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Admit it. The first time you heard the phrase “Hoopla Team®“—maybe last week, or last month, or ten seconds ago, in that headline—you rolled your eyes. Oh you did so.
But the eyes stop rolling when people hear about the remarkable turnarounds happening across the country when leaders get serious about the transformation of their workplace culture—a transformation that has the Hoopla Team smack dab in the center of it. (more…)
Remember détente?
Anybody who lived through the Nixon years will remember the word. But if you’re like me, you didn’t quite know what it meant. As a kid, when I heard Henry Kissinger talk about “détente with the Soviets,” I always figured he meant, “We agree not to bomb each other for now.”
As it turns out, détente is a much more interesting idea. Détente is the process of relaxing tension and building mutual confidence. In the 70s, we didn’t just stop bombing each other—we also sent ballet companies and art exhibits back and forth. Our leaders got together at Camp David and toasted marshmallows or whatever they do. The bottom line: We got to see each other as people.
So what does this have to do with the workplace? (more…)
Ever dream of being surrounded by people who always tell you just what you want to hear? Think that would be a pretty sweet deal, do ya?
If so, President Kennedy would like a word with you. (more…)
Most of us live “reasonable” lives, looking at what we CAN do and using that as a guide to what we WILL do. Shoot for mediocrity and you’re guaranteed a bull’s-eye, every time. But a life worth living is about setting unreasonable goals, doing unreasonable things to make them happen, making unreasonable requests of people every day to stretch them to their undiscovered greatness.
Hey wait a minute, you say. Times are tough. The economy’s in the tank. Everyone is running for cover. My 401(k) is in flames! I can’t even count on that pension!
Whoa there. Deep breath, partner.
If mediocrity is a shallow moat in good times, it’s even less protection when times are tough. Aiming low and being “reasonable” doesn’t bring out the best of who you are. If you want to enliven your teammates, your kids, your friends, here’s a surefire way to do it: Make unreasonable requests of them. (more…)
You can’t monitor and audit every tiny facet of your business, or you won’t have time to run the business. So where does execution matter most? It matters most in the critical moments I call Moments of Truth—the moments where execution can mean the difference between success and failure.
Moments of Truth are those critical times when a customer forms an impression of you, deciding whether your offerings and their standards see eye-to-eye. Though they vary from industry to industry and business to business, every business has them. (more…)
Gulliver's Travels
When most people think of Gulliver’s Travels, they picture the big guy tied to the ground by the tiny people of Lilliput. Not a bad metaphor for modern life, eh?
But my favorite part of that story is the flying island of Laputa. The Laputians are philosophers, wicked smart, but they spend all their time navel-gazing—thinking deep thoughts, making complex calculations—and never get around to doing anything. (No surprise that their wives often leave the island and never come back. Talk about SMART.)
I know an awful lot of business leaders who probably have Laputian passports, if you know what I mean. (more…)
In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.—Peter Senge
At some point in his or her career, nearly every politician gets tarred with a catch phrase—and usually not a flattering one.
George Bush, Sr. is stuck with two. There was “Read my lips, no new taxes,” of course. But only slightly less unfortunate was his dismissal of what he called, “The ‘vision thing.’”
He was trying at the time to shake the impression that he was a competent day-to-day manager but lacked any grander vision of where he wanted to lead the country. His choice of words and tone of voice didn’t exactly help.
John F. Kennedy had a vision: “A man on the moon before the end of the decade.” And it inspired the seemingly impossible. We had about 15 percent of the needed know-how when he made that declaration.
Bill Gates had a vision that there would be a computer on every desk in America. And this was back when most people didn’t even know what a computer was!
I once had a CEO look me straight in the eye and say he didn’t really “go for” visions. “I put my energy into training,” he said. “Training, training, training.”
But training for what? I wondered. You do training without a vision, you’re all gas pedal and no windshield.
A study at the Sloan School of Management showed that leaders who create, communicate, and implement successful organizational visions were shown to be more successful in EVERY measure of a business than those who did not.
Powerful, effective, propelling visions all have three things in common: (more…)
Customer Service is Key
Customer satisfaction. Now there’s a nice phrase. It’s so, you know…nice. Everybody likes to be satisfied.
Heck, everybody likes to be fed, too. But when’s the last time you picked a restaurant just because they would feed you? EVERY two-bit restaurant will feed you. Whoop de doo.
Thing is, just about every business will “satisfy” you, too. They’ll get your dry cleaning done, your package delivered, your hair cut. So if just about everybody can step over the low bar of customer “satisfaction,” why do we keep talking about customer satisfaction as if it’s a meaningful goal? (more…)
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Imagine yourself transported to an unknown city by helicopter. A stadium comes into view below you. The chopper descends and lowers you gently into a seat. You are handed a hot dog and a pennant and given one instruction: Cheer for the home team.
You glance at the pennant to see what team you’re rooting for, then start cheering halfheartedly: Uh…woohoo. Go, uh…team! Beat the visitors.
No matter how many foot-longs they feed you, this is gonna get old fast. You can’t plop me down in a random stadium in a random town and expect wholehearted, red-in-the-face cheering as if it was MY team! You’ll go through the motions until you’re full, then all bets are off.
Seems like a wacky scenario, doesn’t it? But take a look around corporate America and you’ll see much the same approach to employee morale and productivity. Employees are expected to be productive and loyal to the company that happens to own the chair they’re sitting in just because it keeps them in hot dogs. And it doesn’t work. (more…)
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There are a thousand different faces of success—and failure, for that matter—each with a different track leading to it.
I’ll assume success is your destination. What does it look like? Specifically, what are the values that drive and define your sales culture?
I’m not looking for some secret set of “right answers.” I said there are a thousand different ways to be successful, and I meant it. But you can’t aim for all of them at once. If you want to end up somewhere meaningful, something that fits your corporate and personal values, you have to train your sights on a very specific vision of the future, then lay the tracks that will get you there, and only there.
So how do you know which way to head? (more…)