Three Words – 2012

January 1, 2012 By 33 Comments

Finish/Start

Maybe you’ve heard of this exercise, maybe you haven’t.  It’s something that my friend Chris Brogan started several years ago as a way of replacing New Years Resolutions with words that would serve as guideposts to the various goals that he wanted to accomplish that year.

I use them similarly, in that they serve as reminders to stay grounded in my goals.  They can serve to inspire me as well as smack me in the face when I need them to.

I have to say that I didn’t use last year’s Three Words as deliberately as I am setting out to do this year, thus one of my words speaks to that, speaks to not only the process of having and keeping goals, but the work that needs to be done to accomplish them.

One of the things that I like the most about this exercise, is that it’s not about choosing the best words or choosing something that sounds like something I want to happen in 2012.  They also aren’t goals in and of themselves.  These Three Words emerge from time spent reflecting on last year and setting clear goals (I have 100 for 2012) that I can measure and hold myself accountable to.  These Three Words serve me and my goals as both a guide and reminder of what’s important.

So, without further ado; My Three Words for 2012

Reclaim – In 2012, I will be accomplishing goals that serve to reclaim various aspects of my life.  I have several specific goals that are served by this word.  For example, I want to reclaim my physical and financial health for myself and my family and I have specific goals in each of these areas.  The word serves these goals, because it is a reminder that my health is mine to own, both financially and physically.  It is something that is directly affected by personal choices and actions I make to create that health.  The word Reclaim is also an acknowledgement that it is my fault for poor choices made in the past.

Set – Last year I read the book, “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor.  In that book he shared a story where in order to accomplish the goal of learning to play the guitar, he literally put the guitar in between the couch and the television.  This was to ensure that when he sat down after a long day, he didn’t create the excuse that his guitar was too far away to practice.  I have come to call this “Putting Success In Your Way”.

The word Set will serve as a reminder that I must continue to set up the circumstances for my success.  Again, it ties to Reclaim in that I have to own this.  Set also requires an understanding of the goal and what it will take to accomplish it.

Do – As in, DO the work.  I have some substantial goals for 2012.  This is going to be an enormous year for me as you’ll likely learn if you continue to come by here.  Everyone of my goals requires work to be done.  I cannot accomplish them without this last word.  I can’t run a 10K or more if I don’t log the miles ahead of time.  I can’t publish anything if I don’t write or more than that, do the research on what I’m writing about.  Do is a call to action that says, ‘it’s really great that you’re Reclaiming and Setting the stage and all that, but get moving and do the freaking work’

I’d love to hear what your Three Words are and don’t think it’s too late either.

Filed Under: Goals, Productivity, Reflective Practice, Three Words

Forget What the Calendar Says – 2012 Starts Now

December 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

sunset

Actually it haas already started

Truth be told, my sights have been on 2012 for almost 2 months.

Don’t get me wrong, 2011 has been good to me and my family in many ways. I have also made a lot of mistakes along the way. One of those mistakes, was losing sight of some of my goals for 2011. Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes was in not doing a better job establishing those goals. They simply weren’t as defined as I think they should have been.

This year, I will again have my Three Words for 2012, which my friend Chris started several years ago.  Reflecting on my Three Words for 2011, they had highs and lows. What they lacked, for me was a depth, and a plan for execution and accountability.

That will change in 2012.

I’m Not Waiting

One of my goals for 2012 will involve fitness, but I’m not waiting.   I’m not telling myself, “I will start exercising on January 2nd”.  I’ve already begun.  I’ve been at this goal for almost a month now.  I didn’t want to wait for the calendar to tell me it was time.

In fact, I cleared another mental hurdle this weekend by running while I was travelling.  I brought my running gear with me on a trip. I woke up in Boston this morning, definitely not feeling like going for a run, but managed to log a few miles in the city, running through parts of Boston Common on a crisp, December Day.

Last week, I cleared another one by going for a run on a cold rainy day in Maine.

These are all small mental hurdles that have kept me from following through in the past.  I am naming them and moving through them.

Two on the Calendar

A quick look at my calendar will give you a preview how I will measure my progress on my fitness goals.

Tonight I registered for Two 5K Road Races.  One of them is on January 8th, so for me, 2012 has to start now.

So, what do you want to accomplish in 2012?

What are you doing right now to work on that?

Filed Under: Productivity, Reflective Practice

Local Business Can Compete with Amazon

December 15, 2011 By 10 Comments
Amazon’s $5 Deal

Perhaps you’ve heard the story about Amazon dispatching an army of smartphone wielding shoppers, enticed by $5 and discounts on items.  Shoppers go to local retailers to scan products with Amazon’s Mobile App, see that they get a better deal on Amazon and walk out of the store empty handed and the promise of $5.

I’ve heard phrases such ‘retailers are becoming showrooms for the online marketplace’.

The story though, doesn’t have to be about how Amazon is killing local brick and mortar, it can be about how local brick and mortar can adapt to online competition.

I’m one of those buyers

I’ve done something similar recently, where I went to a local music shop to look at Ukuleles.  The price on Amazon was nearly $15 cheaper.  I went to the owner of the store and presented him with the price and an opportunity to match it, he made a quick phone call to his distributor then turned to me and said, “I just can’t do it, I’m sorry.”

There I was, standing across from the owner and the guys who do the repairs on instruments in a store that has been there for years.  There was the Ukulele in front of me and even though he was certain I would walk away, I laid down my card, bought it and was home and playing in an hour.

I bought it because of the relationship, service after the sale and my desire to have it that day.

Applying Daily Deals Thinking

Another familiar story is the rapid growth of the daily deals industry and t’s industry leader Groupon.

Many Small Businesses have been more than willing to jump on this opportunity, offer a 50% discount, and pay 40% of the sale to Groupon for the promise of increased foot traffic and new customers who will buy more and return later.  This is the key to the success of those promotions.

If this is a successful model for local business, then….

Launch a campaign that takes on the Amazon shoppers directly

Why not use the energy effort and promotional resources of Amazon’s multi-million dollar campaign to your advantage and apply calculations that you’re already considering investing in a daily deal promotion.

As a small business with little to no marketing budget, there is an opportunity to leverage the publicity that this story is getting and swing the doors wide open to the Amazon Scanner Army.

Here’s a sketch:

Announce to the world that you invite all Amazon scanners to your business.  Contact local news outlets who are always hungry for a unique story to get the word out.  This is leveraging the publicity with your own twist.

Welcome the scanners and the foot traffic.

Ask customers to scan whatever items they would like and present it to you for the opportunity to match the price.

Match the price when you can, be honest when you can’t.

Wow them with personal service and provide the instant gratification of getting the product THAT DAY.

Not everyone of those customers will be a win, but neither is the daily deal you’ve been thinking about.

Write a new storyline

We hear it everyday.

“Local Business can’t compete”

“Local Business is dying”

“Your neighbor is losing her job because we shop online”

and my favorite; “Every time you One-click Buy, a puppy dies”

Alright, I made that one up.

There are alternatives.  There are opportunities.  There are new story lines to be written and the first line is:

Local business can compete.

Filed Under: Business

Thoughts on Chris Brogan’s Twitter Unfollow Experiment.

September 27, 2011 By 2 Comments

Keep Out Experiment In Progress

Disclosure #1:  I work with Chris at Human Business Works.
Disclosure #2:  Sometimes I disagree with him, it’s what makes HBW work.

The Experiment

Chris posted about the status of his Twitter Unfollow Experiment, citing at one point in the post,

A lot of what I do with each social media tool set is experiment. I work hard to understand what will work well, what won’t, what will serve my needs or my clients’ needs, and what will happen if I do this or don’t do that

Chris also pointed out that despite his original plan to follow people back, that he’s found value in the current state of things and may hang out at 300. A finding he would have never discovered had he not taken a risk and experimented and he’s happy to communicate and share those findings.

The Fear

In a conversation I participated in at PodCamp Boston 6 this past weekend I heard folks talk about the worry they held about their blog posts, ‘what if what I say is wrong?’ or ‘what if what I do is wrong?’
These are valid questions and I could feel and identify with the pain they were expressing and the agonizing over getting it right before posting on a blog or twitter, G+ or other site.

The Challenge

Getting stuff out there, “shipping” if you’re into Seth Godin’s stuff, is a real challenge. Particularly when we are worried about everyone’s perceptions about our brand, our knowledge, our expertise.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

We tell our kids this all the time and truthfully it’s also what you say.  However, how you communicate; earnestly, openly, confidently yet with the humility to know that there are people who are smarter than you, gets you a long way.

You’re going to be wrong

While there are steps you can take to limit the impact a botched experiment has on your brand, once you come to terms with the fact that you are going to be wrong from time to time, it’s easier to be confident with putting stuff out there, trying something new and taking the risk knowing that at least you’ll learn something along the way.

The Lesson

The real lesson in all that Chris did with the Twitter Unfollow Experiment is in the idea of experimentation, communication, and sharing the results.

Experiment because it’s good for you and your business to grow and try new things.

Communicate what you are doing and bring us along for the ride.  We may not like what you’re doing, but at least we understand it.

Share the results.  If you found value in the experiment, tell us about it so that we can draw our own conclusions as they apply to our situation.

A few parting questions:

As a brand or a representative of a brand, do you have the opportunity to experiment within your organization and how often to you take advantage of that?

As a leader, do you give permission for your employees to experiment?

How are you measuring what matters most in the experiment and how will you share it?

Filed Under: Business, Productivity

Can you afford to fail?

March 25, 2011 By 2 Comments

Screen Failure

I recently read “Poke The Box” (Affiliate Link) , Seth Godin’s newest and first Domino book.  While I found the book to be oddly laid out and organized, I did find a number of very useful ideas throughout and many that got me thinking.  One of those ideas, is from a small section called “This Might Not Work”.

Seth encourages us to say those words, often and operate from that position where failure just might exist. In that section, Seth asks the question, “Is your work so serious and flawless and urgent that each thing you do, every day, must work?”

Oh, The Pressure

I got to wondering about how this might be different, or should I say be perceived differently, by leaders in the non-profit sector.   As a contributor at 501 Mission Place, I’ve been thinking about the constant pressure that non-profit leaders put upon themselves, that the margin of error for them, appears much smaller.   As a former non-profit Executive Director, I am familiar with how narrow that margin feels, both financially and to the mission.  There is a sense that one must constantly serve the mission or else risk it all falling apart.

Trapped

What I notice with some non-profits, is that the mission traps them.  The mission and service to it, tends to narrow the focus of those working in it.  In fact, that’s often the challenge, finding a way to work on your business instead of in it.  If non-profit leaders get stuck in their business, surrounded by mission and service, how then do they grow their organization?  How do they move from being so enmeshed in the day to day realities of who their mission serves, to a place where they can take risks and innovate, to a place where they can comfortably say “This might not work”?

Reflect, Redraw, Rejuvinate

Estrella Rosenberg suggests that we lead with vision instead of mission.  I think she’s onto something,  but I’ll ask the question that I love to ask, “So, what does that look like?”.  No it’s not rhetorical and it might be a bit different for every circumstance, but I am certain that it starts with a few things:

1.  Step away from your work often enough to ask yourself if you are working on the right thing?

2.  If your mission is to serve people at a certain point along ‘the stream’, take time to look further upstream at why folks end up at your spot.  Look for opportunities to become involved in advocacy and legislation that would reduce the need for you to serve.

3.  Look outside your organization, community, and cause to see what you can learn from successful people, organizations and businesses that have gone before you.

More than anything, ask yourself, “What would that look like?” and find the space to try bold new ideas even if they ‘might not work’.


Filed Under: Uncategorized

Shooting Free-throws: Cultivating a Practice Ethic

March 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Boys playing basketball outside

March Madness

I caught a bit of ESPN this morning and saw a player from the UCONN women’s team practicing free-throws.  My mind quickly leapt to the stories of Larry Bird (hey I’m from New England) practicing 500 free-throws before school each day, then to Michael Jordan’s legendary practice habits.  While his physical gifts helped propel him to being perhaps the greatest player of all time, it was his work ethic during practice…his practice ethic that made him better than everyone else.

Practice makes…

We’re all familiar with the value of a strong work ethic and we know successful folks who appear to possess a strong work ethic.  What if we discover that  the people who we most admire for their success and apparent work ethic actually possess a strong practice ethic?  The people I know  and have worked with spend tons of time at the free-throw line, shooting hundred of baskets working on the fundamentals, doing the stuff that others might find boring.  They spend time mastering the simplest aspects of the game enabling them to recognize and make the difficult moves more easily.

What does that look like?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask.  I love to ask it when I’m working with other people.  It helps me to take my conceptual understanding to a more meaningful place where I can begin to see something in action, actually working.

It leaves me wondering; What does a practice ethic look like in business?  If you are going to be at the top of your game in your work life, in running your business, in working for a company, in running a non-profit and trying to change the world:  What does practice look like?

I was having a conversation with my friend and business partner, Joe Sorge yesterday.  He talks about being able to ‘work on your business instead of in your business’.  Having only worked with Joe for a short time now and having had the opportunity to visit his restaurants in Milwaukee, it is clear that Joe works on his business.  Joe has a great practice ethic.

For Joe, practice looks like learning, extrapolating and repurposing.  It’s looks like reading;  industry magazines, blogs by Chris Brogan, Seth Godin, John Jantsch and others.  It’s about reading the Harvard Business Review and books by Scott Belsky (Affiliate Link) to glean ideas and repurposing them for his own business.  It’s about engaging people from other industries and thought leaders.  It “looks like” asking questions and contributing to the conversation.

What good is practice if you don’t play the game?

It’s also about action.  It’s about asking ‘So what would that look like if we did that at AJBombers, or Swig, or Water Buffalo?’  Putting all of these ideas into action, testing and experimenting is the important part of ‘Then What?’.  Chris Brogan’s Blog Topics is also a great example of years of practice in idea generation and the craft of writing, put into action.  At over 425 subscribers, it seems like a pretty good game.

Success clearly isn’t coming from just a strong work ethic, it’s coming from a strong Practice Ethic. So, what does practice look like for you?  Are you spending enough time shooting free-throws?

Filed Under: Business, Productivity, Reflective Practice, Uncategorized

Reflective Practice

January 17, 2011 By 5 Comments

Reflective Practice is defined by Donald Schon as “the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning”.

All the kids are doing it

And by kids I mean masters. Aside from the fact that prominent thinkers such as Schon, John Dewey and Jean Piaget have been talking about it for decades. I think I first noticed it when reading Dale Carnegie several years ago. He has a section in his book where he talks about learning a key element of productivity from a Wall Street Banker who religiously conducted a weekly review every Saturday. His family knew and gave him the time. It was a key to his success.

“Sharpen the Saw”, is one of the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ that Stephen Covey talks about. Think about that. Covey boiled years of reading and research down to 7 Habits (yes, I know there are 8 now) and one of them is about taking the time to reflect, redraw and rejuvenate. Seems important to me.

These guys are too old for you? OK. How about David Allen, who also recommends a weekly review to maintain a ‘mind like water’? Oh, and my personal hero, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s Touchpoints Approach (who is the youngest older person I know), maintains that Reflective Practice is key to growing as a professional and growing in your interactions.

I reflect all the time

I have always, quite naturally reflected on situations, circumstances, interactions, accomplishments, and of course, failures. I’m a bit of an associative thinker and I’m sure there’s a touch of “SQUIRREL” tucked in there somewhere. So, I might begin the process of reflecting on an interaction and end up thinking about what it would be like to ride a segway on an ice hockey rink.

Natural is fine, but is it doing anything for you? Natural abilities are wonderful, but what could they be in the hands of a master, someone who is willing to hone and develop those abilities. The question is, how do you hone your abilities to reflect?

Ask the right questions – Framing

These may not be the right questions for you, but I’m going to offer 5 questions here to share with you one possible frame for Reflecting. I have come to understand that for me, reflection has to be intentional, deliberate and framed to keep me focused in order to extract meaning. This means that I have to ask myself the right questions.

What successes occurred this week and how can you build on them?
What struggles did you encounter this week and what can you learn from them?
What remains unfinished from this?
What resources do you need?
How will you approach next week differently?

Don’t allow yourself to give quick and simple answers. Think about your interactions small and large. Think about your relationships with your employees, your clients, your customers. Dig deep and look for the unexpected and overlooked interactions that may just help you get better.

What questions would help you frame your reflections?

Filed Under: Business, Productivity, Reflective Practice, Work

Three Words – 2011

January 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

I’ve been a bit busy over at Human Business Works since I joined in August of 2010 and we are working hard to grow peoples capabilities. The real thrust behind everything we do over there is about looking for opportunities to lift people up, provide opportunities for them to learn, connect, share and be successful.

The work that I am doing there is somewhat new to me in that it’s a different industry but it is also very familiar to me. My prior work was working with children and families where I was supporting the growth of professionals who serve them and creating environments for them to be successful. Interestingly enough I still find myself doing that in this role, not the children and families part, but supporting the growth of professionals. We’re also creating environments for people to grow and be successful. The big difference, is that the folks I work with and I, don’t necessarily share a common language, we have to discover it. I have a lot of listening to do. I have a lot of learning to do.

This is the thrust of my Three Words for 2011.

Frames – In my work with the team at HBW I am going to be focusing on frames. Frames are necessary to build. They help us to build a common understanding of our business goals, our relationship. Frames support the structure of what we’re building. Frames provide the parameters in which we are working and serve to outline our mutual expectations of not only what we’re trying to accomplish, but how.

Fire – Passion and execution are the elements of this word for me in 2011. Passion drives our organization. Just spend 5 minutes with Estrella Rosenberg at 501MissionPlace, Joe Sorge at Kitchen Table Companies, or Josh Fisher our new Creative Director and you will get a sense of the passion and fire I’m talking about.
My role is to recognize it, find ways to tend to it and support its purpose. That’s where execution comes in. A useful purpose for fire is used to forge. Fire is built on passion is a great first step, but we can’t loose site of how to use it.

Masters – I want to spend 2011 learning from Masters. I have the good fortune of working with one of them. Actually, I have the good fortune of working with many of them. In 2011 I want to spend time getting to know more people, sitting with folks, listening and learning from Masters.

I learn a ton in a five minute conversation with Jon Swanson or by reading one of his posts. Part of this will be reading, listening and watching to find masters. You can bet that this applies to appreciating the mastery that emerges from my children and my wife.
I also have an ongoing list of folks I’d like to meet in 2011. I bet you’re on it.

So, there you have it. My Three Words for 2011. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by

A note and preview: One of the Masters who I’ll be talking a lot about here is world renown pediatrician, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, who is a master at relationships and a master of observation (I quite think the two are connected).

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Be Helpful

May 28, 2010 By 3 Comments

I saw this Tweet from Tom Peters the other day and the first line struck me immediately. Being helpful is something I think about often and in fact train people to consider often in their work in supporting families through something called the Touchpoints approach.

Touchpoints

Dr. T. Berry Brazelton is a pediatrician and the Founder of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center in Boston. Dr. B’s approach to working with children and families (Touchpoints) is based on relationship and focusing on the strengths of the parent. As a practitioner working with families; a pediatrician, a nurse, home visitor, teacher or other family service professional, Touchpoints asks us to be mindful of the family system we are entering. It asks us to join collaboratively, rather than prescriptively.

Assumptions

In order to accomplish this, Touchpoints asks us to operate from certain Assumptions which for many in the field of early childhood education or family service might be challenging. The Touchpoints Assumptions are:

  • The parent is the expert on his/her child
  • All parents have strengths
  • All parents want to do well by their child
  • All parents have something critical to share at each developmental stage
  • All parents have ambivalent feelings
  • Parenting is a process built on trial and error

These Assumptions ask us to reflect on our own practice and imagine what a relationship with a family would look like if we truly operate from these Assumptions.

Strengths, Collaboration and Offering Advice

If we simply look at and think about operating from the Assumption “All Parents Have Strengths”, it begs us to discover what those are. The only way we can discover those strengths, is by engaging in a relationship with them. If we assume that this person ‘has strengths’ and, to go one step further, that they “have something critical to share” with us, all of a sudden, the relationship is less about what advice I have for you as a parent, but about discovering together what will be helpful to you based on your strengths, your own knowledge, your expertise.

So, when a parent says that their child is not sleeping through the night, I can either choose to launch into a prescriptive diatribe about what I think she should do, or I can begin by earnestly wondering with her about what those nights are like for her, or if it is even a concern for her. Based on what she initially told me I really don’t have any idea what would be helpful in this situation.

Being Helpful

If you haven’t guessed by now, I believe we can recast these Assumptions for our everyday relationships, in our organizations, in our business practices. What would happen if we look first for the strengths in others, if we seek to understand what they know and what is important to them? Maybe then we can begin to understand how we can be most helpful.

I’m off to read Ed Schein’s book.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Up Too Late: Bad Parenting

February 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We let our ten year old stay up too late last night.  I think it was 12:30 when he and his mom and I finally went to bed.  I am sure there will be consequences.  In fact, this morning he woke up and one of the first things he said was, “that movie was intense”.

Yesterday on a whim, I rented “The Great Debaters”, with Denzel Washington.  It is a story about a debate team from an all black college in the 1930′s who, after beating so many other small black colleges and one white college, are invited to debate at Harvard.  What I loved an appreciated were the many examples of bright minds, passionate about learning, knowledgeable about poetry, the Bible, mythology and literature and a lovely quote that summed the culture of one hard working family, “We do what we have to, so we can do what we want to”.

There were grim reminders of our country’s racist legacy, and oscillation between worlds that challenge the watcher to understand that the path these students were on was not just difficult because of racism.  It also flew in the face of leaving the comfort of a culture that they were part of, to exist in a culture where members of each believed they did not.

Aidan watched this.  At every reasonable interval we checked in with him to see if he was awake and whether he was “ok”.  His responses were groggy though not from being tired, but from the rapt attention he gave this movie.  At some of the more intense moments when we thought it might be confusing or overwhelming, he simply replied, “That’s so sad.”  What we knew from both his attention and response is what we have come to know and appreciate about Aidan.  That he understands humanity and is able to comprehend the context in which something is presented.

What happened last night was one of those moments when you are reminded that you are raising a person who, while needing the support and guidance of his parents, has gifts to give and a strong role in our family.

We talked for a short while afterward.  His mother and I discussed with him some of the language we heard.  He and I talked about the characters love for reading and his own passion for greek mythology, novels and more recently, poetry.

The epilogue of the movie demonstrates not how these events and characters changed the course of history, but how this experience changed lives of the characters.  This too is important.  For while it was wonderful, the experience of watching something like this with Aidan revealed far more for me than the story itself.

Filed Under: Uncategorized
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