You don’t have to sugarcoat it, you don’t have to go easy on me. I want your honest opinions, thoughts, feelings, aHa! moments, and takeaways from my book Focal Point.
Why? Well, let me catch you up to speed first.
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Adam Smith, in his important book The Theory of Moral Sentiments, wrote that excellent people have three primary virtues: prudence, justice, and benevolence, in that order. Each of them is essential to the others and to the living of a full life in society. Read the rest of this entry »
The greatest need we have today, in every area, is for men and women to practice the values of integrity, discipline, responsibility, courage, and long time perspective, both as individuals and in their families. These are the key qualities of leadership.
Our society needs leaders at all levels who practice the principles that lead to long term-success. Especially, we need people in positions of authority and political power to support and encourage others, whose lives and work they influence, to develop character and resist the tendency to act expediently in ways that are harmful to themselves and others. Read the rest of this entry »
When your business hits a crunch point, you must make the survival of your company your primary consideration. Desperate situations often require desperate measures. You must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to resolve the crisis and save the situation. Read the rest of this entry »
There are two essential qualities of leadership. Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric says that the “Reality Principle” is the most important of all. What this means is the practice of realism in all things.
Realism is a form of intellectual honesty. The realist insists upon seeing the world as it really is, not as he wishes it were. This objectivity, this refusal to engage in self-delusion, is a mark of the true leader.
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The Quality of Thoughtfulness
The ability to think and plan strategically is perhaps the most important single skill of the effective executive. In a longitudinal study of leaders who, in retrospect, made the best and most effective decisions, the single quality that stood out from all others was the quality of "thoughtfulness."
Thoughtfulness may be defined as a careful concern for the secondary consequences of each decision and each action. This is the essence of strategic thinking.
Your Most Powerful Tool
The most powerful tool that you as an executive have to bring to bear on your work is your mind - your thinking ability. Everything you do that sharpens and hones your ability to think with greater clarity before acting, will benefit you and help you to move upward and onward more rapidly in your career.
Use a Two Pronged Approach
The best way to approach strategic thinking is two pronged. This means to work simultaneously on the personal and the corporate.
Increase Your "Return On Energy"
In personal terms, strategic planning is an exercise in increasing "return on energy." Your greatest single asset is your earning ability. And your earning ability is nothing more than the total of the mental, emotional and physical energies that you can apply toward getting valuable results for yourself and your company.
Anything that you can do to increase your return on energy invested will increase your overall levels of effectiveness and contribution in every area of your life, especially, and most importantly in your work.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to increase your return on equity and your return on energy.
First, think about everything that you are doing in terms of its financial return to your organization. What are the things that you do that yield the highest return on equity? Whatever they are, do more of them.
Second, think in personal terms about the things you do that give you the highest return on energy. Where do you contribute the greatest value and achieve the greatest satisfaction? Whatever they are, do more of these things.
Your ability to communicate is the most important skill you can develop to get on to the fast track in your career.
Solve Problems and Make Decisions More Effectively in Discussions With Other People
Your ability to communicate is the most important skill you can develop to get on to the fast track in your career. Perhaps the most important thing you do in business is to solve problems and make decisions, both by yourself and with other people. A major reason for meetings in the business organization is problem solving and decision making. The key to effective problem solving and decision making discussions, is for you to all go through the process systematically.
Clarify the Problem
Right at the beginning, you ask the question, "What exactly is the problem?" Clarity of definition will resolve 50% of the issues before they go any further
Think About the Future
When discussing a problem, be sure to focus on the future over the past. Ask the question, "Where do we go from here?" "What do we do from here?" "What are our options for the future?" Too many problem-solving discussions end up focusing all of the attention of all the people present on what happened in the past and who is to blame. The effective executive uses this type of communication to focus on where the company and the individuals are going, and what can happen in the future - the only part of the equation over which anyone has any control.
Focus On the Solution
A second element in effective problem solving communications, is for you to talk about the solutions instead of talking about the problems. It is for you to keep the attention of the individuals in the meeting focused on the possible solutions and what can be done rather than what has already happened.
The discussion of solutions is inherently positive, uplifting and has a tendency to release creativity amongst the group. A discussion of problems is inherently negative, de-motivating and tends to inhibit creativity. You can become a positive thinker simply by becoming a solution-oriented person rather than a problem-oriented person. If you get everyone in your organization thinking and talking in terms of solutions, you will be astonished at the quality and quantity of ideas that will emerge.
Putting These Ideas Into Action
First, take some time to be absolutely clear about the problem that is under discussion. Give some thought to what an ideal decision or solution would accomplish. Instead of focusing on the situation as it is, talk about the situation as you would like it to be.
Second, keep the conversation focused on solutions, on what can be done in the future. The more you think and talk about solutions, the more positive and creative everyone will be and the better ideas you will come up with.
Motivating Salespeople in Tough Times
The Communication Process
The ancient Greeks taught that all conversation involved three ingredients: Ethos, or the character of the speaker; Pathos, connecting with the emotions; and Logos. The logos discussed by the Greeks refers to the factual content of a message, the words used. It refers to the argument that you present on behalf of your point of view. (However, we know that the facts themselves, although they are important, are not as powerful or as influential as the emotions are.)
The Selling Process
In selling, we know that there are three parts to the process. These are, first, establishing rapport with the prospective customer, second, identifying the problem or need that the prospective customer has and, third, presenting the solution. These are the ethos, the pathos and the logos of selling to someone.
Build Good Relationships
Your success in every area of life will be based largely on the quality and quantity of relationships that you can initiate and develop over time. In the world of business and sales today, relationships are everything. We often call this the "friendship factor." We have discovered that a person will not do business with you until he or she is convinced that you are his or her friend and are acting in his or her best interest. In other words, you cannot influence someone unless he or she likes you in some way. Of course, it’s often possible for you to influence a person if he fears you, but that type of influence lasts only until the person can rearrange his situation and escape from the circumstances that enable you to have control over him.
How to Influence and Persuade Others
The way to influence people, then, is to earn their liking and respect, to appeal to the friendship factor. This requires spending time with him, caring for him and respecting him. The more time that you are willing to spend with the person, the greater will be his tendency to trust you and to feel that you are acting in his best interest. The more obvious it is that you care about the person, about what he really needs, the more likely it is that he will be open to your influence. This is even more important in your personal relationships, with your family and friends. The more that people feel you care about them, the more open they will be to your influence.
Action Exercises
First, slow down when you first meet a person in a business or sales situation. Take some time to build a relationship with him or her before you proceed to business matters.
Second, appeal to the friendship factor that underlies all good business and personal relationships. Ask questions about the person and his or her life and concerns. Listen attentively to the answers. Focus on the relationship first.
Everyone has critical skills and knowledge that are important to many other people in the company.
Use Better Titles for Each Person
Some years ago, when I started in business, the job of the receptionist was to answer the telephone and direct the callers to the appropriate people. Today, however, her job is far more complicated and, therefore, more important. Since she is the first contact that most customers have with our business, her personality and temperament are extremely important.
Think About Your Customers
The prospective client who telephones begins forming an impression of us the instant that the telephone is answered. Then, because our companies are doing so many things, she must tactfully ascertain exactly how the caller may be best served and who is the best person in the company to direct the telephone call to.
One Person Can Make the Difference
In many cases, there are requests for further information, and follow-up telephone calls go through our front-office manager. Her ability to handle these calls effectively, to direct calls to the right people, to take accurate messages, and to act as the core person in a network of communications makes her job so important that it is essential that she sit in on all staff meetings and be aware of everything that is going on.
Keep Yourself Informed
Your job in your company also requires that you know a lot about what is going on everywhere else, as well as being thoroughly conversant with what you do. And the fastest and most accurate way of keeping current with what is going on is to develop and maintain a network of contacts, an informal team of people within your workplace who keep you informed and who you keep informed in turn.
Encourage Participation and Involvement
The old methods of command and control now exist only at the old-line companies, many of which are fighting for their very survival. Today, men and women want a high degree of participation and involvement in their work. They want an opportunity to discuss and thoroughly understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. People are no longer satisfied to be cogs in a big machine. They want to have an integral role in achieving goals that they participated in setting in the first place.
Build a Top Team
Being a team player is no longer something that is optional. Today, it is mandatory. If you want to achieve anything of consequence, you will need the help and cooperation of lots of people. Your main objective is to structure everything you do in such a way that, because you are constantly cooperating and working well with others, they are continually open to helping you achieve your goals.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, recognize that every person in the company is essential to the smooth functioning of the organization. Take time regularly to discuss their jobs with them and understand what they do.
Second, identify the things that you do that can really affect the work of others. Then, look for ways to do your job so that you help others in every way possible.
Leadership: The Critical Difference
How to get support for your ideas more easily than ever before.
Many years ago a retiring executive gave me an old pamphlet he had carried throughout his career. It was entitled, "Take Time Out for Mental Digestion."
He told me that this little pamphlet had been one of the most helpful things he had ever read in his business life. At the time I spoke to him he was the president of a corporation with more than 10,000 employees.
The message of this pamphlet was simple. It said that people always resist new ideas and new courses of action, even if the ideas are good for them. However, if they have an opportunity to think about them for a few days, very often they will come around to the new way of thinking with both agreement and enthusiasm.
The pamphlet said that an individual needs about 72 hours to absorb a new idea. Effective executives are those who present their ideas in very casual way, rather than as a decision or a fact engraved in stone. They present their thoughts as ideas for consideration. Effective executives encourage the other person to take the new idea or new way of doing things and think about it for a few days. They say that "we can discuss this later" and they just leave the idea with the other person.
Over the years, I have found this to be a remarkable piece of advice and a very important insight to communicating effectively with others.
People Will Resist Change
It is normal and natural for people to resist change of any kind, even and including a change that they will benefit from. So, allow them to take time out for mental digestion. Present your new idea in a low keyed, non-threatening way and just encourage the individual to think about it for a while and then discuss it later.
Present Ideas As Possibilities
In my early executive career, I was continually frustrated by trying to get my ideas, which I had thought through and which I, of course, thought were wonderful, accepted by my seniors and my co-workers.
When I started taking time out for mental digestion and just presented my ideas as possibilities, I was astonished at how much more readily people turned around and came to see the validity of the ideas. I also found that, if you present an idea with too much enthusiasm, you trigger natural resistance which soon becomes ego-based, irrespective of the validity of the ideas.
Present Ideas in a Low-Keyed Manner
On the other hand, if you present your ideas in a low-keyed manner and just leave them for consideration, people can come around to accepting them in their own time and embracing your new ideas without any loss of face or without any ego problems.
The next time you have a great idea, mention it casually and ask other people what they think about it. Give people time to digest the idea, even if they are totally opposed to it at the beginning.
Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do to use this principle in practice.
First, think your ideas through on paper before you present them to others. Expect natural resistance. When you do present your ideas, do it in a low keyed, almost indifferent manner so that it stirs up no resistance.
Second, expect your ideas to be rejected initially. When this happens, simply ask open ended questions to get feedback and then present your ideas again at a later time in a different form. It is amazing how effective this strategy will be.
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