Don’t get me wrong – I think the core concept of trying to find new and different ways to do things is something that all organizations and leaders should continuously be seeking.  But somehow, the word “innovation” now has more definitions than a room full of body builders.

Since it’s almost Super Bowl Sunday, here’s a thought.

Almost everyone would agree that the West Coast Offense, popularized by the San Francisco 49ers 20-25 years ago and still in use by many teams across the NFL, changed the way offenses operate and defenses react.  It was quite the “innovation.”  But at its core, it was not a huge, earth-shattering change.  It didn’t involve jet packs, re-engineered helmets, designer drugs, or robots.  It simply tweaked the way you got the ball in the hands of your best players, by throwing it to them in short passes rather than handing it to them.  Genius, eh?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But it was simple, clever, new and very effective.  THAT’S innovation.

(Bill Walsh, enjoying the fruits of his innovation)

In 2012, let’s ease off the gas on our expectations that everyone who is “innovating” has to be throwing all kinds of technology, money, and hype at a problem or an opportunity.  Just find more ways to put the ball in the hands of your best players and see what happens…

1) Strive relentlessly to get to the top.

2) Don’t ever look down.

I’ve come across a few leaders recently who seem to spend the majority of their time on their careers and “managing up” – trying to please their superiors, tell them what they want to hear, and generally expend all their energy to keep trying to fast track themselves to the top.  As you can imagine, that leaves little time to focus on their direct reports, or God forbid, the folks another level down.  After all, how are THEY going to help me get to the next open VP or C-level spot that opens up???

And let’s not kid ourselves.  It’s not that this is irrational behavior.  I’ve seen it work enough to understand why it seems like a sound strategy for managers who believe they are doing ‘whatever it takes’ to get ahead.  Good for them!

But if the reason you’re afraid to look down is because you don’t want to see your heel prints on the heads of folks who are supposed to look up to you and respect you, then maybe it’s time to take a break from the climb and see if you can lend a hand to a novice climber instead…

As a consultant, I am paid to provide expertise to my clients that they typically either do not have “in house” or cannot afford to spare from other key undertakings.   For the most part, that arrangement works pretty well.  So I was a bit surprised this past year when I worked with a client who, while they seemed content to pay me, didn’t actually seem to want my help.  And this wasn’t a week-long engagement ; it was months.  And here’s the most puzzling part:  while I pride myself on being wrong as often as possible, in this particular case, most of the advice and guidance I was providing, history will now show, was right on the money.  So what gives?

I think that, for many of us, we may have inadvertently created a belief system that to ask for help is to admit weakness, stupidity, a lack of leadership, or some other characteristic that we hope doesn’t end up on our tombstone.  As a leader, I think that’s a big problem.  Because it’s just as easy to end up with some equally or perhaps even less flattering labels on our tombstones, like arrogant, egotistical, know-it-all, and ineffective.

Next time you have a problem you’re not dead-certain how to solve, try this.  Go up to a few folks and say, “I think I may need your help…”   I bet you get more enthusiastic responses than you might think.  And bolster some folks’ sense that they can add value too.

Remember, HELP is not a four letter word, but FAIL is…

So I went to their website and noticed that, for new patients, they offer a coupon right on the web site that the first visit – bitewing xrays, consultation and prophylaxis (a VERY cool word that apparently means cleaning someone else’s teeth…) is ONE DOLLAR.  That’s right, ONE DOLLAR.  And, that both you AND the referrer, in this case my wife, both get a $30 gift card to your choice of stores, like Meijer, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc.  I’m in!

So I go to the appointment, hand in my paperwork and tell the receptionist I have coupons as well and does she needs those, and she says “no” and I get my exam, cleaning, etc.  All good!

Then I get the bill which turns out to be $175 after insurance.  I am a bit flabbergasted and assume I misunderstood the offer so I head home and check their website again.  It looked pretty straightforward; I was entitled to a $1 cleaning as a new patient.  But here’s the best part:  2 days later, I get a letter from them with a brochure marketing their patient referral program and clearly re-stating their gift card offer!

So I paid the bill and enclosed a note along with the coupon and mailer essentially asking what gives with their referral policy and their discount and coupon offers.

To their credit, they called me today to address the issue.  They “explained” that I needed to explicitly request the $1 cleaning and that I also needed to ask for the gift cards and that I could only have one or the other.  I was very happy with their service so I decided, for a change, not to be an a$$, and just requested the gift cards, which they claim will be on their way shortly.

Here’s my thing:  I understand that even the world of higher end professional and medical services these days is not immune to intense competitive pressures and that repeat customers (as in come back for a cleaning and checkup every 6 months) are worth their weight in gold, silver or whatever you get your teeth filled with… 

But for you all out there that are considering similar offers to grow your customer base, why don’t you consider proactively reminding your new patients what they are entitled to, instead of hiding it and hope they don’t notice?  If you can’t afford a marketing campaign, don’t do it.  But if you can, and the recurring revenue is really worth the initial investment, imagine the impact you could make on a new patient/customer if you reminded them of your discount policies and referrals and made sure they took advantage of them?

  You want a customer for life??  Try that!  I know it’d make me smile…

1. I will arrive at meetings on time – it seems that a recent and increasingly popular trend is to arrive at meetings late and demonstratively harried from the meeting you just attended that ran over.  But just remember that, operating under the assumption that your input at the meeting was valued in the first place, the boost to your ego from being “busier” than everyone else is trounced by the productivity hit that the other 9 attendees just took while they waited for you, especially now that Fantasy Football is over.
2. I will NOT multitask while I am having an actual conversation with a live human being – sadly, this is a tough one.  Between the opportunities to sneak a peak at an email, text message, or other communication, and the likelihood I am already planning to disagree or ignore what the other person is saying, I am going to have to stay “laser focused” to pull this off.   My strategy is to face the speaker, turn my cell phone face down on the table, close my laptop, and make eye contact.  I realize this is a ‘stretch goal’ for many of us, but imagine how good you’d feel if that’s how you were treated when you were talking…
3. I will accept regrets and hindsight for what they are: datapoints – As I reflect on 2011, there are definitely some things I would have done differently.  By definition, that comes as part of hindsight.  And often, hindsight’s charming companion, regret, comes along for the ride.  I think the key to self-improvement as a leader is to marry hindsight and regret in wedded bliss with pattern recognition, a key sophistication of human intelligence.   Let the past go and don’t dwell on it UNTIL you see a similar pattern emerging.  Have your private “aha” moment and then take a different tack than you did last time and see if you can’t end up with a better outcome.

That’s only three.  Anyone have a resolution or two to add to the list???

Happy 2012 y’all…

This, of course, begs the age-old question -  How do you go about doing that??  Here are some options:

1. Send out a letter to all employees who have been with the company for more than 2 years and ask them to stop whatever they are doing and write down everything they know about the company and their jobs and submit it to their manager.
2. Hire a team of interviewers, like NPR’s Story Corps, to record discussions and remembrances with your employees and make the vignettes available to everyone, or better yet, play them over and over again on the company’s PA system.
3. Insist that HR maintain a detailed job description of every role in the company, and sleep restfully at night knowing that those descriptions clearly and accurately reflect the real daily duties and priorities of your staff (oh wait, most companies already do that…)

Sadly, as many of you sharp bloggites have detected, so far “none of the above” looks like a winner in a landslide.  And I have some suspicions why that might be…

Most companies these days love to talk about their “culture.”  How it’s unique, or reflects their values, or is the key element of their staff retention strategy.  And that may all be true!  But culture is experienced, not taught.  And that takes time.

I play basketball 3 days a week at 5:30 AM with a bunch of equally disturbed guys simultaneously trying desperately to cling their youth and a 15 foot jumper they probably never had in the first place.  Many of us have played with the same group, more or less, for 5+ years.  And over that time, we’ve occasionally gone out to watch the NCAA basketball tournament, golf, or start a Fantasy Football league, which can help with bonding and maintaining your composure when you’re being elbowed in the ribs.  We’ve also developed a set of “unwritten rules” that govern how we play to the extent necessary – scoring, what the games are played to, play 2 games then sit, offense calls fouls, etc.   But when a new person shows up, little of that is shared on day 1.  We don’t hand anyone a sheet of paper and say, “here’s our rules if you want to play and, by the way, we’re going to grab a beer on Friday night – wanna come?”   And if you think about it, if we did, it’d almost be creepy.  Getting to know someone and mutually deciding if they belong in your culture and if they want to belong to it is a process that probably goes back thousands of years.

    So if you feel like you need to accelerate the process of sharing tribal knowledge, don’t automatically start and end with “codification.”   Think about the other ways that humans share knowledge and welcome new members into groups  – through social interaction, story telling, and a respect for the ‘wisdom’ of the tribe’s elders and let that complement your efforts to ‘write it all down…’

1. Be generous with praise
2. Get rid of the managers
3. Make your ideas theirs
4. Never criticize or correct
5. Make everyone a leader
6. Take an employee to lunch every week
7. Give recognition and small rewards
8. Throw company parties
9. Share the rewards and the pain

Although it might be great sport, I am not even going to pick at each recommendation.  Each could be be useful at times, though I would be reluctant to universally apply any of them.  I am also going to restrain from pointing out the obvious conundrum between #2 and #5 (oops, I guess I just did… dang.)

I do want to offer one constructive thought, since we are all banned from criticizing or correcting by #4.

Compensation and motivation/morale are two vastly different things.

If you don’t believe me, find a company that has the highest morale and the most motivated employees you’ve ever seen.   Then have the CEO announce that the company is bankrupt and that anyone who wants to stay and work for free can do so starting Monday.  I am not saying no one would show up, but I doubt it’d be business as usual.

Most employees need to work to live, sustain their families, and otherwise pursue their personal version of the American Dream.  That’s why the size of their paycheck matters to them.   They also want to feel good about where they work, who they work with, and what they do.   Here’s a news flash though:  the latter is, to a large extent, out of your control as a company leader/exec for two reasons:

1) you can’t possibly predict or control the complex interpersonal relationships that develop in the workplace.

2) in many organizations (though I am sure not yours) there is an innate skepticism from employees around all new management initiatives.  The “real” reason you’re taking me to lunch, throwing a party, or praising me is always lurking in the back of some of your folks’ minds.

And if anyone even mildly suspects that any of these parties, praise or changes is intended to be a “replacement” for a raise or bonus, you will be well on your way to the exact opposite outcome of what you set out to do.

Instead, just try being Fair, Honest, Transparent and Unflappable.   That’s five less things you have to remember to do, and none of them require you to go to the Olive Garden six times a month…

So here’s something that I know I take for granted most of the time.  Springs.  But they are amazing devices and they are everywhere.  Watches, garage doors, shock absorbers and even my lawnmower’s ignition system.  And most of the time, they work perfectly.

One time, though, a few years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night after hearing an enormous “BANG” sound downstairs.  It took a while to figure out what had happened, but one of the giant springs that helps the garage door go up and down (check them out next time you have a minute to kill) had snapped in two.  Yikes!   I didn’t even know that could happen!   Then I learned something else.  Try lifting a garage door without those springs.  It turns out that garage doors are REALLY heavy.  Who knew?

Here’s the thing:  springs work by creating just the right amount of tension.  If there’s no tension, you can’t lift the garage door.  If there’s too much, the springs snaps and goes recoiling everywhere.

I have noticed at several of my clients lately that there’s quite a bit of tension.  The political tension between perfecting finicky software and meeting promised deadlines.  The resource tension between getting things done and training new team members.  And the ever-present tension between wanting to innovate but being constrained by real budgets.

These are your organization’s springs.  I have come to appreciate that it’s not a bad thing that these tensions exist.  They help balance opposing forces.  That’s what springs do.  The question is:  do you know where the springs in your organization are, and are they too loose, too tight, or just right?  Because you don’t ever want to wake up to a loud bang…  trust me.

And if I suspected that something was seriously wrong, I might even get ‘a second opinion.’  Depending on my insurance, I might have to pay out of my own pocket for that opinion, and there’s also a good chance I might hear the same feedback I got from the first physician, but hey, this could be serious and I can’t afford to take chances!

I work with a lot of organizations who rely on software and information technology about as heavily as I rely on my body.   In many cases, software runs their business and gives them a competitive advantage.   And many of these business users know as much about their software’s inner workings as I do about my body’s.    After all, it’s not their field of expertise.  They have IT professionals who are working ‘under the covers’ to make their software do what it’s supposed to do.

But I’ve noticed they rarely, if ever, seek a second opinion.  Sometimes that takes the form of a “software audit” or a “code review.”   Usually, it’s done by an independent third party who, like a medical second opinion, may completely agree with what their IT pros are telling them.  On the other hand, if something is not being done according to best practices or industry standards, that’s about the only way they are ever going to find out.

Health Care has second opinions.  Construction has building inspectors.  Even elevators have to be routinely inspected.  Isn’t it about time the software industry grew up and realized that even though you may not always get a ‘clean bill of health’ from your audit, that’s better than waiting til they break out the scalpels…?

I have decided, though, that if I ever run a marathon, I will take a vastly different and obviously superior approach.  I will jog the first 16 miles of the race and then sprint the last ten.   I am pretty confident I can beat her time by doing that.  I can jog 16 miles briskly in about 3 hours, and then sprint the last ten at ten miles per hour, in another 60 minutes, finishing in 4 hours.  Take that!

I was committed to this plan until a few friends asked some probing questions like, “Bob, have you ever sprinted ten miles?”    Brutally, they followed up with, “Have you ever sprinted even two miles?”  And then, the coup de grace, “Have you ever sprinted even one mile after jogging 16??”

At that point, I realized the flaw in my plan.  Trying to go faster at the end of a long race is no strategy for success especially if:

a) you’re out of shape or

b) you’ve never done it before

So why do so many project teams and project managers think they can get to the halfway point of a project in six months and then finish the other half in two??

It’s gotta be the lactic acid buildup…