1. It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
2. Get mad, then get over it.
3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that, when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
4. It can be done!
5. Be careful what you choose, you may get it.
6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7. You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.
8. Check small things.
9. Share credit.
10. Remain calm. Be kind.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
12. Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Great writers teach that plot should consist of three strands: external, internal, and relationships. The “external” is the events that happen to a character (or what the character does), the internal is the emotional/intellectual growth of the character, and “relationships” are about deepening bonds between characters.

Seems to me that’s pretty good advice for the plot of your life, too. Whether you are getting ready to go out on a date, attend a conference, pitch a VC, or head out on vacation–whatever you are doing–be mindful of the external, internal, and relationships. Seek out new experiences, seek to learn and develop, and create opportunities to meet new people or deepen relationships with those you already know.

Me: “That’s ridiculous. Did you tell them we don’t do that? Did you explained why they’ll get better results from our approach and why we charge $500,000 and why that’s actually the best investment they can make?”

My sales rep: “Well, I spoke to Joe in development and he said he could do it if we code it in Gobbledygook, license clip art from AcmeArt,  and tell them they have to do their own QA. Joe says he wants to do it.”

My eyes narrow, my blood pressure rises, here we go again…

As an entrepreneur, time and again I would have to fight that battle—er, educate—my customers and my employees as to what we sell, and why we don’t sell everything else.

In any business—but especially a small company—it’s critically important to stay focused on your specific solution, which you’ve crafted for a specific type of customer. That focus will grow your brand more quickly, get better sales results, lead to higher profits, and ultimately let you expand into new areas. But it takes discipline.

Too often, sales representatives want to say yes to any business, at any cost, to win a deal. Their motivation is usually psychological (closing a deal feels great; be low on the rack and stack board feels terrible) and because they want the commission and have no stake in whether what’s delivered will satisfy the customer in the long term. It’s easy to be an order taker, it’s harder to actually sell.

Too often, your employees will nobly want to take any business that comes in. They might think they’re being heroic, “I can hit that deadline…don’t you worry!” Other times it’s for job security, “We’d better take the next thing that comes in otherwise we’re doomed.” Still others want variety, “This will give me a chance to learn that 3D modeling program!”

Try as I might, I always found it very difficult to explain why we don’t just say yes to every opportunity. What I found worked best was the car analogy. I would say…

Listen, there is no car company out there that tries to get 100% market share; no car company expects to sell to every car buyer.

Many people like a Cadillac, but not everybody, and not everybody can afford one. A family of four making $60,000 per year probably doesn’t want a two-seat Porsche 911. A multimillionaire, 35-year old single woman is less likely to want a Toyota Sienna mini-van. BMW focuses on creating “the ultimate driving experience” and is looking for buyers who can afford that experience. If each car company tried to offer every possible car so they could sell to every car-buyer they would have a muddled brand, an unfocused sales effort, and be wildly unprofitable.

So, as hard as it is sometimes, think carefully about what you stand for—what product or service you think is best for a particular target audience—and then make those sales. Look for those kinds of prospects and make those kinds of sales.

When someone wants you to custom build something or to drop your price or to change your solution, push hard to convince them why your solution is actually a better choice, but if they just aren’t that type of buyer, kindly steer them to a company who is a better match.

• work in focused bursts
• create rituals
• check email at set points in the day

You can see or download a bigger version of the mindmap here.

Also, if you are interested in this topic, make sure to check out my prior posts: 14 Secrets to Expanding Time and Touch It Once.

3. Don’t make the world worse. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that “changing the world” also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.

4. Marry someone smarter than you are. You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. Note: Having a “spouse with benefits” is different from having a “friend with benefits.”

5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids’ sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it’s fun? We are systematically creating races out of things that ought to be a journey. We know that success isn’t about simply running faster than everyone else in some predetermined direction. Yet the message we are sending from birth is that if you don’t make the traveling soccer team or get into the “right” school, then you will somehow finish life with fewer points than everyone else. That’s not right. You’ll never read the following obituary: “Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place.”

6. Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives.

What advice would you give if you were giving a commencement speech?

Although the title shows that this book is targeted at learning professionals, it’s a great book for business leaders as well. In the last year I’ve seen BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, and even the staid Harvard Business Review discuss how gamification is impacting marketing, service and employee satisfaction. Excerpted from my foreword, here’s my take on it…

As I sit down to write this foreword, I reflect on how many games I encountered in the previous week.

I saw my youngest daughter playing Club Penguin on the Internet, my son playing Mario Super Slugger on the Wii, my oldest daughter playing Zoo Tycoon on a laptop, my sister-in-law tending her Farmville crops on Facebook, a friend playing Angry Birds on her iPhone, a Cancun cab driver explaining how he plays Call of Duty with others from around the globe, and the US Naval War College describing to me their war game to assess their ability to deal with new conflicts that might arise from the climate crisis.

All of this just in the last seven days!

And I hesitated to actually list all those games by name, knowing that it will instantly date this book, just as the games I grew up with—Pong, Space Invaders, Zork—instantly date me.

Yes, from casual games to serious games, from smart phones to consoles, from toddlers to retirees, games are everywhere. Although games themselves are of course not new—they’ve been played in the earliest civilizations—we have reached a confluence of technology and design where games have become ubiquitous, and seem to have a unique ability to engage when we most need it.

It is this power of modern, digital games to engage that have caused “gamification” to become somewhat in vogue. Just as many industries benefited from the principles of industrial design, and interface design, and experience design…smart industries and businesses will quickly learn and adapt the principles of game design (or game “mechanics”).

Karl Kapp has written the definitive guide to gamification which itself is accessible and engaging. He brings trends to life and illustrates the principles of gamification through numerous examples from real-world games. Whether he’s describing the Cisco “Binary Game”, the US Navy’s multi-player anti-piracy game, or even the importance of aesthetics in a simple chess piece, Karl captivates the reader and ensures comprehension page after page.

There is no doubt that “gamification” is an important and powerful weapon in the arsenal for employee engagement, sales and marketing, learning and behavior change of any kind. This book is a valuable guide for all who are trying to understand or adopt these important design principles.

Buy the book from Amazon.

Check out the Gamification Facebook page.

Did you notice where I’m writing this from, and more importantly, when? Five. Thirty-two. AM.  Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” blares from the speaker overhead.

Nope, I haven’t just finished an all-nighter at the tables (although I can hear some hoots and hollers from where I sit).

In an hour I’m speaking to 100 sales representatives from a major biotech company. Which, yes, means that they are starting their day at 6:30 in the morning. Forget the stereotype about business junkets…this company flies hundreds of people to a retreat, and they start their day at 6:30am.

Welcome to the new normal.

In fact, I just got an email from a wealthy CEO friend. He was up earlier than I was to drive to the airport to start a 10-day around the world trip packed with meetings. Of course he could take his money and just retire…sit at home doing nothing. But if he wants to be a CEO—if he is pursuing his passion through his work—he needs to set the alarm to an un-Godly hour and get cracking.

Welcome to the new normal.

Another friend who is currently running for Pennsylvania Attorney General leaves the house most mornings at 6:00am, drives hours to meetings in Harrisburg, or Pittsburgh, or some other place. Has meetings and speeches the last into the evening, makes 50-100 calls a day while in the car, and gets home around midnight.

Welcome to the new normal.

I just finished the Steve Jobs book by Isaacson and it’s littered with references to Jobs calling people up about work issues on Saturdays, Sundays, at 2:00am, whenever.

Hop over to Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, who is famous for taking red-eyes to Europe, checking into his hotel and then going for a 5 mile run, all before 7am in the morning.

Welcome to the new normal.

Go ahead and get mad for a few minutes. “It shouldn’t be that way. What happened to 9-to-5? We need work-life balance. Blah, blah, blah.”

But that’s like kicking a rock and getting mad that the rock is hard. “The rock shouldn’t be hard!” Maybe not, but it is. And it hurts less when you stop kicking it.

Success has always gone to those who have run faster than the average bear. (Or at least to those who could outrun their friends who are also being chased by the bear.) It’s just that the bear runs faster these days.

Globalization. Increased competition. Rapid change. Crappy economy. You know this already, right?

Welcome to the new normal.

What this means is, yes, if you want to be successful you probably need to work hard. And it also means that working smart is more important than ever before. Focus is more important than ever before. Strategy is more important than ever before. Relationships are more important than ever before. Health is more important than ever before.

Oh, and by the way, is this really “the new normal”?

How hard do most people around the world, work? How hard did the American settlers work, with all their belongings packed up on a wagon as they headed west? (Sure your cubicle might be a little boring, but at least you aren’t being swarmed by mosquitos while looking out for Apache Indians).

How many hours a day did Thomas Edison work? How many hours a day do US Marines work right now in Afghanistan (for very very low pay)?

My alarm went off at 4am today and groggily I did think, “Why did I agree to do this? Who needs it?”

And then I remember that it is a choice. And I choose to join the all the other productive successful people who are thriving in the “new normal.”

And I choose to be grateful.

How lucky am I to be able to see the sun come up over the Las Vegas strip? How lucky am I to be getting great food and drink all day? How lucky am I to have a job that enables me to share what I care about with so many people.

Here’s to hard work, and realizing how blessed we are to have it.

• Create massive emotional commitment among all your direct reports
• Turn your apathetic group into a high performance team exhibiting huge discretionary effort
• Be a leader who people fight to work with
• Win a “Best Place to Work” award within 12 months

Indeed, you can do all that and more, and it doesn’t take a lot of time or a big budget.

I should know…I’m a former Best Place to Work winner and I never had a big HR department, paid an outside consultant, or spent any money on tschotskes or other employee “rewards.”

The secret is in your behavior, and the in the actions of your down-line managers.  But before we go any further, what the heck is employee engagement anyway?

Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals.

When employees care—when they are engaged—
they use discretionary effort.

Companies with engaged workers have 6% higher net profit margins (Towers Perrin research) and five times higher shareholder returns (Kenexa research).

The ROI of engagement comes from what I call the Engagement-Profit Chain:

Engaged Employees lead to…

higher service, quality, and productivity, which leads to…

higher customer satisfaction, which leads to…

increased sales (from more repeat business and referrals), which leads to…

higher levels of profit, which leads to…

higher shareholder returns (i.e., stock price)

Based on my own experience as a serial entrepreneur leading “best place to work” teams, and on Kenexa’s research on over 10 million workers in 150 countries, there are three keys to driving engagement.

1) Growth and Development. Do your team members feel like they are learning new things and advancing their career?

2) Recognition & Appreciation. Do your team members feel appreciated and that their ideas count?

3) Trust & Confidence. Do your team members trust the leadership and have confidence in the organization’s future?

To remind myself of these three keys, I often repeat the mantra:

“GReaT leaders focus on Growth, Recognition and Trust.”

Lastly, you must create a rhythm of two-way communication. You need a schedule of consistent communication touch points that enable you to implement Growth, Recognition and Trust actions. In every organization I’ve led—from startups to non-profits—I use a consistent rhythm of daily quick huddles, weekly one-on-one’s and monthly full team meetings.

Since the release of my book We last year, the number one question I get from audiences is:

“How do we actually do this?
How do we create an engaged workforce on a daily basis?”

So I finally took the time to put it all down in writing. No fluff. Just a 60 page action guide for front-line managers and anyone that wants to immediately start increasing their employee engagement results.

If you would like dozens of ideas on how to specifically create a culture that fosters growth, recognition and trust, and if you’d like a detailed 8-week employee engagement implementation plan, I hope you’ll check out my new book

Employee Engagement 2.0: How to Motivate Your Team for High Performance (A “Real World Guide for Busy Managers)

Some early readers wrote:

• “…a game changer for any leader or any size company looking to improve their employee engagement.” –Heidi Braun
• “I read it a week ago and am already implementing it.” –Steve Tyson
• “ A simple, direct, actionable tool kit for any manager who cares about his or her team and the success of the organization.” –Susan Hengel
• “Kevin doesn’t waste time with theory or research he simply shares what has worked for him over the years and offers six simple steps any manager can implement to increase employee engagement at work.” –K. Byler

Click here to buy Employee Engagement 2.0 from Amazon.com.

“Oo-rah!” shouted the Marines in the audience. I was one of the few civilians, among a thousand service men and women, at the recent BEYA Stars and Stripes dinner hosted by the Marine Corps in Philadelphia. The dinner takes place each year in honor of black engineers. Every time an Air Force or Navy officer won an award, the airmen and sailors cheered. Whenever an Army officer won an award, the soldiers in the room roared. But when a Marine won an award, the other Marines in the audience boomed, “Oo-rah,” which has been the Marines’ battle cry since the Korean war.

That got me thinking that not enough companies use battle cries. After all, battle cries have been used for thousands of years to unite individuals into a collective identity and to emotionally charge them up before rushing forward to accomplish their mission.

Click here to read the full article, and to see the battle cries of companies like Coca-Cola, and how I “battle cried” my way through the first quarter of my new business.

I was walking quickly to my gate at McCarran airport in Las Vegas, oblivious to most of my surroundings, when I heard someone shout, “Hey, Allen Edmonds!” The older gentleman was looking straight at me, and he had a passing resemblance to Morgan Freeman.

Now my first name isn’t “Allen” and my last name isn’t “Edmonds”, so I almost replied, “No, I’m Kevin Kruse.” Then I realized he was talking about my shoes.

I was wearing Allen Edmonds loafers—black Maxfields to be exact.

The shoeshine guy, standing 50 feet away, had called out the brand of my shoes. I’ve walked through hundreds of airports, and frequently do get my shoes shined, but nobody has ever called out to me this way. Despite my plane’s looming departure time, I couldn’t help but hop onto the shoe shine stand and start up a conversation.

“Wow, you sure know your shoes—even Allen Edmonds,” I started.

“Of course I do. I lived in Wisconsin most of my life. Their factory was down the road. It’s the last great shoe company in America. More people should buy them. We used to always shop in the corner store to support our community, and we should buy stuff made from American companies.”

“I agree,” I said. “That’s part of why I get them. Great shoes and I love supporting an American manufacturer.” I saw from his name tag that his name was Ramone. “Do you know other brands, Ramone, or just Allen Edmonds?”

He smiled broadly, “I know them all…Cole Haan, Ferragamo, Johnston & Murphy, Florsheim. I have to know them all. Customers buy from people who are experts in what they do.”

“True that,” I agreed. “You know, in all the years of travel, I’ve never had a shoe shine guy yell out the name of my shoe before. You’re quite the salesman.”

“I learned from my Dad,” he replied. “He used to tell me, ‘A closed mouth doesn’t get fed.’ Not everybody responds, but I was selling stuff door to door when I was a kid. Knock on 100 doors and 95 will tell you no. But each ‘no’ gets you closer to the five who say ‘yes. It’s just a numbers game.”

“So how long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“I’ve been shining for 40 years. There’s no such thing as unemployment in this line of work. I’ve traveled around the world shining shoes–it’s a dying art. Young people don’t realize the power in having a personal service job. Nobody can outsource you. You can’t get someone in China to fix your plumbing, you know?”

Ramone’s hands moved fast—the cloth snapping and popping against my shoes.

He went on to describe his goals. “I’m saving up for the day when I’m going to go out on my own.”

“Going to buy your own shoeshine stand?,” I asked. “Rent space here in the airport?”

“No way. I’m not going to wait for customers to come to me. I’m going to go them. Think about it…people spend big money on their shoes, and they want to take care of them and look good, but nobody has any time. I’m going setup scheduled times to visit all the big companies in their offices. People will know they can find me in their lobby the same time each week and they’ll come down for a shine. I’m bringing the service to them.”

Wow, that’s actually a really good idea. I’d get my shoes shined a lot more often if it was that easy.

Ramone finished the job and my shoes didn’t just shine, they positively glowed.

I got up and paid Ramone for the shine, and tipped him well for the conversation, too. I rushed off to catch my plane with a little extra pep in my step and a smile on my face. It was great to be reminded of so many classic business success principles and great to see that American entrepreneurship is alive and well.

If you ever find yourself in Las Vegas McCarren airport, head over to the shoeshine stand next to Applebees. Tell Ramone a stranger named Allen Edmonds sent you.

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