You’re goals are best served by looking through your windshield than your rear view mirror.

No One is Immune

Life has a way of occasionally serving up catastrophes. It happens in both our personal and professional lives.   We all eventually lose a loved one, a job, a partner, key customer or asset. Since we’re human, catastrophic events can easily become all-consuming and potentially paralyzing.  When there’s something going on, you’re impaired and thereby less talented.  You can not fully regain your faculties until you’re past it.  As emotional beings, we need to process these things. The emotional healing process that needs to run its course. If you’re aware of this need, you can hasten the process.

Words of Wisdom From Da Coach

In 1992, the Chicago Bears fired Mike Ditka, their iconic head football coach. “Da Coach’s” fanatic fans were distraught. As for Mike Ditka, he lost the dream job that he worked tirelessly to gain and maintain. Yet in the face of this life altering event, Coach Ditka shared four words of wisdom as he addressed the media: “This too, shall pass.” By “this”, he refereed to the emotions inherent with setback events like anger, bitterness, despair, vindictiveness, frustration, disappointment, regret, etc..

The Rear View Mirror Metaphor

With those four words, “Da Coach” was telling both himself and his disappointed fans that if you view this event in the rear view mirror, it might loom large now. But in time, the image will get smaller. And for everyone to move on they must make a conscious effort to allow the image of adversity to shrink over time.

We all have different time tables for overcoming emotions connected to our catastrophes. Imaging the image of the event in the rear view mirror shrinking over time can really help. Perhaps the image never fully disappears. But it helps to be aware that as time passes we need to move on. To paraphrase Ditka, “This too must pass”. We eventually need to free ourselves from the emotions that potentially paralyze us from moving forward. The best way to shrink that rear view image is to change your focus from the mirror by asking…

What’s in Your Windshield?

Navigating life’s challenges IS like driving a car. You need to devote most of your attention looking through your windshield to safely reach your destination. If you’re distracted by long lingering looks in the rear view mirror, you can set yourself up for more adversity.

Ask Yourself…

• Are there losses or setback that you’ve allowed to linger in your rear view mirror?
• Have you allowed yourself to become a distracted driver? What purpose has that served?
• If you had more focus on the road ahead, what more could you achieve?
• Do you have written goals for the most important things on your horizon?

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Todd Bermont of The Careers College for enhancing my appreciation for the importance of the windshield view.

You’ve likely experienced “The Ivory Tower Approach” to goal communication.  This is where management hands down your new goals with little or no discussion.  The expectations are dictated with no questions asked.  The underling assumption is that since the goals originate from a position of authority, they will be instantly, automatically and whole heartedly embraced by all followers.  Let’s take a closer look at this assumption.

Goal Setting as A Process

Imagine you are a commercial airline pilot responsible for the safe delivery of a plane full of passengers to their scheduled destination.

The successful outcome of your flight depends on precise completion of a series of proven, sequential processes. What happens when you alter a sequence? What if you changed the process and retracted the landing gear while the plane was still on the ground? You would need a very good reason to jeopardize the outcome of the flight while dropping a $45 million aircraft and 200 paying passengers to the pavement. Why do I offer this seemingly silly example? It’s because I routinely see businesses shortcut or abandon their critical processes in similar fashion. And then they wonder: What happened?

SMARTer Leadership

This blog’s name, SMART Leadership, is derived from an acronym for the eight elements of the goal setting process that we use with our clients, as outlined on the right.

Similar to preparing for airliner take-off, short-cutting any single element of the goal setting process will also jeopardize your outcome. An often overlooked element is “attainable“. Have you ever worked in an organization where the goals were viewed as unattainable? What happened to your commitment? What was the level of frustration? What happened to achievement? Yet how often do we see unrealistic goals handed down from above without concern for buy-in?

So, how should we apply what we know about process and attainability to improve execution?

• Effective goal setting for your critical initiatives should be treated as a process. That is, a sequence of steps or events that produce a desired outcome. Ignoring any of the eight elements above will compromise your likelihood for achievement.
• To support the critical element of attainability, consider the words of Henry Ford: “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.”

As a leader, ask yourself: How strong are your people’s beliefs in your desired outcomes? Who is responsible for instilling those beliefs? Neglecting to assure goal attainability can have the same grounding effect as retracting your landing gear prior to take-off.

When achievement wanes from lack of commitment, we can lose faith in the process and possibly dismiss goal setting as an unrealistic practice. We then throw the baby out with the bath water. How often do we then start some new initiative without understanding what went wrong with the old one?

Attainability is just one of eight critical elements for your pre-flight checklist for achievement. What short-cuts might you be taking any with the other seven criteria? How are your outcomes being affected?  Are you ever guilty of retracting your landing gear before take-off by cheating the goal setting process?

Are You a Dictator or a Collaborator?

Formal leadership is about getting results through others. Collaboration and understanding motivation are critical leadership skills.  As a leader, isn’t it your responsibility to assure that your followers buy-in to your goals?

How would your followers rate you when it comes to:

• Understanding Motivation?
• Setting and Planning the Achievement of SMART Goals?
• Collaboration?
• Inspiring Commitment?

If you could improve these critical leadership skills, how much more might your team achieve?

As a leader, organizational goal setting is something you do with your team, not to them.

Related Articles:

• Hypothetical Hockey: The Goal-less Game Scenario
• This post was written as a rebuttal to a Harvard Business Review article titled The Folly of Stretch Goals,
• Delegation and the Power of “Why”  Tips for better buy-in

Escalating Overload

Living in the information age, the amount of issues competing for our attention continues to  escalate. Remember the times when outsiders could only reach us through phone, mail or knocking on our door?  The fax machine came along and generated new incoming messages with a heightened level of urgency.  Electronic messages have all but obsoleted fax machines and intensified the volume of seemingly urgent messages.

Falling Through The Cracks?

New opportunities are constantly arriving by email, phone, snail mail and maybe even by fax.  How do you recognize them and prevent them from falling through the cracks?  You need to apply both skills and knowledge to gain systems that efficiently:

1. Analyze
2. Prioritize

Prescription and Cure

Hospital Emergency Rooms have a time tested system for analyzing and prioritizing.  It’s called triage.  It dates back to World War I when French medics created a system for prioritizing treatment of battlefield causalities.  Triage has evolved it is still utilized in ER’s today. When the demands on ER’s resources exceed their ability to immediately treat all cases presented, the triage system sorts cases into three categories. Heart attacks prevail over hangnails.

Time Management Triage

Time management experts prescribe categorizing your activities into three simple categories:

1. Must Do
2. Should Do
3. When I Have Time

When applying this system, be aware that items in category #3 often go unattended.  They fall through the cracks by design like a hang nail patient in an over burdened Emergency Room.

Business “Opportunity Triage“

With business opportunities it is equally important to recognize the difference between heart attacks and hang nails.  As you define the categories for your Opportunity Triage system, you analysis needs to analyze two factors:

1. – Value and  Return on Investment

Quantify the opportunity’s potential in terms of revenue growth, or cost savings.

2. – Urgency

Estimate how long can the opportunity be ignored before it falls through the cracks

With this analysis, your opportunity triage criteria should resemble that of the World War I French medics. It might look something like this:

1. Items with a potential financial impact greater than $ X that need immediate action
2. Items with that same financial impact that need action in the next 30 days
3. Those opportunities of lesser impact and less urgency

________________________________

How Crowded is Your Opportunity Waiting Room?

Do you have an effective system to analyze and rank your opportunities? If you don’t, some of them are likely to go untreated and may suffer an untimely death.  A valuable opportunity is a terrible thing to waste.

Triage Trivia

The triage concept has helped hospital effectiveness for nearly 100 years. Effective prioritization is an essential leadership skill. It is all too often missing in running our businesses and our lives. I created the phrase, “Opportunity Triage” in 2002 while working with a client organization where the staff perceived every incoming customer as a heart attack. As they embraced triage and learned to analyze and prioritize, they were able to both regain their sanity and improve their resource management.

Whenever I’ve applied the phrase “Opportunity Triage” to other situations, I’ve found it’s really “sticky”.  So fittingly, I’m compelled share with my subscribers.  On a selfish note, I’m claiming credit for creating the concept as I’ve notice others have borrowed it as their own. While we all borrow and use the ideas of others, it’s nice when we give credit to the originators.

Related Posts:

Three Simple Steps To Tackling Tough Tasks

Time is Money: What does that really mean?

I can sympathize with the struggles of the elderly. My 86-year-old mom is routinely challenged by her growing physical limitations. Her handicapped parking pass and cane offer some help.  But is this really about the elderly?

Who among us hasn’t accidentally walked into a glass door or window or a screen door?  Was your first inclination to sue the owner of the door? When should you take responsibility for your own mistakes?

McDonald’s Coffee Spill Deja Vu

Doesn’t this Apple store door story remind you of the so-called victim who sued McDonald’s after spilling hot coffee in her lap?  Isn’t the Apple case just another chapter of an irresponsible person attempting to cash in by blaming others for their own clumsiness?

Call me a cold attorney hater, if you want.  I don’t believe that a person’s clumsiness should be their lottery ticket.  No matter how many law suits are filed by victims of their own mistakes, the world will never be fool-proof.  At some point, fools should be held accountable and not be rewarded by blaming others for their blunders.

Self Leadership Lesson

Do you know people who regularly blame others when they cause things to go wrong for themselves?  Do you want them on your team?  As your boss?  Your ability to lead others begins with your ability to lead yourself.  That start with taking responsibility for yourself.

Related Links and Articles

• Are You Playing The Blame Game?
• People of All Ages Crashing Into Glass on YouTube
• Grandma Sues Apple After Walking Into Apple Store’ Glass Door

“Good Is the Enemy of Great”

That quote is the first sentence of the opening paragraph of the business best seller, Good To Great by Jim Collins. Mr. Collins goes on to explain how the complacency mindset that comes from with being very good is an obstacle to pursuing greatness. The noble concept of pursuing greatness has inspired leaders, followers and book sales. Does that mean we should pursue greatness in every thing we do?

Can GREAT Be The Enemy of GOOD?

We can agree that the biggest obstacle to becoming great is the natural tendency to settle for being “good enough”. The Good To Great companies in the book succeeded by being better than their competition. However their greatness was selective. >> more on the Strategic Pursuit of Greatness >>

Pursuing greatness in every aspect of every activity is guaranteed to set you up for failure and/or burnout. To avoid that potential for failure, you need a clear idea of when to Leave Well Enough Alone.

3 Times to “Leave Well Enough Alone”

When you recognize these pointless pursuits of perfection, it’s a signal to stop:

• Are you trying to be great with all things to all people?
• Are you trying to be great at all things to some people?
• Are you proceeding without specific, measurable goals that clearly provide a compass for your pursuit of greatness?

If you do have a compass for greatness, you should then approach each activity or opportunity by asking…

• Is this activity critical to my pursuit of my goals for greatness
• If not, what is par or this task or activity?
• What do I need to do to avoid doing sub-par work?

If your activity doesn’t qualify as Great Mission Critical and your work is at-par, it’s time leave well enough alone.

To apply that thought, it’s time for me to end this briefing.

Related Articles and References

• For strategic thinking purposes, I recommend the book: The Myth of Excellence: Why Great Companies Never Try to Be the Best at Everything
• My Original Article: Good is the Enemy of Great
• Strategic Pursuit of Greatness – Step 1
• From Good To Great To Gone

Mere experience with using a voice, a pen or a keyboard, doesn’t qualify you as a good communicator.

This is far from being breaking news. The 1967 Academy Award winning film, Cool Hand Luke provided us with a classic line that’s still used today to describe our most problematic skill deficiency.

“What we’ve got here is (a) failure to communicate”

Here’s a 40 second video replay.

As humans, we spend over 70% of our waking hours communicating in some form: writing, reading, speaking, listening. So could it fair to conclude that over 85% of dysfunction and conflict relates to communication failures? Whatever the number, we can all gain by communicating more effectively.

So with the help of some really articulate sources, I’ve compiled seven ways to help you reduce the amount of dysfunctional communication both professionally and personally.

7 Secrets to Effective Communication

1. Start With Why

Because humans are emotional beings, our actions are most often driven by our feelings. Author Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why, explains both why it’s important to share our beliefs up front and how effective leaders have done it generate spectacular success. Inside-Out Communication can be game changing for those who develop their skills to apply The Golden Circle. For more, link to my lessons in Inside-Out Communication.

2. - “First Seek to Understand Then to be Understood”

This is Habit #5 in Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People via St. Francis of Assisi. Seeking to understand requires:

1. Asking with genuine interest
2. Listening with empathy

If you truly want to be perceived as an interesting person, you need to start by being interested. This is both a mindset and a skill set.

3. – Less Telling and More Asking

Influencing via asking is far from the next new, new thing. In ancient Greece, Socrates challenged his students with thoughtful, strategic use of questions. More recently, Peter Drucker tells us…

“The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future will know how to ask.”

When your questions enable others to discover the value of your ideas for themselves, are they more or less likely to take action? How do you respond when you’ve pondered to the point of agreement?

4. – Become An Accountable Communicator

For communication to achieve its purpose you need to play two different roles:

1. The Sender (speaker or author)
2. The Receiver (listener or reader or viewer)
   

When communication fails, how often do you blame the other person for their failure in one of these two roles? What if you stopped playing The Blame Game and instead took full responsibility in each of your roles as sender and receiver? What if you established an environment where everyone in your circle was equally responsible? What would happen to the amount of dysfunctional communication in your world?

5. – Become A More Active and Empathetic Listener

There’s a reason we have two ears and only one mouth. But how many of us act accordingly? Effective influencing requires achieving a high level of rapport. In the words of John C. Maxwell: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Are you trying so hard to be interesting that you fail to be genuinely interested? Here’s a quick litmus test challenge for you. Ask your spouse, significant other, best customer, or someone else you who knows you well:

“Where do I rank among the caring listeners that you know?”

Be prepared for a humbling response.

6. Self Awareness

Are you an introvert? An extrovert? Are you a highly detail orientated perfectionist? Or do you prefer to discuss things at a higher level and avoid minutia? As you improve your self-awareness, you can more effectively moderate our style to fit that of your audience.

7 – Audience Awareness

In communicating either individually or with small groups of collaborators, knowledge of the preferences of others will allow you to connect at a higher level. As develop the ability to detect and adapt to another person’s communication preferences, you’ll connect like never before. Sources include:

• Understanding of DISC (behavior style profiles)
• NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), your ability to influence both large and small groups
• Matching body language

I must caution you that self-awareness, secret #6, is a prerequisite to applying understanding others (Secret #7).

A Quick Fix?

In our world that includes high-speed internet, microwave ovens and drive through windows, we’re accustomed to instant gratification. Just reading these words will not allow you to flip a switch and instantly unlock the secrets. Implementing them requires breaking old habits and developing new skills and mindsets. Your communication habits have taken a lifetime to develop. Habits can not be replaced in minutes. Developing high level skills require an investment of time and effort. Trial and error. Professional Coaching perhaps?

Like any good investment, the dividends can be highly rewarding. If you could make that 70% of your day more effective and minimize the dysfunction and conflict, how much more could you achieve?

Related Articles

• More on Asking in Cutting Edge Leadership from Ancient Greece.
• Behavior Styles insight from my Talent Tea Leaves Blog
• Is Experience Overrated? When does more mean more?
• Overcoming The Curse of Knowledge

I’m an evangelist for Simon Sinek and his book, Start With Why.  I believe that as leaders develop new skills to apply his Golden Circle concept, they can be much more effective in winning the hearts of their followers.  So as a developer of leaders, I’m compelled to spread the word.

Inside-Out Communication

Simon Sinek’s concept is that people don’t buy, what you do. They buy why you do it.  He uses the Golden Circle to illustrate the concept of Inside-Out Communication. It illustrates how most communication begins with what we do, then how we it.  And as an afterthought you might mention why you’re doing it.  In doing so, you lose the opportunity to connect with your audience on an emotional level where 90% of decisions take place.  While that’s nice to know, knowledge is useless unless it’s applied. If you believe in the concept, yet still struggle to apply the Golden Circle, I’m here to help.

 How Do YOU Start with Why?

I’ve noticed more national advertisers are starting with why.  You now see TV commercials from BMW and Charles Schwab that start with “We believe…”.

Here’s one of the best I’ve seen lately.  Lara Feltin, the Cofounder & CEO of Biznik knows how to Start With Why.  Her company, Biznik is an on-line community specifically designed for independent business people.  They are changing their model from free to fee based.  Members now have to pay dues.  While Biznik’s changes offer an interesting business strategy case study, I believe there is an even more valuable lesson in their use of inside-out communication.

In her two minute video, Lara starts with why.  She conveys her beliefs with passion. Her goal is to do business with people who believe what she believes:  “When people are living their passion, the world is a better place“.  How can you argue with that?

Before any mention of the changes and new features (Biznik’s how and what) she starts by passionately sharing her beliefs.  And she progresses by sharing her belief that their members will benefit from their changes. It’s not about the features as much as it’s about their members’ successful outcomes!

What’s Your Why?

Even if you’re not an independent business person or if you somehow don’t share Lara’s beliefs, you can still learn from her use of the Golden Circle.  And you have to admire her passion.  If you DO believe what Lara believes and you’re a passionate independent business person, you’re likely to invest in being part of the Biznik community that has found a way to both generate revenue and filter their rif-raf.

Should We Also Close With Why?

One of my CEO coaching clients has found the Golden Circle to be a game changer in his role as an industry conference panelist and as a keynote speaker. He has discovered that when he reiterates their WHY in closing remarks, he sees nodding heads in the audience like never before.  Amen!

Related Links

• When There’s No Why, There’s No Way
• Social Marketing Insight from Kris Kringle
• Chicago Executive Coaching Beliefs Page  My work in progress
• 7 Secrets of Highly Effective Communication
• Cutting Through Marketing Clutter

Other “We Believe” Videos

I’ll add more as I discover them.

Charles Schwab

Harvest Investments

Apple I Pad 2

Start With Why – Simon Sinek’s Video on Ted Talks

Not a commercial. A passionate, 18 minute overview of the book by the author.

Lesson Learned

I’ve now learned that if you want to connect with a CEO, feature her in a blog. Based on her comment, this post quickly got Lara Feltin’s attention.  While it wasn’t my intention, it was nice to make her day.

My presentation, Pursuing Your Leadership Potential, featured concepts that I’ve shared here in the past including The Skills Curve and The Execution Box, And I unveiled The 5 Secrets of Effective Communication, which the audience rated the most valuable part.

Thanks also to my photographer, Kevin Lemanski who took a break from his own MBA studies to attend.

Why Don’t We Execute?

Organizations typically hire for skills and knowledge, then fire and promote on the basis of attitudes and habits.  Upon terminating people, they start the process over again. Are skills and knowledge needed for job success?  Of course!  Yet, how many times have we seen skillful, knowledgeable people fail to fit with their new job or organization?

Introducing “The Execution Box”

The graphic below gives us an illustrated model and explanation for execution shortfalls. When most organizations attempt to improve performance, they spend time and money both seeking and developing skills and knowledge (left side of the model below). However failures and terminations typically result from factors on the right side of the model: Attitudes and Habits.

For committed execution of goals that support your strategy, you need people to WANT TO.  This applies both to large organizations, teams, and to individuals.

The Knowing Side of The Execution Box

Most organizations focus their attention and resources on the left half of the diagram. They seek to recruit and enhance skills and knowledge.  Does it make a difference?  Sometimes.  Yet we often struggle to make a business case for training and development. How do we gain return on our investment of resources when measurable, tangible results are often elusive.  What if we broadened our focus to consider…

The Doing Side of The Execution Box

Most shortfalls, failures and terminations result from deficiencies in the right side of The Execution Box.  Despite the fact that we know, we don’t always do:  Unless our attitudes and habits are developed, we struggle to close the execution gap.

Consider the typical shortfalls:

• Remakes/re-dos
• Late deliveries
• Lost customers and opportunities,
• Delayed execution / missed deadlines
• Stagnant innovation
• Reluctance or slow termination of poor performers

Can these be attributed more to lack of knowledge or lack of execution? Are knowledge and skills of your workforce critical to success? Of course! But, what are we doing to address the real cause of the typical shortfalls?

When it comes to developing productive attitudes and habits, most managers don’t know what they don’t know. Performance and execution suffer and everyone wonders: How do we change this? All too often, we restart the same cycle. We fire, recruit, hire and ramp-up new people while hoping their attitudes and habits will improve.  Shouldn’t we do more than hope?

 Knowledge alone is not power. Only applied knowledge is power.

Closing The Gap

Closing your execution gap requires a focus on developing attitudes and habits to concert with enhancing skills and knowledge. At Chicago Executive Coaching, we believe that a holistic approach to closing your execution gap is the key to more effective goal achievement.   Knowing is nice. Doing is where the action is.

“People’s minds are like parachutes – they only function when they are open.”

If I asked you to rate your open mindedness on a 1 to 10 scale, what number would you give yourself?

Do I Lose My Dignity or My Sanity?

Before you answer, let’s look at the other side of the open minded coin. Who among us wants to be considered closed minded? There’s an indignity connected to being perceived as indignant. You don’t want to be that person. So if your mind isn’t closed, it must be really open to any and all possibilities. Right? But how realistic is that?

We all face the growing challenge of idea and information overload. Blame it on the internet and all the media connected to it. The reality is that we have more information to process from more sources than ever before. Is it any wonder we get overwhelmed? What does all this do for our attitude for openness? It’s enough to make you leap from your airplane without a parachute.

Is is possible to stay open to it all? Won’t we either suffocate or drown? Our solution is to filter what we take in and eventually choose to adopt.

Open Mindedness: Is it an Attitude or a Skill?

The answer to that question is “yes”.  To address our information overload challenges, we need to filter or limit our information intake and then work to prioritize the most valuable. Being indignant is an extreme expression of an attitude for closed mindedness. Overcoming an unproductive attitude requires development of new skills driven by an awareness of the attitude’s damaging effects. You also need a renewed focus on the desired results to make more effective filtering decisions.

Packing Your Parachute

So here’s my quick checklist for maintaining an open mindset.

• Stay focused on your goals and our purpose
• Embrace the belief that possibility thinking is the best path for innovation and problem solving
• Develop and maintain a circle of diverse, trusted sources and advisors
• Develop your skills for enhanced filtering and time management

______________________________

Related Articles:

Social Marketing Insight from Kris Kringle

In case you were wondering, Thomas Dewar is more famous for his work as Scottish whiskey distiller.