Ideas-to-Action

The "Best Idea Ever"

I met the most amazing person earlier this week.  Jennifer Hale is a true expert in organizational development, leadership development, facilitation, and coaching.  Her joy and passion for helping people improve their lives and organizations radiates from her facial expressions, to the words she uses, to how she engages with people individually and as a group.  She has the unique ability to leave people in a better place than where they started.

In one of our training conversations this week, she told us about the "best idea ever".  I have thought about this idea, done some of it mentally, but never put the pen to paper. 

Life is about relationships.  We know that networking is critically important (both personally and professionally), but we often don't take the time to prioritize and invest in the relationships we want to build.  Now, we have technology like LinkedIn and Facebook to keep engaged with a variety of people who enter our lives, but...

Do you have your Top 20 list? 

Have you identified (i.e. written down on paper) the top 20 people who you want to build relationships with?  Notice, I did not say get something from (like a job recommendation or a work contract).  These are people that you are truly interested in and want to build a relationship that has 1) mutual enjoyment, 2) respect, 3) shared experiences, 4) trust, and 5) reciprocity (signs of a solid relationship from John Maxwell's "Talent is Never Enough").

You will find that your Top 20 will change over time.  Some people who were in the Top 20 will fall out, some will be added.  Always be open to new relationships.

For some people, getting to 20 is hard...stop reading right now, take 3 minutes and simply write down the Top 10 people that you want to develop deeper relationships with.  Was it who you expected?  Was it hard to find 10?  Who did you have to trade-off to get your top 10?  What are you doing today to invest in those relationships?  Do you have a plan to build the relationship?  Are your actions effective?  What could you do different?

One thought that was going through my mind as Jennifer was facilitating this week is that some people seem to treat the number of connections on LinkedIn as a "badge of honor" while others treat individuals with great honor and value.  We love to make connections through current technology.  They are easy and fast.  LinkedIn and Facebook are good tools to connect people, but then we must individually decide if we want to invest time and effort with specific people to build solid relationships.  We must take time to have conversations, not simply link to each other in the digital world.

How are you approaching networking and relationship building?  Are you investing in building solid relationships or simply created an on-line Rolodex?  Who is in your Top 20?

Jennifer, thanks for the spark...

Courageous Leadership

I am currently reading John Maxwell's new book "Talent is Never Enough".  First, I am a big fan of Maxwell's work (my disclaimer).  Second, I am really enjoying this read.  I particularly like his list about courageous leadership (pg 164)...

Courageous Leadership Simply Means I've Developed:

1. Convictions that are stronger than my fears.
2. Vision that is clearer than my doubts.
3. Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion.
4. Self-esteem that is deeper than self protection.
5. Appreciation for discipline that is greater than my desire for leisure.
6. Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo.
7. Poise that is more unshakable than panic.
8. Risk taking that is stronger than safety seeking.
9. Right actions that are more robust than rationalization.
10. A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased.

Powerful.  Courageous.

...and speaking of pursuing your passion...

Maxine Clark has a great passion behind Build-a-Bear.  This story in BusinessWeek online is a wonderful little reminder about the joy you can receive (and help others create) by pursuing your passion.

I particularly like her closing comments:

Finally, you should always allow yourself to dream—and dream big—it's only through such thinking that great things happen. Don't limit yourself because you don't think your dream is attainable. You must start by believing you can truly achieve whatever you set your mind to, no matter how big it might seem. Not dreaming big enough is one of the biggest mistakes you can make—if you can't see your dream, how do you expect others to?

I have always been a strong proponent of dreaming big...or making your goals hilarious.

Inspiring

I was extremely privileged and blessed to hear Nick Vujicic speak last Sunday.  Nick was born without arms or legs and offers an amazing, inspiring story and message.  It is impossible to hear Nick and walk away without some self examination about where we put our trust, what we do to put our faith into action, and how we let meaningless things steal our joy. 

You can get more information about Nick at Life Without Limbs.

Experience profound joy in your life and live a life without limits.

Make Your Goals Hilarious

Here is a wonderful nugget by Mark Fusco at Squint.  He makes a really good point that your dreams and goals should be hilarious.  Live big.  Break the constraints of rational, logic thoughts and ideas.  Stretch.  Grow.  Change.  Innovate.  Transform.

Why wait to dream big...Great things are accomplished by people with hilarious goals.

Thanks Mark!

"Change" is meaningless

The "change" word seems to be everywhere.  Barack Obama seems to be making a lot of headway touting "change" (not a political endorsement).  While the word "change" may play well in during the political season, "change" by itself is meaningless in our personal and business lives.

Here is the problem:  Change does not mean improvement. 

Associates in Process Improvement have a simple and straightforward model that I have found useful to frame improvements in my personal life and business life.  The model is based on 3 questions:

1. What are we trying to accomplish? (Set aims)
2. How will we know change is an improvement? (Establish measures)
3. What change can we make that will result in improvement? (Select changes)

It seems so simple...and it is.  But, it is also very powerful.  Powerful enough that the Institute for Healthcare Improvement uses it as their base improvement model in their 5 Million Lives Campaign.

Peter Kim recently posted his resolutions for 2008.  He did a great job of identifying what he wants to accomplish (be more green, lose weight, save more money), identifying key measures to determine if he actually improves, and creating some hypotheses about what he can do to make an improvement.  He is also searching for expert knowledge (see his green resolution) on other ways to make an improvement.  There is no substitute for expert knowledge.

As you move forward into 2008, making resolutions and vows to change something about your life, I encourage you to move beyond the desire to change and take real action to improve.  Use the 3 questions to frame your improvement, then start testing your changes to see what works and does not work.

Remember, improvement requires making changes, but not all changes result in improvement....

Don't just change.  Improve.

Quality is Essential

McKinsey recently posted an interview (registration required) with Armand V. Feigenbaum, noted quality guru.  There are some good nuggets of knowledge in this short interview that marketing leaders should listen to as they consider implementing process improvement methods (especially Six Sigma) in marketing.

Some of his specific comments that are particularly important to marketers include:

"Improvements in quality lead to improvements throughout the organization.  Above all, quality must be understood as a management style, and an infrastructure has to exist that supports both the work quality of the individual and teamwork between departments."

"Some companies have an outdated idea of quality and how to improve it.  Managers think of quality as minimizing defects...This aspect has long been an entry-level requirement in competition, but is no longer enough from a customer perspective."

"Many companies don't understand that new market conditions require extensive changes in management methods."

Generally, here is my interpretation of these comments:

There is consistency with with W. Edwards Deming's Chain Reaction that shows how improvements in quality lead ultimately lead to staying in business and providing more jobs.  Building quality has a flow through effect throughout the organization.  Quality is not necessarily a function or something that a "highly trained Six Sigma Black Belt" can do.  Quality is something that must be a part of the fabric of management, part of the company's DNA.  If you are establishing a quality program or effort in addition to your existing work (or creating special categories of leaders to review and approve projects), you are creating "shadow work structure" that is unsustainable and will ultimately collapse under it own weight.  Quality must be a part of everyone's job.  Not a special function.  If you are waiting for a Six Sigma Black Belt to come fix your processes, quit waiting.  Take ownership and start improving.  If you need a guide to get you going, check out The Improvement Guide.

Be a Systems Thinker.  Too many people and companies try to work according to the organization chart.  This is not how work gets done.  Silos.  Barriers.  Frustration.  Politics.  Understand the white space.  Understand the processes.  Throw away the org chart and look at how work actually gets done in your company.  Look across business unit and function boundaries.  As marketers, we need to clearly understand the value chain so we can optimize how we go to market. 

Understand your company through the lens of your customers.  Quality of products is not enough.  Customers expect quality products.  What about their experiences?  How are you bringing customer knowledge back into your company?  How is it used?  How does it shape marketing?  Design customer experiences that expand their expectations.  How do you do it?  Quality.

Finally, as marketers, managers, and leaders in companies, we must always learn, grow, and improve our management methods.  Over the years, I have interacted with a variety of leaders that woke up one day and found their organizations being leap frogged in the market, backsliding, or stuck in a quagmire of operational ineffectiveness.  "We have always done it that way"..."We do it like this because we a different"..."our market is unique and we can't change it"..."we tried changing it once, but it did not work, so we went back to our old way"..."our industry is just too complicated for us to change"..."that would create too much pain in our company"...all words that lead to organization destruction and death.  Be willing to step out, test new ideas, try new concepts, reinvent some old ones.  Sitting still is sliding backwards.

Accelerating Business Innovation

Clay Richardson and I just posted a new column on BP Trends about "Accelerating Business Innovation".  If you missed our first column, "Business Innovation - Creating New Value with Ease and Grace", we are writing this column to explore both the business (Victor) and technical (Clay) sides of innovation.  Our aim is to motivate business and technology leaders to develop knowledge about business innovation and take action to guide innovation processes in their organizations.

In this month's column, we discuss how BPM has emerged as a business discipline and technology platform that allows companies to reduce innovation cycle time and "get to market" quickly.  Specifically, we explore the following five traits that enable this acceleration:

1. Shared development between business and technical teams
2. Flexibility to accommodate changes to requirements and customer demands
3. Reuse of existing business services
4. Rapid prototyping and stakeholder buy-in
5. Streamlined testing and deployment

We hope you enjoy the column.  Oh, and feel free to come back here and give us your thoughts.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Companies are aflutter about innovation, but is anything really new?

• Twitter is the evolution of the telegram...
• Blogs are the evolution of cave drawings...
• Facebook is the evolution of "hanging out with friends"...
• Six Sigma is evolution of quality and statistical methods...
• Bionic is the evolution of the artificial limb...

Yes, there are many "new" technologies or configurations of existing technologies that enable us to live our lives and do our jobs better (according to the outcomes we specify), but nothing is being created that did not already have the potential to be created by man.  There is definitely dependency on previous discoveries and innovations, there is definitely sequencing of discoveries (i.e. Facebook could not have existed before the Internet), but there is nothing new that did not, or does not, have the capability to exist at its appointed time in human history.

Everything that is new today was simply waiting to be discovered.

What does it mean for us in our work and lives?  While there is nothing new under the sun, there is the opportunity to discover, configure, and innovate.  All the tools of innovation are available for everyone.  Everything that you need already exists.  Actively observe your surroundings.  What are people doing?  What problems can you solve today with a little observation, thinking and creativity?