Category: Working Smarter

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Are You Encouraging Insanity in Your Company?

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But in business, insanity goes a step further. In business, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, and then making it a standard operating procedure for everyone to follow.

One of the easiest rules I stress in business, and one that most CEOs never fully grasp is this: “If something works, do more of it. If something doesn’t work, stop doing it!”

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet we fail to follow it. Let me give you an example:

I will often ask someone “What are you doing in sales that has been giving you the best results?” I will typically get an answer like this: “When we bring an engineer with us on the presentation, we close almost every deal after doing that.” Then I find out that they only do this rarely and only on certain occasions. I can’t help but ask: “Well, if it gets you such great results, why aren’t you doing it more often? In fact, why aren’t you doing it every time?”

Then I’ll ask: “What are you doing that doesn’t work for you?” A typical answer might be: “We do a lot of direct mailing, but the response rate is dismal at best.” My anguished response is: “So why do you keep doing it?” Usually, they don’t know why. Corporate insanity? Perhaps.

The bottom line here is that you need to identify, within your organization, those things that are working well for you and figure out how to leverage them, do more of them, and enhance them.

STOP!

And you need to identify what isn’t working for you and stop doing it. Why spend time and money on things that aren’t generating a return? It just doesn’t make sense, but it happens all the time.

My recommendation is to begin a corporate-wide initiative to pinpoint the practices that are working across the different functional areas (accounting, sales, manufacturing, marketing, product development, human resources, etc.), and start doing more of them, and doing them better.

At the same time, you should be making a monumental effort to figure out what’s not working…what’s costing you effort, money, and lost opportunities. Then STOP doing them! Stop institutionalizing insanity in your organization. Every manager in your company should be able to answer this question: “What’s working and what’s not working?” If they can’t answer that question, maybe they shouldn’t be working — for you.

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Don’t End Up As The Best-Looking Horse In A Glue Factory

Your company is having financial problems. Products aren’t selling. You are not keeping up with competitors, and customers are heading out the door. What do you do? Redesign your website. Sure, there’s your top priority right there. If you change your colors to something innovative-looking and add some new content, then the rest will fall into place. With a website like that, well, people will think you’re Apple.

What you’re doing here is putting lipstick on a pig, something a lot of companies do. When performance starts failing at a business, CEOs and senior executives spend a lot of time focusing on the wrong things rather than understanding the real problems that are derailing them.

Stop Focusing On Symptoms

Most executives treat symptoms and never diagnose the underlying causes. If you were a doctor and did nothing but treat symptoms, never diagnosing core diseases, you’d be sued for malpractice. The truth is we commit malpractice all the time in business. Companies take steps to look better to themselves and the outside world. They remodel offices, write useless policies and forget about them, revamp they’re websites; and all the while their company is dying around them. They end up being the best looking horse in the glue factory.

Say, for example, a leader says, “I have a problem with morale in my company. I need ways to boost morale.” A less-than-adequate coach might say, “Have employee parties. Have a barbeque each month and hand out awards.” A real coach would ask questions like: “Give me some examples of why you think morale is bad. How is it manifesting itself? What behaviors are you seeing that make you believe morale is low? What do you think is causing those behaviors?”

Well, we find out that the company hasn’t given raises in two years and had a nasty round of layoffs. Now we’re getting somewhere. The solution isn’t a picnic. We need to look at the whole problem: people are afraid of losing their jobs. They’re insecure, worried, and, maybe even strapped for cash.

Focus On Solving Real Problems

No wonder you have a morale problem! Or rather – a morale symptom. You have to start by dealing with those problems. Communicate more about the layoffs and the company’s performance; talk about the initiatives you’ve undertaken to create more stability. That’s how you get morale back on track, not by putting more lipstick on the pig with parties or plaques.

If you’re treating the symptoms, you are letting the underlying cause grow and fester, and eventually, it will become so severe that you can’t ignore it. It’s going to force you to look at it, and it’s going to be ugly. You can save everyone some time, resources, and anxiety if you start digging now. Changing your website colors or adding new waiting room art can wait.

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Real Leaders Don’t Complain

I can’t tell you how many times I am in a coaching session with someone, and I end up spending most of the time just listening to them complain. After a while, I have to stop everything and tell them this: The true leader in any organization is the person who doesn’t complain.

No truer words were ever spoken. You may be the appointed leader, the elected leader, or even the founder of an organization, but if you are a complainer, you will never be seen by the employees and other stakeholders as the real leader of the organization. Somewhere in the organization is the person who never complains. He or she will be viewed as the true leader of the organization. The problem is, as the CEO, that person SHOULD be you!

Suck It Up

People don’t like whiners and complainers. I’m sure you don’t either. So, if you are constantly whining or complaining about things, you can imagine how others feel about you. Samuel Johnson, the noted British author, once said: “The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.” Who the heck wants to be looked at with contempt?

Think about all the famous leaders who are held up to us as examples, whether they are business leaders, military leaders, or political leaders. How many of them complained? How many of them were constantly whining about things? None, that I can recall. Now think about your own organization. Who are the people who never complain or never whine about things? Aren’t those the people you respect the most? They are the natural leaders within your organization.

Time Is Precious: Don’t Waste It Complaining

Complaining is an admission of failure. It is a negative energy that disrupts the smooth operation of the organization. It reflects on you and provides you with an image to others of a miserable, unhappy, and uninspiring person. And it wastes a lot of time…People who are busy complaining aren’t busy doing what they should be doing in their jobs. The late Congresswoman, Shirley Chisholm, once said: “You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

If you can honestly reflect on yourself, and see that you are a complainer, then you need to shift your attitude and become a doer instead. This is particularly true if you need to be a leader and inspire others. Moreover, look around your organization for the people who never complain. They are the aspiring leaders within your company, and you should keep your eye on them. They will be the people who will take your organization to the next level.

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Do Your Employees Hate To Lose More Than Love To Win?


Have you ever had an employee lose a sale, or a customer, or a negotiation, and say, “Well, I gave it my best shot.”? Although he would have enjoyed winning, he was more than willing to accept his loss because giving it his best effort was enough for him. Trust me, this guy is a loser. Everyone enjoys winning. I have never met a person who didn’t like to win, but some people are content to lose if they know they gave it their best shot. True winners – those that are highly competitive – won’t simply settle for winning. They can’t stand losing, and they will do anything rather than suffer a defeat. These highly competitive types tend to work harder, make greater sacrifices, put forth extra effort, and perform heroic actions. They are like athletes at the top of their game.

What Really Drives Athletes

When top athletes in their professions are surveyed, we find that winning isn’t what fuels their success, but instead, hating to lose is what drives them to compete at extraordinary levels. It’s no different in the corporate world. We need to staff our companies with employees who think and act like these top athletes. A culture of winning is fine, but just imagine what your company would be like if everyone there hated to lose. So you have to go beyond having a winning culture…you have to create a culture of people who hate to lose, and who would do anything rather than experience defeat. These are the people that will propel your organization to its next level of performance. When I coach CEOs about this, I make it a point to say that their company motto ought to be: “We Hate to Lose.” What else do you need to say? That’s pretty much it… Then you have to slowly weed out the people who are content to come in second, and bring in people who hate not being number one – in anything they do! These “hate to lose” people actually feel physical pain when they lose.

Creating A “Hate To Lose” Culture

A winning culture is fine for some companies, but a “hate to lose” culture will kick the crap out of that company every time. Take a good, hard mental look at your key employees, and you will know who is OK with losing, and who hates to lose. Over time, you need to build your organization around the “hate to lose” people, and get rid of the people who are OK with losing. Your culture will take a dramatic turn that will pay dividends going forward. To reinforce my point, take a look at these memorable quotes from some great athletes: – “I hate to lose more than I love to win.” (Jimmy Connors) – “I’m a competitive person. I hate to lose and competition is everything. When you lose you’re easily forgotten.” (Michael Jordan) – “Above anything else, I hate to lose.” (Jackie Robinson) – “If you’re going to play at all, you’re out to win. Baseball, board games, playing Jeopardy, I hate to lose.” (Derek Jeter) – “Boy, do I hate to lose.” (Peyton Manning)

How do you feel about losing? Are you a “hate to lose” CEO? And what about your company’s culture? How intensely do they hate to lose?

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Are You Being Seduced by Tools?

It is easy to be seduced by a tool that will solve your most pressing problems. We convince ourselves that weak sales, shrinking margins, inability to keep up with the competition, and more, can be solved with this software program or that new sales force management tool. “If I have that tool,” the CEO thinks, “I’ll have what I need to improve and gain an advantage.”

Except that such an all-powerful tool doesn’t exist. While you do need to evolve with technology, it is equally important to recognize that a tool is not a solution. Solutions come from people, and the most impressive, sophisticated, feature-rich tool is useless in the hands of someone who won’t leverage it. If I give a monkey a hammer, he’ll destroy my house. If I give a hammer to a master carpenter, he’ll build me a beautiful new home. The tool hasn’t changed, only the hands we put it in.

The main problem with tool seduction is that it means executives or managers are looking outside their organization for answers, rather than to their people. They are abdicating their own role in the problems that have developed, and potentially tolerating incompetence from their team. It is like people who are trying to lose weight, and instead of exercising or eating better, look for that miracle cure in a pill that will magically transform them.

True Solutions Take Work

The truth is, the right tools can help with all of this, but they don’t take the place of solid leadership. SharePoint, for instance, a web-based file-sharing program by Microsoft, offers a tremendous range of features. It allows users throughout an organization to access information, communicate, and manage data efficiently. It’s a tool. It is part of a solution. When leaders train their employees, who then share, edit documents, and publish content, the team can become more productive. But the program isn’t going to make that content any better! Only the workers can do that.

There’s an old saying, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.” You can get all the tools you want; if you don’t have the people to leverage them and make the right decisions about and with those tools, they are as useless as your 1980s Commodore. Too often, we focus on the tool and not the people who will be using them. When that happens, these “solutions” have relieved you of nothing in the end but some time and money.