I saw this poem last week and it really resonated with me – thought it may be of interest or value to you as well.  The original credit goes to here.

The strength of a man isn’t seen in the width of his shoulders.
It’s seen in the width of his arms that circle you.

The strength of a man isn’t in the deep tone of his voice.
It’s in the gentle words he whispers.

The strength of a man isn’t how many buddies he has.
It’s how good a buddy he is with his kids.

The strength of a man isn’t in how respected he is at work.
It’s in how respected he is at home.

The strength of a man isn’t in how hard he hits.
It’s in how tender he touches.

The strength of a man isn’t in the hair on his chest.
It’s in his Heart … that lies within his chest.

The strength of a man isn’t how many women he’s loved.
It’s in how he can be true to one woman.

The strength of a man isn’t in the weight he can lift.
It’s in the burdens he can carry.

Make it a great week,
David

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“Today, I had an amazing experience at….”

Discovering a tweet like the above referencing a review about you, your organization, or your brand is certainly better than:

“I’ll never visit / do business with / interact with / buy from….”

Can you think for a moment about why, as a society, we take pictures? Not just to post them on Facebook, impress people with our Instagram filter abilities, or to bribe people later when caught doing their “Elaine from Seinfeld” at the company holiday party! We take pictures to:

1. Capture the moment, and

2. Share with others.

Despite their financial woes, Kodak came up with an unforgettable phrase years ago: “Kodak Moments.” They wanted you to use Kodak films for Kodak cameras to capture that special moment and share with family and friends.

I’m a big believer that we’re all products of the advice we take. An old mentor drove into me years ago to create “Kodak Moments” in my business! Amazing experiences that not only my customers, partners, employees, teammates – in essence, my portfolio of relationships – wanted to capture, but also to share with everyone they knew as they raved about their experience with me, my team, or our organization.

I believe the 2012 version of that “Kodak Moment” are “Tweetable Moments.” Given the real-time nature of microblogging, customer experiences – good, bad, or ugly – are all fair game. And those who tweet their experiences don’t just tell a few friends; now they tell 1,000 friends and their friends’ networks, or more! Their raw comments are often passionate, unfiltered, and real-time. Do I agree with every rave or rant I see in my Twitter feed? No. Any comment may certainly be only one perspective on what really happened. Here is the thing – it doesn’t matter. What matters is how organizations choose to engage and influence both that individual as well as the broader market’s perception of the experience and what they choose to do differently because of the experience. Let’s take a closer look at each:

1. Do organizations know? Twitter is the 21st century version of an organization’s phone line. Can you imagine NOT picking up phone calls from customers? Yet, so many organizations still believe NOT responding to tweets, Quora questions, or Pinterest posts are OK. News Flash: when you don’t reply you’re sending two signals. The first one is that you don’t care. Last time I checked, not a positive attribute.

2. Do organizations listen? Do they really listen or do they dismiss your comments? Do they assume that you’re simply looking for something free, or are really concerned about the experience? Do they scan the entire social sphere for misinformation or competitively inaccurate information they can positively respond to, challenges they can resolve, or otherwise learn from every interaction – in short, listen louder?

3. Do organizations learn? What do they do with these Tweetable moments? Do they use them to celebrate “praiseworthy” efforts or train, develop, and coach the “blameworthy” ones? Do they alter their training & development or new hire on-boarding process, or their performance evaluation and compensation models? Do they create “self-service” websites because of the taxonomy clouds of the most search keywords? Do they celebrate consistency in the sentiments from the tweets in how individuals, teams, and the organizations behave when “corporate” isn’t policing, governing, or babysitting?

As I wrote in Return on Impact (ASAE, 2012), social is more than doing; social is about thinking and leading differently in the age of connected relationships. How are you ensuring your organization knows, listens, and learns? What examples of “Tweetable experiences” can you share?

[Originally posted in the Huffington Post on May 8, 2012.]

I found some notes from a consulting engagement from a couple of years ago where the CEO and I went off-site and we mapped out the organization’s top 10 priorities.  The CEO was replaced by the Board and last I checked, not only they haven’t replaced him (does anyone ever wonder the utility of or lifecycle of an “interim” role?) but they’ve also not implemented any of these, conceptually agreed, priorities to move the organization forward! 

Amazing how often, the board is simply dysfunctional and they continue to wonder why they’re losing market share, amazingly talented people, and of course revenue and margin opportunities.  See if you can argue with any of these recommendations:

1. 2012 Vision & Strategy – Make it clear, succinct, simple, and gain board support behind owning and devising a path to get there.
2. Business Development / Corporate Development – Topgrade the team and institutionalize best practices for consistent progress and outcomes.
3. Relocate the HQ – Make definitive plans to move from the current geographically undesirable location to a metro market more easily able to attract and retain top talent.
4. Redefine the Key Roles – From “command & control,” to “trust & track” move beyond functional silos to customer-centric capabilities.
5. Upgrade the Tech Infrastructure – Dramatically upgrade your CRM, integrate social & mobile strategies, and develop a roadmap based on customer lifecycles.
6. Institutionalize Best Practices – Develop a “playbook” of best practices across customer touch points for repeatable, predictable processes & outcomes.
7. Rebrand – The brand was (and is) tired, outdated, and not consistent with the equity they had built or the promise they were offering clients moving forward.
8. Elevate Your Distribution – Develop a more robust franchise model led by a senior franchise expert!  Hold franchisees accountable for performance, execution and results.
9. Client Lifecycle – Integrate the IMPACT Model into a much stronger understanding of the customer lifecycle, what they need as they grow and how you can continue to add value at every stage of their evolution.
10. Expand Your Market Reach via Strategic Alliances – Specific to 10 growth areas of the organization, identify, prioritize and invest in strategic alliance relationships with larger organizations who can help you expand and extend your market reach.

Again, not a single one has been implemented almost two years later.  This isn’t about me or my methodology (input).  It’s about big ideas being squashed by small minds.  It’s about mediocrity feeling threatened by meritocracy.

In my experience, organizations, which are in terrible shape, have usually been victimized by a series of poor decisions by the leadership or the board. As a senior leadership advisor, I’ve yet to find a reason to believe that they will suddenly see the error of their ways, hire me, and adhere closely to my advice. Instead, they have been protective, defensive, and miserly.

Conversely, clients I’ve worked with who were in great shape have been led by exceptional leaders who make intelligent choices, are willing to listen to new ideas, and have resources (human, time, capital) to invest.

The lesson learned from working with the client above is that the old school advise of “creating pain,” seldom works!  Instead, I focus on finding strong, tough minded, astute executives for whom I can create growth, innovation, and passion / excitement in their evolution.  They become exceptional clients and often, great friends.

If most of your business relationship challenges, setbacks, and defeats are caused by others, A) have you ever thought YOU may be the common denominator? And B) how can you focus on specific behavior modifications to prevent them in the future?

I’m coaching my clients that they need to “own” their relationship failures, because that’s how we all grow and conquer our fears. In our society it’s easy to blame others (“politics holds me back at work”) or creating imaginary resistance (“I get stage fright”); the challenge with constantly looking at external elements vs. introspection, is that it tends to deepen the hole you find yourself cowering in.

Exceptional leaders, successful entrepreneurs, and consistently outstanding performers take possession of their fears and obstacles, real or imagined, and overcome them. Facing your relationship-centric fears won’t kill you; not doing so will allow it to paralyze you and stop any personal and professional growth.

The results you’re after will come from modifying, enhancing, elevating, expanding, or sometime eliminating certain behaviors.  Relationship-centric behaviors are consistent and only when you make time for introspection, or coaching and mentoring from people you respect and trust, can you uncover your relationship-development strengths to build on and weaknesses to shore up through others.  Just remember, that we all have growing edges!

Make it a great week,
David

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012 | 12 PM Eastern (9 AM Pacific)
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Tuesday, May 29, 2012 | 12 PM Eastern (9 AM Pacific)
Deploy Social Analytics to Listen Louder and Tell a Compelling Story
With Guest: Wes Trochlil

Humans are in love with patterns and habit, but we abhor boredom. The idea of listening to the same presentation hundreds of times might sound like Dante’s lesser-known tenth circle of Hell, but I have learned amazing lessons from repeated exposure to the same message and I think we should all look deeply into those repeat experiences in our lives to absorb as much learning as possible from them. Allow me to provide you with an example.

When I first heard David speak about Relationship Economics over four years ago, I had no idea I would end up working with the Nour Group. Just like I had no idea I would end up hearing the Relationship Economics presentation dozens more times after that. David is a dynamic speaker (believe it or not, he doesn’t pay me to say that) and I was impressed with his presentation and told him so at a reception later that evening.

“Thanks so much and how nice to meet you – thanks for all the great tweets you sent out from my presentation,” David said.

[What?!? Not only had he reviewed the Twitter feed for his presentation, but he remembered my name from that and recognized me when we met. I haven't had an experience with any other speaker like that before or since. I wish all speakers did consider their audiences' immediate feedback that expertly.]

After joining the Nour Group as senior advisor, I have realized that every time I watch the Relationship Economics presentation (or the Return on Impact presentation, workshops, etc., for that matter) I learn something new. Part of the reason for this is because each presentation has 20%+ fresh content for each specific audience, but mostly I have realized that on any given day I will focus in on different parts of the presentation to apply to my work.

How often do we dismiss presentations immediately after listening to them? How often do we put down the magazine article without further reflection? What would happen if we allowed ourselves more time to contemplate and fully digest the information we choose to consume?

This morning I am listening to David present Relationship Economics again to a group of folks in the reinsurance realm. Each time, I learn from the off-the-cuff comments David makes along with the standard slides. Today, this is what has captured my imagination:

• “Your clients are looking for value add, but not just value-add; value received, value perceived, and value applied.”
• “Unless you excite or disturb, you’re never going to get people off the dime.”
• “zoominfo is just one of the many social platforms that you can use in looking deeply into your relationship investments.”
• “Trust and track versus command and control.”
• “Knowledge management is not a system; it is a process.”

You’ve heard the old adage that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade?  Well, the Nour Family is going through a bit of rough patch, so I decided to take my 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son to a keynote speech in Chicago with me this past weekend.  I got them on stage, the client was great, the audience had fun and we ended up having a great time together in the windy city together.  So, it all worked out OK.  While getting ready one morning, my son said something that resonated with me.  It’s a line from a movie he had heard:

“You Shower– You Shave – You Show Up – those are the three Shushes!”  I thought I’d apply them to professional speaking since a) it’s an incredibly easy business for anyone to get into – yes, unfortunately including many hacks who have no business being on any stage, and b) it’s a difficult business to sustain and profitably grow, particularly with many undereducated buyers not realizing that it is in fact a profession!

1. You Shower!  Beyond hygienic cleaning up, before any keynote you also have to mentally clean up!  That’s right – get your head on straight.  How can you take your educational foundation, professional pedigree, and subject matter expertise and integrate their vernacular, nomenclature, key market challenges and opportunities that are both interesting and relevant to them?  Keep in mind that they don’t want to know everything you know; they simply want to know that which will help them grow, personally and professionally.  By the way, the smiley sheets don’t matter.  The standing ovation doesn’t matter. The only outcome that matters is your buyer’s desired strategic outcome?  Is the audience better off because you showered – physically and mentally?

2. You Shave!  That’s right, shave out the cheesy jokes, the pontification, the same crap you’ve been dishing out since 1972!  Unless your thinking and approach remains fresh, how long will you remain relevant?  Trim the excess slides, the excess comments, the excess models just to prove how smart you are!  Instead aim to make the complex simple.  It’s amazing how often we need to be reminded than we need to be taught.  And by the way, common sense isn’t common practiced.  What are you reading, how are you growing, how are you constantly adding unique intellectual property to elevate yourself above the market noise!  And make no mistake about it: there is a lot of “noise” in the speaking profession!  Clean cut is more than a shave; it’s also the manner in which you articulate your unique insights and independent perspectives.

3. You Show Up!  I don’t care if the audience is 5 people or 5,000 people.  You show up – early is on time and on time is late!  You show up, prepared and your deliver – every time!  You do as much due diligence for a group of students as you do a senior leadership or board retreat.  You show up and you swing for the fence: with your opening and closing remarks and everything in between.  Thanking “the academy,” or your parents for having you is a waste of their time and it dilutes your credibility.  Grab them by the collar with what you say and how you deliver it to scream: “this material is important to listen to and, I’m exactly the guy to deliver it.”  Your opening comments will set the tone for the speech.  Your closing comments will set the tone of how you’ll be remembered and repeated!

The best client executives or meeting professionals I’ve worked with in the past eight years of delivering professional speaking engagements, also tend to think about their meetings differently.  Here are a just three tips:

1. What’s your ROO?  Respectful of the meeting profession, meetings are a means to an end.  There has to be some kind of a strategic desired outcome!  What do you want the audience to think, feel, or do differently because of this meeting?  And how will you measure your return on objectives (ROO) from this meeting?  It can’t be a stale survey of the food, the temperature in the room, or the trinkets you passed out.

2. Lead with the content!  I’m often amazed that many organizations or planners secure the venue years in advance, coordinate the catering, schedule the entertainment and the extracurricular activities and somehow the content is thought of last!  Last time I checked people fundamentally gather for two reasons: content and community.  What new or compelling content can I get exposed to, and what new relationships can build or existing ones can I nurture?

3. The agenda is like fish – the fresher it is, the better!  I’ve been a part of some great agendas, and I’ve unfortunately seen some really bad ones.  One client offered yoga classes and walks around the property lake early every morning.  I loved fresh meals (read: kill the starch) at one client meeting last year.  Other clients have mixed in “get up and move activities” in between speech, after speech.  Others have met in the mornings with outdoor activities after lunch.  The ones who encourage spouse or significant others to participate are particularly relationship-centric; they feel involved, engaged, and build their own relationships which make the work part easier.  One client took all the attendees to a nearby theme park.  Another, brought painting classes, teamwork by writing and performing music, or a Lego building workshop to the session.  Don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t all have to be fun and games, but who wants to sit there and be talked at for three days in a row?!?  Inspire, challenge, provoke, educate and entertain them.  But keep it simple, fresh, and moving!

What have you found to be great attributes of both professional speakers and amazing meeting planners?

True story. I recently stayed in the Fairmont Chicago on a business trip and had an amazing experience all courtesy of Tim “The Magic Man” at the concierge desk.

My colleague had brought his kids with him for a chance to grab some family time with them after delivering his keynote and breakout sessions. We travel a lot and his family is fabulous and truly fun, so we decided to spend some time together exploring Chicago. However, as anyone with kids knows, sometimes it is the simple things that appeal most to children. In this case, they were in search of water…the pool to be exact…which the Fairmont didn’t offer.

Enter Tim.

Tim greeted us with a smile when we approached the concierge desk. Upon hearing of our quest, he assured us he could call to the neighboring Swissotel Chicago and allow us the ability to use their swimming pool without any problems. Tim then asked is there was anything he could do in addition to solving that problem. He listened (never losing his smile or complete attention to what we were saying) and answered our questions. We visited the pool that day and my colleague’s kids were ecstatic. The quest for the pool had been achieved. The kids started calling him the “Magic Man” and stopped by to say thank you on the way back through the lobby to go back upstairs.

But it didn’t end there.

Tim then had a surprise delivered to their room – a cheese and fruit tray with a personally written card thanking them for their stay and reiterating his pleasure at being able to help with their questions. The unexpected delivery was a surprise and delighted the kids – especially when they saw he signed it, “Tim – The Magic Man.”

When we ended up locked out of an attached hallway to the hotel, we called the main hotel and had to talk with two people who spent time telling us they had to check and weren’t sure about letting us in through the closed doors. We called and asked to be connected to the concierge desk. Soon Tim, our official savior for the trip, came toward us down the hallway to let us back in, smile still on his face.

Why aren’t there more people like Tim?

Tim met and exceeded our expectations over and over again. In the meantime, two other opportunities were completely lost on other staff members who were so lost in the routine of what they usually did, the common sense of how to provide exceptional service were lost on them.

I told Tim I was going to post about my awesome experience with him on Yelp. He thanked me profusely and I suddenly felt powerful. I had a way to help this person who had done such an amazing job. Certainly Yelp (and sites like it) have changed the way organizations receive feedback from customers. But more than that, Yelp has changed the way organizations should do business. With more and more people making buying decisions based on what their friends say about a business, can your organization afford not to care about exceptional service or even tracking what customers say about you online?

Here are four ways you can provide a “Magic Man”-like experience to your own clients and members:

1.    Listen with a mindset of finding a solution.

Think beyond your title and job description, no matter your industry. People love to share stories of the dumb things people do in the face of common sense. For the two people we reached when trying to get past the locked glass door in the attached hallway, they had a hard time thinking, “Okay, this is a member of our Presidential Club (translation: he travel and stays with us a lot = spends money with us often) and he has two wet kids in a hallway in between hotels…we need to walk down and open the doors and keep his business!” Tim understood immediately.

2.    Smile.

Nothing kills a bad mood faster than seeing a smiling, understanding face. It is hard to overestimate how this can set the tone for all future interactions.

3.    Don’t be trapped by your job description.

Maybe your job description doesn’t mention leaving your desk to walk down a hallway and let guests in…but as a business person with the bigger picture in mind, would you rather make them wait? Your job description is no excuse not to solve immediate problems within your power to change.

4.    Empower employees to make decisions and problem solve for themselves.

If you are the owner or manager over employees, please do everyone a favor and lead by example and reward employees who go above and beyond their traditional roles. Exceptional service will not go unappreciated by customers for long.

There doesn’t need to be only one Tim “The Magic Man” …what would happen if there were a team of them working for your organization?

Read more about “Yelpification” in Return On Impact

Check out  this post written by Robert McGarvey for Internet Revolution featuring David Nour.

Today started out with a late shuttle driver and an early morning flight to connect to a speaking engagement in Lincoln, Nebraska. As the driver sped along with fuming passengers grumbling about being late to their planes, I tried to not get car sick and smiled at the thought of meeting some fun people and friends at the meeting. The whole experience was testing my relationship building skills to be sure.

So much depends on one’s countenance at times of stress. Admittedly, sometimes I do better than others. Today put all that to the test so that I had to marvel when someone remarked on my good mood. What caused it? I had no reason to laugh and be happy, but I was fine in the midst of chaos. I tried to review the elements of the day’s events.

When I landed at my connecting city (Detroit), there was an announcement that our plane was delayed. An hour later we discovered our flight was canceled and the only way I’d make it to my destination was after the event I was keynoting was almost over – just in time to sleep and catch another early flight to Chicago.

Before long I was on the phone with the organizers trying to figure out how to come in for the meeting via Skype while at the same time trying to make sure that my luggage would make it to the new destination – Chicago – the site of the next meeting.

In the midst of it all, everyone around me – the organizers and travel agents – all kept their senses of humor and a “can-do” attitude which helped to ease the pain of the inconvenience. It made me wonder how we can better do that for our customers and members.

I would submit we may help ease others’ discomfort during challenges in the following three ways:

1. Sympathetic listening.

Not just hearing, but truly listening to the issue as the customer or member explains, avoiding all immediate judgement. Coming from a perspective of believing the other person has value and is an intelligent individual, there should be no reason not to let him or her explain the situation and have understanding in return. Better listening would resolve 90% of the interpersonal problems people have.

2. Orientation toward finding a solution.

Take ownership of trying to solve that person’s problem if you can. If you aren’t the right person, escort him or her to the person who can help solve it. Don’t just provide a phone number and email address. Make it your priority to try to solve that problem.

3. Humor or good will. 

When all else fails, a quick smile or a goofy laugh can do wonders. The kindness of strangers can do amazing things to lift the spirit when everything else is going wrong. If your customer or member seems to be having a bad day, offer them a little kindness. Even a little bit of your positive attitude goes a long way.

Finally, always learn from your challenges. As I was recounting the experience on the phone to my mentor, we reviewed all of the things I could learn from this experience, such as always fly in the day or night before an event and try to always insist on direct flights. You should never stop learning and reviewing how you can improve your situation for the future.

How will you make your client or member’s problems disappear or seem easier to handle? Do you meet challenges with a “can do” attitude?

I’m re-reading a really interesting book, Business Model Generation, in which, the first of five sections describe the business model canvas – a tool for describing, analyzing and designing business models.  The authors define a business model and provide nine building blocks which form the basis for a tool – resembling a painter’s canvas which allow you to paint pictures of new or existing business models.

So I started wondering about a strategic relationship canvas?  A framework about the manner in which you do or perhaps need to, identify, build, nurture, sustain and capitalize your strategic relationships?  Not a theoretical exercise, but a tool with a fundamental purpose to foster understanding, discussion, creativity and analysis – of your single biggest off-balance sheet asset: your portfolio of relationships.  What would that look like?  What would you do with it and how can it help you see through a different lens – that your educational foundation and professional degree are the paint and the brush, but the real art (and science) of getting to a finished product will only come to fruition through the relationships you choose to invest in!

Whether for your personal growth, your team’s performance within a project or a strategic account, or your organization’s quality, diverse, and value-centric relationships, I can’t help but to wonder how many people are flying blindly!  Think about it a second – where do your most valuable relationships come from (what worked if you initiated any of those)?  Where and how have you captured some of the best practice in your past when you’ve created compelling second interactions?  How did you amplify your imagination in nurturing your most valuable relationships to a quantifiable stage?  What type of analysis are you willing and able to do to understand how to really sustain and capitalize on some of your relationships and not others?  If you struggled to answer any of these, how will you ever improve, grow personally or professionally, and paint the canvas others will admire?

In the coming months we’re launching “Nour Advantage,” and the “Nour 9;” evolutionary ways to gather and foster understanding, discussion, creativity and analysis of strategic relationships.  Stay tuned for more info and I hope you’ll make time to joins our canvas and paint a unique picture of your current and future state.