When Will You Choose to Be Successful? An Irreverent Rant on Personal Motivation
Filed under: Career, Leading Change, Life and Business, Making Decisions, Performance, Social Commentary, Social Satire, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
You can distill an entire shelf of self-help books down to this simple question at the top of the post: “When will you choose to be successful?” Based on my calculation, I just saved you somewhere between $400 and $800 dollars or more at retail on self-help books. Make checks payable to…
It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people have for not succeeding at something they view as important to them personally or professionally. While behavioral psychologists might label this as an issue of “external versus internal locus of control,” as I listen to the excuses flowing for not getting the job, not losing weight, not saving money, not making it to class, not writing a book, not keeping up with blogging, what I’m really thinking is (in very loud terms inside my mind), “YOU HAVE NOT MADE UP YOUR MIND TO SUCCEED!”
Just a Few Examples:
- Let’s take diets. First of all, we’re all on them. Eating is required for life. The type of diet that bedevils most people is the one that involves doing this less often. To my own knowledge, there are very few incidents reported every year that involve someone force feeding someone else donuts and super-sized gargantuan fast food meals. Given the lack of external coercion, we are left to conclude that free-thinking people with free will are jamming the extra calories down their gullets and then lamenting the struggles of dieting. My suggestion is duct tape over the mouth. For multiple reasons.
- Want to write a blog or a book? It’s darned hard to do without understanding the secret behind S.A.I.C. That stands for “Sitting Ass in Chair.” Quit talking, sit down and start typing.
- Interested in reinventing yourself? This is a common topic during these unpleasant economic times, and a few courageous souls are active in pursuit of this challenging activity. However, more than a few know that they need to do something, but suffer from too much S.A.I.C., and need to apply G.A.O.O.C.a.G.G. That stands for “Get Ass Out of Chair and Get Going.”
- Still smoking? Yeah, big tobacco got you. It’s a plot. It may well be, but why are you committing slow suicide along with your donut eating, super-sizing, friends. Same issue. No one is holding the gun to your head saying “smoke me.” I get the nicotine thing…but find some help and get on with it.
- Would life at work be great if only the boss would hurry up and eat/smoke/reinvent himself out of your life? Get over your boss and focus on yourself and your performance. Some of the best performers and most successful people you’ll meet got that way by using the motivation of a lousy leader to help them push forward.
- Sales down this quarter? The last time that I looked, there’s still a lot of money flowing through the global economy. Someone somewhere is selling something. Why not you? Maybe it’s time to reinvent your approach to getting clients to know, like, trust, try, buy and refer you. (Thanks, John Jantsch…those are part of his Marketing Hourglass terms!). Shameless plug…call me on this one, I can help!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Just so that you know that I’m an equally opportunity pain in the ass, I’ve got a few challenges on my plate that I’ve occasionally found myself looking around for good excuses to attach to my lack of progress. However, I know better and the excuses only make me realize that my biggest failure on the issues at hand is that, “I’ve not yet decided to be successful.” OK, I’ve decided. Now back to work. Right after I take a lunch-time workout to make some progress on another goal.
It’s your turn. Have you decided?
Just a Little Tongue In Cheek-In Search of a New Model for Leader Selection
Filed under: Innovation, Leadership, Social Satire, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Talent Management
Note from Art…hey, these can’t all be deep! Have some fun with the idea and maybe we’ll start a revolution in leader selection in the process.
I cannot claim this as an original idea. I was re-reading Tom Kelley’s outstanding book, The Art of Innovation, based on his experience with design and innovation firm, IDEO, and I was particularly enamored by the part where Kelly describes the process of IDEO’s project teams picking their own leaders. The leaders serve at the discretion of the team.
Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of us have been going about this all wrong for all of these years.
Thoughts on a New Model In Leader Selection:
It might take a leap of faith to delegate leader selection to the employees, but based on the nearly endless supply of horror stories that I hear from readers, workshop participants and MBA students, I don’t think we’ve cracked the code yet on consistently selecting quality and qualified leaders.
In attempting to identify the potential flaws in my “employees pick the leaders/inmates running the asylum” idea, it helps to think through my assumptions.
Why This Might Work:
- The proper alignment of incentives and compensation with goals and results serves as a check against selecting chuckleheads. If the members of a team or even an entire company have their livelihoods on the line, their own best interests are served by choosing the best-qualified individuals.
- This approach practically guarantees that the “role of the leader” will quickly orient towards a “True North,” that emphasizes serving the team, knocking down barriers, encouraging innovation, and finding and developing even more talent.
- This one may put me way out on a limb with some readers, but here I go. Most people are inherently good and I believe (perhaps naively so), that they would opt for ethical, capable leaders versus those that may be more charismatic but significantly less capable. (Yeah, even writing that makes me believe that I’m moving towards naïveté on this one. Nonetheless, I’m sticking to it.)
The Success Will Be in the Details:
There are a few kinks in this plan that I’ve not yet worked out, including how to keep leaders from constantly seeking a vote of confidence, how to boot out leaders that aren’t performing, who defines what it means to perform and how to make sure that strong values and positive ethics guide everyone along the way.
Long story short, I’m still working on my checks and balances.
Nonetheless, it would be nice to shift the burden to the people to ensure the best and brightest are in place and serving. After all, it works so well in Washington!
And If This Model Doesn’t Work…
OK, if this idea doesn’t hold water, I’m already working on adopting my Jeffersonian-model of leader selection. Jefferson was of the mind that anyone that wanted to hold political office should not be allowed, and that our elected officials should be drafted from the citizenry and serve for a limited period of time. Same here. If you want to lead, there’s clearly something wrong with you, and you are automatically barred.
What say you? Is it time for a new method of leader selection, and how can you help frame a new Leader’s Constitution and an Employee Bill of Rights?
An Irreverent but Pointed Look at Feedback & An Update on the Newsletter Promotion
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Social Satire, Talent Management, Your Professional Development "To Do" List
Thanks to everyone that joined the Management Excellence Newsletter list during the past view days!
We succeeded in growing the already substantial list by a whopping 25% and I’m honored that so many of you joined. Now of course the burden is on me to live up to my commitment of fresh, compelling and useful content in the spirit of the blog. I welcome the opportunity and challenge!
I will be recruiting one of my sons to help me with the name drawing for the free books (Practical Lessons in Leadership) and will reach out to the winners via e-mail over the next day or so for shipping information.
Thanks again for your enthusiastic response! For those that missed joining, but don’t want to miss out, the sign up is found in the right column on both the Management Excellence and Building Better Leaders sites.
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Today’s post is at my Building Better Leaders site/blog and features a slightly irreverent look at the value and need for feedback. It is entirely possible that in the course of making a point on why feedback is such a critical skill to master, I compared it to Viagra, dissed the Chicago Bears QB Jay Cutler and encouraged incompetent leaders to volunteer to stand next to a wall with a blindfold on and smoke a cigarette. And yes, there is a message and at least a few ideas for you once you get beyond my slightly off-center suggestions. Since the post is R-rated, if you are easily upset by references to performance enhancement and firing squads, you may want to skip the post.
If you are courageous, here’s the link to:“Feedback-Performance Enhancement for Leaders Without the Pill”
Why Competition is So Great and What Chicago Needs to Learn
Filed under: Current Affairs, Life and Business, Management Education, Marketing, Social Commentary, Social Satire
Note from Art: I love the city of Chicago. I love the people, the energy and I love the feel of the restaurants and museums and the theaters. However, I don’t love the knuckleheaded political and union wrangling that blares from every news channel in a constant drone of finger pointing and accusations and bone-headed moves. We’re battling insane ex-governors and ridiculous retail sales tax increases in the face of a recession. One of the latest issues is the backlash and the stream of excuses for the loss of several major conventions due to complaints of usurious pricing and strong-arm tactics.
After losing major conventions to different venues, the local politicos and the brass that run McCormick Place in Chicago are back-pedaling so hard in defense of their labor and service costs that they are contributing to the wind velocity in this already “Windy City.”
It is shameful to watch the officials and local union leaders attempt to defend or deny their usurious pricing and their strong-arm tactics. If you’ve been involved in setting up a show on the floor at McCormick Place before, you would be flabbergasted to listen to the union official on the news blatantly denying that exhibitors are bullied and denied simple things like the right to put a plug in an outlet without union help.
Bull!
I’ve been on the receiving end of having an employee mistakenly plug in a device only to have the union workers complain…stop work and call over a union official to give the booth manager heck. Additional fees were incurred and the service went from bad to really bad.
Another year, same incident…slightly worse outcome. There must be something about plugging things in when you work for an electronics company, but yet another well-intentioned employee crossed the union line and was observed pushing a plug into a receptacle. Same union crap storm followed by a week of suspicious, intermittent power outages and shockingly slow response times. (OK, that was a bad pun!)
- The reported stories of $50 per gallon coffee…3 gallon minimum, $50 delivery, 20% gratuity and extra handling and service fees are sadly all true.
- As reported by ABC News, “A plastics exhibitor vented on a trade group website that when he ordered four cases of Pepsi for his booth, McCormick Place hit him with a bill for $345.39.”
The defense from McCormick Place, “These are the industry standards.”
In another example: “The sticker price of soda aside, it’s the labor costs at McCormick Place that rile most exhibitors. One exhibitor at the recently departed Health Care Information show said the electrical services bill in Chicago reached $40,000. In Orlando, the same work costs $4,000.”
Mayor Daley’s response: “McCormick Place has had a difficult chore in getting and keeping shows unless they get their costs down. It’s as simple as that,” said Daley.
In true Chicago fashion, the head of the Union responds, “We’ve stepped up.”
Keep stepping, buddy.
The Bottom Line:
It’s a big competitive world out there and the good news is that businesses and in this cases marketers and convention-going firms have options. If I’m Orlando or Vegas or any one of a dozen other venues, I’m all over the Chicago-conventions that have had enough of the expense abuse.
Sad for Chicago in the short-term, but maybe good in the long-term. A big dose of competition and a shock to the system will either result in the right improvements or things will just deteriorate. There are few venues that can offer the menu that is Chicago for a conference destination. Here’s hoping for a great response. After all, we’ve solved the Governor-picking problem…errr, I mean the sales tax problem….err…. . Oh heck, I hope we fix this one.
Good for free enterprise. Now if only there was an airline (aside from Southwest) that gave a crap about customers. But that’s another rave for another day.
A Friday Case Study: Welcome to Rick’s World-Where the Rules Exist for Just One Reason
Filed under: Leadership, Life and Business, Management Education, Middle Management, Social Satire, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Talent Management
Note from Art: this is my first stab at what I intend to be an on-going leadership case study serial chronicling the lives and times of some rather interesting characters. Any resemblance to individuals living, dead or otherwise (?) is most likely not accidental. If you are reading this and it feels like I’m talking about you or your workplace, we’ll, it’s always possible.
Readers, the purpose here is to get you to chime in and offer our characters some advice. My tone is light by design, but these types of situations are very real. I hope that you relax, share a few thoughts on coping with some tough and often irrational issues that have just enough truth in them to make our skin crawl when we see them on our favorite “Office” sitcom or laugh at them in a Dilbert cartoon.
Welcome to Rick’s world, where the sole mission of every manager in this production facility (one of many around the country for Mega Inc.), is to minimize the crap storms from corporate and keep the colorful and all-powerful Rick safe for yet another year.
Rick has been in charge of this facility for over a decade, and while the sign hanging on the building says one thing, everyone knows that this location is Rick, Inc. Rick rules both with velvet gloves and an iron fist, and sometimes the iron fist is covered in velvet.
For Rick’s staff, Alan the plant manager, Jose, the sales manager, Susan the h.r. manager (and triple agent) and Erica, the customer service manager, their sole goal is to keep Rick in his office looking at reports with pretty numbers. Once Rick hits the floor and starts barking orders, the system breaks down into chaos. And while we all know that stuff happens during the course of the day, the group (minus Susan, the triple agent), have a near blood pact to control and contain disasters, lest Rick get wind of things and emerge from his office with his red face shouting, “What the *&^^% is going on around here.”
Depending upon the severity of the situation, the &^^% might sound more like, $%^$$ ^&%% #$%%^^. It’s easy to read Rick’s annoyance based on his adjective count. During the plant disaster last year, the staff is convinced that he set a world record for stringing together the longest list of curse words and colorful phrases in recorded history.
Yep. Should Rick get wind of a problem, a crap storm usually involves a fair amount of yelling and screaming followed by an emergency meeting in Rick’s very comfortable office and a few hours of rhetorical questions about “how did this happen?”
Alan, Jose and Erica take the heat, explain and re-explain the situation while Susan digs for the dirt. “Rick, this is unconscionable. Someone should be fired.”
Rick nods at Susan, recognizing that she is a triple agent, simultaneously reporting to him, allegedly working with the management team and reporting back to the Dark One…the head of H.R. at corporate. “We’ll come to that,” he responds to Susan, with every intention of never, ever coming to that point. Yep, Rick’s perspective is that you “keep the crap storm contained” and we can manage it here. Let it run out of control and get back to corporate, it’s outside of Rick’s World and all bets are off.
The meeting wraps up with Rick barking out orders…a few of which make no sense or at least contradict each other. The group, sans Susan, who is imploring Rick to write someone up, meets out on the production floor and sorts through the orders trying to determine how best not to screw the place up beyond repair by following Rick literally. Of course, it’s a fine line, because Rick has selective memory and you just don’t want him remembering the one thing that you thought was so ridiculous that you opted to ignore it.
To the newcomer, these meetings might seem pretty rugged and unprofessional, but to the staff, they recognize them as part of the process of managing Rick. Rick has survived for so long in this tough company by delivering acceptable numbers in good years and bad, that over time, the team begins to empathize with the need to keep Rick in good shape and in charge. He’s on occasion a benevolent dictator, and after a few years of working around him, you realize that job 1 in the facility is to deliver on things that please Rick.
While the above description might make Rick out to be a bad guy, he’s really not. He has a good business sense for running his facility and he’s proven it by surviving in a dog-eat-dog corporate environment. His bark is usually worse than his bite, although not always. He’s fun to talk to one on one….has a lot of interesting, hobbies and he rails at the news and politicians as much as he does his staff.
Today:
While this particular day had been quiet, Rick emerged from his office beet red and spewing a four-alarm litany of creative curse-words. Susan grabbed her notepad with a smile and Alan, Jose and Erica looked at each other, took a collective deep breath and started the march into Rick’s office.
Discussion Prompters:
- If you’ve worked for “Rick” before, what’s your survival strategy? What should Rick’s staff do to balance carrying out their jobs and surviving in Rick’s World?
- Rick is an unconventional and old-school, command and control leader. Does this make him a bad leader? Remember, he gets results and so far, we’re not hearing that his staff members don’t like him.
- What’s the best way to neutralize a “Susan” type character?
- Anything else that jumps to your mind about the case!
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