Players and Doers

Players learn the commands for the video game and run up the score.

Doers learn how to do something to get results.

Players value image – being in the right place, knowing the right people, being included in the right projects.

Doers value completion – collaboration moving the project forward, process improvement to gain efficiency, acquiring new project-applicable skills, completing the task or project.

Players are viewed by coworkers as poseurs – accomplished at the unimportant, yet highly visible.

Doers are viewed by coworkers and management as 'THE go to' person – makes it happen, gets it done, achieve results AND looks for the next project.

I'd take a team of Doers over a company of Players every time. Why? When the philosopher, Larry the Cable Guy, said it best: Git R done – he was talking about the Doer!

Word Inflation

A while back, I collaborated on a project to produce a document suitable for public dissemination.

I noticed that when collaborators sent back edits and improvements to the draft's author, each received a comment like: 'Awesome Changes!', or 'This will really make our document Awesome!', or 'The new formatting is Totally Awesome!'.

In reality, the changes did make the document incrementally better, but this exchange made me think about the non-communication that has developed from the over use of laudatory remarks for non-laudatory work.

This feedback to the originator is analogous to giving a trophy to everyone on the team, regardless of their contribution or skill level – it's a cheap 'feelgood' for showing up but does nothing to help the player (collaborator) improve their output. If a slap-dash revision is greeted with the same accolade as a masterwork improvement, what does the collaborator learn about their contribution?

Valid feedback is a precious gift from the giver because it shares an engaged point of view. The remark 'thanks, that clarified the point' provides value, as does 'thanks for the edit, but I did not see much improvement over the original wording'. How does Awesome convey either message? Any message?

I certainly hope you feel this post was Awesome, and will comment appropriately.

All Around the Town - Sales Lab Presentations

The Company Picnic

Ah...the company picnic. Fond memories of fried chicken, hard dry burgers, 15 varieties of potato salad, a dish with melted marshmallows on top, a mystery casserole, and some wrinkled burned hotdogs.

And lots of employees with their families.

Sometimes leaders are reluctant to attend this traditional summer event (also the holiday party close to the end of the year). Other leaders look forward to these events to move the organization forward.

Why the different perspective? The benefit of attending these events may not be immediately obvious – it wasn't to me.

First thing on Monday morning after the company picnic, my boss found me and asked why I wasn't at the picnic. Had other plans, I answered. The boss said – do you realize the employees want to see you in this informal setting, and they missed the chance since you did not attend. WHAM – had never thought about the picnic from that perspective, and it completely changed my outlook on the importance of company events.

Employees come to a company picnic or holiday party because: it's a chance to socialize with coworkers and the bosses; it's an opportunity to 'see and be seen'; it's a free (or admission is bringing dish to contribute) event, and it's fun.

Leaders who look forward to the picnic are eager to mingle informally with the folks, to meet employees' families, and to see the workers in a non-work environment to gain a more complete impression of who they are. And it can be fun.

Keep in mind, while the leader may be coming to the event to see the employees in a different setting, the employees are coming to observe the boss in a non-work setting as well. They are seeing a different side of the leader – adding greater depth and richness to their view of this person who is leading 'their' organization.

Sometimes a leader should eat a hotdog with the troops to develop a stronger bond between her and the staff – and between the staff and her. A few hours of mingling in this informal setting can make a significant difference in building a stronger organziation.

Which is more compelling:

• the memory of a leader with a half-eaten chicken leg talking about when he played pick-up basketball as a kid and worked tables to get through college – or –
• some guy standing up in front of the company meeting talking about hard times, saying 'Trust me'.
  Who would you rather follow?

...And avoid that mystery casserole!

Entertaining experience - Sales Lab Video Channel

Your Leadership Tribe

Everyone has a tribe – family and friends, other people with whom you have a relationship. This tribe is primarily involved with you in social, support, and general activities. People you've invited (or inherited) to participate in your life.

Taking it to a higher level, Seth Godin wrote about tribes, seeing them as the confluence of the leader (you), an idea (your vision), and a mission of creating change and achieving results (you and your followers). Whether it is:

• marketing a new product or service – or changing how existing products and services are sold, like the progressive sale of eBooks;
• spearheading a health mission like identifying trans fats, labeling their presence in foods, educating consumers, and virtually eliminating the presence in consumer foods; or
• eliminating steps in a process because they no longer serve a purpose – akin to cutting 3-inches off the ham before baking it – because your old oven was too small.

What about your leadership tribe?

It has some traits of your personal tribe – it provides support and offers the insight of experience. It is forward-focused like Seth's tribe but differs – you are not exclusively the lead dog in your leadership tribe.

Your leadership tribe consists of people you know, others you respect, and still others who are a significant influence on your outlook and thoughts – a super peer group in a sense.

More about the three components of your tribe:

• people you know; you have a relationship; you value their insight and input; they participate in your projects and you participate in theirs,
• people you respect, but may not know personally; you read their writings and listen to their talks; you follow them over time; they provide ideas, points of view, thought stimulation – for me this includes folks like: Seth Godin, Fred Wilson, Chris Anderson, Harvey Mackay,
• people who are an influence on you; by what they did; from their ideas and shared wisdom; because they changed the world; they achieved results; they tell the truth, have high standards, and stand by their principles – for me this includes: Peter Drucker, Jacques Cousteau, Ronald Reagan.

With your leadership tribe sometimes you are the leader of others and other times you are a follower of another's leadership. Your tribe is a foundation – tapping their experience and listening to their perspective to broaden what you bring to the project. Your tribe is resource – physical, mental, and emotional participation in your project. Your tribe is a training ground – you learn by doing under the leadership of people you value and respect, and by reading their account of other situations.

As with other peer relationships, you will have the role of a leader, a follower, a driver, a participant, and an advisor at any point in time – even simultaneously for different projects. You may appear alone to observers at times...doing all the work by yourself – in reality, your leadership tribe cloaks you with significant depth and strength to deliver on commitments and goals.

A team focuses on a goal – win the game, complete a project – while a tribe is a more organic structure – on an operational level when working on a project, certainly it is focused on the goal, but when that has been attained the tribe continues to serve its members with new insights, thoughts, sharing, mentoring, validation, and other continuing benefits. Members of the tribe with direct relationships receive inputs and provide outputs from the others.

Who do you have in your leadership tribe?

Sales Lab Posts – 400+ chapters of insight

Write It Down! – Multiply the Value

The planning session was a success – plenty of energy, ideas flowed freely, all captured on the flip chart, everyone added to the conversation. At the end, the notes were reviewed, consolidated, prioritized, summarized as bullets on a new flip chart – which were typed up and distributed – a record of the session.

During implementation, the bullets are interpreted differently among the doers – people not at the planning session don't know the context and the session participants have different views of what the distilled items mean.

Like reading an email quickly written and sent – gremlins must have changed it – this isn't what I thought I said.

Business leaders need to get it out of their head and on to paper – was a point Randy Taussig, Core Leadership, made during his presentation of “Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit” at the July meeting of the YPLG. Writing it down is a beginning.

I carry a notebook (paper, not computer) and usually write extensive notes during a meeting or event – things of interest and significance at the moment. My notes serve to remind me of the discussion and aid recall of relevant information.

Often I'll write up my notes as a 'one-pager' to share with Dick and others, or to document a new concept or technology application. Writing up the notes is a learning experience in itself.

Reading and distilling the notes, I recall more detail about what was said and have a chance to think more deeply about it.

Focusing on content, instead of capturing what's said, offers an opportunity to validate and assess the information. – does it fit with current knowledge, does further research reflect, contradict, or not address the new information.

Distilling the notes eliminates distractions and improves clarity and depth by concentrating on significant elements of the presentation or event. I also find this 'head work' leads to greater scrutiny of the critical thinking behind these elements – often leading to an additional level of understanding.

My notes are not unlike the typed bullets from the meeting or the unfocused email – perhaps adequate but not illuminating. However, the process of writing up the notes helps to dig deeper and know the topic better, as well as creating a useful document to share with others. The writer learns more and a good document helps others to understand the significant elements from the meeting or event – well worth the effort.

The Sales Model – So that's how to do it!!

The Final Frontier

We are embarking on the greatest business revolution in 4 generations. It affects our whole economy.

The biggest change in ownership since WWII is starting now and will continue through the next 15 years. More than one half of small and medium business in the American economy are owned and managed by Boomers, and will have a forced change of ownership.

Who are they? Many current business owners have their personal fortunes, the scorecard of their careers, tied up in their businesses. They must find a way to get the money out of the business or assure its continuing viability, or have an unsuccessful retirement.

Do you know business owners in this situation – can’t figure how to get their money out? What do they need? Owners are looking for credible solutions.

We find that the keys to past success are usually the owner’s point-of-view and the culture of the company. We have found that outside solutions seldom work, they aren’t credible to the people doing the work, and they often have never worked elsewhere.

How do you begin creating a solution to a new problem? You should probably start with a common definition of what you have and what you want. Just defining those two often shows available solutions that were previously ignored.

We worked with owners of a technology distributor who wanted to sell the assets of the organization, had a figure from a recent audit, and hoped for a quick sale around that figure. We talked with them about what are the assets? In addition to office equipment and inventory – what else -  entity and name, customer records, sales process, industry knowledge? 

Asked what they wanted, the owners said quick sale at top dollar. Which is primary – speed or price?

As our conversation expanded, the owners defined what they were selling (the complete entity, but retaining another separate corporation), had identified potential buyers (their knowledge of the industry could be useful to the buyer for transition), and that a couple of years was OK to get a better price.

Just getting the conversations and revelations took 90 days.

For a nonprofit teetering on the knife-edge of solvency, the conversation lead to determining a merger was a desirable choice strengthen the organization and keep the mission programs operating, then find partners, complete the combination of the two entities. The entire process took almost 3-years.

A contractor got 100% of their revenue from government contracts when we began the conversation about getting money out for the owners. What do you have, what do you want? The results over an 8-year period was to increase government revenue threefold, reduce government contracts to less than 30% of total billing, and to sell the organization for several multiples of its initial value.

A successful future begins with a conversation.

Rules of the road? Click: Selling Out 

Words And Actions Make Leaders Great

Greatness is a perception by others. What makes a leader great is more than achieving the mission, goal, or results – greatness is also about how he or she got us there. It's a complex set of factors not adequately described by a couple of words – but we can get in the general vicinity with these three traits:

• saying what you will do
• doing what you say
• inspiring others to do their very best to achieve goals/results.

George Washington is admired as a great, if somewhat reluctant, leader. These two stories from the closing days of the Revolutionary War highlight his ability to inspire followers and achieve seemingly impossible results.

The momentum of the war was shifting in favor of the Colonial Army under General Washington's command and he wanted to press this growing advantage by crossing the Delaware River again to mount an unexpected attack on the British and the Hessians. Unfortunately, there was a huge problem – most of the troops had fulfilled their commitment to serve and were preparing to return home.

The troops had turned down an offer to pay them for continuing another 6-weeks, then the General visited the bivouac areas of the various units to speak with the men. His message was that there would never be another point in their lifetime that they could make such an important contribution to the freedom of their country as they could in the upcoming battle, AND that he would be honored to fight beside them to win the victory. The troops committed to joining him.

What money could not accomplish, a humble personal appeal to do for the greater good won their hearts and shortly, won the war.

After winning the Battle of Yorktown, General Washington and his senior commanders received a message that British General Cornwallis wanted to surrender. When the Cornwallis party arrived to present his sword in surrender, they attempted to present it to Washington – he refused to accept the sword and pointed to his second in command, General Benjamin Lincoln to receive the sword. By this simple action, Washington made clear that he did not see Cornwallis as an equal, and, more importantly, General Lincoln receiving the sword of surrender removed any doubts that Lincoln had Washington's support and confidence (Lincoln had lost a major battle to Cornwallis earlier in the war).

Great leaders are aware of the effect of their words, actions, and messages – direct and indirect – on their followers and others, and make good use of opportunities as they present themselves to reinforce the importance of the mission and goals as well as value subordinates bring to achieving the results.

See the New World – A View from the Big Chair

The Changing Social Paradigm

The Web provided the pathways. The software provided the user with sophisticated tools and utilities. Social media – like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Twitter – provided the community and forum. All of which has contributed to far reaching change in the way we interact, conduct business, pursue careers, and entertain ourselves.

bitod (back in the old days) we were mostly a private people – we were limited by desire and opportunity in what information we shared with others – even the braggards and attention seekers had limited range on spreading their exploits. The notables and infamous receive greater exposure when the news media ignite their 15-minutes of fame.

bitod social interaction was predominately face-to-face, by telephone conversation, and through written letters.

bitod information about individuals was costly to collect and therefore was not freely shared – although bulk information about people was a salable commodity.

Along comes the ability to easily share information – among friends and family or in the business community – and the information about individuals exploded, becoming widely available, intentionally and inadvertantly.

Many found an advantage in creating a personal legend using LinkedIn to chronicle professional activities and accomplishments; or Facebook to develop an on-line personality mixing social and professional interest and exploits. This information is available for others to discover or the individual can point interested parties to it.

An alternative to traditional interaction is asynchronous written communication: instant message (IM) or text messaging. Using the phone keyboard one person can send a text message to another phone and the recipient can receive it immediately. Even though the message is a one-way send-receive process, the parties often carry on a 'conversation' of text messages going back and forth.

With the variety of communication alternatives now available, ranging from personal to impersonal, active to passive, engaging to transactional, the social paradigm – how we interact has been shaken up while being broadened dramatically.

People can share their most intimate thoughts and actions delivered in an impersonal way – by posting on-line.

Messaging is so handy and people are quite skilled in its special language as well as the speed of writing and sending, that they may be texting the person sitting next to them. Text rather than talk – indirect rather than direct is part of the shifting paradigm.

Others try with limited success to restrict personal information on-line and in social media sites, only to find it is elsewhere on the Net. A friend was shocked to learn that her name, age, address, and others in the household were readily available on-line from several sources, although she has been judicious about protecting such information.

During a presentation at Verisign earlier this year, Vint Cerf made the point that there is no privacy on the internet - it is a vast copy machine with no delete key. Any information about you can be found eventually.

How does this affect the new social paradigm? The common assumption is detailed information about the individual is available through social media and on the Web. The unspoken assumption is what is not readily available did not happen.

How does all this come together and how does it affect you?

You are profiled on the internet – your legend is a combination of what you have contributed directly – like your content on Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Facebook – and passive content that search engines and information aggregators discover.

Today a person interested in your background, accomplishments, and activities will research it on-line and use their own legend on the internet as a metric of the accuracy and completeness of your information.

For those of us in business – whether selling products/services, working in a role within an organization, or in a transition between roles – our collective profile is an important tool to increase our visibility and aid in our success. A strong showing aids in a winning contract, a promotion, or landing a new job; a weak showing can make it harder to reach your objective.

Personally I use LinkedIn as my address book and research tool for a person's career and accomplishments. I glance at Facebook content to get a broader sense of the individual. Google Plus is a running faucet of activities, thoughts, and alerts from people I find worth listening to about near and future innovation and change.

We each have a collective profile on the internet; it is important that you contribute and shape your content where able. That means working on your presence in the social media sites and publicizing your activities to be visible for search and information aggregators.

Writing a good profile (and updating it every 3-6 months) is an investment of your time and energy – but worth the results. Adding other content routinely to the site shows you are engaged and paints a vivid picture of your capabilities and interests. If not posting your own blog, commenting on others' posts increases your visibility, especially among your tribes – the people you know and others who may be interested in you.

Today's social paradigm is built on ready access to information about people and their activities and an array of methods to make contact, carry on conversations, and develop relationships.

Time has past to sit in wonder about how to engage social media for your benefit – your absence or 'in-name only' participation is not an answer.

Sales Lab Video Channel - Entertaining experience

Status Meetings – A Welcome Change

Business has changed – how we do it, where we work, what we are responsible for, and who we are working with has been radically shaken – sometimes I feel like the paint can in that shaking mixer at the paint store.

Working smart and efficiently is needed to cover the additional responsibilities we inherited as others left the organization. Nevertheless, several of the old practices seem untouched by this new reality – like the written weekly report to a manager or the Monday Morning Meeting.

An update report to the manager is a one-on-one, asynchronous communication – from writer to reader. Often in a mark-up format – freshening up the statistics while leaving the prose intact – the report shares metrics without intelligence or current conditions. Many writers see it as a time consuming task of no direct value in reaching goals and delivering results.

The Monday Morning Meetings were not efficient when everyone was in the same location – come in early or break in to the day's schedule to sit for an hour or more to speak for about 5 minutes. When locations and resources increased, these meetings became more unwieldy to schedule and virtually attend. And people resist going to meetings – too many are time wasters without obvious purpose or tangible results.

The status meeting is an effective way to share intelligence about individual and organization progress, market intelligence, and customer feedback.

A status meeting has 5 principal elements for each stakeholder to share crisply:

1. What are your goals for this week?
2. What results did you achieve?
3. What changes did you make to get better results?
4. What was the best things you learned about the marketplace, customers, competitors – what will benefit your co-stakeholders in achieving their goals?
5. What are your goals for next week?

No need to prepare handouts or written documents for a status meeting – participants will take notes on items of interest to them. Sharing goals, results, and what was learned outside the organization, is of value to all participants and can help build teamwork in the process.

Can the status meeting scale and still be effective? General Stanley McChrystal when Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) held a similar meeting: 'As We See It' session with 70 nodes around the region for 90 minutes everyday – he said this was the most effective way to tap local knowledge of enemy activities and keep all units up to date on current information and plans.

I find that it takes about 6 weeks or so of weekly meetings to understand the meeting format and get everyone participating fully, but once there it is a meeting that participants find useful. Just the collective market intelligence alone from the status meetings can magnify the scope of current knowledge far beyond what one individual could typically observe.

Worth trying, if you want to build your organization's effectiveness.

Captain Dangerous

The other day at the next marina, there was a 32-foot cabin cruiser attempting to tie up to the dock. The captain was having a difficult time bringing the boat near the dock – very entertaining for the observers in our marina.

First, the boat was aiming at the dock on an angle instead being parallel to it – and it was coming too fast stop before running into the dock. The captain reversed the props and shoved the throttle to full power, jerking the boat in the opposite direction (toward our marina's dock). The captain then jammed the transmission into forward and again pushed the throttle to the max – the boat came to a sudden stop, then jumped forward quickly gaining speed, so the captain jerked the wheel which took the boat out into the channel.

The two marinas were temporarily safe, but boat traffic in the channel was now in peril. Captain Dangerous spun the wheel, reversed the transmission yet again, and went to full throttle again. Now he was traveling backwards in a U toward boats in the channel that had stopped to give him room to maneuver. He did another spin, shift, full power cycle and was now going 180 degrees from the original direction, heading toward moored boats in the marina.

For the next 20 minutes he continued these maneuvers with no better results, stopped traffic in the channel, and threatened several marinas in the area. Finally got close enough that a dock hand could toss a line to boat and he pulled the boat into the dock (first mate was almost pulled out of the boat before the captain thought to cut the engines).

It takes skill and planning to 'drive' a boat – and plenty of practice to do it well. Moves are deliberate, changing paths are anticipated well in advance and made gradually.

As I was watching Captain D from one of the boats at risk in the channel, I realized how similar captaining a boat is to leading an organization.

A leader should have a vision of the outcome, steadily move toward the goal, make deliberate changes when appropriate, and learn from experience (good or bad) to become a better leader.

Failing to do this may entertain outsiders, while putting the organization and others at risk.

Posthumous Goal

A commercial on TV: the young boy walked up to home plate on an empty ball field with his bat, a ball, and a smile as he was prattling on about the world's best hitter.

He settles in at the plate and, with one more verse of world's best hitter, tosses the ball into the air. After the swish of a haymaker swing and no thunk of the bat, he looks down to see the ball lying quietly at his feet.

Undaunted, still smiling, the boy again settles at the plate, recites world's best hitter again, tosses up the ball, takes his swing. When he looked down, there's the ball at his feet once again. His smile fading with each attempt, he tries several more times - unsuccessfully - to hit the ball, his world's best hitter becoming less enthusiastic with each miss.

With a 0 for many tries record, the boy's face is set in a frown, clearly disappointed, and his head is hung – then it snaps up, the smile is back, and he steps back up to the plate to take his stance. With a megawatt smile, he tosses the ball up while saying the world's greatest pitcher.

A posthumous goal offers some feel-good for the boy, but it creates a detrimental result in other situations.

A manager says just do your best for the project output but adds 10% more to 'goal' when critiquing the disappointing project results.

Or, a project is due by the end of the week, but at noon on Thursday, the supervisor says he wants it by the end of the day.

A goal communicates intent. What does a posthumous goal accomplish?

The Doer- A Key To Lasting Achievement

Twenty, Two, and One

We are experiencing a time of change - big change, fast change – in business, employment, markets, government. No new news here.

The nature of a job has changed as well...what do you do each day now?

How about this for a model:

20 sits (meetings) per month – to learn, share, sell, or get;

2 blog posts per week – writing aids learning – publishing increases visibility;

1 anchor event per month – a place to learn, show what you know, get connected, be visible (and available)– and hand out nametags, recruit membership, or present.

By the end of each day, make progress on achieving your goals.

Rainmaker – 300 seconds of new possibilities

Self Reliance

The trend toward self reliance is growing in velocity and scope. This post is highlights of the shift that is becoming increasingly clear.

As I recall, we were taught at a young age to rely on others instead of ourselves – back in the old days:

• parents set our limits and standards
• teachers enforced the rules – insisted that we color within the lines
• professors picked what we read, how we interpret it, and what to apply – to get our grade
• employers specify the 'one right way' – thank you Frederick Taylor
• community and peers guide how we conduct ourselves, even what we do for leisure activities.

We were indoctrinated to seek 'experts' for many things:

• web designers for our public face
• programmers to recreate the paper version in bits and bites
• mechanic to decode and fix the car
• doctors to 'fix' our health and ailments.

The paradox is while relying (depending?) on all these external elements, when doing leisure-time projects we benefited so much from hands-on learning and how to do it better from the mistakes.

Experience with my first soapbox derby racer showed me what to do differently next time (and next year's version was better and faster):

• grease the wheels
• boxy front is slower (air resistance), raked front cuts through the resistance better
• adding weight equals slower speed – a steering wheel is cool, but a couple of ropes does the job at a third of the weight.

The experience taught me a process I've relied on since then:

concept > design > build > test > refine > deliver. I also learned to think beyond the specific goal to see how the external elements affect the project.

Individuals have found that large organizations, private and public, are not the safe fortresses we once thought them to be – missions are outdated, size is costly, jobs are replaced by technology, short-term management vision cause long-term negative effects, and many are dying, a shadow of past greatness, or gone – e.g., General Motors and Hostess Brands (twinkies).

If we cannot rely on the stalwarts of the past, what now? Many people have a fragile hope that they can exist in this situation, or could locate a similar role in a different organization. Following this dream is like the watering hole on the plains of Africa during a drought – each day the opportunity shrinks and there's no rain in sight.

More and more individuals are changing their approach, investing greater reliance on themselves instead of external entities. Indicators of the trend and the growing availability of powerful creative tools for individuals to use include:

• greater involvement in DIY (do it yourself) activities
• an explosion of entrepreneurs and kitchen-table ventures
• more individuals working for themselves or collaborating with others
• greater participation in your healthcare and being responsible for own health
• chips became more powerful, so doing sophisticated things with your computer, tablet, smartphone became easier (not expert needed) – even 3D printing from your home computer
• access to knowledge is virtually unlimited from the internet – now we are mastering filtering of information (rather than where to find it) and reading multiple authors with varying viewpoints for validation
• blogging is personal publishing and has expanded into a living resume for professional individuals
• Google Plus is a powerful acquisition and communications tool to connect to the world

Not everyone will be a Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), or Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), but a significant number of people have taken off on their own. The interesting thing is, these self reliant trailblazers have better odds of success than the buyer of a PowerBall ticket has of winning the jackpot.

Want more about the new trend? Read Wikipedia - To Tell The Truth

The Bartender's Lesson In Finance

One of my favorite projects was 3½ months as the general manager of a country club while a search was under way for a new GM.

My goal was to improve the performance of the dining and grill rooms, increase diner volume, and grow revenue from this area of the club.

To record sales, each area had a terminal for the central a point of sale (POS) system. Each night after the club closed, the POS was closed out and reconciled. My first night, the bartender, who typically did the close out, helped me learn the process and printed the tape with details of the close, including the gross receipts for the day.

When we were done, I took the tape and asked his estimate of the gross receipts amount – he said he had no idea. I asked for his best guess – I showed him the amount...he was way off. The next night he was closer and after about a week he was within a few hundred dollars of the actual amount.

The next night, as I was locking up the club, the bartender did the close out and was waiting for me with a Cheshire cat smile – when I went to start the close, he was standing there holding the tape, with a hand over the gross receipts figure. His smile got bigger when he ASKED ME for an estimate of the receipts for the day! After a quick mental review, I told him the figure – it was within $75 of the actual amount.

I told the bartender that having an accurate feel for the receipts is important – the same is true for general costs as well. I gave him an estimate of the daily combined labor cost for servers, cooks, bartenders, and other dining staff – he immediately said – on Tuesday we don't even take in that much.

My turn to have a huge smile as he says that knowing costs and receipts gives him some tools to manage our operations better. How I ask? The bartender, standing a little taller, says we can have fewer staff on hand for the lighter days, or send them home early based on the diner volume – servers, cooks, and others. Also we could do some specials or deals to promote more activity on the light days.

He got it – make adjustments in the cost and revenue sides of the ledger to better balance operating results. By knowing how the receipts and costs relate, and honing his ability to accurately estimate the key figures, he became more valuable to the club.

With his new outlook, the bartender was making a greater impact on the club's bottom line and in a short time was promoted to a more responsible role (and more $$).

A lesson well learned and applied to get positive results.

The Power of Appreciation

The other day I realized it is unusual for people to be told they are appreciated.

The revelation came about from my offering a compliment to the person responsible for the logistics of my meetings and events.

The comment was: people do not appreciate the effort required to have a perfect meeting – if it is done well no one notices; however if there's a glitch, it is glaringly obvious – and I thank you for creating perfection.

The recipient immediately sent an urgent response asking what had gone wrong and with assurance that any problem would be corrected immediately and it would not happen again.

Recognition for doing a great job of the logistics was so unusual that she heard the comment as a preamble to a complaint. I quickly said there's no complaint – just the opposite - I appreciated the work your team does to make everything ready before we walk through the door.

The response was memorable - oh, yes it does take a lot of work and care to create an experience that people take for granted, and you make such a good point about folks not taking the time to acknowledge when things go well. We appreciate that you are always complementary and appreciative of our efforts to support your events!

Have you noticed the reaction when you thank someone for their help – a smile; they stand a bit taller; they will replicate that action over and over again. The one I like a lot is the look of surprise followed by a big grin and a wave when I thank the crossing guard near the subway – a painless way to make someone's day.

The same principles apply to the people you work with (or for) and volunteer with as well. Ever tell your boss or your partner you appreciate him/her for _________ (fill in the blank as appropriate) – the reaction is priceless.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs (NCIS) is a master at expressing deserved appreciation – he acknowledges a good job to the individual but does so within earshot of their co-workers. The recipient almost floats off the floor with pride and satisfaction, and gets another good jolt when seeing the reaction of the coworkers. Do you think they are motivated to to do more good work – you bet they are!

Share your appreciation – catching someone doing good is effective mentoring when you shine a spotlight on it.

Give it a try – share what you find.

Rainmaker– 300 seconds of new possibilities

Contingent Commitment

During the course of a month I go to several meeting and events which require advance registration (RSVP). I usually work the registration desk and find that between 20% to 40% are no shows – registered to come but do not make it.

Several people have shared their disappointment in the number of people who had indicated they were coming to their wedding, but did not show and did not even send a note of apology/explanation for their absence.

In recent post on a blog I follow, a fellow was gnashing his teeth about having taken a new job - he was starting on Monday - but late Friday he got an invitation for a second interview for his 'dream job' – what should I do, he whined.

When I ran the human resource function in my organizations, there was a small but growing trend of individuals who accepted our job offer and agreed to a start date, but did not show up – no call, no explanation – nothing except they did not make it – ever.

What is common in these four stories is that people committed to an action but a notable portion did not follow through on their commitment.

Why does this happen?

Of course there are unforeseen things that pop up last minute – boss calls an instant meeting, car overheats, kid emergency, spouse late to come home - the list goes on... This can certainly account for some of the no shows, but it does not account for the 'radio silence' in not contacting the host – even a “sorry I could not make it, something came up” shows more character than blowing off the failure to attend.

But what's the explanation for the rest to the group who did not have a personal crisis and still did not make it?

Is the idea that 'a person's word is their bond' not as valid or important today - don't make a promise you can't keep and always deliver on your promises is about personal integrity.

There now seems to be the 'contingent commitment' – it looks like a commitment but acts like a maybe. A pledge with an unstated 'except' – yes, I'll attend the event (except if I don't feel like it or something better comes along).

If someone consistently commits but does not follow through, how does that speak about their character? Would you trust them to be a key player on the team working on a high profile or critical project?

My comment back to the guy with a conflict between starting a new job and going to a second 'dream job' interview – “you committed to your new employer – show up to the job unless the employer has unilaterally changed the offer.”

Am I being too idealistic, expecting individuals to honor their word – or revise their commitment - for something as trivial as just another event? Have we gotten so busy and over-scheduled that it is acceptable to be casual about showing up?

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The Changing Social Paradigm

The Web provided the pathways. The software provided the user with sophisticated tools and utilities. Social media – like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Twitter – provided the community and forum. All of which has contributed to far reaching change in the way we interact, conduct business, pursue careers, and entertain ourselves.

bitod (back in the old days) we were mostly a private people – we were limited by desire and opportunity in what information we shared with others – even the braggards and attention seekers had limited range on spreading their exploits. The notables and infamous receive greater exposure when the news media ignite their 15-minutes of fame.

bitod social interaction was predominately face-to-face, by telephone conversation, and through written letters.

bitod information about individuals was costly to collect and therefore was not freely shared – although bulk information about people was a salable commodity.

Along comes the ability to easily share information – among friends and family or in the business community – and the information about individuals exploded, becoming widely available, intentionally and inadvertantly.

Many found an advantage in creating a personal legend using LinkedIn to chronicle professional activities and accomplishments; or Facebook to develop an on-line personality mixing social and professional interest and exploits. This information is available for others to discover or the individual can point interested parties to it.

An alternative to traditional interaction is asynchronous written communication: instant message (IM) or text messaging. Using the phone keyboard one person can send a text message to another phone and the recipient can receive it immediately. Even though the message is a one-way send-receive process, the parties often carry on a 'conversation' of text messages going back and forth.

With the variety of communication alternatives now available, ranging from personal to impersonal, active to passive, engaging to transactional, the social paradigm – how we interact has been shaken up while being broadened dramatically.

People can share their most intimate thoughts and actions delivered in an impersonal way – by posting on-line.

Messaging is so handy and people are quite skilled in its special language as well as the speed of writing and sending, that they may be texting the person sitting next to them. Text rather than talk – indirect rather than direct is part of the shifting paradigm.

Others try with limited success to restrict personal information on-line and in social media sites, only to find it is elsewhere on the Net. A friend was shocked to learn that her name, age, address, and others in the household were readily available on-line from several sources, although she has been judicious about protecting such information.

During a presentation at Verisign earlier this year, Vint Cerf made the point that there is no privacy on the internet - it is a vast copy machine with no delete key. Any information about you can be found eventually.

How does this affect the new social paradigm? The common assumption is detailed information about the individual is available through social media and on the Web. The unspoken assumption is what is not readily available did not happen.

How does all this come together and how does it affect you?

You are profiled on the internet – your legend is a combination of what you have contributed directly – like your content on Google Plus, LinkedIn, and Facebook – and passive content that search engines and information aggregators discover.

Today a person interested in your background, accomplishments, and activities will research it on-line and use their own legend on the internet as a metric of the accuracy and completeness of your information.

For those of us in business – whether selling products/services, working in a role within an organization, or in a transition between roles – our collective profile is an important tool to increase our visibility and aid in our success. A strong showing aids in a winning contract, a promotion, or landing a new job; a weak showing can make it harder to reach your objective.

Personally I use LinkedIn as my address book and research tool for a person's career and accomplishments. I glance at Facebook content to get a broader sense of the individual. Google Plus is a running faucet of activities, thoughts, and alerts from people I find worth listening to about near and future innovation and change.

We each have a collective profile on the internet; it is important that you contribute and shape your content where able. That means working on your presence in the social media sites and publicizing your activities to be visible for search and information aggregators.

Writing a good profile (and updating it every 3-6 months) is an investment of your time and energy – but worth the results. Adding other content routinely to the site shows you are engaged and paints a vivid picture of your capabilities and interests. If not posting your own blog, commenting on others' posts increases your visibility, especially among your tribes – the people you know and others who may be interested in you.

Today's social paradigm is built on ready access to information about people and their activities and an array of methods to make contact, carry on conversations, and develop relationships.

Time has past to sit in wonder about how to engage social media for your benefit – your absence or 'in-name only' participation is not an answer.

Sales Lab Video Channel - Entertaining experience

Ideas in Action

When I was a lad, sodas were 10 cents from a vending machine. Not being fond of sweet carbonated drinks, I told friends that it would be great to have these machines dispense ice cold spring water in bottles. Of course they laughed at such a goofy idea.

My bottled water idea was a lark – just a dream – because there was no action or plan to develop it further.

Ideas without action are not a unique occurrence – this is the fate of most creative thought. Even if an idea is written down but introduced by “they should...” - it merely entertains your mind and does not create value unless you take action.

Think about it – how does innovation and knowledge create value? It comes from taking action on an idea, not just the idea alone, and applying it to get results.

Health care is changing radically due to the new law and supporting technology is evolving rapidly in response to its needs. The Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health and Google Glass Meetup got together this week to start a conversation about how to use the emerging technology of wearable information devices as a tool for providing better health care delivery.

Keith Montgomery, Executive Director of Center for Total Health, describes his organization's role as a place for conversations which lead to new ideas for improving health care. What I noticed is they are not looking for new science, they are looking to get patients to be healthier by doing what we know works.

Antonio Lugaldia, an organizer of the Google Glass Meetup group, demonstrated the glasses (which are equipped with a computer, camera, heads-up display, and internet access), and was just released to the developer community. The user can transmit what she sees and receive data and graphics on Google Glass heads-up display.

Center for Total Health and Google Glass Meetup brought together health care practitioners, consumers, and app developers to talk about needs and potential solutions using this technology. By the end of the evening, several possibilities had been identified – like the emergency room doctor who thought having the patient's information and vital signs available through while he was working could improve triage diagnosis and care delivery.

While this conversation might currently be similar to a boy telling his friends about vending bottled water, Center for Total Health, Google Glass Meetup and Google are committed to caring it forward to action – results – value.

The incentive for continuing to talk is the consumers and developers are sharing their needs and solutions – asking stakeholders what they need speeds up the development of useful solutions.

The larger conversation is how to change behavior of health care consumers and providers to improve patient outcomes. For example, technology can permit a patient to monitor their health and improvements from modifying their behavior.

Ideas are plentiful and worthless – action creates payoff.

Open Source Leadership – the new paradigm

Rainmaker 20 – The New Business Models

Traditional business models emphasized massive size or focused specialization.

The new business models use technology and global reach to create a smaller, efficient footprint.

Users now have access to events like Google I/O and to utilities that easily complete complex tasks.

Elements of the new business models:

• Businesses are smaller – we don't need the throw weight of the past
• Resources are not limited to local or regional access
• Business structure changing from hierarchy to network
• New projects now spend less time counting and more time building – collaborative resources reduce or eliminate the hire/train cycle
• Architecture and security instead of command and control process.
• Outsourced functions – e.g., delivery and warehousing – eliminate using internal resources for these functions
• Not classroom training – open access groups share knowledge via forums, events, and blogs
• Changes are more agile – in process and software – updates are launched as needed, instead of the next revision
• Nanoscale changed the proof of concept phase of development – faster, cheaper

Keep the scope of projects to what can be done now and what is affordable now – add additional features and enhancements when you have customers and cash flow.

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