Dirty Word #26 – Enough!
August 16, 2010
One of the joys of having a DVR is that I generally watch commercials at warp speed. Admit it, you do too.
But I was in a hotel last week and thus without my friendly DVR so I noticed an ad that quickly had me wondering if it was real or an ornate spoof.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the 30-second toothbrush. Apparently, in their Great Recession-inspired frenzy, Americans no longer have the recommended 2 minutes to brush their teeth so the fine folks at 30-Second Smile got to work on our behalf. (This reminds me of my other favorite personal hygiene trend – the multi-blade razor. I’m waiting for the day that Gillette brings a 12-blade razor the size of a waffle iron to market.)
I’m no math genius, but if you brush your teeth the dentist-ordained twice a day, this could yield 3 minutes of time savings every day. Over the course of a diligently-brushed year, this would save you – hold onto your teeth! - 18 hours and 15 minutes of brush time. (In leap years, you’d chalk up 18 hours, 18 minutes. One more reason to celebrate Leap Year!) Don’t even get me started thinking about how much time you’d save by the time you need dentures.
Kidding aside, what does it say about us that someone thinks this would appeal to a significant segment of the market? Are we in such a rush that we can’t spend four minutes a day doing this simple ritual? What are we going to do with those fragmented 90 second bursts – update our facebook status to say that we just saved 90 seconds brushing our teeth?
Here’s a different idea. Take the full two minutes. Call it what it is – a stewardship ritual, taking care of the teeth you were given at birth by no merit of your own.
Even better, use the morning brush time to think about one person (a customer, colleague, employee, supplier) you can serve outrageously today. Use the evening brush time to be thankful that a) you have teeth to brush, b) you came through the day and have another chance to serve and be served tomorrow. For extra credit, you could try to identify someone who did something you appreciate. They’d probably love a text (and yes, u cn omit vwls 2 save time if u must).
Oh, and maybe we should all resolve to double-check our pitches to see if they pass the giggle test. Sometimes enough is enough.
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?
A Dirty Word Trifecta – Learning from a blown call
June 4, 2010
Something interesting and unusual happened this week and I don’t want to miss the opportunity for all of us to learn from it. While I’m not a big baseball fan anymore, like many of you I saw the video highlight of Armando Galarraga’s almost-perfect game on Wednesday night. On the last out of the game, umpire Jim Joyce mistakenly called the batter safe at first when he was clearly out, costing the Tigers pitcher a place in history.
But maybe both men deserve a place in a different kind of history for demonstrating three Dirty Words (as I call uncommonly good words that we’re embarrassed to use in the marketplace) in one 36-hour period…
Most people in Galarraga’s position would have been outraged at this mistake and gone on a rampage, during, after and LONG after the game was over. Most umpires would stone-wall or make excuses about the mistake. And most relationships would be irreparably damaged as a result. Joyce and Galarraga aren’t most people. Here are the three Dirty Words in action:
- Ownership – Jim Joyce, upon seeing the replay, immediately went to Galarraga (and the Tigers team) in private to own his mistake and apologize. He went further yet. He went in public and said, “I blew it. I cost that kid a perfect game.” No shirking. No excuses. No “that’s the way it is.” Just pure ownership.
- Forgiveness – Not to be outdone, Galarraga responded by forgiving Joyce. He went as far as to shake his hand the next day, not just some sort of cold forgiveness that mouths the words but holds back the real deal.
- Grace – Even in the moment, Galarraga didn’t blow a gasket. He was surprised, even visibly disappointed. But he went right back to the mound and got the last out of the night. Later he said, “I understand, nobody’s perfect.” He gave Joyce dignity and respect even though the unwritten rules of the baseball diamond would not have demanded it. Finally, we have a positive role model to talk about from sports…
Here are the application questions for us: In which relationships do we need to take Jim Joyce’s example and own a mistake? And where can we follow Armando Galarraga’s example by practicing forgiveness and giving grace? Not only will we probably feel better, but the “game” wherever we play – our firm, school, non-profit, office – will be more productive as a result.
Good fights
February 25, 2010
I got some interesting responses from my last post on handling irritants. It led me to think more about the inevitable fights we have on leadership teams.
We shouldn’t be surprised when leadership teams experience conflict. Whenever there are important issues and people with strong opinions, there will be fights. As Peter Drucker once said, “Not to have an opinion after having experience would argue for an unobservant eye and a sluggish mind.” Strategic discussions, policy deliberations, and even everyday operational trade-offs will often prompt friction and, shall we say, the open exchange of ideas.
The question is, what kind of fights does your leadership team have?
A recent HBR article on the topic got my juices going on this. And I humbly offer my simple grid to help prompt some thought on the conflicts you have in your leadership team. (Yes, this model works for domestic relationships too, but that’s my marriage therapist-wife’s department.)
(Click on the thumbnail to see a larger view!)
The message of the model is simple – we’re trying to manage two variables when picking fights: what we fight about and how we conduct ourselves before, during, and after the fight. If we can fight constructively about substantive things more often than not, we won’t do the things that leadership teams typically do – and we’ll waste less time, focus more energy on important things (like serving customers!), and maybe even enjoy work more.
So here’s the question: In your leadership team’s last planning cycle, how much time and energy was spent in each of these quadrants? What additional business value could you create next time by simply pushing more time and energy up and to the right? What can you personally do to influence that shift?
Worth pondering…
Dirty Word #22 – Innocence
April 15, 2009
I’m going to take a break today from writing about strategy, momentum, and performance. That’s because I saw something today that got my attention – and perhaps goes a little deeper than just getting stuff done.
Most of you are familiar with Americon Idol, a show that entertains both through identifying talent and by finding people who are willing to embarrass themselves in front of millions. In fact, the shows where the vastly under-talented sing before a panel of three paid-to-be-cynical judges often score very high in ratings. It’s like watching a train wreck with no blood.
England has its own version of the show, Britain’s Got Talent, and Simon Cowell brings his caustic wit to that panel as well. This past weekend, Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old single woman from northern England got her turn on the show. From the moment she walks on stage, you assume it’s a classic American Idol set-up – that she will embarrass herself and perhaps show herself to be totally deluded about her talent.
Boy, was that panel (and packed house audience) in for a surprise. If you haven’t seen this performance, I dare you not to click here and watch it. Better than that, I dare you not to be moved by her talent.
Even more, perhaps we should be moved by the dynamics behind the interaction. Susan doesn’t fit the American Idol/Britain’s Got Talent stereotype for stardom – young, beautiful hotties. We can laugh at the astonished reactions of the panel. But I admit I’m a little uncomfortable that my own pre-suppositions about Susan were far from complimentary as I watched her stride out onto the stage. I was squirming and thinking to myself, “She can’t be serious…”
She was very serious.
What can we learn from this?
- Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is the obvious point. Beauty comes in many different packages.
- As we lead, we need to restrain our temptation to judge. This is true about our knee-jerk reactions to people, ideas, organizational models. Would a second look lead us to see something better and deeper?
- Is innocence actually strength in disguise? What strikes me about Susan Boyle is that she just loves singing. She was confident but had no chip on her shoulder. She seems very comfortable in her own skin even when others dismissed her. In a world (and TV series) full of schemers, Susan just went out and did what she does every week in the church choir. What would happen if we approached each other with a similar lack of pretense?
What else can we learn from this video? How does it apply to our roles as leaders in organizations?
Dirty Word Re-visited – Mistakes
March 31, 2009
Unless you live in a very different world than I do, you have probably noticed one of the dominant reactions to our times: fear. If you’re an employee, you may fear the possibility of that unplanned visit by the HR team. If you’re a boss, you may fear the directive to trim yet more cost from your area of responsibility. If you’re a consultant, you may fear that meeting with a client or prospect when they tell you they just don’t have the funding to do your project.
All of those circumstances can lead people to especially fear mistakes, and this can be a real problem for leaders. Instill a deep fear of mistakes in your team and you just might keep an already faltering organization stalled for some time. Here’s a story to illustrate:
I have a friend named Shaun who runs a very unique program at a Chicago-area high school. He is a chef by training, and attended the prestigious Culinary Institute of America (kind of the Harvard of chef schools). The guy can cook. But he’s chosen to put his skills to work teaching high school students how to run a first-class food operation. In fact, they run a full restaurant at their high school and serve top-notch meals to faculty and staff. And you thought extended summer breaks were the best part of teaching!
A graduate of his program was accepted to an elite chef school and sent to Spain to apprentice under one of the top chefs there. On her first night in the kitchen, she was handed an order of chicken and told to put the appropriate sauce on it. Unfortunately, the instructions were given in Spanish and this young lady spoke no Spanish: nada. She looked around, took her best guess as to which sauce to use and finished the dish.
Much to her chagrin, her immediate supervisor looked at the dish in horror: she had finished this chicken dish with chocolate sauce. The supervisor showed the dish to the head chef. He looked at the dish and the young American chef waited for the inevitable Gordon Ramsey-like explosion. She mentally had her bags packed for a return trip in disgrace.
Instead, the chef smiled and said, “You will do well. You took initiative. I would much rather you take initiative and make mistakes sometimes than that you wait to be told what to do.” The dish had to be trashed and started over, but the chef had learned something important about his young student.
“The initiative is marvelous. The chocolate chicken – not so much…”
So as leaders, now more than ever, we must find ways to encourage initiative and courage even when they cause mistakes. Yes, we should watch to see if team members can learn from and anticipate future problems. But courageous (imperfect) action almost always beats fear. Who needs some recognition for taking initiative despite fear in your world?
Dirty Word #21 – Frugality
January 13, 2009
If you read the Wall Street Journal, you may have noticed an article last week entitled New Frugality Worsens Downturn. It talks about the perils of individual frugality for the larger economy. (If you want entertainment, sample the response of WSJ readers who commented on the online article – let’s just say they have little sympathy for the argument that it’s our patriotic duty to spend!)
I won’t jump into that particular debate right now. Instead, I’ll share an insight I got a few years ago about money and what happens when it’s in shorter supply. Some readers may know that after 10 years with a consulting and training company, I decided to quit in April of 2003. Our family had saved a cash cushion and I decided to take a sabbatical of up to one year.
The sabbatical was a great experience on many levels and I probably learned more in that year than in most 12 month periods of my life. One of the biggest lessons I learned was how many problems I had solved in the past simply by throwing money at them. A little bored with what’s in the cupboard? Go out to dinner! Have a friend who’s down? Buy them a gift! Curious about a book or movie? Click on amazon.com! Sick of the normal family vacation? Go to Spain!
That all changed when I took the leap out of the corporate world. Of course we still spent money, but we started to look for other, more ingenious (dare I say frugal) ways to meet needs and wants. I took up cooking again. We discovered our local library. We had fabulous family vacations camping in the north woods. I mowed my own lawn again. I even dug out dandelions by hand. And while I was very happy to see cash flowing back into the family, I must say we had some wonderful times learning to solve our problems creatively during that year.
Here’s my point: perhaps as a country, as companies, and as non-profits, we have over-depended on money to solve our problems over the past 20-30 years. Frugal people aren’t necessary less happy – but they are more ingenious! They find ways to solve problems with no (or less) dollar signs attached. They work together to solve a problem ingeniously (how about sharing a snow blower or lawn mower instead of everyone owning their own?).
Necessity can be the mother of invention and a downturn can be the mother of ingenious, “hey, we did it!” solutions.
Dirty Word #20 – Friendship
December 18, 2008
There’s an old saying that people quote when something bad happens to them: “It’s times like this when you find out who your friends really are.”
For many of us, it’s one of those times. Maybe for all of us…
It goes without saying that we live in a very nervous world right now. I know smart, successful people who understandably refuse to read the news. Yes, purveyors of news specialize in reporting nasty things. It’s just that they have such an abundance of it right now! And much of it strikes at a very personal level – job loss, destruction of wealth, uncertainty in quantities we haven’t known in recent memory. It has most of us looking over our collective shoulders…
Which leads me to wonder – when you look over your shoulder, who do you see? If that bad thing happened (or maybe it’s already happened), who is there offering help and support? We work in a world that largely eschews friendship. “It’s just business,” we say. But only the person who has to rationalize an action says this. The person on the receiving end almost always feels like it’s personal.
One of the upsides of this terrible downturn is the opportunity to give each other friendship. That may look like opening a door to an opportunity, but it just as easily may just be taking a moment to place a phone call, to write a note, or to grab a cup of coffee.
When I’m tempted to take my own advice on this, I sometimes wonder, “What do I say?” Then I remember that I don’t have to say much (and it’s probably better if I don’t say much so that I don’t end up looking stupid). I simply have to tell that person I’ve been thinking about them and ask them how they’re doing. Most people just like being heard a little bit and sometimes they even get a little clearer by thinking out loud.
Two groups may be reading this and saying, “Yeah, easy for you to say. Sit in my shoes for a moment.” Those two groups are those who have recently had a setback or those leaders who are in the middle of making tough business decisions that will create setbacks for others. I plan to post specifically about those situations, but I’ll tip my hand here – in both cases, you still have ample opportunities to offer friendship to those around you. It costs little and can be a big benefit.
For now, look over your shoulder. Who can you count as friends? Be thankful for those people, no matter how few they are. And look at the people around you – who can you befriend right now. It’s times like these….
Dirty Word #19 – Correction
October 10, 2008
I usually write about strategy implementation, leadership, and turning everyday work into top-notch learning. Be warned, today’s post is a little different.
The events of the last few weeks have shaken many of our core beliefs. I was in Knoxville with a client when the market started its dizzying plunge. We watched with awe as it dropped hundreds of points. Little did we know at that point that the market close of that day would look stratospheric compared with where we are today.
And still the question remains, “Where will it end? Where’s the bottom? Where is the solid ground?”
One principle taught by Tom Paterson, one of the most experienced organizational consultants on the planet, is that we have to find the truth or it will bite us in the butt. In other words, you can have the most elegant vision in the world, but if it’s based on illusion, it floats away like vapor – only with crashing sounds.
I’ve been reflecting recently on things we assumed as “truth” that are now challenged by reality:
- My money will grow by X% between now and the day I need it (I’ll leave you to fill in X depending on how bullish you were)
- My 401(K) will still be a 401 (K) in thirty years
- Our financial system is rock solid and our deposits/investments are safe
It’s possible that this whole season will look like irrational hysteria in a few months. We may recover more quickly than the gloomy economists predict. Maybe…
But regardless, there’s a good side to a market correction like this. The vertigo we feel as our assumptions shake beneath our feet can force us to ask fundamental questions. Like, what really is true? What do we really believe? What are the core principles on which we can stand?
I don’t have all of my answers yet. But here are few stabs:
- If my ultimate security comes from something as fickle as money, I’m hosed. I’m not my paycheck, my bank account, my 401(K) or my house. And neither are you. We all matter regardless of what happens in the markets.
- Values count. It’s easy to frame values and hang them on the wall. But now, when it’s all falling apart, is when we find out what really matters to us. I want to look back on these days and feel proud that I stuck with a core set of principles.
- Relationships matter. It’s easy to shrink back right now, to just stare at the news in disbelief. Now is the time to reach out, to offer help, to listen. We may lose financial capital, but we can be building relational capital with colleagues, clients, suppliers, even competitors.
- The how matters immensely. We are all going to have to do unpleasant things in the coming months. Last time we had an event like this (9/11), I had the great displeasure of laying off 80% of my workforce over the following 18 months. It was the right thing to do for the organization and I was the face of that organization. But how I did that – the way I delivered the message, the personal support I offered to employees (those who stayed and those who left) – I knew that mattered big-time. We’re there again. We can do difficult, “right” things and still be human (in the best sense of that word).
- Quality time over good, simple food with friends and loved ones is still one of the best things on the planet. No market correction can take that away.
That’s my starter list. What values correction is this roller-coaster ride creating for you?
Dirty Word #18 – Mistakes
August 8, 2008
Nobody relishes making mistakes, but sometimes they can be good. In our strategy implementation work with clients, we often get involved coaching leaders on how to be more effective in their roles. Some time ago, I was working with a really smart client who was trying to improve her influence with her team by turning up her listening skills. Her people sometimes thought she had her mind made up already and tuned them out, especially when conversations got heated up. And as a pretty passionate person who values debate, that happened often.
During one of our regular meetings, she sheepishly told me about a blow-up she had had with one of her key team members. “We had a disagreement and both of us got pretty angry. I acted downright dismissive to this person and he was practically insubordinate to me.”
I could tell that my client felt like this was a major failure. I didn’t feel that way.
“This presents a great opportunity,” I said. “You can go back to your team member, own your part of the break-down, say you’re sorry, and tell him you’ll try to do better next time.”
“But it wasn’t all my fault. Am I supposed to just gloss over his part of the mess?”
“Of course not,” I answered. “He has to own his stuff too, but you’re the leader and leaders go first. I’ll bet if you own what you can honestly own from the situation, he’ll respond in kind.”
Not only did my client follow through on her decision, but she reported that the incident had actually strengthened her relationship with this key staff member. It just goes to show what John Gottman’s research on relationships has suggested – that mistakes are inevitable and that sincere efforts to repair damage are much more important than the mistakes themselves.
It’s worth thinking about – are there mistakes or conflicts facing you right now (with colleagues, clients, or key suppliers/partners) that are relationship-building opportunities in disguise? How can you capitalize on them?