Emotions are Contagious

Posted on May 5, 2013 | Leave a comment

There’s a joke I used to tell my Scouts around the campfire, when it was late and that youngest ones had turned in:

There was a pirate captain who, when attacked by the British Navy, called for his cabin boy to bring him his red vest. The captain fought bravely and his men, following his example, repulsed the Royal Navy ship trying to arrest (and then inevitably hang) them.

The cabin boy was curious but hadn’t worked up the courage to ask the captain why he called for a red vest when they were under attack. It seemed odd to the boy that a change of clothing be at the top of the captain’s mind at such a time.

The next time they were attacked, this time by three Royal Navy ships, the captain called for his red jacket. Again, he and his men fought bravely and barely managed to escape. The cabin boy couldn’t hold himself back any longer.

“Captain, sir, if you please. Whenever we’ve been attacked you’ve called for your red vest. The last time we fought off three ships, but not until you donned your red jacket, sir.”

“Yes, that’s right.”, replied the captain, “And you want to know why?”

“Yes sir, if I may.”

“Well, whenever there’s a chance I may be injured in a skirmish, I don my red vest or jacket so that the men won’t know if I’m injured and bleeding. That way they won’t lose heart no matter how dire our situation, and fight on.”

The cabin boy nodded and smiled, because he know knew how the captain inspired his men. “I want to be as brave as the captain one day.”, he thought to himself.

The next day six ships of the line came over the horizon, spotted the their ship, and made sail to catch the dread pirate.

“Shall I bring your red vest, sir?”, the cabin boy asked.

“No.”, said the captain.

“Shall I bring your red jacket, sir?”, the cabin boy asked again.

“No.”, said the captain.

“Then what shall I do, sir?”, the cabin boy asked a last time.

“Bring me my brown pants.”

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Posted in behaviour, communications, influencing, leadership, self-awareness, teamwork

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Pick Your Staff Like You Pick Your Fruit

Posted on April 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

As a parent, I was told and believed that parents are the greatest influence on the character and success of our children. And it’s not true. Believing that only served to make me waste time doing things that weren’t effective, and made be feel guilty and ashamed when I failed as a parent, and made me act like a controlling asshole. Best of intentions, poor behaviour, bad results.

Turns out that the greatest influence on a child’s character is not her parents, but rather friends in school and out. So, if we have so little influence, what can we do? Help our children pick their friends? Help them learn how to choose their friends?

You Can Pick Your Friends

A friend of mine shared with me how she taught her son to choose his friends like you would choose your fruit. Pick the ones that are mature and ripe and flavorful. And if you find a rotten one, don’t keep it around.

I believe the same is true of whom we choose to surround ourselves with as adults. Our peers, professional colleagues, and friends are a great influence on us in our day-to-day lives, and the research bears this out. We’re more like to be able to quit smoking, lose weight, or exercise regularly if we choose to spend our time in the company of others who do the same, for example.

I believe the same is true of choosing friends with a positive attitude. Not a Polly-Anna make-believe optimism. A positive attitude that helps us get through the hard times, celebrates our successes, and helps us enjoy life when we can.

I believe the same is true for those we chose to work for or with. If you’re a hiring manager you have a huge influence on the outcome of the success of the company. Hiring the right people may not guarantee success, but hiring the wrong people is a sure-fire way to fail.

Who you choose to hire is the greatest influence on the success of your company. A-players hire and are attracted to other A players. A-players will not tolerate working for or with B and C-players for very long. They have a choice, even in a recession, of where to work, and they will take it.

B-players hire C-players because they do not want to feel threatened. B and C-players cost the company not only in terms of lost productivity, but also lost opportunities, demoralized staff, dissatisfied customers, and the extra effort it takes to manage them. They infect everything they touch. The cost of hiring the wrong person is five times their salary and up. They are literally a rotten apple that will turn an entire barrel of apples into a stinking, rotting mess.

Most people leave a job because of their boss, or because their boss tolerates poor performance in others. Not because of money. Even though that’s what they tell you. (Except maybe in Alberta and Saskatchewan because of our weird oil and gas economics, and I believe that’s about to come to an end.) So C-player supervisors and managers drive A players out of the company.

Personally I like Robert I. Sutton’s “no asshole rule“. I found it delightful that simply by telling candidates in the hiring interview that, “By the way, if you’re an asshole, I’ll fire you.”, had the effect of screening out a majority of abusive behaviour from the first day. Some candidates, after being confronted with such a clear boundary around expected behaviour, simply didn’t take the offer. Which I imagine was just fine by Mr. Sutton.

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Posted in behaviour, hiring and firing, influencing, leadership, outstanding managers, relationships, selecting talent, teamwork

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Your Second Most Valuable Personal Resource

Posted on April 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

Barrack Obama has one colour of suit. That way he doesn’t have to spend any time in the morning decision which shoes, belt, tie, or shirt match. They all do. Fewer decisions to make at the beginning of the day. He also has the same breakfast every day. He has more important things to do, apparently.

It’s part of his personal strategy of reducing decision fatigue. He learned that the more decision you make in a day, the worse each next decision is. So he’s spent years reducing trivial decisions he makes keep his strength for the more important, complex, and challenging ones.

Making decisions burns energy. Holding two or more options in your mind and comparing them is one of the most expensive executive activities our brain engages in. Stress, poor nutrition, poor fitness, and insufficient sleep will also contribute to a fatigued brain.

Making Good Decisions

We have only so much energy we have for decision-making during a day. The more fatigued we are the poorer decisions we make, and the more easily we fall into decision-making traps. Which contributes to stress, lack-of-sleep, etc.
It’s kind of the opposite of a self-licking ice-cream cone. It’s more like a death spiral.

One of the frequent complaints I hear from busy executives and managers “lack of time”. When we dig a little deeper if often comes down lack of focus and poor time-management habits. They’re trying to everything and end up accomplishing nothing. Currently I have nine clients, seven of whom are doing well. Who’s businesses are growing and improving as we work together.

Take Care of Yourself

Most of them are physically active and robust. They’ve learned to take care of themselves. They exercise, they eat well, they don’t smoke (except for the occasion cigar when on vacation in Cuba), they have good sleep habits, and they don’t drink to excess.

smoking ncoYou don’t have to do all these things to be a good leader. Being perfect is not a prerequisite to success. Goodness knows I’ve met a few smoking, drinking, swearing men and women that get the job done and have the respect of their team. Even been one on occasion. But it’s harder.

Business is not Olympic diving. You don’t get points for difficulty.

Eat That Frog

If you eat a frog first thing in the morning, you can go through the rest of the day knowing that probably nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. The frog in this case might be the thing you’ve been procrastinating about the most, or that task that will have the greatest positive impact on you life right now.

Tackle tackles things first, and and second things not at all. Tackle the work that requires your best focus and brain-power when you’re at you’re best. And if you have two big frogs to eat, eat the biggest, ugliest, oldest one first.

Guard Your Brain

Husband your decision-making energy carefully. Guard it jealously like you guard your time. Be conscious of your physical and emotional states, and how they affect your behaviour and decisions.

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Posted in behaviour, decision making, effectiveness, focus, focus, leadership

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We Have To Do Everything NOW, So We Can Fail Faster

Posted on April 14, 2013 | 1 Comment

Seventh and last in a series about communication and change management.

I’ve got a lot of renovation projects started around my house. We installed hardware floors eight years ago, and still haven’t put the baseboards in. I know it was eight years because the night we put the last nail in is the night my god-daughter was born. In fact, we baby-sat her older sister while Mom & Dad (who’d been helping us) went to the hospital to deliver their latest.

When everything is a priority, important things get missed

When everything is a priority, important things get missed

The outside of the house is half painted, the garage needs new gutters, and I have the bricks but not the sand to re-lay the back patio so that it slope away from the house instead of towards it. I started that job when I took the old wooden patio out. I don’t remember how many years ago that was.

There’s lots of things we could be doing, and yet nothing seems to get done. We’ve gone from doing a little here (let’s get an estimate on finishing the tiling on the back landing) to doing a little there (oops, the playhouse needs repair! Let’s turn it into a garden shed while we’re at it – the kids are all grown up and don’t need it anymore.)

It’s demoralizing really. Lots of activity, no sense of progress. Companies and teams can suffer from the same organizational schizophrenia. When everything is important, then nothing is important, and nobody is clear about what to do next.

Fix #7 Focus

There’s a saying about how the cobbler’s children go barefoot because he’s too busy making shoes for everybody else. So I took my own advice. I stepped back to figure out what I was trying to accomplish over all. Then I picked one thing to do to get me closer to that.

Sooner or later we’re going to need to sell the house we’re in. The kids will all be moved out soon. The house is too big for just the two of us. Maybe we’ll find a little place out in the country. Or the mountains. Or maybe next to a slow-moving river in a little valley out on the prairie.

Regardless, we’re going to need to get our investment plus maybe a little extra out of it. We were never going to get there if we kept doing the same thing we are now, which is trying to come up with the perfect plan and budget.

Pick One Thing

We picked one project and we’re focused on that. We’re installing the baseboards,  re-painting the wall, and moving around some furniture and pictures. Then we can get our offices set up, and get some extra closet space to make the kitchen more livable. But the baseboards are going in. We’ve spent the last two weekends working, and the progress is tangible. At the end of today the pronouncement was “Let’s keep going!

It is so easy to plan everything out to the Nth degree, and let slip the time we could actually be doing things. Time is the one thing we cannot run down to the hardware store and get more of.

Decisions are Expensive

Making decisions is expensive. Holding two competing ideas, alternatives, or options in your brain at the same time, and choosing between them, costs the brain a lot of energy. Our ability to make quality decisions degrades with each subsequent decision during the day. Save your decision making energy for when you really need it. Once you’ve made a decision, act on it!

“Do Not Do” List

Leader’s make decisions. Those decision include what not to do. And that has to be communicated as explicitly as what you are going to do.  What if you made a “Not” list? List all the things that you’re not going to do? If need be, you can even make a “Later” list, as in “This might be next, but I’m not going to spend time and energy thinking about it now.”

Start With the End in Mind

Have a vision for where your company / team / organization is going. Then pick something, usually the most urgent “do now” stuff, and get it done. Something that if you focused on it for a set time would give you the best chance of getting closer to your goal. Give yourself a deadline. Remove all other distractions. Then do it until it’s done. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Focus precedes success, which generates momentum, energy, enthusiasm, and that elusive “employee engagement”.

What’s on your “do not do” list?

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Posted in effeciency, effectiveness, execution, focus, leadership, setting goals, teamwork

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I’m Busy, They’ll Figure It Out

Posted on April 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

Sixth in a series about communication and change management

We can’t manage time.

We can’t manage five minutes and turn it into six. We can’t manage information overload – if we tried our heads would explode every time we walked into a library. We don’t manage priorities, we have them.

We can decide what to focus on and how we spend our time.

Alice's White Rabbit

We can’t manage time, but we can manager our focus

Those things we choose to spend our time and attention on are more likely to be successful than those we don’t. Yet some of us seem determined to try to do everything that comes along, whether or not it aligns with our work and our lives. There may be many reasons for this behaviour. The result is often stress, failure, and shame.

You can’t create more time. You have to budget the time you we do have. Decide what you must, should, and want to do with your time. More importantly decide what you’re NOT going to do.

If your objective is to make a program or initiative fail, then you don’t need to make the sometimes difficult decisions about what other things you’re not going to spend your time and attention on. Just let it happen by default. Because you’re too busy.

Here’s the paradox. As managers we get things done through other people. Managing people take a lot of time and effort. Maybe even more than managing ourselves. Which can be a pain. If people did what they were supposed to, being a leader would be a lot easier.

One of things that can’t get ignored by default are the human relationship aspects of your job. I think it should be near the top, in fact. You can’t ignore the people part, building trust, and then get mad when the projects executed by those people fail.

There’s no point in being so busy that you don’t check in on a project, program, or initiative only to find out in the last two weeks of a three month effort that you’re two months away from finishing it. Now you’re going to be spending the next two weeks pulling that particular set of chestnuts out of the fire. While you ignore your other work. Tell me again why we’re so busy?

Fix #6 Have a Rhythm

Clear responsibilities, hysterical transparency, and regular reviews drive accountability. Getting things done doesn’t mean doing everything yourself. Getting things done means planning and delegating the work, keeping track of progress on a regular basis, and reporting on that progress.

Consider maintaining a”relationship” with the projects you’re accountable for, as well as the people you work with. Regular, habitual check-ins, meetings, or status updates are the best means of keeping a project on track.

Establish a rhythm lets you stay up-to-speed on what’s happening with all the work and your team. Ideally once a week. Once a day if that’s appropriate for a critical, complex, or large project.

If your check-ins are once a week, and the work is more than two weeks in duration, then break the work into two week chunks. With tangible, deliverable results at the end of each. This could be a report, a presentation, a manufactured good, a software release, a construction milestone, a signed contract, etc. Something real.

Two weeks is a nice way to break up the time. In the first week something should be started, and in the second they should have finished. Now you can verify progress. There is a report, a presentation, or other work product the shows progress. Not started? Okay – what’s the hold up? Finished now? Good – where’s the deliverable?

This is one example of how to design a project to provide the clear responsibilities and transparency.

You can deliberately build in the rhythm that allows you to manage, direct, and oversee the work. Or you can spend more time later cleaning up the mess. Your choice.

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Posted in accountability, communications, meetings, productivity, relationships, teamwork

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Interruptions – Guest Blog

Posted on April 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

My friend Karl proof-reads for me, and after a recent proof-reading mentioned he’d written an article on interruptions for his company newsletter. I’d like to share it with you.

White Noise – Work Interruptions

Interruptions

Enjoy!

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Posted in effectiveness

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Everybody Sees the World the Same Way I Do – It’s a Trap!

Posted on April 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

Fifth in a series about communication and change management

Frustrated They're Not Learning? It May Not Be Them

Frustrated They’re Not Learning? It May Not Be Them

I love words. As a child when I discovered books, that became  my world. It’s where I escaped to. I write daily. I journal. I have plans to write a book. I love the smell of books. I have a library that I measure in hundreds of linear feet. Some books go back to the late 18th century.

It’s a lovely place. Coffee on, music in my ears, typewriter keyboard under my hands. Or a new book on my e-reader. When I learn or process I usually do it through words. Words are beautiful. Words are powerful. Words are magical.

Yet I’m closing myself off from most of the world. Not everybody has a sensual association with the written word like I do. Saying that out loud it seems that might be a good thing. My point is, not everybody processes the world through words. There are five senses, not just eyes scanning shapes laid out linearly.

Words are a visual media, yes, but there are also photographs, drawings, and pictures. Movies, models, and sculptures. There are many visual media, and many different ways to understand the world. The best writing (and speaking), in fact,  invokes the visual in concrete and tangible ways.

Fix #5 Appeal to All Five Senses

Learn to tell compelling stories. Tell them in different ways. Consider all the senses. Persuasive, moving arguments invoke all five senses and more. They invoke memory and emotion. We act because of how they make us feel.

I saw one of the worst examples of killing all enthusiasm for a great idea at an after-dinner presentation last week, in which a simple story from the audience rescued the evening.

The presentation was on workforce management. The slides that accompanied the presentation looked like a random collection of numbers and letters thrown at the page. The presenter read from the slides. It was horrible.

I felt sorry for the poor guy. He was trying to jazz things up by having a little drawing of a flow-chart or something in the bottom corner once in a while. Ironic really. Yet it was a simple metaphor from the audience that brought his concept  to life:

There are two kinds of shoppers at the hardware store on a Saturday morning. The first kind has a list, knows what she needs to complete the entire project, and gets in and out just the once. She spend the rest of the day executing the project, finishes early, and has a beer on the patio at the end of the day.

The second kind makes a trip to the hardware store every time they figure out they’re missing another piece or tool. This was me last summer when my outside faucet sprung a leak inside the house – six trips to the hardware store before I had the drywall back on the ceiling!

There. One simple visual metaphor and the jargon-filled, esoteric project management concept is distilled and made clear. Now the details (and project managers love details) have a skeleton to hang from. Oversimplified? Perhaps. Understandable? Yes.

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Posted in change management, communications, effectiveness, influencing, leadership, motivating, persauding

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One Email Outta Do It

Posted on March 25, 2013 | 2 Comments

Fourth in a series about communication and change management.

http://flic.kr/p/diquZA

Face to face communication is always best

I love email. It’s fast, it’s easy, its’ cheap. It also provides us a record of what was said. Sometimes it’s important to have a record.  Also I don’t have to ask people how their day’s going, or remember their kids kids’ names. But maybe that’s just me.

So what’s the problem with email? Words themselves make up only as much as 40% and maybe as little as 7% of communication. Words themselves are only a small part of what’s being communicated. So for trivial or strictly objective communication (“Where are we having lunch?”, “Please send me the numbers for the third quarter.”) email works just fine. After that, the chance of mis-communication goes up.

The more complicated the message, the greater the chance for mis-communication. The more emotionally laden the communication (“I think you have an attitude problem.”) the greater the likelihood of misunderstanding. The more people involved, or the less time people have worked together, the greater the opportunity for misinterpretation. Add all those together and the chance of added drama, resentment, and wasted effort is almost certain.

My experience, both as a manager and as a facilitator, is that mis-communication is really easy. You have to work really hard to *not* mis-communicate. Yet we often choose on one of the worst ways to talk to others about complicated, potentially emotional issues with people we don’t really know that well – email.

Fix #4  Talk to a Human

Talk face-to-face. Wash , rinse, repeat.

Mark Hortsman has an amusing saying (I paraphrase): “I’m glad to hear you want to work with people. All the jobs with trees and dogs are taken.” As managers and leaders we manage and lead people, not email. If our jobs were to manage email I wouldn’t have to write this blog post.

Keeping a record isn’t going to engage and influence people to change behaviour or create enthusiasm. Repeated human interaction, building relationships and trust, is the only thing that does.

Phone calls are better than emails for engaging human beings. Video-conferences better than phone calls. In person meetings better than video-conferences. One-on-one, face-to-face meetings are better still. Regular, repeated contact.

If you need a record of agreement, write it afterwards. First pick up the phone, walk down the hall, learn to speak publicly. Tell stories, have a vision, be passionate. Email is efficient  but it’s ineffective. If you’re a manager of human beings, learn to manage human beings. If you’re a manager of trees or dogs, carry on.

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Posted in communications, influencing, leadership, relationships

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Link

Predicting Success

Predicting Success

Predictor of business execution success

Check out my latest article for RESULTS.com “Predictors of Business Execution Success”. It’s a gooder.

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Posted on March 18, 2013 in behaviour, leadership

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I’m Going to Provide an Overwhelming Rational Arguement, and then Fail

Posted on March 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

Third in a series about communication and change management

An Aurora Police Department detective takes a witness statement following a shooting outside the 16 movie theatre in Aurora. Aurora Police responded to the Century 16 movie theatre where police confirm at least 14 people are dead and 50 others injured. AP Photo/Karl Gehring Shooting at Batman screening

“Fact, just the facts ma’am.”

Great if you’re investigating a murder. Insufficient if you’re inspiring action or driving change. It is a mistake to believe that any solely rational, logical, or well-constructed argument will persuade people to set aside their own perceived best interest in favour of doing what’s right or doing what’s correct.

Many people will listen to a rational arguement, analysis, or well-constructed thesis and wonder what you’re up to. What do you really want? What are you trying to hide? Even executives – especially executives – know that any one set of numbers and facts can be tortured to confess whatever is needed to support both sides of the same arguement  Most of us make decisions based on gut, and rationalize that decision with facts and analysis afterwards.

I’m not saying you don’t need to be skeptical, or that you don’t need to do that analysis. As Stephen Lynch once said, “You can run your business with discipline, or you can run it with regret.” But rational  arguement is not going to overcome behavioural inertia in others.

You are going to need more than just the facts.

Fix #3 Appeal to Their Hearts Too

Martin Luther King didn’t say “I have a plan.”

He said “I have a dream.”

Stories, vision, passion, vulnerability. These are what persuade. Concrete, tangible, visual goals are what drive action.

Yes, your plan has to be based in reality. Businesses have to make money to live. But the purpose of a business cannot and should not be just to make money. Your body needs to make red blood cells in order to live, but that’s not your life’s purpose. A doctor gets paid well, but doctors don’t exist to make money.

Businesses need a higher purpose too. Maybe you’re not going to solve world hunger, but you should have a vision beyond just X percentage growth, or Y dollars revenue. Have the guts to stand for something. Something that inspires people to leap out of bed in the morning and eagerly embrace their work.

Amazon’s goal is to provide “Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.” Henry Ford wanted to “Democratize the automobile.” Google wants to “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Not every purpose is going to appeal to every person, but you want it to appeal to the people that are working for you.

Hopefully your change is tied to the higher purpose of the company. An emotional, human connection that impels the actions, and energy needed to overcome inertia and drive change deeply and quickly in your team or company.

Or you could write another policy change. Your choice.

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Posted in behaviour, change, communications, emotional intelligence, engagement, influencing, leadership, motivating, teamwork

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