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How Ice Cold Water Can Teach Us About Company Traditions

Was it Comfortable?

Yesterday, January 1st, 2014, I willingly jumped into the Atlantic Ocean with nothing on but a pair of baggies. The water was 55 degrees and the air was about 4 degrees warmer. Although this sounds like downright stupidity, the Polar Plunge is a fun and exciting way to start the new year!

Everyone gathers early on New Years Day and strips down to their summer swimwear for a brief dip in the ocean. These plunges are held all over the world and are sometimes associated with fundraisers. Many people refer to it as a nice “cleanse” going into a new year, signifying a fresh start… a VERY fresh start.

Although this is not technically something new for me, I am counting this as getting out of my comfort zone. If you’ve ever sat in an ice bath, had to wear a wetsuit while surfing, or done a polar plunge yourself, you know how UNcomfortable 55 degree water is!

Tradition

My Mom has been doing this for 10+ years on and off and she is no doubt the reason I have picked up the tradition as well. Each year on New Year’s Day she sets out (sometimes twice) to plunge into the chilly waters with hundreds of other folks in her community. A few years back she asked my brother and me to do it with her and some of her friends.

company traditions

From Left: Nancy, Linda, Terry, Kendria, Marty, Lyn, Katie, Mike, & Laurie

Now, each year she has anywhere from 4 to 10 people that she has somehow convinced to jump into the ocean with her. It’s become a tradition. It doesn’t matter if the water is 70 or if it’s in the 50’s, she’s showing up to plunge. In December as everyone is making Christmas and New Year’s plans, my Mom is making Polar Plunge plans and gathering the troops for the annual dip.

When everyone gathers we talk about how cold it looks, when it was the coldest, when so-and-so joined us, and what it was like last year. We gather and we bond over an experience, we create memories together. We laugh and smile and put a little Kahlua in our coffee to keep us warm. Nobody gets paid off of this, nobody is forcing anyone to show up, it’s just plain fun and one last excuse to spend time with friends and family before the holiday season is officially finished.

Application

In our businesses, we should have similar company traditions. They don’t necessarily need to involve 50 degree salt water, but they should be events that are held to bring people together. Some companies do a Christmas party, some have a summer picnic, others do an annual retreat. The point is to bring people together around something that is not work focused to encourage fellowship amongst the team.

When we incorporate seemingly ‘silly’ traditions such as this, we are strengthening the fabric of our company culture. When Mom tells everyone she’s doing it and she’d love to have them join, some people grimace and walk-away. That’s fine, it doesn’t bother her. Other people beam and they’d love to join! The ones that will be there smiling are the ones that will tell the naysayers how much fun it was. Many of the naysayers will be at the front of the line next year, nobody wants to miss a good time.

Company traditions can be the same way: some people will hate them, some will love them. But in the end, if we never put them on consistently,we never have the opportunity to build traditions. If we don’t put effort into building events that help shape culture, a culture will take on it’s own form and it may not be what we want. Company culture is something that should be planned out, traditions are one way to help us do this.

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What kind of traditions (company traditions or other) do you have? Where do you have the opportunity to incorporate one? 

Leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter!

Happy New Year! Make 2014 the best one yet!

A Linchpin and a Cup of Coffee

Aaaand Scene

As I went through the Starbucks drive through in Neptune Beach, FL the other day, I had a lot on my mind. I was distracted and not necessarily in a good way. As I was heading to see my dad, I pulled through and ordered a Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte – I’ve been trained well.

As I pull up to the window, the young guy at the window is smiling at me like he’s had 4 shots of espresso in the last hour. He’s as positive as can be and I can’t help but courteously smile back. I pay, get my coffee, and right as I begin to pull out he spots something in my passenger seat.

Half-joking Starbucks bro: “I see you’ve been cheating on us, eh?”
Sheepish me: “Uh…Um…No! I mean, yes, but it was because I was traveling and there wasn’t a Starbucks…”
Bro: “Haha it’s OK, you’re here now! Have a great day!”
Me: “Haha will do, you too. Merry Christmas!
Bro: “Merry Christma…..”

I was caught off guard, big time. He spotted a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup in my car from the day prior. I stopped on the way to Florida and Dunkin was the chief coffee supplier in that particular fueling station.

Customer Loyalty

This bro knew that the brand he represented had such a cult-like following that he could get away with a statement like that and I would get the joke! I loved it, I was blown away by his ability to think on his feet and make me laugh from a drive-thru. Would he be able to do that if he worked at a McDonald’s? Hardly.

Starbucks Bro didn’t need to know that I regularly have Starbucks and that’s my coffee spot of choice in my hometown. All he knows is that the average Starbucks drinker swings by 18 times per month. He knows his customers are loyal and he has a bond with them, even if they’re not one of his regulars. He can make jokes like that an not make people feel uncomfortable. He read the situation very well and acted quickly to make me remember this interaction so much that I wrote about it.

A Linchpin

This type of interaction is the work of a Linchpin. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Seth Godin’s work. One of my favorite books of all time is Linchpin. I think everyone should read it, I promise it’s applicable to your life.

Seth defines a Linchpin as someone that is indispensable: the server that has an ability to calm customers and gets along with all of the kitchen staff during rush hour. The doorman that always brightens everyone’s day, no matter what. The VP that treats everyone in the organization the same from top to bottom and goes above and beyond the call of duty. These are people that bring their best selves to work. They don’t just serve coffee and smile, they create a WOW experience. Starbucks bro, thanks for creating an unforgettable experience!

Can we Create Linchpins?

The short answer is no. But we can encourage this type of behavior in our workplaces. When someone does something that is out of the normal, encourage them or thank them to let them know their work is recognized. We can do our best to hold those people in high regard that don’t just punch in and punch out.

And finally, we can invest in our people. When we invest in our people, they want to give more. Starbucks has great continual learning programs, it’s not a surprise that I had this sort of interaction. When we invest in our people, they repay us by shining to our customers. 

What can we do to bring our best selves to work? What can we do to create unforgettable experiences for our customers and co-workers? What can we do to encourage the work of Linchpins in our organizations?

I’d love to hear your experiences with Linchpins in different situations, leave a comment below or chat with me on Twitter.

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Christmas is tomorrow!

I am very thankful to have each of you reading my blog. Writing is fun for me and I hope that I am bringing each of you value! 

Merry Christmas!

How Minimalism can Grow our Businesses

As I begin packing for an extended stay in Florida for Christmas, I am reminded of how minimalist my life has become. I am not an avid practitioner of minimalism and I have not gone off the deep end, I just don’t have as much stuff in my life as I used to. But there are some important lessons we can use while making plans in our businesses.

I have an advantage

I’m a guy. We don’t need 4 pairs of shoes for a weekend trip. I can re-wear the same pair of jeans from Friday to Monday and nobody would be able to tell. This usually makes packing very easy for me when I leave, whether it’s for a weekend or week. I learned this from years of traveling for work, I used to constantly over-pack. However, this holiday trip is different.

I have a wedding to go to, church to attend, golf to be played, running to be done (yes, I’m finally fully recovered), and ducks to be hunted. Needless to say, I have a busy stretch ahead of me, and I am in the process of packing for all this. My single roller suitcase is going to turn into a car-full of shoes, suits, golf clubs, and 1/2 of the clothes I own!

Minimalism defined

minimalismWhen we get used to not having a lot of “fluff” in our lives, we don’t need it. I do my best to live with only the essentials. I try not to buy more clothes than I would wear, I don’t have a brand new car “just because I want it,” and the items I have in my home are functional so I have a little junk as possible. But when I recently moved I realized that I had accumulated more junk than I realized, I had to simplify. I donated 10 bags of cloths & stuff to Goodwill and threw out enough trash to fill an entire garbage truck. I was a stress-relieving process that helped me strip life down to the essentials. 

Minimalism is difficult to define since it’s more of a concept than a concrete thing. Basically, it’s living with only the essentials. Part of the definition I found on Wiki was “not completely without ornamentation, but that all parts, details and joinery (referring to architecture) are considered as reduced to a stage where no one can remove anything further to improve the design.” Although this is an architecture definition, it perfectly captures the idea I am attempting to express.

Application

In art, architecture, our lives , and most importantly for this example, our businesses it helps us to strip away all that is unnecessary and only focus on what we need. I enjoy learning and practicing productivity tips because they are similar in philosophy to a minimalist: nothing is unnecessary.

I get it, you kind of have to be a radical to be a minimalist. Again, I am not one. If I were, this post would be 3 sentences long and this blog would be much less intricate. However, the 2 part application of a minimalist theory to our businesses would help many of us.

1.) Strip away all that is unnecessary –

  • Meeting that don’t have a real objective
  • Reports that don’t bring any action or have any purpose
  • Busy-work (I loathe that term)
  • Processes that slow down decision making

2.) Focus on what is most important in the business –

  • Is it product design?
  • Is it a lean manufacturing process?
  • Is it customer service?
  • Is it the people we hire?

When we take away the things that aren’t absolutely necessary to us doing business, we can focus on our core competencies and improve them. What can you improve in your business today?

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Have you recently stripped your business down to the core? Share what the process was like and what you learned.

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on stripping down a business.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. 5 Days till Christmas!

Why Some Organizations Will Almost Always be Faster than Yours

When we think of the archetypal business model, we think of  a pyramid with the CEO up top then tiering down to upper management, then the managers, then the front-line workers. The more difficult the decisions, the higher up it must be passed along to be decided. What we get with this model is an entire front line of people unwilling and unable to make decisions while forcing the upper tier(s) to spend all their time thinking for others instead of planning. So how do we avoid this?

Source www.rossanaroja.com/

Source: www.rossanaroja.com

Empowering People

When we examine businesses that thrive and those that collapse, we see some that are clinging to the hierarchy described above while the start-ups that seem to be taking over the world are thriving. We are seeing this because the start-ups are much more nimble, and now that they are able to attain cash up front from VC’s (venture capitalists) they can afford to bring on other great minds to work alongside them that share their passion.

When this happens, the smart people that started the company are able to focus on growth because they can hire other smart people to surround themselves with. Since they are surrounded by capable people, they don’t need to make decisions for them and the founders can focus on growth. They empower their people to make decisions and trust that they will make the right ones, allowing start-ups to make fast decisions. Meanwhile in corporate America, time is wasted passing the buck up the ladder like an a scene from Atlas Shrugged.

Hire for Quality, not to fill Space

So we know that fast organizations have few tiers and they empower their front line people to make as many decisions as possible. That’s great, but how do we get those people that are responsible enough for us to trust? Don’t skimp on the hiring process.

Spend some time and money up front to save headaches in the long run. Be picky about who you want to work with. Do they mesh with the team? Can they solve problems? Can they think on their feet? Be sure to have all these questions answered before they are brought on. It’s going to cost a little more, but it’s going to be worth it. The older I get the more I realize that the cheapest isn’t always the best. 

Training

But Mike, it’s too hard, I don’t have that kind of time or money.

First off, yes we can, I guarantee that we haven’t used all the tools at our disposal. Have we ever dropped what we were doing and put ‘HIRING’ at the top of our to-do list above all else? Use some of that fancy internet I talked about above to find some online resources and dabble in social media since you’re now a master at of.

Secondly, if we can’t find them, make them. I spoke at length about investing in our people and the benefits of doing so (ironically, that came from one of the most stringent hierarchy systems, the US armed forces) back in November. What is it we want our people to know?

  • Effective customer service tactics
  • How to upload pictures to a website
  • Improved closing ratios on sales calls
  • Standard accounting practices
  • How to use Microsoft Excel

Most skills in the workplace are learn-able things, but we must take the time to teach people up front if we want to save ourselves the hassles in the long run. Set up work-shops and teach people on the job or give them paid OT to come and learn. They will appreciate the investment we make in them and will be more eager to perform for us. Most people are inherently smart, unfortunately we don’t give them the opportunity to prove it to us.

If it were too hard the entire collegiate athletics system outside of Division 1 would crumble. Coaches deal with this and thrive in situations because they use the resources at their disposal to the best of their abilities, they cannot make excuses. The only difference is that their success if much easier to identify: W or L.

Empowering PeopleReprimanding

When we give our people this much responsibility, they’re going to make mistakes. They will handle something differently than we expect, they will drop the ball, and ultimately the company will take a step back because of it. BUT, if we are prepared for it and if we have built a culture of learning, we can learn from it properly.

It will be crucial for their development that we handle their mistakes properly. Second guessing their every move only after it is made is not the way to encourage growth. Giving them as much information as possible up front and then teaching as they go is the best way to build their confidence. Don’t just tell them what they did wrong, encourage them when they do right as well.

Using a ‘reprimand sandwich’ as I heard it referred on Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Podcast is the best way to keep spirits high, while pointing out mistakes. Sandwich a reprimand for a mistake in between two positives for the most effective way to teach a new person. Everyone reacts differently, but this is the safest when dealing with a new person that is still building confidence.

Take the time to learn how your people learn so that you can teach them best. And learn how they respond to criticism as well, some people thrive by being publicly reprimanded and others will quit on the spot for something like that. Everyone is different, it is our job as leaders and managers to figure that out.

Remember that the goal is to make our organizations fast by empowering out people to make decisions, this will allow us to spend our time planning for the future so we can grow our businesses.

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Does your organization put decision making in the hands of your front line people? What are the positives and negatives associated with this type of management?

Leave me a comment or connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this follow-up technique!

P.S. 7 Days till Christmas!

Why Counterbalancing Improves our Effectiveness

Some of us go, go, go and we never stop. Never taking a break for coworkers, family, or even ourselves. These are the ones that burnout. These are the ones that can’t really enjoy life because we’re so focused on our work. We need to be counterbalancing our focused work with family time, with study time, and with ‘me’ time as well.

A Parable

There’s a parable I love about two lumberjack brothers that decide test their skills against one another. They have an all day wood chopping competition that would make my friend Reed blush. The rules are simple, whoever has the biggest pile at the end of the day is the better lumberjack.

counterbalancing

#reedbrownchopswood

They begin in the early morning furiously chopping wood at the same rate, building equally impressive heaps. After a couple hours, the older brother takes a break and walks away. The younger sees the opportunity and begins to chop even faster, forgoing rest. The older brother returns and begins to chop away for another couple hours, then takes another break.

The younger brother again forgoes rest and continues to plow through logs as fast as he can while his brother is away. He noticed that his pile had initially been larger than his brothers in the morning, but as the day went on his brother’s pile seemed to overshadow his own. So he put his head down and chop away as hard as his body would let him. This happens again and again until the day is over. The older brother would take a break every couple of hours and the younger would push through.

At the end of the day the older brother had a pile more than twice the size of his brother’s! The younger brother was furious. “How did you beat me? I never stopped chopping all day and you were taking breaks every couple hours!”

The older brother responded, “I was sharpening my ax every time I took a break.”

The younger brother hadn’t stopped once to sharpen his ax all day. By noon he was working twice as hard as his older brother with less than half the results.

The Lesson

When we attack something with all of our might, we need to counterbalance that ‘push’ by giving time to sharpen our ax. This can come in many forms, but ultimately it helps us keep us from getting burned out in one area or another.

For some this might be spending quality time with family after a hard push at work that requires extra hours at the office. For others it might be some alone time after friends come in town for the weekend and we host. And still for some it can be diving into a project wholeheartedly after never really committing themselves to anything prior.

To be the most effective versions of our selves, we should to take counterbalancing measures our lives to stay sharp. We can work as hard as we want, but if we’re using a dull ax we won’t be able to give our best.

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How do you sharpen your ax? 

Connect with me on Twitter, I’d love to hear your successes (& failures) on the subject. 

P.S. 12 Days till Christmas!

Stand Firm

I went to Seacoast Church this morning and the message was powerful and inspired me write this today. It’s funny how we can draw inspiration from the varying experiences in our lives if we just look for the connections. I was inspired on one level from the biblical message, but what struck me was their celebration of 25 years since inception. They have been standing firm and growing their church in amazing ways and today they reflected back on the journey.

I am not a regular at Seacoast, however I will be attending much more frequently because of today’s experience. This type of growth can (and does) happen to many organizations, this one just happened to be a church. They began in 1988 with 65 people as what they called a “traveling band” and have since grown to (from what I can tell) 11 campuses, Mount Pleasant being the hub. They have also planted hundreds of churches across the world and continue to do so. And although it is what most would call a ‘mega-church’ it still feels like a small community. We attended a satellite church that showed the main message through a live video feed while the worship was help directly in front of us. Did I mention we went to this service at a rented out movie theater? The entire experience was awesome and the people were warm to newbies, a very welcoming environment that we will undoubtedly be back for.

stand firmBut how can they replicate this experience so well? And what can be applied to our businesses from this? Lots of companies grow fast but cannot sustain that growth and it eventually shrivels back. It’s the organizations that grow steadily and carefully that are the most successful long-term, not the ones that get ‘there’ first. In my brief experience I could see two things that allowed them to grow like this and still make their growth effective.

A.) Solid Culture

B.) Having a central platform

Great people don’t just waltz into organizations, they have to be molded, mentored, challenged, and most importantly retained. When this is repeatedly performed, a great culture emerges and remains present. When the culture is strong in the lead office/church/location it can then be branched out. If the that lead office, church, or location doesn’t know what it stands for and satellites are being planted everywhere, the company culture becomes weak and doesn’t have the same effect in the satellite. Seacoast knows who it is, what it stands for, and what it wants to do. In turn, the same culture is present at each of the campuses. Just as we would find the same setup in a franchise like Subway, we find the same attitudes and smiles in each Seacoast location.

They have been standing firm in their place for 25 years while the world whirls like a figurative (as well as literal it turns out) hurricane around them. The physical representation of this is their live video feed that allows each of the 11 locations to view the same message from Pastor Greg simultaneously at each of the different services. This is genius for many reasons such as keeping costs low and a larger outreach that in turn generates a larger influence. The more heady representation of this is their beliefs: “We exist to help people become fully devoted followers of Christ.” Plain and simple, but most importantly non-wavering.

What do our organizations stand for? Can we boil it down to a simple sentence like Seacoast has done? When we know what we stand for and we are firm in our beliefs we attract people to us like that solid structure during a hurricane. We all need something to hold on to and stand firm in.

Seacoast knows what it stands for and they have been doing so for 25 years. Their growth is amazing, but with such strong beliefs it’s not a surprise.

How to lose good people

Yesterday I started a two-part series on goals, this will have to be finished tomorrow because I have too pertinent of a topic that I feel I have to cover after yesterday’s events. Sometimes life slaps us in the face while we are busy planning it… This is about how to lose good people.

I spoke with three different people that work for the same company (two separate branches) yesterday that were all to the breaking point with their employer. I know the company and most of their direct supervisors so I can honestly say that their claims are not far fetched. Plus they have no reason to lie to me, I am an outsider. All three of these people just came to me asking advice on how to handle their situations because they felt they were not being treated fairly. More than anything they just wanted a sounding board.

I heard things like: overworked, no respect given, no consideration for promotions when outsiders were hired with less experience, 9 days late on paychecks, firings that lasted two weeks before the boss came to their senses, threatening jobs regularly, expecting overtime and additional work as the norm, and the list goes on.

But it’s sad. Sad that each of their situations have come to this. Sad that they can’t take these troubles to their supervisors. Sad that even if they did take it to their supervisors they will be met with degrading comments like, “What are you bitching about?” or “You got a raise recently didn’t you? So yes, that is your job” or my personal favorite, “I don’t have time for this.” And the worst part is that these are not minimum wage people, they have a combined 10+ years of experience in a company that has just celebrated it’s 7 year-anniversary. 

If this is how we treat our people, our tenured people, how can we ever expect to grow companies into anything more than a loose house of cards? What happens when times get tough? These will be the first to go; happily.

This is not the path to success.

Success comes from treating our people right: Going out of our way to make sure they are happy in their positions. Listening when they have troubles or feedback. Communicating without condescension when we want or need something of them. Buying them lunch ‘just because’ instead of trying to manipulate people into owing us something. Telling people they’re doing a great job when accolades are earned. Paying them on time (man, I really thought that one was obvious).

When we treat people like this, magical things happen. People stay late, they recruit their friends for the company, mountains are moved, people want to come to work, petty issues float away before they materialize, and we set the foundations for concrete organizations that will last much longer than ourselves. If we have great people we can leave without everything falling apart.

People matter. If you are guilty of the actions in blue you can start turning things around by telling someone how much they are appreciated today with an earnest heart. And if you really want to make a turnaround you can do it every day. Treat people with respect and keep an eye on productivity. There is a direct correlation between how people are treated and their output.

Goal Setting (1/3)

One of the very first topics I wrote down in my idea roll for blogging was about goals. I have always been a huge believer in them and I have always implemented them in my life and work. Plus, every time that I hear about them I am inspired to revisit and renew my own goals for the coming weeks, months, and years.

The first step in the goal-making process is to dedicate some time to think about what it is we want. Is it a raise? Is it more time with family? Maybe it’s to finish reading that book we’ve been putting off, or to start getting fit again. Goals can be related to anything in our lives that we deem worthy, they do not just have to be work-related. I encourage people to have goals for different facets of life, it helps us to keep a balance. If all of our goals are work related we end up being workaholics and we neglect our personal or family lives.

When I managed a number of sales people in the furniture store I would have a goal review every 4-6 months with them. This was not a time for me to impose my thoughts, it was my time to listen to what they wanted to accomplish. The ones that didn’t have goals were forced to think about what they wanted and put it on paper, this opened a lot of eyes. The ones that had goals liked this exercise because it helped clarify what they wanted and gave them an opportunity to talk it through with someone. I would have them write down their goals on a sheet of paper (hand-written, not typed) then I would keep a copy and they would get the original as a reminder of what they had committed to. If we did not have that sit-down many of them would not have put any thought to their goals.

What is going to be the catalyst for us to write out our goals if we haven’t done so already?

What have we done recently to help our teams accomplish their goals?

We often hear or read about goals and think, “Yeah I know, goals are good,” and it goes in one ear and out the other. I want to encourage anyone reading this to stop what you’re doing and write down 3 things YOU want to accomplish. They can be short-term goals, they can be long-term goals, anything you want to do with your life. Todd Henry wrote The Accidental Creative and he closes out this book with a story by a South African man that asks a question about where to find the richest land on Earth. Some people said it was Wall Street, other said oil fields. But the answer to the man’s question was the graveyard. He proceeds to explain that there lies all of the unwritten books, the projects never finished, and the businesses never started of all the millions of people throughout history. He then goes on to explain a theory he has to ‘die empty’ without that unfinished work inside us.

What do we want to accomplish before our time runs out?

Take some time to think about what it is that you want to accomplish. Make time in the schedule with no distractions to think about it. Turn off the phone, leave the music out of it, and just think for a while. I love to stay moving so taking a walk with a notepad and a pen is the best thing for me. Don’t rush, give yourself at least 30 minutes if not more to think about what is important.

Goal setting is the first step, it gives us a clarity of direction. When a goal is set, we can ask ourselves if our daily actions are helping us get closer to our goals or taking us further away instead of just drifting along like so many others.

I will address how to follow through with our goals tomorrow, making them is just the beginning!