When was the last time you asked somebody what his strengths were?

I was reading (and watching, it comes with a cool 20 minute movie on DVD) Marcus Buckingham’s new book, “The truth about you“, this week. In it he explains how to find your strengths and exploit them and how to find your weakness and ignore them.

As usual with books of this sort, you feel like what is saying is so obvious, you can’t understand how you didn’t think about it yourself.

This made me think – how many managers do you know, ask their team, on a regular basis, what are they strengths and what can they do to help them do it. Buckingham talks in the book about the fact that most managers focus on your weaknesses and ask you to improve them, which is futile. But the problem isnot only that managers concentrate on their team’s weaknesses, the problem is they usually don’t utilize their team’s strengths and they don’t talk about it with them.

As I mention in my my E-book, “Playing It to Excellence and Happiness in Real Life – Five Concepts I Learned by Playing Basketball, Working and just Living”, you always need to find new ways to use your comparative advantage. But more important, you have to communicate what that advantage is. Buckingham is right. No organization or manager will do anything in order to let you use your strengths. So you need to act – talk to him about it and explain yourself. But my question is – what if managers actually started doing it? do we only need to change the people, or can we also change the managers?

It is never to late to start. When was the last time you asked somebody what his strengths were and asked him what can you do to help him use them better?

Elad

Nice and Obvious

A few weeks ago I was standing in a book store looking for books in the business section. One woman approached the section and asked the clerk for a recommendation about a business book. He recommended her the book “The power of nice” which title in Hebrew roughly translates to: “It is worthwhile to be nice in business”. The woman looked at the clerk and asked him: “What kind of message will the person I give the book as a present get? I don’t think it is nice to bring someone a book that explains how to be nice“.

This story not only illustrates a bad translation of a book title (it happens a lot) but something deeper – I really tried, but I can’t understand why the hell does someone need to convince us that being nice is important?

I ran into this short 1-minute video clip today by Tim Sanders. Again, an explanation on why is it important to be nice in business.

 

“The young people coming into to market economy today view economic freedom by the ability to chose a boss that is not a jerk” the video says, trying to explain to us why being nice is important.

Is it me or is this crazy? Shouldn’t nice be the default? Is there anybody who can explain the process that led to the current condition in which nice is not the default?

I watched the video. I read “the power of nice”. They are both… well… nice. But obvious. It was very hard for me to point one concept in the book that did not seem trivial or that I really feel I learned from. I couldn’t find even one. 

I wanted to explain in this post how obvious the concept of being nice is, by showing how important it is to be nice. But decided not to. It is too obvious.  Maybe I am naïve. Still, I believe nice should be the default.

Elad

Relationships or communication?

Today, I read a very interesting manifesto called: “Today’s Trojan Horse” by Diana McLain Smith. The manifesto talks about the importance of relationships. Smith claims that people disregard relationships and treat them like nonimportant soft-skills due to mistaken beliefs about our ability to influence and utilize them.

As I was reading this, I thought to myself that although the focus on relationships is important and interesting and might be even useful, what is really needed is a change in the way people in organizations communicate. The problems people experience in professional relationships are just a manifestation of their inability to communicate. The problem is that ironically, most organizations today operate in a way that hinders effective communication. If you will come into a team in an existing organization and try to talk about your feelings and putting everything on the table, in the way the manifesto suggests, you will run into great difficulties. Not only people will refuse, openly or not, to cooperate with you, but actually the infrastructure of communication in the organization does not support these attempts. There is no time for such communication in meetings. There are no regular feedbacks sessions that help people communicate what they are really thinking. There are no meeting between high management and the low-end workers. There is no flow of information.

I am not saying you should not take the advice the manifesto expenses and try it out. On the contrary, I think most of it is parallel to “communicate” concept I lay out in my E-book, “Playing It to Excellence and Happiness in Real Life – Five Concepts I Learned by Playing Basketball, Working and just Living”. I am just saying that there needs to be a deeper change in the infrastructure and organizational culture of most organizations in order to allow communication or relationships to flourish. This is a process that will take time and effort, resources that will only be allocated as soon as senior management begins to understand the long term effects of these concepts.

Elad

Tell me how you measure me and I will tell you how I will act

The recent crisis in Wall-street created a hefty discussion regarding the compensation senior mangers received. What I get by reading a little of this discussion, is that there is a general line of thought according to which the problem was the lack of connection between the long term success of the company and the compensations of senior managers.

Today I read this article in Knowledge@Wharton site about the difference between public and private company managers. This got me thinking that the problem might not be that the compensations of managers was not connected to long term, but that the demands investors and analysts had from public companies themselves were short terms. The compensations senior managers got were in line with the demands of the investors of the company. They should be.

Most of the analysis you see in the stock market is short term. It always surprises me that when a company publishes good reports the stock price rises. The question should not be the current reports, but the reports of three to five years ahead. This in turn percolates into the boards of directors. If the board, which is supposed stand for the investors, if focused on the short term, than this is what the senior managers will do. Focusing on the bottom line is important, but you should not focus on the bottom line of your next report, but on the bottom line of the report you will publish in three years.

This is a cultural and managerial problem. We focus too much on the short term. This is why companies don’t invest as much as they should in human resources and training. You can only see results for this kind of investments if you wait for a very long time. So, the investors can point fingers to the senior managers for their large compensations, but until they change their focus to the long run and enforce this kind of thinking on their directors, there will be no change.

Elad

Framing and Semantics

One of the concepts I lay out in my E-book, “Playing It to Excellence and Happiness in Real Life – Five Concepts I Learned by Playing Basketball, Working and just Living” is: communicate. I try to explain that people who communicate on a regular basis have a better chance for reaching happiness and excellence. I do that by talking about a number of important characteristics of communications. One of those characteristics is semantics. In a lot of situations, even thought you thought you were saying something, people hear what they want to hear. And it is usually not what you wanted to say. This I why you should be very aware of the way you phrase yourself. The upside of this is that if you phrase yourself well and carefully plan the framing of your communications it will help you to reach almost any listener.

In the last few days I have been reading Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s book (with co-authors) called “Rationality, Fairness, Happiness”. This book is actually a selection of writings by Kahneman and others regarding different concepts of behavioral economics.

What you discover when you read this book is that humans operate in a very weird way and are prone to different effects and biases. On of the more famous is the “framing effect“, which in a nutshell says that the way a question or statement is framed or phrased, by it self, can alter the result of human behavior and choice.

The book actually shows a lot of examples where people responded differently to the same situation because of different framing. One very simple example is a research regarding the language doctors use with patients. If a doctor says to the family of a patient that there is a ten percent chance that the patient will die after a certain treatment the family will react one way while if he says that the treatment has ninety percent survival rates, the family will react differently, although the meaning is just the same. The chances that they will put the patient through the treatment changes depending on the way the doctor presents it to them.

When you think about this regarding communication in general and semantics in particular, you understand that we don’t always give the appropriate emphasis to semantics and phrasing. That is too bad, because they have a lot of uses. What we need to understand is where to use them and how.

One example is in sales. In the book, they explain how people were more prone to buying insurance depending on the way it is displayed. When you build a sales pitch or brochure, do you think about it using the framing effect? Another aspect is the way discounts or sales are presented and the effect they have on the person’s decision making process. Do your sales take that into consideration? As it is getting harder and harder to get the clients’ attention, isn’t it important to invest time and thought in how we frame what we try to get his attention with?

A second example is surveys. The book shows many examples where different answers were given only because a question was split into two questions or the order of the questions had an impact of the answers. Now, surveys might not be perfect because of the framing effect. But they are still a very important and widely used tool. The question is, when you form a survey of your own, or order one from a company, do you ask why the questions were put the way their were or why is that the order of the questions, do you demand that the survey will not use framing effect in order to make sure that it doesn’t give you the results you want but the real results?

The problem is most of us don’t have the appropriate training to use this kind of thinking. But we can teach ourselves and demand those who supply services to us (like in the case of surveys) to use it. I think that people who will master these concepts and use them in business and personal context will have great advantages. We have a lot to learn.

Elad

Never start with the slides

Today I started building a new presentation. It is an idea that has been running in my head for a pretty long time. This one is different from other presentations I built till today, because I am not quite sure I will even give it. I am trying to see if I can create something of value. I have a few ideas who to give it to, but it is still vague. Currently I am just creating it for me, to help me think about the subject, hoping it will lead to something great.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of a presentation the first thing that pops into my mind is the slides. I can see many of the slides and what will be on them – the pictures, what I will say with the slide, how it will be revealed. This makes it very tempting for me to just start of by building the slides. This something I try not do. Granted, conveying ideas using pictures is sometimes very powerful. But you can jot down the idea of the slide without building the slide itself (perhaps on a back of a napkin, also see here). Instead, I write down the ideas for the slides and start writing the actual words I will use when i give the presentation. The actual speech itself. Only when I am sure about the main theme, the story, the idea I want to convey, I move to the slides. Sometimes, when I start building the slides I will go back and improve the words, but I always start with words first.

This process helps me remember something very important about using slides. The slides are not the presentation. I am. The idea is. The story is. The words I will say will be. The slides are just a tool. You can compare it to using humor. Humor is great tool for giving great presentations. When used in the correct way, it can turn a bad speech into a great one. But it is not a must. You give a wonderful and engaging presentation without using any humor at all. The same goes to slides usage. Slides can help you convey your idea visually. But first you need an idea. The slides can’t talk for you (and no, reading them out loud does not count). You don’t go writing your presentation around a joke. You don’t go writing your presentation around the slides.

Elad

Remarkable? Depressing. Stay positive!

Today, I saw this lecture by Seth Godin. Now doubt, it is worth you’re 20 minutes.

 A few after thoughts:

1. I don’t argue with what Seth is saying, but even he has to admit that it is, after all, a little depressing. If very good is very bad, because the only way to create something valuable is to be remarkable, it sets a very high standard. Now I understand better, why when I got 98 in a test my father always asked me two questions: (a) Why did you lose 2 points? (b) How much did the other people in the class got? Seth talks about business but he says that this is true to many other areas in life. Again, that is a depressing thought. Honestly, how many things have you done in your life you can say are remarkable? I know that I haven’t than many. But the important thing is how do you feel about the remarkable things you did do… still there is optimism hidden somewhere.

2. A few days ago I wrote here about a post by Seth regarding PowerPoint presentations and how to make them remarkable. One of his points was that a presentation should not be more than 10 minutes long. I did not agree with it, Lisa Braithwaite of speak schmeak even wrote a post about it explaining why in her eyes, you should not put a time limit on presentations. In this lecture, Seth shows why this rule can not even be considered a guide line. His lecture is more than twice his recommended time. It is still quite remarkable.

3. This lecture shows us once again, that preparation, passion, originality and humor are more important to a presentation than good design or other exaggerated pyrotechnics.

 Elad

“No – we have a minimum”

A few days ago my printer broke down. Since I will be moving to Australia in a few weeks, I decided not to fix it. Anyway, yesterday, I needed to print a document urgently so I saved it as a pdf file and went to a copy-store close to my house.

As I went into to store I was not sure where should I put my disk-on-key, so I asked the owner how do I print a document. He asked what I needed to print and how many copies. I told him I have a 2 page document and that I will need about 5 copies. A total of 10 pages.

He said no problem. But we have a minimum of 10 Shekels. I thanked him and walked out of the store. I walked another 3 minutes to another store and printed my document there for 2.5 shekels.

My question is why the set a minimum at all? What did the owner have to lose by printing my document? It doesn’t cost him anything to reach the file and send it to printer. So, why make it difficult? I know he did not lose a lot of money by not servicing me. I actually might have understood it if the store was full and he needed the computer for costumers who had bigger documents and were willing to pay more for not waiting. But it wasn’t. The store was empty. I was the only costumer.

I really felt cheated (even though I did not pay anything). I would never return to that store. This might not be a substantial lost to the store owner, but he could not have known that. With no cost at all for him, he could have made me happy and keep me as a costumer.

Many times you see such policies. Usually, they don’t make sense. If you create rules that hinder your costumer you only hinder yourself. Even if your rules do make sense some of the time, they should be bendy enough to allow you to serve the costumer under the right circumstances. As Seth Godin says – Service is marketing.

Elad

Blogging as a time-management tool

Yesterday a friend of mine gave me a torn piece of paper out of a magazine. She gave it to me because it mentioned the Peter Principle, which I told her about a few weeks ago, without remembering its name. Anyway, I found the entire article on-line (it is in Hebrew) and read it. It actually deals with blogging as a managerial tool.

Now the mentioning of the Peter Principle is not accidental. One of the claims in the article is that this principle applies to blogging. In my very own very rough translation:

If what you write is worth reading you don’t have the time [to write a blog]. Whoever has time to sit down and invest in his blog, probably has nothing that interesting to say.

If I put aside my own pride (why? Why am I not worth reading????), I am not sure this is true.

First, there are some very interesting blogs written by very busy people. You can check out the blogroll of this blog and see that for yourself and off course there are many more.

Second, and I think more interesting, is that this approach actually portrays to concepts. One relates to time management. The other relates to blogs and blogging as an activity which is not in the heart of a manager’s role.

In his book, “Management Challenges for the 21st Century“, Peter Drucker says that you never know how a product or service that was invented in one industry will affect other industries. Maybe blogging can be used to solve time management problems.

Take for example what I wrote about “thinking time” a few days ago, after reading a post by Franice Wade of The 2Time Management System blog. What if we use the writing of a blog to create “thinking time” for top-managers? If we agree (and it does seem to be a wide agreed on concept) that the higher you are in the hierarchy the more important it is for you to set aside “thinking time” and that the higher you are in the hierarchy it is harder to do so, than perhaps writing a blog could be used as a thinking tool for the manager. If you commit to writing a blog daily or weekly it means you have to set aside time to think about it – which should be great for business.

Many great writers I know don’t write for anyone else but themselves. Some of them use the writing as a sound box, to test their thoughts. It is the passion in their writing that attracts readers. So if you can use a blog in order to think and do it passionately, you get the “regular” results of a business blog but add a value to your business in other ways.

Elad

Not to use PowerPoint and the taking of notes during a presentation

Seth Godin writes today an interesting piece about: “Nine steps to PowerPoint magic“. In it, he gives nine tips about how to use PowerPoint to deliver great presentations. I want to talk about 2 of these tips, one I agree with very much, and the second, I am not quite sure about.

The first and most important tip Godin gives is not to use PowerPoint at all. In his words:

Don’t use Powerpoint at all. Most of the time, it’s not necessary. It’s underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do… look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.

Today, you can see many organizations that have fallen in love with the format of a PowerPoint presentation. There are some organizations in which it is expected (or worse – mandatory) to deliver information using Powerpoint. Many organizations created templates and rules about how to use this instrument which have nothing to do with giving a good presentation. PowerPoint usage has become a standard. Usually a bad one.

The problem with PowerPoint is that it is a tool that does not always fit the circumstances. Talking to an audience differs depending on the circumstances. Giving an inspirational speech about an idea and teaching something is not the same. Talking to 100 people is not the same as talking to 3 people. Not mentioning the differences in subject matter.

I remember when PowerPoint was starting to be used for giving classes in the one of the schools of the Israeli Air force where I was serving (yes, near the end of the last millennium). The commander of the unit was so impressed with intertwining new technology into the curriculum that he ordered every department in the unit to take at least three classes and build a PowerPoint presentation for them. I was talking to the officer in charge of guidance development and he told me this was an erroneous order, because PowerPoint should be used only if it can contribute to the class and improving it. It should not be a default setting.

I think it can be explained very easily if you think about a megaphone. Sometimes, a megaphone helps in making the crowd hear you and understand you. It is a great tool, if you are standing outside and talking to a large crowd. But if you are in a small room trying to talk to a small number of people, it would just seem ridiculous. The same is true with PowerPoint. Sometimes, it just makes you seem ridiculous.

If PowerPoint can contribute to your message or there is something visual you need to show your audience, use it, other wise you should think twice about using it. If you chose to use it, think carefully how to do it. PowerPoint can be used in different manners not only in the standard format we a used to seeing. For example, see here for using PowerPoint for presentations in small groups.

In the last weeks I have seen two great presentations that did not use PowerPoint at all. They did not need it. One is Malcolm Gladwell’s speech “Genius: 2012“. The second is Sir Ken Robinson’s speech “Do schools kill creativity?“

The second tip Godin talks about deals with note taking by the audience:

Too breathtaking to take notes. If people are liveblogging, twittering or writing down what you’re saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it/note-taken it for them, right? We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That’s a shame. Your actions should demand attention (hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, “write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.”) People don’t take notes when they go to the opera.

Not that I have a problem with it, but I think Godin sets the bar a little high this time.

First, even if you are the best presenter in the world and have the most compelling message, there will still be some fluctuations in your presentation. And it is Ok that people write down things while during these fluctuations. Most people can write an idea down and continue to listen at the same time.

Second, Godin claims that a presentation should not be longer than 10 minutes. I am not sure that is always possible. But even in a 10 minutes presentation, the important idea is much shorter and usually repeats it self a number of times, because we all know the importance of repeation in presentations. The second time the same idea is presented – don’t you want your audience to write it down.

Third, I know that for me personally, when I feel like I have something to write down, it means the presentation is interesting and contributes to me. In the two aforementioned presentations I watched, I felt the urge to write some of the ideas down for later use during the speech.

Fourth, and more importantly, as Godin himself says – “We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That’s a shame” – Maybe it is a shame. But that is the way people work – when you are presenting you should take that into notice. The all point of presenting is to create value for the listeners. I prefer they write own my main idea and remember it than having their full attention all the time and than having them forget my message afterwards because for some people the opposite of forgetting is writing.

 Elad