Get More Done By Saying Less

Good article by Carmine Gallo on the Business Week small business site on the value of being more succinct when communicating. http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jun2009/sb20090616_017396.htm

Contains a great quote by New York real estate queen Barbara Corcoran. "Nobody is as interested in you as you think they are." This can be applied to our communication strategy as well. People probably aren't as interested in our message as we think they are, but we can improve our communication effectiveness.

We coach leaders to use two strategies: elevator speeches and over-communication.

When introducing a new concept or message, employ an elevator speech. Elevator speeches should answer four questions about our topic:

1. What is it?
2. Why is it necessary?
3. What will success look like?
4. What do I need from you?

The idea behind the elevator speech is that if you can't describe your idea, product, or message in four sentences or phrases, it's too complicated and will probably not be retained by the hearer.

Then once the elevator speech is prepared, you can't just say it once. You have to absolutely pound the message over and over and over. Dont' be afraid to repeat yourself. Repetition is how people remember.

This Summer, Don't Be Camouflaged

I chuckled when I saw the "uniform" satirist Stephen Colbert wore when he went to Iraq recently to entertain the troops. I didn't know Brooks Brothers custom-made camouflage suits. Then I really cracked up when I saw the clip of him getting his hair cut by order of the President: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31183492#31183492

Camouflage makes for a funny suit for Colbert, but fading into the background is something every leader should avoid this summer. Summer is already a time of vacations and time away from work as it is. The thing to remember this summer is visibility. In our book "Ordinary Greatness," we talk about the importance of leaders being as visible as possible in order to find the greatness that exists everywhere in the company. So instead of staying in the office doing e-mail or spreadsheets, get out and spend time with staff. Here are the benefits:

1. Builds trust between staff and management


2. Provides opportunities for the leader to identify and recognize
   ordinary greatness occurring during the course of the workday


3. Lets staff know that you care about the work that is being done
   and appreciate its importance to achieving organizational goals


4. Encourages staff to make suggestions and offer opinions to improve
   the organization, creating a stronger sense of ownership


5. Provides the context for identifying opportunities for improvement
   and understanding the dynamics of decision choices


6. Helps the leader recognize obstacles or barriers that need to be
   removed to achieve better outcomes

However, the myriad benefits of visibility are often lost on executives. They have given us many excuses for not being visible. Here are some we have heard over the years:

1. Too busy


2. Didn't I just do that last month?
   
3. I don't know what to say when I am with staff.


4. They don't want me around anyway.

Entire books can be written to debunk each of those excuses, but if you are interested in improving your visibility, here are some tips:

1. Commit to just getting started and doing it. It's always scariest right before you get started.


2. Schedule it. Be sure your schedule is not so overburdened that you miss out on being visible to your staff and customers.


3. Use your visibility time as an opportunity to over-communicate key messages. Don't be afraid to repeat yourself.


4. If you are interacting with staff layers down in the organization, don't forget to manage up their leader to them -- be positive. This is what we call a win-win-win-win.

So next time you are tempted to hide out in your office, remember Colbert's camouflage suit. Be sure this is one article of clothing that you never wear. Stand out and get out. Now about that haircut...

Any visibility tips that have worked well for you? How do you stay visible to your customers and staff?

What My Summer Job Taught Me

With millions of high-schoolers and young adults heading out to the workforce for their first summer jobs this month, the WSJ ran an interesting item, "The Strange Summer Jobs of 23 Famous People." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124389730538274205.html#mod=djem_we

While it is satisfying to think of Rod Stewart as a gravedigger, Brad Pitt in a chicken suit, and a young Colin Powell selling furniture, this article also acted as a catalyst for me to think about my first summer job. I worked at a Dairy Queen (just like Gwen Stefani, it turns out), and here's what I learned there:

1. The concept of mandatory effort/discretionary effort is real. I hadn't yet heard these terms, but before long (maybe a week), I had figured out just how much work I needed to do and how fast I needed to do it to avoid getting in trouble. Every one of your staff members knows where this line is as well. Those leaders who can tap into discretionary effort and get more than what is mandatory will be most successful. Not getting the maximum discretionary effort from people represents the greatest waste in most businesses today, and if leaders addressed this, most layoffs and waste-reduction efforts would not be necessary.

2. Find out the most important part of your job and do it better than anyone else. The rest is pretty simple. For example, though no one told me early on, I quickly found out that the most important part of my job was keeping the soft-serve mix bags in the cooler from emptying. Duh, you say, it is a DQ, and people will want soft-serve ice cream, but hey, give me a break, I was 15! Don't make anyone ever guess what is most important to the business overall, to you, and to their individual success. Are your staff members confused about priorities?

3. The true leader isn't always the one with the title. Every shift at the DQ had a crew chief as you might expect, but then there was a lady named Ruth. Ruth had worked there since the Dairy Queen was a Dairy Princess, and her combination of tenure and confidence and fearlessness made her a leader though she was not a formal crew chief. I made sure I didn't cross her, and often looked to her for guidance before I checked with my boss. Do you know who the influential informal leaders are in your business? Do you recognize that some people have more influence than others and deal with them accordingly? Fortunately, Ruth was generally a positive force and presence, but I have seen many cases where the informal leaders were negative influences, and those teams and businesses were almost always dysfunctional.

What about you? Any lessons you learned at your first summer job?