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#wayfinding
You can tell when a photo or video is from the 1970’s. Like the leather goods of the period, the photos have a sepia tint. Earthy, brown tones rule. Due to the aging of the film development materials or the state of video capture science of the time, these pages particularly don’t age well and have a distinctive look.
It makes me wonder what the shade of this decade will be when we reflect on it 40 years from now.
Singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles, in her book “Sounds Like Me,” talked about the music making process.
“I have learned over the years that ‘not knowing’ is part of the beauty of making music, and that vocabulary is important, but not crucial in communication. Only patience is crucial in communication. Recording is exploration. You take a piece of music and excavate, searching for the shape of the song wants to take in the moment. You use wonderful musicians, producers, and engineers who help you navigate those waters and hopefully also help you remember that it doesn’t have to feel precious or scary. You try things that don’t work as you hunt for what does. And sometimes you even find it.”
Life is a bit like that. Learning anything is an act of faith and mastery is an act of patience.
I remember talking to my grandpa about the amount of change he had seen in his life, which spanned the center of the 1900’s. He would tell me about the novelty of plastic bags (where you could see what was inside without opening the bag – crazy!) and freeways (they overlapped each other just like a Buck Rogers’ cartoon). Fast forward to 2017 and the pace of change is just that: fast forwarding. Futurist Maurice Conti predicts that in the next 20 years, there will be more change to our work than in the last 2,000 years.
We are in a transition of truthfulness. Technology has changed the way we think about what’s real and what’s been modified – creating blurry lines between perceptions and reality.
For example, credit card “safety” no longer includes a traditional pillar of safety – privacy. Credit card safety is now achieved through predictive analytics and constant monitoring of purchases; quite the opposite of privacy.
Technology has modified how we perceive safety with car services – for many of us, a navigation and tracking system like the ones found in popular ride-sharing services makes us feel safer than a taxi driver who has passed a background safety check. It is hard to determine which is the more authentic version of safety.
Another example of how technology has modified the truth is photo filters. With the touch of a button, a photo can easily be manipulated and shared with millions of people. While a flower crown or a puppy face is a fun addition for social media pictures, what happens when filtered photos are presented as real and passed around social media channels, gaining legitimacy with every click, like and share? Combined with our ever-decreasing attention spans and memories that are increasingly dependent on the content we share via social media, and photo filters become a variation on reality, an inch further from an authenticity.
As we move away from privacy and authenticity and become easily modifiable, we lose the honesty and benefits of being honest – trust, reliability, loyalty. Without honesty, companies lose their personal connection to buyers, their internal teams are not efficient, and their business partnerships don’t last. Loyalty becomes obsolete. As business leaders, it is our responsibility to encourage truth so that honesty is a core value to our internal team and our customers.
How can we encourage honesty within our organization? By removing the pitfalls that distort reality and creating opportunities for genuineness.
I don’t mean an office that meets required occupational safety standards, I mean an environment that is a safe place for people to learn and grow in their roles. Encourage colleagues to share their mistakes, how they overcame the mistake and the lessons they learned. Help teammates teach each other by encouraging them to provide constructive feedback in a productive way. Focus on problem solving, and not blaming individuals, to help the team develop integrity. As the leader, it is also important for you to disclose your own mistakes and lessons learned to help the team recognize that mistakes as learning opportunities and not punishments.
People feel more empowered when they are trusted. Give your team assignments and deadlines, time to work and the ability to ask questions, then give them space to do their job. Eliminating micromanagement practices help employees feel respected and motivated to complete their work while building pride and integrity.
Your words have tremendous value, so don’t sacrifice them. As a business leader, you have the knowledge and experience to anticipate potential problems. Review business plans with a watchful eye on timing and pricing, guarantees and other promises customers will count on. Set realistic expectations with your internal team about promotions, raises and bonuses. Do not give lip service to the executive team. Breaking promises, resetting expectations and over committing leads to disappointment, which deteriorates trust and your words lose their value and your reputation as reliable.
Honesty is perhaps best tested in crisis. Leading with honesty and truthfulness to do the right thing, even if it’s extra work or the outcome is intimating. If the crisis is handled with honesty, the virtue of honesty will be stronger than ever when its resolved. If you try to cover up the crisis, a downward spiral of dishonesty and lies will begin.
This doesn’t mean disclose classified or time-sensitive information, but be upfront in a timely, open manner. If the product is delayed, be truthful about when it will be delivered. If a service is cancelled, offer a reliable alternative. If expectations for a product or service can’t be met, don’t try to conceal the situation. Challenges will be overcome, but an untrustworthy reputation is nearly impossible to overcome. Being transparent creates a culture of honesty where rumors cannot thrive and truthfulness raises to the top.
One of the most obvious indicators of untruthfulness is inconsistency. As Mark Twain said “if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” While important aspects can be tailored to each audience/group, putting truthfulness at the forefront of every conversation will leave no room for doubt. Consistency is a key aspect of building and maintaining trust.
When you think about mentors and leaders that have resonated with you the most, you will likely notice a common theme – the most aspirational people we encounter have shown us their true selves. Be that relatable person for your team; transparent and filter-free without pretense or ulterior motives.
In our pursuit of honesty, we can help create more defined lines between perceptions and reality. We develop into a more trust-worthy company, which helps build customer loyalty and in turn, helps our products and services succeed.
This article was originally posted on Leaders In Heels: Career Lessons.
As a student and practitioner of career planning, I am always in search of the definition of a successful career. What enables success and how is it defined?
I was reading Amy Poehler’s book, Yes Please, recently and stumbled across her brilliant definition.
"Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren't. Career is the think that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later."
I think she touches on something that each one of us has to wrestle with in our careers: is it going to be our life’s main dish (something that defines you) or is it a nutritious vegetable (something you do because you need to)? Or, for the lucky ones, is it dessert? Something you choose to do because it is sweet and makes the whole meal better?
Life is an amazing teacher and in business, I have learned more richly from our customers than any other single group. Here are some of the lessons I have learned.
All of us have experienced it. The dizziness and disorientation that comes from motion sickness. Either in the backseat of a station wagon, on a boat, or spinning around the yard, there is that familiar and strange sensation of your brain swirling around in your head. Something similar happens in times of change in our professional lives as well. Whether navigating new waters, riding along on a bumpy road, or having circumstances change suddenly, some motion sickness can be hard to avoid.
So, how do you survive change, avoid light-headedness, and emerge on the other side stronger, wiser, and more capable than you began? Here are three principles to apply.
1. Find your Focus
When I would go out boating as a kid with family friends and started to feel a little wheezy, they would encourage me to set my eyes on a fixed point like the horizon or the nearby shoreline. It helped provide perspective and settle my stomach. The same is true in our work life. In times when the business results or changing processes are like choppy seas, it is good to fix your eyes on the constants of your business: your commitment to customers, your loyalty to the mission, or your cool products. Not everything in the environment is changing and some of what is steady is extremely positive and can keep you grounded even if things are changing.
2. Hydrate Your Interests
One of the common causes of dizziness is dehydration. To avoid dizziness, they recommend drinking enough water, eating regularly and sleeping soundly. In other words, you can’t neglect your health and expect your body to perform at its peak. Most of us have multiple interests in and beyond work. In times of change it is important to nourish your curiosities. At work, look for ways to learn new skills or expand your contributions. And in your personal life, don’t neglect the things that feed you like hobbies, time with friends, family, or time in reflection or in nature.
3. Practice Your Flexibility
Have you ever wondered how ice skaters can perform those tight and fast spins on the ice without getting dizzy? Unlike dancers, who can fix their eyes on a single location trick their brain into thinking it is still even though their bodies are moving, ice skaters are moving too fast for that. When the spin stops, why don’t they feel overwhelmingly dizzy and fall to the ground? The answer is a little anti-climactic: they get used to it. Starting small and slow, they build their tolerance. They might still get dizzy, but not enough that the audience would know. You, too, can practice your flexibility and open-mindedness and train yourself not to get disoriented in times of change. It requires some self-awareness, perhaps some self-reflection and opportunities to practice. So, if you find yourself facing change after change, be thankful that you are getting the opportunity to practice.
The most common cause of dizziness is unintended motion. It’s something out of your control and causes your body to move when you haven’t moved it. In times of change, the first thing to go is our own sense of control and that can be disconcerting. But it need not be debilitating. Like the effects of vertigo, most times they are harmless and temporary. We just need to find our feet and proceed forward and the dizziness will pass.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.
I read with interest an article in the Huffington Post that recounted the 1500 meter race at the Rio Paraolympic games. The top four finishers in the visually impaired category would have beat the Olympic Gold metalist, a very talented Matthew Centrowitz Jr. Abdellatif Baka, Tamiru Demisse, Henry Kirwa, and Fouad Baka all ran faster than Centrowitz.
The 1500 meter race at the Olympics was very strategic and not necessarily fast. In fact, Centrowitz was way off his best time and in fact, there are over a dozen high school kids in the US that have ran faster than the time he posted at the Rio Games, but still the achievements of these blind or nearly-blind running is remarkable.
It leaves me with some “what if” questions.
What if these runners had been on the field at the regular Olympic games? How would they have done? They certainly were capable of finishing the distance in time. But without their sight, could they have known their position in the strategic race that left people guessing until the end who would emerge victorious.
How does a blind or visually-impaired runner judge his position on the track? How does he know if he is in the leading pack or one further back? How does he pace himself (or herself) in the field that is running that day?
And what does this have to teach us about the vision and insight we have today about our businesses, products, and projects? Does having more information make us a better finisher? Not in all cases.
I am inclined to agree with Tim Washer speaking at ContentMarketing World who recently concluded “analysis is good, but don’t let it kill a good idea.” At least not all the time.
Don't fear the unsustainable. If it is unsustainable, it won't sustain.
Before proceeding with a solution, ask yourself the following:
“Do we have enough data to know if customers have a problem that we have a unique right to solve?”
You will save yourself a lot of money and time if you ask this ahead of time and use it as a strategic filter for investment. If you don’t know why you will win, then you won’t likely win.
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because it is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and it will be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges the motivate you. Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
- Martha Graham, to Agnes de Mille,
as quoted by Sara Bareilles in her book “Sounds Like Me”
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.
“A fatherless girl thinks nothing is impossible and nothing is safe.”
– May Sarton as quoted by Gloria Vanderbilt on the documentary she did together with her son Anderson Cooper
If this is true (and thankfully, I don’t have personal experience), what will this mean to our world as so many girls are growing up without fathers in their lives. More invention. More innovation. More paranoia. More pessimism or more optimism?
“I think we are an outfit headed for extinction,” commented Ernest Hemingway upon seeing fake books in his fancy hotel room. Later, it is said that Hemingway went back to the bookcase and stood there stiffly and as he looked at the pasteboard backs again he said, “Phony, just like the town.” A town who had criticized his writing and was constantly jockeying for their best position at the expense of those who created art.
I think there are a lot of pasteboard book backs in our world as well. Things that are staged for the sale, but not lived in. Furniture that distressed with sandpaper, not with life. People who are photoshopped (as a verb) and filtered until unrecognizable. So much so that photos posted unaltered and raw on social media are often tagged #nofilter, as the opposite is too common.
This makes the authentic so attractive.
High self-awareness is a key element in business success. It can be easily overshadowed by the sexier traits of charisma or sheer intellectual genius. A study a few years back by Green Peak Partners and Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, quantified what employees have known for a while: "Companies and their investors need to put more effort into evaluating the interpersonal strengths of potential leaders. They should focus more on how a leadership candidate does the work, and not focus exclusively on what he or she has done.”
How one gets things done and the improvements one might make over time are rooted directly in a leader’s ability to face truth about themselves. According to the authors of Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck, leaders can improve themselves. According to their Harvard Business Review article, leaders must become “more aware of what motivates them and their decision making.”
In the end, there are three characteristics of feedback that I believe capture why it is critical to our success; Feedback is a mirror, a gift, and a miracle.
Self-Awareness Requires a Mirror
I don’t mean the kind of mirror by which you check your teeth for spinach or fix your hair. I don’t mean the kind of mirror that customer service agents to make sure they are smiling when taking phone calls (however effective that might be). I am referring to a different type of mirror. The kind that tell you how you are showing up in your professional life that leads to self-awareness and reflection. That mirror is feedback.
"Although the quietest of the emotions self-awareness is an incredible predictor of emotional intelligence," writes Daniel Goleman in a study with Korn Ferry Institute. Turns out, the ability to respond to crisis, develop teams, and manage your own emotions are all skills that can be improved with better self awareness.
Every journey begins with a first step and there are a variety of assessments that you can take to improve your self-awareness. Some of my favorite are profiled here for your reference. I have used Kolbe and StrengthsFinders as team building tools, as well, to help us better understand our team mates and how to work together.
Feedback is a Gift that Isn’t Easily Given (or Received)
“Not all gifts arrive in neat packages,” said Carole Robin, director of the Arbuckle Leadership Fellows Program at Standard Graduate School of Business. “This is definitely true for feedback.” Leaders must be exceptional at giving feedback in order to develop their teams and achieve their goals. Feedback delivered with candid compassion can transform businesses and relationships and most of us could improve our performance.
Leaders have a double responsibility however. They also need to make sure they are not missing out on the opportunity to receive the gift of feedback themselves. Ken Blanchard called feedback “the breakfast of champions.” And sometimes that breakfast is served is too cold, too warm, or too late, but it can be nourishing in any case.
We need to persevere and to find people who can tell us the truth. “We all need people who can give us feedback,” said Bill Gates. “That’s how we improve.”
People are often hesitant to give pointed feedback to their boss or colleagues. The conversations are awkward and best and can be career limiting, if the leader values comfort and coddling over results and responsibility (and we have all known a few of those).
The gift of feedback must be received and given with open hands, open hearts, and open minds. Create forums for feedback like 1:1 meetings, office hours, or surveys. In listening sessions, sit with your arms in a neutral position and try to constrain your reactions or defensive tendencies.
And just like your grandmother taught you: not all gifts are what you want, but because it is the “thought that counts” you have to treat the gift, and the giver, with graciousness. You must look for how you can best apply what you are learning. You may end up disregarding portions of what was shared, but it is in the consideration and reflection that changes occur.
Truth Telling is a Miracle (considering the obstacles)
In their book Execution, authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, talk about the seven key traits of a leader and among them are “know yourself” and “insist on realism.” That last topic was so impactful to their thinking and their business success that they went on to write Confronting Reality. Yet in order for leaders to face reality, they need to be told the truth and they need to hear it clearly.
Failure to listen is more common than head cold among senior leaders. Combine this with the difficulty of speaking truth to power and it is no wonder that leaders can live in an echo chamber of glossed-over good news and ungrounded positivity. We criticize our culture for believing fake news, but often live in a world of fake news about ourselves and our businesses. It is a wonder hard truth is ever spoken, in fact. We are all guilty of not speaking up boldly enough or not being as open to feedback as we should have. It really is a miracle when it happens. Yet, it is a miracle that we can encourage and even facilitate with the right behaviors and attitudes.
In addition to being open to constructive criticisms, it is critical that you understand the data that indicates business success. In most environments, these include revenue and margin or market share data as backward looking indicators. It is also important to look at early or forward-looking indicators such as sales funnel analysis or engagement metrics on key tools or campaigns known to convert to sales. These business dashboards serve the same purpose as the dashboard of your car: providing you a feedback loop that indicates if you are running at speed, violating conditions of success, or if you have a crisis pending. Data reporting and analysis can be an important part of your truth telling toolkit.
With a combination of mirrors, gifts, and miracles, we can lead better businesses and lead them better.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse.
I recently heard the serial entrepreneur, Bret Taylor, speak with Kara Swisher from Recode: Decode about the redesign they did of FriendFeed before selling it to Facebook. He called the redesign a “dead cat bounce,” implying that the product had already lost to a competitor and it was a last-ditch effort to bring it to life, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
It got me thinking. Does bouncing a dead cat back to life ever work? At what point did he know it was dead? What would have been saved (in money, time, or “life force”), if he hadn’t bounced the cat one last time?
I don’t know much about FriendFeed, and I am in no place to judge, as I know that I have bounced a dead cat in my own career. Vigorously. With passion and authority. And seen it skid out. To see the effort amount to nothing other than lost time, money, and credibility.
It requires a lot of self-reflection and brutal honesty to avoid the temptation of playing “Weekend at Bernie’s” with your business, ideas, products, or initiatives. May we all have the courage to face the truth and focus our attention on the things that matter most.
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.
Call it an “artist’s temperament” or perhaps the high propensity of ADHD among artists, chaos often follows artistry. Whether you are talking about a visual artist, painter, musician, or even a creative software developer, things like time management, detail-orientation, and the need for clarity is often low. They are more comfortable with uncertainty, with ambiguity, and take a more flexible approach to things (often everything except their art).
Some of us straddle the worlds of art and science. We have responsibilities to design the systems and then keep the trains running on time. And when we feel like the chaos factor swings a little high, it might be time for us to channel our inner artist. And realize the only thing we control is our art.
