“They that will not be counselled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason, she will rap you on the knuckles.” – Benjamin Franklin
Viewing entries tagged
personal growth
“Some will never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.” – Thomas Blount
“Humans are social animals. There are probably dozens of ways we absorb energy, inspiration, skills, and character traits from those around us. Sometimes we learn by example. Sometimes success appears more approachable and ordinary, because we see normal people achieve it, and perhaps that encourages us to pursue schemes with higher payoffs. Sometimes the people around us give information we need or encouragement, or contacts, or even useful criticism. We can’t always know the mechanism by which others change our future actions, but it is pretty clear it happens, and it’s important. Years ago, I mocked an intern for thinking his choice of neighbors would influence his career. If he’s reading this, I’d like to offer my apology. I can easily see that were you live might influence the energy you put into your career. If you live near optimistic winners, whose qualities are sure to rub off to some extent. And I advise you to consider is fact a primary tool for programming your moist-robot self. The programming interface is your location. To change yourself, part of the solution might involve spending more time with the people who represent the change you seek.”
– Scott Adams in his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
“Give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” – Judith Minty
To read more from Jennifer Davis, check out "What Fire Teaches Us About Innovation."
“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” – Neil Gaiman
For more from Jennifer Davis about change, read "The Rate of Change."
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large – I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – Terry Pratchett
“You don’t make mistakes. Mistakes make you.” – from The Last Word movie
Read more by Jennifer Davis about making mistakes.
Growth stops when you lose the tension between where you are and where you could be.”
I saw one of those motivational parody posters once that said, “Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
I feel that the same can be said of the nightmare managers and bad bosses we have all had in our careers.
One thing that leaders can do to avoid running a company into the ground is let people tell them the truth.
Here are 5 things you can learn from bad leaders.
1. Bad leaders don’t listen
No one sets out to be a bad leader. Even incompetent or emotionally-injured people generally want to do a good job.
And perhaps more often than not, people don’t realize that they aren’t good leaders. Speaking truth to power is difficult and uncomfortable and possibly risky, so people don’t generally tell their managers how they really feel.
If the manager has created an environment where bad news doesn’t get shared, then no one is going to share the news that the leader is bad.
I once asked a CEO boss of mine what was the one thing that leaders could do to avoid running a company into the ground (a time-worn description we have all heard to describe the work of a value-destroying CEO), and he said, “Let people tell you the truth.”
This means creating the right environment of humility and openness, and getting the right people.
2. Bad leaders make bad hires
Bad leaders often hire people who are like them — people who think like them, have similar temperaments, experiences, or even the same alma mater.
Sometimes that works out great because of the comradery and teamwork that develops. But more often, the corner office becomes an echo chamber where new ideas, fresh approaches and alternative views can’t be voiced.
3. Bad leaders don’t fire fast enough
Driven by ego (or naïve optimism that things will miraculously get better for no rational reason), bad leaders don’t like to admit they have made bad hires, and they are more likely to hold onto a poor performer until a lot of damage has been done — not only the opportunity cost to the business or the direct impact of mistakes, but also damage to the credibility of the leader.
4. Bad leaders do the wrong things well
Sometimes leaders can get so fixated on the process, continuous improvement and infrastructure required to scale the business that they forget the value of the business as perceived by their customers. This can lead to the automation of processes that make the company worse.
I have been part of improvement initiatives that assumed the way we were doing something was right and we just had to speed it up or make it less labor intensive, only to find out that it was a waste of time and resources. So we just found a better and faster way of wasting money.
Leaders should know which products make them money, which customers have the best overall lifetime value, and what campaigns or initiatives have delivered the most tangible results in recent times.
5. Bad leaders do the right things poorly
Finally, leaders who rose through the ranks on their technical merits or intellectual prowess might find themselves ill-equipped for the soft-skills part of their job. In his book Emotional Intelligence, author Daniel Goleman outlines why being able to identify and empathize with others is a better predictor of success than IQ.
Bad leaders don’t have the necessary skills to deal positively with conflict, defuse tense situations, provide clear direction in the face of uncertainty, and truly lead.
The good news about these characteristics is that they aren’t set in stone. Being a bad leader isn’t fixed in the stars or determined like a person’s height or eye color. These are things that can be developed and with mentoring, thoughtful consideration and work. If you want to be a good leader, strive for it.
This article was originally posted on The Business Journals.
Anyone who has lived knows that nothing good comes without some heartache, struggle, and failure along the wall. Any truthful trajectory showing a result doesn’t look like a rocket. It looks like a squiggly diagonal line to the right. Success is an upwards sloping line, but at any point of the line, the slope wasn’t upwards.
I have been enjoying the NBC show “This is Us.” In a recent episode, a character visited his childhood home and was surprised to find a few precious items tucked behind a fireplace brick left decades ago. As he takes inventory of what he found (see how I am trying so hard not to spoil it for you?), the character reflects on how the items were still hidden there after all these years and comments “isn’t it strange how the world sticks and moves like that?”
Our careers also stick and move as well. Here are three ways our work and our workplaces can be sticky and yet demonstrate mobility.
1. Habits die hard, so it’s good you have nine lives
Each of us learned powerful lessons in our families growing up or under the tutelage of coaches, teachers, and early bosses that affect our work habits. We learned to work hard, work smart, and communicate in these early experiences. Early habits and work styles can stick. But they can move as well. Especially if we are mindful and purposeful. In this book, The Leadership Pipeline, Ram Charan, outlines steps people take in their career to abandon the things that made them successful in the past to adopt new habits and approaches befitting their increasing responsibility or more impactful role. The first passage, as he names it, is the transition from managing yourself to managing others. Then, managing managers. Then managing functions. Then to managing businesses, then groups, and finally enterprises. And at each stage there are things that have to be learned and things that need to be unlearned. That is hard work to execute, but just like child’s toys hidden behind a fireplace aren’t appropriate for a grown-up, taste and needs change and you will need to as well.
What habits are no longer serving you that need to adapt?
Years ago, I was the one that took notes in meetings. I can type fast. I understood the issues. I was organized. But over time, I learned that being the scribe didn’t serve me. It kept me from fully participating in the discussion and it turned me into an administrator instead of the leader I needed to be. So, I delegate this now to others and only capture my own actions or commitments. This is a small thing, but illustrates how change occurs. One habit at a time.
2. “Culture eats strategy for lunch,” so I hope you are hungry
The quip about the importance of corporate culture is attributed to management guru, Peter Drucker and is now the title of a book by Curt Coffman and Kathie Sorensen. And just like changing your diet, changing your culture is a difficult, but worthwhile effort. I have worked in organizations whose leaders were very purposeful and thoughtful about the culture they were building. One of my past CEOs and mentors, Balaji Krishnamurthy, went onto to found a consulting company focused on culture and its impact on strategy. Changing the corporate culture requires first awareness that it is there. It is like a fish recognizing that it is swimming in water. Only if it differs from your experience or changes in some way, do you notice it is even there. And when you do notice, it is already having a negative (or positive) impact on your results, team dynamics, and job satisfaction. The fish is gasping for air when it leaves the water. High performing companies think about what culture they wish to build, reinforce the preferred behaviors in many ways, and demonstrate patience and persistence. Culture is very sticky, but there are many examples of leaders who decide that what they are isn’t what they need to be and they lead change initiatives that last. But it is a process and not everyone comes along for the journey.
What elements of your corporate culture are no longer helping you achieve your goals?
I worked for an established company. An established company that was acquired by an entrepreneurial Chinese firm last year and formed an incredible international business that is now being served by the combined company and our brands (Planar andLeyard). And our business is growing rapidly (we doubled last year). Facing this caliber of change - which hold so much promise and is very exciting, yet challenging - has caused me to reflect on the kind of leader I need to be and the kind of “norms” we should be cultivating in our business. This is an effort in progress and requires constant reflection. The old ways of working, communicating, executing our plans, or even making our plans must change to keep pace, and I must change with it.
3. Excuses never made anything better
Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” But that doesn’t make it less tempting to cook up a fresh batch of excuses when things go wrong or when the results of poor choices catch up with us. We blame our boss, our genes, our 4th grade math teacher, or the train being late. Our dog ate our homework or our phone battery is dead. I am not saying that these things don’t occur and that everything is within our control. Clearly that is not true. But if we focus on the excuses we can get stuck. In old ways of thinking. In old patterns of acting. In using the same excuses again and again. In not holding ourselves accountable for being better versions of ourselves.
Watch yourself make excuses. What are you trying to avoid? Who are you trying to impress? What are you afraid will happen? What excuses do you use regularly?
I have been trying to post articles on LinkedIn once a month. A discipline that I started nearly two years ago and I have been quite predictable about it. Then I wrote an article in December about the benefits of procrastination and I guess I took it too much to heart: January got away from me without a post. I blamed my busy schedule. I blamed the fact that I was writing for some other publications. Those are all true, but they were true before as well. I promised myself that I would turn one of these ideas I had squirreled away in Evernote into an article and would post it tomorrow. Then tomorrow became the day after that and now a month later, I am confessing that those excuses didn’t write the article. Only writing it did. All my efforts to procrastinate could have been directed to writing and my track record would have been preserved. In this case, this is a practice I do primarily for myself, but I see the same pattern in other more important matters. It is time to retire some of my well-used and worn out excuses and perhaps you need to do the same.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse
"Success is what happens after you've survived all of your mistakes." - Lauren Maillian, Founder and CEO of LMB Group
Author and activist Valeria Kahn has spoken that her passionate advocacy being her sword and her law degree being her shield.
Others might consider their looks their sword and their sense of humor their shield. Others might list their customer relationships as their sword and their technical training as their shield.
What is your sword and shield?
As you prepare for some well-deserved R&R at the end of the year, you might want to catch up on some leadership reading. Besides the perineal favorites like Seth Godin and the ever-prolific HubSpot blog, here are a few you might want to add to your reading list in 2017.
- Leadership Freak
Dan’s provocatively-titled blog focuses on servant leadership principles. - Lolly Daskal
Lolly’s writing focusing on self-awareness in leadership - Brian Solis
Brian writes about the intersections of technology and user experience with unique editorial - Conversation Agent
Valeria is a thoughtful writer who brings an academic bent to the broad-reaching topics related to communication and branding. - Heidi Cohen
Heidi prides herself on actionable marketing insights and she has some great data and infographics on content marketing. - Grow Blog
Mark has assembled a great team of contributors to his blog and the insights there are pithy and interesting. - Michael Hyatt
I personally like Michael’s quote card images (but you know I am a sucker for these). - John Maxwell
John’s posts are short and thought-provoking. - Skip Pritchard
Skip writes about leadership from a practical perspective. - Leadership Now
As an avid business book reader, I appreciate Michael’s summaries of new publications worth checking out. - Great Leadership
Dan and his guest collaborators, cover a range of topics from employee development to conflict. - The Context of Things
I like Ted’s style, which mixes trend watching with leadership with a dose of self-depreciation. - Leader Chat
David, who works for Ken Blanchard companies, publishes a mix of articles that are how-to for managers, especially those dealing with difficult issues. - Berger Leadership Blog
Dan is with the National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) and he writes from a practical perspective about the challenges and rewards of leadership.
Here is a few more from marketing vendors who write about topics of particular interest to marketers.
- https://radius.com/blog/
although focusing pretty narrowly around Radius’ predictive tools, they provide some great round-ups, so when you are done with this list, check theirs out as well! - https://mention.com/blog/
Mention provides a range of services, but their blog is a treasure-trove of specific how-tos related to digital marketing and media monitoring. - https://www.semrush.com/blog/
semrush is another tool-kit maker and their blog is practical and action-oriented for marketers looking to up their digital game. - http://www.roojoom.com/blog/
The Daily Lead is about storytelling on digital platforms. - http://www.oktopost.com/blog/
Oktopost is a service provider who offers great content on B2B digital marketing techniques and best practices.
Okay for those keeping count at home, there are more than 17 on this list. There is simply a lot of great material out there and if you are interested in being a better leader in 2017, we can always use more inspiration.
According to former president at SRI who helped launch hundreds of innovation projects and companies, here are four things a CEO must be able to do:
- Articulate a clear value proposition. In the first few sentences or minutes of a pitch to an investor or a customer. If it takes pages, it is too nuanced and not strong enough.
- Prove they’re passionate about the customer.
- Demonstrate their ability to build a winning a team.
- They must know how to execute
I’d add a fifth one and that is
5. Be strong enough to say “no” to good ideas to remain focused on the great idea that will lead to substantive results and breakthroughs in the market.
These are things that professionals in any position should strive to do.
"We neither shun growth or idolize it. We view it as a by-product of achieving our other goals." -McKinsey & Company
English is a strange language. Of that, there is no doubt or dispute. The amalgamation and combination of various tongues and cultures have resulted in an ever-changing and nearly-impossible-to-codify language system that ranks among the most difficult to master.
I have been reminded of this recently when reflecting on the word: fearless.
There is a plaque in my office, created by a friend, that has this word written on the face. She meant it as a compliment and a reminder. She commented that she saw me as someone who fearlessly faced change, ambiguity, and challenge and created something remarkable as a result. I am deeply humbled by this description. I also know it was to serve as a reminder that I do my best when I bring my best, fearless self to the work at hand. It has been my office for a while and having it there on the shelf, in the landscape of my periphery every day, is undoubtedly serving both her purposes. I must admit, I leaves me with a bit of an imposter’s syndrome, because I know how many fears and doubts that I live with each day. And I know I am not alone and that the word itself is part of the problem and possibly the solution.
But the word “fearless,” is often used to synonymously with fear-free. “He ran fearlessly into the burning building to save the child,” the newspaper will report of the local hero. “She has a fearless brush stroke,” they will sell of an artist’s boldness. “He is fearless and just free-climbed Half Dome,” someone will remark about an athlete’s death-defying feats. But any of these people will tell you that they have doubts. They are not guaranteed success. They have fears. They are not fear-free, but rather they are overcoming their fears. What does it truly mean to be fearless?
The answer might be hidden in the word itself. The term “less” is a relative word. It implies that it is less when compared to something else. I am sure you can sting your eyes with “tearless” shampoo, but it is meant to imply a relative safety to other products on the market. We use words like seamless, matchless, baseless, careless, effortless, heartless, motionless, priceless, and thankless as if they are absolutes, but they are really descriptions of relation. You can be seemingly tireless, but still get tired. Tireless is what others observe, but the truth is far more nuanced. The comparison you might make is between yourself and others or between yourself on different days and in different situations.
In my experience, courage is not the anecdote of fear. It is action. Fear can be paralyzing, especially when combined with a vivid imagination, but the fearless face it down, give it a name, and move forward. Not recklessly, but with calculated intention, identifying and mitigating risks. To be fearless is just to strive to fear less than you did the day before and you do that with action. Before long, you are accomplishing things never before possible.
We live in strange and scary times. Unprecedented stress combined with new technologies bring the raw edges of humanity to the surface and the world stage. If there was ever a time for fearlessness, the time is now.
This article was published on LinkedIn Pulse.
With experience and expertise comes the ability to choose well. To understand better the implications of choices that you make. To see the full landscape when the forks in the road rise to meet us. To pick that which suits our strengths, brings us joy, and optimizes our success. To not worry about what others think of the choices we make, realizing that they are one of the few things in life that are truly our own.
I have had the privilege of doing a number of different functional roles in my career and throughout all of them, I have have found the following five skills critical in all of them:
1. Gather Requirements
Of course, you'd expect those in product management or market research would need to know this skill, but frankly, it is critical across all functions and in all organizations. Being able to understand the needs of the customers (internal or external) and identify success metrics is absolutely critical to every role, even those in executive leadership where resources are allocated and capital is obtained to fund the work. This requires the ability to ask good question, perceive needs, and broker ideas from one part of the business to another.
2. Identify Decision Makers
Professional sales people make their living by understanding what, but more critically who, stands between them and a sale. They understand how to work with champions, financial buyers, and other profiles to achieve results and make certain that the customer is getting full value for their purchases. But in my experience it is not just account managers who need to have this skill. Knowing this avoids wasted time and effort convincing people with no purchase power or decision making authority on the merits of your offer. Whether you are advocating for an internal proposal or influencing key suppliers, everyone should know how to determine who the real decision makers are. Often this is achieved through a combination of observations and questions. The best sales people are ones who can tactfully ask who needs to be involved in the decision and process by which decisions of this type are made. Those are good questions for everyone to be ready to ask.
3. Tell the Truth (in love)
I consider the truth a gift and regularly remind my staff that I rely on them for their candor. I sincerely hope they take me up on the offer to listen to their complaints or suggestions with an open mind and a willingness to change, if necessary. Being able to receive the truth is a made a lot easier when the truth teller is gifted in this area. The effective truth teller strikes a balance between frankness and concern for the individual. They speak the truth in love, as the writer of Ephesians penned.
And it is easy to lose that balance. Taylor Swift's song "All Too Well" poetically describes the person who emphasized truth over love:
Hey, you call me up again just to break me like a promise.
So casually cruel in the name of being honest.
Being able to deliver a tough message in a tender way is a very useful skill for any professional.
4. Advocate for Yourself Resourcefully
We often employ our full range of resourcefulness on tasks at worth, without taking stock on how we might marshal the same energy to advocate for ourselves. No one else will do it for you (no, really, it is true). It's up to you.
5. Identify Opportunities for Personal Growth
And part of advocating is knowing what to advocate for. This is why it is critical that people continue to grow and be on the look-out for professional opportunities. They don't have to cost money or take a lot of time. They can be as simple as asking the advice of people you admire or reading a blog or book on a topic of interest. Being intellectually curious is one of the things that sets the the high performers and high potentials apart from the crowd.