Think before you drop in

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dropinTrue story: a couple of years ago a friend came over to visit and chat about some business ideas. My daughter was napping upstairs, my wife was out running, and the two of us were sitting in lawn chairs in the backyard watching our two boys (6 and 8 at the time) try to “drop in” on a skateboard into the half pipe ramp we had built together.

“Dropping in” is an audacious challenge. Imagine this for a moment. Although the top of the ramp is *only* four and a half feet high, when perched up there with your back foot bracing the board and your front foot poised to pounce and slam the deck down on the ramp and race across the plywood – trust me – it’s a scary drop.

So there we are, watching the boys attempt, and fail, at “dropping in.” David says to my son Charlie, “Gimme the board.” Then gangly and tall David takes the skateboard and places himself in position on the top deck of the ramp, narrows his eyes, and drops in. And while dropping, he contorts his leg underneath himself and collapses at the bottom of the ramp.

“I broke my leg,” he says. Of course he did. I watched the entire thing and clearly saw him fall upon his twisted right leg. And yet all I can say is, “Really?” He says again, “I broke my leg.” David is calm, lucid, knowing. Right, of course he did. I saw it happen. Yet stunned in disbelief that this has happened right here, in my backyard, before my eyes, I say again, “Really?”

David says, “You gotta call 911.”

He’s right, and with a broken leg lying on the deck he also seems to be calling the shots. I stare at him wondering why he isn’t screaming.

David then calmly asks my son Will for some ice. Will races inside to the kitchen and returns with a single ice cube. I ask my son Charlie to fetch my mobile phone – which he does – and then I stand there, hesitating, holding my phone and asking David yet again, “Really?”

I call 911. Within minutes a platoon of emergency vehicles and EMTs arrive. The lead responder observes David on the skateboard ramp and shakes his head quietly in amused wonder. Then they pack him up – splint, rolling emergency bed, the works. He, indeed, broke his leg in several places and spent a few days awaiting, and then recovering from surgery.

I write quite a bit about the importance, and value, of aspiration. That is, to aspire to a skill or an improved version of oneself is a wonderful and important part of growth and development. How else might we become a greater person without aspiration? We have to envision possibilities before we can realize them.

Yet the key thing here is to remember the steps to get there. It takes hard, conscientious, dedicated practice and work before we arrive at the ability to “drop in” or something similarly difficult that we aspire to.

Here’s a tip from David Taylor: what we aspire to may not be immediately transferable just because we want it so.

It’s About the Impact, not the App

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If we are software coders, we can get hypnotized by the killer hack. If sales professionals, we can be entranced by the nuance of well-run client meetings, and if project managers, it’s easy to be seduced by the latest task management app. But remember, while the devil is in the details, the beauty is in the result, the impact, the difference.

Don Tapscott has a marvelous illustration of the power and importance of connecting people with ideas, without being encumbered and distracted by the mechanism itself.

A few years ago he was in his house when down the hall he hears his son calling out, “Dad! Dad! Come here – you’ve got to check this out!” So Don walks down the hall to his son’s room and finds him at the computer looking at images of space and his son is saying, “Look Dad, that’s a quasar, and that could be a black hole, and over here are stars being born, and this light we’re looking at is millions of years old! Isn’t that amazing!”

Don is pleased with his son’s interest in the cosmos, and says “That’s very cool son, where did you get these images?” And his son says, “Oh, they’re not pictures I’m streaming live from Hubble.” At this point Don’s jaw drops, and he says to his son, “What?! Do you understand you are harnessing the most powerful telescopic instrument on earth? And it’s not even on earth?” To which his son replies, “Yeah whatever Dad, but look that’s the Orion Nebula!”

Ultimately our purpose here together is about connecting people with ideas. Ideas that translate to service, and valuable innovation. Ideas that can change both our beliefs and behaviors, which then can cascade out and change whole ecosystems within an organization. Providing people with the confidence of ideas and knowledge allows others to reach through our fears, find our passion and display it through purpose.

Our passion is what we love to do, but our purpose is why the world loves you.

Building Cathedrals

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This story has been retold many times, in different ways, but the point is the same.

Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was a famous English architect and builder. As legend has it, he was walking past three stonecutters working on the rebuilding of St. Paul’s cathedral. He asked them each what they were doing.

The first worker said, “I am earning six pence a day.”
The second worker said, “I am cutting this stone true and square.”
The third worker said, “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build St. Paul’s Cathedral.”

Peter Drucker interprets this story illuminating the three perspectives of:
“I am making a living for me”
“I am doing my best work for a reason I do not connect to” to finally
“I am willingly contributing to a greater purpose and meaning, for which it will take many hands and a guiding leader to accomplish.”

Connect higher. What’s your point of view?

Your product is not what you sell, it’s the difference you make

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Your product is the impact you make, the change you affect, the experience your product delivers. Your product is the result, the causatum, the punch. Sell cars? No, you don’t sell a car, you sell utility or transport or identity or experience or speed perhaps. In pharma? – you don’t sell drugs, you sell health and well-being. Clothing retail? – your product isn’t jackets and boots, it’s warmth and style and durability and expression of taste.

It starts at the beginning – teachers and educators certainly aren’t selling, they are creating idea agents, young people interested and willing to learn, excited and touched by ideas they put into action. My wife, a high school science teacher, should justifiably be proud when she talks to a former student who was inspired to enter teaching, or go into microbiology, or well… go into any discipline related to science because they were touched in a meaningful way in her class in high school.

And if you are in the the business I’m in – the learning business, you aren’t selling books, courses, classes or video learning, your product is behavioral change. Your product is impact – the difference those ideas make.

Early this year, Tim Sanders gave the keynote address at our annual client conference, Perspectives. Afterwards, a woman approached him to congratulate and thank him for his message, she said “Thank you for a wonderful presentation, but I still don’t understand. What are you selling?” Tim smiled and said, “I’m selling success, your success.”

It doesn’t matter if you are in sales, you are still selling – ideas, solutions, change, experiences, expertise. But understand your product might not be what you think it is. The core asset in your arsenal to make an impact is between your ears – your brain and your willingness and ability to engage and affect change through whatever products or services you happen to be representing. The course, the textbook, the video, is merely a transit mechanism. It’s the vehicle for ideas.

Your difference is the difference you can make, representing something you believe it. But remember the quality of the interaction matters. As Susan Scott says, “The conversation is the relationship.”

When you Systematize, You Sterilize

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“To systematize is to sterilize.”
– Shlomo Maital

Lionel Messi plays soccer with the joy of a child. His inventiveness and wizardry can leave you (his opponents too) gaping in awe. In an interview for the New York Times with Jere Longman, Messi stated that he would quit the game as soon as it stopped being fun.

I have three kids and I’m convinced that they will far exceed me in their capability in pretty much anything that they’re working on currently. The capacity and abilities of my daughter, for example, in ballet and building fairy houses is well…already beyond anything I’m capable of, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me. My boys, currently nine and eleven, are into skiing and soccer at the moment, and because of the understood 10,000 hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, I’m quite certain that they will far surpass me as well.

Last night I coached an indoor soccer game with my son Will’s team, and although individually each player is quite talented, we were playing a team that was a little bigger and little older than us. And while it was a close match at halftime, in the second half the opposite team outscored us probably 5-1. Later that evening I attended a party and I was chatting with Artie, one of the fathers of a player on our team who had grown up playing a game called futsal. Futsal is a game in which you play with a small ball on a small court, and the ball doesn’t bounce so well. The game rewards creative, inventive play, and since it’s played on small court, like indoor soccer, most goals come from either breakaways or crisp passing to find opportunities. The game does not reward a single individual attempting end to end efforts.

Artie was suggesting that we should play the game more like basketball in which once we lose the ball our team should retreat immediately back to a defensive position and wait for the opposing team to attack. Once we regain possession of the ball we should try for breakaways down the wings – down the sides and out of traffic on this small field. He pointed out that almost all of the goals scored in the game came from breakaways, we should employ the same tactic.

I’ve only been coaching soccer and lacrosse for a few years now – mostly to my young boys – but Artie has clued me into a couple things that Daniel Coyle has known from studying the worlds best coaches and players around the world, in disciplines ranging from skiing, to soccer to violin playing. The best coaches he finds, talk less yet say more, and let the kids define the play to accelerate the learning.

If you’re a parent watching sports, you have observed it is quite common to see coaches and parents from the sidelines yelling directions or ideas. But as the kids will remind me, and I’ve already observed, they really don’t hear very much as people yell from the sidelines. They hear you in the small moments when you speak to them personally and directly. The second key idea is to set up structured drills, but then allow the exercise to evolve as the kids choose the way the drill is created in real time.

The first idea is intuitive. It makes sense that if you pull a child aside and speak to them personally and customize each tip and bit of advice to them individually and let them understand you know them, your small bit of advice will resonate more strongly.

And the second idea – the one in which you allow the kids, the players, let the drill emerge as they see it happening, allows them find play and individual expression and joy in creating each moment, because the play comes from their own personal expression of skill and ability.

These ideas are aptly applied to our work. Daniel Coyle has spent the last few years studying just such coaches and players on a world class level and found numerous examples of how the best players and coaches mine and build brilliance from seemly “average” players, workers, contributors in almost any discipline. Join us December 7 for a live, interactive event in which Dan Coyle discusses these findings and provides clear, actionable tips on how to crack the talent code.

Engage. Connect. Deviate.

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Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman once said, “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.” His point is that, once we label and partition a thing or an idea, it curtails our sense of discovery and curiosity to learn more. We have to regularly nurture curiosity to allow creative value to emerge. But don’t confuse creativity with brainstorming, or divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is a critical component but not the end result. Divergent thinking—our ability to come up with a multitude of possibilities—does not necessarily equal creation of recognized and shared value.

What does this mean? www.JasonTheodor.com

For example, I showed a sign of a man throwing litter into a trashcan to my five-year-old daughter Annie and asked her what she thought it meant. She said, “It’s someone putting ice cubes in a hot tub.” Well, could it not be?

Similarly, our son Will watched my wife collect clothing and toys around the house to donate to Goodwill. After half an hour he had a puzzled look and said, “How can good Will wear all of these clothes? How old is good Will?” He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and it can be a good thing. Preserving a sense of remaining open new truths is a critical component of creativity, and that capacity to interpret the mundane as unexpected is innate in all of us.

To uncover the pleasantly unexpected in something we have known for a long time, or to have a novel interpretation of something we have never seen before, we must remain ever curious. This curiosity allows us to build a growing repertoire of ideas that, when gestated for long enough, can interconnect to create new mash-ups that, hopefully, are recognized by the world as possessing shared value.

When we are in flow—deeply engaged in activity—we can accelerate the duration it takes for those idea mash-ups to reach full potential by connecting ourselves with other people with whom we don’t interact regularly—or by making new relationships. These connections can quicken the process of borrowing brilliance to generate new ideas. Again, it’s those mash-ups of cross-pollinating, disparate ideas that leads to new value creation. Remember the most powerful new creative mash-ups often come when we reach out into our networks of people around us—particularly when we share, connect, and collaborate with those with whom we have weak (occasional) ties—that those new value iterations have a chance to form.

Finally, remember we find the best expression of ourselves when we don’t wait to be tapped by our leadership, our company – when we don’t wait to be asked. In our work, we all see opportunities to be filled, dilemmas to be solved, and possibilities to be executed on. And yet we hesitate. We’re waiting to be asked, ignoring the difficult, or pausing out of fear. That fear is often borne out of trying to anticipate what we think the company wants and expects of us – trying to intuit how the company or leadership thinks we should act.

The truth is, we will bring much greater energy, creativity and passion to our work when we take the lead, when we take the first step. Step boldly.

Have a Casting Call, not an Interview

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When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It’s to enjoy each step along the way.

– Wayne Dyer

Fred Kleisner has an enviable job. As CEO of premier boutique hotelier, Morgans Hotel Group, Fred’s job is to run some of the coolest, hippest hotel properties in the world. From the Delano in South Beach to The Clift in San Fran to the Hudson in New York City, Morgans has become known as the kind of place celebrities, rock stars, and wannabes, wanna spend their time. Their signature experiences are the lobby and entrance spaces, as well as their clubs and night life environments. The place, the property, the ambiance are all of course incredibly important, but Fred understands that at the heart of Morgans is the people who make the place cool and fun.

When I went to interview Fred Kleisner at his Hudson property near Central Park, New York – and no, sadly I didn’t get to stay there… – I was greeted by a couple stylish, cool women in the lobby who chatted me up about where I came from, the city, the weather. It was not at all evident initially that they worked there. There’s no uniform, no name tags, no clear evidence that people work there, except for the fact that they are incredibly thoughtful and helpful. For example, Jessica greeted and escorted us to our filming location with Fred and remained constantly helpful throughout our visit.

During the interview I asked Fred what kinds of characteristics and personalities they look for when hiring. He said they aren’t interested in hiring tall, thin models, but are much more interested in someone’s whole personality and strengths. Morgans’ more recent interview sessions, which he calls a “casting call,” were hosted in a theatre. After the more standard Q&A, candidates were invited to get up on stage and share anything they wanted, with an emphasis on something that expressed who they were at heart. Fred said candidates sang, told stories, danced, recited poetry, talked about their travels, and more. This exercise told the candidates they were entering a safe, welcoming environment where they were expected to bring their unique identity to work, while also allowing the interviewers to glimpse the more personal and honest side of potential hires before they find out six months into the job.

If we want initiative, passion, and creativity, take a tip from Fred Kleisner and Morgans Hotels – don’t just have an interview, have a casting call.

What’s Your Mantra?

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Guy Kawasaki has a suggestion for those out there working diligently to build mission statements that matter. Don’t do it. That’s right, drop the two day offsite and the fifty thousand dollar consultant-generated mission statement that no one reads or can remember. Here’s Wendy’s mission statement:

“The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnerships.”

I had no idea buying a hamburger at Wendy’s included participating in leadership innovation. You could save yourself the two-day offsite and the consultant fees and try the corporate mission statement generator. I pulled the handle and got:

“We are in the business of improving a long-term commitment to stakeholder value by support through personal goals exceeding all expectations.”

Guy has different advice. Create not a mission statement, but a mantra. A mantra is three, four words tops and goes straight to the heart of what you are all about.

Try these:

  • The happiest place on earth – Disneyland
  • Relax, it’s FedEx – FedEx
  • It keeps going, and going, and going… – Energizer
  • The miracles of science – DuPont
  • They’re g-r-r-r-eat! – Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes

You get the idea. What can you say about yourself or your business that speaks to the heart of who you are. Creating your own mantra requires distilling three things down to something as brief as a haiku: what you believe in, are good at, and can make a difference at.

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why

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“Play that is directed by the child, not the parent, is the key to cultivating curiosity.” – Todd Kashdan

This evening I was treated to my 7 year old son playing the piano – not the pounding childish make-noise kind, but nor the rote practice kind assigned by music teachers.  And I take nothing from either version of playing the piano – both quite valid in figuring out this instrument. But he worked the piano in a moment of utter focus finding melodies he invented.  It was nothing Mozart-like of a young prodigy, he was simply exploring the piano in a very present and exploring way – finding rhythm and notes on his own.  He’s never had piano lessons beyond watching and listening to my own piano tunes I learned long ago.  It was just simple curiosity about what the piano sounds like.

When we are in a curious state, we ask probing questions, read deeply with intent, manipulate and examine objects, and persist in activities and tasks which we find both challenging and stimulating.  Todd Kashdan has conducted studies with his colleagues which demonstrate that curious people tend to become more curious over time (curiosity breeds curiosity) and ultimately find greater enjoyment and even live longer too.

Study after study reveal that true and lasting competitive advantage comes from having talented and engaged people.  The surest way to wither your sense of engagement is to curb your curiosity.  Curious people are more competent, knowledgeable and expert.  Not only that, curious people have stronger relationships, more physical and mental resilience, and even cultivate a stronger sense of meaning in their lives.

So when we are trying to find more “engagement” in our work, or as a leader cultivate that high level of engagement, there are three clear variables.  First, the right people; then those people in the right seats; and doing what they are good at and love. Those three components to engagement look like this:

  1. Recognition of Role: Everyone must have a clear understanding of what role they play in the larger context of the organization. Demographic studies suggest this demand started in earnest with Gen X, and now Gen Y pretty much refuses to be part of a work environment that isn’t entirely transparent.
  2. Executable Talent: Show up with the skills yo. This is part talent selection, and part talent development. Every organization and leader must create an environment where curiosity and intellectual growth is expected.
  3. Passionate Commitment: Parts 1 and 2 are important but for full engagement, a passionate belief about what the team, the function, and the organization as a whole is trying to do remains paramount.

Two out of three of the above is nice but insufficient. Someone with skills who lacks belief in the mission is a flight risk. The most intolerable might be the prima donna who refuses collaborative efforts. As John Tucci, CEO of EMC says, “I have taken very talented smart people who did not play on a team and shown them the door.”

Understanding context, building skills, and being passionate aren’t easy to have on a consistent and thriving basis but maybe the key is simply to remain curious.

Here’s a tip that really works.  When trying to build new knowledge, or figure out how to connect with someone who might be on the opposite side of your viewpoint, ask a simple open question that mines what they know about.  This works on almost any topic – vegetarianism, the Iraq War, whether we should renew our catering contract, whatever…  Ask something open and probing, for example, “Help me understand why being a vegetarian (buying from a particular vendor….whatever) is the best choice for our community (our company, again whatever the topic).”  If asked in an honest inquiring voice, you are more likely statistically to be viewed as empathetic and even intelligent in your curiosity. Stay open, be curious, enrich your life.

Make your work your play and never work again

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When you do what you love, you never work again. 
– Confucius

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls it being in Flow. Ken Robinson calls it being in your Element. It’s a wonderful state to be “in the pocket” (musicians) or “in the zone” (athletes).  The historical model of business competitive advantage dictates that a few wield the insight, and the many provide the mental brawn of execution.  And so this model squanders the potential collective insights of people who make up the bulk of the executing talent we employ.  Yet research shows those enabled to find their voice, skill and passion, are the most likely to build stronger collaboration with customers to build successes.

Recently I posed the term Echoleaders to mean those who find their voice and begin to build resonant ideas around them.  Resonance is when the energy applied is in sync with the intended outcome. I mean to say we should be vocal in what we believe, and by giving voice to our passions – in work, play, whatever – we’ll naturally find those in our field of vision who can echo back their own experiences and then collectively we find new paths of creating constant value and innovation.

Just watch the Facebook or Twitter scroll you participate in and the ‘like’ affirmations and comment participation demonstrate your resonant posse on any given idea or moment in your life.  Each point of participation is a building block of collaborative effort. All contributions are cumulative. The point is this: if you focus on your skill and passion, you’ll find an interested like-minded group to participate in the journey.

Make your work your play. Wherever you are on the Org chart, reach beyond your task and team, and give voice to what you believe. If your heart and intent is authentic, a growing party of fellowship will happily join your venture.