“If you want to hire people to do a job, to be cogs in the system and to do what they’re told, you might want to focus on people who don’t think very highly of themselves. People with low self-esteem might be more happy to be bossed around, timed, abused, misused and micromanaged, no? And the converse is true as well. If you want to raise your game and build an organization filled with people who will change everything, the first thing to look for is someone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that they’re not capable of great work. A harried teacher might find it easier to teach a class to obey first and think second, but is that sort of behavior valuable or scarce now?
Industries that need to subjugate women or demonstrate power over one class of person or another are always on the lookout for people they can diminish. Our task, then, is to find people we can encourage and nurture until they’re as impatient with average as we are. The paradox is that the very people that are the easiest to categorize, to command and to dominate are the last people we want to work with.”
“If you choose to manage a project, it’s pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what’s happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman. If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you’re on the hook. It’s an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship. Running a project requires a level of commitment that’s absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?” – Seth Godin
I received this question this afternoon from an association site I belong to. Below is the answer I responded with on the association site, but I want to make sure anyone can add additional thoughts to this topic which is why I am also posting it here (similar to the lemonade stand analogy below). How would you have answered the question?
Good question, we don’t have a set percentage to gauge success. My benchmark wouldn’t be a traditional benchmark. When news articles or internal announcements get more “hits” we assume it is due to what the article pertains to. We notice that content which isn’t particularly engaging doesn’t get many hits. Anything from C Level Management, or a major announcement tends to get higher viewership. Even every day news items may not pertain to everyone. Furthermore, it just may not interest them. It is one of those instances where “you can lead an employee to the news story, but you can’t make them consume it.”
We may want 100% of our associates reading what we put out, but we are finding that isn’t the case, and we are looking to move to a subscription and “pushed” communications model. We are playing with a design that has a top portion of the page what has what is considered “pushed” news and a bottom section which contains what each associate has subscribed to. Our philosophy is if they have helped decide what they want to see, they will be more inclined to visit the site, or read the content in the email summary.
If you have the ability, it would be great to show percent viewing the news story but also the number of comments and how well the story was rated. I’d personally be much more interested in that data as opposed to knowing an article was clicked or accessed. It would also be great to have analytics on how long they were on the page and site (time wise). If you have 1,000 employees, and you are able to get all 1,000 to click a 5,000-word article, but on average they only stay on that page for 10 seconds, I’d consider that an opportunity.
I’m trying to change our culture, but I know it isn’t easy. Currently, I would say we only focus on content consumption, but I want to get us to where we also focus on opinions and ratings of the content. I’m trying to make it so we think of ourselves as a lemonade stand. We, the Communications Group, push out lots of lemonade. If the lemonade doesn’t have enough sugar in it, nobody will want to drink it. If we put our lemonade on the wrong side of town we make it too tough for them to find us, so we opened several lemonade stands (one on our Intranet and one via email like yourself).
If we sell the lemonade and only focus on how much we sell, as opposed to what people think of it, we won’t grow our lemonade business. Sales and number of product sold is important, but I’d take one customer who pays $1 for my lemonade and gives me feedback to 10 customers who each pay a dollar ($10 total). They drink my lemonade yet don’t give me feedback to improve my product long term. The lemonade stand that focuses on getting the most customers to its stand may be able to attract lots of customers. But the lemonade stand that focuses on what the customers think of their product will be the stand likely to stay open the longest. And make the most money. Not sure if that analogy works, but it was fun to try.
It is also almost like a one-sided conversation if we only focus on analytics. If I do all the talking, and you aren’t allowed to talk back, how valuable is that for you and the organization? My benchmark would be anything that can show you are providing engaging content that inspires enterprise collaboration and knowledge sharing. For instance an article with 10 replies/comments that is rated highly is of more importance to me from a benchmarking perspective than one that is accessed more often. Great question, that is what I am thinking is the best benchmark, but I’d imagine others may find other analytics more useful.
Scott sent this to me a few days ago and I finally got a chance to watch it tonight. I did enjoy it and am guilty of taking my laptop and phone everywhere I go because most meetings aren’t productive so I disagree with those two rules. Nicole Steinbeck says: “Meetings can be a huge productivity & time suck. So what if you took out all of the stupid, wasteful stuff and left only the useful parts?” Below is a summary of her talk by Scott Berkun (but as he reminds us, all credit goes to Nicole).
Schedule a 22 minute meeting – Who decided meetings should be 30 or 60 minutes? What data is this based on? None. 30 and 60 minute meetings leave no time to get between meetings, and assumes, on average, people need an hour to sort things out. Certainly not all meetings can be run in 22 minutes, but many can, so we’d all be better off if the default time were small, not large.
Have a goal based agenda – Having an agenda at all would be a plus in most meetings. Writing it on the whiteboard, earns double pluses, since then everyone has a constant reminder of what the meeting is supposed to achieve.
Send required readings 3 days beforehand – The burden is on the organizer to make this small enough that people actually do it. Never ever allow a meeting to be “lets all read the documents together and penalize anyone diligent enough to do their homework”. (note: I think 24 hours is plenty).
Start on time – How often does this happen? Almost never. Part of the problem is Outlook and all schedule programs don’t have space between meetings. By 2pm there is a day’s worth of meeting time debt. 22 minutes ensures plenty of travel/buffer time between meetings.
Stand up – Reminds everyone the goal isn’t to elaborate or be supplemental (See Scrum standing meetings). Make your point, make your requests, or keep quiet. If there is a disagreement, say so, but handle resolving it outside of the meeting.
No laptops, but presenters and note takes. If you’re promised 22 minutes, and it’s all good stuff, you don’t need a secondary thing to be doing while you pretend to be listening. One person taking notes, and one person presenting if necessary.
No phones, no exceptions – see above.
Focus! Note off topic comments. If you have an agenda, someone has to police it and this burden is on whoever called the meeting. Tangents are ok, provided they are short. The meeting organizer has to table tangents and arguments that go too far from the agenda.
Send notes ASAP – With 22 minutes, there should be time, post meeting, for the organizer to send out notes and action items before the next meeting begins.
Last week I was at a Communications Media Managers Association (CMMA) event in Plano, TX (not too far from Dallas, TX). The keynote speaker for the event was BJ Fogg a Stanford University professor who talked about “Hot Triggers & Rituals The New World of Persuasion.” There were some technical difficulties which delayed his presentation, which I know rushed him and didn’t allow him to get through all the content he wanted to present.
The best example I think he gave was of Oil of Olay, which required him to do morning and nightly treatments to help “fight wrinkles”. He was noticing he wasn’t remembering to apply the treatment consistently, he would either apply in the morning or at night, but often forgot to do both each day. He then told himself, “I need a trigger to remind me to do it twice each day.” Like most Americans, he brushes he teeth twice a day, once in the morning, and once at night. Therefore, to help remind him to apply the treatments, he put the treatments in the sink where he normally brushes his teeth. That way, he had to physically look at and remove the product from the sink before he could do anything else (it was a trigger/reminder).
His theory is essentially people need a reminder (a trigger) to do things, and there are a number of circumstances which can either promote or prevent a task from being done. You can see his research at http://behaviorgrid.org/. Below are my notes from the meeting:
Started by talking about how it is best when you can automate persuasion.
Types of Behavior changes:
One time
Fixed period
From now on
Core motivators
Pleasure/Pain
Hope/Fear
Social Rejection/Social Acceptance
Simplicity has 6 elements
Time
Money
Physical effort
Brain cycles
Social deviance
Non-routine
Each person has difference resources. These vary by context.
Simplicity is a function of your scariest resource at that moment.
Motivation, ability, and trigger must be present at the same time otherwise if one is missing, the behavior will not occur
You can increase a person’s ability by simplifying, not by training
Put “hot triggers” in the path of motivated people (hot triggers are when users can take immediate action on something that reminds them to do something)
New triggers if successful lead to new rituals, which leads to new platforms (Facebook… Farmville etc.)
They no longer dictate work hours or workplace…where you have to work.
They create outcome based goals for what each employee must achieve. It unleashed a whole new envelope of innovation of morale with those workers which allowed them to drive high level performance we’ve seen with Best Buy.
Customizing workplace to meet employee needs. Provide flexibility to employees on flexibility and freedom while holing employees accountable for goals and objectives.
“The boss drives people; the leader coaches them. The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says ‘I’; the leader says ‘we.’ The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says ‘go’; the leader says ‘let’s go!'”
— H. Gordon Selfridge, American-British retail magnate
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Success is a journey, not a destination. It requires constant effort, vigilance and re-evaluation.
The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Evan Rosen wrote a nice article in Business Week titled “Creating Collaboration Takes More Than Technology.”
The following is a synopsis of that article: In a typical scenario, the months fly by after the collaboration tools are implemented. As the seasons change, decision-makers anticipate reaping the benefits of collaboration. And perhaps they can even point to successes within particular business units or functions. Often, though, it’s the same old story. The company remains for the most part internally competitive, hierarchical, and command-and-control driven. The tools alone have failed to make the company collaborative. Worse yet, the tools may have created no real value, and the decision-makers who had pinned such high hopes on these tools are surprised. Are the tools the problem? More likely, the problem is the organization. When tools fail to create value, it’s usually because decision-makers adopt tools before the company’s culture and processes are collaboration-ready.
Organizations even adopt tools for the wrong reasons, primarily the belief that tools will create collaboration. Tools merely offer the potential for collaboration. Unlocking the value of tools happens only when an organization fits tools into collaborative culture and processes. If the culture is hierarchical and internally competitive, it will take more than tools to shift the culture. Just because a competitor uses collaborative tools doesn’t mean the time is right for your organization to do likewise. If the competitor is apparently deriving value from tools, maybe it’s because the competitor’s culture is more collaborative and the tools are extending and enhancing the culture.
To help fix the issue, he recommends the following:
Focus on Culture Before Tools
Fit Tools into Business Processes
Adopt Spontaneous Work Styles
Use Tools to Develop Products and Services
Give the Entire Organization Access to the Same Tools
“If you want to hire people to do a job, to be cogs in the system and to do what they’re told, you might want to focus on people who don’t think very highly of themselves. People with low self-esteem might be more happy to be bossed around, timed, abused, misused and micromanaged, no? And the converse is true as well. If you want to raise your game and build an organization filled with people who will change everything, the first thing to look for is someone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that they’re not capable of great work. A harried teacher might find it easier to teach a class to obey first and think second, but is that sort of behavior valuable or scarce now?
