know thyself

Know thyself - it's advice as old as the hills, and it's the core of authenticity. When you know yourself, you are comfortable with your strengths and not crippled by your shortcomings. You know your behavioral blind sides and emotional blockages, and you have a modus operandi for dealing with them - you draw on the people around you. Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.

Nowhere is self-awareness more important than in an execution culture, which taps every part of the brain and emotional makeup. Few leaders have the intellectual firepower to be good judges of people, good strategists, and good operating leaders, and at the same time talk to customers and do all the other things the job demands. But if you know where you're short, at least you can reinforce those areas and get some help for your business or unit. You put mechanisms in place to help you get it done. The person who doesn't even recognize where she is lacking never gets it done. 

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 81, 82

what would make it special?

Back in 2016, when Berry Aldridge was still just an intern and making thank-you calls to ticket purchasers, he was having trouble reaching a family, the Nunn family, who had bought eight tickets to the show. Finally, Berry got in touch with the father. He learned that the wife and mother had bought tickets for their seven kids to go to a game - and then she had tragically died.

Shocked and speechless, Berry managed to get out, "I'm so sorry to hear that," before ending the conversation. 

Then he walked into my office and told me the story. "What do we do?" he said.

Channeling Ken Silver, I replied, "What do you think?"

"Well, I'd really love to get the kids and dad out here and create something special for them," he said.

I agreed. "What ideas do you have? What would make it special?"

As it turned out, Berry had plenty of ideas - and he was ready to put them into action, planning the whole night for the Nunn family all on his own. When the family arrived on the night of the game, Berry seated them in the front row and had all the players come and deliver autographed bats and balls and hang out with the family for about a half hour before the game. Then Berry presented the dad with a jersey with his wife's name. Its number was the number of years they'd been married.

After the game, Berry and the father were chatting a little more, and the father shared that these Bananas tickets were the last gift his wife had given their kids - and he couldn't have imagined a better gift! Without Berry, the family might never have come to the game. Thanks to Berry's effort, the family was able to make that last gift - the last story of their wife and mother - special.

Imagine what your business would look like if your interns or new hires brought the same level of care and agency to their work - all because they were empowered to think for themselves. What amazing things would you be able to do for your fans?

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

fans first, right?

It's the end of a game and people are going home. It's pouring. Like, biblically pouring. That happens in the South: sometimes the sky just opens up and dumps buckets without warning.

Since our first rain delay, we've learned a few things. We line up our staff with umbrellas, and they take turns walking fans to their cars in the parking lot. They always hold the umbrella directly over the fans, getting wet in the process. Then, it's a race back to the gate to pick up another fan. 

Laura, an intern just two weeks in, is approached by an older gentleman, and the amble away. After thirty minutes, I suddenly realize she's still gone and think, Whoa, where is she? Just as I'm about to rally the troops, Laura walks up. 

She's drenched.

Where have you been?" I ask, grateful she's okay (if a little wet). 

"I walked a guy all the way home to his doorstep," Laura says. "He told me he lived right down the road and had walked to the game." As it turned out, "right down the road" translated to a mile down the road. Suffice to say, Laura got her steps in for the day. 

I'm speechless, which is rare for me. Then Laura looks up at me. "Fans first, right?"

Right. Now that's going the extra mile to keep Fans First.

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

free popsicle hotline

Darren Ross is the COO of Magic Castle Hotel in Hollywood. Built in 1957, Magic Castle isn't exactly the modern, amenity-filled experience that modern travelers are used to. As Darren says, "We don't have an elevator. We don't have a bar. We don't have a restaurant. We don't have room service. We don't have a gym. We don't have a spa. There are a lot of things we don't have that are part of our story."

There is one thing they do have: Darren. And he knows that even with all these limitations, he can still find ways to entertain his guests. 

To make Magic Castle a one-of-a-kind experience, Darren drew from his own childhood traveling experiences. He couldn't control what they didn't have, but he could create a happy, nostalgic experience full of 1950s charm.

First, they added a free snack bar filled with every kid's dream: potato chips, pretzels, popcorn, granola bars, and full-size candy bars. Then, they added a free DVDs menu, a free laundry service, a free beverage bar, and a free soft-serve ice-cream machine - where visiting kids get to choose the flavor for the day.

For me, thought, the best part of the Magic Castle experience was the free popsicle hotline. 

This ingenious idea started with poolside service on silver trays a few times a day and grew into a red phone mounted on the wall right by the pool that calls directly to the front desk. If someone picks up that phone, they receive an array of delicious popsicles, stat. Guests take their pictures with them. Kids search for the phone on check-in. As Darren says, "It's playful. It's fun. It's inexpensive for us. It's a conversation piece, and people are talking about it."

This is how scripting can help control the context. With fun waiting around every corner, guests don't focus on the facility. They focus on the value and uniqueness of the experience. 

Also, it saves Magic Castle tons in marketing costs. Darren doesn't need to spend a lot to advertise. His guests do it for him through tons of repeat business and referrals. That's how Magic Castle can keep its occupancy rate in the nineties - something unheard of for a small, independent hotel from another era.

If you want that Magic Castle magic, look at what assets you have, and ask how you can use them to entertain your future fans and create a better experience. It doesn't have to be big - just thoughtful.

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

savannah bananas - fans first

Since 2016, the Savannah Bananas - an independent-league baseball team playing out of Savannah, Georgia - have operated by a single mission: Fans First, Entertain Always. Every decision we make, we ask if it's Fans First. If it's not, we don't do it.

The Fans First Way has been the key to the Bananas' success. It's how we've created a one-of-a-kind experience in a well-established industry. 

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

apply change management early

We must, at some point, ask the question: How much resistance might we avoid if we would apply change management early and effectively? In the example with the ERP implementation case study, rather than simply designing a "great" solution to the manufacturing and inventory structure and beginning implementation, a proactive change management program could have been put in place to engage and support employees through the transition. Rather than waiting for resistance to happen, or being taken by surprise when key employees resisted the change, the leadership and project team could have assumed that resistance to change is normal and natural. If they had started with this as a basic presumption of change, then their actions and planning could have prevented the project failure and unfortunate consequence to the customer.

Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey

Change Management: The People Side of Change, by Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey Prosci Inc. 2012. P.22

the business includes IT

When you use the word “customer,” do you mean an internal customer — someone who works for the same company that you do and who uses the technology IT provides? That’s a mistake, many experts believe. “The most significant thing CIOs get wrong about business-IT alignment is servicing other departments’ ‘internal customers,’ instead of the true business customer needs,” says Phil Pettinato, CTO of Versapay. “The CIO should push to transform processes so the internal stakeholders can create better customer experiences for the primary customer.”

Because, of course, external customers are your company’s customers, and that makes them your customers, too. Thinking of internal users as customers creates a division between business and IT that can undermine your efforts to create alignment. “I don’t believe there’s IT and the business,” says James Anderson, a vice president and analyst at Gartner. “The business includes IT. And your product is not IT, it’s the services enabled by IT that are used for business outcomes.”

Philip Pettinato

"7 hard truths of business-IT alignment," by Minda Zetlin. CIO. October 31, 2022

how to be less wrong

Have you ever been taught that if you want to understand someone, you need to put yourself in their shoes?

It's a helpful rule of thumb because it reminds us that the way we see the world is not the way other people do. But there is some danger in this approach. 

Here's why.

We are not nearly as good at understanding others' perspectives as we think we are. Of course, sometimes we guess right, but often we guess wrong...

But here's what is surprising to me. 

It seems obvious that asking someone how they feel helps us better understand them. Yet, how many of us choose to guess how other people feel instead of simply asking them? 

 

Don't guess the perspective of another person. Instead, ask them. 

• Ask customers, What is the most valuable thing we do for you? Where could we be better?
• Ask your team to share the friction points of a current project and ask how you can help reduce them. 
• Ask a family member to send you a link to something they would like for Christmas. 

Greg McKeown

"How to Be Less Wrong," One Minute Wednesday. September 21, 2022

share profits

The larger truth that I failed to see turned out to be another of those paradoxes - like the discounters' principle of the less you charge, the more you'll earn. And here it is: the more you share profits with your associates - whether it's in salaries or incentives or bonuses or stock discounts - the more profit will accrue to the company. Why? Because the way management treats the associates is exactly how the associates will then treat the customers. And if the associates treat the customers well, the customers will return again and again, and that is where the real profit in this business lies, not in trying to goad strangers into your stores for one-time purchases based on splashy sales or expensive advertising. Satisfied, loyal, repeat customers are at the heart of Wal-Mart's spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores doe. So, in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associate in the store and the customer. 

Sam Walton

Sam Walton, Made in America by Sam Walton & John Huey. Bantam Books. 1992. p. 128

they had the credo

How Johnson & Johnson bounced back from the tragic cyanide murder scandal in 1982. 

At the time Johnson & Johnson owned 37 percent of the market and Tylenol was their most profitable product. Then reports surfaced that seven people had died after taking Tylenol. It was later discovered that these bottles had been tampered with. How should Johnson & Johnson respond?

The question was a complicated one. Was their primary responsibility to ensure the safety of their customers by immediately pulling all Tylenol products off drugstore shelves? Was their first priority to do PR damage control to keep shareholders from dumping their stock? Or was it their duty to console and compensate the families of the victims first and foremost? 

Fortunately for them they had the Credo: a statement written in 1943 by then chairman Robert Wood Johnson that is literally carved in stone at Johnson & Johnson headquarters. Unlike most corporate mission statements, the Credo actually lists the constituents of the company in priority order. Customers are first; shareholders are last. 

As a result, Johnson & Johnson swiftly decided to recall all Tylenol, even though it would have a massive impact (to the tune of $100 million, according to some reports) on their bottom line. The safety of customers or $100 million? Not an easy decision. But the Credo enabled a clearer sense of what was most essential. It enabled the tough trade-off to be made.

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.53,54

ask fundamentally different questions

The most powerful use of digital tools is not to cut costs, create efficiencies, or even move faster and with greater agility, but to ask fundamentally different questions. It is through exploring these new possibilities that we can solve complex problems and make more meaningful impacts for customers, employees, and the communities we serve.

Effective Digital Transformation Depends on a Shared Language, by David C. Hay, Thomas C. Redman, C. Lwanga Yonke, and John A. Zachman. Harvard Business Review. December 14, 2021

technical debt

Companies all over the world are embracing digital transformation — the use of new (or already existing) technological capabilities — as the means to better work with their customers, distance themselves from (or keep up with) their competitors, and connect various aspects of their businesses. But to succeed in this endeavor — or even to simply get the most from their current tech — they must rid themselves of a heavy burden: technical debt. Put simply, technical debt occurs when you choose an imperfect short-term solution that will require a more substantial fix later, and includes disparate systems, added software to accommodate them, and added effort to work around them.

Because technical debt is the result of shortcuts — choosing quick fixes over a long-term investment — it causes plenty of problems in the here and now. It adds enormous friction any time people need to coordinate work together across silos. There’s also the ongoing expense to exchange data between systems; the unquantifiable costs associated with being slowed down by your systems, whether you’re in the midst of digital transformation or responding to a competitor’s move; and the price you must eventually pay to redesign and simplify systems. And technical debt and its costs compound over time.

At first blush, executives may dismiss technical debt as the province of their IT departments. That conclusion camouflages the root cause of the issue, however. In truth, technical debt stems from the way the businesses are structured, and how departments develop their own systems and languages for getting their work done.

Effective Digital Transformation Depends on a Shared Language, by David C. Hay, Thomas C. Redman, C. Lwanga Yonke, and John A. Zachman. Harvard Business Review. December 14, 2021

a compelling and uncontested priority

It can be difficult to choose the right quest. Should the company expand into new regions, get closer to customers, innovate with more partners, get faster and more responsive, or become more sustainable? Executives sometimes say “all of the above”—but that’s too much to handle at once. The right quest should be a compelling and uncontested priority. In some of the cases we analyzed, companies straddled quests (customer focus and agility, for instance, or innovation and sustainability). That can work as long as the components are fused into one cogent focus.

Bharat N. Anand and Jean-Louis Barsoux

"What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management," Harvard Business Review. November-December 2017. 

lonely at the top

The loneliness that often comes with being a CEO may seem like a small price to pay for the rewards, recognition, and power that come with the job. As the old joke goes, “It might be lonely at the top, but the view is terrific.”

But being isolated at the top can compromise your decision making and leadership effectiveness, both of which require having as much firsthand information about a situation as possible. Senior executives tend to be shielded from organizational problems and data; they are given limited and filtered information about their operations, employees, and customers. While time constraints make some of this filtering necessary, having a layer of handlers who make their own decisions about what the leader should or shouldn’t see exacerbates the isolation.

...deference to authority is deeply ingrained in most societies. So it’s natural for employees, even at the highest levels, to occasionally hold back opinions and feelings that they fear might contradict or irritate the boss...

So what can you do to reduce executive isolation?

...get out of the bubble. All senior leaders are surrounded by physical or virtual trappings of office — the formal decor, the board dinners, the financial reports, the assistants that manage travel and scheduling, the intensive calendar that leaves little time for reflection. To break through the isolation, you need to periodically escape... For example, when Xerox was undergoing its turnaround under Anne Mulcahy, in the early 2000s, each member of the senior team took responsibility for a small portfolio of key customers. This forced them to go meet these customers and hear how they felt about the company. Fidelity used to require all senior people to spend time fielding calls on their customer service line, which gave them direct contact with customers.

Executives can institute skip-level meetings, where they talk with lower-level teams (without their bosses being present) about business conditions, customer reactions, and how to implement strategies. They also can conduct town halls, where employees ask questions and engage in conversations. Creating these listening posts gives executives unfiltered data to factor into their decision making.

Finally, tell your senior team to push back when they disagree and to challenge your thinking. Make sure that you have team members who have the courage to speak up and can be critics. This is easier for some people than for others, so you should actively recruit or promote at least two or three people who will serve as important counterpoints. You need to have the strength of ego to let them challenge you, both privately and during team meetings, and to really listen to their ideas. It won’t always be easy, and sometimes you may need a coach to help you with this process.

Ron Ashkenas

"How to Overcome Executive Isolation" Harvard Business Review. February 2, 2017

from our customers

The passenger [at Southwest Airlines under Herb Kelleher] was deemed paramount; every employee's paycheck bore the words. "From our customers."

Thomas Petzinger, Jr.

Hard Landing: The Epic Contest For Power and Profits That Plunged The Airlines Into Chaos. By Thomas Petzinger Jr. 1995 p. 324

look after your staff

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.

If You Look After Your Staff, They'll Look After Your Customers. It's That Simple.

Richard Branson

"Look After Your Staff" Virgin.com. Mar. 27, 2014

what has changed with leadership in the past 50 years?

Very Little.

Tom Peters is a business and leadership legend widely known for his historical bestseller, In Search of Excellence, which has been called "the greatest business book of all time" by Bloomsbury Publishing.... 

In an interview with Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, Peters didn't mince words on the current state of leadership, saying that "nothing has changed in 50 years, including the maddening fact that all too often a business strategy is inspiring, but the execution mania is largely AWOL."

In his latest work, The Excellence Dividend, Peters collects everything he's learned in his 35-plus years of writing and speaking on the best practices for businesses and their leaders. He also puts the finger on the most common offenses people in management roles have made--and keep making. 

1. Inability to execute well.
2. Seeing 'excellence' strictly as long-term strategy.
3. Failure to develop a thriving culture.
4. Failure to put employees first.
5. Failure to listen.
6. Ignoring women as potential leaders and consumers

"Poor cross-functional coordination and communication is the principal element in the delay of everything," Peters says. If your organization's health is suffering due to internal conflict and too many obstacles in the way of progress, leaders aren't actively working together in a coordinated way to effectively execute.

How do you interpret excellence in leadership or business? Most leaders think "strategy," "planning" and "vision" are pathways to achieve excellence "out there." But Peters says managers fail to capitalize on immediate excellence--how we connect, listen, inspire, and admit mistakes on a human level to employees or customers. "Excellence is conventionally seen as a long-term aspiration. I disagree. Excellence is the next five minutes," says Peters.

"CEO job No. 1 is setting -- and micro-nourishing one day, one hour, one minute at a time -- an effective people-truly-first, innovate-or-die, excellence-or-bust corporate culture," Peters says. 

Peters says excellent customer experiences rely entirely on excellent employee experiences because it's the employee who makes or breaks the customer connection. This means leaders must see extreme value in them and pour into their career growth and development. "Training is any firm's single most important capital investment," adds Peters.

I've often written that effective communication isn't just about talking; it is also the ability to listen and understand what's happening on the other side of the fence. That's what great leaders do. "I always write 'LISTEN' on the back of my hand before a meeting," Peters says. 

On a more strategy level, Peters says "women buy everything" and make up a majority of consumer and business purchasing decisions, yet are largely underserved. But his conclusion hints at the underrepresentation of women in the C-suite: "One indicator of readiness to embrace this colossal women's market opportunity comes from conducting what I call a 'squint test.' One, look at a photograph of your exec team. Two, squint. Three: Does the composition of the team look more or less like the composition of the market you aim to serve?" Now there's a reality check.

Marcel Schwantes

"6 Things The Smartest Managers Already Know But Keep Getting Wrong" Inc.com. Oct. 8, 2018

de-centralized empowerment

Oftentimes leaders believe they want to create a flexible and high-performing team, however balk at the realities of doing so. You are, quite literally, trying to work your way out of your job by creating a team that doesn’t need you in the way that you are used to. This is an uncomfortable journey, and before you embark on it be sure you are ready for the outcome. It helps to be clear on your objectives for this shift. Most leaders will want their team to be moving faster, making better decisions, and doing so more independently. But why? Is it to give you bandwidth to focus on more strategic aims? To enable them to better serve clients and customers? To help them grow and be prepared for the next step in their careers (enabling you to take the next step on yours)? Your reasons may be a combination of the above, but keep in mind that you are starting a journey to unleash your team’s capability to accomplish this objective. It’ll be hard, but it’s time to get out of their way.

Chris Fussell

"Eyes On, Hands Off: How to empower your team and get out of their way" Medium. March 15, 2017.

from success to significance

Many people, as they go through life, focus mainly on success. To them, success is represented by wealth, recognition, and power and status. Now there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things, as long as you don’t think that’s who you are. But I’d like you to focus on the opposite of each of those things as you strive to move from success to significance.

What’s the opposite of accumulating wealth? It’s generosity—of your time, talent, treasure, and touch (reaching out to support others). What’s the opposite of recognition? It’s service. And what’s the opposite of power and status? It’s loving relationships.

If you focus only on success—wealth, recognition, and power and status—you will never reach significance. That’s the problem with self-serving leaders; they have a hard time getting out of their own way. But if you focus on significance—generosity, service, and loving relationships—you’ll be amazed at how much success will come your way. Take Mother Teresa, for example. She couldn’t care less about wealth, recognition, or status. Her whole life was focused on significance. And what happened? Success came her way. Her ministry received tremendous financial backing, she was recognized all over the world, and she was given the highest status wherever she went. Mother Teresa was the ultimate servant leader. If you focus on significance first, your emphasis will be on serving others—and success and results will follow.

Life is all about the choices we make as we interact with others. We can choose to be serving or self-serving. Life constantly presents us with opportunities to choose to love and serve one another.

Someone once said to my wife, Margie, “You’ve lived with Ken for more than 50 years. What do you think leadership is all about?”

Margie said, “Leadership isn’t about love—it is love. It’s loving your mission, loving your customers, loving your people, and loving yourself enough to get out of the way so that other people can be magnificent.”

That’s what servant leadership is all about.

Ken Blanchard

"Moving from Success to Significance". KenBlanchardBooks.com.  January 24, 2018. 

trust employees

In this world of intense scrutiny, where everyone is looking at what you do...one reaction is to create management systems, more process, more controls, and more bureaucracy. Relying on traditional supervision, process and controls would inhibit serving clients responsively, and stifle employees' creative energies. We cannot apply Industrial age management systems to address post Industrial age needs. There is a better alternative, which is to trust employees. Values are the glue, the bond that binds us together in the absence of controls. These must be genuinely shared values; they can't be imposed top-down. Values provide employees a framework to make decisions when management systems and procedures are unclear. It comes down to judgment, based on shared values.

Sam Palmisano

"The Future of Leadership" by Samie Al-Achrafi. The Huffington Post. 10/30/2015