Category Archives: Growing up

December 31, 2013 · 2:54 pm

Most Read Posts of 2013 – TunesDay Edition

Last day of the year and it falls on a TunesDay.  I looked up the most read post with that theme and it was one from this past July when the Mrs. and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.  Not content to let that speak for itself, I turned to a rock classic to talk about relationships between our businesses and our customers.  I hope you enjoy it (again!) and please have a safe New Year’s Eve.  See you on the other side.

It’s Tunesday! Today is a special one for me since it’s the 35th anniversary of the day the Mrs. and I got married. Because of that, I wanted a song from roughly the time when we got married that’s also a love song. What popped into my head this morning is “Let’s Stay Together“, a hit for both Al Green and Tina Turner.   The two hits actually happened on either side of our wedding date and I’m very aware that a lot of folks use this as a wedding song (we didn’t – Embraceable You, as I recall…).  I’ve always thought that Al Green’s version was way too low-key for the passion of the song and the video below is a live Tina Turner version which captures the song’s essence:

So what’s this got to do with business?  Actually, quite a bit.  You see, trying to stay together is what all of us do as businesses – with our customers, our team, and our vendors:

Let’s, let’s stay together
Lovin’ you whether, whether
Times are good or bad, happy or sad

The one thing that makes a relationship last is the trust that you’re standing on certain ground.  As the lyric says, you may go through bad times as well as good but never wondering about the underlying connection is crucial.  A customer with issues may not be happy but they’ll stay a customer if they trust you’re working to resolve their problem.  They want to hear “let me be the one you come running to”, not “I’m unable to help you.”

At its core, a relationship of any sort involves an investment of some sort.  While there is a lot of sanity in not throwing good money (literally and figuratively) after bad, it’s generally easier to keep a customer than to find new ones.  A commitment to trying to stay together makes that happen.  That’s how you celebrate 35 years as partners!

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December 16, 2013 · 9:04 am

You Never Walk Alone

Here we are, winding down another work year, and I thought this might be a good time to look at some food for thought on leadership.  Why now?  Well, at this time of year there are frequently year-end reviews going on and employees hear from their leadership as to how the employee has performed in the manager’s estimation.  Much more rare is the manager hearing from the subordinate with respect to the manager’s performance.  I suspect if the worker bees could speak up, they’d talk a fair amount about how the boss lacks interpersonal skills and a sense of mistaking pushing their employees in the right direction for leading them.   It’s a critical distinction.

It really boils down to character.  Many people get promoted into leadership roles and forget that they didn’t get there by themselves.  In fact, they lose sight of the fact that the single greatest skill a boss can possess is, in my opinion, the ability to motivate others in a positive way.  Turns out it’s not jut my opinion:

The flaws most commonly tripping up our at-risk leaders were related to failures in establishing interpersonal relationships. Far less frequent were fatal flaws involved in leading change initiatives, driving for results, and — we’re happy to report — character. That might explain how they’d managed to get as far as they had. But past a certain point, individual ambition and results aren’t enough. As they climb higher in an organization and the ability to motivate others becomes far more important, poor interpersonal skills, indifference to other people’s development, and a belief that they no longer need to improve themselves come to haunt these less effective leaders the most.

That’s from the folks at Zenger Folkman who do leadership assessments and training.  The good news is that bad leaders can become good ones if they’re willing to accept that they have issues.  The biggest of these may be the premise that they are somehow isolated from the team – above them in more than rank.  Bad leaders confuse who they are with what they do and substitute a title for earning respect.  None of us walk alone in the world and especially not in the work world.  Only when we acknowledge that and learn to work with and through others do we reach our full potential.

Make sense?

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November 22, 2013 · 9:53 am

President Kennedy

Fifty years ago today I was sitting in my third grade class when a teacher came in sobbing.

John F. Kennedy

Cover of John F. Kennedy

President Kennedy had been shot and the next few days have been burned into my brain ever since.  Strangely, all of those memories are black and white, since that was the kind of television we had at the time.  In retrospect, the day and his death ended an era of hope in this country as we moved into an era of conflict and chaos.

Smarter people than I have written about JFK’s impact but I thought it might be appropriate to translate a few of his thoughts into business thinking since that’s what we do here on the screed.  As is also our custom, I’m going to avoid the politics of what he had to say as well as what others had to say about him and his administration.  First, the most famous quote from his Inaugural Address:

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

In business terms, this is a recurring theme here.  Flip “country” to customer and I think you’ve got a solid paradigm through which you can view almost any business decision.  Next, the quote that triggered what might be his most enduring legacy:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

While we can debate the merits of the space program (and I wrote about that a while back), I don’t think there’s much debate about two things.  One, that program contributed to the rapid advancement of many of the technologies you’re using at this very moment to read this.  Those same technologies are driving a lot of growth in our economy and around the world.  Two, and this is the main business point, the imperative to think big thoughts.

No business can succeed by standing still.  What’s the next frontier?  How can we be better and lead?  Kennedy viewed space as a defense project which is clear when you read the address from which the quote is taken.  Dreaming big is a great defense, because the odds are your competitors are trying to as well.  As the space program has proven, the by-products of big ideas are often more valuable than accomplishing the goal itself.

Finally, Kennedy took office as a 43-year-old, following President Eisenhower who was 71 when he left.  He was the first president born in the 20th Century and projected an image of youth and excitement.  His language was forceful and filled with imagery of destiny and long-term thinking about solving problems.  That’s a great model for anyone who presents ideas which most of us do on a regular basis in business.

What happened 50 years ago today was a tragedy.  I wonder sometimes how different this country – and the world – might be had Kennedy served two terms.  While his presidency wasn’t without controversy and crisis (if you haven’t seen the movie Thirteen Days, find it and watch it!), it’s his legacy of civil rights, social programs, NASA, and the Peace Corps that stand out in my mind.  His approach to leading is a great model despite some of the personal foibles he had, and taking his approach to business issues isn’t bad either.  You agree?

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