Zane Safrit

Stefan Swanepoel, Author of Surviving Your Serengeti Conversation: Conversation Highlights

Stefan Swanepoel joined the show recently. Stefan is the author of Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business & Life.

For 2 million wildebeest of Africa, their Serengeti is a 1,000 mile-long migration filled with hunger, thirst, predators and exhaustion. The journey is so impressive, so dangerous and incomparably massive that is rated the #1 Natural Wonder of the World.

Stefan Swanepoel’s life has been a “Serengeti journey”—from his birth in Kenya to schooling in Hong Kong and South Africa eventually, running a New York-based global franchise network with 25,000 sales associates in 30 countries. In all he has served as president of seven companies and two non-profit organizations.

You can listen to our conversation here.

Thank you, Stefan, for joining the show. I loved your book!

Zane, good morning. It’s so wonderful to be on your show with all of your listeners today. Thank you very much for the chance to talk with your listeners.

You’re currently running a global enterprise now, right?

Well, we’re not quite global. We do a bunch of international consulting. I do have clients on a number of continents in addition to the US.

But, we are a company that does produce a very comprehensive annual analysis of the real estate industry, particularly the residential real estate where we have big companies that provide home-selling services to the buyers. These are companies that people would recognize their names if we were to mention them. But we do research for them and consult with them. We help them with their international expansion.

Why did you think that metaphor of the Serengeti would resonate with an urban, all-digital, all-the-time reader?

Wow. An urban, digital, reader.

We’re all on a journey every day in our lives whether we have adversities of challenges or burdens to overcome. We have our own struggles today.

When I was trying to write this fable, this metaphor, I was looking for something taht was going to big. I thought “Wow, we might not be a jungle animal. Maybe we are what you just described...this urban, digital, concrete jungle.” And we participate in our world. We carry with ourselves a mask; we hide our feelings.

Because we are so politically correct which is a part of being graceful and respectful of other people, we often do not say what we mean nor mean what we say.

If you look at the animals in the serengeti, they are who they are. They don’t have this mask or this different persona. And you can see more clearly their unique skills and talents.

I thought “Wow, isn’t it a good idea if we as the reader cut through the rubbish and focus on what are our strengths? What our weaknesses and who are are instinctively?” And the animal paradigm, the animal metaphor, showed it so clearly.

We’re not animals and I’m not saying we are animals.

But it highlights it so easily. And I could holler out to you “Hey, Zane are you crocodile or a giraffe?” And we could get into a meaningful business or life dicsussion without stepping on anybody’s toes.

You bring up this question of Which Animal Am I? I visited your website, and took the quiz to determine which animal am I.

Turns out I’m a mongoose.

We launched this quiz in early - December. We’ve had over 4000 take the quiz (5000 as of February 4.) The results are very balanced. Of course there are 7 skills. There is the:

• Enduring Wildebeest
• Strategic Lion
• Enterprising Crocodile
• Efficient Cheetah
• Gracious Giraffe
• Communicating Elephant
• Risk-Taking Mongoose

The three that are most widely at this time, and we have a 3rd party monitoring this test so its results are meaningful but by no means an in-depth analysis. But it seems the Enterprising Crocodile, the Gracious Giraffe and the communicating Elephant seem to be the three that more people tend to follow into.

You’re in a really unique category. Not many people are willing to take risks.

What inspired you to write Surviving Your Serengeti? What was the driving force behind this 5 year labor?

I’ve written 18 - 19 books. Writing a book for me is not the hard part. But all those books are technical in nature. My most recent book came out as recent as 2 weeks ago. So, this is an ongoing process.

I was looking for something I could say where could I put my absolute passion, a a parable. I don’t want to compare, but if you think of Andy Andrews or Bob Burg I was looking for a business parable that was bigger, something that was epic, something that was awe-inspiring, something that was large. And I thought, “wow the largest mammals is the elephant, the fastest animal is the cheetah, one of the oldest is the crocodile.

I looked at all of this and thought “Wow, you find them all in one place.” And then at the same you have the wildebeest which is one of the largest mammals and one of the largest migrations of mammals on the planet.

When I saw all of that together I thought “Wow. Here, I found a place on this planet where the story of Life is bigger than Life itself. It’s this big canvas that God created. It’s a really impressive landscape. Can I find in there a hidden message? ”

I went to the serengeti. I’ve been before. I’ve been on 20 safaris in my life. I got on a plane and went back to the serengeti with a new pair of eyes just to look at the serengeti with its wonderful awe-inspiring message of Nature.

When I went back, I found it. I spent two weeks on my own, with one ranger dedicated and I saw it.

I loved that you chose a business fable as your format. Why? Was that our original intention?

I think that technical books, which I’ve written so much, and academic books, which if you’re not in that space, are a tough reads; you have very little inclination to read a technical or academic book.

Yet, people tend to be fascinated by stories whether it’s Harry Potter stories or other stories. People love to read and be transported to somewhere else.

And looking at all the books and I’m a very avid reader, I was saying to myself “Which genre of books do I think will tell me that story, that message, and yet I can put purpose behind it?”

Of course, we’ve all read the many books by the Ken Blanchards of the world, the One-Minute Manager, and I said “That’s who I am.That’s the genre of books I enjoy personally the most. “

And I feel that if I can tell a good story, that if I can transfer you here in the US to Africa...if I can sketch for you a safari, I can really carry you out of your chair in the office environment and take you to this awesome awesome place then I can live out my dream and be a story - teller at heart.

I can tell you a story and take you on this journey with me in a pleasant, unthreatening way, whether you’re running a company or raising kids or you have aspirations to something else. I hope that I can communicate a message through my fable.

My friend Erika Andersen coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. It's reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?

Two or three things pop to mind.

Tenacious persistency. People should be willing to continue on this journey of life. When we break our journey we sometimes give up so easily. We like to blame others: people or institutions or the government.

I’m not saying it can’t be sometimes involved in the problem. I’m saying we need to be tenacious in our desire to be successful.

And then if I could sneak in another one, but strategic efficiency. You have to be efficient in anything you do. Even in running this program, people may think you just talk, but I’m sure you spend hours preparing for this show. You have a plan. And once you have that plan you have to execute it efficiently. You have a timeline and you try to make your readers and listeners as satisfied as possible.

Tenacity, persistency, strategy, efficiency. And of course those are words in my book.

How will you know you're making progress? What metrics will you use?

Mine or your listeners? Again, a tough question. When one writes a book and it’s a parable for how one deal’s with life or challenges, I think when you see people write about it, blog about it, Facebook about it and they come back to you and they say that this book has had an impact on their lives, an imprint on their companies.

Maybe, I can give you a few examples. the book isn’t out yet, It’s available in March, 2011.

We had a few hundred galley copies made, set up by my publisher. I had a few made up to share just within my circle of influence. I picked 50 or so of my clients and I showed them a draft copy, which was an unfinished product, it has some typos. I said ‘Just read through it. Give me your take. Let me know what it is” But there are 3 or 4 stories shared and they’re on the Serengeti book website.

I can think of Sara Weise, a real-estate broker agent in the Austin, Texas area. She was so fascinated by the what animal am I quiz that she had her whole company take the quiz. And they all came up with different answers and they all took an afternoon off and sat down and chatted about it. What are the characteristics of your animal? How do you deal with challenges. They had this whole team building exercise and she posted it on the web. [Note: I can't find the link.]

I shared an advance copy with one person and it got shared with an entire company and they’re talking about it, how they could better understand themselves.

Another example which brought tears almost to my eyes is Tracey Reeves. She read the book, took the test, posted it on the web. She had a son, about 18 years old and apparently he does not read a lot of books. And I have kids in that age and they generally don’t read a lot of books. He picked up the book, took the test and found out he was a wildebeast. And she blogged on her website that that gave him more confidence and gave him a sense of encouragement and a sense of belonging. He now feels that the wildebeast is an animal that is very enduring and tenacious, will never give up, and even against all odds of hunger and predators, still goes through that journey. And her son is wlaking around with a new level of confidence. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with his life yet. But the book has made a huge impression on him to such an extent that he took our quiz, posted it on his Facebook page and had all the kids in his neighborhood take the quiz.

It’s those kinds of messages you get back that make you say “Wow! I’m really helping people change their lives.”

Who were you writing for? Describe the reader you had in mind while you wrote late at night over those 5 years.

The reader I had in mind. Probably those same persons that I believe the sage in the book, Zaccariah, is speaking to. I included in the book many subtle and hidden messages that if you don’t get it will be ok, but if you do it will give you added depth and meaning.

I have 4 different generations in the book. I have the senior generation, the baby boomer generation, of which I am one. I have Gen-x and Gen-y. So, whether you are a 50 or 60-year old. I have gentleman that’s retired, a gentleman who lost his job on Wall Street, a kid who works on a farm, a former Navy Retiree. A lot of time was spent to collect an eclectic group so that when Zacchariah tells them the meaning of life, the messages of the animals, the skills each animal has to survive and thrive, they each accept that story in a different way.

Who was I trying to reach? I’d say it’s all of those people. So, if you say “Stefan, you’re not focused.” So, probably more so the employee that is working for business today or the entrepreneur and is having a tough time with his job or his cash-flow which I know very well, too.

The struggles of corporate America, of the entrepreneur, who I have worked with every day. I’ve had my own company, 6 times I’ve owned as the major stockholder. Then I’ve also been the President of a publicly listed company. So, both sides.

That probably is the closest I was writing to. But, I’d love to believe that any person working or not, studying to become something or does not yet know who they would like to become.

You list seven skills ....to survive our serengeti. What are they? What's the most important one?

I’ll give them to not in importance, but in percentages. So far, of the 4000 people who have taken the test the most popular is the Enterprising Crocodile. That shows you how many entrepreneurs we have in this company, who work for themselves and have that desire and passion to be their own boss. That’s about 28% of the quiz-takers, so far.

At the same percentage is the Gracious Giraffe. That’s impressive. I didn’t think it was going to be that high for that animal. These are people who just have what it takes. Their word is their bond. They say what they mean. They really care about people around them. They care about society and are professional about how they interact with everyone.

The 3rd category is the Communicating Elephant. That might be effected by I have had a lot of real estate professionals take the test. And many are the Enterprising Crocodile, but also they are the Communicating Elephant. They have to be comfortable speaking with both in front of people, around people and get their message across as they are sales people.

The next 4 animals are very close. One is 9%. The other two are 8% and 7%.

The Strategic Lion, the person that is very focused in life. They have a plan or they create a to-do list or an action plan for his day or life. He knows what he wants to do.

The other one is probably the Efficient Cheetah. Very similar to the Strategic Lion. Here it’s not the long-term plan or I am mapping out my actions, but it’s everything I do I want to do in the quickest time possible. Don’t waste my time. I need to get through things. That’s the person you give the work to because the busiest person is the one who gets the work done, juggling many balls in the air. Then the one you refer to which is I think is a very special one. I deliberately put that one in.

The Risk-Taking Mongoose is an incredible animal. Yes, it might be small in size. But that’s why I put it in because of it’s size it is not scared to go against the King Cobra snake. It’s a great team player. It understand risks. It’s not risk averse. It doesn’t mean it will do anything. It means that it is calculating when it does something and is very efficient.

The last one, the main character in the story, the Enduring Wildebeast. It is not as big as the American bison, not as pretty. But it is tenacious. That animal has incredible endurance. Each year it crosses 1000 miles. It has cheetahs running and pullbing it down. It has lions stalking it. It has crocodiles eating it. Yet it has become the dominant species in the serengeti. It completely dominates to such an extent that there are 1.5 million animals and when they move each year it completel changes the landscape. All the other species depend on where the wildebeast is at any time.

Although many of them die during this journey, as we do in ours. We may not die but we have challenges and setbacks and we have to overcome them. And that’s what the wildebeast does.

This is a circle of life they run every year.

We need all 7 skills to be successful. Which one do you see people having mastered the least? How does that raise the risk for not surviving our serengeti?

As a population, and remember I have my citizenship, my family accepted our citizenship from a decade ago and I am truly proud to be a U.S. citizen...If I had to pick one, and think about the people I have worked with in the past and look at the results of the quiz, I would probably say the enduring wildebeast is the one we tend to not have. We tend to be self-centered sometimes. We tend to blame other people and give up and not pursue what our beliefs are, what our commitments are.

Now, of course there are many examples which I could cite where we have done the opposite. Nothing is mutually exclusive, black and white.

But if I could share with the listeners it’s don’t give up. I’m not saying be stubborn or arrogant and think you can do anything. But at the same time if you set your heart on something and you have a roadmap, don’t use any and every excuse to find a way from something. If you put your head down like a wildebeast and keep focused then you can in most cases be way more successful if you’re willing to endure.

We all have multiple skills. And a well-balanced person would have multiple skills or you would try and strive to have them.

But, of course, not every skill we have is not equally prominent. The book tries to illustrate which of these instinctive skills which would mean the most to everyone I think that we should say how do we work together as a team, if you have this one skill and I have this one, how do I understand and communicate with you because instinctively, if we were thrown into a new environment which one would we be? Because you can’t be all of them.

If you had to depend on one skill to survive and thrive in the serengeti... would you be the one running fast or the one with plan to have breakfast?

What is the one that if I had to depend on you, which one are you going to be so good and we would know that, so that I can depend on you and we can compliment the rest of a team with complimentary skills so we can have a better team, a better company or even a better country.

What are three things we can do to better master that wildebeast, bring out the endurance?

We have to instinctively know who we are. If we know who we are out of the 7, then by default we can determine what we are weakest at. If we are weakest at endurance then accept it. Don’t fight it. We aren’t all superman; we aren’t all perfect. Identify the skills you are not strong at. Accept that and see how you can improve on that with the skills of the others in your company.

If you want to say that is your weakest skill or your least strongest skill, I don’t care. But then try and see if you can improve on that. Find someone who is good on that skill. If I’m not a risk-taker, but you are then maybe if I befriend you and we work together then maybe we can learn from each other. If I’m averse to risk-taking then I might say no to something before I give it a second thought. But you might look at the same problem, then you’re already looking at how you’re going to solve the problem.

Ad by know that that’s how you think then I can learn from you. By learning which animal we are with the What Animal Am I quiz, a 3-4 minute quiz and as I said before I’m not trying to create a new strengths0finder or a meyers-brigg. This is a casual, informal, way for you to have fun and learn what skills instinctively drive us.

I recommend everyone go to the site. The survey was fun and quite useful and your description was quite accurate.

You've survived and thrived in multiple Serengetis. You've lived around the world. You’ve led 7 companies. Which of these 7 skills played the greatest role in your success?

I would say probably two. Probably number one would be Strategic Lion. You’ve gotta know where you want to go to. If you don’t know you won’t know if you get there. We’ve heard that said so many times by so many times.

Strategy. Have a plan not only for your life but break it into pieces for the rest of your life: your religion, your kids,. If you don’t have a roadmap then it is likely you will not get to where you want to.

I had a very specific plan. I was very fortunate to grow up in this diplomatic household. I learned 3-4 languages by the time I was 5. My father took me to 3-4 continents. I’ve been to 40 countries around the world. It gives you a broad-based understanding and respect for the different cultures and societies and languages around the world.

I think that balances me.

But at the same time, it confuses you as a young child. You’re not sure where home is. In one year I was speaking one language and one year later I was speaking Swahili at the age of 3 or 4. I don’t remember because at the age of 6 I was put in a school in Hong Kong and learning Chinese. What a jump is that?

And then by the age of 12 the put me in a Dutch/Afrikaaner school in South Africa and wanted me to learn to speak Afrikaan and Dutch.

The only way I could do this was to have plan. Where do I want to end up not just geographically? Where would you like to end up in life? What is it you want to do? And what are the steps you want to do to get there?

And then if I can I’ll sneak in the last one: Endurance. Once you have your map, don’t give up on it.

Which of the 7 offered the greatest challenge? What did you learn from solving that challenge?

Whew. Maybe efficiency. I think it’s one of the hardest skills. We think we are efficient.

But, I recognized it as a weakness two decades ago and I have taken a concerted effort to be more efficient. It’s trying to learn every day what am I going to do today and tomorrow and create a priority list of items, to try and rank them in importance.

I don’t really allow anyone to call me on my mobile phone. I think only 4-5 people have my mobile phone number. It’s not that I don’t want calls from people, or I’m important. It’s just that I’ve tried to training people that if you want to deal with me then you can leave a voicemail and I’ll respond in 24 - 48 hours. If you send me an email, a text, I’ll respond to you in a few minutes.

I found I can deal with people better, deal with more people, at my time and leisure with the time blocked and set aside. I can be more efficient. I like being able to focus on that task that will help me be more successful at that time.

Perfect! That segues nicely into our next question. Skill number 4 is Efficiency. And you write:

To accomplish this you must be constantly on the lookout for 'inefficiency' in the project, or process, or yourself by controlling sources of friction and distractions (email, phone calls, texts, web surfing, etc)

You touched on a couple of things you do now. What other steps do you take now with all your responsibilities?

How do you accomplish this in your life today?

I think we all have distractions in our lives. Some situations are more unique and special than anybody else’s. If you get a chance to speak with someone else you find that everybody carries with them their own struggles and burdens and ordeals. And yes, inefficiencies.

I would say it is trying to roadmap it out and prioritize it. Whether it’s a diary or an electronic list but having a very clear idea of a task list with a responsibility whether it’s you or a team member for when that project is completed.

We all know that saying:

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

It’s that same principle. If you have a huge task that takes days or weeks or months, how do you prioritize that into small chunks and steps. And how do you deliberately set aside time each day. And, don’t allow the flickering Tweet or Facebook to interrupt. I tweet 50 times a day but not at the same time every day but I have a specific time slot every day.

There are times you should put those things down and concentrate on doing what needs to be done. If you’re on a conference call you can’t be tweeting and efficient. And the same with your family. There are times you need to put those things down and concentrate on the task at hand.

Skill number 5 is Grace. I imagine that in your journeys around the world you have captured some opportunities to both show and learn this skill. Do you have an experience that either taught you that skill or taught you it's importance?

You’ve probably picked the hardest one among all of them. There are few people who have read the book and see how do you be the Gracious Giraffe.

That is one thing very very often missing from society. Be it that we should be grateful for everything we have received, be it that we should act gracious with other people, be it that we should transpose that word in the business world to the word professional and say we should be professional and ethical in our dealings.

I’m not sure how you should imply that word. You can take the religious connotation, you can take the grateful connotation, the professional connotation. In my opinion they are all acceptable connotations.

How did I learn that skill? I would probably give credit to my father. He was a diplomat and I grew up in a diplomat household. He was always representing another entity whether it was a company or our family or in our case a country.

But, because you’re representing a country in a foreign place, he was always mingling with very important, influential people, and he was the window for the people he was meeting to the universe of the country he was representing.

He could never let his guard down. He could never not be gracious. Whether it was pride and joy or complexity and sorrow, he had to handle those opportunities with the utmost in grace.

That’s the environment I grew up with and it has stayed with me.

I think it is key.

How do you teach graciousness in your company?

Yeah, it’s tough to teach it in a company. I think it can be taught. I’ve seen it taught within companies. It takes time. It becomes a culture. It takes a mindset.

You don’t walk into a company and say “Guys, let’s be graceful.” It’s a philosophy. It become the very fiber of who you are. It’s not something you can learn in a book. You might pick one up and say “Oh I should be more graceful and then you are for a few minutes and then you forget about it.”

But, if you want to be as graceful as the giraffe in the way you treat people, respond to people, respect people...it’s got to go all the way through the company. It’s got to probably start at the top of the company. The company’s got to have heart. The founder has to have heart, has to have purpose and meaning. He has to understand he is not just chasing the dollar. Clearly the company has to always be making money, be successful.

By no means am I saying the one skillset replaces the other. They are complimentary in nature. If you want to a culture of grace it’s got to come from the top and it takes time.

One of the results we've seen in this recent economy is the result of companies failing to invest in upgrading the skills of their key stakeholder: employees.

You've been a very successful business leader. How did you bring these 7 skills to your employees and associates? Which one proved to be the most challenging to master by those in our organization? How did you address that?

We’re really getting to the heart of the matter. How can we be better humans and contribute better to our organizations? If you want to be an executive that I aspire to and yes I try to be these things but I also fail. If we aspire to be better, you’ve got to say that you care and then you’ve got to show it.

You’ve got to show it in your fiber.

You’ve got to say what you mean and then you’ve got to mean it.

You’ve got to show where we’re going and then you’ve got to get us there.

You’ve got to say what you’re going to be doing and then you’ve got to do it.

It’s again that seeing something through to fruition. Stephen Covey said:

“Walk your talk”.

Talk is easy; it’s cheap. We know so many around us and our leaders who will give us lip service and never make good on their promises. The leaders we remember, that we look back on as an icon, are leaders who do exactly what they say they are going to do.

Those are skills that will change an executive from a shallow, empty, person with rhetoric to an impressive leader who we’ll say “I will follow you through anywhere. Even if I have to cross the savannah where there are crocodiles, I’m going to follow you because I know that you mean what you say. And we’re going to run together as a team.”

That’s the definition of a successful business leader.

You list Communication as skill number 7. And I'm reading where communication and collaboration and creativity are skills in great demand in the future.

Will communication skills take a more pre-eminent role in the future? Or will endurance or risk-taking?

I’m not sure which one will become dominant. The elephant’s skills, I think so, will become critical.

There is so much media and white noise out there that communication is critical. It’s critical that the person who is sharing the message or parting the wisdom or giving the tasks or duties, make sure the people they are speaking to have complete clarity about your message. You message needs to triumph over any potential confusion and we’re shouting over this white noise and we think, I think, that you said, but I don’t know, I’m confused, I’m going on my own.

The person who needs to get the right message is not the person hearing the message, it’s the person giving the message. If I’m giving a message today then I need to organize my sentences and words that I have the highest probability that the person listening to it will get a good sense and balance of what I’m trying to get across. I agree with you that communication is absolutely key.

Let's talk about social media. Big, buzzy topic. One of its appeals is its ability to share knowledge. Well, share information. What role if any could social media play in developing these 7 skills?

I absolutely adore social media. As humans we’ve always been good at communication. We’ve done it in a different way, at a bar or sports game or a drive through or we’ve done it in a barbecue in the backyard. Social media is just a different place for us to get together. It’s a new vehicle. But it is still at the heart for those of us who like to talk to people and want to share.

And yes, I know social media started as "someone had breakfast this morning..." But you get to the stage where it’s very tiring and I don’t have the time to filter through all the thousands of people having coffee today.

But it is an opportunity to bond with my followers. I tweet all my own tweets. I have 3 accounts. Between the three of them I have 41,000 followers. My personal one I have 20,000 and this book has 10 or 11,000 followers. We try to talk about our focus every single day.

I try to respond to every single tweet or retweet about me or my book. So it’s not just a touchy-feely. It’s about connecting with these people, most of whom live in a city and town far away from where I am. This is a convenient and easy way to share with them.

I think that the platforms be that Facebook or Twitter of LinkedIn are going to grow and adapt to become a very very commonplace thing in the not too-distant future if they are not already there.

Which character are you in your book? Any other characters in the book that you encountered in your personal serengeti?

I’m not going to tell you! That’s a secret.

There are a few characters that I would like to be. I’ll share with you the three characters, but my publisher asked that I keep it a secret until the book is published. These are the three characters I would love to be.

I would love to be the enduring wildebeast.

I have a lot of respect for the Strategic Lion, not because it’s the king of jungle. But the roadmap idea we talked about has been key for me in my life.

You asked me what I think a lot of people don’t have a lot of and that would be the Efficient Cheetah. That’s a skill I would try to have more of.

I’m probably one of those three.

You're a leader. Leaders are readers, says Jim Rohn; I just quote him. What books are you reading?

It’s wonderful to get on a plane and go somewhere. Books are good for planes.

I would say that the book I just finished was Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. I’ll most likely be seeing him in March.

A book I have on my table is Getting Naked by Pat Lencioni. there’s a whole bunch of books by Lencioni. Getting Naked is the best business book on my table from him.

You posted a list of your top business fables from the last 20-some years. Which one was yours?

If I had to pick one I’d say Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson. He's written the most successful business fable of all time.

The author I look up to the most is probably Ken Blanchard. I remember him going back to almost my university years, the One-Minute Manager, 1983 if I remember correctly. I have a testimonial from him for my book. And it was so great to get that from someone I look up to so much.

I love The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

I love Andy Andrews. His two most recent books are the Traveler’s Gift: 7 Decisions That Determine Personal Success and The Noticer.

A personal friend of mine, I’m meeting with this afternoon is Bob Burg. He wrote The Go-Giver and Go-Givers Sell More. And his book has been translated into a number of languages.

Leave us with a quote to help just Keep. Moving. Forward through our serengeti.

I would say that, something we can remember the book by. Nature has a lot to share. There’s a big message in Nature. And if you’re willing to listen, then any ordeal you may encounter, any struggle you might have, you already have the skill and God will give you the opportunity to hone your skill and prove your skill on any journey you do.

I wish your listener’s all the best.

Where can our listeners find you on the web?

The best place to find me on the web is at Serengeti Book.

I'm on Twitter at

Serengeti, for the book.

Swanepoel, for my personal account.

I write a blog every single day. I post on YouTube once a week; we have 20 videos up there.

And you can take the test, What Animal Am I?, at the site.

Next guests: Elizabeth Doty.

Create a Company of Geniuses With One Step

Dave Rendall, author of The Freak Factory: Making Employees Better By Helping Them Get Worse, was a guest on our show in 2010. You can listen to our conversation at this link.

I try to ask each guest a question that condenses their solutions into actionable steps our listeners can immediately take. I also try to address their solutions to current challenges our country faces.

Here's what I asked Dave:

Now. An email just came in. It’s from President Obama. He writes Tell Dave I love what he’s saying. I want him to meet with my economic advisors in the Oval Room next week. I want him to give me three steps to turn our country into a Freak Factory of genius citizens and employees, leaders and managers, innovators and operations experts.

What will you tell him?

Dave answered:

I’ll do the classic politician thing and not give you the answer you asked for. I’ll give you one.

There’s a book out there called SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by the Heath brothers. They say when you are trying to make change, find the bright spots and clone them.

My advice to President Obama is really simple. Stop looking at all the problems. Stop looking at the problems with our educational system and businesses. Instead start asking

•  
  • "Where are the schools that are working and how can we copy them?"

The solution is to look at the schools, the educational offerings that are turning out people who are critical thinkers who are ready for the 21st century and ask how can we get more of them?

Do the same thing with business. Don’t ask what are the problems with business, how do we save businesses that are failing. The question is who’s starting businesses, who’s making money, why are they making money, what are they doing differently, how can we help people do more of this.

I had a great year in 2009 when people were saying the whole world is falling apart. I had a great year in 2008 when people were saying the whole world is falling apart. I expect to have a great year this year when people are saying the world is falling apart.

I’m using new media. I’m taking an entrepreneurial approach. I’m trying to adapt and be flexible.

But we don’t hear about that. We hear about Fortune 500 companies who made terrible decisions, about ripping people off and we try to fix that instead of looking at what is working.

Let’s look at what’s working and make it bigger instead of poo-pooing it and saying that will never work. We need to find where the bright spots are and clone them and look at what’s working to help people pay their bills, that’s getting people educated and find out how to get more of it.

I liked it. Find what works. Look at it. Fixate on it. Then do it, do it a lot, keep doing it. Keep doing what works. Keep looking for more things that work. 

Find what you do that works, that works best, that find the most receptive audience, an audience that encourages you to keep doing what works and works best for you. That is usually the audience where your strengths accelerate or amplify the development and expression of their strengths.

Go forth and be strong.

Upcoming Radio Guests

Here is a list of the upcoming guests on my radio show. Thanks to all the guests for their time, their book and thanks to those who helped schedule their shows with me.

* Derek Irvine, VP of Client Strategy and Consulting for Globoforce and co-author of Winning with a Culture of Recognition. Founded in 1999, Globoforce® is the world's leading provider of strategic employee recognition solutions. Their blog is excellent! I love this post: C - Suite Blind to Reality of Employee Engagement.  Their book is a delight and every CEO should have it, read it.

February 16 at 9:30 AM, Central. Listen here.

* Richard Troxell, is President of House the Homeless, an educational and advocacy group founded in Austin, TX in 1989. Their mission is education and advocacy surrounding all issues of homelessness. Richard is the author of Looking up at the Bottomline: The Struggle for the Living Wage an intense personal, political, and educational guide through the last 30 years of homelessness in America.  I'd agree. It's an intense story with intense implications for who we are as a nation and how we choose to create a sustainable economy and sustainable communities which embrace all of our members.

February 17, 9:30 AM, Central. Listen here.

* Dan Hill, founder of Sensory Logic and author of About Face: The Secrets of Emotionally Effective Advertising. Sensory Logic is a scientific market research firm that specializes in quantifying emotional response through the facial coding tool originated by Charles Darwin and developed into the Facial Coding Action System (FACS) by Dr. Paul Ekman and his colleague Wally Friesen

About Face: The Secrets of Emotionally Effective Advertising is based on research using facial coding, eye tracking and cutting edge tools, as well as interviews and examples, it gives essential insights into how to make adverts more effective and emotionally engaging. I like it. It's well-written, includes excellent examples and case-studies and actionable steps to make your ad stand out from the 90% that are ignored.

February 26, 9:30 AM, Central. Listen here.

* Chris Zane, founder of Zane's Cycles and author of Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers.

"If you can shift your thinking away from merely selling and into building trust instead, even if it costs you a few bucks in profit," writes Zane, "you'll begin to see opportunities you never imagined once you understand what it means to 'wow' that customer by giving them more than they expected."

Zane has done that with his bike shop which grossed $10 million in 2006, and has enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 23 percent since opening in 1980.

Zane credits his success to giving "extraordinary customer service with the help of an empowered team of employees...The whole thing is about having a good time. Being positive. People have to be happy at work," he adds. link

I love his book. I love his story. His name's pretty good, too.

March 2, 9:30 AM Central. Listen here.

Radio Guest: Stefan Swanepoel, author of Surviving Your Serengeti

Stefan Swanepoel is our guest tomorrow. Stefan is the author of Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business & Life. We'll talk about how he survived his serengeti and those 7 skills he shows we need,  and ways to master them, in order to survive our own serengeti.

Our show starts at 9:30 AM, Central. Listening options are listed below.

For 2 million wildebeest of Africa, their Serengeti is a 1,000 mile-long migration filled with hunger, thirst, predators and exhaustion. The journey is so impressive, so dangerous and incomparably massive that is rated the #1 Natural Wonder of the World.

Stefan makes it very clear how we all live in our own serengeti. That's our journey through life, through our trials and successes, failures and what they teach us, teachers and mentors, obstacles and pitfalls, which when we put it all together is..well, the greatest natural wonder. And the challenge today to survive our own Oasis with a Darwinian theme is ever greater in today's economy and culture. Talk about a competitive economy. And the ever-changing culture with technology, innovation, disruption in our businesses and personal lives....tough. Very tough journey.

I'd say our journey is the # 1 Wonder of the World. We're all obsessed with it through our entire life.

But Stefan's book, excellent book by the way, offers 7 skills to help us survive our serengetis of life and business. And ways and means to master those 7 skills.

Stefan is someone who can write expertly on surviving a serengeti. According to his website:

Stefan Swanepoel’s life has been a “Serengeti journey”—from his birth in Kenya to schooling in Hong Kong and South Africa eventually, running a New York-based global franchise network with 25,000 sales associates in 30 countries. In all he has served as president of seven companies and two non-profit organizations.

Now for the first time he has combined his love of wildlife and nature, his ability to captivate audiences, and his comprehensive life experience into a captivating message in a major trade book. In Surviving Your Serengeti he vividly portrays how this larger-than-life metaphor can provide guidance and inspiration for individuals and companies in today’s fast, busy and complex world.

Stefan has authored 19 books and reports on business trends, real estate and social media. He lives with his wife and two sons in California.

Join us tomorrow at 9:30 AM, Central or later with any of these listening options:

LIVE

1. Listen in streaming mode at this link.

2. Call 646-915-9212 during the show's live hour, 9:30 AM, Central to 10:30 AM, Central

LATER

1. Listen in streaming mode at this link.

FTC DISCLAIMER. My payment was the pleasure of reading a complimentary copy of his book, considering the metaphor of my life as a journey across and through my own serengeti, learning more on how to master the skills to complete this journey with a bit of dignity and success, and an hour's upcoming conversation with the author. And the pleasure of working with his publicist.

Share their customer’s praise for them: word-for-word. Week 37

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 37th week. The lesson this week is:

• Share their customer’s praise for them: word-for-word.

You have recognized them in many different ways. Right? Right.

Your recognition for them is recognized by them. It is appreciated. Regardless of any response, it is appreciated.

The same message spoken from a different voice is powerful. Reinforcement. A 3rd-party’s reinforcement. Reinforcement by a 3rd-party with nothing gained from their message. That is delivered when a customer recognizes those who make meaning for their day, listen, acknowledge, take responsibility and deliver a solution and promptly for their needs.

Share that customer’s words of praise with those who inspired those words. You have recognized their work for a long time. And now, their work is recognized by a new audience. So...share it with those who built that audience into a fan base.

Notice the connection you build when you do share this testimony. Your work and talents and decisions are now aligned and that alignment has resulted in something very, very, good for you both. For all three of you, including the customer. That’s a good thing.

***********

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.

Implement a No Face-Time Policy. Week 36

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 36th week. The lesson this week is:

• Implement a No Face-Time Policy.

Just because you choose to have no family life should you insist they skip theirs, too?

An effective technique to build a closed-loop, echo-chamber, communication channel is to insist on face-time. If you’re there late, by god they better be, too.

And in today’s business environment, a company with communication channels of closed-loops and echo-chambers that reinforce an executive’s truisms, long on isms and short on truths, is a company whose doors will be closed soon. The sound of those doors closing will echo across the lives of those who steadfastly stayed late with their out-of-date leader.

Recognize the life of those in your organization by allowing them to live it. Recognize their life’s meaning does include their family.

Recognize their need, our need including yours, to re-charge, re-create, renew.

And that is accomplished with time to pursue and enjoy others who share their meaning, add to it.

Another, enlightened self-interest point:

Rest is the basis of activity.

It is also the basis of clarity of mind and purpose and courage to pursue their purpose. That clarity and courage translates to more results during the day, faster results, and the courage to lead the change to a sustainable business.

*************

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 Talking w/ Brad Szollose, Author of Liquid Leadership

I spoke with Brad Szollose recently. Brad is the author of an excellent book titled: Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia - Multigenerational Management Ideas That are Changing the Way We Run Things.

From his about page:

During the Dot Com Era of the early 90′s, Brad co-founded K2 Design, Inc. which later raised over $7 million through private placement and an IPO... [The company] saw 425% growth for 5 straight years, expanded from 2 business partners to 4 partners and 60+ employees with offices worldwide and valuated at over $26 million.

For that success, he received the Arthur Andersen NY Enterprise Award for Best Practices for Fostering Innovation Among Employees.

We talked about his book and the ideas he offers, gathered and refined, with his experience leading a startup company, through growth, through turbulent economy and industry, and his later success bringing these principles to clients around the world.

You can listen to our conversation here.

Brad, thanks for being on our show. Again, congrats on a great book.

Let’s talk about this book: Liquid Leadership: From Woodstock to Wikipedia - Multigenerational Management Ideas That are Changing the Way We Run Things.

Who were you writing for when you wrote this book? Describe that person you saw as you labored together to cull all your insights and wisdom.

Baby boomers were having trouble understanding the shift in the workplace that we were making: from the industrial age and its way of thinking to the Information Age and its way.

I don’t know if you remember, but as kids we were promised that in the year 2000 technology was going to solve everything. We were supposed to be living in a dome-city on the Moon and flying around in jetpacks by now. Some listeners may think we’re crazy but us Baby Boomers were told this. We were shown this. It was in everything. Our movies, or TV shows. Even my 4th grade teacher gave us an exercise where we had to visualize life in the year 2000 and how we would be living.

But, now we’re here. And it effects everything, not just business. If you’re a teacher or firefighter or a police officer, if you’re mother a father an uncle, there’s a gap. And it’s not going to go away.

The problem is we’re in an instant celebrity universe right now. I used to teach branding workshops at Right Management. It’s in NY city. This is where top executives in the publishing industry were transitioned through Right Management into a new job.

I would go in and teach branding workshops with a buddy of mine and in the end we would still and look at each other, astounded at all the boomer executives would walk out thinking “Yeah, I get it.” But they didn’t understand they needed to be a brand today. Or why technology was important for their job.

That was the first audience. The second target audience for the book was I realized I had to create an ‘aha’ moment on every page that would bring together both Gen-Y, Gen-X, Millenials, and Baby Boomers. They are all in the workforce right and they all think differently.

You’re writing about a clash of cultures. In my case, in our case, these habits and cultures have been reinforced for the past 50 years and in Gen-Yers the past 20 years.

My father was raised in the Great Depression. And that meant so was I. I’m a Boomer that was raised during the Great Depression. My father was so cheap we didn’t buy anything. He put my whole bedroom together from the woodshop project he built during high school. He was a saver. There was always going to be a problem.

My generation, a cusp-boomer, was “Hey, we’re going to get our toys now. We saw the economic downslide from 19798 - 1984 and we saw our parents lose everything. So, as a group we became Yuppies, Buppies.

Here’s the funny part, we raised Generation - Y. “Hey you can have your dreams.” My father on my 18th birthday, came into my bedroom and said “Hey, you’re 18 now. That’s awesome. You need to get a job or go to college or move out.”

Generation Y was raised completely differently. “You stay here as long as you want. Your dad and I just bought you a brand new car for your 18th birthday. You do something you love. Don’t do what we did. We worked way too hard. We burned ourselves out. We went and worked in a cubicle. YOU...go out into the world and do what you love!”

So after about two weeks at work, most Gen-Y’s are standing up and thinking “Um, I’m not really happy here.”

They’re going to quit. I can find something better and live at home.

Corporate America knows they can’t control this generation. They don’t like it.

What common challenge, problem, of theirs were you trying to solve with this book?

I would have to say that Boomers were taught that working hard and retiring and having all these wonderful experiences was the right way to do it. We’re correct. That’s the way it’s been for 6000 years. You work hard to get ahead.

But, not a days, but there’s a lot of Boomer cynicism. Boomers are being forced to sell their toys. Everything we’ve been taught is running smack dab into what’s happening. The dollar isn’t very good. So you have that. Then you have another generation that doesn’t care about that. They have embraced technology. They seem to be getting ahead. they seem to be having so much fun doing what they’re doing. They’re at the expense of Boomer and living at home, yes.

But the reality is that a lot of the jobs being created right now, Boomers do not have the skill-sets to fill them. We’re talking about 3-4 million jobs. Boomers that have lost their jobs cannot step into those new jobs because these jobs are in new sectors like green jobs. They haven’t been trained how to let go of old thinking and how to move forward with new thinking.

I don’t know if you’ve ever read Future Shock, but Alvin Toffler said the illiterate of the 21st century or of the future are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

That’s what’s taking place right now. That’s where the gap exists.

And when I wrote liquid Leadership, Boomers have to learn what is taking place right now. And at the same time, Gen-Xer and Gen-Yers has to really understand that when Boomers do understand this new technology we see the bigger picture and can steer you out of the mud that’s taking place.

And what is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future when you are successful with solving that?

I hope this becomes a guidebook for the 21st century. A standard-issue both at the college level and at the corporate level. I’ve had a few college professors who have read my book and they’ve said this is a game-changer, I was told.

Now, lets go back to your readers. I recommend everyone listening get a copy of Brad’s book. What is their hoped-for future with embracing the ideas in your book? How will that change their world?

Well, right now, a lot of Baby Boomers are waiting for the jobs to return. They’re waiting for the economy to kick back in gear, the government to do some things. There’s a lot of anger out there. They know things have been twisted in back rooms of Wall Street. Their retirement will not be there. But guess what, the jobs won’t be there, either.

And what you’re going to have is the perfect storm coming. You’re going to have college grads sitting in the same waiting room to interview for a job as a 48 or 58-year old with all this experience. You’re going to have Boomers and Gen-Xers and Y-ers competing for the same job.

As a Baby Boomer, I had to let go of my cynicism and my linear thinking. One of the things that helped me was I went to this seminar called The Games in Learning Society. This is where game designers meet with academia from all over the world to design games to facilitate learning.

Why would games be used at the college level? Well, imagine an economics course set up like a sim-city, simulation city? Instead of learning how taxation effects us in one class after another, instead you build a model of a small city over semester and see how it all interacts. You have zoning laws. You have planners now coming out of college having planned mock models 30 -40 times.

It’s sorta like a reverse mentorship.

As Boomers, are we prepared for that?

You have 7 Laws of a Liquid Leader. Is there one law that’s imperative? You can’t be considered a liquid leader without following it?

My number one law is Tell the truth or create an environment where it can be told.

There are three that go hand-in-hand where you cannot have one without the others.

The first one is "You have to Place Your People First". Your employees have the best ideas for creating efficiencies. That’s where the ideas are coming from. That’s where all the changes are going to be implemented.

The difference now is between top-down management and integrated management. You can go into your sales staff and they’re comfortable with you and they say we need to make some changes to our brochure. Those kind of changes get implemented faster.

I had a friend who worked at Siemens. Didn’t see the CEO for 3 quarters and he also worked at the main headquarters.

The 2nd Law is you need to "Create an environment where it’s safe to tell the truth"

Where do companies lose this environment where it’s safe to tell the truth? You start with everybody’s excited and passionate and getting things done. But somewhere along the line you lose that.

This happened with my company, K2 Design. It happens at many companies.

I wrote an article about it titled the difference between executives and an entrepreneur and an executive. An entrepreneur comes together out of passion...or frustration to change the current paradigm with one of their wonderful products or services. Netflix was started by Reed Hasting for that very reasons. He returned a video and was faced with $60 late fees. And he thought ‘You know what? I’m going to start my own company and eliminate the late fee system.” Late fees were a billion-dollar system back then.

Entrepreneurs are excited. They don’t stick to one model.

By the way at those levels you can’t help but be profitable.

The executive comes along after the company gets its first round of financing or rainmaker and says “You know what? We don’t have enough systems in place. We need systems so this can run automatically.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. A lot of businesses need systems. McDonald’s is a prime example of a company where they have systems on the front line and it works.

But, they lose the entrepreneurial spirit in some of these companies where they are always questioning the status quo.

The status quo models are great. During the industrial age they worked great at getting things done. You knew you could count on that at that at the end of the assumbly line that car would come off perfect. You had the systems in place.

But now you have an assembly line where you have modular input and customization. And if you don’t know that’s taking place, then it’s going to be tough to manage. You see companies like Dell who manage this very well. You can order online a customized PC. That was unheard of 50 years ago.

The executives with all the training and education are great. But they have to keep some of that entrepreneurial zest for breaking that status quo.

Do Gen-xers do any better with these laws than Boomers?

I think their cynicism really helps.

The 3rd Law I put in place was "Create a nurturing environment for the creative talent."

I think the Gen-Y brings that 3rd law to work every day. They’re in these results-only environment where they get the work done when they’re inspired to be creative.

Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,  is a fantastic book. They did studies where when you have a simple rewards and task program set up for people. They do it. You meet your quota and get a raise or bonus.

And this worked at every single level until the pressure to create something amazing took place. And then people failed miserably. And they were willing to compromise their morals and ethics to get it done and they would still fail.

The moral is the higher reward, the higher the goal, the opposite takes place: failure.

But what they did find out in these studies at MIT and London School of Economics is that when they just took money off the table and paid people a decent salary and gave them deadlines...and let them go; they didn’t manage them.

Guess what they discovered? Productivity went through the roof.

This made no sense. Once money’s off the table we are motivated by a sense of challenge, creativity and the need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

Too many companies are going back to the old industrial model of yelling at people , “Do your job because there’s nothing out there anyway.” And, oh by the way, the last 10 people we fired, we’re going to dump all their work on you.

The baby boomer brands we grew up with are dying because we’re retiring. They did not foresee how the internet was a completely different model. They assume they could step into the internet and be the same dominant model they were in the brick and mortar world. And, they weren’t.

That’s why Amazon is the number one bookseller in the world while Barnes and Nobel is trying to build us coffee shops.

That’s why that cynicism is important. If these companies had had an environment where they had listened to the people who were coming in right out of college, Gen-X and Gen-Y, been right there and also with the 4th Law, You have to support re-invention of your company, they would have moved very nicely into the 21st century.

Did you grow up liking James Bond?

Yeah. Yeah I liked James Bond. The Sean Connery James Bond.

My first James Bond movie was Diamonds are Forever. My parents snuck me in. I’m 10 years old. I’m mesmerized.

Guess what? The James Bond brand is in danger of dying because Boomers are the only one that have a relationship with James Bond.

James Bond for the Gen-Y is a video game.

I loved the question you posed in the chapter titled The Credo of the Liquid Leader. Who will lead us? Historical hierarchies are being dismantled. Pretty soon everyone will be a leader. Boomers, Gen-xers, Gen-yers, millennials...Why is that a good thing and not a case of too many leaders, not enough doers?

I’ll tell you why. Boomers are trained that you work hard and you hoard your knowledge and use it to get ahead and then you will earn that corner office, the big salary, the club membership and all those things that come with linear thinking.

But, today, leaders are doers. And they’re knowledge sharers.

My favorite company that I like to use is Pixar. Pixar has to create customized movies every single tie out of the gate. And they’re so impressive, every single time. They win Oscars for every single movie.

Here’s a company that has to have customized content every single time. How do they do it? Every single time they have meetings where each person that comes represents one of the other teams. That might be computer animators, sculptors, art directors...They all come together and each team is assigned one movie.

Now. You have multiple teams, A, B, C, D working on individual projects. Sometimes you need to rotate into other teams where there’s a need. There’s a support structure there.

The 2nd thing is that people get to rotate into the next one as they earn their position. You have to prove yourself on these teams.

John Lassiter at Pixar created such a great management model, he won an Oscar for his management model with Toy Story. He’ll take a star who’s worked on teams with 4 or 5 films and he’ll take them and say “We’re going to give you the Director’s seat in the next film.”

Now they don’t just shove them out there. They have a mentorship program. They support them through the whole process of directing that film.

The 2nd thing that’s amazing at Pixar is they have an university where you can go and get a degree and work for Pixar.

The other thing they have is their software is so unique and works so well they have a product to sell outside of Pixar. Renderman.

The final thing they have is, the older wiser mentors, they are always trying to pull out the best talent.

The final thing is they do a post-mortem. It’s trust-filled environment where they critique their work. Instead of looking at what wrong, they ask what went wrong and how can you improve?

Awesome model for the 21st century.

They keep fresh talent coming in and listen to them. You see a lot of these companies that are cutting edge now listening to these new members.

50% of Kodak’s revenues come from products that didn’t exist 5 years ago. These products come from young people or are used by young people.

Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist and principal at Union Square Ventures, wrote a post a few years ago that said the odds were greater that the next game-changing startup would come from Gen-xers not boomers.

But statistics show more old geezers, boomers if you will, are entrepreneurs than their whipper-snapper colleagues in Gen-x. Far greater numbers and percentages.

So, who have the multi-tasking skills needed to startup a new business?

Everybody does.

I’ll give you a few statistics. Baby boomers have had 35-40 years in the workplace. When you reach a certain point in your career we’re taught you either start your own company or consultancy; you get out there and take the risk after you have the seasonality.

Yes, you’re going to see more boomers starting businesses out of frustration. This pace will pick up as well.

If you start looking at Gen-X and Y, they have been trained to act like an entrepreneur. I think you’ll see a huge influx of Gen-X and Y’s starting their own companies. It will either be formally or freelance individual or they’ll form the next big idea.

They’re moody; they can see things the way they supposed to be. They get very frustrated listening to adults while adults don’t listen to them.

These are adults who were raised on karate classes, soccer games, dance lessons. Their whole day was a day-runner and now you want them to sit in cubicles.

What most of them are doing is quitting their jobs, designing websites to make a little money.

It’s the hard work part of the equation that Gen-X and Y need to pick up.

Gen-X will start because they’ve reached the age where they have the house, the car, the family and the next step is start a company.

Ok, so now is the imagination part of the show. Let’s imagine...an email from President Obama awaits you. And it includes an invitation to the Oval Office...He’s read your book. President Obama wants you to help him become a more liquid leader. What are three things he can do before his next State of the Union address to be a more liquid leader?

He needs to realize he is about to go down in history as either the greatest president in our history or the worst.

One of the principles of liquid leadership is you have to tell the truth. Mr. President you have to stop trying to make everybody happy and tell the truth. The system needs to be upgraded and reinvented.

The 2nd thing is he has to tell people that the model we have been working with for the past 150 years doesn’t work. We can no longer work for the 20th century. We’re in the 21st century where things move much more dynamically. You can’t expect one group to pay for everybody.

The 3rd thing is he has to lead with strength and determination and the sense of re-invention; he has to wear it instead of giving it lip service. Now, we have to see the example. We’re waiting.

If things don’t change, then Gen-Y will be the first generation to march to Washington DC and opt out of social security. They will tell the President "it is a ponzi scheme. We are the first generation to say we don’t want anything to do with it."

In your chapter titled Future Shock, you remind us of our biologically limited capacity to change. And in your next chapter titled A Farewell to Kings you make a good case for the shift in leaders from being Shamans of insights and solutions to their sherpas, from changing their MO from knowledge hoarding to knowledge sharing.

Being enough of a student of history to create problems for myself, I am stuck remembering that when faced with overwhelming rates of change, disruption and apparent chaos, when the amount of information given us to process overwhelms our biological abilities we revert to form throughout history and we opt for the strong-man leader. The King. Our need for stability takes priority over our need to grow.

How will we not revert to form this time and opt for a strong-man leader in the face of all this change?

I think it’s a trust factor. We have to trust ourselves. We have to trust ourselves as a group. We the people. There’s a reason why the constitution has We The People in type a hundred times bigger than the rest of the text.

We the people are the ones in charge of our government. Whenever there is centralized power, we don’t move forward.

Look at history. Everything you hold dear, that came about from inventions over the past 235 years.

The US proved that sharing the power would create the greatest explosion of knowledge and progress in history. And we have to get back to that.

You’re a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn said that. I just quote him. And you’re avid readers, too. What are you reading in all your free time? 

I’ve read everything from the Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More, Faster, Now, World by Vince Coscenti to Flip: How to Turn Everything You Know on Its Head--and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings, by Peter Sheahan;  it talks about how to flip the paradigms in your organization and science fiction.

What are you reading in science fiction?

I started reading over again Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. You grok me?

I grok you.

Speaking engagements?

My schedule’s on my website for the book Liquid Leadership. I’m always updating my website with my schedule.

I wanted to offer your listeners something more than just Hey go buy my book. If you email me, just leave your name and email and contact information, I’ll send you a free ebook with a report called Cracking the Gen -Y Code. It will teach you how they tick, how they work, and how they buy. That should help you not only understand their world but yours as well.

Where are you on the web?

My last name is so hard to spell. If you go to  Liquid Leadership you’ll find everything. I also have a blog that I post to every Monday.  That has all my insights and meanderings about the gap between Gen-X, Y and Boomers.

Thanks, Brad!

Call them before their first day! Week 35

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 35th week. The lesson this week is:

• Call them before their first day. Welcome them with your message of anticipation for their addition and contribution to your organization tomorrow.

Well-begun is half done.

This simple step, rarely taken (guilty!), delivers the right impact at the right time.

Making this call not only communicates your recognition for them, but it carries the implicit recognition from everyone who waits to welcome them tomorrow.

It creates the right expectation for your new hire. Wow, they already recognize me, what i can contribute. They have prepared for my arrival. They await my arrival, perhaps. This is going to be a good situation.

The Your in your organization now includes them. Your welcome call signals they are already part of the conversation and connections and collaborations. 

Mind open, heart open. Anxiety down. Anticipation up.

Well-begun is half done.

Call them before their first day.

***************

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.

 

Leading Our Tribe

 

Great presentation by Seth Godin.

Thank you, Jill Konrath!

Would you re-hire your superstar?

I watched the Eagles comeback last Sunday against the NY Giants. Down 21 mid-way through the 4th quarter, they score 28 points in 7 minutes 28 seconds, with the game-winning TD on the last play, a punt-return by DeSean Jackson.

Michael Vick, THAT Michael Vick, was well...amazing in that stretch. That’s after being sacked and pounded for 3.5 quarters in the game. Michael Vick, a leader. Poised, committed, determined...kept on coming. Never quit on himself, his team, the game.

That’s the kind of superstar you want on your team, right?

Would you re-hire your Michael Vick, your superstar who in the past had shown super-bad personal character? Super-bad is...a euphemism for the personal character or its lack Michael Vick showed in the past. Torturing innocent, defenseless, anyone or anything is among the lowest forms of human behavior. Michael tortured dogs. Tortured a lot of dogs for a lot of years.

Would you re-hire your superstar after they finished their two-year prison sentence for this heinous behavior? Would you give them a 2nd chance? Could your organization give them a 2nd chance?

Would you believe him when he says he understands now that what he did was wrong. And why.

That’s a tough one for me to accept in Vick’s case. Torturing dogs...is cruel. You should not need someone to explain why this is cruel and unacceptable. Torturing dogs for years is...a pattern of cruelty. Can 2 years in a federal prison undo that pattern, show it for what it is?

Would you believe your superstar if he then went and spoke publicly about his cruelty and why it is cruel and unacceptable?

Michael Vick speaks regularly and publicly to groups about the devastation to the dogs and to the people who torture them.

Everyone deserves a 2nd chance. But could you give your superstar a 2nd chance with these circumstances? Is your culture strong enough to embrace not only a prodigal son but a prodigal son with this baggage?

My wife and friends and neighbors are involved in animal rescue. I am an eentsy bit. Even with my eentsy bit I see the terrified looks of abused animals when they arrive at the shelter. And I see how unbelievably grateful they are only days later when you stop to pet them, hold them, talk to them, and play with them. I am a stranger to them. And yet, a few moments of attention and touching and talking and playing with them...I’ve seen tears in their eyes.

Back to Mr. Vick and your superstar. Would you re-hire your superstar if your superstar was Michael Vick?

Michael Vick got a 2nd chance with Andy Reid and the Eagle’s organization. He’s shown that was a good decision by them. I see a change in Michael Vick from those years past. Is it real? I don’t know. So far it seems.

I don’t have an answer.

Everyone deserves a 2nd chance. So few 2nd chances are rewarded. So few rewards are seen for 2nd chances granted. What are our choices, really? Without a 2nd chance, granted or received, we lose all chance at remaining connected.

It was fun watching Michael Vick play. He’s an awesome talent. His journey is a public one now. Every time I see him play, read about him, these questions come to mind.

Would I re-hire him? Could I re-hire him? Could you?

Your Company's 'Secrets' on WikiLeaks

The brouhaha about the most recent WikiLeaks release of State Department cables and the secrets they reveal has been in all the news, recently.

What would happen if the same thing happened with your company?

What if every internal email among your executive officers were published for everyone in the company to read?

Would it be a secret that IT had no respect for the endusers throughout the company?

Or that Customer Service thought Finance was too restrictive, ok anal, about their customer credit criteria?

Or would anyone be shocked, shocked they'd say to hear that the CFO thought the CMO clueless and his most recent marketing ideas would generate no ROI.

And everyone thought the Board of Directors were what and did what?

Would you be really surprised at the infighting, name-calling and childish positioning?

How many would be shocked, shocked they say to hear that key decisions were made based on politics and whose buddy you are. Everyone seemed to data, results, logic and feedback from those implement the policies and those who suffer under them?

No one, really.

Now, wouldn't those same executives or their minions claim corporate secrets were revealed and their ability to negotiate with vendors hampered by these revelations of what everyone knew but no one could acknowledge?

These secrets and the unspoken, unwritten rule in the employee manual that everyone play along pretendng they are secrets are like the child's tale: The Emperor's New Clothes. In that tale, everyone told the king his non-existent cloak is gorgeous and he is handsome while wearing it. That's what the king wanted to hear. And telling the king what he wanted to hear was how you curried favor. Finally, a child pointed out there was no cloak; the king was nekid. N-E-K-I-D. Nekid.

Guy Kawasaki had a list of 10 ways to create employee evangelists. One way was to open the kimono; show everyone the reality. My point here is there is no kimono there. The company's culture is already transparent, nekid. Everyone already sees. Everyone sees clearly. Everyone already knows and discusses it. Only a few select people demand the illusion be maintained.

That's where employee dis-engagement begins. It's the source of cynicism and distrust. It's where the passion and motivation are lost. It's the starting point for people to actively undermine a company's brand.

So, now let's acknowledge what's seen. And what it does or doesn't do. And what it could do if everyone joined in. We're all adults.

It will be a bumpy ride. Like the faux fainting spells, and the and the senatorial grandstanding with the WikiLeaks there will be those in your company who want to keep secrets, whose career and influence are built on maneuvering those secrets like chairs on the Titanic. Help them understand they are capable and talented and you are there to help. Show them what's possible when everyone works together. It's change and the lack of control they fear.

And if they can't understand it then...rescue yourselves. Man the lifeboats and let them stay with the sinking ship and their precious chairs.

I guess my point is that the 'secrets' revealed in WikiLeaks are not secrets if you just read the news on a regular basis.

 

Give Them The Time They Need for Their Family.

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 30th week. The lesson this week is:

• Give them the time off they need for a family crisis.

Do I need to explain this? I don’t really, do I?

If you hesitated answering that question NO, consider these points:

1. Fair’s Fair. If you have a company crisis you expect, even demand, they work the time needed to solve that crisis. Right? You’re not doing anything more than what you ask, demand, in return.

2. The Vacation Policy. Maybe your HR person mentions your vacation ‘policy’. Fine; that’s their job. But do you want someone at work when at best their attention is divided. You’re paying full dollar for a resource that delivers 50% or less of its potential results.

3. The Investment. Consider the ‘crisis day’ as an investment. Word of that kindness and flexibility will spread through the company. A thread or two of loyalty and trust will be woven into your corporate fabric. That thread, that weave, is employee engagement.

Now, if you are an average company you may have 20% - 30% of your employees actively engaged, intellectually and emotionally, with their work. That thread, that weave, could add a few percentage points.

What if 10% more of your employees were actively engaged, intellectually and emotionally, with their work? How would that be reflected in your corporate results? More revenues? More cash-flows? Lower hiring costs? Lower employee turnover?

Think about it.

***********************************

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.

A little bit of transparency isn't so fragrant

SC Johnson recently put this commercial on the air. And it makes a lot of promises. Promises that, as a proponent of transparency, I'm excited to see. But from the tone of the ad, you can already tell that they don't seem to completely get the world they now live in. Instead of suggesting there might be some ingredients that they will need to remove or improve on, they instead attempt to project an image that suggests there will be no ugly surprises. In the ad, they go on to say that we will get to know everything they know; that there will be no asymmetry of information; and that even those sneaky compounds that fall under the catch-all of "fragrance" will be revealed. It's worth mentioning that there are hundreds of compounds that can be listed under this single term, "fragrance," and that is a big problem for transparency.

via alexbogusky.posterous.com

A little bit of transparency, sometimes, isn't so fragrant. Matter of fact, a little bit of transparency is like being a little bit pregnant: You either are or you're not.

This metaphor does break down as all metaphors do.

Transparency doesn't happen overnight as individuals. It doesn't happen overnight with organizations the size of SC Johnson.

It is a process. A process marked by a continuous series of first-steps, stumbles, fall-downs and a few eurekas. And the first ones...well, they may not be so fragrant. But eventually you get back up, you take a few more steps, you have a few eurekas where people say this is exciting! They, you, find yourselves engaged, part of this process and more join you. Now you have ideas being shared and solutions being offered. Now you have problems and mistakes solved...immediately. Now people see the future and it's bright with potential.

And THAT fragrance is....sweet!

Is having a trustworthy boss better than a big raise?

The well-being results show strikingly large values for non-financial job characteristics, especially workplace trust and other measures of the quality of social capital in workplaces. For example, an increase of trust in management that is about one tenth of the scale has a value in terms of life satisfaction equivalent to an increase of more than 30% in monetary income. via www.bakadesuyo.com

Without a boss you can trust, that raise will likely never be seen. If you do see it, it will be only once.

With a boss you can trust, you can create a plan, a process, a culture, a team, a company...where raises come regularly. Those raises come regularly because you are regularly learning together. That learning brings more solutions for more challenges. That brings more growth. More sustainable growth.

Support Their Charities - Week 28

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 28th week. The lesson this week is:

Support their charities.

We have listed 27 ways, 27 steps you can take, to recognize your employees. This step may offer the greatest, most meaningful, recognition for your employees. Supporting their charities shows you care about their values, their goals, their lives. And you willingly invest in their lives outside their work. And you willingly invest in their activities 1 or 2 or 3 steps removed from any direction connection with work.

Supporting can be defined as:

• donating funds, personal or corporate.
• allowing them time during the day to volunteer
• allowing them time during meetings to describe their charities and why it is important.
• sharing their story in your company newsletter.
• sharing your time to listen.

A number of pre-requisites are required to complete this step. You will have to:

• have built a foundation of trust with them
• create a culture where deeper values are shared and encouraged
• invest the time to engage with them
• listen with them

And the steps listed in this 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan will help you complete those pre-requisites.

Think about what those steps would bring for you, your organization and those who help create, build, sustain and grow that into their organization. And now this last step is almost a celebration of what you have achieved.

Thanksgiving Week, this week, is a good time for this lesson.

Thanksgiving...giving thanks.

A tangible way to give thanks is to support charities. Help those who have as yet not enjoyed the benefits of life you have so far. Give thanks back giving back.

**********

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 Matt May, Author of The Shibumi Strategy

Matthew May joined the show recently to talk about his excellent new book: The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change.

You can listen to our conversation here.

This is Matt's 2nd time on the show. Earlier we discussed his book In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.

When Matt's not writing great best-selling books, he's busy speaking with corporations, universities and governments around the world or writing for  national publications such as USAToday, Design Mind, and MIT/Sloan Management Review. He has been featured and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker Magazine, and on National Public Radio.

Matt, thank you for being on the show. How are you this early morning?

I’m great. Thank you.

I don’t encourage stalking but I do encourage following. Where can our listeners follow you on the web?

Sorta the big three. The website is www.matthewemay.com. Facebook it’s Shibumi Strategy and on Twitter it’s matthewemay.

What cool project are you working on?

A cool part of this book promotion I’m working on is the iPhone ap for the book. It’s a side project but integrated into the book project. It should be imminent.

Let’s talk about your newest book The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change. Great book. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

You wrote it as a fable. Why a fable? What did that format offer?

This is sort of a personal story. I really believe that people resonate with characters and storylines. I wanted to tell a personal story. I don’t think any straight ahead non-fiction narrative would tell the story as well as a good old story that has the arc of a journey to it. I wanted to explore a small format and branch out my writing and do it in a smaller, shorter, more user-friendly way.

Who did you write this for? Describe the reader you had in mind as you wrote this.

Interestingly enough, I had a very specific person in mind as I wrote this. This fable is an amalgam of experiences and real people facing real-life challenges. The particular person that I wrote it for, it started off as a much smaller story of someone who had faced a setback and made a breakthrough in facing that challenge.

And I wrote it and low and behold my agent got a hold of it and decided to pitch it as a book.

The publisher wanted to publish it. We expanded it to include a few more principles But there was a specific person in mind that it was written for.

That’s important. When you have a real person in mind when you create anything it takes on a different tone and a different character. You’re actually able to touch more people at a different level, their hearts and minds, than when you try to write something for everyone.

You accomplish the ability to reach everyone when you think about one person.

It was a happy accident and something that was never intended to be a published book. But when you do something like that and connect with people then good things happen.

Why is it important for them to read it?

This book is important right now for a couple of reasons. It’s about a hard-working family man in the midwest who loses his job when his company closes. He’s in an idyllic setting and everything is going along hunky-dory when his company closes. And he has to face that challenge. He doesn’t want to uproot his family and he’s forced to take a job that really isn’t a job. He struggles mightily with it. He’s not very good at it. And through his struggles he discovers a way through that allows him to go through a personal transformation.

I think a lot of people right now are faced with that particular challenge. There’s a lot of displacement going on around the world right now. People are taking new directions not because they’ve chosen to but they have been forced upon them.

If you view those kinds of setbacks and crises as opportunities.There’s a zen concept called kiki. The characters are of two sets. One is danger and another is opportunity. If we can change our mindset to see opportunity to take new directions then good things can happen. It’s not easy especially when you’re trying to survive the day.

I believe there are a huge number of people in transition either involuntarily or voluntarily and they are looking for a little bit of hope and optimism to see a way through.

And this is what this book can deliver.

Erika Andersen, coined a phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal*, in her book Being Strategic. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal with writing this book?

The hoped-for goal was ‘hope’. It’s one of hope and optimism. That’s an important sentiment right now.

With any luck people reading this will get a little lift and uplift.

But along with that optimism comes a couple of practical toe-holds or guide rails to go with that hope.

What are a couple of those practical toe-holds?

There are a lot. The notion that you mentioned I coach and practice kaizen. The notion that we allay our fears by taking small steps. By making smaller changes towards a goal of even if you’ve been radically moved from one position to another, moving forward with smaller steps that are pallatable with smaller measurable targets that allow us to move forward in a positive way without shaking up our existence too much.

It’s essentially an amalgam of Japanese practices combined with zen concepts which come from design, architecture and gardening, combined with a little bit of western neuroscience all delivered in the form of a character’s story who gets wisdom delivered from rather unlikely sources.

What metrics will show you are making progress?

The metrics here aren’t quantifiable ones. I’m looking for anecdotal ones, evidence that people are handing this book to others to read as a gift, a gesture, sharing those stories on Facebook or on my sight or Twitter.

I’m looking for the feedback, the resident core that people are getting back to me with feedback that says “Look I’m giving this book to someone who is going through the same kind of setbacks as Andy Harmon”, the main character in the book.

Those are the kinds of feedback I’m looking for.

You write:

The lessons of The Shibumi Strategy comes not in the form of answers but in the form of questions. It is in the process of how we address these questions that we awaken.

I loved it.

Most business leaders are less interested in process than in answers. Impatience, worried, anxious describe many. But you’re saying a process of meaningful change comes through a process of questions, how we form those questions and then how we address them. Why should an impatient, worried, anxious business leader invest the time in starting this process and making it a habit?

Let me answer it this way. When you’re frantic and impatient and in panic mode sometimes you end up doing things that worsen your situation.

I learned a very important lesson a couple of years ago from a gentleman named Boyd Matson. He’s an adventure journalist, photographer, with National Geographic. He taught me a very important lesson. That lesson is this:

• How to stand still when the hippos charge.

The point is doing something is not always better than doing nothing. For instance, the practical application here is you come up on a momma hippo at a watering hole with a calf and she decides she doesn’t like the way your hair’s falling that day and she decides to charge. If you run, you die.

All of us at a business level have a 2000 lb beast barreling down at us whether it’s a competitor or the economy. . If we are frantic and if we indulge in our flight or fight responses hard-wiring sometimes we can worsen things. If you stand still when the hippos charge you can survive.

16:00

That’s a metaphorical answer to your question of why should a leader decide to ‘don’t just do something, stand there.' And consider asking questions. It is when you’re in a dangerous business setting taht you do begin to ask yourself some questions.

• Why is this happening to us?

• Why is my business going under?

• Why is it happening to me?

• What am I going to do?

• Why isn’t my plan working?

Those are all relevant questions. And if you jump to the solution you can have end up happening to you what happens when you run from a charging hippo.

It’s the difference between playing whack-a-mole and chess. If you watch a chess tournament there’s not a lot of action going on. There’s a lot of thinking and strategizing for that. Do we have time for that? I don’t think we cannot have time for that.

What is the Shibumi process?

Let me explain a little bit. Let me unwrap Shibumi a bit. Shibumi is a word without definition or tanslation. It has come to mean the best of everything and nothing. There’s a zen-ness to the notion of Shibumi. Shibumi is effortless effectiveness, elegant simplicity, understated beauty.

I ran across the term when I read a novel titled Shibumi: A Novel, by the author Trevanian. It was a spy novel. The character in there was pursuing Shibumi which is the height of personal excellence with effortless effectiveness.

And that word always struck me as interesting. Because I did spend some time with a Japanese company, 8 years. I got indoctrinated into that Japanese and zen methods and ideals.

And the ability to achieve that state of effortless effectiveness you can actually unpack it and unravel. But it doesn’t happen easily or happen overnight. I bet at some point the listeners in your audience had that aha moment or that feeling of flow, if you will, which is sorta inadequate to describe the Shibumi experience or ‘being in the zone’.

But, the process of how you replicate that experience is like the hero’s journey. You commit to something. You prepare for it. You struggle greatly with it to the point that you are up against a wall, banging your head up against the wall. And you step back. You take a break.

And it’s generally speaking when you take a break , you shift your perspective and a tremor of breakthrough happens. And if you can continue with those little breakthroughs you can transform your life.

And that’s sorta the process of the heroic journey. Commit to something. Prepare for it. Your plan isn’t going to work. But you struggle with it anyway.

Take a break when it doesn’t work. Think about things in a different way. And low behold a breakthrough happens. Maybe you’re in the shower. Maybe you’re taking a shower. Maybe you’re taking a walk. It’s probably unrelated to the problem you’re struggling with when you get this aha moment or eureka moment and you try and unpack and unravel it and find the DNA to it and it transforms your whole way of thinking. That’s the Shibumi process.

There’s nothing straight ahead or linear about it. It’s what we all do in life. It’s just that we have to keep our radar screens open for our breakthrough tremors, our aha moments, and string them together and try and understand what led to it in the first place and try and repeat it. And follow that process.

If I'm hearing your correctly, what you’re offering is a systematic process to create a series of small heroic journeys throughout our lives so that we have a constant process of meaningful change and progress is more consistent and faster?

The goal isn’t to actively seek out a radical shift or turn the world upside down change. The words meaningful change, if you were to parse that phrase create and meaningful and change...create is putting out there something that wasn’t out there before, irrespective of magnitude or scale. Meaningful has to do with our purpose. It’s outwardly focused. It’s helping others. The notion of change is ongoing. It’s continuity by constantly moving forward. Not changing to be different but changing to move forward.

Yeah, it’s a constant moving forward with little ideas in a story fashion, in a journey fashion, that weave this arc that I call a leadership arc or heroic arc.

If you look back over it, the most powerful learning experiences or the times that have been most meaningful to you, they’re not necessarily big change the world things. Whether it’s with your son or your daughter or your teacher or coach. Little, little moments that are packed with meaning. And it’s the ability to reproduce those.

I don’t know that there’s necessarily the system to it. But there’s certainly an arc to it.

Clearly there are some who are able to go through this hero’s arc and we’re able to celebrate them and say Wow! I so appreciate those people.

And, we’re all going through this journey in our own way.

Where in this journey do most of us seem to stumble?

I think it’s when we try to do too much. When we try to hit the grand slam homerun when we should try to be getting on base. When we go for the hail mary pass when the situation calls for us to get the first down. Invariably what happens when we swing too far and wide without thinking about the impact when that happens. We end up with too many strikeouts and too many misses, turn the ball over to someone else and we’re out of control. We’re out of control because we decided to put ourselves out of control. That’s where the stumble happens.

The stumble happens not because we don’t know what we’re doing or we’re not smart people. It’s sometimes that things seem so radical, the situations seem so dire that the situations appear to call for a dire response. That’s where I think we fall down.

The challenge is calming down, quieting the mind. That’s actually one of the Shibumi dimensions of stillness or quietude. It is where our best creativity comes. When we have quieted our mind and quieted our bodies and given our selves a chance to take a breath and take a step, a single step.

That’s where we fall down. It’s when we try to create the world-shattering killer ap, change the world, boil the ocean, in a single master stroke.

I’m assuming then that since companies are a grouping of individuals that they stumble in much the same ways. They try to hit home runs, find a single solution for all their problems.

I think there’s the same stumble point. I think there’s a killer-ap mentality out there. Too often I work with organizations that don’t want to be bothered with the little ideas. They want to jump the curb. There is a time and place when you should jump the curb. But it happens when you find incrementally better ways to do something and there comes a point where the next leap, the step is the same size but the outcome is much greater.

I’ll share an experience. Toyota worked tirelessly for years getting better, getting better. And then they launched their luxury series, the Lexus. This was 21 years ago. It didn’t take very long before Lexus was the leading luxury name-plate.

Painting with a big broad brushstroke here but for the last 20-30 years our economy has focused on efficiency. It’s been all about lean operations, Six Sigma, cost cutting, off-shoring. All that’s been built on an organizational hierarchy of top-down, command and control, me-boss you - worker mentality. That’s entrenched deeply in companies from top to bottom now.

Interestingly enough that’s exactly the situations the main character is up against. The only option available for the main character really isn’t a job. It’s a desk and a phone. There’s no salary, no benefits. He has to make something happen in a top-down move the metal or your out mentality. He struggles with it.

He can’t fit within the situation very well. It goes against everything he’s been taught in his previous role in selling.

He’s got goals and best-laid plans. None of it works. None of it works in the system he faces.

And he’s forced to get perspective when his boss tells him to take a break, take a day off. And he does and when he does he finds a solution that allows him to work within that system but in a different way.

When you have a new idea you have two choices. Work within the system ‘cause that’s the box. Or step outside that box, change the system.

Most of us don’t have the power to change the system. So, we have to figure out how to work within the system. It’s not about a huge change. There’s a loophole, a niche, there’s a way that lets us work within the box, that allows us to have a great outcome.

32:00

The answer to your question is to change the mindset of your people to always thinking outside the box and thinking of those great big ideas to refocus their attention inside the box and look for little inroads.

The more there are these little inroads you can get, by team by department, there is an organic growth that happens inside that company.

I’ve seen it happen again and again with companies. They start small. They try it with a team as an experiment. Allow people to think a bit and to take charge and try it. Generally speaking they are shocked by the very low-cost ideas that actually change the outcome and the climate of the organization.

Talk about top-down! I worked for a long-time with the LA Police Department. Paramilitary org. Trust me, command-and-control is synonymous with the LA PD. Yet, we started very small, in an area of the operation, the jail and we grew from there.

It is possible. Did we change the system? No, But we found a lot of ideas in that rather target-rich environment to improve the system.

Fantastic. How long have you worked with the LA Police Department?

I worked with them from 2004 to 2006 under the banner of Toyota. I got to work all the factions. I worked with the detectives. I worked with narcotics. I worked with the jail operations. I worked with notorious internal affairs, bureau of standards, confidential informants. I learned to shoot a gun. I went on ride alongs and helicopter missions.

After I left Toyota I kept working with them for another 18 months. I spent a good chunk of time with that organization. And if you can make meaningful change there you can make meaningful change anywhere.

I was talking with a friend of mine who lives overseas. I described much of our country’s process of change as reflecting the lack of activity from our brain’s frontal lobes. I said I think historians will look back at these times and discover there was a shutdown of the frontal lobes on a near national level. You write a bit about this. You talk about our brain’s Amygdala. What is the Amygdala and why’s it important to a process of meaningful change.

Which stage of the Shibumi process stills the amygdala? How do we still it and allowing thinking and creativity to gain ground in our day?

Well, this sorta gets back to the whole what to do when the hippos charge thing. We are hard-wired, the amygdala is where the fight or flight response is contained. There’s this funny thing that happens when we try to change anything. It sets off the fear mechanism. It sets off that fight or flight mechanism.

If someone presents a new idea immediately this resistance sets in. Oh, that won’t work or We can’t do that. That’s just the brain’s resistance to change.

The smaller the change the less that gets set off. And it’s the big radical changes that ends up paralyzing us in terms of our creativity. Because it’s connected to our creative zone. When fear is present we generally are not as creative as we could be. It gets in the way of our creativity and our ingenuity.

We have to find ways to stem that, to temper that reaction. That’s why kaizen or change through small steps is so effective. You can be creative in small ways that it doesn’t set off that fear, fight or flight reaction.

Isn’t it interesting that it’s always our ideas that seem great to us when we come up with them? But when you present them to someone else they think of umpteen reasons, nine ways to Sunday, why that won’t work. That’s just the good ol’ resistance to change.

And the way around that is to think smaller, sometimes.

Where in the Shibumi process does the amygdala get stilled?

The ability to quiet the mind is an acquired skill. The process of kaizen helps.

But there comes a point on a personal level where we need to do two things. Quiet our minds and then take a break from routine.

The two concepts are tied together. One is our ability to take a mental break. One is our ability to take a physical break.

Boston Consulting Group did a 4-year experiment where each week they required these experimental teams to experiment with a new way of working. That new way of working wasn’t that radical. It was simply that they weren’t supposed to work. They weren’t allowed to work one evening of each week.

Management consultants work 80- 100 hours a week.

The big huge experiment was scheduled required time-off one evening a week. You cannot work past 6 PM.

That doesn’t seem so radical or that much a break. You weren’t allowed to talk to your co-workers, no email, no blackberry, no nothing. You had to just not work.

And it was extremely difficult for the consultants. That means I’m going to have to work harder on the weekend. Or I’m going to be left out of the loop on something. They didn’t like. It ran against everything they were about in their mad dash to move up the ladder.

But after 4 years of experimenting with a few teams, Boston Consulting Group is rolling it out on a firm-wide basis. That one little break from their routine to come up with more creative ideas, to work better as a team, to have better client results, to have better intra-team communications just from that little break. It allowed them to be better, to do more, by working less.

One of the most studied groups in neuroscience are Buddhist monks. They study the adepts those with over 10,000 hours of meditation practice. The reason they study them is they exhibit abnormally high levels of gamma brain waves.

Only recently have neuro-scientists figured out, you know the legendary eureka, the aha moments, that’s what scientists call the sudden insights way of solving a problem, there’s science to it. What is required for it is quiet mind.

Gamma brain waves are the brain waves that immediately precede that eureka moment. They’ve done study after study where they give people tough problems and then they give them a break. Some were allowed to sleep. Those that had the break came back and solved the problem with more accuracy, more frequency and do it quicker.

They study monks because they have abnormally high gamma brain waves.

Your brain needs quiet before its storm.

Another quick study. Tony Schwartz wrote a book called The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working. He did a little bit of work with the scientific community and found there’s a rhythm to our bodies. Go past 90 minutes and our efficiencies and effectiveness and creativity begin to wane. So he wrote his book in half the time using a 90-minute cycle. He would work for 90 minutes, take a break and then work for another 90 minutes. It took him half the time to write this book as it did his others.

That particular cycle I have worked into my own life and I highly recommend it. Try this. Work for 90 minutes even if you’re doing sports or learning to play tennis. After 90 minutes take a break. Go for a run or go for a walk. Listen to some music. Take a break even if you’re in the middle of something. Take that break.

You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel, how much more productive and energized you’ll feel at the end of the day. 4 90-minute cycles with breaks in - between far more productive than working 8 hours and taking a long break.

This takes us to our next question. The act of reflection and how to execute it within a business environment. I don’t know of many companies that have time for much reflection. For critiques, for performance evaluations, for comparing real vs projected. But reflection. How does a company begin to incorporate time for reflection into their daily routine?

46:00

Reflection meaning not staring off into space and considering the meaning of life, but having a purpose.

Generally speaking, here in the US we only reflect when things go bad oftentimes to place blame. But, there’s no real learning in that.

Children in Japan are taught reflection as soon as they begin school. It’s irrespective of what that outcome is.

It’s basically 3 questions:

1. What did you plan to happen?
2. What happened?
3. Why?

And let’s stay with that metaphor and let’s say here in the US your child comes home with 1 A’s, 2 B’s 2 C’s and a D. Generally speaking we high-five on the A’s. And don’t give it much thought. But, what happened on that D, man? Why did you get that D? What’s going on there? Well, get in your room and work harder.

And good job on the C’s and B’s, work harder and maybe bump up them up to be B’s and A’s.

There’s not a lot of reflection on that outcome.

The child in Japan is taught to reflect on the A. Did you intend to do that? What did you do different?

That’s a gap.

Here in the US when we exceed an expectation we do the end-zone dance. We don’t try to unpack. Why did we overshoot that mark? Shouldn’t we be meeting these expectations.

A number of companies do this. BP, believe it or not has a robust process for reflection and review. [I’m struggling with this] It’s patterned after the Armys After-Action-Review.

An after-action-review is a safe haven for learning. It’s a regular meeting that occurs after every milestone has occurred, not just at the end of a deployment. You’re just rying to answer those three questions:

1. What did you plan to happen?
2. What happened?
3. Why?

It’s about goals and tasks. It’s not about placing blame. It’s not an outside facilitated thing. It can’t happen without everyone present. You’re just trying to answer three questions.

The process of Kata or routine also requires 3 questions. What are they? Why are they important?

Kata is just routine. It comes from martial arts. Everybody remembers good ol’ Karate Kid when he’s learning wax-on, wax-off. The basic karate moves. When you have a routine, you create a standard, follow it and find a better way. That’s your basic routine.

But what any good kata or routine does is provide a framework and basis for action that allows us to be more creative, more innovative and more improvisational.

I’m at the point where I cannot think of a kata or idealoop. I go through 4 cycles:

• What’s the problem?

• Why did it exist?

• How can I solve it?

• How can I test it out?

A recent guest here was Dave Rendall, author of the Freak Factory. He talks about finding the right spot, the right fit where we can showcase our strengths. You talk about the inner person and the outer person and the need for harmony between the two. How does that, harmony of inner and outer, work in a business setting?

It’s the ability to make a strong connection to the core values of a system. You know when things aren’t right. The character in the book knows things aren’t right because all the values his boss displays go against his own. It causes a huge stress for him, in his life, in his work. He doesn’t believe in the same things. He doesn’t believe in treating people the same way.

It causes stress. And he’s outta synch. And what happens is one of two things. One: we grin and bear it because we think we have no choice. Or we de-select and leave and look for another opportunity.

One of the great things I’m reading right now is a great book. It’s called Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. It’s by Chip Conley. Forward is by Tony Hsieh of Zappos.

Wonderful book in line with meaning and meaningful change. Intrinsic motivation and self-worth and the ability for us to create that inner and outer harmony. We belive in the task and the mission of the organization and what we’re working for and the people in the organization have divergent views, perhaps. But they’re aligned with the same basic values and principles.

Do you have an example of company that re-aligned with its core values after having become disconnected?

A great example is Toyota. I think everybody is aware of what happened with Toyota this year. Much of it media-driven. The Congressional hearings and irrespective that no one has been able to duplicate the problem of sudden acceleration, the leaders of Toyota say that they lost their way. They grew too fast. They took their eye off the basic things that got them here in the first place. And that’s the great danger in any organization. Toyota calls it big-company syndrome, big-company disease.

But they have righted the ship. They have re-doubled their efforts. They still to this day are digging to understand how even one instance have possibly occurred under their watch.

It happens to the best of us. But there are ways for us to get back on track.

You’re a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn said that. What are you reading for work or play?

I just finished reading a great book by Steven Shapiro, an innovation consultant. It’s called Personality Poker and it comes with a deck of cards.

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson...by the way I review books on a weekly basis for Open Forum.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, by Nancy Duarte. It’s about how you craft a story for presentation. Just a great book that everyone should read because all of us have to pitch an idea sometime.

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, by Nick Bilton, NY Times blogger.

Those are some of the books I’ve been reading that I get inspiration from.

Mr. Shapiro sent me a copy of his book. We’re coordinating a schedule with him for December. I agree, it’s an excellent book.

Where are you speaking where we can come hear you?

You can hear me do a little bit on my website: Matthew E May. I just spoke at a Ted Salon in London. It was hosted by Frog Design. Hopefully it will be online soon.

Let’s revisit where we can find you on the web?

The easiest way, the hub of everything is my website.

Thank you Matthew!

16 Insights from Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom

... Niklas Zennstrom is such a role model to entrepreneurs this side of the Atlantic. Not only did he co-found and run Skype, the London-based internet-phone start-up which eBay bought in 2005 for $3.1 billion — a venture more than two dozen venture capitalists turned down flat. He also, with business partner Janus Friis, created the game-changing peer-to-peer software Kazaa, launched the online video-sharing service Joost, and now runs a Mayfair-based investment firm called Atomico which recently raised $165 million. via www.wired.com

16 tips, insights, rules. Check them out.

These apply to anyone with an idea or a question or a different perspective not just the classic entrepreneur who turns global telecommunications on its head.

My favorites were:

• “You shouldn’t be afraid of failure — when something fails, you think, ‘What did I learn from that experience, I can do better next time.’ Then kill that project and move on to the next. Don’t get disappointed.”

• “Often you’re the only one who believes in what you’re doing. Everyone around you will say, ‘Why not give up? Don’t you see it won’t work?’ You then have to find out, are they right or am I right? It took a year to raise money for Skype: we went to 26 different venture capitalists, asking for 1.5 million euros and prepared to give away a third of the company. But no one wanted to invest.”

This one wasn't so bad, either:

• “Try to prove there are people actually interested in your product before you spend money building a business. Test it on your mother, sister, friends — I tried Skype on them very early on. Though you never know with the ‘mum test’ if they’re saying good things because they just want to be nice.”

Check out the list. Keep it handy. You, we, will need it as forge innovations and solutions for our goals, our organizations, our economy.

Use Their First Name - Week 27 of the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 27th week. The lesson this week is:

Use their first name.

Such a simple act.

Charm and charisma are often featured with a great leader’s list of attributes. Charm and charisma are empty without this simple step: use their first name.

Recognize THAT person.

It is part of how a great leader makes you feel you have their undivided attention, that you are the only person they care about.

Few acts are as flattering as the simple act of a well-respected leader recognizing us with our first name.

Few acts are as deflating for us as the simple act of a soon-to-be formerly-great leader forgetting our names, failing to address us with our names.

Sure. We’re busy. We live and work in chaos. Maybe, we’re busy, work and live in chaos and are part of 1000 person organization. Ok. So, what? Your successes now present a new challenge. Remember the names.

There are tricks and tips to help you if you’re not one of those people who have a magic memory for people’s names. Try using it 3 times when you’re introduced.

1. Bill?
2. Bill, it’s nice to meet you.
3. What’s your biggest challenge working here, Bill?

Maybe, that's too old-school. Ok. Create your own.

Failing that, be honest.

You were introduced to me last week. I failed to write your name down. Please tell me your name again so I won’t forget it. It’s important for me.

Then write it down. Send them a note afterwards.

Find a way, a rule, a tip. Use their first name.

Their first name is the first step towards their engagement. Our first name is the first step towards our engagement.

Use it.

**********

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 Dave Rendall, author of The Freak Factory

Dave Rendall, author of The Freak Factory: Making Employees Better By Helping Them Get Worse, joined the show recently. You can listen to our conversation here.

This is from his website:

About

As a boy, David was told he’d never amount to anything because he couldn’t sit still, he was a terrible listener, and he wouldn’t stop talking. He listened to the criticism, did his best to sit still, stop talking and listen, and studied counseling psychology. The result? He was unhappy, unsuccessful and never worked as a counselor.

So David started the Freak Factory, realizing that his supposed flaws were actually strengths. Now he’s standing up and talking for a living, and he’s spoken to over 200 organizations large and small in the last couple of years about how to get the most out of yourself and your employees.

Dave walks his walk. He celebrates his weaknesses. He’s restless. He can’t sit down. He’s impatient. He’s always talking. He’s a bad listener.

So-o-o. He used those as markers to point him to his strengths: author, consultant, speaker, professor, marathon runner, dad.

That makes him a great radio guest, also.

Dave, how are you? Thank you for being on the show.

I don’t encourage stalkers but where are you on the web and how can people follow you?

The best place, the one stop to find me is my website, drendall.com. It’s got links to facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Linkedin...links to my blog. That’s the best place to find me and jump off to your favorite social media.

You’re a professor now. And in addition to molding young minds, what cool project are you working on right now?

There’s two things I’m working. Earlier this year I started doing standup comedy at a local comedy club. I’m enjoying that. Clips from that are on Youtube. You can find it at youtube.com/drendall. That’s been good; it challenges me in a new way but keeps me sorta in the speaking world. It takes advantage of the fact that I got into trouble my whole life for making people laugh in class and now I’m getting to do it in front of an audience that expects me to do that.

The other thing I just started is a new blog called the Automatic Speaker. I’m trying to take what I’ve learned over the last 6 years in building my speaker business and share it with other folks. I’ve had former students and others who have asked me to mentor them in building their speaking business. I’m using the blog to formalize that process and even understand what I’m doing a little better.

The idea is that if you ever read the book the Automatic Millionaire, David Bach’s idea is that you need to put your retirement and financial stuff on cruise control. If you expect you’ll work on it every month, you’re wrong. Come it with some automatic, routine, ways to get yourself moving in the right direction. How to create a business that doesn’t require you to constantly grind on it, make constant cold calls but instead a business where people constantly call you and ask you to speak.

My intro was a little long. I apologize. But your perspective is so refreshing. It’s creative and yet it’s supported with excellent data and logic. When did you begin to connect your journey discovering your weaknesses as they were called were actually signs of your strengths? And what was the moment you realized...the whole country’s going through much the same process?

When I was in college the Resident Director for men’s dorms came up to me and told me he’d like me to apply as a Resident Assistant. Up until that time I was pretty sure that I was the reason they had Residents Assistants and not the person who would be in charge of that. I was in trouble for a variety of things and never quite seen as a role model for any body else.

He said the very things that other people saw as problems as rebellious or as bad attitudes ...he saw as signs of leadership potential. He wanted to help me use my ability to influence others in a positive way. That was a way to frame it thatI had never heard before. Certainly no one had ever used with me before. And that got me thinking about myself and my characteristics in a new way which then started the journey to ultimately lead us to see that it’s not my story, but it’s true for all of us, for managers, for how you run a country.

Was that when you made it your mission to share your journey with others with your books, your blog, your speaking?

It probably wasn’t right away. I hadn’t realized I was a writer or a speaker. Sometime in college a professor told me I’d make a good teacher. Up until then I’d been so nervous to give a presentation my hands would shake...Eventually I realized I had always been a public speaker my whole life, but I’d just been getting in trouble for it, doing it from the audience instead of doing it from in front of the entire room.

I taught a class, stood in for a professor, one time. Gradually I had more opportunities to speak at my job at non-profit group. I would be asked to speak more often. Then when people would ask me to speak, the topic I was most passionate about was this Freak Factor, Freak Factory concept.

It’s something I’m passionate about. It’s not just a book I’m trying to write or a concept I’m trying to promote.

I love your book - The Freak Factory: Making Employees Better By Helping Them Get Worse.That title just has to tweak people’s noses a little bit, doesn’t it? What’s the most common responses when people see its title?

I think people are confused initially. But they’re also interested.

I was worried that people would think it was unprofessional or wouldn’t see the truth in it and reject it. But people are intrigued by it.

The most common response before people read it is misunderstanding.

I did this presentation for a human resource management groups here locally. The guy who introduced it obviously hadn’t read it but he had read the title. He told this whole story about overcoming your weaknesses and finding what’s wrong with you and fixing it.

That’s a common misunderstanding. People don’t read it the way it is written. They decide I’m talking turning your strengths into weakness or somehow overcoming obstacles or difficulties. That’s not really the message.

The message is that we perceive these things as weaknesses, but they’re actually strengths. It’s not something we have to do to them. It’s a perspective we have to change in how we look at them.

After that the response is incredibly positive. My speeches are always successful. I’m almost always asked to come back and do something else. People feel they have been given a new approach to make things better.

Our friend, Erika Andersen, also wrote a great book titled Being Strategic. In it she coined the phrase reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future for writing The Freak Factory?

Well, maybe it’s not the reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future but what I’d really like to see is a management revolution. I’d really like to see us completely change how we treat people in organizations. Completely change the way we handle performance evaluations. Completely change the way we treat strengths and weaknesses. See where that leads us.

Evidence shows what we are doing isn’t work real well, isn’t productive. But we keep on doing it or doing more of it even though it’s not working well.

15:00

A reasonable aspiration would be to see a few companies decide to turn their organizations into freak factories and to work with them on that process. That would be very satisfying to know that one or two companies had changed how they treat people, had become more productive and helped their employees become more fulfilled and live a better life. That would be satisfying.

How will you know you are making progress towards it? What metrics will you use to measure your progress?

One of the big ones for me is just stories coming back from people. People sending me emails. People talking to me. Just sorta anecdotal evidence. That’s the way I see if my other concepts are working for people. They tell me ‘Hey, Dave, thanks, this worked for me’.

Ever since I first published the ebook for The Freak Factory, a book publisher from the UK contacted me. He’s been working with me for how to apply this to his team and with his boss and in his organizations.

He’s asking a lot of tough questions. That helps me refine the concept. He’s trying to apply it in the real world. And he’s telling me the obstacles and barriers that he’s experiencing he finds in the real world.

And then having me help him answer questions. He believes it. But, he’s afraid others won’t.

It’s really been an exciting process to be involved in even in answering questions about how it applies to organizational culture and getting management buy-in. Hopefully more and more of that will spread.

Part of my challenge is to identify organizations who are already doing it. I don’t think anybody is doing it perfectly or doing everything.

If you’re going to adapt to people’s strengths and adjust to how they do things instead of forcing them to fit into a box then you have to rethink how you handle job descriptions.

If you look at W.L. Gore. They don’t even have job descriptions. So, they’re already starting from a base of saying let’s help people move to the things they are most invested in. Let’s let them spend time in the things they are most interested in, most committed to. Let’s allow people to avoid work that they don’t find enjoyable or interesting. They purposefully start with a lack of structure that allows people more flexibility.

Part of the challenge is to show real companies are doing bits and pieces of it. Help more people be less afraid of it and understand their company won’t implode.

We need to look at the outliers and freaks and see how we can copy that.

I’m a big fan of Bruce Springsteen since 1978. I read one quote of his that explained in part why his performances are so freakishly, consistently, outstanding. He said he sang each show to one person in the audience.

Who was that one person for you as you wrote this book? Describe that person you had in mind as you wrote The Freak Factory.

I think there’s probably two. The first person is the person who is already doing this and need some support for it. They’re are people already doing this. But they feel like they’re a weirdo. They don’t get support for it. It works on their team but they have a hard time moving it through the hierarchy. They are constantly being pressured by other people in their organization to take a more conventional approach.

What this does is like some kind of group therapy. There are other people out there who see things the same way.

The other person is the one who’s tired of employee performance evaluations and self-improvement plans. The person who’s tired of trying to fix people’s weaknesses. And they realize it just doesn’t work. They’re just done. They’re looking for a better way. it’s the person who’s recognized the limitation of the other approaches and would like to try something different.

In your book you describe two problems. What are those two? Those two problems cause a lot of problems downstream.

The most obvious problem is also a symptom. That problem is that people aren’t happy at work. People aren’t productive at work. There’s all sorts of stats out there that says 52% of people aren’t engaged with work. And 19% are actively disengaged which makes for a total of 71%...who come to work every day and aren’t particularly excited about what they do.

What it means to be actively disengaged is those people aren’t just wasting time, they are looking for ways to make the organization fail, they are looking for ways to sabotage the company’s goals.

Another statistic is 67% of people think about resigning their job on a regular basis. If I am I’m imagining I’m not going to be here in a few days or weeks, I’m not going to be doing the things I need to do to be effective.

Look at how many organizations are getting rid of social media access because they are worried people are goofing off and wasting their time. I have unlimited access to social media. But since I run the business I am productive when I need to be productive. I am taking ownership of it and am engaged with my work.

We have a productivity problem which we think is the main problem and and so we focus on fixing that problem.. But I think that is just the symptom of what I call the perspective problem. We think the employees are broken. That’s our belief system. We treat them as they are broken. That’s our behavior and how we manage them. We think they’re broken. We see them as broken. We treat them as broken and then we stand around wondering why they don’t work.

If you see people as broken and treat them as they are broken then they will act broken.

The real root of the problem is the way we perceive our employees. We come in with a mental illness model. We come with this diseased model, we come with this identifying weaknesses model and it pervades everything we do.

And we apply it to business. We spend all of our time identifying what is wrong with people. And then expect them to fix it. So people walk around feeling like failures, we remind them they’re failures and then we wonder why they are not succeeding.

I think the tow problems are the perspective problem and the productivity problem. We see people incorrectly. We treat them incorrectly. It leads to results that are productive or effective. We continue on and think a better evaluation program or incentive program would fix people when in fact it doesn’t.

I’m trying to show people how to overcome those two problems by creating a freak factory.

You share a lot of data in your book that are the result of these two problems. What are some of the data points in corporate performance that reflect the impact of these two problems?

It’s a good question and one I don’t have a good answer for. I’m not super data -oriented or super-quantitative or a super-detail-oriented person.

The reason I know this is an issue is every audience I speak to tells me this is an issue. They agree they have problems with productivity and engagement. It’s mostly anecdotal, intuitive. I’ve never met anyone who says no, my people are super-productive and engaged as they could be.

One point I always come back to is public corporations have generated a decline of over 75% in their return on assets over the past 45 years. That was included in The Shift Index of John Hagel and John Seeley Brown and their colleagues and discussed in John Hagel's book, The Power of Pull and Steve Denning’s book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management.

Would you say that the focus of management on correcting or controlling employee weaknesses has in turn made them weak?

Yeah, I think in the way we manage people and the way we manage our companies. When I do surveys with organizations and they get the results back and they want to see where the problems are, what they don’t do well and try to fix that. That would be the way to take them to the next level.

You talk about businesses generating a negative return on assets, the reality is businesses do things every day, Dan Pink’s new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, says that business don’t do what science understands motivates people.

We do what other people are doing or telling us to do. We copy it and think whatj other’s are doing must work. What we’re missing is we’re not asking how those people are doing. Do you really want to be like that?

We have to be willing to be different, unusual. The direction everybody is going just isn’t that productive.

32:00

People don’t have jobs right now. And we’re talking about how to create jobs.

Nobody’s asking how do we create businesses for all those people who are unemployed. the problem is supposed to be taht people don’t jobs. The real problem is people don’t have income.

A job is one place to create income. Self-employment is another way. Creating a business that creates jobs is another way to create income is another way which also creates income for other people.

Jobs are only 150 years old. We have the mindset that jobs are a way to make people happy, to give them income. We tell our kids to go to school and get good grades and grow up and get a good job. 150 years ago people called employment wage slavery. They thought it was the worst thing to do to sell your soul and your financial future to an employer who would take the profits and you would get a small piece of it. And yet now we’re told jobs has become the norm.

There’s a country-wide mindset that we should do what we have done, we should do what everyone else is doing. Instead of looking for unique solutions that would improve things.

Being a leader you offer solutions. And in your book you offer 4 strategies to correct these two problems. What are they?

I’ve adjusted them a bit in my recent speeches.

The first step is Awareness. We need to figure out what people’s strengths and weaknesses are. One of the beauties of my approach is our negative bias. We tend to see problems before we see solutions. We tend to see things first that are wrong or go poorly. If I ask you what your employees’ strengths are you would have a hard time answering that. But if I ask you what your employees’ weaknesses are most people would be able to answer those questions very quickly as we already have them written down somewhere.

The first step is we have to become aware of our employees’ weakness which we probably already are.

We have to resist the impulse to then try to fix it.

We move to the next step which is Acceptance. Apparent weaknesses are strengths in disguise. Peter Drucker in his book The Effective Executive, said "Strong people always have strong weaknesses, too."

Notice he didn’t say "sometime". He said always. Where there are peaks there are valleys.

What he’s saying is that people’s strengths come with weaknesses. People have really high spots but they also have really low spots. We need to be aware of them, step 1. And then accept them step 2.

I like to think of them as side effects. Just like powerful medications have powerful side effects we’ve all come to accept that’s the way things are and in order to get the benefits we have to put up with the side effects. People’s strengths are the medicine and their weaknesses are their side-effects.

The next step is Appreciation. Now, it’s not enough to say oh, I’m stuck with these people’s strengths and their weaknesses we want to see people succeed because of their weaknesses not in spite of them.

Paul Orfalea was the founder of Kinko’s and he recently sold it for $2.4 Billion and a lot of people say that despite his dyslexia and what he says in his book is that it was because of his dyslexia...

• because I couldn’t read and write I relied on my team to read and write for me;

• because I couldn’t read and write I created a voice mail system where people could share suggestions throughout the organization without it having to be filtered by anyone else;

• because I didn’t think I was smarter and better than anyone else because of my huge weaknesses I accepted the weaknesses of others and allowed people to be unique and be themselve;

• because I wasn’t perfect I didn’t expect anyone else to be perfect either.

So, here’s a man who ran a multi-billion, multinational, company who couldn’t read and write and he still can’t read and write and he allowed other people to be strong where he was weak and he allowed himself to be strong where others were weak and he appreciated in himself his weaknesses and appreciated in others their weaknesses. So we want to go beyond step three to Appreciation.

The next section includes 4 things you can do. The first one is Amplification. If I really believe that weaknesses are just strengths in disguise then I would ask you to go farther in that direction. I ran an ultra-marathon. And my Brother-in-Law came out and said “Dave you’re crazy. And, you’re awesome, too! “

In order to be awesome you have to be a little crazy.

The philosopher Seneca said

“There’s no great genius without a touch of madness.”

The whole problem is we are trying to hold people back to be less of themselves when what we ought to be doing with Amplification is help people become more of what they really are.

My favorite thing about that running story is for my whole life people told me I’m hyper-active. And when I’m a kid they told me that’s a problem; you need to fix it. But when I ran an ultra-marathon I went farther literally in that direction that people told me not to go then as an adult people told me “Wow I could never do that”.

So, now I’m getting praise for that thing I was criticized for in the past.

As managers we need to consider praising the things we criticize. Instead of saying you talk too much in meetings we could say you seem to have a lot to add I wonder if you could lead our meetings and help take us in a new direction or if someone is quiet in meetings say “You’re really quiet in meetings I’d have to imagine that you are listening to all the things people are saying and you’re reflecting on that. Let’s talk one on one after the meeting and let me listen to you in a quiet personal setting where you might be more comfortable.”

Allowing people to be more of themselves and pushing them in that direction instead of people pulling them the other way.

The next one is Alignment. We need to stop forcing people to try and fit in. When people find the right spot, when I’m a public speaker nobody ever asks me about my listening skills, when I’m running my own business nobody ever asks me if I’m good at taking orders.

It’s not just about being yourself and everybody has to just accept you for who you are. it’s about finding the place where people value that, where people need things we bring to the table and they’re not worried about the things we don’t.

The real magic in management is finding the spot, Drucker says “the real purpose of management is finding places where people’s strengths are effective and their weaknesses are irrelevant."

I think we see our job is plugging people in spots. But the genius in management is finding where people are most effective and moving them around in usc a way that they are able to be themselves.

The next step is avoidance where we really struggle. If we want people to be their best we have to let them be their worst. Moving them to the right spot seems to be an easy task except that it involves allowing that person to do things that everybody else has to do or we know is part of the job. To do things more is to do other things less. That’s where we have a lot of difficulty.

The last one is Affiliation. We need to create a team with complimentary strengths and weaknesses. The reality is we can’t expect everybody to be well-balanced, well-rounded. But we can create a team that is. How do you let some people do that and other people do this. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Affiliation allows us to find the real value in teamwork. But what we find in organizations is 5 people who do the exact same thing. Everybody does things the same way at the same time and we call it a team but what it is is a group of clones doing the exact same thing everyday.

Which one is the most important? Which has the biggest impact?

I think it’s Alignment. There was a guy in the 1800’s named John Merrick. We know him as the Elephant Man. It’s a book and a movie, but a true story. For awhile he was in a freak show before they closed them down in England. And when he left the freak show he was fortunate enough to meet a doctor who took him and tried to help him and cared for him. And the first thing John asked the doctor was "Can you help me find an asylum for the blind? "

What he recognized was his weaknesses, his disability, would literally disappear if you put him in the right spot. Everything that was wrong with him would become invisible. Ironically those people who were blind could see him for who he really was. He was compassionate. He was kind. He was intelligent. He was well-read. He was a great guy but his appearance was horrible.

He knew that if you put him in the right spot where they couldn’t see his physical appearance he would fit in. He knew that with the right fit his weaknesses would disappear.

When I was studying to be a counselor, counselor’s sit and listen all day. All that would do would put a spotlight on my weakness. I don’t want to sit and listen all day because I have ideas, I have energy. I want to share. I want to teach. I want to help.

My weakness is I can’t sit still. My strength is I have energy and ideas and I want to help. When I became a college professor people are asking me for my opinions. Then I get to be myself, I am confident. I am energetic. It gives me an opportunity to be successful.

But it’s all about the right fit. I’m the same person. If you force me to be a counselor, every day of the week, force me to have session after session, listening to people all day, I’d seem incompetent, I’d seem unmotivated, I’d seem uninterested. Sooner or later you would fire me and say "Dave’s not a good employee" when there’s nothing wrong with me; I’m just in the wrong spot.

There’s a concept in psychology they call "fundamental attribution error". That we tend to assume that people’s behavior is related to their core characteristics. So we seem someone acting nervous in an interview we assume that they are nervous and they have something to hide instead of saying they are nervous and anybody would be nervous in an interview and the stakes are high.

We tend to say this person is a bad employee for doing a bad job. Maybe they’re in a bad spot. And in another place could actually be fantastic.

We lose the best people because we are not trying to them the best spot; we’re trying to get them to fit in.

47:00

One of your f-words in the last strategy, the strategy of adaptation is fail. You write Allow employees to be the worst, so they can be the best. I like it. How can you perform at your best if you’re constantly worried about making a mistake. That just makes you weak from dividing your mind. But you take it one step further you encourage companies to allow them to be the worst. How’s that received by managers and leaders?

I think the best way to answer that one is to give an example of how that works in real life.

I was teaching a class and complaining about state farm insurance. This girl raised her hand and said I sell State Farm and you could move over to my agency and we could handle all the paperwork and it’ll be free what do you say? She sold me during class. She was a great salesperson. Sometimes great sales people are great at sales and bad at paperwork.

She came up to be about a year later and said she was having this trouble with her boss. Her boss was frustrated that paperwork wasn’t done right and things were missing and they needed to come up with a solution.

The classic solutions are to put her on a bonus plan and give her bonuses for turning things in on time and correctly and giving her penalties for turning them in late and send her to training her how to better manage her time, to put her on a performance plan and to have someone in the office teach her how to handle her paperwork better.

That misses the point that she’s a great salesperson and when you try to make her better the paperwork she’s losing time and opportunity. We all have limited time and energy. That’s a reality we all tend to overlook. The reality is we want well-rounded perfect people who are good at everything. But that misses the point that there’s only a limited amount of time and energy and you’re only going to get the best out of people when you’re allowed to let things go. And the things you should let go are your weaknesses. What her boss did is she did none of those things, she hired someone to do her paperwork.

What her boss figured out was that one man’s trash was another man’s treasure. She had a salesperson who was great at sales and there was probably someone out there who was good at filling out paperwork and loved doing it. They love the sameness of coming in and what to do and how to do it. And they could be hired at a reasonable wage. So she hired someone to do the paperwork.

So, now Kelly’s happy because she’s free to do more selling and not constantly reminded of what she stinks at. The new person is happy because she has a new job and the agency is happy because she’s making more money.

At some point we have to let things go if we’re going to let our employees be great.

Another f-word in the Adaptation strategy is Fire. If you love them, set them free. Most people don’t equate loving an employee with firing them. Explain what you mean by loving someone enough to fire them.

If you’ve come to the point that this is not the right fit for the person then if you love them the best thing you can do is to let them go.

There are plenty of stories of “I got fired and it was the best thing that happened to me. “ There’s a ton of great examples.

Sometimes people aren’t doing what I suggest in the Freak Factor. They’re trying to force themselves to fit in. You’re not trying to. They’re trying to put themselves in a spot where they don’t match.

Sometimes firing someone is the push they need to discover this is not good for me and provide the impetus to discover what they are good at.

I think sometimes if you truly care about this person then letting them to continue in this position where they’ll never be truly engaged, be happy, be fulfilled...so, instead of saying you’re not a good person you say this is not a good fit. But I think you have a lot of good skills but they are a better fit elsewhere.

Now. An email just came in. It’s from President Obama. He writes Tell Dave I love what he’s saying. I want him to meet with my economic advisors in the Oval Room next week. I want him to give me three steps to turn our country into a Freak Factory of genius citizens and employees, leaders and managers, innovators and operations experts.

What will you tell him?

I’ll do the classic politician thing and not give you the answer you asked for. I’ll give you one.

There’s a book out there called SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by the Heath brothers. They say when you are trying to make change, find the bright spots and clone them.

My advice to President Obama is really simple. Stop looking at all the problems. Stop looking at the problems with our educational system and businesses. Instead start asking

• "Where are the schools that are working and how can we copy them?"

The solution is to look at the schools, the educational offerings that are turning out people who are critical thinkers who are ready for the 21st century and ask how can we get more of them?

Do the same thing with business. Don’t ask what are the problems with business, how do we save businesses that are failing. The question is who’s starting businesses, who’s making money, why are they making money, what are they doing differently, how can we help people do more of this.

I had a great year in 2009 when people were saying the whole world is falling apart. I had a great year in 2008 when people were saying the whole world is falling apart. I expect to have a great year this year when people are saying the world is falling apart.
I’m using new media. I’m taking an entrepreneurial approach. I’m trying to adapt and be flexible.

But we don’t hear about that. We hear about Fortune 500 companies who made terrible decisions, about ripping people off and we try to fix that instead of looking at what is working.

Let’s look at what’s working and make it bigger instead of poo-pooing it and saying that will never work. We need to find where the bright spots are and clone them and look at what’s working to help people pay their bills, that’s getting people educated and find out how to get more of it.

Jim Rohn wrote that Leaders are readers. You’re a leader and I suspect an avid reader, also. What are you reading for work or fun or both!

For fun, I’m reading something from an Iowa native. Bill Bryson wrote At Home that goes through a history of how our homes work and our lives work and it’s a fascinating history of going through our houses, room by room, and how that room came to be and why we use it for what we use it.

I’m listening to The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and Home by Dan Ariely. There’s a lot of material in there for the Freak Factor. What he does is he goes through and talks about how the irrational things we do that don’t quite make sense often have a very functional uses in our life, and are also very adaptive, even though we’d say it was irrational or stupid. He shows how much of what we do that doesn’t make sense are actually helpful in a variety of ways. It’s helpful to see things in a way we haven’t seen before.

Are you still running? When’s your next marathon?

I’ll run the Myrtle Beach marathon next February.

Where are you speaking where we can come see you?

I’m never really speaking where you can come see me. One of the ladies who saw me in tasmania has relatives in Pinehurst and I’m doing a talk in Pinehurst and asked them if these folks could come in and see me and they thought that was cool.

You can go to my website and click on the speaking schedule tab and see where I’m going to be and if I’m going to be in your area. I’m in Wisconsin next November and next March. I’m scheduled to be in Tasmania next May. I’m all around NC. So if you see me in your area, contact me and we can meet or I can see if you can sit in the back.

Remind us again where are you on the web.

My website is Drendall.com

Thanks, Dave!

Forgiveness. Week 26 of the 52-Week Employee Recognition Plan

I announced in May, 2010, the 52 - Week Employee Recognition Plan. This is the 26th week. The lesson this week is:

Forgiveness.

Have you heard of The Golden Rule? It’s common English phrasing is:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

You introduced it in Week 23: Share your failures. You shared your failures openly. That required you to forgive yourself. And offered your audience the opportunity to forgive you.

Now, you have the basis to forgive those around you.

Lest anyone read this as a namby-pamby, touchy-feely, I’m happy - you’re happy, rule of thumb remember this: There are leaders buried underneath the traditional hierarchy of corporate policies and rules. They hide in cubicles and on assembly lines. They work in quiet desperation. The fear of failure and the resulting punishment keep them locked down, working in quiet desperation.

And businesses and our economy remain locked down, in quiet desperation, too.

Businesses and our economy cannot grow until we grow more leaders. Our upcoming leaders must learn...how to lead. Learning involves...failure or learning what you did not know.

No one will take that risk unless they know their errors and good ideas crushed by reality...will be forgiven. Not forgotten. No, no. Forgiven and then remembered. That memory will serve as the lesson to move forward for this generation of leaders and those upcoming.

This process of learning, this culture of learning as Gary Harpst described it, is a culture of engagement. Employee engagement is one of the keys to reverse the trend of declining return on assets that John Hagel’s research discovered and reported in The Shift Index. Employee engagement is how companies generate higher profits, lower costs, higher productivity, higher share prices than their competitors who ignore their leaders forced to hide by an unforgiving corporate culture.

Forgive each other. Find our leaders; they’re all around us. Grow our organizations and our economy.

Back to The Golden Rule. While its common English Phrasing is Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, the Golden Rule, the ethic of reciprocity, is found in all great cultures, cultures that last and create a lasting impact on our progress.

If that ethic can be found in all cultures in all times, if it can create great sustaining inspiring cultures, surely it can work in your organization. Forgive those in your organization. Create a culture that endures, that grows, that inspires.

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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.