Selling Through A Slump

This new ebook from 11 top sales professionals and bloggers (yes, I'm putting myself in that category--at least for the moment) focuses on simple advice on Selling Through The Recession.

Sponsored by the folks at TheCustomerCollective and Oracle CRM, we look at 11 industries, providing the top 10 tips, in each, for identifying opportunities, supporting your customers and growing the business. It's simple and pragmatic advice for every sales professional.

In addition to the great advice, the eBook is Free! How can you beat that?

Download This Free eBook

Selling Through A Slump: An Industry by Industry Playbook brings together sales strategies and best practices from 11 top sales experts from 11 distinct vertical market sectors, ranging from retail to health care to telecom—because one size doesn’t always fit all. The practical tips and experience-based wisdom here aren’t just limited to any single industry, though. Regardless of your market sector, you’re bound to find value in this arsenal of great sales ideas.

Just imagine, getting advice from:

• Charles Green, Founder and CEO,Trusted Advisor Associates writing on Selling for Accountants and Consultants
• Skip Anderson, Founder, Selling to Consumers Sales Training writing on Selling for Retailers
• Mike Kujawski, Founder, Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing on Selling to Public Sector Clients
• Mike Wise, VP, Insurance Technologies, IdeaStar Incorporated writing: Selling for Insurance Agents
• Matt Homann, Founder, LexThink LLC writing about Selling for Lawyers
• Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO, PhoneWorks LLC about Selling in Health
  Care
• John Caddell, Caddell Insight Group on Selling in Telecommunications Markets
• Dave Stein, Founder and CEO,ES Research Group, Inc writing about Selling Technology
• Jill Konrath, Author, Selling to Big Companies writing about Selling in Services
• Anne Miller, Founder,Chiron Associates on Selling Media
• and last, but not least, me, Dave Brock, President and CEO, Partners in EXCELLENCE on Selling to Manufacturers .

I've found the advice from my peers useful---I've been reading and applying lessons from a pre-release version of the book.

Download This Free eBook Now!

You'll find it a worthwhile resource.

Finally, thanks to TheCustomerCollective and Oracle CRM for sponsoring this!

Sales Managers Must Set The Example To Drive Change

We read everyday about organizations not achieving what they want in leveraging sales training, implementing CRM, implementing Sales 2.0 tools, new processes--whatever. While it may sound surprising, one of the key reasons organizations don't get what they want from these programs is that managers, at all levels don't set a visible example in utilizing the tools, training, or processes themselves. Somehow, they become things that the sales people must do, but managers don't.

If managers are not committed to set a visible example in any initiative, the organization is probably better off not doing it--saving the money and time.

Many years ago, I was brought into run a troubled sales organization. We had to go through a major reduction and completely re-examine everything that we were doing. We instituted new sales processes, brought in new training programs, and implemented a CRM system (almost before CRM was CRM). As we made these changes, I started getting push back from the managers and sales people---it was natural, change is tough for all people and there is a natural tendency to resist new initiatives and change--even when what you have been doing doesn't work.

Managers came to me and said "We don't have time to do these things, we just need to get out an sell." Sales people said, "You don't understand, I've been selling for years, planning is bureaucratic and wastes my time." There were lots of excuses, some legitimate, most not.

I decided to simplify things. I told everyone, they were accountable for making their numbers and achieving their goals. I told them they could do whatever they wanted, that they were responsible for their own success.

There was one big caveat: While people could do whatever they wanted, when they engaged with me, they were required to do things a certain way.

I told people I was available 7/24 to make sales calls with them--my highest priority was to be with customers helping them close business. However, in order to get the most out of the customer's time and my time, I said I had the following requirements: I wanted a written sales call plan--using the tools we had introduced in the sales training. I wanted a decision process map, and I wanted an opportunity plan. I told people that if I didn't have those before I jumped on the airplane, I would personally call the customer and reset the meeting, apologizing because we were not prepared to use the time well.

I got some grumbling. It only took two cancelled customer meetings to get people to realize I was serious. They started completing the plans---though only for me. For every plan I got, I would take the time to call the sales person review the plan, we would revise it and come up with a stronger plan---all using the tools and processes we had invested in. It didn't take too long before people started seeing that using these produced results. Soon they weren't using them just for me, but they were using them to improve their own productivity and effectiveness.

We did the same thing with funnel, account, territory and opportunity reviews. I told the management team they could use whatever process they wanted, but in doing the review with me, they had to use the tools and processes we had invested in. In the first few review meetings, people would try to avoid this, I stopped the meetings, sending them out of my office to do the work the way we had agreed. Over time, people started seeing the value of this. Our meetings were shorter, much more productive. We had common languages, processes and disciplines. We were becoming more focused, more efficient and more successful in building the business.

None of this would have happened if I hadn't set the example of using the tools and processes myself. If I hadn't cancelled meetings, thrown people out of my office, we never would have made the changes necessary to achieve our goals. There were some painful times, there was some grumbling. I had to invest a lot of time in coaching people in how to use the tools and explaining why they would produce result----but in fact that was my job!

My responsibility was to set an example for my team. To demonstrate my confidence in the tools, training, and processes by using them every day. To develop my people and their people, showing them and working with them in how they could improve their performance with the tools.

Over the next 12 months, we were remarkably successful, we took a terrible situation and turned it into a great success. We were benchmarked as "best practice." The team was positive, they used the tools, not because I required it, but because they produced value to them and improved their results.

Change is difficult. It's the manager's responsibility to lead people in change and to set a personal example. When are driving change in the organization, it's not them that we are changing, it's us.

Do Great Sales People Make Good Sales Managers?

There was an interesting thought posed in LinkedIn today: “Good sales people make good sales managers.” It went on to ask the characteristics of good sales managers. The question struck a chord, a dissonant one, provoking me to respond. I’m sure I have missed a lot of characteristics of great sales managers, and would ask for your addition, deletions, edits. Here’s my response and the list I started with:

Great sales people are sometimes the worst sales managers. Likewise, some mediocre sales people end up being stellar sales managers.

There is a long list of leadership skills/traits that are important for managers. I will stay away from repeating these.

Some specific areas that I think are often overlooked for sales managers:

1. Very process oriented. Today's sales manager cannot be involved in every deal, issue or transaction. They have to have a strong process in place, make certain their people understand and are executing the process. The sales manager has to continually monitor the process, taking deep dives in problem areas to help their people address them.

2. Disciplined and performance oriented. Closely tied to the previous point, the sales manager must have a strong focus on performance and performance improvement. This requires having the right metrics in place, making sure people understand what they are accountable for, giving them the opportunity to perform, being there to coach them when they have problems, and being prepared to take the appropriate actions if performance problems are not resolved.

3. Loyalty to the organization and their people. The sales manager is often caught between a rock and a hard place---the objectives of the organization sometimes come into conflict with what is best for the team. Effective sales managers are actively involved in setting organizational strategies and priorities (at least in terms of sales) and engage the sales people in executing them--though they may resist---which requires strong engagement and coaching. At the same time, sometimes the "organization" is insensitive to the sales people. The sales manager needs to defend the sales people to the organization, making sure they are heard.

3. Strong business orientation and focus. Make the right business decisions—both for the customer, for the sales organization, and for the business. Understanding how businesses work and what drives them.

4. Incessantly customer focused. If I have to say more, then we really don’t understand the point of professional selling.

5. Incessantly curious---driven to learn and improve. Incessantly curious about solving customer problems. Incessantly curious about the art and science of professional selling—driven to improve the performance of each individual in the organization, the organization as a whole, his own personal performance, and the business. This means they probably spend much more time asking questions and listening then they do talking.

6. Appropriately compassionate. Understand what drives people—customers, sales people, support people, others in the organization. Able to understand their points of view and what drives them. Able to communicate and work with them in a matter that demonstrates respect and trust. At the same time, able to make tough decisions—but with compassion based on the impact on individuals.

7. Able to sublimate their egos. Sales management is about leadership, growing and developing people, growing and developing the organization, growing and developing the business. It is not about how great you are and your past victories. It requires admitting you are wrong when you are. It requires being able to change your point of view.

8. Problem solvers. Driven by solving problems, finding ways to overcome obstacles, not being wed to the past. Creative and innovative in adapting new approaches to address issues and improve the business.

9. High energy. Constantly moving forward, setting strong examples for everyone around. Note, I am not saying high activity, high meeting orientation. High energy is different than meaningless activities.

10. Value, principle driven. Without a strong value system, a manager has no context in which to make decisions and drive the organization. Without sticking to the values and principles, the organization will wander and not produce results.

11. Thoughtful, reflective, good sense of humor. Self explanatory.

12. Able to leap tall buildings without tripping. Sales managers don’t need to have a big “S” on their chests, but they need to inspire and motivate others.

I’m sure I’ve missed some and could go into much more detail on each item. But I look for all of these in hiring great sales managers!

What would you add? Are there any you would eliminate?

Sales Manager: Stop Wasting Your Time On Coaching Meetings!

I get complaints from both sales people and managers on the topic of coaching. Sales people don't feel they are getting the coaching they need---their managers don't have time. Managers, don't feel they are providing the coaching they should---they don't have time (and they don't know how to--but that's another post).

Somehow, people have the notion that coaching is something that you do differently, it's kind of like the performance review, a specific coaching session or meeting is scheduled and the manager has to devote a certain amount of time to the "coaching meeting." The reality is the meetings are scheduled, then rescheduled, then cancelled, then combined to be part of the annual performance review.

Is that the way we should be coaching and developing our sales people (this message also applies to any other business professional--just do a global replace of sales with whatever function you manage)?

Coaching has to be integrated into the daily business. The impact of the immediacy of the feedback is phenomenal, and, pragmatically, it's the only way it gets done.

Every sales manager that I know conducts reviews. Pipeline/funnel, account, territory, deal/opportunity reviews. Usually, these are focused on the business, but sales managers miss the opportunity to use these normal reviews to coach their teams and each sales professional.

The review process is part of the normal set of activities sales professionals are involved in every day. They present the sale manager not only an opportunity to monitor the status of the business, but also to coach. In these review meetings the manager can:

1. Reinforce strategies, priorities, processes, even the use of key tools (like CRM).
2. Identify best practices within the team or individual performance and reinforce these great behaviors.
3. Identify weaknesses or disfunctional behavior and correct them.
4. Use the meetings to subtly develop new skills and capabilities by suggesting changes in approach---even discussing them in the meeting.

These review meetings are a tremendous opportunity to accomplish a lot of things, let's not just limit them to sharing information about the status of the business. (If you are interested in more information about how to leverage these reviews, we've written some white papers on these, just email me and I'll send you a copy).

Separately, managers travel with their people (or should be). These represent great opportunities to catch your people doing something right, coaching to reinforce the good behaviors and eliminating the bad behaviors. Unfortunately, the tendency is to focus exclusively on the business issues, and even worse, managers push the sales person to the side and "take over" the sales process, acting as super sales people. This usually doesn't help the deal and certainly has a negative impact on the sales person's performance.

Traveling with your people is a great opportunity to move business forward (only if you can add value that your sales people can't), and to coach and develop your sales people in real time.

Coaching is critical! The only way managers will be successful and have the impact they need is to integrate coaching into the daily business process. We need to stop the notion of scheduling specific coaching meetings and use every opportunity we have to coach our teams and people.

New Year and Goals

I've taken a brief holiday from posting, now am back in full force---partly a reflection of goals I have set for myself, the business, and this blog. Getting started in the New Year had me reflect on setting goals--somehow on January 1, we call them resolutions, the rest of the year they are goals. I am constantly amazed at how casually most people treat goals--particularly those they set for themselves.

Rather than repeat what lot of well thought out recommendations and observations, I thought it more useful to point you to some good blog posts on the topic.

Seth Godin has a nice, brief post on goals: The Thing About Goals. It's a fast read and makes a point about people who get things done: All have goals.

Over at the Power Of Less blog, by Leo Babauta, he offers great tips to help each of us achieve our goals. I've become a great fan of his blog and the Power Of Less offers great reminders and insight.

At Gill Corkindale's Harvard Business Review blog, he offers a great tip: Schedule Regular Meetings With Yourself.

Goals are important. I've established mine, I'll be talking about them in later posts.

Vicious Disqualification Is Critical For Sales In A Down Economy!

Yesterday, I spent time with the sales management team of a large corporation reviewing their funnel. I noticed something very important, the quality of the deals in the funnel had declined significantly.

It seems, as things were getting tougher, management was pushing sales to "go out and get more deals!" In an effort to keep their funnels full, the sales people were chasing bad deals. They were deals in which the customer had no real interest, urgency, or funding to go forward with a project. Deals in which my client's solutions were marginally competitive. Deals that were the wishful thinking of hungry sales people.

We had a long discussion about the topic: Is it better to have a high quality, but lean funnel, or is it better to have a full funnel of lower quality. We quickly concluded that, particularly in tough time, maintaining the quality of the funnel, was critical. Some of the reasons include:

• The lower quality deals have significantly lower win rates, yet consume significantly more sales, pre-sales, and management time.
• The few times those deals were won, the cost of supporting those customers was much higher. Customer satisfaction was significantly lower--impacting the perception of my client in the market, customer support costs were higher, decreasing profitability, and too much sales and management time was involved in dealing with these situations.
• The "inflated" funnel set the wrong expectation in the business. Management could not really determine the real performance or expected performance of the sales organization and the gap to plan. Consequently, they were not implementing the right recovery strategies.
• The time spent chasing bad deals, robbed the time sales people have to prospect and find quality deals. They were missing good opportunities, simply because they were spending too much time managing low quality opportunities.

Maintaining a quality funnel in very tough economic times takes courage, but it is the only way sales professionals and management can optimize their business results. No individual or organization can afford to waste any time or resource on non-productive activities. Maintaining or increasing the quality of the funnel, is critical to maximizing results and sales productivity.

The fastest way to increase sales productivity and building quality funnels is to get sales people to focus on vicious disqualification. They must focus on deals where customers have an urgent need--in today's economy, organizations will only invest in the most urgent, highest return areas. Sales must focus on deals that hit their organization's sweet spot---these are deals that have a higher probability of winning. There may be real deals out there, but if they don't fit your capabilities and sweet spot, you probably have little chance of winning them.

If sales people focus on vicious disqualification, the quality of the funnel will improve dramatically. Win rates and productivity will soar. Management will be able to accurately forecast the state of the business and develop strategies to address gaps. Sales people, with lean, but quality funnels will have more time freed up to prospect and find more quality deals.

It may seem counter intuitive, but vicious disqualification and the highest quality funnels are the best way to maximize business and profitability in a down economy. Your thoughts?

Was There Life Before 7/24 Connectivity?

Today's New York Times has an interesting essay by Ben Stein entitle, Connected, But Hermetically Sealed. It is nice commentary about how we use technology to seal ourselves off from the real world.

Mobile phones, PDA's Ipod's, all great technologies that contribute to the quality of our lives also serve to diminish the quality of our lives by isolating us.

Imagine, sitting with a group of people, none talking to each other, but all engaged in text messaging as vigorously as possible.

Yesterday, on a bike ride, I passed someone saying "Hello" as I passed. They didn't hear me or respond, because they were listening to their Ipod.

All of us are guilty, I find myself hiding behind my (de)vices. After all, it's so much easier to bury yourself in email, messaging, playing a game, or listening to music than to be engaged. Rather than observing what's going on around us, rather than talking to friends, colleagues, and, god forbid, strangers, we can hide behind the technology. Without these (de)vices, I have to actually pay attention to something or someone else. I have to listen, I have to hear a different point of view, I have to learn.

It strikes me a ironic, these devices intended to enhance communications instead isolate us. We deal with only the familiar and turn a blind eye to the new.

These devices, which can improve our productivity, are actually diminishing the quality of our experience. Instant accessibility supposedly helps us be more reachable for urgent things, enable us to respond faster. When I reflect on the emails, text messages, and phone calls to my mobile, as far back as I can recall, there was nothing that couldn't wait a few hours. In fact there are many things that would have been better off by waiting a few hours.

I have often thought back to pre-historic times---when we didn't have mobile phones, PDA's etc. How did we deal with "urgency?" I have been engaged with top executives in major businesses worldwide. As I reflect back, business and the quality of decisions these executives made did not seem to suffer from delays of a few hours. In some ways, one might argue that many issues which are urgent at one moment, are no longer important 30 minutes later. The built in buffer of waiting a few hours to get back, actually made numerous issues become non issues and disappear.

Many organizations are recognizing these issues. they set limits on sending and receiving emails. They limit use of Blackberry, phones and other (de)vices. We don't need an organization to help us with that, each of us can take action.

1. Set your own time limits to email.
2. Let calls to your mobile phone roll into voicemail---don't interrupt what you are doing to answer it.
3. Let text messages queue up, look at them periodically, but not instantaneously.
4. Take some joy in looking around, watching what is going on around you, engage in the real world.

We Don't Have Time To Do It Right!!!

Why do we seem to make the time to re-do things--several times over--correcting mistakes, but we never find the time to do things right in the first place?

I've been pre-occupied and frustrated by this issue for several weeks. Two multi-billion dollar organizations I am working with are on similar paths. They are in such a hurry to act that the action itself takes precedence over doing things right.

Both organizations have smart, motivated, well intended people. Both face major challenges in executing even the simplest strategies. It troubles me that such smart people are caught in a trap of executing so stupidly.

Here's an example: A key project--recruiting new resellers, engaging them and motivating them to sell my client's products/services is critical to the growth strategy. A program was announced and launched. However, no one had taken the time to develop the detailed plans for fulfilling the program and dealing with the responses.

Here's where the problems started (you might say they started with the absence of thoughtful planning), but the announcement was a wild success! Within 30 days, we had responses from over 200 organizations wanting to partner with my client. We didn't know about these response for over 30 days because the person getting the responses 1)Didn't know what to do with the responses; and 2)Didn't inform management of the responses.

We found the problem after about 35 days. You might think the problem was fixed and we could declare victory---but that makes too much sense. This company spent lots of time talking about the need to solve the problem, but didn't focus on actually solving it (the solution had actually been designed and could have been quickly implemented). In the meantime, more responses and requests for partnering came in. At the end of about 50 days, we had 400 pending requests---none of which had been acknowledged.

People panicked and started focusing on symptoms. An email was sent to the 450 respondents, it told them they now had an access code to my client's partner/reseller website. It neglected to welcome them, it neglected to tell them how to get started, most importantly, it neglected to give them the access code.

30 days has passed since then, frustrated potential partners are not getting responses to their queries, yet the company solved another symptom. It sent out the userids and passwords so that people could access the reseller web site and start learning a little about the products. The only problem though, no one provided these ids and passwords to the webmaster, so all attempts by the resellers to access the web site were rejected with not explanation.

And undoubtedly the story will go on. At each point, before, during, during, during..... I have encouraged the client to get a small task team together and to define a detailed plan, assign responsibilities, and execute the plan. But everyone's been too busy to sit down.

Now, months later, the client is at this point: They have 100's of people wanting to be resellers, the majority of whom have not received a response for at least 45 days, in some cases for over 90 days. Those who have received the first response, were confused and frustrated because they were not provided the information to do what was expected. Those who received the second response, see yet again, a failure in execution. Many potential resellers are so frustrated and fed up with their experience, they no longer want to partner with this organization.

I am frustrated, 1) My client has spent countless person hours in activity that has not only not helped resolve a problem, but has made the problem worse. 2} There is a tremendous opportunity cost---people who wanted to be resellers and who could produce significant revenue are now so upset they are no longer interested. 3) All of this could have been avoided with a 2 hour planning session-----but they were too busy to do this.

If this isn't depressing enough, this isn't an unusual case. It seems to be more the norm than the exception. Activity trumps thinking. Action overrules planning. We always have time to correct mistakes, we never have the time to do the right thing in the first place.

I started my career many years ago in IBM. At the time I started, there was a simple sign on everyone's desk. It had one word: Think.

Reflecting back on that sign, that notion has never been more important to effectiveness and producing results than it is now. Every minute we spend thinking or planning can save us hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted effort. It can help us realize millions of dollar in revenue and profitability.

But I'm at a low point----people are probably too busy to think about this. People just don't have the time.

Defragging Our Minds

We all (or at least Windows people) know that it's necessary to defrag our hard disks every once in a while. Fragmented hard drives run much slower---I've had some that are so fragmented they barely get work done. You can hear the little sucker whirring away, seems like there is a lot going on, but in the end the system slows down to getting very little done.

I'm in my office, frustrated that my computer has slowed down so much, our computer guy told me to defrag the drive. As the computer is doing it's thing, it struck me that people are a lot like computer hard drives. Sometimes we get too many things going on---driven by too many interruptions. We get so many things going on, we eventually get to the point where we get no work done. We are so fragmented, that while there is activity, there is virtually no output.

Every once in a while we need to defrag our minds. We need to examine what we are doing, how interruptions drive our behavior and the impact on what we accomplish. We're constantly connected, always on, and multitasking. There's lots of activity but are we really accomplishing things.

Defragging our minds is tough, but there are some simple things to start:

1. Reduce your dependency on email, messaging, mobile phones, twitter and other technologies that reinforce interruptions.

2. Empty your in box. Even if you can't reduce your dependency on email, at least empty your inbox--it's amazing what that accomplishes.

3. Identify your 2 highest priority tasks and schedule time to complete them (or move them significantly forward).

4. Consider going some place where people can't find you (another part of the building, your local library, some place where you can think and work without distraction).

5. Schedule time to catch up on your reading---both business and recreational reading. It clears your mind, gives you a different perspective and broadens your views.

6. Schedule some exercise or meditation time. Refreshing your body refreshes your mind.

It's a start, the most important thing is to keep it up, otherwise, it's amazing how quickly you get fragmented and lose your effectiveness.

Now, I only have to think about that other thing my computer guy told me------memory leaks.

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention And The Coming Dark Age

As a person who constantly rails against the levels of multitasking most of us have fallen victim to, I was intrigued by a new book: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson.

I have just had the opportunity to quickly skim it, and think it is an important book to read. It seems well researched, presenting data on the impact of multitasking and our inability to focus. It projects a dire future---I'm not sure I quite buy into that---but will re-read.

Technology has provided us wonderful means of staying in touch. It provides us access to oceans of information. We all have wonderful tools.

However, in leveraging these tools, it seems we may have lost sight of what they are supposed to help us do. They should help us get more done----yet because of our inability to focus, our willingness to succumb constantly to interruptions, we seem to get less done. They are to help us make better decisions, yet it seems that we have less wisdom or knowledge.

In our fast moving, bullet point focused worlds, it will be hard to sit down and read this book, but it is worth the time----and the reflection.

Quiet Time--Break Away From Email, Phones, Blackberry's

Interesting article in today's New York Times: Lost In E-Mail, Tech Firm Face Self-Made Beast. The article examines efforts by many companies to understand the impact of constant interruptions on productivity.

Companies are finding tremendous results in forcing people to stop distractions for a period of time each day, devoting that time to thinking or getting real work done (such a concept!). The article cited a Basex study which placed the impact in lost productivity in the U.S. due to distractions at more than $650 billion annually!

Take the time to read the article.

Better yet, everyday, try to take at least one hour off---don't check email, don't answer the phone (landline or mobile), don't use your Blackberry, don't surf the web, don't sit in a meeting. Use the time to think, prioritize, or get some real work done. You'll be amazed at what you accomplish.

Why Don't Managers Think Deeply

Today, the Harvard Business Review Working Knowledge Newsletter and Art Petty On Management had complementary articles on Why Don't Managers Think Deeply? It's a fascinating topic that should concern all leaders. Both are worth reading, and, dare I say, thinking about.

I'd like to add some of my own opinions about why manager's don't think deeply:

• People confuse form with substance: Brilliant presentations, PowerPoint's, or "hot programs" may be attractive and create a lot of interest, but many have no depth beyond the bullet point on the chart. People haven't really thought about what the strategy and the most effective means of execution. People don't get into deep discussions about the issues or alternatives.
• Activity trumps results and effectiveness: We. particularly American business professionals, have a bias to activity. We see nothing wrong with Ready, Fire, Aim. The activity is often unfocused, aimless, and ineffective. We are often to busy with our activities to take the time to think.
• Activity can be mistaken for accountability: "Busy people must be doing important things and producing good results." In reality, busy people may be busy people, but "busyness" does not necessarily mean a lot is being accomplished. The greatest sin made in the name of "busyness" is multitasking--we simultaneously sit in a meeting, process our emails, text message on our phones, and think about what we want to do on the weekend. This keeps us from focusing on what we must do.
• Thinking---at least results focused thinking-- forces us to make choices. It forces us to commit to a course of action and to execute it. Many people are afraid to commit to a course of action. It is better to react or do nothing than it is to commit to something and to be held accountable.
• Thinking deeply is messy hard work. It is difficult to reduce it to a bullet point. It is demanding and takes time---but time spent thinking doesn't look like activity. The results aren't pretty and can sometimes be complicated to present and get others to support.
• Thinking deeply requires the ability to integrate and synthesize. Some people just aren't good at this--but it is critical for leaders.
• Thinking deeply isn't rewarded in a lot of organizations. It's hard to measure, consequently hard to reward. Thinking takes away from "busyness." it's easier to measure and reward activities.
• Thinking deeply may be threatening to senior executives. Senior executives who don't take the time or have difficulty thinking deeply about issues will, justifiably, feel threatened by subordinates that take the time to think before acting.

And I could go on, but enough for now. I would be remiss though, if I didn't look at some of the downsides of thinking deeply. I have encountered people in business who are deep thinkers, yet who cannot translate the results of their thinking into meaningful action.

Deep thinking must be accompanied my meaningful---thoughtful action. Without this it is never tested and the results are never produced.

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings!?#?!!%&*

"A person's stature in business is measured by the number of meetings on their agenda!" Sometimes I actually believe people think this is true. I see too many people participating in too many meetings---that accomplish absolutely nothing!

The problem is worse in today's "always available" global business environment. People are always on, conference calls, and other "meetings" consume our lives. I recently did an informal audit of a number of clients and found many scheduling meetings from 5:00AM through midnight! I also found, that during this 19 hour period, many were in meetings for as many as 12 hours during that time.

The meeting is not an end--it is a means. Increasingly, I believe meetings should be the last alternative we choose to get things done.

I was struck today by Fred Wilson's A VC Blog. He outlines some guidelines to managing "Unproductive" Meetings. They included (with very liberal interpretation by me):

• Limit the length of time up front--keep it short.
• Have a hard stop that you enforce.
• Set an agenda at the start of the meeting. Here I disagree with Fred a little. I think the agenda should be set and distributed before a meeting. If I possibly have the option, I do not attend meetings where an agenda has not be pre-distributed.
• Don't say yes to every request that is made.
• Do it right in the meeting, if you can: Here Fred is referring to quick emails or phone calls. We all know that "to-dos" don't get done. Those that can be accomplished by emails or calls, I do immediately.
• Ask the person who called the meeting to follow up: Have them send the notes with what is being requested or has been committed. If they don't, then it can't be important.

I'd add some other rules that help me:

• All meetings should be held in rooms without chairs.
• Never-never-never order coffee or other refreshments for a meeting. Consider not allowing refreshments---even water brought into a meeting. People's thirst of caffeine addictions will keep meetings short.
• Any presentations should be distributed as position papers beforehand. People should be required to review these before hand so that you can use the meeting time to get things done. Lou Gerstner used a variation of this technique very effectively at IBM. If a participant has not reviewed the materials before the meeting, then they don't get to speak.
• If decisions are to be made, make sure these are clearly identified in the agenda.
• Decide what the meeting is about and keep it focused on that one thing. Is it an informational meeting? Is it a decision-making meeting? It can't be both.
• No multitasking involved--if you are at the meeting, be In The Meeting! No email, except at the end to do follow ups. No phones except at the end, No blackberry's or anything else. If those are more important, don't waste your time and those of others in the meeting.
• Calculate a cost to each meeting, make sure there is a positive ROI to meetings. For consultants, time is money--I am very sensitive about my time. Assess the investment in time (on a fully burdened cost basis) that each person is making in the meeting. Is the time justifiable?

The most important thing is block large portions of your time for yourself. You need time to think about what you are doing. You need time to to the work. You need time to plan.

Having A Bad Day?

Interesting post in The Positivity Blog. All of us have bad days, we feel off or unproductive. Shaking off whatever causes the bad day is difficult. The blog offers several points to help, I have reordered them and put my own twist on them:

Work out: Working out helps me clear my mind, getting off whatever is bothering or frustrating me. I am always refreshed and productive after I've worked out. Beyond the health benefits, working out helps me focus and be more effective. I encourage every professional to take a few minutes in their day to work out in some way.
Give value: This startled me, but when I got to thinking about it and my own personal experience, it made a huge amount of sense. Too often, when we have a bad day, we get consumed by ourselves--typically, this lead me further down. Giving value, finding a way to make a difference for someone else, breaks me out of this cycle. It stops me from thinking about myself and gets me to thinking about others and other things. It doesn't have to be a "big" thing. It could be a phone call, and email, taking the time to listen to someone.
Try something new: I'd add Do Something Different. If you keep doing the same thing, more often than not, it produces the same result. If that is the cause for your bad day, how will doing it more change things?
Ask the right questions: Questions like "Why did this happen to me," keep you mired in the situation. Questions like "What is awesome about this situation," "Is this really important in the long run," and others help you get a different perspective.
Get enough sleep: I might add---take a nap. Typically, we have bad days when we are tired. You tend to have a better day when you are fresh.
Eat: I'm not sure about this one, but the variation I believe is drink water! Hydration counts!
Just do it: Do what you really want to do.

Some interesting things to think about!

Empty Your In Box---Increase Your Productivity

A few weeks ago, I read a time management tip about "emptying" your In Box (From Randy Pausch's Time Management Seminar). I'd always used my In Box as a kind of memory jogger on different things, in addition to my to-do and follow-up lists. I decided to try Randy's tip. It's amazing, how well it has worked. I've noticed a tremendous increase in my productivity. I don't go back to old messages, that I've read dozens of times before to remind myself what to do--after all I've already put the item in a to-do or follow-up. Why have another location to confuse and slow me down?

Randy, thanks for a great but simple tip. It's made a big difference for me. Try it.

On the other hand you might remember:

• One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries."--A.A. Milne,author of "Winnie-the-Pooh"

What You Stop Is Important

Everyone I encounter, professionally and personally, has more on their plates than they could possibly accomplish. In virtually every business, organizations are trying to do more, with fewer resources and people, in shorter periods of time. That seems to leak over into our personal lives, with each of us over committing to each other.

At some point, you start seeing very dis functional behaviors: Stress levels high, tempers short, people unhappy, people frustrated, fingers pointing, blame being passed and so forth.

I'm working with one large organization that has undergone a series of severe resource cutbacks over the past 2 years. They have cut the resources, but they haven't reworked the work. I encounter a lot of "thrashing." This is characterized by a lot of start and stop, immense levels of activity, but nothing is ever completed and results aren't being produced.

Too much of the time, I see people focused on improving the productivity and effectiveness---sometimes translated into, "How do I accomplish more in less time." People never consider stopping things, they look at how they can change to do more. This breaks at some point. Organizations literally break, they fail to perform, management and shareholders find new people to do the job. Personally, we break down. Illness is up, bills to analysts/shrinks/pharmacists/our local barkeeper are up, the quality of our relationships is down.

Something has to stop! Actually that's the answer--perhaps figuring out how to do more is really about what we need to be stopping. We can't continue to do thing in the same way or faster, perhaps we should be focusing on what we stop.

Recently, in working with a client in a major restructuring, we spent most of our time focusing on what we had to stop. There was a significant reduction in resources (read people were gone). Rather assuming we would just accomplish the same thing with fewer people, the management team had the wisdom to sit down and focus on what they had to stop. This approach freed the team up, enabling them to redesign the work, finding better ways to execute their strategies and achieve the goals they hadn't been achieving before. They are on a good path, only time will tell, but I suspect they will be successful. Prior to this, even with more resources, they were trapped they could do more. That wasn't working, but they never took the time to look at stopping things. It took a painful restructure to get them to consider the question.

Professionally and personally, for those who aren't achieving the results they expected, for those that are frustrated or can't find the time to do what they "need to do." Perhaps it's time to stop---take the time to figure out what should be stopped and get back to basics and essentials.

Perhaps doing this will also enable us to take some time to stop and smell the roses------sorry, I couldn't resist.

"Completed Staff Work"

I was having a conversation with a client, the CEO of a Fortune 100 organization, and he cited something I hear from many leaders and executives, "My people come to me with problems, they don't come to me with solutions."

There was more to it, but the comment reminded my of something a manager/mentor in IBM gave me many years ago. It was a short document called, "The Doctrine Of Completed Staff Work." I've traced it to two sources, Brigadier General G.E.R. Smith, of the Canadeian Army (08/09/1943) and Brigadier General George A. Rehm, US Army, 1942-1943.

Some may be put off by the military rigidity of this paper, I find it a useful tool to remind professionals and leaders about the importance of "doing your homework." In today's world, where speed seems to overcome quality of thinking, the article is a provocative reminder.

It is reprinted below:

The Doctrine Of Completed Staff Work

Completed staff work is the study of a problem, and presentation of a solution, by a staff member, in such form that all that remains to be done on the part of the commander is to indicate approval or disapproval of the completed action. The words "completed action" are emphasized because the more difficult the problem is, the more the tendency is to present the problem to the commander in a piecemeal fashion.

It is your duty as a staff member to work out the details. You should not consult your commander in the determination of those details, no matter how perplexing they may be. You may and should consult other staff members. The product, whether it involves the pronouncement of a new policy or affects an established one, when presented to the commander for approval or disapproval, must be worked out in a finished form.

The impulse, which often comes to the inexperienced staff member, to ask the commander what to do, recurs more often when the problem is difficult. It is accompanied by a feeling of mental frustration. It is easy to ask the commander what to do, and it appears too easy for the commander to answer. Resist the impulse. You will succumb to it only if you do not know your job.

It is your job to advise your commander what she or he ought to do, not to ask what you ought to do. The commander needs answers, not questions. Your job is to study, write, restudy, and rewrite until you have evolved a single proposed action--the best one of all you have considered. Your commander merely approves or disapproves.

Do not worry your commander with long explanations and memos. Writing a memo to your commander does not constitute completed staff work. But writing a memo for your commander to send to someone else does. Your views should be placed before the commander in finished form so that the commander can make them his or her views simply by signing the document. In most instances, completed staff work results in a single document prepared for the signature of the commander without accompanying comment. If the proper result is reached, the commander will usually recognize it at once. If the commander wants comment or explanation, she or he will ask for it.

The theory of completed staff work does not preclude a rough draft, but the rough draft must not be a half-baked idea. It must be complete in every respect except that it lacks the requisite number of copies and need not be neat. But a rough draft must not be an excuse for shifting to the commander the burden of formulating the action.

The completed staff work theory may result in more work for the staff member but it results in more freedom for the commander. This is as it should be. Further, it accomplishes two things:

• The commander is protected from half-baked ideas, voluminous memos, and immature oral presentations.
• The staff member who has a real idea to sell is enabled more readily to find a market.

When you have finished your completed staff work the final test is this:

If you were the commander would you be willing to sign the paper you have prepared, and stake your professional reputation on its being right?

If the answer is no, take it back and work it over, because it is not yet completed staff work.

Why Multitasking Only Works To A Point

I've written before about the perils of multitasking and will continue to rant on this topic. I'm at fault for multitasking too much---I do emails on conference calls, update my calendar during web conferences, and manage to focus on watching the news rather than listening to my wife in the evenings.

Somehow multitasking has become the test of how important or how busy we are. I've been convinced that productivity and quality of results actually declines the more we multitask. Most of my evidence, however, has been anecdotal, or personal. (Sure I can quote accident figures about people talking on cell phones while driving.)

I read an interesting post in t the Wall Street Journal BizTech blog by Ben Worthen on February 1. In the post, he cites a study by researchers at the University of Oregon. Some points from his post: (paraphrasing Mr. Worthen's observations.)

• Researchers found the average person can only focus on four things at once.


• Despite claims to the contrary, there is no correlation to age. Younger people cannot multitask more.


• The complexity of things doesn't matter. There is little difference in trying to recall very complex/intricate items or simple things. That means little things that we take for granted, like following the car in front of us, take as much effort as something more complex, like a difficult phone conversation, or reading.

He concludes, that new technologies provide us the capability to multitask even more, however, human evolution has not kept pace and we have real limitations. It's an interesting post and worth reading. I still feel four tasks is overstating things a little.

The study does explain one thing.....why I still have problems walking and chewing gum at the same time......

In Praise Of The Checklist

Fast Company has an interesting short article, Heroic Checklist, that is a worthwhile read. I'm a tremendous fan of checklists, though in our consulting practice we find too many people resist them as either too structured or too simplistic.

Checklists are great, there greatness lies in their simplicity:

• They help keep us disiciplined and focused.
• They make sure, that in the rush of everyday activity, we don't overlook critical items/activities.
• They free us up to identify and focus on the most critical issues.
• They help us be more effective.
• They free us up to be more creative and innovative.
• They help us produce results.

Use checklists, keep them short and simple. They make a difference. They help us be more productive and effective.

Focus Until It Hurts! Then Focus More!

Most of the organizations I encounter have one common challenge----focusing. In the past week, I have been involved in projects with 4 companies---2 Fortune 50 companies, a large company, and a very early stage start up. All had exactly the same problem:

They had not identified and committed to executing the 1-2 things critical to accomplishing their goals. As a result, each was failing to achieve their goals. Consistently, failure to focus is the biggest issue I see confronting organizations and people.

This got me to thinking, why is it so tough? Some thoughts:

Focus is boring: It is so much more exciting to look at new ideas, to try new things. If I focus, I am forced to complete one thing before moving to the next.

Focus is not cool: After all, we seem to measure our worth by how much we can multitask----multitasking is the enemy of focus---but it's what we are all about---how many meetings can we manage simultaneously, how many emails, phone calls, and the story goes on.

Focus requires thought: If I am going to focus on something, I have to think---really think----what is it that I need to focus on, what do I give up, is it the right thing to do, should I be doing other things? Once I've decided, then I have to continue to think. It's much easier to wander and react to crises.

Focus requires discipline: Discipline---it's such a boring word---isn't it much more fun to react? Why do I want to be so predictable?

Focus demands accountability: If I commit to one thing and just do that----people will have an expectation---I will actually be responsible for doing something---for accomplishing something. If I choose not to focus, then it is more difficult to pin me down---I can move from crisis to crisis, issue to issue, but I never really have to produce a result.

Focus demands courage: What if I choose the wrong thing, what if I am wrong? Everyone around me is not doing this---you can't pin them down---this makes me responsible for what I do---for the result I produce. Sometimes, we are all alone in doing this.

Lots has been said about focus, but we do everything we can to avoid it. Imagine the difference in each of our lives if we could just start to focus. Imagine what each of us and our organizations could accomplish.