results – Page 5 – Elisa K. Spain

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.

Is Resistance The Problem?

March 19, 2017March 18, 2017 by Elisa Spain Comment Closed

Leading change in an organization is full of challenges. Most of these challenges are associated with creating a vision, inspiring action, achieving buy-in, and sustaining the change.

And sometimes, we don’t take the simple steps to achieve buy-in. Put simply, everyone hears through their own filter. Therefore the actions we see may not be the actions we expected. Obvious perhaps, and yet when leading change, we sometimes think that things are not happening the way we want because people are resisting.

Sometimes, they simply didn’t hear
Sometimes, they heard, but we haven’t made the effort to help them see the value from their perspective, i.e. the WHY
Or what they heard is different from what I thought I said
Or they need to hear it more than once; 7 times I have been told is the magic number
Or they need to do it more than once, or even twice, to “get it”
Or we simply need to allow time for the change to settle in

So, next time, before calling out a “resister”, first pause and ask them what they heard.

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?

Vertical Silos vs. Multitasking

February 19, 2017February 20, 2017 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Lots has been written about the downside of multitasking. And research shows that when it comes to tasks, at least amongst pre-millennial generations, it doesn’t work. Working on more than one thing at a time, e.g. talking on the phone and filling out a form or writing a paper, doesn’t work. It actually takes longer to get both tasks done when we multitask because our attention is divided.

And yet as leaders, we must pay attention to both the content, and the context of each situation. Isn’t this a form of multitasking?

I was discussing this with a friend recently and he had the following commentary, “My view is that we don’t really multitask but hold vertical subject or action silos in our heads, and each time we get an update for that silo we mentally log it in, decide if it’s critical or not and then process the next data segment for another silo.”

For me this was an ‘ah-ha’. As leaders, we must do this type of multitasking. Information flows in throughout the day. Vertical silos help us determine how to separate the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant. And, if we hold both content and context in a silo, we can remind ourselves when we must pause and address the context before we can make further progress on the content.

An example that comes to mind for me is leading a meeting, something we leaders do frequently and sometimes without thinking. In meetings, there are at least 3 vertical silos we must monitor throughout the session:

Most of us focus primarily on the content silo. We prepare agendas, prepare materials, ask for participation, assign tasks, etc. etc.

But what about the context silo? Is everyone present, fully present? What else may be going on in the lives of the people present that distracts their attention? How are people feeling about the subject matter and the time given for discussion? Are they feeling that they are being heard? I recently led a session where we gave an assignment and when we stopped the work at the end of the allotted time, the participants were visibly angry. Clearly we had not given them enough time. I wish context was so easy to read all the time. Most of the time it is subtle and if we don’t have that silo in mind, we miss the cues.

And what about the environment? Have you created an environment that makes the participants feel comfortable? Are the chairs comfortable; what about the temperature and ventilation? If an all-day meeting, or even a half-day, is there nutritious food so people stay focused? Or are you serving all sugar (e.g. fruit and bread products only) creating highs and lows and inadvertently impacting attention?

So, as you go through each day, I encourage you to think about your silos and ask yourself, are you logging into each of them appropriately?

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?

What Does It Mean To Be Present?

January 22, 2017January 16, 2017 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

When we talk about being present in our Vistage meetings, the request is to turn off the outside world and be present with the conversation in the room. Many of our members have similar requests for meetings inside their companies. Some leaders even collect everyone’s mobile devices when they enter the room so that no one is tempted to check messages and check out.

And of course, its easy to check out without a mobile device nearby. We get lost in our thoughts. And, meetings are only one place this can happen; it also happens at home. When our partners, our children, our friends are speaking, are we listening? Or are we waiting to respond, or simply lost in our thoughts?

Perhaps 2017 is the year to begin… finding time each day, or even each week, to shut out the noise, to be in silence or even meditate, all as practice for being present.

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?