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This is one of my favourite poems about life, it’s titled “There’s a Hole in my Sidewalk“, by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1.

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I cant believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… its a habit.
But, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5.

I walk down another street.

This is a great analogy, which for me, describes the process of change the we all experience as we journey through life……… let’s take a closer look…..

Chapter 1 is where we initially find ourselves, we have a identified that we need to change, “I fall in. I am lost…” but have not taken responsibility for, “It isn’t my fault“. This is the first step in the process of change is to recognise that we have a problem.

In Chapter 2, we fall in the hole, we cannot believe that we’ve fallen in the same hole one more time! We still haven’t taken full responsibility for changing, “it isn’t my fault.” and “It still takes a long time to get out.” Why do I keep falling in this hole? Who’s doing this to me? If other people would just do things in the right way my life would be much easier.

In Chapter 3, we finally realise that we’re part of the problem and decide to take personal responsibility for our situation, “It is my fault. ” and “I get out immediately.“. We realise that we did something, or failed to do something, which has caused us to land in the same hole again. We recognise the pattern and begin to ask questions such as, “what am I thinking and doing that causes me to land in this hole?” Instead of looking for ways to change others we begin to look for ways to change ourselves. We finally accept personal responsibility for falling in the hole!

In Chapter 4 we begin to change our thinking and behaviour and soon we’re have new and different experiences. You have gained a bigger perspective and a deeper understanding of yourself.

In Chapter 5 we have grown and matured, we’ve moved on, we’re waling down new and more interesting streets…!

Technorati Tags: Habit, Change, Psychology, Personal Development, Poetry

“We Learn…
10%…of What We Read
20%…of What We Hear
30%…of What We See
50%…of What We See and Hear
70%…of What We Discuss With Others
80%…of What We Experience Personally
95%…of What We Teach Others” - William Glasser Via: Life 2.0

Getting the message across is one of the most challenging leadership tasks. People are powerfully engaged when they emotionally connect with the leader’s message. Meaningful conversation, shared experiences and teaching are the foundation of emotional connections with others. Weak communication results in emotional detachment and people disengage from the leader’s vision and goals. Effective leaders spend time with their people in conversation and in shared experiences, using their experience to teach and mentor others.

• What’s your primary means of communication?
• Are your people actively engaged in conversation?
• How much time do you spend with your people?
• Do you use shared experiences to teach important lessons?

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Communication, Teach, Strategy, Quotes

An interesting article from Fast Company, “Marcus Buckingham Thinks Your Boss Has an Attitude Problem” by one of my favourite business researchers and authors Marcus Buckingham, he works at the Gallup Organization and his research focuses primarily on making the link between people, their performance, and business results. He the co-author of two best-selling books: “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently“, with co-author Curt Coffman, and “Now, Discover Your Strengths“, with co-author Donald O. Clifton.

Buckingham’s research has involved sifting through 1 Million Gallup surveys seeking to answer the question “What does a strong and vibrant workplace look like?”, his research resulted in identifying 12 key questions, referred to as the Q12, represent the strength of an organisation or work unit.

The 12 Questions That Matter

Marcus Buckingham’s research revealed that a “vibrant workplace” requires that people within an organisation or work unit can provide compelling answer to the following 12 questions. These 12 questions are important in determining whether people are engaged, not engaged, or actively disengaged at work.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment that I need in order to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the past seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission or purpose of my company make me feel that my job is important?
9. Are my coworkers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This past year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

_{(c) 1992-1999, The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.}

The research resulting from answering these 12 questions speaks for itself:

The link between people and performance was vivid. The most “engaged” workplaces (those in the top 25% of Q12 scores) were 50% more likely to have lower turnover, 56% more likely to have higher-than-average customer loyalty, 38% more likely to have above-average productivity, and 27% more likely to report higher profitability.

The research has also highlighted important “attitude adjustments” that management need to make to increase the levels of employee engagement.

Key Attitude Adjustments

Buckingham offered an overview of his research and identified five attitude adjustments that redefine the essence of leadership in business:

Attitude Adjustment #1: Measure what really matters. (By the way — the numbers you’re using now don’t matter.)

You can divide any working population into three categories: people who are engaged (loyal and productive), those who are not engaged (just putting in time), and those who are actively disengaged (unhappy and spreading their discontent). The U.S. working population is 26% engaged, 55% not engaged, and 19% actively disengaged.

In essence, then, the CEO’s job is to improve the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged workers. But here’s the problem: Few of the CEOs in our study could say which work units in their company were effectively engaged and which weren’t. They didn’t know where their culture was strong and where it was weak, whether it was getting better or getting worse.

Attitude Adjustment #2: Stop trying to change people. Start trying to help them become more of who they already are.

You can’t standardize human behavior. Of course, that’s precisely what most leaders attempt to do. That goal — standardizing human behavior — is the driving force behind most executive-training programs and leadership-development courses. What’s the quickest way to build a coherent culture? Get everyone to manage the same way…. The best managers don’t even try to fight that fight. We studied 80,000 of them from 400 different companies — people who excelled at getting great performance from their people. These managers followed the same basic set of principles: People don’t change that much, so don’t waste your time trying to rewire them or trying to put in what was left out. Instead, spend your time trying to draw out what was left in. When it comes to getting the best performance out of people, the most efficient route is to revel in their strengths, not to focus on their weaknesses.

Attitude Adjustment #3: You’re not the most important person in the company. (Believe it or not, your middle managers are.)

Our research tells us that the single most important determinant of individual performance is a person’s relationship with his or her immediate manager. It just doesn’t matter much if you work for one of the “100 Best Companies,” the world’s most respected brand, or the ultimate employee-focused organization. Without a robust relationship with a manager who sets clear expectations, knows you, trusts you, and invests in you, you’re less likely to stay and perform.

Attitude Adjustment #4: Stop looking to the outside for help. The solutions to your problems exist inside your company.

Talent is a multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield will be. That’s why the best leaders are relentless at seeking out, shadowing, studying, and highlighting the lessons of their own top performers. The funny thing is that most CEOs spend their time benchmarking best practices in other companies. They want to know how they’re doing relative to their peers. I tell my clients, Don’t go on a tour of Disney, Southwest Airlines, or Discover Financial Services. You have some of the world’s best managers working inside your own company. Look to them first. Learn from your own people first.

Attitude Adjustment #5: Don’t assume that everyone wants your job — or that great people want to be promoted out of what they do best.

We say that we want to build world-class organizations. That’s meaningless if we don’t value world-class performance in every role. Yet the people who touch customers the most — hotel housekeepers, outbound telemarketers — get the least respect and the lowest paychecks. The assumption is that anyone can do that job and that nobody would want to do it if they were given a choice to do something else. Frontline talent has a prestige problem, and it’s turning into a corporate-performance problem…. Unfortunately, the only way we have to reward excellence on the front lines is to promote people out of the very roles that they do best. We turn great housekeepers into supervisors, virtuoso shelf stockers into salespeople, and managers into leaders.

Technorati Tags: Engagement, Research, Management, Leadership, Business, Human Resources, Strategy

The Center for Creative Leadership highlights the following 5 principles that form the essence of innovation. They describe principles as:

the fundamental, timeless laws that underlie the methods and techniques used for innovation. While principles are timeless, specific methods will be used and adapted over time as the situation demands.

There are five principles that give life to the process of innovation:

1. Innovation starts when people convert problems to ideas. New ideas are born through questions, problems and obstacles. The process of innovation is indebted to the trouble that comes about when we are surrounded by that which is not solved, not smooth and not simple. Therefore, in order for the innovation process to flourish, it needs a climate that encourages inquiry and welcomes problems.
2. Innovation needs a system. All organizations have innovation systems. Some are formal, designed by the leadership, and some are informal, taking place outside established channels. Informal channels are untidy and inefficient, yet innovation is always associated with them.
3. Passion is the fuel, and pain is the hidden ingredient. Ideas do not propel themselves; passion makes them go. Passion, in addition to talent and skill, is a valuable company asset. Passion is what transforms other resources into profits, but it never shows up on a balance sheet. Unfortunately, there seems to be some universal law that says when pursuing a passion or following a dream, pain is part of the process. Innovation leaders need to take the pain with the passion and learn to manage both effectively.
4. Co-locating drives effective exchange. Co-location refers to physical proximity between people. It is a key for building the trust that is essential to the innovation process. It also increases the possibility for greater exchange of information, cross-fertilization of ideas, stimulation of creative thinking in one another and critique of ideas during their formative stage.
5. Differences should be leveraged. The differences that normally divide people — such as language, culture, race, gender and thinking and problem solving styles — can be a boon to innovation. When differences are used constructively and people move beyond fear, suspicion, mistrust and prejudice, differences can be leveraged to enhance and sustain the innovation process.

Technorati Tags: Innovation, Creativity, Management, Leadership, Business, Principles, Strategy, Ideas

Ram Charan co-author of the popular book “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” which I previously reviewed here, has just released a new book on leadership titled “Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don’t“. Ram Charan’s insight into the real content of leadership provides you with the eight fundamental skills needed for success in the twenty-first century:

1. Positioning (and when necessary, repositioning) your business by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money.
2. Connecting the dots by pinpointing patterns of external change ahead of others.
3. Shaping the way people work together by leading the social system of your business.
4. Judging people by getting to the truth of a person.
5. Molding high-energy, high-powered, high-ego people into a working team of leaders in which they equal more than the sum of their parts.
6. Knowing the destination where you want to take your business by developing goals that balance what the business can become with what it can realistically achieve.
7. Setting laser-sharp priorities that become the road map for meeting your goals.
8. Dealing creatively and positively with societal pressures that go beyond the economic value creation activities of your business.

Know-How is the missing link of leadership. By Showing how the eight know-hows link to, interact with, and reinforce personal and psychological traits, Ram Charan provides a holistic and innovative portrait of successful leaders of the twenty-first century.

Sounds like another interesting read from Ram Charan.

Technorati Tags: Book, Management, Leadership, Skills, Business, Quote

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Playing the game is a totally different experience from being a spectator in two important ways:

1. When you’re a spectator, you’re emotionally detached from the situation. It’s not your reputation, it’s not your “skin in the game” or your money.
2. When you’re playing the game you’re often making important decision without the benefit of having complete information. Whilst a spectator can see the whole game, take the time to assess all available information and reflect on what happened in an objective manner, players in the game do not have this opportunity. Players need to continually make decisions with incomplete information, under great time pressure where the outcome has huge emotional stakes.

As Theodore Roosevelt points out, great leaders don’t lead from a distance. They’re found on the frontline, active in the game of life, dirty, muddy and passionate! Too many of ‘leaders’ today spend their time observing and watching the game, criticising those who are actively involved. What critics fail to realise is that observing and watching the game is very different from playing!

You can often spot those who are not involved in they game of life, they’re always talking about what others are doing, they often talk about what needs to be done to change the behaviours of others and to win the game. Spectators often have good and valid reasons why others should change and often their observations are right, however being right is not important! The point is when we focus on the behaviour of others we fail to take responsibility for our own behaviour. When we spend our time and energy focusing on changing others, we’re distracted from becoming who we need to be, we’re distracted from taking accountability to change our lives. We fail to do what Ghandi suggested, we fail to “be the change we want to see in the world“…..

… and ….. at the end of the day we cannot change others. We can only choose to be player in the game of life, we choose who we want to be, we choose how we want to behave, we choose to actively participate…..

How is your game? Are you actually in the arena? Are you taking enough risk?

Technorati Tags: Attitude, Management, Leadership, Motivation, Business, Quote

I would like to draw your attention to the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” which is receiving alot of attention on the web. It seems that this book will be invaluable to anyone responsible for communicating ideas. The book is written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath who say that they:

“wrote this book to help you make your ideas stick. By “stick,” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact — they change your audience’s opinions or behavior. At this point, it’s worth asking why you’d need to make your ideas stick. After all, the vast majority of our daily communication doesn’t require stickiness. “Pass the gravy” doesn’t have to be memorable.”

After reading ‘The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference‘ by Malcolm Gladwell two brothers Chip Heath (a Stanford Business school professor) and Dan Heath (a corporate education consultant at Duke) were inspired by Gladwell’s top selling book. After extensive research they found that the ideas that ’stick’ all share the following six principles (with a chapter dedicated to each principle):

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY - How do we find the essential core of our ideas? - Find the core of your idea. This isn’t done by ‘dumbing it down’; this is done by finding what is essential to your message. Strip your idea down to the bare essential. A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. “It’s hard to make ideas stick in a noisy, unpredictable, chaotic environment. If we’re to succeed, the first step is this: Be simple. Not simple in terms of ‘dumbing down’ or ’sound bites.’ What we mean by ’simple’ is finding the core of the idea. ‘Finding the core’ means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence.” (pgs. 27, 28)

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS - How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? - Get peoples attention. Attract it. Hold it. How? Through surprise. Break people’s ‘guessing machine’ and then repair it. How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods! We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. But surprise doesn’t last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. “The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern. Humans adapt incredibly quickly to consistent patterns. Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message-i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audiences’ guessing machines.” (pgs. 64, 72)

PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS - How do we make our ideas clear? - Concrete is memorable. Abstract is not. Make your idea like Velcro. Hook them through concreteness. We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions — they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images — ice-filled bathtubs, apples with razors — because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience. “Abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and to remember it. It also makes it harder to coordinate our activities with others, who may interpret the abstraction in very different ways. Concreteness helps us avoid these problems.” (pg. 100)

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY - How do we make people believe our ideas? - Help people believe. Honesty and trustworthiness should be glorified. Use authorities and anti-authorities. Vivid details boost credibility. If possible, use statistics that generate a human context. “How do we get people to believe our ideas? We’ve got to find a source of credibility to draw on. A person’s knowledge of details is often a good proxy for her expertise. Think of how a history buff can quickly establish her credibility by telling an interesting Civil War anecdote. But concrete details don’t just lend credibility to the authorities who provide them; they lend credibility to the idea itself.” (pgs. 138, 163)

PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS - How do we get people to care about our ideas? - We make them feel something. Make people care. Associate ideas with emotions that already exist in others. Bridge the emotional gap between your idea (that they don’t care about - yet) with something they already are emotional or care about. Place emphasis on benefits! Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco. “How can we make people care about our ideas? We get them to take off their Analytical Hats. We create empathy for specific individuals. We show how our ideas are associated with things that people already care about. We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities-not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be.” (pg. 203)

PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES - How do we get people to act on our ideas? - We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. Get people to act. Use stories as stimulation (tell people how to act). Use stories as inspiration (give people energy to act). “A story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose. This is the role that stories play-putting knowledge into a framework that is more lifelike, more true to our day-to-day existence. Stories are almost always CONCRETE. Most of them have EMOTIONAL and UNEXPECTED elements. The hardest part of using stories effectively is make sure they’re SIMPLE-that they reflect your core message. It’s not enough to tell a great story; the story has to reflect your agenda.” (pgs. 214, 237)

The authors have started a blog to continue the discussion of the ideas from the book.

Getting ideas to stick is a key leadership practice and this book promises to provide a great addition to a leaders “toolbox”. The book reminds me of the book “The Leader’s Voice: How Communication Can Inspire Action and Get Results!” written by Boyd Clarke and Ron Crossland, which I reviewed here. This is definately a book that I will have on order to be read next month.

References:

• Time article “Are You Sticky?“
• Book review from Book Biz Talk
• Brand Autopsy “Sticking with Made to Stick“
• Inc.com article “Chip and Dan Heath: Marketing Made Sticky“
• MSNBC article “Why some ideas are winners and others flops“
• The book excerpt from the Made to Stick website.

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Business, Communication, Book, Strategy

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