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Trust is the glue to connecting and more...
Trust is the glue to connecting How do you know when you should trust someone who wants to do business with you? It could be a colleague, client, vendor, or consultant. You may be looking for their assistance or you want to help them. It could backfire. We have all had one of those experiences. I just got out of one. If y Before I get to into what I learned, let us talk about the trust quotient, it measures trustworthiness. Charles H. Green lays it nicely in his post here, with reference material from The Trusted Advisor The key components of the trust quotient include:
Each of these factors are equally weighted, however, since there is only one factor in the denominator, it carries greater significance in establishing your trustworthiness score. There are a number of ways that trust begins to erode such as if our focus becomes me-centered or there is inconsistency with our words, actions or behaviors. According to Green, the more a person focuses on his or her own needs versus their customer or other people’s needs – the lower the trustworthiness score. Why is the trust quotient so important? It gave me a framework to diagnose the situation and identify where it went wrong. Here is my analysis: There were some assumptions that did not play out as expected. There was a lack of direct experience working with them. I assumed (I know what they say about word) that they knew how to deliver results and do what they say they will do. Intimacy was one-sided. This is where I probably read the tealeaves incorrectly from the start. There were clues – but I was focusing on the wrong person. They brought me into their confidence and I was feeling warm and fuzzy. I did not test them with my confidences. There was a strong me-centered orientation from the other person. This caught me off guard. Know the lines of demarcation on the type of relationship you have with the other person – partner, team member, employee or subcontractor in the project. Differing approaches may set up mismatched expectations with the other person. Timing, timing, timing. Circumstances create situations where you make a gut call on someone. There was not enough time to gather all the information in the trust quotient to make a informed decision. Clearly, the trust quotient is going to be a part of my assessment of working with clients and colleagues in the future. It is a powerful and simple equation yielding quick results. If you are interested in learning what your own trustworthiness score is today, take the quiz here. It may give you some insight into how well your glue is sticking when connecting with others. Lynn Dessert owns Leadership Breakthrough, improving personal communication and influence one-step at a time. Post your thoughts or email me!
                     Organizational Flexibility Do not view the organization as a static monolith that is the end-all of efficiency for your situation. Bend the structure to meet current situations. If you have an environment of trust and a well-internalized plan, you can shift things around easily. That is a huge advantage over organizations that view structure as something fixed until heaven and earth are moved to change it. Ken Blanchard tells a story of a Motor Vehicles Bureau in California that illustrates this. He had so many unpleasant memories of long lines and wrong forms that he avoided physical visits at all costs. Finally, when forced to show up in person, he was delighted to see the exact opposite of the stereotype. He got great service and was out with a new license (including a new picture) in 9 minutes. He went to complement the manager, asking how he made the organization work so much better. The manager replied, “My job is to reorganize the Department on a moment to moment basis, depending on citizen need.” That attitude changed the whole customer experience from one of dread and horror to adoration. In my other articles, I have concentrated on the perils of leadership transitions and cautioned against too much turmoil. The coin has another side, however, and that is to create learning opportunities for leaders to prevent stagnation. Do this with care because of the pitfalls listed above, but don’t ignore it. Use it to keep leaders fresh and challenged. You might have leaders swap positions for a time. This technique has many interesting advantages and some challenges. Leaders become entrenched in their thinking if they do the same thing too long. Their perspective becomes parochial, no matter how objective their intentions. Assuming the role of another person helps perspective and also keeps groups reporting to both people in balance. This technique is particularly effective for leaders who are bickering over personnel or turf issues. Sitting in the other person’s chair for a year or two helps both leaders see how parochial they were. It is often unpopular with both the leaders and their constituents, so be prepared for some pushback if you propose this. In the end it works extremely well, but it is usually a tough sell. You can also achieve flexibility by pulling an incumbent leader off for a critical assignment. Let the group be led by someone else in the organization. This allows you to test leadership capability of the substitute in a risk-free way. It also allows the moved leader to get a break and gain new perspective. Robert T. Whipple is the CEO of Leadergrow Inc., a teaching and consulting company.
What it means when someone hurts you Emotional hurt. “I never understood how some people can be so hurtful to the ones they were closest to,” is a comment I read recently. It really does not matter if the person hurting you is at work or outside of work. The dynamics are the same. The truth is if you feel hurt by someone, it is because you have made some level of investment in the relationship. If the relationship is going along well, you feel great, if someone stumbles, you feel the pain. Yes, it is a sign that you care. Do you wonder how the same action or comment affects people differently? One person may be hurt, while another person does not even pay attention to it. Could it be that people who do not let it bother them – just do not care enough to let it affect them? It is hard to hurt someone who does not care about your actions and opinions. Can you emotionally hurt someone who you are not close to? It is less likely to happen, if both parties do not care about each other. There are situations where the other person may not realize they are doing something that is hurtful. Consider this, if there is a disconnect with two people – one person feels hurt and other does not realize it, then one of these conditions may exist:
Think about situations, conditions and implications for how people can hurt you. Next, think about how you may have hurt others. Remember to consider your work and personal life. When things fell apart, can you relate it to one of these conditions? Bottom line: You can really only be hurt by people who you care about – regardless if they care about you. Lynn Dessert owns Leadership Breakthrough, improving personal communication and influence one-step at a time. Post your thoughts or email me!
One author’s journey to write a book I met him several years ago when he was a client of mine. When he left the corporate world to start his own business, he called me up and asked for some advice and support. Today, Mike Dalton is a successful consultant who just wrote his first book – and he contributes to Elephants at Work. I had the honor of seeing an advance production copy to provide feedback. It is fascinating to learn about how someone gets a book written. What process do they use, what obstacles did they face? Find out about how Mike handled it. Mike, at what point did you come up with the idea to write a book about Innovation? What was your inspiration? When I was responsible for the new business development and innovation process for SC Johnson & Son’s polymer business (now BASF), my team started trying to use some of the TOC concepts to improve new product success. Then one day on a long car ride to see a customer, some of the guys on my team and I were talking about how it would make a good business novel. Ever since reading Eli Goldratt’s seminal work, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement Once you had the idea, how long did it take you to get started? Well that was about 5 or six years ago. Early on though, it just seemed like someone else must have already seen the role TOC could play. I did not take it too seriously. Later in 2006, when I started Guided Innovation Group, my innovation coaching and consulting firm, my research showed that no one else had made that connection – or if they had, they were keeping it to themselves. Then as my practice developed, I really began to flesh out what I call the Guided Innovation System and some of my other tools like Customer Value Lens and Guided Innovation Mapping. It was over the last 3 years where that original idea germinated and then eventually blossomed into Simplifying Innovation. Who was your champion? I am not sure I had any one champion; there have been many giving people as I have developed this approach. Several successful independent consultants that I worked with over the years, like Dr. Jim Hlavacek, Dr. Gene Slowinski, and Dr. Matt Sagal, all advised me early on that a book is critical to differentiating yourself. Then during the writing and peer review process, I got help from many people, including several TOC luminaries, like Bill Dettmer and Dr. Lisa Lang. They provided great feedback and helped me fine-tune my approach even further for the final edit. Did you have a goal to finish by a certain date? I did – In July of 2009; I set a goal to write my first draft in 100 days and to have the book selling on Amazon right after the start of the New Year. Did you make that date? If not, what where some of the hurdles? I am happy to say that I did reach both goals. Of course, since the book teaches some planning and project management techniques, it would have been pretty lame. As far as hurdles, just fitting it all in to a six month window was a big one. To do that I used one of my own techniques, Guided Innovation Mapping, where I worked backwards from my goal to identify the obstacles and then built a plan to get around all of them within my time line. I ended up carving out two hours a day for writing and then two more hours for some of the production and marketing tasks. I started in July and had a complete manuscript in early October. Tell us some more about other hurdles. What was the most difficult one? How did you overcome it? Learning to write in a novel format was probably the biggest hurdle. While I am a big fan of the format, I am not sure I would recommend that anyone attempt it without a safety net. It is kind of funny too, because that’s exactly what Carol Ptak warned me from her experience with Necessary but Not Sufficient: A Theory of Constraints Business Novel, a business novel she wrote together with Eli Goldratt and Eli Schragenheim. 
Mike's Storyboard The reason it is so hard is that it is like writing two books at the same time. You have to write a business book that teaches all of the important points the reader needs to know. At the same time, you have to create a novel with compelling characters and an interesting challenge so that the reader is immersed in the experience. The hard part is that they have to be intertwined. You can only teach at certain parts in the story, as certain conflicts are uncovered or resolved. The story can only progress as the teaching moments present themselves. Eventually, the only way I could keep it all straight, was with a graphical, color-coded storyboard that let me keep track of all of the different elements. I really learned a lot about writing in the process. Were there any parallels to writing the book and your story in Simplifying Innovation: Doubling speed to market and new product profits – with your existing resources Oh, very much so. You know one of the things that I teach in the book is fully exploiting your innovation bottleneck. One of the ways you do that is by making sure you are addressing an unmet need. For me, the unmet need became companies not being able to improve the impact they get from their investment in new product innovation. Well, improving innovation is definitely a place where companies struggle. It is amazing really. There are all these strategies and experts out there advising companies on innovation, but 50% of CEO’s are still dissatisfied with their return on R&D spending. If you look at the US manufacturing sector alone, $75 Billion (that is right – billion with a B) is wasted on ineffective innovation. That may be rounding error compared to what Washington spends, but in the real world, companies are spending 20-50% of their net earnings on R&D without seeing the return they expect. We have to do better than that. But, how? As you know, I am a big picture guy, so stepping back from the issues, it became clear that there are all these great ideas, concepts and tools out there, but no clear framework of how to apply continuous improvement principles to new product and service development. Inside companies, everyone complains about not having enough resources, but CEO’s already feels like they are spending too much as it is. The real root of the problem is they do not know how to systematically attack the problem at its leverage point – the innovation bottleneck. Put simply, it is how to get more out of what they are already investing – it is the unmet need. What was the biggest Ah Ha you had while going through this process? I would have to say that my Ah Ha moment was in coming up with the final title – I started writing with the working title of Innovation Flywheel – marketing and innovation working together to create momentum. About half way through the writing, the simplifying theme had emerged as a predominant part of the storyline. That is when it hit me – Innovation will always be a complex process; improvement should not be. There is so much clutter out there making it hard for leaders to focus; what I was really providing was not just improvement, it was a framework for simplifying improvement of the innovation process – and doing so with the resources, you already have. Then, over Thanksgiving break, I read Goldratt’s recent book, The Choice Thanks for the inspiration, Mike! If you need someone with his insight and talent, give him a call today. Lynn Dessert owns Leadership Breakthrough, improving personal communication and influence one-step at a time. Post your thoughts or email me!
“I hear you” is Profitable A consultant approaches a CEO and suggests, “If you improve your employees’ as well as your ability to listen, you will profoundly impact your bottom line.” Can you hear the response? “They just need to do as they are told,” or “We just invested in the best equipment money can buy, they just need to do their job!” In his article, “Better Listening for Business and Personal Success, James Patterson stated, “You can trace 99.99% of all the problems we have at work back to some breakdown in communication. More specifically, the problem normally is a failure to listen.” All too often, soft skills are thought of as a nice thing to have, but not something that can dramatically improve profits. Yet research indicates many areas where not listening has cost a company or in fact a nation millions of dollars. Think of the following examples. • A supervisor who does not listen to his or her people will cause poor morale and disrupt the flow of information. When employees do not feel heard, they quit communicating resulting in the lack of critical information a leader needs to make effective decisions. A poor decision in one part of a business can result in a ripple effect across the entire organization. • One of the main reasons individuals leave an organization is due to the relationship with their immediate supervisor and exit surveys indicate that a major cause is the employee never felt heard by their supervisor. The cost to replace an individual can reach 150% of their salary according to Wm. Bliss of Bliss & Associates, Inc. including recruitment costs, training costs, lost productivity, new hire costs and lost sales revenue. • Think of the role of listening in decision-making. Often we come to a conclusion of the way things ought to be solved and go into a meeting with our mind made up. We are not open to exchanging ideas or viewpoints with others and only thinking of our rebuttal as others speak. The auto industry failed to listen to their customer’s desire for smaller vehicles and debated why they should continue to build large vehicles, only to find they are losing market share and facing bankruptcy. • Another short-coming is when we judge the messenger as not being competent. When we negatively label people as uninformed, we do not listen to what that person says, and we limit our ability to gather all the information needed to make an informed decision. Think of the stories such as 9/11 or the Challenger explosions where individuals tried to warn higher ranking officials about impending tragedy. You should judge only the information after it is received, and you have taken time to consider other options. On the other hand, when employees feel heard, they will continue to communicate openly. Bob Schmidt of the University at Notre Dame states, “Great leaders listen to their associates and make them feel that their thoughts have been given consideration.” When Lauren Dixon of Dixon-Schwabl was selected as “2008 Best Small Business in America” to work for, she received a report outlining her employee’s comments. Although overwhelmingly positive, she noticed one concern involving the lack of parking. Per Lauren, that day she formed a task force to enlarge the parking lot and it was quickly resolved. This type of action screams “I hear you” and “I respect what you are saying.” By investing in your employees’ ability to listen productivity, morale and ultimately the bottom line are dramatically affected.
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ou have an unpleasant experience, does that mean you should stop trusting people immediately or is this a great opportunity to figure out where it went wrong? I vote for the latter.
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, I have always enjoyed that format. I am a big fan of Patrick Lencioni’s work too (
, 
, etc). Anyway, we even sketched out a story outline just to entertain ourselves in the car. Nothing came of it at the time, but it planted the seed still it was the seed of an idea to write a business novel on innovation.
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. That just further confirmed for me that I had chosen the right title and theme. He talks extensively about what he calls inherent simplicity–How TOC simplifies improvement and change by showing you where the leverage point is. It was quite gratifying to see that I had independently stumbled upon the same path.