Learning Your Strengths for More Energy

In my latest quarterly meetings I’m sharing the concepts from a phenomenal book. “Now Discover Your Strengths,” by Marcus Buckingham. It changes how people look at their own growth and development. The book works from a couple of essential rules.

First, we tend to be obsessed with our weaknesses and try to improve on them. The reality is that in any area where we’re truly weak, we can climb from pathetic up to really bad. So if you’re not good at math, you’ll never be good at it, no matter how hard you try.

Second, there’s a big difference between a skill and a strength. Many people spend time using skills, but not achieving peak performance. Buckingham’s definition of a strength is something you’re pulled toward and want to do. When you’re doing it, you’re highly engaged. You’re curious about how you can do it better. When you’re finished, you feel energized and want to do it again. If you look at your workday through that filter, you’d probably put your focus in different areas.

For example, I’m a person who’s good with numbers and finance, statistics and so forth. Although this is a skill of mine, if I spent all my time crunching numbers for a company, it would drain me. However, if you give me a chance to work with a challenging CEO or leadership team of a company, I’ll be there in a second. And even though I’ve worked hard, when I’m done I’m energized and want to do more. That’s a strength.

In an ideal situation, you should spend 80 percent of your time playing to your strengths, and spend 20 percent polishing your skills so they’re reasonable. This can create a new environment for growth. According to Buckingham, less than 20 percent of us get to play to our strengths.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

Are there areas that your company can focus its training to develop employee strengths? Where can you leverage the desire to improve strengths, so you come away with a net energy gain?

Underperforming Team Member

What can you do with an under-performing member of your team? You need a plan instead of telling them you’re not happy, bluntly letting them know they have three months to turn things around or it’s not going to work.

I often see teams with toxic members. These are high-performing, incredibly valued members of a team, but they are toxic to the other team members and their work. In a recent example in my coaching, one team member was an A-player in every way except how they communicated with other people on the team. They jumped in and overpowered anyone on the team who disagreed with them. You’ve seen this kind of person: dominating conversations, aggressive and argumentative—just generally very stubborn.

For some people, a person like that might be easy to deal with. They’re typically so driven, so focused. But in terms of creating healthy team dynamics, someone like that will shut down many other team members. They’ll prevent the less-assertive people from speaking out. These quieter members process internally, and they often have the most brilliant insights. In the presence of a toxic team member, they don’t have a chance. They want nothing to do with the conflict, and if they had their way, they’d crawl under the table.

I’ve seen CEOs deal with these toxic members two ways. They ignore them, which throws the team into massive dysfunction. Or they fire them, which is an absolute waste, because these people bring incredible value in so many other ways.

My solution is something I call “Whacking them over the head with a 2×4.” And it works, most of the time. It’s a private conversation with the individual, where you tell them one-on-one how valuable they are, what they contribute to the team, and how you see them performing in the future. You explain that all their value is overshadowed by their behavior in the meetings, destroying the team dynamic.

You tell them that although you want them to grow with the company, if they can’t learn to be part of a healthy team dynamic, they’re going to have to leave. They need to see their demise staring them in the face if they don’t change. I find they usually react defensively and want to blame other people. I just did this several days ago, when this team member launched into reasons and justifications for their behavior. The key is that you have to be able to continue the conversation with them, until they see this as an opportunity to grow and evolve into a leader.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

Who do have on your team who, although they’re incredibly value, do more damage than good to the team’s environment? What’s the direct truth you need to use to whack them over the head with a 2×4?

An Outside Facilitator

I’m working in Dubai this month to meet with clients. During my journey here I considered why I fly halfway around the world, every quarter, to meet with companies. The reason is simple. The meetings make sure that their planning and execution gets results.

After the first six to 12 months—while I get a company up to speed on the Rockefeller methods I use—the meetings ensure these methods get ingrained into a company’s DNA. I facilitate a quarterly meeting, sometimes an annual one, in the same way. We work to build habits they can continue on their own.

We review the past quarter: What worked, and what we’ll do better next time. We review the commitments the company was scheduled to deliver on during the quarter. Finally, we decide as a group what the top 3-5 things are to accomplish during the next quarter.

The key is having an outside facilitator at the meeting, someone to hold an executive team accountable to what they said they’d do. Without this, their efforts wouldn’t be as focused, tangible or accountable. I use two tools for this. Number one is counting the percentage of their commitments completed on time. I also measure those top 3-5 things, goals we call rocks. If either of those fall below 80 percent, then we’ve got a failure on our hands.

Acting as an outside facilitator is key. But I’ve got to say, it’s sometimes not fun to hold these CEOs accountable. There are times when the tension in the room is so thick you’d have to cut it with a chainsaw. But the fact is, they haven’t come close to delivering what they intended to deliver. So they let themselves down.

The interesting part? Most of the time when people really miss the mark, I don’t need to be tough on them. With such driven, successful people, during that powerful silence they reprimand themselves. Coaches often struggle with that, because they’re too worried about companies liking them or being best friends. After a meeting with a dedicated, outside coach, they step up their game.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

What can you do to stay focused on your commitments? Is there any way to hold your team accountable to your top goals?

Finding the Right Environment to Thrive

I’m very fortunate to work with company leadership teams with completely different styles. One company I work with is incredibly aggressive. The team dynamics are intense, and to an outsider they might seem manic. But I must say I absolutely love working with them. I have a style that meshed with them, and they’ve got a great work environment. The intensity of the meeting doesn’t bother me at all. (That being said, I come from a family where our arguments only lasted minutes, and afterward we were all laughing again.)

Recently this company had a trainer come in to work with them. On the first day they almost made the trainer cry on several occasions. The trainer let the CEO know how difficult the team was. By the end of the day the team was comparing, calling me “Coach Heaven.”

While I got a kick out of hearing that, the point is not that I’m good and the other trainer is bad. It’s just that my natural strengths are suited to work with this driven, non-traditional team. There are companies who might think the other trainer is from heaven, compared to me, because they would be a better fit.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

Take a look at which environments you’re absolutely at your best in. What environments are you not right for, even through you’re performing at a high level?

How to Lead a Horse to Water — and Make Him Drink

Some people say that we can’t change, that we will always be as we are. I don’t believe that’s true. I see people change everyday. But in order for people to change, they need motivation to change – usually pain of some sort. We need to find a way to use their salt.

I recommend using salt… yes, salt? People also say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. However, you can feed him a little extra salt.

Salt can get results in other ways. The best motivation I’ve seen is like salt in a wound: Fear, pain, or frustration. Over the years I’ve seen CEOs reach out to coaches when their level of pain or frustration is too great.  They realize they don’t get to spend enough time with their family. Or the stress level in their company is wearing them down. They get burned out with their business, and can’t see a way to make it work anymore. They can’t solve their problems with the same tools, because the same issues keep coming back again and again.

In those cases the salt is already there, making them really thirsty for change. Even when people just want to make their business life better, there has to be salt in the wound, there has to be some sort of dissatisfaction. Without it, people won’t change.

I’ve seen three things people need to make meaningful change:

1. They have to want it.
2. Second, they have to need it, meaning there’s an obvious gap.
3. Finally, they have to be willing to pay for change. This cost is more than just financial. It’s a willingness to do the work.

With those three ingredients, magic can happen – because there is serious commitment to move ahead to a better place.

The real challenge is for people to be able to make these changes before the pain reaches crisis levels… or worse, when it’s too late.  You can look for ways to add salt to the current situation and create a desire to change today—but make sure you add enough to get results you’re after.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

• What change do you want to make that you’re not motivated enough to do?
• What’s the salt you could add into the mix that would lead you into action?

New Book from Jim Collins: How The Mighty Fall

Here is a clip of Jim Collins talking about the core concepts from his new book, “How the Mighty Fall“.

  

 

I love the simple ways he presents the findings of their research…He breaks the process into 5 stages and in Jim Collins style, links them to a growth chart of a company: 

 

STAGE 1: HUBRIS BORN OF SUCCESS

STAGE 2:  UNDISCIPLINED PURSUIT OF MORE

STAGE 3: DENIAL OF RISK AND PERIL

STAGE 4: GRASPING FOR SALVATION

STAGE 5: CAPITULATION TO IRRELEVANCE OR DEATH

 

 

The key here is to be able to spot if your organization is getting caught on this path – and to catch it early on.

 

There is also a detailed story in BusinessWeek this week.

 

Take a read for yourself…I have yet to read the whole book but expect that it will be as good as Good To Great and Built To Last. 

 

CoachKevin’s Challenge:

•  Where could you be getting caught up in your own success in away that could lead to your demise?
• What can you do to get a good reality check?

Why are Many Meetings a Waste of Time?

Meetings are absolutely essential to the success of any organization. They are the glue that pulls people together for a short period of time. But in many companies, meetings are pathetic and create little or no value. It shocks me to see the number of companies that don’t even have weekly meetings to keep executives or managers on track.

 To get and keep aligned and focused, most teams need to meet at least once a week.  In The Rockefeller Habits  methodology I use with clients, they meet every day.

People usually stop having meetings because they feel it’s a waste of time – and they’re often right. We’ve all been there. Some people just want to talk about things. There are no decisions being made. There’s nobody taking notes about commitments. You’re just having a chit-chat. You feel like you’d do better across the street at the Starbucks having a coffee.

Leading meetings is a skill as valuable as being able to write or build something. Meetings are Business 001, even before Business 101. You need an agenda. Along with that agenda, here’s my list of basics for a good meeting.

• Start on time and end promptly, too
• Have people be prepared to share what they need to share
• Lead the meeting, to move it ahead
• Redirect off-topic discussions to another time and place
• Make tangible decisions at the meeting
• Take notes about all decisions or commitments, and note the date those items will be completed
• Most importantly, you must keep your meeting on track: cut people off politely who are long-winded or off topic

That last basic requires a bit of finesse.  Here are some of the techniques I use:

• Tell people up front that you will cut them off, so they are not surprised or offered
• Use phrases like “take 10 seconds to finish up your point.” Or, “How does that relate to what we’re talking about here?”
• Say to the group, “Last comment. We need to make a decision.”

Decisions lead to results. Write down those decisions and follow up at next week’s meeting. Once you make a decision and commitments, then you can talk about it—after the meeting.

 Coach Kevin’s Challenge:

In the end, your meetings need to create tangible value for all that attend…

• What is keeping your meetings from being as valuable as they could be?
• Ask at the end of your meeting how effective it was. Rank your meetings on a 1-10 scale.
• Make a list of 3 points right now that would make your meetings a 9.5.

In-N-Out Burger

One of my favorite business strategies is to leverage your relationships with your customers. On my recent trip to Mexico, I saw that strategy working for In-N-Out Burger.

You might know about the loyalty to these burgers. On our bus ride down to Encinada, 40 people were raving about them. Even before we got on the bus, they were saying, “We’re going to In-N-Out. You gotta eat there, it’s great!” Never in my life have I seen so many people get excited about a hamburger joint. People were evangelizing, saying how cool it was. So much so, that there was really no choice. I had to go.

If you haven’t gone, you get a burger, fries, and a drink or milkshake. And that’s their whole menu. It was an incredibly efficient business, and nice to see something so darn simple. Because it’s so simple, it’s easy for people to get behind it and tell the story. In-N-Out’s story is so simple that people go crazy about it.

This story is the subject of new book about In-N-Out.  I read the book review in BusinessWeek, and the article notes that a lot of the success comes from the fact that In-N-Out didn’t mess it up. They managed to stay true to their values and keep it very simple. I loved the marketing they did with free bumper stickers, where the company used spotters to enter drivers with the stickers in a vacation contest. They managed to make their story into a cult of hamburger lovers.

The story about the burgers was not only dead-on, but these customers were able to articulate it in a way that engaged me.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

What would it take to get your customers out there, getting excited about your business like In-N-Out’s customers do? What is the simple message you would love everyone say about you?

The Fewer Moving Parts, The Better

Lots of people are talking about ideas on how they can be LEAN or more efficient in their businesses. One of the core principles to LEAN is how do you remove from a process to make it more efficient.  Here is a beautiful thing that actually removes the need for staples in an office…food for thought.

 

Coach Kevin’s Challenge

How can you apply this to your business or better yet, how can you apply this principle of removing something to make the process more efficient?

Article from Kevin Lawrence: How to Engage Your Entire Organization in Driving Business Results

Below is Kevin Lawrence’s article, “How to Engage Your Entire Organization in Driving Business Results”. We hope you find it relevant and insightful. You can also access other articles and subscribe to Kevin Lawrence’s email newsletter “Coach Kevin’s Insights” by clicking here. 

If you would like to reprint this or other articles, we ask that you leave Kevin’s contact information intact at the end of the article and notify us that you will be using it. If you’re looking for an article customized for your publication, please let us know.

Please contact me with any questions, either by email at Janice@CoachKevin.com or by phone at 604-313-2229.

__________________

Many companies launch internal campaigns to boost morale or drive change within an organization.  The reality of these is that they’re often just corporate fluff and puff and really don’t create an impact.  Here’s an example of a leadership team who has created notable change, not only in the performance of the company, but in the level of service delivered to clients. An incredible theme aligned the entire company creating marked and measurable performance over a period of 90 days.

Victorian Epicure Inc.

Vancouver Island, on Canada’s West Coast, is home to Victorian Epicure Inc. which was founded in Victoria, BC in 1991, by Sylvie Rochette. Sylvie first sold her small selection of home spice blends from the back of her station wagon at community fairs and other events. Her vision was to make it easy for busy mothers to create healthful and delicious meals for their families.

From those humble roots, Victorian Epicure has expanded to an office and manufacturing facility situated on 80 acres of agricultural reserve land, which includes 7 acres of vineyard on the Saanich Peninsula, just north of Victoria. Sylvie’s original vision of helping busy mothers continues today, but the company now manufactures and markets over 300 high quality spice blends and gourmet food products, accompanied by a line of professional quality cookware and a Home and Body Care line.

In 1996, Epicure Selections® (www.epicureselections.com) was created as a catalogue division of the company in response to the high demand for the products. More than 6000 Independent Sales Consultants represent Epicure Selections® in communities across Canada, providing personalized service to sell Epicure’s products. Amelia Warren is the Vice President of Epicure Selections®.

Identifying the Challenge

In the fall of 2007, the senior executive team at Epicure met to plan their strategy for the fourth quarter, which included Christmas, the busiest time of year for Epicure. In the meeting, it became clear that the biggest challenge (and opportunity to improve) they faced  was the time it took to process each order during the Christmas rush period. This “in-and-out” time needed to be dramatically shortened: in previous years, it was taking up to ten days from the time an order was received at the Home Office facility until it was out the door for delivery. Depending on where the order was going in Canada, the shipping time could be an additional three to seven days. In the worst case, a customer would have to wait up to seventeen business days for their order.

Near Christmas, customers wanted to ensure their orders arrived before December 24^th. Because customers were uncertain about processing and shipping times, they would stop ordering at the beginning of December to ensure timely delivery. For Epicure, this meant the potential loss of two weeks of sales at the busiest and most lucrative time of the year.

During the planning session for the fourth quarter of 2007 there was much discussion around order processing times . In the end, the leadership team decided that they needed to get orders out the door in under three days. While the focus was on speed of delivery, the leadership team knew that customers also had the expectation of accurate orders. As a countermeasure to speed, they decided that the absolute minimum quality threshold would be 97% accuracy of orders (proper items selected, sealed and labeled properly, and packaged so that there would be no breakage during shipping).

Choosing a Theme

 The leadership team brainstormed on how to communicate the order processing goal of three days to the company. They wanted to engage each and every employee in making sure that the entire company would deliver the commitment to Epicure customers.

In order to ensure success in achieving the goal, they used a process they have used a number of times before, which is called a quarterly theme.  As explained in the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish, quarterly themes are designed to engage all employees of a company in achieving the number one goal for the company in that quarter. In the end, the theme they chose was so simple that everyone, customers and employees, could grasp it at once:

 “In & Out in 72”

Executing “In & Out in 72”

Much thought was given to aligning the entire company around the new goal.. Tangible ways were found to measure whether they were meeting the order processing in 72 hour goal. A bonus scheme was created to incent employees to achieve the quarterly theme. Epicure built a system that provided daily feedback to all employees on how they were doing. With the help of the art department, the leadership team created posters that set expectations for employees and showed the bonus levels while communicating the absolute minimum goal of 93% of orders processed in 72 hours with a minimum of 97% accuracy.

At Epicure, the employees are called the “Home Team.” At the same time that the Epicure leadership team was selling “In & Out in 72” to the Home Team, they made a bold move. They ran a six week marketing campaign to all their external customers promising them “In & Out in 72.”  Employees were featured in advertisements promising “We will deliver in 72 hours, period.” Amelia Warren, Vice President, said “(The ad campaign) was effective in that once we made our commitment public to our customers it also was engaging and reinforcing the importance to our Home Team, the importance of their jobs to the businesses and livelihoods of our customers.“

Running Hard to Christmas

The campaign was launched with tremendous enthusiasm and excitement. Employees responded positively to the bonus scheme. Everyone was held accountable.  Teams met in daily huddles and reviewed the numbers. The numbers were published daily, both yesterday’s orders and accuracy, but also the cumulative totals on whiteboards around the Home Office facility. There was no hiding from the results. Everyone knew where they were at. People did stumble, but there was one goal, one focus, and everyone had to work together better than they had ever done before.

Amelia says “I think it challenged everyone to look at, where are the gaps here?  Where are we stuck?  What’s the relationship between what I’m doing over here to what you’re doing there, and how does that all contribute to meeting or not meeting that In & Out in 72 hours?”

There were other changes that helped them drive to their goal:

• Management made it crystal clear that it was 72 hours from order receipt until shipment out the door. If the order arrived Friday at 11:59 pm the shipment was out by Monday at 11:59 pm.
• They moved to a seven day schedule.
• The pick list was tweaked to correct some confusing items. For example, they changed “Greek Oregano” to say “Oregano-Greek” as sometimes the “Greek Seasoning” was being picked by mistake.

Exceeding Expectations

The “In & Out in 72” campaign was a phenomenal success. There were 28,543 orders shipped during the campaign with an amazing 99.67% In & Out in 72 Hours. The average time to process an order and have it ready for shipment was less than 27.5 hours (just over a day) — which is two and a half times faster than their In & Out in 72 goal. They did all of this while maintaining an outstanding 97% accuracy for all orders.

“In & Out in 72” is the new expectation by the leadership team, the Home Team and for Epicure’s customers. There is a complete expectation inside and outside Epicure that orders will be processed and shipped within 72 hours. The accuracy rate has improved, rising from 97% to almost 99%. Not only did they improve the performance of the company, all of the employees pulled together and got to share in the satisfaction of being a winning team.

Lessons Learned

We discussed the lessons learned from this campaign with Amelia. She told us the following:

1. There has to be one person driving the whole process.
2. Clear measurable goals make the focus clear to the leadership team and give them a sense of what is happening with the rest of the Home Team.
3. Employees like having numbers to aim for. Providing daily feedback means that they know immediately where they are succeeding or failing. If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, you don’t know whether you are succeeding or not.
4. Having measurable goals helps everyone pull together and lets individuals know the role they are playing in the lives of Epicure’s consultants. When Management talks about meeting “In & Out in 72”, they can link it to feedback from a consultant in Nova Scotia who writes and says “Thank you so much. I was so excited to get my order.”
5. Keep it simple. You want the minimum possible administrative burden. The “In & Out in 72” campaign had two simple goals:
   1. At least 93% of orders out in 72 hours.
   2. At least 97% accuracy of orders.

The incentives don’t have to be huge.  It’s more about the energy and excitement that the theme generates and less about what the actual reward is.

Wrapping Up

Quarterly themes can be a powerful way to drive business results. A theme is an engaging way to get all employees in an organization to pull together to deliver on a tangible goal that makes a real difference to the business. Themes work best when they are backed up by simple daily measurable results that every employee can understand.  As with this example with Epicure, a quarterly theme is a powerful way to improve the performance in an organization while at the same time engaging the entire team in accomplishing something they can take pride in. Epicure performed two and a half times better than their unbelievable goal of 72 hours, while delivering 97% accuracy on all orders. To learn more about using themes and other strategic tools in improving your company’s performance, contact either Kevin Lawrence or David Greer.