Drama; Don't Do It

One of my favorite shows on TV is Top Chef. Through watching it over the last several seasons, I've learned that there is a difference between people who can cook really well and a Chef. You've got folks with real talent that can't get it all together in the time allotted and certainly can't work with other people. They are the ones yelling, running, and cussing up a storm down to the last second. It makes for good TV, but these guys never win. Its the contestants that, sure - may stress - but do it with purpose and with little if no drama.

Back to business...

If you find that business is theater, you're in the wrong building.

Business is about accomplishing objectives together for a purpose. Drama is about bringing attention to yourself (as seen on TV).

I have certainly been guilty of drama, especially when there's the risk (AKA stress) of not getting to that business objective. But it is not a helpful tool. If anything, it spends your energy and the energy of those around you on something that distracts from the real chance to maybe, just maybe hit that goal.

So here's the question that you've got to honestly answer to yourself...do you thrive on drama? A few easy ways to tell:

• Does every task you work on come down to the last possible minute - with you cranking it out mere seconds before catastrophe strikes?
• Are you beating up those around you with your stress as you barrel your way down to a last-minute result?
• Does the end product reek of lackluster quality, due to steps skipped as you cranked out your last-min result?
  

It really doesn't have to be last min...really. Just a little planning, communication, and thinking more than just for today. That'll mean you've got to say goodbye to drama though. Either that, or you can seek out the next spot on reality TV.

Different Kind of 4 Letter Word

Over the last 4 weeks, I found myself in the Squeeze to the point where blogging about it seemed like a distant dream - and no where close to a reality. On the good side of that, I witnessed a multitude of things that will be making an appearance in the weeks ahead....

Amidst that stress and the friction, one thing emerged as the topic of choice for my first entry, post-squeeze: HELP.

Many times it seems that you've got to go it alone, especially when everyone around you is juggling as much as they can handle. Its the American ideal to pull your bootstraps up and man your post. But you can't always man your post if you're running solo.

We in the middle have to reach out for help. Although it may not seem it, being able to ask for help is just as important a trait as being able to handle a lot of responsibilities.

Admit when you're stretched to what feels like your limit and may need some help to get it all done. Of course, this can be risky. You have to be able to accept that you may in fact not be at your limit, and simply feel like you are.

No matter. Admit this anyways. It will challenge you, alert those around you that you are struggling, and enlist the help of your team to get through it to the other side.

Breathe

Ah, the stress of management. Projects with intense deadlines piling up, internal conflict, external conflict, sales down, bills not being paid on time, people not returning your calls/emails - the intensity of managing any group of people or body of work can get your blood flowing and your head spinning.

Seems I have two more common & immediate reactions to the crunch. Either...

1. I get myself pumped up with adrenaline and just start moving. This feels like the catalyst to pull you through the trench. But just like a caffeine boost or a sugar rush - its temporary. WARNING: burn-out will eventually ensue.
   
   
2. If not adrenaline, the fear of keeping it all in the air will hit me like a punch in the gut and completely paralyze me from any action. WARNING: this is a fast track to a pink slip.
   

Both are polar extremes.

I find the best, 1st action is to just stop for a second and take a breather.

Yeah, pretty cheesy sounding. But even so, this is what we juggling managers need to do. Stop moving forward, stop trying to consider all the fear-inducing possibilities of failure. Stop thinking about it all. Take a minute, see all of the things before you and all the things you're afraid of, accept them, and then just breathe for a second.

Only after pausing first should you let yourself think about it - but even then it should just be in terms of what really needs to get done right now. Then come up with your plan of what you've got to work on first, second, tomorrow, etc. And don't forget about help. You need it - don't be afraid to ask for it.

Now its time to move forward - but not with the adrenaline "hyper-action" or the fearful "no-action". Instead, you've accepted the worst, you've asked for help, and you've got some form of a plan.

Happy Juggling.

Time to Stop the Rambling

Ah, the long call. The conversations when you talk about your week, ups and downs, and then realize 45 min has passed, you're out of time, and didn't accomplish anything?

Happens to everyone.

I find that two things work well to incentivize people to be personal, sure, but also accomplish what you need to while not running out of time.

First and foremost is the agenda. Go ahead and let it be known what you're going to be talking about and what you need to accomplish before you get on the call. Try and do it by email the day before. Then recap it again right when you're getting the call underway. Keep your goals in front.

The next best help is setting an end time. Go ahead and set the end time for your call when you're scheduling it - "I can talk at 3:00 and will have until 3:45". That way everyone on the call knows when the chit chat has to end and you need to get down to business.
*And side-note - anything over a 1 hr call is pretty ineffective. People will start waning after an hr and do other tasks while on the call. Keep it at an hour or shorter.

Don't get me wrong, chit chat is good, but it just has to know its limits.

Redemption of Conference Calls

Last week it was emails...so why not talk about a close second in the difficulty rankings for communication - the dreaded conference call. There have been a couple of recent posts out there in the blog world recently on the topic:

• Sasha talked about how to run your team on one end of the call
• Godin talked about adding a chat/presentation tool to the call
  

I'd like to add in one more part to the conversation - the group conference call. These are those calls you have with multiple organizations (1+) that brings another team to the the table.

So let's say you've got your team in place using Sasha's techniques above, and are using the chat/presentation feature Seth suggests - how do you wrangle in the folks from all sides? On calls like this, you've probably experienced people talking on top of each other, cell phone interference, speaker phone traffic, no leadership, people afraid to speak up...and those are just the ones I could think of in a quick 10 seconds.

There are solutions, but its up to us managers of the world to tackle these and bring some order to the chaos. We can run a good one...here's how:

• Be clear about who the leader is on the call. If there are multiple teams, there may be multiple leaders, but the lead org should take the lead (meaning the organization that is the ultimate stake-holder). If there's no lead org, you've got bigger issues to solve first.
  
  
• Be on time (even early) and start on time. If someone else is more than 5 min late to the call, start without them. If its mission critical for them to be on the call, step away from the conf call for a min and try calling them direct on their cell AND emailing them to let them know you're waiting on them. If 10 min passes and still no-show (again - only for the mission criticals), apologize and tell the group you'll have to reschedule.
  
  
• Send all info BEFORE the call (not during...). This includes things like documents you'll be reviewing, login info, etc. If something needs to be reviewed before the call and you expect to hear concise feedback (not blink reactions), make sure you send it hours in advance (if not a full day). Don't expect a smooth call if you're wasting the first 20 minutes trying to get things in front of people.
  
  
• Send a reminder about the call the same day (even if you've done a calendar invite) along with critical details (dial-in info, etc). It sounds weird, but also include timezone info in your reminder. I've been shocked at how many conference calls were missed because someone said "noon" to someone in a different timezone.
  
  
• Whittle down large groups to the critically necessary folks (sorry interns). This is much easier to do for your team (see Sasha's entry). Much harder to tell someone else's org to do. But go ahead and make the suggestion anyways. Everyone will be glad you did in the end.
  
  
• And whatever you do DO NOT use speaker phone. Use conference party lines that allow everyone to get on their own horn and chat. This one step alone will reduce 75% of your problems.

Try it out.

Blasted Email

Lately, I've been increasingly bothered by inaction....

Emails, more than anything, seem to spark this fervor of frustration inside of me. Sometimes I send an email, I know its received, and then nothing ever happens in response...ever. Did it fall off the face of the web-earth? And please don't tell me it went into Spam...that's a totally lame excuse (even if its true). With all the ways we communicate with people, Email has just lost its value as a MUST-RESPOND-TO item. You get email notifications about Facebook messages, comments on your status, Twitter followers, random emails that don't really need a response, mass forwards, and on. To make matters worse, we take our email on the road and then sync it with our computers at work...so if I've read a message quickly on the go, its certainly been taken care of...right?

Actually...that's almost never the case.

A good rule of thumb I try to employ across the board is to make sure that not one email that warrants a response slips through the cracks...not one. I do this by marking all my email messages as unread that still require a response. My boss Craig uses a different method - leaving all email messages that require action to remain in his inbox, while those that do not need a response get moved elsewhere. The point isn't to use a specific method, rather, its to have a method.

In addition, I also use a 24 hour rule. If I've received the message during the work week, I've got to get back to that person within 24 hrs. Same day is really what I'm shooting for, but the ultimatum is 24 hrs.

Getting a handle of your emails is something few do well - especially if you're someone who receives large numbers of them on a daily basis. Manage them well and people will notice. You will standout from the masses.

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And if you get tired of email, you can revert back to the original medium...

Process to Innovate

I've been reading The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier this past month. Early on, Marty tells a quick story about what innovative companies look like:

“Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is famous for a crazy video in which he yells, I-LOVE-THIS-COMPANY. With Apple, its the customers who shout that.”

Steve Jobs saw problems consumers dealt with and found unique and stylish ways of combating those everyday problems. He designed his solutions.

So if we want to be like Apple and innovate real, needed, and wanted solutions - where do we start?

My thought...we start with our dreams. But in order to do that, we've got to first admit, acknowledge, and share the things that prevent our dreams in the first place...our realities.

Looking at how to get to this result with a business team, I came up with a 3 step process that helps facilitate a group to think together about what could be (its best to do it on a board of some kind):

1. Constraints
   We start out with the least fun part, but the part that gets everyone a little more comfortable with being able to dream - we deal with the everyday Constraints. Constraints are those sticky things that keep you from easily moving about within your business. Its the barriers that box you in to certain decisions. Things like budgets, deadlines, current service offerings, development costs, competition, etc.
   
   This list can get long, but its important to let all your Constraints be spoken outloud to give them all the attention they deserve. Afterall, most of us spend the majority of our days trying to jump these hurdles, avoid them, and figure out how to manage them. These are the things that keep us from really engaging our imagination. We assume our Constraints are largely immovable, so we resign ourselves to a worklife of working around or within them.
   
   
2. Ideals
   After everyone has given voice to every constraint you can possibly think of, its time to get everyone engage in their dreams or Ideals. Ideals are those things you wish were true about the projects you work on, the amount of profit your company makes, the types of companies you work with, and so on. This list may be shorter and you may need to encourage everyone to speak up, but this is a huge step toward the process of innovation.
   
   With your board chalked full of all your Constraints in sight, your team won't will feel the need to say things like, "we can't do that...think about how little we get paid for that service", etc. Everyone will know the ugly Constraints aren't being ignored, so they will feel increasingly comfortable letting them go (at least in the moment) and thinking about what they really wish was true about your business.
   
   
3. Innovation
   Now comes the fruition...its time to look at all you've written on your board and consider all of the Constraints you currently deal with as well as all the Ideals you wish were true. You'll begin the process of designing solutions to accomplish your Ideals while considering your Constraints. Don't get caught up on the idea that this is a matter of ignoring the Constraints to just engage the Ideals, or even vice versa. Rather, this is about asking yourself questions like,
   

• "Can this Constraint be adjusted to accommodate this Ideal?"
• "Will this Ideal increase our ability to serve our customers?"
• "If we can't adjust any Constraints to accomplish this Ideal, how can we accomplish this Ideal through another means?"
• "Is this Constraint even necessary?"

You'll be surprised to see the speed at which real, tangible, ideas start going up on the board - ideas that are feasible and have a real shot of seeing the light of day.

Even the oldest, most set-in-their-ways of companies can employ this and get to real innovative solutions to offer to the marketplace.

Give it a try...and let me know what your team came up with. And if you'd like to give it a try, but don't feel like trying to lead it yourself, give me a shout...I'd be happy to help lead a session with your team.