Accomplishment Coaching

Culture de jour?

Sometimes the most fascinating coaching lessons come when you least expect them.

Driving in my car this morning I was listening to a news report about the fate of GM and Chrysler.  The person being interviewed used the phrase “creature of the culture” when describing Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM.

Without dissecting the phrase to death, what spoke to me was this question, “Where am I a creature of the culture”?

In other words, where have I won enough battles, manipulated enough systems and opted for the most comfort that I am no longer able to powerfully approach change in my business? 

Take a moment to ask yourself that question.  My answer scared me half to death.

I’ve won enough battles that now my ego schedules more vacations than I have time for.

I’ve manipulated enough systems that in several communities, what I have to say always goes.

I’ve opted for comfort rather than taking sufficient action in prospecting for my business.

Sound nasty?  You bet.  Yet it’s the most powerful reflection of the day.

You see, I want to take vacations, I want my voice to be heard, and I always want to share my business with someone new.  But I want those things because they are part of a culture of commitment to grow and develop.  I don’t want those things if they’re simply part of the culture of comfort.

So, take a moment to distinguish where you’ve become that “creature of culture”.  And most importantly, distinguish the culture… commitment or comfort.

Leadership Practices:

1. Write out the top five actions you’re taking to develop the leaders in your company, community or family.  Are those actions from commitment or comfort?
2. Ask five of your colleagues/contemporaries to identify where they see you taking action from commitment.  Then ask them where they see you taking action from comfort.
3. Make a weekly Top Six Results list.  This is NOT a “to-do” list, but a promise to produce specific, tangible results.
4. Identify the top five areas of your business or life in which you’re resisting change.  Now what?

Happy culture shift,

-Coach Preston

Practice = sometimes scary, always empowering

Stan owns a small IT business with seven employees and approximately $1.5M in annual sales.  Overall, he’s been successful for the past 15 years without much effort as the majority of his business has either just shown up or come from referrals.

But times have changed slightly.  The economy’s hit a few bumps, two large clients graduated to larger IT vendors, and one of Stan’s top salespeople left for another business a year ago.  As an experienced business owner, he took much of this in stride.  “No worries.  We’ll be just fine,” was his mantra.

But then one of his major clients declared bankruptcy and left Stan with one less client and $300,000 in unpaid receivables.  Stan saw the writing on the wall.  He needed to get into action and fast.

After hiring his first salesperson 10 years ago, Stan had stepped out of the sales operations of his business to focus on strategy and delivery.  Were the current circumstances going to require that he get back into sales?  Intellectually, he knew he was the one with the most knowledge and technical expertise. 

“But I haven’t been on a sales call for almost eight years,” the lamented.  “That’s ridiculous for me to think… after all, I’m the one who started the business.” 

He thought back to how he had strategically chosen the best technicians to support design and delivery.  He hand picked all the top vendors to support his services.  He hired some of the best technical salespeople in the market.  Stan was completely confident that he, as well as his team, consistently delivered top performance.

But, what he’d soon learn is that his ability to perform would actually be his Achilles heel.

When I met Stan, one of the first questions I asked him was “Stan, what’s your relationship to practice?”  He looked at me a bit strangely so I asked the question again.  “Stan when you or your salespeople go out to meet with prospects, what do you expect?”

“For us to perform, period,” he replied.

Then I asked, “Stan, how much time do you and your team spend practicing sales?”

“Why never.  We’ve been in business for years.  We don’t need to practice,” he said with a bit of annoyance.

Poor Stan; he’s fallen into the same trap that 95% of us fall into.  We expect performance without practice.  We expect ourselves and others to be great, perfect and effective from Day One.  “We just gotta get out there and perform and show we can do it.”

Consider that belief is a complete setup.

You see, all the folks we admire, Tiger Woods, Pavoratti, Steve Yzerman… got where they are by practicing, practicing, and practicing some more.

When we’re new at something, we’ve got Bambi legs, i.e. we’re not going to be very good at it.

I asked Stan how it was currently going performing without practice.

“Not good,” he replied.

So I asked, “Stan, what would be possible from having a great capacity for practice, in other words, to expand your ability to suck at something for awhile?”

Stan replied, “That’s crazy.  We can’t afford to do that!”

Then after a brief pause, he continued, “Except I see we can’t afford to keep expecting immediate performance either… so now what am I supposed to do?”

“So Stan, please listen to the following carefully.  Performance is possible.  Practice creates performance.”

“Practice does not mean thinking about it, analyzing it, exploring your feelings about it.  Practice means actually doing the thing that you don’t know how to do yet.”

“So, go practice.  Go be with people and notice where you can’t.  Sound awkward, look bad, get your nose bloody, and go skin your knees.  That’s the only way to break all that stuff up… through practice.”

“So Stan, what do you see are the next actions for you and your team?”

He replied, “First, I see I’m not the best one to support my sales team.  I’m too concerned with immediate performance and I know when I’m focused on that, I’ll never allow my team to practice.  So the first thing I’ll do is hire a coach.” 

“Next, I want to start shifting my relationship to performance and develop a new relationship with practice.  I can do that by inviting my managers to take bolder risks, be willing to fail and for me to not get upset about it.  I can also start going out and having sales conversations without trying to control how it goes.”

That was seven months ago.  In that time, Stan’s company has:

Made up for the $300,000 shortfall in receivables with three new clients

1. Stepped out of sales completely and has empowered his sales team to generate another $400,000 in new revenue
2. And has a technical team completing development of a software program that wasn’t expected to be complete for 18 months

Stan’s two biggest lessons:

1. Show up every day to practice rather than to perform.
2. Realize that no matter how valuable, knowledge and expertise exist only in the world of performance.  Curiosity and possibility exist in the world of practice.

Leadership Practices:

1. Invest less time focusing on problem solving and invest more time focusing on creative development (i.e. “Where do I want my business to be in 6, 12, 18 months” rather than “How am I going to manage in a down economy”).
2. Practice communicating from your heart rather than just your head.  Your heart is where connection, trust and true credibility are developed in relationships. You’re brilliance muscles are already well developed; no need to keep working out those.
3. Consider, as crazy as it sounds, your years of powerful education, training and experience create an inability to practice – that place in which huge possibility exists.  Education and experience build great knowledge, but inherently create a culture of performance without practice.  It can also devastate the curiosity and discovery which consistently lead to breakthrough results.

Swing Away,

-Coach Preston

Susan called me last week in the midst of big frustration.  She had just left a meeting in which her designers slammed the breaks on a new product launch.

“I can’t believe this team.  They’re constantly putting on the breaks with new projects; especially ones that will make the biggest difference in this company.  I don’t know what to do because this is exactly how it goes here… people come up with terrific plans for new products and the culture squashes them.”

Susan jumped into a dissertation about how she was going to develop a strategy to get her team enrolled in the project, create a timeline that fit within the current culture and hope that her design team actually aligned with the plans.  Although she mentioned it, she didn’t even dare to guess what the production team would say.

Does any of this sound familiar?  You’ve been promoted up through the ranks of your organization, adhered to the operational and cultural parameters, produced results, and have deep technical knowledge of your business.  You are a brilliant leader.

Yet, just like Susan, you find yourself stymied by “how it usually goes”.

In Susan’s example above, the next step is to figure our how to make this new product launch happen.  She knows the product development process intimately, knows just how far she can push the process, and is very knowledgeable with the literal and perceived limitations of her team and the production team.

At least this is the familiar process she finds herself in.  It’s just that the possibility this new product presents to the organization will insist the organization do things very differently.

So now what?

Susan’s fallen into the ageless trap of trying to figure out the “how we’ll get this done” part of moving projects forward.  This is where most of us live most of the time.  How will we get this done?  How will I have that conversation?  What exactly do I need to say or do to make the situation turn out another way?  All based in “how“.

Now, this isn’t all bad.  Understanding “how” to coach supports me in my business.  Knowing “how” to measure assists a carpenter in producing a fine product.

But as a leader in your organization, are you paid to “do” the work (the “how” stuff)?  Or are you paid to motivate, inspire and create?

Let’s go back to Susan.  After having a brief conversation with her, she approached her production counterpart with the following statement:

“I need your production team to assemble a machine in six months rather than the 13 it usually takes for our new packaging product.”

Within a day, she had a promise from her production counterpart that he’d be able to do eight months rather than 13.  Susan completely surprised and ecstatic.  Never had the production team made a promise like that.

Here’s the key shift:  Susan simply made a declaration combined with a request.  She did not get hung up (as she typically did) with figuring out “how” the production team would make it work.  She trusted her production counterpart and left the “how” to him.

In other words, her only focus was on the “what“.

Leadership Practices:

1. Grab a note pad, pen and clean out the ears… listen for and keep track of all the times you ask the following question (or versions of it) – “How will I do that?”
2. Make a list of all the “what’s” you want to have or to happen in your business.
3. Practice declaring these “what’s” into existence without worrying about the “how”.  I.e. “I will increase sales by 35% this quarter”, “We will hire a new technical manager by July 1, 2009″, or “I will put $750 per month into savings.”

Identify and invite at least one person who could support you in each “what” declaration.  I.e. invite your sales manager to come up with 5 ideas on “how” you’ll increase sales by 35%.

Leadership is not “doer-ship” or “how to-ship”.  It’s about leading, inspiring, making bold promises and speaking and listening from greatness and possibility.

What difference will it make in your business and life if you began giving up figuring out “how” and just made requests around the “what“?

Happy What You Want,

-Coach Preston

• You walk into a retail store on a Monday morning in February and the store clerk says, “Pretty cold out there, eh?”
• A work colleague sends you an email sharing words about the promotion of another colleague.
• You create a plan for sales growth that exceeds all past sales projections and results by 75%.

What does each one of these three scenarios have in common?

If you guessed that each has something to do with you, then you win!  But that’s not where I’m looking.

The common thread of each of these scenarios is that none of them have an opinion or interpretation attached to it.  In all instances, there is nothing but facts.

So what’s the point?  I’m curious about what opinions and interpretations you’re experiencing right now in reading this.  Are you frustrated?  Are you hoping that I actually make a good point?  Are you sensing you’ll be really bored with my musings?

Exactly.

You see, we all exist in a world of interpretations.  Whether we walk into a retail store, get an email from a colleague or make plans for the future, we rarely experience any of those activities without assigning meaning to them.  What’s it mean that the store clerk said what he did?  What’s my work colleague really trying to say?  How am I going to achieve these new sales goals in the current economy?

No matter how long you or I replay these examples, we’ll end up assigning some type of meaning to them.  Why do we do this?  Because as emotional creatures, we strive to have everything mean something or align with a value system to keep order in our lives. 

Ask yourself the following question, “What’s the meaning of life?”  If you’re like 99% of folks, you’ll come up with an answer to that question, no matter what it is.  Whatever your answer, you’ve assigned the answer meaning.  Meaning that fits into your version of how things should or shouldn’t go or be.

Just to be sure, there’s nothing wrong with this process.  We live successful and fruitful lives by leveraging this process.

However, consider that although it serves us many times, when it doesn’t serve us, it does some real damage.  Here’s an example:

An insurance agent had to let a salesperson go last week.  The agency has clear expectations of performance and the salesperson wasn’t meeting the expectations.  However, when the agency owner called the salesperson into her office, the salesperson put up a huge fight.  “You’re firing me because you don’t like me.  I’ve seen you with the other folks all nice and such.”  Whether that was the case or not, the salesperson disrupted the entire office for most of the afternoon because he made his lack of performance MEAN that the agency owner didn’t like him.

The salesperson felt “snubbed”.  Or at least that’s the interpretation he created.

So what action do you think this salesperson is taking now?  Is he seeking another opportunity or trying to “right” the perceived “wrong” by complaining and threatening to sue his former employer?

If you guessed the second, you win again!

More often or not, your actions are a direct reflection of your interpretations or the meaning you assign things; empowering or disempowering.  The trick is not to stop creating interpretations, but to become more aware that you’re doing what we all have been programmed to do – create interpretations.

Since we create disempowering interpretations, it means we can create empowering ones as well.  So when you go to take your next action on a project, sales goal or in a relationship, first check to see what your interpretations are of the current state of affairs.  That check-in may prove very empowering.

Leadership Practices:

1. There’s nothing to “fix” about creating interpretations.  That would be like trying to fix how your brainwaves operate – good luck.  Rather, practice being more aware of where, when and how you act based on interpretations.  The more aware you can become, the more you’ll be at choice rather than being a prisoner of undistinguished behavior.
2. When you do get hooked (upset) by an interpretation, look to where this interpretation likely originated… in your past somewhere.  In our example above, our salesperson was getting hooked by a past experience of being told he wasn’t good enough.  Being let go from the insurance agency had nothing to do with that past experience, but his interpretations made the connection.
3. When things don’t go the way you want them to, take a moment to ask “What actually did happen?”  In other words, distinguish the facts from the interpretation.  Many times, this is all that’s required to create a new set of actions that move you in the right direction.

Happy Meaning-Making,

-Coach Preston