The Titan Group - Derrick Strand's Blog: Conventional Thinking Not Allowed!

What's In A Name? Potentially A Lot!

2012-05-03T20:16:43Z

I read an article last month that discussed the huge box office failure of the Disney movie, John Carter. The movie is projected to lose over $200 million dollars and resulted in the recent resignation of Walt Disney's film unit chairman.

In spite of all the bad press, I took my family to see John Carter and guess what......we thought it was great! It was very entertaining and my six year old liked it as well. So I began to wonder why a good movie (my family's interpretation) could do so poorly at the box office?

I'm sure there has been some sort of deep, complex analysis as to why it was such a failure but I don't think that is necessary. I think the reason is very simple. The movie had a really bad name! John Carter is simply not an interesting or exciting title.

Yes I know that is the main character's name from the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel but that doesn't mean they had to name the movie that. The name, John Carter, simply did not exude edgy, cool, action or fun in anyway. Ask your son under 10 (I did) if they wanted a John Carter action figure? My boy said no because he'd rather have a Ninjago, Ironman, Batman figure instead because they are "way cooler!"

This made me think of other great products or services that failed, not because it was necessarily a bad product, but because it had a bad name. Some examples include:

Retardex - An oral rinse meant to retard the growth of plaque. A terrible name that offended a large portion of the population.

Reebok Incubus - A women's shoe that failed badly. Reebok found out through a news broadcast that "Incubus" as defined in the dictionary was an evil spirit that in medieval times was thought to descend upon women and have sex with them. Not great for sales.

Nads Hair Removal - I don't think I need to even comment on this one!

There are many more but I will stop here. This made me think and wonder if the same things are happening in organizations. Do good ideas, good initiatives and good solutions sometimes fail simply by having a bad name? The answer is yes!

In a past life in a large management consulting firm, we had a change management practice that ended up failing due to the lack of business. We found that no one wanted to pay for "change management" as they didn't see the value in such a soft, touchy feely term.......especially at $400/hour!!

The practice dissolved but an interesting thing then occurred. We started to build change management practices into all of our engagements but we didn't call it change management. We called it communication planning, stakeholder needs analysis and other things that the client understood and didn't mind paying extra for since they liked the terms better. The work was the same, it was simply called something different.........and it sold!

Another example revolves around a client I had that was interested in detailed process improvement to improve quality and customer satisfaction. In many ways it was a textbook type of six sigma effort. Lucky for me I did not use that term as I interviewed the executive team and various employees. I found out that several years ago that someone rolled out a six sigma effort that was poorly led and poorly thought out. If failed miserably and "six sigma" was now a dirty word in the organization. You and I know this was not a failure in six sigma but a failure in leadership, design and execution. These facts did not matter. The perception was that six sigma doesn't work.

Our solution was to use similar tools and techniques as six sigma but change the names and subtly change the approaches to look slight different and to never, never use the term, "six sigma." The project was a success but it would have been "dead in the water" from day one had we used terminology that was deemed to be toxic in their organization.

My point is that you can have a great product or service that doesn't sell or doesn't work if the name or phrases used do not work for your client or customer. Do your homework and manage your risk accordingly prior to putting names to things. It literally could mean the difference between success and failure. Just ask The Walt Disney Company.

Change Your Habits and Improve Productivity in 2012

2012-01-20T14:43:15Z

For many of us, the New Year means setting new goals and objectives both personally and professionally. We start off the year with high expectations for ourselves and of all the things we are going to accomplish. We get off to a fast start and then……. life happens! The constant noise of each new day and the unforeseen circumstances and events of life cause us to lose focus and set aside all of those things that we said we wanted to accomplish.

Before you know it, a year has gone by and very few, if any, of those initial goals or objectives are checked off as “done,” that is if you can actually find the original goal sheet in your cube or office! Sound familiar?

Well this is a new year and a new opportunity to not let that happen. A new opportunity to change your habits, become more disciplined and hold yourself accountable for achieving your goals. The key to all of this is managing your time more effectively. Below are a few tips and techniques to help you get better control of your time so you can accomplish more and meet your goals.

Create Your Own Strategy Map

Although this is not a traditional time management tip, it is critical to shape everything you do. When you create a strategy map, you define your MVV’s (mission, vision and values.) This can be personal or career based. Staying true to your MVV’s, determine your strategic goals for the year. I would recommend only four or five. Once you have these goals, determine the activities you need to engage in to achieve those goals. Lastly, translate those activities into measures and have targets for those measures so you can hold yourself accountable.

The result of this exercise will be a one page diagram that summarizes what you are doing, why you are doing it, how you’re going to do it and how you’re going to measure it. I have my strategy map as my background on my laptop so that every morning it’s the first thing I see. This helps me to immediately focus my day on the things that matter most.

For a sample strategy map, please contact me at derrick@titanhr.com and I will send you one as well as directions on how to complete it.

Break Down Activities Into Smaller Chunks

One reason we don’t achieve our goals is because they are too big so we don’t even try. For instance, if my goal is to write a book this year, that goal may feel overwhelming on the surface. If I break down that goal into writing one page a day, it seems much more doable. If I do this, I will have a 365 page book written by year end. The key is to break large goals into smaller ones. This gets you started on a positive note which creates momentum along with the desire to continue.

Manage Two of your Biggest Time Wasters

Easily two of the biggest time wasters in the workplace are email and meetings. Look at your emails and ask yourself, “Did I really need to receive this email?” or “Does this email help my achieve my goals?” If not, start the purging process. Ask to be removed from unnecessary distribution lists and tell people to only copy you on things that require your attention. Also, remove yourself from newsletters etc. that distract you from your stated goals. At the very least, route those messages into a folder, “To Be Read Later.” Over time, you will greatly reduce the volume of email which frees up time to do more important things.

Meetings are an even a bigger waste of time, in most cases. If a meeting does not connect to your job duties or goals, don’t go. There is nothing wrong with refusing to be in meetings that are not productive. At a minimum, it may spark a discussion to change a meeting to become more relevant. You may not be able to get rid of all your unproductive meetings but you will be surprised at how many you can get out of that are not worthwhile which frees up time to do other things that align with your strategic goals.

Return to Batch Processing

This may sound counterintuitive in today’s real time environments but studies have shown that what we think of as multi-tasking at work is actually switch-tasking, meaning that we are switching our attention back and forth between different things. There is a cost each time we switch. There are many exercises available that prove this theory. So instead of switching back and forth from answering email, doing research, answering the phone and instant messaging, turn everything off but one thing and focus on that until it is done. Then move on to the next thing and completely focus on that. You will get more done, faster and with higher quality.

Some people have mastered this by only answering email at 10am and 3pm. The rest of the day, email is shut down. They answer message in batches and are much more productive than switching back and forth between different tasks. This also applies to the phone. Forward your phone to voice mail and answer messages at certain times of the day. You will be amazed how much more productive you will be.

Plan for Tomorrow at the End of Today

One simple yet powerful technique is to plan out tomorrow’s work before you leave today or before you go to sleep at night. You will think more clearly than the next morning when the noise of the day can get you even before you start. Planning the night before with a clear head will greatly improve productivity tomorrow.

My Challenge To You

Some of you may think some of my suggestions are crazy or unrealistic in today’s fast paced world. In some cases that may be true but in the vast majority I bet that is not the case. My challenge to you is to just try them and see what happens. Even though you probably can’t eliminate all worthless meetings, what if this helps get one or two off your calendar. Wouldn’t that be worth a try?

Maybe you can’t answer email only at 10am and 3pm but why not shut it off for an hour and focus on only one thing and do it well. My guess is that the world will not explode if you aren’t on email for one hour.

How about breaking big goals into smaller ones that can be done in one day? Isn’t that worth a shot?

Please send me a note to let me know how these tips have helped you become more productive and focused. Just know I won’t respond until 10am or 3pm!!

Derrick Strand is Principal of Leadership and Organizational Development at the Titan Group in Richmond. He challenges people to “think differently” about leadership, organization, people, and process. His relentless assault on the status quo helps clients to address and solve issues in unique and innovative ways. For more information contact Derrick at derrick@titanhr.com or at 804-814-9921.

The Lost Discipline of Reading

2011-11-02T20:39:45Z

This is a post I've been meaning to right for some time now and recent events reminded me that I need to do it now! I spoke on leadership just yesterday at a professional development conference in the DC area. The session went well as did the whole conference but there was a disturbing theme that bothers me a great deal so I have to share. It has to do with reading. More specifically, business professional reading........or more appropriately, the lack there of!

I went to seven or eight different sessions where speakers referred to book after book and author after author during various parts of their presentations. In each case, the speaker would ask how many of you have read "this" book or have read anything by "this" author. In session after session, the speakers were amazed at how few people read or had even heard of certain business books or authors. I'm not talking about obscure books but best sellers like "Good To Great," "Balanced Scorecard, "Think and Grow Rich" and even "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." I was stunned as well.

Based on this, I decided to do a little research and here's what I found based on a literary research study:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

Now I can't validate whether these statistics are true but even if they are half true it is disturbing and based on what I just witnessed at the conference I attended, it certainly appears to be a major issue.

Here's the good news! If you really want to grow professionally and run circles around others in the marketplace.......start reading! I truly believe this is a competitive advantage! It doesn't need to be more difficult than that!

Set a goal to read one new business book a month and start to watch how things change. Start with the classics and do it for one year. Whatever you are passionate about that also applies to your role or career aspirations. You will be amazed at how things will change. I bet that you will see significant improvements in the some of the below areas just to name a few:

Problem Solving
Managing Others
Team Building
Goal Setting
Dealing with Conflict
Communicating
Leading Change
Customer Service

Don't be one of those people who says they are too busy to read. Be the one who makes time to read because of it's huge return on investment for you and in your future. For list of great business books to get you started, click here.

Have you ever met an unsuccessful person that had a huge library in their house? I don't think so!

I would love to hear from you. Let me know your comments and thoughts by either commenting on this post or contacting me directly at derrick@titanhr.com or 804-814-9921.

You can also connect with me at:

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Derrick Strand is a Principal in Leadership and Organizational Development at The Titan Group in Richmond, Virginia. He designs and delivers innovative management and leadership courses to the public and internally to clients who prefer customization. He also assesses and redesigns organizations to ensure they are structured in a way that facilitates, not hinders, their ability to achieve their vision and goals.

It's Likely That Team Performance Is Determined Before You Start!

2011-07-22T16:41:08Z

"Team builder" and "team player" are popular phrases in the workplace today and we often list them as skills we look for in effective managers and leaders. I know many a leader who could talk a good game about building effective teams in the interview process yet were not very successful at making it happen in the workplace. These same leaders also tend to be highly critical of other team leads who can't get a team to deliver great results. Why is it so hard to develop great teams?

High performing teams are a product of many factors. I believe many of these factors can be addressed BEFORE a team is formed. In fact, I know many project teams that were doomed to fail before they even started............I know you seen this since I'm sure you have been on at least one of those types of teams!

Let's talk about key components to team success BEFORE you even get started. For the sake of this discussion, I'll be referring to project teams that are assembled for different organizational initiatives. Here are the questions that need to be asked and answered:

Why are we doing this? - Before a team is ever put together, it should be "crystal clear" as to the reason for the project, how it ties to overall company objectives, who's the executive sponsor who is accountable and what defines success at project completion. It amazes me how many projects kick off without any of this information defined. Don't let it happen to you.

Make sure all of these components are clearly defined before agreeing to be a team lead or a team member. If no one has answers, run for the hills! The likelihood of project success without having these nailed down at project initiation is almost zero.

What attitudes do we need? - Many executives assign people to teams solely based on availability (where is a warm body to dump on this team!) Also, I've seen people assigned to project teams only based on skills and background. No one ever seems to ask these people whether they 1) have passion/enthusiasm about the project itself or if they are 2) excited to have the opportunity to be on the team. It's as if that doesn't matter.

I'm here to say that passion and excitement are crucial to having a high performing team. I would much rather have a team with average skills that had high energy and passion for the project than a highly skilled team that is not interested in the project at all. Before assigning people to teams, find out if they have passion and positive energy around solving the problem. If they don't, look for people that do.

What skills do we need? - Don't get me wrong, after passion and energy, skills are very important. If we did a good job defining the project and what success looks like, we should have a good idea of what skill sets are needed. Again, resist the urge to assign the "next available" person to the team. Find the people with the right skills.

What perspectives do we need? - Solutions to problems can be challenging and they require looking at the issues from many different angles or perspectives. You want a diversity of perspective and thought on your team so seek out people who think differently (e.g. left vs.right brained or customer focused vs. internal process efficiency), work in different functions or departments and who are at different levels organizationally.

The more perspectives you can have, the more comprehensive the problem solving will be.

Do we have an effective team leader? - If you have assembled a team with passion and energy towards the project that have good skills and also have differing perspectives and opinions, we better have an effective team leader! Why? Because a team with these characteristics is bound to have conflict. This is great if you have a team leader that is good at managing team dynamics and knows how to foster an environment of "constructive conflict." Constructive conflict is where there is significant debate, discussion and disagreement over issues and potential solutions.

You want team members to vigorously attack issues and problems, NOT each other. The team leader has to be skilled in managing this or a bar room brawl could break out!

Conclusion - A lot of what defines a high performing team happens before the team has it's first meeting. This of course does not guarantee team success but it certainly creates an environment that vastly increases the probability of success and high performance. This is a leadership lesson for everything, not just projects. One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create an environment where people can succeed. Are you creating these high performing environments?

I would love to hear from you. Let me know your comments and thoughts by either commenting on this post or contacting me directly at derrick@titanhr.com or 804-814-9921. You can connect with me at:

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Derrick Strand is a Principal in Leadership Development at The Titan Group in Richmond, Virginia. He designs and delivers innovative management and leadership courses to the public and internally to clients who prefer customization.

Leadership Trap - "Sanitized For Your Protection"

2011-05-21T01:06:00Z

Leaders rely heavily on others in their organization to accumulate data for reporting purposes. This includes daily sales figures, monthly end financial results, and project status updates. Many times this data is accompanied with powerpoint slides or “decks” (despise that term) to help interpret the meaning of the data and to “tell the story.”

Leaders I work with speak frequently about their desire to know exactly what is going in the business so they can make better, more timely decisions. As Jim Collins says in “Good to Great,” they want to hear and confront the brutal facts.

The question is, “Do they get the brutal facts on a consistent and timely basis?” I would argue that in the majority of cases, leadership does not.

Let's take a look by peeling back the covers to see the sanitation reporting cycle in action!

1. Raw Data is Generated by the Front Line Employees

Here are results in its purest form. The actual results do not lie. This is what's really happening!

2. Data is Gathered and Reported to Middle Management

Sit back and wait for the questions to massage, sanitize and reorganize the data

3. Middle Management Reviews

Does the data make us look good or do we need to make some adjustments……..we better make some adjustments so this looks better! I don’t want to get yelled at. Send back to massage, sanitize and reorganize (MSR’s) the data
After repeated MSR’s, we now feel comfortable sending to senior management

4. Senior Management Reviews

Does the data make us look good…..……..we better make some more adjustments so this looks even better! I don’t want to get yelled at either!! Send back to middle management for more massaging, sanitizing and reorganizing
After repeated MSR’s, we now feel comfortable sending it to executive leadership
Cross our fingers that our MSR’s have eliminated all questions and potential objections

5. Executive Leaders See Sanitized Results

Review of results indicate things are in order and senior management had great answers to all of our questions. Great job! Meeting adjourned.

I hope you don’t think I’m exaggerating for effect because I am not! I see this cycle all the time and it is quite disturbing. Leaders are not getting the information they need to make good decisions. They get a false sense of state of the business which can eliminate any sense of urgency to take action………..until it’s too late.

The end result is layers of management spending significant time and resources creating misleading information, at best, which leadership either acts or doesn’t act on. Not only is time wasted on non-value activity, the activity’s main objective is to create misleading information. Not a recipe for success.

Key Leadership Question

As a leader, the first question I would ask is, “Am I the problem?” Have I created a culture that does not encourage sharing the truth? Many leaders say they want the truth but then go "ballistic" on everyone when they hear it. If that is you, you may have created the “trickle down” culture of sanitation.

Action Steps to De-Sanitize

High performing leaders really want the truth..........so ask for it. Ask for the bad news. Ask your senior management team what we stink at and what is trending in the wrong direction. If they can’t come up with anything, you know that information is being withheld.

React to bad news in a constructive way and encourage your team to share the unvarnished truth. Recognize members on your team that speak the truth. Start changing the culture so that “confronting the brutal facts” becomes the norm as opposed to the cycle of truth avoidance.

You can’t solve problems until you are aware of them. Encourage unvarnished, unsanitized reporting so you can work on solving the problems instead of ignoring them.

Remember, bad news is not like fine wine, it does not improve with age!

I would love to hear from you. Let me know your comments and thoughts by either commenting on this post or contacting me directly at derrick@titanhr.com or 804-814-9921. You can connect with me at:

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How Numb Have You Become?

2011-04-20T15:32:00Z

This post is in honor of the dreaded tax filing day that just passed. When I do my taxes, I'm reminded of how much of my hard earned money goes to federal and state taxes. Most of us tend not to think about the size of our individual tax bill until tax time because of how taxes are collected during the year.......otherwise known as withholding.

I googled "origin of tax withholding" and found that withholding came about with The Current Tax Payment Act of 1943. It was enacted as an emergency to fund World War II but after the war, it was never repealed. We've had income taxes withheld from our paychecks ever since. Because of tax withholding being automatic and being withheld from our checks, we never actually have that money in our hands. Because of that, we have become numb to the fact that it was technically ours to begin with. We only seem to get upset about it once a year, when we file our taxes.

This made me wonder, "What else have we become "numb" to? When I say "numb" I mean things that we take for granted, things we accept as "okay," things that we used to object to and things that we used to be passionate about that have gone stagnant. Below is a list of areas you may want to examine to see if numbness has taken over.

1. Family and Friends - Have you slowly, over time, let these relationships deteriorate or have seriously taken them for granted? Take a relationship inventory and determine which relationships need repair or a "jump start." Then develop a plan to address each important relationship and get them back on the right track. There are few things, if any, that are more important than family or friends.

2. Work - Do you find yourself going through the motions at work or do you have energy and passion for what you do? If not, why not? Have you become accepting of your current work situation? Be honest with yourself. Maybe it's as simple as regaining focus and setting clear goals and objectives. Sometimes that alone can re-energize you. If things have become too numb and you can’t get your energy back, maybe it's time to change roles or seek out other opportunities.

3. Meetings – Do you hold boring meetings or attend boring meetings? What are you doing about it? How about holding fewer meetings and going to fewer meetings? If you need to have a meeting, make it productive, interesting and fun. Don’t accept that meetings have to occur or have to be boring. Please contact me if you’d like some ideas on how to “spice” up your meetings to get better results.

4. Communications – Do you find yourself engaging in less and less “in person” interaction due to email, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter etc. Only 7% of effective communication relates to content (words). The other 93% relates to pitch, tone, delivery and body language. Also, one way communication does not guarantee comprehension. Face to face interaction and dialogue helps to eliminate confusion and miscommunication. Do not become “numb” to fact that personal interaction is critical to effective communication.

5. New Ideas – How many new ideas or thoughts do you generate in a given day? Do you have systems in place at work and in life that intentionally spark creativity and innovation. A recent IBM global study showed that the number one quality CEO’s are looking for in their workforce is creativity. You CAN be creative and you CAN build systems and structure in your work and life that foster creativity and innovation. Please contact me on tips and techniques related to creativity and innovation.

Take a moment to do a self checkup and look for areas that have gone “numb” in your work and in your life. Make today the first day of “numbness elimination” and moving forward, be intentional in maintaining and growing your passion and energy towards all things you do.

I would love to hear from you. Let me know your comments and thoughts by either commenting on this post or contacting me directly at derrick@titanhr.com or 804-814-9921. You can connect with Derrick at:

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Why Personal Motivations Matter

2010-09-28T13:16:00Z

There is a famous quote that says, "Remember, you are unique, just like everyone else." Everyone is indeed unique with a their own genetics, upbringing and life experiences that have shaped who they are and what they have become.

Yet for some reason, when all of these unique people walk into the door at work, they are supposed to conform and be like everyone else. It's as if all the uniqueness is checked at the door and I am now an "employee."

Kind of depressing, isn't it?

When I talk to individuals at different clients, I hear a lot of the great ideas they have but they are unwilling to share them. They say the work environment is not receptive to new ideas or concepts that challenge the status quo. Sure, the leadership team talks a good game but these employees have seen first hand theirs or others ideas shot down in flames at many management meetings.

Sometimes they even get the title of "trouble maker," just for challenging things and sharing new ideas and thoughts that may threaten management or even higher. You may try it once but never again! What a shame!

Why do so many people give up sharing their unique ideas so quickly?

Here's where the personal motivations kick in. It called job preservation and security. Many people have very unique situations in their personal lives that shape what they do at work. Severe hardships, family illnesses and sending multiple kids through college are examples that may create financial and emotional strains. They need their job, even if they don't like it or don't feel challenged or appreciated. They simply need it to survive and there aren't any other good options. I have heard employees at least 50 times over my career say, "I'm not sharing that! I have bills to pay and mouths to feed." Again, what a shame!

If this is the case and the company culture does not reward new ideas or challenging the status quo, these individuals will keep their ideas to themselves in the name of job security. The end result is an organizational void of new thoughts and ideas. This leads to being less competitive and can ultimately lead to an organization's demise.

Organizations do not spend near enough time, if any at all, understanding the uniqueness of its people and the uniqueness of their personal motivations. If they did and then created a safe environment where new ideas and challenging the status quo actually created more job security, the amount of creativity and innovation would be astounding!

The organizations that understand this, embrace it and then create safe environments to foster creativity and innovation will have an enormous competitive advantage, regardless of the industry.

How do you think personal motivations affect organizational performance? I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my monthly newsletter. Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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My Top Ten Most Influential Business Books

2010-09-13T21:05:06Z

On occasion, people will ask me what books have had the biggest impact on my life and career. This weekend I decided to go through the library and put together my top ten list. Over the years, these books have been key in the development of my philosophy on business and life. Although I'm not sure if they will have the same impact on you as they did on me, if you haven't read some of these books, I would strongly encourage you to check them out!

Here they are in no particular order:

Good to Great by Jim Collins - Studies why some companies that were average for many years suddenly changed and became great over a sustainable period of time. Real research on certain companies across many different industries that made this leap. Filled with great organizational themes for success.

The Balanced Scorecard by Robert Kaplan & David Norton - Groundbreaking book on the limitation of financial measures and analysis. Linking leading and lagging indicators from different dimensions and understanding their relationships has been a big part of my performance management work over the years. Hard to believe this was written back in 1992.

Leading Change by John Kotter - My bible for the fundamentals of leading and driving change in organizations.

The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema - Taught me that you can't be all things to all people and be a market leader. Decide what you are and what you are not and stick to it.

Nuts by Kevin & Jackie Freiberg - The story of Southwest Airlines. This book taught me there can be a method in the madness and that everything you do should be intentional. Also, you can have fun and be successful at the same time.

At Work with Thomas Edison by Blaine McCormick - Taught me that innovation just for innovation's sake it not productive. You must be trying to solve something and create value for the marketplace. Edison is known as a great inventor but he was also a great businessman.

Serious Creativity - Edward de Bono - One of the most mentally challenging books I've read. Teaches ways to think differently in order to come up with solutions to problems. Also, that creativity can be learned and can become part of an organization's culture.

Customers for Life - Carl Sewell - So simple and so powerful. Basic concepts for creating life long customers that are as relevant today as they were the first time I read it.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni - Like all of Patrick's books, it's a novel filled with all kinds of business lessons. I use his team building pyramid in all of my teambuilding training.

The Customer Comes Second by Hal Rosenbluth - Focus on your employees first and other things will take care of themselves. Highly innovative ideas in creating an employee based culture that delivers extraordinary results.

You can find all of these titles and more at my website's best business books web page or copy and paste the following url http://www.derrickstrand.com/Best_Business_Books.html

What books have influenced you the most? I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my newsletter. Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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Only Use the "E" Word (Empowerment) When You Mean It!

2010-09-09T18:37:00Z

A popular buzz word today when it comes to engaging employees is empowerment. Leaders say, “We empower our employees to solve problems,” or “you are empowered to change things.”

This is powerful to employees only IF it is true. If they are only words that are not followed by actions, you can do much more harm than good.

For example, you want to put together a task team to solve a specific business problem. You ask for volunteers to be a part of this important initiative and tell them they are “empowered” to come up with a solution. The team is excited about the opportunity. They work additional hours outside of their normal duties and come up with recommendations they firmly believe will solve the problem.

The team puts together a formal presentation and shares the results with you and the leadership team. Here’s where the problems can start. If you do not like the recommendations and decide not to implement them, the potential impact on the morale of the team members is significant:

They will feel like they were lied to and they weren’t truly empowered
They will feel like all of their hard work was wasted
They will not trust senior management moving forward
They will not volunteer for future projects
They will share their experiences with co-workers and spread the distrust

This scenario can have severe consequences on employee morale, production and retention.

If you truly believe in empowering your people, then you have to manage the process from beginning to end to make sure employees are truly empowered.

1. Provide guidelines and constraints – you need to limit the exposure and risk but setting guidelines like no additional spending or the recommendations must align to strategic objectives.

2. Trust your employees –Have faith that your employees are capable of solving problems without your intervention. You have set the guidelines and constraints, now leave them alone.

3. Hold them accountable for the solutions– Along with empowerment comes accountability. When they present their solutions, you need to make sure they are within the guidelines and constraints and they are fact based solutions. If not, they need to go back and rework their recommendations.

4. Support the implementation of the recommendations – Once they have met the requirements and their solutions are based on sound decisioning, then you must support the implementation. This is true empowerment.

5. Celebrate the successes – A key to getting more people involved is to communicate to all employees the success of a project and reward the team members based on their contribution. This will help in getting future volunteers for the next initiative and will build morale.

Use the “E” word carefully but if you use it appropriately, it can lead to significant results for your business and for your people.

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic. I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my newsletter. Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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Why Some Leaders Are Like Bad College Professors

2010-09-02T12:09:00Z

Take yourself back to your college days for a moment. Think about all the professors you had and remember the ones that you really liked, the ones that were okay, and the ones that were really bad. My guess is that an unscientific distribution of those categories follows the 20/60/20 rule (see my blog post on the 20/60/20 rule) where 20% were good, 60% were average and 20% were bad.

Let's start with the bad ones. There are a variety of different reasons why some professors are not particularly liked by students but it's not usually because they don't know the subject matter thoroughly. I remember the teachers I struggled with the most were the ones that were absolutely brilliant.

So what was the issue? In my view, the main reason why these professors didn't deliver is simple. They did not have the ability to translate their wealth of knowledge into simpler terms that college students could grasp onto and comprehend.

The professors got frustrated when students didn't understand what they were saying and they didn't have any alternative ways of teaching. Now, here's the worst part........they don't see it. They think their teaching approach and style are fine and it's the students that just aren't "getting it."

The end result?? Students didn't learn the material and they were frustrated because they did poorly on examinations.

In the business world, I see many leaders that have the same issues as bad college professors. There are extremely intelligent and know the business inside and out. However, they are not able to translate vision and strategic thinking into simple and concise concepts that employees at all levels can understand. These leaders can't understand why their employees don't "get it" and assume it's the employee's problem.

Also in this case, there is no attempt by leadership to simplify the message in order gain broader comprehension. They don't believe it's a problem with the messenger or the message. This leadership "blind spot" causes visions and strategies to be misinterpreted and misunderstood. Employees are left confused as to what the message is or what it is they can do to support it. Here are some things to avoid so you don't become the "bad professor" in your company.

Ensure your message is clear, concise and simple. Fifty plus page powerpoint presentations are a NO NO! Keep the message to one or two slides if possible. If you need more than this, your message isn't concise enough.

Ask for feedback. After your presentation, ask for electronic feedback. Do people understand the message or not? If not, take that feedback and do it again with a different approach. Keep doing this until the message is clear.

Don't try to look like you are smarter than everyone else. People resent that. Keep it simple and people will respond positively. Remember, the goal here isn't communication, it's effective communication. Effective communication means that the largest number of people comprehend the message and know how to apply it.

Let's now focus on the really good professors you had. The ones I remember had the following qualities:

Fun
Interesting
Deep knowledge of the subject
Passionate about the subject
Passionate about you learning
Flexible with learning approaches
Self deprecating
Able to break down complex things into simple, bite size chunks

They also felt that if students didn't learn, it was a failure on their part, not the students.

Asa leader, focus on being one of the "good professors." These leaders understand the ultimate goals of communication are comprehension and application. Organizations will achieve incredible results with these"professors" at the helm!

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic. I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my newsletter. Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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The 20/60/20 Rule for Leading and Managing Change

2010-08-31T17:16:00Z

I wrote this in April, 2010 as a part of my monthly newsletter to my list of subscribers. The response to the content was so positive that I wanted to post it on my blog. I hope you enjoy it and I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

Most of us have heard of the Pareto Principle known as the 80/20 rule that states roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Examples include:

80% of sales come from 20% of the salespeople
80% of customer complaints come from 20% of the customers
80% of the work is done by 20% of employees

……. and so on. It has been amazing to see, over time, how accurate this has been when analyzing the activities of clients.

Another rule I’ve found to be accurate is a variation on the Pareto Principle and it’s just as powerful. It’s called the 20/60/20 rule. Its application to leadership, time management and generating results is priceless.

The 20/60/20 rule applies to people and relationships. This could be employees, customers, vendors, a church congregation, PTA ……. even family and friends.

The rule states that approximately:

20% of the people will immediately be on board with whatever you are saying
20% of the people will immediately be opposed to whatever you are saying
60% of the people can be influenced one way or the other depending on future interactions

Let’s expand on each of these.

The Positive 20% - This group already has an understanding or a viewpoint that is in complete alignment with what you are saying. You don’t have to “sell” them! They already get it. This could be the customer who is ready to buy, the employee that agrees with the new vision or the family member who has wanted you to change jobs for a long time.

The Takeaway: Leave this group alone or else you might screw something up! Don’t over communicate with them or spend a lot of time influencing or persuading them……..they’ve already got it!

The Negative 20% - This group already decided before you even open your mouth that they are against it. Typical responses from this group are, “I’m too busy for this”, “it will never work”, “it doesn’t make any sense”, “this is a waste of time.”

No matter what you do, you will not be able to convince this group that whatever you’re doing is a good idea or that it’s a great product/service that they need to buy. Know anyone like this?? I bet you do and I bet they are in every relational group in your life: prospects, employees, neighborhood associations, family members and friends.

The Takeaway: Ironically, the takeaway here is the same as the positive 20%. Leave this group alone! All of your efforts in persuading this group will be for naught. The only outcome for you will be frustration and wasted effort. Wasted effort that could have been applied to the next group.

The Middle, Workable 60% - Here is where you can make a difference! The sixty percent in the middle can be influenced one way or another after the initial interaction. It will depend on further communications, the environment, and their own individual processing. Here is where you want to spend your time.

Identify this group and then spend the majority of your time with them finding out why they are “on the fence.” Create a safe environment where they can give honest answers to your questions without the fear of retribution. What do they like? dislike? How they would approach it? Incorporate their input so you can get their buy in. In most cases, people don’t expect all of their ideas to be incorporated. They just want to be heard and to know that leadership values their views and opinions.

The Takeaway: With focused attention and genuine interest in their input, you should be able to get the majority of the 60% to move over in the positive category.

Effective leadership, in any organization, involves knowing how to efficiently use your time to generate the best results. Applying the 20/60/20 rule is a great tool to determine where to spend that time and with “who” in order to generate the biggest impact to your organization.

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic. I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com for general information or to sign up for my newsletter. Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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Change Your Lens for More Insight

2010-08-20T12:16:43Z

Several weeks ago, my wife and I were looking at potentially replacing her SUV with a new car so we did some research on the internet and found a car she liked. For the next few days, it seemed like every where we drove, we saw the car that she had picked out. It was all over the place and in many different colors. The funny thing is that I do not remember ever seeing that car on the road prior to her picking it out.

I found this fascinating so I went home and tried another experiment. I sat out on our patio and watched the birds fly in and out of our bird feeders, like I do frequently. This time, however, instead of casually watching, I intently watched every detail of the birds motions, how they ate, how they interacted and where they flew away to. It was amazing! It was this whole new world that was right in front of me all of this time and I hadn't spent any time focusing on what was really going on.

I then realized that I do this a lot in business and life. I'm missing a lot of what is going on around me because I'm either not paying attention or not looking at it with the right "lens." Their are several lenses that I think, unfortunately, come naturally to us. They are the negativity lens and the blurry lens.

Negativity Lens - I believe that most people live their daily lives with this lens on. It seems to be natural for people to see only the negative things that occur during the day.

I can't catch a green light.
This traffic is horrible.
Somebody took the last cup of coffee and didn't make more!
Whooa! Look at Bill's comb over! His part is almost down to his ear!
This meeting is so boring. No agenda and no focus.
I hate being on this team, no one else does any work but me!
Did you see Sheila's toes........nasty!

I could go on and on and on. If you think I'm exaggerating, spend an hour at work listening intently to colleagues and keep a mental count on the positive vs. negative comments. Also, go out on Facebook (if you have an account) and look at people's status updates. My unscientific sample puts the negative to positive comment ratio at about 9 to 1. It's no wonder people are unhappy or unsatisfied if this is the typical lens they view their world through.

From the business side, I also think we spend too much of our time and energy on problems and what is wrong and not enough time talking about and celebrating what is right and good in the company.

Blurry Lens - This ties back to watching the birds on my patio. My lens was clear enough to see, in general, what the birds were doing but I wasn't seeing any of the details. It's not that I couldn't see the details, I was simply choosing not to. Either I didn't want to expend the energy or I just wasn't interested in what was going on.

Think about the interactions you have at the office or with family and friends. How much time do we focus on the obvious like what is said or done. How little time do we spend on the subtleties of how things are said, the body language, the facial expressions, who is in the room, what is in the room, and people's past history with each other. If we only focus on the obvious, we miss most of what is really going on.

There is a scene in one of the Bourne spy movies starring Matt Damon where he is in a public place with another person and he proceeds to give, in incredible detail, descriptions of everyone in the room, why he thinks they are there, could they be a threat, what people are talking about, where's the closest exit, etc. These types of agents are trained to take in everything in their immediate surroundings because their life depends on it. I definitely think there are things we can learn from this example.

From the business perspective, think about your people, business processes and activities and really focus hard on the details to see what you may be missing. The current TV show, "Undercover Boss" highlights this. Executives go undercover to see what's really going in their businesses.

They think they know what's going on but when they become a front line employee for a week, they see all of the things they've been missing. The bosses usually come back to the corporate office with new ideas to implement that will address the issues or challenges they experienced on the front line. They would never have come up with or implemented these new ideas had they not seen the details.

My Challenges For You

Try the Positive Lens - Get up one morning and commit to intentionally viewing your world only through a positive lens. Try it for an entire day. See all the things that are positive and good in your life, in your environment and in the people you interact with. There is good in everything! Fight off the urge to be negative. Just try it! Once you do, please report back to me the results. Did you find yourself in a better mood? smiling more often? more productive? better discussions?

Please let me know!

Clean off the Blurry Lens - Much like with the positive lens, get up one day and intentionally plan to absorb all of the details of your environment, the things you do and the interactions you have with others. When you are intentionally seeing and absorbing all the details, you realize there is a whole other world of things going on that you've been missing. Please report back on this one as well.

If we change our lenses to ones that are positive and crystal clear, I believe we can also change our attitudes. If we are able to change our attitudes, we are more able to see all of our blessings, in great detail, and be thankful for them.

Doesn't that sound like a better approach than blurry and negative?

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic. I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com . Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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Constraints Can Actually Enhance Creativity

2010-08-17T20:03:00Z

I have facilitated many different sessions on creativity and innovation. Intuitively, you would think that the more freedom you provide in the creative process, the more ideas and better ideas are generated. In my experience, this is not the case.

I have found that unlimited freedom to develop unlimited options or ideas can actually stifle the creative process. People, even highly creative people, like to know there are some limits and boundaries to thinking. Without these limits, the infinite possibilities can really be overwhelming and people get "stuck" because of the unlimited options.

The most creative sessions I've had with groups are the ones with strict boundaries or limits. At the beginning, the group struggles with even one or two ideas that meet the criteria. After a while, the group gets rolling and comes up with all kinds of ideas that are within the limits but extremely creative.

The best real world example of this is customized license plates. The limits and boundaries are set up from the beginning. You can only use letters and numbers and only up to seven spaces. When the first ones came out, they weren't very interesting. Over time, people became very creative in their uses of letters and numbers in those seven spaces. I never in a million years thought there could be so many creative ways to express your thoughts on a license plate given these restrictions.

The importance of all this is that even the creative process needs structure. Creativity for creativity's sake is nice but it doesn't always generate strategic results. By providing an solution framework upfront as to the limits and boundaries before engaging in the creative process, it will force people to dig deeper, come up with more creative solutions and these solutions will be actionable since the solution framework was provided upfront.

Please share your thoughts and comments on this topic. I'd love to hear from you. You can also check out my website at www.derrickstrand.com or email me at dstrand@derrickstrand.com . Also, connect with me at the following social media links:

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Building Relationships: What I Learned from my Class Reunion

2010-08-16T13:09:00Z

This past weekend, I went to my 25th high school reunion. It was the first one I went to since I graduated. Now there were many reasons for being absent from my 5, 10, 15 and 20 year reunions. I moved away from my hometown to go to college. I graduated and then proceeded to work in many different cities far away. All of my immediate family moved down south during those years which left me no burning reason to head back "home."

None of those were the real reason I didn't go back to any of the reunions. I had the money to go back but I did not have the desire. You see, I didn’t enjoy high school that much. By my junior year, I was really tired of the cliques, the teasing related to not having the “right” shoes, jeans, jackets or friends and with kids literally not interacting with you because you were not with the “in” crowd.

That’s when I decided to more or less go into a protective shell. I focused on school and sports and socialized with a core group of friends that I knew I could trust. Because of this decision, I missed out on a lot of the fun things associated with high school: homecoming, prom and the “cool” parties.

I left high school with a bitter taste in my mouth and thanked God it was over. That bitterness, albeit in decreasing amounts, remained for the next 20 years and it was never low enough to make me want to go back to a reunion.

Since this year was the 25th, I decided it was time to go. Enough time had passed, I thought, to go back and see what it would be like. I honestly did not know whether I was going to love it or hate it until I walked in the door.

Much to my surprise, I had an absolute blast! The years seemed to have melted away the protective layers that I had as a teenager and it seemed to have melted away others away as well. The result was fun, playful discussions about high school followed by genuine discussions about how you are doing, what you are doing, where you live and more details about your family and your life.

The “kid” in most everyone seemed to be on display and because of that, discussions were open, unguarded and interesting. I had more meaningful discussions with some classmates in five minutes than I did in four years of high school.

On the disappointing side, there were still some people hanging on to their high school “status". Others seemed cold, distant and unwillingly or unable to be that playful teenager they once were.

I feel bad for these individuals since they really missed a golden opportunity to genuinely reconnect with others and to reconnect with that inner “kid” in them. I wanted them to have as much fun as I did! The good news is there were only a handful that missed out.

What did I learn from all of this?

Remove Protective Layers – This experience just revalidated with me that it is impossible to have genuine, meaningful relationships when you have protective layers. Working on removing those layers so you can be more honest and vulnerable will allow you to greatly improve existing relationship and create new ones that you never thought were possible. Do you expose yourself to potentially getting hurt? Sure you do, but the payback will far exceed any risk.

Be True to your “Inner Kid” – Do you know people that used to be fun that just aren’t anymore? It seems like the years have sucked all the “joy of life” out of them. At the core, I think we are all fun and happy kids and over the years we are taught to suppress that and in our adult life, we tend to discount its importance and put it on the back burner.
I do believe that the main reason the reunion was so much fun is that most of us were acting like silly teenagers and being true to our innate personalities. We need to give ourselves permission to be our natural selves all the time and not suppress it.
Don’t Miss Out – Out of the 400 in our graduating class, only 100 made it to the reunion. There were many people that weren’t there that I would have loved to talked to. I know many of them didn't go for the same reasons I didn't go to the first four. All I can say to them is that they missed out on a great opportunity. Life is all about opportunities. In order to play, you have to show up. A lot of life is simply about showing up!

I have had so many experiences where I didn’t want to do something but I still did and they turned out to be some of the best experiences I’ve had. They are always a reminder that you will miss out on life if you don’t show up!

If we can peel back the protective layers, put our true self on display and simply participate in life, we will expose ourselves to all the potential in our lives and take control of it.

Think of how all our relationships will change if we apply these three principles. The relationships with our spouse, children, friends, family, co-workers will change almost immediately.

Let's give it a try. We have to get in the relationship game in order to make a difference. In the end, the only things that matter are our relationships with others. We must do our part and our relationships will flourish.

As you can see, my reunion had a profound impact on me. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on similar experiences you’ve had. I look forward to your input.

Find out more at www.derrickstrand.com. You can also contact Derrick at dstrand@derrickstrand.com or via the following social media links:

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