negotiation – Page 2 – Elisa K. Spain

Not Asking Has a Price Tag

June 11, 2017June 10, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

We Vistage chairs often talk about the importance of staying curious, of asking questions. Often as leaders we tell ourselves that the only “cost” of being directive vs. asking questions are soft costs. For example, we make assumptions that are wrong and have to start over when we learn we are headed in the wrong direction.

What about the hard costs of heading in the wrong direction?

What about when we as leaders, march into a new area, or start a new initiative, everyone follows, and we are headed in the wrong direction? Money is invested and then we have to start over. If only we had asked a few questions up front, we tell ourselves afterwards, the price tag associated with the failure might have been avoided.

This TED talk, titled simply, “If you want to help someone, shut up and listen!”, by Ernesto Sirolli, brings this point home in a global way. Ernesto Sirolli is a noted authority in the field of sustainable economic development and is the Founder of the Sirolli Institute, an international non-profit organization that teaches community leaders how to establish and maintain Enterprise Facilitation projects in their community.

What does this talk have to do with leadership? A lot.

What does it have to do with business? I’ll let you decide that.

As We Search For What Matters, Must We Choose?

May 14, 2017May 12, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

The Choice

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story’s finished, what’s the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day’s vanity, the night’s remorse.

William Butler Yeats, 13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939

I came across this poem some time ago and was reminded of it in a recent discussion in my Vistage groups about “what matters”. Today we constantly talk about achieving balance; we perceive that it is the stress of modern times that creates this challenge. Yet this poem was written in the early 20th century. A reminder that this quest is the human condition, a daily challenge of choice. Here are the questions that come to mind:

Must we choose between success in life and work?
Or is it the search for perfection of one or the other that forces the choice? e.g. Albert Einstein was portrayed by his biographers as a poor husband and father. Was he, or was this the judgement of the biographers?
As we search for meaning in our lives, must we distinguish between what defines “life” and what defines “work” or is it possible to simply pursue what matters to us?
On this day devoted to mothers, what are you telling or demonstrating to your children about this question?

Care, Attention, Competency

May 7, 2017May 6, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Care, Attention and Competency (CAC), these are the watchwords of the client service model for one of my Vistage member’s business. This business is in the construction industry and as he explains, bottom line of what they deliver is service, not construction.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the progression (regression) from Better, Faster, Cheaper to simply faster and cheaper. So where does CAC come in? Perhaps as several of my readers responded, the bifurcation is already happening, certainly in the consumer world (think airlines premium seats/status vs. economy/discount seats), and beginning in the B2B world. If this is so, then in order to deliver better, CAC must become the standard.

What exactly does this mean? For me it means, we meet the customer where they are, we provide care, in the manner they want us to show it. We give them our attention when they ask, and not wait until they demand it. And, we remind ourselves that competency, while the baseline, isn’t enough. In fact, studies show that customers who receive care and attention are more tolerant of errors, because they trust we will resolve them.

In short, CAC begins with the Golden Rule, and reaches it’s full value with the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. The alternative to the Golden Rule is the Platinum Rule: “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”

Here are the questions I leave you with:

Assuming the bifurcation is happening, where is your business on the continuum?
Are you focused on Faster/Cheaper or are you seeking to differentiate by offering Better?
How might CAC apply, or not, to your service delivery? And are you delivering by the Golden Rule or the Platinum Rule?

Better, Faster, Cheaper

April 23, 2017April 21, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

For many years, the adage was “do you want it right, on-time or cheap, pick two”. And then somewhere in the 80’s and 90’s, perhaps associated with the dot.com era, marginal costs moved close to zero in some industries. Because of this, we began to expect all three. In fact the new adage became “better, faster, cheaper”. And, some believed we had moved to an era where all three were in fact possible.

Or did we?

I wonder if instead, more and more businesses, driven by customer unwillingness to pay for quality, have simply picked two on our behalf, with the two being cheap and fast. We see this happening in B2B, B2C and B2Self (i.e. w/internal corporate customers) three examples:

Amazon delivers using their own drivers because they are cheap. Amazon made this choice because they believe what we consumers want from them is fast and free delivery and when quality of logistics suffers (packages left in strange places, in the rain, etc.), we are willing to accept that cost.
Airlines overbook and sometimes have to deny boarding to passengers or in a recent highly profiled United airlines case, remove passengers to accommodate crew. This recent scandal with United brought attention to the consequences of this (and while this particular situation captured on video was awful, we all know it isn’t just United Airlines that overbooks and removes passengers).
HR support and IT support is outsourced in many, perhaps most?, large corporations. Ask any employee or user of IT which 2 of the three choices they are getting?

In an article entitled “Why Flying in America Keeps Getting More Miserable” Matthew Yglesias of Vox news sums this up well when he says, decades’ worth of evidence suggests we prefer cheap and safe to pleasant. Pleasant, defined as available seats all the time combined with higher prices to cover the costs, is a price we pretty clearly could bear as a society if we chose to, but as consumers we have collectively and repeatedly chosen not to. Instead, wherever competition has reared its head in the industry, the mass market has aimed for low prices above all else, followed by a vigorous culture of collective complaining when something goes wrong.

Where will this take us in the future…

Will this trend toward faster and cheaper continue to drive most products and services?
If it does, will there be exceptions where quality is the driver? The obvious exception is medical products and medical care, or is it?
Will some markets bifurcate such that parallel services will develop where consumers are willing to pay for quality?

What are the implications for your business?

What Does “Implement Dictatorially” Mean?

April 16, 2017April 3, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

A few weeks ago, I posted the following as the leadership quote for the month of March:

“Decide democratically, implement dictatorially.” —Peter Schutz, CEO of Porsche 1981-1986

One of my readers replied with the following comment:

“Schutz got the first part of that quote right. I however believe you implement collaboratively.”

In our conversation that followed his comment, I was reminded how everything is subject to interpretation. My reader heard Schutz say “command and control”.

What I hear in this quote is, gather input in the planning and then once the decision is made, get it done. It is incumbent upon a leader to hear input from those impacted by a decision. Two reasons for this:

to inform the decision, perhaps others see opportunities or risks that the leader does not
to allow those impacted to feel heard, to weigh in

And, it is incumbent upon a leader to move quickly once the decision is made. The time for feedback is over, it is time to execute and for all parties involved to move together toward implementation so as to maximize the benefits of the decision once it is made.

How do you see this question?

And What About Our Own Resistance?

April 9, 2017April 3, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Whether leader or follower, we are all in the position of having change thrust upon us. Vistage Speaker, Mike Scott, responded to my March 19th blog (Is Resistance The Problem?), with the questions I asked, turned inward. Thank you Mike for this wonderful reminder of the responsibility we each have to notice our own resistance.

HOW DO I OPERATE?

I justify my resistance when:

1) I resist when I don’t “get it.”

2) I think I know more than I do therefore I don’t actively listen. Then I resist.

3) I think I heard all you said when I didn’t. Then I resist.

4) I think I know what you’re going to say so I stop listening. Then I resist.

5) I mentally criticize what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. Then I resist.

6) I really don’t know what you mean when I think I do. Then I resist.

I blame others when I should be asking, “What was my part in this problem that was created?”

In my workshops one of the principles is to have people repeat or paraphrase all verbal requests. I’m going to use this as the logical justification for repeating and paraphrasing. A new context.

Continuous Improvement

March 12, 2017March 10, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Last week I talked about ratings and how we seem to have lost the purpose. So if ratings have taken on a life of their own, what do we do instead to foster continuous improvement?

In the manufacturing world there is the concept of Kaizen, brought to the U.S. by Edward Deming. It’s a simple concept that goes like this. Intentionally and continuously look for ways to innovate and improve your business processes. Employees, customers and other stakeholders can be a source of those ideas.

So, rather than give up on surveys, what if we turned them into something useful?

Instead of focusing on the ratings, what if we focused on the comments?
Instead of looking for what is wrong, what if we looked for what is right?
Instead of focusing on big initiatives, what if we encouraged our stakeholders to share ideas for continuous improvement?

Once we start collecting these ideas and small innovations, what metrics can we put in place to measure the results of our continuous improvement efforts?

Is Everyone a 5 or a 10?

March 5, 2017March 4, 2017 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

We seem to be in a place where everyone is rated, everything is surveyed and everyone expects a rating of 5 (or when a 10 point scale, a rating of 10).

It began with the car dealer who tells us, “You will be getting a survey and if your rating will be anything less than 10, please let me know now so I can fix it”. They make it sound like they will lose their job if they get anything less than a 10, and perhaps that is so. Then came Uber and Lyft and customer service surveys every time we call anyone for anything. And the message is the same, the results of a rating less than 5 (or 10) will be disastrous for the person being rated. Frankly we have a similar system in Vistage with our resource speakers.

I want to believe the intent of all these surveys is to solicit feedback for continuous improvement. Somehow we moved away from feedback to scoring; and from scoring to ranking; and from ranking to “everyone gets a 5”; kinda like the stereotype we hear about the millennial generation where everyone gets a trophy.

So what to do?

Do we all just play along?
Is it worth it to give a fair rating, and what we believe to be a true rating, knowing that most everyone else is giving a 5 or a 10?
Is it worth it if the person on the receiving end may actually lose their job for a 4 or an 8, or lose their opportunity to get more gigs?
What happens when we encounter that rare person who truly is a 5 or a 10, what then? How do we reward them, communicate to them that they are a star?
Or is finding stars not the point? Is the goal simply to differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable, pass/fail?

What do you do in these situations?

But, Do They Really Like You?

February 5, 2017January 27, 2017 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Many years ago, Sally Field famously accepted her Oscar saying, “You like me,” she declared. “You really like me.” With the strong emphasis on the word really. Turns out what she actually said was, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me.” We probably misremember or misheard the quote, because it isn’t just actors who are primarily motivated by being liked, we all are. Psychologists say this misquote is so sticky because it exemplifies a central human need.

And, whether we are liked, impacts our ability to have long term, lasting, success. Likability is an essential component of EQ. Likability impacts the legacy we leave.

I am fascinated, particularly lately, with how this shows up in politics. Here in Chicago, our mayor nearly lost the last election, despite what he has accomplished, because lots of people, don’t like him. Our previous mayor was extremely popular. As a result, he could do things that people didn’t like (like swoop in and close an airport in the middle of the night, without any authority to do so), because people liked him, even if they didn’t always like what he did. The airport closing, by the way, turned out to be something the citizens of Chicago ended up liking because it became a lovely park and concert venue. And, our parks and the overall beauty of the city is part of Mayor Daley’s legacy.

Working with CEOs and executives, I observe the same phenomenon. The CEOs who, like Sally Field, are really liked, by their teams, get results. They get a pass when they make a mistake, especially when they own it and admit it. And more importantly, they get support when they want something to happen.

As we think about our own leadership, a question worth asking ourselves, perhaps daily:

What can I do today, to hone my EQ skills and increase my likability?

Perspective…

January 8, 2017January 6, 2017 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I had an experience that reminded me how true it is that we see the world through our own perspective. So much so that our experience, in the exact same situation as someone else, can be entirely different. And it’s not until we pause and sincerely try to see the world as the other person does that we can appreciate their perspective.

Here’s the story. A man I dated briefly, my first year of college, sent me a message through Facebook Messenger. At first, I wasn’t sure who the sender was, after all, this was more than 40 years ago. After a while I remembered, so I responded and said hello. He wrote back telling me he was glad to be in touch because he owed me an apology. Turned out, from his perspective, when I transferred to another college we had an agreement that he was to join me. He didn’t join me after all, he said, and he felt he had broken our agreement.

High standards he has for himself you might say, especially since he is still thinking about this after 40 years, that’s perhaps a topic for another discussion about letting stuff go.

Going back to the perspective subject, my memory of the situation was completely different. What I remembered was he did contact me and I had moved on; I wasn’t wanting or expecting to see him.

Who knows which perspective is what actually happened; perspective in this case is clouded by years. However, the fact that each of us remembered the exact same situation so differently, has stayed with me since our brief interchange on Facebook Messenger.

It’s a reminder to me to stop and listen and ask questions, to be sure I work hard to see the world as the people in my life see it. As a leadership coach, I must work to see every perspective, not just my own. Not easy and nothing important is easy, is it?

The challenge for most of us is we are busy moving forward, busy with our own perspectives and we just don’t take the time to pause. We assume, we challenge, and we see only what we believe to be so.

In this new year, what will you do, to try to see the world from someone else’s perspective?