The Little Big Things
Page 11
First: “Amp up your attitude.” Some people radiate energy, some don’t. But the don’ts can at least square their shoulders, and pump themselves up a bit. (“Energy” is not to be confused with aggressiveness. Energy is, in my opinion—I can’t speak for Roger A.—mostly in the eyes.)
Second: “Give your message a mission.” That is, if you’ve got something you want to get from the interaction … STAY ON MESSAGE. I honestly think I give my best speeches when I’m tired. I cut down or cut out all the convoluted twists and turns—and stay religiously “on topic.”
Third: “Recognize ‘face value.’” A “poker face,” Ailes tells us, works well in poker—but is a disaster in more normal human interaction, including professional settings. Call it “animation” or “engagement” (my terms, not Ailes’s); but it is different from raw energy; it’s something about being In the Moment. And, again, the idea is not to mimic a whirling dervish—animation to me mostly involves the intensity of concentration. (My wife—this time I think it’s a positive—claims my intensity of listening-concentration scares her half to death if it’s aimed her way. I wouldn’t know.)
The “bottom line” here is more important than the specific points: Pay mindful attention to how you engage! It’s as important as (or, yup, more important than) “content”—like it or not.
FIRST THINGS
As with personal success, so with organizational success: To an exceptional degree, customers evaluate your company according to their initial brush or full-fledged contact.
The Griffin Hospital team, masters of “patient-centric care,” as it’s sometimes called and as described in my riff on Kindness, clearly believes that the first impression matters. Hence, prospective patients are, for starters, sent clear driving directions!
As the patient heads for the hospital, he or she is already in a tizzy; lousy directions will only fuel the angst. (Music piped into the parking lot is also part of their … First Impressions Theatrical.)
No surprise, the true master of “all this” is Disney. Disney pays about as much attention to the parking lots and parking lot attendants and the parking process as to their theme rides. For example, the staffers involved are carefully selected and even more selectively trained—they are true “parking professionals.”
My “simple” advice: Beginnings are overwhelmingly important—and surely count as “strategic substance” in any interchange.
Think through beginnings v-e-r-y carefully—one micro-step at a time. Invest Time (lots of) & Money (lots of) & Training (lots of) in creating and managing first impressions.
What about something akin to a new “C-level” job:
CFIO/Chief First Impressions Officer.
(And if “C-level” is a little much, which maybe it is, I do sincerely counsel at least a DFI/Director of First Impressions.)
NB: Study (that word again!) the Art & Craft of Packaging. For one thing, there’s a literature a thousand books long. Packagers are the ultimate “spin doctors”—they have all of about one-third of a second (not the seven seconds Ailes says you and I have) to hook you or me to a product on the store shelves that took three years and 80 million dollars to create.
NB: I did a vastly extensive and expensive house renovation about 20 years ago. The prospective contractor, one of three I was interviewing, was due at my house for our first meeting at 11:00 A.M. I saw him pull up in his truck at about 10:40 A.M. He sat in his truck until precisely 10:58 A.M., then came to the front door and knocked. He had, effectively, iced the job before the first word was exchanged.
43. Work (Like a Demon) on Your Last Impressions.
Now that you’ve got your seven-second impression nailed, having mastered your entries, consider the other bookend …
Daniel Kahneman (a psychologist who won the Economics Nobel in 2002 for his groundbreaking work in the field of behavioral economics) tells us, as reported in Psychology Today, that our memories are very selective. In particular, no matter how extended an event (party, commercial transaction), we form our view and make our evaluation based—with dramatic skew—on the “most intense moments” and the “final moments.”
This is just one of the many compelling arguments for what I call EEM, or Emotional Experience Management. The “final moments” evidence is particularly startling; it explains why we might attend a brilliant, four-hour dinner party, yet three months later only remember that two guests exchanged heated remarks on the way out the door. (This is not an “illustrative story.” A ton of hard data supports such tales.)
The solution?
Plan-Manage-Micromanage “Last Impressions-Experiences.”
AGGRESSIVELY.
It’s not nearly enough to avoid last impression “screw-ups.” Of course we don’t want anything to “go wrong” at the Experience Exit Stage. But more important, we want a … Planned Exit Atmospherics Strategy & Story that’s … memorable, compelling, emotional, that goes “aggressively right,” not “not wrong.”
A doc’s walking the patient to the door (rather than pointing distractedly to the Billing Desk, while simultaneously picking up the next patient’s folder) is the Determining Factor in the Patient’s Impression … more, actually, than a good or bad diagnosis. (Again, hard evidence supports this apparently ludicrous statement.) Similarly, a bad dessert can mar an otherwise 5-star meal … just as an on-the-edge-of-your-seat, drop-the-popcorn climax can salvage a film or play that suffered a few bumpy plot points early on in the performance.
So … WORK ON YOUR EXITS … ASSIDUOUSLY!
Meaning of “work on”?
Consider the last impression: tear it apart, tiny step by tiny step by tiny step. Diagnose it. Video it. Ask outsiders to view the video. Playact the “exit sequence.”
GET ‘EM COMING AND GOING
Beginnings! (See #42.)
Endings! (See #43.)
Open 15 minutes before the official opening time.
Close 15 minutes after the scheduled closing time.
Message: Good sense and hard-nosed social-psych research say:
Beginnings Matter!
(A lot!!)
Endings Matter!
(A lot!!)
Obsess on beginnings!
Obsess on endings!
Key word: obsess.
44. Work on Your Presentation Skills. (Or: 17 Minutes Can Change the World!)
CNN wire, afternoon, June 4, 2008: “He was an obscure state lawmaker. But after a 17-minute star-making turn as a keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and a scant two years in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama is on the verge of becoming his party’s presidential nominee.”
As I mentioned at the start of the introduction, my first blog post at tompeters.com, on July 28, 2004, was an encomium to Barack Obama’s convention speech. Among other things, I said: “I know a good speech when I hear one. Namely the Democratic Convention keynote by Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama. The content may or may not have been to your taste depending on your politics, but as a Work of Art there should be no dispute: Clear and compelling theme. Perfect pitch. Connection with the immediate and distant audience. Humor and self-deprecation. Memorable stories. Phrases that uplift. Timing to die for.” (It’s worked out pretty well for then Illinois state senator Obama. At that point, he wasn’t yet even a U.S. senator!)
Seventeen minutes!
My God:
Seventeen minutes!
Seventeen good minutes—and you, too, can move your wife and young daughters (husband and young daughters—someday!) into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!
Fact, in “our” more modest worlds: Awful or poor or average or even “okay” or “pretty good” presentation skills trip up or hold back an incredible number of otherwise exceptionally talented people at all levels, and in all functions, and in businesses of all sizes, in all industries. And yet it is rare to see someone launch a martial-arts-training-style-no-bull-I’m-gonna-master-(or-at-least-get-a-helluva-lot-better-at)-this-thing-or-bloody-well-die-trying offensive on pr
esentation skill improvement.
I … simply … don’t get it.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Do me a (personal) favor.
At least … consider … an all-out-fully-professional-time-consuming-study-and-practice-sustained attack on your presentation skills.
All out.
Fully professional.
Time-consuming.
Study.
Practice.
Sustained.
Attack.
I’ll look forward to the engraved invitation to your Inaugural Ball …
“POWER POINT” FROM A POWERFUL GUY
My obsession with bugging others about primacy of top-tier presentation skills started late, after I sat at dinner, in 2007, next to a “Top 25” exec at a Fortune 25 company, an outfit known for its “just-the-facts” approach to decision making. We were chatting about this, that, and the other, and at one point he said to me, out of the blue, “I work like hell developing guys for the top, and say I’ve got four guys who’ve performed well and could move up. I’ll swear, two or three, or sometimes all four, will drop off the track as a direct result of lousy presentation skills.”
I know this chap reasonably well, and he’s a naturally reticent genius engineer whose speaking skills were positively horrid until he applied, over a period of years, his gargantuan willpower—and brute force—to training/improving himself.
Work
45. On Being a “Professional.”
Think “professional,” and what words come to mind? Doctor. Lawyer. Schoolteacher. Musician. Ballplayer. Six Sigma quality guru. Cloud-computing consultant. JIT inventory management expert. Said professionals share certain characteristics.
They are …
Students of their craft
Dedicated to a “calling”
Pursuing constant improvement
Masters of a defined body of knowledge
Etc.
Well, my effort in many sections of this book is to expand, or even redefine, the idea of “professional” to include several bedrock areas of behavior, the effective practice of which determines success or failure in getting things done.
For example …
Saying “Thank you” (Mastering the Practice of Appreciation)
Apologizing (Repairing frayed relationships)
Listening (Hearing and Absorbing and Engaging with others’ views)
Questioning effectively
MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around) /The Art of Staying Connected
Achieving peace and prosperity among warring organizational tribes (turning cross-functional integration into Strategic Weapon #1)
Writing and Presenting
And so on. Each of these items—and I’ve said it a dozen times and I’ll say this a dozen more times—can be studied and can be mastered—with about as much practice as is required to achieve mastery in painting or molecular biology. Most of us take most of the things enumerated immediately above “seriously.” But few of us are determined to achieve no-bull … “professionalism” … around these and like topics, which are the true bedrock of enterprise effectiveness.
Action: Reflect on the principal ideas discussed in these pages. Develop a Formal Study Plan for a handful of topics such as those suggested above—for yourself and for your group.
46. “Everything Passes Through Finance” (And So Should You).
I listened to a presentation by the CIO of Sysco, the giant distribution company. The topic was a transforming new system, the implementation of which he’d successfully overseen. One huge advantage he’d had, he told us, was a long stint in finance—he knew pretty much everyone there; and he’d been able to communicate in the insiders’ code and with the insiders’ sensibilities.
The average reader probably won’t have the same experience as our Sysco friend, but the idea is nonetheless powerful. Pretty much everything we’re involved in “passes through Finance” at some point. It’s not true, as the joke goes, that “The finance guys have a one-word vocabulary, ‘No.’” It is by and large true that they are typically not pushovers, and that they’ll push you to answer some uncomfortable questions.
And for smooth implementation of your project, it’s nice (imperative) to know the language—and a few of the folks as well.
Hence I recommend that you try and get on a project team that will give you a chance to learn the Language of Finance—and to begin in earnest to build a network in the department. And try a course or two in accounting or finance if you didn’t major in business or get an MBA. This is a straightforward investment, and the direct or indirect return may be high as a kite—and long-lasting.
(Of course the primary “trick” is to ask questions, even simplistic ones—it shows that you want to learn and you wish for one of “them” to be your teacher—what greater mark of respect?)
Everything passes through Finance.
Their business is your business.
(Stop pissing and moaning about their world.)
(Invest in appreciation of their world.)
47. What’s on the Agenda? Why Don’t You Decide?
He/she who writes the Agenda and Summary Doc (innocuously called “Meeting Notes”) wields … Incredible Power!
Believe it!
The question is seemingly innocent, “What should we cover at the Weekly Review Meeting?” The response is anything but innocent: The “agenda” is in and of itself a group “To-Do” list. (More important than any pretentious “strategic plan.”) And: “To-Don’t” list. (What’s left off … to the Supreme Annoyance of many Power Players.)
Moreover … some stuff will be at the Top … some at the bottom. (The latter probably won’t get covered, or will be given short shrift.) Hence … a “mere” agenda Establishes & Determines the Group Conversation for, say, the week, or even the quarter. (And … the lovely catch … concocting the Agenda by soliciting members is typically a “crappy task,” unwanted by one and almost all.)
My message: grab it!
Larger message: Social networking, group document editing, and the like aside, one of the most effective paths to power has long been interjecting oneself squarely into the middle of key information streams. While working on the creation of a Public Management Program at Stanford’s business school in the early 1970s, I ended up exercising exceptional sway over events. As by far the most junior member of the team, I got “stuck” with all the record-keeping and draft-writing jobs that were beneath the grandees nominally in charge. I de facto controlled “institutional memory.” I could not have said “Go west,” if the group intended to “Go east.” But I damn well could turn east into east-northeast or east-southeast at will. To pull off something like this requires complete understanding of information systems, an obsession with details, and more or less a willingness to go without sleep. As invisible puppeteer, one must be eternally vigilant in order to keep control of the “innocent” document flow that is the organization’s lifeblood. It is an apparent dogsbody’s job that can confer power beyond measure.
NOTE WELL
No less important than agenda-setting is the grubby-demeaning work of note-taking. Talk about … UNVARNISHED POWER!
Everybody is so damn busy preening, interrupting, bullheadedly pushing their pet peeve, etc…. that they seldom hear what actually goes on during a meeting. Only the meek and quiet notetaker knows the story; and long after the participants have washed the memory of the meeting clean from their crowded lives, the Notetaker’s Summary comes along explaining what transpired … Carefully Edited.
You get my drift, I presume. The “powerless” soul who agrees to “develop the agenda,” “take the notes,” and “publish the notes” … may just be the … #1 power player!
Speaking of “notes,” note this: James Madison was the notetaker at the U.S. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. To no small extent, his “mere” notes (incredibly detailed) were the principal driving f
orce animating the Constitution of the United States of America!
48. We Are All in Sales. Period.
“Everyone lives by selling something.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Some years ago, on a trek in New Zealand, I met a fellow at our lodge in the NZ Alps who’d had a very successful career as a TV producer—you’d recognize a couple of his shows. (It was vacation—ID’ing him would be improper.) He told me a lovely little story—not so “little,” actually. I paraphrase, from some old notes:
“For a host of reasons, including, to be sure, cockiness, I was dead certain that I had some winning ideas. And, yet, try as I would—I busted my ass—I couldn’t get funding, not even for a cut-rate pilot.
“One night I was in a hotel and the TV was on, just background noise, really. It was one of those middle-of-the-night advertorials, on make a million ‘overnight’ in real estate. The guy was going on at one point about collecting information from numerous sources about the person you’re meeting with. [This is waaaaay pre-Google.] It wasn’t tricky, but it made sense.
“To make a long story short, that show launched an intense year or so scramble to teach myself selling. I read every damn ‘how to’ book written. Most were shit, but even the bad ones would have a useful tidbit or two. I actually went to a handful of those all-day selling seminars; again, the yield was usually low, but a couple were real gems.
“Fact is my campaign to master selling paid off pretty damn quickly. Within six months I’d gotten my first serious funding. Maybe it was just luck, but I really don’t think that’s the whole thing.
“I’m a pretty good salesman these days—maybe I ought to do my own 2:00 A.M. get-rich-now seminar. What do you think?”
He was teasing about the last part, of course—but I bet it’d be a hell of a show if he did do it.