In my 27 years in the business world, I’ve been fortunate enough to observe great (and not so great) leaders,  read many books about leadership, and gain many years of experience as a leader myself.

Through all this I’ve walked away with a ton of lessons about what makes a great leader, and I’ve enjoyed writing about many of them on this blog.

But 10 of them are my favorites - the lessons that have “stuck” with me and are now a part of my daily practice.  The ones that I believe are critical to excellence in leadership.

I present them in more detail below,  and I invite you to dig a little deeper and click through to my original post on each lesson.   After you do, let me know what you think, and if they resonate with you.  Let’s keep learning together!

Leaders must:

1. Practice “Full Spectrum” management, where high performers get the recognition they deserve, AND underperformers either get coached or let go.
2. Teach instead of just tell, by using repetition, consistency, plain English, common sense, and best of all, rolling up the sleeves and showing them how it’s done.
3. Be an Enabler, not a Disabler, because if we can’t entrust someone with proper responsibilities commensurate with the job description, we simply shouldn’t hire them.
4. Develop a Zen-like mantra of goals that permeate the minds of all your teammates, and watch great stuff happen.
5. Avoid inertia at all costs - or risk heading in the wrong direction.  Provide the needed acceleration to propel a business forward, always.
6. Trust the facts, for if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. As John Adams said, they are indeed “stubborn things”
7. Understand that words alone don’t make the leader- proper presentation, attitude, inflection, cadence and structure are musts to inspire to action.
8. Exhibit a blend of will and humility - we push hard knowing we don’t have all the answers, with a sense of decency, fairness and mindfulness.
9. Know “the secret of work” for their team - the passion, the cause, and the fun that results.
10. Be able to mix it up and do the unexpected, like break out in song at a staff meeting. Put in a memorable hook to go with your message.

Over last 27 years I’ve done a ton of ROI calculations determining if an investment of “X” in something (call it “Y“) could, or did,  produce an adequate return on that investment, based on predetermined thresholds.

So, if my threshold was 10%, and my X investment in Y returned 12%, I was either good to go or popping a champagne cork.

Let’s now consider “Social Media“.     Here’s my first problem - most people aren’t buying these platforms, that is, unless you are a venture capitalist that owns a piece of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  or anything else out there.

They are just USING them.  For free (or pretty close to it).

There goes the “X”, because  there’s no investment,  and the “Y”, because there is no something that has been bought - in one fell swoop.

And thus, the cringe.

What Then, Is A Better Value Evaluator?

I believe a far better way to characterize the potential value of using Social Media is to look at its Utility.

That is, its “fitness for some purpose or worth to some end” (thank you Webster’s dictionary).

Because when you get right down to it, as I’ve said in this space before, Social Media is just another way for humans to communicate.  Right up there with television, e-mail, texting, telephones (wireless and wireline), morse code, tin cans and good ‘ol snail mail.

What’s more, we have (at least) a million potential “ends” for communication - and if you pay close enough attention to your social media streams, you’ll see quite a lot of them.

Pick An End, Any End

For this exercise, let’s just pick one of them, one that I’m pretty familiar with -customer service.

To provide the kind of customer service I want (where the level of satisfaction is such that the lifetime value of those customers is maximized), I need to communicate well.  I need to be available to my customers to talk about their problems, discuss their bills, take payments,  sell services, or even talk about the weather.

I need forms of communication that work well towards that end - they need to have high Utility to me.

The Utility Test

Now let’s put Social Media to the customer service utility test.   On the positive side, it’s probably already being used by  a significant number of my customers, which combined with the relative ease of using the tool means that we have good accessibility.    Next, the negatives - this communication is being done “in public” (so good and bad is exposed),  with inherent limitations on the expansiveness of our discourse (i.e. to use Twitter as an example, I only have 140 characters).

The bottom line on Social Media’s Utility for customer service?   I believe it is poor-to-marginal- we can score some PR points for “being there” and showing empathy and courtesy, but when it comes to actually solving problems and answering questions in a meaningful way, we’ll end up “moving the conversation” to the traditional means anyway (most likely through a telephone, or a face-to-face discussion).

With this Utility determined, I can put it up against the Utility of all the other forms of customer service communications and allocate my resources accordingly (which means we won’t be shutting down our call center anytime soon).

This is just one example - I could also put Social Media through its Utility paces for me personally - and given the way I use it, I’d give it high marks for finding and forging friendships, promoting my blogging activities, learning more about the world I live in,  and indulging my love of  music and music trivia.

Now About That Screwdriver…..

What I hope is apparent here is that Utility carries with it a large doses of subjectivity and personal preference -things that are hard to measure on a pure objective scale (like an ROI), but really should be evaluated when deciding whether or not to use something.

Which is the beauty of assessing Utility for Social Media- it just boils down to, how well does it work as a means to your end?   And within that beauty lies the reason behind the ever-growing popularity of the medium - its seemingly endless number of uses for a corresponding number of ends.

It’s just another tool in the communications toolbox - and when was the last time you tried to calculate the ROI of a screwdriver?

Think Utility instead, and send the ROI back to your stock portfolio.

That “something” for me is work (aka what we do to make a living).

And nope, I haven’t quite figured it all out yet - which I gather isn’t unusual given that a Google search for “Secret of Work” produced no less than 181 Million entries.

Keep in mind I’m not talking about the classic cause and effect here - that is, the objective results of the labor, which is in most cases contributing to profit or loss.

What I’m searching for looks inward, to the effects of the work on ourselves, our psyches, and our overall feelings about life.

Yep, the deep stuff.

The problem is, we can get so tied up in the “day-to-day” nuts and bolts activities that are part of our daily working lives that we rarely can come up for enough rarefied air to ponder those larger issues.

Occasionally, however,  this higher level reflection can happen, and this past week was one of those times for me.

It was the confluence of several things - a funeral, a business trip, a management meeting, and a conference - that created a perfect learning environment.

And here’s what I learned, in very simple terms:

• Work must be done with passion
• The work must be for a cause greater than ourselves
• It ultimately must be fun, or it isn’t worth doing

What’s more, these 3 are truly a set - that is, you can’t just get to 2 out of 3 and call it good.

We need to get to the fun part, and that’s all too often neglected.  It’s an underrated piece of the puzzle.

For example, how often does someone ask  “Are you having fun?” at your workplace?

I suspect it’s a rarity,  since “fun” is all too often associated with “unproductive“.    Where the work itself can’t possibly be the cause - if someone is enjoying themselves too much, it must be because they spent more time playing video games than cranking out spreadsheets.

In other words, there’s a “fear of fun”.

But here’s where my lessons of the past week come in.

I see “fun” when the passion and the cause are making a difference - when a group of people are continually hitting targets and raising bars - in other words, to use a sports analogy, they are “winning”.

And who doesn’t enjoy being a winner? Think of the camaraderie, the smiles, the feelings of satisfaction, the pats on the back, and yes, the celebrations.

That’s FUN, all right.   Better than getting a high score on Tetris.

I realized that I don’t fear this - in fact, I do regularly ask my team if they are having fun.

Because I’m confident that the foundations of the “secrets of work”, the passion and the cause,  are already in place.

I just need to get them (and myself) across the goal line to the fun zone.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by James Michener

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both”

Yipee!

SOBCon09 is now history, and all the “digiloggers” have returned to the blogosphere, blending the analog with the digital and keeping the human ahead of the platform.

With this wind at our backs Liz Strauss and I have forged ahead with planning for SOBCon2010, and we’re pleased to report that we have a date and a place:

April 30- May 2, 2010

Summit Executive Center

Chicago, Illinois

That’s right, we’ll be gathering again at the same great facility where we’ve held the last two SOBCons-

We also have a theme for 2010 - “Where the Virtual Meets the Concrete“.

Or as I like to call it - “The Return of the Digiloggers, Part 2“

But there’s a catch.

We can only accommodate 150 people, max.

This is a gathering where size does matter, and we really want to keep the numbers at a level where we maximize the value of the learning and interactions.

So that’s why we’ve already opened up registration, so those who would like to get a head start on reserving a seat to this event can do so, right now.

Because I know you don’t want to miss it.

But we also know that plucking down cash so far in advance is a lot to ask.

Therefore, we are announcing the “Reserve Now, Pay Later” program. It’s a “three-fer”:

1. You get a seat early, and rest easy - your there
2. You get a deeply discounted rate - $300 off the “at the door” price
3. You only have to put down a $95 deposit now - and just pay the rest by December 31, 2009

Here’s what you need to do:

• Go to the SOBCon2010 Registration site
• Click “Enter Discount Code“
• Put in this code: paylater10, then click “apply discount“
• Buy your tickets at $95
• Pay the remaining $500 per ticket to us by 12/31/09 to keep your seats (I”ll let you know how to do that)

To take advantage of this program you need to act quickly - the $595 rate, and thus this program,  expires on July 3, 2009

Note once again: If you do not pay the remaining balance due by 12/31/09, you will forfeit the $95 deposit and lose your seat to the event.

While you’re visiting the registration site, also take a minute to look at the video highlights of SOBCon09 (by Ramsey Mohsen).

(Note: edited on 6/15 to get Ramsey’s name correct)

Liz and I hope you can join us at the 2010 event, and even better, we hope you can take advantage of this program.

We’re counting the days! Already.

Many thanks.

]]> http://www.terrystarbucker.com/2009/06/14/the-sobcon2010-reserve-now-pay-later-program/feed/ http://www.terrystarbucker.com/2009/06/07/you-are-what-you-earn-or-the-secret-of-life-part-iii/ http://www.terrystarbucker.com/2009/06/07/you-are-what-you-earn-or-the-secret-of-life-part-iii/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:51:26 +0000 Starbucker http://www.terrystarbucker.com/?p=830 Remember the old Smith Barney commercial with John Houseman?  In it he uttered one of those unforgettable lines that will forever be emblazoned in my memory: “Smith Barney - they make money the old-fashioned way - they eaaaaaarn it” I was thinking about that line a lot lately, and the significance of “earning”. The dictionary defines earn “to [...] Remember the old Smith Barney commercial with John Houseman?  In it he uttered one of those unforgettable lines that will forever be emblazoned in my memory:

“Smith Barney - they make money the old-fashioned way - they eaaaaaarn it”

I was thinking about that line a lot lately, and the significance of “earning”.

The dictionary defines earn “to receive as return for effort” and “to come to be duly worthy of“.

In other words, when we truly “earn”, it was undoubtedly the result of a great deal of time and energy devoted to something.

Most of the time we think of this as getting paid for our labor, but there are other things we earn that are far more compelling when it comes to our daily lives:

Like, among many other things,

• Respect
• Trust
• Love
• Admiration
• Friendship
• Knowledge
• Recognition
• Accomplishment
• Mastery (or Best in Field)
• Trophies (or Championships)
• Readers
• Customers
• Smiles

Think about how much more fulfilling some of these “earnings” are because you had to work so hard at them - when the effort itself made the difference.

The best way I can illustrate this is climbing a mountain.  The top of a peak is just another point of latitude and longitude on this big planet, but yet standing at that point is far more valuable to most than standing on a street corner.  Why?  Because of what it took to get there.

I found another example in the newspaper over the weekend - it was a teenager named Shanequa who had just graduated from high school and was the first person in her family to be accepted into college.

Here’s how she described the experience (as told to columnist Bob Herbert):

“It has been very difficult. I had my ups and downs. There were some bad days, but I fought through them. My teachers were always pushing me: ‘Shanequa, you can do it. Don’t give up.’  When the acceptance letters started coming in the mail, I was like, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I wish I could do it all over again just to get the letters in the mail that said, ‘Shanequa, congratulations, you have been accepted at this university.’ ”

What Shanequa earned was well worth the big effort.

And then there’s Major Dick Winters. It was the 65th anniversary of D-day yesterday, and Major Winters was one of those men who so bravely landed and fought on the Normandy beaches, among those famous “Band Of Brothers”.  I’ve written about him (and his book) on this blog, and I thought about him again today as I reflected on “earning”.

He came to mind because of all the things he’s earned in his lifetime, the one thing that was the most fulfilling to him was the respect of his fellow soldiers, achieved by a lot of hard work, sacrifice, courage, and selflessness.

And thus I stumbled yet again onto another “Secret of life” - Part III, actually.

My first and second discoveries melded their way into this:

“Never grow up, and never give up”.

To that, I now add this (with apologies to John Houseman):

“Achieve fulfillment the old-fashioned way - earn it”

Indeed, we are what we earn- and there really aren’t any short cuts.

It was declared as front page news (with a big smiley face) in this past Sunday’s New York Times.

The article made its case by citing the recent popularity of Judd Apatow’s movies and their “nice” characters like those played by Paul Rudd, and the humble, polite and amicable Kris Allen, the latest winner of “American Idol”.

And there’s a earnest little blog, “Operation Nice“, which is recruiting readers to take an “oath of niceness“.

All well and good - but the terminology needs to change - soon.

Mind you, I’m certainly not rebelling against the sentiment - what I’m objecting to is the word “nice” itself.

“Nice” is just too easy of a target for the cynics of the world and their poison arrows to muddle and belittle the message.

That’s because of the word’s confusing etymology - as I had noted on my previous attempt to discontinue its use a couple of years ago, even the dictionary itself couldn’t sort it all out:

“The semantic history of nice is quite varied, as the etymology and the obsolete senses attest, and any attempt to insist on only one of its present senses as correct will not be in keeping with the facts of actual usage. If any criticism is valid, it might be that the word is used too often and has become a cliché lacking the qualities of precision and intensity that are embodied in many of its synonyms.”

Because of this historical ambiguity, it’s almost too easy to label “nice” as too wishy-washy, or too “middle of the road”.

As the NY Times article pointed out, critics and pessimists have a field day coming up with their own definitions, like “predicable and vaguely reassuring, like easy listening radio and greeting card sunrises“.

Those of us who are inclined to believe in the better nature of humanity (myself included)  know that isn’t what we’re driving at here.

Humans who exhibit considerate behavior can also disagree. They can also be provocative.  They can also listen to AC/DC as well as The Carpenters. They can even poke fun at life’s absurdities (including some Hallmark cards).

It just boils down to this - it’s a much better world when we conduct ourselves with humility and grace, and treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated - with respect and civility.

And if the NY Times is correct, and we are indeed entering a new age where that kind of  behavior is in vogue and celebrated, then amen to that.

Let’s just not call it “niceness”, please.

We’re selling ourselves way too short.

How about, “the Age of Better Humans“?

Or  “Operation Better Humans“?

Because there is too much to gain from this seeming sea change than to let a vague four-letter word obfuscate a genuine desire of a growing number of people to live out their long held (and perhaps previously masked) belief that love is, and has always been, the answer.

Keep the sentiment, change the word.  And then the world.

you still need to pull yourself over it”

Picture you are a researcher, looking over one of the most comprehensive long-term studies of human behavior.  You spend 42 years with nearly 270 men, studying their lives.

While the human mystery generates 270 different stories that, on the surface, defy any explanation, one fundamental truth comes out - relationships are absolutely critical to happiness.

“Happiness is Love; full stop” you proclaim.

Now that you’ve made this discovery, you can now find your own happiness, and live blissfully for the rest of your life.

Well, not exactly.

It doesn’t always work that way.  It didn’t work for George Vaillant, the actual researcher who oversaw the famous “Grant Study” of those 270 people.

David Brooks recently wrote about Vaillant and the study in the NY Times, in response to a longer piece about it entitled “What Makes Us Happy” written by Joshua Wolf in the Atlantic.

I read these articles and could easily imagine the utter frustration that would result from having the proverbial firm grasp on the happiness bar, but not being able to pull yourself over it.

It’s a vivid and classic illustration of what Brooks calls “the complexity of human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute“.

On the other hand, there are millions of people, I’m sure, who “practice happiness” without the benefit of a scientific study to prove they are doing the right thing.  They jumped over the bar without even knowing there was a bar to jump in the first place.

This leads to a question that has been attempted to be answered by many, many philosophers, teachers, book writers, bloggers, and life coaches- can happiness be taught?

Perhaps what the study reveals is a better question- if good relationships are critical to happiness, isn’t it really the relationship skills themselves that hold the key, and thus we as a society should be paying much more attention to this in our children’s formidable learning years?

That seemed to be Vaillant’s problem - he had a rough childhood and developed a real fear of intimacy, a fear that not even the full compelling force of a preponderance of data could overcome.

There, alas, is the conflict for the ages - the battle between logic and emotion.

While that battle cannot always be won, we can at least arm ourselves with yet another strong piece of evidence that relationships really, really matter.

And for those of us that are able to actively cultivate them we can perhaps not only keep ourselves over the bar, but pull many more people over with us.

Because a happier world is a better world.

My first encounter with Zappos came a few years ago when my wife was looking for a particular pair of boots.

I had overheard a remark by a friend of mine that praised their “quick service and free shipping”, so I passed it along to her.

We haven’t bought a pair of shoes from anyone else since.

What has always set this particular retailer apart for me has been its attitude towards its customers- it’s apparent on their website, and with their people.   They just seemed to “get it” - making me happy was important to them.

And the free shipping (and on the return side, thank you) didn’t hurt either.

Of course, this appreciation as a customer led me to want to look a little harder at this company, as a businessperson and leader, to find their “secret sauce”.

I didn’t have to look any farther than the CEO’s office.

Zappos is led by someone who had the audacity to put the pursuit of happiness ahead of market share, inventory turnover, margins - heck, ahead of everything.  Happiness is Zappos “raison d’etre”.

That person is Tony Hsieh, and you can find an excellent piece on him in the latest edition of Inc., written by Max Chafkin.

Profiled as someone “widely regarded as one of the most innovative Internet marketers of all time“, he has created a very successful company in a seemingly unorthodox way - passionately and relentlessly  promoting a culture of “personal emotional connections“  with customers and with each other.

He had been through the ups and downs of high-tech entrepreneurship, and wanted to create a place that would be built to last, celebrating the life fulfilling potential of a happy workplace.

Hsieh was convinced that if he was successful in building the right culture, the profits would come - and come they have.

This culture construction had several key components:

• A collaborative summation and discussion of key company values, assembled into a book each new employee receives (this book has grown to 480 pages since each employee is asked to make a contribution)
• Pervasive transparency of all key goals & objectives, both short-term and long-term (i.e. you can’t miss them because they are plastered all over the building)
• Innovative and comprehensive training programs that emphasize knowledge of company history and values (they are famous for offering $2,000 for new trainees to leave the company)
• Emphasis on the social aspect of the workplace (they actually require their managers to spend 10 to 20 percent of their time “goofing off” with the people they mange)
• Confidence and trust in the employee’s ability to creatively,  intelligently, and efficiently please customers with a minimum of process and structure (for example, there is no scripting, and they do not track call times)

Hsieh intends to expand this formula beyond shoes - he’s mentioned hotels and banking as possibilities - and I suspect he’ll continue to find success, as long as his culture constructs continue to be applied.

That’s the big if - as other similar visionaries have learned (Howard Schultz of Starbucks is a great example), the outside pressure to put profits first can be very, very strong.

I hope he can resist that pressure, for he’s showing us a better way forward.- one that blends people, passions, purpose, and profit.

Unfortunately we didn’t get a lot of chances to talk at the recent SOBCon conference in Chicago, but when we did, it didn’t take long for us to dive into the philosophical pool.

Even when we weren’t trying.

It was a light discussion about singing and dancing and our feelings about participating in such activities.  I told Chris I didn’t have any problem cutting a rug or belting out a tune, even in a crowded room (or at a podium at a bloggers conference).   He, on the other hand, didn’t have the same inclinations- particularly in the dancing category.

He quickly added, with more than a tint of admiration, that for some in his family, dancing was “like breathing“.

Like breathing……………..”Kerplunk“

We were now once again in the pool.

After absorbing that comment I then replied - “So what’s like breathing to you?”

I leave that for Chris to answer in a blog post of his own, but what this little exchange did for me was set off alarms in my own head.

What’s like breathing to me?  What are those things that help define who I am but are yet rarely thought about, because they come so naturally?

Chances are, if I give this more than casual thought, I can gain some valuable clarity about the state of my life and what should be the focus of my work, my play, my relationships, and everything in between.

Problem is, just like we rarely stop to ponder something so essential to our lives as breathing, there is often no reason for us to stop and try to figure out the “why” in our lives.

Why do I love to sing? Why does music move me?  Why does making a friend smile with wry humor so meaningful? Why do I feel so good around mountains? Why can I make a speech or presentation without having a panic attack?  Why is my leadership instinct to guide and nurture, instead of control? Why is my intellectual “default” to pick something up and read it, even if it’s a cookbook sitting in the kitchen (and I don’t even like to cook)?  Why do I practice yoga at 5:30 in the morning, even though I know it’s 5:30 in the morning?

That’s all like breathing to me, but it may be a good time to dive into those “whys” a little deeper, since Chris already pushed me into the pool.  So that I will do - and we’ll see what happens.

Thanks Chris for the help, and I look forward to your take on this.

How about you?  What’s like breathing in your life?  And more importantly, why?

C’mon in, the water’s fine!

Terry, Liz & Phil Gerbyshak (1st SOBCon07 speaker)

I’ve just returned home from SOBCon09 in Chicago - a weekend gathering of 130 friends and social media practitioners with open minds, big hearts and tons of ideas.

This is the third time Liz Strauss and I have hosted this event, and just as the first two, I was totally blown away by the positive energy and “can-do” spirit of every single person who attended.

It was a perfect environment for valuable and focused  learning - and learn we did.

For nearly three days we had an ongoing conversation about the value of this medium as it relates to our business and personal goals and objectives - from seemingly a million different directions.

We talked about building trust, shaping personalities, defining personas, staying true to ourselves - and that was just the first two hours.

After we “gut-checked” ourselves with statements like  “free doesn’t pay the rent”, we dug deeper, looking at the nuts and bolts and the blocking and tackling of our businesses, from the “thing itself” to all the discipline, focus and preparation that is needed behind the scenes to fully flower our ideas and passions - and oh yes, make some money.

We realized that our “audience” can extend well beyond what we might have thought before, and we would be well served to make the changes necessary to make us accessable to all who would want to reach us.

And then, day two.

Are we hitting our social media targets?  Can we really market on Twitter? How valuable are those conversations?  Do we have our analog act together as well as our digital?  (Don’t you love panels!)

We learned that how we look and how we act as  “in the flesh” humans is more directly linked to our online sucess than we think.

We realized that warhorse axiom “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”  HAS to apply in our digital world too, and we got some pretty darn good tools to figure it out.

We tossed around (with great vigor) the notion that social media can and should only be a part, and oftentimes just a small part, of an integrated whole.    It’s not the be all and end all.    And beware of those  “experts” who say otherwise.

And finally, the person who stared this whole thing put it all into perspective, in the form of a simple little house.  One with a great big heart in the middle of it.

Then, the next day, we got a chance to apply what we learned for the benefit of our wonderful sponsors.

What SOBCon is creating, in my view, is a new breed of businessperson - the “Digilogger“.

A Digilogger is someone, or a company,  who can successfully synthesize what has and always will work on the “analog” side of the fence and blend it seamlessly with the digital tools we now have at our disposal.

Put even more simply, it’s making sure the platform is the extension of the human, instead of the other way around.

It’s old school merging with new school, into something meaningful, vital, vibrant and better still,  successful.

And that’s what the “S” in SOBCon is all about.

Yes, I’m a Digilogger.  And now, after three years, those ranks have grown by leaps and bounds.

Are you next? If you haven’t already, join the SOBCon family and find out.

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended, supported, and sponsored this event.

And Liz, I dedicate this post to you.

(Oh, and mark your calendars - SOBCON2010 is April 30- May 2)