Month: May 2012

vanilla passion

I’ve long heard that vanilla is the best-selling ice cream, yet I’ve met very few people that say vanilla is their favorite. So what’s going on? How can a flavor that few love be a best seller? It wins because it is less offensive to more people. Few love it, but few really hate it. Vanilla is a safe choice.

That seems to be the strategy of a lot of businesses: play it safe and offend fewer people than your competition. The opposite approach is to be very clear about what you are and what you aren’t and focus on the customers who truly appreciate what you’re about. Rather than being some things to all customers, the focus is on being everything to some customers.

Likewise, many (most?) people approach their careers and lives that way. It’s pretty obvious from the sameness of LinkedIn photos and bios that the goal is to fit in, be like others, don’t stand out. Don’t veer too far away from the tribe norms. And, on some levels, there’s nothing wrong with that after all vanilla sells more as a whole.

The problem is, it gets passed over more, too. Vanilla sells more, but no one is passionate about it. I gravitate toward ice cream flavors with names like “Chocolate Armageddon” but you might hate that. You might prefer straight up mint chip. Others go for rocky road. We push the vanilla aside to get to what we really want.

When we look at products, businesses, or even people that folks get really excited and passionate about and want to go out of their way to champion, support, and tell others about, it’s never a plain vanilla product, business, or person. The things we get passionate about, the companies we are loyal to, the people we really want to help succeed always stand out in some way.

If we choose to stand out, there will be naysayers, critics, and people who don’t like us. But there will also be the raving fans. If we choose to play it safe there will be few naysayers, critics, or people who don’t like us. But there will also be few cheering us on.

Being different doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, it often impedes it. First impressions do count, the image we present to the world does matter; people judge us based on the information we give them. I can’t control my height, gender, race, age, etc. but I can control how I dress, how I’m groomed, what I say, how I say it, etc.

Being different doesn’t guarantee success, BUT successful people are often different. They think different. They operate different. They have a different message for the world. And they get different results.

So often it seems that the giants don’t norm off of everyone else. They aren’t looking to see what others are doing before deciding what to do. Instead, they go their way and let other choose to follow or not. It’s ironic that so many of our icons are also iconoclasts.

The guys over at Talent Anarchy (twitter: @talentanarchy) refer to our individual uniqueness as our freak flag (a term I love). It’s not about piercings, tattoos, and blue hair. It’s about owning who we are as individuals and being comfortable and honest enough to be really authentic. That is really, really hard to do. And, done right, there is scary, incredible power there.

It’s a tough choice. But remember: sometimes the choices that look the safest are actually the most dangerous. After all, when was the last time you bought vanilla ice cream as a treat for yourself?

 

people will talk

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: people are talking about you.

Managers: at night, around the dinner table, your employees are telling their families all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Employees: at night, around the dinner table, your manager is telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

Everyone: at night, around the dinner table, your co-workers and your customers are telling their family all about you. They are talking about their day and your part in it; how you’ve affected their lives, the things you’ve done, what they think about you.

No matter what level you are in the organization, no matter whether you serve internal or external customers,  the people above you, below you, and alongside you are talking about you. You can’t stop them from talking about you, it’s just the way things are. But if they are going to talk, what do you want them to say about you? How do you want them to describe you?

Be that person. Be someone worth saying great things about. Be the co-worker, employee, and leader that inspires and develops and makes a difference in the lives of all those around you.

why we must make HR matter

A quick list of reasons we must make HR matter more:

The organization improves only when individuals improve.

The biggest difference between you and your competition is your people and your effectiveness at leading them.

Nothing happens in business without people. Business = people = business. Or is that: People = business = people?

The customer experience will never exceed the employee experience.

Few things slow the pace of business more than mistrust. Few things expedite business more than trust. Trust doesn’t happen on spreadsheets, it happens between people.

HR touches all areas of the organization. Done well it fosters organizational health. Done poorly and every departments is affected (infected?).

Trends come and go, but the company will always need great people.

Leading is a very difficult job. HR (done right) helps leaders make better decisions.

 

What would you add? Hit me up in the comments.

fear of a human business (the freak flag advantage)

Business is run by humans for humans so why is the business world so, so scared of showing their humanness?

With rare exception, corporate social media policies shout: “We’re terrified our customers will find out that actual people work at this company!” The policies are very clear that you should never, ever associate yourself with the company. Don’t reveal that you have opinions, actual thoughts, passions, dreams, hobbies, families. Don’t give customers the opportunity to appreciate each individual’s uniqueness, good and bad. Assume customers are so easily offended that they will boycott the company because of what an employee posted on a social media site. Give no one the benefit of the doubt.

It’s so sad, it’s funny. There’s so much good that comes from recognizing humanity and individuality. It makes companies and their products real and relevant. Companies (marketers anyway) want us to have a relationship with the brand, yet don’t realize that no one develops attachment to faceless, soulless, neutered, beige vanilla sameness.

One of the easiest ways to differentiate your company is to let your humanness shine. But few get that. They miss that the root of differentiation is being different. And that celebrating your authentic differences and actually standing out is daring and wonderful.

Yesterday, though, I came across a magazine advertisement for the Jaguar XF that blew me away. The company not only got it but made it the absolute core of the entire ad campaign!

At risk of plugging products I know nothing about, let me describe the ad. Maybe you’ve seen it: two page spread with three electric guitars and amps taking up almost the entire space, in the lower left is a small picture of a sports sedan, in the lower right is a small and understated  Jaguar company logo. The headline is: “Some of the other machines our designers play with.” It goes on to brag that the lead design of the new car is the “spike –haired, head-banging lead guitarist of his own band, Scattering Ashes…” and describes how he brought that amped up rock passion to designing this car.

Wow! An ad that gets attention, an admission (no, a celebration!) that they have passionate-not-quite-mainstream employees, and a darn good looking car. A great, eye-catching ad that takes a risk and shows commitment to shattering old images and shaking up the status quo. Then it gets even better. There is a QR tag to hear the music. Whip out your smart phone and you’re taken to a youtube video with a tongue-in-cheek opening warning and a Scattering Ashes song playing while three Jags make lurid slides around the tarmac.

Wanna see?

Some of the commenters on youtube mention that the song isn’t all that good and it seems out of sync with the Jag image. Yeah, it’s not the greatest song ever. And, yeah, it runs counter to an image of   traditional, stodgy, understated, quiet class. Cleary, Jag is looking to aggressively redefine their image. It’s an electric scream against the what you think they are and an overdriven invitation to join them where they want to be.

But wait! This isn’t a neon colored hatchback with extreme graphics being sold to the fast & furious crowd. This is a luxury sports sedan being marketed to people that can drop $50 – 70k+ on a car – you know, uptight, conservative folks in suits and ties. Shouldn’t you be telling them how much status the car will bring them, or focusing on safety, or winking at how sporty you’d like them to think it is?

Sure, you could. But then you’d be just like everyone else. Or you could celebrate the glorious passion and humanness of your employees, crank your company culture up to 11, and actually differentiate yourself by actually being, well, different.

Don’t know if the car’s any good or if the campaign will be successful, but I love the bold stance. Anyone could have done it, but only one did. Unfurl the freak flag and rock on!

project management failure

I was mountain biking the other day with someone who seemed to always be in the wrong gear. When the trail turned uphill, he wouldn’t start downshifting until he was already climbing. By then, it was too late and then he would stall out and have to hop off and push the bike. I would do what others in the group did and downshift before getting to the hill, enabling me to ride past the walking cyclist. Skillwise, this person is a better rider than me so I found it odd that I’d catch him on the hills. I took me a long time before I realized that the only real difference was that he didn’t look past his front wheel and I tend to look much farther down the trail. Idon’t have faster reaction times and I certainly wasn’t a better rider, but by looking farther ahead, I created more time to react.

So, what does this have to do with project management? I recently had near catastrophic failure on a project I was leading. Deadlines were pushed to the absolute limit and disaster was imminent. It all turned out well, but it was despite me rather than because of me. I saw the edge of the cliff and knew how close I had let my team had come to failure. The insight from the mountain bike ride the other day made me realize that I simply wasn’t looking far enough ahead. I was like the cyclist walking up the hill. I had gotten so caught up in other tasks that I didn’t take the time to look ahead. It was project management at its poorest. I was looking so close to my metaphorical front wheel that I could only react after problems or the unexpected popped up. Looking further ahead would have allowed me the space to anticipate and react much more quickly instead of scrambling and swerving at the last second.

Once again I learn a lesson that I already knew. Those are the most painful. And the most valuable.

innovation can’t be done on cue

All the business articles and blogs are telling us we need to be more innovative and just how to do it with the righteousness of tabloids touting the latest celebrity diet. Innovation as a buzzword is all the rage.

So we start innovation task forces and committees and add “innovation” to job descriptions and mission statements and company values and we INNOVATE! Except we don’t.

It all falls apart because we treat innovation like it’s a task on a to-do list or a product we can purchase. Innovation is not a project to be managed. Innovation not an outcome. Think about it this way: no one wants a diet – they want to be thin and fit. Likewise, no one really wants innovation – we just want a competitive advantage.

The most innovative and creative people I know have several things in common:

They are intensely curious about many, many different things. They read and explore ideas constantly.

They are able to bring seemingly unrelated ideas together across several different fields. Experts get stuck with the “known” of their narrow world. Innovators are almost never described as experts – they aren’t attached to the status quo in any one field so they are never stuck rehashing the solutions. They are free to incorporate solutions from everywhere.

They love to make the complicated simple.

They are a little weird and a little odd. They think differently and ask questions no one else asks. They wonder why things are the way they are and why things couldn’t be different.

They take time to think. Inspiration doesn’t happen according to schedule . It generally strikes when we’re working on something completely different, in the shower, while on a run, sitting on a park bench, or doodling in a boring meeting.

They don’t care about your opinion. If they did, they’d get stuck trying to fit in with societal groupthink. Instead, they go their own way and hope you’re smart enough to join them. This is very important because innovative ideas rarely get past a committee. Instead, it really seems to come from people and companies who don’t have to account to others for wanting to change the status quo. Either because they were in charge like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or because they’ve been given license to play like at 3M, Google, or various skunkworks groups that operate protected from company norms, or because they have no vested interest in the status quo to begin with.

They NEVER, EVER, NOT EVEN ONCE set out to innovate. They think different and want to find better solutions.

Forget innovation. Focus on creating great new products and services and improving the existing ones. That’s where innovation lives.

innovation paradox

There is a huge paradox when it comes to change and innovation. Those have the most knowledge and perspective and who should be leading the charge and often the least likely to raise the innovation banner.

The people with a vested interest in the status quo (whether intellectual, emotional, financial, etc.) will argue the loudest and longest against change. Oddly enough, it’s the professional organizations, trade magazines ,  leaders in the field, etc. who seem to scream the most against the innovations that could actually improve the field. Rather than pushing for improvement, they have a vested interest and deep understanding for how things are and a very limited appreciation for how things could be. Or soon will be.

The problem for them (and any of us resisting change) is that no matter how loud of tantrums they throw, no matter how much they try to legislate, regulate, and block change, the rest of the world goes about its business and soon leaves them behind, arguing amongst themselves.

Denial is not a change strategy. We can find ways to get ahead of and benefit from the change or we can get drug along behind. Our choice.

the business-human paradox

Business cannot get done without humans, yet we forever want to ignore the human side of the equation. It’s messy and we can’t control it as much as we’d like and it’s unpredictable and it’s really stinkin’ hard to quantify and it requires a long-term focus in a short-term world and, and, and…

So we choose to downplay it, put it aside, focus on the things we can quantify and control. Yes, we need to get that side of business right too. But because that side is where businesses would rather spend their time, it is much more difficult use it to gain much of an advantage over the competition. And because  the human side is so hard, the companies that get it right reap some phenomenal long-term benefits.

It’s really interesting that, because business cannot get done with humans, businesses WILL address the people issues sooner or later. When you focus on and nail the human side you free up time to really concentrate on making and delivering great products and services. When you ignore the human side, you spend every waking moment dealing with people issues. The paradox – the cosmic joke – is that the more you ignore it, the more time you spend dealing with it.

 

[Note: this is a slightly expanded version of a comment I made on Gareth Jones’ blog in response to his post, Organizations: The World is Still Flat. That’s twice this week he’s inspired me – thanks, Gareth!]

life balance defined

Life balance. I discussed 4 common myths and what it isn’t the other day. Now, it’s worth taking a look at what it is.

My definition:  life balance is the process of actively creating fulfillment in every major area of our lives: career, family, relationships, spirituality, health, hobbies, finances, etc.

The common definition seems to be: working less. When we’re overworked or stressed, we say we need more life balance and what we mean is we want less work. But working less doesn’t automatically balance our lives. If we’re overworked, working less will free up some time that we could use to find better balance, but that is neither automatic nor guaranteed.

I suspect that when most of us think of a balanced life we think of it as not having pain in any of the major areas. Yeah, that’s a start, but avoiding pain contracts and shrinks our lives while seeking fulfillment expands and opens our lives up. No pain vs fulfillment sounds similar, but it’s the difference between not starving and having plenty to eat, of not being poor and being financially secure, of not having enemies and having lots of friends, of never getting emotionally hurt and connecting deeply with the important people in your life, of not being ill and being vibrantly healthy, and so on. It is the difference between surviving and living.

This means that life balance is:

  • Dependent on you knowing what you find fulfilling. Life balance is about creating fulfillment, so if you don’t know what fulfills you it’s going to be really, really hard to create balance. When we don’t know what would be fulfilling we default to avoiding pain.
  • Different for everyone. We are all fulfilled by different things so be cautious about trying to imitate another’s life balance choices. They might work for you, but they might not.
  • Never finished. Balance is a dynamic process that is always shifting and changing. There is no finish line, there is no “done”. It is always subject to change as we face new circumstances and life events.
  • Dependent on opportunity costs and tradeoffs. We can’t spend 24 hours a day on each aspect of our lives so the key is knowing how much time and effort we need to give to each area and when.
  • All about priority management. Creating balance requires effectively managing our time and priorities.

The big questions are:

  • What are your priorities?
  • What would fulfillment look like in each major area of your life?
  • What would you need to do to create that?
  • Why is that important to you? Is it really, truly so important that you’re willing to do what it takes to get there, or does it just sound cool? Choose the things that matter to you so much you’re willing to work to get them.

I suspect I’m overcomplicating it. Life balance is simple (not easy; never easy). Be clear on what you want from life and what yo’re willing to do (and what you’re willing to forego) in order to get it. Then go do it.