Posts Tagged "Team Strength"
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 Book Review
IQ vs EQ
IQ- Intelligence Quotient- is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as a number that measures apparent relative intelligence.
Described by Psychology Today, Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.
Both IQ and EQ influence success in relationships, health and overall happiness. Read about the four building blocks of emotional intelligence in this Readitfor.me review of Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves’s Emotional Intelligence 2.0 .
Emotional Intelligence 2.0
Book Review by: Readitfor.me
For hundreds of years, your worth to society was determined by how much physical labour you could do. Then, sometime in the last 100 years, the tide shifted and people started placing stock in your Intellectual capacity – your IQ. The more you knew and the better you were at taking exams largely determined the trajectory of your career. In fact, the education system is still set up under this paradigm. However, as the authors of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 would tell you, there’s a shift underway. As it turns out, there’s a completely different “intelligence” that has a large bearing on how successful you are in life – your emotional intelligence – or, EQ.
In fact, emotional intelligence is the missing link to a peculiar finding. Consider that people with the highest IQs outperform those of us with average IQs 20% of the time – not surprising. But also consider that people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs a whopping 70% of the time. The greatest predictor of success, we now know, lies in our ability to harness our emotional intelligence.
And if you aren’t with us yet, chew on this. People with a high level of emotional intelligence make a lot more money than those with low levels of emotional intelligence – $29,000 a year more, on average.
So whether you are looking to increase your emotional intelligence, or even just looking for the secret to making an additional $29,000 a year, this is a topic for you. So buckle up, and get ready to learn the four building blocks of emotional intelligence – self awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management.
Self-Awareness
Self awareness is the ability to understand your emotions as they are happening, and to understand your tendencies to react in certain ways in different situations. There’s no need to go and live in a Buddhist retreat for 21 years to find your self-awareness. In fact, just thinking about your emotions as they happen is a very good start and will help you along your journey.
A person with high self-awareness is usually in control of their emotions. It’s not that they don’t feel emotions, but they don’t let them take over their lives. On the the flip side, a person with low self-awareness typically will take their own stress and project it on to other people. These are the type of people that if they are having a bad day, dammit, so is everybody else on this godforsaken planet. While these people might say that they don’t care how they are perceived, it’s quite likely that they just don’t know how they are perceived.
Here are some strategies for increasing your self-awareness and getting to know yourself a little better.
- Notice your feelings and realize that they are not good or bad, they just “are”. For the most part, you won’t be able to control your feelings. If something terrible happens, you’ll feel some pretty nasty emotions. In fact, you are better off feeling them fully now, rather than burying them deep inside. However, the key is to not hold on to them – let them take their course and then let go of them. Lastly, realize that however you react to these emotions will have an impact on others.
- Understand how your buttons get pushed. We’ve all got pet peeves and people that just seem to rub us the wrong way. Being able to articulate these things is critical because then you can start to take actions to be in control of yourself in these situations.
- Keep a journal. Doing a review of your day and your emotions throughout is a great step towards self-awareness. You’ll start to see patterns in your thoughts, feelings and behaviours that are destructive. Once you see those patterns you’ll do anything you can to get rid of them.
- Don’t be fooled by your moods. Sometimes there are days when you are on cloud nine, and nothing could be going better. Other days you feel down in the dumps and nothing could be going worse. Of course, reality is usually somewhere in between those two extremes. So even though you hate your job, spouse, and that jerk who cut you off in traffic on those down days, remind yourself that things aren’t as bad as they seem and that the mood will pass – it always does. On the flip side, don’t get lulled into a false sense of security on the good days.
Self Management
Self management is highly dependent upon your self-awareness. It’s the ability to use your self-awareness to react in a positive or useful way in any circumstance. This is your ability to control your emotions around situations or people.
If you are around somebody who is able to manage themselves at a high level, you’ll notice that they handle themselves extremely well under pressure. On the flip side, people who aren’t able to manage themselves at a high level lose their cool on a regular basis.
Here are some strategies for increasing your self-management ability so you can keep your cool in any situation.
- Breathe, dammit! Your brain consumes a remarkable amount of oxygen – a full 20% of your body’s requirements – and it only gets what it needs to function on a high level if you are breathing properly. Although breathing deeply is good advice for any situation, it is doubly good in stressful situations because otherwise you’ll be restricting the flow of oxygen to your brain.
- Sleep on it. If you find yourself in a stressful situation and need to make a decision, sometimes the best thing you can do is put it off until the next day. When you are being controlled by stress, you are unlikely to make the best decision – whether this is at work or at home. So, prepare yourself to take extra time with stressful decisions.
- Get control of the voices in your head. We all have them. You know, the voices that tell you that you are an idiot for agreeing to the extra work on the long weekend. Or that you aren’t good enough for the job. When you find yourself in these situations, change the language in your head. If you’ve made a mistake – don’t generalize and say that you always make stupid mistakes. Remind yourself that you made a mistake this time, and it doesn’t mean that you’ll make it again tomorrow.
- Learn something valuable from everybody you encounter. We can all learn lessons from the people who inspire us and treat us well. But what about the people who don’t move us deeply, or worse, rub us the wrong way completely? If you can learn from those people, you will truly be working on another level. In almost any situation you find yourself in, you will learn a little more about yourself, and gain greater self-awareness in the process.
Social Awareness
Social awareness is the ability to read other people’s emotions and understand what’s going on with them. It’s the seeing what it’s like in the proverbial “other person’s shoes”.
If you spend any time with socially aware people, you’ll notice that they talk less and observe more. They will dig deeper into what you are saying by asking you questions so that they understand you better. On the other hand, people with low social awareness seem to be waiting for you to stop talking so that they can show you how smart they are. In the process, they seem to miss the entire point of what you are saying. We’ve all been around people like that, and at times, have probably acted that way ourselves.
Here are some strategies for increasing your social awareness so that you can connect better with others.
- Greet people by their name. This may seem far too simple to increase your social awareness, but you’ll be tapping into the universal need to be “acknowledged” for who you are. Your name is an essential part of your identity, and starting off each encounter by using the other person’s name will bring you closer to them immediately.
- Increase your cocktail party conversation skills. This might seem trite, but creating a connection with other people takes work. Planning ahead and remembering who will be at a party and what their children do after school (for instance), is all part of the game. In the process, you will find yourself actually caring about these things because most people respond in kind to this kind of behaviour. As it turns out, giving a damn about people is a pretty good strategy.
- Practice your listening skills. When others are talking, don’t just listen to the words coming out of their mouth. Watch their body language and listen to the tone and pace of their voice. If their words and body language don’t match, check in and see if you truly understand what they are thinking. Some people will tell you that they are “just fine” in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary. Checking in like this will bring your connection with your friends, colleagues and family to an entirely new level.
- Understand how others view you. This isn’t something that most people want to do, preferring to go through life believing that they don’t have any of the flaws that they see in other people. However, being socially aware is also about understanding how you impact others. So, check in with some friends and family to see how they are experiencing “you”. You’ll learn quite a bit about yourself, but also how you come off to others in a multitude of situations. This is invaluable information.
Relationship Management
Relationship management is sort of like “bringing it all home”. It’s understanding your emotions and the emotions of others to skillfully manage a relationship.
People who do this well seem to manage many different relationships and seem to be close with all of them. They also make everybody they come into contact with feel at ease with them, even when delivering a stern message. People with low relationship management skills are constantly reacting to people and situations rather than responding to them. They make it very difficult for others to build a bond with them.
Here are some strategies you can use to develop your relationship management skills.
- Do the “little things” on a consistent basis. If study after study (and your own personal experience) tell you that what people want more than anything is to be recognized, why do we do it so infrequently? Catch people doing good things as often as you can, and you’ll find yourself creating a stronger connection with people much quicker than you ever have.
- Don’t let you emotions drift into other situations. Have you ever been around somebody who gives you the cold shoulder out of the blue, even though you haven’t been around long enough to do anything wrong? These people are often still thinking about another event during the day that got under their skin, and have allowed it to have an impact on your relationship. Always deal with your emotions, and then be present with whoever or whatever requires your attention next.
- Take feedback well. Sometimes, even if you don’t ask for it, people will tell you what they think of you or your performance. How you deal with this situation will greatly impact the level of closeness in your relationship with this person. Take it with grace, and you’ll be letting the other person know that they can truly tell you anything and the relationship will continue to grow. React poorly to it, and you’ll be starting the process decline of that relationship.
- Explain your decisions, don’t just make them. If you want people to follow you and respect you, you need to explain why you make the decisions that you make. If you don’t, it’s inevitable that some people will think that you’ve missed a key issue and that you made the wrong decision. Then, the gossiping begins. On the other hand, if you take the time to explain how you came to your decision, people understand your thinking much more clearly, and then know what you did or didn’t consider. It also opens up a dialogue about the issue that is missing when all you give is the answers.
Conclusion
Emotions and emotional intelligence used to be considered the “soft stuff”. Not only was it not welcome in the business world, it was often looked upon as a weakness. Markets were won and lost on the backs of high IQs and hard work. However, as the authors and many scientists have been able to show, emotional intelligence not only leads to better relationships, it leads to better business. And I can’t think of a better reason to get in tune with my emotions.
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How do you get your point across in a world full of distractions?
Periodically, I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.
There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.
The Readitfor.me tool has grown into a great resource for both personal and team growth, offering book summaries, micro courses and master classes. Check out this link: Readitfor.me. See how these tools can help build you personal and Team Strength.
Here is a summary of the Book Brief by Joseph McCormack.
Getting you point across clearly and concisely, saves resources- time and money.
Read on to learn how you can get your point across in a world full of distractions.
Brief
by Joseph McCormack
Book Review by ReadItFor.me
We live in an attention-deficit economy, and being brief is both desperately needed and rarely delivered.
When we are not clear and concise, there are consequences. Time, money and resources are wasted. Decisions are made in confusion, great ideas don’t get pursued, and deals take far too long to close.
This book is all about getting your story straight, and then getting to the point. Quickly.
Join us for the next 12 minutes as we explore how to communicate your message briefly, and powerfully. As author Joseph McCormack points out – it’s like Six Sigma for your mouth.
Let’s get started.
Why Brevity Is Vital
These days, everybody is busy. Especially executives. Your rambling marketing message or sales pitch is likely to get lost in the daily flood of information they struggle to stay on top of.
As McCormack points out, being brief is not just about time. The more important point is how it feels to the audience. It’s not about using the least amount of time. It’s about making the most of the time you have.
There are three things you need in order to adhere to the principles of brevity – be concise, clear, and compelling. What follows naturally from this is that you also need to have a through understanding of your subject matter.
Mindful of Mind-filled-ness
Living in a world full of distractions means that the people around you are mentally stretched. That makes getting to your point before your audience gets distracted an imperative.
There are 4 main sources of pressure your audience is battling as you try and get your point across:
- Information overload, which has gotten worse as social media and email invades our lives more and more every day;
- Inattention, causing them to struggle with paying attention longer than 10 seconds at a time;
- Interruptions, which means that there are many different things competing for attention at all times;
- Impatience for creating results, which causes people to be stressed almost all the time.
Here’s the point. Even if you are given 30 minutes to make a presentation, you have far less than that before your audience tunes you out.
Why You Struggle with Brevity: The Seven Capital Sins
In spite of the evidence that brevity is a necessity in today’s world, it turns out to be difficult to master because of what McCormack calls the “seven capital sins.”
- Cowardice. You don’t have the guts to be clear and take a stand on the issue, so you mask your message in mounds of jargon and buzzwords.
- Confidence. You know the material so well and can’t help explaining it in painful detail.
- Callousness. You don’t respect people’s time. When you say “this will only take a minute”, it ends up taking many times that.
- Comfort. When you are comfortable with an audience, you let yourself get wordy and drag the story out.
- Confusion. You tend to do your thinking out loud, not mindful that your audience would rather hear the finished product.
- Complication. You think that the issue is really complicated, missing the point that your job is to simplify it for people.
- Carelessness. You don’t think about what you are going to say deeply enough, and so your message gets mixed up.
Brevity Tool #1: BRIEF Maps
People who start to gain experience in making presentations and sales pitches mistakenly abandon outlines, thinking they are a tool that only rookies use.
Professionals understand that an outline is critical to their success. McCormack tells us that there are five immediate benefits you’ll get by using them.
Outlines keep you:
- Prepared, so you are ready to deliver your message.
- Organized, so you understand how all of your ideas connect.
- Clear, so you are certain what your point is.
- Contextual, so you can draw a bigger picture so your point stands out.
- Confident, so that you know what to say, inside and out.
The BRIEF way to do an outline is organized as follows:
- B: Background or beginning;
- R: Reason or relevance;
- I: Information for inclusion;
- E: Ending or conclusion;
- F: Follow-up or questions you expect to be asked or that you might ask;
This format can be used for anything you need to present – from an important project update to your team to the most important sales pitch of your life.
Now that we’ve covered how to outline your message, let’s move on to how to deliver it.
Brevity Tool #2: The Role of Narratives
Bore your audience to death with corporate-speak and they’ll tune you out faster than you can say “next slide.” But tell them a good story and they’ll gladly give you their undivided attention.
McCormack introduces us to the idea of the Narrative Map to help us do just that. There are five elements in the map.
The focal point
This is the central part of the story, and tells the audience what it’s about. For instance, at the beginning of his presentation launching the iPhone, Steve Jobs said “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
Setup or challenge
In the context of a marketing or sales message, this is the challenge, conflict, or issue in the marketplace that your organization is addressing. Every great story includes a dragon that needs to be slayed.
Opportunity
This is about communicating the opportunity that the challenge poses. Some people call this an unmet need or an aha moment.
Approach
Now we move on to how the story unfolds. This is the how, where and when of your story, describing how you’ll solve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity. There are usually three or four key points to be made here.
Payoff
All good stories include a payoff at the end. This is where you paint the picture of what life looks like for your audience after your solution is implemented.
So that’s how you outline and then craft a narrative that gets communicated clearly, concisely and powerfully.
Let’s now move our attention to a method for being clear in our every day conversations with the people around us.
Brevity Tool #3: Controlled Conversations and TALC Tracks
As McCormack points out, if we are undisciplined in how we present information, we are even more undisciplined in how we have our daily conversations.
Being brief in a conversational setting means shifting from endless monologues to what he calls having controlled conversations. These conversations have a rhythm, a purpose, and a point.
In order to get conversations right, there are things you need to do, and things you need to avoid.
Let’s start with the three common mistakes that draw people into long, unwieldy conversations:
- Passive listening: Letting the other person babble on about everything and say nothing. As a result, there is no control.
- Waiting your turn: Letting the person talk, then jumping in to say your part. As a result, two separate conversations are happening.
- Impulsively reacting: Responding to a word or thought the other person said. As a result, there is no clear direction in the conversation.
Now let’s move to a structure for balance and brevity. McCormack calls these TALC Tracks.
T is for Talk
Somebody in the conversation starts talking. It could be you or the other person. There are two things to consider at this stage:
- Be prepared to say something when the other person finishes speaking.
- Make sure your response has a clear point.
AL is for Actively Listen
Listen closely to what the other person is saying the entire time. Don’t zone out, multitask, or otherwise take your attention off the other person. There are two things to consider at this stage:
- Ask open-ended questions related to what you heard.
- Dig deeper into the parts of the topic you are genuinely interested in.
C is for Converse
When a natural pause happens in the conversation, it’s your turn to jump in with a comment, question, or sometimes a bridge to another topic. There are three things for you to consider at this stage:
- Don’t use your turn to start a new conversation.
- Keep your responses short.
- Know when to stop so the other person can start talking again.
When and Where to be Brief
Now that we’ve covered the foundations of how to be brief, let’s go into some specific examples of when and where to be brief.
In Meetings
We all know that meetings suck. There are three villains that you need to slay in order to make them suck less.
- Reduce the amount of time devoted to them. Put the BRIEF back in briefings.
- Consider a standing meeting, or a meeting with no table. And most importantly, meetings should be more like a conversation than a presentation.
- Making sure that no one person dominates your meetings. That includes outside presenters.
Social Media
McCormack suggests that we create social media posts and emails that respect a busy executive’s time. That almost always means making things shorter.
Presentations
The best way to deliver a presentation is to first understand what your audience wants to hear, and then speak to those things, and those things only.
Job Interviews
Nobody likes job interviews, and that includes the person doing the hiring. When you are the candidate, create a BRIEF Map that quickly explains why you are qualified. Then, tell a story that shares some of your past successes that demonstrate what your potential employer is looking for.
Sharing Good and Bad News
When you are sharing good or bad news with your team, always get to the point quickly. Then, let some time for the news to sink in and leave time for them to ask questions.
When you are delivering bad news in particular, consider three important issues:
- State bad news simply and clearly, without pulling punches.
- State the real reasons for the bad news so people know what’s happening.
- Take advantage of tough situations to have a heart-to-heart.
Conclusion
Everybody is busy. The world is begging you to get to the point quickly.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt once famously said:
Be sincere, Be brief, Be seated.
and see how this tool can you build your company for long term success.
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Is your company built for long term success?
Each month I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.
There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.
If you are like my clients, you work hard learning how to grow your company or organization. You invest the time and money to improve your team for better results and increased value.
How can you build your company for long term success?
Read on…
Built To Last
by Jim Collins
Some companies are built to be very successful for a very long time. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras teach us how to do it.
In Built To Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras research and explain the characteristics of companies that have massive success over a long period of time.
These companies are:
- Premier institutions in their industry
- Widely admired by knowledgable businesspeople
- Made an significant impact in the world
- Had multiple generations of CEOs
- Been through multiple product (or service) life cycles
- Were founded before 1950
How do we know that these companies are so valuable? They compared these visionary companies with a comparison company that were founded at a similar time and in a similar industry. Think Ford vs GM, or HP vs Texas Instruments. In other words, other solid companies that were better than the general market.
They found that $1 invested in the comparison companies would have returned two times what the general market would have returned. But the visionary companies would have returned fifteen times the general market.
In essence, these companies have something to teach us about what it takes to be very good, for a very long time.
How did they do it? Let’s find out.
Clock Building, Not Time Telling
The authors use the metaphor of building a clock versus telling the time to make the first important distinction between the visionary companies and the comparison companies.
When you are merely telling the time, you are focussed on having a great idea or being a charismatic company leader.
Instead, a clock builder focusses on building a great company that can thrive beyond any product cycle or leader.
Interestingly, few of the great companies in their study can trace their roots back to a great idea or excellent initial product. Some of them began as outright failures.
When Masaru Ibuka founded Sony in 1945, he had no initial product idea. After considering bean-paste soup and miniature golf equipment as two potential first products, they settled on their first product – a rice cooker. It’s first significant product – a tape recorder – failed in the marketplace.
For the visionary companies, a runaway hit product was never the ultimate goal. Creating an enduring company was. As the authors describe it, the shift was in seeing the products as a vehicle to create the company instead of the company as a vehicle to create products.
The builders of the visionary companies were ready to kill or revise a failing product, but were never willing to give up on the company.
Something very interesting happens when you focus on creating an enduring company instead of great products – you realize that you don’t need a high-profile charismatic leader to succeed.
“Tyranny of the OR”
Another interesting thing the authors found was that the visionary companies didn’t seem to make the trade-offs that most companies would make.
Where most companies would make a choice – you can have change OR stability, or low cost OR high quality – the visionary companies would find ways to have both at the same time.
More Than Profits
Visionary companies exist to do more than just make money, where the comparison companies typically don’t.
If you go to business school they’ll teach you that the core purpose of a company is to make money for it’s shareholders. Making money is obviously necessary for a company to survive. Only in Silicon Valley can companies go on for years burning through mountains of cash and still stay in business.
But the visionary companies don’t put profit first – their put their hopes and dreams for what the company can do beyond creating a profit first.
This is what the authors call the core ideology of the company. It is a set of basic precepts that say this is who we are, this is what we stand for, and this is what we are all about.
The core ideology is a combination of core values and purpose.
The core values of a company are the essential and enduring principles that drive all decision making at the company. The Johnson and Johnson Credo is an often cited example (go look it up if you have some time). They remain fixed over time, the bedrock on which the entire company is built.
The purpose of a company is the set of fundamental reasons for the company’s existence beyond just making money. The purpose should be broad, fundamental and enduring. It is something to continuously pursue, not to achieve.
As Walt Disney once said:
Disneyland will never be completed, as long as there is imagination left in the world.
Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., the son of IBM’s founder and the 2nd president of the company, sums up what the authors are getting at in this section of the book when we says:
“If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except its basic beliefs as it moves through corporate life…The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.”
Preserving the core while stimulating progress is the central concept of this book.
Stimulating progress in the visionary companies is an internal drive, not an external one. They don’t wait for the market to tell them it’s time to improve. They feel compelled to do it on their own – like a great artist feels compelled to create.
The trick is to have a firm understanding of what your core actually is. Most companies in the comparison group mistake strategies and tactics for their core, and thus don’t change their strategies and tactics readily enough.
Unfortunately, that also allows them to drift from their core purpose, leading to the double whammy of a rudderless company fixated on tactics and strategies that will eventually stop working.
Now that we’ve got the core idea of the book nailed down, it’s time to move onto the five categories of preserving the core and stimulating progress you can use to become a visionary company.
Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)
Although I have a natural fear of things that are big and hairy, I’m willing to make an exception here.
BHAGs are commitments to challenging and often risky goals toward which a visionary company channels its efforts.
It’s the difference between having a good old regular goal, to becoming committed to a huge and daunting challenge. The most often quoted BHAG of all-time is when Kennedy told the world the US would land a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s were up.
In order to work, the BHAG needs to be clear and compelling. Your people need to “get it” right away – it should take little or no explanation.
GEs goal in the 1980s fit the bill. Their goal was to “Become #1 or #2 in every market we serve and revolutionize this company to have the speed and agility of a small enterprise.”
When you read your BHAG, there should be some part of you that tells you that you’ve set yourself an unreasonable goal. But there should be another part of you that tells you that you can do it anyways.
People outside your organization will think (and sometimes tell you right to your face) that you are crazy.
But when you set it right, it will galvanize the energy of your entire company towards achieving it.
Cult-like Cultures
The visionary companies build a culture that is a great place to work only for those who buy in to the core ideology. Those who don’t fit in with it are ejected like a virus, which helps to preserve the core.
That’s because when you are very clear about what you stand for, and very clear about where you are heading (someplace amazing and scary at the same time), you tend to be more demanding of your people.
This causes some people to compare these types of companies to cults. In fact, as the authors point out, they do share at least four characteristics with them.
- a fervently held ideology
- indoctrination
- tightness of fit
- elitism
When you show up to a visionary company, you are going to be reminded of your purpose and BHAG on a regular basis. You’ll be rewarded in many ways if you become a permanent part of the team. And you’ll feel a sense of elitism because out of all of your friends, you’ll be the only one working on a mission greater than earning a paycheque.
To make the comparison complete, the people around you will probably accuse you of “drinking the Cool-Aid.”
But that’s ok – that’s what it takes to become a visionary company.
One last point on this topic – this is NOT about creating a cult of personality – this is about creating a cult of purpose and mission.
Try a Lot of Stuff and Keep What Works
To me, this sounds an awful lot like what people today would call the Lean Startup method. Or at least the beginnings of it.
In visionary companies we see high levels of action and experimentation – often planned and undirected – that produce new and unexpected paths of progress that enable visionary companies to mimic the biological evolution of species.
As Richard Carlton, the former CEO of 3M once said:
“Our company has, indeed, stumbled onto some of its new products. But never forget that you can only stumble if you are moving.”
Many of the visionary companies made transitions from one market to another not because of detailed strategic planning, but by experimentation, opportunism, and sometimes by accident.
American Express started off as a freight business in 1850. One of the things they originally shipped was cold hard cash (think of a Brinks truck today and you get the idea). The creation of money orders forced a decline in demand for their cash shipping service, so they created their own money order, which they called the “Express Money Order.” That started their transformation into the financial juggernaut we know today.
Each of the visionary companies exhibited this kind of behaviour. 3M famously created the Post-It note as a failed experiment into a permanent adhesive, which one of their engineers used to mark pages in his church hymnal. The rest, as they say, is history.
If you want to create a culture where evolutionary progress takes hold, start with these five principles.
- Give it a try—and quick!. Try new things, adjust to what you find, and for heaven’s sake, keep moving.
- Accept that mistakes will be made. The nature of experimentation is that you don’t know what you’ll find. So some things will work, and others won’t. Accept that mistakes will be part of the process.
- Take small steps. Small steps serve two purposes. First, any small mistake won’t sink the company. Second, many small steps put together are what it takes to make real progress.
- Give people the room they need. Give your people the latitude to try new things.
- Build the clock. Turn the previous four steps into something that becomes part of your culture.
Home-grown Management
In visionary companies we see a lot more promotion from within the company, which means that the senior management is always filled with people who’ve spend a significant amount of time immersed in the core ideology of the company.
This one is pretty straight-forward and doesn’t require much more explanation.
Just remember that you need to have a management development process and long-term succession planning in place to ensure a smooth transition from one generation to the next.
If you are doing a good job of developing talent internally and keeping them indoctrinated in your core purpose, you should have no problem finding your next great executive from your ranks.
Good Enough Never Is
In the visionary companies, we see a “continual process of relentless self-improvement with the aim of doing better and better, forever into the future.”
The critical question for each of the visionary companies is not “how are we doing compared to our competition?”, it is “how can we do better tomorrow than we did today.”
In fact, visionary companies will go to great lengths to ensure that they create discomfort so that they can create change before the external world demands it.
As an example, in the early 1930s, P&G already had the best products, the best people, and the best marketing. So they designed a brand management structure that allowed P&G brands to compete directly with other P&G brands.
In each of the visionary companies the authors found some sort of discomfort mechanisms to combat complacency – which is something that the best in any field have to combat.
Boeing had a practice they called “eyes of the enemy”, where they assigned managers the tasks of coming up with business plans with the sole purpose of destroying Boeing. Then they would come up with plans to respond to those (imagined, but very real) threats.
The goal for the visionary companies is to ensure the long-term health of the company, which requires constant investment into the future. This includes when times are good, and when times are bad. Long-term health is never sacrificed in the name of short-term profits.
Conclusion
Interestingly, much of what was written about these Built To Last companies is coming back into fashion about 35 years later.
What I want to suggest is that these principles were once required if you wanted to build a great and enduring company. These days, it seems as though you need to follow these principles if you merely want to survive.
Companies with long term success have strong teams.
Our Team Strength tools help companies maintain the focus on developing the most successful teams. When there is a need for an infusion of talent we use a Team approach in the selection process for those new employees.
By enlisting the help of existing team members, we efficiently identify qualified candidates while also determining their values and fit to the culture of the organization. As a result, in 60% of our engagements our clients have identified and hired two candidates for each available position.
Please share this summary with a friend/colleague
How Successful is Your Team?
“The only meaningful measure of a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.”
Each month I share a favorite book review from Readitfor.me.
There is never enough time to read all the latest books – this tool is a great way to learn and to stay on top of the latest topics and new ideas.
If you are like my clients, you work hard learning how to grow your company or organization. You invest the time and money to improve your team for better results and increased value.
How successful is your team? Are you leading your team to success?
Read on.
Extreme Ownership
by Jocko Willink Leif Babin
Readitfor.me Review:
“So, there I was.…”
According to the authors of Extreme Ownership, this is how every story told by a Navy SEAL starts off.
“So there I was, pinned down by heavy fire, with only two rounds left in my rifle”. You know, the type of stories that probably would have turned out differently if you or I were the protagonist.
So here I am, trying to boil down some of the best leadership advice I’ve read in a long time into something you can read over your morning coffee. (Luckily, this is about as difficult as things get over here).
As Jocko Willink and Leif Babin tell us, “The only meaningful measure of a leader is whether the team succeeds or fails.” So get ready to take a good hard look at yourself as a leader, and prepare to start thinking differently about how you control your destiny.
Principle #1: Extreme Ownership
This section starts off with a story about a mission that almost blows up in their face – literally. Due to miscommunication between the Navy SEALs unit and a Marines unit there was a “blue-on-blue”.Which means that the Marines and Navy SEALs had mistakenly been firing on each other. One Navy SEAL took some shrapnel in the face, but miraculously nobody had been seriously injured or killed.
Situations like this aren’t taken lightly, and Willink thought that his career as a team leader could be coming to an abrupt end as a result. His boss and an investigating officer came in from another camp to dig in and find out what had happened.
Many things had gone wrong, and it would have been easy to point fingers at the people who had made the mistakes that day to try and escape the heat. But that’s not Willink did. He stood up in front of the group, including his commanding officer, and said:
“There is only one person to blame for this: me. I am the commander. I am responsible for the entire operation…And I will tell you this right now: I will make sure that nothing like this ever happens to us again.”
No matter what situation you find yourself in, you alone are responsible for the success or failure of your team. Period. If you do fail, you must accept full responsibility and then develop a plan to win.
As a leader, you not only take ownership of your role, you are responsible for anything that impacts your mission – including your people. If a person under your command is not performing up to par, you must train and mentor them. If they continue to underperform, then you must be loyal to the mission above all else and find somebody who can get the job done.
Principle #2: There are no bad teams, only bad leaders
If you’ve ever watched a video of Navy SEALs going through Hell Week (if you haven’t, hop over to Youtube and search for “Navy SEALs Hell Week”), you’ve seen them inside black inflatable rafts paddling through the ocean.Each class of SEAL recruits are split into teams that compete with one another over the course of the week. Each team is given a leader, who is in charge of getting the best out of his men in gruelling circumstances.
One year, Babin recounts, one of the teams was winning each race (Boat II) and another team was consistently coming in last (Boat VI). So one of the instructors decided to run a little leadership experiment. The leaders of the two teams would switch boats to see if the lacklustre performance of Boat VI could be explained by a lack of leadership.
The leader of Boat VI was understandably excited, because he had been dealt a hand of lousy recruits and simply couldn’t win with such a weak team. The leader of Boat II wasn’t happy, but quietly went to work figuring out how to get them to perform at a higher level than they were used to.
Right on cue, Boat VI was spurred on by their new leader and started to win every race, with Boat II having to settle battling for second place.
This highlights one of the most important leadership principles you will ever learn – that leadership is the greatest factor in any team’s performance.
Principle #3: You have to believe if you want to win
The SEAL team the authors fought with was called Task Unit Bruiser, which was the same unit that Chris Kyle – author of American Sniper – belonged to. They had a fearsome reputation as being the most lethal fighting unit in the Iraq War, and possibly ever.So when they were told that in order to run any mission they had to bring along Iraqi soldiers with them, they weren’t too happy. As Willink describes it, heading out into Ramadi (where they were fighting) was dangerous enough.
Imagine one day having another Navy SEAL literally watch your back as you complete your mission, to having somebody you don’t know with inferior training and questionable loyalty take their place.
Willink knew that if he didn’t understand and believe in the mission, his team wouldn’t tow the line either. And that might cost them their lives.
As it turns out, the reason higher ups had mandated that the Iraqi forces join the fight with the SEALs was that if they didn’t get Iraqis “on-the-job” training, they might not ever be able to complete the securing of Iraq. Without that, they might never go home.
So once Willink understood and bought into the “why” behind the mission, he was able to communicate the message with clarity and with confidence to his team. Once they understood why they were being asked to take on more risk and danger during their missions, they were able to move on and get to work.
The same goes for you in your role. If there’s anything that your are working on that you don’t completely believe in, you need to get that resolved – quickly.
As the authors note:
In order to convince and inspire others to follow and accomplish a mission, a leader must be a true believer in the mission.
Principle #4: Check your ego
Because of the need to sometimes blend in with the local population in the Middle East, Navy SEALs are known for growing beards and generally not keeping up a “disciplined appearance.” Unfortunately, they are sometimes also known for being arrogant.The authors tell the story of one Navy SEAL unit being shipped in to work out of a base that was owned and operated by the Army.
They rolled into town wearing baseball caps, cutoff shirts and egos that Donald Trump would approve of. This didn’t mix well with the extremely disciplined routine the Army soldiers were required to follow. The colonel in charge of the base mandated this discipline because they were in the most dangerous part of Iraq, and any slip up in protocol, no matter how small, could cost them their lives.
Not only were these SEALs condescending to the Army soldiers, they weren’t interested in learning what the Army had learned running missions in Ramadi.
Ultimately, the SEAL group was asked to leave the base even though they were very capable and could have greatly helped their cause.
While belief in yourself and your team is crucial, having an outsized ego will only get in your way. It can cloud your judgment and get in the way of taking on constructive criticism.
As the authors point out, the most difficult ego to deal with is usually your own.
Principle #5: Cover and Move.
In the business world, when you hear the word “Teamwork” you might automatically picture some cheesy motivational poster with a group of people all rowing in the same direction. It’s very easy to dismiss the idea of teamwork as a bunch of you-know-what.But in combat, you literally rely on the other people you work with to keep you alive.
When they find themselves taking enemy fire and need to get from one place to another, SEALs operate a tactic called “Cover and Move”. Basically it means teamwork. One section of a team lays down fire on the enemy while another section moves forward and takes some ground. Then the reverse happens so the team who was laying down the fire can get caught up.
As a leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that when your team encounters trouble that their first instinct is to work together to find a way out rather than pointing fingers.
How can you tell if your teams are working together closely or if they are just giving it lip-service? Pay attention to the off-hand comments that they make. If your sales team calls your production team the “order prevention department”, for instance, that might be your cue to dig a little deeper to get things back on track.
There are enough enemies outside of your walls to deal with, right?
Principle #6: Keep things simple
If you are going to accomplish your mission, your people need to understand the plan. Even more important, when things go wrong, your team needs to understand how to fix it. This is almost impossible if your team doesn’t understand the mission, or the strategy you are using to accomplish it.Keeping things as simple as possible is the only way your team is going to be able to understand and execute. Why? Because your plan is almost always more complicated than you think it is. And no matter how well your plan is prepared, things almost always go wrong and decisions need to be made on the fly. If your team doesn’t understand the plan, it crumbles under it’s own weight at the first sign of trouble.
A great example of this in the business world is the commission structure you create for your sales people. If your team doesn’t completely understand how the work they do impacts their bonus level, you will never get the type of behaviour you are trying to encourage.
If your plan requires your sales people to pull out a calculator on every deal to understand what they are going to get paid on an order, it’s too complicated.
Principle #7: Leaders need to prioritize and execute.
When you find yourself in a situation where you are taking fire from all sides and everything seems to be falling apart around you, what do you do?Relax, look around, and make a call.
No matter what is going on around you, your job as a leader is to keep moving forward by making the best possible decision, given the circumstances.
The authors give us a step-by-step plan for getting things done when chaos erupts. First, decide what the highest priority problem is. You can only solve one thing at a time, so start with the most important.
Second, in clear and simple terms, tell your team what you’ll be focussing on.
Third, create a solution to the problem, seeking input both up and down the chain.
Finally, direct the execution of that solution, making sure all of your team’s efforts are focussed there until the plan is executed.
Rinse, wash, repeat.
Principle #8: Decentralized Command
In order for your team to execute your plan, teams must be broken down into small and manageable sizes, making sure to decentralize command so that front-line employees are empowered to make decisions.As human beings, we are not equipped to manage more than ten people at any one time, especially when problems come up and decisions need to be made quickly.
There are a few things that need to be in place in order for this to work.
First, senior leaders must communicate constantly and consistently with their front-line to ensure that the have the right information to make the right decisions. Your team must be crystal clear about the mission and strategy at all times.
Second, the front-line team must believe that senior leaders will have their back if they make decisions that are consistent with the mission and the strategy, even when they go wrong. It only takes one situation where a front-line employee doesn’t feel supported to grind decision making to a halt.
Lastly, like we’ve discussed before, the mission and the strategy must be simple so that you avoid the game of “broken telephone” that could easily occur with complex instructions.
Conclusion:
The best leaders practice Extreme Ownership
Are you ready to practice Extreme Ownership in your business and life?
Why Community Service
Congratulation to Dr. Jack Mitchell who has received two new awards from his involvement in the community. One of the awards is Volunteer of the Year Award from an organization that focuses on providing safe space and assistance primarily to women and children involved in domestic violence. The second new award is from the local Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Jack received the prestigious President’s Award for “dedication, hard-work and commitment”.
There are great reasons and benefits to volunteering:
- Good for your health
- Learn new skills
- Gain professional experience
- Make a difference/improve lives
- Get to know your community
- Challenge yourself
- Connect with others
Strengthen your Team by Connecting your WHY with volunteering in your community.
Tracy Levy, SafeSpace director of Development; Dr. Jack Mitchell, St. Lucie Volunteer of the Year; Janet Farnan-Dyer, SafeSpace Resource & Volunteer Coordinator
We are proud to present our St. Lucie County Volunteer of the Year, Dr. Jack Mitchell. Dr. Jack’s contribution as a Board Member and Advocate in the community creates future financial sustainability to help us save and change lives of victims and their families. Thank you Dr. Jack for your endless dedication to SafeSpace and our mission. We appreciate all that you do!!
Why Community Service
A conversation with Dr. Jack Mitchell
Dr. Jack, congratulation on your two new community service awards.
I feel such gratitude, and simply want to give back. I have a strong awareness of how fortunate and how blessed I am in life, an awareness of “why” I am here on earth. Volunteerism simply flows as a result of this gratefulness.
I like the quote by the famous lecturer and writer, Jim Rohm:
“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.”
I draw from this: Know your personal “why” ; set your sail accordingly because the winds of life will challenge all of us; be grateful for your blessings; and be generous with your time, talent and treasure.
The Why is about how you feel – and we are inspired by that which moves us and connects us to other people. Dr. Jack Mitchell shares his why:
As a volunteer, I am impressed with the dedication and love of so many staff employees. They give of their time and talent so very generously to their organizations and the people they serve.
My Why is to help people grow personally and professionally.
I have been blessed with exceptional education, corporate and entrepreneurial experiences. I am passionate to use all these to help people. It feels great to give back.
Communication starts by understanding yourself and then listening to others. How have you used your understanding of Team Strength DISC to help you to be a better volunteer?
The Team Strength DISC profiles and chart, are tools that I can use in every aspect of my life: work, volunteering and personal interactions. I have been involved with this process and system for more than 30 years. Using these tools has helped me to develop the sensitivity to assess and communicate effectively. This was not always the case, years ago, I would make assumptions, mis-read people and miss opportunities.
I still do day, but hopefully nowhere near what I did years ago. What a powerful tool for all of us today. The more you practice, the better you get. Whether in business, in family matters, or in general communication, the Team Strength DISC Profiles are marvelous help to better communication.
Communication is life’s most important skill- better communication make for a better life.
Set your organizations sails by improving the quality of your teams’s communication. Get started now on your Team Strength- call 772-210-4499 or email for more information or to set up and an account.
How Do Others Hear You?
Answer: It’s not what you say – it’s what they hear.
Effective communication ensures that others hear what we mean.
What if you could have an enhanced view of your communication interaction with others? Often times, what we say and what others hear are two very different things. Managers and business leaders often persist in communication and organizational practices believing everyone recognizes their “obvious” intentions, overlooking costly misinterpretations that stem from different behavioral styles. Those challenges lead to workplace inefficiencies that that were difficult to resolve— until now!
Team Strength
Our Team Strength Interactive Tool significantly improves a manager’s effectiveness in critical, real time communication with employees.
We Leverage the insights of the DISC profile with a web based tool to conveniently identify and address the specific obstacles to teamwork and better results.
- Strategize difficult conversations.
- Coach employees to effectively communicate with each other.
- Maximize your team dynamics.
Contact us for a complimentary demonstration.
Plan now for Spring and Summer Workshops and Training Programs
Each of our workshops can be customized to the current needs and challenges of your organization. They are engaging, enlightening and fun and will lead to improved cooperation and interaction.
Workshop Portfolio
Want to improve quality of your company’s communication? Get started now on your Team Strength- call 772-210-4499 or email for more information or to set up and an account.
Tim Kinane
Tim is a Consultant to Business, Government and Not-for-Profits Organizations specializing in innovative and challenging ways for organizations to survive, to thrive and to build their teams.
