The Secret: What Great Leaders Know & Do

Originally posted 3/22/11.

I am currently reading Ken Blanchard’s book “The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do.”  It is a typical Blanchard book- long on idealism and easy solutions to complex problems, and short on overcoming obstacles and actual, real world situations.  I find Blanchard’s books to be almost fairy-tales in their setup, execution and swift, wrap-everything-up-in-a-bow mentality.  That is not to say Blanchard’s books are not valuable, far from it.  I wish more managers would take the time to read about becoming better managers.  In my fifteen years as an employee, I have had one manager who was truly great at developing people.  She was the first manager I ever had in the professional world and I modeled myself after her example.  She was also a disciple of these kinds of management books- we had FISH (another Blanchard staple) all over the walls of the employee break room and our daily and monthly meetings often revolved around team-building and setting goals.

Since leaving banking three years ago and moving into manufacturing, I have found there are fewer managers who I would consider great.  In fact, most have been downright average.  None have been bad managers by any stretch, but there have been few who were in any way inspiring to their employees.  Most of them come in, put in their 8-10 hours a day and go home.  They run around, put out fires and sit through meetings, but do nothing to help develop their employees or strengthen the team they are in charge of.  It is disappointing, really, to see so much human potential put to waste.

In my previous blog post, I talked about finding purpose in your job.  Too many managers don’t see the purpose in their jobs.  Their purpose is to inspire and lead their employees!  To help them achieve their goals and dreams.  Every single employee who comes to work has hopes and dreams.  They have goals and aspirations.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be coming into work every day.  It doesn’t matter if someone’s goal is to become CEO or make enough money to quit their job, it is the manager’s job to help them realize and work towards those goals.  How many people can say their manager has taken five minutes to talk to them about their goals and aspirations in the last month?  You’re probably nodding your head sadly because your manager hasn’t asked you about your goals since your last annual review.  And that is an absolute shame.

The War For Talent

Originally posted 3/19/2011.

I read this morning an article called “The War For Talent” discussing how difficult hiring has become for computer developers out in Silicone Valley, NYC and other tech hotspots around the country.  It is getting difficult enough to find and hire the best talent that companies have gone as far as twittering pictures of what a new developer gets on their first day on the job.  Here is one example:

This is the “new developer” setup at Tasty Labs, a social media company best known for it’s founder, Joshua Schachter, who founded Delicious before selling it to Yahoo and pocketing a cool $15 million.  I looked at that setup and immediately realized how completely forward Tasty was being with it’s workers, and how well it knew them that it had these thing set up for “Day One.”

First, the Macbook Air and 27” external display- the epitome of “cool” in those circles shows the potential programmer that the company is willing to spend on it’s employees and wants them to have the best hardware to do their work on.  The wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and iPhone all add to the enticing package, making potential employees drool over the “cool” factor alongside the “fun” factor that must be involved with a company who chooses all Apple products for it’s new employees.  I did the math, this setup probably costs around $2500 and as much as $3500 (depending on the options chosen) for each new employee the company hires.  For comparison’s sake, I did the math on the setup I received as a part of my first day on the job: Dell Optiplex 380 desktop and monitor: $325.  Desk phone from 1980 (I’m not kidding): It couldn’t have cost more than $10.  That’s pretty much it.

Now, I would like to consider myself a pretty valuable employee.  I show up early and work late, I am at the top of my group when it comes to productivity, development of the business, customer service and leadership, and still after 3 and a half years, I am relegated to hand-me-down hardware that was new in 2007 and a telephone that might as well have a rotary dial.  You might think that I am jealous (a little bit) or angry at my current employer (not at all).  The reason for this is that I love my job because it gives me purpose.

Yes, I am bringing it back to purpose again.  All the cool gadgets in the world cannot replace a sense of purpose in your career, and this will make the difference between a tech company who can attract and retain the best talent, and one who is constantly throwing the latest and greatest gadgets at their employees to get them to stay.

BTW, I am not saying that Tasty does not give it’s employees a sense of purpose, I don’t know, I don’t work there nor know anyone who does.

But I do know that what I do matters.  Every time I see an airplane take off from the airport near work, I know that I helped build something on it.  Maybe not that particular airplane (I have only been doing this for three years), but for at least some airplanes, I have helped to build through the parts that I have purchased.  This is an amazing thing to consider, when you know that every day there are 87,000 airplanes in the sky (30,000 commercial flights) and those flights are carrying people, packages, freight, and many other things to their destinations.  None of that would be possible without the airplane parts that I purchased.  It is an incredibly fulfilling feeling to know that.

It is so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of your job or your place of work- the office politics, the heavy workload, the long days with little appreciation; that it is easy to lose sight of the big picture.  We build airplanes that take people to their destinations.  We build freighter airplanes that take thousands of pounds of freight to its destinations.  The iPad 2 that I received this week made it’s way to me from Hong Kong in a Fed Ex 777 Freighter that someone doing exactly what I do every day helped to build.  That sort of thinking is what brings it home.  Purpose.  It is up to you find it, but I assure you, it is there.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Red Swingline Stapler sitting on the developer’s desk.  Now THAT is the epitome of cool.  Frankly, I think everyone at my company should get a red Swingline.  It would bring that little wink and understanding nod to the everyday work that is so often sorely lacking.  It would say “Don’t take things too seriously.”  That’s a message worth sharing.

The Road to Going Pro

Originally posted 3/16/2011.

I joined Toastmasters this week.  The first meeting I ever attended was last week on the 51st floor of the Williams Building in downtown Tulsa.  I first heard of Toastmasters many years ago and had thought about joining several times in the past but never got past “that seems like a good idea,”  A few weeks ago, I was thinking about my professional goals and self-improvement and Toastmasters popped back into my head.  After a little bit of research, I found an active club nearby and decided to attend a meeting.

This week was my second meeting.  It is odd, although I was in a room comprised of complete strangers, I felt completely at ease.  A big part of that is the welcoming nature of the Toastmasters- nearly everyone introduced themselves to me either before or after the meeting and every one of them was engaging and enthusiastic about Toastmasters.  As long as I can remember, I have been skilled in speaking in front of large groups of people- much of my college career involved giving presentations and early on in my banking career I developed and presented a “Financial Info for College Students” speech and presented it to local college students during their orientation week.  During my one year of law school, I participated in a moot court competition where we received our topics of argument the day of the competition and had to research the topic and formulate an argument either for or against and compete against other students.  In the first event I ever competed in, I placed third out of a field of more than 20 students, and gave my final arguments in front of a panel of judges and a courtroom full of people.  It was nerve-wracking, and yet, I felt cool and calm and received several comments afterward about my poise and presence.  Also during my year of law school, I gave a presentation about a baseball arbitration, again arguing against other students in the class.  The arbitration I lost, but after class the teacher (a local judge) pulled me aside to tell me that in twenty years of teaching his class, he’d never seen a presentation as skilled as mine.

Why, then, am I joining a club designed to develop public speakers when my skills are already decidedly well-developed?  Because you can always get better, and despite my extensive experience thus far, there are areas I can stand to improve.  Unless I am focused on it, I make unfortunate use of non-verbals (uh, um, and).  I can also use more practice seeing what makes a good speaker great.  At some point in the future, I would like to become a professional public speaker, someone who is paid to speak to groups at conferences.  There is no better way to make the connections I will need than by joining an organization comprised entirely of public speakers.

During a Toastmaster’s meeting, the Presiding Toastmaster will address a Table Topic, often a question designed to facilitate easy discussion.  Last week it was, “What would you do with $100 million” and this week it was “If you could be any age.”  Surprisingly, the Presiding Toastmaster asked me to speak briefly on the topic at hand. While caught off guard, I recovered immediately and stood and spoke for about a minute about going back to high school and re-visiting some of the events and situations that have crafted me into the individual I am today.  I sat back down and was thrilled to receive a hearty round of applause from the group.  Later in the meeting, during the “critique” session, I was informed that I had used no non-verbals during my brief speech (whew!) and that the consensus was that my
speech was good.  I was later told that I have an excellent speakers voice and great presence in commanding the room.  To say I was beaming from this praise would be an understatement.

I will soon be sent the “Newbie Notebook” from Toastmasters and will get to progress through the ten speeches necessary to become a “Competent Communicator,” the first in a line of ever-increasingly challenging ranks achieved through giving various speeches in front of the Toastmasters or outside groups.

http://www.toastmasters.org/education

After Competent Communicator comes Advanced Communicator with ranks of Bronze, Silver and Gold before becoming a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).  While working towards the rank of Distinguished Toastmaster,
an applicant can also apply to become an Accredited Speaker.  To date, only 60 Toastmasters have ever achieved this rank which requires having spoken at at least twenty-five non-Toastmaster speaking engagements within three years of application, and an audio presentation.  If your speech passes the first level of screening, you are invited to appear before a live review panel at an International Convention during which you will be judged.  Only a few applicants each year are awarded the level of Accredited Speaker, in fact, fewer than twenty percent of all applicants have qualified for Accredited Speaker status in the 31 years the program has existed.

http://www.toastmasters.org/asapp.asp
http://www.toastmasters.org/astips

Whether I am ever able to achieve Accredited Speaker status, I know my future lies in public speaking.  The skills I have developed on my own will only be enhanced and perfected through my involvement in Toastmasters.  My praise, while uplifting, will fade if I fail to improve.  In order to become great, I must continue to challenge myself by stepping outside of my comfort zone.  Only then, after growing as a speaker, will I be worthy of delivering a speech that people would pay to come see.  Someday soon, I hope to be the keynote speaker at a business conference near you.

What Is Purpose?

Originally posted 3/7/2011.

Saturday I brought up purpose, the third of Dan Pink’s “incentives that work” for today’s workers. Today I’d like to further investigate what purpose is and how it effects people more than money. Purpose is the idea that what you do matters, that your actions every day in your job have an effect on people and the world at large. But how do you find purpose in your day to day job? This part is all about mindset. Perhaps these three stories will help put “purpose” in perspective:

Johnny the Bagger
You have probably heard the Johnny the Bagger story before. It is a famous true story about a young man with down syndrome who found purpose in his job as a grocery store bagger through providing the best customer service he could. Johnny would insert motivational quotes into the bags of his customers telling them, “I hope you enjoy my quote of the day.” Pretty soon, everyone was waiting in Johnny’s line. They loved his quotes and enjoyed that special interaction Johnny provided.

Now, many people think this story is all about customer service, and in part it is, but it is also about finding purpose in your work, even when the work is as routine as working as a grocery store bagger. Johnny found purpose in his work, and in doing so, found far more job satisfaction and success than he ever would have had he considered the job of grocery store bagger demeaning or unimportant. Johnny proved otherwise.

Middle School Janitor
I remember another story about a middle-school janitor who took great pride in how he cleaned his school and classrooms. His reasoning was that these kids had the chance to go to school someplace that was clean, neat and tidy and that would contribute to learning, or they could go to school in a building with overflowing trash cans, dirty blackboards and grimy carpets. It was up to him to give these kids every opportunity to grow up to be successful, even though his only part in their lives was played out at night, long after the kids had left school.

Michael Gill, author of How Starbucks Saved My Life
Michael Gill is a former advertising executive who, at the age of 63, found himself unemployed, divorced and out of options. Gill ended up taking a job as a Barista at his local Starbucks and in doing so, found new purpose in his life through meaningful interactions with people on a daily basis. I read Michael Gill’s inspiring story in 2008 and was taken by how happy Gill seemed talking about his passion for a job that for many of us would seem unimportant. But to Gill, the five minutes he had with his customers was the most important part of his day- it was crucial to ensure his customers walked away having had an excellent experience.

Think about it, whether your job is the head of a corporation, a Procurement Agent buying airplane parts, the teller at a bank or the barista at a Starbucks, each of you has the opportunity each day to serve your customer in ways that will make their lives easier. Customer service is everywhere, it is not just for retail environments any more. If your job is unfulfilling, it is up to you to find something in it that will make it fulfilling. It is not your company’s responsibility to make you happy in your job. Happiness is a choice, and it is not always easy to achieve.

Now, even though it is not your employer’s responsibility to make your job enjoyable, there are things employers can (and should) do to make what is often a daily tedium more fulfilling. We will talk about some of those things in my next entry.

Dan Pink on the Surprising Science of Motivation

Originally posted 3/5/2011

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

With TED 2011 now completely wrapped up, I felt motivated to peruse some of the more popular Ted Talks according to a published list of the “most popular Ted Talks.”  The very first one happened to be a topic that is close to my heart; leadership and motivation.

In the embedded video, Dan Pink discusses the differences between what science knows about motivation and what business thinks they know about business.  There is a significant break between the so-called “20th Century Incentives” (rewards, money) and what actually works with today’s workers (autonomy, mastery and purpose).

I hope to further discuss Dan’s theories in future blog posts.  I have to admit, as someone who has spent the better part of the last twelve years either in business school or working in the business world, these are things that I know, or should know.  I, too, have fallen victim to the “give them a sweeter carrot” fallacy when it turns out, that is not what motivates people.

Enjoy the video, and we will pick this back up later.