keep it to yourself!

Have you ever invented something? Have any patents under your belt? I have a feeling you have. Most of us have a few eureka moments in our lives, others blessed with many.

Where do good ideas come from?

Check out this TED talk by Steven Johnson here:


Steven was also featured in the Wall Street Journal, September 25th, in the article, The Genius of the Tinkerer. In a similar tone to his TED talk, he speaks about how to use technology.

Innovation is not about implementing the latest technology, but the appropriate technology.


It's clearly about not keeping it to yourself, right? If you've ever wondered about the validity or complained about preparing for a design review, I hope this makes you think twice.

If brainstorm meetings, product development strategy sessions, or design reviews aren't quite what they used to be in your company, perhaps we should talk over coffee.

communication & leadership

I finally watched the latest Alice in Wonder land film this weekend. With all the special effects and quirky characters, what I remember most actually is a new word, “muchness” defined early in the movie when The Mad Hatter explained to Alice that she had lost her much-ness, as in she had been so much more.

I like this new word. Let’s consider the muchness of people, leaders we know.

Have you ever witnessed someone to lose their muchness? …Their moxy? …Their rapport? ..Their cover?

It’s amazing how quickly your trust, respect, and “follow-ship” of a leader can be annihilated. I recently witnessed just this phenomenon. In this situation, the leader felt compelled to give grandiose speeches via email paired with long spaces of time between communications and avoided questions from others.

Was the intent to be cryptic? Controlling? Passive aggressive? Persuasive? This could also have been someone incredibly busy, prone to thinking out-loud, and not considering the relationship with the team.

Then this leader avoided, as in didn’t show up to a critical meeting with her team.

Unfortunately, whether meaning to or not, her cover was blown, her “muchness” removed, and her “follow-ship” erased.

Any benefit of the doubt was removed due to blatant disrespect.

The trap can be easy to fall into. How you are perceived by others is their reality of you. Constant communication helps to correct misconceptions and to keep conversation going.

What opinions are you holding of someone that a conversation might clear up?

What has caused you to lose “follow-ship” of a leader?

It's not my job

A month ago Thanksgiving, I talked about being thankful to your colleagues. As the week of Christmas has arrived, I am thinking about what and how you give in your organization.

What are you giving back to your organization?

Ideally, your teams are made up of diverse skills and viewpoints complimenting each other on how they interact and what they bring to the table. Your teams are confident enough to counter view points for creative discussion leading to creative solutions.

We all have our role. We all have our job.

Having our role also means that there are roles that don’t belong to us; tasks and responsibilities that don’t fall under our umbrella – tasks left to others.. jobs that aren't ours.

Do you ever do things that aren’t directly assigned to you? Of course we all have to mindful of our immediate and long-term responsibilities to ensure our work is getting done without being overworked ourselves, but I’d like to explore what happens when we give of ourselves fully at work.

Let’s starting with making a list of things that we could give:

• Pick up any trash you come across that’s the size of a dime or larger on the floor

• Help a colleague pick up something that accidentally spilled

• Walk a strong pace to get to your destination quicker – to finish quicker

• Smile and greet every person you encounter in your office

• Listen respectfully to every person you interact with in your office

• Help someone do their job if you have idle time

• Research and brainstorm on products, services, or just plain ideas that will help your company to do more.

• Contribute in discussion at meetings

• Prepare for meetings you’ll attend

• Finish your work when you’ve committed to finishing it

• Continuously think of ways you can do your job better

• Continuously think of ways your company can service its clients better

• Choose to share the positive verses complaining or dwelling on the past

• Support the team decision and make it successful even if you disagree with the method (within moral limits obviously)

• Go the extra step, put on the finishing touches, and do a little more proudly to delight your clients (or the colleague you’re delivering to)

• Be proud of what you deliver

• Understand the ‘why’ of decisions so you can support them fully

Wouldn’t you like someone who did all these things to work for you?

What more would you add to this list?

To be or not to be transparent?

I vol- unteered with a great nonprofit for over three years. They help people get into safe affordable decent housing where they can have the confidence of knowing it’s as permanent as they need it to be. It’s amazing how providing stability in someone’s life can turn their whole world upside down yet right side up.

Like many nonprofits (and commercial ventures), they have been struggling to raise funds.

As a volunteer, I was always surprised to learn that they struggled for donations because I knew their programming was so strong.

As a volunteer, I was always surprised to run into people who had grave misconceptions about the program and its benefits.

As a volunteer however, I could never find out exactly how the program was funded. No one could or would answer me directly about where the money went and how much was actually needed.

The goals were not clear.

I found it difficult to help them, often guessing at what they might need. My fellow volunteers shared the same concern with me. We’d guess as best we knew and do the best we could. I would find in conversation with potential donors that they also had the same questions as I did but with many misconceptions about the program as well.

What if this was a commercial venture?

What would you do if this was your commercial venture?

The same rules apply don’t they? Frankly, I can hear the gears over-heating in your head:

• Set clear goals!

• Communicate a clear message to the team on what needs to be accomplished!

• Get everyone unified around a real and tangible long term goal.

• Help the team create tactical plans that will enable the long term goal to be reached.

• Be transparent such that everyone can understand what is going on.

• Be transparent so that everyone will trust the plan and the motive.

What else would you add to this list?

In defense of negativity

There’s good reason to not feel so positive these days.

Events, attitudes, and circumstances can throw us for a loop. We react based on fear, experience, upbringing, our values, understanding, and openness to change. We can react negatively in spite of our age and all the self help books we’ve read.

"We have good reason. Negativity is akin to grieving."

Why not be a sourpuss? You can share with the world your anger by wearing a frown on your face, ignoring people you work with, being snappy with answers to questions, being incredibly aloof, only giving out small tidbits of information but not all the information your coworkers need to do their jobs well…

What else can you think of?

Perhaps you could also rally resentment against a manger by quietly questioning their whereabouts when absent from the office. This is especially effective when you know the manager is at a legitimate meeting, but no one else does. You could undermine the manager’s leadership when they have delegated something by going to that person and asking any series of questions such as: “why doesn’t he do it?” or, “Does he even know how this is supposed to work?” or better, “that’s not appropriate.”

One could make a new employee whom they resent perhaps for not being a part of their hiring decision, feel incredibly unwelcome through several vibrant ways:

• the silent treatment,

• withholding information, and

• pointing out faults superficial, made-up, or exaggerated to fellow colleagues.

"Negativity Tip: This last is best executed in small huddled groups where upon the new person coming across you in the hallway or break-room, you immediately stop talking and remain silent until the person passes."

Denying critical elements a new person needs to do their work is also an excellent negativity tool to wield. Examples of this could be falsifying customer deadlines, conveniently forgetting each week to make an extra copy of the office key for the new employee, or forgetting to convey important messages.

This type of anger transfer is especially useful in spreading negativity as the new person has nothing to do with why you are angry, hurt, or unappreciated. The effectiveness of this negativity is wonderful because the poor sap never sees it coming and will be completely blindsided by the treatment.

But why go to all that bother?

Wouldn’t all this bad behavior only drain energy from you? What good could come of it? If you find that you’re not able to accept new direction or effect change in your workplace positively through collaborative healthy means, perhaps a job change is better for everyone, especially you.

The difficulty in negative behavior is that it rubs off. Like it or not, we tend to learn and mirror patterns we witness in others. Negativity is best tackled quickly.

Luckily, good leaders know this too. Good leaders know how to ignore petty negative passive outbursts and when to step in. They understand that learning the root of the anger will help bring resolution quicker moving everyone forward. Establishing trust and creating an environment where a negative employee can open up and start to describe what is wrong in a one on one environment can lead to mutual understanding and positive change in how you work together. Long term everyone benefits, even if this employee chooses to leave the company.

How have you tamed a bad seed?

What tools do you use to help your teammates shine?

Originally posted by me on the L2L blog, November 6th, 2009.

Lions, tigers, and bears..

Actually, more like: lions, beavers, and golden retrievers.

At my previous company I would periodically take those little self-evaluation tests to figure out my general personally type. This was typically done during a team off-site and the results would be anticipated.

Of course Larry is a “Retriever”.

Sure enough, the test results showed that Mary is a strong driver but with a tall yellow bar too.

For myself, I was always a driver but like reading horoscopes, I saw a little of myself in each description of the lion, otter, golden retriever, and beaver.

Sometimes we’d have to wear these little personality name tags in the office and when we’d tire of this display; we’d hang them in our office for people to see. Supposedly this would help others work with us better.

How exactly am I supposed to give a Retriever information?

How do I more effectively ask a Beaver to do something?

Wouldn’t it be easier if I just knew what to get from others to do my work more effectively?

We all go to work wanting to do a good job. Everyone there, like everyone you might notice in your neighborhood, at church, or in the grocery store, is a mixed bag of nuts. We’re all different. We all have our own idiosyncrasies. We all have our own perceptions based on our upbringing. Some even have their own agendas.

How can we work together better?

While understanding your colleagues and knowing them personally always benefits, one doesn’t always have the opportunity to understand how someone works.

• You could be new on a team.
  

• Your team could be located at several locations.
  

• Understanding someone else’s personality type might not be your gift.
  

There are many reasons why knowing yourself better is the key to getting information presented to you as you need to do your job more effectively verses leaving it to someone else's interpretation. Things like:

• What questions should you ask to fill in the gaps in your mind?

• How should you lay out your work for your brain to process quicker?

• When should you slow down to let others catch up?

Just as in personal relationships, understanding your very own unique way of processing information, will make you more effective in all you do.

Starting a new gig

A list. A 9 point action list.

I have some friends starting new opportunities soon and it got me thinking about how their company will survive their leaving. It got me thinking about how to gracefully leave an organization and even how to successfully leave a position within an organization. I did a quick search to find some do-s and don’t-s, but it really goes deeper than this. I decided to write this post. I’ll expand more next week, but for now, a list:

1. Be transparent. Ensure that your boss and your team understand what it takes to do your job.

2. Record justification. For every project and initiative, there is strong justification for decisions made throughout its development. What are they? Filling in others and recording for future reference will ensure that others understand ‘the why’ of decisions. This will make it easier for the team to support and to carry plans forward when you’re not involved anymore. Your project could be a fundraising strategy with a particular company, a manufacturing process, or a specific product design. Ask me about the life of a thin-wall plastic product I designed and why recording was so important.

3. Train your team. Consider how well your team does their individual jobs. Conduct formal in-house training that will make them perform even better. You have a lot to share from your years of experience. Not sure where to start? Work with a consultant who can customize and develop training with you.

4. Define your strategy. It’s probably a good one so why not share it? This will enable your boss and your team to do two things: a. carry it forward in your absence, and b. improve upon it.

5. Perform a thorough review of your role. Define what you do and what your replacement should expect as their duties. Identify gaps in your position and the organization to help drive improvement after you’ve moved on. This is not a criticizing letter, but a bulleted list.

This organization’s future success can also be yours.

6. List assets to your position and how they help or hinder you. Do you really need three computers? That blackberry? Better managing database software? You might also have several marketing pieces, prototypes, or other inventory you control. Passing this list on to your team and replacement will help them save money and continue critical customer support.

7. Develop a schedule for implementation. We all have ongoing projects and it’s likely you’re leaving in the middle of one. Finish what you can and put in the works details that will ‘run’ during your departure. The idea is to allow for seamless transfer to your replacement. This is not the time to let your customer or donor down. Successful transfer can only reflect well on both of you.

8. Open your books. Reorganize if necessary. You may hold sensitive and critical information for the operation of your company. Ensure this information is gathered in one place, is easy to interpret, as well as easily found. What kind of information you ask? Things like:

1. current customer lists – contact names, products they buy from you, products they buy from competitors, what they like to order for lunch, how they take their coffee, where they spend their holidays. Information should include special strategies with them and details from your last meetings.
2. Show budget information including when you spent money, when your group was reimbursed. Provide details on how you plan for your department/company.
3. If you work for a nonprofit, be sure to include volunteer information (and not just names!), donor schedules, cashflow timing, donor in the works information and the like.
4. For your projects, clean up your to-do action lists and ensure those responsible understand they get no slack during the leadership transition.

9. Communicate. Everyone will miss you whether they like you or not. Close the loop gracefully informing all in appropriate positive ways whom their future contact will be. For customers, work hard to introduce personally your new replacement. For suppliers, work hard to introduce your new replacement. For colleagues, work hard to introduce your new replacement. These face to face meetings show a strong level of professionalism and can only bode well for your future and that of your ‘old’ organization.

What would you add to this list if it was your boss leaving?

What would you add to this list if one of your teammates was leaving?