The professional use of time

   I was fortunate enough to meet with a young entrepreneurs' club recently. We discussed a trait that is prevalent among young entrepreneurs, impatience. One particular "ready-set-go" person  wanted to quit his almost-completed degree program and get on with doing business as a new entrepreneur.
   As New Orleans Saints fans(World Champions) our discussion turned to their MVP quarterback, Drew Brees.
   It must be very stimulating to take a snap as a professional quarterback, drop back into the backfield and have a couple of tons of fast moving humanity, intent on doing you damage, running at you full speed. Yet, professionals like Brees use their 2-4 seconds in these situations very carefully.
   Less experienced and less capable players often work to get rid of the football as quickly as possible just to prevent loss of yards or a tough tackle. Brees, and other similarly qualified quarterbacks, wait until the proper moment, checking their receivers, then allowing them to break into the open where the chances of a completion are at a higher percentage. It's an excellent example of the professional use of time. If the time is right, they will of course, unload the ball quickly, but the right use of their time in these situations gives them a much better opportunity for success.
   Young entrepreneurs could well use this example as insight into their own careers and choices. Just because the opportunity presents itself, does not necessarily mean the time is right to leave school, take on a big project without the funding or manpower, leave a secure but unexciting job for a risky venture with a buddy.
   I often teach that for entrepreneurs, a heartbeat is the measure of an instant. The professional use of time allocates those heartbeats toward only those people, projects and circumstances that are genuinely worthy of the most precious and perishable of our resources, our time.
   There are few accomplishments today that will get you the instant credibility of a good academic background. It's often a worthwhile use of heartbeats and can have a positive affect on an entrepreneur's entire future.
   There are many entrepreneurs who have earned their success without any other credential than intelligence, and diligent work. The dozens I've talked to and worked with still make use of their time from the professional
perspective. And  they act when the time is right rather than when it's just easy or convenient.

How hindsight can become insight

This morning in a conversation with a capable, experienced friend who, due to the significant changes in governmental regulation, was forced to close a very successful business, we discussed hindsight.
The discussion was that he felt inadequate in sharing any ideas that might help those currently in, or wanting to start a business because he felt that his recent failure would taint his credibility.
After talking a while, we did agree that having good hindsight could easily be translated into extraordinary insight to those people who had yet to walk the path he had walked in business.
My comment was that more most benefits, young or new entrepreneurs might appreciate knowing what to avoid in business, as much as they might appreciate stories of success.
I think an important point is that, as Mike Vance of the Creative Thinking Institute says, "We never really know the power behind the principle of influence, who we influence and how deeply."
Do not de-value experiences just because they have not produced the outcome they were intended to produce. The experiences themselves have value as hindsight, and can easily become the insight of those who have yet to experience the same or similar circumstances.
Hindsight + insight = Farsight, and who among us would not want a big double helping of that?

The HUMANEERING Company works to glean hindsight, farsight and insight, from a variety of books, leaders and projects, to insure that we can then offer that wisdom to our entrepreneurial clients. Visit our website to glimpse our insight.
www.hmnrng.com

The Spy Factory

NOVA, the sensational public tv series ran a special on The Spy Factory, detailing how the National Security Agency had enough information to hinder or prevent the 9-11 terrorist attack and yet did not take the steps necessary. In the program, James Bamford, author of 'The Shadow Factory' details how with almost unthinkable technological capability, the NSA had been tracking the 9-11 terrorists many months before the attack, yet due to human characteristics, failed to take what action was possible. Incredibly, although Osama Bin-Laden's satellite phone had been tapped, the details available on the 9-11 attack were not adequately relayed to the US authorities who could act in our own protection.

My point is not to criticize any agency charged with public security. Rather the lesson for us is a clear indication that having cutting edge technology, even knowing how to use it to its maximum, STILL leaves every organization's leadership with the glaring need to understand and effectively influence human behavior.

Personal and Organizational development are the professional arenas where human behavior in the workplace is studied and techniques are developed for leaders to understand and accept their role in influencing that behavior.

I believe the key organizational leadership role is to have the insight, interest, skills, tools and capabilities to positively affect human behavior toward a worthwhile Mission, using a defined set of values as a behavioral guide. However human characteristics like resentment, entitlement, jealousy, power, authority, anger, empathy are all issues that can be well hidden, but which can have profound effects on organizational effectiveness. So it was with the NSA and individual an departmental values may have led to withholding information that may have saved thousands of American lives. Hardly ever do our decisions as organizational leaders hold a life or death result for our followers, but the meaning here can certainly be applicable to all organizations.

In my practice, I do not advocate that leaders need to practice a kind of "C" grade psychology.
Most of us are not qualified, but organizations cannot assume that technology is all that needs good management, because the appropriate behavior will follow. I maintain that the key organizational resource is not people, but more specifically human behavior. The great American thinker, Williams James said, "What we do, matters."

In the NSA, apparently what they did not do also mattered. A great deal.

Total Quality

In a conversation with a Social Media expert, I learned that those people involved in the Total Quality movement, the drive to make improvements in almost everything, work closely with computers and numerical metrics. His view of Social Media usage included measuring the results of Social Media marketing. I agreed about measuring results and those people I've known working in the quality movement tend to be more technically oriented.
I would submit that any movement to define and improve quality must include the element of human beliefs, actions, interactions and relationships. However, the technological counter might be "You can't measure beliefs".
I once worked on a project to help a company improve the interactions between their front line customer service staff and their customers. One organizational leader said, "We want our CSRs to be nice, but you can't train people to nice and you can't measure nice."
But, of course you can define what "nice" means to your organization, and when "nice" is defined in terms of behavior - how interactions and relationships should be conducted between your staff and your customers - you can then train to those behavior requirements. In fact, we created an entire process for being "nice" and called it the Six steps to excellence in customer service.
Leaders must come to realize that a key leadership responsibility is to purposefully affect the beliefs of the people in their organization and which in turn, influences behaviors. "Nice" can certainly be defined in terms of how we behave, and it can be taught.

Total Quality includes more than adding and subtracting easily quantifiable numbers. Total Quality includes investigating and improving high-value human actions, interactions and relationships.

The power of why?

For anyone who has leadership responsibilities or who will or wants to have leadership responsibilities, I strongly recommend viewing this video:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

It may be the most professionally advantageous 18 minutes you'll allocate to your own development this year.
Part of our leadership and organizational evaluation process includes asking Why, Why Why...because it
eventually leads us both to your beliefs.

And beliefs drive behaviors; yours, your teammates and your customers.

What the "Secret" should have been.

The popular video "The Secret" is a modern adaptation of the idea that if you are clear about what you want, if you believe what you want is on its way and if you are open to the "universe" bringing it to your doorstep, whatever it is you want will show up.
If you want to explore a bit deeper into this idea, to find out how the "Secret" should have been presented, read 'The Power of Intention" by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

In the "Secret" we learn that intention, the human drive to receive or own what it is WE ourselves want, is the path to having almost anything. Dr. Dyer takes a very different approach, describing intention as a force that is universal, not a human drive at all, but rather much like a force or will that brings everything into its own creation, existence and recycling. Dyer says that if we know how to align ourselves with intention(not if we have the drive to be, get or do what we intend), then indeed our lives will manifest what was intended for us.
The difference between the two concepts of intention is significant.
One is mystical, and packaged to be attractive in a marketing sense. Dyer's concept, and apparently the concept of many other world recognized deep thinkers has little to do with what WE determine our path is(our ego), and more to do with a power of creation that has a purpose for everyone and everything.
If you are interested in what a connection to "intention" can produce in your life, I'd suggest leaving "The Secret" and picking up Dr. Dyer's book.
It certainly was my intent to do so.

The Focus Report

Entrepreneurs have lots to remember and do.

Often so much so that sometimes even stopping to review how healthy the company is becomes a chore. It's not just the financial statement, because that's always historical, but instead we need to be looking at the dollar-producing activities....what actions are we taking as individuals and as a company that lead to incoming revenue? What actions can we be taking today, or this week, that will have a positive effect on this month's revenue?(Financial statements are always historical and don't give you information that is timely enough to make changes in your operations to have a positive effect THIS month.)

That's where a Focus Report or "dashboard report" is an extremely valuable tool.

Typically when a CEO needs to know what critical factors reveal the financial viability of a company, they have to first define those factors, then track down on which report the information is located, who has access to that particular information and how often the information is reported.

I recommend that you put together a Focus Report, unique to your company. The Focus Report defines the most critical benchmarks; for example, sales closed and dollar volume, sales pending and dollar volume, number of new prospects qualified, number of quotes prepared, total expenses, etc. FOCUS on only the few most critical measurements, have an administrative person find the information, document it on ONE PIECE OF PAPER, keep it updated weekly and along with the data itself, indicate the trend, up, down or status quo and whether the data indicates that you are on-target to reach your goals, or not.

The HUMANEERING Company has a complete process for helping entrepreneurial CEO's reduce their stress, manage their time more productively and get good information that helps them manage their company effectively. The Focus Report is one example.

The health of your organization

Recently I was involved in an event that brought up the concept of health to a meaningful discussion. Organizational health, much like personal health is a matter of increments; our organizations get better because we work on them, a step at a time, or sometimes we wake up and find that our organizations are unhealthy and we've let them deteriorate, again step by step.
In a discussion I had with a new client about the health of his company I suggested that the state of the organization might be gauged by the beliefs of the key staffers and the quality of the conversations among those same people. If we can, as leaders, purposefully and respectfully influence the conversations we have with our co-workers, we can affect their beliefs and consequently, the health of our companies.
In fact, I think that the more frequently we have directed conversation with our team, the more likely we are to understand two key issues: A) what our key team members are thinking, especially about what our organization is about, and how we are to collaborate to function in behalf of our clients and b) whether their thoughts(and therefore their actions) are likely to be in line with your company Mission and Values, even when unsupervised. Organizational health is about more than just the bank account. As leaders we have to insure that the fuel that drives our organizations...people's beliefs and their subsequent actions...is recognized, nurtured, aligned and ultimately rewarded.
Health, good or bad, is managed incrementally and good health in organizations is the purposeful application of ideas and actions that promote values like respect, trust, confidentiality, reliance etc.
What are your organizational values? Do you purposefully promote those values through conversations with your key team members?

The Learning Curve

In an entrepreneurial gathering recently, I heard young leaders talking about the "learning curve." They were discussing the process by which new employees made themselves more valuable to their organizations and the difficulties they as leaders faced in that process.
Abraham Maslow talked about the 4 levels of learning and how each of us, theoretically, goes through essentially the same transformation, the learning curve.
Maslow's learning sequence begins with Unconscious Incompetence, the state of being unaware. We don't know that we don't know, much like an infant being unaware of quantum physics, or a new employee not having a practical grasp of your organization's culture.
The second level of learning, is, Conscious Incompetence, the state of being aware of our lack of knowledge and capability and how it might affect us. Perhaps you've heard a great speaker and knew that you needed to practice those skills if you were to become a better communicator. Or you may have had a discussion with an employee about how their desire for more capability would be an asset to the company.
The third level of learning is Conscious Competence. When we all learned how to drive, for a few weeks or so we felt gangly, with lots to remember and much to do to be safe. Then slowly, we became competent and the act of driving became more natural. Achieving a level of competence is a significant achievement, even for those of us just learning to drive, or learning how to be successful as a member of an organization. Employees who reach the level of Conscious Competence can then begin to demonstrate some autonomy, some creativity and their true abilities can begin to contribute to the organization.
Finally, Maslow describes the highest level of learning as Unconscious Competence, the state of being where we know that we know. We can perform our responsibilities so well that we no longer require constant conscious thought, we're becoming automatic. Accomplishment builds confidence and therefore personal and organizational value.
With an understanding of this kind of learning curve, leaders can help, assist, challenge, encourage and even permit failure on the part of new employees, all with the understanding that it's a natural process. From Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence, good leaders help others learn in order to build organizational assets.

The edge of experience

Entrepreneurs are self-reliant, diligent, "don't take no for an answer" people, who often move forward on plans and projects confidently, even when they don't know all the answers or even all the questions.

This drive is fueled by the belief that working harder can solve almost any problem, or that if we have the money, we can pay to have the problem solved. This moment in the life of an entrepreneur and their company I call, being "at the edge of our experience."

The edge of experience is the point at which we realize that neither we ourselves as leaders, nor any of our team members actually has any applicable experience for the upcoming project we've assumed. There is no looking back over our shoulder to examine what similarities there might be between what we have done before and what we are about to tackle.

Intellect, hard work and diligence are vital for business success, but they are generally not a substitute for experience.

Part of the development of entrepreneurial companies is to include people of experience as part of your team. Youthful energy is wonderful, and when combined with a mature experience, can build confidence and credibility. Always subjecting your team members to situations where they are working at the edge of their experience can create tensions and anxieties that cause resentment and work to dilute teamwork, rather than support it.

The young quarterback runs the team on the field, but the usually older, more mature-minded coaches lend their experience to the mix.