How do you make decisions? March 18, 2008
If you are like most people, you don’t know the process you go through to make a decision. It happens quickly, naturally, and without our awareness.
The easiest ways to discover how you make a decision, is to take 4 of your friends out to dinner.
When you are handed a menu, place it closed in front of you and watch your friends. Notice how one might ask what someone else is going to have. Notice another might read through every item. Another might glance at the menu and close it. The fourth will do something different.
Once they have made their choice, pick on one of your friends with these questions. (I’ll leave the decision of which one to pick up to you, but if you’ve worked with me before, you’ll know my selection criteria).
“What have you chosen?” Listen closely to the answer. They will likely tell you everything about their decision process. Once they finish, ask:
“What made you choose that?” And again listen to their answer.
If you’re lucky, they’ll say something like “I looked through the menu till I found the dish I had before,” or “I opened the menu and picked the first thing I noticed.” If you’re unlucky, they’ll give you a long rambling story about their childhood. Both will tell you how they made that decision.
Now comes the real challenge. Pick up your menu and use their method to choose food for yourself. This doesn’t mean choose the same dish (although you might). If they choose something they have had before, then you do the same. If they choose the first thing they see, do the same.
Doing this can give you a powerful insight into your own decision method (and might have you eating something new - always a bonus!).
So after doing this, what does that get you?
- It gives you skills to notice someone else’s decision method. This in itself is useful for sales, negotiation, business or making your partner happy because if you know how someone makes a decision, simply give them the information they need to make the decision you want.
- You get insight into your own process. Even though you are only choosing what to eat, the chances are this is the same process you go through to pick a car, house, shoes or a pen.
- You now have another way to make a choice. Chances are you may not like this new method - thats ok, you don’t have to use it. You can keep it in your back pocket when you want a change, or are faced with a very difficult decision.
Notice how the people around you make decisions. Notice how you make your own decisions.
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Decisions, Group Dynamics, Learning, Management, Motivation, Negotiation, Persuasion, Psychology, Sales
5 steps to becoming a manager or leader December 6, 2007
Leaders are born and made. Like any skill it takes time, effort and attention to improve.
The following 5 steps can be used to build not only your leadership (or parenting, or work, or employee, or management) skills, but also the coherence of your team, and those around you.
1. Make your clear goal and instructions.
Make your goals clear and give reasons. Once you’ve done this, ask for questions. You can find what I think are the questions to ask here. If you screw this step up (and many people do) it undermines your leadership and damages your teams ability to do their job.
2. Establish open communication.
This is commonly called the ‘open door policy’. Allow everyone to come to your with their problems. That doesn’t mean you fix the problem, just that you are at least aware and can act. Having open communication gives you direct feedback to ensure you don’t fall into one of the biggest risks of leadership.
3. Act quickly with problems.
This shows everyone how to deal with problems. Everyone in your team looks to the leaders how to act. If you float around, unable to make a decision, it will kill morale and confidence. The problems you avoid get bigger. You are a leader, and leaders solves problems and remove limits.
4. Insist the team report all the news.
Good and bad. If you get only good news, you are unable to fix the problems. If you get only problems, you also damage morale by not celebrating the wins. And the worst case is when you get no news.
5. Use crisis as a method to develop people.
If a crisis happens, don’t take the problem from the person. Help them solve it. Help them find the opportunity in crisis. Help them develop, design and implement good solutions. This helps you, as they are able to be comfortable and deal with bigger problems in the future, and also give them more confidence in you as a leader.
Through using these 5 points you are leading by example and doing what the very best leaders are renowned for; Developing the people around them.
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Communication, Leadership, Management, Team building
Ultimate question of team management November 13, 2007
If you are a leader, then this is the simplest question that will get you the best results to keep your teams working well together. Ask it, and your team will love you. Skip it and you might never know about how bad the team is.
Did you hire the right person?
In February 2007 a manager asked me for some advice. A few weeks prior he had hired a new person and thought they were a great fit into the office. Even though this new person was hired to take the pressure off, it didn’t seem to make any difference. The manager was asking me how he could update the procedures to make things work more efficiently. As usual, I asked him a question in response, “What do your team members say?”
“I don’t know,” He replied. “I’ve not asked them.”
I looked at him, he stared back. Then he got up and started asking people in the office. Five minutes later he returned with the answer. The new guy was just not working out.
Ask this question when you add a new person to your team. This question will quickly identify if the new person fits within the team, is disruptive, supportive, negative or positive for the team. The question will allow you to find out if you made the right decision in hiring the new person faster than any other method I know. Discover if they really can integrate into and improve the group dynamics.
Use it as a pressure gauge
Ask the question at least once a week as a gauge on how well the team is working together. Ask it of different people within the group - as each person will have a different answer. With each answer, you’ll be able to build a complete picture of the social dynamics within the team.
Build a complete picture of your Group Dynamics
It is a very simple question with many many answers. Each time you ask the question, the answers will be different. Ask it when the group is under pressure, ask it when they have free time. Ask when a new person joins the team or when someone leaves.
I know I’ve labored the point somewhat, but I don’t think I can express any better how important this question is to running an effective team. The question can be asked in any form, but the most common is:
“What do you think about [insert the name of another member of the team]?”
Encourage their self interest
Make it clear when you ask the question, that you want their personal opinion. Some will tell you that so-and-so is disruptive, argumentative and difficult to deal with. This information is pure gold! If everyone in the team says the same, you may well have a problem. If only one person says it, you have something different.
Ask them all!
In July of 2007 I had one manager almost destroy his team by asking this question only to one member. The team saw this, and reacted like most people - by ostracizing the ’snitch’. The team started having secret meetings and private email communications. Make sure you ask every member of the team, about every other member of the team. If you skip one, you run the risk of causing a similar situation.
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Change, Communication, Group Dynamics, Leadership, Management, Productivity, Team building
The worst position to be in is September 30, 2007
When you are making mistakes, and no body is pointing these mistakes out to you.
What this really means that the people around you have given up on you. They might have tried to point out mistakes in the past, but have learnt that it makes no difference. So they keep these thoughts to themselves.
If you can’t accept or don’t get feedback, then it’ll be just like not watering your household plants. You’ll live for a time but eventually you’ll wither and die.
Technorati Tags: CEO, Change, Communication, Leadership, Management
Business and leadership is about removing limits July 20, 2007
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction.”
~ Albert Einstein
These limits might be your own, limits of those around you, limits of the industry or even limits of humanity.
A good example of this is the Medicine industry. Working towards removing the limits of illness, sickness and accidents (genetic deformities etc). Think of Cochlear implants as a specific example - removing the limits placed on individuals thanks to genetics or accidents.
It is not the development of some new gizmo that makes one company profit, it’s removing limitations. A superb example for this is the blog you are reading right now. The boom in blogs over the last few years has been because it is so easy - anyone can, within 5 minutes, have a running blog. Five years ago, you needed knowledge and experience to achieve the same result.
Henry Ford made the car. But that’s not what made him wealthy and the car such a common item. It was the Ford company consistently focusing on removing the production limitations. Little by little making it easier and cheaper to produce.
You can hold this idea for yourself every day. Focus on removing limits in what you do and how you do it. Maybe something as simple as having to open a drawer each time you need a pen. Removing that physical limitation can help your day. Maybe it’s something bigger like using a filing cabinet for your documents, or using GTD (Getting Things Done) method of time management or getting into work early to miss the traffic. When you remove or avoid a limit, your productivity increases. Removing these limits for yourself means not only being more effective with work, but also reducing your stress.
Businesses grow and improve through removing limits. Some common examples are automatic printing of invoices, just in time production runs to remove warehousing limits, and mobile phones removing the need to be near a land line. Fedex’s whole premise is to remove the time limits for delivering packages.
And I think the number one job of a leader is to remove limits of the business and their team. That’s not to say the leaders will be able to achieve zero limits, there will be contextual limits, budget limits and more. The limits leadership remove are the limits that constrain the workers within the business and also external situations that limit the business itself. These limits might be cash flow problems, team cohesion, client retention etc. Removing those limits might be a strategy change, responding to customers, or sliming the operations.
What are the limits that are placed on you (or you place on yourself) that can easily be removed? What things limit the people around you that you can remove?
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Change, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Stress
The risks of Leadership July 3, 2007
When I was taught abseiling, the teachers drilled safety over and over again. Ensure you are always anchored, and to check all the major parts of your gear before jumping off. Go through the ABC’s. Anchor - Is your rope secured properly? Belt - Is your harness on correctly, buckle tight? Carabeena - are you tied in correctly?
The day I was learning, one person in the group, James, was learning how to train others.
During the middle of the day, after the beginners had just finished an intermittent level overhang, I watched Gary, our lead instructor, take the rope everyone had just finished using and intentionally tie a large knot about half way down. He then instructed James to tie off and begin abseiling down. James was naturally a little apprehensive. Gary had to spend several minutes convincing James that this was part of his testing.
Gary followed James down on a parallel rope. All the while James was very concerned about the knot, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to complete the jump.
As James approached the knot, he stopped about a meter above it, secured himself then began to untie the knot. Gary quickly stopped him. “That’s not the test. What happens if you can’t untie the knot, or there is some other obstruction?”
“I want you to continue all the way down, until the knot is hard against your figure 8″ (A figure 8 is the part that connects the rope to your harness).
“No,” said James. “I can’t get out from there if I do that.”
Again Gary was insistent. “Go down the rope until the knot is hard into your figure 8.”
James was beginning to get scared. He started stating that he’d never do that, stopping before an obstruction. Every excuse he came up with, Gary came up with another explanation and again told James to comply. All the while both of them were hanging ten meters above jagged rocks.
In the end, James reluctantly complied with the insistent requests. He then used his shoelaces as a method to climb his way back up the rope, disconnect from the rope and reconnect below the knot. Each step of the way he argued, resisted and complained.
This is a superb example one of the major problems leaders experience. The leader knows what needs to be done, and (sometimes) how to do it and then passes this onto the employee. Only to have the employee avoid doing the task, or doing it poorly.
While a leader may be completely comfortable with the given task, the employee may not be. And more importantly, as in the above example, the employee is the one taking the risks. If James fell during that test, Gary would be uninjured, James would be in hospital. The risk James experienced was vastly different that the risk Gary experienced. Yet Gary continued to insist that James followed instructions that were more and more dangerous.
Remember, what you find trivial, other may find difficult, even impossible. What can you do to help people around you through their fears? Who can you contact to help you through yours?
Meetings? Just say ‘no’ April 20, 2007
Seth Godin offers some very good points about meetings. They waste time, increase stress and are usually poorly run.
If you know me at all, you know I’m not a fan of meetings. Most meetings I consider a waste of time. There is, however, a lot that can be done in meetings to get value from them. Seth offers some suggestions, and I have a few more.
My first and foremost one is to ask yourself two questions before the meeting. What is the reason for the meeting? Do I need to make a decision about this? If you don’t need to make a decision, then you can read the meeting notes. If you don’t know what the reason for the meeting is before the meeting, it’s unlikely you’ll know after.
If the reason is just to bring the team together, is it better served with an informal chat over coffee and doughnuts? If the meeting is to update a distributed team, it can be done inside 5 minutes in most cases.
I work with stressed out people often, and I can always point to meetings as a time waster and partial cause. Often meetings will start late and run long. Often no decisions will be made in the meeting and another meeting will need to be scheduled (though this also relates to poor decision making - another of my pet hates!). When I work with these people, I make sure they understand that every meeting is an investment. Not just of their time, but also a percentage of their salary. This is also true for everyone else in the room.
I have a few additional tips to augment Seth’s tips. They are harsh, but most meetings can easily be shortened by at least 5 minutes, without any loss in value.
- Make sure meetings start on time. Lock the door so no one arrives late and disrupts the meeting, or ‘fine’ those arriving late.
- Ensure the meeting finishes on time.
- Ensure every meeting has clear purpose and agenda. Hopefully sent to all attendees a day before the meeting. Also make sure the agenda is listed in order of importance, so if the meeting ends (finishing on time, remember) the important points are covered.
- Note all decisions and action points, including who’s doing what action. At the end of the meeting, review to make sure everyone knows their actions and tasks.
- Start the meeting with “This meeting will only be XX minutes long. If we don’t cover all the points, we will have to postpone them.” Setting the frame of the meeting so everyone knows what’ll happen.
- At any time, you can leave the meeting. If your only reason for being there is complete, leave. If the meeting has wandered off the agenda, either pull it back on track, or leave. If it is running long, leave.
Do you have any more tips?
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Communication, Goalsetting, Leadership, Management, Policy, Proactiveness, Productivity, Stress
Suffering from burnout? December 6, 2006
The New York Magazine is running a feature story on burnout.
They offer some interesting ideas, and point to some of the research that is out there. I’ve been in a similar situation and you can read part of the story here. The rest of the story I’m saving for the introduction of my book on stress reduction. Yes, it’s still being written and researched. Yes, it’ll be ready when it’s ready.
Because of the experience of that story, I’ve collected a professional group together for making sure you don’t burn out, and in case you already have, put you out and fix you up. Details can be found here.
Update: Jory Des Jardins explores the causes of worker burnout. A useful article on the interactions between company culture and worker burnout.
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Change, Productivity, Stress
The DNA of a company October 10, 2006
I was working with a company that was having some morale problems. The management called a meeting to let everyone know about the long term plans for the company. Prior to the meeting, the stories told by employees was that the company was being restructured to sell off. During the meeting, the lead manager (not CEO) of the meeting made comment, “There is no big secret. The changes we have gone through are not just to cut costs, but to also to make the company meaner in the marketplace.”
Sitting at the table, one of the employees actually snorted in disgust. A few others rolled their eyes. This was a clear example of the employee stories having more power than one comment from management. It would have been more effective (assuming the manager didn’t want to give more proof to the established story) if the manager told his own. Something that took the established story and changed it. Something like; “We thought seriously about selling the company, but in the end we realised that would take too much time, effort and money. Instead we decided to not just cut costs, but also make the company meaner in the marketplace.”
The DNA that is the blueprint of your body is contained within every cell. This blueprint holds your genetic heritage, and defines how your cells will develop, the way they will look, and their performance.
Stories are the DNA of a company. The stories that are told from one person to another define where the company is heading, what the culture is, how individual employees know how to respond to a situation. Handed down from the old hands to the new joiners. Think about the company DNA of Google, Apple and IBM. What is their story? Can you imagine the different stories that are told around the water cooler by employees?
How do these stories define their results? How do you know about the different stories from these two companies? Is there a difference between the stories that management tell, and the stories that employees tell?
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Change, Communication, Companies, Leadership, Management, Persuasion, Proactiveness, Storytelling
To Er in speech June 21, 2006
There is unfortunately a common occurrence that to me is like nails being dragged down a blackboard.
It’s the ‘um’ and ‘er’ that some people put into gaps in their speech.
These are sounds added in between words and sentences to fill the silence and tell listeners that the speaker is still speaking. In a normal two way conversation, the people having the conversation take turns to speak. Like a tennis match these turns go back and forth. The listener knows when to speak next, when the ‘ball is in their court’, by waiting for the speaker to be silent. So if the speaker does not want to give up their turn, they add in some form of filler noise. An ‘um’ or ‘err’.
Of course, when someone is presenting there is no need for the filler noises as there is an expectation from everyone that the speaker is not having a back and forth conversation. Yet I’ve seen CEO’s of multi-national companies presenting to a camera and have two or three of these noises in every sentence. It was excruciating for me to watch.
The interesting thing about these filler noises is that they are not needed. Not only not needed when speaking to an audience, but not even needed when speaking one on one. You can keep silent within a conversation, and still hold the speaker position. The most obvious, overt example of this is when the speaker holds up their hand like a stop sign.
You can hold the attention of all listeners with entirely non-verbal methods. Take a look a Tony Blair and Bill Clinton during interviews for examples of this. Watch their behaviour, not what they are saying. Listen to the timing and rhythm and become aware of the silence that they deliberately allow into the speeches.
There are many things that you can do to first stop the habit of ‘um’ and second learning how to keep attention. To start, consciously slow down your rate of speech a little allowing you to listen to your own words and enable you to self edit what you say. And secondly, play with how much you can slow down your speaking and extend the silence without others commenting…
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Persuasion, Presenting