Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

A lot has changed in the 12 years since I wrote this, but the preference for pictures to words has grown exponentially. That said, used well the right words can still draw pictures in your mind.  

Read other Golden Oldies here.

The old adage, “one picture is worth a thousand words” is usually true, that’s why fundraisers use some kind of graphic to show how close they are to their goal. That concept gave rise to millions of .ppt files, entire industries dedicated to presenting information graphically, and billions of dollars spent annually to do it.

The best communicators use words to create pictures—images that are simple and graphic enough to create identical impressions in all the minds that hear/read them.

When I was recently asked for an example of this I offered my favorite, which is a version of an email that’s been making the rounds for at least a decade. I think you’ll agree that the mental image created would be universal—and very graphic.

Lipstick in School

According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington recently was faced with a unique problem.

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back.

Finally, the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night.

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

This version ended with the comment, “Here lies the difference between teachers and educators.” I would add that here lies the difference between talkers and communicators.

Image credit: JJ & Special K

Poking through 12+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

You might think that stuff would change in 11 years and you would be correct if you were talking about technology, food, or similar topics. But when the subject is people, not so much.

Accents can be just as much a challenge today as they were when I wrote this and before. The difference 11 years have made is that while there is greater acceptance of diverse accents the need for understanding them hasn’t changed.

Nor has the solution described in this post. If anything, its importance has significantly increased.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

The ability to communicate successfully, in both directions, is the mark of a great manager, as is building and managing a powerful and innovative organization.

Accomplishing this mandates a willingness to hire the best available people.

But what do you do when the best can’t be easily understood?

Accents, whether from overseas or US regional, are a major turnoff to many people. Reactions range from idiotic assumptions of incompetence (essentially subconscious prejudice) to annoyance for having to exert effort listening (sheer laziness).

In a diverse world of shrinking talent pools, where English is a second language for many, it’s bad business to pass on those candidates, but it’s also ridiculous to believe that the problem will fix itself or just fade away if you ignore it.

I’m not talking about the need for flawless English, but about recognizing what happens if they aren’t understood.

What can you, as a manager, do?

If the challenge is accent (whether from India, China, New York, Liverpool, Mississippi, etc.), rather than comprehension or language knowledge, that could minimize their contribution or effectiveness, what do you do?

The same solution you use for any good candidate who is lacking a particular skill, you offer training. In this case, accent reduction training.

Again, not to force them to sound like you, but to improve their speech enough to ensure a reasonable level of understanding.

Yes, the discussion and offer needs to be handled with sensitivity, but people aren’t stupid and they know the things that put them at a disadvantage in the workplace. What you are offering to do is pay for training that will give them a boost throughout their career, not just at your company.

The cost isn’t that great, either, the company profiled in the article charges around $1000 per person. In comparison to the cost-per-day of continuing the search, $1000 doesn’t even qualify as a peanut.

Plus, there is additional ROI to you, individually, and to your company.

• You acquire top talent with a high degree of loyalty, while building a reputation as a creative manager, who knows how to successfully staff outside the box, is willing to invest in people, and has the vision to see beyond the obvious.
• Your company strengthens its diversity, which typically improves innovation, while your management achievements have an external halo effect on the company.

Image credit: 마 법사

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

For all the promise of technology people are still people and they respond as such. Further, I doubt that’s going to change within the lifetime of anyone currently breathing.

(Note: Although the “Chat with Miki” box no longer exists, I typically reply to email within 24 hours.)

Read other Golden Oldies here.

“Clint” used the ‘Chat with Miki” box in the right-hand frame to ask me this question.

Have you ever heard this?  “People usually won’t change until the pain of NOT changing exceeds the pain of changing.”

Since this is a pretty common idea I thought I’d share my ideas with everybody.

I’ve heard this and many variations of it over the years, especially when applied to the workplace where it becomes a form of management by threat

For example, if your company or boss decides on a change and people’s jobs hinge on that change, they will change.

The problem is that they will also disengage at some level, maybe a little, but sometimes a lot. Not always obviously, but over time it will show in lower productivity, less creativity and, eventually, higher turnover.

Clint then asked if I thought that vested self-interest could be used instead of increasing the pain.

The answer is absolutely.

VSI is the perfect opposite to increased pain.

By rethinking a desired action, such as change, and presenting it in terms of its value to employees you can trip the VSI switch—but not if it’s a con.

As I’ve said a million times, people are not stupid; if the desired action is not really in their best interests there is nothing you can do that will convince them. VSI will still kick in, but the result will be resume polishing, lots of LinkedIn action and conversations with recruiters.

Clint decided that by using vested self-interest he could reduce the pain of changing. He plans to connect his organization’s goals to his people’s goals, which will effectively reduce the pain and increase the likelihood that they will do what he needs them to do—painlessly.

Handy little item my chat box. Try it, I’m usually here.

Image credit: nkzs on sxc.hu

Way back in the 1965 there was a major blackout that knocked out power throughout the Northeast. It may not have actually increased the birthrate nine months later (that’s an urban myth), but I know from friends who lived there that after the sun went down the choices of what to do were limited, so many fell back on age-old entertainment.

So what happens when technology goes down?

A foreshadowing came in early December when the Azure Cloud was incapacitated.

Under the heading “Services Experiencing Downstream Impact from Azure Active Directory” Azure’s status page additionally clarified:

Engineers are engaged on an underlying Azure Active Directory issue impacted several Azure properties that rely on the service. Services currently reporting impact include Web App, Operational Insights, Machine Learning, portal.azure.com and manage.windowsazure.com. Updates to this message will be provided as events warrant.

One Reg reader whose office has thoroughly adopted the cloud informed us of the savagery this outage is causing their colleagues to stoop to: “Some people seem to have got a connection, but most of us have now given up and some have even taken the drastic measure of actually talking to each other. It’s most unnatural!”

Can you imagine the shock and consternation when colleagues actually had to talk directly to each other?

And just in case our message is too subtle for you, the world is not improved when talking directly to another human being is considered unnatural by even one person.

Hat tip to KG for taking time to send this.

Image credit: gorfor               

As someone who has lived more decades than most of my readers I can remember when having influence wasn’t considered a viable life goal.

But that was then…

Not only is it an acceptable goal, there are sites like Klout that track your influence and even companies and managers dumb enough to hire based on a candidate’s Klout score.

These days, influence is measured based on important criteria, such as number of friends and followers, tweets and other commenting and web presence—an impressive way to measure, to be sure.

As influencers become more intentional and influencees less discerning I thought this was a good time to repost something I wrote several years ago.

Influence = Manipulation

Every conversation about leadership talks about ‘influence’ and how to increase yours.

In a post at Forbes, Howard Scharlatt defines influence this way,

Influence is, simply put, the power and ability to personally affect others’ actions, decisions, opinions or thinking. At one level, it is about compliance, about getting someone to go along with what you want them to do.

He goes on to describe three kinds of influencing tactics: logical, emotional and cooperative, or influencing with head, heart and hands and talks about ‘personal influence’ and its importance in persuading people when authority is lacking.

A couple of years ago I wrote The Power of Words and said, “Personally, other than socially acceptable definitions, I don’t see a lot of difference between influence and manipulation,” and I still don’t.

I realize most people consider manipulation negative and influence positive, but they are just words.

I often hear that leaders are good people, while manipulators are bad people. But as I pointed out in another post,

• leaders are not by definition “good;”
• they aren’t always positive role models; and
• one person’s “good” leader is another person’s demon.

Everyone believes that they use their influence in a positive way, but when you persuade people to do whatever who are you to say that the outcome is positive for them?

Influence, persuasion, manipulation; call it what you will, just remember that it is power and be cautious when you wield it.

And if you are on the receiving end of influence, be it active or passive, you’ll see a higher ROI by paying attention and being mindful of intent.

Image credit: Anonymous

Long before I had a career and ever since I have lived by the following rule.

Whatever information, knowledge or even wisdom you are looking to teach, share or impart, whether as official teacher, mentoring manager, friend or just interested party, is more likely to be absorbed if you follow this advice.

“People learn more when they are laughing.” –Confucius

Flickr image credit: kafka4prez

Perceptions rule.

The things you say and do hold no reality other than the way they are perceived by your audience, which includes employees, customers and investors.

Everything people hear, see or do is filtered through their MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and they a respond according to their perceptions, whether they reflect the actual intent or not.

In other words, what one person says and the other guy hears may have nothing to do with each other.

That’s why it’s critical to the success of your venture to actively manage the perceptions of all stake-holders.

Perceptions are a constantly moving target that are distorted by a variety of circumstances—from something as minor as feeling out of sorts to global economic turmoil; as a result the communications that were understood today may not work tomorrow.

Experts constantly bandy such words as ‘authentic’, ‘honest’, ‘sincere’ and similar terms in talking about how to change perceptions, when, in fact, there are only two things working together that actually accomplish perceptional change.

Those two things are actions and time.

If over time actions don’t back up whatever is said, then perceptions won’t change.

The greater the change the greater the cynicism as to how real and how sustainable it actually is, so don’t expect instant buy-in.

Communicate what you’re going to do and then do it consistently over and over forever—and watch perceptions change.

Flickr image credit: Gregory Gill

People are often faced with the quandary of deciding how honest they should be when responding to some version of the classic “does this outfit make me look fat” question.

This Rule serves as a good filter to help you decide how to respond

“Never confuse
telling people what you think
with telling them
what they want to hear.”

That doesn’t mean you should always provide the latter and not rock their/your boat.

Sometimes people really do want to know if the outfit makes them look fat.

The trick is to evaluate the situation in order to decide how to handle it.

Flickr image credit: istolethetv

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

It may sound like complete heresy, but entrepreneurs rarely build companies—they found them.

Founding a company requires a product vision and enough passion to draw a few others to the cause.

Building a company in the 21^st Century requires the ability to both lead and manage.

“Increasingly, the people who are the most effective are those who essentially are both managers and leaders.” –HBS professor David Thomas

Today’s knowledge workers, especially the type that gravitate to and succeed at startups, demand both leadership and management skills from those in charge.

And the key attribute is communication.

“Communication is the real work of leadership. Great leaders spend the bulk of their time communicating, and they know how to employ all three of Aristotle’s rhetorical elements.” –Nitin Nohria, Dean, Harvard Business School.

The best communicators are also the best listeners; moreover, they listen to everyone not just those in certain positions or at X level and above.

But listening and communicating require time and energy and many entrepreneurs are too busy.

They are company founders, not company builders.

Which are you?

Option Sanity™ ensures fairness
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Experience teaches that if you absolutely need information frame it as a  question and then shut up.

It’s a tried and true method that every good sales person knows (they call them closing questions) and is guaranteed to get whomever you are talking with to answer specifically.

For most people it’s a diffucult strategy to employ in spite of working 99% of the time.

Often the silence stretches, creating pressure to fill the void, so the askER enumerates, adding detail or “what I mean is…” and the askEE is off the hook and rarely responds to the original question.

Even when the askER stays quiet their mental mouth is moving, framing responses, organizing rebuttals, responding to possible scenarios.

Whether physical or mental, your thoughts drive the words and the more thinking the less listening, because the focus is elsewhere.

In order to get funded you need to hear investors.

In order to sell you need to hear your customers.

In order to manage you need to hear your people.

You can’t hear if you are talking.

Shutting up is key and that means shutting your mental mouth along with your physical one.

Option Sanity™ helps you hear

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Image credit: Bun in a Can Productions