The DNA of Excellence

Scaling Up Excellence – Getting More Without Settling for Less – Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rau (Crown Business)

Think about your business. Are there pockets of excellence, departments or sections of your business that perform at a higher level, deliver better results and just seem to get it? You’ve tried everything short of cloning to try to duplicate those outcomes only to come up short?

It was that frustration that was at the genesis of a seven year search for answers conducted by a pair of Stanford professors on a quest if you will, to map the DNA of Excellence. The results come in the form of Scaling Up Excellence: Getting More Without Settling for Less from Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rau.

 

 

While Sutton and Rau may not have succeeded in drawing up that scientific road map, but they have delivered an important and unique business edition that is based on hard evidence and proven tactics to tackle the challenge of scaling up excellence across an organization.

Sutton and Rau have boiled  scaling excellence down to seven principles:

1. Spread mindset, not just footprint.
2.  Engaging all the senses.
3. Link short-term realities to long-term dreams.
4. Accelerate accountability.
5. Fearing the clusterfug.
6. Scaling requires both addition and subtraction.
7. Slow down to scale faster - and better - down the road. 

They offer useful guidance and examples for a wide variety of business ranging from healthcare to financial sectors and retail and hospitality to social media and web-based businesses.

The Lost Art of Communication

  

Say This, Not That: A Foolproof Guide to Effective Interpersonal Communication – Carl Alasko, PH.D. (Tarcher Books)

I have been a professional communicator for over 30 years. It’s who I am and what I do.

Interpersonal communication is certainly nothing new, groundbreaking or Earth shattering. As I read through Say This, Not That: A Foolproof Guide to Effective Interpersonal Communication, by Carl Alasko author of Emotional Bullshit, I was struck at how much of the advice that he was passing along seemed to me to be nothing more than common sense.

The more I read the more I was struck by the fact that Alasko could potentially be sitting on a gold mine in the form of doling out what once were basic communication skills to generation of people who had become so enamored with electronic communication forms that they simply were not equipped to participate in the most basic of human relationships, the conversation!

In the book Alasko focuses on dating, relationships, parenting and then later the workplace, by offering up a series of common interactions that we all get involved with on a regular basis; then offers suggestions on how to handle and respond to those scenarios.

While at times Alasko slips into touchy, feely, pop psychology and doles out advice that would make Alan Alda seem like a firm hand; overall he offers up viable solutions for dealing with life and work situations. While this may seem like new ground to some, my best advice would be to put down the damn smartphone and talk!

   

The Mysteries of the Brain

The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg (Random House)

 I was interested in this book from a variety of perspectives:

·         As a professional marketer the formation of habits certainly has some implications for what I do for a living.

·         My wife suffered a stroke which impacted her brain and the way she deals with information.

·         A family member with addictive tendencies and shows signs of obsessive compulsive and bipolar disorders.

In the The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg certainly discusses how the brain reacts and acts in the formation of habits. Duhigg also gives examples of how people who have suffered some form of traumatic brain injury may have unaffected portions of their brain compensate for the injured sections. Along the way Duhigg really highlights the overall lack of definitive knowledge physicians and scientists truly have about the brain and its function.

Duhigg offers some basic steps in the formation of habits as well as the modification of habits and how even small changes in the process can have a dramatic impact in altering habits; including both positive and negative habits. When it comes to those with addictions, many will disagree with this section, which in the end doesn’t really have a foundation in science but does have some practical implications in our lives.

Particularly interesting are the portions of the book that deal with consumer habits and how businesses and marketers can use big data and predictive analytics to drive consumer habits by altering the decision making process to drive choice.

While it doesn’t offer “scientific proof” that some may be seeking, The Power of Habit does offer some intriguing insights into habit formation and the potential methods of alteration.

Finding The Stars in Your Universe

The Star Factor – William Seidman and Rich Grbavac (AMACOM)

I don’t recall the source, but I recently saw a post on LinkedIn to the effect of a company bean counter talking to a CEO about paying for special training for a talented staffer: loosely paraphrasing-  “what if we pay and they leave?” to which the CEO responded- “what if we don’t and they stay?”

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face, even in a difficult economy, is to identify and retain talented individuals. All too often it is the process to identify the talent that is the hard part; like the song says, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

In an effort to help businesses identify and retain star talent, Dr. William Seidman and Richard Grbavac from the the performance improvement company Cerebyte have put together the book, The Star Factor – Discover What Your Top performers Do Differently – and Inspire A New level of Greatness in All.

Seidman and Gbravac have boiled down the identification process to a set of three simple questions that you can ask yourself-

1.      Who are the people you most respect for their ability to perform some or all of the functions associated with the initiative, program or project?

2.      Are these the people you would go to if you needed to solve a critical problem or to identify leadership for a new initiative, program, or project dealing with this function or area of expertise?

3.      If these people told you how to do something would you (a) believe them and (b) do whatever they said to do, without question?

Do you notice a common theme that runs clearly through these questions? What is it that sets your team’s stars apart from the rest of the pack? TRUST! You can trust them to get the job done, to bring their A-game every day and to be able to take the reins of a project and move it forward without you needing to micromanage every step of the way. The stars on your team are the people you trust.

Now the question becomes how do you give those stars and the potential stars on your team the tools and resources they need to take things to the next level and succeed? The difficulty for some leaders is fear; fear that they will lose those stars or be outshined by the people on their team. It is that “fear factor” that you will have to learn to manage and overcome to continue you growth and success.

Drawing It Old School

Drawing Ideas: A Hand-Drawn Approach for Better Design – Mark Baskinger and William Bardell (Watson Guptill Publications)

As someone who writes for a living, I have always placed a high value on utilizing words to tell a story. With the growth of infographics I have become a big fan of using the combination of words and pictures to convey messages. More often than not I find myself utilizing an old fashion pad of paper, flip charts or a whiteboard to help me tell a story, outline a project or goals.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I have utilized my drawing skills to convey design ideas for client websites, rough advertising graphics, signage, banners and much more. While I have utilized a variety of graphics programs from basic to more complex, to rough up projects; I find that my best stuff comes from using an old school sketchbook and pencils or markers. One of the few nodes to modern convenience is using Post It Notes to make it easier to move pieces around on the page.

With this in mind I have embarked on an effort to upgrade my design skills to help me better communicate ideas with clients. One of the first steps in the process was to pick up a copy of Drawing Ideas: A Hand-Drawn Approach for Better Design by Mark Baskinger and William Bardell. Baskinger, an associate professor at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University and Bardell, a principal at the design firm, Luminant Design, have put together a wide ranging collection of examples and ideas for utilizing analog tools for designing and developing projects.

This book gives you a great foundation of the basics including the tools to deliver the best end product. Later in the book they also offer up a variety of Top Ten Tips lists that are useful for any creative type. Again with the Post It Notes…I have flagged and indexed these pages for quick and easy reference; I know at some point they will be copied and placed in my work book for consultation.

Speaking of design, Drawing Ideas is a magnificently illustrated and uniquely bound collection; it will nicely on the work bookshelf or on the lobby coffee table.

Focus – On Your Success

Back in 1998 residents of California passed Proposition 227 which dramatically changed the way bilingual students were taught. Basically students who were limited English proficient would no longer be taught in a bilingual, 50/50 fashion; instead they would spend 100% of their classroom time immersed in English. Teachers unions and bilingual advocates groused about the unfairness of the bill and complained that students would suffer from this allegedly misguided legislation.

Some of the loudest and most ardent advocates of the law were Hispanic parents who believed that this heavy focus on English would benefit their students. As the bill took effect and student became focused on English, a surprising (to those against the bill) thing happened; by focusing on English student actually excelled and learned English and other subjects at a faster rate with improved scores across the board.

Why would anybody be shocked by these results? When you put 100% focus on something, as compared say to only a part-time, 50% focus, wouldn’t you expect to have stronger results? All too often business leaders and entrepreneurs get distracted by the newest, shiny object and lose focus on their goals and their success.

More often than not the shiny object ends up being the promise of a quick buck that seems too appealing to pass up. Revenue may seem like a good reason in the short term, but the loss of focus comes with a price tag that far outstrips the short term gain. By tenaciously locking in your focus on your goals, avoid getting sidetracked and ignoring the naysayers, you will reap bigger rewards.

Don’t kid yourself; having focus is hard work and one of the appeals of the distraction is they just seem so darn easy! You need to remind yourself daily what your goals are, which means they need to be written down and they need to be front and center in your work environment. When you start to feel things slide off track, grab that list and refocus your energy on your goals!  

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design – Randy Krum (Wiley)

The old saying is “A picture is worth a thousand words.” As a writer my response has always been, then imagine the value of a thousand words. By utilizing infographics, marketers get to have the best of both worlds.

Marketing has always been about telling stories and engaging customers. Through the use of infographics your data can tell your story by creating a visual representation of your story coupled with words that make your story easy to not only comprehend, but also to remember. Randy Krum covers a broad range of uses for infographics in Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design that goes way beyond adding charts and graphs to your presentation or report.

Krum starts with the basics of how infographics work, what makes them effective tools and then details how to develop your story and create your design. For the non-designer, creating infographics may seem like a daunting task, but Krum offers some great basics tips, design rules to live by and tools and tricks to make the process a whole lot easier.

Krum also loads the book up with some great example pieces that prove to be great creative inspiration. Okay, so you’ve got your idea, you gathered your data, developed and refined your design and you’ve created a winning infographic. Now what? Krum also provides a road map for successfully launching and releasing your infographic so that delivers the bang you are looking for. As always I am looking for actionable steps that I can put to use right away and Krum certainly delivers.