March 22, 2010
It’s almost the end of a quarter. For many organizations, this quarter continues a string of difficult ones – and our typical focus on reporting quarterly results just reinforces that.
Of course, some bad news doesn’t follow a nice quarterly calendar. One client organization I know has recently received some really bad news that has essentially shut down a significant portion of their business until they can resolve some key issues. That’s a bad day at the office.
One of my contacts there sent this question:
How do you keep your head up and your leadership intact when things look bleak?
My friend suggested learning lessons from the legendary Ernest Shackleton, who led an ill-fated attempt to reach the South Pole. A few lessons this client drew from Shackleton’s story:
- Never lose sight of the ultimate goal, and focus energy on short-term objectives.
- Find something to celebrate and laugh about. (I must admit, gallows humor has seen me through many a tough scrape. My dad always said, “Hey, where’s your sense of humor?”)
- Never give up – there’s always another move.
A recent Harvard Business Review article by Joshua Margolis and Paul Stoltz offers a couple of other practices that resilient leadership teams do when facing tough odds or sobering facts.
- Ask, “What features of the situation can I (even potentially) improve?
- Ask, “What sort of positive impact can I personally have on what happens next?”
- Ask, “How can I contain the negatives of the situation and generate currently unseen positives?”
- Ask, “What can I do to begin addressing the problem now?”
Here’s what I like about these questions: they look forward and encourage us to take positive action. They hijack that panicky, discouraged part of the brain and get it focused on something useful again. They may even lead us to taking advantage of some aspect of this crisis. After all, we all need a kick sometimes to get moving – and bad news can lead us to do that.
What other ways have you seen a tough situation turned to the good?
A Critical Distinction
March 11, 2010
Sometimes we confuse critical thinking with just being critical. There’s nothing about critical thinking that says you have to be a jerk. In fact, really useful critical thinking inspires the hearer to raise the bar (vs. defend himself). But many hours are wasted because we get confused about how best to apply critical thinking.
Here are a few examples I see often when doing planning work with smart people (especially smart people):
- The Leadership Team Jousting Match – A leadership team is deliberating a course of action. One team member offers an idea. Someone else (often a perceived rival) decides to take the opposing view, not because there are substantive differences but simply to try to prove that his ideas are superior to his peer’s. The meeting becomes a side-show in the two colleagues’ competition for visibility and influence. Wasted energy seeps from the team – as demonstrated by the rolling eyes of perceptive members in the team.
- The “Needs-to-be-Superior” Leader – A leader is reviewing the draft work product from one of her team members. She has a reputation for being difficult to please and being crazy smart – a reputation she quietly nurtures because it keeps everyone off balance. Though she gave little guidance to her team member, she now works hard to mark up the draft, looking for any possible imperfection to amplify. What she doesn’t know is that her team members now intentionally leave mistakes in their work to indulge her little critical pleasure. It’s wasted effort.
- The “Stuff-it” Executive – A leader is working with his team to refine the organization’s long-range plan. He’s quite concerned about the direction they are going, but he’s concerned about the backlash he might get if he asks tough questions. So he jams his concerns and frustration down deeper into his gut. He fails to consider that it will come out – just in a less controlled and less constructive way. (And you tell me – do you think his people don’t notice his unease?)
I wrote several posts ago about asking yourself, “Is it worth it?” when you feel irritation in a meeting. There are times when it is worth it – when asking certain questions will make a big difference. Here are few effective questions I’ve picked up from clients and colleagues over the years:
- What assumptions underlie your position?
- Which of those assumptions are most important to the position? How would your position change if they proved false (or not fully true)?
- What have you done to test your assumptions? What else could we do?
Now, the trick, of course, is to ask questions like these in ways that don’t seem attacking to others – to have them believe that you are truly trying to stretch the idea (and maybe even stretch them) instead of trying to tear them down. It’s this unique mix of toughness on the problem and softness on the person that sets apart effective critical thinkers and jerks.
And that is a critical distinction.
Who has an example of someone who has mastered the art of constructive critical thinking?