Zane Safrit

Where Good Ideas Come From

via laughingsquid.com

We all need to know.

It's 4 minutes and 7 seconds to begin to find out. After that, I think we just have to keep coming back.

From Jen Myronuk

Beware of "Imagine if..."

“Imagine if…” is always a red flag. It doesn’t mean the imagination won’t prove to be right, it just means slow down, step back, and get back to what’s real for a moment.

Any scenario can be imagined. Any use case can be dreamed up. But is this something a majority of the people will really need? Is there solid ground beneath this feature or is it floating in fantasy land?

via 37signals.com

Got a point.

I remember a few conversations where I either used the magic phrase, 'imagine if', or I witnessed someone using that phrase.

Didn't matter, really. The results were the same: zero.

Slow down, step back and get real...again.

Tomorrow's Guest: Erika Andersen, author of Being Strategic

Erika Andersen, founder of Proteus International and author of Being Strategic: Plan for Success, Outthink Your Competitors, Stay Ahead of Change, is our guest tomorrow. The show starts at 9:30 AM, Central.

As founder of Proteus International, Erika Andersen has built a reputation for promoting learning and change in ways uniquely tailored to her clients' challenges, goals, and culture. She does that by focusing on thoroughly understanding each organization and on collaborating with her clients in ways that are engaging, direct, and "learner-friendly." Erika uses metaphor and models to help people learn about themselves and their organizations, and then to decide how to move toward the future they envision.

She has served as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and top executives of a number of corporations, including MTV Networks, Hewitt Associates, Turner Broadcasting, MillerCoors, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group, CBS, Madison Square Garden, and Comcast Corporation.

Her book, Being Strategic, is one of my favorite books. It's one of the three books I keep handy. Why? In an ever-changing environment it is important that I assess opportunities while Being Strategic.

And her book offers powerful, clear, actionable steps to insure I am Being Strategic in my plans for big projects or small. In fact, I ask each guest on this show to take a step recommended by Erika in her book. That step is to identify the 'reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future' for a project, a business, a life-change they offer to help their audience and the audience for this show. Their answers are always inspiring, just like her book.

We’ll talk about her deceptively simple definition of ‘being strategic’ and its 5 steps. She’ll explain why being strategic is a daily habit. And I’m very excited to hear about her recent PBS special on Being Strategic which she recorded before a live audience earlier this year and is available through PBS stations around the country.

You have two listening options:

LIVE

1. Call in during the live portion from 9:30 AM, Central to 10:30 AM, Central. 646-915-9212, here in the US.

2. Listen in streaming mode during the show or later.

ARCHIVE

1) Listen in streaming mode.

Be Their Ronald Reagan: Help Them Tear Down Those Walls!

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 20th (20th? Yes, 20th) week of that plan. The lesson this week is:

Be their Ronald Reagan: help them tear down those walls.

Former President Ronald Reagan spoke these now famous words on June 12, 1987:

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'"

It was a rousing speech given to a rousing reception in an inspiring location.

Look at it closely. Can you see a business leader, you, giving the near-exact same speech today:

Department heads, team leaders and all of us together, if we seek success, if we seek prosperity for each other and our company, if we seek new ideas for new products and services to serve new markets: Come here to this meeting! Let’s open our office doors! All of us together, let’s tear down those walls. The walls that keep us from sharing ideas, sharing credit, sharing challenges and resources to conquer them.

I understand the fear of competing in a global market with what we see as our limited resources and the pain of division that afflict this company --and I pledge to you my efforts to help overcome these burdens.

A leader is first recognized when they communicate a compelling call to action, an inspiring call to action, a vision and a purpose that unites disparate and competing interests to put their differences aside and unite their skills and passions towards a common goal.

A leader is confirmed when they work tirelessly, consistently, openly and transparently to execute that vision.

Be their leader. Be their Ronald Reagan. Inspire them to tear down those walls!

Bold calls to action, provocative calls to action, like these in speeches like this given in places like the Brandenburg Gate that divided then West and East Berlin were what helped this former president be known as The Great Communicator. Here’s the text of the speech. Here’s a video clip of the speech.

**********

You can start with any week of the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan and make that your first week.

You can take one of those weeks and turn it into a month or commit to an accelerated pace and complete 6 of the weeks in one month.

You can create your own week of employee recognition. Share that journey here. Share it in your blog or Twitter or Facebook.

But do something to recognize your employees! They set your brand apart as your ultimate competitive edge. And the more you recognize their achievements, the more achievements you'll see and they'll enjoy, along with your customers and and shareholders, partners and vendors.

Highlights from My Conversation with Ed Muzio, Author of Make Work Great

Ed Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics which provides Analytical Solutions Maximizing Human Potential. He is the author of the excellent book Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture and Gain Influence - One Person at a Time. And he joined our show last week to talk about his company and the solutions he offers in his book for those who want to Make Work Great!

You can listen in streaming mode at this link.

Good morning, Ed. Thank you for being on our show.

Good Morning Zane, ... Thanks for having me....I've been excited about this all week, especially after reading your last blog post about it.

I don’t encourage stalking but where are you and what projects are you working on now?

Ha, I think the information age mandates stalking. So, that’s ok. Anyway, I’m in my office in downtown Albuquerque this morning. This week I’m gearing up for a few upcoming sessions I’m giving for clients, and also working on the instructor certification materials for the seminar based on Make Work Great. We just began offering instructor certifications and we’ve already got people asking for them.

When did you begin to think about offering instructor certification programs?

We do it for all of our programs. It’s always been part of the plans. for this program. The reception has been warm for this program. So, we pushed it in the schedule a bit.

Who did you write this book for? Describe the reader you pictured as you wrote this book?

It’s initially geared for people who have a true desire to do something in their workplace. They wanted to make things better at work but felt trapped between a rock and a hard place...

Why do they need to read your latest book?

The why is in some ways self-evident. But in other ways it’s not.

 

I think there’s a drive to make work better. After I wrote the first book which was 4 Secrets to Liking Your Work ...but have you heard that people complain about their job? If you write a book named 4 Secrets to Liking Your Work it’s an invitation to complain about your job. Everybody comes up to you and tells you what’s wrong about their job...it’s not a bad thing. I learned about what what’s wrong in work and what people are struggling with and it’s a good path towards fixes. But there was one subset of those people who would come up and say you have a good set of ideas for improvement but I can’t do anything because...someone else, the employees, the leaders, the management someone else controls everything and I can’t do anything until they fix it.

And, I would say...

• Well, do something anyway.

And, they would say:

• I can’t; I can’t do anything.
  

And, I would say:

• Well, quit.
  

And, they would say:

• I can’t.
  

And, I would eventually say:

• I guess I can’t talk to you anymore....

Eventually, my friend and advisor, Dr. Deb Fisher who was a co-author with me on this first book, said you can’t do that. You’re telling them to shut up and do it any way. And you can’t do that. You have to give them the answers. You have the answers anyway.

And eventually I wrote what she described as the Ed Muzio guide to do it anyway and that’s Make Work Great.

My friend Erika Andersen coined what’s become a favorite phrase for me. That’s reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future when you wrote Make Work Great?

I can share with you the purpose of my company. That’s to change the way America works and that’s to put companies back in control in the information age, and put individual people and employees back in control of their careers and their lives. A lot of people don’t feel that way right now.

More reasonable – I view my purpose in this book is to help leaders increase their group’s output and reduce stress, for themselves and their groups. I’ll help a few people, today, then I know I did something and if it spreads from there, that’s the goal.

What are some of the metrics you’ll use to measure your progress?

There’s a lot of ways to look at progress. My favorite metric is voluntary reporting. Just last week somebody posted on my personal Facebook page that said something like:

I put the book to work and started making my cultural crystal and I immediately saw and felt the changes in myself and externally saw the results.

If my goal is one person at a time, that’s a good metric.

What’s been the biggest or most common obstacle? Is it from the management side or the employee’s side?

The biggest obstacle I have to overcome is that initial sense that I can’t do anything until management fixes things. That is really a crippling belief system. That’s

If I can get somebody in a room and start to experiment with some things they can do then they can leave with a smile on their face saying I can do this or I can do this tomorrow.

 

But getting them in that room sometimes is tricky. But people are really firmly set in their belief system that it’s somebody else’s job, that it’s Management’s job is to make me happy.

And that’s not a good place for management to be and it’s not a good place for anybody else to be, either.

There’s no idea that there’s a put your head in the sand and ignore structural problems. I would never recommend anyone ignore problems. But at the same time there are things you can do no matter what the problems are that can be useful.

I was sold on your book with your first section: It Starts with You. Personal responsibility is bandied about a lot these days. But it’s rarely bandied about in the workplace. Your two books clearly point to that personal responsibility. This sounds like a silly new-age, pop psychology, question but where and when did we forego personal responsibility for our happiness and performance at work? Forget life. Let’s just deal with work.

You know, it’s funny. It seems we have foregone it in a lot of areas. And, much of what I do is in the work context. For example, I have a very popular seminar around reading behavior and responding to it to better engage people in communication. I finally had to put a policy in place to offer the tools and materials to spouses for graduates for my class.. Because after each seminar a couple of people would come up afterwards and says please could I have these tools for my spouse because I need it for that person . . My policy ends after I provide the tools I stop talking. And the focus is work and when I get asked for marriage advice, that’s where I stop talking!!

The focus is what you can do and not what others are going to do.

On the other hand your first sentence is You’re not as autonomous as you think you are. So...personal responsibility is just a nice phrase for the employee putting the yokes on themselves?

Haha! The yokes are already on you, or not, depending upon your perspective. In reality, we’re all somewhat free and we’re all somewhat yoked. That whole first section of the the book that says you’re not as autonomous as you think you are goes through some of the reasons that you have forces acting on you that are real and strong and are not all you. You have some freedom and you have some constraints. What the book is about, what Make Work Great, is about taking advantage of the areas in which you’re already free and leveraging that to make yourself even more free.

I saw, but now I can’t find it, an article that said 30% or more of those currently employed will leave their job once the economy turns around. And in a recent 4-minute video your host shared that 75% of currently employed are looking for new jobs.

Yeah, that 30% sounded low to me. It’s definitely 30% or more and maybe as much as 3/4’s looking to get out.

Why are so many of those currently employed thinking that in order to Make Work Great they need to work someplace else?

...Well, it’s really easy to say “things are better elsewhere than here,” because I’m here, I’m not elsewhere and I can see and fell all the problems that take place. And you’re comparing all the problems you can see “here” with your ideal version of “there.”

But the statistics suggest that’s not an accurate perception. If 3/4’s of the people thinks it’s better elsewhere, where is elsewhere?

I read where companies hold in excess of $2 trillion in cash. Clearly they’re waiting to invest in productivity assets. Clearly the companies are getting productivity from their employees. Are those companies putting too many demands and too much stress on those employees?

...Either the companies are putting stress on the employees, or the employees and managers and leaders are putting it on themselves. From what I’ve seen, if you look at it that way, it’s both.

But, I think that’s a confusing lens to look through, because either way, the fix is not for “the company” to do something different because “The company” isn’t a person, it’s just a bunch of employees. You have to ask yourself who’s on the other side of the question? When the employees start doing something differently, increasing output, reducing stress, that changes the company.

That’s the critical ratio, the output divided by stress, you talk about, isn’t it? Define your critical ratio.

Right! The critical ratio is output versus stress. This harkens back to my engineering background.

If you’re a leader or an employee in a company, you’re trying to do something useful, I hope – that’s output – and you’re trying to do it in a way that doesn’t burn you out – that’s stress.

You’re engaged in an optimization problem.

Maximum output minimum stress is the only way to survive over the long term in the information age.

Companies create less in relation to the stress their stakeholders experience or create. Their key stakeholder, employees, have had enough.

Stress is not just a new age notion, it has direct impacts to family and friends and health. It’s real. Studies have shown we’re all overstressed, and we shy away from those companies or situations that add to it.

It’s not a position you want to be putting your employees in or customers in...to be adding to their stress.

How does Make Work Great address that?

What’s different about what I’m doing is that this is not a stress reduction program like meditation and deep breathing. Not that those aren’t valuable. . What this says is we’re going to optimize that balance. We’re going to make the most of that control you have. What we’re doing is maximizing the most output with the least amount of stress.

Should it address that? I mean if so many companies are so poorly managed that they motivate their most important asset to flee at the first opportunity...can these brands be rehabilitated to or with Make Work Great?

...That’s creeping up to the question, on the individual level it’s the question of should I quit or stay, which is always an interesting one, and of course the answer is different for each person and each situation.

Of course it’s an unique question for every person and every situation.

I would never say if you should or shouldn’t quit because how would I know.

If you’re going to work and stay there then you should do these things. You practice the behaviors that give you more output with less stress that will be good for your career and that would be good for your health. There’s no reason to do it if you’re not going to stay employed.

But I’ll tell you this: if you’re gonna stay, do these things. Do them for your company, do them for yourself, whatever – it’s just practical common sense that you do them because they make things better for you.

What are the four simple guidelines that define the process to Make Work Great, a process you call a special type of moderation?

The four things are:

1. Don’t put your career in jeopardy. Do things that help you, not hurt you.

2. Don’t compromise your ethics. Never. Again, common sense. The book talks about ways to be overt and honest about the work you do.

3. Don’t use all your time. Don’t look at it like you’re going to spend 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week and change the culture. Make small changes and realize the benefit. This is about slow changes with lasting effect, not quick changes or programs du jour. Make small changes, realize the benefit, then change again.

4. Don’t get impatient. That's the flip side of don’t use all your time. Develop good discipline and then wait for the rest to take care of itself. It’s like planting a tree. It won’t grow if you keep digging it up and looking at it.

Of those 4, which one presents the most common, greatest challenge?

Well, I don’t know about other people, but for me patience is my greatest struggle. I’m one of those people who want things to happen RIGHT NOW.

Unfortunately it’s that short-term thinking that gets companies into messes in the first place. We think if we can throw more resources at it it will go faster.

Company culture is an organic process, and you can’t shortcut organic processes. In business, we have a hard time with this idea. We tend to think you can speed up anything by throwing people and money at it. But it’s like Fredrick Brooks said, “nine women can’t make a baby in one month.” You can’t change the culture faster, just because you want to, or because you try to hurry. All you do is stress yourself out.

So, If you want long term changes to your workplace, you have to be okay with making small incremental steps and watching the progress.

You outline the personal responsibility with 2 big steps: Overtness in Task and Clarity within Relationships. Tell us about those two.

Sure, well overtness about task is about being clear and overt about the work you’re doing and the task. There are 6 principles involved:

• What you’re doing (purpose),

• Why it matters to the company (impact),

• Why it matters to you (incentive),

• Whether or not you’re doing it (progress),

• What you need from the company to do it (resources),

• What you need from yourself to do it (capabilities).

Overtness about tasks is I’m talking and syncing with these issues all the time with as much overtness and obviousness as I can. If nothing else I’m thinking to myself all the time about these with as much clarity and overtness as I can muster.

And this inevitably leads to questions. You don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do or why you’re trying to do it. Those questions lead to conversation with others who can help you get what you need. Those questions with others lead to ...clarity within relationship: clearly define the purpose of your interaction, the approach, and be very limited in seeking need for agreement.

For example, if you and I are managers and we have an employee whose workload we want to share.

I should be clear with myself of what I’m wanting to do, I want 5 more hours of their time, and I’m careful to approach you in a way that makes sense, and I’m going to limit the need for our agreement. I’m going to try to keep our agreement focused on that one employee and their time and not our management philosophies.

All of this sounds so simple. Be clear, honest, transparent. Don’t compromise your ethics. Why is that so tough for so many?

It’s all about discipline. Overtness about task and clarity about relationships is a discipline. And disciplines are tough. I often tell people, for example, that I go to the gym a few times a week. Many weeks that’s true. But it’s amazing how easy it is to say those words even after a two or three week run in which I haven’t managed to get to the gym at all.

This is the same thing – overtness, clarity, honesty, and transparency are a discipline, and one you need to practice on a regular basis. Easy to say, not always easy to do. Job or life will sometimes try to pull you in another direction.

Another thing I liked about your book is you addressed that this is hard. You have a chapter titled When Growth is Difficult. Which of these two steps, Overtness in Task and Clarity in Relationships, presents the biggest challenge for people? Why?

...Well, we’ve talked a little already about the purpose piece and overtness about task. Again, I can’t speak for everyone, but it does seem like a lot of people have trouble with the relationship part of the puzzle. Figuring out what you don’t know about your work and all the 6 aspects of overtness about task getting ...then finding the people who have the answers, and getting them to give you those answers, can be tricky.

That’s a lot of what my firm does is help companies deal with those issues or better yet avoid them in the first place by having good tools in place so when conflict comes up in the workplace they are prepared to deal with it.

You talk about Conflict in the Crystalline Network. You reference and summarize some excellent researchers in this field of conflict. You discovered commonalities among them all. What are some of these commonalities they? Why are they important?

After reading quite a bit about conflict, I came up with my model which I called the building blocks of reality. It’s 5 pieces.

In every situation, you have:

• the objective data which is what is going on,

• the situational factors,

• your interpretation of the situation,

• your preferred approach,

• your deeply held beliefs.

You can conflict with someone on any of those levels, whether you know it or not. You may be conflicting over the objective data, you may be reading it differently. You may be conflicting over your deeply held beliefs. or you may be conflicting anywhere else in the middle.

The key is to be overt and transparent in your communication about what issue you’re talking about. First we talk about the objective, then we talk about the situation and then the interpretation and if we need to go further then we can go into our driving approaches and beliefs, if we can.

There’s a great video on our site at Make Work Great. It’s called Disagree, Don’t Argue. It goes into this model.

Basically if we’re clear about what part of the situation we’re talking about we’ll at least know where the conflict is that we’re talking about and address it appropriately.

Otherwise if I’m concerned about the data and you’re concerned about my beliefs we’re just going to go in circles.

What tells us our crystal we are now building will turn into a network, a lattice if you will?

The idea of what I call the cultural crystal is that you start to practice the disciplines yourself and over time they start to spread out. And when you see other people copying your patterns of behavior, that means your influence is spreading.

If you attend one of my sessions or you watch the video titled Say no without saying no and you learn about this 90-second format for talking about your output and you start to use it you’ll see this pattern start to spread out.

The key is to not try to push it, and not to try to take credit for it, rather, just be happy that you are making a difference. And just know that the patterns are starting to propagate.

A recent guest here was Molly Anderson, co-author of The Corporate Lattice. You offer complimentary perspectives on how to create lattice networks of engaged employees in cultures of learning that unite to create passionate brands. You both deserve more than that one sentence summary. But I hope one day you two connect. I think you’d have a lot to talk about.

I’d like to meet Molly, The lattice metaphor works for me, although I think in some cases it may suggest a little less randomness than what is actually in play. But it’s definitely a far superior metaphor than a ladder or a hierarchy.

We haven’t talked about social media. Your book doesn’t discuss it either. Even though I’m a big fan of it, I’m glad you didn’t. However, that seems like a perfect resource to expedite creating crystals, building networks, moving from contributor to advisor.

Well, I think you’re right and you’re very perceptive for noticing it. I made the conscious choice not to talk about today’s social media sites likeTwitter or Facebook, because we all know those can be different tomorrow.

But those are just mechanisms, anyway. I didn’t talk specifically about public speaking, or e-mail, or telephone etiquette either, because those are just mechanisms.

What I tried to do was talk about the contents of communication, what you talk about and how you talk about it and leave the reader to select the mechanism.

I see you have just begun to wade into the social media pool.

I’ve been on Facebook for years, but only got my company on it and started the Twitter stuff this year. I’m surprised how fast our following is growing, but it’s still pretty small.

Of course I’m doing my best to base my self worth on how many followers I have, so please, follow me somewhere!!

Jim Rohn said that Leaders are Readers. You’re a leader. Judging from the footnotes and references in your book, you’re an avid reader, also. What are you reading these days?

Thomas Kayser’s follow-on to “Mining Group Gold: How to Cash In on the Collaborative Brain Power of a Team for Innovation and Results. I’ve been asked to endorse it, so I’m reading that right now. It won’t be out until next year but so far, I’m seeing a balance between theory and application for getting groups of people to do something useful.

I also just read “The Big Short:Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis, a book about the subprime mortgage collapse, because I’m intrigued by how systems of people make decisions that are ultimately bad for nearly everyone within them.

I haven’t written it up yet, but as I read the story of what happened, I was struck by the lack of overtness and clarity being practiced by those who set up, ran, and ultimately suffering under the subprime mortgage bubble.

Let’s revisit who should read your book and why should they read it.

Anyone who has a job as a manager, leader, executive, or even individual contributor in a workplace that is complex and multifaceted. What I’ve been told is that if someone has a sense of wanting to make the workplace better for others, or even just make it a little better for him or herself, my book will help.

Where can people find you on the web?

The company's website is Group Harmonics and from there you can click through to the book websites, and also to my social media. And, we just added a free giveaway too.

Restaurants turn to Twitter to fix customer complaints. And you?

Geoff Alexander, managing partner of Wow Bao, explained his company's Twitter commitment like this: If somebody has 1,000 followers and writes a negative Tweet about Wow Bao, then 1,000 people could think the restaurant is bad. But if Wow Bao publicly responds to that Tweet, 1,000 people may see the issue is being handled. via www.usatoday.com

And there you have it.

That's why your business needs to be on Twitter. Listening. Responding.

You're customers and prospects, partners and employees, are all on Twitter. Commenting. Listening. Responding...

They're waiting to hear how you comment, listen and respond. But they, we, won't wait forever. Other options, your competitors, are there already...Commenting. Listening. Responding...

The hidden costs of maintaining the status quo

We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy. —

Warren Buffett excerpted in “Startup lessons learned from Warren Buffett” [thx Derick] via 37signals.com

There's our choices.

• A few awkward moments shared in public. A few decisions made questionable in hindsight. Some results found to be not as good as expected.

• The illusory comfort of routine. Backing into our bunkers. Defending our turf. Then there's no turf left to defend.

Do you like routine?

I love routine. Don't you? I love its comfort and steadiness. I love its lack of interruptions. I love its ease.

On the other hand, which routine should I defend or have defended in my life bunker? Where should I stop learning, changing, growing...creating and sharing a few awkward moments?

Which routine of yours do you want to defend? At what point do you want to stop learning?

Twitter is NOT a Social Network, Says Twitter Exec

Kevin Thau, Twitter's VP for business and corporate development, announced during a presentation at Nokia World 2010 today that everyone's favorite micro-blogging network is not actually a social network. via www.readwriteweb.com

Translation:

Listen...Listen to me. You're not a social network. If you'd stop  using Twitter to connect so much, socialize so much, you'd understand that! 

I immediately thought of Kevin Bacon's scene at the end of Animal House. Against the tide of humanity he's screaming All is well...Remain calm...

It's easy to see Mr. Thau in Kevin's position telling us on Twitter...You are not a social network...You are no-t-t-t-t...

Make meetings meaningful…for them. Week 19 of the 52-Week Employee Engagement Plan

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 19th week of that plan. The lesson this week is:

Make meetings meaningful…for them.

Meetings. Don’t we hate ‘em? What is it about meetings that make us hate them so much?

They’re too often unorganized, poorly managed, they distract and interrupt us, produce few measurable results, dull our thinking, disillusion our hopes, lengthen our day, aggravating, seemingly endless, and we don’t like them.

Has anyone, any business, ever said the following:

Wow, it was only because we were constantly in meetings that we are able to meet our goals, grow the company, reduce customer churn, raise conversion rates....

Why? Because the meetings are too often irrelevant for the attendees and their work towards their personal goals, team goals, department goals.

How can a person showcase their strengths in a meeting? Meeting and event organizers, yes. But that’s their business and passion. And it’s not yours and you’re not.

The only meetings made meaningful are meetings where the topic is finding more ways to for their strengths to shine in reaching your goals, individually and collectively. Those are meaningful meetings...for them.

Make those meetings. Those meetings will be meaningful. They will be short, too. And that leaves you more time and opportunities to recognize them.

**********

You can start with any week of the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan and make that your first week.

You can take one of those weeks and turn it into a month or commit to an accelerated pace and complete 6 of the weeks in one month.

You can create your own week of employee recognition. Share that journey here. Share it in your blog or Twitter or Facebook.

But do something to recognize your employees! They set your brand apart as your ultimate competitive edge. And the more you recognize their achievements, the more achievements you'll see and they'll enjoy, along with your customers and and shareholders, partners and vendors.

2 Rules for More Effective Meetings

Two Simple Meeting Rules - from Mushahid Khan, President and COO, O'Rourke Petroleum "We are on a mission to make our meetings more effective and we've implemented two steps to help."

• No meeting is more than one hour - ever! I was one of the biggest contributors to this problem and so it's taken a change from me.
• Before every meeting, we say: "The purpose of this meeting is _________" If you can't fill in the blank, you probably don't need to meet.

via verneharnish.typepad.com

Simple. Effective. Works for me.

What do you think?

Would it work for your company?

What do you do to keep your meetings more effective?

Radio Guest: Ed Muzio, author of Make Work Great

Ed Muzio is CEO of Group Harmonics and the author of the excellent book Make Work Great: Supercharge Your Team, Reinvent the Culture and Gain Influence - One Person at a Time. He will be our guest tomorrow at 9:30 AM, Central. Your listening options are described below.

The website for Make Work Great offers this:

Ed Muzio offers managers and executives at every level a blueprint for building a positive, motivating, and productive workplace in any kind of organization. Top-down hierarchies are becoming outmoded, especially in today’s decentralized, multi-cultural business environment.

Ed gives managers the tools to fundamentally alter the culture and inspire workers to support, collaborate and pool their talents...

True. And I highly recommend managers and executives at every level read his book. Make Work Great is well-organized, clearly written by someone who freely shares his passion for building a positive, motivating, and productive workplace in any kind of organization.

And the tools and practices he offers in his book are, well, just excellent! They are practical and pragmatic. They are inexpensive. Safe. Sequential. And from my brief use of them I can say they produce results.

But...and you knew this was coming...there is another value I discovered for Make Work Great . It's not just for managers and executives. Make Work Great offers resources that can make every member of an organization a leader, one who supercharges their team, reinvents their culture...one person at a time. And that one person is...ourselves.

Or said another way, what Ed offers in Make Work Great can make employees into managers, managers into executives and executives into leaders. And...possibly, even probably then, all could work with Ed's resources together to create a positive, motivating and productive culture.

Is it obvious I liked Make Work Great? I did. And now, we are treated to a conversation with its author.

LISTENING OPTIONS:

LIVE

1. Listen in streaming mode at this link.

2. Call 646-915-9212 during the live portion of the show, 9:30 AM- 10:30 AM Central on September 22.

LATER

1. Listen in streaming mode at this link.

Seth Godin + Tony Hsieh = Kindness + Happiness = Change the World

via www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

Kindness + Happiness = Change the World.

Ok, the math for changing the world or bringing more change to the world as my friend Cliff chooses to say, can be even simpler:

• Kindness = Changing the World

• Happiness = Changing the World.

Change the world? Why not.

Facebook’s valuation put in perspective

via holykaw.alltop.com

Definitely helps.

But then consider the Pentagon's $660+ Billion Annual Budget. .

Or consider where our $660+ billion military budget places us among the other nation's of the world and their military budgets: #1. By a whopping margin.

Our military budget is so-o-o big compared to the military budgets of others countries. How big? Well, if you combined the military budgets of those countries ranked 2-10...into a single military power:

...we would still outspend them by $100 billion or 20% more. The combined spending for countries ranked 2-10 for military spending equals roughly $500 billion. ...20% less than we spend ourselves. We're number 1!

How big is our military budget?

You would need to combine the military budgets of the countries ranked 2 - 19 to equal ours. Our military needs more than the combined budgets of the next 19 highest-ranked countries for military spending...

Now, THAT's putting Facebook’s valuation in perspective.

It also puts our values in perspective, too.

How does your company's spending priorities reflect your values?

What internal demographic would be seen as most important as judged by how you allot your expenditures? 

Does that align with your purpose, your mission statement, on your website?

Does that align with the experience you create for your stakeholders?

Or do you risk becoming a brand whose claims ring hollow, too? A brand whose stakeholders are increasingly alienated, cynical, even angry. A brand that lacks the internal resources to re-align with their core values.

Something to consider on Monday, anyway.

How do we change the world? Form a crystal

How can you most effectively make an impact on the world around you? The answer is the same whether you are a CEO, a first-line manager, a line worker or an executive: grow a crystal. Start first with yourself, then move on to the people around you, and work outward from there to improve the network around you.  --   Page 24, Make Work Great by Ed Muzio.

Form a crystal. Change the world.

Form a crystal. Grow a community around us, with us. Change our world.

I’m talking next week with Ed Muzio about his book and his work. (Listen here.)  Ed helps those at work create crystals. And Make Work Great. But you can take his advice and apply it in your life outside work if you separate the two. Or even if you don’t.

Your Idea Prevention Department

via www.tomfishburne.com

Where's your idea prevention department?

Who runs it?

What could you accomplish if:

A. they remained. Why? Well, skeptics perform a valuable role. They force on us a little quality control, a little courage, a little fortitude and determination. We'll need that in the future with our ideas.

B. their voice was just a little less loud?

Innovation Isn't Rocket Science

But we treat it like it is and that's the problem. Sometimes it's right under out noses—it's just that someone never thought of doing that before until "it" got done. And the first person, or organization who got it done implemented the innovation. So they set the agenda for others to follow. A peanut butter and chocolate cup is innovative—why didn't someone think of that idea sooner? In retrospect, the two tastes should have always gone together, the minute they themselves were invented and put into production. Don't over estimate your potential to innovate. It's usually right in front of your eyes. But few people stop to realize how innovative a simple idea can be, and even fewer people accelerate to put the simple idea into action. Innovation requires follow through and lots of it. The next time you find yourself asking the question "why hasn't somebody thought of this before"? It's likely that they have. But they probably thought past the original idea and never brought it to life. That's your chance to innovate, and I recommend that you take it. via darmano.typepad.com

This is a great post.

And it's followed by a great series of comments.

Together, they create a conversation where ideas and points of views and even a little data are shared.

Kinda like what you have to do with innovation, finding new ideas...creating new ideas from the conversation and what's shared, clarified, refined, tossed out....

Innovation isn't rocket science. Mostly, it's a conversation like this one.

Is This Your Social Media Manager's First Day?

via www.dilbert.com

A Week in Social Media Silence?

So this week, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology Provost Eric Darr will enforce a campus-wide social media blackout — no Facebook, no Twitter, no instant messaging — nothing.

Access to these popular social media tools will be blocked from campus computers through the week. This is not a disciplinary exercise, Darr says, but an academic one. At the end of the week, students will write reflective essays about their time in social media exile.

via www.npr.org

My first response to this headline was ...What?!?!?

Then I read through Provost Darr's rationale:

Often there are behaviors, habits, ways we use technology that we may ourselves not even be able to articulate because we're not aware of them...

I saw it then as a sabbatical, a week in silence almost. I've spent a day in silence and even as long as a week in silence when out hiking. It was...refreshing. I came back with a refreshed perspective, solutions to chronic challenges, aggravations were let go; I appreciated those around greatly.

I regularly take mini-sabbaticals from social media each week. A long run with no headphones. A long drive. Reading a book. Taking the dog out for a run. Going to be early.

Always, always, these are productive. Problems are let go; solutions take their place. Enthusiasm is renewed.

My one wish for the students and Provost Darr is that they share their essays using social media where we all can share and learn and even apply those discoveries of a week in social media silence in our daily lives.

What do you think?

Could you go a week without social media?

Would it be productive?

What would you find on the other side of that week?

Do You Respond Publicly?

Every business loves social media marketing when customers are raving about them in Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets, but what happens when there’s some bad press on a social network? How do you handle a potential public blemish without making it into a full-fledged stain? While the downside of social media marketing is that we cannot control what people say about our businesses, we can use these powerful connectors to make things right.via www.businessweek.com

I like this post a lot. The advice is clear. It reads as the author has acquired real-world experience. He offers specific resources on specific social media tools. And he's a good writer.

But is there a missed opportunity here? That is the opportunity for your customer community to see you in action. And to rally around your correct and helpful responses.

Granted some details of a problem are private, confidential, complicated and should be handled as such.

And at some point, we, readers and effected parties, all want that difficult discussion taken to a private setting.

But it instills confidence in our audience when they can watch how we respond to a report of a problem. And our actions can speak louder than the detractors comments.

But, again, when in doubt...err on the side of caution.

When will our ultra-social genomes be sequenced?

Scientists have at last sequenced the entire genome of two very different species of ant. The insights gleaned from the genetic blueprints are already yielding clues to their fascinating social behavior. via holykaw.alltop.com

And now...what will scientists find when they sequence the genome of say...

• those with a Twitter following of 1 million people;
• Guy Kawasaki;
• or my sister who refuses to use email...for anybody, for any reason.