My New Project: Leadership Caffeine-The Book

April 18, 2010 By 6 Comments

A Cup of Leadership CaffeineNote from Art: want to light a fire under yourself…make a big goal public.

My long list of life-goals includes a few that are underlined and even circled to connote priority. Write one book per year is one of those that is double-underlined, circled and highlighted for emphasis.  It’s high time that I quit thinking about this personal and professional Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and started executing.  So, after too much thought and not enough work, I am excited to make public my next project: Leadership Caffeine-The Book. (Expect the title to evolve a bit.)

For those of you astute enough to notice that I write a weekly Leadership Caffeine feature, you are to be excused if you immediately think, “Oh no, here comes another book of compiled blog posts.”  I’ll give you credit for at least being partially correct.

The goal in all of my work is to inform, educate, entertain, inspire, challenge and ideally, drive improvement, and that is the focus of this new project.  The posts most definitely will provide the core of the content, although they will be organized, edited and integrated into a format that both glues them together and adds value to ample new material, including cases, vignettes and more suggestions for turning ideas into actions and results.

They sit today on the website and in the blogosphere as discrete essays without a framework, and without continuity.  The book will add that value.

Why Base the Book on the Themes in the Posts?

For several reasons:

  • Tom Peters offered a statement in a recent interview with David Meerman Scott that suggested something to the effect of (I grossly paraphrase): the first draft of a book based on blog posts is a heck of a lot better than the first draft of a book without them. Consider me in complete agreement.
  • Many of the posts have great comments and suggestions that further strengthen or that challenge the core premises.  What remarkable feedback that serves to make the next iteration all the more valuable!
  • This weekly category of posts are reserved for the topics that I believe are the most important in leading and driving performance.  Why not leverage those thoughts and points?

Why Write About Business: Leadership, Management, Strategy, Quality, Projects etc.?

I’ve long since given up on wondering what compels me to write about business topics.  I grew up loving fiction and wanting to be a novelist, and somewhere during this journey, I fell in love with everything about the pursuit of great performance in managing and leading.

I also write, because I believe that I have some things to say, and because my wife and kids and colleagues prefer that I direct my passion at a bigger audience and give them an occasional break.

What I Will Ask of You:

By making this goal public, I’m on the hook for results.  I like that!  Accountability is a good thing and I’m driven in part by the compelling need to live up to my words.  I expect you to keep me honest and active.

Frankly, I want an opportunity to leverage the power of this great new world of social networking and media, and I will frequently solicit input as well as seek out examples of great performance and performers that you are willing to share.  Stay tuned.

Next Steps:

I could not be busier at this time, serving clients as part of my consulting business and teaching and training in a number of venues.  In fact, I hope to continue this trend and add to an already rich schedule. Nonetheless, I plan on executing this project during the summer months. The goal is to be able to show you what I did on my summer vacation.

This will be difficult, but of course, most things worth doing have a hefty difficulty factor.  I’m truly thankful for my good friends and colleagues that have not only encouraged this effort, but have agreed to take on some of the editing work. This will be a better product because of their support.

Thanks for letting me share the goal and I’ll keep you apprised as things progress.

-Art

Filed Under: Career, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

9 Tips for Nailing the Classroom Group Project Presentation

April 16, 2010 By 12 Comments

Note from Art: this is a public service post for anyone in a classroom anywhere that is on the hook for a group project.  MBA students and undergraduates, please pay particular attention.  If you know someone that might benefit from the guidance, please pass this along.  I want to hear about some seriously great group project presentations over the next few weeks!  And hey, the rest of you professionals out there might just pick up a few pointers below as well.

Everyone’s Doing It and Many are Not Doing It Well:

On campuses and in classrooms, graduate and undergraduate students alike are all doing It and many are not doing It very effectively.   The It of course, is preparing for the end of semester/quarter/year group project presentation, which in many cases will serve as a significant portion of the final grade.

After sitting through a fair number of these presentations over the past few years, I’ve identified some common mistakes that detract from the quality of the final presentation and depress grades, not to mention instructors.  The mistakes and misfires are generally a result of two issues: the very personal and irrational fear of presenting and some horrendously poor planning and coordination between group members.

Sidebar on Group Projects:

The topic of group projects in school probably merits a book, and while there are many pros and some cons to this component of the education process, I am in the camp that a well-defined project assignment enhances the learning experience, challenges individuals to develop strong group socialization, communication and leadership skills and offers a learning opportunity for the entire class if the output is of good quality. I’ll save the cons and potential for abuse of this component of college and grad school life for another post.

Regardless of your opinion on the worth of group projects, they are a reality, and one which students should play to win.  What follows is a short summary of the tips and suggestions that I provide to groups in my MBA and undergraduate classes.  I welcome additional thoughts and I encourage you to use these tips in good health and in pursuit of an A.

9 Tips For Nailing the Class and Group Project Presentation:

1.  Ensure that the group members share an integrated view of the project:

One of the biggest and painfully visible issues with group projects is that it becomes clear that the work was doled out to team members and while everyone knows their part, no one knows the whole picture.  Take the time to discuss your respective work products, key findings/conclusions and ensure that there is a unified and complete view of the project.

2.  Before preparing presentation materials, the group must think through the following:

  • You need to interest your audience in the first 60 seconds or you’ve lost them.  The group should develop an engaging opener..a reason for the audience to be interested.
  • You need to plan your message…before you begin writing your presentation.  Key points; necessary supporting points; examples; summary of key findings…and take-aways.
  • The goal is not to show how much you know..it is to concisely and briefly deliver key points, insights and conclusions.

3.  Building the presentation:

Remember, business plans seeking millions of dollars in funding can be pitched in a dozen or fewer slides.  Keep your deck brief…make every slide count.

  • Ideally, have one person build the presentation…it allows you to standardize on graphics, fonts and importantly, on a single voice.  Nothing is worse than disjointed presentation materials that don’t flow and look like they were created in a blender.
  • The best approach is always one-main point per slide.  (Or, no slides at all.)
  • Pictures are best…with brief captions or sidebars
  • Plan on your narrative and speaking points filling in all of the words that are not on the slides.

4. Helping the group and individuals prepare to present:

Since your slides are crisp and clean, every speaker must plan out their presentation narrative.  I like to print my slides, handwrite my major points (no more than 3 to 5) and then practice delivering these points until I don’t need notes. Other important planning issues:

  • Create transitions between speakers
  • Plan on the team leader conducting group introductions.
  • CREATE AN ENDING.  Too many groups end with “that’s all.”  That works for a cartoon…not for a project presentation.
  • Coordinate the slide advancement in advance…not during the presentation.

5. Getting yourself ready-prepare your attitude:

It’s time to tackle the irrational demons that bedevil so many classroom (and professional) speakers. Think through the following:

  • Remind yourself that there is little to fear.  The audience is on your side.  They want you to succeed.  Unless you disrespect the audience, they are there for you.
  • Remember that your goal is to always inform, share and even entertain.  Entertaining does not mean that you have to tell jokes…but having the mind of an entertainer…ensures that you focus on pleasing your audience.
  • Sit down the night before the presentation and imagine that you were an audience member for your own presentation.  Jot down a list of what you would like to learn.  Review that list before the presentation.

6. Immediately before the presentation, remind yourself of the following:

  • Smile while speaking.  Your smile is infectious.
  • Eye contact please.  Or at least pick different spots in the room slightly above head level and move your eyes to each spot in a random fashion.
  • Project your voice.  Many students forget to project, and the audience has to struggle to hear.  Be loud and proud…always with a smile.
  • If you have an accent…or if you are a mumbler, you will need to focus on both projecting and enunciating!
  • Modulate your voice.  Raise volume for emphasis…lower volume for intensity.  Avoid talking in a monotone.

7. During the presentation:

  • Smile, project your voice, and make eye contact.  Present with confidence, and be part of the group in the room, not a talking head.
  • Enthusiasm and passion are a speaker’s best friends!  Show and share yours.
  • Modulate your voice.
  • Notes: if you must have them in your hand, don’t read from them.  An occasional glance is fine.  Reading is never fine.
  • DON’T READ YOUR NOTES!
  • Posture…don’t stand defensively (no arms crossed)…don’t get in the fig-leaf pose (use your imagination) and don’t get in the T-Rex pose (again, use your imagination). No hands in pockets, either. Pick a base position…hands at the side with occasional, simple gestures.  Vary it slightly so that you don’t become a mannequin. (Thanks, Tim Koegel for these posture suggestions!)
  • Be conscious of your timing.  If you’ve practiced and if you know your key points…make them and keep moving.
  • Briefly recap your key points and then transition to your next speaker…introducing him/her by name…and perhaps topic.

8. After the presentation: Q/A:

Many a great group presentation crashes on the rocks of a mismanaged Question and Answer session.  Consider the following:

  • Pre-plan for someone to be the question moderator.  The moderator should restate the question and then direct it to the appropriate person.
  • If you don’t understand the question, ask the questioner for clarification.
  • If you don’t know the answer, do not make it up.  Develop the habit of saying, “I’m not certain, but that is an important question that I would love to look into for you.”
  • Keep your answers brief.  Resist the urge to share everything you know.
  • The moderator should sense when the question is answered/over and move on.
  • No need to get defensive with an audience member that disagrees.  It’s OK to agree to disagree.

9. Wrapping Up:

The group moderator should close out the group’s presentation, thank the audience and transition for the next group.  Do something to close out beyond the ever-present and really depressing, “that’s all we have.”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Here’s to nailing some group project presentations, getting great grades and importantly, improving your personal and professional communication skills along the way.  Use these in good health!  -Art

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Marketing Yourself, Performance, Professional Growth, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Management and Career Miscellany on the Lighter Side

April 14, 2010 By 2 Comments

Really Bad Career Advice:

A friend embarking on a next-step job search initiated a conversation with the recruiter she had used for hiring purposes for several years.  While most of the conversation was spent listening to how horrible his business was, he finally listened to my friend’s next steps plan and offered up this priceless advice.  “You may just have to face up to the fact that your career is over.”

My friend is an experienced, passionate leader with impeccable credentials, current certifications, great management experience and technical skills in a hot industry.

The recruiter must have been talking to himself.

Project Management Success-It’s the People, Stupid!

The most complex part of project management is not mastering the tools or the Project Management Body of Knowledge. It’s all about leading people.

Organizations interested in improving project performance are well-served to improve selection, coaching and mentoring and yes, even training so that their project managers develop critical experience in dealing with the most complex of all projects…the human participant.

Speaking of Project Management-Regarding the PMP Certification Exam:

“It’s the most god-awful test I’ve ever taken.”  -Master degreed nurse and operations executive on her recent, successful certification.

More than a few have indicated that this increasingly important certification is a test of your ability to take a test. Hmmmm.

Read Somewhere-A Great Idea for Improving Your Decision-Making Effectiveness:

Attributed to the late, great Peter Drucker, his suggestion was to develop the habit of writing down and filing your rationale for a major decision and then reviewing this document six to nine months down the road to find out how wrong you were.

I love this idea for the learning opportunity as well as for the expected shock value of, What was I thinking?!”

Social Networking-Everyone’s Shouting, But is Anyone Listening?

Spend a few minutes observing a twitter-stream and you’ll notice that interaction has all but disappeared in the noise of people shouting about something.  It’s like 20 million people on a street corner all hawking a newspaper with a different headline at the same time.

Here’s to creating more high quality conversations and interactions….likely off Twitter and on something old-fashioned, like a telephone.

–

Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making Tagged With: , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Learning to Adjust Your Altitude

April 12, 2010 By 14 Comments

A Cup of Leadership CaffeineWhile the phrase is most commonly referenced as attitude adjustment, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that one of the abilities that leaders must develop to be effective is the ability to adjust their altitudes.

Good leaders learn to scale institutional and intellectual heights with ease and comfort, quickly adapting to the audience and situation.

Examples of Frequent and Successful Altitude Adjusters:

  • There’s the CEO that’s built a career around being a brilliant strategist and an even better operator.  Watch him work a factory floor and you’ll see him descend from the lofty level of the boardroom to the critical issues of people and process.  He’s equally comfortable in the rarefied air of strategy and vision and market forces or as an observer and student on the shop floor where true value is being created.
  • The small business owner that serves customers all day long and drives home with an emerging vision for how her business must change in order to grow.
  • The college professor that translates the philosophical foundations and theories of her specialty into practical, relevant concepts and tools that clarify, stimulate interest and offer some form of sustaining value.  This professor offers knowledge and insight designed for use.
  • The Product Manager that is able to move seamlessly from detailed requirements discussions with engineers in the morning to a concise strategy discussion and competitive analysis with executives in the afternoon.
  • The Project Manager that pivots on one foot to resolve a team dispute and then pivots back to the work of helping his team learn to make better decisions.

Regardless of the specifics, these effective formal and informal leaders move seamlessly from the detailed to the general, from the tactical to strategic and from the confusing and complex to the simple and straightforward as easily as you are reading this post. Whether this is an innate ability for some or a learned skill for others, those that practice adjusting their altitudes are significantly more effective than others stuck at one level.

Of course, those that are effectively stuck at one level are requiring everyone else to adapt, and that takes energy and breeds stress and strife.  These less than effective leaders require both the proverbial attitude adjustment as well as some solid lessons in learning to adjust their altitude.

5 Suggestions for Learning to More Effectively Adjust Your Altitude:

1.  Seek first to understand and then be understood.  I love that saying for its wisdom.  I observe many leaders that engage with their team members on issues for just a few moments and then cut them off mid-stream, with an opinion, a decision or an order.  Teach yourself to clamp your jaw shut and listen and process on all of the verbal and non-verbal cues that are so generously placed in front of you.  The time you invest in focusing and listening and then thinking about the issue being presented will give you time to adjust your altitude to the right level.

2.  Plan your message. Knowledge workers and individual contributors should redouble their efforts to plan the messages for exchanges with executives.  While you may be personally fascinated by the details of your project or product, it is critical to recognize that those in executive roles want you to give them the time…not to tell them how to build the watch.  For unscheduled, hallway or elevator exchanges, condition yourself to move into time-teller mode, again resisting the urge to showcase your in-depth command of every detail.  Your overall work and results will showcase whether you have command of the details.

3.  Recognize that context is key to motivating action.  Assume that no one else has thought through the issue in as much depth as you have.  Management teams that vigorously debate strategy for weeks and then become satisfied on a direction and choices must recognize that no one else in the organization has any context for either the direction or the choices.  This common communication gap is actually more like a grand canyon of misunderstanding, both in expanse and in height and depth.

4. Learn to see patterns in problems. In your daily work life, develop the habit of identifying recurring problems and patterns and then suggesting and implementing ideas that eliminate these problems and improve organizational practices.

5. View your role and tasks in the context of a long value chain.  Instead of thinking about what you do as discrete and separate from people in other groups, recognize that your work impacts the performance of others along the chain.  Seek to understand how and why others depend upon you and better yet, develop an approach that emphasizes constantly measuring your own performance against how well you are meeting the needs of others that come after you in the organizational value chain.

The Bottom Line for Now:

For your own professional development, challenge yourself to understand issues from all levels.  The best leaders and the best employees connect their work to creating value for customers or solving vexing internal issues. These effective professionals learn to scale heights from idea to implementation, from problem to improvement and from understanding to new direction.  They strive to become effective communicators at all levels and they constantly focus on understanding what is reality to individuals at all layers of the organization.

While the vertical metaphor of altitude may grossly simplify what is really going on here, it’s simple and comprehensible enough to grasp and apply.  For today and everyday, make certain that you are challenging yourself to adjust your altitude.  You might just find a lot more enjoyment and success in your work, in the process of scaling the issues.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Jumpstart Your Marketing Reading to Retrain Your Brain

April 9, 2010 By 8 Comments

Fresh ideasIn my opinion, there’s never been a better time to get involved in the field of marketing.  The advances in technology, the spread of social media and the incredible need that organizations everywhere have for individuals that get that marketing is a philosophy…a way of thinking and acting, and not a department, has never been greater.

A sidebar…I absolutely hate the textbook study of marketing and the very narrow view that is perpetuated about this college major, profession and function. I asked for a show of hands recently from a group of college seniors (business majors) on how many believed that marketing was mostly about advertising and promotion.  About 80% raised their hands….even with my obvious and leading question.  The fault is not their own…it’s a flawed education process developed and perpetuated mostly by well-intentioned people that haven’t been on the hook for creating value through great marketing practices outside of the Ivy-covered walls.

Recently, a number of students and early career professionals have asked me for a reading list to help jump-start their learning (or re-learning) and to help support their job transition process.  While my list is wholly incomplete, If I wanted to  retrain my brain, jump-start my marketing re-education and a passion for this arena in the next 90 days, here’s what I would read:

Marketing Writing to Retrain and Inspire:

Books in order of my reading preference:

  • Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch
  • Purple Cow, Seth Godin
  • Tuned In by Phil Myers, Craig Stull and David Meerman Scott
  • The New Rules of Marketing and P.R. (second edition) by David Meerman Scott
  • World Wide Rave, David Meerman Scott
  • Winning, by Jack Welch (marketing and strategy content)

For Tech and Product Marketers (these are older…but timeless in my opinion)

  • The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christenson
  • Crossing the Chasm, Geofrey Moore
  • The Discipline of Market Leaders, Treacy and Wiersema
  • Innovation, Tom Kelley

Blogs

There are many great blogs out there, and I would definitely check out the “80 Essential Blogs for the Modern-Day Marketing Student,” of which Management Excellence is listed at #22.  And while the names are familiar as the authors of many of the books above, these are some of the key people redefining the rules.

Magazines:

It’s an eclectic list that by design, crosses organizational boundaries:

  • FastCompany
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Wired
  • INC.
  • MIT Sloan Management Review
  • Something or several pop culture pubs, including People, Reader’s Digest (yeah, you heard it here)…and your choice of your favorite

The Bottom Line for Now

While the above list is fairly long, many of the books are quick and fascinating reads, and the blog and magazine content can be consumed on the fly.  I’ll be back next week on activities that I would dive into to further my marketing re/self-education, including getting involved social networking beyond Facebook.

Happy reading and here’s to breeding a new generation of professionals that understand that marketing is more than advertising and promotion.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Marketing, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , ,
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