I’ve always thought of life as a corridor with dozens of doors opening, each one representing an opportunity.

You may open one or pass them by—it’s your choice.

Each time you do open one and enter that door closes forever and you move down a new corridor full of doors.

The door you entered is sealed because whatever lay behind it changed you, so you can’t go backwards, only forward.

Some people to through life opening as few doors as possible, changing as little as possible and staying as safe as possible.

Others launch themselves through the most interesting doors with gusto, taking advantage of whatever opportunities are concealed and then on to the next door.

In honor of all those who are, or lean to, the latter description I dedicate these two Rules. They are especially apropos today.

Watch for big problems—they disguise big opportunities.

Welcome the unexpected! Opportunities rarely come in neat, predictable packages.

You can’t open every door and you don’t have to stay long if you don’t like what you find, but if you pass straight through never opening any doors you’ll stay in pristine condition and you don’t really want to arrive at the end as untouched as you were when you started—do you?

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Last week I had a call from a “Rick,” marketing manager, with what he thought was a unique problem—sadly it’s not as uncommon as you might think.

Short version. “Chris” is one of his top producing marketing people and extremely valuable to the team and the company. Recently, the team had a vehement disagreement on a marketing plan, but finally decided to go with an approach different from the one that Chris had championed.

Since then, Chris has made a number of comments and suggestions that undermine the current effort and has privately said that she hopes it fails because the other approach was better.

The team was starting to notice and some were losing confidence—a sure way to guarantee failure.

Rick said he had talked a bit with Chris; she denied that she was sabotaging the campaign and if it failed it would be because the wrong choice was made.

When I asked if Chris was always such an ideologue Rick was startled. He hadn’t thought of her actions in those terms, but after thinking it over he decided that she was a bit, although normally not to this extent.

Rick went on to say that it was ironic, because during the election Chris had been adamant that the “hide-bound ideology on both sides was creating problems for the country” and that she thought Obama was less locked into a specific, narrow ideology than most politicians.

More recently, she had been furious with Rush Limbaugh’s comment “I hope Obama fails,” seeing it as destructive and unpatriotic.

And therein, as I told Rick, lay his solution. Here is what I suggested.

• Arrange a conversation without interruptions, such as an off-site lunch.
• Make a production of turning off your cell phone (if Rick isn’t answering his, Chris is unlikely to interrupt to answer hers).
• Keep the tone conversational; avoid anything that sounds like an accusation or makes the lunch feel like a confrontation.
• Remind Chris’ about her previous thoughts regarding ideologues.
• Once she confirms her thoughts gently draw the parallel between her attitudes and an ideologue.
• Use her own words and feelings to refute whatever defense she raises (again, without attacking her).
• Keep it conversational and take your time leading her to the recognition that her actions are the same as those she dislikes, just in a different arena.

Rick called today to say they’d had lunch that day and the conversation went exactly as predicted. It wasn’t perfectly smooth and there were some dicey moments, but when that happened he backed away and tried another route. He said that it would have been impossible to do in the office with interruptions and turning off their cells created a whole different mood.

He said that when Chris realized that she was doing a highly watered down version of Limbaugh she was openly shocked and very apologetic.

Instead of leaving it there, Rick took extra time to walk through the competing plans and why the team had chosen the one and not the other. He explained that it wasn’t that Chris was wrong, she just held a different opinion and that was OK, but it wasn’t OK do anything to undermine the program—even unconsciously.

With a more open mind Chris grudgingly agreed to the reasoning. She said that in spite of still feeling the other plan was better she would do everything in her power to make the project work. She said that the success of the project was more important than being “right.”

Rick was lucky because a critical member of his team was also a rational thinking person who could see a parallel when it was pointed out and not enough of a hypocrite to claim “that’s different…”

Chris was lucky because she worked for a manager who valued her and was willing to take the time to help her change and grow.

How do you control your inner ideologue?

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Last week I wrote Time To Get Off Your Ass And Lead (Yourself) and Ravi Tangri added some very intelligent thoughts in his comment. I hope you’ll take a moment to click over, read it and add your own thoughts to the conversation. It’s an important one for all of us.

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Not long ago a friend was at a high school basketball game; the home team, from a wealthy community, was losing to the visiting inner city team. My friend was horrified to hear the home team students start chanting “We don’t care, we won’t fuss, someday you will work for us!”

He was even more aghast when he realized that many of the parents were joining in.

That’s why some schools are working to change kids’ MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) by finding ways to teach empathy; programs such as Second Step and Roots of Empathy seem to be working in the schools using them.

Empathy is especially important for those kids from wealthy areas whose parents often have (hopefully) unconscious, elitist MAP.

But it’s hard to empathize with things you’ve never experienced.

Neither adults nor kids can understand hunger if they’ve always been able to eat when they feel like it.

It’s not just feeling hungry, cold, wet, etc. that creates empathy; it’s enduring them beyond where it’s comfortable that allows people to get some idea of what millions face every day.

Few adults like venturing outside their comfort zone and kids like it even less, but learning empathy requires discomfort. Go ahead, you’ll survive—I promise.

Please take a few minutes to read the article and think about your own level of empathy and the levels of those around you—at home, at work and elsewhere.

Then think about what you can do to increase empathy in your little corner of the world. Perhaps then we can replace one e-word, entitlement with another, empathy.

If everybody does that the whole world really will change.

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There are many lessons to be learned from the current economic crisis, but one of the most important is that we the people should stop following and start leading ourselves.

In other words, we each need to take responsibility for our own actions and think critically about the words and actions of those in positional leadership roles.

In business, we need to rid ourselves of the idea that positional leaders don’t need management skills or that managers don’t lead.

Jim Stroup points out in numerous posts that “No one has proven that leadership is different from management, much less that it is a characteristic inherent in individuals independently of the context in which those individuals operate, one that they carry with them from one organization to another and which they then instill into groups otherwise bereft of it.”

We need to stop defining leaders based on their vision and skill at influencing people to follow them.

A comment left on a Washington Post column by Steve Pearlstein regarding the leadership failure that led to the current economic crisis neatly sums up the problem with that definition.

“What a great summary of the economic problem. However this was not a lack of leadership. Defining leadership as influencing people to move in a specific direction, the financial and economic elite successfully led the country into the economic disaster. The problem was a lack of management that failed to identify the signs of the pending disaster.”

Mike Chitty’s team approach is an unlikely solution since you can’t mandate that whichever [leader or manager] is superior will listen to or act on the ideas of the subordinate, while making them equals is rarely successful.

We need to lead ourselves and stop waiting for someone else to show us how, tell us why or lead our actions. 99% of us know what’s good—not just for ourselves, but for the world.

We especially need to stop

• putting ideology ahead of success;
• avoiding accountability by citing all those whose lead we followed;
• excusing our own unethical behavior on the basis that others do the same thing; or
• believing that [whatever] is OK, because our religion forgives our actions.

Everyone cleaning up their own back yard will alleviate a large part of the problem, and then we can work together for the good of everyone, not just “people like us.”

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One of the hardest things that growing companies face is the need to stop shooting from the hip.

I hear the reasons not to all the time, from startups, small biz, entrepreneurs, et al:

• It will ruin our culture.
• It stifles creativity. It’s for larger companies.
• It’s bureaucratic. It’s too time consuming.

“It” refers to the underpinnings of all successful companies. “It” includes the following in order of importance:

• Financial controls that include
  • monthly statements of revenues by product;
  • discounts;
  • costs by department;
  • cost of goods sold;
  • inventory;
  • receivables aging;
  • stock issuance;
  • cash flow;
  • manufacturing yields;
  • hiring by department
• Annual operating plan covering the above financial measures
• Organization charts and definitions of responsibilities
• Hiring process
• Long-term planning
• Centralized information technology implementation and planning

Whether it’s just you, or one, ten, fifty, or more employees, whether full time, part time or virtual, you need viable processes to keep you focused—think of it as coloring inside the lines.

Everything on this list can, and should, be scaled for applicability, but all are important to every business endeavor.

Those that don’t directly apply may be tweaked, e.g., manufacturing yields can change to productivity measures; a very few, such as “stock issuance” may be completely discarded if the action is truly warranted.

Sure, they can’t all be implemented at once, but none of them will happen as long as your MAP rejects or begrudges them—after all, you’re the boss (CEO/president/managing partner/owner) and people will follow your lead.

Finally, don’t confuse process with bureaucracy. Process is like MAP, it gets you where you want to go, whereas bureaucracy stifles whatever it touches; process, like MAP, is ever-growing, while bureaucracy is carved in stone.

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Considering the news with which we’re being inundated this seemed like a god time to offer up something a bit more positive.

Not sugar and syrup that you wouldn’t believe anyway, but the kind of one liners that are worth printing out and sticking on the monitor and taping to the bathroom mirror.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and it looks like work.” –Thomas Edison (Entitlement has more letters.)

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” –Mark Twain (If they don’t encourage you to climb they won’t offer a hand if you trip and fall.)

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.” –Benjamin Franklin (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter…)

“Live as if you are to die tomorrow.  Learn as if you are to live forever.” –Gandhi (Teach this to your kids and tattoo it on your frontal lobe—it’s the best advice you’ll ever get!)

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The markets are in turmoil, the economy sucks, borrowing has gone the way of the dodo bird and businesses large, small and micro are looking to cut costs while still motivating their people.

For many companies this means a change in corporate culture, but which changes will have the most impact?

Short answer: creating/enhancing a culture of fiscal intelligence.

Long answer: a transparent culture that spends its money wisely, sharing the reasoning with its people, eliminating low ROI frills and cuts without selling the company’s future down the drain.

This doesn’t mean substituting crappy coffee for the good stuff and eliminating free soda or M&Ms as so many companies do.

It does mean listing all the frills—executive and worker alike—and polling your people to find which are really paying off and which can be scrapped—not a decision made by management, but one that your people hash out and agree to before it’s a done deal.

Sometimes good coffee and soda have a higher ROI morale-wise than you would think.

All this should be doubly true for startups, but it often isn’t. Yes, your money is banked and if you’re VC funded, as opposed to angel, chances are you’re pretty flush—but having it doesn’t mean you should spend it.

Any company that thinks cushy perks are attractive in this economy think again.

Think just how naïve/ignorant/arrogant a candidate must be to expect a large sign-on bonus or fancy perks given current economic conditions.

Not to mention how financially stupid any company still offering them appears to a candidate.

The smartest companies build fiscally intelligent corporate cultures from the beginning, so that when they have to tighten down they know exactly where to cut and their people aren’t surprised.

Throwing money around is always stupid, whether in business or personally.

I’ve heard from companies of all sizes and managers at all levels why this one candidate was worth X more than anyone else walking and how not getting her could deal a crippling, or even lethal, blow to the company.

If you ever feel that way, remember two inimitable truths.

• If not having that one specific person could bring down the company it’s probably going to crash and burn anyway.

• The candidate who joins you for money will always leave for more money.

Remember, the goal is a lean, mean, innovative, motivated machine—not a lean, mean, depressed one.

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The foremost thought to hold in you mind when creating a positive and powerful review culture is that it’s similar to Chinese cooking—most of the time is spent in preparation, whereas the food cooks quickly.

(Note: terminology can be confusing; ‘goal’ and ‘objective’ are interchangeable as are ‘appraisal’ and ‘review’.)

Here are the underlying steps that you need to learn, practice and absorb into your MAP.

Annual reviews alone don’t work even when that’s all your company requires.

To succeed people need semiformal feedback each quarter along with constant, informal daily input and coaching focused on helping them achieve the goals set forth in the previous annual review. (More on goals later.)

Reviews are the same as every other management task—they require good planning, open communications and accountability on both sides.

The first step to painless reviews is to commit to doing

• one HR-blessed annual review, with full paperwork, during the last two weeks of December;
• four quarterly reviews within the first week of each quarter; and
• constant, informal, ‘how am I doing’ feedback all year long.

Remember that

• any time you set a goal it needs a delivery date to be real; and
• never make commitments you either can’t or aren’t planning to fulfill.

First tell your people what to expect, then post your commitment on the department intranet and tell every person you hire how it works—and follow-through.

When you commit publicly you make yourself accountable.

Good reviews aren’t about filling out a lot of paperwork, whether by hand or computer. Yes, you need to follow company guidelines and use company approved forms, but as stated at the beginning, those are the mechanics.

The secret of a positive review culture is defining exactly what you want a person to accomplish during the year, discussing the goals and refining them together, in other words, the heart is the interaction between you and each person on your team, because one size does not fit all.

The result is that your people not only know exactly what their goals are, but they own them.

Setting Goals

• The basic rule is to never set more than three to five major goals in a year and the exact number depends on their size and complexity.

• Annual review goals should be high level, complex, and take 12 months to accomplish. They can include hard skills, such as technical certification, and soft skills, such as improving presentation skills.

• All goals should be quantified. “Be more willing to share” is a self defeating goal because it offers no way for the person or you to measure improvement; it becomes totally subjective, a matter of opinion and a source of contention at next year’s review. Instead the goal might be “Increase time spent sharing knowledge 10%” and agree on what the baseline is currently.

• Work together during the discussions to break down large/complex annual goals into smaller, more manageable goals that can be achieved each quarter and still more bit-sized pieces for each month, week and even day.

The cool thing is that achieving a constant stream of smaller goals keeps people motivated and prevents the large goals from overwhelming them.

And before you start complaining about the time involved, perhaps you should go back and read your job description or, better yet, go back a little further and think about all the lousy reviews you’ve had along the way, either because they didn’t happen or because they were all form and no substance.

Then think about, hopefully, the manager(s) who saw the value and used reviews to challenge, stretch and juice your growth, so you were ready for a promotion that put you in their shoes.

Then decide which one you want to be for your people.

Be sure to come back next week when I show you a simple, amazing tool that helps identify goals for each of your people and also has some terrific side benefits.

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One way or another I seem to be on a creativity/innovation kick this week, so it seemed reasonable to make that the subject of today’s quotes.

First the practical…

Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer. –W. Edwards Deming (You can’t want what you’ve never had.)

Innovation is the whim of an elite before it becomes a need of the public. –Ludwig von Mises (Got to love those early adopters!)

Now the inspirational…

There are no dreams too large, no innovation unimaginable and no frontiers beyond our reach. –John S. Herrington (But you have to believe…)

If you open up the mind, the opportunity to address both profits and social conditions are limitless. It’s a process of innovation. –Jerry Greenfield (But addressing the former with no consideration of the latter is a recipe for disaster.)

Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow. –William Pollard (Something that GM and Chrysler still haven’t learned.)

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As discussed last week accountability stems from the public nature of an action and one of the best ways to inject strong accountability into your organization is with a positive review function that your people might actually like!

Sound impossible? It’s not and over the next few weeks we’ll discuss how to make it happen.

The first thing that you need to understand is that there are two totally separate parts of the review process.

The visible part, the mechanics, is dictated by your company, but that’s all it is—mechanics; usually a timetable and a set of forms.

The important part is invisible and is bound by your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

In other words, positive reviews are a function of how you choose to think about them.

Done correctly reviews are painless and even enjoyable for both parties.

Done incorrectly reviews are painful, embarrassing, discouraging, upsetting, frustrating or all of the above—for both parties.

The bottom line of reviews can be summed up in two words—no surprises.

Any time an employee is surprised by information during a review means that you aren’t doing your job as a manager.

You avoid surprises by understanding the philosophy behind the review process and how it should work and then allocating the time and effort to make it work.

How many times during or after your own annual review have you said out loud, or silently screamed in your head, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

How many times since you were promoted has one of your own people felt the same way?

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