culture – Page 8 – Elisa K. Spain

We Are Bound By What We Know

February 21, 2016February 19, 2016 by Elisa Spain1 Comment

Ah, the wonder of a child. We hear all the time that all children are creative, all children are artists; and then something happens as adults and we self-select into those who are creative and artistic, and those who are not.

I wonder how much of this is because as adults we are bound by what we know. The more we bring our knowledge and experience to a given circumstance, the more likely we are to miss an opportunity to look with the fresh eyes of a child. On the other hand, knowledge often equals wisdom, the ability to learn from experience and therefore make better choices.

So, how do we know when we are bringing wisdom and when we are bringing limiting beliefs to a given situation? Perhaps these questions can help:

Is what I am about to do something I have done before and if so, is my previous experience relevant?
If it is something new, is my previous experience truly relevant, or is it holding me back?
Am I uncomfortable with taking on something new and therefore looking for knowledge that will justify my discomfort?
What if I suspended judgement and argued for a reason to say yes?
What if I suspended judgement and argued for a reason to say no?

Multitasking Isn’t All Bad

February 14, 2016February 12, 2016 by Elisa Spain1 Comment

Multitasking might reduce productivity but it may also boost creativity. Research shows that at least at this stage of evolution, we humans are less productive when we multitask. Article after article reminds us we actually accomplish less multitasking than if we simply did one thing at a time and saw each task through to completion before starting the next one.

What these articles fail to mention is the impact of multitasking on creativity. Have you ever found that when designing a new product or creating a new program that taking a pause, working on something else and coming back to it actually boosts your creativity? A recent study detailed by David Burkus author of “The Myths of Creativity”, supports this experience.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Sydney and examined three groups of students tasked with completing an “alternate uses” test — a common creativity drill wherein subjects are given an object and asked to come up with as many uses for it as they can.

The first group was given four straight minutes to work on the exercise.

The second group was given two minutes to work on it, then told to work on a different creativity test — namely, they were tasked with coming up with synonyms for a list of words. They were then given two minutes to return to the original test.

The third group was given the same two minutes on — two minutes off — two minutes back on structure. But during the subjects’ two minutes off, rather than taking on a different creative task, were instead given the much more passive activity of completing a survey that asked them about themselves.

When the results came in, they were fairly stark. The first group, the one that worked for four minutes straight, generated an average of 6.9 ideas during the alternative use test. The second group, which took on creative work in between different legs of the alternative use test, generated 7.6. And the final group, which stepped away from creativity tasks for a few minutes, came up with 9.8 ideas.

In short, multi-tasking is not all bad. In fact, in the right circumstance it may actually be good. So, the next time you have a creative project you are working on, go ahead and stop, go do something completely different and more mundane and you may find a creative boost.

Is It Empty Or Filled With Possibilities?

January 17, 2016 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

For the last month or so, my husband and I have been purging, shredding, scanning, throwing away, and donating stuff. We decided to welcome the new year with less.

For me, less stuff opens up possibilities. Less stuff gives us the freedom to go where we want, if we want, now or in the future. The way I see it, getting rid of stuff opens up space; space to expand and to more easily see and access the things that bring me joy; and in some cases, exchange the old for the new.

For others, stuff is what connects us to the past. Without stuff tightly filling a space, rather than an opening, there is a void, a loss to mourn or a fear of what the future might hold.

Opportunity or emptiness? Abundance or scarcity? These are questions to ask ourselves, as we choose to lighten our collection of stuff (or not).

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

It's That Time Again…

January 3, 2016 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

What time? In business we call it goal setting time. In our personal lives we call them “new year’s resolutions”.

Here’s how Webster’s defines each of these:

Resolution: “to make a definite and serious decision to do something”

Goal: “something that you are trying to do or achieve”

Hmm, resolution sounds much more committed and yet, the common lore is resolutions are broken soon after made. Why is that?

Here’s the process most follow for business goals:

we set goals for the period
we prioritize the goals and choose the most important to focus on
we identify the steps we, and our team, need to take to get there
we identify the dependencies that exist and order the process accordingly
we establish monitoring systems and milestones, so we know how we are progressing toward the goal

In short, for business goals we have a process and for those who follow the process, results follow.

In my experience, working with business leaders, some follow a similar process for personal goals and many do not.

I wonder what has to change in our mindset for us to begin to treat personal goals or resolutions as “definite and serious” with the same level of importance as we do our business goals?

For some, it is a health scare that reminds us that life is short and our families depend on us.

Is that really the only way to get from here to there?

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

What Does All This Mean, What Will We Do, And How Will We Go About Doing It?

December 20, 2015 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

I’ve decided to end the year with a guest blog from my friend and fellow Vistage Chair, Larry Cassidy. We’ve been having a discussion amongst us Vistage Chairs about the recent tragedies, hate crimes and terrorism and the related impact some members have begun to see in their companies. For me, Larry’s commentary expressed the challenge we face as a nation and caused me to pause. With that in mind, I am making it visible here, offering you some food for thought as you begin the holiday season.

First, a couple of stories and then Larry’s post.

One Chair began this conversation by sharing these stories

One member reported an angry customer screaming in the lobby of her financial services company that the customer service rep he dealt with (second generation Pakistani American) should go back to her home country.

Another member reported, after I asked if he had seen any evidence of workplace intolerance, that he had four Muslim employees in his IT department and he overheard one of the non-IT employees refer to them as the ‘sleeper cell’. He didn’t know what to say or do. But now that I asked the question, he realizes he needs to discuss with his HR director how to find ways to insure there is not a hostile workplace environment.

Larry’s Post

My first newsletter was sent on June 27, 2011, some 230 newsletters ago. And for those 4½ years I have stepped carefully around politics. Today I will take edge up to that tricky topic, not so much traditional politics, but rather on who we are, and what price we 322-million folks are willing to pay to be that.

We have undergone many serious gut-shots in the past several years, Paris and San Bernardino being the latest. As I ponder these tragedies, and before releasing this newsletter into the wild, my thoughts go to three big ideas:

becoming the best version of ourselves,
the hard price we are (or are not) willing to pay to get and stay there,
our leadership as a part of all that.

There are many pieces to that, and we each have our own ideas. I will share mine below. You may disagree. But I do so because it is a conversation we cannot avoid, and all voices are required.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

The Statue of Liberty, dedicated 10/28/1886

Terrorism is a stark and frightening example of what others can do to us. Paris. San Bernardino. Too much, too often. And leadership is what we choose to do about it, and how we go about doing it.

Once again, we confront events with which we have not contended (remember: Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11), and while such moments spawn anger and paranoia, they also summon our better angels. Which is one more good reason we would rather live here than anywhere else in the world, our flaws notwithstanding.

As I now savor almost-eight decades, I wonder if our fears might extinguish the Statue of Liberty’s torch, our shining beacon of freedom. And I question whether my opportunity to be born here, to live here, and to experience this thing called America, could have happened had such fear and paranoia won the early days of our history.

A bit dramatic? Go back a century-or-more, and we Irish were potato-heads, lazy scum. Italians were looked on as not much better. Jews? Forget it. African Americans, which was hardly what they were called? Slaves at best. Nor does that count Japanese-Americans or German-Americans in WWII. Pretty lucky for we shoddy Irish (and me) that we got past much of that.

Yes, we each have a right to feel, to fear, to embrace and to be safe. But before we pounce, look around. Soak it in. The ethnic, religious and nationalistic mess we behold is what has combined to make us great. It is our grand experiment, a palate on which each color and belief and ancestry is a part. It is us. So, what will it be ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now?

Once again, we are in the process of deciding. In every business, classroom, sanctuary, gathering and discussion. And we are the leaders: the parents, coaches, elders, teachers, business executives. Make no mistake, we are deciding, we are leading and we are teaching.

So what will we do, and how will we go about doing it?
Which parts of what made this country great will we keep, and which will we discard?
Will we mirror or will we reject what those who threaten us espouse?
And once we decide, once we move on, will we have found our way to safety while continuing to lift our lamp beside the golden door?

This is a big deal. And we are all right in the middle of it.

Larry Cassidy

P.S. This is the last post this year, see you back here in January.

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

Are Your Expectations Too High Or Too Low?

December 13, 2015 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

How do you know?

Sometimes we set our sights too low and don’t achieve as much as we can.
Sometimes we expect too much from ourselves and constantly feel as though we don’t measure up.
Sometimes we expect too much from our team or our key vendors and they feel as though they can’t please us.
Sometimes we expect too little or don’t ask for what we really want from our employees or our vendors and we end up taking on too much ourselves instead.

How do we know which it is? For me the litmus test is this…

How often are our expectations of ourselves or others met?
What does our gut say about that percentage? Too high? Too low?
What then is the next step to get our expectations in line with what is possible?

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

Right People At The Right Time…

November 22, 2015 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Most of the clients I have worked with over the years founded their businesses; same is true for the members of my Vistage CEO group. These folks often join Vistage because they want to grow and build a professionally managed business. They are grateful and loyal to the folks that helped them get started. And, sometimes these two objectives are at odds.

The CEO knows in his head that change won’t happen without changing some key players. (After all, if the folks that are there were going to get you where you wanted to be, you would be there already). And, in his heart he is torn.

As humans, when confronted with substantial change, particularly within a structure, the mind tends to go immediately to “what am I going to lose?” Often there is much to gain, occasionally something to lose, but this is our mind at work, much less than the process at work. The question becomes, how do we overcome these fears and realize that forward progress only comes with transformation?

Here are some questions to consider, as you think about your own evolution:

Owner: Am I in the right role in the organization? Am I best suited to be the investor, the operator, or both?
Owner: The age old question, are the right people in the right seats on the bus to get to the destination I want?
Owner or Key Executive: Am I spending most of my time do the things that are in my genius?
Owner or Key Executive: Am I performing at the same level (or higher) today as I was when I began? If not, what change could I make so that I am?
Owner or Key Executive: Am I making decisions out of loyalty rather than what is best for the organization? If so, what is the cost? And what really is loyalty?… Are we doing someone (or ourselves) a favor keeping them (staying) in a role that we are not excellent at? How might the organization (or I) benefit by moving on if I am not performing?

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

As Time Goes By….

November 15, 2015 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Lots of talk these days about the increasing role the millennials are playing in the workplace. At the same time, many boomers remain in the workforce. The result: younger people managing folks older than them.

Millennials tell me they often feel uncomfortable in these situations. Today, I was talking with a young man taking over a family business. He shared with me that while he is excited about the opportunity, he is wondering why none of the “seasoned guys”, who have been with his father a long time, wanted to buy the business from his Dad. He is also wondering how they feel about him being their boss.

While the dynamics of a family business are different, I hear the same story from millennials in all types of organizations. And, I remember when I too was in a similar situation. I was 24 and became the manager of 3 divisions of a large company. Two of the direct managers were older than me and one was my age. Turned out the most challenging one, as you may have guessed, was with Nevin, the one my age. He wanted the job I had.

Here is what I learned from this experience. It is up to both the manager and the now junior employee to make it work. The best situation for me was with Rita, a graceful woman 30 years older than me. Rita didn’t want my job; she loved the job she had. And, while I was her boss, I learned a ton from her. She was gracious in sharing her wisdom and I credit her with helping me become a better leader. Nevin was a bigger challenge; we had some rough waters for some time. What we learned was there was a place for both of us and we could learn from each other. The result, we remained friends for many years to come. When I moved on, he took over the role I had, and years later, I introduced him to a friend who helped him launch a writing and speaking career he had dreamed of.

If this resonates with you, whether you are the boss in this situation or the older or peer subordinate, what are you doing to make the extra effort to make this work for both of you?

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

Tell Me A Story…

November 1, 2015 by Elisa Spain1 Comment

We humans seem to learn best, relate best and connect best, with stories. As children we learn the culture and norms of our society from fairytales and fables told by our parents. In the beginning of communities and societies, we told stories to the members of our “tribes” to initiate them into the tribe.

In organizations, we learn the culture and norms of our company from stories. For our teams and our customers, the stories they hear about the company and the stories they tell about the company matter. And today they share stories within their social networks, spreading the stories so much further than was possible before (via Yelp, Glassdoor, Twitter, to name a few).

The questions that come to my mind are:

What stories are you telling yourself, your team, your customers?
Are you intentional about the content of these stories and who you are telling them to?
What greater impact could you have by telling stories and fables of your own?

What Our Vistage Members Want You to Know

How Do You Keep Your Mojo?

October 18, 2015 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Sometimes the demands of one part of our life, work or family, consume us. Sometimes because of a crisis, sometimes because of a spike in workload or children’s sports or…, sometimes just because we become consumed.

These days, mobile devices link us 24/7 to the office, our bosses, our employees and coworkers. We are, as I heard it said recently, living in time poverty. It may be necessary, now more than ever, to pause, regroup and allow ourselves to do something counterintuitive; listen to music, go sailing, jogging, practice yoga, make pottery or simply go for a walk.

Why counterintuitive? Because our responsible self says, stay with it, do the work, finish the project, take care of the sick loved one, etc. We tell ourselves its selfish to do something for ourselves “at a time like this”.

If we think of our lives as a three legged stool….when one leg is gone, it won’t balance and falls over. We can’t take the pressures of work and family and go back and forth between them alone….that’s where the third leg, a completely different activity that is our individual interest alone, comes in.

At the height of World War 2 when the pressures were immense, President Roosevelt would escape to his stamp collection for an hour or so, doing something completely different. General George Marshall would ride horseback many mornings to relieve the pressures of his job of building and leading an Army of 8 million men and women.

Think about it—