5 Reasons Why Taking Shortcuts Shortchanges You

Video Notes:

You are all very busy. You go from one meeting to another and you have senior leaders breathing down you necks saying, “do more, do it better, do it faster, do it cheaper”. Amidst the busyness of your everyday work life the appeal of taking a shortcut can be alluring. But, I want to share with you the five reasons why taking shortcuts may be appealing but taking them shortchanges you. Here are the five reasons.

1. The important relationships in your life perish with the use of shortcuts. You can’t use a shortcut to raise your children nor can you use shortcuts to have a meaningful, high quality relationship with a significant other or a spouse. You simply cannot do it. Quality relationships time, focus and your presence.

2. We miss out on wonderful experiences when we run from point A to point B. If we don’t take the long route, what we miss seeing is the topography, the landscape, how other cultures behave differently nor are we seeing in the world of work how our customers experience things. When we’re rushing from point A to point B and taking a shortcut we’re shortchanging ourselves as to other people’s perspectives and how they do things.

3. You’ll never reach your full potential if you’re looking for shortcuts. Itzhak Perlman, the virtuoso violinist, never took a shortcut in becoming a virtuoso violinist. Whenever you see someone perform and comment “they are masterful,” I will promise you this, they did not take a shortcut.

4. We become human doings as opposed to human beings. When we are on the hamster wheel going from one task to another task to another task, our tasks blind us to other more important aspects of our personal and professional lives. Going mindlessly or frantically from one activity to another has us becoming human doings as opposed to human beings.

5. We are not very interesting when we simply read the Cliff Notes on life. It is true that you can read the Cliff Notes on Alexander Dumas’s, The Count of Monte Cristo, but I believe you will miss out on a wonderful narrative by an masterful storyteller. When you immerse yourself in a story, you become interested and engaged in the story and you want to share it with other people. When you do, others find your engagement and you interesting because of your interest in the story. When you only read the Cliff Notes you’re unable to experience the full breadth of a particular story.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the five reasons why taking shortcuts will shortchange you. There are times you will want or need to take a shortcut, but these five reasons are worth your consideration because far too often the shortcuts you’ve taken have left you shortchanged…and that’s something you’ll want to avoid doing again this week.

This week, identify one shortcut you’ve been taking that is no longer serving you well, and make a commitment to change it. If you don’t you’re going to miss out and be shortchanged. I don’t believe that’s what you want, so this week identify one shortcut and make a commitment to eliminate it.

High Performance Cultures: What every leader can learn from Ferrari, Bentley and Lamborghini

It was one of the most thrilling moments in my life. I was doing 187 miles per hour at the Porsche Driving School in what is best described as a rocket ship built on four wheels. The engine, only a few inches from my head, pounded in my chest as if I was receiving CPR, and the trees flew by so fast that they were no longer trees, but more a blurry green swatch of color out of the corner of my right eye.

I came to learn how to drive fast. Not to race you from one traffic light to the next down main street, but to become a more educated and safer driver in all types of circumstances. Learning the subtle nuances of when and how to shift gears, when to accelerate and when to brake, I left with a vastly improved lap time as well as greatly enhanced mindset behind the wheel.

High performance cars are very similar to high performance cultures. You have a choice as to whether to drive one or not. You can choose to drive a car that is purely functional transportation. Or, you can choose to drive a car that is one part engineering masterpiece, one part handcrafted artwork, and one part a catalyst for supreme exhilaration.

Here is good news. Whether you are a university, healthcare institution, a financial services organization or a technology department, you have a Ferrari sitting in your driveway and the keys are in your hand. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people who own a Ferrari, the level of intimidation about the power, torque and performance of the Ferrari has the car parked in the driveway looking good but not being driven. Their owners are not experiencing the acceleration, the cornering and the ability for the car to transport you to an unparalleled more compelling driving experience.

In my consulting work I’ve found that driving a culture that is the equivalent of a finely tuned sports car requires embracing five high performance cultural mindset shifts. Not unlike a manual transmission in a car, making these mindset shifts allows you to trade in your functional transportation for a finely tuned, hand-built work of art that accelerates you to the finish line before your competition. I call these Hugh Blane’s Cultural Accelerators. They are:

1.Cultures are hand built. Not unlike Ferraris, Bentleys and Lamborghinis, cultures are made with painstaking attention to detail by master craftspeople. Automobile engineers pour over specifications in the hopes of eliminating tiny imperfections, and marketing and customer care representatives create experiences that are exhilarating and rewarding.

The same holds true for your organizational culture. It is handcrafted and not an off the shelf idea culled from the most touted leadership book of the quarter. It is crafted with an uncompromising and meticulous passion for a compelling future. A future that outperforms your competition, builds customer loyalty and commitment, and leaves you in a category of one. In all races between you and your competitors, the race to customer loyalty and commitment will always be won by the most committed and passionate culture.

2. Cultures are customer centric. All of the car manufacturers I’ve mentioned know their customers inside and out. They have painstakingly thought through every aspect of the purchase process and engineered it to adhere to the automotive admonition “the thrill of the wheel seals the deal.” Once a prospective car-buyer has been thrilled by an automobile, the likelihood of them being converted from a prospective customer to a loyal customer increases exponentially.

Cultures that strive to thrill their customers, as well as to thrill the employees who work directly with them, will have customers’ speed toward them. If you are not thrilling the customers that matter most to you they will jump in their car and drive toward your competitors.

3. Cultures need to perform at higher speeds. Regardless of whether you agree that a Bentley Continental GT needs to hit tops speeds of 197 mph is irrelevant. What is important is that the automobile has been designed to achieve these speeds with an amazing amount of composure and safety.

Cultures are the same. Your culture can be designed to travel from a complete standstill to sixty miles per hour faster than your competitors and it can be designed to achieve a higher top speed with composure and safety. But the important question all leaders need to ask is, are we traveling on the Autobahn in Germany at top speed? Or, are we on a two-lane highway in Shreveport Mississippi with a governor holding us to fifty-five miles per hour?

In today’s world of work where hyper connectivity and access to information is expected in seconds, traveling fifty-five miles an hour will leave you obsolete and surpassed by newer and faster competitors. It’s time to speed up.

4. Cultures require better car handling skills. Creating a handcrafted culture that thrills customers and accelerates performance requires better car handling skills by drivers at every level of an organization. Specifically, every leader in the organization must embrace the admonition from racecar driver Mario Andretti who said, “If everything feels like it’s under control you’re simply not going fast enough.”

Gone are the days of having everything under control. The race for accelerated performance requires you to build a culture that is capable of balancing itself on the safe edge of the known and predictable along with the unknown and uncharted. This will leave some leaders on the edge of their seats proclaiming they’re going too fast. If you’re not hearing this, you’re not going fast enough.

5. Cultures cannot be purchased on the cheap. High-performance sports cars as well as high-performance cultures require you pay a premium. You cannot take a Chrysler minivan to the racetrack and expect to be competitive. You have to invest a premium either in purchasing a car designed for the racetrack, or to convert your current car into a competitor. If you’re not willing to make the investment into creating a high-performance culture then you will be resigned to being at the back of the pack and not being competitive.

Creating a high performance culture does not require you buy a Bentley. It does require that you buy-in to the five mindset shifts above and to move toward the same belief that W.O. Bentley had when he started Bentley automobiles. He said: “we will build a fast car, a good car, the best in its class.” Here’s to fast, good and best in class cars and cultures.

The quality of your questions determines the quality of your results

Video Notes:

This week I’m going to talk to you about the quality of your questions. Here’s my bold premise for this week. If you increase the quality of the questions you ask yourself, either at home or at work, then your performance will go up appreciably.

Let me give you an example of a low quality question: how do I lose ten pounds?

That’s a bad question and is a low quality question. Here’s an example of a high quality question. What do I need to do to live the most vibrant life physically? That question can take you into areas such as sleep, nutrition, exercise, the quality of the people you spend time with when you’re away from work to the quality of the people you spend time with at work.

There’s a whole different world that comes about by asking the second question as opposed to the first one. The vast majority of people in the world of work spend more time thinking about how to put out fires as opposed to becoming fire retardant. How to become fire retardant is a high quality question. How do we put out fires? That’s a low quality question.

This week if you want to have a significantly better week, if you want to transform yourself and your organization, ask high quality questions. If you do that you will be really amazed at the quality of your week.

That’s it ladies and gentlemen. Have a fabulous week and I will see you here again next week. Take care.

The 7 steps of learning a new skill

The process of learning a new skill is as much mental as it is physical. Take swimming for example. Knowing how to hold your hands and kick your feet is the physical side of learning to swim. Keeping your head underwater while not feeling as though you are going to drown is the mental side of learning to swim.

In my coaching and consulting work what I’ve found is that people have a greater difficultly with the mental aspects of learning a new skill as opposed to the physical aspect. Whether learning to lead, become a high-performing team member or giving feedback, having a process allows us to not only learn the new skill, but to master it.

If you have something you want to learn, here are my 7 steps for doing so:

1. Find an exemplar: An exemplar is someone you respect, admire and who is really good at what you want to learn to do. This can be a coach, a consultant or mentor within your organization. The key is to not reinvent the wheel. Find someone who is exceptionally good at what you want to learn and who has the disposition to help others learn the skill they have.

2. Observe the person in action: Be curious about what your exemplar does as well as what they don’t do. Observe them and take mental pictures of what you see. Since a picture is worth a 1000 words, observing your exemplar creates an impression of what the skill looks like when performed well.

3. Interview the person: Whenever possible, ask your exemplar what makes them successful. What are they thinking, what is their frame of reference and what do they believe makes them successful? Since learning a new skill has a mental component, learn as much as you can about their mental frame of mind.

4. Focus on progress not perfection: Learning a new skill requires that you accept not being good at the skill at first. What’s required is isolating two or three things to practice, and practice time must be viewed as a time when you will get dirty and may even look foolish. Being willing to practice without a preoccupation on looking good or getting things right is what makes your practice time valuable.

5. Ask for feedback: Ask for specific feedback, and if and whenever possible, videotape yourself performing the skill. Seeing yourself on video accelerates your learning exponentially.

6. Follow the rule of 72: When you learn something new, the potential for you to master the skill and use it effectively happens when you take action within 72 hours of learning something new. When you don’t take action within 72 hours the potential for you to be effective drops precipitously. Having a bias for taking action immediately is essential for learning new skills.

7. Rinse and repeat: The process of observing, interviewing, practicing, learning and acting, when done repeatedly leads to learning a new skill.

10 strategies for reversing negative self talk

As part of my Monday Morning Minute for May 7, 2012, I mentioned a list of the top ten strategies I’ve learned for reversing negative self talk. By doing them intentionally for thirty days you can and or will change the quality of your internal dialogue for the better.

1. Focus on one of your greatest successes: This strategy is designed to refocus your attention on one project or activity you’ve done really well. Specifically, you want to remember what you heard people say to you or about you and your performance. You then want to create the longest list possible of affirming feedback and view it daily for thirty days.

2. Inventory your self talk: Noticing what type of conversations you have with myself is important. Are these conversations positive and affirming or the opposite? Learn to catch yourself when they are negative and review your list from #1 above.

3. Meditation and or prayer time: The most important time of your day is the first thirty minutes. How you spend this time determines the quality of the rest of your day. If you spend your first thirty minutes checking email, watching the news, or reading negative newspaper stories you’ll be toast. Spend this time in meditation, prayer and or reading inspirational works. This is the time to reconnect with who you are spiritually.

4. Get an accountability partner: One of my best decisions was to hire a mentor/coach. Whether for triathlons or for my business, I benefited immensely from having someone other than myself view my plans and results. You will want to have a personal board of directors; a group of three to five people who call you on your stuff when need be. If you’re like me you’ll recognize that we all have advanced ways of fooling ourselves and need a trusted and respected accountability partner in order to grow and prosper.

5. Affirmations and visualization: Develop a list of qualities and traits you want to exemplify. Read your list every morning before leaving bed and every evening before turning the lights out. While this process is not scientific, this process will have a positive effect on your outlook and demeanor within one week of starting.

6. Have an internal contrarian: Whenever you fall into negative self talk you will benefit from taking a contrarian point of view. For example: if you start to generalize from a negative specific situation, you should stop and ask yourself to find evidence that points to an alternative conclusion. You’ll typically find at least five alternatives, and from the five choose one that seems the most plausible. This one plausible alternative outcome is proof that your current negative perspective is skewed.

7. Set a higher standard for how you talk with yourself: This is a really important strategy. Why do we talk to ourselves in ways we wouldn’t accept from a friend, client or family member? It’s oftentimes out of habit or conditioning. If a friend talked with you in the same way you talk with yourself you’d be gone. Have the same standard for your own negative self talk! Learn to mentally get up and walk away from negative self talk by saying “stop it – this is a habit you’ve learned, but it’s not working any longer.” If you won’t stop your own negative self talk who will? No one!

8. Practice assertive optimism: Somewhat similar to contrarian thinking, assertive optimism is the practice of seeing people, events, and situations from an optimistic perspective. How many times have you been upset with someone only to find out later that their behavior was rooted in either a family emergency or receiving bad news? Too many times. Keep in mind that there is always another side to the story and you don’t know it. Each situation and any corresponding negative expectations are rooted in a story we tell ourselves…typically about something we’re afraid of. Work to assertively insert optimism into all of your interactions and transactions. If you see me doing differently, you are free to let me know.

9. Choose your words carefully: Whenever we’re tired and worn out we become sloppy with our language. We say things like “I’m so stupid” or “I’m completely blowing this.” Instead, stop and use words like “I’m tired and can’t concentrate” or “this is not my best performance. I will do so much better when I’m rested.” The words you choose are planted in the fertile soil of your imagination and take root. I recommend choosing words that are known to produce a bountiful harvest and not a bed of weeds.

   And last but not least…

10. Don’t dwell on negative self talk: It’s really easy for us to fall into a pattern of focusing on that which we don’t want. When we don’t want something its oftentimes because we’re afraid of the consequences…so we procrastinate and dwell on it. For example, there was a period in my life when I was really afraid to fly because I thought the plane would crash. I would spend entire flights saying (to myself of course) “we’re going to crash.” The problem was that I was remembering an event from my childhood and wrongly assumed that ALL flights would end in a crash. It wasn’t until I met a pilot who understood my concerns and proved that what I was worrying about was the least of my worries when flying. Now when I fly I focus on the positive saying “I may not love flying, but it’s safer than driving my car.” The first conversation creates fear, the later creates clear thinking that leads to a more enjoyable flight.

I have a couple of questions for you:

1. What other strategies have you found helpful?

2. Which of these strategies resonates with you?

3. Which of the ten strategies, if you were to more fully embrace it, would have a positive influence on your personal and professional life?