Life lessons from a boxer's life

Last night we went to a boxing gym to support a mate of ours in his first big bout.  Genevieve didn’t think she would enjoy it, but she got caught up in the moment.  I didn’t expect to still be interested, and yet I got totally absorbed in all the matches and couldn’t wait for Andy’s turn in the ring.  When I was younger my father taught me how to box, and I was surprised how much of it came back to me.

My Dad boxed in the British Army.  I guess that would be back in the late 1940’s and after.  He was a child of the depression, and I think he had a tough childhood.  I think fathers take their children to sports, (or science fairs, or libraries or whatever), because they want to pass some life lessons on to their children and it’s often hard to put those lessons into words.  A friend of mine recently showed me a list of life lessons learned from playing ice hockey.  I suspect the parents who are taking their children along to hockey, (or whatever), want them to learn those lessons, even if they can’t articulate what they are or expect their children to listen to them if they tried.

My father has a million opinions on life, but he could never get them across to me in words in a way that would engage me to listen.  (Probably as much my fault as his.)  However, through boxing as a young kid and early teenager I absorbed a lot of what he thought was important.

Appearances can be deceptive.  My Dad is a little guy.  He's 4'11".  That's him in the photo with Mum and I on a recent trip.  I don't think size ever stopped him from doing any thing.  All my life he has always been faster and feistier than me.  Never underestimate anyone and always look out for the little guy who is hungrier than you.  No matter your size never be afraid to step in to the ring, and never let anything hold you back from doing what you want to do.

Ok…that may be more than one lesson.

Keep your head down and hands up.  Sport is supposed to be fun, but anything worthwhile is usually hard work as well.  Once you start you need to focus, and keep your gloves up and ready for what’s next.  No looking up, looking around, daydreaming or dozing.  Work hard, play hard.

And while you’re at it…

Turn up for training.  You might think you just get into a ring and belt the heck out of the other guy.  You’d be wrong.  There’s an art and a science to boxing well.  You need to practice enough that it comes naturally, and you need to study enough that you get the form and execution right.  You can’t do that if you don’t turn up because you have a case of the sniffles, or you had a late night, or it’s cold out.  I tried all those: they didn’t work.  My Dad was the original “just do it” man long before Nike’s ad campaign.

Get on the front foot.  Unless you really, really need to back off and regroup, the best strategy is always to take the game to the opposition.  Sometimes you can be tempted to ignore a problem and hope it will go away.  Many people have a problem with procrastination, and sometimes that includes me, but no-one ever got into a ring and won by hiding in the corner.  You have to tackle life head on.

And speaking of corners.

You need good people in your corner.  After you’ve done a few rounds with your personal demons everybody needs to get back into their corner for a while and take a rest.  When that happens you need supporters.  Don’t piss off your mates, don’t look down on people whose role is different from yours, and never forget you don’t get anywhere without a lot of help from a lot of people. When someone has just watched you go toe to toe with your opposition and they have good advice…take it.

Once you’re in the ring you’re all alone.  Make sure you’ve prepared, and believe in yourself, because once the rumpus starts you have to rely on yourself.  I think as a kid boxing built tremendous self-confidence in me.  Some people think boxing does that because it makes you a better fighter, like you go around thinking “I could take him”, and “I could beat him up”.  That isn’t it at all.  It builds confidence because you develop self-reliance.  It’s just you and your opponent and a pair of gloves and a roped in ring.  You can’t call for your mummy and you can’t wait for anyone else to help you out.  If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen because of you.

Few are fooled by fancy footwork.  I’ve worked with some people who have amazing moves.  When you try to hold them accountable for something or plan something solid for the future they have a dozen excuses for why it didn’t get done, it’s not their fault and anyway, “look at this great shiny object I have here”.  Some people think they can avoid you looking at their results by distracting you with their moves, (or their fancy marketing, “blue sky plans”, smart clothes or latest electronic gadgets).  At the end of the bout, results count.

You’re only as good as your opposition.  Boxers are matched up according to weight and experience.  If you’re good, you can expect your opponents are going to get better, just as you will by being matched up with them.  If it’s all too easy chances are you’ve rigged the system somehow and you’re not progressing.  Seek out worthy opponents that stretch you.

You don’t win them all.  Sooner or later you’ll be counted out of a match by a technical knock out, (like a cut lip, bloodied eye or other injury that prevents you from going on), or perhaps you’ll get beaten by someone bigger, meaner and faster than you who scores more points on you.  Maybe one time you’ll miss a move and cop a blow to the head and need to get taken out of the fight.  Maybe you actually get knocked out.  Tough!  Life happens.  It’s not about the match you’ve lost, it’s about whether or not you come back.  Suck it up and train for the next time.

While you’re at it.

Be magnanimous in victory.  When you do win remember what we said about only being as good as your opponent.  Be gracious, be civil, be a good sport.  We always had to stand together at the end of every fight, and if you lost you congratulated the other.  Thank him for a good fight.  Hold the ropes open for the loser, and let him leave the ring with dignity.  There’s always plenty of time to celebrate later.

And finally, don't be afraid to show your emotions.  In the picture my parents are holding hands.  They've held each other's hands when they go out walking all their lives.  Whether I won or lost, did well or did poorly, I could always tell what my father thought of my efforts.  He lives life large and encouraged me to do the same.

Our friend Andy won his bout, was a great sport, and afterward we all went out for a few drinks and celebrations.  Well done.  He got knocked around a bit but I’m sure he enjoyed it.

I’m fifty now, and I can’t even imagine what it would be like to get into a boxing ring at my age.  I equally can’t remember my father ever sitting down and trying to give me life lessons.  My Dad’s still around, in his 80’s, just as feisty and opinionated as he ever was.  I believe he still thinks of himself as a boxer, although he's obviously thinking of how he lived his life, not his ability to get back in a ring.  I have never had a very close relationship with my father.  Perhaps that was just the way of his generation.  Maybe, even though I would have resisted it furiously, just maybe, some of those lessons that got him through his life rubbed off on me.  Maybe that’s what he wanted all along.

Earning the Attention of a Prehistoric Brain

One of my colleagues recently created a blog posting with this title.  You can see Terri's article here.  Her point, from a trainer's perspective, is that brains are wired to ignore the repetitive and regular and pay attention to the unexpected and irregular. 

Psychologists call ignoring the background sensations habituation, and paying attention to what is new and different vigilance.  Our brains are quite primitive this way…they work much the way a dinosaur's brain worked.

How does knowing this help a principled leader?

I'm currently working with a client where we are half way through an 18 month culture change project across their organization.  One of the ways we are making the culture change stick is to use habituation and vigilance to our advantage.

When we first introduced the change we used as many different communication channels as we could.  We also had as many different customizations as possible for each of the audiences.  Each time the managers and staff saw the themes from the change process pop up in a memo, staff meeting or handout they thought "Ah, here's that thing again."  With every twist in the communication they looked at the changes and thought about what it meant for them.

Once the change was successfully introduced we started finding a common language and reinforcing a common mindset among the staff by repeating the same materials.  Over time the managers and staff no longer thought of what we were doing as "change", it just became "the way we do things around here".

We got the staff and managers to be vigilant about the changes coming their way, and habituated to the idea that change is natural.

Terri's article is a great look at the concept for improving training outcomes.  I also use the concept with my clients as one of the ways to help them make meaningful changes stick.

(You can also make people hyper-vigilant.  That's when the changes and novelty are coming so quickly, and the anxiety level is raised so high that people pay too much attention to paying attention, and become frozen into inaction).

There are principles that underlie each of the states of vigilance, habituation and hyper-vigilance.
 

When we work with someone responsible for making a change initiative work we help them answer the question:  "When do I need to be novel and different with this message, when do I need to make sure it's more of the same, and when is enough, enough?"

One tip to make your New Year resolutions achievable.

Hopefully you are celebrating the successful achievement of your 2010 goals.  And hopefully you are looking forward to setting new goals for yourself and maybe your department, organization or community.  You have probably heard it's a good idea to write them down and tell other people about them.

Most people think it is about record keeping.  Good record keeping is no small thing in itself when it comes to September and you are trying to remember what you promised to do.  However, that is not the main reason why  writing a resolution down and telling other people about it makes it more achievable.

It's nothing "new age" or anything mystical about the universe.  It's a simple insight we have into the psychology of how our minds work.  There is indeed a power to writing things down and telling others:  it's the psychological power of cognitive dissonance.

Consider two statements:  "I am a good person" and "I tell the truth".  Most of us would believe both of these to be true about ourselves.  Now say you write down your resolution and you achieve it.  Ta dah!  You are a good person and you tell the truth.

However, let's say you wrote down your resolution and you are maybe not going to achieve it.  Cognitive dissonance kicks in.  Perhaps "I am a good person" and yet "I don't tell the truth".   This is unlikely and your mind rejects it.  Instead, your conscious and subconscious mind works on the the idea that "I am a good person" and "I tell the truth" therefore … "I should/I must achieve my resolution". 

The act of writing down your resolution means you have taken more effort with your resolution and the harder is it for your mind to think you went to that effort, you're a good person but you didn't tell the truth.

The power of cognitive dissonance says the more effort you put into writing down your resolution the more your unconscious will motivate you to make it true.  Buy an expensive note book, use  fancy calligraphy and give a copy to all your friends.

Of course, you could argue that telling other people just means you will get shamed into having to complete your resolution, but it is really the same thing.  If you are a good person and you tell the truth and you look like you are not going to achieve your resolution…either you have to put a lot of mental and social effort into explaining to yourself and others why…or you just put extra effort into achieving the resolution!

If you are a manager or leader get the people you work with to write down their resolutions, goals and promises for the coming year.  Join them, and be the first one prepared to share your resolutions publicly.  Watch how the more effort is put into writing down the resolution, and the more publicly it is shared, the harder people will work at all levels to make it come true.

Cognitive dissonance was one of the first things I learned as a psychologist about counseling people and I was stunned by how well it works in almost every case.

Update on the Tour De France...

It's Tour De France time. I love cycling. A year ago I wrote an article on the tour and how success in professional cycling and success in business is very similar. The article is just as relevant today, so here it is again...

This isn’t a post just for cycling lovers.  As you can see on the left, I enjoy getting out on two wheels whenever I can.  However, I’ve just spent three weeks watching the biggest international event in professional cycling, and I have some thoughts on what I saw and how it relates to the world of business.  Here are my (slightly) random thoughts.

 

It’s about teamwork.  The cyclists cover thousands of miles across France, and at the end of the race there can only be one winner.  However, it’s impossible to imagine anyone being successful over such a long trial without the backing of their team.  Wheels need to be changed; drinks need to be brought up.  Sometimes a rider sacrifices their own bike to pass it to another member of their team whose bike has crashed and who has a better chance of winning.  If you can’t maintain the support of your team you will never win.

Respect differences.  The Tour De France is a race for all types.  Some of the racers are lean little whippets who excel at sprinting away on the flat.  Some cyclists are powerhouses of muscle who get away from the pack on the long hills.  Each team has a balance of people who are best at different things, and they had better understand and respect each other for their different contributions.

The journey is the prize.  If you don’t make one of the top three placings or win a special jersey for King of the Mountain or similar the financial rewards aren’t that great for three weeks spent pedaling around 3,500 kilometers, (or more than 2,000 miles).  I read that the prize for the fourth place winner is 70,000 Euros, (about $US100,000), and that tails down to the rider that finishes 19th earning just 1,000 Euros.  Even the winner, Alberto Contador, isn’t that well rewarded.  He gets 450,000 Euros, but that has to go toward paying for the team, (and there are nine riders in a team), the support vehicles, the team managers and cooks and buses and everything else.  I’m not saying the ones at the top don’t get enough in support and endorsements to make it worthwhile.  I do think it’s not the money that motivates the average participant.  You can bet they “get in the flow” when they get on their bike, and they get a reward from what they do that isn’t just financial.

Team results?  Team rewards.  Even if you only want to maximize the performance of the best rider, you had still better make sure you reward the whole team for their effort.  We know that there can only be one winner, and you would think the way to ensure that everyone puts in their best effort is to focus on rewarding individual achievement.  Instead, the teams and the organizers ensure there are prizes, jerseys and accolades enough to reward everyone.  Not every rider can be number one.  When you have to get the best out of more than a hundred cyclists you have to ensure that everyone has a stake in making it a great race.

Knocked over?   Get up again.  Every day someone “hits the wall” and falls behind, or literally hits a wall or something else and falls over.  Every day they get up and start over again.  When I was a kid I had tremendous resilience.  If I fell over I’d just dust myself off, get a band aid or two and carry on.  As we get older we lose that, and yet here are people riding with broken collar bones, bruises, cuts and all sorts of damage.  Most of what we think hurts us isn’t really that bad, and if we just get back on our bikes we are surprised by how far we can go.

The link to business?  I love the Tour De France.  There’s something wonderful about watching athletes of the highest caliber competing in any sport.  I think that if any of these cyclists have the inclination to participate in business they have the temperament to do pretty well.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ...

I have written before about the Basic Interpersonal Skills.  The third one is "Always make the effort to make things better".

If you put the emphasis on the word "always" you can think of another way of saying this.  Never give up.

Never give up on your friends, never give up on your commitments, never give up and accept defeat before the game is over.


I tuned into the World Cup today expecting to see an example of this from my beloved Socceroos.  It was highly unlikely they would go through to the next round, but it was possible if they managed to win against Serbia, and the goal difference worked out OK in the Germany v Ghana match.

Australia played their hearts out and secured a close fought win.  Unfortunately for us it wasn't enough to grab a place in the final sixteen.

On the next screen at our local watering hole we could see history in the making at the Wimbledon Tennis tournament.  I have seen matches go to 8/6 in the final set, 9/7, 10/8 and even 11 and 12 all before being finalized.  Izner vs Mahut was still going at 59 all in the final set before bad light called off play for the evening.

Whatever happens in the game I have new example and a new rephrasing of my third Basic Interpersonal Skill.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up!

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Peter Drucker, King of management gurus, has five essential questions for every organization. This book includes content from five of today’s thought leaders, to supplement Drucker's questions and bring them up to date.

You can use this book as a tool for self-assessment. In the words of one reviewer "...answering these five questions will fundamentally change the way you work, helping you lead your organization to an exceptional level of performance."

Peter Drucker’s five questions are:  

 

What is our Mission? with Jim Collins 

Who is our Customer? with Phil Kotler

What does the Customer Value? with Jim Kouzes 

What are our Results? with Judith Rodin

What is our Plan? with V.Kasturi Rangan

 

I have recently worked with a couple of organizations who have looked at themselves closely in terms of the five questions and who are entering the new decade with a completely reshaped vision of themselves.  

One large non-profit had to ask the hard question:  Who are we here to serve?  Their customers were not only the members of society served by their community impact delivery, but also the donors, volunteers and others who had to be engaged by the organization's mission.  In these difficult times this non-profit is providing real leadership on the new "business as usual" and managing to maintain their donor and volunteer base.

 

Another client is a project team leading a significant ERP implementation across a 3,000 employee organization.  Over the last six months or so they have been looking very carefully at what their (internal) customers value, and the results they are really there to deliver.  As a result their "go-lives" are customer focused and the departments they work with are partners in ensuring everything goes smoothly.

 

The five questions could be obvious, (see my Monty Python article), but the depth of analysis enables this book to be a real breakthrough framework for many.

David to speak at Carlson School of Management

I'm on a panel to speak at the Carlson School of Management next week on "Selling, Marketing and Management Tools In The New Global Market." If you're local and you can come along I'll be glad to look out for you and introduce you around.

 It should be a good evening. They have a great panel of speakers which I'm pleased to have been invited to join. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say!


You can find details of the event below and: here.

SMEI Minnesota Presents

The New Global Market
Selling, marketing and management challenges in the new global market

Carlson School of Mgmt 3M Auditorium, Minneapolis
Thursday, April 22, 2010 (4:30 PM - 6:30 PM)

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Moderated by Dileep Rao, Ph.D., Carlson School of Management. Three-time Outstanding MBA Teacher of the Year; International entrepreneur and book author, Bootstrap to Billions.

Amit Gupta
Chairman, Amsum & Ash, Inc
• Co-founder and chairman of TAB India, a Jaipur-based quarrier, processor and marketer of granite, marble, slate and sandstone sold around the world.

Brett Schockley
Vice President of Emerging Products & Technology, Avaya
• Co-founder of Spanlink Communications
• Leads Avaya’s global professional services team for Contact Center and Unified Communications
• MBA, Carlson School of Management

James Thomas
Vice President of International Sales, Mate Precision Tooling in Anoka
• New sales channels in Mexico, Eastern Europe and Brazil
• Former President of Colder Products International
• MBA Thunderbird-Garvin School of International Management

Dr. David Farrar
International Business Consultant
• Former head of human resources in Southeast Asia and global effectiveness manager at Cargill.
• Speaker and consulting roles in Australia, Belgium, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa, Singapore, Switzerland, UK and U.S.

This event is FREE

Advance registration is required. If you prefer to register by phone please call 800-999-1414 ext 202.

And you can go to our new Facebook Business Page if you would like to let me know you're coming.

I'll look forward to seeing you!

Five tips for better team building events

I do not like team building events. It’s not because I don’t like building teams, it’s just that so many of the so-called “team building” strategies I see are divorced from the everyday realities of the team’s life. As a result, the team feels more demotivated by the non-related event than if they had been left alone to get their work done.

People form into teams naturally under situations of group opportunity or stress. A team is a group of people who function cooperatively as a group toward a common goal. Under the wrong conditions teams can form that don’t have the same goals as the organizations they work in. Conditions such as resistance to change, coping with stress and punishing people they see as outside their group. Managers and leaders want to promote teams where the cooperative work is aligned to the organization’s purpose, and the teams productivity is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Here are five steps for planning a positive team building event.

1. Make sure that the team is a team. Too often, the team is really a group of people who happen to work in the same department or in the same function. They don’t have common goals, they don’t share rewards or work on projects together. They just sit together, report to the same manager, or work on the same project. Pulling a “team" like this together for team building that is separate from the group’s normal way of doing business just builds cynicism. Send people to a team building event when all the rewards in the group are based on individual goals will have no lasting impact.

2. Let the team plan the event. I know this sounds dangerous! The success of the team building event begins a long time before the event occurs. Wouldn’t it be a little ironic to try to build team behaviors without letting the team exhibit those behaviors? Let the team model the behaviors you are trying to instill, and coach and guide them along the way. Delegate the task properly and the team building event will give the team the sense of empowerment and collaboration you want them demonstrate.

3. Plan the event around a meaningful business purpose. I won’t lead events that are out of context for the team or divorced from their regular work. Perhaps the meaningful business purpose is celebrating a recent success, or working as a group to set team norms. It doesn’t matter in a big sense if the business purpose might otherwise be a downer for the team…I have seen successful events built around the theme of recovering from losing a major account or building bridges with a client after a serious project misstep. Don’t have a team event just to build an overall sense of teamwork. I once worked with a VP who took her team out to Paint A Plate for a day. It was a waste of time because the event was just a fun day with no link to anything the team did back in their cubicles. If someone had linked painting plates with good team behaviors it might have worked. (My example was probably made worse by the fact that she didn't attend the second half of the event at the local theme park: what message did that send to her people?) We might just as well have been throwing balloons around or going boating. Try selling those to a team that’s going through a work slump.

4. Follow up with meaningful activities back at the work place. Probably as part of the event the team will learn something about each other’s strengths and development opportunities, or someone will come up with a new strategy for cross-functional co-operation. Make sure that there is a visible process that everyone contributes to that brings the team building event back to work. Make it an agenda item at a coming management meeting to debrief the event for What Went Well, What Opportunities Were Uncovered, and What Commitments Were Made.

5. Finally, if you want the event to build good team behavior you had better know what good team behavior looks like. If you don’t already know what good team behavior looks like you need to get a list together so you monitor, recognize and reward the right behavior when it occurs at the event, and back at the work place. If you want a quick checklist you could do a lot worse than use Patrick Lencioni’s model. He describes Five Dysfunctions of a Team, but to make it easier to see the positive side of his model I will rephrase it to make Five Functional Behaviors of a High Performing Team. Simply put they are: Trust Each Other; Embrace Conflict Positively; Commit To The Team’s Goals; Ensure and Accept Accountability, and Focus on the Team’s Stakeholders’ Results.

Using what’s above you can plan an event that will build your staff into a positive team. First, make sure they really are a team with common goals, work processes and rewards. Let them plan some team building together. Make sure they build the event around a meaningful business purpose. Make sure they follow up by bringing the learnings of the event back to the workplace. And finally, make sure you have set clear expectations with them for what good team behavior is.

Now, do you trust them enough to let them loose with your team building objective and a budget?

Are you an Apple, or are you AT&T?

Let me tell you a tale of two very different customer experiences. At this time of year many of us are heavily involved in holiday shopping, or else we are doing new contracts for services or reviewing our budgets at work. It got me thinking about what sort of customer experiences we want to have, and how can we identify a couple of rules that make the difference. These two customer experiences really happened to me this weekend…and they provide a good model to review the customer experiences we receive and want to give every day.

We decided for Christmas to gift my mother-in-law with an iPhone. She is pretty up to date with modern technology, and it was both a useful and fun present for someone who likes geeky things and can use it in her business. At the same time, Genevieve decided to gift me with one of the same new iPhone 3Gs’s and we decided to update her from her Blackberry to an iPhone and put us all on an AT&T contract.

The Apple store was packed with people, both shoppers and staff. As soon as we walked in we were warmly greeted by an easily identifiable Apple “Genius” in a red top. (By the way, it takes a certain self-confidence to call your sales associates and technical support people Geniuses). We outlined what we were after and in a few moments we were seated comfortably at a table with a bright, young associate eager to demonstrate how the iPhone worked. (Luke: Thank you, you truly are a Genius.) However we still had one question: we had an iPhone already and wanted to know how we could get it onto a family calling plan. Luke explained that he could put iPhones purchased in the store onto an AT&T plan, but could not connect the existing phone to a plan. He suggested we talk directly with AT&T, and showed us where we could find a representative.

Here is where our troubles started.

The AT&T staff were standing around talking with each other, dressed in a wide variety of clothes, and hardly interacting at all with customers who came to their store. When we did get someone’s attention we were shown through a dizzying assortment of plans and prices. On more than one occasion I had to stop the associate to confirm what we were being told. An example: “So this thing is ‘free’ provided we pay more for this other thing?” Many of the plans and handsets were discounted or on special. We left the store once we had got a specific answer to our specific question about putting an existing iPhone onto an AT&T plan, (or so we thought).

We purchased our two new iPhones and returned to the AT&T store to put them onto a new family plan along with our existing iPhone. Here’s where the trouble started. It turned out we had been given incorrect information about the plan, and to put our existing phone with AT&T and change after twelve months as we wished was going to cost us about $115 more than we had been told. No-one in the store denied we had been given the wrong information, (about an hour before). They just apologized and said we could at least get our money back on the iPhones…not so helpful if you’ve just cancelled your previous plan. We talked with a manager, who didn’t seem to have any authority to fix what one of his staff had cost us, and eventually after about half an hour of discussion and various phone calls to their ‘customer service’ line we were given a credit to our account of $115. During that time we were offered free phones we didn’t want, (and obviously didn’t need), and we weren’t told some obvious things about our plans which we obviously did need, (like overseas access since we had told them the iPhone was an early Christmas present because Camille was just about to fly to France).

Meantime, I have since returned a headset that didn’t work to the Apple store. They looked up my account, (on the spot), confirmed the date of purchase, told me the piece was out of warranty, helped me get the supplier's address, and gave me a new, (free), replacement headphone while they took on the responsibility of sending the faulty headset back to the manufacturer.

We were extremely happy with Apple, not so much with AT&T. I should emphasize that it wasn’t so much about the individuals who served us. I believe each of them were well-intentioned and ably trained. It was more about the way the organizations approached their market and empowered their staff to live their brand. Everyone makes mistakes with their customers sometimes, so what was so different about Apple’s approach? Here are a couple of things that spring to mind.

1: Pricing. Apple has a good product and tries to price it fairly and simply. When they make a mistake, as they did with the original iPhone pricing, they admit it. (They gave the original purchasers of iPhones a rebate. Given these people must have known they were paying a premium for being the first to own the new devices the rebate sounds like a smart marketing move when it transpired that Apple weren’t selling enough phones at the original price.) Meantime, Apple have no confusing specials, sweet deals or “free” add-ons that cost money. Personally, I would rather give my service away to someone if they genuinely want to try out what I do than cheapen my product by discounts and concessions.

2: Quality. When you have a good product you don’t need to compensate. Customers of all kinds are pleased to get what they pay for, and usually appreciative whenever their expectations are exceeded. In the Apple store my mother-in-law was giggling like a little girl whenever the sales associate showed her something her ‘smart phone’ could do. It wasn’t just the apps, it was the voice recognition built in, the tagged voicemails, the compass and lots of other things that served as surprise and delight items.

3: Service. The Apple associates genuinely came across as loving their jobs and proud of their product. The demonstrations were enthusiastic without coming across as sales pitches. When something went wrong, like my faulty headset, they were empowered to make it right on the spot. When they didn’t know the answer to a question they said so, and went and discovered where the answer could be found.

Price, quality, service: my marketing professors used to tell us to “pick any two”. Apple shows you that it’s possible to optimize all three without sacrificing profitability. Without dwelling too much on AT&T’s strategy let’s focus on the positive aspects of Apple’s go-to-market philosophy. You can easily sum up their brand as leading edge technology that’s easy to use. You get quality and service and you know you’re paying something of a premium in terms of price. I'm not sure what AT&T's branding is and I'm sure I don't know what they stand for to their consumers, (at least these consumers).

Principled businesses try to make the experience for their customers satisfying in each area while being candid about needing the relationship to be profitable. Principled leaders try equally hard to ensure they have a “leadership brand” and they are transparent about what they stand for and what people can expect from them. Not so all businesses and not so all leaders.

So in your business, do you follow Apple’s strategy, or are you an AT&T?

Summit on leading in crisis

Recently I was lucky enough to score an invitation to the Summit On Leading In Crisis hosted by Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, and now Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. George gathered four very experienced panelists to discuss their “personal stories from the trenches”.

Bill George began the discussions with observations from his new book, “7 Lessons for Leading In Crisis”. I’ve read the book since the forum, and it’s a good read. George sees crises as opportunities for excellent leaders to show what they’re worth. He calls crisis “The Ultimate Test of Leadership”. The seven lessons range from “Face Reality Starting With Yourself” to “Go On The Offense, Focus On Winning Now”. The seven lessons are the basis for a useful discussion with your managers and leaders about how they face crises and where they have opportunities for improvement. Earlier posts by George had slightly different lessons, and these look as if they have changed to make them more useful to a general audience, (as opposed to an earlier post by George on the Wall Street Journal site where one of the lessons was "Build a mountain of cash, and get to the highest hill.").

At the summit the book was sold with a study guide that I think was just as useful as the book. It provided each of the lessons with a set of questions and conversation starters that many leadership teams and coaches could include in their regular after action reviews.

George’s opening remarks mainly centered on our current economic crisis. His point was that it wasn’t a failure of mortgage lenders, economic policies or government regulation. The current crisis is a failure of leadership. Each of the speakers following Bill took up his theme, followed by some of their personal illustrations. Here are a couple that stuck with me…

Mary Carlson Nelson, Chair and former CEO of Carlson Companies was the first to speak after Bill. She made the valuable point that it can be easy to blame leadership without recognizing that there are many great leaders in great organizations who have been caught up in the current economic cycle and are weathering the crisis as best they can.

David Gergen, Director of the Center for Pulblic Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, talked widely across politics and the economy. Overall he came down on the side that it’s not just great leadership that will get us out of this…it also takes the light hand of appropriate regulation to stop the worst excesses of a free for all economic market. I liked his philosophy. Life is rarely a case of either this or that, most things are usually a case of both this and that.

Anne Mulcahy, Chair and former CEO of Xerox, talked about how most of the recovery in our economy will actually be driven by small nimble organizations rather than large multinationals and conglomerates. Many of the books and theories of leadership look as if they are written for CEOs and super-executives. In reality, the millions of actions of regular people and small to mid-sized organizations acting with integrity in their own best interests drive most of business and most of our economy.

Finally, John Donahoe, Chair and CEO of eBay. Donahoe was what you would expect from a West Coast high tech executive…relaxed in chinos and an open shirt, engaging and personally humorous. (I wonder what he was like before eBay as a high-powered consultant from the east coast). The story that I remembered most of Donahoe’s was his description of his son’s job search post college. You might imagine that Donahoe could call up any one of his network and find a “job” for his son. I’ve even known CEO’s in large public organizations who have found “internships” for their children, knowing full well the positions their children are getting are nothing like a real job in terms of the way they are treated or experiences they will be given. Donahoe’s boy is looking out for his own future like any other college grad. Apparently he sat at home for a long time with no job until he eventually volunteered to work for free at something he loves.

I liked that story best of all the summit tales. Taking personal responsibility, acting with integrity and finding a way of making a valuable contribution to others are real markers of leadership.

The summit will be televised on TPT and local public television stations in the near future. The audio is available from Minnesota Public Radio and I imagine it will soon be broadcast nationally. Check it out for some very interesting reflections on leadership from some very heavy hitters in business.

A lesson in presence from The Next Food Network Star

Developing presence is one of the most common coaching requests from middle and senior executives. It’s rare that someone comes out and says “I need more presence”, but it’s common for people to review their 360 feedback or reflect on their career progression and decide they need a better ability to engage others and generate respect and support.

The Next Food Network Star is a reality program where a season’s worth of contestants come together to compete for the prize of their own show on the Food Network. Culinary challenges are thrown at the contestants each week with the aim of finding out two things: do they have cooking expertise, and do they have the presence to become a television star.

Something that makes the show different is that the judges’ panel includes two food network executives who provide real feedback and coaching. They want to select the finalist with the most presence who will generate ratings for them next season. Along the way they want to develop the finalists with the best potential to maximize their presence for the home audience.

This week, we got a lesson in developing presence from Melissa, (Season Five, Episode Seven if you want to Google it and see the show highlights). In this episode the network deliberately messes with the finalists, putting them on a live breakfast show with various technical faults they can’t anticipate and have to deal with on-air. The host gets Melissa’s name wrong repeatedly, and in various other ways gets her totally flustered on live television.

We see Melissa panic. Her delivery quickens, the tone of her voice goes up, and her facial expressions give away that hunted look that communicates “get me out of here”. After, the judges tell her what they saw, and give her advice on how to improve.

Here are the three things she does to improve her presence:

• Incorporate stakeholder feedback
• Communicate to connect
• Get in flow and enjoy the work

Incorporate stakeholder feedback. I have written before about what many people do when faced with negative feedback. Usually it’s one of four things. They claim it wasn’t really a problem, they provide reasons why they really aren't unhappy with the outcome, they blame something or someone else, or they act like what we know happened didn’t really happen. We can call these the Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny strategies. The trouble is, trying to Justify, Rationalize, Excuse or Deny when we know something went wrong just makes things worse. It makes people want to argue with you so that you “get it”, or it makes them want to punish you so that you “get what’s coming to you”.

Melissa takes the opposite and better tactic. She acknowledges feedback and shows respect for her stakeholders by demonstrating to them how she has incorporated it into her behavior. Note: she doesn’t always have to agree, but she always at least acknowledges feedback and shows how it will affect what she does next time. In almost every case responding positively to audience feedback builds presence. It makes your audience invested in your success because they feel a part of what’s going on with you. In this case the judges panel are a proxy for the real at-home TV audience. Nevertheless, in a strange way watching Melissa take on the panel’s feedback engages our attention and commands our respect and support. (Or at least it did with me…your results may differ).

Communicate to connect. There are many aspects of communicating with presence. In this episode Melissa loses her audience when she is seen to mildly panic in front of them. The judges advise her to be more commanding with her communication. Melissa focuses on what she feels she can control, and we hear her tell herself that she is going to slow down her delivery to be more impactful. “When I slow down my speech my mind and body follow” she says. This is actually great advice for anyone. Call it gravitas, purpose or presence; we know that people with slower and more deliberate communication generally command more audience attention and respect. Speed of delivery is something concrete and actionable that most people can control.

Get in the flow and enjoy the work. You have to “read between the lines” to see this one in the episode. When people are given pep talks before going out to perform they are often told to “just go out there and enjoy yourself”. It’s easier said than done. However, I believe that’s because the advice often misses one vital aspect. You have to “get in the flow” and go enjoy yourself. Think of getting in the flow as being totally immersed and carried along by the work.

Flow is a concept popularized by one of my favorite psychologists, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. The big implication for presence is that audiences tend to mirror the emotions and behaviors of their presenters. Humans are wired for empathy and imitation. If we see someone enjoying themselves and fully engaged in their work we tend to be more interested and enjoy ourselves more as well. In her final challenge of the episode Melissa lets go of her anxieties, slows down her communication and visibly enjoys being fully engaged in her cooking. (And as an added bonus her better performance comes out in her meal!)

Presence is an elusive concept. Having an impressive appearance or bearing, commanding respect and attention, enlisting others sympathies and support….who wouldn’t want these things?

In this episode we see someone take on three highly actionable behaviors and improve their presence. Whenever I have clients who want to improve their presence here’s my three part program:

• Actively solicit stakeholder feedback and visibly incorporate it into your behavior
• Communicate to connect, (we often need to look at just what is being done to lose the audience)
• Get in the flow and enjoy your work

Top Chef Masters: The Good, The Bad and The Guilty

I noticed on a recent episode of “Top Chef: Masters” that there is a significant difference between the way these seasoned, successful chefs treat failure and the way the normal reality show contestant acts when faced with the judges’ panel. It’s a good lesson for most executives, (whether they watch reality TV or not).

In most cases when someone goes before the judges on a reality show they do one of four things. They claim it wasn’t really a problem, they provide reasons why they really aren't unhappy with the outcome, they blame something or someone else, or they act like what we know happened didn’t really happen. We can call these the Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny strategies. The trouble is, trying to Justify, Rationalize, Excuse or Deny when we know something went wrong just makes things worse. It makes people want to argue with you so that you “get it”, or it makes them want to punish you so that you “get what’s coming to you”.

A key issue that many executives don’t know how to deal with well is the presence of regret. Regret is when you think something like “how much better this would have been if it had turned out another way.” It's OK to feel and express regret. Regret isn’t the same as guilt. Guilt is when you not only regret something, but feel morally responsible or worthy of punishment. For example, if you hit a child who runs out from between parked cars you would naturally feel regret…but if you were speeding or driving under the influence you should probably feel guilty as well.

When people feel guilty they should ‘fess up and face the consequences. When people feel guilty and don’t want to take responsibility, or feel the consequences exceed what they are prepared to face, they Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny.

The Top Chef Masters certainly made mistakes and did things the judges might have found questionable. One very well known chef cooked his pasta in the bathroom, (you have to see the episode). Another froze all his fresh produce before the contest started. However, although both chefs expressed regret, in the sense that they would have preferred things to have happened differently, neither acted guilty. Consequently, the judges didn’t feel the need to argue with them, or punish them.

Most of us make mistakes, and when we do we should be prepared to face consequences without attracting undue argument or punishment. We should regret what happened, and accept the consequences without acting guilty. The way the master chefs acted was exactly the way to do this.

First, they acknowledged what happened without shrugging it off. Again, think of our driver who has hit a child in the road. We would be shocked and angry if the driver’s response was too glib, or didn’t appropriately acknowledge that we all would rather the child weren’t hit. Imagine if the driver said something like “well it’s really too bad but it’s not my fault…it’s not like it was my responsibility not to drive in the road rather than that negligent child or parents’ fault.” Ouch! Instead, our top chefs admitted what they had done and definitely didn’t downplay what happened or shrug it off.

Secondly, they agreed it would have been better otherwise, and expressed appropriate regret. In Top Chef Masters the chefs come before a panel of judges who have eaten their food and sat among their customers. If something the chefs have done affected the judges personally, they apologize, and express regret. A simple “I’m sorry about that” goes a long way to disarm the Argue/Punish response.

Finally, if you watch the episode carefully you see the third element of the chefs’ way of handling their mistakes. They remain quietly optimistic about the future. Either they say they learned from their mistake, (that chef will check the fridge again before he risks freezing his produce), or they put the mistake in context, (obviously the chef who cooked in the bathroom did so because of the extreme circumstances of the setting, not because he thought it was a good place to cook).

I have often seen successful executives take this one step further if they are going to have an ongoing relationship with the “judge”. Sometimes we make a mistake and the person we end up discussing it with is our boss, our colleague or our customer. When that happens it’s good to take the approach of “how can we make this better”. This ONLY works once you’ve gone through the first three steps, (Acknowledge, Express Regret and Behave Optimistically), otherwise you just set off the Argue/Punish response. Note also the “we”. I describe it as mentally getting you both on the same side of the table. Adopt the attitude that you’re going to sit side-by-side with this person and figure out what will improve the situation.

Good executives make mistakes. If they don’t they’re probably not trying hard enough. When they do it’s important they NEVER resort to one of the guilty behaviors, (Justify, Rationalize, Excuse and Deny). Instead, it’s OK to express what's appropriate in the circumstances, (Acknowledge the situation without shrugging it off; Express regret with an apology where appropriate; Be quietly optimistic about the future). Where an ongoing relationship is involved, the good executive knows the importance of engaging the other in making the situation better.

What is the best book about doing business in China?

“Managing the Dragon” by Jack Perkowski! There are three things that make a business book stand out for me among all the many very ordinary books that are published each month. The author needs to know what they are talking about, They need to have something new to say, and they need to be able to write it in an interesting way that I can relate to.

Perkowski manages to do all three in a book about business that reads like a combination between a personal biography and a travel guide. Throughout the book three themes are continuously repeated, if not always explicitly: Connectedness in relationships, Trust, and Perseverance. I imagine that these three values would also be strong contributors to Perkowski's self-identity.

Perkowski knows what he’s writing about. He went to China in 1991 after a successful career on Wall Street, and founded a automotive parts company currently selling over US$500m and 30% of that outside China. His book outlines how he came to make the connections in China that enabled him to start and build his business, and the various challenges he has faced since.

He has a number of new things to say. For example, many people talk about the challenge of enforcing Intellectual Property Rights, (IPR), in China. Local laws do little to protect IPR, and writers often draw negative conclusions about the Chinese character and society as a result. Perkowski, on the other hand, has a purely economic take on the situation. He talks about the sort of products that are regularly knocked off, the kinds of buyers they have, and the distribution systems. His take is that all of these do much more to explain what happens in China than any judgemental comments about Chinese morality. His own business success shows how he has accommodated and succeeded in the Chinese market without compromising his principles. And the something new? Products with the most proprietary content and highest-technology value are probably the best products to take to China and the easiest to protect. (You’ll have to read the book).

Other counter-intuitive concepts in the book?

• You don’t need a local partner in China, and you might even be better off without one.
• You don’t need to learn Mandarin
• The real reason for the Chinese cost of manufacturing, (it’s not lower labor costs)

Not every one of Perkowski’s plans came out well. He discusses how he went through Plan A to begin his company, (it failed), Plan B, (which also failed), and he eventually settled on Plan C, (the success). The story of his three different strategies and how he learned from his mistakes is a lesson in persistence and humility many leaders can learn from. He describes his journey in China as a marathon.

There is a lot of discussion in the book about baijiu, the local alcoholic drink without which no business dinner seems complete. Many of the stories are funny and entertaining in their own right, and would stand up to inclusion in any collection of witty travel writing. Perkowski also uses them as a platform to talk about the importance of mutual respect, being willing to share, acting kindly toward others and having a sense of humility. All of the various dinners and social drinking sessions seemed to build supportive relationships that furthered the business without being focused on the business.

Finally Perkowski makes two points in his book that are interesting and easy for me to relate to. Firstly, he debunks the popular notion that China is different because it relies on Guanxi, which can best be described as “a network of influence and supportive social relationships”. A lot of foreigners emphasize the extent to which this is important in China, likening it to nepotism or cronyism. In fact, most successful people in any culture rely on networks of influence and social support. Managing The Dragon describes how China is the same, rather than focusing on how it is different. Perkowski uses his own career story to illustrate how important it is to be socially intelligent, and how he has benefited from the support of others.

The other concept emphasized in the book to which I readily relate is the importance of trust. If employee and customer engagement means contributing time, talent and resources to the organization it is impossible to imagine engaging people without trust. The importance of trust is a central theme throughout Managing The Dragon. The book looks at both the benefits of positive trust, and how difficult business is in the absence of trust.

Of all the business books on China I have read, this is one of the few that looks at how doing business in China is much the same as doing principled business anywhere else. No fancy tricks or “gee whiz” formulas. And at the end of the day, Perkowski sounds like a good guy to share baijiu with.

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Postscript: After this review was written Jack Perkowski left Asimco. I'm not sure of the circumstances, and I'm not sure they are relevant. However, here's another review of Perkowski's views of doing business in China, this time from the China Law Blog at http://www.chinabusinesslawblog.com/2009/02/want-lasting-relationships-in-china.html Interestingly, the emphasis in the article is on one of the key themes in the book that I picked up on: the importance of trust.

The Three Principles Exercise

Three principles govern your success as an ethical leader who gets things done:

• Treat everyone with integrity
• Align activities to deliver what matters most
• Engage stakeholders to commit their time, talent and trust






Exercise:

Divide your activities each month or week into three groups:

1. Treating people with integrity: All the things you do specifically to communicate the core purpose of yourself and your organization, set your values and demonstrate your principles in action. This is how you shape Why things are done by you and your organization.

2. Alignment: All the things you do to set and support business goals that focus on what matters most; your activities to drive results, and actions you take to cascade accountabilities to all levels. This is how you shape What is to be done in your organization.

3. Engagement: All the things you do to encourage people to commit their time, talent and trust; the things you do to provide recognition, build morale and encourage effort. This is how you shape How things are done in your organization.

Review:

Do the review at a high enough level that you start to see themes in your activities. Don't be too concerned if you assign some of the activities to more than one of the principles.

What can you learn from how you spend your time? Given your Strategic level, what things are you doing that don’t contribute to the three principles? What things do you need to do more of and less of?

For Advanced Discussion:

Compare how you spent last week/month/year with how you plan to spend next week/month/year. What are the differences? When are you most successful? What are the barriers that prevent your time being spent the way you plan?

Download a version to print or share here.

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Self identity and effectiveness

This is me two weeks exactly after my surgery. You can tell from the beard...I'm not planning to keep it but it's been growing since the operation. It gives me a Ernest Hemingway look that goes with the fact I have been doing a lot of writing and reflecting lately.

Two things happened today that made me think again about how my recovery process has progressed. Firstly, I received my monthly copy of the Journal of Applied Psychology today. This month's special edition is on social identity and well-being. (I'm an applied psychologist...that means I did six years full time university study after my undergraduate business degree, and my focus is psychology applied to real world issues. In my case my expertise is psychology applied to business, ethics and organizations. The International Association of Applied Psychologists is the world's oldest professional psychology association.)

Secondly, someone I don't know was reading this blog and commented "...I did find it interesting. He sure is a type A. I could not agree with him more on how his outlook affects how he recovered!!!"

I don't think of myself as a type A, or super competitive, or very driven. I've had feedback before that I come across this way, but, like most people I just think I'm "normal". However, I know that how you identify yourself makes a huge difference to your effectiveness when faced with stresses and challenges.

You've possibly heard the saying "whether you think you can or think you can't, you're always right". A lot of people mistake "positive outlook" for some kind of new-age ability to affect the world around you because of how you think. It's much more complicated than that. My IAAP journal featured articles that show that if you identify with a group that gives you a sense of meaning, purpose and belonging, it's likely that your positive self-image will spill over into your ability to handle challenges, particularly health related challenges.

Type A outlook? Sort of, but not quite.

You can see in the picture that I'm wearing my last marathon finisher's t-shirt. Today was my first day of physiotherapy, and I wore it to the physio session. I wasn't trying to be smart, but I think of myself as a marathoner. I identify with that determination to finish, stamina, and positive mental attitude. I didn't think about why I wore it today until I came home, read my email comments and opened my journal. Yep...that's one of the ways that I identify myself, and that attitude carries over into my ability to deal with this surgery and everything else in my life.

Social and self identity are extremely important. How you see yourself is reflected in how others treat you, and plays a key role in determining the mental resources you can muster. I once coached a Finance Director who felt that every day on the job was a fraud...another day he got by until people found out he wasn't very good. The thing is he really was good, running financial operations for a multi-billion dollar operation spread across dozens of countries, but with that attitude he could never muster the self-confidence to be a really effective leader in his organization.

It's better to find a more effective self-identity...like great parent, generous parishioner, faithful friend or whatever. All of us have complex self identities, part of mine is being a marathoner.

How do you identify your self?

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