When Bigger isn’t Better

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Clients are always asking us how they can motivate their teams. Should they give big bonuses? More vacation time? Raises? Promotions? Big often isn’t the answer.

It’s easy to get caught trying to make a big splash, trying to solve a problem in one fell swoop, trying to land the big one, trying to make everything right, or betting on any other attempt to go from failure to winner in one shot.

In sailboat racing we call this “hitting” the corners. A racer will leave the fleet and sail way out to one corner of the course hoping that a shift in the wind direction will allow him to make a big gain and get to the next mark without having to make a series of small tacks. The danger in this maneuver is similar to making a big play to solve a business problem-all your competitors are sailing on one side of the course and betting on small gains and their better skill at maneuvering to take advantage of another’s misstep. While they’re making small bits of progress, you’re hoping for a miracle.

The big maneuver-big risk, big reward-is tempting for lots of psychological reasons. This is especially true if you’re facing a loss. And the kind of loss we’re talking about may be the loss of a valued employee or the loss of respect of your team or a valued client.

A client of ours is continually trying to find a way to motivate his team. His ideas center on bonuses. What we know from our experience and from the research is that small experiences-short sincere interactions, shared laughs and successes, supportive team meetings and focused positive feedback-have more impact and a longer shelf life.

Find a few times today to listen to a client or team member beyond your standard quick check in. Sit with a team member while you eat. Ask a check-in question to open your staff meeting-“Please share something that has gone well for you in the last few days.” Offer a focused, specific piece of positive feedback-avoid any generalizations or flowery praise; be real and concrete.

We can show you ways to make small improvements in the quality of your team interactions and client meetings. Chances are those small steps will start interesting and important growth opportunities. Call or email us.

From Inertia to Implementation-Getting Clients Unstuck

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Until clients agree to implement a plan for their finances, estates, dental health or other professional services, we, the professionals, aren’t able to move ahead. You may have gathered the data, crunched the numbers and worked out a reasonable and perfectly logical course of action, but sometimes everything stops for no apparent reason.

The problem is simple but not easy. In many situations and for many clients there is an emotional or social need that isn’t met and that void drags the whole process to a standstill. The client may not realize they’re stuck, and you may not realize it either— but stuck they are and stuck they’re likely to remain unless you’re able to discover the unmet emotional need and address it if you can.

Many unsigned agreements and never-implemented plans are sitting in a folder waiting for someone to ask a good question or two, listen to an answer that may seem irrational and stay with the client until that person is ready to hear more data. Explaining the logic (again), demonstrating what we know and how brilliant we are “should” work, but it doesn’t. When clients won’t move, we need to find another path. Ideally, we create the situation where the client asks for more information.

I was asked by a financial advisor to try to unstick a client. As is often the case, both the client and the professional are stuck. In our first meeting, Peter, the wealth advisor who was referred by a client of mine, explained his frustration with his client Jack.

“Jack inherited $5 million of a poorly performing stock, which he won’t diversify or sell. This position is a major part of his portfolio.  He is a bright, practical man. He’s married, has no children. He hopes to retire in 5-7 years. Holding onto this stock could keep him from a successful retirement and he won’t listen to reason.”
I asked Peter what he knew about this inheritance.

“Jack’s grandfather left it to him.”

When I asked for details, Peter admitted he hadn’t asked for any more than that. Knowing how complex family ties can be, my emotional radar pinged me.

It takes time to develop a relationship where a person trusts that you really care—we all know when someone is trying but not really interested. This is one of those times when only the real deal will work. The initial step is to ask sincere, curious questions and then listen to the answers. This step takes time, but it is an investment that pays dividends when clients decide to trust you and begin to implement.

Peter asked that I coach him before the meeting, and attend in case he needed my assistance. My initial suggestions were for us to create some good questions he needed to ask and that he show he heard the answers by rephrasing them back to the client or reflecting on the emotions involved.

At the client meeting Peter introduced me matter-of-factly as their financial behavior and transition specialist and after a brief catch-up, he followed our plan and asked about the stock.  “Can you tell me more about the stock you inherited from your grandfather?”   And then he quietly waited for Jack’s answer.

After a bit of reflective listening and a couple of focused questions, Peter learned that Jack’s grandfather told him not to sell the stock until he had children.  Jack had pledged to his grandfather that he would abide and didn’t want to go back on his promise even though he and his wife had no children and wouldn’t have any.

Peter didn’t know what else to say or ask, so I spoke to Jack and reflected on the emotional bind.

“What a dilemma for you:   If you sell the stock, you break your word to your grandfather, but it makes no sense to hold on to it. Quite a bind.”

 Jack said, “I do feel trapped but honoring my vow is paramount.”

I asked what he thought his grandfather might say now, given the stock company’s accounting scandals and Jack’s age.

“Times are different now. I don’t know what he’d say.”   I sensed his increased receptivity and asked if his grandfather would think it advisable to hold the stock forever, given that he and his wife Marie were not going to have children.”

“After looking at this from another point of view, I can hear my grandfather telling us to think for ourselves and not ‘be sheep’.” He added that, in fact, his grandfather might be upset if he didn’t diversify.  “But I did give him my word,” Jack said, still ambivalent about how to proceed.

“So he might want you to diversify, but it’s still hard to change the agreement.”

When I saw signs that Jack looked relaxed, I asked, “Would it be helpful to have Peter take another look at the numbers?”   He agreed and after just a few minutes, Jack decided to sell a fifth of the stock.

After underscoring Jack’s agreement to diversify $1,000,000 of his stock, Peter was eager to work out the details, but I could see that Jack needed time to come to terms with his decision. To Peter’s initial dismay, I asked if Jack wanted to continue today or schedule another appointment.

Emotions play a positive role in all decision making and we ignore them at our peril. We need to invite client history and feelings into our calculations and assist them to find a path toward implementing plans that are in their best interest. Ask questions, listen carefully and trust that your clients will know when you are really interested. Listening shows your interest in them. Questions show your interest in them. Present a plan that reflects all their needs—financial and emotional.

And, of course, we are here to help when you’re stuck. Contact us to strategize more effective questions you or your team members can ask. We can also help you develop other communication strategies that encourage positive momentum. Simple tweaks can make a real difference.

Change with Almost No Effort

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Self-discipline is an important component of change, but in certain circumstances you can alter your behavior without using much of your precious discipline-energy at all.

You can institute changes, often with very little effort or even awareness, if you simply adjust the way you arrange your organization system, office, or car.

Change the Physical Environment

Try to physically position things so that the habit you’re trying to develop has no roadblocks. When you feel an urge, you want to be able to follow through with next to no effort, no thought, no decisions, and very little chance of a detour.

Goal: Keep a to-do list

Physical Change: Keep your to-do list within the “easy-reach” zone on top of your desk, in your pocket, or on your phone. Have the most current items visible so you don’t have pages to turn or screens to click through. If you plan to use paper, always keep a pen where you never have to reach for it. If your list is electronic, keep it open and waiting, certainly no more than one click away.

Goal: Exercise regularly

Physical Change: Keep your workout clothes out and visible, your socks with your shoes, the shirt with the shorts or pants. If the weather is getting cool, keep your shell with the rest of your clothes.

Goal: Pay bills on time

Physical Change: Put bills to be paid in a prominent place with a large label where it will be visible to you from a regular route you use in your office or home. The best place is often right next to the place you’re going to pay them.

Goal: Start online work you’ve resisted doing

Physical Change: Put a prominent link on your computer or smartphone for any online task you might resist doing.

Use the opposite approach when you’re trying to break a current habit.

Goal: Change your snack habits

Physical Change:  Don’t place snack items where they’re visible or reachable (think obvious, handy, convenient, efficient); you’re more likely to eat more. Place them at the back of the office fridge, in a closed cabinet or drawer that isn’t in reach of your desk.

Goal: Ignore email when concentrating

Physical Change: Turn off email reminders. This is equivalent to making them less visible.

Goal: Don’t get caught by the Internet

Physical Change: Delete any “favorites,” desktop links, or other saved links that lead to entertaining or distracting web addresses. The little extra effort of having to type the address will slow down your impulse to visit the site.

Jay is an expert at helping clients come up with simple ideas and small useable steps to implement the changes they want to make. If there are things you’d like to change in your work or personal life, call or email us.

Questions Can Lead You Out of the Fog

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A business loss or misstep can either drag down team morale or lead to creative new approaches. The difference is often in how you manage the initial reaction to loss. Do you start guessing at the possible reasons and end up preferring the ones that find fault in either the potential client or your team?

Research shows that there is a better chance of improving your performance if you truly understand what failed and then quickly transition to focusing on what you will do differently next time. But in the emotional disappointment of the loss it can be hard to formulate questions that dig into the truth and then spur creative thinking.

Here are a few of the questions we’ve helped our clients fashion. Notice that each tries to encourage a look past obvious conclusions. Any one might lead you to a new insight or perhaps asking a few that are fractionally different from each other will uncover a nuance that is important.

  • What caused this client to not choose us? Or what did the other company offer that we didn’t? Don’t accept the first few reasons until you’ve looked at a range of possible explanations.
  • What did we allow to slide that might have made a difference? Where did we show a lack of commitment? What might have happened that we simply gave less than was required?
  • What would we do differently in a similar situation next time? Start from the positive future moves you might try.
  • Did we identify the potential risk points ahead of time? Did we fool ourselves about a crucial aspect?
  • What can we learn from our tendency to spend time affixing blame to the potential client or ourselves? Blame is different from discovering what went wrong and quickly switching to how to improve.

The wording of the questions is important and the attitude with which you ask them is crucial. Any blame or hostility will anchor the conversation in the past. You want to focus on how to move forward. You want to encourage both yourself and your team. False praise or phony affirmations just make things worse. The key is to keep people’s attention on the changes, the improvements.

This postmortem, aka After Action Review, should be short and end with the expectation that people are able to move forward, to be ready and eager for another shot at the next opportunity. But even here be thoughtful—it’s better to ask the team if they’re ready than to tell them.

If you want greater performance, higher morale and more creative approaches, we can help. Whether you’re looking to craft the “right” questions, think through how to help your team learn from their mistakes, or gain additional insights, give us a call or email.

Oops. Maybe we should start that again! Are you ready to make a change? Is there a way we can be of help as you look ahead?

Rating of Perceived Effort

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Change is simple, but not easy. But approach change correctly and “not easy” can become “easier than it once was” and eventually even “normal effort.”

Jay had fun this winter working with a professional bicycling coach. His goal is to be able to ride hundred mile events (Centuries) with more speed and less fatigue. His coach, a former pro cyclist—Sara Bresnick of Pedal Power Coaching—regularly assigns workouts and Jay sends her digital data from his riding sessions and rates his perceptions of the effort required to do aerobic or strength intervals. There is a standard RPE (Rating of Perceived Effort) scale that he compares his efforts to—from #1=“I’m watching TV and eating bonbons” to # 9=“I’m probably going to die”. Number ten on this scale is “I’m dead.”

Assigning a specific rating number to your effort can help clarify just how hard you are working. It moves the conversation from “This is too much work!” to “This is this much work.” If you want to change your capacity to put out effort, you need to invest in practice that stretches you and challenges your current abilities. This is true whether you want physical endurance, the persistence to keep trying a new behavior or the consistent patience needed to influence other peoples’ habits.

Strength and endurance are built through challenges that ask a bit more than your body, emotions or mind is currently accustomed to. Too big a challenge causes a level of exhaustion that requires a long recovery. In the case of emotional or willpower exhaustion this dramatically increases the likelihood that you will fail to manage your behavior. For example, if you’re trying to remember to ask more questions instead of just giving advice or information, you’re more likely to go back on autopilot and forget to focus on your curiosity. Or if you’re trying to control your irritation, you may blow it.

Too little challenge and the increase in your ability will be so slow that you are more likely to give up or forget to keep trying. In the end, your capacity remains the same. The trick is to challenge yourself at a level of moderate effort—“I’m mostly comfortable, but this is taking some effort and careful thought.” This is the equivalent of physical exercise where you are still able to talk, but are aware you’re breathing harder.

It may help you get a feeling for where you are and what you’re willing to do to move forward, if you compare yourself to a perceived effort rating scale.

Here’s a possibility:

1. I’m cruising along as usual.
2. I’m staying well within my comfort range.
3. I’m comfortable, but I’m pushing myself a bit.
4. I’m mostly comfortable, but this is taking some effort and careful thought. (This is an effort that builds capacity.)
5. I’m outside my comfort zone and feeling some stress. (This begins interval training.)
6. I’m outside my competency zone and feeling moderate stress.
7. I’m tired from all the thinking, planning and remembering it’s taking to stay on track.
8. I’m tired and need a break real soon.
9. I’m working so hard at this that I can’t think about anything else. I feel like I’m going to lose it.
10. I can’t think and feel only confused and frustrated.

Last year Jay rode his bicycle club’s Spring Century for the second year in a row. He was dreading a hill that occurred around mile 85, after almost six hours of riding. The first year he had struggled up this hill in his lowest gear and occasionally wondered if he was going to have to stop. Last year he kept waiting and waiting for the hill to appear. When he was at mile 90 plus he realized that he had gone over the hill and not even recognized it. With practice, a 9 had become a 6.

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How much energy are you really investing in your own or your company’s progress? How much are you willing to invest to get the outcomes you want?

We can help you identify changes you are ready to tackle—for you, your business or your team. Then we can design specific steps that will increase your capability and the perception of effort required to reach your goals. Coaching makes it easier than going it alone. Give us a call to discuss next steps.

Getting Started

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Clients are always identifying motivation as a central problem in changing their behavior and instituting new habits. But what is motivation? How do you develop additional motivation? A simple place to begin is with the notion of getting started.

Think of motivation as what’s needed to push against resistance and create momentum. What are your options to generate motion?

  • Lower your resistance
  • Increase your motivation
    • Know your desired outcome
    • Find your personal purpose
    • Feel loyalty to the team, patients, clients
  • Both lower resistance and increase motivation
  • Or, just take a first small action step that requires less motivation and presents less resistance, and creates activity.

With our clients we encourage simple answers that lead to the easiest solutions possible. Just taking a simple action step is often that solution. When I don’t feel like getting on my bicycle for a training session I don’t struggle to find motivation – I just put on my workout clothes. That step pushes past a chunk of the resistance – I’m already dressed – and kindles a bit more motivation – do I want to get undressed after getting this far?

If I’m still struggling, I start again and just pump up my bike tires. Now there is less standing in my way of getting on and riding, and more pull to make use of the clothes and tire pressure – just getting on and getting started is easier.

Figuring out where to start on a list of tasks is similar. Just do the simplest one. It creates momentum and as we learned in science class, a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Be careful not to get caught in too much figuring out how to conserve energy, be most efficient, or organize the work before getting started.

Outline the project – in motion. Set a date and time to get started – step one accomplished. Write a brief summary of the paper – you no longer have a blank screen. List in bullet points some attributes of the employee you need to evaluate – step two will seem easier.

You’ve heard or read us talking about this before? We find that even when people intellectually know what they need to do, they often have no system to cut through the resistance and remind themselves. So this is another reminder – just do the equivalent of standing up and taking a small step. Remind yourself that you don’t need to feel motivated; you just need to take a small step and create a bit of momentum. If that isn’t quite enough, take another small step. Soon you will either have a bit of forward momentum or you will be finished with the task or project – either works.

Steps toward motivation are simple to understand, but they are hard to implement. Having support and an experienced problem solver in your corner can make the difference between just wishing and actually accomplishing. Szifra Birke and Jay Livingston understand people and will partner with you to help you get started and keep momentum going so you get things done. Contact us.

 

Efficiency is Sometimes Inefficient

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When you’re looking at your project or task list it is easy to get caught in trying to minimize your investment of time, effort or money.

But be beware, the time you spend figuring and planning is sometimes a substitute for starting a straightforward task.

Some situations to consider:

  • How long do you spend looking for a bargain on an item that is a fairly minor expenditure?
  • Is your task list system or software taking a long time to become useful?
  • Do you pursue 98% flawlessness when 85% is great for this draft or proposal?
  • Do you ask your team to follow a specific guideline when a bit of flexibility might generate more initiative along with the minor disorganization?
  • Do you wait to pay bills until they’re all in, when it might be more pleasant to break up your days by paying a few at a time?
  • Do you always pay off the highest interest loan or credit card even when paying off a small balance on a low interest card might feel good and clear additional space in your attention?

When I was young my parents gently chastised me for trying to carry too many grocery bags at once or too many dishes to the sink. They called this a “lazy-man’s load.” They pointed out that to save a return trip I was risking dropping my whole load—short-term it felt efficient, but the actual outcome was potentially very wasteful.

It may be a good to ask yourself:

  • “Is doing this task this way actually efficient, or am I putting roadblocks in my way of getting things done?”
  • “Am I paying attention to the fact that I may be wasting a lot of time strategizing something that just needs doing?”
  • “Would just starting probably get me done a bit faster?”

If you’re ready to point out how much can be gained by planning, considering and minimizing your investment, we want to agree with you. It certainly isn’t prudent or judicious to just bust ahead. But be very careful if you often have tasks that languish and lists that grow faster than you can prune them. It may make sense to try a few experiments with a “just do some little things” approach.

And stay alert to your feelings. Task lists and projects are not done with organization alone. They often require momentum, enthusiasm and creativity and those can be generated by getting some small things out of the way, even if you’re a bit inefficient while doing them.

If you like practical, straightforward ideas that can increase effectiveness for you and your team, give us a call. We listen and help you find the ideas that get things moving in new directions. We are experienced experts on the people side of business. That means you, your clients and patients, and your team.

Never Enough Time

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If you’re in the middle of growing your business or your career, you likely have more work than you have time for, and just putting your head down and doing isn’t a sustainable situation. Yet it can become a chronic and ultimately troubling one. What’s to be done?

When we have too little work, it is an emergency. Too little work means a significant push is called for — advertising, networking, PR, media. Not enough work offers clear pathways to solutions; although some are more and some less effective-find work, don’t stop until you’ve sufficiently filled the calendar. Every startup initially faces this, and many people get so comfortable dealing with this pressure that they don’t see the tide turning and beginning to overfill their work blocks. They just keep saying yes.

There are also those blissful moments when we have just the right amount of work, Goldilocks moments–our calendars aren’t too cold or too hot. We are making reasonable revenue but we can get home for supper on time. The problem is that “just enough” will often quickly fall back into not enough. Your pipeline has air bubbles in it; expansion, R&D or payroll will soon demand more resources, even though there isn’t current capacity for it. If you have just enough and you’re in growth stage, productivity figures flatten out. If you’re slipping from a previous glut of work, productivity figures fall.

And then there is the experience that most of us are familiar with– you have more than you can reasonably do, particularly if you value balance in your life. Your best employees are swamped, your days are stretched, and the satisfaction of completing a job is replaced with the stress of seeing your list of responsibilities grow while you’re trying desperately to finish up the last project. Emails alone can feel like a floodtide that has no end until it drowns you.

Here are three things to try that can change how you think about, feel about and handle too much work:

1. Organize it. Until you have a complete list of all your projects and tasks, it is hard to know whether you’re looking at      inadequate time and project management, inappropriate delegation of tasks (to you or others), poor discrimination on your part when accepting responsibility, or a true need to build additional capacity in your team. And without a complete list you are in a weak position to lobby senior leaders to either prune your responsibilities or add positions.

2. Reframe it. Stop catastrophizing the situation with labels that mischaracterize an overabundance of work as “Too much!”, “Drowning!”, “Swamped!” or “Buried!” Your actions, emotions and thinking will tend to follow the views you espouse, so talk to yourself and others using specific, realistic descriptions and solution based statements–“I need to get control of my workflow.” The reality is that you do have an abundance of possible tasks, and they put pressure on you to better manage your work flow and selection.

3. Choose Wisely. Whether you choose your projects or they’re chosen for you the key is to choose wisely.

If someone is pressuring you to take on additional tasks, when you can’t get done what you have on your list and you’re sure that you are already working pretty efficiently, involve the delegator in helping to choose your priorities. Be certain that you both agree on what can get done during your work time.

If you choose your own clients or projects, slow down and choose who and what are going to be the most important in the long run. This is a time to not let urgency-today’s interests or crisis–take precedence over your long-term goals. Having too many projects allows you to raise the quality of your clients, take on the most productive or lucrative ventures and prune out low-return undertakings.

We simply have the time we have. We can invest it in complaining and ineffective processes or we can focus on strategic choices and thoughtful organization. Be clear about what responsibilities you’ve accepted; think and talk about them in realistic, positive terms; and make a commitment to cautiously choose what you add to your plate.

We can help you learn the skills necessary to manage your workflow and to relentlessly implement those skills when the pressure is on.

Questions versus Telling

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A young couple, who were six months into a manufacturing startup, called to set an appointment to talk about their bedding product business. We asked how it was going in general, and they reported they were selling product and just barely meeting expenses. We set a time to stop by for a tour and a discussion.

Almost before they started our tour of their assembly shop we began to see some of the issues—their organic product line was so expensive it constricted their customer base to a tiny, upper-income niche when their natural market was more student based, they had hired college-educated assemblers with corresponding wages, and their facility was located in high-rent Cambridge, Mass.

By the time we finished the tour we were pretty sure we had a few really practical solutions—broaden the product line, hire cheaper labor and move. But we didn’t share our diagnosis and we didn’t give them any advice. We asked a question: Do you have specific problems you’d like help thinking through?

They did, and those weren’t the same problems we had been ready to solve. They wanted advice on creating a profit-sharing plan that would be pleasing and motivating to their college friends—those assemblers. They wondered how to find cheaper suppliers of organic materials, and by the way, they loved living and working in Cambridge—a different set of questions than we assumed. Our thoughts would have to wait until we developed a trusting professional relationship by addressing their questions.

We are a culture that values knowing and telling, and this often leads us into giving answers before we ask important questions about things like, what is the problem the other person wants to solve and how far have they gotten with possible solutions.  We tend to feel our status is enhanced by telling, that telling what we know shows our competence, or that just telling it speeds up problem solving and implementation.

We see this all the time in day-to-day interactions between leaders we work with and their teams. Recently a team member interrupted a meeting I was in with a company CEO. She asked, “What do you want me to do about the problem with the regulatory reports?”

He answered, “Like I told you, draft a response letter and show it to me.” When she left he expressed frustration, “How many times do I have to tell her?”

I asked if she would really know the answer to her own question, if she thought about it. He said she might. I asked what question he might ask that would force her to think it through. He came up with a reasonable initial question and began considering the effects of asking it. I then asked did he know if she was comfortable trying things without initially checking the details with him. He said he had never thought of asking her.

I didn’t need to suggest solutions to his problem; I needed to ask questions that neither of us knew the answer to. He didn’t need to tell his person what to do; he needed to find out what was getting in the way of her solving the problem on her own.

If you can actually stay curious, and demonstrate it by asking the right kind of questions, you encourage learning by both you and the other person. Being truly curious—humbly inquiring, not setting them up to answer your way—can help the other person drop their defensiveness and their need to know and begin to think.

Let me start this whole piece again.

How effective are you at getting other people to listen and learn when you keep telling them what to do?

Making Meaningful Holidays Last All Year

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Whether family income is $25,000 or $2,500,000, it is possible to fashion more meaning, purpose and fun in holiday celebrations. So this year be intentional about what you want to accomplish and find ways to involve your whole family, or work team. Here are a few things I’ve found important to keep in mind:

People Who Spend Money To Do Things Feel Happier Than Those Who Spend Money To Buy Things

Think about what you might do this year as a family. Listen to each person and decide on something that would be good for everyone. You might try an immersion program to learn a new language, cooking lessons, a play in New York, or a sports event.

Give Others an Experience

You can also create a cost-free experience by serving food at a homeless shelter, inviting a person in need to a holiday meal, or helping at a local animal shelter. These and many other activities create memories that last.

Share with Others

Giving to others is both a responsibility and a pleasure. Involve your children in your philanthropy by communicating what you do, “I’m going to donate money this year to support things I care about. Usually I give money to _________, _______, and _______. This year I’d like to hear where you think a donation would do the most good.

Children can get a quiet lesson in limited means, can help look for what actually works, and learn that certain organizations only exist because people give support, etc. Find a place they can donate their less used toys and electronics-
and give them the personal joy that comes with giving.

Bring it to Your Workplace

If your workplace holiday party is getting stale or too rowdy, create a different atmosphere-Invite families, bring in some simple entertainment, invite a few non-profits to join you and present gifts from you and your employees, together wrap small presents for a nursing home or hospital to give out.

Holiday traditions were created over the years by families and communities doing things that felt meaningful and fun. And each generation has a responsibility to bring fresh energy and renewed awareness to the celebration. What might you do differently this year?

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I also discussed this topic in the most recent episode of my monthly cable TV show, Shrink Rap. Click this link to watch it: http://cvp.telvue.com/player?id=T01497&video=176034