Break the Bubble

If you don’t already know, your internet experience is filtered. Your google search turns up different results than mine. If you tend to click through to MSNBC then liberal and left leaning links will pop up on your search. Fox watcher? You’ll get news from the right.

Result? We don’t get our views challenged. We reinforce what we already believe and we become ever more polarized.

Here’s a cool solution (for news filtering and other) – Flipboard.

This cool and free little app enables you to quickly and easily bounce from The Economist to Al Jazeera to Salon to The Washington Post to 30 other news outlets. Pick a different one every day.

Your head might spin, but the bubble will burst. And who knows where that open-mindedness might lead?

Who, me?

As Jerry Seinfeld once put it, “People! They’re the worst.”

If people were just more reasonable, smarter, more understanding, more attentive to my obviously correct view of the world and my perfectly reasonable needs, we’d all get along just fine.

Sound good so far?

One of the great challenges in dealing with frustrations with other people is not to help them see your perspective. Rather, the great challenge is for you to explore and fully understand what challenge you are creating for them.

Try these questions:

• How am I contributing to this problem?
• What do I do that most frustrates you?
• (And an old standby) What’s more important here, building this relationship or being right?

Hierarchy of Values

Abraham Maslow is renowned for identifying the hierarchy of needs that humans have: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization. The satisfaction of lower needs generally precede and must occur before higher needs can be addressed.

What if corporate values are the same way? What if the development of certain values are more foundational and generally precede other values for a company to be most effective?

If I were responsible for the training of new employees, I would spend the whole first year indoctrinating them into the value of accountability. We must begin with the foundation that if you see something that needs fixing or doing, you are responsible. You own the success, not just of yourself but of the company.

Year two would be dedicated to truth telling. If we cannot be honest with one another about the company and our behavior we are doomed.

Year three would focus on compassion. It would be nice to put this in year one, but without accountability, compassion would fail. Without truth, compassion stifles needed discussion.

That’s my hierarchy of corporate values. How would you arrange yours?

Could You Repeat That?

How many times must you hear a fact before you remember it for good?

How many times must you practice a behavior before it is your automatic response?

How many times must you learn something before you’ve really learned it?

I told my client I wanted him to reread the book I had asked him to read a month before. Why? Because he hadn’t learned it. Why hadn’t he learned it? Was it because he was dimwitted? Of course not. He’s a very bright guy.

When we read we learn momentarily. Once we finish a book we quickly unlearn what we read. When we reread and reread and reread again, then true learning begins.

Religion gets this, telling us to reread the same book every year. I think that’s a great idea. We should all pick at least one book to reread every year. This year I’m picking The Essential Gandhi.

What book would you choose?

Down Time Best Time

What’s your slowest time as a business? Mondays? August? First week of the month?

You may think that’s just the way it is. In fact, it’s only that way because you haven’t been creative enough to change that.

Case in point: Lick Hudson. An ice cream store in upstate new york. Winter time is dead time for an ice cream store. Nothing to be done about it. Right?

Not so says Lick. Here’s what the store looks like when the weather turns cold.

When work slows down, the creative mind has time to ponder. Embrace your creativity and you can make the most of your down time.

(Now if only I can get the ice cream store in my town to turn into a cheese shop during the winter.)

I Have a Hunch

Often we argue with people based on hunches of what the facts might be. My wife and I recently did this over ski helmet safety. Is wearing a ski helmet safer?

This is an interesting question simply because we had no idea. We didn’t know the research. We didn’t know the facts. We just knew what our hunches were. But that didn’t stop us from arguing.

There is no way to win an argument of hunches. The only valuable moves are to let go of the argument permanently or temporarily in order to go do some research and get the facts.

We need to learn to say, “Hold on. We both don’t know. Let’s go away and get some info.”

In my case when we actually tried to dig up facts we found research suggesting that helmets might help in certain skiing accidents. We also found research that said that the weight from the helmet on a child’s head might increase the risk of neck injuries.

So there was no clear resolution to our disagreement. But stopping the hunch battle was by far the best move we could make.

In the Right

Most people (myself included) have a lot invested in being right. When we get into disagreements our emotions can flare, or even without the emotion, we can just stubbornly focus on the reasons we are right and the other person is wrong.

For a totally different experience, try this. Next time you are getting into a disagreement start your sentences with, “I might be wrong . . .”

For a real challenge try this. “Here are three ways I could be wrong . . .”

Continuum

Tactical and strategic are a continuum. They are not buckets. Do something tactical enough times and it will be strategic. Often times the biggest changes in our worlds occur from the seed of tiny initial actions.

Immune to Failure

A woman described herself to me as being “immune to failure.” This woman is extremely successful. She has achieved multiple distinctions as the first woman to hold particular positions in her company. But she has also stumbled in her life and career.

So how does this immunity work?

What it isn’t:

• Never failing.

What it is:

• Seeing herself as a success
• Never defining herself by a failure
• Understanding that setbacks are normal
• Looking for the opportunity in every situation
• Assuming that success will come
• Having fun

The Macro Manager

Someone told me he wanted to stop being a micromanager. Who wouldn’t? But I find most people have a much harder time eliminating an old behavior when they don’t have a new replacement behavior.

So we defined the replacement behaviors as being a Macro Manager. Micro management can be broken down into three areas: asking, telling, doing.

Micromanagers ask you for too much detail information and focus primarily on the past. The Macro Manager asks more about results and the future.

Micromanagers tell you your goals, the answers to your questions, and how to do your job. The Macro Manager tells you to come up with recommendations and ideas before offering his/her own.

Micromanagers do work that could be done by their team, sometimes even taking work back that was already (temporarily) delegated. Macro Managers do delegation so that they have the time to think strategically, create opportunity for team members, coach and support.

It’s time for a whole lot of managers out there to get Macro.