Further investigations were made, and finally it was discovered that the statue had been sculpted by forgers in Rome. The teams of analysts who did the 14 months of research turned out to be wrong. The historians who relied on their initial hunches were right.
I especially like this story because it aligns so strongly with my research in organizational creativity. Whether they call it a hunch, a gut feeling, or a flash of insight, thousands of successful managers and executives make business decisions using their intuition. Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Conrad Hilton are famous examples of executives who relied heavily on intuitive business decisions. A story about Conrad Hilton highlights the value of what was referred to as “one of Connie’s hunches.” There was to be a sealed bid on a New York property. Hilton evaluated its worth at $159,000. and prepared a bid in that amount. He slept that night and upon awakening, the figure $174,000 stood out in his mind. He changed the bid and submitted the higher figure. It won. The next highest bid was $173,000. He subsequently sold the property for several million dollars.
At the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Douglas Dean studied the relationship between intuition and business success. He found that 80 percent of executives whose companies’ profits had more than doubled in the past five years had above average precognitive powers. Management professor Weston Agor of the University of Texas in El Paso found that of the 2,000 managers he tested, higher-level managers had the top scores in intuition. Most of these executives first digested all the relevant information and data available, but when the data was conflicting or incomplete, they relied on intuitive approaches to come to a conclusion.
Computer whiz Allan Huang had puzzled for months over a recurring dream in which two opposing armies of sorcerers’ apprentices carried pails filled with data. Most nights, the two armies marched toward each other but stopped just short of confrontation. Other times they collided, tying themselves into a big red knot. Then one night, something different happened – the armies marched right into each other, but with no collision. Instead, they passed harmlessly through each other like light passing through light.
In all of our brains, there is a powerful subconscious process, which works to sift huge amounts of information, blend data, isolate telling details, and come to astonishingly rapid conclusions. Our job is to better understand that process so we can nurture it, trust it, and use it!
Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D. is the author of nine books including CREATIVITY IN BUSINESS and “THIS ISN’T THE COMPANY I JOINED” — How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down. She delivers keynote speeches and seminars to association and business audiences around the world. For more information or to book Carol as a speaker at one of your events, please call: 510-526-1727, email: CGoman@CKG.com, or visit her website: http://www.CKG.com.
As anyone who has crammed for an exam can tell you, usually the number of hours we work without interruption is inversely proportionate to how much we accomplish. So how do these entrepreneurs manage to work so many hours without suffering from brain fatigue?
Well, first of all, it is because they truly love being an entrepreneur and are passionate about their enterprise. But, I believe, part of the answer is that they wear so many hats. They never get stuck doing the same kind of work for too long.
Here are some more brain-based tips that can work wonders and could be what helps propel entrepreneurs forward:
1. Buy a good office chair, or get a standing desk.
Focal Upright Furniture has a brand-new chair-and-desk combination on the market. Invented by Martin Keen, of Keen shoes fame, it uses a position between sitting and standing, and allows lots of movement as you work. It also helps those who use it remain attentive.
2. Do not multitask.
John Medina, author of Brain Rules, tells us the brain cannot multitask, period. What it does do is switch back and forth between tasks very quickly. Someone whose attention is interrupted not only takes 50% longer to accomplish a task but also makes up to 50% more errors. A study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people who talk on the cell phone while driving are four times more likely to have an accident, because it isn’t possible to devote your full attention to both driving and talking at the same time. Hands-free calling offered no advantage. What’s the lesson to take away? Focus on one task at a time, and you’ll accomplish each better and faster–without killing anybody.
3. Use all your senses.
Work is more entertaining for your brain–and therefore makes you more alert–when you engage as many of your senses as possible. Use colored paper and pens. Experiment with peppermint, lemon, or cinnamon aromatherapy. Try playing background music.
4. Don’t make too many decisions in one day.
It sounds farfetched, but if you go shopping in the morning, then negotiate yourself out of eating a cookie at lunch, and finally try to decide between two job offers that afternoon, you might choose the wrong job because you didn’t eat the cookie, according to Scientific American. Making choices depletes your reserves of executive function, or “the mental system involved in abstract thinking, planning, and focusing on one thing instead of another.” This can adversely affect decisions you make later.
5. Take a quick break every 20 minutes.
A study in the journal Cognition reveals that people can maintain their focus or “vigilance” much longer when their brains are given something else to think about every 20 minutes. That’s the time when thinking becomes less efficient. This trick is called momentary deactivation. If your mind isn’t as sharp after a long period of work, it may not be completely fatigued. It just needs to focus on something else to refresh the specific neural network you’ve been using.
6. Work with your own circadian rhythms.
Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you fade every afternoon, or is that when you are strongest? Don’t schedule an important meeting at a time when you will be operating on one cylinder. And don’t waste your peak work time at a doctor’s appointment.
7. Relax for 10 minutes every 90 minutes.
When you’re awake, your brain cycles from higher alertness (busy beta waves) to lower alertness (alpha waves) every 90 minutes. At that point, you become less able to focus, think clearly, or see the big picture. You know the signals: You feel restless, hungry, and sleepy, and reach for a coffee. Herbert Benson of Harvard, author of The Relaxation Response, recommends working to the point where you stop feeling productive and start feeling stressed. At that moment, disengage. Meditate, do a relaxation exercise, pet a furry animal, go for a quick jog, take a hot shower, pick up your knitting, practice the piano, or look at paintings. Allowing your brain to go into a state of relaxation, daydreaming, and meditating will reset your alertness.
Read full article via Inc.
As a leader, you must understand that your stakeholders are watching you, most every minute, most every day.
And they’re learning.
They’re learning if you care about them.
They’re learning if you believe in them.
They’re learning if you believe in yourself.
They’re learning if you believe what you’re saying.
They’re watching to see if you walk the talk or just crawl a little.
They’re waiting for you to slip up and reveal the man behind the curtain, or the phantom behind the mask.
Because they’ve been taught not to trust leaders lately.
Enron, WorldCom, Steroids and Corked Bats, American Idol, Sarbanes-Oxley, all the fine print, the word “virtually.”
All lies and manipulation, clouding their heads and wounding their hearts.
So they’re desperate for truth. Which is why they’re watching and listening.
Everything you say and do and write communicates. Everything you don’t say and don’t do and don’t write communicates.
So, yes, they’re watching you.
And, yes, it’s an awesome responsbility.
But, if you want to be a leader, you know all about responsibility.
They’re watching you… and learning.
Be aware of that.
And then forget it and just be yourself. Someone who cares. Someone with courage. Someone who gets it.
They’re watching… and I’m guessing they like what they see.
By John Gerstner – CEO, Communitelligence, ABC Copyright 2000
It occurs to me that my office at Deere & Company is a communications world divided. The front half is where I process and warehouse the daily deluge of mail. It is mostly of the junk category … pseudo-letters trying to sell me something, conference brochures, newsletters about newsletters, computer catalogs, magazines, memos, and once in a great while, a quaint personal letter. This is the dead-tree side of my office.
The other half is my Way-Cool New Media side. It houses a ram-charged, gigabusting desktop computer so loaded down with multimedia, graphic, Web authoring and miscellaneous software that it processes about as fast as a donkey running up the Grand Canyon — or so it seems as I sit, fingers poised over keys, impatiently waiting milliseconds for Web pages to load. The computer is flanked by a big, honking monitor, 600 dpi color printer, flat-bed scanner, Syquest disk drive, and a TV-VCR … all connected by a fearsome hairball of wires that snake along the floor like a python ready to spring. This is the electronic side of my office.
And so every day at work, I am tugged by the yin and yang of today’s communications world. Do I attend to the never-ending stream of paper that is heaped on my desk, much of it lavishly printed and designed … or do I plug into the torrent of raw bits streaming onto my screen in the form of e-mail messages that beep their arrival, and web pages that flicker and flash … all just a mouse-click away. Atoms or bits? That is the question.
Well … I’m here to admit that for the past three years, the electronic side of my office has me in its Web. I estimate I am now spending about 80 percent of my time working with the New Media. This is quite an admission, considering when I started my communications career the ultimate high-tech communication tool was an electric typewriter, and the ultimate editing tools were a pair of scissors and cellophane tape.
It’s not that I have totally forsaken my first love, print, for this younger, sexier communications mistress. Let’s just say I’ve been enamored and intrigued ever since I first saw her enter the communications party three years ago. What makes this fling difficult is that I still have a “real” job. As Manager of Internal Communications for Deere & Company I continue to plan strategy and create content for JD Journal magazine and “JD In Focus” video, plus consult with Deere management and unit communicators worldwide.
I must admit I am still a print person at heart. In my mind, you really can’t compare a finely printed magazine to a Web site, no matter how cool it is. Words printed in publications take on value, if for no other reason than they are expensive to produce and distribute. A magazine is real. You can start a fire with a magazine.
A Web site, on the other hand, only exists on some distant server as an illusive metaphor of print. Unless I have all the computer gadgetry to plug in, I can’t even see the brilliance. No one really likes to read text on a screen, and when it comes to reading in bed or bathroom, print wins hands down. Yet, we’re all being cyber-hyped and dot-commed to death by — guess who — the print and television media. Go figure.
I suspect I am not the only print communicator straddling two worlds today. We are all victims of the Internet neutron bomb that dropped on Planet Earth three years ago and blew communication and commerce to bits … literally. Print is now obsolete, but it won’t go away. It just has to reinvent itself, as radio had to do when television came along. It serves no good purpose for any of us to clutch our newsletters and magapapers and cast dispersion on this new darling medium of the communication world. Better to start down the so-called Superhighway than dawdle and wind up as road-kill.
No matter how cold you may feel to this cool new medium, it is indisputable that print suddenly has some serious competition. Nothing printed will never be instantaneous and global. Nor can its audience give immediate feedback. Nor can you get a real-time detailed log of who’s hitting what pages, where they came from and how long they stayed.
Print publishers must simply digest the Web and re-focus on what print does best … such placing mirrors and filters in front of the world so that readers can see it with context and perspective.
It is also indisputable that the role of the communicator (and a whole lot of other professions) have been turned upside down. We communicators no longer have the luxury of simply crafting messages that mold opinion and elicit action. Now we must also help invent the medium the messages are being delivered on. It is as if the architect had to draw the blueprint and then put in the plumbing. The problem is, with all this fuss over the network, browsers, bandwidth and protocols, who’s minding the message? Plus, now everybody’s a communicator. Oh, what a tangled web we have woven.
The good news is that the communicator’s role and potential contribution to an organization is greatly expanded. By helping invent the medium, the communicator can help sort out the good, bad and ugly from a virtual universe of New Media stuff. Just because we now have the tool to push 50 info-channels to employee desktops does not mean that this makes any business sense. As new and dazzling communication possibilities come along … from real time chats to 3-D animation to virtual reality, the communicator can help digest and feed back valuable insight to the developer, who can then come up with even better technology. And on and on.
The bad news is that old media never dies, and since most corporate Web sites and intranets are still garage operations manned by people with “real” jobs, we all must work a lot harder these days, and probably for not much more pay.
Which undoubtedly explains why a lot of good communicators have been sitting under the shade tree next to the Information Superhighway waiting for the dub-dub-dub-dot-com-hype to subside. They see the Internet as a lot more work, and since most of their audience isn’t wired anyway, why not wait it out?
The only problem with this strategy is that if we communicators don’t jump in and help invent the medium as well as the messages, who will? One of the reasons why so many Web sites are so bloated, confusing and shallow with no center is that communicators were not sitting in front of the screen along with the teckkies.
With or without us, an army of technologists and entrepreneurs are piecing together an amazing new ether-world that promises to transform the way we live, work, shop, gamble, invest, learn, entertain ourselves and even have sex — all with amazing efficiency. This conjures up the scary vision of Americans spending their days lazing in their homes, with the only traffic outside those brown trucks delivering the merchandise they have ordered over the Net.
Of course this is only a virtual pipe dream at this point. Those of us actually trying to do this Internet stuff every day are much like the poor gold miner slogging through the muck to find that little info-nugget. The Superhighway Strike is an illusive fantasy, always over the next cyber-horizon. And deep down we know the real gold will go to guys like Bill Gates anyway.
Those of us in Camp Intranet are mired down with much more mundane concerns, like justifying employee Web access to cynical managers, writing and enforcing intranet policies and publishing standards, and building brick-by-brick a truly information-rich and user-friendly internal Web … intranet dial-tone. This is an immensely large, complex and time-consuming task. We are only beginning to bite into this elephant we have to swallow. After three years of toiling on my own little intranet outpost, I have reached these conclusions, all debatable, of course:
No one person, department or profession does the Internet. Internet projects are by definition multi-departmental, multi-disciplinary team efforts. Three skills are crucial — communication, technical and design — but resources must also be tapped from Marketing, HR, Legal, Finance, Advertising and the Library, to name a few. There’s never been a better time to take someone new to coffee or lunch.
It’s very easy to get hooked on the technology. Timothy Leary saw computers as the New Drug, and I think he was on to something. Since cyberspace in some respects is like visiting another planet, it’s not surprising that some people escape and overdose on computer games and chat rooms. There’s also real allure to working on the front edge of new technology. Figuring out how to deploy new Net tools such as BackWeb and Net Meeting is a lot more fun than writing another Chairman’s Report to the Stockholders. The trick is to keep one eye on the technology while keeping your seat in the chair, crafting good content and intuitive navigation to it. Internet hype is everywhere. Discount everything by at least 50 percent.
The Internet blurs everything. Who’s home page is it when it contains content from a dozen divisions of the company? Who’s responsible for setting and enforcing Internet policy in an organization? The HR department? Computer Security? Corporate Communications? Management? What’s the professional communicator’s role when everyone’s a communicator? How about facilitator, mediator, translator, or simply project manager? Sometimes the role most needed is Turf Referee.
Sometimes it’s all a bit much. I’m undoubtedly biased but I consider the Internet to be the mother of all corporate projects, the largest team-project ever. But every Internet project has amazing scope and complexity, wearing detail. huge ramifications and therefore, sticky politics. The task is even more difficult because everything is new and everything is rush (1 Web year = 2.5 months). Unfortunately, playing Master-of-the-World Wide Web day in and day out takes its toll. Some days even the word Internet makes you tired.
Technology is not the hardest part. Human beings are. Because Internet technology poses a huge reengineering potential on the workplace, there’s a tremendous inertia to overcome before every new streamlining advance is put in place. There are at least as many meetings needed to figure out the human paradigm shifts as are needed to figure out how the hardware and software installs. The trick is to skate to where the puck is headed — and not talk every new technology to death.
Learn the language. The Internet has its own vocabulary, and there are certain acronyms, protocols, terms and slang that you should be able to hear without visibly having your eyes glaze over. For instance … 128-bit encryption, client/server architecture, data mining, legacy systems, whiteboard, push technology, dynamic pages, frames, server side includes, ISDN, jpeg, SAP, and SQL Servers. Java and cookies, anyone?
Don’t judge the Internet by what you see today. As incredible an invention as the networked computer is, the so-called Superhighway is really a rutted dirt road with lots of go-slow zones and detours to nowhere. We are about where television was in the 1950s … at the test-pattern stage … waiting for some good programs to come on. At this point, there’s still a lot of hoopla about very little great content. But as the computer, telephone and TV converge, couch potatoes undoubtedly will never be the same.
The Net has already impacted traditional media in mighty ways. Wired Magazine looks like the Web it reports on. Some Web sites are spin-offs of television programs, and some television programs are spin-offs of Web sites. On the print side, the firehose of information gushing from the Net means no one has the luxury of writing long anymore, except novelists. New-Media sensitive newspapers, newsletters and magazines are now compressing articles with about the same ratio as the latest Internet software compresses audio and video files. (Thus I wonder how many people will read to the end of this 2,000-word article.) Does this mean the end of serious thought?
Strive to be simply brilliant. The Internet has spawned terrible complexity. Every next step requires questioning old ways, defining new requirements, finding owners, getting the budget, settling on a timetable, and doing a pilot. “Do you want the hack, or do you want us to do it right?” This was the question posed by one of our resident Gurus recently. “The hack is about $10,000; doing it right will cost $150,000,” he added, making it a no-brainer. When it comes to Web work, favor action over discussion. Execute simple first steps. Too much talk guarantees inaction. It’s not like print, where mistakes live forever. You can change the Web site tomorrow. Expect order to eventually come out of chaos. Do the hack.
Content is still king. With the glut of confusing information coursing through the Net daily, thoughtful, well-crafted and designed communication has never more needed. Which is why print — and we trust, communicators — won’t go away.
John Gerstner, ABC, is Manager of Internal Communications for Deere & Company, Moline, Illinois. In 1996, Gerstner was named to lead the launch of Deere’s Web site (www.deere.com) and help guide Deere’s intranet, JD Online, which links 15,000 employees representing eight divisions in 10 countries. He continues to be responsible for JD Journal, the corporate internal magazine of Deere & Company, John Deere In Focus, an employee video program. His department just rolled out a new design for JD Online that promises to make it a key internal communications & HR tool for the company.
Gerstner has been awarded 13 IABC Gold Quills since 1977. He is a current Director-at-Large of IABC’s Board, and a Trustee of IABC’s Research Foundation. He is a frequent speaker and workshop leader on Internet, intranet, and organizational communication. His series of interviews on “The Civilization of Cyberspace” appeared in Communication World magazine. (Interviews with John Perry Barlow, Nicholas Negroponte, and Cliff Stoll). In his spare time, Gerstner creates and exhibits Photo-Paintings, which can be viewed at Performing Arts Gallery in Davenport, Iowa, and on the Web at: http://www.netins.net/showcase/fotolink/intro/welcome.html.
Steven Covey had the right idea. There are discreet skills and attitudes, habits if you will, that can elevate your conflict practice to a new level. This article shares a selection of habits and attitudes that can transform a good conflict resolver into a highly effective one. By that I mean someone who facilitates productive, meaningful discussion between others that results in deeper self-awareness, mutual understanding and workable solutions.
I have used the term ‘conflict resolver’ intentionally to reienforce the idea that human resource professionals and managers are instrumental in ending disputes, regardless of whether they are also mediators. These conflict management techniques are life skills that are useful in whatever setting you find yourself. With these skills, you can create environments that are respectful, collaborative and conducive to problem-solving. And, you’ll teach your employees to be proactive, by modeling successful conflict management behaviors
Understand the Employee’s Needs
Since you’re the ‘go to person’ in your organization, it’s natural for you to jump right in to handle conflict. When an employee visits you to discuss a personality conflict, you assess a situation, determine the next steps and proceed until the problem is solved. But is that helpful?
When you take charge, the employee is relieved of his or her responsibility to find a solution. That leaves you to do the work around finding alternatives. And while you want to do what’s best for this person (and the organization), it’s important to ask what the employee wants first— whether it’s to vent, brainstorm solutions or get some coaching. Understand what the person entering your door wants by asking questions:
- · How can I be most helpful to you?
- · What are you hoping I will do?
- · What do you see my role as in this matter?
- Engage in Collaborative Listening
By now everyone has taken at least one active listening course so I won’t address the basic skills. Collaborative Listening takes those attending and discerning skills one step further. It recognizes that in listening each person has a job that supports the work of the other. The speaker’s job is to clearly express his or her thoughts, feelings and goals. The listener’s job is facilitating clarity; understanding and make the employee feel heard.
So what’s the difference? The distinction is acknowledgement. Your role is to help the employee gain a deeper understanding of her own interests and needs; to define concepts and words in a way that expresses her values (i.e. respect means something different to each one of us); and to make her feel acknowledged—someone sees things from her point of view.
Making an acknowledgement is tricky in corporate settings. Understandably, you want to help the employee but are mindful of the issues of corporate liability. You can acknowledge the employee even while safeguarding your company.
Simply put, acknowledgement does not mean agreement. It means letting the employee know that you can see how he got to his truth. It doesn’t mean taking sides with the employee or abandoning your corporate responsibilities. Acknowledgement can be the bridge across misperceptions. Engage in Collaborative Listening by:
- · Help the employee to explore and be clear about his interests and goals
- · Acknowledge her perspective
o I can see how you might see it that way.
o That must be difficult for you.
o I understand that you feel _______ about this.
- · Ask questions that probe for deeper understanding on both your parts:
o When you said x, what did you mean by that?
o If y happens, what’s significant about that for you?
o What am I missing in understanding this from your perspective?
- Be a Good Transmitter
Messages transmitted from one person to the next are very powerful. Sometimes people have to hear it ‘from the horse’s mouth’. Other times, you’ll have to be the transmitter of good thoughts and feelings. Pick up those ‘gems’, those positive messages that flow when employees feel safe and heard in mediation, and present them to the other employee. Your progress will improve.
We’re all human. You know how easy it is to hold a grudge, or assign blame. Sharing gems appropriately can help each employee begin to shift their perceptions of the situation, and more importantly, of each other. To deliver polished gems, try to:
- · Act soon after hearing the gem
- · Paraphrase accurately so the words aren’t distorted
- · Ask the listener if this is new information and if changes her stance
- · Avoid expecting the employees to visibly demonstrate a ‘shift in stance’ (it happens internally and on their timetable, not ours)
- Recognize Power
Power is a dominant factor in mediation that raises many questions: What is it? Who has it? How to do you balance power? Assumptions about who is the ‘powerful one’ are easy to make and sometimes wrong. Skillful conflict resolvers recognize power dynamics in conflicts and are mindful about how to authentically manage them. You can recognize power by being aware that:
- · Power is fluid and exchangeable
- · Employees possess power over the content and their process (think of employees concerns as the water flowing into and being held by the container)
- · Resolvers possess power over the mediation process ( their knowledge, wisdom, experience, and commitment form the container)
- · Your roles as an HR professional and resolver will have a significant impact on power dynamics
- Be Optimistic & Resilient
Agreeing to participate in mediation is an act of courage and hope. By participating, employees are conveying their belief in value of the relationship. They are also expressing their trust in you to be responsive to and supportive of our efforts. Employees may first communicate their anger, frustration, suffering, righteousness, regret, not their best hopes. You can inspire them to continue by being optimistic:
- · Be positive about your experiences with mediation
- · Hold their best wishes and hopes for the future
- · Encourage them to work towards their hopes
Be Resilient. Remember the last time you were stuck in a conflict? You probably replayed the conversation in your mind over and over, thinking about different endings and scolding yourself. Employees get stuck, too. In fact, employees can become so worn down and apathetic about their conflict, especially a long-standing dispute; they’d do anything to end it. Yes, even agree with each other prematurely. Don’t let them settle. Mediation is about each employee getting their interest met. Be resilient:
- · Be prepared to move yourself and the employees though productive and less productive cycles of the mediation
- · Help the employees see their movement and progress
- · Be mindful and appreciative of the hard work you all are doing
Hopefully, you’ve discovered that these are your own habits in one form or another and that your organization is benefiting from your knowledge. You can learn more about workplace mediation and mediation in general from these books and websites:
The Power of Mediation
Bringing Peace into the Room
Difficult Conversation: How to Say What Matters Most
http://www.ne-acr.org (The New England Association of Conflict Resolvers)
http://www.mediate.com (mediation portal site)
http://www.workwelltogether.com (conflict management toolkit)
“Mediation is based on a belief in the fundamental honesty of human beings. Which is another way of saying we all want to be treated justly – that is according to our unique situation and viewpoint on the world. And we cannot expect to be treated justly if we do not honestly reveal ourselves.” ~ the Honourable Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister 1937
Dina Beach Lynch, Esq. was formerly the Ombudsman for Fleet Bank and is currently CEO of WorkWellTogether.com, an online conflict management toolkit. Dina can be reached at Dina@workwelltogether.com
The best time to discuss the forces of change is well in advance of the organization’s response to them.
More and more leaders are recognizing the need to design a workplace event that enables people to experience for themselves the need for change. When Rubbermaid held a product fair in its headquarters town, it displayed storage bins, kitchen items and other plastic housewares, each with a label that detailed what it cost to make and what it sold for. Sounds like a run-of-the-mill corporate event except for two things: the fair was open only to Rubbermaid employees and the products were not Rubbermaid’s, but its competitors’. Rubbermaid wanted its workers to see for themselves what they were competing against.
The commercial organizations of Bayer used an “IMS year in review” presentation to in order to show Bayer’s position/wins/challenges in perspective with the industry. (IMS is a company that tracks information on the Pharmaceutical industry and then sells it back to companies.) This gave employees an opportunity to see how they stacked up against the competition – and to ask questions from an unbiased external source.
When Jack Stack arrived at International Harvester’s factory in Springfield, Missouri, the engine remanufacturing plant was losing $2 million dollars a year on revenues of $26 million. Stack and the 119 employees of the now independent Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation initiated an amazing turnaround. Ten years after he bought the company, SRC had sales of $73 million and the firm hired almost 600 additional workers. How did he do that? By increasing all employees’ business literacy. Stack created a system called “The Great Game of Business,” which was designed to teach every employee about the entire business — including the finances of the company. From the “Root Learning Maps” used by Sears and Pepsi, etc. to courses offered by financial services consultants, business literacy is a tool many organizations use to prepare people for change.
Few strategies are as valid a stimulus for change as responding to customer feedback. At Ritz-Carlton Hotels, employees continually create change in order to solve customers’ problems. Here’s how it works: if a particular hotel has, as its primary customer complaint, a problem with room service taking too long, the manager would inform employees in that department and ask for volunteers to form a committee to find the root of the problem in the room service system and to change or create a different process that solves the problem. By the same token, if two different departments have a conflict — say waiters are dissatisfied with dishwashers because the banquet service isn’t ready on time — then members of both departments form a cross-functional team (as internal customer and supplier) to find the process problem and solve it.
To prepare the organization to position itself for the future, Planned Parenthood started out by commissioning a research project. Consultants interviewed experts in all of the different fields that PP had an interest in — everything from reproductive healthcare to gender and population issues to politics. And they used this research to provide background information for everybody throughout the organization who requested it. In this way, participants were prepared by the time they got together for their first big meeting to discuss the need for a new vision.
Rather than protecting people from outside threats, leaders need to expose workers to the complaints and changing needs of customers, the new products of international competitors, and the financial reality of costs and profits. Instead of stifling conflicting opinions, leaders must encourage employees to join a constant questioning of the prevailing business assumptions — and to be ready to act upon new opportunities early in the game to maintain a competitive advantage. A few questions to get you started:
o What government regulations could “change the rules” of the industry?
o What new demands/needs could cause our customers to stop buying our product or service?
o What kinds of technological innovation would most drastically affect our product or service?
o What changes (in pricing, services, process, etc.) could the competition introduce that would cause us to rethink the way we do business?
o What companies that aren’t our competitors now could become competitors in the future?
o What current competitors could become partners in the future?
o What are the global trends that could most affect our market – both positively and negatively?
o What changes would we have to make to take advantage of these possible challenges?
Cartoons Archive
Copyright, Grantland Enterprises. |
Copyright, Grantland Enterprises. May not be reproduced. |
A woman from the audience followed me into the hallway. “I think we’re married to the same man,” she said. Successfully fighting the urge to fire off the snappy reply, “Could be. I travel a lot,” I simply smiled back. I’d heard this before.
I’m introduced as a change-management expert – married to a man who refuses to change anything. So, during my speech, I tell humorous stories about the resistance my husband puts up – and how I learned, from managers I’d interviewed, different ways to handle his protests.
After every speech, audience members come up to me to comment on my husband. Many people recognize their co-workers or loved ones (or themselves!) in him, and some (like the woman who’s own spouse’s behavior so resembled mine) jokingly commiserate with me. The thing I find most intriguing about this phenomenon is that in my twenty years of professional speaking, no one has ever approached me after a program to say they most appreciated my fifth point. That’s because they don’t remember what my fifth point was. But they do remember my husband and the lessons about handling change resistance that they learned through my stories.
As a communicator, stories can be your most potent allies.
Social scientists note that there are two different modes of cognition: the paradigmatic mode and the narrative mode. The former is rooted in rational analysis; the latter is represented in fairy tales, myth, legends, metaphors, and good stories. Good stories are more powerful than plain facts!
That is not to reject the value in facts, of course, but simply to recognize their limits in influencing people. Stories supplement analysis. Facts are neutral. People make decisions based on what facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. Facts aren’t influential until they mean something to someone. Stories give facts meaning.
Here is the difference: Trying to influence people through scientific analysis is a “push” strategy. It requires the speaker to convince the listener through cold, factual evidence. Storytelling is a “pull” strategy, in which the listener is invited to join the experience a participant, and to imagine herself acting on the mental stage the storyteller creates. Stories resonate with adults in ways that can bring them back to a childlike open-mindedness – and make them less resistant to experimentation and change.
Compared to facts, stories are better for building community, capturing the imagination, and exerting influence. Stories about the past help employees understand the rich heritage of an organization, stories about early adopters offer successful examples of dealing with change, personal stories are powerful leadership tools for building trust, humorous stories can ease tension and, if you interview key staff, stories can capture their wisdom.
Stories can address universal human themes
Michael LeBoeuf, author of How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life, illustrates the power of making people feel important with the following story:
Jane, recently married, was having lunch with a friend, explaining why she married Bill instead of Bob.
“Bob is Mr. Everything,” Jane said. “He’s intelligent, clever and has a very successful career. In fact, when I was with Bob, I felt like he was the most wonderful person in the world.”
“Then why did you marry Bill?” her friend asked. Jane replied, “Because when I’m with Bill, I feel like I’m the most wonderful person in the world.”
Stories can show how to approach your work
I once asked Sanjiv Sidhu, the CEO of i2 Technologies, what kind of attitudes he encouraged in his work force. Although his is a high-tech company, he told me a story about cleaning houses. It’s the same story he tells employees.
“Most people would think that cleaning houses for a living was a pretty boring job. But I believe that if you had the right attitude, cleaning houses could be intellectually stimulating. Let’s say it takes you four hours to clean a house, and you’re doing three houses a day, six days a week. That’s 72 hours of really boring work and a pretty sure recipe for burnout somewhere down the line. But if you redefined the job, said to yourself that you were going to do each house in two hours, there’d be an innovative component in the work suddenly. You’d need to do a study that asked, for example: ‘Am I going to vacuum the whole house first and then go back and polish the furniture, or am I going to do everything in one room before moving on to the next?’ And if you added to that goal the goal of being the best house-cleaner ever, then you really would be stretching your mind, the job wouldn’t feel boring anymore and you probably wouldn’t burn out because your own innovative thinking would keep you interested.
But then suppose you shifted gears again and said, ‘Okay, now I’m going to clean each house in ten minutes!’ That’s where the real fun would begin for someone like me because I’d know I couldn’t hit that target by merely tinkering with spatial tasking. I’d have to start thinking about new kinds of house-cleaning equipment–or maybe even new kinds of houses that cleaned themselves. That’s the kind of thinking we’re encouraging in our employees all of the time.”
Stories can make values come alive
Nordstrom is one organization that does a remarkable job of using anecdotes about its sales force to communicate its value of impeccable customer service. There is, for example, the often-repeated tale about the saleswoman who took her lunch hour to drive from downtown Seattle to the airport to make sure that her customer received his new business suit. The customer had purchased the suit that morning to wear at a meeting in another city the next day — and then discovered the garment needed alterations. The Nordstrom saleswoman had promised to have the suite altered and delivered to him before he left town. She kept her promise.
Stories can become the symbol of change
There is a story I tell in the book, “This Isn’t the Company I Joined” – How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down: Buckman Laboratories has been in the specialty chemical business since 1945. Under the leadership of Robert H. (Bob) Buckman, it also became a world-class, knowledge-sharing organization. Bob would tell you that converting a command-and-control organization into a networked one was not without its challenges and setbacks. Still, by 1994, Buckman Labs had jumped into full-bore knowledge sharing: new software and connectivity had been installed, most of the associates were equipped with laptops, and online Forums were up and running. To honor and reward the top 150 people from around the world who had done the best job of sharing knowledge with the new technologies, a “Fourth Wave Meeting” was held in Scottsdale, Arizona. The meeting was three days of fun, celebration and work – specifically, critical discussions about business trends and strategies. It was also the setting for the following story:
Through the entire conference, a man wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals sat at the back of the room, chronicling the meeting on his laptop and sending live messages onto the Forum for the rest of the company to read. His name was Mark Koskiniemi. About midway through the meeting, one of the organizers (a manager) approached Mark and asked him to stop sending out notes on the meeting. Mark refused by saying he didn’t feel that was appropriate. When the organizer suggested that the request to cease came from the top, Mark countered by saying he’d appreciate hearing it personally.
A few minutes later, a break was called, and Mark found himself face-to-face with Bob Buckman. Here is how Mark recalls the conversation:
Mark: Hello, sir.
Bob: Mark, I understand that you have been posting notes from the meeting on the Forum. I have to say that I have not read them, but are you sure that is such a good idea?
Mark: Do you trust me?
Bob broke into a big smile, nodded slightly, and nothing further was said about Mark’s continued reporting of the events.
As Mark later said: “If knowledge sharing is built on trust, then to me this moment over any other demonstrated that Bob Buckman really trusted the associates of Buckman Laboratories to take the company forward.”
There were two results from Koskiniemi’s reporting:
1. In all, he sent more than 50 Forum or e-mail messages related to the reports coming from the meeting.
2. Koskiniemi (who is now head of Buckman’s operation in Australia and New Zealand) told others the story – and it came to symbolize the desired culture change.
I’ve been paying attention to the things that command attention, both of myself and others, and I’ve made a list of 21 techniques that work. This list is far from all of them I’m sure, but it should be enough to get you started …
1. Be wrong
The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It’s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that’s willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing. If you have the courage to be that person, you’ll find lots of people paying attention to you.
2. Be right
You can also gain attention by being right … but only if you’re more right than everyone else. Run a mile faster than anyone else, explain your topic more clearly than anyone else, be funnier than everyone else. Embody perfection, and people will take notice.
3. Communicate what others can’t
As writers, we take ideas from our heads and put them on the page. Sometimes we forget how difficult that is for some people and how valuable that makes us. Lots of people would give anything to be able to say what they mean. But they can’t. So, they turn to songs, books, and art that communicate for them. Be a producer of those things, and you’ll never lose their attention.
4. Do something
Everybody online is trying to say something important, but very few are trying to do something important. If you want attention, dare not to just give advice to others, but to live that advice yourself. Then publish it to the open web.
5. Surprise people
Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick, say that one of the best ways to set yourself apart is to break people’s “guessing machines.” Take a surprising position, making outlandish analogy, or otherwise do the opposite of what you normally do. As long as it’s unexpected, people will stop and pay attention.
It turns out that it’s in the best interest of organizations to ensure the happiness of employees. Happier employees are more successful in numerous domains such as motivation, longevity at a workplace, self-efficacy and health.
Fortunately, increasing happiness at the workplace isn’t a secret.
According to Pryce-Jones, happiness at work has five major components, referred to as the 5Cs:
1. Contribution: What a person does in the workplace and their view of it. This relates to a feeling of pride in our efforts to be effective and provide value. Having clear goals and achieving them can aid in this component.
2. Conviction: A person’s ability to stay motivated. This relates to how someone responds to adversity and whether they can remain positive and focused toward the mission of the corporation.
3. Culture: How well a person fits within the ethos and dynamic of the workplace. We all have different personalities and we want to consider how well we fit within the culture of our organization. Do you desire autonomy, or reliance on others? Do you enjoy change and variety, or a fixed system and processes?
The value of this Business Plan process is the thinking that it forces you to do about your business, your products and services, your goals and the actions you’ll take to achieve your goals. Even if no one but you ever sees the plan, you will have given purposeful and logical thought to the purpose and direction of your business. This process helps ensure that the many activities you squeeze into your limited hours are time well spent – focused on moving your business forward in an aggressive yet realistic way.
Part 1: Analysis
Core Services
- List the core services (or products) you offer
- Be as specific as possible, but put similar items in a group (e.g., “Editorial Services” includes writing, editing, etc.)
Target Markets
- List the market segments you serve
- Be realistic; if you realistically cannot serve large corporations, for example, then don’t include them
- Be as specific as possible, but put similar items in a group unless there is a compelling reason to list them separately (e.g., “School Groups” could include secondary schools and colleges, but these segments might have different needs)
Competition Analysis
- List your competitors and a brief description of them
- Unless a specific competitor presents unique challenges to your business, it is OK to list them in groups (e.g., “Independent Practitioners” or “Small Agencies”)
- The purpose is to provide yourself a picture of what your business is up against as you market your core service
Vision and Mission Statements
- It is useful to have Vision and Mission statements that keep you focused on what is important to you
- Vision Statement should describe the “ideal state” of your business; it should be achievable, but also something to strive for
- Mission Statement succinctly states what your business is about, its purpose, the role it plays in the market
Part 2: Assumptions
Business Principles
- It is useful to develop a set of Business Principles that guide how you will conduct your business
- These principles have a direct bearing on your relationships with customers and clients
- The reason to include it under “Assumptions” is because your Business Principles are conditions under which your business operates; as you will see further in this section, you will list other conditions under which your business operates as well
Economic Assumptions
- List things you know about the economy (local, state, regional, national, international – whatever you believe affects your business)
- Include relevant historical facts (e.g., “the U.S. economy fell into recession in 2001”) and how they affect your ability to do business
- Note the impact of past, current, or anticipated economic conditions on your business and the products/services you provide
Financial Assumptions
- List things you know about your personal and/or business financial situation that affect your ability to do business and to grow your business
- Include things like cash flow issues, savings programs, the financial picture as a result of actions or conditions (a recession, recent investments, loan approvals, etc.)
- Reflect financial “realities” about your business (e.g., the need to control expenses, taxes owed, upcoming capital expenditures, expanding payroll, etc.)
Technological Assumptions
- Since so many businesses – large and small – depend on technology (web, e-mail, phone, etc.) today, it is useful to think about how these issues affect your business’s ability to succeed
- Think about upgrades of hardware and software, the impact of growth and expansion on your technological needs, training that will be necessary, etc.
Part 3: Strategic Summary
SWOT Analysis
- List all the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats about your business
- Be honest with yourself; don’t hold anything back or ignore realities
Key Success Factors
- Out of your SWOT Analysis, what are the key factors that will affect the ability of your business to succeed?
- Examples: strong reputation, broad client base, repeat business, unique provider, etc.
Competitive Advantages / Disadvantages
- Create lists of your competitive advantages and disadvantages based on your analysis of everything else up to this point
- What unique advantages does your business have in the marketplace?
- What distinct disadvantages does your business have?
- Be honest and don’t hold back because you will develop strategies based largely on this informatio
Strategic Goals
- Develop two or three broad Strategic Goals for your business in the next year or the next 3-5 years, depending on the scope of your plan
- Strategic Goals should be “big picture” goals, but they should also be specific enough that you can measure them
- Under each goal, list one to three specific, measurable components
- Example of a Strategic Goal: “Grow Client Base”
- Example of specific, measurable component: “Add at least X new clients by X date”
- Make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-driven
Tactical Actions
- Out of your Strategic Goals, list specific actions you will take that will help you achieve them
- Examples: Meet with two new prospective clients per month; Join a professional association to expand my network
- Create a calendar that plots when each tactical activity will occur so you don’t forget to do them
Town-hall meetings help close the gap between what business leaders see as problems and what front-line employees experience.
A West Coast financial-services company got some good news recently. A survey on communication, administered by my company and Gill Research of Chicago, indicated that employees feel their supervisors do a very good job communicating about business issues. The company’s senior management has a clear business plan, according to employees, and they feel senior management clearly communicates with them about the plan.
This company is in an enviable position. Employees generally trust the business leaders and enjoy a healthy communication environment. Among the good news, however, there was a warning sign: Employees believe senior management could do a better job of understanding the issues and concerns of people in the lower levels of the company.
Even in the best companies, employees perceive a gap between what they experience every day and what senior management sees as the most pressing problems. One of the responsibilities of a leader is to look at all the available information and to make an informed decision about where the organization must focus its attention.
Business leaders and employees will not always agree on the issues. After all, a business is not a democracy. Senior management is accountable first to shareholders or owners. However, senior management also needs the physical, mental and emotional investment of employees for the business to be successful.
That’s why it behooves business leaders to have an ongoing dialogue with employees. The financial-services company with whom we worked holds regular town-hall meetings where business leaders talk to – and more important, listen to – employees about the problems facing the company. Senior management gets high marks for the town-hall meetings, but the survey indicated employees don’t always feel senior management understands the nitty-gritty realities of front-line jobs.
Having worked for several companies in which town-hall meetings were a centerpiece of the communication program, I realize most business leaders have a hard time knowing when to stop talking and start listening. They want to explain the reasons behind business decisions – and they should. Even if employees don’t agree with business decisions, they usually find the decisions easier to accept if they understand the reasons.
But explaining business decisions is not the greatest value of town-hall meetings. Most companies have multiple vehicles through which leaders explain business issues and decisions. The greatest value of town-hall meetings is in the building of affinity between business leaders and employees. That affinity begins with senior management listening to and internalizing what is on employees’ minds.
My hometown of Richmond, Va., has a wonderful example of an executive who understands the power of listening. Mayor Doug Wilder – who once was Virginia’s governor and recently was elected mayor, or the city’s CEO – has participated in numerous town-hall meetings with citizens. The fact that he is accountable to the citizens is a bit different from the relationship between a company CEO and employees. Still, he is an example of a strong leader who does not allow his strength to overpower his ability to listen. As Wilder engages in more listening, citizens feel empowered to get involved in solving the problems facing the city.
I believe any CEO of any company would welcome that kind of self-motivated involvement by employees.
Arunis Chesonis is a CEO who gets the power of communication as a necessary ingredient for success. If only other CEOs followed his recipe.
My radar is always up for examples of CEOs who understand that communication is necessary for business success. It’s difficult finding business leaders who do more than pay lip service to the idea of frequent, honest communication with stakeholders – especially employees.
Arunis Chesonis is a rare find. He is CEO of PAETEC, one of the few startups that survived the great telecom boom of the late 1990s. I first read about him in Fast Company magazine in February 2004. The article caught my eye because Chesonis has created a company culture where information flows freely, knowledge passes from one person to another and the dignity of people comes first. It’s a philosophy that works, too – last year’s article cited a 250 percent growth rate in the previous three years and it’s still growing at a rate of 120 percent.
Chesonis impressed me so much that I suggested him as a keynote speaker for the annual Corporate Communicators Conference presented by Ragan Communications in Las Vegas last week. The conference organizers like to find a CEO who can charge up the corporate-communication professionals in attendance – it can be demoralizing to work for some companies that believe the less communication the better.
My friend and fellow communication consultant Charles Pizzo wrote a blog from the conference and gushed about Chesonis’s address. Believe me when I say it takes a lot for Charles to gush about anything, so I knew the CEO’s remarks were powerful.
“This is a CEO who gets it,” Charles wrote, “who lives, breathes and exudes communication. “Speaking from the heart with no script, he is a communicator’s dream.”
That observation alone tells you how easy it is for a CEO to score points with customers, employees, or whomever, just by being real. So many business leaders are attached at the hip to a script filled with jargon and clichés, it’s no wonder nobody believes a word they say.
Charles summarized Chesonis’s remarks, which focused on his philosophy as a leader. “You cannot over-appreciate your employees. Give employees ownership. Show fairness in wages, perks and parking. Keep balance: work is not the most important thing in people’s lives. Flexibility counts: people have family and friends, birthdays and Little League. The culture is the company: create a sense of family. Support the community: encourage employees to develop pride while chasing their passions.”
What does this have to do with communication? Everything. So many business leaders fail to understand that actions – their individual actions, the company’s actions – communicate strong messages to people all the time. I have a friend who is close to burning out personally and professionally in his job for one of Richmond’s top employers. His boss doesn’t understand how her constant demands and unreasonable expectations communicate that he is a commodity to be used and tossed aside.
“Arunis makes so much sense, and is so refreshing, that we should bottle his essence and pour it over salads in corporate boardrooms all across the land,” Charles wrote. “His message is absolutely palatable.”
And yet, it’s on the menus of so few companies these days.
There is no “normal” timetable to accept a change. Each person in every organization is unique. Things that bother some people don’t faze others. The same is true when it comes to the timetable that people have in terms of experiencing the four stages of a corporate change – awareness, understanding, acceptance and embracing the change. Select employees will understand, accept and embrace it once they are aware of the change, while others will take months, years or may never fully embrace it.
During the strategy development, establish the long-term vision for your change marketing program and short-term checkpoints. By setting short-term checkpoints you will help manage expectations on how quickly you can expect change to happen. You will also be able to reward and recognize your team for short-term achievements. In addition, you will have the opportunity to tweak any communications or programs that are not delivering results.
Corporate Communications often finds itself at the mercy of the organization to sets its agenda for the year. While Communications’ efforts should certainly support company strategy, consider these 5 Communications-specific trends that will influence the function’s ability to have a real impact in 2012.
1. Stakeholders have (even more) power.
The age of individual control over what, when, and how to consume information continues in 2012. New devices, like the Kindle Fire, new services, like Spotify, and new mobile apps, like Zite, that took off in 2011 will further enable people to act in ways natural to them. Chances are, reading/viewing/listening to dry corporate messages isn’t something most people like to do naturally! As a result, Communications’ approach to everything it creates must be stakeholder-centric, not company-centric.
Smart teams will kickoff the year by asking themselves, “Do we know where our key stakeholder groups go for information?” Determine how your stakeholders consume information with CEC’s audience listening guide , and then use that information to develop a stakeholder-centric communication plan .
2. Communicators look to build their business partnership skills.
In 2012, the Corporate Communications function grows up. Once just the PR-engine for the company, Communications is now expected to impact business results in a much different way by coaching leaders to communicate more effectively, developing internal communication systems for employees to connect with one another, and feeding stakeholder insight to business leaders, to name a few roles.
A new set of skills is required for communicators to live up to these new expectations. Clear writing and a solid understanding of channels won’t cut it, but a focus on business partnership skills such as critical thinking and negotiation will enable communicators to grow into the position of consultative business partner.
By now, most of you know that I’m a super-early riser. If you do some homework on the subject, you’ll find that many successful CEOs are, as well. It’s simply ingrained into us – If we want to be successful, we need to be working when others are not. It’s like the classic running quote:
“Somewhere, right now, someone is training while you are not. When you race him, he will win.”
So I get up early because I believe it’s worth it. Here’s some of the benefits you can get from doing it, and as a bonus, here’s how to actually do it!
It’s time to wake up…
Top ten reasons to get up early every day:
10) Learn! You can browse seven websites in a row (news, news, gossip, financial, gossip, sports, weather) without being interrupted by one email. You’re now smarter for your entire day.
9) This early, it really IS all about you. You get a few minutes of pure “you” time. For me, it’s waking up and making coffee. While I’m doing that, I can pet Karma and NASA, and not in just a “scratch behind the ears once because I’m late” way. I can sit with them as I drink my first cup of coffee and enjoy the calming effect that a pet has on you. I have no doubt this helps to set my mood for the day.
8) We’re not as big as we think we are. I can watch the sunrise. We take certain things for granted. Light, air, clouds, etc. Get up one morning and actually watch the sky turn from dark to light. It’s amazing. It changes your entire perspective from how big we are to how small we are when you realize that we’re nothing in the universe, just starstuff on a much, much bigger plane. That affects how you think, and changes for the better how you look at things.
7) You’re automatically early. Getting up even a half hour early eliminates the “rush” that comes with leaving the house in the morning. Get up earlier, and you’re calmer. You remember everything you need to take. You walk out without being stressed. This leads to a calmer day. Also, studies have shown that being on time is one thing that good leaders master, as well as demand. Want to be on time? Get up earlier.
Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.
If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.
Gain Awareness, Be Grateful
One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do the most successful people start their day?”. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.
Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.” Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you’re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize “everything you want in your life as if you had it today.”
Robbins offers the “Hour of Power” segment of his Ultimate Edge series as a free audio stream (here’s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you’ve met in your career are working on Robbins’ plan.
Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First
Brian Tracy’s classic time-management book Eat That Frog gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you’ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here’s how to force yourself to stick to it:
There is hope. Based on the insights from my interviews, there are productive ways to break the multitasking habit — even though that habit isn’t yours. Small strategic steps that bring to light how the multitasker is stalling progress can go a long way.
Call out the multitasker mid-task. Sometimes the pace of everyday life makes self-awareness challenging. As psychologists would argue, “emphasize the interpersonal and intraspsychic costs” (PDF) of the multitasker’s mistake. You can help by simply bringing attention to their multitasking habit and how damaging their behavior is becoming. The results could surprise you. One entrepreneur recounted, “After watching a VC constantly check his iPhone while I was pitching, I let him know that it was affecting the quality of our presentation. He put his phone away and respected me more as a result.”
Find a new time to meet. To beat a multitasker, take away their Plan B, C, and D. If they’re already engaged in something, reschedule time with them to have a proper interaction. One banker argued, “When my annual performance review meeting was sabotaged by my manager’s email habit, I stood up and suggested we reschedule time after hours, when he was ‘off the hook.'” An effective strategy for the workplace is to reschedule a slot at the beginning of the workday, before the day’s emails, alerts, and notifications start rolling in.
Physically disengage. When multitaskers get tough, the tough get walking. One mother said, “If my kids are too busy playing with their iPads to have a proper conversation with me, I walk out of the room. That usually does the trick.” Sending this powerful signal shows you’re willing to play hardball and will pique the attention of even the most-seasoned multitasker. Of course, walking out on your boss probably isn’t the best career option, so disengage in other ways. One junior consultant suggested that “moving to an empty chair on the opposite side of the room gave the senior partner space to wrap up her email and slide over to me when she was ready to talk.”
Handle a multitasker’s habit and pave the way for a more productive work environment. You’ll alleviate everyone’s irritation and frustration, and you might just rescue a failing project or a doomed relationship. By making them aware of their faux pas, you can stop the multitasking maniacs dead in their tracks — and sidestep potentially damaging impacts before they arise.
What does it mean to “manage up” in the workplace? It means to take initiative and build relationships. It’s pretty easy and fairly simple, but many of us struggle with it.Here’s how to help you manage up in your workplace:
1. Take initiative: Don’t wait for someone to tell you to do something—just do it. Look for ways to improve day-to-day operations, and suggest creative ideas. When you take the initiative, you increase your visibility within the company. Management will take notice.
2. Keep the boss informed: Communication is key. Make sure your boss knows everything there is to know about an assignment or project. This will help you build a solid relationship with her.
3. Leave personal opinions to yourself: Like mom always said, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Despite how you feel about your boss, you should always give your maximum effort. This is tough because you won’t always agree with her, but the solution is simple: Be professional at all times.
Here’s our first-ever list of the Top 75 Websites For Your Career (in alphabetical order):
Owned by The New York Times, About.com offers a wealth of free information for job seekers and those looking to advance their careers, including articles about everything from how to get along with your boss to questions not to ask an employer during an interview. About.com also links to other sites focused on specific careers like advertising or criminology, that have articles on topics like copywriting or the day in the life of a police officer. Users can also read up on the history of various fields, find a list of schools where they can study for a particular degree, or peruse an article on the most popular jobs in a given field. The site links to job listings powered by Indeed.com. Job search and employment expert Alison Doyle has been About.com’s job search guide since 1998.
This is the site for Betts Recruiting, which searches for talent for the business side of venture capital-backed startups in New York City and Silicon Valley. The focus is on sales, marketing and business development staff from the junior level through vice president.
Co-founded by career coach Pamela Skillings, who used to work in human resources at Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and MasterCard International, Big Interview offers online interviewing tutorials where users pay $197 for a package of three installments. Users can prep for industry-specific interviews like pharmaceutical sales or advertising. The prep involves an on-screen interviewer asking questions like, “tell me about yourself,” and “why are you interested in this position?” The user then records her answer and watches it back onscreen. The site offers numerous tips for different stages of the interview process (sample answer, in part: “I love managing teams and solving customer problems.”)
Blogging4Jobs.com is an online workplace resource for managers, leaders, human resources, and recruiting professionals. They take their audience to “uncomfortable, yet necessary,” places exposing them to the realities of the workplace without the “corporate sugar coating.” The site was launched in 2007 with a goal of helping job seekers learn the unwritten rules of job searching. The site has since expanded to offer insights into the world of work from a corporate and operations no-nonsense point of view.
Boomer Job Tops offers ideas, hints, tips and how-to’s for the growing baby boomer population to help them find a job, win an interview or move their career forward. The site has hundreds of articles from experts in the career area on résumés, interviews, strategy and tactics with a “boomer focus.”
Here are the Top Ways You Stink At LinkedIn:
1. Warm Spam – Just because I accept you as a contact, does not mean I want you to pitch me your product/service. Although I wrote a post about it, take a gander at what happened today. Some financial planner thought it was wise to pitch me his services right after accepting him as a contact. When I enlightened him in my reply on why spam is a bad thing, this was his reply:
“”I’m sorry that you felt so negative about that email. I try to send that correspondence out to a select group of people that I think have the financial sense and means to be interested in this strategy Scott. Obviously I was wrong in your case and apologize for brothering you with this suggestion. Linkedin is a way to network and connect with other business people Scott so if I can help enhance a high income earners retirement, that’s what I try to do as a Financial Advisor. Most high income earners are always looking for a way not to pay taxes Scott and this is a strategy to do so and this is why the rich get richer.”
I assume the book he read about selling said:
1. Every no is a yes in disguise!
2. Use the person’s first name multiple times. It makes them trust you!
3. Social media is really social selling!Outside of his lack of a comma anywhere, spelling and the perception that my name was just auto-filled into a form email, what he doesn’t realize is that in his industry above most, I have to know and trust you to an incredible level before we’d even start this discussion.
Social is just that, getting to know each other. Not social spamming.
2. Blank Requests – “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”. Do you feel that? That’s the feeling of a relationship! Nothing says “I know you!” like a generic request for a connection! Let the good times roll! If you want someone to be your connection, put 5 seconds of effort into it and let that person know how you know them or why you want to connect. I know some of the apps don’t allow for it and fire off this request anyways, but spend a little time and care and those requests will get accepted much quicker.
3. Twitter + LinkedIn = Litter – Go login now to LI and tell me what you see from people and their “status”. 98% of what I see are automated feeds from Twitter. Broken @ names, and “via Twitter” all over the place. Is that the message you want to send to your business contacts? That you’re not there but you’re giving them the honor of reading your tweets? Social media isn’t about being everywhere, it’s about being great at where you are. Stop the social synching.