Tag Archives: business thinking

January 15, 2018 · 12:01 pm

50 Years On

As I sat down to write this morning’s screed with Dr. King’s birthday on my mind, I realized that it’s been 50 years since that horrible year of 1968. I was 13 at the time and if you’re younger than about 55 today you probably have no memories of the almost non-stop bad news. It’s hard to believe but things seemed even more screwed up and polarized that they do today. The day Dr. King was shot is one of my indelible memories and the killing of Bobby Kennedy two months later snuffed out a small glimmer of hope that Dr. King’s legacy might come to fruition soon. It took another 40 years for that although there are valid arguments that we as a country are still waiting in many ways.

With that, what follows is my post on celebrating Dr, King and his message from a few years ago. It’s about listening, something many of us don’t do often enough. Maybe you can give it a try this week?

Today is the day we pause to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday.  I went back and looked at my post from two years ago, which was about dreams – specifically one of Dr. King’s dreams becoming a reality.  That was sort of focused on what he saw – his vision.  Today I want to focus on one of the great man’s best qualities that influenced how he acted to make that vision real.  I think it’s applicable to business.  No, it’s not going to be another ethics rant (although those are never out of style in my book).  Today, it’s about the most important skill I think all great businesspeople – and great leaders – possess.

To me, great leaders serve to fulfill the needs of their people.  For Dr. King, it meant endless meetings with various groups to understand their concerns and explain how broadening civil liberties to be more inclusive could help meet them.  For those of us in business, it means paying more attention to the concerns of our customers and co-workers than to our own agenda – these folks ARE our agenda to a certain extent, along with the underlying needs of our businesses.  In a word – listen.

Everyone wants to feel as if their ideas and thoughts are being heard if not acted upon. Without someone hearing them, acting on those concerns is impossible. Listening, then speaking, brings trust.

I know this isn’t a new thought in this space but it came to mind on this day thinking of Dr. King.  If you go back to the early days of Dr. King’s involvement in the civil rights movement, it’s pretty clear that he was a reluctant leader. He was drafted to lead and was kind of unsure of himself.  As he listened to the members of the community and other clergies, he realized that he was simply a voice for the community and their agenda became his agenda.

Many of you will be familiar with Stephen R. Covey, who wrote that we ought to “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  I think Dr. King if he read pop-psychology, would have appreciated that.

What are you listening to today?

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January 4, 2018 · 12:46 pm

Snow In The South

It snowed here in North Carolina last night. I awoke to find maybe two inches of the white stuff. Having lived almost my entire life in New York and Connecticut, my immediate thoughts were “how pretty” and “no big deal.” Then I remembered where I was. We got what I would call an overnight accumulation here last February (under an inch, seriously), and it closed the schools for four days.

In my mind, there is about a foot/inch ratio which applies to the level of hysteria and inconvenience here. An inch of snow here is the equivalent to a foot up north. The local TV stations have been nothing but the weather for the last day and the excitement in the reporters’ voices as they stand by some highway pointing to a dusting is palpable.

There is, of course, a business thought or two in all of this. One is that of perspective. My perspective on snow is very different from that of my neighbors, most of whom rarely have ever had to deal with it. Don’t let your own perspective corrupt your ability to get inside that of your partners, vendors, and customers.

Next is emergency planning. Despite the rarity of snow here, many of the roads were pre-treated with brine before the snowfall to help keep the roads clear. That means the authorities have both the equipment and the knowledge (brine actually works better than rock salt and is way more cost effective than clearing the snow later) to be proactive. They had a plan. Can you say that you have a plan, the tools you’ll need, and the knowledge required to handle most emergencies that happen in your business?

I’ll probably just hunker down today and let nature take its course. It’s a sunny day with the temperature back above freezing so the snow won’t be here long. Nevertheless, it’s been here long enough to remind me of a couple of business truisms. You?

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January 2, 2018 · 10:19 am

Don’t Be Eeyore

And we’re back! Happy New Year to each of you. I hope whatever time you were able to take off was fun and, more importantly restorative.

Eeyore as depicted by Disney

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the time of the year when we’re inundated with ads for resolution fulfillment. You know: weight loss, smoking cessation, and products and services that will help you to achieve whatever new goals you’ve set for yourself during the upcoming year. In many cases, people make these resolutions to raise their happiness quotient. They are trying to have their reality exceed their expectations, which is one traditional measure of happiness. Improving the reality – bringing it up to or exceeding whatever expectations they have – improves happiness.

There is another way to go about this, of course, and that’s to lower expectations. Think of Eeyore, the gloomy donkey. He expects that a sunny day will become rainy and that a rainy day will result in floods. His expectations are low and so he is rarely disappointed.

Some folks think that way about their businesses. They have low expectations so that they’re not disappointed with the outcomes. The issue with that is that both in business and in real life it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We expect next to nothing or to be dissatisfied with things and when we get very little or aren’t satisfied, we’re actually kind of OK with it since we didn’t expect anything otherwise.

So if you’re the resolution-making kind of person, maybe you can make one more: not to be Eeyore. I believe that our expectations affect our decision-making. If we don’t have any expectations at all we’re paralyzed. Having negative thoughts will depress you and low expectations are premised on negative thoughts. You don’t need a Debbie Downer in either your personal or professional life and you certainly don’t want to be one.

Please don’t misread this as encouragement to throw caution to the wind. Jumping off a roof, either literally or figuratively, because you have a high expectation that you can fly is just nuts. But don’t be Eeyore. Things are going to go wrong from time to time. Learn from it and keep refining those lofty goals. You might not achieve every single one but it’s also about the journey, right?

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