Newsletter

Hello!

A client of mine makes everything hard. Instead of just going after the job she wants, she maps out a 10 year plan the requires 15 key skill development efforts, seven essential relationships to be built, and a critical mass of completed projects. Then she decides it’s not doable, and settles for less, for MUCH less. We all do this. You should see me agonizing over every word of an article. Absurdity! This month’s article is on making things easy, instead.

This month:

• Brief peek into the future
• Article: Making things easy (especially during the holidays!)
• Please send questions!

========== Brief peek into the future

Starting in January, I will be developing and launching CDs on leadership, management, and entrepreneurial topics. Stay tuned!

========== Article: Making things easy (especially during the holidays)

Make it Easy!

Have you ever noticed how hard we make things for ourselves? A client of mine was holding back on her dream of working in pro sports. “I don’t have the background,” she said, “so I’ll settle for banking.” (Not as my client, you won’t!) We picked up the phone. Five minutes later, she had an interview with the CEO of a major sports franchise. It wasn’t so hard after all; we just had to call and ask.

We all make things hard. It’s weird. We’re scared to let things be easy. We have lots of reasons. If something is easy, we tell ourselves it must not be worth much. My job can’t be easy … how would I justify my salary?

It’s easier to believe something is hard than face our real motivations, like fear of failure. If something’s easy, we have no excuse but to try. If we try and fail at something easy, that says bad things about us. Better to make things hard, so if we ever try and fail, we can blame the task, not ourselves.

Lastly, we make things hard so we have jobs! We’ve created huge corporations and bureaucracies in part to employ people. If things were simple, we might be out of a job. (My favorite is receipts. How much of our economy is devote to nothing more than tracking receipts and expenses, for tax and accounting purposes?)

So how do we make things easy again?

Stop solving the solution! We often start solving a problem and the solution becomes worse than the problem. A startup’s IT department needed a new laser printer. Concerned about costs, the management team met to discuss the purchase. They met three times, for an hour each time. By the time they decided not to buy the $500 printer, they had wasted thousands of dollars of management time, and distracted the managers from really moving the company forward.

Settle for 80% quality. This is my Achilles heel. A perfectionist, I like things to be perfect. But that last 20% towards perfection often takes as much work as the first 80%. When you find yourself worrying about whether the font on your weekly status report uses small capitals correctly, you’ve traveled far into the land of absurdity. Let yourself settle for 80%, you’ll be happier when you do.

At the end of the day, “hard” is our story, it’s not the truth. We can make something hard in our minds, or we can let it be easy.

The experiment for the holiday season:

You’ll have lots to do in the next week. Make it easy. When you catch yourself thinking, “This will be a hassle,” stop and chuckle. Then decide you’ll make it easy, and do it. Stop solving the problem. Settle for less. You’ll be surprised how much you get done. And when you discover you have more free time than you thought, don’t tell anybody. Just give it to yourself as a Holiday present.

See you in the New Year!

[Send your questions to Stever at: inquire@SteverRobbins.com]

========== Please send questions!

I like to base newsletters on your questions. Send questions to:

inquire@steverrobbins.com

I’ll answer the best in my newsletter and BLOG.

========== Want to exceed your own expectations in your business or career? Call 617-491-7638!

When you’re ready to start doing seriously better, give me a call and I’ll help you make it happen. Just call +1-617-491-7638. Whether it’s becoming the best executive possible, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or having a successful business and fulfilling home life, some dreams _should_ come true. I coach high-performing leaders to help them further their skills, careers, and lives.

========== Become a better leader in a Fun, Provocative Read!

Looking for new ideas you can implement immediately to be a more effective leader? Pick up a ‘It Takes a Lot More than Attitude … to Lead a Stellar Organization.’ This collection of essays explores with what it takes to be a great leader, in an engaging, no-nonsense conversation that keeps you turning the pages. It also makes a perfect gift for the person with the leadership title who just doesn’t get it.

Buy it now at http://www.alotmorethanattitude.com

(The only book on leadership that starts by discussing the responsibilities of leadership, and goes on to reveal all the secrets the great leadership pundits never discuss. Like when and why you can wear a feather boa to staff meetings…)

====

Do Great Things!

– Stever

Just be prepared to get your belly button pierced…

No one should take themselves so seriously
With many years ahead to fall in line
Why would you wish that on me?
I never want to act my age
What’s my age again?
What’s my age again?
   —Blink 182, “What’s my age again?”

Heck, everyone’s saying we must innovate to stay a competitive nation. So the government is throwing money at high-tech businesses. But that only takes care of funding, and frankly, money’s easy to come by if you have a good idea. Once we have the money, we businesses have to use the money to Do New Things.

The hard part is finding the people. We need people who can push the boundaries. Who can go beyond the ordinary. Who can think new thoughts. A lot of those thoughts will be wrong and won’t work. But hopefully, enough will work so we can keep pushing forward. There’s a reason high-tech growth seems to be pushed by 20-somethings—they don’t know what’s impossible, and they haven’t yet been beaten back into conformist thinking.

A Fable that Starts True: Extraordinary People Producing Ordinary Results

A young man—college student—with a goatee and headphones sat across from me on the subway. Hunched over a book, he was wearing cargo pants, a T-shirt, several bracelets, and many necklaces. The knapsack in his lap proclaimed (in hand-written magic marker), “Life is a verb, not a noun.” A button on the knapsack: “Reading is Sexy.”

I looked around. Everyone else was wearing sensible clothes. Khakis. Button-down shirts. Gap shorts. Me? Khaki shorts and a generic polo shirt. Clothes, happily devoid of personality. The young man had more personality in his little finger than the rest of us had together. Pondering, I wondered if he would ever end up as Boring as the rest of us(1).

Step-by-step, he’s molded into Everyman

It would begin on the first day at work. “Wearing a goatee isn’t really appropriate for this office,” he would be told with a smile by the kindly secretary who wants to see him succeed. The next day, he’s cleanshaven. Bracelets, she informs him, aren’t really right for work. And why not leave the necklaces at home, too.

The next day, he shows up, feeling a bit less like himself, feeling like he’s holding back. But, eager to do a good job, he cuts his hair. He shoves the backpack under his desk and buys a smart, leather folio. He shows up “dressed for work.” A colleague sees his old knapsack under his desk, smiles condescendingly, and offers helpful advice, “As an expert at copy-writing I can assure you that technically, ‘life’ is a noun. The verb form would be ‘live.'”

A few weeks later, he finds his childhood hero is speaking in a nearby town. He wants to take a day off and go. “Sorry, kid. You haven’t accrued enough vacation time, yet.” He sighs, understandingly … and in that moment, his Life really does begin to transform from a verb into a noun.

Next comes his yearly review. His best idea saved the company a cool million, but some of his ideas are a bit … out there. We helpfully give him the Tried-and-True industry handbooks, so he can tone down the wacko ideas. He learns quickly what is and isn’t possible. And since he did a good job, we give a whopping 5% raise. (That is $1,750 given his $35K salary. We’re glad he’s not a $200K person; we’d be shelling out ten grand. He doesn’t notice that his raise amount has far more to do with his age than with the value of his idea. We don’t notice, either.)

Within a couple of years, our young friend fits right in. He wears the right clothes. He cancels his dinner dates for Oh-so-important client meetings. He knows the conventional wisdom, and can self-censor his wacko ideas in the bud. He spends his time working, attending industry conventions, and absorbing the Status Quo. He’s a success. And he’s quite unlikely to be an agent of innovation, creativity, or newness. Mission accomplished!

Conformity is our boon and our curse

The problem is conformity. We love it. We like people who look like us, who dress like us, who care about the same things, who live similar lives. It’s hard-wired, you know. Given two identical college applications with different candidate names and pictures, we prefer the one who looks and sounds like us. And never mind the Internet “revolution.” We’ve now made it possible to read only news that agrees with our existing beliefs, communicate mostly with people we know will agree, and read commentary that comes straight from our comfort zone.

Conformity has its good side, of course. It’s very easy to manage. You only need to learn one way of dealing with people, and, well, that’s that. You can pretend everyone’s the same, and since we all agree dress, emotion, purpose, and rewards in the workplace are pretty much standard, we’ll play along enough for us all to happily work together…limiting ourselves to the lowest common denominator of our uniqueness.

But we innovate, create, and find new ideas come people interact who think differently. People nudge each other outside their comfort zones, and if the environment is right, they can end up breaking existing molds and creating Great New Things. But innovation means helping people cultivate their differences and then bringing them together in ways that spark creativity.

When we all wear the same work uniform, we send the message: differences in expression aren’t allowed here. When we all work in identical cubicles, we send the message: individuality is limited to two 8×10″ pictures above your keyboard tray. When our idea of flex-time is letting someone come in at 8:15 instead of 8, we send the message: no matter what your own rhythms, they matter less than having your body here.

And guess what’s the worst of all? Hiring for “fit.” You know what happens when you hire only people you feel comfortable with? You get yet another carbon copy of the Standard Employee you already have way too many of. The candidate who makes you feel a little uncomfortable, who thinks a bit off-the-wall, will bring you genius, if you treat them right.

So bring some extraordinary results into being by bringing together ordinary people, just not your definition of ordinary. Practice stepping outside your comfort zone. Wear some clothes that you’d never normally wear. Don’t be my friend who, at age 60, confided that the only thing he can wear comfortably is a suit and tie (even at home). Go someplace new. Try a new cuisine. Stretch yourself. Find out what happens. Learn from it. Meet some people outside your normal sphere. Go to Burning Man.

But why stop there? Instead of looking oddly at the young man in your office who pierced his nose, go get something pierced yourself. Your belly button is a good choice; you can always tuck in your shirt when you want to be discrete. But above all, remember that conforming to the norm leads you nowhere but the norm. It makes for boring business and a boring life. If you’re going to dream big dreams, matter to the people around you, and create breakthroughs whereever you go, start by piercing your belly button. Khakis and a polo shirt in a gray cubicle just aren’t going to take you anywhere extraordinary.

(1) In a twist of fate, I ended up in line next to this young man several months later. His name is Phil. I’m giving him a copy of this article in the hopes that it will make a difference… back

Power. As I discussed in my Working Knowledge article (archived here), power is one of the prime motivators for many people on the planet. Yet it comes in many flavors, and the most popular form isn’t necessarily the most effective.

This month:

• Stever sighting: Yesterday’s New York Times
• Please send questions!
• Upcoming public events
• Article: The most powerful kind of power

Stever sightings

New York Times, Sunday September 17, 2006
“Taking a Rain Check on a Promotion”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/jobs/17advi.html

Please send questions!

I like to base newsletters on your questions. Send questions to:

inquire@steverrobbins.com

I’ll answer the best in my newsletter and BLOG.

Stever’s Upcoming public events

For details, visit https://www.steverrobbins.com/register

24 Oct 06, Teleseminar on ‘Overcoming email overload,’ noon Eastern Time. Hosted by Mary Cole.
30 Oct 06, Live workshop on ‘Manipulation 101: Advancing your agenda when logic fails.’ Harvard Business School Club of Boston.

Article: The Most Powerful Kind of Power

[Send your questions to Stever at: inquire@SteverRobbins.com]

Wouldn’t it be great if you had power, so people would do anything you wanted? That’s why many people want to be leaders; they want to give orders. There’s just one problem: most people don’t want to be told what to do. If you have teenagers (or were one, once), you know that commanding is the quickest road to resistance.

“But,” you say craftily, “If I’m the boss, they have to do what I say!” Yup. Which means that the group’s performance is solely a reflection on you and your abilities. If you dictate their every action, then it’s your fault when things fail.

The Weakest Power is Coercion

The common view of power is Being Boss, telling people what to do. You limit their choices, so their only choice is to do what you want. That’s the power to restrict by coercion. With this kind of power, you’ve gotta be the smartest one around, since no one else’s ideas matter. And I have news for you: if you’re reading this, chances are you’re NOT the smartest one around. The smartest one around is retired on a tropical island right now, enjoying a fruit-flavored drink.

So even if you get all the coercive power you want, you’ll likely use it to make your life petty, and the lives of everyone around you miserable.

The Strongest Power is Engagement

Another source of power is engaging people. Connecting to their values and calling them to use their strengths in service of something meaningful. While only authority figures can use coercive power (who would put up with it unless forced?), anyone can use engaging power.

Remember your best mentor, boss, coach, Uncle, Aunt, parent, teacher. The ones who made you believe in yourself, find what was important, and really go for it. For me, it was 10th grade Geometry teacher Beth Schlesinger. She loved all us kids, even the goof-offs. She made math fun, added stories and songs, and had faith that we would rise to the challenge. Twenty two years later, we invited her to our reunion, and told her how vital she was in shaping our lives.

Mrs. S had all the keys: she helped us know our goal–we were there to learn Geometry, at the end of the day. And she made the work fun. She kept us creative with puzzles and games. She expected our best, and believed we were up to the challenge. When someone believes in you like that, you dream bigger dreams. You make yourself larger-than-life, and then you live up to it.

Start Engaging Everyone Around You

Start bringing out the best in the people around you. Learn what their goals are, and help them stay on track when they get side-tracked. Learn what they enjoy, and help make their work life fun. Learn about their hopes and dreams, and encourage them to take steps to achieve them. And above all, have faith in them and expect them to live up to that faith.

You’ll find that people want to be around you. When you lay out your vision, they want to sign up. They know that by becoming part of your mission, they’ll become more of who they want to be. You’ll discover that you’ve built the kind of loyalty that no amount of money or title can buy. And best of all, you can start now, with everyone around you. I know you’re up to the challenge; I have faith.

[Send your questions to Stever at: inquire@SteverRobbins.com]

Want to exceed your own expectations in your business or career? Call 617-491-7638!

When you’re ready to start doing seriously better, give me a call and I’ll help you make it happen. Just call +1-617-491-7638. Whether it’s becoming the best executive possible, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or having a successful business and fulfilling home life, some dreams _should_ come true. I coach high-performing leaders to help them further their skills, careers, and lives.

Become a better leader in a Fun, Provocative Read!

Looking for new ideas you can implement immediately to be a more effective leader? Pick up a ‘It Takes a Lot More than Attitude … to Lead a Stellar Organization.’ This collection of essays explores with what it takes to be a great leader, in an engaging, no-nonsense conversation that keeps you turning the pages. It also makes a perfect gift for the person with the leadership title who just doesn’t get it.

Buy it now at http://www.alotmorethanattitude.com

(The only book on leadership that starts by discussing the responsibilities of leadership, and goes on to reveal all the secrets the great leadership pundits never discuss. Like when and why you can wear a feather boa to staff meetings…)

====

Do Great Things!

– Stever

I was planning to write this month about Power and how to use it. Then a news story made me realize you can’t build power without the basics. Like actually getting the job done. This month’s article discusses the two factors that account for all of your business success or failure.

This month:

• Please send questions!
• Upcoming public events
• Article: You can only achieve through process *and* people
• Recent press mentions

Please send questions!

I like to base newsletters on your questions. Send questions to:
inquire@steverrobbins.com.

I’ll answer the best in my newsletter and BLOG.

Stever’s Upcoming public events

For details, visit https://www.steverrobbins.com/register.

12 Sep 06, Teleseminar on ‘Developing the Executive Mindset’, noon Eastern Time. Hosted by Art Giser.
26 Sep 06, Teleseminar on ‘Overcoming email overload,’ noon Eastern Time. Hosted by Mary Cole.
30 Oct 06, Live workshop on ‘Manipulation 101: Advancing your agenda when logic fails.’ Harvard Business School Club of Boston.

Article: You can only achieve through process *and* people

[Send your questions to Stever at: inquire@SteverRobbins.com]

Competence. I read an article about a company hired by the US to build a number of roads, hospitals, and buildings. Nice, measurable goals. Years later, they had failed miserably on all counts. Complete incompetence, paid for with billions of taxpayer money. If you were CEO, would you consider that a job well done? (If so, either hire me to help you change or unsubscribe from this newsletter. I’d rather it not be found in your inbox when you’re arrested for racketeering and fraud.)

And that’s the whole trick in business, isn’t it? To get results people value. When good results are the exception rather than the rule, there are only two possible causes: check your people and check your systems. I’ve found most of us naturally care about one or the other, but not both. We love people, but never have time for the systems. Or we’re great with systems, but … people? Who cares about them?

You should care. They do all the work and set the quality standards. Do you know you’re hiring for competence? Most people hire for skill. They look for resumes with keywords or for experience doing exactly what the open job needs today. Earnest folk develop assessments, tests, and competency models, rating each candidate along a dozen painstaking scales.

Shallow, shallow, shallow. Those are skills, and you can train skills. But you can’t train people to care deeply about doing a good job. You want people who are proud of their work and devoted to getting better. Who cares if they’re good at a skill before you hire them? Trust me. In six months, you’ll care far, far more about whether they’ll move heaven and earth to master and grow in their job once they’re on board.

Look for the right attitude. Southwest Airlines is famous for group interviews, in which they actually watch each candidate in a group setting and notice who cares about pleasing others. That’s who they hire. Go talk to your candidates and employees. Listen carefully to find out who looks proud when talking about doing a good job. Dig. Ask questions like, ‘What was your favorite work experience and why?’ If there’s no evidence they care about the quality of the job, they’re likely not your dream employee. If people are just showing up for the paycheck, they won’t put in the effort it takes to produce results. And that includes you!

In fact, if they have no work ethic, they might deliberately sabotage you. The owner of my local Subway sandwich shop hires kids with a strong work ethic. He once heard a new hire tell the others they could get more hours by making sandwiches more slowly. He fired her on the spot. That kind of attitude doesn’t change, and will poison a business unless it’s nipped in the bud.

Hiring the right people is only half the battle. You have to back them with the systems to do good jobs. Yes, you need to give them computers, machinery, cash registers, and the other tools of the job. You also need to give them policies and procedures that let them do a good job. We’ve all called customer service people who are super friendly and helpful, and spend the entire call confiding that ‘management just won’t let me do that.’ How long do you think a quality-committed person will stay at a job that only allows mediocre results? Not long.

The system underlying everything is your system of Money. Moola. Cash. Scratch. Pay. People do what you pay them for. They take pay as a signal for how to behave. If you pay and promote mediocre-performers the same as high-performers (an astonishingly common practice), your high-performers are more likely to start imitating your mediocre-performers than vice-versa. And when you promote people just because they’re politically savvy, you get a political organization that only incidentally does any work. Think about it: politicians are hired solely for political reasons. Which member of Congress do you want running your business’s cash register?

Also pay attention to how flexible your policies let people be at their job. The Customer Service world is filled with stories of overnight packages being delivered by helicopter by daring deliverymen during a storm. Or department store clerks letting customers return merchandise they didn’t even buy there. By giving those front-line people flexibility, companies created a culture where the job got done and customers became evangelists for life.

We’ll never know what went wrong with the company that couldn’t build hospitals. Likely as not, they didn’t subscribe to this newsletter. You can avoid their mistake. Start by looking around to find out whether your people even want to do a good job. If not, start cleaning house. (Hold yourself to those same standards, by the way. You might be in the wrong job.) Then make sure your people have the systems and policies they need to deliver the results. Just ask, and they’ll tell you if it’s so. And pretty soon, you’ll be able to create an organization where you set out a goal and your company is able to Do Great Things.

[Send your questions to Stever at: inquire@SteverRobbins.com]

Stever sightings:

Canada.com
‘You’re back from vacation and face a mountain of emails: It’s time to tame the beast’
https://www.steverrobbins.com/r/e1nmx (will redirect to Canada.com)

Need breakthroughs in your business or career? Call 617-491-7638!

Are you reaching the breakthroughs you need around business, strategy, career, and people? I can help. Just call +1-617-491-7638. Whether it’s becoming the best executive you can be, heading off to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, or just having a successful business and fulfilling home life, some dreams should come true. I coach high-performing leaders to help them further their skills, careers, and lives.

Become a better leader in a Fun, Provocative Read!

Looking for new ideas you can implement immediately to be a more effective leader? Pick up a ‘It Takes a Lot More than Attitude … to Lead a Stellar Organization.’ This collection of essays explores with what it takes to be a great leader, in an engaging, no-nonsense conversation that keeps you turning the pages. It also makes a perfect gift for the person with the leadership title who just doesn’t get it.

Buy it now at http://www.alotmorethanattitude.com.

(The only book on leadership that starts by discussing the responsibilities of leadership, and goes on to reveal all the secrets the great leadership pundits never discuss. Like when and why you can wear a feather boa to staff meetings…)

---

Do Great Things!

– Stever

Hello!

The NBC Nightly News segment was fun, though the 4-hour shoot became just 15 seconds of airtime. That’s showbiz. I’m trying for permission to post the segment on the web.

‘Face facts,’ my mom used to say. That’s the moral of business book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management, which inspired this month’s article on the times we stop facing facts so we can (short-term) keep feeling comfy.

This month:

• Article: Why we don’t face facts … but should
• Overcoming Email Overload: It’s a strategic issue.
• Upcoming challenge: can you solve a simple business problem?

========== Article: Why we don’t face facts … but should

I was reading Hard Facts,(1) a business book that presented a case for ‘evidence-based management.’ In evidence-based management, better business results come from using data and sound reasoning. Sounds pretty obvious to me, but the authors felt compelled to make a case for evidence-based management using facts. Of course, people who believe facts are for sissies won’t buy that argument. But I’ve found confronting hard facts is often way worth the payoff.

You see, facts matter. You believe you can fly? Great. Dive off a 10-story building with no safety net. Gravity will dispute you. Gravity will win. If you act from untrue beliefs and aren’t willing to look at the unfolding facts, your flying belief might lead to an abrupt, messy end.

We only want facts at our review if we’re doing a good job

We all believe we’re great at whatever we do. We resist evidence to the contrary. When I help an executive create a development plan using 360-degree feedback exercise, their self-perception (‘I am a communication skills God’) mismatches the feedback (‘Charlie has the worst communication skills I’ve seen in 35 years of work’). Charlie’s reaction? ‘Wow. That feedback hurts. But maybe people here just don’t know what good communication skills are like.’ As if!

When it comes to leadership, others’ perceptions matter because perception IS reality. If people don’t understand or respect Charlie, they won’t follow him, they won’t listen to him, and they won’t promote him. Even if they’re all wrong and he’s right, it won’t matter, because creating the right perception is a vital part of his job.

Know if your beliefs work

Sometimes facts annoy us by contradicting our long-held beliefs. So we ignore them. We believe good leadership means using a dictatorial, micro-managing style. We demand 80-hour work-weeks, are stingy with vacation time … and wonder why a steady stream of ungrateful jerks work for us and leave right when we need them most. Facts say that giving people autonomy, engaging commitment, and allowing them a natural rhythm of work/recovery simply works better than being bossy. Besides, you hated it when you parents were bossy; do you really think your employees are any different? Your belief may make you feel powerful, but it isn’t an effective way to run the business. Don’t let the lust to be Alpha Dog blind you to being Effective Dog. (Fact: my metaphors are a bit strained today.)

Know your productivity facts

We love to ignore the facts when doing what makes us feel productive. Email addiction is one place this shows up. Many executives spend 25%+ of their time handling email that only accounts for 5% of their results, They confuse busy-ness with business. Just because we feel productive doesn’t make us productive unless the facts back it up.

Think about how you approach your job. Do you if your beliefs are supported by facts? Or if they’re contradicted? The more you can build the strength to use data and objectivity in your decision-making, the more you’ll find you can shape a path that leads you and your organization to your most closely-held goals.

(1) You can read my detailed review and buy the book at Amazon by going to: https://www.steverrobbins.com/r/book-hardfacts back

========== OVERLOADED BY EMAIL?

The webinar was a success, despite some … interesting … technical glitches. Coming later this year: a product on how to manage your email. The product will focus on the strategy of integrating email into your job, and will present tactics that support smart strategy.

(Also coming soon: a white paper on how email overload is a strategic issue for companies, despite often being viewed as an individual productivity problem.)

Meanwhile, find out exactly what email overload is costing you and your company. It’s free and it’s fun. Visit:

http://www.overloadassessment.com

========== UPCOMING CHALLENGE PODCAST & BLOG: http://blog.steverrobbins.com/bizblog/, https://www.steverrobbins.com/podcast

Stay tuned for my Podcast & BLOG the week of the 24th. In my Podcast, I’ll be presenting a deceptively simple question about business and issuing a challenge for the first person to think through the Facts and answer correctly.

========== Need breakthroughs in your business or career? Call 617-491-7638!

Are you reaching the breakthroughs you need around business, strategy, career, and people? I can help. Just call +1-617-491-7638. Whether it’s becoming the best executive you can be, heading off to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, or just having a successful business and fulfilling home life, some dreams _should_ come true. I coach high-performing leaders to help them further their skills, careers, and lives.

========== Become a better leader in a Fun, Provocative Read!

Looking for new ideas you can implement immediately to be a more effective leader? Pick up a ‘It Takes a Lot More than Attitude … to Lead a Stellar Organization.’ This collection of essays explores with what it takes to be a great leader, in an engaging, no-nonsense conversation that keeps you turning the pages. It also makes a perfect gift for the person with the leadership title who just doesn’t get it.

Buy it now at http://www.alotmorethanattitude.com

(The only book on leadership that starts by discussing the responsibilities of leadership, and goes on to reveal all the secrets the great leadership pundits never discuss. Like when and why you can wear a feather boa to staff meetings…)

====

Do Great Things!

– Stever

You’ve worked your butt off opening an insurance brokerage. People walk in the door and you sell them insurance. Or do you? We often choose our job and career because we like the job or the product or the industry. “High tech is fast-paced and exciting,” my friends exclaim as they dive head first into the Next Insanely Great Thing. It becomes easy to fool ourselves into believing our customers think about our product the same way we do. Yet our long-term survival depends on knowing what we’re really selling.

Selling the product when customers buy the benefit

Since we don’t know what customers are buying–only what we’re selling–we think we’re selling our product. To find out what customers are really buying, look to the benefit they’re getting. Verizon needs this lesson. My next door neighbor has had an unlisted phone number for the last 40 years. She recently heard that Verizon is now reporting phone bill payments to credit card agencies. She called and complained. “My account number is my phone number. By sharing my record, you’re violating my privacy.” The customer service rep smartly informed her that she’s paying $5/month to keep her number from being listed in the directory. She’s not paying for “privacy.”

Guess what? He’s wrong. The only way Verizon used to share her number was through the directory. People who wanted privacy would pay for an unlisted number and they were covered. Now that Verizon gives out numbers in databases, etc., they seem to think that customers won’t mind unsolicited calls as long as the calls didn’t originate from the printed directory or 411. Poppycock! My neighbor is buying privacy, and Verizon is going to lose $5/month unless they start selling privacy, and not just an unlisted number.

Sometimes customers are buying the interactions

What if you’re selling a commodity? Customers get the same benefit from any other producer of your commodity. But the experience of buying from you might be different. Customers might be buying that experience.

My local bookstore (www.PorterSquareBooks.com) charges full retail prices in a community full of techie geeks who love Amazon.com. They’re not just doing well, they’re thriving. Why? Because they’re not selling books. The physical layout of the store is light, airy, and open. Books in the center of the store are on tables, while the bookshelves line the walls. Freestanding bookshelves are arranged so aisles open into the middle. No matter where you are in the store, you never feel hidden or isolated. Shortly after opening, they added a cafe where people can sit, read, and work. Next, they started having book readings by authors, book clubs, and the like. Despite the higher-than-online prices, the bookstore is almost always buzzing with people. Because even though they make money with a commodity, books, they’re selling something far rarer today: community.

Selling community is very different from selling books. It means expanding into areas that bring people together, that encourage interaction, and that create a sense of belonging. Amazon sells books, and they’ve expanded product-wise. Now you can buy lawn furniture, too. Yippee. Recently, Amazon has added Blogs and Wikis and other community elements, but I’m convinced. Amazon online will never be more than a pale imitation of Porter Square Books in-person.

Here are a few more examples:

• Ad companies don’t sell advertising campaigns. They sell sales.
• Consulting companies don’t sell hours, they sell advice and/or results.
• Media placement companies don’t sell ad impressions, they sell prospect calls.
• Clothing stores aren’t selling clothes, they’re selling identities.

Take the time to understand what your customers are buying. Are they buying your product or service? Are they buying the benefit they get from your product? Are they buying the interaction around your offering? Understanding what you’re selling is the key to knowing how, why, and where to go next to grow your business.

Ever met someone who likes to keep decisions open? WAY open? My friend Jordan is like that. No decision can be complete unless we have a dozen options to choose from. He enjoys the options-generation process itself. Especially for small things, I’m one of those people who just likes to make a decision and move into action. Options are only necessary if the initial options don’t meet the needs, and the fun is in choosing an option and acting.

Stever: Let’s grab lunch. How about a sandwich at Dave’s Fresh Pasta?

Jordan (thinking): Oh, Stever’s thinking of having some lunch. What fun! Stever’s tossed out the first idea. Now I’ll toss out some more ideas, get Stever’s ideas, I’ll react to his ideas, we’ll have a bit of a back and forth, brainstorming possibilities which shall surely result in a delicious lunch.

Jordan: Ok. We could also go to Maria’s. Or maybe there’s a new Mexican place down the street. Or maybe Harvest…?

Stever (thinking): Why does he always do this? Every time I make a decision, he has to suggest something else. Why can’t we simply go where I suggest once in a while?

Stever: Look, why don’t we just go to Dave’s Fresh Pasta.

Jordan (thinking): No! There might be something else I want to enjoy. Stopping the options-generating process means we now stop enjoying different possibilities.

We both end up in a downward spiral. Besides lunch, there are two sets of needs on the table: I need to move into action. Jordan needs to spend time generating possibilities. When we do it in that we both end up frustrated, and we do it that way every time I start off the conversation. The solution is surprisingly simple:

Change the order of the interaction.

If I’m starting the conversation, I normally start with my favorite option. But Jordan’s response will always be to generate alternatives. So how about this as an opening gambit:

Stever: Let’s grab lunch. What are some of the possible places we could lunch?

Jordan: How about Carberry’s? The Mexican place? Harvest?

Stever: Or maybe Dave’s Fresh Pasta? It’s close, inexpensive, and super-yummy.

Jordan: Sounds great! Let’s do it!

By recognizing that Jordan’s natural strengths operate at the start of the decision, I can kick off with a question that engages him appropriately. Then when he’s had his fill of options, I can put mine out and we can make a decision and move forward. In practice, he’s usually quite amenable to whatever I want anyway… as long as he’s had a chance to generate options first. We’re both happy.

This also applies to Dreamers vs. Critics

Another common order-dependent interaction is dreamers vs. critics. Some people are great at finding the holes in a plan. Others are great at dreaming. You want both in a decision, only often they happen in reverse. The critics get involved at the brainstorming phase, and knock ideas out before they’ve even had a chance to be fully generated.

When you have a dreamer and a critic, put forth some ground rules. Decide in phases. Make sure both people understand the ground rules and the reason for them. Then brainstorm first, with the critic muzzled, secure (hah!) in the knowledge that they will have a turn. After brainstorming has generated lots of options, let the critic find the problems with the options. During this phase, the brainstormers get to sit quietly, nod, and smile (through gritted teeth). Lastly, the brainstormers take the critic’s list of concerns and brainstorm answers to those concerns. The critic can review the answers and the group decides whether the final solutions meet the needs.

Often, differences in personal styles are points of conflict. But all the different styles are strengths in the right time and place. One path to harmony (not to mention better results!) is to change the order you interact to insure everyone has a chance to use their style in a place that makes sense.