Are you on send or receive?

When I was much younger, my MSG Schaffer asked me one of his important, character forming questions.

“PFC Hill, in order for us to have a meaningful conversation, one of us has to be on send, one of us has to be on receive. Now, do you want to send, or receive?”

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that although I answered ‘receive’, he felt it necessary to ask me the question twice.

I’m not sure if you’ve had previous military experience, but I can tell you that MSG Schaffer was being extremely generous by asking me the question a second time. We both knew he didn’t have to ask once, let alone twice.

Today, I”m still thankful for that question. I ask myself that all the time when coaching a client. “Do I want to be on send, or receive?”and “Does this client want to be on send, or receive?”

Even in life, walking down the street, am I on send or receive? The implication is, what would I miss if I am on send and not receive? And what do you miss by being on send?

For example, a client recently wanted me to help with a job application. They were frustrated with the web process and asked me to help. I agreed, but before we began, he wanted to send. He felt it was important to tell me about his work history and his career up to this point.

Because he had a long career (I believe he was in his mid-60’s) the time to ’send’ me his career history took quite some time.
As he took me through a history of an incredible life, from bridge engineer to aid worker to starving children in 3rd world countries, into self-publishing, authoring and careers beyond telemarketer and fundraiser, he indicated that he’d recently helped out a retired priest.

He felt lucky to have been there to help protect this priest, because he was about to be victimized by a con-man, all too willing to take the retired priest’s life savings to help him avoid his soul going to hell.

After listening, I told this Renaissance man that his real purpose as I heard it was defender of the helpless. And instead of applying for a job, he needed to first discover who needed defenders enough to pay for them, then simply go find them and let them know he was available.

Had I been on send and not receive, I would have missed the real opportunity to help someone discover themselves.

On that day, I was very glad for my Master Sergeant. Thanks MSG Schaffer, wherever you are. Message received.

Why don’t your customers wear tattoos of your brand?

Why don’t mothers have “Tide” Tattoos?

What would it mean for sales if they did?

I watched the Malibu Rum commercial yesterday for radio boom boom – the one with the two DJ’s giving the weather forecast and it’s all sunny, even at night.  The rest are just details.

There’s a line for their radio station at the end of the commercial http://radiomaliboomboom.com/

“It goes beyond traditional television spots by creating an experience where consumers can connect with the irreverent, vibrant spirit” of the brand, Craig Johnson, marketing director for Malibu said, describing it as “a fully integrated [consumer] experience.” (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-marketing-pullback-for-malibu-rum-2009-07-31)

It started me thinking about lots of things.  The thought chain went something like this.

“Wow, I imagine people dancing to the radio station music at house parties, drinking rum.

That’s cool, clever even.

Huh, that’s not product, it’s not even brand…its… culture.. the experience surrounding the product, not the product itself. Oh that’s genius, wish I’d thought of it.

Well, why then don’t people have Honda radio or Tide TV? In fact, what is the culture for Tide and Honda anyway? Oh, there isn’t one.  Wow, huge marketing gap there.

Who else does culture marketing really well? Harley Davidson of course. If someone gets a tattoo of your logo that’s significant pain and you’re really onto something… also DC comics with their Superman brand.  People get the red S tattooed on their arms too.  Heh, imagine mothers walking around with “Tide” tattooed on their arm or chest, now that’s funny!  Even funnier if you imagine them getting into a fight with the shout wipes moms over who’s got a better, cleaner culture. Yikes!”

The internal narrative went on of course.  But I began to take a leap to something else.  Large corporations spend a lot of time and effort to create a company culture so their employees feel connected and participate (hopefully) according to behavior they want.  So… if customers are an important part of the business (and they are) why don’t they have a culture, and why don’t companies spend effort to create, promote and sell that culture, like Malibu Rum, Harley Davidson and DC comics are doing? 

It’s because they don’t have an idea for how to go about it – in fact they’re not even aware of it as a possibility.  Most marketing courses at colleges are teaching product placement and brand marketing. No one is teaching culture marketing. 

So, how to do this?

First, what is the culture surrounding your product?  When does it get used?

Jennio Turkey might be the Sunday Dinner with family and friends.  Turkey is a part of the event, even the centerpiece, but it’s not the whole event.  What could you do with a Sunday Dinner, family culture?

What about the values? This is always important with company cultures, finding out what are the common values? This in many ways defines who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ (Just like in High School – cliques) .  What are the values of a Sunday Dinner? Family, Community, Tradition come to mind.

So, maybe Jennio Turkey could create churches or community clubs and community centers.  They are all aligned with the common values. (I threw church in there to wake up your brain, I don’t really think Jennio should sponsor churches.  It could lead to Hormel creating a Spam church, yuck).

Finally, what is the measure of success? When customers tattoo your brand on their arm? Maybe not, but other than sales trends you might want to measure how many times your brand shows up in popular culture, music , movies and such. 

Now how much would you pay for that kind of priceless word of mouth marketing and product placements?

Experts – get busy and share!

Are you a leader or other expert struggling to share your expertise?

You may know a lot.  Maybe you’re wondering how you share that with a larger audience.
Perhaps you’re looking to write that how-to book someday or maybe you’re considering a blog or radio show or perhaps even a tv show?

These can all be done but you may not think you have the resources today. So, start from where you are – you’ve heard that a time or two, maybe even said it to others.

I compare your expertise to a well. If nobody knows it’s there, what good is it? If nobody comes to the well to draw the water, what use is it?

But, if you consider closely, people are regularly asking for your help, right? You probably email people with suggestions, advice or answers to their questions. Recast those as blogs, after you take out the names and identifying information, of course.

The point is, you’re already providing value – just like a well. People are drawing from your talent, you just haven’t captured it as repeatable knowledge.

Once you gather enough of these emails and blogs, your book creates itself. No work, no hassle.

TV show? Ah, well, perhaps you’re a mentor or systems expert… if so, you have regular meetings where you give advice and direction. Just get in the habit of taping it each time. You have a home video camera I’m sure. Bring it with you and start recording it.

Edit the video for free with Windows movie maker. It’s an incredible free program that’s on your PC today. From there, you can post it on http://youtube.com or if you just want the audio, then do http://blogtalkradio.com

If you don’t regularly meet with people you can still capture the knowledge, just call your team on skype with http://pamela.com (a free recorder that captures up to 15 min of skype conversation).

Ultimately, no matter what, you have the capability to automatically capture your skills, talent, knowledge and expertise, you just need to have someone regularly come to you and ask.
Set up a partnership where you and another expert regularly interview each other and you have everything you need.

Want a better training? Try simulations for success

Here’s a game making template to create games that stimulate learning

I was talking to a corporate trainer today.  We were discussing how to get participants engaged in the training, especially if the training is about policies and procedures, a typically dry subject. The point of training is not the training, not the feedback forms that say ‘great job’ but rather the takeaway. Can the participants remember and effectively apply the lessons learned?

One of our discussion topics was games and simulations vs. a traditional ‘lecture’ style. How would you create a simulation for applying polices and procedures… you could do a role play scenario but we all know how well class participants feel about role play… about the same as public speaking. They are typically not up for it.

Then it hit me… role play… role playing games. What are the elements of a role playing game that allow it to be successful for the participants? I mentioned the most well known, Dungeons and Dragons and I wondered about what are the elements of a great story in D&D?

You have the following elements:

• Scenario – The scene or situation could be a city adventure, dungeon exploration or wilderness challenge
• Characters/Avatars – someone you invest your identity and consideration into – you start to care about your character, perhaps even developing a ‘backstory’
• Choices – you can explore the dungeon or explore the city, it’s up to you
• Stated goals – in D&D this is usually presented as a quest
• Challenges – There are monsters, puzzles and riddles that will resist or oppose you accomplishing your goal
• Outcomes are uncertain – The element of risk means that you may very well not succeed, depending upon your choices
• Teamwork – Especially important in the game is the ability to work together. Each party member has needed strengths that help and weaknesses that must be accommodated
• Randomization of the outcome – The dice rolls determine if the chosen action is successful, or more correctly, determine the amount of success or failure
• Modifiers to the random outcome – if you have certain skills, talents, abilities or ‘magic items’ you have an advantage that will help you
• A storyteller – Very important to the game, someone to narrate and keep the story going (the dungeon master)

So, now if you’re a trainer… This becomes a system to create a game or simulation that effectively teaches the lessons you want your class to remember (not just learn… remember and apply).

• Scenario – The scene or situation could be an office challenge or a story about co-operating with customers, or a new product launch
• Characters/Avatars – someone that the participants can use to try on different roles and approaches viscerally, so they can try different (and perhaps competing) approaches and perspectives
• Choices – you can follow the policy or choose to flaunt it, it’s up to the participants
• Stated goals – some definition of success, perhaps it’s not getting bad press coverage or increasing the stock price of the company
• Challenges – There are temptations, struggles and laws that will resist or oppose you accomplishing your goal
• Outcomes are uncertain – The element of risk allows your participants to possibly flaunt the rules and not get caught
• Teamwork –Each team member contributes strengths such as people skills or detail focus or goal orientation. These have strengths and weaknesses that require teams work together, especially if there is a time limit
• Randomization of the outcome – a percentage chance of success against odds are always a welcome part of any game. It’s the chief element of most games that keep us interested and engaged
• Modifiers to the random outcome – if the team can find or learn skills or other items in game that help them win, or perhaps cause them more challenge instead of actaully helping, this helps them see other resources they may not have known about
• A storyteller – In this case, the facilitator. Someone who can help out in the ‘rough patches’,  keep the game going and guide the debrief session so people can share what they learned

So you might have game pieces or scorecards to allow people to have tangible take home reminders of the lessons they learned. Something they can keep with them use to discuss with others about the lessons learned.

There you have it – a simple model to make any training event a memorable and useful one that participants will use again and again.  I going to find my multi-sided dice and character sheets.

Save time in the interview process – hire for mindset and fit

Save time interviewing – screen for skills and mindset

So having experienced hiring from many perspectives, I realize that a great failure of the system is hiring for skills only. Hard skills and soft skills to be sure, but still… just skills. The problem is managers look for ‘fit’ not just ‘skills’. It becomes the managers job to interview for fit. Some companies put their values in the job ad and hope or suppose that it will attract people with the same values, but that doesn’t really select preferred people based on those values. Even worse, the process doesn’t select for something even more important. Mindset. For example, manager mindset is different than employee mindset. One job seeker was having trouble in the interviews. He’d get really nervous. As we explored it with him I came to realize that he was ‘chomping at the bit’ to prove that he could do the job and that opportunity never seemed to come up in the interview. They’d ask a bunch of questions but it never seemed to focus on his skills or can he do the job, which he was very VERY eager to prove. I told him that isn’t why they have interviews. They have interviews to see if you ‘fit’. I told him that if you made it to an interview you already passed the ‘can you do the job’ screen. HR is responsible for finding out if people have the skills and experience to do the job. Therefore, they already know you can do the job in the interview. Furthermore, you were among the BEST of the people that could do the job. The only thing they really want to know now is do you fit in and can they work with you as one of their direct reports, that’s the point of the interview. So why doesn’t HR find people that match ‘fit’ or mindset as well as skill? That would save the manager a bunch of time. Simply because the manager doesn’t give them any measurable criteria or a standard for what they are looking for. So, what happens is it becomes a long drawn out process for everyone involved. I assure you, managers do not like interviewing, because it takes a lot of something they don’t have, time. What to do? There are lots and lots of tools that assess mindset. I’m not talking about ethics or values. I’m talking about is your desire to be the best in your field or is it the desire to make others the best in their field? Are you a ‘warrior’ or ‘villager’? are you open minded or are you concerned about being right? The best tool that I’ve found so far is behavioral interview questions. These (when done correctly) tell a manager what this person feels about customer service, innovation, adaptability or other considerations. If you’re a manager, give your HR team the behavioral interview questions you want to know about, that are important to your team and to anyone joining. Have HR ask them in the screen but also have them put the criteria in the ad. “The ideal candidate will have demonstrated success in dealing with customers in a retail setting, specifically having the ability to convert upset complaints into delightful customer experiences.” Put up to three of those criteria in a job posting and now that candidate knows what you’re looking for and knows if they ‘fit’. Oh, and don’t be discouraged if less people apply – that automatically saves you time if candidates don’t feel they ‘fit’.

Get the figures without the facts – A MN Executive Coach shows you how

MN – Entrepreneurs Are you struggling with efficient ways to measure value?

As a leader, do you wish you could help others gather information for decision making quickly?

Oftentimes in my coaching sessions I ask for an estimate of value or change in value.  Unfortunately records are not often kept.

I teach people a simple estimating or approximating procedure that allows them to determine a range of improvement.

It works because the unconscious mind gathers a lot (make that a LOT) of information that we’re not consciously aware of.  This process allows the conscious mind to more easily access the unconscious parts of ourselves that are more aware of events and surroundings.

I first ask them to rate the original state on a 5 point scale using the following phrases

Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Bad.  Then I ask them to rate it again after they made the improvement on the same 5 point scale.

Next, we attribute a percentage to each point as follows:

Excellent – 100%

Good – 80%

Fair – 60%

Poor – 40%

Bad – 20%

So if for example, they rated the original state as ‘Poor’ and the improved state as ‘Good’ then that equates to an estimated 40% improvement.

Now, you can easily estimate financial or efficiency improvements.  Usually people will remember (or can estimate) financial figures or time performance.  But they usually only know the ‘before’ or ‘after’ number, not both.  Fortunately, since we have an improvement number now (40%) it’s easy to calculate the change in numerical terms.

Give this a try next time you have to estimate a performance improvement. You may surprise yourself by how much you actually remember.

For an easy way to teach your team this principle – share this article with them and ask them what they thought.  This will help instill it as a permanent process in your business.  All you have to do is remind your team of it when you ask for data that’s unavailable.

Alan Hill is principal of http://srkinc.com and Co-Founder of http://quantumcommonwealth.com

Please visit these websites for more information about how we can help your Minnesota business grow profit through business strategies.

Work Life Balance (1 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

Work Life Balance - Part one of two

 

In the recent BNET article/blog titled “Be a Great Leader – and Have a Life,” the author talks about the importance of the four domains: 1) Work, 2) Home, 3) Community, and 4) Self.

If you label yourself as a successful leader: how DO YOU DO IT? What works for you? The article may work in theory, but does it work in practice? 

 

I have a different perspective than most.

 

First it requires we forgo the notion that amount of time spent in each domain equates to balance. Perhaps a person is most beneficial to society by spending most of their time as a business leader because they are positively impacting many more lives than that of their family.  Or perhaps they are more impactful as a father teaching one person how to golf (Tiger Woods).  I believe our balance should be measured in contributions, not time.

 

When I was a corporate leader I did what was necessary to support my team. Many long hours were required. What came of that investment was a perpetual mentoring program that continues to give employees the opportunity work to promote themselves on a technical path.

 

My work life balance came in the lessons I learned and the mentor skills I developed as a result of that time invested. Now I am able to leverage that investment of time with many other businesses, just like a programmer writes a program once and people use it many times over.

 

I find it more beneficial to impact many more lives as a result of having spent what some consider an enormous amount of time to obtain an ability to quickly give benefit to many customers. Did I have balance then? Some would say no because I spent so much time at work and not at home. However, what if I write an ebook of my lessons and share that with the world? Would the time that others save in their work so they can be with their family be considered a part of my ‘balance’?

I submit that balance has to be considered in the scope of an entire life. Our tradition in America is to retire at age 65. Why wait so long? Why not develop a recurring revenue stream (or several) based upon our experiences, regardless of how much time we spent developing them?  Then we would be able to retire whenever we want.  Would this be considered balance because you’re taking away time from your family?    

As an example, Bill Gates does not have to work for a living, but he spent a bunch of time building a company that we all benefit from. When you consider the time he saved us (forget about buggy software for a moment) does that balance out the time he invested?  Consider that he is now in charge of a foundation that positively impacts lives around the world.  Does that balance out the countless hours he spent away from his family? 

Conclusion: When you measure work life balance, weigh in the amount of future return you and others will receive for the balance of your investment in your life’s work.  Considering the return will help you determine if this time is worth the investment.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill 

MN CEO’s: Tired of IT Project Expenses?

Minnesota CEO’s –  change the employement game for your employees to bring more value

 

Problem: Frustrated, unappreciated technical talent that doesn’t understand their value.

Solution: Treat them like the talent they are, like top producing movie stars.

 

I believe that the troublemakers are the ones that bring opportunity.  Someone who’s frustrated in their work is frustrated because they believe it can and should be better – they just may not be able to express the desired change in a way that others are able to understand and act upon.  For example, I heard the story of a manager at Sun who many years ago complained to the owner that he was frustrated and leaving.  The owner asked exactly what he felt needed to change and received quite an earful.  The owner told him something to the effect of ‘looks like you have a big job to do implementing these changes, you’d better get busy’.  The owner knew how to change the frustration into action.

 

The story about the coming to a particularly ugly head of the bitter dispute between network admin Terry Childs and his managers (see http://www.cio.com/article/444526/Tech_Workers_Smoldering_Discontent), is about a frustrated employee and a supposed ‘incompetent boss’.  I believe the question is how to change the rules of employment so as to prevent frustration.  This is a similar situation in many ways to the labor movement in the US that created unions.  Employees felt they were being taken advantage of and so they unionized in order to create a better work environment for themselves.  Today technology workers are experiencing similar frustrations yet they reject the notion of unionizing, they perceive themselves as different from the ‘union mentality’.

 

Where then, is a workable solution to this quandary?  In the entertainment industry there are talent scouts – they ‘lock up’ the best talent by securing an exclusive representation agreement.  Interestingly enough, the way top talent is ‘sold’ is by reputation and by potential draw power, i.e. this star has a phenomenal box office draw and the movie will make you more than what you pay them.  Imagine bringing this model to the ‘frustrated tech industry’.  

 

If I were a recruiter I could package up a superstar team of the best database analyst, best web developer and the best Project Manager etc., pick a target company and ‘sell’ them.  The pitch is this team is able to get the job completed in ½ the time because they already have the experience and code components ready to go.  Now I’m selling the best solution economically, not just a body or a team.  Repeat this process for an entire IT shop – now IT workers are finally focused on delivering real hard dollar business benefits instead of chattering on and on about buying more IT hardware for no clear or understandable purpose.  They are finally able to show they are worth more than they are being paid. 

 

However, just like in the entertainment industry, if an entertainer doesn’t want to do the project then they don’t take the gig.   It’s up to the talent scouts to find the best replacement.  No more frustration for the IT worker, they pick the companies they want to work for. 

Smart IT talent would understand that the code they create is theirs to license out to their employer.  As they grow their experience they also grow their application base.  They can then offer reusable components and start selling those to other companies.  This would have to be negotiated, hence the value of the talent scout to the formerly frustrated IT worker. 

 

For example, a company may want to expand internationally.  They turn to their IT department managers and hear a bunch of IT speak on language conversions, database redundancy and security, etc.  The CEO turns to the talent scout who says ‘yes, I have a team that’s developed international applications and they have most of the application you need already designed and coded.  It will take them less than 3 months to deploy (one business quarter)”.  “Oh, yes, this team already works for you on contract but I own the rights to them and their code’.  Would you like me to have them move forward with this new project?”

 

Same thing for support teams.  Clearly identify how they are providing more value than they are charging in the form of their paycheck.  These people are now sold as an insurance policy against downtime.  Keep metrics on their downtime and return to service metrics – now when the discussion comes to ‘lets make support cheaper’ you have a value metric.  Team A has this downtime metric, Team B has another downtime metric. Cheaper equals this much more additional downtime risk.  Is your business ready to assume that additional risk?   It also gives a competition metric for the support team. How well do they stack up against global support?  What areas do they need to improve upon?  How much have they improved system uptime?  Is that trend increasing or decreasing? What about new systems, are they deployed faster and more stable? 

 

Compare this to the revenue this system brings in.  Now business owners and managers have a way to appropriately size support.  High revenue systems get high value support and less downtime risk.  Low revenue systems get low cost support and take on more downtime risk.

 

As these support teams create innovative support solutions, automated support tools and a knowledge base, these are owned by the team, not the company.  This would require a talent scout to negotiate on their behalf so that the value is retained by the team. 

 

Business owners would finally be able to quantify the value of their IT team and they’d be able to finally have an IT group focused on creating real business value.

 

Really smart companies would lock up the rights on their own talent before they ‘unionized’ by signing exclusive representation agreements with talent scouts.  Imagine your Human Resources team out there ‘locking up’ the rights to the top IT talent.  Not just hiring them but getting exclusive representation rights (yes, a contract). 

 

Bottom line, IT workers are not able to sell their value.  It’s why they need someone to negotiate on their behalf. 

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill

Alternatives To The Pyramid Organization

I see it many times, organization leaders struggling to get a little bit more performance out of their employees and their organization.  I imagine it quite like looking for rocket ship performance out of an automobile.  No matter what you do, it’s never going to fly.

 

Structure creates limits

Consider the structure of organizations – designed in a pyramid structure.  The purpose of the pyramid structure is to give stability and permanence.  Consider how long the Pyramids in Egypt have lasted.  Unfortunately it sacrifices growth and change.  Compare this to the organization of a free market economy – a trade based structure.  No centralized control, no hierarchy, yet there is still an organization to it.  It’s able to accomplish dramatic changes in a nation.  Look at all the developing countries that have recently switched from a planned economy to free market. 

 

Rocket ship organizations

What would happen if we took this ‘rocket ship’ of a free market and applied it inside an organization?  Imagine employees free to create and innovate because they are rewarded to do so.  What might that do for your employee suggestion program?  What if employees were rewarded financially for helping other employees develop and grow? How would that change your company’s mentoring programs?

  

This might sound great but how exactly would this work?  For starters, look for systems and models in the free market that can transfer to the corporate world.  Bring a venture capitalist system, along with an appropriate reward (perhaps a 10% license royalty) into the corporation and suddenly you’ll have more ideas than the old employee suggestion box ever gave.  Bring an executive recruiter into your organization and assign them the responsibility to find and promote the best talent from within.  If you need to do it at no cost then consider an employee paid approach – The employee pays a percentage fee of their future earnings.  Now you don’t have the expense of finding talent outside the organization and employees are finally empowered to manage their careers.

 

Here’s one of my favorites, because it’s quick and low cost… having trouble getting your employees to control costs?  Create a negotiation department that is responsible for training employees how to negotiate and for negotiating on their behalf (if needed) with vendors, suppliers and customers.  Now give employees an incentive for doing so.  It could be a percentage of the savings or it could be as simple as tracking and accounting the amount of value they create for the organization.  Imagine employees bragging how much they saved or made for the company.  Why? because it’s in their best interest to do so.  Managers will want people on their team that can demonstrate specific dollar value.  Managers can then build winning teams that are experienced at getting high value returns.  Of course you want to add other measures such as vendor and customer loyalty.  You can’t have them negotiating at the expense of stability.

 

Oh, people have told me that this department already exists, centralized purchasing.  Uh,  nope.  That department is focused on negotiating low priced contracts.  Only contracts.  Their goal is creating contracts, not creating employees trained to negotiate value and control costs.  Ask how many well trained employees they created vs. how many contracts.

  

Sue Bushnell recently wrote an article about these ideas and more at cio.com. http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;913070162.   I also have an ebook on this if you’re interested, just email me and request a copy.

 

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company, ActionCOACH.  If you would like to learn more about him, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill.

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