What's Best Next

You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for January 2009

Archives for January 2009

What Does a Leader Do?

by

So much has been written on leadership, yet the concept of leadership often remains vague and unclear. The first reason for this is probably that many books on leadership are average to bad.

But even good books on leadership often fail to provide the core clarity that goes right to the heart of what leadership is. For example, Marcus Buckingham points out that the book Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence details “nineteen traits that effective leaders are supposed to possess.”

I have that book on my to read list, but now I’m afraid to read it. How are you going to keep 19 different competencies in mind? It is hard to apply such a broad spectrum in the day-to-day.

To be sure, it is helpful to understand the characteristics of something, especially leadership. There is much value in that.

But, before that, I would argue that you need to know the single, underlying core of a matter. Knowing the 19 characteristics of this or that is not going to be sufficient guidance. It’s too much — and too little — at the same time. They need to be integrated into a bigger idea.

You need to know the core of a matter so that you have a context for understanding the broader characteristics of it (in this case, leadership). So, what is the core of leadership? What is the essence of what a leader does?

Maybe the authors of Primal Leadership do this. But successful attempts at this are rare. I have seen nothing more helpful than the definition of leadership that Marcus Buckingham gives in his book The One Thing You Need to Know: … About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success.

Buckingham’s definition is not simply the best of a bunch of “good but still not exactly right” attempts; it resonates. When you read his definition, you immediately get it. Finally. You have an aha moment (at least I did), and realize “that’s it — that’s what leadership is.”

So, what does a leader do? Buckingham’s answer is:

Great leaders rally people to a better future.

A great leader does not control people, he rallies them. He rallies them to realize and bring about a vision of a better future.

Buckingham especially emphasizes the future-oriented nature of leadership:

The two key words in this definition are “better future.” What defines a leader is his preoccupation with the future. In his head he carries a vivid image of what the future could be, and this image drives him on. This image, rather than, say, goals of outperforming competitors, or being individually productive, or helping others achieve success, is what motivates the leader.

Don’t misunderstand. An effective leader might also be competitive, achievement oriented, and a good coach. But these are not the characteristics that make him a leader. He is a leader if, and only if, he is able to rally others to the better future he sees. (The One Thing You Need to Know, pp 59-60.)

One last thing: This means that a leader must have a talent for optimism. If you are not an optimistic person, nobody will want to go to the future that you see. Leaders rally to a better future. “As a leader you must believe, deeply, instincitvely, that things can get better” (p. 63).

Web-Enabled TV Sets Not Too Far Away

by

You can already access the web on your TV through devices like the Apple TV and so forth, but this requires hooking up devices external to your TV. Now it looks like web-enbabled televisions are on the horizon, as Yahoo, TV Makers Unveil Deals to Webify the Tube:

TV and the Web are converging, but until recently most of the movement has come at the Internet end. Broadcast channels are increasingly putting current episodes online, and U.S. audiences for Web video were up 34% in November 2008 over the previous year, according to new metrics from comScore.

Now the other side of the equation is starting to move, with the announcement by Yahoo that it has lined up manufacturing partners who will build high-definition TVs that will let viewers access Yahoo online services directly from their big home screens.

At the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday Yahoo revealed that it would work with Samsung electronics, Sony, LG Electronics and Vizio to build TV sets that can access the Yahoo Widget Channel.

The new service will use factory-installed software and the Ethernet connections used to provide cable TV to connect viewers with Yahoo TV widgets, small applications they can click while watching programming to get news, weather and finance reports from Yahoo.

Another widget will let users browse through photo’s they’ve stored on Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing portal.

Among non-Yahoo content, TV audiences will also be able to click on widgets that access eBay, Amazon, Twitter, Netflix, Blockbuster, music service Rhapsody and the Web sites for CBS, the New York Times, USA Today and Showtime.

Present Like Steve Jobs

by

BNET has a good 7-minute video on giving better presentations called Present Like Steve Jobs. “While most speakers merely convey information, Jobs inspires.”

Here are the main points:

  1. Unveil a single headline that sets the theme. For example, “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
  2. Provide the outline. For example, “I’ve got four things I’d like to talk to you about today. They are …”
  3. Open and close each section with a transition in between. Make it easy for listeners to follow your story, letting your outline serve as guideposts along the way.
  4. Don’t be stiff and formal. Have fun and be excited about your company, product, service.
  5. If you offer numbers and statistics, make them meaningful. For example, don’t just say “we’ve sold 4 million iPhones to date.” Say, “that’s 20,000 each day since it was released.”
  6. Make it visual. Don’t fill your slides with mind-numbing text and charts. Paint a picture for your audience without overwhelming them. Use video clips, demonstrations, and guests.
  7. Identify your memorable moment and build up to it.
  8. Rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse some more.
  9. Give your audience an added bonus to walk away with. “One more thing …”

Four Ways Social Networking Can Serve Your Organization

by

BNET has a good article on Four Ways Social Networking Can Build Your Business. Here’s the intro:

Social networking may sound fluffy, but it can translate into real benefits for you and your company. William Baker, a professor of marketing at San Diego State University, surveyed 1,600 executives and found that firms that rely heavily on external social networks scored 24 percent higher on a measure of radical innovation than companies that don’t. Online networks can help you hire the right people, market your product — or even find a manufacturer.

The four ways social networking can serve your organization are:

  1. Finding unexpected collaborators.
  2. Building a global business from scratch.
  3. Finding talent in the trenches.
  4. Viral marketing on the cheap.

Read the whole thing.

Do Goals Get in the Way?

by

Yes, that’s the point.

They get in the way of less important courses of action.

This does reduce flexibility — the flexibility to do what is not worth your time. But you should not set or implement your goals in a way that blinds you to genuine, spontaneous opportunity.

There’s the rub.

Seth Godin had two good posts recently that relate to both sides:

The Thing About Goals

Having goals is a pain in the neck.

If you don’t have a goal (a corporate goal, a market share goal, a personal career goal, an athletic goal…) then you can just do your best. You can take what comes. You can reprioritize on a regular basis. If you don’t have a goal, you never have to worry about missing it. If you don’t have a goal you don’t need nearly as many excuses, either.

Not having a goal lets you make a ruckus, or have more fun, or spend time doing what matters right now, which is, after all, the moment in which you are living.

The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run.

It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact… those people have goals.

Willing to Be Lucky

I just heard Kurt Andersen quote E.B. White with this glorious phrase.

How willing is your organization to be lucky? What about you in your career and your marketing efforts? Or in the people you meet or the places you go or the movies you see or the books you read?

My closest friends each were found as a result of chance encounters and luck. So were my biggest ideas and some of my most successful ventures.

It’s very easy to plot a course for today that minimizes the chance of disappointment or bad outcomes or lousy luck.

I wonder if you could plot a different course, one that created opportunities for good luck?

Thoughts on How to Schedule Your Day

by

It may not seem much in line with GTD, but I believe in having a general framework from which you approach your day. In other words, a basic schedule of sorts that gives some behind-the-scenes guidance for how to slot things in your day. This template is not something you literally put on your calendar, but is more of a mindset.

The Four Things You Need to Do Each Day

My thoughts on this are continuing to emerge, but it seems to me that there are four types of things you need to carve out time for in any given day:

  1. Routines
  2. Releases
  3. Projects
  4. People

Definitions

Routines means your daily workflow routines, such as processing email and your physical inbox.

Releases are small actions that are not project related. GTD has you put these on your next actions list. I found that doing so actually ruined my next action list because I would always end up with six trillion mosquito tasks staring at me all day long. I’d want to do things just to get them off my list, and not because it was the most strategic use of time.

So now I group all of these mosquito tasks together into a project of their own, which I keep outside of my next action list. My “next action” on them is then “work through releases.”

Projects are any unique initiatives you are working on which have a beginning and an end.

People means interaction, networking, general management stuff, meetings, stuff on your calendar, and so forth. Obviously much of this is also involved in projects as well.

Dividing Up Your Project Time

Within your projects each week, I’m thinking that it might be best to divide up time in this way:

  1. 70% on core projects: Things that execute and improve those things that are right at the heart of your business / ministry / nonprofit model.
  2. 20% on progress projects: Things that will generate entirely new growth and approaches that did not exist before. This is akin to the concept “20% time” at Google or 15% time that 3M began back in the 50s and such. The principle behind designating time to both core projects and progressive projects is: “preserve the core, stimulate progress” (Jim Collins). Be doing both.
  3. 10% on learning projects: Developing your skills and knowledge. Do this “on the clock,” so to speak. It’s too important to only leave to evenings and free time.

How Much To Spend on Each Area

This section really should have come before the above section on dividing up your project time. But dividing up your project time is of greater importance, so I put that first.

Anyway, let’s talk now about how much time these four overall areas should be given each day. This will vary for everyone. And it’s not rigid (except for, as much as possible at least, the first: getting your routines out of the way immediately). Again, it’s more of a lose agenda I keep in my head that is very adaptable; it’s not some firm structure.

Here are some initial thoughts:

Routines: 1 hour or less. Do these right away. Take that very seriously. Get in to work early and hammer out your email, review your RSS feeds, plan your day, and do any other daily routines. Get these out of the way in one batch early on so that you don’t have to keep trying to find time to finish them up throughout the day. They will only get in your way if you don’t nail them out immediately.

Releases: 1 hour or so. After doing your routines, take maybe 30 minutes to an hour to clear out non-project actions. These are basically the “next actions” in the GTD system. If you clear some out every day, you can keep up. Again, knock these out in a concentrated batch early in the day, before the phone starts to ring and new email starts to come in.

Projects: 2 hours or more. After your routines and releases are out of the way, turn to concentrated time on your priority projects. By this time it might be 9:00 or 9:30, so interruptions are going to start. That’s fine. Try to avoid getting interrupted, but if you got your routines and some releases out of the way, you’ll be able to handle interruptions better without getting too side-tracked. You can’t isolate yourself, anyway.

The amount of time spent concentrating on projects will vary with your job. For some people it might be a lot more than 2 hours a day. For others it may be much less.

People: I don’t have a time recommendation here. This could be the rest of your day, depending on the nature of your job. As long as you got in time to get rid of your routines and some standard action items, along with some concentrated focus on projects, you’re doing well and should be able to focus the way you ought in regard to meetings and interacting over your work.

Free: The core principle behind my above thoughts is to get in early and get routine stuff out of the way right way, and then make some progress on your next actions (releases). Then you can work in more releases as desired in between meetings and project work and be more discretionary in how you use your time.

In other words, be disciplined so that you can be spontaneous. If you aren’t keeping up with at least some baseline of progress at the very beginning of each day, the spontaneous time will never feel like it comes. You will always be trying to “keep up.”

What if your job is to do routine things? For example, processing insurance claims. That would go in the project time, except you would be doing operations (ongoing things that involve more than one step) rather than projects (initiatives that come to an end and involve more than one step). You’d still have daily workflow routines to clear out right away, such as email and your physical inbox and stuff, releases that may not pertain to your ongoing operational stuff, and some projects.

These are some loose, initial thoughts. The main aim driving my thinking here has been: If you want to be able to spend 70% of your project time on core projects and 30% of your time on advancement and learning projects, you need to be able to group your work into some type of “categories.” If you don’t, it will be harder to single out your project time from other time.

Simply doing projects, and even next actions, “whenever they work during the day” has never worked for me. In order to have the “whenever it works” time, I need to also have some designated time for them as well.

Making it All Work: David Allen's New Book Now Available

by

For those who haven’t already heard, David Allen’s latest book is now available: Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and Business of Life. I haven’t read it yet, but when I do I’m sure I’ll be interacting with it in some posts.

Here’s the summary:

Why this book? Why now? GTD, now in 28 languages, has become a viral phenomenon around the world. An understanding of the reasons for that success and the principles behind the power of GTD opens a much broader application of the underlying formulae for success, across the whole span of life and work. “Making It All Work” illuminates the true basics of self-management – control and perspective – and how to get and keep both in any and every situation with solutions simpler, and more sophisticated, than you think.

David Allen shows us how to excel in dealing with our daily commitments, the unexpected, and the information overload that threatens to drown us. “Making It All Work” provides an instantly usable, success-building toolkit for winning “the game.”

“Making It All Work” addresses: How to figure out where you are in life and what you need; How to be your own consultant and the CEO of your life; Moving from hope to trust in decision-making; When not to set goals; Harnessing intuition,spontaneity, and serendipity; And why life is like business and business is like life.

BNET has several excerpts from the book (HT: Lifehacker):

In Defense of Buzzwords … Sort Of

by

It’s not uncommon for people to say “I don’t like that word — it’s overused.” For example, I think the word “synergy” may have gotten burned out back in the 90s or so. Words like “strategy” and others are today’s victims.

It is important to be original. We should continually be coming up with new ways of saying important things. That not only keeps things interesting, but also advances thinking and stimulates new ideas.

Let’s just not forget that the concepts behind the words that we feel are over-used usually remain valid and significant. Don’t let the concepts be devalued in your mind because you don’t like hearing the words again and again.

And if the bulk of things in your life need to be new in order to be meaningful, you are going to get exhausted. Because even the concept of “newness” can become old. Avoiding cliches can become cliche.

And in the meantime, you’ll also be left with a reduced vocabulary for communication. Buzzwords came to exist for a reason: they do communicate something. Every field has its jargon — the medical field, sports, the business world, the world of work. Without buzzwords, there are certain things that are going to be more complicated to explain, wasting time.

Come up with new, un-buzzword-like ways of saying things continually. But you can’t reinvent the whole field of buzzwords at once. You will always have to use them in some way or another.

The problem is when people use buzzwords without really understanding what they mean, as an attempt to appear credible simply because they’ve used a certain word. That’s ugly, and to be avoided. But the intelligent, thoughtful use of a buzzword sometimes is what keeps the ideas clear and facilitates effective conversation. Maybe, when used in that way, they aren’t even buzzwords after all.

This is probably a bit of risky post — it sounds like I’m devaluing the concept of newness and originality. But I’m saying the opposite: namely, let’s make sure we don’t become unoriginal in our opposition to lack of originality.

A Productivity Tip from Jerry Seinfeld

by

Lifehacker has a good post from a while back giving a very useful productivity tip from Jerry Seinfeld:

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don’t feel like it.

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write.

Read the whole thing to get the details on how it works.

The author of the post, Brad Isaac, points out that this technique can be used in many different areas. He’s used it “for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.”

I’ve done a variation of this with some things as well, including eating less, trying to read 3 books a day, and getting up super early, and found it to be very effective (though the 3 books a day didn’t last too long!).

You can even implement this technique on your iPhone with the Goalkeep app.

Maslow Revised His Hierarchy of Needs

by

Remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? I recall learning about it for the first time back in about 7th grade social studies. Still today, I see it referred to all the time in management and productivity books. Even books on project management talk about it.

Starting with the lower-level needs and moving to the higher-level needs, the hierarchy is:

  1. Basic physical needs: food, clothing, shelter.
  2. Security: physical welfare and security of belongings.
  3. Social: sense of belonging, acceptance, friendship.
  4. Self-esteem: accomplishment, respect for self, capability.
  5. Self-actualization: performing at your peak potential.

(That’s the best summary I’ve seen; it’s from The Project Management Professional Study Guide, p. 323).

Whether you agree or disagree with Maslow, here’s what’s really interesting: According to Stephen Covey and Rebecca Merrill in First Things First, Maslow revised his hierarchy later in life.

He realized that the highest need is not self-actualization, but self-transcendence — namely, living for a purpose higher than self.

That’s significant. Even Maslow recognized that, ironically, a real sense of fulfillment does not come from seeking simply your own welfare, but from living and doing things for a purpose beyond yourself.

This could be pondered at so many levels. I’m going to make the application to career and management (I hope that’s not a let-down!). One of the reasons people feel a lack of significance in their jobs is because they don’t see how it relates beyond themselves (and their company).

In fact, people today are more and more looking for this connection to wider significance in their jobs. They want to do things that fit a larger purpose and do good on a wider scale than just meeting the bottom line, or accomplishing the next task at hand.

To keep people in your organization motivated — genuinely motivated — keep before them a line of site to the wider purposes that their work serves.

And that’s probably more important to most people than what they are paid.