Generate Great Management Performances by Dan Coughlin

Multi-Tasking is Overrated

2010-04-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Multi-tasking has been all the rage for the past ten years.

Apparently a person should talk on the telephone, respond to e-mail, text to a friend, and hold a face-to-face conversation with an employee all at the same time.

Not only that the person should never say no to any project or request of his or her time.

If you want the fast path to being mediocre, keep doing ten things at once.

Superior performance comes from superior focus. If you're helping your child with homework, then focus on your child and the homework. If you're preparing a big speech for work, focus on the speech. If you're responding to e-mail, then just focus on e-mail.

Do one thing at a time extraordinarily well regardless of what that one thing is.

Do You Need an Innie or an Outie?

2010-03-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Everybody has one.

No, I'm not talking about a belly button. I'm talking about the need to change something in order to improve. We all need to continually review our performance and results and ask ourselves two very important questions that require absolute honesty on our part:

Do I need to change something about myself or how I go about doing things (Inner Change)?
Do I need to change something about my situation or who I interact with (Outer Change)?

Since we can never change another person we have to decide whether we have to change something about ourselves or something about the situation we find ourselves in. If you've had a long-term relationship with an employee or a supplier or a customer, it may be very difficult for you to let go of that relationship, but that may be what is necessary for you to move forward. You may have to leave your current job situation and do something altogether different in order to fulfill your potential. If you have to change some habit that you've had all your life, it may be difficult but it may also be necessary if you want to become more effective.

Choose your change carefully. Is it going to be an innie or an outie?

Build a Foundation of Excellence

2010-02-26T06:39:00.000-08:00

Excellence means consistently delivering a superior performance. To be a truly great manager you need to consistently deliver a superior performance in all aspects of your work. In other words, you need to build a foundation of excellence that you know you can always rely on.

Divide Your Job Into Ten Parts

Think about your role and all the things you do and write down each one of them. Here is a list of tasks for you to consider:

Manage a P&L Statement.
Give public presentations.
Hire new employees.
Let go of existing employees.
Develop employees.
Promote employees.
Build relationships with key suppliers.
Build relationships with key customers.
Oversee multiple functions in your organization.
Create a customer-focused culture.

You can come up with a different ten items, but you get the idea.

Identify What You Do With Excellence Right Now

Look at your list and on another sheet of paper write down what you do at an excellent level right now. Those items are the beginning of your foundation of excellence.

Select What Task You Will Focus on Next

Now you are ready to add to your foundation of excellence. Of the remaining items on your list, which ONE item will you focus on improving until you can consistently deliver a superior performance? You still have to do the other parts of your job, but you're going to pour in extra energy and attention on one area until it becomes excellent. It may take a few years in order to become excellent at that task. Be patient and stay focused. Once you can do that with excellence, then you know you can count on it. Then you can move on to another task to focus on.

You will probably be amazed at how little progress you make in a year and how much progress you make in a decade.

Expand Your Perspective

2010-02-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

In the midst of tough economic times, it is relatively easy for a manager to lose sight of what is possible. Before we look ahead let's look into the recent past.

Look at what has happened in the past 3 years:

iPhone spread like wildfire. It did not exist three years ago today. Can we exist without it now?

Three years ago today almost no one outside of Alaska knew the name Sarah Palin. Now she has a best-selling book.

Look at what has happened in the past six months:

Tiger Woods, once the absolute platinum level of corporate sponsorships, has dropped dramatically in the public's view. In the meantime Kobe Bryant has risen dramatically as the epitome of a team player. How quickly things change.

As a manager, you don't know what is possible over the next three years, but do know that extraordinarily good or bad results can occur. Prepare yourself everyday to deliver a great performance. You just never know which performance will break through into the spotlight. Don't ever take success for granted, but also don't ever assume that frustrating results will be around forever. Be on top of your game every day! And one day you will generate amazing results.

Turn Hump Day into Leap Day

2010-02-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

The concept of “hump day” has had a long history, too long in fact.

For many years employees and managers alike have talked about the importance of getting through hump day, which is Wednesday, and then getting to the weekend. Unfortunately, hump day is a career killer.

Hump Day Employees look at every week as the process of starting at the bottom of the hill on Monday morning at 8 AM, climbing to the top by Wednesday at noon, and then coasting down to the bottom of the hill by 5 o’clock on Friday. These people haven’t gotten anywhere during the course of the week. They are back where she started on Monday morning week after week after week.

Imagine a college athlete who performs exactly the same way at the beginning of every season. Those kinds of players never get off the bench, assuming they can even keep their spot on the bench. Intuitively, we know that we have to always improve if we want to take our careers to the next level, but then the reality of the workweek sets in and we sabotage ourselves with this nonsense about getting through hump day. We psychologically set ourselves up for a mediocre week and a mediocre career.

From now on make Wednesday at noon your weekly inflection point to capture key lessons and catapult to a higher level of performance over the remainder of the week. Look at the greatest performers in history. They did not rise briefly and then fall backward over and over. They leapt forward to higher and higher levels of achievement and repeated that process over and over. Study Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and a host of other great achievers. They didn’t push forward for 52 hours and then slump backward for 52 hours. They raised their bar of achievement, and then set the bar higher again and again.

Leap Day Worksheet – To be Filled Out at Noon on Wednesday
(Maximum Time Investment – 35 Minutes)

1. Make a List of the Meetings/Activities/Events That Have Occurred So Far This Week

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.

2. For each entry in step one, answer these five questions in less than five minutes:

Entry One:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Two:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Three:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Four:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Five:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Six:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Entry Seven:

a. What did I do that was effective?

b. What did I do that was not effective?

c. What could I have done to be more effective?

d. What did I learn from this experience?

e. How can I use what I learned to perform at a higher level for the remainder of this week?

Do you see any common patterns on what makes you effective or ineffective?

Define Success on Your Terms

2010-02-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

If you allow your success on an annual basis to be defined by other people, you will drive yourself batty in good times and bad times.

As a business manager, I imagine you get asked regularly, "How are you doing?" Invariably, the other person means, "How are your numbers? How is your salary?" If you define yourself only by your economic performance and salary, you are destined to fail often. This happens for two reasons:

First, economic growth is not always linear. Second, your financial numbers are only a fraction of your whole life.

However, if you fall into the trap of letting other people define your success then you will ignore the other 85% of your life beyond your financials and you will never be fully satsified with any financial performance.

Define Your Success For the Next Year

Here are 12 questions to consider as you determine your success over the next 12 months:

What do you want your financial numbers to look like at the end of the next 12 months in terms of business revenues, profits, personal income, and personal savings?
What do you want your physical fitness to be 12 months from now in terms of weight and conditioning?
What personal behaviors do you want to improve over the next 12 months?
What do you want your relationships with your family members and friends to be like over the next 12 months?
What type of contribution do you want to make in your community over the next 12 months?
In what ways do you want to develop your mind over the next 12 months?
What skills do you want to enhance over the next 12 months?
What new professional relationships do you want to build over the next 12 months?
What vacations do you want to experience over the next 12 months?
What hobbies do you want to develop over the next 12 months?
How do you want your customers to be better off over the next 12 months?
How do you want your families to be better off over the next 12 months?

You can add or subtract questions as you choose. My point is I'm encouraging you to put down in writing what success looks like on your terms, not someone else's. Other people's perspective of you is usually far narrower than it should be. It's your responsibility to define and pursue success in a way that represents your whole life.

Types of Leaders

2010-02-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

There are 11 different types of leaders I’ve met or studied in my career. Each type can be effective in leading other people, and you can be more than one type of leader as you go about trying to influence your target audience to improve the desired outcome.

11 Types of Leaders

1. The Researcher – this person’s advice is based on data and carefully selected examples from the past.
2. The Exemplar – this person’s behaviors and personal choices model the desired performance so well that he or she influences other people simply by being watched.
3. The Motivator – this person provides inspiring words with an inspiring tone.
4. The Teacher – this person breaks down the idea and explains it so well that other people truly get it and can run with it even when he or she is not present.
5. The Visionary – this person describes a compelling dream of what the future can look like and that vision is what people hold on to as they go about their daily activities.
6. The Storyteller – this person tells stories that convey a powerful point.
7. The Coach – this person engages the other person in a conversation and offers advice based on observed behavior.
8. The Facilitator – this person asks open-ended questions and gets multiple people involved in developing the answers.
9. The Collaborator – this person exchanges ideas with the other person and works together with the other person to develop even better ideas.
10. The Dictator – this person tells people exactly what to do and how to do it, but this approach is generally only useful in dramatic life-or-death situations.
11. The Organizer – this person influences other people based on the roles he or she places them in and the way resources are distributed.

Assemble Your Leadership Plan
Write down how you will influence the individuals that you want to guide toward achieving better results in your organization's most important desired outcomes. Which type or types of leadership are you going to provide to influence them to think about what you want them to think about?

Practice Paying Attention

2010-01-27T13:39:00.000-08:00

We live in the age of distractions.

Texting, surfing, and multitasking have become a way of life. Unfortunately, listening, focusing, and staying engaged are on a downward turn.

It's cool to text in the middle of a busy meeting. Suddenly you're connecting with someone outside the drab meeting and really enjoying yourself. You can read your e-mail while you're on the phone, or text while you're driving. You can do so much more now than any person could have done just 10 years ago.

...and that's part of the problem.

Folks don't really listen, they don't really hear, and they certainly don't comprehend what is being said. All of this actually hurts productivity a great deal.

The tools aren't the problem. It's our inability to stay focused in the moment that hurts performance. All of the modern electronic technology devices and social networking tools are similar to the old-fashioned Cracker Jack Box. There's bound to be a good surprise in there somewhere and so we keep dismissing the topic of the moment to search inside our iPhones, Blackberrys, computers, and so on.

Practice staying focused on one thing at a time.

The individual who can stay focused over an extended period of time has a far greater chance of developing extraordinary skills, delivering extraordinary performances, and achieving extraordinary results. To develop the skill of focusing, practice paying attention regularly. When you're talking with your spouse or children or parents or friends, practice letting go of everything else and really listening to the other person. When you are reading a story, focus on just that story. Test yourself after the conversation or after reading the passage and see how much you can recall. Modern technology is cool, but practice using it in a focused manner, not an omnipresent way.

Surround Yourself with Positive Influences

2010-01-26T13:07:00.000-08:00

Be ruthless about who you allow to influence you.

Make a list of everyone you let influence you in the past month. This includes authors of books and articles, individuals on radio and television shows, work colleagues, customers, prospects, friends, neighbors, family members, and anyone else who influenced you in the past month.

Next to each person's name write down whether the person was a positive or negative influence on you.

A positive influence helps you see what you are capable of achieving, provides insights on what you can do to achieve your desired results, and/or offers some form of encouragement for you to consider toward achieving the desired outcome. This isn't about "happy talk." Rather it's about receiving constructive input that increases your chances of success in the future.

A negative influence tries to convince you that you are not capable of achieving meaningful results, provides reasons why you will certainly fail over the long term, and/or offers some form of discouragement for you to consider toward giving up on your aspirations. This isn't about "tough love." Rather it's about receiving sarcastic, cynical, and demeaning input that decreases your chances of success in the future.

Once you see who the positive influences are in your life and who the negative influences are it is up to you to consciously step away from the negative influences and toward the positive influences.

Know What You Know

2010-01-22T07:51:00.000-08:00

Go to the bookstore and buy a blank journal.

In that blank journal write down what you know about management, leadership, communicating with people, building a brand, etc. Put down on paper how you would approach different situations. This takes time. Add to it one to two hours a week.

For the past six months whenever I had time I've gone back to what I know and I've written it down. I reread the three books I've written, I watched six hours of videos of my speeches, and I went through every Learning Guide I've created over the past three years. I wrote down every idea that I've taught or written about since 2004. Now I can see what I know.

After you write down what you know, start to actively use what you know. Don't leave a good idea from your past laying on the desk. Use it.

Afer you know what you know and you have used what you know, then add to what you know.

Far too often, I have found people constantly wanting to add to what they know before they really have taken the time to know what they know and to use what they know. Strengthen your foundation of practical knowledge first, and then look for ways to build on it.

Stretch Before Exercising

2010-01-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

For years I jogged and played racquetball without stretching at all. And for years I have terrible problems with my back. Never quite made the connection between those two until months of work with a chiropractor. After all the tests and all the work on my back he showed me a few basic stretches. Now I warm up, stretch, exercise, warm down, and stretch again. Voila. My back has been dramatically better.

If you feel you are wasting time as a manager in meetings, try stretching before you exercise. Prepare for the meeting by studying relevant information, crafting questions you want to ask during the meetings, clarifying how you will answer those questions, and identifying the purpose of the meeting for you. Just showing up at meeting after meeting without preparation can cause back pain, headaches, and an overall feeling of intense frustration.

Competing in a Global Economy

2010-01-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we make business more complicated than it needs to be.

A few nights ago I gave a lecture on "Ideas for Competing in a Global Economy" for a Global Communications class at Fontbonne University. I told a story about needing a jacket and shirt at the last minute for a meeting. I called up the Nordstrom's store on Michigan Ave. in downtown Chicago and they kept their store open later so I could get the clothes. Then I told them how the Nordstrom's in St. Louis had a shoe shine salesman who carried my shoes out to my car so I could hold on to my three-year-old son Ben's hand.

I asked them what ideas from that story they felt were important for competing successfully in a global economy.

One student said, "Be willing to go the extra mile."
Another said, "Empower your employees to take care of the customer."
A third one said, "The people you hire will make all the difference."
And the fourth one, and my favorite one, said, "A genuine act of kindness goes a long way."

Competing around the world is the same as competing in your own city. Go the extra mile, empower your employees to create and deliver value, hire people who will provide the type of value you want to be known for delivering, and remember that a genuine act of kindness goes a long way.

Let's Get It Right This Time

2010-01-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

January 4, 2010.

New slate, new decade, new approach. Or rather I should say back to a very old, basic approach. Let's see if we can sustain our focus for an entire decade this time. No shortcuts, no "gold rushes" for homes or tech stocks or even gold for that matter.

Identify the purpose you want your organization to fulfill.
Make sure your decisions going forward support that purpose.
Identify the values you want guiding your behaviors and the behaviors of the people in your organization. Do it in collaboration with your employees, but maintain the final decision-making authority. Hold yourself and others accountable for adhering to these values.
Study your customers and desired customers closely. Identify what would be of value to them.
Create and deliver that value.
Charge appropriately so that your price fits within the value they are receiving and allows you to make a profit.
Let your customers and desired customers know of the value they can receive from your organization.

That's it. Stay focused for a decade and watch what can happen.

Increase Purposeful Efficiency

2009-12-27T07:51:00.000-08:00

Don't waste a dime or a minute. Efficiency is about optimizing every available resource. However, a resource cannot be optimized unless you know the purpose you are trying to fulfill, the goals you are trying to achieve, and the values you want guiding your behaviors.

It is not enough to be efficient, nor is it enough to be effective. You need to be both and continually increase both. Once a week go through these questions:

The Process of Increasing Purposeful Efficiency

What is the purpose our organization is trying to fulfill?
What specific goals do we want to achieve?
What are the values we want people to adhere to in our organization?
How did I use my time this week to fulfill our purpose and increase the chances we will achieve our goals? How could I have used it better?
How well did my behaviors align with the values we want to adhere to in our organization? How could my behaviors have aligned better with our desired values?
How well did I guide my employees toward fulfilling our purpose and achieving our goals in an efficient manner? How could I have done a better job?
How well did I invest our financial resources toward fulfilling our purpose and achieving our goals? How could I have done a better job?

By pausing and reflecting, you can continually increase your purposeful efficiency.

Remove Management Viruses

2009-12-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago a nasty virus entered my computer. Links took me to all the wrong places on the web. I shut down my computer and called in a terrific computer consultant. He removed my hard drive, worked his magic, took out the virus, and installed a new anti-virus program. He then ran Spybot Search and Destroy to kill off any other nasty problem. The whole deal was done quickly and efficiently.

Managers need to remove viruses from their system as well.

What habits do you have that eat up your time and energy and resources? What do you do that eats up the time and energy and resources of your organization?

Search through your calendar over the past 45 days. Look at where your time was spent. Think about the goals you've pursued, the projects you've been involved, the conversations you've had, and the e-mails you've exchanged.

Can you spot any viruses in what you do and say?

Identify what you can do to remove those habits from your work flow. Do you have a clear sense of your purpose as a manager? Do you know the 2-3 most important outcomes you are working to improve? Are you staying focused on the three things you can do that would have the greatest positive impact on improving those 2-3 high priority outcomes? Are your communications with your employees increasing the chances they will be successful in the future?

Just as a virus can wipe out your computer, a management virus can dramatically endanger your career and your organization's results. Search for and destroy those viruses. Most of the time I have found that these management viruses can be traced to an individual being overly tired and worn out. This happens because the individual feels the need to prove that he or she is an incredibly hard worker and deserves the management role. This can become a vicious cycle as the individual works longer and harder, becomes more and more tired, and increases the number of activities, projects, and objectives that are being pursued.

Make Sure the Gift Matches the Packaging

2009-12-09T11:35:00.001-08:00

Portraying yourself as a caring boss or a good listener will win you points in the short term. However, you have to make sure your packaging matches the gift people receive from you.

Have you ever received a beautiful package only to open it up and find a cheap, tacky gift inside?

That's what it is like when a manager presents himself or herself in one way to a group of employees only to act completely differently behind closed doors. Be who you are. Be real. Present yourself as you really are so people know what they are dealing with. Eventually people will know if your packaging matches who you really are.

Would people describe the way you are packaged in the same way they would describe who you really are on a regular basis? If not, what can you do about it?

The .01% Club

2009-12-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Membership Requirements: Be among the very best performers in your type of role AND continually work to learn more and improve your performance.

Perform Extraordinarily Well and Keep On Improving

Seems to me about 1 in every 10,000 people in any type of role do both. They are exceptionally good performers AND they are committed to always learning more and improving their performance. I would put Clint Eastwood in that category. As an actor and director, he has been making films for more than 50 years. He has emerged as one of the best actors and directors of multiple generations. And yet he continues to strive to learn more.

In the December 6, 2009 issue of PARADE Magazine, Eastwood, who is 79, was quoted as saying, "The reason I still work at this stage of my life is because I enjoy learning something new every day. When you accept that it's a constant learning process, it's fun."

Is being in The .01% Club something you aspire for? If so, how can you improve your current performance level? How can you learn ways to improve your future performance level?

The Six Components of Every Business

2009-11-22T20:38:00.001-08:00

A business has six parts: purpose, values, content, delivery, packaging, and brand. Don't make it any more complicated than that. Answer these questions:

Why does your organizaton exist? (Purpose)
What beliefs guide the actual day-to-day behaviors in your organization? (Values)
What is the basis of customer value that the people in your organization are working to continually improve? (Content)
How do the people in your organization deliver value to customers? (Delivery)
How is that value packaged for customers? (Packaging)
What is the value that you want customers to perceive receiving from your organization and what is the value they actually perceive receiving from your organization? (Brand)

If you want to dramatically improve your business, examine your answers to these six questions. Then decide if you want to really affect one or more of those answers. If you do, then what will you and other key members of your organization have to keep doing, stop doing, and start doing in order to make the desired answers a reality? Don't make the process any more complicated than that.

Understand the Upside and Downside of a Mentor

2009-11-20T08:40:00.000-08:00

A mentor is a person who invests time and energy in getting to know you over an extended period and offers you insights on how to perform better.

Almost every extraordinary performer acknowledges the importance of mentors in his or her life and describes how they made an enormous difference along the way.

I encourage you to actively seek out mentors. You don't need to call them mentors and they don't have to have a formal relationship with you. If a person spends time with you and offers you helpful insights and suggestions, then he or she is being a mentor for you.

In my lifetime I've had about a half dozen wonderful mentors, individuals who dramatically impacted my thinking about my personal and professional life. Much of what I am doing today and the way in which I am doing it can be traced to an insight I gained from one of my mentors.

However, I've also learned some mistakes I've made with my mentors. It's not what they did to me, it's what I did in response to them.

Mistake #1: I tried to be like them.

Whenever I did this I was always disappointed in my performance. I felt that I was being a fake and I felt as though I could never be as good as the other person. I was right on both accounts. I was being a fake because I wasn't being myself, and I was never going to be as good at being the other person as that person was going to be. The purpose of a mentor is not for you to try to replicate him or her. The purpose is for you to gain insights from that person that you can consider incorporating into your approach that might improve performance.

Mistake #2: I expected them to be flawless.

Many times I got frustrated with my mentors when I realized they were not perfect. I had built them up in my mind to be superheros. Don't make that mistake. Mentors are humans. Learn what you can from the individual that can help you to be a better performer. But don't be unrealistic. No human being is perfect. It's unrealistic to expect you are going to learn how to perform better from every aspect of another person. Value the value you gain from the person and then accept that person for who he or she is as a person.

In the End Make Your Decision

2009-11-17T15:09:00.000-08:00

Bill Belichick is at it again.

He calls for a pass on fourth down with two yards to go on his own 28-yard line with two minutes to go in the game. His team, the New England Patriots, came up six inches short of the first down and lots of people are calling him an idiot.

However, let's replay that in slow motion. Bill Belichick called for a pass on fourth down. He made what he thought was the best decison for that moment. Once he made the decision then he lived with it.

As a manager, you have to make a decision. At some point you have to make a decision. Once you make that decision you will have to live with the consequences of that decision. Belichick has made a lot of "unusual" decisions on the way to winning three Super Bowls and playing in four. I've grown fairly sick of all the critics in the world (Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olberman, Bill O'Reilly, Chris Mathews, etc.) who attack every decision by people they don't like or agree with. Hey, we can all criticize. But are you capable of making a decision? Deciding and criticizing or two different things.

However, in the end a manager has to make a decision in order to be a manager. Are you willing to do what you think is the right thing to do at any given moment? When you are you will have to live with the consequences, but at least you will know that you a true manager because in the end a true manager makes decision.

Trust is the Essential Ingredient of Influence

2009-11-16T06:05:00.000-08:00

Leadership is influencing how other people think in ways that generate better sustainable results both for the organization and the people in it.

Think about the people who have influenced you effectively during your career to achieve better results. I'm not talking about the people who provided you with inspirational dissatisfaction. Those are the people who demeaned you or who wrote you off, and you came back to prove them wrong. I'm talking about the people who positively influenced your thinking and your actions in ways that lifted your performance level. Write down descriptions of each of these individuals. My hunch is that you will find they are very different types of people in a lot of ways, except for one. In the end, I'll bet one common characteristic is you trusted each of these individuals for wanting to improve performance both for the overall organization or team and your own performance level.

If you want to influence another person, invest nine hours building trust for every one hour you spend trying to influence the person. You build trust by listening to the person, by being honest with the person, and by doing what you said you would do. It is not complicated, but it does require you to pay attention to what you're doing. It requires purposeful effort to build trust. And it requires consistency in all of the above.

Write in a Handwritten Journal Three Times a Week

2009-11-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

Capture your best ideas and biggest lessons learned in an old-fashioned handwritten journal three times a week. Every year read over what you wrote.

I started doing that in 1986, and I can trace the development of many useful ideas back to their infancy when the first pieces of a particular idea puzzle started falling in place. When you read your notes after after a good distance of time has passed, you will begin to see them in new ways and with new possible combinations.

The master of this is Malcolm Gladwell. Reading his books is like taking a masterclass in writing. Read The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.

Purpose Makes the Intangible Tangible

2009-10-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

The work of a manager is very intangible.

Managers don't make products, provide services, sell either of those, conduct research, or design things. Managers attend a lot of meetings, have a lot of conversations, review work done by others, and make decisions about who to hire and fire and where to spend their time. In other words, they do a LOT of intangible stuff.

Without a clear purpose of why the organization or the work group exists, the manager can literally fill up his or her day doing intangible stuff and achieving nothing.

A clear purpose gives meaning to all the intangible activities.
A clear purpose clarifies which metrics matter and which ones don't.
A clear purpose helps managers identify the employees they need and the ones they don't.

Southwest Airlines is all about democratizing the skies. They are all about making air travel possible for more people and making it a fun, on-time experience. That simple purpose simplifies all of the intangible work of their managers. Suddenly their managers know what to do and whom to hire and what kind of culture to build.

Don't rush into your work day to attend meetings and review work done by others. Instead begin your day by reminding yourself of why your organization exists and why your team exists. With that purpose in mind, go about the work of doing intangible activities that generate lasting, meaningful, important, and tangible results.

I encourage you to read It's Not What You Sell, It's What You Stand For by Roy Spence and Haley Rushing. You can learn more about it here.

Schedule Balance

2009-10-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

The biggest complaint I hear from executives and managers is they don't have enough balance in their lives.

Then when they pull out their schedules I soon find out why. They are complaining about something for which they have not planned. As we look at their next 60 days all we see are business meetings and events. They've planned no time to be with their family or at their kids's schools or at fun events related to their hobbies. It's all work stuff.

If you want to increase sales, you schedule sales visits.
If you want to improve operations, you schedule operational reviews.
If you want to improve life balance, you schedule a variety of work, family, and personal events.

Steps to Improve Life Balance

Write down the different areas of your life.
Take out your calendar for the next 60 days and schedule time for each area of your life.
If you ever have to change the schedule, immediately reschedule the event that was affected.
At the end of the 60 days review your calendar and see if you really did have a balance of life acitivities.
Repeat the process for the next 60 days.

Balance does not just happen. It requires a focused effort to make it a reality.

Honor the Platform You've Earned

2009-10-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

In his book, Take the Risk, Dr. Ben Carson talks about the privilege of speaking to audiences all over the world. He earned this platform through his work as a professor and director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes. Because of several famous operations he conducted on children who were born connected at their heads, Ben Carson has spoken to millions of adults and students. He sees this platform for sharing his messages as an honor that is to be treated with respect.

Every manager has a platform upon which to share his or her thoughts with others. For some managers, the audience consists of three people. For other managers, the audience might consist of 300,000 or 3 million people. The size of your audience doesn't matter. What does matter is that you honor the platform you've earned.

Here are four insights to honoring your platform:

Carefully decide on the 3-4 main points that you want to consistently get across.
Develop a variety of ways to reinforce those points using analogies, personal stories, stories about famous people, quotes, visual aids and so on.
Deliver your main ideas in a variety of ways including speeches, e-mails, podcasts, voicemails, handwritten letters, and regular conversations.
Avoid off-the-cuff remarks where you're trying to be "one of the gang." Oftentimes those remarks ruin a manager's credibility and undermine the message he or she is trying to get across.

Beware of the Dangers of Abusing Power

2009-10-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

Managers by definition have a certain degree of power over others. Beware of the dangers of abusing that power.

Managers have the power to hire and fire, to promote and demote, and to assign responsibilities and take away responsibilities. Managers do affect their employees' short-term, and oftentimes long-term, career opportunities in both positive and negative ways.

Be very careful in never using your power as a manager to get away with things that you wouldn't be able to get away with if you didn't have the title of manager. I've seen managers swear at their employees, publicly humiliate them, and talk to their employees in a degrading manner. I've seen managers get away with telling dirty jokes that most employees would never even consider saying. Why did they do it? Because they could and they allowed themselves to abuse that "privilege."

I encourage you to read an extraordinarily powerful book called, Broken Trust: Stories of Pain, Hope, and Healing from Clerical Abuse Survivors and Abusers by Patrick Fleming and Sue Lauber-Fleming. It includes five stories from priests who abused children and young adults and three stories from adults who were abused. (You can learn more about this book by clicking here. In reading these stories and the commentary from experienced psychotherapists you might see more clearly the following:

How inexplicable horrors and terrible abuses of power can actually happen.
The long-term affect of abuse on the victim and the victim-abuser.
The necessity of avoiding even the smallest exploitation of your power as a manager.
The need to see employees as human beings and not as objects to be manipulated for your individual success or pleasure.

Abuse of management power happens far too often, and most of it happens at a subtle level that doesn't impact the manager's career. The responsibility falls mainly on the shoulder of the manager to monitor his or her own behavior and to avoid taking advantage of the power that comes with the title of manager.

Essential Management Questions

2009-10-26T13:44:00.001-07:00

As I said in the first blog entry, the job of a manager is to convert resources into results.

That simple definition leads to a few essential management questions:

What are the three to four most important results your organization is focused on achieving or improving?
What are all the available resources you have to choose from in order to improve or achieve the desired organizational results?
How can you combine and deploy those resources toward the improvement or achievement of the desired results?

Most managers I've met have little problem answering the first question. However, many of them are not aware of the full array of resources available to them.

The primary resources they miss out on are the lessons that their employees have learned during their careers. Too often I've seen top managers huddle with a very small group of peers and direct reports and develop a plan of action that completely avoids any input from the people responsible for implementing the items on the plan. The knowledge of the front-line work force is a key resource available for no additional fee. Just tap into it.

In answering question three, remain patient as you keep digging for ways to leverage what you have to achieve what you want. Consider unusual combinations and keep in mind that success does not solely depend on throwing a bunch of money at the problem. Sometimes spending very little money can force you and others to really think of powerful new combinations for the resources you already have available.

Essential Leadership Questions

2009-10-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

For many years, I've used this definition of leadership:

Leadership is influencing the way other people think in ways that generate better sustainable results both for the organization and the people in it.

This definition generates these Essential Leadership Questions, which include:

What is the organization you are focusing on right now and who are the people in it?
What are the sustainable results you are ultimately trying to produce for the organization?
What are the sustainable results you are ultimately trying to produce for the people in it?
Who are the people you are trying to influence?
What are you trying to influence them to do?
How will you influence these people on an individual and/or group basis?

These six questions can be applied regardless of whether the organization is a family, a school, a not-for-profit organization, a business, a nation, a society, or the world.

Take out a blank sheet of paper and answer each of these six questions carefully. Keep your answers close by you as you go about your day-to-day activities. See if your answers can influence your own behavior first.

Communicate Expected Standards and Hold People Accountable

2009-10-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Don't post your corporate values where customers can see them.

Instead communicate to your employees the values you expect everyone in your organization to live up to and then provide positive and negative consequences that reinforce the importance of those values. As they say, talk is cheap. Either you are going to make the expected values real and meaningful or they will quickly lose all credibility.

Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the National Football League, has made it VERY CLEAR that players and coaches are expected to behave with a certain standard of values. He has suspended superstars who rarely have ever faced such serious negative consequences in their careers. As he said to PARADE Magazine on October 18, 2009, "We are role models. People look up to us. I think when a high standard is communicated to everybody, people will meet it. I thought it was important to make that clearer."

If you want to read the whole article, click here.

The Process versus The Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal

2009-10-22T07:32:00.000-07:00

When a new manager take over a group, he or she usually follows one of two paths.

Either the manager announces that this group will achieve an extraordinary goal by a certain date, or the person says the focus will be on continually improving the process and eventually great results will occur.

Both approaches have an upside and a downside. If process managers don't eventually achieve something remarkable, employees and investors stop caring about the process and start looking for another manager. If the big-goal managers don't achieve those big goals, they lose their credibility as well.

On the other hand, both approaches can be effective. What makes a management approach effective is if it impacts the employees' behaviors and decision-making in ways that generate better sustainable results for the organization both in the short-term and in the long-term. We can argue all day whether a new manager should announce big goals on day one or should focus everyone's attention on improving the process of achieving great results.

The truth is it doesn't matter. A manager is only successful if he or she impacts behaviors and decision-making in ways that generate significantly better sustainable results. I encourage you as the manager to consider the situation and ask yourself these two questions:

For this particular group at this particular time, will announcing a big goal cause them to focus on improving their behaviors and decisions in ways that will help them achieve the goals or will it seem so unrealistic that it causes them to not take me seriously and ignore my advice?

For this particular group at this particular time, will focusing everyone's attention on the process of achieving great success move them to improve their behaviors and decisions or will it cause them to write me off in the haze of "we've been there and done that"?

Obviously this is going to be difficult. There is no management crystal ball that tells you for certain which approach will be more effective for your group at this time. Consider the two approaches and challenge yourself to select the one that you believe will have a greater impact on improving behaviors, decisions, and results. In the end, that will be the measuring stick of your effectiveness as a manager.

A Strategy is a Guide for Making Decisions

2009-10-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

If you were on an African safari or climbing through the Himalayas, you would take a guide with you. Your guide would provide options and explain the risks at each step on the adventure. However, you would make the final decision on what to do.

A strategy provides parameters to operate within, but you have to choose the final decisions within those parameters.

A business strategy has the following parameters. Choose them carefully for your organization, and then let them be your guide to make decisions within.

Questions for Establishing Your Business Strategy

Why does the organization exist? What is it's purpose?
What are the underlying values our members are expected to use in determining their behaviors?
What are the short-term and long-term financial objectives in terms of revenue, costs, and profits for our entire organization?
What is the primary decision driver for our organization? Fill in this blank: We want to be primarily a ____ organization. (Choose carefully what type of organization you want to primarily be. The choices are a customer-centric business, a product-centric business, a service-centric business, a technology centric business, a method of sale-centric business, or a method of distribution-centric business.)
What is the secondary decision driver for our organization? Fill in this blank: We want to be secondarily a ____ organization.
What is the value we will deliver and to whom are we delivering it to?

Once you (including you and the other members of the strategy development team) have clarified your answers to those six questions, you will have a strong sense of the parameters that will guide decisions on what your organization will do in the future. As you consider a certain tactic or planned activity, determine if it fits within the guidelines you've established in answering those questions.

As in taking on an adventure, a strategy serves as your guide. It doesn't tell you what to do, but provides you with paramenters within which to make decisions.

A Result is Not a Result Until It's a Result

2009-10-20T05:39:00.001-07:00

The best intentions in the world do not constitute great results. Having lots of potential customers in the pipeline does not equal a great quarter. Having well-crafted designs of new products does not equal a breakthrough for your company.

A sales manager recently shared a story with me. One of his sales reps sent him a report every month filled with positives about his sales pipeline. However, he had no sales. At the end of the first month, the sales manager said, "Great job." At the end of the second month, he said, "Keep going." At the end of the third month, he said, "The proof is in the pudding." At the end of the fourth month, he said, "Activities are not sales. A sale is when the customer says yes and puts money down." Suddenly the sales rep started to actually make sales.

Don't let yourself or others think that activities and possibilities equal results. It's better to move one project, one sale, or one new product all the way to the finish line than to have a dozen great ideas in the pipeline.

Remember: a result is not a result until it's a result.

Sustain Thought-Filled Practice

2009-10-19T06:18:00.001-07:00

There are books and then there are books.

The finest book I've ever read on generating great performances is Development of Professional Expertise, which is edited and partly written by Dr. Anders Ericsson. He has spent more than thirty years studying great performers in chess, ballet, the military, education, medicine, and so on. You can learn more about it here.

This is the most comprehensive and in-depth book on how to develop great performances I've ever come across. It is over 450 pages with intense chapters written by a couple of dozen experts on how to perform at a very high level. One main idea that runs throughout the book is called deliberate practice. I think of it more as "sustaining thought-filled practice" because it involves both doing something and thinking about what is happening before, during, and after it occurs.

The Components of Sustaining Thought-Filled Practice

Identify the role you have passion and strengths for doing.
Clarify the 5-6 critical aspects of that role.
Create simulations of the actual performance that allow you to focus on improving one or more of the role's critical aspects.
Gain relevant feedback on the simulated performance in a timely manner.
Consider the feedback and make adjustments.
Sustain your effort for long periods of time.

In a way all of this seems so obvious. It's basically the formula for success in youth sports and in learning to play the piano and in doing math homework. The world's greatest performers take this formula to the highest level. They refine the steps and reapply them over and over and over for more than 10,000 hours.

Teamwork is Not Built in a Workshop

2009-10-18T12:34:00.000-07:00

As the economy begins to breathe again companies will focus on improving the teamwork in their organizations.

It's important to remember that teamwork is never, ever established in a one-day seminar. Seminars and workshops are useful for improving understanding of a topic and for seeing what needs to happen and why it needs to happen. This can include interactive activities that might feel like teamwork, but they are actually just a mechanism for explaining what needs to happen in order to have true teamwork.

Teamwork occurs when a group of people support one another toward fulfilling a meaningful purpose. All parts of that statement are important in the final actualization of a team. In the end, five key questions need to be answered:

Which individuals will constitute the group?
What is the purpose that the group is working to fulfill?
What can the individuals do to support one another on the road to fulfilling that purpose?
Do the individuals actually step forward and provide that support for one another?
Is there real progress being made toward fulfilling the desired, agreed-upon purpose?

These questions are answered over time, not in an excercise during a workshop. The workshop can help the attendees understand what questions need to be answered and possibly spur the individuals into action after it is over with. But the real work of teamwork happens back at the work site, not in the hotel ballroom.

Err on the Side of Safety

2009-10-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

Two days ago I was on the treadmill watching CNN when sudddely the president's speech in New Orleans was interrupted by a silver flying saucer over Colorado. I couldn't hear the volume and couldn't understand why they kept mentioning a boy in the caption below the images.

It turns out they thought the six-year-old boy was in the helium saucer-like balllon that had risen to 7,000 feet. For the next 90 minutes I was mesmerized by this wild event and thought often of my own eight-year-old son, Ben. When the balloon finally landed and the workers opened it up, I feared that the boy had fallen out in route. Only much later did millions of people learn that the boy was hiding in the attic.

Whether this event was a hoax or not, and as of this writing we're really not certain, is not the point. From the perspective of delivering a great management performance, the media and rescue crews all did their jobs exactly the right way.

Always err on the side of safety. Even if the circumstances seem bizarre and outlandish, stay with the pursuit of safety until you've learned that what you thought was true is not true. Great managers always consider that the unlikely is possible and put the safety of other people ahead of their financial concerns.

It cost an incredible amount of money for all those people to try to "save" that little six-year-old boy. Obviously people worked frantically to do everything they could to increase the chances that the boy would live. That is the appropriate response if you want to be a great manager. Go all out in the pursuit of safety, not in the pursuit of short-terms savings or profits.

Color Code Your Results

2009-10-16T06:26:00.000-07:00

Can you see your business performance at a glance?

Do you know how the different parts of your business are doing right now?
Can you find the answers in less than five minutes?
Can you immediately identify areas of concern and areas of strength?
Do have to go on a three-day retreat to really understand what is happening in your business?

In his terrific new book, Obstacles Welcome, Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, provides a variety of practical management gems. He clearly is a person who's "been there and done that."

One of my favorite ideas from the book is his practice of color coding results. He uses a simple green-yellow-red coding system for all of his organization's results. If a result is meeting or exceeding the expected results, then it's marked in green. If a result is slightly below the expected result, it is marked in yellow. If it is well below the expected result, it is marked in red.

He, and everyone else in the organization because the results are posted out in the open, can see what is happening at any given moment. This helps him and everyone else to determine what to do immediately.

Start this idea on a few key areas: financial results (expected revenues, expected cost of doing business, and expected profits), operational results from the customers' perspective (expected value received and expected quality of the delivery of that value), and marketing results (expected responses from targeted audiences).

Regularly color code the actual results versus the expected results. Visually scan the colors on your Results Sheet and see if you can immediately identify any areas for short-term concern or any areas that can be leveraged for long-term great results.

Use Outcome-Based Scheduling

2009-10-15T19:27:00.000-07:00

The most precious resource you have as a manager is time.

Use it wisely or wastefully, but either way it's gone when you go to sleep. Your job is to improve a few key results. Take our your schedule of activities for the upcoming week. As you look at it, ask yourself these questions:

Do you know what the most important result is that you are trying to improve for your organization?
Are these the activities that will have the greatest positive impact on improving your most important result?
Have you saved time on your calender for emergencies?
Are you realistically going to get to the few activities that can make the biggest difference in improving your most important desired result?

I suggest you use an Outcome-Based Scheduling Approach. Here are the steps:

Take out a blank sheet of paper. (Get used to this. Most of my advice starts with "take out a blank sheet of paper.")
Write down the single most important outcome you want to improve in your organization in the next three months.
Carefully select and write down the three activities that you can do that you believe will have the greatest positive impact on improving that outcome.
Take out your calendar and write in specifically when you will do each of these three activities. Lock those in place.
Add any other activities that need to be added, but never remove or overlap the three critical activities for improving the desired result.
Remove as many non-essential activities from your calendar as possible. Force yourself to give up some of your activities. Create lots of free space in your calendar. This will allow you to both deal with emergencies and still accomplish the three critically important activities you selected above.

The Job of a Manager

2009-10-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Managers don't make products and they don't deliver services.

Steve Jobs didn't make the iPhone and the manager of a quick-service restaurant doesn't serve the food.

The job of a manager is to convert resources into results. Within his or her realm of influence are certain human, capital, and occasionally natural resouces. Ideally, the task is to combine those resources and guide them toward the achievement of remarkable results.

In the months to come my objective is to provide you with an on-going set of user-friendly insights, strategies, practical tips, and examples that you can use to generate a great management performance. I define a great management performance as achieving signficant and sustainable results in your organization's highest priority desired outcomes.

The job of a manager is absolutely necessary for any organization to succeed in today's complicated and constantly shifting scenarios. It is also necessary for the success of a country or society. Never underestimate the importance of being a manager. It is THE critical role in the success of any on-going enterprise.